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Main topic: Working in the RPG Industry!

Shawn shares a panel he had with Jackson DiCarlo at the Running GAGG Gaming Conventions. They discuss working in the RPG industry, sharing the insights of Shawn’s long career and Jackson’s two-year experience as a designer!

Listen or watch:
MasteringDungeons.podbean.com

youtube.com/watch?v=tMx9m6k4Pe…
#DnD #TTRPG


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News: Cosmere’s Apple TV Deal, 5th New WotC Hire, D&D + Fortnite + Hytale, and more!

Listen or watch:
MasteringDungeons.podbean.com

youtube.com/watch?v=3UmvQi9y44…
#DnD #TTRPG #Cosmere


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In the massive 3.5-million-page release of the Jeffrey Epstein records in late January 2026, the internet was quick to scan for any household names. In the chaos of the “DataSet 9” disclosure, the name of Disney CEO Bob Iger surfaced, sparking a firestorm of speculation. However, a closer look at the specific documents—particularly the correspondence indexed around EFTA00096640 and EFTA00096641—reveals a story not of illicit parties or secret islands, but of weaponized whistleblowing and a bitter corporate financial grievance. [...] To the average guest at the Magic Kingdom, a “Dividend Reinvestment Program” sounds like dry corporate jargon. But for the individual writing to the DOJ, it was a battleground. The funds-theft allegation mentioned in the email refers to a long-standing fringe legal theory held by a small group of disgruntled investors. They claimed that Disney’s automated system for reinvesting dividends into additional shares was being manipulated to “skim” fractional shares from long-term holders. While the FBI had previously reviewed these claims and found no evidence of systemic theft or fraud, the author of the EFTA files remained convinced that the Bureau had botched the case. By mentioning Bob Iger—the public face of the company—and burying his name within a dossier provided to the DOJ during the Epstein era, this individual ensured that Iger’s name would eventually be caught in the dragnet of any future document release. It was a “reputational time bomb” designed to force Disney back to the negotiating table or to compel the FBI to take the “dividend theft” case seriously, to avoid public embarrassment. Retaliation Through Association This tactic is a classic example of retaliatory reporting. In the world of high-stakes federal investigations, individuals often try to “link” their personal enemies to high-profile criminals to ensure that their grievances get national attention. In this case, the writer was essentially telling the DOJ: “I will help you close the ‘balance’ of the Epstein case if you help me take down Bob Iger and the Disney Dividend program. [...] It shows a writer who is openly trading information for a personal favor—a favor that had everything to do with Disney’s accounting department and nothing to do with the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein. In the end, the “Wildest Ride in the Wilderness” for Bob Iger wasn’t an island in the Caribbean; it was a disgruntled investor with a very long memory and access to the DOJ’s tip line.

This sounds more interesting than anything else I have seen from the Epstein files. Apparently somebody set up a bomb for Bob Iger over dividents the Walt Disney company has alledgedly been skimming. The individual who made sure Iger's name is in the Epstein files sounds pretty certain that it was so.
Where's my fucking money, Bob!?

Une bonne vidéo de @blast pour comprendre comment il est réellement possible de faire baisser la facture d'électricité.
(Spoiler c'est Macron qui décide et la solution ne fait pas partie de son logiciel)

youtube.com/watch?v=lcrPLGap0Z…


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'The EU runs on Microsoft' – and Uncle Sam could turn it off, claims MEP

theregister.com/2026/02/04/eu_…

Open source gains urgency as Europe reassesses reliance on US tech

<- by me on @theregister

It's important to note this was published by Anthropic, from the Anthropic Fellows Program.

How AI Impacts Skill Formation

toot.kuba-orlik.name/@kuba/116…

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“As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them.”

~ Tench Coxe
(1755-1824) American political economist
An American Citizen, No.2, Sep. 28, 1787

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First 2026 Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase Looks at Switch 1 and 2 Games

Nintendo confirmed that it will hold a Partner Showcase Direct at 6am PT/9am ET/3pm CET on February 5, 2026, and it also noted this will be all about Switch 1 and 2 games. It will only focus on third-party titles from partners like Capcom and Square Enix. Also, it will be a worldwide affair, with English and Japanese ...

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Mission: Lower bills.

Here’s our play:

👉 Cheaper energy sources: we are linking electricity prices to wind and solar instead of expensive gas.
👉 Lower taxes: we are pushing for reduced national taxes on your monthly bills.
👉 Saving by using less: investing in better insulation to stop energy waste.

The big target: we aim to cut household energy bills by 66% by 2035.

✔️ For a Europe where energy is clean, local and, above all, affordable for every citizen.

in reply to European Commission

This is somehow incredibly funny timing considering Finland just had high price electricity peak because windmills froze stuck and there is no sun in winter!

But I do agreee coal&gas needs to go away, we need modern nuclear energy for reliability to back up the unstable sources.

However, we can't just allow companies to generate more waste the more power is available, tech needs to be way more optimized and overall scaled down when it doesn't do anything useful (such as AI).

EU Parliament Debates Digital Fairness Act Consultation newsletter.digitalfairnessact.…
MEPs press the Commission on timelines, child protection, and closing loopholes on dark patterns and design.

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This should be getting more attention in the press:

ibtimes.co.uk/jk-rowling-calle…

Whatever excuse you're using to keep the books on your shelves - you lose.

#Epstein #HarryPotter #Mouldemort #Bookstodon

in reply to Twoowls Elt 🦉 🦉

@twoowls73 It's not a rot that's spread though, is it; it seems to be a function of having a billionaire class *at all*. Those who aren't actively racist, transphobic, sexist, paedophiles, tax dodgers, genocide-enablers or otherwise corrupt (and I include tax "avoidance" in that) can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

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“It is a mindless philosophy that assumes that one's private beliefs have nothing to do with public office. Does it make sense to entrust those who are immoral in private with the power to determine the nation's moral issues and, indeed, its destiny? .... The duplicitous soul of a leader can only make a nation more sophisticated in evil.”

~ Dr. Ravi Zacharias

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Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi extends condolences on passing of Abdul-Karim Nasrallah en.ypagency.net/383986

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There’s A New Nintendo Direct Just In Time For Switch 2’s Momentum To Snowball

The partner showcase will feature third-party partnerships

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🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬


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Daily Verse

"For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, "Abba, Father!" The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him."

-Romans 8:15-17

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Blust and the Bible: The Dragon…


A few weeks ago, a fascinating book appeared: Robert Blust’s posthumously published The Dragon and the Rainbow (open access). A bit unexpectedly for a linguist, Blust had a decades-long obsession with world-wide folk beliefs about rainbows. In investigating them, he came to a surprising conclusion: dragons (as a mythological concept) originated as a way to explain rainbows. While this isn’t so clear in places like Europe and China, there’s an important missing link in the figure of the Rainbow Serpent, a legendary creature that is simultaneously a serpent-like monster and the rainbow itself, well-known from Australia but apparently also widespread in Africa.

It would be good to hear what some anthropologists think about this, but for now I think it’s a persuasive argument and I recommend everyone go read the book.

Having said that, there’s one body of evidence on traditional beliefs on dragons and rainbows that Blust almost completely ignores: the Hebrew Bible. On p. 99, he explicitly states:

Whether the dragon of the ancient Near East had hair-like features is hard
to determine, since the only evidence we have for this creature comes from
limited literary documents written on clay tablets, or from rare sculptured portrayals such as the dragon of the Ishtar Gate in Babylon.


*sad Leviathan noises*

Blust vaguely mentions the rainbow of Genesis 9 in passing, but in this post, I want to consider some potential biblical dragons and see how they compare to his typological list of draconic features (pp. 26–27). We’ll discuss them in increasing order of draconicity.

The Snake


I don’t think the snake from the Garden of Eden story (Gen 3) is very dragon-like, although the book of Revelation might identify it as such. It seems more like the archetypical snake, with the story explaining why snakes don’t have legs, among other things. Still, we can check off the following features:

  • 5) has scales (duh)
  • 16) terrifies women (kind of; eternal enmity between snake and woman’s offspring)
  • 26) has human traits (can speak)

Not a great score.

Flying Fiery Serpents


The word śārāp̄ ‘Seraph’ looks as if it comes from the root ‘to burn’. Accordingly, when it refers to snakes or snake-like creatures, it is often translated as ‘fiery serpent’. Numbers 21 narrates an episode where God sends ‘Seraph snakes’ to punish the Israelites. This plague ends when Moses is instructed to make a bronze or copper Seraph on a pole (later referred to as Nehushtan, maybe a play on ‘snake’ and/or ‘bronze, copper’). Isaiah 6, 14, and 30 also mention winged or flying Seraphim, which are also snake-like.

This kind of Seraph:

  • 4) can fly (according to Isaiah)
  • 5) has scales
  • 11) is colourful/red (copper or bronze)
  • 19) has fiery breath? Not mentioned
  • 25) causes sickness, disease or trouble

If they can fly, they probably count as dragons. But borderline.

Now we come to the dragonest of them all:

Leviathan


Also known as Rahab; the Slippery Serpent; the Dragon (tannīn) that is in the Sea. Like Ugaritic ltn in the Baal epic, Leviathan plays the part of the capital-D Dragon in the widespread myth of the Weather God slaying the Water Dragon. We have quite some information about him, thanks to an entire biblical chapter of dragon description (Job 41). How does he score?

  • 2) is a guardian of springs or other bodies of water (the sea)
  • 5) has scales (explicitly)
  • 9) is opposed to thunder/lightning: only indirectly: Leviathan is opposed (in some texts) to Yʜᴡʜ; Yʜᴡʜ (in some texts, like Psalm 29) is associated with thunder. Without e.g. the Ugaritic connection I don’t think we would get this from the Bible
  • 16) terrifies women: possibly subverted by God’s challenge to Job to turn Leviathan into a pet for his girls
  • 19) has fiery breath (I was surprised to learn this, but it’s in Job 41)
  • 21) causes earthquakes (if seaquakes count)
  • 27) can be personified (has several names, is presented as an individual)

The reason Blust ignores Leviathan may be because he doesn’t fit his core definition of a dragon: a snake-like chimeric monster that combines features of cold-blooded and warm-blooded animals. Leviathan is chimeric, though, or at least monstrous: he has multiple heads (Psalm 74:14, unless this is an intensive plural, ‘great head’; but in the Baal epic, ltn has seven heads) and, possibly, limbs (baddīm).

There is one out-there possibility to make Leviathan a bit more mammalian. It isn’t obvious to me that Behemoth (‘Great Beast’) in Job 40 is distinct from Leviathan. Their descriptions run together without a break:

Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I made you … Can one take it with hooks or pierce its nose with a snare? Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook, or press down its tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope in its nose, or pierce its jaw with a hook?
Job 40:15a,24–41:2 (English versification), NRSV


Also, Behemoth is called “the first (or: chief) of the great acts of God”; as for Leviathan, “On earth it has no equal”.

Taking Behemoth as another name of Leviathan goes against millennia of interpretation, but it gives us:

  • 18) is connected with hoofed mammals (“it eats grass like an ox”)

Probably not worth it.

Even without this farfetched connection, I think Leviathan is dragon enough. An interesting recurring feature of his that does not match broader dragon typology is the mention of his flesh being distributed as food. But I’m not sure what to make of that from a Blustian point of view.

So much for biblical dragons! Next post: biblical rainbows.
#Bible #Genesis #Hebrew #Isaiah #Job #Numbers #Psalms

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Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (III)


Part IV

Alright. Gilead is a spectrum and Og of Bashan isn’t real, he can’t hurt you. Let’s talk about some of the specific places in Bashan. Here’s the map again.
Map of the Hauran. In the west, between the Sea of Galilee/Jordan and the Ruqqad river, the Golan Heights. To the east of the Golan Heights, Jaydur (Iturea) in the north, Nuqrah (Batanea) zigzagging to the southeast, including Daraa, Lajat (Trachonitis) above the eastern part of Nuqrah, and Jabal-Al-Druze (Auranitis) in the east, including Qanawat, As-Suwayda, and Salkhad.Map by Wikimedia user Amitchell125.

Kenath/Nobah


And Nobah went and seized Kenath and its surrounding villages. And he called it Nobah, after himself.

Num 32:42


Kenath is usually identified with Qanawat, in Jabal al-Druze (Roman Auranitis). That’s pretty far northeast, but the name checks out, and we don’t get any other information about Nobah or Kenath. So, OK. As this volcanic field is something of a refuge area, if Kenath/Nobah was really inhabited by Israelites (when?), I wonder whether we’re really dealing with an isolated conquest or maybe the last remnant of broader Israelite settlement in Bashan at some point.

Salchah


Generally identified as Salkhad, which fits as Salchah appears to indicate the easternmost point in Og’s kingdom. Fine.

Argob


Next: we’ve seen a few verses in Deuteronomy 3 that refer to the district of Argob in Bashan, most interestingly:

Jair, son of Manasseh took all the district of Argob, as far as the border (or: territory) of the Geshurites and the Maachatites. And he called them after himself, the Bashan, Havvoth-Jair (the villages of Jair), until this very day.

Deut 3:14


The only other reference is in Kings, in a list of King Solomon’s administrators and their districts:

Ben-Geber in Ramoth-Gilead: to him belonged the villages of Jair, son of Manasseh, which are in the Gilead; to him belonged the district of Argob, which is in the Bashan, sixty big towns, with wall and bronze bolt.

1 Kgs 4:13


Argob is commonly identified as the Lajat, Roman Trachonitis. This seems to be based on the translation as ṭrkwnʾ in Targumei Onqelos and Jonathan. But this seems unlikely to me for two reasons. First, it’s pretty far away; but then, so is Qanawat. But more importantly, the Lajat is a lava field that looks like this:

As Argob may come from a root that also yields a rare Hebrew word for ‘clod’, this is normally taken as a plus for the identification as this seems like a fittingly ‘rocky’ landscape. But it doesn’t look like a great place to maintain sixty big towns. Note the distinct lack of towns on the map of the Hauran, or on Google Maps, or on this 2011 CIA population density map:
Circled: the Lajat, mostly coded as 1 to 5 inhabitants per square kilometre.
Where else could Argob be? Here’s what we know:

  1. It’s consistently called a “district” (חֶבֶל), suggesting it’s a clearly-defined area.
  2. It’s in Bashan.
  3. It contained “sixty large towns”.
  4. It could be administered by someone in Ramoth-Gilead.
  5. According to Deut 3:14, it bordered on or included Geshur and Maacah, but elsewhere that is said about Bashan as a whole (Josh 12:5 = 13:11), which Deuteronomy apparently conflates with Argob; use with caution.

Geshur is somewhere in or near Aram; it’s the homeland of Absalom’s mother, one of David’s wives, who is confusingly also called Maacah. The region of Maacah seems to have been in the same general area; one clue is the place name Abel-Beth-Maacah, in the northwestern bit of the Galilee panhandle, close to Dan. Both names are usually associated with the Golan Heights, with most identifications placing Maacah in the north (and spilling over to the west) and Geshur in the south.

Whether we trust the Geshur and Maacah indication or not, I think the Golan Heights actually make for a much better Argob than the Lajat:

  1. Clearly marked off by Mount Hermon in the north, the Hula Valley and Sea of Galilee in the west, the Yarmuk in the south, and the river Ruqqad in the east; the name Golan itself may mean something like ‘encircled, enclosed (area)’. (Lajat also passes this one.)
  2. It is in Bashan. (Lajat too.)
  3. Due to semi-recent events, the Golan looks underpopulated on the map above, but it is known to have had dozens of ancient and hundreds of modern settlements. “Sixty big towns with wall and bolt” may be an exaggeration, but the Golan is much closer to it than the Lajat.
  4. Ramoth-Gilead was probably a few kilometres south of modern al-Ramtha, on the southwestern edge of Bashan or just in Gilead. The Golan is adjacent to Gilead (2.0 and later); the Lajat is not.
  5. The Golan probably overlaps with Geshur and Maacah; the Lajat probably does not even border them. But use with caution.

The other main candidate for Argob I would consider is the Nuqrah, Roman Batanea, the central and, I believe, most fertile part of Bashan. This is where Ashtaroth and Edrei were located and it probably beats the Golan on the sixty big towns front. It’s also adjacent to Gilead, Geshur, and maybe Maacah. As it’s less of a clearly circumscribed area, though, I guess I’d expect it to just be referred to as Bashan, or for Ashtaroth and Edrei to be mentioned more consistently with regards to Argob (as they are with regards to Bashan as Og’s kingdom). So my money is still on the Golan.

Havvoth-Jair


Jair is a son or descendant of Manasseh, who took a bunch of ḥawwōṯ and named them after himself. The details differ:

textJair, son of…number of townsregion
Num 32:41Manasseh(not mentioned)Gilead?
Deut 3:14Manasseh(not mentioned)Bashan
Josh 13:30(not mentioned)60? or total in Bashan?Bashan
Jdg 10:3-4(a Gileadite)30Gilead
1 Kgs 4:13Manasseh(not mentioned)Gilead
1 Chron 2:22-23Segub, grandson of Machir, son of Manasseh23 (total together with Kenath and surroundings = 60)Gilead

Deut 3 and Josh 13 both conflate Havvoth-Jair with Bashan, the kingdom of Og, as a whole; Deut 3 additionally throws Argob into the mix. Based on the other early attestations (so excluding Chronicles, although it doesn’t contradict it), it seems that Havvoth-Jair was originally placed in Gilead. It’s been suggested that the Deuteronomist conflated it with Argob and Bashan as a whole based on the verse in 1 Kgs 4, maybe based on a copying or reading error: “to him belonged the villages of Jair, son of Manasseh, which are in the Gilead; to him belonged the district of Argob, which is in the Bashan, sixty big towns”. I don’t think we can localize Havvoth-Jair any better than that, other than that it probably wasn’t too far from Ramoth-Gilead either.

Overview


So it looks like we’ve got these Israelite towns and regions in Bashan:

  • Kenath/Nobah: Qanawat, northeastern part of Jabal al-Druze (Num 32, 1 Chron 2)
  • Argob: Golan Heights (1 Kgs 4, Deut 3)
  • Bashan as a whole, the kingdom of Og, from the territory of the Maachatites and Geshurites (Golan, Hula Valley) to Salcha (Salkhad; Deut, Josh, some other references)
  • Havvoth-Jair: originally in Gilead, “reassigned” to Bashan

What stands out again is the apparently secondary nature of the Og tradition and the northward shift of (tribes associated with) Gilead. Can we explain this? If I don’t lose interest, we’ll give it a shot in Part IV.
#Bible #Chronicles #Deuteronomy #Hebrew #Joshua #Kings #Numbers


Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (IV)


Back by personal demand: the conclusion to last summer’s series on Gilead and Bashan (Part I, II, III).

First of all, I’d like to draw your attention to an excellent pair of comments by Yitzchak Dickman. Some corrections based on what Yitzchak wrote and the sources he referred to:

  • Havvoth-Jair most probably refers to the area around Irbid, more or less where I placed Machir before.
  • Rohmer (2020) also places Argob in the Golan (just the northern part in his view) and makes a convincing argument that Bashan only includes the western part of the Hauran. The eastern part was known as… Hauran, but it isn’t mentioned in the Bible (Ezekiel’s Hauran is another region, farther north).
  • The identifications of Kenath with Qanawat and Salchah with Salkhad aren’t so straightforward. Yitzchak mentions the possibility of Kenath referring to al-Karak (al-Sharqi), in Daraa Governorate; Rohmer (2020: 296, 298 = 426) alternatively writes that “following Noth, the majority of contemporary Biblical scholars do not place it in the Hauran, but northwest of Amman” (my translation). Rohmer also points out that while the name Salkhad can be traced back to Nabataean at least (ṣlḥd), this is actually quite different from biblical Salchah (slkh): “only the lam is identical between the two words!” (2020: 290; translation mine).

Here’s a nice map from Rohmer illustrating this updated view:
Imagine Havvoth-Jair between Gilead and the Yarmuk.

So, what’s up with the tribes shifting north and Gilead shifting south?


Yitzchak Dickman also presented an interesting theory involving Judahite expansion into Transjordan in the comments linked above, but I think we may be able to explain the drift by looking at some other, more securely attested conquests in the Iron Age.

  1. In Part I, I argued that Israelite control of the Mishor never extended all the way to the Arnon, but that the area between the Arnon and Wadi al-Hidan was Moabite. In the 840s, King Mesha conquered the rest of the Mishor, taking over pretty much all of the territory of Reuben and at least one Gadite outpost (Ataroth).
  2. In the wars between Israel and Aram (relevant decades: 830s-810s), Hazael of Damascus is said to have conquered all the Israelite lands east of the Jordan during the reign of Jehu (2 Kgs 10:32-33).
  3. Jehoash of Israel (790s-780s) recaptures towns that Hazael had taken from Israel (2 Kgs 13:25). But apparently these were lost under Jehoash’s father Jehoahaz (810s-800s), while Gilead was lost under Jehoahaz’s father Jehu. So does this really refer to the reconquest of Gilead, as suggested (e.g.) here?
  4. Jehoash’s son Jeroboam (roughly 780s-750s) extends Israel to its maximum size. According to Amos (6:13), Israelites of this period boasted of taking Lo-Debar (according to Finkelstein et al. 2011: on the border of northwestern Gilead and southeastern Bashan, at modern al-Husn) and Karnaim, in Bashan proper. If Gilead wasn’t reconquered by Jehoash, then Jeroboam probably took it as well.
  5. Finally, in 733, the Assyrians conquer Gilead and turn it into a province of their empire. In the same year, they conquer Aram-Damascus, which again includes Bashan at this time (apparently the Israelites didn’t hold onto it for long).

Summing up: Israel loses the Mishor (southernmost Israelite Transjordan) and never recovers it; loses, regains, loses Gilead (central Israelite Transjordan); and conquers but then once again loses Bashan (northern Israelite Transjordan). While they end up losing everything, there’s a clear south-to-north shift in Israelite territory over time, while the off-and-on possession of Gilead could account for the blurring of its borders. We can imagine the tribal territories and regional names shifting in a few stages:

Ninth century: Tribal Israelites in northwest Jordan


Status quo before Mesha’s revolt, matching the non-Priestly text of Numbers 32. Reuben is on the Mishor (up to Wadi al-Hidan), Moab south of Wadi al-Hidan, Gad mostly on the east bank of the Jordan between Reuben in the south, Ammon in the east, and the Jabbok in the north. Gilead 1.0 (the highest hilly area north of the western Jabbok IMHO, contra Finkelstein et al.), Machir, Havvoth-Jair and maybe Kenath/Nobah are other distinct tribal regions between the Jabbok (or just south of it) and the Yarmuk. Reconceptualization of all these as Manassite Gilead yield Gilead 2.0. Bashan is not Israelite and therefore not originally mentioned in Numbers.

In the 840s, Moab conquers the Reubenite Mishor. Reuben’s “people become few” (Deut 33:6) and he will “no longer excel” (Gen 49:4).

Eighth century: Transjordan lost and regained, conquest of Bashan


The main terminological development I imagine here is the use of Gilead, the most fertile part of (originally) Israelite Transjordan, as a pars pro toto for all the lost and subsequently regained territory, including that of Gad: Gilead 3.0. The tribal identity of this larger Gilead seems to be more Gadite than Manassite: the loss and recapture may be described as a “trampled” Gad “striking” back (Gen 49:19), or maybe the memory of this tribal expansion is directly attested in the reference to God “enlarging Gad’s domain” (Deut 33:20).

Seventh century and later: Reimagining tribal territories after the Assyrian conquest


After 733, there was no Israelite Transjordan, and after 722 there was no more kingdom of Israel to begin with. What we get in the Deuteronomistic History especially is different combinations of the regions of the Mishor, Gilead (3.0), and Bashan and the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh.

One way to do this is by assigning each of these regions to one (half-)tribe: Reuben in the Mishor, Gad in Gilead, and Manasseh in Bashan. This is what we (mostly) see in Joshua 13.

Alternatively, you can keep the historical memory that Gad was south of the Jabbok and Manasseh was north of it. Since Gilead (3.0) now extends on both sides of the Jabbok, that results in Reuben (which hasn’t been historically prominent for centuries) and Gad sharing the Mishor and Gilead south of the Jabbok, part of Manasseh living in Gilead north of the Jabbok, and another part of Manasseh living in Bashan. This is what we mostly see in Deuteronomy 3.

Finally, you can draw the Mishor into a new, Mega-Gilead (Gilead 4.0), using it to refer to all the originally Israelite lands in Transjordan (but excluding Bashan). This appears to be the usage in the Priestly text of Numbers 32, which repeatedly refers to Gad and Reuben settling in “the cities of Gilead”. The Persian-period or early Hellenistic text of 1 Chron 5 also refers to Reuben’s territory in the Mishor as part of Gilead.

Of these three systems, I’m inclined to see Deut 3’s as the oldest (memory of divided Gilead 3.0), followed by Josh 13 (Gilead : Bashan mapped to Gad : Manasseh), and then the Priestly and Chronicles one (Gilead-Mishor distinction abandoned). As far as I can tell, this development matches mainstream ideas about when each of these texts was written.

There’s a few loose ends that we haven’t discussed (why does Joshua 13 say Manasseh starts at Mahanaim, on the Jabbok? why does 1 Chron 5 talk about Gad living in Bashan?). For now, though, I think this makes good sense of the shifting terms and territories we see in the different texts. And just in case anyone wants to fund a trip to Jordan to go see what things look like on the ground—do let me know.
#Bible #Chronicles #Deuteronomy #Genesis #Hebrew #Joshua #Nabataean #Numbers


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Eastern Roman vs. Byzantine


I always find it a bit jarring to read about Israel/Palestine in the “Byzantine” period. To my mind, Byzantine has strong medieval connotations, a time when the region fell under various Muslim and Crusader states. Hence, I’d be more inclined to talk about the Eastern Roman period. But given the continuity from the Roman Empire to the Eastern Roman Empire to the Byzantine Empire (which never called itself the Byzantine Empire), can we ever hope to draw a sharp line between (Eastern) Roman and Byzantine?

As a non-historian, I’m here to tell you: yes.

Unburdened by too much relevant knowledge, it seems to me that there are at least two big differences between the Late Antique Eastern Roman Empire and the Early Medieval Byzantine Empire.

First, the Byzantine Empire is unapologetically Greek, while Latin titles and the Latin language still played some role in the Eastern Roman Empire (although Greek was certainly dominant).

And second, the map of the Empire goes from something like this:

To something like this:

Except for some short-lived (re)conquests under Justinian I, the big difference is the loss of Egypt and North Africa, the Levant, and much of Armenia to the Islamic conquests.

This also changed the religious make-up of the Empire, as large segments of the Christian population of the lost areas (Copts, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox) followed a form of Miaphysitism (Christ has one nature) as opposed to the official Roman state religion at that time of Chalcedonian Christianity, the forerunner of Eastern Orthodoxy as well as Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
Gold solidus depicting Heraclius and two of his sons
Happily, both developments can be associated with one and the same emperor: Heraclius (r. 610–641 CE). After fighting a devastating war against the Sasanian Persians, Heraclius’ empire suffered a series of crushing defeats to the early Caliphate, the first engagement taking place in 629.

And in the very same year, Heraclius first styled himself as basileus, the title used by Greek and Hellenistic rulers before the Romans and by all Byzantine rulers afterwards, without using other titles that were inherited from the earlier Roman period: kaisar (Latin: Caesar), augoustos or sebastos (Latin: Augustus) and autokratōr (Latin: Imperator).1 This makes for a nice cut-off point for the total dominance of Greek, even though the Latin titles remained in use for some time afterwards.

A couple of unrelated developments similarly co-occurred under one emperor some 250 years earlier. Theodosius I was the last emperor to hold sway over the whole Roman Empire: after his death in 395 CE, the empire was split into East and West, each half being ruled by one of his sons. Administratieve divisions like this had taken place before, but this one was to be permanent and is commonly taken as the beginning of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Gold solidus depicting Theodosius I
Theodosius’ reign also saw an important event in religious history. In 325, the Council of Nicaea had formulated what would become the orthodox doctrine concerning the Trinity. After decades of ongoing struggle with non-Nicene forms of Christianity and holdovers of pre-Christian Roman religions, an edict by Theodosius established this Nicene Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380. From that point on, it would play a paramount role, both in the West, where it contrasted with the non-Nicene Arian Christianity of most invading Germanic peoples, and in the East, where subsequent debates over the nature(s) of Christ would lead to schisms between the Church of the East, the Miaphysite churches, and what would become the Chalcedonian church.

So at two points in time, we have a few political and religious developments going hand in hand. Together, they lend a distinct flavour to these different periods in the history of the Roman Empire(s). Of course, there are several ways to further split up the periodization of the Roman Empire (e.g. before and after the third century) and the Byzantine Empire (pre- and post-Seljuks seems like a big distinction). But as for the Eastern Roman Empire, I think this gives us a pretty well-defined beginning and end point:

Roman EmpireEastern Roman EmpireByzantine Empire
eraClassical Antiquity Late Antiquity Middle Ages
established byOctavian/
Augustus
(r. 27 BCE–14 CE)
Theodosius I
(r. 347–395 CE)
Heraclius
(r. 610–641 CE)
ruled byCaesar, Augustus, Imperatorkaisar, augoustos/
sebastos, autokratōr
basileus
dominant language Latin (Greek)Greek (Latin)Greek
dominant religionRoman paganismNicene ChristianityChalcedonian Christianity
(second half:
Eastern Orthodoxy)

So: “Eastern Roman synagogues”, “Aramaic dialects of the Eastern Roman period”, “Hebrew poetry of Eastern Roman Palestine”… Who’s with me?
A famous emperor from roughly the middle of each period: Marcus Aurelius, Justinian I, and Basil II.

  1. Wikipedia tells me that Heraclius first used basileus together with autokratōr kaisar in a letter from 628, with the more traditional titles first being left out in one from 629. ↩︎


#Greek #history #Latin #Syriac

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Biblicizing the Bronze Age


(This is part joke, part mnemonic; do not take it seriously.)

I had some fun aligning Levantine archeological periods with the Hexateuch (Torah + Joshua) and some possible dates in the prehistory of Hebrew. The Middle Bronze = Patriarchs and especially Late Bronze = Israelites in Egypt alignments are pretty standard, but I like how well the third millennium lined up with Genesis 2–11. Period names and dates are mostly drawn from Greenberg (2019; paywall).

(Late) Chalcolithic, ca 4000-3750: Eden


Low inequality, high standard of living. Good times.
The “Ghassulian Star” fresco from the Chalcolithic site of Teleilat (el-)Ghassul (Jordan).

Early Bronze, ca 3750-2200: the Antediluvian Age

Early Bronze IA, ca 3750


Expulsion from Eden, beginning of history and the Hebrew calendar. Harder, less prosperous times compared to the preceding Chalcolithic. In the east, city-building Cainites of the Middle Uruk Period bring urban civilization to Elam and Upper Mesopotamia. Breakup of Proto-Semitic.
Fragments of Gray Burnished Ware, typical of EB IA.

Early Bronze IB, ca 3300


Birth of Jared. Descent of the Watchers (as per the Book of Enoch) and their teaching of arcane technologies triggers a prosperous golden age. Writing invented.
Reconstructed ground plan of a large Early Bronze IB building at Tel Bet Shean (Israel).

Early Bronze II, ca 3100


Birth of Methuselah (“Man of the Spear”). Armed conflicts(?) cause massive abandonment of EB I villages and a shift to more defensible, walled hilltop settlements.
EB II and III fortifications of Jericho (Israel).

Early Bronze III, ca 2850


Death of Adam. Nephilim build the pyramids. God does not like the establishment of the Akkadian Empire (is he anti-Semitic?) and gives them a 120-year warning for the Flood (Gen 6:3). In the Southern Levant: increasing isolation, inequality, continuing construction of fortifications; cities abandoned between 2500 and 2400.
Fighting gods, heroes, and bull-man hybrids on an Old Akkadian cylinder seal, ca 2300.

Intermediate Bronze, ca 2200-2000: the Flood


4.2-kiloyear event: severe drought(!) triggers collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia. Arpachshad, Shelah, Eber. Southern Levant continues in its late EB post-urban state.
Ain Samiya goblet, found near Ramallah. Something something snakes and rainbows.

Middle Bronze, ca 2000-1550: the Patriarchal Age

Middle Bronze I, ca 2000


Tower of Babel built in the days of Peleg. Completion of the Great Ziggurat of Ur, Etemenniguru, “The House Whose Foundation Creates Terror”, commissioned by Ur-Nammu (Nimrod) ca 2100. Breakup of Proto-Northwest-Semitic.
Ruined facade and access staircase of Etemenniguru, Ur (Iraq).

Middle Bronze II, ca 1800


Birth of Abraham. Beginning of the Amorite Age: Northwest Semitic–speaking dynasties establish themselves from Babylon to the Nile Delta (convenient for travellers from, say, Ur to Haran to Canaan to Egypt). High point of the Levantine city-states. Invention of alphabetic writing?
Artefacts from Amorite Mari (Syria).

Middle Bronze III, ca 1650


Birth of Jacob. Hyksos period in Egypt. Separation from MB II is “largely an artifact of historical interpretation” and “archaeologically elusive” (Greenberg 2019: 181).
Tell el-Yahudiyeh Ware jug, typical style of the MB III Delta and Southern Levant.

Late Bronze, ca 1550-1200: the Sojourn in Egypt

Late Bronze I, ca 1550


Birth of Joseph. New Kingdom of Egypt expels Hyksos and starts to assert itself over Canaan. Breakup of Proto-Canaanite.
Egyptian dagger with the name of Ahmose I, founder of the 18th Dynasty and the New Kingdom.

Late Bronze IIA, ca 1400


Death of Joseph’s generation. Israelites in Egypt grow into a great and mighty people. Egyptian Empire fully controls Canaan. Amarna Letters.
Relief of Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and three of their daughters in that weird-ass art style of his.

Late Bronze IIB, ca 1300


19th Dynasty in Egypt, oppression of the Israelites. Birth of Moses. Egyptian Empire firmly entrenched in Canaan. Texts from Ugarit.
Gold plaque depicting an Egyptian-style goddess from LB Lachish (Israel).

Transitional Bronze-Iron, ca 1200-1000: Exodus, Joshua, Judges


Exodus, desert wanderings, conquest of Canaan, Judges period; Late Bronze Age Collapse. Israelite settlements appear in the highlands of Cis- and Transjordan, Philistines show up on the southern coastal plain. Oldest Biblical Hebrew. The rise and fall of the New Kingdom (1550–1150) together cover 400 years (Gen 15:13).
Collar-rim jar, typical of Israelite highland sites of the TBI.
After the Hexateuch/Bronze Age, things get even less controversial (apart from one big debate): Iron IB (last 150 years of Greenberg’s TBI) is the period of the Judges/very early monarchy; Iron IIA early flourishing of the kingdom of Israel (pick your dynasty); Iron IIB, properly divided monarchy/rise of Aram-Damascus; Iron IIC, Neo-Assyrian period and peak kingdom of Judah. But at that point, the Bronze Age is half a millennium ago. All in all, I’m just glad I’ll be able to annoy people by referring to the EB as the Antediluvian Bronze Age going forward.
#Amorite #archaeology #Bible #Egyptian #Exodus #Genesis #Hebrew #Joshua #ProtoSemitic

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Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (I)


Part II

Part III

Part IV

I’ve been trying to get a grip on the geography of two large-ish areas east of the River Jordan that the Hebrew Bible says were once populated by Israelites: Gilead and Bashan. The boundary between these two matches the modern border between Jordan and Syria pretty well, with Gilead corresponding to part of northwestern Jordan and Bashan to the Syrian region of Hauran. But there’s some issues. The use of Gilead is pretty inconsistent: sometimes it seems to refer to just a small part of the area, not all of the Israelite East Bank. There’s conflicting statements on which tribes lived where. And in the case of Bashan, there’s a special focus on the district of Argob: where’s that?

youtube.com/watch?v=8OsA1CSdgY…

The kind of average, overall picture we get from the canonical bible as a whole isn’t too complicated. Approaching Canaan after their desert wanderings, the Israelites are attacked, first by Sihon, king of the Amorites and then by Og, king of Bashan. The Israelites defeat them and certain tribes and subtribes settle in their lands, divided as follows:

  • Gilead is divided between the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of the tribe of Manasseh.
  • Other clans belonging to the same half tribe of Manasseh get Bashan.
  • Some subregions get conquered by specific individuals, like Jair who names his portion Havvoth-Jair and Kenath, which is conquered by Nobah.

But zooming in on the actual texts, things get more complex. In this Part I post, we’ll mainly be looking at Numbers 32, Deuteronomy 3, and Joshua 13.
Topographic map of Jordan and surroundingsMap for reference, by Wikimedia user Sadalmelik. The river running into the middle of the Dead Sea is Wadi Mujib, the Arnon. The one running into the middle of the Jordan valley is the Zarqa River, the Jabbok. The western part of the Jordanian-Syrian border follows the Yarmuk. The River Jordan runs north to south along the modern kingdom of Jordan’s border, into the Dead Sea.

Gilead: who goes where?


For starters, the different accounts of how the territories of Reuben and Gad relate to each other are hopelessly confusing, if not confused; Yigal Levin gives a much better overview here than I could.

Levin identifies three distributions:

  1. Numbers 32: Reuben gets the northern part of the plateau to the east of the Dead Sea (north of the Arnon), the Mishor, with Gad living both north and south of them (east of the Jordan and east of the Dead Sea/bordered by the Arnon).
  2. Joshua 13: Reuben gets the southern part, most of the Dead Sea coast as far south as the Arnon, and Gad gets the whole east bank of the Jordan (apart from where the Ammonites live) up to the Sea of Galilee.
  3. Joshua 21 (list of Levitical cities): Reuben’s cities haven’t securely been identified but seem to be in the southeastern part, on the desert fringe between the Arnon and the big wadi coming from the north, Wadi al-Hidan;1 Gad gets the east bank of the Jordan, north of the Dead Sea.

After staring at Levin’s maps for a long time, the main disagreement seems to be about who controls the area between the Arnon and Wadi al-Hidan, with the towns of Dibon and Aroer: Gad in Numbers 32 (where they also hold the southwestern town of Ataroth), but Reuben in Joshua 13. Otherwise, there’s a disagreement about the border town and former Amorite capital of Heshbon, but the general picture is the same, with Gad in the north by the Jordan and Reuben in the south by the Dead Sea.

Interestingly, there’s another contender for the area south of Wadi al-Hidan: Moab.

I am Mesha, son of Chemosh[ît], king of Moab, the Dibonite

Omri had taken possession of the land of Madaba … but Chemosh restored it during my days. I built Baal-meon, and I made a reservoir in it; I built Kiriathain. The men of Gad dwelt in the land of Atarot from ancient times, and the king of Israel had built Atarot, but I fought against the city and took it; I killed the entire population.

Chemosh said to me: “Go, take Nebo from Israel!” I went in the night, and I fought there from dawn until noon; I took it and killed everyone

The king of Israel had built Yahaz, and he lived there while fighting against me, but Chemosh drove him out before me

I built Aroer and made the road in the Arnon

I (re)built Beth-Bamoth because it had been destroyed. I (re)built Bezer because it was in ruins.

Translation by André Lemaire


We can divide the places that overlap between the Mesha inscription (ca. 840 BCE) and the biblical accounts of Reuben and Gad’s territories into three categories, based on what Mesha says about them:

  1. Dibon, Aroer, Beth-Bamoth (biblical Bamoth-Baal?) and Bezer seem to be part of Mesha’s domain before he fights Israel: he does not mention conquering them.
  2. (The land of) Madaba (biblical Medaba), seemingly including Baal-Meon and Kiriathaim, is (re)conquered from Israel, as are Nebo and Jahaz.
  3. Ataroth is also conquered, but singled out for its Gadite population.

Of the places in group 1, Beth-Bamoth/Bamoth-Baal has not been identified. If we connect it with Baalei-Bamoth-Arnon in Num 21,2 it would appear to lie on the Arnon. Dibon and Aroer are on the north bank of the Arnon. The location of Bezer has not been identified but most of the biblical mentions specify that it lies “in the desert”, which, like the rest, plausibly places it south/east of Wadi al-Hidan. This is the area where Num 32 and Josh 13 show the most disagreement.3

Of the places in group 2, Medaba, Baal-Meon, Kiriathaim, and Nebo all lie north/west of Wadi al-Hidan. The wonderful Ortsangaben der Bibel suggests Khirbet er-Rumel as the most likely location of Jahaz, which lies on Wadi al-Hidan. These places are never attributed to Gad, only to Reuben.4

Finally, Ataroth (group 3) lies north of Wadi al-Hidan, close to where it joins the Arnon. Both Mesha and Num 32 mention it as belonging to Gad, and it is never attributed to Reuben.

Together with the other places from Num 32 and Josh 13 that have been identified, I think this makes for a geographically plausible division that explains the disagreement between the biblical sources:

  1. At least in the middle of the 9th century, the border of Moab was not the Arnon (Wadi Mujib), but Wadi al-Hidan. Dibon and Aroer were already part of Moab before Mesha’s revolt. This is why the biblical authors don’t know whether to assign this part to Reuben or Gad: it may never have been Israelite in the first place (despite Numbers 21’s very strong insistence that Sihon, the Amorite king of Heshbon, had conquered it from Moab and it was therefore part of Israel’s conquest of Sihon’s kingdom).
  2. The plateau between Wadi al-Hidan and the Dead Sea, the Mishor or Land of Madaba, was occupied by the kingdom of Israel. The Hebrew Bible mostly assigns this to the tribe of Reuben; Mesha doesn’t specify.
  3. The low land by the Jordan and probably also on the Dead Sea coast was held by Gad, with the fortified town of Ataroth as a southern outpost on the Moabite border.

That gives us a satisfactory division of Gilead.

This is Gilead, right?

Where is Gilead?


Most of the story in Num 32 seems to be about Gilead (vv. 1, 26, 29). But then, right after Moses gives the territory in question to Gad and Reuben in v. 33,5 we read:

And the sons of Machir, son of Manasseh, went to Gilead and captured it. And he dispossessed the Amorites that were there. And Moses gave the Gilead to Machir, son of Manasseh, and he settled there. And Jair, son of Manasseh, went and captured their villages, and called them Jair’s Villages (Havvoth-Jair).

Num 32:39-41


(Havvoth-Jair is in Gilead according to Judges 10 and 1 Kgs 4, but in Bashan according to Deuteronomy 3 and Josh 13.)

OK, so Gilead is somewhere else? And Manasseh lives there? About that:

And [Jephthah] passed through the Gilead and Manasseh

Jdg 11:29

Gilead lies in between Ephraim and Manasseh.

Jdg 12:4


Josh 13 seems confused about this as well:

And Moses gave to the tribe of Gad … And their border was Jaazer and all the towns of the Gilead … the Jordan being the border, until the edge of the Sea of Kinnereth, the east bank of the Jordan.

Josh 13:24-27

And Moses gave to half the tribe of the Manassites … And their border was from Mahanaim … and half of the Gilead …

Josh 13:29-31


We also find seemingly contradictory statements right in the same passage in Deuteronomy 3, a more general statement about the division of Transjordan that we haven’t considered yet (Moses is speaking):

At that time, we took the land from the two Amorite kings that were in Transjordan, from the Arnon gorge to Mount Hermon. … All the towns of the Mishor and all the Gilead and all the Bashan, as far as Salcah and Edrei, Og’s royal cities in the Bashan. … At that time we took possession of that land. From Aroer on the Arnon gorge and half of Mount Gilead and its towns I gave to the Reubenites and the Gadites. And the rest of the Gilead and all of the Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to half of the tribe of Manasseh … and to Machir I gave the Gilead. And to the Reubenites and the Gadites I gave from the Gilead until the Arnon gorge, the middle of the gorge being the border, and until the Jabbok gorge, the border of the Ammonites.

Deut 4:8-16


Here, we see a threefold division into the Mishor, the Gilead, and the Bashan. Gilead is split between Reuben/Gad and half of Manasseh, or entirely given to Machir.

Finally, there’s Genesis 31-33, where the patriarch Jacob names a bunch of places in “the hill country of Gilead”: a town of the same name (probably), Mizpah, Mahanaim, Penuel, and Succoth. As far as we can tell, these were all pretty close together, in the hill country north of the Jabbok. In the same region, we later on find the places Jabesh-Gilead and (probably) Ramoth-Gilead.

The contested nature of Gilead is also reflected in tribal genealogy: Gilead is a grandson of Manasseh and a son of Machir according to Num 26:29, 27:1; Josh 17:1,3, but appears as a separate tribe besides Machir in the Song of Deborah, Jdg 5:14,17 (interestingly, neither Manasseh nor Gad is mentioned here). Gilead also appears to be an independent tribe in Jdg 11, the story of Jephthah, and also note Jair (of Havvoth fame) as a Gileadite, not a son of Manasseh, in Jdg 10.

Let’s try to make some sense of this from a diachronic point of view. Map below.

  1. Bible scholars generally believe that the twelve-tribes scheme, with each tribe descending from a son of Jacob, is the endpoint of a long development. From that perspective, the data from Judges look oldest: Gilead isn’t a son of Jacob and doesn’t explicitly descend from one, but it’s a separate tribe nonetheless, distinct from Machir and/or Manasseh. Its territory probably lay in the Gen 31-33 hill country north of the Jabbok, including places like Mizpah (Jephthah’s hometown), Jabesh-Gilead, Ramoth-Gilead, and… Gilead.
  2. There’s a flatter tract of land north of this Gilead 1.0, around modern Irbid. This could be the core area of Machir, later identified as a son of Manasseh. This goes well with Jdg 5, where Machir is praised for participating in a battle near Megiddo and Taanach: not so far away from Machir’s territory as proposed here, but a farther journey for Gilead and Reuben, who are both chastised for not having taken part. It also explains how Jepthah can go from Gilead to Manasseh (Machir) and back again before crossing into Ammonite territory, and how Gilead lies in between Manasseh (Machir), to the north, and Ephraim, to the west.
  3. Gilead then gets recast as a son of Machir (hence grandson of Manasseh, great-grandson of Joseph, great-great-grandson of Jacob) to fit him into the twelve-tribe structure. Machir now formally covers both the flatter northern part and the hillier southern part, everything between the Jabbok and the Yarmuk. As a result, maybe a bit later, Gilead extends to refer to this whole territory, and this Gilead 2.0 is said to have been granted to Machir (Num 32:39-40; Deut 3:15). In Deut 3:14-16, this makes for a clean division of Jair getting Argob in Bashan (north of the Yarmuk), Machir getting Gilead 2.0 (Yarmuk to Jabbok), and Gad and Reuben (maybe not so distinct anymore at this time) getting everything between the Jabbok and the Arnon.
  4. Next, Gilead spreads to the hills south of the Jabbok, which don’t seem like such a different landscape from Gilead 2.0. This Gilead 3.0 probably amounts to everything between Ammon and the Jordan. We now have a threefold distinction of Bashan (east of the Jordan, from Hermon to Sea of Galilee), Gilead (east of the Jordan, from Sea of Galilee to Dead Sea), and the Mishor (east of the Dead Sea as far south as the Arnon). Gilead is split half-and-half between Manasseh in the north and Gad/Reuben in the south (Josh 13:30-31, but see below; Deut 3:12-13).6
  5. Josh 13:24-27 seems to have the same division, but assigns all of Gilead 3.0 to Gad. We can resolve the contradiction within Josh 13 if we see “and half of the Gilead” in v. 31 as a harmonization with Deut 3. That also explains why it comes in such a weird position, interrupting “all the Bashan, all the kingdom of Og, king of the Bashan, and all of Havvoth-Jair, which is in the Bashan, sixty towns” and “and Ashtaroth and Edrei, Og’s royal cities in the Bashan”. Actually, that bit about Havvoth-Jair may also be a harmonization with Deut 3. If so, Josh 13 assigns Bashan to Machir/half of Manasseh, Gilead 3.0 to Gad, and the Mishor to Reuben.
  6. Finally, Num 32 uses Gilead for the land that gets assigned to Gad and Reuben, apparently including the Mishor. Gilead 4.0 then encompasses all the (allegedly) Israelite territory in present-day Jordan, from the Yarmuk to the Arnon. At least, some verses in Num 32 do.

Map:
Orange: Gilead 1.0 (separate tribe). Green: Gilead 2.0 (Machir). Blue: Gilead 3.0 (Machir and Gad/Reuben or Gad). Purple: Gilead 4.0 (Gad and Reuben).
So in combination with what we saw about the borders of Moab in the first section, this suggests the following division as the oldest one we have evidence for (roughly correlated with modern Jordanian governorates because that works pretty OK):

regiontribe/kingdomgovernorate (# on map)
Wadi al-Hidan to ArnonMoabpart of Madaba (8)
Mishor northwest of Wadi al-HidanReuben/Israelpart of Madaba (8)
Jordan and Dead Sea coast south of JabbokGadmostly Balqa (5)
hill country north of JabbokGileadAjloun (2), Jerash (3)
plateau south of YarmukMachirIrbid (1)
headwaters of JabbokAmmonparts of Mafraq (4), Amman (6), Zarqa (7)

Map by Wikimedia user TUBS.
To sum up the diachronic story, we see Gilead creeping a little bit north and then a lot south, Machir/Manasseh creeping a little bit south and then moving north, and Gad expanding north. What’s going on up there? In Part II, we will turn and ascend the road to Bashan to find out.

  1. Apparently also spelled Haydan. I’m using this name for the whole wadi, although the upper parts seem to have different names as well. ↩︎
  2. Either as another variant of the name or as a play on words: ‘the lords of the high places of Arnon’, referring to Bamoth-Baal (= ‘the high places of Baal/the Lord’) on the Arnon. ↩︎
  3. Dibon and Aroer are Gadite in Num 32 but Reubenite in Josh 13. Bamoth-Baal and Bezer are only mentioned as Reubenite (Josh 13 and 21, respectively). ↩︎
  4. Medaba and Nebo in Josh 13, [Beth-]Baal-Meon and Kiriathaim in Num 32 and Josh 13, Jahaz in Josh 13 and 21. ↩︎
  5. And half of Manasseh; probably an addition, because they weren’t part of the discussion so far. But they’re about to show up. ↩︎
  6. I’m split on whether there’s two conflicting descriptions in Deut 3 or just some unclear phrasing. If we want to read the whole chapter as using the same system, we can say it all employs Gilead 3.0. Verses 12-13 state that this was split between (some) Manassites to the north and (some) Gadites/Reubenites to the south. The following verses then clarify that Jair (Manasseh) took Argob/Havvoth-Jair, Machir (Manasseh) took the northern half of Gilead, and Gad and Reuben took the southern half of Gilead and everything else up to the Arnon. ↩︎


#Bible #Deuteronomy #Hebrew #Joshua #Judges #Kings #Moabite #Numbers


Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (IV)


Back by personal demand: the conclusion to last summer’s series on Gilead and Bashan (Part I, II, III).

First of all, I’d like to draw your attention to an excellent pair of comments by Yitzchak Dickman. Some corrections based on what Yitzchak wrote and the sources he referred to:

  • Havvoth-Jair most probably refers to the area around Irbid, more or less where I placed Machir before.
  • Rohmer (2020) also places Argob in the Golan (just the northern part in his view) and makes a convincing argument that Bashan only includes the western part of the Hauran. The eastern part was known as… Hauran, but it isn’t mentioned in the Bible (Ezekiel’s Hauran is another region, farther north).
  • The identifications of Kenath with Qanawat and Salchah with Salkhad aren’t so straightforward. Yitzchak mentions the possibility of Kenath referring to al-Karak (al-Sharqi), in Daraa Governorate; Rohmer (2020: 296, 298 = 426) alternatively writes that “following Noth, the majority of contemporary Biblical scholars do not place it in the Hauran, but northwest of Amman” (my translation). Rohmer also points out that while the name Salkhad can be traced back to Nabataean at least (ṣlḥd), this is actually quite different from biblical Salchah (slkh): “only the lam is identical between the two words!” (2020: 290; translation mine).

Here’s a nice map from Rohmer illustrating this updated view:
Imagine Havvoth-Jair between Gilead and the Yarmuk.

So, what’s up with the tribes shifting north and Gilead shifting south?


Yitzchak Dickman also presented an interesting theory involving Judahite expansion into Transjordan in the comments linked above, but I think we may be able to explain the drift by looking at some other, more securely attested conquests in the Iron Age.

  1. In Part I, I argued that Israelite control of the Mishor never extended all the way to the Arnon, but that the area between the Arnon and Wadi al-Hidan was Moabite. In the 840s, King Mesha conquered the rest of the Mishor, taking over pretty much all of the territory of Reuben and at least one Gadite outpost (Ataroth).
  2. In the wars between Israel and Aram (relevant decades: 830s-810s), Hazael of Damascus is said to have conquered all the Israelite lands east of the Jordan during the reign of Jehu (2 Kgs 10:32-33).
  3. Jehoash of Israel (790s-780s) recaptures towns that Hazael had taken from Israel (2 Kgs 13:25). But apparently these were lost under Jehoash’s father Jehoahaz (810s-800s), while Gilead was lost under Jehoahaz’s father Jehu. So does this really refer to the reconquest of Gilead, as suggested (e.g.) here?
  4. Jehoash’s son Jeroboam (roughly 780s-750s) extends Israel to its maximum size. According to Amos (6:13), Israelites of this period boasted of taking Lo-Debar (according to Finkelstein et al. 2011: on the border of northwestern Gilead and southeastern Bashan, at modern al-Husn) and Karnaim, in Bashan proper. If Gilead wasn’t reconquered by Jehoash, then Jeroboam probably took it as well.
  5. Finally, in 733, the Assyrians conquer Gilead and turn it into a province of their empire. In the same year, they conquer Aram-Damascus, which again includes Bashan at this time (apparently the Israelites didn’t hold onto it for long).

Summing up: Israel loses the Mishor (southernmost Israelite Transjordan) and never recovers it; loses, regains, loses Gilead (central Israelite Transjordan); and conquers but then once again loses Bashan (northern Israelite Transjordan). While they end up losing everything, there’s a clear south-to-north shift in Israelite territory over time, while the off-and-on possession of Gilead could account for the blurring of its borders. We can imagine the tribal territories and regional names shifting in a few stages:

Ninth century: Tribal Israelites in northwest Jordan


Status quo before Mesha’s revolt, matching the non-Priestly text of Numbers 32. Reuben is on the Mishor (up to Wadi al-Hidan), Moab south of Wadi al-Hidan, Gad mostly on the east bank of the Jordan between Reuben in the south, Ammon in the east, and the Jabbok in the north. Gilead 1.0 (the highest hilly area north of the western Jabbok IMHO, contra Finkelstein et al.), Machir, Havvoth-Jair and maybe Kenath/Nobah are other distinct tribal regions between the Jabbok (or just south of it) and the Yarmuk. Reconceptualization of all these as Manassite Gilead yield Gilead 2.0. Bashan is not Israelite and therefore not originally mentioned in Numbers.

In the 840s, Moab conquers the Reubenite Mishor. Reuben’s “people become few” (Deut 33:6) and he will “no longer excel” (Gen 49:4).

Eighth century: Transjordan lost and regained, conquest of Bashan


The main terminological development I imagine here is the use of Gilead, the most fertile part of (originally) Israelite Transjordan, as a pars pro toto for all the lost and subsequently regained territory, including that of Gad: Gilead 3.0. The tribal identity of this larger Gilead seems to be more Gadite than Manassite: the loss and recapture may be described as a “trampled” Gad “striking” back (Gen 49:19), or maybe the memory of this tribal expansion is directly attested in the reference to God “enlarging Gad’s domain” (Deut 33:20).

Seventh century and later: Reimagining tribal territories after the Assyrian conquest


After 733, there was no Israelite Transjordan, and after 722 there was no more kingdom of Israel to begin with. What we get in the Deuteronomistic History especially is different combinations of the regions of the Mishor, Gilead (3.0), and Bashan and the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh.

One way to do this is by assigning each of these regions to one (half-)tribe: Reuben in the Mishor, Gad in Gilead, and Manasseh in Bashan. This is what we (mostly) see in Joshua 13.

Alternatively, you can keep the historical memory that Gad was south of the Jabbok and Manasseh was north of it. Since Gilead (3.0) now extends on both sides of the Jabbok, that results in Reuben (which hasn’t been historically prominent for centuries) and Gad sharing the Mishor and Gilead south of the Jabbok, part of Manasseh living in Gilead north of the Jabbok, and another part of Manasseh living in Bashan. This is what we mostly see in Deuteronomy 3.

Finally, you can draw the Mishor into a new, Mega-Gilead (Gilead 4.0), using it to refer to all the originally Israelite lands in Transjordan (but excluding Bashan). This appears to be the usage in the Priestly text of Numbers 32, which repeatedly refers to Gad and Reuben settling in “the cities of Gilead”. The Persian-period or early Hellenistic text of 1 Chron 5 also refers to Reuben’s territory in the Mishor as part of Gilead.

Of these three systems, I’m inclined to see Deut 3’s as the oldest (memory of divided Gilead 3.0), followed by Josh 13 (Gilead : Bashan mapped to Gad : Manasseh), and then the Priestly and Chronicles one (Gilead-Mishor distinction abandoned). As far as I can tell, this development matches mainstream ideas about when each of these texts was written.

There’s a few loose ends that we haven’t discussed (why does Joshua 13 say Manasseh starts at Mahanaim, on the Jabbok? why does 1 Chron 5 talk about Gad living in Bashan?). For now, though, I think this makes good sense of the shifting terms and territories we see in the different texts. And just in case anyone wants to fund a trip to Jordan to go see what things look like on the ground—do let me know.
#Bible #Chronicles #Deuteronomy #Genesis #Hebrew #Joshua #Nabataean #Numbers



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Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (II)


Part III

Part IV

We’re looking at some issues in the naming of regions east of the Jordan the Bible says were once inhabited by Israelites. Last time, Gilead, in present-day Jordan; now, let’s start looking at Bashan, in present-day Syria (mostly, depending on whom you ask), today known as the Hauran.
Map of the Hauran. In the west, between the Sea of Galilee/Jordan and the Ruqqad river, the Golan Heights. To the east of the Golan Heights, Jaydur (Iturea) in the north, Nuqrah (Batanea) zigzagging to the southeast, including Daraa, Lajat (Trachonitis) above the eastern part of Nuqrah, and Jabal-Al-Druze (Auranitis) in the east, including Qanawat, As-Suwayda, and Salkhad.Map by Wikimedia user Amitchell125.
Everyone agrees that the modern Hauran and ancient Bashan are basically equivalent, and I don’t disagree. (Traditionally, the Golan, Roman Gaulanitis, is also part of the Hauran and Bashan.) But there are a few aspects of the average-canonical “Israelites smite Og, possess Bashan” narrative that I do want to look at in detail. We’re going to have to break this up further, so in this post we’ll stick to the first main point: most conquest of Bashan passages are secondary.

(Most of the ideas in this post are not original to me. I don’t know where I first encountered each of them, but my impression is the majority is pretty mainstream.)

There’s a range of indications that the Israelite defeat of Og, king of Bashan was originally limited to the Deuteronomistic History. Let’s start with a long quote from Deuteronomy (NRSVUE because I’m lazy) for reference and then contrast what we find in D, the hypothetical source underlying most of the book of Deuteronomy, with what we find elsewhere.

2 16 “Just as soon as all the warriors had died off from among the people, 17 the Lord spoke to me, saying,

24 ‘Proceed on your journey and cross the Wadi Arnon. See, I have handed over to you King Sihon the Amorite of Heshbon, and his land. Begin to take possession by engaging him in battle. 25 This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you upon the peoples everywhere under heaven; when they hear report of you, they will tremble and be in anguish because of you.’

32 So when Sihon came out against us, he and all his people for battle at Jahaz, 33 the Lord our God gave him over to us, and we struck him down, along with his offspring and all his people. 34 At that time we captured all his towns, and in each town we utterly destroyed men, women, and children. We left not a single survivor. 35 Only the livestock we kept as spoil for ourselves, as well as the plunder of the towns that we had captured. 36 From Aroer on the edge of the Wadi Arnon (including the town that is in the wadi itself) as far as Gilead, there was no citadel too high for us. The Lord our God gave everything to us.

3 “When we headed up the road to Bashan, King Og of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, for battle at Edrei. 2 The Lord said to me, ‘Do not fear him, for I have handed him over to you, along with his people and his land. Do to him as you did to King Sihon of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon.’ 3 So the Lord our God also handed over to us King Og of Bashan and all his people. We struck him down until not a single survivor was left. 4 At that time we captured all his towns; there was no citadel that we did not take from them: sixty towns, the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. 5 All these were fortress towns with high walls, double gates, and bars, besides a great many villages. 6 And we utterly destroyed them, as we had done to King Sihon of Heshbon, in each city utterly destroying men, women, and children. 7 But all the livestock and the plunder of the towns we kept as spoil for ourselves.

8 “So at that time we took from the two kings of the Amorites the land beyond the Jordan, from the Wadi Arnon to Mount Hermon 9 (the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, while the Amorites call it Senir), 10 all the towns of the tableland, the whole of Gilead, and all of Bashan, as far as Salecah and Edrei, towns of Og’s kingdom in Bashan. 11 (Now only King Og of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. In fact, his bed, an iron bed, can still be seen in Rabbah of the Ammonites. By the common cubit it is nine cubits long and four cubits wide.) 12 As for the land that we took possession of at that time, I gave to the Reubenites and Gadites the territory north of Aroer that is on the edge of the Wadi Arnon, as well as half the hill country of Gilead with its towns, 13 and I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh the rest of Gilead and all of Bashan, Og’s kingdom. (The whole region of Argob: all that portion of Bashan used to be called a land of Rephaim; 14 Jair the Manassite acquired the whole region of Argob as far as the border of the Geshurites and the Maacathites, and he named them—that is, Bashan—after himself, Havvoth-jair, as it is to this day.) 15 To Machir I gave Gilead. 16 And to the Reubenites and the Gadites I gave the territory from Gilead as far as the Wadi Arnon, with the middle of the wadi as a boundary, and up to the Jabbok, the wadi being boundary of the Ammonites; 17 the Arabah also, with the Jordan and its banks, from Chinnereth down to the sea of the Arabah, the Dead Sea, with the lower slopes of Pisgah on the east.


1. In the Pentateuch, only D talks (normally) about the occupation of Bashan


So that’s how Deuteronomy describes the division of Bashan: it goes to Manasseh, as does half (or all?) of Gilead.

As we saw in the last post, Numbers 32 is all about the division of Transjordan. But Bashan goes nearly unmentioned. All we get is (translations are mine unless indicated otherwise):

Then Moses gave them, to the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben and to half of the tribe of Manasseh, son of Joseph, the kingdom of Sihon, king of the Amorites, and the kingdom of Og, king of the Bashan, the country with its towns within [its] borders, the towns of the surrounding countryside.

Num 32:33


This is the first time the tribe of Manasseh or Bashan is even mentioned in this chapter. It’s odd to end a story about two tribes asking for land in Gilead (and/or the Mishor) with two-and-a-half tribes receiving land in Gilead (and/or the Mishor) and Bashan. This reads as a brief harmonization with Deut 3 and Josh 13 and is probably not original to the chapter.

The other place where we might expect mention of Bashan is in Deut 34, the last chapter of the Pentateuch. Moses looks out over the promised land:

Then YHWH showed him all the land: Gilead as far as Dan and all of Naphtali and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh and all the land of Judah, up to the western sea, and the Negev and the plain, the valley of Jericho, the city of date palms, up to Zoar.

Deut 34:1b-3


Gilead! But no Bashan; not umambiguously at least.

This last passage is in Deuteronomy, but is not normally assigned to D; the Neo-Documentarians say it’s J, I think. So: outside D, nobody settles in Bashan (except for Nobah, maybe; more on him later).

2. The Og passage in Numbers 21 is secondary


But we have a defeat of Og passage earlier in Numbers, don’t we? Yes, but (NRSVUE again):

21 21 Then Israel sent messengers to King Sihon of the Amorites, saying, 22 “Let me pass through your land; we will not turn aside into field or vineyard; we will not drink the water of any well; we will go by the King’s Highway until we have passed through your territory.” 23 But Sihon would not allow Israel to pass through his territory. Sihon gathered all his people together and went out against Israel to the wilderness; he came to Jahaz and fought against Israel. 24 Israel put him to the sword and took possession of his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, as far as to the Ammonites, for the boundary of the Ammonites was strong. 25 Israel took all these towns, and Israel settled in all the towns of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all its villages.

33 Then they turned and went up the road to Bashan, and King Og of Bashan came out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. 34 But the Lord said to Moses, “Do not be afraid of him, for I have given him into your hand, with all his people and his land. You shall do to him as you did to King Sihon of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon.” 35 So they killed him, his sons, and all his people, until there was no survivor left, and they took possession of his land.


The thing to note here is how both texts compare to the ones in Deuteronomy 2 and 3. The Og passages are virtually identical, something that the NRSVUE translations don’t bring out so clearly at the beginning (so here are mine):

Num 21Deut 3
וַיִּפְנוּ֙ וַֽיַּעֲל֔וּ דֶּ֖רֶךְ הַבָּשָׁ֑ן וַיֵּצֵ֣א עוֹג֩ מֶֽלֶךְ־הַבָּשָׁ֨ן לִקְרָאתָ֜ם ה֧וּא וְכָל־עַמּ֛וֹ לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה אֶדְרֶֽעִי׃
And they turned and ascended the road to the Bashan. And Og, king of the Bashan, came out to meet them in battle at Edrei, him and all his people.
וַנֵּ֣פֶן וַנַּ֔עַל דֶּ֖רֶךְ הַבָּשָׁ֑ן וַיֵּצֵ֣א עוֹג֩ מֶֽלֶךְ־הַבָּשָׁ֨ן לִקְרָאתֵ֜נוּ ה֧וּא וְכָל־עַמּ֛וֹ לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה אֶדְרֶֽעִי׃
And we turned and ascended the road to the Bashan. And Og, king of the Bashan, came out to meet us in battle at Edrei, him and all his people.
וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהוָ֤ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה֙ אַל־תִּירָ֣א אֹת֔וֹ כִּ֣י בְיָדְךָ֞ נָתַ֧תִּי אֹת֛וֹ וְאֶת־כָּל־עַמּ֖וֹ וְאֶת־אַרְצ֑וֹ וְעָשִׂ֣יתָ לּ֔וֹ כַּאֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשִׂ֗יתָ לְסִיחֹן֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ הָֽאֱמֹרִ֔י אֲשֶׁ֥ר יוֹשֵׁ֖ב בְּחֶשְׁבּֽוֹן׃
And YHWH said to Moses, “Do not fear him. For I give him into your power, him and all his people, and his land. Treat him as you treated Sihon, king of the Amorites, who dwells1 in Heshbon.”
וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהוָ֤ה אֵלַי֙ אַל־תִּירָ֣א אֹת֔וֹ כִּ֣י בְיָדְךָ֞ נָתַ֧תִּי אֹת֛וֹ וְאֶת־כָּל־עַמּ֖וֹ וְאֶת־אַרְצ֑וֹ וְעָשִׂ֣יתָ לּ֔וֹ כַּאֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשִׂ֗יתָ לְסִיחֹן֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ הָֽאֱמֹרִ֔י אֲשֶׁ֥ר יוֹשֵׁ֖ב בְּחֶשְׁבּֽוֹן׃
And YHWH said to me, “Do not fear him. For I give him into your power, him and all his people, and his land. Treat him as you treated Sihon, king of the Amorites, who dwells in Heshbon.”
וַיַּכּ֨וּ אֹת֤וֹ וְאֶת־בָּנָיו֙ וְאֶת־כָּל־עַמּ֔וֹ עַד־בִּלְתִּ֥י הִשְׁאִֽיר־ל֖וֹ שָׂרִ֑יד וַיִּֽירְשׁ֖וּ אֶת־אַרְצֽוֹ׃
And they smote him (and his sons and all his people,) not leaving him any remnant, (and they took possession of his land.)
וַיִּתֵּן֩ יְהוָ֨ה אֱלֹהֵ֜ינוּ בְּיָדֵ֗נוּ גַּ֛ם אֶת־ע֥וֹג מֶֽלֶךְ־הַבָּשָׁ֖ן וְאֶת־כָּל־עַמּ֑וֹ וַנַּכֵּ֕הוּ עַד־בִּלְתִּ֥י הִשְׁאִֽיר־ל֖וֹ שָׂרִֽיד׃
(And YHWH our god gave Og, king of the Bashan, into our power too,) and we smote him, not leaving him any remnant.
נִּלְכֹּ֤ד אֶת־כָּל־עָרָיו֙ בָּעֵ֣ת הַהִ֔וא לֹ֤א הָֽיְתָה֙ קִרְיָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹא־לָקַ֖חְנוּ מֵֽאִתָּ֑ם שִׁשִּׁ֥ים עִיר֙ כָּל־חֶ֣בֶל אַרְגֹּ֔ב מַמְלֶ֥כֶת ע֖וֹג בַּבָּשָֽׁן׃ כָּל־אֵ֜לֶּה עָרִ֧ים בְּצֻר֛וֹת חוֹמָ֥ה גְבֹהָ֖ה דְּלָתַ֣יִם וּבְרִ֑יחַ לְבַ֛ד מֵעָרֵ֥י הַפְּרָזִ֖י הַרְבֵּ֥ה מְאֹֽד׃
We seized all his towns at that time: there was not a village that we did not take from them, sixty towns, all the district of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. All these were fortified towns with a high wall, gates and a bar, apart from the very many towns of the country dwellers.
וַנַּחֲרֵ֣ם אוֹתָ֔ם כַּאֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשִׂ֔ינוּ לְסִיחֹ֖ן מֶ֣לֶךְ חֶשְׁבּ֑וֹן הַחֲרֵם֙ כָּל־עִ֣יר מְתִ֔ם הַנָּשִׁ֖ים וְהַטָּֽף׃
And we purged them as we did to Sihon, the king of Heshbon, purging every town of men, the women, and the children.
וְכָל־הַבְּהֵמָ֛ה וּשְׁלַ֥ל הֶעָרִ֖ים בַּזּ֥וֹנוּ לָֽנוּ׃
But all the animals and the towns’ loot we plundered for ourselves.

By contrast, the Sihon passages are worded very differently—and the one in Deuteronomy closely resembles the following Og passage (see the bolded text), while the one in Numbers does not:

Num 21Deut 2
ק֣וּמוּ סְּע֗וּ וְעִבְרוּ֮ אֶת־נַ֣חַל אַרְנֹן֒ רְאֵ֣ה נָתַ֣תִּי בְ֠יָדְךָ אֶת־סִיחֹ֨ן מֶֽלֶךְ־חֶשְׁבּ֧וֹן הָֽאֱמֹרִ֛י וְאֶת־אַרְצ֖וֹ הָחֵ֣ל רָ֑שׁ וְהִתְגָּ֥ר בּ֖וֹ מִלְחָמָֽה׃
“Come, break up camp and cross the Arnon gorge. See, I give Sihon, the Amorite king of Heshbon into your power; start by taking possession of his land, and provoke him to battle.
הַיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֗ה אָחֵל֙ תֵּ֤ת פַּחְדְּךָ֙ וְיִרְאָ֣תְךָ֔ עַל־פְּנֵי֙ הָֽעַמִּ֔ים תַּ֖חַת כָּל־הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם אֲשֶׁ֤ר יִשְׁמְעוּן֙ שִׁמְעֲךָ֔ וְרָגְז֥וּ וְחָל֖וּ מִפָּנֶֽיךָ׃
“This day, I will start to put the fear and terror of you over the peoples under all of heaven, who will hear rumours of you and tremble and quake before you.”
וַיִּשְׁלַ֤ח יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ מַלְאָכִ֔ים אֶל־סִיחֹ֥ן מֶֽלֶךְ־הָאֱמֹרִ֖י לֵאמֹֽר׃
Then Israel sent messengers to Sihon, king of the Amorites:
וָאֶשְׁלַ֤ח מַלְאָכִים֙ מִמִּדְבַּ֣ר קְדֵמ֔וֹת אֶל־סִיח֖וֹן מֶ֣לֶךְ חֶשְׁבּ֑וֹן דִּבְרֵ֥י שָׁל֖וֹם לֵאמֹֽר׃
And I sent messengers from the wilderness of Kedemoth to Sihon, the king of Heshbon, a message of peace:
אֶעְבְּרָ֣ה בְאַרְצֶ֗ךָ לֹ֤א נִטֶּה֙ בְּשָׂדֶ֣ה וּבְכֶ֔רֶם לֹ֥א נִשְׁתֶּ֖ה מֵ֣י בְאֵ֑ר בְּדֶ֤רֶךְ הַמֶּ֙לֶךְ֙ נֵלֵ֔ךְ עַ֥ד אֲשֶֽׁר־נַעֲבֹ֖ר גְּבֻלֶֽךָ׃
“I would like to cross your land. We will not reach out to any field or vineyard, nor will we drink the water of any well. We will take the King’s Road until we pass out of your territory.”
אֶעְבְּרָ֣ה בְאַרְצֶ֔ךָ בַּדֶּ֥רֶךְ בַּדֶּ֖רֶךְ אֵלֵ֑ךְ לֹ֥א אָס֖וּר יָמִ֥ין וּשְׂמֹֽאול׃ אֹ֣כֶל בַּכֶּ֤סֶף תַּשְׁבִּרֵ֙נִי֙ וְאָכַ֔לְתִּי וּמַ֛יִם בַּכֶּ֥סֶף תִּתֶּן־לִ֖י וְשָׁתִ֑יתִי רַ֖ק אֶעְבְּרָ֥ה בְרַגְלָֽי׃ כַּאֲשֶׁ֨ר עָֽשׂוּ־לִ֜י בְּנֵ֣י עֵשָׂ֗ו הַיֹּֽשְׁבִים֙ בְּשֵׂעִ֔יר וְהַמּ֣וֹאָבִ֔ים הַיֹּשְׁבִ֖ים בְּעָ֑ר עַ֤ד אֲשֶֽׁר־אֶֽעֱבֹר֙ אֶת־הַיַּרְדֵּ֔ן אֶל־הָאָ֕רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ נֹתֵ֥ן לָֽנוּ׃
“I would like to cross your land. I will stick entirely to the road, I will not deviate to the right or the left. You can sell me food for silver so I can eat and give me water for silver so I can drink; I will only pass through by foot, just as the children of Esau did to me, who dwell in Seir, and the Moabites, who dwell in Ar, until I cross the Jordan to the country that YHWH our god is going to give us.”
וְלֹא־נָתַ֨ן סִיחֹ֣ן אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵל֮ עֲבֹ֣ר בִּגְבֻלוֹ֒
But Sihon did not let Israel cross his territory.
וְלֹ֣א אָבָ֗ה סִיחֹן֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ חֶשְׁבּ֔וֹן הַעֲבִרֵ֖נוּ בּ֑וֹ
But Sihon did not allow me to cross it.
כִּֽי־הִקְשָׁה֩ יְהוָ֨ה אֱלֹהֶ֜יךָ אֶת־רוּח֗וֹ וְאִמֵּץ֙ אֶת־לְבָב֔וֹ לְמַ֛עַן תִּתּ֥וֹ בְיָדְךָ֖ כַּיּ֥וֹם הַזֶּֽה׃
For YHWH your god had hardened his spirit and emboldened his mind in order to give him into your power, as it is today.
יֹּ֤אמֶר יְהוָה֙ אֵלַ֔י רְאֵ֗ה הַֽחִלֹּ֙תִי֙ תֵּ֣ת לְפָנֶ֔יךָ אֶת־סִיחֹ֖ן וְאֶת־אַרְצ֑וֹ הָחֵ֣ל רָ֔שׁ לָרֶ֖שֶׁת אֶת־אַרְצֽוֹ׃
And YHWH said to me: “Look, I am starting by putting Sihon and his land before you. Start by taking full possession of his land.”2
וַיֶּאֱסֹ֨ף סִיחֹ֜ן אֶת־כָּל־עַמּ֗וֹ וַיֵּצֵ֞א לִקְרַ֤את יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ הַמִּדְבָּ֔רָה וַיָּבֹ֖א יָ֑הְצָה וַיִּלָּ֖חֶם בְּיִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
Sihon gathered all his people and came out to meet Israel in the wilderness. He reached Jahaz and fought with Israel.
וַיֵּצֵא֩ סִיחֹ֨ן לִקְרָאתֵ֜נוּ ה֧וּא וְכָל־עַמּ֛וֹ לַמִּלְחָמָ֖ה יָֽהְצָה׃
Then Sihon came out to meet us for battle at Jahaz, him and all his people.
וַיַּכֵּ֥הוּ יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל לְפִי־חָ֑רֶב
And Israel put him to the sword.
וַֽיִּתְּנֵ֛הוּ יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ לְפָנֵ֑ינוּ וַנַּ֥ךְ אֹת֛וֹ וְאֶת־בָּנָ֖ו וְאֶת־כָּל־עַמּֽוֹ׃
And YHWH our god put him before us and we smote him and his sons and all his people.
וַנִּלְכֹּ֤ד אֶת־כָּל־עָרָיו֙ בָּעֵ֣ת הַהִ֔וא וַֽנַּחֲרֵם֙ אֶת־כָּל־עִ֣יר מְתִ֔ם וְהַנָּשִׁ֖ים וְהַטָּ֑ף לֹ֥א הִשְׁאַ֖רְנוּ שָׂרִֽיד׃
And we seized all his towns at that time, and we purged every town: men and the women and the children; we left no remnant.
רַ֥ק הַבְּהֵמָ֖ה בָּזַ֣זְנוּ לָ֑נוּ וּשְׁלַ֥ל הֶעָרִ֖ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר לָכָֽדְנוּ׃
Only the animals we plundered for ourselves and the loot of the towns that we seized.
מֵֽעֲרֹעֵ֡ר אֲשֶׁר֩ עַל־שְׂפַת־נַ֨חַל אַרְנֹ֜ן וְהָעִ֨יר אֲשֶׁ֤ר בַּנַּ֙חַל֙ וְעַד־הַגִּלְעָ֔ד לֹ֤א הָֽיְתָה֙ קִרְיָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר שָׂגְבָ֖ה מִמֶּ֑נּוּ אֶת־הַכֹּ֕ל נָתַ֛ן יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ לְפָנֵֽינוּ׃
From Aroer that is on the edge of the Arnon Gorge and the town that is in the gorge as far as Gilead, there was not a village that was too high for us. YHWH our god put everything before us.
וַיִּירַ֨שׁ אֶת־אַרְצ֜וֹ מֵֽאַרְנֹ֗ן עַד־יַבֹּק֙ עַד־בְּנֵ֣י עַמּ֔וֹן כִּ֣י עַ֔ז גְּב֖וּל בְּנֵ֥י עַמּֽוֹן׃
And they took possession of his land from Arnon to Jabbok, as far as the children of Ammon, for strong was the border of the children of Ammon.
רַ֛ק אֶל־אֶ֥רֶץ בְּנֵי־עַמּ֖וֹן לֹ֣א קָרָ֑בְתָּ כָּל־יַ֞ד נַ֤חַל יַבֹּק֙ וְעָרֵ֣י הָהָ֔ר וְכֹ֥ל אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּ֖ה יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ׃
Only the land of the children of Ammon you did not approach, any tributary of the Jabbok Gorge and the towns of the hills, and all that YHWH our god commanded.
וַיִּקַּח֙ יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֵ֥ת כָּל־הֶעָרִ֖ים הָאֵ֑לֶּה וַיֵּ֤שֶׁב יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ בְּכָל־עָרֵ֣י הָֽאֱמֹרִ֔י בְּחֶשְׁבּ֖וֹן וּבְכָל־בְּנֹתֶֽיהָ׃
And Israel took all these cities and Israel settled in all the cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon and all its surrounding towns.

So, Numbers has a Sihon and Og passage that differ considerably in wording (the only close parallel is he came out to meet Israel/them). Deuteronomy has Sihon and Og passages that closely resemble each other. And the Og passage in Numbers matches part of the one in Deuteronomy verbatim (with a person change in the verbs), while the Sihon passages don’t match so closely.3 What does this show?

  1. Numbers 21 originally had a Sihon story, but not an Og story.
  2. Deuteronomy 2-3 retells the Sihon story from Numbers 21 and adds an Og story along the same lines, following D’s own larger narrative, style, and theology.
  3. Someone added an excerpt of Deut 3’s Og passage to Num 21 to harmonize the two texts.

The remaining points should be shorter:

3. The geography doesn’t make sense


This is a supporting argument for Og being secondary to Num 21. In Deuteronomy, God commands Moses to head north to Bashan in order to defeat Og and take his land; that’s part of the plan. In Numbers, the Israelites are just trying to cross the Jordan. Sihon won’t let them pass, attacks them, and is defeated. Then, the Israelites head north to Bashan for no stated reason whatsoever, veering wildly off course. The Og passage has been taken over from Deuteronomy, but without the narrative justification.

4. Og is a mythological figure


Og is a giant, the last of the Rephaim.
Cool thumbnail from YouTube.
Recall the description of his giant bed and Rephaite heritage from Deut 3, quoted above.

We’re not really sure what Rephaite means. In Deuteronomy, the term does seem to refer to some kind of giants. In Genesis 14, they don’t necessarily seem supernatural in any way and just appear as a people apparently inhabiting Bashan, as Chedorlaomer & co. defeat them at Ashteroth-Karnaim; like Edrei, modern Daraa, Ashtaroth (the more usual name) is a historical place in central Bashan/Hauran, Roman Batanea. But one other place where we find Rephaim—well, rpu͗—with both supernatural and Bashanite associations is at Ugarit. The most relevant text is KTU 1.108 (excerpt):4

yšt . rpu͗ . mlk . ʿlm
‘May Rapi’u, King of Eternity, drink’

w yšt [i͗l .] gṯr . w yqr . i͗l yṯb . b ʿṯtrt
‘(and) may [the god,] mighty and noble, drink, the god who sits enthroned in Athtarot’

i͗l . ṯpṭ . b hdrʿy .
‘the god who rules in Hedrei’


It seems likely to me that the figure of Og as a supernatural giant king who rules from Ashtaroth and Edrei in Bashan was inherited from older myths. Either way, Og’s giant status clearly contrasts with that of Sihon, who is just… a guy. He’s an Amorite, he lives in Heshbon, he won some battles, he lost some battles. This discrepancy goes well with a scenario where the two stories have different origins, for instance because the Og story was added to the Sihon story at a later point in time.

Summing up


We’ve seen that in the Pentateuch, a fully integrated narrative of the conquest of Bashan is limited to D. Here, we find a motivation for the Israelites heading north (God said so), a description of the defeat of Og in terms that match the surrounding text, and full inclusion of Bashan in the subsequent division of the conquered lands. In the older tradition(s) that D is basing itself on, the Israelites only met, conquered, and dispossessed Sihon, the Amorite ruler of the Mishor. Og the Bashanite Rephaite giant was only added to the story later on.

Why? Did Bashan become more interesting to Israelite/Judahite authors over time? And what’s up with the recurring references to Argob and Havvoth-Jair, which also seem to change their geography over time? Sounds like we’re going to need a Part III.

  1. I heard a talk, or read a paper, about this weird participle instead of a perfect here. Don’t remember what the solution was. Sounded convincing though. ↩︎
  2. This resumptive repetition suggests that in Deuteronomy, the preceding passage on the message to Sihon was inserted later to match the story in Numbers better. ↩︎
  3. Apart from bits of the message to Sihon passage, which looks secondary in Deuteronomy (see the Note 2). ↩︎
  4. Text and translation adapted from this post by Laura Quick, who doesn’t accept the proposed reading as place names. I would argue that the change of h- to ‘- in what seems like a prosthetic syllable is unproblematic and has a good number of parallels. Moreover, we have no idea what they spoke in Bashan and what sound laws that language may have undergone. ↩︎


#Bible #Deuteronomy #Hebrew #Numbers


Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (IV)


Back by personal demand: the conclusion to last summer’s series on Gilead and Bashan (Part I, II, III).

First of all, I’d like to draw your attention to an excellent pair of comments by Yitzchak Dickman. Some corrections based on what Yitzchak wrote and the sources he referred to:

  • Havvoth-Jair most probably refers to the area around Irbid, more or less where I placed Machir before.
  • Rohmer (2020) also places Argob in the Golan (just the northern part in his view) and makes a convincing argument that Bashan only includes the western part of the Hauran. The eastern part was known as… Hauran, but it isn’t mentioned in the Bible (Ezekiel’s Hauran is another region, farther north).
  • The identifications of Kenath with Qanawat and Salchah with Salkhad aren’t so straightforward. Yitzchak mentions the possibility of Kenath referring to al-Karak (al-Sharqi), in Daraa Governorate; Rohmer (2020: 296, 298 = 426) alternatively writes that “following Noth, the majority of contemporary Biblical scholars do not place it in the Hauran, but northwest of Amman” (my translation). Rohmer also points out that while the name Salkhad can be traced back to Nabataean at least (ṣlḥd), this is actually quite different from biblical Salchah (slkh): “only the lam is identical between the two words!” (2020: 290; translation mine).

Here’s a nice map from Rohmer illustrating this updated view:
Imagine Havvoth-Jair between Gilead and the Yarmuk.

So, what’s up with the tribes shifting north and Gilead shifting south?


Yitzchak Dickman also presented an interesting theory involving Judahite expansion into Transjordan in the comments linked above, but I think we may be able to explain the drift by looking at some other, more securely attested conquests in the Iron Age.

  1. In Part I, I argued that Israelite control of the Mishor never extended all the way to the Arnon, but that the area between the Arnon and Wadi al-Hidan was Moabite. In the 840s, King Mesha conquered the rest of the Mishor, taking over pretty much all of the territory of Reuben and at least one Gadite outpost (Ataroth).
  2. In the wars between Israel and Aram (relevant decades: 830s-810s), Hazael of Damascus is said to have conquered all the Israelite lands east of the Jordan during the reign of Jehu (2 Kgs 10:32-33).
  3. Jehoash of Israel (790s-780s) recaptures towns that Hazael had taken from Israel (2 Kgs 13:25). But apparently these were lost under Jehoash’s father Jehoahaz (810s-800s), while Gilead was lost under Jehoahaz’s father Jehu. So does this really refer to the reconquest of Gilead, as suggested (e.g.) here?
  4. Jehoash’s son Jeroboam (roughly 780s-750s) extends Israel to its maximum size. According to Amos (6:13), Israelites of this period boasted of taking Lo-Debar (according to Finkelstein et al. 2011: on the border of northwestern Gilead and southeastern Bashan, at modern al-Husn) and Karnaim, in Bashan proper. If Gilead wasn’t reconquered by Jehoash, then Jeroboam probably took it as well.
  5. Finally, in 733, the Assyrians conquer Gilead and turn it into a province of their empire. In the same year, they conquer Aram-Damascus, which again includes Bashan at this time (apparently the Israelites didn’t hold onto it for long).

Summing up: Israel loses the Mishor (southernmost Israelite Transjordan) and never recovers it; loses, regains, loses Gilead (central Israelite Transjordan); and conquers but then once again loses Bashan (northern Israelite Transjordan). While they end up losing everything, there’s a clear south-to-north shift in Israelite territory over time, while the off-and-on possession of Gilead could account for the blurring of its borders. We can imagine the tribal territories and regional names shifting in a few stages:

Ninth century: Tribal Israelites in northwest Jordan


Status quo before Mesha’s revolt, matching the non-Priestly text of Numbers 32. Reuben is on the Mishor (up to Wadi al-Hidan), Moab south of Wadi al-Hidan, Gad mostly on the east bank of the Jordan between Reuben in the south, Ammon in the east, and the Jabbok in the north. Gilead 1.0 (the highest hilly area north of the western Jabbok IMHO, contra Finkelstein et al.), Machir, Havvoth-Jair and maybe Kenath/Nobah are other distinct tribal regions between the Jabbok (or just south of it) and the Yarmuk. Reconceptualization of all these as Manassite Gilead yield Gilead 2.0. Bashan is not Israelite and therefore not originally mentioned in Numbers.

In the 840s, Moab conquers the Reubenite Mishor. Reuben’s “people become few” (Deut 33:6) and he will “no longer excel” (Gen 49:4).

Eighth century: Transjordan lost and regained, conquest of Bashan


The main terminological development I imagine here is the use of Gilead, the most fertile part of (originally) Israelite Transjordan, as a pars pro toto for all the lost and subsequently regained territory, including that of Gad: Gilead 3.0. The tribal identity of this larger Gilead seems to be more Gadite than Manassite: the loss and recapture may be described as a “trampled” Gad “striking” back (Gen 49:19), or maybe the memory of this tribal expansion is directly attested in the reference to God “enlarging Gad’s domain” (Deut 33:20).

Seventh century and later: Reimagining tribal territories after the Assyrian conquest


After 733, there was no Israelite Transjordan, and after 722 there was no more kingdom of Israel to begin with. What we get in the Deuteronomistic History especially is different combinations of the regions of the Mishor, Gilead (3.0), and Bashan and the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh.

One way to do this is by assigning each of these regions to one (half-)tribe: Reuben in the Mishor, Gad in Gilead, and Manasseh in Bashan. This is what we (mostly) see in Joshua 13.

Alternatively, you can keep the historical memory that Gad was south of the Jabbok and Manasseh was north of it. Since Gilead (3.0) now extends on both sides of the Jabbok, that results in Reuben (which hasn’t been historically prominent for centuries) and Gad sharing the Mishor and Gilead south of the Jabbok, part of Manasseh living in Gilead north of the Jabbok, and another part of Manasseh living in Bashan. This is what we mostly see in Deuteronomy 3.

Finally, you can draw the Mishor into a new, Mega-Gilead (Gilead 4.0), using it to refer to all the originally Israelite lands in Transjordan (but excluding Bashan). This appears to be the usage in the Priestly text of Numbers 32, which repeatedly refers to Gad and Reuben settling in “the cities of Gilead”. The Persian-period or early Hellenistic text of 1 Chron 5 also refers to Reuben’s territory in the Mishor as part of Gilead.

Of these three systems, I’m inclined to see Deut 3’s as the oldest (memory of divided Gilead 3.0), followed by Josh 13 (Gilead : Bashan mapped to Gad : Manasseh), and then the Priestly and Chronicles one (Gilead-Mishor distinction abandoned). As far as I can tell, this development matches mainstream ideas about when each of these texts was written.

There’s a few loose ends that we haven’t discussed (why does Joshua 13 say Manasseh starts at Mahanaim, on the Jabbok? why does 1 Chron 5 talk about Gad living in Bashan?). For now, though, I think this makes good sense of the shifting terms and territories we see in the different texts. And just in case anyone wants to fund a trip to Jordan to go see what things look like on the ground—do let me know.
#Bible #Chronicles #Deuteronomy #Genesis #Hebrew #Joshua #Nabataean #Numbers



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Who Smote Whom? The geography of Israelite Transjordan (IV)


Back by personal demand: the conclusion to last summer’s series on Gilead and Bashan (Part I, II, III).

First of all, I’d like to draw your attention to an excellent pair of comments by Yitzchak Dickman. Some corrections based on what Yitzchak wrote and the sources he referred to:

  • Havvoth-Jair most probably refers to the area around Irbid, more or less where I placed Machir before.
  • Rohmer (2020) also places Argob in the Golan (just the northern part in his view) and makes a convincing argument that Bashan only includes the western part of the Hauran. The eastern part was known as… Hauran, but it isn’t mentioned in the Bible (Ezekiel’s Hauran is another region, farther north).
  • The identifications of Kenath with Qanawat and Salchah with Salkhad aren’t so straightforward. Yitzchak mentions the possibility of Kenath referring to al-Karak (al-Sharqi), in Daraa Governorate; Rohmer (2020: 296, 298 = 426) alternatively writes that “following Noth, the majority of contemporary Biblical scholars do not place it in the Hauran, but northwest of Amman” (my translation). Rohmer also points out that while the name Salkhad can be traced back to Nabataean at least (ṣlḥd), this is actually quite different from biblical Salchah (slkh): “only the lam is identical between the two words!” (2020: 290; translation mine).

Here’s a nice map from Rohmer illustrating this updated view:
Imagine Havvoth-Jair between Gilead and the Yarmuk.

So, what’s up with the tribes shifting north and Gilead shifting south?


Yitzchak Dickman also presented an interesting theory involving Judahite expansion into Transjordan in the comments linked above, but I think we may be able to explain the drift by looking at some other, more securely attested conquests in the Iron Age.

  1. In Part I, I argued that Israelite control of the Mishor never extended all the way to the Arnon, but that the area between the Arnon and Wadi al-Hidan was Moabite. In the 840s, King Mesha conquered the rest of the Mishor, taking over pretty much all of the territory of Reuben and at least one Gadite outpost (Ataroth).
  2. In the wars between Israel and Aram (relevant decades: 830s-810s), Hazael of Damascus is said to have conquered all the Israelite lands east of the Jordan during the reign of Jehu (2 Kgs 10:32-33).
  3. Jehoash of Israel (790s-780s) recaptures towns that Hazael had taken from Israel (2 Kgs 13:25). But apparently these were lost under Jehoash’s father Jehoahaz (810s-800s), while Gilead was lost under Jehoahaz’s father Jehu. So does this really refer to the reconquest of Gilead, as suggested (e.g.) here?
  4. Jehoash’s son Jeroboam (roughly 780s-750s) extends Israel to its maximum size. According to Amos (6:13), Israelites of this period boasted of taking Lo-Debar (according to Finkelstein et al. 2011: on the border of northwestern Gilead and southeastern Bashan, at modern al-Husn) and Karnaim, in Bashan proper. If Gilead wasn’t reconquered by Jehoash, then Jeroboam probably took it as well.
  5. Finally, in 733, the Assyrians conquer Gilead and turn it into a province of their empire. In the same year, they conquer Aram-Damascus, which again includes Bashan at this time (apparently the Israelites didn’t hold onto it for long).

Summing up: Israel loses the Mishor (southernmost Israelite Transjordan) and never recovers it; loses, regains, loses Gilead (central Israelite Transjordan); and conquers but then once again loses Bashan (northern Israelite Transjordan). While they end up losing everything, there’s a clear south-to-north shift in Israelite territory over time, while the off-and-on possession of Gilead could account for the blurring of its borders. We can imagine the tribal territories and regional names shifting in a few stages:

Ninth century: Tribal Israelites in northwest Jordan


Status quo before Mesha’s revolt, matching the non-Priestly text of Numbers 32. Reuben is on the Mishor (up to Wadi al-Hidan), Moab south of Wadi al-Hidan, Gad mostly on the east bank of the Jordan between Reuben in the south, Ammon in the east, and the Jabbok in the north. Gilead 1.0 (the highest hilly area north of the western Jabbok IMHO, contra Finkelstein et al.), Machir, Havvoth-Jair and maybe Kenath/Nobah are other distinct tribal regions between the Jabbok (or just south of it) and the Yarmuk. Reconceptualization of all these as Manassite Gilead yield Gilead 2.0. Bashan is not Israelite and therefore not originally mentioned in Numbers.

In the 840s, Moab conquers the Reubenite Mishor. Reuben’s “people become few” (Deut 33:6) and he will “no longer excel” (Gen 49:4).

Eighth century: Transjordan lost and regained, conquest of Bashan


The main terminological development I imagine here is the use of Gilead, the most fertile part of (originally) Israelite Transjordan, as a pars pro toto for all the lost and subsequently regained territory, including that of Gad: Gilead 3.0. The tribal identity of this larger Gilead seems to be more Gadite than Manassite: the loss and recapture may be described as a “trampled” Gad “striking” back (Gen 49:19), or maybe the memory of this tribal expansion is directly attested in the reference to God “enlarging Gad’s domain” (Deut 33:20).

Seventh century and later: Reimagining tribal territories after the Assyrian conquest


After 733, there was no Israelite Transjordan, and after 722 there was no more kingdom of Israel to begin with. What we get in the Deuteronomistic History especially is different combinations of the regions of the Mishor, Gilead (3.0), and Bashan and the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh.

One way to do this is by assigning each of these regions to one (half-)tribe: Reuben in the Mishor, Gad in Gilead, and Manasseh in Bashan. This is what we (mostly) see in Joshua 13.

Alternatively, you can keep the historical memory that Gad was south of the Jabbok and Manasseh was north of it. Since Gilead (3.0) now extends on both sides of the Jabbok, that results in Reuben (which hasn’t been historically prominent for centuries) and Gad sharing the Mishor and Gilead south of the Jabbok, part of Manasseh living in Gilead north of the Jabbok, and another part of Manasseh living in Bashan. This is what we mostly see in Deuteronomy 3.

Finally, you can draw the Mishor into a new, Mega-Gilead (Gilead 4.0), using it to refer to all the originally Israelite lands in Transjordan (but excluding Bashan). This appears to be the usage in the Priestly text of Numbers 32, which repeatedly refers to Gad and Reuben settling in “the cities of Gilead”. The Persian-period or early Hellenistic text of 1 Chron 5 also refers to Reuben’s territory in the Mishor as part of Gilead.

Of these three systems, I’m inclined to see Deut 3’s as the oldest (memory of divided Gilead 3.0), followed by Josh 13 (Gilead : Bashan mapped to Gad : Manasseh), and then the Priestly and Chronicles one (Gilead-Mishor distinction abandoned). As far as I can tell, this development matches mainstream ideas about when each of these texts was written.

There’s a few loose ends that we haven’t discussed (why does Joshua 13 say Manasseh starts at Mahanaim, on the Jabbok? why does 1 Chron 5 talk about Gad living in Bashan?). For now, though, I think this makes good sense of the shifting terms and territories we see in the different texts. And just in case anyone wants to fund a trip to Jordan to go see what things look like on the ground—do let me know.
#Bible #Chronicles #Deuteronomy #Genesis #Hebrew #Joshua #Nabataean #Numbers

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The end of Antiquity


It’s becoming apparent that I have an above-average interest in oversimplified schemes of historical periodization. Recently, it’s been on overdrive, kicked off by a pretty practical question. It would be convenient if I could tell a couple of students in a course I’m teaching soon that the Nabataean script is from Classical Antiquity, while the Nabataeo-Arabic and Paleo-Arabic scripts are from Late Antiquity. Are they?

The issue here is “Late Antiquity”. As we know, the idea of the Middle Ages is that they’re in between (Classical) Antiquity, traditionally held to end with the deposition of the last Western Roman emperor in 476, and the Modern period or specifically the Renaissance, the rebirth of Classical culture and learning. Historians have put forward the concept of Late Antiquity to point out that 476 is a random-ass watershed and that the centuries on both sides of it resemble each other a lot, more than they do their more distant Ancient predecessors and Medieval successors. There’s no clear break from an obviously Ancient fifth century (up to 476) and an obviously Medieval world right after it. Late Antiquity is supposed to emphasize the gradual transformation from the Roman Empire to Early Medieval Europe (and the same in the Near/Middle East, I guess). The real Middle Ages then start sometime in the eighth century, probably the second half, when we’ve got Charlemagne in Western Europe and Abbasids in the Middle East—good Medieval stuff.

The problem I’ve been running into is that both schemes kind of suck to me. The late fifth and sixth centuries feel decidedly un-Medieval in many ways, with Roman generals fighting barbarian tribes in Italy and Africa and Spain and so on, while the seventh and early eighth don’t have all that much Antiquity left in them. Especially the seventh century feels like a fish nor fowl situation: so much is changing all over the place at the same time.

So, after long but not necessarily thorough consideration, I’ve tentatively reached the following, vibes-based scheme, which splits Late Antiquity up into two or three different periods. I give some of the main characteristics of each period so you can see if they pass the vibe check for you as well. Cut-off dates are rounded for convenience.

  • 30 BCE–200 CE: Early Roman Empire. Pax Romana, most of the time. Julio-Claudian, Flavian, Nerva-Antonine dynasties. Gladiator is shot. Paganism. Stoic philosophers. Jewish revolts. Transitions from Second Temple Judaism to early Rabbinic Judaism (Mishnah codified ca. 200) and early Christianity. Parthians.
  • 200–400: Middle Roman Empire. Constant shifts in governance type: militaristic soap opera dynasty (Severans), Crisis of the Third Century, Tetrarchy, back to single emperors to co-emperors to single emperors. Finally, definitive split into East and West. Rome (the city) replaced as capital by Milan and Nicomedia/Constantinople early on in this period. Massive expansion of Roman citizenship (Constitutio Antoniniana). Christianity goes from proscribed to persecuted to tolerated to state religion. Fights over the Trinity. Neoplatonist philosophers. Both Talmuds mostly written, Palestinian Talmud redacted. Sasanian Persians.
  • 400-600: Late Roman Empire. Huns! Goths! Migration Period more generally. Bad times for the Romans, most of the time. Western capital moved to Ravenna. Western Empire breaks up into Germanic-ruled kingdoms. Transition from de facto Germanic shogunate to a de jure Germanic kingdom in Italy means no more Western “Emperors”. “Last of the Romans” figures like Aetius, Belisarius, and Boethius both before and after 476. Towards the end of this period, Lombards and Pannonian Avars play at Ostrogoths and Huns 2.0. Fights over Christology. Neoplatonist academies. Babylonian Talmud completed and redacted, still in Sasanian Persia.
  • 600-720: Nascent Middle Ages. End of Justinian’s dynasty. Islam! Lombards and Avars fully entrenched in Italy and Pannonia, respectively. Slavic and early Turkic expansions. Pippinids. Last known act of the Roman Senate in 603. Gregory I “the Great”, first Pope with a monastic background, one of the last from a Roman senatorial family. Visigoths, Anglo-Saxons, Lombards, and remaining pagan and Arian Franks convert to Catholicism. First Geonim. Apocalyptic war between the baby Byzantine Empire and Sasanian Persia followed by Islamic conquest of (large parts of) both of them.
  • 720-1000: Early Middle Ages. 720ish as cutoff date: early Islamic conquests run out of steam (failed siege of Constantinople 717-18; conventional start of Reconquista in 722; Battle of Tours 732). Introduction of Arabic as chancery language and widespread conversion in newly Islamic territories. Charles Martel consolidates power in soon-to-be Carolingian Francia. Isaurian dynasty in Byzantium, Iconoclasm. Byzantine emperors stop using the nomen Flavius, putting an end to Roman naming conventions. Avars settle down. Pope Gregory II distances Rome from Byzantines; arrangement with Liutprand, Lombard king of Italy, gives rise to Papal State. Bede, the “first medieval scholar”. Old Irish, Old English (in Latin script).

Enough significant events cluster around 600 and 720 that I think it makes sense to take these as big cutoff points. We’ve got enough Ancient things going on up to 600 and Medieval things after 720 that we can say that Antiquity ended around 600 and the Middle Ages proper started around 720. The intermediate long seventh century could go either way, but it feels more like everything is being put into place for the Middle Ages than that there is so much lingering Antiquity being cleaned up. So I’m going with Nascent Middle Ages to reflect that.
The Harran Inscription, Paleo-Arabic and Greek, from 562.
That places Nabataean (Early Roman Empire), Nabataeo-Arabic (Middle Roman Empire), and Paleo-Arabic (Late Roman Empire) scripts in Antiquity and the unhyphenated Arabic one in the (Nascent) Middle Ages. Something I can work with.

Happy New Year!
#Arabic #history #Nabataean

Allez, cette fois c'est les Codes Rousseau (pour le permis de conduire) qui ont fuité.

Les catégories de données identifiées comme ayant été potentiellement concernées :

Données d’état civil (nom, sexe, date de naissance)
Coordonnées (adresse postale, adresse électronique, numéro de téléphone)
Photographie d’identité
Identifiant officiel lié au permis de conduire (numéro NEPH), ainsi que la date d’enregistrement associée
Données relatives à l’obtention de l’ASR (ASR, ASR1, ASR2)
Signature

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Techbro stance: "Regulating AI is hindering innovation."

The purpose of regulation is to protect humans from harm, support wellbeing and promote societal sustainability.

So the techbro stance is "I can't invent new stuff if I can't fuck with people's lives and health."

Except that's not innovation, that's abuse.

Politicians and media really need to start understanding the difference.

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World Report 2026: Ελλάδα

hrw.org/el/world-report/2026/c…

>Η κατάσταση του κράτους δικαίου επιδεινώθηκε στην Ελλάδα λόγω ενεργειών της κυβέρνησης που υπονομεύουν τους δημοκρατικούς θεσμούς και παραβιάζουν τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα...

The Corry Doctorow @pluralistic «Reverse Centaur» ( theguardian.com/us-news/ng-int… )
... is *alive* !!
(last sentence to be read in Dr Frankenstein voice)

#ai #ia
#NightmareOnLLMStreet
#Noai
#Capitalism
#Marketing
#ByTheWayIfAnyoneHereIsInMarketingOrAdvertisingKillYourself


This is the most dystopian thing I've seen all week, and I'm living in 2026 America so that's *saying something*

rentahuman.ai/


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Lol "Pootin" is in fact one of the very few high and migthy who DIDN'T get compromised in the Epstein files. That didn't go down well with the British tabloids.

#Epstein #MSM #Journalism

consortiumnews.com/2026/02/03/…

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wowt.com/2026/01/30/mother-ups…

FREMONT, Neb. (WOWT) - The mother of a Fremont High School student who was struck by an SUV during a student protest said she is angry with school officials and believes they should have prevented the demonstration.

The student was hit by a red SUV while participating in an anti-ICE protest outside the school. She is now recovering at home with bumps and bruises.

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Am 5.2. präsentiert und diskutiert @matthimon eine Recherche zum Einsatz von 3D-Animationen durch das israelische Militär, die vom +972 Magazine, The Ferret, SRF und dem Forschungskollektiv Viewfinder veröffentlicht wurde. Sie befasst sich auch damit, wie solche »Illustrationen« als vermeintliche Beweise benutzt werden. Dabei soll ein besonderes Augenmerk darauf gelegt werden, wie diese Bilder in internationalen Medien zirkulieren. nd-aktuell.de/termine/92920.ht…

thinking of housing shortage in terms of raw numbers of homes is just stupid, because homes aren’t fungible. scatter 40 million new homes across the tundra of Alaska and you’ll do nothing to address housing miseries. build a neighborhood 50,000 people are excited to live in and you’ll do a lot more. washingtonpost.com/business/20…
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in reply to Steve Randy Waldman

There is no doubt that this is true, as there are many cities in the US with large numbers of abandoned houses that nobody wants.
in fact there are thousands of vacant houses in the US that can be bought for under 10k. Of course they need about 50k worth of work to be livable, but even so, it's very affordable housing, just in spots were not enough people want to live.

#jamescameron #dupersdelight 😮
youtube.com/watch?v=uH-gaQseC0…
damn.
did you see it too? that smirk? he knows he's peddling lies, misleads, deceptions...

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VG247 just posted:

Nioh 3 review - Team Ninja’s most accomplished action game, and the series’ most accessible

The moment Nioh 3 was revealed as Team Ninja’s next project, it immediately jumped to the top of my most anticipated games of 2026. That excitement was dampened somewhat when the studio revealed the game’s “open field” level design. I am very much over open-world games, but I was particularly worried that we ...

vg247.com/nioh-3-review-pc

#gamingNews #VG247

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x.com/crimeunmasked/status/201…

👀


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non stop #heart #attacks since the lethal injections were forced onto the public by the #WHO
#vaccinescam
Recent Cardiac Events Amongst Sports People
A quick search to see if the trend goes on:

12 December 2025 - Ex-Chelsea star Oscar, 34, ‘to retire from football’ as heart condition identified following training ground collapse
thesun.co.uk/sport/37619...rem…

9 January 2026 - Oregon high school football players save coach’s life with CPR, AED after cardiac arrest
investigatetv.com/2026/0...ard…

3 years after suffering cardiac arrest, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin continues CPR awareness campaign
livenowfox.com/news/dama...-cp…

14 January 2026 - Football Coach's Heart Stops While Playing Pickleball. Off-Duty Firefighter Rushes to Help After Seeing His Collapse
people.com/football-coachs-h..…

13 December 2025 - High school basketball referee collapses, dies during game at Monrovia
eu.indystar.com/story/sports..…

1 December 2025 - 28-year-old ran 5 km for workout, yet nearly died of a heart attack
economictimes.indiatimes.com..…

27 December 2025 - UAE: Indian student, 17, who died of cardiac arrest was footballer with no medical history of heart trouble
gulfnews.com/uae/emergencies..…

19 January 2026 - Kali Muscle hospitalized after sudden gym collapse as bodybu ..
Kali Muscle hospitalized after sudden gym collapse
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/..…

17 January 2026 - Edoardo Bove agrees contract termination with Roma after heart scare
rfi.fr/en/sports/2026011...er-…

Digit reshared this.

youtube.com/watch?v=IL8mj-49pP…
#eff #southafrica #apartheid #israel #america #africa #meddlers #notthejews #fakejews #dupes #empire #progress #society #rejectwhatamericaisdoing #defiance #notgoingtobeintimidated #goodspeech #BigBully #plunderers #BigBaron #poverty

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»I made 20 #GDPR data deletion requests in the past year. 2 complied immediately. 6 complied after I filed complaints with data protection offices. 12 still haven't. The regulation exists, the enforcement doesn't.«

nikolak.com/gdpr-failure/

#privacy #EU

Hoy es el aniversario de la Huelga de La Canadiense, huelga que comenzó en una empresa eléctrica barcelonesa y se extendió rápidamente a otras empresas eléctricas y otros sectores que se solidarizaron con la lucha encabezada por la CNT.

A consecuencia de esta huelga se promulgó la jornada de 8 horas en abril de ese mismo año.

Los derechos se conquistan y hay que defenderlos.

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IGN just posted:

Nintendo Acknowledges Switch 2 Sales Have Been 'Slightly Weaker' Than Expected Outside Japan

Nintendo has discussed the fact that Switch 2 hardware sales were lower than expected outside Japan towards the end of 2025.

ign.com/articles/nintendo-ackn…

#gamingNews #IGN

Sheikh Qassem, addressing the so‑called champions of sovereignty: Come, let us work on the principles of honor and sovereignty, ending the aggression, withdrawing from the occupied territories, freeing the detainees, and reconstruction. english.alahednews.com.lb/fast…

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VGC just posted:

A Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase has been officially announced for this week

The show will focus on Switch and Switch 2 games from third-party developers

videogameschronicle.com/news/a…

#gamingNews #VGC

You know, I never really thought about it but I'm pretty sure the way I use a keyboard would be considered "wrong" by some computer teachers.
I pretty much exclusively use my index fingers to type. Only exception is the Shift key where I use my pinkie finger. :zt_think:
I think one teacher actually tried to get me to use all of my fingers but gave up and just let me continue typing the way I had been.

NSFW 18+ Nudity

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Que se passera-t-il lorsque Trump exigera la clôture de l'affaire Epstein ?!

Il a déclaré qu'elle n'avait rien révélé à son sujet et qu'il s'agissait d'un « complot » ourdi contre lui par Epstein et d'autres, ajoutant : « Mais je pense qu'il est temps maintenant, peut-être, pour le pays de se tourner vers d'autres problèmes, tels que la santé ou tout autre sujet qui préoccupe la population. »

L'orateur ici est une personne faible et confuse, et non le tyran Trump, ce qui signifie que les documents le condamnent d'une manière ou d'une autre.

Mais le plus important, c'est que sa peur dépasse la simple condamnation personnelle pour s'étendre à la perturbation de son projet, car elle condamne les entités sionistes auxquelles il est allié, et qui sont elles-mêmes alliées aux « évangéliques », qui constituent ce qui reste de ceux qui se sont rassemblés autour de lui… bien sûr, au nom de leurs mythes religieux et de leurs tendances racistes.

Son appel restera lettre morte, car l'enjeu est trop important pour être ignoré par un appel humiliant, voire par une nouvelle guerre.

At 12 ET today me and Jason are doing AMA on the main technology subreddit about the tech ICE is using, the nationwide network of AI Flock cameras around the U.S., and the state of surveillance in general. Get your questions in before then: reddit.com/r/technology/commen…

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