Archaeologist disproves widespread beliefs about the Dead Sea ScrollsThe list of texts is sort of correct, although there were relatively few fragments of the Septuagint, not all of the Apocrypha was found there, and the Aramaic Targums are not the ones known from elsewhere. But quite a lot more was found: sectarian constitutions (the Community Rule and Damascus Document), rewritten scripture and prophecies, already-known pseudepigrapha (e.g., 1 Enoch, Jubilees), poetic and liturgical texts, calendrical texts, etc. Perhaps the reporter wasn't able to take notes fast enough to get all this down.
Wyatt Kanyer
Issue date: 2/26/10 Section: News (DailySkiff.com)
Jesus Christ did not live with the ancient people from the settlement near caves in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, even though some scholars have argued the contrary, an archaeologist said Thursday in a presentation sponsored by the Brite Divinity School.
Jodi Magness, an endowed archaeology professor from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, focused on the Essenes, an apocalyptic group that lived in Qumran, near the 11 caves in which more than 900 scrolls were discovered. She said that one-fourth of the scrolls represent all but one of the books of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, all of which have at least one copy.
The rest of the scrolls are the Greek Septuagint, the Aramaic Targums, the Pesharim and the Apocrypha, which are found in early versions of the Catholic Bibles.
[...]
Otherwise the article looks like a pretty accurate account of what I would have expected Professor Magness to say. She represents the traditional interpretation of the site as an Essene installation, although there are other interpretations as well. For past PaleoJudaica coverage of the archaeology of Qumran, start with this link and keep following the links back.
