Re: [Megillot] Davies response (was SV: osey hattora)

[RUSSELLGMIRKIN]

Dear Philip,   Some specific points on which we disagree are the following:   (1) While your book The Damascus Covenant generally recognizes the (P) material is redactional, it views the remaining (E) and (D) materials as contemporary (and CD as a whole as basically a unitary composition with a few minor redactional additions) despite their differing legal content.    (2) I earlier posted that "The (H) laws in CD, like the related laws in 11QT, have full temple participation.  In CD, one only sees reservations about the temple in later portions of the Admonitions that contain the later Serekh terminology and thus postdate the (H) legal materials."  To which you replied, "Not full temple participation at all. Where do you find that? The temple participation is partial and consistent with what Josephus says about the Essenes."    CD 16:13-19 treats freewill offerings offered at the temple.  CD 9:13-16 mentions priests and the ram-offering in connection with lost objects.  CD 11:17-18 concerns the weekly sabbath offering.  CD 11:18-21 concerns the unacceptability of offerings conveyed to the temple by men with an impurity.  CD 11:21-23 warns against the impure entering the “house of prostration”, evidently on the temple precincts; CD 12:1-2 warns against sleeping in the city of the temple (at festival time?).  In The Damascus Covenant, 134-36 you cite several of these same passages as showing "impressive evidence of participation in the Temple cult."  It is important to note that these are all part of the earlier Halachic (H) legal materials in CD.  These passages show full participation in the Temple cult in the early strata of CD associated with the Teacher and his group (before the rise of the Man of Lies and the Teacher's exile).  In The Damascus Covenant, 136, you then bring in CD 6.11b-14 to show that the Damascus community had reservations about the temple, but this belongs to a later strata of material postdating the Teacher's time (specifically, during the "Wicked Era" that began with the Teacher's death; compare CD 20.13b-16a with 6.14).   (3) You treat CD 19.33b-20.34 as a single literary unit.  But CD 20.27b-34 belongs to (E) and was written while the Teacher was still alive (and, indeed, his "voice" was still a living voice), while almost all of CD 19.33b-20.27a belongs to the later Damascus Additions that postdated his death.   (4) Much of your historical interpretation rests on a distinction between the Interpreter of the Law who came to Damascus and the Teacher of Righteousness, and here you largely rely on CD 6.10-11 that looks to the eschatological rise of one who "teaches justice at the end of days."  But (a) the Interpreter of the Law appears to be another name for the Teacher of Righteousness (cf. the related title at 4QpPs(A) i 27); (b) after the death of the Teacher the exiles in Damascus did indeed look forward to the rise of a new Teacher in CD 6.10-11 as well as (or rather, equivalently) the rise of a new Interpreter of the Law (CD 7.18-19; 4QFlor 1-3 i 11-12).  These latter texts contain terminology characteristic of the time of the Serekh literature adopted by the Damascus exiles .   (5) You write, "I see you are still using the pesharim as reliable information about the Teacher. I don't. My reasons are in my book Behind the Essenes. What are your reasons for taking the pesharim as reliable (and how do you counter my arguments?)"  I agree with your major conclusion in the chapter on The Life of the Teacher in Hymn and Pesher that the general descriptive terms the Teacher uses in 1QH is crystallized into sobriquets in 1QpHab and 4QpPs(A).  But I do not follow (nor did your article present any arguments I could detect) how this terminological evolution in any way detracts from the accuracy of the pesherim.     Best regards, Russell Gmirkin