More on Rachel Elior and the Essenes
Menachem Butler has further clarification by Rachel Elior of her theory that the Essenes never existed. Money quote:
Why should we rely on the questionable testimony of Philo, Pliny and Josephus, written in Greek and Latin outside of the Land of Israel in the first century, about peaceful celibates who lived ideal lives in a Utopia where the expression of anger, lust, greed or desire, and luxury or comfort, were utterly forbidden, and entirely disregard the most valuable testimony of 930 scrolls written in Hebrew and Aramaic by struggling, desperate Zadokite priestly circles and their supporters, who lost the sacred sovereignty of the Temple and the divine worship, promised to them in Exodus and Leviticus, and written clearly in sacred prose and holy poetry, their disappearing Biblical world, in the Hasmonean period, when they were deposed and lost all earthly power and had to rely upon the angelic world and an apocalyptic future?
Read the whole post here. Also see this post at Biblia Hebraica for more discussion.
March 18th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Thanks, Michael, for staying on top of this. Menachem Butler’s post is interesting, and I will link to it.
However, insofar as Elior’s proposal depends on a dismissal of the coeval testimony of Philo, Pliny, and Josephus in Greek and Latin about the Essenes (she has backtracked a bit) and on a privileging of non-coeval tradition in Hebrew and Aramaic preserved in rabbinic literature of a later time period, her procedure is not credible, I would think, from a historiographical point of view.
However, now I want to read other things by Rachel Elior. She does sound like a breath of fresh air.