CC BY
43
M. S. Kasyan
Two Virgins - Two Cities: Artemis Ephesia and Aseneth, the Wife of Joseph1
Резюме. В настоящей статье делается попытка прояснить символику апокалиптической сцены иудео-эллинистического апокрифа «Иосиф и Асенет» через сравнение c архаическим культом Артемиды г. Эфес и ее иконографии. Сопоставление мифологических, археологических, а также историко-литературных данных приводит нас к заключению, что литературная образность (пчелы рая, небесный сот, мистическое включение Асенет в сферу божественного и ее новое имя «град убежища») отражает древнейшее представление о божественности пчел, как оно было представлено в малоазийском культе Артемиды Эфесской.
Ключевые слова: апокриф, роман, пчелы, мифология, Артемида Эфесская, иудео-эллинизм, ессены.
There are two scholarly enigmas: one is the iconography of the Artemis of Ephesus and The other is the origin of the name of the Jewish sect essenes. These two traditionally difficult problems seem to have nothing in common: the former is what we see on the breast of the goddess usually called polymastos, while the other concerns the meaning of the name essenes, Hebrew or Aramaic. I'll try to resolve both problems with the help of the ancient mythological concept of divine bees, and of an intermediate literary source - a Jewish-Hellenistic apocryphal text Joseph and Aseneth (JosAs).
The Old Testament apocrypha Joseph and Aseneth has been regarded since M. Philonenko as a sui generis Greek erotic novel (Philonenko 1968: 43-49; esp. West 1974: 70-81). The similarity of the general pattern of the narrative (beautiful people both of high social position meet each other, sudden love disease of a misandric virgin, impediments to their union,
1 This paper is a result of two my reports in ICAN-2009 (Lisbon), and FIEC 2010 (Berlin).
divine intervention, happy wedding) was seen as influenced by the Greek novel.
Being a love story JosAs has its own peculiarities if compared with other Greek novels: it is not only a story of the marriage of the patriarch Joseph to the Egyptian Aseneth, it is also a story of her conversion to the true God of Israel and it contains an apocalyptic vision. The language of JosAs is borrowed from the Septuagint (LXX), the characters and the events are from Genesis (Gen. 41: 45-47), a lot of exact or implicit quotations are taken from the Bible etc. These show to us the intersections of the various Mediterranean traditions of the Hellenistic epoch.
Nevertheless there are details and symbols of the central apocalyptic scene (ch. 14-17) which are unique. This scene involves bees and honeycomb. While sacral honeycomb might be regarded as an analogue with the manna from Exodus, (Ex16:31: 'like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey'), the presence of bees in the conversion mystery has not been fully clarified by the Biblical tradition2.
The scene looks like this: after a prayer of repentance a heavenly messenger ('the Man') appears before Aseneth and they partake of a miraculous 'honey comb', which 'was big and white as snow'. Then white bees came up from it, covered Aseneth's body ("and all those bees encircled Aseneth from feet to head") and built a new comb on her mouth. However, not all the bees built the new comb, but only specific ones that were "great and chosen (¿kAektol), like their queens (paCTiAiCTom), and they rose from <...> the comb and encircled Aseneth's mouth, and made upon her mouth and her lips a comb similar to the comb which was lying before the man” (16, 19-20)3.
2 Bees and honey in the Biblical tradition have been recently considered by the following authors: Hubbard 1997; Wong 1998; Portier-Young 2005.
3 We use critical edition: Burchard 2003, and English translation: Burchard 1985.
These most enigmatic images of the novel - a virgin covered by bees, the wonderful bees themselves, and partaking of honey as sacramental culmination of conversion -seem to have no parallels in the Greek literary sources as well.
We will try to find an explanation in a wider context, taking into account the ancient ideas about the bees and the data of the archaic Greek cults.
The mythological and sacred function of bees is universal in various cultures of the Mediterranean. A hive is a natural model of a human community, like a polis, while a brood with its queen can be compared to a colonial settlement. Meanwhile this concept was not a Greek invention. Archaeological evidence from Asia Minor suggests that the idea of a city as a hive goes back to Neolithic cultures. Bees are counted among demonic creatures such as Italic manes, Greek ^uq^ke?/ Muq^i&ove? or Jewish Rephaim4. The bees serve in different myths as mediums between the world of the dead and that of the living5, between the gods and the people, i.e. they are servants of gods and heavenly messengers. And this is not their only function. The myth about the building of the second temple of Delphi points towards bees as builders6. They are also feeders of gods (Zeus, Dionysus and Artemis), poets, prophets; they attend to the fertility deities, and keep hidden knowledge, being in contact with the oracle. Their food (honey) gives life or immortality and the honey they give characterises the blissful «golden age» (often in combination «milk and honey»). In many Greek cults and myths, bees are present in full variety of their functions: medial, ominous, feeding and building.
4 About Rephaim see Schnell 1986: 35. Detailed study of bee mythology is found in Olck, Bees (RE s.v.; A. B. Cook's article is still among the best studies on the subject (Cook 1895). See also Burchard 1985: 230-231, notes f2, h2, and MacInnes 2000.
5 Cf. the neo-Platonic interpretation - Porph. Antr. 14-15.
6 According to Pausanias the bees built the temple with wax and bird wings (Paus. 10, 5, 4). This description corresponds to natural habits of bees (building of honeycombs). See Sourvinou-Inwood 1979.
We can see that white divine bees and honey have the same functions in JosAs as well: "For this comb is (full of the) spirit of life. And the bees of the paradise of delight have made this from the dew of the roses of life that are in the paradise of God. And all angels of God eat of it and all the chosen of God and all the sons of the Most High, because this is a comb of life, and everyone who eats of it will not die for ever (and) ever" (16, 14). The miraculous snow-white bees that came up from the cells of the divine comb ('innumerable, ten thousand <times> ten thousand and thousand upon thousand') had "wings like purple and like violet and like scarlet (stuff) and like gold-woven linen cloaks, and golden diadems <were> on their heads" (16, 17-18).
Let's look at the 'chosen' and 'remarkably big' bees that covered Aseneth. It is well known that a Queen-bee is the biggest bee in a colony. Aristotle (HA), Plinius (NH) and their compilers referring to the 'leader' of a swarm regularly call it by the masculine terms - ^ye^wv, paciAEU?, rex7. Feminine terms like paciAiCTom in our text are not found in Greek sources before 1-2 AD8.
M. Philonenko analyzed the whole bee scene in JosAs and especially the virgin's image sub specie Aegypti (Philonenko 1968: 67-79). He believed that Aseneth is a representation of Egyptian Neith (with her 'bee-symbols'), or, to be precise, the Hellenistic combination of Neith and Athena worshipped in Sais9. Ch. Burchard was skeptical about it and paid more attention to the tradition of Sion, the City of God being described as a feminine figure. However, the Biblical tradition leaves the bee scene unexplained (Burchard 1985: 189). Beside Neith of Sais, bees are also associated with Greek deities, mostly of chthonic origin.
7 Aristotle notes that these kings are sometimes called 'mothers' because they 'beget <progeny>' (H. A. 5, 112).
8 BaaiAeia, paaiAiaaa according to Arrian (Epict. 3.22.99). 'Bee-queen' replaces 'Bee-king' considerably later (Phryn. Eclogae, 197).
9 According to Philonenko the name Aseneth is etymologized as
Belonged to the Goddess Naith (Philonenko 1968: 61-62).
Taking into account the lack of literary sources, we may try to follow similar visual images in the arts and point to another virgin covered with bees whose image was famous throughout Mediterranean, to Artemis of Ephesus (further AE), one of the oldest Greek colony's goddess. In Hellenistic times, AE was a more influential and powerful deity than Egyptian Neith, and I believe AE to become Aseneth's prototype, is so to say visual etymology. Let us follow some of the intriguing crossovers between the Ionic deity and the heroine of the story.
It is well known that AE had a special status among the other city deities. She was the major goddess of the polis, the city's protective deity (she was often portrayed as bearing either corona muralis, the city walls, or a temple on her head). A virgin Goddess with bees on her garment (bigger than lions and bulls, which shows their exclusive and high status) is both the defender of the city, and the City itself.
Aseneth after her conversion and transformation accepts a new name: ".your name shall be City of Refuge, because in you many nations will take refuge with the Lord God, the Most High, and under your wings many peoples trusting in the Lord God will be sheltered, and behind your walls will be guarded those who attach themselves to the Most High God in name of Repentance" (15, 7); "You shall be like a walled mother-city of all who take refuge with the name of Lord God" (16, 16)10. Thus, the Egyptian priest's daughter is transformed into the City itself and becomes the protector for all proselytes.
Aseneth is compared to Biblical foremothers: "and she was tall (^eyaAn) as Sarah and handsome as Rebecca and beautiful as Rachel" (1, 8). One of the epithets, 'tall', seems here rather curious. In LXX the definitions of Rebecca and Rachel are the same, while the term used for Sarah (^eyaAn) isn't applied to her. In general it is seldom applied to women only to describe their high social position, not their appearance (e.g. 2 Kings 4:8). On the other hand, the term is often used to refer to a city
10 Cf. the Biblical concept of 'cities of refuge' (Num 35; Josh 20, 2-3; 21,
13 etc.).
(both in LXX and NT: Gibeon, Sidon, Nineveh, Babylon etc.). Meanwhile ^eyaAn, ^eyiorn are well-known cultic epithets of Artemis, the main city Goddess of Ephesus11.
The divine city of Aseneth and that of AE are both cities of newcomers. A bee is stamped on the Ephesian coins of archaic period (attested from 6th c. B.C.12) possibly as a sign of a colony (the swarm leaves its native hive). A new honeycomb on Aseneth's lips can be taken as a symbol of a new community. The answer to a question, what a community it could be, is disputable13. What is said explicitly is that the newly converted, Aseneth, is herself a symbol of the new Jewish proselytes' community. Artemis Ephesia is also not only a city goddess, but also the goddess, who protects the refugees14. Why is she so kind to strangers?
Ephesus is one of the oldest Greek colonies in Asia Minor (dated by the 1st millennium B.C.). It is also known that one of the collegiums of AE priests was called melissai (the bees) while another was called essenes15. Ectct^v is a rare (Ionic) word which Callimachus uses for 'king or leader', 'the leading one' (Zeus is called 0ewv ¿CTO^va «the essen of gods», Call. Jov. 66) and he calls someone Mup^i&ovwv ¿CTO^va (Call. Fr. 178)16. Scholia to Callimachus explain the term as follows: ¿ctct^v kuqlw? o paCTiAeu? iwv ^eAictctwv, vuv &£ o iwv av&pwv ("Essen is a regular term for 'bee King', but now it is also applied to king of peoples"). Bee as a King and King as a
11 This very formula (ueydA^ v\ Apxe^ig ’E^eaiwv) was used by «men of Ephesus» in the argument with Apostle Paul (Acts 19, 28. 34). In the inscriptions - see also Engelmann 2001: 34.
12 Ephesian coins are among the earliest Greek coins; see Karwiese 1995: 99-130.
13 G. Bohak explains the divided swarm symbolically: the story represents the historical schismatic movements of the Maccabean period (divided priesthood).
14 Cf. e.g., in Achilles Tatius Artemis is described as the only saver of those who ask her for protection (aux^ [iov^ xoug en’ aux^v Kaxa^euyovxag e^eaxi awCeiv Ach. Tat. 8, 8, 9).
15 About Ephesian priests see Oikonomos 1924; Engelmann 2001: 37.
16 Callimachus uses such a rare Ionic word probably because he knew the details of AE's cult; cf. his Hymn to Artemis (Call. Dian. 237-258).
Bee is attested in ancient times - the Egyptian hieroglyphic representation of a bee (bjtj) means "King".
Classical and Byzantine lexicographers (Etym. Magnum, for example, s.v.) often interpret this rare word essen in a similar way: о растіЛєи^ ката Ефєохои^ апо ^єтафора^ той раотЛєш^ - "the Ephesian word for 'king' is transferred from <the term for> bee King". But the most important for us now is the meaning 'colonist, settler' (о оікют^), 'citizen' (о поЛіт^^)17. It points to the fact that beside its general metaphors (bees as a nation, essen as its king and leader) in the Greek mentality the term is also associated with historical events, i.e. with Greeks' migration to Asia Minor18.
The great bee-goddess AE being the queen of the 'hive-city' or polis open to newcomers has her own leader-servants, the Essenes, the cultic kings of archaic tradition. She was the queen of her people who had a strict social hierarchy reflecting the universal religious and mythological imagery of Anatolian (or Cretan) antiquity. In our apocrypha Aseneth is also the city of refuge for the pious citizens and has priests-citizens, the God's people represented by bees around her.
Essenes lived ritually pure lives and had a special cultic function as it is attested in epigraphic material from Ephesus and literary sources19. Pausanias (8, 13, 1-2) compares the rule of life of Ephesian Essenes to that of the servitors of Artemis Hymnia in Orchomen: "The Mantineans there <in Orchomen>
17 EM, s.v. ¿ctot]v. It should also be noted here that ßaaiAeüg was an Ephesian priest title - see Karwiese 1995: 43 note 175. The etymology of ¿ctct]v is unclear. This word could be of Phrygian or Lydian origin, cf. Engelmann 2001: 37; on Asia Minor's background see also Morris 2001: 135-138. I should like to thank prof. V. Tsimbursky, for his valuable suggestion that he gave me in personal conversation regarding possible affinity of Ionic ectct^v and Hittite isha (acc. ishan) «lord, master».
18 See Cook 1895: 13, note 97. Ephesus probably had a so-called 'quarter of refuge': unlike other Ionic cities, Hellenistic Ephesus had
5 (not 4) phyla, the extra one being reserved for newcomers (Jews among them). The Jewish community probably constitutes one of its chiliastias; see Ramsay 1904: cap. 17.
19 See first of all Oikonomos 1924; also Engelmann 2001.
have <...> a priestess and a priest. It is a custom for them to live their whole lives in purity, not only sexual but in all respects, and they neither wash nor spend their lives as ordinary people do, nor enter private persons' homes. I know that the hestiatores of the Ephesian Artemis live in a similar fashion, but for a year only, the Ephesians calling them Essenes (’EoCT^va^)."
The inscriptions from Ephesus often mention «the two essenia»20. It is possible to suppose that their two duties were: 1) preparing a sacred meal for the goddess and serving food for worshippers during the goddess' feast; 2) housing newcomers or «immigrants». The latter duty may well have been inherited from the first settlers. If we assume this, the semantic development of the word in question seems very natural: from the self-designation of the first settlers, the colonial nobility so to say, to an appellative applied to the priests of the major local cult. Some services probably involved a kind of magic rituals including the initiation, during which the goddess herself gave the oracles (Engelmann 2001: 37).
Artemis in Ephesus is usually portrayed as "Mistress of animals" (standing goddess flanked by two sacred animals) and she, the goddess, who has bees as her servants, has bees in her garment as well. The word kosmos (the general term for statue apparel in inscriptions) was used to refer to her cultic garment (ependytos) (Engelmann 2001: 38-39). The wardrobe of AE is evidently exclusive. Many Greek goddesses have some special attributes like the helm of Athena, for instance. But no one has a sacred vestment of such a complex and recognisable appearance. Its most remarkable feature is called polymastia. There are many ways to understand this feature. I suggest that we should regard the bulbs on her breast as the cocoons of the King-bees=essenes21. I suppose that Ephesian essenes give us a key both to the garments of AE and the image of Aseneth.
20 E.g. IvE 1582b; Oikonomos 1924: 336-339. On the Ephesian mysteries in general see also Portefaix 1999: esp. 613.
21 Sir W. M. Ramsay was the only one who assumed that this element may have something to do with bees. He believed that «bulbs» were
In our apocrypha the garments of the heroine are of great importance. When Aseneth meets Joseph for the first time, she is dressed as a noble Egyptian lady: "and dressed in a (white) linen robe interwoven with violet and gold, and girded herself (with) a golden girdle and put bracelets on her hands and feet, and put golden buskins (or anaxyrides) about her feet, and around her neck she put valuable ornaments (koct^ov noAuxi^ov) and costly stones which hung around from all sides, and the names of the gods of the Egyptians were engraved everywhere on the bracelets and the stones, and the faces of all the idols were carved on them. And she put a tiara on her head and fas(t)ened a diadem around her temples, and covered her head with a veil" (3,5). As a character Aseneth may be an allusion to the famous Anatolian goddess, to AE. Four times Aseneth changes her clothes and each change symbolise the stages of her transformation. It should be noted that Aseneth's outfit is called kosmos (o koct^o^ t^ nap0£via^ auT^ 2,4; aL 0^Kai tou koct^ou aur^ - 10,8; 14,14; 18,5), just like AE's apparel.
To summarise the parallels of AE and Aseneth we would like to stress the following points. The feeding function of mythic bees we encounter both in JosAs and in the Ephesian cult. Honey is sacral food in JosAs and has a heavenly origin: "For this comb is (full of the) spirit of life. And the bees of the paradise of delight have made this from the dew of the roses of life that are in the paradise of God. And all angels of God eat of it and all the chosen of God and all the sons of the Most High, because this is a comb of life, and everyone who eats of it will not die for ever (and) ever" (16, 14). Essenes in Ephesus had their special function: to prepare the meal for the goddess and her guests at the annual feasts (Oikonomos 1924: 333-336). In the first case (JosAs), sacral food is a symbol of immortality presented in literature, in the second case - a part of actual ancient ritual (Ephesus).
symbolic representations of working bee cocoons (but according to him, essenes were drone-bees), see Ramsay 1927: 81-83. Ch. Seltman in his excellent paper polemized with Ramsay's point of view and proposed his own interesting interpretation (Seltman 1952).
Artemis and Aseneth are parallel images not only because of the bees. One is a goddess, the other is a divine creature after her conversion. The tower chambers, Aseneth's private quarters that she never leaves, have temple features (idols and sacrifices) and from the time of her birth seven maids are there to serve her (JosAs 2). The crowded temple of Artemis in Ephesus is the home of the goddess' servants (both essenes and melissai), who stay there during their service. Bees in myth represent chastity22 - Aseneth and AE are chaste virgins. And the chastity of Ephesian goddess' priests is attested by Pausanias. So we can see that the functions of mythic bees coincide with the functions of bees in JosAs and of Ephesian priests.
Combining an analysis of mythological concepts, archaeological evidence, historical and literary data and the Jewish Hellenistic imagery we come to the following conclusions: the literary images (the bees, heavenly honeycomb, Aseneth's mystical inclusion to the divine sphere and her being called the 'place of refuge' for the chosen) reflect the ancient concept of divine bees as it is known within the Ephesian cult of Artemis. Although we do not know AE's cultic practices in every detail, it is clear that her cult involved elements of mystery and her bee-priests were rooted in the same mythic idea.
The intersections of the Ephesian cult and the Judeo-Hellenistic apocrypha evoke a further comparison of Ephesian realia with Judeo-Hellenistic realia.
Gideon Bohak sees, like M. Philonenko, in ch. 14-17 of JosAs in the bee scene the key to the novel, but he uncovered the similarity between divine bees in the novel and the Jerusalem Temple's priests. That means that bees in JosAs represent angels in the celestial sphere (and priests). The parallel with Ephesian essenes seems to confirm Bohak's hypothesis, because essenes in Ephesus are priests and bees. Bees as builders create a new comb that is symbolic for a new community and city in JosAs, as for essenes in Ephesus. They
22 Cf. the notion of their chastity in the works describing real bees: Arist. HA 1, 12; Colum. De r. rust. 9, 14, 3).
give places to new citizens, and thus their role would have been to organize the polis.
It was already observed that essenes (lat. esseni), the name of Judaic community of Qumran, is not Semitic, but Greek in its origin, and that it had been transferred from the famous Ephesus' priests to the Palestinian community (or communities) in the Greek-speaking environment (Jones 1985; esp. Kampen 1986; and 1988: 151-185; 2003). The transference is supposed to have taken place on the Greek soil and via an unidentified literary source known to Plinius, Philo and Joseph Flavius. But this explanation, exceeding the limits of the Semitic languages, was not supported by modern Hebraic scholars. To support this hypothesis we propose to examine the problem in question not so much from the linguistic point of view as from that of the imagery. We suggest that essene as a bee king, essene as a priest of Artemis, and essene as a member of a Judean community are not accidental homonyms (as they are usually represented in many dictionaries). The transference of the name of the Ephesian community to the Palestinian one became possible thanks to the semantics of bee-life and the bees-like priesthood, because both Qumranites and essenes regarded themselves as people of priests with similar features of ritual chaste life23. And the white bees like angels or heaven priests in Jewish-Hellenistic narrative JosAs give us the additional argumentation for it. The metaphor of this image goes back to the image of bee community as an ideal community in general. And a proselyte community is an ideal society for some derivations of Hellenistic Judaism in Hellenistic epoch.
However, it would be a reasonable question - why did the author of JosAs make his heroine who rejected pagan gods so similar to the pagan goddess? Egyptian Aseneth appears before Joseph with her complete kosmos looking like an idol and so he rejects her. Aseneth's idol-like appearance symbolizes her old pagan rule of life. But not only is pagan Aseneth similar to the idol, when she is converted she acquires
23 According to Aristotle's classification, bees belong to social animals with no individual features and no distinction of sexes (HA 1, 12).
the features of the most powerful goddess of the pagan world. She is covered with divine white bees and her kosmos is now symbolic.
Thus, the story about Joseph and Aseneth directed to Jewish diaspora uses a well-known image to demonstrate how paganism can be transformed into the righteous monotheism of a different religious society, a society desperate to defend its religious uniqueness in pagan environment.
Artemis of Asia Minor was worshipped far from Ephesus and became the main symbol of Greco-Roman paganism for Jews and later for Christians. If our hypothesis is correct, we would not exclude the possibility of using the image of AE for the story of conversion in order to show the turning to the true God by not merely a heathen but by a powerful pagan goddess.
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Summary
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate, that the most enigmatic apocalyptic scene in Old Testament apocrypha Joseph and Aseneth involving bees and honeycomb could be explained in some details with the help of the cult and iconography of Artemis of Ephesus (AE). Conclusions presented in the paper are based on combined analysis of mythological conceptions, archaeological evidence, historical and literary data and this Judeo-Hellenistic novel's imagery. Bees, heavenly honeycomb, Aseneth's mystical inclusion to divine sphere and her being called «place of refuge» for the chosen — all these are literary images reflecting the ancient concept of divine bees, that was presented in historical reality in Ephesian cult of Artemis.
