spin

There was a reason why I mentioned the walls between the rooms in the western wing. They obviously help to bear the weight of the second floor. There is nothing in L.56/58 similar that I can see. So, how was the second floor held up there?

I guess it's possible, but it doesn't seem likely to me, unless there's some way to hold up a second storey, that you can see that I can't.

Redirected? Where do you think it was earlier? Or do you mean that it was extended past L.56 sometime later?

The southern wall seems to be the same wall that went from L.74 in the east to L.102 in the west (see the Couasnon plan that comes with de Vaux's notes). That should make one think twice whether it was ever a part of the main building. (It may have been, but seems unlikely for a number of reasons I've now mentioned.)

As to the wall of L.83, it doesn't compare either in thickness or in location for a wall to close the western side of L.56.

I think this wall was to strengthen against lateral stress on the cistern from the weight of the building to the north. Qumran is on a slope as you know and the central courtyard has been built up towards the east, so the upper part of L.58 is actually above the original ground level. The setting away of the southern walls of the courtyard and the buttress seem to me to be designed to shift the weight away from stress on the cistern.

The southwest corner of L.1 was definitely the corner of the building. There was no extension to the south. There is no architectural evidence for a western wall of L.56 which fits with the conventional reconstructions. There may have been an additive wall...

The logic is right. The measurement doesn't seem to be. The wings are about half as wide again. L.71 must have pushed them to the limits, but L.91 is as wide as L.111, L.1, L.4, L.38, L.51, L.77 and slightly wider than L.30. The width of all these loci should fit your logic.


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To come back to this, de Vaux's stratigraphy isn't poor. It is marred by his presuppositions about the site. Otherwise the stratigraphy has meaning: it's just that we have to understand what it tells us. We are trying to deal with much finer distinctions than most archaeological sites of the era usually worried about. De Vaux was not a bad archaeologist, but we have different requirements these days and fifty years is a long time in the development of techniques and requirements.


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Minimalist

Josephus, in his discussions of the Essenes, either the short one in Antiquities or the longer one in War of the Jews, says nothing about them seeking to establish an alternative to the temple priesthood. At one point he states: and when they send what they have dedicated to God into the temple, they do not offer sacrifices because they have more pure lustrations of their own; That sounds, to me, as if they still paid some attention to the temple priesthood. If they were such drastic revolutionaries as you suggest why would there be any documents in their library which did not condemn the establishment? Even Pfann admits that not all of the documents bear this type of outlook.

Different things are considered "treasure" by different people. Hence my earliest suggestion that whoever elected to hide the scrolls in the caves was responsible for the scrolls (but not responsible for the gold!). In fact, the scrolls fared better than the gold which was captured by the Romans. In any case, I still doubt that the scrolls had much if anything to do with the "Essenes" other than the fact that they were stored in caves near Qumran and a French cleric came along and connected the dots...adding in his own bias of a monastic group copying documents as they did in France in the dark ages.

:huh:

Yes. What does Archaeology have to say about the Essenes?

spin

Boy, you've sure got this screwed up -- but you're certainly not alone. You assume that the scrolls represent the people who lived at the settlement. This is thus far unfounded. You assume that sons of Zadok, the leaders of the scrolls community, were bashing the temple priesthood. I asked you to think of a time when the sons of Zadok (and sons of Aaron and sons of Levi) were not in the temple. You never answered (hint: when was it polluted?). You assume that the writers of the scrolls wanted an alternative priesthood. Gosh, they call their leaders the sons of Zadok, sons of Aaron and sons of Levi. That doesn't sound like alternative anything. If you'd like to say that they were pretending, then you might also reconcile that with their stringent adherence to torah and thus to use of its bloodline.

Then, how could you establish an alternative temple priesthood without a temple -- sorry, without the temple? Make do without? Not much of a temple priesthood. Pretend? Build a substitute? Naaa.

(Perhaps we should separate this non-archaeological stuff from this thread. It'll remove the temptation to clutter the discussion.)


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XKV8R

is this really necessary?

so says you. i think a lot of dss research has shown compatibilities between the the rules of the community and life in the desert at a place like qumran. while this does not in and of itself prove anything, it is a piece of evidence that should be considered.

i didn't answer b/c this is supposed to be an archaeology discussion. but to answer your dss question, since when does israel have priest-kings? (and don't be smart and say melchizedek or jesus.) were the maccabees levites? do you think those that supported the true priesthood liked that? there has always been groups of disgruntled jews trying to establish alternative temples and priesthoods, often in response to displacement or disenfranchisement. elephantine is one (they actually built a jewish temple and had a priesthood.) i don't think it impossible with all of the political and religious competition going on in jerusalem in the early hasmonean period that a group would have separated themselves from the now very non-levitical maccabean temple priesthood (the citron-peltees) and called themselves the sons of zadok and set themselves up as the 'real' priesthood, with visions of a new, true temple and following all of the traditional laws (with perhaps some necessary changes). so they would love the tradition, love the torah, keep the laws, and consider themselves the true priesthood (which they might have been) but hate the jerusalem temple priesthood who took over. hell, they might even refer to the high priest in jerusalem as the 'wicked priest'...

but of course, that is dss stuff and not archaeology. let's keep it at archaeology per the initial post.

see above.

elephantine built one. what did jews do after the fall of the jerusalem temple in 70? oh yeah. ritual purity. torah study. keep the festivals.

(and i'd like to see someone build the 'temple scroll' temple per the specs in the doc. lol.)

but again, you are asking dss questions. again, let's stick to archaeology.

or, we can talk about archaeology here and stop with the scrolls lectures and rebuttals.


ok. archaeology. seriously.

spin

Do you prefer processed cheese or a good Emmental (or Gruyere or Rocquefort)?

This is the old "walks like a bird, must be a duck" syndrome.

I didn't say anything about priest-kings. But I did ask when the sons of Zadok and the sons of Aaron etc., the temple priesthood, were not in the temple. When you got there, I think you could then have said what you would have expected that they would write about those in the temple.

(Wasn't Jonathan ben Mattathiah high priest? What would make you think that they weren't Aaronid? Their own propaganda says that they were from the family of Jehoiarib (1 Mac 2:1). (But then this is a further sidetrack.))

Elephantine isn't a particularly useful analogy. It several centuries earlier and in a foreign country. It was not put forward to be a rival of the one in Jerusalem. The temple at Tell-Yahudeh near Heliopolis is a better analogy, but then it was founded by the sons of Zadok.

Do you think they could have gotten away with calling themselves sons of Zadok?

Again, when was there a wicked priest in the temple? The good guys out and the bad guys in?

So would I, but the good thing about an idealized temple is that it needn't be built.

I have no trouble with talking about scrolls. I was just asking that that be separated into another thread.

Hey, as you've noticed from other posts in this thread, I'm happy to talk about the archaeology of the site.


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Just a quick bump to remind XKV8R that there is some archaeology in post #61 to be dealt with.


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