{"id":383,"date":"2014-09-11T06:55:21","date_gmt":"2014-09-11T06:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richardabbott.authorsxpress.com\/?p=383"},"modified":"2014-09-11T06:55:21","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T06:55:21","slug":"so-who-was-shamgar-son-of-anath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/09\/11\/so-who-was-shamgar-son-of-anath\/","title":{"rendered":"So who was Shamgar son of Anath?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Shamgar son of Anath, who struck down six hundred Philistines with an ox-goad” – Judges 3:31<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This particular snippet from early in the biblical book of Judges seems at first sight not much more than a propaganda note about the superiority of the Israelite defenders against the bad-guy Philistine arrivals. But actually there is a lot more here than meets the eye.<\/p>\n

\"Inscribed
\nA lot of the regular discussion circles around whether 600<\/em> was intended to really be a literal body count, or is simply an absurdly inflated number chosen to intimidate. And what exactly does ox-goad<\/em> mean in this text? Was it literally an agricultural implement repurposed for war – something which has often happened through history – or was it a nickname for some other weapon?<\/p>\n

There is a lot more to glean from these few words. Shamgar<\/em> is not an Israelite name, nor even one drawn from the broader Semitic language family. It seems to be Hurrian in origin. If so, the original form was probably Shimigar<\/em>, where Shimi<\/em> was a Hurrian sun god. The Hurrians were a prominent elite group through most of the second millennium BC in the middle east, appearing as minor kings, nobility, or warrior leaders. They spread down from the north of Mesopotamia, roughly where the Kurdish lands are today, and flourished for some time before being integrated into the general population at the start of the first millennium and disappearing as a recognisable group.<\/p>\n

So was the historical Shamgar<\/em> behind our text actually an accomplished military leader, named after another nation’s god, with the 600 being killed not personally by him but rather by men under his command?<\/p>\n

Anath<\/em> (sometimes Anat<\/em>) is the name of a particularly passionate and warlike Canaanite goddess, and in any event is grammatically female rather than male. Biblical commentators have noticed the oddity here – the Hebrews of this era routinely identified a person through their father, not their mother. To resolve this some have proposed that Anath<\/em> was also used as a common male name, meaning something like “answered<\/em>“.<\/p>\n

There are, perhaps, easier solutions. One is to suggest that in this early stage, some groups who affiliated with the Hebrews really did identify through the mother’s line. Readers of In a Milk and Honeyed Land<\/em> will know that the four towns I write about there do just this.<\/p>\n

Another possibility arose from archaeological discoveries of Bronze Age arrowheads and javelin heads from various parts of the Levant. Many of these have names scratched into them, and “son of Anath<\/em>” appears several times. (The image above of one of these arrowheads has been supplied by the Biblical Archaeology Society website). For example, we know of one “Abdi-Labit son of Anath<\/em>“. The title also turns up in Ugarit and even in Egypt as well as Canaan. Now it could be, of course, that Anath<\/em> was a rather common name after all, and that many ethnic groups really did count lineage through the mother. <\/p>\n

But it seems more likely that what we see here is actually the identifying mark of a warrior class. When you had proved yourself in some way you were entitled to call yourself a son of Anath<\/em>. Human nature being what it is, I am sure that if there was an original band who coined the name and were successful, others would copy it for themselves.<\/p>\n

In The Flame Before Us<\/em> I follow this line. You will meet there a certain Shimmigar<\/em>, who is a member of a small band of skilled warriors responsible for protecting the northern borders of Ibriym<\/em> (Hebrew) territory. Find out more in a few months’ time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Shamgar son of Anath, who struck down six hundred Philistines with an ox-goad” – Judges 3:31 This particular snippet from early in the biblical book of Judges seems at first sight not much more than a propaganda note about the superiority of the Israelite defenders against the bad-guy Philistine arrivals. But actually there is a … Continue reading So who was Shamgar son of Anath?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,13,23,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-fiction-2","category-history","category-in-a-milk-and-honeyed-land","category-the-flame-before-us","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}