(undulating electronic synthesizer music)
The Dead Sea Scrolls are the most famous
Biblical texts ever found.
They were discovered between 1946 and 1956
in 11 caves near the Dead Sea
next to the ancient settlement of Qumran.
Here we have Biblical texts dated from the Second Century BC
to the First Century AD
written in Hebrew and Aramaic,
the languages that Jesus spoke.
Some of these texts are not from the Hebrew Bible;
they belong to a group that was spiritually and physically
preparing itself for the end of days.
They are unique to the people who wrote, copied,
and stored them in clay jars hidden in the caves.
So who were the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Some say they were a mysterious Jewish sect
called the Essenes.
Others say they were exiled priests
from the ancient temple in Jerusalem.
A few scholars have ventured the possibility
that at least some of the people who wrote
the Dead Sea Scrolls were followers of Jesus.
Is this possible?
As it turns out, a recently-discovered
Dead Sea Scroll fragment may be
the oldest reference to Jesus ever found.
It may have been written in Aramaic
by some of His earliest disciples.
But does the Scroll really refer to Jesus?
I'm allowed into the vault where the scrolls are kept.
Scholars studying this fragment call it 4Q541.
Dr. Alexey Yuditsky,
a Dead Sea Scroll scholar,
comments on the scroll.
In other words, the text seems to speak of someone
codenamed the Dove.
The first official translation of the text was:
"Do not mourn for him.
"Know what the Dove has asked of you.
"Do not strike it.
"And do not bring the cross and the nail close to it."
When some scholars realized the possible connection
with Jesus, the crucified Son of the Dove,
they said that the word cross could not be clearly read.
And that the Aramaic word for nail, tsatsa,
was actually a Persian word for hawk.
To find out whether tsatsa means hawk or nail,
I went to the Galilee, where there are entire villages
of Aramean people who still speak Aramaic.
If I come to your village, to a (mumbling) village
in the Galilee, and I ask you
what does this word mean, tsatsa?
It mean a nail.
Nail? Nail, yeah.
For example, I can show you here
an image, or picture,
with a nail and it's fitting an Aramaic say-so.
OK? It actually looks down
here like the letters from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Yeah.
Go to Mikel, tell him: "Give me a say-so",
he will go and give you a nail.
OK?
He's three years old.
Some people treat Aramaic as if it's a dead language
accessible only to scholars.
But in reality, there's...
I mean my first stop would be to ask people
who still speak it: "What does tsatsa mean for you?"
If you go now to communities in the (mumbling),
to communities in Syria, to communities in Israel
that knows the Aramaic and still speak it,
ask them what they say, so they will tell you it's a nail.
To resolve the controversy,
we went to Professor Emile Puech,
the original translator of the official version
of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
I asked him: "Given the hole in the text,
"have you changed your mind
"about the word cross appearing in the text?"
What about the word tsatsa?
Is it a hawk, or a nail?
As for the word Dove in the text,
Puech sees this as a metaphor
for someone who agitates people by making trouble.
It is this agitator who is being crucified.
So though he confirms that the Dead Sea Scroll fragment
says Dove, crucify, and nail,
Father Puech does not want to link
the crucified agitator to Jesus.
But someone who does not hesitate
to make the controversial identification
is Dr. Robert Deutsch.
This is the first time that a passage
in the Dead Sea Scrolls seems to be linked to Jesus.
So perhaps 4Q541
is a fragment from a now-lost gospel;
a gospel written by a community that felt
that the end of days was imminent;
a gospel that doesn't stress Jesus
as suffering on the cross, but His teachings.
If this is a lost Christian text, it is bound to lead
to a reconsideration of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
some of the most famous Biblical texts
ever found in archeology.