Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com>]

I realise that this may be technically off topic for the b-hebrew list
because it relates to an Aramaic section of the Hebrew Bible, but maybe
someone can help anyway:

The word +AR:P.:LFY") (tarpelaye') in Ezra 4:9 seems debatable. As it occurs
after a list of offices but before a list of ethnicities, it could be either
an office or an ethnicity. So RSV translates "officials". But BDB suggests
that this is a gentilic and probably derived from a Persian form of (:ABA
NAH:ARAH "beyond the River" (v.10). This seems plausible, cf. KJV
"Tarpelites". But NIV translates "of Tripolis" and The Message as "from
Tripolis", presumably referring to ancient city (mentioned in 2 Maccabees
14:1), now Tripoli or Tarabulus in Lebanon. (Also apparently using
"Tripolis" are the Easy to Read Version,
http://www.wbtc.com/articles/downloads/bible_downloads/ERV15Ezr.pdf)

My question is, is this understanding plausible? And if so, does it depend
on a dating to the Hellenistic period of these words recorded by Ezra,
quoted as from a letter by a Persian officer? For the name Tripolis is
clearly Greek. Did the city already exist and have this Greek name in the
Persian period? According to http://phoenicia.org/history.html, the city was
founded only in the early 4th century BCE, so after the time of Artaxerxes I
who is probably the king to whom this letter was addressed; certainly there
is no clear record of its earlier history, even according to the modern
city's own website, http://www.tripoli-lebanon.com/.

But it seems odd that conservative Christian translations like NIV and The
Message would choose an interpretation which seems to depend on a late
dating of the text, and which appears to conservative readers to be an
anachronism.

Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/