Qumran (Hebrew: חירבת קומראן, Khirbet Qumran) is located on a dry plateau about a mile inland from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank, just next to the Israeli Kibbutz of Kalia. The site was most likely constructed sometime during or before the reign of John Hyrcanus, 134-104 BCE and saw various phases of occupation until, probably after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Titus and his Legio X Fretensis destroyed it. It is best known as the settlement nearest to the hiding place of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves of the sheer desert cliffs.
The Dead Sea scrolls comprise roughly 825-870 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran (near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea).
Since the discovery in the middle of the last century of almost 900 scrolls in various states of completeness, mostly written on parchment, extensive excavations of the settlement have been undertaken. Jewish ritual baths and cemeteries have been found, a large cistern, a large dining or assembly room, an alleged scriptorium, and a guard tower.
Most scholars consider it to have been home to a Jewish sect, often said to be Essenes; others have proposed that it was a villa for a single wealthy family, or even that it was a Roman fort. The large cemetery nearby may contain some answers, if women are buried there in great numbers. It would tell what the occupants of the settlement were like and who lived there; but under Jewish law (Halakha) excavating cemeteries is forbidden.
The scrolls were found in a series of caves just to the west of the settlement. Some of the caves seem to have been permanent libraries with built in shelves. The texts found in them represent the beliefs and practices of different Jewish religious orientations. A number of them appear to have been selected for the library there, when Qumran is thought to have become the asylum for supporters of the traditional priestly family of the Zadokites against the Hasmonean priest/kings. A letter found in the 1990s expresses the reasons for creating a community, some of which mirror Sadducean arguments in the Talmud. But most of the scrolls seem to have been dumped in the caves only during the turmoil of the First Jewish Revolt, at a time when Jericho and Jerusalem were facing the sack, or had already been sacked, but Qumran was still standing and secretly accessible from Jerusalem via the Kidron Valley.
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The Essenes (es'-eenz) were followers of a religious way of living in Judaism that flourished from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD. Many scholars today argue that there were a number of separate but related groups that had in common mystic, eschatological, messianic, and ascetic beliefs that were referred to as the "Essenes". There are also contemporary movements which identify themselves as Essenes, including the "Orthodox" Christian Essenes.
