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

Re: orion-list 4Q448



goranson@duke.edu wrote:
> 
>         You are certainly free not to see Judah as the teacher of righteousness.
> But the case for the identification, made by several scholars in several
> publications over several decades, is by no means "nothing more" than what
> you wrote.

My point, which was I'll concede fairly sharply worded, merely suggested
that the identification of the teacher of righteousness with Judah the
Essene was an attempt to link one comparatively unknown character with
another. We have (as far as I'm aware) only Josephus's evidence for the
latter's existence, and he appears in just this one instance.

> On the other hand, I quite agree with you, if by "respectively"
> you intended to link some Qumran references to Judah, Ephraim, and Manasseh
> with Essenes, Pharisees, and Sadducees, in that order. Also, why couldn't
> an individual named Judah be the leader of a group which saw itself as the
> true Judah?

That's some coincidence isn't it, although I agree we cannot entirely
rule it out. I would maintain, however, that I think the references to
Judah in these texts have no bearing on the name of the Teacher of
Righteousness himself. If he was named 'Judah' I would suggest that this
arises out of the community's self designation as Judah, rather than the
other way around, i.e. the leader of a community taking the name of that
community as his own name. Given the cryptic designations of Judah,
Ephraim and Manasseh as outlined previously (you were reading me
correctly although I pointedly stayed away from the term 'Essene' ;) )
this seems eminently more sensible.

On a different tack altogether, I am very interested in the suggestion,
recently posed, that Judah the Essene was implicated in the
assassination plot (of Antigonus). I must confess that this aspect of
the narrative had not previously occurred to me and I shall follow this
thread with renewed interest.

Marcus Wood
Department of Theology
University of Durham
For private reply, e-mail to Marcus Wood <M.E.M.Wood@durham.ac.uk>
----------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from Orion, e-mail to majordomo@panda.mscc.huji.ac.il with
the message: "unsubscribe Orion." For more information on the Orion Center
or for Orion archives, visit our web site http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il.