Books in Brief

Fouilles de Khirbet Qumran et de Ain Feshkha

Jean-Baptiste Humbert and Alain Chambon (Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Gottingen, 1994) 418 pp. 220 Swiss francs. Available through the Biblical Archaeology Society (tel. 1–800-221–4644) for $175.

This extraordinary book of over 400 folio pages was instigated by a suggestion from former chief scroll editor John Strugnell and was prepared by Jean-Baptiste Humbert, Alain Chambon and their colleagues at the École Biblique et Archéologique in Jerusalem. Here they present to the public, as quickly and completely as possible, the raw materials from the excavations at Qumran from 1951 to 1957, directed by the École’s Père Roland de Vaux. Although de Vaux published numerous preliminary reports and some semi-popular lectures on the excavation, he died in 1971 without having written a final report.

As pressure to release photographs of the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls built up in the late 1980s, the École decided to employ outside help to prepare the final report of de Vaux’s excavations. Their choice fell on a Belgian archaeologist, Robert Donceel of the Catholic University of Louvain. Regrettably, after the better part of a decade, it is now clear that this solution has not worked well. Donceel has withdrawn to a secondary position in favor of his wife, Pauline Donceel-Voûte, and may never produce a final report.