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Re: Walls not a fortress make
Dear all,
I don't know how relevant it is to the treatment of books in the caves
near Qumran by the Roman soldiers, but we might bring to mind that many
centuries earlier the vassal treaties of Esarhaddon were smashed to
smitherines in the royal palace, apparently by rebelling vassals who were
expressing their dissatisfaction. If the Romans were responsible for
tearing up the DSS in antiquity may they not have had similar vindictive
motives.
Victor Hurowitz
On Tue, 2 Apr 1996, David Jay Kaufman wrote:
> Niels,
> I would say that your argument is amateurish and not mine. First,
> you misunderstood my point. Yes, the Romans were not nice guys. Yes, they
> probably would have destroyed the site. Understanding this, why would
> they take the time to hack a bunch of scrolls into mincemeat? On the
> point of being amateurish, I cited a fact, that the scrolls were
> destroyed, and you argued a possibly unrelated generality, that soldiers
> are not nice. My question was how do we know that the Romans destroyed
> the site? Yes, the timing makes the most sense. I was wondering why they
> destroyed the scrolls, not why they destroyed the site. Is there any
> evidence of the Romans destroying texts or not? Is this the only evidence
> of possible Roman "book burning" during the history of the empire? If it
> is, does that shed some doubt on the conclusion that the Romans destroyed
> the texts and the site?
>
> -David.
>
> ps. If at all possible, try citing evidence instead of calling names.
>