S. 356f. Hence it is that Josephus manifestly speaks only of one progenitor Οὔσης, therefore of one tribe; while the word Ghûta, often as a synonym of buq'a (בקעה), denotes a low well-watered country enclosed by mountains, and in this appellative signification occurs as the proper name of several localities in the most widely separated parts of Arabia (comp. Jâkût, sub voce), which could not be the case if it had been = ארץ עוץ.[1]
The word Ausitis used by the lxx also has no formation corresponding to the word Ghûta, but shows its connection with עוּץ ארץ by the termination; while the word Ghûta rendered in Greek is Gouthata' (in Theophanes Byzant. Gouthatha'), in analogy e.g., with the form Cheblatha' for Ribla (Jos. Ant. x. 11).[2]
But why are we obliged to think only of Damascus, since Josephus makes Trachonitis also to belong to the land of the Usites? If we take this word in its most limited signification, it is (apart from the eastern Trachon) that lava plateau, about forty miles long and about twenty-eight broad, which is called the Legâ in the present day. This is so certain, that one is not obliged first of all to recall the well-known inscription of the temple of Mismia, which calls this city situated in the Legâ, Μητροκώμη τοῦ Τράχωνος. From the western border of this Trachon, however, the Monastery of Job is not ten miles distant, therefore by no means outside the radius that was at all times tributary to the Trachonites (Arab el-wa'r), a people unassailable in their habitations in the clefts of the
- ↑ On the name 'Us, as the name of men and people, may be compared the proper names 'As and ‘Aus, together with the diminutive ‘Owês, taken from the genealogies of the Arabs, since the Old Testament is wanting in words formed from the root עוץ, and none of those so named was a Hebrew. In Hebr. they might be sounded עוץ, and signify the “strong one,” for the verbal stems Arab. ‛ṣṣ, ‛wṣ, ‛ṣy (comp. Arab. ‛ṣb, ‛ṣr, ‛ṣm, and others) have the signif. “to be compressed, firm, to resist.”
- ↑ On this word-formation comp. Reisebericht, S. 76.
