Re: Ancient latrine fuels debate at Qumran

Tom McDonald wrote:
...
If you mean 'Tom McDonald,' viz. me, then you are not even close to
understanding the current state of archaeological play wrt Qumran. I
have from the first said I am pretty much ignorant of any of the
archaeological or textual (or any other) issues on the subject. I tried
to get you to think about the megilla as an archaeologist might; and to
that end, you seemed to begin to grasp the problem of context
surrounding the 'sundial.'

But no, I haven't brought you up to date on the current archaeological
debate about Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
...

You mentioned Stacey to me - a lead in to current archaeological debate
such as what
Doug means.

Provenance matters. However, in the case of the "sundial" you implied
De Vaux
did not keep careful notes on his "stone disk". De Vaux mentioned the
object on some
obscure list, just that! We just don't know the provenance.

Moving on, the evidence of the object itself (markings etc.) shows that
it was a sundial
according to Thiering. Pfann first recognized it as a sundial. Nobody
here on the newgroup
clicked on the Thiering url I gave on the Qumran Sundial. Nobody here
has read Pfann's
original article.

Doug says he gave 2 urls from BAR on the other side of the argument -
that the object
is NOT a sundial.

Fine, I would like it if others would get into the merits of the
argument and share their
insights with us in an educational process.

If people are not interested, it's on them.

Best,
Dave

.

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