Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

I promised myself I wouldn't get involved any more but faulty logic just
needs to be corrected. There are three basic problems here.

1) An assumption is being made that everybody knows Jacob's destination.
This isn't in the text at all.

2) An assumption is being made that Jacob insinuates going through Seir as a
necessary stop to his destination and not as a detour to visit his brother.
This also is quite simply not in the text.

3) Going around the dead sea to the South is actually not such a bad route
as Jim is making out. It avoids the need to cross the river with huge
flocks, women and children.

James Christian  [ducks and runs away as he doesn't want to get dragged into
this never ending saga once more]


On 20 May 2010 15:27, <jimstinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

>
>
>
> 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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