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orion-list Pacifism of Essenes deconstructed
I have also thought for some time that the story of Judah the
Essene in the temple c. 104 BCE "prophesying" the violent,
same-day death of Antigonus I, with exact instructions on
where best to ambush Antigonus for the assassination,
reads like a story of a scandal involving a political
assassination with which this esteemed Essene figure
of tradition was implicated. Of course in the story in
Josephus the reader is intended to understand that Judah
was entirely innocent of the hit. But in modern legal terms
Judah would have been guilty, at the very least, of incitement.
The question to me is not whether this reading or interpretation
of the story is an obvious one but why it has never been
mentioned (so far as I know) in any published literature on
Essenes. Is it the romanticizing of the Essenes that has
shaped responses to texts such as this in ways below
consciousness, such that obvious readings are not simply
rejected, but are literally not even seen such that they can
be rejected?
Greg Doudna
For private reply, e-mail to Greg Doudna <gd@teol.ku.dk>
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