On Thursday 10 June 2004 19:24, Jack Kilmon wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jim West" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Gregory L Doudna" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 1:39 PM > Subject: Re: [Megillot] Redating the Dead Sea Scroll Deposits > > > At 07:11 PM 6/10/04 +0200, you wrote: > > >Magness states that she has neither "time nor inclination" to > > >engage specifics. > > > > > >Greg Doudna > > > > That's a shame. If someone has put enough thought into something to say > > they disagree with it completely then surely they can stoop to explain > > why so that the person can evaluate with fresh eyes their own ideas. The > > imperialism of some academics is simultaneously disgusting and > > disheartening. > > > Nevertheless, gross generalities like "disagree with all of it" should > > not be taken with any level of seriousness. Such statements simply show > > that the person making them is disengaged. Unless your paper is refuted > > point > > by > > > point it stands unrefuted. > > I think Jim will agree with me that very often these types of "debates" are > not as much issues of scholarship and methods as they are about > "territory." You know..that which kept the DSS hoarded in desks and vest > pockets for 50 years. I was in Bill Albright's office for one of the first > examinations of photographs on the cave 1 scrolls....in fact, he gave me a > translational exercise with the Isaiah text. I was but a lad.
Wow. What a privilege! I'm insanely envious. > One could > not then predict decades of territorialism, jealousy, VERY shoddy care and > contamination of the texts themselves and total lack of reporting for the > Qumran dig. All the while, assumptions were made regarding the origin of > the DSS, who wrote them and the relationship between the cave materials and > the Qumran site...a relationship I, to this day, do not believe exists. I > welcome Greg's evaluation..he is, after all, facile in the field of AMS > dating and I also welcome Goranson's critique but, as a scientist familar > with C14 methods I have to say that disagreeing with ALL of Greg's research > with a blanket statement is not science or scholarship..it's > territorialism. Indeed. I agree about the purported relationship between Qumran and the scrolls, and I thank you for putting a name to this sort of thing. "Territorialism" is an excellent description of it. > Something that intrigues me, for its absence, is a careful microscopic scan > of the so-called "scriptorium tables." The plaster tops are absorbant..at > least they were when in use. If the surfaces of these tables show no ink, > embedded fibers, or other artifacts of scribal activity, surface use and > wear, they are not scriptorium tables. I have seen no report on this > critical examination relevent to whether or not there was scribal activity > at Qumran. The inkwells are not enough. I'm sorry, but I have been > watching and reading since that day in Albright's office over a half > century ago and there has been far too much bungling. All right, I'm going to stick my neck out here, and if I get my head lopped off it won't be the first time. Looking at photos of these "tables," from what I can see, and from their general appearance, height, etc., they look like benches to me, especially since the photos seem to show erosion from being sat on. The way these supposed tables were supposedly raised to a level where scribes could supposedly use them seems more than a bit contrived, as well. In any case, I've heard it said that scribes of that time didn't even use tables, they held the materials on their laps. I'd like to know more about this. As for the inkwells, if this really was a "scriptorium," I would have expected a lot more inkwells than were actually found. Scribes weren't the only ones who used ink. -- Dave Washburn http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur Learning about Christianity from a non-Christian is like getting a kiss over the telephone. _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
