Hot in Qumran

Qumran National Park, Israel

Very Hot and Sunny

Ali, our OAT (Overseas Adventure Travel) bus driver who has negotiated all the snarled traffic and parking headaches in Jerusalem gladly takes us from the city east to Qumran National Park. This is where the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed. We go to discover how they were discovered and their significance.

Qumran is in the West Bank; we were waved through the checkpoint with no fuss.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Scrolls have been found in multiple caves; this is one such cave

In 1947 a Bedouin boy threw a rock into a cave and heard pottery break. Investigating, he found a broken earthern jar containing scrolls made from animal hide. He took the scrolls to a shoemaker and asked the shoemaker to make sandals from the hides. The shoemaker alerted an antiquities dealer, who brought them to Professor Eliezer Sukenik of Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Facsimile of Dead Sea Scroll

Most scholars believe that the Essenes, a Jewish separatist sect that set up a monastic community at Qumran in the late 2nd century BC, wrote the scrolls. During the Jewish revolt against Rome the Essenes apparently hid these precious scrolls in difficult to reach caves before the Romans conquered Qumran and dispersed the inhabitants in 68 AD.

The scrolls survived, hidden in jars for nearly two thousand years and preserved by the area's arid climate. They included books of The Old Testament, the Apocryphal and works by the Essene sect. Almost all books of the Hebrew Bible were discovered here, many virtually identical to the texts still used in Jewish communities today. Sectarian tests included the constitution or "Community Rule", a description of an end-of-days battle and a hymn reminiscent of the Psalms in the Bible.

The Essenes Monastic Community at Qumran

It was too hot to quibble over who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

We arrive at Qumran in oven-like temperatures

37 Degrees Celsius = 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit

The Essenes were ascetics and paid great attention to ritual bathing and purity. Their writing room - Sciptorium -  had desks and ink stands for the scribes who probably wrote most of the scrolls. Members themselves lived in huts and tents. 

Flavius Josephus gave a detailed account of the Essenes in The Jewish War (c. 75 AD).  Claiming first-hand knowledge he relates that the Essenes lived a life of piety, celibacy, poverty and a belief in communal living. They ritually immersed in water every morning, ate together after prayer, devoted themselves to charity, forbade the expression of anger, studied the books of the elders, preserved secrets and were very mindful of the names of the angels kept in their sacred writings. (Josephus was a Roman-Jewish 1st century historian)

Essene men entered the purification bath on the left and exited on the right. The larger space on the left insured that an un-purified body entering would not brush up against a purified body exiting

Another ritual bath - there were several in the community

Ancient cistern 

Base of a kiln 

 Water Cistern

Kiln

Where did the water come from in this desert environment? Flash floods occurred when rain fell on parched ground and did not soak into the earth. Capturing 2-3 good flash floods and storing the water in cisterns could have gotten a community through dry periods.

Water flash flooding down this cliff has left a visible channel. Note the tiny figures of hikers in the bottom, slightly right of center

Channel bringing water to a cistern

The ice cream man was doing a brisk business!