Mishna and Guemaras of the present Israelites are but one rill out of many streams,
concur in representing Nimrod as every thing haughty, tyrannical, and impious ; hut
nothing can be produced to justify these gratuitous assumptions, earlier in date than
Josephus ; who merely hands us the rabbinical notions of his day (first century after
Christ), when he calls N£/3pwôcs the leader of those who strove to ¿erect “ Babel’s
tower and, as such, that he rebelled against Divine Providence. Now, before speculating,
in opposition to the express words of Genesis Xth and Xlth, what may have
been NMRD’s performances on that deplorable oocasion, it ought to be first shown
that the fragment termed “ Genesis Xlth, ver. 1 -9 ,” possesses real claims to b,e considered
historical. This being as much out of our power as of any hody else at the
present day, Josephus’s modern views upon NMRD’s primordial rebellion, serve merely
to illustrate the proneness of the human mind to explain the impossible by inventing
" the marvellous. So we lay them aside, beyond the only historical fact resulting from
Josephus, viz: that, in his age, NMRD was reputed to have been a rebel..
Such being the unique source whence flow all later theories upon KUSA’s heresies,
and his son’s enormities, we descend the main stream as we find it continued, “ even
unto this day,” by the Rabbis : — “ According to the Talmud (tr. Chagiga, ch. ii.), the
name NMRD, Nimrod, is derived from MRD, marad, to rebel, because its writers suppose
that he induced mankind to rebel against God. This, however, E b n E z e a
does not seem willing to admit, but says—r ¿ Seek not a cause for every (Scriptural)
name, where none is expressly mentioned ; ’ on which his commentator (Ohel Joseph,
in loco) remarks, ‘ if the name of Nimrod is derived from the Cause stated in the
Talmud, it ought to have been, not NMRD, Nimrod, but MMRD, Mamred.’ -But,
according to Simones ( Onomast. V. T. p. 472), the name Nimrod is composed of
NIN, offspring, and MRD, rebellion; so that NIN - MRD means filius rebellionis.
A portion of the name NIN survived in Ninus, under which appellation he is known
to historians as the builder of Nineveh. . . . He began to be a mighty one in the. .earth
(Gen. x. 8). ‘ Setting himself up against the Omnipotent, and seducing mankind from
their allegiance to the Lord.’ (Rashi.) The sacred historian intonds'here to point out
to us the first beginning of those movements and convulsions in society, which led to-
the formation of states and dominions, especially to that of royalty [ ! ]. And, inasmuch
as these movements led to the overthrow of the previous state of things, the
name of the man by whom these changes were first introduced, NMRD, Nimrod, from
MRD, Marad, to. rebel, is peculiarly expressive.” ,«®
There is — excuse the phrase ! — a verdant lucidity about this series of. non-sequiturs
that justifies our tedious extract. \ In it we perceive the chain of evidence, as lawyers
would say, through which Christian commentators obtain their first notions upon
NMRD “ evidence ” upon which each confounder erects his own favorite tower of
BBL, confusion. “ Nous en convenons,” concedes the Abbé Glaire ; “ we agree that the
fable of the Titans has some relation to the history of the tower of Babel ; but may
not one conclude from it that the Greek poets wished to imitate the legislator of the
Jews, and surpass (enchérir sur) the veracity and simplicity of. his, recital?”
But, suppose somebody happened to entertain the idea that NMRD may not be
derivable from the Canaanitish root MRD at all ; what, if such case were proved,
becomes of Nimrod’s rebellious propensities ?
To ascertain this possibility, a philologist must rise above the level of rabbinical
hermeneutics.
We have seen that the word NMRD was a proper name among pharaonico-Assyrian
individuals in the tenth century b . c. — an age anterior to most if not to all parts of
Hebrew literature extant in'our day. This bisyllabic quadriliteral (ceasing to remain
any longer mere Hebrew) merges into the vast circumference of Skemitish tongues, of
which Arabic is the most copious representative.
Now, foremost amid living Semitic lexicographers, stands Michel-Angelo Lanci, and
his views are supported by students equally authoritative in their several specialities.
The substance of their researches i s : — that the primeval speech whence all Semitish
tongues have sprung was, aboriginally, monosyllabic in its articulations, and therefore
at most biliteral in its alphabetical expression; whereas, at the present day, these
languages, Hebrew and Arabic essentially, are dissyllabic and triliteral. “ As vowel
sounds,” holds a supreme authority, Rawlinson, “ are now admitted to be of secondary
development, and of no real consequence in testing the element of speech, the roots of
which are almost universally biliteral; the Babylonian and Assyrian [in which languages
NMRD’s name originated] being found in a more primitive state than any of
the Semitio dialects of Asia open to our research [must be older] ; inasmuch as the roots
are free from the subsidiary element which, in Hebrew, Aramaean, and Arabic, has
caused the Iriliteral to be regarded as the true base, and the biliteral as the defective
one.” Above one hundred examples are given by Lanci; proving how those words
which rabbinical scholars suppose to be primordial Hebrew radicals, (i. e. of three
letters), are but a secondary formation along the scale of linguistic chronology; because
suffixes', prefixes, or medial elements, have become superposed, or interplaced, upon or
within a pristine monosyllable. There was, then, a time before the period when the
law of triliterals became formed; and while on the one hand the Hebrew tongue preserves
abundant monosyllabic reliquiae of that remoter age, on the other, the preponderance
of bisyllabic roots in Jewish literature establishes that such literature arose
afterthe law of triliterals had already become prevalent. This later age oscillates, it is
true, between 700 B. 0., and some centuries previously; but cannot, by incontrovertible
ratiocination upon historical data, be carried back to Mosaic days fourteenth
century b . o. — a linguistic point in which all Oriental philologers of the new school
coincide.
2d. Archaeologically.—NMRD, therefore, older on Egyptian monuments than any Hebrew
writings that have come down to us, .was already, in the tenth century B. c., a
matured importation from its native Assyria; where, doubtless, this proper name had
existed long previously: being distinguished by the, probably-Ohaldcean, projector of
the chart of Xth Genesis, as: the earliest traditionary founder of very ancient cities.
To explain by a tri-literal verb, MRD, itself susceptible of reduction into an earlier
monosyllable, the quadriliteral bi-syllabic proper name NMRD, although not absolutely
impossible, presents many chances of involving its advocates in anachronisms; and
most certainly would never have occurred to modem Orientalists, had it not been for
the rabbinical legend current in Josephus’s days, which, thousands of years after
NMRD’s age, and hundreds later than Xth. Genesis, endeavored, to reconcile Assyrian
mythes with a Hierosolymite doctrine of genesaical origins. We have seen above, that
the derivation of NMRD from MRD, to rebel, is considered speculative even by Talmudists
themselves; and, with Gesenius’s Thesaurus, the writer (G. R. G.) would undertake,
upon legitimate principles of Semitic palaeography,—such as the commonest
mutations of D for N; B for M; L for R; T, TA, S, or SA, for D, &c. — to draw a
dozen, or more, happier, and quite as orthodox, significations for NMRD, Hebraically,
than that ungrammatically twisted from MRD, which takes little or no account of
the protogramme N.- « ..
Hear Land’s more reasonable etymology. We give it regretfully, because without
the ingenious arguments by which the Professor defend?, it in his Paralipomeni, and
coupled with all the reservations due to philological intricacies of this archaic nature.
The word NMRD is nonsense when wrung out from the verb MRD, to rebel. It is a
compound of two distinct monosyllables, NM and RD. The former proceeds fro» the
radical, preserved in Arabic, Nelli, “ to spread a good odor:” the latter from R«D,
“ to be responsible.” NiMRoD means, Semitically (whether such was its pristine
Assyrian acceptation or not), “ he-whose-royal-actions-correspond-lo-ihe-good-odor ( o f his
fame)'.”
But, difficulties cease not here ! In King James’s version, as in all its MS. ancestors
hack to the LXX (where ylyas Kvvtjyds, a hunting-giant, is its wondrous para