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Re: orion "damascus"
On Fri, 2 Jan 1998, Stephen Goranson wrote:
> One of the proponents of associating "Damascus" with Qumran is F.M. Cross,
> _Ancient Library of Qumran_ (1960, 1980) 81-3. J. Murphy-O'Connor
> vigorously advocated associating "Damascus" with Babylon (several articles
> in RevBiblique [e.g., 1974, 215-44] and elsewhere). Various others
> (including, e.g., Samuel Iwry in Eretz Israel 9 [1969] 80-5) take
> "Damascus" more literally. In CD, "Land of Damascus" reasonably reads as
> geography: "out of the land of Judah" (VI.5) and "to the land of the north"
> (VII.14). Among the texts to compare: I Kings 19:15 (cf. JJS [1992] 282-7).
> An exile of some Essenes to the "land of Damascus" could have occurred
> duing the reign of Alexander Jannaeus.
I've been working on a somewhat related topic and am likewise inclined to
take CD literally here, which I believe you will discover is the way it
was taken prior to the discovery of the Qumran texts. For a discussion
of upper Galilee (or the upper Jordan) in relation to some related texts,
see George Nickelsburg, "Enoch, Levi, and Peter: Recipients of
Revelation in Upper Galilee," JBL 100 (1981): 575-600. George argues
that there is textual evidence for the association of the upper Jordan
region (just around Mount Hermon from Damascus) with the reception of
revelations and visions, although it becomes more difficult to establish
the basis for such a tradition on the basis of what we know about the region.
David W. Suter
Saint Martin's College
Lacey, WA 98503
dsuter@catadon.stmartin.edu