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Re: Babel in the east or not?

From:Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
Date:Sunday, December 20, 1998, 4:55
On Sat, 19 Dec 1998 19:10:33 -0500 Sally Caves <scaves@...>
writes:
>On Sat, 19 Dec 1998, Steg Belsky wrote: >> But it's *not* "to" - it says *from*, explicitly! >> _vayehi benas`am MI-qedem_. >> MI- = from >> It's as simple as that. I don't know from where all these >>translations came up with "to". >> If it was "to qedem", it would say _leqedem_, _laqedem_, or >>_qeidma_. But definitely *not* _miqedem_. >> -Stephen (Steg)
>Hmmm. Well, now I'm cast into doubt. Wasn't Babel associated with >Babylon at the time of the writing of Genesis? Wasn't the Pentateuch, >according to the sources I've consulted, set down during the >Babylonian >Captivity? Shinar: the plain in the Tigris-Euphrates basin. Ancient >Babylon is sort of in the middle there. Where are these people going >or >coming in relation to what contested site--to the writers of Genesis?
>Sally
Babel and Babylon are the same place - "Bavel" in Hebrew. About where the people migrating to Shin`ar were coming from, that's another matter: The only place i myself have seen _miqedem_ translated as something other than "from the east" is in Onqelos's translation/commentary, dating from the first century CE, where he explains it in Aramaic as _beqadmeita_, "in the east" (which still is nothing like "to" the east). In his opinion, it seems that the Torah was describing it from the point of view of the Israelites - Bavel is eastwards from Egypt, the Sinai, and the area of Canaan, so of course anyone arriving there would be traveling "in the east". Rav Sa`adya Gaon (who lived in pre-medieval Babylonia) just 'translated' it from poetic terms into everyday terms: "miqedem = min hamizrahh" ( = from the east). He doesn't mention where they were coming from. Rav Moshe ben Nahhman (Nachmanides) explains [quoting Rav Avraham Ibn `Ezra] that "Araratt (where the ark landed) is in the east....Noahh when he came out of the ark, him and his descendents settled in that area, and when they became numerous they migrated to the valley (Shin`ar)". The Mahara"m explains _qedem_ with it's secondary meaning, "ancient". The root QDM is also used for "preceding, before". He explains _nas`am miqedem_ as "_nas`u miqadmono shel `olam_" - "they left He who preceded the world", as an introduction that they did bad things (that whole tower bit). Rav Shlomo Yitzhhaqi (Rashi, from early-medieval France) connects _qedem_ with _har qedem_ ("the mountain of qedem") that appeared a few verses earlier: "and their settlement was from Meisha' towards Sefarah, Har haQedem" (10:30). So, they left this place called "qedem" and went to shin`ar. But he doesn't say whethere he thinks "Har haQedem" is a description ("mountain of the east") or just the name of the place. Rav David Qimkhi says simply "[_miqedem_ means] from the east", and then goes into somewhat greater detail: "because that was where the settlement was at the beginning, and there Humanity ("Adam") was created, because Gan `Eiden was in the east, and Noahh when he left the ark went to the place where he originally lived, or the ark was there when he left it. Also, the mountains of Araratt are in the east, and they [the people who built Bavel] in their agreement left that east and came *towards the west* until Bavel. So there's a "short" list of the explanations of the commentaries that i could find. As you can see, not one of them says that the migration was towards the east. Also, since i mentioned the second, "time" meaning of QDM, i'll just mention that in my Rokbeigalmki translation of the Babel text i translated it with a note, as: " nga'k~edem (cha~razd-a tyekt-a) " = "from qedem (the east, the ancient times)". -Stephen (Steg) ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]