The UnXplained

An indestructible cloak

imprinted with a divine image.

Small fragments of wood

believed to possess sacred energy.

And an ancient Egyptian staff

imbued with the power of God.

Throughout the world, there are objects in museums,

churches and private collections

that are said to come from biblical times

and the saints and martyrs whose lives

were devoted to God.

Many believe that these priceless items

not only prove that the stories

from the Old and New Testaments are true

but that the artifacts also

have the power to perform miracles.

Could the objects we know as biblical relics

really be authentic?

And might they actually possess divine energy?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

While tending his flock of goats in the rocky hills

just northwest of the Dead Sea,

Bedouin shepherd Muhammed ed-Dib

spies the entrance to a long-forgotten cave.

Inside, he finds an assortment of dusty clay jars

containing fragments of parchment and papyrus

with writing in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

They are the ancient Jewish manuscripts

we now call the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest copies

of the Hebrew Bible that we have

by a thousand years.

Prior to their discovery,

the oldest copies of the Bible that we had

were from about 1100 AD.

So, these scrolls were arguably

the greatest discovery of the 20th century.

Over the course of the ten-year excavation project,

archeologists recovered more than 15,000 scroll fragments

from 12 separate caves.

And as scholars painstakingly pieced the writings together,

what they deciphered

was a lost history of biblical proportions.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are really fascinating

because some of them are books that didn't make it

into the Bible,

like the Book of Tobit, the Book of Jubilees,

the Book of Enoch.

So, this is a brand-new set

of other information about the Bible.

The Dead Sea Scrolls fundamentally changed the way

we read the Bible because it shows us

that there was another group of sectarian Jews

who had books in their Bible

that didn't end up making it into the Hebrew Bible.

And so now we ask the questions:

Well, why do these guys believe something that's so different?

And so, we probably have just as many new questions

now that we've discovered them than we had before.

The creation of the biblical canons,

along with their carefully chosen hiding places,

seems like a clear indication

that these manuscripts were considered very important,

at least for as long as time

and the fragile parchment would allow.

But perhaps the most intriguing discovery in the Qumran desert

was an extraordinarily well-preserved scroll

created to endure the test of time,

because this document

was intentionally made of copper.

The Copper Scroll is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls,

but it's unlike all the others.

It was actually discovered in what's called Cave Three,

the third cave around Qumran.

This scroll is entirely written

on a sheet of copper alloy.

It's about eight and a half feet long.

And it had been rolled up after it was engraved in antiquity

and set into the caves.

So this is really an astonishing find.

Obviously, there was a lot of thought into making

this particular scroll out of copper.

They wanted something that could go through

all kinds of catastrophes and still be able to convey

the information that it has inside it.

When it was first discovered, the Copper Scroll

was sealed shut by thousands of years of corrosion,

preventing scholars from unraveling

the secrets it held inside.

But in 1955,

English archaeologist John Allegro

and engineers at the University of Manchester

were able to carefully cut the scroll into sections

and reveal its ancient Hebrew inscriptions.

What Allegro discovered

was nothing short of astonishing.

His translations revealed that the Copper Scroll

is actually a treasure map.

The Copper Scroll is an inventory of treasure,

63 locations of a massive amount of treasure.

We're talking like $300 billion

worth of treasure in today's money.

The Copper Scroll is a list of locations

where one can expect to find all sorts of riches.

Gold, coins, artifacts.

So, many people have viewed it

as kind of an ancient treasure map.

Unfortunately, we've not found

any treasure associated with the Copper Scroll

because a lot of the vocabulary is strange

and the geographical places are unknown to us.

Instead of ancient scripture,

the Copper Scroll lists 63 different treasure locations

in the Judean Desert.

But as with any great treasure hunt,

there's a hook.

The locations listed on the scroll

either no longer exist,

are completely unknown to scholars

or just too vague to figure out.

This is the big mystery about the Copper Scroll.

It's very nondescript. It'll give a location,

and then it'll tell you how far down to dig.

For instance, it'll say something like...

And it does this 63 times.

So, the question is: Where is this place?

But we just don't know.

Could the Copper Scroll lead to a massive fortune

buried throughout the Judean Desert?

It's an incredible notion.

But if it is true,

then where did this treasure come from?

When you look at the treasure inventory in the Copper Scroll,

and it describes like 160 tons of gold and silver,

you have to be thinking about, well, who would have

160 tons of gold and silver?

The only place that would have that is Solomon's Temple.

And so the idea is that:

Is this a list of the treasure of the temple?

Because the temple, of course, has gold and silver.

What about the things in the temple?

Including the most sacred object,

the Ark of the Covenant.

Is potentially the Ark of the Covenant

one of the things that is hidden

in this, location of treasures?

According to the Hebrew Bible,

the sacred chest said to hold

the Ten Commandments' stone tablets

was once kept in a secret chamber

beneath King Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem.

But at some point, the Ark disappeared,

and nobody has seen it for thousands of years.

Could the Copper Scrolls reveal its hidden location?

The idea that the Copper Scroll

could lead us to, say, the Ark of the Covenant

is a tantalizing, maybe even a seductive idea.

The Ark of God is probably the most powerful relic

in ancient Israel.

And it's reported to have tremendous power.

I guess if somebody finds treasure,

then the mystery will be solved.

But until then, it's still in that mysterious realm.

Is the Ark of the Covenant

hidden somewhere in the Judean wilderness?

We don't know.

If the Copper Scroll really does lead

to the Ark of the Covenant, what happens if it's found?

How will believers react?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining another relic,

in Mexico City,

a cloak imbued with divine power by the Virgin Mary

that is believed to be indestructible.

In a busy plaza just north of downtown

sits the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Every day, thousands of worshippers

crowd inside to pray and to show their devotion

to a beautifully illustrated garment

that hangs above the church altar.

It's a miraculous cloak

known as the Tilma of Guadalupe.

The Tilma of Guadalupe shows the image

of a beautiful woman

with her head inclined downwards and her eyes half-closed.

And she is wearing a gorgeous blue flowing dress.

It's all sort of celestial imagery of

gold and stars and, kind of, rays

shooting off of her. It's very, very beautiful.

Like the Shroud of Turin,

the burial cloth laid over Jesus after the crucifixion,

this cloak is an object

revered by Christians around the world.

In fact, every year, more than 20 million people

arrive to worship the Tilma of Guadalupe.

This astonishing figure makes it the single

most popular holy relic in the Catholic faith,

which naturally begs the question:

Just what is it about the tilma

that makes it so important to believers?

The Tilma of Guadalupe is a sacred image