Re: Ancient latrine fuels debate at Qumran

On 10 Jan 2007 11:45:25 -0800, in sci.archaeology, Carl wrote:

Doug Weller wrote:
...
Does it not bother you that de Vaux ignored or ommitted a lot of the
archaeological evidence?

I take it into account. Would you care to summarize for other readers
de Vaux's major errors?

Are you arguing for no gap between 1b and II?

Of course not.

And the settlement being Essene in both periods?

In Thiering terms Essene is defined by use of the solar calendar by
subgroups of the era. (She details 6 major variants: NS, NLS, InterS,
InterLS, SS, SLS; page 175 of her 1992 book Jesus and The Riddle of The
Dead Sea Scrolls; if interested, see amazon.com)

So, the classical or high Essenes are phases 1a and 1b; the low Essenes
are phase II.

It is instructive to read her Plan of Qumran to describe the
archaeological site on pgs 312-317
of her book.

Right off the bat, she brings up "the well grounded assumption of
symmetry in all the activities of Essenes".

"Although at first sight there appears only to be a general harmony, a
closer study shows
that the buildings had an exact plan. The main buildings and
installations were governed by a square of 150 x 150 cubits, divided
into four squares of 75 x 75 cubits." (p 313)

Fig 7 shows the four squares for the Plan of Qumran Buildings.

---

"In the first phase of occupation (1a) two stepped cisterns (A and B,
Fig. 7) werebuilt close to the well, with several rooms around them. A
simple enclosure, retained from early Israelite times, stretched to the
east. The position of the cisterns already indicates that the leaders
had settled near the well, while workers concerned with the pottery
kiln that was installed at this time on the far eastern side were
relegated to the east. It was from this phase, as it appears, that the
settlement was called 'the potters' field', the name used for it in Mt
27:7. It appears from the reconstruction of the chronology that in 140
BC the Essenes had been expelled here, 'returning to the land of their
desolation' (TLevi 17:10). A group of priests took up the space around
the well, and their acolytes, celibates of the kind that had long been
taken into the solar shrines, became the workers. One of their
occupations was the making of pots and dishes of the of the special
shape required for the sacred meals and libations." (p 312)

---

"(The outer hall outside the Israelite wall), opening on to the
southern esplanade, was set up
with a system for flushing the floor. A pipe led into it from the
water system, and the floor was slightly sloping, so that the water
would run through the southern door. De Vaux, who
excavated the Qumran site, considered that this supported his view that
the hall was the monks' reefectory (ADSS p. 11). It is true that meals
were taken there, as large numbers of dishes were stacked in the room
called the pantry leading off it. But it would be quite unnecessary to
use precious water, which flowed from the wady only once a year, simply
to clean after meals; a broom would have served as well! However, the
location of the hall outside the walls suggests that it was for the
meals of visiting village pilgrims. On the view that a man who had
recently had sexual intercourse could defile a holy area (11QT 45:11),
it would be necessary to use precious water for ritual washings after
the visits of such men. In the second phase, this system was
abolished, the floor being levelled and the conduit pipe blocked (ADSS
p. 26). This accords with the reconstruction of the history given
here, that the second phase saw an occupation by the
'seekers-after-smooth-things', who engaged in 'loose living' by strict
Palestinian Essene standards. They no longer held that sex defiled the
area." (p 313)

And 4 years after Jodi Magness's work:

http://medarch.blogspot.com/2006/08/archaeologists-challenge-link-between.html

I studied the url and I do not see how these pottery findings
contradict Dr. Thiering.

You need to do some more research. It is crystal clear that there is
considerable dispute about this -- and that opinion is slowly shifting
from the facile assumptions made in the 1940s as more evidence is
uncovered.

Doug
--
Doug Weller --
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk
Amun - co-owner/co-moderator http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amun/

.

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