194 
of “Jerahmeel” ; Amramis a“ development ” of ‘ Jerah- 
meel” ; Aérvam is a corruption of “ Jerahmeel” ; Zev7 is 
a Jerahmeelite name, for it corresponds to Leah, which 
is ‘‘a fragment of a feminine form of Jerahmeel” ; 
Maacah is “a popular corruption of Jerahme’el or 
Jerahme’elith (a Jerahmeelitess),” AZeholah is the same, 
Mephibosheth (col. 3023), Michael, Abihail (col. 3198), 
Jerubbaal, Ephrath (3516), Rimmon (3379), Ramah (3264), 
Jericho (3258), Hiddekel, Leummim all apparently occur as 
corruptions of, or substitutions for, “ Jerahmeel.” In the 
majority of cases it is impossible to discover how or why. 
“ Both Micha and Chimham [the italics are ours] (2 S. 19, 
37 #) may quite naturally,” says Prof. Cheyne (co/. 
3025), “‘ be traced to Jerahme’el” ; Hded-melech ought to 
be “ Arab-jerahmeel” (3340); the MWepAz/im were really 
Jerahmeelites, for MePhilim =“ Rephilim” = “ Jerah- 
meelim”; and after this the transition Memmzel— 
“ Jemuel”—“ Jerahmeel ” is comparatively easy ! Further, 
Amalek is “an early popular distortion ” (2935) of, and 
“ultimately the same name” (3258) as, “ Jerahmeel.” 
The inevitable Jerahmeel pursues us even into the 
Garden of Eden. In Gem. ii. 8 “we cannot hesitate 
to read ‘Yahwé [Elohim] planted a garden in Eden 
of Jerahmeel’”; the traditional text reads, “And 
Yahwé [Elohim] planted a garden eastward in Eden.” 
According to Prof. Cheyne there is a “Jerahmeelite 
form of the story” of Paradise (3574), and the pas- 
sage Gen. iii. 20 probably ran _ originally, “And 
Jerahmeel called the name of his wife Horith, that is, a 
Jerahmeelitess.” The original names of Adam and Eve 
were, therefore, not Adam and Eve, but “ Jerahmeel” 
and “ Horith.” We cannot find that any real reasons 
are given for all these assumptions. 
Dr. Winckler’s hypothetical North-Arabian “ Musri” 
is pressed into service in much the same way. Here is 
the traditional text of Dew?. xxxiy. 1 side by side with 
Prof. Cheyne’s version of it ;— 
Traditional Text. (R. V.) 
“* And Moses went up from 
the plains of Moab unto 
mount Nebo, to the top of 
Pisgah, that is over against 
Jericho. And the Lord shewed 
him all the Jand of Gilead, 
unto Dan, and all Naphtali, 
and the land of Ephraim, and 
Manasseh, and all the land of 
Judah, unto the hinder sea: 
and the South, and the Plain 
of the valley of Jericho the 
city of palm trees, unto Zoar.” 
Prof. Cheyne’s Version. 
“And Moses went up from 
Arabia of Musri to the top of 
the mountain of the Negeb of 
Jerahmeel [fronting Jerah- 
meel].2, And Yahwe shewed 
him Jerahmeel as far as Dan, 
and all Tappthim [the land of 
Jerahmeel and Musri], all the 
land of Judah as far as the 
Jerahmeelite sea,? and _ the 
Negeb of Jerahmeel [the land 
of Jerahmeel, the land of 
Musri].” 
Prof. Cheyne’s note is to the effect that the words in 
square brackets are to be regarded as glosses; note 3 
states that this is the true original name of the Dead 
Sea. 
Because, relying on his own arbitrary interpretation of 
ii. Chron. xxi. 16, Dr. Winckler boldly supposes a North- 
Arabian Kush as well as a North-Arabian Musri, Prof. 
Cheyne naturally follows, and so: we ;find that the name 
of Nehushta, the mother of Jehoiachin, is corrupt ; 
it ought to be “ Cushith,” a NortheArabian: her father 
was ‘“‘Elnathan of Jerusalem” ; this is very unlikely ; 
““Elnathan” is of course wrong, and “ Jerusalem ” is in 
this passage a corruption of Jerahmeel! Of course Prof. 
Cheyne does not mean a corruption in the sense in 
NO. 1704, VOL. 66] 
NATURE 
[June 26, 1902 
which the word “lord ” is a corruption of “hlaford” ; he 
means that the text has been more or less wilfully altered! 
from the supposed original “ Jerahmeel” to the existing 
“Jerusalem.” But he gives no real proof of any such 
corruption or of the validity of his supposition that the 
original text read “ Jerahmeel.” 
Mordecai follows the rest ; Paddan-aram ought to read 
“Haran (Hauran?) of Jerahmeel” (3523); Daniel ‘‘is 
most easily explained as a corruption of Jerahmeel,” 
and with Daniel go Badel, Nebuchadnezzar and Bel- 
Shazzar, the real original of the latter having been a 
hypothetical ‘‘ Baal, prince of Missur” (3983). For 
Prof. Cheyne’s apparent belief that the names of Nebu- 
chadnezzar and Belshazzar have, in the Book of Daniel, 
been substituted for those of his hypothetical North 
Arabian heroes, and that the w2zse-en-scéne of the story 
of Daniel is to be bodily transferred from Babylonia to: 
the Negeb of Jerahmeel, no proof whatever is given. 
The reader is invited to compare the accepted text of 
Jer. xxxix. 1 with Prof. Cheyne’s version of it ; Mergal- 
Sharezer is, according to him, a corruption of ‘ Mergal- 
sharezer” (!) which “ proceeded from” ‘ shar Yerahme'el 
shar Missur, “the king of Jerahmeel and the king of 
Missur.” He turns the Babylonian Nergal-shar-utsur, the 
Rab-mag, and other Babylonian officials into princes of 
Jerahmeel, Missur, Nodab, Cushim and the Arabians 
For these extraordinary proposals not the slightest 
justification is given. 
For Prof. Cheyne the Book of Obadiah seems to con- 
tain a kind of Bacon-Shakespeare eryptogram all about 
Jerahmeel, and this is how he, with apologies for doing 
so, it is true, recasts the well-known sentence from 
Psalm cxxxvii. : “On the heritage of Jerahmeel we wept, 
remembering Zion.” In Psalm cx., Prof. Cheyne restores 
an original text for verses 5-6(R. V.), “The Lord at thy 
right hand shall strike through kings in the day of His 
wrath ; He shall judge among the nations, He shall fill 
the places with dead bodies, He shall strike through 
the head in many countries,” as follows :— 
“The Lord will shatter Jerahmeel in the day of His 
wrath, He will judge mighty kings for the treason of 
their pride. The Lord will smite Geshur on the land of 
the Arabians ; the kings of Rehoboth He will destroy, 
the princes of Jerahmeel.” 
It may be admitted that the received text is here cor- 
rupt, but we cannot see that the corruption goes very far. 
or think it probable that the original sense of the passage 
quoted was very different from its present tenour ; even 
as it stands, it is not nonsense, any more than is the 
Pisgah passage quoted above. 
Finally, we may compare the received text of Gez. x. 
10 #7, describing the kingdom of Nimrod, with Prof. 
Cheyne’s version of it :— 
Traditional Text. (R. V.) 
“« And the beginning of his 
kingdom was Babel, and 
Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, 
in the land of Shinar. Out 
of that land he went forth into 
Assyria, and builded Nineveh, 
and Rehoboth-Ir, and Calah, 
and Resen between Nineveh 
and Calah. .. .” 
Prof. Cheyne’s Version. 
‘© And the beginning of his 
kingdom was Jerahmeel in the 
land of Seir. From that land 
he went forth into Geshur, 
and smote Hebron, Rehoboth, 
Jerahmeel, and Beersheba, 
which is between Hebron 
and Jerahmeel.” 
In this passage we have a plain statement of a legen- 
dary account of the origin of the kingdoms and cities of 
NL  ————— 
~ane 
