Posted on 03/13/2009 9:53:56 PM PDT by rdl6989
Scholarship suggesting the existence of the Essenes, a religious Jewish group that lived in the Judea before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, is wrong, according to Prof. Rachel Elior, whose study on the subject will be released soon.
Elior blasts the predominant opinion of Dead Sea Scrolls scholars that the Essenes had written the scrolls in Qumran, claiming instead that they were written by ousted Temple priests in Jerusalem.
"Sixty years of research have been wasted trying to find the Essenes in the scrolls. But they didn't exist, they were invented by [Jewish-Roman historian] Josephus. It's a history of errors which is simply nonsense," she said.
In his book "The Jewish War," Flavius Josephus describes the Essenes as an ascetic, mystical religious sect that lived in abstinence from worldly pleasures, including sex.
The Essenes are commonly believed to have written the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in a Qumran cave in 1947 and are considered the most significant archaeological discovery of the past century.
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
more about the Chinese thing:
The Chinese connection (to the Dead Sea Scrolls)
The Star | Nov. 4, 2006 | NEIL ALTMAN
Posted on 11/30/2006 8:40:52 PM PST by John Philoponus
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1746758/posts
Challenging History: The Dead Sea Scrolls
The Evening Bulletin [PA] | 25 September, 2007 | Neil Altman
Posted on 09/25/2007 4:48:34 PM PDT by brityank
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1902099/posts
With what hope of success would Josephus have perpetuated this fraud? He was writing journalism, not history; there would have been thousands of Jews and other locals who would have heard of his account and said, “Essenes? What on earth is he talking about?”
He would only have immediately discredited himself by trying to perpetuate a fraud a million people could have immediately unveiled.
Now a scholastic fraud 2,000 years later, on the other hand...
Clearly there was a movement represented by the Dead Sea Scrolls, started by a “teacher of righteousness”, who apparently objected to one of the Hasmonean Chief Priests, so I don’t see why it is inconsistent to say that a group founded perhaps by a renegade priest wrote the dead sea scrolls.
That’s funny, I did a search and nothing came up. I even searched the keywored essenes and nothing recent was posted. :D
Think Babtists...... they split up all the time.
It is reasonable to assume that a group of Jerusalem priests split off and became Essenes at the new community of Qumran.
It sounded like he was saying that there was no such thing as a group called the Essenes...
...and I don’t think we’re getting our money’s worth out of Google search lately. Used to work great, now I’m not too sure.
In his book "The Jewish War," Flavius Josephus describes the Essenes as an ascetic, mystical religious sect that lived in abstinence from worldly pleasures, including sex. The Essenes are commonly believed to have written the Dead Sea Scrolls......by some people, yeah.
Agreed!
Well,....that too.
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