Breaking the Romans Code Author:Michael Wood What if a newly deciphered Dead Sea Scroll proves Christianity misunderstood the Biblical book of Romans for the last fifteen hundred years? This is precisely what acclaimed cryptographer Michael Wood documents in his new book Breaking the Romans Code. — The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in eleven different caves. All the scrolls were immediat... more »ely published the moment they were translated except for the scrolls found in cave number four. These scrolls were guarded under a strict secrecy rule for many decades after their discovery.
Finally, in 1991, the keepers of the scrolls were coerced into publishing them. But the general intrigue surrounding the scrolls quickly died down because no one noticed anything remarkable in them. However one scroll in particular got under the skin of cryptographer Michael Wood - the scroll entitled "Some Works of the Law." The publication of this scroll was the first time archaeologists had seen the phrase "Works of the Law" outside the Bible itself.
Discovery of the empirical meaning of "Works of the Law" greatly affects Christianity today. For the meaning of this phrase is central to the Catholic/Protestant debate. The Protestant Reformation was largely based on a disagreement about what constitutes the "Works of the Law" discussed in the Biblical book of Romans. Catholicism considers the first century phrase as a reference to one thing, while Protestants believe it refers to something else.
Cryptographer Michael Wood was convinced the Dead Sea Scroll found in cave four contained the missing key to empirically deciphering the phrase once and for all. In Breaking the Romans Code, Michael Wood's empirical deciphering of the "Works of the Law" results in a totally unexpected solution. For the documented, verifiable answer turns out to be different from what both Catholics and Protestants thought. In fact, the final answer isn't even among their possible candidates - it turned out to be something neither denomination even considered.
So, quite unintentionally, Breaking the Romans Code ended up documenting that Orthodox Christianity has misunderstood the biblical book of Romans for the last fifteen hundred years. And this rather unfortunate situation is proven to be so, now that the Romans Code has been broken.« less