kinneres
At a glance
In short
Rabbi Klein suggests that the lake has no name of its own, and that each of its three names was taken from whichever city on its shore was most prominent at the time. It is Kinneret in Tanach; Ginosar in the Targumim and other works of the Second Temple period, Josephus among them; and Yamah shel Tiveria, the Sea of Tiberias, in the Gemara. "The Sea of Galilee" is named for the surrounding region, and none of these sources uses it.
Distinctions
Kinneres (כנרת)
The name the Torah uses in fixing the eastern border of Eretz Yisrael (Bamidbar 34:11; Devarim 3:17; Yehoshua 12:3, 13:27). Yehoshua 19:35 lists a fortified city Kinneres in the territory of Naftali, captured in Yehoshua's day, and this city's name turns up in various ancient inscriptions as well. The lake is called the Sea of Kinneres because that city was then the leading settlement on its shore. Topographically it is a lake, not a sea, but yam covers both.
Ginosar (גניסר)
The Targumim render Kinneres as Ginosar and Yam Kinneres as Yam Ginosar, and Josephus (War of the Jews III:10) likewise calls it the Lake of Genezareth, an anglicization of the Greek form of Ginosar. The Gemara (Megillah 6a) states that the Biblical city Kinneres is Ginosar. The fruit of Ginosar is praised in the highest terms (Berachos 44a), and the Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 98:17) expounds the name as ganei sarim, gardens of officers, for the fertility of that land and the fruit it produced. By the Second Temple period the city was known as Ginosar and still prominent, so the lake took its name, and that is the term the works of that era use.
Yamah shel Tiveria (ימה של טבריה)
The Bavli calls the lake Yamah shel Tiveria (Shabbos 87a-87b, Moed Katan 18b, Bava Kamma 81a-81b, Bava Basra 74, Bechoros 55a) and the Yerushalmi Yam shel Tiveria (Shekalim 6:2, Bava Basra 5:1); both mean the Sea of Tiberias. The shift in name tracks the rise of Tiveria on the western shore past Kinneres and Ginosar. The Arabic name for the lake, Buhairet Tabariyya, carries the same sense.
Kinnor (כנור)
Ordinarily a stringed instrument. Its place here is only through the Gemara's derashah on the city's name and the possibility, from Rabbi Nosson of Rome, that the word also names a berry.
Where the authorities disagree
Which name to write in a get. A get must name the city where it is written and fix its location by the nearest body of water, so a get written in Tiveria must name this lake. Which of its three names is the correct one was disputed at length between Rabbi Yosef Karo and Rabbi Moshe ben Yosef of Trani, who sat together on the beis din of Tzefas.
Where the name Kinneres comes from.
- A popular account says the lake is called Kinneres because its pear shape resembles a kinnor, a musical instrument. There is no real source for this.
- The Gemara (Megillah 6a), which identifies the Biblical Kinneres with Ginosar, derives the name differently and applies it to the city, not the lake: its fruits are as sweet as the sound of a kinnor.
- Rabbi Nosson of Rome (Sefer HeAruch) defines kinnor either as a kind of berry, which Jastrow identifies as a thorn jujube (compare Rashi to Bava Basra 48b), or as a musical instrument, a harp or lyre.
Whether Tiveria is a Biblical city. Two accounts stand against each other.
- Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews XVIII:8) has Herod, the Herodian tetrarch of the Galilee, found the city and name it in honor of the Roman emperor Tiberius.
- The Gemara (Megillah 5b-6a), on the other hand, identifies it with one of two cities named in Yehoshua 19:35, Chamas or Rakas: Chamas, "hot," for the natural hot springs there, and Rakas, "empty," because even the empty and unlearned among its people were as full of mitzvos as a pomegranate is of seeds. For the name Tiveria itself the Gemara gives two accounts: the city sits at the tabur, the navel of Eretz Yisrael, in importance rather than in geography, and the name is tovah re'iyasah, "its sight is good," which Tosafos explains as its beauty, its gardens and orchards.
Why the rabbinic sources drop the name Kinneres. Archaeologists at ancient Ugarit (Ras Shamra, in modern Syria) found a list of old Canaanite gods carrying a god named Kinnaru, and kinnor appears in Ugaritic for a stringed instrument in the same sense as the Hebrew; on this some academic scholars have argued that Kinnaru was the Canaanite god of music and that the city Kinneres was named after him. The late Dr. Dov Ginzberg of the Geological Survey of Israel argued from this that perhaps Chazal avoided the Biblical name because of its idolatrous origins and named the lake instead for one of the Jewish cities nearby, Ginosar or Tiveria. Rabbi Klein presents all of this as a possibility only, and adds that if nothing else, perhaps it accounts for the city Kinneres being renamed Ginosar.
Radak on these roots
Sefer HaShorashim
ט-ב-ר
The navel; and because the navel is the middle of the body, the middle and high point of the earth is called טַבּוּר הָאָרֶץ.
The word itself
In Aramaic the word is a known one for the navel, the שורר; and Chazal use it much, as פיו סתום וטבורו פתוח (Niddah 30b), its mouth closed and its navel open.
The middle of the earth
Since the navel is the middle of the body, a place that is the earth's middle and its height is called by the word: מֵעִם טַבּוּר הָאָרֶץ (Shoftim 9:37), from the middle of the land, and יֹשְׁבֵי עַל טַבּוּר הָאָרֶץ (Yechezkel 38:12), those dwelling on the middle of the earth.
מֵעִם טַבּוּר הָאָרֶץ (שופטים ט, לז), יֹֽשְׁבֵי עַל־טַבּוּר הָאָֽרֶץ (יחזקאל לח, יב), והטבור בארם ידוע והוא השורר. ובדברי רבותינו ז"ל הרבה באמרם (נדה ל, ע"ב) פיו סתום וטבורו פתוח. וזולת זה הרבה. ולפי שהטבור אמצע הגוף קורא מקום שהוא מצוע הארץ וגבהה טבור מֵעִם טַבּוּר הָאָרֶץ, יֹֽשְׁבֵי עַל־טַבּוּר הָאָֽרֶץ [בוניגול"ו בלע"ז].
כ-נ-ר
כִּנּוֹר, the kinnor, named in the pesukim with the ugav and the nevel; its sense is known. It takes a plural, and a plural in the feminine form.
Its forms
כִּנּוֹר וְעוּגָֽב (Bereishis 4:21), kinnor and ugav, and וַיְהִי לְאֵבֶל כִּנֹּרִי (Iyov 30:31), my kinnor is turned to mourning. The plural is וְקוֹל כִּנּוֹרַיִךְ לֹא יִשָּׁמַע עֽוֹד (Yechezkel 26:13), the sound of your kinnoros will be heard no more, and in the feminine form וּבְכִנֹּרוֹת וּבִנְבָלִים (Shmuel II 6:5), with kinnoros and nevalim, and תָּלִינוּ כִּנֹּרוֹתֵֽינוּ (Tehillim 137:2), we hung up our kinnoros. Of all of them he says only ידוע, it is known.
כִּנּוֹר וְעוּגָֽב (בראשית ד ,כא) וַיְהִי לְאֵבֶל כִּנֹּרִי (איוב ל, לא). והקבוץ וְקוֹל כִּנּוֹרַיִךְ לֹא יִשָּׁמַע עֽוֹד (יחזקאל כו ,יג). ובלשון נקבות וּבְכִנֹּרוֹת וּבִנְבָלִים (שמואל ב' ו ,ה), תָּלִינוּ כִּנֹּרוֹתֵֽינוּ (תהלים קלז, ב) ידוע.
Radak, Sefer HaShorashim, Berlin 1847. Public domain, digitised by Sefaria from the National Library of Israel.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The Shining Sea of Galilee," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 3 August 2019.
Cited in the essay: Bamidbar 34:11; Devarim 3:17; Yehoshua 12:3, 13:27, 19:35; Megillah 5b-6a with Tosafos; Berachos 44a; Shabbos 87a-87b; Moed Katan 18b; Bava Kamma 81a-81b; Bava Basra 74; Rashi to Bava Basra 48b; Bechoros 55a; Yerushalmi Shekalim 6:2 and Bava Basra 5:1; Bereishis Rabbah 98:17; Sefer HeAruch s.v. kinnor; Josephus, War of the Jews III:10 and Antiquities of the Jews XVIII:8; Jastrow on the berry; the responsa of Rabbi Yosef Karo and of Rabbi Moshe ben Yosef of Trani on the get; the Ugaritic god-list from Ras Shamra with the deity Kinnaru, and the late Dr. Dov Ginzberg of the Geological Survey of Israel on it.