DOCSLIB.ORG

Yizhar Hirschfeld. Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Yizhar Hirschfeld. Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence Yizhar Hirschfeld. Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004. 270 pp. $34.95, cloth, ISBN 978-1-56563-612-5. Reviewed by Steven Bowman Published on H-Judaic (June, 2005) Hirschfeld's important contribution presents and proprietary right for publication of the scrolls the results of the past several decades of archaeo‐ were claimed by various Christian scholars until logical research at Qumran and the surrounding the 1990s, this theory remained regnant (and still region. He amplifies for the contemporary reader is among many scholars and the general public). and scholars in the felds of Qumran research the In recent decades challenges to this theory have results offered at a conference held at Brown Uni‐ emerged from a variety of sources including versity in 2002, the frst dedicated to the archaeol‐ scrolls scholars, archaeologists and historians. ogy of Qumran. The book, amply illustrated and Two challenges to de Vaux's thesis threaten to un‐ impressively documented, is bound to be contro‐ hinge his entire theory of a pre-Christian monas‐ versial for its wholesale revision of the relation‐ tic community at Qumran that copied holy scrolls. ship between the site of Qumran and the Dead Sea One challenge is the theory that the scrolls repre‐ Scrolls found alongside the site. From this per‐ sent part of the public and private libraries sent spective it parallels the new approaches to bibli‐ from Jerusalem to Qumran for safe keeping on cal archaeology prevalent in Israel. the eve of the revolt. A second challenge is that For about a generation after the 1947 discov‐ Qumran was not an Essene monastery but rather ery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, the site a semi-fortified working (industrial) estate. and the scrolls have been linked in a theory pro‐ In this lucid and tightly argued summary of posed by Father Roland de Vaux of the Ecole the archaeological evidence, by a scholar who has Biblique in Jerusalem, who proposed and defend‐ researched the Dead Sea settlements from the ed his thesis that a sectarian monastic group Hasmonean through the Byzantine periods, (whom he identified with the Essenes) lived and Hirschfeld applies the rigor of archaeological worked at Qumran until the destruction of the site analysis to the site of Qumran and its subsidiary and its inhabitants by the Romans in 68 C.E. Since site Ein Feshka and systematically overturns the the site was under Jordanian control until 1967 Christian interpretation of Qumran, placing it H-Net Reviews within the context of Jewish settlement and eco‐ area up to Jericho; some local wine was grown nomic activities in the Dead Sea region. Hirschfeld and produced; and animals were raised for meat, points out that, aside from the lack of scholarly milk, and hides (sheep, goats, cows). Roman re‐ discipline in the excavation of the site by de Vaux, mains post 70 indicate that there was an intensity many of the fnds at the site were not published of manufacture for the Roman fisc. and hence did not become part of the discussion As for the scrolls, Hirschfeld points out the about the site. For example, he lists the wealth of anomaly that the scrolls were found in caves metal, glass, and ceramic material effects that around Qumran (and in other caves up and down show the inhabitants to be manufacturing high- the valley). Not one scroll fragment, however, was quality goods from local products: perfume from found in situ at Qumran itself! This is perhaps the balsam plants and date wine from the palms that surest evidence (ex silentio to be sure) supporting proliferate in the area even today. Also the quality the argument that the scrolls came from else‐ of the fnds and decorations indicate an upper- where, and that elsewhere could only have been class proprietor, probably one of the priestly fam‐ from Jerusalem on the eve of the city's siege and ilies from Jerusalem. destruction. Norman Golb has been the most vo‐ Hirschfeld goes through Qumran locus by lo‐ ciferous proponent of this origin of the Scrolls in a cus and reinterprets nearly everyone in a manner number of publications and conferences since the contrary to that of de Vaux. Moreover, he ana‐ mid-1990s. We might add that other scrolls could lyzes Ein Feshka and shows it to be an agricultur‐ have been at the palaces and retreats in Jericho. al site attached to Qumran and forming a single Finally Hirschfeld asks: who were the Essenes industrial estate during the Herodian period. The and where did they live? His excavation of the fortified tower of Qumran is from the Hasmonean wadi above Ein Gedi discovered and analyzed the period when the site served as a frontier police caves and the assembly that might have inhabited station for the main highway along the Dead Sea. them. At the same time, he gives a close reading of Hirschfeld also reanalyzes the graveyard at Qum‐ Pliny's description of the Esseni (a still undeci‐ ran and explains the presence of females who phered word) and places them south of Qumran were not necessarily Essenes but rather workers and above Ein Gedi. He reminds us that the Esseni or pilgrims or travelers or brought from other were poor by choice and vegetarians, and proba‐ sites to a central graveyard. He puts the graveyard bly eked out a subsistence by working for the into context by discussing the Nabataean sites in prosperous industrial plantations along the coast the Lisan peninsula and the newly discovered from Ein Gedi to Qumran.[1] It is unlikely that massive Nabataean graveyard (3500 graves) at they copied or even had any scrolls. Given their Khirbet Qazone. contemplative way of life that eschewed civiliza‐ In a fnal chapter Hirschfeld discusses Qum‐ tion, it is extremely unlikely that they were to be ran in context, not, as de Vaux presented it, as an found in the highly settled areas along the Dead isolated monastic community, but rather as anoth‐ Sea. Indeed, I argued in 1984 that the name Qum‐ er station in a highly developed and intensive in‐ ran derives from the Aramaic/Arabic word for dustrial and agricultural zone along the western "priests" and Khirbet Qumran is a local Bedouin and northern shores of the Dead Sea during the memory of this. Certainly John the Baptist and Herodian and Roman periods. Ein Gedi, to the Josephus's teacher Bassus, as noted by Hirschfeld, south, was the center for the manufacture of bal‐ are not linked with settled sites. sam perfume; the Dead Sea was mined for its salt The book is studded with site drawings, and bitumen; dates were processed all along the schematic reconstructions, maps and colored pho‐ 2 H-Net Reviews tographs. It is most user friendly, both in terms of Hirschfeld's positive and critical remarks. The rich bibliography will assist the reader in discov‐ ering more about Qumran's unknown archaeolo‐ gy and that of the Dead Sea region, which has been more heavily explored by scholars for the past decade and a half. Note [1]. This interpretation is quite similar to the picture portrayed by Moshe Shamir in his biogra‐ phy of Alexander Yannai, The King of Flesh and Blood, trans. David Patterson (New York: Van‐ guard Press, 1957). If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-judaic Citation: Steven Bowman. Review of Hirschfeld, Yizhar. Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. June, 2005. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10701 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Dávid Nóra Margaréta a Qumráni Közösség Thanatológiája a Második
    Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem Bölcsészettudományi Kar Történelemtudományi Doktori Iskola Eszmetörténeti M űhely Dávid Nóra Margaréta A qumráni közösség thanatológiája a második Szentély korának eszmerendszerében és gyakorlatában Doktori (PhD) értekezés A doktori iskola vezet ője: Dr. Fröhlich Ida DSc A m űhely vezet ője: Dr. Fröhlich Ida DSc A disszertáció témavezet ője: Dr. Fröhlich Ida DSc 2009 0 Tartalomjegyzék 1. Bevezetés. A disszertáció témája, a választás oka, a disszertáció célja....................................................................................................................3 2. A téma kutatástörténete....................................................................................6 2.1. A tekercsek felfedezése el őtt.......................................................................7 2.2. A tekercsek felfedezése után.......................................................................9 3. A qumráni telep és a közösség.........................................................................15 4. A közösség életmódja, szokásrendszere a vonatkozó források alapján 4.1. Antik auktorok az esszénusokról..............................................................21 4.2. A tekercsek................................................................................................24 4.3. Régészeti leletek........................................................................................28 5. Tisztaság és tér a qumráni közösség eszmerendszerében................................36 6. A tér szakralitásának
    [Show full text]
  • The Oriental Institute News & Notes No
    oi.uchicago.edu THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE NEWS & NOTES NO. 165 SPRING 2000 © THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO AS THE SCROLLS ARRIVE IN CHICAGO... NormaN Golb, ludwig rosenberger Professor in Jewish History and Civilization During the past several years, some strange events have befallen the logic as well as rhetoric by which basic scholarly positions the storied Dead Sea Scrolls — events that could hardly have on the question of the scrolls’ nature and origin had been and been foreseen by the public even a decade ago (and how much were continuing to be constructed. During the 1970s and 1980s, the more so by historians, who, of all people, should never at- I had made many fruitless efforts in encouragement of a dialogue tempt to predict the future). Against all odds, the monopoly of this kind, but only in the 1990s, perhaps for reasons we will on the scrolls’ publication, held for over forty years by a small never fully understand, was such discourse finally initiated. And coterie of scholars, was broken in 1991. Beginning with such it had important consequences, leading to significant turning pioneering text publications as those of Ben-Zion Wacholder in points in the search for the truth about the scrolls’ origins. Cincinnati and Michael Wise in Chicago, and continuing with One of the most enlightening of these came in 1996, when the resumption of the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series England’s Manchester University hosted an international confer- of Oxford University Press, researchers everywhere discovered ence on a single manuscript discovered in Cave III — a role of how rich these remnants of ancient Hebraic literature of intert- simple bookkeeping entries known as the Copper Scroll.
    [Show full text]
  • Cosmological Narrative in the Synagogues of Late Roman-Byzantine Palestine
    COSMOLOGICAL NARRATIVE IN THE SYNAGOGUES OF LATE ROMAN-BYZANTINE PALESTINE Bradley Charles Erickson A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religious Studies. Chapel Hill 2020 Approved by: Jodi Magness Zlatko Plese David Lambert Jennifer Gates-Foster Maurizio Forte © 2020 Bradley Charles Erickson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Bradley Charles Erickson: Cosmological Narrative in the Synagogues of Late Roman-Byzantine Palestine (Under the Direction of Jodi Magness) The night sky provided ancient peoples with a visible framework through which they could view and experience the divine. Ancient astronomers looked to the night sky for practical reasons, such as the construction of calendars by which time could evenly be divided, and for prognosis, such as the foretelling of future events based on the movements of the planets and stars. While scholars have written much about the Greco-Roman understanding of the night sky, few studies exist that examine Jewish cosmological thought in relation to the appearance of the Late Roman-Byzantine synagogue Helios-zodiac cycle. This dissertation surveys the ways that ancient Jews experienced the night sky, including literature of the Second Temple (sixth century BCE – 70 CE), rabbinic and mystical writings, and Helios-zodiac cycles in synagogues of ancient Palestine. I argue that Judaism joined an evolving Greco-Roman cosmology with ancient Jewish traditions as a means of producing knowledge of the earthly and heavenly realms. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my sincere appreciation to my adviser, Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • November 2007 Thirteenth Issue
    האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים The Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature מרכז אוריון לחקר מגילות מדבר יהודה והספרות הקרובה להן November 2007 Thirteenth Issue Letter from the Director From Jerusalem to San Diego: Scrolls Exhibitions and the Dear Friends and Colleagues, Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation The past academic year (2006/2007) has been a by Dr. Weston W. Fields busy one at the Orion Center on a variety of fronts. A series of stimulating seminars and coffee hour The Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation (DSSF) was first connected presentations culminated in the Eleventh International with Scrolls exhibitions almost by accident. In 1997, Brigham Orion Symposium, convened June 18–21, 2007 in coop- Young University asked the Foundation to find Dead Sea eration with the HU Center for the Study of Christianity, Scrolls to go along with the Masada Exhibit from Hebrew on the topic, “New Approaches to the Study of Biblical University, which was to be shown in Provo, Utah. Since Interpretation in Judaism of the Second Temple Period members of the LDS (Mormon) community had been both and in Early Christianity.” Plans are already underway for participants in and donors to the publication project, we agreed the Twelfth International Symposium, which will focus to explore the possibility of borrowing some of the scrolls on the language of the Scrolls and Ben Sira. owned by the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. After two Thanks to the good offices of Dr. Weston W. Fields, trips to Amman agreement was reached, and we supplied four the Orion Center is cooperating with Ixlan Inc., to plates of scroll fragments to the Provo exhibit.
    [Show full text]
  • Herod I, Flavius Josephus, and Roman Bathing
    The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts HEROD I, FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, AND ROMAN BATHING: HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY IN DIALOG A Thesis in History by Jeffrey T. Herrick 2009 Jeffrey T. Herrick Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts August 2009 The thesis of Jeffrey T. Herrick was reviewed and approved* by the following: Garrett G. Fagan Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and History Thesis Advisor Paul B. Harvey Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, History, and Religious Studies, Head of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies Ann E. Killebrew Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Jewish Studies, and Anthropology Carol Reardon Director of Graduate Studies in History; Professor of Military History *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT In this thesis, I examine the historical and archaeological evidence for the baths built in late 1st century B.C.E by King Herod I of Judaea (commonly called ―the Great‖). In the modern period, many and diverse explanations of Herod‘s actions have been put forward, but previous approaches have often been hamstrung by inadequate and disproportionate use of either form of evidence. My analysis incorporates both forms while still keeping important criticisms of both in mind. Both forms of evidence, archaeological and historical, have biases, and it is important to consider their nuances and limitations as well as the information they offer. In the first chapter, I describe the most important previous approaches to the person of Herod and evaluate both the theoretical paradigms as well as the methodologies which governed them.
    [Show full text]
  • Review of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997, Edited by Lawrence H
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Faculty Publications, Classics and Religious Studies Department Classics and Religious Studies 2003 Review of The Dead Sea Scrolls, Fifty Years after Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997, edited by Lawrence H. Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, and James C. VanderKam; executive editor Galen Marquis Sidnie White Crawford University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub Part of the Classics Commons Crawford, Sidnie White, "Review of The Dead Sea Scrolls, Fifty Years after Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997, edited by Lawrence H. Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, and James C. VanderKam; executive editor Galen Marquis" (2003). Faculty Publications, Classics and Religious Studies Department. 105. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/classicsfacpub/105 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Classics and Religious Studies at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications, Classics and Religious Studies Department by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. 97 Published in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 329 (2003), pp. 96-97. Copyright © 2007 American Schools of Oriental Research. The Dead Sea Scrolls, Fifty Years after Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997, edited by Lawrence H. Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, and James C. VanderKam; executive editor Galen Marquis. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and the Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000. xxi + 970 pp., 48 figures, 1 table. Cloth. $104.00.
    [Show full text]
  • Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence'
    H-Judaic Bowman on Hirschfeld, 'Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence' Review published on Wednesday, June 1, 2005 Yizhar Hirschfeld. Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004. 270 pp. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-56563-612-5. Reviewed by Steven Bowman (University of Cincinnati) Published on H-Judaic (June, 2005) Hirschfeld's important contribution presents the results of the past several decades of archaeological research at Qumran and the surrounding region. He amplifies for the contemporary reader and scholars in the fields of Qumran research the results offered at a conference held at Brown University in 2002, the first dedicated to the archaeology of Qumran. The book, amply illustrated and impressively documented, is bound to be controversial for its wholesale revision of the relationship between the site of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls found alongside the site. From this perspective it parallels the new approaches to biblical archaeology prevalent in Israel. For about a generation after the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, the site and the scrolls have been linked in a theory proposed by Father Roland de Vaux of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, who proposed and defended his thesis that a sectarian monastic group (whom he identified with the Essenes) lived and worked at Qumran until the destruction of the site and its inhabitants by the Romans in 68 C.E. Since the site was under Jordanian control until 1967 and proprietary right for publication of the scrolls were claimed by various Christian scholars until the 1990s, this theory remained regnant (and still is among many scholars and the general public).
    [Show full text]
  • Dead Sea Scrolls - the Music of the Bible an Overview on the Work of Suzanne Haik-Vantura(1912 - 2000)
    Dead Sea Scrolls - The Music of the Bible An overview on the work of Suzanne Haik-Vantura(1912 - 2000) Hebrew Bible Cantillation ITU-State Conservatory, Istanbul. Term Project Mehmet Okon¸sar January 27, 2011 i Contents Biblical research 1 BiblicalExegesis ............................ 1 TraditionalJudaicBibleStudies . 2 Musical Archeology 2 ”NewTestament”Times .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 2 IncantationversusChanting. 3 Dead Sea Scrolls 4 Thediscovery.............................. 6 TheimportanceoftheScrolls . 7 Qumran-EsseneTheory and the departures from it . 8 The texts 9 GroupingtheScrolls .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 10 Excavations............................... 11 The Story of the Discovery 11 TheBedouins.............................. 11 MarSamuel............................... 12 The photographies allows for the reading . 12 Gettingintotherighthands. 13 Historical importance of the Scrolls . 13 Facts About the Dead Sea Scrols . 14 On Jewish Liturgical Music 17 Maqams 18 Cantillation Signs 19 ThePurposeofCantillationSigns . 20 Thesyntacticalfunction . 20 Importanceintheunderstanding . 21 Thephoneticfunction . 22 Themusicalfunction.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 22 Types of Cantillation Marks 22 Babyloniansystem ........................... 22 Palestiniansystem ........................... 23 Tiberiansystem ............................ 24 Differentiation in the poetic books . 25 Notation 25 ii Suzanne Haik-Vantura 26 The Methodology 28 The schools of interpretation of the signs . 28 Appendices 30 NamesandMeaningoftheSigns . 30 Sequences
    [Show full text]
  • Law and Society in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Preliminary Remarks*
    Law and Society in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Preliminary Remarks* Aryeh Amihay 1. Terms and Context Any examination of the legal material in the Dead Sea Scrolls inevitably necessitates conjectures on two methodological concerns of contextualiza- tion. First, whether an archaeological discovery of texts, overburdened by fortuitous circumstances of various sorts, is sufficient to constitute a corpus; and second, if it is a corpus, how does the legal material of the scrolls relate to other postbiblical material, either Jewish or Christian, and how should one approach the task of comparing these separate corpora. Regarding the first concern, I deem the archaeological circumstances insufficient, which is why I try to avoid declinations of “Qumran” as adjectives or adverbs. The cache of texts is indeed “Qumranic,” but the sect reflected in it, their views, and practices were certainly never Qumranic, since that name for the location would not have come into existence at that point. This is not to detach the sect from the site, as some have proposed.1 Jodi Magness has persuasively and accessibly made the argument that such a detachment is not only wrong when reading the textual and material evidence, but methodologically * This is an expanded and revised version of a paper I presented at the Legal Theory and Jewish Law seminar at Kibbutz Tzuba, May 27, 2011. I am grateful to the participants for their comments, and especially to the organizers of the seminar, Hanina Ben-Menahem, Arye Edrei, and Suzanne Last Stone. I also wish to thank Ari Mermelstein, Alex Jassen, and the anonymous readers for helpful criticism.
    [Show full text]
  • An Archaeological History of Qumran: with an Explanation of Archaeological Techniques
    An Archaeological History of Qumran: With an Explanation of Archaeological Techniques Presented by Christy Connell To Dr. David L. Snead Committee Chair And Dr. J. Randall Price Committee Member Liberty University History Department May 2017 2 Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..3 Chapter 1: A Brief History of Archaeological Methods and Techniques……..…………………10 Chapter 2: An Early History of Archaeology at Khirbet-Qumran ………………...…………….30 Chapter 3: Qumran Excavations in the 21 st Century……………..……………………………...57 Chapter 4: The People of Qumran……………………………………………………………….80 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….95 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………..98 3 Introduction Khirbet Qumran is an archaeological site located on a plateau in Qumran National Park near the Dead Sea in Israel. Although it is a site rich in archaeological history and has been visited by tourists since the early nineteenth century, it only recently became a household name in the mid-twentieth century with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves surrounding the plateau. While the Dead Sea Scrolls are generally the area of focus for most scholars, much archaeology has been done in Qumran focusing on the community and its ruins as well. This thesis focuses on the archaeology of Qumran, examining the buildings and material remains as opposed to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is generally the more popular area of scholarship. There is also a chapter detailing the history of archaeology as a whole in order to familiarize the reader with the archaeological process. Qumran’s archaeology is topic of some controversy among scholars, as some think that it was not inhabited by the communal Essenes, as generally believed, but another different Jewish sect.
    [Show full text]
  • The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls
    Archaeology and Biblical Studies Andrew G. Vaughn, Editor Number 14 The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls by C. D. Elledge Society of Biblical Literature Atlanta The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls Copyright © 2005 by the Society of Biblical Literature All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions Offi ce, Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, GA 30329 USA. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Elledge, C. D. (Casey Deryl) Th e Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls / by C. D. Elledge. p. cm. — (Archaeology and biblical studies; 14) Includes indexes. ISBN-13: 978-1-58983-183-4 (paper binding : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-58983-183-7 (paper binding : alk. paper) 1. Dead Sea scrolls. 2. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title. II. Series. BM487.E45 2005 296.1'55—dc22 2005016939 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, recycled paper conforming to ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) and ISO 9706:1994 standards for paper permanence. CONTENTS Preface vii Abbreviations x . What Are the Dead Sea Scrolls and How Were They Discovered? ................................................................1 The Unlikely Discovery of an Ancient Library 1 Controversies Solved through International Cooperation 8 Major Publications of the Dead Sea Scrolls 11 .
    [Show full text]
  • Qumran Excavations 1993–2004
    THE QUMRAN EXCAVATIONS 1993–2004 YITZHAK MAGEN AND YUVAL PELEG THE QUMRAN EXCAVATIONS 1993 –2004 PRELIMINARY REPORT offprint of : Judea & Samaria Publications Staff Officer of Archaeology Israel Antiquities Authority Civil Administration for Judea and Samaria JSP 6 [ 1 ] Y. MAGEN AND Y. PELEG © Staff Officer of Archaeology — Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria Jerusalem 2007 All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form without premition from the publisher. [ 2 ] THE QUMRAN EXCAVATIONS 1993–2004 PREFACE This is a preliminary report recording ten years of continuous archaeological excavations at Qumran, and is an extended version of Y. Magen and Y. Peleg, “Back to Qumran: Ten Years of Excavation and Research, 1993 –2004,” in K. Galor, J.-B. Humbert and J. Zangenberg (eds.), Qumran. The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretation and Debates. Proceedings of a Conference held at Brown University, November 17–19, 2002 (Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 57), Leiden 2006. See also H. Shank’s article, “Qumran —The Pottery Factory,” in BAR 32 (2006). This article will also appear shortly in the sixth volume of the Judea and Samaria Publications series (JSP) published by the Staff Officer for Archaeology in Judea and Samaria and the Israel Antiquities Authority. We felt it necessary to separately publish this article due to the fact that until now, most of the discussion regarding our new theory on the nature of the site has been in newspapers — in articles not initiated by us — and has been based upon unsubstantiated evidence from certain scholars.
    [Show full text]