Kamesar's review is consistent with my own understanding of the political
vocabulary underlying Dio (which is also present in Pliny's passage on the
Essenes), and Dio Chrysostom's political interests. However, I fail to see
how this tends towards a "Stoic view of the Qumran Jewish Essenes". Rather,
this is more in the Aristotlean / Peripatetic tradition, in which political
institutions and ideas of various obscure groups around the world were
collected for what insight they might provide. As such this tends to confirm
some relation with Nicolas of Damascus, who was an Aristotelean (see his
autobiography and comments by Wacholder), wrote a paradoxographical
"collection of strange customs" for Herod (largely dealing with political
institutions around the world), and of course wrote on the Essenes. I have
already commented on Orion on the paradoxographical vocabulary prominent in
Pliny's description of the Essenes. Thus for instance, Pliny's commentary on
perpetuation of a community by adoption of others - "Thus through thousands
of ages (incredible to relate) a race in which no one is born lives on
forever" - is a typical Aristotelean / paradoxical theoretical formulation of
no historical value, but expresses (in typical purple prose) interest in
unique/bizarre political institutions of others.
Best regards,
Russell Gmirkin
> I happened upon the review by Adam Kamesar of Vermes and Goodman, The
> Essenes According to the Classical Sources, which offers some comments
> relevant to recent threads here (JAOS 111 [1991] 134-5).
>
> "...Synesius, Dio 3.2, where the Essenes are described as a 'polis hole
> eudaimon'...This phrase is translated with the words 'an entire and
> prosperous city'....Yet it must be remembered that Dio is a Stoic of sorts,
> and he regards a polis not so much as a place of habitation, but as a
> 'group of people living under the rule of law in the same place' (Oratio
> 36.20; cf. 36.29 and H. von Arnim, Stoicum veterum fragmenta, III:80-81).
> Indeed, that in this passage polis should be translated and understood with
> reference to this definition (cf. the rendering "Gemeinwesen' in Adam and
> Burchard, 39) may be confirmed by the fact that it is employed [/p.135] in
> apposition to the word 'Essenes.' Accordingly, we should be wary of
> pressing the distinction between the description of the Essenes as a
> 'polis' in Dio/Synesius and as a 'gens sola' in Pliny....For the latter
> phrase should probably be rendered 'a people living on its own,' and not as
> Goodman translates, 'a people unique of its kind'....Likewise, 'eudaimon'
> should not be translated by an adjective with material connotations such as
> 'prosperous,' for the author is clearly thinking of that sort of eudaimonia
> which accrues to a city as a result of the virtue and concord of its
> inhabitants (see von Arnim, SVF, 1:61). In fact, in the immediately
> preceding sentence (omitted by Goodman), Synesius had mentioned Dio's
> description of the 'bios eudaimonikos' of an individual, a Euboaean hunter
> who lived a highly austere life in the wilderness but nevertheless achieved
> an outstanding degree of happiness (Oratio 7). Therefore, in all
> probability Synesius is referring to a description of the Essenes in which
> the latter are praised for a similar accomplishment in a group setting."
>
> Such description accords with a Stoic view of the Qumran Jewish Essenes,
> 'ose hatorah, the yahad (Gemeinwesen, community) on the north-west Dead Sea
> shore.
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