Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Seems when they retest the DSS most get younger not older

Ha ha ha

Why are you so desperate to interpret the age of the text to fit a pre-existent idea? It reminds me of the wife of the serial cheating philanderer. 'If only X happened, then he would be faithful.' Yes, but how many times does he have to cheat on you to acknowledge that he is a philander. 'Oh, but I was mean to him.' You go on and on making excuses for a theory when the actual scientific evidence firmly sinks the Eisenman hypothesis.

But let's say they nailed it (the carbon dating) for sake of argument.

If only you were really acknowledging this fact. For reasons I don't fathom you develop this 'hypothetical' scenario under the condition we allow this one caveat:

Still, (once again) how does the context of Commentary on Habakkuk rule out James the Just being the Teacher of Righteousness?

In your previous post you argued that James could have presented himself as the Teacher of Righteous from the DSS. But why does that have to be true? What is the convincing reason to accept this? You are the worst person to answer this question because you have come to the forum for the explicit purpose of rescuing this theory. The proper approach is to leave the question until some evidence can be found that suggests that the early Christians or James were related somehow to the community which produced the scrolls. But this isn't possible now nor will it ever likely happen. No one has ever produced one scrap of evidence to support this convincingly.

Indeed consider my interest in the Samaritans for a second as a matter of comparison. The Dositheans (or 'Dositheus') are/is explicitly identified in the Pseudo-Clementines as having a community which gave birth as it were to Simon Magus. Where on earth do you find anything so convincing with respect to the connecting the community that produced the writings associated with the 'Teacher of Righteous' and early Christianity?

Your best argument against James would be the interpretation that follows: "and God told Habakkuk to write down that which would happen to the final generation, but He did not make known to him when time would come to an end." but you Spin have failed to make a case other than to imply that a commentary on a 600 year old prophecy by the prophet Habakkuk, automatically disproves James the Just as the Teacher of Righteousness.

No the best argument is simply to acknowledge that the argument that the community that produced the literature associated with the 'Teacher of Righteousness' can be connected to James hasn't been proved. The idea that James is or thought he was the Teacher of Righteousness is a wholly unproven or unprovable assertion much like von Däniken's assertion that the angels in the Bible were space aliens.

MrMacSon wrote:

ficino wrote: To assume that scrolls were written on pieces of parchment that had lain unused for the better part of a century makes the above such a hypothesis.

Another possibility is the practice of re-using the materials.

Some parchment is reused, yes. It will be necessary in this case to show that the DSS are palimpsests. There are ways to test for that, e.g. infrared, ultraviolet, other kinds of spectral imaging and digital imaging. The husband of a paleographer colleague of mine can "smell" a palimpsest because often urine was used to wash off the earlier writing, leaving a distinctive odor centuries later. I don't know whether sniffing the DSS would prove anything, but it can be determined whether or not a given MS. is a palimpsest.

^ cheers

Whatever time period the DSS may have been written in, given that their prohibitions against niece marriage and taking multiple wives are directed at kings, even if it's only a coincidence, the Herodians are certainly a very good match.

But Eisenman's theory has more going for it than the above similarities. As I've mentioned in previous comments in this thread, there happen to be numerous correspondences between Ananus and the Wicked Priest, even down to the smallest details, such as both of them having a bad temper and trying and executing more than one person. It also plausibly explains the reference to the exiled house in the Habakkuk Pesher as being the Sanhedrin that the Talmud says was exiled from the Temple in the first century CE.

There also happen to be other correspondences between the Spouter of Lies and Paul, and there are ideas and terms in the DSS, such as "the way," "the new covenant" and a place called "Damascus," that also happen to be mentioned in early Christian writings and that I intend to discuss more.

Given these kinds of similarities, even if we can say with absolute certainty that the DSS date to before or just into the first century CE, I think the "internal data" at least warrants seeing the Scrolls as being very close to "proto-Christian."

Atwill and Braunheim's challenge to the radiocarbon dating results was published in Dead Sea Discoveries, 2004; the only response to their article in that same journal that I have noticed is by Johannes van der Plicht of the Center for Isotope Research, Groningen Uni and the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden Uni, 2007.

"Radiocarbon Dating and the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Comment on "Redating" DSD 14, 1, 2007.


On the Atwill-Braunheim article Plicht writes:

However, here it is shown that this conclusion is wrong and unjustified. It is based on a incorrect understanding of statistical processes underlying the principles of 14C dating, the calibration of 14C dates, and their interpretation. In addition, “Redating the Dating” exhibits major mathematical deficiencies to the point that the argument used by the authors backfires: it is this article that uses the wrong mathematics.

On specific points of the Atwill-Braunheim argument he continues:

Atwill, et al., use calibrated 14C dates and compare these with palaeographic dates, and calculate the “amount of error.” Furthermore, it is stated that an “inaccurate dating curve” was used in the publications concerning 14C dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls. What is meant here is “inaccurate calibration curve.” Here it is argued, that this “amount of error” cannot be used as a measure of the difference between 14C dates and palaeographic dates, and that the conclusion concerning the “inaccurate dating curve” is not relevant.

And

Apart from the “amount of error” concept shown to be incorrect, there is another serious error made by Atwill et al. For the sake of argument, let us take the “amount of error” as shown in the table as a correct number. There are positive numbers, corresponding to palaeo-graphic dates that are older than the calibrated 14C dates; and there are negative numbers, corresponding to palaeographic dates that are younger than the calibrated 14C dates.

Next, the “amount of error” numbers are averaged, resulting in an average number of 66 years. This however must be the result of a wrong calculation: the averaged number of the “amounts of error” from the table is 16 years. This is a rather small number, much smaller than the authors have obtained. I suspect the authors ignored the minus signs of their “amount of error”; calculating the average from the absolute values indeed yields a number of 66 years.

Atwill et al. claim that the 14C dates of the Dead Sea Scrolls do not demonstrate the reliability of palaeography. It is shown here, however, that this conclusion is based on a wrong interpretation of the available dataset of 14C dates.

Towards the end of their paper, it is argued that the errors for the 14C dates should be increased (figure on p. 154). This is at best confusing, and not as straightforward as it seems based on common laboratory practice.

There seems to be a suggestion that the 14C dating method can not be fully trusted. First, from the title of the article: “Redating the Radiocarbon Dating. . . .” Furthermore, the article discusses 14C dates measured by the laboratories at Oxford, Zürich and Tucson: “not incuriously, these were the same laboratories that had previously been selected for the C14 testing of the Holy Shroud of Turin.” This is not a very scientific statement: it is not related at all to the subject of the paper, i.e. the Dead Sea Scrolls. In addition, the Dead Sea Scrolls were only 14C dated by Zürich and Tucson, and not by Oxford. At present, there are many AMS laboratories worldwide, providing the community with many thousands of 14C dates annually. Twenty years ago, however, only a handful of AMS facilities existed which specialized in 14C and archaeology . . . . . All the 14C laboratories repeatedly check themselves aginst each other in intercomparison exercises. We do not have an agenda, except providing the best possible 14C measurements to the community.

Oh but you are citing a scientist, Neil. He has a discernable bias - toward facts and reason. That is wholly impermissible here. Besides look at the convincing work John has done to bring forward a number of vague similarities between the DSS and early Christianity. Surely that makes up for the C 14 evidence.

I don't think I've irritated enough people today so let me add one more item.

Eisenman and Wise wrote Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered and there is a chapter covering Mishmarot Rotation. There are many fragments and texts involved with "Who Rotates in and When...".

4Q325 (p. 127, to pick a page somewhat randomly):

"Fragment 1:

(1) [on Tues]day: on the eighteenth the sabbath fa[lls to Jehoiarib...]
(2) [on Tuesday] in the evening. On the twenty-fifth the sabbath falls to Jedaiah; also during that course's duties falls
(3) [the festival of] the Barley on the twenty-sixth..."

And so on. Tremendous numbers of Solar Calendar, Luni-Solar Calendar cross refernced dates and Mishmarot Groups.
Find when these dates match and you find when they were written.

CW

I think I participate in these forums to watch how the manner in which the minds of the obtuse work. Please explain to me Charles why any of this nonsense overcomes the results of the carbon-dating?

Is it possible to match precise dates of the month of the Jewish calendar as suggested by Charles above? My information is old so tell me if it has been superseded -- but I understand that the beginnings of months were determined by observation of the appearance of the new moon at Jerusalem and if it was cloudy we would have even less reason to assume that observation back then matched our mathematical projections.

@neilgodfrey,

The Essenes came up with a different calender based on the sun and not the moon (4Q320-30 and IQSx, 5). This was in order to be in tune with the 'laws of the Great Light of heaven' (IQH xII, 5). The first day of the year always fell on the same day of the week, i.e. Wednesday. Now, you have to sit back and wonder, how could the Essenes be part of the Sadducees or Pharisees with such an unusual calender?

It seems, the Essenes were a different/separate sect altogether and therefore, the Teacher of Righteousness could not be from the Hasmonaean dynasty.