Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Fancier Quinn:
 
A.  You wrote:  “[‘Enaim’ is a] Place name meaning, ‘two eyes or springs.’  
A village near Timnah, where Tamar seduced Judah”.
 
That is not quite right, at least not in the Patriarchal narratives.
 
In the Patriarchal narratives:
 
1.  Eyn, in the singular, can mean either “eye” or “spring” or “fountain” 
or “well”.
 
2.  But either a dual or plural form of eyn, whether the dual Eynym/“Enaim” 
at Genesis 38: 14, 21, or any plural form of eyn, never means “springs” or “
fountains” or “wells” in the Patriarchal narratives.  Rather, a dual or 
plural 
form of eyn in the Patriarchal narratives always means “eyes” literally, and 
usually has the figurative meaning of “judgment”, “opinion”, etc.
 
Note that Tamar is not by a well when Judah meets her.
 
If I understand correctly how Eynym is used in the Patriarchal narratives, it 
cannot mean “springs” or “fountains” or “wells”.  Rather, Eynym as a dual 
must mean “eyes” literally, and usually has the figurative meaning of “
judgment”, “opinion”, etc.
 
In the Patriarchal narratives, a well is often the setting for a romantic 
meeting that presages marriage.  When Abraham’s trusted servant goes looking 
for 
an ideal bride for Isaac, Rebekah is appropriately found by a well.  Genesis 
24: 11, 15  Jacob meets his heartthrob, statuesque Rachel, at a well.  
Genesis 
29: 2, 9  Also, a distraught, pregnant and lonely Hagar gets much-needed fine 
divine advice by a well.  Genesis 16: 7  By contrast, Judah’s meeting at 
Eynym/
“Enaim” with a disguised Tamar, who has put on a veil and is impersonating a 
prostitute, is not romantic at all, and thus a setting by a well would be 
inappropriate here.  Note that the text explicitly tells us that Judah never 
had 
relations with Tamar thereafter.  Genesis 38: 26
 
By contrast, “eyes” and “judgment” are of critical concern in chapter 38 of 
Genesis.  Tamar covers everything but her “eyes”, and then Judah will soon 
enough be required to make a critical “judgment”:  should Tamar be burned 
alive (Judah’s initial judgment, at Genesis 38: 24), or, rather, is Tamar 
more 
righteous than Judah himself (Judah’s considered judgment, at Genesis 38: 26)?
 
The beautiful symbolism here works right if and only if Eynym means “eyes”/“
judgment”, rather than meaning “wells” or “springs” or “fountains”.  Based 
on the distinction in this portion of Genesis between singular on the one 
hand, and either dual or plural on the other hand, I myself do not see the 
word 
Eynym as being ambiguous in this context.  Rather, the clear meaning of Eynym 
in 
the Patriarchal narratives is “eyes”/“judgment”.
 
B.  But the really exciting question here is as follows.  Are scholars right 
that Eynym is JEPD fiction?  According to Richard Elliott Friedman, in The 
Bible with Sources Revealed (2003), (i) all of chapter 38 of Genesis was 
composed 
by J, and (ii) at p. 3 Friedman notes that “J was composed by an author 
living in the southern kingdom of Judah” in the 1st millennium BCE.  Why 
would any 
author from 1st millennium BCE Judah, presumably living in or near Jerusalem, 
have any interest in the substantive content of chapter 38 of Genesis?  Why 
would any Hebrew in 1st millennium BCE Jerusalem care whether it was a divine 
blessing or a divine curse for an early monotheist to sire sons/grandsons?  
That 
was a hot button issue in Late Bronze Age northern Canaan, when the defense 
of northern Canaan against the dreaded Hittites seemed to ride on the 
peculiar 
question of whether Egypt’s odd pharaoh at the time, who was busily trying to 
sire sons/grandsons, would consider himself divinely blessed or divinely 
cursed on that account.  But to the best of my knowledge, no Hebrew in the 
1st 
millennium BCE or in Jerusalem was concerned with portraying siring 
sons/grandsons 
as being a divine blessing.  Note that the most famous words of Judah, who is 
the namesake of both J’s homeland of Judah and the religion of Judaism, are:  
“She is more righteous than I…”  Genesis 38: 26  That controversial defense 
of Tamar’s audacious actions in tricking Judah into siring sons/grandsons 
makes perfect sense in a Late Bronze Age northern Canaan context, while 
making no 
sense at all in a 1st millennium BCE Jerusalem context.
 
Which brings us right back to the main topic of this thread.  Instead of 
being JEPD fiction, as scholars see it, is Eynym in fact, by sharp contrast, 
Late 
Bronze Age northern Canaan historical fact?  Either Eynym is in the secular 
historical record as a town name, or it’s not.  To the extent the Patriarchal 
narratives are filled with pinpoint accurate historical details concerning 
Late 
Bronze Age northern Canaan, the Patriarchal narratives cannot have been 
composed by JEPD in the 1st millennium BCE (with 5 of the 6 authors/editors 
being 
from Jerusalem, in southern Canaan, on the JEPD theory of the case).
 
So let’s take a look to see whether or not Eynym is attested in secular 
history as being the bona fide name of a Late Bronze Age town in eastern 
Lower 
Galilee in  n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n  Canaan.  The question of whether the geography 
of the 
Patriarchal narratives is historical or fictional is of critical importance 
in judging the overall historicity of the Patriarchal narratives.  It is hard 
to believe that J would have known an historical Eynym/“Enaim” and Timnah in 
the hill country of eastern Lower Galilee in the Late Bronze Age (or, for 
that 
matter, that J would have bestirred himself to mount a stirring defense of 
the 
glories of an early monotheist siring sons/grandsons).
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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