The Essenes, a strict ancient Jewish sect devoted to religious purity and linked to the Dead Sea Scrolls, are one of the most interesting and mysterious religious elements in Judaea around the time of ...

As you leave Jerusalem and go to the south and to the east, toward the Dead Sea, the terrain changes rapidly and starkly. You move off gradually from [the] ... rolling hillside, through the ravines, ...

Those who make a great show of being religiously pure often lead lives that are secretly very dirty -- or at least so it was in biblical times. Recent bioarchaeological findings at the ancient Dead ...

Sensational charges have flown across the Atlantic in recent weeks, and refreshingly, their origin has not been political. Sensitive points in Biblical history have relegated some international issues ...

One of the less sanitary aspects of life in Jesus' day has come into play in the debate over who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, how they lived and how they died. The latest evidence comes from a site ...

Rival groups of scholars excavating this dusty plateau overlooking the Dead Sea are arguing over who lived here in biblical times — ordinary farmers or the Essenes, a monastic sect seen by some as a ...

Recently, Israeli paleopathologist Joseph Zias and American biblical scholar James Tabor claimed that primitive latrines they discovered close to the ancient city of Qumran confirm that Essenes had ...

Following directions in the Dead Sea Scrolls, archeologists have found the latrines used by the sect that produced the scrolls, discovering that efforts to achieve ritual purity inadvertently exposed ...

From time to time sensational claims that the Teacher of Righteousness of the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran anticipated the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus have received much notice in the press.

As you leave Jerusalem and go to the south and to the east, toward the Dead Sea, the terrain changes rapidly and starkly. You move off gradually from [the] ... rolling hillside, through the ravines, ...