[Magazine] The Biblical Archaeologist. Vol. 36. No 4

40 Pages·1973·4.13 MB·English

The
Biblicall
Archaeologist
Publishedb y
The American Schoolso f Oriental Research
126I nmanS treet, Cambridge,M ass. 02139
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The Cave 11 Psalms scroll before unrolling. Courtesy of the Rockefeller Museum.
The Dead Sea Scrolls - A Quarter Century of Study
JAMES A. SANDERS
Union Theological Seminary, New York
December, 1973
VVoolluummee 3 6 NNoo..4 4 December1, 973
110 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST Vol. 36,
The Biblical Archaeologist is published quarterly (February, May, September, Decem-
ber) by the American Schools of Oriental Research. Its purpose is to provide readable, non-
technical, yet thoroughly reliable accounts of archaeological discoveries as they relate
to the Bible. Authors wishing to submit unsolicited articles should write the editors for style and
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Editors: Edward F. Campbell, Jr. and H. Darrell Lance, with the assistance of Floyd V. Filson
in New Testament matters. Editorial correspondence should be sent to the editors at 800 West
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Art Editor: Robert H. Johnston, Rochester Institute of Technology.
Editorial Board: G. Ernest Wright, Harvard University; Frank M. Cross, Jr., Harvard lini-
versity; William G. Dever, Jerusalem; John S. Ilolladay, Jr., University of Toronto.
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Copyright by American Schools of Oriental Research. 1973
PRINTEDI N THE UNITED STATESO F AMERICAB, Y TRANSCRIPTP RINTINGC OMPANY
PETERBOROUG(N;H. , H.
Few archaeological discoveries of the past century have fired the
popular imagination as those of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is over a quarter
of a century now since the first finds. During that time an unbelievable
amount of literature has been published about them, ranging from the
enduring and valuable to the sensational and absurd. Now is a good time
to review the field to see where we are.
Most readers are at least acquainted with the ancient literature dis-
covered since 1947 in the eleven caves located near the Wadi Qumran
along the northwest shorewastes of the Dead Sea. But the manuscripts
recovered in the Qumran caves are only a part of what has been brought
to light since 1947 and referred to as Dead Sea Scrolls. Ancient literature
has been found in the same general area extending from caves in the
Wadi ed-Daliyeh eight miles north of Jericho, to the ruins of Masada
eighteen miles from the south end of the Dead Sea, and from the Jordan
Rift west into desert areas as far as Nissana in the Negev. A list of the
ancient Palestinian manuscripts published to date is available in an ar-
ticle by the writer in the Journal of Jewish Studies, 24 (1973) 74-83.
The loci of discovery are, from north to soutli, the Wadi ed-Daliyeh,
the Qumran area, Khirbet Mird, the Wadi Murabba'at, Nahals Hever,
Seelim and Mishmar, and Masada. The Nissana papyri (edited by Krae-
mer, Casson and Hittich in Excavations at Nissana, ed. by H. Colt et al.,
Vols. 2 and 3 [1950-62]) are not included in the general designation Dead
Sea Scrolls, but must be included in any purview of the extraordinary
phenomenon of manuscript discoveries in modern times.
In antiquity and until recently the areas of these discoveries were
largely the preserve of Bedouin hardy enough to live there, and many
of the manuscript discoveries have been made by local tribesmen. The
1973, 4) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 111
Co
IQ
Shechem a
z
A<<. o
c-z
7
11
*1
14
Jericho
Jerusalem o
Bethlehem a
Fig. 1. Sketch map showing locations of recent manuscript finds and sites of related settlements.
The numbers point to the Wadi ed-Daliyeh cave (1), Qumran (2), 'Ein Feshkha (3), Ras
Feshkha (4), Khirbet Mird (5), the caves in the Wadi Murabba'at (6), the "cave of the
letters" in the Nahal Hever (7), and Masada (8). Map prepared by Muriel Baske.
pertinent physical factor in all the discoveries is the aridity of the region.
Scholars, accustomed to the greater rainfall and humidity of Palestine in
general, doubted that this land could yield manuscript discoveries; just
112 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST Vol. 36,
here, however, the humidity is constantly low, and the "impossible" hap-
pened. The uniqueness of the environment where they were preserved
is underscored by the accelerated rate of deterioration of the manuscripts
since they have been stored in Jerusalem. Even modern techniques of
atmospheric control have not significantly checked the rate of discolora-
tion since displacement from the Dead Sea area. That is why the Albright
Institute of Archaeological Research and the Shrine of the Book in Jeru-
salem have joined forces to publish the well-preserved colored photo-
graphs of three scrolls made by John Trever in early 1948, within a year
after their extraction from Qumran Cave 1 (Scrolls from Qumran Cave
1 from Photographs by John C. Trever [1972]) - now the only record
of these scrolls in their early freshness and legibility.
Adding to the impression that this narrow range of territory is
unique in its capacity to preserve manuscripts are records of two, and
possibly three or four, discoveries in antiquity in the area of Jericho.
1) The earliest is noted in an early third century A.D. colophon in
Origen's Hexapla; it claims that Greek and Hebrew manuscripts were
discovered in a jar near Jericho during the reign of Caracalla, perhaps
A.D. 217. It is possible that Eusebius refers to the same event. 2) A letter
by the Syrian Bishop Timotheus I, about A.D. 800, reports the discovery
of biblical and other works in Hebrew in a cave near Jericho about
A.D. 790. 3) Jewish and Arab sources of the tenth and eleventh cen-
turies tell of a Jewish group of the eighth century and continuing until
their time - the Karaites - who possessed biblical books supposedly
found in a cave, the location of which is still unknown. 4) It is not
impossible that the Torah textual traditions which the Masoretes call
the Jericho Pentateuch may have come from a similar discovery.
The historical range of the documents recovered in the twenty-year
period from 1947 to the mid-sixties, after Masada had been excavated,
is rather extensive. The oldest is apparently Papyrus 21, from Cave 1 of
the Wadi ed-Daliyeh lot, which dates from the second quarter of the
fourth centry B.C. (375-65 B.C.) The youngest seems to be Arabic ma-
terial dating from the 8th centry A.D. at Khirbet Mird. This brings us to
the ninth century and hence to the realm of medieval material such as
manuscripts from Judean Desert monasteries, much of which is preserved
in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchal Library in Jerusalem (see, for ex-
ample, Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of
Mark [1973]). The languages represented in the ancient Palestinian
literature are Hebrew, Palestinian Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Nabatean,
Christian Palestinian Aramaic and Arabic. This wide range of ancient
literary remains touches on twelve centuries of Palestinian history from
the reign of the Persian emperor Artaxeres II (Mnemon) into the
1973, 4) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 113
second century of the AMuslimc onquest and Arabic hegemony in the
area. The types of literature are almost as varied as the range of dates
and languages. Because of the sheer quantity of manuscripts from Qum-
ran, most are biblical, religious and liturgical in nature. But there are
commercial, contractual, financial and military documents as well among
the other finds. And it must be pointed out that while there is a wealth
of new data provided for reconstructing the history of the region and
period, there is no actual non-biblical historiography repiesented, such
as we know in I Maccabees, Josephus or Eusebius. What we have is a
flood of primary historical sources which will keep several generations
busy evaluating it and extracting from it its true significance.
The Modern Discoveries
Though there is still some doubt in the minds of some scholars about
the date and manner of the discovery of the scrolls out of the first
Qumran cave, most scholars have accepted the fact that Bedouin first
entered the cave in the spring of 1947; that within a year their impor-
tance had been recognized by experts, Jewish and Christian, who then
resided in Jerusalem; and that within two years, the cave itself had been
located by qualified archaeologists, who were, by careful excavation of
fragments left behind by the Bedouin, able to verify it as the provenance.
Announcements of the discovery, and the early publication of three
of the scrolls by the ASOR in 1950, caused older scholars who had been
interested in a cemetery near the caves to call for further inspection of
the graves and the barely visible ruins of some architecture the Arabs
had always called Khirbet Qumran. Earlier scholarly conjectures con-
cerning the site had ranged from de Saulcy's suggestion that it might
somehow be related to biblical Gemorrah, G. Dalman's theory that it
had been a Roman fort, to F. M. Abel's hypothesis following Clermont-
Ganneau that the tombs had belonged to an early Moslem sect. The
graves had already been subjected to scientific investigation, but only
in a single probe in 1873. Paul Kahle, among others, insisted that both
ruin and tombs be excavated to see if there was any relation between
the manuscript cave and the ruins with their closely allied graves lying
to the east. The ruins were more than half a mile south of the cave
but indeed close enough to suggest some relation. Actually by the end of
1952 three caves lying within a few hundred yards of the ruins had been
discovered, one of which, Cave 4, proved eventually to be the richest
in manuscript yield of the eleven in the Qumran area.
But even before Caves 4, 5, and 6 came to light others had been
discovered which kept the archaeologists scurrying and the scholarly
world abuzz with excitement. Indeed while the first spade work was
114 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST Vol. 36,
Fig. 2. Map of the Qumran region, with inset map locating the eleven manuscript-bearing caves.
From the book The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies. Copyright
(c) 1958, 1961 by Frank Moore Cross, Jr. Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc.
being done on the Qumran ruins, in December 1951, the caves of the
Wadi Murabba'at came to their attention. Then in early 1952 what is
now called Qumran Cave 2 was found by the Bedouin. This was enough
1973, 4) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 115
to cause the experts to plan a sort of dragnet of all the likely caves in
the area, from Ras Feshkha in the south to the Wadi Dabr in the north.
In this first reconnaisance, more than forty caves were scientifically in-
vestigated, with over twenty yielding pottery fragments of the same type
as those found in Cave 1 and the Qumran ruins. Ultimately, some 270
caves were excavated, about forty yielding pottery and objects, twenty-
six yielding pottery of the Hellenistic-Roman period.
i:ig. 3. The jar at the right with a limestone covering block comes from the Qumran ruin; the
one at the left is from Cave 1. A whole range of such similar pottery types shows that
the caves and the ruin belong together. From R. de Vaux, L'archeologie et les manuscrits
de la Mer Morte, PI. XXIIB.
The upshot is this: the relation between the ruins and the caves
excavated, including the eleven manuscript caves, has been established
on the basis of the pottery and ostraca found in both. Though no manu-
script material lias been found in the ruins themselves, and no coins
found in the caves to match those in the ruins, the pottery evidence is
sufficient. While pottery in the caves ranges from Chalcolithic down to
modern in date, the vast majority dates from the Hellentisic-Roman pe-
riod and is identical with the pottery excavated in the ruins. Even caves
without manuscripts yielded the same crop of sherds, suggesting the
caves were used for habitation.
116 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST Vol. 36,
In the dragnet exercise, tile arcllaeologists in Mar-cl, 1952, discovered
Cave 3, containing manuscript fragments of bibllical and sectarian ma-
terials of the same sort as those found in Caves 1 andt 2, plus two rolls
of copper engraved with square Hebrew claracters, two parts of a single
scroll to which I will return below.
Thus began a wliole series of manuscript discoveries. These include
those already mentioned from Khirbet 5Mirdi n tlle Judean Desert on
the western edge of the Buqeia; some that found their way over tlle
then international border from Israel, south along the Dead Sea, into
the Wlest Bank of Jordan; Caves 4, 5 and 6, already mentioned, in 1952;
Caves 7 to 10 discovered by the archaeologists in 1955; andt finally Cave
11, discovered by Bedouin in early 1956. The knowledge tlat Bedouin
had transported manuscripts from their side of the border into Jordan
spurred the Israelis to activity in the area near and south of 'Ein Gedi.
In 1959 four teams set out into the area and excavated caves, in the
Wadis or Nahalim called Hever, Seelim and Mishmar, whlich yielded
manuscript and other materials largely from tile period of the Second
Jewish Revolt, or early second century A.D. The caves of the lWadi
ed-Daliyeh north of Jericho were then excavated by the American Scliools
of Oriental Research in late 1962 and early 1963, and Masada, with its
unexpected yield of biblical and sectarian manuscripts, by Professor
Yigael Yadin of the Hebrew University in 1963-65. Finally, in Hebron
a number of manuscripts came to light in 1966 written in an unknown
script, which one scholar believes to be proto-Phoenician but others
believe to be forgeries.
Archaeology
At present writing the scholars' reference for the archaeological work
done on Khirbet Qumran, the ruins at 'Ein Feshkha, andt the caves in
the area is Father Roland de Vaux's 1959 Schweich lectures, L'archeol-
ogie et les man uscrits de la Mer Morte, published by the Oxford Press in
1961. He was the principal archaeologist working in the area through-
out the finds until his lamented death in the late summer of 1971.
WVithina short time, and perhaps by the time this article appears, this
will be supplemented by two important posthumous publications: a re-
vision of the Schweich lectures and an archaeological report prepared
by de Vaux for Volume 6 of the series, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert.
The reference for the archaeological work done on the four caves in the
WVadiM urabba'at is P. Benoit, J. T. Milik, and R. de Vaux, Discoveries
in the JudaeanzD esert, II (1961), 3-63. For the sites in Israel one refers to
tle articles by Y. Yadin, Y. Aharoni, B. Lifshitz, P. Bar-Adon and others
in the Israel Exploration Journal, 11 and 12 (1961, 1962) and also to
1973, 4) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 117
BA, 24 (1961). There is also the popular but very useful account in
Yadin, Bar Kokhba (1971). For Khirbet Mird one still refers to tle
articles by G. H. Wright and J. T. Milik in Biblica, 42 (1961), 1-27.
Paul Lapp's excavations in the two caves in the Wadi ed-Daliyeh receive
preliminary treatment by F. M. Cross, Jr., in BA, 26 (1963), 110-114
and in New Directions in Biblical Archaeology (1969), pp. 41-46. A final
report on this work is in the press as I write. Yadin's preliminary report
on the massive dig at Masada in 1963-64 appeared in the Israel Explora-
tion Journal, 15 (1965), 1-120, supplemented by Masada (1966).
The remarkable observation one must make upon reading all these
reports is how well they harmonize to give a rather clear archaeological
outline both of the occupation of Qumran from the middle of the
second century B.C. to A.D. 73, and of the history of the anti-Roman
movement in the last third of the first century A.D. and the first third
of the second. The reports on the two sites, Mird and Daliyeh, unre-
lated to either of these two discrete historical phenomena, are none-
theless consonant with and/or do not contradict the outline. The ar-
chaeologists agree that all the manuscripts from the eleven caves of
Qumran belonged to a single library, the library of a Jewish sect whicll
occupied the buildings excavated at Qumran and 'Ein Feshkha from
about the middle of the second century B.C. to A.D. 68. They furthermore
agree, with varying degrees of confidence, that the sect in question was
the ancient Essenes who were routed from the buildings by Roman
soldiers who then occupied them as an outpost until A.D. 73 - with
the footnote that they were used for a short time by Jewish rebels about
sixty years later in the Bar Kokhba revolt. And they are confident that
tlese principal occupants at Qumran, who owned the library, were quite
distinct from the Sicarii of the first century who occupied Masada or
the rebels of the second century who lived in tlhe caves at Murabba'at
and those in the Nahal Hever region.
Before turning to questions raised by non-archaeologists about this
"archaeologists' consensus", we should note the results of some other
excavations, carried out after the work on the Qumran building proper,
which raise questions about the relationship between the Qumran ruin
and its adjacent cemetery on tlhe one hand, other more distant building
complexes on the other hand. In 1958, de Vaux excavated the ruins at
'Ein Feshkha, less than two miles south of Qumran. These he interpreted
to be directly related to the Qumran installation, constituting an agri-
cultural and tanning center for the Qumran Essenes. As for the cemetery,
he excavated forty-three of the more than 1,100 tombs, in what he saw
to be a main cemetery and two secondary cemeteries. His sampling led
118 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST Vol. 36,
(te Vaux to coIcltI(le that celibacy was practiced at Qumran; )burials of
womenl and cliilldrcii were coIfilned to tlh secondary cemeteries or to
places (quite a distance away on the eastern slopes of the burial area.
De 'Vaux also noted the peculiar south-nortll orientation of tlle graves,
the fact that the lheads were tirniied to face east, and the design of the
tonib which kept dilt from touclhinlg the corpse.
After the 1967 war, P. Bar-Adon and( otlhers conductcd excavations
south of Ras Feslkha at somie five sites. One of tliese, lying very close to
tlle slore of tile sea some ten miles soutli of Qumran, is a building
colmplex withl adjoining cemetery. I'lhe only report available at tile
moment is in Revlue Bibliqule, 77 (1970), 390-400. Bar-Adon dated this
new site to tle first centur-y B.C. and tie first century A.D., and linked
Fig. 4. The ruins of the agricultural and tanning complex at 'Ein Feshkha. From de Vaux,
L'archeologie, PI. XXXIIA.
it to tlie Qumran and Feshkha structures as belonging to the Qumran
EEsssseeiinneess ; lhiiee tthhiinnkkss iitt,, lliikkee QQuummrria, n, iiss aa cceenntteerr ffoorr mmeeeettiinnggss aadn d wwoorrkk ,
not for habitation. De Vaux agreed, as a posthumous publication men-
tioned abovtoem .w.sis lllo w. Bar-Ado excavated twenty and found
sskkeelleettoonniss ooff ttwweellvvee mmeennc,i iss, eevveenn wwoommieenn,, aaunddi i aa bbooyy.. TThlhe e ttoommbbss aarree ooff ttlhhee
same style and orientationl as tliose at QumEran. In one was found a jar
with a Hebrew inscription paleographically the same as inscriptions from
Qumran. (Both this a nw site andQ umtlrcaand s eviadences of Ironl age
and assigns SecacalQl ut o mran, 'Ir ham-melah to his new site; the latter
name had often been suggested for Qumran previously.)
Note two things. First, Bar-Adon's finds in his cemetery do not
suggest celibacy. This calls to mind one facet of the otherwise rather