Chol ( ''ḥōl'') is a word mentioned in Job 29:18 in the Masoretic text of the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Leningrad Codex The Leningrad Codex ( [Leningrad Book]; ) is the oldest known complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, using the Masoretic Text and Tiberian vocalization. According to its colophon (publishing), colophon, it was made in Cairo in AD ...

reads: The Greek

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

(circa 200 BCE) used the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

expression στέλεχος φοίνικος (stélechos phoínikos, "stem/trunk of a palm tree") when rendering Hebrew ''ḥōl'' in Job 29, which the Latin

Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Bible translations into Latin, Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Diocese of ...

(circa 400 CE) interpreted as ''palma'' (Latin for "palm tree"). The Greek term φοῖνιξ ambiguously denotes both the palm tree and the phoenix, the former being a far more common term. Roelof Van den Broek (1971) believed that "sand" was the most appropriate interpretation of the term ''ḥōl'' in Job 29:18, following the common meaning of ''ḥōl'' in Hebrew. On his interpretation, "multiply my days like the sand" must be a metaphor for a long life. On the other hand, Mitchell Dahood (1974) argued in favor of the interpretation "phoenix" on the basis of parallels between Job and

Ugaritic texts The Ugaritic texts are a corpus of ancient cuneiform texts discovered in 1928 in Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and Ras Ibn Hani in Syria, and written in Ugaritic language, Ugaritic, an otherwise unknown Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic langua ...

. In particular, the Ugaritic line ''ḥl rḥb mknpt'' "phoenix broad of wingspread" strongly points to an Ugaritic noun ''ḥl'' "phoenix", as "sand" does not fit this context. Ugaritic ''ḥl'' "phoenix" is cognate to Hebrew ''ḥōl.'' The Rabbis preserved the original understanding of the word ''ḥōl'' as referring to the phoenix. The school of R. Jannai said: " he ''ḥōl''lives a thousand years and at the end of thousand years a fire issues from its nest and burns it until as much as an egg is left of it. Then it grows limbs again and lives." R. Judan b. Simon said: "it lives a thousand years and at the end of thousand years its body is consumed and its wings crumble to pieces until as much as an egg of it is left. Then it grows limbs again and lives."

Notes

References

* * Slifkin, Natan (2007). ''Sacred Monsters: Mysterious and Mythical Creatures of Scripture, Talmud and Midrash''. Zoo Torah. *Lecocq, Françoise (2014). Y a-t-il un phénix dans la Bible ? À propos de Job 29:18, de Tertullien, ''De resurrectione carnis'' 13, et d’Ambroise, ''De excessu fratris'' 2, 59, ''Kentron'' 30, 2014, pp. 55–81 (https://journals.openedition.org/kentron/463). *Van den Broek, Roelof (1971).
The Myth of the Phoenix: According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions … Door Roelof Van Den Broek. Translated from the Dutch by I. Seeger
' Brill Archive. pp. 58–60. {{Book of Job Animals in the Bible Book of Job Christian legendary creatures Christian terminology Greek legendary creatures Jewish folklore Jewish legendary creatures Phoenix birds Hebrew words and phrases in the Hebrew Bible