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 2nd century BC to the 1st 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. Alexei Yuditsky, a Dead Sea Scroll scholar, comments on the scroll. There are three important words here. Yonah, or Yonah, or Yonah.
Shachpa, or Shachpa. And Tzatzah, or Tzatzah. 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, tzatzah, was actually a Persian word for hawk. To find out whether tzatzah 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, or Maronite village in the Galilee, and I ask you, what does this word mean, tzatzah? It means a nail. Nail?
Nail, yeah. For example, I can show you here an image or picture with a nail, and it's written in Aramaic, tzatzah. And actually, look down here, like the letters from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Go to my kid, tell him, give me a...
Say so, he will go and give you an ear. Okay? That's...
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 Tzatz mean for you? If you go now to communities in Lebanon, to communities in Syria, to communities in Israel that knows the Aramaic and still speak it. Ask them what it says, so they will tell you it's a name. To resolve the controversy, we went to Professor Emil Puesh, 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? Let's say that despite the criticisms that I could have, I did not change my mind. I tried to control my image.
Imagination, but the rest of the work, there is. So Thalia is a certain reading, in my opinion. Despite the criticisms that I could read, I am not convinced, I have not changed my mind.
And then the word clue, the word c'est ça, As for the word dove in the text, Pouesh sees this as a metaphor for someone who agitates people by making trouble. But the word colomb, I can't say colomb. I read it at the beginning because it's the simplest word. But since there are several possible meanings, in the publication of this volume, I put agitator. Someone who does not hesitate to make the controversial identification is Dr. Robert Deutsch.
This is a very important, extremely important fragment because it mentions four terms. which are connected to the crucifixion. You have mourning, you have the nail, you have a dove, and we know that Jesus was the son of the dove, and you have probably crucifixion. So we have only three complete, almost complete lines, and you have four terms which are talking about crucifixion. And the date of the fragment is 1st century AD, so...
to which crucifixion you want to connect it. I don't have in my mind nobody but Jesus. 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'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 archaeology.