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RE: orion-list 63 BCE; 4QMishC

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-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Doudna


However is this a complete understanding of this text?  Ian
has proposed (I hope I paraphrase his sense accurately)
that rather than a timeless recurring 6-year cycle priestly
course sequence, that this IS an annal--like a chronicle or
diary--although from a priestly point of view.  Consider: every
week a scribe or temple chronicler--however it worked--writes
down the signficant news for that week.  Most weeks nothing
important happens except for the change of course of the
priests (that, of course, is very important, indicating the
authors of the text).  But when a war, a battle, a new monarch,
etc. happens, that is also written down.  No week goes by
without a change of priests' course, so that is a headline every
week.  The other "news headlines" get written in sporadically
as they occur.  This then is no timeless 6-year cycle for
priestly courses.  It is literally a diary, written contemporary
to the events it tells, over the course of a few years.  It is
literally a firsthand contemporary chronicle of events from a
temple historian.  

Reply:
This may be far removed from the ancient world, but I'm aware of a similar
"document" from Native American culture.  The Ogalala or Rosebud Sioux
maintained a Winter Count Teepee that had marked on its side a graphic
symbol for each successive winter based on the major event of the winter.  I
have a photo of it in a museum catalog of photographs by three photographers
taken over the years on the Pine Ridge or Rosebud reservations.

David Suter
Saint Martin's College
For private reply, e-mail to "Suter, David" <dsuter@stmartin.edu>
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