Re: Babel in the east or not?

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)

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