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Re: One Thousand Scribes

Greg Doudna wrote:
> 
> Of the approximately 850 texts at Qumran,
> many show more than one scribe.  In all of
> the decades of study of these texts, only
> three scribes have been identified across
> texts, so far as I am aware.  These are:
> 
>     -- the same scribe wrote 1QS (1QSa, 1QSb),
>         4QTest, 4QSam(c), 2QJer, and wrote
>         corrections on 1QIsa(a)
> 
>     -- the same scribe wrote 1QpHab and 11QTemple(b)
> 
>     -- the same scribe wrote 4QpPs(a), 4QpHos(a),
>             and 4QpIsa(a)
> 
> One might think that among the remaining texts there
> may be more scribe identities.  Perhaps.  But
> a lot of texts have been worked over by a lot of persons
> for four decades now and the three scribe identitities
> above are the meager results from all this time.
> 
> The conclusion is that the true number of scribes
> represented in the Qumran texts can hardly be estimated
> on present information at less than a thousand, greater
> than the number of texts.  Fred Cryer is absolutely
> right in outlining what he and I hope to do here in attempting
> to count, catalogue, and quantify information about these
> scribes.  Perhaps the number may come down by one or two
> hundred--or it may not.


	My understanding of the Qumran settlement is that the
"census" of residents would be in the neighborhood of 200, IF
indeed they LIVED there rather than just use the place as a
"headquarters" for the 1000 or more Essenes who may have lived
in the Essene Quarter...and two or three thousand more around
Palestine.  The abandonment of the site (by whomever) following
the earthquake of 31 BCE and the absence of coins through the
Herodian period (40 BCE-4B BCE) suggests again that the
facility was not used until well into the 1st century..and,
of course, ending in 68ish or so.

	The scrolls, however, date, according to the C14 testing,
from the 4th c. BCE (Test Kohath) up to the time of the
Roman war (thanksgiving). with an average of 150ish BCE to 70ish CE.
The scribal "count" can be very important for the model of
where the scrolls came from.  I lean more and more for the
Essene community in Jerusalem.

Jack Kilmon
jpman@accesscomm.net