Jonathan Keller's List: Old Testament

• may have been the textual treasures of several groups, hidden away during wartime—and may even be "the great treasure from the Jerusalem Temple,"
• new research suggests many of the Dead Sea Scrolls originated elsewhere and were written by multiple Jewish groups, some fleeing the circa-A.D. 70 Roman siege that destroyed the legendary Temple in Jerusalem.
• Artifacts discovered by Peleg's team during their excavations suggest Qumran once served as an ancient pottery factory. The supposed baths may have actually been pools to capture and separate clay.
• And on Jerusalem's Mount Zion, archaeologists recently discovered and deciphered a two-thousand-year-old cup with the phrase "Lord, I have returned" inscribed on its sides in a cryptic code similar to one used in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
• To some experts, the code suggests that religious leaders from Jerusalem authored at least some of the scrolls.
• According to an emerging theory, the Essenes may have actually been Jerusalem Temple priests who went into self-imposed exile in the second century B.C., after kings unlawfully assumed the role of high priest.
• Many modern archaeologists such as Cargill believe the Essenes authored some, but not all, of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

• chemical analysis on vessel fragments from the Qumran-area caves.

   

  "We take a piece of ceramic, we grind it, we send it to a nuclear reactor, where it's bombarded with neutrons, then we can measure the chemical fingerprint of the clay of which the pottery was made," Gunneweg says in the documentary.

   

  "Since there is no clay on Earth with the exact chemical composition—it is like DNA—you can point to a specific area and say this pottery was made here, that pottery was made over here."
• Gunneweg's conclusion: Only half of the pottery that held the Dead Sea Scrolls is local to Qumran.

• "The Jerusalem theory has been rejected by virtually everyone in the field," he said.

   

  "The notion that someone brought a bunch of scrolls together from some other location and deposited them in a cave is very, very unlikely," Schiffman added.

   

  "The reason is that most of the [the scrolls] fit a coherent theme and hang together.

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• Gibeah (Hebrew: גבעה‎) – could be a variation of the Hebrew word meaning “hill,”
• It is located along the Central Benjamin Plateau, 3 miles (4,8 km) north of Jerusalem
• Benjamin allotment - Joshua 18:28
• The Turning Out of the Concubine of Gibeah, and the Battle of Gibeah - (Israelite Civil War) - Judges 19-21
• Israel’s first king, King Saul, reigned from Gibeah for 38 years - 1 Samuel 8-3
• Prophetic mention during the period of the Divided Kingdom - Hosea 5:8, 9:9, 10:9; Isaiah 10:29
• The 10th Roman Legion camped here in their assault on Jerusalem in 70 A.D. - Josephus, War of the Jews

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•  ²⁹And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.

   ³⁰And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day: consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.