[neveh-l] NYTimes.com Article: New Debate Over Community Linked to Dead Sea Scrolls

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New Debate Over Community Linked to Dead Sea Scrolls

December 23, 2002
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD 




 

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Hundreds of books and thousands of
articles have been written about the Dead Sea Scrolls,
discovered more than 50 years ago in caves near the ruins
of a forlorn settlement known as Qumran. Scholars and
divines have transcribed, translated and argued over the
texts, searching for insights into the history of ancient
Israel at a time of transition in Judaism and the origin of
Christianity. 

But Qumran itself went largely unexplored for the longest
time. Even the results of the few initial excavations in
the 1950's have remained mostly unpublished and unavailable
for independent study. 

The situation, some scholars say, is not unlike the
handling of the scrolls themselves, which were tightly held
by select biblical scholars whose control over their
publication was finally broken after a rancorous struggle a
decade ago. 

Now it is the archaeologists who are restive. Many of them
no longer accept without question the traditional view of
Qumran advanced after the first excavations by Father
Roland de Vaux, a French biblical scholar and
archaeologist. 

Examining building foundations, graves and possible ritual
baths at the site, Father de Vaux concluded that this had
been a self-contained monastic settlement of Essenes, a
strict Jewish sect, and that it was their scribes who wrote
the scrolls in the first centuries B.C. and A.D. Some of
the ascetic practices and radical religious beliefs
mentioned in the scrolls appeared to correspond with Essene
doctrine, as recorded by nearly contemporary historians
like Josephus, Pliny and Philo Judaeus. 

Challenges to this interpretation have been mounting in
recent years. Qumran may instead have been a military
fortress, some scholars contend, or a fortified manor house
or a villa. It may have been an agricultural community or
commercial entrepot. In any case, it is increasingly
argued, there is no firm archaeological evidence linking
the Qumran settlement to the scrolls found in the nearby
caves. 

The crumbling consensus was manifest at a conference of
Qumran archaeologists held here in November at Brown
University. Organizers said this was the first meeting to
focus solely on the archaeology of the site, 12 miles south
of Jericho on a rugged plateau above the western shore of
the Dead Sea. 

From their new research, archaeologists described pottery
that seemed to refute the de Vaux hypothesis and other
pottery in support. They inferred from the tableware the
possible size and nature of the community. They reported on
skeletons exhumed from the graveyard - why would a couple
of women be buried in an Essene cemetery? They argued over
whether an aqueduct and some basins were there for ritual
baths or were simply for drinking water or agriculture.
Sometimes the discord grew heated. 

"There is no new consensus," Dr. Katharina M. Galor, a
Brown archaeologist and an organizer of the conference,
said during a break in the talks. "Or the new consensus is
that the old consensus is dead." 

Dr. Jean-Baptiste Humbert of the French Biblical and
Archaeological School of Jerusalem, successor to Father de
Vaux, now deceased, generally defended the traditional
interpretation. But he conceded, "Today, no one can prove
that Qumran is an Essene site, though the hypothesis
remains the most likely one." 

Dr. James D. Tabor, a historian and professor of religious
studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte,
said in an interview: "Most would agree, that's the best
hypothesis. But if you go beyond that and ask specific
questions, then you get a different story." 

Perhaps reflecting the view of many skeptics of the Essene
connection, Dr. Yizhar Hirschfeld of Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, said, "To support the monastic nature of the
settlement, scholars sometimes have overmanipulated the
archaeological evidence." 

Father de Vaux, for example, has been criticized as perhaps
seeing Qumran through the lens of his own life as a
Dominican priest living in a close religious community. 

It may be understandable that he saw the outlines of large
rooms in the main building and the absence of private
dwellings as evidence of a communal social structure, like
a monastery. The traces of water basins suggested the
presence of miqva'ot, or Jewish ritual baths, which an
Essene community would have had. And the individual graves
in the cemetery were unlike the burials in family tombs
favored by most Jews at the time, and nearly all of those
dug up contained skeletons of adult men. 

In Father de Vaux's defense, Dr. Galor noted that
archaeologists at that time had scarcely studied the shores
of the Dead Sea. "Only after you see other things at other
sites, getting a regional picture, then you see that Qumran
is probably not such a unique site," she said. 

As they sought to re-evaluate the site, several speakers
ended their reviews of new findings on a note of
frustration. 

"I am hampered by the fact that most of the material for
Qumran is not published," said Dr. Jodi Magness of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a defender of
the de Vaux thesis and the author of the well-regarded
"Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls" (Eerdmans,
2002). "This is all subject to revision after everything is
published." 

Dr. Jürgen Zangenberg of the University of Wuppertal in
Germany said, "The deplorable lack of relevant data affects
all theories on Qumran, the mainstreamers and the rebels
and iconoclasts alike." 

Only one volume of Father de Vaux's excavations report has
been published, with two more yet to come from Dr.
Humbert's group, possibly in the next year or two. The
project, based at the French school in Jerusalem but
involving an international team of scholars, has been held
up by a lack of money. 

As of now, many archaeologists say, there is no unequivocal
evidence of who the people living at Qumran were, or what
they were doing there. These are the core questions driving
renewed excavations, which started in the 1990's. 

Several conference speakers, notably Dr. Hirschfeld,
reported findings suggesting that this was an agricultural
community. The people there may have cultivated dates and
other fruit. There was some reason to think the people grew
balsam for perfume or indigo to dye linen. Therefore,
archaeologists said, the number of workshops on the
premises could be explained, and the basins could have been
soaking pools for balsam or vats for processing indigo. 

As Dr. Mireille Bélis of the French school in Jerusalem
said, indigo plants were grown on the shores of the Dead
Sea, required plenty of water and were a valuable
commodity. 

Dr. Magen Broshi of the Israel Museum and Dr. Hanan Eshel
of Bar-Ilan University in Israel disagreed. They said the
area's aridity and water salinity were not favorable to
extensive agriculture. A nearby oasis was indeed a farm,
they pointed out, but it seems to have been limited to a
single crop, date palms. 

Others said the existence of some farming did not
necessarily preclude a religious function of the community.
It could have been the way the Essenes supported
themselves. 

Recent excavations revealed several kilns, many pottery
shards and other evidence possibly supporting an extensive
ceramics industry at the site. The similarity in style of
pottery found in the ruins there and the clay jars that
held the scrolls was an important point in associating
Qumran with the cave scrolls when the traditional
hypothesis was first proposed. 

But that argument may be undermined by research reported by
Dr. Rachel Bar Nathan of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Examining pottery styles in the region, she found the same
types of ceramics prevalent in Jericho and elsewhere.
Qumran may not have been such an isolated community, she
concluded, but appeared to have had many commercial ties
throughout the region. 

The regional approach is one of the new elements in Qumran
studies, involving scientists, sociologists and scholars of
ancient economics. Dr. Zangenberg said this "will teach us
that even `religious sites' - if Qumran was anything like
that - had their economic, their social structure and
natural environment that determined the range of options"
that influenced the community's character and operation. 

One of the earliest and most vocal critics of the Essene
hypothesis has been Dr. Norman Golb, professor of Near
Eastern languages and civilization at the University of
Chicago. In the 1980's, he was struck by the multiplicity
of Jewish religious interpretations and practices recorded
in the scrolls. This did not seem to him to be the work of
a single sect like the Essenes. 

Instead, Dr. Golb argued that the scrolls were written by a
variety of Jewish religious thinkers and were hurriedly
moved from Jerusalem libraries when the city fell to the
Roman army in A.D. 70. Refugees hid them in the caves near
Qumran for safekeeping. 

In that case, the scrolls would have had nothing to do
directly with Qumran itself, which Dr. Golb contends was a
military fortress. 

His is no longer the voice in the wilderness it once was.
Many at the conference were open to the possibility that
the scrolls were not the work of the Essenes, though no one
presented solid evidence that Qumran had been a military
base throughout its occupation. 

But Dr. Golb was not invited to the conference. "Others
don't want to acknowledge that mine is the best
hypothesis," he said in a telephone interview. 

So contentious is the entire subject of Qumran, Dr. Galor
said, that some scholars who were invited agreed to attend
only if some others of opposing schools of thought were
excluded. 

After the conference, Dr. Galor said that this was only
"the starting point of a true scholarly discussion" on
Qumran, and it may take another decade before it is clear
where current research and excavations are leading. Even
that may be too soon, she said, to resolve the issue of
whether the Essenes lived there and wrote the scrolls. 

With hope but no certainty, Dr. Galor mused, "Maybe, at the
next international conference devoted to the archaeology of
Qumran, one will be able to detect the beginnings of a
consensus."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/23/science/23CND_SCRO.html?ex=1041710094&ei=1&en=7609a5715dcc9de5



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