L'eau et les bains à Qumrân

In spite of the scholars' divergences about both the site Qoumrân and the manuscripts, the initial consensus on the importance of water has never been questioned. The excavations performed in the last two decades in Israel and Jordan allow us today to compare the Qoumrân set up with other settlements of the same period (water-conveyance, volume, basins, technology) and to bring out Qoumrân from its so-called specificity in terms of purifying usages. Therefore the vocabulary devoted to practices (bath, baptismal practice, tebilah) and places (swimming-pool, ritual bath, miqweh) should be reconsidered in terms of the new data, including water-related materials and bodily usages.