Paranormal Bible Study – Amaltheia

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Published 3 days ago by Cris Putnam

I haven’t posted to this site recently due to the Christmas holiday (defended at Logos) and because I am knee deep in co-writing my third book with Thomas Horn who is now a television producer as well as my publisher. Not to mention, we are travelling to the Superstition Mountains and then Sedona Arizona in a couple weeks to complete our field-research. Needless to say, I’m plenty busy. The following is me taking a break.

A lot of the work I do as writer is detailed research into the biblical text. I just stumbled upon this example and I’m not sure it’s relevant to the book, so I thought I would share this tidbit so my readers can get a taste of how to dig weird facts out of the Bible.

“And he called the name of the first Jemimah and the name of the second Keziah and the name of the third Qeren-Happuk.” (Job 42:14)

The last name Happuk has a strange reference to “horn of antimony” in the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon:

Quote :: †קֶרֶן הַפּוּךְ S7163 GK7968 n.pr.f. (horn of antimony, i.e. beautifier, v. פּוּךְ);—Job’s third daughter Jb 42:14.

What makes it more interesting is that the Septuagint rendered it Amaltheia kerasi
“καὶ ἐκάλεσεν τὴν μὲν πρώτην Ἡμέραν, τὴν δὲ δευτέραν Κασίαν, τὴν δὲ τρίτην Ἀμαλθείας κέρας,(Job 42:14)

So now you are probably asking “Amaltheia who?” and I confess that this is where scholarly resources and Logos Bible software shine by linking to the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible:

Quote :: AMALTHEIA Ἀμάλθεια

I. Amaltheia is the name of the goat that suckled baby →Zeus right after his birth (so Callimachus, Apollodorus, Diodorus Siculus), or of the nymph who nursed and fed him on goat’s milk (so Ovid and Hyginus). The ‘Horn of Amaltheia’ (Ἀμαλθείας Κέρας) was one of the horns of this goat or, according to others, a horn possessed by the nymph, which provided in abundance whatever one wished, and became the well-known image of the ‘horn of plenty’ or cornucopia.

G. Mussies, “Amaltheia,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst,(Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 26.

A magical goat horn possessed by a nymph… who knew? Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting one draw conclusions about Zeus, cornucopias or nymphs but I think you might imagine the creative potential that this sort of historically legitimate material offers a writer. Of course, it exacts a price in that I’ll never think of that “Horn of Plenty” Thanksgiving decoration with the naivete I once enjoyed.