Addan

Addan appears in the post-exilic returnee lists alongside several other obscure names. Whether the term designates a person or a place is not resolved in the text itself; the parallel register in Nehemiah preserves the variant spelling Addon.

In the Returnee Lists

The Ezra register groups Addan with Tel-melah, Tel-harsha, Cherub, and Immer: "And these were those who went up from Tel-melah, Tel-harsha, Cherub, Addan, [and] Immer; but they could not show their fathers' houses, and their seed, whether they were of Israel" (Ezr 2:59). The Nehemiah parallel substitutes the form Addon: "And these were those who went up from Tel-melah, Tel-harsha, Cherub, Addon, and Immer; but they could not show their fathers' houses, nor their seed, whether they were of Israel" (Neh 7:61). What both passages share is the inability of those returnees to document their Israelite descent — the lineage gap is the point of the entry, and Addan/Addon is one of the unverified origin-points named in it.