[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: "Love" in the DSS



>Whether  [in the DSS]
there was a theology of love there is another question,
and it might even be an imported one. <   [Michael Stone]

My own reaction exactly!  It seems  to me that a research project on this topic
is in danger of assuming its conclusions. From my reading of the contents of
the DSS, "love" in any of its polysemous connotations does not seem exactly a
concept that leaps from the pages.  My next question: why exactly would anyone
assume or expect that such would prove to be the case?    Would it not be more
profitable to focus on other topics (such as eschatology and apocalyptic on
the one hand, and cultic purity on the other) to which the subjects covered in
various assorted scrolls seem, upon first impression, more naturally to lend
themselves? (If I were advising a graduate student, I would consider it a mis-
take to encourage him/her to start from somewhere so far out in left field.)

"Puzzled in Providence."