Nephthai (Hastings' Dictionary)

See NEPHTHAR. NEPHTHAR (Νεφθάρ, AV Naphthar), Nephthal (Νεφθαί, AV Nephi).—In 2 Mac 18 there is a legendary account of the hiding of the sacred fire of the temple at the Captivity, and of its recovery by Nehemiah. It states that the fire was concealed by the priests at the command of Jeremiah (see 2!) in a dry well or pit. When Nehemiah had built the temple and the altar (sic), and was about to offer sacrifice, he sent the descendants of those who had hidden the fire to bring it back.

They found in the well only a thick liquid (ὕδωρ παχύ), which was drawn up and sprinkled upon the wood and NEPHTHAR the sacrifice. On the sun shining out from behind a cloud, a great fire was kindled on the altar. When the sacrifice had been consumed, the re- mainder of the liquid was poured, by Nehemiah’s orders, upon great stones. It again ignited, but its flame soon spent itself, while that on the altar continued to burn.

The king of Persia, having heard of the matter, surrounded the well with a sacred enclosure, and used to bestow jortions of the liquid on those to whom he wished to show special favour (so RV). Nehemiah and his com- panions called this substance Nephthar, but it was generally known as Nephthai (v.*). The second word appears in MSS as Νιφθαεῖ, Νιφθαί, Νιφθά. Cod. A simply repeats Νιφθάρ. Syr. has 3 and wAas, Vulg., followed by AV, reads Naphthar and Nephi. The reading of v.

31 is uncertain (χαταχεῖν, ogg i arenes and the meaning of v.82> and of v.35 is obscure. e legend repeated by the Jewish historian Joseph ben-Gorion, who describes the liquid as ‘water like thick oil and honey,’ and among Christian writers by Macarius (Hom. 11). <A different legend is given in the Ethiopic Book of Adam (Di nn, 1853 ; Malan, 1882), which states that Ezra found in the vaults of the temple a censer filled with fire.

According to the common Rabbinical tradition, the sacred fire was one of the five things lacking in the second temple (Buxtorf, ‘de Igne sacro,’ in Ugolino’s Thesaurus, x. 426). The names Nephthar, Nephthai, along with the interpretation of the former as ‘cleansing’ or ‘purification’ (καθαρισμός), constitute the chief problem of this passage. They were applied to the substance, and not, as Vulg. (hune locum) suggests, to the place where it was found. Two suppositions are possible— 1.

That Nephthar was the original word, and Nephthai a popular corruption. On this view vayious attempts have been made, some elaborate, an none very successful, to connect Nephthar with the meaning καθαρισμός, or otherwise to ex- lain its derivation. (a) According to Benfey and tern (Die Monatsnamen einiger alter Volker, 1836), Νεφθάρ corresponds to the Zend naptar.

Naptar apanm is said to denote the sacred elemental water (Urwasser), otherwise known as arduisur, to which the highest powers of purification were attributed ; (δ) Tagen e (Gesammelte Abhandlun- gen, 177f.) finds that the Syr. 5Aaq3 corre- sponds to the Bactrian viddv[a]tra, meanings puri- cation’; (6) Νεῴθάρ may originally have been 77>}, from 1p ‘to be pure’; (d) it may have been 795), from sp ‘to set free,’ and may mean ‘liberation,’ i.e.

of the concealed fire ; (6) it may be connected with Aram. ve ‘ unleavened’ (Ewald). 2. That Nephthai is the original, and Nephthar the corruption. In this case the form of the word and the circumstances of the narrative combine to suggest that Νεῴθαί is the same as naphtha lange) the well-known combustible mineral oil. e inflammable properties of naphtha, as well as its medicinal virtues, were well known in ancient thines (Strabo, Geog. XVI. i. 15; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii.

105; Plutarch, Alexander, xxxy.; Dioscorides, Materia Medica, i. 85), and it was further asso- ciated with sacred fires. Strabo (Geog. XVI. i. 4) mentions a naphtha well in connexion with the temple of Anwa. The natural flames in the oil region of Baku on the Caspian Sea have long been, and still are, held sacred by a sect of fire-wor- shippers.

The legend in 2 Mac 1 may have had some actual spontaneous ignition of naphtha b the sun’s rays as its basis, but it is unlikely that it originated in Palestine. Naphtha is found in the waters of the Dead Sea(Thomson, Land and Book, ii. 371), but not in the neighbourhood of Jernsalem. The well Bir Evid, a little below the junction of the valleys of Jehoshaphat and Hinnom, is known also as the ‘ well of Nehemiah,’ and is connected | with this legend, but the tradition does not seem VOL. 1Π1.

, 32 NEREUS 518 to be older than tie 16th cent. (see EN-ROGEL, JERUSALEM, vol. ii. 285°; Robinson, BRP i. 331-3; Pierotti, Jerusalem Explored (Eng. tr. 1864], i. 188; Thomson, Land and Book, ii. 456: Warren and Conder in SWP, Jerus. vol. 371-8). Most prob- ably the story came from Persia or Babylonia, in both of which naphtha is abundant. This sup- osition is confirmed by the part assigned to the ersian king in vv.

®-*, The Jewish writer who transferred the legend to Jerusalem may have invented the form Nephthar and its derivation, the latter being perhaps suggested by the idea of ‘purification’ in vy.15%, On the whole subject see the commentaries of Grimm (1853), Keil (1875), Bissell (Lange), Rawlinson (Speakers Comm.), Zockler (Kurzgef. Komm. 1891) ; Kamphausen (in Kautzsch’s Apokr. u. Pseudepigr. d. AT, 1898); also Ewald, Hist. of Israel (Eng. tr.], v. 162-3. JAMES PATRICK.