The products of Tarshish are mentioned Ezk 27'-'; Tarshish traded with Tyre with a ' multitude of all kinds of riches, with silver, iron, tin, and lead.' According to Jer 10' ' silver spread (RV 'beaten') into plates' is brought from Tarshish. Fin.ally, the precious stone called tarshish may be noticed ; but this, unfortunately, cannot be identilied. See preceding article.
The tradition of the ancii^nt veraions on the
• To avoid this confliet, Bochart assumed two Torehiah*— one in the W. of the Mediterranean, the other in the Indian Ocean. This desperate effort to avoid the acknowledgment of a small misunderstanding by the Chronicler is now universally aban- doned. See, further. W. B. Smith, OTJC^ 140 ; A. R Uavid- •oa, Eiekiel, p. 200 ; Sayce, UCil 130.
situation of Tarshish is very unsatisfactory. First, the passages are to be set aside where it was felt, correctly, that Tarshish, translated literally as a geographical name, would be misunderstood, i.e. the passages speaking of the Tarshish ships. The Jewish scliolars translated, or rather paraphrased there freely, but not inadequately, ' sea ships.' Thus already LXX in Is 2'" (TrXofa eaXdcrcrTjs).* The Vulg. extends this translation to less suitahle passages ; cf. Is 23'- •» (Jilia maris !) 60" 66" (gentes in mari), Ezk Ti''^, 1 K 10-^ (per mare), 2 K22^'^'>, otherwhere, mostly, Tharsis. Thus also the Targum (nd"), usually, in the Prophets (for exceptions see below). This was followed by Saadia and modem versions (e.g. Luther). Jerome (on Is 2'") was told by his Jewish teachers that I'/iarsis was the proper Hebrew word for ' sea ' t (in opposition to Aramaic ?) : a strange artifice !
Another Jewish tradition appears in the LXX of Ezk 27'" (also Vulg.) and Is 23, where Tarshish is rendered ' Carthage ' or ' Carthaginians ' ; likewise Targ. in 1 K 22™, Jer 10' ' Africa ' (i.e. the Roman province of Africa, the fonuer territory of Carth- age). This tradition is evidently founded on the frequent association of Tarshish with Tyre, the apparent mother-city of Carthage, J but it does not suit the sense of the other passages.
Josephus (Ant. I. vi. 1) read the name ap- parently Tarshush, and explained it as Tarsus in Cilicia, an interpretation which formerly seemed very satisfactory. Now, however, we know from coins of Tarsus and from Assyrian inscriptions (Delitzsch, Paradies, 103, etc.) of Shalmaneser that the old Cilician city had the name iin 'I'arzi, not as Josephus presupposed.
The interpretation most widely accepted at present was proposed by Bochart, Phaleg (pre- ceded by Eu.sebius [Onom. ed. Lag. 166. 8, cf. 183. 17-18], who already combined Tarshish and the Iberes, i.e. Spaniards). Bochart found the Hebrew name Tarshish in the Greek Tartessos, explaining the seeming interchange of t and sh by the analogy of Aram, th for Heb. sh (which analogy, unfor- tunately, does not apply here, where no Araniasans come in question). The remote position attributed both to 'farshish and to Spain, the W. end of tiie world, according to the opinion of the ancients, suits well, and so does the wealth in metals (especially the Spanish silver and tin) ; finally, some connexion of the Phoenicians with Spain seems to be recognizable before the Carthaginian conquest. Tartessos is supposed to have been the name of a city (?), extended first to the S. of Spain, then to the whole country. The name of the soutliern coast, Turdetania, and of a tribe, somewhat farther north, the Tiirdidi, Turdali, seems to allow a comparison (cf. Straho, below).
A very vigorous attack upon this popular theory has been made by P. le Page Renouf in PSBA xvi. (1894) 104. He urges that the whole theory rests only on a deceptive similarity of sound, that Bochart's appeal to Aramaic is unsuitable (see above), that we have no proof for Phcenician settlements in Spain (which were only alleged to have existed in order to suit Is 23* etc.). § He even claims that the city or country Tartessns seems ' to have existed only in the realms of imagination, like the isle of Calypso or the garden of the Hesperides. Its site was certainly un- known at the time of Straho, though it was then identified on grounds of probability with the
* This mipht, however, be taken from a Hexaplaric 80uro« (Symmachus or Theodotion ?).
t ' llebnei putant lingua propria mare Tarshish appellarL
i More correctly, the mother-city was Sidon.
\ For such colonies, indeed, the tradition (Strabo, p. 157, Arrian, etc.) is very recent. It Ifl questionable if those lat« writers were able to distia^isb between Oartha(;iuuia and earlier PbtiBoiciaD coloDie&
TARSUS
TARSUS
68&
nei<;lil)oiirliood of the B.^etis or Quadalquivir.* Late writers, like Valerius Maximus, I'liny, and Arriaii, confounded Tartessus and Cades.' The metallic treasures of Spain, Kenouf claims, were developed onlj' by Harailcar Barcas after the first I'nnic war, and the tin in the bronze of earliest Greece and Babylonia came rather from Eastern mines (?).t Thus the necessity for going to Spain for tin is removed. Renouf's {I.e. p. 138) idea is that Tarshish has a Semitic etymology, 'the broken '(??), which might (!) mean 'shore, coast '(??), whence the translation 'sea' in the versions (?).$ The passages connecting it with Tyre show tlien, he claims, that the Phcenician coast itself is meant. This theory is so inconsistent with Ezk 27, etc., and so forced, that it does not deserve a detailed refutation.