CHAPTER FOUR THE NAMES OF THE MAGICIANS

That the name of at least the first of our magician brothers is Semitic in origin is hardly any longer open to serious doubt, even though some previous scholars of note have sought to derive both names from Egyptian (cf. Freudenthal p. 173 and authorities there noted; Freudenthal himself, citing some earlier authorities, calls them "gracisirte agyptische Namen"). Solomon Schechter's publication of the Cairo Geniza manuscripts of the Damascus Document signifi­ cantly strengthened the view that "Jannes" at any rate derives from Hebrew or . Furthermore, as was noted in I.2, the passage in question (CD 5, 17b-19), which speaks of Belial having raised up "Yl).nh and his brother" in opposition to Moses and Aaron at the time of 's exodus from Egypt, is now extant among the manuscript finds from Qumran, perhaps in duplicate. A somewhat curious view regarding the origin of both names was advanced just before the turn of the century by Iselin ("Zwei Be­ merkungen" [1894]), who would have us believe that the names arose out of a misreading of Gen 14: 13. The phrase 'iD~i1 ~iDD ("Mamre the Amorite") was misconstrued as 'iD~' ~iDD thus producing the names "Mamre" and "Amre," the latter becoming in time "Iamre" (one assumes), which in turn must have become , 'Iannes. " Iselin then appeals to the LXX of Gen 14: 13 in order to explain the morphological development from Hebrew -iD- to Greek -~J3p- in "Mambres." Why "Amre" (= "Jannes") did not like­ wise produce" Ambres," he does not discuss; nor does he suggest how the order of the two names was reversed in subsequent tradition which is almost entirely uniform on this score. Y alqut Reubeni twice has the reverse order: 80a, 46b; H. J. Frede, Vetus Latina 25. 1 lists as a lone exception a variant reading in Augustine; and Michael Glycas speaks of Zambres and Jannes (CSHB 37 p. 293). Though Iselin's view on the origin of the names may have some relevance for "Mambres" /"Iambres," it completely ignores the textual evidence on "Iannes." Alan Wikgren more recently has suggested that both names, in­ cluding their textual variants, may have an identical origin. In his NAMES OF THE MAGICIANS 37

IDB article (1962) on the two magicians he writes that "the names may be Grecized Aramaic, and may... derive from forms of 'John.'" An identical etymology and origin would, however, seem rather unlikely. Not only would one, on this supposition, be hard pressed to explain the internal structure of' 'Iambres" but loss of in­ itial /y/ in part of the Hebrew/Aramaic tradition as well as in Latin transmission, presumably through assimilation to the second /m/ would appear less likely than assimilation to the preceding "Iannes." That similar assimilation did indeed occur is obvious from all three linguistic traditions. Alongside of "Mambres" in Latin we find' 'Iamnes" (passim.) and, in Greek guise, the Vienna papyrus features ElOall~PTJ<; beside ElOaVVTK In Jewish tradition we have an instance ofO'~' and Ol:l'i::l~' (YalS She mot 5 [176]), where the second name is in fact a fusion of the two, rather than being sim­ ply a case of assimilation. Moreover, since in Hebrew/Aramaic the two names are regularly linked by" which is palaeo graphically easi­ ly and frequently confused with" and in Greek (Ka)t is employed for the same purpose, the likely introduction of initial /y/ in the second name would be further enhanced. Though the first name in our pair is indisputably Semitic, the ori­ gin of the second poses somewhat more of a problem. Attempts by Weinstock (1948) and Thissen (1987) to give it an Egyptian deriva­ tion fail to convince. Among scholars who hold to a Semitic origin, a derivation from the root i1i~ "to agitate/rebel" has found widespread favour. This derivation was already proposed by Levy (I 337b) and receives favourable comment in JEn. Meyer (p. 57 n. 1) has taken this derivation one step farther by sug­ gesting, on the basis of eD, that an original ~i~~ pn' ("Yo.banan the Rebel' ') developed into two distinct names. The development Meyer posits, while not improbable per se, rests nonetheless in the final analysis on pure conjecture. We do well to remind ourselves that our oldest reference does not speak of "Yo.banan the Rebel" but of "Yo.banah and his brother" -whatever name this brother had or did not have at that juncture. Nor is Jannes ever dubbed a "rebel" in any extant tradition about the two magicians, though we have argued that in the Damascus Document they are apostate . One might, however, suggest that if ~i~~ is indeed the original form of the name under discussion, some sort of association with the root i1i~ might possibly help explain how a relatively ob­ scure biblical name (Gen 13:18,14:13,24,18:1) and one which has