692
TEBAH
TEKOA
deacon. The stones in the mystical buililing ' are the apostles and bishops and teachers and deacons ' ( ]'is. iii. 5). Hennas writes disparagingly of 'self- appointed teachers,' who ' praise themselves as having understanding,' ' senseless though tliey are' (Sim. IX. 22). We have no definite account of the manner in wliich the teachers perfornjed their work, or of the substance of their instructions. We are tempted to think of the catechetical teaching of later times ; but there is no clear indi- cation of a catechumenate in NT. StUl sometliing of the kind must have arisen early from the neces- sity of the case. The Didachi seems to have been a text-book for some such teaching. It has been suggested that the Logia recently discovered in Egypt might be a list of sayings of Jesns drawn up for use in teaching. Possibly St. Matthew's Logia was compiled with that end in view ; and the same may be suggested of the canonical Gospels (cf. A. Wright, NT Problems, p. 91tf.). AVitli reference to teachers and teaching in the NT see Allen, Christian Institutions, pp. 28, 29, 40, 42; McGiffert, Apostolic Age, 52811., 64011., 654 ff. ; Weizsiicker, Daa Apostulische Zeitnlter, pp. 621, 022. W. V. Adeney.
TEBAH (nja ; A TipcK, Lnc. T(£(3fx).— A 'son' of Nahor bj' his concubine Reumah, Gn 22" [J]. The name stands for an Aramasan town, prob. the same as is named in 2 S 8' [where read, after LXX, Pesh., and 1 Ch 18', nao for nai. See Tibhath].
TEBALIAH (i.t^js' J" hath dipped, i.e. purified' ; B lafiXa.l, A Ta;3£\(as, Luc. Ta/ie^^X).— A Merarite gatekeeper, 1 Ch 26".
TEBETH (r?n, T7,;3^9).— The 10th (Bab.-) Jewish mouth. See TIME.
TEHAPHNEHES, Ezk 30>'.— See Tahpanhes.
TEHINNAH (njnn ; B QmijAv, A Qavi, Lnc. e«^rd).— Tlie ' father' of Ir-nahash, 1 Ch 4".
TEIL TREE.— A mistranslation (AV Is 6») of n% (RV ' terebinth '). For the various tr" of 'elah see Oak and Terebinth.
TEKEL.— See Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.
TEKOA (J'lpn ; LXX Gcicue, Gf/coCe, BtKiifx, Geniis). — A town in the tribe of Judah, about 10 miles S. of Jerusalem and 5 S. of Bethleliem, situated on a detached hill about 2700 ft. high which is girt with other lower hills. From the summit there is a broad prospect. In the W. and S. tlie view is closed by hills, cultivated or clothed with low vegetation. On the N. is the ravine of Urt.'is and its continuation KhureitOn, cutting deeply through the hills down to the Dead Sea. Tlie Frank moun- tain and Bethlehem are visible : Jerusalem is hidden behind intervening hills, but the Mount of Olives can be seen and, still farther to the N., Nebi SamAvil. To the S.E. is another deep and wild valley, Wady Jeliar, running towards the Dead Sea, glim])ses of which can be obtained through the distant clifis. Eastwards the hill slopes down to the Wilderness of Judah. Canon Tristram describes the approach from the Wady liereikeh : ' In front of us is a long hill, with a copious spring at its foot. . . . The district in its natural features seems to have been always w^hat it is now — bare, treeless, open pasturage. We here lose all traces of the ancient terraces which gird the undulations of every hill farther west with their swathing bands. Here and there are still patches of cultivation in the hollows of the valleys, but the soil is dry and stony, and we
begin here to lose the rich vegetable mould w hich, however scanty, still covers more or less the whole of the central hills, and have, in its stead, only a thirsty, chalky marl. That vegetable soil is doubtless due, in the lirst instance, to the prim- aeval forest, which certainly once covered the whole of the Judoean, as of the Gilead, range, but has left no trace of its existence on the Western slopes towards the Dead Sea.'
The town is not mentioned very frequently in Scripture. The Heb. of Jos 15''" does not include it in the list of places Ijelonging to Judah : the LXX gives it and ten other towns, one of them being Bethlehem. 1 Ch 2-^ 4' ascrilie to Tekoa an anti- quity coeval with the Conquest. According to tnese passages, Ashhur, Caleb's half-brother, was the father, i.e. the founder, of Tekoa. In 2 S 14 the wLse woman of Tekoa is spoken of in such a manner as to convey the impression that her shrewdness had brought her dwelling - place into notoriety. David spent much time in this part of the country during his Wanderjahre : afterwards it was a recruiting ground for the ranks of his mighty men (2 S 23-'», 1 Ch 11=8). prom 2 Ch 11« we learn that it was one of the towns fortified by Reboboam. Its commanding position and its situation on the utmost frontier of the cultivated land would ensure its being made a military post. Jer 6' shows that its defences continued to be kept up. The p"ophet bids the children of Benjamin raise up a signal on Beth-haccherem (Jebel Fureidis, the Frank moun- tain), and blow tlie trumpet in Tekoa. This is not said merely for the sake of the play on words, tik'u, Tekoa [note also tak^H in v.^], but also because this was a garrison town. The Wilder- ness of Tekoa is named at 2 Ch 20^ as the battle- field where Jehoshaphat defeated the Ammonites and their allies. In the Bk. of Nehemiah (3°- ") the public - spiritedness of the commonalty is sharply contrasted with the contemptuous retusal of their chiefs to bend the neck to the Tirshatha's yoke. 1 Mae 9^ relates that Simon and Jonathan ned to the Wilderness of Tekoa from before Bac- chides. The crowning glory of Tekoa was its connexion with the prophet Amos (Am 1').