[b-hebrew] Genesis 12: 5: Are "Souls" Slaves?
Yigal Levin
leviny1 at mail.biu.ac.il
Sat Nov 17 18:43:26 EST 2007
Dear Jim,
Let's not get carried away. The fact that I don't disagree with you on every
point does not mean that I accept your whole theory. First of all, as you
may have seen in my reply to Shoshanna, Alter seems to follow an age old
tradition when seeing these people as "slaves". But I agree with you that
the text does not support that interpretation.
However, neither does it support yours. The Patriarchs originated in
Mesopotamia, NOT Lebanon. No-where does it say that Abraham's "fellow
travelers" were actually his relatives. There is no evidence that Abraham
"got rich" from trading goods. In fact, gen. 12:17 says that the pharaoh
made him rich because of Sarah. Abraham and Lot are pictured as shepherds,
not traders.
Yigal Levin
----- Original Message -----
From: <JimStinehart at aol.com>
To: <b-hebrew at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 1:21 AM
Subject: [b-hebrew] Genesis 12: 5: Are "Souls" Slaves?
>
> Yigal Levin:
> Have you noticed that you and I usually end up agreeing as to the meaning
> of
> the Hebrew words that I ask about? It is very important for me to find
> out
> that I am not the only one interpreting these key Hebrew words this way.
> 1. You wrote: “What's your point. Only a few of the commentaries
> and
> translations that you quoted actually called the people ‘slaves’ or ‘
> servants’.”
> The fact is that many prominent scholars insist that Abraham bought
> slaves
> at Harran.
> (i) Robert Alter is probably the highest profile scholar there is
> regarding the Patriarchal narratives. He translates this part of Genesis
> 12: 5 as
> "the folk they had bought in Haran". And in his comments, Robert Alter
> explicitly asserts that these people were "slaves".
> (ii) Gesenius translates this part of Genesis 12: 5 as "the slaves
> which
> they had obtained in Haran".
> (iii) As to (&H/"'asah", BDB says: "acquire property of various kinds…Gn
> 12: 5". The implication of that remark by BDB seems to be that the souls
> that
> Abraham and Lot acquired in Harran were "property", i.e. slaves.
> So when I start out with Robert Alter and Gesenius definitely against my
> point of view, and BDB apparently against my point of view, you can see
> why I am
> bringing this issue to the b-Hebrew list. I am absolutely delighted
> that
> you agree with my interpretation of “souls”/ /NP$/"nephesh".
> 1. You wrote: “I agree that this interpretation [that Abraham bought
> slaves at Harran] is unsupported by the text. These people were
> obviously
> people who had attached themselves to Abraham and Sarah - sort of ‘fellow
> travelers’.”
> I agree with you completely about that.
> 1. You wrote: “Whether they were relatives or not, and whether they
> served as
> guards or not is simply conjecture - the text does not say.”
> As I previously discussed, the RK$ that Abraham brought to southeastern
> Canaan from Harran probably consisted in large part of valuable luxury
> commercial
> goods, which had been purchased on a long caravan trip to Mesopotamia.
> Abraham sold that RK$ for a high price in Egypt, and that is why Abraham
> comes
> back to Canaan from Egypt laden with silver and gold.
> If so, then of course Abraham needed security guards to guard that RK$ on
> the dangerous, long trip from Harran to Canaan and Egypt. One key
> question, you
> see, is whether those security guards were slaves/servants or not. That’s
> why this discussion you and I are having here is very important.
> Just think what would have happened if these dozen or so “souls” were
> Abraham’s relatives, who were acting as security guards on a one-time
> caravan trip
> to Mesopotamia. Many of Abraham’s relatives, most of whom were not on
> this
> caravan trip to Mesopotamia, had contributed to financing this caravan
> trip.
> Thanks to the timely divine advice that Abraham received at Genesis 12:
> 1,
> Abraham had made the audacious, brilliant move of skipping Lebanon (and
> the
> Lebanese middlemen) and had gone directly to Egypt, where Abraham sold
> the RK$
> for a fortune. Not only Abraham, but Lot, and the security
> guards/relatives,
> and all of Abraham’s many relatives who had financed the caravan trip,
> were
> now newly wealthy. So it makes sense that for a short time, most all of
> Abraham’s relatives would gather at Hebron, collecting their share of the
> proceeds
> from this lucrative, one-time caravan expedition. And they owed Abraham
> big-time for Abraham’s great success in selling the RK$ at such a high
> price in
> Egypt (on behalf of Abraham and all his many relatives).
> Now, for the first time, we can understand Genesis 14: 14, a verse on
> which
> you have commented previously. Where did Abraham’s 318 armed retainers, “
> born in his household”, come from? In 5,000 years of human history, no
> one
> ever had 2,000 slaves at modest Hebron, from which 318 males of fighting
> age
> could be drawn. No way. These are not slaves or servants. These are
> Abraham’
> s relatives, “born in his household”. For a short time, virtually all of
> Abraham’s relatives gathered at Hebron after the hugely successful
> caravan trip
> way out to Mesopotamia. So Abraham could muster 318 relatives as
> fighters
> to rescue Lot and Sodom’s loot, and they took no share of Sodom’s loot.
> But that was it. There was no more money to be made at modest Hebron, a
> place fit solely for subsistence living herding sheep and goats. There
> would be
> no looting opportunities. Abraham makes no attempt to convert his
> relatives
> to Abraham’s new religious views. Nature takes its course. Almost all of
> Abraham’s relatives move away from modest, dull Hebron over the course of
> the
> following 10 years.
> So everything makes perfect sense. Eliezer of Damascus makes perfect
> sense
> as being Abraham’s first servant. The “souls they had gotten” at Harran
> make perfect sense as a dozen or so relatives who were security guards on
> the
> long caravan trip. And Abraham’s 318 armed retainers, “born in his
> household”
> , make perfect sense as well.
> Once we see that the Patriarchal narratives open with Terakh’s family
> being
> on a long, arduous caravan expedition to Mesopotamia, a caravan trip that
> had
> started in northern Canaan/Lebanon, everything about the first four
> chapters
> of the Patriarchal narratives makes perfect sense.
> You ask: “What’s your point?” My point is that if we look at what the
> Hebrew text of the Patriarchal narratives actually says, and jettison the
> Ezekiel-era reinterpretation/misinterpretation of that text (which denies
> that the
> Hebrews were indigenous to northern Canaan/Lebanon), everything in the
> text
> makes perfect sense, in a mid-14th century BCE historical context. That’s
> my
> point.
> 3. I am always worried that I am misunderstanding the exact meaning of
> the
> Hebrew words. You do not realize how important it is for me to have you
> agree with my interpretation of the Hebrew words, even though we continue
> to
> disagree over the implications of what those words entail.
> 4. You wrote: “The Hebrew says "hannephesh asher 'asu" - literally "the
> souls that they had made". The question is, why call them "souls" and
> not just
> "people" (anashim), and what does "made" mean. Assuming that Abraham and
> Sarah were not
> proto-Frankensteins who "made souls", it seems to imply that these people
> had some sort of deeper connection to Abraham and Sarah.”
> I agree 100%. You have made my point better than I did.
> 1. You wrote: “Traditional Jewish commentaries see them as people
> who
> Abraham and Sarah had "converted" to their belief in the One God.
> Perhaps,
> but that's also not what the text says.”
> But there, I disagree entirely. Note that throughout the entirety of the
> Patriarchal narratives, the Patriarchs never make any attempt to convert
> anyone
> to the Patriarchs’ religious beliefs, except the Patriarchs’ wives (more
> or
> less) and, of critical importance, the favored line of sons. There is no
> attempt to instill Abraham’s religious beliefs in either Ishmael or Esau,
> as far
> as we can tell in the text. Likewise, as to these relatives who were
> serving as security guards on the long, dangerous caravan trip to
> Mesopotamia,
> Abraham never tries to convert them. Note that, on the contrary, Abraham
> does not
> seem to mind at all when, over the course of 10 years’ time after Lot’s
> rescue, these relatives disappear from Hebron, never to be seen again.
> Interestingly, the Patriarchal narratives are presenting Abraham as being
> concerned
> only with his own sons, not with his collateral relatives.
> If we go with what the Hebrew text actually says, and jettison the
> Ezekiel-era reinterpretation/misinterpretation of this text (which
> reinterpretation/misinterpretation has been basically unchallenged for
> 2,500 years now), we will
> find that the Patriarchal narratives make perfect sense, on all levels,
> in
> the historical context of the mid-14th century BCE. The text is right
> there,
> before our very eyes, as knock-dead gorgeous as ever, if only we will look
> at
> it with new eyes.
> A lot is riding on how one interprets NP$ and (&H at Genesis 12: 5. If
> Robert Alter and Gesenius are right that these are “slaves” whom Abraham
> “bought”
> at Harran, then my interpretation of the Patriarchal narratives would be
> dealt a serious blow. I am so glad that you agree with my contrary
> interpretation of these two key Hebrew words.
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
>
>
>
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