Jerusalem Origin Hypothesis:

A few scholars have asserted that the scrolls had been the work of Jews residing in Jerusalem, who concealed the scrolls in the caves near Qumran whilst escaping from the Romans during the devastation of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Karl Heinrich Rengstorf first proposed that the Dead Sea Scrolls came from at the library in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

Later, Norman Golb advised the fact that scrolls were the goods of multiple libraries in Jerusalem, and not necessarily the Jerusalem Temple library. Proponents of the Jerusalem Origin theory indicate the variety of thought and handwriting among the scrolls as proof in opposition to a Qumran origin of the scrolls.

Several archaeologists have also accepted the origin of the scrolls other than Qumran, such as Yizhar Hirschfeld and most recently Yizhak Magen and Yuval Peleg, who all understand the remains of Qumran to be the ones from a Hasmonean fort which was reused in the course of later periods.

Figure 4: Qumran chronology