Tanach Thoughts

I'm happy to share that my first Tanach paper has been published and is now available online: Hoham, King of Hebron, Jewish Bible Quarterly 53:2 (2025), pp. 87-96. It can be found both on the issue's webpage and on academia.edu .

So, exciting news, one of my papers has passed the first peer reviewer! He expressed interest in my general theory, but had a long list of issues with some of the specifics. Some I believe that I have to reject outright because these comments are unsubstantiated. The reviewer simply stated that he was uncertain about these points. I think that if I can sharpen other points based on the rest of the comments, then it'll be okay if I (politely) reject these. So, whilst searching for information that would strengthen the rest of my thesis, I came across something interesting: Both Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and Targum Yerushalmi to Devarim 1:44 translate "Seir" as "Gavla" (גבלא, Aramaic for Gebal). Now, Gebal is known as an ancient town in Sidon, and it eventually became known as Byblos. But Seir is in the south of Israel! So why would these targums identify Seir with Gebal? As it turns out, there was indeed a time when the region of Idumea (Edom) or Seir was known as...

This week's parsha features Bnei Yisrael passing through Edom and the two Emorite countries - Sichon's country and Og's country ( Bamidbar 21:21-35 ). Og was the last of the Rephaim ( Devarim 3:11 ), a race of giants that were wiped out way back during the War of the Four and Five Kings in Beresheet ( 14:5 ). Some midrashim state that Sichon was also a giant, of the antediluvian kind (for example, Devarim Rabbah 11:10 ). Looking through Tanach it occurred to me that giants might be frightening, but they obviously aren't unbeatable. David and his men defeated a number of giants, and, as mentioned already, the four Mesopotamian kings managed to defeat the Rephaim. And yet, two parshas ago, when the spies told Bnei Yisrael that there were Anakim in the Land of Yisrael ( Bamidbar 13:28 ), Kalev and Yehoshua said nothing about "hey, guys, giants are not unbeatable!" Kalev made a more generalized statement, that "yes we can, because we have Hashem!" ( ibid...

Never mind now what animal the Tanachic Re'em was (my favorite opinion is Rabbi Ahron Marcus's, that it was the elephant, but I am aware that the popular opinion is that it was the Aurochs) , Re'em is usually spelled in Hebrew ראם, but there are some variants: רמים (sing. רם - Tehillim 22:22), ראים (Tehillim 92:11), רים (Iyov 39:9-10). Re'em appears to be connected to the word רם - Ram, great (in size). In other words, we are talking about a large animal. I noticed something interesting a couple of days ago. There are two cities in Tanach said to have been called Ramot - ראמות: One is Ramot in the Gilad ( one of the cities of refuge and a Levitical city - Devarim 4:43, Yehoshua 20:8, Chronicles 1:6:65) and the other is Ramot in the territory of Yissachar (later a Levitical city - Chronicles 1:6:58). Anyway, there's no huge chiddush here, I just find it interesting that the root ראם exists also in the names of cities that were likely high up, topographically-speaking...