A Biblical Treasure Hunt Part 5

(From “A Biblical Treasure Hunt, by Philip Mandelker)

(iii) The Treasure: Water or Petroleum? or Both?

(a) “MEGED” – Water or Oil? - The traditional answer to this question has been water. The Radak (R. David Kimhi) suggested as much in the 12th Century in his commentary on Genesis 49:25

(“Radak Commentaries”, at p. 209). Rabbi Sa’adia Gaon, the leading rabbi and scholar of the 10th Century and founder of the great Academy at Sura in Iraq, appears to agree. (Kapach, Y., ed., Commentaries of Rabbeinu Sa’adia Gaon on The Torah (Mosad HaRav Kook, Jerusalem, 1963) [“Rasag Commentaries”], at p.154.) In both these cases, the reasoning appears to be grounded in the references in the Joseph Blessings to TEHOM which, as discussed above, is associated with underground water.

Nor, indeed, should this conclusion come as any surprise. The southern foothills of the Carmel range just north of Wadi Ara, located in the northern portion of the Lands of Manasseh and today known as Ramot Menasseh – the Manasseh Hills – are among the most fertile lands in Israel, blessed with a great number of natural springs. The cause lies in the fact that underlying Ramot Menasseh are two fresh water aquifers – the Mountain Aquifer carbonates of late Cretaceous age and the overlying local Ovdat Group Aquifer of the more recent Eocene age. Most of Israel benefits from only one or rarely two aquifers; so with its two aquifers, the Ramot Menasseh region in the north of the Lands of Joseph is, indeed, blessed with precious subterranean sweet waters.

However, there is a clue in the Blessings of Joseph which could support a conclusion that the “precious thing” is or is also petroleum. This clue can be found in the multiple references to the treasure lying in “eternal” and “ancient mountains” and in “everlasting” and “primordial hills”. One of the first things one looks for in exploring for petroleum is “ancient” anticlines (as the Umm el-Fahm anticline, see the Geographical Note at The Map, above) and buried structural highs. Anticlines and structural highs are geological terms for mountains and hills now typically lying deep under ground, but which had been mountains and hills on the earth’s surface in “primordial” ages tens and hundreds of millions of years ago. Interestingly, in these anticlines one frequently finds both oil and water, with the oil, being lighter than water, lying on top of the water – though sometimes the oil and water bearing strata are interspersed. But at the relevant depths the water is almost always salt water, the sweet waters of the aquifers feeding the springs of the Ramot Menasseh and other sweet water springs and wells around the world usually running in more recent geological strata which overlie the oil bearing strata and so, being closer to the earth’s surface, are more readily accessible to man.

As noted, in the dry Land of Israel, these sweet waters are indeed precious blessings; but are they the only precious liquids referred to in the Blessings of Joseph? Specifically, they may be “precious things of earth”, but not necessarily the “precious things” of the “deep [TEHOM] that couches beneath”. Rather, those deep or rather deeper blessings may be the precious things that lie on top of the salt water of Tiamat, the goddess of whose skin and bones the earth was made with the purpose of ensuring that the subterranean salt waters not escape. And these deeper precious things, lying just on top of the abysmal salt waters, may just be (rock) oil.

(b) “SHEMEN” – Olive Oil or Rock Oil? - For the next clue, we turn again to the Blessing of Asher which refers specifically to “oil”. The Hebrew word for “oil” as it appears in the Blessing is “SHEMEN”. Any speaker of modern Hebrew will tell you that “SHEMEN” means vegetable oil, particularly olive oil, but can also mean oils extracted from animal fats. He will very likely point out, however, that it does not mean “rock oil” or petroleum, for which he will say a wholly distinct word exists: “NEFT”.

Even in modern Hebrew, however, petroleum based lubricants are referred to by the word “SHEMEN” and oil shales, rocks suffused with hydrocarbons from which oil can be extracted by various treatment processes, mining and retorting and in situ heating, are known as “PITZLEI SHEMEN”. Unabridged dictionaries of modern Hebrew go even further and reveal that one of the uses of the word “SHEMEN” is in the term “SHEMEN ADAMA” or “earth oil”, which is defined as “a type of oil which is taken out of the earth and is used for burning; . . . petroleum.” See Gur, Y., Milon Ivri (1946) and Even-Shoshan, A., Ha’Milon Ha’Hadash (Kiryat Sefer, Jerusalem, 1979) (“Even-Shoshan”). In his groundbreaking lexicon of the Hebrew language, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, uses the term “SHEMEN ADAMA” in his definition of “NEFT”: “this is SHEMEN ADAMA, a form of liquid which flows out of the ground and even spouts up, and is used for light and heat, Naphta; . . .” Ben-Yehuda, E., A Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew (Yoseloff, New York – London) (“Ben-Yehuda”), vol. VIII, p. 3719. But more importantly, in his long entry for the word SHEMEN, along with reference to the term “SHEMEN ZAYIT” (“olive oil”), Ben-Yehuda refers to the terms “SHEMEN AVANIM” and “SHEMEN AVNI” – forms which mean “stone oil” or “mineral oil”). In his discussion of the term “SHEMEN AVANIM”, Ben-Yehuda states “of the first type are NEFT (naphtha), stone oil (stein öl)”. Ben Yehuda, vol. XV, p. 7258.2 So we find in Hebrew an accepted use of the word “SHEMEN” in the form of “SHEMEN ADAMA” or “earth oil” 3 and in the form of “SHEMEN AVANIM” or “stone oil” for petroleum, just as in Latin where “PETROLEUM” is “rock oil”.

But true to customary usage, the typical speaker of modern Hebrew will nonetheless, in all likelihood, persist in saying that the reference in the Asher Blessing to “oil” means quite literally “olive oil” and has nothing to do with petroleum. And he will rightly add that the lands of Asher along the Mediterranean coast of Israel, as the lands of Manasseh to the south and east of Asher, were historically blessed with olive groves and known as a major source of olive oil; whereas there have been no commonly known petroleum fields in the region.

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This persistence will be supported by the speaker’s knowledge that in Biblical times, olive oil was very valuable and had many uses – for cooking, illumination, medication and lubrication, among others. He will add that the best indication of the perceived value of olive oil is the fact that olive oil was used to anoint kings and high priests and that the word “SHEMEN” and its derivatives are used metaphorically in Hebrew to denote plenty, fullness, riches.

Following this line of thought, though, can lead us to the interesting conclusion that the reference in the Blessing of Asher to the “SHEMEN” in which Asher’s “foot” or southern territories is dipped need not necessarily be only a literal reference to “oil” whatever its source (in which kings and soldiers were wont in Biblical times to wash their feet before setting out on or on returning from a long journey – see commentary on Job 29:6 in “Olam Ha’Tanakh”, vol. “I’yov” [Job], at p. 159). Rather, such reference might also be a metaphoric reference to the precious things – “MEGED” is the word repeatedly used in Moses’ Blessing of the Tribes of Joseph – and bounty to be found couching in the deep beneath the lands of Menasseh on which the southern territories of Asher border and which are to flow to the surface out of Joseph’s well.

2 Use of “SHEMEN AVANIM” as the Hebrew term for petroleum or naphtha appears in “Raishit Limudim”, a scientific primer written in Hebrew by B.B. Linda and published in Berlin (Rossman) in 1878. The reference appears in a discussion of mineral and earth resins at p. 75, sec. 107.

3 “Earth oil” as a term for petroleum is common in petroleum producing provinces around the world. In Sumatra, Indonesia, where petroleum seeps have been known for centuries and where Royal Dutch-Shell had its first major discoveries at the end of the 19th Century, the term for petroleum is “miniac tennah” or “oil from the earth”. Forbes, R.T., Studies in Early Petroleum History (Brill, Leiden, 1953) (“Early Petroleum History”) at pp. 111 and 172-173 (quoting P.S. Boccone, Museo di Fisica [Venezia, 1697].) – In Burmah, a tributary of the Irawaddy River along which oil seeps have also been known for centuries, is known as Yenangyoung or Earth-Oil Creek. Forbes, Early Petroleum History, at p. 169 (quoting M.A. Symex, An Account of an Embassy to the Kingdom as Ava, sent by the Governor-General of India in the year 1795). It was near Earth Oil Creek that Burmah Oil, forerunner of British Petroleum, got its start at the end of the 19th Century.

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