Tanach Thoughts

Just came across this article , which suggests that the Phoenician word פמי (PMY) refers to a lion, and as a theophoric component, it refers to an Egyptian lion god with a similar name. There are several synonyms for lion in Tanach - Aryeh, Kfir, Lavi, Layish, Shachal, perhaps Shachatz - so I wondered whether this suggestion could explain a difficult word in Tanach. A quick search found Chuppim, Muppim, Shuppim and Shefufam - various sons of Binyamin. Muppim's name might come from the Egyptian city of Mof (Memphis). Shuppim and Shefufam might be related to Shefifon, a type of snake. But what about Chuppim? Well, as PMY comes from Egyptian, I checked what Khu (חו) means in Egyptian. And lo, it refers to a part of the soul per the Egyptian conception of the soul. So, potentially, Chuppim's name (Khu + PYM/PM = PMY) could mean "lion's soul". (image taken from here )

So, very exciting news that I got just a last night - I was informed by the editors of the journal Megadim that my article has been accepted for publication. They just recommended a few small corrections. Once I send in the final draft they'll start preparing it for publication, presumably for the next volume (64). Don't remember if I've shared in the past, but I can sure share now that the article suggests a new interpretation for the difficultly-phrased verse in Melachim 2:15:25: " וַיִּקְשֹׁר עָלָיו פֶּקַח בֶּן רְמַלְיָהוּ שָׁלִישׁוֹ וַיַּכֵּהוּ בְשֹׁמְרוֹן בְּאַרְמוֹן בֵּית  מלך  [הַמֶּלֶךְ] אֶת אַרְגֹּב וְאֶת הָאַרְיֵה וְעִמּוֹ חֲמִשִּׁים אִישׁ מִבְּנֵי גִלְעָדִים וַיְמִיתֵהוּ וַיִּמְלֹךְ תַּחְתָּיו." "His aide, Pekah son of Remaliah, conspired against him and struck him down in the royal palace in Samaria; with (?) Argob and the Arieh, and with him were fifty Gileadites; and he killed him and succeeded him as king. The verse describes the assassination ...

This is part 4 of a series of posts I made shortly after starting the blog (nos. 1 , 2 , 3 ). Back then, I noticed that there were many ties between the Tribe of Yehudah in particular and Egypt. This was most particularly apparent in their personal names, though there were a couple of other connections. I am now in the midst of conducting research for my latest seminar paper, in which I will attempt to propose a link between the Samaria Ostraca and the LMLK handles (more on that in a later post). As researching one fascinating topic goes, my search led me to many other fascinating topics, one being the subject of Egyptian icons in Judahite (i.e., of the Kingdom of Yehudah) material culture. For example, all LMLK handles feature variants of two main Egyptian symbols: A winged disk (many identify it with the Egyptian winged sun disk) or a winged scarab, a sacred Egyptian symbol. Another example are Judahite seals, many of which feature blatant Egyptian symbols, including idolatrous symbo...

I considered writing another post about the blasphemer, a subject near and dear to my heart (because it's an unsolved mystery!), but then I discovered to my shock that my last post on the subject was actually still in draft mode, never published..! So, though I'm still super busy, here's a ready-made post from last year, touched up and completed: The blasphemer is a subject that has been on and off of my mind for a couple of years now. The blasphemer was the son of Shlomit bat Divri, a woman of the Tribe of Dan, and an Egyptian man, who lived during the time of the Exodus. He had an argument with a purely-Israelite man and ended up cursing God, hence his title as "the blasphemer". He was put to death. The midrash ( Sifra 14:1 ) attempts to explain this story thus: "("And the son of an Israelite woman went out; and he was the son of an Egyptian man in the midst of the children of Israel. And they strove within the camp, the son of the Israelite woman and ...

On this blog I've discussed a couple of times the Exodus and archeology (see here and here ). Recently, I have been thinking to myself that perhaps the lack of hard evidence means something. True, there's a loose collection of findings (such as the Ipuwer Papyrus or the Book of Gates (see here )) that many Bible-believers hold to be evidence of the Exodus, but since they have all been dismissed by academic scholars in a manner that has lulled the world into a belief that there is zero evidence for the Exodus, it is difficult to consider them hard evidence. Not impossible, just difficult. Which led me to think that perhaps there's a reason for us not having found hard evidence for the Exodus, i.e., something that will completely knock the socks off of academia, and that is that the Exodus stands as a challenge to our generation: Will you believe or will you deny? Look at it this way: Although we have not yet found evidence for portions of the Tanach, it is no longer (compa...

Yes, the title is a misnomer. The question was originally asked by the Mechilta on the verse . And that question is as follows: ""And he took six hundred choice chariots" ( 14:7 ): Whence came the horses required for the chariots? If you would say, from Egypt, is it not written (Ibid. 9:6) "and all the cattle of Egypt died"? And if you would say, from Pharaoh, is it not written (Ibid. 3) "Behold, the hand of the Lord is in your cattle in the field, in the horses, etc."? And if you say, from Israel, is it not written (Ibid. 10:26) "And our cattle, too, will go with us; not a hoof will remain"? Whence, then, did they come?" Now, the Mechilta goes on to explain that the horses belonged to those Egyptians who feared Hashem and listened to Moshe's warnings during the plagues that killed the domesticated animals. But earlier this evening I thought of two other possibilities: 1. The midrash in Shemot Rabbah 10:2 says (loose translation): ...

 I was originally planning for the post title to be "Zecher Leyetziat Mitzrayim or Zecher Leyetziat Mitzrayim?" but you can't emphasize words in post titles, so I nixed that. This post is a callback to one of my very first posts, almost a year ago, here . I was troubled then by the implications of claims made by various people that basically the whole Torah was based on the culture and religion of other ancient nations, Egypt in particular. Well, actually, I wasn't really troubled by the implications. B"H my faith is strong. I was more troubled about the fact that more and more people were coming to accept this notion as though it was the simple, clear truth. The main problem I see is that not only it makes out Hashem to be a copyist and unoriginal, but it also seems to remove from the Torah its eternal aspect: How could it be eternal if everything in it came to reflect some such civilization that the Israelites had happened to come into contact with and decided ...

 As you can see, I'm making up for the last month or so of no posts. I heard today a class by Dr. Chagai Misgav, a religious doctor of archeology in the Hebrew University. One of the things he said was that a few years before the class was given (the class is from the year 5773, so we're talking about around 5768), an ostracon - i.e. a piece of ancient pottery with writing on it - was discovered in the Beit Ha'elah Valley. This discovery was considered very dramatic in the world of archeology. Why? Well, until that point, it had been widely accepted that the proto-Hebraic alphabet had evolved from the proto-Canaanite alphabet. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, let me explain: This is what the proto-Canaanite looks like: (image taken from here ) and this is what proto-Hebrew looks like: (image taken from here ) When comparing the various inscriptions and ostracons found, the archeological world managed to create the following theory of development: (image taken...