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Re: Bait not taken
On Fri, 29 Nov 1996 13:32:56 -0800 (PST), flint@twu.ca writes:
>
>Dear Ian Hutchesson,
> Thank you for your reply to my posting about wasting time. I am sorry I
>cannot answer your five interesting questions, since I have exams to
>prepare and grade, a book to submit and DSS editions to finalize.
>
> Greetings,
>Peter Flint
>
Peter
It struck me while I was contemplating how to suggest you replace the
created word "finalize" with the better word "complete" or "finish", (I hope
you don't let your students get away with such clinkers) you might not be able
to do your work on the DSS had not outsiders like Hershel Shanks or myself in
my small and limited way done everything we could to put pressure on every
pliable institution and person involved with the DSS Scroll "imprisonment" for
lo those many years. In the final analysis, the public will got its way.
What did YOU do to wrest control of the corpus from the Cabal that held them?
Outsiders like myself and many others worked hammer and tong to see that it
happened and thanks to the leadership of Hershel shanks it did. The Academic
community did nothing for forty years from the time Edmund Wilson, another
outsider, showed the world the value of the texts then so recently inearthed.
The vested interests have a lot of explaining to do why the interested world w
was kept from seeing the texts themselves.
May I point out to you the difference between two different recent
publications of the texts. One gives the images themselves first in full
detail while the other gives the translations first. The more
valuable usefulness of the publications rests with the first.
So it is with discussion. We can spout all we like. The texts themselves
give their own message no matter which nobby said what. And it will be the
reader who makes the finasl decision.
We outsiders have as big a stake in the DSS as you insiders.
Tom Simms