Linguistic Analysis of "Galilee"

[Isaac Fried]

Jim says
Sum[erian] gigir 'chariot' …). In most of the languages this word can be analyzed as a reduplicated verb 'to turn; roll; twist'. Sum[erian] kìr 'to roll' gigir → ; PIE [Proto-Indo-European] *kwel- 'to turn; twist' → *kwekwlo-; CK [Common Kartvelian -- a language of the Caucasus similar to Indo-European] gr- 'to roll' → *grgar.

Says I
who needs the "Sumerian" gigir when we have the Hebrew כִּרְכָּרָה KIRKARAH as in Isaiah 66:20
וְהֵבִיאוּ אֶת כָּל אֲחֵיכֶם מִכָּל הַגּוֹיִם מִנְחָה לַיהוָה בַּסּוּסִים וּבָרֶכֶב וּבַצַּבִּים וּבַפְּרָדִים וּבַכִּרְכָּרוֹת

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[Isaac Fried]

We have also the גַּרְגַּר GARGAR, 'grain, crumb, seed, berry, fragment', as in Isaiah 17:6
וְנִשְׁאַר בּוֹ עוֹלֵלֹת כְּנֹקֶף זַיִת שְׁנַיִם שְׁלֹשָׁה גַּרְגְּרִים בְּרֹאשׁ אָמִיר
KJV: "Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough"
And also גַּרְגֶּרֶת GARGERET, 'neck, the freely moving bony segments that loosely connect the head to the body', as in Prov. 3:3
חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת אַל יַעַזְבֻךָ קָשְׁרֵם עַל גַּרְגְּרוֹתֶיךָ כָּתְבֵם עַל לוּחַ לִבֶּךָ
KJV: "Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart"

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[Jim Stinehart]

Isaac:

You wrote: “[W]ho needs the ‘Sumerian’ gigir when we have the Hebrew כִּרְכָּרָה KIRKARAH as in Isaiah 66:20”?

Yes, כרכרה is exciting, but even more exciting is the fact that Gesenius sees its root as being כרר (II Samuel 6: 14, 16).
Although the actual meaning of כרר is “dance”, its ultra-literal meaning is “to move in a circle”. That’s because the 2-letter root כר or גר means either “round”/“circle” or “to roll”.

It’s unclear what the meaning of כרכרה is, and why. In its one appearance in the Bible, KJV says that כרכרה means “swift beasts”. Gesenius sees a similar meaning, “swift camels”, so-called from their “leaping” or “bounding”, perhaps inspired by music; but I find such an explanation to be fanciful in the extreme, and wrong. Rather, at Isaiah 66: 20 the following meaning works fine, and follows what I see as being this word’s etymology: “all manner of vehicles drawn by animals that ‘roll’ along swiftly”. The key concept is “to roll”, which relates to the fact that the wheels on animal-drawn vehicles are “round”.

If, per the above analysis, the ultimate 2-letter root כר or גר has as one of its meanings “round”, then we can analyze KRR or GRR at item #80 of the mid-15th century BCE Thutmose III list of places of Canaan as follows. With Aharoni, I see KRR or GRR as meaning “Upper Galilee”, and in context, quite possibly as intending to reference in particular “[Qadesh-of-]Upper-Galilee”, the place known in later books of the Bible as Kedesh-Naphtali.

The literal meaning of KRR or GRR is “[place of] rounds”, that is, a land characterized by many “hills”, which are “rounded” in shape, just as a wheel that “rolls” is “round” in shape. As such, KRR or GRR is a colorful name for: “Upper Galilee”.

Let me repeat here my own interpretation of the originally-intended meaning of Genesis 20: 1:

“And Abraham journeyed [north] from thence toward the [land of Adami]-the-south [in eastern Lower Galilee], and [after going farther north, into Upper Galilee,] dwelled between Qadesh[-Naphtali in eastern Upper Galilee] and [Tyre, misspelled as] Shur [in northwestern Upper Galilee], and sojourned in גרר : Upper Galilee [KJV: ‘Gerar’].”

The linguistic point here, which is the focus of this thread, is that גרר literally refers to “rounds”, which is a colorful word for “hills”, with the intended geographical reference, both at Genesis 20: 1 and on the T III list, being the land of “rounds”/hills, that is: “Upper Galilee”.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

[Jim Stinehart]

Isaac:

1. You wrote: “We have also the גַּרְגַּר GARGAR, 'grain, crumb, seed, berry, fragment', as in Isaiah 17:6”.

Gesenius has the p-e-r-f-e-c-t explanation of why גרגר means “berry”: “so-called from its round and rolling form”. Yes! I couldn’t say it better myself.

2. You wrote: “And also גַּרְגֶּרֶת GARGERET, 'neck, the freely moving bony segments that loosely connect the head to the body', as in Prov. 3:3”.

Gesenius says that גרגרות is the plural of גרר, with the singular form usually meaning a rough sound, such as gargling in the throat (hence the plural form having the meaning of “neck”), but that sometimes the singular form גרר means the smoother sound of “rolling”.

My point here, as always, is that the 2-letter root כר or גר means either “round”/“circle” or “to roll”. As such, as a geographical expression, גרר literally refers to “rounds”, which is a colorful word for “hills”, with the intended geographical reference, both at Genesis 20: 1 and at item #80 on the mid-15th century BCE Thutmose III list of places in Canaan, being the land of “rounds”/hills, that is: “Upper Galilee”.

Whether the Patriarchal narratives are accurate history, recorded by a contemporary, of the world of the first Hebrews in the mid-14th century BCE [my view], as opposed to the view of many university scholars that this Biblical text is utter fiction ginned up in 7th or 6th century BCE Jerusalem, depends in no small part on whether גרר in the Patriarchal narratives means [in a Late Bronze Age context] “Upper Galilee” [my view!], as opposed to the unanimous, but totally erroneous, conventional view that גרר is supposedly referencing some unattested place south of Gaza [Not!].

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

[Jemoh66]

Jim and Isaac,

Just a comment about GARGERET. In English this root shows up as GaRGLe, a throat related activity. In French the word for throat is GoRGe. Additionally, the animal whose prominent feature is its long neck is the GiRaffe.
See Moses Isaacson's GARGLE entry: http://www.edenics.net/english-word-ori ... word=GORGE

[Isaac Fried]

I agree that כר KAR, related to הר HAR, is 'hill, mound, pillow, pile.'
It appears to me that
ברבר, גרגר, דרדר, הרהר, זרזר, חרחר, טרטר, כרכר, מרמר, סרסר, ערער, פרפר, צרצר, קרקר, שרשר
all mean 'flutter'.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

[Jim Stinehart]

Isaac:

You wrote: “I agree that כר KAR, related to הר HAR, is 'hill, mound, pillow, pile'.”

Yes.

And KRR or GRR at item #80 on the 15th century BCE Thutmose III list of places in Canaan both (i) is one and the same place as גרר [KJV: “Gerar”] in the Patriarchal narratives, and (ii) while literally meaning “rounds”, effectively means “hills”.

The area south of Gaza is not characterized by hills. But Upper Galilee is certainly characterized by hills. גרר in the Patriarchal narratives means “[place of] hills”, and references Upper Galilee.

When Abraham was told for the second time by YHWH that Sarah would bear a son in less than 12 months’ time, Abraham did not then commence, inexplicably, to sojourn in the arid Negev and Sinai Deserts, near the קדש that is Kadesh-barnea. No way. Rather, per Genesis 20: 1, Abraham proceeded north and commenced sojourning in lovely Upper Galilee, near the קדש that was then sometimes referred to as “[Kadesh-]גרר” [per Aharoni’s analysis of item #80, KRR or GRR, on the T III list] (that is, “Kadesh-Upper-Galilee”), being the city located in eastern Upper Galilee that is later referred to in the Bible as Kadesh-Naphtali.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

[Jim Stinehart]

So far on this thread we have seen that based primarily on linguistics, and secondarily on item #80 of the Thutmose III 15th century BCE list of places in Canaan, גרר [KJV: “Gerar”] at Genesis 20: 1 seems to mean: “Upper Galilee”.

If that is so, then the קדש at Genesis 20: 1 would not be a reference to a Kadesh-barnea located in some ill-defined place on the approximate border of the Sinai and Negev Deserts, far southwest of Canaan proper. No, the קדש at Genesis 20: 1 would in that event be a reference to the קדש that was one of the most important cities in Upper Galilee in the Late Bronze Age, being the קדש that is referred to in later books of the Bible as “Kedesh-Naphtali”. (As I noted previously, Aharoni sees (i) KRR : GRR on the T III list as literally referring to “Upper Galilee”, but (ii) as in fact being an abbreviated reference to Qadesh of Upper Galilee. The GRR/Upper Galilee reference there was important in order to avoid confusion with a
completely different קדש: Qadesh-on-the-Orontes in southern Syria.)

True, 100% of university scholars follow the Biblical Inerrantists in asserting that the קדש at Genesis 20: 1 is, without a shadow of a doubt, certainly the Kadesh-barnea that is located in some ill-defined place on the approximate border of the Sinai and Negev Deserts.

But although 100% of university scholars s-a-y that, is there in fact any support whatsoever for that scholarly view, based on what is attested in non-biblical sources that pre-date the 4th century BCE?

We are fortunate that we have, right here on the b-hebrew list, the scholar who is perhaps the world’s leading scholar on the subject of Kadesh-barnea (or at least is definitely one of the leading scholars): our own Prof. Yigal Levin. Prof. Levin’s meticulously-researched scholarly article, “Numbers 34: 2-12, The Boundaries of the Land of Canaan”, about half of which is devoted to Kadesh-barnea, is available here:

http://www.jtsa.edu/Documents/pagedocs/ ... evin30.pdf

Here is what Prof. Levin says in that article as to whether there is any support, based on what is attested in non-biblical sources that pre-date the 7th century BCE, for the unanimous scholarly view that the קדש at Genesis 20: 1 is allegedly a place, Kadesh-barnea, located in the Sinai and/or Negev Deserts:

“Kadesh-barnea…is not known from either literary sources or from archaeological evidence in the Late Bronze or the Early Iron Ages….” At p. 66.

Oops. We see that there is not a scintilla of support, based on what is attested in non-biblical sources that pre-date the 7th century BCE, that there ever was a place called קדש far southwest of Canaan proper.

True, Prof. Levin hints in his article that some time after the 8th century BCE, there may be non-biblical evidence for a Kadesh-barnea far southwest of Canaan proper. But his article in fact does not set forth any such non-biblical evidence (but rather simply cites Joshua).

Meanwhile, we know that the Qadesh located in eastern Upper Galilee was an important city in the Late Bronze Age. It is probably referred to, both in Ugaritic literature and on the Seti I list of places in Canaan and Syria, in precisely that way: קדש. (I say “probably”, because there is a split of scholarly opinion as to whether Qadesh in Upper Galilee, or rather Qadesh-on-the-Orontes in southern Syria, is being referenced in Ugaritic and on the Seti I list.)

100% of university scholars can s-a-y that Genesis 20: 1 inexplicably portrays Abraham as choosing to sojourn in the Negev and Sinai Deserts immediately after being told for the second time by YHWH that Sarah will finally bear Isaac within the next 12 months. But why should we on the b-hebrew list accept that scholarly view, which not only makes the Bible look ridiculous and non-historical, but also has no support whatsoever based on what is attested in non-biblical sources that pre-date the 4th century BCE?

גרר is attested in the Late Bronze Age as meaning “Upper Galilee”. קדש is attested in the Late Bronze Age as meaning “Qadesh of Upper Galilee” (later called Kedesh-Naphtali in later books of the Bible). When 100% of university scholars assure us that they are 100% certain that Genesis 20: 1 is not using any such historical nomenclature, but rather is using non-attested, non-historical geographical nomenclature that makes Abraham look crazy, we should just say the following to university scholars: Not. No. No way.

We on the b-hebrew list should refuse to accept the scholarly assertion that Genesis 20: 1 allegedly portrays Abraham as nonsensically choosing to sojourn in the Negev and Sinai Deserts right before Isaac’s birth, instead of making the logical choice to sojourn in lovely Upper Galilee, for the following two reasons:

1. There is no support whatsoever, based on what is attested in non-biblical sources that pre-date the 4th century BCE, for the scholarly claims that at Genesis 20: 1, קדש is allegedly referencing a locale (“Kadesh-barnea”) far southwest of Canaan proper, on the approximate border of the Sinai and Negev Deserts, or that גרר is allegedly referencing an unknown locale (“Gerar”) somewhere southeast of Gaza.

2. By stark contrast, we know from impeccable Late Bronze Age inscriptions that קדש is an attested reference to the Qadesh in eastern Upper Galilee, and that גרר is an attested reference to Upper Galilee.

No matter how unanimous the ultra-southerly scholarly view may be of Genesis 20: 1, it is unanimously wrong. Genesis 20: 1 is, rather, referencing Galilee, all the way in every way.

Jim Stinehart

[Jim Stinehart]

In this post, let’s ask if גרר as a geographical place name at Genesis 20: 1 has the same three characteristics within the scholarly community as does קדש in that verse, namely:

1. 100% of scholars say that they are 100% certain that קדש is located southwest [in the case of קדש, very, very far southwest] of Jerusalem.

2. Yet, scholars admit that there appear to be no historical attestations in the ancient world to support that unanimous interpretation.

3. Moreover, many scholars, probably at least a plurality of mainstream scholars, further admit that קדש is well-attested in Late Bronze Age inscriptions as being a city located in eastern Upper Galilee, which is referenced in later books of the Bible as Kedesh Naphtali.

Do all three of those same three items apply as well to גרר [KJV: “Gerar”] at Genesis 20: 1?

#1 is easy. 100% of scholars say that they are 100% certain that גרר is located somewhere southeast of Gaza, which is well southwest of Jerusalem.

What about #2? Are there any historical inscriptions from the ancient world to support that unanimous scholarly view as to the geographical location of גרר? Let’s consult a leading geographer of the Bible, Anson Rainey, as to that question:

“Gerar is never mentioned in any non-biblical source….” Anson Rainey, “The Sacred Bridge” (2006), p. 114.

Are we beginning to see a pattern here in the “scholarly” interpretation of the geography that underlies Genesis 20: 1?

As to #3, many scholars see item #80 on the 15th century BCE Thutmose III list of places in Canaan as having the following two key characteristics: (i) it is an Egyptian rendering of a west Semitic geographical place name that cannot be distinguished, linguistically, from גרר; and (ii) it likely references “Upper Galilee”.

Given the foregoing, is the “scholarly” analysis of Genesis 20: 1 kosher?

There is n-o-t-h-i-n-g in non-biblical inscriptions from the ancient world that supports the unanimous scholarly view that the קדש and גרר referenced in Genesis 20: 1 are allegedly located southwest of Jerusalem, whereas there are bona fide Late Bronze Age inscriptions that attest to both קדש and גרר as referencing locales in Upper Galilee.

It makes logical sense that each of Abraham and Isaac would take their large flock of sheep and goats to lovely Upper Galilee, which has magnificent pastureland, rather than to an arid area southeast of Gaza. It makes no sense that Abraham would choose to wander about the Sinai and Negev Deserts just after being told, twice, by YHWH that Sarah will bear Isaac in less than 12 months’ time, or that both Abraham and Isaac could build a whole series of wells ending at the famous Beersheba located in the Negev Desert (as opposed to the Beersheba in Upper Galilee), or that Isaac could somehow get rich growing wheat southeast of Gaza (not too far from the famous Beersheba in the Negev Desert).

Why should we blindly accept the unanimous “scholarly” view of the geography that underlies Genesis 20: 1, when that “scholarly” view appears to make no sense whatsoever on any level?

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

[Jim Stinehart]

In pursuing the linguistic question of whether גרר = Upper Galilee (instead of some unattested place southeast of Gaza), let’s now ask if Genesis 20: 1 is grammatically possible, given the conventional view of the geography that allegedly underlies this verse.

A. Conventional Geographical Understanding of Genesis 20: 1

Here is the KJV of Genesis 20: 1, to which I have added in brackets the conventional geographical understanding:

“And Abraham journeyed from thence toward [and through] the south country [the Negev Desert], and dwelled between Kadesh [Kadesh-barnea, located on the eastern edge of the Sinai Desert,] and Shur [the northwest corner of the Sinai Desert, just opposite Egypt proper], and sojourned in Gerar [southeast of Gaza].”

Genesis 20: 1 is conventionally interpreted as allegedly saying that Abraham dwelled between Kadesh-barnea (located on the eastern edge of the Sinai Desert) and Shur (located at the northwest corner of the Sinai Desert, just opposite Egypt proper), and sojourned in Gerar, southeast of Gaza.

But if Abraham dwelled between the eastern and the western borders of the Sinai Desert (that is, in the Sinai Desert) [far southwest of Canaan, being just east of Egypt proper], then how on earth could Abraham be said to sojourn southeast of Gaza [in Canaan, nowhere near Egypt]?

“Gerar (near Gaza) does not fit readily ‘between Kadesh and Shur’ ”. E.A. Speiser, “The Anchor Bible Genesis” (1962), p. 148.

B. Proposed New Geographical Interpretation of Genesis 20: 1

Based on non-biblical inscriptions from the Late Bronze Age, I myself have proposed the following completely different geographical interpretation of Genesis 20: 1.

Here is the KJV of Genesis 20: 1, to which this time I have added, either in brackets or per a paraphrase, my own new proposed geographical understanding of this verse:

“And Abraham journeyed from thence [Bethel, north] toward [and through] the country [of Adami-]the-south [located in eastern Lower Galilee], and dwelled between Kadesh [Qadesh-of-Upper-Galilee (later called Kedesh-Naphtali), located in eastern Upper Galilee] and Shur [a misspelling of Tyre, an island city-state located in the northwest corner of Upper Galilee], and sojourned in Upper Galilee [גרר = KJV: “Gerar”].

Note how naturally the grammar reads on my proposed geographical re-interpretation of Genesis 20: 1. If one sojourned between קדש : Qadesh-of-Upper-Galilee : Kedesh-Naphtali, in eastern Upper Galilee, and צוד/Tyre in northwestern Upper Galilee, then fully consistent with what Genesis 20: 1 says, one would indeed be sojourning in גרר : Upper Galilee [KJV: “Gerar”], when dwelling “between” those two places.

As historical verification of the foregoing proposed geographical re-interpretation of Genesis 20: 1, let’s now ask who the leading princeling was in northwest Upper Galilee in Year 13 [with such year being specifically referenced at Genesis 14: 4] in the Late Amarna time period. The answer is that both in the Bible, and in the Amarna Letters, it was: Abimelek.
Furthermore, both in the Bible, and in the Amarna Letters, Abimelek is the only person who frets (and he constantly frets) about contested access to valuable water wells.

We see that Genesis 20: 1 has p-i-n-p-o-i-n-t historical accuracy, rather than being logically and grammatically impossible, if we are willing to look to historical inscriptions from the ancient world in determining the geographical locations of the geographical place names in such verse. Abraham logically chose to sojourn with his people and large flock in the fine pastureland of lovely Upper Galilee, being the northern portion of the Promised Land, while not setting foot in the arid, virtually uninhabitable Sinai Desert, which was not part of the Promised Land. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g makes perfect sense, on all levels, if we could just get the intended underlying geography right.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois