The Copper Scroll Decoded * Robert Feather (isbn 0722538022)

In 1947 a local shepherd was looking for two of his goats near the Dead Sea. In a cave he stumbled upon some scrolls with text. In the two following years, about 80.000 scrolls, either complete or partially, were found in about 10 caves. These scrolls became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls which are not the same as the so called Nag Hammadi scrolls. The Nag Hammadi texts mostly deal with the periode just before the birth of Christ, the Dead Sea scrolls more about the times of the Old Testament and before.
One scroll is written on copper, which is strange, because the Qumran-Essenes who the texts are suscribed to had an aversion against wordly goods. So when Robert Feather heard about the copper scroll, he was fascinated. He has a background of metallurgy and is a raised Jew. Feather started to try to find out how the Essenes got their copper and the technique to work with it. During his book he not only trails the Essenes back to ancient Egypt, but also other notorious persons from the Bible, like Abraham, Josef and Moses. While giving a new translation of the strange scroll that is written in an odd kind of ancient Hebrew with here and there Greek letters, Feather often looses track of his original goal. However I found that a bit irritating in the beginning, his stays off the path are actually much more interesting than the original subject. Feather quite convincingly proves that Judaism (and therefor also Christianity and Islam) with it’s monotheism actually comes from the heretic pharao Achnaton (Amenhotep IV) who reigned from 1349-1332 BC (halfway the 8th dynasty). Achnaton of course was the pharao that got rid off the many Egyptian gods in favour of the only highest divinity Aton. For a while that is, because after Achnaton’s short reign, his works were destroyed and the Jews had to flee away (the Exodus from the Bible). Some with Moses into the desert, others to other places. Not only Jews fled with Moses, also priests of Aton with treasures from the temple.
However Feather locates all the places where treasures are hidden according to the copper scroll, his new found history of Judaism and monotheism are more interesting to me and definately worth to read by anyone who is interested in this kind of history.