Monday, 20th April 2009
Dennis Mizzi (Oriental Institute, University of Oxford)
THE QUMRAN CAVES: A RE-EVALUATION OF THE EVIDENCE
This paper reassesses the archaeological evidence from the limestone and marl caves in the Qumran area. There are two main assumptions, undercurrent among many scholars, with regards to the Qumran caves. The first is that many of the marl caves were used for dwelling purposes by members of a sectarian community inhabiting the site of Khirbet Qumran. The second is that at one point or another hundreds of manuscripts (the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls) were taken out of Khirbet Qumran and deposited within ceramic cylindrical vessels in these caves, and since these cylindrical jars are virtually unique to Khirbet Qumran and the caves in its environs, they provide an archaeological link between the two entities, and consequently between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the site of Khirbet Qumran. This paper challenges both the aforementioned assumptions, and it discusses the possible implications that the new proposed hypothesis might have on our understanding of Khirbet Qumran and of how and when the scrolls came to be deposited within the Qumran caves.
Dennis Mizzi is a student at the University of Oxford, who is currently finishing a doctorate in Jewish Studies. His research interests include the site of Khirbet Qumran (on which he is writing his dissertation), the Dead Sea Scrolls (especially the sectarian literature) and the history and archaeology of the First and Second Temple Periods, as well as the Hebrew language (biblical and post-biblical Hebrew).
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