Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Brak <Brak AT neo.rr.com>]

"If they did, they succeeded in reversing themselves in fundamental 
theological tenets within a few years--from nonpredestinarians to 
all-out determinists, to name just one example. Such a scenario is 
thoroughly implausible."

I throughly disagree with such an assertion. There are many cases where 
people (and groups of people) under go complete reversal of theological 
thought within a space of a few years. I personally witnessed a local 
church go from being extremely conservative to extremely liberal (for 
example from "only hymns on the organ/piano" to a full band with drums) 
in a space of a couple years - caused by the arrival of a new pastor. So 
for the Qumran sect to go from one belief to the opposing belief is not 
"thoroughly implausible". In fact by understanding the nature of sects 
(their birth and growth and off-shooting) its actually very likely. Just 
my two-cents based on real life experience with it.

B"H
John Steven


goranson AT duke.edu wrote:
> Yesterday arrived the brand new second edition of James C. vanderKam, the Dead
> Sea Scrolls Today (Eerdmans, 2010). Even if you read the first edition, I
> recommend also reading the new edition. For a sample here are two paragraphs
> from a longer discussion of the proposal that Sadducees resided at Qumran
> (pages 120-121):
>
> "The Sadducees and the Essenes may well have agreed with one another on many
> laws or other points; they presumably did not disagree about everything. from 
> a
> historical perspective, one would expect Sadducees and Essenes to share some
> views because both had deep priestly roots. The Qumran group may have been
> founded and led by priests who called themselves [though not the whole group--
> SG] sons of Zadok..., while the term _Sadducee_ seems to be derived from the
> name Zadok....Both parties opposed what they understood to be the Pharisaic
> tendency to soften some laws and to modify the related penalties. [p. 121] 
> That
> is, one reason why they shared some legal views is that both were conservative
> on matters relating to the law.
>
> The nature of the data from the Mishnah...hardly matches the amount and
> character of the earlier information from Josephus, Pliny, and others that has
> led many to identify the Qumranites as Essenes. That Qumran views and those
> attributed to the Sadducees correspond for a few individual laws does not
> entail that the Qumran group was Sadducean in any sense in which that name is
> commonly employed today. After all, the Qumran manuscripts teach such 
> prominent
> anti-Sadducean doctrines as the existence of multitudes of angels and the
> all-controlling power of fate. How could Sadducees develop such teachings,
> which are diametrically opposed to what ancient writers said about them? Also,
> the fact that an _early_ document such as the Cave 1 copy of the Rule of the
> Community...enunciates thoroughly Essene, anti-Sadducean theology makes it 
> most
> improbable that the Qumran residents arose from Sadducean origins. If they 
> did,
> they succeeded in reversing themselves in fundamental theological tenets 
> within
> a few years--from nonpredestinarians to all-out determinists, to name just one
> example. Such a scenario is thoroughly implausible."
>
> best,
> Stephen Goranson
> http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
>
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