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In “Whose Bones?” published in our previous issue, authors Magen Broshi and Hanan Eshel described their excavation last summer of a skeleton inside a tomb at Qumran, near where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. They dismissed as “sensational” claims made by a University of Hartford press release that the skeleton might be the remains of John the Baptist or the Teacher of Righteousness (the leader of the people who wrote the scrolls). That press release quoted Richard A. Freund, professor at the University of Hartford and a colleague of Broshi and Eshel at the Qumran dig. Here is Professor Freund’s response.—Ed.
I am glad to see that my colleagues, Magen Broshi and Hanan Eshel, both agree now about the importance and the Second Temple period date of the tomb that we discovered last summer. There was some public confusion (as some of your readers may remember) because I immediately announced that our Qumran site had a tomb from a first-century C.E. Teacher of Righteousness, while Magen Broshi insisted that the tomb was that of a pre-modern Bedouin and of little significance. We may differ as to which significant first-century figure was buried there, but we now all agree that it was a Second Temple figure and someone apparently connected with the Scrolls.
The initial press release, for which I accept responsibility, mentioned that the bones we discovered were those of John the Baptist—and this became the headline around the world. I recognize that there is no archaeological basis for the assertion that the bones we excavated belonged to John the Baptist. As project director I should have deleted that reference in the press release, which was hurriedly drafted by a university press department back in the States. I failed in this responsibility, and for this I apologize. Unfortunately my failure resulted in obscuring the very important results of the excavation as described in the BAR article by Broshi and Eshel.” (“Whose Bones”, BAR 29.01)
I still maintain, however, that the bones may well be those of the leader of the Qumran community, called the Teacher of Righteousness. Unfortunately, the excavation season was plagued by disputes among the three directors of the excavation project. What seemed to me a clear and repeated refusal on Broshi’s part to excavate the critical Tomb 1000, despite the fact that the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) early on indicated an underground anomaly, has since been confirmed by Eshel.
There were other reasons, in addition to the GPR results, to excavate Tomb 1000. It is the only building in the three Qumran cemeteries. This building occupies the most prominent position in these cemeteries, which include over 1,200 graves. The entrance to the building, in our opinion, opens to the east, toward the sun. The east-west orientation of the body was distinctive, as I noted in early interviews. (Remember that the Qumran community used a solar calendar and referred to themselves as the Sons of Light.) The pot, clearly from the Second Temple period, that was placed at the foot of the skeleton was another distinctive feature. This was certainly not an insignificant burial of a modern-day Bedouin. All this points to the importance of Tomb 1000.
Eventually, Broshi relented and the excavation of Tomb 1000 proceeded. But there were false reports that I had secretly excavated the site and removed the bones. The police at Ben-Gurion Airport were alerted that I was illegally carrying purloined bones to the United States. Of course the police found none because there were none.
According to an article in the Jerusalem Post, Broshi said that I had fooled him by previously sending the bones out of the country by Federal Express. This is a dastardly, unfounded accusation. It is also libelous. It is difficult to imagine a more damaging charge against an archaeologist than to say that he or she illegally exported items from an excavation—especially bones.
I believe I am due a public apology from Mr. Broshi.
Now, just a few words about the identity 063of the person buried in Tomb 1000. Broshi and Eshel say that the bones may well be those of the mevaqqer, the overseer of the Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls) community. This is certainly a reasonable suggestion.
It is also possible that the bones belong to the person called Teacher of Righteousness in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Broshi and Eshel reject this suggestion because, they say, the Teacher of Righteousness was the founder of the community and he would have been long dead by the mid-first century C.E., the period to which they date the bones. They may well be correct if the Teacher of Righteousness was a person, rather than a title held by a succession of persons. The latter is the position taken by a number of Dead Sea Scrolls scholars. Although they are a minority, they nevertheless include such scholars as Shemaryahu Talmon, one of the most distinguished living scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like other honorifics from the period, such as “priest” and “rabbi,” mevaqqer and probably “Teacher of Righteousness” were titles that were used in successive generations in a community that was in need of ongoing leadership. “Teacher of Righteousness” was still being used in a late rabbinic source,1 so it does not seem that the title disappeared before the Common Era!
Broshi and Eshel prefer to call the building in which the skeleton was found a “mourning enclosure,” distinguishing it from a mausoleum. They may be right. It is certainly not like the ornate mausoleums in Jerusalem and Beth-Shearim. But it is worth noting that their fellow archaeologist Vassilios Tzaferis calls a similar building he excavated in a Roman-era cemetery at Akko a “mausoleum.”2
I believe the building at Tomb 1000 is a mausoleum-like structure containing a single tomb; it is certainly not similar to the multi-tomb mourning enclosures cited by Broshi and Eshel. This distinctive structure within Qumran’s cemetery would naturally be allocated to the most important figure in the community—the Teacher of Righteousness.
All in all, a little more circumspection is needed about this excavation, its finds and the disagreements concerning it.
In “Whose Bones?” published in our previous issue, authors Magen Broshi and Hanan Eshel described their excavation last summer of a skeleton inside a tomb at Qumran, near where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. They dismissed as “sensational” claims made by a University of Hartford press release that the skeleton might be the remains of John the Baptist or the Teacher of Righteousness (the leader of the people who wrote the scrolls). That press release quoted Richard A. Freund, professor at the University of Hartford and a colleague of Broshi and Eshel at the Qumran dig. Here is […]
