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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] How Long was Hebrew a Living Language?

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  • From: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
  • To: dwashbur AT nyx.net
  • Cc: Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] How Long was Hebrew a Living Language?
  • Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:06:52 +0100

Hi,

Quoting dwashbur AT nyx.net:



On 31 Aug 2009 at 7:42, James Read wrote:

Yeah,

I think you're right David. There seems to have been quite a lot of
this kind of thing. Too many conclusions from so little evidence. We
basically have a library of manuscripts kept in a safe location. It
could well have been just one very zealous individual hoping to keep
the scrolls safe from some kind of disaster.

I think some have even suggested that this may have been an early
Christian fleeing from a besieged Jerusalem that put the scrolls
there
in a safe place. Some of the texts even seem to have Christian ideas
in them. Like the wicked priest and the righteous teacher. I know
there is a lot of debate over who the wicked priest is and who the
righteous teacher is but it has to be admitted that there are
parallels to be found with Christian teachings.

James,
The parallels are such as might be found in most any offshoot-Judaic sect, especially with
regard to morality etc. The whole wicked priest thing is so vague that I don't base anything
at all on it; the pure fact is, we haven't a clue what they meant.


Yeah. Sure. It has also been suggested that this may be a reference to Maccabean usurpment. I suppose any theory is as good as any as nothing is conclusive. In an attempt to get the discussion back on track about the usage of Hebrew though it certainly would help in the matter of dating the DSS is we knew who was being spoken about.

As for the idea that this was a single person, Christian or otherwise, fleeing Jerusalem to try
and keep a corpus of books safe, I can't go that way. If we had found a moderate number of
documents in one or two caves, maybe. 800 documents in 11 caves? I think not.

Sure. I see what your saying. That's a lot of documents for one person to carry right? And why didn't he put them all in one cave? So is your guess a small Hebrew speaking community living in isolation?

James Christian


Dave Washburn

http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
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