Yizhar Hirschfeld. 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 amplifes 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 ofered 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 at Qumran, the site a semi-fortifed working (industrial) estate. and the scrolls have been linked in a theory pro‐ In this lucid and tightly argued summary of posed by Father 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 identifed with the ) 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 fsc. 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 efects 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. 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 fortifed 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).

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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

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