Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?: The Search for the Secret of Qumran

The party line on the Dead Sea Scrolls (that is, the most commonly accepted explanation) is that most of the scrolls were produced by a sect of Essene separatists who lived in the recently excavated settlements at Qumran, near the Dead Sea. This explanation has many merits, including independent reference to the Essenes in this area by Josephus and Philo, an historian and a philosopher contemporary with the sect, and by Pliny. Qumran, according to this theory, was a monastic settlement, and one of the primary activities of the residents was the production of scrolls in a scriptorium. The scrolls provide a record of the beliefs and some of the practices of this sect.However, not all subscribe to this point of view. Some, starting with various interpretations of the scrolls like to see proto-Christians and radical scenarios. Unfortunately, some have done this simply because it grabs the headlines. However, there are other dissenters, perhaps more likened to a loyal opposition, who have both the credentials and the credulity to make alternative cases of interpretation. Norman Golb is one such scholar, whose ideas of an alternative theory of the Qumran settlement and the origins of the scrolls is significant enough to merit mention in many of the latest Dead Sea Scrolls general surveys as a minority view that still has plausibility in some respects.Golb, in his introduction, talks about his hopes and frustrations with trying to work with the established Scroll hierarchy. Suffering from the same sorts of issues that made access and interpretation such highly politicised topics, Golb felt he was not only an outsider, but sometimes a bit of an outcast, among the Scroll scholarly community. Golb's main thesis here, presented after giving an overview of the history of the scrolls and the archaeological digs at Qumran (complete with maps, drawings and photographs), is that this is not a monastic community, and not really a scriptorium. Drawing information from an early article by Rengstorf, who thought that the Qumran settlement was anything but an Essene community, he developed the idea of Khirbet Qumran as a fortress, developed in part because of inconsistencies between the archaeological finds and the supposed activities of Essenes that would have required different architecture and different arrangements. This Hasmonean fortress is located in an admittedly strategic location, particularly for the various events and travel routes of the area during Hasmonean times. Furthermore, Golb felt that the scrolls had far too many variations and contradictions to all be the product of one particular sect, or one particular community of people. Golb contends that the scrolls were actually the accumulated writings of many groups and sects from across ancient Judea, and were most likely the library of the Temple - these were then hidden in the caves in the vicinity of the known fortress at Khirbet Qumran, outside of Jerusalem, but not too far away, to p

This 1995 book should have been the stake in the heart of the theory of a so-called 'Qumran community of Essenes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls'; revealing, as it does, the promoters of that bankrupt theory to be mostly scholarly charlatans -- masquerading behind academic credentials -- of the most religiously bigoted variety. (Roman Catholic? Jewish? Protestant? It makes no difference. The Scrolls' origins, translations, and interpretations seem to be the sole study in which religious bigots of all Judeo-Christian persuasions can strike an ecumenical accord.) As a result of strident proselytizing and unscholarly -- sometimes immoral and illegal -- activities, the 'consensus view' of the 'Qumran-Essene scribes' is unfortunately alive and thriving today in many scholarly circles; which means, perforce, that it is a 'given' in lay circles. Sad. Maybe another half century will see its final demise. I have a single beef with this terrific book, and that is with the somewhat gratuitous pondering, toward the end of the book, about the effects of the Dead Sea Scrolls on the study of early Christianity. In the process of tackling this huge subject in merely a few paragraphs, Golb refuses to distinguish between early Judeo-Christianity and the full-blown, Hellenic/Roman Christianity of Paul and Constantine. In refusing to do so, Golb -- a bit perversely, it seems -- practices very well that same scholarly obtuseness and obfuscation that he has just spent hundreds of pages castigating. He should have foregone the publication of these half-formed musings. Otherwise, I think that everyone who is interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls should read this book; and then that same everyone should not delay in taking advantage of the Internet to send scolding letters to the scoundrels who managed to suppress the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls for exactly half a century after the discovery of the first seven scrolls. You might want to mention in your letters that these rogues are still, after the publication of the Scrolls, almost managing to suppress any and all discussion of their flawed translations and interpretations of the Qumran fragments. I think that these ladies and gentlemen -- the only honorifics that I will accord them -- should know that we do not like to be told lies.

Professor Golb's book is outstanding on two counts: (1) He shows, with very convincing evidence, that the Qumran ruins have little or nothing to do with the writing of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and (2) He exposes the academic politics, personal egos and rivalries, and the dangers of dogmatic thought that have contributed to a completely erroneous viewpoint regarding the Scrolls.On the first count, the ruins are clearly shown to be consistent with a fortress, and with no evidence of any scribe work. Furthermore, the collection does not consist of anomalous writings at the fringe of Judaism. Rather, they are very typical of Judaism 2000 years ago, with plurality of ideas and beliefs, divisions and competitions among its sects, and a general condition that fostered the environment that eventually led to Jesus and the birth of Christianity.However, as important as the above findings are, they pale in comparison to the parts of the book in which Prof. Golb exposes the movers and shakers in the field of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship to be petty, coniving, over achieving academics with personal scores, sensitive egos, strong biases (mostly against Jewish history), and a willingness to put dogma above the truth. For anyone in academia, the danger that ideas become dogma, and then prevent all other original ideas from further study and support, is a reality we all know too well. In this book, Prof. Golb traces the birth and development of the Essene dogma, and shows how destructive it has been to scholarship and the truth.While the writing can be dense, the story is so compelling and the perspective so personal (Prof. Golb has been ridiculed for his ideas, as often happens with those who challenge dogma), that it is an easy read for anyone.

If you only read a few books about Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, look no further. This book is the one you are looking for. The value of this book can be equated to the value of NUMEROUS books on the same subject. One reason this is so, is because it spends throughout time discussing and criticizing other authors, archaeologists, and Qumranologists. I feel with confidence after reading this book that the scrolls were certainly not composed by an "Essene sect." An equally appropriate title for this work could be "A History of the Dead Sea Scrolls." It deals with all the work that has been done since their discovery, the excavation of Khirbet Qumran, and many other important relevant topics. Though I very much enjoyed this book I wish that the author could have dealt more with his theory and not just his criticism of the traditional Sectarian theory. He believes the scrolls were of Jerusalem origin and Khirbet Qumran a Jewish military fortress, but does not go in depth to elaborate as much as he does pointing out all of the other researchers' fallacies.But this does not cut down the importance of reading this book to anyone interested in looking into the Dead Sea Scrolls. If you are such a reader, THIS BOOK IS A MUST:)

As an attorney, I was amazed at the resistance Prof. Golb encountered (and is apparently still encountering) to his compelling explanations of the provenance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this book, he makes an unappealable case for the Scrolls as coming from the library of the Temple, undoubtedly buried in the caves for safekeeping as the Romans began to menace Jerusalem. Oddly, that is not what the book is really about. The true focus is the wagon-circling of those academicians who had built careers on the--as Prof. Golb demonstrates with inescapable logic--totally unfounded assumption that the ruins at Khirbet Qumran are the remains of a monastery where scribes churned out sectarian literature to be stored in the local caves. Beginning with the group surrounding the Dominican Roland de Vaux, which originally formulated the "Qumran-Essenes" theory largely out of air and good wishes, at least two generations of graduate students obtained their doctorates by excluding, working around, or simply suppressing evidence at variance with the received truth. Prof. Golb's dissection of their arguments would stand up well in any court.Golb perhaps did not intend to pillory so brutally the lack of real intellectual rigor required of today's PhDs, but a reader is compelled to wonder exactly how severely these people are required to defend any conclusions they arrive at. The one sour note in an otherwise fascinating work is the impenetrable recital of the academic-political intrigues surrounding the controversy. Golb was apparently defamed rather savagely in the process and a wish for vindication is understandable. However, he seems to overlook his own presentation as his best weapon. Having exposed his opponents as obvious hacks, he truly need do nothing more than sit back and watch his opponents squirm. Verbum sat sapienti for the second edition, which I eagerly await.