[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Are 1000 scribes too many? was Re: DSS Scribes
With respect to the suggestions by Moshe Schulman and others as to
the putative "high turnover" of residents in Qumran:
What we are witnessing here is a classical example of the ad hoc
embroidery on an hypothesis that has no other function than to "save
the appearances", i.e., to make room in the hypothesis for data which
are uncongenial to it. The example used by Thomas Kuhn in his fine
study of *The Copernican Revolution* is the addition of cycles and
epicycles to the planetary motions specified by Ptolemaic astronomy,
after observation showed that the strict Ptolemaic model was unable
to account for planetary movement in detail. Such an adjustment made
it possible to continue to adhere to the Ptolemaic scheme, but at the
cost of making the model more complex than the competing theory of
Copernicus.
Here we have a single didactic "given" which a number of scholars are
unwilling to abandon, namely the idea that whatever society dwelled
in the settlement was responsible for the production of the scrolls
found in the caves. At every turn, new information makes this view
increasingly problematical--not, I hasten to say, impossible. But at
the moment it is astonishingly complex, and I urge scholars to ponder
whether it is worth adhering to, or whether it might not be a better
idea to rethink the basic model.
Fred Cryer
Assoc. Prof./Research
Univ. of Copenhagen
fc@teol.ku.dk