Philip was well known for his out-of-the-box thinking and I learned a lot from him, especially on how to think about the Dead Sea Scrolls. His doctoral dissertation on the War Scroll influenced how I looked at that work, and you can see some of how I used it in my teaching in this online lecture on the War Scroll for my Dead Sea Scrolls class. I also drew on his ideas about the Pesharim and on utopianism and Qumran sectarianism.
I knew Philip for many years and we kept in touch off and on. Our last e-mail exchange was last summer, when we talked about the lead codices and the merits of Islay whiskies. He also appeared from time to time in PaleoJudaica posts. I see that a few years ago I commented, "Davies is usually controversial and always interesting." I think that is a fitting epitaph.
Requiescat in pace.
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