Toto

Writing the DSS There is a video clip on the website showing actors engaged in bloody warfare and other actors portraying wild eyed religious zealots (the TV audience needs some drama.)

There is this in the caption to photo 4: And this caption to photo no 11:

PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto,

The documentary rightly rejects De Vaux ideas that the scrolls come from the Essene Community, but it seems to link them now to the debunked mythology of Masada that Yigael Yadin created.

It seems that National Geographic has retracted one unsupported hypothesis that it has been pedaling to the public for almost 60 years, in order to pedal another unsupported hypothesis. Is this progress?

Incidentally, the show appears to claim that Professor Pfann, has made an amazing discovery. He is "The founder and President of the University of the Holy Land/Center for the Study of Early Christianity... Dr. Pfann was a member of the staff of the excavations of Beth Shean (with Yigael Yadin) and the City of David (with Yigal Shiloh). He is currently co-director of the excavations of the Nazareth Village Farm." (from http://www.uhl.ac/meet.html)

Amazingly, Dr. Pfann apparently hit upon his hypothesis before anybody had the chance to even examine the cup. The day it was revealed to the world by James Tabor (Yes, that James Tabor), we get this: http://jamestabor.com/2009/07/

I'm giving 9:1 odds that this will turn out to be a major scandal/hoax rather than a major discovery.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

meow

The true nature of this propaganda effort coming from National Geographic can be seen in the following statement presented as a "fact":

This statement appears to reflect a controversial claim being made by supporters of the traditional theory, aimed at defending their "fall-back" position. By the basic criteria of critical scholarship, it can hardly be described as a "fact." It is, rather, another example of the hit-and-run technique: the opponents of the claim were obviously not given the opportunity to respond to it (if they were, why would the documentary describe it as a "fact"?), and when they do respond, their criticisms will not be aired on National Geographic. By the time any word of their rejection of this claim gets out, the propaganda effect will already have been achieved. This is called hit-and-run scholarship, not free and open debate. It's a silencing technique commonly used in this field; we have seen it before and we will undoubtedly see it again.

Toto

*bump*

It's on tonight.

charles

Did anyone watch it? I missed it. Would like to get a synopsis.

Minimalist

It was hardly earth-shaking. In essence, he came out for lots of different groups hiding stuff in the caves before the Romans slaughtered them.

The best thing was that the guy who took over for De Vaux and has to publish his papers thinks he got the whole Essenes thing wrong. That was amusing.

squiz

Robert Cargill has written about it here.

spin

How many blunders can one count in this presentation?

While I'm happy to see a documentary which doesn't kowtow to Essene conjecturing, there are a number of problems.

The stuff about Ein Gedi...

Pliny talks about the Essenes having Ein Gedi below them, yet the program only talks about in Ein Gedi. No mention is made of the camp above Ein Gedi (excavated by Y. Hirschfeld), where there were many single huts, a mikvah. Talk about looking in the wrong place.

Scroll jars

No scrolls were actually ever found by archaeologists in scroll jars. A few so-called scroll jars were even set into the floor in a few places at Qumran -- a very funny place for a "scroll jar". All of Gunneweg's conjecture about these jars is pointless.

Qumran

Jodi Magness rehearsed her usual claptrap about a dining room and a pantry to support her claim that the site was sectarian. She doesn't explain why there would be over a thousand pottery items when there were many many fewer inhabitants at the site.

Dissident priests

Although there is a historical epoch when priests were self-exiles from the temple (during the period of Antiochus IV), but there is no historical traces of any such exile at the time of the Jewish War. These Jewish War dissident priests are just a conjecture.

The Jewish revolt

"There is one event that ties the fate of all these groups with all their scrolls together: the great Jewish revolt," says the narrator and it's yet another unfounded conjecture.

Carrying scrolls through the sewers of Jerusalem

Who are they kidding? Carrying scrolls through such narrow corridors as those sewers (specifically those narrowest)?

I loved the Cargill line: "what you see here is what the Romans do: they destroy things", reducing the Romans simply to a base level of barbarity, rather than facing the fact that these were barbarous times. Alexander Jannaeus could crucify thousands of Pharisees and Herod could kill numerous family members, but it's the Romans who destroy things. Barbarians didn't sack Rome and Babylonians didn't destroy the temple 600 years earlier. Doh!

I can understand a certain amount of dumbing down of material to provide digestible morsels for those who know nothing about Qumran and the scrolls, but there's not too much beside the dumbing down except Cargill buying kosher meat and Cargill at the Wailing Wall and Cargill visiting Masada.


spin

aa5874

The question being asked was "Who wrote the scrolls?"

And they kind of answered the question.

The people who wrote the scrolls were NOT Christians.

That eliminates Peter, Paul and the Lord's brother.

jgreen44

What do you think about Robert Eisenman's book, James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls? To Eisenman, the Scrolls are historical documents written in disputes between James' school and Roman collaborators (among whom, according to Eisenman, was Paul). Eisenman identifies Josephus' Herodian Saulus who was active during the siege of Jerusalem with Paul of Tarsus. Eisenman also says that Paul might well have been the enemy of the Righteous Teacher, the Lying Spouter of the Scrolls who repudiated the Law and betrayed the covenant.

James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls by Robert Eisenman

(via: amazon.co.uk)