Pliniu

copy Koninklijke Brill NV Leiden 2009 DOI 101163156851709X395777

Dead Sea Discoveries 16 (2009) 1ndash21 wwwbrillnldsd

On Pliny the Essene Location and Kh Qumran

Joan E TaylorDept of Philosophy and Religious Studies University of Waikato

PB 3105 Hamilton New Zealandjetaylorwaikatoacnz

AbstractPliny wrote that the Essenes lived west of Lake Asphaltites and that infra hos was En Gedi Some scholars associate Plinyrsquos reference with Qumran others with a location above En Gedi Given that Pliny writes about Judaea by following the course of the landrsquos remarkable water it would be most natural to read infra hos as ldquodownstream from themrdquo Th e Dead Sea itself has a current and there was a belief that the lake had a subterranean exit in the south From a survey of scholarship produced prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls it appears that Plinyrsquos reference was usually believed to indicate a wide region of the Judaean wilderness understood to stretch from En Gedi northwards andor inland When En Gedi was identifi ed in the mid-19th century the suggestion that Essenes occupied caves just north of and above the ancient settlement was made but this was not seen as exclusive If we again read Pliny appropriately as referring to a region which the gens of the Essenes held we can move away from either-or dichotomies of possi-ble Essene sites

KeywordsPliny Essenes Dead Sea Asphaltites Infra En Gedi Qumran

Th e debate about the location of the Essenes on the basis of reading Pliny Hist Nat 515 remains unresolved With arguments on both sides having been stated cogently there seems little new to add to the debate and proponents of both readings have felt justifi ed in their interpretations1

1 For arguments in favor of a site north of En Gedi see E M Laperrousaz ldquolsquoInfra hos Engaddarsquo notes agrave propos drsquoun article reacutecentrdquo RB 69 (1962) 369ndash80 who reads infra as ldquodownstreamrdquo Roland de Vaux Archaeology and the Dead Sea

2 J E Taylor Dead Sea Discoveries 16 (2009) 1ndash21

However there is some information useful for this discussion that shows how Pliny was read by travelers to the Dead Sea in previous eras that has thus far been represented erroneously Th ere are also comments by people who viewed Kh Qumran prior to the excavations of the 1950s that indi-cate why no one identifi ed the site as Essene All this needs to be remem-bered in case the equation of Qumran as an Essene site is presented as quite arbitrary

Pliny and the Water of Judaea

As is well known Pliny writes a description of Judaea focusing on its water

Iordanes amnis oritur e fonte Paneade qui cognomen dedit Caesareae de qua dicemuus amnis amoenus et quatenus locorum situs patitur ambitiosus accolisque se praebens velut invitus Asphaltiten lacum dirum natura petit a quo postremo ebibitur aquasque laudatas perdit pestilentibus mixtas2

Scrolls (Th e Schweich Lectures on British Archaeology Oxford Oxford Univer-sity Press 1973) 133ndash37 Geza Vermes and Martin Goodman eds Th e Essenes according to the Classical Sources (Sheffi eld JSOT Press 1989) 3 n 19 Menahem Stern Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (Winona Lake Eisenbrauns 1984) 1480ndash81 John J Collins ldquoEssenesrdquo ABD 2619ndash26 at 620 For the argument that Pliny refers to the Essenes as being further inland abovewest of En Gedi see Jean-Paul Audet ldquoQumracircn et la notice de Pline sur les Esseacuteniensrdquo RB 68 (1961) 346ndash87 also Robert A Kraft ldquoPliny on Essenes Pliny on Jewsrdquo DSD 8 (2001) 255ndash61 esp 258 Yizhar Hirschfeld Qumran in Context Reassess-ing the Archaeological Evidence (Peabody Mass Hendrickson 2004) 231ndash33 For a strong defense of the reading that has the Essenes north of En Gedi see Christian Burchard ldquoPline et les Esseacuteniens agrave propos drsquoun article reacutecentrdquo RB 69 (1962) 533ndash69 Th e debate has been nuanced recently in the pages of this journal by the suggestion that while Pliny may refer to Qumran he is untrustworthy and inac-curate Albert I Baumgarten ldquoWho Cares and Why Does it Matter Qumran and the Essenes Once Againrdquo DSD 11 (2004) 174ndash90 at 177ndash78 and see Kraft ldquoPlinyrdquo 261 ldquoI would not try to build much on this part of Plinyrsquos reportingrdquo Magen Broshi has responded by questioning such skepticism noting that ldquothere is no reason why Plinyrsquos testimony should be rejectedrdquo cf ldquoEssenes at Qumran A Rejoinder to Albert Baumgartenrdquo DSD 14 (2007) 25ndash33 at 29

2 C Plini Secundi Naturalis Historiae ed Charles Mayhoff (Stuttgart B G Teubner 1967) 390ndash92

J E Taylor Dead Sea Discoveries 16 (2009) 1ndash21 3

Th e Jordan River rises from the spring of Paneas which gives its name to Caesarea [Paneas] of which we will speak [later] Th e river is pleas-ant insofar as the situation of places permits twining and lingering it shows itself as reluctant to the request of Asphaltites a lake of a dismal nature in which fi nally it is absorbed and its praised waters lost mix-ing with unhealthy ones

Th is is not a cool scientifi c description but it is one that uses personifi ca-tion for the subject of the piece In characterizing the water as reluctant to come to the party in lake Asphaltitis Pliny has the water of the Jordan twisting and turning away andmdashmost especiallymdashprocrastinating in lake Genesar Ergo ubi convallium fuit occasio in lacum se fundit quem plures Genesaram vocant ldquoTh erefore where the fi rst convenience makes an occa-sion it fl ows into a lake which many call Genesarrdquo We are then given a note of the towns of this lake which are ldquopleasantrdquo amoenis as is the lake ab oriente Iuliade et Hippo a meridie Tarichea quo nomine aliqui et lacum appellant ab occidente Tiberiade aquis calidis salubri ldquoon the east Julias and Hippo on the south Tarichea by which name some call the lake on the west Tiberias with healthy hot springsrdquo3 If we take the text as it stands the river does a reluctant loop going down the east side and then back up the west before continuing south Th e water remains the subject with its pleasantness refl ected in the towns its alternative name coming from Tarichea and healthy hot springs at Tiberias mirroring its own healthy quality

Th en Pliny notes places around the strange water of Asphaltites

Asphaltites nihil praeter bitumen gignit unde et nomen nullum corpus animalium recipit tauri camelique fl uitant inde fama nihil in eo mergi prospicit eum ab oriente Arabia Nomadum a meridie Machaerus secunda

3 Whether Tarichea is mistakenly placed in the south by Pliny or by a later copyist remains unknown In my article ldquoPhilo of Alexandria on the Essenes A Case Study on the Use of Classical Sources in Discussions of the Qumran-Essene Hypothesisrdquo SPhilo 19 (2007) 1ndash28 correction to a proof resulted in the follow-ing printing error ldquohe [Pliny] places Tarichaea south of the sea of Philoteria per-haps confusing it with Galileerdquo 2 n 2 which only goes to show how transmission of place-names can be skewed (ie transpose ldquoGalileerdquo and ldquoPhiloteriardquo) Tarichea is normally considered to be Magdala north of Tiberias Additionally the alterna-tive name applied to this body of water was Lake of Tiberias not Lake of Tarichea (see Eusebius Onom 74 162)


quondam arx Iudaeae ab Hierosolymis eodem latere est calidus fons med-icae salubritatis Callirhoe aquarum gloriam ipso nomine praeferens ab occidente litora Esseni fugiunt usque qua nocent infra hos Engada oppi-dum fuit secundum ab Hierosolymis fertilitate palmetorumque nemori-bus nunc alterum bustum inde Masada castellum in rupe et ipsum haut procul Asphaltite et hactenus Iudaea est

Asphaltitis produces nothing except bitumen hence its name It receives no body of an animal bulls and camels fl oat On account of this character nothing sinks in it Facing it in the east [corr south] is Arabia of the Nomads On the south [corr east] is Machaerus a Judaean citadel at one time second to Jerusalem On the same side is the curative healthy hot spring Callirhoe this name well-known because of the fame of its waters On the west the Essenes fl ee all the way from the shores which are harmful Below these was the town of En Gedi second only to Jerusalem [corr Jericho] in fertility and groves of palms now another ash-heap Th en Masada a fortress on a rock and this not far from Asphaltites And to here is Judaea

Th is text is slightly corrupt It seems ab oriente and a meridie have been transposed to replicate the reluctant turn of water around Genesar Pliny writes that Arabia ldquofacesrdquo or ldquolooks out atrdquo the lake which stresses its posi-tion just beyond Judaea but the specifi c sites he mentions are within Judaea4 Pliny cannot have meant to refer to Judaean Machaerus as lying to the south of the lake since the famous healing sanctuary east of the Dead Sea Callirhoe (cf Ptolemy Geogr 516 Josephus War 1657ndash659 Ant 17169ndash176) is identifi ed as being on the same side as Machaerus and ultimately the key southern point and terminus of Judaea is identifi ed as Masada not these two sites

In terms of the whole passage the fl ow goes e fonte Paneade ldquofrom the spring Paneasrdquo hactenus ldquoto hererdquo (Masada) the water being the length of Judaea itself More immediately on the western side of Asphaltites the movement goes south so that ldquobelowrdquo the Essenes there lies En Gedi (infra hos Engada) and ldquofrom there Masadardquo (inde Masada)5 Th e word inde most naturally carries on the trajectory established by infra hos ldquobelow them

4 A little earlier Pliny had written that Judaea was called Peraea ldquonear Arabia and Egypt separated from the rest by the river Jordanrdquo Th is is where Machaerus and Callirhoe lay

5 To look at En Gedi separately in relation to the Essenes without noting the


from there rdquo If infra hos is understood to mean a site below the Essenes in height then inde would have to mean that Masada is even lower down also in height

Th e overall movement of the corrected text as it mentions places around the lake is then east west and south Th e water remains the subject Lake Asphaltitesrsquo nature is bizarre and unpleasant in contrast to the River Jordan and yet paradoxically there are famous restorative springs beside it the weirdly-enduring Essenes and ldquobelow theserdquo ie ldquodownstream from theserdquo a town with fertility second only to Jericho (correcting ldquoJerusalemrdquo which appears earlier in the passage in a similar phrasemdashsecunda quondam arx Iudaeae ab Hierosolymis) As Laperrousaz carefully surveyed Pliny uses the term infra as ldquodownstreamrdquo in six other instances (Nat Hist 39 426 511 15 631 [x2] 32) and probably also in two further cases (Nat Hist 623 x2)6 It fi ts both with his usage and the subject of his description water

Here there is a valid objection that we are in a lake rather than a river and so ldquodownstreamrdquo for infra just seems wrong even with the framework of ldquofrom here to hererdquo that Pliny presents For infra to be ldquodownstreamrdquo the water would need some kind of south-moving momentum when everyone knows that the Dead Sea is a dead end Interestingly however there are ideas of the continuation of the Jordanrsquos momentum in later sources For example in the description by Burchard of Mount Zion in 1283 he reports a Muslim belief that the Jordan ldquoboth enters the sea and leaves the same but shortly after leaving it is swallowed up in the earthrdquo7 Richard Pococke noted ldquoIt is very extraordinary that no outlet of this lake has been discovered but it is supposed that there must be some subterra-nean passage into the Mediterraneanrdquo8 and ldquo[i]t is a common opinion that the waters of that river [Jordan] pass through it without mixing with the water of the lake and I thought I saw a stream of a diff erent colour and possibly as it is rapid it may run unmixed for some wayrdquo9 Pliny clearly understood that there was a mixing but this does not imply a lack of

continuation of the direction indicated by ldquobelow themrdquo would be to take certain words out of context

6 Laperrousaz ldquolsquoInfra hos Engaddarsquordquo 3757 See Descriptio Terrae Sanctae in Burchard of Mount Sion (Palestine Pilgrimsrsquo

Text Society 12 London Palestine Exploration Fund 1896) 608 Richard Pococke A Description of the East and Some Other Countries (London

W Bowyer 1745) 2359 Ibid 36 See also Barbara Kreiger Th e Dead Sea Myth History and Politics


motion and there is indeed a largely south-moving current in the Dead Sea which probably explains the belief that there was some unseen exit for water at the southern end Th e true explanation for this current was not found until David Neev and K O Emery demonstrated that the greater density of the southern basin pulled the water of the northern basin towards it which combined with the Corolis eff ect from the earthrsquos rotation cre-ated a strong fl ow south along the west coast and a weak north-fl owing stream on the eastern side10

Was Pliny aware of such a current on the west side Was there something in his source he omitted concerning an exit of water in the south of the lake He might well have had some indication of this but since Pliny is interested in defi ning Judaearsquos extent he snaps the account shut at the boundary of the land and does not speculate on the continuation of the fl ow he alludes to Th e important thing is that Pliny does not much move away from water as his reference point in terms of placements and infra when used of water carries the sense that one is to look beyond a point according to the fl ow A water-based understanding of infra therefore makes the best sense in terms of the language and content of the whole passage

Th e Dead Sea and the Essenes

Yizhar Hirschfeld recently asserted that ldquoPlinyrsquos testimony is the only one that locates the Essenes in the Dead Sea regionrdquo11 but this is not so Th e association was also made by Dio Chrysostom (c 90 CE) in a discourse mentioned by Synesius (c 400 CE) Essenes have ldquoa whole happy city by the dead water in the interior of Palestine (παρὰ τὸ νεκρὸν ὕδωρ ἐν τῇ μεσογείᾳ τῆς Παλαιστίνης) [a city] lying somewhere close by Sodomrdquo (Synesius Dion 32) Mention of Sodom and the peculiar term τὸ νεκρὸν ὕδωρ means it is unlikely that Dio derived his information from Pliny12

(2d ed Hanover Brandeis University PressUniversity of New England 1997) 19ndash20

10 David Neev and K O Emery Th e Dead Sea Depositional Processes and Envi-ronments of Evaporites State of Israel Ministry of Development Geological Survey Bulletin 41 (Jerusalem Ministry of Development 1967)

11 Hirschfeld Qumran in Context 23212 Contra Adam Kamesar ldquoReview of Th e Essenes According to the Classical

Sourcesrdquo JAOS 111 (1991) 134 In addition Dio apparently praised the Essenes


Solinus (fl 250 CE) in his Collectanea 351ndash12 refl ects Pliny and also another source which may (through a compiler) be Dio since here too there is mention of Sodom as well as Gomorra (ibi duo oppida Sodomum nominatum alterum alterum Gomorrum ldquoin that place [are] two towns the one named Sodom the other Gomorrardquo) and the curious lake is described as being ldquoin the interior of Judaeardquo interiora Iudaeae paralleling Diorsquos ἐν τῇ μεσογείᾳ τῆς Παλαιστίνης13 Martianus Capella De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (Satyricon) 6679 (c 400 CE) provides a short-ened and slightly garbled version of Pliny while Epiphanius (c 375 CE) places his ῾Οσσαῖοι on the other side of the Dead Sea within the regions of Nabataea and Peraea (Pan 1911 1922 cf Pan 5311) but still the lake features as an associated zone14

It has been suggested by Stephen Goranson that Plinyrsquos source on the Essenes is a lost geographical work by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (63ndash12 BCE)15 though Nikos Kokkinosrsquo recent insight that this particular sec-tion may come from another lost work by C Licinius Mucianus (legatus of Syria 67ndash69 CE) is signifi cant since Mucianus made a compilation of observations regarding curiosities of the world (Pliny Nat Hist 736) a collection of paradoxa or mirabilia in which the wonders and paradoxes of Judaearsquos waters would have been appropriate as would the marvel of the ever-enduring sex-eschewing Essenes16 Th e literary genre of this passage

when Pliny sees them as a wonder only for their continual existence without reproduction resulting from peoplersquos despair of life see Joan E Taylor ldquoDio Chrysostommdashaccording to Synesiusmdashon the Essene Landscaperdquo in Th e Dead Sea Scrolls Texts and Contexts (ed Charlotte Hempel Leiden Brill forthcoming)

13 C Iulii Solini Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium ed Th Mommsen (Berlin Weidmann 1895) 155 To some extent this could refl ect Plinyrsquos identifi cation of Judaea as being supra Idumaeam et Samariam if supra indicates a place further inland ldquobeyondrdquo though with Dio and Solinus the references are specifi cally to the Dead Sea and not to Judaea as a whole

14 See also Burchard ldquoPlinerdquo 54215 Stephen Goranson ldquoPosidonius Strabo and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa as

Sources on Essenesrdquo JJS 45 (1994) 295ndash98 a proposition previously made by Martine Dulaey ldquoLa notice de Pline sur les esseacuteniens (HN 5 17 73)rdquo Helmantica 38 (1987) 283ndash93 reprinted in Jackie Pigeaud et Joseacute Oroz-Reta Pline lrsquoAncien teacutemoin de son temps (Conventus Pliniani Internationalis Namenti 22ndash26 Oct 1985) (Salamanca Universidad Pontifi ca 1987) 599ndash609 I am grateful to Stephen Goranson for this reference

16 Nikos Kokkinos ldquoTh e City of lsquoMariammersquo an Unknown Herodian Connectionrdquo


is important for understanding its emphases and language Solinus refl ects this genre more apparently than Pliny in writing his own collection of mirabilia and he prefaces the entire description of Judaea with the com-ment Iudaea inlustris est aquis sed natura non eadem aquarum omnium ldquoJudaea is famous for waters but all these waters are not of a [single] naturerdquo (351) a theme that seems to underlie Plinyrsquos description despite the fact that he never articulates this in so many words

Scholarship on Plinyrsquos Reference to the Essenes

In discussions about how to read Pliny appeal has at times been made to the history of scholarship in that it is implied that there was an absence of any absolutely clear association between the north-western coast of the Dead Sea and the Essenes in previous academic writing indicating that no one read Pliny as meaning to refer to this locality and that instead scholars linked the Essenes with En-Gedi Yizhar Hirschfeld commented that ldquo[b]efore the discovery of the Scrolls there were no doubts among scholars that the Essene settlement should be located in the En Gedi areardquo17

However the situation is more complex In the fi rst place it should be noted that from the Middle Ages onwards the location of En Gedi itself was believed to have been in the north-western part of the Dead Sea coast Burchard de Monte Sion Descriptio Terrae Sanctae (1280)18 notes that Biblical Zoar called Segor by Christians was now pointed out just 5 leagues (145 km) south-west of Jericho ldquoat the foot of Mount

Mediterraneo Antico 5 (2002) 715ndash46 at 729ndash30 fi rst identifi ed by Alfred Klotz Quaestiones Plinianae geographicae (Berlin Weidmann 1906) 160 Ben Zion Wacholder has suggested Nicolaus of Damascusrsquo work ldquoCollection of Remarkable Customsrdquo as a source (Nicolaus of Damascus [Berkeley University of California Press 1962] 71ndash72) but Nicolaus would better suit being a source for Josephusrsquo accounts of the Essenes rather than Plinyrsquos since Plinyrsquos description of the Essenes is embedded in a description of the amazing (and somewhat personifi ed) water of Judaea (on which see Mary Beagon Roman Nature Th e Th ought of Pliny the Elder [Oxford Clarendon 1992] 196)

17 Hirschfeld Qumran in Context 232 n 8218 Burchard de Monte Sion Descriptio Terrae Sanctae ed J C M Laurent

Peregrinatores medii aevi quattuor (Leipzig H C Hinrichs Bibliopola1864) Eng transl PPTS XII (1896) see pp 58ndash63


Engaddirdquo19 In the compilation book of the travels of Jehan de Mandeville published 1357ndash1371 in Anglo-Norman French the land of En Gedi is between Jericho and the Dead Sea20 Th e 15th-century visitor Felix Fabri thinks he is on Mount Engaddi at Khan al-Askar just south-east of Jericho which leads him to a discussion of opobalsam21 Such northern placements of En Gedi (alternatively one that placed En Gedi close to Bethlehem) were repeated through to the early 19th century the ldquoruines drsquoEngaddirdquo are situated at the end of the valley of Achor in M Jacotinrsquos map of 1799 not far from the island of Rujm el-Bahr It was not until Edward Robinson successfully publicized Ulrich Seetzenrsquos identifi cation (on his map drawn on the basis of Jacotinrsquos in 1806) of En Gedi being the spring still called Ain Jiddi in Arabic that scholars identifi ed En Gedi in its present location22

Because of the placement of En Gedi in the north-west scholars prior to Robinson either placed the Essenes in the north-west adjacent to the Buqeia ormdashmore scepticallymdashsomewhere on the western side of the Dead Sea since En Gedi itself could have been located anywhere in this region on the basis of the ancient sources (eg Eusebius Onomasticon 6811 8616 969 ldquoEngadda lies to the west of the Dead Seardquo) In the writings of the Englishman Richard Pococke who traveled through the Buqeia and visited the region near En Feshkha in 1740 he notes the problem of bad air around the Dead Sea and writes of this place ldquoPliny says that the Essenes inhabited no nearer to it on the west than the air would permit

19 Th e southern town previously called Segor or Zoar was now no more and a new town named Zukhar (which fl ourished from the 11th to the 15th centuries) had taken its place Th us memory of ZoarSegor appears to have been eroded

20 T Wright ed Early Travels in Palestine (London Henry G Bohn 1848) 178ndash81

21 Felix Fabri Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae Arabiae et Egypti peregrinationem (ed C D Hassler 3 vols Stuttgart Stuttgard-Literarischerverein 1843) Eng transl Palestine Pilgrimsrsquo Text Society VII-IX (1893ndash97) IX folios 246andash247a

22 Edward Robinson ldquoA Brief Report of Travels in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions in 1839 undertaken for the Illustration of Biblical Geographyrdquo in Th e American Biblical Repository (New York Gould Newman and Saxton 1838) 2418 Edward Robinson and Eli Smith Biblical Researches in Palestine (Boston Crocker and Brewster 1856) 506ndash9 cf Ulrich Jasper Seetzen Reisen durch Syrien Palaumlstina Phoumlnicien die Transjordan-Laumlnder Arabia Petraea und Unter-Aegypten (ed and comm Fr Kruse 4 vols Berlin G Reimer 1854) 2226ndash27


themrdquo23 Johan David Michaelis in 1750 identifi ed Plinyrsquos locality with the desert of Judaea ldquoNow the desert of Judaea was a place of resort for the Essenes who according to Pliny were very numerous in the neighbor-hood of En-geddi near the Dead Seardquo24 In August Neanderrsquos monumental history of the Church published in 1825 the Essenes lived ldquoin der stillen Gegend an der west-seite des todten Meeresrdquo25 Th e non-specifi c view is refl ected repeatedly in the scholarly literature for example by Henry Hart Milman in 1843 ldquoin some highly cultivated oases amid the wilderness on the shores of the Dead Sea were situated the chief of the large agricultural villages of the Essenesrdquo26 Th omas Oswald Cockayne wrote in 1841 that ldquoPliny also attributes great antiquity to this sect (per saeculorum milia) and places them west of the Dead Sea in what was called the Wilderness of Judeardquo27 Th is unspecifi c tendency does not give us a reading of Pliny as such but indicates an unwillingness to place En Gedi anywhere very surely along the western coast of the Dead Sea

Plinyrsquos infra hos Engadda was in fact thought to indicate that the town of En Gedi was in a more southern location than the Essene habitations in the translation made by Christian Strack in 1853 He translates ldquoSuumldlich von ihnen lag sonst die Stadt Engaddardquo28

For explorers who visited the area who became aware of where En Gedi lay on the basis of Seetzen and Robinson the question was whether the Essenes extended deep into the Buqeia or right up to En Gedi town but it was generally understood that En Gedi was south of them For example Feacutelicien de Saulcy situated Essenes as far west as Mar Saba monastery29 He

23 Pococke Descriptio 3724 John David Michaelis Introduction to the New Testament (trans Herbert

Marsh Vol IV London F C and J Rivington 1823) 8725 August Neander Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche

(Gotha Friedrich Andrens Berthes 1825) 2426 Henry Hart Milman Th e History of the Jews from the Earliest Period to the

Present Time (New York Harper and Bros 1843) 212427 Th omas Oswald Cockayne Th e Civil History of the Jews from Joshua to

Hadrian (London John W Parker 1841) 20728 Cajus Plinius Secundus Naturgeschichte (ed Max E L Strack trans Chris-

tian F L Strack Bremen Johann Georg Heyse 1853) 220 For this and further discussion on the issue of placement see Stephen Goranson ldquoRereading Pliny on the Essenes Some Bibliographic Notesrdquo Online httporionmscchujiacilsymposiumsprogramsGoranson98shtml

29 Feacutelicien (Jules Reacuteneacute Bourgignant) de Saulcy Voyage autour de la mer Morte et


writes ldquoCrsquoest Pline qui nous apprend que les Esseacuteniens habitaient la cocircte occidentale du lac Asphaltiterdquo taking from this source a license to identify caves in the Mar Saba ravine and mosaic tesserae in the wadi bed as deriv-ing from Essene presence Likewise as he goes along the Wadi Kedron de Saulcy notes ldquoPartout sur la rive que nous pouvons eacutetudier de lrsquooeil en cheminant les excavations esseacuteniennes pullulentrdquo Th ere is no mention of Essenes being further south than this

Th e close En Gedi connection is found in a report by the American explorer Lieutenant Lynch who wondered about Essenes in the Wadi Sudeir cliff s just north of (and indeed above) where ancient En Gedi was located30 Th is reportmdashfi rst published in 1849 and much reprintedmdashwas very infl uential Lynch writes of a party ldquocreeping like mites along the lofty crags descending to this deep chasmrdquo and comments

Some of our party had discovered in the face of the precipice near the fountain several apertures one of them arched and faced with stone Th ere was no perceptible access to the caverns which were once per-haps the abode of the Essenes Our sailors could not get to them and where they fail none but monkeys can succeed Th ere must have been terraced pathways formerly cut in the face of the rock which have been worn away by winter torrents

It was natural after this description that many commentators would refl ect Lynchrsquos observations which is why there are references to the Essenes in close association with En Gedi in the post-Lynch scholarly literature with Pliny brought in for support31 For example Robert Buchanan fi nds a

dans les terres bibliques exeacutecuteacute de deacutecembre 1850 agrave avril 1851 (Paris Gide et J Baudy 1853) 145ndash50 Also see idem Narrative of a Journey Round the Dead Sea and in the Bible Lands in 1850 and 1851 (ed and trans Edward de Warren London Richard Bentley 1853) 152ndash56 ldquoPliny informs us that the Essenians inhabited the western coast of the Asphaltic Lakerdquo (155ndash56) De Saulcy found near Mar Saba a cave and pieces of mosaic tesserae he associated with the Essenes

30 William F Lynch Narrative of the United Statesrsquo Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (7th ed Philadelphia Lea and Blanchard 1850) 294 Lynch appears to call the spring Ein Sudeir the fountain of ldquoAin Jidyrdquo and writes of part of the ldquoWady Sudeirrdquo being ldquobelow Ain Jidyrdquo (p 289) with the wadi going down towards the Dead Sea

31 Arthur P Stanley Sinai and Palestine in Connection with History (London John Murray 1856) 296 Emil Schuumlrer A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (trans Sophia Taylor and Peter Christie Edinburgh T amp T


place for the observations of both de Saulcy and Lynch Looking at the caves around Mar Saba he comments

In these caves it is said that the Essenes were wont to live previ-ous to and about the commencement of the Christian era If Pliny be correct in placing the head-quarters of the Essenes among the rocks of En-Gedi (Ain-Jiddy) not more than twelve or fourteen miles south-east of Mar Saba the probability is all the greater that some of them may have dwelt here32

Buchanan was much taken with Lynchrsquos descriptions and quotes exten-sively from him just pages further on33 For him however any close asso-ciation of the Essenes with En Gedi made it even more probable that they were also at Mar Saba

By the middle of the 20th century this association between the cliff s above and north of the spring of En Gedi and the Essenes was much sup-ported especially in French scholarship thanks to the infl uence of Feacutelix-Marie Abel who championed the close En Gedi association34 When Andreacute Dupont-Sommer considered Pliny in relation to the Essenes his tone sug-gests he is arguing against the current scholarly consensus on the question

It is generally admitted that the Essene colony described by Pliny was situated near the spring of Engedi towards the centre of the western shore of the Dead Sea in fact the text of Pliny continues thus ldquoBelow them (infra hos) was the town of Engada rdquo But I believe this means not that the Essenes lived in the mountains just above the famous spring but that this was a little distance from their settlement towards the south Pliny then actually goes on to describe Masada further to the south ldquofrom thence (from Engada) one comes to Masada rdquo Th us from north to south we have the Essene ldquocityrdquo then Engada then Masada If Plinyrsquos text is to be understood in this way the Essene ldquocityrdquo

Clark 1885) 193ndash94 Walter Bauer in August Friedrich von Pauly and Georg Wissowa (eds) Real-Enzyclopaumldie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft Neue Bear-beitung Supplement IV (Stuttgart Metzlerscher Verlag 1924) 386ndash430 at 390 Feacutelix-Marie Abel Geacuteographie de la Palestine (2 vols Paris Librairie Lecoff re 1938) 2316ndash17

32 Robert Buchanan Notes of a Clerical Furlough Spent Chiefl y in the Holy Land (Glasgow W G Blackie and Co 1859) 268

33 Ibid 276ndash7834 Abel Geacuteographie de la Palestine 2316ndash17


would be found towards the north of the western shore that is to say precisely in the region of ʿAin-Feshkha itself Should this explanation not be acceptable it could be supposed that the Essenes possessed mon-asteries other than that mentioned by Pliny and Dio in the same Wilder-ness of Judaea and that the monastery of the New Covenant from which come the ʿAin Feshkha scrolls was one of these Essene monasteries35

However whatever some scholars believed in terms of the Essenes living among the rocks of En Gedi (ie the cliff s north of the ancient town) it did not stop visitors from continuing to understand Pliny as referring to a region inland from the north-western Dead Sea in which the Essenes could have lived anywhere As Christian D Ginsburg wrote in his essay on the Essenes ldquothe majority of them settled on the north-west shore of the Dead Seardquo36 William Hepworth Dixon who visited the area stated in 1866 that the ldquochief seats of this sect [of the Essenes] were pitched on the western shores of the Dead Sea about the present Ras el Feshka and along the slopes of the wilderness by Mar Saba and Ain Jidy Some of them dwelt in the villages below Bethlehem One of the gates of Jerusalem bore their namerdquo and when he gets to Ain Feshkha he identifi es it as ldquoa saline spring in the ancient territories of the Essenesrdquo37 When Claude Conder came with the Palestine Exploration Fund survey team to make the fi rst detailed maps of this region from 1872ndash1875 he noted regarding the Judaean wilderness north-west of the Dead Sea

From a very early period this horrible wilderness appears to have had an attraction for ascetics who sought a retreat from the busy world of

35 A Dupont-Sommer Th e Dead Sea Scrolls A Preliminary Survey (trans E Margaret Rowley Oxford Blackwell 1952) 86 n 1 Th e original French is found in idem Aperccedilus preacuteliminaires sur les manuscrits de la Mer Morte (Paris Maison-neuve 1950) 106 n 3 I am grateful to Steve Mason for this reference

36 Christian D Ginsburg Th e Essenes Th eir History and Doctrines Th e Kab-balah Its Doctrines Development and Literature (London Longman and Green 1864 repr London Routledge and Paul 1955) 26

37 William Hepworth Dixon Th e Holy Land (2d ed vol 1 London Chapman and Hall 1866) 279ndash80 284ndash85 cf Joseph B Lightfoot ldquoOn Some Points Connected with the Essenesrdquo in idem Th e Epistles of St Paul iii Th e First Roman Captivity 2 Th e Epistle to the Colossians 3 Epistle to Philemon (1875) 114ndash79 at 146 ldquoTh e home of the Essene sect is allowed on all hands to have been on the eastern borders of Palestine the shores of the Dead Sea a region least of all exposed to the infl uences of Greek philosophyrdquo


their fellow men and who sought to please God by torturing their bodies he had given them Th us the Essenes the Jewish sect whose habits and tenets resembled so closely those of the fi rst Christians retired into this wilderness and lived in caves Christian hermits from the earliest period were also numerous in all the country between Jerusalem and Jericho38

R H Charles in 1912 could write that ldquothe Essenians inhabited the west-ern coast of the Asphaltic Lakerdquo and could translate Pliny as ldquoBelow the country of the Essenians is Engaddardquo the ldquobelowrdquo here in fact indicating a southerly site further along the Essene coast39 Th e area of the north-western Dead Sea hinterland was not identifi ed as an Essene location only after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 rather a large part of it was long considered by scholars to be the locale of the Essenes in the Sec-ond Temple period a region that stretched from Rujm el-Bahr to En Gedi from Mar Saba to the coast of the lake What is strikingly missing in the discussions is any sense that there was one exclusive site apart from that identifi ed by Lynch and even then scholars continued to see the Essenes as inhabiting a region

Lena Cansdale has stated that ldquobefore the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 no connection had been made between the sect of the Essenes and the ruined ancient settlement of Qumranrdquo40 a comment that is both true and misleading in that it may imply that identifying Qumran as Essene is wildly arbitrary However Qumran itself lay unidentifi ed as an Essene sitemdasheven though it lay right where Essenes were thought to be situatedmdashnot because no one thought of this area as an Essene location but because no one believed that the ruins of Qumran dated to the time of the Essenes

It seems clear from the accounts of travelers to the Dead Sea that in the later Middle Ages the ruins of Qumran were identifi ed with Biblical ZoarSegor which along with En Gedi was erroneously placed along the north-western part of the lake shore while Seboim was identifi ed with the largely

38 Claude R Conder Tent Work in Palestine (vol 2 London Richard Bentley and Sons 1878) 301

39 R H Charles Fragments of a Zadokite Work (Oxford Clarendon 1912) 155ndash56

40 Lena Cansdale Qumran and the Essenes A Re-Evaluation of the Evidence (Tuumlbingen JCB MohrPaul Siebeck 1997) 19


submerged ruins of Rujm el-Bahr41 As time went by this identifi cation of Qumran as Segor was itself forgotten and Jacotinrsquos map may suggest that some visitors identifi ed Qumran with En Gedi When Feacutelicien de Saulcy visited in 1851 he proposed that Qumran was to be seen as another Bibli-cal city Gomorrah42 Despite a widespread skepticism about this identifi -cation no one placed Qumran within the Second Temple Period when the Essenes lived in the area andmdashwhen not making wild conjectures about Biblical citiesmdashthey identifi ed the site as a Roman or later fortress as suggested by C W M Van der Velde in 1856 ldquoTh e ruins called Ghom-ran are those of a small fortress which has been built to guard the pass above and around it on the E and S a few cottages have stood which probably aff orded shelter to the soldiers the whole having been surrounded by a wall for defenserdquo43 Th is was a perfectly valid interpretation of the ruins of Period III at Qumran which had been left to weather the centu-ries around about the end of the 1st c CE to early 2d c CE (at the latest from the time of Bar Kochba)44 It was believed that there was no syn-chronicity between the ruins and the Essenes that is the reason it was not identifi ed as an Essene site despite the fact that it lay in what was identi-fi ed as an Essene area in the Second Temple Period

Interpreting Pliny in Terms of Region

Turning to how we should interpret Pliny on the basis of what is known from archaeology his evidence is as critical as ever especially in the light of Dio and should surely not be dismissed Given our modern image of Qumran now located with palm trees beside it we may be inclined to read

41 For discussion see Joan E Taylor ldquoFruumlhe Entdecker und die Wiederentdeckung des Toten Meersrdquo in Qumran und die Region am Toten Meer (ed Juumlrgen Zangenberg Zaberns Bildbaumlnde zur Archaumlologie Mainz Philipp von Zabern Verlag forthcoming)

42 For a summary of the reports by explorers who visited the area in the 19th century see Joan E Taylor ldquoKhirbet Qumran in the Nineteenth Century and the Name of the Siterdquo PEQ 134 (2002) 144ndash64

43 Carel Willem Meredith van de Velde Memoir to Accompany the Map of the Holy Land (Gotha Justus Perthes 1856) 257

44 See Joan E Taylor ldquoKh Qumran in Period IIIrdquo in Qumranmdashthe Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls Archaeological Interpretations and Debates proceedings of a conference held at Brown University Nov 17ndash19 2002 (ed Katharina Galor Jean-Baptiste Humbert and Juumlrgen Zangenberg Leiden Brill 2006) 133ndash46


Pliny as indicating this site alone not a region Further discussion of Plinyrsquos meaning has of course sometimes turned on whether he means Qumran solely or not but Plinyrsquos description of the Essenes being gens sola socia palmarum does not read that they only lived at one place Palm trees can be a feature of any site of human habitation with suffi cient irriga-tion in the region to this day and would have grown at Qumran En Feshkha and elsewhere along the coast where there was adequate watermdashthough probably not in the Buqeia45 Diodorus Siculus wrote that in the area of the Dead Sea ldquothe land is good for growing palms wherever it hap-pens to be crossed by rivers with usable water or to be endowed with springs that can irrigate itrdquo (Bibl Hist 2489)

In fact reading exclusively within the parameters of Plinyrsquos text palm trees are at the point that Essenes are introduced associated with the area of Jericho (Hiericuntem palmetis consitam) Only after the introduction of the Essenes do we learn that En Gedi also has palm trees (secundum ab Hierosolymis fertilitate palmetorumque nemoribus ldquosecond to Jerusalem [corr Jericho] in fertility and groves of palmsrdquo) so the way Pliny presents it in his narrative the Essenes seem to be companioned on the one side with the palm trees of Jericho and on the other with those of En Gedi which again creates an image of a wide region More likely however Pliny is vividly using the image of palm trees to emphasize the isolation of the Essenes in this environment in comparison to normal settlements of vil-lages and farms of fertile regions here the barren wilderness by a sea devoid of life is interrupted by small zones of life in which palm trees are the most obvious living entities standing like a crowd around settlements Apart from these there are no other life forms to be seen46

As Burchard pointed out Pliny used the word litora ldquoshoresrdquo in plural meaning a stretch of bays not one shore at one place Th e reference does not indicate just the site of Qumran ldquomais drsquoun district esseacutenienrdquo and therefore Burchard asks ldquo[e]st-ce parce que lrsquoauteur bien savait-il que les Esseacuteniens tenaient en eff et toute la reacutegion entre les grottes au nord de Kh Qumracircn et le Racircs Feshkha au sud y compris peut-ecirctre la Bouqeiʿacircrdquo47

Th at Pliny is referring to a large area comes through also in the emphasis placed on how many Essenes there were He uses the word turba ldquoswarm

45 Note that Solinus describes the Essenes as making their living from date palms palmis victitant

46 See also Burchard ldquoPlinerdquo 56747 Ibid 543


crowd multituderdquo Moreover gens is not an appropriate word for the inhabitants of one single settlement but rather refers to a people like a clan or race who stretch over a country or province as Burchard has noted48 Th at there were so many Essenes yet no sexual reproduction within their gens was precisely why the Essenes were a peculiar wonder in a Graeco-Roman assemblage of remarkable things ita per saeculorum milia incredi-bile dictu gens aeterna est in qua nemo nascitur ldquoIn this manner through thousands of agesmdashincredible to saymdashit is an enduring people in which no one is bornrdquo Th e comment incredibile dictu indicates the entire tone of this description Th e size of the population is one key factor in why this gens is so incredible

Philo of Alexandria and Josephus also mention a huge number of Essenes over 4000 in total (Prob 75 Ant 1820) Philorsquos word ὅμιλος ldquocrowdrdquo or ldquothrongrdquo (Prob 91) reinforces this In Philorsquos Hypothetica Moses trained μυρίους ldquomultitudesrdquo of his pupils for a life of community namely the Essenes and ldquothey dwell in many cities of Judaea and many villages and in great and much-populated throngsrdquo (Hypoth 111 cf 115) Unlike Pliny neither Philo nor Josephus place the Essenes by the Dead Sea but have them in Judaea generally but since Judaea is included in the area Pliny specifi cally defi nes as Essene the evidence is not remotely con-tradictory Philo and Josephus do not need to be read to indicate that the Essenes were evenly spread even if Essenes were found in many places including perhaps (unlike Pliny) En Gedi for Pliny they could not have existed there because En Gedi was totally destroyed

Of course Philo and Josephus may well have known of Essenes most especially living by the Dead Sea in Judaea and simply omitted any detailed identifi cation of them there to guard against the negative associations it could have created People understood that the Dead Sea had bad air49 Strabo has sooty smoke coming out of the lake and tarnishing metal (Geogr 16242) Philo was particularly conscious of the need to breathe good air (Gig 10) and in the case of the ldquoTh erapeutaerdquo Philo extols the

48 Ibid 54149 Th is is a view that persisted until modern times see Daniel the Abbot

(1106ndash8) 27 transl William F Ryan in John Wilkinson Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099ndash1185 (London Hakluyt Society 1988) 38 In the 15th century Father Felix Fabri was told that no one should visit the lake because the stench from the sea makes you vulnerable to infection sickness and death Felix Fabri Evagato-rium 236a


Jewish philosophersrsquo chosen locality at length precisely because of its health-giving breezes which blew from both the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Mareotis (Contempl 22ndash23)50 their choice of location refl ected well on their wisdom Philo could say no such thing about the wisdom of peo-ple living next to the Dead Sea and Pliny himself had to emphasize that the Essenes lived some distance from the shores to preserve themselves from harm

An image of a regional Essene locality does not preclude Hirschfeld being right about some possible temporary Essene presence behind and above En Gedi even though the structures he identifi es are not hermitsrsquo retreats but seasonal huts for agricultural work51 since once the dichoto-mizing tendencies of the debate are removed then one can read Pliny as accommodating numerous Essene sites within the general area sites used not for contemplation but for productive work Hirschfeld himself ended his entire archaeological reassessment of Qumran by noting not only his own discovery of small huts behind En Gedi as being suitable for Essenes in accordance with a reading of Pliny that focused on height but also by noting that Pesach Bar Adonrsquos surveys showing that similar sites were found in 16 locations at the foot of the cliff s or on the natural terrace that runs between En Gedi and Kh Mazin52 He then stated that ldquo[a]nalysis of Plinyrsquos testimony supports the assumption that the site above En-Gedi and similar sites were part of a general phenomenon of ascetic colonies along the western shore of the Dead Sea in the Second Temple Period [italics mine]rdquo here adopting the rival reading of Pliny53

Plinyrsquos evidence does not require a strictly minimalist eitheror situation of only one archaeological site being Essene within this broad region potentially any site in the north-western Dead Sea vicinity might have

50 See Joan E Taylor Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria Philorsquos Th erapeutae Reconsidered (Oxford Oxford University Press 2003) 75ndash81

51 Hirschfeld Qumran in Context 233ndash40 idem ldquoA Settlement of Hermits above En Gedirdquo Tel Aviv 27 (2000) 103ndash55 Hirschfeld notes that this area was sparsely occupied containing 28 small cells David Amit and Jodi Magness ldquoNot a Settlement of Hermits or Essenes A Response to Y Hirschfeld A Settlement of Hermits above ʿEn Gedirdquo Tel Aviv 27 (2000) 273ndash85 have pointed out the sea-sonal agricultural character of these structures

52 Pesach Bar Adon ldquoAnother Settlement of the Judean Desert Sect at ʿEn el-Ghuweir on the Shores of the Dead Seardquo BASOR 227 (1977) 1ndash26 idem ldquoExcavations in the Judean Desertrdquo ʿAtiqot 9 (1989) 1ndash88 [Hebrew]

53 Hirschfeld Qumran in Context 240


been occupied by Essenes in the Second Temple period if we credit Pliny with any validity at all However this is not to say that archaeological proof of Essenes must be found in order to grant Pliny any historical cre-dence In ancient history we cannot look to archaeology for clear proof of every literary attestation or we would have precious little history at all Ultimately as historians are forced to do very frequently we need to rely on sound textual evidence even when archaeology provides inconclusive data or no data at all in order to make any propositions about the past Th is does not result in absolutes merely fair suggestions that may or may not be corroborated Ancient history is not an exact science that can neces-sarily provide sure provable results

Perhaps the best archaeology can do in this case is to establish that cer-tain sites such as Qumran and En Feshkha were Jewish with additional features very appropriate to Essene occupation However the nature of the site itself must be remembered It is surely questionable whether many smaller industrial or agricultural settlements anywhere provide any fi rm indicators of the ethnicity or religious affi liation of the inhabitants A grape-press in an area attested by literary sources to be Jewish and near to archaeological sites of synagogues or miqvaot (and so on) would probably have been operated by Jews even if nothing else indicates this likewise an agricultural or technical installation in an area attested as being occupied by Essene Jews might well have been operated by them even without a single sectarian indicator Th e nature of a site will dictate the nature of the evidence

Given this should the onus be on archaeologists to prove a distinctively Essene archaeology as such We have seen how easily this can come unstuck in the case of the cemetery which at one time was thought to indicate quite clearly a particularly Essene form of burial54 so that other similar burials in Judaea could be identifi ed as Essene55 until it was realized that Nabataeans could also bury their dead in this way56 and it might actually

54 Eg see Emile Puech ldquoTh e Necropolises of Khirbet Qumran and Ain el-Ghuweir and the Essene Belief in Afterliferdquo BASOR 312 (1998) 21ndash36

55 Boaz Zissu ldquolsquoQumran Typersquo Graves in Jerusalem Archaeological Evidence of an Essene Communityrdquo DSD 5 (1998) 158ndash71 trans of idem ldquoField Graves at Beit Zafafa Archaeological Evidence for the Essene Communityrdquo in New Stud-ies on Jerusalem (ed A Faust Ramat Gan Bar Ilan University 1996) 32ndash40 [Hebrew]

56 Konstantinos Politis ldquoKhirbet Qazonerdquo AJA 102 (1998) 596ndash97 idem


simply be a method of burial for people too poor to aff ord rock-cut tombs a type of burial appropriate to Essenes while not necessarily being distinc-tive to them alone57

Archaeologists in favor of the Qumran-Essene hypothesis can adopt an ultra-defensive position in terms of the sitersquos apparent sectarian features when answering criticisms that if features which were previously thought to be ldquoEssenerdquo are not distinctively so at all then the Essenes may not have lived at Qumran But the fact remains that Essenes may have lived at Qumran even if there is not a single incontestable archaeological indicator of their presence (though I think there are some of these)58 just as Chris-tians lived throughout the Roman Empire in the fi rst two centuriesmdashas we fi nd in numerous literary sourcesmdashbut there is virtually nothing in the archaeological record to prove their existence before the 3d c CE Archae-ology can at times greatly help solving historical problems and it may illu-minate the past in myriad ways but it also has its limits in terms of the hard evidence it can provide to prove any given historical hypothesis one way or another

In summary Plinyrsquos infra hos is ambiguous and has warranted careful debate but it is most naturally understood in its literary context as indicat-ing the fl ow of water from the spring of Paneas to the south of the Dead Sea On the basis of Pliny Essenes were considered to live in the region west of the northern part of the Dead Seamdashas far south as En Gedi or as far west as Mar Sabamdashby western explorers and travelers who ventured to

ldquoRescue Excavations in the Nabataean Cemetery at Khirbat Qazone 1996ndash1997rdquo ADAJ 42 (1998) 611ndash14 idem ldquoKhirbet Qazone une neacutecropole nabateacuteenne agrave la mer Morterdquo Le Monde de la Bible 121 (SeptndashOct 1999) 95 idem ldquoTh e Naba-taean Cemetery at Khirbet Qazonerdquo Near Eastern Archaeology 62 (1999) 128 idem ldquoChirbet Qazone Ein nabataumlischer Friedhof am Toten Meerrdquo Welt und Umwelt der Bibel 16 (2000) 76

57 Joan E Taylor ldquoTh e Cemeteries of Khirbet Qumran and Womenrsquos Presence at the Siterdquo DSD 6 (1999) 285ndash323 at 312ndash13

58 On the basis of de Vaux Archaeology E M Laperrousaz Qoumran lrsquoeacutetablissement esseacutenien des bords de la Mer Morte histoire et archeacuteologie du site (Paris A amp J Picard 1976) Jean-Baptiste Humbert ldquoLrsquoespace sacreacute agrave Qumracircn Propo-sitions pour lrsquoarcheacuteologierdquo RB 101 (1994) 161ndash214 idem ldquoSome Remarks on the Archaeology of Qumranrdquo in Galor et al Qumranmdashthe Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls Archaeological Interpretations and Debates 19ndash39 Jodi Magness Th e Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids Mich Eerdmans 2002)


the region or commentators basing themselves on their observations long before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls With the ruins of Qumran once the issue of contemporaneity was established by archaeological inves-tigations this site also was validly considered as being potentially an Essene habitation especially as some of the sitersquos features are consistent with this interpretation though it has become the only site in the minds of some

In cases where a non-Essene interpretation of Qumran has been sug-gested in recent revisions of the archaeology there has been an eff ort to read Pliny as indicating a location for one small group of people in the hills above En Gedi an identifi cation that stretches back to the observations of Lynch As with a Qumran-only picture this runs directly against indica-tors in Plinyrsquos text that he is referring to a region and against the readings of Pliny by classically trained writers of previous eras Even the most seri-ous proponent of the En Gedi theory Yizhar Hirschfeld noted that in fact similar settlements to the Essene habitations he identifi ed stretched up along the coast towards En Feshkha and Qumran A return to the former concept of an Essene region would enable scholars today to move on from a polarization of conceptualizations regarding the Essene locality and the Essenes themselves without demanding exceptional proof that archaeol-ogy may not be able to provide with certainty


However there is some information useful for this discussion that shows how Pliny was read by travelers to the Dead Sea in previous eras that has thus far been represented erroneously Th ere are also comments by people who viewed Kh Qumran prior to the excavations of the 1950s that indi-cate why no one identifi ed the site as Essene All this needs to be remem-bered in case the equation of Qumran as an Essene site is presented as quite arbitrary

Pliny and the Water of Judaea

As is well known Pliny writes a description of Judaea focusing on its water

Iordanes amnis oritur e fonte Paneade qui cognomen dedit Caesareae de qua dicemuus amnis amoenus et quatenus locorum situs patitur ambitiosus accolisque se praebens velut invitus Asphaltiten lacum dirum natura petit a quo postremo ebibitur aquasque laudatas perdit pestilentibus mixtas2

Scrolls (Th e Schweich Lectures on British Archaeology Oxford Oxford Univer-sity Press 1973) 133ndash37 Geza Vermes and Martin Goodman eds Th e Essenes according to the Classical Sources (Sheffi eld JSOT Press 1989) 3 n 19 Menahem Stern Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (Winona Lake Eisenbrauns 1984) 1480ndash81 John J Collins ldquoEssenesrdquo ABD 2619ndash26 at 620 For the argument that Pliny refers to the Essenes as being further inland abovewest of En Gedi see Jean-Paul Audet ldquoQumracircn et la notice de Pline sur les Esseacuteniensrdquo RB 68 (1961) 346ndash87 also Robert A Kraft ldquoPliny on Essenes Pliny on Jewsrdquo DSD 8 (2001) 255ndash61 esp 258 Yizhar Hirschfeld Qumran in Context Reassess-ing the Archaeological Evidence (Peabody Mass Hendrickson 2004) 231ndash33 For a strong defense of the reading that has the Essenes north of En Gedi see Christian Burchard ldquoPline et les Esseacuteniens agrave propos drsquoun article reacutecentrdquo RB 69 (1962) 533ndash69 Th e debate has been nuanced recently in the pages of this journal by the suggestion that while Pliny may refer to Qumran he is untrustworthy and inac-curate Albert I Baumgarten ldquoWho Cares and Why Does it Matter Qumran and the Essenes Once Againrdquo DSD 11 (2004) 174ndash90 at 177ndash78 and see Kraft ldquoPlinyrdquo 261 ldquoI would not try to build much on this part of Plinyrsquos reportingrdquo Magen Broshi has responded by questioning such skepticism noting that ldquothere is no reason why Plinyrsquos testimony should be rejectedrdquo cf ldquoEssenes at Qumran A Rejoinder to Albert Baumgartenrdquo DSD 14 (2007) 25ndash33 at 29

2 C Plini Secundi Naturalis Historiae ed Charles Mayhoff (Stuttgart B G Teubner 1967) 390ndash92

































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































Documents

Pliniu