A very sober reading of teshuqa would be constraint. It doesnt really preclude the breadth of other things Ive suggested, but it would fit the three explicit biblical contexts responsibly, and in a way harmonious with the general drift of other Semitic languages. Narrowness is the thing the root conveys, a squeezing of whatever or whoever the idea is applied to. Suqu in Akkadian is more like a narrow street than just a street. This would mean Eve squeezed towards her husband, sin squeezed towards Cain (and having arrived and made itself comfortable), the one the womans soul loves in the Song would have been squeezed towards her and arrived upon her. I think thats safe. Its in Arabic and Ugaritic as well. But the Bible puts more positive associations around the word. Even sin likes arriving at Cains door, and Cains not that fussed about removing it. Constraint is a safe reading of the meaning of the word, and perhaps that *was* the key denotation, but the usages suggest much more. Constraint invites so many questions: What causes the constriction? Does it hurt? Can it be resisted? Constraint is nice and safe, but inadequate to flesh out the semantic gap in the text left by the unknown word. Ive started retracing old sources, just rechecked Lane and found nothing useful. I think Gilgamesh tablet 12 is the best. Ghosts and pointy sticks and streets and earth and death and rest and so on are all very Genesis 1-4 and SUQ semantic stem. It is also possible we should be cautious about concluding spiritual facts too literally, as we would with historical facts where those borrow concepts from surrounding cultures. Its not that those ideas are tainted, just that communication works from known to unknown. Teshuqa can be a great way of talking if thats the way people think about spiritual things, but there can be better ones if they dont. On balance, though, Id suspect teshuqa *is* real, and a more superstitious culture, although very badly mistaken, provided rich vocabulary and story telling that could be used to tell very clear moral and eternal truths. Even without knowing Babylonian mythology we can get the sense of the Bible, but we should retain more than a little humility about it, since even the best scholars in the world struggle to interpret the limited data we have about societies contemporary with the Bible. But pushing on teshuqa and sins relationship to Cain have convinced me the Bible alone gives us enough information to refine our translations in Gen chaps 3-4. The Song of Songs really helps with it I think, and thats a book thats only been taken literally quite recently. For perhaps 2000 years at least, no major Bible teacher saw the Song of Songs as literal at all.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Apr 2014 11:35:24 +0000