Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bryant J. Williams III" <bjwvmw AT com-pair.net>]

Dear Jim,

Might I remind you that "wilderness" does not necessarily mean "a tree 
forest"?
The "wilderness in ancient Israel and Canaan were also vast areas of desert 
with
small shrubs, rock formations, etc. It would be real easy for some one to not
see a well in the near vicinity if it is hidden be a rock formation. In fact,
the American West and Southwest has large areas where hidden tanks of water,
tinajas, existed, but one had to know where they were. One could easily miss 
the
tinajas if one did not look for the signs. Hagar would not have known the 
signs.
The rest of your post has so many a priori assumptions that your arguments are
illogical.

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <JimStinehart AT aol.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 6:48 AM
Subject: [b-hebrew] Ishmael's "Wilderness of Paran"


>
> Genesis 21: 14 refers to the “Wilderness of Beersheba”, and Genesis 21: 21
> refers to the “Wilderness of Paran”.  In my view, those are two different
> names for the same wilderness.
>
> No satisfactory linguistic analysis of P)RN/“Paran” has been done, because
> analysts think that the logical linguistic meaning of P)RN cannot fit what
> chapter 21 of Genesis is talking about.  But it does!  As we will see in
> this post, MDBR P)RN logically means “dense forest”, and that is exactly the
> place where Hagar gets lost and has YHWH point out a well to her, where
> Ishmael grows up to be an archer, and where Esau in the next generation bags
big
> game for his doting father Isaac.  We will see in this post that
> historically there was indeed a very “dense forest” near Beersheba, if we 
> know
which
> Beersheba the Biblical text is talking about here.
>
> P)RH means “foliage of a tree”, per Ezekiel 17: 6.  Accordingly, one would
> expect P)RN at Genesis 21: 21 to mean “place where there is abundant tree
> foliage”.  Based on linguistics, MDBR P)RN should logically be a “dense
> forest”.  On that linguistic analysis, the “Wilderness of Paran” at Genesis
21:
> 21, where Ishmael grows up after being exiled at age 9½ regular years by
> his father Abraham, should be a heavily forested area where few people 
> lived.
>
> Are there indications in the text that we are dealing here with a dense
> forest, rather than with a desert-like area?  It would make sense for Hagar 
> to
> get lost in a dense forest.  We are told that Hagar can find no water to
> drink, but that YHWH then points out a nearby well. It makes sense that 
> Hagar
> would fail to see a nearby well in a forest, because such a well could 
> easily
> be hidden behind a tree in a forest, needing to be pointed out to Hagar by
> YHWH.  Genesis 21: 19.  In desert-like terrain, however, it’s hard to see
> how Hagar could fail to see a nearby well.  The presence of a well in a 
> forest
> would mean that some humans were living there.  If Hagar and Ishmael were
> helped out by a small number of people living in a dense forest, then it
> would make sense that Ishmael was taught to make a bow and arrows and to 
> hunt.
> The text tells us Ishmael became an “archer” at Genesis 21: 20, and the
> best place to hunt for a living would be in a dense forest.  The text seems 
> to
> imply that Hagar and Ishmael stayed in that dense forest for some years,
> while Ishmael was a young man, surviving by Ishmael’s ability to hunt big 
> game
> for eating.  Only years later, when Ishmael is old enough to marry, does
> Hagar obtain a wife from Egypt for Ishmael [who is probably similar to Hagar
as
> a young servant coming out of Egypt], and then Ishmael and his descendants
> at that point take up a nomadic life ranging far and wide, with Ishmael
> giving up the forest of his youth.  Though the text does not take the time 
> to
> spell out all of the above details, all of the foregoing can easily be
> implied.  Everything makes sense if and only if the Wilderness of Paran/the
> Wilderness of Beersheba is a very large, dense forest.
>
> Was there in fact a dense forest, with few human inhabitants, near
> Beersheba?  Beersheba is mentioned at Genesis 21: 14, with the other
description of
> this wilderness being the “Wilderness of Beersheba”.  [Beersheba is also
> mentioned again at Genesis 21: 31.]  It’s hard to believe there would be 
> good
> hunting near the famous Beersheba in the Negev, since the surroundings are
> desert-like.  It’s also hard to see how Hagar could fail to see a nearby 
> well
> in that type of environment.  And of course, P)RN in that case could not
> come from P)RH, meaning “foliage of a tree”.
>
> But note how everything makes perfect sense if the Beersheba in chapter 21
> of Genesis is Beersheba of Galilee.  In all of Galilee, there was only one
> place in the Late Bronze Age where there was a huge forest, with almost no
> human population:  the southwest corner of Upper Galilee and the northwest
> corner of Lower Galilee, being just southwest of Beersheba of Galilee.  
> There
> were no towns there in the Late Bronze Age.  Rather, it was dense forest.
> The  o-n-l-y  place in Galilee in which this section of chapter 21 of 
> Genesis
> would make sense is immediately southwest of Beersheba of Galilee, and
> Beersheba is mentioned so very prominently here.  Genesis 20: 1 tells us 
> that
> Abraham had moved to GRR, and GRR is historically attested as being the Late
> Bronze Age word for “Galilee”.  Abraham is still in GRR/Galilee when he
> exiles Hagar and Ishmael, and then announces that the new well his men have
dug
> shall be called “Beersheba”.  That’s Beersheba of Galilee, not Beersheba in
> the Negev.  [We later find out in chapter 26 of Genesis that Abraham had in
> fact dug a series of four wells, spaced a day’s journey or so apart, ending
> at Beersheba.  That pattern of a series of wells exactly describes northwest
> Upper Galilee and Beersheba of Galilee.  By contrast, there is no series of
> wells anywhere close to Beersheba of the Negev, which is world-famous
> precisely because it has the only wells in the area.]
>
> Esau is likewise said to be a great hunter, a few verses after Beersheba
> has been mentioned.  Genesis 26: 33;  27: 5.  In the Late Bronze Age, the 
> very
> best place to hunt for CYD/big game [like deer, wild boars, etc.] in all of
> Canaan was the dense forest in the southwest corner of Upper Galilee,
> immediately southwest of Beersheba of Galilee.  After moving to GRR 
> [Galilee]
in
> chapter 26 of Genesis, Esau in chapter 27 of Genesis hunted big game in the
> same dense forest as had Ishmael in the previous generation:  in southwest
> Upper Galilee and northwest Lower Galilee, just southwest of Beersheba of
> Galilee.
>
> Unlike in the Early Bronze Age and in the Iron Age, in the Late Bronze Age
> most of Upper Galilee was lightly populated [having a much smaller
> population than Lower Galilee at that time].  As such, Upper Galilee was an
> attractive place for the tent-dwelling Patriarchs to sojourn.  And one 
> place,
though
> only one place, in and near Upper Galilee had virtually no population at all
> in the Late Bronze Age:  the dense forest immediately southwest of
> Beersheba of Galilee.
>
> If we focus on the topography of Late Bronze Age Canaan, we can figure out
> what P)RN means regarding Ishmael’s “Wilderness of Paran”.  It means a very
> dense forest [just southwest of Beersheba of Galilee], where one could get
> lost, where one could miss seeing a nearby well, and in particular where the
> hunting for big game was super-terrific.
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
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> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>


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