 In 1947, three nomadic shepherd teenage boys were traveling around the desert close to the Dead Sea. They stopped to take a break by a watering hole and one of the boys wandered off to do what boys tend to do and throw rocks into caves. And by the stroke of luck or fate or the hand of God, the boy threw a rock into a cave and he heard something shatter. What shattered was a clay jar that had a manuscript in it. But it wasn't just one clay jar. There were multiple clay jars. The boys thought that they had found possible treasure and they ended up selling the scrolls to a Syrian Orthodox priest for $250. Sadly, what the boys didn't know was this was one of the most incredible finds in our modern history. It included one of the oldest versions of the Hebrew Bible plus other testimonies. Testimonies and manuscripts that had not been read for 2,000 years. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe button and give us a like. 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His contact information is also in the description box below. Welcome to SOTaric Atlanta. My name is Bryce and today we are going to be talking about the Sons of Light. Now again, for those of you who are following along on the dark outposts on our breakdown of all the missing books of the Bible, link to that again in the description box below. You've already heard a lot of this yesterday on David's channel. Again, I'm going to start doing breakdowns on this channel too for those that are not a part of the dark outpost. So for those who have heard it, feel free to sit through a recap. And for those who haven't heard it, I hope you enjoy. Now once again, before we get started, I have one question that I want to ask the community. While I was heavy in research a couple of days ago, I stumbled upon a new cult, what appears to be allegedly a cult that's kind of brewing in our world right now with a famous celebrity. And I kind of want to cover it even though I normally cover older stories. However, I'm thinking about covering this cult on a live because I really want to get you involved as well and allow you to interact in real time with this story so we can kind of figure out what's happening together. However, I've been really hesitant about doing lives because all of us are scattered all over the world, which is so cool. But I know that because of time changes and time differences, that not everybody is going to be able to participate at the live with everybody else. So I'm located in Eastern Standard Time in Atlanta. That's the East Coast of the United States. So I'm going to take same time zone as like New York City. So I'm thinking if we were to do a live, I would do it like on a Saturday anywhere between 4pm and 6pm. I know that most people that go live go live later on in the evenings on the weekend. But again, I want to make sure that for those of you who are multiple hours ahead of us in like Europe and Australia and Asia, that you still it's a reasonable hour where you would be able to participate as well. So just let me know in the comment section below if it's really not possible and not feasible for us to do that, then I'll just cover it in a regular story and then let you comment. But I would love to be able to do it in a live format so you guys can participate as well. Okay, let's get started. So the Dead Sea is actually a salt lake that borders both Israel and Jordan. Most people are super familiar with the Dead Sea. If you are one of the Abrahamic religions like Judaism or Christianity or Islam, you know a lot of these stories that take place in these holy texts kind of evolve around this area known as the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is the lowest elevation on the planet. In fact, it is 4264 feet that's 1300 meters below sea level. It is 10 times as salty as the ocean and this is why people famously can float real easy on the Dead Sea. In fact, they said that if you're trying to swim, it's more like you're floating, which kind of reminds me as a kid growing up in the 80s and the 90s, I don't know if kids still do this today, but we would wear swimmies. Do you guys remember those where they would put like inner tubes on your arms and so you would just like float in the pool? So it kind of reminds me of that when you're a kid and that sensation of just kind of floating along in the pool. I don't know. I've never been to the Dead Sea, although I would really, really love to go to the Dead Sea. So with the Dead Sea and why it's called the Dead Sea is because you see the River Jordan, it flows into the Dead Sea. The River Jordan is a very famous river. After all, this is where Jesus was baptized. Well, as the river flows into the Dead Sea, it gets like stuck there. And because it gets stuck there, the salt really has nowhere to go with the sun beating down on this Dead Sea because this is a desert. The water evaporates leaving the salt behind. This makes it technically an extremely dangerous place to live. In fact, wildlife nor animals can sustain life there. However, people have been living there for thousands of years, ironically. Now in my research, I did hear that they do believe the Dead Sea will be no more by the year 2030, which is vastly approaching. So in case they're right, once, you know, we're able to leave our homes, I would suggest everyone goes to the Dead Sea before it's possibly too late. Another ironic thing about the Dead Sea is that even though it is super inhospitable for life to be there, it's also like a health resort too. And it's been a place for health and rehabilitation and beauty for thousands of years. Like, that's so crazy. It's like opposing forces, right? We talk about that a lot in yoga opposing forces. Here we have this Dead Sea that's called the Dead Sea because it's super dangerous, but yet it also, within its danger, provides like rehabilitation. A very famous historical character from the Bible and just from secular history, Herod the Great, used the Dead Sea for this purpose. He used it as a health spa. And even though Herod the Great has gone down in history as not being so great, being a pretty wicked ruler, there was one group of people that he was good to. These were the Essenes. The Essenes called themselves the Sons of Light. And these were the people that were responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were the scrolls that our three nomadic shepherds found in 1947. Now the caves that housed the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in an area called Qumran. This area was considered to be royal land. And it appears that this is where the Essenes or the Sons of Light lived. They lived very communally in this area. And now it's speculated that Herod the Great actually gave them that land. That's how much he respected the Essenes. And you see, another thing about Herod the Great and the Essenes is that the Essenes within their community, they never took oaths. They believed that their word was enough. They really prided themselves on their integrity, which sounds a lot like things Jesus said. Well anyway, because of this, and because their word was so good, Herod never made them take an oath of allegiance. The Essenes died out in the Jewish War that happened between 66 AD and 73 AD. However, it is speculated that even though the majority of the Essenes were killed off during this war, a few survived. And after a while, they stopped calling themselves Essenes or Sons of Light. Instead, they started to call themselves Christians. So if the original Christians wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, why were they hidden for so long? Now if you remember back to our episode last week on Constantine, we talked about how Constantine wasn't necessarily the Great Constantine, but more of a con man that manipulated the faith of Christianity into a myth-raic faith, which is a Canaanite faith. So on this journey of trying to figure out who the original Christians were and what they believed, it's an imperative that we start with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes. So let's get started. In 1950, three years after the discovery of the scrolls, official archaeological digs started in Quran. Now when they found the remains of this civilization, at first they thought it was Roman. But with the discovery of the scrolls and the jars that they were kept in quickly changed that narrative. You see the jars that the Essenes kept the scrolls in looked very, very different from Roman jars. All in all, 11 caves were found that held between 800 and 1000 manuscripts. They were written in the languages of Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew. Five of the caves were determined to be natural caves and the other six were created by the Essenes to hold these manuscripts of the original Hebrew Bible. The only difference is this Bible had alternative stories compared to the official Bible created by Constantine the con man in the 300s. And by saying this, it is important for me to recognize that there are many scholars out there, academic and biblical scholars, historians, archaeologists alike, that speculate that Constantine might have forged some of the books of the Bible that we know and that the original texts are hidden in the Vatican library. You see, Constantine again, he was a con man. And so he wanted to change some of the story to fit with the Canaanite religion and not the true religion of Jesus practiced by the Essenes. Now for me personally, I have no idea what to believe about this. I would not be surprised though if it is found later when we have access to the Vatican library that Constantine did change the stories a little bit to fit his own narrative. However, I'm just going to keep a grain of salt on all of that as we move forward. And I just wanted to let you know that in case there are some triggering things about these manuscripts that were found as we continue to go through them in future episodes. Now around 1956, speaking of the Vatican, it starts to get involved in these excavations. And in fact, the Vatican takes it upon itself to try to piece together some of the scrolls that had deteriorated a little bit. Now I don't know about you, but I have very little trust in the Vatican. I have very little trust in the Vatican and the Smithsonian. In my opinion, these two places, corporations are corrupt. And so it is my opinion around this time that a new smear campaign starts against the Sons of Light. I believe the Vatican doesn't want people knowing what the original Christians really believed. However, despite the Vatican's attempt at a smear campaign, by 1992, New Testament scholars started to argue that some of the manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls should be in the New Testament of the Bible. Around this time as well, more of the public started to become aware of these scrolls. So who exactly were the Essenes and what is their history? Well, we have to go back to really understand Jewish heritage, to understand why the Essenes became the Essenes. We know from 1400 to 1000 BC that people were nomads. This was the time of Abraham. And of course, with Abraham comes the three Abrahamic religions that we know today, being Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Now as we go deeper into this study, my opinion is that there's actually only two Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam. Because as we get deeper into the Essenes, and deeper into the missing books from the Bible, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, we're going to learn that the Christian faith was a sect of Judaism. Around 1000 BC, a new Jewish state was born. And this was under the famous King David, the famous King David who killed Goliath or the Nephilim, a giant. Going back to a past episode we did on giants. This is also when the first Jewish temple was built. Now between 900 and 586 BC, there was a split between the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah. This of course causes a weakness in the Jewish kingdom, opening them up to invasion from many groups. I mean, it's simple. If we are united, then we stand strong divided we will fall. We've seen this over and over and over and over again in history. So by dividing the kingdom of Israel, they were weak. And they were invaded by a lot of Mesopotamian kingdoms. And we know the Mesopotamian kingdoms were predominantly Canaanite. From our Canaanite episode we did with David Zublik. Now by 586 BC, Jerusalem is sacked by the Babylonian Empire. And it is at this time that the first temple is destroyed. And the Jewish people are now enslaved. But in 538 BC, Cyrus the Great allows the Jewish people to return to their homeland. At this time, they experience about 200 years of self-rule and self-governance or peace. And it is speculated that this is around the time that the Old Testament was written down before it had just been words by mouth. You know, that's how ancient civilizations told stories. Well, now they get to sit down and write it out. Of course, this is the Torah. The second temple is also built at this time. And even though the second temple doesn't exist anymore, in fact, it was taken down during the Jewish war that got rid of a lot of the Essenes, but we do still have one remaining wall. That is the wailing wall that we see in Israel today. Now the end of the Old Testament's timeline starts in 333 BC. And this is when Alexander the Great comes and conquers the area. We've talked about Alexander the Great a lot, when we've talked about the Ptolemaic dynasty, which was the dynasty of Cleopatra. Again, I will post all relevant past videos in the description box below if you need a refresher. Now Alexander the Great dies in 323 BC, and he dies without an heir or a successor. So this starts about 20 years of war between his generals, one of them again being Ptolemae, which became a huge family in our historic timeline. But nonetheless, by 301 BC, the Hellenistic period begins, and it doesn't end until 30 BC, right before the birth of Christ. Now because these were Greek people, a lot of the Greek language was brought into the Middle East, hence why a lot of the biblical manuscripts and manuscripts found in the Dead Sea Scrolls were written in Greek. It is around this time that the Sons of Light or the Essenes were formed. They were formed as a group to rebel against the Greek influence. So that's going to end part one of our breakdown of the Essenes. Part two will be released to you on Friday. I do want to take my time going through this because this is some pretty fascinating stuff and it totally has changed my perspective on history, and maybe it will change yours too. I don't know, that's totally up to you. Anyway, thank you guys again for sitting through this. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you to Josh McKay for doing our music. Again, if you want to purchase his music, the link is below. And thank you to Todd Roderick for being our producer, and I will talk to you soon. Bye!