“Ophir”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Ophir ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|oʊ|f|ər}};^[1] {{Hebrew Name|אוֹפִיר|Ofir|ʼÔp̄îr}}) is a port or region mentioned in the Bible, famous for its wealth. King Solomon received a cargo from Ophir every three years,{1 Kings 10:22} which consisted of gold, silver, sandalwood, pearls, ivory, apes, and peacocks.{{sfn|Schroff, The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea|1912|p=41}}

Biblical references

Ophir in Genesis 10 (the Table of Nations) is said to be the name of one of the sons of Joktan.{{efn|This is also stated in 1 Chronicles 1:22}} The Books of Kings and Chronicles tell of a joint expedition to Ophir by King Solomon and the Tyrian king Hiram I from Ezion-Geber, a port on the Red Sea, that brought back large amounts of gold, precious stones and 'algum wood' and of a later failed expedition by king Jehoshaphat of Judah.{{efn|The first expedition is described in 1 Kings 9:28; 10:11; 1 Chronicles 29:4; 2 Chronicles 8:18; 9:10, the failed expedition of Jehoshaphat in 1 Kings 22:48}} The famous 'gold of Ophir' is referenced in several other books of the Hebrew Bible.{{efn|Book of Job 22:24; 28:16; Psalms 45:9; Isaiah 13:12}}

In Septuagint, other variants of the name are mentioned: Ōpheír, Sōphír, Sōpheír and Souphír.{{sfn|Mahdi, The Dispersal of Austronesian boat forms in the Indian Ocean|1999|p=154}}

The New Testament apocrypha book Cave of Treasures contains a passage: "And the children of Ophir, that is, Send, appointed to be their king Lophoron, who built Ophir with stones of gold; now, all the stones that are in Ophir are of gold."^[2]

Archaeology

In 1946 an inscribed pottery shard was found at Tell Qasile (in modern-day Tel Aviv) dating to the eighth century BC.^[3]^[4] It bears, in Paleo-Hebrew script, the text "gold of Ophir to/for Beth-Horon [...] 30 shekels"{{efn|Beth-Horon probably refers to the ancient city 35 km south of Tell Qasile; another interpretation is that Beth-Horon means 'the temple of Horon', (a Canaanite deity also known as Hauron), see {{harvtxt|Lipiński|2004|p=197}}}}^[5] The find confirms that Ophir was a place where gold was imported from.{{sfn|Lipiński|2004|p=144}}

Theorized or conjectural locations

India

Earlier in the 19th century Max Müller and other scholars identified Ophir with Abhira, near the Indus River in modern-day state of Gujarat, India. According to Benjamin Walker Ophir is said to have been a town of the Abhira tribe.^[13]

Africa

Biblical scholars, archaeologists and others have tried to determine the exact location of Ophir. Vasco da Gama's companion Tomé Lopes reasoned that Ophir would have been the ancient name for Great Zimbabwe in Zimbabwe, the main center of sub-African trade in gold in the Renaissance period — though the ruins at Great Zimbabwe are now dated to the medieval era, long after Solomon is said to have lived. The identification of Ophir with Sofala in Mozambique was mentioned by Milton in Paradise Lost (11:399-401), among many other works of literature and science.

Another, more serious, possibility is the African shore of the Red Sea, with the name perhaps being derived from the Afar people living in the Danakil desert (Ethiopia, Eritrea) between Adulis and Djibouti.

Afri was a Latin name used to refer to the Carthaginians, who dwelt in North Africa, in modern-day Tunisia. This name, that later gave the rich Roman province of Africa and the subsequent medieval Ifriqiya, are from which the name of the continent Africa is ultimately derived, seems to have referred to a native Libyan tribe originally, however, see Terence for discussion. The name is usually connected with Phoenician afar, "dust", but a 1981 hypothesis^[14] has asserted that it stems from the Berber word ifri (plural ifran) meaning "cave", in reference to cave dwellers.^[15] This is proposed^[15] to be the origin of Ophir as well.{{sfn|Lipiński|2004|p=200}}

Americas

In a letter written in May, 1500 Peter Martyr claimed that Christopher Columbus identified Hispaniola with Ophir. ^[16]

The theologian Benito Arias Montano (1571) proposed finding Ophir in the name of Peru, reasoning that the native Peruvians were thus descendants of Ophir and Shem.^[17]

Other assumptions

In 1568 Alvaro Mendaña became the first European to discover the Solomon Islands, and named them as such because he believed them to be Ophir.^[18]

In Jewish tradition, Ophir is often associated with a place in India,{{efn|Fourteenth-century biblical commentator, Nathanel ben Isaiah, writes: "And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab (Gen. 10:29), these are the tracts of countries in the east, being those of the first clime,"^[19] and which first clime, according to al-Biruni, the sub-continent of India falls entirely therein.^[20]}} named for one of the sons of Joktan.^[21] The 10th-century lexicographer, David ben Abraham al-Fasi, identified Ophir with Serendip, the old Persian name for Sri Lanka (aka Ceylon).^[22]

In Tomo III (1519-1522), pages 112-138, of the book Colección general de documentos relativos a las Islas Filipinas existentes en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla^[23], found in the Archivos de Indias de Sevilla in Spain, Document No. 98 describes how to locate the land of Ophir. The travel guide started from the Cape of Good Hope in Africa to India, to Burma, to Sumatra, to Moluccas, to Borneo, to Sulu, to China, then finally Ophir which is said to be the Philippines. While all other probable locations of Ophir are based on expert opinion, this is the only probable location with documentary support.

See also

Notes

References

1. ^"Ophir". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
2. ^{{Cite book|title=The Book of The Cave of Treasures by Ephrem the Syrian: Translated from the Syriac Text of The British Museum|last=Badge|first=William|publisher=The Religious Tract Society|year=1927|isbn=|location=London|publication-date=|pages=32|translator-last=|translator-first=|quote=|via=Google Books}}
3. ^Maisler, B., Two Hebrew Ostraca from Tell Qasîle, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Oct., 1951), p. 265 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/542173]
4. ^Boardman, John, The Prehistory of the Balkans: The Middle East and the Aegean World, Tenth to Eighth Centuries B.C., Part 1, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 480 [https://books.google.com/books?id=vXljf8JqmkoC&pg=PA480]
5. ^Kitchen, Kenneth A.; Handy, Lowell K. (ed.), The Age of Solomon: Scholarship at the Turn of the Millennium, BRILL 1997, p. 144 [https://books.google.com/books?id=gam10TAOZusC&pg=PA144]
6. ^Smith, William, A dictionary of the Bible, Hurd and Houghton, 1863 (1870), pp.1441
7. ^Smith's Bible Dictionary
8. ^Ramaswami, Sastri, The Tamils and their culture, Annamalai University, 1967, pp.16
9. ^Gregory, James, Tamil lexicography, M. Niemeyer, 1991, pp.10
10. ^Fernandes, Edna, The last Jews of Kerala, Portobello, 2008, pp.98
11. ^{{citation |last=Menon |first=A. Sreedhara |title=A Survey of Kerala History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N7WaZe2PBy8C |year=1967 |publisher=Sahitya Pravarthaka Co-operative Society [Sales Department]; National Book Stall |p=58}}
12. ^{{citation |last=Aiyangar |first=Sakkottai Krishnaswami |title=Ancient India: Collected Essays on the Literary and Political History of Southern India |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=htArUg0OMpcC&pg=PA60 |year=2004 |origyear=first published 1911 |publisher=Asian Educational Services |isbn=978-81-206-1850-3 |pages=60–}}
13. ^{{citation |last=Walker |first=Benjamin |title=Hindu World: An Encyclopedic Survey of Hinduism, Volume 2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iGjXAAAAMAAJ |year=1968 |publisher=Allen & Unwin |p=515}}
14. ^Names of countries, Decret and Fantar, 1981
15. ^¹The Berbers, by Geo. Babington Michell, p 161, 1903, Journal of the Royal African Society [https://www.jstor.org/pss/714549 book on ligne]
16. ^De orbe novo decades
17. ^{{cite journal|last1=Shalev|first1=Zur|title=Sacred Geography, Antiquarianism and Visual Erudition: Benito Arias Montano and the Maps in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible|journal=Imago Mundi|date=2003|volume=55|page=71|doi=10.1080/0308569032000097495|url=http://research.haifa.ac.il/~zshalev/Articles/IMundi-2003-Montano.pdf|accessdate=2017-01-17}}
18. ^HOGBIN, H. In, Experiments in Civilization: The Effects of European Culture on a Native Community of the Solomon Islands, New York: Schocken Books, 1970 (1939), pp.7-8
19. ^{{cite book |last=Ben Isaiah |first=N.|author-link=Nethanel ben Isaiah |title=Sefer Me'or ha-Afelah |publisher=Mechon Moshe |translator=Yosef Qafih |volume= |edition= |date=1983|location=Kiryat Ono |page=74 |language=Hebrew |url= |doi= |id= |isbn= |jfm= }}
20. ^Sunil Sharma, Mughal Arcadia: Persian Literature in an Indian Court, Harvard University Press: Cambridge 2017, p. [https://books.google.co.il/books?id=qaA4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=first+clime,+second+clime,+third+and+fourth+climes&source=bl&ots=XpCu9sE2sC&sig=Lfy6OILuRBRGPdt1EwoKD6-lOG4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjoqPz88Y_eAhVRalAKHaEEDecQ6AEwBHoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false 66]
21. ^Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Book 8, chapter 6, §4), s.v. Aurea Chersonesus
22. ^Solomon Skoss (ed.), The Hebrew-Arabic Dictionary of the Bible, Known as `Kitāb Jāmiʿ al-Alfāẓ` (Agron) of David ben Abraham al-Fasi, Yale University Press: New Haven 1936, vol. 1, p. 46 (Hebrew)
23. ^{{cite book|url=http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000175741&page=921|last=Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas|title=Colección general de documentos relativos a las Islas Filipinas existentes en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla|volume=Tomo III--Documento 98, 1520-1528|pages=112–138}}