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Was John the Baptist Really Buried at Qumran?
The circumstantial, indirect, and direct evidence is so overwhelming that I believe the answer to this question has to be answered in the affirmative. At the risk of being repetitive, the essential elements of the evidence are as follows:
1. The testimony of the Christian Scriptures, and of Flavius Josephus, that John the Baptist was beheaded—an extremely unusual form of execution at the time—not far from Qumran.
2. The view of a good proportion of international scholars that John the Baptist, at one period in his life, belonged to the community of the Qumran Essenes. In addition, the evidence previously cited in this book seems to confirm this probability. It would, therefore, be entirely possible that John the Baptist was buried at Qumran because of his role as a previous member.
3. Analysis of the literature, and of unpublished material, including Jozef Milik’s revelation that he excavated a grave at Qumran containing a headless skeleton, which he considered might be that of John the Baptist; and Joseph Zias’s confirmation that one particular skeleton had been singled out and held back from examination—a skeleton whose skull is not referred to in the literature, unlike detailed results for bones from almost every other grave.
4. Location of the grave containing the held-back bone material as that identified by Jozef Milik, and its being marked by a single palm frond—not seen on any other grave in the cemeteries at Qumran.
5. Ongoing stories and legends that the head of John the Baptist was preserved beyond his death.
6. Procrastination of those in possession of the detailed reports of the 1950s excavations in the Qumran cemetery, to allow publication of the information or access to bone remains, until the late 1990s, and then only as a result of peer pressure. Even now, the whereabouts of but a percentage of the material is known, and a final report has not been published. Analytical results for the material from the grave identified as that of John the Baptist have also not been published, unlike detailed results for bones from other graves.
7. Denial by the École Biblique in East Jerusalem, right up to 1999, that any bone material was being concealed from examination by scholars, but at the same time, verification from other sources that some material had been held back.
All but the last item of this summary of evidence has been discussed earlier. The last item therefore requires further explanation. While I am not a great conspiracy theorist, it is difficult to understand why any bone material found at Qumran and the nearby burial area should be kept hidden from general scholarship, unless it had some interpretative significance that might be thought to prove embarrassing in some way....
The Unanswered Questions
Where were the remains of Q18 at this point? Were they still in Jerusalem? How were the contents of Q18 described in the comprehensive review article by Röhrer-Ertl, Röhrhirsch, and Hahn, published in Revue de Qumran? If Q18 was recorded as having a cranium, then clearly it could not be that of John the Baptist, nor the body described by Jozef Milik.
To answer the last question first, in every instance where information on the bone remains of all fifty-nine bodies (from the fifty-five graves) excavated at Qumran is given in the Revue de Qumran article, it is given as either “whole skeleton,” or “head,” and/or “pelvis.” Again, as articulated in the Revue de Qumran article, in only two instances is the presence of the head not mentioned, and that is for graves Q18 and Q17.
In association with these graves, and these graves only, was the presence of dust reported, and this is taken to prove the presence of a coffin or coffins. Both are graves from which the bones had gone missing, and the only remains available to the German team were solid-wax models. There is no information recorded for Q17, but the contents of Q18, at the time of its excavation, were described as “those of a male approximately 30 years of age.” (See page 15 of the color insert.)
With the information from Joseph Zias that the bones of Q18 were the only ones held back in Jerusalem when the rest were sent to Paris, and the information from the Kurth Collection analysis that only Q18 and Q17 were not available for analysis and therefore there was no confirmation that a head was present, it seemed that Q18 must have been kept back because it was indeed the bones of John the Baptist.
And yet, despite this conclusion, matters were to take one final, weird, contradictory, and astonishing twist.
While the remains of twenty-two graves in the Kurth Collection were being analyzed in Germany, Dr. Susan Guise Sheridan, associate professor of biological anthropology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who had close associations to the École Biblique in East Jerusalem, was entrusted with analysis of the material that had been sent to France and finally surfaced after nearly fifty years in hiding.
Her summary report on the remains of eighteen graves that had been sent to France reveals that the skeletal bones Q18 were originally held back in Jerusalem, were preserved in paraffin wax, and had been on display in the Rockefeller Museum for decades. Strangely enough, no one, from Father Émile Puech, head of the École Biblique, to Hershel Shanks, editor of the all-seeing American magazine Biblical Archaeology Review, and even Joseph Zias, curator at the Rockefeller Museum for twenty-five years, was aware of their existence—let alone their exhibition.
Graveside photos taken in the mid-1950s of the remains labeled Q18, compared to those received at Notre Dame in 1999, are said to confirm that the bones, indicating a male of thirty to thirty-five years of age, came from the same grave, although it is difficult to see the head, and the bone lengths appear somewhat different. Unlike the report in the Revue de Qumran article, which stated that the two skeletons in question did not have heads, Dr. Sheridan confirms that Q18 did have a cranium, so it cannot be that of John the Baptist after all.
So what of Q17, located beside Q18 and the only other remains for which the Kurth Collection had only a wax impression and therefore could not confirm the presence or absence of a cranium? Graveside photographs confirm that this skeleton, assessed as a male adult, of all those available for examination or described in the records, definitely did not have a head. Adjacent to Q18 in the Qumran cemetery, Q17 was in the same location described by Jozef Milik as the place where he excavated a headless body.
So where are the bones of Q17?
According to Dr. Sheridan, the bone material presented for examination was, in most instances, carefully bagged and labeled. When the box that should have contained the remains of grave Q17 was opened, it was empty apart from some nails and pieces of wood. The bones were missing, and no one seems to know where they are now!
The strong evidence that John the Baptist was a member of the Qumran Essenes and the secrecy surrounding the bone contents of Q17 mean that they are, I believe, almost certainly those of John the Baptist. With all the other pointers that follow from this astonishing conclusion, I began to consider which other of John the Baptist’s contemporaries might be buried at Qumran.
More: Chapter 39: 33. The Bones of John the Baptist - The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran: The Essene Mysteries of John the Baptist
The circumstantial, indirect, and direct evidence is so overwhelming that I believe the answer to this question has to be answered in the affirmative. At the risk of being repetitive, the essential elements of the evidence are as follows:
1. The testimony of the Christian Scriptures, and of Flavius Josephus, that John the Baptist was beheaded—an extremely unusual form of execution at the time—not far from Qumran.
2. The view of a good proportion of international scholars that John the Baptist, at one period in his life, belonged to the community of the Qumran Essenes. In addition, the evidence previously cited in this book seems to confirm this probability. It would, therefore, be entirely possible that John the Baptist was buried at Qumran because of his role as a previous member.
3. Analysis of the literature, and of unpublished material, including Jozef Milik’s revelation that he excavated a grave at Qumran containing a headless skeleton, which he considered might be that of John the Baptist; and Joseph Zias’s confirmation that one particular skeleton had been singled out and held back from examination—a skeleton whose skull is not referred to in the literature, unlike detailed results for bones from almost every other grave.
4. Location of the grave containing the held-back bone material as that identified by Jozef Milik, and its being marked by a single palm frond—not seen on any other grave in the cemeteries at Qumran.
5. Ongoing stories and legends that the head of John the Baptist was preserved beyond his death.
6. Procrastination of those in possession of the detailed reports of the 1950s excavations in the Qumran cemetery, to allow publication of the information or access to bone remains, until the late 1990s, and then only as a result of peer pressure. Even now, the whereabouts of but a percentage of the material is known, and a final report has not been published. Analytical results for the material from the grave identified as that of John the Baptist have also not been published, unlike detailed results for bones from other graves.
7. Denial by the École Biblique in East Jerusalem, right up to 1999, that any bone material was being concealed from examination by scholars, but at the same time, verification from other sources that some material had been held back.
All but the last item of this summary of evidence has been discussed earlier. The last item therefore requires further explanation. While I am not a great conspiracy theorist, it is difficult to understand why any bone material found at Qumran and the nearby burial area should be kept hidden from general scholarship, unless it had some interpretative significance that might be thought to prove embarrassing in some way....
The Unanswered Questions
Where were the remains of Q18 at this point? Were they still in Jerusalem? How were the contents of Q18 described in the comprehensive review article by Röhrer-Ertl, Röhrhirsch, and Hahn, published in Revue de Qumran? If Q18 was recorded as having a cranium, then clearly it could not be that of John the Baptist, nor the body described by Jozef Milik.
To answer the last question first, in every instance where information on the bone remains of all fifty-nine bodies (from the fifty-five graves) excavated at Qumran is given in the Revue de Qumran article, it is given as either “whole skeleton,” or “head,” and/or “pelvis.” Again, as articulated in the Revue de Qumran article, in only two instances is the presence of the head not mentioned, and that is for graves Q18 and Q17.
In association with these graves, and these graves only, was the presence of dust reported, and this is taken to prove the presence of a coffin or coffins. Both are graves from which the bones had gone missing, and the only remains available to the German team were solid-wax models. There is no information recorded for Q17, but the contents of Q18, at the time of its excavation, were described as “those of a male approximately 30 years of age.” (See page 15 of the color insert.)
With the information from Joseph Zias that the bones of Q18 were the only ones held back in Jerusalem when the rest were sent to Paris, and the information from the Kurth Collection analysis that only Q18 and Q17 were not available for analysis and therefore there was no confirmation that a head was present, it seemed that Q18 must have been kept back because it was indeed the bones of John the Baptist.
And yet, despite this conclusion, matters were to take one final, weird, contradictory, and astonishing twist.
While the remains of twenty-two graves in the Kurth Collection were being analyzed in Germany, Dr. Susan Guise Sheridan, associate professor of biological anthropology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, who had close associations to the École Biblique in East Jerusalem, was entrusted with analysis of the material that had been sent to France and finally surfaced after nearly fifty years in hiding.
Her summary report on the remains of eighteen graves that had been sent to France reveals that the skeletal bones Q18 were originally held back in Jerusalem, were preserved in paraffin wax, and had been on display in the Rockefeller Museum for decades. Strangely enough, no one, from Father Émile Puech, head of the École Biblique, to Hershel Shanks, editor of the all-seeing American magazine Biblical Archaeology Review, and even Joseph Zias, curator at the Rockefeller Museum for twenty-five years, was aware of their existence—let alone their exhibition.
Graveside photos taken in the mid-1950s of the remains labeled Q18, compared to those received at Notre Dame in 1999, are said to confirm that the bones, indicating a male of thirty to thirty-five years of age, came from the same grave, although it is difficult to see the head, and the bone lengths appear somewhat different. Unlike the report in the Revue de Qumran article, which stated that the two skeletons in question did not have heads, Dr. Sheridan confirms that Q18 did have a cranium, so it cannot be that of John the Baptist after all.
So what of Q17, located beside Q18 and the only other remains for which the Kurth Collection had only a wax impression and therefore could not confirm the presence or absence of a cranium? Graveside photographs confirm that this skeleton, assessed as a male adult, of all those available for examination or described in the records, definitely did not have a head. Adjacent to Q18 in the Qumran cemetery, Q17 was in the same location described by Jozef Milik as the place where he excavated a headless body.
So where are the bones of Q17?
According to Dr. Sheridan, the bone material presented for examination was, in most instances, carefully bagged and labeled. When the box that should have contained the remains of grave Q17 was opened, it was empty apart from some nails and pieces of wood. The bones were missing, and no one seems to know where they are now!
The strong evidence that John the Baptist was a member of the Qumran Essenes and the secrecy surrounding the bone contents of Q17 mean that they are, I believe, almost certainly those of John the Baptist. With all the other pointers that follow from this astonishing conclusion, I began to consider which other of John the Baptist’s contemporaries might be buried at Qumran.
More: Chapter 39: 33. The Bones of John the Baptist - The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran: The Essene Mysteries of John the Baptist
