Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] El-Paran

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>
  • To: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] El-Paran
  • Date: Wed, 5 May 2010 18:20:42 +0300

Also, please note that whatever was meant by tereminthos in the Greek it was
most definitely in the singular.

James Christian

On 5 May 2010 18:15, James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com> wrote:

> Jim.
>
> both the LXX and the vulgate support an understanding of El-Paran being a
> place in the desert.
>
> ἕως τῆς τερεμίνθου τῆς *φαραν ἥ ἐστιν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ
> ad campestria Pharan quae est in solitudine
>
> Also I don't know what your source for translation of tereminthos is but
> the Vulgate quite clearly shows an understanding of 'plains of Pharan'.
>
> Also, just a couple of weeks ago I trod many of the places the bible refers
> to as MDBR, what you translate as marginal pasture land. They look very much
> like desert to me. Although, yes, you are right, they do have a few blades
> of grass in them that the livestock of the local Bedouine regularly chew on.
> I don't think this warrants your proposed translation, though. If we were to
> take a random sample of native speakers of English show them these places
> and ask them to spontaneously categorise the panorama I'm placing my bets
> that they would call them deserts rather than 'marginal pasture land'.
>
> James Christian
>
> On 5 May 2010 16:28, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:
>
>> James Christian:
>>
>>
>>
>> 1. If you are going to cite the Septuagint, then note that the Septuagint
>> sees El-Paran as referencing terebinthes or oak trees of Paran. There are
>> no oak trees south of the Dead Sea! But there were plenty of oak trees in
>> the Transjordan north of the Dead Sea. So the Septuagint helps me here,
>> while hurting your traditional view that the Horites are an unattested
>> people portrayed as living south of the Dead Sea, instead of being the
>> historical Hurrians who historically lived, and are accurately portrayed
>> in the Biblical text as living, in the Transjordan.
>>
>>
>>
>> But before we leave the Septuagint, note that the scholarly view that
>> El-Paran/Great Desert means a navigable waterway, namely the Gulf of
>> Aqaba, is greatly undermined by the Septuagint. There are no oak trees
>> near the Gulf of Aqaba! It’s hard to believe that Greek-speaking Jews in
>> Egypt would have confused oak trees with the Gulf of Aqaba, as university
>> scholars would have it. By contrast, oak trees and the Transjordan are a
>> natural match.
>>
>>
>>
>> 2. Your translation manages to get everything after El-Paran completely
>> wrong. You leave out )$R entirely. That’s not right. You translate (L
>> as “in”, yet (L has the exact opposite meaning! (L means “against” or “up
>> to” or “by”, but n-e-v-e-r “in”. When the author wants to tell us that
>> the Hurrians lived “in” the hill country that is north and south of the
>> city of Seir/Jazer in the Transjordan, he naturally uses the word B near
>> the beginning of Genesis 14: 6, meaning “in”. Finally, MDBR is rarely
>> translated as “desert” here, because that’s not its normal meaning. M is
>> a prefix meaning “place”. DBR means “to drive”, that is, to drive flocks
>> across land that is very marginal pastureland, being land which could
>> never be farmed, but not usually meaning a true desert, across which
>> flocks would not ordinarily be driven. The ordinary translation is
>> “wilderness”, but that’s a little misleading, because the MDBR is not
>> necessarily “wild”.
>>
>>
>>
>> Although )$R usually means “which” or “that”, it can have the meaning of
>> “that is”, where it’s function is to clarify what came before. (L can
>> mean “up to”, and MDBR can mean “very marginal pastureland”. Genesis 14:
>> 6 is telling us that the troops sent by the 4 attacking rulers “forcefully
>> pressured”/NKH the Hurrians throughout the Transjordan, from where they
>> lived “in the hill country of Seir, to as far as El-Paran/the Great
>> Desert/the Syro-Arabian Desert, that is, up to the very marginal
>> pastureland (that borders the eastern Transjordan, on the west edge of the
>> Great Desert/Syro-Arabian Desert)”. That is to say, the Hurrians
>> throughout the entirety of the Transjordan were forcefully pressured in
>> Year 14 to become Hittite partisans. Here is how Biryawaza, with a
>> Hurrian-type name, got forcefully pressured by the Hittites in Year 14 (of
>> Akhenaten’s reign) in the Transjordan:
>>
>>
>>
>> “Biridaswa [the pro-Hittite princeling ruler of Ashteroth] [and his
>> confederates] keep saying, ‘We are servants of the king of Hatti,’ and I
>> [Biryawaza] keep saying, ‘I am a servant of the king of Egypt.’ …When the
>> king of Busruna [Biblical Bezer, far south of Ashteroth, near Kiriathaim]
>> and the king of Halunnu [very likely a city near Ashteroth] saw this, they
>> waged war with Biridaswa [of Ashteroth] against me [Biryawaza, the Hurrian
>> *maryannu* faced with the unenviable task of trying to keep the
>> Transjordan and nearby territory safely within Egypt’s sphere of
>> influence], constantly saying, ‘Come, let’s kill Biryawaza….’” Amarna
>> Letter EA 197: 13-30
>>
>>
>>
>> 3. Genesis 14: 6 is fully historical. All the Hurrians throughout the
>> Transjordan were forcefully pressured to become Hittite partisans in Year
>> 14. That means the Hurrians from the well-wooded hill country of Seir on
>> the west, all the way over to the marginal pastureland on the east of the
>> Transjordan that borders the Great Desert/the Syro-Arabian Desert. That’s
>> exactly what Genesis 14: 6 says, and that’s exactly right. That’s what
>> indeed happened in the Transjordan in Year 14. Read all about it in
>> Amarna Letter EA 197.
>>
>>
>>
>> The pinpoint historical accuracy of Genesis 14: 6 is truly breathtaking.
>>
>>
>>
>> Jim Stinehart
>>
>> Evanston, Illinois
>>
>>
>>
>>
>




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page