The land of Sin () or Sinim (from: , i.e. the inhabitants of the land of Sin, or the people of Sin) is a biblical

hapax legomenon In corpus linguistics, a ''hapax legomenon'' ( also or ; ''hapax legomena''; sometimes abbreviated to ''hapax'', plural ''hapaxes'') is a word or an Fixed expression, expression that occurs only once within a context: either in the written re ...

that appears in

Isaiah Isaiah ( or ; , ''Yəšaʿyāhū'', "Yahweh is salvation"; also known as Isaias or Esaias from ) was the 8th-century BC Israelite prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named. The text of the Book of Isaiah refers to Isaiah as "the prophet" ...

49:12: "Behold, these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim." The Greek

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

instead says, "from the land of the Persians." Some English versions simply

transliterate Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...

the word, others translate the Hebrew as

Syene Aswan (, also ; ) is a city in Southern Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate. Aswan is a busy market and tourist centre located just north of the Aswan Dam on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract. The modern city has ...

(Aswan), and still others associate Sin with

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. Sinim resembles ''Sinae'', the Latinization of ''Qin'', after the

Qin state Qin (, , or ''Ch'in'') was an ancient Chinese state during the Zhou dynasty. It is traditionally dated to 897 BC. The state of Qin originated from a reconquest of western lands that had previously been lost to the Xirong. Its location at ...

, founded in 778 BC, and the

Qin dynasty The Qin dynasty ( ) was the first Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China. It is named for its progenitor state of Qin, a fief of the confederal Zhou dynasty (256 BC). Beginning in 230 BC, the Qin under King Ying Zheng enga ...

, founded in 221 BC by Qin Shi Huang-Di. ''

Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible ''Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible'' is a Bible concordance to the King James Version compiled by Robert Young. First published in 1879, it contains "about 311,000 references subdivided under the Hebrew and Greek originals with the li ...

'' (1879) defines the word as "a people in the far east; the Chinese?" ''The

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia The ''International Standard Bible Encyclopedia'' refers to two different versions of a Bible encyclopedia: a 1915 fundamentalist edition, and a 1979–1995 revised evangelical edition. The first version was published under the general editorship ...

'' (1915) says, "The land is clearly far off, and it must be sought either in the South or in the East. Many scholars have favored identification with China, the classical Sinae. It seems improbable that Jews had already found their way to China; but from very early times trade relations were established with the Far East by way of Arabia and the Persian Gulf; and the name may have been used by the prophet simply as suggesting extreme remoteness....While no certain decision is possible, probability points to the East, and China cannot be quite ruled out." Modern translations of the Bible tend to translate Sinim as Syene (ancient Aswan) because the

Great Isaiah Scroll The Isaiah Scroll, designated 1QIsaa and also known as the Great Isaiah Scroll, is one of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls that were first discovered by Bedouin shepherds in 1947 from Qumran List of manuscripts from Qumran Cave 1, Cave 1. The scroll i ...

of the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between ...

uses that word. In modern Hebrew, ''Sin'' () is the word for China, just as modern Hebrew uses other ambiguous biblical place names for contemporary countries, such as '' Sfarad'' () for Spain and ''

Tzarfat Tzarfat (, ) is a Biblical placename that may refer to Sarepta in Lebanon. From Medieval Hebrew and into Modern Hebrew, it has come to be identified with France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Weste ...

'' () for France. In the

Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Bible translations into Latin, Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Diocese of ...

, Jerome of Stridon translated “Sinim” as "

Terra Australis (Latin for ) was a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Its existence was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that continental l ...

" into Latin. Also, Sinim may be derived from the old Hebrew words "Sinah" or "Sneh", meaning a hostile bush. This lends credence to the purely speculative thesis that Sinim – according to Isaiah 49 – refers to a land of bushes located at the ends of the Earth, i.e.

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, although Jews and Europeans had no knowledge of it at the time. This thesis was notably put forward by Herbert Armstrong to justify

British Israelism British Israelism (also called Anglo-Israelism) is a pseudo-historical belief that the people of Great Britain are "genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants" of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. With roots in the ...

In Latter-day Saint theology

In language nearly identical to that of the

King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English Bible translations, Early Modern English translation of the Christianity, Christian Bible for the Church of England, wh ...

First Nephi The First Book of Nephi: His Reign and Ministry (), usually referred to as First Nephi or 1 Nephi, is the first book of the Book of Mormon, the sacred text of churches within the Latter Day Saint Movement, and one of four books with the name Neph ...

21:12 in the

Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, first published in 1830 by Joseph Smith as ''The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi''. The book is one of ...

reads: “And then, O house of Israel, behold, these shall come from far; and lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim.” The index of this scripture of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Restorationism, restorationist Christianity, Christian Christian denomination, denomination and the ...

defines Sinim as “possibly heland of China”.

In Latter-day Saint theology

References

Further reading