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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] What Is "Enaim" at Genesis 38: 14, 21?
  • Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 09:18:15 EDT


Fancier Quinn:

A. You wrote: “[‘Enaim’ is a] Place name meaning, ‘two eyes or springs.’
A village near Timnah, where Tamar seduced Judah”.

That is not quite right, at least not in the Patriarchal narratives.

In the Patriarchal narratives:

1. Eyn, in the singular, can mean either “eye” or “spring” or “fountain”
or “well”.

2. But either a dual or plural form of eyn, whether the dual Eynym/“Enaim”
at Genesis 38: 14, 21, or any plural form of eyn, never means “springs” or “
fountains” or “wells” in the Patriarchal narratives. Rather, a dual or
plural
form of eyn in the Patriarchal narratives always means “eyes” literally, and
usually has the figurative meaning of “judgment”, “opinion”, etc.

Note that Tamar is not by a well when Judah meets her.

If I understand correctly how Eynym is used in the Patriarchal narratives, it
cannot mean “springs” or “fountains” or “wells”. Rather, Eynym as a dual
must mean “eyes” literally, and usually has the figurative meaning of “
judgment”, “opinion”, etc.

In the Patriarchal narratives, a well is often the setting for a romantic
meeting that presages marriage. When Abraham’s trusted servant goes looking
for
an ideal bride for Isaac, Rebekah is appropriately found by a well. Genesis
24: 11, 15 Jacob meets his heartthrob, statuesque Rachel, at a well.
Genesis
29: 2, 9 Also, a distraught, pregnant and lonely Hagar gets much-needed fine
divine advice by a well. Genesis 16: 7 By contrast, Judah’s meeting at
Eynym/
“Enaim” with a disguised Tamar, who has put on a veil and is impersonating a
prostitute, is not romantic at all, and thus a setting by a well would be
inappropriate here. Note that the text explicitly tells us that Judah never
had
relations with Tamar thereafter. Genesis 38: 26

By contrast, “eyes” and “judgment” are of critical concern in chapter 38 of
Genesis. Tamar covers everything but her “eyes”, and then Judah will soon
enough be required to make a critical “judgment”: should Tamar be burned
alive (Judah’s initial judgment, at Genesis 38: 24), or, rather, is Tamar
more
righteous than Judah himself (Judah’s considered judgment, at Genesis 38: 26)?

The beautiful symbolism here works right if and only if Eynym means “eyes”/“
judgment”, rather than meaning “wells” or “springs” or “fountains”. Based
on the distinction in this portion of Genesis between singular on the one
hand, and either dual or plural on the other hand, I myself do not see the
word
Eynym as being ambiguous in this context. Rather, the clear meaning of Eynym
in
the Patriarchal narratives is “eyes”/“judgment”.

B. But the really exciting question here is as follows. Are scholars right
that Eynym is JEPD fiction? According to Richard Elliott Friedman, in The
Bible with Sources Revealed (2003), (i) all of chapter 38 of Genesis was
composed
by J, and (ii) at p. 3 Friedman notes that “J was composed by an author
living in the southern kingdom of Judah” in the 1st millennium BCE. Why
would any
author from 1st millennium BCE Judah, presumably living in or near Jerusalem,
have any interest in the substantive content of chapter 38 of Genesis? Why
would any Hebrew in 1st millennium BCE Jerusalem care whether it was a divine
blessing or a divine curse for an early monotheist to sire sons/grandsons?
That
was a hot button issue in Late Bronze Age northern Canaan, when the defense
of northern Canaan against the dreaded Hittites seemed to ride on the
peculiar
question of whether Egypt’s odd pharaoh at the time, who was busily trying to
sire sons/grandsons, would consider himself divinely blessed or divinely
cursed on that account. But to the best of my knowledge, no Hebrew in the
1st
millennium BCE or in Jerusalem was concerned with portraying siring
sons/grandsons
as being a divine blessing. Note that the most famous words of Judah, who is
the namesake of both J’s homeland of Judah and the religion of Judaism, are:
“She is more righteous than I…” Genesis 38: 26 That controversial defense
of Tamar’s audacious actions in tricking Judah into siring sons/grandsons
makes perfect sense in a Late Bronze Age northern Canaan context, while
making no
sense at all in a 1st millennium BCE Jerusalem context.

Which brings us right back to the main topic of this thread. Instead of
being JEPD fiction, as scholars see it, is Eynym in fact, by sharp contrast,
Late
Bronze Age northern Canaan historical fact? Either Eynym is in the secular
historical record as a town name, or it’s not. To the extent the Patriarchal
narratives are filled with pinpoint accurate historical details concerning
Late
Bronze Age northern Canaan, the Patriarchal narratives cannot have been
composed by JEPD in the 1st millennium BCE (with 5 of the 6 authors/editors
being
from Jerusalem, in southern Canaan, on the JEPD theory of the case).

So let’s take a look to see whether or not Eynym is attested in secular
history as being the bona fide name of a Late Bronze Age town in eastern
Lower
Galilee in n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n Canaan. The question of whether the geography
of the
Patriarchal narratives is historical or fictional is of critical importance
in judging the overall historicity of the Patriarchal narratives. It is hard
to believe that J would have known an historical Eynym/“Enaim” and Timnah in
the hill country of eastern Lower Galilee in the Late Bronze Age (or, for
that
matter, that J would have bestirred himself to mount a stirring defense of
the
glories of an early monotheist siring sons/grandsons).

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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