Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 21/03/2007 04:13, Yigal Levin wrote:
> Yohanan,
>
> The Bible does not say that "Mizraim" is what we call "Egypt" or that "Aram" is what we 
> call "Syria". ...

This is a strange statement. "Mizraim" is simply the Hebrew word for 
Egypt, used repeatedly for the land of the Nile and the Pharaohs which 
is what we call "Egypt". "Aram" is the Hebrew word transliterated in 
some English versions and translated "Syria" in others, which refers to 
a rather ill-defined territory roughly comparable to the modern state of 
Syria and of which Damascus was for some time the capital. So I don't 
know what you mean here. Because the Bible is not a dictionary it does 
not explicitly tell us which Hebrew words correspond to which English 
ones. But it provides enough geographical information to make these 
identifications completely certain.

As for Kush, the biblical information may not be quite so certain, but 
Ezekiel 29:10 seems to put the border of Kush at Aswan, strongly 
suggesting that at least here Kush refers to Nubia.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/