NOVA explores the last refuge of one group of Jewish patriot Shimon Bar Kokhba's followers with a historian whose bold theories have rocked the world of biblical archaeology.

September 2007( check local listings)

In a gloomy cave perched high in a canyon near the Dead Sea, archaeologists made a startling discovery in 1960: a bag containing letters written on papyrus nearly 2,000 years ago. The letters were written by one of the great figures of Jewish history, the rebel Bar-Kokhba, who led a heroic guerilla uprising against the Romans. Biblical scholar Richard Freund returns to the cave with the latest archaeological techniques, hoping to find more traces of Bar-Kokhba's epic struggle. Instead, Freund comes up with tantalizing new finds that lead him to a radical and controversial theory. Could the treasure concealed in the cave be a long-lost relic of the great temple in Jerusalem destroyed by the Romans? NOVA joins Freund in a fascinating detective hunt that plunges him into the heated scholarly debates of Biblical archaeology.