Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

James Christian:

Look at the glaring contradiction we see in the Septuagint, which views
MWLDT as meaning “birth place”.

Genesis 11: 28, per Septuagint:  “And Harran died before his father Thara
in the land in which he was born, in the country of the Chaldeans.”

Genesis 24: 4, per Septuagint:  “…‘but you shall go to my country where I
was born, and to my tribe, and get a wife for my son Isaak from there’”.

[The above Septuagint translations are taken from the new Oxford version,
here:  _http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/01-gen-nets.pdf_
(http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/01-gen-nets.pdf)   Note that the 
Septuagint, so
often inaccurate, somehow missed the key word “Ur” at Genesis 11: 28.]

On the view that MWLDT means “birth place”, southeastern Mesopotamia is
Abraham’s native land,  a-n-d  Harran, in faraway northwestern Mesopotamia, is
also Abraham’s native land.  That makes no sense.

Now compare how everything makes perfect sense if MWLDT means “kindred”:

Genesis 11: 28, per the English Standard Version :  “Haran died in the
presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the 
Chaldeans.

Genesis 24: 4, per ESV:  “…but will go to my country and to my kindred,
and take a wife for my son Isaac."

Now everything makes perfect sense, and there is no contradiction.  Haran
died in the place where Haran’s kindred/MWLDT were at the time, namely
southern Mesopotamia.  Genesis 11: 28 says nothing about where any member of 
Terakh
’s family was born, and does not assert that southern Mesopotamia was
Abraham’s native land.

Years later, Abraham sends his trusted servant back to Harran to get a wife
for Isaac, because that is where many of Abraham’s kindred/MWLDT were
living.  Genesis 24: 4 says nothing about where Abraham was born, and does not
assert that northern Mesopotamia was Abraham’s native land.

Note how the context, to which you allude, confirms the meaning here.

By the way, I never asserted that MWLDT first came to mean “birth place”
in modern times.  What I said was, on the contrary, that (i) MWLDT means “
kindred” in Biblical Hebrew, and (ii) MWLDT often means “birth place” in
modern Hebrew.  You brought up a different issue, which is relevant but not
addressed by me in my first post:  the Greek Septuagint interprets MWLDT to 
mean “
birth place”.

Note how the Greek Septuagint contradicts itself.  It makes no sense to
assert that  b-o-t-h  southern Mesopotamia,  a-n-d  northern Mesopotamia, were
Abraham’s native land.

Professor Yigal Levin, noted scholar Gordon Wenham, and BDB, having
reviewed all of these passages, view MWLDT in the Patriarchal narratives as 
meaning
“kindred”.

The reason why scholars (such as the scholars cited above) have been
extremely unwilling (unlike me) to explore the consequences of that linguistic
fact is that scholars want to hold on to the traditional view that the
Patriarchal narratives set forth a mythical, contra-factual assertion that the
native land of Abraham is Mesopotamia.  T’ain’t true!  The Patriarchal
narratives say nothing of the kind.  The Patriarchal narratives, historically
accurately, present Canaan as being the native land of the Hebrews, per 
Genesis 25:
8.  All of Abraham’s ancestors were born in Canaan.  All but one of Abraham’
s ancestors died, and were buried, in Canaan.  The one and only exception
as to death and burial was Terakh, who was trying to make it back to his
homeland of Canaan, but never made it.

Given the foregoing reading of the Patriarchal narratives, where MWLDT = “
kindred”, it is no surprise that Hebrew is a virgin pure west Semitic
language, like Moabite and Ugaritic (and unlike Akkadian and Egyptian).  The
Hebrews are indigenous to Canaan.  That’s what most modern historians tell us.
And that’s what the Patriarchal narratives have been telling us for 3,500
years now.  Ezra had his reasons, under terrible duress, to reinterpret the
geography of the Patriarchal narratives.  But since Ezra did not change a 
single
letter in the text of the Patriarchal narratives itself, we can look at
that text for ourselves.  Ignore the pointing, ignore II Chronicles, and 
ignore
Ezra’s traditional, non-historical view of the Patriarchal narratives in
general.  The unpointed text of the Patriarchal narratives has pinpoint
historical accuracy as to these matters, if we will only look at what the
unpointed text of the last 40 chapters of Genesis actually says.

The key here is to understand, in context, the meaning of the word MWLDT.
The only way to force the Patriarchal narratives to assert, falsely, that
the Hebrews were native to Mesopotamia is to refuse to accept that MWLDT in
the Patriarchal narratives means “kindred”.  If MWLDT in the Patriarchal
narratives meant “birth place”, then we would have the absurd result of the
text telling us that  b-o-t-h  southern  a-n-d  northern Mesopotamia were
Abraham’s native land.  No way!  Not.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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