Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

At 23.24 27/12/99 -0800, Numberup AT worldnet.att.net wrote:
>Representative of what?  "Normative Judaism" is for the most part the
descendant of
>the Pharisaic school of thought, as the rabbis are the inheritors of the
Pharisees.
>Though 1 Enoch and other apocalyptic works were valued by the Covenant
Community
>["Essenes"] of Qumran, 

There are *so many assumptions* in the above, my mind boggles.

What was normative Judaism at the time of the production of most of the
scrolls?

What community? (The scrolls were clearly not produced at Qumran and there
is no justifiable archaeological evidence for a "community" at the site. If
you are attempting to make the scrolls represent some non-standard
position, are you able to bring any contemporary evidence to bear on the
matter? What has eventually come down to us filtered through the Pharisaic
tradition does not of course represent normative Judaism of the second
century BCE.)

What have "Essenes" got to do with the price of fish in an egg market? (It
has only ever been wild speculation, widely held, but nevertheless wild.)

>so far as I can determine, they have not been a part of any
>know canon of the Pharisaic sages, i.e., rabbinic Judaism.  That, I
thought, was the
>question.

I would have thought that the question was ultimately about how texts were
perceived and treated.

I was however not dealing directly with that matter but with the notion
regarding the book of Enoch necessarily related to 'sectarians or adherents
of alternative "Judaisms."'

If the corpus of the Dead Sea Scrolls represents the conglomerate of
pre-Pharisaic normative Judaism, then Enoch, in a pre-canonical period, has
the equivalent of canonization. It may be from this situation that the
varieties of Christianity spread carrying with them books like Enoch and
Jubilees.


Cheers,


Ian