A mis­sion­ary under the Yahoo ! Groups nome de plume of Patri­ot Tim” has made an alle­ga­tion in a dis­cus­sion group by stat­ing that the Syr­i­an pagan idol Rim­mon () as men­tioned in 2 Kings 5:18 is the same Deity as for the Mus­lims, who some­times call upon God as ar-rah­man (The Mer­ci­ful). To repeat the mis­sion­ary’s claim :

    The verse in ques­tion is II Kings 5:18, and the words were spo­ken by Naa­man the Syr­i­an gen­er­al who had just been healed of his lep­rosy by Elisha the prophet[.…] We see Naa­man say­ing that, because of his posi­tion of impor­tance to the king of Syr­ia, he would be required to enter and bow to Rim­mon in that deity’s tem­ple in Dam­as­cus. Thus, we see that RIMMON is found in the Bible.

This arti­cle is more or less an improve­ment from the orig­i­nal response we had offered and is intend­ed to deeply address the issue of Rim­mon, insha’allah.

Is Rim­mon real­ly Rah­man”?

On the issue of Rah­man”, the mis­sion­ary argues that :

    Rah­man, as indi­cat­ed to us in the Qu’ran, Surah 17:110, is anoth­er name for All?h. Hence, we see that there is a def­i­nite con­nex­ion, lin­guis­tic and oth­er­wise, between the Rim­mon who was wor­shipped all through­out Syr­ia, Pad­dan-Aram, Assyr­ia, and the rest of the north­ern Fer­tile Cres­cent, and Rah­man, or Allah.

We believe that we have had tol­er­at­ed enough of this shod­dy schol­ar­ship, and now is the time to blast this mis­sion­ary to king­dom come. The real­i­ty is that one does not need the source(s) that he duti­ful­ly par­rots from Chris­t­ian polemi­cists like Dr. Robert Morey, as The New Strong’s Exhaus­tive Con­cor­dance of the Bible, The Brown-Dri­ver-Brig­gs Hebrew-Eng­lish Lex­i­con and William Gese­nius’ Hebrew and Eng­lish Lex­i­con are all good enough author­i­ties on the etymology.

As we have ear­li­er stat­ed, the name of this Syr­i­an pagan idol Rim­mon appears in 2 Kings 5:18. This verse is as follows :

May the Lord for­give your ser­vant in this mat­ter : when my mas­ter enters the house of Rim­mon to wor­ship there, sup­port­ed by my hand, and I have to bow myself down in the house of RIMMON ; when I have to bow myself down thus in the house of RIMMON, may the Lord for­give your ser­vant in this matter.

Accord­ing to Gese­nius, the Hebrew word rim­mon” actu­al­ly means pome­gran­ate,” and the Ara­bic equiv­a­lent is rum­man”, which is quite sim­i­lar to the Hebrew and shares the same R‑M-N cog­nateWilliam Gese­nius, Hebrew and Eng­lish Lex­i­con, (Crock­er & Brew­ster, 1865), p. 982 ; c.f. J. M. Cow­an (ed.), Hans Wehr’s Ara­bic-Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, p. 360. The fol­low­ing image would clear­ly illus­trate this relation :

Pome­gran­ate” is thus the prop­er trans­la­tion of rim­mon” in the Bible (Num­bers 20:5 ; Deuteron­o­my 8:8 ; 1 Samuel 14:12 ; Songs 4:3, 6:7). Rim­mon’ is also the name of a num­ber of places men­tioned in the Bible, specif­i­cal­ly the Old Tes­ta­ment, named such because of the num­ber of pome­gran­ates that grow there. As Gese­nius states :

The pome­gran­ate tree is still found in Syr­ia, Pales­tine, and Egypt […] From their abound­ing in pome­gran­ates, sev­er­al places received the prop­er name Rim­mon[.]William Gese­nius, op. cit., p. 982

Exam­ples of such places being named Rim­mon’ can be seen in Joshua 15:32, 19:7 ; Judges 20:47 ; 1 Chron­i­cles 4:32 and Zechari­ah 14:10. Indeed, until today there is a spe­cif­ic place in Pales­tine called Rim­mon (reysh-mem-vav-nun) in Hebrew, and Rammwan/​Rummon (raa-meem-waw-nun) in Ara­bic, and it still exists today.

We can see that Rammwan/​Rummon is thus the clos­est Ara­bic equiv­a­lent to the Hebrew rim­mon”, and not Rah­man” as Patri­ot Tim erro­neous­ly asserts.

Refer­ring to Strong’s on RIMMON, the fol­low­ing entry is found :

4. A Syr­i­an god (7417)[3]

The B‑D-B Lex­i­con has more infor­ma­tion on RIMMON, and on p. 942 we read that :

[Rim­mon] n. pr. dei ; as Ram­manu, god of wind, rain and storm ; thun­der ; storm.[4]

There are two pos­si­ble ety­mo­log­i­cal expla­na­tions for the RIMMON of Syr­ia. The first is from Gese­nius, who says that it is “…per­haps the exalt­ed, from the root RMM.”[5] The oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty is that the spelling is a delib­er­ate Jew­ish insult, and this is not uncom­mon in the Bible. We read that

Rim­mon” is an epi­thet of Hadad (Adad in Mesopotamia); the Akka­di­an form is Ram(m)an. It has been sug­gest­ed that the Hebrew Rim­mon, which is iden­ti­cal to the Hebrew word for pome­gran­ate,” is a delib­er­ate mis­point­ing of an orig­i­nal Ram(m)an (or some­thing sim­i­lar) to dis­par­age the deity. This epi­thet Rimmon/​Ramman is best under­stood as thun­der­er” (cf. Akka­di­an ramanu to roar,” hence to thun­der”). Accord­ing­ly, the name Hadadrim­mon means Hadad is the thun­der­er.” Hadad, or Rimmon/​Ramman, was the chief diety of the Arameans of Syria[.][6]

In light of Jew­ish tra­di­tions with dis­parag­ing name-games in Hebrew, we favour the pos­si­bil­i­ty that call­ing the Syr­i­an pagan idol as RIMMON was mere­ly an attempt at insult­ing this pagan deity, and have no con­nec­tions with rim­mon” mean­ing pome­gran­ate”.

This is already enough to refute the mis­sion­ary’s men­dac­i­ty. But let us take one step fur­ther and look up the mean­ing of the Ara­bic ar-rah­man, as stat­ed in Hans Wehr’s Ara­bic-Eng­lish Dictionary :

ar-rah­man : the Mer­ci­ful (i.e. God)[7]

The root of ar-rah­man is the word rah­ma, and from the very same page, we find that the root means :

pity, com­pas­sion ; human under­stand­ing, sym­pa­thy, kind­ness ; mercy[8]

Clear­ly, we cer­tain­ly do not see any ety­mo­log­i­cal rela­tion at all with the Hebrew noun RIMMON (). Indeed, one does not blind­ly assume that a word is con­nect­ed to anoth­er sim­ply by the play of sounds, and we need to look at sev­er­al estab­lished rules for find­ing ety­mo­log­i­cal con­nec­tions. The rules are :

  • 1. Geo­graph­ic proximity
  • 2. Shared cognates/​roots
  • 3. Rel­a­tive synonymy 

So what does this mean ? It means that the lan­guages have to orig­i­nate near one anoth­er, and indeed Hebrew and Ara­bic are from the same branch and area. They have to share the same cog­nate, and last­ly, they have to share the same mean­ing. While we do not deny that the Hebrew noun Rim­mon con­forms with cri­te­ria 1, it does not con­form with cri­te­rias 2 and 3, and hence fails the rul­ing for deter­min­ing whether RIMMON is indeed relat­ed to the Ara­bic word ar-rah­man. As one of the great­est Philoso­phers of Lan­guage (one of the found­ing fathers of the field), Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, put it :

The mean­ing of a word is its use in the language.[9]

The equiv­a­lent word for ar-rah­man in the Hebrew would be Ha-Rach­man”, as found in Rivlin’s Hebrew trans­la­tion of the Qur’an, 1:1 :

    Allah is the "Rimmon" of Syria? A Reply to Christian Mendacity 2
    In the name of God, Ha-Rach­man, the Mer­ci­fulYosef Yo’el Rivlin, Alkur’an /​tirgem me-‘Arvit, Devir, Tel Aviv (19361945)

Appar­ent­ly this title is not alien to the South Ara­bi­an Chris­tians, for Philip K. Hit­ti informs us the following :

The ear­li­er South Ara­bi­an civ­i­liza­tion could not have alto­geth­er passed away with­out leav­ing some trace in its north­ern suc­ces­sor. The inscrip­tion (5423) of Abra­hah deal­ing wih the break of the Ma’rib Dam begins with the fol­low­ing words : In the pow­er and grace and mer­cy of the Mer­ci­ful [Rah­man-an] and His Mes­si­ah and of the Holy Spir­it”. The word Rah­man-an is espe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant because its north­ern equiv­a­lent, al-Rah­man, became lat­er a promi­nent attribute of All?h and one of His names in the Koran and in Islam­ic theology.[11]

Philip K. Hit­ti fur­ther informs us in a foot­note that :

Rah­manan appears as title of the Chris­t­ian God in a fifth-cen­tu­ry South Ara­bic inscription.[12]

So we see that the South Ara­bic Chris­tians them­selves using the appela­tion Rah­manan for their God, and hence we begin to see how per­ju­ri­ous the claims of the mis­sion­ary real­ly is.

The Ara­ma­ic word for Rachaman/​Rahman is rachamanaa, and indeed this is found in the Tal­mud. Con­sid­er the Ara­ma­ic text of Qid­dushin 81b, where it is rec­om­mend­ed that those look­ing to be pro­tect­ed from evil say :

Rachamanaa nighar beih ba-Satan 
Trans­la­tion : May the Most Mer­ci­ful rebuke Satan.

In the same part of the Tal­mud, there is a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry about Rab­bi Chiyya :

Rab­bi Chiyya bar Ashi hawah raghil kal eedan dahawah nafal l’apeih hawah amar : ha-Rachaman yat­sileinu miyetser haraa’
Trans­la­tion : Rab­bi Chiyya bar Ashi had a prac­tice where every­time he pros­trat­ed he would say may the Most Mer­ci­ful save us from evil inclinations”.

So, even the great Tal­mud sages were doing as the Mus­lims do to this day, pros­trat­ing and giv­ing homage to the Most Mer­ci­ful, ar-rah­man. This pas­sage from the Tal­mud is still rel­e­vant, as there is yet one more point to be made here. Lat­er in the sto­ry Rab­bi Chiyya is tempt­ed by his wife, who asks him to bring him a pome­gran­ate. She is quot­ed as saying :

aiytei nee­haleih l’hakh rumanaa d’reish tsut­si­taa shawur aazal
Trans­la­tion : Bring me that pome­gran­ate on the upper­most branch.

The word for pome­gran­ate in the Ara­ma­ic is rumanaa, which is quite close to the Ara­bic rum­man. What we learn from this is that in Hebrew, Ara­bic and even Ara­ma­ic (from this look at Qid­dushin 81b), there is no con­nec­tion between the word for Most Mer­ci­ful” — a name giv­en to God — and pome­gran­ate, a name heaped upon a pagan deity.

This is fur­ther col­lab­o­rat­ed when we refer to the root word of ha-rach­man, which is rachuwm, in Strong’s num­ber 7349 and find the following :

    rachuwm Allah is the "Rimmon" of Syria? A Reply to Christian Mendacity 3 rakh-oom‘; from 7355 ; com­pas­sion­ate:- full of com­pas­sion, mer­ci­ful.James Strong, op. cit, under the word rachuwm”, p. 131

Thus we see that rachuwm and rah­ma share the same R‑H-M cog­nate, and thus we have estab­lished a sol­id ety­mo­log­i­cal con­nec­tion between both words. Of course, there is anoth­er Hebrew word that is even clos­er to raheem (RHYM) than rachuwm is, and that is the exact Hebrew equiv­a­lent ! Con­sid­er the following :

    Allah is the "Rimmon" of Syria? A Reply to Christian Mendacity 4

Sum­ma­riza­tion

As the final nail in the cof­fin, let us sum­marise what we have dis­cussed above :

1) RIMMON is a Syr­i­an pagan god of thun­der and the name itself is a noun and has noth­ing in com­mon with ar-rah­man, which is an attribute/​appellation of God, as any Mus­lim school­child would know.

2) RIMMON has its roots in the Akka­di­an Ram­manu, mean­ing thun­der­er” or to roar, to thun­der” and its only con­nec­tion to the pome­gran­ate” (rim­mon) is that this is part of a delib­er­ate Jew­ish insult against this pagan idol. Rah­man” came from a total­ly dif­fer­ent root word, rah­ma, which means pity ; com­pas­sion ; sym­pa­thy”, etc.

3) RIMMON is the Syr­i­an god of wind, rain and storm”. By no stretch of imag­i­na­tion can this be applied to Allah, the God of Abra­ham(P), Moses(P), Jesus(P) and Muham­mad(P)! Fur­ther, we have seen how the South Ara­bi­an Chris­tians them­selves use the appela­tion Rah­man-an (equiv­a­lent to the north­ern ar-Rah­man) for God, and how the Ara­ma­ic phrase Rachamanaa is found in the Jew­ish Talmud.

4) Nowhere in Strong’s or in the BDB/​Gesenius lex­i­cons do we find any cor­re­la­tion of RIMMON with the Ara­bic word ar-rah­man or its root word rah­ma. The Hebrew equiv­a­lent for rah­ma is the word rachuwm. Both rah­ma (Ar.) and rachuwm (Heb.) share the same R‑H-M cognate.

Con­clu­sion

It is evi­dent that the mis­sion­ary Patri­ot Tim” clear­ly resorts to non­sen­si­cal and shod­dy schol­ar­ship in order to dis­cred­it Islam, no mat­ter how sil­ly the the­o­ries’ that he repeats. We sug­gest that Patri­ot Tim” should stick to his cur­rent day­time occu­pa­tion instead of try­ing to pass him­self off as some sort of ety­mol­o­gist-cum-arche­ol­o­gist and par­rot­ing ver­ba­tim from mono­lin­gual polemi­cists like Morey.

And only God knows best. Allah is the "Rimmon" of Syria? A Reply to Christian Mendacity 5

Ref­er­ences

[2] William Gese­nius, Op. Cit., p. 982

[3] James Strong, The New Strong’s Exhaus­tive Con­cor­dance of the Bible, under the word RIMMON

[4] Under , The Brown-Dri­ver-Brig­gs Hebrew-Eng­lish Lex­i­con, p. 942

[5] William Gese­nius, Op. Cit.

[6] Fred­er­ic W. Bush, HadadRim­mon”, The Anchor Bible Dic­tio­nary, (Dou­ble­day 1992), Vol. 3, p. 13

[7] J. M. Cow­an (ed.), Hans Wehr’s Ara­bic-Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, p. 332

[8] Ibid.

[9] Wittgen­stein, Philophis­che Unter­suchun­gen, pt. I, sect. 43

[10] Yosef Yo’el Rivlin, Alkur’an /​tirgem me-‘Arvit, Devir, Tel Aviv (19361945)

[11] Philip K. Hit­ti, His­to­ry of the Arabs, The Macmil­lan Press, Ltd (1970), p. 105

[12] Ibid.

[13]