Chernoivanenko V. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Qumran Site Identification: Historiography.

The thesis is dedicated to two important questions in Qumran Studies - the question of the authorship of the Dead See Scrolls and the question of the identification of the Qumran site, as well as to the place of these questions in current historiography. The dissertation examines and characterizes the first attempts to interpret the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It analyzes the main postulates of the "standard" (Qumran-Essene) theory, surveys how the "Essene heritage" has been mythologized, and defines its three main instruments (Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient historia writers), makes a general overview of archaeological studies of previous years, systematizes and describes all existing views and theories on the aforementioned questions, including those alternative to the "standard" model, and finally traces the inception and evolution of the Jerusalem theory, which the author believes to be the best alternative theory to the "standard" model. Besides a historiographic systematization, the author also includes two analytical studies in the work: one dedicated to the mythologization of the "Essene heritage" in the XXth century, and the other to the Jerusalem theory, its evolution and criticism of the Qumran-Essene theory. The author reaches the conclusion that Qumran Studies of the early XXIst century are far from monolithic or even from a hypothetical consensus in identification of the Qumran site and the authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls; each theory continues to hold to its own arguments, at best widening its horizons and allowing for a certain inner theoretical modification; the Qumran-Essene (mostly in its incarnation as the "Groningen hypothesis") and the Jerusalem theories have proven themselves to be the best-grounded theoretically and to have the most evidence in their favor. They have been time tested, and have only gained new adherents. Most other theories are closer to hypotheses (even though they are often called "theories" in scholar literature), and are not systematic theoretical constructs, but have rather shaky foundations; in general, it is hard to speak of any possibility of any kind of absolute reconstruction in Qumran Studies, as in any other branch of ancient history, and thus we come to a notion totally acceptable to a modern scholar - the notion that a study of this topic is merely an attempt at subjective reconstruction.