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The Mysterious Dead Sea Scrolls and theSleeping Prophet who predicted their discovery

by Terri Bilbo

Without a doubt the Dead Sea Scrolls are the most dramatic archaeological find of

this century. This collection of ancient scriptures is still making news almost 50years after the discovery. Just last month The Angel Scroll was publicly identifiedas an authentic part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This particular parchment describesembalming recipes for the resurrection of the dead and the use of herbs andstones for healing, practices that the Jewish historian Josepheus attributed to theEssenes. Included for review was another document which describes a religiousvision of an angel escorting a man namedYeshua on a journey through theHeavens, entering through the gates of a heavenly palace.

The documents that have become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls havecreated a storm among the worlds scholars, and theologians are strangely quiet

about the implications of the writings and the writers. Qumran is especiallysignificant because it has been well established that the community was inexistence at least 100 years prior to the birth of Christ and for 68 years after hisdeath. The location is in the geographic center of important events in Christs life,such as the baptism by John the Baptist, which took place just a few miles away.Qumran is also close to an easy trade route from Jerusalem to Jericho, and in themiddle of the vast wilderness the Baptist wandered over, and to which Christretreated during his forty days in the wilderness. These facts have raised manyquestions in scholars minds as to how much Jesus knew about Qumran and thework the Essenes were doing there and why they disappeared without a trace inthis very time period.

The Edgar Cayce readings suggest a close connection between Jesus, his familyand friends, and the Essene community. The Sleeping Prophet often spoke ofthe Essenes as the religious organization that evolved into the ChristianChurch. Before their discovery, scholars had traditionally believed that theEssenes, if they existed at all, were cloistered, celibate monks. They supposedlyrecruited new members, either by accepting mature men who wanted to get awayfrom the world, or they would take in sons from outside families, provided that theboys were young enough not to have been influenced in the ways of the world.Women, scholars thought, played little, if any, role in helping the Essenes.

On the other hand, Edgar Cayce, eleven years prior to the discovery of the scrolls,mentioned that the Essenes of this time recognized the twinness of the soul andthat women played a vital, even critical, role in Qumran and even the actual birth,training, and public ministry of Jesus the Christ. According to the readings, only afew of the Essenes lived for any length of time in what could be described as amonastery. Thousands of them resided throughout the Middle East, all of themleading normal lives for the Jews of their time.

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Evidence supporting these two factors came to light during the excavations atQumran from 1949-54, and more recently in Jerusalem itself. A cemetery wasfound at Qumran between the monastery and the sea that held over800 graves,and experts have concluded that numerous skeletons found were women, evengirls. In fact, Edgar Cayce told one woman she was the first Essene woman to

attain leadership stature in the community. Cayce explained that she wasinstrumental in collecting an recopying the scriptures for the Qumran community.She may have been the person charged with deciding what commentaries wouldbe preserved in the Qumran literature. The commentaries included in the DeadSea Scrolls are discussions of the Old Testament Scripture, but Cayce explainsthat she also was associated with the New Testament. Repeatedly in the readingshe reminds her of things she said or written, and these are from the Gospels.Experts have long agreed that the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were writtenbefore the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., as much as 10 years before, and that theyare so closely related that scholars believe them to have descended from anotherbook called the mysterious Q document.

The Essenes were at Qumran at that time and could well have made copies ofthese writings to circulate among the growing and widely scattered Christiancommunities. There had been some uncertainty about the date of the Gospel ofJohn, because it was known that he was a teenager when Jesus chose him tobecome one of the Twelve, and that he had lived to an old age in the Grecianseaport ofEphesus, in what is now Turkey. Johns complex symbolism, especiallyin his prologue, led some to deduce that John wrote his account of Jesus in his oldage after spending many years in discussions with Greek philosophers. Thediscovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls changed that opinion. John is so definitelyEssenic, particularly in his references to the light and the darkness, that theprevalent opinion now is that he may have been an Essene himself. Experts sayJohn came to know Jesus through John the Baptist, and they are confident thatJohn the Baptist was an Essene.

New evidence about the Essene community was recently published in the scholarlymagazine Biblical Archaeology Review article, Odd Tomb Out: Has JerusalemsEssene Cemetery Been Found? in the March/April 1999 Issue. Finding an Essenecemetery in Jerusalem cast serious doubts that the Essenes were a smallcloistered cult but points out they were a thriving community of believers who werein Jerusalem, Qumran, and Carmel.

If John the Baptist and John the Beloved were Essenes, just who were they andwhat did they believe? The name comes from the Romans, who called them theExpectant Ones, for they expected the Messiah to come. They were also knownas The Elect, The Carmelites, and The Poor. They thought of themselves asThe Remnant, and they called themselves The Brotherhood. The Essenes didnot believe in offering blood sacrifices, and thus were thought of as heretical at thetime. They performed healings, as Josephus attested to, and also believed inprecognition, ESP and astrology. They believed that all the Sons of Light werepriests in Gods eyes, each saint was called to a specific purpose, whether it be

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priest or farmer, shepherd or parent, marriage or healing, but their main purposewas to spread the word of the Lord.

Why were the Dead Sea Scrolls hidden in these caves in the heart of thiswasteland? Cayce explains that this Messianic group was outgrowing their

headquarters in Mount Carmel, so they decided to expand. The actual buildingwas carried out in secret; aqueducts were built to transport freshwater from the hillsin the rainy season, and cisterns were made to hold the enormous amount of waterneeded. Also, in preparation for the library, they studied the best methods ofpreserving the written word. They made their own scrolls and ink, and they knewthat the dry air at the City of Salt was perfect to store the Holy Scriptures. Theyintentionally made and preserved these scrolls for the coming age! One must beastounded that here they are being discovered and studied exactly at the end ofthe age of Pisces and the beginning of the age of Aquarius.

One must also wonder, since Edgar Cayce was correct about so many things

concerning the location and make-up of the Qumran community eleven or moreyears prior to its discovery and two years after his death, could he also be rightabout Jesus early associations with the Essenes? To find out more about EdgarCayces readings on this topic, pick up a copy of the book, The Remnant, or thebook, Edgar Cayceon the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) was founded in 1931 byEdgar Cayce. The Dallas Fort-Worth A.R.E. chapter will be presenting a free ofcharge a moving story told in narrative form revealing the mysteries of Christsbirth, Marys part in this mystery, and a more detailed explanation of who theEssenes were and why they wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls on December 4, 1999. Formore information on this event or about Edgar Cayce and his readings, please feelfree to call metro 817-577-9143. website: http://www.are-cayce.com

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