Bible Studies

For those of you who find references to Peronne or Pyreenes or Greek (and Venetian!) pirouni/pirons interesting, here is a piece from Deuteronomy (33, 2):

“The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from Mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints; from his right hand went a fiery law for them.”

and also Habakkuk (3, 3):

“God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens and his praise filled the earth. His splendor was like the sunrise; rays flashed from his hand, where his power was hidden.  Plague went before him;  pestilence followed his steps.  He stood, and shook the earth; he looked, and made the nations tremble.  The ancient mountains crumbled and the age-old hills collapsed— but he marches on forever.”

another interpretation has been something like:

“The Lord came from Sinai but His glory dawned unto them from Seir, and flashed forth from Mount Paran.”

Paran has been tentatively suggested as referring to a mountain near the river valley of Wadi Feiran (Ptolemy?).  Wadi Feiran is Sinai’s largest river.

Another identification that was suggested for Paran is Mount Serbal or Sinai.

We will leave aside the fact that wadi means river in Arabic and Hebrew and the connection (if any) with the Slavic voda/woda meaning water.

We note that Paran also appears in other places of the Bible as, for example, in the Desert of Paran.

(Piran was a name also of numerous Persian figures, including, apparently, the prince “Ultra” from Ammianus Marcellinus Book 27 which may have been a mistranslation of what the author took as Peran (Greek: beyond) to Latin (i.e., Ultra).  What Piran or Peran meant in ancient Iberian (from Armenia/Georgia not Spain), we do know know exactly.