Archaeological Report on Magen and Peleg's Dig at Qumran

[Minimalist]

http://www.antiquities.org.il/images/sho..._color.pdf


Long but it is their conclusion that Qumran was a pottery factory and not some friggin' monastery.

[Captain Colostomy]

What does that imply/refute/reinforce etc., Min? (Not that it has to...furthering understanding of the area is good, regardless.)

[Minimalist]

No "Essenes" sitting around copying books which they hid in nearby caves.

[Captain Colostomy]

No "Essenes" sitting around copying books which they hid in nearby caves.

Thanks. One less piece of evidence to support widespread Essene activity(or even their existence?) then, I suppose?

[Minimalist]

Oh, they existed. Josephus wrote of them fairly extensively and Pliny the Elder noted them as well although he was most likely referring to a writing by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa during his governorship of Syria c 15 BC.

The thing is that while they lived communally they seem to have been primarily agricultural workers who went out into the community to work and returned to the commune at night. No one suggested they spent a lot of time copying books. Josephus lived among them for 3 years without making reference to such an activity.

Roland De Vaux was a French priest who oversaw the early excavations at Qumran and as he was a Dominican he applied his own European concept of a monastery and concluded that the Essenes had a monastery at Qumran and wrote out all these scrolls.

[Aractus]

http://www.antiquities.org.il/images/sho..._color.pdf


Long but it is their conclusion that Qumran was a pottery factory and not some friggin' monastery.

It doesn't matter what it was, the scrolls themselves still serve as proof that they were accepted as scripture by contemporary Jews of the time for various reasons, and the book of Daniel is dual language, and the content of the scrolls themselves is virtually identical to the MT, etc, all of this is very important. Also important is the fact that there is a large amount of non-scripture written in Hebrew proving once and for all that Hebrew WAS a written language, and not one invented or that only the priests understood, etc.

[Minimalist]

And the one thing you forgot to mention is that they are the earliest examples of such writing. The previous versions were in Greek. A fact which drives fundies up a wall!

[freedomfromforum]

[Minimalist]

Enjoy your popcorn. They are all out in a googling frenzy looking for older manuscripts.

But they won't find them. The Greek Septuagint was first.

[Aractus]

And the one thing you forgot to mention is that they are the earliest examples of such writing. The previous versions were in Greek. A fact which drives fundies up a wall!

Enjoy your popcorn. They are all out in a googling frenzy looking for older manuscripts.

But they won't find them. The Greek Septuagint was first.

Pfft. "THE" Greek Septuagint? Almost no serious scholar believes the LXX was ever written as a single piece of work, it's merely a collection of translations made of the OT, and it was modified by Origen who used the other Greek translations to "improve it".

All "The Greek Septuagint" as you call it is is a copy of the fifth column of the Hexapla, written c. 220-240AD.