the minnow

I'm just curious, when they are discussing King Solomon, they say that he traveled to distant lands by ships and attained gold, exotic items like ivory, peacocks and apes (Kings 10:22) and they mention a place called Tarshish of the East and Ophir. somewhere in tropical India, Sri Lanka or Malaysia, since peacocks, apes and elephant ivory is found in those areas? Is there any proof? What is the most likely geographical location?

Toto

Jewish Encyclopedia thinks it might be South Arabia.

andrewcriddle

Tarshish itself was probably Tartessos in Southern Spain.

Ships of Tarshish is used (eg 1 Kings 22:48-49) when referring to travel to Ophir in the East. This is probably a metaphorical usage in which any large long distance cargo ship could be called a Ship of Tarshish whether it was literally going to Tarshish or not.

Andrew Criddle

spin

I doubt that, though I've heard it before. A lot of the references to Tarshish help us to understand that it is the city which wouls one day give us Paul. Tarshish is a son of Javan, putting it in the Greek world for the writer of Gen 10. The prophecies against Tyre in Isaiah and Ezekiel puts Tarshish in the eastern Mediterranean. That one could know about trade with Tarshish made it part of the trading world of the writers and that certainly wasn't in Spain.

The only difficult passage about Tarshish is the Chronicles parallel to 1 Kgs 10:22, which though a later text insets a reference to Ezion-Geber near where Eilat is today, which I take as a late error, for it suggests that one could get to Tarshish from Ezion Geber and so could not be the city on the southern Anatolian coast.

The reference to apes and other exotic trading items is not so clear in the original Hebrew, so it would not be too wise to bank on the text of the translation.


spin

yummyfur

I agree that Tarsus seems the most likely candidate.

I'm not sure that the Chronicles or 1 Kings mention of Ezion-Geber is that problematic, though probably late, one could actually get to Tarsus from Ezion-Geber because there was a canal that connected from the Suez gulf to the Nile, at least from Darius I onwards and possibly before, maybe as early as the 13th century BCE. It's possible the writer considered this Judah's only port, for often it did not control the coast along the Mediterranean.

Interesting to note the LXX has no exotic items like apes listed, just gold, silver and carved stones.

andrewcriddle

Hi Spin

You make some good points and Tartessos does indeed seem a long way from Israel.

However, does the fact that the luckless Jonah in chapter one tries to get to Tarshish in the (mistaken) belief that that will mean being out of the Lord's reach; indicate that Tarshis was on the very edge of the Israelite known world ?

Andrew Criddle

yummyfur

The problem here is that Jonah goes to Joppa and just gets on this ship by paying a fair, it's unlikely any ship would ever go directly to Tartessos, especially from Joppa, that this ship would be easy to get and available right away, and you could just pay a reasonable fair to be taken all that way. The description in Jonah sounds like this is some kind of regular shipping route port which one could find a ship to easily in Joppa, and without a king's ransom in money to board. He merely wants to get out of Israel, and also thinks being on the sea, in a ship he can't control, he can just shrug if god asks again, and say, as soon as I get to port, I'll get on my way, hoping that Nineveh will be a wastland by that time.

Also there is the possibility that Tarsus has a pirate/privateer connection. Cilicia is later known for much pirate activity, it could have also been so earlier, and there seems to be much early pirate activity on the south coast of Anatolia in general, for example on the Lycian coast. Tarsus could then be a city one would flee to if one didn't want to found, as no one asked a lot of questions.

yummyfur

More info linking Tarshish with Tarsus

Ezekial 27:12
"Tarshish was your customer because of the abundance of all kinds of wealth; with silver, iron, tin and lead they paid for your wares."

Tin was a fairly scarce resource in the ancient world. There is a bronze age tin mine located in the Taurus mountains near Tarsus, one of the only ones so far found in the Middle East.

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/940106/tin.shtml

The Taurus mountains were also a very important source of silver in the ancient world. One can get iron and lead there as well.