Posted on 07/15/2007 10:25:17 AM PDT by wagglebee
An American academic leading visitors around an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Natural History Museum in San Diego will challenge the consensus on the identity of the scrolls' authors, the Chicago Jewish News said on Friday.
Professor Norman Golb, of the Jewish History and Civilization department at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, does not believe that the scrolls were authored by the ancient Jewish Essene sect, a pacifist group, as most experts believe, arguing instead that the scrolls were authored by a variety of Jewish residents of Judea who fled the Roman Army in 70 C.E.
"In the last few years, the Chicago scholar's theory has been bolstered by the work of two leading Israeli archaeologists on the basis of 10 years of archaeological excavations at Qumran, where most of the scrolls were found and where the Essenes were said to have lived," the Chicago Jewish News said.
"Still, Golb's theories remain controversial, and the current exhibit in San Diego and others that visited several U.S. cities (Chicago not among them) in 2006 and early 2007 are sure to fan the flames," the article added.
The scrolls, discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd, are "written primarily in Hebrew and Aramaic, with a few in Greek, include texts from the Hebrew Bible, commentary on the texts, information about daily life in the Second Temple period, writings on theology, war, discipline, religious practices, membership requirements of a sect that some believe to be the Essenes, and lists of hidden caches of treasures and weapons."
Ping
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It is my understanding there were Essenes in Judea and some could have ended up in Qumran.
That’s what I had always heard.
I'm confused, half of the article was about three other topics.
I know, that’s why I only posted the portion that concerned the scrolls.
Warriors Once Occupied Dead Sea Scrolls Site
Live Science | 7-12-07 | Heather Whipps
Posted on 07/15/2007 7:29:41 AM EDT by Renfield
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1866176/posts
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The link to the full article that is summarized in the one you saw is:
http://chicagojewishnews.com/story.htm?sid=1&id=250911
The Heather Whipps article entirely misinforms the public.
Schniedewind and his UCLA colleagues have lifted the identification of Qumran as a fortress from work by a series of scholars and presented it as their own discovery, without informing the public of why they are doing this.
(1) Dr. Yizhar Hirschfeld’s book Qumran in Context (2004) explains at length that the site was originally a fortress (see especially Chapter 3, pp. 49-182). The book provides two technically correct, original drawings of the tower and rectangular building attached to it, first as they existed during the Hasmonean period (p. 86) and then with a new extension of the Herodian period (p. 113).
Note that Hirschfeld, a professional archaeologist, did not need to use “virtual 3-D reconstruction” to do his work and reveal that Qumran was built as a fortress.
(2) The leaders of the official Israel Antiquities Authority Qumran team, Dr. Yitzhak Magen and Dr. Yuval Peleg, also clearly state that Qumran was a Hasmonean “military post responsible for the security of the Dead Sea shore” (See their report in The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates [Brill, 1996], pp. 102 ff.).
(3) Dr. Norman Golb of the University of Chicago has been arguing that Qumran was a fortress since at least 1980.
So I ask: why are these traditional Dead Sea Scrolls scholars at UCLA stepping in now and trying to steal the credit due to their opponents, who have refuted fifty years of research?
Schniedewind’s “virtual reality” film, and his sensationalist press campaign surrounding it, should be seen in context. Apparently this scholar has decided to rehash the findings of several prominent Israeli archaeologists and present it in the form of “evidence” found by himself, without explaining that his true aim is to reconcile those findings with the Qumran-Essene theory that these same Israeli archaeologists, following Golb, have rejected.
For the background to this sensationalist campaign, see my pieces http://www.nowpublic.com/dead_sea_scrolls_exhibit_misleads_public
and
http://www.nowpublic.com/dead_sea_scrolls_san_diego_natural_history_museum_update
and the references provided in them.
Welcome to FR.
Thank you.
I forgot to say one basic thing:
None of the key Israeli archaeologists of the past decade who have investigated the two stages of Qumran construction (Hirschfeld, Magen, Peleg) have concluded or suggested that in the second stage any kind of sect, let alone “pious monks,” lived there or wrote scrolls there. Probably due to no fault of her own, Ms. Whipps fails to mention this crucial fact in her article.
...and “lists of hidden caches of treasures and weapons”...
I wonder if anyone has tried to track these down?
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