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JustMe
Skeptic Friend
64 Posts |
 Posted - 03/16/2009 : 11:09:45
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Biblical scholars have long argued that the Dead Sea Scrolls were the work of an ascetic and celibate Jewish community known as the Essenes, which flourished in the 1st century A.D. in the scorching desert canyons near the Dead Sea. Now a prominent Israeli scholar, Rachel Elior, disputes that the Essenes ever existed at all — a claim that has shaken the bedrock of biblical scholarship.
Elior, who teaches Jewish mysticism at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, claims that the Essenes were a fabrication by the 1st century A.D. Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus and that his faulty reporting was passed on as fact throughout the centuries. As Elior explains, the Essenes make no mention of themselves in the 900 scrolls found by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 in the caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea. "Sixty years of research have been wasted trying to find the Essenes in the scrolls," Elior tells TIME. "But they didn't exist. This is legend on a legend."
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1885421,00.html
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Edited by - JustMe on 03/16/2009 11:10:42
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On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 03/16/2009 : 11:22:23 [Permalink]
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| who the hell wrote them then? |
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JustMe
Skeptic Friend
64 Posts |
Posted - 03/16/2009 : 13:54:46 [Permalink]
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| Haley Joel Osment |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/16/2009 : 14:30:46 [Permalink]
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This is pretty much a non-story to me. It's like a variation on the "Shakespeare didn't write those plays, another man by the same name did" theme.
In this case Rachel Elior is saying that a pious Jewish community called the Essenes didn't exist, and couldn't have penned those scrolls. Instead, a pious Jewish community that Elior calls "the renegade sons of Zadok" did so. Seems kind of a minor issue to me.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 03/16/2009 14:32:21 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 03/17/2009 : 00:54:35 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by On fire for Christ
who the hell wrote them then?
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I wrote them, just to fuck with biblical "scholars" in the 21st century. You see, I'm actually 9000 years old, and have been screwing with humanity all this time. Mostly practical jokes. Seriously though, I do apologize for Ghengis Khan. That one got a bit out of hand.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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R.Wreck
SFN Regular
USA
1191 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2009 : 13:23:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
who the hell wrote them then?
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I wrote them, just to fuck with biblical "scholars" in the 21st century. You see, I'm actually 9000 years old, and have been screwing with humanity all this time. Mostly practical jokes. Seriously though, I do apologize for Ghengis Khan. That one got a bit out of hand.
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Ghengis Khan? That's small potatoes. What I want to know is if you're responsible for Falwell. |
The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley
The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 03/23/2009 : 10:41:38 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
who the hell wrote them then?
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I wrote them, just to fuck with biblical "scholars" in the 21st century. You see, I'm actually 9000 years old, and have been screwing with humanity all this time. Mostly practical jokes. Seriously though, I do apologize for Ghengis Khan. That one got a bit out of hand.
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Have you seen The Man From Earth?
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809935183/info
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-Chaloobi
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 03/23/2009 : 12:16:50 [Permalink]
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| It certainly is an interesting concept. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 03/23/2009 : 17:13:55 [Permalink]
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I don't think this is all that original. Well, OK, I don't know if anyone is saying that the Essenes are a complete fabrication, others have long suggested that the Essenes aren't responsible for the DSS. Indeed, I tend to buy into that theory.
Unfortunately, the main proponent of this idea, Norman Golb, has a bit of an image problem, thanks to his son. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 03/23/2009 : 18:09:22 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
I don't think this is all that original. Well, OK, I don't know if anyone is saying that the Essenes are a complete fabrication, others have long suggested that the Essenes aren't responsible for the DSS. Indeed, I tend to buy into that theory.
Unfortunately, the main proponent of this idea, Norman Golb, has a bit of an image problem, thanks to his son.
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Yikes! Sounds like the field needs an Indiana Jones to kick some butt.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 03/23/2009 : 20:21:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
who the hell wrote them then?
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I wrote them, just to fuck with biblical "scholars" in the 21st century. You see, I'm actually 9000 years old, and have been screwing with humanity all this time. Mostly practical jokes. Seriously though, I do apologize for Ghengis Khan. That one got a bit out of hand.
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I'd like to see someone prove you didn't.
However, my money is on Dr. Manhattan. |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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| Edited by - pleco on 03/23/2009 20:22:15 |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 03/24/2009 : 07:38:43 [Permalink]
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Seriously, the theory of Qumran as a sectarian settlement has been widely criticized in recent years.
Without Qumran, the connection of the scrolls to the Essenes is seriously reduced.
Who wrote the scrolls then? We don't know. A Judaic sect which had some of its beliefs contrasting which what was mainstream Judaism, like the Essenes. But, apparently not, in contrast with the Essenes, one that was living in isolation and poverty. In fact, it has been suggested that the scrolls were written in Jerusalem and only transferred to the site for safe-keeping and such a metropolitan location would be in sharp contrast with what we know of the Essenes.
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Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Scholar: Dead Sea Scrolls 'authors' never existed
