[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

RE: orion 1st BCE generation

    [The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set]
    [Your display is set for the "ISO-8859-8" character set]
    [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly]

I wish we could keep the discussion of the C-14 analysis of the Scrolls to
those scholars who actually understand the methodology involved. This
plather isnīt worth discussion.

Fred Cryer

> ----------
> From: 	stephen goranson[SMTP:goranson@duke.edu]
> Reply To: 	orion@mscc.huji.ac.il
> Sent: 	18, december 1998 20.28
> To: 	orion@mscc.huji.ac.il
> Subject: 	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
>