Outlook Grim for Final Report on Qumran Excavation

Don’t expect the final report on the excavation of Qumran any time soon. Probably never.

The latest effort to prepare and publish a final report is sliding into oblivion. It may already be there. “We are not writing any final report. It is not on the program,” admits Mme Pauline Donceel-Voûte, the scholar who was supposedly preparing the report.

Père Roland de Vaux of the French École Biblique in Jerusalem, who directed five seasons of excavations in the 1950s, died in 1971 without writing a final report. In the late 1980s, aroused by public concern over the lack of publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the École Biblique engaged Robert Donceel, a Belgian archaeologist, to prepare a final report based on de Vaux’s extensive notes, photographs and artifacts from the dig. Donceel, according to sources at the École, brought his wife, Pauline Donceel-Voûte, into the project; contrary to the contract, she has taken it over (“usurped” was the word used by a responsible École Biblique scholar) and has come up with an interpretation of the site that has won little favor (“stupid” was the word he used).

Mme Donceel claims that the École Biblique promised her husband all sorts of assistance, but when he came to Jerusalem none was provided. She stepped in to help him. Originally, she had no intention of becoming involved in this project. She has been “in the limelight,” she says, only because she speaks better English than he. Most of the work is his, she says.

Relations between the Donceels and the École Biblique have descended to the point where the two sides are barely speaking to one another. The last contact, we were told, was over a year ago.