[rdl6989]

Ping

[SecAmndmt]

CE = A.D.

[screaming eagle2]

sounds like another academic battle is about to begin.

[Star Traveler]

Hmmm..., that’s really odd, because over in Israel, they’re doing archeological digs in an area that was isolated and had a thriving community and they’ve traced the Dead Sea Scrolls (the material) which were found in caves — to the buried bones of the animals that the skins came from (from DNA testing).

So, they’ve linked up the Dead Sea Scrolls, to a specific place that they are doing archeological digs and it shows that it was an isolated but a thriving community.

What this guy is saying just doesn’t make any sense at all, especially when the very material was traced to the bones buried at this site where there was a thriving community...

[drubyfive]

Bad news for crossword constructors.

[Force of Truth]

...an ascetic, mystical religious sect that lived in abstinence from worldly pleasures, including sex.

That should have clued everyone in right there.

[Jeremiah2]

Well, I always had my doubts once I saw those superscripted th’s in the dead sea scrolls.

[Daaave]

Qumran Cave 6 with Wadi Qumran in background.

[Philo-Junius]

So Josephus just made up an entire sect? To what conceivable end?

[Condor51]

"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.

Yep, that Josephus was a real prankster.

I understand he worked part time as a Stand Up Comic too.
His stage name was Jerryphus Seinfeldus

[SunkenCiv]

nuts, we were doing so well here, too...

Scholar: The Essenes, Dead Sea Scroll ‘authors,’ never existed
Ofri Ilani | March 13th, 2009
Posted on 03/13/2009 8:18:50 AM PDT by TaraP
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2205869/posts

[Unam Sanctam]

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.

[SunkenCiv]

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.

The problem I see with this author/paper is that the accuracy of Josephus (in this case, about the existence of a bunch of cave-dwelling ascetics called the Essenes) doesn't have anything much to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which apparently were hidden just the one time and never gone back for, and includes the Copper Scroll, which describes the hiding places of various items of value, appears to be obviously stuff from the Temple. Given the dating of the scrolls themselves (info that wasn't available to the modern individual who cooked up the Essenes=scroll writers), it seems settled that the cache of scrolls came from the Herodian temple during the Roman War.

This equating Josephus' Essenes with the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls isn't in Josephus, and isn't even in the scrolls' text, but has a modern origin. One the one hand we have people who fanatically defend this identification, and on the other we have the author of the claims described in the topic message. Both proceed from the same false premise.