What Do Religious Scrolls Tell Us? | 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 they were people of faith and dreams they shall separate from the habitation of unjust men and shall go into the wilderness to prepare their the way of him [Music] aligning themselves with heaven over a period of 200 years they prepared for the end of days a last great battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness hidden for 2,000 years the scrolls are again talking to us giving life to the voices from the desert the story begins in the winter of 1947 with an arab shepherd boy named muhammad at deed 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 he enters the cave and to his amazement finds ten 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 [Music] you located in ancient Palestine on the shores of the Dead Sea a day's walk from Jerusalem the village of Qumran soon drew the world's attention scholars at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem undertake the painstaking work of piecing together bits of ancient biblical Scrolls found at a mountain cave near the Dead Sea this parchment the story of the discovery and scholarship of the scrolls has often been shrouded in secrecy hidden documents false accusations and conspiracy theories involving government's and world leaders much has been at stake both politically and scientifically from the discovery of the first scroll hope and fear ran high hope that the scrolls would reveal eyewitness accounts from the very days of Jesus's life in Palestine fear that they would undermine the fundamental beliefs of Christianity and Judaism for 50 years the scene has been set for extraordinary research and for a never-ending controversy immune PO ash of the occult be bleak in Jerusalem is a Catholic priest and world-class paleography he has spent 30 years piecing together the broken texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls the scrolls are written in Aramaic the language spoken by Jesus and in old Hebrew two languages that in some forms have survived to present-day is it a mankini entity I try to impregnate myself a little with their mentality their ideas their point of views I can imagine them organizing themselves at the beginning in their habitation in Qumran and copying the texts they use as biblical texts and then composing other texts useful for their community their everyday life a community full of each is a crucial to fill the gaps in the manuscript amel relies on a lifetime of studying ancient writing he considers many factors in deciding which of the thousands of fragments belong to the incomplete text the individual writing style of each scribe the time period of the letter style a vast knowledge of different types of ancient texts and a keen intuition sharpened by years of dedicated study I found for example this little fragment and this one and I said can they go with what I had reconstructed yes they found their place you don't move enough plus a meals artistic gift allows him to almost feel the personality of his ancient brother in scholarship he son do you want to come edition for me maybe came from me familiar people friends people with whom I would love to discuss I would like to share with them I would like them at least to inspire me to comprehend the gaps in the manuscripts natandy menisci who were they the writers copying old texts to new scrolls and composing new texts calling out for a society of their dreams once the scrolls were found interest turned to a forgotten place in the desert a place which could reveal the truth about the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1951 father Roland DeVoe assembled a small team of archaeologists who probed the ruins of Qumran they dug for five years and formed what was to become the accepted story of the community in the desert an elite society known as the Essenes gathering a massive library of sacred Scrolls Davo assembled a group of young scholars to work on the scrolls at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem John struck Nell was 26 when he came from Oxford to join the team they smoked cigarettes and presence of the holy strolls 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 stroll and no we learn 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 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 to vote 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 had 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 eventually over 800 texts would be identified on tens of thousands of disintegrated fragments some were smaller than the tip of a finger and others were blackened and hardened with the passage of time the task was overwhelming and frustrating to scholars a tedious and groundbreaking work that was fueled by the rising expectations among academics religious leaders and the public at large scholars and the general public alike were hoping to find glimpses on much more than glimpses of Jesus in early Christianity in the scrolls this great expectation was met with frustration as the process of scholarship was painstaking and initially limited to eight scholars all Christians and no Jews the foundation was laid for widespread suspicions of a religious cover-up he established churches had much to lose if the scrolls contained information from the days of Jesus which undermined age-long beliefs between 1952 and 1956 10 other caves were discovered which contained scrolls and fragments no one doubted this area still concealed other secrets from the time of Christ 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 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 this was the modest beginning of the sceen community and the scrolls library they began constructing buildings kills to fire pottery and aqueducts and cisterns for moving and storing water [Music] this was a period of tremendous religious ferment 3rd 2nd 1st centuries BCE and Judaism from Second Temple time but there were all kinds of other trends as well like strong apocalyptic messianic trends and these feed to some extent into Christianity to some extent into rebellious groups within Judaism who rebel against Rome twice and we have a kind of sorting out of traditions at this time in which some parts of Second Temple Judaism end up sort of flowing into rabbinic Judaism and some other elements end up flowing into Christianity and some other elements just sort of die off the scene but it's a very complex set of developments which lead to the religious picture that we know of once we emerge into the early centuries of this year Jerusalem today strains with the voices of many faiths just as it did 2,000 years ago based on the same historical facts many depicted in the Dead Sea Scrolls sects and religions have carved out their own religious beliefs Jews and different Christians come as pilgrims to this hallowed ground Muslims worship as they have for centuries at the Dome of the rock known among scholars variously as the covenant errs the essence the yahud and the sons of light as the desert community defined themselves they also lived in a time and place of many voices Sadducees Pharisees Essenes and other groups all claimed to be the true Israel Judaism was evolving from the rich tapestry of voices that pitched Jews against each other in a spiritual battle for souls the sons of light emerged from this world and followed their leaders into the desert to establish a new order unaware of the fact they were living in a world that was in the throes of giving birth to rabbinic Judaism and Christianity as we know them today departing Jerusalem the sons of light also left behind the sacred temple the temple in their eyes was defiled and therefore could not serve the truly righteous of Israel [Music] and so what happened was that the members of the Kuran community basically felt that that temple was not being run right because of Hellenistic influence on the high priests various other specific rituals that they disagreed with so they withdrew from it and for them the dream of a perfect temple that they would return to and that would be run the way they thought it should be run was perhaps the greatest of all dreams 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 hearts 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 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 there were also remains of an extensive system for water storage and use unique to this site reconstructing the site it bears all the signs of a fortress a place which is as hard to enter as it is to leave it is likely that the sons of light slept in the caves of the nearby cliffs and in tents around the sacred building only entering into the east gate after two years of initiation and probation the most important part of the main complex was the scriptorium the place where scrolls were copied or written and the rooms where the scrolls were studied no doubt the sect had a large collection of Scrolls to read from some of historical significance such as the copies of older biblical texts but also those containing the harsh rules for their daily lives through an elaborate system of aqueducts the water from the Judean Hills was channeled into cisterns and baths built by the community at Qumran at the so called fifth hour of each day the community would return from their labors to eat in common before eating they purified themselves the men would take their work clothes off and put on a loincloth walk into the deep pool and submerge themselves after this ritual of purification they would then return to the community on the holy or pure side of the stairs could this water ritual be linked to the development of the Christian baptismal Rite of later times purity was of utmost importance to the Essenes living at Qumran it affected all walks of life 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 unlike others in the area at the time each member of the community had his personal plate and cup they didn't eat out of communal pots and pans they were concerned with contamination and cleanliness both physical and spiritual [Music] the blind the deaf and the lame are not allowed into the sacred precincts and the reason for this is that the blind cannot see if they're touching something that makes them impure the Deaf because they can't hear the proper interpretation of the Torah to be able to know whether they are becoming impure or not and the lame because they scare the angels away [Music] it was a tough regime each brother was pledged to a strict code of conduct that reinforced the sanctity of a place where angels tread and prayer was constant even simple murmuring was met with swift justice whoever has murmured against the authority of the community shall be expelled among the Dead Sea Scrolls our text definitely written by the Essenes themselves 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 Josephus the ancient historian observed that those guilty of serious offenses often came to a most miserable end still bound by oath send as seen practices they could not partake of other men's food or drink and so fell to eating grass and wasted away dying of starvation in the desert 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 could John have brought the Rite of baptism with him to his own mission along the Jordan River not far from Qumran thus establishing a direct historical link to Jesus it is probable that many aspects of the Essenes beliefs echo and John the Baptist teachings as well as in early Christianity and Judaism but the tough regime was far removed from later Christianity and other religions preaching compassion for the weak and sick yet they believe that their piety and purity led to a higher dimension an archaeology points to a different story in the fourth layer at Qumran archaeologists have found ashes and arrowheads telling the story of the community's destruction and okuda pocket passenger see at first they didn't think of staying more than a few months maybe a few years at most and they died there with regrets since they were expecting the Messiah and hoped to come back to Jerusalem toldja me see aleppo Havana Jerusalem 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 1200 graves 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 in different 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] the body was lowered into the grave and then placed in a chamber which was cut sideways into the earth des Vosges unpublished notes accurately depicts the graves stones were then placed over the chamber opening to protect the body as it awaited a great final resurrection at the end of days but the mystery about the skeletal remains have deepened over time 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 today the bones are fueling an academic controversy perhaps the society was divided into groups a scholarly or administrative elite and a working class whose bones are scarred by hard labor this could still fit with the theory of a monastic society but other findings do not anthropologist Gustav rora we have skeletal remains of men women and children this 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 his Devoe's monastic theory borne out by the evidence before he could publish his final report and open up his conclusions to a normal academic procedure and debate father des Vosges suddenly died at the age of 66 his archaeological evidence remains unpublished to the dismay of the scientific community it is clear that the studies of the skeletons de veau relied on were at best preliminary educated guesses the challenges to the accepted theory based on new evidence are provocative Dakara Amazon chats cos Act II I once joked that they ate drank and were merry and that corresponds fully with what I'm talking about today this was a very normal community who lived well orderly and was able to accomplish much whether they were truly of the sceen sect of Judaism I don't know and it doesn't interest me someone else must determine that but that which is described as as seen in today's literature and they were not seen on the title that that's why I wished anthropologist sue Sheridan is working on the frontier of archaeological science with 21st century tools that will finally allow the ancient bones to begin to tell their story Sheridan is fascinated with the presence of women in the cemetery 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 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 found at Qumran present problems 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 the tower and their arrowheads that means it's a fortress but you're disregarding everything else at the site space-age technology is shedding new light on ancient Qumran NASA's synthetic aperture radar SAR for short is designed to read the Earth's surface even when obscured by dense cloud cover today's Palestine can be seen in detail and physical features are enhanced by the satellite technology but the amazing feature of this technology is that it allows us to see beyond the observations of the naked eye it can actually work as a time machine and allow us to glance back into history the same technology mounted on a small plane will allow the scientists to probe even further seeing caves hidden underground trails covered over time and objects only centimeters big on the ground a number of metal cones are deployed to form a grid which the photographs can be aligned the flight route is carefully mapped out as they need to fly as low and level to the surface of the ground as possible to get the best reading [Music] [Music] some believe that there are still sites to be on earth that Qumran that we have not yet found all the details about this community new technology paired with ancient texts could hopefully give us a better picture of the religious group that lived here Doug Thompson collects data as they fly over the site at this stage he has no visual control of the images the system captures only later in the lab will he be able to analyze the material but it's already clear that the Qumran site was not an isolated island in the desert it was a place well connected with nearby communities such as Jericho ein feshkha and Iyengar another space-age method developed by dr. Gregg Behrman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is put to use on the scrolls themselves at the invitation of the Israeli Antiquities Authority selected fragments darkened by aging and deteriorating rapidly are put to the test [Music] Berman's technology is based on using infrared light to capture the lost images just as the satellites camera can reveal stories about life on Earth he can see beyond the limitations of the naked eye the situation is tense in the room whatever is on the piece of parchment no one has seen it for almost 2,000 years all over that that's what you want look at that in an instant Gregg Behrman washes away 2,000 years of dirt bat dung and animal urine revealing for the first time lines of text that will divulge even more about the sons of light what we found out was that as you work further in the infrared this is 640 in 680 this is the red part 720 this is infrared you see that you move further out the text begins to emerge from from the background and down here at the bottom is an enhanced version of 970 nanometers once in the computer scientists can work with the new images and texts the dazzling magic of this new digital technology masks flaws that some scholars find troubling although an advocate of this new road of research Bruce Ackerman of the West Semitic research project at the University of Southern California is quick to point out the potholes in digital reconstruction of scroll fragments let me show you what what I mean here we have up here a Dead Sea scroll or a section of saying from the Genesis apocryphon one of the more interesting Dead Sea Scrolls of what I would call a good use of computer imaging a kind of even eating that no one would argue with we see here there's a tear in the text you see where the ink was and the piece just sort of Jags down because of the tear now what we did here if we simply cut this little piece out electronically I should add you know it's not done don't try this with the real thing and we simply shoved it up and when you shoved it up we it became not quite nice you'll notice that we left a line that's very clear that shows that we have done something to the fragment we it would be very easy to go in and make this edge sort of melt away and just become part of the fragment above it you would not be able to tell and most scholars would have no idea that you've done any kind of manipulation so this is a good example of of a type of manipulation G that one could do with the real text if the real text were not so fragile but there are other types of manipulation which one would say are a little bit more questionable not here texts where we have done some computer imaging in habit see here is the on this one end this is the raw image or the image that is on unprocessed and here on the other end is a really absolutely gorgeous if I do say so myself image of the text and we could say computer enhancement yielded that but you see hiding behind that is a multitude of sins this image in some respects is a fake now what do I mean by that here I can show you how we quote faked it okay I am lightening the image around this what turns out to be a young so that you can very clearly see where the letter begins and where it ends as if it had been originally written by the scribe and taking all of that little bleeding that has taken place because of the deterioration of the text you can also let's make a little darker on yeah you can that don't no problem see beautiful ink original looks like it was written yesterday pull it back now zoom out when we pull back if I were to show people this material and this material and said computer imaging yielded that if I don't explain what I did they would assume that that is a totally objective maneuver and it's not it's a highly selective highly idiosyncratic maneuver indeed using this type of technology I can put your name in a Dead Sea scroll but the one name everyone has looked for in the scrolls is the one of yeshua ben yosef known to Christians as Jesus and to the Muslims as Issa even Maruyama but his name is nowhere to be found the texts have been grouped by scholars into three categories biblical books sectarian documents and non biblical 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 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 the third group of documents is harder to categorize but they offer the first glimpse that scholars have had into 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 after a period of confusion a great leader emerged whom the scrolls refer to as the teacher of righteousness under his direction the disciples devoted their lives to the production collection and study of the great library of scrolls could this teacher have been John the Baptist could Jesus himself have been part of this community speculations abound because there is still a lot we do not understand about this group of people and the mystery deepens as scholars have found cryptic texts among the scrolls sacred teachings that were not for the eyes of outsiders could the name of Jesus be hidden in these secret documents Stephan fond of the University of the Holy Land has worked to decipher the unusual alphabet he has not found the name of Jesus in the text but apparently the cryptic writing was devised by a man called the Maskull who was a visionary or prophetic leader in the community in a way the text reads like an instructional manual and fajn believes the mask ill-kept this text close to his heart and carried it with him at all times 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 it is easy to believe that the texts of the communities such as the mascius coded language were actually written at Qumran where the community was established and where the scrolls were found 2,000 years later but could some of the scrolls have been written somewhere else and then brought to Qumran for safekeeping during the Jewish revolt in 68 C II scientists from new fields have joined the biblical scholars in their search for answers microbiologist Scott Woodward at Brigham Young University has worked on extracting ancient DNA from mummies in Egypt the Israeli Antiquities Authority approached him regarding DNA sampling of the scrolls when we were originally approached by the Antiquities Authority in Israel the idea was what can we do with all of these fragments of the scrolls the the pieces that didn't belong in some large scroll it was there any way that we could put those back together and reconstruct some of the Dead Sea Scrolls from from a pile of unconnected fragments because the parchment on which the texts are written is leather and comes from animals the scientists can look for the genetic material found in the cells finding small parts of DNA strings in the so called mitochondria of cells scientists can create a genetic fingerprint of each individual animal by testing piece after piece they can see if they come from the same original parchment thus likely belonging together in the same sequence of text not only can fragments be pieced together DNA and genetic signatures can reveal even more information we have been able to show that the technology works what that will be able to do for the scholars is help answer the question where were the scrolls written in order to do that we have to take the genetic signature that we now have from some of these scrolls match it with the genetic signature that we would find from bones from some of the archaeological sites bones from Qumran bones from Jerusalem and other sites throughout the Holy Land and then probably finally the other the the next thing that we ought to be able to do is take some of the unidentified fragments that are still sitting in inboxes waiting to be pieced back together to see if we can in fact reconstruct some new pages from which the scholars would then be able to get new information so DNA could help reveal whether the parchments were actually from Qumran or from elsewhere in the Middle East goats had always been prime suspects as the source of scroll material common domestic animals they were a natural fit because they could thrive in the harsh climate of the Dead Sea and were acceptable to use his skin for sacred or biblical text ibex skin a wild animal was also found in scrolls which were not biblical in nature but in sectarian documents that were written for the regulation of the community ibex was an interesting choice but not a surprising one it was with more sampling however that the DNA work took an unexpected turn startling scholars and raising more questions about the scrolls [Music] but what we found in this case was that these Scrolls seem to have been written on parchment from bovine or from cows there may be a problem with cows here where where do you raise cows on the shores of the Dead Sea it's not very easy I think most people would agree that they probably weren't there so where did they come from so the origin of the scrolls is called into question by yet another source the shards and jars of the Qumran pottery may be the key to answering the fundamental questions of Qumran when and why was the site established and where did the scrolls come from professor Yan gonna bake of the Hebrew University is applying the technology of nuclear activation to find out if the jars were made at the communities kiln in Qumran or were perhaps brought here from another location such as Jerusalem in police records all over the world are stored fingerprints of criminals according to which every individual can be identified so what we are doing here is the same more or less the same we are taking a chemical profile as a kiln which is called a chemical fingerprint and we can match it later with the ceramic which is found at the site after gathering clay samples from the kill and Qumran guna Vagos to the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem where the jars are kept one interesting characteristic the scroll jars display is a blistering effect on the ceramic surface guna Vague offers several theories to explain the effect one of the more intriguing is the idea that the jars were made quickly to hide the scrolls perhaps when the Qumran i'ts learned of the advancing Roman army people were in hurry now to produce the jars and therefore they took whatever they could lay their hands on in order to produce these jars as soon as possible and therefore when they are going in the kiln you get different linkages now after that they are fired with the clay and the calcium carbonate and then you get blisters all over the place but not all jars look the same and they are found in different places and containing different Scrolls one conclusion doesn't answer all the questions if DNA analysis takes the scroll research to the molecular level Neutron analysis takes it further into the building blocks of all matter after the samples are packed in vials numbered and identified they are sent to the Technical University of Budapest [Music] guna vegs partner dr. Marta Bala prepares them for the nuclear reactor the samples are bombarded with neutrons which rendered the powder samples radioactive the radiation given off by the sample is converted into electric pulses which are converted into numbers which show the quantities of chemical elements within the clay this is the fingerprint that will point the way to the location where the jar was made and a possible clue to the origin of the scrolls themselves in Jerusalem guna vague can compare the results with an extensive data bank from around the Middle East I have 100 cents the results of Ron hunten 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 their 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 this is a surprise because some have guessed that the jars containing the Dead Sea Scrolls may have come from the jerusalem temple [Music] 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 de veau thought guna vex 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 were the jars made that held the precious Scrolls the members of the Qumran community with a strong apocalyptic belief were not surprised that they were heading into a final battle the long hours of study and discussion had prepared them for a great 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 in the year 68 seee the Roman army marched south from Jericho they mobilized the army to curb the Jewish rebellion the Qumran Knights were probably not the prime target but they would not escape the Romans rage [Music] the Essenes look to the cave surrounding Qumran to protect their precious library of Scrolls [Music] [Music] the scrolls were safe but the men who hid them never returned they went out to fight the battle they had prepared for and the scrolls had described in detail on the points of the javelin they shall write shining javelin of the power of God bloody spikes to bring down the slain by the wrath of God flaming blade to devour the wicked struck down by the judgment of God one thousand men ranked seven lines deep they shall each hold shields of bronze burnished with mirrors the sun's of life waited more than 200 years in the desert for this holy war what signs they were waiting for as unknown but when the Roman army was mobilized to curb the Jewish rebellion they believed the day had come [Music] [Applause] the historian josephus tells us at the fate of the essenes at the hands of the Romans the war with the Romans tried their souls through and through by every variety of test racked and twisted burned and broken and made to pass through every instrument of torture in order to induce them to blaspheme their lawgiver smiling in their agony Xand mildly deriving their tormentors they cheerfully resigned their souls confident that they would receive them back again the Jewish revolt was an ironic end to the apocalyptic vision of the sons of light for it was the Romans who had a dizzying array of weapons and legions of men archaeologist dr. McGann brochure well they took they were revolt against the Romans too seriously they believe that this is the apocalyptic war they were expecting so they entered the war with abandon so much so that they perished in the world they were just killed on the battlefields and after the battles they were hunted down by the Romans and butchered and how did I know the fact that we have 800 Scrolls I mean there was nobody to retrieve it hidden away in a forgotten crypt beneath the busy streets of modern Jerusalem is the grave of the 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 devote take with him to the grave and why does his name still awaken controversy [Music] 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 the arguments are spinning faster and faster around the ruins of Qumran a place that 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 the dreams and visions that drove these men into the wilderness are not yet fully understood it is the science of the 21st century that will bring us closer to these forgotten voices in the desert [Music] in this area there quite a number of artificial caves that caved in that crumbled we believe that there might have been even 20 the fact that they are crumbled is an advantage because they haven't been rifled nobody disturbed if they have crumbled in the right time so there is a very good possibility that if we dig those caves you'll find utensils and God willing even manuscripts even that's his cause though lost in the aftermath of the Roman military campaign the voices of Qumran can once again be heard because of the painstaking work of dozens of scientists and scholars around the world but for every question answered many others are being asked and perhaps many answers still lie hidden in the desert in many ways the real work on the Dead Sea Scrolls is just beginning 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: BbJT_7NcUeA

Length: 51min 11sec (3071 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2020