Endnote 9 – A Ritual Purification Center

Bryant G. Wood, “To Dip or Sprinkle? The Qumran Cisterns in Perspective,” BASOR 256 (1984), pp. 45–60. Crown and Cansdale assert that the construction of the water system “could [not] have been undertaken with the meager material resources and civil engineering capabilities of the Essenes” (p. 33). But how do these authors know what resources and capabilities the Essenes had? A group that pooled all its resources could well have had considerable capital to wield.