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Re: orion "LEATHER SCROLLS"?
It is good to know that Stephen Pfann is now on the list. I look forward to
your future publications and posts. Certainly the word "parchment" has been
defined differently by different users: from the material resulting from
the process associated with Pergamon to a wider category. I agree it is
not strictly applicable to Qumran. But to some extent "leather" appears to
have been used with different definitions too. As, for example, by J.B.
Poole and R. Reed "The Preparation of Leather and Parchment by the Dead Sea
Community," Technology and Culture 3 (1962) 1-26 (and in a shortened
reprint in the 1972 anthology, Technology and Culture). William S. Ginell,
"Report on Dead Sea Scroll Studies" (Getty Conservation Institute, 1993),
incidentally, also uses the term "parchment."
So I think your call for careful use of terminology is useful.
Among the consequences--on which perhaps you'd like to comment:
Does noting that most Qumran mss skin surfaces are not leather
(defined as [fully?] tanned skins?) suggest that we should reevaluate the
measurements published by F. E. Zeuner in PEQ 1960 33f, on "The Basins of
'Ain Feshkha"? In other words, the lack of tannin there along with the
other indications of skin-preparation (e.g., the stone beam rollers). Do
you agree that Essenes there did prepare writing surfaces?
Secondly, the contradictory on-list responses so far on ritual
purity vis-a-vis skin preparation are already foreshadowed in the
informative but sometimes mistaken article by Poole and Reed, cited above.
For example, on p. 7 in the original article, they write, "We have seen
that there is good reason for believing that this [Qumran] community was
hyper-Pharisaic or Essenic in character and that they would probably
believe most strongly in the validity of the Oral Law." I suggest that
sentence is quite mistaken.
Best regards,
Stephen Goranson goranson@duke.edu