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Re: orion Essenes = 'osey hatorah?

	David Suiter, thanks for your observation.
	Greg Doudna  wrote "Of course [...] Philo is of no real weight" 
and then asked me "On what basis" do I think that *his* interpretation 
of Philo is wrong. But, if he thinks Philo is of "no real weight,"  why 
even ask?
	Jack Kilmon, apparently, prefers Aramaic proposals, and has 
often advocated, alternately, one or the  other of the two most popular 
Aramaic ones, Cross' preference or Vermes' preference ("healers"). 
First, Hebrew is a more likely source for self-designation of Essenes, 
as the torah is in Hebrew. Second, both of these Aramaic proposals can 
be shown to have arisen in the history of scholarship as 
misunderstandings, misunderstandings, e.g., of Maccabees and of De Vita 
Contemplativa. Third,  I do not think 4QAramaic Levi does include this 
Aramaic root. (In the orion archives, this was discussed by Robert 
Kugler, Michael Stone, and others.) Even if one concludes it does 
appear in that little fragment, that is merely once.
	More important, in my opinion, than excluding the sixty or so 
mistaken proposals that I have encountered, is an open-minded look at 
the evidence which indicates Hebrew 'asah: evidence from not only Philo 
and Epiphanius (have you read the latter's description of 
Ossaioi/Ossenoi as a torah observant Jewish heresy? and are you aware 
of the range of sources to which he had access?), but of several other 
texts, citations of which I have typed out on orion before (some of 
them are in Adam/Burchard), more than once, and texts which do indicate 
how the name evolved, why the name was received as it was, and why some 
observers accepted it and some not, and, not least, self-designations 
in several Hebrew Qumran texts widely and correctly regarded, on other 
grounds, as Essene.
	In case anyone is interested, the reference (from Daniel 
Boyarin) that  I mentioned previously (but have not yet seen) is:
Paulus Cassel, "Caricaturnamen," in _Aus Literatur und Geschichte_ 
(Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Friedrich, 1885).
best wishes,
Stephen  


For private reply, e-mail to stephen goranson <goranson@duke.edu>
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