The Qumran Settlement—Monastery, Villa or Fortress? - The BAS Library
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The Qumran Settlement—Monastery, Villa or Fortress?

By Hershel Shanks

Not long after archaeologists confirmed the location of the cave where Bedouin shepherds had found the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls, an archaeological expedition was organized to excavate the nearby site known as Khirbet Qumran, the ruins of Qumran. Directed by a Dominican father, Roland de Vaux, the excavation and survey was sponsored by the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jerusalem (de Vaux’s institution), the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and the Palestine Archaeological Museum. Five seasons of excavation were conducted between 1953 and 1956. De Vaux never used the word “monastery” with regard to the Qumran settlement, so […]

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Footnotes

1.

The Biblical manuscripts include 34 copies of the Book of Psalms, 27 copies of Deuteronomy, between 20 and 24 copies of Isaiah and About 20 copies of Genesis. The sectarian manuscripts include 12 copies of the Manual of Discipline, six copies of MMT, and nine copies of the Damascus Document.

Endnotes

1.

All quotes from de Vaux in this article are from his Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, rev. ed. (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973).

2.

Philip R. Davies, “How Not to Do Archaeology: The Story of Qumran,” Biblical Archaeologist (BA) 51 (1988), p. 203.

3.

Norman Golb, “The Problem of the Origin and Identification of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124 (1980), pp. 1–24; and Golb, “Who Hid the Scrolls?” BA 48 (1985), pp. 68–82.

4.

Amihai Mazar, “On the Discoveries at Giloh,” Israel Exploration Journal 40 (1990), pp. 77–101.

5.

Golb seems unaware of the fact that Qumran is located at a dead end. He nowhere mentions Ras Feshka. Because there was access to Jerusalem from Qumran, Golb concludes that “the site was thus not an isolated locale of desert monks. On the contrary, it emerges as a fortress of strategic importance in the Judean wilderness” (Golb, “Who Hid the Scrolls?” p. 68).