...the old theory, created in the infancy of Scroll scholarship, that these manuscripts were written in whole or at least in large part by a Jewish sect of Essenes supposedly living at a site — Khirbet Qumran — located in the Judaean Wilderness near the Dead Sea shore.
[The new conflicting theory] claims that the presently known accumulation of evidence, adduced by growing numbers of text scholars and archaeologists, demonstrating that the Scrolls are of Jerusalem origin, that Khirbet Qumran was a secular site with no connection to a religious sect, and that the Scrolls lack any [significant connection] to that [secular] site.
Bless you.
Golb’s editorial in The Forward (linked in my piece above) summarizes the controversy in readable language.