Here are two notes (not a full review) on The Jesus Dynasty (April, 2006) by James Tabor.
On page 120: "Josephus tells us that there were only 6,000 Pharisees and 3,000 Essenes. Philo...puts the Essenes at 4,000." It may at first seem a small (and inadvertant) error to bother mentioning. Josephus (Ant. 18, 20) actually wrote that Essenes numbered over four thousand, (UPER TETRAKISXILIOI; Philo (Quod omnis 75) gave the exact same figure, (UPERTETRAKISXILIOI of the Essenes ['osei hatorah in Qumran Hebrew self-designation], dedicated to the service (not healing) of God (therapeutai theou). The reason I think this is worth noting is because both Josephus and Philo rely here on a shared source, likely the Histories of the Stoics Strabo and Posidonius, as I suggested in "Posidonius, Strabo and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa as Sources on Essenes," J. of Jewish Studies 45 (1994) 295-98. In my view, some other recent publications, not by Tabor (I'll provide references if anyone is interested), have distortingly underestimated the importance of sources in Josephus; that in turn can needlessly obscure information in Josephus on Essenes. Jim Tabor suggests that the James ossuary inscription may be entirely genuine, though a quick first reading did not persuasive me on that matter. Again, perhaps a minor note, but at one point the book appears to claim that the James ossuary may have come from a tomb in Talpiot, while at another point it appears to claim that the James ossuary may have come from a different tomb in Ben Hinnom valley. Those two arguments tend to undercut one another. Of course, these are fairly minor aspects of the book compared to some of its other pretty large claims, left for another occasion. best, Stephen Goranson http://www.duke.edu/~goranson "Jannaeus, His Brother Absalom, and Judah the Essene" _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
