Well, Ian, conventions are difficult to break, and truth be told my own
adherence to my own claims and views is practised more in the breach than
inthe observance: In Brill's Encyclopedia of Midrash (2005) p 513 you will
find a caption Halakha and there you will find me comparing "halakhic
appr
Dear Herb,
Thank you for your insightful posting! I appreciate your comments on the
appropriation/use, or misappropriation/misuse, of terms that are specific to a
particular religious tradition. That being said, I am a little concerned that
we are being a bit too quick to point the finger at one
oh my complaint is against using words in scholarship which
are taken from religious traditions and then reading back
our anthropological assumptions about these terms as if the
tradition is all about our reductions. And also, if physics
has no biblical basis does that mean we shouldnt meddle with
Dear Ian:
I appreciate your thoughtful post; allow me please to
reflect at length.
I stand by what I said. People who deal with Qumran
sometimes, improperly,
just use the word halakhah to mean "law" as opposed to
"lore" and I did write in an
earlier post "What we now call Midrash halakhah (likely
Dear Herb,
You make a good point! Perhaps I did push things a bit too far in order to make
the distinction between the way in which one arrives at a particular
interpretation and the interpretation itself. Having said that, please allow
me to provide three short quotations which may help to faci
From:
Herb Basser
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ian,
Whatever halakhah might or might not mean, it never refers
to scriptural exegesis or any exegesis for that matter. It
can refer to laws which are justified by some scriptural
prroftext or other but never to the process of
derivation.The methods of interpr
Dear Stephen,
I am familiar with Baumgarten's position on the relevance of rabbinic 'halakha'
to the legal material of the scrolls. One of the most concise presentations of
his position can be found on page 22 in DJD 18:
"As is well known, there are those who consider the relatively late date of
Dear Ian W.,
You have restated (below) that you consider it "helpful" to call Qumran legal
texts "halakhic" I really do not. I find that it is either (a) assigning to
them a quite distorting view owned by sect they opposed (Pharisees) and/or (b)
retrojecting, without warrant, rabbinic terminolo
Dear Stephen,
When Schiffman's dissertation came out in the early 70's (Brandeis 1971?) the
field of DSS research was less than twenty-five years old! It is not
surprising that the use of the word 'halakha' caused some waves, but it has
since been adopted as an acceptable label by the majority of
- Original Message -
From: "Joshua Ezra Burns" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Ian Werrett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2005 4:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Megillot] Essenes, Sadducees, and Joseph
Baumgarten
> The same can be said about tr
Dear Ian W.
Again you are using the argument that if someone (modern) did it, it is OK,
even good. (But, Mom, all the kids do it.) Your first example, Larry
Schiffman's dissertation title, is I recall correctly, did not arrive
without considerable regrets by some learned advisors. You have the
nesday, February 09, 2005 4:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Megillot] Essenes, Sadducees, and Joseph Baumgarten
Dear Stephen,
If we are talking about the literal use of the Hebrew word 'halakha' in
the
scrolls ... then you and I have no argument. As far as I can tell there
is no
concrete evidence
Dear Stephen,
If we are talking about the literal use of the Hebrew word 'halakha' in the
scrolls ... then you and I have no argument. As far as I can tell there is no
concrete evidence in the scrolls to suggest that the authors employed the word
'halakha' in the rabbinic sense.
If, however, we
Here's the test:
If youre prepared to call the teacher, Righteous Rabbi, then
call Qumran law "halacha"-- but only if.
Herb
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Dear Ian Werrett,
We are not compelled to call "halakha" legal determinations that the authors
would have cringed to hear called "halakha"--is there an history advantage to
calling something what it is not?--and, I suggest, it's better method if we do
not use a misleading term. "Legal" texts is
Stephen,
Are we to deny the presence of 'halakhic' material at Qumran simply because the
word 'halakha' does not appear in the scrolls or because it is not used in the
rabbinic sense? Virtually every scholar working on the legal material in the
scrolls, including J. Baumgarten, uses the word 'ha
Dear Philip,
You may not be persuaded about the significance of different perspectives on
the word "halakha," but, I submit, the authors of many Qumran texts were; so,
if we are interested in history, we'd likely do well to recognize that and not
use anachronistic terms. And beyond terminology,
I just want to make one small comment on an issue that has been
raised by Stephen Goranson but has recurred throughout the more
recent history of DSS discussion.
These legal matters are best not
termed here "halakha," because that rabbinic term is not used at Qumran in the
rabbinic sense
The qu
James Davila has posted a summary of his good first, Indroduction, lecture for
his DSS course, linked at:
http://qumranica.blogspot.com
To this good introduction, may I suggest a little nuancing of one matter. It
is quite true that Joseph M. Baumgarten was the first to publish (in J. of
Jewish
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