Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Onkelos Aramaic:  “Plain”
 
On this thread let’s examine why Onkelos, one of the most respected ancient 
translators of the Torah, (i) mistranslated (L )LWN at Genesis 12: 6 as “
unto the plain of” [or “unto the valley of”], and (ii) translated [not 
mistranslated] B-)LNY at Genesis 18: 1 as “in the plain of” [or “in the 
valley of”
].  The Aramaic word that Onkelos uses is MY$R, which can mean either “plain
” or “valley”.  I believe that in modern English, the better translation 
of the Aramaic word MY$R is “valley”.  The Jordan River “Valley”, that is, 
the KKR of the Jordan at Genesis 13: 10, is MY$R in Aramaic.  In the ancient 
languages, “plain” primarily meant the flat bottom of a valley, not a high 
treeless expanse, and hence in modern English the better translation is “
valley”.  [If the Onkelos Targum for Genesis 18: 1 were translated into 
English as “valley”, that would nicely fit with the “valley of Hebron” that 
is 
expressly referenced at Genesis 37: 14.]   
 
Before I set forth my own views on this subject, in this post let’s start 
by looking at how this general issue was addressed on November 6, 2007 by 
Philologos in The Jewish Daily Forward, here: 


 _http://www.forward.com/articles/11956/_ 
(http://www.forward.com/articles/11956/) 
 
“Confusion number one is between the Hebrew word alon, which means oak, and 
elah, which means terebinth. The word elon in Genesis, which has the 
initial vowel of elah and the final syllable of alon, looks like a hybrid of 
the 
two that allows one to choose the meaning one wishes. Yet it needs to be 
remembered that the Hebrew text of the Bible was originally written without 
vowel signs (and still is written that way in a Torah scroll), so that the 
original pronunciation may have been alonei and not elonei.
 
In any case, this is how the first translation ever made of the Bible, the 
second-century BCE Greek Septuagint, interpreted the word, for it gives us 
pros te drui te Mambre, that is, “by the oak of Mamre.” (Why “oak” is in 
the singular, I don’t know.) Yet, the next translation we know of, the 
first-century C.E. Aramaic version of Onkelos, a standard Jewish text to this 
day, 
has the puzzling b’meishrei Mamre, which can mean either “in the plains of 
Mamre” [or “in the valley(s) of Mamre”] or “in the encampment of Mamre.”  
Since the verse in Genesis continues, “And he [Abraham] was sitting in the 
entrance to his tent [ohel],” perhaps Onkelos was working with a variant text 
that had ohalei, “the tents [or encampment] of,” rather than alonei. 
Although this may not seem terribly likely, I can’t think of any other 
explanation.
 
Be that as it may, when Jerome produced his fourth-century C.E. translation 
of the Bible into Latin, which was adopted by the Catholic church and 
heavily influenced all early Bible translations into European languages, he 
followed Onkelos by choosing — don’t ask me why — not “in the tents” but “in 
the plains” of Mamre (that is, in convalle Mamre).  [No, “convalle” in Latin 
means “valley”, or to be more specific, “a valley enclosed on all sides”
.]  This was picked up by the 1611 King James Bible, which passed it on to 
other translations — hence Mr. Morris’s Stone Chumash.  [In Elizabethan 
English, “plain” is probably ambiguous.  It could be, but need not be, a 
synonym 
for “valley”.]  But not all English Bible translators agreed. Already in 
1530, William Tyndale translated alonei mamre as “the oak grove of Mamre,” 
and many modern English Bibles have gone along with him.”
 
In a follow-up column on November 20, 2007, at 
http://www.forward.com/articles/12049/
 
“[T]he first translation of the Hebrew Bible into any language, the 
third-and-second-century-BCE Greek Septuagint, renders the elon of elon moreh 
and 
elonei mamre as drus or “oak,” a word that is akin, in the history of 
Indo-European languages, both to our English “tree” and to “druid.” The 
druids, 
the ancient priests of the Celtic peoples of Europe and the British Isles, 
commonly held their religious ceremonies in oak groves, to which their name 
is related, and were a widespread feature of the European landscape in Onkelos
’s time. This could have been another reason for him to worry that 
wrong-minded readers might think that the oak trees among which Abraham 
pitched his 
tent were chosen by him for their sacredness. To avoid giving this 
impression, he might have felt entitled to depart from the literal meaning of 
the 
text.
 
Up to this point, Mr. Cohen’s theory [that Onkelos used an odd translation 
in order to avoid any imagery of tree worshipping] can explain things. What 
it does not explain, however, is why, even if he had his reasons for not 
translating elon as “oak,” Onkelos chose “plain” as his alternative. Why “the 
plains of Mamre” and not “the hills of Mamre,” or “the environs of Mamre,”
 or “the crossroads of Mamre,” or something else? There is nothing about 
the Hebrew word elon to suggest a plain or a valley, and nowhere in the early 
rabbinic literature by which Onkelos is often guided have I been able to 
find such an interpretation. It would appear to be his own invention.”
 
Note that Philologos, along with seemingly all modern scholars [and, 
presumably, everyone on the b-hebrew list except me], assumes, despite what 
both 
the Masoretic Text of Genesis and the Onkelos Targum say, that (1) Genesis 
18: 1 allegedly is describing “the oak trees among which Abraham pitched his 
tent”, even though it would make no sense for a shepherd to pasture a large 
flock of sheep and goats among oak trees(!), and that (2) Abram sojourns in a 
place characterized by “hills”, even though there is not one word of 
support for that view in the last 40 chapters of the Masoretic Text of 
Genesis or 
the Onkelos Targum, where the Patriarchs’ ‘Hebron” is never once said to 
be “up” or “high” or “hills”.  When Onkelos says MY$R/“valley” at Genesis 
18: 1, why do modern scholars assume that Onkelos had no idea what he was 
talking about, and that MY$R is “his own invention”?  Is that a convincing “
explanation” of the Onkelos Targum for Genesis 18: 1?  When Jerome says “
convalle”, a Latin word that means “a valley enclosed on all sides”, how can 
everyone be so sure that he did not mean “valley”, especially since Genesis 
37: 14 explicitly says “the valley of Hebron”?  And when the 1611 KJV 
chose to use “plain” at Genesis 18: 1, why is everyone so certain that such 
is 
an inexplicable mistake?  Abram is not pasturing his flock of sheep and 
goats in oak trees.  Onkelos and Jerome and the KJV all chose to say “plain” 
or 
“valley”, and pointedly did not translate Genesis 18: 1 to say that Abram 
pastured his flock of sheep and goats in oak trees and/or in the hills.
 
The purpose of this thread is to explore (1) why “valley” is an 
understandable and acceptable, if non-literal, translation of )LNY by Onkelos 
at 
Genesis 18: 1 for the “valley of Hebron” [Genesis 37: 14] where Abram 
sojourned, 
rather than being “his own invention”, and (2) why Onkelos deliberately 
chose to mistranslate )LWN as “valley” at Genesis 12: 6 for the mountainous, 
heavily wooded locale of Shechem in hill country, instead of choosing a more 
defensible mistranslation such as “a wooded place”.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois