To George Brooks:
The question we were trying to answer was, "Why does Josephus say the
Essenes were Ioudaioi by birth?", a question which methodologically must
precede Peter Janku's original question of whether Josephus's statement
implies that the Jewishness of Essenes was generally contested.
When you wrote, "it would be easy to see why Jews of the time of
Josephus might wonder at the non-Jewish
source of the Essenes...", I reminded you that Josephus' audience was
not Judean.
You responded, "The fact Josephus's target audience is the Greco-Roman
world doesn't really affect my observations about the immediate
perceptions that a knowledgeable reader (i.e. a Jew or Palestinian
native that can read Greek) would have had when reading sections on
Bannus/Banus or about his references to Wilderness dwellers."
Your observations may be correct, but not helpful in addressing the
original question. Knowing the response of a Judean reader does not help
us determine WHY Josephus said anything, if Josephus did not have that
readership in mind when writing.
You wrote,
> First we know that Josephus had some of his works
> re-published in Aramaic (I do not immediately recall whether
> his mention of Bannus was in one of them).
I don't know what Aramaic version are referring to, unless you mean the
earlier account of the war sent to the "barbarians in the interior"
mentioned in BJ 1.3. Bannus, of course, was only mentioned in Vita 12,
would not have been part of this earlier Aramaic account, if it ever
even existed.
You keep mentioning such people as a "Jew or Palestinian native who
could read his Greek writings", "contemporary Jewish readers". I suspect
you are working with some false assumptions about the circulation of
literary texts in the Roman world. As Steve Mason says in his
introduction to AJ,
"In first-century Rome, no one could write a substantial work in quiet
anonymity as we do, then pass it to a publisher for printing and
marketing to an abstractly imagined target audience. Rather, the
production of almost every book was a social affair, the communal effort
of a circle of interested friends and patrons."
Only when deposited in imperial public libraries or when it reached a
bookseller did it leave that circle and become available to the general
public. See especially R. Starr's "The Circulation of Literary Texts in
the Roman World" (Classical Quarterly 37 [1987], 213-223), but also E.
Fantham's _Roman Literary Culture_ (Princeton, 1996) and D. Potter's
_Literary Texts and the Roman Historian_ (Routledge, 1999).
I don't really think Josephus expected any Judean to read his work. He
did not have any "contemporary Jewish readers".
To Dave Hindley, who wrote:
> _On the Capture (of
> Jerusalem)_ was published in Aramaic shortly after the event
> (and perhaps before Masada was taken a few years later) as a
> warning for other Jews (mainly N. Mesopotamia) to consider
> the might of Rome before they too attempt revolt, and shortly
> afterward reworked into a book for a non-Jewish (Greek
> speaking) audience.
Do you also mean the account mentioned in BJ 1.3-6? Or are you referring
to the 'military supply' Dierk mentioned (the relevance of which I do
not see; we were trying to determine Josephus' audience). Also, where do
you get the title _On the Capture_ from?
To Peter Janku,
You mentioned that Philo does not question that the Essenes are Jewish.
I don't have my Philo text with me today; does Philo specifically say
they are Jewish? In Every Good Man is Free, the context is surrounded by
other highly disciplined non-Jewish peoples, is it not?
You also wrote,
> Ergo, it is as natural to assert, that
> conversions da taken in the meantime such proportions, that
> Essenes could no longer be percieved automatically as Jewish.
Are you suggesting that Essenes accepted gentile converts? Some of the
DSS prohibit the acceptance of a GER, do they not? (I am thinking of
4QFlorilegium and possibly 1QS).
> My personal opinion on the public Josephus had in mind is due
> to a somehow psychoanalytical approach. His overdimensioned,
> gonflated ego had certainly recieved a big blow after
> changing sides, So big, that he might subiacently have had in
> mind a hellenized Jewish, possibly Pharisaic,
> readership/audience: All his books are apologetic by nature,
> and some of the contents are certainly pleas pro domo.This
> could also explain why he called himself a Pharisee, whereas
> the bulk and the tendency of his discription of the 3, than 4
> schools of thought is evidently biased in favor of Essenes,
> which makes him really, if anything, an Essene.
About the Essenes and Josephus, I agree. Essenes are the most ideal of
the sects, and Josephus criticized the Pharisees often. I think Josephus
wished to be considered an Essene (and perhaps that's why he added that
note about the "marrying kind": he was married). I appeal again to Steve
Mason's writings (I hate to appeal too much to one scholar, especially
one who is my teacher, but Steve is one of the few who makes sense of
Josephus as a whole); his recent (Brill, 2000) introduction to the
Antiquities and article "Josephus and Judaism" in the _Encyclopedia of
Judaism_ (also Brill, 2000) both have good summaries.
Steve has thoroughly convinced me that Josephus did not even call
himself a Pharisee. He has also convinced me that his audience was not
Jewish. Both Josephus's explicit statements (AJ 1.5, 9; 20.262) and the
most basic kinds of Judean things he explains come together to show he
wasn't writing for Jews.
Yes, Tcherikover (1956) showed that Jewish apologetic literature was
intended for an internal audience, but even he does not include Josephus
in this category.
Nor was Josephus writing for any "public".
To return to your original question, Josephus's audience consists of
Greek-speaking Roman elite Jewish-sympathizers, and therefore the
question of whether the Essenes were Jews/Judeans, if it had occurred at
all (which I doubt--see my previous post on the men-de construction),
occurred to this non-Jewish audience.
Ken Penner, M.C.S. (Regent College), M.A. (McMaster)
Ph.D. Student, Religious Studies, Biblical Field (Early Judaism major)
McMaster University
Hamilton, Canada
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
For private reply, e-mail to "Penner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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