John J. Collins' new book is about "The Dead Sea Scrolls" that were found between 1947 and 1956 in caves by the Dead Sea.

John J. Collins' new book, "The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography" talks about the discovery of the ancient manuscripts, the story behind them and the controversies that surrounded the discovery.

The scrolls are believed to have existed at the time of Jesus and people say they were hidden in the desert near Qumran in the West Bank by a Jewish sect known as the Essenes.  Collins, who is a Catholic, is fascinated to know what the scrolls teach the people about Christianity.

"I've been interested in Messianism," he says. "What kind of Messiah were people expecting? What do the scrolls tell us about that? ... Why does a movement decide to go off and live in the wilderness and - some of them at least - not marry and have all their possessions in common? What's the kind of thinking that goes into that?"

The scroll also possesses information about life during that period, says Collins. "Nobody can be an extremist all the time," says Collins, "and so if you have a collection of writings held by this extremist group, there will still be an awful lot of stuff in that other people would have shared. They had the same Scriptures as everybody else. They observed the same festivals as everybody else, even if they observed them at a different day."

The professor also recalls the incident when Mel Gibson had called him to do some Arabic translation for his film "The Passion of the Christ." Collins says he received a call, which was a recorded voice of the actor, requesting him to assist with some Arabic translation for the film and that Father Fitzmeyer had recommended Collins to Gibson. Collins asked for the script and began reading it, however, when he discovered a talking snake in the manuscript, he decided against doing the translation. Nonetheless, Collins admits that whoever did the translation finally, did a pretty good job.