Today (Tuesday) I looked to see letters to the editor of the NY Times Science section where a week ago a one-sided report on Qumran archaeology appeared. The report was based largely on one paper from the Brown University Archaeology Conference, as well as a hyped-up BAR version of it. The reporter had attended that conference. Perhaps he forgot the lively debate there. Instead of interviewing, say, Jodi Magness, whose book The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls received many excellent reviews, Norman Golb, absent at Brown, was interviewed. The NY Times reporting was slanted toward those who seek to separate the scrolls, the caves, and the site; slanted toward those who prefer to imagine little or no sectarianism in their late second temple period history. Myths were repeated: de Vaux supposedly calling Qumran a "monastery"; and "Essenes" as supposedly absent in the scrolls. A bizarre unique uneconomic economy was asserted. No letters appeared, though I imagine they received letters. I know I wrote a letter.
Part of the problem goes back to the conference volume Introduction by K. Galor and J. Zangenberg. (The Volume itself does include some good papers.) They present a view of the history of scholarship that simply defies the actual history. Then (p.5) they write of the Y. Magen and Y. Peleg article that until de Vaux's work is completely published "...we will have to turn to Magen and Peleg for the most reliable and complete picture of the Qumran material culture...." That was an imprudent recommendation, given that this preliminary publication, largely based on digging in dumps, is much less completely piblished and evaluated than de Vaux's. best, Stephen Goranson http://www.duke.edu/~goranson _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
