Final Post

Classes are now over and we are all gearing up for final exams, so this is the last post on Qumranica and henceforth it is on indefinite hiatus. I will leave the archive up for now and I may (or may not) restart the blog sometime in the future.

I want to thank the students of DI4712, DI4713, and DI5212 for sharing their research with us. I am also grateful to the readers of Qumranica. Thanks for your comments and feedback and I hope you enjoyed the course. This was an interesting experiment on which I will need to reflect. I imagine I will have some comments on it in my paper on blogging which is to be presented in a CARG session in November's SBL meetings in Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, matters pertaining to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran will continue to be covered, along with other aspects of ancient Judaism, over on PaleoJudaica. I hope you will continue to visit there.

Penultimate Post

A week ago, we of St. Mary's College had our annual School dinner and I have just about recovered from it. There are always entertaining speeches and songs, and this time Matthew Ford, one of the students in the Dead Sea Scrolls course, sang us a work of his own composition about the School. As has been my custom with such things, apart from the first verse I will quote (with his permission) only the verse that pertains to me:

There is a college called St. Mary's Quad,
there studies divines, where great men have trod.
They do lots of talking, and coffee they drink,
You'll pass your exams, with a nod and a wink.

St. Mary's Quad, St. Mary's Quad,
It looks like we've had a few;
We're funny peculiar, and all very bright,
The wonderfully odd St. Mary's Quad.

There was a young scholar of ancient Hebrew,
his name is Doc. Davila, bad grammar won't do.
He studies the Yahad, there no much he misses.
He likes to pronounce 'the Groningen Hypothesis.'

St. Mary's Quad, St. Mary's Quad,
It looks like we've had a few;
We're funny, peculiar, and all very bright,
The wonderfully odd St. Mary's Quad!