ENNON. - Locality where St. John the Baptist exercised his ministry for the last time, before being imprisoned; situated near Salim (ἐγγύς τοῦ Σαλίᾳ), it abounded in water, and for this reason the people went there to be baptized (Jn 3:23). It was on this side of the Jordan (ibid. 26, where there is an allusion to Bethany πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου of Jn 1:28); it must have been some distance from the Jordan, otherwise the mention of the "many waters" would make no sense. The name Αἰνών (Vulgate Aenon; cf. "Aen" Jos. 15:32, and "Ain" Jos. 19:7; 21:16) is a transcription of the Aramaic plural "ěndwān" ("springs"), written "ěnān" in the Targum of Deut. 8:7. It is to be identified with the group of five springs (Ain el-Fāṭūr, Ain ed-Deir, Ain Qur'an, Ain es-Semsiyē, Ain el-Beidā) in the Gôr, 12 km south of Beisan; to the north of them rises Tell-Ridga (beside the ruins of Umm el-'Amdān), corresponding to Salim.
Thus tradition attests, quite clearly from the beginning of the 4th century: thus Eusebius and St. Jerome (Onomasticon, under the entry Aenon, ed. E. Klostermann, 1904, p. 41: "A. iuxta Salim, ubi baptizabat Ioannes, sicut in Evang. cata Ioannem scriptum est. Et ostenditur nunc usque locus in octavo lapide Scythopoleos ad meridiem iuxta Salim et Iordanem" and under the entry Salem, to which in the 4th century corresponded the village Salumias; cf. Jerome, Ep. 73 ad Evang.; PG 22, 680); thus the Peregrinatio of Egeria (which speaks of Sedima) and the mosaic map of Mādabā. Perhaps the name Salim has been preserved, shifting, at Tell Sarem, 5 km further north.
Both identifications of A. are to be rejected: with 'Ainūn in the Wādy Fār'ah, to the south of which there are many springs, 10-12 km from the present village of Salim which is about 6 km east of Nābhas-Sichem (I. Conder, On the identification of Aenon, in Pal. Expl. Fund Q. Stat. 1874, p. 191 ff.; A. Henderson, s.v. in Hastings' Dict. of the Bible, I 1898, p. 45; W. F. Albright, in The Harvard theol. Rev., 17 [1924], p. 193 ff.), and with 'Ain (codex B and the Sixtine edition of the Septuagint Jos. 15:61 have Αἰνών) and Selim (Hebr. Silkām) of Jos. 15:32, in southern Judea (J. N. Sepp; E. Le Camus, La vie de N. S. J. C., I, Paris 1887, p. 296, n. 1; Th. Zahn, Das Evang. des Johannes, Leipzig 1912, at the passage cited).