The Essenes Never Existed

An article published by Time Magazine quotes Rachel Elior, Professor of Jewish mysticism at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, who says that the Essenes were not the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls and that the existence of the Essenes was a creation of Flavius Josephus.

Below is an excerpt from the article:

Biblical scholars have long argued that the Dead Sea Scrolls were the work of an ascetic and celibate Jewish community known as the Essenes, which flourished in the 1st century A.D. in the scorching desert canyons near the Dead Sea. Now a prominent Israeli scholar, Rachel Elior, disputes that the Essenes ever existed at all - a claim that has shaken the bedrock of biblical scholarship.

Elior, who teaches Jewish mysticism at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, claims that the Essenes were a fabrication by the 1st century A.D. Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus and that his faulty reporting was passed on as fact throughout the centuries. As Elior explains, the Essenes make no mention of themselves in the 900 scrolls found by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 in the caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea. "Sixty years of research have been wasted trying to find the Essenes in the scrolls," Elior tells TIME. "But they didn't exist. This is legend on a legend."

Elior contends that Josephus, a former Jewish priest who wrote his history while being held captive in Rome, "wanted to explain to the Romans that the Jews weren't all losers and traitors, that there were many exceptional Jews of religious devotion and heroism. You might say it was the first rebuttal to anti-Semitic literature." She adds, "He was probably inspired by the Spartans. For the Romans, the Spartans were the highest ideal of human behavior, and Josephus wanted to portray Jews who were like the Spartans in their ideals and high virtue."

According to the article, Elior believes that the renegade sons of Zadok were the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Elior’s theory about the authorship of the Scrolls is as controversial as the view proposed by Norman Golb. I am sure that this new proposal will continue the controversy about the origin of the Scrolls.

Read the details of this new theory proposed by Rachel Elior by visiting the Time web page.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Dead Sea Scrolls, Essenes, Qumran, Rachel Elior

The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Controversy Continues and Continues

A group (or a person; there is no way of knowing who is writing the posts) called “We Demand A Neutral Scientific Exhibit” on January 12, 2007 posted the following note to my post on "The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Controversy Continues":

The San Diego Natural History Museum's upcoming Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit has now also come under attack. At least two blogs have now published a letter from Dr. Risa Levitt Kohn, a professor of religious studies who is curating the exhibit. For details and links, see http://pacific-science-scrolls-scandal.blogspot.com/. In her letter, Dr. Kohn denies allegations that the exhibit is "biased" and "unbalanced". As Dr. Mariottini explains, Scrolls scholarship is currently polarized into two opposing groups, one holding that they were written by a sect living at Qumran, the other holding that no sect lived at Qumran and that the Scrolls are the remnants of the libraries of Jerusalem. This polarization is confirmed by the Cambridge History of Judaism, which features two separate articles presenting each of these two theories. In her letter defending the planned exhibit, Dr. Kohn admits that not a single opponent of the Qumran-Essene theory -- not even the leader of the official Israel Antiquities Authority archaeological team that has concluded, after ten years of excavations, that Qumran was a pottery factory and that the Scrolls came from Jerusalem -- has been invited to participate in the Museum's lecture series (featuring 22 speakers), but she attempts to justify this decision by referring to the "scholarly consensus" on Scroll origins. It is difficult to square this assertion of "consensus" with the picture presented in multiple news accounts and the Cambridge History of Judaism. If Dr. Kohn has set out to defend the old Essene theory in the face of growing scholarly disenchantment with it, why doesn't she just admit that the exhibit is indeed biased and unbalanced, instead of arguing herself into an impossible situation?

In a response to a comment posted to one of the entries, the author (or authors) of the blog defines the main issue of the controversy:

"The nature of the settlement at Qumran is the subject of a lively academic debate. The TRADITIONAL VIEW... is that the settlement was inhabited by Essene monks who observed strict rules of ritual purity and celibacy and who wrote many of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The SECOND SCHOOL says the people living at Qumran were farmers, potters or soldiers, and had nothing to do with the Essenes. The scrolls, according to this view, were WRITTEN IN JERUSALEM and stashed in caves at Qumran by Jewish refugees fleeing the Roman conquest of the city in the first century."

For those interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the controversy whether the Scrolls are related to the Essenes or to a secular group, visit The Dead Sea Scrolls in Seattle and San Diego

This blog makes an attempt at proving that the exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Washington, was biased because it ignored new developments in Scroll research made in recent years. In addition, this blog claims that the exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum is also biased because it is a version of the exhibit shown in Seattle.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tag: Dead Sea Scrolls, Qumran, Essenes

The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Controversy Continues

People who are interested in the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls know that there is a controversy among scholars on the nature and origin of the Scrolls.

The traditional view about the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls is that they are the work of the Essenes or an Essene-like sect that lived at Khirbet Qumran, a site located near the shore of the Dead Sea in the Judean Wilderness. The traditional view also claims that the Essenes wrote their sectarian books and copied biblical texts and then, at the time Rome was threatening the community, hid the Scrolls in the eleven caves in which they were discovered in the 1950s and 1960s.

The alternative theory is best explained by Norman Golb:

“The Scrolls reflect religious and social ideas of various groups within ancient Judaism, that Khirbet Qumran was not a religious site either of Essenes or others, and that the hiding of the Scrolls in the caves arose out of the need of the Jews of Jerusalem, circa 68/69 C.E., to sequester their manuscripts and other valued possessions when they became aware that the Romans intended to besiege and invade the city.”

This description of the alternative theory is presented by Golb in a lengthy article, “The Dead Sea Scrolls at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center” and published on the web page of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Golb’s article was written in reaction to the exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. Golb believes the exhibit is designed to support the original Qumran-Sectarian theory. He came to this conclusion based on the fact that the exhibit excludes any information that supports the alternative view.

Readers who are interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and learning the reasons for the alternative theory will profit from reading Golb’s article. At the end of his article, Golb provides a list of books and articles that oppose the traditional theory of the origin and nature of the Scrolls. I highly recommend this article.

To read the article in its entirety, click here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Qumran, Essenes, Dead Sea Scrolls, Norman Golb

Toilets, Qumran, and the Essenes

In an article written by Alan Boyle, Science Editor for MSNBC, Israeli anthropologist Joe Zias and James Tabor, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte report the discovery of latrines at Qumran. Below is an excerpt of the article:

One of the less sanitary aspects of life in Jesus' day has come into play in the debate over who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, how they lived and how they died.

The latest evidence comes from a site that two researchers have identified as the communal latrine for Qumran, the ancient settlement near the caves where the 2,000-year-old scrolls were found.

Israeli anthropologist Joe Zias and James Tabor, a biblical scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, say the unusual placement of the latrine would be consistent with the theory that Qumran was inhabited by a hard-core Jewish sect known as the Essenes. They even speculate that the latrine's unsanitary conditions may have contributed to ill health among the sect's members.

The prevailing view among archaeologists has been that Essenes at a Qumran monastery were the keepers of the Dead Sea Scrolls — but that view has come under increasing challenge in recent years, with some experts saying Qumran was a fortress or a pottery-making center that had nothing to do with the Essenes.

One of the most vigorous critics of the Essene connection, University of Chicago historian Norman Golb, told MSNBC.com that the latest report from Tabor and Zias "does nothing" to prove that the Essenes lived and worked in Qumran.

"The recent finding of a latrine can, at the most, show no more than that the inhabitants of the area were human beings who practiced some form of sanitation," Golb said.

So what do ancient potty practices have to do with the mystery of Qumran? Although the findings of Zias and Tabor may not be a smoking gun, they represent an intriguing blend of textual analysis and "CSI"-style forensics — intriguing enough to be accepted for publication in Revue de Qumran, an international journal on Dead Sea Scroll science.

Toiletries in texts

It all started with Tabor's reflection on historical texts: The book of Deuteronomy, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves, considered bathroom duties to be unclean in the sight of God. Thus, the faithful were told that their latrines had to be placed far enough away from the community to be out of sight. Various references specify distances of 1,000 to 3,000 cubits (1,500 to 4,500 feet, or 457 to 1,370 meters), preferably to the northwest of the community.

According to the 1st-century historian Josephus, the Essenes in Jerusalem strictly observed this custom. He marveled at the Essenes' religious and intestinal fortitude, noting that they refused to "go to stool" on the Sabbath — and Tabor speculated that this was because the latrine was farther away than Jews were allowed to travel on the holy day.

Years ago, it struck Tabor that Essenes at Qumran should have had a similar practice. "I thought, 'They must have been doing this if they believed it so fervently. Has anyone ever gone out and looked for this?'" he recalled.

Looking at a map, Tabor saw there was a prime site about 1,640 feet (500 meters) northwest of the Qumran site, sheltered from view behind a bluff. When he walked up to the site, he could see that one area of soil had a significantly different coloration. But how could he prove that it was a latrine, where the Essenes felt it was their religious duty to dig a trench, do their business and shovel dirt back on top?

That's when Tabor called upon Zias, a "bioarchaeologist" who has taken on other biblical puzzles such as the mechanics behind Roman-style crucifixion.

Parasites in ancient poop?

Zias took 10 soil samples — four from the site identified by Tabor, and six from elsewhere in the area as control samples — and had them analyzed by Stephainie Harter-Lailheugue, a French parasitologist from the Centre National de la Recerche Scientifique.

Three of the four samples from the suspected latrine contained desiccated eggs from parasitic worms commonly found in human stool samples (tapeworms, roundworms and pinworms). Meanwhile, none of the control samples turned up evidence of human-specific parasites.

Zias said that would indicate "heavy and continual use" of the site as a latrine.

Usually, the parasites in fecal matter would die out due to exposure to the elements in the Dead Sea region, Zias said. That's what happens to the waste left behind by modern-day Bedouins, for example. But Zias said the Essenes' practice of covering up their waste may have actually preserved the parasites.

Yet another curious twist strengthened the Qumran connection: Similar traces of parasites were found in a soil sample taken from inside the settlement, at a spot that Zias and Tabor think served as an emergency restroom for the Essenes.

As he put together the story, Zias came around to the view that Qumran was actually a pretty unsanitary place to live. "This should be a warning to religious people that you can take things a little bit too far," he told MSNBC.com.

Godliness vs. cleanliness

As time went on, pathogens would likely build up in the latrine, Zias said.

"What happened was that 20 to 40 people went out there every day over a period of 100 years," he explained in a University of North Carolina news release. "By burying their fecal matter, they actually preserved the microorganisms and parasites. In the sunlight, the bacteria and parasites get zapped within a fairly short amount of time, but buried, the parasites can live in the soil for up to a year. Then people pick up things by walking through fecally contaminated soil — it's like a toxic waste dump, and if you have any cuts on your feet..."

If the people who used the latrines were indeed Essenes, their religious practice would require them to undergo a ritual washing when they returned to the settlement. For modern-day Westerners, that sounds like good hygiene. But 1st-century Qumran was a different environment, and such practices would actually make matters worse, Zias said.

Water would typically stand in the ritual pools for months at a time, replenished only by three months' worth of winter rains. When the residents immersed themselves in the pools, they'd leave behind bacteria and parasite eggs. The warm water and sediment would serve as a fertile breeding ground for the pathogens, leading to cross-infection.

"Can you see yourself going into whirlpool water standing there for nine months, and 100 people have been going in there before you, day in and day out?" he asked.

Zias said the parasites detected at the presumed latrine would cause intestinal distress — which, in his mind, also helps explain the emergency toilet identified within the community. "If you're sitting there reading the Torah and you've got diarrhea, you think you're going to make it up the hill? You're not going to make it," he said.

To read the article in its entirety, visit the MSNBC Web page by clicking here.

The article presents more details about the findings by Zias and Tabor. The article also sheds additional light on the lives of the people who lived and worked at Qumran.

If you are interested in one aspect of at life Qumran and how the Essenes lived, this is an article that you should read.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old TestamentT
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Qumran, Essenes, Joe Zias, James Tabor,Norman Golb