Sometime between 1946 and 1947, three bedouine sheperds
were exploring the cliffs around the Dead Sea.
One of the men through a rock inside a caveand he heard the sound of chattering pottery.
When they the day later, they dicovered 10 jars,
pushed up against the cavern walls.
Although, most of these jars were empty, two contained cilindrical scrolls
-they were so old, that they started falling apart
in the following days.
Although, they didn't realize it at the time,
they had discovered the first Dead Sea Scrolls
However, only seven scrolls came from that cave.
The Dead Sea Scrolls actually crompise 972 texts. Some of these
are complete documents, like the Great Isaiah Scroll,
which is a 24 foot long piece of parchment, containing that entire biblical book of Isaiah.
Others are tiny, barely legible fragments of papiri.
Scholars agree, though, that these scrolls are the greatest archeological discovery of the 20th century
It has revolutionized both the study of Second Temple Judaism and the New Testament period.
However, despite everything we know about the scrolls, we actually don't know who wrote them
The scrolls actually came from 11 caves, all surrounding the same site called Qumran.
Whoever wrote them might have lived at Qumran.
In fact, some of the caves can only be acceced by traveling through the site.
But, what is the evidence for associating the inhabitants of Qumran with the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Our first piece of evidende is that Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls date to about the same time period.
Although, this doesn't prove authorship, it does place them both in the same place at the same time.
Based on coins, pottery and radio-carbon dating, archeologist have determined that Qumran
was inhabited between 100 BCE to about 68 CE when the Romans destroyed Judea.
Dating acient documents, though, it's a little bit more difficult.
And the Dead Sea Scrolls don't really have any dates printed on any of them.
However scholars do have several methods, that allow us to estimate
when a document may have been written down
This is called Paleography, the study of ancient handwriting
Based on a close analysis of the Hebrew script,
scholars have determined that whoever wrote them was actually taught somewhere between 225 BCE
and 50CE, under the dynasties of the Hasmonians and Herodian kings.
So, paleography and archeology has narrowed the authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls
and the inhabitators of Qumran to the same 200 year time frame.
But, what can the scrolls themselves can tell us about who wrote them?
About 40% of the Dead Sea Scrolls are copies of the Hebrew Bible.
Like the book of Isaiah and the book of Psalms
Others are copies of Second Temple literature, like the book of Enoch and the book of Tobit.
But 30% of the texts are unique, what we call sectarian writings.
It is these texts that give us the best who might have written the Dead Sea Scrolls
One of the sectarian writings is called the Community Rule.
It's essentially a strict manual on how an exclusive community should live in the desert.
Some of the rules are pretty strict, like banishing anyone who falls asleep on an assembly for 30 days.
But most of the rules are focused on purity and food laws, like what we see in the Hebrew Bible.
So, if the people living at Qumran actually wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls,
we would expect to find evidence of ritual purity and communal dining...
which is exactly what we find
Qumran has at least 10 rituals purity baths, what we call Mikveh, spread throughout the site
The inhabitants would periodically immerse themselves in waters to clean from any ritual impurity.
What is most striking, though, is the sheer size of these Mikveh.
In fact, the water system at Qumran could hold over 577,000 Liters of water,
which is over double the amount that a small population in the desert would have needed to survive.
They also appereantly practiced communal dining: Attached to one of the largest rooms in the site,
archeologist discovered a pantry with over a thousand dishes all stacked on top of each other.
Outside of this complex, they discoverd a Mikveh where the inhabitants would have ritually purify
themselves before entering the communal dining space. Based on this evidence,
scholars agree that a Sectarian Jewish community living at Qumran wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls
and stored them in the surrounding caves.
But, can we push this hypothesis even further?
Consider, for example, this quote from the Roman historian, Pliny the Elder:
From the geographical reference that Pliny the Elder gives us,
we can assume that there was a sectarian community called the Essenes, living north of the cities
of En Gedi and Masada, which puts in the general region as Qumran.
The Essenes were one of the most prominent philosophical schools of Judaism
during this time, along with the Sadducees and Pharisees we read about in the New Testament.
Josephus talks about them as a people hyper-concerned with ritual purity, communal dining, and asceticism.
Which again, sounds a lot like the Dead Sea Scrolls theology that we read about. Based on the testimonies
of Pliny and Josephus, along with the archeological material at Qumran,
scholars hypothesised that not only were the Dead Sea Scrolls written by a small sectarian community,
but that the Essenes themselves.
This Essenes Hypothesis has gained considerable popularity in the scholarly community.
However, we must remember it's just that: a Hypothesis based on evidence.
Ancient historians can never be 100% certain when it comes to ancient authorship.
Qumran was destroyed in 68 CE, when the Romans invaded Judea.
Although it's unlikely, some scholars think the Scrolls were hidden in these caves from the Romans,
as they attacked Qumran. However we shouldn't think of this as some sad final
stand of the Essenes. If they were indeed Essenes, Josephus talks about them in the present tense.
Implying they survived the invasion. In fact, they accomplished something that people in antiquity never could:
long lasting fame, influence, and a voice heard by millions around the world to this day.
If you'd like to know more, you should check out the Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, run by Israel antiquities authorities.
Also, the Orion Center's Bibliography has a lot of helpful resource for anyone doing resource on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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