Moving to WordPress in fulfillment of my vow has certainly been the cause of manifold blessings for me personally, but surely my joy would not be fulfilled unless I endeavored to share them with all of you, my gentle snowflakes. For this reason, following the strategically impressive example of Mark Stevens, I have decided to announce the Covenantal Blessings Book Giveaway at The Voice of Stefan! The prize this time around is a copy of Peter W. Flint (ed.), The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), the fifth volume in the series “Studies in the Dead Sea Scroll and Related Literature” edited by Flint, Martin Abegg, and Florentino García Martínez. Here, for your edification, is the Table of Contents:
Preface
Contributors
Diacritical Marks, Sigla, and Abbreviations
Introduction
Peter W. FlintPart 1: The Scriptures, the Canon, and the Scrolls
Canon as Dialogue
James A. SandersHow We Got the Hebrew Bible: The Text and Canon of the Old Testament
Bruce K. WaltkeThe Bible in the Making: The Scriptures Found at Qumran
Eugene UlrichThe Dead Sea Scrolls and the Canon of Scripture in the Time of Jesus
Craig A. EvansNoncanonical Writings in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Apocrypha, Other Previously Known Writings, Pseudepigrapha
Peter W. FlintPart 2: Biblical Interpretation and the Dead Sea Scrolls
The Interpretation of Genesis in 1 Enoch
James C. VanderKamAbraham in the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Man of Faith and Failure
Craig A. EvansMoses in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Living in the Shadow of God’s Anointed
James E. BowleyKorah and Qumran
James M. Scott4QMMT, Paul, and “Works of the Law”
Martin G.Abegg Jr.The Intertextuality of Scripture: The Example of Rahab (James 2:25)
Robert W. WallBibliography and Indices
Select Bibliography
Index of Modern Authors
Index of Ancient Literature
Truly an impressive collection of essays! And what can you do, you ask, to get your hands on this outstanding volume? Well, it’s really very simple. I ask of you two things:
1. First, that you announce my change of address and this giveway on your own blog, and provide a link to your announcement in the comments to this post. (Note that WordPress blogs generate automatic pingbacks, and therefore you don’t need to provide if a link if you blog on WordPress.)
2. Second, that in your comment you provide your most creative theory regarding the identity of the Qumran community (if there was one, according to your theoretical construct). Obvious things like the Essenes and the Golbian Hasmonean fortress are out of the question. I, for instance, hold that Qumran housed the easternmost (and most learned) first-century outpost of the KISS Army.
I will accept submissions until Monday, June 29, and will announce the winner on the morning of Tuesday, June 30. Best wishes to any and all who choose to participate!
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Be blessed and multiply!
Thanks, Mark! But frankly, what I’m hoping will multiply is the number of my readers.
Now that you’re on WP you can cank on that!
cank? is that the verbal form of ‘canker sore’?
Indeed it is! And you are one of only a handful of people who knows that! Or perhaps for the less educated I could have said “bank.”
You are going to love my entry!
Threaded comments and Neo-Sapien! Welcome to the fold. I’ve since decamped to a self-hosted blog so that I can do all the things that you could do in Blogger.
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[...] also presented his (ahem) long-neglected (and long-suffering) readers, gentle snowflakes all, with a challenge. The one proposing the most innovative theory regarding the identity of the Qumran community will [...]
I hope I do not appear ungrateful, but Esteban — but really now, a (goyisher) paperback? From you, I would expect no less than a portion of parchment, inscribed in lashon kodesh, preferably from Qumran itself. Alternatively, how about an invite to a nosh with Larry Schiffman?
Please, tell me that this is all some insidious plot to improve your google search ranking for the term “Flint.”
How dare you expose my secret motives!!!
Oh, who am I kidding. I did indeed wish to offer a portion of parchment inscribed in lashon kodesh from Qumran itself, but I lost the eBay auction. Further, Schiffman wasn’t answering his phone; I believe the Golb Jr. fiasco might have something to do with it. So, in desperation, I scoured my library in search for a prize, and behold, there were to copies of this book! And so it came to pass that I offered this as my book giveaway. O woe! O sorrow!
OK, as long as your motives are impure, I have no complaints. See here:
http://whatilearnedfromaristotle.blogspot.com/2009/06/estebans-new-home.html
PS: My theory: The Qumran-ites were jokers with a vision — who realized that with a bit of preparation, they could really throw Bible studies into a tizzy some two millennia hence.
Stefan, you’re making this almost impossible for me to win it.
Come on, TC! It’s not all that hard. I formulated my theory in exactly 2 seconds.
[...] That guy that used to blog over at Blogger has moved up the next link in the evolutionary chain and is giving away a book in celebration: http://voxstefani.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/in-which-you-reap-the-benefits-of-my-covenantal-blessings... [...]
[...] Esteban Vázquez is on WordPress now AND . . . 2009 June 11 by Bitsy Griffin he’s having a book giveaway to celebrate. [...]
Qumran was the first attempt at social networking, but parchmenting, “Josef is heading to Ein Gedi for the weekend…” or “Ruben says pack up your stuff, the Romans are coming…” didn’t get the word out fast enough. And they didn’t yet have facebook or twitter apps for their cell phones.
You better have some hard evidence that they didn’t have those cellphones apps, Mister! I, for one, am not inclined to believe they were so primitive.
Dude, it’s so obvious. There’s not a single tweet or status update on any of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Twitted: Voice of Stefani Everyone knows that “Qumran” was a primitive doo-wap community. “Qum-ran-ran a-qum-ran-ran” was the top song for a decade on either side of 0 CE.
Thanks, Will, for proving to me that Twitter has a right honorable use: to promote The Voice of Stefan!
ok well i had already previously mentioned you… so that’s taken care of. and second, the Qumran community clearly and obviously was made up of disgruntled dilettantes who were dissatisfied with accurate interpretation of scripture and so opted to run out into the desert to live secluded lives whilst staring at their lint filled navels and awaiting the coming of the priest/messiah who would prove them all right. and his name? geoff hudson!
Amazing! I knew it!
But Jim, you didn’t mention the giveaway, now did you? Come on, send over the millions of visitors you promised!
Posted! Surely my theory is the most sound as to the identity of the Qumran community.
http://thechurchofjesuschrist.us/2009/06/another-giveaway-another-entry/
Far into the future, a certain biblical miminalist creates a time machine, and in an attempt to travel back to ancient Egypt to prove that Moses did not write the Torah, he is hit by a fit of pentecostal fire, bumps the controls, and mistakenly lands near the Dead Sea.
Like a man on a deserted island, he is a community of one – yet, he builds many places of worship (one where he goes and one where he used to go). He begins to collect MSS, in an attempt to create a single source MSS so that far into the future, it will become the KJV.
One night, this solitary Biblical Minimalist cried out after reading a postscript attached to a parchment bought from a local MSS dealer in Galilee who happened to be selling a bone box of sorts. The attachment was from Moses himself! It said, plainly, ‘I, Moses, Brother of Aaron, wrote this Torah.’ Shouting loudly, with his teeth nashing, ‘Oh come on!’ The biblical minimalist didn’t see the peasant walking by who mistook the ‘Oh come on!’ for Qum-ran.
Thus, Qumran was born.
Who was that biblical miminalist? We’ll never know…
Best one yet!…Keep me in mind, I’ll blurb the book…
My entry requirements for evaluation can be accessed here:
http://morphed2fly.blogspot.com/2009/06/covenantal-blessings-book-giveaway.html
You might recognize that I used some of the same historical sources as another, very famous, trinitarian, historian, while not actually referencing them in footnotes…sorry…
[...] BlogSpot and all of its works and all of its angels and all of its services and all of its pride, but he is also doing his best to give away a review copy of a book so that he doesn’t have to …. Help him out if you get a [...]
It is done: http://logismoitouaaron.blogspot.com/2009/06/announcement-giveaway-historical.html
[...] Today is the last day to submit your entry for the Covenantal Blessings Book Giveaway! If you haven’t gotten around to formulating your theory of Qumramic origins, the time to do [...]