#deuteronomy — Public Fediverse posts

𝐘𝐀𝐇 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 𝐓𝐕 100 𝐁𝐈𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌 |𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐖

https://youtube.com/live/KvqY1C820o0?si=ZWTYyjouhAm2eUKV

𝐘𝐀𝐇 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 𝐓𝐕 100 𝐁𝐈𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌 |𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐖

https://youtube.com/live/KvqY1C820o0?si=ZWTYyjouhAm2eUKV

𝐘𝐀𝐇 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 𝐓𝐕 100 𝐁𝐈𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌|𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐖

https://youtube.com/live/YrFJwbMSrC0?is=QTEXwBG0asNNznPr

𝐘𝐀𝐇 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 𝐓𝐕 100 𝐁𝐈𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌|𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐖

https://youtube.com/live/YrFJwbMSrC0?is=QTEXwBG0asNNznPr

Deuteronomy 26:11 is a short verse, but it teaches a powerful truth. After remembering God’s goodness and giving an offering of thanks, the people are told to rejoice. This joy was not meant to be selfish or silent. It was to be shared with family, with the Levites, and with strangers.
#Deuteronomy #wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/50980

Deuteronomy 25:19 is a powerful verse that reminds us of God’s justice, protection, and faithfulness. It is a call to remember the past, to trust God’s promises, and to stand against evil and injustice.
#Deuteronomy #wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/51793

John Calvin—Swiss Reformer, preaching Deuteronomy—observes that prosperity does something insidious. You stop remembering your own wretchedness. You feel exempted. No longer of the common sort. And that kills compassion entirely. You forget what others endure. Some respond by locating a minor inconvenience and suggesting the genuinely suffering simply replicate their heroism. Calvin would not have been impressed.

#calvinist #biblical #christian #deuteronomy

John Calvin—Swiss Reformer, preaching Deuteronomy—observes that prosperity does something insidious. You stop remembering your own wretchedness. You feel exempted. No longer of the common sort. And that kills compassion entirely. You forget what others endure. Some respond by locating a minor inconvenience and suggesting the genuinely suffering simply replicate their heroism. Calvin would not have been impressed.

#calvinist #biblical #christian #deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 31:27 reveals God’s deep knowledge of Israel’s stubborn rebellion. Moses honestly confronts the people, warning that their disobedience will only grow after he is gone.
#Deuteronomy31 #Deuteronomy #wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/52589

Calvin, preaching Deuteronomy, notes that Proverbs 22:2 commands rich and poor to meet together — proximity being the mechanism by which help actually reaches people. God, apparently, considered physical nearness load-bearing. Today we prefer charitable giving at arm’s length: a click, a transfer, no eye contact. Very efficient. Entirely missing the point Calvin was making, but very efficient.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
#charity #calvinism #deuteronomy #christian

Calvin, preaching Deuteronomy, notes that Proverbs 22:2 commands rich and poor to meet together — proximity being the mechanism by which help actually reaches people. God, apparently, considered physical nearness load-bearing. Today we prefer charitable giving at arm’s length: a click, a transfer, no eye contact. Very efficient. Entirely missing the point Calvin was making, but very efficient.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
#charity #calvinism #deuteronomy #christian

Deuteronomy 31:29 is a sobering verse that reveals Moses’ foreknowledge of Israel’s future disobedience. It reminds us that turning away from God has serious consequences, both temporal and spiritual.
#Deuteronomy #wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/52595

I would love to know how De Wette's thesis of 1805 (that #Deuteronomy was composed for the Josianic reforms in the 7th C BCE) went from being a possibility to being academic orthodoxy.
#HebrewBible

Deuteronomy 30:5 is a powerful verse about God’s mercy, faithfulness, and restoration. Even after rebellion and exile, God promises to bring His people back. He will not only restore what was lost — He will do even more
#Deuteronomy #wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/52203

Deuteronomy 27:18 carries a strong message about honesty, justice, and protecting the vulnerable. The curse against those who “make the blind to wander out of the way” warns us against deceiving or cheating others.
#Deuteronomy #wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/51314

The Book of Deuteronomy remains highly relevant today because it addresses universal themes that are as applicable to modern life as they were to ancient Israel.
#Deuteronomy #BookofDeuteronomy #wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/book-of-deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 27:21 is a strong verse. It shows that some actions are so serious that God pronounces a curse on them. This curse was not hidden—it was spoken publicly.
#wolink #Deuteronomy #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/51317

Old Testament Reading: #Deuteronomy 30:15-20

#Moses set forth the #choice before #Israel. 

Deuteronomy 27:19 is a solemn warning and a call to justice. It condemns the perversion of judgment against strangers, orphans, and widows.
#Deuteronomy #wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/51315

Deuteronomy 28:67 is a powerful and heartbreaking verse. It speaks of the deep sorrow, fear, and despair that result from turning away from God.
#Deuteronomy #wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/52107

Deuteronomy 27:20 is a powerful reminder of God’s demand for justice, especially for the vulnerable—the stranger and widow. It condemns those who twist or pervert justice and calls for God’s judgment upon them.
#Deuteronomy #wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/51316

The Torah, Written

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/the-torah-written/

Succession

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/succession/

Deuteronomy 27:23 is a strong and sobering reminder of God’s standards for purity and family honor.
#Deuteronomy ##wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/51417

The Book of Deuteronomy is called a farewell speech because it emerges from a decisive historical moment, adopts a rhetorical style of final address, and conveys Moses’ last comprehensive instruction to Israel.
#Deuteronomy #BookOfDeuteronomy
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/book-of-deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 29:28 is a sobering reminder of the seriousness of sin and the reality of God’s judgment. The Lord uprooted the rebellious people from their land in anger, wrath, and indignation, casting them into exile.
#Deuteronomy
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/52028

Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (IV)

Back by personal demand: the conclusion to last summer’s series on Gilead and Bashan (Part I, II, III).

First of all, I’d like to draw your attention to an excellent pair of comments by Yitzchak Dickman. Some corrections based on what Yitzchak wrote and the sources he referred to:

• Havvoth-Jair most probably refers to the area around Irbid, more or less where I placed Machir before.
• Rohmer (2020) also places Argob in the Golan (just the northern part in his view) and makes a convincing argument that Bashan only includes the western part of the Hauran. The eastern part was known as… Hauran, but it isn’t mentioned in the Bible (Ezekiel’s Hauran is another region, farther north).
• The identifications of Kenath with Qanawat and Salchah with Salkhad aren’t so straightforward. Yitzchak mentions the possibility of Kenath referring to al-Karak (al-Sharqi), in Daraa Governorate; Rohmer (2020: 296, 298 = 426) alternatively writes that “following Noth, the majority of contemporary Biblical scholars do not place it in the Hauran, but northwest of Amman” (my translation). Rohmer also points out that while the name Salkhad can be traced back to Nabataean at least (ṣlḥd), this is actually quite different from biblical Salchah (slkh): “only the lam is identical between the two words!” (2020: 290; translation mine).

Here’s a nice map from Rohmer illustrating this updated view:

So, what’s up with the tribes shifting north and Gilead shifting south?

Yitzchak Dickman also presented an interesting theory involving Judahite expansion into Transjordan in the comments linked above, but I think we may be able to explain the drift by looking at some other, more securely attested conquests in the Iron Age.

1. In Part I, I argued that Israelite control of the Mishor never extended all the way to the Arnon, but that the area between the Arnon and Wadi al-Hidan was Moabite. In the 840s, King Mesha conquered the rest of the Mishor, taking over pretty much all of the territory of Reuben and at least one Gadite outpost (Ataroth).
2. In the wars between Israel and Aram (relevant decades: 830s-810s), Hazael of Damascus is said to have conquered all the Israelite lands east of the Jordan during the reign of Jehu (2 Kgs 10:32-33).
3. Jehoash of Israel (790s-780s) recaptures towns that Hazael had taken from Israel (2 Kgs 13:25). But apparently these were lost under Jehoash’s father Jehoahaz (810s-800s), while Gilead was lost under Jehoahaz’s father Jehu. So does this really refer to the reconquest of Gilead, as suggested (e.g.) here?
4. Jehoash’s son Jeroboam (roughly 780s-750s) extends Israel to its maximum size. According to Amos (6:13), Israelites of this period boasted of taking Lo-Debar (according to Finkelstein et al. 2011: on the border of northwestern Gilead and southeastern Bashan, at modern al-Husn) and Karnaim, in Bashan proper. If Gilead wasn’t reconquered by Jehoash, then Jeroboam probably took it as well.
5. Finally, in 733, the Assyrians conquer Gilead and turn it into a province of their empire. In the same year, they conquer Aram-Damascus, which again includes Bashan at this time (apparently the Israelites didn’t hold onto it for long).

Summing up: Israel loses the Mishor (southernmost Israelite Transjordan) and never recovers it; loses, regains, loses Gilead (central Israelite Transjordan); and conquers but then once again loses Bashan (northern Israelite Transjordan). While they end up losing everything, there’s a clear south-to-north shift in Israelite territory over time, while the off-and-on possession of Gilead could account for the blurring of its borders. We can imagine the tribal territories and regional names shifting in a few stages:

Ninth century: Tribal Israelites in northwest Jordan

Status quo before Mesha’s revolt, matching the non-Priestly text of Numbers 32. Reuben is on the Mishor (up to Wadi al-Hidan), Moab south of Wadi al-Hidan, Gad mostly on the east bank of the Jordan between Reuben in the south, Ammon in the east, and the Jabbok in the north. Gilead 1.0 (the highest hilly area north of the western Jabbok IMHO, contra Finkelstein et al.), Machir, Havvoth-Jair and maybe Kenath/Nobah are other distinct tribal regions between the Jabbok (or just south of it) and the Yarmuk. Reconceptualization of all these as Manassite Gilead yield Gilead 2.0. Bashan is not Israelite and therefore not originally mentioned in Numbers.

In the 840s, Moab conquers the Reubenite Mishor. Reuben’s “people become few” (Deut 33:6) and he will “no longer excel” (Gen 49:4).

Eighth century: Transjordan lost and regained, conquest of Bashan

The main terminological development I imagine here is the use of Gilead, the most fertile part of (originally) Israelite Transjordan, as a pars pro toto for all the lost and subsequently regained territory, including that of Gad: Gilead 3.0. The tribal identity of this larger Gilead seems to be more Gadite than Manassite: the loss and recapture may be described as a “trampled” Gad “striking” back (Gen 49:19), or maybe the memory of this tribal expansion is directly attested in the reference to God “enlarging Gad’s domain” (Deut 33:20).

Seventh century and later: Reimagining tribal territories after the Assyrian conquest

After 733, there was no Israelite Transjordan, and after 722 there was no more kingdom of Israel to begin with. What we get in the Deuteronomistic History especially is different combinations of the regions of the Mishor, Gilead (3.0), and Bashan and the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh.

One way to do this is by assigning each of these regions to one (half-)tribe: Reuben in the Mishor, Gad in Gilead, and Manasseh in Bashan. This is what we (mostly) see in Joshua 13.

Alternatively, you can keep the historical memory that Gad was south of the Jabbok and Manasseh was north of it. Since Gilead (3.0) now extends on both sides of the Jabbok, that results in Reuben (which hasn’t been historically prominent for centuries) and Gad sharing the Mishor and Gilead south of the Jabbok, part of Manasseh living in Gilead north of the Jabbok, and another part of Manasseh living in Bashan. This is what we mostly see in Deuteronomy 3.

Finally, you can draw the Mishor into a new, Mega-Gilead (Gilead 4.0), using it to refer to all the originally Israelite lands in Transjordan (but excluding Bashan). This appears to be the usage in the Priestly text of Numbers 32, which repeatedly refers to Gad and Reuben settling in “the cities of Gilead”. The Persian-period or early Hellenistic text of 1 Chron 5 also refers to Reuben’s territory in the Mishor as part of Gilead.

Of these three systems, I’m inclined to see Deut 3’s as the oldest (memory of divided Gilead 3.0), followed by Josh 13 (Gilead : Bashan mapped to Gad : Manasseh), and then the Priestly and Chronicles one (Gilead-Mishor distinction abandoned). As far as I can tell, this development matches mainstream ideas about when each of these texts was written.

There’s a few loose ends that we haven’t discussed (why does Joshua 13 say Manasseh starts at Mahanaim, on the Jabbok? why does 1 Chron 5 talk about Gad living in Bashan?). For now, though, I think this makes good sense of the shifting terms and territories we see in the different texts. And just in case anyone wants to fund a trip to Jordan to go see what things look like on the ground—do let me know.

#Bible #Chronicles #Deuteronomy #Genesis #Hebrew #Joshua #Nabataean #Numbers

Blessings and Curses?

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/blessings-and-curses/

Deuteronomy's Liberation Theology

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/deuteronomys-liberation-theology/

#Christian is INCAPABLE of Providing Actual Answers to Our Questiosn | Matt Dillahunty & Justin DZ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLC_D_KL6n8

When Justin walks her through #Deuteronomy 22's law requiring #women to produce bloody sheets as proof of #virginity—noting that nearly half of women don't bleed their first time—Winsome admits innocent women would be executed under this law but refuses to question #God.

#Christian is INCAPABLE of Providing Actual Answers to Our Questiosn | Matt Dillahunty & Justin DZ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLC_D_KL6n8

When Justin walks her through #Deuteronomy 22's law requiring #women to produce bloody sheets as proof of #virginity—noting that nearly half of women don't bleed their first time—Winsome admits innocent women would be executed under this law but refuses to question #God.

The Origin of Prayer

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/the-origin-of-prayer/

Sexual Assault in Torah and Talmud

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/sexualassault/

Unproductive Desires

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/unproductive-desires/

textual activism and the ancestral toolbox

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/rebelliousson/

https://humanistictorah.org/2025/09/26/humanistic-torah-podcast-episode-3/

Episode #3 of the #HumanisticTorah podcast is now out!

In this episode:

1. Reflections on last night's Interfaith Alliance of Oklahoma's Annual Dinner
2. Podcast round up- focusing on episodes from Judaism Unbound and Called to be bad
3. Some practical ideas on how ordinary folks can take small actions in support of peace in Gaza,
4. A D'var Torah based on Deuteronomy 31 and the Tao Te Ching chapter 78.

#HumanisticJudaism #Mazeldon #Judaism #Deuteronomy #Interfaith #TaoTeChing #Taoism #Oklahoma

https://humanistictorah.org/2025/09/26/humanistic-torah-podcast-episode-3/

Episode #3 of the #HumanisticTorah podcast is now out!

In this episode:

1. Reflections on last night's Interfaith Alliance of Oklahoma's Annual Dinner
2. Podcast round up- focusing on episodes from Judaism Unbound and Called to be bad
3. Some practical ideas on how ordinary folks can take small actions in support of peace in Gaza,
4. A D'var Torah based on Deuteronomy 31 and the Tao Te Ching chapter 78.

#HumanisticJudaism #Mazeldon #Judaism #Deuteronomy #Interfaith #TaoTeChing #Taoism #Oklahoma

Just saw #Deuteronomy 1:7 and 1:19-20 right after each other in someone's draft and man, that whole second part of verse 7 looks super sus.

Just saw #Deuteronomy 1:7 and 1:19-20 right after each other in someone's draft and man, that whole second part of verse 7 looks super sus.

Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (III)

Part IV

Alright. Gilead is a spectrum and Og of Bashan isn’t real, he can’t hurt you. Let’s talk about some of the specific places in Bashan. Here’s the map again.

Kenath/Nobah

And Nobah went and seized Kenath and its surrounding villages. And he called it Nobah, after himself.

Num 32:42

Kenath is usually identified with Qanawat, in Jabal al-Druze (Roman Auranitis). That’s pretty far northeast, but the name checks out, and we don’t get any other information about Nobah or Kenath. So, OK. As this volcanic field is something of a refuge area, if Kenath/Nobah was really inhabited by Israelites (when?), I wonder whether we’re really dealing with an isolated conquest or maybe the last remnant of broader Israelite settlement in Bashan at some point.

Salchah

Generally identified as Salkhad, which fits as Salchah appears to indicate the easternmost point in Og’s kingdom. Fine.

Argob

Next: we’ve seen a few verses in Deuteronomy 3 that refer to the district of Argob in Bashan, most interestingly:

Jair, son of Manasseh took all the district of Argob, as far as the border (or: territory) of the Geshurites and the Maachatites. And he called them after himself, the Bashan, Havvoth-Jair (the villages of Jair), until this very day.

Deut 3:14

The only other reference is in Kings, in a list of King Solomon’s administrators and their districts:

Ben-Geber in Ramoth-Gilead: to him belonged the villages of Jair, son of Manasseh, which are in the Gilead; to him belonged the district of Argob, which is in the Bashan, sixty big towns, with wall and bronze bolt.

1 Kgs 4:13

Argob is commonly identified as the Lajat, Roman Trachonitis. This seems to be based on the translation as ṭrkwnʾ in Targumei Onqelos and Jonathan. But this seems unlikely to me for two reasons. First, it’s pretty far away; but then, so is Qanawat. But more importantly, the Lajat is a lava field that looks like this:

As Argob may come from a root that also yields a rare Hebrew word for ‘clod’, this is normally taken as a plus for the identification as this seems like a fittingly ‘rocky’ landscape. But it doesn’t look like a great place to maintain sixty big towns. Note the distinct lack of towns on the map of the Hauran, or on Google Maps, or on this 2011 CIA population density map:

Where else could Argob be? Here’s what we know:

1. It’s consistently called a “district” (חֶבֶל), suggesting it’s a clearly-defined area.
2. It’s in Bashan.
3. It contained “sixty large towns”.
4. It could be administered by someone in Ramoth-Gilead.
5. According to Deut 3:14, it bordered on or included Geshur and Maacah, but elsewhere that is said about Bashan as a whole (Josh 12:5 = 13:11), which Deuteronomy apparently conflates with Argob; use with caution.

Geshur is somewhere in or near Aram; it’s the homeland of Absalom’s mother, one of David’s wives, who is confusingly also called Maacah. The region of Maacah seems to have been in the same general area; one clue is the place name Abel-Beth-Maacah, in the northwestern bit of the Galilee panhandle, close to Dan. Both names are usually associated with the Golan Heights, with most identifications placing Maacah in the north (and spilling over to the west) and Geshur in the south.

Whether we trust the Geshur and Maacah indication or not, I think the Golan Heights actually make for a much better Argob than the Lajat:

1. Clearly marked off by Mount Hermon in the north, the Hula Valley and Sea of Galilee in the west, the Yarmuk in the south, and the river Ruqqad in the east; the name Golan itself may mean something like ‘encircled, enclosed (area)’. (Lajat also passes this one.)
2. It is in Bashan. (Lajat too.)
3. Due to semi-recent events, the Golan looks underpopulated on the map above, but it is known to have had dozens of ancient and hundreds of modern settlements. “Sixty big towns with wall and bolt” may be an exaggeration, but the Golan is much closer to it than the Lajat.
4. Ramoth-Gilead was probably a few kilometres south of modern al-Ramtha, on the southwestern edge of Bashan or just in Gilead. The Golan is adjacent to Gilead (2.0 and later); the Lajat is not.
5. The Golan probably overlaps with Geshur and Maacah; the Lajat probably does not even border them. But use with caution.

The other main candidate for Argob I would consider is the Nuqrah, Roman Batanea, the central and, I believe, most fertile part of Bashan. This is where Ashtaroth and Edrei were located and it probably beats the Golan on the sixty big towns front. It’s also adjacent to Gilead, Geshur, and maybe Maacah. As it’s less of a clearly circumscribed area, though, I guess I’d expect it to just be referred to as Bashan, or for Ashtaroth and Edrei to be mentioned more consistently with regards to Argob (as they are with regards to Bashan as Og’s kingdom). So my money is still on the Golan.

Havvoth-Jair

Jair is a son or descendant of Manasseh, who took a bunch of ḥawwōṯ and named them after himself. The details differ:

Deut 3 and Josh 13 both conflate Havvoth-Jair with Bashan, the kingdom of Og, as a whole; Deut 3 additionally throws Argob into the mix. Based on the other early attestations (so excluding Chronicles, although it doesn’t contradict it), it seems that Havvoth-Jair was originally placed in Gilead. It’s been suggested that the Deuteronomist conflated it with Argob and Bashan as a whole based on the verse in 1 Kgs 4, maybe based on a copying or reading error: “to him belonged the villages of Jair, son of Manasseh, which are in the Gilead; to him belonged the district of Argob, which is in the Bashan, sixty big towns”. I don’t think we can localize Havvoth-Jair any better than that, other than that it probably wasn’t too far from Ramoth-Gilead either.

Overview

So it looks like we’ve got these Israelite towns and regions in Bashan:

• Kenath/Nobah: Qanawat, northeastern part of Jabal al-Druze (Num 32, 1 Chron 2)
• Argob: Golan Heights (1 Kgs 4, Deut 3)
• Bashan as a whole, the kingdom of Og, from the territory of the Maachatites and Geshurites (Golan, Hula Valley) to Salcha (Salkhad; Deut, Josh, some other references)
• Havvoth-Jair: originally in Gilead, “reassigned” to Bashan

What stands out again is the apparently secondary nature of the Og tradition and the northward shift of (tribes associated with) Gilead. Can we explain this? If I don’t lose interest, we’ll give it a shot in Part IV.

#Bible #Chronicles #Deuteronomy #Hebrew #Joshua #Kings #Numbers

Our reflection examines love for neighbor, drawn from Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and connects it to today's Gospel reading, focusing on a lawyer's encounter with Jesus. #GospelReflection #Christianity #BibleStudy #LoveYourNeighbor #JesusTeachings #FaithJourney #Scripture #Leviticus #Deuteronomy #ReligiousEducation

Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (II)

Part III

Part IV

We’re looking at some issues in the naming of regions east of the Jordan the Bible says were once inhabited by Israelites. Last time, Gilead, in present-day Jordan; now, let’s start looking at Bashan, in present-day Syria (mostly, depending on whom you ask), today known as the Hauran.

Everyone agrees that the modern Hauran and ancient Bashan are basically equivalent, and I don’t disagree. (Traditionally, the Golan, Roman Gaulanitis, is also part of the Hauran and Bashan.) But there are a few aspects of the average-canonical “Israelites smite Og, possess Bashan” narrative that I do want to look at in detail. We’re going to have to break this up further, so in this post we’ll stick to the first main point: most conquest of Bashan passages are secondary.

(Most of the ideas in this post are not original to me. I don’t know where I first encountered each of them, but my impression is the majority is pretty mainstream.)

There’s a range of indications that the Israelite defeat of Og, king of Bashan was originally limited to the Deuteronomistic History. Let’s start with a long quote from Deuteronomy (NRSVUE because I’m lazy) for reference and then contrast what we find in D, the hypothetical source underlying most of the book of Deuteronomy, with what we find elsewhere.

2 16 “Just as soon as all the warriors had died off from among the people, 17 the Lord spoke to me, saying,

…  24 ‘Proceed on your journey and cross the Wadi Arnon. See, I have handed over to you King Sihon the Amorite of Heshbon, and his land. Begin to take possession by engaging him in battle. 25 This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you upon the peoples everywhere under heaven; when they hear report of you, they will tremble and be in anguish because of you.’

… 32 So when Sihon came out against us, he and all his people for battle at Jahaz, 33 the Lord our God gave him over to us, and we struck him down, along with his offspring and all his people. 34 At that time we captured all his towns, and in each town we utterly destroyed men, women, and children. We left not a single survivor. 35 Only the livestock we kept as spoil for ourselves, as well as the plunder of the towns that we had captured. 36 From Aroer on the edge of the Wadi Arnon (including the town that is in the wadi itself) as far as Gilead, there was no citadel too high for us. The Lord our God gave everything to us.

… 3 “When we headed up the road to Bashan, King Og of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, for battle at Edrei. 2 The Lord said to me, ‘Do not fear him, for I have handed him over to you, along with his people and his land. Do to him as you did to King Sihon of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon.’ 3 So the Lord our God also handed over to us King Og of Bashan and all his people. We struck him down until not a single survivor was left. 4 At that time we captured all his towns; there was no citadel that we did not take from them: sixty towns, the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. 5 All these were fortress towns with high walls, double gates, and bars, besides a great many villages. 6 And we utterly destroyed them, as we had done to King Sihon of Heshbon, in each city utterly destroying men, women, and children. 7 But all the livestock and the plunder of the towns we kept as spoil for ourselves.

8 “So at that time we took from the two kings of the Amorites the land beyond the Jordan, from the Wadi Arnon to Mount Hermon 9 (the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, while the Amorites call it Senir), 10 all the towns of the tableland, the whole of Gilead, and all of Bashan, as far as Salecah and Edrei, towns of Og’s kingdom in Bashan. 11 (Now only King Og of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. In fact, his bed, an iron bed, can still be seen in Rabbah of the Ammonites. By the common cubit it is nine cubits long and four cubits wide.) 12 As for the land that we took possession of at that time, I gave to the Reubenites and Gadites the territory north of Aroer that is on the edge of the Wadi Arnon, as well as half the hill country of Gilead with its towns, 13 and I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh the rest of Gilead and all of Bashan, Og’s kingdom. (The whole region of Argob: all that portion of Bashan used to be called a land of Rephaim; 14 Jair the Manassite acquired the whole region of Argob as far as the border of the Geshurites and the Maacathites, and he named them—that is, Bashan—after himself, Havvoth-jair, as it is to this day.) 15 To Machir I gave Gilead. 16 And to the Reubenites and the Gadites I gave the territory from Gilead as far as the Wadi Arnon, with the middle of the wadi as a boundary, and up to the Jabbok, the wadi being boundary of the Ammonites; 17 the Arabah also, with the Jordan and its banks, from Chinnereth down to the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, with the lower slopes of Pisgah on the east.

1. In the Pentateuch, only D talks (normally) about the occupation of Bashan

So that’s how Deuteronomy describes the division of Bashan: it goes to Manasseh, as does half (or all?) of Gilead.

As we saw in the last post, Numbers 32 is all about the division of Transjordan. But Bashan goes nearly unmentioned. All we get is (translations are mine unless indicated otherwise):

Then Moses gave them, to the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben and to half of the tribe of Manasseh, son of Joseph, the kingdom of Sihon, king of the Amorites, and the kingdom of Og, king of the Bashan, the country with its towns within [its] borders, the towns of the surrounding countryside.

Num 32:33

This is the first time the tribe of Manasseh or Bashan is even mentioned in this chapter. It’s odd to end a story about two tribes asking for land in Gilead (and/or the Mishor) with two-and-a-half tribes receiving land in Gilead (and/or the Mishor) and Bashan. This reads as a brief harmonization with Deut 3 and Josh 13 and is probably not original to the chapter.

The other place where we might expect mention of Bashan is in Deut 34, the last chapter of the Pentateuch. Moses looks out over the promised land:

Then YHWH showed him all the land: Gilead as far as Dan and all of Naphtali and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh and all the land of Judah, up to the western sea, and the Negev and the plain, the valley of Jericho, the city of date palms, up to Zoar.

Deut 34:1b-3

Gilead! But no Bashan; not umambiguously at least.

This last passage is in Deuteronomy, but is not normally assigned to D; the Neo-Documentarians say it’s J, I think. So: outside D, nobody settles in Bashan (except for Nobah, maybe; more on him later).

2. The Og passage in Numbers 21 is secondary

But we have a defeat of Og passage earlier in Numbers, don’t we? Yes, but (NRSVUE again):

21 21 Then Israel sent messengers to King Sihon of the Amorites, saying, 22 “Let me pass through your land; we will not turn aside into field or vineyard; we will not drink the water of any well; we will go by the King’s Highway until we have passed through your territory.” 23 But Sihon would not allow Israel to pass through his territory. Sihon gathered all his people together and went out against Israel to the wilderness; he came to Jahaz and fought against Israel. 24 Israel put him to the sword and took possession of his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, as far as to the Ammonites, for the boundary of the Ammonites was strong. 25 Israel took all these towns, and Israel settled in all the towns of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all its villages.

… 33 Then they turned and went up the road to Bashan, and King Og of Bashan came out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. 34 But the Lord said to Moses, “Do not be afraid of him, for I have given him into your hand, with all his people and his land. You shall do to him as you did to King Sihon of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon.” 35 So they killed him, his sons, and all his people, until there was no survivor left, and they took possession of his land.

The thing to note here is how both texts compare to the ones in Deuteronomy 2 and 3. The Og passages are virtually identical, something that the NRSVUE translations don’t bring out so clearly at the beginning (so here are mine):

By contrast, the Sihon passages are worded very differently—and the one in Deuteronomy closely resembles the following Og passage (see the bolded text), while the one in Numbers does not:

So, Numbers has a Sihon and Og passage that differ considerably in wording (the only close parallel is he came out to meet Israel/them). Deuteronomy has Sihon and Og passages that closely resemble each other. And the Og passage in Numbers matches part of the one in Deuteronomy verbatim (with a person change in the verbs), while the Sihon passages don’t match so closely.3 What does this show?

1. Numbers 21 originally had a Sihon story, but not an Og story.
2. Deuteronomy 2-3 retells the Sihon story from Numbers 21 and adds an Og story along the same lines, following D’s own larger narrative, style, and theology.
3. Someone added an excerpt of Deut 3’s Og passage to Num 21 to harmonize the two texts.

The remaining points should be shorter:

3. The geography doesn’t make sense

This is a supporting argument for Og being secondary to Num 21. In Deuteronomy, God commands Moses to head north to Bashan in order to defeat Og and take his land; that’s part of the plan. In Numbers, the Israelites are just trying to cross the Jordan. Sihon won’t let them pass, attacks them, and is defeated. Then, the Israelites head north to Bashan for no stated reason whatsoever, veering wildly off course. The Og passage has been taken over from Deuteronomy, but without the narrative justification.

4. Og is a mythological figure

Og is a giant, the last of the Rephaim.

Recall the description of his giant bed and Rephaite heritage from Deut 3, quoted above.

We’re not really sure what Rephaite means. In Deuteronomy, the term does seem to refer to some kind of giants. In Genesis 14, they don’t necessarily seem supernatural in any way and just appear as a people apparently inhabiting Bashan, as Chedorlaomer & co. defeat them at Ashteroth-Karnaim; like Edrei, modern Daraa, Ashtaroth (the more usual name) is a historical place in central Bashan/Hauran, Roman Batanea. But one other place where we find Rephaim—well, rpu͗—with both supernatural and Bashanite associations is at Ugarit. The most relevant text is KTU 1.108 (excerpt):4

yšt . rpu͗ . mlk . ʿlm
‘May Rapi’u, King of Eternity, drink’

w yšt [i͗l .] gṯr . w yqr . i͗l yṯb . b ʿṯtrt
‘(and) may [the god,] mighty and noble, drink, the god who sits enthroned in Athtarot’

i͗l . ṯpṭ . b hdrʿy .
‘the god who rules in Hedrei’

It seems likely to me that the figure of Og as a supernatural giant king who rules from Ashtaroth and Edrei in Bashan was inherited from older myths. Either way, Og’s giant status clearly contrasts with that of Sihon, who is just… a guy. He’s an Amorite, he lives in Heshbon, he won some battles, he lost some battles. This discrepancy goes well with a scenario where the two stories have different origins, for instance because the Og story was added to the Sihon story at a later point in time.

Summing up

We’ve seen that in the Pentateuch, a fully integrated narrative of the conquest of Bashan is limited to D. Here, we find a motivation for the Israelites heading north (God said so), a description of the defeat of Og in terms that match the surrounding text, and full inclusion of Bashan in the subsequent division of the conquered lands. In the older tradition(s) that D is basing itself on, the Israelites only met, conquered, and dispossessed Sihon, the Amorite ruler of the Mishor. Og the Bashanite Rephaite giant was only added to the story later on.

Why? Did Bashan become more interesting to Israelite/Judahite authors over time? And what’s up with the recurring references to Argob and Havvoth-Jair, which also seem to change their geography over time? Sounds like we’re going to need a Part III.

1. I heard a talk, or read a paper, about this weird participle instead of a perfect here. Don’t remember what the solution was. Sounded convincing though. ↩︎
2. This resumptive repetition suggests that in Deuteronomy, the preceding passage on the message to Sihon was inserted later to match the story in Numbers better. ↩︎
3. Apart from bits of the message to Sihon passage, which looks secondary in Deuteronomy (see the Note 2). ↩︎
4. Text and translation adapted from this post by Laura Quick, who doesn’t accept the proposed reading as place names. I would argue that the change of h- to ‘- in what seems like a prosthetic syllable is unproblematic and has a good number of parallels. Moreover, we have no idea what they spoke in Bashan and what sound laws that language may have undergone. ↩︎

#Bible #Deuteronomy #Hebrew #Numbers

Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (I)

Part II

Part III

Part IV

I’ve been trying to get a grip on the geography of two large-ish areas east of the River Jordan that the Hebrew Bible says were once populated by Israelites: Gilead and Bashan. The boundary between these two matches the modern border between Jordan and Syria pretty well, with Gilead corresponding to part of northwestern Jordan and Bashan to the Syrian region of Hauran. But there’s some issues. The use of Gilead is pretty inconsistent: sometimes it seems to refer to just a small part of the area, not all of the Israelite East Bank. There’s conflicting statements on which tribes lived where. And in the case of Bashan, there’s a special focus on the district of Argob: where’s that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OsA1CSdgYY

The kind of average, overall picture we get from the canonical bible as a whole isn’t too complicated. Approaching Canaan after their desert wanderings, the Israelites are attacked, first by Sihon, king of the Amorites and then by Og, king of Bashan. The Israelites defeat them and certain tribes and subtribes settle in their lands, divided as follows:

• Gilead is divided between the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of the tribe of Manasseh.
• Other clans belonging to the same half tribe of Manasseh get Bashan.
• Some subregions get conquered by specific individuals, like Jair who names his portion Havvoth-Jair and Kenath, which is conquered by Nobah.

But zooming in on the actual texts, things get more complex. In this Part I post, we’ll mainly be looking at Numbers 32, Deuteronomy 3, and Joshua 13.

Gilead: who goes where?

For starters, the different accounts of how the territories of Reuben and Gad relate to each other are hopelessly confusing, if not confused; Yigal Levin gives a much better overview here than I could.

Levin identifies three distributions:

1. Numbers 32: Reuben gets the northern part of the plateau to the east of the Dead Sea (north of the Arnon), the Mishor, with Gad living both north and south of them (east of the Jordan and east of the Dead Sea/bordered by the Arnon).
2. Joshua 13: Reuben gets the southern part, most of the Dead Sea coast as far south as the Arnon, and Gad gets the whole east bank of the Jordan (apart from where the Ammonites live) up to the Sea of Galilee.
3. Joshua 21 (list of Levitical cities): Reuben’s cities haven’t securely been identified but seem to be in the southeastern part, on the desert fringe between the Arnon and the big wadi coming from the north, Wadi al-Hidan;1 Gad gets the east bank of the Jordan, north of the Dead Sea.

After staring at Levin’s maps for a long time, the main disagreement seems to be about who controls the area between the Arnon and Wadi al-Hidan, with the towns of Dibon and Aroer: Gad in Numbers 32 (where they also hold the southwestern town of Ataroth), but Reuben in Joshua 13. Otherwise, there’s a disagreement about the border town and former Amorite capital of Heshbon, but the general picture is the same, with Gad in the north by the Jordan and Reuben in the south by the Dead Sea.

Interestingly, there’s another contender for the area south of Wadi al-Hidan: Moab.

I am Mesha, son of Chemosh[ît], king of Moab, the Dibonite

…

Omri had taken possession of the land of Madaba … but Chemosh restored it during my days. I built Baal-meon, and I made a reservoir in it; I built Kiriathain. The men of Gad dwelt in the land of Atarot from ancient times, and the king of Israel had built Atarot, but I fought against the city and took it; I killed the entire population.

…

Chemosh said to me: “Go, take Nebo from Israel!” I went in the night, and I fought there from dawn until noon; I took it and killed everyone

…

The king of Israel had built Yahaz, and he lived there while fighting against me, but Chemosh drove him out before me

…

 I built Aroer and made the road in the Arnon

…

 I (re)built Beth-Bamoth because it had been destroyed. I (re)built Bezer because it was in ruins.

Translation by André Lemaire

We can divide the places that overlap between the Mesha inscription (ca. 840 BCE) and the biblical accounts of Reuben and Gad’s territories into three categories, based on what Mesha says about them:

1. Dibon, Aroer, Beth-Bamoth (biblical Bamoth-Baal?) and Bezer seem to be part of Mesha’s domain before he fights Israel: he does not mention conquering them.
2. (The land of) Madaba (biblical Medaba), seemingly including Baal-Meon and Kiriathaim, is (re)conquered from Israel, as are Nebo and Jahaz.
3. Ataroth is also conquered, but singled out for its Gadite population.

Of the places in group 1, Beth-Bamoth/Bamoth-Baal has not been identified. If we connect it with Baalei-Bamoth-Arnon in Num 21,2 it would appear to lie on the Arnon. Dibon and Aroer are on the north bank of the Arnon. The location of Bezer has not been identified but most of the biblical mentions specify that it lies “in the desert”, which, like the rest, plausibly places it south/east of Wadi al-Hidan. This is the area where Num 32 and Josh 13 show the most disagreement.3

Of the places in group 2, Medaba, Baal-Meon, Kiriathaim, and Nebo all lie north/west of Wadi al-Hidan. The wonderful Ortsangaben der Bibel suggests Khirbet er-Rumel as the most likely location of Jahaz, which lies on Wadi al-Hidan. These places are never attributed to Gad, only to Reuben.4

Finally, Ataroth (group 3) lies north of Wadi al-Hidan, close to where it joins the Arnon. Both Mesha and Num 32 mention it as belonging to Gad, and it is never attributed to Reuben.

Together with the other places from Num 32 and Josh 13 that have been identified, I think this makes for a geographically plausible division that explains the disagreement between the biblical sources:

1. At least in the middle of the 9th century, the border of Moab was not the Arnon (Wadi Mujib), but Wadi al-Hidan. Dibon and Aroer were already part of Moab before Mesha’s revolt. This is why the biblical authors don’t know whether to assign this part to Reuben or Gad: it may never have been Israelite in the first place (despite Numbers 21’s very strong insistence that Sihon, the Amorite king of Heshbon, had conquered it from Moab and it was therefore part of Israel’s conquest of Sihon’s kingdom).
2. The plateau between Wadi al-Hidan and the Dead Sea, the Mishor or Land of Madaba, was occupied by the kingdom of Israel. The Hebrew Bible mostly assigns this to the tribe of Reuben; Mesha doesn’t specify.
3. The low land by the Jordan and probably also on the Dead Sea coast was held by Gad, with the fortified town of Ataroth as a southern outpost on the Moabite border.

That gives us a satisfactory division of Gilead.

…

This is Gilead, right?

Where is Gilead?

Most of the story in Num 32 seems to be about Gilead (vv. 1, 26, 29). But then, right after Moses gives the territory in question to Gad and Reuben in v. 33,5 we read:

And the sons of Machir, son of Manasseh, went to Gilead and captured it. And he dispossessed the Amorites that were there. And Moses gave the Gilead to Machir, son of Manasseh, and he settled there. And Jair, son of Manasseh, went and captured their villages, and called them Jair’s Villages (Havvoth-Jair).

Num 32:39-41

(Havvoth-Jair is in Gilead according to Judges 10 and 1 Kgs 4, but in Bashan according to Deuteronomy 3 and Josh 13.)

OK, so Gilead is somewhere else? And Manasseh lives there? About that:

And [Jephthah] passed through the Gilead and Manasseh

Jdg 11:29

Gilead lies in between Ephraim and Manasseh.

Jdg 12:4

Josh 13 seems confused about this as well:

And Moses gave to the tribe of Gad … And their border was Jaazer and all the towns of the Gilead … the Jordan being the border, until the edge of the Sea of Kinnereth, the east bank of the Jordan.

Josh 13:24-27

And Moses gave to half the tribe of the Manassites … And their border was from Mahanaim … and half of the Gilead …

Josh 13:29-31

We also find seemingly contradictory statements right in the same passage in Deuteronomy 3, a more general statement about the division of Transjordan that we haven’t considered yet (Moses is speaking):

At that time, we took the land from the two Amorite kings that were in Transjordan, from the Arnon gorge to Mount Hermon. … All the towns of the Mishor and all the Gilead and all the Bashan, as far as Salcah and Edrei, Og’s royal cities in the Bashan. … At that time we took possession of that land. From Aroer on the Arnon gorge and half of Mount Gilead and its towns I gave to the Reubenites and the Gadites. And the rest of the Gilead and all of the Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to half of the tribe of Manasseh … and to Machir I gave the Gilead. And to the Reubenites and the Gadites I gave from the Gilead until the Arnon gorge, the middle of the gorge being the border, and until the Jabbok gorge, the border of the Ammonites.

Deut 4:8-16

Here, we see a threefold division into the Mishor, the Gilead, and the Bashan. Gilead is split between Reuben/Gad and half of Manasseh, or entirely given to Machir.

Finally, there’s Genesis 31-33, where the patriarch Jacob names a bunch of places in “the hill country of Gilead”: a town of the same name (probably), Mizpah, Mahanaim, Penuel, and Succoth. As far as we can tell, these were all pretty close together, in the hill country north of the Jabbok. In the same region, we later on find the places Jabesh-Gilead and (probably) Ramoth-Gilead.

The contested nature of Gilead is also reflected in tribal genealogy: Gilead is a grandson of Manasseh and a son of Machir according to Num 26:29, 27:1; Josh 17:1,3, but appears as a separate tribe besides Machir in the Song of Deborah, Jdg 5:14,17 (interestingly, neither Manasseh nor Gad is mentioned here). Gilead also appears to be an independent tribe in Jdg 11, the story of Jephthah, and also note Jair (of Havvoth fame) as a Gileadite, not a son of Manasseh, in Jdg 10.

Let’s try to make some sense of this from a diachronic point of view. Map below.

1. Bible scholars generally believe that the twelve-tribes scheme, with each tribe descending from a son of Jacob, is the endpoint of a long development. From that perspective, the data from Judges look oldest: Gilead isn’t a son of Jacob and doesn’t explicitly descend from one, but it’s a separate tribe nonetheless, distinct from Machir and/or Manasseh. Its territory probably lay in the Gen 31-33 hill country north of the Jabbok, including places like Mizpah (Jephthah’s hometown), Jabesh-Gilead, Ramoth-Gilead, and… Gilead.
2. There’s a flatter tract of land north of this Gilead 1.0, around modern Irbid. This could be the core area of Machir, later identified as a son of Manasseh. This goes well with Jdg 5, where Machir is praised for participating in a battle near Megiddo and Taanach: not so far away from Machir’s territory as proposed here, but a farther journey for Gilead and Reuben, who are both chastised for not having taken part. It also explains how Jepthah can go from Gilead to Manasseh (Machir) and back again before crossing into Ammonite territory, and how Gilead lies in between Manasseh (Machir), to the north, and Ephraim, to the west.
3. Gilead then gets recast as a son of Machir (hence grandson of Manasseh, great-grandson of Joseph, great-great-grandson of Jacob) to fit him into the twelve-tribe structure. Machir now formally covers both the flatter northern part and the hillier southern part, everything between the Jabbok and the Yarmuk. As a result, maybe a bit later, Gilead extends to refer to this whole territory, and this Gilead 2.0 is said to have been granted to Machir (Num 32:39-40; Deut 3:15). In Deut 3:14-16, this makes for a clean division of Jair getting Argob in Bashan (north of the Yarmuk), Machir getting Gilead 2.0 (Yarmuk to Jabbok), and Gad and Reuben (maybe not so distinct anymore at this time) getting everything between the Jabbok and the Arnon.
4. Next, Gilead spreads to the hills south of the Jabbok, which don’t seem like such a different landscape from Gilead 2.0. This Gilead 3.0 probably amounts to everything between Ammon and the Jordan. We now have a threefold distinction of Bashan (east of the Jordan, from Hermon to Sea of Galilee), Gilead (east of the Jordan, from Sea of Galilee to Dead Sea), and the Mishor (east of the Dead Sea as far south as the Arnon). Gilead is split half-and-half between Manasseh in the north and Gad/Reuben in the south (Josh 13:30-31, but see below; Deut 3:12-13).6
5. Josh 13:24-27 seems to have the same division, but assigns all of Gilead 3.0 to Gad. We can resolve the contradiction within Josh 13 if we see “and half of the Gilead” in v. 31 as a harmonization with Deut 3. That also explains why it comes in such a weird position, interrupting “all the Bashan, all the kingdom of Og, king of the Bashan, and all of Havvoth-Jair, which is in the Bashan, sixty towns” and “and Ashtaroth and Edrei, Og’s royal cities in the Bashan”. Actually, that bit about Havvoth-Jair may also be a harmonization with Deut 3. If so, Josh 13 assigns Bashan to Machir/half of Manasseh, Gilead 3.0 to Gad, and the Mishor to Reuben.
6. Finally, Num 32 uses Gilead for the land that gets assigned to Gad and Reuben, apparently including the Mishor. Gilead 4.0 then encompasses all the (allegedly) Israelite territory in present-day Jordan, from the Yarmuk to the Arnon. At least, some verses in Num 32 do.

Map:

So in combination with what we saw about the borders of Moab in the first section, this suggests the following division as the oldest one we have evidence for (roughly correlated with modern Jordanian governorates because that works pretty OK):

To sum up the diachronic story, we see Gilead creeping a little bit north and then a lot south, Machir/Manasseh creeping a little bit south and then moving north, and Gad expanding north. What’s going on up there? In Part II, we will turn and ascend the road to Bashan to find out.

1. Apparently also spelled Haydan. I’m using this name for the whole wadi, although the upper parts seem to have different names as well. ↩︎
2. Either as another variant of the name or as a play on words: ‘the lords of the high places of Arnon’, referring to Bamoth-Baal (= ‘the high places of Baal/the Lord’) on the Arnon. ↩︎
3. Dibon and Aroer are Gadite in Num 32 but Reubenite in Josh 13. Bamoth-Baal and Bezer are only mentioned as Reubenite (Josh 13 and 21, respectively). ↩︎
4. Medaba and Nebo in Josh 13, [Beth-]Baal-Meon and Kiriathaim in Num 32 and Josh 13, Jahaz in Josh 13 and 21. ↩︎
5. And half of Manasseh; probably an addition, because they weren’t part of the discussion so far. But they’re about to show up. ↩︎
6. I’m split on whether there’s two conflicting descriptions in Deut 3 or just some unclear phrasing. If we want to read the whole chapter as using the same system, we can say it all employs Gilead 3.0. Verses 12-13 state that this was split between (some) Manassites to the north and (some) Gadites/Reubenites to the south. The following verses then clarify that Jair (Manasseh) took Argob/Havvoth-Jair, Machir (Manasseh) took the northern half of Gilead, and Gad and Reuben took the southern half of Gilead and everything else up to the Arnon. ↩︎

#Bible #Deuteronomy #Hebrew #Joshua #Judges #Kings #Moabite #Numbers

Tattoo Jew

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/tattoos/

#Deuteronomy 12 famously refers to a place YHWH will choose for his cult, which scholars often take as referring to Josiah's reforms (2 Kings 23). But in Deuteronomy the verbs are future tense (יבחר).

Or are they? SamP thinks otherwise.

All 21 times where the text refers to the place which God will choose (Deut 12:5, 11, 14, 18, 21, 26; 14:23-25; 15:20; 16:2, 6-7, 11, 15-16; 17:8, 10; 18:6; 26:2; 31:11), MT imperfect יבחר corresponds to SamP perfect בחר.

#HebrewBible #TextualCriticism
1/?

Trying to learn more about Ethiopia(n Semitic languages), I just finished reading William A. Shack’s The Central Ethiopians. Amhara, Tigriňa and related peoples (1974; London: International African Institute). It’s 50 years old, many of the sources it uses are over 100 years old, and I’m sure it’s full of inaccuracies I didn’t recognize besides the ones I did, but it’s a place to start.

On the traditional religion of the Western Gurage, Shack writes (p. 113):

Yəgzär is the supreme god of the Gurage, the creator of the world. However, there is no cult addressed to Yəgzär, as there are to lesser deities, the most important of which are the cults of Waq, the male “Sky-god,” of Dämwamwit, the female deity, and Božä, the ‘Thunder-God.” Each clan has its own local Waq; Dämwamwit and Božä are central deities for the säbat bet federation. … In Gurage belief, Yəgzär handed over to Božä the responsibility of regulating the daily conduct of Gurage and affording ritual protection against theft and the destruction of property by arson.

Two things stand out to me here:

1. The creator god as a “high god” who is not the most commonly worshiped one and has handed over control to another god, specifically the god of thunder. This mirrors the relationship between Ilu and Ba’lu at Ugarit. But also compare Kronos and Zeus in Greek mythology, or maybe Odin and Thor in Germanic religion.
2. “Each clan has its own local Waq“.1 This sounds very Iron Age West Semitic to me. Think of Israel and Judah worshiping YHWH, the Ammonites worshiping Milkom, the Moabites and Kemosh, the Edomites and Qaws… We also find this in Ancient South Arabia, as I learned from Imar Koutchoukali during the last Leiden Summer School: there, everyone venerated Athtar, but each kingdom again had its own particular tutelary deity, like Almaqah for the Sabaeans and Wadd for the Minaeans. We seem to have an explicit description of this theology in Deut 32:8–9:

When Elyon apportioned the nations,
    when he divided humankind,
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
    according to the number of the children of God;2
YHWH’s portion was his people,
    Jacob his allotted share.

(adapted from NRSV)

Feature (1) occurs in some shape or another in a lot of religions, especially ones from the Near East, and it may well have spread through contact. The Gurage Zone is far enough away, though, that I wonder whether this points to an inheritance from Proto-West-Semitic times. Feature (2) seems less common to me, although that could just be my ignorance speaking. Also, I’m not really sure how the difference between a thunder god and a sky god works out in practice; maybe I should read the other publications by Shack he refers to in this passage. But for now, creator-god-appoints-thunder-god-as-ruler and each-political-unit-has-its-tutelary-sky-god as reconstructible elements of Proto-Semitic religion makes for an exciting hypothesis.

1. The name Waq is borrowed from (Lowland?) East Cushitic, but from what I’ve read on Wikipedia he’s more important there and the localized aspect may be missing. ↩︎
2. MT: “the children of Israel”; commonly reconstructed like this based on LXX “the angels of God” ↩︎

https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2024/10/20/gurage-evidence-for-proto-semitic-religion/

#AncientSouthArabian #Bible #Cushitic #Deuteronomy #Gurage #Hebrew #ProtoSemitic #religion

Genesis 10 and the rest of the Pentateuch

Simeon Chavel just uploaded a new paper that I mostly disagree with but found very stimulating. Chavel’s main point, that we shouldn’t talk about “Semitic” peoples etc. anymore, feels like a partial strawman, as I don’t think a lot of contemporary scholars do that anyway. Meanwhile “Cushitic” is still very much in use to refer to languages (contrary to what he seems to believe) and I don’t see many good reasons to give up “Semitic” in that context either.

The part of Chavel’s paper that I found most interesting, however, is his analysis of the Table of Nations, Genesis 10. Chavel follows(/furthers?) a view put forward by Guy Darshan that besides a Priestly text, Gen 10 contains a large amount of text from a competing system of cataloguing the peoples of the world. We find this in the lists of the descendants of Cush (just the Nimrod passage), Mizraim, Canaan, and Eber. These four passages are stylistically quite different. While Chavel seems to take this as evidence that they all derive from one and the same source, I’m inclined to follow the more common view he mentions and take them as four separate additions to the text. As I hope to briefly set out, this is supported by the way these passages relate to the rest of the chapter and the Pentateuch as a whole.

The Priestly base text

Something I hadn’t understood before Chavel’s paper is how neatly you can get a coherent, straightforward base text of Gen 10 by just sticking to the lists of “sons”.1 Here it is in translation:

1 Now this is the genealogy of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And sons were born to them after the flood. 2 The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. 3 The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah. 4 The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. 5 From these the coastland peoples of the Gentiles were separated into their lands, everyone according to his language, according to their families, into their nations.6 The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. 7 The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabtechah; and the sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan. … 20 These were the sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their languages, in their lands and in their nations. … 22 The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram. … 31 These were the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their languages, in their lands, according to their nations. 32 These were the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, in their nations; and from these the nations were divided on the earth after the flood.

(NKJV)

This is a lovely segmented genealogy, just like the one in Gen 46, for instance. Every section has an introduction and a conclusion, as does the genealogy as a whole. Stylistically this matches other genealogies that are assigned to P and that attribution makes great sense too. Fascinatingly, this layer of the text contains all the Grandsons of Noah that I wrote about a year ago (time flies!). As I found there, the combination of nations that are mentioned only fits the early seventh century. So if this genealogy is an integral part of the P narrative—which it sure seems to be to me—we can date that to the early seventh century too. I thiiink I remember that Israel Knohl arrives at the same dating of his “P(riestly) T(orah)” on other grounds, but I would have to check. This is centuries earlier than a lot of European scholars would have it.

The Canaanites

15 Canaan begot Sidon his firstborn, and Heth; 16 the Jebusite, the Amorite, and the Girgashite; 17 the Hivite, the Arkite, and the Sinite; 18 the Arvadite, the Zemarite, and the Hamathite. Afterward the families of the Canaanites were dispersed. 19 And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon as you go toward Gerar, as far as Gaza; then as you go toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.

(NKJV)

The Torah.com article by Aaron Demsky I just linked has some great observations on this passage. Two points: together with Canaan himself, we have twelve ancestors/peoples, a feature we know from other genealogies (e.g. the Twelve Tribes of Israel); and the genealogy combines a list of six peoples that are to be disposessed by the Israelites, well known from other texts, with six Phoenician city-states. This is done in chiastic order: Sidon (city), Heth (people), four more peoples, five more cities.

It seems clear to me that this passage is dependent on many other parts of the Pentateuch, for the following reasons:

1. The genealogy is familiar with the (non-Priestly) list of six (sometimes seven) peoples that are to be conquered, which includes the Canaanites, as well as the use of “Canaan” as an encompassing term. By combining this with six mostly obscure (to us) terms referring to city-states, it creates a list of one + eleven groups that is never used in this way elsewhere.
2. Heth is singled out, being mentioned as an individual and not as “the Hittites”. I think this must be because of the references to “sons/daughters of Heth”, which sounds like they literally descend from one ancestor named Heth; members of other Canaanite peoples aren’t referred to in this way. These “sons/daughters of Heth” references all occur in Priestly texts.
3. The description of the borders of Canaan in v. 19 doesn’t make a lot of historical or geographic sense, starting in the middle of Phoenicia and including cities that were prominent at different times as well as long-destroyed or possibly legendary ones. Nearly all of them occur elsewhere in the Pentateuch,2 though, and in texts that are normally assigned to different sources. This verse could be a later addition, though, so this doesn’t necessarily reflect on the Canaan passage as a whole.

If the list of Canaan’s sons depends on both Priestly and non-Priestly Pentateuch passages, it’s hard to see it as part of an originally independent source. Rather, it may have been added after the initial compilation of the Pentateuch.

The Egyptians

13 Mizraim begot Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, 14 Pathrusim, and Casluhim (from whom came the Philistines and Caphtorim).

(NKJV)

I’m citing the NKJV for consistency here, but they messed up the translation of the last line. The preposition את shows that כפתרים ‘Caphtorim’ is part of the object of “Misraim begot”, not part of the subject of “whence3 came”. Canonically, the Philistines came from Caphtor (Amos 9:7, Jer 47:4, Deut 2:23). So I strongly suspect a scribal error for an older text like:

13 Mizraim begot Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, 14 Pathrusim, Casluhim, and Caphtorim (whence came the Philistines).

In this version, the passage could have been added to explain the origin of the Philistines—very important in Genesis and mentioned in Exodus 15, but not otherwise provided with a genealogy in Gen 10. The bit about the Philistines could also be a later gloss, however, which would explain the incorrect placement (e.g. if it started out in the margins before a scribe moved it to the main text). In that case, there’s nothing in the Mizraim passage that shows dependence on the rest of the Pentateuch; I just wanted to make that point about the Philistines being in the wrong part of the verse as we have it.

The line of Eber

21 And children were born also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder. … 24 Arphaxad begot Salah, and Salah begot Eber. 25 To Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan. 26 Joktan begot Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, 27 Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, 28 Obal, Abimael, Sheba, 29 Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan. 30 And their dwelling place was from Mesha as you go toward Sephar, the mountain of the east.

(NKJV)

Verse 24 depends on the P base text and if I read Chavel correctly he does see this as an editorial addition. In his view, it connects the P text to an originally independent genealogy of Eber. I think we need to go deeper, though. The etiology given for Peleg’s name anticipates the non-P Tower of Babel story in the next chapter. At the same time, we don’t get any descendants of Peleg mentioned here because they’re given in the P genealogy from Shem to Abram that forms the second half of Gen 11. So instead, I think we’ve got a redactor (who knows both P and non-P Pentateuchal texts) linking the Table of Nations to the list of descendants of Joktan. (More on this another time.) This may well have been an independent document, which would explain the mention of Sheba here—in the P base text, Sheba is a great-grandson of Ham (v. 7), not a descendant of Shem. I guess it could also belong to a non-P source that is attested more widely, something like a fragment of a J Table of Nations; don’t really see anything to support or refute that.

Nimrod

8 Cush begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” 10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, 12 and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (that is the principal city).

(NKJV)

So here we have a passage that does not look Priestly (use of the Tetragrammaton before Moses) and which contradicts the non-Priestly Tower of Babel story in Gen 11. Nothing here looks dependent on anything else in the Pentateuch. I agree that this looks like it could be from an independent third source, but at this point there’s very little in the rest of Gen 10 to connect it with—it could go with the descendants of Joktan or Mizraim (probably without the Philistines), I guess, but they don’t have anything in common. 🤷‍♂️ Apparently, there was a big hype for the (third-millennium BCE) Akkadian Empire in 7th–6th century Mesopotamia, which could explain the interest in ancient cities like Akkad and Uruk (Erech) here. Again, 🤷‍♂️

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, a lot of the non-P material in Gen 10 depends on a compiled version of the Pentateuch. Independent sources may have been preserved in the genealogy of Joktan, the Nimrod passage, and maybe the genealogy of Mizraim; I see no reason to connect them to each other or to any other texts. For the most part, then, we can understand the Table of Nations as a P text (from the early 7th century!) with later interpolations that were added after the compilation of the Pentateuch, partially drawing on other material.

1. I omit the sons of Aram, who are missing from the parallel text in 1 Chronicles 1. ↩︎
2. All of them if Lasha (לשע) is somehow equivalent to Bela (בלע) from Gen 14, as the association with the preceding four cities (all mentioned in Gen 14) suggests. Bela could have been influenced by the personal names Bera (ברע) and Birsha (ברשע) that occur shortly before its first mention in Gen 14. ↩︎
3. Not “from whom”, another strike against NKJV. As Chavel points out, this is expressed with a locative adverb, not a pronoun. ↩︎

Deuteronomy 21:10-19.
How's that sound now?
-
#Deuteronomy #Torah #Bible #Christianity #Judaism #atrocity #apologetics #Putin #meme

Deuteronomy 21:10-19.
How's that sound now?
-
#Deuteronomy #Torah #Bible #Christianity #Judaism #atrocity #apologetics #Putin #meme

-- The Diablocritics Ep 4 — ‪@ TruthUnites‬ and Apologetics for War Crimes in Deuteronomy 21 --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNQTiDG1jFU

#Diablocritics #Deuteronomy #Bible #Torah #law #warCrimes #Hebrew #Judaism #Christianity #apologetics