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An Ancient Bible That Has No Moses
The weird tale of the Temple Scroll
In 1955, one of the most remarkable manuscript discoveries in history had been made, or would be shortly. One of the key figures in its emergence, the Reverend Dr. Joe H. Uhrig, knew only that he was going to the ‘Holy Land’, to learn more about the Bible.
Returning to America, he resumed his career in the exciting new field of ‘televangelism’. His T.V. program, Hand to Heaven, was filmed in a ‘little country church’ in Alexandria, Virginia. He’d built it as a studio set. The cemetery outside was fake.
A nice touch — on the tombstones, rather than names, there were selections from the ‘Ten Commandments’.
It was a perfect expression of Christianity of the time, as much as the movie of The Ten Commandments which came out in 1956. The rugged, handsome actor playing Moses, the prophet of God, receives “the Law.” However Hollywoodized, this was the Bible that people loved. A show.
But the idea of a ‘new’ divine revelation was in the air, to the media-saavy showman at least. By early 1960, the Rev. Uhrig’s T.V. church was “padlocked by angry creditors,” the newspaper notes, as word spread that he “had gone to Beirut, reportedly to search for Dead Sea scrolls.”
