SHADOW OF THE GRAIL.

SHADOW OF THE GRAIL.

Ronnie Carleton (c) 2011

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The Author Ronnie Carleton.

Over 2500 years of history men and women have recorded parts of their

Lives and of others in one form or another and more so a history linked

to the Hebrews, Jesus and hidden texts which are claimed to be a true

account of events at that time.

If today we depended on history accounts of the past without linking

archaeology evidence to it, if any, then we risk many wrong interpretations

of it.

History can of course put us on the right track for future research should

we choose to do so but a research subject on a history does not mean

finding text and treating it as truth but also looking at facts of the time and

sometimes removed from the topic to be researched in order to gain some

idea of what the canvas was like in the beginning before all artists, some

good, some bad and many fraudsters to the causes because they had an

axe to grind.

In religion and more so for this research, the Christian Religion had and
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does have an axe to grind about well hidden facts about Jesus and his

friends and anyone OR anything in the past linked to them.

They also have a very basis view of events around the time of Jesus and

and Rome may well have all the text documents locked away with many

lacking understanding of what they contain as truth and fact.

I am of the opinion that you need one full lifetime to learn skills that

may be useful and another to put those skills into practice but sadly

we being mammals, our lifespan is limited as we get much older the brain,

unless it is used daily, tends to be like an old computer and runs slowly,

losing information in the process.

My research therefore is the myth and truth about the history of the Holy

Grail said to be from the time of Jesus though I am of the opinion that

the so called Grail was around before the birth of Jesus and may well be

one of four objects. Text, art, artifices and human remains.

I need to place a note here that the man Jesus as known, was a leader of

a cult, a human being with all types of feelings like we all have or had

therefore he was not a God.

My second point in this opening of the my book is that though the 'Grail'

may well have a religious link it does not mean that in any way it is linked

directly to Christians.
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ARCHAEOLOGY DATING.

No matter what branch of Archaeology you deal with the main question that

needs to be answered is WHEN? That is the most important part of dating

a find not just what it is. The trouble with those working in the archaeology

and history fields, more than often, their dating is well out.

Once you have some idea of a date then you will be able to work out when

and what rate changes took place on that site. This may be 100 years > or <

With radiocarbon dating it is possible to obtain a time scale in prehistory

though such dating is expensive for most.

Relative dating can also be done by Stratigraphy and Typology.

It should always be kept in mind that stratigraphy may not in fact have

a relationship if there has been a lot of disturbance of an area because

of under layers being exposed to the surface layer.

With typology you first need artefacts that have been lumped into similar

Groups or types that have meaning to the trained observer.

The use of typology is very useful when it comes to pottery and shards

that look similar and linked to a culture.

Fabrics will depend on the degree in which clay has been worked before

Pottery was formed and what temper was used. Conditions and firing of

the shaped clay are also important.

By now, the bits and shards will be grouped into hand made or wheel

turned pottery, fine or rough wares, shell and clay wares, straw and grog
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wares. Note will be taken of good and bad firing wares.

This all needs to be sorted before you can get down to the nitty gritty

of all the artefacts now being subdivided according to shape and into jars,

bowl, cups, and vases.

Intuition about shapes and dating will of course lead to conflict and

disagreement in some camps so the best way I feel now to approach the

subject is by mathematical terms though this is not always possible in the

field.

The overall shape of the artefact can be added to as time goes on such as

the base of the rim, spout or handle, body and neck shape, and size.

Pottery shards and the pots themselves can be linked and dated to a

group of humans who lived on the site area or at least close by but trading

with other groups far a field cannot and should not be ruled out.

DEEP SEA CORE AND ICE CORE DATA.

If we are looking for climatic change evidence then it can be done by

obtaining sample cores from ice or deep sea beds.

In the sea core sample there will be microscopic marine organisms known

as FORNMINIFERA and are shell like structures, which have been laid

down over many millions of years.

This sedimentation will show variations in the ratio of 2 oxygen isotopes

in the calcium carbonate showing the temperature indicator of what it was

when the organisms were alive.

We can now date back as far as 2.5 million years, which reflects all climate
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change across the earth.

Cold periods will reflect to ice advancement and the warm periods to ice

retreat.

ICE CORES.

These cores are extracted from polar ice on land and will reflect climate

Oscillations and compacted ice for the last 3000 years and dating for that

takes place almost to the year.

Deeper core samples for the moment are not certain as a real date but may

still prove to be used in data evidence.

Ice Core samples in the south pole area were taken at a depth of 2200m

with a time range listed at 160,000 years though I am of the opinion that the

real dates will be later than this, or at least a warm period in between.

POLLEN DATING.

Very useful in dating past vegetation and the climate when the trees and

plants were growing close to ancient sites under investigation and are

important in relative dating.

The best examples I can give are during the Holocene post-glacial period

in northern Europe in zone sites.

Pollen dating would also be useful for dating past plants in the Near East

and more so on semi-desert areas to be found today.

ACID SOILS

Bog bodies and artefacts found close by could be matched with any pollen

found on such and dated. The lower boundary is around 10,000 BP.
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Such pollen zones are not uniform across many large areas of land.

Pollen dating therefore can show evidence of what the environmental zone

was as far back as 3 mya in sites in East Africa so there is no reason I see

that such could not be used for the dating of the Crusades and past battle

fields across Europe and in the UK and Ireland.

HISTORICAL DATING.

This is a mine-field for careless research or poor interpretation of data.

If the information for a country is based on good firm evidence then

historical dating is useful and in some cases the ancient chronology of a

country must be known before any such dating takes place.

Only in the more literate societies who recorded their own history and

events is this possible.

Examples I have listed below for reference.

EARLY HEBREW HISTORY AND TRIBES.

EGYPTIAN HISTORY.

FIRST GREEK OLYMPIC GAMES 776 BC.

GREEK HISTORY.

CONQUEST OF EGYPT BY ALEXANDER THE GREAT 332 BC.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGIES.

ROMAN HISTORY CELTIC HISTORY.

It is easy to use a historical chronology when there are plenty of artefacts

found that are related to it.

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At times some of the artefacts themselves will give good dating and more

so on Maya ceramics that have hieroglyphic inscriptions, coins in Roman

times, though a coin will only give the date it was made, the head of the

ruler on it as a guide. Date after, which means the coin is not earlier than

the deposit but could in fact be later than the date.

When it comes down to the Holy Land and Egypt you get a mixed bag of

dates, some of which I discovered were not complete or accurate.

LAKE SEDIMENTS AND VARVES.

Deposits of clay are in some old lakes layers or varves, are found around

the edge of water where there has been a history of glaciers and the

annual melting of ice sheets which have been retreating since the last Ice

Age.

They vary in thickness from year to year with a thick layer showing a warm

layer, a thin one a cold year.

By measuring the yearly thickness it is possible to link them together

to form a sequence.

Many such clay deposits can represent thousands of years stretching from

the present back to the very beginning of ice sheet with-drawl shows a

date of the end of the ice age in an area.

In Japan laminated sediments from Lake Suigestsu can now be dated back

to 45,000 years ago and for the first time the calibration of a radiocarbon

calendar can now be used.

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TREE RING DATING.

Most trees when alive produce a yearly or seasonal tree ring and can be

seen as an example in the fresh cross cut of a tree.

It will be seen from any example that the rings are not uniform in thickness

and become narrow as the tree reaches the end of its natural life span.

The amount of tree growth rings each year is also affected by climate and

in areas where there is high rainfall and the soil is arid in type, and

then the rings will show thick when in Europe a sharp cold spell in spring

could produce a very narrow growth ring.

With a tree planted or grown from seed naturally in 1940 in Europe or the

UK then a cross section taken in 2005 will show the last outer ring of

the cut as 2004, the first ring, the centre 1941.

Count from centre outwards, each ring for a year until you reach 1947.

Note the change in the ring.

Count onwards to 1962/63 and again note the ring change if any.

Now this is all very well and good on timber that you see in your lifetime

but look at a cross cut of timber found in 2005 but in a bog for almost

1,000 years and the wood beside the remains of a human being.

We know the date of the depth of the cut out bog where the old oak was

found and let us place it at 1500 years from the surface to the bog oak.

The human artefacts were a little above the bog oak so dating of the

human artefacts would seem easy, say 1,200 to 1,000 years old.

Not so always as I discovered in a bog body found in Donegal in the 1990s.

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Everyone was excited by the find, everyone had a paper to write on it and

everyone involved made the mistake that the body remains was that of a

pre-history human being.

What they failed to do was look at the teeth of the skull on day one and

if they had done so, as I later advised, they would have found three molar

fillings!

Because the areas was a deep turf cutting area and turf taken as fuel for

40 years the depth of the trench was a good two metres deep, the bog oak

close to the water filled hole near the bottom and the first bones in the

water and buried in peat soil which had stained the bones.

A track for tractors was above three M away from the digging.

The fillings in the teeth sorted the men and women out from the boys very

quickly and a number of people trained in archaeology were left with egg

on their faces, while a forensic team moved in and them out.

Never ever take anything for granted when dealing with human artefacts.

RADIO-CARBON DATING.

A very useful method of dating but has its limitations in accuracy, and time

range.

Many archaeologists cause major errors in careless interpretation of data

because they need a result quickly.

What you are dealing with is radiocarbon decay which has 3 isotopes = 12

C , 13C and 14C. and in any sample of carbon 98% is of the 13C type.

This unit of carbon has been bombarded by cosmic rays and N 14 in the
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upper atmosphere therefore contains an excess of neutrons, which makes

it unstable.

It decays by the emission of weak beta radiation back to its precursor

Isotope of 14N and this decay will take place at a constant rate independent

of all the environmental conditions.

The process is therefore can be classified as half-life, two half lives

and so on.

With C14 the half-life is around 5,730 years and for 238 U it is listed

at 4500 million years.

The use of AMS in the lab is getting more common now and requires

smaller

samples, as little as 5-10 mg and makes the direct dating of pollen easy.

ARGON-ARGON DATING.

Potassium argon dating (K-Ar) is used to date rock samples up to many

million years old but also very useful in dating very early human type sites

in Africa and Asia that can be as much as 5 to 6 million years old but

restricted to volcanic rock no more than 100,000 years old.

The process is much the same as radiocarbon dating and decay with very

slow decay of potassium 40 to the inert gas argon 40 in volcanic rock

samples.

Its half life is 1.3 million years but there has to be in place an error

estimate of 2% of the total age = 30,000 years.

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URANIUM SERIES DATING.

Based on the decay of radioactive decay of isotopes of uranium it is useful

for the period of 500,000 to 50,000 years ago, which is outside the range

of radiocarbon dating and used on rocks that are not volcanic at past

human settlements and sites.

Used to date rocks with a high calcium carbonate found around lime rich

springs or in limestone caves.

I note with some awareness that the Tomb of Jesus discovered was not

dated this way for some unknown reason and that we have no real date

recorded. Maybe that is because what was found in the holy land was not

the Jesus Tomb at all and someone stopped the project which was a

building site?

HUMAN REMAINS DATING.

A minefield of doubt and wrong dating at times using K-Ar and data results

as in the case of skull 1470 found in Kenya in 1972 when it was dated at

2.6 mya but was later dated at 1.8 mya which was confirmed and later tests

put the bone at 1.88+ 0.02 my.

Human remains play games with time and age and when dealing with any
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remains, the first thing that needs to be known is sex, age at death, build,

appearance and relationship with the surrounding environment. Then if

possible and very useful, the cause of death.

There is a number of factors to consider in research like this about any

human remains said to be linked to the grail or grails and that is of course,

is to make sure that all the forensics are right.

Truth and evidence don’t always run true to form of course and more so

when it comes to some myths, keeping in mind that in every myth there

may well be a little bit of truth or clues in all myths.

History as we know has a way of repeating itself and one has only to look

at the number of world conflicts from the time of Jesus to now to see

except for the main human actors nothing has changed.

The history of the Grail, now known as the Holy Grail, is no exception but

there are more 'players' on stage, a good few noted for being 'ham actors'

and of little account when it comes down to evidence and facts.

There are also 'protectors' of the Grail, protectors of knowledge and of

Faiths through history and many such people have left many red herrings

for the unwary researcher, be it in archaeology or history to follow that

go nowhere. A little like chasing wood smoke. Such I add were not

protectors of truth.

It would be a grave mistake to link the grail to the death of Jesus on the

cross only, if at all, and also what the grail was or is.

If it was a single object like a cup or bowl as suggested by many then

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we need to look at what material such an item was made from and also

dating it.

For some, the 'Holy Grail' tends to be linked to Christianity only and this

too could take a researcher up the wrong path if he or she did not look

at many other possibilities.

My researched data also points at the old Hebrew tribes, early Arab

nations, the Knight's Templars, The Vatican, Rome and the

Romans, the Celtic Tribes of Europe and all related text and artworks.

The main problem with the Grail is what it was/is and dating.

Historical events had to be looked at closely for evidence or direct clues

and this at the time felt like taking a rowing boat up the Amazon, exploring

every stream that feeds that great river, finding dead ends that meant

retracing my tracks and doing a massive amount of text and document

research.

Below I have tried to set out the data as I researched it and in doing so

have suggested many possibilities but ruling out 'Alien Contact', UFO's

and all such rubbish that has been suggested by others in the past.

The main problem with researching other myths and mythology that

surround the grail is that at times one ventures into the underworld of the

paranormal and by doing so tend to get way laid with the research that is

needed.

Most if not all religions in the past and now has a strong paranormal link

and that is how the human mind works and has been programmed to suit a
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belief and then use it as 'truth' and law.

The good, bad and pure evil is within many religions even today and God

or the Higher Power could well be pondering on where he or she went

wrong with a human race of mammal because they seem set on a course of

self penalisation .

We all need to believe in something 'paranormal' and have done so for a

very long time in history and no matter where you go in the world today,

such belief is there.’ Organised' paranormal belief therefore is what we now

call religion and even with tribal people in deep jungle habitats it is there

and there is no getting away from it.

Nature of course plays a major part in many religious beliefs and where

I might go cold when faced with 'Holy Religious belief' I do not feel that way

when it is linked to nature.

The idea of the grail I suggest did come from the Holy Land but well before

organised Christianity and may well have had another name, in another

language in fact and passed on at first in the oral traditions and later added

to with artwork on an object or objects that included scrolls, cups, bowls,

text work on a scroll with art work.

There was also a grail link to Europe and the British Isles.

This early work could be laid at the feet of old Hebrew tribes and or the

Egyptians which rules out the Romans but not the Greeks.

What must be kept in mind is when a written understood language took

place and where.

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This form of communication had to be important and well advanced as

was the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as the first ever Bible text.

Oral communications about the past before the written word came into

play, left room for adding details or not mentioning them at all ,left a lot

of problems in future interpretation then written down.

Added to this was Middle and Near East tribal or culture spoken and

written words which some people even if linked to a tribal group could not

grasp or understand.

As an example I put before you the Irish language.

People in the west of Ireland from Co. Donegal down to Co. Cork are at a

loss to what Irish speakers are saying in Dublin and the east coast of

Ireland and vice versa though the written word in Irish for the most is

understood though not all of the words at times.

If two people, one from the west of Ireland and one from the East were

asked to write a report in Irish on the subject of the Famine and allowed

3000 words only after listening to a tape recording in English of the

subject, it is very doubtful that the finished report would be the same.

Words would be dropped or added, some letters left out or put in with the

result being close but not close enough.

There is no doubt in my mind that the very first attempt at connected

writing in the Middle and Near East would have been poor or crude with

only the basics and all because of mind development at this time, around

2500 BC.
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From here on though religious poems and epics were written down and

later the first of the text in the Old Testament recorded 1750> BC

It was now all a question of thoughts turned to words and recorded as

such, known now as 'etymology' and seeks the 'true' meaning of a word but

first you need to find the root.

Even at this new understanding today, the interpretation of old spelling

leaves much to be desired and care is needed when researching old text

Documents no matter what part of the world they came from.

The scribe who wrote the old text knew from his mind pictures what he was

saying and why while today's reader of the same script can only grasp

picture fragments of what the scribe had and wanted others to understand.

The old oral traditions of language from the past do not always convert

well to the old written words of scribes, sometimes as many as 10 scribes

working on the same documents on the same subject and with a wish it

will be understood and taken as 'truth'.

It is easy to see that the two modern day scribes got lost in the translation

of the same Old Hebrew text but it would be hard to work out which one is
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fact and which has been added to.

The translation could well have been made to suit the needs of a

community, a work of fiction and half truths in fact to bring people into the

fold.

When it comes down to it, the same confusion surrounds the grail and its

linked history from the past because of poor interpretation of facts, of

history dates and of course events.

Therefore in my research I had to place archaeology, history, biology,

forensic pathology in the same bed because the rest could not function

with one of the above missing.

What did come to light with seven years of research before I could get

around to writing anything about the grail was the amount of historical and

archaeology events that had to match or come close to matching otherwise

the work would be more fiction than fact.

That had been done before and no doubt will be done again by others but

I knew that I had to take a road less travelled, even if it meant that I had to

set aside good research material to get as close to the evidence

that would stand up to close scrutiny. That is what I have therefore done.

Much of what I have had, needed to be set aside because it was of little or

no use. The same data at times came up in very different forms and much

of the dating of events was wrong or not even close. Some of the research

on a subject or event became repetitive to the point of frustration.

I haunted University Liberties in Birmingham over the years, wrote many

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emails to universities in the Near and Far East for information and

thankfully in the long haul I ended up with a number

of things that pointed towards the Grail and more to the point 'Grails'

which took me from the Near and Middle East, across Europe into the UK

and even Ireland.

In the end I was pleased with the results of the final researched material

and then started to write.

Organised religions over the last two thousand years has brought nothing

but confusion, anger and hate to the world, power struggles of the inner

mind of the human mammal .

Religions of course had to have a place in my researched material, all

with many views on what the grail was, what it should be, and what they

wanted it to be.

Alas the end result is not what they wanted to be.

What it is can only be described as is 'Real' but not always could be

regarded as fact from some of the many sources.

Mythology is the study of whatever religious or heroic legends but today,

is so foreign to a students experience that he or she cannot believe them to

be true, even if they wanted them to be.

Many views and writings have placed what The Grail is and what in fact it

could be linked to from the far past with such suggestions put forward like

a cup from the Last Supper, a bowl that caught the blood of Jesus when he

was on the cross, parts of the cross itself, nails from the cross, bone
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fragments of Jesus the Man, the Shroud Jesus was wrapped in, hand print

of Jesus, and much more.

Christianity cannot lay direct claim to what is known as The Grail because

there are a number of other players on stage such as the Old Hebrews and

the Ark Of Covenant, the Prophets of YHWH (God), Islam and the birth of

Muhammad (570 AD)- (632 AD), India and the Epics, Puranas, Upanishads,

(1000 BC-700 AD), The Indian Vedic Period and Dharma.

The name 'Christ' was added to the name Jesus after and not before his

death. It is an old Hebrew word meaning Messiah.

I state this because what we know of the Old Hebrew tribes is fragmented

and passed down first in the oral traditions then later in writing.

Very few people have wondered or indeed questioned where in fact where

these tribes first came from but most of all, why?

My research into the tribes of Hebrews came up with a good number of

clues but not all easy to find and I had to look East for some of the possible

answers though not compass East as we know it today, but solar East.

I am of the opinion that 5000+ > < years ago, the Earth for some reason

tilted slightly but enough to change the tribal locations in the far past.

Take the Flood in the Bible as a good example below.

We are told of the flood in the Bible but we are not told of the floods.
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THE FLOOD IN THE BIBLE.

NOAH'S ARK INVESTIGATION

In order to get any idea of why an Ark was built we need to first glance

at the records and claims made in the bible. In doing so I also needed to

be careful not to take such records at face value and not as a true

statement of fact.

That meant more research into weather patterns caused by volcanic

eruptions world wide and there was a few of those.

(1) Did a deluge really take place in fact at this time in history?

(2) If Noah got a warning of such a pending flood was it a natural one or

something more?

(3) How long did it take to build such an Ark.?

(4) What were its measurements from bow to stern?

(5) How high was it?

(6) From a Genetic point of view were all the people on board from the

same family group?

There is no doubt in my opinion that many animals would have been taken

on board but as a source of future food and breeding when afloat and

later. There would not be time or room to load up all the animals mentioned

in the Bible and other sources. So in this case, the old Testaments details

listed about all the animals two by two being brought onto the Ark is not
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fact or true.

Any animals that were brought on board were a food source and nothing

more. A few that were useful, would have been kept for breeding if dry land

was every reached.

On top of that food would be needed as well as water for animals and

humans alike while afloat. Again that would take up space on any boat, no

matter what size it was and from a natural history point of view, wild

animals and birds would have been impractical.

The flood is mentioned in the Bible Genesis VI.VIII, I X, and X but give

me no real clues where it took place but states that this flood was between

2448 BC and 2348BC = 100 years in old time which does not help much

when it comes down to Archaeology and facts with evidence.

Such factual evidence I should point out was hard to come by over many

years of research. There are of course possibilities and

that what was known as The Ark settled somewhere between Turkey and

Iran when the water levels dropped.

Doing a little maths from the first date and warning of a pending flood

(2448 BC+) and Noah had three sons from that date, SHEM, HAM, and

JAPHETH = 9 Natural months x 3 = 2450 and 3 months BC, providing each

child came one after the other, which seems unlikely but even if you allow

a year between the children by the time the third son was aged one that

would put the starting date of children born at 2452 BC or there about.

If we consider that his sons and wife were to help him build the ark then
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it would be 16 years + before the work started, using 'GOPHER' wood and

tar pitch.

That would put the starting of building of Noah's Ark around the year

2436 BC. We now need to look at the Ark itself before the flood came.

Again from a maths point of view as well as a boat building view, it leaves

much to be desired as evidence.

No doubt Noah and his wife planned the work early and more than likely

carried out some of it in between childbirth and the rest.

The real work would have started with fit adults, more than

Noah and his wife and if the Bible is right then it came down to Noah

and the three sons when the youngest reached 16 years, the oldest at 18

years + with his wife doing her share. Then it is very possible that Noah

had more than one wife, even more than two and all producing children

over the years. I am not talking about a small boat here.

Forget the animals 2 by 2 because that did not happen but there would

have had to be enough room for many domestic animals, a source of food

during the flood, their food supply, Noah's family needs in food and space,

clean water storage and tools.

The Ark built was said to be 300 cubits long ,50 cubits wide in the middle

and 30 cubits high = 1 cubic of old being 18 to 22 inches.

Even if we take 22 inches as 1 cubic, the Ark as laid out by the Bible would

have measurements that read thus;

LENGTH. 300 CUBITS = 6600 INCHES = 550 FEET.

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MIDDLE ACROSS. 50 CUBITS = 1100 INCHES = 91 FEET.

HEIGHT. 30 CUBITS = 660 INCHES = 55 FEET.

If I use the 1 cubit =18 inch measurements, it reads like this;

300 CUBITS @ 18 INCHES = 5400 INCHES = 450 FEET.

50 CUBITS ACROSS @ 18 INCHES =900 INCHES = 75 FEET.

30 CUBITS HIGH @ 18 INCHES = 540 INCHES = 45 FEET.

I therefore will use the 2nd as the right measurement of the Ark at 18

inches which is 450x75x45 = 570 feet in all.

It is very doubtful if Noah had any experience in building a boat of any size

so this suggests he did have help and knowledge of some ‘Sea People’

who did. The materials used in the building the ark needs also to be looked

at closely as this could give a good indication of where it was built before

the flood and how far it would have travelled till the water height dropped.

The first job would be to dig a deep and long pit, around 500 feet + long,

the banks at least on each side to hold the materials and weight from

slipping.

Reed bundles would be made to fit together to form a pontoon and by the

time it reached to what would be the middle section it would have been

around 357 feet long which in time would be added to.

Reeds therefore suggest a fresh water or brackish lagoon close by and

that to me suggests the Nile Delta area and that wet area could well have

been a large marsh area or around a freshwater lake.

All the reeds would have to be cut well down and for length. Plenty of
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them. Having cut reeds myself in the past I can inform you that it is hard

and dirty work using a sharpened hook or scythe for the cutting.

They are stacked and tied in bundles, then in the case of our ark, moved

to dry land near or at the point of construction.

Later the bundles would need to be shaped, and roped together as well

as some form of waterproofing placed on them.

If the Common Reed was used ( P. communis) this is a very robust

bamboo like plant found in marshes and at the edges of lakes and ponds

and can reach 3 M in length. The dried stems are used for thatching and

mat making.

The Giant Reed (A.donax) is around 4 to 5 M high and is also a wetland

species as is the Reed Mace found in many places.

If we look at the Bulrush which can be 3 M tall and is very strong when

dried this too could be found in wetland habitats.

It is my opinion therefore that the area where the ark was to be built was

close to a large marshland which would provide the raw materials.

All main species of rush or reed would have been used and dried well

before hand. Most of the cutting would have been carried out in the 'winter'

months.

Once the 'bottom' pontoon is laid and in place and the work of laying a

frame-work would begin using the wood of an area, such as cedar and the

poles were set to form a Skeleton of sides and three decks.

The bottom deck would have housed domestic animals like cattle, sheep
 26

and goats, the middle deck fowl and animal food supplies and the upper-

deck for humans with their food and grain supplies as well as sleeping

quarters.

The frame work would have been of reeds, wood and sealed with a raisin or

type of pitch inside and out and roofing would have been arched but

supported and slightly over-lapping.

Once finished the who ark would be heavy and even more so when loaded

with animals, humans and their supplies.

What was at the start 45 feet tall on dry land would lose some of that

height from a waters surface because of weight, at least 10 to 15 feet

leaving 30 feet just above the water surface, if that.

There is little doubt that whoever overseen the building of the ark was a

‘master boat builder’ and knew his maths at this time but it was not Noah.

Now we are laid to believe that Noah, his 3 sons and his wife did all this

work on their own? This I feel is not right, for besides if Noah had good

skills, his children would not have them all, the wife a very few so to build

an ark this size and shape, sea or flood worthily then there had to be other

adults with boat building skills on hand.

If we except that, then I must also except that they too had families or

more and must have went with Noah when the flood came.

The ark was therefore a small community effort for all who took part

mainly for survival.

But which flood?

 27

As to the flood itself it has to be remembered that it was not the whole

world that flooded but only a large area in the Middle East as far as this

research goes.

There were other floods before and after this main event in many parts of

the world including parts of Europe and Asia.

Today such flooding and storms are still going on across the globe with

loss of life of animals and humans, homes destroyed and cities and towns

left in ruins. Such events today are well recorded by the worlds media and

there are most of the time some natural warnings over the years.

There is one in place now about major Global Warming and a good deal of

evidence that more floods and sea levels will rise due to ice caps melting.

Yet many refuse to believe that such disasters will happen across the

earth but they will. No one, with all the knowledge of technology and

computer help have thought or designed an ark.

For Noah and others to build such and Ark there had to be a reason, that

reason could well have been natural warnings over the years, much the

same as we are getting now yet for the most, fail to heed most of the time.

Whatever the reason matters little what does matter is what type of flood

was it, that would rise water over a time and flood the lands close by and

beyond, taking the ark with it?

It is stated that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights so we need to look

at the possible areas that it happened.

There are 4 sea areas around the target areas, Lake Van which is in the
 28

middle with Armenia and the Caspian Sea to the NE, Turkey and the Black

Sea to the NW, Syria and the Mediterranean Sea to the SW and Iraq and

Persian Gulf to the SE.

We are informed by the Bible that the Ark came to rest after the flood

somewhere in the remoteness of the Ararat Mountains mainly Agri Dagh

though many think that it was Judi Dagh close to the border of Iraq.

I needed to look at distances from each sea to locations A =Ararat and B

= Agri Dagh.

THE MEDITERRANEAN TO ARARAT IS 632 MILES NE.

TO JUDI DAGH 475 MILES NE.

FROM THE CASPIAN SEA TO ARARAT IS 316 MILES DUE SW,

TO JUDI DAGH IS 474 MILES DUE SW.

FROM THE BLACK SEA AREA TO ARARAT DUE SE IT IS 474 MILES.

TO JUDI DAGH IT IS 316 MILES SE.

FROM THE PERSIAN GULF TO ARARAT NNW IT IS 790 MILES.

TO JUDI DAGH NW IT IS 632 MILES.

On top of that there is the Tigris River which floods and is South of Judi

Dagh. This is also marsh area with large beds of reeds as is the case close

to lake Van.

THE NAVIGATION OF THE ARK.

A type of steering oar or oars would have been used though there were no

Sails and much of the navigation would have been the stars, sun and

moon when they were showing.

 29

The problem here is if it had been raining day and night for 40days + then

there could not have been any navigation using the sky due to cloud cover

and Noah would have been steering 'blind'. The sea, wind and clouds as

well as currents would have placed the Ark at the mercy of nature and little

could have been done to steer or navigate the boat.

It is stated by others that a raven was used to help in the navigation but

there are no ravens in this area just common crows and even then if they

would have sensed land they would have flown directly to it and not

returned. There is also a mention of doves being used and bringing back

some twigs with leaves on it but even if they were ‘homing’ doves there is

no evidence of any sort I found that would support this.

As for the dove being released and bringing back a twig of green I will

put this down as a myth because doves will not carry any twigs unless for

nesting and only a short distance at that.

As the ark was being pushed by wind, sea and of course, currents

Seamanship of any kind did not occur.

Noah would not be able to see around him very far, no more than 4 miles

because of the weather conditions and big seas.

Considering the journey started on the 17th of February to the 17th or 18th

of July that was 5 months at sea or on flood waters with no land in sight.

Other sources state that the ark was afloat for a year but I do not except

this as fact. In that case we should consider allowing for wind and currents

that the Ark travelled around 2000 miles though not in a straight line.
 30

By 2000 miles I mean of course sea or Nautical miles (13.4x150 days) =

2010, a nautical mile being 6,082.66 feet = 1,853m.

As far as Noah and his ark are concerned I had to consider the distance

from both sites outwards to give a possible starting location.

If I took it that the ark moved by sea, wind and drifting in a straight

line then my research shows that this was not possible because 2010

miles from any of the sites where the ark is supposed to have landed show

outwards that any 'starting' areas are just too far away for that time in

history.

See below.

COMPASS POINTS AND POSSIBLE LOCATIONS FOR THE ARK

STARTING IF SAILED IN A STRAIGHT LINE ONLY.

2000 MILES.

KRUSK IN RUSSIA. not possible.

ARUL SEA NE. Possible if winds were right.

GREECE. W of both sites. Very possible.

EGYPT. SSW of both sites. Very possible. SW winds

PERSIAN GULF AREA'S Iran. Possible.

RED SEA AREA. very possible.

That is if only the wind, tide and currents took the Ark in a straight line

from A to B and the two main areas that I would suggest as a main starting

point was Greece or Egypt.

The old records in the Bible and other texts say that Noah started his
 31

journey in February and it ended in July so we are talking about winter

through spring and into late summer.

I feel that we can now rule out that the Ark came to rest in a valley of

the snow close to Mount Ararat. (16,854 feet today).

There is no good evidence to support the idea that the Ark was in fact on

the mountain or mountains though it has been wrongly suggested that this

was the case.

The Caspian Sea area close to Iran gets around 2000mm of rain each year,

that being a good 80 inches and in middle Turkey, the Feb temperatures

can be as low as 0'C (32F) and 73'F in July.

The area site where the Ark is supposed to have landed already had the

first civilizations that started around 3,000BC in the valley of the Nile and

also in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

As this was the case then by the time of the Flood mentioned in the Bible

took place, 2,448BC + there were already people in the area for the 500

years before that flood and the ark moving into their area.

The people before Noah landed were not primitive because they farmed,

had irrigation and flood defences built.

Writing systems in hieroglyphs as well as alphabets were known and this

Mesopotamia culture were also part of what is now known as IRAQ.

Egyptian civilization began around 3000 BC again before the Major Flood

mentioned in the Bible.

So the evidence does point to a flood and it was on record but that record
 32

must have been oral at first and much later, recorded by scribes.

I am of the opinion from my research that the Flood as it was known was

to do with Volcanic activity and it was a major event.

I will even go as far to state that that this event changed Empires and

Civilisations and not as always thought , wars.

Let me put forward the theory that such an event took place around the

Greek mainland, Crete, Asia Minor but affected the shores of what is today

the Holy Land.

It was therefore not rain but sea mixed with volcanic ash, and a great tidal

wave, and may have been as high as 100m spread out from a volcano that

collapsed within its self, the sea rushed in to the empty space, many miles

deep then came back out with great force and spread out across the

Mediterranean areas.

There would have to be more than one great wave of course during that

time because the floods that came, took away cities and towns and

dumped massive rocks and coral onto the shores, some blocks around 100

tons were pushed many miles inland.

2448 BC is the date that the major flood took place as stated by the bible

and some other people but my data and research puts that date well before

the Iron Age for the area, the Bronze Age and broken down in the Crete

area as Pre-Palace Period 3000- 2000 BC, First Palace Period 2000- 1700

BC, New Palace Period 1700-1450 BC, Post-Palace Period 1450- 1050 BC.

I found that this give me a framework of known dates to work with and if
 33

the data recorded about the flood and experts place at around 2448 BC

then it had to fit into the Pre Palace Period 3000-2000 BC and late Bronze

Age for this area. With cross referencing my research there is no getting

away that these time-lines are fact.

There was a major eruption in the target areas.

The broken rings of Thera have formed small islands due to a massive

eruption around 1500 BC that caused great damage and also floods from

waves but this date is in the New Palace Period 1700-1450 BC.

In Greek Mythology it is known as Deucalion's Flood, they place of where

Atlantis is said to have vanished.

If this was one of the 'Floods' and I believe it was, then the coasts of

South Greece (Mycenae),Crete, Libya, Egypt, Canaan, Cyprus and Turkey

would all have been hit by one or more Tsunami's.

And some flooding would have occurred, with evidence of such today.

The wave height would not have been 100m as suggested by some, but

more than likely 4.2m. The ash cloud moved SE towards Cyprus.

Earthquakes as a result would have been weak and close to the surface.

There is I discovered, much confusion about the dating when eruption

happened and I have listed them below.

1645 BC, 1628 BC, 1600-1480 BC, 1540-1480 BC and 1500 BC

I would suggest from the evidence that it is more than likely that the major

eruption took place around 1645 BC and ash fall-out seemed to be limited.

The other major point in my research is language from the past and that
 34

the possible 10 lost tribes had and understood where today only a few

words remain or not understood.

 35

Even ‘art’ work from the past was a form of language and for the people at

this time they were more aware of it as a message than we are today.

That is I suggest, is because we see the picture but not the message.
 36

LANGUAGE OF THE GODS.

This could be one of the reasons why the early Hebrew writings left out

many words from their own past because they were not understood or

ignored.

When the first field archaeology field workers discovered the writings of

Ancient civilizations you could say that they were excited and it meant

that a door or doors were open into cultures suggesting all types of things

from hidden treasures, Grails codes that should lead to better

understanding of where and what a grail was is.

The real problem was they could not understand what they were looking at.

They had the raw material thousands of years old and a text that was a

complete mystery to them and in some cases, words still are.

 37

Such unfamiliar writing on mud tablets, on the walls of temples and tombs,

inside old forts and on coffins for a very long time baffled the 'experts'

and in many cases of discovery some of the writings were set aside or if

damaged thrown on a spoil heap.

Those that were kept were placed in boxes and stored away, sometimes

for years.

Even today language experts have problems sorting out the past

discoveries of writings and fragments of such and these code breakers, for

want of a better word, struggle in the hope that someday they will crack it.

The clues that were discovered were many and varied and good

interpretation was needed because questions had to be answered if the

letters or languages resemble any other already known languages of the

distant past?

Old Hebrew and old English is a very good example of this because

someone faced with such text today may well give up unless they were

experts in that field.

They may well skip some words while reading such text because they

could not understand the word or even part of a word or what it meant.

It could be that such a 'missed' word was an important clue or a letter

suggesting part of an alphabet and this being a key in fact, once

understood could be used to read text if ever discovered.

 38

There is also a problem with old text if Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Egyptian

words have been inserted.

As far as a Grail is concerned there is a lot of suggestions of what it

may be but so far little text to point at clues.

Something as so called importance as the suggested 'Holy Grail' should

have some text that was written at the time it came into being.

This may show a number of very different symbols, letters and words but

it does not mean that such text was written at the place of origin and

such a codex may just contain a number of letters which could suggest it

being alphabetic rather than a full text which ten places it in the syllabic

category. It is possible that any mention of the Grail may be a mixture of

picture writing and letters.

If the grail is real then the clues will be there but it is finding such

and what if there are 'grails' rather than a single one or even worse,

bits of an artefact scattered from the Middle East and Near East westwards
 39

as far as the British Isles and Ireland and Eastwards to Italy and even

Greece?

I note that even today the human mind and computers have failed to find

many of the answers like the writings and symbols of the Indus

Civilizations which were around South Asia 2300-1700 BC and for the most,

always remained a mystery.

What we do know in part is the ancient writings and language from Egypt,

Near East, Homeric Greece and the Maya civilizations of South America.

As far as the cuneiform scripts are concerned from my research, I have

laid out below tables starting with the old Alkadian with my suggested

family tree ties or links as well as the development of the mixed Indo-

Iranian languages.

In time the second table may be added to or parts removed but I am of the

opinion that the links for both with researched evidence is correct and as

close as I can get.

What I did discover with the Near East writings is that at times they

seemed to have 'crossed over' because there is many similarities with

some of them that no matter how hard you try cannot be explained away.

Therefore somewhere out there and yet to be discovered is still more

unknown language forms. They may well be ‘dead languages’ but they are

out there to be discovered and even hidden in known ancient texts.

 40

3000BC

OLD AKKADIAN

HURRIAN

2500BC

OLD BABYLONIAN

SUMERIANS CUNEIFORM SCRIPT

OLD ASSYRIAN

2000BC

MIDDLE ELAMITE

1500 BC

MIDDLE BABYLONIAN

MIDDLE ASSYRIAN

HITTITE

1000 BC

NEW BABYLONIAN

NEW ASSYRIAN

500BC

ACHAEMENID ELAMITE

LATE BABYLONIAN

BELOW IS THE INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGES

OLD IRANIAN

SANSKRIT AND PRAKRITS

MIDDLE IRANIAN
 41

HINDUSTANI

MARATHI / KURDISH

BENGALI

ROMANY / PERSIAN

OSSETIC

The study therefore of archaeology languages is complex and to be even

good at it you need to start early and devote your life to it and anything

new discovered then the decipherment will have to be a manual one and

long term.

Computers are useful to add data to and keep records and broken down

codex data but it is the human mind, with knowledge that will solve many

of the problems.

The language of the Persian Kings and Empire has been well documented

by the Greeks, mainly Herodotus who did report on the main Persian Wars

a good 250 years before Alexander The Great so by this information that

has been recorded gives us a time-line for such an event.

The Rosetta Stone has 3 languages as you will see below.

The Rosetta Stone was discovered by people working for Napoleon when

he invaded Egypt around 1799 and written on it was a decree that had been

set out by King Ptolemy V in 196 BC.

 42

The decree was in three scripts, two in old Egyptian and one in Greek

which helped somewhat in the knowledge gained from some of the

scholars did have some Greek which did in fact help in the translating in

part of the Egyptian text and hieroglyphs picture format and the other

cursive which was used for faster writing

The man who was able to start sorting out the Rosetta scripts was Jean

Francois Champollion but the date data here I found confused because it

was said to be discovered in 1799 and later Champollion was able to kick

start the first process.

From 1809 he had studied Egyptian manuscripts and many of the

inscriptions and had a good knowledge of Coptic which is linked to a very

ancient language. He was then able to build up a readable alphabet and

found that it formed part of the main text outside the cartouches of the

Rosetta Stone.

Coptic died out as a spoken language around 1000 AD but is still the

language in the Coptic Church.

A British Army Officer and archaeologist, Sir Henry Rawlinson carried out

the main decipherment of three long inscriptions of the three ancient

languages that had been written on a rock face in Western Iran.

At that time it was known as Behistun and it seems the scripts dated from

Darius 1st, Ruler of Persia from 521-486 BC.

What I found of interest here is that the three noted languages were;
 43

OLD PERSIAN, BABYLONIAN, AND ELAMITE.

This places the dating time-lines from 2500 BC to 500 BC and all three

scripts had been written in cuneiform which was typical of the ancient

Near East.

I should point out that the Old Persian script does come very close to the

Avestan language that was used for the Holy Text of the Zoroastrian

religion. I point this out again because history and events were being

recorded for a very long time and in a number of formats and languages of

the written sort.

That being the case, with the evidence of old text and languages being

used and with progress over time-lines then it is not possible that

something like the Grail would have been overlooked and not recorded in

some form of text as well as major tidal waves causing floods.

If people assume that the Grail started its life somewhere in the Holy-land

or Near East then somewhere there has to be evidence in a written form

that it was and is real, even parts of it spread across Europe.

I suggest here that the 'Grail or Holy Grail' was given that name once it

reached Europe, starting in France and spreading outwards, a virus of

myth and truth combined but contaminated with religion and political

Codex’s.

Rawlinson discovered that the Old Persian script was in cuneiform

symbols that showed alphabetic in nature he went on to decipher it and

became the first person to do a translation of the first script on the rock
 44

face. Once he had cracked the first codex he then went on to do the same

with the Babylonian script which was syllabic and with many more

symbols. When he got to the Elamite script however he had to stop as it

was an unknown language.

I suggest also that it may well have been the Sumerian language and was

spoken and used as text in the past.

That saying; 'It's all Greek to me' means that you don't understand what

is being said or written but the Linear B script, a forerunner to the Greek

language and found on tablets in Greece is even worse.

For a long time it did confuse and frustrate many people and more so that

the Egyptian and Babylonian languages because it was an 'unknown'

language to everyone.

There was no history of a similar language or even clues to what the

writing on the tablets that had been discovered on Knossos and Crete

contained.

There was no mention of the eruption or the tidal waves and this I found

strange because such an event would have been recorded.

It was a woman by the name of Alice Kober (1907-1950) who worked out

the language on the tablets was infected with word ending variations with

nouns, tense, or verbs.

Within a short time she also worked out a number of words that looked the

same at first except for the endings.

She then came up that she would suggest grammatical endings for the
 45

words, and on the right path.

After her death her work was then taken on by Michael Ventris (1922-1956

and in turn he began to get a more complete picture of the symbols which

did have a relationship with one another.

His hard work paid of because what he did discover in the end was that the

Linear B script was giving the names of Greek towns and therefore Linear

B was a form of ancient Greek.

Whatever the Grail or Holy grail was and possibly is it had to come about

at the time of 'Literate Societies' that used a form of writing linked to

civilizations such as the Near and Middle East, which would include Egypt,

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel ,Turkey, Greece, Palestine, possibly the West of Asia

and Italy (Rome) .

Any of the historical records of the above and more so any form of text

helps with finding answers to the culture or tribe.

Without some form of text from the past you have nothing to work with or

point you in the right direction.

If there is text then in time it may well be possible to link comparisons with

other culture writings or words.

A word of warning here.

Because 'Family Tree' scripts are different and even related it does not

suggest that the languages used in every day life are related to one

another.

It was the Greeks who did develop the alphabet from the tribe and culture
 46

of the Phoneticians who used a language that did not belong to the known

Indo-European groups but linked more to the Semitic group as well as

Hebrew, Babylonian, and Assyrian.

The 'dead' languages known as Indo-European are Ancient Greek, Latin,

Old Celtic, Vedic Sanskrit of Rig-Veda and the old Persian of the Avestan

and were no longer the 'spoken' word of the people.

I am of the opinion that these 'dead' languages though not in every day

use as a spoken language must have been recorded as a written language

in some form so therefore are not lost as many think.

I tried for a long time to learn Sanskrit for the main purpose of trying

to understand the Indian classical writings but failed to grasp it fully and

had great difficulty with it.

Word order in some cases makes little or no difference and is therefore

a less crucial role than in English.

 47

The same could be said for many other people when they started to study

Hittite and the Anatolian languages.

A study therefore of Hittite language is the study of a very hidden tribe

in pre-history and though now and then mentioned in the Bible and

suggests that they came from within North Syria.

Assyrian culture and people started in Mesopotamia around 2000-1000BC

with their major empire building 1813-1781BC.

This was followed by the Middle Assyrian and the Neo-Assyrian Kings,

Assurnasirp al II ruled from 883-859BC and it was him that extended his

empire westwards towards the Mediterranean.

Later his son, Shamanester III 858-824BC took on himself, before his father

died, to expand the empire in all directions, which he did.

The centre of Assyrian was set up on a hill overlooking the Tigris River

in NE of today's Iraq and much of the structures here was rebuilt by

Shamshi-Adas Ist BC This area is not far as the crow flies where the

remains of the Ark possibly lie hidden.

It was in the 19th century that a number of carved relief's and inscriptions

started to turn up; the inscriptions were at that time an unknown

hieroglyphic script in north Syria but also in Anatolia (Turkey).

Here I found at least one connection with some clues.

Such clues from the past I discovered, are all well and fine but if they

lead you nowhere that you had hoped for and want to go then confusion

for the researcher arises.

 48

By that I mean we want to sometimes fit those clues into our idea

of what our interpretations rather than what the real interpretation is.

This, believe it or not, is a common occurrence with many students and

some archaeology field workers because they grasp the 'answer' like a

drowning man grasping a straw, that fits their own personal interpretation

and latter proved to be wrong.

Some Christian archaeologists with an axe to grind are a very good

example of this as are historians who are defenders of the faith.

The myth and paranormal events around Jesus is of course disputed.

If death is not the end and the energy leaves the body fast then is this what

Christians believe to be as the ‘soul’ or ‘holy spirit’? There is no evidence

whatsoever that Christians are the only ones with a soul but there is a vast

amount of evidence world wide that before Christianity came about there

was and still is a believe in an afterlife and reincarnation.

The Church may well frown on this idea of an after life if you are not a

Christian but just because it is said that Jesus rose from the dead does not

mean that he did in any form. The body remains should have still been in

the tomb and just the spirit or soul leave and as we all know today the
 49

mortal remains of Jesus vanished. Gone and no trace!

THE ARCHAEOLOGY MYSTERY OF JESUS.

My research tended to lead me to this topic of Jesus because if one was

seeking a grail or grails then at least one should turn up here, either as an

object or in text that would stand up to very close scrutiny by scholars

world wide.

There is little doubt that Jesus the man was a real person, a person that

is surrounded by mystery, tall stories and of course the many hidden

agendas.

No one person or even a whole archaeology department anywhere in the

world has in any way got to the truth, whatever that is, on the life and death

of the man known as Jesus.

The Church of Rome does have in its archives, hidden information that for

one reason or another and best known to themselves stays hidden.

It is very unlikely in my lifetime that the Vatican will ever be transparent

to the public about all hidden scrolls and text documents that deal with the

archaeology and known history of the Holy-land and beyond.

 50

That suggests fear and doubts with in the Vatican archives about what is

real and what was real but should never be revealed to the Christian

masses because if it was it would send shock waves around the world that

I would term as a ‘Religious nine eleven’ waiting to happen.

There are always good reasons for this as far as the Church of Rome is

concerned, at least in their eyes but with-holding archaeology data and

evidence is not one of them.

Their problem is blinkered thinking and 99% political because they work

on a right to know or for your eyes only policy.

It all comes down to fear of course and they were once very good at

installing fear in the followers of the Roman Catholic faith, including their

own priest and bishops, now the past is coming back to haunt them.

The poor in the Christian world and who have the faith need God and

Rome because it gives them hope.

The Church of course needs the poor and obedience from them otherwise

it will not survive past the year 2999.

It started in the past, a half truth.

That past starts with the man known as Jesus, not Christ and what was

known then as the Jesus Movement, a Jewish religious groups in fact, not

Christian. It was after the death of Jesus that political as well as a new

formed religion took over and called itself the Christ movement.
 51

I had to research the birth of Jesus and found only in a hidden gospel as

I referred to above, one of many of course but for this part of my research

does show that what we read in the bible about the birth of Jesus and

Jesus as a child differs from the hidden text evidence.

Mary, the mother of Jesus is a good place to start and I will deal with that

‘other’ Mary later.

THE LOST GOSPEL OF THE BIRTH OF MARY.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, was from a royal race and family of David and

she was born in the city of Nazareth then later educated in Jerusalem in

the Temple so from my research such a place of learning was not for 'men

only.'

Her father was Joachim and her mother was Anna, the father's family were

from Galilee and also the city of Nazareth. Anna, the mother, was from

Bethlehem.

Anything they had in the way of food, animals or money they divided in

their community into three parts; one third to the Temple and the officers

who ran it, one third to the poor and the last third to themselves.

It is more than likely that Mary was a child bride and very young teenager

where she went into an 'arranged marriage' that had been set up by the

Hebrew priests of the temple.

They were together for twenty years before they had children.

Having no children after such a long time was frowned on by some of the

Priests of the temple, mainly Issachar who was High Priest of Jerusalem
 52

and made a point of informing Joachim told him that everyone not having

a male child in Israel was cursed.

This is similar to what priests told young married couples in Ireland up

to the 1970's but in their case they wanted more converts for Rome, even if

the parents already had children and found it hard to cope with feeding and

clothing them as was so often the case.

The reason why the Church of Rome frowned on birth control is that the

possibility of losing six hundred million converts world wide each year was

too much for them.

Of course if such a comment had been made to Joachim when he was on

his own it would have been bad enough but it was done when the temple

was packed and a good few of his friends and neighbours were there at the

time.

I have known of Catholic priests in Ireland telling their congregation to

rule out birth control as it was a sin and that too many young married

couples were married too long and childless .

Joachim was confused or seemed to be but he would also have felt great

embarrassment.

That night he did not go home but stayed with some shepherds outside of

the town and when he slept he had a dream that his wife would produce a

daughter and should be named Mary and should be brought to the temple

when she was eleven years old and married when she was twelve.

For some reason Joachim remembered the old story of Sarah and how
 53

after many years give birth to Isaac.

Then there was Rachel who was married to Jacob and was also barren

until she give birth to Joseph who later became the governor of Egypt.

Samson and Samuel were also born of 'barren' mothers.

Mary was born and when she was three, brought to the temple with

offerings and the fifteenth Psalms of degrees (120th-134th) had 15 stairs to

climb because the temple I discovered was built on a hill or small

mountain.

It would seem by this gospel that Mary, aged three took the stairs to the

top with ease.

Little did Mary know but according to Jewish Law, she was to be left there

with other children of her own age while her parents went home.

It would seem from my research that she did not see her parents again for

a long time and had been 'farmed out' to the temple officials.

When she reached the age of fourteen years she did have the chance to

return home but refused and while other children left she stayed on.

The officials at the Temple were more than a little put out that she refused

leave because she was, by Jewish Law, at the age where she should be

getting married.

It seems it was all sorted out by rods brought by unmarried men who came

to the temple and a young Joseph was one of them.

Mary and Joseph the carpenter were then married and in time a number of

children were born to them, one being Jesus. The Virgin birth was and is a
 54

myth. Of Jesus the child and as a teenager little is known and after his

death it was Paul in fact who started it off and in a short time he had no

choice but to include the dead Jesus and some of his words and

background into this movement and that is how Christianity began.

The new Christ Movement was anti Jewish to a fault and continued to be

so for many years.

I am concerned only with the archaeology evidence in this research and

religion links because to get involved with the long standing religious

debate makes things more unclear than they already are. More like the bed

of a stream or river. You can see things on the bottom as long as you don't

stir up the mud.

Religions in passing from an archaeology point of view do play a part

in the research as well as many of the past social groups in the Holy Land.

No matter who you are, researching Jesus the man, is rife with

contradictions because of poor past and present day interpretation of the

evidence, not to mention those people who are more then basis and push

the Christian Faith beyond the pale be it truth or fiction.

That of course is their belief but it does little to enhance the facts as

I have discovered.

One of the problems many people of how a Jew and from the Royal

household family at that time could form a group that were later named

Christians. It was a small group and if it was around today, may well be

classified by some as a terrorist group, more so by Israel and others in the

 55

Middle East that surround what is known as the Holy Land.

Jesus however was a Jew, a Hebrew and that is the course he followed as

did most of his followers until his death around 30 AD.

There is some doubt in my mind from the research I carried out if in fact he

was in the royal bloodline of David and I suggest that this was not the case

from a genetic point of view.

The evidence that he remained a Jew is still there and his name, King of

the Jews was given to him by the Jewish Priests and Rome as this was

their way of demeaning him and the Jesus Movement. Jesus died a Jew

and not for Christian dogma as is so often stated even today.

Getting involved with such research many years ago was not as straight

forward as I had though because looking at the archaeology evidence as

well as the social evidence there was also the paranormal and psychology
 56

influence that had to be considered. Much could also be said about the

Grail and Grail seekers world wide today.

The paranormal, psychology, religion and archaeology history all go hand

in hand as a suggested formula. To leave such out took away pointers to

Holy Land events of that time.

In parts of this research there is also natural history research which is only

included when and where it is needed to emphasize a point or present as

evidence of an event. Natural history and geology do play a very important

part in field archaeology and reading a landscape as it was then rather than

what it is now is a gift, but only with training and hands on archaeology.

NOTES ON THE HOLY LAND.

In order to get some idea of what the Holy Land was and is I have

researched specific aspects and customs of the peoples here and

surrounding areas in pre-biblical, biblical and post biblical history.

Without such background information on Agriculture, baths as well as

bathing, burial, embalming, cult objects, forts, houses, inscriptions, metals,

monastery set up, seals, roads, synagogues, writing and trade there would

be little point in the archaeology research into Jesus.

Also time-lines for the span of Jesus birth and death is very important

as well.

There were many civilizations involved in and around the Holy Land some

of them in place by 7000 BC. Up to 1500 AD

Many came later as invaders or to trade and all left some evidence as well
 57

as parts of their cult culture.

It was the Mesopotamia that produced the very first civilization city and

state in 3100 BC on the banks and delta of the Nile.

In the two horns of what is known as the Fertile Crescent, progress within

was important with Syria-Palestine at its centre.

Both these did benefit from such progress but also became victims of

invasion and wars.

The Assyrians and Babylonians came from the east and headed south,

Egyptians came from the south east and going north but the most

important group were the Semites who came from the south end of the

Arabian Desert where they mingled or displaced the local Neolithic peoples

of Palestine.

BC

The Neolithic people give these first invaders names such as; The Howling

People, The Ghosts, The Horrors, and The Long necked men.

When the second invasive wave of Semites came it was the Amorites then

later followed by the Armenians which brought the very early Hebrew

tribes.

It must be kept in mind at all times that Christianity is a young religion,

2010 years only and overshadowed by some of the much older ones as

well as cultures and societies of peoples. Therefore the history of the Holy

Land is complex and not pure but had been and still is multi cultural that

went wrong because it never worked or never will. Much can be said today
 58

about many of the cities of Europe and the UK where such multi cultural

ideas abound, even forced on people to except without question or protest

and in my view and informed opinion prone for disaster and future

violence. What in fact happens is not only the people are imported or

invade but they bright with them many other things, religions being the

curse of all nations when it is tested to the full.

With such cultures and societies came parts or whole characters and

alphabets which can be viewed below.

In many cases such alphabets were later taken and parts used in

other writings therefore giving clues to social culture contact over the

years BC. It is of course the interpretation of such that leads to difficulty for

the archaeologist or other scholars of history.

Archaeology and forensic archaeology still needs to continue the work into

Pre-Semitic history and more so with a close look at Palestine though at

the moment that is still impossible due to wars and conflict.

It is a coastal strip of which invaders marched, a mountain spine, the deep

Cleft of the Jordan valley Dead Sea rift, with all three areas running north

to south. In the east beyond the rift is now nothing but desert.

The strip ends well south of the modern city of Haifa where the ridge of

mountains meets the sea. Here, coastal route does turn inland at a pass

where the fortress of Megiddo or Armageddon crosses the Plain of Jezreel

and then fords the River Jordan on the road to Damascus.

Jerusalem on the spinal centre is 2,500 feet above sea level and 35 miles
 59

from the coast in the west and 20 miles from the bottom of the rift in the

east where the land is recorded at 1,290 feet below sea level.

This was the main crossroads lie and was used by many in the past.

It was at these crossroads that the tribes of history passed and sometimes

re-passed but always leaving some evidence behind them that they had

indeed been there.

Signs and symbols were a good part of artefact evidence some of which I

have place on the following pages. Note the similar symbols throughout

the ages and in different tribes above.

From to so called symbols at the found tomb of Jesus to the Dead Sea

Scrolls all have a part to play in Holy Land Archaeology.

First there needs to be an understanding of what in fact sign and symbols

were and are. I deal here with Middle East signs and symbols.

Symbol means sign, mark token, recognition and from the Greek to throw

all together Early on it was one half symbol and the other part when found

and joined would in fact give a meaning or word.

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Such a method also ensured that the authenticity of the person and

meaning was true.

In other words if we look at today's symbols they mean one of two

things, something that represents or denotes something else. The symbol

of an owl may look like the bird but could mean also wisdom as in Wise

Owl.

From an archaeology point of view when interpretation is needed for such

past signs and symbols it is not the modern mind that must interpret what

he or she thinks it is, but what it means in prehistory.

 61

For some reason today's academic archaeology minds miss this simple

point without using common sense and thinking not what it is but what it

was. Much has been lost as evidence with such thinking and a good lot of

artefacts with signs and symbols should be re-examined again if they have

not been bastardised by academics who worked in ‘bad’ archaeology.

The main function of all signs and symbols is Communication.

The first was very primitive cave drawings and paintings staring around

25,000 years ago but it was not until 5500 BC it was then language started

to appear with the very first scripts being pictorial.

Then came sign and symbol evolution which I suggest was like this.

5500 BC.

PICTORIAL.

IDEOGRAMS.

LOGOGRAMS.

2000 BC.

PHONOGRAMS.
 62

The first true writing was invented by the Sumerian's who at that time

lived in the Euphrates valley, Mesopotamia, (modern South Iraq) and very

likely the Marsh Tribes could have strong genetic links with the Sumerian's

of pre-history. The earliest written records from this area was found at

Nippur and only because clay tablets were discovered.

They were dated at around c.3400 BC.

Most cuneiform signs were logo grams which stood for words but there

was150+signs that were also used to represent syllables or was so often

the case and still missed by many of today's archaeologists, stand for

another word that sounded similar but with a very different meaning.

An example of this is the Sumerian word fish Ha, but could also mean may

and the same signs were used for both words.

At least 25 logo grams were used as determinative and placed before other

signs but not pronounced indicated the class of object or being to which

the spoken signs belonged.

Although cuneiform looks complicated it was highly successful at the time

and was used by the Akkadians, Babylonians, and much later by the

Assyrians who simplified them and made them more square.

Baked clay for the most is imperishable therefore many good examples of

cuneiforms survived and found but I suggest many more will be found.

Early pictogram.

Late pictogram s.
 63

Cuneiform.

Babylonian.

Assyrian.

2500 BC 1800 BC 700 BC

Such cuneiforms and symbols were recorded, added to, removed and

replaced by many invaders over time.

The phonogram of a mounted cross is not the sign of the cross as many

Christians believe in but an old sign well before Jesus which reads thus;

n+f+r and pronounced 'nefr meaning good or beautiful.

From 539 BC the use of the cuneiform in Mesopotamia was beginning to

decline in use but was kept alive and in use by priests and many scholars

and the last known records are 75 AD.

It is this last group of cuneiform writing that suggests that there may

well be others and some have been hidden away which may well give us

more insight if not to Jesus the Man, then the history of his time and

beyond for 75 years.

If we take a fact that Jesus was a man, was crucified and is said to have

died when he was 30 years of age then there has to be some written

records in cuneiform or text that should well point to evidence that he died

on the day stated or, more important did not die, was removed and hidden
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away and lived into old age with his wife and children.

Where better than in Egypt or Rome, maybe both? The New Testament

version somehow does not give the full story of what really happened and I

have included part of it here for reference.

The New Testament data.

The depiction of Jesus suggests that he was largely a law-abiding and

highly nationalistic Jew, and a man with strong ethical concerns.

Like many of Judaism's great rabbis though Jesus was never a rabbi, he

saw love of a neighbour as religion's central demand.

Though many Christians are under the impression that he opposed

Judaism's emphasis on law, in actuality he criticized anyone who

advocated dropping it.

"Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law [the Torah] or the

Prophets," he declared to his early disciples in the Jesus Movement.

“I tell you solemnly, till heaven and earth disappear, not one dot, not

one little stroke, shall disappear from the Law until its purpose is

achieved."

The law’s” purpose," of course, is the universal recognition of God, a goal

which neither Christianity nor Judaism believes was realized in Jesus'

time, or since. It is now very unlikely it ever will be before the human

mammal becomes extinct as a species and the apes and monkey’s will still

look up at the stars and moon and night in wonder, yet puzzlement no

doubt.
 65

Jesus concluded his message with a severe warning: "Therefore, the man

who infringes even the least of these commandments and teaches others

to do the same will be considered the least in the kingdom of heaven"

(Matthew 5:17-19

On at least one specific legal issue, Jesus identified with the stricter rather

than the more lenient rabbis.

The prevailing School of Hillel taught that divorce was permitted for any

reason, while the School of Shammai permitted it in cases of sexual

misconduct the position later attributed to Jesus in the New Testament

(Matthew 5:31-32

The subsequent Catholic ban on all divorce seems to represent an even

stricter legal standard than the one Jesus established.

Today the European Courts for Human Rights is in a real dilemma of how

to resolve this issue where religions are involved world wide, but more so

with Catholics.

A perennially interesting, though probably unanswerable, question is how

Jesus regarded himself.

Did he see himself as the Messiah? I am of the option that Jesus the man

and a Jew would not even have considered this nor for the sake of ego

would himself pushed the idea onto others.

Gandhi likewise never considered himself a Messiah though he was looked

on by many as a great man.

It was the followers of both probably, that thought this although one must
 66

remember that in the first centuries of the Common Era the word "Messiah"

had a different meaning than it has today as did the word 'Christ' because

the word 'Christ' did mean Messiah.

Contemporary believers usually think of the Messiah as a wholly spiritual

figure.

Then, it meant a military leader who would free the Jews from foreign (i.e.,

Roman rule,) bring them back from the four corners of the earth, and usher

in an age of universal peace. It would seem from this that the Jews were

seeking their own ‘Grail’.

A century after Jesus, many Jews accepted the military general, Bar

Kokhba as the Messiah, although even his greatest supporter, Rabbi Akiva

made no claims regarding his spiritual greatness.

Indeed, it was precisely because of the military association with the word

"Messiah" that the occupying Roman authorities must have seen Jesus as

dangerous and decided to crucify him.

That the Romans hung over Jesus' body a sign proclaiming his crime,

KING OF THE JEWS, again underscores the apparently militant and

political direction of his activities. Parts of this sign and the cross were to

be named as the Grail.

Jesus' nationalism, which occasionally spilled over into an unpleasant

chauvinism, is illustrated by a story in Matthew:

"Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. Then out came a

Canaanite woman from that district and started shouting, 'Sir, Son of David,
 67

take pity on me. My daughter is tormented by a devil.' But he answered her

not a word.

And his disciples went and pleaded with him.

'Give her what she wants,' they said, 'because she is shouting after us.'

He said in reply, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.'

But the woman had come up and was kneeling at his feet.

'Lord,' she said, 'help me.'

He replied, 'it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the

house-dogs.' Such a statement is like an Irish man saying, “There is many

a slippy stone to a gentleman’s house”, or me saying to a group of Yoga

students, “When a sparrow dies a natural death only God will see it.”

It means nothing to most but something of wisdom to a few.

The woman in question of course knew the wisdom of it.

She retorted, 'Ah, yes, sir; but even house-dogs can eat the scraps that

fall from their master's table.' Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, you

have great faith. Let your wish be granted"' (Matthew15:21-28 )

Concerning Jesus' executioner, Pontius Pilate, we have a considerable

body of data that contradicts the largely sympathetic portrayal of him in the

New Testament. Even among the long line of cruel procurators who ruled

Judea, Pilate stood out as a notoriously vicious man. He eventually was

replaced after murdering a group of Samaritans: The Romans realized that

keeping him in power would only provoke continual rebellions.

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The gentle, kind hearted Pilate of the New Testament who in his "heart of

hearts" really did not want to harm Jesus is fictional.

Like most fictions, the story was created with a purpose in mind.

When the New Testament was written, Christianity was banned by Roman

law. The Romans, were well aware that they had executed the founder of

the Jesus Movement. Indeed the reference to Jesus' crucifixion by the

Roman historian Tacitus is among the earliest allusions to him outside the

New Testament had no reason to rescind their anti-Christian legislation.

Christianity’s only hope for gaining legitimacy was to "prove" to Rome that

Its crucifixion of Jesus had been a terrible error, and had only come about

because the Jews forced Pilate to do it.

Thus, the New Testament depicts Pilate as wishing to spare Jesus from

punishment, only to be stymied by a large Jewish mob yelling, "Crucify

him." The account ignores one simple fact.

Pilate's power in Judea was absolute. Had he wanted to absolve Jesus, he

would have done so: He certainly would not have allowed a mob of Jews,

whom he detested, to force him into killing someone whom he admired.

Crucifixion itself, a Roman form of execution, was forbidden by Jewish law

because it was torture, something of a fact that many Christians today fail

to take on board.

Some 50,000 to 100,000 Jews were themselves crucified by the Romans in

the first century.

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How ironic, therefore, that Jews have historically been associated with

the cross as the ones who brought about Jesus' crucifixion.?

Is there a Jewish consensus on how Jews are to regard Jesus? Perhaps

not, but in recent decades many Jewish scholars have tended to view him

as one of several first- and second-century Jews who claimed to be the

Messiah, and who attempted to rid Judea of its Roman oppressors.

However, almost no Jewish scholars believe that Jesus intended to start

a new religion.

Were Jesus to return today, most Jews believe, he undoubtedly would feel

more at home in a synagogue than a church. I tend to agree with this.

An increasing number of Jewish scholars believe that Christianity real

founder was another first-century Jew, Paul.

With the evidence in my research I am of the opinion that this in fact was

the case. Most statements attributed to Jesus in the New Testament

conform to Jewish teachings. This is, of course, not surprising, since

Jesus generally practised Pharisaic (rabbinic) Judaism. However, at least

three innovative teachings ascribed to Jesus diametrically oppose Jewish

teachings.

1.Jesus forgives all sins: "The Son of man has the authority on earth to

forgive sins" (Matthew 9:6

Judaism believes that God Himself only forgives those sins committed

against Him.
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As the Mishna teaches: "Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, atones for

sins against God, not for sins against man, unless the injured party has

been appeased" (Yoma 8:9).

The belief that Jesus can forgive all sins is fraught with moral peril.

Some fifteen hundred years after he lived, Protestant reformer Martin

Luther writing in the spirit of Jesus' statement, taught: "Be a sinner and sin

vigorously; but even more vigorously believe and delight in Christ who is

victor over sin, death and the world....

It is sufficient that we recognize through the wealth of God's glory the

lamb who bears the sins of the world; from this sin does not sever us,

even if thousands, thousands of times in one day we should fornicate or

murder" (letter to Philip Melanchthon, August 1, 1521).

2.

Jesus' attitude toward evil people: "Offer the wicked man no resistance.

On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other

as well" (Matthew 5:38-39 and "Love your enemies and pray for your

persecutors" (Matthew 5:44 )

The Torah commands that one offer the wicked man powerful resistance:

"You shall burn the evil out from your midst" (Deuteronomy 17:7 )

Elsewhere, the Torah approvingly records Moses' killing of a brutal

Egyptian overseer who was beating a Jewish slave.

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3.

Jesus' claim that people can come to God only through him: "No one

knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to

reveal Him" (Matthew 11:27 )

The implication of this statement and the continuing belief of many

fundamental Protestants is that only one who believes in Jesus can come

to God. Judaism holds that anyone can come to God; as the Psalmist

teaches: "God is near to all who call unto Him" (Psalms 145:18)

My own research has looked at the Old and New Testament and it suggests

that the crime that Jesus was supposed to have committed was to be

known as 'King of the Jews' and leader of a new Jewish Movement not in

anyway a Christian one because there were no Christians at the time of

Jesus and his crucifixion. It was in fact the Romans who arrested him, not

the Jews though I suspect a few high ranking Jewish priests were pleased

with the result.

Punished and sentenced to death by crucifixion by the Romans but backed

by some well heeled and powerful Jewish Priests but carried out by the

Romans, the body of Jesus would still have been under strict Jewish laws

as well as his family and followers in removing and washing the body

before sunset.
 72

As it was getting into the weekend, there would have been haste on all

sides to perform these last rites before the start of Sabbath at sunset on

the Friday because Saturday was a day of rest for all Jews.

There would have been sense of panic from family members and others in

that community. In those times there was and still is 39 forbidden activities.

This would mean that the Friday Jesus died on the cross at around 3.00pm

and in April of that year there would have been less than four hours of

daylight left to carry out the removal of the body, the washing of the body

and the placing in the tomb or grave. I should point out here that you

needed to be well heeled and have connections to have a tomb.

This tomb must have been a family tomb but well outside the city walls.

If that was the case then it was into the soft stone in a rocky hill side

and had two chambers.

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The outer chamber would have been where the body would have been

washed carefully, dried, then anointed with herbs and spices mixed with

oil, more than likely palm oil.

Once this ritual was carried out the body would be wrapped in a shroud

and placed on its back in the outer chamber and the entrance sealed with a

large stone pushed into place by a number of people.

In most cases of Jewish burials like this, a full year would pass before

the bones were cleaned and moved into the second chamber but with no

hint of any flesh or tissue on the bones.

Such ossuaries were used by family generations over the years and most

times the name of the last body in would be placed on the outside of the

tomb, engraved into the soft stone.

The tomb in question was said to be on loan by Joseph of Arimathea.

I have a problem with this tomb loan suggestion and that is why a normal

burial did not take place at least till the Sabbath was finished then the

body moved to a more permanent location.

Many archaeologists living in the west somehow fail to take on board the

many types of burial that did take place in the Holy Land and even into the

time of Jesus. Ritual burial in the Holy Land took many forms of which I

feel and of the opinion needs to be addressed.

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TYPES OF BURIAL.

Like all groups in the Middle East, the belief in an after-life was real

and not new. It is as old as the first human being who could think and

reason. From this observation then as far as the Holy Land burials were

concerned from 1000BC to 33AD attention was always given to how the

body would be placed in the grave or tomb and where that would be.

The earliest burials recorded were from the Middle Palaeolithic Period in

Palestine.

The Mousterian culture buried their dead in pits and sometimes but not

always, coving the body with stones. Such was found at Mount Carmel with

the body placed in a contracted position, knees drawn up and the hands

place near the breast. A few funerary objects were placed close to the

remains .Many hundreds of burials of the Natufian Mesolithic culture have

been discovered and during this period the internments were of 2 types.

(1) The body was placed in the grave in the contracted position but on its

side. This could well be collective or single internment.

(2) The skull alone was interned.

The women and sometimes men, wore pendants, necklaces, anklets which

were made from shell or bone. Some skeletons were painted red.

Once the Neolithic period advanced, new burial customs also came into

play, with skulls buried in the floor parts of houses as found in Jericho but

Megalithic monuments were also erected which in fact was the dolmen or

table grave. The tomb itself was covered with small stones and soil.
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Those found in Palestine were all in the semi-arid wilderness as in the

Jordan Valley hills. The date put on them at the moment was 4000 BC.

In the tombs linked to them single and double burials were found to have

taken place.

During the Chalcolithic Period, (Copper Age) 4000-3000 BC, on the coastal

plains the first clay ossuary’s were used and most no longer than 2 feet in

length but all contained human bones. All the bones were detached.

Such ossuary’s were found stored in artificial caves in the soft sandstone.

90% of those discovered were built in the shape of small houses with

gabled roofs. The opening was large enough to insert a skull and some

bones then a door was closed over.

Some ossuary’s were in the shape of animals and at times, a much smaller

one and was placed inside the larger one.

Cyst (Pits) graves were also common during this time.

EARLY BRONZE AGE.

Funeral rites and culture moved forwards with graves in the Holy Land

being built more carefully than human dwellings.

The burials were single or collective and shaft graves were now common.

Such a shaft would lead deep underground to a burial chamber.

Each such tomb would have pottery vessels and many were tea pot jugs,

plates bowls and cups.

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The remains of food in such were also discovered in the tombs.

At Babe dh-Dhra there is at least 20,000 such tombs as well as shaft

graves. Some of the tombs here were stone lined and stone roofed and one

shaft did lead to a number of burial chambers.

Pots in such chambers were placed around the walls while in the centre

of the floor the bones were piled.

A charnel house was also found here in this area and was mud brick 35 x

17 feet. There were many skulls at the door way and inside mixed layers of

pottery and bones.

In the same area at a later date cairn burials were now taking place which

was no more than a shallow pit in which a body was placed with some

goods and pottery and then filled in with stones but showed slightly above

the ground surface. There may well be a link here to design and use to

those cairn burial sites in the UK and Ireland.

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Middle Bronze Age brought various types of burial practice and in some

place the dead were buried within the confines of a town and close to

houses with the tombs built of stone and reopened when needed again.

Collective burial was now also practised on a much larger scale but the

numbers were < 40 bodies for each tomb with pottery and food also placed

inside.

The body would be placed on its back with the knees raised and with each

new burial the bones of the last were moved to one side. Cumuli were also

scattered over the hills but very few have been excavated.

A stone cyst on a bed of flat stone was found, 3x 5 feet x 3 feet, the body

had been laid on flat stones with a jar and some grinding stones near by.

The Tumulus was made up of stones and earth and was raised over the

grave to a height of 15 feet. The diameter was 14 feet.

By the time Hyksos ruled Palestine a new type of burial was now in place.

This was dead warriors and their horses were interned together.Weapons

and pottery were also placed in the burial area.

LATE BRONZE AGE BURIALS.

Tombs now were made up of a shaft and sloping towards the grave which

led to a well rounded or square burial chamber and over 200 pottery shards

have been recovered from one tomb.

IRON AGE BURIALS

Oval pit with a ledge and a stone cover and also a shaft that was in the
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sand- stone and the body placed here then blocked with a large stone.

Then came the multi-chamber tomb with an open court from which steps

led into an underground anti-chamber where on the walls were high ledges

for placing the body. Forty four such burial places were found in one area.

ROMAN PERIOD.

Mainly burial caves but not many and range from small family tombs to

large catacombs for the rich or Royalty. In time fancy tombs were built

inside of caves but also as a stand alone tomb with underground passages

and chambers.

Large Jewish necropolis was also built at this time along side the less

formal burials.Some of the shafts could run as deep as 20 feet into a burial

chamber and both were lined with dressed stone.

In such, there would always be a wooden coffin.

THE BURIAL PLACE OF JESUS.

As I have suggested by my research above then the burial place, if he was

buried, would be linked to one of the above burial practices of the time.

There would be no getting away from this evidence but one thing I do know

from the evidence research data is that a special or personal tomb was not

designed for the body of Jesus in the Holy Land.

CHAPTER 10.

HOLY LAND ARCHAEOLOGY.

THE FAMILY TOMB LINKS.

It was in 1980 that bulldozers working there uncovered a tomb at

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Talpiot, Jerusalem and Jewish archaeologists were brought in to map the

tomb and remove a number of ossuary’s to a warehouse.

The outside of the tomb had a round ring symbol on it with an upside-

down chevron surrounding the ring. Inside under the slit were 3 skulls that

had been placed there, almost at the entrances of the 3 burial niches.

There is evidence that before the discovery and many years before, the

tomb had been broken into by tomb robbers who removed artefacts such

as the normal oil lamps of the time, glass bottles that may have held

perfume and clay tea pot like jugs.

I would suggest that some bones were also removed for the moment the

reasons unknown. The real possibility that bones or skulls had been added

at a later date cannot be dismissed.

If one or more of these bones were taken there is no good forensic

evidence that supports that they could be linked to Jesus or other

members of his family though whoever took them may indeed thought that

were one of the 'grails' much looked for.

Four of the ossuary’s show no type of inscriptions but the other 6 do

which makes ten in all that was removed in a legal way but there may well
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have been two broken into or removed by tomb robbers be they Crusaders

or Templars. For the moment the ossuary’s are claimed to be identified as;

A very plain almost unmarked and the plainest of all the ossuary’s said

to be that of Jesus, son of Joseph.

Another one ID as that of Yosa or Joseph but not known if this Joseph was

the father of Jesus or Joseph of Arimathea.

If the bone box contained any remains of Joseph of Arimathea then he was

placed here after the death of Jesus many years later and this tomb may

well have been his family tomb as suggested by others.

The 3rd one is ID as that of Maria = Mary and in Hebrew letters but the

Latin version of the Hebrew name (Roman) but is it the wife of Joseph or

that of Mara, Mary Magdalene who must therefore have become part of this

family through marriage.

Marianne was Mary Magdalene real name but may also have been known

as Maraas the Greek inscription suggests.

Another bone box had the name Matia on it which suggests Matthew but

not known if it is Matthew the Gospel writer.

The main box that throws a spanner in the works is the one marked Judah,

son of Jesus, and this being a very small ossuary which does suggest

made for a child.

I would suggest that the Joseph mentioned is not the father of Jesus

because it is more than likely he died and was buried in Nazareth and not

Jerusalem, and not ending up in the Talpiot tomb. Unless of course the
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bones were removed from Nazareth and placed in the tomb at Talpiot as a

secondary burial?

One has to keep in mind that like today first names like John, Mary,

Joseph, Matthew, Simon and so on were also common in the Holy Land

and thought were recorded in Hebrew or Greek, ‘Jesus’ may not be the

Jesus of the Bible. There is not any evidence to support this was in fact the

tomb of Jesus of the bible.

From a forensic point of view the finding of the tomb due to building

construction and of course surrounding destruction scattered or lost

forensic evidence including bones and bone fragments.

The IAA, (Israel Antiquities Authority) were more than slow to move on the

discovery on March 28th 1980, a Friday and as it was getting close to the

Sabbath with sunset a few hours away no one was sent till the Sunday.

In the meantime, the tomb entrance was open for anyone who wanted to

enter could and children nearby discovered skulls and bits of bone and

were in fact throwing them around.

The area was in fact little more now than an open cast mine or new

building site with materials being used for roads.

All that was left of the skulls was brow ridges and bone fragments with a

few teeth. Two of the skulls were smashed into many fragments.
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In time the site was named and numbered as IAA 80/500-509.

What now is known about the tomb area outline is that there had been an

outer courtyard in the very front of the Tomb faÃade that was carved into

limestone and some chalk, not sandstone, though it had remained un-

discovered under red mud and weeds for many years.

The courtyard was placed at 15 feet wide and to the north of this; a wall

had been wrecked by the work crew a few days before.

The entrance to the anti-chamber was carved into the north wall, the seal

pointing the way down to a much larger chamber.

Skull fragments were mixed together here with disturbed soil and rubble,

a forensic and archaeology nightmare in fact. The skulls found however in

the anti-chamber had not been buried according to Jewish practice of the

times. I found this to be odd and well out of normal Jewish practices

around 30 to 80 AD. Somehow, something is not right here be it the skulls

or the type of burial.

The IAA did not move onto the site until dawn on the Sunday and though

work had been stopped much outer damage had been done.
 83

Now all that could be done outside was salvage archaeology a hit and

more miss ,exercise than one thinks. Pressure was of course on the IAA

because all work had been stopped and time lost to the construction

workers was also money lost. Instead of having months, even weeks the

evidence gathering to a few days at the most.

The inside of the tomb to be mapped and photographed as well as the sign

above the door V and possible Y with a circle in the middle.

It should be noted that the inside of the tomb was damp and mouldy as

well as a possible health risk to those in the archaeology field working in

there.

The floor was covered in deep red mud. (terra rossa) The evidence in this

research suggests that the mud on the floor had taken hundreds of years

to accumulate there and that all bone fragments outside of the seal stone

had been the result of past tomb robbery.

As for the ‘mud’, I suggest that most of this was bat droppings over many

years, mainly from the larger Horse-shoe bats and that it was a summer

roost.(See above)

Jews in 1AD to 100 AD did not leave the remains of family members

outside a tomb to rot away and be picked over by black kites or dogs.

Inside the ossuary niches were now discovered under the red mud as well

as two arched burial shelves. There is without doubt that such were the

primary sites. They were cut into the stone on the north and west walls of

the tomb.
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Whoever had ordered the burial shelves had money and power because

they were carved out of solid rock.

It should be kept in mind that only 20% of all ossuary’s discovered in

Jerusalem have had inscriptions on them and 80% none.

A few that were removed on site were inscribed in Aramaic linked to

Hebrew, Hebrew, but linked to Latin and one in Greek.

A skull was also discovered inside the tomb but somehow seemed out of

place where it was found for it was not on any shelf or part of an ossuary.

Where the first skull was discovered two more were found also making the

number of 3 of skulls in a place they should not have been.

The circle above the door suggested a royal bloodline but I suggest was

a blank and never finished. If it had been the family tomb of Jesus it would

have been even if Jesus had not been interned there.

It was here that one of the skulls had been found earlier by children

playing. The three skulls that had been found inside and not in a place

where one would expect to find them ,seemed to have been placed there at

a much later date but placed as some sort of sign or symbol.

Such bones or fragments could not be classified as The Grail unless

someone was sure who they belonged to. So far this has not happened.

It was possible to extract DNA data from the skulls and bone fragments to

see if there was in fact a genetic family link to the remains but this was not

carried out for some reason.

As it therefore stands and with limited evidence that has been supplied as
 85

data for research as well as on site data recorded I am now of the opinion

that the above Tomb is not one that the remains of Jesus the man was

placed or that of his family that were close to him. Therefore from this point

of view and evidence there is no ‘grail’ material here that would stand up to

close scrutiny.

Of course that will not stop people writing books and papers on the tomb

but what I ask is in their evidence that they are going to present to the

public eye and ear? Very little if the truth be known because what will be

written and of course re-written will all be rehashed data that borders on

fiction and fairy stories with the word ‘maybe’ included in the text at least

30 times.

Expect it to be added to of course, like the unmarked boxes in the tomb

and skulls, to the Knights Templars, Alien bodies interned after a

spaceship crash, a hidden grail and King Arthur, and a long dead female

Egyptian Goddess who turns out to be male or vice versa.

Nothing like a clear and focused mind when it comes down to archaeology

and history where truth and evidence is needed!

Data on the Dead Sea Scrolls past and present presents some vital clues

to the thinking then as well as interpretation of such which I had to include

below. The Scroll Data could not be left out of the Grail research.

CHAPTER 12.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLL DATA

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There will be problems with many people in accepting the Dead Sea Scrolls

as archaeology data that is based on fact but one thing I do know is that

all the scroll scripts were written as what was believed at the time and may

have been ‘doctored’ and added to by others.

There is also again the problem of languages and also the time-line factors

because they don't always add up as good strong evidence yet there could

well be clues within them that point to what the ‘grail’ or grails are.

Questions may well be asked were the scrolls written or re-rewritten before

the death of Jesus or after when the Christ Movement was in full swing

because Jesus became 'Christ' after his death not before?

The scribes who wrote the scrolls may well have been making copies of the

very old originals or parts of them.

No doubt this will be found in the style of letters and the written word

itself.

My own research into the Dead Sea Scrolls and Copper Scrolls started ten

years ago and what started as a major Archaeology Research Project

became also a major forensic investigation into all the details.

It had all the makings of a good detective story as I uncovered details

of misconduct, politics of the worse kind, maybe even murder, shady

deals, good and bad archaeology practice, political intervention, fraud, and

reputations ruined and made all because of the archaeology finds at

Qumran and there-after.

Move over Dan Brown!

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THE HISTORY

The first findings of the scrolls in 1947 in a cave at Qumran by a young

Taamireh Bedouin teenager, Muhammad adh-Dhib, opened up Pandora's

Box in the world of religion and politics.

Archaeology Departments world-wide became hostile to others and more

so if they had any material from cave 1, from now on known as 1Q and the

others later discovered as 2Q, 3Q, and so on.

In the beginning it started off as a battle for content of scroll fragments

later to become a war.

I suspect also that somewhere in the dry sands of the Qumran area there

are modern day human bones to be yet discovered and foul play should

not be ruled out and at least three shallow graves. There were a number of

people for such a shallow grave in the beginning of this scroll saga.
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The Qumran area and the caves became the stage, the actors to play all

parts were still not on stage but were gathering in the wings, and the rest

were scattered world wide, playing bit parts when their turn came.

In the lighting of the stage set, a great shadow of the Church of Rome

loomed and elsewhere, more religious shadows fought for a place in the

lime-light or take centre stage if and when they got the chance.

There were many who wanted the chance, dead bodies or murdered

reputations mattered little to them as long as they reached their own

personal goal and had a paper published or got rich on stolen scroll

fragments as well as fraud.

In this research at first I wanted to avoid going over old ground about

the Dead Sea and Copper Scrolls.

This in a short time became impossible because to get the full story I

needed to take a hard look again at all the data that I had and in doing so

discovered much more than scrolls and scroll fragments. So for this part of

my research I had to re-write and re-think the research.

Therefore I have had to list all my research data and include it here.

(WADY QUMRAN MANUSCRIPTS)

We know in the winter of 1947 a young boy discovered the 1st lot of scrolls

in jars and scattered fragments in 1Q cave and took some scrolls and in

time passed some or all on. I have no doubt at all this was done for money

and who could blame him because times were hard and he had no
 89

knowledge what such scrolls were.

His friend who he brought to 1Q later removed a few more scrolls and from

here the archaeology world became involved as well as religious groups.

The Second World War was over and a new war was starting in the Holy

Land.

THE PEOPLE INVOLVED FROM THE BEGINNING.

VERSION ONE .

2 TAAMIREH BEDOUIN BOYS, ONE BEING MUHAMMED adh-DHIB.

(see photograph 1) WINTER OF 1947 FEB OR MARCH.

(There is still much debate in which months the cave was discovered

along with the first scrolls and fragments. I would suggest early March)

The summer of 1947 has also been put forward by some archaeology field

workers and not the winter. This would not be the case as flocks of goats

and sheep would need tending once in spring more so than in summer and

the lambs already born.

KHALIL ISKANDER SHANHIN (KANDO) GENERAL DEALER AND

ASSYRIAN CHRISTIAN.
 90

Second contact with the scrolls.

Took the scrolls he had obtained from the Bedouin to the Syrian Convent

of St. Mark in the Old City (Jerusalem).He was now alerted that there might

be more scrolls to be uncovered in 1Q and worth something so he and a

friend, GEORGE, went back to the 1Qcave and collected a number of larger

fragments. They wanted to cut out the middle man and fast.

It was then that they let the Syrian authorities of St. Marks into their secret.

That is, from my research, the first scrolls found, the fragments later

and more than likely scrolls from 1Q.

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ATHANASIUS YESHUE SAMUEL, ARCHBISHOP, SYRIAN ORTHODOX

CHURCH.

Was not a Hebrew scholar but his monastery did contain many old text

scripts before he came in contact with the Dead Sea Scrolls out of 1Q.

St Marks Monastery is known to have a vast collection of ancient

documents from past history and seeing the scrolls for the first time was

aware that they were important to someone.

He first came in contact with the scrolls from 1Q in April 1947 but it was

not until July that he requested Kando (see above) along with George

Isaiah to set up a meeting with him with the two young youths who first

found the scrolls in 1Q and to bring them and the scrolls to St. Marks.

The two young Arab teenagers did in fact turn up at the gates of St.

Mark’s with the scrolls in a bag.

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Jerusalem being a place of unrest between Jews and Arabs the gate

keepers were unaware that Samuel had requested the youths to come

turned them away and would not let them enter.

There is little doubt from my research that these two young men did in

fact have at least 4 scrolls with them, maybe more fragments and were

angry when they left the gates of St. Mark’s.

It would have been more than an insult to the Bedouin men because not

only had they come a long way by requests from Kando and Isaiah, but on

getting there were dismissed out of hand by the people on the gate.

Both young men it seems, refused to have anything more to do with Kando

and Isaiah and one of them, name not known, sold his share of the scrolls

to a local dealer in the City of Bethlehem.

This Dealer I was to learn was a Jewish merchant inside the Jaffa Gate and

wanted to buy more such scrolls if they could be found and for a good

price. George Isaiah however did persuade the Arab youths to refuse such

an offer but again come with him in two weeks to St. Mark’s Monastery.

Kando however was able to buy the remaining scrolls later of the other

man then sold them on to Samuel at St. Marks There were 5 scrolls in all

but one was badly damaged.

The four scrolls that Samuel now had were and are listed as;

OF ISAIAH OLD TESTEMENT

GENESIS APOCRYPHON.

BOOK OF HABAKKUK ---COMMENTS.

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COMMUNITY RULE.

ARAMAIC SCROLL (Damaged and unopened)

What happened to the damaged 5th scroll I don't know but suggest that

Samuel also obtained this or at least some of the fragments?

The 5th scroll was reported broken in two.

Samuel then sent George Isaiah and one of his priests, Father Yusef with

him back to 1Q cave where they would work only at night because of army

patrols in the area and this they did, finding another jar of scrolls and

fragments as well of other scrolls that have never been seen.

There is little doubt in my mind that Samuel bought all what was found at

a price and George Isaiah went away a happy man to the bank.

Samuel needed to know the real age of the scrolls he now had so he

himself went to see a Syrian expert Stephen Hanna Stephen who worked in

the Department Of Antiquities in Palestine but Archbishop Samuel was

advised later by him that the scrolls he had control off were of a resent date

and not as old as he himself thought. This is not surprising of course I

discovered, because Stephen worked in the field of Arab history and had

little knowledge of Hebrew archaeology if any at all.

The ‘experts’ started to come out of the walls like cockroaches to a dark

kitchen at night. What came to be a ‘secret’ turned out as a major farce like

an old black and white movie, a real comedy of errors? Within a year it was

very hard to tell the good guys from the bad, who was screwing who and

for how much?

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Samuel then consulted one Father A.S. Marmadji about the scrolls he had

and was under the impression that the good Father would at lease have

some knowledge seeing he was a well known Arabist and from the French

Dominican School of Archaeology. Father Marmadji was as much use to

Samuel at that moment in time as a wet mere cat in a snake pit.

Father Marmadji no doubt disappointed and his ego taking a knock he then

looked up another expert, a Dutch Scholar, Father J.P.M. van der Ploeg

who was in fact staying at the Dominican Monastery of St Stephen which

the School of Archaeology had serious links. The Dutch scholar was then

sent for and came to view the said scrolls who almost at once was able to

state that the largest scroll was that of the book of Isaiah.

Samuel no doubt was delighted because this Dutch scholar was well

known and worked in the Ecole Biblique et Archaeology Francaise de

Jerusalem which was run by Dominican Monks but paid in part at that time

by the French Government.

Again he was told by the Dutch expert on scrolls and old text that the

Scrolls Samuel had passed to him to examine were not old text and

dismissed him out of hand.

It would have been like a slap in the face with a wet fish for the Archbishop

that day.

Little did this Dutch expert in fact know that he had a priceless number

of old scrolls in his fingers but lost them because he failed to look at them

closely and by closely I mean very close. He had stated that the Isaiah
 95

scroll was just that but not written in old text as the timeline suggested.

This Dutch expert did know two things. One, that the scrolls or scroll he

looked at was in fact the ‘real thing’ and two, if he could, he would offer to

buy it.

Samuel was no archaeology expert but he was in no way stupid and he

knew that he had something of value. Money rather than history was his

thinking.

By mid September 1947 Samuel was fed up trying to get an age of his

scrolls so arranged one last meeting with his own supervisor in the Syrian

church at Homs. This Church in Homs is north of Damascus.

By now I suspect Archbishop Samuel was beginning to feel more than

stressed out and running around in small and large circles. He was now

getting close to becoming paranoid in his strong belief that what he had

was of great value.

What went on between Samuel and his supervisor behind closed doors we

may never know, but something did and I am now of the opinion that

funding was on hand for Samuel for him to form a working party and carry

out more work in 1Q at Qumran and obtain anything of interest.

It is here from my research that the plot thickens because what went on

behind those closed doors in Damascus was not just between Samuel and

his supervisor.

There was someone or a few other people who could read part of the

scrolls and who advised strongly that Samuel continues his work of any
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recovery of other scrolls and all fragments. There was also a mass of

35mm photographs taken of fragments and scrolls.

Before I go into this I was impressed by Millar Burrows version of what

happen once the first scrolls were discovered and Samuel and a few others

got involved. Millar Burrows is no slough when it comes to Near East

archaeology and more so the archaeology of the Holy Land.

His version was in dairy form and was more upfront in his observations

and comments than many of the other people involved.

Palestine and Israel would soon be at loggerheads and internal conflict was

soon rife with shootings with bombings taking place daily and movements

of people restricted. Burrows knew the area well and its history.

Burrows thought that the first scrolls were found by the two youths from

the Taamirah tribe was in late February or early March 1947. The

Archbishop who we already know stated that he first heard of the scrolls in

the month of Nisan which I suggest is April and not March, Father van der

Ploeg seen them in July. Khalil Eskander and George Isaiah is said by

Burrows to have brought one of the scrolls to Archbishop Samuel to view,

the Archbishop was puzzled because the writing was not Syriac but

Hebrew. Then he broke off a small piece of scroll and burned it , by the

smell of the smoke he was able to tell it was leather and not parchment.

Pleased with this bit of non ‘scientific’ witchcraft he told the merchants that

he would buy the scrolls.

It seems by Burrows account that the merchants were unable to make

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contact again with the Bedouin youths for at least a number of weeks and

who came to Bethlehem on the first Saturday of the month of Tammuz

(July). The Archbishop (Samuel) then had a phone call from Khalil

Eskander the merchant in Bethlehem who stated that there were now three

Bedouins with scrolls with him as he spoke.

For some reason the Archbishop did not see the three men because

Eskander sent them directly to George Isaiah, the Jerusalem merchant who

was the one who took the men to the monastery to meet Samuel and is in

the first version were turned away by a priest who did not like the look of

the group.

From my point of view, both versions about the turning away from the

monastery seem to match except that George Isaiah was with the two

young men in the second version. There were also three men with George

Isaiah not two as in the first version.

Archbishop Samuel was more than a little annoyed when he found out what

had happened at the Monastery gate and phoned Eskander right away and

not George Isaiah for some reason.

Eskander informed the Archbishop that two of the men had now left their

scrolls with him for safe keeping but the third man, unhappy the way he

had been treated by Christians, took his share of the scrolls to the Muslim

sheikh at Bethlehem and sold them. It may well be that this was the part of

a scroll that was later obtained, for a price, by Professor Sukenik of the

Hebrew University sometime in November 1947.

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It seems more than a bit odd to me when I carried out this research, that a

Jewish Merchant inside Jaffa Gate offered to buy the scrolls of the two

Arabs (Muslims) and George Isaiah persuaded the men not to sell.

At this moment in time you could say that tensions between Muslims and

Jews were high and the area was a dangerous one to be, no matter what

side you were on.

So, there was a lot of coming and going, phone calls and messages by this

small group of people and I discovered as Burrows did, that the two young

Arabs did return to Eskander’s shop in Bethlehem along with George Isaiah

and all four then headed off to see Archbishop Samuel. Of course this time

he would see them and welcomed them with open arms because he could

now buy five manuscripts, some damaged and two in fact part of one,

Burrows named the broken one as the ‘Manual of Discipline’.

There was of course also the great long manuscript of Isaiah, a

commentary on the book of Habakkuk and a badly damaged Aramaic script

which still had not been unrolled for inspection, known at that time as the

‘forth scroll’.

This suggests from my research that the scrolls that Samuel was

presented on that day were the real thing and not copies made in the last

50 years past but copies all the same.

It seems that by now that the question of the scrolls was going to get much

more complicated and at least three groups of people were involved if not

more.
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A Dr. Trever, a good friend of Millar Burrows, on their return from the USA

was able to detach one column of the damaged scroll from the suggested

text and linked it directly to the lost book of Lamech which from then on

was called the ‘Lamech Scroll’ by Trever and Burrows.

While all this was going on, Professor E.L. Sukenik was in the USA and it

was November 25th 1947 that he himself first learnt of a fragment of a scroll.

It was shown to him by an antiquities dealer and was asked directly would

he buy the scroll that it came from. Sukenik I suggest may have thought it

was a forgery but said yes and four days later he arranged to have the

dealer bring the scrolls or scroll to him. This was duly done and the dealer

did turn up with help to carry the two jars and scrolls and scroll fragments.

Sukenik did not waste much time because he knew what he was looking at

was real and old. Money changed hands quickly and once everyone had

gone Sukenik wasted no time moving jars and scrolls from Bethlehem to

the much safer Jewish Jerusalem. It was the same day that the UN passed

the resolution that recommended the partition of Palestine and things went
 100

down hill fast from a political point of view on all sides.

Sukenik felt safe now, excited even but was not aware that Archbishop

Samuel also had scrolls and only fund out by chance in December the

same year. The news came from a Liberty assistant that by chance had

made a visit to the Monastery and heard about the scrolls there. It would

seem that the scrolls had been kept from him for at least four to five

months while he was in the USA working.

What did turn up in my research that in January 1948 Sukenik did get a

letter from Anton Kiraz, a member of the Syrian Orthodox Church no less,

and informed Sukenik in that letter that he had some old manuscripts that

he would like him to look at closely.

Things being unhealthy and very dangerous in the Arab and Jewish

quarters the meeting took place in the YMCA which was in Military Zone B

where passes were issued to the city. Sukenik and Kiraz met and the

Sukenik was surprised and delighted that what Kiraz had brought with him

matched parts of the scrolls he already had and Kiraz did admit that the

came from a cave in the Dead Sea area, Kiraz had indeed been to the cave.

Kiraz had Sukenik hooked and he offered to sell the manuscripts to the

Hebrew University and said he would also like to meet the Archbishop to

work out the financial terms of the deal.

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Samuel later said that all this had been done without his consent or even

knowledge.

As for Sukenik he was allowed to borrow three of the scrolls for two days

and he arranged for a number of columns to be copied which I should add

he later published, from the Isaiah manuscript. Sukenik is said to have

returned the borrowed scrolls on the 6th February 1948 to Kiraz and then

was shown two others which belonged to the Manual of Discipline.

Archbishop Samuel had more plans afoot and he got George Isaiah to get

the two young men who found the first scrolls to take him to the cave (Q1).

When he got to the cave it seems there were more scrolls, some damaged

of course and one undamaged one. There was also it is reported (Burrows)

that there was also a strange and out of place, a piece of wood lying within
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scroll fragments.

Somehow the Archbishop had one Father Yusef go to the cave again and

remove any fragments and any scrolls he could find. The large jar he left as

it was too heavy to move.

Samuel and his boss had their main meeting but after that they had another

meeting behind closed doors and without the two Arab youths.

Also present at that meeting and arrived at the same time as Samuel was

a Miles Copeland and his wife Lorraine Copeland.

Miles Copeland was at that time the CIA s representative in the Damascus

office but may have been going under the name of Richard Copeland a

name he used in the past for his work, as well as others, in the Middle East

and when he was in the old OSS during World War II.

My research did show that in Copeland’s own words did have a visit from

a sly Egyptian merchant who took out of a dirty sack a scroll that was

flaking around the edges badly and bits being blown away into the street

which were never recovered or so they said. This may well have been the

third man that had been at the Monastery but was turned away by the priest

as well as his two other friends.

Why did he in fact mention later his meeting with the sly

’ Egyptian’ merchant because he was in fact in Syria and not Egypt?

If Copeland had been anyway good at his job he would have known that the

man was either an Egyptian or a Syrian. In those days the USA or UK

personnel linked all Arabs as’ Egyptians’ and would call them ‘rag-heads’
 103

even today this still happens.

Miles Copeland was in the CIA at the time and was also known to be part

of the Seed Plant Project as well as being party to the overthrow or

attempted overthrow of the Syrian leader General huk Husni-Alzaim in

1948.

One thing I do know is that the CIA Agents was very active in the Middle

East sowing seeds between Jews, Arabs and other Muslim groups in the

area. In time these seeds would become a bitter harvest and still going on

today.

The Arab and Jews were soon at another's throats soon afterwards.

As for his wife Lorraine Copeland she was a well known in the field of

Middle East archaeology and no ones fool. In fact she was much better

educated than her husband, who never got around getting a degree, had no

knowledge of archaeology that would be worth writing home about but if he

could obtain the scrolls for the USA or himself he would do it.

It was from this point that Miles Copeland agreed to have the unknown

scroll photographed back in his office in Damascus and in fact he, his wife

and a few others went there and did that.

My research revised in 2010 did revel more about this strange affair and

Copeland was under the impression that he had the scroll, the Old

Testament of Daniel.

Sukenik was said to have met an Armenian art dealer between the Jewish

and Arab Zones in Jerusalem at night, each one of the men on opposite
 104

sides of the barbed wire. A very dangerous place to be for both men and

then the Armenian male showed Sukenik some fragments of a scroll that

an Arab antique from Bethlehem had come to him with the day before.

This dealer from Bethlehem said he obtained them from some Bedouin

men.

What puzzles me greatly about this account is that two men meet at night

in a very dangerous place next to the barbed wire boundary and set about

talking business. Some sort of lamp or light had to be available for

Sukenik to examine the fragments, a dangerous occupation seeing Jews

where killing Arabs and British soldiers, Arabs were killing Jews and firing

on anything and British soldiers were caught in the middle and no doubt

would fire on any men near the wire if they thought that their own lives

were at stake?

Whatever happen and how seemed to set Sukenik on a quest so he

arranged again to set up another meeting for three days later.

Sukenik I suggest, being an archaeologist knew he had seen something

important so he slipped out of Jerusalem on the 29th of November 1947 and

made his way to Bethlehem in secret. There he was shown three scrolls

that he was told were up for sale and that somehow Archbishop Samuel

has missed or at that moment in time, was unaware of. There was for

viewing the two jars that the scrolls hand been stored in. He was allowed to

take the three scrolls home to study in detail, an act of trust it seems or a

ploy by someone. He was still at this studying in detail when at midnight he

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heard on the radio and with some alarm that the UN had voted for a State of

Israel. Now he knew that somehow he had to buy the scrolls and his son,

Yigael Yadin, Chief of operations of the Haganah- a secret militia and

Jewish organization, shared his father’s convictions and concerns that the

scrolls should be bought, and fast.

Three scrolls for sale and all linked now to the New Jewish State and the

politics that came with it.

It was around the 27th January 1948, Sukenik set up a meeting with

Archbishop Samuel and again this meeting was to be top secret to be held

this time in the British Sector in the YMCA, Jerusalem. The librarian here

was a strong member of the Archbishop’s flock. To get there to this

meeting Sukenik had first obtain a pass which he got from the District

Officer, Prof; Biran.

The meeting by all accounts was held in a very private room and Sukenik

was then shown the Archbishop’s scrolls. He was even allowed to borrow

then, again on trust, to examine at his home.

On the 6th February 1948, Sukenik returned the scrolls back to Archbishop

Samuel but could not raise the funding at that moment in time to buy them,

much to his disappointment. He tried of course to get the Archbishop to

lower the price as we all would in the interests of archaeology history but

Samuel said no. The price for the scrolls would stand.

A few days later, Sukenik did find the funding, from where and by whom I

don’t know but he was like a child going shopping. Then a letter arrived
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from Archbishop Samuel saying that the scrolls were no longer for sale.

Little did Sukenik know at this time of disappointment, that the bold

Archbishop Samuel had been dipping his pen, making phone calls and

sending cables to US scholars and other US officials, all who had seen the

scroll photographs. Samuel may not have been an archaeologist but he

could smell money, dollar green and he had been offered a much higher

price for all fragments and the scrolls he had. There was no way, even if he

knew what the new buying price was, that Sukenik could find the money in

his war torn country.

So if this deal was with the Copeland Gang then it had the blessing from

the US Government if not Rome. Copeland would have had his archaeology

trained wife to back him up that the scrolls were real.

It is stated that there were problems that Copeland himself had overlooked

or claimed to have overlooked and that was when they un-rolled the scroll

on the flat roof there was a wind and fragments were blown away and

across the roof tops as well as a good part of the parchment.

If this is true it does show that Copeland was missing a few brain cells,

common sense lacking on a mission and his wife, trained in Near East

archaeology stood there mouth open and not protesting in any form.

What was left was photographed with a 35mm camera that was not bought

locally but part of the CIA equipment on hand.

30 frames of 35 mm film were taken of the scroll on the roof but 30 frames

would not have been enough to photograph the whole damaged scroll in
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any detail.

What puzzled me here about the scroll opened on the roof is why Miles

Copeland's wife, who was good at archaeology, did not warn them of the

possible damage to this scroll in the conditions at that time?

The said photographs taken by Copeland were the sent to Beirut and

examined in more detail by someone who knew a great deal about the

ancient languages if the region.

The text it has been stated was said to be part of the book of David Old

Testament with some of the writing in Hebrew and some in Aramaic.

This may well have been part of a scroll, David Apocryphon 2Q =Q2 22.

If it was then someone had already found cave 2Q and removed at least

one scroll and fragments?

For some reason known only to his wife and himself, Copeland did not

follow this up strange scroll because both scroll and the man who had it

vanished never to be seen again, the photographs that were taken left in a

drawer and later to also vanish?

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Fragments of the same scroll were in fact found five years later which

suggests there was such a scroll at one time.

The photographs of that scroll never became public as far as I am aware.

There little doubt in my mind that Samuel was in Syria with 3 scrolls and

only one was opened on that day, damaged as it was.

Somehow what Copeland and his wife looked at and ID may have been the

Hebrew text of Isaiah, not Daniel or David yet they were told it was in

Hebrew and Aramaic.

Samuel still wanted to find out about the age of the scrolls he had so as

we now know, he was put in touch with Professor Eleazar Sukenik of the

Hebrew University who arranged a meeting with him to view the scrolls.

From my research above we know what happened next.

As time went on more scrolls and fragments were discovered in 11 caves in

all. There is in my opinion a strong link to other scrolls and fragments

discovered later but not in the caves of Qumran.

As far as the archaeology site is concerned known as the Khirbet Qumran

site not only had ruins but a vast burial area and all within a short distance

from all the caves.

Following upon the first discoveries of Scrolls in the Judean Wilderness

(1947/1948), Prof. Eliezer Sukenik proposed, primarily on the basis of his

reading of the Serekh Hayahad (Discipline Scroll of the Unity Brotherhood),

that they were writings of the Essene sect.

Pliny the Elder, after all, had described that sect as having settled in
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the Judean Wilderness as refugees from the destruction of Jerusalem, and

as being near the settlement of En Gedi.

During that same early period of discoveries, the Dominican scholar-priest

Roland de Vaux expressed the opinion that these Essenes (whom Pliny

had described as (celibates) had lived near the area where the original

Scroll cave and others being discovered nearby, for a total number of

eleven were located.

On this basis de Vaux began exploring and excavating the nearest place of

Habitation, namely Khirbet Qumran, and eventually announced that he had

uncovered the very settlement of the Essenes described by Pliny; he went

on to offer specific interpretations of structures within the settlement,such

as The Scriptorium, the Essenes Refectory, and Ritual Baths that facilitated

the claimed Essenes purification interpretations that appeared to justify his

designation of the settlement in its entirety as the Laura, or monastery, of

the Essenes.

At this stage everyone wanted on the band wagon because if de Vaux said

it, then it must be right.

Researchers around the world concerned with the study of the antiquities

of ancient Israel and the Second Temple period accepted, and to a

considerable extent still accept, Roland de Vaux’s interpretation of the site.

It may be seen that he expressed his views without waiting at least 3 to

4 years for the possibility of specific material proof that might emerge to

substantiate his theory.

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No Scrolls had been discovered within Kh. Qumran itself during the period

of his excavations, and none were ever to be found there.

In time, however pieces of evidence would indeed be discovered that

contradicted and today increasingly contradict, de Vaux’s opinion and that

of all writers who have continued in essence to support his view.

The major findings include the following:

Discovery of the Copper Scroll in Cave 3: This text, first unrolled in1955,

describes the hiding of scrolls and of gold and silver ingots, but also as

has been shown particularly by B.Z. Luria in his study of this manuscript of

vessels and related objects carrying the same names as those of objects

and implements used by the Jerusalem priesthood in Temple rituals.

Among the place-names mentioned in this Scroll in connection with the

sequestration of the various items are places near Jericho (itself also

mentioned by name), the Wadi Achor, and a specific place within the Wadi

Qidron which according to recent discoveries by Israeli archaeologists was

evidently one of the Wadi's whereby inhabitants of Jerusalem fled, during

the Roman siege of 70 C.E., to regions of the Judean Wilderness.

The likely home of the Copper Scroll thus appeared to be Jerusalem but I

am of the opinion that it was made elsewhere, later moved to Jerusalem

and ended up in cave 3.

However, Pre de Vaux’s reaction to the discovery which posed an obvious

danger to his theory was simply to label it a forgery.

Discovery of manuscript fragments at Masada: According to Josephus,

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large numbers of inhabitants of Jerusalem fled to Masada during the siege

and subsequent Roman onslaught and the Scroll fragments discovered

there are clearly material evidence pointing in this direction.

Decipherment of the Copper Scroll, was in itself of such nature as to cast

doubt on Pre de Vaux’s opinion that the hiding of the earlier-found Scrolls

in the 11 caves was specifically because of their proximity to the claimed

Essene settlement; for with this new evidence common sense dictated that

the hiding might more likely have been accomplished by Jerusalemites

fleeing eastward and southward towards both Masada and that other great

fortress of the Jews which was Machaerus, east of the Dead Sea.

This configuration of events was further indicated by the fact that the

church Father Origen had utilized a Greek Bible translation discovered,

according to him, together with other Hebrew and Greek books in a jar near

Jericho, and by a report written circa 800 A.D. by the Nestorian Patriarch

Timotheus I concerning the discovery of various writings in Hebrew script,

Biblical and otherwise, in a cave near Jericho.

(The proposal of the late Prof. Yadin, chief excavator of Masada to the

effect that these fragments were brought to Masada specifically by the

claimed Essenes of Qumran, is not supported by no piece of historical

Evidence, and even many traditional Qumranologists would eventually

begin shying away from it, as they also began abandoning de Vaux’s claim

that the Copper Scroll was a forgery.)

I find it more than a little odd that Prof.Yigael Yadin ( Prof. Sukenik’s son.)
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was attacked and had to be discredited in this way by fellow archaeologists

and historians.

Discovery of phylacteries among the various manuscripts of the caves:

Approximately thirty phylactery texts were discovered, but the Torah

passages found within them were far from uniform in content.

This fact ran directly counter to the rule of the Brotherhood order

(i.e., the Yahad) described in the Discipline Scroll which de Vaux and most

later Qumranologists have asserted was the operative doctrinal text utilized

by the claimed sectarians of Khirbet Qumran requiring that all members of

the Brotherhood follow uniform ritual practices.

In publishing those phylactery texts under his control, Pre Josef Milik

asserted that, specifically with respect to the phylacteries alone, each of

the claimed Essenes of Qumran was allowed to follow his own predilection

but Milik never explained his rationale of such a notable deviation.

Prof. Yadin in his edition of different phylacteries from the caves, was on

the other hand altogether silent with respect to a solution of this problem.

(Moreover, neither Milik nor Yadin could cite a single text pertaining to

the Yahad brotherhood which implied any duty at all on their part to wear

phylacteries.)

Based on the philological evidence of the texts themselves, the variations

testify to the fact that those who hid the phylacteries in the caves did not

constitute a particular sect following uniform discipline, but rather

belonged to disparate groups of individuals fleeing eastward from the

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Roman onslaught on the capital in consonance with the evidence of the

Copper Scroll and the Masada text-fragments. Whatever they brought with

them to hide may not have been just text or scrolls. There had to be

something else and I suspect both de Vaux and Prof; Yigael Yadin knew

this by some clue or clues they had already uncovered but not published

on before their deaths. The answer I suggest lies in the Copper Scroll

which I will deal with later in full and may well be one of a set of copper

scrolls, the other one not yet found or if it had been found it never has been

revealed where it is and what it contained. One thing I am aware of is that

the Copper Scroll is in no way religious as are the other scrolls. It is from

my research, a codex map with clues within it that are linked to the natural

world.

Geographical Representation of Jerusalem Hypothesis

The Scrolls found in caves near Khirbet Qumran and Jericho, as well as

those found at Masada, represent remnants of an extensive Hebraic

literature hidden by inhabitants of Jerusalem, making use of the

underground tunnels leading eastward to Wadi's lying outside of the city,

before and during the Roman siege of 70 A.D.

I suggest that such cave locations were already known and been used for

many years before the Roman siege of 70 AD by Jews and Arabs.

Khirbet Qumran itself was a strategic Hasmonaean fortress reused by

Jewish fighters during the First Revolt (66-73 A.D.).

Refugees fleeing towards Machaerus would have had to traverse the

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desert area near Kh. Qumran on the way to their destination, and are

responsible for the sequestrati on of many of the scrolls and phylacteries

found in the caves.

Publication of photographs of all the Dead Sea Scrolls under Israel

control: In order for the reader to grasp what the said scrolls looked like at

the time they were photographed I have inserted some of them below.

Note different styles of writing and lay-out.

My thanks to all who let me have use of the scroll photographs 2011

SCROLLS AND SCROLL FRAGMENTS.

This event, which transpired as a result of the freeing of the Scrolls (1992

and thereafter), opened the eyes of researchers to the fact that, according

to their individual handwritings as then revealed, only very many scribes,

approximately to the number of 500, could have copied down the Scrolls.

This development moved more than a few of the traditional Qumran

archaeology field workers to distance themselves from Pre de Vaux, now

indicating in contrast to him that it was possible or even likely that many of

the manuscripts were not copied at Kh. Qumran but rather brought from

Jerusalem or perhaps other places as well to nowhere else than the

claimed sectarian centre of Qumran.

I suggest that this unlikely claim, however, did not satisfy other

researchers, who by then had begun to perceive that no certainty whatever

could be attributed to the Qumran Essene theory, and that the Scrolls as a

whole might very likely have been of Jerusalem origin and hidden in the
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caves out of necessity during the First Revolt if not before because these

are copies of the originals which were very old and dry but never found to

this day.

Publication of the Scrolls virtually in their entirety, subject by subject:

From studies of the specific texts among the virtually forty volumes now

published under the sponsorship of the Israel Antiquities Authority, it has

become very evident that the texts attributed to the Yahad brotherhood,

social and religious phenomenon, constitute only a minority of the great

number of Scrolls and Scroll fragments now known, most of the others

having no demonstrable connection with the writings of the Yahad group.

Further results of investigation of the manuscripts:

The manuscripts as known in their fullness during the past several years

have made clear the fact that the encouragement or practice of actual

celibate asceticism is not to be found in any of the known texts.

This fact cannot but militate against the claim of de Vaux and his present-

day followers that the inhabitants of Kh. Qumran were those very celibate

ascetics described by Pliny as living above En Gedi.

Pliny left few written records or if he did then they too perished with him

when he and many others were caught in the volcanic eruptions of Mt

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Vesuvius in 79 AD and Pompeii was buried in hot ash and mudslides.

This has opened the way yet wider to the problem of identification of the

Inhabitants of Kh. Qumran, while simultaneously rising with yet greater

concern the question: Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls and why the Copper

Scroll was onetime dismissed as little more than a forgery by de Vaux?

Recent archaeological investigations:

During the past twenty years, archaeologists of professional standing and

competence have conducted extensive excavations of Kh. Qumran and

detailed studies of the findings.

They have shown that the nature of the evidence uncovered reveals no

positive indication that either Essenes or any other specifically sectarian

group inhabited that site.; (Magen and Peleg.) For the most recent analysis

dealing specifically with the cemetery adjacent to Kh. Qumran the number

given is 37 males and between 13 and 17 females analysed so far, a

proportion comparable to that of other Palestinian grave sites.

As indicated by the Kh. Qumran towers strategic position midway between

the Hasmonaean fortress of Machaerus and Jerusalem itself

,recent scholarship also supports identification of the site as a

Hasmonaean fortress erected during the 2nd century B.C., in line with

considerations and the extensive scientific reports preceding

and following.

Given the configuration of material evidence as now known, and keeping

in mind that it may not all be right or accurate I refer you to Josephus
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careful description of the plight of Jerusalem's inhabitants which led to the

hiding of their goods and treasures as the siege tightened.

Scrolls found both at Masada and in the caves in our own time are

surviving suggested evidence of that past experience.

These are only some of the main pieces of evidence inevitably leading to;

rejection of the traditional Non-essential theory and its variants, which

remain marked by internal weaknesses not capable of withstanding critical

inquiry.

On saying that I found in my research into the posted signs and

expositions presented at Kh. Qumran itself, as at the Shrine of the Book in

Jerusalem, continue to be the product of that original theory, without

indication of any endeavour to deal with its problems.

Both in the State of Israel and abroad, the actual body of evidence now

favouring the theory of Jerusalem origin continues to be almost

consistently missing from exhibitions of the Scrolls, along with any

ensuing debate about it a situation obviously calling for redress of the

known information.

It is as though, for no obvious reason, there still remains a pressing need

to support the old Sectarianism theory an unsubstantiated belief now in

troubled waters for a good many years but many in the archaeology field

are dug in for a long debate which I have no doubt will continue and lead at

times to bloody paper battles as before. People will be so busy infighting

and destroying reputations of others in order to feed their own archaeology

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ego that the whole point and answers to the questions will be lost.

I say this with respect to all those archaeologists in the future who are

planning a battle rather than a heated debate on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the

Jesus Codex and of course the search for the Grail or grails.

What will be totally missing from most of the explanations, as from the

defence put forth by individual Archaeologists, is any effort to describe

or otherwise deal with the experience of Jerusalem's inhabitants at the

moment of their greatest danger not just from the Romans but long before

with invading warring tribes. I make this point now because Jerusalem’s

inhabitants were not all Jewish as so often thought and if we move

forwards from 30 AD to 1200 AD then there may well be other scrolls or

copies of such yet to be discovered.

It would of course I suggest, disregard, even the testimony embedded

within the Scrolls themselves, pointing above all else to the literary

fecundity of the Palestinian Jews during these times, somehow remains

basically unacknowledged in the realm of traditional Jewish Archaeology.

Much the same thing happened and still does happen in Ireland with that

invisible border.

Suggestion being widely employed by many is that scrolls were removed

by claimed sectarians from Jerusalem to Kh. Qumran where they were

studied by those sectarians before being transferred to the caves has no

material proof. Most of them were unlikely to have more than one language

at this time and a good few could copy but I doubt very much that many
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knew what in fact they were copying.

This is not negative archaeology, and I should point out, , the attention of

good researchers chasing smoke about Jerusalem in 70 A.D., while

deflecting away from genuine cultural value of the said scrolls , with limited

possibilities may have been brought to the Judean Wilderness from

Jerusalem at the same time that a war happened to be raging in that part of

the country.

But which war?

Pre de Vaux, at the dawn of his research, perceived that there was a

connection of some sort. I intend to agree with him on part of that and he

knew something or discovered something that he never spoke or wrote

about. Whatever it was may have been connected to the Jesus movement

and his family but we may never know because he took what he knew to

his grave.

He ended up by proposing that the claimed Essenes hid their scrolls in the

eleven caves because they had learned that Roman troops then engaged

in that war were on their way from Jericho (north of Kh. Qumran) to attack

them.
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My own research finds if this was the case why did they flee to hide their

manuscripts not northward where the scroll caves were discovered but

southward, away from an attack of this kind?

The discovery of manuscripts at Masada a decade after Pre de Vaux’s

proposal provided the basis for an interpretation of Scroll origins Josephus

describes the mass movement, during the siege, of refugees from

Jerusalem via (still extant) tunnels, and describes their eventual gathering

at Masada.

(a) The Jerusalem tunnels lead to the Wadi system branching out in both

an eastward and a south-eastward direction;

(b)According to Josephus, the refugees eventually arrive both at Masada

(with the exception of those slain in the Forest of Jardes) and Machaerus;

(c) Scrolls are discovered both at Masada itself as well as in areas of

the northern Judean Wilderness that refugees fleeing toward Machaerus

would have had to traverse.

(d) Despite this confluence of evidence, traditional Archaeology field

workers who now concede the likelihood of all or part of the Scrolls

Jerusalem origins never appear to discuss the fact of that War, or to

recognize its impact on the Palestinian Jews, or to assent to the likelihood

that it was that War which resulted in the transfer of scrolls from Jerusalem

to both Masada and the Judean Wilderness.

Instead, the shift being put forward by them is generated particularly by

the awareness that several hundred scribes copied just those Scrolls that
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survived a fact pointing to the primary cultural centre of Jerusalem as the

home of the Scrolls. It has even been suggested by some writers that it

was only, or mainly, those Scrolls which exhibit deviation all spellings of

Hebrew words that would actually have been written at Kh. Qumran and I

suggest that that the original scrolls, or some of them were well hidden still

have to be discovered. In that we would find many words that were not

Hebrew but of the old languages of the Near and Far East.

In this way, the conceit has become widespread that a special Qumran

Hebrew developed or was created at the site of the claimed sectarian cult

I believe as some do, that the copied scrolls that have been found so far

have been implanted with some letters or words that are a form of codex

and in order to understand it all you need all the scrolls together,

discovered and yet to be discovered to get the full meaning..

Of this belief likewise, however, not a single proof exists.

Yet there is no way that the Jews of this time, as well as Greek scribes

would move all the copies of their work to one place or area because what

they had was important for future generations. It is more likely that other

scrolls were moved as well as the originals, to the four points of the

compass but within a fifty mile radius of Jerusalem. I stand by this and am

in no doubt that more scrolls will be found in the future.

I should point out here that prior to the age of dictionaries and their

widespread use, deviations in orthography were a common feature of

written language expression in the greatest of cities.

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Examples that come to mind are the numerous orthographic variations in

Documentary Judaic-Arabic manuscripts of the Cairo Genizah, or hand-

written and printed works in many languages produced in European cities

at least until the 18th century.

If the Roman Army found any scrolls in the plunder of Jerusalem then I am

sure that they have been translated into Latin and now housed in the

Vatican archives, hopefully carefully.

In recent years these various proposals and assertions have been yet

further confounded by the claim of an Ecole Biblique scholar once closely

allied with the late Pre de Vaux, to the effect that this enigmatic group of

pious sectarians did not actually live at Kh. Qumran at all, but only in the

surrounding desert area an idea for which I found that the author who

wrote this can not cite a single piece of actual evidence.

In effect, no proof has yet materialized to support any of these claims:

neither that a group of sectarians lived round-about Kh. Qumran, nor that a

sectarian community settled at Kh. Qumran either for a few or several

generations, nor that such a group wrote scrolls there which contained

orthographic deviations while receiving others from Jerusalem

which did not, nor that was this group succeeded by eventual sectarians

who took many of the texts and marched northward so as to hide them in

some of the caves in the very face of the claimed mortal enemies

advancing from Jericho.

While the evidence of the Copper Scroll could, in terms of the paradigm
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shifts in question, conceivably be dismissed on the claim that this scroll is

merely one of those ostensibly brought to Kh.Qumran from Jerusalem

before being hidden in Cave 3, that can hardly be done with the other

impeding evidence, namely:

1) The historical record is to the effect that the inhabitants of Jerusalem

did flee to both Machaerus and Masada;

2) Hebrew manuscripts were discovered both at Masada itself as well as in

a region of the Judaean Wilderness that refugees would have had to

traverse in fleeing towards Machaerus;

3) The phylacteries found in the caves strongly imply an activity of

individuals who did not adhere to any single sectarian group; and

4) The War itself represented the major calamity of the Palestinian Jews

during the 1st Century A.D., one of whose consequences, as Josephus

writes, was the dire need of the inhabitants of Jerusalem to hide those

items and possessions valuable to them.

If I rely only on historical evidence, all of these factors in addition to the

presence of large numbers of scribble handwritings so far discovered

obviously have to be taken into consideration in drawing reasonable

conclusions about the origin of the Scrolls; and in this light, the unadorned

testimony of the Copper Scroll can hardly be ignored.

The artefacts it describes include not only scrolls, but objects such as

are associated with the Temple, as well as large sums of gold and silver

ingots evoking not the gleanings of a small sect but an institutional

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treasure such as the Temples holdings or a royal hoard.

I feel strongly that somewhere within this Codex lies a clue to the Grail or

Grails.

Over sixty hiding places described in the Copper Scroll, most of them in

the northern part of the Judaean Wilderness, reveal a much wider

suggestion of other groups than that attributable to a small sect

supposedly living in the desert.

While first expressed by traditional Qumranologists and ‘want to be ones’

in the early 1980s, the claim that some, many, or even the majority of the

Scrolls were first brought from Jerusalem (or elsewhere) to Kh. Qumran,

before being deposited in the caves, is an assertion which reached its peak

only in the 1990s, when the clear evidence of multifarious scribes had fully

emerged.

(In Ireland we would say that such people with such view were well away

with the fairies like the followers of UFO’s and Alien Abductions and very

possibility linked to one another genetically!)

The failure, however, of those writers to bring their recognition of the

multiplicity of scribal hands into line with the other discoveries already

well known by that time and in the future, does reveal a continued effort to

validate the idea of a sectarian community in the desert by use of an

imaginative, but until now unproven, fall-back position in what has come to

represent a classical case of circular reasoning.

I would also add to this that such writers could become great writers of
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historic fiction because they did their research (badly) but write well

enough for a best seller.

The effect of papering over the actual configuration of historical evidence

pointing to the sequestration of the Scrolls, both in the eleven caves and at

Masada, by inhabitants of Jerusalem in the course of their flight from the

city, no evidence has yet been discovered which tends to show that a

Jewish religious sect ever inhabited Sherbet Qumran. I would also go as far

to say that if any Jews were there the number would have been very small.

That is not to say, however, that claims asserting the existence of such

evidence has not been made in past years. It could well have been a mixed

community of a number of tribes and people’s with skills.

News releases once made announcements, for example, that DNA analysis

would likely prove that the parchments on which the Scrolls were inscribed

actually came from herds living in the Judaean Wilderness near Kh.

Qumran, but no evidence to this effect has ever subsequently been

published. A goat or sheep skin is just that, nothing more and some, like

farmers of today, would buy and sell stock at a market animals that may

have crossed borders and land, blows the whole DNA suggestion out of the

water. The only thing the DNA test could so with relation to this topic is tell

if it was a sheep or goat skin, possible blood group, and very unlikely for

the time line, the breed.

More recently, a claim about the Dead Seas chemical composition and its

effect on the Scrolls parchments has surfaced, likewise implying, without

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warrant, a particular connection with Kh. Qumran.

News sells papers and glues people to TV’s, even bad news, the best kind

and a few years ago news items announced the discovery of an Essene

latrine in the vicinity of Kh. Qumran, whereas what was found consisted

only of non-datable faecal remains in a patch of soil. That helps! I mean for

nearly two thousand years it lay there, hidden or maybe not so hidden and

during that span of time the person who claims this is also saying that no

other Arabs, Jews, Syrians, Germans, British troops, or Archaeologists

from many nations, who passed closed to the spot or even on the very

spot, stopped to go to the toilet?

A more serious claim was made in 1997 in advance of the Israel Museums

50th anniversary celebration of the Scrolls discovery, when a press release

was issued by the museum announcing that an actual artefact, tracon

inscribed with Hebrew writing, had been discovered at Kh.Qumran

constituting the first archaeological proof that an actual connection existed

between Kh. Qumran and the manuscripts found in the caves.

The claimed proof, put out by a few traditional Qumranologists, consisted

of a single word within the text the word Yahad, meaning unity which is

also a word used in some of the Scrolls to designate the Unity

Brotherhood.

Magnification of the crucial line of the text, however, failed to show

actual evidence of the word Yahad and therefore there is no evidence of

the word. Although the museum, even until today, has refrained from
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issuing a retraction of its original claim, writers on the Scrolls generally do

because having egg on your face does not go well for you in University

promotion in a Department and cuts in research grants.

(It has been suggested that the press officer at that time and who wrote the

statement is now retired and living somewhere in the Himalayas with

Monks close to the Chinese Border but in a very Silent Order!)

Another traditional scholar, while acknowledging that the crucial word in

question is not to be found on the ostracon, has claimed that a different

word in the same text, this time the term mebakker, or overseer who

occasionally have a role in the Brotherhood texts can be found elsewhere

on the same ostracon. It seems from my research however, under

magnification of the crucial line evidence of this other word is also entirely

lacking.

As far as I see it the authors came up with these words from the top of

their heads basically talking 'shite' and nothing to do with a Muslim

language! On these and other efforts to find an actual proof of sectarian

settlement at Kh. Qumran.

It is not too difficult to understand why such efforts have come to take

place and why they will be likely to continue into the future.

With the passage of time, and notwithstanding Pre de Vaux’s scenario,

if not stage managed drama, not a single Scroll fragment or other written

text discovered to date proves that a sect inhabited Kh. Qumran; in

addition, during the past few decades archaeologists of professional

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standing who have investigated that site with increasing care have likewise

found no evidence that scribes composed or copied manuscripts there or

that sectarians, ascetic or otherwise, lived there during the period of

the Second Jewish Commonwealth.

Such beliefs, created in the infancy of, Dead Sea Scroll Research still

remain simply that, beliefs unsupported by actual evidence.

Traditional Scroll scholars and myself, have come to insist on the

fundamental question, advocating the correctness of unsupported and

unlikely ideas while defending the scientific righteousness of revered

scholarly figures of the past who created those ideas.

A clear and certain sign pointing to this gradual transformation in the

nature of the Scrolls debate is the clearly documented one-sidedness of

the great majority of relevant museum exhibitions taking place over the

past several years, and the adoption within them of highly questionable

claims similar to those mentioned above.

It may well happen that such efforts will continue until appropriate inquiry

is made into unacknowledged and until now unrevealing background

influences possibly fuelling these efforts.

The movement towards utter transparency in the debate over Scroll

origins is only now beginning to develop. But I find it a slow process and at

times blocked by some ‘experts’ in archaeology and historical ego

building.
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Meanwhile, back in the Holy Land and desert sands, despite various

claims that continue to become media news, if not to confuse ,countless

well-intentioned readers, it may surely be more honest to say, ‘We don't

really know’., about that time in the history of Israel which was the First

Revolt and Jerusalem's destruction at the hands of Roman troops came

about but more so, if in fact scrolls or other documents were copied or

moved to the caves 1 to 11 and in my opinion, even more yet un-

discovered.

BEFORE THE DISCOVERY OF THE SCROLLS.

My own revised research 2008-2011,that many of the scrolls known were

likely written in part and copied from others between 170 BCE and into 68

CE. Unless people have knowledge of that time line then their own

interpretation could well be wrong so I have outlined some data that may

help.

I will come back to the political and religious intruding later in this research

and the part the Church of Rome had to play with scrolls and people they

had control off.

In order to get as close to time line dates during this turbulent period

of past history I had to research as many written texts as I could in order

even to get close. Even then most of the text was in translations so I am

sure that parts of it were interpreted wrongly or in some cases, the

information given was to hide what really was in the text.

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The Israelite Kingdom 928 BCE of the time was split in two and by 722 BCE

this Kingdom was defeated by the Assyrians from Mesopotamia and in

turn they lost all because in 587 BCE the Babylonians too it from them and

the Temple of Solomon was destroyed.

Thousands of displaced people were exiled to Babylon for 57 years.

In 539 BCE war clouds again gathered and the Persians came in force and

Judea and Babylon fell, the Jewish exiles granted permission to return

home.

The return home phase took over 100 years because many Jews and their

children had of course been exposed, even forced to take on alien religions

and teachings. They had no choice in the matter of that I am sure.

This in time brought about Jewish Sects and none more so than the

Zoroastrian religion. Such outside Sects developed even more down

through the time of writing, then making copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

By 458BCE the Jerusalem Temple had been rebuilt thanks to Persian

funding and known as the Second Temple period.

The whole Chronological Table I have listed below that was and is involved

in my research. Any mistakes I have made I have tried to correct.

CHRONOLOGIAL TABLE.

1400 BC.

HEBEW TRIBES AND OTHERS ARRIVED IN FORCE INTO CANAAN.

ISRAELITES IN EGYPT.
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1300 BC.

MOSES AND THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT.

CONQUEST OF CANAAN = PALESTINE BY JOSHUA.

1100-1200 BC.

THE JUDGES.

PHILISTINES AND OTHER SEA PEOPLE SETTLE ON SHORES OF

CANAAN.

1050 BC.

SAMUEL.

1025-1006 BC SAUL.

1006-968 BC.

DAVID.

EMPIRE NOW EXTENDS FROM THE BORDERS OF EGYPT TO

EUPHRATES.
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968-928 BC.

SOLOMON BUILDS THE TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM.

925.BC DIVISION OF THE UNITED MONARCHY.

KINGDOM OF ISRAEL.

KINGDOM OF JUDAH.

925-907 BC.

Jeroboam reigns in Israel.

Invasion by Shishak.

928-911BC Rehoboam reigns in Judah.

882-870 BC Omri reigns in Israel and builds Samaria.

New alliance with Tyre

924 BC Shishak 1 of Egypt invades Judah and Israel.

870-851 BC Ahab reigns in Israel and defeats Armenians.

Fights again Shalmanezer in the Battle of Qarqur 853 BC.

The prophet Elias very active.

867 BC-851 BC.

Jehoshaphat reigns in Judah and has a defensive alliance and co-operation

with Israel.

858-824 BC Shalmanezer III of Assyria subdues the Armenians and

reaches Gilead and Galilee.

851-843 BC Jehoram, King of Judah fails to re-conquer Edom.

852 BC Mesha, King of Moab re-establishes independence from Israel.

850-842 BC Jehoram reigns in Israel.

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850 BC Israel and Judah invade Moab without success.

842-814 BC Jehu rebels and is crowned King over Israel with help from the

prophet Elisha.

This internal struggle makes Israel very dependent on Damascus which

was ruled by Hazael.

812-810 BC.

The King of Judah is put under pressure from Damascus.

799-785 BC Amaziah gets back independence and re-captures Edom

800-785 BC Johoash reaffirms Israel's independence.

786-758 BC Uzziah reaffirms Judah s ascendancy over its neighbours to

the east, south and west.

Prophet Isaiah is active and continues well into Hezekiahs reign.

785-750 BC Jeroboam II in alliance with Uzziah of Judah and re-establishes

the Solomonic borders. Prophet Amos active during the time.

745-727 BC Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria invades and controls the

Palestinian land bridge during a number of campaigns.

724-697 BC Hezekiah rules Judah and beats back the invasion by

Sennacherib.

722 BC Samaria is taken by Sargon II of Assyria after a siege by his

predecessor Shalmanezer V that had lasted 3 years.

A great part of the population exiled into very remote parts of the Empire

and this may account for mention in other text of the Ten Lost Tribes.

It is here that the rest mingle and live with the transplanted gentiles
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and form the Samaritans though not excepted as orthodox Jews.

722-628 BC Israel now an Assyrian province.

628-609 BC Josiah- last expansion of Judah which because of the

Assyrians weakness takes in much of the lands of Israel.

609 BC Josiah killed at Megiddo in a battle with Pharaoh Necho.

605 BC.

The Ne-Babylonian Empire now established which includes most of the

Assyrian realm.

604 BC Israel now a Babylonian province.

586.BC Nebuchadnezzar takes Jerusalem and the First Temple is

destroyed with large parts of the population exiled to Babylonia.

Jewish Troop population also flee into Egypt followed by the prophet

Hezekiah. This lead to the first Jewish military colonies in Egypt.

539 BC Israel now a Persian province.

537-332 BC THE PERSIAN PERIOD

537 BC Jews allowed to return to from Babylon to Judea

515BC The Second Temple.

440 BC the walls are rebuilt in Jerusalem.

435 BC Nehemiah arrives from Babylon and Ezra the scribe helps him in

the rebuilding.

332-134 BC HELLENISTIC PERIOD

332 BC Alexander The Great at war with the Persians and takes backs the

lands as well as Palestine. Jewish archers join his army and take Egypt.
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301-200 BC Palestine under Ptolemies of Egypt.

198 BC.

Palestine falls to Antiochus III from Syria.

190 BC Romans take Magnesia from Antiochus III

168 BC Rome takes all of Macedonia and uprising in Jerusalem, Jews

massacred and Temple looted.

( Suggest this time when first of the scrolls were written and

others copied from 170 BC to 68 CE.)

DECEMBER 167 BC Desecration of the temple.

The revolt and the Book of Daniel is given forth.

DECEMBER 164 BC Maccabees rededicate the Temple.

The Dead Sea Scrolls at the time they were written or copied were

therefore records and notes by scribes who had knowledge or some

knowledge of all of the above events.

The scrolls that were copied were a sort of back up as we would have on

a computer for our files and folders.

That suggests that some of the original written scrolls were hidden away

also or destroyed during conflicts across what is known as the Holy Land.

Very few people in archaeology would agree that there were at one-time,

Master Scrolls somewhere but I am still of the opinion that this was indeed

the case and remains so.

Why else would Jewish writings show up in today's scrolls be written in

a number of middle east languages, Hebrew and Greek as examples?

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LANGUAGE DATA.

We do not know when or where the impetus to produce and/or transmit

Jewish literature in the Greek language took root.

Probably, in the Greek (Hellenistic) world of Alexander the Great and his

successors, Jewish inhabitants in various far flung locations around the

Mediterranean Sea (and further east) came to use Greek as their normal

language. In some cases, Hebrew was dropped as a written language in

some areas.

Some of them also must have been interested in protecting their ancestral

customs and traditions, largely associated with the area known to Greeks

and Romans alike as Palestine.

One option would have been to keep the ancestral language or languages

alive (primarily Hebrew and Aramaic).

Another would be to translate materials into the newly acquired Greek

language. Reverence for Moses and the traditions associated with him

seems to have been a defining feature of early Judaism, and as Greek

became the everyday language of new generations of Jews, the desire to

have access to the books of Moses must have inspired an interest in

translating them into Greek.

This could have happened, in part or in whole, independently in various

locations in the Hellenistic world, but what has survived through the ages

is traditionally identified with the important Hellenistic city-state of

Alexandria, located at the western edge of the Nile delta on the coast of the
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Mediterranean Sea.

The tradition that an early Ptolemy, one of the Greek rulers situated in

Alexandria, desired to develop a library that contained as much of the

significant wisdom of that world as possible, provides background for the

legendary tales of the Alexandrian translation of the Pentateuch, or five

books of Moses,being translated from Hebrew into Greek by a team of 72

imported bilingual Palestinian scholars.

This tale of the translators and their miraculous production becomes the

basis for speaking of the Septuagint ,i.e. the work of the LXXII translators

(shortened to LXX, we suppose for convenience of reference; Septuagint in

Latin) and unfortunately comes to complicate by gross oversimplification

the subsequent history of related Greek translations and compositions.

For various internal reasons of vocabulary, idiom, style, and the like,

modern scholars have come to agree that Alexandria is an appropriate

location for the Pentateuch translation, probably early in the Ptolemaic

period, named after Alexander's successor who was in control of

Alexandria and Egypt.

And we have good evidence for the continuation of such translations

there, through I suspect that the introduction (prologue) written by the

grandson of Yeshua/Jesus son of Sira who translated his grandfathers

Hebrew pedagogical opus into Greek sometime before 100 BCE.

The grandson knows, also, of other efforts to render Hebrew into Greek,

which he depicts as a difficult task. He mentions I should add, rather

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vaguely, law, prophets/prophecies, and other books from the instruction

and wisdom of Israel that presumably were already known in Greek forms.

Even with this helpful information, we have no precise knowledge of the

Grandson’s occupation, training, or linguistic and scribal abilities.

In his world, translation abilities would have been important for

conducting business and governmental matters, at the very least,

especially in important local centres such as Jerusalem and Alexandria.

He claims to have come to Egypt at a particular point in his life, and to

have produced his translation there.

If we assume, which I don’t like to do, it seems likely, that his grandfather

taught and wrote in Palestine, it may be that the grandson also came from

that area.

Whether he already knew, before arriving in Egypt (Alexandria?), of the

various Greek translations from Hebrew to which he alludes we cannot

know.

Large fragments of his grandfather’s work in Hebrew have also been

preserved, and when we look at the grandson’s Greek, it is clear that he

has not slavishly followed a firmly fixed translation approach that conforms

to what we find in the Greek Pentateuch.

Similarly distant from the LXX proper (the Pentateuch) in its Greek features

is the Greek of the Psalms, and further from them both is the Greek of

Isaiah, not to mention other portions of the LXX/OG (Old Greek) anthology

of translations.
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That they all originated in the area of Alexandria is possible, but they

certainly do not all represent the same approach to translation, and it is

equally possible that at least some of them originated from other locations

in the Hellenistic world, and at various times.

That is to say, there is no translational homogeneity among the miscellany

of materials that came to be gathered together under the heading the LXX.

It is a highly artificial and doubtful collection, and that fact needs to

be highlighted more than it usually is. I suggest that more in-depth

research is needed here by others who are much more confident than I am

and also have the time because my body clock is speeding up.

Can we reconstruct from this diversity of translational efforts?

At very least, we can see some contrasting approaches that suggest

different levels of linguistic ability, translational philosophy, and, perhaps,

awareness of (and influence from) other translational activities.

To put it another way, there is no evidence for a single coherent approach

to translation in the materials that have survived and a great deal of

evidence for the contrary.

I am reminded; there is not yet any simple technological mechanism

such as the mega-codex that is attested several centuries later (4th century

CE) for gathering these various scrolls into one cohesive and easily

accessible body.
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The Context for Transmission

Most of the earliest fragments of Greek Jewish scriptural writings that

have survived come from the Pentateuch, and even among them there is

significant diversity in format and in some aspects of presentation.

Keep in mind that there was friction in the two main decoding camps in the

Holy Land from 1948 onwards and still going on today.

I need therefore to clarify for the reader as I have researched the events

that surrounded the decoding the Dead Sea Scrolls, Copper Scroll and

other fragments. I have also included here the results of what was found in

the caves for reference if needed. (Carleton 2010)

Qumran cave 4 LXXDeut 11 (2nd BCE, parchment roll) 02.

Pryl458 of Deut (2nd BCE, papyrus roll), 03.

Qumran cave7 Exod 28 (2nd/1st BCE, papyrus roll), 04.

Qumran cave4 Lev a (2nd/1st BCE, parchment roll), 06.

Pfouad266a [942] Gen (1st BCE, papyrus roll), 07.

Qumran cave4 Lev b (1st BCE, papyrus roll; tetragrammaton = IAW), 08.

Pfouad266b [848] Deut (1st BCE, papyrus roll; Hebrew/Aramaic

(tetragrammaton), 09

Pfouad266c [847] Deut (late 1st BCE, papyrus roll), 12.

Qumran cave4 Num 3-4 (turn of the era, parchment roll),

The non-pentateuchal fragments are: 05.

Qumran cave7 EpJer (2nd/1st BCE, papyrus roll), 05+.

Qumran cave7 frgs 4, 8, 12 [Epistle of Enoch? = 1 Enoch 103] (1st BCE[?],

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papyrus roll) see also reconstruction notes and frg 8 alone 05+.

Qumran cave 7 frg 5 (unidentified controversial Mark frg, turn of the

era[?], papyrus roll), 10.

Qumran cave4 paraphrase of Exod(?) (late 1st BCE, papyrus roll), 11.

Qumran cave4 unidentified Greek (late 1st BCE, parchment roll), 13.

Nahal Hever Minor Prophets (hand A), with example of paleo-Hebrew

tetragrammaton and hand B (turn of the era, parchment roll), 14.

Poxy3522 of Job 42 (1st CE, papyrus roll; Paleo-Hebrew

tetragrammaton),15.

Poxy4443 of Esther (1st/2nd CE, papyrus roll), 16.

Pfouad 203 prayer/amulet? (1st/2nd CE, papyrus roll)

Just as we do not know who made the translations in the first place, we

are in the dark about who copied and used them, and under what

conditions.

We tend to envision the transmission and use of Hebrew scriptures as

taking place in religious contexts the Jerusalem temple, local synagogues,

sectarian communities involving especially priests and scribes, community

leaders and later, rabbis.

The larger world in which all this was taking place also knew of the

transmission of written materials of various sorts, from local court and tax

records to sophisticated literature, involving professional copyists, with

bookshops and publication processes as well as governmental record

offices.
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In the Greek world, there were also Jewish professionals of various sorts,

from producers and keepers of documentary records to book store owners

and their supporting staffs.

It is not impossible that Jewish literature sometimes made its way into

non-Jewish hands, including book sellers and copyists, nor is it unlikely

that Jewish sellers sometimes handled non-Jewish materials.

Then there would be private copies presumably less formally prepared

would always be a possibility as well.

The research on which I am engaged, and am reporting here, reflects an

attempt to identify and trace possible indicators of characteristically

Jewish scribal practices in Greek, from the earliest evidence (2nd century

BCE) on into the period when Christianity comes to dominate the Grecian-

Roman world (4th-5th century CE).

The research is ongoing.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS RESEARCH TEAMS.

Things never really got going full tilt for at least a year after the first scrolls

were found and it was a long time after 1947 before the first qualified

archaeologist was on site checking out the caves 1 to 3.

Scroll forgeries and fragments were now common place once the word had

got out about the finds, the Arabs and others were not too long in flooding

the markets across the world to private dealers and some intuitions looking

for a scroll or fragment of the same but at a high price. Many Arab men

were laughing all the way to the bank with English and US currency, people
 143

got rich fast or robbed quickly.

Archbishop Samuel took off with his scrolls to the USA for the good times

and an asking price of one million dollars and God was on his side it seems

because when the Jordanian government demanded the return of Samuel’s

scrolls but it was too late.

Something had to be done because the whole Scrolls circus was now a

major embarrassment to all involved who had an interest in archaeology

rather than hard cash. That was what was shown to be on the surface at

least to the public and the bankers of Scroll archaeology research.

Things were not what they seem for all this research under the great

umbrella of ‘archaeology’. Dirty deeds were afoot, kidnapping arranged and

carried out of a young Arab man, a possible commando raid planed to go

into the sewers and invade the other research teams rooms and steal back

the scrolls there to add to their own collection. Torture and murder were

not ruled out it seems because the Jewish camp wanted all the scrolls as

well as the fragments and to get their hands on such, nothing could be

ruled out by the leaders.

Joseph Saad, director at this time of the Rockefeller Museum had been

approached by a young Arab man, a member of the Ta’amireh tribe, who

had some scroll, fragments. On seeing them Saad demanded of the young

man to be taken with a team of his own to the cave where the fragments

came from. He set off the next day with his team, some serving in the army

and discovered that the man with the fragments had flown the coup. He
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caught up with him on the road back to his Ta’amireh camp, stopped the

jeep and everyone bundled out guns pointing at the young Arab.

Before he knew what was happening he was taken by force and thrown into

the back of the jeep or lorry and was taken back to Saad’s HQ, put in a

room and questioned for hours. He was not long telling all to his guards,

location, type of cave, how man other people from his tribe involved and

any scrolls or fragments hidden away.

Marvellous what guns pointing at you and some electric wires can do

when you are standing in water in a room and your testacies start to shrink

at the thought of what could happen if you did not talk. Being an Arab and a

young one at that he knew that his body, and more so that part, was more

important than being brave for a few fragments of scrolls. He talked.

Saad set off almost at once, this time with a lorry and jeep. His team were

all armed in case they ran into trouble because by now the local tribes

people would have heard about the kidnapping of one of their own.

They got as far as they could to the Wadi Murabba’at and the four caves

they had been told about but had now to leave the lorry and jeep and walk

into the area of where the caves were, a good six or seven miles.

They found material and it could be dated to around 200 AD which included

letters written by Simeon bar Kochba around 133 AD which mentioned

plans for the Jewish revolt . But there was other material I am sure though

not scrolls.

Before they could get into these four caves they had to frighten off the
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local men working the caves with gunfire fired in the air. This of course was

no way to carry out any archaeology research or do work on site and it was

soon to backfire on the official Saad and those around him. When word got

back to Father de Vaux he was more than angry, he seemed to be

demented so things sped up around Qumran. Gerald Harding was in

charge and from the Department of Antiquities while de Vaux was the

archaeologist. They of course had a good mixed team and decided to do a

major survey of the caves in the Qumran area as well as the lands around

them. This went on for a good five years to 1956. de Vaux and his team

found a great number of buildings in the lowlands which he ID as the

Essene community that Pliny had mentioned before his death in AD 79.

This archaeology success was noted and Father de Vaux was also to make

friends of the Bedouin tribes and they could be employed but the whole

project was now under the watchful eye of Jordanian and Palestinian

archaeologists. The cave survey was carried out from the 10th to the 22nd of

March 1952. In all the number of sites listed by de Vaux I have listed below.

5 miles of cliff face, 267 sites, 37 caves with pottery shards. In cave three

(Q3) 20th March 1952, two scrolls which later turned out to be one, this

being the Copper Scroll but was in two half rolls.

I should point out that some of the Arab workers did find other scroll

fragments in the caves but said nothing and also found caves that they

said nothing about which means the survey was not completed at the time

and was I suggest was not professional by any means.

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For this part of my research my thanks to all the library staff at the

University of Birmingham who have and do allow me excess to documents

and old papers for the ongoing research. Much more remains to be done by

me on hidden codex's and I am looking at a two year project.

Of course, when I speak of books prior to the latter part of the first century

of the common era, we mean scrolls or rolls.

The codex form, with which we are so familiar (hinged on one side, written

on both sides of the page) is a technological development for which good

evidence emerges with Roman booksellers around the 70s of the first

century (Martial mentions this in his Epigrams), and which took rapid root

in some Christian circles soon thereafter.

Not that it is absolutely new at this time rough schoolbooks with wooden

waxed pages and leather thong bindings were available earlier, and some

formal records were also kept in an early codex format but its use to

transmit literature seems novel in the first century.

In a scroll dominated literary world, creation and control of large corpora

of materials was much more difficult that it became when large-scale

codices were produced under Christian auspices in the 4th century of the

common era.(CE)

The Bible as we know it could not easily exist, except perhaps as a cabinet

with appropriate slots, or in a portable scroll pouch/box (capsa), for which

the contents might be listed somewhere.

Even a mini-collection such as the Pentateuch would have been difficult

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to maintain in its multiple scroll form.

Not only in origin, but in early transmission, the LXX, or even the LXX/OG

is a seriously misleading designation.

There were scriptural scrolls, usually of individual books or the longer

books but occasionally with two or more works in a single scroll such as

the twelve Minor Prophets, or some wisdom texts (e.g. Proverbs, Qohelet),

seldom more.

Even after the development of the mega-codex technology in the 4th

century, use of smaller codices gathered into collections persists.

The Grecian-Roman world had its conventions for its literary scrolls,

especially those produced professionally.

Yes, there was room for some variation in some respects, just as there is

today between publishing houses, but on the whole the procedures were

fairly clear: spacing was not normally used to separate phrases or words

(scriptio continua),accents or breathings or punctuation were rare, as were

abbreviations of words or numbers.

Lettering was carefully formed, with attention to keeping letters relatively

uniform in size and separate from each other.

We can speak of bilinearity (regular top and bottom horizontal lines can

be imagined as enclosing the letters) and of the lack of ligatures (joined

letters, as in script).

Poetry might be formatted differently from prose, with new physical lines

for new poetic lines (normally hexameter). And so on.

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The world of professional documents operated with more flexibility, and

sometimes seems to have influenced certain copyists of literature to be

less rigorous writing formats and styles. Much the same we do today on

our computers.

Exploring the Earliest Jewish Greek Fragments.

Thanks largely to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we now have

access to a significant number of Jewish /Greek literary fragments, mostly

representing works that came to find a place in the developing LXX/OG

collections. The earliest ones I have listed above.

What do they reveal about Jewish conventions of copying, assuming that

they (or at least some of them) were produced by Jewish copyists and not

by their non-Jewish counterparts?

A few things stand out and call for closer examination I discovered:

1.

Many of the fragments display a highly sophisticated lettering style, with

decorated or shaded letters, careful bilinearity (sometimes with an

emphasis on the top horizontal alignment, with letters seeming to hang

from it as also in many Hebrew manuscripts), apparently of quite good

quality. Some are less decorative, less carefully executed, but almost all

seem to be formal rather than amateur productions.

2.

Most of the fragments that preserve enough text to judge make use of

spacing of some sort, usually by sense units but in one instance even by
 149

word division, in contrast to expected scriptio continua.

Whether this is sufficiently unusual to constitute a Jewish scribal

characteristic remains to be argued but I am of the opinion that it would

have been in the originals.

It certainly can be viewed as consistent with what is found in many Hebrew

Jewish documents from the same period (notably the Dead Sea Scrolls),

where even word division is normal.

3.

Some of the early Jewish fragments also use marginal markings, including

letters that extend into the margin (ekthesis), enlarged letters on the

margin, and other indicators of division, which similarly contrast with any

ideal of scriptio continua.

Again, whether good parallels can be found in equally early and

presumably non-Jewish literary materials remains to be tested.

4.

While any general tendency to use abbreviations is lacking, such as will

be encountered regularly in later Christian manuscripts (nomina sacra),the

treatment of the special four-lettered name for God, the tetragrammaton,

deserves and must have close attention.

There is little unanimity among the witnesses, which suggests that even

if we can posit a Jewish style on the basis of other considerations, it is not

so homogeneous a style as to control this particular feature.

Similar comments can also be made about variety in dealing with the
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Tetragrammaton in the Hebrew and Aramaic materials in the Dead Sea

Scrolls.

Factors other than scribal style seem to be at work here! As a point of

added interest, use of the tetragrammaton, both as a term and in its

various forms, became popular in the world of magic, as can be illustrated

from various gemstones.

5.

As already noted, the early Jewish/ Greek materials are on scrolls, along

with virtually everything else from that period of Grecian-Roman literary

activity. At what point can we speak of Jewish codices? That remains to be

discussed below and I hope leaves room for debate as well as some

doubts.

Early Christian Literary Activity

As we all doubtless acknowledge, the earliest followers of Joshua/Jesus

were, as he was, Jewish until he was said to have died.

If there was a Matthew who wrote things down about Jesus, he was a

Jewish writer and not Christian as many think. His new faith came a few

years after the death of Jesus and not before. He followed the flock led by

Paul.

There will come a time or better, different times in different places and

situations when (some) Christians will dissociate themselves from that

Jewish past, but for present purposes, I want to emphasize the blurry

period of continuities rather than the similarly blurry periods in which self-
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conscious distinction may have encouraged discontinuities as well.

We all have our own ideas who and what Matthew was but was our

idealized Matthew, the literate (to some extent) Jewish follower of

Joshua/ Jesus, a trained person in any regard? Did he know about styles,

lettering, formats, abbreviation, and the like? In what context?

Documentary? Literary? It is I suggest ,he knew all this but we can only

guess.

In the first generation or two of the Jesus movement, did any Jewish

professional scribes come on board? Any Jewish publishers and/or

booksellers?

Paul wrote. In Greek. He was Jewish, and seems to have received some

sort of formal training.

Did it include mastery of scribal techniques? He mentions writing with

large letters in his own hand (Galatians 6.11), but it is difficult to know

exactly what the significance of that statement may be for our discussion,

beyond the observation that he could write legibly in Greek.

And among the non-Jewish converts to emerging Christianity, how many

had been trained or involved in the production and distribution of books?

We don't know, but such questions are relevant to the task of attempting

to identify more clearly how early Christian scribes practices developed,

and how they may relate to earlier Jewish, and non-Jewish, features.

A few characteristics seem to stand out: I outline them below.

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1.

It has often been pointed out that Christians, more quickly than their

contemporaries in the Grecian-Roman world, adopted the codex as a

format for transmitting their literature, for some a form of vanity publishing.

They did not invent the codex that much is quite clear.

Nor did they use codex exclusively. There are clearly Christian scrolls as

well, for a long time. But where did they get the codex idea in the first

place, and why did it catch on among them so rapidly?

Some scholars have suggested that Paul, or the Paulinist movement ,

already has codices in view in referring to the books [scrolls?] and the

parchments in 2 Timothy 4.13.

Also in the Luke passage about Jesus opening and closing the book of

Isaiah in the Nazareth synagogue (Lk 4.17-20), it has recently been

suggested that an early textual variant to that passage may be envisioning

a codex rather than a scroll.

I found this rather tenuous evidence, probably from the early second

century at best, but in the minds of those ancient authors and/or revisers,

of Jewish documents seems to be envisioned.

Is it possible that early Christian copyists (and authors?) learned to create

codices as part of their Jewish heritage? Of course it is possible, perhaps

even more probable, given the other continuities between Judaism and

what became Christianity.

When fragments of Jewish scriptures from the early centuries of the

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common era are discovered, one criterion used to identify their ancient

connections is the codex criterion; if the fragment is from a codex, it must

be Christian! This, of course, makes it impossible to identify any Jewish

codices among such materials .It also limits the possible answers to the

questions that need to be asked about the Jewish ones.

Early Christian manuscripts tend to be rather carelessly executed, due to

documentary influences and later ‘doctored’ if it did not serve the needs of

the Church. That is why the ‘sectarian’ scripts and fragments form scrolls

were buried for the most or did not surface at all because what is in them

or was in them would do great damage to Christian belief. This is probably

also true of some Jewish examples.

If I have rattled the cages of many academics in the archaeology field then

is no bad thing because all too often they churn out the same old

archaeology tape and the needle is stuck.

To students of archaeology and related studies I say in 2011 is if you don't

think it right or know the information you are being spoon fed is wrong

then challenge the Tutor. Head on and have your own answer ready.

The details are often daunting, but behind them are developments of

relevance to our historical understanding and also forgotten people who

deserve to be recognized for their accomplishments and contributions.

What is the Septuagint? = 70

The Septuagint is the traditional term, derived from the Latin word meaning

seventy, for the canonical collection of Old Greek translations of the

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Hebrew Scriptures and related literature (Greek Apocrypha).

These translations are the earliest and among the most valuable of the

surviving ancient biblical versions.

The Septuagint became the Bible for much of the early Christian Church.

When Jewish scriptures are quoted in the New Testament, it is almost

always from the Old Greek translations.

Furthermore, even when not directly quoted in the New Testament, many

of the terms used and partly crafted by the Septuagint translators became

part of the language of the New Testament and early Christian literature.

That of course does not mean that it is accurate in translation from Hebrew

to Greek and then into English or Latin.

The History of the Septuagint

According to an ancient legend, King Ptolemy Philadephus of Alexandria

wished to make a collection of the world’s best literature.

His librarian, Demetrius of Phalerum, suggested that the Hebrew books of

holy law (presumably the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch) should be

part of the collection, since the law which they contain is full of wisdom

and free from blemish or so he thought.

Ptolemy sent ambassadors with gold and jewels to the Eleazar, the high

priest in Jerusalem, requesting a copy of the Hebrew law as well as a group

of learned men who could translate the Hebrew books into Greek.

Eleazar selected six elders from each of the twelve tribes and sent them

to Alexandria with a copy of the scriptures in which the Jewish characters

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were written in gold letters.

A version of this legend has the seventy-two translators complete their

task in seventy-two days, and when they compared their efforts they

discovered that each had produced an identical translation.

A great story I suggest but almost impossible to do, even today with

computer aids.

Scholars agree that this story was created for Jewish purposes to enhance

the importance of the Hebrew Scriptures by suggesting that a pagan king

realized their significance and, therefore, arranged for a translation into

Greek. The Jews sold the King a ‘bum’ steer and he took it as truth.

Such Scholars have conjectured that a likely motive for such a project was

to meet the educational and liturgical needs of the large Jewish population

in Alexandria, many of whom had forgotten their Hebrew.

They spoke Greek but, as Jews, they also wanted to be conversant with

the ancient scriptures. Much like the Irish who live away from Ireland and

become more Irish than the Irish at home.

Over time this Septuagint Pentateuch became widely used by Greek-

speaking Jews in antiquity outside of Palestine, and became a model and

magnet for other translational efforts at various times and in various

places.

From among these Greek Jewish people, the early Christian movement

attracted many of its followers while the ' Jesus Movement' attracted more

Jews who could speak Hebrew as well as some Greek

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When Christian collections of Jewish scriptures were united into the

Christian Old Testament, which was published together with the New

Testament collection to form the Greek Christian Bible, those responsible

used the available Septuagint (Old Greek) materials as the basis for their

text.

It was from these Septuagint materials that the early Latin translations

were made, which formed the background for the most influential

translation for the western Church, the Latin Vulgate.

In this way, Catholic Christianity along with the Eastern Orthodox

Churches still embraces the tradition of the Greek Old Testament, which

has served them well for two thousand years.

Religion of course raised it ugly head again because in the sixteenth

century, however, Protestants turned away from the Septuagint

and reverted to the Hebrew Jewish Bible as the basis for translations into

modern languages.

Hence, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles have more books in the

Old Testament than their Protestant counterparts.

Books like 1 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Jesus Sirach and

Wisdom of Solomon were preserved primarily in Greek or in translations

made from Greek and some of these books were originally written in Greek.

Those Jewish scholars who collected and transmitted the Hebrew Jewish

Bible during the early centuries CE did not accept these apocryphal works

into their authoritative Hebrew-Aramaic anthology, which in turn provided

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the base text for Protestant translations.

AUTHORS NOTE.

In case there is any misunderstanding, the scrolls and fragments are not

in any way CHRISTAIN though many people of that faith and in the early

days copied, borrowed and even stole for their own use much of the

content to suit their needs.

The Greek Church as well as the Church of Rome would only use the parts

of script

that would suit such needs and suppress other parts that they later

classified as pagan and much debate would have went on behind closed

doors of what to use and call truth and what to dismiss out of hand and not

mentioned to the faithful of such religions.

The Psalster found among the Dead Sea Scrolls includes Psalms not found

in the Book of Psalms and probably did not have all of the Psalms in the

Book of Psalms

(Psalms Scroll).This suggests at the very least that the collection of

Psalms which we now know as the Book of Psalms was not universally

accepted at the time when the SCROLL WAS DISCOVERED.

Language changes constantly.

The Hebrew Scriptures use words and mention the names of animals and

places, whose meaning has been lost to antiquity.

There is always the hope that manuscripts found in the future will shed

light upon the meaning of these words but time is running out as well as
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funding in 2011 for such research though I should add that a few people,

including myself will beaver on in hope of understanding and new

discovery, funding or not.

Some interpretations of entire passages hinge upon the understanding of

a particular word or phrase.

When archaeology provide us with texts that utilize the particular word

or phrase in question, they help us to evaluate whether or not the

interpretations based upon them are tenable. In many cases they are not

and we start again.

The expectation that archaeology will try to recover lost texts is one

aspect of the relationship between Syro-Palestinian archaeology about

which Dever complains.

He asserts: ‘It is worth noting that serious objections to archaeology as a

discipline come almost exclusively from biblical historians, Northwest

Semitic/Hebrew epigraphers, Assyriologists, and other students of texts,

who although highly specialized themselves, value archaeology mainly for

producing literary remains...These scholars seem oblivious to the equally

valid historical data to be derived solely from the analysis of material

culture remains.’

Having mentioned the positive effects that archaeology has upon the study

of Sacred Scriptures, I now feel I should mention some of the negative

effects and possibly harmful side effects.

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If we drop all the fancy jargon such as Dever and others use we are left

with the bones and from here we have to flesh them out but get it right as

best we can.

As Dever mentions at the end of his article after claiming among Syro-

Palestinian archaeology many future accomplishments will certainly be the

writing of a more comprehensive and satisfying history of ancient Palestine

in both the Old and New Testament periods,

What archaeology cannot do, even at its best, is to prove the Bible in any

sense either by demonstrating that the events claimed by the biblical

writers as central to the salvation history that actually happened, much

less by validating the theological inferences that are drawn from these

events, whether ancient or modern Here Devers point is valid.

Archaeology might help us to understand the Bible better.

It might provide evidence to confirm the occurrence of individual events

or even the historical events found in an entire book, but all archaeological

evidence and facts, like all the facts and hypotheses in science, are relative

truths.

At best, they serve as models and mirrors of absolute truths.

Since 1995, numerous variants to each of these two theories have

appeared in print, none of which, however, has been supported by actual

empirical evidence.

Such real evidence I discovered in 2009, is lacking and much that has in

fact been put forward as fact has been wishful thinking or pure guess-
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work.

The same can be said for some scroll data and the shadow of the grail.

Some readers may be aware that exhibitions of the Scrolls taking place in

museums both here and abroad over the past few decades have continued

to promote and defend only the older interpretation of Scroll origins while

at the same time, as a rule, discouraging open debate in public forum

between scholars adhering to mutually opposing views on this topic.

Those people who did in fact view the exhibit, should first be aware that,

since 1948, successive phases of dynamic development in the discovery

and investigation of the Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran site have taken

place. The present totality of evidence has inevitably led various scholars

in Europe, Israel, and the States to conclude that the original theory of

Scroll origins is unworkable.

The further evidential conclusion is that the original theory must

eventually give way to the recognition that these manuscripts have no

organic connection with any particular sect claimed to inhabit the area

where they were discovered, and that they originally came from Jerusalem

rather than any other place.

The theory of Jerusalem origin could hardly have been suggested by the

discovery and reading of the first seven Scrolls (1948-1950).

Prof. Eliezer Sukenik’s almost immediate conclusion was that the Manual

of Disciplin (also called the Community Rule) was Essene writing; Pre

Roland de Vaux latched on to this idea and initiated an ambitious

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excavation project at the nearby site of Khirbet Qumran that led, one might

say ineluctably, to his eventual claim that he had found the long-lost laura,

or monastery, of the Essene celibates of the Dead Sea region described by

Pliny the Elder. This of course as we know or should know give his

enemies the ammunition they needed in the future and most of this was his

own doing.

In the early 1950s there was scarcely a scholar in the world who did not

believe that claim and yet anomalies in the theory began to emerge even

before completion of de Vaux’s excavations in the mid-1950s, by which

time discoveries of many more manuscripts had been made in caves

stretching northward, from near Khirbet Qumran, a distance of at least two

kilometres.

The anomalies include the following elements:

(a) De Vaux urged that the claimed Essenes had hidden their manuscripts

in the caves upon hearing that Roman troops were about to come down

from Jericho to attack them; but he did not explain why, by that token,

those putative celibates moved northwards with their manuscripts i.e.,

towards Jericho rather than southwards away from the direction of the

supposed pending attack?

Such was his thinking at this time but then he was in fact proved wrong

in much of the evidence he had presented on the scrolls.

Today it would be unlikely that he would get away with such broad

statements. De Vaux I should point out, worked for Rome first and the
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Church and for archaeology research second. That is where he got major

grants from. He may well have been restricted of what he could or could

not say in public or publications as I suspect was the case.

(b)Pliny the Elder asserted that his celibate Essenes lived with only the

palm trees for company whereas the fact that Kh. Qumran was, by

contrast, a well-built stone site with a tower did not elicit an explanation by

de Vaux.

De Vaux insisted that the Qumran site housed celibate Jewish monks

whereas his own excavations were already producing evidence of the

presence of females there.

He recognized that a cemetery of virtually a thousand graves was present

on the very plateau of Kh. Qumran, without explaining how the purity-

loving brethren reflected in the Community Rule could allow such a

graveyard proximate to the inhabitants living quarters.

(It was either the females or the sheep and they could eat sheep!)

(c) When the Copper Scroll, discovered with other manuscripts in Cave 3

(1952), was deciphered, it was seen by the first scholars who actually read

it to describe the hiding in Judaean Wilderness sites of treasures, scrolls

and artefacts whose palpable place of origin was Jerusalem.

This was the first documentary evidence pointing to that city as the place

of origin of the Scrolls but Pre de Vaux, without offering any specific proof,

simply pronounced the Copper Scroll a forgery. A bad mistake and very

bad archaeology, the final nail that could have been used to destroy him
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later.

Thereafter, when Yigael Yadin’s Masada expedition;

(over 50 kilometres south of the Qumran area) revealed other scrolls of the

same character as those found earlier in the Qumran caves, Yadin claimed

that they were brought there by those same claimed Essenes of Qumran

even though Josephus had described in painful detail, as an eyewitness,

the flight of the Jews from Jerusalem to Masada in the wake of the Roman

siege.

The Masada text-evidence, when added to the documentary evidence of

the Copper Scroll, logically pointed to a different explanation for the hiding

of the Scrolls than that being pushed by Pre de Vaux and his followers.

(d) The seven or eight researchers working with de Vaux in the decades

before the Scrolls were freed provided no information concerning the

number of scribes who copied them. There was without doubt some

conflict on site between the members as well as later.

Yet as more and more scrolls came to be published after 1992, it could be

perceived that the copyists had, as shown by their variegated and

individual handwritings, numbered no fewer than several hundred scribes.

That on its own I suggest would have caused major problems because if

you can picture a busy TV or Newspaper Newsroom with so many people

all adding and writing the same story, sparks and tempers would fly.

This new finding led inevitably to the recognition that the Scrolls could

have been produced only in a heavily populated cultural centre from which
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they could be readily removed and hidden thus reinforcing the earlier-

discovered evidence pointing to the Scrolls Jerusalem origin.

EGO OF COURSE CLOUDS THE MIND WHEN IT COMES TO

ARCHAEOLOGY FACTS AND REAL EVIDENCE.

It is an unfortunate fact of contemporary cultural history that exhibitions

of the Scrolls mounted world-wide since 1992 have offered no serious

description of these facts or any other piece of documentary evidence

pointing to the Jerusalem origin of the Scrolls.

This has continued to be the case even after well-trained European and

Israeli archaeologists who have studied the Kh. Qumran site over the past

two decades have concluded, independently of one another, that the site

offers no evidence of notably sectarian occupation or engagement in

bookmaking or literary activity.

Even while traditional Archaeology field workers continue to assert that

multifarious ritual baths dominated the site, the Israel Antiquities Authority

team in its archaeological reports on those installations states that that

they were, with one or two exceptions, water reservoirs having no

particular ritual implications.

On that basis, nothing unusual was discovered; ritual bathing was a

general rule in Palestinian Jewish society, not limited to radical sects, while

reservoirs were necessary, in inhabited sites of the Judaean Wilderness, to

sustain life during the long summer season of drought.

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The archaeological findings are of course significant, but please note that

their primary value in terms of the salient question of Scroll origins is the

confirmation they provide for the earlier-created theory of Jerusalem origin

of the Scrolls an interpretation arrived at not primarily by the study of

archaeological evidence but rather through the testimony of written texts.

At all events, and despite the above developments, exhibits of the Scrolls

since 1992 have remained notably one-sided in their treatment of the

fundamental question, at times even to the point of dogmatic recidivism.

In no uncertain terms, an introductory wall text asks, in reference to the

Scrolls: Who wrote and used them?

Scholars have two basic theories about these manuscripts.

The one is that they all belonged to a single religious sect that probably

lived at the settlement of Qumran; while the other is that they were a

random collection of texts reflecting the beliefs of several distinct Jewish

groups representing either a single priestly or public library, or the sacred

texts of various Jewish communities from Jerusalem and elsewhere in the

Land of Israel.

So far in my research and thankfully, the UFO and Alien Visitors Brigade

has not high jacked or entered the stage as they did in the past with

Egyptian Archaeology and South American archaeology with mindless

clutter and statements. There is no dispute that the value of the Scrolls are

important but conflict with other statements in the past as well as

descriptions of individual manuscripts.

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Thus for example we read in a description of the famous Community Rule

that its dictates are those of the Dead Sea community an expression often

repeated in other books and research and that the fragments as well as

scrolls, are indicative of its importance to the sectarians.

Contrary to this claim, however, publication of virtually all of the Scrolls

as now known, in their variety and with their mutually conflicting ideas.

What else? In my view and opinion it has resulted in a situation of heated

debate where only the most traditional Archaeology field workers and

researchers, would still now claim that they describe but a single

heterodox group.

It therefore cannot be proven that the actual evidence discovered at

Khirbet Qumran, and much more fully known today than in the mid-1950s,

indicates that any single group including the authors of the Community

Rule lived and had their headquarters at that site.

This is where Pre de Vaux made this claim circa 1950 as a consequence of

his belief that the home of his group should be sought in the near vicinity

of the caves where they were found; but the arguments subsequently

made by him that Kh. Qumran was that site are not objectively sustainable

because of the evidence presented by him and others is weak.

This confusion is more obvious in the descriptions of the manuscripts that

have been display, which also appear to be based upon the some

assumption of the single-sect theory.

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Thus the description of as Words of the Luminaries, while first correctly

stating it to be a sequence of Hebrew prayers intended to be recited on

fixed days of the week, goes on to state that The sectarians rejected the

way that sacrifices were conducted in the Temple, and believed that God

should be worshipped only with prayer until the end of days....

All very well and good but in the history of Scrolls scholarship, the idea

of sectarian origin of this writing arose only out of several fundamental

prior assumptions: namely that the authors and scribes of the texts found

in the caves lived as a sect at Kh. Qumran; that the writings of this sect

included only Biblical and Apocryphal texts plus the works of a single sect;

that the various poetic texts found in the caves are to be included in the

latter category; and that hence all of the ideas expressed in those poetic

writings were shared by the entirety of the claimed sect supposedly

inhabiting that site.

This was the line of reasoning initiated by Pre de Vaux and followed by

Pre Baillet and Pre Puech in their studies of this text.

This was followed later by pure archaeology shite and wild claims made

when in fact they did not know but needed a press release fast.

These assumptions, however, have never been demonstrated to have a

factual basis.

The descriptions of the other Scroll texts presented, it becomes clear that

some writers were irresponsible or poorly informed in their thinking and

presentation of the old research or maybe they wanted fame and fortune in
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the world of Academically halls?

The Biblical Book of Jeremiah, including the fact that this figure

prophesied disaster and annihilation for the Judaean kingdom.

There is little doubt in my mind that the concept of holiness of certain

writings other than the Pentateuch was gradually developing among the

Palestinian Jews in Second Temple times.

That being said, all of the writings eventually considered as canonized

prophetic books had actually attained that exalted level before the time of

the Tannaitic masters (2nd-century A.D.) has never been demonstrated,

and the mere presence of a certain number of Biblical prophetic texts

among the Scrolls does not change that picture.

Scripture is normally defined as holy writ in Hebrew, kitb haqodesh; and

it must be kept in mind that no such expression appears in the Scrolls,

which pre-date the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D.

Josephus, whose career mainly spanned the second half of the 1st Century

A.D., does, it is true, write of the Jews having besides the Pentateuch and

four books of hymns and precepts, thirteen sacred books dealing with the

Kings and Judges and he elsewhere occasionally refers to or quotes

writings of six of the Biblical prophets plus Daniel, but nowhere does he

make mention of the prophets Amos, Hosea, Joel, Obadiah, Micah,

Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Zechariah or Malachi.

I found this odd of why they had been left out of text and this part of

religious history?
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Among the latter Scroll texts are fragmentary commentaries, those on

Habakkuk and Hosea, but it cannot be determined whether the interpreters

responsible for them wrote as they did because there was a general belief

in their holiness, or merely on the grounds that they opined, as individuals,

that those writings should have that status.

It is also possible I believe, that much that was written about the sectarians

when the scrolls were being decoded was left out and never published on

orders from the Church who du Vaux was over shadowed by most of his

archaeology life. This treatment appears in explanations of other texts on

display.

In the case of the small fragment of a copy of the Community Rule, the

explanation offered is that it contains instructions concerning the everyday

conduct of the Dead Sea community.

It would seem from my research that some people and with a religious axe

to grind, would make every effort to protect the single-sect theory, even if

it is wrong.

The scroll in question contains descriptions of ideas and conduct

espoused by the Yahad brotherhood, but also statements implying that the

members of that group lived in various Palestinian towns and cities but

without a single reference to communal habitation in the Judaean

Wilderness or along the shore of the Dead Sea.

The additional descriptive statement that the members lived a communal

life of abstinence according to strict rules is far more a description of the

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celibate Essenes described by Josephus than it is of the members of the

Yahad brotherhood.

The observance of purity laws, the sharing of wealth, and the holding of

special group meals and discussion sessions are traits considerably more

reminiscent of brotherhood groups of Hellenistic times by now quite well

known than they are of the activities of the genuinely abstemious Essenes

as described by Josephus, Pliny the Elder, and Philo.

Nor is it the case that the text on display condemns the religious laxity

of fellow Jews.

The words used in the manuscript are ma al anashim, the wickedness of

men not, in this case, the wickedness of the sons of Israel.

A mote point I add and no mention of women which seems odd.

As contrasted with wording in the manuscripts that condemns the scribes

own people, the passage in question, as well as various additional

statements in writings of the Yahad brotherhood and others, are clearly

meant to be construed as ideas expressing moral concern on a general

human level.

Scribes or writers no matter who they are seem to have licence to invent.

This is all the more apparent from the writers description of the heavily

Apocalyptic War Rule (=War Scroll) first published in 1962 by Yigael Yadin

(who himself supported that theory and contributed to its spread).

Thus we find the writer stating that this manuscript describes the final

war at the end of days between the Sons of Light and the Sons of
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Darkness but it does not point directly at one group or another.

I should point out that the brotherhood group designated in the

Community Rule by the expression ansh hayahad (men of the Yahad

society) is never mentioned in the War Scroll.

It was only by careful research that the Sons of Darkness covered nations

and tribes who were not Jewish in word or thought but had invaded or

tried to over many years.

The War Scroll, on the other hand, describes various nations, not only the

presumed Romans, as being included amongst the Sons of Darkness.

In the War Scroll the Sons of Darkness are vanquished by the Sons of

Light, but the latter are described, over many columns of the text, as

including all Israelites except the most rebellious sinners.

(Many writers claim that the words sons of light, appearing in three

columns which they treat as the beginning of the Community Rule, refer to

the Yahad brotherhood, but careful readers and researchers will observe

that there is no connection between those three columns and the others,

which describe only the Yahad brotherhood without any mention of the

sons of light doctrines.)

A subsequent portion of the description states that the sectarians held

that the time of this battle was near and would be heralded by the

messianic coming, a belief later shared by early Christians.

However, no reference to a Messiah, or to a messianic coming, is in the

War Scroll.
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I did find there (column 11, lines 6ff of the Yadin edition) a quotation

of the famous Biblical passage (Numbers 24.17f) announcing that “A star

will tread forth from Jacob, a sceptre will rise from Israel”, etc.,

but the words that both precede and follow this quotation in the scroll

interpret the declaration not as the hint of a future personal Messiah such

as early Christians claimed for it.

The Book of Tobit, according to the description, was one of the Second

Temple Jewish compositions that once again implying a static rather than

dynamic conception of the process of Second Temple Biblical

canonization.

It could be with clear thinking, a more temperate formulation would be that

Tobit and other such Hebraic texts never became part of the Hebrew Bible

either in Second Temple times or thereafter.

The description adds that eventually Tobit and certain other such texts

were adopted...by the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches as Old

Testament. A common confusion; in fact such writings were adopted by

them as deuterocanonical writings within the body of texts designated by

Christians as the Old Testament.

Since the Aramaic Apocryphon of Daniel has elicited great interest on the

part of those exploring Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity,

here too caution would be needed.

The description states that this text refers to a historical king who will

arise and be the son of God.

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This interpretation being offered is assisted by the profusion of capital

letters introduced into the translation; but the actual gist of the passage is

that a false saviour will arise whom people will naively adopt as a godly

personage, speaking of him as a heavenly creature (bar elyon) tyrannizing

the nations until the true people of the Lord arise and cause peace to

blanket the earth. (We are still waiting for this peace!)

In describing the period of tyranny, the ancient author for good reason

does not use the term mashi ah (=messiah), nor is it found or implied

anywhere else in the manuscript.

The past text scroll jar first describes the original view positing an organic

link between such jars and the manuscript-bearing caves, but then adds

that recent scientific analyses of the pottery composition of the jars

suggests a more complex picture, with clays or the jars coming from

several other sites in the area. In other words someone got the jar

fragments and labels mixed up and when they arrived for sorting this

caused a wee bit of a panic to say the least. “Say Nothing!” mode came

into operation right away and everyone involved kept their heads down and

their mouths shut.

Israeli archaeologist Rachel Bar Nathan, who has made a comparative

study of the northern Judaean Wilderness pottery and writes that the scroll

jar is a well-known vessel within the repertoire of the Second Temple

period, particularly in the plain of Jericho and the Dead Sea region .

The pottery from Qumran does not assist in differentiating the community
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at Qumran from that at other Judaean sites, especially in the Dead Sea

region.

Similarly, regarding the ancient sandals on display, which contain nails,

the appended label first states that they were interpreted as evidence that

the inhabitants of Qumran visited the caves often, but then is careful to

point out that only Roman soldiers wore sandals constructed with nails.

It is this type of confusion that made this research more hard work

and therefore it meant a mass of cross references by myself to even get

close to facts with evidence. More so with the Copper Scroll Research.

In describing the phylacteries (tefiiin) discovered in some of the

manuscript caves, the museum acknowledges for the first time anywhere in

a Scrolls exhibit that they comprise several different versions, and that

scholars have interpreted this either as evidence for the diversity of

Second Temple Period Judaism, or as proof that the scrolls could not have

belonged to a single sect.

(This is what front PR people do, confuse everyone.)

What I am suggesting here is that not one but several groups must have

been responsible for the phylacteries.

With regard to the scroll wrapper from Cave 4, this focuses on the fact

that the very fine weaving and the use of expensive, imported indigo dye

suggest a certain level of wealth on the part of those who cared for the

scrolls, hinting at the embarrassment this finding poses for the question of

a claimed presence at Qumran of wealth-eschewing groups such as the

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Essenes or the Yahad brotherhood.

The source of such indigo dye or ink could be obtained from Indigneria

plant species in Asia and Africa, the leaves being fomented for use as a

dye. Blue and black dyes can also be obtained from marine molluscs

species. Oak galls will give a very black dye once they are boiled up.

The inkwell discovered at Ein Feshkha, within Khirbet Qumran were

originally cited as evidence that the Scrolls were written by scribes from a

religious sect living at Qumran, but thereafter emphasizes that many text

scholars insist that all the scrolls could not have been written at this small

settlement, since they represent some five hundred different examples of

handwritings and varied scribal traditions.

Left is the fact that no evidence has ever been found within Kh. Qumran

for intense scribal activity even on the part of a small group.

But the balance obviously sought by those people is reflected in a

subsequent statement that archaeologists debate whether the number of

inkwells from Qumran make the site unique, since such objects were found

at other sites in Israel. Shekels from Tyre were also found within Khirbet

Qumran. If the residents of Qumran belonged to a religious sect, states the

commentary, the hoard could have been communal property, or the cache

could have constituted the half-shekel taxes that the sect members refused

to send to the Temple.

For those who propose that Qumran was an ordinary villa, farm or

industrial site, the hoard represents the wealthy owner’s savings or

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commercial profits. There is I suggest, a lack of common sense displayed

in the descriptions of the individual manuscripts, such descriptions raises

serious questions and the actual documentary evidence supporting the

described scholarly opinions, of which there are many.

It is all very well being an academic wonder boy or girl with letters after and

before your name, research papers published or waiting to be published in

archaeology, more so in Near East archaeology if you do not know how to

weed the archaeology garden at Qumran. If you are not aware of

archaeology forensics then the title before your name should be

“Dead Thick, Malcolm ……”, and after your name, “Like real thick!”

In Irish and archaeology language world wide, the word, “Thick” means

‘STUPID’

‘Could be a horse?’ ‘She has been here a long time.’

‘Three nipples don’t add up.’ ‘What comes after 79?’

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PARCHMENT TYPES.

From very remote times, hides first raw, and later tanned were used as

writing material in the Near East.

My research shows that the first mention of skins being used for such a

purpose occurred in the Egyptian IV Dynasty, that being > or < around

2600-2500 BC, that being the Early Dynastic Period though from the

evidence, I am of the opinion that it was much later than this when it came

to writing on hide.

Skins however were used also by Persians for recording their own history

from 1000 BC> when the Achaemenids, a branch of Persian tribes, moved

into W Iran and settled in FARS.

The Writer On Skin,

This has been depicted on Assyrian monuments from 800 BC and the skins

of sheep and goats were also used by the Ionian's to write on.

There may well have been mistakes made in the Egyptian data and what

was in fact classified as leather was in fact parchment and true parchment

did not appear until 200 BC. This I should add, throws cold water on some

researchers who worked on the early Dead Sea Scrolls from 1948 to 1956

The Latin word for parchment is pergamena crops up from time to time in

old Roman text data.

True parchment in fact started life in Pergamum, a city in Asia Minor.

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Authors Note. (Carleton 2011)

There is often confusion to what the Dead Sea Scrolls were recorded on

and 80% of people tend to think that all were written on animal skin that

had been treated for that purpose.

This in not in fact the case as around 50 scrolls or fragments were written

on reed papyrus.

As for the skins used in the near east my list includes sheep, goat, cattle

and deer skins that through time-lines were prepared by scraping fat and

tissue off it, limed to loosen wool and hair then scraped again with a

curved knife for that purpose.

Remaining flesh or fat are scraped away from the underside (flesh side)

and the skin is then stretched on a frame and more scraping carried out.

At one time the whole skin was used as parchment but now it is made from

the flesh side of a split skin, this being the grain side which once

contained the roots of the hair or wool.

Liming was often used and repeated to remove all grease and this left the

skins in alkaline condition and the skin required no more treatment such

as tanning. Tanning was used if skins were as leather for shoes, belts and

clothing in the past.

Drying under tension on a frame completes the process.

The most common parchment in the Near East at the time the scrolls were

copied or written was sheep and goat skin but I suggest that goat skins

were used more-so for the scrolls.

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In Co.Donegal, Ireland I did in fact carry out this process on goat, sheep

and deer skins and found that goat skins were better for writing and

drawing on once they had been cut down to size. Hare and rabbit skins did

not produce good results for writing on.

From a forensic point of view the skins used for the scrolls were from a

X type sheep or goat skin. (Cross bred )

The production of the Dead Sea Scrolls therefore needed treated skins,

reed pens, ink and inkwells, needles and thread and in the case of the

papyrus scrolls, a very good supply of papyrus reeds of which Qumran

areas were in short supply.

In that case papyrus reeds must have been imported to the area at a price.

As Egypt was low on the reed supplies the material reeds must have come

from Syria at that time and brought overland by camel or donkey.

Once the skin has therefore been treated it was cut into sheets and sewn

together to make a single blank scroll.

A handle sheet was attached at one end which would name the text that

was written and on the outside of the main scroll.

The scroll to be written on by a scribe was ready.

The ink used was a carbon based dye and the standard and writing style

by each scribe varied over time.

It should be noted that some of the dead Sea Scrolls have in fact been

edited by another scribe at one time.

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This tends to show I discovered, in the Community Rule Scroll found in 1Q

= cave 1.

The Carbon dating for some of the scrolls found.

TESTAMENT OF KOHATH 388- 353 BCE

PALAEOGRAPHIC AGE 100-75 BCE.

295-220 BCE

REWORKED PENTATEUCH.

339-324 BCE 125-100 BCE

209-117 BCE

BOOK OF ISAIAH 335-327 BCE 125-100 BCE

202-107 BCE

TESTAMENT OF LEVI 191-155 BCE 280 -100 BCE

146-120 BCE

BOOK OF SAMUEL 192-63 BCE 100-75 BCE

TEMPLE SCROLL 97 BC-1CE 180-BC- EARLY 1st CENTURY CE

GENESIS APOCRYPHON 73 BCE-14 CE AS ABOVE

THANKSGIVING HYMNS 21 BCE-61 CE 50 BCE-70CE

HEBREW RESEARCH SCRIPTS FOR THE SCROLLS.

ARCHAIC 250-150 BCE (Mainly biblical text)

HASMONAEAN 150-70CE

HERODIAN 50 BCE- 70 CE
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If Petrie was the father of Palestinian archaeology then it may be said

that Albright was the father of Biblical Archaeology.

That is, that branch of archaeology that sheds light upon the social and

political structure, the religious concepts and practices and other human

activities and relationships that are found in the Bible or pertain to peoples

mentioned in the Bible.

That bible, being the old Hebrew Bible and not the King James Bible.

The main purpose of biblical archaeology is not to prove or disprove

the Bible. Yahweh is the God who acts in history, and in as much as

archaeology sheds light on that history it is important to biblical studies.

It is the people therefore and their habitat as well as the tribes that such

research should be about. Early work done by critics was done in complete

isolation from any comparative materials. Wellhausen consciously ignored

the early archaeological finds believing that Israel's development was

essentially independent of the development of Egypt or Babylonia.

Gunkel writing only 17 years after the publication of Wellhausen's

Prolegomena found himself disagreeing with the latter's conclusions

because he took into account extra-biblical parallels, such as the

Gilgamesh Epic.

Lance concludes that after Gunkel:Old Testament research would follow

many paths...but at least one thing was clear: no longer could the Old

Testament be reliably interpreted as a self-contained system in isolation

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from the rest of the ancient Near East.

Those who would understand the Bible in depth would have to read it as

an organic part of its context. Archaeological discoveries have led to the

modification of the Documentary Hypothesis, rather than to its

abandonment.

The various sources of the hypothesis are now held to be historical, but

transmitted orally for a long period, so affecting the stage rather than

the sources themselves. Selman notes that only a few writers have argued

for the abandonment of the Documentary Hypothesis on the basis of

archaeological data.

There is much disagreement as to the exact period into which the so called

Patriarchal Age fits. Although some scholars go for a first millennium date,

most hold to a date in the early 2nd millennium, in the Middle Bronze age.

Albright and his colleague Nelson Glueck felt that they had found

irrefutable evidence for Abraham in the Middle Bronze age (MBI: 2 100 1

900 BC.). Albright associated Abraham with the Amorites migrations of this

period, arguing that he was a donkey caravanner who plied his trade in

Canaan.John Bimson argues for an earlier dating (Abraham c.2 092 1 992;

Jacobs entry into Egypt c.1 877.) on the basis that while not being

completely satisfactory, it does at least avoid some of the problems

associated with assigning the Patriarchs either to MBI or MBII. I should

point out that he hen go’s on and argues that the length of the Patriarchal

age is sufficient to span the major changes in settlement patterns that

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occurred during the transition between these periods.

Cornfield et al opt for a Late Bronze Age (LBA) date for Abraham and place

Joseph in the Iron Age, because of the mention of Philistines, as well as

certain references in the poetic passages in Genesis 49, Isaac's blessing of

his sons (Gen. 27), and Noah's curse on Canaan.

From an archaeology point of view their dating runs into difficulty because

it is out of line with the biblical chronology.

The patriarchs must be placed somewhere between 2100 1700 BC < if the

Chronologies are to be regarded as anything other than artificial, which

unlikely. Such dating in a time line is of course difficult because I am very

aware that the Old Kingdom of Egypt was around 2575-2150 BC, the Middle

Kingdom 2040-1783 BC. Much evidence has been put forward for a dating

of 1950 1700 BC.

The alliances between Mesopotamian powers are typical for this period as

are the personal names of the patriarchs. Seasonal occupation of the

Negev has been substantiated, as have the presence of city states and

certain social customs. This evidence is not as strong as it was once

considered to be.

Van Seters, for example, claims that the Arabian names in Genesis 25

must be from the 1st millennium. In his view under a guise of genealogy,

gives a picture of the wide-ranging incense trade carried on by the various

Arab tribes and localities in the sixth century BC. This argument rests on

Van Seters claim that none of these Arabian names occur in Mesopotamian
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documents before the reign of Shalmaneser III (8th century BC).

Hamilton points out that this absence is most likely due to the lack of

contact between the Tigris-Euphrates and Canaan before that time.

Van Seters reasoning thus over extends an argument from silence.

On the basis of this evidence the milieu of the patriarchal narratives is

more likely to be of the 2nd millennium than of the first, so I am for a

dating of 1950 -1700 BC.

Archaeology is, like all sciences, is not without limitations. As mentioned

above, it cannot verify spiritual truth, and data it provides can often be

interpreted in different ways and is.

There is always the possibility that data will be misused, and some of the

ways that this has happened will be discussed further below. A second

problem is simply the vast amount of information still to be collected.

Wiseman & Yamauchi point out that: in Palestine alone, of more than 6 000

sites surveyed, fewer than 200 have been excavated, and of these only 28

to any major extent... some sites are still occupied (e.g. Damascus,

Jerusalem, Erbil) and therefore can only be partially examined.

The precise location of some prominent OT places (e.g. Jericho & Ai) is

still questioned. Only a fraction of the objects retrieved from some sites

have been published.

In Palestine the high water table may have caused its perishable writing

(Papyrus & parchment) to perish. Yet of the estimated half a million

documents from OT times, fewer than 10% have been published.

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It would be too much to expect, even if the data were less fragmentary,

that we would find any direct evidence of the biblical patriarchs, and

indeed none has been discovered. That does not mean there is none yet to

be found or found and not yet decoded. Nor indeed has any historical

figure from Genesis 12-50 been identified. It would be wrong to conclude

from this that the stories are fictional, or to suggest, as some scholars

have, that the biblical narrative teaches us things about God and ourselves,

without concerning itself with historical accuracy.

Lance points out that the vast amount of data being collected has caused

archaeology and OT study to become separated simply because no one

man can be an expert in both areas. Specialization, I feel is the only way

round this problem may mean that important facts are not passed between

the various fields of study. A good example of such behaviour in the past is

the Dead Sea Scrolls data that was held back for many years.

The material contained in Genesis 14 is the most sharply debated area of

Patriarchal archaeology.

The mention of so many characters and events that would be expected to

appear in extra-biblical accounts have made this chapter a focus of special

attention. Many scholars regard the account as late and unhistorical.

Attempts at the beginning of the 20th century to identify the four Kings

(most famously Amraphel with Hammurabi, King of Babylon) have been

now been generally rejected on both philological and historical grounds.

Any positive identification, G.W. Anderson asserts, is beset by difficulties.

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Van Seters rejects the historicity of the accounts on the basis of the lack

of any evidence for such a military alliance in a 2nd millennium context.

He further argues that Abraham, with an army of 318 men would hardly

have been able to defeat a force that he reckons to number several

thousand.

However our knowledge of this period of history is still so patchy that

these events could have gone undetected in extra-biblical finds, especially

the difficult problem of Elamite rule in the Dead Sea area.

Wenham points out that the armies in the ancient world of 2nd millennium

were small, more on the level of raiding party than of an invasion force

much like the old Clans of Irish History.

Although there is no direct archaeological confirmation of this account,

the names of the Kings (which are well attested in the 2nd millennium), the

route taken by the armies and incidental references to Canaanite religion

and certain legal terms give it at least a ring of authenticity I am

suggesting.

Due to the weakness of the evidence on both sides, and there is a lot of

weak evidence here, the best solution would be to allow archaeological

research to fill the gaps on our knowledge.

The Hyksos Period (c.) 1 700 1 550 BCE)

This has received a great deal of attention because the rise of Joseph to

power and the entry of Jacob and his family into Egypt is often linked with

it.The identity of the Hyksos is uncertain.

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Some identify them with a Hurrian ruling class who, through superior

weaponry and strategy dominated Syria, Canaan and the Lower Kingdom

of Egypt.

Bright argues that they were of essentially Semitic origin, their earlier

rulers apparently being Canaanite and Amorites princes from Palestine

and Southern Syria.

The subjugation of the confused and weakened Lower Kingdom was more

likely to have been more by infiltration than by conquest.

Although the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt cannot be made to fit

Chronologically with the expulsion of Israel from Egypt, Devries points

out that Israel must have been in Egypt throughout the Hyksos period.

There is no direct evidence of Joseph's administration available from

archaeology. However, a number of incidental features of the Joseph

narrative (Gen. 37-50) have been shown to be consistent with the Hyksos

period.

The price of 20 shekels was the average slave price in the 18th century

BC ( later the price rose until it was 40-50 shekels in the 15th-14th

centuries.

The technical terms used in Pharaohs court (Butler, Baker), as well

as court (Gen. 41:14) and prison procedure and etiquette have been shown

to be accurate. The Vizier of Egypt was known as the Seal-bearer of the

King of Lower Egypt (cf.Gen. 41:42) and the gold chain sanctioned a Viziers

control over regulation of food supply. (Gen .41:42).

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Although Cornfield argues that the mention of Rameses (Gen. 47:11) before

the rise of the Nineteenth Dynasty in the 14th century is anachronistic, it is

possible that the name is accurate, being interpreted ‘Re’ has created it.

The Egyptian names are not attested elsewhere until the 12th or 10th

centuries BC (e.g. Potiphar, Asenath, Zephanath-Peneah), but this is

probably due to lack of documentary evidence rather than their non-use.

Excavations in the mound of Yorghan, near Kirkuk, Iraq during 1925-31

unearthed more than 4000 clay tablets, many dating from the 15th-14th

centuries BC, when the city there was known as Nuzi, part of a province of

the Mitanni Kingdom.

These tablets include many kinds of documents, from marriage contracts

to wills and agreements of sale for land and slaves and are the source of

the striking parallels to the patriarchal stories.

Many of the texts only record the basic information necessary for the

transactions they describe, omitting that which was understood by both

parties.

This has meant that the texts are capable of being interpreted in a number

of ways, as we shall see below.

Mari (Tell-el-Harari) is located 25km from the border of Iraq, on the West

bank of the Euphrates. Excavations there began in 1925, revealing the city

to have been a prosperous city in the patriarchal period.

Among the finds were the famous Mari Letters from the Royal archive.

Although they do mention some OT names (e.g. Nahor and cities

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Haran, Hazor & Laish) their significance is more general than those from

Nuzi in that they provide us with general information about the 2nd

millennium world rather than many specific parallels, although some have

been drawn from them. The mention of tribes of pastoral nomads, known

as Amorites, has proved particularly relevant.

Of all the claims of archaeological substantiation of Biblical events and

characters, those initially made for the discoveries at Tell Mardikh

(in Northern Syria) were the most rewarding. One of these claims was that

the five cities of the plain had been found named on the same tablet in the

same order as in the Bible.

I have since discovered that his claim was later withdrawn and no surprise

there for guesswork is not much good when it comes to archaeology time-

lines.

16 000 Sumerian texts were discovered, many, as with those from Nuzi,

dealt with economic and commercial matters, but Royal decrees, lexical

and religious texts have also been found.

That old boggy of course turns up again and again with problems in

translation mean that some texts are open to interpretation and we should

know what that means. However, they do point to a 2nd millennium rather

than a 1st millennium context for Genesis as a whole, showing that names

such as Abraham, Israel, Esau and places like Salim were all current at this

time.
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This extra biblical data has been used in three ways to furnish parallels

to Biblical events. Firstly, to give further examples of practices already

known in Genesis (e.g. the supposed introductory formula used in death-

bed dispositions (Gen.27:2) and the sale of a birthright (Gen. 25:29-34).(82)

The second was to provide background information on such things as

shepherding contracts (Gen. 31) or the practice of a barren wife having

children by one of her slave-girl (Gen. 16:1-4; 30:113). The third method

was to interpret a little understood biblical practice using archaeological

data.

Three examples of this are the adoption of Eliezer by Abraham (Gen.

15:1-4), Abraham's purchase of the Cave of Machpelah (Gen.23) and

Rachel's theft of the household gods (Heb. Teraphim) (Gen.3 1:19,30-34).

The means by which these parallels were arrived at, owes more, at times,

to enthusiasm than to scientific method. Enthusiasm is well and fine but if

it does not come with good archaeology practice and knowledge then it is

as useful as a cow pat on a wet Sunday.

Millard points out that the selection of information was eclectic, being

based solely on its similarity to a Biblical passage, regardless of whether it

was representative of practices recorded in other texts found at the same

location. Often a single text was used for comparison.

Millard concludes: “When all is said these parallels [those based on

unbalanced or distorted data] prove nothing. At worst, they can be

misleading as additional evidence shows a custom to be local or

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commonplace. At best they show the possibility that the Patriarchal

Narratives exhibit some [of the same] practices, so permitting us to

conclude that they may tell of the same times. They are not to be neglected,

however, when they are thoroughly understood in their context”.

At least two texts from Nuzi have been used to explain Abraham's fear that

his servant Eliezer would become his heir (Gen.15:1 -4).

These texts describe how childless couples might adopt a son to serve

them in their old age and in turn inherit their property upon their demise,

after fulfilling the appropriate mourning rites.

This practice was widespread in the Ancient Near East, but despite the

popularity of this explanation it has now been largely rejected.

The main difficulty, apart from the translational difficulties inherent

in the text of (which are great), is that the Nuzi tablets state that once

adoption had been carried out the adopted could never be completely

excluded from the inheritance,

even if a son were born to his adopted parents he would then take second

place to the natural son. However, this shared inheritance is never

mentioned in Genesis, but, as Van Seters points out, is clearly excluded.

There is I feel, little point in arguing that Abraham was flouting the

accepted practice of his day it is easier to accept Wenham's observation

that too much is being read into the text from the supposed parallel as is

so often the case.

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Eliezer is not called a slave (the servant in Gen.24 is not named) and the

text does not say that he had been adopted, although Abraham may well

have been planning to do so if he had had no son of his own.

In Genesis 23 Abraham buys the Cave of Machpelah from Ephron the

Hittite as a burial place for his dead wife Sarah but I can not see why he

just did not plant her in the desert and move on as many poor people had

to do. The resemblance between this account and Laws 46 and 47 of the

Hittite Laws has led to another incident of parallel-mania as it is sometimes

called by its critics.

According to these laws, the sale of a man's entire property freed him from

all feudal responsibilities connected with the land, whereas if he disposed

of only part of it, these would remain his.

Barker and Wright therefore conclude that Ephron took advantage of

Abraham's predicament to free himself from taxes (or whatever form these

feudal responsibilities took).

Van Seters may have hit the nail on the head when he said , “the main

problem is that this interpretation must supply the story with missing point

of comparison and then reconstruct the text to agree with it.”

These missing parts in the account are any references to feudal service,

and any indication that Ephron was selling his entire property, which was

unlikely. This passage is not a precise parallel with a Neo-Babylonian

dialogue document but it is more likely that it represents an early form of

bargaining, which later developed into the sophisticated ritual of the Neo-
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Babylonian period suggested by Van Seters. Despite this at least three

recent articles still maintain that there is a parallel with the Hittite law code.

Many scholars, including Bright, Cornfield, Kidner, Mellor, Thompson and

Wright prefer to link the theft with a tablet from Nuzi, which implies that the

possessor of Teraphim had the right to inherit the household property.

Rachel's motive in stealing them was therefore an attempt to ensure that

Jacob would receive Laban’s estate. This view is one of several that is

based on an interpretation of no more than twelve, most frequently only

four or five of the approximately 300 Nuzi family law-texts known.

It would be more foolish to think that the will of the still-living father

could be thwarted by such a theft; the idols would only prove to be a

liability.

The writer was therefore not being anachronistic, but rather being

consistent with Abraham's 1st millennium context.

Despite the many dogmatic claims there is now a great deal of evidence

for the accuracy of the references to camels. Camels in the holy lan debate

has its roots in some basic facts of archaeological history.

Before 1950 animal bones found on digs were regarded as having little or

no importance. I suggest here that this was a bad mistake.

In addition most of the early sites were in interior hill country in which

the camel played a very small role but a role all the same.

With the recent increase in interest in fauna remains a number of writers

now place the domestication of the camel in the fourth millennium BC.
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Evidence discovered so far includes a mention of a Camel in a list of

domesticated animals during the Old Babylonian period (1950-1600 BC) in

a Sumerian Lexical Text from Ugarit; reference to camels milk in another

Old Babylonian text.

Pierre Montet found a 2nd millennium stone container in the form of a

camel in Egypt and Parrot uncovered a picture of the hindquarters of a

camel on a jar at Mari, also c.2000 BC, and camel bones dating from the

pre-Sargonid era (c.2400 BC).

Wiseman asserts by the 3rd millennium BC camels were in use, together

with donkeys, as slow moving beasts of burden, but were not domesticated

on a large scale until c.1500-1250 BC. Harrison, Kitchen and Yamauchi cite

further examples.

Day concludes that there is now no necessity to regard the patriarchal

references to camels as anachronisms.

As you should note, everyone has an opinion on the camel in the Holy

Land and Egypt even Wenham indicates that the camel’s relative rarity

probably made them something of a luxury a factor that emphasizes the

wealth of the patriarchs. The controversy over camels has tended to

overshadow a far more important fact.

That is that the first reference to horses in Scripture is not until the

time of Joseph s administration in Egypt (Gen.47:17) some time in 18th -

16th centuries BC.

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When it was first introduced to the Middle East in about 2 300 BC, the

horse was very valuable, serving as a beast of burden as well as being

used for riding. The Amarna letters (14th century BC) mention horses in

Canaan, but they do not appear to have been widely used (in warfare at

least) until the time of Solomon. A writer in the 1st millennium wishing to

emphasise the wealth of the patriarchs would have been more likely to

have substituted horse into the account rather than camel as by the 1st

millennium camels had become much more commonplace, while horses

were still expensive.

A second alleged anachronism is the record of Philistines in the

patriarchal narratives (Gen.21:32,34; 26:1,8,14,15,18), as the fierce race of

warriors from Capthtor settled on the coastal plains of Canaan in the 12th

Century BC.

Therefore references to Philistines in this region earlier that this date

must represent an example of an unconscious anachronism.

However, Kitchen has argued persuasively that the name is a replacement

for an earlier race of immigrants from Capthtor.

These people were different to the 12th century Philistines in that they

dwelt around Gerar under a king (Heb. Melek), rather than in the five cities

of the plain, which were governed by a ruler (Heb. Seranim).

Lasor argues that the earlier Philistines were identified with the

Canaanite’s, and may have inherited the name of a southern Canaanite

people group called Palishti.

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Palishti was later transferred to the prst, the Egyptian name for the 12th

century Philistines. Most conservative scholars follow Kitchens

explanation. Lasor adds as an alternative that the name may have been

proleptic.

I suggest there is no longer any valid reason to claim that the name is

anachronistic.

Van Seters makes many valid points concerning the abuse of parallels,

especially those found at Nuzi. Unfortunately throughout the first section

he repeatedly makes broad assertions to justify a 1st millennium context

which do not stand close examination as my research discovered.

There are three examples below though I do not agree on Van Seters

interpretation.

When considering Gen. 12:10-20; 20; 26:1-11, in which the patriarch

pretends that his wife is really his sister, Van Seters draws on 6th century

Egyptian marriage contracts that refer to a man's wife as his sister.

This would then explain why the patriarchs acted as the did.

Moving on from here Van Seters falls into an error that he earlier

condemned by importing a meaning into the text that is clearly not there,

by arguing that in Egyptian law a man's wife was also known idiomatically

as his sister.

The explanation is rendered unnecessary by the comment of Gen.

20:12, but more seriously in Genesis 12 an Egyptian Pharaoh

misunderstands what Abraham meant ( as one would.) by calling Sarah his

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sister.

If Van Seters is correct, we could expect him to be familiar with one of

his own country's idioms? The more reasonable explanation (and the one

supported by the text) is that while a brother was likely to be at least

tolerated by a rival male, a husband was not.

There have been parallels drawn between Esaus sale of his birthright to

Jacob (Gen. 25:29-34) and texts from Nuzi that describe the transfer of

birthright amongst members of a family.

Rejecting these Van Seters bases his preferred parallel on one damaged

text. Even if it were possible to be certain about this text, the transfer of

birthright was not just a 1st millennium phenomenon, but occurred in

several periods.

Examples of a childless wife presenting her slave girl to her husband (cf.

Gen. 16; 30:3, 9) are linked by Van Seters to a Neo-Assyrian text from

Nimrod. I suggest from my research he is correct in his assertion that this

custom cannot prove a 2nd millennium context, but neither can it be used

in evidence for a 1st millennium context any more conclusively.

However his distinction between the children of the wife and those of the

husband is considered by Selman to be unrealistic.

Also the idea that the wife retains full control over the slave girl.

In fact the text is nearer to the 2nd millennium parallel cited because it is

Abraham who has to dismiss Hagar, an act that he performs reluctantly and

only with divine consent and encouragement (Gen. 21:9-14).

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The implication could be fairly made that Abraham knew that the custom

of the day forbade the expulsion of a slave girl under these circumstances.

Once again the establishment of a 1st millennium parallel does not

dismiss the 2nd millennium parallels because here, and in many other of

Van Seters examples, the practices involved are not restricted to one

period.

That is why I urge caution when reading old scripts as well as personal

interpretation of the same, because it only takes one word or sentence to

throw everything later into complete chaos.

An example I quote is the word ‘stoat.’ Small mammal of the marten family

and a carnivore. Stoat is what it is known by, but in England, Scotland and

Ireland it is also called by its local name; witerick, weasel, and so on.

A weasel in Ireland is in fact a stoat because weasels, smaller than a stoat

and looks like one except for two things. It does not have a black tip to the

tail and weasels never made it across the land bridge into Ireland before

the sea levels rose.

The best, I fear that can be said is that they have a ring of authenticity and

that they do not now appear as far-fetched as was once thought but no

longer carry the weight that they once had. I conclude in this section

therefore that the burden of proof is very much on those who would deny a

second millennium context for the patriarchs, not 'Christ' as many tend to

think. I should also point out here that the Christ Movement led by Paul

was very anti Jewish and did cause conflict and pain to Jewish
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Communities as anyone who makes a study of the New Testament will see.

The trouble with old scripts and texts I discovered, was the number of

variations almost of the same story and many people have got excited by

finding a script or words in Hebrew only to discover the same later in Greek

with subtle changes in some lettering and words.

I did discover this by accident in the Mandala Yoga Ashram in Wales in

their library there which I used to haunt in search of material for research.

It is for all intentions a good reference liberty for yoga students, language

and of course text from Asia and the Near East.

What I did do was learn to understand the letters of text first and that

way if I was looking for material I knew what language it was.

The second problem and a major one for me was interpretation and again I

would enlist the help of students on courses, more so those that had

studied the classics or were from India or had lived there for a time there

and knew languages and languages linked to yoga.

Thankfully they were great with their space and time and did help.

I have laid out below some language guidance that was used for reference

below.

ARAMCIC

JUDEO-ARABC.

LADINO POSSIBLE SPANISH CONNECTION.

PHONECIAN.

YIDDISH.
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One can see from the above the great difficulty for anyone making a study

of old scripts. The trouble with all the data is that of language and a good

deal of that is from the old languages and from many different scribes.

From a research point of view I did find that some of the interpretations

left a lot to be desired and in many cases only to suit the moment in time

and were basis.

What had not and still not been studied, are the hidden scrolls and gospels

and reasons why Peter and a few others were left out of the bible? After

all, if Peter was the selected head of the Church then there had to be

someone that recorded his life after the so called death of Jesus or almost

impossible, even for a fisherman, to not have recorded part or the whole

of the great event in Rome.

Such gospels from women at the time and after Jesus have been omitted

from both the old and new testaments by Hebrew and Christian leaders but

I know that they would have been recorded.

Mystical vision

I am of the opinion and with some knowledge, that the paranormal comes

into play here and that must be kept in mind because that is where it is.

All religions are riddled with such and there is no escaping the paranormal.

Isaiah says that he received his messages in visions. That would include

dreams, trances and mystical voyages. These visionary "trips" produce

language that is highly descriptive and full of similes and symbols.

Extensive alliteration causes confusion even to the careful reader.

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Also, visionary repetition of important events three or more times does

not indicate three or more events but rather the certainty of the event.

The over throw of Satan under the symbol of Leviathan the dragon is an

example. Visions therefore need to be treated with respect but also with a

very open mind as the person having the visions may also have been

suffering from a mental illness at the time but unknown then.

Translation:

Isaiah uses many literary devices that are not translatable.One of the major

devices is the use of a play on words.

Sometimes it is simply the use of rhyming words or acronyms.

For instance Isaiah 8:22 and 9:1 (In Hebrew the same verses are 8:22, 23)

Isaiah repeats forms of the two words (mu'aph and mutsaq) in both verses

which in his contrast are a link to the meaning of the passage.

The play on these words makes it clear that it refers to the invasion of

Tiglath Pilezer III.

That 9:1 is linked to 8:22 and therefore the preceding two chapters is not

as apparent in English. At other times words are used that have double

meaning. At least one of the words that Isaiah uses has a double meaning

that is only understood as a double meaning in the light of prophetic

fulfilment.

That is the use of the word "nazer" Heb. which is fulfilled in Mat.2:23 where

it is linked to Isaiah 11:1.But that is only one of the eleven or so times

Isaiah uses the word.

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The Hebrew reader should be startled in those places where Isaiah uses

this word in contexts that are clearly messianic. These contexts also

contain the word "salvation" that in Hebrew is "Yeshua" which is also the

name Jesus.* This is only one of the startling "flights into mysticism"

available in Isaiah that defies translation.

It could well be that later translations left parts of it wrong because

of the scribes own interpretation of the script.*"Is it a light thing that you

are my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the

Nazarenes of Israel? I have also given you for a light of the Gentiles to be

my Yeshua unto the ends of the earth."

This research so far has looked at past text and history in some detail

but so far there is little or nothing pointing to what the 'grail' was or is.

The only real pointer is not the Dead Sea Scrolls that give us history but

directly to the Copper Scroll which I will deal with now in full.

What the grail or grails are could be almost anything that suits the needs of

the people or person, the tribe or country and the religions links, if any.

There are a number of possibilities and I am listing them below.

THE ARK OF CONVENT.

A CUP OR BOWL.

SECRET COPTIC TEXT.

MISSING DEAD SEA SCROLLS.

REMAINS OF JESUS AND FAMILY.

WOOD FROM THE CROSS.

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HEBREW SCRIPTS.

EGYPTIAN TEXT SCRIPTS.

LATIN AND EARLY CHURCH SCRIPTS OR OLD TEXT

KNIGHTS TEMPLAR TEXT-EVIDENCE

EARLY ARAB RECORDS AND HIDDEN TEXT-EVIDENCE.

MISSING OR HIDDEN SCRIPTS.

HIDDEN TREASURE LIKE GOLD AND SILVER

It is also possible, as I said earlier, there may well be more than one grail

type or object and this is likely considering archaeology history in the Near

East and Asia and at times poor interpretations of facts of 'evidence'.

Anyone has got this far in reading my research will by now see that

religions and Cultures play a large part in it though may have missed the

political links.

That is the problem with archaeology Empires and cultures because one

tends to focus on the tribe or culture, religion, myth and mythology, wars

and conflict and very little political interaction that tend to give us clues.

Religion and politics from a history and archaeology point of view are bed

partners of the worse kind because both always have an agenda, good or

bad.Today the Vatican is a good modern example of this as does Israel, the

Arab World and some Asian cultures.

Christianity could well be the top offender because what was put down in

the Old Testament is not being used or even thought about any more and

the pace is now gathering where numbers are dropping and converts few.
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It is, I am of the opinion, very terminally ill.

Such politics and religion came into play against Gnosticism, a Christian

off shoot to main stream Christianity which to say the least the whole

thinking of old texts referring to the life and death of Jesus the man.

As I stated before it all came about when an Arab discovered them in a

cave at Nag Hammadi in December 1945, two years before the first Dead

Sea Scrolls were found.

The fifty two texts were in a red earth ware jar along with some 'secret

poems' and they were in book form and covered in leather and were

without doubt codex's.

The location I believe now was in one of the one hundred and fifty caves

that honeycomb the face of the Jabal al-Tarif mountain in Upper Egypt.

They were early Coptic in nature but before they had been placed in the

jar in a cave, straw was also placed with them to keep them dry.

Muhammed Ali Samman who found them, had more to think about that

some mouldy old texts and straw and he left them with his mother and she

used some straw and one of the books as heating from the fire.

Then with his brother went out and killed the man who killed his father.

The caves on the mountain had been used 4300 years ago as burial places

for the dead so this suggests the red jar was placed there well after that.

I am of the opinion that these texts were copies of the original and

translations of such around 120-150 AD but what was lost in such

translation if anything, I don't know.

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Later when they had been sold on to dealers and reached the archaeology

community not only was there surprise and excitement.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 and in a much different location

which added fuel to the fire of course.

The Nag Hammadi find in 1945 was to set teeth gnashing in Jewish and

Christianity circles because new Gospels had been discovered and

recorded. I will call these the 'hidden gospels'.

Because words of Jesus when he was alive had been written down and

copied by Judas Thomas, his possible brother and said to be a 'twin'.

This twin is also mentioned in the Greek Gospels but care must be taken

here in case the interpenetration by others is wrong.

That does not take away from the fact that the Gnostic Gospels turned

some of the stories in the bible upside down and I have listed as much of

the titles below.

Gospel of Philip- Mary Magdalene.

Secret Gospel of John The Mysteries.

(This may point to the Egyptian or Jesus Mysteries)

Fifty two texts in all that included the Gospels of John, Philip, Truth,

Egyptians the Secret Book of James, Secrets of Paul, Letters to Peter and

Philip and the Secrets of Peter. There was also one text on Thunder,

Perfect Mind but I have no idea what it means.

The Gospel of Judas is also recorded and placed at 200 AD and as a

suggested Coptic Papyrus codex which was found at Beni Masah.

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Thomas ( Judas) is recorded also going to India, but the trade routes were

not being used till 80-200 AD so he had to get there and back via another

way.

If this was the case then he may have contact with Hindus and Brahmanism

tribes or cultures. There is no way he could have went to India and not met

local people, some maybe hostile, some welcoming him.

Much later of course when there was a well established trade route people

from India may have had possible links in the Holy Land and even Egypt.

If Thomas had kept a log of his adventures in India or the people he met

earlier but there does not seem to be any record from my research.

That does not mean that there is none.

There could well have been a language problem between the people but it

surprises me that he kept no record after he came back from India.

No mention is dispatches by anyone so far.

The Gospel of Philip and Mary Magdalene does mention that 'kiss on the

lips of Jesus' and as the other research data confirms it it does not mean it

is true. From my own opinion and views I think it was and Jesus may well

have been doing the kissing not just Mary. There was I am sure a real

relationship here, a ‘loving’ relationship and sexual.

If Jesus did not die on the cross and Mary and him were lovers or even

married then there is a likelihood they may well have had one child at least

if not more but living somewhere else outside of the Holy Land.
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Therefore I had to do research on Mary Magdalene in depth which I have

included below;

THE MARY MAGDALENE SAGA.

Many writers and researchers have produced data on Mary Magdalene,

some of it so far out and inaccurate that it is not worth reading or could be

used as part of this research.

The good news is that a few writers were spot on and give some good

material and the rest I did and put meat on her bones.

Mary Magdalene was a real person and she and Jesus were more than just

'good friends.' What is not always known is that when Mary anointed the

feet of Jesus and his head with an ointment that had been imported from

India, not only was it expensive but also used only by lovers or newly

weds. This strongly suggests two things.

(1) A trade route to and from India.

(2) That Jesus the Man and Mary were lovers.

She then dried his feet with her hair and that meant she too was anointed.

This was done in the sight and hearing of the followers of Jesus.

It should also be kept in mind that the 'kiss' on the lips by Mary to Jesus

did create ill feeling by some of the male followers.

The daughter of Mary Jacob she was born a week before Jesus was born

in Bethany, her on the 25th of December and him on the 6th of January the

following year if you use the old Julian calendar.

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To help with the evidence here, the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates

Christmas, the birth of Jesus, on the 6th of January even to this day.

I suggest when we are talking about Mary at Christmas we are talking

about the birth of Mary Jacobs and later to be known as Magdalene.

I expect critics of course to debate or dismiss these dates as fact but

they are and it is only when the Gregorian calendar came into force

divided the new Christmas Day from the old.

That is why there are twelve days of Christmas now noted as part of the

Festival.

If any one grail is to be linked to Jesus or Mary Madeline then it is to be

found in Europe that being France, Ireland or Rome and not anywhere in

the Holy Land. India in the NW is also a major contender, like around

Kashmir.

The most powerful religious group today, and who have in the vaults all

types of texts and objects relating to the Holy Land, The Catholic Church

linked in the past to The Templars, hidden text and of the old gospels.

Some I should point out will be highly sensitive because such information

is not for public viewings.

If it were it may well change the whole course of Catholic and Jewish

religious history and thinking today. Someday I have no doubt that they will

go on the Internet and much more interesting than the US data that was

uploaded in December 2010.

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The Guardian of the 'truth' as far as Rome is concerned is an organisation

Opus Dei, founded in Spain in 1928

Today in 2011 the membership (Official Numbers) I have listed below.

I take this from the Annuario Pontificio, the Official Vatican yearbook.

1,8050 < > PRIESTS, 83,644 LAYPEOPLE =85,491 MEMBERS < > AND 55%

NOW WOMEN.

The Work of God (Opus Dei) members are very faithful to the church and

more so than everyday Catholic men and women.

They come from all works of life but are mainly educated and have skills

that can be put to good use and if you don't have a skill to offer and don't

get fully involved with the Catholic faith daily then you don't get excepted.

A sort of Church Mafia if you like but with power and the ear of Cardinals.

If there are secret texts and scripts or anything remotely that could be

termed a 'holy grail' then some of these people know about it and also

know where some of them are as a location. But they don't know where at

that the location. Much the same as the Codex May on the Copper Scroll in

fact. You may find one or two locations but when you get there the

archaeology landscape will have changed and ‘markers’ may have

vanished over the years. Mountains and large rock pile would not but a

river may be no more than a long dry Wadi, a home for lizards, snakes and

scorpions.Where it is not, is the USA, Russia, Greece, and Rome. Egypt

and the vast areas of the Holy Land is the target area and also some

castles and large homes in France and even England.

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I feel strongly that what people are looking for and have looked for without

success is not a solid object like bone or a cup.

It is more than likely Text codex which when found and the puzzle decoded

will lead them something more profound than they have thought it would

be. That 'something' is in France or the UK but it came from the Near and

Middle East and it was brought there well after the death of Jesus and his

family. Where it was placed it is still there today. One Grail out of many I

suggest and others still hidden, possibly never to be discovered.

I am convinced therefore that though the other scrolls I have mentioned are

of a religious nature the Copper Scroll is less so and I am off the opinion

again there is more than one beaten copper scroll.

Such a copper sheet or sheets I suggest were made in Egypt as ‘blanks’

then added to after, a form of riveting was carried out and then and only

then, the Codex written and drawn on them. This missing Copper Scroll

may well have been found and removed already.

The journey to such a resting place starts in Jerusalem and it was a group

of holy Knights that brought it, passing it on and on to their fellow knights

till journeys end. It was something that the Church wanted and did not get

though I have no doubt they had people looking for it, people questioned,

even tortured and murdered, seeking information of its whereabouts and

what in fact it contained. The ‘One off Two’ I suggest here is a good

starting place for the Knight’s Templars involvement in removing items.

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THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 1118-1350 AD

It must be kept in mind that research into the Templars starting date as

a group is difficult to pin down from many sources but for the moment I

will suggest a date between 1100-1350 AD

Their main job was to protect pilgrims on the highways and byways on

their way to the city of Jerusalem in Holy Land.

The first group was small in number and founded by Hugues De Payen,

Lord or nobleman from the Champagne area of France.

In those early days they were known as 'The Order Of Poor Knights of

Christ, or Knights of the Temple of Solomon' so right from the beginning

there is evidence of a link to the Holy Land and Jerusalem though it is

highly unlikely that the eight men got close to the Holy Land for a few

years.

In time, Hugues De Payen turned up in Jerusalem at the palace of King

Baudouin 1st and offered the Knights and himself as protectors of the

faithful. In other words they were to protect the highways and roads around

Jerusalem where pilgrims walked.

The King seems to have thought it a good idea though I am sure he

pondered on how eight knights were going to do this.

So a wing of the palace was set aside for them and as they had taken an

oath of poverty they would not have been heard to keep.

It is doubtful if they did not eat and drink well while there and the Patriarch
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of Jerusalem and Emissary to the Pope as well as religious leader of the

new kingdom made sure that they were well cared for.

What I found strange is that for nine years there were only nine knights

recorded in old records which stated that no one else had been recruited.

I found this more than strange so carried out more research which I have

included below.

Hugues de Payen and these nine men were in fact Templars but again

what is odd that there is no record of the same 'protecting' pilgrims.

No mentions of battles with cut-throats or robbers, no data on the number

of pilgrims they saved?

In 1127 it does seem that some of the nine returned to their homes and in

1128, the Church, led by Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, stated that the Grand

Master (Hugues de Payen) and the knights were officially recognised.

This again was in the year 1128 in France and trouble was not far away

from Church involvement and the Knights of the Temple and others, the

others being the Cathars or Albigensians and as far as the Church was

concerned they were all involved in heresy. That in those days was a dying

offence but only after prison and torture.

Cathars were a religious group and were known as , 'Cathars, Cathares,

Cathari 'and from Italy, 'Patarines' The trouble between Cathars and the

Church started sometime before 1165 and when they first started up were

condemned by the Ecclesiastical Council at Languedoc town of Albi,

Southern France.
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By 1200 the Roman Catholic Church was more than alarmed at the spread

of this religion, a branch of the Christian religion but not run in the same

way. The Church being the all powerful in 1209 sent in an army of 30,000

knights and foot soldiers and slaughtered men, women and children and a

trail of blood and burning went from Languedoc, Perpignan, Narbonne,

Carcassonne, to Toulouse.

Nothing or no one was spared during this Albigensian Crusade.

Pope Innocent III called for it and was pleased with the bloodshed and

results. 'Rex Mundi' (King of the World) the God of Evil and the Catholic

Church had done their job well because it lasted for at least 40 years and

you don't have to be a mathematician to work out that it ended in 1249.

and the Order of the Poor Knights was said to be formed in 1118 and by

1249 the Knights Templars stayed neutral even though they would have

known about the murder and slaughter in France.

I suggest that some Templars did in fact get involved in France under

direct orders from the Church.

Those that stayed out of the slaughter their excuse being was that they

were to fight the Saracens but to be fair to them they did take in and even

hid Cathari refugees.

What is not known is that a good many Cathars joined the ranks of the

Knights Templars and many Templars of high rank came from Cathar

families.
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The Templars from the Cathar families that lived in the Languedoc areas

and did not travel to the Holy Land but stayed there.

The South of France offered the Templars at a later date somewhere to

hide and run to when the Church they had fought for turned on them as it

had done with the Cathars.

My research from the time of the forming of the Order of Templars 1118 AD

to the betrayal by the Church and the hunting down of the Templars

across Europe, mainly France and England 1315 AD I had to look at the

links between England and France and who was in power at this time.

I did this to give a much larger picture of who may or may not have been

linked to the Knights Templars because many young men from well to do

families were knights or made knights, depending how much money or

lands they had and could hand over. There were of course a few ‘poor

knights’ employed but first they had to have a sponsor, a Prince, Lord,

King or Queen who would kit them out with horse, sword and armour on

the understanding they would go to the holy land and fight for the Church.

They had to take an oath and give an undertaking to do at least three years.

Such poor knights never were awarded a title so they were known only as

Templar and were looked on by other Templars and members of the

Church in and around the Holy Land as the lowest of the low, ‘God’s holy

peasants’ one Bishop said.

A very good clue to who belonged where and when is the sign of the red

cross or a cross of carved stone in castles or churches across France and

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England, Scotland and Wales. This cross was a major symbol and always

Templar linked.

I have therefore listed the families of France and England during the

Templar Period for reference.

NORMANS AND ANGEVINS.

Robert III Curthose, Duke of Normandy 1054-1134

William II Rufus, 1057-1100.

Henry Ist ,1068-1135.

Edgar, King of the Scots 1074-1106.

Alexander 1st, King of the Scots, 1077-1124.

David 1st King of the Scots,1080-1153.

William III, Count of Flanders 1101-1128.

William Athling d. 1120.

Robert of Gloucester illegi ,d.1147.

Henry V, Emperor 1086-1125.

Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou. d. 1150.

Theobald, Count of Blois.d.1151.

Henry, Bishop of Winchester ?

Stephen, 1096-1154.

Henry 2nd , 1133-1189.

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Geoffrey VI of Anjou 1134-1157.

William, Count of Poiton 1136-1164.

Eustace, 1130-1152.

William, 1135-1159.

William, 1153-1156.

Henry, the young King, 1155-1183.

Richard 1st Coeur de Lion 1157-1199.

Geoffrey 1158-1186.(Married Constance of Brittany who died 1201,

linked to Arthur 1187-1203.

John Lackland 1167-1216

Henry III 1207-72.

Richard of Cornwall, King of the Romans, 1209-72

THE PLANTAGENETS.

Edward 1st 1239-1307.

Henry III 1207-1272

Edward 2nd 1284-1327

Joan of Ark 1272-1307

Edward Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster.1245-1296

Thomas of Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk.1300-1338

Edmund, Earl of Kent 1307-1330.

Thomas, Earl of Lancaster 1276-85.

Henry, Earl of Lancaster 1281-1345.

Edward 3rd 1312-1377.

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Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence 1338-1368.

Henry,1st Duke of Lancaster. Died 1361

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster 1340-1399.

Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, 1341-1402

Thomas of Woodstock, Duke Of Gloucester 1356-1397.

Richard 2nd 1367-1399.

Henry IV, Earl of Bolingbroke 1366-1413.

As can be seen from the above list there is evidence of a cross over as

well as conflict if not battles. This does not mean that all those listed

above were linked to the Knights Templars but most of them were linked to

the Church and Crusades.

The women of this time I have not mentioned except for Joan of Arc of

who married had children inside and outside of marriage.

The husbands were also busy and a fair number of children were born to

other women not even of the Court.

It seems that in 1300 AD, some men from the Albigenses had went to one

Comte de Montfort and get him to come and look at some human remains

that they thought and were convinced to be that of Jesus.

He refused and left it at that but it is said that King Louis IX had been told

the story by an old man called Jean de Joinville who was an

acquaintance of the King.

Why would a King of France make up such a story?

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There was also a report of a treasure that was kept at Montse'gur and when

the place was attacked by the Pope's army nothing was found.

One has to ask was this a link or suggestion to a holy grail and if so,

what was it? If it was the grail then somewhere in the Pyrenees it still lies

hidden and close to the Spanish border.

Whatever was smuggled out of Montse'gur during the siege of the castle,

was done at night and was taken somewhere by a small band of Templars

This could have been the fortified caves of Ornolac in the Ariege but all

that has ever been found were a number of skeletons yet no one at the time

thought of preserving them.

Half a days ride away from the castle was Rennes-le- Chteau or the caves

close by it in the hills. Any treasure that left the castle that night does not

mean just gold or silver. It could have been something else and something

that needed protecting.

In 1139? a Papal Bull was issued by Pope Innocent II who one time had

been a Cistercian monk at Clairvaux. It was to proclaim that the Templars

would swear allegiance to the Pope and the Pope only to be independent of

all Kings and princes of France.

De Payen, the Grand Master of the Templars in the autumn of 1128 went to

see King Henry 1st in England and very soon young men from well to do

families in England and across Europe started to join the Knights Templars

bring with them deeds of their lands, gold and money as donations to the

cause.
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A REWRITE OF THE TEMPLAR HISTORY

My research again had to look at the Knights Templars and all those people

involved as well as Orders who muddied the waters of history by jumping

on the historical bandwagon.

This included the Church of Rome in France and the rest of Europe.

The Reader of my Research could place the Crusades alongside to the

NATO Forces in Afghanistan today.

In the case of the Crusades these were based as Holy wars and battles the

Christians of Europe being pushed by the Church of Rome.

Blood was shed, murder and rape carried out and of course, like all wars,

the civilian deaths. All in the name of God it seems.

Afghanistan is no different and NATO and the USA troops cannot in

anyway win the war much the same as the Crusaders thought when in the

Holy Land. Little if anything has been learnt from the Crusades of how not

to fight and conduct a War in a far off land.

The early days of the Knights of the Temple in the Holy Land, the battles

and the battles also across Europe.

The crusades to the Holy Land 1095-1291 AD

FIRST CRUSADE TAKES JERUSALEM AND LATIN KINGDOM FOUNDED

THERE.

1100-01 AD FOLLOW UP EXPEDITION; DEFEATED BY TURKS

1107-10 KING SIGURD OF NORWAY BRINGS HIS ARMY TO THE HOLY

LAND.
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1122-24 VENETIAN EXPEDITION TO THE HOLY LAND

1144 AD ZANGI, RULER OF MOSUL AND ALEPPO, CAPTURES EDESSA.

1146 DEATH OF ZANGI

1147-49 2ND CRUSADE; ATTACKS DAMASCUS. FAILURE

1154 NUR AL-DIN, SON OF ZANGI, CAPTURES DAMASCUS.

1169 SALADIN BECOMES VIZER OF EGYPT.

1172 PILGRIMAGE OF DUKE HENRY THE LION OF SAXONY.

1174 DEATH OF NUR AL-DIN.

SALADIN FROM EGYPT TAKES DAMASCUS.

1177 PILGRIMAGE OF COUNT PHILP OF FRANCE.

1187 SALADIN TAKES JERUSALEM.

1189-92 3RD CRUSADE TO RECOVER JERUSALEM.

FAILS BUT SOME TERRITORY GAINED.

1197-98 GERMAN CRUSADE.RECOVER SOME TERRITORY.

1201 -04 4TH CRUSADE TO ASSIST CHRISTIANS IN HOLY LAND.

CAPTURES CONSTANTINOPLE.

1217-21 5TH CRUSADE, ATTACKS EGYPT BUT ARMY CUT OFF WHEN

MUSLIMS OPEN SLUCE GATES.

1228-29 CRUSADE OF EMPEROR FREDERIC II.

JERSALEM RECOVERED BY TREATY.

1239-40 CRUSADE OF THEOBALD, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE AND KING

OF NAVARRE. (FRANCE)

1240-41 CRUSADE OF EARL RICHARD OF CORNWALL ENGLAND.

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RECOVERS TERRITORY WITH TALKS.

1244 JERUSALEM LOST TO THE MUSLIMS.

1249-54 FIRST CURSADE OF KING LOUIS IX OF FRANCE AND ATTACKS

EGYPT. HE WAS DEFEATED 1250 CONTINUED; TO HOLY LAND 1250 AD

TO STRENGTHENS ITS DEFENCES THERE.

1269 CRUSADE OF THE PRINCES OF ARAGON.

1269-70 FRISIAN CRUSADE.

1270 2ND CRUSADE OF KING LOUIS IX OF FRANCE; TO TUNIS; FAILURE.

1271-72 CRUSADE OF THE LORD EDWARD OF ENGLAND.

1274 2ND COUMCIL OF LYONS,FRANCE, TO MAKE PLANS TO RECOVER

THE HOLY LAND.

1291 ACRE PORT CAPTURED BY AL-ASHRAF KHALIL, SULTAN OF

EGYPT.LATIN CHRISTIANS FALL.

There are no more crusades to the Holy Land but Jerusalem remains the

long term issue of crusades and fought over.

RULERS OF THE KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM 1088 AD TO 1344 AD

EUSTACE II COUNT OF BOULOGNE MARRIED (M) TO IDA OF LORRAINE.

DECENDANTS; EUSTACE III SON, GODFREY OF BOUILLON 1099-1100 AD,

BALDWIN I 1100-1118AD.

BALDWIN II, COUSIN OF BALDWIN I 1118-31 DESENDANTS LISTED

BELOW;

Hodierna M Raymond II count of Tripoli.

Raymond III M Eschiva lady of Tiberias (2nd marriage)

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MELISENDE 1131-61 M FULK (2nd marriage)1131-43 former count of Anjou.

DECENDANTS LISTED BELOW;

Baldwin III 1143-63, Amaury 1163-74 M Agnes de Courtney; DECENDANTS

LISTED BELOW;

Maria Comnena 2nd marriage to Baldwin III,BALDWIN IV 'The leper

King'1174-85, SYBYL 1186-90(M.WILLIAM OF MONTFERRAT) SYBYL THEN

MARRIED GUY OF LUSIGNAN 1186-1192 LORD OF CYPRUS 1192-94 ( 2

DAUGHETS BOTH DIED1190,BALDWIN V 1185-86

(Baldwin V never married and no known children.)

ISABEL I 1190-1205 DAUGHTER OF MARIA COMNENA.

ISABEL FIRST MARRIED HUMFRID OF TORON, NO CHILDREN AND

DIVORCED 1190.

ISABEL MARRIED (2) CONRAD MARQUIS OF MONTFERRAT

DAUGHTER MARIA M JOHN OF BRIENNE 1210-25.ISABEL Ist MARRIED

HENRY COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE 1192-97 THEN MARRIED AIMERY OF

LUSIGNAN, KING OF CYPRUS AND JERUSALEM 1197-1205 AND HAD

MELISENDE WHO DIED IN 1223.

THERE WAS ALSO ANOTHER ISSUE BUT NOT KNOWN AT THE MOMENT.

ALICE A DAUGHER DIED 1246 BUT HAD M HUGH I KING OF CYPRUS, M

ALSO BEFORE HER OWN DEATH, BOHEMUND V OF ANTIOCH THEN

RALPH OF COEUVRES MARIA HAD ISABEL II 1225-28

FREDERICK II M ISABEL II 1225-28 HAD SON CONRAD WHO BECAME THE

KING OF SICILY 1243-54 THEN CONRADIN A SON BECAME KING OF

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SICILY 1243-68.

ALICE AND HUGH Ist LINKED DIRECTLY TO HENRY I KING OF CYPRUS

MARIA WHO M WALTER OF BRIENNE, ISABELLA WHO M HENRY OF

ANTIOCH.

ISABELLA DIED 1264.

HUGH II, KING OF SICILY 1253-68 WAS RELATED BY BLOOD TO HENRY I.

HUGH II WAS EXCUTED BY CHARLES 1 IN 1268.

As you can see from this research not all is going well at this time for

any of the rulers of Jerusalem from 1088 to 1344 AD and blood was spilt.

Dirty deeds and plots were afoot with King Baldwin IV 1774-1785 who

suffered from leprosy from childhood died.

After he died he was succeeded by his nephew, the child Baldwin V who

died in 1186, then his mother Sibyl and her husbands Guy of Lusignan took

over for a time.

Sibyl and her daughters died in 1190, Guy was deposed and Sibyl's half

sister Isabel was then made Ruler of the Kingdom but before that she was

forced to divorce her husband, Humphrey of Toron. She then married a

number of men all who died from 'accidents'.

Conrad her second husband was assassinated in April 1192, the third one

Henry 'fell' to his death onto the cobbles below from a window in 1197, the

forth husband died of food poisoning it is noted in 1205

It is easy for anyone to see that there were too many reported 'accidents'

and all linked to one woman, Isabel.

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The church at this time, though powerful not powerful enough in the

crusader states. They did produce a few new Orders in those states and

most of these were much needed military Orders who also become

involved in political laws and deeds of the day.

It would be wrong to think that only The Templars were the only Order

fighting in the Holy Land and during the Crusades because there were

more and also armies, all Christian from Europe getting involved with the

blessing of the Pope in power and always with the backing of the Church.

From the French and English point of view many families were married

through one another and most of them well off, some not so well off but

tried to keep their standards high, in social, political and Church circles.

A family may have had little funding for a Holy War but if they could marry

into a family that was well off then they were, as they say in Ireland, on the

pig's back.

Arranged marriages were not uncommon, much the same as in parts of

Asia today and most of the time 'love' never came into it.

That 'emotion' may come later but it mattered little just as long as there

were male children born in time.

Women in such circles were in many ways better educated than their

partners and they spoke and could write in two languages if not more.

Such women were also responsible for the writing of the times, long short

stories about knights and wars but they did in fact research well and were

not worried about using real names of people or locations.

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With that sort of writing around the time of the Crusades by some women,

you can be sure that there is, if looked for, a wealth of hidden clues of who

was who, what, why happened and where.

Below I have included some research and history of such writing for

reference.

THE MILITARY ORDERS.

This is a study of the appearances of the Military Orders in the epic and

romance literature of the Middle Ages, 1150-1500.

The subject is important for historians of the Military Orders and the

crusades because the Orders appearances in literature give an insight into

how they were viewed by the noble knightly class who supported them with

money, land and recruits, the same class for which epic and romance

literature was composed.

The Orders continued appearance in this literature throughout the Middle

Ages is valuable evidence for continued belief in the Orders vocation

military service in a religious order dedicated to defending Christians and

Christendom against their external enemies and continued support for the

crusade, with which the Military Orders were often but not invariably

associated in. The subject is also of interest to literary specialists.

The Military Orders appearances in fictional literature, and the changes in

their roles in fictional throughout the Middle Ages, indicate that while

convention was important in the composition of fictional literature, from

the late twelfth century onwards it was essential that

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fiction should reflect actual events: that it should be realistic

While this was not total realism, fictional literature must at least

have a context in actuality, and the inclusion of the Military Orders could

assist in providing this context.

No study of the Military Orders roles in medieval fictional literature

can be complete without a consideration of the Templars appearance in

Wolfram von Eschenbach version of the Grail legend, Parzival, and the later

works based on it. This study reassesses the historical context of Parzival

and sets out a new historical interpretation of the work.

It also reconsiders the connection of the Grail with the Holy Land and with

the concept of the perfect knight and considers how these themes were

developed during the course of the Middle Ages.

While the emphasis here is on the historical rather than the mystical

aspects of the Grail legend, it is also shown that Wolfram von

EschenbaTempleise, who bear a symbol of faithful love the turtle dove

were probably responsible for the development of the image of the

Templars in French literature as supporters of lovers.

Certain problems arise in a work of this sort in reconciling the

expectations of historians and of literary specialists, who differ in their

approaches to their material and in their definitions of key concepts such

as history, reality, literature and Fiction.

In attempting to define such terms there is a danger of becoming bogged

down in an epistemological morass, but at the same time to avoid any

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attempt at definition will certainly lead to misunderstanding among readers

regarded by historians as having been written primarily to entertain.

I point this out because in some of the older books of fiction written by

women may well contain clues like locations, names and deeds that could

be of use to the researcher.

As study of the military religious orders has expanded rapidly in recent

years, it is clear that a comprehensive survey of the Military Orders

appearances in medieval fictional literature would be worthwhile, as an

indication of underlying attitudes towards the Military Orders by the landed

warrior classes throughout the Middle Ages.

Hence James of Vitry declared in the thirteenth century that to question

the concept of the Military Order was a sign of heresy.

The Military Orders were orthodox Catholics, and their vocation was

regarded as essential to the defence of Christendom.

The direct predecessor of the first Military Order may have been a knightly

confraternity. During the eleventh century these associations of knights

became quite common: members would band together for some good

purpose, such as maintaining the peace in their area, the protection of a

monastery, or mutual support on an expedition.

These were informal, secular groupings which might involve the Church in

that the knights took oaths of fidelity to the group and promised to use

their swords only to fight for good, but otherwise had no formal connection

with Church institutions.

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It is possible that such an association of knights in the Holy Land, seeking

the blessing of the patriarch of Jerusalem for their military activity in

defence of the pilgrim routes, became, with Church approval and support,

the Order of the Temple.

The three leading international Military Orders, in order of militarization,

were the ; Order of the Temple of Solomon of Jerusalem (or Templars), the

Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem (or Hospitallers) and the

Hospital of St Mary of the Teutons (or Teutonic Knights).

The Order of the Temple of Solomon was so called because its

headquarters in Jerusalem was the al-Aqsa mosque, which the Latin

Christians identified, erroneously, as Solomon’s Temple.

Before being given to the Order, it had served as a royal palace for the

Latin kings of Jerusalem.

The Order was military from its first official foundation, probably at the

Council of Nabla in January 1120.The Hospital was named after the hospice

for poor sick pilgrims which the Order ran in Jerusalem.

The Orders role of guarding pilgrims on the pilgrim routes within the Holy

Land was a natural development of this role. When the Hospital became

Militarised is a matter of scholarly debate, but it was certainly becoming

involved in military activity by the 1130s and was fully militarised by the

1160s, while maintaining its role as a Hospital.

The Teutonic Order, which originated during the siege of Acre (1189 AD)

during the Third Crusade, also began as a hospice for sick pilgrims and
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did not become a Military Order until 1198.

These three international Orders also became involved in defending

Christian territory in Europe: the Templars and Hospitallers in Spain, and

the Teutonic Order in Prussia and Livonia, where defence became an

offensive war against the pagan Prussians,Lithuanians and the Christian

Orthodox Russians.

Their military operations on the frontiers were supported by a vast network

of estates in Europe, from which money, warriors and other supplies were

sent to the frontier.

As a result of their need to collect resources in the West for supplying

their centres of operations on the frontiers, the Military Orders also

became involved in trade and other economic activities and banking.

They also became servants and advisor's of popes, kings and nobles

throughout Europe. They were therefore very much in the public eye and

attracted a good deal of comment from contemporaries, favourable and

unfavourable.

After the final loss of the Latin Christian territories in the East to the

Muslims in May 1291, the Orders of the Temple and Hospital removed their

headquarters to Cyprus, while the Teutonic Order moved its headquarters

to Venice.

The Hospitallers went on to conquer Rhodes from 1306 onwards; the

Teutonic Order moved its headquarters to Marienburg in Prussia in 1309,

but I am sure they did not go empty handed and took with them anything
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that was of value or in time, could be sold.

The Order of the Temple, on the instigation of King Philip IV of France,

was dissolved by the pope in 1312 and its properties transferred to the

Order of the Hospital.

THE CHURCH DID ITS DUTY WELL TO GOD AND SLAUGHTERED

TEMPLARS AND OTHERS ACROSS EUROPE.

There were also national Military Orders in Spain.

The most famous of these were the Order of Santiago, also known as the

Order of St James and the Order of Calatrava.

The Way of St. James was now a well established pilgrim’s way and many

came from Europe to the foothills of the Pyrenees before they crossed the

high passes to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia.

You should note there is a French and Spanish way of St. James.

I am sure that the list I have made of towns and villages along St. James

Way starting at Orreaga/ Roncesvallas in the Pyrenees and moving west to

Santiago de Compostela contains Templar forts, castles, name places, and

roadside and church graves all linked to the Knights Templars.

Hidden away in villages of the main pilgrim way will be found clues and

links to the Templars, secrets that have been hidden for years still to be

found and on the skyline at dusk, the outline of a knight on a horse facing

west.

The areas I have still an interest in are Pamplona, Lizarra, Puente La Reina,

Tafalla, Los Arcos, Viana, to the SE of here and in the valley, Calahorra,
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then back on the main road to Logrono, Nagera, Burgos, Tardajos, De Sirgi,

De los Condes, Fromista, Sahaqun, Santas Martas, Leon, del Rabanedo,

Astorga, Ponferrada, del Bierzo, O Cebreiro, Sarria, Palas de Rei, North to

Lugo, back to main road and west to the end. I intend walking it, exploring

it fully in 2011/12 and writing up my research. In all it will take a month but

being seventy years old then, it may take a little longer. I will be in no hurry

but I will do it.

From 1300 to 1522 the Hospital of St John was involved in naval and land

action against the Mamluks and, later the Ottoman Turks, in the Eastern

Mediterranean, Asia Minor, Greece and the Balkans.

It finally lost Rhodes to the forces of Suleiman the Magnificent at the

beginning of 1523.

In 1530 the Order accepted an offer from the Emperor Charles V to use the

island of Malta as its base, and continued hostilities against the Ottoman

Turks from Malta until the surrender of the island to Napoleon in 1798.

The Teutonic Order continued to wage war against the pagan Lithuanians

from its bases in Prussia and Livonia. Both Orders were assisted by forces

from the West; the Hospital took part in various naval leagues with Venice,

Genoa and other naval powers, while western European knights came out

to Rhodes to give military and naval assistance.

The Teutonic Order Prussian base became a popular destination for

knights who wanted military experience against the pagans.

The Order’s regular expeditions against the Lithuanians, Reisen, were

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promoted by the Order as a means of winning honour and glory as well as

serving God against the pagans.

The Reisen continued even after the official conversion of Lithuania to

Christianity in 1386. However, after the Order was defeated by the allied

forces of Poland-Lithuania at Tannenberg (Grunwald) in 1410 and the

ideology underlying its wars came under attack at the Council of

Constance, 1414 AD, the number of western Europeans prepared to come

to the Prussian front was greatly reduced.

Economic and political crises within Prussia as well as continued conflict

with Poland-Lithuania resulted in the destruction of the Teutonic Order’s

hegemony in Prussia.

In 1466, with the Second Treaty of Thorn, the Teutonic Order in Prussia

became a vassal of the king of Poland, although its Livonian branch

retained considerable independence.

The military religious orders did not play a leading or dominant role in

knightly epic and romance literature, but from around 1175 until the latter

part of the fifteenth century and later they repeatedly appeared by name in

certain roles.

They did not appear in every form of epic and romance literature: they did

not appear in the great prose Arthurian romances of the thirteenth century,

the Vulgate Cycle and, or in the prose Tristan, Meliadus or Gyron le

Courtoys.
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Service with the Templars as penance for a crime was a theme taken from

contemporary events. Criminals were indeed sent overseas to serve at the

Temple of Solomon in penance for their crimes, or were required to send

knights to serve there.

Criminals of previous generations had faced penance in a religious house

or a requirement to go on pilgrimage; a pilgrimage to Jerusalem followed

by penance in a religious house that consisted of fighting the enemies of

Christians and possibly being killed in service was a reasonable

development from this. It made human book-keeping easy for the church

officers of those who died in service.

Bernard of Clairvaux wrote of villains and impious men, robbers and

sacrilegious, homicides, perjurers and adulterers going to fight with the

Templars by the early 1130s; he does not state that they were sent in

penance, but as he explains that Europe was glad to see them go it seems

probable that some were sent in penance.

Following the murder of Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, in

December 1170, King Henry II of England was absolved by the Church on

condition that he provide two hundred knights to serve for a year with the

Templars in the Holy Land.

In fact, Henry provided the money to pay two hundred knights, rather than

sending the knights himself.

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The four knights responsible for the murder of the archbishop were

condemned to go overseas and fight for the defence of Jerusalem.

According to the later Lansdowne Codex MS 398 in the British Library, the

knights were given penance by the pope, to go to the holy places of

Jerusalem and fight fourteen years with military arms in the Temple against

the pagans.

The contemporary chronicler Roger of Howden tells us that they were sent

by the pope to Jerusalem in penance and after their deaths they were

buried in Jerusalem before the door of the Temple.

He does not specify whether this is the Lord’s Temple or the Temple of

Solomon, but the latter seems more likely in the context not that it matters

much because being dead is just that.

In fact, however, it is not clear whether the murderers did actually ever go

to Jerusalem.

In a similar vein, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, told in his Miracula

how a local lord, Humbert of Beaujeu, who had inflicted much damage on

local churches, especially the abbey of Cluny, received a vision in which he

was warned to mend his ways or he would end up in the tortures of Hell.

Terrified, Humbert went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he joined the

Order of the Temple although he later jumped ship when things cooled

down, left the Order and returned home again ,a make believe hero and
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defender of the Faith in the eyes of his people.

In 1224 Pope Honorius III told the master of the Temple to receive a knight,

Bertran, who had killed a bishop, into the house of the Templars for seven

years to do penance for his crime.

It seems doing penance in the Order of the Temple was a suitable

punishment for a knight accused of murder; presumably an honourable

one, given that there was strong justification for Bernier’s crime.

The literary role of the Order of the Temple as a place of penance appears

again in Orson de Beauvais, written between 1180 and 1185, or early in the

thirteenth century.

This work was not well known, although it probably remained popular at

Beauvais beyond the thirteenth century, as it was used by the author of

Valentin et Orson, a prose romance composed between 1475 and 1489 and

printed at Lyons by Jacques Maillet in 1489.

Saracens were around in North Africa by name before the Muslim world

was founded in 570 AD and it was only during the first Crusade that

Christians and others named all Arabs, be they Muslim or not as 'Saracens'

For this research and out of respect I will call those that fought in the

Holy land as Muslims if they were of Arab blood during the Crusades.
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TIME-LINES

550 AD Birth of Muhammad.

610 AD The Cave and the first Revelation of Quran.

622 The Hijra.

623 The Battle of Badr.

630 Capture of Mecca.

632 Death of Muhammad.

1st four Orthodox caliphs.

642-728 Hasan alBasri.

655 Murder of Uthman.

565 Battle of Siffin.

661 Murder of Ali.

661-750 Umayyad caliphs.

680 Battle of Kerbala.

Death of Husaym.

750 Overthrow of Umayyads.

750-1258 Abbasis Dynasty.

765 Ismailis begin as Seveners,Nizaris.

767 d. Abu Hanifah.

795 d. Malik Anas.

801 d. Rabia.

855 d. Ahmad ibn Hanbal.

861 d. Dhu'l Nun alMisri.

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873-935 alAshari.

874 The Twelvers.

944 d. al Maturidi.

1056 AD 1147 Almoravids. Crusades

1077 AD 1130 ibn Tumart.

1170- Almohads 1210

1207-1273 Rumi.

1501 Ismail claims to be hidden Imam.

1526 Battle of Panipat.

MY RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS ON SCROLLS ONLY.

SEARCHING FOR THE RELIGIOUS GRAIL.

THE COPPER SCROLL MY DATA RESEARCH.

Carleton © 2011.

Shifting through reams of paper and other evidence for the above research

led to many more questions than I had answers for but I did have answers

that led to possibilities if what the grail or grails were.

In my research I am of the opinion, with the evidence I found, that the

grail OR grails are and were real but what it is directly is not one single

thing. There are many 'grail' stories and myths, less evidence to support

such and a vast amount of red herrings over the years.

This grail 'madness' by many, more so modern writers, is very similar to

the psychological affects that started in the USA in 1947

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(Note; same year the first scrolls were discovered) when the first UFO's

were reported there. It was like a virus and spread across the USA like that

because in time, everyone started to believe in them. A UFO sighting

reported in the Press or on a TV news channel was the trigger for many

people to look to the skies, then the phone calls about sightings increased

80% and soon the UFO 'virus' spread to Europe and later world wide.

This virus in time, mutated and showed up as UFO's and Alien Abductions

world wide.

Many books, like the grail books of today were on bookshelves, a few

become best sellers and people of good standing and a brain, jumped on

the band wagon to add fuel to the virus. After all if Dr. so and so says that

UFO’s are real and Alien abductions are real then the normal man and

woman in the street are going to think that this is all real?

Of course, USA and UK conspiracies abounded, departments of defence

were criticized for not releasing information to the public and those people

who claimed 'abduction.' were later found to be wanting in their evidence

as were the writers who pushed them forward and interviewed them.

Of course credibility went straight out the window by 2010. UFO's and

Alien abductions was now a dead duck in the water, a myth created by

humans for human consumption and bad for your already damaged mental

health. The head bangers who claimed ‘alien abduction’ crawled back into

the shadows waiting for the next ‘big’ brain damaging event, be it vampires

with a modern face and a change of habits, strange human creatures that
 239

were the result of radiation contamination in the 50’s and 60’s when they

were in the womb and the mother was eating pork that day, and so on.

Therefore, some of the grail books today fall into the above, a good read

for some, a sprinkling of historical evidence here and there to lend some

credibility to the whole drama and put across as 'truth'.

God bless King Arthur, Merlin and the ten Knights of the Round Table!

There are of course a few, a very few books on the grail, that point to

possibilities by the writers that there was and is a grail.

Their research is good from a historical point of view but for many their

evidence uncovered about a grail is weak, mainly because they put their

own interpretations on what the grail is or was.

The human context in their research and on stage was real enough but

tangled like a plate of cold spaghetti on an even colder plate.

In my own research I uncovered that the grail, or at least one of them,

the first, was around by the late ninth century and made by human hands.

What was used to make up this grail were artefacts from 30AD if not

before. There is not I discovered any evidence of the documentary kind

before 750 AD in Europe of 'Grail history' because it did not exist in any

book form but did come afterwards during the Charlemagne period.

There was of course verbal talk of a grail well before 750 but it was at the

end of the eight century and into the ninth that the first text was written as

Translatio Sanguinis Domini of Reichenau. (Codex Augiensia)

LXXXIV folio 125/136).

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I therefore have to start with one Abbot Waldo of Reichenau, said to be

the 'Seeker of the Grail.' He was of course referring to the Cross of

Niedermunster which Hugo of Tours brought to the Court.

The only Waldo I could come up with was Peter Waldo, a French lay

preacher who founded a sect 1170 AD who was dedicated to poverty

and meditation, the Bible being his sole authority.

He was I discovered pronounced heretical in 1215 and lost his head in

1217.

As for Hugo of Tours he enters the history stage later.

It was at around the time of the Emperor of Charlemagne rule, that being

Charles The Great, (Charles 1st) Frankish King (742-814), Holy Roman

Emperor in the west (800-814) shared Kingdom with his brother, Carloman

768-71, conquered Spanish March from Moors (Muslims) 788, crowned

Emperor by Leo III.

It seems therefore that Charles 1st of France was heard off In Jerusalem

by a man called Azan, a Prefect there not of the Holy City as many think

but of Osca and he sent Charles the key of this city stating he wished to

surrender. I suggest that the name 'Azan' should in fact be Hassan and that

the city was in fact Huesca in the Spanish Mark and seems to be mentioned

in the chronicles by Lorscher and Einhard in 799.

What I also discovered from the works of Fra Gaetano ; Catino di Smeraldo

Orientale gemma Consagrata,Genoa 1726 that the Chalice of Huesca is

mentioned and is kept now or was at Valentia.

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Azan however wanted to meet the Emperor and even went as far of

informing Pope Leo of his requests and also that he would like to present

the Emperor with a treasure beyond all price.

He said no and the Pope was more than a little put out when it was the

Church who in fact made him Emperor so it was suggested he come

to Rome and think again before he got there.

Azan for some reason had been informed all was in order so he set out

and took ill on the island of Corsica. He sent word that he was too ill to

make Rome and could the Emperor come to him?

The Emperor having a fear of flowing water or maybe contempt for the

request, said no but he would send someone to meet him on the island so

Waldo was appointed to sort it out but did not go himself but sent Hunfrid,

a holy man but not a priest of any sort as priests were not appointed at this

time.

The Emperor heard that Hunfrid was going but still he ordered Waldo to go

with him and when they arrived on Corsica they found Azan very ill and

bed-ridden. Presents were exchanged .

Azan then presented to both men to take back to the King, a vessel

(Ampulle) of onyx-stone said to contain the blood of Jesus and a small

cross made from gold and precious stones which contained in the arms the

blood of Jesus (Christ) and in the centre a splinter of the cross that he died

on. A nail (Roman made) was also included.

(Here we now have three possible grails)

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Waldo and Hunfrid set sail first arriving at the convent of Anastasia which

was said to be in Sicily and Hunfrid left Waldo behind to guard the cross

and vessel while for some reason unknown went to see the Emperor alone.

The Emperor and parts of his Court then went on a 500 mile pilgrimage

from Ravenna to the convent on Sicily where all the treasures were on

display when he got there including the cross and vessel.

Waldo was now Abbot Waldo with great powers, land and money.

He later became Rector of the Monastery of St. Dionysius, St, Denys near

Paris.

Monks there however had been in the past more than neglectful in their

duties and soon found the full force of Waldo's power and anger come

down on their heads, those that still had them.

Hunfrid was already old and declined to take most of the gifts offered by

the Emperor except for the cross that was said to contain the blood of

Christ. Hunfrid did get the cross and built a Monastery at Schannis to

house it in.

When Hunfrid died his son Adalbert inherited everything his father owned

including the cross but it seems that by great cunning a man called

Ruodpert, related by blood somehow to Emperor Ludwig had his master,

that being Adalbert of course, put him in charge of his estates.

When he was away on a trip, Ruodpert sized everything except the blood

relic which Adalbert had and fled to his brother living in Istria.

Both brothers gathered a small army and marched to Zizers where

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Ruodpert was but before a battle got underway, Ruodpert was kicked by a

black horse and died on the ground.

The day was won and Adalbert returned to his estates and later his son;

Udalrich got the inheritance and guarded the gold cross till he too died.

His daughter Emma took the cross and when she died it went to her son;

Udalrich, named after Emma's father, but the son was asked by Walther

husband and wife team, to hand over the gold cross to them if he wanted

to marry their daughter.

This he did and married the daughter and the mother and father build a

small chapel within their castle grounds to house the relic.

When they died it was brought over to the convent of the Virgin Mary

which was on an island and kept there.

My research turned up an interesting point because the gold cross was

moved yet again to a Monastery in Reichenau and the facts of this was to

be kept secret from those outside the walls.

Later the cross turned up in Zurich in the chapel of St. Kilian then back to

the convent on the island where it had been once before on the 7th day of

November 925 AD.

The documentary evidence ends here with no more comment on what

happened this gold cross afterwards.

It is easy to see why the above could be looked on as one of the grails

but linked to three more, the Roman nail from the cross though I suspect

that no nails were used on the cross and that the victim was tied on by the
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wrists not nailed, the splinter of wood from the cross and the blood from

Jesus. What I will add to this is that one or more persons would know of

anything that was taken from the cross and the most important is Mary

Madeline because she was close to Jesus and is said to have ended up in a

number of places, including France where she stayed to the end of her

days.

If this is fact then she went to France as a Jew not a Christian and was

a major member of the Jesus Movement at that time. The question is what

and who did she bring with her?

Her Journey from Jerusalem would not have been a direct one by sea and

land because at sea she would have done some island hopping to get

mainland Europe and what was needed was evidence of some sort that she

and the people who went with her left it in places they stayed for a time.

It is highly unlikely that she made this journey alone.

If Jesus was dead as said to be by the , then it is possible that she took

with her some form of artefacts, be it a few splinters of the cross, dried

blood, part of the shroud and so on.

If this was the case then we are now looking a more grails that were left in

locations during her travels.

The trouble with this is that Mary Madeline is reported to have fled to a

number of locations and some of these are in Asia.

That does not mean that she never went to Asia (India) but if she did, it

must have been soon after the crucifixion rather than later in her lifetime.
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I had to take into consideration her age at the time of Jesus’ death and the

age she would have been in France or Asia.

If we take it by the evidence in old text then Jesus and Mary were around

the same age < or > and the year recorded of the death of Jesus was

around 31 AD then by 64 AD Mary for the period, would have been an old

woman (64 years) It is highly unlikely that Mary made any long journeys at

this late time in her life so if she did then it had to be between 32 AD and 45

AD<.

There are various time lines here of reported locations of Mary Madeline

during her own life time but what I was looking for was evidence of such

between 32AD and 45AD.

This is what my research turned up below.

Keep in mind that the woman known as Mary Madeline would have been

dead by 80 AD if not well before.

'Mary' is mentioned often in the New Testament, 'Mariam' 4 times, 'Maria'10

times, and Marya and unknown number.

As 'Mary' is the English spelling I should point out that at the time of Jesus

there would have been around 8500 females with the name of Mariam or

Maria living in and close to the city of Jerusalem.

We know that the mother of Jesus was a 'Mary' but Mariam is also

mentioned 13 times and Maria 6 times when Jesus was a boy and a young

man. I had to research the possibility that such a name or names were as

common as Smith in the UK and found that this was indeed the case.
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I therefore took a sample of 3000 people in the holy land and it is a small

sample that did show if 4% of that 3000 people were named 'Mary or

Mariam' only 1 would be possible out of all the Mary's living there at the

time which would leave 2700> < unknown and around 36420 men on the

same day as Jesus died in the Holy Land.

What I discovered is that the Talpiot Tomb discovered has thrown up more

questions than answers because if Jesus was married and had a son then

he too would have been found in this tomb. The chances of Jesus being

buried in a rock carved tomb would be I suggest less than 1%.

By using the Bayes Theorel (Theory) I have come up with 00.1% that Jesus

was buried here along with all his family members which would have

included the two Mary's and his brothers.

In this tomb discovered there were ten ossuary’s with a possible 35

skeletons scattered around and four of the ossuaries had no name

attached to them but six did have inscriptions which I have included below;

'YESHUA BAR YEHOSEP' = JESUS, SON OF JOSEPH.

'YEHUDAH BAR YESHUA' = JUDNA, SON OF JESUS.

'MARYA' = MARY.

'YOSEH' =JOSES.

'MATYA' = MATTHEW.

'MARIAMENOU H MARA' (Greek)

MARY, MARA, MARTHA = MASTER?

When the Tomb was found it was going to cause great excitement world
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wide and it did. What has been overlooked is that the said bones of Mary

were in Constantinople in AD 886 and before that a report in 771 AD that

the remains of Mary were in the Abbey of Vezelas, Burgundy run by the

Benedictine Order.

More research the Dominicans at St. Maximin la Sainte-Boune also claimed

the remains of Mary Madeline.

There was I discovered 'in-fighting' between the two Orders and all may

not be as it seems.

The Jesus Movement was said to be run by Mary from 55 AD up to her

death sometime in 75 AD.<

There is little doubt in my mind that Mary would have been dead

by 80 AD.

The trail now led to the discovery of the Nag Hammade Library in Egypt in

1945 where copies of Coptic manuscripts were found. These had been

copied from old Greek and had been written around 250 AD.

In the Gospel of Mary 10 pages were missing out of 19 pages and at least

four pages had been doctored in the re-writing by scribes later.

I suggest that the first copies were made in Greek from the old Hebrew

language above and then again later copied for the second time in Coptic

script. Like all translations from this time in history mistakes would have

been made and words replaced that suited the scribe at the time who put

his own interpretation on any word he could not understand.

A few years later in 1947 the Dead Sea and Copper Scrolls were also
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uncovered and we know now that a good deal of the interpretations of the

scrolls in the early days was wrong. Researchers also dragged their feet in

publishing material about the scrolls I noted. Like for years!

What has come to light with my research is that many people from AD 80

up till the present day were seeking some form of grail or artefact linked to

Jesus or what is termed, 'The Holy Family' but in the very early searches,

once a form of Christianity was up and running then established, this

increased.

Such people were not chasing 'smoke' but going on their informants and

instinct that something of great value was out there and to most, it meant

more than financial gain if discovered.

You can see from my research here that religions play an important part

in the search for the grail or grails across the world, 90% of them linked to

the Jesus Movement of the past and Christianity of the future.

However the old Jewish religion and Muslim religion also have had their

part to play and most of all, the participants taking part in seeking truth,

wisdom and knowledge.

Archaeological research such as this as well as history researchers

should avoid at all costs, a prejudiced view of other religious groups as

well as what was and is claimed as Pagan groups.

You do at your peril and more than likely will miss valuable clues that

could aid such research, even enhance it.

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SEEKING THE CROSS.

It was a woman who returned from the Holy Land, died, aged seventy four

in 328 AD and a few years before she first undertook a long journey on a

quest for what she claimed was the 'True Cross' to Jerusalem which was in

the Near East. Her name was Helena, mother of Constantine who had

coverted to Christianity and besides seeking the cross she also wanted to

build Churches in the Holy land.

The wood from the cross (lignum crucis) if found was another Grail and will

be treated as such for my research here.

Helena I suspect at the time had no idea where the cross or even splinters

of the same would be found in or around the city of Jerusalem but that did

not stop her making the long journey and her faith and perhaps wishful

thinking drove her on.

She was not just an Empress now but as a pilgrim and her journey started

from Bithynia, onto the Cilician Gates and made her way to Antioch.

From here she would have taken the road to Tyre, Caesarea and then into

Jerusalem.

This was by land and would be around 1200 miles with many dangers on

the way including bandits and a few warring tribes.

If she went by ship then the journey would have taken two weeks if she
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went direct to the ports of Caesarea Maritima or the port of Yafo and would

have to face rough seas, and of course raiding ships while she was at sea.

Today we would have looked on Helena's trip as foolhardy no matter what

route she took even with a small army and servants with her and her

advanced age. I suggest that she came by land because on the way there

would have been 'protected' staging posts where she could rest and new

horses found.

The best her party could have done in a day would be < than 25 miles.

It was a great challenge for an old woman because she also had to oversee

the building of churches and because of this, the Christian faith went from

being a small thing to something much larger in the Near East and Helena

is said to have founded 48 churches while on her pilgrimage though the

evidence only supports the ones at Bethlehem and at the Mount of Olives.

I found no evidence whatsoever that Helena suggested and overseen the

building of ‘48’ churches and I also found it hard to take on board to

discover in my research that Constantine also sent Eutropia, the mother of

Fausta, who was at one time Constantine's wife until he boiled her alive in a

bath as an act of revenge. The reason why he sent his mother in law to the

Holy Land is not clear but was on her demands so that she could over-see

the building of a church at Mamre.

This site is said to be the place where Abraham is said to have

encountered the Three Angels.(Thankfully no UFO’s, Aliens or the Devil!)

More digging and more research as Archaeologist's do and I had little

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choice in the matter if I wanted evidence to support my own findings about

Helena, born 265 AD and died 328 AD Eutropia, Fausta, murdered by

Constantine because he thought his son, Crispus was having a sexual

affair with her.

(For some reason this seemed more common across Europe than one

suspects. The English and Scots Courts were prone to mother/son sexual

awareness as were many of the Courts of Europe.)

The research does show that between the 15th and 17th of June 325AD,

this son, Crispus soon followed his step mother, as he was poisoned at

Pola, Croatia. Thanks to whispers in the ear of Constantine, Helena, his

mother killed two birds with one stone though at the time was unaware of

the murders that were to follow soon afterwards.

It has been broadcast, wrongly, that Helena was a princess from Britain,

a daughter no less of King Coel of Colchester.(Old King Coal)

Helena I suggest was a Bithynia Greek, lived with or married Constantius,

the father of Constantine.

The father in time left her or threw her out and he went on to marry

Maximian's step daughter, Theodora in 288AD.

I could not trust the data from Geoffrey of Monmouth's

(Historia regum Britanniae 1137-9) but it is worth looking at.

Again the King Coel of Colchester crops up and it is stated that he rebelled

Against one King Asclepiodotus and took the throne which may mean one

or the other were lesser Kings.

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In time it seems, his daughter Helena later married Constantius who had

paid a visit to the British shores for a visit. Not to fight I may add but to

collect tribute. This would have been in 305AD and he went there with his

son, Constantine to York. He died in York in 306AD

Monmouth also claimed that Constantine was blood related to King Arthur.

(As would happen, a psychological need to push this for some reason.)

Seeing that Constantine was a Roman Emperor and 'Arthur' was British

this seems very unlikely. Constantine was in fact born on the 28th of

February 272 AD in Serbia.

I found no evidence whatsoever that Helena was a British princess or a

Roman slave in Britain and shipped out.

She more than likely was of Greek stock as I suggested above.

I could find nothing that she was related to any King to support the view

that she was of 'Royal' blood. If anything she would have been

middle/lower class if alive today.

What also came to light is that Constantine did not become a Christian until

he was in fact lying on his death bed no matter what the Christian Church

says and considering the number of murders he ordered and carried out

himself including the murder of his wife and his son, he made a poor

Christian. But facing death within the hour tends to focus the mind so he

covered all bets I guess and became this ‘repentant Christian’.

I discovered from old data his list of children which I have included below;

Constantina, Helena, Constantine II, Constaritus II, Crispus (Murdered),

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Constants. It is therefore possible that there were more than one or two

women in his life.

Helena however was a Christian before she made her trip to the Holy Land

in search of the Cross but also to seek atonement for the crimes her son

committed over the years.

Constantine moved his capital from Rome in 326 AD to Byzantium on the

Hellespont. Of course the Christians moved into Rome like flies on dead

meat, though in a very short time they were at one another's throats and

blood was shed. Constantine died on 22nd of May 337 AD.

The time line for Constantine the Great was 306-37 AD May he have got to

Heaven before the Devil knew he was dead.

Helena was seeking the true cross when she went to the Holy Land and

that was her main aim on her quest as well as seeing some churches were

built and rebuilt. She was on a mission it seems and that mission included

the Cistercian Order when she reached Jerusalem as well as anyone who

could lead her to the wood of that cross. This was her own personal Grail.

It seems her body clock was ticking much faster by this stage and I am

sure she became aware of that by the time she was shown the first wooden

splinters of the said 'cross'. There is little doubt if the cross or bits of it

were real then splinters of it would have ended up in every Christian

Country world wide in time.

The 'lignum crucis' would have had and believed to have a very unique

talismanic power and by 359 AD such splinters were on their way to parts
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of Europe, including Rome.

Everyone wanted a slice of the holy wood and would even kill for it if it

came to that. In the end there would be such a proliferation of these

pieces that the Church itself became alarmed because it was the wood that

was being venerated and sailing again close to pagan worship.

For many, the wood was holy and not what it should have stood for and

that is the Passion. However, like the scrolls and scroll fragments it would

not have taken long for the locals and even Church members to flog

forgeries to many people for a price.

With this research evidence I can rule out the wood or splinters from the

alleged physical remains of the Cross is in no way a 'Grail' or Grails

thought it did bring on mass hysteria when the faithful at that time gathered

in a crowd.

I suggest that you would have got the same reaction if you had used any

tree species of wood found in the Holy Land and claimed it was from the

true Cross. As I said before, Paranormal and Christian belief are bed

partners and the minds of the forth century pilgrims were ripe for

implanting 'false hopes' because the wood splinters were from the

'physical' world, they could be seen and touched while the paranormal

world surrounded the whole issue.

The Jerusalem fragment was lost somewhere on the scorched fields of

Hattin in 1187 and never found again.

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My research does show that Helena just before her death in 328 AD had

arranged for a secret collection of the cross splinters, a good sized sample

in fact, to her Sessorian Palace in Rome.

Her 'home' became a church and watched over and guarded by Cistercian

monks, even today. Somewhere behind a locked door in a reliquary that

was ordered to be built by Mussolini is kept the Titulus Crucis, the head

board that was on the Cross and what Helena discovered as well as parts

of the cross.

One could say that Helena invented in part, Christian archaeology but there

was also a woman from Spain called 'Egeria or Atheria' who also made a

visit to the holy sites in the holy land and sent back a good number of

letters to a group of women in Spain in 382 and 384 AD.

The evidence comes from the remaining parts of a book

she had written (Different editions of Latin text but a book by J.Wilkinson

'Egeria's Travels, Jerusalem,1981 pp.89-147) is also worth researching.

I should point out that one letter with her name mentioned was held by one

Spanish abbot, Valerius of Bierzo who died in AD 695, 300 years after her

death but adds yet another name as author; 'Etheria.'

It is here that I found the mystery of this women complex because in

Roman mythology her name means 'Etheral One'

(The nymph of the fountains) and may well have come from the south of

France (Aquitaine) then moved to Northern Spain, (Galicial), the same area

or not far away from it where in 2011/2012 I hope to walk and do more
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research.

There is good reason to think that this woman was well off because she

could afford the pilgrimage via Constantinople (Byzantium) to Jerusalem

but also was in Galilee, Samaria, Egypt, Edessa-Urfe and after three years

made the return journey back to Spain.

This suggest a number of things; She knew Greek, wrote in Latin but not

the classical Latin of such places like Cicero or Seneca.

Her writings I am sure were more practical than being literary but

colourful.

She wanted to describe in detail what it meant to be a Christian in the

Holy Land to her women friends back home. There is no way she made

such a trip on her own so she had to have a small group of people with her

some she hired in Spain or France and all those that went with her, male

or female she trusted.

For Egeria this was no scatter brained trip or holiday and more than likely,

personal, monastic and also political she wanted to walk where Jesus had

walked, the two Mary's had stood and touch the stones.

I am suggesting here that she may have been linked from a genetic point

of view to the major players at the time of Jesus when he was alive and

died. The answer to many of my questions lies in Jerusalem and at a

church there, as well as Santa Croce in Gerusalemme that sits just on the

outskirts of ancient Rome also in a place called 'Jerusalem' because of

Helena brought the history here in a full circle.

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The women of these periods were strong willed and had quests and

reasoning beyond any man of the time. They planned well and carried out

their plans even if at times they went wrong, but they should never be

ignored. I hope that one can see from my research that it was not just male

rulers and leaders that painted the vast canvas of the Holy Land and parts

of Europe. Women had a major part to play in all this history and

archaeology, they guided leaders including their husbands and sons, they

murdered when and if they had to and it was to their own advantage, ruled

or helped to rule armies, became brides of Christ but also political with it

and most of all, could be very dangerous if crossed.

Most of all, they had courage when faced with many problems, not just as a

mother and wife but because they were a woman. The higher officials in the

Church had little regard for them but were to learn later that this was a very

bad mistake. Today, they are climbing the church steps and will soon

become a powerful force for the Vatican and Canterbury to deal with.

Mary Magdalene and those women who came after her, carried secrets with

them, knew answers to the questions that are still needed, kept their own

logs and dairies as they do, and were smiling that smile that was neither

good nor bad but left you wondering what they know that you would never

know if you were a man?

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MY COPPER SCROLL RESEARCH DATA 2011

Let’s face it. The Copper Scroll found in Cave 3 in 1952 and it threw the

archaeology world into chaos once it had been noted of something more

that just sheets of beaten copper with a few symbols on it. A few

archaeology field workers thought it was a hoax, including du Vaux who

said so. When found it was thought to be two scrolls but in fact it was one

that had broken in two due to its oxidized condition and poor handling at

the time.

The width when it was almost new would have been around 0.3m and 2.4 m

in length and in rolls which seemed stuck together and very tightly at that.

It became known as 3Q15 and seemed at the time to be written in a very

early form of Hebrew, almost a square form script but I suggest linked

more to Hebrew and Aramaic but also to Egyptian hieroglyphs and

Phoenician scripts. It does not come across as a religious scroll like the

Dead Sea Scrolls mentioned earlier and has been shown to contain words

that are not found on any of the other scrolls or fragments of the same.

Dating it has been a problem for many but around 68CE < or > would be a

good starting point. There is in my opinion a very good strong Egyptian

link as well as some Astronomy linked to the skies of the Holy Land and

Egypt at the time it was made. I will include more data on this later.

The copper scrolls, both parts were in time sent to the UK and were

unrolled or opened by Prof; H Wright Baker of the Manchester College of

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Technology as it was known at that time in 1955. Note that it took three

years to get to this point as and may have never got there if it had not been

for the good work of John Allegro who had in the beginning been working

on the Dead Sea Scrolls along with Father Roland de Vaux who was from

the Ecole Biblique In Jerusalem and Lankester Harding, Director of the

Department of Antiquities of Jordan. Some how, and to this day I don’t

know how, Allegro persuaded the two other two men for him to take it to

the UK and Manchester. There was no love lost between Allegro and

du Vaux I should point out but it was sanctioned that this is what Allegro

could do.

Both parts of the broken scroll were covered in an adhesive or wax then

carefully ‘sliced’ the scroll into 23 sections for close examination.

I am of the opinion still that this copper scroll was not a ‘one off’ as stated

by some writers on the subject but one of two like I stated earlier in the

research. You do not go to all the trouble finding copper in Egypt, making it

into thin strips of the length required, then transfer data to it by a number

of work men and not make a copy of it, which would be stored elsewhere.

The work on the copper scroll would have been expensive but whoever had

it made had money anyway, so cost was not a problem. The copper scroll

is now in the Amman Museum in Jordan.

When it was first looked at there was a major problem of Decipherment and

of course translation of this scrolls contents. The writing, style and mixed

language was and did test everyone involved and even today good parts of
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the codex have not been cracked. This is not due to the want of trying.

It has taken 30 years > now to get as far as we have in unlocking any

secrets of this copper scroll and it still is an enigma for most of us.

My research has uncovered evidence of at least 30 mistakes in 12 columns

of text that had been worked on and points out strongly that the original

scribe was very poor in his understanding of Hebrew. I say this because it

has been found that the language he used was well outside the working

classical Hebrew of the times.

This could be the reason why the copper scroll lay untouched for many

years. The scroll I should point out written in ‘mirror image’ that is because

copper sheet was used the writing as such was done from the back of the

sheet so that it would show right on the front. To test this write a few words

backward on a sheet of paper then hold it up to a mirror and see the good

and bad results. The scribe in question had a very difficult task tp perform

and get it right. Clay was then added to the scroll finished sheet and then

rolled. What was not known is that the scribe had in fact created a very

large clay tablet that was in fact destroyed when the scroll was sent to

Manchester University to be opened using surgical cutting in strips.

In my opinion this clay was as important as was the sheet of copper and

University staff should of course have been notified of this fact, not just

because of the ‘off print’ but it would also have contained pollen, insect life

maybe and even finger prints of the scribe or scribes. If the clay ‘off print’

somehow had been preserved as whole, almost impossible, bit it could

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have been x-rayed in part at least before the butchery of the main scroll

started.

Some text was lost of course in the copper scroll when the strips were

made, peeled off no less and the clay ignored as anything useful.

Never use a unqualified person with a brain who is not an archaeologist

with common sense to carry out such work. To be fair to the University

staff though, they had little guidance on what to look for. All they were told

that it was a copper scroll and needed to be looked at. They took the word,

’ copper’, literary.

In 2006 in Wales I tried out an experiment with copper piping and beat it

with a hammer over a few days until I had a small sheet, 6”x 4” (Inches).

In the end I had a very think sheet of copper, through in no way all the way

smooth but good enough for the job. With small punches I wrote on it from

the back, simple words and letters, the imprint with that mirror effect

looking ok but a bit ugly in place. With a sheet of paper and some ink I was

able to print of in part, what I had written. The results were blurred but

could be made out. Then I used ‘puddling clay’ the sort that would be used
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at the bottom of a garden pond to stop leakage. I placed the clay on the

copper sheet and rolled it with a baking roller until it two was a flat sheet

over the copper sheet. Placing it in hot sun I left it to dry (summer) and in

two days was able to peel off the clay from the copper underlay.

The results were much better than the paper and ink results, however the

edges were blurred with some letters missing all together.

In the next part of this experiment I used wet clay, rolled it on the copper as

before then carefully rolled clay and copper sheet into a tight roll. This I

placed into a gas oven at very low heat for two hours, then removed it and

covered with paraffin wax. I also wrapped the roll now in a small hide which

I had dried and cleaned.

Finding a location where the land was free of man made chemicals was not

hard and I discovered a large bed of stones of all sizes and shapes on the

trail towards Tally. Here I placed my ‘copper’ scroll and left it for two years.

In 2008 I went back and recovered this ‘scroll’ from the stone pile and

found that the hide that the scroll was wrapped in had in fact moulded and

broken up. Back in the Ashram at Llandrada I tried to un-wrap the scroll

which was easy enough but all the clay was a jumble of crumbs and small

lumps, in no way what I wanted as a ‘Tablet’. This part of my experiment

was a failure but it did tell me that weather and conditions where it was

buried were not the best. As for the copper scroll I had made, there were

much better results. The copper sheet had in fact turned green with the

edges black but the writing I had punched out on the sheet remained
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visible enough to read. There was some fading of letters but on the whole

this part of the experiment went well. If that much damage could be done to

copper over two years in Wales then over 1000 years or more in a cave, Q3,

the damage would have been much worse, more so around the edges of

the copper scroll. My scroll was 6 inches by 6 inches while the Copper

Scroll would have been around 2.6m in length at the time it was made but

when recovered it was 2.4m in length = 8 feet. Parts were missing either

due to chemical reactions of soils and damp or had been removed when

first found either by accident in the handling or removal on site for

examinations in a lab in Jordan. Whatever the reasons I am off the opinion

that because the copper scroll was broken in two and the condition of it,

parts of the script are missing and still missing which of course makes it

very difficult for all involved to break the codex’s. More damage was done

when it was examined in detail and had strips of copper removed.

So what did the damaged Copper Scroll codexes tell us?

I can say without doubt after examining a good deal of evidence that the

Copper Scroll is not linked in any way directly with Jesus or the Jesus

Movement. I look towards old Egypt for the many answers that still need to

be looked at because my research evidence tends to point to Egypt, and

the old tribes of Egypt that moved from there into the Holy-land. I will also

put forwards that the main leaders in the early days were in fact Egyptian,

with Egyptian beliefs and language codex’s and not Hebrew as many claim

even today. That main migration by Abraham, Jacob and Joseph as well as
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the people who went with them, had more Egyptian blood in them than

Hebrew links. With the migrations came the old scripts, the treasures of all

and the knowledge of Akhetaten from the 18th-20th Dynasty which I will deal

in my new research book; “AKHETATEN; THE WOMAN IN THE MOON.”

© Carleton 2012

In the Copper Scroll translations by John Marco Allegro which I have

reproduced below but added comments to, I thank Joan R. Allegro and the

Estate of John Allegro for it use here in my research.

I have laid out his findings and translations in one column and my

comments and opinions in another.

In defence of John Marco Allegro I am of the opinion that he was given the

dirty end of the stick when it came to the Dead Sea Scrolls research by du

Vaux and other prominent archaeologists of long standing but of little

loyalty or behaviour of a gentlemen or Knight. They grouped together like a

bunch of hyenas to attack his reputation, his standing and his archaeology

knowledge. Little did they know, that what comes around goes around and

my, how they have fallen!

Archaeology comments has ruined many a reputation as we know and at

times a debate on a subject was all part of it but when it comes to being

malicious and cruel, as many were, then as assassins we stand convicted

and most of all guilty when we cross that line and beyond the pale of

professional archaeology study.

There is no need for me to comment which assassins I mean when it came

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down to the Dead Sea and Copper Scrolls debate. They know!

JOHN M.ALLEGRO’S TRANSLATIONS OF THE COPPER SCROLL.

MY RESEARH COMMENTS, IF ANY. Carleton © 2011

Start COLUMN 1. ITEM 1. Finish Item 61

In the fortress which is in the Vale of Achor, forty cubits under the steps

entering to the east; a money chest and its contents of a weight of 17

talents. KeN.

I have no idea at the moment where or what this fortress is and though it

says the ‘Vale of Achor’ it still leaves the problem of location.

I suggest that this is NW of Jericho.

The articles hidden there are listed as money chest but this throws up the

questions of when they were buried and when the first ‘coinage’ was in

use. The coins used in the holy land from 500 BC to 200 AD I have listed

below; Currency though not coinage was also used.

700 BC. Silver ingots and jewellery, small silver and god bars.

500 BC. Silver tetradachma minted in Gaza. Only Greek and imitation Greek

coins were used showing the goddess Athena on one sie and an owl on the

other.

400 BC. Silver drachma minted in Judea, a bearded man on the front and

on the back, a God in a chariot holding a falcon.

300 BC. Gold octadrchuma struck in Joppa. Front of this coin shows

Arsinoe, wife of Egyptian ruler, Ptolemy II. On the back there is a twin

cornucopia.
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126BC-65 AD. Silver shekel minted in Tyre. Front of this coin shows the

Phoenician god Melqart. On the back an eagle.

This coin is said to be linked to the thirst pieces of Silver that Judas got

and it may well have been Tyrian shekels.

Another point of interest is that payment made to the Temple had to be of

pure silver and this coin qualified even with it pagan symbols on it.

103-76 BC. Bronze prutah struck in Judea during the time of Alexander

Janneus (103-76 BC.) Front of coin a lily though I suspect it was a marsh

flag, with the name of the king written in the old Hebrew script. On the back

is an anchor with the name of the king on it but written in Greek.

71 AD. Bronze sesterce minted in Rome to celebrate the Roman capture of

Jerusalem in 70 AD. On front shows Emperor Vespasian. The back shows a

a Roman with a Jewish woman grieving under a palm tree.

132-35 AD Roman coins minted during the Bar Kokhba Revolt were

restruck with Jewish symbols the front showing the Temple and written on

it Jerusalem in old Hebrew script.

There is nothing in the coinage or currency to show any link to a Grail.

All the other columns and items listed refer to light bars of gold, nine

hundred talents hidden in a floor, in the place of the Basin, tithe vessels

made up of lag vessels and amphorae, Stair case of refuge, 40 talents of

silver, in a slat pit under the steps,42 talents of silver, in a hole in the Old

House of Tribute 65 bars of gold, in underground passage of the Court,

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A ‘wooden barrel’ inside which had a bath measure of untithed goods and

70 bars of silver, in the cistern which is 19 cubits in front of the east

gateway is the hollow that is in it, ten talents?, in the cistern under the wall

on the east is a spur of rock, 600 pitchers of silver, in the pool to the east is

a hole on the north corner 22 talents?, in the Court of…? Gold and silver

vessels for tithe, sprinkling basins, cups, sacrificial bowls, libation vessels

and in all 609, under the other corner in the east is 40 talents of silver, in

the pit which is in the north tithe vessels and garments, in the tomb in its

shaft in the north and under the corpse 13+ talents, in the Great Cistern in a

hole within a pillar in the north, talents, in the\water conduit 40 talents of

silver, between the 2 oil presses that are in the Vale of Achor, 2 pots of

hidden silver, at the clay pit which is at the bottom of the wine press 200

talents of silver, the eastern pit which is in the north (He had to be and Irish

Scribe!),in a hole 70 talents of silver, the dam sluice of the Valley of

Secacah 34 talents of silver, SW of Qumran at the head of the water

conduit which runs into Secacah from the north 7 talents of silver, in the

fissure that is in Secacah ‘Solomon Reservoir, tithe vessels and within

them figured coins, sixty cubits from Solomon’s trench towards the great

watchtower buried at 3 cubits, 13 talents of silver, the tomb that is in the

Wadi Kippa in the eastern road to Secacah and buried at 7 cubits 32

talents, in the inner chamber of the Double Gate, facing east there is a

buried pitcher, one scroll under 42 talents, the inner chamber of the watch

tower that faces east, buried at 9 cubits 21 talents, the Queens Tomb on the
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west side buried at 12 cubits, 9 talents, the dam sluice which is the

bridge…the high priest that.. 9 talents, the water conduit in the north

reservoir and in 4 pots 400 talents, an inner chamber next the ‘cool room’

400 talents, in the Summer House buried at 6 cubits six pitchers of silver, at

empty space in east corner buried at 7 cubits 22 talents, next the water

outlet of the drain pipe buried 3 cubits towards the overflow tank 80 talents

of gold in two pitchers, in the drain pipe tithe jars and scrolls within the

jars, in the Outer valley in the middle of the Circle on the Stone buried at 17

cubits 17 talents of silver and gold, at the dam sluice at the mouth of the

Kidron Gorge 7 talents, a stubble field of the Shaveh facing SW in an

underground passage, 70 talents of silver, In the gutter which is at the

bottom of the rain water tank in the plaster four staters, the Second

Enclosure in the underground passage that faces east buried at 9 cubits 24

talents, the Holes in the underground passage facing south buried in

plaster at 16 cubits 22 talents, the ‘funnel’ silver from consecrated

offerings, buried at the wide part of the water pipe that runs to the basin 9

talents, in the sepulchre that is in the north at the mouth of the gorge of the

Place of the Palms at the outlet of the valley all in it are consecrated

offerings, the Stronghold of Senaah gutter that opens to the south, the

second story down from above, 9 talents, in the Ravine of the Deep which

is fed from the Great Wadi, in its floor 12 talents, the reservoir which is

Beth Kerem, ten cubits on the left as you enter 60 talents of silver, in the

vat of the olive press in the west side a plug in stone of two cubits, 300
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talents of gold and ten serving vessels, under the monument of Absalom

on the west side, buried at 12 cubits 80 talents, settling tank in the bath

house of running water, under the gutter, 17 talents, in corner buttresses,

tithe vessels which contain coins, below the Portico’s south corner in the

tomb of Zadok, vessels for tithe sweepings, spoilt tithes and inside them

figured coins, in the exedra of the cliff facing west in front of the Garden of

Zadok under the great sealing stone that is in its bottom; consecrated

offerings, in the grave which is under the paving stones; 40 talents, in the

grave of the common people who died absolved of their purity regulations;

vessels for tithe or tithe refuse inside them figured coins, House of two

Pools in the pool as you enter from the settling basins vessels of liquid

tithe and inside them figured coins, in the hewn chamber of the west tomb

scattered over, hundred talents of gold; in juglets sixty talents, blocking

stone also has juglets and under the sill of the tomb chamber 42

talents,under Mount Gerizim entrance of upper pit one chest and its

contents and 60 talents of silver, in the mouth of the Spring of the Temple;

vessels of silver and gold for tithe and money, the whole being 600 talents,

the Great Drain of the Basin; instruments of the House of the Basin, the

whole being a weight of 71 talents, twelve minas, and Item 61, in the Pit to

the north in a hole opening northwards and burial at its mouth; a copy of

this documents with an explanation and their measurements and an

inventory of each thing and other things.

When John Allegro died in 1988 I was in Nottingham and heard of his death
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while on a course at Nottingham University but when he died he took a lot

of useful information with him. Wherever he is right now I would like to

think he is smiling at all the confusion he has caused and a good poke in

the eye for Father du Vaux, now also dead, and his cronies who ambushed

Allegro, set up press releases against him in the newspapers and drove

him off the Dead Sea Scroll Team almost, but not quite, a broken man.

When I first research the contents in the Copper Scroll and read through

the translations of same I thought someone was taking the piss, as we say

in Ireland and for a moment I also thought that someone was John Allegro

but on reading through it again and again I knew what he had was what he

found. He also opened another door for me, just a gap to look through and

make a decision.

By the time I got this far in my research I was almost ready to wrap it up

and put it all to bed. Finished and confused but it was not to be. Nagging

doubts and excitement, hidden fears and time factors. All this and it would

have been easy to walk away now. Maybe a whisper maybe just the wind in

a winter garden; “Don’t! Go through the door and question more.”

All I had was the results of a Copper Scroll translation, a bit more, but not

much, of a Treasure Map that give compass points, some locations but not

many, hints of buildings and design, landscape views with the odd name.

All I needed now was a skull and cross-bones on a black background with

the music from Raiders of the Lost Ark blasting in the background.

What was offered were clues from the Dead Sea Scroll area at Qumran, find
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out who the Essenes really were, their links if any to early Christianity and

links if any, to the Egyptians. The Essenes Community or cult were getting

hijacked in the past by Jews and Christians once the Dead Sea Scrolls

became public knowledge. The Jewish archaeology Departments who were

involved in their research on the few scrolls they had was up front and as

they were decoded, then published up front. The ‘Christian’ Archaeology

Team were mostly made up of Church men, except for Allegro who did his

work as an archaeologist. The rest in the Christian Team held information

back, slow to publish, very slow to even get on with the job in hand, du

Vaux who was in charge of it all, did not want Jews working on the scrolls

and fragments they had and would not employ an Jewish person and never

did. This to me suggests that he disliked Jews, was racist, and had

something to hide about scroll fragments and some information from the

Copper Scroll he was frightened off. John Allegro when he was forced out

of the team had at least some parts of the Copper Scroll to work with as

well as his notes from the other scrolls he worked on and he published in

the end. He did have threats from The Christian Camp, once they failed in

stopping him publishing his data and those threats were of great concern

to himself and for his family. Of course they were anonymous and

cowardly as they always are but most people working in the field of

archaeology in the Holy Land knew who was behind such threats.

My problem with the Copper Scroll was the detail, the use of

modern day words and the way they were laid out. My other real problem
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was the weights and measures of all things mentioned in the scroll and

used in the translation. Inches and feet, yards and lbs I have no problem

with but being from the ‘old school’ for a time, I was at a loss but in the end

I cracked it which I have laid out below as guidance.

It is suggested that the weight of the copper scroll without the clay would

have been 3x (30x80) x 0.1 x 8.93 = 6.429.6g (Robert Feather) 1999 but I

think it would have lost some of its weight when it was opened.

Weights and measures in the Holy Land at this time and in Egypt were I

discovered in fixed terms of everyday things. I will deal first with the Old

Testament weights first but give the Metric weight to the right of the page.

Talent (60 minas) = 34.227kg

Mina (50 Shekels) =571.175 grams.

Shekel (2 Bekas) = 11.423 grams.

Beka half shekel 10 gerahs\= 5.711 grams.

NEW TESTAMENT WEIGHTS.

Hebrew Talent = 34.227 kg.

Pound, Hebrew mina. = 571.175 grams.

Pound, Latin libra. = 325.707 grams.

OLD TESTAMENT LENGTHS.

Cubit 2 spans = 44.424 cm.

Span ( 3 hand breadths ) =22.212 cm

Handbreadth ( 4 fingers) =7.404 cm.

Finger = 1.849 cm.

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NEW TESTAMENT LENGTHS.

Cubit =45 cm.

Fathom = 182 cm.

Furlong stadia or miles =184 m

= 1.486 m.

Now whoever was involved in the text and art work of the Copper Scroll

they knew their weights and measures, good at maths to put a finer point

on it judging from the lay out but it should be remembered that the Copper

Scroll is a copy of all the information laid out on a paper or skin scroll.

That as far as I know has not been recovered year if ever.

Because of the vast amount of wealth mentioned in the Copper Scroll, and

of course the few vague locations hinted at, I am of the opinion that the

scribes were also very good at compass bearings using Astro-projections

and fixture points, landscape markers as well as building layout.

The hiding of all the wealth and other items, if in deed there is any, did not

happen overnight, was well planned and thought out. Such wealth was not

all moved over a few days from the Temple in Jerusalem because the

Roman Army would soon be hammering on the gates and I suggest that

most of it was hoards from the past and not all Jewish as many suggest.

By the time of the Crusades and the good men of the Cross, the Knights

Templars and other Knightly Orders got to Jerusalem to defend the

Christians I have little doubt that looting did take place, not just by the
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Romans and Muslims but also by the Knights of God and the Church.

Any gold and silver found as well as coinage would vanish fast, smuggled

into bags and in time, removed to Europe, which would include Rome, The

Vatican, Spain, France, Germany and the British Isles. Good Knights of

Christ they may have been on the surface but treasure was not to be left, in

fact I would go as far to say that such hidden hoards were actively looked

for.

The Qumran monks, known to Pliny, Philo and Josephus and mentioned in

dispatches were the sect known as the Essenes who may well have been

linked with the very exclusive Therapeuta who came from Egypt.

The Essenes were a large sect, had their own community, had a cemetery

close by their community home, some of the remains being that of

children, many of females and the rest male suggests strongly that it was

not in any way an all male community. What this community was not was

Jewish, even though many want to push that as fact. Nor were they early

half baked Christians or even linked to them but a few may well have at one

time been involved with the early Jesus Movement and also I suspect with

the cave dwelling Magharians. The Essenes were a real community; they

were intelligent lived in towns, villages and also caves. They had ritual and

they had burials as the cemetery proves at Qumran. The so called

‘monastery’ was excavated by no other than G.L Harding and the good

Father Pere de Vaux no less in 1951-1956. The ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ and

Copper Scroll were placed in the caves in jars around AD 66 if not a few
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years before.

To give you some idea about what the Qumran community had and could

do I have listed a number of things below out of interest.

This so called monastery area was not a major religious site. It was a major

human community made up of migrants but now Hebrews of old.

They came in migrations years before Jesus was ever born and with them

came knowledge of building, watchtowers, dinning rooms, kitchens,

bakery, pottery , shops and a very elaborate plumbing system that even the

Romans or Jews did not have at this time. When they turned their back on

Hebrew ritual they also did with Egyptian ritual little did they know that in

time they too would have to train for battle and maybe even a war or two.

The first and only real battles that came in 66-70 AD destroyed their

settlements and those that had fled to the hills and lived, returned later to

bury men, women and their children. Then like smoke on the wind, those

few that were left vanished and only the caves and rocks remained.

There were only two directions they could go and feel safe. East and West

and I suspect that a small migration did take place, a human one and with

them went their animals, corn, tents, and a fair amount of gold and silver.

They walked back across the sands to where they came from, to Egypt and

there somewhere in the Nile delta they settled but at a price.

As they farmed and did all the jobs they did at Qumran, made a living they

must have looked at the setting and rising sun and whispered a prayer to

Amenophis IV (Akhenaten) or Nefertiti. They had the Grail and always did.
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THE END.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

War in the Middle Ages. Philippe Contamine and M. Jones; Blackwell 1988.

A History Of the Arab Peoples; Albert Hourani Faber and Faber 1991.

Religions Of The World; Lionheart Books 1997.

Civilizations of the Holyland; Johnson, Boo club Associates 1979.

Oxford History of the Classical World; Oxford University Press 1995.

Paul, Envoy Extraordinary; William Collins and Sons 1972.

Birth Of Greek Civilization; Pavel Oliva, Orbis Publishing Limited 1981.

Noah’s Ark; David Fasold, Sidgwick and Jackson 1990.

Neolithic Of the Near East; James Mellaart, Thames and Hudson 1973.

Archaeology of the Holyland; Avraham Negev, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1972.

THANKS ALSO TO;

University of Birmingham Staff 2010

Ronnie Carleton © 2011

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