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  • 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 18:36:55 +0300

Further note that both the LXX and the Vulgate seem to be treating the
phrase El Paran as a construct rather than as a proper name of a place. At
this point a discussion of the possible meaning of )YL might well be
warranted. Translators of Vulgate clearly understand this phrase as plains
or fields of Pharan.

James Christian

On 5 May 2010 18:20, James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>




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