The Jesus Scroll was a best-selling

Bestseller

A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...

 book first published in 1972 and written by Australian author Donovan Joyce

Donovan Joyce

Donovan Maxwell Joyce is known as the author of the international best-seller The Jesus Scroll. Joyce, an Australian radio producer and author, was born in 1910 at Hawthorn, Melbourne. Educated at Scotch College, Hawthorn, on leaving education he was employed by the Broken Hill Proprietary Co...

. A forerunner to some of the ideas later investigated in The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to...

, Joyce's book made the claim that Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 of Nazareth

Nazareth

Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...

 may have actually died in 80 AD at Masada

Masada

Masada is the name for a site of ancient palaces and fortifications in the South District of Israel, on top of an isolated rock plateau, or horst, on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea. Masada is best known for the violence that occurred there in the first century CE...

 in Israel

Land of Israel

The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...

 during the Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 siege of that fortress.

Joyce, an Australian journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, claimed to have seen a scroll stolen from the Masada excavations. He wrote that it was one of fifteen scrolls discovered during the dig there. His book states that the stolen autobiographical

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

 scroll was signed Yeshua ben Ya’akob ben Gennesareth, who described himself as eighty years old and added that he was the last of the rightful kings of Israel. The name when translated into English became Jesus of Gennesareth, son of Jacob. Joyce identifies the author as Jesus of Nazareth. Joyce's book further suggests that Jesus may have survived the crucifixion, was present during the Roman siege of Masada during the Jewish Revolt of 66-74 AD, and that he had married Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples, and the most important woman disciple in the movement of Jesus. Jesus cleansed her of "seven demons", conventionally interpreted as referring to complex illnesses...

 and fathered a child with her

Jesus bloodline

A Jesus bloodline is a hypothetical sequence of lineal descendants of the historical Jesus and Mary Magdalene, or some other woman, usually portrayed as his alleged wife or a hierodule...

.

Joyce claimed that he attempted to visit Masada in 1964 during the archaeological

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

 excavation but was prevented by Yigael Yadin

Yigael Yadin

Yigael Yadin on 21 March 1917, died 28 June 1984) was an Israeli archeologist, politician, and the second Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces.-Early life and military career:...

. Joyce further claimed that an anonymous and corrupt archaeologist asked him to smuggle the 'Jesus Scroll' out of Israel that had been discovered during that dig. Joyce says in his book that the scroll was taken from him at Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

 airport by Israeli Security personnel and that it then probably disappeared into the Vatican Archive.

Joyce proposed controversial theories concerning the historicity of Jesus

Historicity of Jesus

The historicity of Jesus concerns how much of what is written about Jesus of Nazareth is historically reliable, and whether the evidence supports the existence of such an historical figure...

that caused outrage among many Christians; Joyce received numerous death threats.