Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 2007 Volume 25
    
    Review Article Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence
    JOAN E. TAYLOR
    
    In recent years the Qumran-Essene hypothesis – most comprehensively presented by Roland de Vaux, who excavated the site of Qumran (Fig. 1) in the 1950s – has come under repeated attack. While initial doubts were expressed by historians such as Norman Golb (1995) and Lena Cansdale (1997), the battle is now raging within the realms of archaeologists. In his
    
    Fig. 1. View of Qumran from the pass to the west of the ruins
    
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    book, Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence (2004), the late Yizhar Hirschfeld has examined the site from its earliest to latest forms, providing a radical revision of how it may be viewed within the context of the Dead Sea region. The argument and language of this book is clear and accessible and the illustrations superb, all of which will continue to invite many scholars and the general public into Hirschfeld’s alternative scenario. Hirschfeld was innovative in his approach to the site and presented a cogent challenge to supporters of de Vaux. This book was one that I was happily willing to endorse as a serious thesis from a worthy and gracious opponent. It is a great shame that he is no longer with us to engage in debate about the site of Qumran or see the impact of his work. In Qumran in Context Hirschfeld presents the view that the Qumran-Essene hypothesis is no longer sustainable in the light of archaeology, taken on its own terms. Roughly following the chronological guidelines first proposed by Jean-Baptist Humbert (1994), he defines four strata. Stratum I is an Iron Age establishment. Stratum II dates to the Hasmonean Period. Stratum III is defined as ‘Herodian’ though it stretches from the time of Herod the Great to the fall of Qumran in AD 68. Stratum IV is the period of Roman occupation dating from AD 68 till as late as the Second Revolt (a theory I suggested at the Brown Conference on Qumran archaeology in 2003, and one which I discussed very profitably there with Prof. Hirschfeld, whose comments were very astute and valuable to me). It is the period represented by Strata II and III (corresponding to de Vaux’s Period Ia, Ib and II) that is relevant for the Qumran-Essene hypothesis, since it is during this time de Vaux and Humbert suggest that Essenes built up and occupied the site. Hirschfeld argues that in the Hasmonean period (late second century BC to mid-first century AD) the structure existing at Qumran was a kind of fortress, while in the ‘Herodian’ phase of Stratum III the site was a manor house or estate in which a variety of industries took place, partly involving the processing of opobalsam. In all periods, Hirschfeld sees a connection between Qumran and Ein Feshkha, so that they formed one agricultural zone, joined by a long wall. Hirschfeld finds no reason to associate this estate with Essenes, and suggests that the Dead Sea Scrolls were an important library deposited in caves close to Qumran at one time by refugees from Jerusalem who hid them with the help of local Jews who were non-sectarian. The Essenes are to be detached from Qumran and placed instead in the hills behind En Gedi, where Hirschfeld has excavated small huts in which they purportedly lived. Hirschfeld accepts no peculiarities of the site of Qumran that cannot be explained in terms of a rural manor house model, for which he draws on a number of archaeological parallels. It is difficult to review such a rich counter-hypothesis and all the wealth of evidence Hirschfeld brings to his argument concisely, and a detailed critique of Hirschfeld’s archaeological proposals in regard to the buildings alone would involve a lengthy discussion. Jodi Magness, in the Review of Biblical
    
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    Literature 8 (2005), and also Hanan Eshel (2005), have already pointed out a number of errors and issues for consideration and these need not be repeated here. However, one thing to note is a tendency by Hirschfeld to use ‘either/or’ language that attempts to refute the identifications made by other scholars by means of de-emphasizing their observations and results and over-emphasizing an alternative. Therefore, the emphasis on the tower in the Hasmonean period leads Hirschfeld to reject completely the suggestion by Humbert that the architectural remains represent a villa. However, in the Herodian Period Hirschfeld can easily accommodate the tower as part of his rural manor house, seeing it as an appropriate defensive inclusion in the total plan. Indeed the revetment that Hirschfeld associates with the Hasmonean stratum is from this time: Magness (2002: 57) notes that the rampart was an addition to strengthen the tower after the earthquake of 31 BC (so also Magen and Peleg 2006: 102). Hirschfeld judges the construction to be a fortress on the basis of the tower (Fig. 2), a square plan and the strategic location, yet his example of manor houses – which he considers clinching comparisons for the Herodian phase of the site – are all fairly neatly square/rectangular with each having their own single tower, and would match the Hasmonean phase of Qumran – as
    
    Fig. 2. The tower of Qumran from the west
    
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    Hirschfeld identifies it – much better than the expansive site he identifies in Stratum III. The point is that just because something is fortified it does not make it a fort, viz. something designed primarily for defence. De Vaux (1973: 5–7) already noted that the two-storied tower was built defensively since the lower walls are also thickened at the base and very robust, though it should be remembered that the tower did not loom above any other part of the building complex since much of this complex was two-storied (clearly seen in locs. 1, 2 and 30), in fact Hirschfeld has it as three-storied in his Figure 40 and four-storied in Figures 42 and 57. Nevertheless, de Vaux concluded that the building complex of Period Ib is not as a whole built defensively, as a fort. What we can identify in Qumran’s tower surely – as with the other local manor houses/villas – is strengthened fortification for defensive purposes, but this does not necessarily make the entire ˆtre. architectural assembly into a fort with a single military raison d’e If we resist the ‘either/or’ dichotomy, it is easy to see that structures can have multiple rationales at any one time. There is literary evidence to corroborate the building of towers to defend agricultural resources from theft (e.g. Isa. 5: 2; Matt. 21: 33, Luke 14: 27–30), and the study of the Nazareth Village Farm in this issue of the Bulletin well illustrates the use of towers to guard agricultural domains. The tower at Qumran might also have enabled watchmen to guard the pass and roadways, which is indeed a strategic consideration, and one which Magen and Peleg (2006: 102–104) also see as decisive in identifying early Hasmonean Qumran as a kind of military post. The similarities between Qumran, Rujm el-Bahr and Kh. Mazin may well mean that there were a string of settlements established during the early Hasmonean Period around the Dead Sea, but they were surely not purely military posts, but designed for the exploitation of the economic resources of the lake and supervision of the trade that resulted, as Hirschfeld himself has pointed out. How long this form of Hasmonean Qumran existed remains a controversial point. A critical issue of chronology in Hirschfeld’s (and Humbert’s) schema is when exactly the buildings and water systems were expanded. It is at the time of the expansion that Humbert considers Essenes first occupied the site. De Vaux identified this expansion with Period Ib, dated to the initial years of the first century BC, while Humbert is doubtful that this took place so early, placing the expansion later in the first century BC, a chronology followed by Hirschfeld, who suggests that this phase began in either 40–37 BC (Parthian invasion) or 31 BC (post-earthquake). Jodi Magness considers the expansion part of the early growth of the site (which has no Period Ia as de Vaux defined it) long before the earthquake of 31 BC. Magen and Peleg have now presented a different chronology in which there was a later Hasmonean (pre-Herodian) expansion. They reason that Essenes could not have arrived at this time because the residential space was cut back by the construction of pools (loci 56, 58, 48–9), though
    
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    without any apparent consideration of upper storey modifications. Full publication of the results of de Vaux’s excavations (now being prepared at ´ the Ecole Biblique under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Humbert), along with those of Magen and Peleg, will undoubtedly enable the discussion to proceed with more clarity. It should be noted that Hirschfeld’s title, Qumran in Context, is quite telling. It is right methodologically to situate a site within its context and ensure that any analysis takes place with everything that is known about that context firmly in mind. It needs to be remembered, however, that one can be right methodologically but still come unstuck in terms of an argument by overemphasizing some factors while de-emphasizing others, for the sake of a polemical ‘either/or’ approach. In terms of emphasis, Hirschfeld draws on good studies to define the roadways or tracks around the Dead Sea, and also pays careful attention to harbours. It is absolutely the case that traffic went by way of rivers, lakes and seas in the ancient world, and the Dead Sea was no exception (Nissenbaum 1991; Hadas 1992; Shimoni, Yucha and Werker 1992). One sees on the Madaba mosaic map, dated to the 6th century AD, that there are boats on the Dead Sea carrying cargo. But the question of whether Qumran was a commercial hub is not solved by noting connections without careful attention to the date of these paths, tracks and shipping routes. Accessibility does ˆt not mean that Qumran was a commercial entrepo and a hive of busy trading activity throughout all periods of its habitation. We do not always know who controlled trading routes, or what access was permitted in any given zone, especially in the case of precious commodities, in particular the opobalsam trade that Hirschfeld is most interested in emphasizing. If, for example, it was always a royal monopoly, what does that mean for trade access to the region? Qumran aside, the reasons why it is hard to consider the northwestern Dead Sea busy with commercial activity is provided by the very archaeological evidence Hirschfeld is keen to rely on: the Dead Sea scrolls were hidden in certain caves in the region (Caves 1–3, 6, 11), just as people themselves would hide in caves in the region in both the First and Second Revolts, surely because this area was not well-travelled, but rather wilderness in which hidden things/people would not easily be found, whether by Romans or anyone else (who might betray them). In addition, as Humbert has pointed out, ‘except in urban contexts, cemeteries were generally established in areas that were useless, abandoned or remote’ (Humbert 2006: 23). In terms of Qumran’s industrial and agricultural dimensions in the context of the Dead Sea, Hirschfeld in Chapter 5 gives a very good presentation. As Zangenberg and others have reminded us, from the fourth century BC onwards the Nabataeans had collected bitumen from the surface of the lake and sold it to the Egyptians for embalming.1 There was a trade route leading from the lake to Egypt as well as across the Judaean wilderness to the western part of Palestine via Zoara (Har-El 1978). The production of
    
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    opobalsam, dates, salt, sulphur and soap involved the towns and settlements in labour and trade. In the Roman and Byzantine periods, the two major towns actually on the lake were Zoara, in Nabataea/Arabia, and En Gedi, both being centres for the opobalsam industry and date propagation (see Hepper and Taylor 2004). R. M. Bloch (1962, cf. Rosenson 1986) has suggested that the boats depicted on the Madaba mosaic map are carrying cargoes of salt, shown as different colours to illustrate the distinction between sea and rock salt. In addition, there was the production of soap in this region. Hirschfeld notes (p.138) that a ‘cleansing product’ was manufactured here. Zohar Amar (1998) has identified the installations and materials found by Vendyl Jones in the so-called ‘Cave of the Column’ as being connected with the production of soap from potassium-rich plants (from the family of Chenopodiacae) which grow wild in the vicinity, which might fit with the fact that the occupants of Qumran were also washing in the basins of loci 34–5 (De Vaux 1973: 7; Magness 2002: 123, though Magen and Peleg 2006: 65, assign these basins to the perfume industry). All this suggests that it is reasonable to consider that there were one or more such industries taking place at Qumran, along with the propagation of palms, processing of dates and some pottery production (without making it primarily a pottery production centre as do Magen and Peleg 2006). In the crunch, however, Hirschfeld is clearly most intrigued by the opobalsam-cultivation or processing possibility: ‘[it] is most likely that many of the installations at Qumran were connected with the processing of the unique resources of the region, the valuable perfumes and ointments produced from balsam’ (p.138). Ein Feshkha, which Hirschfeld himself has excavated, is a critical element in his identification of the industry of Qumran since it is considered part of the total farmed estate. Here there is an oasis covering originally over 1 km in length crossed by both natural and artificial channels where a mixture of brackish and not-so-brackish springs fed a basin of 150–200 m2, up to 120 cm deep, with a maximum temperature of 278C. Nevertheless, the fertility of the oasis of Ein Feshkha and its suitability for growing certain plants has still not been tested by practical botanic experimentation, nor has there been a serious landscape archaeology analysis of the area or of the Qumran plateau. Discussions on the springs of Ein Feshkha can highlight the sweetness (so Hirschfeld, 7–11) or the salinity (Broshi and Eshel 2006) of the water, since in fact the whole area is pock-marked with springs of varying salinity levels. Moreover, no geological study of where ancient – now dried up – springs were located has yet been done. Archaeology does indeed indicate that some moderately sweet(ish) water could be harnessed, since north of the main structure at Ein Feshkha was an installation Hirschfeld identifies as being related to opobalsam processing, though more likely it is a date-wine press (so Netzer 2005), and water was fed to a reservoir next to this installation from a now extinct spring north of the site (Fig. 3). But it is another thing to propose that this whole region could actually support the
    
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    Fig. 3. Water channels at Ein Feshkha
    
    growing of opobalsam. Date palms, on the other hand, are quite resistant to salinity, and experiments could confirm what else could grow here and provide perhaps some vegetation necessary to feed the number of animals resident in Ein Feshkha, as well as the human population. From the archaeological evidence it must be the case that animal husbandry was a critical concern of the residents of Ein Feshkha. South of the main building was a large animal pen (34 Â 34 m) with a stable running along the northern side. How many sheep/goats could be contained here has not been estimated, but they surely provided meat that was consumed both here and at Qumran, the remains of boiled meals being buried (for purity and hygiene?) throughout the latter settlement. However, as with the case of roadway and lake access, the fact that there was agriculture (date palms, animal fodder and vegetables?), animal husbandry and industry (date processing for wine/honey, soap production, pottery production etc.) at Qumran and Ein Feshkha is in no way inconsistent with the Qumran-Essene hypothesis, despite the way that Hirschfeld has presented his case so beautifully. Many scholars who support the QumranEssene hypothesis are also interested in the industries and agriculture that may have taken place in the vicinity of the site. When full publication is
    
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    completed, the various agricultural metal tools found at Qumran will undoubtedly illuminate the range of agricultural work considerably. De Vaux himself was fascinated by the industrial installations at Qumran and Ein Feshkha, as well as agricultural matters (suggesting for example that the occupants farmed the Buqei’a at the top of the pass, to furnish the wheat then ground in the mills of locus 100 and 104; de Vaux 1973, 28–9). De Vaux knew very well that the Essenes in the classical sources are described not as contemplative ascetics unengaged in any productive activity but repeatedly as the very opposite. They are actively working at various enterprises. Hirschfeld, unfortunately, read these sources quite narrowly. For example, Hirschfeld took it as literally true that the Essenes lived, sine pecunia, ‘without money’ (Pliny, Historia Naturalis 5:15:4/73), so that any money or commercial activity found on the site of Qumran was interpreted as evidence that contradicts the Qumran-Essene hypothesis. Hyperbole aside, it is evident elsewhere in our sources that Essenes earned money, which they would then deposit into a communal fund (Philo, Prob. 86; Hypoth. 11:4, 10) and so we might expect some coin hoards in a site occupied by Essenes. Philo states that the Essenes labour in agricultural and artisanal work (Prob. 76). In the Hypothetica Philo mentions cultivators, shepherds, and bee-keeping (11:8) as well as technical skills (11:9). Josephus would write, after his comment that the Essenes have a different ritual of purification for their sacrifices: ‘Otherwise, best are [the] men who have directed their way and all to work hard in agriculture’ (Ant. 18:19). He sees Essenes earning money (Ant. 18: 22), and in War 2.129 he mentions technai – crafts, skills – in which the Essenes were proficient, which would easily have included processing of agricultural products, soap manufacture or pottery making. Since opobalsam sap had a highly esteemed medicinal use in antiquity, any manufacturing process for this – if ever proven – still would not contradict the Qumran-Essene hypothesis, since Essenes were interested in medicinal plants (War 2: 136; see Taylor 2006:144). This points to an issue that underpins Hirschfeld’s entire critique of the Qumran-Essene hypothesis. There is no attempt in the book to describe exactly who the Essenes were, and yet at every turn we are supposed to see the identity of this group as somehow self-evident from the occasional citations of the sources he uses. In fact, it is Hirschfeld’s idiosyncratic conception of the Essenes that governs the paradigms he creates in his work. We have mention of ‘a small sect such as the Essenes’ (p. 45), or, concerning the Hasmonean tower, ‘the revetment was clearly designed and built as an integral part of the tower. And since the function of the revetment was clearly defensive, its presence at Qumran is an indication that its inhabitants were far from being pacifists, as were the Essenes’ (p.72, cf. 241). Essenes apparently did not eat meat, being ascetic and veritably identical to Pythagoreans (p.111, cf. Ant. 15:371): ‘[it] is absurd to think that the inhabitants of Qumran, who were obviously meat eaters, could also have been Essenes’. The presence of some
    
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    women’s skeletons in the cemetery rules out the identity of the population as Essene because ‘according to Pliny, they shunned the company of women’ (p.161). The Essenes are described ‘as freely choosing poverty and a frugal life’ (p. 230, citing Josephus, War 2:122; Philo, Prob. 689). They are a ‘small sect living on the periphery of Jewish society, without access to the Jewish administrative establishment in Jerusalem’ (p. 231). Therefore we have a picture of a small, ascetic, male, vegetarian, pacifist, isolated sect who are linked, by Hirschfeld, with wandering ascetics like John the Baptist and Bannus: ‘[t]he sources tell of figures, such as John the Baptist and the Essenes, who lived an isolated and ascetic life near the Jordan river or in the cliffs above the Dead Sea’ (p.211). Hirschfeld conflates Essenes with Bannus-like ascetics, but the Essenes are actually not described in the sources in the way Hirschfeld defines them. There is nothing that requires us to imagine that the Essenes adopted extreme asceticism, even if they were frugal. It is not stated that they were vegetarian, or that women could not be involved with any of their communities, or that they were a small sect who only lived an isolated existence far away from Jerusalem. In our sources they are characterized by communal living and particular attention to purity, characteristics that have been shown to fit well with Qumran’s archaeology, as de Vaux argued and Magness has explored further. Even the identification of the Essenes as pacifist is highly questionable, since Philo mentions only that they do not manufacture instruments of war as part of their particular commercial operations, as they also reject a trading market, retail business or ship-owning (Prob. 78). In Prob. 76 Philo indeed states that they live in villages and shun cities because of the iniquities found in city life, but Philo – correcting himself – in the Hypothetica writes that the Essenes live in ‘many cities of Judaea and many villages’ (11:1), which coheres with Josephus, War 2:124. When Philo gives the number of Essenes as being over 4000 (Prob. 75, as also Ant. 18:20), the emphasis is on just how many of them there were; they are in Prob. 91, a homilos, a ‘crowd’ or ‘throng’. Moses trained ‘multitudes’ of his pupils for a life of community, namely the Essenes, and ‘they dwell . . . in great and much-populated throngs’ (Hypoth. 11:1, cf. 11:5). Pliny too refers to the Essenes as a turba, ‘throng, large multitude’. Wherever they had their main bases or communities, they are defined by Josephus as one of the three main legal parties in Second Temple Judaism. The Essenes appear in the Jerusalem Temple at certain points of Josephus’ narrative (War 1:78– 80; 2:562–567; Ant. 13:311–313; 18:19), where they appear as teacher-prophets (see also War 2:113; Ant. 15:370–379; 17:346–348), perhaps living in proximity to the Essene Gate in the city. In War 2:140 Josephus notes their humility and honesty in public office. The small, isolationist model of Essenes adopted by Hirschfeld is not borne out by the classical attestations. Hirschfeld’s removal of the scrolls from the relevant archaeological context is a radical de-emphasis of a critical piece of evidence. He notes
    
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    that no fragments have been found at the site of Qumran (p.46), and yet – given that he has defined the site of Qumran as encompassing not only the buildings on the plateau but also the associated farm of Ein Feshkha, so that the entire area is one large estate – the scrolls are clearly on site in the artificial marl caves 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10. According to Hirschfeld, these scrolls, which are directly related to others found elsewhere in terms of their content, are also to be included in the quick hiding operation from Jerusalem that apparently accounts for the scrolls’ appearance in the estate and its environs. But the quick hiding scenario is not the only one that has been suggested (see Doudna 2006, and Pfann in this issue of the Bulletin), and it remains rather hard to know how Jerusalemites would possibly have transported a huge library from the city during the First Revolt. These scrolls may have been stored in the artificial marl caves of Qumran – which are cooler – already as a library. Since these caves are visible from the roadway below the cliffs, it remains most plausible to think that the marl terrace cave finds represent scrolls that had not yet been transported to even more isolated hiding places nearby. Hirschfeld defines as an essential view of the Qumran-Essene hypothesis that all the scrolls were produced and utilized in Qumran (p.45). This is not so. It has long been recognized that scrolls could have come from other places, but the character of the yahad scrolls indicates a cohesive point of view that differs from those currently in charge of the Temple in Jerusalem. As Geza Vermes (1995, xxxi–xxxii) has noted, ‘[o]ver a dozen manuscripts contain sectarian calendars, yet not one mainstream calendar figures among the 575 compositions found in that cave [4]!’ and Vermes asks why Jerusalemites went to the trouble to find caves far away by the Dead Sea when ‘equally inaccessible caves could have been found closer to home?’ Furthermore, de Vaux’s explanation of the peculiar long tables found in locus 30 as being used for laying out long scrolls and writing them (de Vaux 1973: 32) still stands. To recap on this evidence, the room extending southwards from the tower, locus 30 had two storeys, and the top storey collapsed at the end of de Vaux’s Period II (Hirschfeld’s ‘Herodian’ stratum III). In this debris were discovered structures made of mud-brick covered with plaster (which were taken to Jerusalem and reconstructed to make them into benches and a table 5 m long, 40 cm broad and 50 cm high) as well as fragments of smaller tables. In addition to this two inkwells were found in the debris: one bronze and another pottery, one of which still contained dried ink. De Vaux then identified that this upper room was a scriptorium. Hirschfeld considers the plastered tables as benches that were part of the furniture of a triclinium (p.95–96). There are no parallels for such reclining benches. As de Vaux (1973: 30) states, the structures would probably not have borne the weight of someone sitting on them. It is also argued by Hirschfeld that the inkwells were part of the debris from the downstairs room rather than upstairs, and inkwells do not necessarily mean
    
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    you have scroll-writers. Perhaps, but, added to the two inkwells in the debris of locus 30 a further four have now come to light from Qumran, one made of bronze in a private collection (ex Bedouin; see Goranson 1994). This large number of inkwells suggests that some sort of scribal activity was taking place. While it may well be that this scribal activity was administrative, it just so happens that there are no administrative records found on site but rather a large number of fragments of religious writings. In Hirschfeld’s view, Essenes could not be located at Qumran because they lived in the hills above En Gedi (p.232). Pliny, Hist. Nat. (5.15.4/73) writes: ‘ab occidente litora esseni fugiunt usque qua nocent, gens sola . . . socia palmarum . . . infra hos engada . . . inde masada’, ‘in/at the west [of the Dead Sea] the Essenes flee all the way from the shores which hurt, a people alone . . . in the company of palms. . . . Below them is Engedi . . . from there Masada’. Hirschfeld notes: ‘[b]efore the discovery of the scrolls, there were no doubts among scholars that the Essene settlement should be located in the En-Gedi area’ (232, n.82). This is incorrect. Long before the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls and the excavation of Kh. Qumran, the northwestern sector of the Dead Sea coast was considered to be the region in which a group known as the Essenes lived during the Second Temple Period. For example, Christian D. Ginsberg (1864: 26) wrote in his essay on the Essenes that ‘the majority of them settled on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea’. The traveller William Hepworth Dixon (1866: 279–280) noted that the ‘chief ’ seats of this sect [of the Essenes] were pitched on the western shores of the Dead Sea, about the present Ras el Feshka’. No one positively identified the site of Kh. Qumran as Essene on account of the view that it was more modern than Second Temple (see Taylor 2002),2 but the association between this vicinity and the Essenes was clearly made on the basis of Pliny. In sum, the archaeological re-assessment by Hirschfeld does not successfully dent the Qumran-Essene hypothesis because even if some of his proposals are accepted, the site remains perfectly suited to being a residence for people (largely adult men) who were committed to ritual purity, community, common meals, and possessions and a fairly simple work ethic. As this site developed – before the Herodian Period – its adaptations make it distinctively different from any parallel cited by Hirschfeld. The location by the Dead Sea where ancient sources place Essenes; Jewish occupancy; communal dining halls; a very large number of pools that are suitable as miqvaot (regardless of any other uses); cemeteries with poor burials and a significantly greater number of adult males than adult females and children (if any children should be dated to the time of the settlement); a table and inkwells appropriate for some scribal activity; cylindrical jars that are identical to those in which some scrolls are buried in nearby caves; a collection of religious texts – indicating a particular type of legal and scriptural analysis – located in on-site artificial caves (4–5, 7–10); collections of (community) money; a range of agricultural operations – including date propagation and animal
    
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    husbandry – and simple industries that would enable self-sufficiency and economic viability; a location away from the bustle of city life yet still connected with transport systems: these elements, cumulatively considered, strongly support a hypothesis that would have Essenes appropriately living at Qumran in the first century BC to first century AD. On balance, despite the argument of Qumran in Context, the QumranEssene hypothesis remains the most plausible of any yet proposed.3 That many features of the Essene school of thought appear to fit the peculiar theology evidenced in the ancient texts of the Dead Sea scrolls is, in addition, a factor of archaeology itself that should not be pushed aside. I continue to support Hirschfeld’s book as being the best critique that anyone has yet devised against the Qumran-Essene hypothesis, and any proposal must be able to withstand worthy challenges of highly qualified experts. Nevertheless, as Jean-Baptiste Humbert (2006: 19) has recently stated, although the hypothesis ‘has not been irrefutably proven, it nevertheless remains the most likely explanation’. Notes
    1 To Hirschfeld’s citations one can also note Diodorus Siculus, Hist. 19.99.3; Galen, De Simpl. Med. 9.2.10; Josephus, War 4. 481, and see Safrai 1994, 187–8. 2 Apart from de Saulcy, who thought the ruins were of Biblical Gomorrah, there was a tendency to think of the site as post Second Temple and military, e.g. Van der Velde (1856, 257): ‘The ruins called Ghomran are those of a small fortress which has been built to guard the pass above; and around it, on the E. and S., a few cottages have stood, which probably afforded shelter to the soldiers, the whole having been surrounded by a wall for defence.’ 3 See my review of Magness (2002), in PEQ 136 (2004), 81–7. While modifying some of de Vaux’s arguments, Magness provides a careful defence of the QumranEssene hypothesis in terms of the archaeology.
    
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