Quoting Ken Penner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
[....]
I am sceptical because the phonological shift from a long O vowel to
an epsilon in Greek is rather peculiar. It is not completely
unattested (Vaticanus of 2Chr 29:14 has EDEIQWM for YDWTWM; 2Chr
31:13 has EZABAQ for YWZBD; 2Es 16:2 has ENW for )WNW ) but these are
by far the exception; Long O's in Hebrew (as we find in Qal active
participles) normally become Omega in Greek. This is enough to make
me hesitate to express confidence that we now know the etymology of
"Essene".
[....]
Ken, your phonological hesitation, however, could be put in historical context
with, exempli gratis, Philo. You know Hebrew much better than Philo
did. In any
case, there were variant spellings of names back then (see, e.g., the Josephus
name concordance; or Esau in DSS)--still even in the times of Shakespear. The
ancients (including Posidonius and Strabo) did not follow all current
transcription rules.
We have at least five ancient Greek spellings of "Essenes/Ossenes" (6 if Quod
omnis 75 and 91, ESSAIWN H OSIWN, counts). It is widely agreed that the word
has no original Greek meaning (such proposals have been made, but I can list
and refute them), but came from a Semitic Vorlage. Yahad self-designations are
in Hebrew, not Aramaic. And--to repeat the reply to Soren's original
question--yes, osey hatorah as well as related also newly-attested miqsat
ma'ase hatorah appear precisely in texts already widely recognized on other
grounds, as Essene.
best,
Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
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