Ancient Religious Caves | Dead Sea Scrolls | Absolute History

[Music] in the Judean wilderness of Palestine on the shore of the Dead Sea the windswept desert ruins of Qumran still concealed ancient secrets the human remains and artifacts unearthed by archaeologists 50 years ago are only now beginning to tell the story of the people who in desperation hid the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves above Qumran never to return [Music] [Music] hidden away in a forgotten crypt beneath the busy streets of modern Jerusalem is the grave of a remarkable man whose ghost still haunts the archaeologists and scientists eager to know the mysteries of the scrolls and those who hid them what secrets did father Roland de veau take with him to the grave and why does his name still awaken controversy you can't go into somebody else dig and that's what happened here in 93 during the scroll operation and start excavating before you have a final report of what the previous excavation was and now you can understand that they cannot publish their result before the vote will publish his the Dead Sea Scrolls are accessible to everyone now why is the archeological material from Qumran not accessible the same argument that was made about the Dead Sea Scrolls why should the Dead Sea Scrolls be made accessible to everyone that same argument should be made about the archaeology of Qumran we are 52 years after that the Dead Sea scrolls were found but from a point of view in archaeology we just act [Music] the story that consumed father DeVos life begins in the winter of 1947 with an arab shepherd boy named mohammad @b looking for a lost goat in the limestone cliffs above the Dead Sea the boy throws a stone into a small cave opening the sound of breaking pottery comes back to him like a story from the Arabian Nights he enters the cave and to his amazement finds 10 clay jars untouched since the time of Christ all were empty or filled with dirt except one which held one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century the Dead Sea Scrolls a total of seven scrolls were taken from cave number one they were the first manuscripts discovered in this ancient library that would eventually total over 800 texts located in ancient Palestine on the shores of the Dead Sea and only a day's walk from Jerusalem the Qumran ruins were ignored for centuries with the discovery of the scrolls they suddenly took on new meaning was there a connection between the scrolls and the ruins in 1951 father Roland DeVoe assembled a small team of archaeologists to probe the ruins of Qumran they dug for five years and formed what was to become the accepted story of the community in the desert of a monastic Brotherhood known as the Essenes or pious once an elite society gathering a massive library of sacred Scrolls obsessed with ritual purity and the heavenly calendar when he began his excavations Duvall was already a famous archeologist and teacher the first time I met tuvo was in October of 63 and after supper I was introduced to everyone who were sitting out in the garden and Duvall was telling jokes and my French was fairly good but a lot of it was agro he had a great sense of humor and you could see you know the dynamism and the brilliance he was appointed director of the prestigious a called be bleak in Jerusalem in 1953 and president of the Rockefeller Museum in nineteen fifty-four the Dead Sea Scrolls housed at the Rockefeller were entrusted to his personal and exclusive care with the scrolls and the archaeological dig under his personal control DeVoe was in an extraordinary position to correlate the work of the field team digging at Qumran and the young group of scholars he had assembled who were sorting and translating the texts at the Rockefeller Museum John struck Nell was 26 when he came from Oxford to join the team they smoked cigarettes and presence of the holy Scrolls they everyone smoked cigarettes in those days we had Catholic coffee served in the morning you might have spilt a cup of coffee on the scroll and no we were we didn't treat these scrolls with any great reverence we treated them with seriousness and no great scientific skill these young scholars were piecing together a vast jigsaw puzzle of thousands of individual fragments many from texts no living person had ever read the inner convolutions of the scroll were very tight it hadn't been unrolled for 2,000 years and so I really had to work away at chipping at the bottom to get the ebony part away and not losing any information any words and letters and so that that it was hard to do but I had to go to lunch that day and at the American school on in Jerusalem and would know actually what I did was I put a tea kettle on mine stove which was an oil burning stove and and the and let the tea kettle steamed I put plenty of water in it ran got my lunch and came back and I didn't Ted there tell father devote that that's what I had done because he would have in fact when I did tell him later he got very upset that I'd done that but then the result was good dad got it all under glass it was all it was you know just just it worked out perfectly and then later he claimed he had suggested it to me between 1952 and 1956 ten other caves were discovered which contained scrolls and fragments eventually over 800 texts would be identified during the same period massive amounts of data were being collected and recorded by DeVoe and his team at the excavation site details that DeVoe expected to publish in a definitive final report he was 66 and his heart was weak and didn't care he go on you know he go on and he had a very light surgery and during surgery died [Music] jean-baptiste embarr aviacode be bleak is the man to whom the de veau legacy was passed he presides over the ongoing study of the massive amounts of archaeological material duvall left behind but some people ask question maybe not it maybe it's not the same and if command is not the same the glory disappear you know the the fantastic weight of cumin is solved in water if it is not the same and it's why the question is serious because the as long either complete report is not published the people can easy Tate to link caves and skulls with the cite des Vosges sudden death left the world without a final report of his discoveries what we know about Qumran comes from his lectures and notebooks a wealth of archaeological detail that tells the story of a thousand years the archaeological site at Qumran is situated on a wide plateau that sits between the severe limestone cliffs to the west and the Dead Sea to the east [Music] when des Vosges team began work here in 1952 they found piles of rubble that were barely distinguishable from the surrounding landscape the excavation took over five years to complete as des Vosges team worked their way down into the rubble evidence of four periods of occupation was discovered beginning at the deepest and therefore oldest level some structures were dated to 900 BC the time of the Israelite Kings eight centuries later around 150 BC a new group came to the plateau and began constructing buildings kills to fire pottery and aqueducts and cisterns for moving and storing water this was the modest beginning of the Essene community and the scrolls library in the middle of the 1st century BC the community took on what Deveaux called its definitive form the finished complex had three parts first the study area where the scrolls were collected and also a fortress like watchtower second a group of service buildings including a kitchen third at the extreme south end the largest room in the complex used for dining and as an assembly hall and woven throughout a remarkable system of aqueducts and baths used for purifying the members of the community and in the final time period evidence of devastation ashes and arrowheads tell the story of the destruction of the Essenes at the hands of the Roman army in 68 AD and it was this settlement this main period of occupation which Deveaux identified as a secretary in settlement believing that the people who lived at the site were the same people who deposited the scrolls in the caves and this view has remained well it remained basically unchanged up until maybe 10 years ago or so and is still probably I think I could safely say the majority view the accepted view among most scholars the texts have been grouped by scholars into three categories biblical books sectarian documents and non religious writings the first third of the library was comprised of the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible including the great Isaiah scroll older than any previously known copy by a thousand years and there shall come forth the rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him the spirit of counsel and might but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked the Messianic texts the the texts that predict the coming of Messiah and all the things surrounded with that the restoration of the the people of God the restoration of the country all the hopes that are connected with with the coming of Messiah and this was a central tenant of Qumran just as it was a central tenant of Christianity the second category of the library was the sectarian literature or the group of manuscripts that were written by the Essenes themselves to govern daily life among these manuscripts has found the rule of the community which sets forth a strict lifestyle for the members of this elite group every man who enters the council of holiness and who deliberately or through negligence transgresses one word of the law of moses on any point whatever shall be expelled and shall return no more for one sin of inadvertence he shall do penance for two years but if he has sinned deliberately he shall never return to the community so that his way and counsel may be made perfect according to the judgment of the congregation Josephus the ancient historian observed that those guilty of serious offenses often came to a most miserable end still bound by oaths and Essene practices they could not partake of other men's food or drink and so fell to eating grass and waste it away dying of starvation in the desert [Music] some scholars have speculated that John the Baptist the cousin of Jesus may have been an excommunicated as seen surviving in the desert by eating honey and wild locusts and dressing in animal skins besides governing the community other sectarian texts found in the caves were used to protect and convey sacred teachings that were not for the eyes of outsiders [Music] currently new work is being done by Stephen fond of the University of the Holy Land on an unusual type of sectarian text the so called cryptic script devised by the Maskull who was a visionary or prophetic leader in the community this new alphabet which he developed was one that was his own personal alphabet and perhaps of a few other people who he trusted and this was in order to help to keep pure and separate knowledge that others aren't allowed to have access to yet this scroll contains the secret wisdom spoken by the mosquito to those first entering the community for their time of testing the sons of dawn were coming out of the darkness of a wicked world into the light of God beginning a new life of strict discipline and purity [Music] so it can be very interesting to take a look at the way in which this community of the Dead Sea Scrolls formed people gave them a new story for their lives gave them a new way of looking at themselves gave them new disciplines by which they could become in their view better people or to achieve a kind of spiritual perfection the third group of documents are harder to categorize but they offer the first glimpse that scholars have had in to the great ferment that was taking place in Judaism during this period they include retold biblical stories new Psalms works of biblical commentary and interpretation as well as mystical writings describing angelic journeys however there's another kind of religious experience that happens in the setting of worship which comes very close to what we might want to call the mystical and that's represented quite well in the songs of the Sabbath sacrifice where each week for a series of thirteen weeks they would recite one of the songs that describes how the angels worship God in heaven when the wheels of his throne chariot advance angels of holiness come and go there is a fiery vision of most holy spirits about them the appearance of rivulet of fire like gleaming brass the spirits of the living gods move perpetually with the glory of his marvelous chariot I don't think it was consciously assembled as though there were from the start a librarian who asked people and ordered books to be brought there but my best imagining of how the library got there was that a number of the people who came to Qumran spend some time there and to study the Scriptures and to embrace that whole ascetic life brought with them their treasures and especially their religious treasures some of those would be you know a book of you know books of the Bible what we call Scrolls of the scriptures maybe a scroll of Isaiah and a scroll of Deuteronomy and a scroll of the Psalms and maybe Genesis or something like that their favorite ones but then also other religious works that were important to them as the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls nears completion attention is turning again to the story of the desert community Deveaux put forward nearly 50 years ago perhaps a new day is dawning for the archaeological study of Qumran [Music] the temple priests that were to form the core of the Qumran community left Jerusalem around 150 BC they believe the temple the center of Jewish life and worship had been corrupted by the influence of Greek culture they carried with them into the desert the writings and rituals they believed would open the way to a renewed Israel including an extraordinary plan for the creation of a new temple and every member of the House of separation who went out of the holy city and leaned on God at the time when Israel sinned and defiled the temple shall rejoice and their heart shall be strong and they shall prevail over the sons of earth they settled on an isolated plateau near the Dead Sea a location where they could prepare the way of the Lord in restoring the true Israel after a period of confusion a great leader emerged whom the scrolls referred to as the teacher of righteousness for 20 years they were like blind men groping for the way and God raised for them a teacher of righteousness to guide them in the way of his heart under his direction the disciples devoted their lives to the production collection and study of the great library of scrolls and the congregation shall watch in community for a third of every night of the year to read the book and to study together many of the things that Josephus says about the customs of the Essenes are details that we don't pick up on because because their normal practice today in modern Western society but they were unusual at that time so what's unusual here they took their seats they set when they dined as we sit today this was different from the usual greco-roman custom where you reclined the first century historian josephus refers to the dining room of the Essenes as a holy temple where only men who were both free of physical handicaps and ritually pure could eat the sacred meal so they're sitting and each one receives a plate with his food well what's so unusual about that well you see in antiquity in the Roman world in Judea at this time when you when you gather together to eat a meal you were served a big pot or a big sort of a crater or or a cooking pot that had the food in it and this apparently was because of their concerns with ritual purity if you go back to the scrolls and you look at talks about the pure food and the pure drink of the community and they believe that ritual impurity could be transmitted through food and through drink and liquids by the way we're more susceptible than than solid food and for this reason they had all sorts of restrictions on who could participate in the communal meals and who could eat the fewer food I mean who could eat the pure who could drink the pure drink and so apparently because of this concern with transmitting ritual impurity through dining each member received an individual plate of food another surprising similarity between the ancient Essenes and modern hygiene concerns their toilet habits father DeVoe believed that an iron tool found in cave 11 was a hatchet or mattock for digging individual a-train's in the desert soil these characteristics make them seem very modern in the sense that they were concerned with toilet privacy so they would find a secluded spot and wrap their Mantle's around them unlike everybody else that struck him as very odd and afterwards they would immerse themselves and he says as if defiled again because they associated this with the ritual impurity of course these hygienic practices were not based on scientific knowledge but on the religious need for the members of the community to be pure before God in order that they might fulfill what they saw as their central role in the divine plan [Music] ideologically they were Vivica Jews in actual fact they were living in the post vividly euro and I believe that some of the difficulties which we have in understanding and the world of ideas of the Covenant as license is fact that we they are standing with one foot in one age with the other foot and the other age the long hours of study and discussion of discipline and purification were only a prelude to the restoration of the true Israel and the building of the Great Temple in Jerusalem [Music] the members of the Qumran community were eagerly looking forward to a great final battle at the end of days between the sons of light and the sons of darkness with the hosts of heaven fighting on their side the elect of God were to have the final victory over their enemies but the future did not hold what they expected as the roman army marched south from jericho and their war against the jews the Essenes look to the cave surrounding Qumran to protect the precious library of Scrolls the scrolls were hurriedly placed in clay jars and the cave entrances walled up from the outside the library of sacred Scrolls were safe but the men who hid them never returned the Romans tortured massacred and scattered the people of the New Covenant their dream was shattered some of them fled to Masada and took with them thoughts of their writings their scriptures and the pieces that were found there seemed to indicate that that was the case though the community of Qumran was destroyed their ancient cemetery remains the Essene graves have been an enticing mystery since the beginning of Devoe's excavations of the twelve hundred graves neatly laid out on a north-south axis across the eastern edge of the Qumran plateau 54 were opened before ultra-orthodox Jewish criticism stopped the work in the early 60s the story of what happened to the bones and the questions they raised opens a new chapter in the archaeology of Qumran father DeVos attitude toward the bones was perplexing different accounts suggest he was sometimes excited about what the bones could reveal and at other times indifferent he promised the bones to two different anthropologists all read of Allah of France and Gottfried Kurtz of Germany the bones excavated by des Vosges team now reside in three collections in France Germany and Jerusalem all ignored for over 30 years and in various states of decay anthropologist sue Sheridan is working on the frontier of archaeological science with tools that will finally allow the ancient bones to begin to tell their story when the bones were exhumed in the early 50s paleo pathology was in its infancy recent advances now give us a bio cultural picture of the Qumran community this is the individual from tomb 18 and we have represented here a very complete skeleton almost all the bones are here of an individual between age 30 to 33 he's very representative of the rest of the skeletons in the French collection in his degree of preservation and also being a robust man of in this thirties to forties the thing that makes this particular individual even more special is the fact that he was buried in the western area of the cemetery right near the actual ruins closest person to the ruins in a circle of stones that demarcates is great as something special and also he has a coffin there were only three individuals that actually were buried in a coffin and we have large pieces of wood preserved as a result of most of the graves in the cemetery are of similar construction after the body was prepared a hole was dug in the soft soil about 1 to 2 meters deep [Music] [Music] the body was lowered into the grave and then placed in a chamber which was cut sideways into the earth stones were then placed over the chamber opening to protect the body as it awaited a great final resurrection at the end of days over time water and earth movements caused the stones to collapse inward often breaking the bones apart [Music] des Vosges team poured paraffin on many of the bones to keep them from crumbling or separating so the first step before you analysis could be done was a preliminary removal of the wax now that's been done the next step will be to chemically remove all the wax and extract it from the bones so we can have clean edges it's particularly important in the skull so that you can get a nice tight fit reconstruct everything correctly and take measurements from within the skull and once we're able to rebuild the skull and the hips and the knee area we'll be able to look at several features of the skeleton we'll be able to look in great detail at the joint surface is to get reconstructions of daily activity patterns we'll be able to come through for example and look at the vertebral column and see if there were special stresses and strains on the back we can come in and cast the teeth with epoxy resins which allow us to look at the microscopically look at the tooth wear patterns that tell us something about what the individuals were eating so there's a great deal of information about daily like daily life dietary intake etc that we can reconstruct once we have the skeleton cleaned up more at the University of Notre Dame Sheridan partners with chemist Marc sure to prepare bone samples for carbon-14 dating if the age of the bones can be determined perhaps we can get closer to the mystery of the origin of the community these samples are very rare and precious whenever you do a radiocarbon date you destroy the sample so we want to make sure that before we try to get a radiocarbon date we're going to have enough carbon in the bone that we'll be able to get a good date small fragments of bone are tested every precaution is taken to protect the integrity of the bone samples but two millennia of decay have taken their toll the results are disappointing and it since I'm used to working on the inorganic fraction I wasn't wasn't viewing it through the same eye but it was clear these were more badly preserved bones I was hoping when we got through the paraffin that we we'd hit some good news but yeah there's a little cutoff there you've got less than two percent carbon you're gonna row two percent protein you're not gonna get a good day probably but if you've got you know anywhere more than that even just three percent you'll be able to get a good radiocarbon date and I was you know hoping that at least we'd be right I knew below I was hoping we right above that lower limit you know the Germans to have had to rely on forensic methods rather than chemistry to tease secrets from the poorly preserved bones dr. Olaf rora air-cooled inherited the German collection of Qumran bones from Gottfried Kurt in the early 1970s they are now housed in the Catholic Diocese of ice dot he has used the same methods as sushi written to create a picture of the individuals in the Essene community if you haven't done here and think oh we have here the left thigh this is typical for a man of the sides you can also see here that the muscle system is present he was engaged in physical activity but didn't do any hard physical labor he probably did less physical activity than someone like you or I who did some occasional walking the German bone suggest a society divided into groups perhaps a scholarly or administrative elite and a working class so far have you here as a Tyler and as an integer fuel sheesh we have here members of a rural ruling class part of a multi-level society would suggest there was also a lower-class social stratification in the society is therefore more substantiative it must also be mentioned that we have skeletal remains of men women and children as indicates that family structures existed in the community of the 1200 graves 53 were excavated 11 of those were identified as female his conclusion counters the prevailing view based on the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls that Qumran was a celibate male community Gambia and we have here a somewhat delicate cranium of a woman this is woman number 32 who is also the darker ones the primary color again is somewhat faded interesting here is the strong abrasion of the teeth from here one can see the inflamed sinus cavities on both sides which were quite extensive and which caused much pain and annoyance over the years Sheridan too has females from the French collection we know that we've got a woman we know that we have a woman that's buried deep enough to be fitting the pattern we see of the Essenes she's buried in the right bury orientation she doesn't have things like beads and such which was claimed of the ones from the southern extension so she matches the burial pattern for the rest of the cemetery his Devoe's monastic theory borne out by the evidence it is clear that the studies of the skeletons Deveaux relied on were at best preliminary educated guesses the challenges to the accepted theory based on this new evidence are provocative the camera Amazon jet skis act SIA angeleka deep dad young man get home I once joked that they ate drank and were married and that corresponds fully with what I'm talking about today this was a very normal community who lived well orderly and were able to accomplish much whether they were truly of the Essene sect of Judaism I don't know and it doesn't interest me someone else must determine that but that which is described as a scene in today's literature they were not that's why you need but this view of the presence of women and children at Qumran is not shared by all scholars both the type and the number of gendered objects such as the spindle whorl must be considered Qumran was occupied for approximately 150 years and we have one spindle whorl and four beads Masada was occupied for no more than seven years and the caves the other caves were occupied for maybe a few months and yet we have many many more of these gendered objects so in other words if we summarize the archaeological evidence from Qumran there is in fact evidence for the presence of women but it is very very very minimal scholars disagree on other issues as well arguments continue about the purpose of the buildings themselves one view holds that the presence of the large tower in the North section is evidence that the site was a military fortress this is a matter of where you can take the same archaeological evidence and interpret it in different ways but you're not accounting for for a lot of it so yes you could say because there's a tower and there are arrow heads that means it's a fortress but you're disregarding everything else at the site fortress or religious community yet another interpretation of the evidence suggests that it was perhaps designed as a luxury villa replete with baths dining halls and groves of date-palms in the second part of the second century some rich people from Jerusalem or as well Jericho even built villas in that end of the world a close to a nice spring close the palm trees because it was large gardens and orchards and so on and so on it was not a desert at that time and the people could use the villa too as a agricultural center basically the location is not suitable it doesn't fit the model of a usual location for a villa second problem is that it doesn't have the the interior decoration that you find in contemporary villas for example most canari villas have have wall paintings in mosaic and the other thing is is the in terms of the layout the way that you have workshops rooms we use those workshops interspersed around the settlement where is in a villa you know just like today you wouldn't want to have your working areas in your living areas you have them segregated from each other the answers to these questions about the ruins of Qumran may be in the pages of these notebooks father Roland DeVoe may yet have the last word divorce hypothesis that these were a group living on the edge of the desert preparing the way of the Lord and writing manuscripts and know it some have tried to dispute it but the vast majority still believe that this is the best hypothesis to deal with the evidence as we have it the Qumran pottery offers another opportunity to test Deveaux a story the shards and jars may be the key to answering the fundamental questions of Qumran when was the site established and where did the scrolls come from [Music] DeVoe of course now here is the excavator of Qumran he departed from the premise that everything what he found in the site itself was locally made he had published this within about six years and virtually nobody has ever challenged this no archaeologists the thing was that in the time that DeVoe excavated not many sites around there had been excavated there was no Masada there was no Jericho there was no keep Rose was it one of the other Winter Palace is king he wrote today we have them but at that time he didn't have anything so when he found this kind of ceramics no he just assumed this is made on the spot and this has been kept like that for the past 50 years [Music] Yan guna vegs research begins at the kiln used anciently to fire pottery at qumran guna vegg takes a sample of the clay from the kiln to determine its chemical fingerprint that is the unique characteristics that belong only to this type of clay and that will later allow him to compare the pottery of Qumran to the fingerprints of clay samples from many different locations at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem where the precious scroll jars are kept Goethe vague carefully removes a sample of one of the clay jars in which the scrolls were found both the kiln and jar samples will be subject to Neutron analysis at the Technical University of Budapest the clay samples are prepared by dr. Marta Bala they are bombarded with neutrons rendering them radioactive it is this process that yields the fingerprint goona vague uses to compare the Qumran pots with clay samples from throughout the Middle East I have 100 samples the results of 100 surgeries and these indicates that there are four chemical compositions at Qumran the first group matches the inner lining of the kiln at Qumran and was made from the same clay as the kiln these are utility vessels of various kinds secondly there are cooking pots that match throwaways found near the kiln and were obviously fired there third are vessels of various types made from clay that came from north or south of Qumran this group includes some scroll jars finally there is a fourth group of scroll jars that is not from Qumran and not from Jerusalem [Music] this is a surprise because some have guessed that the jars containing the Dead Sea Scrolls may have come from the Jerusalem Temple but what do these results tell us about Devoe's theory of the Essene community the neutron analysis shows that some pottery from the caves and some from the settlement have the same chemical fingerprint proof that the scrolls and the community are linked as Deveaux thought guna begs research also confirms that some pots were imported into Qumran from Jericho and Jordan but a mystery still remains thirty-six samples comprising most of the scroll jars from the caves remain unidentified where would the jars made that held the precious scrolls every year thousands of tourists come to Qumran searching for their own answers about the men and women who settled here over 2,000 years ago and year after year in spite of intense international interest the work of archaeology starts and stops still subject to the whims of funding and political support but the discoveries are by no means over and when I came to the University I was told look the sources are gone everything was already found in those 18 years the better and found everything and there's no chance to find more documents because after 1965 until 1986 nothing was found in the Judean Desert Hanan Eshel is one of the most productive archaeologists working at Qumran in the winter of 1996 a shell with fellow archaeologists McGinn bro she began looking beyond the main site de veau had excavated in the early 50s Yossi Patrick who's teaching in Haifa University he said that there's no trail connecting cave 3 and 11 1 & 2 and the site because he walked here and he didn't find a built trail now since I knew that in that area tanks were doing some maneuvers and I knew that this area is ruined I decided I want to do the opposite I came to the side and walked here trying to find the trail leading from the to cave one and two and while I was walking here I found out that there's those caves that was never recorded by the devote I came here and I said well look there's a kid here and in caves see they wanted that you see just below us we were lucky we got to the floor of the cave and we found 200 pieces of pottery lying on the surface but we found their evidence that the batteries were there before Hearst we found a newspaper in Arabic from 1953 and we found other evidence that tells us that the cave was already excavated by the batteries though many of the dwelling caves have collapsed after 2,000 years Esalen bro she found support for the theory that members of the community took refuge in them at night this fragment from the Damascus document found in cave 4 suggests the need for a geographically close community no man shall walk in any field to do business on the Sabbath he shall not walk more than 1000 cubits from his own town we found another ball and over here we found complete vessels on the surface and a temple and coins and nails of shoes that were dropped here all from Second Temple period and we said we think that in this area tents were built maybe in the winter people were afraid that their morale caves will collapse and they needed to place that they feel safety in a in a rainy day they built here tents and that's what we found here but very interesting is to find all those things on the surface of area so close to the site Qumran has not yet given up all its secrets there are still surprises in store and many new questions to ask was Deveaux right about the celibate monastic community are there more Scrolls to be discovered that will reveal the source of the Essenes wisdom what secrets to the ancient grave still hold what is the future of the archeology of Qumran well until the people that they called me bleak produce their final volume think that what we should do is to work outside of the site understand better the site and wait until we'll have finally we have to do not to do consent divorce results but you have to go on I think at this point we really do have a pretty good idea of what was going on at Qumran but obviously the final publication we'll be able to add a lot to that de veau was a supremely intelligent man so he knew the value of evidence and he never absolute ties he came to very definite conclusions but had absolutely no trouble in changing his mind [Music] and to imagine that DeVoe would be obsessed by the criticisms of his methods and conclusions today no he would just love to be part of us [Music] you you

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Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, dead sea scrolls bible, dead sea scrolls documentary history channel, dead sea scrolls documentary, religious history of the world, religious history, caves, manuscripts found in accra, religious manuscripts, jesus christ, dead sea, dead sea scrolls

Id: LcwwGV2t6Ko

Length: 47min 54sec (2874 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 17 2020