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There are a number of fairly recent scholarly or semi-scholarly sources which identify the "Brook of Egypt" with the Wadi-El-Arish, such as the Hammond Atlas of the Bible Lands by Harry Thomas Frank and Roger S. Boraas (revised edition, 1989), the Zondervan NIV Atlas of the Bible by Carl G. Rasmussen (1989), and the MacMillan Bible Atlas by Yohanan Aharoni, Michael Avi-Yonah, Anson F. Rainey, and Ze'ev Safrai (3rd edition, 1993), Furthermore, the passage 1 Kings 4:24 describes Solomon's empire as extending "from "Tiphsah to Gaza", but it would be difficult to cite any Biblical passage which unambiguously describes any historical Israelite or Jewish kingdom as extending to any branch of the Nile. Not to mention that the verse Genesis 15:18 calls the Euphrates gadol "great", but conspicuously refrains from calling the River of Egypt "great". And most other passages use Nahal (not Nahar), and the word Nahal does not mean "big river".
Also, Shihor seems to be mainly a poetic synonym for the Nile, and so is not necessarily the same thing as Nahal Misrayim at all (except that the Chronicler seems to have confused the two, long after the fact, when expanding 2 Samuel 6).
So unless there has been some dramatic new discovery in the last 15 years, this article shouldn't be so dogmatically emphatic. AnonMoos 13:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Basically looking at the hard evidence:
Any argument that the Wadi El Arish is the intended meaning as opposed to a much latter reinterpretation does not have a leg to stand on. Kuratowski's Ghost 20:04, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Kuratowski, I can't find any source that identifies any branch of the Nile with the Brook of Egypt. I have heard that wadi el-Arish is no longer considered valid either, but this article which is focused on the ethnography of the Late Bronze/Iron I transition in Canaan casually refers to the Brook of Egypt as the Nahal Besor on pages 11 and 12 when describing the Philistine settlement, and comments on the "traditional view" of it as wadi el-Arish on pge 12. The identification of it as Nahal Besor is based on the geography given in the Bible that identifies Nahal Mizraim with the southernmost border of Philistia; historically, the Philistines had their southern boundary at the Nahal Besor.
From what I can tell, your interpretation depends on identifying the Shihor of one biblical statement with the Shihor of another, which is not necessarily correct. Shihor simply means "dark river" and is not necessarily a proper name.-- Rob117 04:25, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
The whole thing is confusing actually. You may have some good points, but other geographical references mark it as the boundary between the Philistines and the Amalekites, who lived in Philistia and the Western Negev/Eastern Sinai respectively. The Yam Suph ("Sea of Reeds") is presumably a reference to the Red Sea, which is part of the border of Israel in the south, not in the west. The only thing that contradicts the wadi el-Arish identification is your connection with Shihor, which is not necessarily a proper name.-- Rob117 04:15, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
And I doubt Nahal Besor is a "fringe" view. The article I linked to is from the 1994 book From Nomadism to Monarchy (edited by Israel Finkelstein; the article in question is by Itamar Singer), which is a standard reference work used and referred to by biblical archaeologists. Note that this is from before Finkelstein proposed lowering the chronology, so it has nothing to do with his recent unorthodox views. Richard Friedman's 1987 work Who Wrote the Bible? identifies the Brook of Egypt as el-Arish in a casual manner; this work is a standard introduction to biblical textual criticism. The fact that el-Arish is identified with Nahal Mizraim so casually suggests that it has not been as thoroughly debunked as you imply. While I think it could plausibly be identified with either Arish or Besor, nowhere besides this article have I heard the Nile interpretation; and the fact that relatively recent scholarly literature still identifies it with one of those two rivers causes me to be skeptical of the Nile identification.-- Rob117 04:54, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
The history of the interpretation as El-Arish also shows that it is based on error, the first time the term is used it is a translation of Hebrew Sukkot used by Saadia Gaon. He identifies the Nachal Mitzraim with the "wadi of El-Arish", Sukkot being the place on the border with Egypt where the departure from Egypt was said to have occurred. Only later does one find that pilgrims mistake modern "El-Arish" as Sukkot hence the name for the latter and its wadi. Kuratowski's Ghost 11:13, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
There were some major errors in the article which I attempted to fix. Saadia Gaon wrote 2-300 years before Rashi or any of the other commentaries who suggest it's the nile. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.80.35.162 ( talk) 12:48, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
Just curious- does the article cited by Na'aman identify Nahal Mizraim with the Pelusiac Nile? If so then it would constitute peer-reviewed support for this view.-- Rob117 22:58, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
At least according to Archaeology of the Land of the Bible Volume II by Ephraim Stern, part of the Anchor Bible Reference Library.
Iron Age occupation has apparently been uncovered at el-Arish, according to this book, so the claim that there is no settlement at the site prior to the Hellenistic period is false.
The Assyrian invasion of Pelusium by Sennacherib mentioned by Herodutus apparently refers to a different event, if it occured at all (do we have any contemporary records of Assyrian invasions of Egypt before the reign of Esarhaddon?) Herodotus's account may even be derived from an Egyptian retelling of the biblical account of Sennacherib's invasion of Jerusalem.-- Rob117 02:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Just curious on the Goshen question: Joshua 15 includes a long list of places given to the tribe of Judah. My NIV and my NJPS Tanakh (and I'd presume the original, but I don't understand Hebrew), in verse 51, read "...Goshen, Holon and Giloh — eleven towns and their villages" and "...Goshen, Holon, and Giloh: 11 towns, with their villages." respectively. No consideration is given about this Judean town in the article; should there be? I don't know enough about this to do anything, other than what I did: because the question isn't fully addressed, I thought we shouldn't necessarily link the first occurrence of Goshen to the Land of Goshen — that's why I moved it to the second sentence. I'd like to see someone bring in some source that discusses this question at all. Nyttend 14:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
A lot of this article reads as if it were a personal essay seeking to argue that the "Brook of Egypt" mentioned in the Bible refers to the "Pelusian branch," i.e. the very far right edge of the Nile delta. But Wikipedia does not host personal essays arguing for personal opinions. Instead, it summarizes (with citations) the views of experts.
And yet, for all fourteen mentions of the Pelusian branch, not a single citation is given to an expert who claims that the Bible's "Brook of Egypt" is the Pelusian branch. There are two citations given related to the Pelusian hypothesis. There is a citation confirming that Assyrians mention a "Nehal Musri", and a citation confirming that the Pelusian branch was seen as the ancient eastern border of Egypt. Those two citations would be relevant if one were writing a dissertation to argue for the Pelusian interpretation, but as long as there is no citation confirming that any contemporary experts by the Pelusian interpretation of "Brook of Egypt," they don't belong in this article.
Accordingly, I will be removing claims about the Pelusian branch from this article. Anyone who can find appropriate citations supporting the claim that contemporary experts support equating the Brook of Egypt with it is welcome to add the stuff back in. Alephb ( talk) 10:11, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
This doesn't seem to be an actual word. I found this (poorly prosodied) poem: "In short, in matters epiphemeral and fiducillary heinious, / I am the very model of a modern Stable-Genius.", which is clearly a nonsense verse. On the other hand, this book uses it in a neurological context, and here it has something to do with culture? Epi- is a prefix, but I don't think phemeral is. epi- + ephemeral would produce *epephemeral, modeling on epencephalic.__ Gamren ( talk) 03:36, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
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There are a number of fairly recent scholarly or semi-scholarly sources which identify the "Brook of Egypt" with the Wadi-El-Arish, such as the Hammond Atlas of the Bible Lands by Harry Thomas Frank and Roger S. Boraas (revised edition, 1989), the Zondervan NIV Atlas of the Bible by Carl G. Rasmussen (1989), and the MacMillan Bible Atlas by Yohanan Aharoni, Michael Avi-Yonah, Anson F. Rainey, and Ze'ev Safrai (3rd edition, 1993), Furthermore, the passage 1 Kings 4:24 describes Solomon's empire as extending "from "Tiphsah to Gaza", but it would be difficult to cite any Biblical passage which unambiguously describes any historical Israelite or Jewish kingdom as extending to any branch of the Nile. Not to mention that the verse Genesis 15:18 calls the Euphrates gadol "great", but conspicuously refrains from calling the River of Egypt "great". And most other passages use Nahal (not Nahar), and the word Nahal does not mean "big river".
Also, Shihor seems to be mainly a poetic synonym for the Nile, and so is not necessarily the same thing as Nahal Misrayim at all (except that the Chronicler seems to have confused the two, long after the fact, when expanding 2 Samuel 6).
So unless there has been some dramatic new discovery in the last 15 years, this article shouldn't be so dogmatically emphatic. AnonMoos 13:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Basically looking at the hard evidence:
Any argument that the Wadi El Arish is the intended meaning as opposed to a much latter reinterpretation does not have a leg to stand on. Kuratowski's Ghost 20:04, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
Kuratowski, I can't find any source that identifies any branch of the Nile with the Brook of Egypt. I have heard that wadi el-Arish is no longer considered valid either, but this article which is focused on the ethnography of the Late Bronze/Iron I transition in Canaan casually refers to the Brook of Egypt as the Nahal Besor on pages 11 and 12 when describing the Philistine settlement, and comments on the "traditional view" of it as wadi el-Arish on pge 12. The identification of it as Nahal Besor is based on the geography given in the Bible that identifies Nahal Mizraim with the southernmost border of Philistia; historically, the Philistines had their southern boundary at the Nahal Besor.
From what I can tell, your interpretation depends on identifying the Shihor of one biblical statement with the Shihor of another, which is not necessarily correct. Shihor simply means "dark river" and is not necessarily a proper name.-- Rob117 04:25, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
The whole thing is confusing actually. You may have some good points, but other geographical references mark it as the boundary between the Philistines and the Amalekites, who lived in Philistia and the Western Negev/Eastern Sinai respectively. The Yam Suph ("Sea of Reeds") is presumably a reference to the Red Sea, which is part of the border of Israel in the south, not in the west. The only thing that contradicts the wadi el-Arish identification is your connection with Shihor, which is not necessarily a proper name.-- Rob117 04:15, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
And I doubt Nahal Besor is a "fringe" view. The article I linked to is from the 1994 book From Nomadism to Monarchy (edited by Israel Finkelstein; the article in question is by Itamar Singer), which is a standard reference work used and referred to by biblical archaeologists. Note that this is from before Finkelstein proposed lowering the chronology, so it has nothing to do with his recent unorthodox views. Richard Friedman's 1987 work Who Wrote the Bible? identifies the Brook of Egypt as el-Arish in a casual manner; this work is a standard introduction to biblical textual criticism. The fact that el-Arish is identified with Nahal Mizraim so casually suggests that it has not been as thoroughly debunked as you imply. While I think it could plausibly be identified with either Arish or Besor, nowhere besides this article have I heard the Nile interpretation; and the fact that relatively recent scholarly literature still identifies it with one of those two rivers causes me to be skeptical of the Nile identification.-- Rob117 04:54, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
The history of the interpretation as El-Arish also shows that it is based on error, the first time the term is used it is a translation of Hebrew Sukkot used by Saadia Gaon. He identifies the Nachal Mitzraim with the "wadi of El-Arish", Sukkot being the place on the border with Egypt where the departure from Egypt was said to have occurred. Only later does one find that pilgrims mistake modern "El-Arish" as Sukkot hence the name for the latter and its wadi. Kuratowski's Ghost 11:13, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
There were some major errors in the article which I attempted to fix. Saadia Gaon wrote 2-300 years before Rashi or any of the other commentaries who suggest it's the nile. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.80.35.162 ( talk) 12:48, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
Just curious- does the article cited by Na'aman identify Nahal Mizraim with the Pelusiac Nile? If so then it would constitute peer-reviewed support for this view.-- Rob117 22:58, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
At least according to Archaeology of the Land of the Bible Volume II by Ephraim Stern, part of the Anchor Bible Reference Library.
Iron Age occupation has apparently been uncovered at el-Arish, according to this book, so the claim that there is no settlement at the site prior to the Hellenistic period is false.
The Assyrian invasion of Pelusium by Sennacherib mentioned by Herodutus apparently refers to a different event, if it occured at all (do we have any contemporary records of Assyrian invasions of Egypt before the reign of Esarhaddon?) Herodotus's account may even be derived from an Egyptian retelling of the biblical account of Sennacherib's invasion of Jerusalem.-- Rob117 02:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Just curious on the Goshen question: Joshua 15 includes a long list of places given to the tribe of Judah. My NIV and my NJPS Tanakh (and I'd presume the original, but I don't understand Hebrew), in verse 51, read "...Goshen, Holon and Giloh — eleven towns and their villages" and "...Goshen, Holon, and Giloh: 11 towns, with their villages." respectively. No consideration is given about this Judean town in the article; should there be? I don't know enough about this to do anything, other than what I did: because the question isn't fully addressed, I thought we shouldn't necessarily link the first occurrence of Goshen to the Land of Goshen — that's why I moved it to the second sentence. I'd like to see someone bring in some source that discusses this question at all. Nyttend 14:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
A lot of this article reads as if it were a personal essay seeking to argue that the "Brook of Egypt" mentioned in the Bible refers to the "Pelusian branch," i.e. the very far right edge of the Nile delta. But Wikipedia does not host personal essays arguing for personal opinions. Instead, it summarizes (with citations) the views of experts.
And yet, for all fourteen mentions of the Pelusian branch, not a single citation is given to an expert who claims that the Bible's "Brook of Egypt" is the Pelusian branch. There are two citations given related to the Pelusian hypothesis. There is a citation confirming that Assyrians mention a "Nehal Musri", and a citation confirming that the Pelusian branch was seen as the ancient eastern border of Egypt. Those two citations would be relevant if one were writing a dissertation to argue for the Pelusian interpretation, but as long as there is no citation confirming that any contemporary experts by the Pelusian interpretation of "Brook of Egypt," they don't belong in this article.
Accordingly, I will be removing claims about the Pelusian branch from this article. Anyone who can find appropriate citations supporting the claim that contemporary experts support equating the Brook of Egypt with it is welcome to add the stuff back in. Alephb ( talk) 10:11, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
This doesn't seem to be an actual word. I found this (poorly prosodied) poem: "In short, in matters epiphemeral and fiducillary heinious, / I am the very model of a modern Stable-Genius.", which is clearly a nonsense verse. On the other hand, this book uses it in a neurological context, and here it has something to do with culture? Epi- is a prefix, but I don't think phemeral is. epi- + ephemeral would produce *epephemeral, modeling on epencephalic.__ Gamren ( talk) 03:36, 9 July 2021 (UTC)