The Truth Behind Season 1 Episode 11 The Dead Sea Scrolls

The Truth Behind is a documentary series that delves deep into some of the world's most perplexing mysteries, bringing to light hidden truths behind strange phenomena and unexplained events. In season 1 episode 11, titled The Dead Sea Scrolls, the show turns its attention to one of the most significant discoveries of the 20th century – the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 while he was tending his flock in the caves near the Dead Sea in Israel. The scrolls consisted of a vast collection of ancient Jewish texts, including the earliest surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible. Over the last seventy years, these texts have captivated scholars, theologians and the general public and have become one of the most significant archaeological discoveries ever made.

In this episode of The Truth Behind, viewers are taken on a journey into the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls and are introduced to the key players involved in their discovery and subsequent study. We learn that the scrolls were written over a period of several hundred years, between the third century BCE and the first century CE, in a variety of languages, including Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

The show provides viewers with a detailed account of the early years of the scrolls' discovery, when thousands of fragments of texts were being sold on the black market to private collectors and museums. The show highlights how these early years were marred by greed, fraud, and violence as people fought over the right to possess these priceless artefacts.

The program also explores the painstaking process of piecing together thousands of fragments of text to create a cohesive picture of the contents of the scrolls. This work was done by a team of dedicated scholars led by Palestinian archaeologist Eleazar Sukenik and French scholar Andre Dupont-Sommer. They managed to decipher much of the text, but there remained some that defied understanding, including the well-known Copper Scroll that describes the location of buried treasure.

But the mystery surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls goes beyond their discovery and contents. The show explores some of the more controversial aspects of their study, such as the suggestion that they were written by a devout group of Jews known as the Essenes, who lived in a nearby desert community.

There are also rumors that the scrolls hold secret codes, hidden messages and revelations about the origins of Christianity and the life of Jesus. The Truth Behind delves into these theories, with experts and scholars debating their validity and providing alternative explanations.

Overall, The Dead Sea Scrolls episode of The Truth Behind provides a comprehensive overview of one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. Through interviews with leading scholars, exploration of the scrolls' contents and examinations of the controversies surrounding their study, the episode provides an in-depth understanding of the scrolls and the impact they have had.