I agree with Dierk's reservations on all three counts.
As for 'exile' - well, exile seems to have become the essential claim of nearly every Second Temple Jew......obviously in most senses figurative. One of the few things I disagree with my good friend George Brooke about is that the 'way in the wilderness' is the derek of halakhah, or of following divine will, not a flight. If there was any literal sense, however, my guess would be that it was a flight from the rest of the Essene movement, the banishment of the messianic teacher and his followers from the main body. But that is a guess.
But if we knew the yahad lived at Qumran, would that help us understand the Scrolls better? Yes, but only very little. They could have lived anywhere that allowed them to keep apart.
So I guess we are more or less on the same mind. Also about the dangers of excessive confidence. One small step in the wrong direction can take you far from the destination even if thereafter you walk in a straight line. Scholarship is surely about retracing checking, changing tack, consulting the map. etc.
Philip
here a variation of the theme:
1. usual tools of a branch office, part of a perfume production facility and/ or date and/or balsam plantage - herein belongs the flushing bassins (?; German: "Schlemmbecken") for the fine clave, suggested already earlier by Zangenberg and others as well as a fair chance for a smithy.
2. uncertain; was cave 8 in fact sealed? and if not - what does a tab actually prove?
3. Pliny's Natural History is a nice work with touristy ambitions, without being qualified for historical authenticity; cf. Bob Kraft's article on Essenes and Jews in Pliny, DSD 8/2001 (to be uploaded if required).
I think the all-important question is: "how did the yahad understand the term exile". It's hardly enough to camp in paramilitary fashion in the neighbor's garden to call such a protest action "exile into the wilderness of nations" - for neither is the garden wild per se, nor is the neighbor an alien, his garden abroad. Please think twice please... Not by chance I've referred to the Isaiah-Trail doctrine (Is 40.3) of the apparently widespread "Threat Song against Assur"-roadmap (Is 10.5-12.6) to the exile of "the rest that returns".
Be that as it may, we are contemporary witnesses of the first true schism in the DSS research. All I can see in the moment is a retreat of the old "mother faction" on all sides - but this could be a mere temporary phenomenon. However, I do not share Zangenberg's excessive optimism
_Dierk
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-- Professor Philip R Davies University of Sheffield _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
