Middle East

OH THE IRONIES: ARAB COUNTRIES THAT BEAR BIBLICAL HEBREW NAMES…….

Arabs are not known for their inventiveness.

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Irony Of Ironies: Arab Countries Bearing Biblical Hebrew Names

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There I was, relaxing in a plastic Adirondack chair in the yard behind my building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Arak, a Levantine anisette liqueur, was flowing liberally through my veins when the revelation hit me:

Every single Arab state bordering Israel has a name taken from the Hebrew Bible.

Start on Israel’s north with Lebanon and Syria – neighboring countries named for adjacent mountains, Levanon and Siryon.Levanon is derived from the Hebrew word lavan, meaning white, alluding to the snow cover of the Lebanese range. Siryon is identified in Scripture as the alternate name for Mount Hermon, the majestic peak straddling the present Israel-Syria border.

Though the Syria-Siryon origin has been debated, historian Daniel Pipes states unequivocally in his 1990 book Greater Syria that the name Syria was derived from Siryon.

Around the bend, Israel’s current eastern boundary is formed by the River Jordan, which gave its name to the kingdom on its eastern bank. Jordan is the English rendition of Yarden, meaning “descends from Dan” – in today’s southeastern Lebanon the river flows down from the hills of what was once the territory of the Israelite tribe of Dan.

To the south lies Egypt – known in Arabic as Mizr. Well, that isn’t originally Arabic either – it’s derived from Mitzrayim, which appears 291 times in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

More here.

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