Old Caves and Young Caves

Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra (1)

1 TDMAM - Textes et documents de la Méditerranée antique et médiévale (Centre Paul-Albert Février)

A statistical analysis of the average age of the scrolls of each of the Qumran caves proves that the manuscripts from caves 1 and 4 cannot come from the same collection as those found in caves 2,3,5,6 and 11 (p<0.0001 !), at least not as random samples. The scenario that all or most caves served as emergency hiding places for the Qumran collection around 68 CE has therefore to be discarded or fundamentally modified. Most probably, the "old" caves 1 and 4 represent the Qumran collection at an earlier point in history than the "young" caves 2,3,5,6,11.

Mots clés: Qumran; Dead Sea Scrolls; Paleography; Statistics; Kruskal-Wallis

Domaines: Religions

Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra. Old Caves and Young Caves: Two Qumran Collections?. 2005. ⟨hal-00148281⟩