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Book Reviews

Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation, by Albert I. Baumgarten, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 55. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Pp. xiii + 240. ISBN 90-04-10751-7. This study attempts an answer to the question why sectarianism was rife in the Maccabean period and does so with a great deal of flair. In an introductory chapter Baumgarten surveys the evidence and offers his own definition of a "sect" as "a voluntary association of protest, which utilizes boundary marking mechanisms [...] to distin- guish between its own members and those otherwise regarded as belonging to the same national of religious entity" (p. 7). The group- ings that fall into this broad category of sects, which may in turn be sub-divided into reformist and introversionist categories (B. Wilson), include Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Qumran, Fourth Philosophy, the followers of John the Baptist and Bannus although the main focus of the book are the first four in the list. I was somewhat frustrated by the way in which Baumgarten sits on the fence with regard to the question of the relationship of the Qumran library to the Essenes given that the evidence he http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Dead Sea Discoveries Brill

Book Reviews

Dead Sea Discoveries , Volume 6 (2): 192 – Jan 1, 1999

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1999 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0929-0761
eISSN
1568-5179
DOI
10.1163/156851799X00216
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation, by Albert I. Baumgarten, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 55. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Pp. xiii + 240. ISBN 90-04-10751-7. This study attempts an answer to the question why sectarianism was rife in the Maccabean period and does so with a great deal of flair. In an introductory chapter Baumgarten surveys the evidence and offers his own definition of a "sect" as "a voluntary association of protest, which utilizes boundary marking mechanisms [...] to distin- guish between its own members and those otherwise regarded as belonging to the same national of religious entity" (p. 7). The group- ings that fall into this broad category of sects, which may in turn be sub-divided into reformist and introversionist categories (B. Wilson), include Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Qumran, Fourth Philosophy, the followers of John the Baptist and Bannus although the main focus of the book are the first four in the list. I was somewhat frustrated by the way in which Baumgarten sits on the fence with regard to the question of the relationship of the Qumran library to the Essenes given that the evidence he

Journal

Dead Sea DiscoveriesBrill

Published: Jan 1, 1999

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