The Copper Scroll

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The journey that follows is fiction.

The prophecies upon which it is based are true.

In 1947, two Bedouin shepherds tending their flocks in the Judean hills not far from Jerusalem stumbled upon the greatest archeological discovery of all time. Over the course of the next few years, hundreds of manuscripts and fragments — what became known to the world as the Dead Sea Scrolls — were found in the caves of Qumran.

Some of the scrolls contained whole books of the Bible, including the oldest known copy of the book of Isaiah, foretelling key details of the coming Messiah. Other scrolls contained descriptions of religious life in the ancient community of the Essenes, a monastic Jewish sect. Still others foretold a coming “War of Gog and Magog” and the building of a great new Jewish Temple in the earth’s last days.

But in 1952 another scroll was found in those same caves, and this one was strangely unlike all the others. It was not, for example, made of sheepskins or parchments. Instead, the message of the scroll had been engraved on copper, a costly and rare procedure. But why? What mysteries did this scroll possess? What message could it possibly contain that was more valuable, more worthy of protection, than Isaiah’s messianic prophecies or the detailed architectural plans of a future Temple?

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