LandonWillis

Category: Biblical History

  • Who Was Symmachus The Translator?

    In the Second Century AD, there were three men who created new translations of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek: Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus.

    This urge to create new translations was spurred on by a few factors.

    First of all, copies of the Greek Septuagint, which the Jews had been using for hundreds of years, had developed several scribal errors. So, by the Second Century, it was in need of a revision where it could be compared to the original Hebrew to make sure that it was still a faithful translation. In fact, of these three scholars, Theodotion’s translation was little more than a revision of the Septuagint.

    But, there was a second, more pressing concern.

    Christianity.

    All three of these scholars (except maybe Symmachus) were Jews. So, they wanted to try and discredit the many prophecies mentioned in the Christian New Testament. To do this, they made their own translations to show how the Septuagint’s translation of the Hebrew prophecies in the Old Testament was not always the same word-for-word.

    For example, the Gospel according to Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, saying that:

    …The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son…

    And that is what the Septuagint says. However, the original Hebrew likely said:

    …The young woman will conceive and give birth to a son…

    So, Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus seemingly wanted to try and discredit the prophecies mentioned in the New Testament by showing that, in the original Hebrew, the prophecies didn’t necessarily say the exact same thing word-for-word.

    Symmachus

    With that explanation out of the way, let’s dive into one of these guys in particular: Symmachus.

    Unfortunately, for all three of these scholars, we have very little information available about them and their works. And of the three, we know the least about Symmachus.

    I’ve read what I could find about him, but much of what I saw was contradictory or vague. So, take what I say with a grain of salt, but I’ll try to be as thorough and accurate as I can.

    Timeframe

    First, Symmachus is generally believed to have lived during the late Second Century AD. One Christian who lived in the 300s AD, Epiphanius of Salamis, tells us that he lived during the reign of Roman Emperor Severus. However, some think that this is a scribal error and he actually means Roman Emperor Verus, which was another name for Marcus Aurelius. Either way, if Epiphanius’ report is accurate, Symmachus was alive in the late 100s AD.

    We know that he must have made his translation before the mid-200s AD at the very latest, because his translation was included in the Hexapla, which was a compilation of translations by Origen, another early Christian.

    Religion

    We also don’t know for sure what religion Symmachus was. Some say that he was an Ebionite, which was seemingly an early pseudo-Christian group that denied the divinity of Christ while also demanding that people still follow the Old Mosaic Law.

    Others think that Symmachus was a Samaritan who converted to Judaism later in life. Either way, he was pretty much a Jew.

    His Translation

    Now, as for his translation itself, like Aquila’s and Theodotion’s, we no longer actually have any copies of it left.

    But, we do have little snippets of it left through quotes made by other ancient writers and thanks to some ancient scraps of parchment. I was never able to track down any source saying how much of his translation is left, but based off of a few details, I’d imagine that it has to be at least a few full pages of material. I’m really just guessing here though. All I was able to find out is that we don’t have a whole copy of his work left.

    There is a reasonable theory that suggests he probably made his translation while in Caesarea Maritima. That’s the same city about 50 miles from Jerusalem where Paul was in prison for a couple years before going off to Rome. Now, this theory that Symmachus lived/made his translation in Caesarea is based off of one quote from an author who is himself quoting someone else who said that he got a copy of Symmachus’ translation from some lady who lived in Caesarea.

    Yeah, like I said, we don’t have much information to work from, and what we do have is convoluted and somewhat unreliable.

    Anyhow, Symmachus’ translation was apparently quite good. Instead of translating the Hebrew to Greek word-for-word (like Aquila did), he translated meaning-for-meaning or thought-for-thought. It’s a similar idea to how a modern English translation, like the NIV, will use English idioms and grammar rather than shoehorning Hebrew and Greek idioms into an English translation.

    In fact, Jerome (who translated the Scriptures into Latin in the late 300s AD) greatly praised Symmachus for his translation because he maintained the sense of the original and didn’t focus on making an exact word-for-word translation. Jerome even referred to Symmachus’ translation when translating the Old Testament.

    Symmachus was able to make a very clear, elegant sounding Greek, using Greek idioms and just working to maintain the meaning of the Hebrew. As part of this, he notably translated a single Hebrew word into many different Greek words, depending on the context. This is again the same as what most modern translators do.

    Other Comments

    I also didn’t have a good place to throw in this thought, but I wanted to mention it.

    If you use a version like the NIV, you’ve probably seen a footnote like the following before (I got this from Job 35:15):

    Symmachus, Theodotion and Vulgate; the meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain.

    That footnote comes immediately after the word “wickedness”. So, what the footnote is saying is that the translations of Symmachus, Theodotion, and Jerome (the Vulgate) all use the word “wickedness” in Greek or Latin. But, scholars aren’t certain on what the ancient Hebrew word means. So, by comparing translations, we can assume that the Hebrew word probably also meant something similar to “wickedness”. But, for whatever reason, scholars couldn’t say confidently that that is what the Hebrew word means.

    Summary

    So, yeah, this was complicated. We don’t have much information on any of these guys and definitely not much on Symmachus.

    But, it seems that he was a Jew (or a semi-Christian who still believed in following the Old Law) who lived sometime during the 2nd Century, maybe in Caesarea Maritima, who made a very good sounding Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.

  • The Onomasticon

    Have you ever heard of Josephus? He was a famous first century Jew who wrote a whole bunch of history books about the Middle East and the Holy Land.

    Much of what we know about the world that Jesus grew up in comes from Josephus. He was one of the most important historians when it comes to us learning about the Intertestamental Period (the time between the end of the Old Testament and the birth of Jesus).

    Well, like Josephus, the Christian historian Eusebius is the main reason why we know so much about the first three centuries of the church.

    For this reason, Eusebius is commonly called “the father of church history”.

    One of his most famous works is something called the Onomasticon. This is from a Greek word meaning “place names”. It’s where we get the English word “onomastic”, which means “relating to a name”.

    The full name of Eusebius’ work was “On The Place Names In The Holy Scripture”. It is a big list briefly describing a lot of the places mentioned in the Old Testament and the Gospels.

    Scholars call this kind of book “a gazetteer”. It’s like a dictionary for place names.

    For example, in the Onomasticon, this is Eusebius’ entry for the word “Bethsaida”:

    Bēthsaida

     City of “Andrew and Peter” and Philipp (the apostles). Located in Galilee on (near) the Lake of Gennesareth.

    Some entries are even shorter, like:

    Amam

     (In) the tribe of Juda.

    There are also longer, more in-depth entries, but most are short.

    In total, there are about 985 entries in the Onomasticon.

    Originally, it seems that Onomasticon was the fourth part of a four part series of works by Eusebius, all detailing the geography of the Holy Land. However, the first three works are lost. The only one that survived, more or less intact, was the Onomasticon.

    One of the other three parts was probably just giving the Greek version of the Hebrew place names. Another was a description of the geography of the tribes in Ancient Judea. And the third one was about the layout of Jerusalem.

    Date

    Now, we don’t know for sure when Eusebius wrote this book. But, most people think it was probably around 325 AD, plus or minus a few years.

    Latin

    A few decades after Eusebius died, Jerome (the man who compiled the Latin translation of the Bible, called the Vulgate) decided to translate the Onomasticon from Greek into Latin.

    Jerome did this probably about 388 AD or so.

    In Latin, he changed the title to “Book on the Sites and Names of the Places of the Hebrews”. He also added some entries and did some light editing of Eusebius’ work.

    Nowadays, “Onomasticon” can be a general term to talk about a gazetteer, a list of names.

  • What Is Purim?

    In Esther 9:20-22 and 9:26, we read about the end result of the whole book of Esther:

    20 Then Mordecai recorded these events, and he sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, 21 obliging them to celebrate the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same month, annually, 22 because on those days the Jews rid themselves of their enemies, and it was a month which was turned for them from grief into joy, and from mourning into a holiday…

    26 Therefore they called these days Purim after the name of Pur.

    So, first off, let’s quickly review what actually happened in the book of Esther.

    Esther, a Jew, was in a surprising situation where she was able to become queen of the Persian Empire (more accurately, the Achaemenid Empire). An important official in the king’s court then got angry with the Jews and convinced the king to issue a decree to massacre all the Jews in the Empire. But, Esther, with the help of her adopted father Mordecai, convinced the king to issue a new decree that allowed the Jews to fight back and preemptively kill all the people who planned to kill them. So, after the Jews had killed some 75,000 people, we read the above verses where they rejoice at having avoided their massacre.

    But, there’s a weird language detail in verse 26. What do Purim and Pur mean?

    Well, pur is just the Hebrew word for a “lot”, and purim is the plural, “lots”.

    This is because the high official who wanted to kill the Jews had cast lots to determine what day the deed would be carried out.

    Also, the Hebrew word pur might come from the Akkadian word puru, which means “a stone”. That would make sense because people would commonly use stones for the casting of lots (nowadays, we would typically use plastic, dice; or I guess flipping a coin works too).

    And modern Jews still celebrate this holiday of Purim every year, typically in our month of March.

    The book of Esther also explains how in the city of Susa (the capital of the Achaemenid Empire), the Jews killed their enemies for two days, while everywhere else the Jews only fought for one day. That’s why the Jews in the city of Susa would celebrate Purim on the 15th of Adar, but everywhere else Jews celebrate it on the 14th. Today, the city of Susa is no more, but the tradition of celebrating the “Shushan (of Susa) Purim” one day later still lives on in Jerusalem.

    As a final note, the “King Ahasuerus” mentioned throughout the book is probably King Xerxes I, but we don’t know for sure. It gets complicated because the book only ever calls him by the Hebrew name Ahasuerus.

  • The Millo

    In 2 Samuel 5:9 we read:

    9 So David lived in the stronghold, and called it the city of David. And David built all around from the Millo and inward.

    We see this term “the Millo” also mentioned in a handful of other places.

    So, what is the Millo?

    Well, that’s where this gets a wee bit complicated.

    We’ve got three verses and some archaeology that all help to give us some idea. First off, we have the verses 2 Kings 12:20 and 2 Chronicles 24:25 which both tell about the assassination of Joash, King of Judah:

    20 And his servants rose up and formed a conspiracy; and they struck and killed Joash at the house of Millo as he was going down to Silla.

    25 …his own servants conspired against him… and they murdered him on his bed.

    Because he was assassinated in his bed and in “the house of Millo” these verses seem to tell us that the king lived in the house of Millo.

    Remember that. We’ll come back to that idea in a moment.

    Next, let’s look at the final verse which helps us, 2 Chronicles 32:5:

    5 And he resolutely set to work and rebuilt all of the wall that had been broken down and erected towers on it, and built another outside wall and strengthened the Millo in the city of David, and made weapons and shields in great numbers.

    That verse is talking about King Hezekiah’s preparations to defend Jerusalem. Nestled in the middle of a description about how Hezekiah was fortifying the city, we can pretty safely say that the Millo was some sort of fortification.

    Now, let’s take a look at the archaeology that can help us out here.

    Not too long ago, an archaeologist in Jerusalem discovered what she thinks is the remnants of the Palace of David and the Millo. She discovered two different remains of connected buildings.

    The first, she called the Large Stone Structure. It’s shaped like a large palace, and thanks to some hints from the Old Testament, she thinks it might have been King David’s palace.

    The second, she called the Stepped Stone Structure. It’s connected to the Large Stone Structure and looks like a large wall bending inwards, like a rampart (you can look up pictures of the excavation; it looks neat). It seems to be some sort of retaining wall, something used to keep all the dirt and debris behind it from moving and shifting. She thinks that this retaining wall/fortification was likely the Millo.

    And remember how 2 Kings 12:20 mentions “the house of Millo”? Well, that archaeologist believes this is because the palace connected to the Millo could be called the house of Millo.

    There’s also another theory I read which makes the claim that the Millo might have been located a bit farther away, in an area known as the Gihon Spring.

    Also, many scholars think that “Millo” comes from the Hebrew word ml’, which means “to fill”. This might be in reference to filling with earth (like an earthen fortification), or some think it means the Millo had something to do with water (like, “to fill with water”).

    Overall, we don’t know exactly what the Millo was, but it seems very likely that it was some sort of fortification. Plus, it must have been in the city of David and was likely nearby, if not part of, the king’s palace.

  • Who Were The Sopherim?

    Over the course of thousands of years, Jewish scribes wrote copies of the Old Testament over and over again. Scholars have now split these thousands of years of scribal tradition into several different time periods.

    You’ve probably heard of at least one group that scholars have sectioned off: the Masoretes, authors of the Masoretic Text.

    The Sopherim (or Soferim), however, refers to the Jewish scribes who worked from around the 400s BC to around 200 BC.

    There is one good starting point that historians use though. Many simply say that Ezra the High Priest (of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah) was the first Sopher (singular of Sopherim).

    Then, scholars give the name of “Sopherim” to the next couple centuries of scribes also. This lasted until the Pharisees took over in the second century BC. Scholars give different names to the periods of scribes during the time of the Pharisees.

    So, what does Sopherim actually mean?

    Well, it’s the Hebrew word translated as “scribes” throughout the Old Testament.

    The word sofer also just means “to count”. Some people think this is because the Sopherim would count every letter in the Torah as part of their process to make sure they copied it precisely right.

  • Ophel

    In the book of 2 Chronicles, 27:3, we read:

    3 He [Jotham] built the upper gate of the house of the Lord, and he built the wall of Ophel extensively.

    So, what does Ophel mean?

    Well, it is obviously not a translation but rather just an English rendering of the Hebrew word עֹפֶל (pronounced something like “Opel”).

    The reason it’s not translated is because there’s a decent bit of debate as to what exactly the word means. There is, however, also a lot of agreement on what the term probably means.

    To give you a quick idea, one source I read described it this way:

    “an elevated, royal, administrative or religious acropolis of, specifically, a capital city“

    Let’s break this down.

    First, most scholars agree that it has something to do with the idea of being “elevated”. This is because when we see forms of the word “Ophel” being used in other parts of the Old Testament, it sometimes has a medical sense of “tumors” or “swelling” (see 1 Samuel 5:9 for one example).

    Most people take this to mean that when “Ophel” refers to a place, it’s talking about some sort of “swelling” area, such as a hill or a rounded fortification (or a lot of people say “a fortified hill”). This ties in with the definition above of “acropolis”. An acropolis is a high (elevated), fortified point in a city. You might have heard of the acropolis of Athens. If this theory is right, then an “Ophel” is basically just the Hebrew word for an acropolis.

    Next, the definition above says that it was probably a “royal, administrative, or religious acropolis”. This is because, first of all, an acropolis would generally serve one of those purposes. In other cities, an acropolis would usually be the seat of government (administrative/royal) and would sometimes have the most important temples (religious).

    But, there’s another reason for that part of the definition. According to descriptions of the location of Jerusalem’s Ophel given in the Bible, combined with modern archaeology, we can say quite confidently that the Ophel specifically referred to the ridge between the City of David (where David set up his citadel after conquering the fortress of Zion) and the Temple Mount. Some scholars though think that the term Ophel would have also included the City of David (administrative/royal). Others think it would have included the Temple Mount (religious).

    And some think that “Ophel” would refer to both mountains, plus the ridge between them. That would probably be the closest definition to being an acropolis. But, almost everyone agrees that the short ridge (a couple thousand feet long) between them is the Ophel of Jerusalem. Some archaeologists even found old fortifications there. That lends to the idea of it being a “fortified hill”.

    Now, in the earlier definition, there was one last sticking point. “of, specifically, a capital city”. 

    What does that mean? Weren’t we talking about some place in Jerusalem?

    Well, yes. But, we actually have two other examples of the word “Ophel” being used as a place name. Both times for a place in another capital city.

    The first is in 2 Kings 5:24:

    24 When Gehazi came to the hill, he took the things from the servants and put them away in the house. He sent the men away and they left.

    “Wait a minute”, you’re saying. “Ophel isn’t in that verse”.

    And you’re right. At least, in English. You see, the word translated “hill” in that verse is actually the same Hebrew word for Ophel. It’s just that translators decided to translate it here instead of just writing Ophel like they did in 2 Chronicles 27:3 at the start of this post.

    When you read 2 Kings 5:24, you might imagine that Gehazi meets Naaman’s servants on some random hill out in the country. But remember. We can probably translate that word accurately as “acropolis” or “fortress” or even “tower”. So, this “hill” is probably some sort of elevated place inside of the city of Samaria itself (you can get more context from the rest of 2 Kings 5 to see that they’re in Samaria).

    And, since Samaria was the capital of Israel, just like Jerusalem was the capital of Judah, the definition of “an acropolis of, specifically, a capital city” rings true.

    Plus, we also have a non Biblical, archaeological source that talks about an Ophel in the capital city of Moab, Dibon.

    In the end, Ophel is a somewhat mysterious word that is sometimes translated in your Bible and sometimes just left as “Ophel”. A good translation would probably be “acropolis”. But other good translations could be “hill”, “fort”, “elevated place”, and “fortified hill”.

    Nowadays, it’s a term used by archaeologists to talk about the ridge between the Temple Mount and the City of David.

    If you want a much more in depth and very interesting article about this subject, try https://armstronginstitute.org/907-what-is-the-ophel. I got a lot of my information from them and found it to be very well written.

  • What Is The Septuagint?

    You’ve likely heard about the Septuagint before. But what is it?

    Well, it’s the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

    Back when Alexander the Great was off conquering the known world, he didn’t neglect to seize the region of Israel. In the years following Alexander the Great’s death, his generals set up their own kingdoms.

    One of these kingdoms was the Ptolemaic Kingdom. It controlled much of Egypt and the territory of Israel. But remember, this new kingdom was ruled by Greeks, the descendants of Alexander the Great’s generals and officers.

    So, as this kingdom grew, the Greek language became more and more important in the area, even for the local Jewish population.

    Soon enough, the Greek-speaking Jews had a problem: they wanted to worship God and read the Holy Scriptures, but they couldn’t. The Scriptures were all in Hebrew, not Greek.

    Now, there is a very famous story about what happened next. I’ll explain this story, but just know: this is almost certainly hyperbole or even outright fiction.

    The story goes like this. King of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, son of one of Alexander’s generals, was consulting with the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. This librarian asked Ptolemy to send for some Jews from Jerusalem who could translate the Old Testament (not yet called the Old Testament) from Hebrew into Greek. So, Ptolemy did just that.

    Once the Jews heard the request, they selected from amongst themselves six men from each of the twelve tribes. Then, these 72 men (6 X 12 = 72) headed off to Alexandria in Egypt. When they arrived, Ptolemy separated each of the men into separate rooms and asked each one to translate the Torah into Greek (i.e. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).

    And as the story goes, each of these 72 men completed their work in exactly 72 days, and every single translation was entirely identical.

    It is for this reason that we call the Greek translation of the Old Testament the “Septuagint”, from the Latin word septuaginta, which means “seventy”. This is in reference to the 72 scholars who completed their work in 72 days. (And yes, apparently whoever started calling it the Septuagint just decided to round 72 down to 70 to make it sound nicer).

    Again, that is the story told about what happened. Is it true? Probably not. Is it partly true? Possibly.

    What we do know for sure is that the Septuagint first came about in the 3rd century BC. As far as we can tell, this was the first ever major attempt to translate the Scriptures (or any religious text for that matter) into another language.

    Due to lots of different reasons, the early church relied heavily on the Septuagint instead of the original Hebrew Scriptures. This makes sense because many early Christians were Greek-speaking Gentiles.

    In fact, when Jerome was translating the Bible into Latin in the late 300s AD, it was very surprising that he translated straight from the Hebrew into Latin. Most translators of the time saw the Septuagint as an equally inspired work of God, so they translated from the Greek into Latin.

    Overall, the Septuagint is just the general name for any ancient copy of the Old Testament that is in Greek. It’s got a fun story behind the name (septuaginta = 70). And it was the most common translation of the Old Testament for the first few centuries of the church.

  • What Was The Masoretic Text?

    When you’re reading through your Old Testament, you’ve probably noticed how the footnotes will commonly mention the “Masoretic Text”.

    So, what on earth is the Masoretic Text?

    Well, in the centuries following Christ, there were many Jews who still tried to maintain the Old Testament. These Jews would act as scribes, copying the entire Old Testament line by line.

    Eventually though, a number of scribes decided that they didn’t like certain aspects of the process of copying the Old Testament. So, starting around the 5th century AD they began to try and fix certain flaws they saw in the copying process.

    First of all, they added something called the Masorah. The word Masorah appears to come from two other Hebrew words. The first word, Masoret, means “a bond” or “chains”, while the second Hebrew word, Meser, means “a message”. When combined, we end up with the word Masorah, which could literally mean “a chained message”.

    But, a better translation for Masorah would be “tradition”.

    So, these scribes added the Masorah (tradition) in the 5th century. What does that mean? Basically, the Masorah was a whole bunch of notes made in the margins of the paper or in-between lines of text or at the end of a scroll or book.

    What were these marginal notes? Mostly notes about things like pronunciation, spelling, and statistics (for example, how many times a certain word is used in the whole of the Old Testament).

    Since these scribes added all these Masorah notes, they became known as the Masoretes (or Ba‘aley Hammasora, literally, “Masters of the tradition”). Then, the copies of the Old Testament that they created earned the name of the Masoretic Text, because it was made by the Masoretes.

    But, the Masorah notes weren’t all that the Masoretes added. They also created section, chapter, and verse divisions for the Old Testament. Most of the chapter and verse divisions that they made are still what we use in our English Old Testaments (there are slight differences for certain verses though, especially in the Psalms).

    Plus, the Masoretes added a system of vowels to the Old Testament. Now, this might sound strange to us. But Ancient Hebrew didn’t use vowels in its writing system. They just left vowels out and spelled everything with consonants.

    As you could imagine, this created some confusion over the centuries. So, the Masoretes created a system where they could add vowel sounds to their copies of the Old Testament without messing anything up. To do this, they represented vowel sounds with little dots and lines that they could put underneath letters. This allowed them to show how something was supposed to be pronounced without having to really take up more space on the paper since they just could just fit small dots right under letters in a preexisting manuscript.

    In addition to all this, the Masoretes were famous for their accuracy in making copies. They developed processes where they would count how many letters were supposed to be in each Book of the Old Testament. And they would count to see what the middle verse, middle word, and middle letter were supposed to be. This helped ensure that they could copy every single letter correctly every time.

    Now, they still made mistakes on occasion, but their copies are considered very reliable and accurate. Even so, they didn’t start their work until the 5th century, so they were making copies of copies of copies…

    Because of this combination of great accuracy with the fact that they were stuck with copies that might have already had small mistakes, the Masoretic Text is very useful for making translations of the Old Testament, while still not being a perfect source.

    Throughout your Old Testament, you’ll see footnotes referencing how the Septuagint, Masoretic Text, and Dead Sea Scrolls might disagree with each other on minor issues of wording. It’s all very interesting to study, but we also need to always remember that all of our ancient manuscripts agree on almost every point. And no major point of teaching is ever really at stake when it comes to these issues of which translation is right.

    I hope I didn’t make any of that too confusing. And I hope that you now better understand what the Masoretic Text is.

  • Gilead: The Witness Heap

    When reading through the Bible, have you ever noticed how it just lists off the origins of all sorts of words? Often, we can’t make sense of the explanation without looking at the footnotes. And so, we commonly pass over these things without a second thought. But the history behind the words is fascinating and gives us something to think back on whenever we see that word elsewhere in the Bible.

    One great and detailed example is “Gilead”.

    In Genesis 31:43-49, we read about how Jacob and Laban made peace with each other after Jacob had fled from Laban:

    43 Laban answered Jacob, “The women are my daughters, the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks. All you see is mine. Yet what can I do today about these daughters of mine, or about the children they have borne?44 Come now, let’s make a covenant, you and I, and let it serve as a witness between us.”

    45 So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. 46 He said to his relatives, “Gather some stones.” So they took stones and piled them in a heap, and they ate there by the heap. 47 Laban called it Jegar Sahadutha, and Jacob called it Galeed.

    48 Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me today.” That is why it was called Galeed. 49 It was also called Mizpah, because he said, “May the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other…”

    So, before anything else, the obvious. “Gilead” does not appear in this passage. And that’s true… sort of.

    Back in Genesis 31:23, we learn that this encounter takes place in “the hill country of Gilead”. But, remember, the Book of Genesis probably wasn’t written down until several centuries after this event. So, by the time that it was written down, it appears that the Hebrew pronunciation of the word had changed. Originally, the place was called “Galeed”, but after a few centuries of the language naturally changing, people started pronouncing it as something more along the lines of “Gilead”. And that’s why Genesis tells us that the place is Gilead and then goes on to tell us that they named it Galeed.

    Galeed/Gilead

    Alright, so now that we’ve figured out why this place is called both Galeed and Gilead, we can look at why it’s called these names in the first place.

    The Hebrew word gal means “heap” or “mound”. And the word ‛êd means “witness” or “testimony”. So, Jacob and Laban did indeed name the place after the pillar they set up as a covenant. Or, in other words, they made a heap of rocks to memorialize witness towards the peace they reached with each other.

    Jegar Sahadutha

    So, why on earth did Laban call this place Jegar Sahadutha?

    Well, that’s just Aramaic for “witness heap”, so it’s just a translation of Galeed/Gilead from Hebrew to Aramaic. Maybe Aramaic was the language that Laban was more familiar with?

    Mizpah

    But guess what! There’s another other other name for this place!

    As we see in verse 49, the place was also called Mizpah.

    Mizpah is Hebrew for “watchtower” (which lines up with what Laban says, also in verse 49). Mizpah is an interesting word used throughout The Old Testament for several different place names.

    Gilead, The Man

    To throw just one more wrench into this fascinating word, we can look at Numbers 26:29. Here, we learn that a man named Gilead was a great-great grandson of Jacob.

    Specifically, he was the grandson of Manasseh, who is the patriarch of the tribe of Manasseh.

    We also see a reference to the “Gileadite clan”. Thanks to this and the fact that the half tribe of Manasseh on the east of the Jordan controlled Gilead, it seems that the man Gilead was perhaps in some way named for this region. And, it was his descendants, the Gileadites, who would control the region as a clan in the half tribe of Manasseh.

    That last paragraph might not be entirely correct, but from what I’ve read, that seems to most likely be the case.

    Gal’azu

    During the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Assyrians of course took the region of Gilead.

    When they did so, they also renamed it to the province of Gal’azu.

    Conclusion

    And so, we have seen that the word Gilead is a direct reference to a certain heap of rocks meant to bear witness to a covenant.

    It’s sometimes so easy to just pass over these etymologies that we see in Hebrew. But they are often fascinating and can serve to give us a greater understanding of what the word really means.

  • What Is The Decapolis?

    We see the word “Decapolis” three times in our Bibles (all in The New Testament), Matthew 4:25, Mark 5:20, and Mark 7:31. But, what on earth is it?

    Well, the word comes from the Greek deka, meaning “ten” and the Greek polis, meaning “city”. So, the Decapolis is the region of ten cities.

    Now, from the reading that I’ve done, it seems that we don’t exactly have the best records for what the Decapolis fully was. But, I’ll go ahead and piece it together as best as I can.

    Pretty much, at the time of Christ, the Decapolis referred to a region mostly east of the Jordan River. There were a total of ten cities (although maybe more than ten) that all were part of the Roman Empire but had been granted a large degree of independence.

    Only one city in the Decapolis was west of the Jordan River. Scythopolis. It was apparently one of the richest and most powerful of the cities.

    And while most of the cities were all more or less in the same region, Damascus was located a good deal further north than the rest.

    There are also conflicting reports of which cities were actually part of the Decapolis. Some resources that I saw said there may have been as many as 18 cities in the Decapolis at some points. It did at least originally refer to just ten cities though (as the name deka polis would have us believe).

    But, was “Decapolis” just a description of that general region, or was it the name for a political alliance or confederation between these ten cities? I have got no clue. Some sources say that it might have been an economic alliance between these rich cities. Others speculate that it was an actual political union. And others still guess that it was just a geographical name with no real significance to how the cities worked together.

    Even though we don’t know too much about how the Decapolis region actually operated, we do know a bit more about its history.

    After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, there were a few new Greek Empires across the Middle East. Over the course of the next couple centuries, these empires founded most of the cities that would later become the Decapolis region.

    Then, in 63 BC Pompey the Great (a famous Roman general) came and conquered a decent chunk of the Middle East. By the time that Pompey came around, the Decapolis region (which was still mainly populated and influenced by Greeks) had become conquered by a new Jewish Kingdom.

    So, Pompey came and effectively liberated the Decapolis. He granted several cities (maybe ten in total) a large degree of independence from Rome. They were on the extreme border of the Roman Empire at the time, and the cities were all apparently very happy to be in charge of themselves again. In fact, I read several sources describing them as city-states. They even had permission from the Romans to mint their own coins.

    Since these cities still kept such a strong Greek influence, that can explain one very well known story in The New Testament. When Jesus crossed over the Sea of Galilee into the “region of the Gerasenes” (Mark 5:1), He’d entered the Decapolis. The city of Gerasa (from whom the Gerasenes get their name) was another city-state within the Decapolis. And when Jesus at the end of the encounter with the “Garasene Demoniac” casts the demons into a giant herd of pigs, did you ever wonder why there were pigs? Remember, the Jews considered pigs unclean. Well, they were in a Gentile region, the Decapolis. So, these pagans didn’t care much about Jewish dietary law, and they kept plenty of pigs.

    From what I can tell, we just don’t have too much information about the Decapolis. But, to sum it all up, it seems that it was a region of at least ten autonomous city-states which were established by Pompey the Great in 63 BC. They were mostly Greeks/Gentiles. And they maintained their wealth and semi-independence until around 106 AD.

    I hope that helps.