CHAPTER SEVEN

A TABLE PREPARED IN THE WILDERNESS: PANTRIES AND TABLES, PURE FOOD AND SACRED SPACE AT

Stephen Pfann

Khirbet Qumran: geology, and ethnography on their own cannot A Farm for a Religious Community fully reconstruct the life practices of ancient soci- eties. Each specialist must have sufficient mater- All people need to eat, even . It has been ial from the site to arrive at a tentative conclusion, emphasized by several participants in this con- and, in the end, they must judge for themselves ference that the site of Qumran was a farm, with the degree of certainty they should apply to their no connection to a religious society. However, the overall conclusions. This is often best done by fact that there is sufficient archaeological evidence cross-checking their results against those of col- to show that the inhabitants of the sites of Khirbet leagues in their own field or of researchers in Qumran and 'Ain Feshkha raised crops or tended other specialties. Khirbet Qumran is a rare site sheep does not preclude the fact that the inhab- in the ancient world where most remains have itants were members of a Jewish religious sect, survived in a relatively superb state of preserva- such as the Essenes. On the contrary, the culti- tion. For the natural scientist, the environment vation of date palms, grapevines, wheat and bar- has undergone little change in the past two thou- ley fields, and even the collection and processing sand years. For the archaeologist, the ruins of of indigo or balsam, should be seen as an inte- Qumran have survived with walls often standing gral part of the daily tasks of such a group, as is above one’s head and with a rich volume of mate- also indicated by the ancient writers. Pliny describes rial remains from all around the site. For the his- the Essenes as living “among the date groves” torian, the surviving literature about the beliefs (Nat. Hist. 5:73). Josephus states that they arose in and daily life of the Essenes is greater than that the morning and said “certain ancestral prayers... of other contemporary groups. For all of these and after these prayers their superiors dismiss them specialists, some of the most important sources for so that each man may attend to the work with understanding life at Qumran must be the nearly which he is familiar” ( J.W. 2:129). Whatever com- one thousand fragmentary manuscripts that were modities the group produced depended largely found in the caves connected with the site. upon the local natural environment or their abil- Temporarily focusing on one’s own specializa- ity to import raw foodstuffs for processing within tion by isolating one’s research from other sources their own facilities. These agricultural products of data available from a site (whether literary, could be produced for their own consumption or archaeological or other), can and, perhaps, should used to barter for other commodities unavailable be done. However, this should be done only as to the community. The constant or occasional use a momentary task in order to scrutinize and cross- of certain industrial facilities for processing vari- check one’s own methods and conclusions against ous seasonal crops (including grapes and dates, another’s. This form of reductionism should never barley, wheat and mustard) is known from antiq- be practiced as either a general or exclusive uity and should be included as part of the over- method, since it isolates and reduces what is per- all picture. ceived as valid data to one source while remain- The archaeological data, limited in scope by ing ignorant of any other source. Excluding other the rare and chance survival of ancient materials sources of information should only be done if it at a site, contributes only a few pieces to the over- can be conclusively proven that they are uncon- all puzzle. Specialties such as paleobotany, nected or are irrelevant to the study. 160 stephen pfann

Khirbet Qumran’s Connection to the of the caves in the cliffs should also be included as property of the Community (whether any num- Several times we have heard in this conference ber of these scrolls were brought in from other that not one of the scrolls, nor even a fragment locations or not). Secondly, we should not expect of a scroll, was found at the site of Qumran itself. to find any scrolls or scroll fragments within the This was used as evidence that the scrolls were main buildings of the site itself. All sacred scrolls not to be seen as being connected with the site in use at the main building would have been taken of Qumran. However absurd this suggestion might and responsibly hidden from an enemy incursion seem to most scholars, nevertheless, this challenge (and so they were in cave 1 and other caves). should not go unanswered. First of all, I would Even worn out scrolls and scroll fragments would like to point out that scrolls were, in fact, dis- have been carefully interred in a geniza, as more covered at the site of Qumran within the enclo- than 17,000 scroll fragments from caves 4, 5, 7, sure walls of the site itself. These scrolls were 8, and 9 likely indicate. It would have been totally found in caves 7, 8 and 9, access to which was out of character for this group to leave even the limited and protected by the enclosure walls of tiniest fragment of a sacred scroll behind at an the original settlement. To gain access to these abandoned settlement. Thus, the ancient library caves, one would have had to enter into the site from the Qumran caves should, indeed, be used or climb over the enclosure wall from outside. as both a primary and secondary source for cross- I would like to add that if these caves, with checking research results and for integrating their scrolls, are now included within the custody scientific work on the settlement and plateau into of Qumran’s enclosure (fig. 7.1), then also all a viable overall picture, and vice-versa.1 other caves within the marl terrace and certain

Fig. 7.1. The southern enclosure and its relation to Caves 4Q , 5Q , 7Q , 8Q , and 9Q .

1 The proposal by N. Golb and others that the Dead Sea sent Temple leadership, the Pharisees and the , as Scrolls, being nearly one thousand in number, were actually “Sons of Darkness” and “the lot of Belial.” At the same the last remnants of the great Temple library rescued from time, they would have to explain the absence in the caves is not particularly helpful. To support this sug- of Qumran of scrolls originating from the Pharisees and gestion, they would first need to provide a sensible expla- Sadducees. This thesis would lead one to believe that the nation as to why such a large portion of the library was Temple leadership preferred reading the literature of their represented by documents which clearly condemn the pre- enemies and not their own literature.