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The same name traced across the biblical canon and the Second Temple texts, side by side.
Sepharad (Sardis)
Obadiah names it as a place where Jerusalem's exiles were scattered. They will come back from there, he says, to the towns of the Negev. Where it was is uncertain, though some connect it with Sardis.
Obadiah names it as a place where Jerusalem's exiles were scattered. They will come back from there, he says, to the towns of the Negev. Where it was is uncertain, though some connect it with Sardis.
Sepharad is named once, as a place where Jerusalem's exiles were scattered and from which they would one day return to resettle the towns of the Negev (Obadiah 1:20). Its identity is uncertain: some scholars connect it with Sardis in Lydia, attested in a bilingual Lydian-Aramaic inscription from that city as "Sparda," while later Jewish tradition took it to mean Spain, giving rise to the term "Sephardic" for Jews of Iberian descent. Some ancient interpreters instead read the word simply as "dispersion" or "diaspora."
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- Obadiah 1:20
