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Re: orion not either/or
At 11:44 AM 9/18/97 -0400, you wrote:
> Whether we approve or not, evidence shows Essenes lived at Qumran
What evidence? What material find has been recovered that proves that
Essenes lived in the buildings of Khirbet Qumran? Are there documents from
the buildings? Did someone scrawl "Essenes were here" on one of the walls?
Are there cups, saucers, platters, or utensils stamped with the "essene mark"?
It is not a matter of approval or disapproval. It is a matter of hard
evidence. What hard evidence is there? We are not even sure that many of
the texts found in the vicinity in caves were written or copied by essenes?
How then can we be sure that Essenes lived at Qumran? Are the graves the
key? What about the women and children found there?
>and elsewhere.
Without doubt they lived elsewhere- like in the Essene quarter in Jerusalem.
But at Qumran?
> The Essenes (and those texts they wrote)
Which texts are those, exactly. I would love to see a list of "Essene
Texts" from Qumran. Who wrote the other stuff found in the caves? Did they
live at Qumran too? When? If they did not live there, then why did they
hide their stuff in caves near there?
> represent neither
>Second Temple Judaism as a whole nor a small, isolated sect. Essene legal
>views, largely, were rejected or ignored by Rabbinic Judaism, though there
>was probably more Essene influence on Jewish mystical traditions which
>persisted. In Christianity, some of the more "Jewish-Christian" books, like
>Revelation of John and Epistle of James (books, not so incidently,
>disliked by Luther [an ex-monk]) were probably influenced by Essene ideas;
!!!!! What evidence is there of this? Parallelomania?
>but, though canonical, were reinterpreted over time.
Huh?
>Stephen Goranson goranson@duke.edu
Jim
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
Adjunct Professor of Bible
Quartz Hill School of Theology
jwest@highland.net