Pure Matter : on the ritual-purity status of glass at Qumran

Abstract

This paper adapts Anthony’s methodology for the case of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, with a view to understanding further the inhabitants of Qumran and the group(s) depicted in the Scrolls vis-à-vis their use of glass vessels and their outlook on the ritual-purity status of glass. The study concludes that the archaeological evidence for glass at Qumran and the Scrolls independently point in a similar direction. Compared to pottery, the glass corpus is small, which could indicate that glass was used infrequently at Qumran or that, unlike pottery, it could be purified in water and reused if it had contracted ritual impurity. Without necessarily proving the latter explanation, an analysis of halakhic passages in the Scrolls, supplemented by an examination of specific biblical and rabbinic texts, reveals that this reading of the archaeological evidence is highly plausible. In the process, the paper also explores, albeit briefly, the subtle differences between approaches that conflate texts and archaeology all too soon and those that integrate the different sources at a secondary stage of the research process, highlighting problems with previous interpretations of the glass-vessel corpus from Qumran.