54. MS — ‘M ash.’
Besides the discrepancy, above removed, between Xth Genesis and the parallel in
1 Chronicles (i. 17), in regard to the affiliations of these four names from Shem, or
from Aram; here is another, that cannot be explained save through an error of .some
copyist. Who can really tell whether we should transpose MSKA into Xth Genesis, or
MS into 1 Chronicles ? ''-¿Supra, p. 478.] Two reasons, however, seem to justify the
accuracy of the former text: one that a MSK is already mentioned among the “ sons
of Japheths” t(i)«'. 2); and therefore the repetition of a similar name amid the Shem-
ites is imprsSsable: the other that the chart of Xth Genesis is the “ editio princeps,”
of older and more standard authority than the books called Chronicles.
The Macce, on the peninsula of the Persian Gulf whereon now stands the derivative
city of Muscat — tke ’Masmi Arabs in Mesopotamia ;■ the Masani near the Euphrates;
and the Massonitce of Yemen; might entice inquiries: but, we think their habitats somewhat
distant from the localities where Aramcean tribes appear to group; especially as
MSA, Massa, descended from Ishmael (Gen. xxv. 14), may well assert its right to the
latter lineage. g A ■ ■.■<-:. v i l i M M M t M B i t e . ’
We cannot amend the old view of Bochart and of Grotius, that this Aramman tribe
survives about Mt. Masius; along Xenophon’s river Masca; in the Masie^i of Stephanas,
and perhaps the Moscheni of Pliny; all of which point to Upper Mesopotamia
as the camping-ground of MaSA639
“ And AKPAa-KaSD engendered SLKA, and SLK/t engendered
aEBR” {Gen. x. 24).
55. r h & — SLKTi — ‘Salah.’
Orfa in Distrhekir has been already demonstrated to be the fountain-source Arpha-
Kasd, “ Chaldaean Urfa,” and no other than the true AUK-KaSDIM, “ Ur of the
Chaldees; ” whence flow the earliest traditions of the Abrahamidse.
SEBR, the yonderer, third in descent, seems to show either that a displacement had
t a k e n place before the name itself could well have been assumed; or that the appellative
“ yonderer” is an ex post facto attribution—the consequence Of a migration that
had previously taken effect. (. ,
Between these two names, Orfa as a fixed geographical point, and Eber “ he who
has gone beyond," stands SLKft; transcribed Salah in king James’s version : perhaps
in this instance with more propriety than according to the vulgar Masoretic Shelah;
which is suggested as the marginal reading. ~ : V
Sela of Ammianus Marcellinus, or Sets of Ptolemy, a city, in Susiana, has received the
concurrence of many commentators. Others consider SLKA unknown. If Yolney s
suggestion of the- city, and territory called Salacha by Ptolemy be not the most probable
halting-place of the EBERi when they Ipid left Chaldman Orfa,, the ignorance of
every body consoles us for ours.640
56. “IDE — fiBR, or rather ezBR—‘Heber.’
[The impossibility of transcribing the letter Gnain of the Hebrews, din of the Arabs,
into any European alphabet, has been noticed by me long ago. As a general- principle,
I follow the rules of Lane in these substitutions; but unless a European hears
the sound of din orientally articulated, his imagination can realize its phonetism as
little as his adult voice can enunciate it. G. R. G.]
Etymologically, EBR signifies “ one of the other side,” or “ the y o n d e r -la n dwhfis
EBRI a “ yonderer," or “ a man from the other side,” has precisely the same radical
as the’ Greek x™p, Latinized into Iber (Iberes, Iberian); equivalent to trrns, ultra, Sic.
“ HEBER one of the other side; Sept. "Epep and 'Epep), son of Salah, w o
became the father of Peleg at the age of 34 years, and died at the age of 464 (Gen.
x. 24; xi. 14; 1 Ghron. i. 25). His name occurs in the genealogy of Christ (Luke
iii. 35). There is nothing to constitute H eber an historical 'personage; but there is a
degree of interest connected with him from the notion, which the Jews themselves
entertain, that the name of Hebrews applied to them, was derived from this alleged
ancestòr of Abraham. No historical ground appears why this name should be derived
from him rathér than from any other personage that occurs in the catalogue of Shem’s
descendants ; but there are so much stronger objections to every other hypothesis, that
this perhaps is still the most probable of any which have y e t been started.”
If the authors of this volume had written the above scientific exposé, it would have
been seized upon as another instance of li skeptical views ” (save the mark !) ; but the
initials “ J. N.” appended to the above article in Kitto are those of a profound Ger-
mano-Hebraist, the Rev. Dr. J ohn Nicholson of Oxford.
Archæologically, the name ÊBR marks a displacement, or dislocation,’ that, must
have occurred before such name could have been given or assumed.
Of such dislocation the earliest notice is the march of the Abrahamidæ from Orfa-
Chaldee to Harran (probably Carroe), in Mesopotamia, and thence to Kanaan : where
the Kanaanites gave to Abraham, probably, the designation of EBR, as “ he who
comes from yondêr-landf§—transfluvianus, or “ from the other side ” of the Euphrates—
whence H ebrew, ÊBRI, became the cognomen of this family. Indeéd, it is remarked
that the title ÊBRIM, yonderers, Hebrews, was given to the Abrahamidæ by foreign
nations. They called themselves Israelites after Jacob’s wrestling match at Phenuel ;
and did not adopt that of “ Hebrews ” until many centuries.later.
We are dealing, therefore, in Xth Genesis — a document compiled at least five,
if not ten, hundred years subsequently to the arrival of the earliest Abrahamidæ in
Kanaan — with a people upon whom the name ÊBR had been imposed, “ nolens volens ”
on their own part. Had the chorographer of Xth Genesis been a man of Abrahamic
pedigree, he would probably have designated his own nation by its most honored title,
“ Israelite ;” but, far from that, a Chaldoean composing his ethnic map in Chaldæa,
naturally gives to ÊBR its radical sense of “ yonderer;” either because the Palestinic
Abrahamidæ were so termed by surrounding populations, or because they were then,
to him, as ÈBeR-àra, “ people who had gone beyond” the Euphrates. That there is no
“ préfiguration ” (i. e., “ cart before the horse ”) in Xth Genesis, has been proven by the
names Sidonian, Hamathian, &c. ; folks who could not well have been citizens of those
cities, Sidon, Hamath, &c., until after the houses had been built: and inasmuch as
these citizens are catalogued in the same document with EBR, the antiquity of the
latter’s registration is brought down to historical times ; long ages after that emigration
from Chaldsean Orfa into Palestine through which the foreign application of
“ yonderers,” given to Abraham’s descendants, had originated.
“ Fama crescit eundo;” and Oriental mythos — after Judaism, a little before the
Christian era, had penetrated into Arabia ; and still more forcibly after Islamism, in the
seventh century, had imbued pagan Arabians with extraneous traditions — assimilated
E b e r , now metamorphosed into a man and a patriarch, to the Arab prophet Hood :
who, in native Arabian tradition, plays a part somewhat like that which Moses does
in Jewish ; being their earliest metahistorical Reformer. Who this Hood probably is,
the profound investigations of Fresnel clearly indicate
DAU-NUAS, or Zhu-Nawàz, is th e subject. “ Ca ire, 12 Mars, 1845.
“ The Greeks knew that Bacchus was Arabian, and have sought for the etymology
of the name Alôwaoç, Dionysus, after their own fashion : they made of it ‘ the god of
Nysa,’ Nysa being a city of Arabia, or, as says Herodotus, of Ethiopia, where Bacchus
was raised by the.Nymphs....................... About forty miles to the east of Zhafâr, the
most ancient of all their (Arabian) métropoles, and the site of the oldest Arabian civilization,
is a mountain that Edrisi calls Loûs, and that th,e inhabitants of Mahrah call
ftoûs.....................This mountain of Noûs, near which is found, Hot the Kabr Hoûd, or