Tanach Thoughts

I thought of an interpretation for Bat Sheva's name ages ago, but only remembered it this last Shabbat during a discussion around the table about unusual Hebrew names. Bat Sheva is usually spelled בת שבע which literally means "daughter of seven", although it might have some connection to the word shvuah שבועה - vow. These are more classic understandings. There are two instances in which her name is spelled Bat Shua בת שוע, both in Chronicles ( Chronicles 1:2:3 ; 1:3:5 ). This variant of the name connects her to Yehudah's wife Bat Shua ( Beresheet 38:12 ) who was evidently named after her father Shua ( ibid. 2 ). Bat Sheva is known to be the granddaughter of Achitophel the Gilonite through her father Eliam; Giloh being a city in the territory of the tribe of Yehudah, so the naming makes sense. The name itself means something like "daughter of salvation/redemption". It could be argued that Bat Sheva is simply a variant of Bat Shua or vice-versa, but I would...

A couple of months ago I posted that I had sent in for the very first time an essay I wrote to an academic journal. Well, the editor has finally replied. She sent me a long list of comments. Some of the comments are technical, regarding writing form. But most of them are about the essence of the essay, and I'm not really sure what to make of them. The professor who assisted me in the research and writing suggested we find a time to sit and look over everything, so that's good. In other, but related news, I will be presenting a poster at the archeology department's young scholars conference this Thursday, on the same topic (the Levitical Cities of Yissachar). What that means is that I spent a week designing a poster and then refining and refining. All of this will culminate in about half an hour of me standing next to my poster, pretty much just hanging about (and answering questions should they come about). Kind of like a science fair... I was also asked to design a poster...

A short explanation on the blog's hiatus: I have been extremely busy lately and that's why I haven't updated in a long time. I actually started making this post over a month ago. Then I had to work on other things, and this post was put on the backburner. I'll try to make a few more posts in coming weeks. I don't want this blog to die down. Some time ago, it suddenly occurred to me that we know very little about the territory of the Tribe of Dan after they moved north. We know they built the City of Dan, and...that's it... But one city can't support an entire tribe. Even the Levites, despite being a small tribe, received 48 cities. So where are all of Dan's other cities and towns? What were the borders of "New Dan"? I'm hoping to make this mapping out of their territory an on-going side-project. From what I know, we have next to no knowledge of their territory, so this will be very speculative. But I thought it would be a fun thing to try o...