Qumran
The first archaeologists to excavate the later Jewish ruins at Qumran identified them with the ascetic community that produced the Dead Sea Scroll known as the Manual of Discipline, but recent interpretations by other archaeologists have suggested the inhabitants of the ruins lived in relative luxury and that the scrolls may have come from Jerusalem. Most recently, some archaelogists have proposed that Qumran was a pottery manufacturing center before its destruction by the Romans. At present, scholars do not agree on whether any link can be established between the ruins at Qumran and the scrolls found in the nearby caves.
See C. T. Frisch, The Qumran Community (1956, repr. 1972); J. van der Ploeg, The Excavations at Qumran (1958).
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