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Moriah

 

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Moriah



 
 
Moriah (Hebrew
Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
: ?????, Moriyya = "ordained/considered by YHWH") is the name given to a mountain range by the book of Genesis
Genesis

Genesis or Breishit is the first book of the Bible used by Judaism and Christianity, and the first of five books of the Pentateuch or Torah....
, in which context it is given as the location of the near sacrifice of Isaac
Binding of Isaac

The Binding of Isaac, in Genesis , is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on Moriah. In Islam, Muslims believe that God's command to Abraham was to sacrifice his older son Ishmael rather than Isaac, which is supported through narrations of Muhammad, although the son to be sacrificed is not dist...
. Traditionally Moriah has been interpreted as the name of the specific mountain at which this occurred, rather than just the name of the range. The exact location referred to is currently a matter of some debate.

he book of Chronicles it is reported that the location of Araunah's threshing floor
Araunah

Araunah is the name given by the Books of Samuel to a Jebusite who owned a threshing floor that was purchased by David and turned into an altar....
 is "in mount Moriah" and that the Temple of Solomon was built over Araunah's threshing floor.






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Moriah (Hebrew
Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
: ?????, Moriyya = "ordained/considered by YHWH") is the name given to a mountain range by the book of Genesis
Genesis

Genesis or Breishit is the first book of the Bible used by Judaism and Christianity, and the first of five books of the Pentateuch or Torah....
, in which context it is given as the location of the near sacrifice of Isaac
Binding of Isaac

The Binding of Isaac, in Genesis , is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on Moriah. In Islam, Muslims believe that God's command to Abraham was to sacrifice his older son Ishmael rather than Isaac, which is supported through narrations of Muhammad, although the son to be sacrificed is not dist...
. Traditionally Moriah has been interpreted as the name of the specific mountain at which this occurred, rather than just the name of the range. The exact location referred to is currently a matter of some debate.

Speculation and debate

In the book of Chronicles it is reported that the location of Araunah's threshing floor
Araunah

Araunah is the name given by the Books of Samuel to a Jebusite who owned a threshing floor that was purchased by David and turned into an altar....
 is "in mount Moriah" and that the Temple of Solomon was built over Araunah's threshing floor. This has led to the classical rabbinical supposition that this is at the peak of Moriah; a later Islam
Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
ic tradition recounts that Moriah is the same location as the Foundation Stone, which Jewish tradition holds to be the former location of the Temple of Solomon. However, this tradition is not reported by the centuries earlier Books of Samuel
Books of Samuel

The Books of Samuel are part of the Tanakh and also of the Christianity Old Testament. The work was originally written in Hebrew language, and the Book of Samuel originally formed a single text, as they are often considered today in Hebrew bibles....
; and biblical scholars
Biblical criticism

Biblical criticism is "the study and investigation of biblical writings that seeks to make discerning and discriminating judgments about these writings." It asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work in its production; what sources we...
 view the tradition as somewhat implausible. According to a biblical passage concerning Melchizedek
Melchizedek

Melchizedek is an enigmatic figure twice mentioned in the Tanakh, also known as the Old Testament. Melchizedek seems to be the King of Salem, and priest of the Most High, in the time of the biblical patriarch Abram....
, Jerusalem
Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and its List of Israeli cities in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if Positions on Jerusalem East Jerusalem is included....
 was already a city with a priest at the time of Abraham
Abraham

Abraham is a man featured in the Book of Genesis and an important figure in several monotheistic religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam traditions regard him as the founding Patriarchs of the Israelites, Ishmaelites and Edomite peoples....
, and thus is unlikely to have been founded after this, at the site of a sacrifice made by Abraham in the wilderness.

Most Jews agree that the temple will be built on Mount Moriah. As a result of this a common girls name in Israel is Moriah. In Hebrew it means "God is my teacher".

In consequence of these traditions, Classical Rabbinical Literature theorised that the name was a (linguistically corrupted) reference to the Temple, suggesting translations like the teaching-place (referring to the Sanhedrin
Sanhedrin

The Sanhedrin was an assembly of twenty-three judges appointed in every city in the Land of Israel.The Great Sanhedrin was the supreme court of ancient Israel....
 that met there), the place of fear (referring to the supposed fear that non-Israelites would have at the Temple), the place of myrrh
Myrrh

Myrrh is a reddish-brown resinous material, the dried Plant sap of a number of trees, but primarily from Commiphora myrrha, native to Yemen, Somalia, the eastern parts of Ethiopia and Commiphora gileadensis, native to Jordan....
 (referring to the spices burnt as incense
Incense

Incense is composed of aromatic Biotic material materials. It releases fragrant smoke when burned. The term incense refers to the substance itself, rather than to the odor that it produces....
). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan is a western targum of the Torah from the land of Israel. Its correct title is Targum Yerushalmi , which is how it was known in medieval times....
 interprets the name as land of worship, while the Samaritan
Samaritan

The Samaritans , known in the Talmud as Cuthim , are an ethnoreligious group of the Levant. Ancestrally, they claim descent from a group of Israelite inhabitants who have connections to ancient Samaria from the beginning of the Babylonian Exile up to the beginning of the Common Era....
 Targum
Targum

A targum is an Aramaic language translation of the Hebrew Bible written or compiled from the Second Temple period until the early Middle Ages ....
 regards it as being land of vision. Most modern biblical scholars, however, regard the name as a reference to the Amorites, losing the initial a via aphesis
Aphesis

In phonetics, aphaeresis , also known as aphesis , is the loss of one or more sounds from the beginning of a word, especially the loss of an unstressed vowel....
; the name is thus interpreted as meaning land of the Amorites. This also agrees with the biblical text as it appears in the Syriac Peshitta – where the near-sacrifice occurs at the land of the Amorites, and in the Septuagint
Septuagint

The Septuagint , or simply "LXX", is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the 3rd century BC and 1st century BC in Alexandria....
, where, for example, 2 Chronicles 3:1 refers to the location as Amoria. This would give it the same etymological
Etymology

Etymology is the study of the roots and history of words; and how their form and meaning have changed over time.In languages with a long detailed history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time....
 root as Hamor, a person's name in the narrative at Genesis 34 which concerns Shechem
Shechem

Shechem was Canaanite city mentioned in the Amarna letters, and later became an Israelite city in the tribe of Manasseh. It was the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel....
. Some scholars also identify it with Moreh
Moreh

Moreh is a name of a location, commonly used in the Genesis....
, the location near Shechem at which Abraham built an altar, according to Genesis 12:6. Hence a number of scholars believe that Moriah refers to a hill near Shechem, supporting the Samaritan
Samaritan

The Samaritans , known in the Talmud as Cuthim , are an ethnoreligious group of the Levant. Ancestrally, they claim descent from a group of Israelite inhabitants who have connections to ancient Samaria from the beginning of the Babylonian Exile up to the beginning of the Common Era....
 belief that the near-sacrifice of Isaac occurred on Mount Gerizim – a location near Shechem.

See also

  • Binding of Isaac
    Binding of Isaac

    The Binding of Isaac, in Genesis , is a story from the Hebrew Bible in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on Moriah. In Islam, Muslims believe that God's command to Abraham was to sacrifice his older son Ishmael rather than Isaac, which is supported through narrations of Muhammad, although the son to be sacrificed is not dist...


External links

  • presents Christian claim that Christ's crucifixion occurred on this mountain.