Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] How Long was Hebrew a Living Language?
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:19:00 -0700
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.
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.