On a day in 1947, toward evening, some Beduin teenagers were rounding up their flock on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. Muhammad a-Dib, 14 years old, threw a stone into a cave to scare out any goat that might have taken shelter there. He heard something break. The next morning, moved by thoughts of treasure, Muhammad went back and made the most exciting archaeological discovery of all time.

In the cave were jars, and in one or two of them bundles, which proved to be leather scrolls dating from about 150 BC to 68 AD. Thus began the modern saga of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Coordinating with Beduin, an archaeological team explored the other caves of the region, finding scrolls from this period in a total of eleven. In the fourth cave, under layers of dirt and guano, the Beduin found about 15,000 pieces of manuscript, from which the scholars have reconstructed parts of 500 documents so far.

The dry air near the Dead Sea preserved the scrolls for two thousand years. Those of Cave 4 were in pieces because, unlike the ones in the first cave, they had not been stored in covered jars. 

Why was this find so exciting? Ordinarily, archaeologists have to make do with interpreting artifacts. When they are lucky, these include inscriptions. But here they had a whole library, opening a window on a way of thinking and experiencing that characterized a Jewish sect, the Essenes, from around the time of Jesus.

There are also biblical texts. Until this discovery, our earliest extant Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible dated from medieval times. Here, suddenly, were manuscripts a thousand years older, including pieces of every book in the First Testament except Esther, even a complete Isaiah. These cast new light on the development of the Bible. More...

A kilometer south of the first cave was a modest ruin called in Arabic khirbet qumran, the ruin of Qumran). (This Arabic name may refer to the whiteness of moonlight. Nights in the Syro-African rift are often cloudless because of the heat.) 

In 1951, Jordan (which then controlled the area) authorized an expedition to dig here. Archaeologists hoped the site would be connected to the scrolls. The present scholarly consensus, sometimes disputed, may be summed up thus:

1. Qumran was the community center of the group that produced the scrolls. The latter have now been independently dated, based on the handwriting, to the same time as the ruin, which contained coins minted between 140 BC and 68 AD. Most of the scrolls were found in the immediate vicinity of the ruin: Caves 4 through 10 are right there.

2. The Qumran group is the same as a sect which Josephus, Philo and Pliny the Elder refer to as the Essenes. True, the writers of the scrolls did not use this term. Yet there are many striking correspondences (though a few discrepancies) between the descriptions of the classical historians and the scroll material. The latter does not fit what we know about the other two major Jewish groups of the period, the Pharisees or the Sadducees.

In his Natural History (Book V 18.73), published shortly before 77 AD, Pliny the Elder quotes an unknown source that links the Essenes to the area:

On the west side of the Dead Sea, but out of range of the noxious exhalations of the coast, is the solitary tribe of the Essenes, which is remarkable beyond all other tribes in the whole world, as it has no women and has renounced all sexual desire, has no money, and has only palm-trees for company. Day by day the throng of refugees is recruited to an equal number by numerous accessions of people tired of life and driven thither by the waves of fortune to adopt their manners. Thus through thousands of ages -- incredible to relate -- a race in which no one is born lives on forever; so prolific for their advantage is other men's weariness of life!

Lying below these (Essenes) was the formerly town of Engedi... 

Pliny's brief paragraph raises key questions: Why did the Essenes live in this desert place? Why were they celibate? Why did they "have no money"? The answers can help us grasp who they were. More...

The site itself, though modest, offers much to those who bring knowledge and imagination. More...

© 2003 Near East Tourist Agency (NET)

Text © 2003 Stephen Langfur