The Prophet Joseph Smith's New Translation of Genesis 16 brings rich surprises. Among these the idea that the name Beer-la-hai-roi applies first to the angel who visits fleeing Hagar and, only second, "for a memorial" (Heb. le-zikkaron) to the nearby well, where Isaac later camped. The idea shocks. Since be'er (buh-AIR) signifies well in Hebrew, how can the word name an angel? Yet the Prophet insists on the matter: "Hagar saw the angel and the name of the angel was Beer-la hai roi wherefore the well was called Beer la hai roi for a memorial" (see OT Mss. 1 and 2; Mss. 2 gives both Beer-la-hai-roi and Beerlahairoi, etc.).
So what does the name Beer-la-hai-roi mean? Open the book and the answer comes readily--you don't even have to think:
"The well of him who liveth and sees me" (LDS Bible footnote)
"Well of the Living One who sees me" (E.A. Speiser, The Anchor Bible: Genesis, 117)
"the Well of the Living One of Vision" Robert Davidson, who also refers us to the standard:
"the Well of the Living One who sees me."
Now what I like about the Joseph Smith Translation is that it invites further reflection. "It feels so good not to be trammeled," says the Prophet in response to the High Council trying good old Brother Brown for his (incorrect!) views on the Bible. Latter-day Saints, Brother Joseph is saying, are free to think.
In light of this invitation--and why else have a New Translation if we're never going to think about it?--I wish to explore the name Beer-la-hai-roi further.
The compound name consists of three elements: Noun (Well) + the preposition l + Noun Phrase (the participial + infinitival forms are nominal in function):
Well + l + the Living One sees me.
The preposition, la, can be understood in two ways: first, as marking possession (thus the reading "well of the Living One"); second, as marking the transition, or setting the relation, of a logical apposition.
The organization of the compound Beer-la-hai-roi matches that of dedications found on objects. We recall the seals stamped on the handles of jars in ancient Israel. These jars were dedicated lhmlk or la ha-melek "to the king", whatever that means. In like manner, certain objects said to be associated with the Jerusalem Temple (although of disputed origin), bear the signature of dedication l-yy, which signifies "consecrated to the Lord." And that's exactly how we can and should read the name Beer-la-hai-roi, if we so please: "Well consecrated as a memorial to the Living One who sees me," that is, made consecrate by the visionary event. More simply, and thereby losing much of the nuance of the Hebrew, we could also read with the commentators: Well belonging to the Living One who sees me, and thence: Well of the Living One.
Back to my earlier point. The translation of the phrase Well + l + Living One can be rendered (weakly!) with the genitive of--and there's an end on't. But isn't it boring just to meekly copy millennia of biblical interpreters? Can't there be any new ideas? Joseph Smith's New Translation is a well-spring of the new.
A second way of organizing the compound name considers the preposition as marking a relation of apposition. In other words, the preposition, l, organizes the bipartite name as logical apposition. In this reading the noun (Well) is considered in relation to, or in respect of, etc., the action or event described by the noun phrase: The Living (God) sees me.
Perhaps: Well where the Living One sees me, or Place + Event.
Or: Well-in-that-the Living One-in action-of-seeing-me.
This last reading affords one way in which we could consider the angel as the well, or well-spring of the revelation that consists in the phrase Living God seeing me: Well-Spring of the Revelation, the Living God sees me. We recall here that both "spring" and "eye" share one name in Hebrew (ayin). A reading Well ~ Living God sees me" shows the name to be the revelation of God, if not theophany, then reflection--an angel of the Presence.
The noun Well anticipates the action of vision. Indeed, the angel is the well-spring of God's revelation to Hagar, the searcher (hqr) after God. What is a well, after all? (And what is an angel?) It is refuge, oasis, rescue, salvation, nourishment, place of greeting, of shalom, of finding, of safety. In light of the revelation of God through His angel, the well becomes for Hagar all of the above and more. The well becomes a manifestation, in the spiritual desert, of God's presence and watch care. It is wholeness, or shalom; it is love.
And any of these nouns could also name the messenger of revelation.
Read the name how we will, the imagery of the well is that of God's manifest wellspring: the name Well marks the manifestation of God by means of symbol, just as the concrete well marks the place of manifestation. And which idea comes first notionally and logically? The action of divine manifestation? or the place where it occurs?
Yes, there is logic in reading the name of the well as the name of the vision and of the one who brings that vision, both angel, and, ultimately, God Himself: "He is the Well-Spring, even the Spirit or Power of the Living God in whose continual Presence I dwell." In the 88th section of the Doctrine and Covenants we read that "light proceedeth forth [the heavenly well-spring] from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space" and further that that "light giveth life to all things."
Such a reading differs but little from the way the Jews understood the Beer-la-hai-roi (Targum Neofiti 1): "Therefore the well was called: 'The well beside which the One who sustains all ages was revealed'" (or, following Neofiti's marginal gloss: "above which was revealed the glory of the Shekinah of the Lord"). The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan yields: "For [Hagar] said, Behold, here indeed the Glory of the Shekinah of the Lord was revealed, vision after vision. Therefore the well was called 'The well at which the Living and Enduring One was revealed' " (The Aramaic Bible Series, vols. 1a and 1b).
Vision after vision, indeed: just three verses later comes the Theophany to 99-year old Abram wherein he is promised a rebirth of vitality in begetting Isaac and also receives, being now newly-made, the name Abraham. Given the proximity of the verses, who can help not view the vision-drenched names in one light: Beer la hai roi and Abraham; Beer la hai roi ~ Abraham.
Following up on this theme of vitality, a third possibility for reading Beer-la-hai-roi comes to mind. For a moment, let's drop the idea of la as preposition all together, and instead read it as a noun of divine power or strength (as in Ugaritic la-smm = the powers of heaven"; Hebrew lax), a noun which also conveys the idea of refreshment and moisture or vitality: Well-Power-Living-Sees-Me.
Now, by dropping la as preposition, I'm not trying to rewrite the perfectly good grammar of the compound name as it stands (or as it has been understood). I just wish to point out, with sensitivity, what Hagar's Semitic ear would be hearing and how that hearing conveys enough ambiguity to allow for more than one interpretation of the sacred name Beer-la-hai-roi.
From the well flows what the ancients called la--virtue, strength, salvation, vitality. It is the Powers of Heaven. It is the promise of Ishmael (God hears as well as sees) and of Isaac. He restoreth my soul.
At any rate, let's leave boring of by the wayside and consider the following readings:
Well consecrated as a memorial to the vision of the Living One who sees me
Well that stands in apposition to (and identity with) the revelation of the Living God who sees me (in whose Presence I am = Angel of the Presence)
Well--Power of Life--my Seeing God (or Being Seen--and Heard--and Quickened--of God).
And: Well = Power--Life--God sees me [in the Presence of God],
which again corresponds notionally with the revelation to Joseph:
"which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space--the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things" (Doctrine and Covenants 88:12-3).
The Well of God is in the middle of all things, it is the generous bosom of Eternity.
Beer la hai roi also typifies Jesus Christ: "This is the light of Christ" (88:7).
Angels, which "speak by the power of the Holy Ghost" [la = power, spirit], also proceed forth from the presence of God and fill immensity with the "words of Christ." And Christ it is who also proceeds from the Father and thus becomes Himself The Well-Spring, the Bright and Morning Star, Refuge and Meeting-Place and Reconciliation (Shalom) of our Salvation (see 2 Nephi 33).
Showing posts with label Old Testament: Joseph Smith Translation and the World of Abraham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Old Testament: Joseph Smith Translation and the World of Abraham. Show all posts
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Ophar in Joseph Smith Translation Genesis 10 and the name Ephraim
My fruit is better than gold
(Proverbs 8:19).
The Prophet Joseph Smith in his New Translation of the Bible at times makes the tiniest of changes. And no change is more wee that that of Ophir to Ophar (Gen. 10:29), which rings in one-vowel-net-weight of change, and nothing more--not a gram.
Of all the wildly archaic names in the Tables of Nations (Genesis 10), why this one? and only this one? Why did it matter to him? and is there any philological evidence for the change? Old Testament Manuscript 1 of the Joseph Smith Translation reads: "and Sheba and Ophar and Havilah and Jobab," and Ophar persists in Manuscript 2.
All traditional commentators follow the only lead ever followed (with one exception: V. Christides), and "simply" connect the name with an unknown gold-bearing locale in Arabia, East Africa, Zimbabwe, India, or "Eldorado" (Anchor Bible Dictionary, V, 26: David W. Baker). The etymology of the name may not be clear to all (Fruitful Land seems likely--metals were sometimes seen as organic in growth and nature by the ancients), but etymology sometimes gets trumped by the swirl of th'event: Ophir registers gold in Biblical Hebrew any way you slice it.
Ophir as place name appears elsewhere in the Old Testament, but there it differs in spelling (in Hebrew) from the personal name Ophir, and this difference is what causes Christides to reject the identification of the place Ophir with the personal name found in Genesis 10. The place name demands the i-vowel, given the yod added to the root after the stop p (the ph reflects the later post-exilic pronunciation); all assume the personal name follows the same pattern of vocalization--yet who's to say for certain? Variant readings of ouphir in LXX Gen. 10:29 yield: oupher (long e), oupher (short), and ioupher (long again), and ioupheir, some of which reflect Opher or Ophar rather than Ophir.
The consonantal base of Ophir is Aleph-Peh-Resh, a root, or root homonym, that conveys more than one meaning in Hebrew and neighboring Semitic languages. One outcome is "soil" or "dust", hardly a name for an Arabian patriarchar ; far better is the reading fruitful, in light of the paronomasia on the name Ephraim found in Genesis. Joseph called him Ephraim because God had made Joseph and Asenath fruitful by adding to them a second son. "Most scholars consider this to be the correct derivation, and hold that the name means 'fertile land'" (Encyclopaedia Judaica, 6:456).
Ephraim and Ephrat (and Ephratah) seem to derive from the same root as Ophir or Ophar. The only difference lies in the postfixes. For Proto-Semitic, students posit an original nominative case-ending for both nouns and personal names in -m; -ay(i)m seemingly answers to a locative ending (indicating place). Others, noting there is no real evidence for such a locative form, read the ending -ay(i)m as a marker of the dual (see James E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian, 190). The name Ephraim, at any rate, remains a prime example of mimation, a phenomenon not well understood later on: "In non-Hebrew words, mimation, which was no longer understood, was vocalized as a plural ending [as with Urim and Thummim]" (Anton Jirku, "Die Mimation in den Nord-Semitischen," Biblia 34 (1953), 80 = Nibley, One Eternal Round, 450 n. 119; see also discussion in Lehi in the Desert and the World of the Jaredites). Ephraim, or Epar[a]/Epra, is not then a "Hebrew" name but one belonging to an older stratum within, or even without, the family of Semitic languages.
A longtime puzzler starts to become clear: if Ephraim is an archaic name, no wonder that the Jaredites, for whom mimation was the rule (so Nibley), should have a Hill Ephraim (the Bible also attests such a place name). In Ether the hill Ephraim was a fruitful mine of iron ore. To modern eyes what an eyesore: Why Ephraim long before Joseph in Egypt? Might it have been for Jaredites a rather typical name--with mimation in the case, or dual, ending? For many, the Hill Ephraim is a place name in Moroni's linguistic and geographic landscape that slips into his translation of the Jaredite record. Hugh Nibley thought so and it is a sound conclusion. As far as fruitful hills are concerned, the Book of Mormon also gives us the Hills Comron and Cumorah. The root k-m-r denotes a ramp or rampart; it also connotes a place of fertile black soil. In Syria we find the Gath Kumara, the fertile black soil of the wine-press. Hills are for planting, for the fencing in and protection of the press and the vineyard. (The reading Comron--not Comnor--comes thanks to Royal Skousen's sleuthing.)
Now for the brick wall. The latest scholarship (Anchor Bible Dictionary, II, 551: Siegfried Herrmann) tells us "The original etymology of the name Ephraim is unknown"--indeed that it never can possibly be known! A guess is a "derivation of 'eper in the sense of 'region' (cf. Akk 'eperu')." Such a determination seems to flow from two facts or notions. First, the Biblical lexicon attests no productive root Aleph-Peh-Resh (and without such a root and its exploitation, what can we know?). Second, any "derivation from Hebrew prh, to be fertile, is based on a popular etymology." And how do we know that? Because it comes from a Bible story and, as everybody knows, Bible stories are just stories. Now Latter-day Saints may not be exactly fundamentalists when it comes to reading the Bible, but we are believers. If Joseph of old was said to have named his son Ephraim as a response to God's making him fruitful, then he did name his son Ephraim for that reason. The name might not mean fruitful in its ultimate etymological outcome, and it is all together possible that the ending -ayim "indicates a place or geographical name" to begin with, yet it clearly connoted fruitfulness to Joseph, a real prophet of old. And that Latter-day Saints, who consider themselves in goodly measure of the tribe of Ephraim, should wish to understand his (their) name, comes as no surprise.
Indeed the older founts of scholarship do draw from the Biblical reading of the name. The Koehler-Baumgartner Lexicon (1953) says that Ephraim is "commonly derived from parah" and means Fruchtland, or corn-land (like Fruitland, Utah in the "mountains of Ephraim"), or Weideland, pasture-land, or pasturage. That Ephrat and Ephrata should derive from the same root as Ephraim is a given for the lexicographers. Thus Bethlehem Ephrata is the Fruitful Place of Bread (lehem); its inhabitants are indeed known as Ephraimites. That other doughty lexicographer, Gesenius, in light of the possible dual value of -ay(i)m, reads Ephraim as double land or twin land (fruitful on both sides of the valley?), a sort of comment on the notion of fertility and fruitfulness. He further compares the dual form of the name to Mitzraim, Egypt as the Two Lands. Indeed it is Mitzraim and her lovely daughter, Asenath, that spells the fruitful land(s): Mitzraim for Joseph becomes Ephraim. The notion is interesting because Ephraim thus becomes a rival, even a superior to Mitzraim: Joseph prevails. For Latter-day Saints the true heritage of Ephraim and Manesseh lies "over the wall" and across the waves by the side of the "everlasting hills": And are not the Americas a "double land"?
Joseph and Moses (and whatever other pre-exilic editors there were) were clearly as content with Ephraim as fruitful land and the root p-r-h (parah: to be fruitful) as is Koehler-Baumgartner. (There must have been an earlier or synonymous root: likely Aleph-Pe-Resh.) For derivatives of parah, we have, above all, peri, which means fruit or a fruit tree, a word also found in Egyptian (pr.t = fruit, seed, divine offspring).
Only traces of the root appear in Egyptian and Akkadian and Arabic--it must be old indeed, as old as the hills called Ephraim. Arabic does give us '-b-r: abara, which means, primarily, to prick or sting; but also to pollinate (ibra is a needle). It is a bee word, and a fruitful lead is on; for if Asenath, as Nibley notes, is a bee lady (see his Abraham in Egypt), why should not her children inherit her beehive fruitfulness? Ephraim also points to the resurrection from the dead. And was not Joseph raised from the darkness of the prison cell and exalted above all men? All typifies Christ, His birth in Bethlehem Ephrata and His resurrection.
For words signifying fruit, fruit trees, and sexual attractiveness or energy, Akkadian yields inbum, or plural (and collective) inbu, for which inib is the construct form in genitival phrases (Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, VII, 144-6.) But how can inbum relate to Ephraim or Opar? To begin with the noun appear as a personal name. A good name for a woman is Inba (Fruitful). And who can forget Inib-Shamash (Sun Fruit) or Inbu-Mama?
Inbum, which later becomes a loanword for fruit into Semitic languages, doesn't come from the Proto-Semitic root Aleph-Pe-Resh but from Aleph-Nun-Bet, the same root that blossoms into waving fields of Hebrew grain: Abib (see Stephen Kaufman, The Akkadian Influence in Aramaic, p.58; Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm Hebrew Lexicon). But, then, Akkadian also attests niprum or nibrum, which signifies sprout or seed (Spross and Nachkommen: von Soden, Akkadischen Handwoerterbuch II, 792). While not fruit, niprum is our root, plus the reflexive n- prefix. The n- is clearly a reflexive infix upon a root, that is an infix with reflexive or ingressive meaning: becoming fruitful, bearing fruit in itself, etc.
To add to the picture, we turn to Egyptian where we find npr or npri (n + prj), the name of the grain god, the god of the fruited plain, who something recalls Mama Inbum. Hans Bonnet, Reallexikon, 517-8, assures us the name is to be pronounced Neper not Neperi (the vowels are open to argument); a feminine variant Nepit recalls Nep-hi (as Nibley somewhere observes).
What then is the ultimate root behind all these Akkadian and Egyptian nouns and names, if any? It is: Aleph-Peh/Bet-Resh, with the resh dropping in Akkadian inb-, inbum and with the i representing what remains of the aleph. In Egyptian the aleph also all but disappears, though we presume that Neper is Inpar or Inpra, or perhaps just Napar or Nepr. The Egyptian word for fruit or seed, again, is pr.t, which is Coptic appears as ebra. And Ebra matches Opar (how Ophir would have originally been pronounced) and Ephraim (Epr-aym).
The Joseph Smith Translation sets us thinking, even about details. We can trace roots only so far, but what I find intriguing is the touch of authenticity, something no one can fake. Even the spelling of the name Ophar typifies and attests the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Notes:
We do find Epher on a Hebrew jar, but that name likely begins with an ayin, as does the Epher found in 1 Chronicles. (Epher: H. Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, 32, citing R.A. Stewart Macalister in "The Craftsmen's Guild of the Tribe of Judah," in PEFQ, 1905, 333.
(Proverbs 8:19).
The Prophet Joseph Smith in his New Translation of the Bible at times makes the tiniest of changes. And no change is more wee that that of Ophir to Ophar (Gen. 10:29), which rings in one-vowel-net-weight of change, and nothing more--not a gram.
Of all the wildly archaic names in the Tables of Nations (Genesis 10), why this one? and only this one? Why did it matter to him? and is there any philological evidence for the change? Old Testament Manuscript 1 of the Joseph Smith Translation reads: "and Sheba and Ophar and Havilah and Jobab," and Ophar persists in Manuscript 2.
All traditional commentators follow the only lead ever followed (with one exception: V. Christides), and "simply" connect the name with an unknown gold-bearing locale in Arabia, East Africa, Zimbabwe, India, or "Eldorado" (Anchor Bible Dictionary, V, 26: David W. Baker). The etymology of the name may not be clear to all (Fruitful Land seems likely--metals were sometimes seen as organic in growth and nature by the ancients), but etymology sometimes gets trumped by the swirl of th'event: Ophir registers gold in Biblical Hebrew any way you slice it.
Ophir as place name appears elsewhere in the Old Testament, but there it differs in spelling (in Hebrew) from the personal name Ophir, and this difference is what causes Christides to reject the identification of the place Ophir with the personal name found in Genesis 10. The place name demands the i-vowel, given the yod added to the root after the stop p (the ph reflects the later post-exilic pronunciation); all assume the personal name follows the same pattern of vocalization--yet who's to say for certain? Variant readings of ouphir in LXX Gen. 10:29 yield: oupher (long e), oupher (short), and ioupher (long again), and ioupheir, some of which reflect Opher or Ophar rather than Ophir.
The consonantal base of Ophir is Aleph-Peh-Resh, a root, or root homonym, that conveys more than one meaning in Hebrew and neighboring Semitic languages. One outcome is "soil" or "dust", hardly a name for an Arabian patriarchar ; far better is the reading fruitful, in light of the paronomasia on the name Ephraim found in Genesis. Joseph called him Ephraim because God had made Joseph and Asenath fruitful by adding to them a second son. "Most scholars consider this to be the correct derivation, and hold that the name means 'fertile land'" (Encyclopaedia Judaica, 6:456).
Ephraim and Ephrat (and Ephratah) seem to derive from the same root as Ophir or Ophar. The only difference lies in the postfixes. For Proto-Semitic, students posit an original nominative case-ending for both nouns and personal names in -m; -ay(i)m seemingly answers to a locative ending (indicating place). Others, noting there is no real evidence for such a locative form, read the ending -ay(i)m as a marker of the dual (see James E. Hoch, Semitic Words in Egyptian, 190). The name Ephraim, at any rate, remains a prime example of mimation, a phenomenon not well understood later on: "In non-Hebrew words, mimation, which was no longer understood, was vocalized as a plural ending [as with Urim and Thummim]" (Anton Jirku, "Die Mimation in den Nord-Semitischen," Biblia 34 (1953), 80 = Nibley, One Eternal Round, 450 n. 119; see also discussion in Lehi in the Desert and the World of the Jaredites). Ephraim, or Epar[a]/Epra, is not then a "Hebrew" name but one belonging to an older stratum within, or even without, the family of Semitic languages.
A longtime puzzler starts to become clear: if Ephraim is an archaic name, no wonder that the Jaredites, for whom mimation was the rule (so Nibley), should have a Hill Ephraim (the Bible also attests such a place name). In Ether the hill Ephraim was a fruitful mine of iron ore. To modern eyes what an eyesore: Why Ephraim long before Joseph in Egypt? Might it have been for Jaredites a rather typical name--with mimation in the case, or dual, ending? For many, the Hill Ephraim is a place name in Moroni's linguistic and geographic landscape that slips into his translation of the Jaredite record. Hugh Nibley thought so and it is a sound conclusion. As far as fruitful hills are concerned, the Book of Mormon also gives us the Hills Comron and Cumorah. The root k-m-r denotes a ramp or rampart; it also connotes a place of fertile black soil. In Syria we find the Gath Kumara, the fertile black soil of the wine-press. Hills are for planting, for the fencing in and protection of the press and the vineyard. (The reading Comron--not Comnor--comes thanks to Royal Skousen's sleuthing.)
Now for the brick wall. The latest scholarship (Anchor Bible Dictionary, II, 551: Siegfried Herrmann) tells us "The original etymology of the name Ephraim is unknown"--indeed that it never can possibly be known! A guess is a "derivation of 'eper in the sense of 'region' (cf. Akk 'eperu')." Such a determination seems to flow from two facts or notions. First, the Biblical lexicon attests no productive root Aleph-Peh-Resh (and without such a root and its exploitation, what can we know?). Second, any "derivation from Hebrew prh, to be fertile, is based on a popular etymology." And how do we know that? Because it comes from a Bible story and, as everybody knows, Bible stories are just stories. Now Latter-day Saints may not be exactly fundamentalists when it comes to reading the Bible, but we are believers. If Joseph of old was said to have named his son Ephraim as a response to God's making him fruitful, then he did name his son Ephraim for that reason. The name might not mean fruitful in its ultimate etymological outcome, and it is all together possible that the ending -ayim "indicates a place or geographical name" to begin with, yet it clearly connoted fruitfulness to Joseph, a real prophet of old. And that Latter-day Saints, who consider themselves in goodly measure of the tribe of Ephraim, should wish to understand his (their) name, comes as no surprise.
Indeed the older founts of scholarship do draw from the Biblical reading of the name. The Koehler-Baumgartner Lexicon (1953) says that Ephraim is "commonly derived from parah" and means Fruchtland, or corn-land (like Fruitland, Utah in the "mountains of Ephraim"), or Weideland, pasture-land, or pasturage. That Ephrat and Ephrata should derive from the same root as Ephraim is a given for the lexicographers. Thus Bethlehem Ephrata is the Fruitful Place of Bread (lehem); its inhabitants are indeed known as Ephraimites. That other doughty lexicographer, Gesenius, in light of the possible dual value of -ay(i)m, reads Ephraim as double land or twin land (fruitful on both sides of the valley?), a sort of comment on the notion of fertility and fruitfulness. He further compares the dual form of the name to Mitzraim, Egypt as the Two Lands. Indeed it is Mitzraim and her lovely daughter, Asenath, that spells the fruitful land(s): Mitzraim for Joseph becomes Ephraim. The notion is interesting because Ephraim thus becomes a rival, even a superior to Mitzraim: Joseph prevails. For Latter-day Saints the true heritage of Ephraim and Manesseh lies "over the wall" and across the waves by the side of the "everlasting hills": And are not the Americas a "double land"?
Joseph and Moses (and whatever other pre-exilic editors there were) were clearly as content with Ephraim as fruitful land and the root p-r-h (parah: to be fruitful) as is Koehler-Baumgartner. (There must have been an earlier or synonymous root: likely Aleph-Pe-Resh.) For derivatives of parah, we have, above all, peri, which means fruit or a fruit tree, a word also found in Egyptian (pr.t = fruit, seed, divine offspring).
Only traces of the root appear in Egyptian and Akkadian and Arabic--it must be old indeed, as old as the hills called Ephraim. Arabic does give us '-b-r: abara, which means, primarily, to prick or sting; but also to pollinate (ibra is a needle). It is a bee word, and a fruitful lead is on; for if Asenath, as Nibley notes, is a bee lady (see his Abraham in Egypt), why should not her children inherit her beehive fruitfulness? Ephraim also points to the resurrection from the dead. And was not Joseph raised from the darkness of the prison cell and exalted above all men? All typifies Christ, His birth in Bethlehem Ephrata and His resurrection.
For words signifying fruit, fruit trees, and sexual attractiveness or energy, Akkadian yields inbum, or plural (and collective) inbu, for which inib is the construct form in genitival phrases (Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, VII, 144-6.) But how can inbum relate to Ephraim or Opar? To begin with the noun appear as a personal name. A good name for a woman is Inba (Fruitful). And who can forget Inib-Shamash (Sun Fruit) or Inbu-Mama?
Inbum, which later becomes a loanword for fruit into Semitic languages, doesn't come from the Proto-Semitic root Aleph-Pe-Resh but from Aleph-Nun-Bet, the same root that blossoms into waving fields of Hebrew grain: Abib (see Stephen Kaufman, The Akkadian Influence in Aramaic, p.58; Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm Hebrew Lexicon). But, then, Akkadian also attests niprum or nibrum, which signifies sprout or seed (Spross and Nachkommen: von Soden, Akkadischen Handwoerterbuch II, 792). While not fruit, niprum is our root, plus the reflexive n- prefix. The n- is clearly a reflexive infix upon a root, that is an infix with reflexive or ingressive meaning: becoming fruitful, bearing fruit in itself, etc.
To add to the picture, we turn to Egyptian where we find npr or npri (n + prj), the name of the grain god, the god of the fruited plain, who something recalls Mama Inbum. Hans Bonnet, Reallexikon, 517-8, assures us the name is to be pronounced Neper not Neperi (the vowels are open to argument); a feminine variant Nepit recalls Nep-hi (as Nibley somewhere observes).
What then is the ultimate root behind all these Akkadian and Egyptian nouns and names, if any? It is: Aleph-Peh/Bet-Resh, with the resh dropping in Akkadian inb-, inbum and with the i representing what remains of the aleph. In Egyptian the aleph also all but disappears, though we presume that Neper is Inpar or Inpra, or perhaps just Napar or Nepr. The Egyptian word for fruit or seed, again, is pr.t, which is Coptic appears as ebra. And Ebra matches Opar (how Ophir would have originally been pronounced) and Ephraim (Epr-aym).
The Joseph Smith Translation sets us thinking, even about details. We can trace roots only so far, but what I find intriguing is the touch of authenticity, something no one can fake. Even the spelling of the name Ophar typifies and attests the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Notes:
We do find Epher on a Hebrew jar, but that name likely begins with an ayin, as does the Epher found in 1 Chronicles. (Epher: H. Nibley, Lehi in the Desert, 32, citing R.A. Stewart Macalister in "The Craftsmen's Guild of the Tribe of Judah," in PEFQ, 1905, 333.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
"A Covering of the Eyes" in Joseph Smith Translation Genesis 20 in light of Hugh Nibley's One Eternal Round
Abraham at Gerar, as in Egypt, loses his wife to a king, who, under divine mandate, is compelled to restore her to her husband. God comes to an ailing king Abimelech in a dream and warns him to return Abraham's wife under penalty of death; Abimelech wakens terrified and confronts the prophet in a withering reproach for passing off wife as sister; Abraham responds in a vigorous defence of his vulnerability as a resident foreigner throughout the inhabited globe and insists, that technically speaking, "indeed she is my sister" (Joseph Smith Translation: "she was my sister"), that is, before "she became my wife." The argument is what it is, yet Abimelech showers Abraham with every possible gift and, upon returning "the man his wife," makes the following arrangements:
Genesis 20
16 And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver: behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that are with thee, and with all other: thus she was reproved.
17 So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants; and they bare children.
If the English words are something less than crystalline, the Hebrew is just as dim.
Claus Westermann renders the verses (Genesis 12-36, 317):
"See, I am giving your brother a thousand silver pieces; this is to be a public justification of you before all of yours-you are entirely vindicated."
Genesis 20
16 And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver: behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that are with thee, and with all other: thus she was reproved.
17 So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants; and they bare children.
If the English words are something less than crystalline, the Hebrew is just as dim.
Claus Westermann renders the verses (Genesis 12-36, 317):
"See, I am giving your brother a thousand silver pieces; this is to be a public justification of you before all of yours-you are entirely vindicated."
Here the scope of the gift and vindication remains hopelessly narrow--only Sarah's family hears about it.
18 So Abraham prayed unto God; and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maid servants, and they bare unto unto him children.
The crossed-out words in Old Testament Manuscript 1 show something of the mental effort that accompanies seeric translation: as Hugh Nibley taught, translation through a Urim and Thummim, or by means of intense seeric focus without such helps, is far more difficult than using a dictionary. Here is work at its most supreme: and here is the gift of the Holy Scriptures.
In the Prophet's reading we learn that the thousand pieces of silver have to do with the purchase of a literal object termed "a covering of the eyes," as "a token unto all", in metaphorical sense, of Sarah's married status--sister no more. But what exactly is "a covering of the eyes"? And whose eyes are being covered? On this point all the commentators differ, except in one thing: it does not refer to a physical object.
By comparison, Joseph's literal clarifications appear to be unimaginably crass and utterly naive. Yet the Targum Onqelos does hint at the "covering" as bought object: "he (or it = the hard cash) will be to you a costly veil" (Onqelos). In Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews we read: "To Sarah he gave a costly robe that covered her whole person," at once "a reproach to Abraham that he had not fitted [his princess] Sarah out with the splendor due to his wife" (1:260 and note 198: Bereshit Rabbah 52.12; MHG I, 301). I sense the Prophet's' concrete "crassness" need not obviate the nuances built into Abimelech's discourse: there's room for both the literal and metaphorical here. But let's look first at how the professors have unraveled the "covering."
E.A. Speiser renders: "Let that [the silver] serve you as a blind to everybody who is with you; you have been publicly vindicated." The "blind" or "covering for the eyes," as he translates (148), "appears to describe a method for diverting or forestalling suspicion. Whether the phrase carries special overtones cannot, of course, be determined," (Genesis, 150). I'm indebted to commentaries but cannot understand "a method for diverting suspicion." Would that be staying at home and closing the blinds? Or using kung-fu on any would-be wife-snatchers? "It's in your court now, Abraham." According to Professor Hermann Gunkel, (Genesis, 222): " 'Eye-covering' is a naive legal term. It refers to appeasement [one would have to be dense not to think so: 1000 smackeroos] which hinders one from seeing the harm done one." One from seeing whom? Harm from whom? Huh? Professor Westermann gives us a bit more to go on: "It is clear that the expression is intended in the sense of a justification of her honor, but it is not immediately clear what the image means." Thus: " 'the gift means that the critical eyes of others will be covered so that they will be unable to discover anything shocking in Sarah' (G. von Rad); Sarah's honor is completely restored (J. Skinner); 'so that the people will not look disdainfully on her' (B. Jacob)," (Genesis 12-36, 328). And Westermann, following some of the greats here, must on the right track: it's not a veil that Sarah wears, necessarily; rather the effect Abimelech's bestowal has on onlookers.
All these commentators filch from Rashi (as my generous borrowings from The Complete Jewish Bible at Chabad.org Library makes clear):
And to Sarah he said: Abimelech [said] in her honor in order to appease her, “Behold I have bestowed upon you this honor; I have given money to your brother, about whom you said, He is my brother. Behold this money and this honor are to you a covering of the eyes.”
[Of her associates]: They will cover their eyes, so that they will not denigrate you, for had I returned you empty-handed, they could say,“After he violated her, he returned her.” Now that I had to spend much money and to appease you, they will know that against my will I returned you, and through a miracle. —
and with all: And with all the people in the world. —
you shall contend: You shall have the opportunity to contend and to show these evident facts. Wherever the word הוֹכָחָה appears, it refers to the clarification of matters.
[Rashi cites the Targumic reading]: “Behold it will be for you a covering of honor on account of my eyes, which gazed upon you and upon all who are with you.” Therefore, he [Onkelos] translated it :“And I saw you and all who are with you.”
Now back to Targum Onqelos:
16. And to Sarah he said, Behold, I have given a thousand seleen of silver to thy brother; behold, that is to thee a veil of honour, for my having sent to take thee, and to see thee, and all that is with thee; and concerning all whatever thou hast spoken thou art reproved (Onqelos, tr. J.W. Etheridge: ultimasurf.net/bible; for the Targumic florilegium for Genesis 20:16, please visit The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon at HUC-JIR).
Note how Etheridge dodges the literal and the crass. What he renders "veil of honour," the Onqelos bluntly terms "a costly veil" (ykr)--an actual object which costs a pretty penny. Perhaps I'm wrong about ykr: Michael Maher insists on the rendering "a garment of honor" being a literal translation of the Hebrew. Yet the bit about honor in modern translations surely comes from the Greek Translation of the Bible: tauta estai soi eis timen tou prosopou sou kai pasais tais meta sou: "this shall be for you as honor-covering [timen] of your countenance and for all who may be with you," that is to say: "if your honor is intact that of all your female associates and indeed that of the tribe will remain intact as well." And the translation garment in light of Abimelech's princely endowment, which makes of Sarah a true municipal (as in the sense in which it appears in Doctrine and Covenants 124:39), also sets me thinking about the interconnectedness of things.
Thus from Rashi, and company (that is, all commentators else), we learn that "a covering of the eyes" signifies a poetic expression of a woman's vindication after being released from her royal betrothal. But how on earth will it work? Things get out: rumors could dog Sarah forever--and Isaac's about to be born. . .
I'm not convinced.
With my eye on the Prophet's reading (and the Targumim), and sensitive to the legal implications of Abimelech's speech (as signaled by the commentators), I render the Hebrew as follows:
1. See now, I do accordingly transfer to thy Brother (or place under his control) '1000 silverweight.'
2a. See then, 'hu-lakh' 'kesut einaym' [Abimelech is using strict legal and ritual terminology here: 'he-to you': 'a covering of eyes']
2b. regarding all that pertains to thee, even all [legal quiddities here: all is covered; or: this reward and gift covers the honor of all women associated with you, relations, handmaidens, etc.].
3. And so her legal status was accordingly settled for her.
The Hebrew text may be corrupt--and the scholars all agree on this (the editor of Genesis in the Biblia Hebraica all but insists). Nobody rests easy with "lekhol asher ittakh ve et khol," and emendations have been proposed. I consider the phrase to be the typical unintelligible legal formulations. Joseph Smith is right to cross out the line all together, although he does so only after an initial struggle at translation. Yet I would insist on one point: the Prophet is not saying that the Received Text in Hebrew is wrong (although the implication may be there). Noting the unintelligibility of the phrasal string, he simply bypasses it in order to restore the fuller cultural practice lurking behind the words: the Prophet's not going to delve into legal intricacies here, word-by-word.
For me, the essential phrases of the text (all rather mysterious) are: "1000 silverweight," "he-to you," and "a covering of eyes." Nobody seems to know what these phrases signify. "1000 silverweight" seems materially clear, but note the scholarly glosses: "a fabulously large sum" (Westermann, 327); "a very considerable sum" (Gunkel). This is all wrong: "1000 silverweight" means "1000 silverweight," not just big bucks, but a very specific amount that would have referred to a most specific and particular transaction. "Hu-lakh" ("he-to you") is more clear: Abimelech has to give the money to Sarah via Abraham, since "by the rules the wife cannot [directly] acquire it" (Westermann, 327).
There is a specificity of things here: all the commentary notes the legal language, but what's it all about?
Step One: Abimelech transfers Sarah to Abraham along with a specific silverweight.
Step Two: It's now Abraham's obligation, not Abimelech's ("he" to you) to transfer the equivalent to Sarah in order to cover all legal loose ends.
Step Three: Sarah now returns legally to her status as Abraham's wife.
But what Step Three really means for Abimelech is that Sarah now obtains, for the first time, a specific legal status as Abraham's wife, everywhere and in all things, and is sister no longer, no way. The entire legal rigmarole thus spells a marriage: Abimelech (Father of the King) gives away the Princess (Sarah) to his client-heir (he's just made Abraham heir to a hugh tract of land). And marriage, in the Ancient Near East, necessarily makes up a rite of coronation: she is to wear a glorious crown.
Given that the "1000 pieces of silver" convey concrete and specific referentiality, and that it is Abraham's fresh obligation to transfer the equivalent to Sarah, in token of receiving her as wife by the laws of the Canaanite kinglets, it now makes more sense to consider "a covering of the eyes" as referring to a second, "bought," concrete object, however metaphorically described.
Let's return to the Prophet's translation:
1. Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver;
2. behold, he shall give unto thee a covering of the eyes[:]
and it shall be a token unto all
that thou mayest not be taken again
from Abraham thy husband.
3. And thus she was reproved [the Prophet did not modify this last line--legal stuff to bypass].
Three things stand out here, wonderful things.
First comes the discourse shift from Step One to Step Two, from "thy brother" to "Abraham thy husband." The shift would be irony, terrible irony, except for the strict ritualistic purpose of the language: what we have here becomes the technical terminology of a marriage. It is precisely the rarity of marriage ceremonies, per se, in ancient texts that make the matter tricky to reach. (The subject of such ceremonies, and whether Genesis 20 contributes to such, demands further attention elsewhere.) But Joseph Smith, with vision and precision, has restored the most telling words of all: a shift from "brother" to "husband": Abimelech has now obviated Abraham's need to ever play his game again; Abraham and Sarah are safe now--and forevermore.
The second point: "He shall give unto thee" expands into intelligible words the technical transfer of rights from Abimelech, erstwhile husband (or father), to Abraham--and thus to and over Sarah, a transfer of rights [not just vindication here] which is cast in the shadowy, metaphorical form of "a covering of eyes."
Third: What does it ["it shall be a token"] refer to? The "1000 silverweight"? Or the "covering"? Or just the act of transfer? And does "token" refer to a concrete object? Or, a symbolic act of transfer? I would say it refers to all of the above. In the first instance, the pronoun refers back to the metaphor(?) or noun phrase(?) "a covering of the eyes," but that "covering", whatever it is, only betokens the act of transfer of authority over Sarah from Abimelech to Abraham. (She has to be officially "restored" to Abraham--see: this is all technical legal and royal practice in order to obviate any lese-majesty or violation of private rights). "And it shall be a token" bespeaks both object (if any) and act.
Certainly for Joseph Smith the noun phrase "a covering of the eyes" bespeaks an object Abraham "give[s]" to Sarah, which then serves as a visible token to all the world of her new, or renewed and now permanent status as Princess-wife. The covering must be a precious object indeed to match the princely gift: indeed Abimelech not only makes Sarah legal and lawful wife but markedly a Princess. The Covering must betoken a Princess, as well as Queen, or it means nothing at all--it's not some simple veil being referred to--the commentators, by the way, are right on that point. The covering of the eyes, more than veil, perforce conveys metaphorical profundity.
And here's where Hugh Nibley's comments on Abraham and Sarah come into play. For Brother Nibley the repetition of the sister-wife episode throughout Genesis spells no mere repetition but ritual (and that formalized by law and custom). And in this ritual setting in which Sarah intercedes for the soul of her brother, Nibley finds an exact parallel in the doings of Isis and Osiris. "What is going on here? Abraham and Sarah identified with Isis and Osiris?" he asks (One Eternal Round, 151; see ps. 148-160). But: "That is just the beginning of the parallels that affirm their identity," as he goes on to show in utmost detail. Again: "If Isis was first of all the great princesses, Sarah's name shows her to be the same." And that's why Abimelech hoped to keep her: she looks and acts like a princess because she is a princess--a forlorn Anastasia recast as all dreams come true. Truly, without princess there can be no right to the throne (in Egypt, especially). "Sarah, like Isis, is the ageless mother and perennial bride; with the birth of Isaac she becomes young again," says Nibley--and the birth of Isaac follows directly the incident at Gerar. No time to spare: Abraham needs to assert his right to the Princess at just this juncture. Abimelech's marriage ceremony thus makes possible a universal, not just Hebrew, claim for Isaac's majestic terrestrial inheritance to be. And it is all made possible because of Sarah. (For further discussion of Abimelech's quest for fertility and his reasons for marrying Sarah, see H. Nibley, "The Sacrifice of Sarah," Abraham in Egypt, an unforgettably brilliant essay).
But we need to capture this elusive "covering of the eyes." Here things converge on the fascinating. Nibley, who doesn't touch upon this particular phrase from Genesis 20:17, does dwell on the objects worn on the heads of ladies who substitute, like Sarah, for Isis. Ani's wife (as Isis: "bears the large and conspicuous emblems of Isis, all signifying stages of rebirth [the stages of life: birth, initiation, marriage, coronation, death, resurrection]--the huge lotus [draped over the forehead and literally covering the eyes], menat-necklace or pectoral of pregnancy, and the large sistrum which soothed Isis at the delivery . . [and]. . . her crown is the same throne [hieroglyph as Isis'] worn on her head," (154). The idea of soothing recalls what Gunkel says about Sarah's appeasement--in Egypt you appease the goddess, or else; for Bastet easily shifts to Sekhmet: tame kitty to fierce tigress: "The Lady's green stone goes back to prehistoric times as the tranquilizing amulet of Sachmis [Sekhmet]," and includes both turquoise amulet and a green malachite girdle (431).
So "a covering of the eyes" suddenly explodes into a bouquet of choices: flowers draped on the head, jewels, and, above all, the crown that stands for the right to the throne: "1000 silverweight" becomes not merely princely gift--it is Abimelech's All. As the Hebrew text emphasizes: it's all and everything that I can possibly give. Abimelech fades as Abraham waxes. (As Johannes Pedersen would say, To Abraham belongs the increase and the blessing.)
But there's more in Chapter 10 of One Eternal Round ("Jewel of Discernment"), and it is here that things get serious--and deeply beautiful.
Discernment is the telling word. Recall what the JST says: "and it shall be a token unto all that thou mayest not be taken again from [not Abraham thy brother but from] Abraham thy husband." All will discern (and borrow from) Sarah's permanent status from the covering she wears--and they will accordingly cover in her presence.
Is that covering, then, a diadem or jewel? Nibley loves to cite the Talmudic description of Abraham, who "had a precious stone hung round his neck which brought immediate healing to any sick person who looked on it" (One Eternal Round, Ch. 10, 423). (He constantly reminds us that Abraham, according to the Pearl of Great Price, is possessor [a koneh] of Urim and Thummim.)
All this goes too far: Talmudic legend to Sarah's covering of eyes? (And whose eyes are being covered anyhow?) Not at all. Note how the Abimelech episode ends: Upon the transfer of the silver and the covering, "Abraham prayed unto God; and God healed Abimelech." Now for Nibley, the stone of Abraham is to be understood as a green stone, a stone that greens and restores the world in rebirth and fertility: "and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maid servants, and [note it well] they bare unto him children." The phrase unto him has been added by Joseph Smith, and the addition signifies much. The healing of Abimelech consists precisely in his recovered ability to sire heirs. Sarah grants, by way of the green jewel, whose apotropaic brilliance blindingly covers the eyes of all who behold it, Abimelech's right to posterity by turning away the plague. She has amply repaid the "1000 pieces." Abimelech has given his every penny (see Targum Neofiti 1), and in return, all is amply restored to him. He, too, has passed his test.
When "Abraham administered to Abimelech," recounts Hugh Nibley, " 'all his house were healed, and the women could bear children with no pain, and they could have male children"; at the same moment, Sarah, barren until then, became fruitful, "the blind, deaf, lame, etc., were healed, and the sun shone out 48 times brighter than usual, even as on the first day of creation" ("The Sacrifice of Sarah," Abraham in Egypt = Beer, Leben Abrahams). That last moment recalls the New Year's rising of the Sun in company with Sirius, "a covering of the eyes" indeed (174-5). Universal Vindication, as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will soon, in summation, be.
The transfer from Abimelech (= Abraham) to Sarah plays out again when "Solomon gave the great sapphire to the Queen of Sheba" after she bests him in the universal game (429). "The jewels work as mirrors that convey "the [healing; fructifying] light of the sun into the earth" (434). Thus: in a medieval fresco "you can see Abraham the Righteous [holding] two round mirrors, which show his offspring on the one mirror, the sons of Sarah, and on the other the sons of Hagar" (Abimelech comes in the picture too as Abraham's gentilic double) (434). Again, we are told that "Asenath, like Joseph, wore the diamond crown of twelve emeralds and is identified with [the Egyptian goddess of weapons, bows and arrows, shields, etc.] Neith, 'the Lady of the Green Crown' " (460).
Shield your eyes when Pippa passes: Sapphires of green, emeralds, crowns, diamonds, blinding mirrors, tiaras, the cobra crown piercing the eyes of any would-be snatcher, and even the hypocephalus (the crown-and-pectoral worn at the head and neck, Aaron-like, that bursts into shimmering flames that leave the observer "awestruck and dumbfounded", 460)--our very own Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham)--all, all these answer to "a covering for the eyes."
Yet nothing so charms like the simple lotus draped over the forehead--more precious than rubies: "even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these" (Matt. 6:29). A lotus for Sarah--"to kindle the Easter-fire."
Note: Please now also see the complementary essay, "What Hugh Nibley Meant (Or, Sarah to the Rescue)," published 12/09/2011, on blogspot.com
Notes:
The Lotus as Crown: "A parable of a king who entered a city: when the men of the city came forth to crown the king with a crown of gold studded with precious stones and pearls, they were met and told: 'The king requires nothing from you except a crown of lilies.' Forthwith, the men of the city rejoiced," W. G. Braude, The Midrash on Psalms (Ps. 45), 449.
Sarah wears a perakh (a blossom-shaped ornament) on her head; an afer (tiara, head-cover: "fruit" or "fruitful"), even a pe'er (head-dress from the verb pa'ar: to glorify or make beautiful) or po'arah (green branch, top branch, etc.).
Sarah wears the Egyptian tpj.t: a nisba adjective meaning "that which pertains to the head," being defined as the uraeus, the White Crown of Upper Egypt, and the Solar Eye [which corresponds also to the hypocephalus]. Hathor herself bears the name tpj.t (here: "first or eldest) as the First Lady, the feminine sun god herself (m jtn.t tpj.t nt jtn(.w) "as the Eldest Solar Globe of the Solar Globes"): see my Papyrus British Museum 10808 and Its Religious and Cultural Setting, 124. Comparable is the blinding amulet to ward off the evil eye given to one Padiamon [a great "Book of Mormon" name], 104.
The edition of the Joseph Smith Translation to read and to hold sacred as a gift to our generation is Faulring, Jackson, and Matthews, Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts.
Vulgate: Biblia Sacra, Stuttgart edition: hoc erit tibi in velamen oculorum ad omnes qui tecum sunt et quocumque perrexeris.
Septuagint: Septuaginta, Gottingen edition, 1974.
The Aramaic Bible: Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis, tr. Michael Maher, p. 73 n. 12.
Targum Neofiti 1: Genesis, tr. Martin McNamara.
The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL), an online resource, is priceless.
Abimelech and Fertility:
From "The Sacrifice of Sarah," Abraham in Egypt: "Here Sarah appears as the central figure in that ritual complex that marks the New Year all over the ancient world and has been noticed in these studies in its form of the Egyptian Sed festival. The theme of Sarah's royal marriages is not lust but the desire of Pharaoh and Abimelech to establish a kingly line. Sarah was at least 61 when she left the house of Pharaoh and 89 when she visited Abimelech. Pharaoh's only interest in Sarah, Josephus insists, was to establish a royal line; or, as Bernhard Beer puts it, "his object was rather to become related to Abraham by marriage," i.e., he wanted Abraham's glory, and that was the only way he could get it. Abimelech's interest is completely dominated by the fertility motif, for he contests with Abraham over "a well of water". . . To complete the scene, Abraham concludes the episode by planting one of his groves in the land of the Philistines (Genesis 21:33). If Sarah is the bounteous and child-giving mother, Abraham no less presides over the life-giving waters." After all, as the Pyramid Texts say: "If you are green then will the king be green as a living rush is green" (One Eternal Round, 430).
Again: In JST Genesis 21:33, the battle over the planting and the water continues with Abimelech doing the planting instead of Abraham: but he dedicates it all in prayer to Abraham's God!
Neith: Hans Bonnet, Reallexikon der Agyptischen Religionsgeschichte.
In what follows I hope to elucidate both the KJV and Joseph Smith Translation of the verses in light of the very heart of wonderful things in Hugh Nibley's and Michael Rhodes's masterpiece, One Eternal Round.
Let's start with the Prophet Joseph's translation, as found in both Old Testament Manuscript 1 and Manuscript 2 (all of which--because of its confounding obscurity?--is not found in the Latter-day Saint edition of the Holy Bible):
17And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold, he shall give unto thee a covering of the eyes, [crossed out words: an that all who shall be with the] and it shall be a token unto all that thou mayest not be taken again from Abraham thy husband. And thus she was reproved.
Let's start with the Prophet Joseph's translation, as found in both Old Testament Manuscript 1 and Manuscript 2 (all of which--because of its confounding obscurity?--is not found in the Latter-day Saint edition of the Holy Bible):
17And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold, he shall give unto thee a covering of the eyes, [crossed out words: an that all who shall be with the] and it shall be a token unto all that thou mayest not be taken again from Abraham thy husband. And thus she was reproved.
18 So Abraham prayed unto God; and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maid servants, and they bare unto unto him children.
The crossed-out words in Old Testament Manuscript 1 show something of the mental effort that accompanies seeric translation: as Hugh Nibley taught, translation through a Urim and Thummim, or by means of intense seeric focus without such helps, is far more difficult than using a dictionary. Here is work at its most supreme: and here is the gift of the Holy Scriptures.
In the Prophet's reading we learn that the thousand pieces of silver have to do with the purchase of a literal object termed "a covering of the eyes," as "a token unto all", in metaphorical sense, of Sarah's married status--sister no more. But what exactly is "a covering of the eyes"? And whose eyes are being covered? On this point all the commentators differ, except in one thing: it does not refer to a physical object.
By comparison, Joseph's literal clarifications appear to be unimaginably crass and utterly naive. Yet the Targum Onqelos does hint at the "covering" as bought object: "he (or it = the hard cash) will be to you a costly veil" (Onqelos). In Ginzberg's Legends of the Jews we read: "To Sarah he gave a costly robe that covered her whole person," at once "a reproach to Abraham that he had not fitted [his princess] Sarah out with the splendor due to his wife" (1:260 and note 198: Bereshit Rabbah 52.12; MHG I, 301). I sense the Prophet's' concrete "crassness" need not obviate the nuances built into Abimelech's discourse: there's room for both the literal and metaphorical here. But let's look first at how the professors have unraveled the "covering."
E.A. Speiser renders: "Let that [the silver] serve you as a blind to everybody who is with you; you have been publicly vindicated." The "blind" or "covering for the eyes," as he translates (148), "appears to describe a method for diverting or forestalling suspicion. Whether the phrase carries special overtones cannot, of course, be determined," (Genesis, 150). I'm indebted to commentaries but cannot understand "a method for diverting suspicion." Would that be staying at home and closing the blinds? Or using kung-fu on any would-be wife-snatchers? "It's in your court now, Abraham." According to Professor Hermann Gunkel, (Genesis, 222): " 'Eye-covering' is a naive legal term. It refers to appeasement [one would have to be dense not to think so: 1000 smackeroos] which hinders one from seeing the harm done one." One from seeing whom? Harm from whom? Huh? Professor Westermann gives us a bit more to go on: "It is clear that the expression is intended in the sense of a justification of her honor, but it is not immediately clear what the image means." Thus: " 'the gift means that the critical eyes of others will be covered so that they will be unable to discover anything shocking in Sarah' (G. von Rad); Sarah's honor is completely restored (J. Skinner); 'so that the people will not look disdainfully on her' (B. Jacob)," (Genesis 12-36, 328). And Westermann, following some of the greats here, must on the right track: it's not a veil that Sarah wears, necessarily; rather the effect Abimelech's bestowal has on onlookers.
All these commentators filch from Rashi (as my generous borrowings from The Complete Jewish Bible at Chabad.org Library makes clear):
And to Sarah he said: Abimelech [said] in her honor in order to appease her, “Behold I have bestowed upon you this honor; I have given money to your brother, about whom you said, He is my brother. Behold this money and this honor are to you a covering of the eyes.”
[Of her associates]: They will cover their eyes, so that they will not denigrate you, for had I returned you empty-handed, they could say,“After he violated her, he returned her.” Now that I had to spend much money and to appease you, they will know that against my will I returned you, and through a miracle. —
and with all: And with all the people in the world. —
you shall contend: You shall have the opportunity to contend and to show these evident facts. Wherever the word הוֹכָחָה appears, it refers to the clarification of matters.
[Rashi cites the Targumic reading]: “Behold it will be for you a covering of honor on account of my eyes, which gazed upon you and upon all who are with you.” Therefore, he [Onkelos] translated it :“And I saw you and all who are with you.”
Now back to Targum Onqelos:
16. And to Sarah he said, Behold, I have given a thousand seleen of silver to thy brother; behold, that is to thee a veil of honour, for my having sent to take thee, and to see thee, and all that is with thee; and concerning all whatever thou hast spoken thou art reproved (Onqelos, tr. J.W. Etheridge: ultimasurf.net/bible; for the Targumic florilegium for Genesis 20:16, please visit The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon at HUC-JIR).
Note how Etheridge dodges the literal and the crass. What he renders "veil of honour," the Onqelos bluntly terms "a costly veil" (ykr)--an actual object which costs a pretty penny. Perhaps I'm wrong about ykr: Michael Maher insists on the rendering "a garment of honor" being a literal translation of the Hebrew. Yet the bit about honor in modern translations surely comes from the Greek Translation of the Bible: tauta estai soi eis timen tou prosopou sou kai pasais tais meta sou: "this shall be for you as honor-covering [timen] of your countenance and for all who may be with you," that is to say: "if your honor is intact that of all your female associates and indeed that of the tribe will remain intact as well." And the translation garment in light of Abimelech's princely endowment, which makes of Sarah a true municipal (as in the sense in which it appears in Doctrine and Covenants 124:39), also sets me thinking about the interconnectedness of things.
Thus from Rashi, and company (that is, all commentators else), we learn that "a covering of the eyes" signifies a poetic expression of a woman's vindication after being released from her royal betrothal. But how on earth will it work? Things get out: rumors could dog Sarah forever--and Isaac's about to be born. . .
I'm not convinced.
With my eye on the Prophet's reading (and the Targumim), and sensitive to the legal implications of Abimelech's speech (as signaled by the commentators), I render the Hebrew as follows:
1. See now, I do accordingly transfer to thy Brother (or place under his control) '1000 silverweight.'
2a. See then, 'hu-lakh' 'kesut einaym' [Abimelech is using strict legal and ritual terminology here: 'he-to you': 'a covering of eyes']
2b. regarding all that pertains to thee, even all [legal quiddities here: all is covered; or: this reward and gift covers the honor of all women associated with you, relations, handmaidens, etc.].
3. And so her legal status was accordingly settled for her.
The Hebrew text may be corrupt--and the scholars all agree on this (the editor of Genesis in the Biblia Hebraica all but insists). Nobody rests easy with "lekhol asher ittakh ve et khol," and emendations have been proposed. I consider the phrase to be the typical unintelligible legal formulations. Joseph Smith is right to cross out the line all together, although he does so only after an initial struggle at translation. Yet I would insist on one point: the Prophet is not saying that the Received Text in Hebrew is wrong (although the implication may be there). Noting the unintelligibility of the phrasal string, he simply bypasses it in order to restore the fuller cultural practice lurking behind the words: the Prophet's not going to delve into legal intricacies here, word-by-word.
For me, the essential phrases of the text (all rather mysterious) are: "1000 silverweight," "he-to you," and "a covering of eyes." Nobody seems to know what these phrases signify. "1000 silverweight" seems materially clear, but note the scholarly glosses: "a fabulously large sum" (Westermann, 327); "a very considerable sum" (Gunkel). This is all wrong: "1000 silverweight" means "1000 silverweight," not just big bucks, but a very specific amount that would have referred to a most specific and particular transaction. "Hu-lakh" ("he-to you") is more clear: Abimelech has to give the money to Sarah via Abraham, since "by the rules the wife cannot [directly] acquire it" (Westermann, 327).
There is a specificity of things here: all the commentary notes the legal language, but what's it all about?
Step One: Abimelech transfers Sarah to Abraham along with a specific silverweight.
Step Two: It's now Abraham's obligation, not Abimelech's ("he" to you) to transfer the equivalent to Sarah in order to cover all legal loose ends.
Step Three: Sarah now returns legally to her status as Abraham's wife.
But what Step Three really means for Abimelech is that Sarah now obtains, for the first time, a specific legal status as Abraham's wife, everywhere and in all things, and is sister no longer, no way. The entire legal rigmarole thus spells a marriage: Abimelech (Father of the King) gives away the Princess (Sarah) to his client-heir (he's just made Abraham heir to a hugh tract of land). And marriage, in the Ancient Near East, necessarily makes up a rite of coronation: she is to wear a glorious crown.
Given that the "1000 pieces of silver" convey concrete and specific referentiality, and that it is Abraham's fresh obligation to transfer the equivalent to Sarah, in token of receiving her as wife by the laws of the Canaanite kinglets, it now makes more sense to consider "a covering of the eyes" as referring to a second, "bought," concrete object, however metaphorically described.
Let's return to the Prophet's translation:
1. Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver;
2. behold, he shall give unto thee a covering of the eyes[:]
and it shall be a token unto all
that thou mayest not be taken again
from Abraham thy husband.
3. And thus she was reproved [the Prophet did not modify this last line--legal stuff to bypass].
Three things stand out here, wonderful things.
First comes the discourse shift from Step One to Step Two, from "thy brother" to "Abraham thy husband." The shift would be irony, terrible irony, except for the strict ritualistic purpose of the language: what we have here becomes the technical terminology of a marriage. It is precisely the rarity of marriage ceremonies, per se, in ancient texts that make the matter tricky to reach. (The subject of such ceremonies, and whether Genesis 20 contributes to such, demands further attention elsewhere.) But Joseph Smith, with vision and precision, has restored the most telling words of all: a shift from "brother" to "husband": Abimelech has now obviated Abraham's need to ever play his game again; Abraham and Sarah are safe now--and forevermore.
The second point: "He shall give unto thee" expands into intelligible words the technical transfer of rights from Abimelech, erstwhile husband (or father), to Abraham--and thus to and over Sarah, a transfer of rights [not just vindication here] which is cast in the shadowy, metaphorical form of "a covering of eyes."
Third: What does it ["it shall be a token"] refer to? The "1000 silverweight"? Or the "covering"? Or just the act of transfer? And does "token" refer to a concrete object? Or, a symbolic act of transfer? I would say it refers to all of the above. In the first instance, the pronoun refers back to the metaphor(?) or noun phrase(?) "a covering of the eyes," but that "covering", whatever it is, only betokens the act of transfer of authority over Sarah from Abimelech to Abraham. (She has to be officially "restored" to Abraham--see: this is all technical legal and royal practice in order to obviate any lese-majesty or violation of private rights). "And it shall be a token" bespeaks both object (if any) and act.
Certainly for Joseph Smith the noun phrase "a covering of the eyes" bespeaks an object Abraham "give[s]" to Sarah, which then serves as a visible token to all the world of her new, or renewed and now permanent status as Princess-wife. The covering must be a precious object indeed to match the princely gift: indeed Abimelech not only makes Sarah legal and lawful wife but markedly a Princess. The Covering must betoken a Princess, as well as Queen, or it means nothing at all--it's not some simple veil being referred to--the commentators, by the way, are right on that point. The covering of the eyes, more than veil, perforce conveys metaphorical profundity.
And here's where Hugh Nibley's comments on Abraham and Sarah come into play. For Brother Nibley the repetition of the sister-wife episode throughout Genesis spells no mere repetition but ritual (and that formalized by law and custom). And in this ritual setting in which Sarah intercedes for the soul of her brother, Nibley finds an exact parallel in the doings of Isis and Osiris. "What is going on here? Abraham and Sarah identified with Isis and Osiris?" he asks (One Eternal Round, 151; see ps. 148-160). But: "That is just the beginning of the parallels that affirm their identity," as he goes on to show in utmost detail. Again: "If Isis was first of all the great princesses, Sarah's name shows her to be the same." And that's why Abimelech hoped to keep her: she looks and acts like a princess because she is a princess--a forlorn Anastasia recast as all dreams come true. Truly, without princess there can be no right to the throne (in Egypt, especially). "Sarah, like Isis, is the ageless mother and perennial bride; with the birth of Isaac she becomes young again," says Nibley--and the birth of Isaac follows directly the incident at Gerar. No time to spare: Abraham needs to assert his right to the Princess at just this juncture. Abimelech's marriage ceremony thus makes possible a universal, not just Hebrew, claim for Isaac's majestic terrestrial inheritance to be. And it is all made possible because of Sarah. (For further discussion of Abimelech's quest for fertility and his reasons for marrying Sarah, see H. Nibley, "The Sacrifice of Sarah," Abraham in Egypt, an unforgettably brilliant essay).
But we need to capture this elusive "covering of the eyes." Here things converge on the fascinating. Nibley, who doesn't touch upon this particular phrase from Genesis 20:17, does dwell on the objects worn on the heads of ladies who substitute, like Sarah, for Isis. Ani's wife (as Isis: "bears the large and conspicuous emblems of Isis, all signifying stages of rebirth [the stages of life: birth, initiation, marriage, coronation, death, resurrection]--the huge lotus [draped over the forehead and literally covering the eyes], menat-necklace or pectoral of pregnancy, and the large sistrum which soothed Isis at the delivery . . [and]. . . her crown is the same throne [hieroglyph as Isis'] worn on her head," (154). The idea of soothing recalls what Gunkel says about Sarah's appeasement--in Egypt you appease the goddess, or else; for Bastet easily shifts to Sekhmet: tame kitty to fierce tigress: "The Lady's green stone goes back to prehistoric times as the tranquilizing amulet of Sachmis [Sekhmet]," and includes both turquoise amulet and a green malachite girdle (431).
So "a covering of the eyes" suddenly explodes into a bouquet of choices: flowers draped on the head, jewels, and, above all, the crown that stands for the right to the throne: "1000 silverweight" becomes not merely princely gift--it is Abimelech's All. As the Hebrew text emphasizes: it's all and everything that I can possibly give. Abimelech fades as Abraham waxes. (As Johannes Pedersen would say, To Abraham belongs the increase and the blessing.)
But there's more in Chapter 10 of One Eternal Round ("Jewel of Discernment"), and it is here that things get serious--and deeply beautiful.
Discernment is the telling word. Recall what the JST says: "and it shall be a token unto all that thou mayest not be taken again from [not Abraham thy brother but from] Abraham thy husband." All will discern (and borrow from) Sarah's permanent status from the covering she wears--and they will accordingly cover in her presence.
Is that covering, then, a diadem or jewel? Nibley loves to cite the Talmudic description of Abraham, who "had a precious stone hung round his neck which brought immediate healing to any sick person who looked on it" (One Eternal Round, Ch. 10, 423). (He constantly reminds us that Abraham, according to the Pearl of Great Price, is possessor [a koneh] of Urim and Thummim.)
All this goes too far: Talmudic legend to Sarah's covering of eyes? (And whose eyes are being covered anyhow?) Not at all. Note how the Abimelech episode ends: Upon the transfer of the silver and the covering, "Abraham prayed unto God; and God healed Abimelech." Now for Nibley, the stone of Abraham is to be understood as a green stone, a stone that greens and restores the world in rebirth and fertility: "and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maid servants, and [note it well] they bare unto him children." The phrase unto him has been added by Joseph Smith, and the addition signifies much. The healing of Abimelech consists precisely in his recovered ability to sire heirs. Sarah grants, by way of the green jewel, whose apotropaic brilliance blindingly covers the eyes of all who behold it, Abimelech's right to posterity by turning away the plague. She has amply repaid the "1000 pieces." Abimelech has given his every penny (see Targum Neofiti 1), and in return, all is amply restored to him. He, too, has passed his test.
When "Abraham administered to Abimelech," recounts Hugh Nibley, " 'all his house were healed, and the women could bear children with no pain, and they could have male children"; at the same moment, Sarah, barren until then, became fruitful, "the blind, deaf, lame, etc., were healed, and the sun shone out 48 times brighter than usual, even as on the first day of creation" ("The Sacrifice of Sarah," Abraham in Egypt = Beer, Leben Abrahams). That last moment recalls the New Year's rising of the Sun in company with Sirius, "a covering of the eyes" indeed (174-5). Universal Vindication, as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will soon, in summation, be.
The transfer from Abimelech (= Abraham) to Sarah plays out again when "Solomon gave the great sapphire to the Queen of Sheba" after she bests him in the universal game (429). "The jewels work as mirrors that convey "the [healing; fructifying] light of the sun into the earth" (434). Thus: in a medieval fresco "you can see Abraham the Righteous [holding] two round mirrors, which show his offspring on the one mirror, the sons of Sarah, and on the other the sons of Hagar" (Abimelech comes in the picture too as Abraham's gentilic double) (434). Again, we are told that "Asenath, like Joseph, wore the diamond crown of twelve emeralds and is identified with [the Egyptian goddess of weapons, bows and arrows, shields, etc.] Neith, 'the Lady of the Green Crown' " (460).
Shield your eyes when Pippa passes: Sapphires of green, emeralds, crowns, diamonds, blinding mirrors, tiaras, the cobra crown piercing the eyes of any would-be snatcher, and even the hypocephalus (the crown-and-pectoral worn at the head and neck, Aaron-like, that bursts into shimmering flames that leave the observer "awestruck and dumbfounded", 460)--our very own Facsimile 2 of the Book of Abraham)--all, all these answer to "a covering for the eyes."
Yet nothing so charms like the simple lotus draped over the forehead--more precious than rubies: "even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these" (Matt. 6:29). A lotus for Sarah--"to kindle the Easter-fire."
Note: Please now also see the complementary essay, "What Hugh Nibley Meant (Or, Sarah to the Rescue)," published 12/09/2011, on blogspot.com
Notes:
The Lotus as Crown: "A parable of a king who entered a city: when the men of the city came forth to crown the king with a crown of gold studded with precious stones and pearls, they were met and told: 'The king requires nothing from you except a crown of lilies.' Forthwith, the men of the city rejoiced," W. G. Braude, The Midrash on Psalms (Ps. 45), 449.
Sarah wears a perakh (a blossom-shaped ornament) on her head; an afer (tiara, head-cover: "fruit" or "fruitful"), even a pe'er (head-dress from the verb pa'ar: to glorify or make beautiful) or po'arah (green branch, top branch, etc.).
Sarah wears the Egyptian tpj.t: a nisba adjective meaning "that which pertains to the head," being defined as the uraeus, the White Crown of Upper Egypt, and the Solar Eye [which corresponds also to the hypocephalus]. Hathor herself bears the name tpj.t (here: "first or eldest) as the First Lady, the feminine sun god herself (m jtn.t tpj.t nt jtn(.w) "as the Eldest Solar Globe of the Solar Globes"): see my Papyrus British Museum 10808 and Its Religious and Cultural Setting, 124. Comparable is the blinding amulet to ward off the evil eye given to one Padiamon [a great "Book of Mormon" name], 104.
The edition of the Joseph Smith Translation to read and to hold sacred as a gift to our generation is Faulring, Jackson, and Matthews, Joseph Smith's New Translation of the Bible: Original Manuscripts.
Vulgate: Biblia Sacra, Stuttgart edition: hoc erit tibi in velamen oculorum ad omnes qui tecum sunt et quocumque perrexeris.
Septuagint: Septuaginta, Gottingen edition, 1974.
The Aramaic Bible: Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis, tr. Michael Maher, p. 73 n. 12.
Targum Neofiti 1: Genesis, tr. Martin McNamara.
The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL), an online resource, is priceless.
Abimelech and Fertility:
From "The Sacrifice of Sarah," Abraham in Egypt: "Here Sarah appears as the central figure in that ritual complex that marks the New Year all over the ancient world and has been noticed in these studies in its form of the Egyptian Sed festival. The theme of Sarah's royal marriages is not lust but the desire of Pharaoh and Abimelech to establish a kingly line. Sarah was at least 61 when she left the house of Pharaoh and 89 when she visited Abimelech. Pharaoh's only interest in Sarah, Josephus insists, was to establish a royal line; or, as Bernhard Beer puts it, "his object was rather to become related to Abraham by marriage," i.e., he wanted Abraham's glory, and that was the only way he could get it. Abimelech's interest is completely dominated by the fertility motif, for he contests with Abraham over "a well of water". . . To complete the scene, Abraham concludes the episode by planting one of his groves in the land of the Philistines (Genesis 21:33). If Sarah is the bounteous and child-giving mother, Abraham no less presides over the life-giving waters." After all, as the Pyramid Texts say: "If you are green then will the king be green as a living rush is green" (One Eternal Round, 430).
Again: In JST Genesis 21:33, the battle over the planting and the water continues with Abimelech doing the planting instead of Abraham: but he dedicates it all in prayer to Abraham's God!
Neith: Hans Bonnet, Reallexikon der Agyptischen Religionsgeschichte.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
"A Trifling Matter": Zoar in Joseph Smith Translation Genesis 13
The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible unfolds expansive doctrinal and historical additions to the record; just as startling are the little changes: additions and deletions that burst out of nowhere and, seemingly, have little to add to the story.
One wee deletion, for example, cancels the appearance of Zoar in KJV Genesis 13:10.
The KJV reads:
And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah,
even as the garden of the Lord,
like the land of Egypt,
as thou comest unto Zoar.
The verse has been commented to death: deletions, rewrites, clarifications all are called for. Something is seriously wrong. . .
Because no single reading, deletion, or rewrite has won out over all comers, we have no way to test the full merits of the Prophet Joseph's reading. That reading, however, does deal with the problematic material in its own deft way (and without fussy commentary):
And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah,
even as the garden of the Lord,
like the land of Egypt.
Here, the clause "as thou comest unto Zoar" vanishes, leaving a perfect gem of a couplet in the Hebrew:
like the garden of the Lord (ki gan Adonai)
like the land of Egypt (ki eretz mitzraim),
which compares the two places on earth most renowned for fruitfulness:
Eden and
Egypt's Delta.
The vague clause about Zoar, as translated into English, is even vaguer in Hebrew, where it is a phrase with a verbal noun, not a clause at all: bo'akha Tso'ar ("your coming Zoar" = in your coming to Zoar; as you start to come into Zoar). Because the phrase adds no meaning to the bicolon, it can hardly be the culminating punch of a tricolon. It breaks the couplet pattern to no purpose.
The Prophet Joseph Smith resolves a longstanding puzzle. After all: "The clause is equally unintelligible, whether we place the Pentapolis, of which Zoar was a member, at the south, or at the north end of the Dead Sea. Most commentators quietly ignore this difference. Others evade it by arbitrarily reshaping the whole sentence," W. W. Moore, "The Incongruous Clause in Gen XIII. 10," (The Old Testament Student, 6.8 at Union Theological Seminary, 1887), 237.
Professor Gunkel, for his part, asserts that all three of the phrases (garden, Egypt, and Zoar) are forthwith corrupt, all being interposed and unhelpful editorial glosses--not to mention the chronologically daft addition about destroying Sodom and Gomorrah--and perforce merit deletion. But which comes in first for deletion? This could be fun: try first one, and read the resulting verse; then another; and another. . .Then try deleting all three at once--there goes the Bible.
Besides, everyone knows that that area was never well watered, so what watered plain? What we get: And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld--exactly nothing.
No wonder the Lord resorts to the unlettered; you can't read a Bible that equals "exactly nothing."
And no wonder Hugh Nibley would tell his students that he loved reading the Book of Mormon because it hadn't been commented to death like the Bible (Here is a touch of wisdom students of the scriptures ought to ponder today.)
The Joseph Smith Translation gives us the best possible reading in English. Nothing at all is said about the Masoretic Text: maybe we're missing something as readers. The Hebrew text aside, the English needs trimming up. And the Prophet prunes well.
Now the French and German translators have their own little trick of rearranging the phrases so as to preserve both Zoar and the final couplet: "before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah until thou comest to Zoar [which was spared]," and then finish off with the concise couplet--but the King James Version didn't leave Brother Joseph that option. Even so, the rearrangement leaves something to be desired--good, solid sense.
There is a point to the poetic couplet about Egypt and Eden, says Von Rad: If "The twofold comparison with Paradise and with Egypt sounds surprisingly worldly and enlightened," it is only to induce Lot, like Serpent, Eve, to choose "quickly." "Striking for our usually reticent narrator are the strong superlatives used to describe the beauty of the land and the wickedness of its inhabitants, as well as the broad ceremoniousness with which the fascinating impression and then the making of the decision are painted. But the narrator wants to make a strong impression here. The unheard beauty of the land. . .and the unheard of depravity of its inhabitants! And how quickly and naturally the man on the heights of Bethel made his choice!" (Genesis: A Commentary, 172).
Joseph, while not resolving every quibble of criticism, at least gives us something--and that something accords perfectly with the logic of the didactic narrative as set forth by Von Rad: Lot sees his choices superlatively--and with no superfluity. But it's more than just something: how could anyone best the Prophet for optimum clarity?
There is one Zoar contender--the Dead Sea Scrolls. Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, editor of the Genesis Apocryphon, notes how that text also drops a Zoar: "The identification of Bela by the gloss in the MT, 'that is, Zoar' (Gen. 14:2) is omitted here; perhaps the gloss is of a dater later than the Genesis Apocryphon" (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave 1 (1Q20): A Commentary, 235). (In this case, the JST leaves little Zoar put.)
The Joseph Smith Translation, however unfamiliar its additions, omissions, and cadences may be, and however daring its lack of dependence on millennia of commentary, is a thing of beauty.
Notes:
Zoar, some say, is to be identified with Tell esh-Shaghur, also Segor. There is more than one Shaghur. For example, according to Hugh Nibley Segor is the same name Lehi gives to an oasis spot in the Arabian Peninsula (Ar. Shajer = clump of trees or bushes, oasis). The footnote for 1 Ne. 16:13a in modern copies of the Book of Mormon yields the ludicrous "HEB twisting, intertwining": Oh, those twisting turns of commentary! In Shajer, we have one of Nibley's greatest identifications of a Book of Mormon name (Lehi in the Desert, 78-9).
One wee deletion, for example, cancels the appearance of Zoar in KJV Genesis 13:10.
The KJV reads:
And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah,
even as the garden of the Lord,
like the land of Egypt,
as thou comest unto Zoar.
The verse has been commented to death: deletions, rewrites, clarifications all are called for. Something is seriously wrong. . .
Because no single reading, deletion, or rewrite has won out over all comers, we have no way to test the full merits of the Prophet Joseph's reading. That reading, however, does deal with the problematic material in its own deft way (and without fussy commentary):
And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah,
even as the garden of the Lord,
like the land of Egypt.
Here, the clause "as thou comest unto Zoar" vanishes, leaving a perfect gem of a couplet in the Hebrew:
like the garden of the Lord (ki gan Adonai)
like the land of Egypt (ki eretz mitzraim),
which compares the two places on earth most renowned for fruitfulness:
Eden and
Egypt's Delta.
The vague clause about Zoar, as translated into English, is even vaguer in Hebrew, where it is a phrase with a verbal noun, not a clause at all: bo'akha Tso'ar ("your coming Zoar" = in your coming to Zoar; as you start to come into Zoar). Because the phrase adds no meaning to the bicolon, it can hardly be the culminating punch of a tricolon. It breaks the couplet pattern to no purpose.
The Prophet Joseph Smith resolves a longstanding puzzle. After all: "The clause is equally unintelligible, whether we place the Pentapolis, of which Zoar was a member, at the south, or at the north end of the Dead Sea. Most commentators quietly ignore this difference. Others evade it by arbitrarily reshaping the whole sentence," W. W. Moore, "The Incongruous Clause in Gen XIII. 10," (The Old Testament Student, 6.8 at Union Theological Seminary, 1887), 237.
Professor Gunkel, for his part, asserts that all three of the phrases (garden, Egypt, and Zoar) are forthwith corrupt, all being interposed and unhelpful editorial glosses--not to mention the chronologically daft addition about destroying Sodom and Gomorrah--and perforce merit deletion. But which comes in first for deletion? This could be fun: try first one, and read the resulting verse; then another; and another. . .Then try deleting all three at once--there goes the Bible.
Besides, everyone knows that that area was never well watered, so what watered plain? What we get: And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld--exactly nothing.
No wonder the Lord resorts to the unlettered; you can't read a Bible that equals "exactly nothing."
And no wonder Hugh Nibley would tell his students that he loved reading the Book of Mormon because it hadn't been commented to death like the Bible (Here is a touch of wisdom students of the scriptures ought to ponder today.)
The Joseph Smith Translation gives us the best possible reading in English. Nothing at all is said about the Masoretic Text: maybe we're missing something as readers. The Hebrew text aside, the English needs trimming up. And the Prophet prunes well.
Now the French and German translators have their own little trick of rearranging the phrases so as to preserve both Zoar and the final couplet: "before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah until thou comest to Zoar [which was spared]," and then finish off with the concise couplet--but the King James Version didn't leave Brother Joseph that option. Even so, the rearrangement leaves something to be desired--good, solid sense.
There is a point to the poetic couplet about Egypt and Eden, says Von Rad: If "The twofold comparison with Paradise and with Egypt sounds surprisingly worldly and enlightened," it is only to induce Lot, like Serpent, Eve, to choose "quickly." "Striking for our usually reticent narrator are the strong superlatives used to describe the beauty of the land and the wickedness of its inhabitants, as well as the broad ceremoniousness with which the fascinating impression and then the making of the decision are painted. But the narrator wants to make a strong impression here. The unheard beauty of the land. . .and the unheard of depravity of its inhabitants! And how quickly and naturally the man on the heights of Bethel made his choice!" (Genesis: A Commentary, 172).
Joseph, while not resolving every quibble of criticism, at least gives us something--and that something accords perfectly with the logic of the didactic narrative as set forth by Von Rad: Lot sees his choices superlatively--and with no superfluity. But it's more than just something: how could anyone best the Prophet for optimum clarity?
There is one Zoar contender--the Dead Sea Scrolls. Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, editor of the Genesis Apocryphon, notes how that text also drops a Zoar: "The identification of Bela by the gloss in the MT, 'that is, Zoar' (Gen. 14:2) is omitted here; perhaps the gloss is of a dater later than the Genesis Apocryphon" (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave 1 (1Q20): A Commentary, 235). (In this case, the JST leaves little Zoar put.)
The Joseph Smith Translation, however unfamiliar its additions, omissions, and cadences may be, and however daring its lack of dependence on millennia of commentary, is a thing of beauty.
Notes:
Zoar, some say, is to be identified with Tell esh-Shaghur, also Segor. There is more than one Shaghur. For example, according to Hugh Nibley Segor is the same name Lehi gives to an oasis spot in the Arabian Peninsula (Ar. Shajer = clump of trees or bushes, oasis). The footnote for 1 Ne. 16:13a in modern copies of the Book of Mormon yields the ludicrous "HEB twisting, intertwining": Oh, those twisting turns of commentary! In Shajer, we have one of Nibley's greatest identifications of a Book of Mormon name (Lehi in the Desert, 78-9).
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