Gregory L. Doudna wrote--without giving a reference--that Rachel Bar-Nathan gave the end of Period Ib as c. 15 BCE. That is simply false. It plainly contradicts what she wrote on page 203 of Hasmonean and Herodian Palaces at Jericho vol. III (2002). "The destruction that marked the upper limit of Period Ib took place only at the end of the first century BCE, and if the site was indeed abandoned this state of affairs continued for but a short while." In other words, in basic agreement with Magness. Magness is footnoted! Plus, if I recall our Nov. 2002 conversations correctly, Rachel--with whom I dug at Sepphoris--clearly agreed with the dating of first century CE Qumran deposits. And, to the best of my knowledge--I was at the Brown Qumran archaeology conference and took notes and had many conversations with many Qumran specialists there--no one there was persuaded by the paper read for the absent Doudna. If Bar- Nathan's views were misreported, are others'? I haven't time to check each claim in each email, but I can say some strike me as mistaken, irrelevant, unpublished or fishy.
Doudna oversimplified the matter of a quite brief inscription in the "pantry." The various statements of Cross, de Vaux, Milik and others need attention by anyone wishing to analyse this. Plus, Magen and Peleg claimed (Peleg speaking) at Brown that the pantry was covered by a post 70 CE earthquake. I report this, not being convinced, merely to indicate again that Doudna oversimplified. (Caution on Qumran publications that use the word "paradigm"--Kuhn would cringe--even "consensus" is overused.) In discussing Ian Young's article--peculiar it is since Prof. Young elsewhere champions simultaneous diversity--one might at least note his exclusion, shunting aside from the already small canon sample Mas Gen as if a copy of non- canon Jubilees. Mas Gen is *non*-MT. Skewing the analysis of the small. smaller sample. And perhaps consider Talmon's suggestions on different groups (and note different find areas). Samaritans...stabilized? If Masada were stabilized--a bit of a curious word for Masada at war--should we take it that stabilization reigned throught the land, all ownerships, no sects, everywhere? Was the MT stabilized before 70? Before Christianity? Sukenik early on considered the scrolls genuine in part because they resembled ossuary inscriptions, very many of these first century CE. Doudna quoted a 1955 Sukenik publication that is not to the point of his pre- 1951 consensus dating claim. Paleography of Qumran is not only about Qumran 9and the quite misused "elastic" and "circular" words). Ossuaries etc. provide comparanda. Doudna in DSS After Fifty Years v.I p438 gives a rule of thumb--an iffy one, but please bear with me--[in ital] "all areas within a one-sigma date range should be considered equally possible and probable." This, to protect against "one of the most persistent fallacies in interpretation of radiocarbon dates: the assumption that 'the middle of the range is the most probable.'" Yet now he appears shocked, shocked that I mention that some of those in the infancy of radiocarbon dating in the early '50s gravitated to the linen range midpoint of 33 AD. Speaking of probability, one ought to report and consider also those date ranges overlapping Doudna's undisclosed and so elusive end of Ib and II beginning--not only those totally after. Or does Doudna not follow his own rule of his own thumb? Allow that probably some first century CE range parts include some true date hits? In that same article appears the unfortunate, misleading metaphor of one shotgun blast (461n) for the manuscripts--production and deposit practically conflated--the latter later written about by Doudna as "ONE EVENT." No. The exclusion of evidence and special pleading of the (now-abandoned, then "permanent" [Qumran Chronicle] 63 BCE deposit date proposal is a previous discussion worth recalling. The exclusion of evidence then included 5 of 19 date ranges totally after, not to mention overlapping ranges (and only one totally before). The current proposal excludes less C14 data, but still excludes, and by the same type misunderstanding of how radiocarbon dating should be used by historians. I request that Dr. Doudna learn properly how to regard not disregard what he called "outliers"--a lession, as far as I can tell, still unlearned, despite being offered to him not only by me but (on orion) by Radiocarbon expert Dr. Jull. Stephen Goranson _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
