The Dead Sea Scrolls: Discovery, Secrets, and the Lost Essene Sect

for dead see one of the most inhospitable places on the planet at 1,300 metres below sea level

the shores of this desolate salt lake are the lowest place on earth although the River Jordan a sacred place

for time immemorial flows into it there is nowhere for the water to go it's only release being the punishing Sun

evaporating it during the course of each day leaving just salt and mineral behind this is very likely the saltiest body of

water on the planet more so than the great salt lake of Utah just a few gulps of this liquid will kill a human

in a matter of hours not only that but deep sinkholes regularly appear all over its banks threatening to open up and

swallow those foolish enough to wander too close to the shore yet all the same people who have not only lived here but

on many occasions thrived for thousands upon thousands of years this is Bible country according to biblical

archaeologists on one edge of this lake the once prosperous cities of sodom and gomorrah may have once thrived the

similarly ancient city of jericho and a whole multitude of other biblical sites are located only a few days walk away

and later still salt merchants from the Bronze Age to the ottoman era risked their lives to brave the harsh deadly

still waters of the sea [Music] it was also here generations later in

the spring of 1947 as Palestine teetered on the verge of a new war that three young Bedouin boys their ancestors

having wandered the region as nomads for time immemorial stopped at the ancient watering hole of Rosh feshkha to rest

their animals the story goes that one of the boys wandered off from the main group bored

he began throwing rocks into some nearby caves when he heard the loud crash of pottery breaking he stopped in his

tracks clearly one of his projectiles had made contact with some sort of an item inside the cave a single thought

entered his mind treasure he ran back down the cliff to tell his friends the night was swiftly approaching upon

investigating the next day the boys were disappointed to find that the cave did not contain buried treasure but a simple

collection of clay pots one of them broken with a number of ancient scrolls spilled out of it onto the cave floor

little did they know it at the time but those Bedouin Shepherds had just made the single greatest discovery in the

entire history of Biblical Archaeology and Jewish Second Temple period studies it was perhaps the most famous

archaeological discovery of the 20th century and soon to become a cultural icon famous the world over for those

parts contained the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls [Music]

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in 1947 once more the dark shadows of war fell upon the Middle East and to the world at large as chaos tore through the

region over the next two years the whereabouts of those ancient scrolls discovered by the Dead Sea remained

shrouded in mystery unbeknownst to the world at large just before the outbreak of war the Bedouins who had found the

initial scrolls at sold demand to a Syrian Orthodox priest in Jerusalem for the meager sum of around 250 dollars

those who read the scrolls at this time were the first to do so in over 2,000 years

noting incredulously that they were nearly identical to the Old Testament Bible that we know today but as we shall

see the Dead Sea Scrolls offered so much more by the time relative stability and a new nation Israel surfaced by around

1950 the whereabouts of the scrolls still remained largely hidden it wasn't until 1954 when an anonymous ad was

placed in The Wall Street Journal that they eventually resurfaced they'd been smuggled into America and put up for

sale when they were bought this time by a traveling Israeli archaeologist on the behalf of his country the price was an

astounding two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a thousand times more than the price given to the Bedouins as

news came out all over the world that the scrolls were the oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible ever found having only

13 or so minor variants from the 10th century aleppo codex as well as the huge amounts of money involved the race was

on for archaeologists and Bedouin tribesmen to find more of the same out in the desert

eventually by 1956 a total of 11 caves containing Scrolls had been found five of them natural and six man-made carved

out of the soft rock of the region astonishingly all had remained untouched since they were first deposited there

some 2,000 years before they contained somewhere around 800 manuscripts the scrolls were written in a variety of

languages Aramaic Greek Latin and Hebrew the various languages spoken in the region 2,000 years ago astonishingly

they contained a huge wealth of writings including alternate versions of biblical texts along with completely original

works never before seen hypothesized to be a long-lost library the scrolls provide a fascinating glimpse into the

long-lost world of an extinct religious sect that existed at the same time Jesus walked the earth

the scrolls can be broadly categorized into three distinct sections firstly are the Old Testament biblical documents

mostly identical to the Bible we know today interestingly one of the first Scrolls discovered is known as the

Genesis Apocrypha an alternative version of the book of Genesis written in Aramaic which

contains a long-lost conversation between Noah and his father lemak which isn't in the

Bible second attacks relating to the everyday life and literary heritage of the period

many being written in Greek and Latin the languages of administration during the later Second Temple period of

Judaism perhaps the most interesting of all however and certainly the most controversial is the third grouping the

sectarian Scrolls these describe the life and teachings of the people who made the writings a secretive

apocalyptic group who refer to themselves as the sons of light [Music]

radiocarbon dating had only just been introduced by the 1950s and was deemed too unreliable and potentially damaging

to be used to date the scrolls instead paleographic dating was used literally meaning the study of writing though

later on less invasive carbon-14 dating was also implemented all of these methods conclusively dated the texts to

the same roughly 300 year period from the 3rd century BC all the way up to the 1st century AD an incredibly important

time for the history of the world also in the 1950s just as the scrolls were being deciphered the nearby

archaeological site of herb at Qumran was investigated too in time most scholars came to agree that this site

only around a day's walk from Jerusalem yet nonetheless completely isolated out in the desert had been the base of the

sons of light [Music] scholarly consensus often differs wildly

on the Dead Sea Scrolls especially given the sheer amount of research that has been done on them large chunks of it

bordering on pseudo history yet practically all scholars do agree on one thing

backed up by chronology and later by archaeological evidence that the scrolls were hidden away during the first Jewish

revolt against Rome a vicious conflict that lasted from 66 until 70 AD and ended with the complete

raising of Jerusalem and the Jewish temple presumably the fighting was so intense that the members of the sect

never came back to retrieve their library leaving it to be rediscovered some 2,000

years later [Music] so what of the secretive sect itself the

writings of the sons of light have captivated the world ever since they were first discovered sparking literally

thousands of books being written as to who they were and most importantly for many what they mean for Christianity

according to the scrolls like early Christian ascetics or monks the sons of light had given up their earthly

possessions to live out in the desert in a communal existence whilst there they attempted to gain wisdom and achieve

salvation by communing with angels a belief generally denied by mainstream Judaism at the time we also find dualist

apocalyptic elements perhaps derived in part from Zoroastrianism and reminiscent of later Christian heresies searches

that of the Bogomils and the Cathars unlike the early Christian community however the sons of light turned their

backs on the meek and the weak for example rejecting the blind on the grounds that they could not see impurity

and the deaf because they could not hear the correct Gospels they also seemed to have been an almost exclusively male and

Jewish affair having extremely difficult initiation rituals aside from this however as reflected by

the thanksgiving scroll which lists various prayers and sayings of the sect there are many similarities with early

Christianity sparking numerous scholars to suggest links between the two groups with Christianity perhaps being some

sort of an offshoot one of the most interesting of the documents discovered is the war scroll clearly showing that

the sons of light were waiting for a final apocalyptic battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil

called the sons of darkness it even outlines battle plans and strategies for the coming war you can listen to this

fascinating and controversial scroll over on our second channel voices of the past and don't forget to subscribe for

other fascinating historical content the war scroll is made all the more interesting by the revelation of another

document in the late 1960s called the temple scroll this had been hidden away in a shoebox until after the six-day war

in 1967 includes detailed instructions for a temple that was never built complete with regulations and sacrifices

perhaps for after the successful completion of the war another famous extract is a commentary

on the book of habakkuk from the Hebrew Bible it speaks of three prominent figures all

of whom have become incredibly controversial and written about the first is the teacher of righteousness

associated with all manner of historical figures such as Jesus's brother James the just and John the Baptist second is

the wicked priest perhaps either referring to the priests and kings of mainstream Judaism or according to

independent scholar Barbara Theron to Jesus himself the third is the man of the lie another controversial figure

interpreted differently by vast amounts of scholars the third and fourth caves however sparked off perhaps the greatest

amount of discussion of all in the third cave was a scroll completely different to all the others rather than being

written on leather this one was made on copper and quite simply it's a treasure map

a detailed set of instructions to 64 treasures hidden somewhere presumably in the Holy Land despite numerous attempts

and expeditions no one in the 20th century at least has ever found any of the treasures maybe like Bronze Age

burial mounds in Europe and most of the Egyptian pyramids they were discovered and looted in antiquity yet every few

years a new theory resurfaces to the contrary and occasionally new expeditions are launched to find them

it was in cave number four however that the greatest mystery of all was found the scrolls here had fallen on the

ground at some time in antiquity and smashed into tens of thousands of tiny pieces some of them no larger than a

tiny pebble over the next 40 years the scrolls of cave 4 were worked on by an elite group of mostly Catholic scholars

with no one else even being allowed to see them of course this created all manner of conspiracy theories about

Vatican cover-ups and sparked a huge amount of hostility from other scholars especially when a story was leaked at

one translation talked of the leader of the sons of light being crucified suggesting a definitive link with Jesus

though this eventually turned out to have been false finally by the 1980s one professor and his graduate students were

entrusted with index cards that they'd been given known as a compendium copies of which had been given out only two

trusted scholars this professor and his students went on to write a computer program which matched the cards oh and

reconstructed the original contents of the fragments though it's not a perfect system and can be fairly subjective it's

said to have around a 90% accuracy rate at the same time secret photographs of the scrolls were left anonymously on one

scholars doorstep and left at Huntington Museum Library in California in 1991 these were officially released to the

public meaning anyone could access microfilm copies of them which you can still do online today as soon as this

happened coupled with new techniques such as infrared scanning which allowed scholars to gain new insights the

floodgates opened along with a new resurgence in quality Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship all sorts of pseudo history

appear some of the strangest of these ideas include Jesus the man by Barbara Theron

one of the premises being that Jesus didn't in fact die on the cross but married Mary Magdalene and lived happily

ever after also in 1992 Kasten feed came up with the idea that there were actually New

Testament Scrolls amongst the others though again this isn't accepted by the vast majority of scholars in order to

fully understand the story of the scrolls we must understand the context of the age in which they were made

we must go back to the very beginning [Music] the Jews are an ancient people their

roots stretch back thousands of years into the past further back than most though very

little actual historical evidence exists for the exodus from Egypt and other search ancient stories a good deal of

information from the Old Testament is at least partially historical perhaps best exemplified by the rediscovery of the

Hittite Empire in the 1800s long thought to have been nothing but of biblical fantasy arguably the first verifiable

period that we have evidence for is the pre Menaka cage for out fourteen hundred to a thousand BC a time of wandering

peoples and warring tribes this is the age of abraham and joseph by around 1000 BC a unified Jewish state was born ruled

over by King David of David and Goliath Fame and then by his son Solomon famous for the immense wealth of his minds

though no evidence has been found for these and for the building of the first Jewish temple said to have been a

splendid and magnificent building the kingdom of Judea then enters a period of division between two kingdoms

along with a series of wars against outside invaders such as the neo-assyrian empire until finally in 586

BC the holy city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the neo-babylonian empire the first temple razed to the ground

thus began the Babylonian exile though this was to be relatively short-lived in 538 BC a new power of robes far from the

slave masters portrayed in Greek sources akima need Persia under Cyrus the Great was an especially tolerant Empire

allowing the Jews and various other peoples enslaved by their predecessors to return to their homelands work soon

began on the construction of the second temple along with another 200 years of self-rule it is during this time that

the Old Testament seems to have been mostly written down and to a certain extent standardized

in 333 BC another mighty empire was to arise dominating and transforming glance from Egypt to Afghanistan and remaking

them in its own image this of course was the Empire of Alexander the Great his arrival brought an end to the time

often called the biblical period the purest and most uncorrupt phase of Judaism harked back to in future

generations when Alexander died without naming a successor it sparked off a vicious

20-year civil war between his generals finally by 301 BC of the Council of the victors the surviving claimants agreed

to carve up the Empire Judea became part of the territory of Ptolemy one of Alexander's cavalry commanders rolling

from his stronghold of Egypt thus whether the Jews liked it or not the Hellenistic age had begun many Jews

began to speak Greek which fairly quickly became the language of administration and governance thus

explaining why some of the Dead Sea Scrolls are written in Greek Greek philosophy and science were

introduced all over the Middle East along with Hippodrome amphitheaters and gymnasiums and a mixture of Greek ideas

traditions and culture mixed with native Jewish wants certain Hellenistic ideas even permeated Judaism often without the

Jews realizing what was happening for example the Bible was translated into Greek and in time ambitious din asks who

wanted to get ahead began to resemble Greek princess it's likely that at this time sects such as the sons of light

began to form as a direct opposition to the new way of life sweeping over the region thirteen rulers named Ptolemy

ruled Egypt from 330 to 30 BC and at least seven of their sisters named Cleopatra married them the most

famous of all being the sister wife of the 13th who eventually married the Roman politician Mark Antony until

around 200 BC Ptolemaic rule extended north into Judea just two years later however another empire went on the

warpath thus Elias it's ruled by the descendants of another of Alexander's generals celeea sauce they'd already

ruled all of Mesopotamia and Syria since the death of Alexander meaning many Jews had been under their rule for over a

century life under the Seleucid Emperor's Antiochus the third and Seles us the fourth continued largely as it

had before with total religious freedom being allowed under Antiochus the fourth however everything was to change spurred

on by his chosen high priests Jason and Menelaus to man who sought to out Helen ice the other in order to win the Kings

favour Jewish life and rituals at the temple were increasingly restricted the city also began to be modernized and

like the rest of the Empire made into a Greek polis eventually Antiochus grew tired of the slow progress of reform and

pushed for quicker action the high priest Menelaus went along with it not only were all Jewish practices such as

observing the Sabbath and religious diet outlawed but Jews were now forced to sacrifice pigs to the Greek gods at

their temple those that peacefully protest it thousands of them were put to death on

mass some scholars see this movement as the origins the sons of light [Music]

finally a wide-scale military rebellion broke out led by a priestly family known as the Maccabees who began a guerrilla

war against celeea said rule matter fayus was the leader of the family but it was his son Judah

nicknamed Maccabee meaning the hammer who against all the arts won the war the kingdom was finally independent once

again and afterwards Judah the Maccabee ruled over it as king in orbit name for according to long-held tradition Jewish

kings had to stem from the family of David Judas two brothers Jonathan and Simon were all daftar him and the

nickname Maccabee also followed them eventually their dynasty would become known as the Hasmoneans after their

ancestor has Menai yet fairly quickly problems began to arise jonathan MacCabe had himself named as High Priest in

flagrant opposition to tradition which stated that only someone from the family of Zadok could be a priest thus many

scholars associate him with the figure of the wicked priest talked of in the scrolls

the Hasmoneans utilizing a strong well-equipped army soon began conquering neighboring lands and enlarging their

Kingdom most notably the next ruler john harkin s not only conquered the but forcibly converted them to judaism

he also conquered Samaria an earlier offshoot of Judaism and destroyed their temple on Mount Essene the survivors

were all sold into slavery from Arista Ballas the 1st onwards the Hasmoneans went even further using the title of

King as well as high priests upsetting religious groups even more in order to pursue diplomatic ties with the

surrounding Hellenistic powers the Hasmoneans also more and more began to style themselves as Hellenistic monarchs

the next king to rule was arguably the most brutal of the bunch and he even adopted a completely Greek name

Alexander geneious perhaps the most vicious event of his reign came when a Jewish sect known as

the Pharisees opposed to the total religious power of the temple in Jerusalem began to vocally opposed him

according to contemporary sources he had all of them perhaps 800 in all publicly crucified in the center of the city but

not before their wives and children were murdered before them all the while Alexander watched their slow deaths

whilst feasting and relaxing on his recliner surrounded by his concubines the time of the Hasmoneans was soon to

be over a reckoning was on the way but as we shall see the Pharisees weren't the only oppositional sect in Judaism

not by a long shot in the early first century AD the Roman polymath Pliny the Elder embarked on a

grand tour for the Empire it was during these travels much of which later formed the basis for his masterpiece of early

scientific literature Natural History that he describes a curious incident on the western shores of the Dead Sea near

to the Oasis of Engedi he describes coming into contact with a curious sect of extremely religious Jews living a

simple communal life out in the desert though he was there to investigate the natural world and the curious properties

of the great salt sea this group clearly had an impact on him later writing that they had existed for

thousands of generations possessed no money and their priestly class refrained from marrying he calls them the Essenes

and he places their dwellings just to the north of Engedi there is nothing else there besides Qumran

[Music] we get other references to the Essenes from the writer filo a Jewish

philosopher from Egypt and product of the hellenizing age but most important of all is the slightly later account

given by the writer Flavius Josephus originally from a priestly family Josephus fought as a general during the

first Jewish revolt before surrendering early on and becoming a famous writer throughout the Roman Empire along with

the invaluable information he provides on both the successful Maccabean revolt and the unsuccessful war against the

Romans Josephus gives us first-hand knowledge of the religious sects of his day the Pharisees the Sadducees and the

Essenes apparently having spent some time living amongst the latter during his youth during the 1st century AD

there wasn't just one standardized Judaism not by any stretch of the imagination varying different Creed's

and schools of thought existed the Samaritans for example or a much earlier offshoot of Judaism splitting off by

around 500 BC before they were wiped out by the Hasmonean King John Haqqanis the main dividing issue had been each having

their own holy mountain to worship on Mount Zion and Mount Gerizim another group mentioned by fellow with a

theropod eye an aesthetic group living in his native Egypt and perhaps in Israel too the most widely known groups

however of the three discussed by Josephus firstly we have the Sadducees the main priestly group at the Temple of

Jerusalem they're mostly hereditary power seems to have stemmed from ancient aristocratic

roots as far as they were concerned only priests at the temple could sacrifice

therefore they held all the religious power they denied fringe theories searches the existence of angels and

even the immortality of the soul seen as an imperfection derived from Plato the Pharisees by comparison wanted to

democratize and transfer power from the temple to the household they came up with other ways of worshipping for

example reading the Torah and communal prayer finally we have the Essenes according to Josephus probably only

numbering a few hundred at any one time they were most certainly a fringe group desert separatists directly opposed to

both the Sadducees and the Pharisees it's possible that there were further subdivisions within the 3 sects like

Catholicism Orthodox Christianity and Protestantism today most scholars today equate the Essenes

with the Qumran community who wrote the scrolls therefore it seems possible that they were the sons of light and if they

were it makes the Dead Sea Scrolls all the more important allowing us an insider's view of the

thoughts and beliefs of a Jewish sect not only contemporary with but very similar to early Christianity however as

we shall see they did differ from Christianity on a number of key issues but what of the archaeological site

adjacent to the caves a link to the scrolls and the Essenes had long beams suspected but could it be proved

[Music] in the early 1950s just as the Dead Sea caves were being discovered excavations

began on the settlement just next to them Cabot command one of the earliest archaeologists to work at the site had

initially dismissed the place as a Roman fort when a jar was found that was almost identical to one found in cave

one however a link was established Roland de veau the French Dominican scholar who led the Catholic team that

first excavated Qumran eventually came to the conclusion it had been inhabited between a hundred and thirty-four BC and

68 AD with a brief hiatus after an earthquake in 31 BC which may explain why the Roman puppet King Herod isn't

mentioned in the scrolls apparently built on the ruins of an Iron Age fort dating from the time of King

Hezekiah or Josiah it was during this brief period of self-rule under the Hasmoneans

between 166 and 63 BC the communal life at Qumran seems to have begun life wasn't easy and in order to get water

supplies an intricate series of aqueducts and cisterns had to be built nevertheless Deveaux and his team all

being Catholic priests couldn't help but view the discoveries at least partially through a Christian lands tending to

liken the Qumran community to their own experiences as celibate monks recording and creating written works in a

cloistered community indeed there are many similarities between the archaeological sites and early Christian

communities however as the scholar Laurence Schiffman argues there is always a danger of overly Christian I

think the Qumran community though some see them as quasi Christians or Christians before Jesus the people of

Qumran were not monks led by a bishop who performed baptisms that way of life simply did not exist yet they were a

group of Jews who performed ritual purifications and copied texts in their library furthermore women are mentioned

in a variety of the Dead Sea Scrolls documents and amongst the 1100 graves founded the Qumran cemetery a

significant number of female skeletons were found either the sources such as filo and Pliny

describing the Essenes weren't strictly accurate or maybe like later duelists like the Cathars it was just the highest

priests who were celibate nevertheless there is a huge wealth of evidence at Qumran for some kind of a

communal life the site lacked verifiable private residences and had much evidence of inkwells and writing materials over

500 coins dating from the Seleucid and Hasmonean periods were found at the site in three large clay vessels leading many

to suggest that this was the earthly wealth given up by the members of the sect we also have evidence of religious

doctrine as described in the scrolls and in the contemporary accounts of the Essenes the pots found at Qumran were a

unique type being long and thin rather than the usual wide ones found in the Roman Empire by having a lid instead of

a cork it was less work to open and didn't break the rules of the Sabbath also found at Qumran was evidence for

the obsession with purity talked of by Josephus with individual plates being found very rare in the ancient world

but where did the community live in the 1980s archaeologist Joseph Petrov explored another 17 caves around Qumran

though he found no new documents he did uncover significant archaeological data and evidence of habitation all from the

Second Temple period finally between 1993 and 1996 another Israeli team looked again once more investigating all

of the caves in the region looking to definitively link Qumran to the caves after all those years of speculation

they found definitive proof an ancient pathway between the caves and the settlements that can still be seen today

occasional nails along the route which had fallen from loose sandals dated to the Second Temple period thus the Qumran

community may have lived in the caves themselves as well as tents the clay jars found in the dead sea caves seemed

to have been produced in a hurry many blisters and imperfections cover the surface it may even be that those

who made them sacrificed their own lives to protect the knowledge of the sect for by 68 AD the apocalyptic struggle they

had waited for for all those years but finally arrived when the tyrant king Alexander geneious

finally died in 76 BC it didn't take long for civil war to engulf the realm his sons Arista ballasts and Herrick

honest not only vied with each other for total power over their father's realm but they involved all of the surrounding

powers including a huge force for perhaps 50,000 Nabataeans that marched on Jerusalem from the south

by 63 BC the hatred felt by the to man was so extreme they made the questionable decision of inviting the

Roman general Pompey campaigning and nearby Syria at the time to mediate between them of course

Pompey having just subjugated the Hellenistic realms of Pontus and Seleucia graciously accepted the offer

eventually quelling the war and setting up her canis as his puppet King in 53 BC however another Roman army this time

under Pompey's rich yet incompetent colleague Crassus suffered a catastrophic defeat against the Parthian

Empire opening up the entire Middle East to attack in chaos comes opportunity and another Hasmonean dynasty the son of the

dethroned Arista Ballas saw it as his moment to strike by 40 BC with Parthian support

Antigonus had himself crowned the new king of Judea it didn't take long however for Rome now

unified again and ruled by the second triumvirate in the wake of Julius Caesar's murder to arrive back in the

region eager for vengeance Antigonus attempted to rule but the Parthian 'he's just weren't that

invested he was easily brushed aside by rome and another puppet put back in charge this ruler however wasn't a

Hasmonean as far as many Judeans were concerned he wasn't even really Jewish he was a half Jew a knitter mayor one of

those neighboring peoples conquered and forcibly converted a century earlier by the expansionist ruler John Haqqanis of

course his name was Herod one of the most hated yet misunderstood figures in history Herod was a strong man he was

capable at what he did and he was extremely loyal to Rome being good friends with Mark Antony and

subsequently Augustus Caesar after working his way out from a regional governorship he gained some

semblance of legitimacy by marrying into the previous ruling dynasty though eventually he would kill not only his

Hasmonean wife but his two sons from the marriage to after they plotted against him renowned for his architectural

achievements Herod was hated throughout the land perhaps best exemplified by the supposed murder of the innocents

recorded in the New Testament nevertheless references to Herod are curiously absent in the Dead Sea Scrolls

though this does seem to have been a short period we're in Qumran was abandoned due to an earthquake Herod had

ten wives and upon his death three different sons succeeded him ruling over various sub kingdoms whilst squabbling

amongst themselves by 44 ad the Romans had had enough and the whole of Herod's kingdom became an imperial province

by this time Qumran had certainly become occupied again as shown by numerous references to Romans

and the dates of the scrolls a new religious sect also appears in the historical record at this time the

zealots unlike their religious predecessors they simply had one course the total expulsion of the Romans

[Music] in April 66 AD crowds of people flocked to Jerusalem to scorn the procurator

Jessie s Flores he'd just robbed the temple Treasury and the people were angry in response he had the crowd

crucified sparking all-out anarchy in the city the apocalyptic moment the sons of light had been waiting for for

centuries had finally arrived this was the beginning of the great Jewish revolt the causes for the revolt were numerous

including the incompetence of Roman governors outright oppression Jewish religious sensibilities class tensions

and general social DC exemplified by the three separate quarreling sects that went on to fortify three separate

districts of the capital [Music] in 67 ad the famed general Vespasian

arrived with three legions twenty-three oxalá II cohorts six wings of cavalry and various other auxiliaries totaling

around 60,000 men on their way to Jerusalem Vespasian scoured the desert mopping up

fortresses and settlements one by one out in the desert Qumran faced its end though we have no evidence whether the

plan from the war swirl was put into action the thick layers of ash and the remains of arrows in the archaeological

record suggests that it was unlikely God came down to fight on their side as they had hoped

[Music] by 69 AD as the siege raged on the station was called back to Rome to

become emperor leaving his son Titus in command in the next year the entire city was razed to the ground temple and all

men women and children massacred the rest sold into slavery one last group the Sicari i around a thousand strong

made an epic last stand and Herod's imposing winter fortress at Masada before committing mass suicide and the

far superior Roman army finally broke through interestingly a copy of one Dead Sea scroll the songs of the Sabbath

sacrifice was found at Masada when it was excavated in the 1960s suggesting that some members of the Qumran sect may

have fled to take refuge with the zealots just 48 kilometres to the south presumably dying there with them in 73

ad [Music] after the destruction of the temple in

70 AD the Sadducees had nowhere to worship anymore and soon died out the Essenes also

disappeared from the record probably all dying during their final apocalyptic battle which may explain why no one came

back to Qumran to reclaim the library even more so after another equally devastating revolt broke out in 132 ad

interestingly it was the Pharisees who survived eventually over time morphing into the mainstream rabbinic judaism we

know today but of course there was another famous Jewish sect still very low in numbers but over time becoming

ever more distinct from Judaism due to its acceptance of polytheistic Gentiles as well as Jews of course the Christians

[Music] long before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Ernst Renan links

the Essenes to early Christianity in his 1862 book the life of Jesus though unfortunately the book was also laced

with a hefty amount of anti-semitism it also established an unprecedented new approach of investigating Jesus as a man

and not necessarily a God this was met with huge amounts of skepticism perhaps most notably from Austrian scholar

Albert Schweitzer and the matter was put to rest for another half century until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls

for early church fathers whether they knew it or not the parallels between Jewish scrolls and their own were

exceptionally important we even have evidence for earlier Dead Sea Scrolls being found in the region and

incorporated into early Christianity during the times of the church father Origen in the third century you sabia

sin the 4th century and timotheus an historian patriarch and leader of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the year 800

the Dead Sea Scrolls aren't Christian but we can't deny the links made between their makers and the man who went on to

form Christianity with most Bible scholars arguing for the faith dough seem to have sprung from a particular

apocalyptic movement within Judaism why not the Qumran community there is some evidence for this hypothesis - in the

Bible John the Baptist and early a teacher figure to Jesus repeatedly scorns both the Sadducees and the

Pharisees but not the Essenes the same position the Dead Sea Scrolls take in the New Testament John chapter 12 verse

38 Jesus says the following as long as you have the light believe in the light so that you may become children

the light they sounds very similar to the sons of light from the war scroll [Music]

baptism a form of ritual purification plays a key role in both the New Testament and in the rules of the Qumran

community but early Christians added to it saying that it removed sin and transgressions as well as impurity

offering anyone who wanted to join the chance of absolving their sins as long as they didn't transgress again perhaps

John the Baptist had been a member of the Qumran sect before branching out and absolving travelers of their sins by

ritually purifying them in the Jordan River whilst living a hermit-like existence from locusts and wild honey

maybe Jesus met John when he went out into the desert or maybe he met and lived with the Qumran i'ts after all the

lower Jordan Valley is only ten kilometers from Qumran less than half a day's walk away did Jesus take the

teachings of Qumran and democratize them for a wider audience allowing non-jews women as well as

disabled and poor people to attain salvation - of course this is just speculation and we'll probably never

know definitively what really happened but it's interesting to wander nonetheless

[Music] the one most important distinction between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New

Testament is the concept of a messiah though many scholars have tried to equate a messianic figure to the scrolls

this is by no means the mainstream scholarly consensus thus the very existence of Jesus is the major

difference and missing link between the two groups perhaps in itself suggesting a common origin before he rose to

prominence [Music] even after the crucifixion it takes a

long time for any sort of standardized practices to take hold often in the first century at least blurring the

lines between Christian and Jew the ever Knights for example mentioned by later Church Fathers were a Jewish Christian

group who accepted Jesus as the Messiah but like Aryan Christians of the later early Middle Ages didn't believe that he

was divine and there were sects within early Christianity - James the just the brother of Jesus for example wanted to

incorporate Jewish aspects into Christianity such as circumcision sacrifices and dietary laws Paul the

Apostle eventually winning out argued that these had no place [Music]

in terms of popular appeal Christianity was always going to win out over the Essenes they were an insular and inward

looking elite chosen group they didn't necessarily want other people to join the Qumran community applied the

strictest possible adherence to Jewish law including dietary laws and circumcision the mainstream Christian

movement relaxed Jewish law as much as possible permitting work on the Sabbath if necessary such as agricultural work

Jews and Gentiles could join Christianity which continued to grow at an exponential rate incorporating

formerly polytheistic people of the Roman Empire and beyond early Christianity had a very active outreach

program and still does today with early church fathers like Thomas being said to have made it all the way to India and

early Christian churches very quickly springing up as far away as China finally in the early fourth century AD

the religion became so influential that it took hold of the very heart of Rome itself with the Emperor Constantine

converting and in the process for better or for worse solidifying Christianity's place as one of the most influential

world religions just maybe the obscure Jewish sect who called themselves the sons of light had a greater impact upon

the history of the world than we will ever know [Music]

[Music] you