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Re: Bedouin and scroll provenance
The other half of what David Crowder noted was
interesting, about the original anecdotal Bedouin
claim of having had the Cave 1 big scrolls for
forty years. But let us analyze this for a moment.
Is this evidence that the Bedouin had the scrolls
for forty years? No, because of a general rule:
it would be expected that the true spot of discovery
might be concealed by some story, if there were
more scrolls to be obtained. According to the
anecdote, the Bedouin knew the scrolls were ancient
and said 200 AD. What does this mean? It means
they had shown them to someone and had received an
expert opinion. Now because a story by clandestine
diggers before their dig sites are known is by
definition subject to question, does this mean the
second story of the goat and etc. is true? Not
necessarily, either. However does any of this bear
on the issue of trustworthiness of the second story
of finding the scrolls in Cave 1? No, because that
would need to be questioned and evaluated for its
truthfulness no matter what story or lack of story
had been told earlier. And none of this bears on
the separate issue of the scrolls' ancient date no
matter where they were found. The ancient date is
a certainty and the Cave 1 provenance has an extremely
good circumstantial case for it--both of these
conclusions having nothing whatever to do with Bedouin
claims of any kind.
Best wishes,
Greg Doudna gd@teol.ku.dk