Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Gregg · 06-13-2004, 05:30 AM

I saw an article in the paper (which I don't have now) the other day where they found Arabic numerals, which hadn't been invented when the scrolls were supposedly written, in some of the texts. Does anybody have more information about this?

Thanks,

Gregg

Toto · 06-13-2004, 10:38 AM

The story is here: (requires registration)

Story

It is unconvincing; it appears to me that someone interpreted some random marks as a 2 and some other scratches as a 3. There is no claim that these are a part of the text.

This is the more interesting article on dating and the scrolls:

Redating the Dead Sea Scroll Deposits at Qumran: the Legacy of an error in Archaeological Interpretation

The scrolls have been reliably carbon dated to the first century BCE. The idea that they are evidence of a Qumram community (sometimes identified with the Essenes) that deposited the scrolls just before the First Jewish Revolt around 70 CE is based on a mistake.

Quote:

Abstract: There was no actual basis for de Vaux’s confidence in 1952 (when he announced the first excavation findings from Qumran) that the scrolls of Cave 1 had been deposited as late as the first century CE, since the dating of a "scroll jar" found in locus 2 was uncertain. A distinct, earlier first-century BCE occupation at Qumran was discovered by de Vaux in the second excavation season in 1953. Yet the perception of certainty surrounding the First Revolt deposit date for the scroll deposits have remained to the present day. In fact it has never been soundly established that texts found in the Qumran caves were composed, copied, or deposited in the caves later than the time of Qumran’s Period Ib in the first century BCE. The dating of the Qumran text deposits is a classic example of an unfounded scholarly paradigm filtering subsequent perception of data (archaeological, palaeographic, and radiocarbon), creating illusions of independent corroboration.

06-13-2004, 05:30 AM	#1
Gregg Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Kansas City, MO Posts: 1,877	Dead Sea Scrolls dating wrong? I saw an article in the paper (which I don't have now) the other day where they found Arabic numerals, which hadn't been invented when the scrolls were supposedly written, in some of the texts. Does anybody have more information about this? Thanks, Gregg

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