avi

unlike the accused/convicted, I did not attend Harvard, nor am I an attorney. In fact, I am ignorant.

I cannot understand what the original fuss was about: This guy Golb claims that the DSS originated in Jerusalem and were transported to Qumran, while other scholars claimed that the scrolls originated in Qumran.

Why is it important to distinguish between these two possibilities, or, (in my ignorance) the more likely, more reasonable possibility, that some scrolls were written in Jerusalem and transported to Qumran, and others were written right there in the desert?

How does it affect the interpretation of the documents themselves, if they were authored in Timbuktu? Do we change our assessment of Aristarchus' discovery of Heliocentrism, because he did not conduct his research, nor complete his computations in Athens, but rather in Alexandria?

I cannot grasp the big picture in this affair.....

avi

DCHindley

avi,

The issue of who wrote those scrolls is an incredibly divisive one, not only in academia but in Jewish circles. Why? Look at the scrolls. They reflect a form of extreme nationalistic and selective Judaism far from the picture we had expected based on the previously surviving literature. We were expecting something quite a bit closer to the picture idealized by Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, the NT, and a few pagan authors who report about the region.

The only major group known to have been active in this area were Essenes, and they are presented in the literature as contemplative "quietists" living in tight knit communes or communities. The scrolls are full of righteous anger, predictions of a glorious war that would establish a world Jewish empire, scorn for those who "seek after smooth things" and hatred for "liars" and impure high priests who seemed more like power brokering politicians than representatives of God. Of course, if we are to assume that the scrolls represent the thinking of a major body of Jews active in the area, it means that Essenes were not as spun by Josephus and Philo, or that the writers were not Essenes at all.

There has been a faction among scholars who wanted to distance the kind of extremist Judaism represented by these scrolls from "mainstream" Judaism. The farther they can be pigeonholed into the "lunatic fringe," or sanitized as hyperbole and metaphores of actually very calm and peaceful essenes, the less likely they could have exerted a major influence on emergent rabbinic thought or early Christians including Jesus and his apostles. If they DO represent more or less mainstream Judaism, then early Christianity as well as Pharisees may have been way more extreme than we would like to believe. I keep thinking of the extreme reaction of one well known amateur critic (a librarian with proficiency in Greek) who so opposed one particular professional critic trying to argue for a date for the personalities of the scrolls in the latter half of the range suggested by C₁₄ tests, he chased him down to numerous boards (Orion, ANE, Crosstalk2, IOUDAIOS, etc) to criticize not just his theory but make numerous disparaging comments about the scholar's undergraduate life as an apologist for 7th Day Adventism, a bubble which ha stated his graduate work had burst.

Norman Golb was one of those who proposed that the scrolls DID represent mainstream Judaism, unfiltered by writers who wanted Judaism to appear less barbaric in the eyes of the Greco-Roman world. This was not a popular idea, and Norman Golb's position was harshly criticized by most other scholars and commentators. Raphael Golb, it seems, took this criticism of his father rather personally. But instead of calmly voicing his opinion that many of the critics were voicing their own agendas rather than arguing the facts of the case, he instead resorted to creating scores of sock puppets to snipe at his father's critics, and even created impersonations of other critics to make it seem that6 they were engaged in a conspiracy to silence Norman Golb and minimize the implications of his theory.

I don't think Norman Golb (the father) had anything to do with what his son did, and I'm sure he is terribly embarrassed by his son Raphael Golb's actions.

DCH

avi

Thank you very much, DCHindley, an excellent summary. Bravo. Well done, as usual.....

Ok, I appreciate, a bit more, some aspects of this controversy, thanks to your lucid clarification.

What I am still having a bit of trouble appreciating, is the notion of "extremist Judaism".

Does the Torah not represent orthodox, run of the mill, ordinary, "typical" Judaism? Are not all of these "extremist" positions found therein?

This may be badly out of synch, but, whenever I read, or hear about "extremist muslims", I just shake my head in disbelief. Its all there, in black and white, in the Quran, everyone can read it: kill the non-believers.

Does anyone on this FRDB imagine that the jews don't share exactly the same attitude? Have such folks been reading about some other Palestine, some other Palestinians, found in some other, parallel universe perhaps?

I had the good fortune, to hear George Wald explain, at the first Earth day celebration, in Philadelphia 1970, how inhuman our conduct was in VietNam, for employing napalm against the VietNamese. Of course, he was absolutely correct.

The very next day, I attended his lecture to the Jews at University of Pennsylvania, when he urged everyone to demand that the Israeli government purchase as much Napalm as possible, for use against the "subhuman" Palestinians.

Those who imagine that there are "mainstream" Jews, who are somehow more "liberal" than orthodox Jews, are sadly mistaken, in my opinion, as that famous, Harvard University Medical School faculty member, Nobel prize winner demonstrated to my satisfaction, on two consecutive days in April, 1970.

avi

Toto

LA Jewish Journal: "Slander, Lies and the Dead Sea Scrolls"

stephan huller

This is the most interesting curiosity I saw at Cargill's website:

I was an extra in the Rob Lowe film Youngblood.

Toto

Raphael Golb promotes his side

XKV8R is not impressed

Russellonius

I went with three generations of my family to the DSS exhibit when it was at the St Paul Science Museum.

I briefed them on the way. According to the display I was wrong on two counts. Three inkwells were found in the vicinity of Qumram and there were about 800 different hand-writings among the fragments. If they lived on-site they were an extremely conservative group with regard to writing supplies.

Part of the display was how past displays had been imbalanced re science vs religion. They did not come right out and say Father Roland DeVaux's team created a hoax. After the DSS display, right after the actual fragments, were many original pages of St John's Illuminated Bible for balance.

spamandham

Exactly. If I used my real name, I'd have to pretend to be a liberal Christian online (as I mostly do in the real world, and also do when I do use my real name online) to protect my income. When I retire, I'll switch to using my real name, because it won't matter any more and anyone I give a damn about in the real world already knows I'm an atheist who tolerates religion, but otherwise wishes it would just go away.

squiz

Ah, now i know what XKV8R stands for - excavator!

manwithdream

This might be interesting to people who care about the Golb case:

https://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/schiffma..._2010nov30.pdf

It is Dr.Norman Golb's response to a confidential paper written by Dr. Schiffman for his university about the plagiarism claim against him.

I am not sure if Schiffman's paper is also on that site.

Kenneth Greifer