3(50 HAUPT— THE BURNING BUSH [April 23, 



Also Balaam was a prophet of Jhvh, while the Israelites, who 

 were to be cursed by this Edomite seer, were idolaters. In Num- 

 bers xxiii., 7 we read that Balaam came from Aram, from the great 

 mountain-^ in the east, i. c, Mount Sinai in the neighborhood of 

 Elath, on the northeastern shore of the Red Sea. This Aram is 

 not Syria, but the Koranic Iramu which we find in the 89**^ sura 

 in connection with the Adites. Iramu (or Aramu) denotes the 

 region southeast of Elath. Balaam is identical with Lokman the 

 Wise. Lokman is a translation of Balaam.-- Both names mean 

 Devoiircr. The name of Balaam's father is Be'or, and Lokman's 

 father was called Ba'iir. Lokman was born at Elath ; elath or 

 cloth means tall trees, including palms, and there is a large grove 

 of palm-trees near Elath. In Judges, i., 16 Elath is called The 

 City of Palm-trees. 



In the Koran the Midianites of Elath are called aghdhu-l-aikati, 

 the People of the Grove. Aikat is an adaptation of Ailat, the Arabic 

 name of Elath. Just as Midian is not a tribal name, but the ancient 

 term for the Sinaitic amphictyony, so the Adites, referred to in the 

 Koran, are not a tribe, but a religious confederation. Arab, 'dd 

 is the collective to 'ddah, custom, usage, institution, a synonym of 

 sunnah which may be connected with Sinai ; it is originally a desig- 

 nation of the Worshipers of Jhvh, as are also Midian and Jehudah, 

 the prototypes of the later Congregation (Heb. kahdl and 'eddh). 

 Hud, the name of the prophet who was sent to the Adites, is but a 

 shortened form of Jehudah. Shu'aib, the Arabic name of Jethro, 

 means small trihe.'^^ 



^ The mountains = the great mountain ; compare the notes on the trans- 

 lation of Esekiel, in the Polychrome Bible, page 157, line 22. 



^ Similarly Nazareth is a translation of the older name of this Galilean 

 town, Hinnafhon or Hittalon, mispointed Hannathon and Hethlon, which 

 means Seclusion; see my paper The Ethnology of Galilee in the Transactions 

 of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions (Oxford, 

 1908) vol. i., page 303, line 3. The original form of the name Nazareth 

 may have been Nagdrath with final t as in Zarephath = Sarepta (Assyr. 

 ^a7-iptu). 



^ Compare Heb. mcthe niispdr, or mcthe ine'dt, or ha-me'dt mikkol 

 ha-'ammim (Genesis, xxxiv., 30; Deuteronomy, iv., 27; vii., 7; xxvi., 5; 

 Psalm, cv., 12). For the Adites compare the new Ensyklopoedie des Islam, 

 edited by Houtsma and Schade, page 128. 



