John Kampen has an article on the Artemis priest name in the current DSD (10
[2003] 205-220;
previously he wrote on them in HUCA 57 (1986) 61-68. I'd like to add a few
notes, information not present in either article. Some of this is from a 1987
SBL paper, which, though unpublished, John attended, and we discussed it then.
I'm emailing this also to him, since I don't know if he's on this list.
Basically,
I suggest the Ephesus priest name is not the source of the Jewish group name.
"Essenas" [Esshnas, h=eta], as it always appears in Ephesus inscriptions, is a
different word than the Jewish group name. The former is third declension; the
latter second declension. These words are distinguished in various Lexicons,
including The Suda (E 3123 and 3131). By the way, for a worthwhile project to
translate and annotate The Suda, see:
http:// www.stoa.org/sol
The latter word is spelled Esshnoi, Eshnoi {Hippolytus], Essaioi, Osshnoi, and
Ossaioi [Epiphanius] and cf Philo's o-spellings. And Philo has Essaioi, not
Essenoi.
Ezechiel Spanheim apparently raised the suggestion in his seventeenth-century
notes on Callimachus (Bibliography here and ff on request). G. F. Creuzer
followed (1812, 1832). There are over sixty different published proposals
[over 60 proposals, not just 60 publications] for
the etymology of "Essenes," and this suggestion was looked at post-1948 by,
e.g., S. Zeitlin and H. del Medico, though the latter changed his mind. J. B.
Lightfoot has an important, still-useful survey essay in his 1904 ed.
commentary on Colossians and Philemon. He mentions the Artemis name, dismisses
it and chooses another source. (He treats Hebrew 'asah as philologically
unobjectionable, but dismisses it for now-invalid reasons.) "I can only regard
it [the relative similarity of names] as an accidental coincidence...." A
reading of E.
L. Hicks [no part 2] and Lightfoot, cited in Kampen's 2003 n.1 allows the
possibility that
the Artemis name came from a Semitic or Eastern origin, whether earlier or
later than the Jewish "Essene" name undetermined--this would affect Kampen's
scenario that the Artemis name, Greek, was first and borrowed, yet with
spelling
and declension changes. In the earlier article (only, no one specific is
ventured as plausible in the
second article), Nicolas of Damascus was his proposed tradent--but he's too
late, not
the source of Philo, nor of Marcus Agrippa, and so on. If a source used by
Philo and/or Josephus named the Jewish Essenes by analogy with a group of
pagan priests, this would likely receive comment--but there is none. Essenes
enemies would be quick to degrade them by highlighting such, were it true.
But, as Al Baumgarten pointed out, most such ancient group names are self-
identifications (the idea that outsiders named Essenes was promoted by
adherents of the Aramaic guesses which failed to appear in ancient texts);
such self-identifications (including generic-become-specific terms) are later
belittled by opponents. E.g., various descriptions of
Pharisees in Qumran Essene text (see Joseph Baumgarten 2003 orion paper, J.
VanderKam in E. Tov Festschrift, A.I. Baumgarten in Encyclopedia of the DSS).
As a full-disclosure aside: Epiphanius maligns the (torah-observing) Ossenes
as once pretending
to worship Artemis in Susa (Pan. 19.2.9), but that appears insufficient to
rescue the Artemis source proposal. So I suggest to the list, and invite
consideration and comment, that Artemis priest name is not the Jewish group
name source. And that Posidonius (who saw Alexander Jannaeus as wicked, but
other Stoic-like Jews as good) and Strabo were the tradents of the Greek form,
taken from Hebrew 'osey hatorah, as many scholars suggested for centuries
before 1948 (e.g. N. Serarius, 1604, Essenes, from 'asah, "factores legis").
More bibliography on request.
best,
Stephen Goranson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Durham NC
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