I seemed to be lumped in with those who the rest of those who "deny" the
"ineluctable" Essene Hypothesis (as though this was the one received true
faith!) in Stephen's remarkable posting. I hope this collection of
out-of-context sound-bites is not what Stephen is trying to promote in his
appeal for a history of scholarship on the scrolls. If so, let me suggest,
Stephen, that a history of scholarship is best written by one who is not an
active partisan.
I see Stephen saved his best context-less quote for last, one which he
described as coming from my web page -- as though I had a web page, which I
do not.
> R. Gmirkin wrote on his web page: "I fear that, like the hero [Don
> Quixote], my brain became fried from all my reading, for as an adult I
> conceived the strangest notion, to set off in quest of adventure...solving
> mysteries in high detective style...I therefore invented for myself an
> entirely novel profession, that of historical detective."
This quote comes from the official web site of the Ultimate Draft
Writers' Consortium, a group of extraordinarily talented writers of whom I am
priveleged to be a member. (I am also a long-standing board member of the
Oregon Writer's Colony.) The site is directed to fellow writers and to the
general reading public - not to scrolls scholars, who may more profitably
read my articles in peer-reviewed journals, etc. The address, which Stephen
omitted, is "http://www.viser.net/~draft/writer/ultimate.htm". One may find
there, by the way -- since my personal life has suddenly become a matter of
keen interest -- a picture of Carolyn Tracy, my fiance, the most incredibly
gifted and beautiful writer, playwright, composer, torch singer and actress I
have ever met, whose first novel, _Pulling Taffy_, is coming out in hardback
from Simon and Schuster next year. Like myself, she has a high genius IQ,
but her focus is in the creative arts, while I have channeled most of my
energies into historical investigations.
It is quite true that I have made a special study of the methodology of
fictional detectives, which I consider to be scientific method raised to an
art form. In science one collects facts, forms a hypothesis, and rigorously
tests the hypothesis against all available facts: anomalous facts are often
the most interesting, as they provide opportunities to learn something ew.
In detective stories, one collects clues to solve a seemingly insoluble
mystery: again, every fact must fit the solution. Among other things, both
science and detective fiction teach you what a real, fully tested solution
looks like. Mysteries actually provide a bonus in also showing what the
wrong solution looks like. We're all familiar with the formula: the
plodding police department seizes on a few preliminary facts that point to
the handiest suspect. The case is prematurely closed. Evidence that doesn't
fit in with the theory is downplayed or ignored. So it is, in my opinion,
with the scrolls field, which has build up a comfortable scenario -- the
Essene Hypothesis -- which has huge gaps and which simply does not accomodate
all the facts. To simply site one among many: why is it that the practices
of the Essenes as described in Josephus only correlates with the organization
rules of 1QS (and such serekh laws of CD as are related to 1QS) and
frequently contradict 4QMMT, 11QT and the "halachic" portions of CD, which
all coincidentally correlate with Sadducee tenets? Some of us sweep such
inconvenient, discordant data under the paradigmatic rug while others are at
work rethinking the evidence and arriving at a solution that accomodates all
the data.
> But are not all historians in some sense detectives? Why deny that five
> decades of scholars have made some important and respectable contributions?
A lot of historians like to think of themselves as detectives: I recall
a book of essays by some rather mediocre historians a few years back titled
"The Historian as Detective" -- very disappointing in content. I think it
somewhat pretentious for one to call oneself a detective merely because one
is in the field of history -- one should at least have solved some previously
intractable problem first, which none of those authors had.
As for the last five decades of scholarship, there is no denying that
there have been many major and respectable contributions. It's just that
uncovering the historical background of the scrolls is not among them. This
remains a major unsolved mystery.
Best regards,
Russell Gmirkin
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