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Re: orion-list Essene cemetery at Jericho?
. There is nothing at the site of Qumran to suggest ascetic living. One must also remember that both Josephus and Philo state that the Essenes read and preserved texts, But for some reason you seems to want to assume that all your Essenes did. (Scrolls) not to mention that for Jews in antiquity, salvation was accorded to those that could study the Torah, unlike faith alone in other religions, which was all that was needed. I would agree that literacy in the towns and villages was not that high, but in the Essene community one would expect that it was very high. In your posting you maintain that during the Revolt scrolls were stored for safekeeping in several places throughout the country and that cave 4 was one of these. I was not talking about the revolt. I was talking about 163 years before the Revolt when Pompey besieged the temple. Hard to accept that cave 4 was a storage facility in that all the scrolls were deposite in the cave sans jars, unlike cave 1. This is what I said: Long before the storage process could be finished the process had to be abandoned (due to the need to defend Jerusalem) and the bulk of the scrolls were sealed in cave 4, where they lay until the 1950s. As to which manuscripts belong to the Qumran community, for starters lets begin with the Manual of Discipline Why? There is no indication of celibacy in the text, and at the same time the text indicates that members had private possessions and money. (The name is interesting, coming from the tradition of Christian monasticism. It's usually called the Community Rule these days from the Hebrew name, Serekh ha-Yachad.) as well as the materials from caves 4,5, 7,8,9, the last three caves are accessible only by directly going through the site. To argue, as some have, that there is no relation between the inhabitants of the site and the scrolls is preposterous, in view of the fact that caves 7,8,9 are only accessable via the site itself ! Part of my thesis is that the people who inhabited Qumran at the time of the scrolls deposit in 63 BCE were Sadducees, who took the most extreme position during the struggle against Pompey. With the fear of catastrophe, those in charge of the temple sent off their valued texts to be stored for safe-keeping. Furthermore you write that ... my demographic analysis... supports no particular group', then one would have to ask, what group would you posit as an alternative, i.e. predominately male, no children, no infants? In the first century there seems to have been a number of weird and wonderful positions. We only have what Josephus has packaged for his Roman audience. (Philo doesn't necessarily indicate all those who were in circulation either.) We have glimpses of groups who bundled together as Zealots and Sicarii, but their ways of life have not come down to us. As Josephus tells us, the Essenes bring other people's children into the community, suggesting that if Qumran had been Essene there would be children in the cemetery. Zealots, Sadd. Phar. ... or whatever? Until someone finds similar data elsewhere, west of the Dead Sea, between Jericho and Ein Gedi, the cemetery/archaeological/anthropological data appear to fit the Essene=Qumran theory quite well. Without Pliny, there is no Essene Hypothesis. There is just tendentious reading of the scrolls. The scrolls themselves do not support the Essene Hypothesis, so one usually reads them metaphorically. One glosses over the rulings about gonorrhea, childbirth, marriage, etc, as this must be the marrying Essenes, but finds no evidence of any other kind of Essenes in the scrolls. And so far, I don't think you've made your case for the cemetery data. It is partly built on your opinion about Steckoll's reputability -- as I said before, dealing with the man, not the data. The archaeological evidence does not support the Essene Hypothesis. Hirschfeld does a reasonable job showing the typological similarities between Qumran and other similar settlements around Israel. The is nothing particularly suggestive that the site had any other special usage. The animal various bones buried in pottery suggest very little religious activity at the site. All there is left is your analysis of the cemetery, which does not confront Steckoll's data front on, but rather dismisses it. Would you like to propose how Steckoll's lack of requisite skills could interfere with the findings of Haas and Nathan as to the presence of three women? I would be interested. Ian ) For private reply, e-mail to zias [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)
Re: orion-list Essene cemetery at Jericho?
, including Jericho and Qumran. Long before the storage process could be finished the process had to be abandoned (due to the need to defend Jerusalem) and the bulk of the scrolls were sealed in cave 4, where they lay until the 1950s. The pottery analysis of several scrolls jars would seem to belie this assertion. Lastly, as for literacy, it would be hard to imagine that the men of Qumran would not be literate on the basis of what is known about the sect. What would make you think such an idea? In America today there is a *functional* illiteracy rate of over 20%. This is with obligatory education for everyone. As to the Essenes all indications we have of them point to a poor background: denial of familial ties, wearing of clothes in rags being acceptable, despising of riches, (at least according to Josephus), and there is nothing in any of the ancient accounts to make one think that they were overendowed with readers. The few dozen people at Qumran worked in their shops. The analysis of Qumran as an early Roman Manor house by Hirschfeld seems reasonable, at least after the building of the acqueduct. (In fact in his comparison of numerous similar sites around Israel, he concluded that There is no evidence from the excavations or in the historical sources that the Essenes inhabited the site of Qumran at any time. He is, of course, correct, though he could have made the statement generic as a religious group and not just the Essenes.) As a productive centre, Qumran's population would have had their productive work to do. There is no reason to believe that the Qumran inhabitants were of the elite who belonged to schools in which they could learn the process of reading and writing (and Ben Sira indicates how much of an elite they were), or could dedicate the time necessary to learn to read. I remember reading an article about literacy in Judea, though I don't have the details at hand -- perhaps someone else has read it. It suggests a very low literacy rate. Why should this not also be true of the Essenes, who were after all of a class of people from whom one wouldn't expect people with the necessary education? Ian ) For private reply, e-mail to zias [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)
Re: orion-list Essene cemetery at Jericho?
Dear Russell, Shalom, thanks for the sentiments regarding my paper on the cemetery. As for your comments on Hirschfeld's attempt to portray the site as a manor house, from information that I have heard here, few archaeologists accept his theory on archaeological grounds. The site is one of the most inhospital places in the region for a manor, and the cemetery data certainly argues against it. From an economic point of view in terms of their ability to produce anything for the mkt. the chance seems slight. The settlement was probably not even self-sufficient at best. True as you point out, the site has a tower but the fortifications are poorly fashioned, thin outer walls, no geographic/military reason to choose this for either a fort or a manor. If one looks at fortified sites in the region from earlier/later periods one ceertainly one can see the reasons for their existence. Secondly, why would one need so many miqvot and what are all those males doing there? Skeletally, they were not soldiers as they bear no signs of trauma. As for sites in the region where one can find a sim. demographic profile i.e. adult males, I cannot offhand think of any. In fact, even in the Judean desert monasteries from the Byz. period one finds the remains of woman and children, as celibacy was not obligatory until centuries later. The cemetery is unique in anthro. terms, with it's closest parallels being Ain el-Ghuweir and the cemetery of Zissu in Jerusalem. Taylor, I believe, in one of the better papers on Qumran brought up the point of spindle whorls however if women were indeed part of the community they must appear in the cemetery. One has to interpert the site as a whole and not pick and choose discrete cultural elements to prove or disprove ones pet theory. This only confuses the issue. Any interpertation of the site will have certain problems with which one must contend and not all are answerable. . If for example, spindle whorls attest to the presence of women then, where are all the rest of the 'womans artifacts'? They certainly may have been there from time to time but residing there, hard to accept. Equating the site with all three major sects, seems implausable, purely on demographic factors in the cemetery as one knows that the other two sects were not celibate. Again this leaves us with few choices. As for the toilet, this could be checked easily with new sci. tech. available, unfortunately, there has not been an over abundance of goodwill in certain quarters and with certain individuals in allowing researchers access to the finds which could easily solve these problems today. As an outsider, Qumran research reminds me more of the 'World Cup' in that instead of cooperation among scholars to solve a historical problem (which is easily solvable) we find too many deliberate attempts by scholars and institutions both here and in France to hide, deceive, deny and destroy. What we are left with is at times a parody of science and what could easily pass as scandal rather than science. In fact, visiting the cemetery a few days ago I counted 9 newly excavated graves, despite vigorous denials from those individuals involved in excavating them. The graves were excavated and then the excavators replaced the covering stones in a rather pathetic attempt to hide what they had excavated. This is anthropology/archaeolgy, no but rather indictative of much of Qumran studies for many decades. This deception is detrimental to the future of anthropology in particular and archaeology general as the IAA has continually claimed that they do not intentionally excavate human skeletal remains and only remove them when they are in danger of being destroyed by construction projects (salvage archaeology) Seems that one can clearly see a double standard being employed here. In the near future Jodi Magness will be publishing a book on the archaeology of Qumran, based on her earlier publications, it should be a sound, sane, attempt to clarify many of the issues surrounding the site including the issue of the toilet near the miqva which personally I have problems accepting. As for the textual issues which you raised, I have to plead complete ignorance, halacha is one area in which I have decided not to stray, and know little, if anything about. Joe Joe Zias Science and Archaeology @ The Hebrew University Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 07, 2002 1:54 AM Subject: Re: orion-list Essene cemetery at Jericho? Dear Joe Zias, First, I think your observations on the apparent bedouin burials in the auxiliary cemetery (if I may call it that) is one of the more important recent contributions to Qumran archaeology, alongside Hirschfeld's identification of the remains as a fortified manor house based on comparison with architectural layouts of other sites. A couple questions. First, do I recall correctly that others have argued that more than one skeleton
Re: orion-list Essene cemetery at Jericho?
Dear Russell Regarding your query as to whether the Roman period graves found in Jericho show affinities to those at Qumran, the scant archaeological evidence, which I pointed out in my article (The Cemeteries of Qumran and Celibacy: Confusion Laid to Rest? (Dead Sea Discoveries Vol.7 no. 2) suggests that they are ethnically different. Four out of seven tombs share the same tomb architecture as that of Qumran, however the inclusion of grave goods, suggests that they are not Essene in origin. In my opinion, assigning Essene affinity to a cemetery must contain the following four shared criteria: orientation, tomb architecture, demographic disparity and few if any grave goods. Without these defining criteria, all appearing in Qumran and nearby Ain el-Ghuweir cemeteries, any attempt to assign definite Essene affiliation will remain unconvincing p.244. This remains true for Jericho as well. Lastly, I would question several points in J. Zangenberg's reply, particulary the assertion that both sites Jericho and Qumran share certain sociological and typological similarities such as 'both are oasis populations involved in agriculture'. Qumran is totally unlike Jericho, the latter being a lush oasis whereas the former is totally dependent on runoff water being brought to the site in the winter by acquduct. Furthermore, Jericho during the Herodian period was a population running well into the thousands, Qumran at best, several dozen, the list of disparities is long. The only ethnic similarity between the two sites is that in both sites lived Jews, one (Qumran) being Essene and the population of Jericho being, the 'Other'. I would argue that the influence of one on the other was probably insignificant. Joe Zias Science and Archaeology Group @ The Hebrew University - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 9:45 PM Subject: orion-list Essene cemetery at Jericho? Thanks to all who respondd to my query on Qumran Hebrew. A new question. I'm trying to evaluate the hypothesis that the Essenes of the Herodian era had a significant presence at Jericho. It has been suggested that criticisms directed against the men of Jericho at bTal Pes 55b ff, Men. 71a ff, dealing with various practices of agricultural workers, may be directed against the Essenes; and I note that Dio Chrysostom apparently refers to Jericho as the blessed city of the Essenes. My question. In 1957 Kathleen Kenyon wrote, The Jericho of Herod the Great was a mile and three-quarters to the south-west, where the Wadi Qelt provides another source of water... In the Roman period the ancient mound served as a burial ground. A number of graves have been found of a curious form, with the body in a recess cut along one side of the base of a grave-like shaft, identical in type wuth those found at Qumran... (Digging Up Jericho, 264). Does this interpretation still hold up? That is, do the Jericho graves unearthed in 1952-1956 have special affinities with those at Qumran? Best regards, Russell Gmirkin For private reply, e-mail to zias [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)
Re: orion-list Qumran Cemetery and el-Ghuweir
Dear Ian I once tried in vain to find Bar-Adon's field notes in the IAA which may have shed light on the cemetery of Ain el-ghuweir however there were no where to be found. As for your query, the presence of the east-woman burial in the cemetery does not in my opinion present any problems as there are def. women in the cemetery, however all of the woman there like the males are buried north-south as in Qumran which is dateable to the same period. Since Jews do not deviate from this practice of burying men in one direction, women in the other, the burial is simply a another Bedouin burial. Unfort. he does not go into any details re: depth, orientation etc. I have the impression that the graves were dug by workers/volunteers and then transferred to the anthro. labs and age/sex there. Thus what would have been obvious to the physical anthropologist dealing with burials, escaped his attention esp. since there was a nearby Bedouin cemetry. As for the madder, we see this so frequently in time and space that it hardly mentions more than a footnote in our reports. It even appears in pre-historic burials in the Sinai. Everyone it seems to have used it from time to time, believing that it strengthened the bones, whereas all it does is to stain them and confuse the issue. Nothing more... Joe For private reply, e-mail to Joe Zias [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)
orion-list women in Qumran
Penner inquired (02/09)about relevant literature regarding the role of women in Qumran. I attempted to conduct research on this decades old problem as well as analyzing the human skeletal remains in Germany and Jerusalem. Finding were published in Dead Sea Discoveries vol. 7 pp. 220-253. To my knowledge, the conclusions reached have not been challenged to date in any peer reviewed journal. The women and children found in the cemetery, (buried east-west)were recent Bedouin burials. Only one woman was found in the cemetery, buried on the margins of the cemetery. Joe Zias Science and Archaeology Group @ The Hebrew University __ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings! http://greetings.yahoo.com For private reply, e-mail to Joe Zias [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)
orion-list [Fwd: Returned mail: Host unknown (Name server: mscc.huji.ac.il: host not found)]
Avital, for some reason this came back host unknown Joe The original message was received at Sat, 6 Jan 2001 18:29:12 +0200 (IST) from [213.8.226.157] - The following addresses had permanent fatal errors - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reporting-MTA: dns; balder.inter.net.il Arrival-Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 18:29:12 +0200 (IST) Final-Recipient: rfc822; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Action: failed Status: 5.1.2 Remote-MTA: DNS; mscc.huji.ac.il Last-Attempt-Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 18:30:52 +0200 (IST) In reply to Greg Doudna's recent attempt to disassociate the scrolls from the jars I would to make the following observations. 1. Cave number 7 which contained the scroll jar with the name Roma written twice on the shoulder in Hebrew was found to contain several manuscripts written in Greek. Secondly recent analysis of the jar showed that it was mfg. in the pottery kiln of Qumran and not imported from outside the region nor from Rome. 2. Compare the near complete scrolls 'allegedly' found in the scrolls jars in cave 1 with those found in cave 4, the latter numbering in the hundreds and in a very poor state of preservation, owing to the fact that they were simply deposited in the cave sans jars. The qualitative difference between the two find sites, wherever and whatever happened in Cave 1 should speak for itself. 3. If indeed these jars were used for water, food ect, as Greg suggests, they why are they not found at Ain el Ghuweir and other nearby sites, not to mention Masada, Ein Gedi, ect ? Joe Zias Science and Arch. Group at the Hebrew University
Re: orion-list Water, Cemeteries, etc. (4 screens)
In a recent posting in which Dr. Altman (cited below) ends with the following sentence I would like to bring attention to one fact that I've cited again and again, that unless you are in the specific field, one can make numerous mistakes. "Neither archaeology nor anthropology meets the essential requirement for scientific experiment. It would be well to bear this fact in mind." (Altman) It's sentiments such as this which fail to recognize the advancements made in archaeology/ physical anthrpology over the last 50 years, e.g. C-14 is def. a repeatable experiment, not to mention all the work which we have been doing on DNA typing the Scrolls, cloning bacterium for the study of ancient disease. As I work in Science and Archaeology the difference between the two is often blurred however unlike the past it is becoming more and more of a science which is why trying to 'figure out' on the basis of logic usually falls badly. For example to say that the 20th century workers at Sedom failed to survive the desert due to lack of water, it has nothing to do with water but rather boredom. Last month I along with several hundred Israelis took part in a grueling competitive Mt. bike race at Sedom. In the 23 kilometer race there were but two water stations and most of the people towards the front passed both with at the most a cup of water. Hardly what you describe and I'm no 'spring chicken'. Another case in point is to look at the number of sites and there are , from the Chalcolithic period up to present times between Jericho and the end of the Dead Sea. Lest we forget all the monasteries there in the Byz. period, people living in caves during several periods, the Bedouin whom have been there for thousands of years, the list is long and had conditions been as you ascribe, these places simply would not have existed. As far as military cemeteries, hard to accept due to the fact that there is no trauma whatsoever on the skeletal remains, not one broken bone. I have seen European military cemeteries and the lit. is out there, def. not a military cemetery. As for the so called toilet of Qumran, with todays modern day methods it would be easy for scientists to check the sediments and say def. one way or the other whether or not Jodi is correct. The problem is however, that certain individuals in charge of the material have not granted free and easy access to these materials to other researchers despite their requests, not to mention that it was excavated nearly 50 years ago!! There are many 'agendas' out there and restricting access to both the archaeological finds as well as the anthropological materials (excepting the Germans) by certain individuals is one of them. I'm speaking from experience and it is precisely these attitudes which impede research and led to the confusion that we are in. Joe Zias Science and Archaeology Group @ the Hebrew University For private reply, e-mail to Joe Zias [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.
Re: orion-list Bones, Beads and Battlefields
Dear Colleagues I'll keep this brief as I went on a bit with another posting in which I dealt with the battlefield theory put forth by Alumna, Golb et al. Jurgen asked me if I can be called Joe which I always refer to myself as the name Zias coupled with Joe in front of it invariably ends up being Josiah, which I'm sure would anger the gods and the prophets. Therefore I avoid it whenever possible. As for the beads, and their importance in this whole argument. Jurgen seems to feel that as beads were found in Ein Gedi and Jericho this destroys my argument of the graves of the women (except 9) being Bedouin. I did not base my argument though I could have exclusively on beads but on the whole burial complex, one which was but 40 cms below the surface. Jericho Tombs- As I said in my recent article (DSD) the fact that there are beads in Jericho from the Second Temple period, they are small in number. According to the recent publication (IAA report 7) the excavators found but 8 beads from a total of 35 tombs. As these tombs are family tombs the ratio of bead per tomb is negliable, in fact, the max no of beads per locus or tomb was 2!! All the beads are glass or faience and there were no bead necklaces nor anklets unless one wishes to say that two small glass/ faience beads are a necklace. The anthropological report is incomplete due to the fact that the religious authorities forced the anthropologist to rebury the material, however a total of 247 individuals were noted which is a minimal number. Ain Gedi- Again the information here mirrors that of Jericho is that nearly all the beads are glass, whereas in Qumran nearly all are of stone. Beads were recovered from but 5 five individuals out of a total of 164. This last figure (164) is however misleading as again the anthro. report is incomplete due to the fact that we do not konw the number of individuals coming from tomb 1 in which a total of 129 glass beads from four coffins and siftings were recovered. In conclusion, the bead data from the both sites (Jericho and Ain Gedi) do not correlate typologically nor statistically with the Bedouin material from both Tel Hesi and Qumran. Therefore the Qumran woman=Bedouin data from the south eastern cem. is significant in dating along with the other burial data (plan, orientation, depth, grave goods, preservation) Lastly, what I find difficult to accept for those saying that these women are Essene or whatever is the fact that one is buried but 40 cms. below the surface whereas most of the male burials are 1.5 - 2 .0 meters below the surface. Did the Jews have one burial standard for the men and one for the women? For those of you familiar with halacha, you know that they didn't discriminate in death. Joe Joe For private reply, e-mail to Joe Zias [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.
Re: orion-list Facts Do Matter! Zias agrees!
king up the material ( a bit of an exaggeration) and I only spent a few days, betrays his knowledge of anything to do with physical anthropology. The reason why one publishes measurements is for other scholars to draw their own facts, some anthropological measurements are so telling when it comes to sexing that one needn't see the material, after all, one doesn't need a 'weatherman to tell which way the wind is blowing' Such is the Way of Science. Regards Joe Zias Science and Archaeology Group @ The Hebrew University For private reply, e-mail to Joe Zias [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.
