OK, so, here's the post.
I will offer the argument for equal consideration to Eisenman's proposal.
This proposition will argue for a 1st c BCE dating from applying the internal evidence as Eisenman did.
It will argue that the appropriate context could easily be the events leading to and involving the Maccabean revolt and subsequent reign.
For brevity, here's a summary of socio-political events leading up to the revolt from Wikipedia (they do a better job summarizing this information in brief than I would, so I figure I'll just cite their entry):
In the 2nd century BCE, Judea lay between the Ptolemaic Kingdom based in Egypt and the Seleucid empire based in Syria, kingdoms formed after the death of Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE). Judea had been under Ptolemaic rule, but fell to the Seleucids around 200 BCE. Judea at that time had been affected by the Hellenization begun by Alexander. Some Jews, mainly those of the urban upper class, notably the Tobiad family, wished to dispense with Jewish law and to adopt a Greek lifestyle. According to the historian Victor Tcherikover, the main motive for the Tobiads' Hellenism was economic and political.[1] The Hellenizing Jews built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, competed in international Greek games, "removed their marks of circumcision and repudiated the holy covenant".[2]
When Antiochus IV Epiphanes (ca. 215–164 BCE), became ruler of the Seleucid Empire in 175 BCE, the High Priest in Jerusalem was Onias III. To Antiochus, the High Priest was merely a local governor within his realm, who could be appointed or dismissed at will, while to orthodox Jews he was divinely appointed.[3] Jason, the brother of Onias, bribed Antiochus to make him High Priest instead. Jason abolished the traditional theocracy and constituted Jerusalem as a Greek polis.[1][4] Menelaus then bribed Antiochus and was appointed High Priest in place of Jason. Menelaus had Onias assassinated. Menelaus' brother Lysimachus stole holy vessels from the Temple, causing riots that led to his death. Menelaus was arrested for Onias' murder, and was arraigned before Antiochus, but he bribed his way out of trouble. Jason subsequently drove out Menelaus and became High Priest again. Antiochus pillaged the Temple, attacked Jerusalem and "led captive the women and children".[5] From this point onwards, Antiochus pursued a zealous Hellenizing policy. He made possession of the Torah a capital offense and burned the copies he could find.[6] According to 1 Maccabees, he banned many traditional Jewish religious practices: Jewish sacrifice was forbidden, sabbaths and feasts were banned. Circumcision was outlawed, and mothers who circumcised their babies were killed along with their families.[7] Altars to Greek gods were set up and animals prohibited to Jews were sacrificed on them. The idol of Olympian Zeus was placed on the altar of the Temple. The motives of Antiochus are unclear. He may have been incensed at the overthrow of his appointee, Menelaus,[3] or he may have been responding to an orthodox Jewish revolt that drew on the Temple and the Torah for its strength[1] and encouraged by a group of radical Hellenizers among the Jews.[8]
Of worth mentioning, we should keep in mind that:
The Hasmonean dynasty[2] (Hebrew: חשמונאים, r Ḥashmona'im; Audio) was the ruling dynasty of Judea and surrounding regions during classical antiquity. Between c. 140 and c. 116 BCE, the dynasty ruled semi-autonomously from the Seleucids in the region of Judea. From 110 BCE, with the Seleucid empire disintegrating, the dynasty became fully independent, expanded into the neighbouring regions of Galilee, Iturea, Perea, Idumea and Samaria, and took the title "basileus". Some modern scholars refer to this period as an independent kingdom of Israel.[3] In 63 BCE, the kingdom was conquered by the Roman Republic, broken up and set up as a Roman client state. The Kingdom had survived for 103 years before yielding to the Herodian Dynasty in 37 BCE. Even then, Herod the Great tried to bolster the legitimacy of his reign by marrying a Hasmonean princess, Mariamne, and planning to drown the last male Hasmonean heir at his Jericho palace.
The dynasty was established under the leadership of Simon Maccabaeus, two decades after his brother Judas the Maccabee ("Hammer") defeated the Seleucid army during the Maccabean Revolt. According to historical sources, including 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees and the first book of The Jewish War by Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (CE 37–c. 100),[4] after Antiochus IV's successful invasion of Ptolemaic Egypt was turned back by the intervention of the Roman Republic,[5][6] Antiochus instead moved to assert strict control over Israel, sacking Jerusalem and its Temple, suppressing Jewish religious and cultural observances, and imposing Hellenistic practices. The ensuing revolt by the Jews (167 BCE) began a twenty-five-year period of Jewish independence potentiated by the steady collapse of the Seleucid Empire under attacks from the rising powers of the Roman Republic and the Parthian Empire. However, the same power vacuum that enabled the Jewish state to be recognized by the Roman Senate c. 139 BCE was later exploited by the Romans themselves. Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, Simon's great-grandsons, became pawns in a proxy war between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. The deaths of Pompey (48 BCE), Caesar (44 BCE), and the related Roman civil wars temporarily relaxed Rome's grip on Israel, allowing a very brief Hasmonean resurgence backed by the Parthian Empire. This short independence was rapidly crushed by the Romans under Mark Antony and Octavian. The installation of Herod the Great (an Idumean) as king in 37 BCE made Israel a Roman client state and marked the end of the Hasmonean dynasty. In CE 6, Rome joined Judea proper, Samaria and Idumea (biblical Edom) into the Roman province of Iudaea. In CE 44, Rome installed the rule of a Roman procurator side by side with the rule of the Herodian kings (specifically Agrippa I 41–44 and Agrippa II 50–100).
The missing High Priest time period in this age should also be noted:
In 1 Maccabees, no High Priest is named for the period from the death of Alcimus in 159 BCE to the claiming of the position of High Priest by Jonathan on the authority of Alexander Balas in 152 BCE (1 Macc 10:18-20). From this it could be concluded that there was no High Priest for these years, and indeed Josephus, drawing heavily on I Maccabees at this point in his history, comes to that conclusion (Ant. 20.237). It is improbable, however, that the office remained completely vacant for these years. Stegemann suggests that the reason that nothing is said in 1 Maccabees about a High Priest between Alcimus and Jonathan was apologetic: to conceal the fact that the Hasmoneans obtained the High Priesthood by usurping it from its rightful holder, the Teacher of Righteousness.
And of course, we need to have notice of the revolt itself:
In the narrative of I Maccabees, after Antiochus issued his decrees forbidding Jewish religious practice, a rural Jewish priest from Modiin, Mattathias the Hasmonean, sparked the revolt against the Seleucid Empire by refusing to worship the Greek gods. Mattathias killed a Hellenistic Jew who stepped forward to offer a sacrifice to an idol in Mattathias' place. He and his five sons fled to the wilderness of Judah. After Mattathias' death about one year later in 166 BCE, his son Judas Maccabee led an army of Jewish dissidents to victory over the Seleucid dynasty in guerrilla warfare, which at first was directed against Hellenizing Jews, of whom there were many. The Maccabees destroyed pagan altars in the villages, circumcised boys and forced Jews into outlawry.[8] The term Maccabees as used to describe the Jewish army is taken from the Hebrew word for "hammer".[9]
The revolt involved many battles, in which the Maccabean forces gained notoriety among the Seleucid army for their use of guerrilla tactics. After the victory, the Maccabees entered Jerusalem in triumph and ritually cleansed the Temple, reestablishing traditional Jewish worship there and installing Jonathan Maccabee as high priest. A large Seleucid army was sent to quash the revolt, but returned to Syria on the death of Antiochus IV. Its commander Lysias, preoccupied with internal Seleucid affairs, agreed to a political compromise that restored religious freedom.
The Jewish festival of Hanukkah celebrates the re-dedication of the Temple following Judah Maccabee's victory over the Seleucids. According to Rabbinic tradition, the victorious Maccabees could only find a small jug of oil that had remained uncontaminated by virtue of a seal, and although it only contained enough oil to sustain the Menorah for one day, it miraculously lasted for eight days, by which time further oil could be procured.
Which means we need to have contextual understanding of the Zadok line.
Historical data show that the high-priesthood remained in the progeny of the Zadokites from the time of Zadok up until the rise of the Maccabees, in about 167 BCE.
...
The house of Zadok occupied the high priesthood through much of the Second Temple's time, from Jehoshua ben Jehozadak after the Exile, down to Simon II (much praised in Ben Sira 50), his eldest son Onias III, and his usurping second son Jason (or Jehoshua), who introduced the programme of Hellenization that eventually led to the Maccabean Revolt.
...
Josephus records that Onias IV went to Leontopolis in the Egyptian nome of Heliopolis with a significant following, and for lending military support to the Ptolemaic Pharaoh was given land to build a temple to rival the Temple in Jerusalem (although Josephus also ascribes this to Onias III, while dating the project so as to suggest Onias II). It has been suggested that Onias or members of his Zadokite house may have also founded the community at Qumran.
Now, for the start of this, I'm just going to be rather candid and use the format of discussion, rather than producing a lengthy report-style format.
The way for which to address finite points (considering the volume of data we're working with) will be for you (Brainache, or others) to pose questions and I will address those questions back in reference to the above setting and the DSS.
Before this, however, I will discuss why I think it makes sense as a plausible link to the DSS.
First, we have all of the unrest noted above, which politically, theologically, and socially fits within the DSS tonality and discussions internally.
Second, the Maccabean time period and the era just prior to it was subject to extreme corruptions to incredibly offensive lengths - far more offensive than anything going on in the 1st c CE era.
Third, the Maccabean revolt was extremely militant and relied heavily on generating new theo-political propaganda; their opponents were equally of the same subjection of military force during these times due largely to the breakout of civil unrest and eventually outright civil war.
Fourth, the established Hasmonean rule became heavily plagued with royal in-fighting and assassinations, as well as overthrew the age-old Zadok line priesthood and radically changed the priesthood hierarchy and customs.
Fifth, it should be noted that the cultural behavior of the Hebrew politics regarding overthrows involves not only overthrowing, but also building a textual justification for the overthrow.
This is similar to how America produced its justification in the Declaration of Independence, which filled its volume with the philosophical reasons the revolutionaries were justified in their overthrow, and how it was not an illegal action.
In the Hebrew version of this behavior of justification for overthrow, not only would new texts be produced, but existing texts would be pulled in as part of the justification library, and many times copied texts would have slight variations in terminologies and focus altered to serve the purpose of the given justification being made.
For example, "Israel" should not be understood as "All Hebrew peoples" in many of the texts, as, instead, the reference is often a 5th c BCE justification referencing the previous Kingdom of Israel and sliding more fault and blame onto that kingdom than was previously attributed, so to show the rightness of Judah.
When primary theocratic factions in the Hebrew culture are seriously fighting for power, this is where we will see an increase of texts and variations in them.
Sixth, the placement of the texts into caves is an interesting and notable characteristic that is not satisfied by Eisenman's proposition.
Building these caves and organizing all of this material to produce a single-thread tangent of justification would take a considerable amount of textual access, logistical and physical effort, and money.
The other consideration of the caves are their incredibly remote locations and difficulty for access.
This is a group who wanted to carry on their work without being found, or reached.
And
Seventh, the Zadok were favored heavily by the prophet Ezekiel and are projected to be the winning priesthood lineage while the Levites are considered foul and corrupt; they are prophetically claimed to succeed to the prophetic Third Temple, which allegedly would be entirely pure and incapable of corruption.
Onias had been party with the Maccabeans and expected to be seated as high priest, but an intrusion occurred by Alcimus as Alcimus pandered for favor to Demetrius I Soter (Seleucid King of Antioch) and Alcimus gained that favor of an army to aid in instating him as high priest in Judah. His debt for the favor, however, was the allegiance with Hellenization (eventually he destroyed the wall separating the Gentiles and Israelites in the Temple), and his Hellenization plans and extreme cruelties caused the Jews of Judah to chase him out of Judah until he could return three volleys later by full force attack with more armies and took over the priesthood for a short time until his death.
Onias, and the adherents to the Zadok line, saw Alcimus as the most vial and wicked corruption of the priesthood of their time.
Onias went on to raise an army in Egypt to attempt to beat out Alcimus, but did not succeed.
Eventually Onias built another temple in Egypt, claiming that the Second Temple would fall soon and that Jews would flock to the new righteous Temple in Egypt; this prediction of his never came to fruition.
While the 2nd Temple did fall, the Temple in Egypt never became a replacement, nor was it ever heavily used. Even Egyptian Jews mostly preferred the Temple in Judah; their homeland.
So here is an alternative to Eisenman; one which matches the internal evidence just as much, or more so, than Eisenman's proposition.
This proposition, unlike Eisenman's, also doesn't have to twist people or groups into lining up with what's in the DSS documents; most of the content just simply does, and we don't have to conjecture secret allegiances that haven't any suggestion of themselves outside of our proposition to get things to line up.
