Nimrod

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For other uses, see Nimrod (disambiguation).

Pieter Bruegel's The Tower of Babel depicts a traditional Nimrod inspecting stonemasons.

Nimrod (Hebrew: נִמְרוֹד, Modern Nimrod Tiberian Nimrōḏ Aramaic: ܢܡܪܘܕ‎ Arabic: نمرود‎) is according to the Book of Genesis, a great-grandson of Noah and the king of Shinar. He is depicted in the Bible as both a man of power in the earth and mighty hunter. He also figures in many legends and folktales outside the Bible. Extra-Biblical traditions associating him with the Tower of Babel led to a darkening of his reputation. Several Mesopotamian ruins (see Nimrud) were given Nimrod's name by 8th century Arabs^[1].

[edit] Biblical accounts

Mention of Nimrod in the Bible is rather limited. According to the documentary hypothesis of the Bible's origin, J made the earliest mention of Nimrod in the Table of Nations.^[1] He is described as the son of Cush, grandson of Ham, and great-grandson of Noah; and as "a mighty one on the earth" and "a mighty hunter before YHWH". This information is repeated in First Book of Chronicles and the "Land of Nimrod" is mentioned in the Book of Micah. It is said that the "beginning of his kingdom" (reshit memelketo) was the towns of "Babel, Uruk, Akkad and Calneh in the land of Shinar" (Mesopotamia) — understood variously to imply that he either founded these cities, ruled over them, or both. Owing to an ambiguity in the original Hebrew text, it is unclear whether it is he or Asshur who additionally builded Nineveh, Resen, Rehoboth-Ir and Calah (both interpretations are reflected in various English versions).(Genesis 10:8–12) (Genesis 10:8-12; 1 Chronicles 1:10, Micah 5:6).

[edit] Traditions and legends

Since ancient times, Nimrod has traditionally been considered the leader of those who built the Tower of Babel in Shinar, though the Bible never actually states this. It is usually assumed that it was under his direction that the building began; this view is found in the Targums, and later texts including Josephus.

Some Hebrew traditions say Nimrod's mother was of Mizraim; others, that he inherited Asshur and expanded Assyria. One legend^[who?] suggests that Nimrod was killed by a wild animal. Another^[who?] says that Shem killed him because he had led the people into the worship of Baal and tore his body to pieces and had them sent them out as a warning to others not to indulge in the false worship. Later his mother and/or wife, Semiramis, collected them, put them together and claimed he was still alive, but had become a god, similar to the legend of Isis and Osiris^{[citation needed]}. Still another mention of Nimrod is in the 16th century Book of Jasher Chapter 27:7, which ascribes his death to Esau (grandson of Abraham), who supposedly beheaded him. The Jewish Encyclopedia states that Nimrod was slain by Esau, with whom jealousy existed because they were both hunters (Targ. pseudo-Jonathan to Gen. xxv. 27; "Sefer ha-Yashar," section "Toledot," p. 40b; Pirḳe R. El. l.c.; comp. Gen. R. lxv. 12).

Josephus wrote:

Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to reach. And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers. Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion…

The Book of Jubilees mentions the name of "Nebrod" (the Greek form of Nimrod) only as being the father of Azurad, the wife of Eber and mother of Peleg (8:7). This account would thus make him an ancestor of Abraham, and hence of all Hebrews.

An early Arabic work known as Kitab al-Magall or the Book of Rolls (part of Clementine literature) states that Nimrod built the towns of Hadâniûn, Ellasar, Seleucia, Ctesiphon, Rûhîn, Atrapatene, Telalôn, and others, that he began his reign as king over earth when Reu was 163, and that he reigned for 69 years, building Nisibis, Raha (Edessa) and Harran when Peleg was 50. It further adds that Nimrod "saw in the sky a piece of black cloth and a crown." He called upon Sasan the weaver and commanded him to make him a crown like it, which he set jewels on and wore. He was allegedly the first king to wear a crown. "For this reason people who knew nothing about it, said that a crown came down to him from heaven." Later, the book describes how Nimrod established fire worship and idolatry, then received instruction in divination for three years from Bouniter, the fourth son of Noah.^[2]

In the Recognitions (R 4.29), one version of the Clementines, Nimrod is equated with the legendary Assyrian king Ninus, who first appears in the Greek historian Ctesias as the founder of Nineveh. However, in another version, the Homilies (H 9.4-6), Nimrod is made to be the same as Zoroaster.

The Syriac Cave of Treasures (ca. 350) contains an account of Nimrod very similar to that in the Kitab al-Magall, except that Nisibis, Edessa and Harran are said to be built by Nimrod when Reu was 50, and that he began his reign as the first king when Reu was 130. In this version, the weaver is called Sisan, and the fourth son of Noah is called Yonton.

Jerome, writing ca. 390, explains in Hebrew Questions on Genesis that after Nimrod reigned in Babel, "he also reigned in Arach [Erech], that is, in Edissa; and in Achad [Accad], which is now called Nisibis; and in Chalanne [Calneh], which was later called Seleucia after King Seleucus when its name had been changed, and which is now in actual fact called Ctesiphon." However, this traditional identification of the cities built by Nimrod in Genesis is no longer accepted by modern scholars, who consider them to be located in Sumer, not Syria.

The Ge'ez Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (ca. 5th century) also contains a version similar to that in the Cave of Treasures, but the crown maker is called Santal, and the name of Noah's fourth son who instructs Nimrod is Barvin.

In the History of the Prophets and Kings by the 9th century Muslim historian al-Tabari, Nimrod has the tower built in Babil, Allah destroys it, and the language of mankind, formerly Syriac, is then confused into 72 languages. Another Muslim historian of the 13th century, Abu al-Fida, relates the same story, adding that the patriarch Eber (an ancestor of Abraham) was allowed to keep the original tongue, Hebrew in this case, because he would not partake in the building.

In Armenian legend, the ancestor of the Armenian people, Hayk, defeated Nimrod (sometimes equated with Bel) in a battle near Lake Van.

In the Hungarian legend of the Enchanted Stag, King Nimrod (aka Ménrót) was the forefather of the Hungarians (Simon Kézai in his Gesta Ungarorum, 1282-85). The twin sons of King Nimrod, Hunor and Magor, each with 100 warriors, followed the White Stag, through the Meotis Marsh, and disappeared from their sight. Hunor and Magor found the two daughters of King Dul of the Alans, together with their handmaidens, whom they kidnapped. Hungarian legends held them to be ancestors of the Huns and the Magyars (Hungarians).

[edit] The evil Nimrod vs. the righteous Abraham

The Bible does not mention any meeting between Nimrod and Abraham. In fact, there is a gap of seven generations between them, Nimrod being Noah's great grandson while Abraham was ten generations removed from Noah.^[3] Nevertheless, later Jewish tradition brings the two of them together in a cataclysmic collision, a symbol of the confrontation between Good and Evil, and also of monotheism against paganism and idolatry. On the other hand some Jewish traditions say the two men met and had a discussion.

According to K. van der Toorn; P. W. van der Horst this tradition is first attested in the writings of Pseudo-Philo,^[4] but this is disputed by the 1917 translation available in Google Books which says in a footnote on page 89 that Philo does not mention Nimrod in the story of the Burning of Abraham with the bricks. But apparently the story is also found somewhere in the Talmud, and versions are found in rabbinical writings in the Middle Ages.^[5]

In some versions (as in Josephus), Nimrod is a man who sets his will against that of God. In others, he proclaims himself a god and is worshipped as such by his subjects, sometimes with his consort Semiramis worshipped as a goddess at his side. (See also Ninus.)

A portent in the stars tells Nimrod and his astrologers of the impending birth of Abraham, who would put an end to idolatry. Nimrod therefore orders the killing of all newborn babies. However, Abraham's mother escapes into the fields and gives birth secretly (in some accounts, the baby Abraham is placed in a manger). At a young age Abraham recognizes God and starts worshiping Him. He confronts Nimrod and tells him face-to-face to cease his idolatry, whereupon Nimrod orders him burned at the stake. In some versions, Nimrod has his subjects gather wood for four whole years, so as to burn Abraham in the biggest bonfire the world had seen (a story possibly inspired or confused with Nimrod's building of the Tower). Yet when the fire is lit, Abraham walks out unscathed. One notes the similarity to Moses, Jesus and Herod, and Daniel in the fiery furnace.

In some versions, Nimrod then challenges Abraham to battle. When Nimrod appears at the head of enormous armies, Abraham produces an army of gnats which destroys Nimrod's army. Some accounts have a gnat or mosquito enter Nimrod's brain and drive him out of his mind (a divine retribution which Jewish tradition also assigned to the Roman Emperor Titus, destroyer of the Temple in Jerusalem).

In some versions, Nimrod repents and accepts God, offering numerous sacrifices that God rejects (as with Cain). Other versions have Nimrod give to Abraham, as a conciliatory gift, the slave Eliezer, whom some accounts describe as Nimrod's own son. (The Bible also mentions Eliezer, though not making any connection between him and Nimrod. He was Abraham's majordomo, entrusted with missions such as fetching a bride for Abraham's son, and he has entered Jewish tradition as the archetype of a loyal servant.)

Still other versions have Nimrod persisting in his rebellion against God, or resuming it. Indeed, Abraham's crucial act of leaving Mesopotamia and settling in Canaan, which effectively sets the stage for the rest of the Bible, is sometimes interpreted as an escape from Nimrod's revenge. Some accounts place the building of the Tower many generations before Abraham's birth (as in the Bible, also Jubilees). In others, it is a later rebellion after Nimrod failed in his confrontation with Abraham, and in still other versions, Nimrod does not give up after the Tower fails, but goes on to try storming Heaven in person, in a chariot driven by birds.

The story attributes to Abraham elements from the story of Moses' birth (the cruel king killing innocent babies, with the midwives ordered to kill them) and from the careers of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who emerged unscathed from the fire. Nimrod is thus made to conflate the role and attributes of two archetypal cruel and persecuting kings - Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh. Some Jewish traditions also identified him with Cyrus whose birth according to Herodotus was accompanied by portents which made his grandfather try to kill him.

A confrontation is also found in the Islamic Qur'an, between a king, not mentioned by name, and the Prophet Ibrahim (Arabic version of "Abraham"). Muslim commentators assign Nimrod as the king based on Jewish sources. In Ibrahim's confrontation with the king, the former argues that Allah is the one who gives life and gives death. The king responds by bringing out two people sentenced to death. He releases one and kills the other as a poor attempt at making a point that he also brings life and death. Ibrahim refutes by stating that Allah brings the Sun out from the East, and so he asks the king to bring it from the West. The king is then perplexed and angered.

Whether or not conceived as having ultimately repented, Nimrod remained in Jewish and Islamic tradition an emblematic evil person, an archetype of an idolater and a tyrannical king. In rabbinical writings up to the present, he is almost invariably referred to as "Nimrod the Evil" (Hebrew: נמרוד הרשע‎), and to Muslims he is "Nimrod al-Jabbar" (The Mighty one or powerful).

The story of Abraham's confrontation with Nimrod did not remain within the confines of learned writings and religious treatises, but also conspicuously influenced popular culture. A notable example is "Quando el Rey Nimrod" ("When King Nimrod"), one of the most well-known folksongs in Ladino (the Judeo-Spanish language), apparently written during the reign of King Alfonso X of Castile.

Beginning with the words: "When King Nimrod went out to the fields/ Looked at the heavens and at the stars/He saw a holy light in the Jewish quarter/A sign that Abraham, our father, was about to be born", the song gives a poetic account of the persecutions perpetrated by the cruel Nimrod and the miraculous birth and deeds of the savior Abraham.^[6]

[edit] Text of the Midrash Raba version

The following version of the Abraham vs. Nimrod confrontation appears in the Midrash Raba, a major compilation of Jewish Scriptural exegesis. The part relating to Genesis, in which this appears (Chapter 38, 13), is considered to date from the sixth century.

[edit] Interpretations

It is often assumed that Nimrod's reign included war and terror, and that he was a hunter not only of animals, but also a person who used aggression against other humans. The Hebrew translated "before" in the phrase "Mighty hunter before the LORD" is commonly analysed as meaning literally "in the Face of" in this interpretation, to suggest a certain rebelliousness in the establishment of a human government. Since some of the towns mentioned were in the territory of Assyria, which is connected to Shem's son Asshur, Nimrod is sometimes speculated to have invaded territory that did not belong to him. However, various translations of the Hebrew text leave it ambiguous as to whether the towns in Assyria were founded by Nimrod or by Asshur.

Inscription of Naram Sin found at the city of Marad

Historians and mythographers have long tried to find links between Nimrod and figures from other traditions. Marduk (Merodach), has been suggested as a possible archetype for Nimrod, especially at the beginning of the 20th century.^{[citation needed]} Nimrod's imperial ventures described in Genesis may be based on the conquests of the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I (Dalley et al., 1998, p. 67). Alexander Hislop, in his tract The Two Babylons (Chapter 2, Section II, Sub-Section I) decided that Nimrod was to be identified with Ninus, who according to Greek legend was a Mesopotamian king and husband of Semiramis (see below); with a whole host of deities throughout the Mediterranean world, and with the Persian Zoroaster. The identification with Ninus follows that of the Clementine Recognitions; the one with Zoroaster, that of the Clementine Homilies, both works part of Clementine literature.^[7]

David Rohl, like Hislop, identified Nimrod with a complex of Mediterranean deities; among those he picked were Asar, Baal, Dumuzi and Osiris. In Rohl's theory, Enmerkar the founder of Uruk was the original inspiration for Nimrod, because the story of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (see:^[8] ) bears a few similarities to the legend of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel, and because the -KAR in Emmerkar means "hunter". Additionally, Emmerkar is said to have had ziggurats built in both Uruk and Eridu, which Rohl postulates was the site of the original Babel.

Because another of the cities said to have been built by Nimrod was Accad, an older theory connects him with Sargon the Great, grandfather of Naram-Sin, since, according to the Sumerian king list, that king first built Agade (Akkad). The assertion of the king list that it was Sargon who built Akkad has been called into question, however, with the discovery of inscriptions mentioning the place in the reigns of some of Sargon's predecessors, such as kings Enshakushanna and Lugal-Zage-Si of Uruk. Moreover, Sargon was credited with founding Babylon in the Babylonian Chronicle (ABC 19:51), another city (Babel) attributed to Nimrod in Genesis. However, a different tablet (ABC 20:18-19) suggests that Sargon merely "dug up the dirt of the pit" of the original Babylon, and rebuilt it in its later location fronting Akkad.

The Church of the Great God has also asserted that Nimrod is to be identified with Christmas trees and the Egyptian god Osiris and was possibly father of Gilgamesh.^[9]

Nimrod figures in some very early versions of the history of Freemasonry, where he was said to have been one of the fraternity's founders. According to the Encyclopedia of Freemasonry: The legend of the Craft in the Old Constitutions refers to Nimrod as one of the founders of Masonry. Thus in the York MS., No. 1, we read: "At ye making of ye toure of Babell there was a Masonrie first much esteemed of, and the King of Babilon yt called Nimrod was a Mason himself and loved well Masons." However, he does not figure in the current rituals.

[edit] Nimrod in Divine Comedy

In the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (written 1308-21), Nimrod is a figure in the Inferno part. Nimrod is portrayed as a giant, which was common in the Medieval period. He is found, being punished, in the Giants' Well with the other giants. His only line is, "Raphèl maí amèche zabí almi", which is gibberish, a reference to the confusion of languages after the building of the Tower of Babel.

[edit] Notes

^ ^a ^b Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985.
^ the Kitab al-Magall
^ Genesis 10,11
^ van der Toorn and van der Horst 1990, p. 19
^ "נמרוד". Jewish Encyclopedia Daat. Herzog College. http://www.daat.ac.il/encyclopedia/value.asp?id1=1058. (Hebrew)
^ Full original text and an English translation appear in the Ladino wikipedia article; see also [1], [2], [3]
^ Homily IX
^ "Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta: translation". Etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk. http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1823.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-12.
^ "Syncretismas!" by Martin G. Collins, Forerunner, December 1995.

[edit] References

The Legacy of Mesopotamia; Stephanie Dalley et al. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998)
Noah's Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery; Stephen R. Haynes (NY, Oxford University Press, 2002)
"Nimrod before and after the Bible" K. van der Toorn; P. W. van der Horst, The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 83, No. 1. (Jan., 1990), pp. 1–29

[edit] External links

Nimrod, entry in the Jewish Encyclopedia
WebBible entry
Against World Powers: A Study of the Judeo-Christian Struggle in History and Prophecy - Modern Christian writings, redolent of apocalypticism, which follow David Rohl's view on the legends of Nimrod, but add the theory that he was an agent of Satan. Another page from this site summarizes Rohl's theory of Nimrod and Enmerkar

[Harris-0] Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985.

[1] the Kitab al-Magall

[2] Genesis 10,11

[3] van der Toorn and van der Horst 1990, p. 19

[4] "נמרוד". Jewish Encyclopedia Daat. Herzog College. http://www.daat.ac.il/encyclopedia/value.asp?id1=1058. (Hebrew)

[5] Full original text and an English translation appear in the Ladino wikipedia article; see also [1], [2], [3]

[6] Homily IX

[7] "Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta: translation". Etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk. http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1823.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-12.

[8] "Syncretismas!" by Martin G. Collins, Forerunner, December 1995.

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Nimrod

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Biblical accounts

[edit] Traditions and legends

[edit] The evil Nimrod vs. the righteous Abraham

[edit] Text of the Midrash Raba version

[edit] Interpretations

[edit] Nimrod in Divine Comedy

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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