The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

432 DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
favor.” 91 Riesner points to the fact that after the restoration the Qumran
settlement was smaller than during the earlier period. 92 So, he asks
whether a part of the Essenes might have remained in Jerusalem while
another and more-radical wing returned to Qumran. 93
This construction, however, is weakened by a more-recent interpretation
of the archaeological and numismatic evidence from Qumran, which suggests
that the settlement was abandoned—possibly because of a violent
destruction—not before 9 or 8 B.C.E., and that it was reoccupied soon thereafter.
94 Of course, this does not preclude an Essene presence in Jerusalem
during the time of Herod. But the close link between the reign of Herod, his
favor for the Essenes (probably corresponding to his conflict with the
Sadducean families), and an Essene settlement in Jerusalem—such a link is
not as certain as the advocates of the Essene quarter hypothesis think.
A second argument is based on Josephus’s mention of a gate in the city
wall of Jerusalem named the “gate of the Essenes” (h( )Esshnw~n pu/lh)
and of a piece of land nearby called “Bethso” (Bhqsw&) in J.W. 5.145.
Pixner identified the gate with a location that had been already discovered
by the archaeologist Frederick J. Bliss, who excavated the Herodian gate
structure in 1977 and—together with other archeologists—its surroundings
between 1979 and 1985. 95 But, if the identification is correct, it is uncertain
what the name of the gate meant: Was the location of the Essenes outside
the town so that they used the gate to go there, 96 or was their dwelling
inside the city walls so that they used the gate to leave the city? From the
Essene position on purity, scholars had concluded that the Essenes might
have used a separate gate. Pixner and Riesner interpret the term “Bethso”
91. Riesner, “Jesus, the Primitive Community, and the Essene Quarter,” 198–234,
esp. 207.
92. Riesner, Essener und Urgemeinde in Jerusalem, 9; cf. de Vaux, Archaeology and the
Dead Sea Scrolls, 24–27.
93. Ibid., cf. also Riesner, “Jesus, the Primitive Community, and the Essene
Quarter,” 198–234, esp. 207.
94. Jodi Magness, “Qumran Archaeology: Past Perspectives and Future Prospects,”
in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (ed. P. W. Flint and J.
C. VanderKam; Leiden: Brill, 1998–1999), 1:47–77, esp. 50–53; idem, “The
Chronology of the Settlement at Qumran in the Herodian Period,” DSD 2 (1995):
58–65. Cf. the comprehensive study by idem, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead
Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 47–72.
95. Cf. Bargil Pixner, “History of the ‘Essene Gate’ Area,” ZDPV 105 (1989):
96–104; Bargil Pixner, Doron Chen, and Schlomo Margalit, “Mount Zion: The ‘Gate
of the Essenes’ Re-excavated,” ZDPV 105 (1989): 85–95, with plates 8–16; cf. the
extensive report in Riesner, Essener und Urgemeinde in Jerusalem, 14–18.
96. Thus, e.g., Eckart Otto, Jerusalem—die Geschichte der Heiligen Stadt (Urban-
Taschenbücher 380; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1980), 125.