community, implies that the Scrolls represent the type of biblical texts that were in circu-
lation in Jewish Palestine during the very end of the Second Temple period.^749 Regardless
of the dates attributed to individual scrolls, which range from the middle of the third cen-
tury B.C.E. to the middle of the first century C.E., the fact that their deposit is perceived
to be limited to a single event at around the year 68 C.E. encourages the view that the
whole collection was in simultaneous circulation prior to that date.^750 If the scrolls were
York: Scribner, 1995), but previously H. Del Medico, "L'état des Manuscrits de Qumran I," VT 7 (1957)
127-38; H. Del Medico, L'énigme des manuscrits de la Mer Morte (Paris: Plon, 1957) 23-31; K.H. Reng-
storf, Hirbet Qumran and the Problem of the Library of the Dead Sea Caves (Leiden: Brill, 1963); and
G.R. Driver, The Judaean Scrolls: The Problem and a Solution (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1965) 386-91. Golb
has written extensively on this topic. See, for example, N. Golb, "Who Hid the Dead Sea Scrolls?," Biblical
Archaeologist 48, 2 (1985) 68-82; N. Golb, "How Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? A New Answer Suggests a
Vital Link Between Judaism and Christianity," The Sciences 27, 3 (1985) 40-49; N. Golb, "The Dead Sea
Scrolls: A New Perspective," American Scholar 58, 2 (1989) 177-207; and most recently N. Golb, "Fact
and Fiction in Current Exhibitions of the Dead Sea Scrolls," n.p. [cited 10 September 2007]. Online: http://
oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/dss_fact_fiction_2007.pdf. A critique of Golb’s argument can be found in F. Garcia-
Martinez and A.S. van der Woude, "A 'Gröningen' Hypothesis'," 526-36. See also R. Alter, "How Impor-
tant are the Dead Sea Scrolls?," Commentary 93, 2 (1992) 38, and F. Garcia-Martinez, "The Great Battles
Over Qumran," 749 Near Eastern Archaeology 63, 3 (2000) 127.
The tendency of recent scholarship seems to be to consider that the Qumran scrolls in general stem from
broader Palestinian Jewish circles in the late Second Temple period, rather than constituting the product of
a single isolated sect (see E. Tov, Textual Criticism, 101-3, and E. Ulrich, "The Scrolls and the Study of the
Hebrew Bible," The Dead Sea Scrolls at Fifty: Proceedings of the 1997 Society of Biblical Literature Qum-
ran Section Meetings [eds R.A. Kugler and E.M. Schuller; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999] 35). The concep-
tion of a single historical ‘sect’ in the Scrolls is also problematic – see P.R. Davies, "The Ideology of the
Temple in the Damascus Document," JJS 33 (1982) 289, n. 7 (reprinted in P.R. Davies, Sects and Scrolls,
45-60, and see pages 99-100 in the same volume). Consequently the alleged historical community at Qum-
ran has been shown to lack a singular identity. Instead perhaps two stages in the development of certain
sectarian divisions are discernable from CD and S. These considerations have been distilled into a revised
hypothesis of Qumran origins that supposes both a diverse background for many of the biblical texts found
in the caves near Qumran, and a two stage developmental process reflected in the sectarian writings also
found there. On this see F. Garcia-Martinez, "Qumran Origins," 113-36, and F. Garcia-Martinez and A.S.
van der Woude, "A 'Gröningen' Hypothesis'," 521-41. 750
For a chronological synopsis for the Qumran texts, see B. Webster, "Chronological Index of the Texts
from the Judaean Desert," The Texts from the Judaean Desert: Indices and an Introduction to the Discover-
ies in the Judaean Desert Series (ed. E. Tov; DJD 39; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002) 371-75. The issues
surrounding the dating of individual texts are complex, and there is a significant divergence of scholarly