History Forum / General / Ancient History / November 2007

It is without abstract.  You need an academic library that subscribes
to "Dead Sea Discoveries".  The article is HIGHLY TECHNICAL.

Preliminary - try "Qumran sundial" and "Qumran roundel" in
Google Scholar.

I invite you to walk patiently thru the "Christian Origins and
Archaeology"
Thread I started Dec. 10, 2006 on sci.arch with 94 messages and 11
authors and pick up on my extracts from the 2002 Thiering article.

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Important amplification of the Thiering Thesis ---

Since the beginning of research it has been apparent that the
Qumran Community had an Essene nucleus.  There had been an
integration of some Essenes with ascetics coming from the
Sadducees and Pharisees, who adapted their calendar and practices
to those of the Essenes, leading to a movement that developed
beyond classical Essenism.  For this reason the word "ascetic"
is appropriate for the whole sect, while the Essene nucleus should
be recognised.

---

As was apparent from the start, the texts describe practices and
beliefs closely similar to the distinctive tenets of the Essenes
as given by their contemporary historians.  These include community
of property, daily sacred meal for initiates only, sexual activity
regarded as defilement, ritual washings, stages of initiation,
strict hierarchy, and physical contact with the unclean forbidden.

When taken together with the additional data in the Scrolls, the
similarities lend themselves to a hypothesis that an original Essene
community had developed in the course of time by taking in men who
wished to follow the Essene ascetic rule but retain characteristic
doctrines of Sadducees and Pharisees (see Thiering's REDATING THE
TEACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS [Sydney: Theological Explorations, 1979]).

The Mishmarot fragments supply good evidence for the integration
of the lunar calendar of Pharisees and Sadducees with the Essene
solar one, retaining the 364-day year as its basis.  The addition of
Pharisees and Sadducees would have brought some Essenes into a more
active involvement with the world than had been the case with
classical monastic Essenes.

In the second phase of the occupation of Qumran, in the first century
CE, these, forming a coalition, may be seen to have taken over the
buildings that had been defiled by the earthquake of 31 BCE and
abandoned by strict monastics.  In this period, the threat of the
Roman occupation, which led to the militancy of such men as Judas the
Galilean and Zadok the Pharisee (Ant. 18:3-10), would have driven the
coalition into an alliance with militants, using the renovated and
fortified buildings as a military base.  They now formed part of
Josephus' "fourth philosophy."  The finds of Qumran liturgical rules
at Masada support this case.

Josephus reserved the term "Essene" for the strict monastics, who
chose to continue their peaceful life secluded from the world in
some place other than Qumran.  But the name could also be used for
the coalition, since their basic organisation and calendar were
derived from Essenes.  When Hippolytus (160-235 CE) describes the
Essenes as zealots, he is referring to the coalition whose fervent
nationalism led them into practices of forcible circumcision and
avoidance of images (Refutation of All Heresies, Book 9, ch. 21).

---

excerpted from
B. Thiering, "The Qumran Sundial as an Odometer using Fixed Lengths
of Hours," DEAD SEA DISCOVERIES, vol 9, 3 (2002), p. 356
http://www.brill.nl/product.asp?ID=7197

David Christainsen