Jeff gets an enigmatic no-prize for bringing us news of a new study who's author claims the Dead Sea Scrolls were not, in fact, written by the Essenes:

Elior, who teaches Jewish mysticism at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, claims that the Essenes were a fabrication by the 1st century A.D. Jewish-Roman historian, Josephus Flavius, and that his faulty reporting was passed on as fact through the centuries. As Elior explains, the Essenes make no mention of themselves in the 900 scrolls found by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 in the caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea. "Sixty years of research have been wasted trying to find the Essenes in the scrolls," Elior tells TIME. "But they didn't exist. This is legend on a legend."

I'm not sure a more contentious area of scholarship exists than historic biblical criticism. This has the smell of a politically-motivated attack, or a bomb-thrower looking for some publicity. However, in this particular contest I'm merely sitting on the top row of the bleachers, waiting for the rest of the People's Front of Judea to show up. WTF do I know?

Do you have any change? I could really use a bag of those otters' noses...