DAY 12 - Judean Wilderness and Qumran

The highlight of today’s field trip will be the visit to Qumran. On the way there, we will follow the Old Jericho Road, which represents a steep drop in elevation from Jerusalem to Jericho (from 800 meters/2600 feet on Mount Zion in Jerusalem) to 225 meters/740 feet below sea level. If you are counting, this is an elevation loss of about 1000 meters/3000 feet! This ancient itinerary is of course the context of the parable of the Good Samaritan as recorded in Luke 10.

Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) is a famous archaeological site with a settlement going back to some of the earliest human presence in the Jordan Valley. The site is also a matter of intense debate with respect to the destruction of the city by Joshua (Joshua 2, 6). The 20th century excavator John Garstang interpreted the archaeological evidence to support the biblical narrative that the site was destroyed during the early part of the Late Bronze Age (1400 B.C.). Kathleen Kenyon, one of the best and most colorful figures among archaeologists during the post World War II era, questioned Garstang’s conclusions. Her interpretation (now still the majority view among archaeologists) created doubts as to the veracity of the biblical record in Joshua. More recently, however, Bryant Wood has again made a strong case for the presence of a settlement at Jericho which would coincide with the biblical account of Jericho’s destruction by Joshua. If you want to dig deeper on this topic, here is a great website.

Qumran is famous for several reasons such as its location (just south of Jericho), community, architecture and material culture, which includes a literal treasure trove of amazingly preserved texts: The Dead Sea Scrolls. Once the news reached the scholarly world that these texts had been found in 1947, William Foxwell Albright, perhaps one of the greatest minds in biblical studies in the 20th century, declared this was one the most significant discoveries ever found in the Holy Land. These texts date back to the 3rd century B.C. to the 1st century A.D. Some 230 manuscripts are biblical in nature while other non-biblical texts offer us great insights into the religious traditions of the community that lived at Qumran. Scholars continue to study these texts with great interest since they help us understand both the Old Testament texts, as well the culture of New Testament times, including the ministry of John the Baptist (Luke 1-3; ANT pp 160-161).

A real treat for us to close the day will be a visit to the Good Samaritan Museum, a recently opened museum near Qumran with a collection of wonderful mosaics from the Byzantine era. Just in case we need a quick brush up on our Byzantine history, here is a popular summary of the Byzantine Empire (4th century A.D. to the fall of Constantinople in A.D. 1453).

• Scripture References: Luke 10; Joshua 2, 6; Luke 1-3
• Text References: AOT pp. 82-84, 205-210; ANT pp. 160-161