About The Real Angel Scroll
Three miraculous paintings, two heart-broken lovers, one earth-shaking revelation.
I’ve always been intrigued by the Dead Sea scrolls, scraps of ancient text written on papyrus and animal skins stored in jars that date back to the time of Jesus, and which were first found in the caves in the Judea Desert by a young Bedouin shepherd. The initial find kicked off a ten year search for scroll fragments in eleven caves, as well as the excavation of the Qumran ruin, a complex of structures between the cliffs where the caves are and the Dead Sea, located in Israel and Jordan, 15 miles east of Jerusalem.
The Dead Sea scrolls were an a sensational archeological find, and then in 1999 came this from the AP in Jerusalem about a text called The Angel Scroll:
”A religious text that has mysteriously surfaced in Israel and is being billed as one of the "lost" Dead Sea Scrolls uses some of the same phrases and imagery as the other 2000-year-old writings, a scholar said Monday after studying excerpts.
But it's too soon to say whether the "Angel Scroll" parchment, which describes a believer's trip through the heavens, is a major find that will shed new light on Jewish mysticism and the origins of Christianity, or an elaborate hoax, said Stephen Pfann, president of the University of the Holy Land.
The story of the Angel Scroll is shrouded in mystery. Rumors have circulated for years among scholars in the Holy Land that one of the scrolls - the religious writings of the Essenes found in caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1954 - made its way to an antiquities dealer in one of the nearby Arab capitals.”
And so this historical artifact became the jumping off point for The Angel Scroll novel. Although some details pertaining to the actual Dead Sea Angel Scroll persist through the book, fiction soon takes over from fact as Claire Lucas goes on an invented hunt for three miraculous paintings with Richard Markson, and undertakes her own fictional “tour of heaven”.
Check out more on the fascinating story of the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the actual Angel Scroll, and the amazing secrets they reveal about the Essenes, Jesus, and the early Christian church.