Mason on Josephus War 2 on Essenes

[goranson]

Steve Mason's article on Josephus War 2 on Essenes distorts Josephus and brackets off and ignores evidence.
Some of these points are in the comments here:
Josephus on the Essenes - Biblical Archaeology Review
BAR Nov/Dec p. 65: "...Josephus does not discuss predestination, a central tenet of the scroll community." That is false. See Josephus Antiquities xiii 171-5 and compare War ii 164f.
Page 81 note 1 attempts to minimize the importance of Philo (who wrote before Josephus), selectively quoting Joan Taylor, without informing readers that she accepts that Essenes lived at Qumran.
Page 63 tries to minimize the giving of all property to the community *as if* that were common in the ancient world.
Even if we were somehow to accept everything Mason imagines about War 2, such would not exclude other evidence that Essenes lived at Qumran, including Pliny and the communal Qumran archaeology evidence.
For additional evidence for Essene-Qumran association, see
Stephen Goranson's Home Page

[Sekhmet]

Hello Mr Goranson,

Please forgive me, I have read all that you have provided.  Still I have difficulty in understanding in what your post is saying.  English is not my native language perhaps this is why?  There are times when English written or spoken is beyond my ability to understand.  Could you perhaps find time to post again in a less rushed manner so I can maybe understand your point of view better.

Many thanks for the consideration.

[goranson]

Steve Mason claimed that the description of Essenes by Josephus in War 2 matches Spartans well and does not match Qumran residents well. He is mistaken. Essenes were peaceful; Spartans were warriors. If Josephus wanted to link Essenes and Spartans, he could have used the word Spartans (or their other name in Greek, Lacedaemonians)--but he did not. On the other hand, the words of Josephus (in War and Antiquities) and Philo and Pliny fit Qumran residents (in first centuries BCE and CE)  quite well, for instance, on predestination, resurrection, initiation, communal property, texts with named angels, purity rules, and geographic location. For more, see "Essenes" in Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, or Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East or:
Stephen Goranson's Home Page

[Sekhmet]

Steve Mason claimed that the description of Essenes by Josephus in War 2 matches Spartans well and does not match Qumran residents well. He is mistaken. Essenes were peaceful; Spartans were warriors. If Josephus wanted to link Essenes and Spartans, he could have used the word Spartans (or their other name in Greek, Lacedaemonians)--but he did not. On the other hand, the words of Josephus (in War and Antiquities) and Philo and Pliny fit Qumran residents (in first centuries BCE and CE)  quite well, for instance, on predestination, resurrection, initiation, communal property, texts with named angels, purity rules, and geographic location. For more, see "Essenes" in Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, or Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East or:
Stephen Goranson's Home Page

Thank you sir I appreciate your time in explaining it further for me.  I will be sure to read the article.  Myself with limited understanding of the article from what I have read.  I would have to agree with you.  Unless there are some substanial proofs, in Mr. Mason's work that would force me to agree with him.  All I can really say is Your position wins at this time. 

The history of the Spartans was to well known in the time of Josephus, for him to confuse them with the Essenes.

Again thank you for your time, consideration and assistance. 

[kattey]

I've read research that said there were pockets of Essenes all over Jerusalem at one time.  I can't say they did or didn't move to Qumran, but I believe in no way did they write the Red Sea Scrolls.

[SteveMason]

Dr. Goranson's continued assertions about my mistakes, errors, distortions, and general ignorance are getting tiresome, most especially because in citing them he distorts, ignores, and mistakes what most people who read the actual articles in question seem to understand. Reviewing someone else's work fairly is one of the most difficult skills in scholarship, and it's something I drill my own students on, for that reason. But it's hard to see how Dr. Goranson has even tried. I can't see any place where he has first tried to represent my arguments, contextually, before leaping on lines he finds objectionable to declare them 'false'.
In this forum:
1. "Steve Mason claimed that the description of Essenes by Josephus in War 2 matches Spartans well and does not match Qumran residents well. He is mistaken. Essenes were peaceful; Spartans were warriors..... he could have used the word Spartans...."
You couldn't tell from this what my argument actually was. Does anyone care? It was, in brief, that (a) a prominent theme of the War is, against post-war Roman ridicule and humiliation of the Judaeans (cf. 1.6-7), that the national character is in fact one of manly virtue, courage, steadfastness; (b) the benchmark for these virtues, recognized by everyone from Plato to Plutarch, were the Spartans, whom everyone admired (as Josephus also says, when he compares Judaeans to Essenes); and (c) since this was so widely known, when Josephus laces his description of the Essenes IN WAR (this is not the same in his later descriptions), he is both illustrating the work's themes in the example of the Essenes and evoking these 'Spartan' values, which the Romans considered themselves also to embody. (d) As it happens, the key terms in War's description of the Essenes most closely matches, if you search other Greek literature, descriptions of the Spartans in other literature. Everyone agreed that Spartan militarism was a bad thing, but they admired the Spartans nonetheless. Goranson's objection neither indicates the structure of my argument nor in any sense refutes it. Goranson mistakes the whole point of my argument, which is not to establish a Spartan parallel; that is incidental to my clearly stated purpose of interpreting the Essene passage in the context of the War, which as an entire work has the Judaeans embodying 'Spartan' (= widely admired) virtues.
2.     Goranson quotes this from p. 65 "...Josephus does not discuss predestination, a central tenet of the scroll community" and declares it false. Anyone curious about what's missing in the '...' I'll tell you: 'Professor Ulmann-Margalit [who supported the Q-E hypothesis in an earlier article] recognizes' what she called 'striking discrepancies' For example  [these are HER points] 'Josephus does not discuss predestination.' Any fair reader can see that I was summarizing her points, the argument of HER article. I did this because it seems important to fairly summarize the arguments of others, and so I tried to convey what she had said on both sides of the question, and why she had ended up where SHE did. For Goranson to portray this to you as my own argument is an astonishingly clear case of the 'distortion' of which he accuses me.
3.      "Page 81 note 1 attempts to minimize the importance of Philo (who wrote before Josephus), selectively quoting Joan Taylor, without informing readers that she accepts that Essenes lived at Qumran." I think that anyone who reads n. 1 on p. 81 can see that this is not the purpose of the note in any way, shape, or form.' I count Joan Taylor a friend, and we have had many long conversations about historical method, even though we reach different conclusions. Only if you think that conclusions are the crucial part of history would you say that I have misrepresented Taylor. But my article is clearly about method, and my whole case is that conclusions don't matter. I don't know who the Essenes were or who wrote the DSS. But I do know how to go about a historical investigation. So does Taylor, and my obvious reason for quoting her here at some length, was to show that she makes the same fundamental point for studying Philo's Essenes as I do for Josephus' Essenes. I did not take Taylor's statement out of context; I was getting at the heart of her methodological commitments, which I share, and that was my point. I was under no obligation, in a footnote, to explore her articles and their conclusions and the reasons for them. Good grief! Goranson again completely ignores the stated purpose and structure of my own arguments, preferring to take jabs at phrases he wrenches out of context. What's the point of that?  How does it advance the discussion, when you declare the straw man you've just constructed 'false'? Why attribute motives to me that I simply don't share, and obviously wasn't trying to promote?
3.      Finally, he declares: "Page 63 tries to minimize the giving of all property to the community *as if* that were common in the ancient world." Look, pick up any book on ancient utopias, ideals, etc., or Porphyry's On Abstinence or Seneca's or Plutarch's moral essays, and you will see that community of goods, though not widely practised (if it were widely practised, Philo and Josephus would not be so glowing about the Essenes), was indeed the ideal: known from the Pythagoreans and most famously the Spartans--this was one of their most discussed traits (e.g., in the admiring essays by Josephus' contemporary Plutarch on the Spartans)--, the members of the Alexandrian Mouseion, and others. Many readers of BAR will know that Acts 2 and 4 make the same claims about the early Christians. Radical simplicity of life and forfeiture of ownership were widely held 'philosophical' ideals. When Josephus celebrates this features of Essene life, just as he celebrates all Judaeans' simplicity and avoidance of luxury elsewhere, he is not saying to his audience 'Hey, I know this is weird, but you know what these guys do...?' He is saying, implicitly, 'These people realize in real life what is only an ideal among most other groups.' I hope that all this is sufficiently clear to most people who fairly read what I wrote, in context.
   Here's the problem, as will perhaps be clear from these examples. I am not arguing in the universe inhabited by Dr. Goranson. I don't care whether Essenes wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls or not. He sees this as my aim, and then lunges at phrases that set him off, without listening to what I'm saying. I am a historian of Judaea in the Roman world. For the time being, I've devoted my work to exploring the relationship between Josephus' narratives (our main sources for the history I do) and the historian's task of reconstructing the past. I am concerned about the categories with which this is usually pursued, and the way Josephus is used (e.g., the reduction of the historian's task to declaring Josephus either reliable or unreliable -- a pointless exercise that we could not apply to other ancient historians). I have spent much time trying (because it simply hasn't been done before) to understand Josephus' works as whole compositions, written and disseminated in the city of Rome. That's what my work is about. The Essenes are incidental to all this. As I wrote the commentary on War 2, I had to deal with them. Scholars who had written on the subject generally adopted the Q-E hypothesis, which explained the evidence as they understood it (mainly the DSS, with reference to individual items in Josephus). As someone whose job it is to interpret Josephus contextually, however, I could not see how those readings of those specific passages, or indeed the whole proposition that his Essenes were the people of Qumran, made good sense of Josephus. It's a very limited ambition on my part, as I have repeatedly said. When the Q-E hypothesis was established in the 1950s, by excellent scholars, this problem was simply not on the horizon. There were no commentaries being written on Josephus.
      It's in the nature of scholarly discussion that we take different approaches and given different weight to different kinds of evidence. But we can only engage each other when we take the trouble to understand what the other is actually arguing and then discuss those issues. I don't see much of that in Goranson's reckless denunciations, and it is becoming a bore to correct his glaring misrepresentations of my work. I don't ask that others be into what I'm into. Do your own thing, and find your bliss. Kol ha-kavod. But don't tell me, as I write a detailed commentary on Josephus, that I must allow my reading of Josephus to be determined by the DSS. That is the simple point of my BAR article, to indicate the problems I'm dealing with (see the first paragraph on p. 62, my 'thesis statement' -- a point sharpened by BAR's editors in the title and format they chose.

[SteveMason]

I must apologize to readers of the forum that my previous note went out as a draft, with quite a few typos in it. As I tried to preview it before editing, the server alerted me that my session had timed out. So I went 'back' to try to recover the post, only to discover that it was actually posted! I hope that readers can see through the typos with sufficient clarity.

[goranson]

If you, Prof. Mason, say you accept all Edna U-M's claimed differences between Essenes and Qumranites--including on predestination that you know to be false (!) from Josephus (!) [and also contradicts her book on this, repeatedly (is it an editing error?)]--and you do not accept any of her claimed Essene-Qumran links, well, no wonder you get the conclusion you reached. Josephus War 2 is not the place to start [bracketing off and ignoring other evidence], but with earlier writing on Essenes. I said you wrote **as if** (with the emphasis) Josephus had no sources. Of course you know he did, and maybe help with his Greek too, but go on anyway *as if* no; hence faulty conclusions. You claim not to deal with psychology of J but claim he completely made up married Essenes, desiring to be considered by his readers as worthy to be one; sure sounds like psychology, and unreliable. More later if dialogue seems possible. On various subjects other than Essenes I appreciate your research.
Stephen Goranson
http:www.duke.edu/~goranson

[Sekhmet]

Wonderful information on a time period I am not very interested in.  Yet, both of you gentlemen in your disagreement has encouraged me to learn more about it.  Thank you both gentlemen!

Dr. Mason thank you for your enlightenment, I greatly appreciate it.  I do care.

When I read Josephus I can not help to remember what he says in his Against Apion Book 1: 23-28.  I see this clearly in his copying of Manetho's "Shepard Kings."

Again thank you both for your input, encouragement, and enlightenment on this admittedly poor time period for me, historically

To all a great day!

[mnoursler]

In Against Apion, Book I, 24 Josephus points out that historians:"...and this ill-treatment they use chiefly when they have a contest with men of the greatest reputation; some out of envy and malice, and others as supposing that by this foolish talking of theirs they may be thought worthy of being remembered themselves; and indeed they do by no means fail of their hopes, with regard to the foolish part of mankind, but men of sober judgment still condemn them of great malignity." So the problem existed then as well.