06-05-2011
The year was 68 CE and the Romans were coming, tearing through Judea and destroying everything and everyone in their path. An isolated community of 200 Jewish, wrapping hundreds of fragile Dead Sea Scrolls or the Qumran Caves Scrolls, an ancient Jewish religious manuscript they placed them gently inside clay jars and hid them in caves near their homes at Qumran. Almost two thousand years later, in spring of 1947, a shepherd boy taking his flock to Bethlehem incidentally smashed an ancient jar. Since that time, over 800 scrolls — and the ancient settlement itself — have come to light.
Masada is an ancient stone fortress in Israel, located high above the Dead Sea on a tall, rocky mesa. Now an Israeli national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 840-acre complex holds well-preserved ruins attesting to the history of the ancient kingdom of Israel and the courage of its people in the face of a Roman siege. Masada is located in Israel on the edge of the Judean desert, between Ein Gedi and Sodom, on cliffs made up of chalk, dolomite and marl strata about 1,300 feet (400 meters) above the Dead Sea.
