Nir Cohen: 1. Let me start with your last comment: “the name SERAH is not obviously female to hebrew ears, how else would the narrator indicate it was a daughter and not a son?”
(a) Does $RX sound like a Hebrew name to you? Pray tell what would it mean? I see it as being a non-Semitic name that means “like Sarah”, where (i) the first two letters, $/%-R, are the first two letters in Sarah’s two names, $RY and %RH, and (ii) in non-Semitic a final heth/X means “coming from” or “-like” or “akin to”, etc. [Compare the final heth/X in the name of Abraham’s father, TRX, where that final heth/X plays the same role in the intentional non-Semitic pun on that name, which means “coming from the man”/turu-xi. All 7 Patriarchs and Matriarchs “come from the man” TRX.] $RX means “like Sarah”, and I see $RX’s situation as being essentially identical to $RY’s situation, as to the precise manner in which each woman was brought into the Hebrew family by her husband’s father. (b) As to clarifying that $RX is a female, what we would have expected, if $RX is Asher’s blood daughter, is that the text would say “and his daughter”. But instead, the text mysteriously says “and their sister”. To me, that alerts us to the key fact that $RX is not Asher’s blood daughter, just as $RY was not Terah’s blood daughter. Asher did not think of $RX as being his daughter [as we know from the word “daughter” not being used at Genesis 46: 17], and Terah did not think of $RY [the attested non-Semitic woman’s name $aru-ya, which does not make sense in west Semitic] as being his “daughter”, because at Genesis 11: 31 $RY is referred to as being Terah’s “daughter-in-law”. The text is telling us what is going on, if we pay close attention to what the text says and does not say. 2. You wrote: “it is even possible that some of the earliest biblical translations/interpretations, like onklos, introduced alterations/innovations which influenced the masorah in editing the final form of the OT in ways which differ from the original text.” Yes, Onkelos saw Ayalon – Mamre, that is, )LN – Y – MMR), at Genesis 13: 18, 14: 13 and 18: 1, and he deliberately mistranslated that phrase into Aramaic as “plains of Mamre”. He did that in order to claim, falsely, that the Patriarchs’ “Hebron” had been located in a locale controlled by the later state of Judah. The world would be a better place today if Onkelos had not deliberately mistranslated those key passages. But Onkelos had nothing to do with $RY or $RX. 3. You wrote: “granted, it is uncommon to find a daughter mentioned in a biblical genealogical list - so we have a real issue: why here?” Precisely. No one has understood that for well over 2,000 years now. There are only two females in the list of 70 Hebrews in chapter 46 of Genesis: (i) Dinah, who is explicitly referred to as being Jacob’s “daughter”, and (ii) Beriah’s “sister” $RX. The reason for including $RX was to confirm that Terah had not acted wrongfully in having his blood son )BRM [ab-rum in west Semitic, but also being a deliberate non-Semitic pun, a-ba-ri-im, meaning “lord”, as these names are indicating a strong non-Semitic influence on the first Hebrews, including marriage patterns like this] marry a woman who Abraham later describes as being his “sister”, but who in fact was not Terah’s blood daughter [with Terah for his part always viewing $RY as being his “daughter-in-law”, not his “daughter”, per Genesis 11: 31]. That was exactly what Asher did for his blood son Beriah regarding $RX. Same. For the same reasons. Same. And with the same good result. Same. The same in every way. Otherwise, there would be no reason for Genesis 46: 17 to include a mysterious reference to “their sister $RX”. Jim Stinehart Evanston, Illinois _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
