Philo's guide to decoding the Hebrew Bible

[Ishtar]

I don't think the dating is misleading. The Essenes are widely believed to be the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls which are dated to c 300 BC. So if anything, I've been conservative.

Ish - I don't know of very many scholars that date the dead sea scrolls before the second century. Here is a reasonable discussion of why.

Thanks Seeker, but I usually go by Wiki unless it's wildly out, and that's what I've done this time with the 300 BC date.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes

The Essenes have gained fame in modern times as a result of the discovery of an extensive group of religious documents known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, commonly believed as being their library. These documents include preserved multiple copies of the Hebrew Bible untouched from as early as 300 BC until their discovery in 1946. The multiple copies of the Old Testament in the original Hebrew confirmed that the Old Testament has remained relatively unchanged since it was redacted in 450 BC ...

I know it's controversial, so I've agreed to a compromise date of 210 BC with Min. I don't really care whether it's first or second century BC. It's a long time before Christ and that's the point.

[Minimalist]

No, not really. "Shit happens" when you stub your toe or break a glass. Larger issues generally have causes.

Here is Josephus' long description of the Essenes from The Jewish War. I can see nothing in it which suggests any sort of monkish book-copying activity.

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/jose ... ssenes.htm

You have to watch the religiously-based club mentality, Ish. We have an early excavator, Roland De Vaux, in 1951 who was a monk himself proclaiming that the scrolls were written and copied by the Essenes and stored in the caves. Like so many other preachers masquerading as archaeologists in the first half of the 20th century they allowed their preconceived notions of "holiness" to color their finds. The vast majority have been overturned in the last 25 years and Magen and Peleg are simply applying the same rule to Qumran.

Could the Essenes have been running a pottery factory to support themselves? Sure. They could have but it is not attested.
In Antiquities, Book XVIII 5, Josephus writes:

5. The doctrine of the Essens is this: That all things are best ascribed to God. They teach the immortality of souls, and esteem that the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for; and when they send what they have dedicated to God into the temple, they do not offer sacrifices (3) because they have more pure lustrations of their own; on which account they are excluded from the common court of the temple, but offer their sacrifices themselves; yet is their course of life better than that of other men; and they entirely addict themselves to husbandry.

Husbandry involves the raising of livestock...not pottery making and Josephus lived at the same time. Presumably he knew these people or at least some of them as he seems to have a degree of respect for them.


So, what Peleg and Magen are doing is stripping away the holy-horseshit and just looking at the evidence on the ground. It is what Finkelstein and the rest did in the late 70's and the result has been very upsetting to the Arches of the world.

Lastly, one can not simply wish away the political and military reality of the Great Revolt. While the Romans were gathering their army (and making Vespasian the emperor in the process) the various factions among the zealots were fighting among themselves in Jerusalem. One cannot think that every person in the city belonged to one of the various zealot factions. There had to be others who were thinking a little clearer. If someone did wish to secrete sacred documents from a library the fact that they were not found until 1947...and then by accident... indicates that whoever decided to stash the documents in the caves knew what the hell they were doing.

I think you are hanging your hat too heavily on the 300 BC date because you are automatically assuming that "3d century means the beginning of the 3d century. It doesn't. At the beginning of the 3'd century BC Rome was a minor power in Central Italy. At the Battle of Sentinum in 295 they defeated a coalition of Samnites, Etruscans and Greeks to assure their own survival. By the end of the 3d century (200 BC) they had defeated Carthage twice, Phillip of Macedon once, subjugated all of Italy south of the Po, parts of Spain, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily as well as much of Illyria. They were the dominant power in the Western Mediterranean and were, within ten years, destined to kick the ass of Antiochus III of Seleucia. So, I submit to you that 100 years DOES make a difference.

[Minimalist]

That’s still a hundred year advance on what you were saying last night when you trying to fit the Essenes into the Maccabean revolt!!

But only if they WROTE the documents which is an open question at this point.

[Ishtar]

I'm not hanging my hat on that date. I was just going along with Wiki. I have already agreed to your revised date so I don't know why you're still going on about it?

[Ishtar]

That’s still a hundred year advance on what you were saying last night when you trying to fit the Essenes into the Maccabean revolt!!

But only if they WROTE the documents which is an open question at this point.

Min .. what does it matter?

You are SO missing the main point - that they were living like Christians long before Christ lived. That's the point .. please can we stick to that?

You were determined last night that they were part of the Maccabean revolt. Now today, it's another political scenario.

None of it really matters anyway ... and why can't people make date honey (which we know the Essenes lived on) and still be spiritual?

Also (edit added later) if you look at my tables, I've put 2nd century BC for the Essenes.

[seeker]

Agreed...again the problem of having only one source. Still, Josephus was writing of a time 20-40 years prior to the Romans even entering the arena. It is hard to see what motivation he would have for misrepresenting anything because of his current audience. Now, Josephus was a pharisee himself so certainly his opinion of the Sadduccees needs to be critically considered. He seemed to consider the Essenes to be a harmless bunch of oddballs.

I think Josephus wanted to paint a fractious and divided picture of the Jews precisely to say there are 'good' and 'bad'. The whole idea was to paint the Sadducees as the ruling oppressors of the good Pharisees, who after all were just trying to be as pious as they can (I feel ill).

[seeker]

Thanks Seeker, but I usually go by Wiki unless it's wildly out, and that's what I've done this time with the 300 BC date.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes

You have to be careful with Wiki Ish. The article they have on the Dead Sea Scolls goes with the mid second century as well.

If it helps your case though I'd suggest that there is every reason to think that the Essenes probably preceded their writings, perhaps by as much as a century.

[Ishtar]

Thanks Seeker, but I usually go by Wiki unless it's wildly out, and that's what I've done this time with the 300 BC date.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes

You have to be careful with Wiki Ish. The article they have on the Dead Sea Scolls goes with the mid second century as well.

If it helps your case though I'd suggest that there is every reason to think that the Essenes probably preceded their writings, perhaps by as much as a century.

The only case I'm trying to make, Seeker, is that the Essenes were following a 'Christian' way of life and following a Teacher of Righteousness who was crucifed long before Jesus was supposed to have lived.

I think arguing about whether it was early 200s or late 200s, or even the 100s, is just an unnecessary tangent

I agree about Wiki, though. It's only since doing this thread that I've noticed how Christian it is, and how they actually attest things by the gospels, and nobody objects....


Yet I don't think I would be allowed to get away on there with attesting something by the Bhagavad Gita or the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Somehow people realise that that's fiction, or at least mythology (one step up from fiction, I suppose ), but not when it comes to the Christian writings.

[seeker]

Agreed Ish, that's why I've gotten to a point where I don't rely on Wiki by itself when I look at anything to do with the bible or religion. I tend to be a little pedantic, only because you never know when something will get misread.

Technically speaking we can't really even say that the community that created the Dead Sea scrolls was Essene but I'm not real sure that matters to your argument. the point is that whatever that community was they preceded Christianity by a century or so and had virtually the same doctrines. In fact you may want to look at a book by Israel Knohl called "The Messiah Before Jesus". It details the story of Menahem, a person in the Qumran community and documented in the Dead Sea Scrolls who thought of himself as the Messiah was martyred and even supposedly was raised from the dead a generation before Jesus. It just shows that these ideas were pervasive in the region.

[Ishtar]

Yes, that's exactly what I wanted to get at.

But I was so concentrated on trying to make that point, I didn't pay enough attention to the detail.

I'll have a look into that book, thanks!

[Minimalist]

I'm not hanging my hat on that date. I was just going along with Wiki. I have already agreed to your revised date so I don't know why you're still going on about it?

I like to argue.

[Ishtar]

No, I do see your point.

I was not understanding but just letting you have it anyway in a quite condescending way, which must have been very dissatisfying for you ... so I'm sorry!

Can we make up now?

[seeker]

This scene needs swelling music and the sound of the ocean crashing into the rocks.

[Ishtar]

This scene needs swelling music and the sound of the ocean crashing into the rocks.

Isn't that from Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing?

[Minimalist]

Min .. what does it matter?

What matters is we can't be sure if this represents a private library written and collected by the Essenes and thus indicative that THEY EXISTED at the time as monks exactly like De Vaux suggested in 1951....or, if they were

a. merely living/working near a place where the scrolls were stored by someone else, or
b. never at Qumran in any appreciable numbers.


I used the word "romance" before because de Vaux has taken the attributes of medieval xtian monks and applied them to the Essenes.

But what is the actual evidence?

In the 3'd century BC, Jerusalem was under the control of either the Seleucid Greeks or the Egyptian Greeks. There seems to have been a toleration until Antiochus IV moved on the temple and touched off the Maccabaean revolt c 160 BC. as the story goes. Was the revolt the result of religious outrage? Who knows? The Seleucids had their butts kicked by the Romans a generation earlier and had been declining ever since. More likely an ambitious leader saw an opportunity and took it, which is a pattern that had been seen in the Mid-East since the hey-day of the Egyptian empire. Weakness leads to rebellion. The later trappings of religion were most likely added on later as justification for the revolt.

But here is the problem. The pharisees seem to emerge in the later 2d century:

http://www.lastdays.org.uk/jesuspha.html

The Pharisees first appeared in the second century B.C. They appear to have originated from a group called the Hasidim (God's loyal ones). By about 135 B.C. they were known as Pharisees (the separated ones).

Unfortunately, so do the Sadduccees:

http://www.livius.org/saa-san/sadducees/sadducees.html

The Sadducees (sedûqîm) were one of the three main Jewish political and religious movements in the years between c.150 BCE and 70 CE. (The other movements were the Essenes and the Pharisees.)

Which leaves the Essenes and, as the Jewishvirtuallibrary says about them:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... senes.html

A third faction, the Essenes, emerged out of disgust with the other two. This sect believed the others had corrupted the city and the Temple. They moved out of Jerusalem and lived a monastic life in the desert, adopting strict dietary laws and a commitment to celibacy.

The problem with this is that the Essenes cannot pre-date first century/late 2d century BC when the other rival factions were going at each other.

Now, here's the good news. For YOUR purposes, first century BC/late 2d century BC is good enough. All that is necessary is to show that the Essenes' core philosophy existed PRIOR to the alleged birth of jesus. The chart you dug out of the other site seems to establish that so you should be happy. It is not necessary to stake out a position for the 3d century, which is probably untenable, when anything prior to 7 BC is sufficient to blow the jesus myth out of the water.





Arch, of course, will have a cow over that analysis...but who cares?