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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] What Is "Hebron"
  • Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 10:34:43 EDT


Isaac Fried:

You wrote: “So XEBRON is a collection of dwellings upon a large hill with
caves that may be used as dignified burial places.”

1. I may semi-agree with your proposed new etymology of “Hebron”, though I
think the conventional etymology is more straightforward. But both
etymologies may have played a role in the Biblical interpretation of “Hebron”.

2. Your proposed etymology of “Hebron” would work well for Hebron as a high
plateau, or for Hebron as a high altitude city. That works nicely for both
the modern city of Hebron, south of Jerusalem, and for the Hebron in the
books
of the Bible after Genesis. But it does not work for the “Hebron” in the
Patriarchal narratives.

Rather than being a high plateau or a high altitude city, the “Hebron” of
the Patriarchs was a valley:

“So he [Jacob] sent him [Joseph] out of the vale [Valley] of Hebron, and he
came to Shechem.” Genesis 37: 14

The word for “vale” or “Valley” there is ayin-mem-qof, which means, per
Gesenius, “a low tract of land of wide extent”.

The Patriarchs live in tents in the low-lying Hebron Valley, near a huge oak
tree called the oak of Mamre. Up on the top of one of the surrounding hills
is the city of Arbe. But Hebron itself is not a city, much less the city of
Arbe.

A later editor, perhaps JEPD, tried to claim that Hebron and Arbe were one
and the same, so that instead of being a valley, Hebron would be
reconceptualized as being a high altitude city on a plateau south of
Jerusalem. But a
reference to “now Hebron” is a late gloss, an openly-disclosed editorial
footnote
giving the later editor’s own comment on the text, rather than being an
original part of the text. That highly suspect phrase is shown in brackets
here:

“And Sarah died in Kiriatharba [--the same is Hebron--] in the land of Canaan…
.” Genesis 23: 2

That sentence originally read: “And Sarah died in Kiriatharba in the land of
Canaan….”

In the Patriarchal narratives, “Hebron” is a low-lying valley north of
Jerusalem, not a high plateau or a high altitude city south of Jerusalem, as
it is
in later books in the Bible.

3. Going back now to etymology, “Hebron” is het-bet-resh + vav-nun, that
is, XBR + ON. The suffix vav-nun/ON means “the place of”. The conventional
view of het-bet-resh/XBR is that it means “binding friendship”.
Het-bet-resh/XBR means “to join”, and hence “have fellowship with”, “league”,
“be bound
in friendship”, or simply “society”.

A valley located about half-way between Shechem and Jerusalem, essentially on
the border between north and south Canaan, could well be called “the Valley
of Binding Friendship”, with the idea being that of binding north and south
together. Such a meaning does not fit well the high plateau of the modern
city
of Hebron, which is more like living on a mountaintop and looking down upon
everyone else. On the other hand, your proposed new etymology of “a
collection
of dwellings upon a large hill with caves that may be used as dignified
burial
places” fits the site of modern Hebron beautifully, while not fitting a
valley
in central Canaan at all.

When JEPD, who lived in Jerusalem in southern Canaan over a period of several
centuries in the mid-1st millennium BCE, decided to reconceptualize the
Patriarchs as having sojourned mostly in southern Canaan (near now beloved
Jerusalem) when the Patriarchs were in Canaan, rather than the text’s
presentation of
the Patriarchs as consistently sojourning in northern Canaan when they are in
Canaan, JEPD may have used your alternative etymology of “Hebron”. The
concept of “a large hill” fits the high plateau of modern Hebron, south of
Jerusalem, perfectly. So your complex proposed etymology may have played a
role in
Biblical interpretation, even though it is much easier to see the XBR in
“Hebron
” as coming exclusively from the word XBR, meaning “binding friendship”, and
having nothing to do with words for “great” or “large” or “hill” or “
excavate”.

I love your analysis that the root of aRBe/”four” is RB/”many”. That sets
the stage for RBT (with a common tav/T ending for Canaanite place names)
being
found both on the Thutmosis III list and in the Amarna Letters, meaning the
city of “Arbe” that is referenced in the Patriarchal narratives. And I can
see how, with a lot of work, a person (especially a later editor of the Bible
like JEPD) could possibly view “Hebron” as entailing “a collection of
dwellings
upon a large hill with caves that may be used as dignified burial places.”
Maybe it was precisely that etymological gambit that allowed JEPD to
reconceptualize “Hebron” in the Patriarchal narratives as no longer being a
low-lying
valley between Shechem and Jerusalem, but rather now being viewed as being a
high altitude city on a high plateau south of Jerusalem.

But be that as it may, in the Patriarchal narratives “Hebron” is a valley,
located north of Jerusalem. The Valley of Hebron in the Patriarchal
narratives
is located at a very different place than is the city of Hebron in later
books in the Bible. The Patriarchs are never portrayed in the Patriarchal
narratives as sojourning in southern Canaan. The Biblical Valley of Hebron
in
Genesis is located at the bottom of the hill where the historical city of
RBT/Arbe
(at the top of that hill) is documented as being located in the Late Bronze
Age
secular historical records: north of Jerusalem.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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