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Re: orion DSS and rabbis
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Martin and, for that matter, Prof. Golb, are surely right to insist that we
not leap from one or two associations to firm historical conclusions. Once
again, scholars would do well to read or even reread Fisherīs excellent
*Historical Fallacies*, perhaps taken together with Popperīs *The Logic of
Scientific Discovery*. We do not have all the pieces of the past, *any*
past (if we did, our time would *be* that past). One does not *reconstruct*
a given past; one *constructs* it in present time on the grounds of
evidence and models (Finley); and, of course, one cannot *verify* oneīs
conclusions about the past; one can only *falsify* inappropriate ones. To
claim that a model is *true* is to misunderstand the nature of models and
metaphors (Ramsay); so the sort of certainty that some scholars here have
been urging about the past is --in hermeneutical terms-- wrongheaded.
Fred Cryer