Re: Newly Discovered Tunnel May Once Have Carried Dead Sea Scrolls

Please note the word "opinion", the author is dealing with a
speculation not a determined opinion.
...........................................................................................................

Norman Golb engages in wild theories about the scrolls but was right
to insist that Qumran was a military fortress.

Golb's point is obviously that not only before, but even during the
revolt, the Jews had ways of getting out of the city. The words "may
have" in his title indicate that he is being entirely frank about the
speculative element of his proposal regarding this tunnel. There is
always an element of the imagination involved in trying to make sense
of scattered pieces of evidence from antiquity.

In this case, the Copper Scroll specifically describes a cache of
silver hidden near a dam in the Kidron gorge, and this tunnel leads
out into the Kidron gorge. Pure coincidence? Perhaps, perhaps not.
That's the kind of delicate process historians are always engaged
in.

I conclude: it's a far cry from recognizing a necessary element of
speculation to asserting that Golb "engages in wild theories." The
archaeologists who have backed him up (the Donceels, Hirschfeld,
Magen, Peleg) certainly don't seem to feel that he engages in wild
theories, and for any of his followers, the idea that a sect lived at
Qumran and wrote scrolls there is precisely a wild theory given all
the evidence to the contrary (women's remains in the cemetery, 500
scribal hands and many conflicting doctrines among the scrolls, etc.).

.

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