Archive for October, 2008
The Copper Scroll Project
Oct 27th
By Shelley Neese
“Shelley, I want you to meet the guy who has cracked the code on the Copper Scroll.”
With that intriguing introduction, I shook hands with Jim Barfield. We stood among the kiosks of Israeli goods during a lunch break at a Christian Zionist conference in Forth Worth, Texas.
“Congratulations,” I replied, “but what’s the Copper Scroll?”
“A treasure map from the prophet Jeremiah,” Barfield answered. I gave Barfield and his companion a quick once over, trying to determine whether they were the well-intentioned kind of crazy or scary crazy. A small-town Oklahoma man with impressive posture, Barfield sported long (really long) grey hair and a full goatee. His partner in “The Copper Scroll Project” is Chris Knight. Knight, another long-haired fellow, speaks softly and possesses a gentle demeanor, but has the same look of confidence and conviction that Barfield exudes as they brief me on the Scroll.
I took in the story with a bit of skepticism at first, but the longer we talked the more I thought that these guys may actually be onto something. The first thing I did after the conference was jump on my laptop and Wikipedia “Copper Scroll.” I also watched a documentary from the History Channel on the mysteries that enshroud the Scroll. I confess there was a gaping hole in my knowledge base since I had never heard of the world’s most intriguing archaeological find.
The Copper Scroll was discovered in 1952 in one of the Qumran caves along the Dead Sea. Though an anomaly among the more than nine-hundred ancient manuscripts, it is part of the official Dead Sea Scrolls Collection. The Copper Scroll differs from the others in that it is written entirely on thin sheets of alloyed copper rather than papyrus or leather. While most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found by Bedouins and sold on the black market to antiquities dealers, the Copper Scroll was found by an archaeological team exactly where it had been waiting to be discovered at the back of a cave for over two thousand years. Unlike the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls Collection, the Copper Scroll is not religious in nature. Instead, it is a detailed list of approximately sixty locations where vast amounts of gold, silver, coins, vessels, and other religious artifacts are hidden.
When the Scroll was found it was rolled in two parts and badly oxidized. Fearing it would crumble, experts debated for five years the best way to open the brittle Scroll. Finally it was sent to a lab in Manchester, England where they cut the Scroll into twenty-three strips with a high-speed saw. Photographs of the strips were taken and eventually published. The Scroll itself was sent to the Archaeological Museum in Jordan since it had been found during an expedition sponsored by the Jordan Department of Antiquities.
There are several theories as to where the treasure listed in the scroll came from and to whom it belonged. There are those who think it is just an ancient hoax. It seems odd that the Essenes, not known for their sense of humor, would create a fake inventory on expensive copper and bury it in a cave for a joke. The most popular theory is that the list details treasure from the Second Temple. In this scenario the Temple items were hidden just before Titus and the Roman army surrounded the walls of Jerusalem. The theory to which Barfield ascribes—and most Dead Sea scholars reject—is that the Scroll is from the First Temple period. Barfield looks to the Second Book of Maccabees and a lesser known seventeenth century book called Emeq HaMelekh (“Valley of the King”). Together these tell the story of the prophet Jeremiah who with the help of five Temple guardians, one named Shimur Halevi, carefully hid the holy objects of the Temple to protect them from the Babylonians and documented those locations on a scroll made from copper.
The Copper Scroll is a very difficult text to understand, written in an uncommon style of Hebrew. Many of the words used in the Scroll were unfamiliar to scholars because they do not appear in any other biblical or rabbinical texts. Adding to the puzzle, next to seven of the locations listed on the Scroll, there are two or three random Greek letters. Worst of all, most of the locations the Scroll lists are obscure references too narrow in their specificity to be known outside of that time period. The list speaks of tombs, dry wells, caves, and pools belonging to unknown people and places. For example, the Scroll writes “Sixty five bars of gold lie on the third terrace in the cave of the old Washers House” and “Seventy talents of silver are enclosed in a wooden vessel in the cistern of a burial chamber in Matia’s courtyard.” I asked Barfield if somehow he had discovered the identity of the old Washer or if he found a secret code associated with the Greek letters. He said cracking the code was more direct than that. “Others have applied too much knowledge or too much significance to these details in their search for the locations and just get lost in it.”
Barfield is the first to admit he lacks the Indiana Jones background one would expect. He has no prior knowledge of the language, archaeology, or geography of the region. Instead he is a retired Oklahoma criminal investigator. Arson was his specialty and he was recognized as one of the Sooner State’s best. His spiritual hobby was studying biblical chronology, which is why he got interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Barfield says he woke up one morning in December 2006, after having a conversation with Vendyl Jones—a man who has spent his lifetime in search of the Copper Scroll treasures and was rumored to be the inspiration for Spielberg’s Indiana Jones—and decided to take a look at the translations of the Copper Scroll. He had read it once before in his work with biblical chronology and said, “I was totally bored by it. It was just a list of kosher metals.” But that morning was different. Barfield treated the Copper Scroll the same as he would an arson investigation. He used a process of elimination. When doing an investigation he tries to prove everyone innocent and thereby eliminates the fringe factors. With the Copper Scroll, he eliminated the fringe and came to a realization. After looking at the Scroll for five minutes he understood the first location and twenty minutes later he identified the next four locations. He and his wife took their first trip to Israel to confirm whether the sites and places that he had identified actually existed. “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just imagining things,” Barfield said. It took six months for Barfield to crack the code for the rest of the locations.
For his research on the Scroll he prepared an investigative report no different in style than anything he would have done for an arson case in Oklahoma, except, of course, for the ancient Hebrew and Israeli maps. He got on a plane and took his report to the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) in Jerusalem. Knowing the IAA must confront treasure hunters every day, I asked if they treated him skeptically at first, especially given his background and faith, but he said laughing, “Once they saw my report they just moved me to the head of the class.” He says that all of the archaeologists, rabbis, and historians he has presented his research to have been convinced: “It is so simple. They just all thump their heads.”
He has been to Israel four times subsequently, meeting with a top level archaeologist from the IAA who has committed himself to the expedition. Usually there is no shortage of red tape when it comes to conducting an expedition in the most religiously sensitive and politically fragile climate in the world. However, Barfield got the permit and will be going to Israel this winter on an expedition to one of the Scroll’s priority locations. The Copper Scroll Project says they are ninety-nine percent certain that they have found fifty-six of the sixty locations of the Copper Scroll; the other four they are just a bit shaky on. They readily admit though that they can not be sure the sites have not already been found and looted over the last 2,600 years.
The quantities of precious metals that potentially lurk under the Judean hills and Negev sands are conservatively estimated to be worth over one billion US dollars today. Other estimates put the value at twice that, calculating between one hundred sixty and two hundred tons of gold and silver. However, the worth of the archaeological discoveries would be far greater than any monetary value.
Both Barfield and Knight describe themselves as “Torah observant Christians” with a sincere love for Israel and the Jewish people. Their central desire in getting involved with the Copper Scroll was to return the treasure of the Scroll to its rightful owners: the nation of Israel. In a phone interview with Barfield we discussed the magnitude of it all, how it could shake the faith of all unbelievers and potentially complete preparations for the refurnishing of the Third Temple. I also noted that the finder’s fee for such an achievement would be significant. “If God has selected me to do this,” Barfield replied, “He gave it to a guy that just doesn’t give a darn about wealth. My children and grandchildren love God and I just want it to stay that way. I want to return these items to Israel and what they do from that point is up to them.”
Whether or not Barfield has solved this ancient mystery is yet to be proven, but after hearing his story I can’t help but wish he is indeed “the guy who cracked the code on the Copper Scroll.”
Shelley Neese is managing editor for the The Jerusalem Connection Report.
The United States of Islam
Oct 2nd
Islam in America, Part 4
By Dr. Richard Booker
In the United States, Islam claims to be the fourth largest religion. Muslims are outnumbered only by Southern Baptist, Roman Catholics and those who practice Judaism. There are more Muslims in the United States than Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc. In the near future, there will be more Muslims than Jews in the United States. As one Muslim leader in the U.S. has said, “Most of our urban centers will be predominantly Muslim by 2020.” Think about that!
The number of Mosques being built in America is growing daily. Saudi money finances the building of these Mosques. The problem is not the building of Mosques because America has freedom of religion. The problem is that these Mosques represent the radical Wahhabi brand of Islam practiced by the founders of Saudi Arabia including Osama bin Ladin.
In addition, the Saudis give millions of dollars every year to American Universities to fund Islamic Studies Departments with the stipulation that the universities would hire Islamic professors to chair the department and teach the courses. Islamic professors at universities across America are teaching something other than a Judeo-Christian tradition and heritage to their students.
It is the stated goal of radical Islam to destroy our Judeo-Christian culture, heritage and Constitution and replace it with Islam and Islamic law with an American Muslim as President of the United States. In his book, The Islamization of America, Abdullah Al-Araby, gives the following comments by Muslim leaders expressing their true goal regarding the transformation of America from a Judeo-Christian nation to an Islamic nation.
He reports that during an official meeting on Islamic-Christian dialogue, the Muslim leader explained to the Christians participating, “Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you; thanks to our religious laws we will dominate you.”
As far back as 1983, an influential Muslim leader named Isma’il Al-Farfuqi said, “Nothing could be greater than this youthful, vigorous, and rich continent (North America) turning away from its past evil and marching forward under the banner of Allahu Akbar (Allah is great).”
At the dedication of an Islamic Center in Stockholm, Sweden in 1983, the speaker proclaimed, “In the next 50 years, we will capture the Western world for Islam. We have the men to do it, we have the money to do it, and above all, we are already doing it.”
In 1984, the vice president of the Islamic College in Chicago stated, “My dream is that the USA will become an Islamic nation by the year 2000.”
Omar Abdel Rahman is the blind sheikh convicted of the attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. In 1991 he called on Muslims to “conquer the lands of the infidels.”
Imam Siraj Wahhaj was the first Muslim clergy to offer a prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives. He said, “Take my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.” He further said, “In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam.”
Imam Zaid Shakir was the former Muslim chaplain at Yale University. He indicated that “Muslims cannot accept the legitimacy of the existing (American) system.”
Another Muslim leader, Adman Nawfal, has said, “It will be very easy for us to preside over this world once again.”
One month after September 11, 2001, a Muslim speaker at a convention in San Jose declared, “By the year 2020, we should have an American Muslim president of the United States.”
Abdurahman M. Alamoudi is the influential founder of the American Muslim Council. He has told his Muslim audiences that the goal of Muslims in America is to turn the U.S. into an Islamic state, even if it takes “a hundred years.” He further says, “If we are outside the country [America], we can say, “O Allah, destroy America. But once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it.”
Alamoudi was put in jail after pleading guilty to plotting acts of terrorism. Before then, he was an advisor to the Pentagon on Islam. In this capacity he created the Muslim chaplain corps in the U.S. military and placed Muslim chaplains in the military.
Omar M. Ahmad is the chairman of the Council of American-Islamic Relations better known as CAIR. CAIR is the “Islamic organization” of choice in Washington. It has tremendous favor and influence. While claiming to be an organization of peace and tolerance, CAIR recently barred the Christian Broadcasting Network from attending a CAIR press conference. Ahmad says, “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to dominate. The Koran should be the highest authority in America.”
Dr. Richard Booker is a bestselling author and speaker and the Founder of Sounds of the Trumpet and the Institute for Hebraic-Christian Studies. He is a contribution editor for the Jerusalem Connection. To learn more of his work, see his web site at: www.rbooker.com. This is the second of six articles on the Islamic Invasion of America. The articles are excerpts from Dr. Booker’s new book, “Radical Islam’s War Against Israel, Christianity and the West.” To get the full text, order this book directly from Dr. Booker’s web site at www.rbooker.com.