Is it about Time to Discard All You Know about Qumran?

Simone Paganini, a young Italian exegete teaching in Vienna and Innsbruck, has just published a book Qumran: Le rovine della luna questioning many of the commonly held views about Qumran. His main arguments are the following: [1] The people who lived in Qumran were not the hypothetical sectarian Essene community that Josephus wrote about. Instead, they were men and women engaged in farming and commerce, particularly in the manufacture of vessels for priestly use. [2] The scrolls found in various caves near the Dead Sea were not produced in Qumran. Rather, they belonged to the library of the Temple of Jerusalem. The scrolls were hidden in the caves to save them from the impending destruction of the Temple by the Roman army. [3] The scroll 7Q5 does not contain a verse from the Gospel of Mark as previous thought by some scholars.

About: Dr. Simone Paganini