Was Qumran a festival gathering site?

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE DAMASCUS DOCUMENT: Cairo Genizah paper may hold key to secrets of Qumran, Dead Sea Scrolls. An ancient religious ceremony, described in several Dead Sea Scrolls, could explain the mysteries of the archaeological site of Qumra (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

Why have archaeologists only found remains of public buildings and not of private dwellings? How is it possible to explain the presence of thousands of pottery vessels in a place that had a few dozen residents at most? And why did the area feature such a multiplicity of mikvaot ritual baths, including very large ones, for such a small population?

According to [Dr. Daniel] Vainstub [of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev], Qumran was intimately connected to the Essenes, but rather than a permanent settlement of the group, it was the site where all its members and candidates would flock from communities all over the country to hold their annual celebration of the “passing of the covenant.”

Could be. I don't know the archaeology of Qumran well enough to have an opinion on this one.

You can read the full text of the underlying open-access article in the journal Religions here and make up your own mind.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the debate over the archaeology of Qumran and how the site is connected to the scrolls, see here and links, plus here.

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