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Question:		Publication date: 05-01-2009
Title:		The Genealogy of Yehudah
Content:		I can't make heads or tails of Yehudah's genealogy: If Yehudah had only five sons, why does David Mandel ("Who's Who in the Jewish Bible") write that Karmi was a son of Yehudah? Also, is "Carmi" another name for Calev? I'm reading 1 Chronicles 2 and 4, and using other sources, to figure out who is who and who is related to who. I can't even figure out who Zavdi ben-Zerach in Joshua 7 is in 1 Chronicles 2. Nikki

Answer:		Publication date: 05-01-2009
Title:		The Genealogy of Yehudah
Content:		Dear Nikki, Many of the biblical genealogies are, in their present state, distorted, which is not surprising for a text that was transmitted for many generations by hand-copying, before the invention of printing. Indeed, we can see that even the rabbis disagreed on the identity of Caleb the son of Jephunneh. According to the Sages of the Talmud, Caleb the son of Hetzron (1 Chronicles 2:18) is the same person as Caleb the son of Jephunneh (Numbers 13:6). Thus says the Talmud: "The son of Hetzron? Yet he was the son of Jephunneh! He was [called so] because he turned away [pana] from the council of the spies [sent by Moses from the wilderness to explore the Promised Land]" (Babylonian Talmud, Sota 11b). And on the other hand, Ibn Ezra wrote: "Caleb the son of Jephunneh is not Caleb the son of Hetzron. [This is established] by clear arguments, which the intelligent ones will understand" (Ibn Ezra on Exodus 31:2). We have already discussed similar distortions in the biblical text and the Sages' use of word plays to identify different personalities with one another in our essay on Miketz weekly portion of the Torah. As for your question, let us begin with the easier part. Joshua 7:2 identifies Achan as the son of Carmi the son of Zabdi the son of Zerach – i.e., Zabdi appears here as the grandson of Judah. The oldest manuscripts of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Bible, composed in the 3rd-1st centuries BCE) read Zambri instead of Zabdi. In 1 Chronicles 2:6, the Masoretic text gives the name of the first son of Zerach as Zimri, and the abovementioned manuscripts of the Septuagint read Zambri or Zambrei, which is the Septuagint's way of transcribing a name that would appear in Hebrew as Zamri, a variant of Zimri; for the combination of letters mb or mp in Greek rendering Hebrew m in some instances, see R. M. Whiting, "Šamaš, šapaš and Murphy's Law," in H. Juusola, J. Laulainen and H. Palva (eds.), Verbum et calamus; Semitic and Related Studies in Honour of the Sixtieth Birthday of Professor Tapani Harviainen (Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 2004), pp. 425-433. So, it appears that the existence of two names for the son of Zerach: Zabdi and Zimri, in the Masoretic Text results from an error in the transmission of the text by some ancient scribe. Now let us turn to 1 Chronicles 4:2: "The sons of Judah: Peretz, Hetzron, and Carmi, and Hur, and Shoval." This verse appears to contain a list of the descendants (bene, "sons" in an extended sense) of Judah in the order of genealogical succession for five generations: Judah was the father of Peretz, Peretz was the father of Hetzron, Hetzron was the father of Carmi, Carmi was the father of Hur, and Hur was the father of Shoval. This interpretation makes it necessary to consider "Carmi" as a textual error for "Caleb" or "Celubay," since the name of the son of Hetzron was Caleb, also spelled as Celubay (1 Chronicles 2:9, 18) while Carmi was the son of Zerach (Joshua 7:1). Such conjecture lacks explicit support in any extant version of the Bible -- but given that the earliest extant versions of the Bible are copies and translations produced centuries after the biblical books were composed, a copying error made during the earliest period of transmission of the biblical text would then appear in all the versions of the Bible known at present. What this example shows is that one cannot really understand the Bible if one works only with the Masoretic Text, without being acquainted with other versions and without understanding the process of the transmission of the biblical text. Regards, Daat Emet