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Re: orion-list Cave 4 linen and deposit date
I apologize if this has been taken up before, but if the caves were
being used in a genizah fashion (not saying they were or weren't), then
would both linen and writings be a good bit older than the time of
deposit? And related...how much use/wear (from handling and reading) is
detectable from the remaining scrolls/fragments? (How would it be
detected in such cases as ancient, damaged, parchment?)
Greg Doudna wrote:
>
> The scrolls in the caves were found associated with linen used
> to wrap the scrolls and used also as packing in the jars to
> protect the scrolls (discussed in DJD III). A radiocarbon date
> on any of these linen items therefore could reflect a date of
> deposit of texts. At my request a linen item from Cave 4 was
> AMS radiocarbon dated in the Tucson battery in 1995. The
> calibrated dating of that linen at 1sigma (68% confidence) is
> 117-2 BCE. At 2sigma (95% confidence) the date range is
> 197 BCE-46 CE. This radiocarbon dating is in better agreement
> with a 63 BCE deposit date than a 68 CE deposit date, although
> of course one could propose (a) use of old linen... [snip, noted]
offlist reply is good if more appropriate. Thanks,
Tim
For private reply, e-mail to Tim L Phillips <tiphillips@InfoAve.Net>
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