The Missing Link

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Not a single fragment of a Dead Sea Scroll has been discovered among the ruins of Qumran, the ancient settlement adjacent to the caves where the scrolls were found. Although many scholars have long assumed that the people who lived in this desert outpost deposited the scrolls in the caves, they had no proof. Recently, excavators at the settlement discovered an inscription that may establish beyond doubt that the Qumran settlers were the people of the scrolls. But it is only fair to warn readers that the decipherment of this difficult inscription, presented here by two of the worldÆs leading paleographers and Dead Sea Scroll scholars, is highly controversial. Among other leading Israeli paleographers, Ada Yardeni, reads the inscription very differently. that will be the subject of an article in a subsequent issue.—Ed.

In the spring of 1996, a small expedition led by Professor James F. Strange of the University of South Florida was searching for more scroll caves in the marl terrace on which the lonely ruins of Qumran sit. Several volunteers were assigned to clean up the eastern perimeter wall (photo, below) that separates the site from the vast cemetery outside, with row upon row of stone-covered graves. One of the volunteers, Joseph Caulfield of Everett, Washington, was working with a trowel at the base of the perimeter wall, very near the surface, when in his own words, “I suddenly heard a clink.” The clink, it turned out, was made by an ostracon¹ (an inscribed potsherd) of unusual significance. The inscription for the first time connects the site of Qumran directly with the documents known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

We were assigned by the excavator to decipher and publish the text on the ostracon.² The broken piece of pottery on which the ink inscription was written came from the body of a large jar. Sometime after the inscription was written, the sherd itself broke in two, which is the condition in which it was found. When joined, the ostracon is nearly 7 inches (17.2 cm) long and about 2 ½ inches (6.3 cm) wide. We have the beginnings of each of the 15 lines, but not the ends. Whoever wrote the text on the sherd was not a very skilled scribe because it is quite crudely inscribed. To make matters worse, the surface of the sherd is badly weathered, making it difficult to read in places. Nevertheless, its sense is plain, especially when the letters are photographically enhanced.

Infrared and ultraviolet photography are regularly used to enhance dimly-preserved writing on papyrus and leather, but this does not work very well on inscriptions on pieces of pottery. We were fortunate, however, to make contact with James Wilson Henderson of Oregon City, Oregon, a pioneer in developing photographic techniques to enhance rock paintings. His experiments with our ostracon produced the much improved images from which we worked, examining the sherd itself as necessary.³

The ostracon is a deed of gift from a certain H|oµnî. The gift, which includes a slave named H|isday and an estate, is given—and here is the startling (and somewhat controversial) part—“to the Community” in fulfillment of an oath. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, the sectarian community (which we believe to be the Essenes) regularly refers to itself as the “Community” (Yahad in Hebrew). The Yahad is the technical term that the sectarians of the scrolls gave to their community.

In the Dead Sea Scroll known as the Rule of the Community (1QS), the complicated requirements for membership in the sect are set out. If an applicant is initially found worthy, he goes through a period of study, after which he is examined concerning the rules of the Community. If he passes the examination, he enters a one-year probationary period, at the end of which he is again examined. If he passes the second examination, he attains full membership, at which point he gives to the bursar of the Community all his property. However, his property is segregated from the rest of 051the Community’s assets for another year. At the end of that period, the property is merged with the Community’s assets (see 1QS 6:13–24).

An oath of entry is well documented in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the requirement of poverty, the Community holding all goods in common (1QS 5:1–2, 7–8; 1QS 1:11–12; CD 13:1; cf. 1QS 6:1–3).

The ostracon appears to be a deed of gift from a neophyte to the Community (the Yahad) of his property, in fulfillment of his oath. Found at the site of Qumran, it clearly establishes the site as a communitarian religious community.

In the box at left, we have printed the text in Hebrew characters and in English translation. (Remember that Hebrew is written from right to left.) We have numbered the lines so that our comments should be easy to follow by referring to the box.

The text begins with a date: “In year two of the … ” The rest of line 1 is cut off.⁴ However, we believe we can give at least an approximate date. The science of paleography has now advanced to the point where certain inscriptions can be dated to within a few generations. Handwriting, like styles in pottery shapes and decoration, changes over time. Handwriting clues include the shape and form of the letters and even the order of the strokes and their direction. Paleographic typologies are especially secure during the periods when the scrolls were written. The script of the ostracon is what we call Late Herodian,⁵.penned in a vulgar semiformal style, a style that mixes formal features with some cursive elements.⁶ It dates to the first century C.E. This is consistent with the pottery on which it is written. It is of the type found at Qumran, and perhaps was fired there.

We know that Qumran was destroyed in 68 C.E. by the Roman Tenth Legion on its way to Jerusalem. So that would be the latest possible date for the ostracon.

We may be able to get somewhat closer than this. It was written in the year two of something. Three possibilities suggest themselves: year two of the reign of a Jewish ruler, presumably Herod Agrippa (41–44 C.E.); year two of the reign of a Roman emperor, perhaps Nero (37–68 C.E.); or year two of the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 C.E.) The last possibility, year two “of the freedom of Zion,” as it is referred to on Jewish coins minted during the revolt, would be 67 C.E.

Several considerations make the last suggestion most likely. First consider the find-spot of the ostracon. Although it was once in the archives of the Qumran Community, it ended up in a dump outside the perimeter wall of the site, perhaps thrown there by Roman soldiers after they conquered Qumran.

Another curious fact: This deed of gift was written on a piece of pottery. Ordinarily we would expect a document like this to be written on papyrus (like some of the scrolls) and in much more formal terms. By the second year of the revolt, however, papyrus was probably in short supply; hence the use of pottery. So although 052we cannot be certain, our best guess is that the ostracon dates to 67 C.E. If so, the end of line 1 may be reconstructed to read “in year two lh[rwt sywn],” or “in year two of the freedom of Zion.” But the ostracon may only be a draft on cheap notepaper that was eventually replaced by a real legal document,⁷ in which case it could date several decades earlier.

Line 2 tells us where the deed of gift was executed-in Jericho. This almost surely refers not to the city but to the district, or toparchy. The end of line 1 may have included a more specific local place name, possibly the ancient name of Qumran, which remains a mystery.⁸ Pliny the Elder mentions ten toparchies in Judea, the first of which is Jericho,⁹ while Josephus records eleven toparchies in a different order, the last of which is Jericho.¹⁰ The district, or toparchy, of Jericho apparently ran from at least as far north as the city itself down to ‘Ein Gedi, south of Qumran. A second-century C.E. document from the Babatha archive^a notes that Babatha’s second husband was from ‘Ein Gedi in the district of Jericho.¹¹

Line 2 also identifies the document as a deed of gift, rather than a deed of sale, by using the verb ntn, to give. The donor is a man named H|oµnî.¹² Unfortunately, the name of his father has not survived.

The recipient of the donation is a certain ’El‘azar son of NahaûmaµniÆ.¹³ He, we may assume, was the treasurer or bursar of the Community (the meûbaqqeµr or paµqiÆd in Hebrew). This deed of gift is unusual in that it is the only deed of gift found in Israel in which the recipient is a man. Normally, documents of gift that have survived from antiquity are written for the benefit of the women of a family, especially daughters, imposing obligations on the family property to provide for the women after the donor’s death because women were not considered legal heirs. Our deed of gift is exceptional in that it records a gift of property to a religious community.

The gift includes, as we learn from line 4, a man named H|isday of H|oµlôn. We may infer that H|isday is a slave belonging to H|oµnî; we have more explicit evidence in lines 14–15, where he is again mentioned, this time as a servant. He is given no patronymic—common practice in the case of slaves. But he is identified as hailing from H|oµlôn, in both line 4 and line 15. This could be the priestly city in Judah by that name (see Joshua 15:51; 21; 15) or the city in Moab by that name (see Jeremiah 48:21). The latter seems more fitting in suggesting that the slave was not a Jew.

Line 5 states that the gift is made “from this day to perpetuity.”¹⁴ In deeds of gift, the words “from today,” are important. According to the Palestinian Talmud, a deed of gift must have the words “from today” in it. Similarly, the Mishnah (the earliest rabbinic code, dating to about 200 C.E.) states that “whoever assigns his goods to his son must write, ‘from today and after death’” (Baba Batra 8.7).

Lines 6 and 7 tell us that the gift includes, in 053addition to the slave H|isday, a house and some associated fig and olive trees.

Line 8 is the critical line, and the critical word is the last. We read it as Yahad—the Community. In Hebrew it is composed of three letters, yhd. The sidebar on the preceding page includes a drawing of this line and an explanation of why we believe that these letters should indeed be read yhd. Indeed, the d(dalet) is certain, and this excludes every other reasonable suggestion for interpreting this word.

We read the first word in line 8 kmlwtw, “when he fulfills (his oath).”¹⁵ If the reading yhd is correct, and it seems to be without serious objection,¹⁶ we must suppose that it refers to the fulfillment of the vow of H|oµnî upon entering the Community at Qumran, or to the fulfillment of his year as a neophyte, after which he assigns all of his estate to the Community.

Incidentally, the gift of one’s entire estate to the community also reminds us of Acts 5:1–11, in which the couple Ananias and Sapphira were expected to give their entire estate to the church but kept back some of the proceeds and were struck dead.

The mention of a slave as part of the gift might seem odd in light of the ancient sources suggesting that the Essenes had a slaveless society. In his description of the Essenes, Philo says, “There is no slave among them, but all are free, inasmuch as they work for one another.”¹⁷ Josephus, describing the Essene attitude towards wives and slaves, comments, “They neither marry wives nor are desirous to keep slaves.”¹⁸

Nevertheless, the scroll known as the Damascus Document (CD) includes some rules concerning slaves. In this scroll we read, “No one shall urge on his manservant, his maidservant, or his hireling on the Sabbath” (CD 12:11).¹⁹ The Damascus Document also states that “He shall not sell them [gentiles] his manservant nor maidservant inasmuch as they have been brought by him into the covenant of Abraham” (CD 12:11). The fate of H|isday, the slave, is left obscure, owing to the illegibility of the end of the left side of the ostracon. H|isday may have remained with the Community as guardian of the gifted estate (this may be what is suggested in lines 10–14), or perhaps he was even freed.

Another peculiar characteristic of the ostracon is that it is written in Hebrew. Most of the economic documents dating to the Second Temple period that have been found in the Judean Desert were written in Aramaic. From the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. to the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (132–135 C.E.), deeds were written in Aramaic or Greek. During the Second Revolt, when nationalist sentiments were strong, deeds were written in Hebrew. In the Qumran Community, however, sectarian works were regularly written in Hebrew, so it is not surprising that this practice was carried over into their legal documents, even though economic documents of the time were usually in Aramaic. Indeed, we would be surprised if the Qumran sectarians had used anything other than Hebrew, especially in a deed of gift to the Community.

In sum, while the text on the ostracon is poorly preserved and difficult to read, we can understand most of what is legible: In year two a certain H|oµnî gives away a slave, H|isday of H|oµlôn, probably a Moabite, together with an estate in the district of Jericho. The gift is made to ’El‘azar son of Nahaámaµnî. Reference is made to fulfilling an oath, or an obligation as a neophyte, to the Community. We understand ’El‘azar to be a major official of the Community, probably the overseer (meábaqqeµr) who handled the funds of the sectarian community living at Qumran.²⁰ The donor is 069entering a communal sect that shares all possessions. This interpretation explains the gift of an estate, including a slave.

Our ostracon is thus very important in establishing the character of Khirbet Qumran. It was not the private estate of a wealthy planter. Clearly, it was the communal center of a sect (we identify it as the Essene mother community) that held goods in common and that flourished at Qumran as late as the mid-first century C.E. and probably into the second year (67 C.E.) of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. This deed of gift documents the communistic practice described in the sectarian documents among the scrolls as well as in the classical sources describing the life of the Essenes.