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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: George.Athas AT moore.edu.au, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Exodus 34: 22: TQWPT H-$NH
  • Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:27:41 -0500 (EST)


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




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