Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 13.01 21/05/99 -0500, Jack Kilmon wrote:
>
>Ian Hutchesson wrote:
>> There seems of course as much evidence for the Murphy-O'Connor theory as
>> there is for the Essene Hypothesis: none!
>
>Although I share some of your concerns and cautions over a blanket
>acceptance of the Qumran/Essenes origins of the DSS, I do not reject
>is as emphatically as you since  we do not have any evidence for an
>alternate hypothesis.  

Very bad rationale, Jack. Why accept something that could very easily be
wrong, just because you can't see anything better? I have on my DSS site a
number of salient conflicts between what we are told about the Essenes and
what we are told in the DSS.

What we do have is circumstantial evidence that the (majority of the)
scrolls came from Jerusalem. Nothing else can explain the 800 or more
scribal hands, lack of a single scribal tradition, and almost no evidence
that scribes were used more than once (there might be a dozen or more
scribes who have written more than one document, perhaps two or rarely
three). A small closed group would not have access to so many scribes, even
in Jerusalem.

Where the scrolls conflict with the Pharisaic position, they are usually in
favour of a more literal use of the biblical literature (such as the laws
about the red heiffer). There is really very little to make one think that
the (majority of the) scrolls belonged to any specific religious position
other than a generic Jewish religion (unsected).

People claim that the community rule is evidence for a sect, but that
assumees a lot about the writers' intentions with the text. It could just
as easily have been a mainstream association (through influence from Greek
culture) whose aims were to strengthen the unity of the religion in the
face of the Greek cultural influence -- which was after all swaying a
section of the priesthood. 

MMT, aware of the problems with the priesthood and written at a time when
non-Jews were sacrificing at the temple, fits nicely into the idea of a
document written from the temple trying to maintain support from the
conservative position at the time preceding the Hellenistic crisis, a time
when priests were marrying foreigners and women of the "wrong families".

The conflicts of the crisis make a more credible historical background to
many of the scrolls, after Onias III (my candidate for the TR) was exiled
to Daphne and eventually killed. He was replaced by Jason, then Menelaus
and we have the rhetoric of the wicked priests in Jerusalem amassing wealth
-- Menelaus's brother was killed through his own greed.

I could go on with the full show, Jack, and I believe that not only this
alternative (ie that the scrolls were merely from in and around the temple
in Jerusalem) but others make more sense than the Essene story, but you've
heard most of it before, but continue time and again to drop the Essene
word, when nothing in the scrolls actually points specifically to them and
a number of indications point away from them.

>The Damascus Document speaks of those who
>retreated from Judea to the Land of Damascus.  

Try and find it among the DSS, Jack. That's the Cairo Damascus Document you
are talking about.

>It's not really
>unreasonable for them to have "unretreated" when the time was right.

The scrolls talk about avoiding the inappropriate people, don't accept
anything from them, don't even talk to them, ie they are living amongst the
unconverted: there is nothing to indicate a retreat to be unretreated from.

>I would examine more closely the assumption that ALL of the texts
>in the caves were from one group.  It's not unreasonable to think
>that the Essenes were not the only people aware of these caves 

(Who says that any Essenes knew about the particular caves, Jack? The trees
are getting in the road of seeing the forest.)

>nor
>that others would also want to hide their precious scrolls or that
>these caves had been known by all groups to have been used
>for that purpose in the past.

>It is more likely, IMO, that these scrolls were an accumulation over
>time by several groups *including* our white robed yahad...and
>if not, it is also not reasonable, IMO, to think that a library of
>any ONE group would only contain texts pertinent to that group.

I'm starting to get delete eager with inappropriate analogies.

>Hell, I have books by Thiering and Von Daniken on the lower
>shelves of my library.

What do you know about the "collectors" of the scrolls that allows you to
make very modern analogies?

>To further complicate the opinion that a "profile" of a single
>group can be determined by this collection is that the texts
>would be expected to show changes in attitudes and "doctrine"
>over time.
>
>That is why I did not want to filter this proposition through the
>"anti-Essene hypothesis hypothesis" and am interested in whether
>the Aramaic of the DSS texts contains indicators of being
>non-Palestinian and could have come from Syria.

One could babble on to Babylon as well.


Ian