The Qumran Discoveries
The Jewish separatist movement, perhaps the Essenes, at Qumran emphasised periodic cleansing in water as a means of receiving spiritual sanctification as outlined in “The Manual of Discipline” (III,4; IV,20). Two rock-hewn cisterns lined with a plaster coating were uncovered during excavations.
One of these was long and deep, having fourteen stone steps at one end that gave access to the water at various levels. Another large cistern near the South wall of the main building had a similar grouping of steps and suggested that these structures were used periodically as baptisteries. Prof. John Allegro, whose startling claims did not endear him to the scholastic community claimed these immediately as baptisteries, a claim subsequently accepted by more conservative scholars.
Allegro writes:
“This rite of initiation into the full membership of the Community was probably accompanied by an initial baptism ceremony…Certainly this would accord with the injunction of the Damascus Document that no man shall bathe in water of less depth than that required to cover a person… Once a person had been admitted to the Purity of the Many he could be baptised in the same water as other full members, but the Sect was careful that no novitiate or non-member was allowed to touch this water, nor any of his possessions, since he was ritually `unclean’: “Let him (the `sinner’) not enter the water to come into touch with the purity of the holy men. For such shall not be cleansed until they have repented of their wickedness; for uncleanness is on all transgressors of His word.” Salvation could come to the Qumran Covenanter only by complete separation of himself and his possessions from the world. This was not prompted by any smug self-righteousness on his part, but because he sincerely believed that pollution from the non-purified world meant the risk of contact with the dominion of Belial or the Devil, which might compromise the constant battle he was fighting within himself against the powers of evil.” The Dead Sea Scrolls by John Allegro. pp.121,122. Penguin Books Ltd. 1956.
The Qumran pools, or mikva’ot, are of great interest to many scholars. It matters little for the purpose of this paper whether the occupants of Khirbet Qumran were the Essenes or some other separatist group. We assume it was they who hid the scrolls in the caves. The Essenes certainly were known to have practised ceremonial ablutions, and it was logical to expect that they would have had at least one mikveh for the rite of immersion. Many water pools were found at Qumran, yet until Yadin’s discoveries on Masada none of them were identified as a mikveh.
Roland de Vaux led a French excavation at Qumran from 1947 to 1954. In 1973 he published a report on his excavations in which he wrote that two small water installations “were certainly baths, but archaeology is powerless to determine whether the baths taken in them had ritual significance.” (“Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls” p 132.) By 1978 de Vaux modified this to: “The care taken in the constructing these installations may suggest that they were intended for the ceremony of ritual immersion.”
But in an article printed in the Bulletin of The American Schools Of Oriental Research (No 256, 1984), Dr Bryant G. Wood of the University of Toronto referred to the two types of pools that had steps leading down to them, one a narrow flight to allow access of a water carrier and the other with full width steps occupying a great deal of space that otherwise would have been filled with stored water which he believed allowed access to the water by a number of people. “The obvious conclusion is that the full-width steps were intended to provide easy access on a regular basis for more than a few people. That such steps were not necessary for the ordinary drawing of water is indicated by the fact that two cisterns were not equipped with steps.” He concluded that “these two types of cisterns served different aspects of life at Qumran – the narrow stepped cisterns for the practical needs of the community, and the wide stepped cisterns for their religious requirements.” Page 49.
An interesting feature of many mikva’ot is a low dividing wall down the steps. The baptisteries at Qumran had such dividing walls and one has a triple division. Archaeologists have suggested that participants were meant to enter the mikveh down one side and leave on the other, the purpose being to avoid treading on a step that he or she had touched in an impure state.
Dr Stephen G. Price, of the Sacred Heart School of Theology, Hales Corners, Wisconsin, elaborates on this:
“In support of the suggestion that the stairs to such pools were divided so as to allow (impure) descent on one side and (purified) ascent on the other, let me cite the apocryphal Christian gospel fragment known as Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 840 (found in Ron Cameron, “The Other Gospels” [Harper & Row, 1984]). There the chief priest in dialogue with Jesus in the Temple Court claims that bathing and changing of clothes are necessary for everyone in that holy place. Then the priest states: “I am clean. For I have bathed myself in the pool of David and have gone down by the one stair and come up by the other and have put on white and clean clothes, and (only) then have I come hither and viewed these holy utensils.” The distinction of the stairs is evidence of the priest’s precautions.” Biblical Archaeology Review May 87.
However this point of view differed from that of Rabbi David M. Friedman, Congregation Darchei Noam, Oceanside, New York, who says: “The explanations offered for the division of the stairways leading to the Mikveh by a low wall or pillars are not sound. The stairway itself, being Mehubar L’Karkah permanently affixed to the ground, can neither contract nor impart ritual impurity. If the fear was contact with ritual contaminants such as dead insects or the like, such a nominal division couldn’t preclude a mishap. More likely, larger Mikva’ot that had a large volume of users, had these dividers to separate those entering from those exiting. The entire process was simply a formality similar to that mentioned in the Mishnah (Middot 2:2) of entering and exiting the Temple Mount using different gates.” Biblical Archaeology Review May 87.
However, this viewpoint is unlikely as in Jerusalem the laws stated that unclean had to walk in the centre of the road or bridge (where the drains were and the donkeys walked), while the clean on their way to the Temple walked on the side of the roads nearest buildings, a sight still to be seen today. Also the Early church practise was to build divided steps as a symbol of “rising to walk in newness of life.”
Professor Wood quotes from one of the scrolls to support his argument that not only were the pools at Qumran used for ceremonial purposes, but that the participant actually immersed himself in them. “Let him not enter into the water to touch the purity of the men of holiness, for they shall not be pure except they have repented of their wickedness” (“Manual of Discipline” 5:13-14). On the question of the mode of the ceremony, whether the members immersed themselves fully or sprinkled he concluded, “The members of the Qumran sect most certainly dipped.”
Dr William Sanford la Sor in the January 1987 edition of the “Biblical Archaeology Review” claims that “the archaeological and Mishnaic evidence seems to support the argument for immersion. That is clearly what occurred in the contemporaneous Jewish mikva’ot, so that is probably what happened in early Jewish baptism.” Page 58. From the writings of Rabbi Maimonides, 12th Century AD master of Rabbinic literature, the author quotes an interesting statement: “Whosoever immerses himself must immerse his whole body, naked, and all of it at once…And if any who is unclean immerses himself in his garments, the immersion still avails him since the water enters through the garments and these do not interpose.” Even the hair must be totally covered, however the Mishnah states, “For immersion to be valid, no part of the body’s surface may be untouched by water. However, it is not needful that the water should enter into every orifice and wrinkle” Mikva’ot 8:5. The Mishnah further states that the immersion pool must contain a minimum of 40 seahs, about 270 litres of water (1000 by some calculations), enough for a person standing in it to be completely immersed, (the knees may be bent), in a deep baptistery no smaller than a cubit square. It can easily be seen how significant these archaeological discoveries have been on the mode of first century baptism.
