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orion Reply to Vernon Chadwick
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Vernon, I don´t want to retrace old ground, and our moderator has in any
case closed this thread, but we don´t even know if the Essenes and the DSS
were contemporary phenomena. The last datable reference in the mss
themselves is from around the middle of the 1st c. bce, while all the
sources which mention the Essenes are from the second half of the 1st ce or
later (e.g., Epiphanios, 4th c. ce). So even to start with one has to
postulate about a century of "Essene" history for which there are no
sources, just to be able to argue for continuity between the one kind of
information and the other. I keep stressing that the Essene theory is not
out of court or impossible. But it requires taking more for granted than
its adherents often consider to be the case.
Given that hundred-year gap of information, it is not incumbant on those
preferring other views to fill in the period by some ad hoc procedure of
their own. It would be silly historiography to say something just to say
it. What we need is secure data, and that is hard to come by, at least at
present.
Frederick H. Cryer
Assoc. Prof. for Research
Univ. of Copenhagen
Faculty of Theology
Købmagergade 44-46
1150 København K.
e-mail: fc.dss@pop.teol.ku.dk
fax: (045) 35 32 36 52