L’ho appena ricevuto e ci sono tre favolosi articoli che consiglio vivamente. Il primo: Josephus’s Essenes and the Qumran Community, di Kenneth Atkinson e Jodi Magness (pp. 317–342)

Chi erano gli esseni citati da Giuseppe Flavio?

1. Since the discovery of the first scrolls in caves near Qumran (the “Dead Sea
   

2. Scrolls”), scholars have noted many similarities between these texts and the
   

3. accounts of the Essenes in the works of Josephus, Philo, Pliny, and others. From
   

4. the beginning of Qumran studies until the present, most researchers have agreed
   

5. with the proposal first put forth by Eleazar L. Sukenik that the Qumran community
   

6. was a branch of the larger Essene movement, a theory often referred to as the
   

7. Qumran-Essene hypothesis.1 Increasingly, however, this thesis has been challenged
   

8. by a number of scholars who argue that the supposed parallels between the scrolls
   

9. and the classical sources have been exaggerated or misunderstood, and that the
   

10. archaeological remains at Khirbet Qumran do not match the lifestyle described in
    

11. any of these texts. In recent years these critics have claimed that Josephus—arguably
    

12. the most important source of information for proponents of the Qumran-Essene
    

13. hypothesis—should be read on his own terms, without any reference to the Qumran
    

14. scrolls, to understand how he creatively shaped his source material regarding
    

15. the Essenes to fashion a distinctive narrative of the past. This view, while recognizing
    

16. Josephus’s creativity, suffers from the same criticism that it levels against the
    

17. thesis that it seeks to overturn.
    

E questo, a firma del mio carissimo amico Jonathan sull’instabilità della Galilea al tempo di Gesù dovuta a questioni demografiche: (Instability in Jesus’ Galilee: A Demographic Perspective, Jonathan L. Reed, pp. 343–365)

1. There can be no doubt that Galilee, once mere background to historical Jesus
   

2. research, has moved to the foreground. What was going on in Galilee during the
   

3. reign of Herod Antipas has become a central question in discovering who Jesus
   

4. was. But how can this be determined? Literary sources are notoriously unreliable,
   

5. archaeological excavations are spotty, and theoretical models are often forced onto
   

6. anecdotal literary or archaeological evidence. A key question in historical Jesus
   

7. research has been the socioeconomic impact of Antipas’s urbanization of Galilee
   

8. when he rebuilt Sepphoris and founded Tiberias, in particular the extent and nature
   

9. of subsequent urban–rural relations.
   

L’ultimo sull’etimologia del nome Iscariota (The Name “Iskarioth” (Iscariot), di Joan E. Taylor):

1. 
   

2. Given the recent discovery and publication of the Gnostic Gospel of Judas
   

3. and renewed interest in the historical figure of Judas Iscariot, it may be timely to
   

4. analyze again the suggestions made concerning the epithet of the betrayer of Jesus.
   

5. As William Klassen has noted, “the last word has not been said or written about the
   

6. meaning of this word.” There is little scholarly agreement about what exactly the
   

7. epithet means, despite the etymological explanations offered to account for it.
   

8. Bart D. Ehrman notes that “some of the best scholars have concluded that we simply
   

9. don’t know what Iscariot means.”
   

Questo il sito della rivista.