native gods, as was the case with other ancient lands. Probably every shrine had its local deity or deities, around whom stories would grow up. Such a shrine was Peniel ("face of God"), the origin of which name is given in the story in ch. 28, and there is added the explanation of why the Israelites did not eat a certain sinew.* In the course of time these figures were subordinated to Yahweh or to the supreme Elohim, and the two systems were sometimes mingled in the later narratives, a given act being attributed now to the angel, now to the supreme god. The "angel of Yahweh" is a distinct figure from Yahweh-a god cannot be his own messenger or agent-but his procedure is sometimes of the same character as that of Yahweh. Nor is the rôle of the angel of Yahweh different in nature from that of any other angel-the "man" of ch. 28 acts with the same independent masterfulness as the angel of ch. 16; the "angel of Yahweh" is merely the angel who happens to act for his divine principal on any particular occasion. The nominal interchange between the two in a narrative is probably not due to a desire on the part of the narrator to indicate their functional identity; this identity he assumes-what is said by the angel he means to be taken as the word of Yahweh-but the fact was understood and no demonstration was needed. Possibly the explanation of the interchange is to be sought in the supposition that in the original story the actor was a local god who later became an angel, and that the divine name was introduced in the course of redaction; in such a case the redactor would not be conscious of inconcinnity, holding, as he did, that the act of the angel was virtually the act of Yahweh. If this view of the origin of the angel as an old native god be correct, the question arises as to when the new name arose, when, that is, the old god was converted into a mal'ak, a messenger or agent of Yahweh or Elohim. The paucity of data for the early history makes it difficult to give a definite answer to this question. In the earlier Old Testament documents angels are a part of the popular scheme of supernatural beings: Jd. 611 ff., 133. 6, Num. 2223, 2 Sam. 2416, 1 Sam. 29° (the Philistine Akish), 2 Sam. 1417 (the woman of Tekoa), 1 Kg. 1318-they belong to folk-lore. They are kept distinct from spirits (which have not the form of * Cf. J. G. Frazer, in Anthrop. Essays Presented to Tylor. gods proper) and from baals (who are non-Israelite deities). The employment of the term "angels" tells nothing about the date of its introduction; once adopted, it would be used generally by the editors of the documents. The process of transformation would naturally go hand in hand with the elevation of Yahweh to supremacy, of which one effect would be to reject or subordinate the inferior gods. The prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries, engaged in a struggle for the sole worship of Yahweh, appear to have ignored these latter. The only occurrence of the word angel in those prophetic writings, in Hos. 12, is in a folkstory, and its employment perhaps indicates the path of transformation: the "man" of Gen. 3224 becomes an "angel." Local gods have always had a peculiarly strong hold on the affections of the people. If that was the case in Israel, the religious leaders would wisely seek not to banish but to incorporate these figures -a method that has prevailed in all religions. The term "messenger" was a natural name for them-they were the agents of the supreme deity.* How soon this process began we have no means of determining with exactness, but it seems to have been virtually completed by the eighth century. The later history of angels does not belong to the present inquiry. The preceding investigation appears to show that, while the Book of Genesis contains conceptions that may go back to a very early period, the present form of the book points to a time near the eighth century, or later, for its redaction. The subject is confessedly obscure (as is true of all attempts at the reconstruction of remote times), and proposed explanations are to be understood as hypotheses that must be constantly tested. The outcome of the Israelite theistic development is clear, the history of its growth is full of difficulties. It is particularly hard to decide what part of the development is common Semitic and what part is specifically Israelite, and in this latter how much is to be attributed to outside influence. On these points future discoveries may throw light. HARVARD UNIVERSITY, *So the Assyrian Nusku and the Greek Iris. II THE MEANING OF HEBREW BITHRÔN (2 Samuel 229) BY WILLIAM R. ARNOLD THE word л occurs only once in the Old Testament (2 Sam. 229), in the account of Abner's retreat to Mahanaim after his disastrous trial of strength with David's army at the pool of ואבנר ואנשיו הלכו בערבה כל :Gibeon. The Masoretic text is .הלילה ההוא ויעברו את הירדן וילכו כל הבתרון ויבאו מחנים The King James Version renders this verse, "And Abner and his men walked all that night through the plain, and passed over Jordan, and went through all Bithron, and they came to Mahanaim." Except for the correct substitution of the proper name "the Arabah" for "the plain," and the incorrect substitution of "went" for "walked," the Revised Version retains substantially the rendering of the Authorized. In the view that -whether descriptive, appellative, or proper name-stands for some geographical or topographical quantity, some route, district, or region lying east of Jordan, between the ford which was crossed by Abner and the city of Mahanaim, our English versions follow the prevailing tradition of translators and exegetes, both ancient and modern. But a considerable degree of uncertainty, as to the more exact character of this term, seems to have existed, nevertheless, from the earliest times. The Alexandrian Greek texts have: καὶ διέβαινον τὸν Ἰορδάνην καὶ ἐπορεύθησαν ὅλην τὴν παρατείνουσαν, καὶ ἔρχονται Èis τǹν πaρeμßoλýv. There are no variants worth mentioning.* Wellhausen, forty years ago, wrote: " wird auch der *See Holmes and Parsons, ad loc. 'Eis wapeμẞoλàs Madiau of the "Lucianic" manuscripts is both conflate and corrupt. = LXX vorgelegen haben als jаратεívovσa. Bei Ortsnamen ist dergleichen am ehesten begreiflich, vgl. Chaifa Kaiphas, Milano Mailand, Mars la Tour Marsch retour u. a."; * that is, the Greek construes the word as a proper name and renders by a punning Greek equivalent. That such fanciful phonetic equations were not foreign to the Alexandrian translators, Wellhausen has sufficiently well shown.† But the assumption of a reading is far-fetched, and would perhaps not be maintained by Wellhausen himself at the present time. TаρаTEίv occurs in the Greek texts of the Old Testament some half-dozen times, always with the meaning to extend, to stretch out, to be outlying, and prevailingly in topographical contexts.§ The Greek rendered our passage, And they crossed the Jordan, and traversed the entire outlying region, and arrived at the camp (Mahanaim). Whether the translator construed as a proper name or as an appellative remains, to be sure, uncertain. But it is apparent that no derivative of Hebrew will support his rendering. The interpretation Tapaтeívovσa is, in my judgment, obviously based on Aramaic, after, or some derivative thereof, such as 2 or , posterior, postremus; (or 8) occurs already cf. Syriac 12, posterioritas.|| in Daniel 2oo, 7of. Possibly the translator supposed the word to have been the Aramaic proper name of a trans-Jordanic territory; or he may have adopted the rendering as a counsel of despair, though construing the word as a Hebrew appellative. At all events, since Aramaic is itself compounded of the preposition and spot, place, track, to account for the Greek interpretation is to reject it. Of the later Greek versions, we know only that Aquila rendered as a proper name, Belwpwv. The usual Greek spelling of Hebrew being Bai0wpwv, it is extremely *Der Text der Bücher Samuelis, p. 156. † L. c., pp. 10 f., note. ‡ See Hatch and Redpath, Concordance to the Septuagint, p. 1065. § With τὸ παρατεῖνον εις τὴν ἔρημον the Greek correctly renders up y of Numbers 232, against the current and misleading "that looks down upon" of modern interpreters. Balak took Balaam to the head of a ravine (D) that extended to (or looked out upon) the ". See Payne Smith, Thesaurus, ad voc. i. ¶ Field, Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt, I, p. 550. improbable that Aquila had a different reading from our 1. In construing it as a proper name, he merely followed the rabbinical exegesis of his day. The text of Aquila evidently suggested to Jerome the pronunciation Bethoron for the word which he, too, understood as a proper name: et transierunt Jordanem et lustrata omni Bethoron (some manuscripts and the official Vulgate have Beth horon) venerunt ad castra; for there is no trace of a Hebrew in in any text of this passage. Vercellone * quotes the opinion of Clericus to the effect that later scribes, and not Jerome, should be held responsible for the Vulgate reading Beth horon instead of Bithron. But Jerome's Onomasticon contains, under the rubric Interpretationes secundi libri regum, the definition Bethoron domus iræ,† showing that, whether Jerome wrote Bethoron or Beth horon-more probably the former-he identified the word with the Hebrew proper name . Evidently he, too, was more confused than informed upon the subject. בית חורון The Peshîta seems to have taken the bull by the horns, avoiding the difficulties of translation by means of a bold paraphrase: And they crossed the Jordan, and marched in the direction of Geshur, and reached Mahanaim. The only light this version sheds upon our problem is that the translator admittedly did not quite understand his Hebrew, and had manifestly never heard of such a locality as "the Bithrôn." Jewish rabbinical tradition has followed the most comfortable course by explaining as a geographical proper name. ויעברו ית ירדנה ואזלו כל בתרון ואתו :So the Targum of Jonathan . Similarly the medieval commentators, who do not linger upon the subject. Rashi contents himself with two שם מחוז וגביל :name of a locality. David Qimhi שם מחוז,words name of a town and territory מעבר לירדן נקרא כן על עניין ידוע אצלם lying beyond the Jordan, and named accordingly, after the familiar * Varia lectiones vulgatæ Latina Bibliorum editionis, II, p. 326. † Lagarde, Onomastica sacra, p. 68. I cite from the London polyglot; the Urûmiah edition has the same text. § See the Rabbinical Bibles. |
