Dr. Gary
Gromacki
Associate Professor of Bible and
Homiletics
Baptist Bible Seminary
Clarks Summit,
Pennsylvania
<ggromacki>at <bbc>dot <edu>
This picture shows the steps into a Quman mikvah (ritual bath). The steps show earthquake damage.
Josephus describes how the Essenes purified themselves through immersion before participating in their communal meals:
"Then, after working without interruption until the fifth hour, they reassemble in the same place and, girded with linen loin cloths, bathe themselves thus in cold water. After this purification they assemble in a special building to which no one is admitted who is not of the same faith; they themselves only enter the refectory if they are pure, as though into a holy precinct" (War 2:129).
Josephus indicates that the Essenes had different levels of initiation.
"They are divided into four lots according to the duration of their discipline, and the juniors are so inferior to their elders that if the latter touch them they wash themselves as though they had been in contact with a stranger" (War 2:150).
Could these stepped pools at Qumran have been multifunctional serving water for cisterns and ritual baths? Jodi Magness writes, "the presence of steps and additional features (such as partitions) indicates that these pools were designed to serve primarily (if not always) as miqva'ot...The restricted access to immersion water described in the sectarian scrolls and by Josephus means that pools could not have functioned simultaneously as a miqveh and as a community cistern (or as a community bath for secular purposes). For only those individuals who were permitted access to the miqva'ot could drink from them; others would have been denied access to the water in those pools. No such restrictions applied to cisterns and other pools that were not used for purificatory purposes. The absence of heated pools or steam rooms (and systems for heating water), mosaic floors, and built up bathtubs indicates that the pools of Qumran were not part of a bathhouse." (Jodi Magness, Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002], 154-155).
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LINKS TO OTHER DSS WEB PAGES BY DR. GARY GROMACKI
Doctrine of God Doctrine of the Bible Doctrine of Man and Sin
Doctrine of Salvation Doctrine of the Community Doctrine of the Messiah
Doctrine of Eschatology Archaeology of Qumran Bibliography on the DSS
Web Sites on the DSS DSS Table of Contents