>I an article titled Archaeologists Challenge Link Between Dead Sea Scrolls and Ancient Sect, written by John Noble Wilford and published August 15, 2006 in The New York Times, archaeologists are questioning again the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the people who lived and worked at Qumran.
The following is an excerpt from Wilford’s article:
New archaeological evidence is raising more questions about the conventional interpretation linking the desolate ruins of an ancient settlement known as Qumran with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in nearby caves in one of the sensational discoveries of the last century.
After early excavations at the site, on a promontory above the western shore of the Dead Sea, scholars concluded that members of a strict Jewish sect, the Essenes, had lived there in a monastery and presumably wrote the scrolls in the first centuries B.C. and A.D.
Many of the texts describe religious practices and doctrine in ancient Israel.
But two Israeli archaeologists who have excavated the site on and off for more than 10 years now assert that Qumran had nothing to do with the Essenes or a monastery or the scrolls. It had been a pottery factory.
The archaeologists, Yizhak Magen and Yuval Peleg of the Israel Antiquities Authority, reported in a book and a related magazine article that their extensive excavations turned up pottery kilns, whole vessels, production rejects and thousands of clay fragments. Derelict water reservoirs held thick deposits of fine potters’ clay.
Dr. Magen and Dr. Peleg said that, indeed, the elaborate water system at Qumran appeared to be designed to bring the clay-laced water into the site for the purposes of the pottery industry. No other site in the region has been found to have such a water system.
By the time the Romans destroyed Qumran in A.D. 68 in the Jewish revolt, the archaeologists concluded, the settlement had been a center of the pottery industry for at least a century. Before that, the site apparently was an outpost in a chain of fortresses along the Israelites’ eastern frontier.
“The association between Qumran, the caves and the scrolls is, thus, a hypothesis lacking any factual archaeological basis,” Dr. Magen said in an article in the current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
He and Dr. Peleg wrote a more detailed report of their research in “The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates,” published this year. The book was edited by Katharina Galor of Brown, Jean-Baptiste Humbert of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem, and Jürgen Zangenberg of the University of Wuppertal in Germany.
This is by no means the first challenge to the Essene hypothesis originally advanced by Roland de Vaux, a French priest and archaeologist who was an early interpreter of the scrolls after their discovery almost 60 years ago. Other scholars have suggested that Qumran was a fortified manor house or a villa, possibly an agricultural community or a commercial entrepôt.
Norman Golb, a professor of Near Eastern languages and civilization at the University of Chicago who is a longtime critic of the Essene link, said he was impressed by the new findings and the pottery-factory interpretation.
“Magen’s a very seasoned archaeologist and scholar, and many of his views are cogent,” Dr. Golb said in a telephone interview. “A pottery factory? That could well be the case.”
Dr. Golb said that, of course, Qumran could have been both a monastery and a pottery factory. Yet, he added: “There is not an iota of evidence that it was a monastery. We have come to see it as a secular site, not one of pronounced religious orientation
For years archaeologists have debated whether the ancient texts found in 1947 in caves near the Dead Sea were part of the Essene community. There are several reasons for questioning the link between the scrolls and the Essenes.
One reason is that the written texts are much older than the community itself. Another reason is that among the texts found in the caves, there are no original documents that reveal particular aspects of communal life at Qumran.
The view that the texts found at Qumran belonged to the temple in Jerusalem and that they were hidden in the caves prior to the Roman destruction of the temple has been proposed, but many scholars continue to associate the texts with a religious community at Qumran, whether they were the Essenes or not.
It is clear that this debate will continue.
To read Wilford’s article in its entirety, click here.
For a video on the Dead Sea Scrolls, click here.
For an overview of the article published in the Biblical Archaeology Review, click here.
Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary
Tags: Archaeology, Qumran, Essenes, Dead Sea Scrolls
Dr. Claude Mariottini - Professor of Old Testament 
>You have carefully omitted the most interesting paragraphs of the article, which I quote below. In their stead, you have offered a mischaracterization of the Jerusalem theory of Scroll origins. No one is arguing that the Scrolls came from the TEMPLE — this is a common misrepresentation of Golb’s view which is much more sophisticated, as made clear in the paragraphs that you have omitted. Here they are:”For years, Golb has argued that the multiplicity of Jewish religious ideas and practices recorded in the scrolls made it unlikely that they were the work of a single sect like the Essenes. The scrolls in the caves were probably written by many different groups, Golb surmised, and were removed from Jerusalem libraries by refugees in the Roman war. Fleeing to the east, the refugees may well have deposited the scrolls for safekeeping in the many caves near Qumran. The new research appears to support this view. As Magen noted, Qumran in those days was at a major crossroads of traffic to and from Jerusalem and along the Dead Sea.”
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>Dear Friend,The omission you mentioned was done only because I did not want to quote the whole article. My desire was to invite readers to read the article quoted on its entirety. However, I agree with you that by not quoting longer sections of the article, I gave the false impression that I was emphasizing a one-sided view of the origins of the scroll.Again, the omission was the result of quoting only part of the article.Thank you for your comment.Claude Mariottini
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>We wish to call attention to some important news:The Pacific Science Center in Seattle has announced its upcoming exhibit of 20 Dead Sea Scrolls (set to open on September 23). According to the description of the exhibit on the Center’s website, they are planning to ignore the developments described in the New York Times article and to treat the Qumran-sectarian theory as an established fact. Arguably, this use of an independent scientific institution to defend a theory that has come under increasing attack in recent years raises serious ethical issues. For further information, see the blog entitled “Pacific Science Center Exhibit: New Dead Sea Scroll Scandal” at http://pacific-science-scrolls-scandal.blogspot.com/
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>Is there independent evidence for the existence of the Essenes? I was under the impression that what we knew of the Essenes was from the DSS. If that’s not the case, then do we not even know if there was such a group? Or do we know there was such a group from other sources, but this just questions whether they were in that location?
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>From Wikipedia:Josephus uses the name Essenes in his two main accounts (War 2.119, 158, 160; Ant. 13.171-2) as well as in some other contexts (“an account of the Essenes”, Ant. 13.298; “the gate of the Essenes”, War 5.145; “Judas of the Essene race”, Ant. 13.311, but some manuscripts read here Essaion; “holding the Essenes in honour”, Ant. 15.372; “a certain Essene named Manaemus”, Ant. 15.373; “to hold all Essenes in honour”, Ant. 15.378; “the Essenes”, Ant. 18.11 & 18; Life 10). In several places, however, Josephus has Essaios, which is usually assumed to mean Essene (“Judas of the Essaios race”, War I.78; “Simon of the Essaios race”, War 2.113; “John the Essaios”, War 2.567; 3.11; “those who are called by us Essaioi”, Ant. 15.371; “Simon a man of the Essaios race”, Ant. 17.346). Philo’s usage is Essaioi, although he admits this Greek form of the original name that according to his etymology signifies “holiness” to be inexact (NH XII.75). Pliny’s Latin text has Esseni. Josephus identified the Essenes as one of the four major Jewish sects of that period.The Essenes have been the focus of much alternative history and esoteric speculation. Recently, for example, Ahmed Osman claims in his book Out of Egypt that the name “Essene” is to be translated as “follower of Jesus (Essa).” This “obvious” translation had been overlooked, it is claimed, because of a previously unquestioned assumption that the origins of Christianity lay in the first century AD. In Eerdman’s Beyond the Essene Hypothesis, Gabriele Boccaccini (p.47) implies that a convincing etymology for the name Essene has not been found, but that the term applies to a larger group within Palestine that also included the Qumran community. Josephus’ reference to a “gate of the Essenes” in the Temple Mount perhaps suggests an Essene community living in this quarter of the city or regularly gathering at this part of the Temple precincts.LocationAccording to Josephus the Essenes had settled “not in one city” but “in large numbers in every town” (War 2.124). Philo speaks of “more than four thousand” Essaioi living in “Palestinian Syria” (Quod Omn. Prob. XII.75), more precisely, “in many cities of Judaea and in many villages and grouped in great societies of many members” (Hyp. 11.1).Some modern scholars and archeologists have argued that Essenes inhabited the settlement at Qumran, a plateau in the Judean Desert along the Dead Sea. While Pliny’s location (“on the west side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast … [above] the town of Engeda”) tends to be cited in support of this identification, there is as yet no conclusive proof for this hypothesis. Nevertheless, it has come to dominate the scholarly discussion and public perception of the Essenes.The Church Father Epiphanius (writing in the fourth century AD) seems to make a distinction between two main groups within the Essenes: “Of those that came before his [Elxai, an Ossaean prophet] time and during it, the Osseaens and the Nazarean.” (Panarion 1:19). Epiphanius describes each group as following: * “Nazarean” Essenes: “The Nazarean – they were Jews by nationality – originally from Gileaditis [where the early followers of Yeshua fled after the martyrdom of James, the brother of Jesus], Bashanitis and the Transjordon . . .They acknowledged Moses and believed that he had received laws – not this law, however, but some other. And so, they were Jews who kept all the Jewish observances, but they would not offer sacrifice or eat meat. They considered it unlawful to eat meat or make sacrifices with it. They claim that these Books are fictions, and that none of these customs were instituted by the fathers. This was the difference between the Nazarean and the others. . .” (Panarion 1:18) * “Ossaeanes” Essenes: “After this [Nazarean] sect in turn comes another closely connected with them, called the Ossaeanes. These are Jews like the former … originally came from Nabataea, Ituraea, Moabitis and Arielis, the lands beyond the basin of what sacred scripture called the Salt Sea. . . Though it is different from the other six of these seven sects, it causes schism only by forbidding the books of Moses like the Nazarean.” (Panarion 1:19)Josephus also writes: “Moreover, there is another [ie. a second] rank of Essenes who agree with the rest as to their way of living and customs and laws but differ from them in the point of marriage.” (War 2.160).Some modern groups who claim a connection with Essenism also claim the location of the Ossaeanes, who encouraged celibacy, to have been around the Qumran area; and the Nazarean, who encouraged marriage, to have been around the Mount Carmel area.
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>There is now also a lengthy critical review of the Seattle scrolls exhibit on the University of Chicago website, written by Norman Golb. http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IS/GOLB/dead_sea_scrolls.htmlIronically, it appears that in Seattle, the exhibit is being treated as a resounding public relations success, even though it was apparently designed to hide the past decade’s developments in scrolls research from the public.
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