At about the time Titus was
demolishing the Second Temple, some unknown Jewish scribe was supposedly
producing the Copper Scroll which allegedly lists hiding places of some
Temple treasures and the Temple taxation money. The
scroll, labeled 3Q15, was found along with other manuscripts that were written
on papyrus or leather in 1952 on an expedition sponsored by the Jordanian
Department of Antiquities. It was so badly oxidized that it had to be cut open
at the Manchester College of Technology in 1956 to avoid crumbling that would
have occurred if it was unrolled. The first translation was published by John
Allegro in 1960.
Vendyl Jones is a former Baptist
minister who became disillusioned with the New Testament. He served in the
Israeli Army. He also founded the B'nai Noach (Sons of Noah) movement which is
an organization that seeks to bring the nations of the world to an understanding
of Torah as it relates to the grand design that God has for Jews and
Gentiles. Jones, with encouragement of several rabbis, has
been attempting to use information from the Copper Scroll to search for the
Ark. But what
is listed on the Scroll? Basically, it’s a list of locations for gold and silver
treasure from Jerusalem and from the
Second Temple, the one that did not hold
the Ark. Most
of the sites mentioned are unknown today. There are spelling mistakes and there
is corrosion that makes it difficult to read in its entirety.
Still, using it, Jones has found items he believes were from the
Temple – in particular, in April of 1988, a small
juglet of thick oil that (according to the Pharmaceutical Department of Hebrew
University) was probably Holy Anointing Oil used on sacrifices and for anointing
the priests and kings of ancient Israel. It was the first find of an
item mentioned in the Copper Scroll.
In a 1992 excavation, his efforts
resulted in the recovery of a reddish snuff - looking material. It was analyzed
by Dr. Marvin Antelman (consultant to the Weitzmann Institute); and
subsequently, the pollens in the material were analyzed by Dr. Terry Hutter, a
paleobotanist. They identified the material as a compound of nine specific
spices in a highly refined state. Two additional inorganic ingredients, Karsina
Lye and Sodom Salt, were found close by in the same cave, apparently ready to be
mixed with the spices, to comprise the ingredients of the Holy Incense, the
Qetoret. This was the same compound burned on the Altar of Incense in the
Holy
Temple. A total of 900
pounds of the Incense was eventually found. It seems likely that even if the oil
and incense were from the Temple, we would be
dealing with artifacts produced during the time of the Second, non-Ark
possessing Temple. However, according to a Vendyl Jones
article by Gerald Robins carried in the Jewish Herald Voice Houston newspaper in
2000, the Scroll is said to contain the following text:
In the desolations
of the Valley of Achor, under the hill that must be climbed; hidden under the
east side, forty stones deep, is a silver chest, and with it, the vestments of
the High Priest, all the gold and silver with the Great Tabernacle (the
Mishkan) and all its Treasures.
What is important here is reference
to the Great Tabernacle (the Mishkan) and all its Treasures. This
reference is not repeated in other translations of this document at other
Internet sites. What is listed on multiple Internet sites is only the following
translation:
Column I In the
ruin of Horebbah which is in the valley of Achor, under the steps heading eastward
about forty feet: lies a chest of silver that weighs seventeen talents (yard
stick).KEN (Note: KEN are
mysterious Greek letters in the original text).
Sacred vestments and oil are mentioned
elsewhere on the scroll, but the above text based on The Wise translation of the
Copper Scroll from The Dead Sea Scrolls, a
new translation (Wise, Abegg & Cook. HarperCollins, 1996) and the
Florentino Garcia Martinez translation from The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated
(Brill/Eerdmans, 1996) has no mention of the tabernacle at all! In fact, in
scanning the Internet, I am unable to find any site other than those backing or
describing Vendyl Jones that mentions anything about the Ark or the Tabernacle in
conjunction with text found on the Scroll. This is import because if we find the
Tabernacle, we may well find the Ark with it. In the Babylonian Talmud
(Tractate Yoma 72a3) it states the following about the
Tabernacle:
Rabbi Chama the son
of Rabbi Chanina said: What is meant by that which is written: And you
shall make the beams of the Tabernacle of cedar wood, standing?...What
does the verse mean by standing? Lest you say,
now that the Tabernacle has fallen into disuse and the beams interred: Their
promise is ruined, never to return! [the Torah] therefore
teaches that the beams are standing – to tell us that they are standing forever
and ever.
The hiding spot of the Ark and the Tabernacle
would have been known be Jeremiah. Although the Tabernacle
and its contents (that would include the Tent of Meeting) were hidden away, they
will one day be found again. What better place to keep the Ark when away from the Temple than in the same Tent of Meeting used to house the
Ark while
Moses and the Israelites were roaming around the Sinai?
I have often been asked to look
into claims by Venyl Jones and his supporters (hereafter referred as the VJRI
for Vendyl Jones Research Institute) that the Copper Scroll deals with objects
hidden in the First Temple. However, the Copper Scroll
contains Greek letters. Since
Israel was not conquered by
Alexander the Great until 332 BCE, there would be no reason for anyone
associated with the First Temple, destroyed 254 years earlier, to be
using Greek. In summary, the dates just don’t fit for the Copper
Scroll to be a First Temple artifact; and
the bottom line is: the Copper Scroll does not mention the Ark.
