Re: OFF: Essense (was Re: Re: Onomastics and taxonomies;Was,LeGuin; Was: 12th-centuryconlang)

On Sun, 17 Oct 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Even so, I imagine they MUST have abstained from fluids on the Sabbath
> and Friday.
>
I wandered into the library and borrowed the book which is The Temple
Scroll by Yigael Yadin.  Quick summary: the Hebrew word used for a latrine
in the text is literally 'hand'.  It had to be outside the 'camp', which
is interpreted to be the entire city of the Temple.  The place of the hand
lay outside the distance permitted to travel on a Sabbath.  According to
Josephus they dug a hole and kept it completely covered with their mantles
while they relieved themselves so as not to 'offend the rays of the
deity'.  Yadin concludes 'They evidently trained themselves or ate special
foods, to enable them to have no recourse to a privy on the Sabbath, and
on other days to retire to a far spot..'  According to Yadin the 'Gate of
the Essenes', from where they departed the city to Betsoa, the house of
excrement, was not the same as the later Dung Gate, the former being in
the western wall and the latter being in the south, Betsoa being in the
north-east according to texts.  In that detail my memory was incorrect.

The Rabbinic tradition had no such hang-ups, much to everyone's relief I
would imagine...

- andrew.
--
Andrew Smith, Intheologus                       hobbit@earthlight.co.nz

Giles: Honestly, Buffy.  You order these products, practice with them for
a morning and then cast them aside in favour of a piece of kindling.
When's the last time you used your hippe?
                        - Buffy the Vampire Slayer #3, Dark Horse Comics.