Eliezer

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semiopen
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Eliezer

Post by semiopen »

We just read Parshah Chayei_Sarah where Genesis 24 deals with Abraham's servant going to find a wife for Isaac.

The name of the servant is never mentioned. However, it is a decent guess that it was Eliezer -
The Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer identified the unnamed steward of Abraham’s household in Genesis 24:2 with Abraham’s servant Eliezer introduced in Genesis 15:2. The Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer told that when Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees, all the magnates of the kingdom gave him gifts, and Nimrod gave Abraham Nimrod’s first-born son Eliezer as a perpetual slave. After Eliezer had dealt kindly with Isaac, he set Eliezer free, and God gave Eliezer his reward in this world by raising him up to become a king — Og, king of Bashan.[86]
In the great tradition of Jewish exegesis, this pushes the sanity needle a bit into the red zone, but why not mention the guy's name even one time in Genesis 24? The obvious answer is that the guy writing Genesis 24 didn't know Genesis 15:2.
But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what can You give me, seeing that I shall die childless, and the one in charge of my household is Dammesek Eliezer!" (Gen 15:2 TNK)
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5597-eliezer

In Gematria, Eliezer's name adds up to 318, which goes back to
When Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he mustered his retainers, born into his household, numbering three hundred and eighteen, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. (Gen 14:14 TNK)
That Eliezer took part in that battle, or was, perhaps, the only combatant at Abraham's side, the Rabbis find indicated in the number (318) of the soldiers (Gen. xiv. 14), the numerical value of the letters in being 1 + 30 + 10 + 70 + 7 + 200 = 318 (Gen. R. xliii., xliv.; Pesiḳ. 70a, b; Ned. 32a; Shoḥer Ṭob to Ps. cx.; compare Ep. Barnabas ix.; it is the classical illustration of Gemaṭria under the twenty-ninth Exegetical Rule of Eliezer, the son of Jose the Galilean). Modern critics (Hugo Winckler and Gunkel) have held this "318" to refer to the number of days in the year that the moon is visible. The rabbinical cryptogram for "Eliezer" rests certainly on as solid grounds.
Jim Stinehart claims that 318 is Hurrian -

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-he ... 41530.html

Talking to a guy named Karl -
In fact, the scholarly view that chapter 14 of Genesis is much older than most of the rest of the Bible is largely driven by Biblical Hebrew language issues, which is your specialty. Consider the following mid-2nd millennium BCE language aspects of chapter 14 of Genesis:
“[T]he number 318 in [Genesis] 14: 14 is analogous to the number of Hurrian handmaids plus the bride [from the Hurrian state of Naharim/Mitanni]
in an Egyptian scarab of Amenhotep III”. Gary A. Rendsburg, “The Redaction of Genesis” (1986), Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana, at p. 116.

Please note the H-u-r-r-i-a-n connection there.

(b) The number 318 is the number of taxpaying citizens in Jerusalem (“porters”) referenced at Amarna Letter EA 287: 53-59 by Abdi-Heba, per the
original reading of Knudtzon referenced in footnote 18 at p. 330 of William L.Moran, “The Amarna Letters”, English-language edition (1992), The Johns
Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland.
I think the assertion in (b) is dubious but Jim is a tough guy to argue with.

My guess is that Jim has it backwards about the relative age of Genesis 14.

Of course, the big question is whether the servant held Abraham's penis when he swore the oath.
And Abraham said to the senior servant of his household, who had charge of all that he owned, "Put your hand under my thigh 3 and I will make you swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell,
(Gen 24:2-3 TNK)

Being a high minded and sensitive person I tend to stay neutral in these disputes, however -
So Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin, and touched his legs with it, saying, "You are truly a bridegroom of blood to me!" (Exo 4:25 TNK)
and seeing how the kid was named Eliezer...
Kunigunde Kreuzerin
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Re: Eliezer

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

the German site bibelwissenschaft.de show an ancient seal about this topic but without more information about the seal

Image
S. Schroer / T. Staubli (127) might have guessed rightly that the idea behind this archaic custom may be that the affiant swears by his virility to wither if he violates his oath" ...
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DCHindley
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Re: Eliezer

Post by DCHindley »

semiopen wrote:
snip of 2010 e-mail discussion between Jim Stinehart and a guy named Karl wrote:Please note the H-u-r-r-i-a-n connection there.

(b) The number 318 is the number of taxpaying citizens in Jerusalem (“porters”) referenced at Amarna Letter EA 287: 53-59 by Abdi-Heba, per the original reading of Knudtzon referenced in footnote 18 at p. 330 of William L.Moran, “The Amarna Letters”, English-language edition (1992), The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland.
Back when I frequented the ANE and ANE2 lists, I used to hate it when someone brought up "Hurrian" in any discussion of the Ancient Near East. Basically anything that cannot be explained adequately by a specific scholar's worldview is attributed to "Hurrian."

These mysterious people, frequently referenced in archeological remains of many ancient peoples but which left little in the way of literary texts.* Thus, "Hurrian" becomes the grain of sand around which forms the pearl, and several theories about them have been proposed attributing to them immensely important influence on the peoples around them, most of which are, IMHO, 99% imagination and 1% fact.

Just my opinion. DCH

*Texts in the Hurrian language in cuneiform have been found at Hattusa, Ugarit (Ras Shamra), as well as in one of the longest of the Amarna letters, written by King Tushratta of Mitanni to Pharaoh Amenhotep III. It was the only long Hurrian text known until a multi-tablet collection of literature in Hurrian with a Hittite translation was discovered at Hattusa in 1983. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrians#Language
outhouse
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Re: Eliezer

Post by outhouse »

DCHindley wrote: 99% imagination and 1% fact.
There it is.

It is nothing more then trying to see how long you can play mental gymnastics before being frustrated at getting no closer to any credible answer.

Trying to guess at multiple unknown authors imagination is one thing, after centuries of redaction and compilations of multiple traditions there is a point to realize some searches are inane.
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