LikeDead Sea Discoveries 16 (2009) 1–21
www.brill.nl/dsd
On Pliny, the Essene Location and Kh. Qumran
Joan E. Taylor
Dept. of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Waikato, P.B. 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand jetaylor@waikato.ac.nz
Abstract Pliny wrote that the Essenes lived west of Lake Asphaltites, and that infra hos was En Gedi. Some scholars associate Pliny’s reference with Qumran, others with a location above En Gedi. Given that Pliny writes about Judaea by following the course of the land’s remarkable water, it would be most natural to read infra hos as “downstream from them.” e Dead Sea itself has a current, and there was a belief that the lake had a subterranean exit in the south. From a survey of scholarship produced prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it appears that Pliny’s reference was usually believed to indicate a wide region of the Judaean wilderness, understood to stretch from En Gedi northwards and/or inland. When En Gedi was identified in the mid-19th century, the suggestion that Essenes occupied caves just north of and above the ancient settlement was made, but this was not seen as exclusive. If we again read Pliny appropriately, as referring to a region which the gens of the Essenes held, we can move away from either-or dichotomies of possible Essene sites. Keywords Pliny; Essenes; Dead Sea; Asphaltites; Infra; En Gedi; Qumran
e debate about the location of the Essenes on the basis of reading Pliny, Hist. Nat. 5.15, remains unresolved. With arguments on both sides having been stated cogently, there seems little new to add to the debate, and proponents of both readings have felt justified in their interpretations.1
For arguments in favor of a site north of En Gedi, see E. M. Laperrousaz, “‘Infra hos Engadda’, notes à propos d’un article récent,” RB 69 (1962): 369–80, who reads infra as “downstream”; Roland de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea
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© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009
DOI: 10.1163/156851709X395777
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However, there is some information useful for this discussion that shows how Pliny was read by travelers to the Dead Sea in previous eras that has thus far been represented erroneously. ere are also comments by people who viewed Kh. Qumran prior to the excavations of the 1950s that indicate why no one identified the site as Essene. All this needs to be remembered in case the equation of Qumran as an Essene site is presented as quite arbitrary. Pliny and the Water of Judaea As is well known, Pliny writes a description of Judaea focusing on its water. Iordanes amnis oritur e fonte Paneade, qui cognomen dedit Caesareae, de qua dicemuus. amnis amoenus et, quatenus locorum situs patitur, ambitiosus accolisque se praebens velut invitus Asphaltiten lacum dirum natura petit, a quo postremo ebibitur aquasque laudatas perdit, pestilentibus mixtas.2
Scrolls ( e Schweich Lectures on British Archaeology; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 133–37; Geza Vermes and Martin Goodman, eds., e Essenes according to the Classical Sources (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 3 n. 19; Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1984), 1:480–81; John J. Collins, “Essenes,” ABD 2:619–26, at 620. For the argument that Pliny refers to the Essenes as being further inland, above/west of En Gedi, see Jean-Paul Audet, “Qumrân et la notice de Pline sur les Esséniens,” RB 68 (1961): 346–87, also Robert A. Kraft, “Pliny on Essenes, Pliny on Jews,” DSD 8 (2001): 255–61, esp. 258; Yizhar Hirschfeld, Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2004), 231–33. For a strong defense of the reading that has the Essenes north of En Gedi see Christian Burchard, “Pline et les Esséniens: à propos d’un article récent,” RB 69 (1962): 533–69. e debate has been nuanced recently in the pages of this journal by the suggestion that while Pliny may refer to Qumran he is untrustworthy and inaccurate: Albert I. Baumgarten, “Who Cares and Why Does it Matter? Qumran and the Essenes, Once Again!” DSD 11 (2004): 174–90, at 177–78, and see Kraft, “Pliny,” 261: “I would not try to build much on this part of Pliny’s reporting!” Magen Broshi has responded by questioning such skepticism, noting that “there is no reason why Pliny’s testimony should be rejected”; cf. “Essenes at Qumran? A Rejoinder to Albert Baumgarten,” DSD 14 (2007): 25–33, at 29. 2 C. Plini Secundi, Naturalis Historiae, ed. Charles Mayhoff (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1967), 390–92.
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e Jordan River rises from the spring of Paneas, which gives its name to Caesarea [Paneas], of which we will speak [later]. e river is pleasant, insofar as the situation of places permits; twining and lingering it shows itself as reluctant to the request of Asphaltites, a lake of a dismal nature, in which finally it is absorbed, and its praised waters lost, mixing with unhealthy ones. is is not a cool, scientific description but it is one that uses personification for the subject of the piece. In characterizing the water as reluctant to come to the party in lake Asphaltitis, Pliny has the water of the Jordan twisting and turning away, and—most especially—procrastinating in lake Genesar: Ergo ubi convallium fuit occasio, in lacum se fundit, quem plures Genesaram vocant, “ erefore where the first convenience makes an occasion, it flows into a lake, which many call Genesar.” We are then given a note of the towns of this lake, which are “pleasant,” amoenis, as is the lake: ab oriente Iuliade et Hippo, a meridie Tarichea, quo nomine aliqui et lacum appellant, ab occidente Tiberiade, aquis calidis salubri, “on the east Julias and Hippo, on the south Tarichea, by which name some call the lake, on the west Tiberias, with healthy hot springs.”3 If we take the text as it stands, the river does a reluctant loop, going down the east side and then back up the west, before continuing south. e water remains the subject, with its pleasantness reflected in the towns, its alternative name coming from Tarichea, and healthy, hot springs at Tiberias mirroring its own healthy quality. en, Pliny notes places around the strange water of Asphaltites: Asphaltites nihil praeter bitumen gignit, unde et nomen. nullum corpus animalium recipit, tauri camelique fluitant; inde fama nihil in eo mergi . . . prospicit eum ab oriente Arabia Nomadum, a meridie Machaerus, secunda
Whether Tarichea is mistakenly placed in the south by Pliny or by a later copyist remains unknown. In my article, “Philo of Alexandria on the Essenes: A Case Study on the Use of Classical Sources in Discussions of the Qumran-Essene Hypothesis,” SPhilo 19 (2007): 1–28, correction to a proof resulted in the following printing error: “he [Pliny] places Tarichaea south of the sea of Philoteria, perhaps confusing it with Galilee,” 2 n. 2, which only goes to show how transmission of place-names can be skewed (i.e. transpose “Galilee” and “Philoteria”). Tarichea is normally considered to be Magdala, north of Tiberias. Additionally, the alternative name applied to this body of water was Lake of Tiberias, not Lake of Tarichea (see Eusebius, Onom. 74; 162).
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quondam arx Iudaeae ab Hierosolymis. eodem latere est calidus fons medicae salubritatis Callirhoe, aquarum gloriam ipso nomine praeferens. ab occidente litora Esseni fugiunt usque qua nocent . . . infra hos Engada oppidum fuit, secundum ab Hierosolymis fertilitate palmetorumque nemoribus, nunc alterum bustum. inde Masada castellum in rupe, et ipsum haut procul Asphaltite. et hactenus Iudaea est. Asphaltitis produces nothing except bitumen, hence its name. It receives no body of an animal; bulls and camels float. On account of this character nothing sinks in it. . . . Facing it in the east [corr. south] is Arabia of the Nomads. On the south [corr. east] is Machaerus, a Judaean citadel at one time second to Jerusalem. On the same side is the curative, healthy hot spring, Callirhoe, this name well-known because of the fame of its waters. On the west the Essenes flee all the way from the shores which are harmful, . . . Below these was the town of En Gedi, second only to Jerusalem [corr. Jericho] in fertility and groves of palms, now another ash-heap. en Masada, a fortress on a rock, and this not far from Asphaltites. And to here is Judaea. is text is slightly corrupt. It seems ab oriente and a meridie have been transposed to replicate the reluctant turn of water around Genesar. Pliny writes that Arabica “faces” or looks out at” the lake, which stresses its position just beyond Judaea, but the specific sites he mentions are within Judaea.4 Pliny cannot have meant to refer to Judaean Machaerus as lying to the south of the lake, since the famous healing sanctuary east of the Dead Sea, Callirhoe (cf. Ptolemy, Geogr. 5.16; Josephus, War 1.657–659; Ant. 17.169–176), is identified as being on the same side as Machaerus, and ultimately the key southern point and terminus of Judaea is identified as Masada, not these two sites. In terms of the whole passage, the flow goes e fonte Paneade, “from the spring Paneas” hactenus “to here” (Masada), the water being the length of Judaea itself. More immediately, on the western side of Asphaltites the movement goes south so that “below” the Essenes there lies Engeddi (infra hos Engada) and “from there Masada” (inde Masada).5 e word inde most naturally carries on the trajectory established by infra hos: “below them . . .
A little earlier Pliny had written that Judaea was called Peraea “near Arabia and Egypt,” . . . “separated from the rest by the river Jordan.” is is where Machaerus and Callirhoe lay. 5 To look at En Gedi separately in relation to the Essenes without noting the
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from there . . .” If infra hos is understood to mean a site below the Essenes in height, then inde would have to mean that Masada is even lower down, also in height. e overall movement of the corrected text as it mentions places around the lake is then east, west, and south. e water remains the subject. Lake Asphaltites’ nature is bizarre and unpleasant, in contrast to the River Jordan, and yet, paradoxically, there are famous restorative springs beside it, the weirdly-enduring Essenes, and “below these,” i.e. “downstream from these,” a town with fertility second only to Jericho (correcting “Jerusalem,” which appears earlier in the passage in a similar phrase—secunda quondam arx Iudaeae ab Hierosolymis). As Laperrousaz carefully surveyed, Pliny uses the term infra as “downstream” in six other instances (Nat. Hist. 3.9; 4.26; 5.11, 15; 6.31 [x2], 32) and probably also in two further cases (Nat. Hist. 6.23, x2).6 It fits both with his usage and the subject of his description: water. Here there is a valid objection that we are in a lake rather than a river, and so “downstream” for infra just seems wrong, even with the framework of “from here . . . to here” that Pliny presents. For infra to be “downstream” the water would need some kind of south-moving momentum, when everyone knows that the Dead Sea is a dead end. Interestingly, however, there are ideas of the continuation of the Jordan’s momentum in later sources. For example, in the description by Burchard of Mount Zion in 1283, he reports a Muslim belief that the Jordan “both enters the sea and leaves the same, but shortly after leaving it is swallowed up in the earth.”7 Richard Pococke noted: “It is very extraordinary that no outlet of this lake has been discovered; but it is supposed that there must be some subterranean passage into the Mediterranean,”8 and “[i]t is a common opinion that the waters of that river [Jordan] pass through it without mixing with the water of the lake, and I thought I saw a stream of a different colour; and possibly, as it is rapid, it may run unmixed for some way.”9 Pliny clearly understood that there was a mixing, but this does not imply a lack of
continuation of the direction indicated by “below them” would be to take certain words out of context. 6 Laperrousaz, “‘Infra hos Engadda,’” 375. 7 See Descriptio Terrae Sanctae in Burchard of Mount Sion (Palestine Pilgrims’ Texts Society 12; London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1896), 60. 8 Richard Pococke, A Description of the East and Some Other Countries (London: W. Bowyer, 1745), 2:35 9 Ibid, 36. See also Barbara Kreiger, e Dead Sea: Myth, History and Politics
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motion, and there is indeed a largely south-moving current in the Dead Sea which probably explains the belief that there was some unseen exit for water at the southern end. e true explanation for this current was not found until David Neev and K. O. Emery demonstrated that the greater density of the southern basin pulled the water of the northern basin towards it, which, combined with the Corolis effect from the earth’s rotation, created a strong flow south along the west coast and a weak north-flowing stream on the eastern side.10 Was Pliny aware of such a current on the west side? Was there something in his source he omitted concerning an exit of water in the south of the lake? He might well have had some indication of this, but since Pliny is interested in defining Judaea’s extent, he snaps the account shut at the boundary of the land, and does not speculate on the continuation of the flow he alludes to. e important thing is that Pliny does not much move away from water as his reference point in terms of placements, and infra when used of water carries the sense that one is to look beyond a point according to the flow. A water-based understanding of infra therefore makes the best sense in terms of the language and content of the whole passage. e Dead Sea and the Essenes Yizhar Hirschfeld recently asserted that “Pliny’s testimony is the only one that locates the Essenes in the Dead Sea region,”11 but this is not so. e association was also made by Dio Chrysostom (c. 90 C.E.), in a discourse mentioned by Synesius (c. 400 C.E.): Essenes have “a whole happy city by the dead water in the interior of Palestine (!"#$ %& '()#&' *+,# -' %. /(012(34 %56 7"8"90%3':6), [a city] lying somewhere close by Sodom” (Synesius, Dion 3.2). Mention of Sodom, and the peculiar term %& '()#&' *+,#, means it is unlikely that Dio derived his information from Pliny.12
(2d ed.; Hanover: Brandeis University Press/University of New England, 1997), 19–20. 10 David Neev and K. O. Emery, e Dead Sea: Depositional Processes and Environments of Evaporites, State of Israel, Ministry of Development, Geological Survey Bulletin 41 (Jerusalem: Ministry of Development, 1967). 11 Hirschfeld, Qumran in Context, 232. 12 Contra Adam Kamesar, “Review of e Essenes According to the Classical Sources,” JAOS 111 (1991): 134. In addition, Dio apparently praised the Essenes,
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Solinus (fl. 250 C.E.), in his Collectanea 35.1–12, reflects Pliny and also another source, which may (through a compiler) be Dio, since here too there is mention of Sodom, as well as Gomorra (ibi duo oppida, Sodomum nominatum alterum, alterum Gomorrum: “in that place [are] two towns, the one named Sodom, the other Gomorra”) and the curious lake is described as being “in the interior of Judaea”: interiora Iudaeae, paralleling Dio’s !" #$ %&'()&*+ #,- ./0/1'#*"2-.13 Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (Satyricon) 6.679 (c. 400 C.E.), provides a shortened and slightly garbled version of Pliny, while Epiphanius (c. 375 C.E.) places his 34''/5(1 on the other side of the Dead Sea within the regions of Nabataea and Peraea (Pan. 19.1.1; 19.2.2; cf. Pan. 53.1.1), but still the lake features as an associated zone.14 It has been suggested by Stephen Goranson that Pliny’s source on the Essenes is a lost geographical work by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (63–12 B.C.E.),15 though Nikos Kokkinos’ recent insight that this particular section may come from another lost work, by C. Licinius Mucianus (legatus of Syria 67–69 C.E.), is significant, since Mucianus made a compilation of observations regarding curiosities of the world (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 7.36), a collection of paradoxa or mirabilia in which the wonders and paradoxes of Judaea’s waters would have been appropriate, as would the marvel of the ever-enduring, sex-eschewing Essenes.16 e literary genre of this passage
when Pliny sees them as a wonder only for their continual existence without reproduction, resulting from people’s despair of life, see Joan E. Taylor, “Dio Chrysostom—according to Synesius—on the Essene Landscape,” in e Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts and Contexts (ed. Charlotte Hempel; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 13 C. Iulii Solini, Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium, ed. . Mommsen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), 155. To some extent this could reflect Pliny’s identification of Judaea as being supra Idumaeam et Samariam, if supra indicates a place further inland, “beyond,” though with Dio and Solinus the references are specifically to the Dead Sea and not to Judaea as a whole. 14 See also Burchard, “Pline,” 542. 15 Stephen Goranson, “Posidonius, Strabo, and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa as Sources on Essenes,” JJS 45 (1994): 295–98, a proposition previously made by Martine Dulaey, “La notice de Pline sur les esséniens (HN 5, 17, 73),” Helmantica 38 (1987): 283–93, reprinted in Jackie Pigeaud et José Oroz-Reta, Pline l’Ancien: témoin de son temps (Conventus Pliniani Internationalis, Namenti 22–26 Oct. 1985) (Salamanca: Universidad Pontifica, 1987), 599–609. I am grateful to Stephen Goranson for this reference. 16 Nikos Kokkinos, “ e City of ‘Mariamme’: an Unknown Herodian Connection?”
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is important for understanding its emphases and language. Solinus reflects this genre more apparently than Pliny, in writing his own collection of mirabilia, and he prefaces the entire description of Judaea with the comment, Iudaea inlustris est aquis, sed natura non eadem aquarum omnium, “Judaea is famous for waters, but all these waters are not of a [single] nature” (35.1), a theme that seems to underlie Pliny’s description despite the fact that he never articulates this in so many words. Scholarship on Pliny’s Reference to the Essenes In discussions about how to read Pliny, appeal has at times been made to the history of scholarship, in that it is implied that there was an absence of any absolutely clear association between the north-western coast of the Dead Sea and the Essenes in previous academic writing, indicating that no one read Pliny as meaning to refer to this locality, and that instead scholars linked the Essenes with En-Gedi. Yizhar Hirschfeld commented that “[b]efore the discovery of the Scrolls, there were no doubts among scholars that the Essene settlement should be located in the En-Gedi area.”17 However, the situation is more complex. In the first place, it should be noted that from the Middle Ages onwards the location of En Gedi itself was believed to have been in the north-western part of the Dead Sea coast. Burchard de Monte Sion, Descriptio Terrae Sanctae (1280),18 notes that Biblical Zoar, called Segor by Christians, was now pointed out just 5 leagues (14.5 km.) south-west of Jericho “at the foot of Mount
Mediterraneo Antico 5 (2002): 715–46, at 729–30; first identified by Alfred Klotz, Quaestiones Plinianae geographicae (Berlin: Weidmann, 1906), 160. Ben Zion Wacholder has suggested Nicolaus of Damascus’ work, “Collection of Remarkable Customs,” as a source (Nicolaus of Damascus [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962], 71–72) but Nicolaus would better suit being a source for Josephus’ accounts of the Essenes rather than Pliny’s since Pliny’s description of the Essenes is embedded in a description of the amazing (and somewhat personified) water of Judaea (on which see Mary Beagon, Roman Nature: e ought of Pliny the Elder [Oxford: Clarendon, 1992], 196). 17 Hirschfeld, Qumran in Context, 232 n. 82. 18 Burchard de Monte Sion, Descriptio Terrae Sanctae; ed. J. C. M. Laurent, Peregrinatores medii aevi quattuor (Leipzig: H. C. Hinrichs Bibliopola,1864); Eng. transl. PPTS XII (1896), see pp. 58–63.
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Engaddi.”19 In the compilation book of the travels of Jehan de Mandeville, published 1357–1371 in Anglo-Norman French: the land of En Gedi is between Jericho and the Dead Sea.20 e 15th-century visitor Felix Fabri thinks he is on Mount Engaddi, at Khan al-Askar, just south-east of Jericho, which leads him to a discussion of opobalsam.21 Such northern placements of En Gedi (alternatively, one that placed En Gedi close to Bethlehem) were repeated through to the early 19th century; the “ruines d’Engaddi” are situated at the end of the valley of Achor in M. Jacotin’s map of 1799, not far from the island of Rujm el-Bahr. It was not until Edward Robinson successfully publicized Ulrich Seetzen’s identification (on his map drawn on the basis of Jacotin’s, in 1806), of En Gedi being the spring still called Ain Jiddi in Arabic, that scholars identified En Gedi in its present location.22 Because of the placement of En Gedi in the north-west, scholars prior to Robinson either placed the Essenes in the north-west, adjacent to the Buqeia, or—more sceptically—somewhere on the western side of the Dead Sea, since En Gedi itself could have been located anywhere in this region on the basis of the ancient sources (e.g. Eusebius, Onomasticon 68.11; 86.16; 96.9: “Engadda . . . lies to the west of the Dead Sea”). In the writings of the Englishman Richard Pococke, who traveled through the Buqeia and visited the region near En Feshkha in 1740, he notes the problem of bad air around the Dead Sea, and writes of this place: “Pliny says, that the Essenes inhabited no nearer to it on the west, than the air would permit
e southern town previously called Segor or Zoar was now no more and a new town named Zukhar (which flourished from the 11th to the 15th centuries) had taken its place. us memory of Zoar/Segor appears to have been eroded. 20 T. Wright, ed., Early Travels in Palestine (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1848), 178–81. 21 Felix Fabri, Evagatorium in Terrae Sanctae, Arabiae et Egypti peregrinationem (ed. C. D. Hassler, 3 vols.; Stuttgart: Stuttgard.-Literarischerverein, 1843); Eng. transl. Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society VII-IX (1893–97): IX, folios 246a–247a. 22 Edward Robinson, “A Brief Report of Travels in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions in 1839 undertaken for the Illustration of Biblical Geography,” in e American Biblical Repository (New York: Gould, Newman and Saxton, 1838), 2:418; Edward Robinson and Eli Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1856), 506–9, cf. Ulrich Jasper Seetzen, Reisen durch Syrien, Palästina, Phönicien, die Transjordan-Länder, Arabia Petraea, und UnterAegypten (ed. and comm. Fr. Kruse; 4 vols.; Berlin: G. Reimer, 1854), 2:226–27.
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them.”23 Johan David Michaelis, in 1750, identified Pliny’s locality with the desert of Judaea: “Now the desert of Judaea . . . was a place of resort for the Essenes, who, according to Pliny were very numerous in the neighborhood of En-geddi, near the Dead Sea.”24 In August Neander’s monumental history of the Church, published in 1825: the Essenes lived “in der stillen Gegend an der west-seite des todten Meeres.”25 e non-specific view is reflected repeatedly in the scholarly literature, for example by Henry Hart Milman in 1843: “in some highly cultivated oases amid the wilderness on the shores of the Dead Sea were situated the chief of the large agricultural villages of the Essenes.”26 omas Oswald Cockayne wrote in 1841 that “Pliny also attributes great antiquity to this sect (per saeculorum milia) and places them west of the Dead Sea, in what was called the Wilderness of Judea.”27 is unspecific tendency does not give us a reading of Pliny as such, but indicates an unwillingness to place En Gedi anywhere very surely along the western coast of the Dead Sea. Pliny’s infra hos Engadda was in fact thought to indicate that the town of En Gedi was in a more southern location than the Essene habitations in the translation made by Christian Strack in 1853. He translates: “Südlich von ihnen lag sonst die Stadt Engadda.”28 For explorers who visited the area, who became aware of where En Gedi lay on the basis of Seetzen and Robinson, the question was whether the Essenes extended deep into the Buqeia or right up to En Gedi town, but it was generally understood that En Gedi was south of them. For example, Félicien de Saulcy situated Essenes as far west as Mar Saba monastery.29 He
Pococke, Descriptio, 37. John David Michaelis, Introduction to the New Testament (trans. Herbert Marsh, Vol. IV; London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1823), 87. 25 August Neander, Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche (Gotha: Friedrich Andrens Berthes, 1825), 24. 26 Henry Hart Milman, e History of the Jews from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (New York: Harper and Bros., 1843), 2:124. 27 omas Oswald Cockayne, e Civil History of the Jews, from Joshua to Hadrian (London: John W. Parker, 1841), 207. 28 Cajus Plinius Secundus, Naturgeschichte (ed. Max E. L. Strack; trans. Christian F. L. Strack; Bremen: Johann Georg Heyse, 1853), 220. For this and further discussion on the issue of placement, see Stephen Goranson, “Rereading Pliny on the Essenes: Some Bibliographic Notes.” Online: http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/ symposiums/programs/Goranson98.shtml. 29 Félicien (Jules Réné Bourgignant) de Saulcy, Voyage autour de la mer Morte et
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writes: “C’est Pline qui nous apprend que les Esséniens habitaient la côte occidentale du lac Asphaltite,” taking from this source a license to identify caves in the Mar Saba ravine and mosaic tesserae in the wadi bed as deriving from Essene presence. Likewise, as he goes along the Wadi Kedron, de Saulcy notes, “Partout, sur la rive que nous pouvons étudier de l’oeil en cheminant, les excavations esséniennes pullulent.” ere is no mention of Essenes being further south than this. e close En Gedi connection is found in a report by the American explorer Lieutenant Lynch, who wondered about Essenes in the Wadi Sudeir cliffs just north of (and indeed above) where ancient En Gedi was located.30 is report—first published in 1849 and much reprinted—was very influential. Lynch writes of a party “creeping like mites along the lofty crags descending to this deep chasm” and comments: Some of our party had discovered in the face of the precipice near the fountain, several apertures, one of them arched and faced with stone. ere was no perceptible access to the caverns, which were once, perhaps, the abode of the Essenes. Our sailors could not get to them; and where they fail, none but monkeys can succeed. ere must have been terraced pathways formerly cut in the face of the rock, which have been worn away by winter torrents. It was natural after this description that many commentators would reflect Lynch’s observations, which is why there are references to the Essenes in close association with En Gedi in the post-Lynch scholarly literature, with Pliny brought in for support.31 For example, Robert Buchanan finds a
dans les terres bibliques exécuté de décembre 1850 à avril 1851 (Paris: Gide et J. Baudy, 1853), 145–50. Also see idem, Narrative of a Journey Round the Dead Sea and in the Bible Lands in 1850 and 1851 (ed. and trans. Edward de Warren; London: Richard Bentley, 1853), 152–56: “Pliny informs us that the Essenians inhabited the western coast of the Asphaltic Lake” (155–56). De Saulcy found near Mar Saba a cave and pieces of mosaic tesserae he associated with the Essenes. 30 William F. Lynch, Narrative of the United States’ Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (7th ed.; Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1850), 294. Lynch appears to call the spring Ein Sudeir the fountain of “Ain Jidy,” and writes of part of the “Wady Sudeir” being “below Ain Jidy” (p. 289) with the wadi going down towards the Dead Sea. 31 Arthur P. Stanley, Sinai and Palestine in Connection with History (London: John Murray, 1856), 296; Emil Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ (trans. Sophia Taylor and Peter Christie; Edinburgh: T. & T.
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place for the observations of both de Saulcy and Lynch. Looking at the caves around Mar Saba he comments: In these caves, it is said, that the Essenes . . . were . . . wont to live previous to, and about the commencement of, the Christian era. If Pliny be correct in placing the head-quarters of the Essenes among the rocks of En-Gedi (Ain-Jiddy), not more than twelve or fourteen miles southeast of Mar Saba, the probability is all the greater that some of them may have dwelt here.32 Buchanan was much taken with Lynch’s descriptions, and quotes extensively from him just pages further on.33 For him, however, any close association of the Essenes with En Gedi made it even more probable that they were also at Mar Saba. By the middle of the 20th century, this association between the cliffs above and north of the spring of En Gedi and the Essenes was much supported, especially in French scholarship, thanks to the influence of FélixMarie Abel, who championed the close En Gedi association.34 When André Dupont-Sommer considered Pliny in relation to the Essenes, his tone suggests he is arguing against the current scholarly consensus on the question: It is generally admitted that the Essene colony described by Pliny was situated near the spring of Engedi, towards the centre of the western shore of the Dead Sea; in fact the text of Pliny continues thus: “Below them (infra hos) was the town of Engada . . .” But I believe this means not that the Essenes lived in the mountains just above the famous spring, but that this was a little distance from their settlement, towards the south. Pliny then actually goes on to describe Masada, further to the south: “from thence (from Engada) one comes to Masada . . .” us from north to south we have the Essene “city,” then Engada, then Masada. If Pliny’s text is to be understood in this way, the Essene “city”
Clark, 1885), 193–94; Walter Bauer in August Friedrich von Pauly and Georg Wissowa (eds.), Real-Enzyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Neue Bearbeitung, Supplement IV (Stuttgart: Metzlerscher Verlag, 1924), 386–430, at 390. Félix-Marie Abel, Géographie de la Palestine (2 vols.; Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1938), 2:316–17. 32 Robert Buchanan, Notes of a Clerical Furlough, Spent Chiefly in the Holy Land (Glasgow: W. G. Blackie and Co., 1859), 268. 33 Ibid., 276–78. 34 Abel, Géographie de la Palestine, 2:316–17.
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would be found towards the north of the western shore; that is to say, precisely in the region of !Ain-Feshkha itself. Should this explanation not be acceptable, it could be supposed that the Essenes possessed monasteries other than that mentioned by Pliny and Dio in the same Wilderness of Judaea, and that the monastery of the New Covenant from which come the !Ain Feshkha scrolls was one of these Essene monasteries.35 However, whatever some scholars believed in terms of the Essenes living among the rocks of En Gedi (i.e. the cliffs north of the ancient town), it did not stop visitors from continuing to understand Pliny as referring to a region inland from the north-western Dead Sea in which the Essenes could have lived anywhere. As Christian D. Ginsburg wrote in his essay on the Essenes, “the majority of them settled on the north-west shore of the Dead Sea.”36 William Hepworth Dixon, who visited the area, stated in 1866 that the “chief seats of this sect [of the Essenes] were pitched on the western shores of the Dead Sea, about the present Ras el Feshka and along the slopes of the wilderness by Mar Saba and Ain Jidy. Some of them dwelt in the villages below Bethlehem. One of the gates of Jerusalem bore their name,” and when he gets to Ain Feshkha he identifies it as “a saline spring in the ancient territories of the Essenes.”37 When Claude Conder came with the Palestine Exploration Fund survey team to make the first detailed maps of this region from 1872–1875 he noted, regarding the Judaean wilderness north-west of the Dead Sea: From a very early period this horrible wilderness appears to have had an attraction for ascetics, who sought a retreat from the busy world of
A. Dupont-Sommer, e Dead Sea Scrolls: A Preliminary Survey (trans. E. Margaret Rowley; Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), 86 n. 1. e original French is found in idem, Aperçus préliminaires sur les manuscrits de la Mer Morte (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1950), 106 n. 3. I am grateful to Steve Mason for this reference. 36 Christian D. Ginsburg, e Essenes: eir History and Doctrines; e Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Development and Literature (London: Longman and Green, 1864; repr., London: Routledge and Paul, 1955), 26. 37 William Hepworth Dixon, e Holy Land (2d ed.; vol. 1; London: Chapman and Hall, 1866), 279–80, 284–85; cf. Joseph B. Lightfoot, “On Some Points Connected with the Essenes,” in idem, e Epistles of St. Paul iii. e First Roman Captivity. 2. e Epistle to the Colossians, 3. Epistle to Philemon (1875), 114–79, at 146: “ e home of the Essene sect is allowed on all hands to have been on the eastern borders of Palestine, the shores of the Dead Sea, a region least of all exposed to the influences of Greek philosophy.”
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their fellow men, and who sought to please God by torturing their bodies he had given them. us the Essenes, the Jewish sect whose habits and tenets resembled so closely those of the first Christians, retired into this wilderness and lived in caves. Christian hermits, from the earliest period, were also numerous in all the country between Jerusalem and Jericho.38 R. H. Charles in 1912 could write that “the Essenians inhabited the western coast of the Asphaltic Lake,” and could translate Pliny as “Below the country of the Essenians is Engadda,” the “below” here in fact indicating a southerly site, further along the Essene coast.39 e area of the northwestern Dead Sea hinterland was not identified as an Essene location only after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947; rather a large part of it was long considered by scholars to be the locale of the Essenes in the Second Temple period, a region that stretched from Rujm el-Bahr to En Gedi, from Mar Saba to the coast of the lake. What is strikingly missing in the discussions is any sense that there was one exclusive site apart from that identified by Lynch, and even then scholars continued to see the Essenes as inhabiting a region. Lena Cansdale has stated that “before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, no connection had been made between the sect of the Essenes and the ruined, ancient settlement of Qumran,”40 a comment that is both true and misleading in that it may imply that identifying Qumran as Essene is wildly arbitrary. However, Qumran itself lay unidentified as an Essene site—even though it lay right where Essenes were thought to be situated—not because no one thought of this area as an Essene location, but because no one believed that the ruins of Qumran dated to the time of the Essenes. It seems clear from the accounts of travelers to the Dead Sea that in the later Middle Ages the ruins of Qumran were identified with Biblical Zoar/ Segor which, along with En Gedi, was erroneously placed along the northwestern part of the lake shore, while Seboim was identified with the largely
Claude R. Conder, Tent Work in Palestine (vol. 2; London: Richard Bentley and Sons, 1878), 301. 39 R. H. Charles, Fragments of a Zadokite Work (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912), 155–56. 40 Lena Cansdale, Qumran and the Essenes: A Re-Evaluation of the Evidence (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1997), 19.
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submerged ruins of Rujm el-Bahr.41 As time went by this identification of Qumran as Segor was itself forgotten, and Jacotin’s map may suggest that some visitors identified Qumran with En Gedi. When Félicien de Saulcy visited in 1851 he proposed that Qumran was to be seen as another Biblical city: Gomorrah.42 Despite a widespread skepticism about this identification, no one placed Qumran within the Second Temple Period, when the Essenes lived in the area, and—when not making wild conjectures about Biblical cities—they identified the site as a Roman or later fortress, as suggested by C. W. M. Van der Velde in 1856: “ e ruins called Ghomran are those of a small fortress which has been built to guard the pass above; and around it, on the E. and S., a few cottages have stood, which probably afforded shelter to the soldiers, the whole having been surrounded by a wall for defense.”43 is was a perfectly valid interpretation of the ruins of Period III at Qumran, which had been left to weather the centuries around about the end of the 1st c. C.E. to early 2d c. C.E. (at the latest from the time of Bar Kochba).44 It was believed that there was no synchronicity between the ruins and the Essenes: that is the reason it was not identified as an Essene site, despite the fact that it lay in what was identified as an Essene area in the Second Temple Period. Interpreting Pliny in Terms of Region Turning to how we should interpret Pliny on the basis of what is known from archaeology, his evidence is as critical as ever, especially in the light of Dio, and should surely not be dismissed. Given our modern image of Qumran, now located with palm trees beside it, we may be inclined to read
For discussion see Joan E. Taylor, “Frühe Entdecker und die Wiederentdeckung des Toten Meers,” in Qumran und die Region am Toten Meer (ed. Jürgen Zangenberg; Zaberns Bildbände zur Archäologie; Mainz: Philipp von Zabern Verlag, forthcoming). 42 For a summary of the reports by explorers who visited the area in the 19th century see Joan E. Taylor, “Khirbet Qumran in the Nineteenth Century and the Name of the Site,” PEQ 134 (2002): 144–64. 43 Carel Willem Meredith van de Velde, Memoir to Accompany the Map of the Holy Land (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1856), 257. 44 See Joan E. Taylor, “Kh. Qumran in Period III,” in Qumran—the Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates, proceedings of a conference held at Brown University, Nov. 17–19, 2002 (ed. Katharina Galor, JeanBaptiste Humbert, and Jürgen Zangenberg; Leiden: Brill, 2006): 133–46.
41
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Pliny as indicating this site alone, not a region. Further, discussion of Pliny’s meaning has of course sometimes turned on whether he means Qumran solely or not, but Pliny’s description of the Essenes being gens sola . . . socia palmarum does not read that they only lived at one place. Palm trees can be a feature of any site of human habitation with sufficient irrigation in the region to this day and would have grown at Qumran, En Feshkha, and elsewhere along the coast where there was adequate water— though probably not in the Buqeia.45 Diodorus Siculus wrote that, in the area of the Dead Sea “the land is good for growing palms, wherever it happens to be crossed by rivers with usable water, or to be endowed with springs that can irrigate it” (Bibl. Hist. 2.48.9). In fact, reading exclusively within the parameters of Pliny’s text, palm trees are, at the point that Essenes are introduced, associated with the area of Jericho (Hiericuntem palmetis consitam). Only after the introduction of the Essenes do we learn that En Gedi also has palm trees (secundum ab Hierosolymis fertilitate palmetorumque nemoribus, “second to Jerusalem [corr. Jericho] in fertility and groves of palms”), so the way Pliny presents it in his narrative the Essenes seem to be companioned on the one side with the palm trees of Jericho and on the other with those of En Gedi, which again creates an image of a wide region. More likely, however, Pliny is vividly using the image of palm trees to emphasize the isolation of the Essenes in this environment in comparison to normal settlements of villages and farms of fertile regions: here the barren wilderness by a sea devoid of life is interrupted by small zones of life in which palm trees are the most obvious living entities, standing like a crowd around settlements. Apart from these, there are no other life forms to be seen.46 As Burchard pointed out, Pliny used the word litora, “shores,” in plural, meaning a stretch of bays, not one shore at one place. e reference does not indicate just the site of Qumran, “mais d’un district essénien,” and therefore, Burchard asks, “[e]st-ce parce que l’auteur . . . bien savait-il que les Esséniens tenaient en effet toute la région entre les grottes au nord de Kh. Qumrân et le Râs Feshkha au sud, y compris, peut-être, la Bouqei!â?”47 at Pliny is referring to a large area comes through also in the emphasis placed on how many Essenes there were. He uses the word turba, “swarm,
Note that Solinus describes the Essenes as making their living from date palms: palmis victitant. 46 See also Burchard, “Pline,” 567. 47 Ibid., 543.
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crowd, multitude.” Moreover, gens is not an appropriate word for the inhabitants of one single settlement, but rather refers to a people, like a clan or race, who stretch over a country or province, as Burchard has noted.48 at there were so many Essenes yet no sexual reproduction within their gens was precisely why the Essenes were a peculiar wonder in a GraecoRoman assemblage of remarkable things: ita per saeculorum milia, incredibile dictu, gens aeterna est, in qua nemo nascitur, “In this manner, through thousands of ages—incredible to say—it is an enduring people, in which no one is born.” e comment incredibile dictu indicates the entire tone of this description. e size of the population is one key factor in why this gens is so incredible. Philo of Alexandria and Josephus also mention a huge number of Essenes: over 4000 in total (Prob. 75; Ant. 18.20). Philo’s word !"#$%&, “crowd” or “throng” (Prob. 91) reinforces this. In Philo’s Hypothetica, Moses trained "'()%'&, “multitudes” of his pupils for a life of community, namely the Essenes, and “they dwell in many cities of Judaea, and many villages, and in great and much-populated throngs” (Hypoth. 11.1, cf. 11.5). Unlike Pliny, neither Philo nor Josephus place the Essenes by the Dead Sea, but have them in Judaea generally, but since Judaea is included in the area Pliny specifically defines as Essene, the evidence is not remotely contradictory. Philo and Josephus do not need to be read to indicate that the Essenes were evenly spread, even if Essenes were found in many places, including perhaps (unlike Pliny) En Gedi; for Pliny they could not have existed there because En Gedi was totally destroyed. Of course, Philo and Josephus may well have known of Essenes most especially living by the Dead Sea in Judaea and simply omitted any detailed identification of them there to guard against the negative associations it could have created. People understood that the Dead Sea had bad air;49 Strabo has sooty smoke coming out of the lake and tarnishing metal (Geogr. 16.2.42). Philo was particularly conscious of the need to breathe good air (Gig. 10) and in the case of the “ erapeutae,” Philo extols the
Ibid., 541. is is a view that persisted until modern times, see Daniel the Abbot (1106–8), 27; transl. William F. Ryan in John Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099–1185 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1988), 38. In the 15th century, Father Felix Fabri was told that no one should visit the lake because the stench from the sea makes you vulnerable to infection, sickness and death: Felix Fabri, Evagatorium, 236a.
48 49
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Jewish philosophers’ chosen locality at length precisely because of its health-giving breezes, which blew from both the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Mareotis (Contempl. 22–23);50 their choice of location reflected well on their wisdom. Philo could say no such thing about the wisdom of people living next to the Dead Sea, and Pliny himself had to emphasize that the Essenes lived some distance from the shores, to preserve themselves from harm. An image of a regional Essene locality does not preclude Hirschfeld being right about some possible temporary Essene presence behind and above En Gedi, even though the structures he identifies are not hermits’ retreats but seasonal huts for agricultural work,51 since once the dichotomizing tendencies of the debate are removed then one can read Pliny as accommodating numerous Essene sites within the general area, sites used not for contemplation but for productive work. Hirschfeld himself ended his entire archaeological reassessment of Qumran by noting not only his own discovery of small huts behind En Gedi as being suitable for Essenes, in accordance with a reading of Pliny that focused on height, but also by noting that Pesach Bar Adon’s surveys showing that similar sites were found in 16 locations at the foot of the cliffs or on the natural terrace that runs between En Gedi and Kh. Mazin.52 He then stated that “[a]nalysis of Pliny’s testimony supports the assumption that the site above En-Gedi and similar sites were part of a general phenomenon of ascetic colonies along the western shore of the Dead Sea in the Second Temple Period [italics mine],” here adopting the rival reading of Pliny.53 Pliny’s evidence does not require a strictly minimalist either/or situation of only one archaeological site being Essene within this broad region; potentially any site in the north-western Dead Sea vicinity might have
See Joan E. Taylor, Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo’s erapeutae Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 75–81. 51 Hirschfeld, Qumran in Context, 233–40; idem, “A Settlement of Hermits above En Gedi,” Tel Aviv 27 (2000): 103–55. Hirschfeld notes that this area was sparsely occupied, containing 28 small cells. David Amit and Jodi Magness, “Not a Settlement of Hermits or Essenes: A Response to Y. Hirschfeld, A Settlement of Hermits above !En Gedi,” Tel Aviv 27 (2000): 273–85, have pointed out the seasonal, agricultural character of these structures. 52 Pesach Bar Adon, “Another Settlement of the Judean Desert Sect at !En el-Ghuweir on the Shores of the Dead Sea,” BASOR 227 (1977): 1–26; idem, “Excavations in the Judean Desert,” !Atiqot 9 (1989): 1–88 [Hebrew]. 53 Hirschfeld, Qumran in Context, 240.
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been occupied by Essenes in the Second Temple period, if we credit Pliny with any validity at all. However, this is not to say that archaeological proof of Essenes must be found in order to grant Pliny any historical credence. In ancient history, we cannot look to archaeology for clear proof of every literary attestation, or we would have precious little history at all. Ultimately, as historians are forced to do very frequently, we need to rely on sound textual evidence even when archaeology provides inconclusive data, or no data at all, in order to make any propositions about the past. is does not result in absolutes, merely fair suggestions that may or may not be corroborated. Ancient history is not an exact science that can necessarily provide sure, provable results. Perhaps the best archaeology can do in this case is to establish that certain sites such as Qumran and En Feshkha were Jewish, with additional features very appropriate to Essene occupation. However, the nature of the site itself must be remembered. It is surely questionable whether many smaller industrial or agricultural settlements anywhere provide any firm indicators of the ethnicity or religious affiliation of the inhabitants. A grape-press in an area attested by literary sources to be Jewish and near to archaeological sites of synagogues or miqvaot (and so on) would probably have been operated by Jews even if nothing else indicates this; likewise an agricultural or technical installation in an area attested as being occupied by Essene Jews might well have been operated by them even without a single sectarian indicator. e nature of a site will dictate the nature of the evidence. Given this, should the onus be on archaeologists to prove a distinctively Essene archaeology as such? We have seen how easily this can come unstuck in the case of the cemetery, which at one time was thought to indicate quite clearly a particularly Essene form of burial,54 so that other similar burials in Judaea could be identified as Essene,55 until it was realized that Nabataeans could also bury their dead in this way56 and it might actually
E.g. see Emile Puech, “ e Necropolises of Khirbet Qumran and Ain el-Ghuweir and the Essene Belief in Afterlife,” BASOR 312 (1998): 21–36. 55 Boaz Zissu, “‘Qumran Type’ Graves in Jerusalem: Archaeological Evidence of an Essene Community,” DSD 5 (1998): 158–71, trans. of idem, “Field Graves at Beit Zafafa: Archaeological Evidence for the Essene Community,” in New Studies on Jerusalem (ed. A. Faust; Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1996): 32–40 [Hebrew]. 56 Konstantinos Politis, “Khirbet Qazone,” AJA 102 (1998): 596–97; idem,
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simply be a method of burial for people too poor to afford rock-cut tombs: a type of burial appropriate to Essenes while not necessarily being distinctive to them alone.57 Archaeologists in favor of the Qumran-Essene hypothesis can adopt an ultra-defensive position in terms of the site’s apparent sectarian features, when answering criticisms that if features which were previously thought to be “Essene” are not distinctively so at all, then the Essenes may not have lived at Qumran. But the fact remains that Essenes may have lived at Qumran even if there is not a single incontestable archaeological indicator of their presence (though I think there are some of these),58 just as Christians lived throughout the Roman Empire in the first two centuries—as we find in numerous literary sources—but there is virtually nothing in the archaeological record to prove their existence before the 3rd c. C.E. Archaeology can at times greatly help solving historical problems and it may illuminate the past in myriad ways, but it also has its limits in terms of the hard evidence it can provide to prove any given historical hypothesis one way or another. In summary, Pliny’s infra hos is ambiguous, and has warranted careful debate, but it is most naturally understood in its literary context as indicating the flow of water from the spring of Paneas to the south of the Dead Sea. On the basis of Pliny, Essenes were considered to live in the region west of the northern part of the Dead Sea—as far south as En Gedi or as far west as Mar Saba—by western explorers and travelers who ventured to
“Rescue Excavations in the Nabataean Cemetery at Khirbat Qazone 1996–1997,” ADAJ 42 (1998): 611–14; idem, “Khirbet Qazone: une nécropole nabatéenne à la mer Morte,” Le Monde de la Bible 121 (Sept.–Oct. 1999): 95; idem, “ e Nabataean Cemetery at Khirbet Qazone,” Near Eastern Archaeology 62 (1999): 128; idem, “Chirbet Qazone. Ein nabatäischer Friedhof am Toten Meer,” Welt und Umwelt der Bibel 16 (2000): 76. 57 Joan E. Taylor, “ e Cemeteries of Khirbet Qumran and Women’s Presence at the Site,” DSD 6 (1999): 285–323, at 312–13. 58 On the basis of de Vaux, Archaeology; E. M. Laperrousaz, Qoumran, l’établissement essénien des bords de la Mer Morte, histoire et archéologie du site (Paris: A. & J. Picard, 1976); Jean-Baptiste Humbert, “L’espace sacré à Qumrân: Propositions pour l’archéologie,” RB 101 (1994): 161–214, idem, “Some Remarks on the Archaeology of Qumran,” in Galor et al., Qumran—the Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates, 19–39; Jodi Magness, e Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002).
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the region, or commentators basing themselves on their observations, long before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. With the ruins of Qumran, once the issue of contemporaneity was established by archaeological investigations, this site also was validly considered as being potentially an Essene habitation, especially as some of the site’s features are consistent with this interpretation, though it has become the only site in the minds of some. In cases where a non-Essene interpretation of Qumran has been suggested in recent revisions of the archaeology, there has been an effort to read Pliny as indicating a location for one small group of people in the hills above En Gedi, an identification that stretches back to the observations of Lynch. As with a Qumran-only picture, this runs directly against indicators in Pliny’s text that he is referring to a region, and against the readings of Pliny by classically trained writers of previous eras. Even the most serious proponent of the En Gedi theory, Yizhar Hirschfeld, noted that in fact similar settlements to the Essene habitations he identified stretched up along the coast towards En Feshkha and Qumran. A return to the former concept of an Essene region would enable scholars today to move on from a polarization of conceptualizations regarding the Essene locality, and the Essenes themselves, without demanding exceptional proof that archaeology may not be able to provide with certainty.
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