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originally posted by: jmdewey60
a reply to: vethumanbeingPhilo of Alexandria.
Who was inventing propaganda? Qumran was raided in 72AD by the Romans; that is also a NON fiction as its well documented.
The "documentation" was written by Josephus, years later, from Rome, where he had been since Titus returned there after the Jewish War that he ended at least one phase of, with the overthrow of Jerusalem.
He had access to a lot of sources (some that no longer exist) to write his histories, one of which would of course been Philo.
So what Josephus said about the Essenes was not from personal knowledge (most likely) but was just repeating what had already been said about them.
Recent analysis of the Qumran site has led to the determination that it had been vacated decades earlier than the Roman conquest of Jerusalem, during the reign of Herod the Great.