Back on May 10th, I posted a link to an essay which drew something of a sharp critique from Scott Bailey. The author of that essay responds in what follows. Readers are happily encouraged to see what Marvin has to say.
Admittedly I think this work is important. But I’m not the originator of it, nor do I claim to be. Barbara Thiering first originated the Jesus as Wicked Priest theory. My contribution is that I was able to validate her theory (with modifications) through the work of mainstream DSS scholars like Otto Betz, thus hopefully putting discussion of a theory long thought discredited back on the table.
What’s new about my version of the Jesus as Wicked Priest theory is that I’ve identified the Essenes as the scribes of the NT. If I’m correct, we now know how Jesus directly interacted with the Essenes and the DSS become a significant source of exegetical information about the historical Jesus. By any reasonable definition of the word, that would be a major paradigm shift. Given that possibility, I think a careful reading of my work is in order, wouldn’t you say?
I’m very disturbed that you have me calling consensus scholars “idiots.” I argue the consensus view needs modifying, yes, but nowhere do I call consensus scholars “idiots.” Considerable ad hominems have been heaped on those of us who believe the DSS directly refer to Jesus by consensus scholars, but I have taken every effort to rise above the fray. In fact, I am in the process of proposing a new SBL section dedicated to exploring the link between Early Christianity and the DSS. In my petition I explain the main reason this line of scholarship has been marginalized is sociological, because consensus scholars have called us “charlatans,” “crackpots” and “fools,” rather than deal with the substance of our arguments. You can find a copy of my petition for the new SBL section here. You are no exception. You have classified my paper as “junk” and attacked my writing style, but I read very few substantive criticisms in your comment. As to your few substantive criticisms:
1. When his theory doesn’t comport with the dating of a scroll? Oh, that’s because it was written later on an old scroll. Egad, air tight that.
I was offering a practical and entirely plausible explanation of why the C14 date range of 1QpHab might allow Jesus to be the Wicked Priest therein mentioned. If you want to compare air tight fits, ask scholars who defend the Maccabean theory why references to the Wicked Priest are found in the 4Q171 scroll, which has been C14 dated from 5 to 111 CE. Jesus misses 1QpHab by 30 years, give or take. The Macabbean candidates miss 4Q171 by 140 years or more. And by the way, 4Q171 speaks of both the Wicked Priest and Teacher of Righteousness in shifting verb tenses, which means both figures were alive when that MS was written. If the C14 dating is correct, 4Q171 speaks of a Maccabean Wicked Priest if and only if it is a copy of an earlier original MS, now lost.
2. It’s possible that 4Q171 is a copy, but this is exactly the point I was making about Occam’s razor:
“Surely a clearer need for Occam’s razor has never been found.” Really? Really? When I start to see words like “Clearly” “Surely” I usually begin to become very, very suspicious of the author. Overstated language is not the hallmark of a good argument.
Occam’s razor states that, all things being equal, theories that appeal to an increasing number of hypothetical entities in order to be valid are inferior to simpler, more straightforward theories. If in order to maintain the Maccabean theory it is now necessary that 4Q171 is a copy, or if we must postulate yet another Wicked Priest to fit the C14 dating, like the Groningen theory does, perhaps it’s time to consider letting this theory go.
My Occam’s razor comment may seem like hyperbole to you now, but I bet it won’t seem that way in 100 years. When 22nd-century scholars look back on all the desperate efforts to justify the Maccabean theory, it will look just as silly to them then as geocentric astronomy does to us now. Incidentally, you failed to note that A.J. Jull conferred with me on the radiocarbon dating section of my paper. Jull is the director of the Arizona AMS lab that actually performed that 1994 C14 tests of 1QpHab and 4Q171. When I asked Jull to assess all my comments in this section, comments such as, “The radiocarbon dating estimates do not support the Maccabean theory nearly as well as consensus scholars say they do; in actuality radiocarbon dating supports the Jesus as Wicked Priest view,” Jull wrote me, “I think your statements are good.” Take it for what it’s worth. My point is that Qumran scholars have been so conditioned to reject any direct connection between Jesus and the DSS you are not weighing the evidence as fairly or objectively as someone from completely outside the field.
3. “Moreover many scholars believe the Essenes authored scribal literature, such as 1 Enoch.” Hmmm… I would like to see a footnote on that and find out who these many scholars are.
I didn’t footnote this comment in the paper (I think I did in my book) because I believed it to be common knowledge among this audience. The earliest known copies of 1 Enoch were found at Qumran, which has long fueled speculation that the Essenes authored it. 1 Enoch is generally classified as scribal literature. See the Anchor Bible Dictionary entry for “scribes.”
4. I can only imagine how he uses his tendentious hermeneutical lens to twist the NT account.
I think my NT hermeneutics are very straightforward, as are my DSS hermeneutics. Because Thiering has been so criticized for her allegorical way of the reading the NT and DSS, I made a point of interpreting both as literally as I could absent a compelling reason otherwise. I address this in the Feedback section of my Website here, which reads in relevant part:
I think the Capernaum of Mark 3:1-6 was really the Capernaum near the Sea of Galilee, for example, and not a symbolic reference to Qumran. And when I read the Thanksgiving Hymns where the author said of his surroundings, “Thou hast caused me to dwell with the many fishers who spread a net among the face of the waters” (1QHa XIII, 8), I read that verse literally, too. I think this verse describes the Sea of Galilee; it is not a figurative reference to the Dead Sea by a mystic-poet, as many consensus scholars have argued.
Overall, I believe the reader will find that my version of the Jesus as Wicked Priest theory squares with a plain reading of the texts, and it squares with more texts than existing theory. But to know that you would need to actually read my paper in full, which I took the time to write because I knew very few established Qumran scholars would take the time to read my book.
Filed under: Books, dead sea scrolls
It looks to me like Mr. Vining somehow has mistaken Scott’s initial (probably ad hoc) reaction to his essay with a formal critique of said essay – something I doubt Scott would think was worth his time. Thus perpetuating the marginalization of this branch of scholarship.
In Scott’s defense, remember that he studies the DSS and especially 1 Enoch with a leading Scrolls scholar who himself can’t really be accused of being part of the “consensus.” After all, it was partly due to Abegg’s work as an outsider on the Scrolls that led to their being made available to all scholars. I’ve also studied the DSS with a leading Scrolls scholar and can guarantee that the SBL is not likely to give Mr. Vining a forum for this issue. Oh, and my initial reaction to his article was somewhat similar to Scott’s . . .
To say that texts dated by C14 probably well before the Thiering/Vining scenario were written on decades old writing surface (and not as palimpsests) is special pleading. There is no evidence for this. The basis offered is a faulty analogy with the reported wearing of clothes by Essenes until they were rags; but the analogy, properly, would be that Essenes might have similarly used books until they were quite worn, not that they kept old writing surfaces (or clothing) unused for decades. It makes a big difference if a proposed scenario is before of after a materially-obtained text date range. Further, for evidence that Jannaeus was the “Wicked Priest” and that Judah the Essene was the “Teacher of Righteousness” see
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson/jannaeus.pdf
I’m going to address both your comments at once.
1. I agree that a blog is not the proper place to hold a genuine scholarly debate of my work. I’d prefer that my paper be peer reviewed, well edited and published in the JBL. But until and if I can make some headway I’ll take what I can get. Thank you for your time and interest.
2. Is there a well-defined consensus against the view the DSS are directly associated with Jesus and/or early Christians? From my fifteen year’s experience of trying to advance this line of scholarship I’d say there is. Schiffman, Charlesworth and Vermes have all condemned this line of scholarship, even though they might differ on the Qumran-Essene hypothesis. And though I think Flint and Abegg will take interest in my work eventually (I spoke with Flint briefly at a recent Qumran conference and he perked up when I told him my reconstruction was based on Otto Betz), thus far they have not formally recognized a direct association between the DSS and early Christianity. The Trinity Western site says only that the DSS are important for understanding early Christianity because they form part of Jesus’s general history and culture. In fact, I think it is fair to say that the rejection of a direct link between the DSS and early Christianity is probably the most well-defined consensus there is in all of Qumranology.
3. It follows that I place little stock in what leading scholars have to say about my work, until and if I’m convinced they have seriously studied it. As I explain in my SBL petition,
http://www.marvinvining.com/files/petition_letter.pdf
leading Qumran scholars rose to those positions primarily by showing that they could distinguish the legitimate scholars from the quacks. Because her methods were questionable, and her conclusions more so, Thiering became the marginalized scapegoat very early on, and this whole line of scholarship has suffered as a result. Note these quotes in her Wikipedia article:
Academic Reception of her Work
While Thiering’s thesis attracted some controversy in the media when Jesus the Man was published in 1990, her ideas have not received acceptance by her academic peers. In a response to a letter Thiering wrote to The New York Review of Books, objecting to a review by Geza Vermes, Vermes gave his personal estimation of the academic reaction to her work:
“Professor Barbara Thiering’s reinterpretation of the New Testament, in which the married, divorced, and remarried Jesus, father of four, becomes the “Wicked Priest” of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has made no impact on learned opinion. Scroll scholars and New Testament experts alike have found the basis of the new theory, Thiering’s use of the so-called “pesher technique”, without substance.”
(The New York Review of Books, December 1st, 1994)
In 1993 Nicholas Thomas Wright, now Bishop of Durham, wrote:[2]
It is safe to say that no serious scholar has given this elaborate and fantastic theory any credence whatsoever. It is nearly ten years since it was published; the scholarly world has been able to take a good look at it: and the results are totally negative.
Historian Dr. C.B. Forbes from the Department of Ancient History of Macquarie University says “No reputable historian agrees with her identifications between people in the Scrolls and people in the New Testament, or believes in her “hidden history”. Here she is utterly out on her own…Dr. Thiering’s ideas have no historical credibility.”[3]
In 2005 Peter Flint, Professor of Religious Studies and Co-Director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, wrote:[4]
“Her views and theories on Jesus and Christian origins have little basis in the scrolls, and even less in the New Testament. Her pesher technique misuses the concept of pesher, her datings of the scrolls are suspect and seem informed by an outside agenda, the connections she draws between Qumran and other nearby communities in the Judean Desert are highly questionable, and the links she finds between the scrolls and the New Testament are almost always without foundation.”
3. As for leading scholars who believe Jesus was associated with Qumran, how about the Pope? Yes, the Pope! After my book was published I discovered Pope Benedict XVI preached a sermon in 2007 in which he encouraged the “plausible” theory that Jesus and his disciples were associated with Qumran per Annie Jaubert’s two calendar theory. I mailed the Vatican a cover letter citing this sermon, along with a copy of my book, a copy of which is found on my site:
http://www.marvinvining.com/sbl.htm
No reply yet, of course
The point is: there is no ultimate authority one can appeal to in order to settle this question. The Pope thinks Jesus was associated with Qumran, but he’s awaiting confirmation from a consensus of scholars, just like the rest of us.
4. Thank you for your suggestions as to why 1QpHab might have been drafted on stored parchment; to be perfectly honest I haven’t really given it that much thought. I knew only that if Jesus were the Wicked Priest and if the Arizona C14 dating of 1QpHab were correct there is a small (30 year or so) gap to account for, and stored parchment seemed to me the most reasonable explanation. Tov recently presented a paper that might be of help. See here, p. 4:
http://www.marvinvining.com/files/cordova_recap.pdf
Tov pointed out that Ethiopian scribes practice their craft much as did the Qumran scribes 2,000 years ago. If so, we might look to them for any evidence that they sometimes use stored parchment.
5. Regardless, I think far too much emphasis has been placed on C14. Most experts I’ve talked with say that C14 cannot possibly settle so tight a chronological issue. Whatever edge there is in C14, I believe the Jesus as Wicked Priest theory has it; but even I will concede I don’t think this edge is definitive. There’s simply too much variance. Likewise with paleography. The paleographical method assumes that handwriting styles everywhere shifted at approximately the same time. Isn’t it entirely possible that handwriting styles in a well-traveled cosmopolitan area would develop more rapidly than an area that is secluded? Isn’t it entirely possible that Golb is right, that the scrolls found at Qumran were drafted all over ancient Israel, thus introducing regional variance into the paleography?
6. As I seem to be losing scholars at the beginning of my paper, where I discuss the contentious C14 issues, perhaps it would be better if I cut this section altogether in order to focus on the area where I feel I’m strongest — hermeneutics. The heart of my paper is my development of Otto Betz’s Essenes/scribes exegesis on pp. 11-26. I encourage you to read this section, if no other.
7. For an argument against Alexander Jannaeus as the Wicked Priest see my discussion of 4Q169 3–4 I, 2–3 on pp. 9 and 10 of my paper, especially note 15. If the Kittim in this passage are Romans, as I argue, the verb tenses and dates for the Roman occupation given by Josephus don’t work.
8. No, the SBL is not likely to give me a forum to explore this line of scholarship; not yet, that’s the reason I’m in the process of proposing a new SBL section. Here, again, is my brief in support of this new section:
http://www.marvinvining.com/files/petition_letter.pdf
Read it, and I think you’ll find I’ve made a convincing case that a theory bias exists among Qumran scholars that would best be addressed by forming a new SBL section. If you don’t think a theory bias exists answer me this: why are you guys getting hung up on a mere 30 year C14 gap with the Jesus as Wicked Priest theory when the Maccabean theory has a C14 gap of 140 years or more? Anyway, forming a new SBL section isn’t going to be nearly as hard as I thought. Basically all one has to do is present a quorum of interested scholars. Shortly before he resigned, Director of Congresses and Professions of the SBL, Michael Collins, wrote me this:
In 12 years of working on the SBL program, I have neither seen nor experienced any bias in how units were or are approved. [After all, in recent years we have approved units that include Mormonism and the Bible; history; ethics; and Queer theory.] The only issues that ever arise are whether or not proposers are following the correct protocols and procedures, submitting a complete application as outlined in the forms on the SBL website. Very few program unit proposals are not approved (I have seen no outright rejections in 12 years) once all requested information and revisions are complete. While I do not have direct experience of it, there may be bias on the part of individual program unit chairs in reviewing individual papers, but there is none in terms of the diversity represented across the program. Most often those who feel a unit is biased based on individual proposals, for whatever reasons, successfully start another unit representing their perspective. This process is how the SBL grew from an ‘old boys club’ of 300 with 10 sessions to the current diverse membership of nearly 10,000 and more than 500 sessions each year. SBL is a member driven organization, representing member interests and covering an incredible range of opinion, theological perspective, and interpretation. If there is sufficient member interest, then new units are created.
I gathered two pages of signatures of scholars interested in this new section at a recent Qumran conference in Cordova, and I expect support to grow. I have no doubt this new section will be formed; it’s merely a matter of how strong it will be. Since the deadline for proposing a new section is February, I plan to continue my petition drive through the end of the year, and probably set up an interest table at the Annual Meting in NOLA like I did at the Cordova conference. (I’ll be setting up an interest table at the upcoming Mississippi Methodist conference if anyone is in the area and would like to stop by.)
Correction: Above I cited an argument that Alexander Jannaeus couldn’t have been the Wicked Priest. I misread. My argument is that Jannaeus couldn’t have been the Furious Young Lion, which is the usual position. Jannaeus as Wicked Priest — yeah, that’s new. I’ll take a look at it.
Regarding no. 4. above, looks like Tov has a book coming out at the end of this month that will cover scribal practices in the DSS and elsewhere.
Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert
Emanuel Tov
This monograph is written in the form of a handbook on the scribal features of the texts found in the Judean Desert, the Dead Sea Scrolls. It details the material, shape, and preparation of the scrolls; scribes and scribal activity; scripts, writing conventions, errors and their correction, and scribal signs; scribal traditions; differences between different types of scrolls (e.g., biblical and nonbiblical scrolls); and the possible existence of scribal schools such as that at Qumran. In most categories, the analysis is meant to be exhaustive. Numerous tables as well as annotated illustrations and charts of scribal signs accompany the detailed analysis. The findings have major implications for the study of the scrolls and the understanding of their relationship to scribal traditions in Israel and elsewhere.
Paper $49.95 • 444 pages • ISBN 9781589834293 • Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 54 •Hardback edition http://www.brill.nl
Mr. Vining,
First, I’m sorry if I offended you with my comment, but as Douglas correctly pointed out it was an ad hoc response as is this one. I find it a tad curious that a month was needed to write a response.
A) I know you didn’t call consensus scholars “idiots” that’s why I didn’t use quotes. However, you were so briefly dismissive of consensus scholars you might as well have. i tend to try and take a disposition that respects and considers the work of others… unless they write with a dismissive air of finality. I find that unacceptable in scholarship.
B) “Surely a clearer need for Occam’s razor has never been found.” I would still suggest that this is perhaps the single worst, most poorly conceived sentence I have ever come across in my academic career. Perhaps, if you had written “Among the DSS this may be a primary example of the application of Ocaam’s Razor: I would have taken little umbrage. You’re world being as small as it is, and your scholarship relying on one tendentious theory you have a sad overinflated idea that “all” scholars will be contending your idea in the future, and your world is so pitiful you can’t even imagine the possibility that there may be a clearer need for the razor. Remember: your sentence means that your theory needs Ocaam more than any other situation not just in biblical studies but “everything.
C) As to 1 Enoch. I suspect that you actually know very little about this book, or should I say books. You see I’m moving. i don’t need a month to write a response. i can see it on my phone and know it’s silly because I know the source material. 1 Enoch is comprised of five booklets written over hundreds of years. Milik proposes that it may have functioned like an Enochic Torah at Qumran. At Qumran there may have been a major difference in that they may not have had Similitudes in their corpus and had The Book of giants in its place.
Who do you suppose Nickelsburg, Vanderkam, Black, Stuckenbruck, etc propose for the authoring of these different booklets? Oh that’s right you have an airtight theory: the Essenes were the scribes! Well done. Look up “tendentious” in the Anchor Bible.
D) You want ad hominem (something I don’t do but in your case you are so dismissive and over inflated it is definitely needed; the only drawback is it fuels your sad persecution complex)
Your so busy reading between the lines you have lost he ability to read what is actually in the lines themselves.
If it wasn’t for poor critical thinking and writing skills you would have no critical thinking ans writing skills at all.
Now go back to your little world and make love to your theory while daydreaming how all future scholars will be sitting around discussing your paradigm shit…
Back to moving boxes.
It took me a month to discover your post because it didn’t show up in my Google alert. I happened to find it when I manually Googled myself yesterday to see if there was anything I’d missed.
I’m well aware of the multiple books of Enoch that were found at Qumran and the scholarship on same, especially Milik; I cover this in my book. I cited 1 Enoch as an example because A) it is among the best examples of a body of literature known as “scribal,” and B) the copies found at Qumran are missing the Similitudes section, implying they are pre-Christian.
Why look up “tendentious” in the dictionary when your comments here are such a perfect example? The common word is bias, and you reek of it. I’m glad you revealed your true feelings toward my work here. Now when I read any criticism of my work by you in academic writing I’ll know any objectivity on your part is pretense.
Keep mindlessly shuffling those boxes, it’s what you’re good at.
Hey, at least I’m good at something which is a hell of a lot more than you can say.
i’d be remiss if i failed to mention that i love honesty. and am a despiser of pretense and hypocrisy. i loathe those ‘academics’ who smile sweetly at you and then as soon as you aren’t looking say all manner of evil about you to others. so i’m all for folk expressing their true feelings. even about people!
Yeah, you know . . .
Up until this point, my DSS research has been a rather expensive hobby of mine. I’m a trial lawyer with 20 years experience. The thing about lawyers: we slice each other to bits in the courtroom then go out and have lunch together afterwards, like that old Bugs Bunny cartoon with the sheepdog and the wolf punching out after a hard day’s work.
I think Qumran scholars could learn something from us lawyers. This nasty Golb/Schiffman scandal, for example. It’s just ridiculous that they’re settling their differences in the courtroom instead of the lecture hall, and Golb’s son could actually go to jail! Why can’t we have a healthy debate without it getting so doggone personal?
“in order to focus on the area where I feel I’m strongest — hermeneutics. ”
The reason I brought up Enoch was not concerning its status as scribal literature, once again I would suggest just perhaps considering some well informed opinions of who wrote this literature, but i brought it up because there are some interesting issues with it at Qumran.
It appears that the Enoch corpus was very important and influential early in the community’s development but it also appears that they gravitated more towards Jubilees later in the history. There are some ideological differences in these texts that I think make this shift perplexing especially if it was a monolithic Essene community that wrote both and went from one to the other. In fact with their disagreements on epistemology and original sin I’m pretty sure they could not come from the same group.
That’s a very interesting comment. We’re doing real scholarship now, thanks.
Short answer: I don’t think the Essenes were a monolithic community — anything but. If my reconstruction is correct they were scattered all over the place, far more than the current Q-E hypothesis realizes. I think the Teacher’s “house of exile” of 1QpHab, for example, was Capernaum, not Qumran. And there were likely very diverse theologies among the different Essene groups. You’ve caught me without a copy of my book at the moment, so I can’t look it up, but I discuss this in my book. I like Charles Pages’s idea that the Nazareans (one of two major groups of Essenes listed by the early fathers, the Nazareans in the north and the Osseans in the south) preceded Jesus, thus somewhat anticipating the early Christian/Essene schism at the heart of my theory.
BTW, I’m going to edit that Occam’s razor sentence to read “This is a perfect time to apply Occam’s razor.” I don’t mind being edited (welcome it, in fact). The reason I decided to weigh on in this blog is because you’d convinced Jim not to read my paper at all. Dude, that was way too harsh! But now I’m starting to feel the love . . .
“In fact with their disagreements on epistemology and original sin I’m pretty sure they could not come from the same group.”
These two are always tightly correlated, don’t you think? as are militancy and misogony, which are all reasons I believe Jesus felt it necessary to break from the Essenes.
I’m very Anabaptist in my beliefs and have long ago rejected original sin, in no small part because of my DSS/NT research. Here’s one of my sermons on point:
http://www.marvinvining.com/files/human_nature_and_the_nature_of_sin.pdf
mvining said “when I manually Googled myself “. I’ve never heard it called that before
LOL, yeah, that does have a double entendre, doesn’t it?
Marvin,
You mentioned Dr. Flint. If/when you talk to him again ask him about me. Ask him about my scholarship that he has read and evaluated. Some of the things I do are not consensus scholarship, however, unlike yourself I have been trained to frame that conversation in a certain way. Your experiences in the courtroom, the confrontation, the need to come over the top, etc. has probably made this difficult for you. My problem is not so much with what you wrote but how you wrote it . What you should get is an experienced scholar to edit your work to take out the non-academic overstated language.
Ask Flint about me. Find out what I’m good at from an authority. You might be surprised. Rest assured I will be asking him about you.
“What you should get is an experienced scholar to edit your work to take out the non-academic overstated language.”
I welcome all the help I can get — always have. If I seem curt and dismissive of other scholar’s work in my paper it’s not intentional, it’s because I’m pressed for space. I’m trying to distill a 300 page book down to a 30 page paper that scholars, who I know have little patience for this theory, are more likely to read.
“Ask Flint about me. Find out what I’m good at from an authority. You might be surprised. Rest assured I will be asking him about you.”
I know who are you are now; I looked you up. I never intended to be disrespectful, I was just trying to get a little respect. Fact is, it shouldn’t really matter who the scholar is who advances a given theory: a theory either works or it doesn’t. I’m shopping doctoral programs now, and eventually I’ll be able to present my work more artfully. But I see no reason why this work should be delayed another four years — especially when first generation DSS scholars are dying off who might be able to contribute.
My encounter with Flint was very brief. We met in the hallway of the Cordova conference during one of the breaks. I handed him a copy of my paper and mentioned that I’d found a way of reworking some of Thiering’s ideas based on Otto Betz. (We also discussed how the NT occasionally quotes the LXX instead of MT and how the DSS sometimes differs from both.) We’d planned to meet up the next day and talk more, but I lost track of him in all the confusion and he left the conference early. I have no idea what he thinks of my paper, or even if he’s read it yet; but he did perk up when I told him my work was based on Betz, whom he evidently respected.
Please email me at marvin@marvinvining.com and I’ll speak with you more about Flint.
the problem with fringe theories is that they generally just don’t work. there’s just no compelling reason that i’ve ever seen for holding the notion that jesus was ever involved with the essenes (if there were such creatures in the first place). i’m not alone in thinking this.
to be sure, truth isn’t determined by majority vote. which is why the whole ‘voting on the sayings of jesus’ by the jesus seminar was so stupid. but for truth to be truth, it has to be demonstrable. jesus the wicked priest? it’s just not demonstrable without loads of special pleading and it really relies – or would have to rely- on firm evidence. and there is none. not in the scrolls and not in the new testament.
I originally didn’t place much stock in Thiering’s Jesus as Wicked Priest theory either. But then I read Betz’s contributing chapter to Charlesworth’s book, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Read carefully pp. 11-26 of my paper. If you still don’t see any support for the JTWP theory, let me know. Keep in mind that Yadin and Betz’s Herodian/Essene identification strengthens and validates the Qumran-Essene hypothesis. In other words, if my version of the JTWP theory is wrong, then probably so is the the entire Q-E hypothesis.
Martin Vining, you wrote: “if my version of the JTWP theory is wrong, then probably so is the the entire Q-E hypothesis.” Perhaps you will reconsider this assertion. I read your paper. I think your JTWP theory is wrong. The Qumran Essene connection, as far as I can see, suffers not at all from your theory being wrong.
In other words, if my version of the JTWP theory is wrong, then probably so is the the entire Q-E hypothesis.
Now we’re getting somewhere. The truth is that they’re both wrong (IMO). The Q-E hypothesis is built on a highly tenuous chain of reasoning held together by conjecture and speculation.
By the same logic as above, if the Q-E hypothesis is wrong, then so must the JTWP theory be wrong.
I realize that I’m reading your statement against the grain-subversively using it to serve the opposite point to the one you were trying to make.
Doug is not reading my statement against the grain at all. If P then Q; not Q, then not P (Modus Tollens).
I have no problem conceding that my JTWP theory lives or dies with the Q-E hypothesis. I happen to think my JTWP theory will significantly advance and confirm advance the Q-E hypothesis once scholars join me in working it.
Sure, the Q-E hypothesis was based on circumstantial evidence. Sure, it had no absolutely firm foothold on which to build. But given the scant evidence it seemed the best hypothesis available at the time. Like any hypothesis, it thrives only as it is able to adduce evidence confirming it.
I cite a book by an Israeli philosopher of science in my SBL petition: Edna Ullman Margalit, Out of the Cave: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Dead Sea Scrolls Research. I highly recommend everyone read this book. She points out, on p. 22:
“According to the Bayesian approach to probabilistic reasoning, the weight of accumulative evidence ought to insure that, in the long run, initially divergent degrees of scholars’ belief in the hypothesis will eventually converge — provided that the scholars are rational and agree on the evidence. In the case of the [Q-E hypothesis] however, such convergence of belief does not occur.”
In other words, Ullman-Margalit thinks the Q-E hypothesis has stalled. In order to go forward, the Q-E must evolve, and in order to do that we must overcome the sociological problems she outlines, many of which I discuss in my SBL petition:
http://www.marvinvining.com/files/petition_letter.pdf
Note Jim’s statement above: “there’s just no compelling reason that i’ve ever seen for holding the notion that jesus was ever involved with the essenes.” Yadin and Betz both offer evidence in their Essenes = NT Herodians exgeses. As it happens, the Herodians were Jesus’s enemies who opposed him and planned his crucifixion.
Again, please read pp. 11-26 of my paper,
http://www.marvinvining.com/files/jtwp_summary.pdf
(endnotes included). If my arguments here are sound, how could they not strengthen and support the Q-E. hypothesis?
As an example of how my JTWP theory strengthens the Q-E hypothesis, let’s look at Schiffman. Schiffman, as we all know, rejects the Q-E hypothesis. And he also rejects any direct link between Jesus and Qumran because Jesus didn’t obey the rigid purity laws found in the scrolls.
Well, at the Cordova conference Schifman presented a paper citing NT evidence that Jesus didn’t follow the Qumran purity laws. And guess which passage he focused upon? “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity” (Matthew 23:25). This whole chapter is filled with Jesus’s diatribe against the scribes and Pharisees, who eventually crucify him.
See my point? If, according to my JTWP theory, the Essenes are the NT scribes, then according to Schiffman the NT scribes are Qumran, and therefore Schiffman ought to come into the Q-E fold.
You can read about my interaction with Schiffman at the Cordova conference here, pp.3-4:
http://www.marvinvining.com/files/cordova_recap.pdf
BTW guys, I have to disappear for couple of days to do my day job. I’m representing a client tomorrow in a nasty child custody fight and need to prepare. Until I come back, please keep those ideas coming!
Okay, I’m back.
Here’s an issue you guys may be able to help me with: What objective standards are there, if any, for evaluating one NT exegesis against another?
The reason I ask is that I believe evaluation of Thiering’s JTWP theory needs more nuance. From an epistemological viewpoint, I think her reading of the NT is nearly impossible to classify as right or wrong; it lacks the property that philosopher of science Karl Popper called “verifiability.” This is because, according to Thiering, the gospels can’t be taken at face value as real historical narratives: according to her, the NT has a “hidden history” that she believes the DSS pesher method revealed to her.
Thiering’s work raises many of the same epistemological issues as Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ. Harpur thinks the NT can’t be taken at face value, either. He believes it was largely derived from Egyptian myths, and that the historical Jesus may not have even existed.
Shortly after I read Harpur’s book I saw a documentary on the History Channel called “Unmasking the Pagan Christ.” In the show, Canadian historian Steve Mason pointed out that Harpur, like Thiering, presents his literary criticism of the NT as history, which is self-defeating.
See the paradox? If an exegete claims the NT isn’t reliable history in order to substitute their own esoteric reading of the NT, why isn’t their reading just as unreliable?
I don’t think this problem is limited to esoteric readings of the NT. I’ve noticed scholars who don’t place much faith in my analysis of parallel pericopae in order to correlate the NT and DSS generally don’t trust the historical reliability of NT in the first place. In contrast, my JTWP summary paper was remarkably well received by the students of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary at the Cordova conference. Why? Probably it was because MABTS is fairly conservative. We good ole Southern boys really believe our Bibles!
Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against higher criticism when used in moderation. But when the dogma that the NT cannot possibly be reliable history stands in the way of new scholarship that could reveal the NT really is reliable history, that’s a problem, don’t you think?
Marv,
This is where I get skeptical about your claims of hermeneutical proficiency.
The issue is not just of “historic reliability” for scholars but genre identification. “History” is a concept–a construct that represents some part of the world–that was conceived hundreds of years after these texts were written. To top that off it has variables that must be specified.
The problem is “historians” trying to use modern concepts that were foreign to the texts they are working with, which is a massive hermeneutical and logical error. You might as well read through the Torah trying to figure out what word processor Moses used or what David thought of hip-hop.
The goal with good historical criticism is cultural and textual relativity–to judge the ideas and texts by the standards of that culture.
Ethnocentrism on the other hand judges another culture by its own standards; once again, a fairly serious flaw in logic.
People in the first century were not writing modern histories, and the idea that our texts are like a video camera reporting literally everything that happened is a great deductive idea… until you go to the texts; especially, if you read them synoptically.
I’m not sure what your argument is, so I’ll hold this with an open hand, but I would foresee some serious issues concerning a one to one correlation between the “NT” and the “DSS” as these are (as I’m sure you know) not a “book” but gospels, letters, apocalypses, pesher, re-written Bible, etc. etc. Written by different authors over hundreds of years in different places. That much complexity rejects such simple reductions.
“This is where I get skeptical about your claims of hermeneutical proficiency.”
When I wrote earlier that I feel the strongest part of my research is my hermeneutics I wasn’t necessarily referring to hermeneutical proficiency. (Although I’m not completely without skills in this area: I have a MA in philosophy and have done hermeneutics of Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, etc. And I’ve studied the structuralist project of linguistics enough to understand poststructuralism.) My point was I think my furtherance of Yadin and Betz’s Herodian/Essene exegeses has yielded some much more straightforward and convincing textual arguments in favor of the JTWP theory than Thiering’s pesher method.
Regarding scholars who are skeptical of the historical reliability of the books of the NT, what I was thinking of specifically was this conversation I’d had with Josephus scholar Steve Mason:
Mark’s Herodians, as you know, mostly disappear from Matt (with one exception) and Luke. Your procedure seems to imply that the authors of those texts knew who the Herodians were but for some reason preferred to call them scribes, as in ’scribes and Pharisees’. The problem is that Matthew and Luke make thousands of small changes to Mark, and in most cases it’s easy enough to see that they wanted to change his account for some reason: Herod Antipas being a ‘king’ with a kingdom, scriptural confusions, the trial of Jesus (completely changed in Luke to suit more plausible legal conditions), etc. Things they didn’t understand in Mark, such as Simon of Cyrene’s sons Alexander and Rufus — evidently known to the author and audience of Mark — were simply dropped by the later authors. So, to argue that Matt and Luke knew who the Herodians were but preferred to call them by other names is a difficult argument, which would need to be made against the whole body of evidence about such changes in general.
I think Mason is looking at this problem backwards. Mostly the two groups are called “scribes and Pharisees” throughout the gospels. Only occasionally do the “Herodians and Pharisees” appear, and I think there are good reasons (e.g., to show their association with King Herod).
This is a thorny problem, I know. Vermes noted that Jesus’ opponents in the synagogue incident at the heart of my theory are described as Pharisees and Herodians in Mk 3:6; just Pharisees in Mt 12:14; and Pharisees and scribes in Lk 6:7. Vermes asks, “Were all these the same?” The Changing Faces of Jesus, 179.
My working hypothesis is that all these were the same, yes. The Essenes/Herodians were the scribes, and the Pharisees were a splinter group of the Essenes. Thus my research is consistent with Schurer and Graetz. Both thought the Essenes were the first Jewish sect form whom all other sects formed.
And incidentally, Vermes has written the Esenes were likely the Hasideans of the Maccabean era. The scribes seemed to appear on the scene at the same time. Note this verse from 1 Maccabees: “Then a group of scribes appeared in a body … to ask for just terms … the Hasideans were the first among … them” (7:12-13). The editors of the New Oxford Annotated RSV comment of this text, “The Hasideans [are] probably the same as the group of scribes.”
“The goal with good historical criticism is cultural and textual relativity–to judge the ideas and texts by the standards of that culture.”
I forgot to mention: This is one of the most sensible comments about historical criticism I’ve ever read.