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orion 1st BCE generation
Of course there are not five, but rather one, 1st CE radiocarbon
datings among the 21 Qumran items, at the two-sigma
level. The 1 out of 21 with a reported 95% confidence of an
exclusively 1st CE dating is 4QpPs(a). The date ranges of
several other items straddle the 1st BCE and 1st CE, with
most of the second half of the 1st BCE in these date ranges.
The interpretation of these dates is that no portion of a date
range can legitimately be excluded (i.e. 2nd half of 1st BCE)
unless there are grounds external to the radiocarbon dating for
doing so.
Is the single 14C dating exclusively in the 1st CE a sufficient
basis to establish a global and far-reaching certainty applicable
to the whole corpus of Qumran texts? In a word, no. If my
hypothesis of a mid-1st BCE generation of the bulk of Qumran
texts and cave deposits is correct, radiocarbon datings of
21 items from this generation would _predict_ at least one or
two off the edge out there exclusively in the 1st CE. (Of course,
an alternative interpretation of the 4QpPs(a) dating is that it
received that measurement because it is truly a 1st CE text;
but repeatability and redundancy are needed in cases of data
at the edges of clusters before declaring certainty.)
In a future article I hope to publish graphs of actual radiocarbon
data on treering measurements, i.e. of known date. Radiocarbon
dates jump all over the line of the date, some above, some below,
the majority overlapping it at some point but many date ranges
that do not overlap, i.e. are not "hits". Several visual examples
of this nature should go a long way toward removing the perception
of near-certainty that might at first glance appear concerning the
existence of any 1st CE scribal activity represented in the
Qumran texts on the basis of present radiocarbon data.
Greg Doudna
Copenhagen