The origin of the name Sepharad: a new interpretation

Abstract

Since the period of Roman Antiquity, Spanish Jews gave the name Sepharad to the Iberian Peninsula. The descendants of Iberian Jews refer to themselves as Sephardim and identify Spain as Sepharad in modern Hebrew. The name Sepharad appears for the first time as a biblical place-name of uncertain location in the Book of Obadiah (1: 20). There are, however, Persian inscriptions that refer to two places called Sparda: one an area in Media and the other Sardis, the ancient capital of Lydia, in Asia Minor. Furthermore, some scholars defend the theory that the biblical Sepharad could be situated in Libya. The most widely accepted hypothesis is that it might have been Sardis. But the connection between the name Sepharad referring to the Iberian Peninsula and the Sepharad that appears in the Bible is not clear; neither has the idea that Sepharad could be identified with Sardis been satisfactorily explained. Finally, even in the case that we accept that Sepharad was Sardis, it is difficult to explain the relation that there could have been between the Iberian Peninsula and the ancient capital of Lydia. In this paper I want to shed some light on all these unresolved questions.