Genesis 36:27names him as a son of Etser, the grandson of Se'ir the Chorite/Chivite, precursor of Edom; his siblings are Za'avan and Akan.
1 Chronicles 7:10 has a different Bilhan, a son of Yedi'a-El (ידיעאל) in the tribe of Bin-Yamin; this Bilhan was the father of Ye'ush (יעוש), Bin-Yamin (בנימן), Ehud (אהוד), Kena'anah (כנענה), Zeytan (זיתן), Tarshish (תרשיש) and Achi-Shachar (אחישחר) - several of which are also the names of places, so we may be talking about clans and their locations rather than individual people:
Kena'anah is the feminine form of Kena'an (Canaan).
Yedi'a-El means "knowledge of god", the god in question being El, the head of the Kena'ani pantheon.
Ehud also appears in Judges 3:15 as a judge. A Benjamite, son of Gera, he assassinated Eglon king of Mo-Av who had conquered and ruled Kena'an for the previous eighteen years, then raised an army of liberation in the mountains of Se'ir.
Zeytan means "olive tree". Every cosmology has its sacred tree; clearly this is the Bilhanite version.
Tarshish in the Tanach may be either Tarsus, St Paul's home town in Turkey, or Tartessus, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. On this occasion, most scholars reckon that the reference is to Tartessus, which was a major Phoenician trading-colony; also known by its later Roman name as Tartessos. However, the Septuagint, Vulgate and Targum Jonathan all regarded it as Carthage, probably because they were brought up in a Greco-Roman world that knew little about Spain but a great deal about Carthage, and they merely assumed that if a great Phoenician trading-post a long way off was mentioned, then it must be Carthage. This is simply sloppy. What is odd is that Josephus, who is famous for his sloppiness as a historian, does for once have an alternative explanation that could be correct, save for the small flaw that the place he suggests was inland to the east, and not a long way west by sea; nevertheless Tarshish does sound a lot like Tarsus in Turkey (see the link above), whose two claims to fame are that Antony and Cleopatra met there for the first time, and fell in love (Shakespeare presumably didn't know that); and that Saint Paul was born there.
There is also a Persian prince named Tarshish in Esther 1:14.
Achi-Shachar means "brother of the dawn", who appears as the principal goddess of the tribe of Yisaschar (יששחר). The dawn - Aurora - was a Phoenician goddess, and clearly this tribal list compresses a Phoenician cosmology that has evident links with the tribe of Bin-Yamin. The question which arises from this connection is: is Bilhan a variant form of Bilhah, Rachel's slavegirl/maidservant who mothered Dan and Naphtali?
Ehud also appears in Judges 3:15 as a judge. A Benjamite, son of Gera, he assassinated Eglon king of Mo-Av who had conquered and ruled Kena'an for the previous eighteen years, then raised an army of liberation in the mountains of Se'ir.
Zeytan means "olive tree". Every cosmology has its sacred tree; clearly this is the Bilhanite version.
Tarshish in the Tanach may be either Tarsus, St Paul's home town in Turkey, or Tartessus, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. On this occasion, most scholars reckon that the reference is to Tartessus, which was a major Phoenician trading-colony; also known by its later Roman name as Tartessos. However, the Septuagint, Vulgate and Targum Jonathan all regarded it as Carthage, probably because they were brought up in a Greco-Roman world that knew little about Spain but a great deal about Carthage, and they merely assumed that if a great Phoenician trading-post a long way off was mentioned, then it must be Carthage. This is simply sloppy. What is odd is that Josephus, who is famous for his sloppiness as a historian, does for once have an alternative explanation that could be correct, save for the small flaw that the place he suggests was inland to the east, and not a long way west by sea; nevertheless Tarshish does sound a lot like Tarsus in Turkey (see the link above), whose two claims to fame are that Antony and Cleopatra met there for the first time, and fell in love (Shakespeare presumably didn't know that); and that Saint Paul was born there.
There is also a Persian prince named Tarshish in Esther 1:14.
Achi-Shachar means "brother of the dawn", who appears as the principal goddess of the tribe of Yisaschar (יששחר). The dawn - Aurora - was a Phoenician goddess, and clearly this tribal list compresses a Phoenician cosmology that has evident links with the tribe of Bin-Yamin. The question which arises from this connection is: is Bilhan a variant form of Bilhah, Rachel's slavegirl/maidservant who mothered Dan and Naphtali?
Aurora the Dawn is, in mythological terms, a handmaiden of the moon-goddess - indeed, her duty, aetiologically, is to help the weary goddess to bed before the sun is fully risen. Rachel as moon-goddess is served by Bilhah as hand-maiden. Is Bilhah then Aurora? And does this tell us anything about the name Yisaschar, one of the sons of Ya'akov, who it has been suggested may be Yah-Shachur, the "Black Madonna". a version of Hindu Kali? Is it actually more feasible that his name (it would then have to be "her name") was Yah-Shachar, which is a correct mythological pairing, indeed the same pairing as Rachel to Bilhah? And we have Kena'anah in the list as well, another feminine version of a well-known name.
(I am not actually convinced by any of this; but the obligation of anyone studying a subject seriously is to explore all viable and feasible explanations, and this unquestionably meets those criteria).
As with Bilhah (בלהה), Rachel's "hand-maiden", the name Bilhan means "modest"; even if the two are not mythologically linked, the etymological link is indisputable. The connection to Bin-Yamin is interesting, as Rachel is Bin-Yamin's mother (though she named him Ben-Oni), and here Bilhan appears to be a tribal ancestor. Do the other names help confirm the geographical origins of Bin-Yamin? And if so, what is really going on in the double-naming of Bin-Yamin: Bin-Yamin by his father, Ben-Oni by his mother? Two completely tribes, melded later on?
(I am not actually convinced by any of this; but the obligation of anyone studying a subject seriously is to explore all viable and feasible explanations, and this unquestionably meets those criteria).
As with Bilhah (בלהה), Rachel's "hand-maiden", the name Bilhan means "modest"; even if the two are not mythologically linked, the etymological link is indisputable. The connection to Bin-Yamin is interesting, as Rachel is Bin-Yamin's mother (though she named him Ben-Oni), and here Bilhan appears to be a tribal ancestor. Do the other names help confirm the geographical origins of Bin-Yamin? And if so, what is really going on in the double-naming of Bin-Yamin: Bin-Yamin by his father, Ben-Oni by his mother? Two completely tribes, melded later on?
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