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orion-list 1QS and hellenistic associations
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Thanks very much to Daniel Falk for the welcome discussion
of models of community organization in the Serekh texts, in
response to my question about M. Klinghardt's 1994 article
(in Wise et al, _Methods of Investigation_). To D. Falk, of the
four sources you name, two of them, Jastram 1995 and Pearce
1995, have nothing to say about Klinghardt (although Jastram's
in particular I found very insightful), and the third, Brooke's
review of Weinfeld, also would not have (would someone who
knows where Brooke's review is found tell me offlist?--
thanks). This leaves only your own SBL 1996 presentation as
a possible interaction with Klinghardt. As I read it, Klinghardt
developed Weinfeld's direction much further than Weinfeld.
Klinghardt argued that some of the criticisms of Weinfeld, and
Weinfeld's own cautions toward going further with the
comparisons, are weakened in that Weinfeld took "only very
few pagan statues into account for his comparison, thus
neglecting the majority of Greek and Roman material" (p. 253).
That is, Klinghardt claimed the case for continuity between
these parallels was stronger than Weinfeld had presented it,
once a fuller corpus of comparative parallels are examined.
Klinghardt also argued that these hellenistic association
structure-types provide the best explanation for the origin of
synagogues. I have seen no published reaction to Klinghardt's
article and am interested in knowing of any. As for your own
comments:
> I presented a paper "Community Order at Qumran" at the 1996 SBL (not
> published) emphasizing the role of idealized biblical models. I argued
> that
> social reality was perceived and presented through the lens of biblical
> interpretation. Ie., despite the similarities to Hellenistic associations
> which almost certainly had an influence in some way, this would in no way
> be recognized (ie., it was not direct, or a conscious modeling on);
> rather,
> the social structures practiced by the sect were perceived and presented
> to
> be continuation of biblical models (as according to their interpretation).
>
This raises the issue of insider versus outsider perceptions and
descriptions. Your material would relate to insider self-perception,
which would not necessarily be in conflict with Klinghardt-like
"outsider" descriptive analysis of the kind which historians of
religion do. The biblical interpretive influences to which you allude
no doubt account for some features of 1QS, but things like a
three-year period of initiation, rules of community property, the
presence of words like "yachad" or "synagogue" themselves, etc.
of 1QS, the Pharisee haburah, Josephus's Essenes, and Second
Temple synagogues generically, seem something other than
derivative from biblical-interpretive origins--but do seem similar
to the hellenistic association rule patterns. (Or do you see this
differently? please comment) The significance of the issue that
I see is this: if the hellenistic-pagan associations provide a
context for understanding the structures of the underlying social
realities of the "yachad" and synagogue phenomenae--even if the
participants in the Serekh yachads or the Essene or Pharisee or
Sadducee organizational fellowships or synagogues, whatever
form they took exactly, might have been consciously anti-
hellenistic (not necessarily a contradiction)--then the structural
similarities between 1QS and Josephus's Essenes which have
shaped the perception of identity between these two (three-years
initiation process, four ranks of members, sanctions for deviance,
etc.) may become less diagnostic or significant than the
differences in specific practices and beliefs. For example,
Josephus describes his Essenes as practicing celibacy, praying
toward the sun, belief in immortal souls going to a "heaven"-like
place after death, differences in the initiation process, etc., all
of which appear to be significant disagreements in detail with
the Qumran "yachad" texts. These differences are harmonized
only with difficulty, usually some form of ad hoc assumption that
Josephus, a contemporary witness, was simply wrong on detail
after detail.
To put it in other words: if synagogues are a Hebrew/Palestine
variant of the Mediterranean "hellenistic association" phenomenon,
then how does this impact the perception of "striking parallels"
between 1QS and the classical Essene descriptions? Were the
Essenes the only ones to have synagogue membership rules--or
just the only ones with surviving contemporary external description
of those rules in some detail? Do 1QS and Josephus's Essenes
truly have more specific striking points of contact than that they
both are synagogues? And if these are simply synagogue-
organization descriptions with variant rules/customs/beliefs
depending on specific groups, how does one evaluate whether
1QS reflects the same group's synagogues as Josephus's
Essenes? This is why I consider Klinghardt's article important
to address.
Greg Doudna
For private reply, e-mail to Greg Doudna <gd@teol.ku.dk>
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