Dead Sea Scrolls

Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? What story do they tell? What is the most current research on the archeology of the site where they were found? How has a new breed of scientific scholars changed what we know of these ancient people and their records? These are the driving questions behind the documentary The Haunted Desert:Archeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls.In nineteen fifty one Father Roland De Vaux, an Dominican priest working at the prestigious Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, organized a team of archeologists to uncover the remains of the community of Qumran, near the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered four years before. The excavation took five years. During this time, the scrolls were simultaneously being preserved and translated. These early scholars and archeologists worked under crude conditions with little financial backing and without the advantage of the scientific equipment and technology available today. They were forced to draw conclusions based on what evidence was accessible to the

In the Judean wilderness of Palestine, on the shore of the Dead Sea, the windswept desert ruins of Qumran still conceal ancient secrets. The human remains and artifacts unearthed by archeologists fifty years ago are only now beginning to tell the story of the people who, in desperation, hid the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves above Qumran, never to return. They were people of faith and dreams: Aligning themselves with heaven over a period of two hundred years, they prepared for the end of days - a last great battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. Hidden for two thousand years, the scrolls are again talking to us - giving life to the Voices from the Desert. Join us as we Unravell the Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.