XKV8R

magen and peleg say something like forward field fort (for hyrcania i'm assuming).

XKV8R

is there something that precludes them??

miqva'ot indicate jewish (and observant). i consider all jews 'sectarian' of some sort. many judaisms and all...

oh yeah, and then there are those pesky scrolls... ;-)

spin

Wrong question. You start with what you know and work from there. There is nothing to suggest sectarians at Qumran, as far as I know.

Certainly.

Do you normally talk about sects during the 2nd temple?

Nothing pesky about the scrolls, though they weren't found in the settlement of Qumran, so the religious tract isn't even inside the house. If you want to introduce the scrolls into the discussion, go ahead.


spin

spin

I'd guess that they're talking about the same thing. I'm just making sure the discussion keeps the reality in sight: a fortress she weren't. A "field fort", a "military outpost". Whatever you want to call it, it wasn't going to withstand more than skirmishing forces.


spin

spin

Josephus goes into details about how the Essenes had to go off so far and dig a hole with their spade.

Doubt it. They had the mikva'ot, which made them serious enough.

Why not indeed?


spin

Minimalist

I suppose they could have. School kids can make pottery so the technique is fairly simple. Still...people have concocted this whole theory based on the existence of the scrolls.

Who is to say that some priest in the temple, c 67 AD, took one look at Vespasian's army then gathering, made the correct deduction that they would end up at Jerusalem and decided to move as many sacred books as he could to a more secure location? Why would such a decision have anything to do with the Essenes or the nearby pottery makers? The site had been known for millenia. Caves are nice hiding places.

XKV8R

wrong question? the question is: what does the evidence tell us about who could possibly live there? what is the evidence? a building. and aux building. expansions to the buildings. pottery industry elements. evidence of animal husbandry. evidence of date processing. maybe balsam perfume? pottery enough to feed a bunch of people. inkwells. a sundial. stylus. coins. glass wares. miqva'ot. and, oh yeah: scrolls.

as you already know, one of the fundamental question is whether the scrolls should be considered part of the context of the site. if we start by eliminating evidence that doesn't fit our conclusion, we've already lost. de vaux did it when he ignored the fine wares and called them monks. others do it when they toss out the scrolls and call it 'anything but sectarian.' still others do it when they discount the presence of writing instruments, or call miqva'ot cisterns (or call cisterns miqva'ot). still others do it when they attempt to argue qumran without looking at the literary/historical sources, or considering the socio-political context. it's all qumran. eliminating what doesn't fit out preconceived notions is bad archaeology.


i talk about sects whenever possible ;-)

and yes, there were sects all the way back to the rebuilding of the temple during the persian period. even more were created under greek rule. lots of sects under the hasmoneans. so ya, obviously they were jews at qumran. question is, which ones?

by that you mean within the walls of the buildings? is the date press (L-75) part of the context? how about magen and peleg's trash dumps to the north and south. are they part of the context of qumran even though they weren't found within the walls of the building? how about the water channel? or ein feshkha? does it have to be discovered within the walls of the buildings at qumran to be a part of the archaeological context?

XKV8R

agreed. it was a poorly built fort. probably the reason it was abandoned so quickly. (also the reason a lot of scholars said it couldn't have been a fort.)

XKV8R

1) b/c some of the scrolls were found in jars
2) the jars weren't designed for the scrolls
3) the scrolls were therefore hastily hidden in jars
4) the jars came from qumran (match the jars there)

if one follows this scenario, the absconders of the scrolls would have had to knock on a door to a settlement in the desert and say, 'pardon me, can we borrow some of your pottery? we need to hide some things in your back yard.' caves 7-9 are especially problematic, b/c these caves are in qumran's immediate backyard (inside the eastern wall extension). or, you'd have to argue the place was already sacked by the time they got there, so they took some unbroken jars from the smoldering ruins (if that is possible following a destruction at the hands of the romans) and hid them in caves they could find, but that no one else could find for 2000 years. you'd also have to argue that several of the scrolls contained multiple copies of surprisingly similar sectarian mss.

i would agree, however, that a majority of the scrolls came from outside of qumran (or at least weren't composed/copied at qumran). there is obviously great diversity among the scripts and even beliefs contained within the scrolls. the question is: how does one account for the diversity within the dss?

and who would want to hide scrolls? someone observant. sectarians? which ones?

XKV8R

spin, btw, post #5319808 was hilarious.

is there anyone else we should add to the list? could list the pre-dss like dalman and masterman. or the new ones?