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Re: orion 1st BCE generation

Thanks, Russell Gmirkin, for your comments, which, in my opinion, include
several interesting and several mistaken assertions.
	There is, of course, no one generation which produced the
scrolls--and the current C14 data does not indicate any such thing. Any
defined single standard-length (30 or 40 year) generation will be instantly
ruled out by present data, as soon (if ever) as it is defined, to a very
high probability on C14 grounds alone, and vanishes to practical
irrelevance, to all for whom other data is also allowed to speak. The C14
data does indeed tell us interesting things, things about several
generations.
	RG wrote that a date of summer 163 BCE for the War Scroll seems
"exceedingly clear" to him. I don't see that, at least, not yet. Does
anyone else on this list? But, for conversation's sake, taking that
(temporarily stipulating that) as the date, and adding RG's statement of
"no doubt" that the War Scroll was copied "well into the first century
BCE," these statements would, if true, suggest more than one generation.
	Russell mentioned "the Peitolus text." Is this a declaration of
your conclusion about reading 4Q468g?
	Explaining away no mention of Hanukkah at Qumran by distinguishing
a "civil holiday" from a "religious festival" is certainly a novel attempt,
but bears little recognizable relation either to Qumran calendar texts or
to Hanukkah traditions themselves.
	Calendar issues, of course, are but one indication in Qumran mss of
profound disagreement with the Hasmonean administration of the temple.
Failure to see any "anti-Hasmonean bias" is astounding. On 4Q448, you must
be aware of differing interpretations. MMT is surely not "clearly
pro-Hasmonean."
	At Qumran, where 1 and 2 Maccabees were not found, there is no
claim of the Essenes or of any writers represented--"Sadducees" are
excluded, unless one retrojects, anachronistically, later, broader senses
of the term--there is no claim of any descent from the Maccabees' Asidaioi.
Such a claim is an artifact of historical errors of medieval and early
modern writers, still imposed on Qumran by a diminishing number of scholars.
	 RG wrote of pulling "related sectarian texts back to the Maccabean
and pre-Maccabean Era." Why attempt to transport sectarian texts to that
early period? Why cast the poor historical Qumranites and other
contemporary sectarians with rather little to do other than being
nearly-frozen tradents of events and interpretations more congenial to you?
	Nahum pesher in the 160s?! Does not pesher Nahum refer to Alexander
Jannaeus? I await your presentation--and Greg Doudna's study of that text
as well.

best wishes,
Stephen Goranson
goranson@duke.edu
fax 919 6603530