At 12:51, local time, there was an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 with epicenter near the city of Christchurch, on the island South of New Zealand. Unlike what happened five months ago, this time there are many victims. 
Trovo imbarazzante che uno dei più rinomati studiosi di origini cristiane e giudaismo del secondo tempio, possa scrivere un articolo di pura fantasia, destinato a comparire in un’imponente e accreditata opera di riferimento.
Purtroppo questo è il caso dell’articolo dell’esimio prof. James H. Charlesworth “John the Baptizer and the Dead Sea Scrolls”, pubblicato nell’opera in tre volumi da lui stesso edita: The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Baylor University Press, 2006, vol. III, pp. 1-35).
After that, the next step is to evaluate the Charlesworth undeniable differences: 1) John's baptism was practiced only once, when the dives were qumraniche daily, 2) John exercised a mission aimed at the repentance of Israel, while the Qumran - with its dualistic theology, determinism and exclusivity - all regarded as outsiders to the damn ground Yahad, 3) contrary to Qumran, the community of John the Baptist (?? - sic!) was reached immediately and it did not provide internal hierarchies, punishment and expulsion.
Established pro & cons about a link between the Baptist and Qumran, Charlesworth goes to challenge, so certainly not compelling, the arguments put forward by Joan Taylor against such a link, accusing it of using a methodology to assess the parallels too rigid, narrow and of course ... positivist! (ever-present bugbear of all the conservative biblical scholars).
So if there are significant parallels, and is therefore not possible to deny the existence of a relationship between the Baptist and Qumran, the equally obvious presence of differences, Charlesworth leads to the inevitable (?) Conclusion that John was at Qumran some time, but later split off from it.
At this point, cleared the land from any reservation, and who became a positivist shield the view of Joseph Fitzmyer, that the idea of \u200b\u200ba Baptist spent at Qumran is a "plausible hypothesis , One That I can not tests, and One That can not be disproved - Charlesworth finally feels entitled to cancel the reins of his imagination, and, with a coup de theater , go directly to ... daring to ask a question to which nobody has been able to give an answer:
what ever pushed John to leave Qumran?
It is here that all of a sudden, the heavens open up and down the reader sees a deus ex machina on:
" Adding historical imagination to What We Have Been Told about the Baptizer by Josephus and the Evangelists, it is clear ... .
E 'clear thing? ...
It' clear that during the two years of novitiate qumranico, John, thanks to its aronia priestly descent, would initially rejoiced to recite passages of the ritual of renewal of 'alliance as 1QS 1.21-25 ("We have operated unfairly ... we have sinned ... we and our fathers before us ..."), that both would remember the words you hear a kid say to my father Zechariah in the temple during his shift.
And even more so, the young would be smitten in reciting blessings as 1QS 2.1 to 4 ("... and the priests bless all the men of God that perfect walk in all his ways and say : bless you with all good things, and keep you from harm ... you get up on the face of his grace ... "), in which would certainly have included estimated as also his dear father Zaccaria.
Ma questo idillio era troppo bello per durare. Già a partire dalle righe immediatamente successive il suo cuore avrebbe cominciato a turbarsi. In 1QS 2,4c-10 si dice infatti che: “E i leviti malediranno tutti gli uomini della parte di Belial. Prenderanno la parola e diranno: Sia tu maledetto per tutte le tue empie opere colpevoli … Non abbia Dio misericordia quando lo invochi, né ti perdoni quando espii le tue colpe …”. Queste parole erano troppo dure per un “uomo buono” (così Flavio Giuseppe) come Giovanni: pronunciarle significava per lui maledire il babbo Zaccaria e tutte le persone che aveva amato.
So, little by little, the voice with which John recited these curses at the meetings of many, began to become more and more low and undetectable, until one day the Maskil noticed that he was associated with many more to say in the ' "Amen, amen" conclusive.
And here the fate of John was forever marked. All of a sudden, as children of light who was, he found himself a Son of Darkness, and he was expelled from the community. And that means for John to come and be in a insoluble existential impasse: on the one hand, he had broken radically with the town she came from the Jewish world, acquiring a new social identity, and second, that identity had not gained more opportunities to express themselves. Nor could think of going back to the world that had left, or go in search of new identities turned to other groups: homo religiosus he was, in fact, he still felt bound by those vows that he had solemnly undertaken before God, entering at Qumran.
In short, John was locked in a state of permanent liminality.
And it is finally revealed the mystery of the bizarre news on diet and clothing Gospel of John. Poveraccio! Sentendosi ancora vincolato ai giuramenti fatti allorché era entrato nella Yahad, egli non poteva accettare di ricevere né cibo né vestiti da chiunque non fosse un Figlio della Luce (e questo nonostante la causa della sua espulsione fosse stata proprio l’incapacità di accettare il dualismo determinista di Figli della Luce/Figli delle Tenebre), i quali da parte loro si guardavano però bene dall’andarlo a trovare, lasciandolo ben volentieri da solo a morire di fame.
E così il povero Giovanni Senzaterra si trovò a doversi cibare e vestire con quel che gli riusciva di trovare in natura: locuste, miele selvatico, pelo di cammello.
Luck would have it, he was then joined by a powerful prophetic call, it suddenly turned in a charismatic leader capable of igniting the crowd with his call to repentance and his invective, in which it was also good to hear the old vice of qumranico others curse the Jews ("brood of vipers"), although in the case of John these courtesies were not free, but reserved for those who freely rejected his message. In any case, drawing on its own bitter experience, the new Baptist iconoclastic prophet would have spurred " Those Who Came To Him to break free of the usual social categories" that "to abandon Their proud claim to be children of Abraham "Although, on his own, he still fails to accept the smallest thing to a Son of Darkness.
But here in the last twenty lines just before the Charlesworth conclusion pulls the final jab:
"There is a possible sequel to this attractive scenario
Aaaargh ... feared the worst,
and get worse as the BANNUS .
"As with the Baptizer, Bannus May Also Have Been ounces a member of the Qumran Community But it left, or Was Expelled from it" .
Yes, that's another poor man possessed by his own votes forced to wear only what is on the trees and eat only what grows by itself, and to soak in cold water without laying.
At this point the reader has already prepared the noose around his neck, to read that
"Bannus is not only a name, it is a description" .
Yes, this is the end. This is to say, it is going to say:
Bannus MEANS ... Banned!
Tell, James, forward: shoot out!
But no.
With a jolt of sobriety, Charlesworth merely states that probably comes from Bannus bnn'h , or "bather" which is to say, in practice, "Baptizer".
escaped danger. Thank you, Jim.
lines that are still only provide a concise summary of the above in the previous thirty pages, where Charlesworth is at pains to emphasize to the reader - if it was not clear enough - that:
"The Some historian must attempt synthesis and use SOME historical imagination That accounts for all the relevant data ".
The reader of Volume 3 of The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls , the task to judge whether this "review" is a parody of the article by Charlesworth, or is the article by Charlesworth to be a parody of historical studies.
I am to have been disrespectful to a great scholar? Or is it a great student to have made fun of his readers, propinano their thirty pages of "imagination"?
_________
For the convenience of readers, I offer below a summary of the article by Charlesworth.
Imagine John came out with a priestly family (at least that in the end they are willing to accept in many) and that his father actually called Zechariah. Imagine that instead of being a Lk 1.80 a hinge that joins the wording of 3.1, contains a historical record. Imagine that, in the desert, John was in Qumran. Imagine that there has been an initiation complete. Imagine what joy in pronouncing the blessings of the roll of the Community, and in doing so, he thought surely the blessing of Pope Zachary did also. Imagine, however, that his affection for Pope Zachary and the other people who had loved him unable to digest Roll the curses of the Community. Imagine that, little by little during the meeting, he stopped to speak. Imagine that it was caught and expelled. Imagine that while he repudiated deterministic dualism (there are no Sons of Darkness), however, continued to feel bound by oath to those who thought (you do not accept anything from a Son of Darkness). Imagine that this was slavery to compel John to eat locusts and wild honey dressing and camel hair. Imagine all this, and here we have before us a plausible explanation of how John was able to abandon the Qumran community in which we imagined he had entered. All this, moreover, satisfies the criterion of "contextual plausibility imaginary", because we can imagine that the same phenomenon has occurred in the case of Banno.
