01x20 - Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

[bunniefuu]

[music]

I'm going on an adventure.

There's only one way to figure it all out.

Unzip the archeology. Make it naked.

[music]

[MALE VOICE] Our animal of the week...

...is the California Ground squirrel.

It's one of the types of Ground Squirrels...

...that are quite common in the United States.

This type is found West of the Rockies.

[SIMCHA] I said scrolls not squirrels.

This is a show about archaeology, not zoology.

The Dead Sea; not the Red Sea.

Dead Sea Scrolls.

Ancient writings on goatskin. Who wrote 'em?

In , a little Bedouin boy, a shepherd,

took his little sheep out for a walk about in the desert...

...to find something to eat for the sheep.

One of the sheep ran away from the flock and into a cave.

The Bedouin boy wasn't in the mood of chasing the sheep...

so he picked up a stone and threw it into the cave.

Suddenly he heard a cr*ck.

[SIMCHA] A pot broke. [pottery shattering]

Not his mother's pot,

but an ancient pot and from it spilled scroll after scroll...

...of ancient writings.

Arguably the greatest archaeological discovery...

...ever made.

One thousand religious texts from the time of Jesus.

Ben-Hur, Spartacus, significant to Jews and Christians alike.

Scholars saw the writings as a window...

...onto the early years of Christianity.

The first archaeologists said the scrolls were written...

...by an ancient and mysterious Jewish sect...

...called the Essenes who lived in a settlement...

...near the Dead Sea known as Qumran.

But some modern archaeologists say...

...Essenes didn't live at Qumran.

So, what can archaeology tell us...

...about who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

I'm heading to the shrine of the book.

The museum built to house this treasure of holy fragments.

This is the very Bible Jesus might have read:

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy,

one thousand years older than any Bible known to man.

I met Curator Adolfo Roitman, and asked him:

what's so special about this ancient hide?

So what are the Dead Sea Scrolls all about?

The fact that we have on display...

...material dating , years ago,

in some cases hundreds of years before Jesus was born,

is actually a real miracle in archaeology.

-It's a miracle.

It's a miracle because for the first time...

...we have original material written years ago.

People through this document,

they come in touch with real people, not virtual people.

And this people, they left messages that in many cases...

...they're relevant also for us as modern human beings.

[SIMCHA] So what were the messages and who wrote them?

Many of the texts were Biblical,

but some were strange documents...

...that archaeologists dubbed The w*r Scroll...

...and The Damascus Document.

These documents reveal that the Essenes...

...followed a messiah-like figure they called:

"The Teacher of Righteousness",

that they thought they were living the end of days,

a time involving a monumental battle between bad and good,

with the Essenes definitely on the good side.

[expl*si*n]

Here's what the texts say:

Strangely, these texts came into the hands...

...of Professor Sukenik of the Hebrew University...

... years after the annihilation of n*zi Germany,

and on the very date of the birth...

...of the modern State of Israel.

Now try to figure out what this guy thought...

...when actually he has in hand manuscript...

...produced by Jews and as he argued,

hidden in caves on the eve of the destruction of Jerusalem...

... years ago.

And they came back to the Jewish nation...

...on the eve of the birth of the modern state of Israel.

So, you can understand, saying okay it happened just by chance.

You can say, no this is part of the mystery...

...of the Jewish nation.

You can see it's not just a coincidence.

Maybe it's plan of the divine plan.

I have no answer, but it's a fact that people thought...

...there was a mysterious coincidence.

You have original material produced by real Jews...

...the same day as the birth of the modern state of Israel.

[SIMCHA] Pretty strange.

I had to go to Qumran where the scrolls were found...

...to see for myself.

South of Jerusalem, km past Ein Gedi,

across from the Dead Sea, is Qumran.

This is Qumran.

This is supposedly where the Essenes lived.

According to the ancient writers like Josephus,

Pliny and Philo, the Essenes lived along coast of the Dead Sea.

The Dead see is right over there,

and archaeology discovered this seemingly monastic settlement.

Some people say that was there scriptorium right there.

That means where people sit around copying holy text.

How do they know they copied things, Holy text?

Because they found the remains of a very long table,

maybe it was a dining room, but there were inkwells there.

It seems to suggest that either...

...they were writing up menu's everyday...

...or they were actually copying holy text.

They were ascetic. They weren't into material things.

They believed in purity, both physical and spiritual.

There were mikvahs here:

Baths for ritual purity. For baptism in essence.

I'm lying in an aqueduct...

...to illustrate where the water went through.

It went all the way here to more systems.

This was meant to supply water to a lot of people.

Look at this huge system.

This was no little farm.

[SIMCHA] Just a minute walk from this settlement...

...are the eleven caves in which they found the scrolls.

All together, these ruins, the water systems and the caves,

proved to early archaeologist that Essenes lived here.

Some modern archaeologists now claim...

...no Essenes lived at Qumran.

So who do they think wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Hold onto my ankle so I don't fall down that precipice.

Are you holding onto my ankle?

That's cave number four...

...where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

The greatest find of the th, maybe the st century.

The Dead Sea Scrolls. Thousands of scrolls,

thousands and thousands of fragments,

right there in that cave.

[SIMCHA] Well, while talking to myself and the camera,

I was approached by...

...Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist, Yuval Peleg.

I wasn't in trouble! He was my date.

That's cave number four right?

That's five, four is-

That's fine. It looks just like four.

Yeah no that's true.

I always get them mixed up.

The original Bedouin kid went in there?

No, cave number one, the cliffs.

So I had the wrong cave?

Yeah, definitely the wrong cave.

I almost fell head first down that gully for the wrong cave?

Yes.

[SIMCHA] According to Yuval Peleg,

this was not the only thing I got wrong.

He says this site was not an Essene outpost,

but a pottery factory,

and showed me the kilns to back his theory.

He explained that the cisterns and the aqueducts...

...were for cleaning the clay, not for purifying the Essenes.

So, how does he explain the scrolls?

According to Peleg,

refugees running from the Romans hid them in these hills.

So who wrote them?

Everybody wrote them.

We know that not a special writer...

who wrote all the seven hundred or so.

Or a special group?

All the scrolls, were brought by the refugees...

...that ran away from the Roman army.

So you're saying those scrolls are really a library?

This is the library of Judaism,

not just the Essenes who lived in Qumran.

[SIMCHA] According to Peleg,

what they found here was the library of all Judaism,

not just the Essenes.

He then led me to cave number four...

...to show me the final proof for his theory that this...

...was a pottery factory, not an Essene commune.

Since the caves were full of scroll fragments,

archaeologists had assumed that the Essenes...

...were burying damaged holy texts here.

Not so, says Peleg.

The damage was caused by animals tearing apart texts...

...hidden by refugees in an abandoned pottery factory.

When archaeologists came, they found fragments?

I think its animals. You can see that there are lots of holes-

Yeah and animals would have been right there right?

That's animal poop? -Yeah.

What kind of animal poop is like that?

-Its small like a mouse.

Like a desert rat?

Yeah desert rat, something like that.

[SIMCHA] The rat is a rodent like the squirrel,

but we want to talk about the scrolls not squirrels.

Peleg says that the inkwells they found...

...weren't for writing scrolls but for labelling the pots.

He claims the factory workers dug out these caves...

...to get the quartz to mix with the clay...

...to make the pots stronger.

So, this cave wasn't a repository for Holy books,

but a quarry for pottery.

When we took some of the clay and mix it with this quartz...

...we made new vessels, pottery vessels.

So you think they were digging out for quartz?

That they created these caves?

These are man made caves you are saying?

Yes they are man made caves.

That's the last stage of our theory.

We have the kiln, we have that, we have that.

We have a reason for the caves.

You have a system with the aqueducts...

...purifying water for the clay.

You've got man made caves for the quartz,

you made the pots, you have kilns.

It's all making sense as a pottery factory,

a pottery industry.

There is no connection between the scrolls and the site.

[SIMCHA] I was troubled by Peleg's theory.

First century historian Josephus says...

...that there were Essenes by the Dead Sea.

Peleg says it was a pottery factory.

Most archaeologists say that the scrolls in the caves...

...were connected to the archaeological site...

...known as Qumran.

Peleg says that the scrolls have nothing to do...

...with the pottery factory that was found there.

So I went back to Jerusalem to discuss Peleg's theory...

...with Professor Gaby Barkay.

I started by making Peleg's argument.

Just because a bunch of people say...

...there were these Essenes on the Dead Sea...

...and you find scrolls near the Dead Sea,

doesn't mean they're the same people.

The scrolls could have been brought there...

...by people fleeing burning Jerusalem,

hidden in the cave,

and this has nothing to do with the Essenes.

We have two elements of Qumran.

We have the caves and you have the ruin.

If you separate between those two,

then you can get all kinds of interpretations.

Maybe Aliens from outer space wrote them.

You can make it into a m*llitary fort,

you can make it into a rich farmer's farmstead,

you can make it into a hamlet.

A Hamlet, alas poor York.

But what does the archaeology tell you?

You say they're connected.

Listen, they are connected,

logically they are connected,

archaeologically they were connected.

The facts are there and I think it makes sense.

[SIMCHA] The facts are that in AD,

Rome came and destroyed Qumran.

Two years later in AD,

Rome destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem.

So, are the scrolls the long lost wisdom...

...of the Qumran Essenes?

Or the long lost Jerusalem library...

...spirited out by refugees?

Maybe the answer to this riddle...

...involves not the texts that were found,

but the texts that were missing.

[SIMCHA] The Dead Sea Scrolls...

...have been called the greatest archeological find of all time.

And yet archeologists can't agree who wrote them.

Maybe clues to the authors...

...are not in the scrolls that were found,

but in the texts that are missing.

The temple in Jerusalem was the centre of Jewish life.

Whoever controlled it was in power.

In the second century BC, the Maccabee Brothers...

...took control of the temple,

thus causing a split in Judaism.

There were those who saw the Maccabees...

...as political heroes and others,

like the Essenes, who felt the Maccabees,

had polluted the temple,

forcing true believers into a desert exile.

So who left the scrolls at Qumran?

If they were brought by refugees fleeing Jerusalem,

the scrolls would preserve fragments...

...celebrating the Maccabees.

Essenes, on the other hand,

would never include the hated book of Maccabees...

...in their library.

I met with Professor Eileen Schuller of McMaster University.

There's a lot of controversy...

...about who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It seemed that at one point...

...everybody said it was the Essenes.

Now we were in Qumran,

and there's a theory now that what we're looking at...

...is not the repository of a community,

but rather the scrolls of refugees...

...from the destruction in Jerusalem.

It's a bit odd to say well we have all these texts...

...but they have nothing to do with the people...

that are living here and there's material that is not here.

I mean, if we looked at what would you expect to find...

in the libraries of Jerusalem,

you might expect to have a copy...

...of the book of the first Maccabee's,

whereas you don't have that at Qumran.

You tend to have texts that are...

...very critical of the temple and of the priesthood.

whether things are being done correctly or not...

...and they basically don't think they are.

[SIMCHA] So it seems that the Dead Sea Scrolls...

...are not the long lost Jerusalem library.

Their authors ignored the Maccabees...

...and predicted an apocalypse.

But they were also an ascetic community,

into detailed rules meant to sanctify everyday life.

[SIMCHA] These rules say Essenes to me.

But we need evidence on the ground to prove it.

I decided to speak with someone...

...who both reads the scrolls and also dug at Qumran:

Archaeologist James Tabor.

You excavated at Qumran didn't you?

Yeah, I dug there.

You dug there?

Well, who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Well let me tell you something that's brewing right now,

that might shut up everything. But I'll tantalize you.

I get tantalized by archaeology.

Well you're going to get tantalized by this.

[SIMCHA] James Tabor found a clue...

...squirreled away in the Damascus Document...

...that proves the Essenes were at Qumran.

This clue was where no one would think to look,

The Essene latrine.

I see it! I see it! Hallelujah! I see it! I see it!

[SIMCHA] Professor Tabor's hunt for the latrines...

...begins with Josephus.

This first century historian writes that...

...he admired the will of the Essenes because,

contrary to tradition,

they didn't feast the night of the Sabbath.

James wondered why Essenes wouldn't feast.

So, he went to the scrolls:

"On the Sabbath you may not go beyond cubits...

...from the city.

Your latrines must be cubits from the city,

and out of sight of the camp,

so as not to pollute the camp."

So on the Sabbath you've got a problem...

...because you can't go out...

...and what if you have to go to the bathroom?

But you're supposed to feast on Friday night.

You're saying that the scroll community a theological problem.

That one commandment that said...

...don't go outside the perimeter outside your house,

another said don't put the toilet too close.

In one text its says and one its .

So they've got a problem. They've got a problem.

Josephus mentions this problem in admiration...

...that they're dealing with it...

...and not eating much on Friday night.

You're saying wait a minute,

if it's the same people that Josephus is talking about...

...and the scrolls are talking about,

we should be able to find their toilets.

It's this kind of archaeology I admire.

You know what I mean?

But there's a clue.

It says in the w*r Scroll they are northwest of the camp.

So they put them strategically where the wind wasn't blowing.

I don't know why, it just says northwest.

They don't want to be down wind from the toilet.

I love this, this is real archaeology.

I stood at the pool on the northwest corner...

...and I sh*t a laser beam cubits due northwest.

I get about, lets say, cubits-

And terrible smell.

No I start looking around and all of a sudden on the ground-

No way.

What do I see?

I see stones set in an exact rectangular.

It's a two staller. -Really?

The doorway is away from the camp...

...and its got you know, like this, it's like a 'U'.

So are you going to call me the Toilet Hunter...

...instead of the Scroll Hunter?

The Outhouse Hunter. -I hate my life.

[SIMCHA] I was back at Qumran to find Essene latrines.

Is it possible that some ancient plumbing...

...will answer the question: who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

I called professor Tabor,

Chair of the Department of Religious Studies...

..in North Carolina Charlotte to talk me through the directions.

I should walk that way?

Ok I'm starting to walk!

I'm starting to walk towards the rock cliff.

I'm walking. It's a ways. That's the point right?

Who would have thought that...

...the secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls...

...would have been solved by a latrine?

Ok but just tell me this!

On the left side of the outcropping,

I'll see a bath and then what will I see?

A path. And then what will I see? Lead to what?

Ok. I'll call you back. Goodbye! Come on guys.

Naked Archaeology can figure out ancient mysteries...

...with ancient poop It's true.

Do you see a path? Is that a path?

I think we took a short cut. I think that's the path.

Whew. I'm out of breath. Whew. Totally out of breath.

I'll tell you one thing, I couldn't have been an Essene.

Couldn't have held it in so long.

I see it! I see it! Hallelujah I see it!

This is the communal sh-- house.

Right here.

It says northwest, this is northwest and hey, right there,

there is a natural outcropping...

...which would hide you from the camp.

You can't see the camp, the camp can't see you.

So this is kind of the ancient version of a stall.

I see it; it's actually separated. I'll walk there. See?

I'm walking right between the two rectangles.

There's even an entranceway! Right here.

I'm seeing the arrangement, look.

You come right in here. Oops sorry, not looking,

you walk right in here. See?

[SIMCHA] Using the scrolls we found the plumbing,

which proves this was no pottery factory

but the home of the Essenes.

And these guys saw their every action,

from w*r to prayer to bodily functions,

worthy of a rule to make it holy.

There you have it.

Proof that the Essenes wrote the scrolls.

Here they waited for the end of history...

...following their leader, the Teacher of Righteousness.

Some scholars believe this teacher...

...was the prototype of the Christ figure.

Dr. Stephen Pfann, Scroll Scholar.

Now, while we still have sun, let me ask you.

One of the scrolls, the famous scrolls,

there's famous scrolls in these things...

...and they talk about the Teacher of Righteousness,

who seems to be a Jesus-like figure, who is it?

I think the Teacher of Righteousness..

...was as many other scholars. That he was a high priest.

He was pushed up from the Priesthood of Jerusalem...

...and he was tortured terribly in the dungeons.

In his hymns we find,

which is known as the Thanksgiving Hymns.

He speaks of the fact that he no longer even cared...

...about cries of the people around him.

But nevertheless, God was faithful...

...and that the Holy Spirit came to him,

that his heart was changed and how he had changed...

...from being a man of flesh and blood...

...to becoming a child of light.

Now, through this overwhelming process-

Its sounds pretty Christian.

Do you think these are proto-Christians?

Out of this kind of movement the Christians?

We have some Jewish guides come out saying...

...you know these texts are Christian texts.

They sound so Christian to us...

...because of these things that they say,

and Christians read the texts and say no,

they sound Jewish.

The fact is, yes.

This is both worlds together before those worlds split.

[SIMCHA] Modern Judaism grew from rabbinic teachings,

which, like the Essene scrolls,

celebrate a divine law that seeks to sanctify every action.

Christianity on the other hand,

is built on an utter devotion to an...

...Essene like messianic figure.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have served to fill in the gaps...

...made by time and men,

and to show us what doesn't change.