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RE: orion-list Orion-List 63 BCE & all that
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rochelle I. Altman [mailto:risa@mail.hol.gr]
> Sent: Thursday, September 16, 1999 9:51 AM
> To: orion@mscc.huji.ac.il
> Subject: Re: orion-list Orion-List 63 BCE & all that
>
>
> On 1999-09-15 orion@mscc.huji.ac.il said:
> >I know of Origen and his Hexapla and so on and that he had a
> >great many sources from the time but does he cite Cave sources?
>
> Origen added three columns to his Psalter - making it an Enniapla. He
> is quoted as stating that the last (the third of the three additions
> and the ninth of the total) came from a jar in the desert. There are
> two possible reasons for this assertion: 1) it did, in fact, come from
> a jar in the desert; or 2) scrolls and jars in the desert were well
> enough known to add authority to this 9th version... and Origen was
> looking for authority to add weight to his arguments with the Rabbis.
> For further reading and/or specific refs, see:
> Crouzel, Henri. _Origen_. (_Orig'ene_) trans. by A.S. Worrall. San
> Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.
> Trigg, Joseph Wilson. _Origen_. London;NY: Routledge, 1998.
> There are also references to Origen's comment on the jar scroll to be
> found in psalm commentaries from the early church, medieval,
> and modern
> works... Jerome, in his numerous descriptions and discussions of Paula
> and her (ideal) villages, refers to scrolls and caves in the
> desert. The
> marginal entries on the Isaiah scroll are late - ca. 5th-7th
> century. The
> break-in through the wall of Cave 1 after the public
> announcement of the
> 'find' indicates local knowledge of the caves.
>
There is more. Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical History (6.16.1), adds to
his account of the Origen material the report of a find of Hebrew and Greek
manuscripts, including a Greek Psalms manuscript, at Jericho in a jar. At
the beginning of the ninth century, Timotheus I (a Nestorian patriarch)
reported a find by Jews of manuscripts in a cave near Jericho. There has
been some discussion of whether such a find underlies some of the material
in the Cairo Genizah (the Damascus Document, for example) and explains the
characteristics of the Kairites.
There is also the story of the Shapira affair in the nineteenth century. An
antiquities dealer, Wilhelm Moses Shapira, reported the finding by the
bedouin of an ancient manuscript of the book of Deuteronomy near the Dead
Sea. The manuscript was displayed at the British Museum as the oldest
manuscript of the Bible, but declaired a forgery by Charles
Clermont-Ganneau. Shapira eventually commited suicide. The manuscript was
sold for ten pounds and disappeared.
David Suter
Saint Martin's College
For private reply, e-mail to "Suter, David" <dsuter@stmartin.edu>
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