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Re: orion WHO SAYS "ESSENES"?

[snip]
> If the term "ESSENES" doesn't refer to the so-called "covenanters from
> Qumran" (for whom we have a significant self-produced library [more than
> 50% of the texts found in the caves] and now can identify at least 4
> settlements and 4 cemeteries ranging from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea,
> confirmed regionally by the map of the Copper Scroll) JUST WHERE ARE THE
> LITERARY AND MATERIAL REMAINS OF THIS HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT GROUP
> CALLED THE "ESSENES"?

I see several problems here: 
1. It has still never been firmly established that these 
"covenanters" actually lived at Qumran, proximity and some minor 
circumstantial evidence notwithstanding.

2. As for the other settlements, we might well ask why there weren't 
significant documentary remains associated with these as well.

3. It seems to me that, when we ask for this kind of "literary and 
material remains" of the Essenes, we are asking for something that we 
don't even have for the other "historically significant" groups of 
the time, such as the Sadducees.  So it appears that we are setting 
up a double standard here: in order to show that the people of the 
scrolls weren't Essenes we have to produce a body of evidence that 
may well be impossible, and can't even be produced for the other 
major groups.  I would prefer a more level playing field.

4. The problem of all the multiple scribal hands, which Pfann 
acknowledged in another post, has never been adequately dealt with.  
As he pointed out, the "self-produced library" idea stems more from 
several perceived-to-be-significant terms than from the physical 
remains of the scrolls themselves.  But even the documents that 
contain those terms exhibit a significantly large number of hands, 
a number that is unlikely to have stemmed from the small body of 
scribal activity that would have been possible at Qumran.

YMMV.
Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"Now I have $2736.15.  Every time I count my $500,
I get a different amount."