Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Christian <jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com>]

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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