AENNON. - A locality where St. John the Baptist last exercised his ministry before being imprisoned; located near Salim (ἐγγύς τοῦ Σαλίᾳ), it abounded in water, and therefore people went there to be baptized (Io. 3, 23). It was on this side of the Jordan (ibid. 26, where allusion is made to Bethany πέραν τοῦ Ἰωρδάου of Io. 1, 28); it must have been some distance from the Jordan, otherwise the mention of "many waters" would make no sense. The name Αἰνών (Vulgate Aenon; cf. "Aen" Ios. 15, 32, and "Ain" Ios. 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 Ghōr, 12 km. south of Beisan; north of them rises Tell-Ridga (next to the ruins of Umm el-'Amdān) corresponding to Salim.
So tradition attests, very clearly since 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, which in the 4th century corresponded to 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, having shifted, at Tell Sarem, 5 km. further north.
The identification of A. is to be rejected both with 'Ainūn in the Wādy Fār'ah, south of which there are many springs, 10-12 km. from the present village of Salim which is ca. 6 km. east of Nablus-Shechem (C. R. Conder, On the identification of Aenon, in Pal. Expl. Fund Q. Stat. 1874, p. 191 sq.; 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 sq.), and with 'Ain (codex B and the Sixtine edition of the Septuagint Ios. 15, 61 has AĪvów) and Selim (Heb. Silkām) of Ios. 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 cited passage).