A question about the Doudna/Hutchesson 63 BCE Qumran ms deposit proposal,
after a few comments.
In my view, this 63 proposal (as written in Qumran Chronicle and orion) has
been disproven multiple times by several confluent streams of evidence.
Briefly, these include archaeology, C14, paleography, and history, as well
as the extreme lengths pursued to exclude Essenes from the Qumran site and
mss.
For example, the C14 data have been read by Doudna as a single "shotgun"
blast pattern, but that requires really one moment of "generation" of the
mss (appropriate really only for one sample, e.g., one piece of skin, not
many mss)--a hypothesis (or series of hypotheses) not only unproven but, in
my view, exceedingly improbable--in order to exclude late date ranges as
outliers. Later paleographic dates have not been better explained as
pre-63. Most of the Qumran pottery is later, etc. Historically, Essenes
were on the north-west Dead Sea shore in Herod the Great's time, while
non-toparchy Ein Gedi was destroyed, etc.
Now, for the question. Greg D. and Ian H. have asked for explicit securely
dated internal text references later than 63, for "falsification" purposes.
I noted that the Qumran mss were rather poor in that respect, if we limit
to clear, plainly datable references. Greg wrote that these internal
datable references "flourish up to c. 63 BCE but then stop. The end of
internal references after 63 BCE is total and permanent, without
exception." QC 8 [1999] 88. That, except for the "c." is quite emphatic.
Similarly, GD wrote: "It is rather like a water spigot had been permanently
shut off on a certain date" [p. 26]. (All this assumes a sudden end to text
production, a hypothesis; GD also hypothesized most production just before
the end.) I offered numerous proposed later text references, but they were
rejected as insufficiently explicit, secure, certain, or the like.
So I ask: how many explicit internal date references that occured before
63--and necessarily also asserted as written before or in 63--do Ian H. and
Greg D. agree on and will explicitly present to the list? In other words,
in order to evaluate on a level playing field proposed post 63 dates, one
could compare with their list of pre 63 dated (and pre 63 copied) items and
their reasoning for those being secure. What constitutes that claimed
stream of references? Hyrcanus (if Hyrcanus II) lived for many years after
63. Aemilius (if Scaurus) was Governor of Syria afterward; when he "killed"
is not clear to me. Queen Sholomzion died before 63, but when was the text
copied? I take the pNahum crucifixions as 88 BC, as have most who date
them; but GD has a later date. If I read correctly, IH and GD differ by as
much as a century on dating some events in the Qumran pesharim. But perhaps
they can clarify.
In any case, Ian Hutchesson and Gregory Doudna, will you present to orion
list a list of precisely which, numbered, explicitly datable secure
internal Qumran text references which you both affirm occured and were
written in ink on Qumran mss in particular years before 63 BCE?
best,
Stephen Goranson
For private reply, e-mail to Stephen Goranson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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