Are The Most Important Parts Of The Dead Sea Scrolls Missing?

[Music] 1947 a horde of ancient documents is discovered in caves on the shores of the Dead Sea Scrolls dating back 2,000 years that will come to be recognized as among the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century but before their true value is realized they pass through the hands of bedwin Traders Scholars and collectors some traveling as far as the United States Archbishop athania Samuel Metropolitan of Jerusalem opens the leather Scrolls of the 2,000-year-old biblical texts a thousand years older than any previously known 50 years later despite every attempt to bring all the Scrolls to light rumors persist that there are more out there adding to the mystery and controversy that have surrounded these writings for the last five decades for those who deal in Dead Sea Scrolls or deal with the secrets they hold the story is far from over bank and equal opportunity L Jersey City 65 Princeton 63 Cherry Hill 65 Jersey inant weather every 10 minutes on [Music] Jersey Princeton New Jersey site of one of America's prestigious Ivy League colleges this is home to Professor James Charlesworth an academic who's become a manuscript detective he's brought to light over 4,000 ancient documents so far Jim Charlesworth is also an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls as head of Princeton's Dead Sea scroll project he's examined many of the recovered manuscripts and thousands of individual scroll fragments but he's convinced that there's more to the story that the picture isn't yet complete I do not believe the greatest discovery has yet been made we haven't got all of the Scrolls we haven't translated all of them there are literally dozens of Scrolls that we haven't yet been able to piece together what do they have to tell us now remember when you're putting together a giant jigsaw puzle and that's what we're doing trying to reconstruct the past when does that piece fit which all of a sudden you have the picture for Professor Jim Charlesworth the search for Scrolls is more than a job it's a passion I thought we would start with the question what are the Dead Sea Scrolls but he's equally committed to interpreting Scrolls already discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls are 2,000 years old not only biblical Scrolls but also previously unknown documents they are coming from the Dark Ages in the history of Western culture a historical gap of over 200 years Jesus he lived exactly in this period of silence and his voice how did our culture take shape whether we're talking about our culture Western culture or we're talking about Judaism or we're talking about Christianity we're talking about the same thing how did all this stuff get started for Charles withth the Dead Sea Scrolls May hold the key and the answers could throw doubt on beliefs held over many centuries how's the alignment can you get the Sheen in line to the that the alignment's going really well all the final cor at Princeton Charlesworth works on Scrolls weighing the evidence and Publishing his conclusions but he also inhabits another world the Twilight world of scroll trading for if there are more Scrolls out there and Charles with is convinced there are then he wants to be the first to make a bid for them I I have absolutely no doubt that there are hundreds of fragments out there in whole Scrolls there are individuals extremely wealthy probably billionaires who purchased these for one reason or another and uh they have fragments uh there are fragments in the homes of lawyers and beduin and other individuals in Israel today I do know that there are full Scrolls in Aman and in Damascus Charlesworth knows that many of his leads will go nowhere but it's a risk he has to take I am criticized for for going after something that's not there but I have seen fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls turn to dust I've seen other fragments turn to water because they're so fragile it's important for me to get them before they disappear they have never been seen for 2,000 years but we have to find them before they Decay Charlesworth is not alone in believing that the truth is still out there in the Judean Wilderness that stretches southeast of Jerusalem other scroll Hunters are on the the trail in order to find another cave in the Limestone we need a good earthquake I mean that's what we need it's very hard you mean you can look at those Cliffs and see that there's you know a lot of piles of stones and you know underneath every pile of stone there is a chance to find another cave Hannah echel is an archaeologist who continues to scour The Cliffs on the Northwestern shore of the Dead Sea here the first Scrolls were discovered 50 years ago sometimes in the summer of 1947 three beds were climbing up this cliff and what they found was this cave those two entrances were blocked and the only entrance which was open is this small one and over there the jars were standing and one of the beds Muhammad he told us that altogether he found eight jars six of them were empty one of them was full with soil and in the last one he found three complete Scrolls now he took out his three Scrolls and some of the jars and went down the cliff back to his tent he showed it to his cousin and uh they started to excavate here and they found another four Scrolls so altogether seven Scrolls were found by the bedin here in 1947 those first Scrolls passed quickly into the hands of a Bethlehem Merchant Khal isander shahin better known as cando suspecting they might be of value cando purchased the Scrolls from the bedwin and started looking for buyers himself the trade in Dead Sea Scrolls had [Music] begun when the bedin realized that Scrolls meant money they began to hunt in Earnest as desert dwellers they knew where to look and Unearthed many more Scrolls than the archaeologists who were to join the search in that first decade the remains of over 800 manuscripts were found in 11 caves to stop the trade in Scrolls and prevent them Vanishing again from history an international team of Scholars based in Jerusalem tried to buy the thousands of fragments that came on the market although they hoped they'd stop the traffic they had no way of being certain but who actually wrote the Scrolls whose story did they tell and why were they hidden as the discovery and trading of Scrolls accelerated archaeologists began Excavating the ruins of an ancient settlement called old Kuman just a mile away from the cave where the first Scrolls were discovered in this room long tables and short one and three inels were found one from metal the rest from pottery and finding tree and the tables together point up to the point that some of the scroll were probably copied in this room evidence began to suggest that the people who lived here had been the keepers of the Dead Sea Scrolls archaeologists were convinced since they had hidden their Scrolls in nearby caves just before their Community was destroyed by Roman Legions in 68 ad for 2,000 years the caves kept their secrets protecting a legacy from the most formative years of both Judaism and Christianity [Music] back in the United States Jim Charlesworth is setting out on another journey in search of missing links in the Dead Sea scroll story his final destination the Middle East but first there's a long detour to Norway chasing Scrolls as a global Pursuit I really find it kind of mystical to be out in this part of the world so far removed from the so-called Holy Land looking for remnants of Jewish writings from the time of Jesus somewhere near Oslo Charles with his following up a lead that a private collector has scroll fragments in his possession Martin scoan is extremely wealthy man and now he's dedicating his life to acquiring ancient manuscripts including the Dead Sea Scrolls there is uh the dream that he will have some significant fragments and uh they'll help us put together the massive jigsaw puzzle of the community that preserved and copied the Dead Sea Scrolls and given us information data that has revolutionized our understanding of how it all began and how we got where we are now Jim Charlesworth knows that missing pieces can lead him down two different historical Trails writings that reflect the life of the people of kumran can tell him about the first century the biblical documents they collected and copied can reveal how the Bible has developed over more than 2,000 years and the other thing is scyan turns out to have both tiny pieces of three of the first Scrolls found in cave 1 which he bought from two of the early scroll Scholars is this a fragment of Daniel this is a Daniel yes and it is actually written in the lifetime of Christ and apostles and when we look at it with visible light we can't see come around and is the earliest complete manuscript very important to get them published scen reveals how one of his pieces fits into a small corner of the scroll jigsaw puzzle I have put these tiny fragments into its context here where it belongs it certainly does look like it fits there but on the whole these fragments are too small to be a big help to char this fragment it's a Pity there's not more that you could see more writing well that's what we have preserved from the first column although there's no major breakthrough here Charlesworth is hardened to find that a collector with a wide knowledge of ancient manuscripts has reinforced his conviction that other Scrolls will be found somewhere in the Middle East scan is convinced that there are maybe cigar boxes full of fragments in the hands of bedwin Charlesworth needs collectors like scoen they can afford to buy lost Scrolls which he can then study but it's difficult the prices of Scrolls have skyrocketed to the point that many people are not interested in playing the game because the prices are way out of line and I think when the prices come down uh then these individuals who have Scrolls probably would be able to find someone to help them on his travels Charlesworth has found that different collectors have different motives now one reason is it's very lucrative you buy a scroll or a fragment for maybe $10,000 and if you're you're lucky you maybe sell it for $200,000 another reason is you become very important you have power and in many circles the most powerful person is the one who has something that you want while Jim Charlesworth travels towards the Middle East Professor Larry schiffman of New York University comes with the subject from a different direction I'd say that what I m is not so much a hunter for Scrolls but a hunter for what's in the Scrolls I've devoted more or less my entire career to trying to understand what the Scrolls really say about the very very important period those years before the split between Judaism and Christianity those years before what I guess we could say or the creation of Western religion as we know it Larry schiffman is a member of the editorial team that continues to translate and interpret the Dead Sea Scrolls making sense of what's already been discovered this difficult process of putting together the jigsaw puzzle of reconstructing the Scrolls is taking decades to complete because of its complexity imagine that you had a New York Times let's say and you took only 10 of its pages and then ripped them up then took 10% of what was on the floor and now you try to get a sense what is the New York Times that's really the boat we're in with the Dead Sea Scrolls in the years that followed their Discovery the daunting task of piecing together 50,000 fragments slowed down the publication process by the 1970s it had almost ground to a halt this frustrated many scholars who weren't allowed access and even provoke conspiracy theories that the Scrolls might hold Secrets damaging to Christianity for a whole variety of reasons the original team after they assembled the jigsaw puzzle was not able to get it published now these reasons included illness uh alcoholism death lack of Interest Israeli Arab politics finally really what happened was that there was so much pressure to get this thing published the assignments were given out again and I would say that by 1991 we were really on the way to getting the material published as it should be with the Scrolls out in the open schiffman is now challenging a widespread assumption that they are only important because of what they say about the origins of Christianity as a Jewish scholar he sees the Scrolls as essentially Jewish documents throwing light on Jewish history they don't just Enlighten a small group of weirdos who went off to the desert and stuck some ancient books in a cave for us to find them they Enlighten us about the whole nature of the Judaism of the period that's why I'm so excited about them from their writings it appears that the people who wrote the Scrolls were a group of Jewish dissidents fed up with the establishment of their day who left Jerusalem to set up their own sect now many scholars use the term ases to describe a sect but the truth of the matter is that we really cannot identify with certainty which sect that was or what group that was that left us to densy Scrolls from his work on the Scrolls Larry schiffman has been able to enter the minds of the people behind the texts the mysterious Community who lived at Kuman 2,000 years ago we know that they devoted much of their time praying and studying which they did for onethird of every night of the year and the results of their study of God's law as enshrined in the Bible were basically enshrined in their texts although schiffman's work is mainly in the study and the classroom he's not averse to some real scroll hunting himself I've been contacted on several occasions and followed up leads that went nowhere and I know others have done the same for some reason whenever you start to get close enough that money is starting to be on the table The elusive Scrolls usually disappear off the face of the Earth so I'm wondering if those Scrolls really exist I'm pretty doubtful but again you never [Music] know sustained by his belief that there are more Scrolls to be found Jim Charlesworth continues his journey his next stop Jordan's capital Aman now how does one continue in this task of looking for Scrolls or looking for fragments you first of all listen get to know people and pretty soon you learn you hear things there are of course circles in which you hear about basketball or cricket and other circles in which you hear about Scrolls and the rumors that hey have you heard that and you follow that up and lo and behold every now and then you find out I cannot believe what we have found today on this trip Charlesworth contacts Point him South into the desert to Petra Petra was a magnificent trading center when the Dead Sea Scrolls were being copied I'm eager to meet some of the bedwin whom I've been talking to for about 15 years there may be some information there and perhaps even more than information that I need to check out though many leads will turn out to be dead ends Charlesworth is convinced that every rumor however vague needs to be pursued beyond the fragments uh I have no doubt that there are real Scrolls full Scrolls lengthy Scrolls well over 20 ft long that are in this area and they're moving them out and they're not in the hands of bedwin but through the beds I can get fragments and get words about where this other material is here the bedwin is still acting as archaeologists still digging as they had done in kumran several decades earlier and the record shows that it's the bedwin who are the people most likely to know the whereabouts of any new discoveries I am a professor at Princeton and I have been here in Petra five times welcome come the bedwin from kumran they come to Petra sometimes sometimes sometimes yeah you speak the same language Caravan Caravan they make Caravan what do they bring with them bring some dresses some eat some salt from sea you know I uh Antiquities they bring some Antiquities I know that I they have told me they bring Antiquities have you seen Antiquities come over but this uh the story before my own life before my life this is all the story yeah not I not my life to ear yeah if you hear anything uh let me know this first meeting hasn't yielded any immediate results but that's not unusual getting information from bedwin is a long process of gaining trust and in the turbulent world of Middle Eastern politics and culture Charlesworth has to tread cautiously see it's very hard to sift this out because the last thing the Palestinian bedwin would want would be to let them get in the hands of the people they claim are their enemies so we were in this turmoil of who do you believe and if they really had material why would they ever give it to me or or or to a Westerner that's a different culture they don't want their enemies to benefit so I really don't know I was a little frustrated from uh Petra we didn't get what I had hoped to from that area while Charles withth continues his search for lost Scrolls back on the shores of the Dead Sea the hunt for documents still in caves goes on it's a quest that has been pursued ever since the original Discovery in 1947 since then the desert has yielded not just Dead Sea Scrolls but manuscripts dating from before the kumran period up to the bar cocka revolt against the Romans in the early 2nd Century 30 years ago the desert seemed to have given up the last of its Treasures after 65 no more documents were found not only by Scholars but by BNS as well now when I started doing my research people told me look there's no more chance I mean the beds found everything there's no more documents in the desert there's no reason to excavate a more cave in 1986 we enter a cave west of Jericho and in this cave first of all we found guns that were hidden there probably after The Six Day War and then we excavated the cave and we found six documents from the b period one document which is earlier from the Persian period in the same cave in 93 we found 30 documents lying outside the cave so it happened to me twice once in ' 86 and another time in 93 where i' had found documents in the Jan desert in 1996 an attempt to uncover more kumran documents LED Hannah Asel to try to find a link between the community and Cave 1 the original scroll cave a mile or so to the north I said let's start from the site and let's see if I can find a trail leading from the site to Cave 1 and two now while I was walking here I found those very nice Trails leading to this area and when I came here I was shocked to see that there's cave here nobody recorded them they're not being mentioned in any of the reports so in 1996 together with men brosi the creator of the Shrine of the book we excavated here and in those two caves when we got to the floor we got we found hundred of body shirts and rims of pottery vessels including cooking pots storage jars and dishes and oil lamps all of them were in those two caves so think that I can safely say that those two caves were used for habitation people lived here during the first century Charles with pursuit of the beding connection takes him from Petra to Bethlehem where the Scrolls originally appeared for sale to a rendevu with a man who claims to be the legendary Muhammad Adib the wolf who found the first cave containing Scrolls you were a Shepherd before you found the Dead Sea Scrolls how did your life change we sold the Scrolls the present people started to talk of the Scrolls the bedwin had found that were fetching this much and that much we sold them for £16 that they were worth millions so we started searching properly it was worth it we'd find stuff and bring it to the museum you looked for other caves notes we worked in caves and emptied them completely there was one cave we worked for one night a small one not a big one we worked for a short while and found a piece of leather with nothing written on it but the Jordanian Army sauce and started firing at us we ran away and that was that would you take me to see that cave I'll show you why not I'm very excited does he have a cave and is there any connection between this cave and the caves of kumra on that will be very exciting even if we don't find a writing in it to find a connection would be to me just very very [Music] [Music] [Music] exciting how yeah go [Music] ah this is good signs we got some uh Pottery here some ancient pottery and you can see it goes down pretty deep here people have lived in this [Music] cave curious if this goes somewhere it looks like it's been filled up doesn't it I wonder what's in there Beyond there I can see back into this crevice maybe 15 or more feet looks like a place where some things have been hidden at one time maybe robbed by bedwin or has an interesting story to tell that's for sure was it a place for hiding Scrolls when the kumran nightes fled from the Romans that's a good question here's another little crevice is very interesting isn't it that goes up a long way it looks very much like many of the crevices in which uh Dead Sea Scrolls had been placed well there's no question this has been inhabited wonder what story it will have to have to tell us over the years are we standing now on uh Scrolls how far down does it go archaeologists have visited this cave but it has never been fully excavated it's impossible to assess the layers of history at a glance to explore it further he'll have to get a permit and Charlesworth has every reason to be optimistic Israeli Tata Roman Israeli Romani Romani exactly what I thought we have Roman Pottery here Romani Romani is Israeli is is so we have we have clear evidence of occupation in that one cave from the time of Isaiah down to the destruction of the first century Jerusalem where much of the drama of the Scrolls has been played out over the last 50 years it's here in the Israel Museum's Shrine of the book that the public can see the major Scrolls Unearthed by the wolf in 1947 an opportunity that 3/4 of a million people take each year [Music] but it's in the Rockefeller Museum in Arab East Jerusalem away from the Public's gaze that the majority of scroll fragments are kept here the delicate business of preservation and piecing together still continues half a century after it began here Scholars can have access to both published and unpublished fragments in their search for what is in the Scrolls in his role as a new testament expert Charlesworth is particularly interested in how Christianity took shape and how the unique writings of the kumran community can Enlighten him what was the world like when Christianity began we really don't know we used to know we used to be so clear but now we're we're so convinced that we were wrong we know we were wrong Charlesworth has requested access to a controversial fragment it contains a combination of ideas traditionally regarded as unique to Christianity but it was written a century or so before Jesus was born hey how you doing joh okay okay fine here's the plate which you requested this is a very exciting fragment but looking at a text U the portions of a text that have remained how many little fragments we have a Jewish document that at least 2,000 years old let's say the century before Jesus and there are some very precious ideas that have been preserved in the larger piece here reference to uh mishiko that is Messiah the anointed one God's Messiah the reference to the resurrection of those who are dead and the belief in uh this is the end of time so these three ideas we take some of the Christian ideas like the coming of the Messiah now we can find that in some of these Dead Sea Scrolls here is the Messiah who will come and that becomes very exciting because we we now know the coming of the Messiah is not a peculiar Christian idea or unique to Jesus's followers we know it as part of the fabric of a very rich culture to me the most advanced culture in terms of symbolisms and religion and spirituality that I've ever seen and it's out of this that we're getting little ideas that help us understand Big Ideas Christianity but there's no question none whatsoever to me and to most Scholars that are now working in the field that the origins of Christianity can be felt in these texts in Judaism here is a precious now we can understand Jesus's language in terms of its own time rather than saying I'll tell you what it means and make it up as we go along we cannot make it up anymore we must be dependent upon what the language what the Syms meant in Jesus's time it's a very important way of exploring a dark period in history the Dead Sea Scrolls then are like the giant flashlight that shines into a lost Corridor of History it's insights from fragments like these that drive Charlesworth to search for more Scrolls and Jerusalem is a good place to do it here rumors of hidden Scrolls [Music] abound just a few days ago a man came to me from uh East Jerusalem an Arab and he said uh We've made contact with some bedwin who allegedly we hid some Scrolls uh south of here maybe two hours drive south of Jerusalem and they hid uh Scrolls in the earth in an earn vessel just uh before or during the six- day war so that would be before 67 so we're kind of running this down um you have two possibilities one is a a you know kind of a wild goose Chase but then there are reason to think that we better be serious and follow this up and that's because uh we've seen fear in the eyes of some of the Arabs and U the Arabs involved are showing that they are very scared right now and that connects not with it being a a wild goose chase but there may be something very important here the lead takes Char to the old city and a meeting with an AR middleman he hopes to be put in touch with the bedwin scroll owners [Music] W it's a lot of money they talking about for them it's something they for 27 years not joke do you have any idea when they did here then they didn't they didn't want to do they know what I mean I agree this business it's you know how it work I think they Al thinking for the future sure isi get invol or anybody they say find it in is then we have thean you know what we're talking about we're in the smuggling me and you yeah see this is what we're talking about you can find his corpse and my corpse no we don't want those are tough not oh I know exactly I agree with you getting off close to something you didn't even dream of [Music] doing in this whole Enterprise you're working with a real danger there is no way I'm going to be involved in anything like smuggling a scroll out of a country or a fragment out my principle is very simple where the scroll is or where the fragment is we should try to keep it and find ways to have it preserved phot gra so the scholars can learn about it and share what they know with whoever is interested in a game where the odds are so high smuggling isn't the only danger as we search for Scrolls of course people bring us Scrolls and and sometimes the ink is so wet you're afraid to touch it obviously we're referring to fakes I have been looking at Scrolls and uh many of them have turned out to be fakes you do a study of the leather do a study of the handwriting but still some of these people are exceedingly gifted in making fake so we work together as a team of Scholars and sometimes they are fakes Charlesworth patience pays off the meeting in the old city gives him the chance to examine a scroll from the bedwin at last we have here the scroll of Esther uh that is lined horizontally and vertically so that Hebrew can be hung on it and written right to left precisely as in the Dead Sea Scrolls what's interesting I'm holding the scroll of Esther the book that we have not yet clearly found among the hundreds of thousands of fragments found in the 11 Caves at kumran but we're looking for a scroll that's 2,000 years old not 50 years old this is not an ancient scroll and that's all the difference in the world for char with finding Dead Sea Scrolls is proving difficult the same was true of Hannah Nel's search in kumran in 1996 but though no new Scrolls were found from his excavations other ancient objects were and it's amazing that in 1996 you still find vessels so close to Kuman that nobody had found we start Excavating then we realized that we're standing on an area the tents were built we found even a tent pole that was used there most of the members of of The Kuman SE were living in tents and Hots and artificial cave as more artifacts are found around the kumran site a picture not just of what the community believed but how they lived is coming into focus and more knowledge about the authors means more knowledge about their writings ESD echel Hannah's wife is an historian and expert on Ancient writing who shares her husband's passion for the Scrolls we have a good chance to have a look at firstand sources that describes the people thought and belief and especially this particular interesting group that dwelt in the desert fighting against the establishment and trying to find their own way in life and belief of Judaism her quest to discover the secrets of the people of kumran is shared by Larry schiffman this was a group which believed that the entire world was divided into two camps the camp of light the good guys and and darkness basically the bad guys and you were predestined to be in one group or the other they believed that in the end of days they themselves and all those who would associate with them by coming to see the light basically by realizing who is right in all this would be saved everybody else Jews and non-jews would die in the ultimate view of this group by combining disciplines Scholars have been able to reconstruct the lives of the people of Kuman this small small group of dissident Jews who abandoned the bright lights of Jerusalem and set up a community in the hills of kumran that would last for over 200 years they developed a way of life with beliefs and practices that would later be found in early Christianity and forms of worship and prayer that would eventually influence modern Judaism studying for a third of the night and praying as the sun rose and set they waited for the end of the world a world which ended for them when the Romans invaded on the southern Edge Of The Kuman site are three cemeteries where the remains of over 1200 members of the community still lie you're standing in the middle of a huge graveyard with no name you have no signs you don't know what is the name of those people and I'm spending big part of my work trying to figure out their name in the winter of 1996 estd eel's investigation was helped by the discovery of some writings on a piece of pottery known as an ostron a group of volunteers were cleaning the wall here and they found at the foot of the wall around here two pieces of one ostron and they took it out and start looking at it and it was 15 lines written in Hebrew script dated to the first century it appears to be a form for new members of the community on it were the names of a volunteer Hony and a leader alazo real people as for Hannah Nel it's the graveyard itself that tells him even more about these people although the cemetery was not excavated fully we have only sample of the graves it is very important data about the nature of the group because most of the people people who were buried here were very young they died in their 30s only one man got to the age of 65 the ruins of kumran are slowly giving up their secrets and the young zealous Jews who had vanished from history are beginning to reemerge for the scholars who are bringing them back to life it's a unique experience all people who deals with Kuman Scrolls a small community of Scholars that taking very seriously every letter that are written in this Scrolls we're basically showing how a group of young people had influenced Christians and Jews that took God in a serious way and we can learn from their writing about a very interesting period that influenced all of us today my own feeling about this group is kind of a two-sided double-edged sword on the one hand I have tremendous tremendous respect for many of their teachings for their devotion for the beautiful compositions that they produced the willingness to sacrifice anything for what they understood as God's way of life on the other hand there are really some teachings that are hard to agree with like hatred of those who don't agree with you the feeling that everyone will be destroyed in the end of days there are aspects here which are really hard to agree with possible [Music] some in the United States it's the writings of the people of kumran that are being Resurrected in an extraordinary way cuttingedge technology is being used by high-tech scroll Hunters doctors Robert Johnston and Roger Easton of Rochester's Institute of Technology and Dr Keith Knox of the Xerox Research Laboratories have been developing a new image processing technique they believe it will reveal writing on Scrolls that has not been seen for 2,000 years till now the technique has only been tested on photographs they are very keen to work on actual Scrolls something that Charlesworth now back in the States may be able to help them with he knows that just 20 minutes west of New York City in the town of tenek there are Dead Sea Scrolls parts of which are unreadable with the help of this new technology he believes it may just be possible to reveal the Lost writings the fragments arrived here back in 1948 part of a collection brought to America by Jerusalem's was then Syrian Orthodox Archbishop athanasius Samuel you want to remove that one there on top first his scroll fragments are now in the care of the Reverend John Mino this is just a beautiful lurgical scroll this is one of the one of the fragments that his Eminence did keep and he wished to be maintained by the church here let me see the other fragment brought there's a second fragment here Jim that you may want to take a look at this I believe is from the from the Book of Daniel definitely you can see the word Danielle here in Hebrew do nun Al that's beautiful this writing is so clear but I'm very curious uh if we can get some readings into this area where the leather has turned to liquid liquefaction where the leather collapses because of the absorption of uh of liquid and of course we can't see anything in here now with a naked eye but it would be very exciting if we can get some readings there and now go further left fire the left this this is using their state-of-the-art camera with a range of wavelengths that far exceeds the human eye the team convert the Samuel Scrolls into Digital Data ready to shoot tension mounts in the room there's no way of knowing what the camera will reveal oh my holy cow look at that unbelievable fantastic there you go there you go there's some unbelievable unbelievable look at those look at that coming out oh my gosh can we improve this should be better this is they can at Rochester the Scrolls now in digital form are being processed by the team with the help of research assistant Mithra musavi follow take the image which shows the writing in both directions scale them appropriately and subtract them you will just see the writing in the other direction uh Perhaps Perhaps or or you might see the in the first part you can see that we can separate out some characters and with using infrared light uh what we're going to look at next is to figure out how to take the jumble of new characters that appears and try and sort them out between what's on this surface what's on another surface what's behind the scroll itself uh that may be that there are two pieces of scroll stuck together and we're seeing two images our infrared image for that wait a minute look at this see we have here the piece of a scroll stuck on top of another scroll and this gets fascinating to me because this gives an indication of that violent period when the Romans were taking the area uh the only way something get squashed or stuck on this it looks like we're getting an in kind of like a footprint from a violent time the most spectacular results come from the the application of the new technology to the fragment of Daniel part of the Bible as used and copied by the people of Kuman with this text Charlesworth is convinced that we are within a generation or so of the original version comparison with a modern copy May raise questions about the accuracy of the Bible in use today this is what you were seeing you turn that around for me won't you yes this is what the uh the infrared picture looks like oh my see we we have we can get this line 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 we we've we've increased this almost double prior to this we were working with a document that is basically around a thousand of the Common Era but this can take us back way beyond the time of Jesus to about 100 BC that's within a decade or so or generation or so of the who wrote that and that means we have gone back at least a thousand years closer and it's the same thing the same document except for some minor variations in spelling for Charlesworth this is the end of a journey that has taken him across the world and back again in order to find treasure in his own backyard saying even the possibility of it's like we've discovered a new document or it's like discovering a new manuscript or another Dead Sea scroll has been found found shall we say technologically MH because uh if we find a fragment that has one or two words on it we're excited but here we should be ecstatic because we have lines and lines plus we already know it is clear that there is a large number of these Scrolls and scroll fragments that have yet to be examined using techniques like this we're able to get significant improvements in the readability in the legibility of the characters in The Scrolls and we see that large number of Scrolls yet to be examined using this technique as something that we could keep us busy for quite a while you gave him an idea you could say that the Scrolls send us a message across the two Millennia that message for us today I think is to understand the extent to which the variegated nature of Judaism that period gave birth on the one hand to reic Judaism but on the other hand through a whole variety of transmogrifications and changes and all this to Christianity as well which teaches that Christianity has its roots in Judaism and therefore comes to tell us the importance of the kinds of relations between the two groups that we would hope would be there for the future there is good reason to continue to look for and I'm sure that cave 12 will be found I really hope that I will take part in this adventure but if not I'm willing that everybody else will do it as long as we have more documents we'll have better data about the the people is important what about it am I going to continue to look for Scrolls and fragments of Scrolls absolutely I'm convinced that there are a lot of fragments out there that may help us understand things that we haven't even asked about so I shall keep looking as long as I live because I've said it repeatedly I think the great discoveries are yet to be made [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Real History

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Id: qayrs5MLTKI

Length: 49min 6sec (2946 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2024