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orion Re: Date of Scrolls Deposit--55 BCE?
I welcome the opportunity to respond to these fair questions raised
by Stephen Goranson:
1) On a substantial number of texts being copied just before
deposit, has it occurred to anyone just how bizarre the notion, going
strong now these decades after discovery of the scrolls, of a model of
200-300 years production for these texts is? I would not be surprised
if over fifty percent of the text copies at Qumran were produced
within the ten year period prior to their deposit in the caves. I
don't doubt the existence of a few old-time scrolls or books in any
collection, but the bulk might be considered contemporaneous and
at the late end as a first guess unless there is evidence showing
otherwise. I have presented this in a seminar here and in a
forthcoming article. I call it "the single generation hypothesis",
in which I propose that most of the scrolls copies come from a
single generation which ended with the scrolls deposit in the caves.
The diversity in the texts would be accounted for because this was
a collection.
2) On the 4QpPs(a) carbon date (5-111 CE two-sigma reported from
Tucson) this is indeed data, but is this the tail of a bell-curve,
contamination, or a true date? If the last, then a pre-BCE deposit
date for the texts is falsified--and we're all ahead because we know
more. I don't buy it, on present information, for two reasons.
First in any battery of 14C dates the data points at the outer ends are
suspicious in principle. They tell you where to redate and look
further but the solid information is in the overlaps and in the
repeated confirmations. The second reason is I think the pesharim
copies must be contemporary and pHab 14C dated in the 1st BCE,
inconsistent with the pPs 14C date. I suspect the true date of
pPs is reflected in the 14C date for pHab, rather than in the 14C
date on itself. Future data can and undoubtedly will decide this
point.
(3) The non-retrieval of the mss. The proposal would be that Qumran
was abandoned or evicted either at the time of Pompey's orders to
withdraw from the fortresses or Gabinius's later "destruction" of the
fortresses to prevent their being used as bases for rebellion. (The
later history of Qumran, with partial use made of the ruins and site
by groups would be a totally separate issue.) A serious hiding of
wealth and texts (if these hidings are part of the same event) seems
to me to require a number of persons somewhere under a dozen to be
fully accounted for and accomplished. If this less-than-a-dozen are
killed, captured, exiled, or don't care, the texts remain
unretrieved by them and are retrieved inconsistently only by accident
of later finders (which happened). Of course the non-retrieval of
the mss is a question for 68 CE no less, so the question is hardly
diagnostic of a date.
(4) On "Qumran has not been shown to be a fortress", I think Bar-Adon
did show it, as much as can be shown in terms of comparisons with
sites and purpose of construction (and broadening the notion of fortress
to mean simply state-sponsored strategic site for control--thick walls
for a siege may be a nonissue). Assuming the use of boats the site gives
a view and control of the Dead Sea. The original purpose may have
been shortlived however. With Roman arrival in Palestine there was
much coming and going in these sites, people ordered to leave, etc.
Furthermore the site of Qumran itself doesn't show a community
gradually building up a complex, but a complex from the start which
was abandoned and only partially reused. Who the later users were,
post-Pompey, is anyone's guess and would have no necessary
connection with a fortress or military use of the site.
Greg Doudna
U. of Copenhagen