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Concept
Midian
Summary
Midian (ˈmɪdiən; מִדְיָן Miḏyān; Madyan; Μαδιάμ, Madiam) is a geographical region in Western Asia mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and Quran. William G. Dever states that biblical Midian was in the "northwest Arabian Peninsula, on the east shore of the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea", an area which contained at least fourteen inhabited sites during the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages.
According to the Book of Genesis, the Midianites were the descendants of Midian, who was a son of Abraham and his wife Keturah: "Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah" (Genesis 25:1–2, King James Version).
Traditionally, knowledge about Midian and the Midianites' existence was based solely upon Biblical and classical sources, but more recently a reference to Midian has been identified in a Taymanitic inscription dated to before the 9th century BC.
Some scholars have suggested that the name "Midian" does not refer to geographic places or to a specific tribe, but to a confederation or "league" of tribes brought together as a collective for worship purposes. Paul Haupt first made this suggestion in 1909, describing Midian as a "cultic collective" ( Kultgenossenschaft) or an amphictyony, meaning "an association ( Bund) of different tribes in the vicinity of a sanctuary". Elath, on the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba was suggested as the location of the first shrine, with a second sanctuary located at Kadesh.
Later writers have questioned the identified sanctuary-locations but supported the thesis of a Midianite league. George Mendenhall suggested that the Midianites were a non-Semitic confederate group, and William Dumbrell maintained the same case:
We believe that Haupt's proposal is to be adopted, and that Midian, rather than depicting a land, is a general term for an amorphous league of the Late Bronze Age, of wide geographical range, who, after a series of reverses, the most prominent of which are recorded in , largely disappeared from the historical scene.
Official source
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