To Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra: Your article is very interesting and it is good to see original and well-thought-out analysis. As I see it, your thesis actually consists of two distinct arguments:
1) that the datings of the copies, based on published palaeographic dates, through statistical analysis produce two clusters, an earlier cluster consisting of Caves 1 and 4 (let us call this Cluster A), and a later cluster consisting of all other caves (let us call this Cluster B). 2) since the existence of these two clusters calls for explanation, you propose one, namely, that Cluster A correlates with Qumran's Period Ib, and Cluster B correlates with Qumran's Period II. My comment. First, I am pleased that you are raising the notion of the texts of Cave 1 being entirely a product of Period Ib activity. This is at minimum a fully legitimate proposal, despite flying in the face of five decades of scholarly dogmatism asserting certainty of Period II Cave 1 scrolls. It is good to see chinks in the edifice appearing. Well done. But I would like to question you on your personal certainty--as you express it--that Cave 4, which is the other "early" Cluster A cave associated with Period Ib, also has 1st CE/ Period II texts. Are you personally certain (as your wording indicates)? After reading my deconstruction of how Cross's 1st century CE palaeographic datings were created by the 1st CE deposit date archaeological assumption, can you honestly maintain *personal* certainty on this point? Remember that all current Qumran palaeographic datings (for the Hebrew hands) are derived from Cross's system. If Cross's palaeographic calibrations for the formal text hands--for which there is not a single, solitary firmly dated external exemplar in the entire two-century period of interest at Qumran 150 BCE - 50 CE--are even a little bit amiss, then all DJD volume palaeographic datings published from at least the 1970's onward, and most earlier, are equally amiss. As for the two clusters: I suggest an alternative proposal in explanation of your findings concerning the two clusters. I suggest that the two clusters are more likely to be (a) Cave 4, and (b) all the other caves; and, that both clusters represent Period Ib phenomena, rather than one being Ib and the other II. Of the palaeographic datings which are your database, the texts of only one cave were in part produced prior to "contamination" of the palaeographic datings by the misbegotten perceived certainty of the 68 CE deposit date. That is some of the palaeographic datings of Cave 1. There was a period, 1947-1951, in which Cave 1 texts were palaeographically dated independent of the alleged archaeological termini. This MAY account for enough of the earlier palaeographic datings in Cave 1 that your Cave 1 data seems earlier than the other caves. But those pre-1951 palaeographic datings may turn out in the long run to be less inaccurate than the post-1951 palaeographic datings which have been wrongly skewed by de Vaux's/ Harding's claim that ALL texts were deposited in the caves in the 1st century CE (DJD 1, published 1955, intro. by Harding). That is, your Cave 1 datings are closer to the accurate datings of all of the non-Cave 4 caves. All of the other non-Cave 4 caves besides Cave 1 have been biased "late" through the process I have described, in the article you cite and in my forthcoming article in the Brill Galor-Humbert-Zanbenberg volume. That is, what you found for Cave 4 is actually the reality for all the non-Cave 4 caves, and they are all Period Ib phenomena. Then only Cave 4 remains to be explained, which turns up earlier than all of the other caves in your data. Since I believe there is a slight systematic bias in the Cave 4 palaeographic datings as well as in the other caves' texts, this means the true datings of Cave 4 texts average earlier than the non-Cave 4 caves. In other words, the distinction between Cave 4 and non-Cave 4 that you see is real, even though both are biased, because the bias is likely approximately the same in these. By my conjecture this would be early Ib versus late Ib. (Which is not to say Cave 4 doesn't have late Ib texts as well.) The explanation for the distinction between Cave 4 and non-Cave 4 is a distinct issue. Several possibilities occur to me, but it would derail my point to propose specifics at this stage, since specifics are not essential to the argument I have given up to this point. So this is an alternative engagement with the interesting analysis and discussion you bring out. It is fairly clearly established now, in the aftermath of Bar-Nathan's Jericho pottery volume, that Qumran's Period Ib extends into at least part if not all of the reign of Herod the Great. Finally, the whole issue of the early dating should not be construed as a burden of proof that the 1st century CE text claims are proven incorrect. The burden of proof is on those who claim there are 1st CE Qumran texts to say specifically how this is known. Those most vociferous in insisting on this, if you try to pin them down, seem unusually slippery in avoiding direct answers. Each camp--radiocarbon, palaeography, archaeology-- seems to say the real evidence for 1st CE texts is in one of the others. But the argument is not simply one of lack of positive evidence of 1st century CE texts. Anyone interested in this issue simply must somehow, some way, obtain and read the new article out by Ian Young: Ian Young, "The Biblical Scrolls from Qumran and the Masoretic Text: A Statistical Approach," in: M. Dacy, J. Dowling and S. Faigan (eds), Feasts and Fasts. A Festschrift in Honour of Alan David Crown, Mandelbaum Studies in Judaica, No. 11, Mandelbaum Publishing, University of Sydney, Sydney, 2005, p.81-139. Young's article, which builds upon, updates, and expands his earlier Dead Sea Discoveries 2003 article, is simply devastating in its impact. Ian Young shows that the biblical texts at Qumran are all from a significantly earlier stage in textual development than all of the biblical texts at Masada. Greg Doudna Bellingham, Washington _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
