Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? : the search for the secret of Qumran

This text challenges existing theories of the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls and offers the author's theory with wide-ranging implications.

The story behind the Dead Sea Scrolls has been in dispute since they were discovered in 1947 in caves in the village of Qumran, now on Jordan's West Bank.

The most popular theory asserts that they were sacred writings of the Essenes, an ancient Jewish pacifist, communal sect of which Jesus may even have been a member.

Norman Golb overturns this theory in this book and suggests that the scrolls are a wide-ranging collection brought by Palestinian Jews fleeing the Roman seige of Jerusalem.

The site of Qumran was not an Essene monastery but a Jewish rebel fortress, says Golb.

These claims are based on the author's own fieldwork, combining an archaeological, historical and textual evidence with reinterpretation of the scrolls themselves as a varied collection of documents which embody a wide spectrum of doctrines, genres and themes.

This new theory has great implications for the development of both Judaism and Christianity during the period of massive upheaval between the writing of the Hebrew Bible and the birth of the New Testament. Golb portrays the spiritual fervour of the people who lived and wrote in this age, and makes a plea for scholars to reject political reinterpretations and read the scrolls only in their own context.