Thanks, Greg, for carrying this thread further in attempts to pin down its
possible relevance (or lack thereof) for DSS studies. In general, I think
you have correctly represented my current position on Pliny's account. In
what follows I'll try to make a few points by way of nuancing or
clarification regarding the Jews/Judea issues:
You wrote:
> On this matter of whether Pliny understands the
> Esseni to be Jews, might it be that to Pliny's source the
> Esseni are the only Jews known to the source,
> as in equivalence or substitute term? Compare Philo
> seeming to cite Essenes as the 'true Jews', i.e. a
> subset representing the ideal state of the whole.
> It is not far from Philo's language to someone still
> further removed to speak of only 'the amazing Esseni'
> as the ones who live 'west of the Dead Sea, higher
> up from the coast' (i.e. in Judea).
I would move more slowly here. I don't think Pliny thinks that the Esseni
are Jews (he may not have even thought about the issue himself, since he
is functioning here primarily geographically). I don't know what his
immediate source or sources (he reads a lot, and might be reflecting more
than a single source here) might have said on this issue, but could
imagine that the Jewishness of the Esseni might have been taken for
granted in a source, or somehow otherwise not expressed in such a way that
an excerpter such as Pliny would have noted the connection.
Worth further exploration in this connection is the perceptions of
Pliny-type of handbooks as to the ethnic/religious composition of Judaea.
My impression is that those ancients were aware of diversity among the
occupants of Judaea, and thus would not simply assume (as some of our
previous discussion seems to do) that to be in Judaea is to be Jewish.
> Why would Pliny say Esseni instead of 'Jews' for the
> people who live in the 'higher elevation west away
> from the Dead Sea' (i.e. Judea) when he himself knows
> of 'Jews' in 'Judea'? Would this not be explicable
> as from a source (or a source of a source?) without
> Pliny making paraphrases into more familiar language?
> Especially if Pliny's source is Juba II as Gmirkin
> argues--who might speak of 'Jews' and 'Judea' in
> slightly different language (i.e. 'west and higher' from
> the Dead Sea, and Esseni live there).
> (Russ Gmirkin: can you shed light on this?)
>
> That is: I am asking if in Pliny's source 'Esseni' is
> the source's way of speaking of the only Judeans either
> known to the source, or else the only Judeans worth
> speaking about. If it was not for Gmirkin's convincing
> chronological arguments, one could even propose
> Pliny's source reflects hearsay in some other part of the
> world picked up from Philo's glowing descriptions of the
> Essenes of Judea! For as you have now argued very
> well, Pliny's source's Esseni are located nowhere other
> than Judea itself--just as Philo's and Josephus's Essenes.
> They are the same Essenes of Judea; all three sources
> are speaking of exactly the same thing (and Qumran is
> not it).
I'm in general agreement that there seems to have been a widespread
tradition in Pliny's world about the marvelous Esseni and groups like
them. Whether there was an application by anyone of that particular name
to all such groups is not clear to me. Philo could be read as implying
this, but perhaps is better understood to mean that there are Essene-like
groups throughout the world, of which the Jewish Essenes are a excellent
specific example. There seems to be a "general/particular" dynamic of
some sort going on here, which may or may not be relevant to the naming
issues (Philo's naming of the Therapeutae is also of relevance for this
discussion, since it is clear that in many ways his "Essenes" and his
"Therapeutae" have lots in common!). The larger discussion of Theoseboi
and related terms in that world may also be significant here.
> That is, Pliny knows of 'Jews' and 'Judeans' but he is
> copying from his source. To the source, the only
> notable people worth mentioning in that higher
> elevation west of the Dead Sea (i.e. Judea) were
> the amazing Esseni. There are regions elsewhere
> in Pliny where the only inhabitants are tribes of people
> without heads, tribes where all the men run as fast
> as gazelles, etc.--here there is <Judea> where there
> are the amazing Esseni. The other inhabitants of these
> respective regions, and in this case Judea, don't get
> registered in the ancient Ripley's catalogue of
> ethnographic wonders. These Esseni of Pliny's source
> *are* how the Jews of Judea are appearing
> in this catalogue of ethnographic wonders.
Again, I doubt that Pliny has any of that awareness. He is selecting from
his voluminous notes things of relevance and/or interest about Judaea, and
somehow his file on Judaea includes the Esseni reference, located to the
west of the Dead Sea, and in a clean air environment (similar to Philo's
location of the Therapeutae where the air is good, as has been pointed
out). He doesn't include in this particular context everything he knows
about the area (for example, the balsam resource), but for some reason,
the Esseni presence catches his geographic attention.
> The point is: there is no notion here of non-Jewish > Esseni, or Esseni
in any sense distinctive from Jews, > a marginal sect of Jews, or some
group other than > Jewish. This is some ancient source (or source of > a
source) adopted or copied by Pliny who thinks of the > inhabitants of
Judea (whom *we* know to be Jews) > as Esseni. And the geographical
location of these > Esseni in Pliny's source is, as you say--not Qumran, >
not an archaeological site in the hills immediately > above En Gedi, not
any site at all--but ... (drumroll) > ... Judea itself.
Well, yes and no. For me, Pliny is not trying to say that everyone who
inhabits the Judaean highlands is of the Esseni gens, but only that in
that particular area of Judaea one finds the Esseni. What else one might
find there is not said, beyond some references to the two specific places
nearer the Dead Sea (Engedi and Masada), and to palm groves and the like.
I don't think Pliny tells us anything about the Qumran area here, although
I wouldn't want to say that his source(s) could not have included Qumran
in the description; we just don't know, and if Qumran was included in the
source(s) as part of the relvant western area, so were (lots of) other
sites on the west of the Dead Sea.
Bob
-- Robert A. Kraft, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania 227
Logan Hall (Philadelphia PA 19104-6304); tel. 215 898-5827
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/kraft.html
For private reply, e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robert Kraft)
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