Who was Moses' father-in-law and why does it matter? Part 1

According to Exodus 2:18, Moses' father-in-law was רְעוּאֵל (Reuel). He was Zipporah's father, whom he gave in marriage to Moses (2:21). Reuel was "the priest of Midian" (2:16). Then according to Exodus 3:1, his father-in-law, "the priest of Midian" was יִתְרוֹ (Jethro) and in Exodus 4:18, his father-in-law's name is יֶתֶר (Jether). In Exodus 18, Moses' father-in-law is called Jethro throughout. So who was Moses' father-in-law and why does it matter?

The oldest Hebrew manuscripts that we possess today are dated between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE. They were discovered among, what are commonly called, the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) in the caves near Qumran between 1947 and 1956. Over 1000 manuscript fragments have been identified of which about 25% are manuscripts of what would later (1st-2nd centuries CE) be canonized as books of the Hebrew Bible (HB). Prior to their discovery, the earliest Hebrew manuscripts were dated to the 9th or 10th centuries CE and represent the Masoretic text (MT), which until recently was the textus receptus for the HB and the Christian OT.  So, it is impossible to overstate the significance of these DSS. They do confirm that there was a significant preservation of the Hebrew texts throughout the centuries. However, at the same time, the DSS demonstrate not a tiny number of differences, called "variants," when compared to the MT. In addition, there are multiple manuscripts of several books of the HB among the DSS that differ from one another.

In the centuries prior the canonization of both the HB, and later, the canonization of the Christian New and Old Testaments, there did not exist one standardized, authoritative text of all biblical books, but multiple manuscripts of key HB texts, that contain numerous variants when compared to one another. Please read the following quote carefully and as objectively as possible:

• "But the real blow to the Masoretic Text...was their contention...that biblical texts were highly fluid in the last centuries before the Common Era. Scribes could add to older texts and rearrange their elements without impairing the status of those texts as Holy Scripture. this means that very different literary editions of the same biblical books were used alongside each other. Take the book of Jeremiah as a particularly illustrative example...The translators of the Septuagint had before them a very different and much shorter book of Jeremiah than the Masoretic version. yet, both editions were clearly seen as authoritative. Even the Torah existed in different, equally authoritative versions." (Martin Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts, 63).

• "In the case of the Hebrew Bible it is difficult to define what the ‘original’ means, since each book is the product of a complicated and often unrecoverable history of composition and redactions. The ‘original text’ that lies somewhere behind the archetype is usually not the product of a single author, but a collective production, sometimes constructed over centuries, perhaps comparable to the construction of a medieval cathedral or the composite walls of an old city.” (The Oxford Hebrew Bible: prologue to a New Critical Edition [2008], p. 322)

What does all this do to the understanding of "all scripture is God-breathed?" While some of the variants can certainly be explained as scribal errors, resulting in obvious deletions of text, or as scribal updates, as the Hebrew language changed over time (re: spelling and grammar), other differences cannot be so easily explained. Were the "original autographs" (which we don't and won't ever have) God breathed (word for word) but then scribal errors and innovations introduced these variants? If so, how are we to think of the biblical texts that we do possess?  Is there another way to think about "God-breathed scripture" that would allow for and help explain these multiple texts and their variants? More to come...