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Re: orion Hirschfeld implications

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dwashbur@nyx.net wrote:
> 
> Jack K. wrote:

> >       I understand what you are saying but I am not really sure that
> > a "make em yourself" society would not have a diverse library.  That the
> > DSS People wrote or copied all the scrolls is an assumption I'm not
> > ready
> > to accept.  I believe many of the texts were "imported."
> 
> Agreed.  It is well known that I don't accept the idea of a "DSS
> People" at all.

	I have been following the studies of the scrolls since
Bill Albright showed me Sukenik's photographs in early 1948.  That
will be 50 years next month.  Wow! I still feel like the same excited
kid I was then (g).  The relationships and duplications of sectarian
literature from Caves 1, 4, 5, 11 suggests to me that the *majority*
of the library belonged to one group. I am not so sure about Caves
3 and 7.  The "yahad" texts fit best what we know about the Essenes
as told by Josephus and Pliny.  We have to keep in mind that J and
P were writing in the second half of the 1st century and their
accounts of the Essenes of the time of the destruction should
not be expected to describe the Essenes and their practices a
century before that.  The divergences between what J and P describe
and what some of the older texts relate should be expected.  Even
such things as celibacy could easily have been altered by the
community.  I am willing to accept that the bulk of the library
belonged to an Essene or Essene-like group and, not being 100%
certain, I call them the "DSS People."

	That others of the caves, and perhaps even the same caves,
may have been used by others for the depositing or even genizeh-ing
of texts...either contemporaneously, earlier or later, is certainly
possible.  I think the Copper Scroll falls in this possibility.

	Caves, particularly ones high up on cliffs away from the
weather, are a great place to hide books and since caves 4-10 are
near Qumran may mean no more than that is where the caves were.
The texts could just as easily have originated in the Essene
Quarter of Jerusalem.  I am hard pressed to consider the texts
as other than Essene in character but I do not expect the
Essene "character" of 68-70 CE to conform with that of the time
of MMT.

Jack

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