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Russel Gmirkin_# 11/17/2004 g-megillot
list [excerpt]:
As I have elsewhere discussed ("Historical
Allusions in the War Scroll," DSD 5 [1998] 172-214), the War Scroll (1QM)
was the official war manual of the Maccabean army [cp. note 4 below}, the
last additions datable to early summer, 163 BCE.
Yonder Moynihan Gillihan_Astral knowledge and the authority of the
general in Greco-Roman military manuals: analogies to the role of the maskil in
the DSS_2002/3 SBL Annual Paper [excerpt; italics mine]:
Greco-Roman military manuals have for some
time proven useful for interpreting the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1962 Yigael Yadin
suggested that the genre of 1QM, the Serekh ha-Milhamah, was the "military
manual," a handbook written for commanders. Several examples of military manuals
composed in the Hellenistic and Roman eras survive; Yadin suggested a Roman
provenance for the manual upon which 1QM was modeled.1 In his recent edition of
the Hebrew text of 1QM, and related articles, Jean Duhaime supported Yadin's
classification and argued that Asclepiodotus' TEXNH TAKTIKH, a highly
theoretical, mathematical treatment of military formations from around the first
century BCE,[2] provided the best generic analogy.[3] Martin Hengel proposed,
alternatively, that "a Maccabean military instruction manual from the second
century using Greek and Roman models underlay the War Scroll." [4] Thus far
the Greco-Roman military manuals have proven most useful for analyzing the most
obviously military text from Qumran, the War Rule.
_____________
[1] Y. Yadin, The Scroll of the War
of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness (ET Oxford: Clarendon, 1962).
[2] See W. Oldfather,
"Introduction," in Aeneas Tactitus, Asclepiodotus, Onasander, edited by the
Illinois Greek Club (LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928), 233-34.
[3] J. Duhaime, "War Scroll (1QM;
1Q33; 4Q491-496 = 4QM1-6; 4Q497)," in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Greek Texts With English Translations vol. 2, Damascus Document, War Scroll and
Related Documents, ed. J. Charlesworth (T�bingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1995) 80-203;
"The War Scroll from Qumran and the Greco-Roman Tactical Treatises," RevQ 13
(1988) 133-51.
[4] M. Hengel, "Qumran and
Hellenism," in Religion in the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. J. Collins and R. Kugler,
48, repeating an argument made in idem, "Qumran und der Hellenismus," in Qumr�n:
Sa pi�t�, sa th�ologie, son milieu, ed. M. Delcor (Paris: Duculot, 1978)
333-72.
Commentary:
To analyze written military material successfully
it is absolutely necessary to know at first the correct measurement used in the
text. Otherwise the analyst directly fails to meet the classification
criteria. Remarkably enough, 1QM analysts do so - following the very first,
Yigael Yadin. But because Yadin's measurement adapted to 1QM is the late, not
contemporary Talmudic cubit,[5] so that any analysis that deals with this
measurement is directly oversized by 10%, [6] thus leading to a wrong
metric interpretation and, as a logical consequence, to a wrong weapon- and
army-type classification. In this way the Palestinian long-dagger with twin
blood-rim turns to a rim-less Roman gladius, the Hellenic thyreos to a
Republican scuta. In fact, all Roman armarment was born into 1QM in
this way. And once the weaponry is "classified" as Roman, the Republican Taktika
has to follow accordingly, herein blind anticipating Parthian cavalry structures
decades before the required Army reform of 110 BC. But not the followers of
Yadin's misinterpretation are to be criticized in the first place, but the great
man himself, for already with his own, truly famous Art of Warfare in
Biblical Lands. London 1963 at hand, one might roughly identify the Taktika
behind 1QM in general and the armament of the combatants in special as that what
is to be expected, at least by military historians, namely contemporary
Hellenic-Palestinian material (eg. Asklepiodotus' TEXNH TAKTIKH), here mixed
with Parthian cavalry highlights and enmeshed in a revised biblical, i.e.
Davidic, warfare that is culminating towards an utmost dangerous priestly
apology of war that is clearly directed to volunteers of war still
unfamiliar with the terror of an ancient field battle. And this is Infantile
Art of War of its best. Rohrhirsch [7] is probably right with his acanthous
theorem: A lot is known, but just a little is
founded - the rest is myth.
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[5] Y. Yadin, The Scroll of the War
of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness (ET Oxford: Clarendon, 1962),
pp. 116 n. 2; here: the cubit of 45.78 cm
[6] D. Vandenberg, The outer form of the
shield in 1QM, Orion list 3/20/2000, here: the "Ezechielan" (or "Essene") cubit
of 42.0 cm; cf. J. Maier, Die Tempelrolle vom Toten Meer und das "Neue
Jerusalem", UTB, Basel 1997, pp. 67-70
[6] F. Rohrhirsch,
Wissenschaftstheorie und Qumran. Die Geltungsbegr�ndungen von Aussagen in der
Biblischen Arch�ologie am Beispiel von Chirbet Qumran und En Feschcha, G�ttingen
1996, pp. 298-329
_Dierk
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