Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clivedurdle · 03-27-2009, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Wiki is interesting

Quote:

Elior is the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Mystical Thought at the Hebrew University, where she has taught since 1978. She earned her PhD Summa cum Laude in 1976. Her specialties are early Jewish mysticism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Messianism, Sabbatianism, Hasidism, Chabad,[2] [3] Frankism and the role of women in Jewish culture. She has been a visiting professor at Princeton University, UCL, Yeshiva University, the University of Tokyo and the University of Michigan.

Criticism and controversy

Her theory of the origins of mysticism in the priestly class has been challenged by Prof. Yehuda Liebes of the Hebrew University,[4] and her understanding of the ancient calendar was rejected by Sacha Stern. Eibert Tigchelaar noted that her examples have a "lack of historical specificity that are disturbing and frustrating."[5] She has been defended by Joseph Dan.[6] Princeton professor Peter Schaefer says she blurs distinctions between texts and periods, and is not sensitive to important nuances. He also notes that her views of angels at Qumran and the calendar are wrong.[7] Prof Martha Himmelfarb finds Elior's work "simply untenable".[8] Elior creates tenuous links, historical connections without a basis, and sees things that just are "not there."[9]
Elior claims that the Essenes, the supposed authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls never existed. She contends that the Essenes were really the renegade sons of Zadok, a priestly caste banished from the Temple of Jerusalem by Greek rulers in 2nd century BC She conjectures that the scrolls were taken with them when they were banished. "In Qumran, the remnants of a huge library were found," Elior says, with some of the early Hebrew texts dating back to the 2nd century BC. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest known version of the Old Testament dated back to the 9th century AD. The scrolls attest to a biblical priestly heritage," says Elior, who speculates that the scrolls were hidden in Qumran for safekeeping.[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Elior

??

Clivedurdle · 03-27-2009, 02:55 PM

Quote:

If there is an archaeological answer to be made regarding Rachel Elior' position on the Essenes i.e. that they were a Josephan invention - then I'm sure there are those more able than myself that will make it.....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

http://www.archaeology.org/9905/newsbriefs/vege.html

Quote:

Vegetarian Essenes? Volume 52 Number 3, May/June 1999 by Spencer P.M. Harrington Twenty-eight spartan dwellings on the edge of the Ein Gedi oasis in southern Israel may have been the home of a community of Essenes, the Jewish sect thought by some to have collected the Dead Sea Scrolls. While no inscriptions have been found positively linking the site to the group, its proximity to the village of Ein Gedi a mile away is grounds for assuming that its inhabitants belonged to the same community, says Yitzhar Hirschfeld of Hebrew University, the site's excavator. Descriptions of the Essenes by ancient authors such as Pliny the Elder "fit the character of the site," he says. Another clue is the presence of a mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath.
The Essenes are thought to have flourished between the second century B.C. and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70. Ancient sources describe them as a tightly knit group of men, possibly celibate, who practiced communal ownership of property. "The people who lived here worked the fields of the oasis," says Hirschfeld, who suspects that the site was a permanent, rather than seasonal, settlement. The dwellings were built for one person only and measure six by nine feet. They appear to have been occupied twice, in the first and early second centuries A.D., and between the fourth and sixth centuries. Three larger buildings possibly had a communal use; one, likely a kitchen, had three stoves and a thick layer of ash on the floor.
While the site yielded a fairly rich collection of pottery vessels, glass sherds, and seven coins from the early Roman and Byzantine eras, it is most remarkable for its lack of animal bones. "Although we worked carefully, sifting everything, we didn't find any," says Hirschfeld, adding that the settlers might have been vegetarian. Although Josephus noted that the dietary restrictions of the Essenes were stringent, the nearby village appears not to have been bound by vegetarianism. "We've found 4,000 animal bones in the village of Ein Gedi," he notes. Judaism has historically advocated vegetarianism only occasionally for ascetic reasons or during periods of mourning. Excavations will continue in the winter of 2000.

© 1999 by the Archaeological Institute of America
www.archaeology.org/9905/newsbriefs/vege.html

Muter mutter archaeology mutter.

Sorry, you have to state why this is wrongly attributed to the Essenes and you must state who lived there.

maryhelena · 03-28-2009, 03:41 AM

Quote:

Vegetarian Essenes? Volume 52 Number 3, May/June 1999 by Spencer P.M. Harrington Twenty-eight spartan dwellings on the edge of the Ein Gedi oasis in southern Israel may have been the home of a community of Essenes, the Jewish sect thought by some to have collected the Dead Sea Scrolls. While no inscriptions have been found positively linking the site to the group, its proximity to the village of Ein Gedi a mile away is grounds for assuming that its inhabitants belonged to the same community, says Yitzhar Hirschfeld of Hebrew University, the site's excavator. Descriptions of the Essenes by ancient authors such as Pliny the Elder "fit the character of the site," he says. Another clue is the presence of a mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath.
The Essenes are thought to have flourished between the second century B.C. and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70. Ancient sources describe them as a tightly knit group of men, possibly celibate, who practiced communal ownership of property. "The people who lived here worked the fields of the oasis," says Hirschfeld, who suspects that the site was a permanent, rather than seasonal, settlement. The dwellings were built for one person only and measure six by nine feet. They appear to have been occupied twice, in the first and early second centuries A.D., and between the fourth and sixth centuries. Three larger buildings possibly had a communal use; one, likely a kitchen, had three stoves and a thick layer of ash on the floor.
While the site yielded a fairly rich collection of pottery vessels, glass sherds, and seven coins from the early Roman and Byzantine eras, it is most remarkable for its lack of animal bones. "Although we worked carefully, sifting everything, we didn't find any," says Hirschfeld, adding that the settlers might have been vegetarian. Although Josephus noted that the dietary restrictions of the Essenes were stringent, the nearby village appears not to have been bound by vegetarianism. "We've found 4,000 animal bones in the village of Ein Gedi," he notes. Judaism has historically advocated vegetarianism only occasionally for ascetic reasons or during periods of mourning. Excavations will continue in the winter of 2000.

© 1999 by the Archaeological Institute of America
www.archaeology.org/9905/newsbriefs/vege.html

I have used bold to highlight the relevant points......
Assumptions have been made......and it falls upon those who have made the assumptions to convince others.........and others, again, will choose to make other assumptions......

Clivedurdle · 03-29-2009, 04:28 AM

Quote:

The dwellings were built for one person only and measure six by nine feet.

Please tell me who this obviously Jewish ascetic group are then? We have records of Essenes. If they are not Essenes who are they then?

It is you who is denying they are Essenes, please put forward an alternative theory! Who were these people?

Were they Jewish? Yes - the ritual bath.
Were they aesthetes - yes - vegetarianism, design of the small rooms, communal eating area.

In Trigonometry, you plot something from various positions. Here we have gnostic thinking, Pythagorean thinking, three at least of the major writers of the time. We have archaeology. We have the gospels with their clear pacifist tradition. We have a clear Hebrew pacifist tradition - lions with lambs.

Who then lived at this village? Essenes are a very reasonable conclusion!

(Hint - this group did not call themselves Essenes.)

maryhelena · 03-29-2009, 05:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Quote:

The dwellings were built for one person only and measure six by nine feet.

Please tell me who this obviously Jewish ascetic group are then? We have records of Essenes. If they are not Essenes who are they then?

It is you who is denying they are Essenes, please put forward an alternative theory! Who were these people?

Were they Jewish? Yes - the ritual bath.
Were they aesthetes - yes - vegetarianism, design of the small rooms, communal eating area.

In Trigonometry, you plot something from various positions. Here we have gnostic thinking, Pythagorean thinking, three at least of the major writers of the time. We have archaeology. We have the gospels with their clear pacifist tradition. We have a clear Hebrew pacifist tradition - lions with lambs.

Who then lived at this village? Essenes are a very reasonable conclusion!

(Hint - this group did not call themselves Essenes.)

Quote:

Rachel Elior writes:

The writers identify themselves in the Manual of Discipline and in the Damascus Document, the Florilegium, and the Rule of Blessings, as The Priests the sons of Zadok according to the biblical tradition of the high priesthood (II Samuel 15:27-29; 19:12; I Kings 1:34; Ezekiel 40:46; 43:19; 44:15; 48:11; I Chronicles 9:11; Ezra 7:2; Nehemiah 11:11). They refer to themselves as the Seed of Aaron, holy of holies, as the children of Zadok and their covenanters [allies], and similar priestly names. They call their leader the Priest of Justice (Cohen Zedek) and they authored texts that were titled as The Temple Scroll, The Scroll of Priestly Watches, The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, The Scroll of Blessings — all pertaining directly to priestly service in the earthly Temple and the heavenly sanctuaries.

Scholars who studied the legal tradition reflected in the scrolls associated it with the Sadducee’s [=Zadokite priests] legal tradition. Scholars who studied the calendar attested in the scrolls associated it with the Sadducee’s tradition on the calendar mentioned controversially by the Sages. Scholars who studied the language of the scroll attached it to Biblical Hebrew and post-Biblical Hebrew with unique priestly vocabulary.

In light of the above facts there are a few questions that I wish to raise:

Why should we associate the priestly oriented scrolls with the Essenes, who are not connected to the priesthood in any of the above testimonies? Why should we connect a library of 930 holy scriptures written in Hebrew and Aramaic to a group unknown in the Hebrew language [but known as Essenes (Essaioi) in Greek], which group is not associated with sacred writing, priestly worship, a solar calendar or Temple ritual — all of which are central in the scrolls? Why not connect the scrolls to the explicitly asserted identity of the writers — the priests, the sons of Zadok and their allies?

As of now, that answer is one that I am happy to go along with........

Clivedurdle · 03-29-2009, 10:02 AM

Maybe the vegetarianism is the clue here.

All priestly groups including modern orthodox groups love and has a central ritual called the passover meal where roast lamb is eaten. Read carefully Exodus!

A vegetarian jewish group were not a priestly group! They do make sense as a pythagorean Greek influenced Jewish group riffing off the clear vegetarian ideals in the Hebrew Bible in the story of Adam and Eve and the ideas of lion lying down with the lamb.

maryhelena · 03-30-2009, 08:09 AM

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/stacey.shtml

Quote:

By David Stacey
Field Archaeologist (1975-1987), Jericho Excavations
March 2009

Slaves

There are many references in the writings of Josephus to the slaves, even eunuchs, of the Hasmonean kings and of Herod.7 Many who are actually mentioned were in positions of some importance within the royal households (inter alia, Ant. 15. 226: 16. 230-3; 17. 55-6; Bell 2. 57). The slaves were presumably of Jewish origin, or were gentiles who had undergone circumcision and ritual immersion so that there was no danger that by their very touch they would have rendered food or wine impure. Although “Roman agricultural writers advised estate owners to employ day laborers rather than slaves for the most difficult and excruciating tasks to avoid damaging their slaves’ bodies’”(Hezser 2005: 249) such considerations would scarcely have concerned the Hasmonean Kings or Herod. The rapid expansion of the royal estate in Jericho “could only have been achieved with a large influx of laborers” (Stacey 2007: 238) and some of these may well have been slaves who “were available throughout the year” and “could be organized in work gangs which were easy to supervise” (Hezser 2005: 250). It should be noted that following Herod’s death in Jericho, his funeral procession was led by troops followed by “five hundred of Herod’s slaves and freemen, carrying spices” (Bell. 1. 673), many of whom must have been employed on the Jericho estate. However, since the day-to-day life of slaves was of no more concern to Josephus than were the lives and conditions of domestic animals, we have little idea as to how many slaves were owned by the royal estate, or to what work they all were put. Elsewhere I have suggested that Qumran was a seasonal industrial suburb of Jericho and that most of the work carried out there was of an unpleasant, smelly, and even ritually impure nature (Stacey 2008). As there was no nearby settlement from which day laborers could be drawn, slaves may have been drafted in from Jericho. It seems probable that not all slaves of non-Jewish origins (inter alia, Ant. 13. 319, 397; Bell. 1. 376), especially those who had been captured in some numbers during Herod’s military campaigns, would have been subjected to circumcision, but would have been impressed to undertake hazardous jobs (such as building the northern palace at Masada, or the dam at Qumran) or those activities, such as the preparation of skins, which would have been ritually polluting for Jews.

We know little about the daily life of slaves and even less about what happened to them once they were dead. It has been claimed that the cemetery at Qumran is exclusively male and therefore proof that the site was occupied by a sect of celibate Essenes. Even if the cemetery was indeed predominantly male (and too few graves have been excavated to be certain of this), it is possible that some of the peculiarities of the graves (when compared to rock cut tombs known elsewhere which clearly belonged to wealthy families) are because they belonged at least in part to slaves. If the five hundred slaves that were assembled in Jericho for Herod’s funeral procession is any indication of the size of the slave population of the Jericho estate, there would have been a considerable number of slaves requiring burial over the years.

Many shaft graves similar to those in Qumran have been found in a large cemetery at Qazone in Nabataea. They are dated a few centuries later and definitely contain burials of men, women, and children. Could it be that the type of grave originated in Nabataea and that those in Qumran belonged primarily to slaves who had been captured during the various conflicts between the Nabataeans and both the Hasmoneans and Herod?

show_no_mercy · 03-30-2009, 08:24 AM

Maybe the Essenes were really just temporary living quarters for Jews who took the Nazirite vow?

andrewcriddle · 03-30-2009, 01:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maryhelena

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/stacey.shtml

Quote:

By David Stacey
Field Archaeologist (1975-1987), Jericho Excavations
March 2009

Slaves

.................................................. ...........
We know little about the daily life of slaves and even less about what happened to them once they were dead. It has been claimed that the cemetery at Qumran is exclusively male and therefore proof that the site was occupied by a sect of celibate Essenes. Even if the cemetery was indeed predominantly male (and too few graves have been excavated to be certain of this), it is possible that some of the peculiarities of the graves (when compared to rock cut tombs known elsewhere which clearly belonged to wealthy families) are because they belonged at least in part to slaves. If the five hundred slaves that were assembled in Jericho for Herod’s funeral procession is any indication of the size of the slave population of the Jericho estate, there would have been a considerable number of slaves requiring burial over the years.
................................................

There were slave women as well as slave men.
I can't see why a cemetery for slaves would be expected to be male only.

Andrew Criddle

Clivedurdle · 03-30-2009, 01:25 PM

Slavery was a clear fault line between pharisees who were anti slavery and zealots/ hasmoneans. In fact evidence of groups without slaves would be evidence of Essenes, who must be seen as proto quakers.

I do not understand why when we have descriptions of three groups in many cultures that are related to human psychological make up, Jews would somehow be the exception, especially as modern Judaism has similar groups - Kibbutzim, reform and Orthodox and xianity definitely does - Quakers, Methodists and Catholics.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

03-29-2009, 10:02 AM	#116
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	Maybe the vegetarianism is the clue here. All priestly groups including modern orthodox groups love and has a central ritual called the passover meal where roast lamb is eaten. Read carefully Exodus! A vegetarian jewish group were not a priestly group! They do make sense as a pythagorean Greek influenced Jewish group riffing off the clear vegetarian ideals in the Hebrew Bible in the story of Adam and Eve and the ideas of lion lying down with the lamb.

03-30-2009, 08:24 AM	#118
show_no_mercy Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Dancing Posts: 9,940	Maybe the Essenes were really just temporary living quarters for Jews who took the Nazirite vow?

03-30-2009, 01:25 PM	#120
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	Slavery was a clear fault line between pharisees who were anti slavery and zealots/ hasmoneans. In fact evidence of groups without slaves would be evidence of Essenes, who must be seen as proto quakers. I do not understand why when we have descriptions of three groups in many cultures that are related to human psychological make up, Jews would somehow be the exception, especially as modern Judaism has similar groups - Kibbutzim, reform and Orthodox and xianity definitely does - Quakers, Methodists and Catholics.

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.