The solitary allusion to a death of the Teacher of Righteousness is in the medieval CD 'B' text at CD 19.35-20.1 and 20.13-15 which speaks of a 'gathering' (death) of the Unique Teacher. (I take Y/MWRH HYXYD to be a wordplay on the Teacher's 'gathering' of the yachad activity, but that is an aside.)
In my pNah study (forthcoming from Sheffield in a week or two) I challenge the prevailing scholarly consensus of a dead, past Teacher, or a Teacher known only from tradition, etc. I argue that there is no reason to suppose the Teacher of Righteousness is regarded as dead and past by any author of a Qumran text at the time any Qumran text was composed. The reason I challenge the scholarly consensus on this point is because no Qumran text has been shown to refer to a past death of the Teacher, or a Teacher set in the past who is not living and contemporary. There is not even an allusion to a death of the Teacher in any fragment actually found at Qumran. The CD 19.35-20.1 and 20.13-15 allusions in the medieval copies (which I accept are likely to be copies from Qumran texts) can be read either as recent past, or imminently expected future, from the perspective of the present of the authors of CD. But existing context and syntactic information appears insufficient to exclude either of those readings--so far as I can tell, from my study at least. Therefore it cannot be presumed, in the absence of an argument specifically addressing and establishing the point, that the death of the Teacher of the 'B' text of CD is *past* from the perspective of the text (as opposed to being anticipated or expected). And there is no sign of the Teacher's past death in any other Qumran text. Would anyone care to engage the text of CD and make the case--which so far as I know has not been made (as distinguished from innumerable assertions without argument)-- that CD requires a reading in which the Teacher is *already* dead at the time the text was composed? And as a corollary, if such cannot be established in the CD passages just cited, is there any good reason on any other grounds to assume the external referent of the Qumran texts' Teacher of Righteousness was not alive and contemporary at the time any text which refers to this figure was composed? In my analysis, all of the sobriquet-bearing figures of the 'sectarian'/yachad texts are living and contemporary at the late-end generation of the texts; the late-end generation of the texts is also the generation of most of the text copies as well (the 'single generation hypothesis'); this late-end generation is mid-1st BCE; and all of the Qumran texts were conveyed from Jerusalem and deposited in the caves at Qumran c. 40 BCE. In my analysis the Teacher in the world of texts never died at all--the Teacher is a role in the world of texts of an historical figure who became high priest in Jerusalem and left behind his role as high priest-in-exile when he came to power again in Jerusalem. As a snapshot of Hyrcanus II in exile 65-63 BCE as reflected in the world of texts written by supporters, the Teacher of Righteousness remains frozen in time... I appreciate Ed Cook's earlier comment on mid-1st BCE, and particularly the civil war between the brothers Aristobulus II and Hyrcanus II, as being pivotal to the Qumran 'yachad' texts. I think Cook is right on this (as reflected also in the introduction to the Wise-Abegg- Cook 1996 English edition of the Qumran texts). My main difference with the Wise-Abegg-Cook interpretation is they have Aristobulus II as a good guy and Hyrcanus II as the bad guy from the perspective of the texts. I think I show it was the other way around. 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. (PLEASE REMOVE THIS TRAILOR BEFORE REPLYING TO THE MESSAGE)
