Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Prof. George Athas wrote:  “This post is built on pure surmise and opinion, 
rather than hard evidence, in  order to support the formulator's 
conclusion. In other words, the method is frail and backward, and the notion 
ill 
conceived. I recommend this post be awarded a ‘Fail without resubmission’.”
 
Let’s then consider the “hard evidence” that supports the proposition that 
on occasion in the oldest parts of the Bible, $NH mean “equinoxes”, not “
years”.
 
A.  Linguistic Evidence
 
(1)  TQWPT means “turn”.  [Indeed, TQWPT later came to have the acquired 
meaning of “equinox”.]  As confirmed below, $NH literally means “change”.  
So in the context of indicating a unit of time, $NH as a noun logically 
originally meant “changes[-of-seasons]”.
 
The Feast of Ingathering that is referred to in the second half of Exodus 
34: 22 occurs at the “turn” of “the changes-of-seasons”, that is, at the 
approximate time of the fall equinox.  [Moses has already earlier referred to 
the Feast of Unleavened Bread/Passover that occurs at the approximate time 
of the spring equinox, so by implication the reference here in the second 
half of Exodus 34: 22 is to the fall equinox.]  If we give the words TQWPT 
and 
$NH their original, literal meanings, Exodus 34: 22 makes perfect sense on 
all levels.
 
(2)  Now let’s consider the narrow question of whether the literal meaning 
of $NH as a noun is “change”.  I believe that that has been the majority 
view of university scholars for over 100 years.  Consider for example the 
following old, but compelling, analysis by knowledgeable Jewish scholars:
 
“Mr. M. Friedman states that the substantive shanah ‘year’, is derived 
from shanah,’ to repeat.  Enough is now known of Semitic phonetics, however, 
to 
enable us to say with certainty that shanah ‘year’ is derived from a stem 
shanah, which means ‘to change’, while שְׁנַיִם, ‘two’, is derived 
from shanah, ‘to repeat.’  A study of the corresponding Aramaean forms, not 
to 
speak of other cognate languages, makes this point clear.  (Compare 
Hebraica, vol. I, p. 220.)   Cyrus Adler”  Israel Abrahams, Claude Goldsmid 
Montefiore, “The Jewish Quarterly Review”, Volume I (Macmillan, 1889).  
 
If $NH as a noun literally means “change”, then it’s logical that its 
original, archaic meaning in referencing time was “changes-of-seasons”.  BDB 
at 
p. 1039 cites several sources for the proposition that $NH as a noun 
originally meant “changing seasons”.  In Canaan, the seasons change at the 
approximate time of the vernal and autumn equinoxes, so a noun [$NH] that 
means “
changing seasons” logically originally referred to the equinoxes.
 
True, it is quite clear that early on, $NH acquired a different meaning, 
namely “year”, that is, a discrete period of 12 months.  Later Books of the 
Bible routinely use $NH with that later meaning of “year”.  But the 
original, archaic meaning of $NH as a noun seems to have been 
“changes-of-seasons”. 
 To confirm that linguistic analysis, we need to turn now to textual 
evidence.
 
B.  Textual Evidence
 
Based on the foregoing linguistic analysis, it is definitely possible that 
some of the oldest parts of the Bible, in certain circumstances, might use 
$NH to mean “equinoxes”, not “years”.  In this post, let’s restrict our 
textual analysis to the following narrow class of cases:  the stated ages of 
people in Genesis beginning with the first mention of Abram at Genesis 11: 
26. 
 [For the moment, we will not consider any other cases.  I am not arguing 
that other situations in the Bible, including even in this part of the Bible, 
necessarily follow this rule.  Rather, at this point I am arguing only that 
the stated ages of people in Genesis beginning with the first mention of 
Abram at Genesis 11: 26 follow this rule:  using $NH to mean “equinoxes”, not 
“years”.]
 
Let me start by proposing the following very literal translation of Genesis 
11: 26 [which I view as being the first verse of the Patriarchal 
narratives, and which in any event is the first Bible verse that mentions 
Abram]:
 
“And lived Terah 70 changes-of-seasons [shanah], and he gave birth to 
Ab-rum, to Ni-ha-a-ri, and to Har-an.”
 
On my theory of the case, at Genesis 11: 26 we are told that Terah sired 
his third and last son, Abram, after Terah had witnessed 70 “equinoxes/shanah”
.  At Genesis 11: 32 we are then told that Terah died after witnessing 205 “
equinoxes/shanah”.  [The literal wording of Genesis 11: 32 is that the days 
of Terah were 5 shanim [the overtly plural form of shanah] and 200 shanah, 
and Terah died in Harran.]  Converting those “equinoxes/shanah” numbers 
into years means that the text is telling us that Terah sired his third son 
at 
age 35 years, and died at age 102½ years.
 
Either the Patriarchal narratives are very old [my view], or else the 
author or authors are doing a good job of making the text seem old.  On 
either 
such view, it would make sense for $NH in the Patriarchal narratives, when 
used in setting forth a stated age of a person, to use the original, old, 
archaic meaning of $NH, namely “equinoxes”.  Though the actual Hebrew 
conception 
of “changes-of-seasons” focused on the agricultural concept of the two 
critically important sets of harvest seasons in Canaan in the fall and in the 
spring, rather than on astronomy, for sake of brevity I refer to “
equinoxes/shanah”, meaning that each person’s stated age expressed in shanah 
in the 
Patriarchal narratives is telling us how many vernal and autumnal equinoxes [“
equinoxes/shanah”] the person had witnessed.
 
We see immediately that interpreting shanah to mean “equinoxes” eliminates 
the frequently expressed concern that the stated ages of people in the 
Patriarchal narratives seem way too old to be believable, in most if not all 
cases seeming to be about twice as old as one would expect in the ancient 
world.  Whereas a man age 70 years in the ancient world would be too old to 
sire 
a son, that is eminently possible for a man age 35 years [who had witnessed 
70 “equinoxes/shanah”].  And whereas it is obvious that no man in any era 
could possibly live to age 205 years, there are documented cases in the 
ancient world of a person on rare occasion living to or past age 102½ years 
[such 
person having witnessed 205 “equinoxes/shanah”].  By portraying Abram’s 
father Terah, who is not a revered figure in the Bible [and so one would not 
expect divine miracles as to his ages], as siring a son at 70 “
equinoxes/shanah” and having as the days of his life 205 “equinoxes/shanah”, 
the Hebrew 
author is effectively telling us right from the beginning that we should not 
interpret shanah to mean “year” or “years”.  The only realistic way to 
make sense of Terah’s stated ages is to view them as having been stated in 
terms of “equinoxes/shanah”, with that being the original, old, archaic 
meaning 
of the Hebrew noun $NH. 
            
There is solid linguistic and textual evidence to support the proposition 
that certain of the oldest parts of the Bible, in certain specific contexts 
[not in all contexts], use the original meaning of $NH, which is “
changes-of-seasons”, and hence effectively reference the fall and spring 
equinoxes.  In 
particular, in setting forth people’s stated ages in the Patriarcal 
narratives, it appears that we are being told how many “equinoxes/shanah” the 
person had witnessed, not how many “years/shanah” old the person was.  That 
is “
the formulator’s conclusion”, but rather than being “built on pure surmise 
and opinion”, it is built on the foregoing solid linguistic and textual 
evidence.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois