MORE ON THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL DEBATE ABOUT QUMRAN:

Debate flares anew over Dead Sea Scrolls
Was community inhabited by monks or mere farmers?

By Josef Federman
The Associated Press
Updated: 9:42 p.m. ET Aug. 18, 2004

QUMRAN, West Bank - Rival groups of scholars excavating this dusty plateau overlooking the Dead Sea are arguing over who lived here in biblical times � ordinary farmers or the Essenes, a monastic sect seen by some as a link between Judaism and early Christianity.

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Yuval Peleg, who has been excavating at Qumran for 10 seasons with fellow archaeologist Itzhak Magen, said artifacts such as coins and pottery they had discovered indicate the community at Qumran "lacks any uniqueness."

"No one can say if they were the Essenes," he said, adding that he had not completed his analysis of the finds and therefore couldn't say more.

However, Randall Price, an adjunct professor at Trinity Southwest University in New Mexico, said his five-week dig at Qumran yielded "new evidence to support old ideas" � that a special Jewish sect lived at Qumran.

Price said he has found animal bones and a well-preserved clay pot. He said the arrangement of the bones � carefully placed together, sometimes along with pieces of pottery � "make it quite clear that this was a religious ritual."

Price said the inhabitants likely held some sort of communal meal. Price, an evangelical pastor, said the meal may have been a precursor for a ritual that later became the Christian eucharist.

He said the pot, roughly 2 feet (60 centimeters) tall and still intact, is the same type of pottery found in the nearby caves that held the original scrolls. This is further evidence of links between the Qumran inhabitants and the scrolls, he said.

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