Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

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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