The land of Sin ( he, סִין) or Sinim (from: he, סִינִים, i.e. the inhabitants of the land of Sin, or the people of Sin) is a biblical

hapax legomenon In corpus linguistics, a ''hapax legomenon'' ( also or ; ''hapax legomena''; sometimes abbreviated to ''hapax'', plural ''hapaxes'') is a word or an expression that occurs only once within a context: either in the written record of an entir ...

that appears in

Isaiah Isaiah ( or ; he, , ''Yəšaʿyāhū'', "God is Salvation"), also known as Isaias, was the 8th-century BC Israelite prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named. Within the text of the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah himself is referred to as "th ...

49:12: "Behold, these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim." Some English versions simply

transliterate Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or ...

the word, others translate the Hebrew as

Syene Aswan (, also ; ar, أسوان, ʾAswān ; cop, Ⲥⲟⲩⲁⲛ ) is a city in Southern Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate. Aswan is a busy market and tourist centre located just north of the Aswan Dam on the east bank of t ...

Aswan Aswan (, also ; ar, أسوان, ʾAswān ; cop, Ⲥⲟⲩⲁⲛ ) is a city in Southern Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate. Aswan is a busy market and tourist centre located just north of the Aswan Dam on the east bank of ...

, and still others associate Sin with China. Sinim resembles ''Sinae'', the Latinization of ''Qin'', after the

Qin state Qin () was an ancient Chinese state during the Zhou dynasty. Traditionally dated to 897 BC, it took its origin in a reconquest of western lands previously lost to the Rong; its position at the western edge of Chinese civilization permitted e ...

, founded in 778 BC, and the

Qin dynasty The Qin dynasty ( ; zh, c=秦朝, p=Qín cháo, w=), or Ch'in dynasty in Wade–Giles romanization ( zh, c=, p=, w=Ch'in ch'ao), was the first dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin state (modern Gansu and Shaanxi), ...

, founded in 221 BC by Qin Shi Huang-Di. Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible (1879) defines the word as "a people in the far east; the Chinese?" The

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia The ''International Standard Bible Encyclopedia'' refers to two different versions of a Bible encyclopedia: a 1915 fundamentalist edition, and a 1979–1995 revised evangelical edition. The first version was published under the general editorship ...

(1915) says, "The land is clearly far off, and it must be sought either in the South or in the East. Septuagint points to an eastern country. Many scholars have favored identification with China, the classical Sinae. It seems improbable that Jews had already found their way to China; but from very early times trade relations were established with the Far East by way of Arabia and the Persian Gulf; and the name may have been used by the prophet simply as suggesting extreme remoteness....While no certain decision is possible, probability points to the East, and China cannot be quite ruled out." Modern translations of the Bible tend to translate Sinim as Syene (ancient Aswan) because the

Great Isaiah Scroll The Isaiah Scroll, designated 1QIsaa and also known as the Great Isaiah Scroll, is one of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls that were first discovered by Bedouin shepherds in 1946 from Qumran Cave 1. The scroll is written in Hebrew and contains the en ...

of the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the ...

uses that word. In language nearly identical to that of the

King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of K ...

First Nephi The First Book of Nephi: His Reign and Ministry (), usually referred to as First Nephi or 1 Nephi, is the first book of the Book of Mormon and one of four books with the name Nephi. The original translation of the title did not include the word "f ...

21:12 in the

Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, which, according to Latter Day Saint theology, contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from 600 BC to AD 421 and during an interlude ...

reads: “And then, O house of Israel, behold, these shall come from far; and lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim.” The index of this scripture of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The ...

defines Sinim as “possibly heland of China”.

References

External links

Article arguing that Sinim is an ancient Semitic/Phoenician name for Australia
Hebrew Bible places {{Hebrew-Bible-stub