Pethor or Petor (פְּתוֹר) in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Balaam Balaam (;; ; ), son of Beor, was, according to the Hebrew Bible, a non-Israelite prophet and diviner who lived in Pethor, a place identified with the ancient city of Pitru, thought to have been located between the region of Iraq and norther ...

. In the

Book of Numbers The Book of Numbers (from Biblical Greek, Greek Ἀριθμοί, ''Arithmoi'', , ''Bəmīḏbar'', ; ) is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah. The book has a long and complex history; its final f ...

, Pethor is described as being located "by the river of the land of the children of his people". The Bible usually uses the name "the River" to the

Euphrates The Euphrates ( ; see #Etymology, below) is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of West Asia. Tigris–Euphrates river system, Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia (). Originati ...

; the rest of the description is somewhat vague and perhaps corrupted. In

Deuteronomy Deuteronomy (; ) is the fifth book of the Torah (in Judaism), where it is called () which makes it the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament. Chapters 1–30 of the book consist of three sermons or speeches delivered to ...

, Balaam is from "Pethor of

Aram-Naharaim Aram-Naharaim ( ''ʾĂram Nahărayim'') is the biblical term for an ancient land along the great bend of the Euphrates River. It is mentioned five times in the Hebrew BibleGenesis 24:10; Deuteronomy 23:4; Judges 3:8,10; 1 Chronicles 19:6; Psalm ...

" in

Upper Mesopotamia Upper Mesopotamia constitutes the Upland and lowland, uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, the regio ...

. It is widely accepted that Pethor is the town Pitru, which is mentioned in ancient

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...

n records. The Hebrew root of the name Pethor is , which corresponds to the Aramaic root . Both roots refer, as verbs and nouns, to dream interpretation. This raises the possibility that Pethor is not the name of a town but rather a description of Balaam's occupation. Indeed, the

Peshitta The Peshitta ( ''or'' ') is the standard Syriac edition of the Bible for Syriac Christian churches and traditions that follow the liturgies of the Syriac Rites. The Peshitta is originally and traditionally written in the Classical Syriac d ...

translates into

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

"to Pethor" in Numbers as , which means "the interpreter". The Vulgata translates "Pethor" by "ariolum", which means a fortuneteller. The Targum Neofiti translates "Pethor" as "dream interpreter." In Deuteronomy, Balaam is "from Pethor, Aram-Naharain." The Vulgata and the Septuaginta omit "Pethor," and the Neofiti translates it, like in Numbers, "dream interpreter." The Deir Alla inscription, dated to 880–770 BCE, describes a vision of "Bal'am son of Be'or," which seems to be the same figure described in the Bible. However, there is no mention of the town he lives in. In addition to the inscription, tablets dated to the Late Bronze were found in Deir Alla. The signs on these tablets are enigmatic and do not correspond to any known alphabet. W. Shea suggested reading these tablets with the root ptr. He concluded that Pethor is Deir Alla. However, more recent study of these tablets, by Gerrit van der Kooij and Michel de Vreeze suggested a completely different deciphering of the signs on the tablets, and in particular ''ptr'' is not found there.

References

Hebrew Bible places {{Bible-stub