andrewcriddle

In thread about Daniel 9:24-27 Spin posted

Hi Spin

Do you mean that the DSS come from a sectarian Jewish religious group other than the Essenes ?

If so I don't think the evidence is strong enough on either side to be worth discussing here.

Or do you mean that the DSS do not come from a sectarian Jewish religious group at all (ie they were written by religious Jews fully within the mainstream of Second Temple belief and practice.)

If so I think this is unlikely. The general nature of works such as the 'Community Rule' and the 'Damascus Document' appears sectarian, and the calendar apparently used by the DSS's writers would have caused divergences with the calendar used at Jerusalem sufficient to prevent full participation in Temple worship.

(Note: I haven't referred above to the connection or otherwise between the DSS and the ruins at Qumran. Although IMHO they are connected I believe that the sectarian nature of the core DSS would be highly probable whether or not such a connection exists.)

Andrew Criddle

spin

The only community that I know of whose leaders were the sons of Zadoq, sons of Aaron and the sons of Levi was the Jerusalem Temple community.

Would you think that Jesuits are a sect of Catholicism? What about Nazirites as a sect of Judaism? What about people who are inducted into the maintenance of the priestly purity rules in order to be in the presence of the priesthood without polluting the priests? Associations were well entrenched in Jewish culture, as evidenced by the Essene association(s) and the Pharisaic haburot. I think 1QS outlines a temple purity association, which I believe was necessary to allow people to see the cultus being performed, ie they were witnesses to the worship of God. Later, CD takes us into the Hellensitic Crisis, when the priests were forced to flee the temple and join Judas Maccabaeus in the wilderness in order for them to protect their purity from the pollution of Antiochus IV, when he stopped the tamid and set up a statue in the temple. The priests who went out into the wilderness were called hasidim (the pious). This was the time when the wicked priest Menelaus was robbing the temple and building his own fortune.

The calendar of the temple was the 364-day calendar. The Pharisees adhered to the Babylonian calendar as imposed on Jerusalem by the Seleucid Greeks. The Astronomical Book of Enoch, which supports the 364-day calendar, argues against not a 354-day calendar but a 360-day calendar, ie there was no contest against the 354-day calendar. Although all the temple rosters (mishmarot) found at Qumran were all 364-day calendars, we find the 354-day calendar making inroads as there are correspondences recorded in some of them between the two calendars. (Using the 364-day calendar, you'll see that not one of Ezekiel's prophecies falls on a Sabbath.)

The community of the scrolls was a very devout group of strict adherents to the law. This would forbid both the misuse of priestly names and the notion of celibacy, which is anti-hereditary.

I find nothing "sectarian" about the scrolls. The only reason why people have trouble with them is because they don't reflect rabbinical ideas, which is only to be expected as the scrolls weren't written in that current of thought. We are looking at an earlier status quo in the DSS. This explains why scrolls could end up at Masada (MMT) and in Egypt (CD), not because some sectarians took them there.

There's nothing advocating celibacy in the scrolls. You just have the normal religiously based restraints on promiscuity. There are lots of laws about women, pregnancy, menses, children, gonnorrhea etc. People say that those texts aren't sectarian -- well, they have to, don't they? -- and the others are. Sure.


spin

Chris Weimer

Unfortunately, my old forum has hacked and defaced, so I lost the conversation with spin about the Essene Hypothesis, but the most outstanding piece of evidence that Qumran was run by Essenes is the toilet found. The scrolls are merely a collection of different works... Essenes writing the book of Enoch in Greek? Sorry...no connection available for that one.

rlogan

Hi Andrew. Of course, the ruins were assisting the Essene hypothesis on account of the idea they would be seen as living apart in a communal setting at Qumran. Once we remove that context we need to replace it with something.

Since the caves and immediate environment are not demonstrating sufficient habitation to support the commune hypothesis, then we have to motivate the placement with (say) secreting a library away - in which case ownership of the property in the vicinity of Qumran now becomes important.

Since Qumran looks to be a manufacturing center for pottery (and a military site before that) then connection of that area to the Temple makes better sense than to a cult eschewing wealth and power, does it not? A place to secret away the Temple library, that is.

andrewcriddle

I was trying to avoid debate about the archaeology of Qumran, because there is no current consensus and it is not something about which I have detailed knowledge.

However, here goes (what follows is all IMHO and IIUC etc).

One of the latest published works on the subject 'The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls' by Jodi Magness 2002 broadly upholds Qumran as a monastic type community. I found her arguments reasonably convincing.

In particular she argues that the question of what was Qumran during de Vaux's phase Ia is fundamentally misconceived Ia does not exist; the Qumran settlement was founded later that de Vaux thought and has more similarity between its beginning structure and end structure than de Vaux realised. (de Vaux's decades long gap between Ib and II didn't happen either there was only a few years desertion followed by late Ib.)

If she is right then the idea that Qumran was a military fort during Ia can be discarded.

As to pottery, Qumran certainly manufactered it but how important it was in its total economy is unclear. In any case even monastic communities have to earn a living.

I think that at the present time it may be better to concentrate on what the scrolls tell us about their authors and avoid conclusions based one way or the other on views about the status of Qumran.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

The problem is that the basis claimed by the community of the scrolls for their calendar of festivals etc is not the Book of Enoch but Jubilees.

CD XVI 'As for the exact determination of their times to which Israel turns a blind eye behold it is strictly defined in the Book of the Divisions of the Times into their Jubilees and Weeks.'

(We know from other scrolls that this was the title given to what we call Jubilees)

Now Jubilees is very definitely opposing the 354 day year.

Jubilees VI 'There will be those who make careful observations of the moon (it upsets the seasons and comes in from year to year ten days too soon). Thus the years will come to them all wrong they will make the day of testimony of no consequence and an ordinary day a feast day and they will mix up all the days the holy with the ordinary and the ordinary with the holy and go wrong about the months and sabbaths and feasts and jubilees. ....for after your death your sons will upset through not making the year three hundred and sixty four days only and so they will go wrong about the new moons and seasons and sabbaths and festivals'

Both the authoritative text for CD and the way it is appealed to ('to which Israel turns a blind eye') imply that the use of the 364 day year at the time of CD was in opposition to the mainstream whatever its earlier status.

If the generally held date of Jubilees (after the Maccabean revolt) is correct then the dependence of CD on Jubilees would require a date at the end of the 1st century BCE, but this date for Jubilees although IMO probable is not certain.

Andrew Criddle

spin

That's because you obviously don't know anything about the archaeology of Qumran. Magness's book is a heap of crap, which is certainly uninterested in Qumran archaeology because it's too busy reading into it the presupositions of the writer, who commits blunmder after blunder, in her desperate quest to make believe that Qumran had to be Essene.

The book takes argument from silence to be a fine art, projecting literary texts onto the site for want of her discussion of the archaeology.

She explains for example that Western Terra Sigillata was probably not frequently found in the Dead Sea basin because of the high transport costs, then goes on to say that as WTS was not found at Qumran it couldn't have been a property for commercial endeavour and was probably sectarian, because sectarians would have tended not to have used imports for purity reasons. The toilet seat is a pure farce, in that she first has convinced herself that it was a toilet seat, then finds herself how Essenes could have a toilet despite how it contravenes Essene practice at least as told by our only source of Essene practice, Josephus. Then we get her acceptance of the weird notion that the earthquake of 31 BCE was responsible for the crack in loci 48/49 the stepped cistern, even though the locus directly to the south had no fault and a locus further south was interrupted and never repaired, yet carried water to a cistern that was in use during the Roman occupation.

One could go on with the terrible mistakes that fills the book. But some of the most interesting things involve what she leaves out. She makes no effort to estimate the population at the site, relying on the guesswork of others that the "dining room" could hold at most 150-200 people, so we get the unanalysed acceptance of that as a guide to the population. However, there is nowhere for that many people to live on the site and there are no physical remains in the area of either permanent tent living or permanent cave living, and signs there must be to support the population assumed. There were no signs of water diversion to supply this ghost population. In fact, archaeologists who have attempted to establish a population limit for Qumran have difficulty getting over a few dozen people. In one fell swoop, we kill the Essene horde at Qumran. A few dozen people. Yes, she neglects where they could have lived and so she has done little useful work in establishing her conviction of a sectarian settlement at Qumran.

And she's totally wrong. She has to argue that the kilns under the skirting of loci 48/49 must have been Iron Age so as to attempt to sustain her opinion. She shows no interest in the development of the water system, especially the previous channel which supplied loc.110, which existed before loci 115 and 116, and these in turn existed before loci 111 and 120 as the wall between the two groups of loci was built for 115 & 116.

The archaeological stratification of the site is far more complex than Magness lets on.

The major building phase at Qumran was Hasmonean, right when the Hasmoneans were providing for defense from Jericho down to Masada. Qumran is a part of this process of fortification of the eastern borders. Magness, being convinced that Qumran is sectarian, doesn't like to consider the place of Qumran in its geographical context because Qumran, the largest establishment between Jericho and Ein Gedi, for her had to be something else.

De Vaux's decades long gap is trying to deal with the problems related to the water system and its development as well as some very thick debris layers on the site. He may be wrong, but Magness hasn't shown the facilities for approaching the problem.

In the basin of loc.49 there was a coin from Agrippa I, meaning that the cistern was still open at that time and she believes that the cistern came into disuse in 31 BCE.

It's easier to discard Magness's facile analysis.

Who paid for the construction of the damming of the wadi and the building of the aqueduct? These are signs of state intervention, as in the case of the water supply for Hasmonean Jericho. Qumran pottery has been found at Jericho, so the manufacture of pottery was not solely for local consumption, and makes some of Magness's more outlandish claims about Qumran pottery look just that, outlandish. Qumran had at least two kilns in operation, which suggests a high turnover in pottery production. Two loci on the site give signs of the storage of pottery, loc 86/9, which Magness misunderstands totally, thinking that the 700 bowls and 300 other assorted wares were for the "dining room", despite the fact that she accepts a maximum population of 150-200. Six bowls each? Yeah, sure.

I'd recommend another book on Qumran archaeology, but none have been written, beside de Vaux's original "Archaeology and the DSS", which is quite useful. Read it along with Magness and Hirschfeld's Qumran in Context to start getting an idea of the possibilities. The Humbert and Gunneweg volume of scientific studies on Qumran, Khirbet Qumran et Ain Feshkha vol.2 has a lot of good information, but is expensive and very difficult to access.

Yes, I'm happy with that. I think the analysis of the site is a red herring of the smelliest kind. The next thing to do of course is to abandon the presupposition of sectarianism and reread the scrolls anew.


spin

spin

The Astronomical Book was written before the imposition by the Seleucids of the Babylonian calendar. That tells you the status quo ante. Jubilees was written with the Hellenistic crisis in full swing.

Your problem is not a problem. Jubilees represents the same current as the AB and Ezekiel.

Yep.

We are dealing with the conflict between the cultic calendar and the civil calendar imposed by Antioch. "Mainstream" is not a transparent term in this context.

(As with many Hebrew texts, Jubilees had a long and complex development. You cannot argue what the state of the text was at the time when CD first references it.)

There is no reason at all for this conjecture. Jubilees obviously has some connection with the 2nd c. BCE with its implied reference to the Kittim as Seleucid. CD ostensibly dates itself through the information about the community's coming of awareness 390 years after the Jerusalemites were "delivered up" to Nebuchadnezzar, ie the start of the exile, plus a further 20 years before the teacher was raised up for the community. The end of CD gives indications of the death of the teacher, so we have an indication of the text being written later again, but the teacher is still relevant to the writers, unlike pPsaA which shows no interest in the teacher at all, yet must be related to the other pesharim because of its dealing with similar material. It may have been the last of the pesharim written.


spin

andrewcriddle

Hi Spin

Of course a date at the end of the 1st century BCE would not be justified by a post-Maccabean date for Jubilees.

I meant to say 'end of the 2nd century BCE' I was coming back to edit it and found you'd already picked it up.

Sorry.

Andrew Criddle

(I'm having problems with a bad internet connection will reply to your other points sometime later.)

spin

Fine, but note the different understanding to the Kittim in the Jubilees and 1 Maccabees -- the latter being written at the end of the 2nd c. BCE. Obviously, the Jubilees reference is sufficiently earlier than 1 Maccabees, eg 1:1 where it is used quite neutrally.


spin