Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear Walter,


I would like to comment on two of your points below, in order to show that
the agnostic position I take towards the viewpoints of those who take and
agnostic position toward the text of the Tanach has some sound foundation:


WM
>In reply to Mr. Washburn's most recent comments challenging my position that
>Genesis is a fifth century BCE creation I have assembled a list of what I
>consider to be "historical markers" indicating Genesis was not written by
>Moses in the 15th century BCE as he maintains:
>
>Please note that all these "markers" are not of the 2nd millenium BCE, they
>are of the 1st millenium BCE:


snip


>Nimrod, from a root, mrd,  meaning "we will rebel," is unattested in West
>Semitic onomastica. It occurs in later Palmyrene (mrd) and epigraphic South
>Arabic inscriptions (p.74, Hess), that is, after 500 BCE. If Nimrod is a
>deliberate distortion of the Assyrian warrior-god Ninurta, then the period
>could be much earlier.

RF
It is commendable that you are open for an alternative interpretation like
that of Ninurta, and I would like to proceed on this path. This month a
suggestion for the origin of the name Nimrod was given on the ANE-list
("thread ane Afro-Mashriqian PPS") in a quote from  W. Papke "Die geheime
Botschaft des Gilgamesch" (in English translation):


"Kush beget Nimrod,...he was a great hunter...The beginning of
his kingdom was Babylon and Uruk"(Gen.X)...
The name of the first king of the 1st Dynasty of Uruk, builder
of Uruk, is Enmer-kár, written in a variant syllabic spelling
en-me-er-rú(d)-kár. Separates one kár, hunter, from the rest of
the word, one gets the name of the first king
of Uruk: en-me-er-rú(d), together Enmerud = Nimrod."

This suggestion includes a reasonable explanation of the name and shows
that it is combined with the word "hunter".

From my own notes I quote the suggestion of P.S. Landersdorfer, 1916,
"Sumerisches Sprachgut in Alten Testament", Leipzig, p 20, regarding the
origin of the name "Nimrod":

"Erwähnt seien nur zunächst die von Delitzsch ausgesprochene Vermutung, der
Name sei NU-MARAD, d.h. "Mann von Marad", einer alten sumerischen Stadt, zu
deuten, sodann die Erklärung Hommels, der darin den akkadisch-sumerischen
Namen für den Neumond NAMRA-UDDU sieht, das etwa mit "glänzendes Licht" zu
übersetzen wäre."

The most likely identification of Nimrod, in my view, is the identification
with Marduk, the founder of Babel. In Sumerian, Marduk is written by signs
that can be read as AMAR-UD. The reason why we find the -uk ending in the
Accadian name, can be the Sumerian sign for  genitive k/ak which comes
after the genitive construction. The name of Marduk could have been read in
Sumerian as AMAR-UD-ak. The vowel of the genitive -ak could have been
harmonized with the vowel of UD to amar-ud-uk; the elision of the middle
"u" and of the first element of "amar" would then give Marduk. To account
for the fall of the first element of amar we can point to the Babylonian
city amar-da that became marad in Assyrian. Based on this we get the
letters marud, but what about the initial element ni? One possibility is
that NU (=man) is found at the beginning, giving "Marduk's man" or "the man
Marduk". Another possibility is that the Hebrew form of the word is a play
of words (just as is "Babel"). Those using Hebrew read (a)mar-ud which is
similar to the Hebrew MRD, and they transformed it into a Niphal infinitive
absolute or a participle meaning "the rebel"


  A.H. Sayce, 1873, "Nimrod and the Assyrian Inscriptions" in "Proceedings
of the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, pp 243-249,
argued for this origin of the name Nimrod from AMAR-UD. He also pointed out
that Marduk was depicted as a hunter. So we may have three elements from
Gen 10:9,10: (1) a word phonetically close to Nimrod, (2) who was the
founder of Babel, and (3) who was a hunter.

How much can we trust the suggestions above? Very much or very little! All
reconstructions of such old material are very doubtful. However, the very
fact that such reconstructions can be made, shows that arguments from
silence, which are very common in late-dating-arguments are even more
doubtful. And they are particularly doubtful if other languages than
Hebrew, such as Sumerian, are ignored. It can be that the exclusion of
other languages than Hebrew, in a way  assumes beforehand a 5th century
date of the material.


WM
>
>Nations (Peoples):
>
>Media takes on no importance till the 9th,8th and 7th centuries BCE when she
>struggles against Assyria.

snip

>I go by the rule of thumb that says the latest elements date the
>composition. I have identified Madai's (the Medes) descent from Japheth with
>the Athenian Greek Medus myth, created not earlier than the 6th century BCE
>and cited by Datis the Median general of Darius I as a reason for invading
>Greece in 490 BCE, and thus date Genesis to the 5th century BCE; this seems
>to fall in line with Hess' observations about Cain, (qynw/Qainu) and Nimrod
>(mrd) as being attested only in the latter half of the first millenium BCE.

snip¨

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld
Walldorf by Heidelberg
Baden-Wurttemburg
Germany

RF
The identification above is of course possible, but I am hard pressed to
see the logical steps leading to this identification of Madai in Genesis
10:2.
Even though we take an agnostic standpoint towards the account, the first
step to take is to see what the account really says. And it says just one
thing, namely, that Noah's son Japhet got a son by the name of Madai, and
he and his brothers were the ancestors of different peoples (just as
Abraham was for the Jews). The chronology of Genesis, which we also must
take into account even though we are sure it is fictious, place the account
of Genesis 10 in a period a little less than a thousand years before it
says that Moses wrote something.

It is true that we fist meet the Medes in the days of Assyria, but how in
the world can we know that the ancestor of this nation did not live 900
years before Moses as Genesis 10 says? This question is particularly
pressing because to date  now written material in Median has been found
even though the nation  existed at least for 200 years and as other peoples
they certainly wrote documents in the Median language. Or should we from
the silence draw the conclusion that the Medes could not write or did not
write anything?

There is of course logic in your conclusion that Genesis 10 is an
etiological account that was written in the 5th century to explain the
origin of different peoples. The late appearance of the nation of the Medes
is a good argument for this. But this is just one possible explanation, and
it does not exclude the possibility that the account itself is an
historical account, just as was the case with the "resurrection" of Bala'am
the prophet. So again, the paradigm to which we subscribe is much more
important as a basis for our conclusions than the data themselves.



Regards

Rolf


Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo