Esther in Wonderland: through a Magical Telescope!


Dear Esther,

I will spare you
many of the hypotheses
put forward by some, primarily
because I do not wish to take part
in the creation of the "phantasms" that
seem to have sprouted like mushrooms in
the wake of the "shocking" discovery, a discovery
that, for whatever reason, causes some people
to throw discretion
to the wind.

That said,
every publication,
be it of a worthwhile study or
- and particularly - of a new Qumran text,
requires a willingness to reexamine our assumptions and,
on more than one occasion, to abandon established conclusions:
this ongoing process is reflected
in the studies gathered
before you.

Most people
rightly identify the Qumran community
with the Essenes who are knwon to us from the writings
of Josephus, Philo, and Pliny the Elder. If in the early days of Qumran scholarship
Josephus shed light on the scrolls,
today the roles are reversed
and the scrolls aid in
interpreting
Josephus.

In the course
of investigation it has, moreover,
become apparent that Josephus is a more accurate witness than Philo at all matters Essene.
Of course, there are facts that neither author mentions,
and details they mention
but the scrolls pass over
in silence.

Ultimately,
however, there are not
many points of contradiction between Josephus' account and the writings
of the sect. The identification of the Qumran community with the Essens does not answer all questions.
It is clear that not all the Qumran writings are sectarian
or reflect a specifically
Essene sensibility.

After all,
the Qumran corpus
contains parts of all the books of the Bible
except the Scroll of Esther {which was rare at the time},
and even fragments of Ben Sira {Sirach}, whose view certainly was at odds with that
of the Qumran community.

This apparent discrepancy
may be due to the fact that the Dead Sea sect, like many of its contemporaries
considered Ben Sira part of the biblical canon. In light of this, it is necessray to distinguish
between the sectarian writings
and the rest of the
Qumran texts.

One scholar
has proposed an orthographic criterion:
that the sectarian writings employ a unique plene spelling.
But while this hypothesis cannot be rejected out of hand, there is no reason
to assume that a Qumran scribe could not have employed this spelling
when copying non-sectarian texts.

Another distinguishing criterion
may be the special, somewhat artificial language of the sectarian texts,
though here too the distinction is not absolute. There is no question that the whole (or almost whole) scrolls that were composed by the Qumran sectarians include the War Scroll, the Community Rule
(also called the Manual of Discipline) & the Rule of the Congregation,
the Hodayot, the Temple Scroll,
& 4QMMT.

The status of the Damascus Document
is more complicated, since it was published before the discovery of the scrolls from a medieval witness preserved in the Cairo Genizah. When the scrolls were first discovered,
there were scholars who recognized a connection between Damascus
Document & the Qumran writings.

Since then,
a number of important Damascus Document fragments
from Qumran have been published.

The Qumran fragments
preserve a reference to Damascus,
though it occurs in a problematic sentence that
speaks of "the Interpreter of the Law
who will come to
Damascus".

Now,
the Interpreter of the Law
is an important figure within the community.
We further find reference to "the converts of Israel, who left the land of Judah
and lived in the land of Damascus", and to "all the men
who entered the new covenant
in the land of Damascus".

It appears, then,
that the Interpreter of the Law
came to Damascus, where a new covenant was established
among those who left Judah and "lived in the land of Damascus."
This matter is further complicated by the fact that the community of the Damascus Document
differs with regard to its laws and its social structure from the strict ideological structure of the Qumran community, reflecting more closely
the description of the
Essenes found
in Josephus.

What was the fate
of the Damascus group?
Why did the laws of the Damascus Document merge with parts of the Rule of the Congregation?
Perhaps the community eventually settled near the Essens on the banks of the Dead Sea,
though there will undoubtely be scholars who will use these issues as a launching
pad for much more colorful hypotheses (assuming,
of course, they are aware
of the severity of
the problem)
...

As
far as
I have personally
become involved in this
whole business: the facts are
much more simple &
easier to trace!

I arrived at Engedi
for the first time in January '67,
at Qumran in May, haSela haAdom a few weeks later,
continued on to the Red Sea shores near Elat, was arrested
in Petra/Elya/Elji on the first day of the socalled Six Day
war, brought to Ma'an & Philadelphia {Rabbat Ammon}
& deported to Bayrut, Cyprus & Tarsus or
Mersin as it is
now called.

Via Konya,
Ankara & Istanbul
I returned by boat to Acco @ Carmel
& from there on back to the places
mentioned before [again
& again]!

I found my Thrill
on those old hills of Ruchama near Gaza,
Engedi, Har El in August '69 & ever since we have been together
after hitch hiking through Kurdistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan & Hindustan
to Nippon & Birobeidjan to return by way of Siberia & Russia to Odessa
at the shores of the Black Sea.

In other words:
my spiritual interests started out @ Home,
at Kindergarten, "Sundayschool" & physical
contact with those places,
so now I keep trying to
pick up the pieces in
order to make a
bit more sense
out of
it?

The
whole thing
became like a
recurring 'nightmare'
including Mordechai and
his 'niece' Esther, Yehoshua
haNatsri aka haMashiach
and last but not least
Sha'ul/Paulos & the
travels with his
Master's
Voice?!

blozen
engel
cool!
knipoog
25 feb 2010 - meld ongepast verhaal
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Asih, man, 80 jaar
   
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