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The "big picture" background here is that the scholarly consensus, established prematurely before all but the scrolls in the 1st cave were found, was that they
by ilimilku 7y ago
The "big picture" background here is that the scholarly consensus, established prematurely before all but the scrolls in the 1st cave were found, was that they belonged to an Essene "monastic" settlement at the ruins of Khirbet Qumran nearby. This has been challenged in a number of ways, yet the consensus of the local, Essene origin remains in tact. A Jerusalem origin hypothesis was developed principally by Norman Golb and advanced by a few others, yet the history of Scrolls scholarship has proven to be nasty to say the least. This new evidence, while saying little in the grand scheme, does possibly hint at a non-Dead Sea, i.e. Jerusalem origin of the scrolls.
- wl 7y agoSpecifically, one of the more likely theories is that a good number of these scrolls were deposited in the desert by various religious communities for safe keeping before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
- ilimilku 7y agoYes, there was one article published a number of years ago (the author's name escapes me), who did a good job of parsing out the various communities that could have been responsible for certain caves, priests, Zealots, etc. I'm not sure it got much traction, but I found the exercise intriguing.
- mrpara 7y agoNot a historian so I may be missing something, but how would one possibly differentiate between the origin being the Dead Sea or Jerusalem based on things like materials used? I mean, Jerusalem and the Dead Sea are less than 35km apart (according to google). Even thousands of years ago, it would have been a non-issue to transport materials or techniques between these two locations. I can't imagine that our knowledge of scroll-making at the time is so specific that we could possibly rule out a craftsman taking a camel from one location to another.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoAgreed. An ancient document storage pit was found (in Iraq?) which was the records of a merchant over several generations. It included trading records from many surrounding settlements. From the time of Hammurabi.
- duxup 7y agoYeah the scale of trade always seems to surprise everyone. It's hard for me often to understand how folks draw the archaeological lines here. Materials could have been traded and the scrolls written near the Dead Sea ... or even folks from the Dead Sea traveled to Jerusalem, used local materials and made some scrolls, and traveled back.
- partialrecall 7y agoI think it's instructive to consider bronze. To make bronze you need copper, which is very common, and tin, which isn't. Tin was only mined in a small handful of locations around the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_in_ancient_times#/media/File:Tin-ancient-sources.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_sources_and_trade_in_ancie... So from that, it's clear to see that extensive trading networks were necessary for these civilizations, not just for luxuries like exotic herbs and spices, but their basic industrial needs.
- DiffEq 7y agoWell not exactly true; you can use Arsenic instead of Tin and there is evidence that they certainly did use it; I am not sure of the breakdown of ancient tin-Bronze vs arsenic Bronze in use. In any case your point still stands as we also know there was tin bronze in use and likely much of it may have come from the British isles.
- cwkoss 7y agoWould arsenic bronze have any added toxic effects?