Chris Weimer

Would anyone be interested in an exclusive Dead Sea Scroll forum? A real forum, mind you, not one of those Yahoo Groups thingys. I have plenty of webspace to offer so I'm looking into burning some of it. I thought that this would be a great way to do so. Whaddya think?

Garnet

I'd really enjoy something like that. It's likely that I'd mostly lurk because my knowledge isn't up to snuff but I know I could learn a lot.

Chris Weimer

I should have some forums up soon, i.e. if people are really interested. Anyone have some ideas for division of forums? Pesher; OT; Qumran; Christianity; might as well add the Cairo Genizah and the Nag Hammdi find to it...

any thoughts?

Chris Weimer

Hm... someone doesn't want one. Well you're not invited then :Cheeky:

j/k

I've also gotten some positive responses at other forums I frequent, and am still waiting on some at yet other forums.

My question then is this: should it remain exclusively DSS? I thought about a basic layout of something like this:

Admin
Hebrew Canon
Hebrew Works
Christian Canon
Christian Works
DSS
Nag Hammadi
Misc

Of course, proselytizing? would not be allowed. Scholarly works and debates only. Whatcha think?

Garnet

Works for me. I've also been looking at the Nag Hammadi texts lately. If you do this, I'll join, like, fer sure. Just don't expect a lot of posting out of me unless folks in there have a LOT of tolerance for dumb questions.

spin

W*TF are you going to get people interested in scholarly analysis of the DSS? Every time a DSS topic comes up here it dies rather quickly. And that's not a particularly scholarly context. So where are all these scholarly analyses to come from?

I naturally would be happy to participate, but I think you kid yourself.


s-p-i-n

* Where

spin

Oh, and if you broke the DSS up into the following subcategories

1. Historical context (what we know about history leading up to the production of the scrolls and how they interact with history)
2. Literary context (how the scrolls fit with earlier literature)
3. Literary analysis (what texts might mean, etc.)
4. DSS and Christianity
5. Qumran and archaeology

you'd find 99% of the traffic would be in #4. How utterly boring.


spin

Hugo Holbling

Peter Kirby is running his Open Scrolls Project and general discussion here. You might like to help him instead of setting up another site, or collaborate when you start your own.

Chris Weimer

That's because there aren't a lot of people *here* who are into the scrolls. And it doesn't have to be rather large. If you ever happen to visit qumran_origin at Yahoo, you'll find a rather large group of people there (mostly debating Barbie). And instead of focusing in on DSS, it could be (as I outlined earlier) a textual criticism forum. I mean, who really here cares about my/the father post but Vorkosigan, you, and I? But what have we accomplished? Do you think anyone yet has come up with such a thing? This is my major, so I figured I'd support the field. Are you with me?

Sure it might be boring for a while, but enough of the 1st three categories and the last one would really be fitting for arguments in the 4th one.

Peter Kirby, with or without his cooperation, already contributed more than enough alone. Let's all thank him...

Chris Weimer

I also wanted to point out that most Biblical scholastic sites and textual criticism sites are owned and operated by Christians of whom the majority usually shuts down any criticism. :banghead: