Regarding "socia palmarum," in Semitic languages, Greek, Latin, and
English, a word for palm tree is also a word for palm of the hand,
sometimes particularly for cupped palms. In Syriac--known from examples
later than Pliny the Elder--the same word of dual meanings comes to
signify "pious," a third more derivative meaning.
It seems possible that Pliny or his source, or both combined, used the odd
phrase "socia palmarum" to indicate not the society of palm trees, but
rather a voluntary association of the prayerful, those whose palms were
stretched out to God.
Socia has a range of meanings, one of which is "voluntary association."
For background on voluntary associations, see Al Baumgarten's article on
Voluntary Associations in the Greco-Roman world in the Martin Goodman
volume JEWS IN A GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD, Oxford, 1998. Rather than implying a
group which lives with only the companionship of palm trees, we may
understand this phrase to be in apposition--that the group is a voluntary
association of supplicants/the prayerful.
That doesn't get us very far on Bob Kraft's points demonstrating that
Pliny is not writing an eyewitness account, and not writing an accurate
description of the area, from which we could conclude that Qumran was
associated at the time (what time?) with a group of Essenes.
We have filters--mine is Aramaic--constructed of hypotheses, about
language and meaning, which allow us to say what we want to. That is, once
properly filtered, the passage from Pliny is a clear indication that
Qumran, or Qumran + Ein Feshka, was home to a group of the admirable sect
known as Essenes, who eschewed companionship with women.
What is not in the Pliny passage is important; some of these lacks are as
follows:
** No indication that Pliny thought Essenes were also Jews
** No clear indication of the location of the Essene group
** No clearly demonstrable identification of their location with the
Khirbeh at Qumran
Kierkegaard's dancer's leap comes to a crashing conclusion; the arc in the
air between takeoff and landing is a thing of beauty, but the landing is
far from the required perfection.
Sigrid Peterson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Russell wrote,
>
[. . . ]
> > ashes. Dulaey doesn't make anything of this detail. (2) Also, he doesn't
> > seem to be aware of the fact that a famous variety of date-palm in the
> > Jericho valley was named the Phonicon, after the phoenix (from the ability
> of
> > this tree to come back to life after seemingly dying). (See Strabo,
> Pliny.)
> >
> > Why are these details important? Because Pliny's Greek source is
> > making a
> > very sophisticated literary play on words. Probably Pliny's Latin "socia
> > palmarum," "in the company of palm-trees," referred specifically to the
> > Phoenix in the Greek source. This source refers to En Gedi and Jericho,
> > famous for their palm-trees (Phoenicons) being heaps of ashes. The source
> > specifically is trying to get across the very poetic idea of the Essenes
> > being the phoenix of En Gedi "rising from the ashes". This image makes no
> > sense unless the Essenes are the survivors of En Gedi's destruction.
> > Geographically, this puts the Essenes near En Gedi and its (phoenix) palm
> > groves - not way up the coast at Qumran.
>
> Phoenix dactylifera L. has its name less because of alleged fire resistance,
> but because of its originally relation with a specific bird connected with
> the wet biotope of the date palm - the Egyptian phoenix bird (bennu), better
> known as grey heron, in the Egyptian mythology cosmic herald of future
> events, patron of time, and - 'his seed (benben) is Osiris who is still in
> Mother Nut'.
> In other words, the date palm is an early import plant.
>
> Dierk
>
For private reply, e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Sigrid Peterson)
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