Dear Dr. Altman and list, Rochelle, you do make bold claims, as in your paragraph below. As you know, we disagree on Essenes vis-a-vis Qumran. For any readers interested, some context of this difference appears in recent posts on ioudaios-list available via http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ioudaios (click on recent messages) There, Dr. Altman gave 5 criteria for "tags," and concluded only one Hebrew word, "hoseh" (to seek refuge), qualified; then, RA proposed Essenes might be non-Jewish Buddhists. I wrote that Essenes were Jews, that ancient namers knew not RA's 5 rules, or didn't always follow them (e.g. "amoraim"--common Hebrew verb, and transitive, as is 'asah, from which, in my view, "Essenes" comes), that RA's analysis of Qumran archaeology was mistaken, and so on. I have two suggestions. First, Dr. Altman, if you are so inclined, could you provide for orion readers your reasons for the assertions in the quoted paragraph? Second, perhaps this exchange could serve a broader purpose if we take into account some history of scholarship, including pre-1948 scholarship. For instance, del Medico's Essene myth proposal; Eusebius' mistaken assertion that Therapeutae were Christian monks and the debates about that by 16th-century Catholics and Protestants; the reintroduction of Philo and Josephus in Jewish scholarship (e.g., Azariah dei Rossi); and some aspects of Qumran study up to the reactions to two books in last Saturday's NY Times {"Proposing a Messiah Before Jesus" by Emily Eakin). In other words, for instance, in my view some Qumran texts are ineluctably Essene, and carry not only such beliefs and practices, but also the source of the name. (A Hebrew name whose recognition was obscured by two Aramaic proposals of 16th-century origin.) There is plenty more to learn about Essenes and Qumran; perhaps we can agree on that. It may be useful to learn some of the sources of support for the assertion that Essenes "_could not_ have been at Qumran." best, Stephen Goranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] [excerpt from Rochelle Altman post:] > >Further, we do not know that we are dealing with a cult. Does the "Essene" >cult hypothesis hold up under reality checks? If the Essenes did exist as >an identifiable, taggable people, they were not at Khirbet Qumran. A very >simple physical and physiological reality check immediately eliminates >Qumran as an "Essene" site. As the "Essenes" were not, and _could not_, >have been at Qumran, classing those documents as "Essene" becomes extremely >doubtful. For private reply, e-mail to Stephen Goranson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from Orion, e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: "unsubscribe Orion." Archives are on the Orion Web site and at http://www.mail-archive.com/orion%40panda.mscc.huji.ac.il/. For more information on the Orion Center, visit our web site, http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il.