KELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Servia Seth
in Italy and in Germany. The Servite monks possess houses in Italy (Rome, San Marcello, Bologna, Florence, Naples, and Palermo), in Austria (nine monasteries in the Tyrol province and eight in the Austro-Hungarian), England (especially London), and the United States (two in Chicago and one in Milwaukee).
Servite nuns, or "Black Sisters," were founded by Benizi, and were especially numerous in Italy and southern Germany; while tertiary Servite nuns were established by Juliana Falconieri (d. 1341) at Florence, were confirmed by Martin V. in 1420, and were spread throughout Germany by the Archduchess Anna Juliana Catharine (d. 1622). Paul V. made these German Tertiaries a separate congregation. (O. ZoCKLERf.) Bibliography : The most important sources are in course of preparation under the care of P. M. Soulier and A. Morini, Monumenta ordinis Servorum S. Marice, Brussels, 1897 sqq. Consult further: M. Poccianti, Chronicon verum totius sacri ordinis Servorum beatce Marice, Florence, 1616; A. Giani, Annales sacri ordinis Servorum beatos Marice, Florence, 1618, extended by A. M. Garbi and P. Bonfrizzeri, 3 parts, Paris, 1719-25; P. Florentini, Dialogus de origine ordinis Servorum, in I. Lami, Delicim erudilorum, vol. i., Florence, 1736; P Tonini, II Santuario della santissima Annunziata di Firenze, Florence, 1876; Hist, de Vordre des Servites de Marie, . . . 1230-1310, par un ami des Servites, 2 vols., Paris, 1886; P. M. Soulier, Vie de S. Philippe Benizi, propagateur de Vordre des Servites, ib. 1886; idem, Life of St. Juliana Falconieri, Foundress of the . . Religious of the Third Order of Servites, London, 1898; B. M. Sporr, Lebensbilder aus dem Servitenorden, 4 vols., Innsbruck, 1891-95; Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen, ii. 218-231; KL, xi. 204-212.
SESSION: The lowest court in the Presbyterian Church, composed of the pastor and elders. See Presbyterians, X., 1, § 2 (6).
SESSUMS, DAVIS: Protestant Episcopal bishop of Louisiana; b. at Houston, Tex., July 7, 1858. He was educated at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn. (M.A., 1878), and at the theological department of the same institution. He was ordered deacon and priested in 1882, and, after a few months as curate of Grace Church, Galveston, Tex., in 1883, was successively curate and rector of Calvary, Memphis, Tenn. (1883-87) ; rector of Christ Church, New Orleans (1887-91) ; and was consecrated bishop coadjutor of Louisiana (1891); within the year, on the death of Bishop J. N. Galleher, he succeeded to the full administration of the diocese.
SETH, SETHITES.
I. Relation of the List to Non-Israelitic Tradition. II. Relationship of the Sethite Series to the Cainite Series. III. The General Idea of the Sethite Line. IV. Significance of the Individual Sethite Names. V Postcanonical Ideas of Seth and the Sethites. VI. Relation of Sethites to the " Sons of God."
By Sethites are meant the ten patriarchs named in Gen. v., namely: Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah.
I. Relation of the List to Non-Israelitic Tradition: An Indo-Germanic origin has been mistakenly supposed, Noah being equated with -nysos in Dionysos on account of Noah's relation to the vineyard (P. K. Buttmann, Mythologus, i. 173, Berlin, 1828); also with the Sanscrit n&vaka (ndvika, "seaman"; J. Grill, Erzvdter der Menschheit, pp. 41 sqq., Leipsic, 1875) ; also with the Egyptian Menes, Greek Minos,
on the basis of a supposed form Manoah (S. Lefmann, Proceedings of the International Congress of Orientalists, p. 3, 1903). These are untenable hypotheses. F. Delitzsch (Babel und Bibel, p. 32, Leipsic, 1902) relates the list with the ten antediluvian Babylonian kings. But a comparison of the names in each series (the Babylonian as given by Eusebius, Chronicon, ed. A. Schone, i. 7 sqq., Berlin, 1866, from Berosus) shows practically no etymological or graphic resemblance. But it is claimed that by transformation and abbreviation and by translation the earlier could give rise to the later. F. Hommel (PSBA, 1892-93, pp. 243 sqq.; Expository Times, 1899-1900, p. 343, 1902-03, pp. 103 sqq.) reasons that Alorus, = Babylonian Aruru, wife of Ea, creator of man, is to be equated with Adam = "mankind"; the third in the Babylonian series, Amelon, Babylonian amelu, "mankind," = Enos, "mankind," and so on. The comparison, however, gives no real results; e.g., in the first case creator and created are paralleled. But it is pointed out that in each list there is a series of ten antediluvians, the last of whom is the hero of the flood; that in both lists the individuals are credited with exceedingly long lives; and that some relations may be traced by transformation or otherwise between the individual names — as when Ammenon (the fourth, corresponding to Cainan) is made to mean "master workman." It may be granted that in three or four cases the Hebrew might arise by translation, as in the case of Amelon and Enos; yet even this does not prove priority for the Babylonian; rather one should affirm that the Babylonian tradition supports the view that the names of the ten kings show a Babylonizing of neutral material. The method in which the regnal years of the Babylonian kings are reckoned (the cycle of 3,600 years) speaks for this supposition; the number ten is itself against a pure Babylonian origin. Among Hebrews ten figures frequently (cf. the tenfold occurrence of "and God said" in Gen. i. 3-29; see for further illustrations Numbers, Sacred). On the contrary, among Babylonians the decimal system had no fundamental position, sixty (five times twelve) being the basis of their cosmic system. F. Lenormant (Les Origines de Vhistoire, i. 217 sqq., Paris, 1880) would secure an Egyptian origin for Seth through the mediation of Hittites and Hyksos. E. Meyer (Set-TypJion, Leipsic, 1875) claims that the god Set had a primitive and pure Egyptian origin, his name meaning "the dark destructive night," that equalizing him with Baal as a sun-deity came about through Canaanitic influence (cf. Wiedemann, in DB, extra vol., 195), that the Hyksos identified Set with their Baal, and consequently the Hittite Baal took the name Set. Hommel incorrectly assumes a relationship of Seth with the Egyptian Set (Die altorientalischen Denkmdler, pp. 53, 56, Berlin, 1903), stating that "according to the restored oldest text of Gen. v. Seth corresponds to Adapa; the Egyptians have obscured this, making Set the brother and opponent of Osiris." Nor can the Sethite tradition be traced to Canaanitic-Phenician origins. Rather should one claim that the Cainite genealogy (Gen. iv. 17-24) so corresponds to the narrative of the Phenician cosmogony as given by Eusebius that it must be
Seth Seton