Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - [b-hebrew] Puns on Historical City Names in Genesis

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Puns on Historical City Names in Genesis
  • Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 11:31:02 EDT


Puns on Historical City Names in Genesis

“Shechem” and “Dothan” are historical names of historical cities in
northern Canaan. But what about the names of the other 10 cities near which
the
Patriarchs are portrayed as sojourning in the Patriarchal narratives? Can we
really believe that these are fictional names of fictional cities in southern
Canaan? Consider the apt remark of Anson Rainey at p. 9 of “The Sacred
Bridge”:

“The written sources we study may all have an agenda, e.g. Pharaonic
propaganda, religious exhortation, but the allusions to geographical details
are
seldom a matter of invention.”

Yet in his long, exhaustive book on Biblical geography, Anson Rainey himself
cannot figure out these 10 references.

The secret is puns. No one loved puns more than the author of the
Patriarchal narratives. The names of all 12 sons of Jacob are explicit puns.
The name
of every other major character in the Patriarchal narratives is an implicit
pun. All four wells that Isaac digs in Gerar are given names that are
explicit
puns. So why shouldn’t city names in this text be puns as well? Is it a “
coincidence” that Abraham gets great divine promises of progeny and land at “
Beth-el”, where “Beth-el” means “house of God”? Or that the famous Jacob’s
Ladder divine dream occurs at a place that Jacob calls “Beth-el”? If
“Beth-el”
is an obvious pun, then why not ask if the names of all the cities where the
Patriarchs are portrayed as sojourning are puns? The author wouldn’t likely
give us fictional names of fictional cities in southern Canaan. That makes
no
sense. No, he is giving us appropriate puns on historical names of
historical Late Bronze Age cities in northern Canaan.

Consider as Exhibit A “Migdal-edar”, at Genesis 35: 21. Does it make sense
for that to be a fictional name of a fictional city between Bethlehem of
Judea
and the modern city of Hebron? Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense for this to
be a pun on two historical names of historical cities in Late Bronze Age
northern Canaan?

In making a pun, one is looking for a different spelling with a somewhat
similar sound. The sound should be similar enough so that the audience can
recognize the original, historical name. But the sound will usually be
different
enough so that the audience will be able to recognize the pun without being
explicitly told that it is a pun.

The most obvious way to do a pun in Biblical Hebrew is to substitute one
guttural sound for another. Aleph and ayin had different sounds in Biblical
Hebrew, but they were both guttural sounds. So as to pronunciation, the
sounds of
these two gutturals were similar enough that the audience could guess what
the
original, historical name had been when the normal guttural was used.
Changing the guttural sound often changes the meaning, enabling the author to
make a
comment by means of a pun.

“Edar” is spelled in the text with an ayin: ayin-dalet-resh. If this is a
pun, then the most likely word on which this is a pun would be a word that
had
aleph instead of ayin, namely: aleph-dalet-resh. All of a sudden,
everything now makes perfect sense. Adar/aleph-dalet-resh is an historical
Late Bronze
Age city in Galilee. So is Migdal/mem-gimel-dalet-lamed. “Migdal” is item
#115 on the mid-15th century BCE list of pharaoh Thutmosis of Canaanite
cities, most of which cities were in Galilee. “Adar” is item #28 on pharaoh
Shisak’
s list from the 10th century BCE. Both cities are in Amarna Letter 256: 24
from the mid-14th century BCE in the Late Bronze Age: “Magdalu” and “Aduru”
(where Akkadian cuneiform routinely has a U at the end of a name, and the
vowel sounds in the middle of these words are not explicitly set forth in the
original Hebrew unpointed text of the Patriarchal narratives).

“Edar”, spelled in Genesis with an ayin in order to make a pun, means “flock”
. “Migdal” means “watchtower”. Note now the nifty pun at Genesis 35: 21:

“Israel journeyed on, and pitched his tent beyond migdal edar [Migdal (and)
Edar].”

Jacob/“Israel” is going to “watch” over his “flock” near Migdal (“
watchtower”) and Edar (“flock”).

Scholars see half of the pun. They see that “migdal” and “edar” are
suitable words for a herder of sheep and goats like Jacob who is “watching”
over
his “flock”, since “migdal” means “watchtower” and “edar” means “flock”.
(The word “edar”/ayin-dalet-resh is used 9 other times in the Patriarchal
narratives to mean “flock”.)

But scholars have failed to see the historical names of historical Late
Bronze Age cities in northern Canaan that are being punned upon here.
“Migdal” is
historical Migdal, in Late Bronze Age Galilee. “Edar” is a pun on
historical “Adar”, also in Late Bronze Age Galilee. The unexpected spelling
of “Edar”
with an ayin has no linguistic relationship to the aleph at the beginning of
the historical name “Adar”, but rather is a deliberate pun, based solely on
somewhat similar sound. The word “and” is also deleted between the two city
names, in order to make this pun.

Note that the historical city name “Adar”/aleph-dalet-resh means “
exceedingly glorious”, and as such is not a fitting name for a place where
Jacob is
routinely pasturing his flock. (Or if the aleph were viewed as not being
part of
the root, then the remaining dalet-resh/D-R would mean “habitation”, again
not being a fitting name.) Changing the aleph guttural to an ayin guttural
changes the meaning of the word completely, making it mean something
appropriate
to what Jacob is doing there: “flock”. “Edar” is not an “exceedingly
glorious” place, but rather is a run-of-the-mill historical city in Late
Bronze Age
Galilee where Jacob is temporarily pasturing his “flock” of sheep and goats.
By contrast, “Migdal” is a natural pun of sorts, being both the historical
name of an historical city in Late Bronze Age northern Canaan, and also
meaning
“watchtower”. Yet a “watchtower” could be stretched to reference a
shepherd “watching” over his flock only if “migdal” was immediately followed
by “
edar”/“flock”, hence “Migdal-edar” at Genesis 35: 21. We begin to see that
these puns are not easy. Rather, these puns have been meticulously created
by
the author of the Patriarchal narratives, who is modifying the spelling of
historical names of historical cities in Late Bronze Age northern Canaan to
make
them into appropriate puns that tell us what the Patriarchs do at these
places.

Every city in Canaan near which the Patriarchs are portrayed as sojourning is
like “Migdal-edar”. In every case, the historical name of an historical
city in Late Bronze Age northern Canaan is being referenced. But in most
cases,
the author is deliberately making a pun by using a spelling that differs from
the historical spelling, and that has merely a somewhat similar sound, not
the
same sound as the original.

“Dothan” and “Shechem” are natural puns. Most of the other 10 cities
become puns only by virtue of an unexpected spelling that is usually not
linguistically derivable from the historical spelling. But the important
point is that
all 12 cities near which the Patriarchs sojourn are intentional puns. The
names of all important characters, all wells, all trees, and all cities in
Canaan
near which the Patriarchs sojourn are puns. The name of the city always
tells us something important as to what role that city plays for the
Patriarchs.
But rather than being empty, easy puns that have no historical reference,
each
pun in fact is a brilliant pun that is closely based on the historical name
of a known historical city in Late Bronze Age northern Canaan. That is the
way
the author of the Patriarchal narratives uniquely operates.

Rather than focusing on this as a literary matter, I think we should
investigate these puns in order to discover the historical setting of the
Patriarchal
narratives. By analyzing these 12 city names, we start to see that the
author
of the Patriarchal narratives has an encyclopedic knowledge of Late Bronze
Age northern Canaan, while saying essentially nothing about (i) southern
Canaan
or (ii) any period of time after (or before) the Late Bronze Age.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




**************Get trade secrets for amazing burgers. Watch "Cooking with
Tyler Florence" on AOL Food.
(http://food.aol.com/tyler-florence?video=4&?NCID=aolfod00030000000002)



  • [b-hebrew] Puns on Historical City Names in Genesis, JimStinehart, 05/28/2008

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page