The Community Conversation with Jodi Magness

The Conversation

Robert Cargill completed his dissertation at the University of California in Los Angeles.  It involves a real-time 3-d tour reconstruction of the Qumran community.  Jodi Magness readily admitted that she did not understand technology; however, because the archaeology at Qumran is her field of discipline, she was asked by a select number of journals to review Cargill’s article proposals.

Magness’s assessment of the Cargill’s dissertation is that Cargill’s conclusions are problematic because the digital model is used to conclusively prove that Qumran was a Hasmonian period fort.  Only after that did Qumran become a sectarian settlement.  Cargill submitted articles for various journals.  Magness, because of her knowledge of the discipline, had review journal articles herself sent her way.  She recommended that it be rejected multiple time and forwarded her reasons for rejection each time.  However, one journal, Near Eastern Archaeology accepted his article but invited Magness to respond.  She accepted this invitation, Cargill was allowed to respond to her response, and then Magness was allowed to respond to Cargill’s response.

Since then, Robert Cargill’s dissertation has been published as Qumran Through (Real) Time:  A Virtual Reconstruction of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scroll.  Last November at the Society of Biblical Literature, Cargill organized a Wild Card session to discuss his book and invited Jodi Magness to be one of the four panelists.

So Magness, in her decision for the topic for a seminar with graduate students, chose her presentation from that panel to be a discussion starter here at Brite.  Little did she know that there probably will be a response from Cargill on his blog as well as a lecture later this year.  Dr. Magness pointed to Stephen Goranson’s comment on Cargill’s post for the event:

“Jodi Magness’ critique has considerable merit; I write to comment on the sentence, ” will she argue that the dead sea scrolls were all written by essenes at qumran?” Neither Jodi, nor I, nor any scholar that I know, claims that “all” of the scrolls were written at Qumran, and the verb “to write” (as in a certain book title) also fails to distinguish between composition and copy. The sentence stands a (of all things, Golb-reminiscent, Essene-denial) straw man. bob, you have done many good things; and that sentence is not one of them.”

The audience was quite entertained with blog post and the comment in general and ripped into laughter given the serious nature of the academy (which is always a good thing).

Magness noted: Technology is a means to an end.  Technology does not provide an objective data. Our data remains incomplete. Past is RECONSTRUCTED.  Archaeology finds itself at a disadvantage because of the serious lack of artifacts and the actors have all passed away. “We have an incomplete of an incomplete of an incomplete of an incomplete.” The Digital Qumran project gives a possible impression of a site’s appearance, but cannot serve as an accurate representation.  Cargill bases his conclusion on model, which is circular logic.

Magness prefers the dating of the Qumran materials that were made public (more on that later) according to Father Roland De Vaux, over and against the dating of Cargill’s work.  Also, according to Cargill, Loci 1, 2, and 4 were storage rooms, and in his digital reconstruction, there are large cylinder jars on the benches.  Yet, Magness argued that the shattered pottery at these sites show not large cylinder jars, but dining dishes.  Also, in a few pieces of pottery found at Qumran, there were animal bones found.  For Magness and others, this may be evidence of the ritual meal practices of the Qumran community.  This may contradict Cargill’s argument, according to Magness, that animals were buried in the ground to protect the animals from scavengers.  Would that mean that scavengers were only a problem at Qumran?  While Cargill questions why Roland De Daux never provided a reconstruction of the Qumran community, that question does not make sense because Magness informed the audience that De Vaux never even gave a final report, so his work is left unfinished.

During the question and answer session, I asked Jodi Magness: What was the relevance for Robert Cargill to argue that the Qumran community was a Hasonian era fort at one point? What difference did it make?

She could not provide an answer; she advised me to ask Cargill himself.

My Concluding Thoughts

Digital reconstruction projects of the ancient world are prolific endeavors, especially for those like me who want to have a better idea of the contexts in which sacred texts and great thinkers came out of.  Nezar AlSayyad has completed a digital reconstruction of Middle Ages-era Cairo, Egypt.  However, he provides some works of caution in an article entitled, Virtual Cairo: An Urban Historian’s View of Computer Simulation.

(PDF AlSayyad)

AlSayyad says, “The second problem was more conceptual. It had to do with our growing recognition of the futility of attempting to create a single “complete” model of historical change from a few fragments of historical evidence” (96).  He continues:

“As historians of urban form and design, we should come to terms with the potential of this new technology and use it in our research. But we should equally resist the seductive power of the medium and its ability to produce models of historical contexts that exceed our knowledge of the built environment, based on available sources. The desire to produce ever more realistic models may result in the legitimization of historical depictions based on little more than speculation and the demands of the computer to assign absolute coordinates to all objects.

We must remember that the “writing” of history is, first and foremost, an art of interpretation, not a science of representation. The stories that we depict will change from time to time and place to place to reflect the interests of those who tell them and the purposes of the people for whom they are written. The challenge in using computer modeling in the telling of history will, perhaps, be in reversing the equation and finding the proper balance between what I call the science of interpretation, on one hand, and the art of representations, on the other” (100).

I agree with Jodi Magness; technology is important, because people want to see what it looks like.  We used to be only able to see artifacts and sites in 2 dimensions, until now; today, it can now be seen in 3D thanks in large part to scholars like Robert Cargill.  Yet, we cannot, i think depend on digital reconstructions to provide us with sufficient data that is conclusive.  We have far too little evidence for making conclusions concerning the Qumran community.

Not all the materials from excavations are published; that is the real scandal, said Jodi Magness yesterday.  This should be the true controversy in the Qumran studies, in which scholars are left to patiently wait on the whims of an archaeologist’s member institution for publication of the rest of the artifacts he or she may have discovered.  Archaeology is a curious field, especially from a postcolonial perspective.  Edward Said’s work in Orientalism ought to give one pause; Oriental research is needed, but it is the orient in relation to who and what? Why of course, an Occident!  So this further problematizes the notion of an archaeologist owning an artifact, a piece of culture of history she or he found.  Exactly, who has the right to own history?  Should the public have access to discoveries if the archaeologist is deceased.  These were the questions running through my mind during Magness’s presentation.  He who owns historical artifacts and archaeological sites also gets to interprets these objects and places, and therefore owns history.

Truth and Peace,

Rod

RodtRDH

Formerly known as Rod of Alexandria, Rod the Rogue Demon Hunter Preacher of Hope | Black Scholar of Patristics | Writer for Nonviolent Politics. Destroyer of Trolls. It must be that angry puppy.

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