Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

+ indicates an emphatic (or aspirated) t


There is a Ugaritic text (KTU 1.78) taken to contain a report of an eclipse:

b++ . ym xd+
xyr . `rbt
$p$ +grh
r$p

This text has a number of difficulties. The first being the significance of
b++. This has been related to the Hebrew b$$, "on the six(th)". (Not a
strange connection, the Ugaritic y+tr, is Ishtar.) This would mean that the
text reads something like,

  On the sixth, the day of the full moon of Hiyaru,
  the sun went in with her gate-keeper Rashap.

(Hiyaru is the month Iyyar. Rashap is an infernal god who may be the planet
Mars.)

If this is an eclipse, we know that it must occur on the first day of the
month (or the day before). It's impossible on any other day, if it is a
lunar month. So, for the text to mean what it does above it must be a solar
month. I don't have enough info to say whether this was likely or not.

However another translation of b++ relates the word to the Hebrew b$$ from
bw$, to be ashamed (as in Ishbosheth) and the text becomes:

  The day of the full moon of Hiyaru was shamed:
  the sun went in with her gate-keeper Rashap.

Thus the text is related to Isaiah 24:23:

  The moon will be confounded, the sun ashamed
  for the Lord of Hosts will reign on Mount Zion...

and it is claimed that the fact that the sun was ashamed means that we are
referring to an eclipse of the sun. But, looking at the other uses of
confounded and ashamed (seemingly interchangeable in English, xpr and bw$),
I've seen no reason to suspect that they mean anything other than the
literal understanding we have of them. (Can anyone elucidate on them -- is
there a fair possibility that bw$ can mean there was an eclipse rather than
the more literal idea that with the presence of God, the moon will be
confounded and the sun ashamed?)

If in fact b++, which in the Ugaritic text may indicate "(be) ashamed",
refers to an eclipse, then the text with some tweaking could be translated:

  The day of the full moon of Hiyaru was shamed
  at sunset with her gate-keeper Rashap.

Thus we have the (in)famous sunset eclipse. However, in Hebrew there is a
very good chance that Amos 8:9 is a prophecy which includes an eclipse:

  I will make the sun go in (text says: down) at noon

where the word "to go in" is bw`, which is the equivalent of the Ugaritic
`rb. The idea of the sun going in, which commonly happened at the end of
the day can be seen in the notion of the sun going in through a door in
heaven, represented for example in the Enochic Astronomical Book, but is no
means unique. "To go in" or "enter" is the normal way to refer to the sun
setting, but it doesn't necessarily mean to set, so the translation "I will
make the sun go down" is in fact interpreting the text and perhaps
misrepresenting the idea: it may, in this, indicate that the sun went in a
door in the sky (at noon). If this is the case then there is a lot of sense
to mention the gate (or door)keeper, Rashap, who as the planet Mars would
not be visible at sunset. At the same time, if the clause `rbt $p$ is a
periphrastic time phrase, then we have nothing to suggest that there was an
eclipse, unless one can make a case for the sun being ashamed -- if that is
the correct translation of b++ -- indicating an eclipse.

There have been even stranger translations of this text, including one
which started "on the six days of the full moon of Hiyaru...", but I think
I've covered the main ideas.

I'd be interested in both any criticisms and any other information about
eclipses and related terminology in the OT/HB.


Thanks,


Ian