Telassar
Telas'sar (Heb. Telassar', תּלִשָּׂר [in Isaiah], fully תּלִאשָּׂר. [in Kings], Assyrian hill; Sept. Θαεσθέν, Θεεμάθ v.r. Θαλασσάρ, Θαιμάδ; Vulg. Thelassar, Thalassar) is mentioned in 2Ki 19:12 (A.V. "Thelassar") and in Isa 37:12 as a city inhabited by "the children of Eden," which had been conquered and was held in the time of Sennacherib by the Assyrians. In both passages it is connected with Gozan (Gauzanitis), Haran (Carrhae, now Harran), and Rezeph (the Razappa of the Assyrian inscriptions), all of which belong to the hill country above the Upper Mesopotamian plain, the district from which rise the Khabfr and Belik rivers. SEE GOZAN; SEE HARAN; SEE MESOPOTAMIA. It is quite in accordance with the indications of locality which arise from this connection to find Eden joined in another passage (Eze 27:23) with Haran and Asshur. Telassar, the chief city of a tribe known as the Beni-Eden, must have been in Western Mesopotamia, in the neighborhood of Harran and Orfa. The name is one which might have been given by the Assyrians to any place where they had built a temple to Asshur, and hence perhaps its application by the Targums to' the Resen of Ge 10:12, which must have been on the Tigris, near Nineveh and Calah. SEE RESEN. Ewald (Gesch. 3, 301, Note 3) identifies it with a heap of ruins called Teleda, southwest from Racca, the Theleda of the Peut. Tab. (11, c), not far from Palmyra. It is in favor of this that in that case the places mentioned along with it in the passages cited stand in the order in which they would naturally be' attacked by a force invading the territory from the east, as would the Assyrians (Thenius,
Exeget. Hanldbuch; ad loc.). Havernick's identification (Ezekiel p. 476) with the Thalatha (Θαλαθά) of Ptolemy (5, 20, 4) would place it too far south. The Jerusalem Targum (on Ge 14:1) and the Syriac take it from Ellassar (q.v.), in the territory of Artemitia (Ptolemy, 6:176; Strabo, 16:p. 744). Layard thinks (Nineveh, 1, 257) that it may be the present Tel Afer, or perhaps Arban (Nin. and Bab. p. 283), although no name like it is found there now.
