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Re: Josephus & DSS & more

James R. Davila wrote:
> 

> 
> By the way, Jack, do our sources ever explicitly identify the Therapeutae
> with the Essenes?

	Allegro and Betz & Riesner do.  Ausubel seems a bit more conservative
having both the Essenes and Therapeutae arising from the same social conditions
but on different cultural levels.  Philo's "Contemplative Life" seems to give
us a better picture of them than Josephus on the Palestinian group..yet again
Philo was a great admirer of the Therapeutae.  That Palestinian "Asayyim" may
have found residence with the Therapeutae following the destruction is suggested
by Allegro but I am not sure of the source of his thoughts on this.  That the
dualism of the Essenes and Therapeutae gave rise to Christian gnosticism is
espoused by some, a construct I would consider as probable given my belief
of a close relationship between the Jerusalem Essenes (not necessarily the
putative Qumran/Secacah sect) and the Netzarim.

	As an aside on our previous discussions of putative "Christian" writings
among the DSS material, I do not think I ever qualified my thoughts on this...
other than the intriguing 7Q5.  "Christian" writings, as we know them in the
New Testament would be anachronistic to the DSS corpus.  Furthermore, these
gentile developments of any writings that would be asscociated with my
speculated Asayyim/Netzarim community would probably be considered pagan and
anathemetized.  7Q5, however, MAY be a fragment of a source COMMON to both
groups and a possible SOURCE document for the original Mark.  This, in my
mind, is a better explanation for O'Callaghan's "similarities."

	The oft-times overzealous desire to find our "roots" in the DSS corpus
would be best applied examining the "bifurcation" texts such as the "Testaments
of the Twelve Patriarchs" which scholarly debate seems to describe as either:

	1. A document arising from (and I will use Yeshuine instead of "Christian")
sources using their own JEWISH sources, or;

	2. A Judaic document heavily interpolated by the "Netzarim/Yeshuine" cult.

	In this regard, I am extremely interested in the texts recently published
in DJD on these fragments compared to the content of the extant "Testaments."  I do
not have access to this material and perhaps you can be some assistance to me on this.
In my humble layman's opinion, herein lies the "common source" material that could
shed some light on any putative "betrothal" between the Asayyim and the Netzarim.

Shelama `amkhon
Jack

Jack Kilmon
Houston, Texas
JPMan@accesscomm.net