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Re: orion Re: moderator & Kilmon posts

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Stephen Goranson wrote:

> 1)      Jack Kilmon wrote: "I was under the impression...that Pliny
> was
> speaking/writing in the 1st  person from his excursion at a time when
> Qumran was in ruins."
>         Dear Jack Kilmon, I have written about this before and cited
> bibliography (available in the archives), so I'll be brief. I think
> Pliny's
> written source was M. Agrippa, writing circa 15 BCE.  But, my views
> aside,
> Pliny scholarship has corrected a mistaken view (based on an
> inscription
> misread over 100 years ago) that Pliny was in Judaea. Pliny scholars
> have
> shown that Pliny was not in Judaea.  Pliny compiled his book from
> written
> sources. His source here was from the time of Herod the Great. One
> indication of this, as shown by Menahem Stern, is that En Gedi was not
>
> listed as a toparchy in Pliny, but was in the later list in Josephus
> War
> 3.55. That's because, as Pliny's source wrote, En Gedi was destroyed
> (namely in c. 40 BCE). Only after the time of Herod the Great was it
> rebuilt sufficiently to be  listed as a toparchy. Qumran scholars
> sometimes
> repeated the error that Pliny visited Qumran, so you may have read
> that
> error. Many people, including myself until not long ago, repeated
> another
> error: that Pliny updated his written account to note the 66-74 CE
> war. But
> he didn't. That he didn't say Masada was destroyed is one indication
> of
> that. Further, reading Pliny to locate Essenes west of En Gedi fails
> both
> the text and the archaeology. I have submitted an article on the
> subject,
> and should it be accepted, I can supply the reference later.

    I will be most interested in an offprint, when available.  Hence
Plinyis at best a secondary source, at worst a tertiary source.  I guess
what
confuses me is that the known "Esseniana" comes from 1st century
chronicles, be it Pliny, Josephus or Philo; and the overwhelming bulk
of the DSS were copied between 388 BCE (Isaiah) to 60ish BCE (Samuel).
    Only the Thanksgiving Hymns seem to encroach the 1st century.  I
would
be much more comfortable if there was a good representation of texts
from
the first century.  The texts appear to be anachronistic to the
chronicled
Essenes unless one would want to coin "proto-Essenes."

Jack


--
D’man dith laych idneh d’nishMA nishMA
   Jack Kilmon (jpman@accesscomm.net)


 http://users.accesscomm.net/scriptorium