separated themselves from the ruling authority in Jerusalem at some point in the second
century B.C.E., as recorded in CD I:5-6. Given the isolation of Khirbet Qumran, and its
apparently ritualistic material culture and infrastructure, the identification of the site as a
place of isolation for a splinter group like that mentioned in the sectarian documents
seems reasonable.^746 However, the extent to which socio-religious isolation can be
equated with economic isolation is uncertain. Despite their socio-religious distinctions
the inhabitants of Qumran apparently maintained connections with those outside their
group to some degree.^747
Based on the link between the site of Qumran and the documents found in the nearby
caves, a clear terminus ante quem of 68 C.E. emerges for the deposit of the Scrolls
there.^748 This date, which has gained widespread acceptance among the broader scholarly
Kampen; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), reprinted in P.R. Davies, Sects and Scrolls, 163-78.
Recent scholarship, such as is expressed in these few examples, tends to represent the sect that lived at
Qumran as arising from an ousted authority structure in Jerusalem which retreated from the central institu-
tion, eventually developing into a disconnected and isolationist fringe group. 746
See M. Broshi and H. Eshel, "Daily Life at Qumran," Near Eastern Archaeology 63, 3 (2000) 136-37,
for the identification of Qumran as a sectarian settlement based purely on archaeological evidence from the
site. 747
Making a clear delineation between socio-religious isolation and economic isolation is complicated by
aspects of the archaeology. Qumran was defined as an ‘open site’ by R. Donceel and P. Donceel-Voûte,
"The Archaeology of Khirbet Qumran," Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet
Qumran Site: Present Realities and Future Prospects (eds M.O. Wise, N. Golb, J.J. Collins, and D. Pardee;
ANYAS 722; New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1994) 9, who described it as “a place for which
articles were not only purchased from Jerusalem or Jericho but from elsewhere in the Mediterranean
world ... this ‘open site’ not only received but most probably also produced and exchanged something of
true commercial value.” In relation to this it is interesting to note the recent paper by M. Bélis, "The Pro-
duction of Indigo Dye in the Installations of 'Ain Feshka," Qumran - The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Ar-
chaeological Interpretations and Debates: Proceedings of a Conference Held at Brown University, No-
vember 17-19, 2002 748 (eds K. Galor, J. Humbert, and J. Zangenberg; STDJ 57; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 253-61.
N. Golb has argued that the scrolls in the caves near Wadi Qumran are not linked to the settlement at
Khirbet Qumran, but instead came from Jerusalem. See N. Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? (New