1. the Animal Bone Deposits at Qumran

DOGS AND CHICKENS AT QUMRAN Jodi Magness Do not give what is holy to dogs. (Matt 7:6) 1. The Animal Bone Deposits at Qumran One of the most puzzling discoveries at Qumran are deposits of animal bones that were placed between large potsherds or inside jars, either flush with or on top of the ancient ground level and covered with little or no earth. The bones belonged to adult sheep and goats, lambs or kids, calves, and cows or oxen.1 Roland de Vaux noted that the bones must be the remains of meals, since all were clean but some were charred, indicating that the meat was boiled or roasted on a spit.2 The suggestion made by some scholars that the community wanted to keep scavengers away from the bones is contradicted by the fact that it would have been easier to dump the bones into Wadi Qumran and by the absence of analogous deposits at other sites; are we to assume that scavengers were a problem only at Qumran?3 Therefore de Vaux’s association of the animal bone deposits with religious or ritual meals that were eaten by the community still seems most likely.4 1 For a discussion see Jodi Magness, Debating Qumran: Collected Essays on Its Archaeology (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 92–104. The bones were analyzed by Frederick E. Zeuner, “Notes on Qumrân,” PEQ 92 (1960): 28–30, who examined about 500 specimens from 39 jars. Similar deposits with bones belonging to the same species were discovered in more recent excavations at Qumran; see Yitzhak Magen and Yuval Peleg, “Back to Qumran: Ten Years of Excavation and Research,” in Qumran, the Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates. Proceedings of a Conference held at Brown University, November 17–19, 2002 (ed. Katharina Galor, Jean-Baptiste Humbert, and Jürgen Zangenberg; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 94–96. 2 Roland de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Oxford Univer- sity, 1973), 14. 3 For the suggestion that the bones were buried to keep them from scavengers see Magen and Peleg, “Back to Qumran,” 96; Lawrence H. Schiffman,Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 338. 4 For a discussion see Magness, Debating Qumran, 92–106; also see Jodi Magness, “Qumran: The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Review Article,” RevQ 88 (2007): 650. 350 jodi magness It is interesting to consider the animal bone deposits at Qumran in light of sectarian purity concerns.5 Lawrence Schiffman notes that the author of 4QMMT was opposed to dogs scavenging the bones of sac- rificed animals in Jerusalem because according to sectarian law bones are a source of impurity:6 And one should not let] dogs [enter the h]oly [camp] [because they might eat some of the b]ones from the te[mple with] the flesh o[n them. Because Jerusalem is the] holy camp, i[t is] [the place which He has chosen] from among all [the tribes of] Israel, since Je[rusalem] is [the head of the camps of Israel] . And concerning] [the uncleanness of a corpse] of a man we s[a]y that every [bone, whether stripped of flesh or complete is subject to the l]aw concerning a dead or murde[red person.] (4Q397 frags. 6–13)7 Yigael Yadin remarked on the polemical nature of a passage in the Temple Scroll which requires that “whoever carries any part of their bones, or of their carcass, skin and flesh and nail, shall wash his clothes and bathe in water . .” (11QT 51:4–5), thereby expanding on 5 I identify the group that settled at Qumran and the wider movement of which it was a part with Josephus’ Essenes; see for example Todd S. Beall, Josephus’ Descrip- tion of the Essenes Illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity, 1988); Jodi Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). Other members of the wider movement lived in Jerusalem and elsewhere around Palestine but have not left identifiable remains in the archaeological record. In my opinion it is accurate to describe the Qumran community and the larger movement of which it was a part as a sect. For a recent discussion see Eyal Regev, Sectarianism in Qumran, A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), especially 15–29, 34–93, who defines the Qumran “sects” (plural) as an example of “introversionist sectarianism.” Also see Cecilia Wassen and Jutta Jokiranta, “Groups in Tension: Sectarianism in the Damascus Document and the Community Rule,” in Sectarianism in Early Judaism, Sociological Advances (ed. David J. Chalcraft; London: Equinox, 2007), 205–45, who conclude that the communities associated with the Damascus Document and the Community Rule were sectarian. 6 Schiffman,Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, 338; also see Magness, Debating Qum- ran, 96. Elaine Adler Goodfriend, “Could keleb in Deuteronomy 23:19 Actually Refer to a Canine?” in Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (ed. David P. Wright, David N. Freedman, and Avi Hurvitz; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 395–96 observes, “That canines were associated in the Israelite mind with the indiscriminate consumption of blood (a forbidden substance even if its source was a permitted animal) seems to have been the main element that led to their expulsion from anything related to sacrifice and sancta.” 7 See Ian C. Werrett, Ritual Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (STDJ 72; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 196–97, for a critique of Elisha Qimron’s reconstruction of this passage..

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