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Please don't call me 'dense', Min. There is no need to be insulting just because we disagree. I'm not Arch.
Still insulting me, Min? And now over something I haven't said? What's up?Minimalist wrote:Who said anything about a military attack?
Titus gathered 4 legions, and equal number of auxiliaries and some allied troops after his father was made emperor, Ish. They were not there for the Annual Legionary Picnic. The Nag Hamadi texts were buried by a group, or perhaps a single member of a group, who did have a reasonable expectation of an attack by the religious powers-that-be (there were plenty of examples of book-burning and persecution of non-literalist christians for them to note) it seems that someone sitting in Ein Gedi and thinking that Titus was coming for them is a bit nutty, to say the least.
Yes in 70AD - but we don't know when these documents were buried.So to answer your question, I raised the issue of a military attack and one suspects it was the main topic of conversation on the streets of Jerusalem in 70 AD. This was not going to be Pearl Harbor. The Romans weren't hiding their intentions, in fact, they were advertising them. The general consensus is that someone hid the scrolls in those caves. One hides something to protect it from danger. In 70 AD it wasn't hard to see where that danger was coming from.
But I'm not dishing anything out ... we've been having a nice discussion here for a while.Minimalist wrote:Please don't call me 'dense', Min. There is no need to be insulting just because we disagree. I'm not Arch.
If you're going to dish it out, Ish, you have to be ready to take it, too.
Being as Christianity was loosely based on Judaism you'd expect them to adopt Jewish conventions.Ishtar wrote:Well, yes, but remember the scrolls containing these stories and themes that were very Christian-like were actually hidden - and so that's maybe why. They were heretic writings that were anathema to the Pharisees, and thus the hiding of them would have had nothing to do with any Roman smackdowns!
In fact, the Temple Scroll is very critical of the status quo in Jerusalem.
I have made this next point before, but will do so again in this context, just to remind ourselves.
Theodore Gaster again:
“No less interesting ... are the many parallels which these texts afford with the organisation of the primitive Christian church. The community calls itself by the same name (‘edah) as was used by the early Christians of Palestine to designate its legislative assembly as was used by that community to denote the council of the Church. There are twelve ‘men of holiness’ who act as general guides of the community – a remarkable correspondence with the Twelve Apostles. These men have three superiors, answering to the designation of John, Peter and James as the three pillars of the church.”
Gaster continues that the Damascus Document says, of the council:
“When these exist in Israel, these are the provisions whereby they are to be kept apart from any consort with forward men, to the end that they may indeed ‘go into the wilderness to prepare the way”, i.e. do what the Scripture enjoins when it says, “Prepare in the wilderness the way .... make straight in the desert a highway for our God [Isaiah 40:3]
As Gaster says, the same quotation is used by John the Baptist (Matt. 3:3; John 1:23).
Gaster also points out that the Manual of Discipline and Damascus Document are similar to the Christian texts called the Didache, the Didascalia Apostolorum and the Apostolic Constitutions of the early Church organisation.
One telling point – among the Dead Sea Scrolls were found the Christian Epistle of Barnabas and writings from Justin Martyr. Justin Martyr is dated to 100 – 165 CE. So they must have continued to use the Qumran caves as a hiding place for 'heretic' scrolls up to at least the mid-first century, or even later.
Hmmm, "we have reason to believe..". Sounds like it's not definite then. Whereas we know the Essenes definitely had many sacred books because Josephus tells us so.
Sorry that's a misunderstanding ... maybe I wasn't clear enough.seeker wrote:
If Justin Martyr knew about Qumran then they couldn't have been hidden. I'll have to look up the Justin Martyr reference, if true then your argument looks pretty good.
Forget the bit about the Essenes .. it's too confusing and not worth getting hung up over. But he seems fairly certain about this exodus of Sadducees into northern Israel at that time....the early “Penitents of Israel”, composed of the purist Sadduccees from the Temple in Jerusalem, left Judea and made their headquarters in the land of Damascus. Many sectaries founded settlements in the northern districts, and Elect of Israel, of the latter days, interacted with like-minded spirits among the groups devoted to the old Nazarite way of life....
The Israelite religion of northern Palestine. so dear to the Nazerenes. seems to have absorbed much of the worship of the Syrians and Phoenicians. This older faith carried folklore and ideas and usages foreign to its southern neighbour, and the pre-Christian Nazerenes of the north are shown by Epiphanius to have had an affinity with the gnostically-minded Samaritans, and the Samaritans with the Essenes.
Check your e-mail.Ishtar wrote:But I'm not dishing anything out ... we've been having a nice discussion here for a while.Minimalist wrote:Please don't call me 'dense', Min. There is no need to be insulting just because we disagree. I'm not Arch.
If you're going to dish it out, Ish, you have to be ready to take it, too.
So you're the only one with a problem.
What's going on?
Yeah, I caught my error and was editing my post when you posted. I've been looking for anything that suggests that Justin Martyrs writings were found at Qumran and can't find one reference. Are you sure of this?Ishtar wrote:Sorry that's a misunderstanding ... maybe I wasn't clear enough.seeker wrote:
If Justin Martyr knew about Qumran then they couldn't have been hidden. I'll have to look up the Justin Martyr reference, if true then your argument looks pretty good.
Writings of Justin Martyr who lived in the first half of the first century CE were found in the caves at Qumran - no scrolls were found in the fort.
So this means the caves were still being used as a hiding place in the mid first century, at least.
This is why you have to be careful of older sources who over relied on the biblical narrative. The Sadducees only emerged during Maccabean times and were never all that concerned with tradition. They were more of a political party. Where the Nazerenes were more concerned with piety and the rejection of material wealth the Sadducees were all about wealth and political power. the Sadducees could not be described as purists.Ishtar wrote:Here's where my thinking is coming from with the Sadducees in this respect. It is taking up the story when the kingdom split in two.
Douglas Lockhart in Jesus the Heretic
Forget the bit about the Essenes .. it's too confusing and not worth getting hung up over. But he seems fairly certain about this exodus of Sadducees into northern Israel at that time....the early “Penitents of Israel”, composed of the purist Sadduccees from the Temple in Jerusalem, left Judea and made their headquarters in the land of Damascus. Many sectaries founded settlements in the northern districts, and Elect of Israel, of the latter days, interacted with like-minded spirits among the groups devoted to the old Nazarite way of life....
The Israelite religion of northern Palestine. so dear to the Nazerenes. seems to have absorbed much of the worship of the Syrians and Phoenicians. This older faith carried folklore and ideas and usages foreign to its southern neighbour, and the pre-Christian Nazerenes of the north are shown by Epiphanius to have had an affinity with the gnostically-minded Samaritans, and the Samaritans with the Essenes.
Still insulting me, Min? And now over something I haven't said? What's up?
I made it crystal clear that I didn't think the documents were necessarily hidden as a result of any military intervention.
Writings of Justin Martyr who lived in the first half of the first century CE were found in the caves at Qumran - no scrolls were found in the fort.
It's Theodore Gaster again, in his book The Dead Sea Scriptures. I'll see if I can find more on it.seeker wrote: Yeah, I caught my error and was editing my post when you posted. I've been looking for anything that suggests that Justin Martyrs writings were found at Qumran and can't find one reference. Are you sure of this?
I'm just wondering why Douglas Lockhart would have got that so wrong, and what would have changed since he wrote it to make it wrong.seeker wrote: This is why you have to be careful of older sources who over relied on the biblical narrative. The Sadducees only emerged during Maccabean times and were never all that concerned with tradition. They were more of a political party. Where the Nazerenes were more concerned with piety and the rejection of material wealth the Sadducees were all about wealth and political power. the Sadducees could not be described as purists.
I buy the Zedek=Sadducee tie, it makes sense. I just think Lockhart is buying into the NT painting of the Sadducees as pious when the reality is quite different.Ishtar wrote:I'm just wondering why Douglas Lockhart would have got that so wrong, and what would have changed since he wrote it to make it wrong.seeker wrote: This is why you have to be careful of older sources who over relied on the biblical narrative. The Sadducees only emerged during Maccabean times and were never all that concerned with tradition. They were more of a political party. Where the Nazerenes were more concerned with piety and the rejection of material wealth the Sadducees were all about wealth and political power. the Sadducees could not be described as purists.
I do also think the similarity in the names must mean something - that Zedek was also known as Tzedek and the Hebrew name for Sadducees was Tzedukim?
But in any case, even if we decouple the Sadducees from the Zadokites, which I'm quite prepared to do, we still have an interesting story in the Damascus Document in terms of Proto-Christianity, or at least what looks like one source of what became Christian ideas, and this is what is interesting me the most.
Maybe that stems from the Zadokite purity laws, which were much more rigorous than the Pharisees had? It's not quite the same as piety, but it could be compared?seeker wrote:
I buy the Zedek=Sadducee tie, it makes sense. I just think Lockhart is buying into the NT painting of the Sadducees as pious when the reality is quite different.
The Sadducees were defined by their notion that they didn't have to do anything that wasn't in the Torah. Lockhart is probably confusing the Sadducee tendency to literalism for piety. The Sadducees were known for literal readings of things like an 'eye for an eye' while the Pharisees tended to rely on a deeper understanding they called the 'Oral Torah' which prevented blinding stupidity (sorry, couldn't resist).Ishtar wrote:Maybe that stems from the Zadokite purity laws, which were much more rigorous than the Pharisees had? It's not quite the same as piety, but it could be compared?seeker wrote:
I buy the Zedek=Sadducee tie, it makes sense. I just think Lockhart is buying into the NT painting of the Sadducees as pious when the reality is quite different.