A new book and a fairly new book search engine occasion a few comments on
history of scholarship of the overlapping subjects of Qumran and Essenes.
I brought a copy of Joan E. Taylor's fine article, "Khirbet Qumran in the
Nineteenth Century and the Name of the Site," PEQ 134 (2002) 144-64 to the
computer. This article helpfully shows that Qumran and environs were visited
long ago and evoked a variety of observations and opinions: Bedouin area, fort
area, Essene area--all these were raised, suggested before the late 1940s
Qumran mss discoveries. Post-1948 discussion was also, to understate, lively.
Therefore, I suggest that the statement, "In the Late 1980s and early
1990s...the first dissenting voices were raised about the Essene character of
the site [Kh. Qumran]..." is less than true. (That's from p.2, Katharina Galor
and Jurgen Zangenberg, Introduction, in Qumran: The Site of the Dead Sea
Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates [Brown U. Conference 2002]
(Leiden: Brill, 2006). That book contains many contradictory essays; some
interesting observations; some distortingly-framed questions; and some
outlandish claims. And some omissions, e.g., W. Farmer's 1955 article, "The
Economic Basis of the Qumran Community," Theologische Zeitschrift 11, 295-308
(and the 1956 P.S.56-58) is oddly missing in the Bibliography of Secondary
Literature.
The meaning of "Qumran" is, I think, still debatable. (One could add to Joan's
bibliography: S. Bowman, "The Meaning of the Name Qumran" in my favourite issue
[44, 1984] of RQ.) Joan Taylor (p. 159) provides 5 alternate old spellings of
"Qumran." Now, with google advanced book search, we can add, e.g., Kumran.
Google book search also provides additional old (pre-1948, back to sixteenth
century) books that correctly perceived that the name "Essenes" (in various
spellings) indeed ("the dede," 1550) had its origin in the Hebrew root asah.
One shortcoming of google book search is perhaps no big surprise: it lists
incorrect dates for some of its texts. That's a bit of a shame, since the
database is big, and rapidly-growing; but the false early dates can often be
easily spotted and eliminated. For example, it returned a supposedly pre-1948
hit for "Qumran community" by giving the date (1889) a journal began
publication.
More work on history of scholarship may help. A lot happened before Sukenik and
Trever and Dupont-Sommern and others--before deVaux--properly brought up
Essenes.
best,
Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
"Jannaeus, His Brother Absalom, and Judah the Essene"
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