John2,John2 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 06, 2018 9:16 am John T wrote:
There are various ideas about the meaning of the 390 years mentioned in the Damascus Document, as VanderKam discusses here:It is clear to me that the Qumran community started three hundred and ninety years after captivity of Judah by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 586 BCE not 390 years after Judah's release from captivity. I know you disagree with Vermes' translation but the math makes perfect sense to me.
Then after 20 years (176 BCE) the Teacher of Righteousness took over the Qumran community. After that, roughly 20 years later, Jonathan Apphus became high priest in 153 BCE and became known as the Wicked Priest. Using this straight forward math, the lifespan of both the Teacher of Righteousness and Jonathan could have easily overlapped.
https://books.google.com/books?id=FSnLk ... el&f=false
So there is some flexibility regarding whether these years are meant literally or symbolically, and like Collins, I'm in the symbolic camp:
This passage has been widely interpreted to mean that this movement arose from Israel and Aaron in the early second century B.C.E. It is doubtful, however, that the number of 390 years can be pressed in this way. It is a symbolic number, derived from Ezek 4:5, and in any case we do not know how the author of this text understood the chronology of the post-exilic period.
https://books.google.com/books?id=13ZxD ... ic&f=false
Thanks for providing the links and I mean that most sincerely. I hope you didn't spend too much time locating them. It was most helpful in understanding how scholars can make simple math very complicated in order to fit their own theory.
As for me: 2 + 2 = 4.
Two questions that I could not find the answer to in Vanderkam's excellent critique of the Groningen hypotheses was:
1. Did the Qumran community base their 390 years on a 354 day lunar calendar or their own 364 day solar calendar?
2. Did any of the Damascus Document fragments found at Qumran actually contain the number 390 in the Exhortation or do I understand Vermes correctly that the number is actually from the Genizah Cairo Manuscript A from around 1000 CE and not from any Dead Sea Scrolls themselves?
Sincerely,
John T