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Re: orion-list Re: Kuhn and Popper





goranson wrote:
> 
> Dear Russell and orion group,

<snip>

> E.g., if the Teacher is Judah the Essene, then he is mentioned
> in Josephus, teaching. Yet such a Teacher might hypothetically not be
> mentioned by Josephus, and still have existed. The historical record is, to
> some extent, growing and being refined.
> 

I would go further than this and say that it is far more probable that
the Teacher is unlikely to have been mentioned in any historical record.

It seems that the only activity in which the Teacher interacted with
those outside of the community is the Day of Atonement incident which
takes place 'at the house of his exile', which if not the Qumran
settlement is in the wilderness somewhere, i.e. not Jerusalem. Our
impressions of the community, it strikes me, are often blown out of
proportion; and in general terms the group may not have been at all
important or significant and thus unlikely to be mentioned in Josephus
or any other source. The reference to Judah the Essene is more
coincidence than anything else, a 'teacher' in broadly the right place
and at more or less the right time, and with obvious links to the
Essenes.

Am I alone in thinking this? That even if new historical documents were
to emerge from somewhere, we are nevertheless unlikely to broaden our
knowledge of the Qumran group except in very general terms. Certainly,
that we are unlikely to find a source relating the other side of the
Qumran 'story'.

Marcus Wood
Department of Theology
University of Durham
For private reply, e-mail to Marcus Wood <M.E.M.Wood@durham.ac.uk>
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