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Tel Abib ( he, תל אביב, ''Tel Aviv'', "the hill of Spring", from Akkadian ''Tel Abûbi'', "The Tel of the flood") is an unidentified
tell ("hill city") on the Kebar Canal, near
Nippur in what is now Iraq. Tel Abib is mentioned by
Ezekiel
Ezekiel (; he, יְחֶזְקֵאל ''Yəḥezqēʾl'' ; in the Septuagint written in grc-koi, Ἰεζεκιήλ ) is the central protagonist of the Book of Ezekiel in the Hebrew Bible.
In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Ezekiel is ackn ...
in
Ezekiel 3:15:
Location
The Kebar or Chebar Canal (or River) is the setting of several important scenes of the
Book of Ezekiel
The Book of Ezekiel is the third of the Latter Prophets in the Tanakh and one of the major prophetic books, following Isaiah and Jeremiah. According to the book itself, it records six visions of the prophet Ezekiel, exiled in Babylon, duri ...
, including the
opening verses. The book refers to this river eight times in total.
Some older
biblical commentaries identified the Chebar with the
Khabur River in what is now
Syria. The Khabur is mentioned in as the "Habor". However, more recent scholarship is agreed that the location of the Kebar Canal is near
Nippur in Iraq.
The ''ka-ba-ru'' waterway (
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform, early writing system
* Akkadian myt ...
) is mentioned among the 5th century BCE
Murashu archives from Nippur. It was part of a complex network of
irrigation
Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has been dev ...
and transport canals which also included the
Shatt el-Nil, a silted up canal toward the east of Babylon.
It is not to be confused with the Kebar River in Iran, site of
Kebar Dam, the oldest surviving arch dam.
Legacy
Nahum Sokolow
Nahum ben Joseph Samuel Sokolow ( he, נחום ט' סוקולוב ''Nachum ben Yosef Shmuel Soqolov'', yi, סאָקאָלאָוו; ) was a Zionist leader, author, translator, and a pioneer of Hebrew journalism.
Biography
Nahum Sokolow was born ...
adopted the biblical place-name as the title for his Hebrew translation of
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl; hu, Herzl Tivadar; Hebrew name given at his brit milah: Binyamin Ze'ev (2 May 1860 – 3 July 1904) was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish lawyer, journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer who was the father of modern pol ...
's 1902 novel
''Altneuland'' ("Old New Land"), basing it on archaeologists' use of Arabic "tel" extracted from placenames to mean = "accumulated mound of debris" for "old", and "spring" (season) for "new", "renewal". Menachem Shenkin picked its name to mean a new Jewish village near
Jaffa, which grew into the modern
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
i city of
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
. The
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
letter ב without
dagesh
The dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of m ...
represents a sound like
but older English translations of the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts o ...
traditionally transcribe it as "b".
See also
*
Book of Ezekiel
The Book of Ezekiel is the third of the Latter Prophets in the Tanakh and one of the major prophetic books, following Isaiah and Jeremiah. According to the book itself, it records six visions of the prophet Ezekiel, exiled in Babylon, duri ...
*
Tell (archaeology)
In archaeology, a tell or tel (borrowed into English from ar, تَلّ, ', 'mound' or 'small hill'), is an artificial topographical feature, a species of mound consisting of the accumulated and stratified debris of a succession of consecutive s ...
References
{{Reflist
Hebrew Bible places
Book of Ezekiel