1) Yaron Ben-Ami, "The Enigma of Qumran" is available at: http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Ben-Ami--The_Enigma_of_Qumran.htm
This article, I'd say, is relatively more balanced than some of the journalism we've seen in recent months, but still leaves much to be desired as an overview news report on Qumran. In its favour, it does correct the misimpressinon of earlier news stories that Y. Magen considers Essenes and Qumran mutually exclusive, or, to use Y. Hirchfeld's perfectly hyperbolic phrasing, that recent digs "contradict everything we know about every aspect of the Essenes." (Haaretz 31 July 04) Y. Magen, chief archaeologist of the Israel administration of the West Bank, proposes that Qumran may first have been a fort. He does not (in this brief article) explain the unprotected water supply nor the (besides a single tower) thin walls and unprotected entrances. Nor are finds of first century BCE weapons adduced. Then he proposes Qumran became a pottery exporter. If you were to pick a site to produce and export plain, heavy pottery, would you pick one of the lowest sites on earth, making export an uphill battle? And export to where? The so-called "scroll jars," for example, are known to appear, so far, only one single time in Jericho, and reportedly one time in a later tomb outside Abila--nowhere else. Of course we'll need to see the dig report. Unfortunately, several digs at Qumran have been less than cooperative with one another, and, at times, seem insufficiently to consider others' work. For instance Jan Gunneweg's study of Qumran pottery--including analysis of what he calls the "ninth" Qumran inkwell- -has so far been insufficiently reviewed. No one I know claims that "all" the scrolls were produced at Qumran. It's time to let that straw man rest. The claim that all scrolls came from Jerusalem merely lacks evidence. These mss criticise Temple administration, so are not plausibly from a Temple library. We're offered the view that they are from all Second Temple Judaism, not sectarians. But that period is notable precisely for sectarians. No Qumran ms known to me can be identified as Pharisee. Belief in resurrection and speculation on named angels contradicts ancient reports on Sadducees. Some books (like Daniel, with named angels, and resurrection) take a view that God and angels will basically take care of the expected spiritual war, a view not excluding present peaceful attitude. Qumran, on all available published evidence known to me, remains, most plausibly, a settlement of Essenes. 2. Barbara Thiering has proposed that Qumran is the site of the origin of Christianity. I do not agree. She proposes that the four NT Gospels, plus Acts, and Apocalypse of John were written in order to be decoded. She calls this "pesher" technique. (She explains her views in books and at a yahoo discussion group, "qumran_origin".) For instance, she claims John the Baptist was the Qumran Teacher of Righteousness. Among other objections, I consider him too late for that; she responded, giving reasons she considers my critiques of her proposals to be quite mistaken. I find both the method she uses and the resulting narrative not believable as history. Here I'll mention some related archaeology. Yizhar Hirschfeld redug Ein Feshkha, in part, I think, looking for evidence of balsam production. To my knowledge he found no balsam. But this recent report is of interest, among other things, to compare with Dr. Thiering's narrative because she includes two buildings located between Kh. Qumran and Ein Feshkha, buildings Dr. Hirschfeld reports on in his "Excavations at "'Ein Feshkha, 2001: Final Report" Israel Exploration Journal v. 54 n.1 (2004) 37-74. Thiering claims one building, east of the long North-South wall, that de Vaux called an "isolated building," was the manger in which Jesus was born. I remarked that, among other things, the plan did not look like a manger to me. Then Hirschfeld's article appeared. He proposes that it may have been a tower used as a columbarium, for gathering pigeon droppings for agriculture. A second building, west of the North-South wall (correctly in YH's text but not so in Fig. 1), according to de Vaux was an Israelite building. That is, in use only in the Iron Age; and not in the Roman Period. But Thiering claimed that that building was an orphanage in which Jesus and others were reared. Therefore, the archaeology of these two buildings, in my view, disproves Thiering's claims for them best, Stephen Goranson _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
