Haran

Shank is most probably wrong, but he still has a couple of good points in his recent BAR article.

* The committee did seem to have individual opinions that varied more than the collective indicated (I read a larger version of all the opinions but can't remember where - perhaps on the IAA website?). Many individual opinions bowed to fields they had no scholarly knowledge of to declare the ossuary a forgery even though their own areas expertise did not allow them such a conclusion.

* The Israeli police seem inept and pesky. How many times have they arrested and released Golan now? Are they any closer to having a case against him yet? Apparently, early-on, they pestered another antiquities dealer but have now decided he had nothing to do with the artifacts in question. Are they just trying to frame someone they don't like? Why would the IAA tell Israeli archaeologists that they couldn't talk to BAR? That's freedom for you...

The whole thing still smells rotten and everyone is acting childish.

Bill

I think it is a mistake to take Eisenman too literally. Most of what he writes is couched in careful language. But occasionally, he will write something that is obviously wrong.

With respect to the radiocarbon dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are good arguments on all sides of this question, and I'm not certain that you can call everything that Eisenman writes as being wrong. He concedes (at the top of page 80 of the paperback edition; all page numbers I quote will be from the paperback edition) that his discussion of the Dead Sea Scrolls will necessarily be controversial. But what he actually writes after that seems fairly uncontroversial: I'm going to stop at this point and quote some evidence from the carbon dating report. The one I find to be particularly interesting with respect to the Eisenman quote given above is the fragment known as 4Q521, called "DSS-8" in the report. Paleographical analysis asserts that this scroll fragment is to be dated as 100-80 BCE. However, the 1-sigma carbon 14 date range for that scroll fragment is 35 BCE to 59 CE. James the Brother of Jesus was supposed to have died circa 62 CE. Accordingly, I believe that Eisenman is justified in using the radiocarbon dating for 4Q521 to call into question the paleographical evidence. And it is particularly 4Q521 that some scholars call the best evidence for ideas from early Christianity being present in the Dead Sea Scrolls. See, for instance, THIS PAGE by Dr. James D. Tabor. This seems to me to be far more than "zero" in support of Eisenman's claims.

In other words, I believe that, in this case at least, the radiocarbon dating supports the theory that the Qumran community and the Community led by James can, and perhaps do, "flow in a fairly consistent manner into" each other.

And the 1-sigma results of the radiocarbon dating clearly places other Qumran fragments as having originated within the supposed lifetime of James, such as 4Q266 (5 CE to 80 CE), 4Q258 (second run: 11 BCE to 78 CE), and 4Q171 (22 CE to 78 CE). (Note: there is some doubt expressed that 4Q342, 4Q344, and 4Q345 actually originated with the Qumran community prior to its destruction by the Romans. They appear to date as late as from the Bar Kochba period, prior to 135 CE.)

==========

Now, I've read again what Eisenman wrote about carbon dating on pages 83-85, and after comparing what he wrote with the actual research report, I can state that Eisenman's objections are reasonably well founded. The documented fiasco with the dating of 4Q258 seems to me to be reason enough to question the validity of the process in the terms used by Eisenman. 4Q258 was originally dated (1-sigma) as 134 CE to 230 CE. The scientists who were conducting the tests were astonished by that result, so for that sample alone they conducted a second run, which produced a date (1-sigma) of 11 BCE to 78 CE.

Now, to a fair-minded person, doesn't the fact that they re-tested only one sample at least raise some eyebrows here? And the only one that was re-tested was the one which didn't produce a result "as expected" from the paleographic presuppositions? If a mistake was made, could it not have also affected other samples? I think so, and thus I must ask why they didn't run at least a few additional "second runs" for some of the other samples. I would feel better about the results if they hadn't appeared to just test until such time as they received the answer that they were anticipating!

The bottom line here is that I believe Eisenman has good reason to be suspicious of the carbon dating results. I would perhaps not be quite as dismissive of them as Eisenman appears to be, but on the other hand, I would not see them as necessarily contradicting everything that Eisenman writes about the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Again, it is not my personal thesis from reading Eisenman's book that James is the "Teacher of Righteousness" and Saul/Paul is the "man of the lie." I believe that those who place those characters back in the Maccabean era have the better arguments. So, I don't just buy everything that Eisenman says, either.

But I also don't dismiss everything that Eisenman says, either.

== Bill

Rick Sumner

And again, I must beg to differ. There is no good argument against accepting the carbon date.

The "zero" referred to Eisenman's claim that the carbon dating need be dismissed. It needn't and it shouldn't.

And this doesn't support the idea that James is an Essene, it supports the idea that the author of Q (or Matthew, should you rule against Q) was familiar with 4Q521, and endorsed the Messianic expectations contained therein. That doesn't make him an Essene, and it doesn't make early Christians Essenes.

In fact, I'll take you one farther--I'll say that every Jew in the area was familiar with the Essenes, and that the vast majority of them knew a thing or two about Essene scriptures. But we find parallels between the Talmud and the Scrolls as well--should we conclude that the Rabbis were all Essenes now?

They emphasize the common millieu into which both were written, they emphasize that Christianity cannot be understood outside of the context of first century Judaism. But that's all they emphasize, as far as Christianity is concerned.

The attempts to attach the scrolls to Christianity in the manner of Eisenman, or Thiering, etc. undermines their true import, and that which makes them so fascinating--they provide a look into the Jewish world of the late second temple period. They're an invaluable resource, but they aren't about Christians.

The pivotal scroll for Eisenman's theory is 1QpHab. It doesn't make it, and without it, Eisenman is lost.

They didn't retest it based on its failure to coincide with the paleographic datings. They retested it based on the fact that it was so out of sync with the rest--it would have been retested even if there were no paleographic dates. 4Q285 was among the scrolls contaminated with glue, and it's likely this is what caused the skewed result.

There was no glue on 1QpHab.

Good reason based on what? He wholly misunderstands the nature of carbon testing--as is evidenced by his absurd misrepresentation regarding regarding 1QpHab (p.988 footnote 20). He tries to base their dismissal on variations on the dating that are *standard.

He has no idea what he's talking about, and it shows. The tests performed were 1) Performed according to standard procedure, despite Eisenman's protests that they weren't extensive enough, and 2) Result in acceptable ranges, despite Eisenman's protests that c-14 isn't that accurate. He's wrong, and he's demonstrably wrong.

I dismiss absolutely everything Eisenman says regarding the c-14 testing of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The same way I disregard everything Kent Hovind says about c-14 testing fossils. In all candor, I generally "poo poo" the entire discussion. The issue, for all intents and purposes, was settled years ago. Eisenman asked for the dating, he got it. He was wrong--it's time for him to accept that like a man, instead of sticking his fingers in his ears and screaming "I can't hear you!"

Else we might have to dismiss him wholesale as "pathetic."

Contra Vorkisogan, it really isn't some apologist ploy. Jull isn't an "NT scholar" whose "lack of methodology" needs to be covered up. He's a scientist, whose methodology was fine, his conclusions valid.

Regards,
Rick

Clutch

In other words, you are giving up the claim that such condemnation is only justifiable for those who have previously criticized him. Good thing, since that claim was strange and unmotivated. (But you couldn't have just said: I agree; I've withdrawn that claim?)

Your new claim, moreover, leans heavily on the term "wholesale", which has a powerful whiff of straw about it. When I say "It's raining", no sane person would take me to mean that it's raining everywhere. Here we are, talking about the ossuary. Shanks is pathetic. Now, have I just said that he is wholly without morally or intellectually redeeming properties? Gosh, he may be quite clever. Good father, for all I know. He seems articulate. Perhaps he's loyal. So what? Look at his behaviour; look at this guy, now; he's pathetic.

Your semantic hair-splitting is unsuccessful, in short. But why are you so keen on it anyhow? Again, it looks like an attempt to derail criticism of Shanks by manufacturing criticism of his critics.

Bill

Well, you obviously reject my argument, and I can do nothing more than strongly disagree with you. Well, my position is somewhere in between. I do not accept either that the carbon dating need be dismissed nor that the carbon dating need be accepted as gospel. Neither extreme is justified by the evidence, in my opinion.

Again, the bald assertions of fact by the text of the carbon dating report are somewhat belied by the actual numbers presented, and this should give anybody pause. That it does not give you pause is perhaps a reflection of your own prejudices. The use of the word "Rabbi" is particularly confusing as most people alive today would tend to interpret that word in accordance with its modern usage. But no part of that modern usage existed prior to the founding of the first rabbinical school in the wake of the First Jewish War. Thus, your question ("... should we conclude that the Rabbis were all Essenes now?") is particularly meaningless and confused. What do *YOU* mean when you use the word "Rabbis" in this context? Do you mean the members of the Sanhedrim? If so, the answer is clearly no, because the Sanhedrim, as an instrumentality of Roman power in those days, would not have contained any Essenes (by the nature of the controversy between the Essenes, Sadducis, and Pharasees). If you mean something else by your use of the word "Rabbis," then it isn't at all clear to me what that meaning might be, and thus I cannot answer your question.

As for the question of the relationship between James and the early Christian church (on the one hand) and the Essene Community in Jerusalem (on the other hand), I never intended that citation to be a definitive proof. I was only repeating what other scholars were saying: that this particular fragment of Qumran writing appears to be most like the theological position believed to have been held by the early Christians in Jerusalem.

You argue that these scriptures would be known outside of the Essene community. I would challenge you on that point because everything I've read about the Essene community leads me to believe that it is essentially a "secret society" (much like the Masons are a "secret society") and thus I would not expect any of their writings to be in public circulation in Jerusalem.

That other Jews would be somewhat familiar with the gross concepts of their theology, I would not challenge. After all, there were any number of Messianic sects in Israel at that time. It isn't possible to sort them all out in any meaningful way beyond stating that they all seemed to be opposed to the status quo in some way (against Rome; against the Pharisees; etc.). Eisenman says more-or-less this same thing: that the only meaningful way to sort out people and groups is to align them with respect to their support of, or opposition to, Rome. Otherwise, they do all tend to blend into each other and become indistinct. I really think you are confused here; either that, or you are managing to confuse me.

It is my take on Eisenman's book that he was specifically attempting to rescue the history of Second Temple Judaism from the rewrites imposed upon it by Christians. In particular, Eisenman seems to be most concerned that we accept his view of James as a kind of "opposition High Priest" (which would only make sense if James were an Essene; again, the Essenes didn't accept the legitimacy of the Sadducee/Pharisee High Priest as chosen by the Romans or Herodians). This assertion also supports the reason for the death of James in 62 CE (the "real" High Priest was fed up with having to accomodate this "opposition High Priest" with access to the holy areas of the Temple, etc.; there was a calendar controversy to boot, and the Essenes weren't celebrating the Jewish holidays on the same days as the rest of the Jews were; etc. etc.).

Modern Christianity is clearly an intellectual descendant of Paul, and Paul tells us little about James and even less about Jesus. Eisenman's theory that James is an Essene leader in Jerusalem who might just perhaps (at some point) be functioning as a kind of "opposition High Priest" seems to be as reasonable of an interpretation of all of the available evidence as anybody can make.

Again, I don't buy Eisenman's theory that James is the Teacher of Righteousness or that Paul is the Wicked Priest. Those assertions do not seem to be well supported at all.

But again, the key relationship here is the relationship between Paul and James, and it is that relationship that Eisenman's book seeks to most illuminate. That later writers found it to be necessary or desireable to overwrite stories of James with replacement legends (or by simple substitution of characters) serves this mission of illuminating this relationship. Those people who eventually became Christians were, to a large degree, anti-Semitic, and (as Eisenman points out) it would have been totally impossible for Jesus, James, or the other Jews of their day to have been in any way anti-Semitic. The anti-Semitism seems to enter Christianity by way of the feelings that Paul had about James and the rest of the Jews with whom Paul was forced to deal. That much, at least, is clear from Paul's own writings. You are obviously interested in defaming Eisenman for some reason of your own.

Eisenman is very careful (at least, in most cases; I don't have time to look up every citation in that extremely lengthy book) to state his theory of James and Paul as the Teacher of Rightousness and Wicked Priest as a speculative theory. So, the best you can say is that, based upon the carbon dating of that one scroll, one speculative theory of Eisenman's "doesn't make it." To so grossly overstate the consequences of that situation as in any way implying that "Eisenman is lost" is to clearly demonstrate your own prejudice and lack of credibility.

Eisenman clearly advances many speculative theories in his book. I agree with those who assert that he seems to be too credulous when pursuing his own pet theories. But, as Eisenman announces early in the book, it is his intent to build up a cumulative case and to allow the readers to make their own decisions, preferably with immediate reference to the source materials. This is clearly a teacher's approach, and I will not castigate a teacher for tossing out speculative theories that will make the students think.

My advice to you is that you should try thinking about the various things Eisenman writes about rather than trying to toss it all into the trash based upon one point you disagree with. My point with respect to 4Q285 was this: when they found out that their methods were inadequate and had produced invalid results for the 4Q285 sample, they should have retested more than just the 4Q285 sample. If you allege that glue contamination was the proximate cause of the original error with 4Q285, then at a minimum they should have retested all of the samples which had exhibited glue contamination. They did not. They only restested 4Q285, and that leads me to conclude that they were not following proper scientific methods. Why? That is for others to say, but I do not find that Eisenman's speculations about bias to be entirely unfounded. You do, and that is your privilege. But you cannot explain to me, in rational terms, why 4Q285 was the only fragment retested. At least, you have not yet done so.

As for 1QpHab, we should not forget that this scroll has an entirely different history from its discovery as compared with the bulk of other Qumran materials. It was one of the original scrolls discovered, and the shepards brought it to an antiquities dealer who sold it to a religious leader who only then took it to a university for study. In other words, the unearthing of the scroll was not performed in controlled scientific circumstances, and due to the very nature of its discovery, it had possibly become contaminated with any number of other things, so virtually anything is possible with respect to skewing its dating one way or the other. Finally, the discrepancy is only about 7 decades in any case (to get it from the range of 30-5 BCE up to the range of 45-65 CE).

And lets consider the paleographic dates versus the actual radiocarbon dates. The text is clearly in a Herodian script, which severely limits the earliest date of its authorship to roughly 30 BCE. Nonetheless, the earliest date for radiocarbon dating is 105 BCE! That means one of two things: either the radiocarbon dating is inaccurate by at least 7 decades (which is the whole point of our disagreement here) or else the document was written on an old piece of paper (also a possibliity; not probable, but at least possible). Either of those two things means that Eisenman can be correct about 1QpHab in spite of whatever the radiocarbon dates show.

You just don't have the evidence necessary to back up the degree of certainty with which you issue your pronouncements about Eisenman. The evidence isn't as clear as you would attempt to argue. OK, then, let me reproduce the footnote that you refer to so that everybody can evaluate it for themselves: OK, lets review what Eisenman says about 1QpHab by comparing it to the report itself, the link to which you so kindly provided.

Eisenman states that "the Habakkuk Pesher {is} also clearly a Roman Era document." Lets look at the stated palaeographic data: “The manuscript is written in an Early Herodian hand (ca. 30–1 B.C.), affecting the Palaeo-Hebrew script in a degenerate form when writing the Tetragrammaton” (Cross 1972: 4; Avigad 1965: 74).

OK, it is an "early Herodian hand," so it is CLEARLY "a Roman Era document." (I'm not going to split hairs here about Herodian rule versus direct rule from Rome, which came later. Herod didn't take power until the Roman legions dispossessed the Macabees. Thus, anything with an Herodian Hand would necessarily have come after the Roman conquest.) Herod took power in 37 BCE, so that is the earliest limit that there could have possibly have been any document penned in "an Early Herodian hand." And yet, the one-sigma results for DSS-3 from the report date that document as 104-43 BCE, entirely before such a document could conceivably have been produced.

The efforts made to fudge the results for this document are clearly shown in Table 2 of the report where 1QpHab is one of only a few documents to receive two date ranges for the 2-sigma results: 153-143 BCE (with 3% confidence) and 120-5 BCE (with 97% confidence).

This is one of those cases where the 1-sigma results fell far enough out of the range that it could not be explained away (or accepted), so the usual answer is to quote the 97% confidence result for the 2-sigma value as the "accepted" date (i.e., 120 to 5 BCE). Well, in my view, this stinks of the usual claim made about bad scientists drawing their curves first and then fitting their data to match. The data didn't fit, and they didn't do more-extensive testing to attempt to resolve the anomoly. Thus, I can excuse Eisenman from protesting about this academic "sleight of hand." You, apparently, cannot: Any true scientist will tell you that the conclusions are only valid within some given margin of error, and with the presumption that there isn't something unknown going on with respect to the experiment. Given the weird disconnect in the results for this document, I can understand how Eisenman could view the results with suspicion. It looks suspicious to me, and I have no axe to grind in this matter at all.

On page 82, Eisenman remarks about the carbon testing errors: "Take, for example, the Community Rule, which many Qumran specialists have attempted to date in the second century BC - or even earlier - on the basis of what they call handwriting, that is 'older' as opposed to 'newer' fragments. A recent AMS Carbon-14 test on one exemplar of this document put it in the second or even the third century CE. These are the kinds of contradictions one encounters.

The two "exemplers" of the Community Rule that were tested according to the report were DSS-4 and DSS-5. And it is one of those "exemplers" (DSS-5) which provided the interesting anomoly in testing when it produced a 2-sigma result of 119 to 245 CE. This is obviously what Eisenman is referring to, above. The retest of that document produced a 2-sigma result of 95 BCE to 122 CE, a range which is virtually worthless for pinning the document down as to when it was actually written.

The 1-sigma results for the retest of DSS-5 are actually favorable to Eisenman (as I've pointed out earlier), since the date range is 11 BCE through 78 CE. The center of that range is about 33 CE, an interesting date for Christians. And surely, it is difficult to believe that anything was written for, or deposited at, Qumran after 68 CE. Thus carbon-14 date ranges that extend to after 68 CE are to be viewed as highly improbable.

So, in my view, there is plenty of room within the range of available results to cut Eisenman some slack with respect to his theories about carbon-14 dating. Eisenman is not arguing, as Hovind does, that the process is entirely flawed. Instead, Eisenman argues that the results obtained at present are too subjective to be useful for final determinations, and in that respect, I grant Eisenman the benefit of the doubt.

== Bill

Rick Sumner

By "Rabbi's" I mean the authors of the Rabbinic literature.

I'll save you the trouble--they aren't Essenes, they're Pharisees.

No, here's what you said: "This seems to me to be far more than "zero" in support of Eisenman's claims." The "claims" in question are the dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is exactly zero support in favor of that.

I would never argue against the presence of an Essene influence in Christian writing. If that's what you're arguing for, you're putting up strawmen, because I never said otherwise.

Clearly they were known outside of the Essene community, they're paralleled in the Talmudic literature.

No, we easily take apart the Talmud, for example, and tell you why it wasn't written by an Essene. We can take apart the Psalms of Solomon, and tell you why it wasn't written by an Essene.

To Judaism at large, it all blended together--which is why we can look at Christian literature and see remnants of Essene theology, or Pharisaic theology, or combinations thereof.

Christianity is all but diameterically opposed to the Essenes at its core. Yigael Yadin once concluded that Christians were, in fact, "anti-Essene" because they diverge so strongly.

The problem is that he's rescuing it from rewrites that aren't there, and thus robbing the scrolls of their true import--of all that makes them such a fascinating discovery.

Yet, when I asked you the other day what led you to conclude James was an Essene, you contended that the Nazirites were Essenes because no historian mentions both. But they do--both Josephus and Philo. Have we a new argument? If so, perhaps it should be addressed on the other thread, or perhaps you should start a new one--it only serves to confuse the issue here, which is the queston of what grounds Eisenman provides to dismiss the carbon-dating.

These were the issues being discussed presently when you interceded in this discussion. These are the issues I am addressing at present. If you'd like a thread on the "relationship of Paul and James" a la Eisenman, perhaps you should start one? But to continue to address them in the context of the present thread discussing his carbon dating only serves to confuse.

That "speculative theory of Eisenman's" is what is being discussed. If you'd like to discuss the remainder of Eisenman's work, we can certainly do so. But it's not the present issue.

And accusations of bias are nothing but ad hominem in a clever guise. Don't presume I can't address other issues with Eisenman's work based on your own misconception of what the present discussion is.

This is the third time you have said this. For the third time, I repeat that all I dismiss wholesale from Eisenman's work based on the carbon-dating is his carbon-dating. I have other grounds to disagree with the rest. But the rest isn't the present issue.

Because, in the event it is so far out of sync, it is the only one that needs to be retested. You pretty clearly don't know much about carbon-testing procedures. I'd suggest you start with the bibliography on Jull's report.

You misunderstand the nature of carbon testing. It can't provide as narrow a margin as paleographic dating. But what it can do is provide a secure terminus post and terminus ad quem. We can state that, barring an act of God, that material did not die before 105 BCE and not after 6 BCE. This doesn't reflect on its accuracy--these are precisely the margins we should expect.

If we combine that with paleographic dating, we walk away with a very high probability that the material died between c 30 BCE and 6 BCE. 30 BCE is less secure, because we don't have the radiocarbon terminus post quem. 6 BCE is all but set in stone.

And that's where you're wrong. I present the same challenge to you that I did to Vorkosigan. See above--but I'm going to expect a commitment that your defence be researched--not simply trying to pick caveats about how "I don't have the evidence necessary," I want you to do some reading on AMS--I want a commitment that either you will present posts that cite relevant scholarship on c-14 dating (rather than NYT articles), or that the issue is going to be put to rest.

I will need about three weeks to compose it, as I'm spreading myself a little thin in this regard, of late.

[Snipped a big section where you emphasize the same misunderstandings of carbon-dating I just condemned Eisenman for]

Eisenman argues that

1) The procedures used weren't sufficient.

They were.

2) The ranges were narrower than we should expect.

They aren't.

3) That Strugnell's presence rather than his means something.

It doesn't.

And so on. He's wrong.

Regards,
Rick

[Ed. For Spelling]

Doctor X

Pssssssssst!

As one who wanders about on topics, it is with some temerity that I ask if we can return to the topic of the Ossary.

Can we split off this interesting--and I do mean that--on to another topic? My reason is I use this thread to keep people "up-to-date" who have questions regarding the Ossary.

--J.D.

Rick Sumner

Apologies for missing this last time, and apologies to Dr. X (I'll take it elsewhere after this, but this needs to be in the context of my last response).

4Q285, despite the apparent misunderstanding of Jull, is not the Community Rule. It's the Rule of War.

Regards,
Rick

Clutch

Yes, me too. If the thread does get split, could I put in a vote for rick and Bill to follow up their discussion to their hearts' content? Very interesting stuff; thanks to you both.

Bill

They also didn't exist prior to the First Jewish War. Look up "Yohanan ben Zacchai" in Eisenman's index. He had himself smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin in order to make peace with Vespasian and obtain for himself the right to set up the first Rabbinical school after the war. Most of modern Judaism traces back to this one man because the Romans more or less destroyed the rest of the sects between Vespasian and Hadrian.

It is to be expected that Yohanan would discard anything he strongly disagreed with, and it would be likely that little to nothing of the Essene texts would be preserved. So, yes, I would agree that "they're Pharisees" because Yohanan himself was a Pharisee, and he naturally preferred the writings of Pharisees when it came time to pick what to preserve. At least, this would be my surmise. Again, I see you arguing for "hard and fast" dates when, as I understand things, "hard and fast" dates are totally unjustified.

Lets look at this caveat from radiocarbon.com: So, clearly you overstate the firmness of the results, and you vastly overstate the general accuracy of the entire process, which necessarily makes assumptions about the material being measured which are admittedly unjustified assumptions.

Many other factors can affect the accuracy and precision of the results. HERE is another caveat: Frankly, all scientific processes are subject to errors, and the sorts of potential error sources identified above are not unexpected.

If I'm concerned at all, it is over the question raised on portions of the radiocarbon.com web site that better results could be obtained in return for higher fees to pay for extra processing. I don't recall anything in the report on the scrolls as to whether or not those procedures were paid for. I guess it will require a careful comparison of the description of what was done versus what is available to be done before deciding what the truth of this point is.

Finally, so far as the scientific process itself goes, I will leave you with the text from the beginning of the pretreatment page: Virtually all of the matters mentioned in passing in that text would be of concern with respect to the dating of the scrolls. In particular, it should be noted that all of the samples were taken from the margins, away from the text, and it is particularly in the margins, and particularly at the edges of the margins, exactly where these samples were taken, that one would expect to see the most pronounced sorts of alterations to the underlying writing material, due not only to the conditions of the storage of the scrolls, but also due to the necessary handling of the scrolls (and this effect would be most pronounced for the one scroll that is most debatable, 1QpHab, which received substantial nonprofessional handling before being turned over to a university for study).

I looked again at Eisenman's complaints (pp. 83-85) and I don't view Eisenman's statements as being so worthy of dismissal as you do. For instance: In summation, Rick, you seem to hold that the dates produced as the result of radiocarbon testing are an absolute end point ("We can state that, barring an act of God, that material did not die before 105 BCE and not after 6 BCE. This doesn't reflect on its accuracy--these are precisely the margins we should expect."). Well, you sound an awful like a fundamentalist Bible literalist, to me. I don't see those date points as being any more secure than any other scientific measurement, and there are numerous reasons to believe that, from a scientific standpoint, other dates might well have been obtained if different scientific procedures had been used.

Finally, I will note in passing Eisenman's extensive implications of skewed results based upon who was paying to have the results produced. Since I worked for several years as a paralegal, and had occasion to hire "expert witnesses" to conduct scientific testing in order to support a "theory of the case" that "our side" was advancing, I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that lab results can be "bought." Eisenman's complaints ring true when there is a substantial controversy, and in this case, it is hard to imagine a more substantial dating controversy.

Frankly, I'm surprised that you would even suggest that the lab results could be defended by yourself. In my view, nobody who was not involved in the processing could ever hope to defend the results, since the possibility of induced errors is controlled by the specific techniques used to handle the materials, and the possibility of "fudged" numbers could only be addressed by somebody who was involved in the calculations used to produce the numbers presented on the final report. There is even the possibility of a typographical error here, since the raw numbers from the mass spectrograph needs to be manually entered into the computer program which produces the final numbers.

Errors clearly happen. And in the one case where the error was obvious, a retest was performed. Just because the results for the other samples were more-or-less what was expected, does that make those results 100% accurate? No way, I'm sorry to say! All I need to be able to say this is a little common sence, the ability to read about the AMS procedures, and a little knowledge of just how science produces results; and particularly, how science produces results "to order" when it is being paid to do so.

== Bill