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Archaeology & History

Mystery of Dead Sea Scrolls solved ?

By T.K. Randall
November 23, 2011 · Comment icon 17 comments

Image Credit: CC 2.0 Lauren Weinhold
New research has revealed clues as to who wrote the famous scrolls discovered near the Dead Sea.
Discovered in 1947, the exact origins of the scrolls has remained a matter of debate. Some researchers believe that they were written by a Jewish sect called Essenes and that the nearby Qumran was a monastic settlement used by the Essenes, others disagree with this conclusion. The current investigation is focused on examining the textiles found with the scrolls, which appear to be linen as oppose to wool suggesting an ancient Israeli origin.
The Dead Sea Scrolls may have been written, at least in part, by a sectarian group called the Essenes, according to nearly 200 textiles discovered in caves at Qumran, in the West Bank, where the religious texts had been stored.


Source: Live Science | Comments (17)

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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #8 Posted by encouraged 13 years ago
Early on, partially because of the ability to sensationalize the discoveries (probably for more funding) and partially merely a poor interpretation that we are still having to deal with to today, the place named Qumron, the sect named Essenes, and the caves and scolls found in them were all confused as being inter related. If one is interested in another interpretation as well as the logic to rid the world of the other, consider reading The Dead Sea Scrolls by La Sur as published by Eerdmans Press .
Comment icon #9 Posted by DieChecker 13 years ago
How come they haven't found any other ancient texts written by other natives of the area there? Weren't there Canaanites and Philistines there before? I wonder what happened to their writings. I don't know about you guys but this smells fishy to me. Maybe because the others in the region were not as paranoid as the ancient israelis were. Also, I beleive the Romans tended to collect local books where ever they conquored, and send them back to Rome.
Comment icon #10 Posted by kmt_sesh 13 years ago
Carbon dating has confirmed that most of the samples tested date to around 100 BCE. Paleographic and other factors confirm the full corpus of 930 documents dates between 250 BCE and 50 CE. Unfortunately the link in the OP isn't working on my end, so I don't know if it's a problem with my connection or something you're all seeing. I apologize if I'm repeating things mentioned in the article Still Waters shared with us. The preponderance of scholars have always argued that the scrolls were the work of the Essenes, so that's nothing new. But of course there is always dissent and there is no unive... [More]
Comment icon #11 Posted by third_eye 13 years ago
one thing i am confused with the C14 dates, does the results date the material the texts were written on or the texts itself? Given the plus minus factor of accuracy, what is the possibility of the scrolls being produced/manufactured and stored/stockpiled for a number of years before written on or stored? That is also taking into consideration the time it took to reproduce/copy the collection of the contents/texts from region to region and of course time to time. None of the studies i've encountered so far have given much attention to the methods or process of making the media. In ancient Chin... [More]
Comment icon #12 Posted by kmt_sesh 13 years ago
one thing i am confused with the C14 dates, does the results date the material the texts were written on or the texts itself? Given the plus minus factor of accuracy, what is the possibility of the scrolls being produced/manufactured and stored/stockpiled for a number of years before written on or stored? That is also taking into consideration the time it took to reproduce/copy the collection of the contents/texts from region to region and of course time to time. None of the studies i've encountered so far have given much attention to the methods or process of making the media. In ancient Chin... [More]
Comment icon #13 Posted by third_eye 13 years ago
~byte save snip~ I'm editing to add something I should have added earlier, which is a couple of book recommendations germane to this topic. One of the most acclaimed and respected is Jodi Magness's The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (2002). A somewhat lighter and well-illustrated book I enjoyed is The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Philip Davies, George Brooke, and Phillip Callaway (2002). I realize the years of publication might be different from the links I'm providing, but I'm only going by the editions I have in my own library. A visit to Amazon reveals any numb... [More]
Comment icon #14 Posted by questionmark 13 years ago
Some of the C14 dating was performed on organic materials found in the caves alongside the scrolls (e.g., textiles and foodstuffs), while in other cases it was the scrolls themselves that were subjected to C14 dating. I can't speak for texts from ancient China because that's outside my field of study, but in the case of Khirbet Qumran the vast majority of the scrolls were written on parchment (a small percentage were written on papyrus and one text was inscribed into copper). These scrolls represent the library of the Qumran community and nothing in their community was of greater value. Much o... [More]
Comment icon #15 Posted by encouraged 13 years ago
Being an author and formally a publisher of scholarly academic text books and monographs, allows me to point out that the article has its problems. Those problems impact the value of the article. Although I was glad to see the information getting out into the public, it concerned me that the tasks of authorship, writing, and penning the scrolls all became synonymous and referred to as if just one task. Naturally as a publisher I am sensitive to that. However, that is like saying that in today's world, I authored, edited, and published my own book. Typically each is a profession unto itself. Ba... [More]
Comment icon #16 Posted by kmt_sesh 13 years ago
Besides that there i http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/, where many of the scrolls are on-line. Excellent resource, questionmark. Rendsburg mentions this website in his lecture series and I completely forgot about it. Thanks for the link. I've saved it to my Favorites.
Comment icon #17 Posted by third_eye 13 years ago
Besides that there i http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/, where many of the scrolls are on-line. Thanks a bunch for the linkie dink QM Such a shame that a lot of the original batch of first located scrolls were all fragmented due to poor handling in the early days ... Wonder if anyone ever did managed to patch them back together again.
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