The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

and in 1958, an associated site at Ein Feshka, less than a mile to the south, was also excavated. In his eagerness to distance the Qumran community from any connection with early Christianity, de Vaux rushed his conclusions about dating into print. In some instances, he did not even wait for archaeological evidence to support him. As early as 1954, the Jesuit professor Robert North noted no fewer than four cases in which de Vaux had been forced to retract on his dating. North also found it distressing that, even on so crucial a matter, no specialists ‘independently of de Vaux’s influence’ were asked to contribute their conclusions.⁷ But it was not de Vaux’s style to invite opinions that might conflict with his own and shed a more controversial light on the material. Nor was he eager to announce his errors when they occurred. Although quick to publish and publicise conclusions that confirmed his thesis, he was markedly more dilatory in retracting them when they proved erroneous.

One important element for de Vaux was a thick layer of ash found to be blanketing the surroundings of the ruins. This layer of ash patently attested to a fire of some sort, which had obviously caused considerable destruction. Indeed, it had led to Qumran’s being partially, if not wholly, abandoned for some years. A study of the coins found at the site revealed that the fire had occurred at some time towards the beginning of the reign of Herod the Great, who occupied the throne from 37 bc until 4 BC. The same data indicated that rebuilding had commenced under the regime of Herod’s son, Archelaus, who ruled (not as king, but as ethnarch) from 4 BC until AD 6.

According to de Vaux’s thesis, the Qumran community consisted of supposedly placid, peace-loving and ascetic ‘Essenes’, on good terms with Herod as with everyone else. If this were the case, the fire which destroyed the community should have resulted not from any deliberate human intention — from an act of war, for example — but from an accident, or a natural disaster. Fortunately for de Vaux, a large crack was found running through a cistern. Although independent researchers found no indication that the crack extended any further, de Vaux claimed to have traced it through the whole of the ruins, the whole of the Qumran community.⁸ Even if it did, a number of experts concluded, it could probably be ascribed to erosion.⁹ For de Vaux, however, the crack, such as it was, seemed the result of one of the many earthquakes the region has suffered over the centuries. Instead of trying to identify the cause of the crack, in other words, de Vaux went rummaging for an earthquake that might have been responsible. As it happened, there was a more or less convenient earthquake on record. Josephus speaks of one that occurred towards the beginning of Herod’s reign, in 31 Be. This, de Vaux concluded, had caused the fire which led to the abandoning of the community. He did not bother to explain why rebuilding did not commence for a quarter of a century before, suddenly, proceeding with noticeable rapidity.

Robert Eisenman points to the strikingly precise timing of the delay in rebuilding. It coincides perfectly with Herod’s reign. No sooner had he died than reconstruction promptly began — and part of this reconstruction consisted of strengthening the defensive towers, as well as creating a rampart. It would thus seem clear, for some reason which de Vaux chose to ignore, that no one dared to rebuild Qumran while Herod remained on the throne. But why should that be the case if the community were on as congenial a footing with Herod as de Vaux maintained, and if the destruction of the community resulted from an earthquake? It would appear much more likely that the community was destroyed deliberately, on Herod’s orders, and that no reconstruction could begin until after his death. But why should Herod order the destruction of a community so placid, so universally loved, so divorced from political activity?

Whether wilfully or through negligence, de Vaux remained oblivious of such questions. Eventually, however, the logic he mustered to support his hypothetical earthquake became too strained even for the closest of his supporters, the then Father Milik. In 1957, Milik wrote of the fire and the alleged earthquake that:

the archaeological evidence from Qumran is not unambiguous as to the order of these two events… the thick layers of ashes suggests a very violent conflagration, better to be explained as a result of a conscious attempt to burn down the whole building; so the ashes may show the traces of an intentional destruction of Qumran.¹⁰

Whether the fire was caused by earthquake or by deliberate human agency cannot be definitively established. Certainly the evidence offers less support to de Vaux than it does to Milik and Eisenman, who, on this unique occasion, are in accord. Nevertheless, many adherents of the consensus still invoke the earthquake, and it still figures with metronomic regularity in their texts.

In another instance, however, de Vaux’s misinterpretation of the evidence — or, to put the matter charitably, wishful thinking — was much more conclusively exposed. Very early in his excavations, he found a heavily oxidised coin on which, he said, he ‘believed’ he could discern the insignia of the Roman 10th Legion.¹¹ Purporting to cite Josephus, he also said that the 10th Legion had conquered Jericho, eight miles away, in June of ad 68. Everything seemed to fit nicely. On the basis of his coin, de Vaux argued that Qumran must have been destroyed by the 10th Legion in ad 68. ‘No manuscript of the caves’, he later declared, waxing dogmatic on the basis of questionable data, ‘can be later than June, ad 68.’¹²

De Vaux had first described his discovery of the coin in 1954, in Revue biblique. He repeated his account five years later, in 1959, in the same journal.¹³ The ‘fact’ of the coin, and de Vaux’s emphatic dating on the basis of it, thus became enshrined in the established corpus of evidence routinely invoked by adherents of the consensus. Thus, for example, Frank Cross would write that the coin stamped with the insignia of the 10th Legion constituted ‘grim confirmation’.¹⁴

De Vaux, however, had made two bizarre errors. In the first place, he had somehow contrived to misread Josephus, ascribing to Josephus precisely the opposite of what Josephus in fact said. Josephus most emphatically did not assert that the 10th Legion captured Jericho in ad 68. As Professor Cecil Roth demonstrated, of the three Roman legions in the vicinity, only the 10th was not engaged in the conquest of Jericho.¹⁵ The 10th Legion had remained a considerable distance to the north, guarding the top of the Jordan Valley. In the second place, the coin de Vaux had found proved not to be from the 10th Legion at all, or, for that matter, from any other. Although badly damaged and oxidised, the coin, when subjected to expert scrutiny, proved to have come from Ashkelon and to date from AD 72 or 73.

Here was a blunder that could not be equivocated away. De Vaux had no choice but to publish a formal retraction. This retraction, however, appeared only as a footnote in his opus L’archeologie et les manuscrits de la mer morte, published in French in 1961 and in English translation in 1973. ‘Mention of this was unfortunate’, de Vaux says laconically, ‘for this coin does not exist.’¹⁶

On the whole, de Vaux tended to be shamelessly cavalier in his conclusions about coins. When he found any that did not conform to his theories, he simply dismissed them. Thus, for example, he found one dating from the period between ad 138 and 161. He shrugged off its possible relevance with the comment that it ‘must have been lost by a passer-by’.¹⁷ By the same token, of course, an earlier coin, on which he attempted to establish his dating and chronology for Qumran, could also have been lost by a passer-by; but de Vaux seems not to have considered this possibility.

Of the archaeological evidence found at Qumran, coins have been particularly important to the international team and the adherents of their consensus. Indeed, it was on the basis of this evidence that they deduced the timespan of the community; and it was through their interpretation of this evidence that they established their dating and chronology. Prior to Eisenman, however, no one had bothered to question their misinterpretation. Roth and Driver, as we have seen, endeavoured to establish a chronology on the basis of the internal evidence of the scrolls themselves. De Vaux and the international team were able to discredit them simply by invoking the external evidence supposedly provided by the coins. That this evidence had been spuriously interpreted went unnoticed. Eisenman recognised that Roth and Driver, arguing on the basis of internal evidence, had in fact been correct. But in order to prove this, he had first to expose the erroneous interpretation of the external evidence. He began with the coin distribution, pointing out that they revealed two periods of peak activity.

Some 450 bronze coins were discovered at Qumran in the course of excavation. They encompassed a span of some two and a half centuries, from 135 BC to AD 136. The following table groups them according to the reigns in which they were minted:

1 coin from 135-104 BC

1 coin from 104 BC

143 coins from 103-76 bc