History an Archaeology and the debates of the Qumran Manuscripts

Abstract

In the year 1947, in a region in the Judean Desert near the shores of the Dead Sea, was found one of the most important collections of ancient manuscripts, known as the Qumran Manuscripts. Some of the caves in which the manuscripts were discovered are close to an old settlement and early researchers deduced that these manuscripts had been written in those facilities by a Jewish religious group. Subsequent investigations, starting from Archeology, would come to question this initial thesis defended mainly by historians and a current debate would be established until today. This article makes a historiographic reconstruction that presents the main points of this debate and proposes that the maintenance of it and the difficulty of reaching a consensus between History and Archeology are related to the epistemological field of these disciplines, with emphasis on the role attributed to the textual and material sources.