the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Sepharad
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or Jerusalem's citizens, captives at Sepharad, shall return to occupy the city and southern Judaea (Obadiah 1:20). Jerome's Hebrew tutor thought Sepharad was on the Bosphorus. Jerome derives it from an Assyrian word "limit," i.e. scattered in all regions abroad (so James 1:1). The modern Jews think Spain. As Ζarephath , a Phoenician city, was mentioned in the previous clause, Sepharad is probably some Phoenician colony in Spain or some other place in the far West (compare Joel 3:6, to which Obadiah refers). C Ρa Rad occurs before Ionia and Greece in a cuneiform inscription giving a list of the Persian tribes (See also Niebuhr, Reiseb. 2:31). Also in Darius' epitaph at Nakshi Rustam, 1:28, before Ionia in the Behistun inscription (i. 15). Thus, it would be Sardis (the Greeks omitting the -ph ) in Lydia. In favor of Spain is the fact that the Spanish Jews are called Sephardim , the German Jews Αshkenazim .
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Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Sepharad'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/s/sepharad.html. 1949.
