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Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

J. L. Teicher
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Extract

The interpretations of the Dead Sea Scrolls propagated by the overwhelming majority of Scrolls scholars start with the assumption that the Scrolls are not later than the second half of the first Christian century—more precisely, not later than June, A.D. 68—the only exceptions being those of one or two scholars who prefer a slightly later date. The exact terminus ad quem is not, however, based on any evidence contained in the Scrolls themselves, but was propounded by Père de Vaux as a conclusion derived from his excavations of the Qumran building and was taken over from him by the Scrolls scholars.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 37 , Issue 145 , March 1963 , pp. 25 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1963

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References

1 Revue Biblique, 1959, 99.

2 Rev. Bibl., 1954, 232 and 1956, 566. The beginning of Period II is here fixed during the reign of Herod Archelaus (4 B.C.-A.D. 6). R. de Vaux, L’Archéologie et les Manuscrits de la Mer Morte (Schvieich Lectures of the British Academy, 1959, London, 1961, 28). Here Period II is thought to start probably at the beginning of his reign, between 4 B.C. and 1 B.C.

3 Schweich Lectures, 36; de Vaux submits that the Roman occupation may have ended in 73.

4 J. L. Teicher, ‘Dead Sea Fragment of an Apocryphal Gospel’, Times Literary Supplement, 21 March, 1953, 160.

5 Schweich Lectures, 33 ; ‘exactly’ (Fr. exactement) is perhaps not the exact word, since de Vaux includes in the group of ‘Roman’ coins, which begin in A.D. 68, coins dating before this.

6 Josephus, The Jewish War (translated by G. A. Williamson), The Penguin Classics, London, 1959, where he is describing the movement of Roman troops in Southern Palestine (p. 249).

7 Schwekh Lectures, 32-33.

8 Bellum Judaicum IV, 477 (Williamson, 385): ‘Thus when Vespasian came to examine it [the Dead Sea], he ordered some non-swimmers to be thrown with their hands tied behind them into deep water, and found that they all came up to the surface as if blown upwards by a strong wind’.

9 Rev. Bibl., 1954, 333; Schweich Lectures, 33-34.

10 Teicher, op. cit.

11 Rev. Bibl., 1956, 551.

12 Rev. Bibl., 1954, 214; Schwekh Lectures, 19.

13 Rev. Bibl., 1956, 547; Schweich Lectures, 34.

14 Rev. Bibl, 1954, 213-214; 1956, 548.

15 Rev. Bibl., 1956, 544.

16 Rev. Bibl., 1954, 213.

17 Rev. Bibl., 1954, 209; de Vaux assigned the voussoirs and the columns to Period I, but in Rev. Bibl., 1956, 564, he stated categorically that ‘there is no possible utilization of such elements (i.e. the columns) either in Period II or in the preceding Period’. He then advanced the hypothesis that the columns had been prepared in Period lb in connexion with a projected embellishment of the building but the project had never been realized. This hypothesis merely reflects de Vaux’s inability to make the columns accord with his conception of the (Essene) nature of the Qumran building. In any case, the frieze and voussoirs (not mentioned in de Vaux’s hypothesis) must have been integral parts of the building.