Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 5/16/06, Yigal Levin wrote:

> I would fully agree with Dr. Rendsburg on this. The etymology
> of Ephraim is spelled out - a form of PRH, meaning "to be
> friutful".
>
> In any case, it is often assumed that Ephraim was originally a
> geographic term, referring to the northern part of the central hill
> country of Israel (later called "Samaria"). There is a question as
> to whether there may have even been a town by the same name.
> In time, the Iron Age settlers in the region began calling
> themselves "sons of Ephraim" - and to develop the etiological
> traditions about Ephraim son of Joseph. You can see a similar
> process with the term "Gilead" - originally a geographic term,
> eventually identified with a phratry within the tribe of Manasseh,
> and then a "Son" of the tribal patriarch.

My thoughts were that Ephraim, along with other names
point to an early name of Canaan.  The area of north
Judea is identified with Efrat, especially in the context
of Bethlehem often identified as Efrat.  North of that,
of course, is Ephraim.  North of that, we find the area of
Shechem, where placenames identified with the Biblical
"daughter of Zelophehad" are found.  The father of
Zelophehad is Hepher, so we might consider this entire
area to be called Hepher.  Further north, we find a place
name Hapharaim.  Altogether, these placenames - Efrat,
Ephraim, Hepher, Hapharaim cover a large area of land,
generally identified with the southern portion of Canaan.
(The northern portion including the Upper Galilee and the
Phoenician states).  The southern placenames Efrat
and Ephraim show possibly a loss of the Het, replacing it
with a glottal stop.

Yitzhak Sapir