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Re: Qumran question (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 17:34:19 EST
From: Ian Hutchesson <MC2499@mclink.it>
To: Multiple recipients of list <ioudaios-l@lehigh.edu>
Subject: Re: Qumran question
herb wrote:
>as far as i am concerned a text read by a community is a community
>text whether or not they composed it
This naturally presupposes that there was such a community. The texts don't
necessarily indicate a single community. Is it more than serendipity that
the texts happen to have been found near the complex known as Khirbet Qumran
whose purpose it seems is far from clear? If not, there is no evidence for a
single community. The many hands involved in copying the texts would suggest
a lot of (perhaps) people at our complex being scribes.
Don't you think it was strange to find a copy of the Damascus Document in
the Cairo geniza, if the document was of an obscure sect that didn't survive
the first Jewish war?
Ian Hutchesson