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orion-list Alexander Jannaeus's site Qumran (was 1QS and Hellenistic associa tions)
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George X. Brooke (not the George Brooke of Manchester,
England) wrote:
> I guess the point I'm making is that reading the DSS text does NOT leave
> a person with the vague possibility that we are reading from the library
> of a Sadducee or Pharisee religious library. And while it is helpful to
> try to catalog the small differences between the DSS and known classical
> writers, I think it is a mistake to magnify these differences to such a
>
While your points are well taken concerning the possibility of
groups breaking up, reforming, splitting into variants, mutating
their rules, etc. such that the Scrolls could well be within the
rubric of "Essenes" who may not be the monolithic order as
portrayed in the classical descriptions, the question is whether
there are positive grounds to know this line of possibility is
indeed the case. Here you reject the Sadducee possibility
out of hand. But in this you are rejecting something about which
there are no acknowledged firsthand texts with which to compare.
The same arguments concerning 1st century CE Sadducees
being mutations or developments different from, say, "sadducees"
of the 1st century BCE might apply as you have argued in making
the case for the Essene identity. Consider that Josephus's major
source for the late Hasmonean era, Nicolaus of Damascus, seems
to have written the history of this period in terms of a Sadducee
(pro-Hasmonean, except for Hyrcanus II) versus Pharisee (anti-
Hasmonean) schema. (I know this schematic is disputed to
various degrees by Le Moyne, Efron, and others, but although
Josephus's account contains lacunae, I think this scheme as
underlying Josephus's extracted history seems surely to be the
case. Whether the scheme is historically accurate is of course
a distinct issue.) What if analysis of a possible "Sadducee"
identity with the "yachad" texts of the scrolls was done solely
on the basis of what can reasonably and soundly be reconstructed
from Josephus's late-Hasmonean source? (i.e. in terms of method,
exclude all later Sadducee descriptions as unreliable and
anachronistic for an understanding of late-Hasmonean era
sadducees, unless proven otherwise.) One might come up with
something like this, for starters, concerning the Sadducees:
(i) pro-Alexander Jannaeus
(ii) anti-Pharisees
(iii) anti those who opposed Jannaeus and supported Demetrius III
This sounds more than a little like the Qumran texts to me,
most of which are from the same time; which were found at
a site built by Alexander Jannaeus; and which among their
texts contain a hymn favorable to Alexander Jannaeus by
name. (This is reading the first two words of the relevant line
in 4Q448, with Wise, as a defaced ShYR QDSh, rather than
'YR.) Another Qumran text, 4QpNah, explicitly condemns
Jannaeus's enemies and (when they are later in power)
wishes them destruction (3-4 i 2; 3-4 ii 4-6). This is prima
facie a striking correspondence in tendez between the Qumran
texts and Josephus's late-Hasmonean-era Sadducees. No
Qumran text is demonstrably in conflict with the pro-Alexander
Jannaeus tendenz which is explicitly attested in the texts
found in the caves next to Alexander Jannaeus's site, Qumran.
Therefore I don't think a direct "Sadducee" identity, in the sense
of Josephus's source's late-Hasmonean era Sadducees, can be
rejected out of hand. As for the Essenes, it is true that they are
said to live by the thousands in eastern Judea, and that Alexander
Jannaeus's Qumran settlement also is in eastern Judea. But this
does not mean that Alexander Jannaeus's Qumran settlement
was staffed by Essenes instead of Jannaeus's own supporters,
who were partly women, and who should not be assumed to be
any less religious or interested in texts. A Qumran-Essene
identity does not logically follow simply because Pliny locates
his thousands of Essenes in east Judea, and Qumran is also
in east Judea. Perhaps instead of Essenes Qumran should be
identified instead with the supporters of the builder of the site,
Alexander Jannaeus. I think it should be investigated whether
what are known as "Essenes" in some accounts are known as
"Pharisees" in other accounts, i.e. the true distinction in the
late Hasmonean era could really, at root, be a clash between
expanding temple-mandated rule ("Sadducees") and native
custom, the popular leaders of which are known in Josephus's
account of the late-Hasmonean era as "Pharisees". (On
Pharisees as reflecting popular, ancestral tradition see M.
Goodman's interesting "A Note on Josephus, the Pharisees,
and ancestral tradition", JJS 50 [1999]: 17-20.) The Essenes
then, instead of having anything to do with Sadducees, might
be some variant of the Pharisee movement, and any similarities
between the 1st century CE Essene descriptions and the
Qumran texts of a century earlier might be purely coincidental.
Just a thought.
Greg Doudna
Copenhagen
For private reply, e-mail to Greg Doudna <gd@teol.ku.dk>
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