[Coyoteman]

Koine Greek to read and understand it in the language of its composition

I thought the Greek versions were later. I seem to remember about AD 900? but that could be faulty memory.

Aren't the Dead Sea Scrolls closer to the original versions?

[Das Outsider]

I thought the Greek versions were later. I seem to remember about AD 900? but that could be faulty memory.

You are probably thinking of the Latin copies. The Greek witnesses of the New Testament go back to the 2nd century (A.D. 125 [papyrus 52]).

[Das Outsider]

Aren't the Dead Sea Scrolls closer to the original versions?

For the Old Testament books, yes. The Hebrew reflects an earlier form used prior to the Massoretes (6th-century A.D.).

[SeaLion]

Aren't the Dead Sea Scrolls closer to the original versions?

It's better than that -- the Nag Hammadi codices include additional gospels (such as a Gospel of Thomas) which are very interesting--but the history of the early Church is a very complicated tangle of power struggles, denouncing of heretics, suppressing of awkward texts, etc. etc. I'm not Christian-bashing here, just noting some of the additional problems in trying to derive any kind of absolutes (moral or scientfic, though it's oxymoronic to talk about 'scientific absolutes', but let that go) from a literal reading of the Bible. But the right to read it that way is an absolute right of anyone who so wishes, I don't challenge that. I do challenge the right of anyone to impose an interpretation of any religious scripture (whether Bible, Koran, Upanishad etc. etc.) in the public school science curriculum