Amorites
THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA
Amos
So lie buried the books, but in tlic morning fouml them triinsformeil into twelve precious stones, with the names of the twelve tribes of Isrjiel enjrraved thereon, and laliTthey were used in Solomon's Then, with the help of the angel Gabriel, 'I'liniile. he smote the Amorites with blindness and destroyed them with his sword. These legends may be regarded as reflecting the prevalent belief of the Jewish people in Amoiite But the ancient midrashic and apocrywitchcraft. phal narratives of battles fought by the sons of Jacob with the Amorites seem likewise to rest upcm the actual warfare which took place between the Jews and the surrounding nations during the second TemAccording to the Hook of Jubilees, s; .x.iv. ple. Testament of Patriarch Judah, S-T; Miilrash Wayis'u, in Jelliuek. "15. II." iii. 1-5; "Chrou. of Jerahniecl," ed. Ga.ster, §§ ...vi., ...vii., and Sefer liaYashar, xxxvii.-.l., the sons of Jacol) fought with the sons of Esau, while the Amorites sided w itli the latter and were defeated. The battlelield described in the various sources being almost identical with the
stones.
battle-jilaee of the JIaecabean heroes, it is much more likely that the story originated in the time of
John llyrcanus, when war was successfully waged against the Idunieans and other nations, than that it arose in the time of King Herod, as Gaster thinks ("Chronicle of Jenihmcel," preface and l..xii. K. compare Book of Jubilees and Edo.m).
The moniimentjil evidence is Critical View as follows; Egyptian inscriptions (see W. 51. MUller, "Asien uud Europa," p. 21(S) call the land east of Phenicia and north of Palestine " the land of the A-ma-ra. " The Amar, or Amor, of the texts is diiefly the valley between the Lebanon and In Menu- Autilebanou mountains, the modern mental In- Beka'a. In the El-Aniama tablets scription. (Winckler. Nos. 42. 44. M)). Aziru. the prince of the same region, is called " Prince of Atnurru." The latter name does not seem to be much more comprehensive than in the Egyptian texts, and certainly does not apply to Palestine. Only in the later cuneiform texts the old expression Amiirru (not to be read" Aharru) is used so vaguely that Phenicia and even neighboring countries are included I )elit7,sch. " Paradies, " p. 27 1 ). The Babj'louian letter-group Im-martu, orMar-tu for" West." hardly belongs here, but because of the similar sound in its earlier form it was written for Amurru in the
(
t^iblets and still more frequently afterward extended signification of Amurru. At present it is not very ca.sy to show the connection between the monumental Amorites and the Palestinian AmorWinckler ("Gesch. Israels," i. .">2) ites of the Bible. assumes that the Amorites, somewhere about the
Amarna in the
time of the El- Amarna tablets (after 1400 n.c), descended into Palestine from their original northern He supports this by the fact that only habitations. those of the earlier Biblicsil traditions, which belong to the northern kingdom, contain the name Amorites namely, the prophet Amos and those parts of the Pentateuch which the critics assign to E. the Elohistic or Ephraimitic writer (followed by Deuteronomy). For this critical distinction in the use of the name sec E. Meyer, in Stade's "Zeit.schrift," i. 122. Budde, in "Richter and Samuel," xvii. ascribes Judges, i. 34. to the Judaic or Yahwistic writer, but see above on the probaljy indistinct and not very ar,
chaic use of the
name
in that passjige.
Wellhansen 341) assumes
("Die Composition des Hexateuchs," ii. that Amorites and Canaanites are synonymous expressions, only that the former is used of the Canaanites exterminated by Israel, the latter to distinguish
530
them from those living among the Israelites at the time of the kings. These conclusions are suggested by the eircumstjince that the territory of the Amorites as described above leaves very little room for tiie Canaanites in the t<rritory occupied by Israel, and that both terms sometimes seem to be used interchange-
ably (compare Gen. xiv. 13 with Judges, i. lU; Num. xiv. i'i with Dent. i. 44 et mg.). Thus Amorite would be the more ancient name, obscure even to the earliest writers. It is not certain that these writers
mology of the word.
were influenced by the ety-
If Amoriti's wereeiiuivalentto should have to compare the ap-
"higlilanders." we plication of the name to the hiirhlaml of .ludah (Num. xiii. 29; Dent. i. 7, lit, 20; Josh. v. 1, x. t>. xi. 32) as a secondary use or as a mere inference from the etymology. At present, however, that etymology has been discarded, as «»(/';• means "summit." not " mountains " or " highland. " The Egyptian inscriptions, indeed, seem to treat the name of the original country Amor as a geographical term, always connecting it with thearticle.while Amoriteisin the Biblean ethnic name. How the Amorites. or at least their name, came to Palestine, still awaits ])lausible explanaticm. Gen. X. 16 calls the Amorites a branch of the Amoritish names like Adoni-zedek Canaanites. (Josh. X. 3; compare verse ~>) seem, Race and indeed, to ))oint to full identity in IanLanguage, guage with those tribes. The (jviestion, why the Amorites. with the rest of the pre-Israelitic population of Palestine, are (Gen. X.) clas.sed among the Ilamites, can not be discus.sed here. Sayce (" Paces of the Old Testament." pp. 100 et set/.) has tried to explain this by assuming a connection between the Amorites (and the Canaanites in general !) with the ancient Libyans, entirely on the ba.sis of a certain similarity of the facial type in one Egyptian sculpture of Hame.ses III. The inimerous other Egyptian picturesof these nations, however, do not confirm this, and a linguistic comparison of Caniuinitish (see above on its identity with Amoritish) and Libyan is impossible. The remote relationship between all Ilamites and the Proto-Semites in race and language does not belong here.
BiBi.ioGRApnT
Sayce,
RaccD
i>f
the Old Tentamcnt, 1891, pp.
100 ct seq. A'.
AMOS. — Biblical Data
yi.
M.
Jewish prophet of the eighth entury n.r. date of birth and death unknown. Among the minor prophets there is none whose personality is so familiar as that of Amos. His name occurs not only in the superscription of the book, but several limes (vii. S, II) et seq.. 14; viii. 2) in the body of it. His home was in Tekoa in Judah. live miles to the south of Bethlehem. The original title of his book was merely " The AVords (
of
Amos
of
Tekoa "
the rest, "
who was among
the
herdsmen," is a later addition emphasizing the fact gleaned from vii. 14, that Amos had been a herdsman From the margin this before he became a prophet. notice appears to have intruded itself into the text. The attempt has been made to discover a northern Tekoa for his home, but there is no need for that. That Amos was from Judah is the simplest interpre-
Home and
tation of vii. 13. Amos himself tells us w:hat his profession was; he was a
Occupation, herdsman more-tigs
anil
one
(vii. 14).
who
tended
.syca-
At Tekoa sycamores
are not grown, but Amos could verj'well have been the proprietor of a sycamore-grove at some distance from Tekoa. in the Shefelah, the hill country leading down to Philistia, where there were sycamore-
