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Re: orion Re: dss and rabbis
Philip R Davies wrote (in part):
>My own comment on this topic is that if dorshei halaqot is a pun on
>(Pharisaic) halakot, then we should also consider why the writers of 4QMMT
>use the verb parash of themselves not their opponents? Personally, I don't
>lay much weight on either argument.
This is a rather dismissive and insubstantial treatment from a
scholar who often calls on us to to employ careful, sophisticated
methodology. Again, I recommend Albert Baumgarten's fine JBL article on the
name of the Pharisees, its development, meanings, and contexts. The group
that, say, Josephus called Pharisees was not always and by everyone called
Pharisees. There is no reason at all that the writer of 4QMMT need be
imagined as embarassed at using the root PRS of his own group or imagined
as from a different group than the writer of 4QpNah.
This dismissal of the pun, which has been obvious to several
writers of close analysis of 4QpNah does not even engage the extensive
description of this group, e.g., as Ephraim and as involved in events also
attested outside of 4QpNah.
Perhaps I should rephrase my invitation to Fred Cryer and now
Philip Davies: show us your historical methodology specifically in the case
of this text, and why anyone reading orion should conclude that your
presumably-different results are better.
Sincerely, just back from the Duke campus, where more than one
capricious writer has pleaded methodology or theory to validate mere
personal preference,
Stephen Goranson goranson@duke.edu