Re: [Megillot] Davies response (was SV: osey hattora)

[RUSSELLGMIRKIN]

Dear Philip,   Apologies for the delay in my response - MSS deadlines.  Also, I wanted to reread the relevant portions of your _Damascus Covenant_ and _Behind the Essenes_ to refresh my memory regarding your theories on CD.   You wrote, "I'm keen to see how you deal with the evidence I published over the last 20 years ago on the whole range of matters that you discuss."  While a full discussion will have to wait the publication of my article (hopefully in 2006-7), I can outline our areas of agreement and disagreement here (since the article discusses your proposals only tangentially).  I will break this up into two parts due to length.   First, I commend your methodology in laying out your "minimal" working premises ("either proven or sufficiently probable to be built upon") and on distinguishing between these and "things which we do not know, even though we may think we do" (Behind the Essenes, 22-24).  Unfortunately, I would put all three of your working premises into the latter category: (1) That "the Qumran community" (by which you mean the Teacher's community) occupied the site of Qumran in de Vaux's Period Ib; (2) that "the Qumran community" was related to the Essenes of the classical period; and (3) that works with a "Qumran origin" (in the sense of the Teacher's community) include e.g. 1QS ("obviously Qumranic") and 1QM, in contrast to "earlier writings (like CD, Jubilees and 11QT)."  We do not know (although some think we do) that the Teacher's group occupied Qumran, were related to the Essenes, or followed the tenets of 1QS, 1QM, or other Serekh texts.  And indeed I think the best evidence points to the Teacher's group long predating Qumran, being related to the Sadducees, predating the Serekh texts, and following the very set of texts you ascribe to an earlier period.  I reiterate my earlier point that the Teacher nowhere appears in Serekh texts, and I would also point out that both the pesharim that reference the Teacher and the Hymns likely authored by the Teacher do not contain the characteristic Serekh terminology.   I find myself in sympathy with your attempt to take redactional elements in CD into account, as well as your distinction between the Damascus community (as you call it) and the group that authored the Serekh texts (your "Qumran community").  But I do not agree with your understanding of the relationship of these two groups.  You view the Damascus community, founded by "the interpreter of the law," to be the parent group of which the "Qumran community" founded by the Teacher of Righteousness was an offshoot.  In my opinion the Serekh texts are an entirely distinct literature which postdates the era of the Teacher of Righteousness.  We at least agree that the Serekh literature postdates 11QT and major portions of CD, but your thesis that the Teacher's group authored the Serekh texts is unsupported by any real textual evidence, despite being a common assumption within the field.   In CD we must now (in light of Hempel's analysis) distinguish between the earlier Halachic legal materials and later Serekh materials.  In the Admonitions section, as I will argue in an article under preparation, we must similarly distinguish between three groups of materials:  (E) the Enrollment Speech written when the Teacher was still alive; (P) Polemical materials against the Man of Lies and his followers, written about the time of the Teacher's death; and (D) the Damascus Additions, written by the exiles in the land of Damascus during the Era of Wickedness after the Teacher's death.  Earlier Halachic legal materials are associated with (E) and (P), while later Serekh terminology and laws are only associated with (D).  The Serekh materials in CD thus postdate the era of the Teacher, inverting your proposed historical sequence.  Further, the Serekh literature arose independently of the Damascus Community.    The Serekh group was not an offshoot of the Damascus Community; rather, the Damascus Community voluntarily came under the influence of the Serekh group and adopted their already existing organizational rules.  If the Serekh literature was written by an offshoot of the Damascus Community as you suggest, one would find traces of ideas from older materials found in CD (including halachic laws, references to personalities in CD and the pesharim, and other matters) throughout the Serekh texts.  Further, I see no evidence of Serekh texts being exilic.  Quite the contrary, 1QM, 1QSa and 1QSb are fairly explicit in their connection to Judea and its temple.  There is some alienation from the temple in 1QS, which is a separate historical matter, but I see no evidence of exilic authorship or association with the Teacher in any of these texts.   Best regards, Russell Gmirkin