Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
- Jodi MagnessJodi MagnessDepartment of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Summary
In 1946–1947, the first Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by accident near the site of Qumran. This discovery led Roland de Vaux to undertake an expedition to Qumran, including excavations at the site and the exploration of the surrounding caves. Eventually, the remains of approximately one thousand scrolls were found in eleven caves surrounding Qumran. De Vaux’s excavations indicate that the site was inhabited in the 1st century bce and 1st century ce (until 68 ce) by members of a Jewish sect—apparently the Essenes—who deposited the scrolls in the nearby caves. They believed the end of days (eschaton) was at hand or perhaps already underway. Members conducted their lives as if the community were a virtual Temple or Tabernacle and observed the same strict regulations governing purity including immersion and purity of food, drink, and dishes as those required for the Temple cult.
Qumran’s distinctive features are physical expressions of the community’s observance of biblical laws and their adoption of a priestly lifestyle. These features include the large number of miqva’ot (Jewish ritual baths), deposits of animal bones, a large adjacent cemetery, communal dining rooms with adjacent pantries of dishes, numerous workshops, and an unusual ceramic repertoire including the same type of distinctive cylindrical jars in which the first scrolls reportedly were found. It appears that the sect observed and enacted the laws and lifestyle of the wilderness camp with the Tabernacle in its midst.
Approximately 2 miles (3 km) to the south of Qumran, excavations were conducted at Ein Feshkha by Roland de Vaux in 1958 and by Yizhar Hirschfeld in 2001. The remains at the site include a farmhouse and industrial installations by brackish springs on the shore of the Dead Sea. De Vaux considered Ein Feshkha “an agricultural and industrial establishment used to benefit the community of Qumran.” However, the archaeological evidence does not demonstrate that the two sites are related or that Ein Feshkha was a sectarian settlement, as it lacks many of the distinctive features found at Qumran.
Subjects
- Judaism and Jewish Studies