PUDENS (Tloans), one of the persons whose salutations Paul, writing from Rome, sends to Timothy (2 Tim. iv. 21). Nothing is really known of him ; but the martyrologies make him to have been a person of figure at Rome, of the senatorial order, and father of two pious virgins, Praxis and Pudentia. Yet, by a strange incongruity, he is also deemed to have been one of the seventy dis ciples. A female disciple, of the name of Claudia (I0,aata), is mentioned in the same verse ; and as a poet of the time, Martial, speaks of the marriage of a Pudens and Claudia, the same persons are supposed to be intended. But this sort of identi fication requires little notice ; and if Pudens and Claudia were husband and wife, it is unlikely that the apostle would have interposed another name between theirs. [CLAUDIA.]—J. K.
PUL (S)n ; Sept. loud, •=baXul,x, cbaX6s), the first of the series of Assyrian monarchs whose inva sions of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah are men tioned in the Bible (2 Kings xv. 19, 20 ; I Citron. v. 26). Menahem, having succeeded in mounting the throne of Israel, proceeded to make himself master of the whole territory belonging to that kingdom. Setting forth from Tirzah he attacked and took by storm Tiphsah, or Thapsacus, on the Euphrates, which had once more been made a border town of Israel by the conquests of Jeroboam II., whose victorious career had restored the ancient boundaries of the land in that direction as they had been in the days of Solomon (2 Kings xv. 16 ; xiv. 25, 28 ; 1 Kings iv. 24). He appears to have thus drawn on himself the notice of Pul. The Assyrian monarch, having marched against him, was induced by the payment of a heavy tribute not only to withdraw his invading forces, but also to give Menahem his support to confirm the kingdom in his hand' against all other aspirants to the crown. There is great difficulty in deter mining what Assyrian king is referred to under the name Pul. He must have ruled over Assyria as the immediate predecessor of Tiglath-pileser II., for this latter monarch, according to Sir H. Rawlinson (Atherzteum, No. 1793), is recorded to have re ceived tribute in his eighth year from Menahem, whose reign occupied only ten years. For some time Sir H. Rawlinson identified him with a king whose cuneiform name he has variously represented as Iva-lush, Vul-lush, and Yama-zala-khus, and who reckoned among the countries tributary to himself that of Khumri or Samaria (Rawlinson's Herodotus, i. 467). This identification, however, he gave up on ascertaining that the lately de ciphered Assyrian canon interposed the reigns of three kings, comprising 37 years, in addition to a probable interregnum of two or three years, be tween this king and Tiglath-pileser (Athenaum, No. 1805). Subsequently he suggested that one and the same individual is denoted by the names Pul and Tiglath-pileser in the sacred narrative. His chief argument for this is that in i Chron. v. 26, the same event—namely the deportation of the tribes beyond the Jordan—is attributed to the two kings associated together as if they were one and the same individual (A/hewer:on, No. 1869). But, as already remarked by Winer (Realm, ii. 259), the passage in i Chron. does not necessarily ascribe to the two kings the accomplishment of the same measure. Pul is mentioned in it as the first As syrian king who came into collision with the Israelites, and thus prepared the way for the subsequent deportation of the trans-Jordanic tribes. But that this measure is attributed solely to Tiglath pileser, as in 2 Kings xx. 29, is manifest from the use of the singular Dr. Julius Oppert, who accepts the account of Ctesias, and takes it to refer to the subversion of the first Assyrian empire, supposes Pul to be the Babylonian Belesys.
The eminent Assyriologist Dr. Hincks maintains that Pul became king of Babylon, holding Assyria in subjection, in 787 B. c. Tiglath-pileser revolted from him and established an independent king dom of Assyria in 768 'Lc.' (Athenaum, No. 181o). The main difference between this view and that of Dr. Oppert is, that Dr. Hincks supposes a considerable interval to have elapsed between Belesys, the conqueror of Nineveh, and Pul. It certainly appears the most plausible opinion ; and it seems safest to acquiesce in it until further discoveries of cuneiform students lead to a more exact determination. It is in accordance with the scriptural chronology, and it falls in with what we can glean of Assyrian history from classical and monumental sources. The account of Ctesias, as found in Diodorus Siculus (Hist. ii.), though re jected by Sir H. Rawlinson and his followers (comp. Prof. Rawlinson, Atte. Alan., ii. 521), has received the support of many eminent modern critics. It has been shown to be reconcilable with the narrative of Herodotus (Hist., i. 102, io6), which contains intimations that there had been a subversal of the Assyrian empire prior to its final overthrow alluded to by that historian (see Winer, Realm, i. 104). It is admitted that the Assyrian canon, in the period between Iva-lush IV. and Tiglath-pileser II., gives indication of troublous times, and of a disputed, or at any rate a disturbed succession'. (Rawlinson, Ann MO11,11. 386). The writer last cited also asserts that the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser IL 'support the notion of a revolution and change of dynasty in Assyria at this point of its history' (Rawlinson's Herodotus, i. p. 468). That Pul was a Babylonian holding rule in Assyria at this time is confirmed by the notice of Alexander Polyhistor (Euseb., Chron., p. i. c. iv.) Post hos ait exstitisse Chal dmorum regem, cui nomen Phulus emt ;' and also by the form of the name. The name Pul, while having, according to Professor Rawlinson, its counterpart among known Babylonian names, is wholly alien to the rules on which Assyrian names are formed. They are always compounds, con sisting of two, three, or more characters' (Am—. Mom, ii. 388, note).—H. C. G.
PUL (5ID ; Africa), a country mentioned only in Is. lxvi. 19, and grouped between Tarshish and Lud. Hitzig, Knobel, and some others sup pose that the true reading is DID, which is else where joined with Lud (Ezek. xxvii. Io ; Jer. xlvi. 9 ; A. V. Libyans) and which is sometimes ren dered in the LAN. cDolia (Gen. x. 6 ; I Chron. i. 8), the same form which occurs here in that version ; for this, however, there is no MS. authority, and we are therefore bound to receive the Masoretic reading as correct.
Bochart would identify Pul with Phila, an island in the Nile on the confines of Egypt and Ethiopia. The Egyptian name of that island is Pelak, which certainly bears some resemblance to the Hebrew Put. Bochart says : Phut pro Phil scripsit Esaias permutatione literarum Van et 70d, qua nihil frequentius . . . Pro Phul Chaldaeus habet plurali numero Nt..610, Phula, cui proxime accedit rID/Xac, Phila (Geogr. Sac. in Opp. i. p. 269 ; cf. Michaelis, Spied. i. p. 257). This is all very true ; but it must be 'kept in mind that the other names here mentioned are those of great countries, while Philae is a very small island. Isaiah would scarcely. speak of the Jewish people being driven to it. It seems much more probable that Pul was the name of some distant province of Africa ; and perhaps the suggestion of Gesenius may be right, that we have a vestige of the old name in the word lioXo, which appears on inscrip tions (Thesaurus, p. 109•—J. L. P.