The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls. (Briefly Noted).

The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls. By Jodi Magness (Eerdmans, $60). Although Qumran, the archaeological site near the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, was excavated in the 1950s by a team led by Roland de Vaux, only preliminary findings have been published, and de Vaux himself died in 1971. M. admirably surveys what can be said about Qumran and the scrolls fifty years after that excavation and is confident that her interpretation will hold, except for minor details, when and if de Vaux's excavation is published in a complete and scholarly fashion. She carefully guides the readers through controversial questions and publishes ample bibliography at the end of each chapter. She dates the founding of Qumran to ca. 100 B.C.E. (thirty years later than de Vaux) and concludes that the buildings that have been discovered were for community functions and not the place where the Essenes actually lived. The private toilet discovered at Qumran shows that the people who worked there did not def ecate in view of others--unlike most of their contemporaries! She also concludes that on the Sabbath day they refrained from defecating altogether, without explaining how this is possible. Women and children were present at Qumran in a minimal fashion, though their graves were marginalized. The pools found at Qumran, to which she gives extensive attention, were originally covered and were used for ritual bathing and not for drinking.