Briefly, I quoted J. Baumgarten's article title that used "Qumran Law" just to show how simple it is to write "law" instead of "halakhah" in the Qumran context. Compare: practice, praxis, observance, serek, legal rulings, and so on, among available words. The 4QHalakhah text was, I think, named by Milik, not Baumgarten, who merely retained the title, not to cause title confusion.
Larry Schiffman wrote on page 5 of the article cited by Jim Davila on http://qumranica.blogspot.com about some of the reasons the term is a problem when used for Qumran. Then: "Accordingly, with due apologies for the problems in using this word, we find little choice but to continue to make use of it." Little choice? If a historian cannot be prepared to choose words carefully, that's a problem. In fact, in Larry's previous sentence he himself used "Jewish law"--exactly the sort of language he then declares unavailable. And the problem involves anachronism for halakhah and for conceptions of Sadducees. In this case, I suggest, this anachronism matters. When someone says "Islamic law" we know it involves religious and civil law; no problem; no need for apologies, or for remembering that we don't really mean a term. "Law" is easy to use; it costs nothing; it avoids the problem of speaking of halakhah concerning people who rejected halakhah. best, Stephen Goranson _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
