RT Article
T1 How the "Jerusalem Scrolls" Became the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran Cave 1: Archaeology, the Antiquities Market, and the Spaces In Between
JF Harvard theological review
VO 115
IS 1
SP 1
OP 22
A1 Nongbri, Brent 1977-
LA English
PB Cambridge Univ. Press
YR 2022
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/180641676X
AB Seven animal hide scrolls with Hebrew and Aramaic writing were sold in Jerusalem in 1947. Additional smaller fragments of similar scrolls were sold from 1948 to 1950. Within a few years of their appearance, these "Jerusalem Scrolls" as they were then known, became "the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran Cave 1." While this change of names may seem trivial, it glosses over some difficult questions about the provenance of these materials. What we now call "Cave 1Q" or "Qumran Cave 1" was excavated in 1949, but scholarship reveals considerable confusion concerning which purchased scrolls can be materially connected to fragments that were excavated by archaeologists under controlled conditions in Cave 1. Furthermore, Cave 1 is often treated as if it was a sealed context rather than the highly contaminated site that it actually was at the time of its excavation by archaeologists. For these reasons, it is not completely clear whether all the scrolls usually assigned to Cave 1 actually originated at this site. This article is an attempt to sort through the evidence to determine exactly which scrolls and fragments attributed to Cave 1 were purchased, when and from whom such pieces were purchased, and what can actually be known with confidence about the connection of these "Jerusalem Scrolls" with the site we now call Qumran Cave 1.
K1 Dead Sea Scrolls
K1 Jerusalem Scrolls
K1 Qumran
K1 after the fact provenance
K1 antiquities market
K1 archaeological context
K1 manuscript discovery stories
K1 Provenance
DO 10.1017/S0017816022000037