January 22, 2020 • 60 mins
Odds are you've heard of the Dead Sea scrolls -- when the first of these ancient texts were discovered in the 1940s, the scrolls revolutionized our understanding of the past, and, in some cases, gave historians and archaeologists more questions than answers. One scroll, discovered in 1952, remains unique in the collection. It doesn't contain religious information, and it doesn't recount earlier stories from the region. Instead, this scroll (the only one written on copper) appears to be a treasure guide. So what happened to the gold, silver and artifacts catalogued on the scroll? Were these caches discovered thousands of years ago... or are these hidden treasures still somewhere out there today, waiting to be discovered?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly, you are you, You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. This is uh, this is a bit
of an Indiana Jones episode for us. Man, Oh yeah,
come on, I know, especially you and I loved Indiana
(00:47):
Jones stuff. Oh yes, immensely, immensely, and I believe we
we may have talked before. I don't know whether it
was on air off air, about which of the four
you know it would be our personal favorites. I I
gotta say, Man, I blame it on the time in
life that I saw it. But last Crusade, Yeah yeah,
(01:11):
head and shoulders above, streets ahead, as they would say
on the former TV show Community Exactly. I can see.
I can see that argument, and you know I generally
I I would have agreed with you until I saw
the crystal Skulls. Yeah, that was like, this is a masterpiece, right,
(01:33):
oh man, especially the ninjas that appear. The ninja's for me,
it's all about that refrigerator. I I can't. I mean,
that's yeah, what better piece of cinema is there? I
challenge you to show me a better piece of American cinema. Yeah,
even spawned the phrase nuking the fridge. Yeah. And you know,
one thing I like about that film series, especially in
(01:55):
Crystal Skull, is that they include realistic survival advice. You know,
bridges aren't just for food. It's lined with lead sun
and plus it's padded, very very padded. Yeah, you know,
I did overall enjoy it. Um we and we. You know.
(02:16):
The fascinating thing about the concept of Indiana Jones, which
is far from perfect, of course, is that it inspired
a lot of people to become actual archaeologists, absolutely right.
It made it seem a whole ton more exciting than
the job actually ends up being. Yeah, there's there are
a couple of scenes, very sparsely painted scenes in which
(02:40):
he is ending a class or something, you know, exactly exactly.
It's It's true also that Indiana Jones was created or
inspired by true life stories of people who were adventurous.
Archaeology and the field of archaeology is far from dusty
(03:05):
or dead and very much not static. In fact, many
of the debates in archaeology that began, you know, forty
fifty two hundred years ago continue today and people are
still really steamed about it, like it's it's all still
(03:25):
very relevant to the academy. You know, people have their
livelihood staked on uh is something that would seem like
a negligible disagreement to an outsider. That's correct, and we
do always have to remember here history is continually being written,
even ancient history is being rewritten as we discover something
new or something more, and that's what today's episode is
(03:49):
all about. That's right. This may be familiar to to
those of us in the audience who watched the stuff
they don't want you to know YouTube series. We are
die being into the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
but not perhaps you know, the way you might assume, Yeah,
not at all. Well it's not at all the way
(04:12):
you might as do. But first, these first Dead Sea Scrolls,
other than a cool name, what are they? Here are
the facts the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're these amazing discoveries.
They're also known as the Kumar and Cave Scrolls, and
apologies for my pronunciation there. It's a collection of these
ancient religious documents that were discovered in late nineteen or
(04:36):
early nineteen forty seven. They are written in versions of Hebrew,
like varying versions of Hebrew, and they were discovered by
these two Bedouin shepherds, just two guys, and their their
names were forgive me but uh Huma or Huma and
Mohammed ed Deep. And they were searching for this. It really,
(05:00):
this is what's happening. They're searching for a lost animal
and they find these things. As a matter of fact,
you know, Paul massive Favor, could we get a little
bit of the kind of Indiana jones E music here
just for a second, uh, something from like the first
or second act? Something building? Yeah, definitely crystal skulls. So
(05:20):
so picture this. These shepherds are hunting for some animal
that's straight from the flock, and they come to an
outcrop overlooking the dead Sea, and as they're looking around
for their lost livestock, they see an opening in the
face of the rock, a cave, right, and caves are
relatively common in this area. Not being nincompoops of any sort,
(05:46):
these shepherds say, okay, we need to make sure it's
safe to enter there, and so they throw some stones
into the darkness to make sure that they don't hear
a larger animal or predator of some sort react acting,
and they don't. Instead, they hear the shattering of pottery.
They're thinking, what what, and so they crawl inside the
(06:09):
cave to investigate, and they find that one of the
rocks they had thrown, by chance, hit an ancient clay pot.
And inside this clay pot, which had chattered, there were
scraps of leather, and these were obviously very old. But
the shepherd said, somebody wrote something on this leather. And
(06:31):
then they looked around. This is the cinematic moment where
they look from the broken pot and they see behind
it as we like focus in in somehow miraculously, and
they they see that there are a multitude of pots,
and these pots also contain stuff. Some of them are
(06:52):
complete scrolls contained, and others are fragments of previous works.
So imagine you know that. You imagine instead of finding
a book, you find like three pages of chapter four.
Now now here is where the story takes a bit
of a turn, because it truly is a story that
(07:14):
one must believe the originators of this story to to
believe it that this is actually what happened. But according
to what is what is known or what is told.
These guys collected all these scrolls up and they kind
of held on to him for a little while. They
took them to some friends and some neighbors. They were like, yo,
(07:34):
look at this, this is pretty crazy, right, what do
you think this is? What could this be? Um? And
then they ended up heading over to Bethlehem. Uh, this
is the nearest commercial center to where they were located
over there. Um, it's it's outside of Jerusalem, right, that's
where this is. Um. And they wanted to see if
they can maybe sell these things to somebody who would
(07:55):
be interested in this what they believed to be in
an ancient relic or series of als, right, And they
didn't know how old it was. They just said, Okay,
this seems important, and we live in a very old
part of the world, right, so let's find an expert.
One of the smartest things you can do in that situation,
The shepherds meet a man named Fadi Salahi Slahi is
(08:18):
an antique stealer, but even he is not completely sure
what the shepherds have found. So he calls a friend
of his, an Armenian who is also an antique stealer,
and says, this is a weird, crazy story, and then
his colleague agrees it. Reaches out to an archaeology professor
(08:38):
named Eliza Lippa Ski and Sukernick is suk Nick is interested, right,
But we have to remember that this is the mid
nineteen forties in the Middle East, the Middle late nineteen forties,
and these are dangerous, dangerous, dangerous times. Sue connect risk
(09:01):
life and limb as a Jewish man traveling to Bethlehem.
He made it across the border. He took possession of
the scrolls. He persuaded Salahi to let them uh to
let him take the scrolls back to study them. Right,
and he is at his home in Jerusalem. He's fluent
in Hebrew. But that's remember what Matt said earlier at
(09:25):
the top, the different versions of Hebrew. Right. If you've
if you are primarily an English speaker, just imagine any
time you had a teacher that made you read Canterbury
Tales in the way it was originally written yeah, exactly know, sure, um,
and something as simple as like the articles are a
(09:47):
little strange, like and you just don't understand the flow
of the language. Um. But here's the thing. As as
he's looking through, Um, it turns out these things they
weren't from the nineteen forties. They weren't from the sixteen
hundreds or the twelve hundreds. They were much much older. Right. Yes,
(10:10):
the scrolls have all been ascribed to a rough period
of time, the Hellenistic Roman period, somewhere between the third
century b C. To the first century see meaning especially
for people who are devoted to Christianity, meaning that these
(10:33):
were written during the time of the historical figure Jesus Christ.
This is this would be contemporaneous or some of this would.
Many of these works correspond to the known Biblical text,
like the the different Bibles you can find in hotels
(10:55):
or in the bookstores or you know, in your house
or friend's house today, and they correspond to parts of
the Hebrew Bible as well. That's that's incredible to find
something like that that then becomes not necessarily these texts, uh,
these specific physical texts, but the contents in them ends
(11:15):
up becoming what the Bible is. That's incredible. Um. And
here's the thing, there's all kinds of other religious writings
that are included in there. There are you know, copies
of the scriptures, other non canonical books that we've talked about,
and I believe we've mentioned this before when we talk
we talked about apocryphal texts and some of that, so
(11:37):
things that aren't included in the official canon of the
Holy Bible. And in total, there are hundreds of documents
found in twelve caves around Cumbar and around that area,
and the last cave that contained some of these scrolls
or pieces of these scrolls was only discovered on it's
crazy February of sen right, not that long ago. That
(11:59):
surprised because even now, if you read a bunch of
fairly authoritative information about the Dead Sea scrolls, you'll see
the number quoted as eleven. So this is very much
a case of history in the making. But who wrote them,
that's the See, that's the thing. Remember how we said
(12:21):
earlier that in the realm of history and archaeology there
are there are details that might seem minor to some people,
but it seems incredibly, incredibly crucial to two insiders in
a community were in a discipline. So the question of
(12:41):
the providence of the scrolls, or the question rather the
original authors is still going to cause debate in the
academic community even today. We know that many of the
scrolls were likely written by a Jewish sect known as
the s Scenes, who are Scenes who control the area
from the second century b c e. To the first century. See,
(13:06):
they're they're real people. They're mentioned by plenty of the
elder who locates them or sites them living in the
same area. So we do have you know, we do
have proof that they were there. They were real, they
were known to be ascetic in nature of their practices.
(13:26):
There are some who may have alleged, you know, mysticism
or something in their beliefs. But a lot of the
problem with a lot of those ideas throwing them m
word around is that it's often it's often coming from
another group and they're they're mothering or they're they're attempting
to make these people seem i don't know, mysterious or
(13:49):
dangerous or off kilter or something like that, something that
is not of us. If you have a rigid belief system,
as soon as you veer off just slightly, then you
become other, right, I mean it tends to occur, and
you know, you put mystic on there because maybe they
slightly disagree on one thing that is a bit esoteric
(14:10):
or a bit um of a slightly different belief about
something really big within a religion, or it would seem
to be from an outsider's perspective. For this reason, you'll
you'll hear scholars occasionally refer to the Dead Sea Scrolls
as the library of this group. The this is this
(14:31):
is an interesting way to look at it, because we
we see some strong evidence that this could happen. Not
everything is written in the type of Hebrew that this
group was believed to have used. You know, they're like
uh Aramaic is in their Greek, Latin and so on.
But if you look at a substantial library at your
(14:52):
local school or something you're going in local college or whatever,
you're going to find multiple books in different languages, right,
and they were just acquired by the institution. But then
you'll hear other people say, well, there are this is
the result of multiple contributing authors across the course of centuries.
(15:12):
There's no one group that wrote these and that's that's
a debate that continues today. I just have to say
that makes sense to me. But you know, I'm not
a scholar that would be that, that would be a library.
You know, it's there were different authors from possibly different
regions throughout you know, I don't know who knows decades.
(15:34):
It's a long time, right. So while scholars still go
back and forth about the identity of all the authors
of the scrolls, it's pretty easy to agree on the content. Luckily,
since since shortly after nine we have literally had members
(15:55):
of our species working around the clock to uh to
figure out what unearth these things actually say. As we
as we mentioned there, it's a lot of it's written
in versions of Hebrew. There's also some writing in Aramaic,
some in Greek, some in Latin. And the scrolls themselves
can be divided up into three rough sections, let's say
(16:17):
three sections. There's stuff from content at least from the
Old Testament. There's all kinds of information in there that
would match up, and it matches up pretty pretty well
with with the Old Testament of the Bible. There's also
slightly alternative versions of existing Biblical writings in there, especially
Old Testament stuff conversations that may not have made it
(16:38):
into what is considered the you know, canonical version of
those religious works exactly. And there's also some a little
more mundane things like um texts that's relating to everyday
life stuff that is occurring in that area with the
people who live there, traditional practices of those people's and
a lot of this stuff is written in Greek and
(17:00):
in Latin, which again like kind of painting a picture
of Okay, well, maybe these different authors are interested in
recording different things here. Um, it's almost like an historian
and like you've gotten a religious uh studies sect writing
those first, you know, the first set there, and then
(17:22):
you've got well, I don't know, historians writing the second
the second set there, and then the next one is
where it gets really fun. This is where it's so
it's like the Revelation scrolls, but they've got a different name, right,
the so called sectarian scrolls, also known as the War
Rule or the War scroll. This definitely came from the
(17:45):
scene sect. It's called the war the Sons of Light
against the sons of darkness. Right the now, this sect
believed themselves to be sort of the holy elected Creme
de lectrem of Israel, and they called themselves the Sun's
at Light and at sometime at the end of time, specifically,
(18:07):
they would have a catastrophic war with the enemies of Israel,
who were called the Sun's of darkness. This role is
an instructional uh, an instructional piece. It's a manual for
organization and strategy. Talks about battle gear, it gets down
into the nitty gritty of signals. Call it portrays a
(18:27):
forty year holy war and it says this will be
between the forces of good and evil, involving divine as
well as earthly soldiers. Uh yeah, and you know, of
course infernal assistance on the other side. So this is
this is fascinating because it's prophetic and apocalyptic. The scenes
(18:51):
themselves by the way to flesh this out, one of
the reasons that they were looked at askance is because
they were generally going to be found in monastic communities,
and in most cases these excluded women. So these were
people living specifically for the purpose of their faith or
(19:11):
their their spiritual values, and a lot of that entailed
writing things down. Yes, yes, and we're going to explore
some more of that after a quick word from our sponsor. Right,
(19:33):
they wrote things down, and since a lot of the
stuff they wrote down predates the Bible, we can look back.
We could do this side by side. There's there are
projects to digitize this information. You can look side by
side and see the evolution of beliefs and concepts from
the time the scrolls were actually written, all the way
(19:54):
to the current translations of Bibles or other religious texts
that you see used to day. In twenty for example,
you can see depictions of narratives like what you would
find in modern day Exodus or Genesis. But but, but,
but here's the thing. These are the earlier versions. They're different.
(20:16):
Oh yes, and then we mentioned apocrypha before, because there's
all kinds of stuff in there about that, uh, stories
of these giants, these ancient giants from before. Uh, these
things called watchers, these fallen watchers, and there's all kinds
of other imagery in there, and um, characters that you
probably wouldn't find if you open you correct a Bible. Yeah,
(20:38):
I was thinking of I was thinking of, what's what's
the strange comparison we can make to this experience in
the modern day? All right, Uh, do you remember fresh
Prince of bel Air. I've heard of it. Yes, I've
seen every episode. Right, Okay, so Aunt Viv in Fresh
(20:58):
Prince of bel Air is actually two different actors, right,
what Yeah, one of them gets replaced, right. You know,
Matt clearly knows all of this. Intimately, You're like the
biggest Fresh Prince and changed was like, that is not
on Viv. Get out of here? Who are you college
(21:18):
in the matrix? Yeah? So for some people reading this
is sort of like that experience, because we grow up
thinking that religious texts are all poor choice of words
here carved in stone, that they do not change, you
know what I mean? And now there is clear evidence
that at some point, yeah dude, they did. They still
(21:39):
have you know, a lot in common, right, and there
is there is also the fascinating case to be made
that this this stuff remains remarkably consistent. Right, But especially
when you look at the modern Christian versions, there are
a lot of differences. There are things that were cut out,
(22:02):
and that has been the root of a great, great
deal of research, the vast spanning the spectrum of plausibility
and credibility, I would say, because you get a lot
of pseudo historians in there, you know, Oh yeah, and
there's so much to explore in the story of the
(22:22):
Dead Sea scrolls, but we want to hone in on
a specific story. We want to hone in on a
single scroll, and we may to be completely clear, we
may return in the future to other parts of the
Dead Sea story. That the Dead Sea itself, man, is
a crazy place. Salinity, it's nuts. They also recently, uh,
(22:45):
scientists found life at the bottom of the Dead Sea.
You're saying, there's life in the bottom of the Dead Sea. Yeah. Yeah,
maybe we were a little too uh quick to pull
the trigger on the name for an update. Mostly dead
the live bottom sea. That's you know, that's not gonna
(23:06):
have probiotics at the bottom there we go. Yeah, and
and uh and underwater whole foods because of course. But
also the Dead Sea is receding at a precipitous rate.
It's sad. Great, thanks, thanks, you're welcome in Australia's on fire. Yeah.
Also still uh. And then as we're recording this, there
(23:28):
were a series of earthquakes in Iran and you know,
some attacks. Yeah, yeah, it's fine, Everything's gonna be fine.
I was talking to an old professor of mine recently
regarding geopolitical tensions in the modern world, and asked him,
you know what he thought was going to happen off
the record and stuff. And his answer was, you know,
(23:50):
he said, I I envy you young folks out there
because you know you can make a choice and you
might not ever have to deal with the consequences. And
he said, you to think about it, which you want
record car tells someone you'll marry them, it doesn't matter.
Now he's saying, we're not going to live for it.
Was his way of saying that you can make the
(24:13):
most ridiculous choices because you really don't know. Uh, if
you know, if you were going to do something that
would have killed you in your eighties, is that a
mooked concern At this point? Oh my god, we can
really live like there's no tomorrow. Tonight's the night. That's
why all the pop songs are telling me to nice
the night. I want to also point out, I'm not
(24:36):
going to give this professor's name. They are retired. I
also want to point out I I think they're eighty
percent joking. I would like to think that. And if
they're not, and if you're listening, that is a horrible
take on this on this situation anyhow. Yeah, yes, we
are focusing on one one specific scroll because there was
(25:00):
a scroll discovered on March fourteenth, nineteen fifty two, and
out of all of the nine something Dead Sea scrolls,
this one is unique for a number of reasons. Well, firstly,
it's not written on papyrus or you know, leather, any
of these other mediums that where the other ones were
written or how they're what they were written on. This
(25:22):
one was written on a thin sheet of rolled up copper.
That's crazy, a thin sheet of rolled up metal. And
this thing is really really interesting. There are several different
estimates here. UM. A lot of these scholars believe that
the probable range for the Copper scrolls creation was somewhere
(25:44):
in the period of twenty to seventy five c E.
And that's just looking at the handwriting itself. When you're
analyzing that it's called from a paleographical perspective. While there's
this person W. F. Albright who suggests it was probably
written somewhere between seventy in a d. Thirty five CEES,
so a little bit after that range at least when
(26:05):
you're looking at it from from a different perspective. UM
It's really really interesting because this thing is unlike the
other scrolls in in way more ways than just the
medium on which it's written. Right, this scroll showed the
trend of religious content entirely and focused on something else,
(26:29):
something that has haunted amateurs and archaeologists alike since the fifties.
The copper scroll you see is not a guide to
day to day life, is not an early version of
Exodus or Genesis, it's not apocrypha. It is best described
as a treasure map. Here's where it gets crazy. A
(26:53):
treasure map, Ben, treasure map, Matt. Now, you're right, that's
exactly what this thing is. It's about as Indiana Jones
as you can get. If you were to pick this up,
and if you were able to read it immediately, you
would you would just in my mind, you would grab
a big stick or a shovel or something and you
would just start digging all over the place. It's intense stuff.
(27:18):
And it's not just one treasure, no, it's it's one
treasure across what treasure sixty four locations. Yeah. The treasures
are a are precious metals, gold and silver, and the
text of the copper scroll is entirely an inventory of
these locations coins and coins. Yes, sorry, sixty three locations are,
(27:44):
according to the scroll, holding gold and silver, and there's
a sixty four location that's a little bit different. But
they're talking, you know, they're making money moves here. These
these these are not little burlap sacks of like five
to ten pieces of silver. No, not at all. You're
you're talking talents, all kinds of talents, sometimes fifty, sometimes ten,
(28:05):
sometimes way more than that. Uh. There's one location like
according to this copper scroll that it holds nine hundred
talents and or roughly eight hundred and sixty eight thousand
troy ounces of buried gold. That's a lot of gold,
my friends. And it is just buried in one place.
(28:28):
But then there's gold and silver buried throughout this entire
region somewhere out there, and we're gonna get into where
that is. But it's not just precious metals, it's not
just talents or gold coins and silver coins. Uh, it's
got it's got religious a coutrement too, that's just buried
out there somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, tithing vessels, other other vessels
(28:52):
that would be used in in religious ceremonies, right, also
priestly vestments. Yeah, but I want to get back to
the vessels. The vessels were really fun for me because
I'm going to read you a quote from one of these,
just so everybody can hear. Is that okay? That's perfect?
I I forgot this was coming. Just really cool. Please
(29:13):
let's do it. Just speaking of vessels. So this is
officially column three. You can find this online if you
want to. You can see it in there, and this
is just me reading it in from an English translation.
Dig down nine cubits into the southern corner of the courtyard.
There will be silver and gold vessels given as offerings, bowls, cups,
(29:34):
sprinkling basins, libation tubes, and pictures. Altogether, they will total
six D nine pieces. Libation tubest what what? What's the
libation tube? A libation tube is anything that you pour
some drink into. My friend, it could be wine, it
could be any other libation, as long as you're having
(29:57):
fun and and hopefully doing it in sacrament to some
higher deity. Librate right, Librate to your heart's content. Would
you call that, uh liban? Would you call that tuban
or lebanuban? Uh? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. They also these were.
(30:20):
The name sounds a bit funny in English, but libation
tubes did serve an important purpose rights they were connecting
the living with the dead and so on, So this
is incredibly important to point out. Though again, not all
of the treasures gold and silver. There were things that
(30:41):
the community truly believed you could not put a price
on right, these priceless objects, and they must be hidden
from invading forces such as the Romans, who of course
will show up later. There's another interesting part though, at
the very towards the very end of the copper scroll,
(31:02):
it says there's another scroll out there that has more details.
It's as if they knew people would complain about the
directions in the scroll, which will get to by the
way they're they're laughable. But that other document, whatever it is,
has yet to be found. There are experts of plenty
(31:24):
in this field, like a Theodore H. Gaster. He studied
the copper Scroll extensively, and he believed that it was
in fact alluding to a real treasure, and that this
treasure could come from one of three sources. The first
of those would be treasure that was acquired by the
(31:46):
Kumarn community of the Escenes that we discussed before. It
would kind of make sense just you know, when you're
thinking about all the religious kuchma that was buried in
all of these things, you can imagine that if it
is a religious community, perhaps a lot of this the
wealth of the gold and everything came through the form
of some kind of tithing or donation or some you know,
(32:07):
you can imagine it was gathered in some way like that.
It kind of makes sense. The next possible source of
this treasure would be from the Second Temple in Jerusalem. However,
we do have to kind of point out here that
the historical records suggests that a lot of the main
or the a large amount of the main treasure that
(32:27):
was inside that Second Temple was in the building when
Rome came through and sacked all of Jerusalem after they
breached all the walls. And it's a there's a great
there's a great article on how Stuff Works dot Com
that goes kind of it paints a really great picture
of what occurred when the Romans sect uh sack Jerusalem
that time. Um, it does not rule out this possibility,
(32:51):
though there's a significant portion of the treasures that may
have possibly at least you know, this is it's a belief, right,
This is where we're talking about this. There's a suggestion
a significant portion of the treasures may have been taken
away from the temple because it was known that the
Romans were coming through for days, right, So there was
probably preparation to get a lot of this treasure out
(33:13):
and hide it somewhere before they actually breached the walls.
And the third idea is that this treasure came from
the first Temple, which was destroyed by the king of
Babylon Nebuchadnezzar in five eighties six BC. There's one problem
with that though. The scroll has been dated to as
(33:33):
you said, earlier mat like CE at the earliest, so
it's unlikely that somebody went back and made a treasure
map centuries later, especially when you see how it's written.
You know. Yeah, But here's the thing I would point
out when I was I was reading that too. This
(33:54):
is my suggestion, and this is there's no weight behind
this suggestion. But if the treasures were secreted away from
either of the temples and kept somewhere, right, um, perhaps
this burying them across the land and all these varying
places that you'd need to dig to find them very
(34:15):
much buried treasure. Um, it could be an interesting strategy
for hiding them a second time, or maybe a third time,
or you know, however many iterations these treasures had been
hidden away from popular view or from the authorities view. Yeah,
I mean, that's that's the tantalizing thing about this, right.
(34:37):
We we have solid, concrete, tangible proof of something, and
now it's it's a herculean mental exercise to try to
plausibly and realistically connect these dots. You know. But when
we talk about connecting dots, we're also talking about decoding
(34:59):
the manuscript itself, because it was written in Hebrew, but
it was written in a different kind of Hebrew, and
the chronology makes us assume that this was deposited later,
was possibly from a different group of people. Will explore
more of the conundrum of the copper scroll after word
(35:20):
from our sponsor. All right, and we're back. Now. We've
been talking about, you know, the origin a lot of
this copper scroll, but we really really want to answer
the question, is there actual treasure out there that if
(35:40):
let's say we got on a plane and ended up
there in that area, could we find some talents underneath
the ground somewhere Troy ounces. Well, what do you think
then it's possible. But to do that we would have
to Indiana Jones style to side for the manuscript. So,
(36:03):
for instance, we we said a talent, we had the
equivalent there for troy ounce. But unsurprisingly, directions are not
given in kilometers, nor are they in miles. Oh yes,
oh sure, yes, absolutely we we mentioned this when I
read column three, it says dig down nine cubits. So
(36:28):
if you were to dig down nine cubits, what what
the heck would that look like? Well, let's talk about
it really, really quickly. A cubit is an ancient and
handy measurement, and that is a pun and we'll get
to it. So let's do something fun together right now. Uh, Paul,
you do this too, just so I can see if
I'm telling it correctly. Uh. Please take your dominant hand
(36:49):
and stretch it directly out in front of you. All right, Okay,
Now let's bend your elbow so it's ninety degrees facing upwards. Okay, okay, excellent.
Now the length for your elbow to the middle finger,
your middle fingers, which is stretched out by the way,
I forgot to mention that that is a cubit, not
bert No, a cube bit. And here's there's a bit
(37:12):
of a problem here because my cub it is not
exactly the same length as your cube it. It's gonna
be clos ish, but it's not exactly the same. It's
roughly eighteen inches somewhere around that that length, or about
forty six centimeters. But this is the measurement that was
used in throughout ancient history for a long long time.
(37:35):
And just think about how helpful this measurement is for
someone anyone who's working on either a huge project or
just something maybe in their home. You can measure something.
I'll be like, I want this table to be about
four cubits across, and you could measure that as you're going,
and uh, you know, cut cut wood to an exact measurement,
(37:57):
right close to exact measurement. And then you could also
talk with your or you know, colleagues, or if you
want to sell it, you can say this thing is
it's about three four cubits. Yeah, it's pretty cool to me.
I I didn't know that. I'm just excited to have
that knowledge. It's a measuring tool that you carry with
you at all times. Yeah, you don't need You don't
need a tool. Yeah, you're the tool. Tell yourself that,
(38:20):
say I am in the mirror. So this is just
one example of the the different phrases or concepts that
have to be translated deciphered for us to launch an
actual treasure hunt based on the information we find in
the copper scroll. Spoiler alert. For some people, what you're
(38:44):
about to hear maybe very disappointing. For others in the
audience today, it may be quite inspiring. And it is
this the treasure which was almost definitely real, by which
we mean real gold, reel, silver, you know what I mean,
the moolah, the good stuff, stuff you could trade on
a market today. This is not like a treasure like
(39:06):
the friends we made along the way or you know, uh,
this is a child's doll that was really important to
a person who died. Yeah, it just to point out here,
it doesn't make sense for someone anyone to take the
time and effort and resources to inscribe in that copper
scroll all of the information that is on there if
(39:27):
it's just some mythical thing that there's no actual treasure all, Like,
why would you do that? So that's the spoiler alert.
This treasure, which again is overwhelmingly likely to be a
real thing. It has never been found, not as far
as we know, a single piece of it, not even
(39:49):
the like, not even the idea of a single piece
of gold or silver. Not a single piece one of
those vessels that was mentioned, No libation tube, etcetera. There's
there's a guy who allegedly found some tiny little a
couple of small pieces, but it was not like, well
he found a rock, right, I think so there he
said it was man made. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. People, this
(40:13):
hasn't stopped people from searching, of course, Um, well, why
hasn't it been found? That's that's the craziest question. First,
I think we mentioned earlier when we were talking about
the possible origin of the treasure. We have to think
of the sheer passage of time. It is plausible that
sometime between modern day exploration and excavation and the time
(40:38):
that these things were originally written, at the time this
treasure was originally buried, it's completely possible any that any
number of people looted the Jesus out of the thing.
You know. Yeah, but why would you leave the copper
scroll behind? Well, the scroll clearly wasn't next to the treasure.
It's supposed to tell you where to go. Yeah, but
(40:59):
you'd use the trail. Sure, you'd have to take it
with you. Right, Well, what if you just found the
treasure and you never found the scroll, you know what
I mean? But this stuff is like nine cubits You
have to dig like nine cubits. Well, we also have
to remember, for instance, that our prime suspect for a
contemporaneous looting operation would have been the Roman community, and
(41:22):
the Romans at the time, uh standard operating procedure was
to torture people to get information so they could have
found uh one. I mean that's also why the treasure
was not put in one location. Yes, right, so maybe
it was a situation where outside of the authors of
the Copper Scroll, most people didn't know. You know, they
(41:42):
probably have pretty good operational security. Most people didn't know
where the other sixty four or excuse me sixty three
things were. That is really smart to split it up
as much as they did. Yeah, well, if this was,
if this was a treasure from the Second Temple, it
was very much not the first rodeo, you know what
I mean, Esson's learned. So the other idea is that
(42:04):
there may have been a cover up of some sort
that was successful, and that the people responsible for hiding
the gold and silver did a great job. But outside
of the Copper Scroll and this other unidentified orundiscovered document,
they just never shared the information with others, or they
passed away, or the people they told the secret to
(42:25):
at some point communication between generations failed. Add to that,
the vagueness of this scroll can be maddening. This is,
if I may, I'm going to read just the excerpt
from the instructions to to one of the treasure locations.
We want to see what you think. I'm just gonna
(42:45):
read it without other than saying it's vague. In the
salt pit that is under the steps, forty one talents
of silver, in the cave of the Old washers Chamber
on the third terrace, sixty five in gets of gold.
What's the Old washers Chamber? Huh? You know what I mean, dude.
I I'm telling you, I have such a feeling about this.
(43:08):
It was an internal document. It was this is what
I'm feeling, and I remember as I was reading through.
You can find a couple of places online where you
can read translations of the full scroll, and it really
does go on like that, Like, that's pretty much what
Ben just read. It's it's like twelve columns of that um.
(43:28):
And it feels like somebody within a group of people
recording um with places like that, like the old washers whatever,
the specific cave that doesn't have an exact you know,
the name is a little strange. It doesn't match up
historically with any other case. They everybody in that insular
group knows all these places intimately, and they know exactly
(43:52):
where to go and where to dig and everything, but
they're just keeping a record of it, or somebody within
it is the record keeper of it. Sure, yeah, you
could it just totally. It totally makes sense. I mean
that makes yeah, it does make sense. I agree with you.
The first thing this made me think of through analogy
was the experience that you have if you have ever
(44:14):
given or received directions in very small towns. Yeah, exactly.
You know. The you may have something that sounds really clear,
like take Main Street and then take a left on
coal Quit at the corner of the Arby's, why the
Arby's or something, but you may also have something like
go about I don't go a mile till you get
(44:34):
to where the old mill burned down, and then you
know there should be a post office box, um, and
then you go and I think you go for about
three miles until you get where the Tilman's used to live,
and then you take a right there. See for us,
just we're been in and Nolan, Paul and I live.
(44:56):
It's so much easier to give directions to anyone because
you can just pinpoint different waffle houses and you can
just once you know where the waffle houses are, then
you can tell anybody how to get anywhere. It's very
convenient reference point. But our point is who can guess
if it is indeed internal document? Who has the foresight
to say, thousands of years ago the old washers chamber?
(45:21):
I mean, clearly where else would you put a washers chamber?
But in you know, in what I was saying this
last thing, you'd have to prove that the old washers
chamber existed somewhere near where the scroll was discovered, rather
than maybe where the scroll was written originally, you know,
the area that it's speaking to. It still makes you
know what It still makes me think though, of modern
(45:46):
English has ruined my understanding of these sorts of translations,
because in American English. Whenever somebody throws the phrase the
old in front of something, it sounds like a euphemism
old washes chamber, You know what I mean? Is this
some sort of strange metaphor for the old washes chamber?
(46:09):
Is that like a move? People? Do? I think it is? Well,
it sounds it does sound like a place. Maybe it
was just written by an old prospector maybe it was
written by the original foghorn Leghorn. But despite this vagueness,
people have insisted on searching. Why would you not? You
(46:29):
know you could be a part of one of the
greatest discoveries in in history, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Right
in nineteen sixty two, we saw one of the largest,
most extensive hunts for the treasures of the Copper Scroll
was led by a man named John Allegro. He followed
(46:49):
some of the places listed in the scroll and did
their best. He and his team did their best to
figure out where they would be in the modern day.
They excavated a ton of potential burial places, but eventually
they gave up and they returned empty handed. There was
a more recent excavation or exploration attempt by a man
(47:14):
named Jim Barfield and Jim Barfield is interesting because he
doesn't he believes that the treasure was not actually gold
and silver. He believes that the primary quote unquote loot
of the treasure would be the vessels and utensils of
the Lost Temple. And so he did something interesting. He
(47:36):
applied triangulation techniques, right, he was he was kind of
cross referencing these ancient texts and the references that the
copper scroll made in different locations because they're all kind
of in the same area. So smart, right, yeah, absolutely,
it's very smart, and it's it's the way that I
would do it. And the reason why it's interesting that
(47:57):
this guy, Jim Barfield did it is because he he
doesn't speak Hebrew. He's not Jewish. Uh, He's just a
guy who's essentially like a treasure hunter or you know,
and someone with an interest in this who had some
time and resources and just used a technique that like
an investigator would use. Basically, um, really really cool stuff.
(48:18):
And so he he thinks he actually found some of
these locations in the surrounding area in in Kumaran. And
there's this breaking news Israel report which is it's not
I will give you that, but let's just let's just
give a quote from that that article about his investigation.
It says, quote, in two thousand seven, he Barfield went
(48:42):
to Kumaran and actually found those locations. In one case,
the scroll describes steps forty cubits long, heading east. Barfield
did indeed find stairs conforming to the description. He also
discovered the remains of a pool precisely forty cubits long,
exactly where the scroll said it would be. However, there
(49:03):
is always a twist here, a reason why we couldn't
fulfill what was going to occur finding all this treasure,
uh quote, but lacking government permission, he could go no further. Yeah, yea.
So those are the two most prominent expeditions, and they
both didn't produce anything that was universally agreed to be
(49:26):
the treasure. That's the best way to say it. Well, yeah,
and we humanity, at least to our knowledge that has
been recorded, has not recovered anything material right from many
of these right. I believe in one of Barfield's investigations
he found a rock that was provably man made. So
(49:48):
so his at this point, he's he's focusing on matching
up physical locations and structures or ruins and and so
he's not immediately going after gold because again he thinks
the treasure quote unquote is a different thing. But all this,
all this together is to listeners. You'll notice that the
(50:08):
last line from Barfield was he could go no further
because he lacked government permission. This brings us to the
possibility or the proposed possibility of a cover up, because
you see, there is no secret that there is a
war over history in the Middle East. Given the historical
(50:28):
tension and volatility of the region, the government has been
very careful about who they allowed to search this area
and when and how. You know what I mean, Like
if you bring in uh, potentially damaging equipment, you could
lose humanity's one shot to figure out some of the
(50:49):
mysteries here. I want to imagine that you're a treasure
hunter who doesn't live in the area, and you find
a treasure and you want to take it out of
that area, and you're going to go through customs or something,
or you know you're gonna claim that it is a treasure,
and you have to claim that it's a treasure in
order to establish where you found it, when you found it,
(51:12):
that you're the one that found it. How important it
is that it's real and authentic. You have to say that.
You have to raise your hand and say, hey, I
found treasure, unless you want to go into the illegal
black market. Yeah, I know, which is something you can do. However,
it's it's difficult because then you're getting things verified, you know,
after the fact, which is a whole it's a whole
(51:33):
different animal. I'm I'm big in black market, uh, antiquities.
I'm always grateful that you're here when when we're doing
these shows, because you know, a lot of the a
lot of the lessons you've learned, you've learned the hard way.
I really have, Oh my goodness. But we can't get
into that for legal reasons. So let's just let's just say, um,
(51:55):
it would be difficult because if you you do find
something in this region, you is your hand and you
say hey, I found treasure, then there it's not just
going to be the local authorities, you know, that are
going to claim ownership over this, though it'll be academic
institutions in this case, will be religious institutions as well.
(52:16):
Barfield said that he believes he he he clearly believes
he was on the right track, and he clearly believes
he was being stymied in his search, but he thought
there was a good reason. He said, if he discovered
anything of value, it would lead to what I would
call a real ship show because we're we're family broadcasts. Uh.
(52:40):
And here's what he said. He says he predicted that
Jordan's would claim the land used to belong to them
if there was something of value discovered. He said, Palestinians
will claim they were here before this other group, so
that therefore they'll say whatever they found belongs to us,
and then the world will believe them. According to Barfield,
(53:02):
he says, you know, Egypt will come along and say
that there was a treasure that was taken from the
land of Egypt during the Exodus. And he says, ultimately
by keeping it in the ground, the Israeli government is
protecting it. It's a very interesting way to allege a
cover up. You know, it is certainly interesting. So I
(53:26):
don't know, should we do we need to get into
anything else, Ben, I just kind of wanna talk a
little bit about like what what you think personally about
this thing? Can we get into opinion? What I what
I think about the the treasure? Yeah, that the scrolls
like the treasure. What do you what do you think
it might still be out there? You really think so?
(53:48):
Quite possibly. I mean, it's it's possible that it was
all looted. It's it's it's not plausible to assume that
all of these different locations survived. It is possible that
a few did, because the only way they would all
they would all have been found were if they were
(54:11):
eventually all sixty four were. First off, we're assuming all
sixty four actually exists, if all sixty four were found
one by one, or if somebody found that second, more
detailed document and then went through and somehow did all
of this in secret and it was forgotten. You know,
this is my This is what I put to you because, like,
I like what you're saying there. I think I think
(54:33):
that that copper scroll where it was found, was essentially
just discarded there or just left there for record keeping
at some point. Just we've got this collection of scrolls,
here's another one. It's just going to be there. Uh,
this is where it lives now because we've already used
it to find everything, we don't need it anymore. And
that second document, like you said, was kept by the
(54:54):
people that recovered all of the treasure because it was
I believe that it was from probably the Second Temple.
And you think it was an inside job, No, I
think I think it was just I think we essentially
got it's a receipt or it's the the old instructions
of like, okay, we've we've accomplished this, we've collected everything.
We don't need it anymore. We'll just leave those instructions there.
(55:16):
Doesn't matter if anyone finds any of these very burial
places anymore, because we've already recovered everything. And then, yeah,
I could I could see that. I could definitely see that.
But I do like the idea that was an inside
job and that there were two documents, uh, two scrolls,
and then one person totally betrayed everybody it took the
(55:37):
second DiPT A doubt that. I doubt that's the case,
but it would make for it would make for a
compelling narrative. This is also taking We have to realize
too that anything of this age is it the value
we ascribed to it is only partially financial and it's
(55:59):
only a very all part of it. The real value
becomes uh, an historical value, and that's where we see
the import there. It can prove confirm or debunk things
that we believe about history today. And it could also
provide evidence of various various stories that have been traditionally told,
(56:20):
and that that treasure, any treasure, if discovered, would immediately
become significant in the in the war over history, you know,
the war over who gets what when and this you know,
this continues across the world, but the Middle East especially
(56:40):
has a it's such an ancient land. It's been home
to immense conflicts over historical claims, religious sites, who has
the right to go where, when and so on. As
of now, we're in a glass half full, half empty situation.
You can say that the treasure was looted long ago
and lost the time, or you, as you are listening,
(57:03):
maybe the person to discover the lost treasure of the
Dead Sea Copper Scroll. If you'd like to read more
of the Dead Sea Scrolls directly, then feel free to
drop by places like the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls
Digital Library, which is digitizing the entire collection of nine
seventies something manuscripts and uploading them to the Internet for
(57:25):
global access. And there are books like the Complete Dead
Sea Scrolls in English that you can find um that
one was written. I believe it was Geza Verms v
r m E s Vermes. You can find something like that.
There's also the Dead Sea Scrolls Reappraisal. It's uh from
(57:46):
John Allegro, the one that been mentioned. You can find
that stuff. If you want to learn more about this
right now. You can also continue the conversation with us,
and the best part of this show your fellow listeners.
Find us on Facebook, find us on Instagram, find us
on Twitter. We are conspiracy stuff, Conspiracy Stuff show or
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(58:07):
Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram. And if you don't want
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t K. Give us a call, leave us a message.
You've got three minutes. But you can just keep calling
back however many times you want, but one is the
magic number. If you can do it in three minutes,
(58:27):
it's amazing for me at least, even though I want
to hear your longer stories to UM, just time. Time
is such a currency, my goodness, it's such a currency. UM.
If you don't want to do any of that stuff,
you can shoot us a good old fashioned email. Recently
we've been getting lots of fantastic suggestions from you, so
(58:49):
continue to do that please. We love it and it
will send us down the rabbit holes that we so
very much want to travel through, and we can bring
you back the nuggets. Sure, the rabbit holes. Yeah, sure,
all right, we'll just get some of the libation tubes.
I really did not know that libation tubes were meant
(59:11):
to pour liquid into a grave. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
did not know that. That's liban, man, it's tuban, liban, tuban,
but a libation tube. For me, it was just anything
you pour. I don't call it, all right, that's tubular,
so tubular, all right, So let's let's get out of
this one. Um. If you don't do that stuff, send
(59:31):
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you
(59:55):
to know, as a production of i Heeart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
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you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly, you are you, You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. This is uh, this is a bit
of an Indiana Jones episode for us. Man, Oh yeah,
come on, I know, especially you and I loved Indiana
(00:47):
Jones stuff. Oh yes, immensely, immensely, and I believe we
we may have talked before. I don't know whether it
was on air off air, about which of the four
you know it would be our personal favorites. I I
gotta say, Man, I blame it on the time in
life that I saw it. But last Crusade, Yeah yeah,
(01:11):
head and shoulders above, streets ahead, as they would say
on the former TV show Community Exactly. I can see.
I can see that argument, and you know I generally
I I would have agreed with you until I saw
the crystal Skulls. Yeah, that was like, this is a masterpiece, right,
(01:33):
oh man, especially the ninjas that appear. The ninja's for me,
it's all about that refrigerator. I I can't. I mean,
that's yeah, what better piece of cinema is there? I
challenge you to show me a better piece of American cinema. Yeah,
even spawned the phrase nuking the fridge. Yeah. And you know,
one thing I like about that film series, especially in
(01:55):
Crystal Skull, is that they include realistic survival advice. You know,
bridges aren't just for food. It's lined with lead sun
and plus it's padded, very very padded. Yeah, you know,
I did overall enjoy it. Um we and we. You know.
(02:16):
The fascinating thing about the concept of Indiana Jones, which
is far from perfect, of course, is that it inspired
a lot of people to become actual archaeologists, absolutely right.
It made it seem a whole ton more exciting than
the job actually ends up being. Yeah, there's there are
a couple of scenes, very sparsely painted scenes in which
(02:40):
he is ending a class or something, you know, exactly exactly.
It's It's true also that Indiana Jones was created or
inspired by true life stories of people who were adventurous.
Archaeology and the field of archaeology is far from dusty
(03:05):
or dead and very much not static. In fact, many
of the debates in archaeology that began, you know, forty
fifty two hundred years ago continue today and people are
still really steamed about it, like it's it's all still
(03:25):
very relevant to the academy. You know, people have their
livelihood staked on uh is something that would seem like
a negligible disagreement to an outsider. That's correct, and we
do always have to remember here history is continually being written,
even ancient history is being rewritten as we discover something
new or something more, and that's what today's episode is
(03:49):
all about. That's right. This may be familiar to to
those of us in the audience who watched the stuff
they don't want you to know YouTube series. We are
die being into the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
but not perhaps you know, the way you might assume, Yeah,
not at all. Well it's not at all the way
(04:12):
you might as do. But first, these first Dead Sea Scrolls,
other than a cool name, what are they? Here are
the facts the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're these amazing discoveries.
They're also known as the Kumar and Cave Scrolls, and
apologies for my pronunciation there. It's a collection of these
ancient religious documents that were discovered in late nineteen or
(04:36):
early nineteen forty seven. They are written in versions of Hebrew,
like varying versions of Hebrew, and they were discovered by
these two Bedouin shepherds, just two guys, and their their
names were forgive me but uh Huma or Huma and
Mohammed ed Deep. And they were searching for this. It really,
(05:00):
this is what's happening. They're searching for a lost animal
and they find these things. As a matter of fact,
you know, Paul massive Favor, could we get a little
bit of the kind of Indiana jones E music here
just for a second, uh, something from like the first
or second act? Something building? Yeah, definitely crystal skulls. So
(05:20):
so picture this. These shepherds are hunting for some animal
that's straight from the flock, and they come to an
outcrop overlooking the dead Sea, and as they're looking around
for their lost livestock, they see an opening in the
face of the rock, a cave, right, and caves are
relatively common in this area. Not being nincompoops of any sort,
(05:46):
these shepherds say, okay, we need to make sure it's
safe to enter there, and so they throw some stones
into the darkness to make sure that they don't hear
a larger animal or predator of some sort react acting,
and they don't. Instead, they hear the shattering of pottery.
They're thinking, what what, and so they crawl inside the
(06:09):
cave to investigate, and they find that one of the
rocks they had thrown, by chance, hit an ancient clay pot.
And inside this clay pot, which had chattered, there were
scraps of leather, and these were obviously very old. But
the shepherd said, somebody wrote something on this leather. And
(06:31):
then they looked around. This is the cinematic moment where
they look from the broken pot and they see behind
it as we like focus in in somehow miraculously, and
they they see that there are a multitude of pots,
and these pots also contain stuff. Some of them are
(06:52):
complete scrolls contained, and others are fragments of previous works.
So imagine you know that. You imagine instead of finding
a book, you find like three pages of chapter four.
Now now here is where the story takes a bit
of a turn, because it truly is a story that
(07:14):
one must believe the originators of this story to to
believe it that this is actually what happened. But according
to what is what is known or what is told.
These guys collected all these scrolls up and they kind
of held on to him for a little while. They
took them to some friends and some neighbors. They were like, yo,
(07:34):
look at this, this is pretty crazy, right, what do
you think this is? What could this be? Um? And
then they ended up heading over to Bethlehem. Uh, this
is the nearest commercial center to where they were located
over there. Um, it's it's outside of Jerusalem, right, that's
where this is. Um. And they wanted to see if
they can maybe sell these things to somebody who would
(07:55):
be interested in this what they believed to be in
an ancient relic or series of als, right, And they
didn't know how old it was. They just said, Okay,
this seems important, and we live in a very old
part of the world, right, so let's find an expert.
One of the smartest things you can do in that situation,
The shepherds meet a man named Fadi Salahi Slahi is
(08:18):
an antique stealer, but even he is not completely sure
what the shepherds have found. So he calls a friend
of his, an Armenian who is also an antique stealer,
and says, this is a weird, crazy story, and then
his colleague agrees it. Reaches out to an archaeology professor
(08:38):
named Eliza Lippa Ski and Sukernick is suk Nick is interested, right,
But we have to remember that this is the mid
nineteen forties in the Middle East, the Middle late nineteen forties,
and these are dangerous, dangerous, dangerous times. Sue connect risk
(09:01):
life and limb as a Jewish man traveling to Bethlehem.
He made it across the border. He took possession of
the scrolls. He persuaded Salahi to let them uh to
let him take the scrolls back to study them. Right,
and he is at his home in Jerusalem. He's fluent
in Hebrew. But that's remember what Matt said earlier at
(09:25):
the top, the different versions of Hebrew. Right. If you've
if you are primarily an English speaker, just imagine any
time you had a teacher that made you read Canterbury
Tales in the way it was originally written yeah, exactly know, sure, um,
and something as simple as like the articles are a
(09:47):
little strange, like and you just don't understand the flow
of the language. Um. But here's the thing. As as
he's looking through, Um, it turns out these things they
weren't from the nineteen forties. They weren't from the sixteen
hundreds or the twelve hundreds. They were much much older. Right. Yes,
(10:10):
the scrolls have all been ascribed to a rough period
of time, the Hellenistic Roman period, somewhere between the third
century b C. To the first century see meaning especially
for people who are devoted to Christianity, meaning that these
(10:33):
were written during the time of the historical figure Jesus Christ.
This is this would be contemporaneous or some of this would.
Many of these works correspond to the known Biblical text,
like the the different Bibles you can find in hotels
(10:55):
or in the bookstores or you know, in your house
or friend's house today, and they correspond to parts of
the Hebrew Bible as well. That's that's incredible to find
something like that that then becomes not necessarily these texts, uh,
these specific physical texts, but the contents in them ends
(11:15):
up becoming what the Bible is. That's incredible. Um. And
here's the thing, there's all kinds of other religious writings
that are included in there. There are you know, copies
of the scriptures, other non canonical books that we've talked about,
and I believe we've mentioned this before when we talk
we talked about apocryphal texts and some of that, so
(11:37):
things that aren't included in the official canon of the
Holy Bible. And in total, there are hundreds of documents
found in twelve caves around Cumbar and around that area,
and the last cave that contained some of these scrolls
or pieces of these scrolls was only discovered on it's
crazy February of sen right, not that long ago. That
(11:59):
surprised because even now, if you read a bunch of
fairly authoritative information about the Dead Sea scrolls, you'll see
the number quoted as eleven. So this is very much
a case of history in the making. But who wrote them,
that's the See, that's the thing. Remember how we said
(12:21):
earlier that in the realm of history and archaeology there
are there are details that might seem minor to some people,
but it seems incredibly, incredibly crucial to two insiders in
a community were in a discipline. So the question of
(12:41):
the providence of the scrolls, or the question rather the
original authors is still going to cause debate in the
academic community even today. We know that many of the
scrolls were likely written by a Jewish sect known as
the s Scenes, who are Scenes who control the area
from the second century b c e. To the first century. See,
(13:06):
they're they're real people. They're mentioned by plenty of the
elder who locates them or sites them living in the
same area. So we do have you know, we do
have proof that they were there. They were real, they
were known to be ascetic in nature of their practices.
(13:26):
There are some who may have alleged, you know, mysticism
or something in their beliefs. But a lot of the
problem with a lot of those ideas throwing them m
word around is that it's often it's often coming from
another group and they're they're mothering or they're they're attempting
to make these people seem i don't know, mysterious or
(13:49):
dangerous or off kilter or something like that, something that
is not of us. If you have a rigid belief system,
as soon as you veer off just slightly, then you
become other, right, I mean it tends to occur, and
you know, you put mystic on there because maybe they
slightly disagree on one thing that is a bit esoteric
(14:10):
or a bit um of a slightly different belief about
something really big within a religion, or it would seem
to be from an outsider's perspective. For this reason, you'll
you'll hear scholars occasionally refer to the Dead Sea Scrolls
as the library of this group. The this is this
(14:31):
is an interesting way to look at it, because we
we see some strong evidence that this could happen. Not
everything is written in the type of Hebrew that this
group was believed to have used. You know, they're like
uh Aramaic is in their Greek, Latin and so on.
But if you look at a substantial library at your
(14:52):
local school or something you're going in local college or whatever,
you're going to find multiple books in different languages, right,
and they were just acquired by the institution. But then
you'll hear other people say, well, there are this is
the result of multiple contributing authors across the course of centuries.
(15:12):
There's no one group that wrote these and that's that's
a debate that continues today. I just have to say
that makes sense to me. But you know, I'm not
a scholar that would be that, that would be a library.
You know, it's there were different authors from possibly different
regions throughout you know, I don't know who knows decades.
(15:34):
It's a long time, right. So while scholars still go
back and forth about the identity of all the authors
of the scrolls, it's pretty easy to agree on the content. Luckily,
since since shortly after nine we have literally had members
(15:55):
of our species working around the clock to uh to
figure out what unearth these things actually say. As we
as we mentioned there, it's a lot of it's written
in versions of Hebrew. There's also some writing in Aramaic,
some in Greek, some in Latin. And the scrolls themselves
can be divided up into three rough sections, let's say
(16:17):
three sections. There's stuff from content at least from the
Old Testament. There's all kinds of information in there that
would match up, and it matches up pretty pretty well
with with the Old Testament of the Bible. There's also
slightly alternative versions of existing Biblical writings in there, especially
Old Testament stuff conversations that may not have made it
(16:38):
into what is considered the you know, canonical version of
those religious works exactly. And there's also some a little
more mundane things like um texts that's relating to everyday
life stuff that is occurring in that area with the
people who live there, traditional practices of those people's and
a lot of this stuff is written in Greek and
(17:00):
in Latin, which again like kind of painting a picture
of Okay, well, maybe these different authors are interested in
recording different things here. Um, it's almost like an historian
and like you've gotten a religious uh studies sect writing
those first, you know, the first set there, and then
(17:22):
you've got well, I don't know, historians writing the second
the second set there, and then the next one is
where it gets really fun. This is where it's so
it's like the Revelation scrolls, but they've got a different name, right,
the so called sectarian scrolls, also known as the War
Rule or the War scroll. This definitely came from the
(17:45):
scene sect. It's called the war the Sons of Light
against the sons of darkness. Right the now, this sect
believed themselves to be sort of the holy elected Creme
de lectrem of Israel, and they called themselves the Sun's
at Light and at sometime at the end of time, specifically,
(18:07):
they would have a catastrophic war with the enemies of Israel,
who were called the Sun's of darkness. This role is
an instructional uh, an instructional piece. It's a manual for
organization and strategy. Talks about battle gear, it gets down
into the nitty gritty of signals. Call it portrays a
(18:27):
forty year holy war and it says this will be
between the forces of good and evil, involving divine as
well as earthly soldiers. Uh yeah, and you know, of
course infernal assistance on the other side. So this is
this is fascinating because it's prophetic and apocalyptic. The scenes
(18:51):
themselves by the way to flesh this out, one of
the reasons that they were looked at askance is because
they were generally going to be found in monastic communities,
and in most cases these excluded women. So these were
people living specifically for the purpose of their faith or
(19:11):
their their spiritual values, and a lot of that entailed
writing things down. Yes, yes, and we're going to explore
some more of that after a quick word from our sponsor. Right,
(19:33):
they wrote things down, and since a lot of the
stuff they wrote down predates the Bible, we can look back.
We could do this side by side. There's there are
projects to digitize this information. You can look side by
side and see the evolution of beliefs and concepts from
the time the scrolls were actually written, all the way
(19:54):
to the current translations of Bibles or other religious texts
that you see used to day. In twenty for example,
you can see depictions of narratives like what you would
find in modern day Exodus or Genesis. But but, but,
but here's the thing. These are the earlier versions. They're different.
(20:16):
Oh yes, and then we mentioned apocrypha before, because there's
all kinds of stuff in there about that, uh, stories
of these giants, these ancient giants from before. Uh, these
things called watchers, these fallen watchers, and there's all kinds
of other imagery in there, and um, characters that you
probably wouldn't find if you open you correct a Bible. Yeah,
(20:38):
I was thinking of I was thinking of, what's what's
the strange comparison we can make to this experience in
the modern day? All right, Uh, do you remember fresh
Prince of bel Air. I've heard of it. Yes, I've
seen every episode. Right, Okay, so Aunt Viv in Fresh
(20:58):
Prince of bel Air is actually two different actors, right,
what Yeah, one of them gets replaced, right. You know,
Matt clearly knows all of this. Intimately, You're like the
biggest Fresh Prince and changed was like, that is not
on Viv. Get out of here? Who are you college
(21:18):
in the matrix? Yeah? So for some people reading this
is sort of like that experience, because we grow up
thinking that religious texts are all poor choice of words
here carved in stone, that they do not change, you
know what I mean? And now there is clear evidence
that at some point, yeah dude, they did. They still
(21:39):
have you know, a lot in common, right, and there
is there is also the fascinating case to be made
that this this stuff remains remarkably consistent. Right, But especially
when you look at the modern Christian versions, there are
a lot of differences. There are things that were cut out,
(22:02):
and that has been the root of a great, great
deal of research, the vast spanning the spectrum of plausibility
and credibility, I would say, because you get a lot
of pseudo historians in there, you know, Oh yeah, and
there's so much to explore in the story of the
(22:22):
Dead Sea scrolls, but we want to hone in on
a specific story. We want to hone in on a
single scroll, and we may to be completely clear, we
may return in the future to other parts of the
Dead Sea story. That the Dead Sea itself, man, is
a crazy place. Salinity, it's nuts. They also recently, uh,
(22:45):
scientists found life at the bottom of the Dead Sea.
You're saying, there's life in the bottom of the Dead Sea. Yeah. Yeah,
maybe we were a little too uh quick to pull
the trigger on the name for an update. Mostly dead
the live bottom sea. That's you know, that's not gonna
(23:06):
have probiotics at the bottom there we go. Yeah, and
and uh and underwater whole foods because of course. But
also the Dead Sea is receding at a precipitous rate.
It's sad. Great, thanks, thanks, you're welcome in Australia's on fire. Yeah.
Also still uh. And then as we're recording this, there
(23:28):
were a series of earthquakes in Iran and you know,
some attacks. Yeah, yeah, it's fine, Everything's gonna be fine.
I was talking to an old professor of mine recently
regarding geopolitical tensions in the modern world, and asked him,
you know what he thought was going to happen off
the record and stuff. And his answer was, you know,
(23:50):
he said, I I envy you young folks out there
because you know you can make a choice and you
might not ever have to deal with the consequences. And
he said, you to think about it, which you want
record car tells someone you'll marry them, it doesn't matter.
Now he's saying, we're not going to live for it.
Was his way of saying that you can make the
(24:13):
most ridiculous choices because you really don't know. Uh, if
you know, if you were going to do something that
would have killed you in your eighties, is that a
mooked concern At this point? Oh my god, we can
really live like there's no tomorrow. Tonight's the night. That's
why all the pop songs are telling me to nice
the night. I want to also point out, I'm not
(24:36):
going to give this professor's name. They are retired. I
also want to point out I I think they're eighty
percent joking. I would like to think that. And if
they're not, and if you're listening, that is a horrible
take on this on this situation anyhow. Yeah, yes, we
are focusing on one one specific scroll because there was
(25:00):
a scroll discovered on March fourteenth, nineteen fifty two, and
out of all of the nine something Dead Sea scrolls,
this one is unique for a number of reasons. Well, firstly,
it's not written on papyrus or you know, leather, any
of these other mediums that where the other ones were
written or how they're what they were written on. This
(25:22):
one was written on a thin sheet of rolled up copper.
That's crazy, a thin sheet of rolled up metal. And
this thing is really really interesting. There are several different
estimates here. UM. A lot of these scholars believe that
the probable range for the Copper scrolls creation was somewhere
(25:44):
in the period of twenty to seventy five c E.
And that's just looking at the handwriting itself. When you're
analyzing that it's called from a paleographical perspective. While there's
this person W. F. Albright who suggests it was probably
written somewhere between seventy in a d. Thirty five CEES,
so a little bit after that range at least when
(26:05):
you're looking at it from from a different perspective. UM
It's really really interesting because this thing is unlike the
other scrolls in in way more ways than just the
medium on which it's written. Right, this scroll showed the
trend of religious content entirely and focused on something else,
(26:29):
something that has haunted amateurs and archaeologists alike since the fifties.
The copper scroll you see is not a guide to
day to day life, is not an early version of
Exodus or Genesis, it's not apocrypha. It is best described
as a treasure map. Here's where it gets crazy. A
(26:53):
treasure map, Ben, treasure map, Matt. Now, you're right, that's
exactly what this thing is. It's about as Indiana Jones
as you can get. If you were to pick this up,
and if you were able to read it immediately, you
would you would just in my mind, you would grab
a big stick or a shovel or something and you
would just start digging all over the place. It's intense stuff.
(27:18):
And it's not just one treasure, no, it's it's one
treasure across what treasure sixty four locations. Yeah. The treasures
are a are precious metals, gold and silver, and the
text of the copper scroll is entirely an inventory of
these locations coins and coins. Yes, sorry, sixty three locations are,
(27:44):
according to the scroll, holding gold and silver, and there's
a sixty four location that's a little bit different. But
they're talking, you know, they're making money moves here. These
these these are not little burlap sacks of like five
to ten pieces of silver. No, not at all. You're
you're talking talents, all kinds of talents, sometimes fifty, sometimes ten,
(28:05):
sometimes way more than that. Uh. There's one location like
according to this copper scroll that it holds nine hundred
talents and or roughly eight hundred and sixty eight thousand
troy ounces of buried gold. That's a lot of gold,
my friends. And it is just buried in one place.
(28:28):
But then there's gold and silver buried throughout this entire
region somewhere out there, and we're gonna get into where
that is. But it's not just precious metals, it's not
just talents or gold coins and silver coins. Uh, it's
got it's got religious a coutrement too, that's just buried
out there somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, tithing vessels, other other vessels
(28:52):
that would be used in in religious ceremonies, right, also
priestly vestments. Yeah, but I want to get back to
the vessels. The vessels were really fun for me because
I'm going to read you a quote from one of these,
just so everybody can hear. Is that okay? That's perfect?
I I forgot this was coming. Just really cool. Please
(29:13):
let's do it. Just speaking of vessels. So this is
officially column three. You can find this online if you
want to. You can see it in there, and this
is just me reading it in from an English translation.
Dig down nine cubits into the southern corner of the courtyard.
There will be silver and gold vessels given as offerings, bowls, cups,
(29:34):
sprinkling basins, libation tubes, and pictures. Altogether, they will total
six D nine pieces. Libation tubest what what? What's the
libation tube? A libation tube is anything that you pour
some drink into. My friend, it could be wine, it
could be any other libation, as long as you're having
(29:57):
fun and and hopefully doing it in sacrament to some
higher deity. Librate right, Librate to your heart's content. Would
you call that, uh liban? Would you call that tuban
or lebanuban? Uh? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. They also these were.
(30:20):
The name sounds a bit funny in English, but libation
tubes did serve an important purpose rights they were connecting
the living with the dead and so on, So this
is incredibly important to point out. Though again, not all
of the treasures gold and silver. There were things that
(30:41):
the community truly believed you could not put a price
on right, these priceless objects, and they must be hidden
from invading forces such as the Romans, who of course
will show up later. There's another interesting part though, at
the very towards the very end of the copper scroll,
(31:02):
it says there's another scroll out there that has more details.
It's as if they knew people would complain about the
directions in the scroll, which will get to by the
way they're they're laughable. But that other document, whatever it is,
has yet to be found. There are experts of plenty
(31:24):
in this field, like a Theodore H. Gaster. He studied
the copper Scroll extensively, and he believed that it was
in fact alluding to a real treasure, and that this
treasure could come from one of three sources. The first
of those would be treasure that was acquired by the
(31:46):
Kumarn community of the Escenes that we discussed before. It
would kind of make sense just you know, when you're
thinking about all the religious kuchma that was buried in
all of these things, you can imagine that if it
is a religious community, perhaps a lot of this the
wealth of the gold and everything came through the form
of some kind of tithing or donation or some you know,
(32:07):
you can imagine it was gathered in some way like that.
It kind of makes sense. The next possible source of
this treasure would be from the Second Temple in Jerusalem. However,
we do have to kind of point out here that
the historical records suggests that a lot of the main
or the a large amount of the main treasure that
(32:27):
was inside that Second Temple was in the building when
Rome came through and sacked all of Jerusalem after they
breached all the walls. And it's a there's a great
there's a great article on how Stuff Works dot Com
that goes kind of it paints a really great picture
of what occurred when the Romans sect uh sack Jerusalem
that time. Um, it does not rule out this possibility,
(32:51):
though there's a significant portion of the treasures that may
have possibly at least you know, this is it's a belief, right,
This is where we're talking about this. There's a suggestion
a significant portion of the treasures may have been taken
away from the temple because it was known that the
Romans were coming through for days, right, So there was
probably preparation to get a lot of this treasure out
(33:13):
and hide it somewhere before they actually breached the walls.
And the third idea is that this treasure came from
the first Temple, which was destroyed by the king of
Babylon Nebuchadnezzar in five eighties six BC. There's one problem
with that though. The scroll has been dated to as
(33:33):
you said, earlier mat like CE at the earliest, so
it's unlikely that somebody went back and made a treasure
map centuries later, especially when you see how it's written.
You know. Yeah, But here's the thing I would point
out when I was I was reading that too. This
(33:54):
is my suggestion, and this is there's no weight behind
this suggestion. But if the treasures were secreted away from
either of the temples and kept somewhere, right, um, perhaps
this burying them across the land and all these varying
places that you'd need to dig to find them very
(34:15):
much buried treasure. Um, it could be an interesting strategy
for hiding them a second time, or maybe a third time,
or you know, however many iterations these treasures had been
hidden away from popular view or from the authorities view. Yeah,
I mean, that's that's the tantalizing thing about this, right.
(34:37):
We we have solid, concrete, tangible proof of something, and
now it's it's a herculean mental exercise to try to
plausibly and realistically connect these dots. You know. But when
we talk about connecting dots, we're also talking about decoding
(34:59):
the manuscript itself, because it was written in Hebrew, but
it was written in a different kind of Hebrew, and
the chronology makes us assume that this was deposited later,
was possibly from a different group of people. Will explore
more of the conundrum of the copper scroll after word
(35:20):
from our sponsor. All right, and we're back. Now. We've
been talking about, you know, the origin a lot of
this copper scroll, but we really really want to answer
the question, is there actual treasure out there that if
(35:40):
let's say we got on a plane and ended up
there in that area, could we find some talents underneath
the ground somewhere Troy ounces. Well, what do you think
then it's possible. But to do that we would have
to Indiana Jones style to side for the manuscript. So,
(36:03):
for instance, we we said a talent, we had the
equivalent there for troy ounce. But unsurprisingly, directions are not
given in kilometers, nor are they in miles. Oh yes,
oh sure, yes, absolutely we we mentioned this when I
read column three, it says dig down nine cubits. So
(36:28):
if you were to dig down nine cubits, what what
the heck would that look like? Well, let's talk about
it really, really quickly. A cubit is an ancient and
handy measurement, and that is a pun and we'll get
to it. So let's do something fun together right now. Uh, Paul,
you do this too, just so I can see if
I'm telling it correctly. Uh. Please take your dominant hand
(36:49):
and stretch it directly out in front of you. All right, Okay,
Now let's bend your elbow so it's ninety degrees facing upwards. Okay, okay, excellent.
Now the length for your elbow to the middle finger,
your middle fingers, which is stretched out by the way,
I forgot to mention that that is a cubit, not
bert No, a cube bit. And here's there's a bit
(37:12):
of a problem here because my cub it is not
exactly the same length as your cube it. It's gonna
be clos ish, but it's not exactly the same. It's
roughly eighteen inches somewhere around that that length, or about
forty six centimeters. But this is the measurement that was
used in throughout ancient history for a long long time.
(37:35):
And just think about how helpful this measurement is for
someone anyone who's working on either a huge project or
just something maybe in their home. You can measure something.
I'll be like, I want this table to be about
four cubits across, and you could measure that as you're going,
and uh, you know, cut cut wood to an exact measurement,
(37:57):
right close to exact measurement. And then you could also
talk with your or you know, colleagues, or if you
want to sell it, you can say this thing is
it's about three four cubits. Yeah, it's pretty cool to me.
I I didn't know that. I'm just excited to have
that knowledge. It's a measuring tool that you carry with
you at all times. Yeah, you don't need You don't
need a tool. Yeah, you're the tool. Tell yourself that,
(38:20):
say I am in the mirror. So this is just
one example of the the different phrases or concepts that
have to be translated deciphered for us to launch an
actual treasure hunt based on the information we find in
the copper scroll. Spoiler alert. For some people, what you're
(38:44):
about to hear maybe very disappointing. For others in the
audience today, it may be quite inspiring. And it is
this the treasure which was almost definitely real, by which
we mean real gold, reel, silver, you know what I mean,
the moolah, the good stuff, stuff you could trade on
a market today. This is not like a treasure like
(39:06):
the friends we made along the way or you know, uh,
this is a child's doll that was really important to
a person who died. Yeah, it just to point out here,
it doesn't make sense for someone anyone to take the
time and effort and resources to inscribe in that copper
scroll all of the information that is on there if
(39:27):
it's just some mythical thing that there's no actual treasure all, Like,
why would you do that? So that's the spoiler alert.
This treasure, which again is overwhelmingly likely to be a
real thing. It has never been found, not as far
as we know, a single piece of it, not even
(39:49):
the like, not even the idea of a single piece
of gold or silver. Not a single piece one of
those vessels that was mentioned, No libation tube, etcetera. There's
there's a guy who allegedly found some tiny little a
couple of small pieces, but it was not like, well
he found a rock, right, I think so there he
said it was man made. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. People, this
(40:13):
hasn't stopped people from searching, of course, Um, well, why
hasn't it been found? That's that's the craziest question. First,
I think we mentioned earlier when we were talking about
the possible origin of the treasure. We have to think
of the sheer passage of time. It is plausible that
sometime between modern day exploration and excavation and the time
(40:38):
that these things were originally written, at the time this
treasure was originally buried, it's completely possible any that any
number of people looted the Jesus out of the thing.
You know. Yeah, but why would you leave the copper
scroll behind? Well, the scroll clearly wasn't next to the treasure.
It's supposed to tell you where to go. Yeah, but
(40:59):
you'd use the trail. Sure, you'd have to take it
with you. Right, Well, what if you just found the
treasure and you never found the scroll, you know what
I mean? But this stuff is like nine cubits You
have to dig like nine cubits. Well, we also have
to remember, for instance, that our prime suspect for a
contemporaneous looting operation would have been the Roman community, and
(41:22):
the Romans at the time, uh standard operating procedure was
to torture people to get information so they could have
found uh one. I mean that's also why the treasure
was not put in one location. Yes, right, so maybe
it was a situation where outside of the authors of
the Copper Scroll, most people didn't know. You know, they
(41:42):
probably have pretty good operational security. Most people didn't know
where the other sixty four or excuse me sixty three
things were. That is really smart to split it up
as much as they did. Yeah, well, if this was,
if this was a treasure from the Second Temple, it
was very much not the first rodeo, you know what
I mean, Esson's learned. So the other idea is that
(42:04):
there may have been a cover up of some sort
that was successful, and that the people responsible for hiding
the gold and silver did a great job. But outside
of the Copper Scroll and this other unidentified orundiscovered document,
they just never shared the information with others, or they
passed away, or the people they told the secret to
(42:25):
at some point communication between generations failed. Add to that,
the vagueness of this scroll can be maddening. This is,
if I may, I'm going to read just the excerpt
from the instructions to to one of the treasure locations.
We want to see what you think. I'm just gonna
(42:45):
read it without other than saying it's vague. In the
salt pit that is under the steps, forty one talents
of silver, in the cave of the Old washers Chamber
on the third terrace, sixty five in gets of gold.
What's the Old washers Chamber? Huh? You know what I mean, dude.
I I'm telling you, I have such a feeling about this.
(43:08):
It was an internal document. It was this is what
I'm feeling, and I remember as I was reading through.
You can find a couple of places online where you
can read translations of the full scroll, and it really
does go on like that, Like, that's pretty much what
Ben just read. It's it's like twelve columns of that um.
(43:28):
And it feels like somebody within a group of people
recording um with places like that, like the old washers whatever,
the specific cave that doesn't have an exact you know,
the name is a little strange. It doesn't match up
historically with any other case. They everybody in that insular
group knows all these places intimately, and they know exactly
(43:52):
where to go and where to dig and everything, but
they're just keeping a record of it, or somebody within
it is the record keeper of it. Sure, yeah, you
could it just totally. It totally makes sense. I mean
that makes yeah, it does make sense. I agree with you.
The first thing this made me think of through analogy
was the experience that you have if you have ever
(44:14):
given or received directions in very small towns. Yeah, exactly.
You know. The you may have something that sounds really clear,
like take Main Street and then take a left on
coal Quit at the corner of the Arby's, why the
Arby's or something, but you may also have something like
go about I don't go a mile till you get
(44:34):
to where the old mill burned down, and then you
know there should be a post office box, um, and
then you go and I think you go for about
three miles until you get where the Tilman's used to live,
and then you take a right there. See for us,
just we're been in and Nolan, Paul and I live.
(44:56):
It's so much easier to give directions to anyone because
you can just pinpoint different waffle houses and you can
just once you know where the waffle houses are, then
you can tell anybody how to get anywhere. It's very
convenient reference point. But our point is who can guess
if it is indeed internal document? Who has the foresight
to say, thousands of years ago the old washers chamber?
(45:21):
I mean, clearly where else would you put a washers chamber?
But in you know, in what I was saying this
last thing, you'd have to prove that the old washers
chamber existed somewhere near where the scroll was discovered, rather
than maybe where the scroll was written originally, you know,
the area that it's speaking to. It still makes you
know what It still makes me think though, of modern
(45:46):
English has ruined my understanding of these sorts of translations,
because in American English. Whenever somebody throws the phrase the
old in front of something, it sounds like a euphemism
old washes chamber, You know what I mean? Is this
some sort of strange metaphor for the old washes chamber?
(46:09):
Is that like a move? People? Do? I think it is? Well,
it sounds it does sound like a place. Maybe it
was just written by an old prospector maybe it was
written by the original foghorn Leghorn. But despite this vagueness,
people have insisted on searching. Why would you not? You
(46:29):
know you could be a part of one of the
greatest discoveries in in history, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Right
in nineteen sixty two, we saw one of the largest,
most extensive hunts for the treasures of the Copper Scroll
was led by a man named John Allegro. He followed
(46:49):
some of the places listed in the scroll and did
their best. He and his team did their best to
figure out where they would be in the modern day.
They excavated a ton of potential burial places, but eventually
they gave up and they returned empty handed. There was
a more recent excavation or exploration attempt by a man
(47:14):
named Jim Barfield and Jim Barfield is interesting because he
doesn't he believes that the treasure was not actually gold
and silver. He believes that the primary quote unquote loot
of the treasure would be the vessels and utensils of
the Lost Temple. And so he did something interesting. He
(47:36):
applied triangulation techniques, right, he was he was kind of
cross referencing these ancient texts and the references that the
copper scroll made in different locations because they're all kind
of in the same area. So smart, right, yeah, absolutely,
it's very smart, and it's it's the way that I
would do it. And the reason why it's interesting that
(47:57):
this guy, Jim Barfield did it is because he he
doesn't speak Hebrew. He's not Jewish. Uh, He's just a
guy who's essentially like a treasure hunter or you know,
and someone with an interest in this who had some
time and resources and just used a technique that like
an investigator would use. Basically, um, really really cool stuff.
(48:18):
And so he he thinks he actually found some of
these locations in the surrounding area in in Kumaran. And
there's this breaking news Israel report which is it's not
I will give you that, but let's just let's just
give a quote from that that article about his investigation.
It says, quote, in two thousand seven, he Barfield went
(48:42):
to Kumaran and actually found those locations. In one case,
the scroll describes steps forty cubits long, heading east. Barfield
did indeed find stairs conforming to the description. He also
discovered the remains of a pool precisely forty cubits long,
exactly where the scroll said it would be. However, there
(49:03):
is always a twist here, a reason why we couldn't
fulfill what was going to occur finding all this treasure,
uh quote, but lacking government permission, he could go no further. Yeah, yea.
So those are the two most prominent expeditions, and they
both didn't produce anything that was universally agreed to be
(49:26):
the treasure. That's the best way to say it. Well, yeah,
and we humanity, at least to our knowledge that has
been recorded, has not recovered anything material right from many
of these right. I believe in one of Barfield's investigations
he found a rock that was provably man made. So
(49:48):
so his at this point, he's he's focusing on matching
up physical locations and structures or ruins and and so
he's not immediately going after gold because again he thinks
the treasure quote unquote is a different thing. But all this,
all this together is to listeners. You'll notice that the
(50:08):
last line from Barfield was he could go no further
because he lacked government permission. This brings us to the
possibility or the proposed possibility of a cover up, because
you see, there is no secret that there is a
war over history in the Middle East. Given the historical
(50:28):
tension and volatility of the region, the government has been
very careful about who they allowed to search this area
and when and how. You know what I mean, Like
if you bring in uh, potentially damaging equipment, you could
lose humanity's one shot to figure out some of the
(50:49):
mysteries here. I want to imagine that you're a treasure
hunter who doesn't live in the area, and you find
a treasure and you want to take it out of
that area, and you're going to go through customs or something,
or you know you're gonna claim that it is a treasure,
and you have to claim that it's a treasure in
order to establish where you found it, when you found it,
(51:12):
that you're the one that found it. How important it
is that it's real and authentic. You have to say that.
You have to raise your hand and say, hey, I
found treasure, unless you want to go into the illegal
black market. Yeah, I know, which is something you can do. However,
it's it's difficult because then you're getting things verified, you know,
after the fact, which is a whole it's a whole
(51:33):
different animal. I'm I'm big in black market, uh, antiquities.
I'm always grateful that you're here when when we're doing
these shows, because you know, a lot of the a
lot of the lessons you've learned, you've learned the hard way.
I really have, Oh my goodness. But we can't get
into that for legal reasons. So let's just let's just say, um,
(51:55):
it would be difficult because if you you do find
something in this region, you is your hand and you
say hey, I found treasure, then there it's not just
going to be the local authorities, you know, that are
going to claim ownership over this, though it'll be academic
institutions in this case, will be religious institutions as well.
(52:16):
Barfield said that he believes he he he clearly believes
he was on the right track, and he clearly believes
he was being stymied in his search, but he thought
there was a good reason. He said, if he discovered
anything of value, it would lead to what I would
call a real ship show because we're we're family broadcasts. Uh.
(52:40):
And here's what he said. He says he predicted that
Jordan's would claim the land used to belong to them
if there was something of value discovered. He said, Palestinians
will claim they were here before this other group, so
that therefore they'll say whatever they found belongs to us,
and then the world will believe them. According to Barfield,
(53:02):
he says, you know, Egypt will come along and say
that there was a treasure that was taken from the
land of Egypt during the Exodus. And he says, ultimately
by keeping it in the ground, the Israeli government is
protecting it. It's a very interesting way to allege a
cover up. You know, it is certainly interesting. So I
(53:26):
don't know, should we do we need to get into
anything else, Ben, I just kind of wanna talk a
little bit about like what what you think personally about
this thing? Can we get into opinion? What I what
I think about the the treasure? Yeah, that the scrolls
like the treasure. What do you what do you think
it might still be out there? You really think so?
(53:48):
Quite possibly. I mean, it's it's possible that it was
all looted. It's it's it's not plausible to assume that
all of these different locations survived. It is possible that
a few did, because the only way they would all
they would all have been found were if they were
(54:11):
eventually all sixty four were. First off, we're assuming all
sixty four actually exists, if all sixty four were found
one by one, or if somebody found that second, more
detailed document and then went through and somehow did all
of this in secret and it was forgotten. You know,
this is my This is what I put to you because, like,
I like what you're saying there. I think I think
(54:33):
that that copper scroll where it was found, was essentially
just discarded there or just left there for record keeping
at some point. Just we've got this collection of scrolls,
here's another one. It's just going to be there. Uh,
this is where it lives now because we've already used
it to find everything, we don't need it anymore. And
that second document, like you said, was kept by the
(54:54):
people that recovered all of the treasure because it was
I believe that it was from probably the Second Temple.
And you think it was an inside job, No, I
think I think it was just I think we essentially
got it's a receipt or it's the the old instructions
of like, okay, we've we've accomplished this, we've collected everything.
We don't need it anymore. We'll just leave those instructions there.
(55:16):
Doesn't matter if anyone finds any of these very burial
places anymore, because we've already recovered everything. And then, yeah,
I could I could see that. I could definitely see that.
But I do like the idea that was an inside
job and that there were two documents, uh, two scrolls,
and then one person totally betrayed everybody it took the
(55:37):
second DiPT A doubt that. I doubt that's the case,
but it would make for it would make for a
compelling narrative. This is also taking We have to realize
too that anything of this age is it the value
we ascribed to it is only partially financial and it's
(55:59):
only a very all part of it. The real value
becomes uh, an historical value, and that's where we see
the import there. It can prove confirm or debunk things
that we believe about history today. And it could also
provide evidence of various various stories that have been traditionally told,
(56:20):
and that that treasure, any treasure, if discovered, would immediately
become significant in the in the war over history, you know,
the war over who gets what when and this you know,
this continues across the world, but the Middle East especially
(56:40):
has a it's such an ancient land. It's been home
to immense conflicts over historical claims, religious sites, who has
the right to go where, when and so on. As
of now, we're in a glass half full, half empty situation.
You can say that the treasure was looted long ago
and lost the time, or you, as you are listening,
(57:03):
maybe the person to discover the lost treasure of the
Dead Sea Copper Scroll. If you'd like to read more
of the Dead Sea Scrolls directly, then feel free to
drop by places like the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls
Digital Library, which is digitizing the entire collection of nine
seventies something manuscripts and uploading them to the Internet for
(57:25):
global access. And there are books like the Complete Dead
Sea Scrolls in English that you can find um that
one was written. I believe it was Geza Verms v
r m E s Vermes. You can find something like that.
There's also the Dead Sea Scrolls Reappraisal. It's uh from
(57:46):
John Allegro, the one that been mentioned. You can find
that stuff. If you want to learn more about this
right now. You can also continue the conversation with us,
and the best part of this show your fellow listeners.
Find us on Facebook, find us on Instagram, find us
on Twitter. We are conspiracy stuff, Conspiracy Stuff show or
some derivation thereof Yeah, conspiracy stuff on Twitter and Facebook,
(58:07):
Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram. And if you don't want
to do that, you can give us a call. Our
number is one eight three three st d w y
t K. Give us a call, leave us a message.
You've got three minutes. But you can just keep calling
back however many times you want, but one is the
magic number. If you can do it in three minutes,
(58:27):
it's amazing for me at least, even though I want
to hear your longer stories to UM, just time. Time
is such a currency, my goodness, it's such a currency. UM.
If you don't want to do any of that stuff,
you can shoot us a good old fashioned email. Recently
we've been getting lots of fantastic suggestions from you, so
(58:49):
continue to do that please. We love it and it
will send us down the rabbit holes that we so
very much want to travel through, and we can bring
you back the nuggets. Sure, the rabbit holes. Yeah, sure,
all right, we'll just get some of the libation tubes.
I really did not know that libation tubes were meant
(59:11):
to pour liquid into a grave. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
did not know that. That's liban, man, it's tuban, liban, tuban,
but a libation tube. For me, it was just anything
you pour. I don't call it, all right, that's tubular,
so tubular, all right, So let's let's get out of
this one. Um. If you don't do that stuff, send
(59:31):
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
i heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you
(59:55):
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