OK.
But leaving aside everything else about Eisenman and his Hypothesis, would you say that these Pesharim and the Damascus Document that we've been discussing are from the first century CE?
Or is that not a justified position?
I'm not asking about Herodian CT's or even if James was involved, only: Would you say these scrolls are from the time period that Eisenman says they are?
Eisenman's date rests on the argument of internal data and dismisses the C
14 dating.
Let's grant his dismissal of the C
14 dating for the purposes of addressing his internal data argument.
Skipping around his many conjectural tangents and juggling shows, his internal data argument is essentially that the conditions of unrest and conflict within Judah's theocratic political environment weren't of issue in form of rebellious factional confrontation until the 1st c CE.
Having established the 1st c CE time frame from the above argument, he then goes on to argue by begging the question.
He states that the idea of a 1st c CE group to write so much about a time of disruption and conflict with such passion about a time period that is akin to the founders of America to modern times (a few hundred years) while at the same time negating their own current time's civil unrest makes absolutely no sense.
From this, he compels the reader to accept the 1st c CE date based on the context making sense as 1st c CE commentary, and then goes on to all of the titles and assigns them out to his pick of groups and people.
However, there is a problem with his argument back at the beginning.
The argument being made of the flavor of factional civil unrest being unique to the 1st c CE is incorrect.
An example is Simon of Peraea, who goes back to the 1st c BCE.
The Hasmonean dynasty of 1st c BCE was ever bit as full as the 1st c CE with civil unrest and contest over the theocratic order and social conduct.
With that in mind, the second part of Eisenman's dating argument begins to lose its footing.
The internal commentaries of these texts are then not about some time a few hundred years before, yet absent of commentary about the current time's conflicts (as Eisenman portrays the idea of dating the texts to 1st c CE while holding that the texts comment on ages past), but instead would be commentaries on current events within 1st c BCE.
I don't want to get into the C
14 argument, and I'm not in this commentary stating which dating is accurate.
Here, I am simply pointing out that the internal dating argument employed does not suffice to negate 1st c BCE dates.
Again, while I do not, in this post, wish to get into C
14 dating arguments, I will note that Joseph Atwill and Steve Braunheim at one time went through a very lengthy deconstruction of the C
14 dating issues from their perspective, arguing in favor of 1st c CE.
http://www.csulb.edu/centers/sjco/carbon14.html
The interesting part of this to me, is that their own recalibartion of C14 sigma levels, and therefore dating, interestingly pushes the Damascus Document completely out of the 1st c CE range they are arguing for (even though several other documents straddle both BCE and CE ranges).
The following table gives the Carbon dating one-sigma time range for the death of the animal whose skin that was eventually used to produce the Scroll in question. It should be remarked that these dates are terminus a quos, since they only measure when the animal whose skin was eventually used died not when the Scroll was actually written. The table gives two calibrated ranges, one based on the 1986 calibration curve then in effect and the other the one from 1998 we have already referred to above. As noted, this new calibration curve produced a significant change for the range of documents like 1QpHab and 4Q267 ( paleographically speaking, considered the earliest fragment relating to the Damascus Document).
Their opinion of the dates then become (DD is the last entry in the table):
Code:
Scroll 1998 Calibration 1986 Calibration
11QT 53 BCE- 21 CE 97 BCE-1 CE
1QH 37 BCE-68 CE 21 BCE-61 CE
1Q266 4-82 CE 5-80 CE
1QpHab 88-2 BCE 104-43 BCE
1QS 116-50 CE 159 BCE-20 CE
4Q258 36 BCE-81 CE 11 BCE-78 CE
4Q171 29-81 CE 22-78 CE
4Q521 39 BCE-66 CE 35 BCE-59 CE
4Q267 168 – 51 BCE 172-98 BCE
Now, my hunch, based on a lot of the arguments and mixed C
14 dates is that (as I've mentioned before) the texts weren't all made in one time or another, but instead spread out in creation over time.
If they are spread out, this would not inherently indicate support for contextual relevance of current events in the 1st c CE for the texts as there is equal possibility that should be kept in mind that some texts may have been copied anew for restoration as time went on since these texts were written on animal hide and subject to damage.
There is also the possibility that indeed some texts were written in 1st c BCE and some others in 1st c CE, just as we have texts in the Hebrew canon ranging from 9th c BCE to the 6th c BCE general ranges.
Finally, it would be a further oversight for us to forget that the Hebrew culture had a tendency to perpetuate and add upon their legends of their struggles and champions, and it would be equally of an oversight for us to forget that such was even done when documents of tradition would pass on to new theo-political factions over time; each altering documents into being relevant to their interests and values of justification and vilification.
