Biblical Hebrew Forum

[jimstinehart AT aol.com]

Yitzhak Sapir:
You wrote:  “The article is old, Jim.  …How was it received by other 
scholars?  Did anyone accept it?  If no one accepted it back in 1911, why 
should we?  …What do modern geographical studies say about Seir?”
 
I think I may have found the 1850 rabbinical source for that old scholarly 
article, which I will set forth in a moment.  
 
But first here’s a 2006 update, from Anson Rainey’s “The Sacred Bridge” at p, 
124, as to the realistic possibility of the ancient site of Jazer being 
Khirbet es-Sar.  [Of some importance here, I believe that the sibilant in 
each case is an Arabic ssade, which is basically an emphatic sin, as the sin 
was in old Biblical Hebrew, and not having a TS sound as does the modern 
Hebrew ssade.  But as we will also see, back in the 19th century the ruins 
there were called “Seir”.]  “Jazer….  Various sites have been proposed 
(Peterson 1992a) for its location, e.g. Khirbet es-Sar (e.g. Merrill 1883: 
484;  Aharoni 1979: 437).  The tel is located 5.5 miles (9 km) west of Amman 
and 1 mile (1.5 km) southeast of ‘Ain es-Sir in a rolling, fertile expanse….”
 



Unfortunately, Rainey is not interested in the fact that a possible site of 
Jazer has as the name of its ancient ruins Sar or Sir, suggesting Shar or 
Seir.  Rainey cannot imagine that a Late Bronze Age reference in chapter 14 
of Genesis to HRRM Seir might possibly be to a different place than a 1st 
millennium BCE reference to HR Seir at Genesis 36: 8-9.  So on his map on p. 
15, he shows Mt. Seir south of the Dead Sea for the reference to HRRM Seir at 
Genesis 14: 6, but that’s what’s said in the 1st millennium BCE Genesis 36: 
8-9.  By contrast, HRRM in the Late Bronze Age Genesis 14: 6 is probably 
referring to hill country, and the locale of HRRM Seir is probably Gilead, 
north of the Dead Sea .  Genesis 36: 8-43 is obviously referring to the 1st 
millennium BCE state of Edom, so how could that portion of the Bible be 
relied on for identifying Seir in a much older portion of the Bible that is 
generally recognized as being the oldest prose portion of the entire Bible, 
likely going all the long way back to the Late Bronze Age, namely Genesis 14: 
6, many centuries before the creation of the state of Edom south of the Dead 
Sea?
Sar and Sir as the name of ruins at the possible site of Jazer recall two 
Late Bronze Age references to Sh-R at this same, or at least approximate, 
location:  (i) She-ru in Amarna Letter EA 288: 26 from Abdi-Heba of 
Jerusalem, and (ii) Sh-R + N at item #22 on the Thutmose III list.  This is 
“well-wooded” hill country, so the possible sources for these various names 
are two words meaning “orchard”:  sha-re in Urartian, with no ayin or ghayin 
(as on the T III list), and sha-a(-ri in Hurrian, with the mysterious Hurrian 
ghayin, which seems to have come into Biblical Hebrew as an ayin in the $(YR 
referenced at Genesis 14: 6.  Amarna Letter EA 197 documents people with 
Hurrian-type names dominating the Transjordan, so it would make sense for 
this site in the “well-wooded” hill country of Gilead to have its name derive 
from the Hurrian or Urartian words for “orchard”.  She-ru in the Amarna 
Letters is neutral as to the ayin/ghayin issue, as the Akkadian cuneiform of 
the Amarna Letters has no ayin.  
In this connection, note the following in Smith’s Bible Dictionary (being an 
even older source than I cited before, dating to about 1860):  “Jaazer…town, 
east of Jordan in Gilead (Numbers 32: 1).  …The land of Jazer;  Seir, west of 
Ammon, north of Heshbon.”  And here’s the entry for Jaazer in Easton’s Bible 
Dictionary (1897):  “Its site is marked by the modern ruin called Sar or 
Seir, about 10 miles west of Amman, and 12 from Heshbon. "  Perhaps the 
original source for those old remarks is from 1850, Rabbi Joseph Schwarz, 
“Palestine Beyond Jordan, Nature of the Country in General”:  “Jazer….[A]t 
present there are ruins, called



 Seir, on the spot indicated, which leaves no doubt the Seir is derived from 
Jazer. Near it there rises the spring called Wady Seïr, and I believe that 
Jeremiah alludes, in chap. 48:32, where he speaks of the sea of Jazer, to 
water pools which were probably supplied from this spring.”  
So we know that as early as 1850, the ruins of the likely locale of Jazer 
were oddly called “Seir”, or some similar name.  That is fascinating, because 
today’s scholars see Seir as exclusively referencing Mt. Seir south of the 
Dead Sea, so why would the ruins of Jazer be called “Seir”?  Was there an 
age-old tradition, defying modern scholarship, that this locale in southern 
Gilead was the Seir referenced at Genesis 14: 6 and in chapters 31-33 of 
Genesis?
It’s clear that when Jacob was at Penuel, he had only two realistic routes to 
enter beloved Canaan.  He was not going to go back north, that’s for sure.  
And he was certainly not going to traverse the entire Transjordan to a locale 
south of the Dead Sea!  No, his only two realistic options were as follows.  
He could go straight west from Penuel, and proceed onto Shechem.  Or he could 
go south to Seir/Shar/Jazer in southern Gilead, and then go west and proceed 
to the Jerusalem area (and perhaps from there onto the Patriarchs’ Hebron, 
which is probably what both Esau and the reader expect him to do, but in fact 
he did not do that).  The story makes no sense at all unless Seir is located 
north of the Dead Sea and south of Penuel.  That Seir is probably the Seir or 
Shar that is attested in the Late Bronze Age at that precise location (as far 
as we can tell), and which may have as the name of its ruins today either Sar 
or Sir, which ruins back in 1850 were called Seir.  The names match as to the 
secular history of the Late Bronze Age, and that location is needed in order 
for the story to make geographical sense.
I myself see “Seir” or some similar name being documented in southern Gilead 
in  a-l-l  of the sources where one would normally look for a Late Bronze Age 
city name in such locale:  the T III list, the Amarna Letters, chapter 14 of 
Genesis, and the modern name of the ancient ruins at the site.  Plus the 
logic of chapters 31-33 of Genesis essentially demands that the Seir 
referenced there be located in southern Gilead, so that it’s on the way to 
Canaan for a person like Jacob who is starting off from Penuel.  In my 
considered view, HRRM Seir at Genesis 14: 6 (a Late Bronze Age composition) 
is a totally different place than the HR Seir referenced regarding the 1st 
millennium BCE state of Edom at Genesis 36: 8-43.  They are two completely 
different places, not even having the same full name, with one being located 
in southern Gilead, while the other is located south of the Dead Sea.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
   


-----Original Message-----
From: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
To: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wed, May 19, 2010 4:38 pm
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Seir


On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 11:35 PM, Jim Stinehart wrote:
> An old scholarly article notes that the ruins of Jazer are called Seir:
       ^^^
The article is old, Jim.  It's not really clear if he is making the
oint you want
t to, but suppose it does, so what?  So what if a scholar wrote something in
911.  How was it received by other scholars?  Did anyone accept it?  If no
ne accepted it back in 1911, why should we?  Maybe the author even
eversed his position?  What do modern geographical studies say about Seir?
ll this has to be considered.  You can't just pick sentences that scholars
rote sometime anytime uncritically and join them together to form a web
f inconsistent statements that support your odd positions.
Yitzhak Sapir
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