Re: Scholar: Essenes never existed!!!

On Mar 16, 4:57 pm, "levin...@xxxxxxxxx" <levin...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From Time Magazine. Per an Israeli scholar regarding the Dead Sea
Scrolls. Interesting, to say the least.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1885421,00.html?cnn=yes

Jay

Well, I've read Schiffman's work saying that Qumran was not founded by
the Essenes and that the scrolls were collected by dissidents from
Hasmonean society. He did not say that the Essenes didn't exist. He
just said they didn't found Qumran and they didn't collect the
scrolls.
(Schiffman, Lawrence, “Origin and Early History of the Qumran Sect”
Biblical Archaeology. Volume 58 Number 1, March 1995 and
Schiffman, Lawrence H. “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of
Judaism,” Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 63, No. 3, Qumran and the
Dead Sea Scrolls: Discoveries, Debates, the Scrolls and the Bible.
(Sep., 2000), pp. 154-159. )

And I read Philo some years ago and don't get me started on the junk
he wrote.

And it doesn't surprise me that somebody who was never in Israel might
get things wrong.

Josephus says in Jewish War where he references the Essenes [B. II.
ch. 8.]
Section 2
"They do not absolutely deny the fitness of marriage, and the
succession of mankind thereby continued; but they guard against the
lascivious behavior of women, and are persuaded that none of them
preserve their fidelity to one man."

and in section 13 of the same chapter he says
"Moreover, there is another order of Essens, who agree with the
rest as to their way of living, and customs, and laws, but differ from
them in the point of marriage, as thinking that by not marrying they
cut off the principal part of human life, which is the prospect of
succession; nay, rather, that if all men should be of the same
opinion,
the whole race of mankind would fail. However, they try their spouses
for three years; and if they find that they have their natural
purgations thrice, as trials that they are likely to be fruitful, they
then actually marry them. But they do not use to accompany with their
wives when they are with child, as a demonstration that they do not
many
out of regard to pleasure, but for the sake of posterity. Now the
women
go into the baths with some of their garments on, as the men do with
somewhat girded about them. And these are the customs of this order of
Essens."
[Whiston translation on the Online Books Page]
That's a far cry from celibacy. This article wouldn't be the first
time a scholar claimed that a Jewish writing said something it didn't;
I have a 1999 example of a tenured professor publishing an inaccurate
claim about a section of Midrash Halachah which is contradicted by the
immediately preceding section.

The generic press, like Time, tarts up both articles and their titles
to grab eyeballs. None of the information would be particularly
surprising to anybody who read Josephus and kept up with publications
by the American Schools of Oriental Research.
.

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