Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, The

The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls. By Jodi Magness. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002, x + 238 pp., $26.00.

Ever since the Dead Sea Scrolls came to the attention of the scholarly world in the late 1940s, there has been debate over the relationship between the scrolls, the site of Qumran, and the first-century Jewish religious sect known as the Essenes. Roland de Vaux, who directed excavations at Qumran in the 1950s, suggested that Essenes lived at Qumran and hid the Dead Sea Scrolls in the nearby caves. This view has remained generally popular among scholars, but has also been contested. Norman Golb, for example, identified the Qumran settlement as a fortress and suggested that the scrolls represent various libraries and personal collections from Jerusalem that were taken to the caves for safe-keeping prior to the Roman attack in AD 70. Robert Donceel and Pauline Donceel-Voute, who worked for a time on the publication of de Vaux's material, concluded that the site was a villa rustica of a wealthy family. Yizhar Hirschfeld has suggested that the site was a Roman manor house, and Alan Crown and Lena Cransdale have suggested that it was a commercial entrepot. An added complication is that most of the material from de Vaux's excavation has not been published. The bulk of this material is in storage at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem under the supervision of Jean-Baptist Humbert. No one is working with all the information. However, Magness was allowed by Humbert to look at the pottery from Qumran in 1991. Together with information gleaned from published articles and reports, she has built a convincing case: Essenes inhabited Qumran and hid their scrolls in the nearby caves.

Magness brings together several lines of evidence to build her case. The strongest link between the caves and Qumran itself (six of the eleven caves are within a quarter mile of the site) is the pottery. In particular, the unique cylindrical store jars with bowl-shaped lids that were used to store some of the scrolls in Cave 1 have identical counterparts at Qumran. This shape is "virtually unattested elsewhere" (p. 81). Also, the small amount of other pottery found in the caves (oil lamps, cooking pots, etc.) is identical to pottery found at Qumran. The presence of stone vessels at Qumran, as well as numerous ritual baths (miqva'ot), are clear indicators that Qumran was at least a Jewish settlement, if not Essene. The lack of fine tableware (Nabataean pottery, Jerusalem painted ware, Eastern Sigillata A, etc.) and luxury architectural remains (stucco, frescoes, mosaic floors, floor tiles, Roman-style baths, etc.) is good evidence that the site was not a villa rustica or country manor house, because these kinds of luxury items are abundant at other sites that were home to the well-to-do (Hasmonean Jericho, Jerusalem's Jewish quarter). Furthermore, Magness uses the architecture of the site to draw some fascinating conclusions about the way space was both valued and utilized by the inhabitants, providing further tantalizing evidence of their sectarian character.

One of the most interesting sections in the book is the discussion of "gendered items" (pp. 175-85). While few items found in excavations can be associated exclusively with women, the list does include items like jewelry and spindle whorls. In contrast to other sites from this same period, such as Masada and the Bar Khokba caves where these gendered items are ubiquitous, Qumran has produced almost no gendered items. Keeping in mind that the Qumran materials have not been published in full, Magness notes that the published and identifiable gendered objects from Qumran consist of "one spindle whorl and no more than four beads" (p. 178). In conjunction with evidence from the cemetery, which contains almost exclusively male burials, Magness concludes that there was "only minimal female presence at Qumran and an absence of families with children" (p. 185). Again, this agrees with the ancient literary descriptions of the Essenes. Magness also discusses the hoard of Tyrian tetradrachmas (temple tax?), animal bone deposits (communal meals?), and the inkwells and benches (scriptorium?) found at Qumran.

Magness is quick to define words that may not be familiar to the non-specialist, and she writes in a style that is easy to follow. She has included a helpful section of maps, drawings, and photographs, along with several indexes. Bibliographical sections appear at the end of each chapter. My complaints are few and minor. Two of the sites related to Qumran that Magness addresses in the final chapter, Ein Feshka and Ein el-Ghuweir, were not included on the map (p. 210 cf. fig. 1), leaving the reader to wonder where these sites are located. Neither is Qasr el-Yahud (p. 76) shown on the map. Also, the two site maps of Qumran (figs. 7 and 8) are small and of poor quality. Magness refers to locations on these maps repeatedly, but it was extremely difficult to find the places that she mentioned. Despite these minor shortcomings, I would be quick to recommend this book for anyone with even a passing interest in Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Essenes.