Whose Bones

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Under the headline, “Digging for the Baptist,” the August 12, 2002 issue of Time magazine asked its readers: “Have archaeologists discovered the skeleton of John the Baptist?” Time’s answer: “It’s possible.”

A related story in the Associated Press asked in its headline, “Could they be remains of sect’s leader, or John the Baptist?”

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These and other similar stories were based on a press release from the University of Hartford headed, “University of Hartford Archaeologist Finds Remains of Man Who May Be the Missing Link Between Judaism and Christianity.”

The first paragraph of the press release states, “University of Hartford Professor Richard Freund and a team of archaeologists working in Qumran, Israel (adjacent to where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered) have found the well-preserved remains of a man from the first century [A.D.]. Freund said the man may be the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ who lived among the ancient Jewish sect, the Essenes. Scholars have long thought that this teacher was John the Baptist.”

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Since we are the archaeologists who directed the excavation^a and since the dig was largely funded through the Biblical Archaeology Society,^b it is especially appropriate that we report the matter accurately for BAR readers.

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Our story begins on November 29, 1951, when archaeologist Roland de Vaux uncovered the remains of a small building on the eastern edge of the huge Qumran cemetery.¹ De Vaux uncovered only two walls of the building, a north-south wall (the western wall) almost 15 feet long preserved in places up to 3 feet, and a less well preserved east-west wall (the northern wall) of over 12 feet, of which only one course survived. The building, which de Vaux called Point B, was built of unhewn stones bonded by a light—colored plaster—like bonding agent. Initially, de Vaux hypothesized that the building was a tower, but he later abandoned this suggestion for several reasons: The walls—not even two feet thick—were not sturdy enough for a tower; and the stones themselves were too small, less than a foot in diameter. Moreover, it would have been much more logical to build a defensive or observation tower 65 feet to the east, at the end of the ridge, to provide a better view to the east, north and south. For de Vaux, the building remained a puzzle.

In the summer of 2001, we led an archaeological expedition to Qumran, always hoping to find more scroll caves, but principally to map the cemetery. It was an enormous project for the Qumran cemetery is unusually extensive. What de Vaux called the “principal cemetery” lies east of the settlement (see plan). It runs about 500 feet north-south and 150 feet east-west. In addition, de Vaux identified two other, much smaller cemeteries: one the north cemetery and the other, south of the Wadi Qumran, the south cemetery (the north cemetery appears on the plan, the south cemetery does not). In addition, the principal cemetery had fingers or ridges extending to the east—the northern extension, the middle extension and the south extension, in de Vaux’s convenient terminology. All in all, there are over 1,200 graves in the Qumran cemeteries, which we sought to map one by one.

But we were also interested in Building B, which we re-examined. In the process of cleaning, we found nearly 150 pottery sherds in the building. Unfortunately, almost all of them were what we call body sherds, as opposed to sherds from rims, bases and handles, which are much more helpful in dating the pottery and determining its entire form. We suspect that we found mostly body sherds because de Vaux most likely collected the diagnostic sherds during his excavation of the building. We did, however, find three rims—one from a hemispherical bowl, another from a cooking pot and the last from a storage jar. This was enough to enable us to date this sherd collection to the late Second Temple period, first century B.C.E. to first century C.E. The pottery was identical to what de Vaux had found at the community center at Qumran.

We also found the southeast corner of Building B—about 16.5 feet from the western wall (see plan). This enabled us to determine the remaining dimensions of the building. It was almost square: 16.5 feet on the north and south and 15 feet on the east and west. In the north wall, 6 feet from the northwest corner, there appears to be a 2-foot-wide entrance to the structure.

In the southern part of the building, we excavated human bones in secondary burial; that is, some time after the initial burial, the bones of several people were placed here in a pile. We found the bones barely 8 inches below the surface. They were probably so close to the surface because de Vaux removed some of the soil on top. Although it is impossible, therefore, to know how deeply the bones were originally buried, it was clearly not as deep as the main burials at Qumran, which are approximately 6 feet deep.

In accordance with Israeli law, we reburied the bones in the Qumran cemetery. But we did have carbon 14 tests performed on the teeth to determine the period when the deceased lived. The teeth were approximately 2,000 years old. Before reburial the bones were examined by a physical anthropologist from the Israel Antiquities Authority, Dr. Y. Nagar, who found that the bones belonged to two women, one aged 25–35 and the other over 50. What effect this finding may have on the view that only men lived at Qumran, we leave to others.

That the building itself is special, there is no doubt. It overlooks the entire cemetery to the west. It is the farthermost construction on the middle extension of the Qumran cemetery, overlooking the Dead Sea as well as the cemetery. It lies 40 feet east of the easternmost tomb on the middle extension of the cemetery. The construction of the building, the pottery sherds found inside it and the pile of bones all indicate that the building was built in the Second Temple period as an integral part of the cemetery.

In the summer of 2002, we returned to the cemetery at Qumran. Still puzzled—and intensely curious—we checked Building B with the help of a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR).^c This revealed 032an anomaly at a depth of 6 feet, directly beneath the pile of bones we had found in 2001. Upon excavation, we found (inexplicably, at a depth of 3.5 feet) a skeleton in primary burial.

The skeleton was oriented east-west. This too was puzzling. In all of the Second Temple tombs at Qumran, the bodies are oriented north-south. The skeleton in Building B (or Tomb 1000 as it is now known) is the only exception (if it is in fact from the Second Temple period). The 54 tombs in which the burials were east-west all proved to be Bedouin burials from about the last few centuries. Some of these burials even had typical Bedouin jewelry in them.² Why was this burial of 2,000 years ago oriented east-west? There appears to be no topographical reason and no physical constraints that would have dictated this orientation. It remains a puzzle.

The western part of the tomb of the skeleton was covered with stones about 8 inches wide. The skeleton’s head, on the east, toward the Dead Sea, faced up. A couple of stones were set in position to protect the skull. The arms of the skeleton were extended along the body. Dr. Nagar examined the skeleton and concluded that it was a male between 35 and 45 years old.³

There appears to be little question that this skeleton is from the Second Temple period. The burial is significantly below the secondary burial of bones above it. The pottery in the building comes from the Second Temple period. And most convincingly, we found a cooking pot typical of the Second Temple period just above the skeleton’s legs. 033Hardly a piece of the pot was missing, and we were able to reconstruct the entire vessel. We have submitted two teeth from the skeleton to carbon 14 testing, and we anticipate that this will confirm our archaeological analysis.

What was the purpose of the structure in which all this was found—the pottery sherds, the secondary burial of the two women, the male skeleton oriented east-west, the cooking pot by his legs?

The suggestion that it might be a mausoleum cannot be sustained. Mausoleums are by definition very elaborate structures. The same reasons that de Vaux used to disqualify this building as a tower also disqualify it from being a mausoleum. One needs only to contrast the poor construction quality of our structure—much inferior to that used in the Qumran community center—with the Second Temple Period mausoleums in the Kidron Valley east of Jerusalem or in Jason’s Tomb in west Jerusalem. While one would not expect a mausoleum at Qumran to be as grandiose as these, one would nevertheless expect it to be outstanding.

Nor is it a nefesh, a memorial structure or cenotaph typical of the Second Temple period; these are usually found in the form of a pyramid and are not typically useable buildings.

In our view, the structure is a mourning enclosure. Similar structures have been found in several cemeteries of Roman-Byzantine Palestine. They probably served for burial requiems and mourning ceremonies. Such mourning enclosures have been found over burial caves and in grave courts. The one most similar to ours was found above “Goliath’s Family Tomb” in Jericho.⁴ It, too, dates to the Second Temple period, is similar in size and shape and is built over a burial area. Some mourning enclosures even have theater-like benches.⁵ The Qumran mourning enclosure was probably used for mourners’071meals, as suggested both by the large number of pottery sherds from cooking pots and storage jars, as well as by the nearly whole cooking pot found next to the male skeleton’s legs.

Whose bones were in the mourning enclosure? Shortly after the discovery in 2001 of what turned out to be women’s bones in secondary burial, a story appeared in Time magazine suggesting that these were the bones of James the Just, brother of Jesus.⁶ This suggestion doesn’t even bear discussion, even without the discovery of what may be the ossuary of James found in Jerusalem, which indicates his bones were collected in a bone box.^d

Similar sensational claims were made following our 2002 discovery of the male skeleton, based, as noted earlier, on a press release from the University of Hartford. There it was asserted that the bones may have belonged to John the Baptist or the Teacher of Righteousness (who, it was said, may have been the same person!). There is not a scintilla of evidence for asserting that the bones are those of John the Baptist. In the first place, the skeleton’s head was in the grave, protected by two stones; John, as we know from the New Testament, was beheaded. Moreover, while there is a possibility that John lived at Qumran early in his life, he would certainly have left by the time he began his public ministry.^e Finally, John would have been regarded as persona non grata at Qumran, alive or dead. His teachings (extolling free will) were diametrically opposed to those of the Qumran sect (who not only upheld predestination but introduced it to the Western world). The suggestion that these might be the bones of John the Baptist is the purest speculation, devoid of the slightest evidence. Richard Freund subsequently withdrew the suggestion.

Whether these might be the bones of the Teacher of Righteousness is a more complicated question. In our view the Teacher of Righteousness (Moreh Tzedek, in Hebrew) was an individual, not an office that was held by a succession of individuals. In the Dead Sea Scroll known as the Damascus Covenant as well as in a number of scrolls called Pesharim (Biblical commentaries), a particular individual is identified as the Teacher of Righteousness, having played an important role in establishing and leading the sect. From the meager historical data that can be gathered from the Damascus Covenant and the Pesharim, especially the Habbakuk Commentary, we learn that the Teacher of Righteousness was in serious conflict with another individual whose sobriquet was the Evil Priest. This Evil Priest was almost certainly a Hasmonean ruler who ex officio also served as High Priest. Leading Dead Sea scholars are of the view that the Evil Priest is Jonathan, the Hasmonean ruler from 152 to 143 B.C.E.⁷ These dates also give us the approximate dates of the Teacher of Righteousness, who was his contemporary. In short, the Teacher of Righteousness was active in the middle of the second century B.C.E. The pottery evidence from Qumran indicates that it was settled only at the end of the second century B.C.E., around 100 B.C.E.⁸ Accordingly, the Teacher of Righteousness and his disciples first resided at some other location and only subsequently did his followers settle at Qumran. He himself probably died before the settlement at Qumran was established.

There is a minority view that the Teacher of Righteousness was an office, rather than an individual. If this is true, then it would be possible that the male skeleton we found in Building B (Tomb 1000) was a successor of the original Teacher of Righteousness.

More likely, however, in our view, the person who was buried here was the person the scrolls refer to as the mevaqqer (overseer), which was an office held by a succession of people.⁹

027 Under the headline, “Digging for the Baptist,” the August 12, 2002 issue of Time magazine asked its readers: “Have archaeologists discovered the skeleton of John the Baptist?” Time’s answer: “It’s possible.” A related story in the Associated Press asked in its headline, “Could they be remains of sect’s leader, or John the Baptist?” 028 These and other similar stories were based on a press release from the University of Hartford headed, “University of Hartford Archaeologist Finds Remains of Man Who May Be the Missing Link Between Judaism and Christianity.” The first paragraph of the press release states, […]