Biblical Hebrew Forum

[dwashbur AT nyx.net]

*sigh* Here we go again.  This has all been answered multiple times on lists 
devoted to DSS 
matters.  And I'm not sure what any of it has to do with b-hebrew...

On 24 May 2006 at 5:56, goranson AT duke.edu wrote:

> There is no consensus on the meaning of the name "Qumran." Joan Taylor's 
> 2002
> p.144-64 Palestine Exploration Quarterly article is a good survey on the
> question. She, like others (e.g. S. Bowman, Revue de Qumran 
> ["priests"]), look,
> not to Hebrew, but to Arabic or Aramaic.
> Briefly, as it wouldn't be related to Hebrew unless knowing the meaning of
> "Qumran" would help characterize the site and its Hebrew scrolls:
> Though a few have proposed Qumran was a fort, it was not built with 
> fortified
> walls, hence is not a fort. It is not at a major crossing. The water and 
> gates
> are not protected. No Hasmonean military remains have been published. 
> Compare
> En Boqeq published by Mordechai Gichon for a real Dead Sea area fort. The
> arrowheads likely were from a minor skirmish between Roman soldiers and 
> zealot
> squatters who moved in in 68 after the Essenes left for east of the 
> Jordan. The
> caves are surely linked with the site; Cave 4, for instance, is entered only
> through the site. The pottery links, the inkwells, the match of 
> Qumran/Feshkha
> with Pliny's account from his Herod the Great era source M. Agrippa, the
> sectarian scroll content, the ostraca published in the Humbert-Gunneweg 
> volume,
> among other links, do not go away.

Dave Washburn
Encephaloriasis: That condition generated when the person you are dealing 
with is so 
incredibly stupid, you can actually feel your own brain cells drying up and 
flaking off.