Greg,
<some comments snipped for convenience>
I agree that many of your suppositions are possible, but I nevertheless
find them unlikely. I guess it's a difference of opinion. There was,
however, one matter on which I wanted to pick up:
> I agree that the phenomenon of sobriquets certainly does
> occur in the pesharim, so it is not in principle impossible
> that an ancient authorial choice could be made in the world
> of these texts to select some name or word--'Judah', 'Ephraim',
> 'Israel', 'Jerusalem', 'the land', etc.--and use it as a nickname or
> sobriquet or code to stand in for something else disconnected
> from its apparent, surface meaning, such as a particular
> contemporary social group. It is simply that when I looked at
> the examples that are cited I just don't see it. It does not
> seem to me to be a necessary reading in any individual
> instance, nor is it even possible as a general (across-the-board)
> reading applicable to all cases. If this kind of assumption of
> coded meanings underneath terms is to be applied to the pesharim,
> why stop there? Why not move into the Psalms, and start
> proposing social groups were intended by the authors
> of those texts underneath the visible text in coded ways when
> encountering similar terms there? (Some hymns or psalms
> seem still to be being written contemporary with the
> Qumran pesharim, or at least it is commonly supposed that
> this is the case, and some of these hymns or psalms use the
> terms 'Judah' and 'Israel', so this question is not a completely
> hypothetical one.)
While not the Psalms it is nevertheless evident that Daniel preserves
similar sobriquet identifications to those occasioned in the pesharim. The
oft-cited Kittim passage is one such example. It is clear that the
residents of Kition in Cyprus are not intended, but that Daniel is instead
referring to the Romans (I have proposed a possible reason for this move
elsewhere on Orion). This is no different to the identification of Ephraim,
Manasseh etc. in the pesharim. Of course the composition of Daniel is
comparitively close in chronology to the dating of various of the pesharim
and I strongly believe that the pesharim are more typical of Jewish
literature of the time than is often realized. In no way do I believe coded
meanings should be considered exclusive to the pesharim. Rather they
reflect Jewish attitudes to Scripture more generally. In this respect the
isolated nature of the discovery of the DSS has not helped.
Regards etc.,
Marcus Wood
also not yet a doctor...
Dept of Theology
University of Durham
For private reply, e-mail to marcusemwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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