WHO WAS PUL IN THE BIBLE?

 

Who was Pul?

It has often been said that you can't tell the players without a program, whether the context is sports or attending a play. I have found that the same is true when trying to read a mystery novel. Sometimes the cast of suspects is so large that I can't keep track of them all, and so I appreciate it when an author lists all of the characters on the first page along with their descriptions.

This sort of problem even (or should I say, especially) occurs when reading the Bible. New readers of the New Testament may be a little taken aback at first before realizing that Saul and Paul are the same person or that the apostle Peter is also Simon, but that is nothing compared to the difficulty of trying to keep track of the much larger host of Old Testament characters. And it doesn't help at all that some of them are known under different names, most of which additionally have underlying meanings in their original languages.

A prime example of this difficulty is seen with the powerful Assyrian ruler and founder of the Neo-Assyrian Empire named Tiglat(h)-Pil'eser III whose reign spanned the years from 745 to 727 BC. During these years he interacted with the Israelites in a number of different guises, which included being their attacker, uneasy ally, and their overlord. And, unfortunately for the reader, he also appears under different names in the Scripture.

The first thing to note is that the Roman numeral after his name is never given in the Bible, and so it is easy to confuse him with the two earlier Assyrian kings who also went under the same name. But that is only the start of the difficulties associated with this personage.

In an older commentary by Edward Young, he stated that this king was the “successor to Pul [a name meaning 'strong'] who invaded Naphtali in the days of King Pekah. Or more likely, he may have been Pul who conquered part of the north and Damascus and carried off people to Kir in 742 BC.” Subsequent scholars now know that Pul and Tiglath-Pil'eser were definitely one and the same person. As Millard explains, “Only with the recovery of cuneiform inscriptions did it become clear that the two names applied to one king, leading to a change in the translation of 1 Chron 5:26.” Thus, the KJV of that verse reads, “And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria and the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away...” Compare this to modern translations which delete the first “and” in order to make it clear that there are two parallel phrases denoting the same person.

At this point I will interrupt the biblical situation to point out that actually today's readers should probably not be so upset about this use of different names in the Bible for the same person since even in my own immediate family I have had two members reverse the order of their first and middle names, and one other couple hyphenated their two last names. That is besides the more traditional practice of the woman changing her last name when she gets married. And one granddaughter chose an entirely different first name for herself, while another one adopted her mother's new last name and step-father's middle name when her mother remarried.

But returning to the biblical example, a short anonymous article in Biblical Archaeology Today magazine states the following: “The name [Tiglath-Pileser] is a nominal sentence, meaning that its predicate is not a verb but a noun, with the verb 'to be' implied but not expressly written.” Thus, it is explained that the king's name can be broken down into the following component Assyrian words:

    tukulti = “my trust”

    apil = “heir (or son) of”

    Esarra = “Esharra temple”

This still does not make much sense to us, but Millard further points out that “Esharra” means that the king's trust was in the god Ashur, whose temple in Assyria was Esharra. “Its Hebrew form in Kings reflects accurately the Assyrian pronounciation of his time.” Thus, the underlying meaning is “My trust is in the god of the Esharra temple” (i.e. the chief deity of the Assyrians, the warrior god Ashur, for whom the nation was named).

Now as to the alternative name Pul for the king, here is how some scholars explain that one:

    Ellison: “Pul [was] his personal name which he retained as king of Babylon and Tiglath-Pileser his throne-name as king of Assyria.”

    BAR: “In 2 Kings 15:19, Tiglath-Pileser III is called Pul, which reflects his Babylonian name, “Pulu” as read in the Babylonian chronicle.

    Millard calls Pul the king's “native name.”

    And to us, Pul appears to be a simple nickname derived from Pileser.

But that is not quite all of the story since Millard continues on to state: “The late Hebrew term found in LXX [Greek Septuagint] and Chronicles is Tilgat-piln'eser. The Greek form which here is actually Algathphellasar “may reflect a later Aramaic form.”

To summarize the situation, this same king appears in the English Bible under the following three names:

    Tiglath-pileser:     II Kings 15:29; 16:7,10

    Tilgath-pilneser:  I Chronicles 5:6,26b

    Pul:                      II Kings 15:19; I Chronicles 26a; II Chronicles 28:20