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Discredited Theory on Dead Sea Scrolls Finds Support in New Archeological Dig

[Chicago Tribune] Ron Grossman - University of Chicago professor Norman Golb has long argued that the Dead Sea Scrolls are a sort of library of writings by different Jewish sects hidden near a site known as Qumran to protect the texts from Roman invaders. Most scholars, meanwhile, have insisted that the scrolls are the work of a tiny sect that wrote them in a monastery at Qumran. But when Golb first visited Qumran, "I looked at it and said to myself: 'This wasn't a monastery. It was a fortress.'" Now Biblical Archaeology Review, in its September issue, reports on an archeological dig in Israel that backstops Golb's ideas about the scrolls. Yitzhak Magen and Yuval Peleg concluded that the site wasn't a monastery and had nothing to do with the Essenes. It began as a fortress when the Jews had an independent kingdom. When the Romans afterward took over Palestine, it housed a pottery factory.
2006-10-27 01:00:00
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