Paul The Herodian and the DSS

[Brainache]

No, Zealots were a 4th sect of the political turmoil of the 1st c CE and were amazingly violent and uncompromising - extreme is key here.

This group wasn't looking for just adherence, but also pure intolerance.
For this group, think Nazi Germany.
This was a purely fascist style of Judaism here; with iron rule and no permission for any differences or discussions in any manner regarding toleration of any agency outside of strictly the Hebrew hand for all things, and any deviation meant immediate death.

This isn't what we see in the DSS.
We see banishment and excommunication for failing the Laws of Moses by one of its members being outlined; we don't see killing them.

The Zealot group was beyond extreme; the Judaic culture refused to even recognize them as a religious sect - considering them to be thugs and other such demeaning names.

In fact, the only time a punishment of death is outlined in the Community Rule, it is for the rule of if some member speaks the name of their god; which was a standard rule of all of the Hebrew culture.

Would they be what Hippolytus describes as "Sicari Essenes"? The ones who, upon hearing anyone non-Jewish discussing the Law would offer them the choice of "Circumcision or death"? ie: "the party of the circumcision" that Paul speaks of?

Aren't they just the extreme end of the spectrum? Aren't the reports of their activities all written by their opponents?

 

[JaysonR]

There's too much uncertainty and conjecture involved in that line of thinking for me to claim some means of validation in the idea.

First and foremost is the problem of "Essene".

 

[Brainache]

There's too much uncertainty and conjecture involved in that line of thinking for me to claim some means of validation in the idea.

First and foremost is the problem of "Essene".

Isn't that what Josephus calls the "Fourth Philosophy" in Judaism?

A corruption of the Hebrew for "Doers of Torah" The ones who actually "Do" the Law, not just teach it. Is what Eisenman thinks. I don't know any Aramaic or Hebrew, so I can't really comment on that.

Most of the things I've posted in this thread have come from one (modern) source: Robert Eisenman. Except for my speculations about 2 Thessalonians and the other stuff about "Menahem The Essene".

I still think that Menahem is a good candidate for being the "Manaen" at Antioch with Paul. Possibly even the "Barnabas" whom Paul preached to in Damascus and took with him on his mission.

Maybe he held the rope when Paul did his basket trick...

The stuff in 2 Thessalonians about the "Man of Apostasy" and the crimes he is supposed to have committed, match so strongly what is in the Habakkuk Pesher about the "Wicked Priest", that I have trouble seeing them as being unconnected.

These are the points I would like to discuss, if you would be interested. I'm not too sure that pinning down a definition of "Essene" is really going to be productive in reaching a conclusion on this Hypothesis. I just want to answer the question: Is there a direct connection between the DSS and Early Christianity? Then we can fine-tune the details later.

 

[JaysonR]

The 4th listed by Josephus was the Zealots.

The Essenes were outlined by Josephus, yes, but the question was:

Would they be what Hippolytus describes as "Sicari Essenes"?

I was saying that the first problem with this question is the problem of Essene; meaning, firstly, before just leaping onto extensions of Essene cultures, one would need to spend some time figuring out the Essene culture.

One of the challenges of that, unfortunately, is the demographics regarding the Essene.
That is a rather large and critical issue.

Yes, Essene means observer of the Torah, or the like.

As to the rest; it's the same basket of chasing wild geese (and I don't mean to be insulting in that).
I know where you are getting the data from; that's kind of my contention.
I don't care who you get stuff from, but the manner in which that content was constructed certainly matters, and the constructs outlined are about as convoluted as it gets - not to mention disregarding and belligerent.


Take for example, this again:

The stuff in 2 Thessalonians about the "Man of Apostasy" and the crimes he is supposed to have committed, match so strongly what is in the Habakkuk Pesher about the "Wicked Priest", that I have trouble seeing them as being unconnected.

Just such a casual linking across between these two as if such a comparison is just light hearted material.

The ramifications anthropologically of this statement are mind-numbingly fascinating in the means of neglect in exchange for convenience of thought association.

What do you think about all of what I wrote in #860?

 

[Brainache]

...
Take for example, this again:

Quote:
The stuff in 2 Thessalonians about the "Man of Apostasy" and the crimes he is supposed to have committed, match so strongly what is in the Habakkuk Pesher about the "Wicked Priest", that I have trouble seeing them as being unconnected.

Just such a casual linking across between these two as if such a comparison is just light hearted material.

The ramifications anthropologically of this statement are mind-numbingly fascinating in the means of neglect in exchange for convenience of thought association.
...

I tried to get an explanation out of you before about it but you pushed it aside.

This is the internet. I'm just asking questions... I'll try to be more stern in future and not be so light hearted... How terrible of me!

An occupational hazard of ignorance, I spose.

I get that you think Eisenman is some latter-day Von Daniken, but I think it's far more plausible than Bigfoot or UFOs...

 

[JaysonR]

I will explain more in detail tomorrow, but I wasn't trying to belittle the concept. Instead, what I was stating was that, indeed, the concept is so vast in weight that it is hardly appropriate for me to respond directly to the question as simply as it was posited.

Those are two very different anthropological identities and that question could be an undergraduate's thesis; that is what I meant.

It is on the caliber of asking if the Minoans increased trade skills of indigenous peoples of North America.

I was not intending to sound of ridicule, but instead attempting to convey the value of the question you were asking me.

As to Eisenmann; I was not tossing him outright, but instead asking a rather straight question.
To rephrase that question...what is it that is not satisfied historically by the 2nd BCE origin outline?

To me, it appears that Eisenmann is using the DSS to solve puzzles he created, and that his DSS hypithesis does not solve much regarding the DSS that was for want of being solved based on the evidences we have.

Why is his idea better than the 2nd c BCE origin...what does the 2nd c BCE origin solution not resolve regarding the DSS?

 

[Brainache]

I will explain more in detail tomorrow, but I wasn't trying to belittle the concept. Instead, what I was stating was that, indeed, the concept is so vast in weight that it is hardly appropriate for me to respond directly to the question as simply as it was posited.

Those are two very different anthropological identities and that question could be an undergraduate's thesis; that is what I meant.

It is on the caliber of asking if the Minoans increased trade skills of indigenous peoples of North America.

I was not intending to sound of ridicule, but instead attempting to convey the value of the question you were asking me.

As to Eisenmann; I was not tossing him outright, but instead asking a rather straight question.
To rephrase that question...what is it that is not satisfied historically by the 2nd BCE origin outline?

To me, it appears that Eisenmann is using the DSS to solve puzzles he created, and that his DSS hypithesis does not solve much regarding the DSS that was for want of being solved based on the evidences we have.

Why is his idea better than the 2nd c BCE origin...what does the 2nd c BCE origin solution not resolve regarding the DSS?

Ah. OK. I'm still learning.

But the 2nd century BCE dating doesn't seem logical to me, given the situation of Herod's installation in the 1st Century BCE. The polemics in the scrolls fit perfectly into the second temple period.

One example I just read about is from the Nahum Pesher where they talk about the curse associated with hanging on a tree. In the original Deuteronomy the curse is applied to "The Land" if a man is left hanging on a tree overnight. The Nahum Pesher revises that to hanging a man who is still alive. The practice of nailing people up who are still alive wasn't practiced until the 1st Century BCE.

The 2nd century dating would also have us believe that there was a group with certain beliefs and practices who disappear for nearly a century, then show up again suddenly at the same place with the same agenda and the same enemies.

I would think it far more likely that if they left the site and came back again, it was within the same generation. Most likely around the time Caligula was stirring up trouble for them, then coming back when things settled down a bit under Claudius.

I think you probably know more about this stuff than me, but I don't understand why the complaints about foreigners and pollution of the temple etc wouldn't apply just as much to Herod and his cronies, as it would to the Seleucids. It also fits in with Josephus' report that the type of religious practice we see at Qumran was a new thing in Israel at the time of Judas The Galilean. There just weren't many of this type of zealous cult around in the 2nd Century BCE, they were a Second Temple phenomenon.

ETA: Thanks to the Mods for changing the title of the thread to make it more accurate.

 

[JaysonR]

Alright, so I was going to get into more detail today regarding the MoA and WP, but in attempting to think about how to go about starting that conversation, my mind continues to swirl in confusion of where to even begin.

It occurred to me that part of the problem with where to begin, for me, is simply part of the last question I asked in the last post.

Why are we trying to solve the Wicked Priest for the Man of Apostasy?
This breaks down into two questions:
Is there an identity to solve for the 'Man of Apostasy'?
Is there an identity to solve for the 'Wicked Priest'?

For the last, yes, but in saying yes here, I would call upon my previous question regarding the Wicked Priest:
What does the 2nd c BCE origin solution not solve regarding this matter?

Regarding the Man of Apostasy, is this entry unique from textual form so as to be requiring literal identification?
Not really.

This kind of name calling is all throughout their texts; Isaiah 14's ridicule of a King is probably the most famous example.
The Hebrew idiom of "Morning Star", referring to Venus' futile attempt to replace the Sun is yet another such example of this concept.

It hurts nothing at all that in their own records, they have repeated examples of individuals taking control of their highest orders of power and corrupting them.

As I've mentioned previously, such was done a number of times (and at times, in succession even) in the history of their High Priest seat.

2nd Thessalonians making a claim that one day a man will rise to power and corrupt it, and to watch out for that day, is hardly surprising from a text attempting to continue a tradition based and rooted on Hebrew mythology and theology.

It would, rather, be far more remarkable if the concept had never been raised at all - considering the Hebrew history of leaders, texts such as Isaiah, Daniel, not to mention the early chronicle format texts which account for multiple individuals corrupted with power and pulling the Hebrew peoples away from the perceived "right" way.

It's all through their texts; this idea of a seducing leader who begins to think himself equal to, or better than, the highest god; for whom innocent Hebrews follow in ignorance and end up trapped in the doom that is the leader's foolish ego.

My point here in highlighting this is that if we so chose to start looking; we could begin to claim every instance in all texts as the same individual (and some did; that's what provokes the "Lucifer" legends).

We could find Isaiah, Daniel, John, Revelation, Thessalonians, and even the DSS and claim them all to be one individual - one evil.

This theme is repeated rather frequently, so it is with hazard that we should make any link between two instances of such listing.
One may refer to an individual or set of individuals, while another may be predictive and not referring to any specific extant individual.

Conversely, two entries may refer to specific individuals, but be rather different individuals, and only have similarity in the fashionable pattern of highlighting such individuals and theologically scorning them and using them as the literary whipping boy.

Equally, it stands possible that the Wicked Priest in Habbakuk was one (or possibly a set of) individual(s) and that the instance in the Psalms entry was a different identity, reusing the same fashioned idiom - as occurs with terms like, "morning star", or the same ἀπώλετο idiomatic phrasing in 2 Thessalonians as in John 17 (as well as Revelation).

So in comparing these two entries, we need to be beyond pedantic to a point of extremity in comparison; idleness and casualness is all fine and well, and yes, we are 'just on the internet', but what use is casually arriving at an erroneously derived conclusion we then use to influence our other deductive thoughts?


In so doing, the first thing we must be compelled to do is set for ourselves a timeline for comparison.
The Wicked Priest HBK is somewhere in the middle 1st c BCE to middle 2nd c BCE.
The Psalm commentary is somewhere mostly within the 1st c CE.

Already we have a bit of an issue here.
The two timelines are incapable of being literal identifications of some same historic individual, unless we accept the Psalms commentary to be discussing events already passed, but if we do this, then that would only weaken the Eisenmann proposition, and more of weight, it would equally propose that this group was somehow invulnerable to the 1st c CE Messianic and Apocalyptic religious wave moving through the theocratic landscape.

Primarily based on the last consideration, it would seem more cautious to assume this group was writing of their current time (or future) and not of previous when they wrote in their Psalms commentary, and equally were writing of their own time (or future) in the HBK's 4 entries.

In working from the position of present to future tense, we are valid in concerning of the issue of two separate identities: 1 (at least) for HBK and 1 for Psalms.

In regards to HBK, we can look around that time and see that our possible High Priests are (in order):

1. Mendaus
2. Alcimus
3. Jonathan Apphus
4. Simeon Tassi
5. John Hyrcanus
6. Aristobulus
7. Alexander Jannaeus
8. John Hyrcanus II
9. Aristobulus II
10. Antigonus
11. Aristobulus III
12. Ananelus
13. Aristobulus III
14. Ananelus
15. Joshua ben Fabus
16. Simon ben Boethus
17. Matthias ben Theophilus
18. Eleazar ben Boethus
19. Joshua ben Sie
20. Joazar ben Boethus

In regards to Psalms, our list of correlated time is comprised of the following:

1. Ananus ben Seth
2. Eleazar ben Ananus
3. Simon ben Camithus
4. Joseph Caiaphas
5. Theophilus ben Ananus
6. Simon Cantatheras ben Boethus
7. Matthias ben Ananus
8. Elioneus ben Simon Cantatheras
9. Jonathan ben Ananus
10. Josephus ben Camydus
11. Ananias ben Nebedeus
12. Jonathan
13. Ishmael ben Fabus
14. Joseph Cabi ben Simon
15. Ananus ben Ananus
16. Joshua ben Damneus
17. Joshua ben Gamaliel
18. Mattathias ben Theophilus
19. Phannias ben Samuel

For each textual body and correlated High Priest list, the question stands open:
Keeping in mind that we are looking for a contemporary for EACH text, and not 1 identity for BOTH texts, the question I will leave to the floor for discussion is the following:

Who fits the description outlined for HBK?
Who fits the description outlined for Psalms?


Only after answering these questions can we then begin to approach the question of relationship between these entries and 2nd Thessalonians.

 

[JaysonR]

But the 2nd century BCE dating doesn't seem logical to me, given the situation of Herod's installation in the 1st Century BCE. The polemics in the scrolls fit perfectly into the second temple period.

Convenience of the exotic cannot be our motive for selection.
What is ignored in just tossing the 2nd c BCE origin out is rather massive in anthropological weight.

One example I just read about is from the Nahum Pesher where they talk about the curse associated with hanging on a tree. In the original Deuteronomy the curse is applied to "The Land" if a man is left hanging on a tree overnight. The Nahum Pesher revises that to hanging a man who is still alive. The practice of nailing people up who are still alive wasn't practiced until the 1st Century BCE.

The 2nd century dating would also have us believe that there was a group with certain beliefs and practices who disappear for nearly a century, then show up again suddenly at the same place with the same agenda and the same enemies.

Why?
Why would it be impossible for a group to start in the 2nd c BCE for one reason and struggle again at a later date for a different reason of related circumstances of injustice and oppression?
History is full of such cases; why is this group incapable of this benign human social accomplishment?

I would think it far more likely that if they left the site and came back again, it was within the same generation. Most likely around the time Caligula was stirring up trouble for them, then coming back when things settled down a bit under Claudius.

We would be making an assumption about departure; we have no reason to rest on such a conclusion regarding any departure.
What we do have is a "silent" point in textual content being generated.
That either means it was lost or they stopped production for an interval for an unknown reason.
It does not mean they ceased residence, inherently.

I think you probably know more about this stuff than me, but I don't understand why the complaints about foreigners and pollution of the temple etc wouldn't apply just as much to Herod and his cronies, as it would to the Seleucids. It also fits in with Josephus' report that the type of religious practice we see at Qumran was a new thing in Israel at the time of Judas The Galilean. There just weren't many of this type of zealous cult around in the 2nd Century BCE, they were a Second Temple phenomenon.

It's not incapable of application; it is exactly in which way are we discussing the application of which description?

The problem I have had all along is not that there was a group that could have been tossing insults at Harrodian time frames, no, that's not impossible at all.
But I do think it short to lump the entire body of DSS content, the entire massive library, and pile it solely onto Harrod's shoulders.

We don't have to move the site, we don't have to remove possibilities of things like the Psalms commentary referring to 1 c CE conditions; we don't have to wipe out the possibility of Josephus referring to this group in some passage.

What we are talking about is NOT compressing a massive body of work into a tiny timeline of textual work and ignore any signs that point to the opposite of this.

What we can do is permit humans to grow as a community and pass on shared poetry, semantics, theologies, and narrative culture.

 

[Brainache]

Convenience of the exotic cannot be our motive for selection.
What is ignored in just tossing the 2nd c BCE origin out is rather massive in anthropological weight.


Why?
Why would it be impossible for a group to start in the 2nd c BCE for one reason and struggle again at a later date for a different reason of related circumstances of injustice and oppression?
History is full of such cases; why is this group incapable of this benign human social accomplishment?

It just seems to me (and I admit I'm not as well versed in this as you) that it isn't necessary to invoke the 2nd century if the scrolls fit in the first century. It feels a bit like multiplying entities to me.

I guess I'm over-simplifying again. But why involve two instances of unjust oppression, when one will do?

We would be making an assumption about departure; we have no reason to rest on such a conclusion regarding any departure.
What we do have is a "silent" point in textual content being generated.
That either means it was lost or they stopped production for an interval for an unknown reason.
It does not mean they ceased residence, inherently.

Well they either left and then came back, or one group left and a different one came back a hundred years later with exactly the same ideas.

Or they stayed there and stopped writing scrolls for an indefinite period for unknown reasons. Or they decided to put whatever they were writing during that time somewhere else.

It's not incapable of application; it is exactly in which way are we discussing the application of which description?

The problem I have had all along is not that there was a group that could have been tossing insults at Harrodian time frames, no, that's not impossible at all.
But I do think it short to lump the entire body of DSS content, the entire massive library, and pile it solely onto Harrod's shoulders.

We don't have to move the site, we don't have to remove possibilities of things like the Psalms commentary referring to 1 c CE conditions; we don't have to wipe out the possibility of Josephus referring to this group in some passage.

What we are talking about is NOT compressing a massive body of work into a tiny timeline of textual work and ignore any signs that point to the opposite of this.

What we can do is permit humans to grow as a community and pass on shared poetry, semantics, theologies, and narrative culture.

OK. The Herodian period goes from about 60 BCE through to 70 CE or so, that's over a hundred years. Is that too short a time frame for what we are talking about?

As I understand it, for about 100 years before that Judea was an independent Jewish state under the Maccabees. Are you saying that the oldest DSS texts come from a time before the Maccabees? And that the later ones pick up from where they left off?

 

[JaysonR]

It just seems to me (and I admit I'm not as well versed in this as you) that it isn't necessary to invoke the 2nd century if the scrolls fit in the first century. It feels a bit like multiplying entities to me.

I guess I'm over-simplifying again. But why involve two instances of unjust oppression, when one will do?

Because that is systemically backwards, and I don't mean that as an insult.
We look at the dates, and then we derive our ideas from those dates and the content.

It doesn't really make sense to ignore dates, create ideas to fit the content, and then from that derive the dates that fit the ideas we create about the content negligent of the dates.

It doesn't matter what sense something makes in regards to efficiency; life is hardly pedantically efficient.
In societies, multiple events of the same form occur repeatedly; especially when it comes to the Hebrew peoples and corrupted injustice.

It is a fact that multiple instances of this occurred. Applying the DSS content across the spectrum isn't because it's convenient, but because the dates and the content suggest this; in much the same way that two volcanic ash layers in the Earth in different layers may not be convenient when one volcanic eruptions suffices for our purposes, but it is never-the-less, the evident material in front of us which suggests two separate and similar eruptions occurred.

Well they either left and then came back, or one group left and a different one came back a hundred years later with exactly the same ideas.

Or they stayed there and stopped writing scrolls for an indefinite period for unknown reasons. Or they decided to put whatever they were writing during that time somewhere else.

There are a multitude of possibilities for the "silence", but we need not answer that issue in addressing the correlative timeline; we simply have to accept that such a low point exists (which is not a complete absence, but a low point where less was generated by comparison to before and after that point - see previous graph). So "stopping production" is only relative to the production at other times in this use.

OK. The Herodian period goes from about 60 BCE through to 70 CE or so, that's over a hundred years. Is that too short a time frame for what we are talking about?

Yes, that is.
We have 3 variations of the Community Rule, firstly, and then we have 981 texts in total.
Let's strip out 10% for the sake of computational model of testing the idea and just say that 10% of the texts were already written texts which they brought with them.
That means we're looking at an average of (being nice) 7 texts being created each year from day one until the day they were wiped out, assuming a start-date of 60 BCE and an end date of 70 CE.

That is beyond incredible for the age; especially since we're not only talking about 7 texts per year, but 7 nearly scribe level perfect texts in at least 5 or 6 different languages.

We have not even accounted for the logistics of inception in this either.
Firstly, this group has to form.
Then they have to find a location to work from regionally.
They then have to set up temporary lodging until more fixed provisions are available.
Then they have to recruit enough people to form a larger collective.
Then they have to work together to build their physical structures, even if they only re-used Maccabean cave hidings (one theory).
Then they have to teach everyone their ideals and ways and set up a social theocratic hierarchy.
Then they have to train individuals, beyond the original, to be scribes which for the Hebrew culture is like us saying that we're going to train someone to be a physicist (meaning, they didn't just toss someone at it, or take it lightly; this was the essence of the universe in their way of thinking - getting the texts wrong could cause earthquakes or cultural erosion by the hand of the all mighty).

Keep in mind, the rules to writing scribal work:

1. They could only use clean animal skins, both to write on, and even to bind manuscripts.
2. Each column of writing could have no less than forty-eight, and no more than sixty lines.
3. The ink must be black, and of a special recipe.
4. They must say each word aloud while they were writing.
5. They must wipe the pen and wash their entire bodies before writing the most Holy Name of God, YHVH, every time they wrote it.
6. There must be a review within thirty days, and if as many as three pages required corrections, the entire manuscript had to be redone.
7. The letters, words, and paragraphs had to be counted, and the document became invalid if two letters touched each other. The middle paragraph, word and letter must correspond to those of the original document.

"Recruited from the social upper class, scribes went through years of training before they exercised their profession."

"Elementary instruction lasted about four to five years.
...Pupils with a grasp of the basics continued their education with the study of some of the classical wisdom texts...and the various Instructions...After four years, as the first phase of the curriculum was finished, students were allowed to call themselves “scribe”...The advanced curriculum, which included an apprenticeship in one of the professions that could
be entered after such literary and scholarly training, like physician or lector-priest, could take up to twelve years."

- Karel Van Der Toorn - Scribal Culture
and the Making of the Hebrew Bible.

The training to accomplish this in 5 to 6 languages is impressive even with the time span of 2nd c BCE to 1st c CE; cramming it into 130 years is even more awe shocking.

Truly, if this was accomplished, then this means these scribes were beyond the rival of any in Ancient History and truly need to be marked as a wonder of the Ancient world (I'm not being facetious; that is a matter of caliber).

We're talking about a simply impossible social accomplishment logistically by compressing this into 130 years, especially for a group outside of the Temple and Court.

As I understand it, for about 100 years before that Judea was an independent Jewish state under the Maccabees. Are you saying that the oldest DSS texts come from a time before the Maccabees? And that the later ones pick up from where they left off?

They come from the around the late Maccabean rule and notably picked up during the Hasmonean time (and events leading up to that political conversion) onward.

Refer to the below timeline for an understanding of the layout of their history.
Timeline of the Hebrew Peoples between 10th c BCE to 1st c CE

I'm not certain, but you seem to think that the Maccabean and Hasmonean rules were issue free, or that there was no reason for such motivated departure.

On the contrary, that High Priest that I called the "Hebrew Caligula" reigned during the late Maccabean rule and was, to date, the most vial, violent, and destructive High Priest in the Hebrew history.

This is the High Priest who had thousands upon thousands killed - men, women and children - and if anyone was found innocent by judges of crimes he laid against them; he killed them too. He took holy vessels from the Temple and sold them for money, he had Hellenistic parties inside the Temple grounds, he walked Hebrew hating slayers right through the gates and into the Temple grounds and let them do what they wished as long as he got a good deal out of things. He personally had the previous High Priest - who was a Zadok (Onias III) - murdered, and he openly and by mandate Hellenized the Judaic faith (or you die).

This man was pure vileness to the Hebrew culture, and he was also the first definitively non-Zadok High Priest, for he was of the tribe of Benjamin.

Harrod, by comparison, almost seems like a breath of fresh air after this guy.

 

[Brainache]

Because that is systemically backwards, and I don't mean that as an insult.
We look at the dates, and then we derive our ideas from those dates and the content.

Just to be clear: What dates are you talking about? The carbon ones, or the Paleographic ones?

It doesn't really make sense to ignore dates, create ideas to fit the content, and then from that derive the dates that fit the ideas we create about the content negligent of the dates.

It doesn't matter what sense something makes in regards to efficiency; life is hardly pedantically efficient.
In societies, multiple events of the same form occur repeatedly; especially when it comes to the Hebrew peoples and corrupted injustice.

It is a fact that multiple instances of this occurred. Applying the DSS content across the spectrum isn't because it's convenient, but because the dates and the content suggest this; in much the same way that two volcanic ash layers in the Earth in different layers may not be convenient when one volcanic eruptions suffices for our purposes, but it is never-the-less, the evident material in front of us which suggests two separate and similar eruptions occurred.


There are a multitude of possibilities for the "silence", but we need not answer that issue in addressing the correlative timeline; we simply have to accept that such a low point exists (which is not a complete absence, but a low point where less was generated by comparison to before and after that point - see previous graph). So "stopping production" is only relative to the production at other times in this use.


Yes, that is.
We have 3 variations of the Community Rule, firstly, and then we have 981 texts in total.
Let's strip out 10% for the sake of computational model of testing the idea and just say that 10% of the texts were already written texts which they brought with them.
That means we're looking at an average of (being nice) 7 texts being created each year from day one until the day they were wiped out, assuming a start-date of 60 BCE and an end date of 70 CE.

That is beyond incredible for the age; especially since we're not only talking about 7 texts per year, but 7 nearly scribe level perfect texts in at least 5 or 6 different languages.

We have not even accounted for the logistics of inception in this either.
Firstly, this group has to form.
Then they have to find a location to work from regionally.
They then have to set up temporary lodging until more fixed provisions are available.
Then they have to recruit enough people to form a larger collective.
Then they have to work together to build their physical structures, even if they only re-used Maccabean cave hidings (one theory).
Then they have to teach everyone their ideals and ways and set up a social theocratic hierarchy.
Then they have to train individuals, beyond the original, to be scribes which for the Hebrew culture is like us saying that we're going to train someone to be a physicist (meaning, they didn't just toss someone at it, or take it lightly; this was the essence of the universe in their way of thinking - getting the texts wrong could cause earthquakes or cultural erosion by the hand of the all mighty).

I know I'm grasping at straws here, but in a community of Thousands, wouldn't these things happen concurrently?

Keep in mind, the rules to writing scribal work:

1. They could only use clean animal skins, both to write on, and even to bind manuscripts.
2. Each column of writing could have no less than forty-eight, and no more than sixty lines.
3. The ink must be black, and of a special recipe.
4. They must say each word aloud while they were writing.
5. They must wipe the pen and wash their entire bodies before writing the most Holy Name of God, YHVH, every time they wrote it.
6. There must be a review within thirty days, and if as many as three pages required corrections, the entire manuscript had to be redone.
7. The letters, words, and paragraphs had to be counted, and the document became invalid if two letters touched each other. The middle paragraph, word and letter must correspond to those of the original document.

"Recruited from the social upper class, scribes went through years of training before they exercised their profession."

"Elementary instruction lasted about four to five years.
...Pupils with a grasp of the basics continued their education with the study of some of the classical wisdom texts...and the various Instructions...After four years, as the first phase of the curriculum was finished, students were allowed to call themselves “scribe”...The advanced curriculum, which included an apprenticeship in one of the professions that could
be entered after such literary and scholarly training, like physician or lector-priest, could take up to twelve years."

- Karel Van Der Toorn - Scribal Culture
and the Making of the Hebrew Bible.

The training to accomplish this in 5 to 6 languages is impressive even with the time span of 2nd c BCE to 1st c CE; cramming it into 130 years is even more awe shocking.

Truly, if this was accomplished, then this means these scribes were beyond the rival of any in Ancient History and truly need to be marked as a wonder of the Ancient world (I'm not being facetious; that is a matter of caliber).

We're talking about a simply impossible social accomplishment logistically by compressing this into 130 years, especially for a group outside of the Temple and Court.


They come from the around the late Maccabean rule and notably picked up during the Hasmonean time (and events leading up to that political conversion) onward.

Refer to the below timeline for an understanding of the layout of their history.
Timeline of the Hebrew Peoples between 10th c BCE to 1st c CE

I'm not certain, but you seem to think that the Maccabean and Hasmonean rules were issue free, or that there was no reason for such motivated departure.

On the contrary, that High Priest that I called the "Hebrew Caligula" reigned during the late Maccabean rule and was, to date, the most vial, violent, and destructive High Priest in the Hebrew history.

This is the High Priest who had thousands upon thousands killed - men, women and children - and if anyone was found innocent by judges of crimes he laid against them; he killed them too. He took holy vessels from the Temple and sold them for money, he had Hellenistic parties inside the Temple grounds, he walked Hebrew hating slayers right through the gates and into the Temple grounds and let them do what they wished as long as he got a good deal out of things. He personally had the previous High Priest - who was a Zadok (Onias III) - murdered, and he openly and by mandate Hellenized the Judaic faith (or you die).

This man was pure vileness to the Hebrew culture, and he was also the first definitively non-Zadok High Priest, for he was of the tribe of Benjamin.

Harrod, by comparison, almost seems like a breath of fresh air after this guy.

Well Ok. That looks pretty convincing to me that the logistics are problematic for this purely Herodian Hypothesis.

The Qumran crowd could very well have started as the followers of this Onias, hiding out in the wilderness with a Library of OT texts that they brought with them.

Thanks for taking the time to go through this.

 

[JaysonR]

Hurray!

We're getting somewhere!

OK, so you might start to understand that what I don't rule out is the possibility that the younger (say, two or three generations later or so) of this original group (who were very likely Temple scribes of the late 2nd c BCE era) eventually gave up on the whole Onias IV and his Temple in Egypt, or the idea of a return to the Zadok line by that family hand, and found reprise and new meaning in the current events of the 1st c CE which mirrored similar, but different, conditions that their sage founders regularly told imperative stories about.

They found a like-cause of their own, rather than holding up a tired and old champion that looked to never come to fruition.

This could explain the change in the texts of the late 1st c BCE and 1st c CE by comparison to the older texts.


Regarding the dates; I was referring to both the Carbon and Paleographic dating - they are complimentary of each other.


Edit: by the way - something to think about...you like to ponder about the relationship between this community and the Galilean "baptismal" uprising.
Consider this; if this community influenced that uprising, then having been around since the late 2nd c BCE in the Northern region would only help the probability of vicarious influence of the culture around the area.

Shortening the time frame makes the probability incredibly dramatic and requires that John and Jesus figure types were active members of the community itself, rather than collaterally influenced by the presence of the activity within their greater "yard" in the North.

 

[pakeha]

Thanks and kudos for your painstaking review of the DSS in relation to any possible time-lines, JaysonR, as well as that overview of scribal training.

 

[JaysonR]

Absolutely, and I hope I didn't "kill" the conversation.

I don't think that the timeline outright kills the idea of DSS community from influencing the regional culture which the Gospel texts are based or influenced from.

Let's, for the moment, grant an axiom of Essene relation for this DSS community (putting aside debates over that issue for the sake of hypothesis - see Norman Golb for the dispute).

Take for example, the standard description of the Essenes (we'll just grab wiki's summary, which is pretty standard description at this point):
The Essenes (in Modern but not in Ancient Hebrew: אִסִּיִים, Isiyim; Greek: Εσσήνοι, Εσσαίοι, or Οσσαίοι, Essḗnoi, Essaíoi, Ossaíoi) were a sect of Second Temple Judaism that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE which some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests.

Firstly, the timeline is recognizable, so there's one start.

Secondly, look at Qumran's location.
The distance between Qumran and Galilee is about 3 to 4 hours of walking.
In the age of 2nd c BCE through 1st c CE, that is not a long walk.
We should note that it would only be about 40 minutes of walking from Qumran to Jerusalem, so the distance is not a direct correlative link to only a Galilean option.

The point there is that it is not unreasonable for the mixture between the cultures, and it has not gone unnoticed that there is at least some fashion of relation between Essene culture and the culture surrounding the Gospel archetypes.

Relation of Essenism to Christianity.
John the Baptist seems to have belonged to the Essenes, but in appealing to sinners to be regenerated by baptism, he inaugurated a new movement, which led to the rise of Christianity. The silence of the New Testament about the Essenes is perhaps the best proof that they furnished the new sect with its main elements both as regards personnel and views. The similarity in many respects between Christianity and Essenism is striking: There were the same communism (Acts iv. 34-35); the same belief in baptism or bathing, and in the power of prophecy; the same aversion to marriage, enhanced by firmer belief in the Messianic advent; the same system of organization, and the same rules for the traveling brethrendelegated to charity-work (see Apostle and Apostleship); and, above all, the same love-feasts or brotherly meals (comp. Agape; Didascalia). Also, between the ethical and the apocalyptic teachings of the Gospels and the Epistles and the teachings of the Essenes of the time, as given in Philo, in Hippolytus, and in the Ethiopic and Slavonic Books of Enoch, as well as in the rabbinic literature, the resemblance is such that the influence of the latter upon the former can scarcely be denied. Nevertheless, the attitude of Jesus and his disciples is altogether anti-Essene, a denunciation and disavowal of Essene rigor and asceticism; but, singularly enough, while the Roman war appealed to men of action such as the Zealots, men of a more peaceful and visionary nature, who had previously become Essenes, were more and more attracted by Christianity, and thereby gave the Church its otherworldly character; while Judaism took a more practical and worldly view of things, and allowed Essenism to live only in tradition and secret lore (see Clementina; Ebionites; Gnosticism).

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5867-essenes

I do not take the above description as sound, but it does show that there are marking similarities that are equally unique attributes that are not correlative practices in traditional Judaism of the age.

The timing is of interest in the sense that the Galilean region only really arises archeologically in the 1st c BCE Hasmonean dynasty after that government pushed North to secure for itself an attempt to rebuild the previously lost Northern part of the kingdom before the Maccabean revolution (Kingdom of Israel).

So, in this hypothesis, we have a group that starts at the end of the 2nd c BCE and a region in the North in which the population only can be uniquely derived from Hellenistic culture starting in the 1st c BCE - which technically makes the DSS possibly older than the traditional Galilean culture of Judaic following (note: not older than Northern Hebrews; older than "Galilean Judaic" culture).

The Galilean region also had a unique culture surrounding its synagogues; chiefly that such were the only structures one would typically be capable of interacting with for religious interaction since the Temple was South past Samaria; so there was a literal country in between a Galilean and their holy Temple.

Take a look at the synagogue markup of Galilee
Image from - Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee: A Region in Transition
This text is a compilation; no singular author.

These synagogues are largely public (not socially structured around a specific fashion of Judaism) and associatively public (mostly attended, but not strictly exclusive to, adherents to a specific fashion of Judaism).
It should be noted that determining the difference between these two types of synagogues is extremely difficult in most cases.

Yet, we can determine that all were extremely social and open in format (which is not unusual for Synagogues) and that the Galilean region would have relied on such religious interaction more than those areas surrounding the Temple.

And of note, the ritual bath distribution.

There is a reasonable link, meaning; worth consideration, between this DSS community, Essene, and Galilean Judaism.

 

[Brainache]

No, you didn't kill the conversation Jayson. I've just got some personal stuff going on that makes it a bit difficult for me to focus on this at the moment.

I hope to get back into it at some point.

Your last few posts were very informative. Thanks for that.

 

[Brainache]

Absolutely, and I hope I didn't "kill" the conversation.

I don't think that the timeline outright kills the idea of DSS community from influencing the regional culture which the Gospel texts are based or influenced from.

Let's, for the moment, grant an axiom of Essene relation for this DSS community (putting aside debates over that issue for the sake of hypothesis - see Norman Golb for the dispute).

Take for example, the standard description of the Essenes (we'll just grab wiki's summary, which is pretty standard description at this point):
The Essenes (in Modern but not in Ancient Hebrew: אִסִּיִים, Isiyim; Greek: Εσσήνοι, Εσσαίοι, or Οσσαίοι, Essḗnoi, Essaíoi, Ossaíoi) were a sect of Second Temple Judaism that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE which some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests.

Firstly, the timeline is recognizable, so there's one start.

Secondly, look at Qumran's location.
The distance between Qumran and Galilee is about 3 to 4 hours of walking.
In the age of 2nd c BCE through 1st c CE, that is not a long walk.
We should note that it would only be about 40 minutes of walking from Qumran to Jerusalem, so the distance is not a direct correlative link to only a Galilean option.

The point there is that it is not unreasonable for the mixture between the cultures, and it has not gone unnoticed that there is at least some fashion of relation between Essene culture and the culture surrounding the Gospel archetypes.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5867-essenes

I do not take the above description as sound, but it does show that there are marking similarities that are equally unique attributes that are not correlative practices in traditional Judaism of the age.

The timing is of interest in the sense that the Galilean region only really arises archeologically in the 1st c BCE Hasmonean dynasty after that government pushed North to secure for itself an attempt to rebuild the previously lost Northern part of the kingdom before the Maccabean revolution (Kingdom of Israel).

So, in this hypothesis, we have a group that starts at the end of the 2nd c BCE and a region in the North in which the population only can be uniquely derived from Hellenistic culture starting in the 1st c BCE - which technically makes the DSS possibly older than the traditional Galilean culture of Judaic following (note: not older than Northern Hebrews; older than "Galilean Judaic" culture).

The Galilean region also had a unique culture surrounding its synagogues; chiefly that such were the only structures one would typically be capable of interacting with for religious interaction since the Temple was South past Samaria; so there was a literal country in between a Galilean and their holy Temple.

Take a look at the synagogue markup of Galilee
Image from - Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee: A Region in Transition
This text is a compilation; no singular author.

These synagogues are largely public (not socially structured around a specific fashion of Judaism) and associatively public (mostly attended, but not strictly exclusive to, adherents to a specific fashion of Judaism).
It should be noted that determining the difference between these two types of synagogues is extremely difficult in most cases.

Yet, we can determine that all were extremely social and open in format (which is not unusual for Synagogues) and that the Galilean region would have relied on such religious interaction more than those areas surrounding the Temple.

And of note, the ritual bath distribution.

There is a reasonable link, meaning; worth consideration, between this DSS community, Essene, and Galilean Judaism.

OK. I've just had another look at this and I'm failing to see where the disagreement is. If the early Christian Archetypes were "Essene", the DSS were written by "Essenes" and they occupy the same space and time, how are they not one and the same?

I realise that the NT has put all of those original "Essene" teachers and their ideas through a later Greco-Roman re-write/reinterpretation to fit with Pauline "Christianity", but that was the point of the discussion.

Frankly, at this point I don't even know what your position is regarding these Messianic, Zealot and Apocalyptic DSS and their relation to Early Christianity.

Plus, I didn't want the thread to drop off the third page of the R&P forum...

 

[JaysonR]

There's on-going debate over "Essene" as the DSS attribution, so I leave room for that dispute since it isn't an agreed upon assignment.

I think it is possible to align them as (at least eventually) Essene, but do understand that the evidence for that assignment is circumstantial.

The issue appears to be that the Essene classification is too late for the early work to be attributed to.
I sympathize with this argument, but I think that it possibly fails to see groups of peoples as more dynamic than a fixed idea over time; that the later group could well have been Essene without this notion requiring the origin of the following being Essene - in much the same way as human social groups evolve over time (for example, the Republican Party and the recent evolution of the Tea Party from that group).

As to the labels Messianic, Zealot and Apocalyptic.
I would say that they were not Zealot at all.
Messianic; I would say it possible in the later group, but not in the early form; though the early form's want of their rightful usurped Zadok priest would have cultivated a future sympathy to the eventual Messianic movements of the region.
Apocalyptic - I find this very difficult, honestly. I have a hard time recognizing any distinct Apocalyptic trend in Hebrew culture as they were always apocalyptic in every age of their growth; always forecasting the downfall and destruction and vengeance.
That being said, if we mean Danielic style where the articulation shifts to Isiah style description amplified and over-saturated, then I would say that it is unlikely for any group of the later era to be party with the Messianic movement and not the Danielic style apocalyptic movement.

 

[Brainache]

There's on-going debate over "Essene" as the DSS attribution, so I leave room for that dispute since it isn't an agreed upon assignment.

I think it is possible to align them as (at least eventually) Essene, but do understand that the evidence for that assignment is circumstantial.

The issue appears to be that the Essene classification is too late for the early work to be attributed to.
I sympathize with this argument, but I think that it possibly fails to see groups of peoples as more dynamic than a fixed idea over time; that the later group could well have been Essene without this notion requiring the origin of the following being Essene - in much the same way as human social groups evolve over time (for example, the Republican Party and the recent evolution of the Tea Party from that group).

As to the labels Messianic, Zealot and Apocalyptic.
I would say that they were not Zealot at all.
Messianic; I would say it possible in the later group, but not in the early form; though the early form's want of their rightful usurped Zadok priest would have cultivated a future sympathy to the eventual Messianic movements of the region.
Apocalyptic - I find this very difficult, honestly. I have a hard time recognizing any distinct Apocalyptic trend in Hebrew culture as they were always apocalyptic in every age of their growth; always forecasting the downfall and destruction and vengeance.
That being said, if we mean Danielic style where the articulation shifts to Isiah style description amplified and over-saturated, then I would say that it is unlikely for any group of the later era to be party with the Messianic movement and not the Danielic style apocalyptic movement.

Well, given that the DSS contain texts of Daniel and the pesharim count Daniel as one of the "Prophets" like Christians do (as opposed to later Rabbinic Judaism), I am, I guess, referring to "Danielic style" Apocalypticism.

I am still reading up on this.

I've just been reading about all of the references to the community as "The Assembly Of The Poor" (Ebionim) in the Psalm 37 Pesher and the Damascus Document etc. Would that stuff count as "Ebionite" texts found in Judea?

 

[JaysonR]

Ebionite is so frustrating of a term to the point of almost being useless.

There was never a group called that, but instead, different people class different groups who use the various forms for "poor" in their texts (or in citation by later commentators) as "Ebionite".

As a result; there's no singular theological construct that we can say is an "Ebionite" theology.

For instance, the thread I worked on the subject matter for considered only two such groups: one is that as outlined by later commentary as "Ebionite", and the other was from Gnostic citations of early Orthodoxy records outlining a faction of Gnostic "Ebionites".

Do these two groups actually belong together?
Do either of these share commonalities of "Ebionite" with the DSS?

These are very hard questions.
I think the reality is probably that there were several groups who valued shedding personal property for a communal life, and therefore would call themselves (in some manner) poor.
I also, however, think that there was no unifying theological link between them by that claim aside from sharing a similar interest in the value of owning very little and sharing among their close community of followers.

For comparison: how silly would it be to call this group the "Messianics" and attempt to classify them strictly by that term alone?
Is that term unique to only this group; are they the only distinct Messianic followers?

If we did this, then we would suddenly find ourselves with a mess on our hands as we would at once be stating that a wide range of groups were the Messianics, and at the same time we would be attempting to clarify that they were not specifically the same group, all of them, together.

This is about what has happened with "Ebionite"; quite similar to "Gnostic", actually.

All it really tells you is that they valued some form of none-embellished monastic life.
Which, for the DSS group, makes sense.

This was a group that started out hating how perverse the official priesthood had gone; that it was throwing lavish parties for the Hellens and selling Temple property for personal funds to throw those parties with.

It would make sympathetic sense for a fall-away "true believer" group to fixate upon uniformed social class and not permit the accumulation of personal wealth within the group.