Shalom All:

A crack in the theory
Will a couple of renegade archeologists make us rethink everything we know about Qumran?
http://www.raptureme.com/cgi-bin/rrnews_list.cgi?cmd=one&file=rrnews/N.20041219.044712.A_crack_in_the_
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer&cid=1103170788474
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AFTER 10 years of work at Qumran, when Magen and Peleg's crew reached the bottom layer of the large pool, they were stunned to uncover a previously unseen white sediment. The powder has turned out to be the most significant clue yet to the Qumran mystery, they say.

"It was the most important thing ever found at Qumran: the bottom of the pool has some three tons of high-quality clay," Peleg told the Post. "We started to understand the site - there were no Essenes."

Qumran in the Second Temple period was not much more than a small, dusty, muddy, and smoky pottery-industry work station, devoid of spirituality, according to the clay sediment in conjunction with their other findings, he says.

The finding of "buckets and buckets" of burned dates also led the archeologists to confirm that the only other activity going on at Qumran was the production of date honey, stored in small ceramic vessels made there.

Initially, to check that the powder was indeed viable clay, the archeologists threw the fine chalk-colored residue into a vat and added water. Then they delivered the clay to a potter and asked her to fire away. The potter gave the clay a quick thumbs-up. Her first vase adorns Magen's Jerusalem office, together with dozens of handmade drawings of Qumran artifacts.

Of all 16 pools, only two were mikvaot, and Jewish law backs them up, the report concludes: "According to Halacha, a mikve can purify only when water collects without human or mechanical help, not from trickling on the ground and not led through channels."

According to aerial dating, the pools were added onto original structures built in the First Temple period, or Iron Age, circa 700 BCE. The paper also deduces that until it was destroyed in the Babylonian conquest in 586 BCE, the first site was a military post - not fort - as it was the only place on the northwest shore that was protected from floods, and so could maintain a safe lookout.

Rather than Nabatean, they hold that the fort was built by the Hasmonean Jannai family who conquered Samaria and the Jerusalem environs and built other such fortresses along the eastern borders of Judea against invading Nabateans. Because of the Roman conquest, the Hasmonean leaders had no need for army posts and the site, says Peleg, was transformed for practical civilian purposes.

"After the Roman conquest, they started building canals and built seven more pools - there was one purpose: to collect clay for the pottery industry," he explains. "It was no mikve, but a sophisticated water system to collect water and clay; and to filter stone and debris. We realized that the water that came from the aqueduct took clay from the whole region and it would sink in the pools."
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Shows again how "agendas" of people (ie. Dominican monk and archeologist Roland deVaux) can create myths that distort The Truth.

Dianne
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