Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Antonio Garcia <garcia.secretariagh.antonio1 AT gmail.com>]

       Hi Stinehart:

       I wrote some notes about tamar on ancient phoenician coins, and I
give you my article in a spanish forum of numismatic.


http://colecciones.fororama.com/lectura-hebrea-de-las-monedas-antiguas-f65/evolucion-del-diseno-punico-de-palmera-y-caballo-t348.htm

       I will send you some arxives of hebrew tamar on ancient coins from
roman empire.

      Regards, Antonio Garcia Hurtado.



2010/10/14 <JimStinehart AT aol.com>

>
> This thread will explore the original meaning of TMR at Genesis 14: 7, a
> section of the Bible that many mainstream scholars see as dating back to
> the
> Late Bronze Age.  By the 1st millennium BCE, centuries after the
> composition
> of Genesis 14: 7, TMR had come to have the narrow literal meaning of “date
> palm tree”, and an alternate, figurative meaning of “column”.  But the
> question on this thread is whether originally, at Genesis 14: 7, TMR had a
> different meaning than “date palm tree”.
>
> The conventional etymologies of the word TMR do not support a pre-1st
> millennium BCE meaning of “date palm tree”.  Strong’s says that TMR comes
> from “
> an unused root” meaning “to be erect”.  But as we shall now see, no
> language pre-dating the 1st millennium BCE seems to have any such word or
> root TMR
> with that meaning.  BDB asks if the root of TMR may be an Arabic verb
> meaning “be erect, stiff (e.g. of lance)”.  But Arabic is not attested as
> being
> in existence until about a thousand years or so after the date that
> scholars
> generally view as being when Genesis 14: 7 was composed.  That Arabic word
> likely derives from the 1st millennium BCE Hebrew meaning of TMR, rather
> than such Arabic word providing a valid etymology for the original Late
> Bronze
> Age meaning of TMR.  TMR appears as a proper name in Ugaritic, but the
> best-known Ugaritic dictionary, by Lete and Sanmartin, sets forth no
> meaning for
> that name in Ugaritic.  Most revealingly, despite spending 3½ long pages on
> the subject, the best that HALOT can come up with as an alleged “cognate”
> for TMR is this:  “Akk. gi$immaru…the Sumerian loanword gi$immaru(m)”.
>  Yes,
> the Akkadian/Sumerian word gi$immarum has the meaning that scholars want, “
> date palm tree”, but it’s not a cognate to TMR.  Since when does g$ = T?
>
> So let’s now consider an alternative west Semitic etymology for TMR in a
> Late Bronze Age context.  We will not restrict our search to words that
> mean
> or imply “date palm tree”, as the above standard sources do, because that
> defeats the whole purpose of doing an historical etymology in the first
> place.
>  We are trying to find out what TMR meant in the Late Bronze Age, at
> Genesis 14: 7, realizing that back then TMR could well have had a different
> meaning than “date palm tree”.
>
> 1.  In Ugaritic, tmr means “Thou shalt bless (lit. ‘fortify’…)”.  Baruch
> Margalit, “The Ugaritic Poem of Aqht:  Text, Translation, Commentary”
> (1989), at p. 190.  Another scholarly source confirms that tmr in Ugaritic
> can
> mean “to strengthen”.  Stanislav Segert, “A Basic Grammar of the Ugaritic
> Language” (1985), at p. 193.
>
> True, when one thinks of a date palm tree, one does not think of strength,
> that is, the concepts of “fortify” or “to strengthen”.  But those concepts
> would apply quite nicely to the cedars of Lebanon, whose  s-t-r-o-n-g  wood
> was famously used to build all those  s-t-r-o-n-g  ships that made Ugarit
> rich.
>
> 2.  Now let’s move on to Biblical Hebrew itself.  TMR could actually be
> T-MR, or [T] + MR.  That is to say, the root of TMR could actually be MR,
> as we
> will now see.  TMRWR-YM (which only occurs in plural) means “bitterness”,
> and comes from a long line of many Hebrew common words that mean “bitter”
> and feature MR, such as the adjective MR, which means “bitter”.
>
> A date palm tree is certainly not “bitter”, but rather is known for its
> sweet fruit:  dates.  But by sharp contrast, a cedar tree is definitely
> bitter.  It has no edible fruit.  The Egyptians used the bitter resin from
> the
> cedar tree in the mummification process.  Even today, one can find current
> ads
> touting how very bitter cedar is, such as the following pet ad for how to
> keep a dog from chewing your furniture:  “Pet Botanics:  Five of the
> world's
> most bitter herbs (Agrimony, Dragon's Blood, Cedar, Gentian Root, Tansy)
> are
> used to discourage chewers.”  When “cedar” is considered as bitter as “
> dragon’s blood”, you know that’s bitter!  In fact, some people refuse to
> cook
> over cedar wood, because it makes the food taste bitter:  “Though I don't
> like to cook on cedar, too pitchy/bitter.”
>
> So if you’re talking the world-famous cedars of Lebanon, then (i) you’re
> talking a very “strong” wood, that was used to make all those strong ships
> for wealthy Ugarit, and (ii) you’re talking “bitter”, as the resin from
> cedar is bitter, cooking over a cedar wood fire makes food taste bitter,
> and
> there’s no sweet fruit to be had from cedar.  “To strengthen” is tmr in
> Ugaritic.  “Bitterness” as a Biblical Hebrew common word is TMRWR, or
> TMR-WR,
> featuring TMR (though with the actual root being just MR, which is what has
> disguised the etymology of TMR).
>
> In my view, in the Late Bronze Age TMR originally signified a tree that was
> “strong” and “bitter”, namely the cedars of Lebanon.  The TMR at Genesis
> 14: 7 are the cedars of Lebanon.
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>



-- 
http://hebreoiberico.blogspot.com/
http://numismticahebreahispana.blogspot.com/
http://europehebrewcoinage.blogspot.com/
http://blistershistory.blogspot.com/