Jurgen Zangenberg writes:
> One question to all: Do you think the mention of "Gerizim" in 3Q 15 12,4-5
> has any impact on our ongoing discussion, not to forget the tiny scrap
> found in Masada also mentioning "Gerizim" recently published by S.Talmon
in
> IEJ 47(1997), 220-237 and the Masada Final Reports?
Referring to 3Q15, there is an intriguing reading which Milik mentioned
but rejected in DJD III of 'house of Yahweh' (as I recall) as related to
the site of the hiding-spot. I don't have DJD III to recheck, but I
recall from earlier checking wondering if Milik had maybe rejected
an ambiguous reading because 'house of Yahweh' at Gerizim did not
sound right, as opposed to an actually certain exclusion on letter-reading
grounds. I don't know what Puech's recent edition has (I don't think
he has 'house of Yahweh'). Unlike the other texts which are subject to
personal readings with the Brill microfiche reader, 3Q15 has no good
photographs in the Brill edition, therefore the next best is to trust
Puech's eyes.
Never mind the 'house of Yahweh'; the reading of Gerizim itself is
certainly there and undisputed. At issue is the date of 3Q15. Most
take as fact that it is 1st century CE based on Cross's
palaeographic dating of 25-75 CE (published in DJD III). But
Cross dated 3Q15 by comparing it to Herodian ossuaries, without
any comparisons to pre-Herodian ossuaries. Finding matches in some
letters with the same letter forms on Herodian ossuaries, he thought
a 1st century CE dating was confirmed. But without any comparison
to 1st BCE ossuaries' letter forms, to know that the same forms
were not occurring earlier, the conclusion is not justified. In any
case there ought to be something intuitively amiss when Cross
said that a date after 68 CE could not be excluded on palaeographic
grounds, but that the true date could in no way be outside the outer
limits of 25 CE and 75 CE. How can post-68 CE be possible but
post-75 CE be the outer limit beyond possibility? That's a claim of
7-year precision! That is just way too much claim of precision to
be believable on the basis of studying letters stamped in metal
from 2000 years ago, and not a single dated text in the entire
1st century CE in the kind of script used in the Copper Scroll.
To make this short, I have unpublished work on the palaeographic
dating of 3Q15 which I hope to publish at some point, and I make
the argument that it agrees very well with a 1st BCE dating on
palaeographic dating grounds. All other known internal content
indicators in Qumran texts don't go later than mid-1st BCE, and
3Q15 was found among other Qumran texts in Cave 3. Its never
been very convincing to me to try to say 3Q15 is a differently-dated
deposit from the rest of the scrolls of Cave 3, and as Ian Hutchesson
and I have published arguments, the scroll deposits look like
mid-1st BCE, rather than First Revolt, in dating. What this means
for the meaning of 'Gerizim' in 3Q15 I don't know. Does 3Q15
reflect a time before the intense rivalry of 1st CE Josephus/NT?
Greg Doudna
For private reply, e-mail to "Greg Doudna" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
----------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from Orion, e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the
message: "unsubscribe Orion." Archives are on the Orion Web
site, http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il.
