A History of the Fertile Crescent. Volume One: From Creation to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

A History of the Fertile Crescent Volume One: From Creation to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob Dedicated to: Jesus Christ, The Lord of History. ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End’ A History of the Fertile Crescent Contents: Part One: Creation to the Flood Creation ……………………………………………. p. 4 Eden …………………………………………………. p. 4-5 The Fall …………………………………………….. p. 5 First City (Enoch) ………………………………. pp. 5-7 The Flood ………………………………………….. pp. 7-12 Part Two: Ark Mountain and Proto Sites Noah’s Ark Mountain …………………………. p. 13-15 Where was the Ark built? ……………………. p. 16-19 Traces of the Flood …………………………….. p. 19-27 The Proto-Cities …………………………………. p. 27-36 Part Three: People movement and Babel Out of Anatolia ……….…………………………. p. 37-42 Babel reconsidered ……………………………. p. 43-51 Plain in Land of Shinar ………………………. p. 52-57 Part Four: Dispersion of Nations The main ethnic streams .……………………. p. 58-64 Shinarian-Akkadian Culture ……………….. p. 65-74 Part Five: Kingdom of Akkad Nimrod as Sargon ..……………………………. p. 75-81 Nimrod and Abram legends ..………………. p. 82-83 Abraham’s contemporaries ……………..….. p. 84-93 Part Six: Patriarchs and Egypt Abram and Egypt …..…………………………… p. 94-96 Isaac and Egypt ………………....………………. p. 97-103 Jacob and Egypt ……………….……………..…. p. 104-125 A History of the Fertile Crescent by Damien F. Mackey The term “Fertile Crescent” was coined in 1914 by the American Egyptologist James Henry Breasted in his popular high-school textbook “Outlines in Human History”. He used it to describe a roughly crescent-shaped region encompassing modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and parts of Turkey and Iran. https://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/fertile-crescent.htm The Fertile Crescent, also rightly known as “The Cradle of Civilisation”, will be the geographical focus of this article. I believe that it, with the inclusion of Nubia (see map on p. 8), corresponds nicely with the riverine system as outlined in Genesis 2:10-14. Part One: Creation to the Flood Contents: Creation ……………………………………………. p. 4 Eden …………………………………………………. p. 4-5 The Fall …………………………………………….. p. 5 First City (Enoch) ………………………………. pp. 5-7 The Flood ………………………………………….. pp. 7-12 CREATION God created the entire universe: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/creation-ex-nihilo-is-in-the-bible • Psalms 33:6 (RSV) By the word of the LORD [i.e., not by existing matter] the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth. • Isaiah 44:24 . . . “I am the LORD, who made all things . . . “ • Wisdom 1:14 For he created all things that they might exist, . . . • John 1:3 all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. • Romans 11:36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. . . . • 1 Corinthians 8:6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. • Ephesians 3:9 . . . God who created all things; • Colossians 1:16 for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. • Hebrews 2:10 . . . he, for whom and by whom all things exist . . . • 2 Peter 3:5 . . . by the word of God [i.e., not by existing matter] heavens existed long ago . . . • Revelation 4:11 “. . . our Lord and God, . . . didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were created.” which He must have created ex nihilo, that is, “out of nothing” - though preferably, “not out of anything” - “because no thing (nothing) existed initially if there was no thing that he did not create” (ncregister). The ‘Big Bang’ is rejected as pure fantasy. EDEN God created the Garden of Eden in Paradise, this latter being the vast riverine land, whose four rivers were watered by the one flowing out of Eden (Genesis 2:10). Eden was an icon of the universe, and on it would be modelled the Tent of Meeting (Moses), and later, the Temple of Yahweh (built by King Solomon). Eden, which was situated in the ‘middle’ of this ancient Fertile Crescent world, was the same site as Jerusalem later on (Ezekiel 5:5): ‘This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the centre of the nations, with countries all around her’. See also: https://www.icr.org/article/the-center-of-the-earth Thus I totally disagree with the likes of Dr. Rohl, and those who follow him, who would locate ancient Eden in Kusheh Dagh, in Iranian Azerbaijan, in the vicinity of Tabriz. One would expect, with a vast riverine system, that boats, and trading by water, would have been early developments. Also astronomy (for agriculture, religion, navigation). THE FALL After the Fall and expulsion from Eden, the children of Adam, such as Cain and Abel twins (?), would continue to bring their sacrifices to the holy place in the Garden, as the Jews would later do, to the Temple of Yahweh there. Dr. Ernest L. Martin (“The Temple Symbolism in Genesis”) is a must-read on all this: https://www.askelm.com/temple/t040301.htm Because Cain slew the holy Abel at this site, Jesus could later pin on the Jerusalemites the blood of the prophets from Abel to Zechariah (i.e., the Maccabean elder, Eleazer), who was murdered in the Temple (2 Maccabees 6:12-31; cf. Matthew 23:35). I John 3:12: “Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous”. The Greek word here for “murdered” (ἔσφαξεν) literally means to “cut his throat” and could be translated “slaughtered” or “butchered”, as in ritually sacrificed. And for John that murder was evidence that Cain was of the evil one. Cain, shared the disposition of the devil, who, according to Jesus in John 8:44, “was a murderer from the beginning”. FIRST CITY (ENOCH) We do not need to go all the way to Mesopotamia to locate the city of Enoch and the other Cain-ite cities. The first so-called city was right on the fringe of Eden, to the east (Genesis 2:8). Though Hebrew miqqedem (מִקֶּ֑דֶם) can also mean e.g. “in ancient times”. Originally titled "The Land of Eden Located" 1964 by David J. Gibson Now that we have arrived at what seems to be a reasonable opinion as to the location of the Land of Eden, the identification of the four river-heads and the approximate site of the Garden of Eden, it should be possible from this to know where to look for the next-door region, that is, the Land of Nod to which Cain went after he was revealed as the murderer of his brother Abel. The Scripture account states: "And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the Land of Nod, on the east of Eden." --Genesis 4:16. It is to be noted that "the presence of the Lord" was in Eden. Here, in the infancy of the human race the Lord's presence is connected with a place. Many think the place was the entry to the Garden, where the Cherubim stood with a Flaming sword. It is generally assumed that to this sacred spot the people brought their sacrifices, as we read of the offerings of Cain and Abel. At this place God spoke directly to the worshippers and the worshippers spoke to Him. From this place Cain was driven and cut off for life. Cain dwelt thereafter in the Land of Nod. It was "on the east of Eden," an expression which seems to mean adjoining it. Therefore, it was not far away. Here in due time Cain's son Enoch was born. As Adam's family increased in Eden, and Cain lived in fear that "everyone" there sought his life for slaying Abel, he hit upon an idea. He enclosed and "fortified" his residence, for self protection. This is the primary meaning of the word, "city" in Hebrew. It did not at first denote size, but an enclosed, fortified place. Cain may merely have erected a wooden palisade about a few huts, but this was new, it was novel, it deserved a name. He named it after his son, "Enoch." The record runs: "And he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch." --Genesis 4:17. [End of quote] With this in mind, it may be futile to look for any archaeological remains of such a basic enclosure, given the ravages afterwards of the Noachic Flood. And Gibson has made this very point: “Now obviously the city which Cain builded and named after his son Enoch must have been destroyed by the Flood so that the physical entity itself probably disappeared, though it was subsequently re-founded”. Admittedly, there is a collection of most ancient settlements in Sumer (southern Iraq) that bear names that might remind one of Cain’s descendants. William W. Hallo points to “… Irad”, for instance, “reminiscent of the first Sumerian city Eridu … ”. (The World's Oldest Literature: Studies in Sumerian Belles-Lettres, 2010, p. 669). These may perhaps be attributable to Cain-ites who later spread to this region before the Flood. But some of these names, at least, seem to emerge also in Syria, which region would likely have been settled by humanity before the more distant Sumer was. Duplication of place names, W to E, and N to S, will become a source of immense confusion. Humanity began as intelligent, cultured and incorrupt, but later, corrupted, devolved. Still, from most rudimentary beginnings, humankind developed to a degree of technology and animal husbandry that we today would call Neolithic and Chalcolithic. Not to mention the introduction of Cain-ite polygamy. Genesis 4:19-22: Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. Tubal-Cain’s sister was Naamah. Legend has it that Lamech became blind, and that he mistakenly slew Cain, and also a young Tubal-cain (v. 23): ‘I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me’. The gods of the ancient world derive largely, I suggest, from antediluvian Cain-ites. The Roman smithy god, Vulcan, for instance, is clearly the metal-worker, Tubal-cain (Greek Hephaestos; Egyptian Ptah). Osiris may be like Adam (Egyptian Atum?), but Osiris has also been likened, in part, to Cain, and even to Noah. Technological innovation is nowhere attributed to the leading Seth-ites, though, whose focus appears to have been more upon the pursuit of Godliness. For example, Genesis 5:22, 24: “Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years … then he was no more, because God took him away”. And, 2 Peter 2:5: “Noah … a preacher of righteousness”. That does not mean that the Seth-ites were technologically inept. Noah built an Ark. Regarding the Nephilim Genesis 6:4), this is about Seth-ites falling into apostasy (like King Solomon did). Angelic beings, even fallen ones, do not procreate with humans (cf. Matthew 22:30). Giants will perish in the Flood, so Solomon tells us (Wisdom 14:6): “For in the beginning, when arrogant giants were being destroyed, the hope of the world took refuge on a raft [the Ark] and, guided by Your hand, bequeathed to the world the seed of a new generation”. I follow Dr. Jack Cuozzo’s work (Buried alive: the startling truth about Neanderthal Man, 1999) in which the author argues that Neanderthals were “humans who lived for hundreds of years, and that their distinctive skull features were caused by extrapolating the changes which normally occur in modern human skulls as they age”. Perfervid palaeontologists in museums are wont to saw off Neanderthal jaws to make them appear ape-like. Evolution is entirely fake. The missing link is still missing. And palaeontologists can exhibit acute devolutionary tendencies, homo sapiens fading away into simius insipiens. (G. K. Chesterton is well worth reading on such matters). Neanderthals, too, faded away - although we still see throwbacks - when God decided to reduce the length of human existence. Here is Noah’s account of it (Genesis 6:1-3): When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years’. It is generally estimated that the duration from Creation to the Flood was 1656 years. THE FLOOD For the time being I rest content with a date of c. 2300 BC (Dr. John Osgood’s estimate) for the Genesis Flood. However, this date will need to be lowered significantly as a revision of biblico-history begins to take its full effect. How much of the world was flooded (Genesis 6-9)? - Some say the flooding was global. - Some say it was local, like one of those large Mesopotamian floods. Saint Peter tells us (2 Peter 3:6): “… the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished”. What was this “world that then was”? Well, the only world to which the reader has been introduced up until Genesis 6 (the beginning of the Flood account) is the riverine world of Genesis 2: our Fertile Crescent. We read about it in Adam’s family history, or toledôt. I follow P. J. Wiseman (Clues To Creation In Genesis, 1977), and against JEDP theory. According to Wiseman, the Book of Genesis is composed of ancient patriarchal family histories (toledôt), from Adam to Jacob (afterwards Joseph), to which editor Moses (and one might allow for other inspired editors, too) later added explanatory details. Now, in Adam’s toledôt history we have mention of the riverine system, but without any of the rivers being named (Genesis 2:10): “A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters”. To which most rudimentary antediluvian account editor Moses will add some important postdiluvian names and directional detail. Thus (vv. 11-14): The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Tigris and Euphrates are well known, as is the city of Ashur alongside the Tigris, named after Ashur (Assur), a descendant of Abraham (Genesis 25:1-2). By “Cush”, editor Moses would only have meant Nubia (often also called Ethiopia), and not the far distant Kusheh Dagh. This hydrological reconstruction means that, whilst the Noachic Flood was far less vast than would be a global flood, it was far more vast than would be a mere local flood. King Ashurbanipal of Assyria (C7th BC, conventional dating), a keen antiquarian who would most certainly have known about local Mesopotamian floods, refers to the flood: ‘I had the joy of reading inscriptions on stone from the time before the flood’. This tells us, too, that writing was in use already in antediluvian times. And we have the written family histories (toledôt) of Adam, Noah, and Noah’s sons, embedded in the first part of the Book of Genesis: Tablet 2: Gen. 2:5–5:2: The origins of mankind. Tablet 3: Gen. 5:3–6:9a: The history of Noah. Tablet 4: Gen. 6:9a–10:1: The history of Noah’s sons. We are therefore talking about an eyewitness account of the great Flood. JEDP theory rightly recognises multiple sources comprising the Flood account, but sadly identifies these as being far later than the time of Moses, instead of being, as they are, pre-Mosaïc accounts as narrated (compiled/owned) by Noah’s three sons. Against Creationists, I would argue: That the Flood was not global. Nor did it destroy every single vestige of the pre-Flood world. The four rivers of Genesis, for instance, were identifiable again after the Flood. They were still there in the days of Sirach (24:25-27), and are even so today. That sediment on earth was caused by the Flood. It was not. Thus Carol A. Hill (“The Garden of Eden: A Modern Landscape”): https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2000/PSCF3-00Hill.html What most Christians do not realize is that this biblical identification of Eden on a modern landscape is in direct conflict with Flood Geology, a premise promoted by Creation Science. The basic tenet of Flood Geology is that all (or almost all) of the sedimentary rock on the planet earth was formed during Noah's flood. But modern geologic study has shown (by oil drilling) that the landscape of southern Iraq is underlain by six miles of sedimentary rock. Thus the question can be asked: How could the Garden of Eden, which existed on a pre-flood landscape existing before the flood, have been located over six miles of sedimentary rock created during the flood? …. That there were dinosaurs in the Ark. I have never yet read about prehistoric animals being in the Fertile Crescent. This map does not appear to have them there either. That there were only eight persons aboard Noah’s Ark. This is what I would consider not to be a properly common sense interpretation of I Peter 3:20: “Those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water”. The “eight” here surely refer to Noah and his wife, his three sons and their wives, from which primogenitors all of the human race, post-flood, would arise. Many of these were already alive and were having offspring of their own, and so the Ark would have been equipped with a decent-sized crew, as would have been absolutely necessary given the tasks and challenges that lay at hand. I am sure that DNA and genetic studies will bear this out, as they have done so tellingly already in the case of the first woman on earth, the mitochondrial Eve. That Noah’s Ark was verging on the size of the Queen Mary. The Chalcolithic technology that we learned was the peak of material achievement prior to the Flood could not possibly have fostered a ship of this incredible magnitude nor sophistication. To insist that it could have is quite nonsensical. However, I would basically agree with them regarding the difficult matter of Ice Ages, at least insofar as Creationists would streamline the evolutionary multiple Ice Ages. Was the aridity after the Fall (Genesis 3:17-19) due to the onset of the Ice Age? There is a vast literature by Creationists on the subject of the Ice Ages which includes some highly significant contributions. Henry M. Morris, for instance, has written, in “The Ice Age” (Creation 11(2):10–12, March 1989): https://creation.com/the-ice-age …. Most evolutionary geologists believe that the Ice Age involved at least three advances and retreats of the ice, with warm periods in between. However, the evidences for the earlier advances are of an entirely different sort than the moraines and striations of the last one, the so-called Wisconsin stage. The former consist of certain dense clay soils, old river terraces and other phenomena that can be interpreted as water-laid formations more easily than they can as earlier glaciations. Human Occupation It should also be noted that the ice never covered the entire earth. Some Bible teachers have mistakenly equated the glacial period with an imagined world-wide cataclysm which left the earth ‘without form and void’ (Genesis 1:2) and covered with water, but this interpretation is impossible. The ice never covered more than a third of the earth’s surface, even at its greatest suggested extent. As a matter of fact, there was probably a ‘pluvial period’—a period of much rain —in the lower latitudes at the same time as there was a ‘glacial period’ in the upper latitudes. …. And again: …. With the Flood, however, all this changed. The vapour canopy condensed and fell to the ground in violent torrents for five long months, and waters and magmas burst forth all over the earth through ‘the fountains of the great deep’ (Genesis 7:11; 8:2) for the same period. Tremendous earth movements accompanied and followed the Flood, and catastrophic phenomena of all kinds continued on a lesser scale after the Flood. In particular, the precipitation of the vapour blanket at the outset of the Flood gradually dissipated the greenhouse effect, and the Arctic and Antarctic zones grew bitterly cold. During and immediately after the Flood the tremendous heat energy released from the depths continued to evaporate great quantities of water, much of which was transported to the polar regions by the newly developing post-Flood atmospheric circulation, where it fell as great quantities of snow. Soon the accumulating snow pack became an ice sheet, radiating out from its centre. There seem to be certain references to this Ice Age in the ancient book of Job (37:9-10; 38:22-23; 38:29-30), who perhaps lived in its waning years. …. Creationists will ask a very valid question of those who do not believe in a global Flood. Why did Noah not just move to safer ground? I can only make suggestions at this stage. Were Ice sheets a barrier? Fierce dinosaurs, too? Hostile, violent clans (Genesis 6:11). Was the first world surrounded by an encircling Ocean (the Okeanos of Greek legend)? As for Job, referred to by Henry M. Morris as co-existing with the Ice Age - a view that many Christians support (Job, they say, may have been an Edomite patriarch, Jobab) - I would insist, quite differently, that we shall have to wait almost a millennium and a half yet to encounter the real prophet Job of the Bible and history. The view of Morris that there was both a ‘pluvial’ and a ‘glacial’ period together seems to fit with New Zealander Terry Lawrence’s argument (“Has Velikovsky Correctly Placed the Ice Age?”, Chronology and Catastrophism Workshop, SIS, May 1988, Number 1, p. 41) that “the ice age struck these lands at the same time as the Noachian Deluge”: …. Pick up a copy of Kummel’s History of the Earth and glance at pp.447-455 and you will see the fallacy of this time-gap. The maps on these pages clearly show that during the Tertiary Age Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor were in a state of complete ruin, being mostly under water. Note in particular the Great Tethys or Central Sea which stretches 9000 miles from Spain to India and is up to 2000 miles wide. On p.453 the map for the Oligocene subdivision of the Tertiary shows that the sea invasion of Europe plainly stops at the boundary of the area covered by the ice age in Scandinavia. This is curious because under the conventional scheme the ice age does not occur for another 23 million years. During the Eocene subdivision of the Tertiary the sea covered the south of England up to a point where the later ice age reached, supposedly 38 million years later. During the whole period of these disastrous sea invasions and large scale fresh water floodings the northern part of the British Isles along with Scandinavia was not touched. In North America it is a similar story for the Canadian Shield. While the rest of the continent was subject to sea incursions, rain storm flooding in the mid-west and volcanic eruptions in the Rockies and Central America all was tranquil in north-east Canada. It is absolutely impossible that while the rest of the world was drowning, most of the British Isles, Scandinavia and Canada escaped. There can only be one solution, i.e. the ice age struck these lands at the same time as the Noachian Deluge. Conventional geologists have therefore reconstructed the ages of the past incorrectly by placing too much time between the end of the Tertiary and the ice age. If either follows immediately or happens at the same time as the subdivisions of the Tertiary i.e. the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene and Pliocene periods are all contemporary with one another). Failing to grasp this, Velikovsky while at least cutting the time period down from millions of years to about 2000, has accordingly overrated the scale of the Exodus catastrophe. There is a slim possibility that Velikovsky might place the Flood at the time of the dinosaurs. This can easily be discounted. Stone Age Man could not possibly have survived in a world of flesh-eating dinosaurs like the 18 foot tall Tyrannosaurus Rex. Besides, in Kummel’s book on p. 37 we find a chart that clearly shows the dinosaurs drowned because of massive invasions of shallow seas upon the continents. The actual figures are 75% sea water drownings and 25% continental rain water and river delta drownings. For the Age of Mammals the figures are reversed: 20% are drowned by shallow sea invasions and 80% by lowland continental and upland fresh water. The book of Genesis makes it clear that the Deluge drownings were caused by forty days and nights of rainstorms. Once more this favours the Cenozoic era and not the Mesozoic or Dinosaurian era. A possible new sequence of the geological ages might be: Cenozoic Holocene – Neolithic. Bronze, Iron Pleistocene. Tertiary – Noachian Deluge – many giant forms of today’s mammals become extinct (cf. Genesis 6:4) Palaeocene – period of change between dinosaurs and mammals Mesozoic. Palaeozoic – Land and sea creatures of the Dinosaurian era. They are contemporary and not separated by hundreds of millions of years as under the conventional scheme. …. [End of article] One thing I think is certain about this most complicated of subjects. The Noachic Flood and its aftermath - when properly interpreted - will enable for a massive overhaul and revision of the Geological Ages, just as it has enabled Creationist, Dr. John Osgood, to make progress towards developing a necessary revision of the Stone Ages (“A Better Model for the Stone Age”, EN Tech. J., vol. 2, 1986, pp. 88–102): https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j02_1/j02_1_88-102.pdf We shall be encountering the experienced Dr. John Osgood again when we come to consider the archaeologies of the patriarch Abram (Abraham), of the Exodus Israelites, and of the Judges, all as so brilliantly identified by him. Lawrence: “… 23 million years … 38 million years … hundreds of millions of years”. Evolutionary-based figures such as these are totally ridiculous and no human mind can possibly countenance them. Take an entire four zeros from 38 million, for 3,8oo, and that would be an approximate time-span estimate from Creation to Jesus Christ. And no one has been able to account properly for this relatively short period of time. Part Two: Ark Mountain and Proto sites Contents: Noah’s Ark Mountain …………………………. p. 13-15 Where was the Ark built? ……………………. p. 16-19 Traces of the Flood …………………………….. p. 19-27 The Proto-Cities …………………………………. p. 27-36 NOAH’S ARK MOUNTAIN The combined research of Ken Griffith and Darrell K. White has caused me to move away from my former acceptance of Judi Dağ as the Mountain of Noah’s Ark landing in preference for their choice of Karaca Dağ in eastern Turkey (see map on p. 14). The pair have strongly argued for the validity of this latter site in their excellent new article: JOURNAL OF CREATION 35(3) 2021 | https://dl0.creation.com/articles/p149/c14993/j35_3_50-63.pdf A Candidate Site for Noah’s Ark, Altar, and Tomb (2) (PDF) A Candidate Site for Noah's Ark, Altar, and Tomb. | Kenneth Griffith and Darrell K White - Academia.edu My main reason for entertaining this switch is that the latter site appears to have been the place, unlikely as it may appear, for the world’s first agriculture, including grapes, and for the domestication of what we know as farmland animals. For example, Ken Griffith and Darrell K. White write: This mountain, Karaca Dag, is where the genetic ancestor of all domesticated Einkorn wheat was found by the Max Planck Institute.1 The other seven founder crops of the Neolithic Revolution all have this mountain near the centre of their wild range.2 This was so exciting that even the LA Times remarked how unusual it is that all of the early agriculture crops appear to have been domesticated in the same location: “The researchers reported that the wheat was first cultivated near the Karacadag Mountains in southeastern Turkey, where chickpeas and bitter vetch also originated. Bread wheat—the most valuable single crop in the modern world—grapes and olives were domesticated nearby, as were sheep, pigs, goats and cattle.”3 …. Manfred Heun was the botanist who followed the DNA of domesticated wheat back to its source on Karaca Dag: “We believe that the idea is so good—the idea of cultivating wild plants—that we think it might be one tribe of people, and that is fascinating,” said Manfred Heun at the University of Norway’s department of biotechnological sciences, who led the research team. “I cannot prove it, but it is a possibility that one tribe or one family had the idea [emphasis added].”3 A 2004 DNA study of wild and cultivated grapevine genetics by McGovern and Vouillamoz found the region where grapevines were first domesticated. Vouillamoz reports: “Analysis of morphological similarities between the wild and cultivated grapes from all Eurasia generally support a geographical origin of grape domestication in the Near East. In 2004, I collaborated with Patrick McGovern to focus on the ‘Grape’s Fertile Triangle’ and our results showed that the closest genetic relationship between local wild grapevines and traditional cultivated grape varieties from southern Anatolia, Armenia and Georgia was observed in southern Anatolia. This suggests that the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Taurus Mountains is the most likely place where the grapevine was first domesticated! ... . This area also includes the Karacadağ region in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent.” …. Remember Noah and his vineyard cultivation, and drunkenness (Genesis 9:20-23), Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked. as narrated in the (eyewitness) family histories (toledôt) of Noah’s three sons (10:1): “This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s sons, who themselves had sons after the Flood”. Due to Ham’s having intercourse with Noah’s wife (not necessarily Ham’s mother?), here, Noah cursed the fruit of that union, Canaan (9:24-29): When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers’. He also said, ‘Praise be to the LORD, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend Japheth’s territory; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth’. After the flood Noah lived 350 years. Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died. That the Canaanites were an accursed race from the beginning is attested also by the wise King Solomon (Wisdom 12:3-11): Those who lived long ago in your Holy Land you hated for their detestable practices, their works of sorcery and unholy rites, their merciless slaughter of children, and their sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood. These initiates from the midst of a bloody revelry, these parents who murder helpless lives, you willed to destroy by the hands of our ancestors, so that the land most precious of all to you might receive a worthy colony of the children of God. But even these you spared, since they were but mortals, and sent wasps as forerunners of your army to destroy them little by little, though you were not unable to give the ungodly into the hands of the righteous in battle or to destroy them at one blow by dread wild animals or your stern word. But judging them little by little you gave them an opportunity to repent, though you were not unaware that their origin was evil and their wickedness inborn and that their way of thinking would never change. For their offspring were accursed from the beginning, and it was not through fear of anyone that you left them unpunished for their sins. “… sheep, pigs, goats and cattle” (p. 14). These, rather than lions, tigers, elephants, hippos, rhinos, giraffes, kangaroos, and dinosaurs, were the sorts of animals that were led in pairs on board Noah’s Ark. WHERE WAS THE ARK BUILT? By now, some 500 Flood legends are known of throughout the world: https://www.bible.ca/ark/noahs-ark-flood-creation-stories-myths-sumerian-kings-list-sumerian-eridu-genesis-kings-list-instructions-of-shuruppak-atra-hasis-epic-of-“Today we know of over 500 ubiquitous flood stories from every culture in every corner of the globe from the present dating back to the dawn of writing”. Where did Noah and his assistants build the Ark? Whilst I cannot definitively answer this question, and I find precious little in the way of any legend upon which to draw for it, I am intrigued by the ancient reverence shown for the true Mount Sinai (Har Karkom), as identified by professor Emmanuel Anati. He wrote intriguingly (Kar Karkom. The Mountain of God, Rizzoli, NY, 1986): Among the many unsolved problems concerning this holy mountain, one is likely to be the most challenging: Why this mountain? What did people find on this mountain which is not found elsewhere? Similar things may have attracted there the Palaeolithic and BAC [Bronze Age] tribes. Perhaps the material evidence has not yet been found or, if it has, it is not yet understood. After forty years from the first discoveries and after fourteen years of survey, we may not yet have discovered enough details to fully understand this high-place. The mountain is likely hiding still other messages”. Among the taunts that professor Emmanuel Anati and his colleagues had received regarding Har Karkom, he tells: “We became used to sarcastic comments such as ‘Did you find the broken Tablets of the Law?’, or, ‘Next you should look for Noah’s Ark’.” That last question has set me wondering if the reason for the apparent holiness of this mountain may have been because it was there where a previous Ark, Noah’s Ark, had been erected - long before the Ark of the Covenant was built there by the Israelites. There would indeed be a nice symmetry to all this (without trying to pre-empt what God himself had decided to do) given, too, the realisation of certain scholars, such as I. Kikawada and A. Quinn, that the Exodus story of Moses was a miniature Flood story (Before Abraham Was, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1985). Moses wrote the Exodus account in terms of ‘a miniature Flood story’, portraying himself as the new Noah. Exodus 3:1: “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God”. The question is, did Moses refer to Horeb (Mount Sinai) as “the mountain of God” only because of what it would later become, or was it already known as that when he was exiled in Midian, and perhaps because Noah had once lived there? What would add further intrigue to any Noah-Moses parallelism would be if there were truth in a very slim legend that Noah had (like Israel) been an exile in Egypt – whatever that land was then called, and whatever it looked like, back in those antediluvian times. Moses, who compiled Genesis from the series of family histories (toledôt) written by his illustrious forefathers, was apparently also very conscious - when writing his own story in the rest of the Pentateuch - of the content, language and structure of Genesis. Simple examples of this are given, followed by a more profound, structural example. • Just as God saw His creative works as ‘good’ (Genesis 1:31), so did Moses’ mother see that her son ‘was a goodly child’ (Exodus 2:2). • The ‘Ten Words’ or creative commands of God in Genesis 1: ‘And God said’, have been found to parallel the ‘Ten Commandments’ of Exodus 20. • Moreover, both series of ten are referred to in the context of the Six Days and a Seventh (cf. Genesis 1:5-31; 2:2 and Exodus 20:9-11). • The new Pharaoh who began the oppression of the Israelites is portrayed by Moses as something of a Nimrod figure, as found in Genesis 10 and 11, a megalomaniacal builder of cities. At Babel, the inhabitants use a phraseology: ‘Come, let us make bricks .... Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens ...’ (cf. Genesis 10:8-9 & 11:3,4) that Moses would copy in Exodus: ‘... the new king over Egypt’ said ‘Come, let us deal shrewdly with [the Israelites], lest they multiply ...’. So the Egyptians ‘made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick’ (Exodus 1:10,14). The stated purpose … was to build a city ‘... lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth’ (11:4). Moses used a kind of ‘rival operation’ to this, for ‘... the more they were oppressed, [the Israelites] the more they multiplied and … spread abroad’ (1:12). • Abram was ordered by God to leave the land of his birth and sojourn in the foreign land of Canaan (Genesis 12:1). Moses, for his part, fled his native home, of Egypt, and sojourned in the foreign land of Midian (Exodus 2:15). • Pharaoh begged Abram to leave Egypt once God had begun to inflict plagues upon that country, because of Abram’s wife (Genesis 12:17-19). Likewise, the Pharaoh of the Exodus begged Moses to leave Egypt because of the Ten Plagues (Exodus 12:31-32). Innumerable other simple comparisons may be found but there is also a more far-reaching similarity between Genesis and the other Pentateuchal books. I. Kikawada and A. Quinn (op. cit., p. 115) have discerned a five-part structure shared by Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch, as well as multiple chiasms, pointing to a striking unity of thought throughout the entire Pentateuch. This similarity of structure is further compelling evidence in favour of Mosaïc (and later editorial) compilation of Genesis as well as substantial Mosaïc authorship of the last four books. Most striking of all, however, is the similarity between the lives of these two great Patriarchs - so much so that we find Moses portraying himself as a second Noah, his story being ‘a miniature flood story’. As we read above, nations throughout the world share legends of a universal Flood and of a righteous man being saved with his family in a boat of some kind. Surely this points to a common ancestry amongst even the most diverse and far-flung peoples! Given the prominence in early Egypt of Joseph and Moses, with their toledôt records, we should expect to find Flood legends in the mysterious Egyptian mythology as well. Strangely, ancient Egypt is thought to have been one of the few nations where memory of a universal Flood has not been preserved. David Fasold (The Discovery of Noah's Ark, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1990, pp. 16-17) thinks otherwise, however, pointing out that the begetter of the ‘gods’ of Egypt was Nu, a name not dissimilar to Noah. Moreover, the original gods of the Egyptian pantheon were 8 in number; 8 was also the number saved in Noah’s Ark (cf. Genesis 7:13 and 2 Peter 2:5). According to Fasold: A closer approximation to the Noah of the Genesis account is hard to imagine. In this regard Noah was the preserver of the seed of mankind .... Noah, or Nu, being one with the original eight gods of the Egyptian pantheon also accounts for Nu being the progenitor of the father of their civilization. These eight were viewed as gods by having passed through the judgment and survived as well as their longevity, which their offspring did not inherit to the same extent. In light of Sir Wallis Budge’s view that Nu represented the watery mass from which the gods evolved, Fasold added: “It takes little imagination to view Nu as directly connected with the watery mass of the Flood, and the ‘bark of millions of years’ as the Ark from ancient times, with the ‘company of gods’ as the survivors”. The ‘goddess’ Nut, mother of all the living, who accompanied her husband Nu on the voyage, must then stand for Noah's wife. Nut was also held in high esteem among the gods. This, moreover, is not the only Egyptian version of the Flood. For another example, see A. S. Yahuda (The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian, Oxford UP, 1933, 219-211). Professor’s Yahuda’s information that Genesis’s uses an Egyptian-based word, tebah, תֵּבָה (Egyptian db.t, ‘box, coffer, chest’), and not a Babylonian one, for Noah’s Ark, is shattering for the common view that Genesis was written in a Babylonian environment. Interestingly, the noun is only ever used to describe just two objects: • Noah's ark - the great ship, 26 places in Gen 6-9 • Moses' ark of reeds line with pitch in Ex 2:3, 5 Was not Moses, to all appearances, “an Egyptian”? Exodus 2:19: “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock”. (Cf. Acts 7:22). Professor A. S. Yahuda’s evidence for Egyptian language and literary elements right throughout the Pentateuch is a perfect complement to Wiseman’s toledôt structure, it having shock value as being quite unknown to JEDP proponents of a Babylonian origin. Creationist Gavin M. Cox, too, is currently doing some very worthwhile research on tracing early Genesis into Egypt. For instance, he tells: https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/icc_proceedings/vol7/iss1/36/ A survey of standard Egyptian Encyclopedias and earliest mythology demonstrates Egyptian knowledge of Creation and the Flood consistent with the Genesis account. The Table of Nations (Genesis 10-11) describes how Noah's sons populated the earth after the Babel dispersion. We are told in Genesis 10:6 that Ham was the father of four sons (Cush, Mizraim, Put, Canaan). The MT Text of Scripture does not contain the name 'Egypt' but refers to this territory using the names of Mizraim and Ham. Scripture's first reference to Mizraim as the Eponymous ancestor of Egypt occurs at Gen. 13:1, and following, refers to Egypt as 'Mizraim' 652 times in the OT (cf. Genesis 50:10-11). Ham is referred to poetically as the Eponym of Egypt in Psalms (78:51; 105:23, 27; 106:22) describing Egypt as the 'land of Ham'. Has Scripture revealed that Ham founded Egypt, and his son Mizraim succeeded him, as the first of Egypt's Pharaohs? Gen. 9:28 reveals that Noah lived 350 years after the Flood, and Gen. 11:10-11 reveals Shem lived 502 years after the Flood (even outliving Abraham), and presumably Ham and Japheth lived to great ages also. Could it be that the Flood Patriarchal family were 'deified', and became the first gods of the pagan nations? …. If so, would Egypt's hieroglyphic language preserve a knowledge of the Patriarchs as ancient, deified ancestors, Egypt's creators, who handed on their knowledge after the Great Flood? And is the Bible's account of the Flood, the Ark, and Noah and his descendants, preserved in plain sight? The Creationist Flood Model would predict this, and I will attempt to demonstrate this to be so. My search will start with Scripture and continually be guided by Scripture. Firstly, the Egyptian language should be a more consistent and enduring guide compared to Egyptian mythology. MT preserves the meanings of Noah's family's names. Could it be that the onomatology of each name is preserved within Egypt's hieroglyphs as a kind of linguistic footprint? In other words Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Creationism. Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship phonetically similar Egyptian words, carrying the same range of meanings as the MT would demonstrate consistency and deep linguistic connections with Genesis as real history. I will review Egypt's earliest creation myths to find any points of contact that may reveal consistency with the Genesis account, and Egypt's preservation of it. I will show that Egyptian mythology has suffered 'theological compression', whereby the Creation and Flood accounts have been conflated. Once the connections are recognized, and teased apart, more evidence will quickly follow. …. Another tradition (for what this particular one is worth) has Noah remaining on the mountain of Ark landing for some one hundred years after the Flood, which would take us to c. 2200 BC. TRACES OF THE FLOOD Whilst I have no intention of trying to account for the alleged mechanisms of the Flood, such as plate tectonics, volcanoes, magma burst flows, uplift, earthquakes, and so on, I think it most likely that one ought to factor in the Black Sea Flood. It, dated variously to c. 7000 BC but also to c. 5500 BC, comes surprisingly close within range of our approximately 2300 BC Flood (especially when allowing for the usual necessary time reduction of revisionism). And it was catastrophic! https://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/sep/14/internationalnews.archaeology Evidence found of Noah's ark flood victims Ship probes land below Black Sea submerged 7,000 years ago and linked to biblical disaster Marine archaeologists have found the first evidence of a people who perished in a great flood of the Black Sea that has been linked with the story of Noah's ark. Using robot underwater vehicles more than 300ft below the sea's surface, they have begun to map a rolling landscape, fed by meandering streams and marked with wattle and daub houses, that was flooded more than 7,000 years ago. The discovery was announced yesterday by Robert Ballard, the scientist who discovered the wrecked Titanic. The Black Sea was once a freshwater lake, well below sea level. About 7,000 years ago, according to geological evidence, the rising Mediterranean sea pushed a channel through what is now the Bosphorus, and then seawater poured in at about 200 times the volume of Niagara Falls. The Black Sea would have widened at the rate of a mile a day, submerging the original shoreline under hundreds of feet of salty water. Nearly 100,000 square miles were inundated. Sea shells on the beaches of the modern Black Sea are of marine origin, but deep below the surface there are layers of shells of freshwater molluscs, mute witnesses to the shoreline of the ancient lake. There are many myths concerning a great flood in the region. There was a first mention [sic] in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Babylonian work. The Romans and Greeks had the legend of Deucalion and Pyrrha, who saved their children and animals by floating away in a giant box. The Hebrew book of Genesis most famously tells the story of Noah, who found grace in the eyes of the Lord, when all around him were wicked. Noah was warned of a forthcoming flood, and built a huge "ark" to hold his family and all the animals in pairs. Noah survived when all perished. Tradition has it that his ark came to rest on the slopes of Mount Ararat in Turkey [sic]. Dr Ballard began exploring the Black Sea in the Hull registered ship Northern Horizon, and used side-scanning sonar to look for interesting shapes on the seabed over a 200-sq-mile area, 12 miles off the Turkish coast, near Sinop. The instruments detected "targets" worth a closer look, so video cameras mounted on underwater robot submarines were put to use. "We found two ancient ships last night," said Dr Ballard speaking by phone from his research vessel yesterday. "What we were trying to do in our wildest dreams - which is exactly what happened - was find a structure that was evidence, not a sunken ship, not trash and not geology, but characteristic of human habitation." They found it. Above an area submerged too deeply for human divers, the sonar instruments revealed details of the landscape. On September 9 they sent robot scouts down to objects which looked like beams and branches, debris that might have been the stiffening for wattle and daub homes. They found a rectangular area up to 12ft by 25 ft, over which an ancient mud and wooden house had collapsed, and they found tools of highly polished stone, together with fragments of ceramics. …. Something needs to be said here about the Epic of Gilgamesh, which, along with various other Mesopotamian flood-type myths (e.g., Atrahasis), is considered to have influenced the biblical account. However, the epic is late and actually borrows from a series of biblical stories (including Ecclesiastes as late as the era of King Solomon), as do a multitude of other pagan myths (e.g., the Assyro-Babylonian epic, Enuma Elish, Creation account). Thus Shawna Dolansky has written about this: https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/places/related-articles/gilgamesh-and-the-bible Gilgamesh and the Bible …. The Epic of Gilgamesh, a literary product of Mesopotamia, contains many of the same themes and motifs as the Hebrew Bible. Of these, the best-known is probably the Epic’s flood story, which reads a lot like the biblical tale of Noah’s ark (Gen 6-9). But the Epic also includes a character whose story bears even more similarities to stories in the Hebrew Bible: Gilgamesh’s possession of a plant of immortality is thwarted by a serpent (compare Gen 3), he wrestles in the night with a divinely appointed assailant who proclaims the hero’s identity and predicts that he will prevail over all others (compare Gen 32:23-32), and he is taught that the greatest response to mortality is to live life in appreciation of those things which make us truly human (compare Eccl 9:7-10). The Gilgamesh Epic was familiar in the biblical world: copies have been found at Megiddo, Emar, Northern Anatolia, and Nineveh. It shares many motifs and ideas (such as the Flood) with other ancient Near Eastern texts. Because of this, it is difficult to state with any certainty that the Epic directly influenced the stories of the Bible. For example, it was widely believed that dreams could be divinely inspired, cryptic forecasts of the future. So when Joseph dreamed of sheaves of corn and bowing stars (Gen 37:5-11), the author was probably not copying Gilgamesh’s oracular dreams. Likewise, the idea that it is mortality—the impetus behind Gilgamesh’s quest—that separates gods and humans is found in other Mesopotamian and Egyptian writings, as well as in Gen 3:22. In the Epic, the gods create Enkidu, who runs wild with the animals in the open country, as a companion for Gilgamesh. There are particularly interesting similarities between the Garden of Eden story in Genesis and the story of Enkidu’s movement from nature to culture and civilization. In both stories, a woman is responsible for the transition of a man who had once eaten and drunk with the animals to a state of estrangement from nature. Once Enkidu is rejected by the animal world, the woman Shamhat gives him clothing and teaches him to drink beer and eat bread—all technological developments that separate humans from animals. In Genesis, once Adam has eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge, he covers his nudity and is sentenced to a life of cultivating food by harsh labor. This is the cost of divine knowledge. In Gilgamesh, when Enkidu becomes estranged from the animals, Shamhat tells him that he has become “like a god.” Later, on his deathbed, Enkidu laments his removal from a state of nature, only to be reminded by the god Shamash that while civilized life is more fraught with difficulty and the knowledge of one’s own mortality, it is a worthwhile price for cultural knowledge and awareness. The closest parallel between a biblical text and the Epic of Gilgamesh is seen in the wording of several passages in Ecclesiastes, where a strong argument can be made for direct copying. The author of Ecclesiastes frequently laments the futility of “chasing after the wind” (for example, Eccl 1:6, Eccl 1:14, Eccl 1:17, Eccl 2:11, Eccl 2:17, Eccl 2:26, Eccl 5:16, etc.), a notion reminiscent of Gilgamesh’s advice to the dying Enkidu: “Mankind can number his days. Whatever he may achieve, it is only wind” (Yale Tablet, Old Babylonian Version). Earlier in the story, Gilgamesh persuaded Enkidu that two are stronger than one in a speech containing the phrase, “A three-stranded cord is hardest to break” (Standard Babylonian Version, IV, iv). Similarly, Ecclesiastes tells us, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work…. Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Eccl 4:9-12). These may simply be common sayings picked up by both authors, but Eccl 9:7-9 seems to directly quote the barmaid Siduri’s advice to Gilgamesh on how to deal with his existential angst: When the gods created mankind, They appointed death for mankind, Kept eternal life in their own hands. So, Gilgamesh, let your stomach be full, Day and night enjoy yourself in every way, Every day arrange for pleasures. Day and night, dance and play, Wear fresh clothes. Keep your head washed, bathe in water, Appreciate the child who holds your hand, Let your wife enjoy herself in your lap. (Meisner Tablet) This advice sums up the message of both the Epic of Gilgamesh and Ecclesiastes, two texts that wrestle with the search for meaning in the face of human mortality. …. Not only did the great Flood about which we read in the Book of Genesis really occur, but evidence of it is still archaeologically, hydrologically and geomorphologically discernible. Moreover, as already noted, written records of the Flood were provided by those who had actually experienced it, namely, Noah, and his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. Shem would go on, after the Flood, to become a most lauded and significant character, the great Melchizedek, King of Salem (which is not Jerusalem, incidentally). Dr. John Osgood has, as a ‘Creationist’, espoused a global model for the biblical Flood, with a consequent radical tabula rasa effect – likely no previous artefacts remaining (“A Better Model for the Stone Age”): A better model - Bibilical chronology of the stone age In order to arrive at a terminus for the so-called stone age against the biblical narrative a number of new details must be taken into consideration. Firstly, there should be the fact that the biblical chronology inserts a catastrophic world-wide flood of momentous proportions that was so devastating that it is unlikely that any artifacts of the world before that flood would be likely to be found on the surface of the earth today. They would be buried deep within the rock strata of the earth. Therefore, the assumption must be made that all the surface artifacts of civilization with which the archaeologist deals must relate to mankind's history after the great Flood of Noah which has been dated by this writer to be circ. 2,300 B.C.3 This allows us a starting point at 2,300 B.C. The end of the stone age has been accordingly determined in the preceding article ('The Times of Abraham', this volume) at approximately 1,870 B.C. during the early days of Abraham's life in Palestine. The reader is warmly referred to the discussion in that paper. Dr. Osgood’s revision of the Stone Ages, though extremely radical, is, in my opinion, far closer to the mark than are the text book versions of the Stone Age progression. Someone needed to start bringing a healthy dose of common sense to bear on the matter, and Osgood is the one who has stepped up to do just that. That does not mean, though, that his pioneering model is perfect. Future modifications will no doubt be necessary. Whatever about all of that, Dr. Osgood’s new outlook has emboldened him to continue on with this confident statement, the stone age terminating at the time of Abram: So we are left with the period from 2,300 B.C. through to 1,870 B.C. [Abram] for the period of mankind's history that the evolutionist would call the stone age. This is obviously significantly shorter than that proposed by those who hold the former evolutionary chronology. Such a reduction in time seemingly defies the imagination. However, the writer wishes to demonstrate in this paper that all that is known of these earlier ages of man can in fact be satisfactorily interpreted within that framework of time. None of this should be ignored. Here, though, I am more interested in Dr. Osgood’s evidencess for the Flood, rather than the degree to which he believes the Stone Ages ought to be trimmed down. And I am quite happy to let him do the expert teaching on this issue. Osgood continues: A wet middle east and heavy strata build-up The biblical model implies that there would have been much more water left over in land basins as a result of the great Flood than would necessarily be present today, and so we would look for evidence of large lake-like accumulations in such possible basin areas. The biblical model certainly does not insist on any particular weather conditions immediately after the Flood, but wet conditions would certainly be logical in God's planning for the habitation of the post-Flood earth, and would be logical in terms of the necessary rapid build-up of plant and animal life again after the Flood. As a result of the Flood, there would have been much salt left on the land, so wet conditions would have caused a washing off of some of this salt from the land and a faster ability of non-salt-loving plants to grow adequately, allowing for quick afforestation, an abundance of plant life, and hence a multiplication of animal life after the great Flood. Wet conditions would have increased the breakdown of mud-brick buildings, increasing therefore the build-up of strata in tells during the early days in the Middle East and causing more rapid build-up in caves, particularly in dolomite and limestone caves. There is strong evidence for a very wet climate in the Middle East and for left-over basins of water over many areas of the Middle East in the early days which the biblical model would allow to be called post-Flood, but which the evolutionary model would call the stone age. Palestine in those early days showed evidence of great areas of water, particularly filling in the north of the Huleh Basin [= Hula. See map I have added on p. 24]: ‘It is currently accepted that during the period of Acheulean occupation of the north-eastern tip of Upper Galilee, a large lake filled the entire Huleh Basin while the mountains were covered by oak forests incorporating several northern elements. such as Fagus. The surroundings were rich in various animals, including a number of large species. The Acheulean site was apparently located close to the ancient lake, in the vicinity of streams descending from the Hermon (Stekelis and Gilead, 1966; Nir and Bar-Yosef, 1976; Horowitz 1975-1977).’9 Also in south-central Sinai: ‘Strikingly thick accumulations of sediments occur in Wadi Feiran and its tributaries in south central Sinai (Fig. 1). Over the past three decades these have been the subject of discussion with reference to their origin (fluvial verses lacustrine) and their climatological and chronological significance. In this note we describe an in situ Upper Paleolithic site, the first known from south central Sinai, which places these deposits in a firmer chronological context of about 30,000 to 35,000 B.P. and lends support to previous climatological interpretations of a former wetter climate.'’10:185 And: ‘Nevertheless, the widespread occurrence of Upper Paleolithic sites throughout the central Negev and down to the very arid southern Sinai would suggest a regionally wet climate, which enabled the Upper Paleolithic people to exploit an area which today is hyper-arid.’10:189 Furthermore, in east Jordan: ‘Briefly, the stratification in the north, west, and south trenches reflects the existence of a Pleistocene pluvial lake that shrank until a widespread marsh formed during the Early Neolithic.’11:28 And again: ‘During the Late Acheulian period of the Late Pleistocene, the scene around Ain el-Assad was quite different: an immense lake, roughly five times the size of the present Dead Sea (Rollefson 1982; Garrard and Price 1977) stretched to the northern, eastern, and southern horizons. Once again, animals would have been attracted to the lakeshore, yielding opportunities for Neanderthal hunters to fulfill their needs.’11:33,34 Similarly, Alison Betts has suggested that in the Black Desert just close to the same area in eastern Jordan there was once lush growth and a large population of animals: ‘As far as hunting is concerned, the desert once supported large herds of game, particularly gazelle, and evidence for the wholesale exploitation of these herds is demonstrated by the complex chains of desert 'kites' lying across what were once probably migration routes.’12 Next Dr. Osgood turns to consider Egypt: In Egypt also, wet conditions prevailed: ‘Naqada I and II are very remote times, and it is now known that conditions in Egypt were then completely different from what they are today. At Armant, for instance, south of Luxor, large trees had been growing sparsely all over the low desert at a height of 20 or more feet above the present cultivation level and, therefore, probably about 40 feet above in pre-Dynastic times. The workmen told Mr. Myers that trees like this were to be found in every part of the Nile Valley. Some of these trees at any rate were earlier than either the Late or the Middle pre-Dynastic periods, for graves of these dates had been cut through their roots. Again, a small Wadi had been silted up and trees had been growing in it. This was all on the low desert, and similar wet conditions are found to have prevailed on the high.’13 The testimony seems uniform that in those early days, by whatever scheme they may be dated, conditions were wetter and large areas of water-filled geographical basins, a picture that is thoroughly consistent with the biblical model. Such conditions, Osgood thinks, account for the widespread use of the hand-axe: Wet conditions and afforestation may well be one of the explanations for the earliest type of culture found in many parts of the Middle East and Europe, that is the Acheulian, the most characteristic tool of which was the hand-axe. The need to clear land, to chop trees, and to build shelter from wet conditions, as well as to shape tools such as spears for hunting in that early survival culture, may well explain the ubiquity of the Acheulian hand-axe, a fairly basic tool. But then, the conditions also were very basic, and survival was the name of the game. Most ancient sites of Çatal Hüyük and Jericho betray evidence of multiple rebuilding: The wet conditions may also explain the very large number of stone-age, particularly Neolithic strata, in such places as Mersin, Catal Huyuk and Jericho, where the main building materials were sun-dried mud bricks. In north-eastern Iraq the Jarmo expedition found that the average expectation for a 'casually built house with some dried mud bricks and mud finished roof' was only 15 years.14 In much wetter conditions of earlier days the life of a building may well have been considerably shorter, even half that time, making rapid build up of strata with rebuilding of levels in tells a very highly likely proposition. Even the layers at the Carmel Caves, Osgood suggests, may be explainable according to a Flood scenario: Furthermore, the deep layers found in some of the caves, such as the Carmel Caves, which are dolomite, may well be explained by the wetter conditions which would give rise to the more rapid breakdown of rock from the roof. Such cave-ins, which were evident in some of the Carmel Caves, along with the increased trampling in of soil, dirt and mud as the people came home from hunting, would have led to a rapid build-up of strata in such caves. It is impossible at this point in time to give an accurate assessment of the time taken for the build-up of these strata. Long periods of time that have artificially been assigned to them simply cannot be sustained on any present evidence. For these reasons, the biblical model stands as a reasonably good scientific model on which to test the evidence. In summary Osgood writes: The Model: A Preliminary Hypothesis From the dispersion of Babel into the virgin forested lands of Palestine came the families of Canaan - Genesis 10:15-19. The initial number of families is unknown, but they are represented culturally by the Palestinian Acheulean artifacts. Their culture was consciously adapted to their new environment of heavily forested country and wet climate with large lakes in land basins, much of the water being left-over from the great Flood. The wet climate would have produced heavy sedimentation of the open land and friable conditions in many caves, which nonetheless were good protection from the climate. From the Acheulian background two different developments came - the Mousterian and Aurignacian of Palestine. At Carmel the Mousterian shelters suffered collapse, possibly from earthquake … ending Mousterian habitation in them. Geographically at least, the Aurignacian appears to have given rise to Kebaran culture. Further evidence of the massive Flood waters - apart from the possibility already suggested of the Black Sea Flood - may be implicit in what we read from the piece by Terry Lawrence in Part One (pp. 11-12). I refer to the “Great Tethys or Central Sea” and also the “Eocene” Sea. In the evolutionary scheme, millions of years can separate phenomena that were, in reality, either only hundreds to thousands of years apart, or were even simultaneous. The traces of the Eocene Sea in the Negev desert of southern Israel, as discussed by professor Emmanuel Anati in connection with Har Karkom (= Mount Horeb/Sinai), I would also attribute to the Genesis Flood. Did the so-called Eocene Sea gently lift the Ark off the top of Har Karkom, and carry it northwards to “the mountains of Ararat [ancient Urartu]” (Genesis 8:4)? Just a thought. Professor Anati writes (op. cit., p 339): The record of sedimentation on Har Karkom has a gap after the Middle Eocene. Although we cannot reconstruct the ensuing interval of geological history [from] evidence on Har Karkom alone, studies in other areas show that deposition of marine sediments took place throughout southern Israel up until the end of the Eocene, approximately 36 million years ago, at which time the seas overlying the Negev began to recede. We can now imagine the area of present-day Har Karkom emerging slowly from a shallow sea and being uplifted during the course of the Oligocene epoch until it was high above sea level. …. The sea never reached Har Karkom again …. THE PROTO-CITIES With humankind originating in Eden, which later became (a no doubt much morphologically modified) Jerusalem, it would be expected that the first ‘cities’, in whatever early form these may have been, lay not too far away from that central site. And we discovered that the first city, Cain’s “Enoch”, was situated very close to there. Sumer (southern Iraq), in whatever form it may have been in those antediluvian days - the Persian Gulf Delta, like the Nile Delta, would have been a post-Flood feature - would have been settled significantly later in antediluvian times, if at all. Now, with humankind re-commencing its epic journey, after the Flood, this time from its base on Karaca Dağ in eastern Turkey (pp. 13-15), then we might expect that the first major settlements, known as proto-cities, would have been in that region – and not, once again, in far-off Sumer as according to the usual view. And so we find, for instance, the surprisingly sophisticated Neolithic proto sites of Göbekli Tepe, about 30km from Karaca Dağ, and, somewhat further to the NW (distance figures vary wildly), Çatal Hüyük (pronounced something like chartle hooyek). Inflated estimated settlement figures for Göbekli Tepe: 9,500 to 8,000 BC; and for Çatal Hüyük (Çatalhüyük): 7,500 BC to 6,400 BC, are notably close to those for the Black Sea flood to the north (7,000-5,500 BC). Following the oldest cultural distribution, Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (map taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Pottery_Neolithic), we find ourselves tracing a pattern for most of the Fertile Crescent. Egypt and, note, southern Mesopotamia (Sumer), are not yet included. The latter region, at least, would still be under flood. Area of the fertile crescent, circa 7500 BC, with main Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites. The area of Mesopotamia proper was not yet settled by humans. The site of Jericho, considered to be one of the oldest settlements on earth, its Natufian level (c. 10,ooo-9,000 BC, conventional dating) perhaps just preceding the more settled PPNA (8,500 BC, conventional dating), is included at the SW extremity (map). Natufian, which Dr. Osgood suggests may possibly have been Hivite/Hittite, was probably just a forerunner to the more settled PPNA. Ken Griffith and Darrell K. White, again, have written well on Pre-Pottery Neolithic A: JOURNAL OF CREATION 35(2) 2021 | https://dl0.creation.com/articles/p149/c14993/j35_3_50-63.pdf An Upper Mesopotamian location for Babel (6) An Upper Mesopotamian location for Babel | Kenneth Griffith - Academia.edu The oldest cultural layers of Sumer and Akkad are defined by archaeologists as the Ubaid, Uruk, and Jemdet Nassar Periods. These were the earliest urban periods in lower Mesopotamia. However, they are not the oldest urban settlements on the planet. That distinction belongs to a culture that Kathleen Kenyon defined as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, or PPNA.7 The Neolithic is defined as being younger than the Paleolithic and Mesolithic cultures, which did not build permanent settlements or practise agriculture. However, this seems to be an unfounded assumption of evolutionary thinking. The unquestionable premise of evolution is that man was a hunter gatherer before he became a farmer. Therefore, the widespread campfires and burial caves of the Paleolithic hunter gatherers must be older than the Neolithic, including the PPNA. However, ceramics including pottery have been found at Paleolithic sites on the Adriatic, as well as in China, and Japan. In the biblical narrative we see farming and city building with fired bricks immediately after the Flood. Therefore, a biblicist might conclude that Paleolithic and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were actually a parallel culture or mode of living that was mostly after the Dispersion, and therefore concurrent with or after the PPNA. The Bible states that Noah was the first farmer after the Flood (Genesis 9:20). In archaeology the ‘Neolithic’ are considered the first farmers, and the PPNA is the oldest known Neolithic culture. Therefore, we expect that the PPNA is a good place to look for the Tower of Babel. The PPNA sites are located in the mountains and valleys of upper Mesopotamia figure 1). There are no known PPNA sites in lower Mesopotamia where Babylon lies. This poses a major problem for the conventional understanding of Babel. However, there are intermediate settlements called the Hassuna and Samara cultures going down the Tigris River from the PPNA toward the later Ubaid culture of Uruk (figure2). Smith asserted that Çatal-höyük, a PPNA site, was one of the first cities built after Babel,8 which agrees well with our thesis that the PPNA represents the culture of Babel and the two centuries immediately after the dispersion. …. I think, though, that the Babel incident and Dispersion therefrom, may belong somewhat later than PPNA. It might be possible to co-ordinate in approximate time the Acheulean Stone Age culture, after the Flood (Dr. Osgood), with the PPNA, at Göbekli Tepe. For, according to Pietro Gaietto: “Regarding the topic of evolution in general I am of the opinion that the strong tendency towards the dressing of large stones at Göbekli Tepe had its origin in the Acheulean tradition of the Mousterian culture”. “History is Wrong” declares one site regarding “The Mystery of Gobekli Tepe” (2018): https://coolinterestingstuff.com/the-mystery-of-gobekli-tepe …. many have proposed that Gobekli Tepe can even be a temple inside the Biblical Eden of Genesis. Is it possible that what we know about the ‘uncivilized and primitive’ prehistoric men is not at all true? Is it possible that advanced civilizations existed before 6000 BCE and their tracks are simply lost in time? Or is it possible that extra-terrestrials interfered and helped men to build monuments throughout the history of humanity? The questions are certainly compelling. Man was supposed to have been a primitive hunter-gatherer at the time of the sites’ construction. Gobekli Tepe’s presence currently predates what science has taught would be essential in building something on the scale such as those structures. For instance, the site appears before the agreed upon dates for the inventions of art and engravings; it even predates man working with metals and pottery but features evidence of all of these. …. which site finds it all so incomprehensible as to have to resort to this extreme suggestion: Ancient Aliens If ancient aliens visited Earth, can evidence of their existence be found in the mysterious structures that still stand throughout the world? Inexplicably, megalithic structures found on different continents are strikingly similar, and the cutting and moving of the massive stones used to build these magnificent feats would be a struggle for modern day machinery, let alone ancient man. Ancient astronaut theorists suggest that the standing stones in Carnac, France were used as an ancient GPS system for ancient flying machines. The recently discovered Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, which has been dated back 12,000 years, has finely chiseled pillars that experts describe as a Noah’s Ark in stone. Is it possible that extraterrestrials assisted primitive man in constructing these unexplained structures? If so, what was the purpose of these grand projects? The truth is that so-called Stone Age man was nowhere near as primitive as proponents of evolutionary development imagine. As said earlier: Humanity began as intelligent, cultured and incorrupt, but later, corrupted, devolved. Pietro Gaietto has well written (Intelligent Cells and their Inventions, 2014, p. 42): To my knowledge, the most ancient civilization that we might define as modern post-Paleolithic, was discovered at an archeological site called Göbekli Tepe, an area which includes the south-eastern region of present day Turkey. The Göbekli Tepe site is a peculiar cultic locale, without habitations, although they exist just a few miles away. A large number of geometric stelae-statues in limestone have been found, decorated with bas-reliefs and engravings of animals …. Anthropometric free-standing tall squared stones, and pilaster in a T-shape, carry representations, in high or low relief, of animals such as foxes, lions and scorpions; and vultures flying or not; deer, bovids, spiders, snakes, cranes, ducks, ostriches, crocodiles, herons, leopards and wildcats. Regarding the topic of evolution in general I am of the opinion that the strong tendency towards the dressing of large stones at Göbekli Tepe had its origin in the Acheulean tradition of the Mousterian culture. I believe that the Göbekli Tepe civilization may well have been the end result of a mixing of two different cultures, although we know nothing at this point regarding the commingling of different populations in those archaic periods of time. …. Göbekli Tepe, which represents one of humanity’s first attempts at Stonehenge type astronomical calculation, offers us some welcome insight into the degree of culture and knowledge that would have emerged from those aboard the Ark. Even if the legend is true that Noah remained on the mountain for a hundred years, others would presumably have left there earlier in search of more favourable locales. Andrew Curry (2008) tells us something about this extraordinary site, Göbekli Tepe, whose origins he badly mis-dates, however: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665/#:~:text=The%20megaliths%20predate%20Stonehenge%20by,of%20the Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years [sic], Turkey’s stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization …. Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple. "Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides. Schmidt points to the great stone rings, one of them 65 feet across. "This is the first human-built holy place," he says. From this perch 1,000 feet above the valley, we can see to the horizon in nearly every direction. Schmidt, 53, asks me to imagine what the landscape would have looked like 11,000 years ago, before centuries of intensive farming and settlement turned it into the nearly featureless brown expanse it is today. Prehistoric people would have gazed upon herds of gazelle and other wild animals; gently flowing rivers, which attracted migrating geese and ducks; fruit and nut trees; and rippling fields of wild barley and wild wheat varieties such as emmer and einkorn. "This area was like a paradise," says Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute. Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant. And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill." …. Unlike the stark plateaus nearby, Gobekli Tepe (the name means "belly hill" in Turkish) has a gently rounded top that rises 50 feet above the surrounding landscape. To Schmidt's eye, the shape stood out. "Only man could have created something like this," he says. "It was clear right away this was a gigantic Stone Age site." The broken pieces of limestone that earlier surveyors had mistaken for gravestones suddenly took on a different meaning. Schmidt returned a year later with five colleagues and they uncovered the first megaliths, a few buried so close to the surface they were scarred by plows. As the archaeologists dug deeper, they unearthed pillars arranged in circles. Schmidt's team, however, found none of the telltale signs of a settlement: no cooking hearths, houses or trash pits, and none of the clay fertility figurines that litter nearby sites of about the same age. The archaeologists did find evidence of tool use, including stone hammers and blades. …. At least part of the explanation for the megalithic structures of Göbekli Tepe, I would suggest, has to do with astronomy, as some have already pointed out. So far, though, attempts to align the figures with the ancient sky must needs be vitiated by the notion that the Göbekli Tepe site be dated to c. 11,ooo BC. For seafaring people these structures would have served as vital navigational aids. Gavin Menzies, a most experienced expert on such matters, wrote a fascinating book that I highly recommend: The Lost Empire of Atlantis: History's Greatest Mystery Revealed (HarperCollins, 2011). Though the ex-submariner, Menzies, sometimes becames a bit ‘airborne’ - or, should I say, ‘went a bit overboard’ (and don’t we all?) - he is often highly informative and is always eminently readable. The Cretans, known from DNA research to have hailed from Anatolia (which fits perfectly with this reconstruction), Menzies would date to an impossible 100,000 BC. Menzies also followed Sir Arthur Evans in labelling as “Minoans” the great sea-faring and trading nation that is the very focal point of his fascinating book. “Minoans”, however, is a mythical concept, based on the popular legend of King Minos, son of Zeus. Excitingly, the long undeciphered Cretan Linear A script has now been worked out by Dr. Peter Revesz (University of Nebraska): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiLyN9T2stY as, indeed, has been, even more recently, the Linear Elamite script: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-near-eastern-world/linear_elamite_deciphered/ Gavin Menzies has likely attributed too much of sea-faring achievement to the Cretans, without factoring in sufficiently, I think, the Levantines, wrongly called “Phoenicians”, another non-real people, who would have been, instead, Canaanites/Hebrews/Syrians. (See Josephine Quinn’s recent book, In Search of the Phoenicians, Princeton, 2018). By the Bronze Age Era, as Menzies has conclusively shown, these Mediterranean sailors were absolutely despoiling places like the distant Lake Michigan (USA) of pure copper – Mediterranean supplies having thinned out – in order to produce precious bronze. According to the brief summary of the book that we find at Menzies’ own site: http://www.gavinmenzies.net/lost-empire-atlantis/the-book/ ... the Minoans. It’s long been known that this extraordinary civilisation, with its great palaces and sea ports based in Crete and nearby Thera (now called Santorini), had a level of sophistication that belied its place in the Bronze Age world but never before has the extent of its reach been uncovered. Through painstaking research, including recent DNA evidence, Menzies has pieced together an incredible picture of a cultured people who traded with India and Mesopotamia, Africa and Western Europe, including Britain and Ireland, and even sailed to North America. Menzies reveals that copper found at Minoan sites can only have come from Lake Superior, and that it was copper, combined with tin from Cornwall and elsewhere, to make bronze, that gave the Minoans their wealth. He uses knowledge gleaned as a naval captain to explore ancient shipbuilding and navigation techniques and explain how the Minoans were able to travel so far. He looks at why the Minoan empire, which was 1500 years ahead of China and Greece in terms of science, architecture, art and language, disappeared so abruptly and what led to her destruction. ... Alessandro De Lorenzis and Vincenzo Orofino present their Abstract to the article “New Possible Astronomic Alignments at the Megalithic Site of Göbekli Tepe, Turkey” (Vol.03 No.01(2015), Article ID:53506,10 pages) as follows: Göbekli Tepe is the oldest and one of the most important among the megalithic sites in the world. Its archaeoastronomical relevance has been recently evidenced by Collins (2013) , according to whom the central pillars in four of the enclosures discovered in the site are oriented toward the setting point of the star Deneb (α Cyg), as this point moves in the course of the time, due to the equinox precession and the proper motion of the star. Taking into account these effects, Collins (2013) obtained an astronomical dating for the various enclosures which agrees rather well with the one obtained by Dietrich (2011) with the technique of carbon-14. In the present paper the careful evaluation of the effects caused by atmospheric extinction has enabled us to verify that the central pillars of the studied enclosures are in fact turned to face the setting point of Deneb, but these alignments occurred in epochs, still in agreement with the ones obtained by Dietrich (2011) , but different from those proposed by Collins (2013) . We have also individuated, for the first time, the probable astronomic alignments of two other enclosures at Göbekli Tepe, i.e. enclosures F and A. In particular, the first one seems to be oriented towards the rising point of the Sun on the day of the Harvest Festival, a day approximately halfway between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox. The second one, instead, shows an orientation towards the rising point of the Moon at its minor standstill. The positions of both celestial bodies have been obtained by extrapolating their declination to the date of the presumed construction reported by Dietrich (2011) . A short discussion about the putative cultural motivations of these alignments is also presented. This approach accords with the fact that the ancients were most earnest about erecting their cultic megalithic monuments wherever they went, in order to determine seasons and solstices, and also, no doubt, as a necessary aid to navigation. Thus predynastic Egypt has its famous Nabta Playa in what is now the Sahara Desert: https://www.google.com/search?q=megalith+astronomy+early+predynastic+egypt& “An assembly of huge stone slabs found in Egypt’s Sahara Desert that date from about 6,500 years to 6,000 years ago has been confirmed by scientists to be the oldest known astronomical alignment of megaliths in the world. Known as Nabta, the site consists of a stone circle, a series of flat, tomb-like stone structures and five lines of standing and toppled megaliths. Located west of the Nile River in southern Egypt, Nabta predates Stonehenge and similar prehistoric sites around the world by about 1,000 years, said University of Colorado at Boulder astronomy Professor J. McKim Malville”. While Egypt and Ethiopia would soon be trading in the waters fronting the great city of Akkad, the Cretans and Levantines would be developing their own shipping skills, eventually trading throughout the entire Mediterranean, and beyond, where astronomical megaliths begin to emerge everywhere: Africa, Spain, France, Britain. It seems that everyone wants to claim precedence for their local megalithic site, be it Göbekli Tepe in Turkey; Nabta Playa in the Sahara; and even France in the following instance: https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/news/world_heritage.php?id=The- The data showed that the very earliest megaliths come from north-western France, including the Carnac stones, a dense collection of rows of standing stones, mounds, and covered stone tombs - dolmens (below). These date to about 4700 B.C.E., when the region was inhabited by hunter-gatherers. Northwestern France is also the only megalithic region that also features gravesites with complex earthen tombs that date to about 5000 B.C.E., which she says is evidence of an "evolution of megaliths" in the region. That means megalith building likely originated there and spread outward. Dolmen Sa Coveccada on northeastern Sardinia in the Mediterranean Sea. Image: Bettina Schulz Paulsson By about 4300 B.C.E., megaliths had spread to coastal sites in southern France, the Mediterranean, and on the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Over the next few thousand years, the structures continued to appear around Europe's coasts in three distinct phases. Stonehenge is thought to have been erected around 2400 B.C.E., but other megaliths in the British Isles go back to about 4000 B.C.E. The abrupt emergence of specific megalithic styles like narrow stone-lined tombs at coastal sites, but rarely inland, suggests these ideas were being spread by coast. If so, Schulz Paulsson believes it would push back the emergence of advanced seafaring in Europe by about 2000 years. …. I would nominate Göbekli Tepe first over any of the other above-named locations. At a far later time, the Roman era, we have the highly impressive Baalbek megalith: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baalbek_Stones#:~:text=The%20Baalbek%20Stones%20are%20six,megalithic%20gigantism%20unparallelled%20in%20antiquity. The Baalbek Stones are six massive Roman[1] worked stone blocks in Baalbek (ancient Heliopolis), Lebanon, characterised by a megalithic gigantism unparallelled in antiquity. Dr. John Osgood has, in his far more satisfactory arrangement of the Stone Ages, greatly lowered on the timescale the Acheulean (and Mousterian) phase (“A Better Model for the Stone Age”): The Model: A Preliminary Hypothesis …. The Natufian appears to have been invasive, probably from the north, but possibly having a memory of a riverine background: ‘All that may be said at present is that the Natufian settlers came from an Alluvial environment and brought with them a tradition of building in clay or pise.’18 Moore affirms that Natufian to PPNA then PPNB formed one cultural continuity. A new invasion from the north came with the PNA culture, continuous with PNB. But against the biblical model, this also must have been a Canaanite culture,5:23 as was all before it. Proto-Urban possibly followed, contemporary with Ghassulian culture (North8) and possibly had a relationship with the Esdraelon culture of the North Palestine area. But with it came rock-hewn tomb burials, suggesting a possible connection with the Hittites of Genesis 23:9. We seem to be on surer ground when identifying Ghassul with the Amorites (see ‘The Times of Abraham’, this volume), a wave of Canaanites which came down through southern Syria. They were perhaps related to the defunct Hassuna culture driven out by Halafian expansion, which enveloped Hassuna and Syria, and more particularly, Aram-Naharaim. …. Part Three: People movement and Babel Contents: Out of Anatolia ……….…………………………. p. 37-42 Babel reconsidered ……………………………. p. 43-51 Plain in Land of Shinar ………………………. p. 52-57 OUT OF ANATOLIA Not surprisingly, the first inhabitants of that most fertile and alluring island of Crete are thought to have been Anatolian farmers – (in other words, Noah’s early descendants): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ahg.12328 The population history of Crete can be traced to the early Neolithic when the island was colonized by farmers from Anatolia who established in Knossos, at about 7000 B.C.E. [sic], one of the first Neolithic settlements in Europe (Evans, 1994); other Neolithic settlements were subsequently established all over Crete (Tomkins, 2008). These Neolithic settlers and subsequent waves of Neolithic migrants (Broodbank & Strasser, 1991; Cherry, 1981; Nowicki, 2008; Weinberg, 1965) established the first advanced European civilization, the Minoan [sic] civilization, which flourished in Crete from 3000 [sic] to about 1450 B.C.E. The Neolithic Cretans are known from DNA research to have come from Anatolia. The earliest Neolithic sites of Europe are located in Crete and mainland Greece. A debate persists concerning whether these farmers originated in neighboring Anatolia and the role of maritime colonization. To address these issues 171 samples were collected from areas near three known early Neolithic settlements in Greece together with 193 samples from Crete. An analysis of Y-chromosome haplogroups determined that the samples from the Greek Neolithic sites showed strong affinity to Balkan data, while Crete shows affinity with central/Mediterranean Anatolia. Haplogroup J2b-M12 was frequent in Thessaly and Greek Macedonia while haplogroup J2a-M410 was scarce. Alternatively, Crete, like Anatolia showed a high frequency of J2a-M410 and a low frequency of J2b-M12. This dichotomy parallels archaeobotanical evidence, specifically that while bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is known from Neolithic Anatolia, Crete and southern Italy; it is absent from earliest Neolithic Greece. It follows, therefore, that vital connections can be established between the first ancient places in Anatolia, like Çatal Hüyük, and early Crete. J. G. Macqueen, for instance, has, in the article “Secondary Burial at Çatal Hüyük” (Jstor, Vol. 25, Fasc. 3, Dec., 1978, p. 226), pointed out some religious commonality between Çatal Hüyük and Crete: “… a good deal of the Çatal Hüyük material can be linked with what we know of Cretan religion”. Dr. Donovan Courville (The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, Loma Linda CA, 1971), will make the important connection of the ancient Cretans with the biblical Philistines, tracing the distinctive pottery of the latter all the way back to Neolithic Knossos (Crete). And this, despite J. C. Greenfield’s assertion: “There is no evidence for a Philistine occupation of Crete, nor do the facts about the Philistines, known from archaeological and literary sources, betray any relationship between them and Crete” (IDB, 1962, vol. 1, p. 534). The distinctive type of pottery that Courville has identified as belonging to the biblical Philistines is well described in this quote that he has taken from Kathleen Kenyon: The pottery does in fact provide very useful evidence about culture. The first interesting point is the wealth of a particular class of painted pottery …. The decoration is bichrome, nearly always red and black, and the most typical vessels have a combination of metopes enclosing a bird or a fish with geometric decoration such as a “Union Jack” pattern or a Catherine wheel. At Megiddo the first bichrome pottery is attributed to Stratum X, but all the published material comes from tombs intrusive into this level. It is in fact characteristic of Stratum IX. Similar pottery is found in great profusion in southern Palestine … Very similar vessels are also found on the east coast of Cyprus and on the coastal Syrian sites as far north as Ras Shamra. [Emphasis Courville’s] By contrast, the pottery of the ‘Sea Peoples’ (c. 1200 BC, conventional dating) - a maritime confederation confusingly identified sometimes as the early biblical Philistines, their pottery like, but not identical to, the distinctive Philistine pottery as described above - was Aegean (Late Helladic), not Cretan. The indispensable “Table of Nations” (Genesis 10), toledôt of Shem, informs us that the Philistines were a Hamitic people, descendants of Ham’s “son”, Mizraim (or Egypt) (v. 6). Genesis 10:13: “Mizraim was the father of the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites, Pathrusites, Kasluhites (from whom the Philistines came) and Caphtorites”. These earliest Philistines would be represented by the users of this distinctive pottery at Neolithic I level Knossos, presumably a stage of the Neolithic somewhat later than PPNA. Thus Dr. Courville writes: With the evidences thus far noted before us, we are now in a position to examine the archaeological reports from Crete for evidences of the early occupation of this site by the Caphtorim (who are either identical to the Philistines of later Scripture or are closely related to them culturally). We now have at least an approximate idea of the nature of the culture for which we are looking …. … we can hardly be wrong in recognizing the earliest occupants of Crete as the people who represented the beginnings of the people later known in Scripture as the Philistines, by virtue of the stated origin of the Philistines in Crete. This concept holds regardless of the name that may be applied to this early era by scholars. The only site at which Cretan archaeology has been examined for its earliest occupants is at the site of the palace at Knossos. At this site deep test pits were dug into the earlier occupation levels. If there is any archaeological evidence available from Crete for its earliest period, it should then be found from the archaeology of these test pits. The pottery found there is described by Dr. Furness, who is cited by Hutchinson. “Dr. Furness divides the early Neolithic I fabrics into (a) coarse unburnished ware and (b) fine burnished ware, only differing from the former in that the pot walls are thinner, the clay better mixed, and the burnish more carefully executed. The surface colour is usually black, but examples also occur of red, buff or yellow, sometimes brilliant red or orange, and sometimes highly variegated sherds”. A relation was observed between the decoration of some of this pottery from early Neolithic I in Crete with that at the site of Alalakh …. Continuing to cite Dr. Furness, Hutchinson commented: Dr. Furness justly observes that “as the pottery of the late Neolithic phases seems to have developed at Knossos without a break, it is to the earliest that one must look for evidence of origin of foreign connections”, and she therefore stresses the importance of a small group with plastic decoration that seems mainly confined to the Early Neolithic I levels, consisting of rows of pellets immediately under the rim (paralleled on burnished pottery of Chalcolithic [predynastic] date from Gullucek in the Alaca [Alalakh] district of Asia Minor). [Emphasis Courville’s] While the Archaeological Ages of early Crete cannot with certainty be correlated with the corresponding eras on the mainland, it would seem that Chalcolithic on the mainland is later than Early Neolithic in Crete; hence any influence of one culture on the other is more probably an influence of early Cretan culture on that of the mainland. This is in agreement with Scripture to the effect that the Philistines migrated from Crete to what is now the mainland at some point prior to the time of Abraham. …. Late Chalcolithic, we are going to find, pertains to the era of Abram (Abraham), when the Philistines were apparently in southern Canaan. Dr. Courville continues, distinguishing early and later Philistine pottery: The new pottery found at Askelon [Ashkelon] at the opening of Iron I, and correlated with the invasion of the Sea Peoples, was identified as of Aegean origin. A similar, but not identical, pottery has been found in the territory north of Palestine belonging to the much earlier era of late Middle Bronze. By popular views, this is prior to the Israelite occupation of Palestine. By the altered chronology, this is the period of the late judges and the era of Saul. … That the similar pottery of late Middle Bronze, occurring both in the north and in the south, is related to the culture found only in the south at the later date is apparent from the descriptions of the two cultures. Of this earlier culture, which should be dated to the time of Saul, Miss Kenyon commented: The pottery does in fact provide very useful evidence about culture. The first interesting point is the wealth of a particular class of painted pottery …. The decoration is bichrome, nearly always red and black, and the most typical vessels have a combination of metopes enclosing a bird or a fish with geometric decoration such as a “Union Jack” pattern or a Catherine wheel. At Megiddo the first bichrome pottery is attributed to Stratum X, but all the published material comes from tombs intrusive into this level. It is in fact characteristic of Stratum IX. Similar pottery is found in great profusion in southern Palestine … Very similar vessels are also found on the east coast of Cyprus and on the coastal Syrian sites as far north as Ras Shamra. [Emphasis Courville’s] Drawings of typical examples of this pottery show the same stylized bird with back-turned head that characterized the pottery centuries later at Askelon. … The anachronisms and anomalies in the current views on the interpretation of this invasion and its effects on Palestine are replaced by a consistent picture, and one that is in agreement with the background provided by Scripture for the later era in the very late [sic] 8th century B.C. There have been many valiant efforts to trace the progress of the Table of Nations of Genesis 10, geographically, ethnically, and genetically. A most recent comprehensive effort is Dr. John Osgood’s book, Over the Face of All the Earth (2015). The author’s erudite treatment of the descendants of Cush in this book is taken up, too, in his You Tube video, Into Africa - The True History of Man - John Osgood (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgAeRFNOOhM). As I say, it is comprehensive, including his attempt to trace even Australian aborigines. What fascinates me as an Australian, though, is an apparent connection - not picked up by Dr. Osgood - of Australian aboriginality with Göbekli Tepe. Certain art-works and symbols found at Göbekli Tepe are common to far-away Australian Aboriginals. The link is so striking that it has led one writer, Bruce Fenton - following the typical evolutionary view of things, which requires much time for the human development from ape-man - to locate the origins of the Göbekli Tepe culture down south in Australia, before its having supposedly arrived at the degree of sophistication enabling for the spread of that culture in the far north (e.g. Turkey). The reality was, of course, the other way around, the human migration going from north to south, as in Dr. Osgood’s system. Forget evolutionary development and those large palaeontological numbers (12,000, 10,000) variously suggested for the BC age of Göbekli Tepe. These people play with, and throw away, 100’s and 1,000’s, like reckless gamblers. Australia’s ancient Mungo Man, for instance, was initially dated to 60,000 BC, but then as I recall, in the space of a week, dropped down to 40,000 BC. Nobody seemed to raise a Neanderthalian eyebrow. A biblical view, instead, would have cultures like Göbekli Tepe emanating at a stage not long after the Flood from an already fairly sophisticated antediluvian world (Genesis 4:20-22) – Tubal-Cain, for instance, having forged implements of copper and iron. Those who later became the Australian Aboriginals - who were not just one people, but many tribes/nations with different languages - would have absorbed this, and other northern cultures (e.g. some Aboriginal art appears to connect with the ‘Ubaid culture in Mesopotamia), and carried the vestiges of these in their long journeys southwards, inevitably losing much of that knowledge over time and distance. Contrary to Bruce Fenton, then, Australian aboriginality is a cultural devolution, rather than evolution. Ian Wilson, exploring the Lost World of the Kimberley (2006), the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia, has pointed out striking similarities between art figures of the Mesopotamian ‘Ubaid culture and the Kimberley’s aboriginal art figures. The Australian Aboriginal languages apparently have some affinity with ancient Sumerian: http://www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/cser.pdf Hungarian language belongs to the family of agglutinative languages. Officially it is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family. Structurally similar – although in a very distant relationship with it – are the Turkish, the Dravidian groups of languages, the Japanese and the Korean in the Far-East and the Basque in Europe. A large portion of ancient languages were agglutinative in their nature, such like the Sumerian, Pelagic, Etruscan, as well as aboriginal languages on the American and Australian continents. …. Many articles connect Australian aborigines with the Indian Dravidians and Tamils. An important point needs to be made about contemporary cultures, and it is one that Dr. John Osgood himself is at pains to illustrate in his revisions of the Stone Ages, the Era of Abraham, and so on. While evolutionary theory tends generally to arrange timelines - be it the Geological Ages or the Stone Ages - in an ‘Indian file’ type sequence, the reality often is that various of these cultures were contemporaneous, or at least partly overlapped the one with the other. And Dr. Osgood will provide examples of this, supported by palaeontologists and archaeologists. So, while the further away humankind roamed from Eden, in antediluvian times, and, in postdiluvian times from the Ark mountain (the Noachic civilization), the less refined it would likely have become, either in terms of its spirituality or of the available technology. Or both. The Neanderthals who migrated into Ice bound Europe, for instance, or those who headed south, into Egypt and Ethiopia, or the Australian aborigines, would of necessity have had to live in primitive conditions at first, until having become properly settled and established. That does not mean that they were any less intelligent, or less evolved (though palaeontologists would jump to such conclusions) than those who had long settled in more central sites, and who thus exhibited more empirical sophistication. The Neanderthals with their incredible eyesight in pitch-dark caves were able to draw highly accurate star maps in animal pictures (e.g. the Lascaux caves in SW France), and they may, thus, have had just as sophisticated astronomical knowledge as those who had inscribed their star maps on monolithic pillars at Göbekli Tepe. By the same token, those who stayed close to the centres of civilisation, frequently apostatised, and came to forget the lessons of wisdom that they had once been taught by their erudite ancestors, the likes of Enoch and Noah, “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5). BABEL RECONSIDERED Creationist reconstructions of timelines invariably progress from the Ark landing almost immediately into the Babel incident. And that is how I, too, would once have viewed humanity’s progression. Now, though, I have not a few problems with such a sequence, as I hope to explain. Still in the family history (toledôt) of Shem (or Melchizedek), we read (Genesis 11:2): “… they found a plain in the land of Shinar …” (וַיִּמְצְאוּ בִקְעָה בְּאֶרֶץ שִׁנְעָר) Now, we have all generally presumed, based upon archaeological ‘wisdom’, that the biblical “land of Shinar” was the same as Sumer, in southern Iraq. Some early opinion, however, did not favour that view, but, instead, had opted for the region of Singara, as explained by W. F. Albright in his article, “Shinar-Šanḡar and Its Monarch Amraphel” (AJSLL, Jan., 1924, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Jan., 1924), pp. 125-126): Until recently no one seems to have suspected that the biblical Shinar might not have been identical with Southern Mesopotamia - using this in its wider sense, following a classical usage which has now become a universal. This view was only natural, since the identification of Shinar with Babylonia was practically required by the LXX translations of Is. 11 Zech. 5:11, to say nothing of the direct equivalence in Dan. 1:2. Until the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions most scholars associated the name with that of the classical district of Singara, modern Jebel Sinjâr, though the geographical equivalence appeared to be only approximate, since Singara is west of Assyria and considerably to the north of Babylonia. The discovery of the native Babylonian term Šumer, "Southern Babylonia," altered the situation, especially since Šumer was then believed to stand for an older *Sungir, for *Sugir, assumed to be the more correct form of Girsu, the name of a town near Lagaš (if not a quarter of the latter). The combination of Singara was now given up in favor of that with Šumer, hardly anyone attempting the paradoxical identification with both. It is the writer's purpose here to point out that the old identification with Singara is not only correct so far as the name is concerned, but also geographically. In the Amarna correspondence of the king of Cyprus with the Pharaoh (EA, No. 35, 49 f.) the former warns the latter to avoid entangling alliances with the king of the Hittites and the king of Šanḫar. While most scholars have agreed with Weber's view that Šanḫar is Šinᴄar, "Babylonia”, the recent tendency has been to accept his later view (WA 1082) that it represents Mitanni. …. In a paper in the Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society, I, 72-4, the writer has endeavored to show that Šanḡar represents the land known to its own sovereigns as Ḫana, on the Middle Euphrates. The capital of Ḫana was situated at Tirqa, which has been located at a mound just south of the mouth of the Ḫâbûr. Now, since ancient territorial divisions were remark ably persistent, the process of gerrymandering not having been discovered, we should expect to find the state of Ḫana or Šanḡar perpetuated as an Assyrian province. Nor are we mistaken. Forrer, in his valuable work on Die Provinzeinteilung des assyrischen Reiches, 15-7, shows that the largest single province in the Assyrian Empire was that of Singâra or Raṩappa, in Central Mesopotamia. Singâra, pronounced, of course, Šingâr -the writing being Assyrian, not Babylonian - is the name of the province, inherited from that of the older state, and Raṩappa is that of its capital, located in the Jebel Sinjâr. Ragappa is the Rezeph … of the Old Testament, hitherto located erroneously at Ruṩâfeh, between Palmyra and the Euphrates. The province of Singâra was bounded on the west and southwest by the Syrian Desert, so it included all the towns on the Middle Euphrates, south of the junction of the Euphrates and Ḫâbûr. Among these towns are expressly mentioned in Assyrian documents Sûḫi (Šûḫ of the OT), Laqe, Ḫindanu and Sirqu, which Forrer has plausibly identified with the old capital of Ḫana, Tirqa. In other words, the whole of the old state of Ḫana was included within the bounds of the new province of Singâra - Šanḡar. …. Some Creationists are now beginning to support the view that the biblical Shinar ought to be located away from southern Iraq, to its NW in the Singar, Sinjar, or Çinar regions. A major problem for the old Sumer identification is that, despite many long years of archaeological research there, the famous city of Akkad (Agade) has not, to this day, been discovered. This city, likely built by Nimrod (cf. Genesis 10:10), received trading vessels from far away Egypt and Ethiopia, giving the lie to the view of Egyptians (Magan) not being seafarers. For, according to an inscription of King Sargon of Akkad: “Ships from Meluhha, Magan and Dilmun docked at the quay of Akkad”: http://www.salut-virtual-museum.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Land_of_Magan.pdf Ancient historians have real problems with this statement, thinking it to be an anachronism. In Sargon’s day Magan and Meluhha could not be meant to indicate, respectively, Egypt and Ethiopia, as they most surely did in neo-Assyrian times. Thus we read this sort of ‘correction’ (loc. cit.): During the Early Bronze Age, the Oman peninsula was known in Mesopotamia with the name of Magan. In the cuneiform sources Magan frequently appears in connection with two other important toponyms: Dilmun and Meluhha, identified by the scholars respectively with the Bahrain islands and adjacent coasts, and the coasts of the Indus valley (civilisation of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa). Moreover, some Mesopotamian documents designate the countries facing the Arabian Gulf with the more generic expression of ‘Lower Sea’. Regarding Dilmun (as Bahrain), we read at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilmun As of 2022, archaeologists have failed to find a site in existence during the time from 3300 BC (Uruk IV) to 556 BC (Neo-Babylonian Era), when Dilmun appears in texts. According to Hojlund, no settlements exist in the Gulf littoral dating to 3300–2000 BC. Dr. John Osgood (in Over the Face of All the Earth) has not made what I consider to be a necessary geographical shift for biblical Shinar away from southern Mesopotamia. Moreover, he adheres to the conservative view that Babel followed hard on the descent from the Ark mountain – {a view that seems to go counter to the biblical sequence of, firstly, “The Table of Nations” and dispersion (Genesis 10), then followed by the Babel incident (Genesis 11)} – and that, therefore, all of humanity, virtually, had migrated to, and then from, Babel. Creationists thus will be forced to say that Genesis 10-11 is not following the precise chronological-historical sequence here. Ken Griffith and Darrell K. White specifically have ‘Genesis 10 describing the spreading out of the tribes after Babel’ (in “An Upper Mesopotamian location for Babel”, p. 72): Territories of the Table of Nations Genesis 10 describes the spreading out of the tribes after Babel, but it specifically describes the territories of one of the descendants of each of the three sons of Noah, as if these tribes were representatives of the larger group. The representative of Shem was Joktan, Ham is represented by Canaan, and Japheth by Javan. We know that not all the Japhethite tribes went west, and not all the Shemite tribes went East. This suggests that this list was made at a moment in time when Javan, Joktan, and Canaan were the first movers from their respective groups. The remainder of the tribes may have still been lingering in the central area before migrating out behind them. Another possibility is that the author of Genesis 10, living near Haran, only recorded the territories of tribes that were personally known to him. …. However, despite Dr. Osgood’s having his dispersion of nations all emanating from the one geographical place, and, in fact, the wrong place (Sumer), his tracing of the nations throughout the world is still quite masterful, serving as a most useful reference work. Typically Creationist is the ‘global’ interpretation according to which the whole of humanity was congregated at Babel, and that everyone on earth spoke the same language. Genesis 11:1: “And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech”. וַיְהִי כָל-הָאָרֶץ, שָׂפָה אֶחָת, וּדְבָרִים, אֲחָדִים Here we have that highly problematical, for Creationists, Hebrew word, kol (כָל), “all”, “whole”, that had already occurred in the Flood account (e.g. Genesis 7:19, 21-23) which, there, they render as intending a global scenario. Yet, in that reversal of Babel, the Pentecost event, not even the Creationists would consider “every nation under heaven” (in Greek, but probably intending Hebrew kol again) to mean the whole of humanity. In fact, the nations here are specified, and they basically hail from our region of the Fertile Crescent and its environs (Acts 2:5-11): Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: ‘Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!’ The “whole earth”, in the Babel account, might better be translated, the “whole land [of Shinar]”. One reason why I do not think that Babel - unlike Creation; Paradise; the Fall; the Flood - had affected all of humanity is because there are not such widespread Babel-like traditions that we have for those earlier Genesis events. Take the Australian aborigines, once again. There are multiple creation, flood and rainbow (their famous Rainbow Serpent) tales amongst them. Reminiscences of the Babel incident, however, are (to my knowledge) more limited. Though Dirk Harfield may be underestimating matters somewhat when he writes: “Unlike creation myths and flood myths, there aren’t any comparable ancient Near Eastern myths about the Tower of Babel”. For, according to New World Encyclopedia there were plenty of Babel reminiscences, and these were widespread – though one would need to determine which of these might have been taught later by missionaries: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Tower_of_Babel Various traditions similar to that of the tower of Babel are found in Central America. One holds that Xelhua, one of the seven giants rescued from the deluge, built the Great Pyramid of Cholula in order to storm Heaven. The gods destroyed it with fire and confounded the language of the builders. The Dominican friar, Diego Duran (1537-1588), reported hearing this account from a hundred-year-old priest at Cholula, shortly after the conquest of Mexico. …. Another story, attributed by the native historian Don Ferdinand d'Alva Ixtilxochitl (c. 1565-1648) to the ancient Toltecs, states that after humans had multiplied following a great deluge, they erected a tall zacuali or tower, to preserve themselves in the event of a second deluge. However, their languages were confounded and they went to separate parts of the earth. Still another story, attributed to the Tohono O'odham Indians, holds that Montezuma escaped a great flood, then became wicked and attempted to build a house reaching to heaven, but the Great Spirit destroyed it with thunderbolts. According to Dr. Livingstone, the Africans whom he met living near Lake Ngami in 1879, had such a tradition, but with the builders' heads getting "cracked by the fall of the scaffolding" (Missionary Travels, chap. 26). James George Frazer has identified Livingston's account with a tale found in Lozi mythology, wherein the wicked men build a tower of masts to pursue the Creator-God, Nyambe, who has fled to Heaven on a spider-web, but the men perish when the masts collapse. He further relates similar tales of the Ashanti that substitute a pile of porridge pestles for the masts. Frazer, moreover, cites such legends found among the Kongo people, as well as in Tanzania, where the men stack poles or trees in a failed attempt to reach the moon.[6] Traces of a somewhat similar story have also been reported among the Tharus of Nepal and northern India (Report of the Census of Bengal, 1872, p. 160), as well as the Karbi and Kuki people of Assam (Frazer). The traditions of the Karen people of Myanmar, which Frazer considered to show clear "Abrahamic" influence, also relate that their ancestors migrated there following the abandonment of a great pagoda in the land of the Karenni 30 generations from Adam, when the languages were confused and the Karen separated from the Karenni. He notes yet another version current in the Admiralty Islands, where humankind's languages are confused following a failed attempt to build houses reaching to heaven. There have also been a number of traditions around the world that describe a divine confusion of the one original language into several, albeit without any tower. Aside from the ancient Greek myth that Hermes confused the languages, causing Zeus to give his throne to Phoroneus, Frazer specifically mentions such accounts among the Wasania of Kenya, the Kacha Naga people of Assam, the inhabitants of Encounter Bay in Australia, the Maidu of California, the Tlingit of Alaska, and the K'iche' of Guatemala. …. We have already encountered two Genesis references to the east, in Cain’s city to the east of Eden (2:8), and likewise in relation to the land of Nod (4:16). I had noted that the Hebrew word miqqedem (מִקֶּ֑דֶם), translated as “[from the] east”, can also mean “in ancient times”. While that latter variation may serve one well if it be a case of a Sinjarian location of “a plain in the land of Shinar” (בִקְעָה בְּאֶרֶץ שִׁנְעָר) (Genesis 11:2), it would appear to be unnecessary for my version (to be explained) for which a migration “from the east” would appear to be quite applicable. More on geographical locations later. But who actually came to the land of Shinar, presuming that humanity had already begun its spreading (‘increasing and multiplying and filling the earth’, Genesis 9:1), north, south, east and west? The clue may be in the toledôt. Shem, who records the account (Genesis 11:1-11:9), may thus have been there as an eyewitness with his family. He was no longer compiling family histories with his two brothers, Ham and Japheth, who must already have dispersed around the time of the Genesis 10 phase. Genesis 10:1: “This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah’s sons, who themselves had sons after the Flood”. At Babel, as in the Pentecost event of Acts 2:5-11, translations might superficially convey the impression of a global event, “whole world” (Genesis 11:1), to be compared with Acts 2:5’s “every nation under heaven”. A pairing of Babel with Pentecost is relevant insofar as the sin of pride and rebellion against God (Genesis 11:4, 7-9), is Divinely undone by the miraculous phenomenon of “tongues” at Pentecost (Acts 7:11): “… we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” With the benefit of such a comparison it may be suggested that the Babel incident was, just as was the Flood, only local in geographic extent. Matt Lynch, however, has a somewhat different take on Babel and Pentecost (2016): http://theologicalmisc.net/2016/05/pentecost-reversal-babel/ Pentecost — A Reversal of Babel? .... Once, when I was teaching a church class, two people started speaking to each other in German. It made things easier for them because it was their native language. But it didn’t make things easier for Margaret (name changed). With deep frustration she exclaimed, ‘Can we just speak English here!’ The experience of linguistic diversity leads many to wish for unity—or rather, homogeneity. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone just spoke normal (i.e., English)? That desire for intelligibility is understandable, but the desire for that language to be English can also betray ethnocentrism. Especially from where I come in the U.S., which has no national language, the fight to retain English can easily slide into a fear-driven attempt to keep ‘our’ culture and ‘our’ language dominant. Confusion over Babel Yesterday the church celebrated its founding linguistic event—Pentecost—an event that many hail as the definitive reversal of Babel. Whereas at Babel, God confused languages, at Pentecost, God brought people of all languages together and united them. At Babel tongues were confused. At Pentecost, tongues were understood. You get the idea. However, Pentecost may not be anti-Babel in the way some suppose. For starters, the reversal idea assumes that a unified language was a good idea gone wrong, and that eschatological unity would somehow involve a return to one language—a Spirit language. But Genesis never states that the confusion of languages was a bad thing. The only downside was for the Babelites, who couldn’t finish their Manhattan project. On the positive side, language diversification enabled humanity to get on with the task of ‘filling the earth,’ something they were meant to do but didn’t because of their big hero project. Notice the language in Gen 11:4: Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. God had wanted humans to ‘fill the earth’ (Gen 1). Babel was in direct contravention of God’s intended vision of teeming diversity. At Pentecost, God embraces language diversity. He doesn’t destroy it. So yes, the Spirit reverses the imperial unification of Babylon, but not the multiplication of languages. Empires and Language To see why the preservation of multiplication is important, it’s important to grasp the imperial function of language unification. Joel Green helps us here: The wickedness of this idolatrous plan [to build Babel] is betrayed in the opening of the Babel story, with its reference to ‘one language’—a metaphor in the ancient Near East for the subjugation and assimilation of conquered peoples by a dominant nation. Linguistic domination is a potent weapon in the imperial arsenal, as people of Luke’s world themselves would have known, living as they did in the wake of the conquest of ‘the world’ by Alexander the Great and the subsequent creation of a single, Greek-speaking linguistic community. …. By confusing languages God was merciful, not punitive. He already recognized that ‘this is only the beginning of what they will do’ (11:6). Who knows what WMDs the Babelites would’ve created? Middleton writes, ‘Babel thus represents a regressive human attempt to guarantee security by settling in one place and constructing a monolithic empire, with a single language, thus resisting God’s original intent for humanity.’ …. So God gave humanity a push toward its original purpose, to fill the world, cultivate it, build cultures, and grow. Linguistic diversity is a natural outgrowth of this process, and one which the Spirit rubber stamps at Pentecost. Israel & the Nations But before we land on Pentecost, it’s important to look at a few snapshots of Israel’s ‘universal’ vision in Isaiah: In days to come the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. … For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. (Isa 2:2-3) I am coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory… And I will also take some of them as priests and as Levites, says the LORD. … From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, says the LORD. (Isa 66:18, 21, 23) In the first vision, the nations come to receive instruction from Israel. In the second, they come to worship, and some even becomes priests. They come as nations, with all their diversity of languages (‘nations and tongues’). And, they retain their identity as nations. They neither dissolve into one gigantic Israelite world empire nor isolate themselves completely. Israel’s worship system includes foreigners and receives the nations’ offerings, while the nations receive teaching from Israel. Pentecost—Preservation and Unification When we turn to Pentecost, we see that the Spirit is similarly uninterested in unifying language: ‘Jews … from every nation under heaven … each one heard them speaking in the native language of each’ (Acts 2:5-6). Things were getting out of hand, so Peter stood up to interpret the event. He did so by drawing on Joel 2, which anticipated a work of the Spirit that obliterated a different sort of division. Here’s Peter quoting from Joel 2:28-29: In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. (Acts 2:17-18) The point couldn’t be clearer—the Spirit gave without regard for status, sex, or nationality. In giving, the Spirit unified the people of God (‘tearing down the dividing wall of hostility’ Eph 2:14), but in a way that preserved their cultural diversity. One Spirit, many gifts. One Spirit, many languages. The Spirit doesn’t negate difference, but cultivates and leverages that difference in service of God’s mission toward all nations. So yes, Pentecost reverses the homogeneity of Babel. And yes, Pentecost reverses any hostility that may have arisen in the wake of linguistic confusion. Yet, the Spirit puts the diversity of cultures (preserved in their languages) on display and empowers each for the proclamation of a de-centered Good News. This was a profoundly anti-imperial move. The point isn’t that the Spirit speaks one language. Instead, the Spirit speaks your language—no matter who you are. .... Prior to Babel, humanity already had multiple ethnicities, cultures and languages (e.g. Genesis 10:20), “… clans and languages, in their territories and nations”. The Babel-onians (the city of Babylon in Sumer had by no means yet been built), living under an apparently dictatorial regime, traditionally that of Nimrod (Genesis 10:8), either spoke only one language or were being autocratically enforced to do so. So the Triune God (‘Come, let us go down …’) intervened, and caused them to do what they had been meant to do, to spread out. Shem’s history narrates the saga (11:3-9): They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly’. They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth’. But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The LORD said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other’. So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth. Unlike what we might have imagined - what I, indeed, have previously imagined - God did not simply intervene amongst the people of the entire world, who spoke just the one single, original language, and affect their hearing, or tongue, or whatever, so that all of a sudden the world languages burst into being. Nothing is beyond God, of course. But all He apparently intended to do was to make the people scatter, to give up their megalomaniacal project, thereby forcing them to become intermingled with the other peoples of the world who had multiple languages. So, ultimately, those at Babel, would have inherited all sorts of different languages, dialects, customs. I have no problem with the notion in Jewish legend that the Lord intervened with some sort of catastrophism, to upset the plans of the Babel-onians: https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2279-babel-tower-of The mighty Tower was blown down by winds (Sibyllines l.c.; Josephus, l.c.; Mek., Beshallaḥ, 4, ed. Weiss, 37); according to the opinion of others, one-third of the building was consumed by fire, one-third sank into the earth, and one-third remained standing (Sanh. l.c.; Gen. R. l.c. 8). Further on, I shall be quoting Dr. John Osgood as to his evidence that the early Mesopotamians, for instance, may well have started off with the notion of just a one supreme God, which outlook later became corrupted to the embracing of many gods. And I would suggest that the same pattern would have followed with the other most ancient nations as well. On this, see e.g: https://pravoslavie.ru/87308.html Now, that information from Dr. Osgood may go a long way towards explaining the meaning of the Babel-onian revolt. The people had had one language, or tongue, in praise of a supreme deity, with few words (cf. Matthew 6:7): ‘And when you pray, do not babble on like pagans, for they think that by their many words they will be heard’. But they decided to embrace polytheism, and so the people of Babel began to Babble - like pagans do. PLAIN IN LAND OF SHINAR If we follow a SW movement of people away from Karaca Dağ (the Ark mountain), we come across, in quick succession, Göbekli Tepe, Urfa, and Harran, all three most ancient sites, and the latter two situated in the Harran plain. Here, I believe, we have two, if not three, of the places named in Genesis 10:10, with the Harran Plain being the “plain in the land of Shinar” (11:2). Obviously this region is far from Sumer, the conventional Shinar, but it is also well removed from those NE Syrian regions with names like Sinjar. The Harran plain would have been a most attractive prospect for those early Ark-ites: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-location-of-the-Harran-plain-on-GAP-reg The Harran Plain has the largest groundwater resources of the Middle East (Bilgili et al. 2018;Yapıcıoglu et al. 2020). …. ... Harran Plain is the largest plain within the area administered under the Southeastern Anatolia Project (known as the GAP project in Turkey), covering an area of 1500 km². While some were migrating in this direction, others would have been following the PPNA trail (Part Two, pp. 28-29), westwards (towards Çatal Hüyük), in Anatolia, and on to the Aegean, and eastwards, towards what would become Assyria (map, p. 28). As we found, PPNA did not extend into (the probably swampy) Sumer. Hence, the level of the flood at Ur in Sumer, found by Sir Leonard Woolley, sandwiched as it was “between remains of the Al Ubaid cultural phase, the last purely prehistoric period of southern Mesopotamia, and a layer of debris from the early Protoliterate period” (https://ncse.ngo/flood-mesopotamian-archaeological-evidence), could not possibly be direct evidence of the Noachic Flood. Jericho was an early settlement. Syrian Ebla and Mari would have been other ones. My long-held view has been - no doubt along with most others who consider the matter - that the four named cities of Nimrod in Genesis 10:10 would all have been located in the land (plain) of Shinar. And indeed those who look to shift Shinar from Sumer to the NE Syrian region will inevitably search for four appropriate sites for these cities. I now believe that that is not going to work. And what follows below will show why I am saying this. For one, Isaiah 10:9 informs us that Calneh, one of Nimrod’s cities, is to be paired with Carchemish: ‘Is not Calno [Calneh] as Carchemish? Is not Hamath as Arpad? Is not Samaria as Damascus?’ That means, at least, that Calneh would unlikely be found as far eastwards as Sinjar, or, a fortiori, in Sumer. Secondly, what we know of another of Nimrod’s cities, Akkad, is that, as according to one of his inscriptions: ‘The ships from Meluhha the ships from Magan the ships from Dilmun he made tie-up alongside the quay of Akkad’. Historians, finding both Calneh and Akkad (both unknown in Sumer) to be difficult propositions according to their own pre-conceived view of things, can try to make some ill-advised ‘corrections’, leading to no end of confusion. W. F. Albright, for instance, had attempted to translate Calneh right out of existence, by turning the Hebrew word (כַלְנֵ֑ה) into meaning “all of them”. According to his view, Babel, Erech and Akkad, three cities only, were all in the land of Shinar. As we are now going to find, though, Akkad was not in the land (plain) of Shinar. Sargon’s Inscription actually makes it fairly apparent where Akkad approximately lay. Some of the ships (reed boats) that were docking in at the port of Akkad were arriving from the far-away lands of Egypt (Magan) and Ethiopia (Meluḫḫa). That that is what Magan and Meluḫḫa obviously stood for is confirmed by a statement made by the neo-Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal: “In my first campaign I marched against Magan, Meluhha, Tarka, king of Egypt and Ethiopia …”. But, because this does not fit in with a wrong geography, and with a wrong timetable, conventional historians are unable to make the obvious connection. Presumably Dilmun (or Telmun), famous for, among other things, its ivory and dates, will need to be sought for anew in the approximate region of Magan and Meluḫḫa. Now, it is clear from all of this that the important, but long lost, city of Akkad, lay on the Mediterranean coast, where the Egyptians were wont to trade with NW Syria, etc. The fairly obvious candidate for Nimrod’s Akkad, then, in reasonable geographical relationship with Carchemish, would be the ancient port of Ugarit (see map, p. 52). What may serve to confirm this unexpected identification is that the Egyptian name for Ugarit is believed to have been IKAT: https://www.academia.edu/41484046/Further_Observations_on_Ugarit_and_Egypt_in_the_Early_New_Kingdom “This new observation of both old and new transcription systems in the Amenhotep II texts fully supports the reading of IkAT as Ugarit …”. The name IKAT is as close to Akkad as one could possibly want! Claude F. A. Schaeffer believed that Sargon, Naram-Sin, of Akkad had used the port of Ugarit for conquest of the lands ‘beyond the Upper Sea’ (CRAI, 1962, p. 202). By now I have identified two sites for Genesis 10:10, namely: (i) the plain of the land of Shinar as the Plain of Harran, and (ii) Akkad as Ugarit (IKAT). The remaining cities of Nimrod I would locate in the Plain of Harran. Urfa and Harran in that plain each have been claimed as the first city built after the Flood. They are indeed most ancient. They (particularly Harran) now become central. “Then shall he say, ‘Have I not taken the country above Babylon and Chalanes, where the Tower was built?’” Isaiah 10:9 LXX Chalanes here would appear to correspond adequately with the Chalanne (Χαλαννη) of Genesis 10:10 (LXX), as one of the cities of Nimrod. Wherever else the cities of Nimrod may have been located, it appears at least that “Chalanne [was] in the land of Senaar [Shinar]”. Chalanne, otherwise known as Calneh (10:10 KJV): “And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar”, was actually quite far distant from Akkad, which I have determined to have been Ugarit (var. IKAT). So we know that Chalanne, or Calneh, was in Shinar. Harran was also in Shinar, as was Urfa “… is 24 miles (39 km) northwest of Haran …”. (Harran was also a land “of the Chaldees”). Harran, as I have argued elsewhere, was where King Belshazzar was slain. The Jerusalem Temple of God treasures in Daniel 1:1-2 need to be connected up with the gold and silver vessels in Daniel 5, the account of King Belshazzar’s Feast: Daniel 1:1-2 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord delivered Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his god in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his god. Daniel 5:1-4 King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone. Whilst one might expect that these sacred vessels of silver and gold had been taken by King Nebuchednezzar to his beloved Babylon, to the temple of his god, Marduk, there - and, indeed, “Babylonia” has been inserted into the NIV version above (with “Hebrew Shinar” as a footnote) - the fact is that King Nebuchednezzar had taken these Jerusalem vessels to “the temple of his god in Shinar”. And Shinar was not Babylonia! Since Shinar, then, is quite a long distance from Akkad-as-Ugarit, the latter being in the country known anciently as Nuhašše, then I have had to abandon my long-held view that all of Nimrod’s cities as referred to in Genesis 10:10 were in the land of Shinar. We are going to find that Lugalzagesi of Uruk (c. 2358-2334 BC, conventional dating), whom Sargon of Akkad (to be identified as Nimrod) is reputed to have defeated, had already extended the kingdom “as far west as the Mediterranean”. The lands in those days were made up of many small states. The land of Shinar itself may not have been a terribly large one. The question now needs to be asked: With Chalanne in Shinar, and with Harran in Shinar, could Nimrod’s city of Chalanne have been Harran? One point in favour of such a conclusion would be the great antiquity of Harran: http://quicksilver899.com/Bible_Mysteries/Harran/Harran.html … the Muslim geographer, Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229 CE), says that some believe that Harran was the first city built after the flood. ["Mu'jam al-Buldan" (Dictionary of Countries) …. Moreover, the two names may be comparable. The Vulgate version of the Book of Tobit helps to orient the geography of the journey of Tobias and the archangel Raphael by its insertion in 11:1 of Charan (Harran): “And as they were returning they came to Charan, which is in the midway to Ninive …”. Charan and Chalann[e] are most similar names, and seem perfectly interchangeable (the common r and l interchange), a potential identification between the pair being bolstered by their common location in Shinar. An intriguing possible indication that Nimrod’s “Babel” may actually have been in Syria-Turkey, and not in Sumer, is the testimony of the Septuagint version of Isaiah 10:9, where the Great King of Assyria boasts, as he knocks over one strong Syro-Palestine city after another: “Isn’t Calneh like Carchemish? Isn’t Hamath like Arpad? Isn’t Samaria like Damascus?”. According to the LXX: καὶ ἐρεῖ οὐκ ἔλαβον τὴν χώραν τὴν ἐπάνω Βαβυλῶνος καὶ Χαλαννη οὗ ὁ πύργος ᾠκοδομήθη καὶ ἔλαβον Ἀραβίαν καὶ Δαμασκὸν καὶ Σαμάρειαν Babylon (Βαβυλῶνος), not Carchemish, is here coupled with Calneh (Χαλαννη), “where the Tower was built” (οὗ ὁ πύργος ᾠκοδομήθη). At http://biblehub.com/commentaries/isaiah/10-9.htm we get this account: The LXX. version, which instead of naming Carchemish, gives “Calanè, where the tower was built,” seems to imply a tradition identifying that city with the Tower of Babel of Genesis 11:4. (2) Carchemish. Few cities of the ancient world occupied a more prominent position than this. Its name has been explained as meaning the Tower of Chemosh, and so bears witness to the widespread cultus of the deity whom we meet with in Biblical history as the “abomination of the Moabites” (1 Kings 11:7). Assisted by such information, I can attempt to solve once and for all the problem of the location and identification of Babel, and the identification and location of each one of the various cities of Nimrod as named in Genesis 10:10. For the location of Babel, two cities had been uppermost in my mind, namely: • Carchemish, for one, based on the Septuagint reading above. Its very name seemed to suggest a Tower (Carchemish = Tower of Chemosh?). • Harran, for the other, based largely on a You Tube video: Harran, Tower Of Babel, Tarot, Gobekli Tepe and The Watchers We read that a ‘solution’ proposed by W. F. Albright was that “Calneh” did not actually qualify as one of Nimrod’s cities - was not even a place at all - meaning that only three locations, not four, comprised Genesis 10:10. My own solution will be a little bit similar to that. I, too, would reduce the number to just the three cities (including a duplication). Genesis 10:10 may be one of those helpful editorial additions (a gloss) by Moses, or by a later editor, to an ancient document – in this case the (toledôt) family histories of Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. As in the case of the Septuagint’s “Babylon and Calane where the Tower was built”, Babel and Calneh, just the one place, may have been stretched (a waw consecutive?) into two names. I have already ascertained that Akkad was Ugarit, and that it was likely situated beyond the land of Shinar; and that Calneh might be Harran, in the land of Shinar. And now I think it most likely that ‘Calneh where the Tower was’, must also have been “Babel”, an apparent nick name due to what had occurred there (Genesis 11:8-9). Even “Harran” may have been a late name for the site, if it was named after Abram’s brother, Harran (cf. Genesis 10:27), or was he named after Harran? A strong possibility for the third site, Uruk, would be Urfa (Ur of the Chaldees), or Sanliurfa, of which Harran is said to be a district (see below). On the other hand, an ancient table from Ebla refers to “Ur in Harran”: https://truthonlybible.com/2015/02/13/ur-of-the-chaldees-abrahams-original-home/ The site of Urfa (Uruk?) would be as ancient as was Harran, and of it, too, has it been said that it was the first city to have been built after the Flood. Urfa | Buildings | EMPORIS URFA, ancient EDESSA, is - according to Biblical accounts - the first city in the world that was found after the Great Flood which destroyed humanity. HARRAN, where Prophet ABRAHAM lived for several years after leaving the ancient city of Ur, is a district of Urfa. In conclusion, I would explain Genesis 10:10 as: “And the beginning of [Nimrod’s] kingdom was Akkad [Ugarit], and [the place nick-named] “Babel”, namely Calneh [Harran], and Erech [Urfa?], in the land of Shinar”. Part Four: Dispersion of Nations Contents: The main ethnic streams ……………………. p. 58-64 Shinarian-Akkadian Culture …..……….…. p. 65-74 THE MAIN ETHNIC STREAMS Whatever the Triune God had done to cause the Shinarites to go their various ways, the Dispersion, as it is called, is thought to have occurred close to the birth of Peleg (Genesis 10:25): “Two sons were born to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided; his brother was named Joktan”. Now, I have no intention here of trying to follow the paths of all of the families referred to in Genesis 10’s Table of Nations. Others have already attempted to do this in detail, one of these being Dr. John Osgood (Over the Face of all the Earth). This sort of thing is his specialty, and I already referred to his most interesting tracing of the Cush-ites. However, as already noted, too, Dr. Osgood (i) takes as his base a supposed Babel in Sumer, and he also (ii) has the Babel incident following Genesis 10. Here is a simplified version of “The Table of Nations in Genesis 10” taken from: https://bible-history.com/old-testament/table-of-nations-genesis-10 According to the Bible the sons of Noah were Shem, Ham, and Japheth... these three sons of Noah represented the three great races of mankind. …. Map of the Descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth …. Genesis 10:32 - These [are] the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood. Shem (Asia) Shem (Heb. "Name") … bore a son at 110 years of age. He was father to five sons who became the fathers of the five Semitic nations as shown below. Shem was actually the father of the nations of the ancient Near East including the Israelites and the Jewish religion, and therefore Judaism, Islam, and Christianity sprang from the line of Shem. The Semites were particularly known for their religious zeal. The Five Semitic Nations: 1. Elam (The Persians) settled northeast of the Persian Gulf. 2. Asshur (The Assyrians) the Biblical name for Assyria, settled between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. 3. Arphaxad … settled in Chaldea. 4. Lud (The Lydians) settled in Asia Minor, but some of them sailed across the Mediterranean and settled in northern Africa. 5. Aram (The Syrians) the Biblical name for Syria, located north and east of Israel. Ham (Africa) Ham (Heb. "hot" or "Black") … and his wife bore 4 sons who became the fathers of the nations of Africa. Ham's fourth son Canaan was prophetically cursed because he gazed at [sic] his fathers nakedness while he was drunk. This curse would mean later that Canaan would lose his land to the Hebrews and would be subservient to the descendants of Shem. The Hamites were known for their physical endurance. The Four Hamitic Nations: 1. Cush (The Ethiopians) settled in Ethiopia south of Egypt, also early in their history some of them migrated to an area north of the Persian Gulf (Gen. 10:8-10). 2. Mizraim (The Egyptians) the Bible name for Egypt, settled in northeastern Africa. 3. Phut (The Libyans) sometimes translated Libya, settled in northern Africa. 4. Canaan (The Canaanites) settled above Africa east of the Mediterranean (Later was given to the Hebrews). Japheth (Europe) Japheth (Heb. "God will Enlarge") … and Shem were both greatly blessed for respecting their father Noah. Noah's blessing on Japheth was far reaching for all of his descendants being the European (Caucasian) nations that were mentioned in Genesis 10. The Japhethites were known for their intellectual activity. The Seven Japhetic Nations: I. Gomer (The Cimmerians) settled north of the Black Sea, but afterwards his descendants probably occupied Germany, France, Spain and the British Isles. 2. Magog (The Scythians) lived north of the Caspian Sea. 3. Madai (The Medes) settled south of the Caspian Sea. 4. Javan (The Ionians or Greeks) Javan is the Hebrew name for Greeks, they settled in Greece. 5. Tubal (The Turks) lived south of the Black Sea. 6. Meshech (The Slavs) lived between the Black and Caspian Seas, 7. Tiras (The Etruscans) located west of the Black Sea. Genesis 10:32 - These [are] the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood. It has been suggested that Ham’s son, Cush, who gave his name to Nubia (Ethiopia), the land through which wound the primeval Gihon river (Genesis 2:13), may have had Kish in Sumer also named after him. And perhaps, too, Urkish (Urkesh) in NE Syria. What I do find here is (as already mentioned) a repetition of place names from one region to another. Apart from Kish, potentially, the land of Sumer also has an Uruk (as I claimed Shinar had), and a Babel (or Babylon). This could mean either that a person, say Cush, had dwelt in several different places that were named after him, or that descendants of such a notable person had later named a place, or places, after that person. Might both Ur of the Chaldees, and also Arpachiyah, have been named after Arphaxad, the son of Shem (Genesis 10:22)? Moreover, some of the biblical names of peoples, such as the Canaanite Hittites (Genesis 10:15), were later applied to peoples who bore no likely relationship to the original ones. The Anatolian so-called ‘Hittites’, for instance, were Indo-European. Dr. David Rohl has identified the biblical Cush with the semi-legendary king of Uruk, Meskiagkasher (kash standing for Cush). He was the father of Enmerkar, Rohl’s hopeful Enmer “the hunter” (kar), thus Nimrod (Genesis 10:9): [Nimrod] was a mighty hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, ‘Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD’.” While I find these connections to be quite plausible, I would estimate (based on what has been discussed) that it may yet have been somewhat too early for Uruk in Sumer. The following piece basically follows Rohl’s various identifications of Nimrod: Nimrod is credited with building the Tower of Babel in order to establish his own cult. Historians have linked the Biblical name with Ninnu (with the epithet Enmersi) of the city of Lagash and subsequently also to EnmerKar of Uruk; Ningirsu of the early dynastic Sumerians; Asar son of Enki of The Sumerians of Eridu and subsequently the Egyptian Osiris Asshur and Phoenician Rashap & Canaanite Reshpu (thus also the constellation Orion); Baal; and the Assyrian Ninurta -while the Babylonians obviously linked him with the Mesopotanian deity Marduk the Sumerian Dumuzi and the Mesopotamian king Ninus of Greek legend husband of Semiramis. As Enmerkar the simplified New Age understanding of the story surrounding Nimrod is as follows. Following his father's fate, his grandfather Hor Meskiagkasher brought Nimrod's mother to Sumerian-Asar in Uruk where his people built a settlement. Intrigued by the prospect for gold in the west Hor Meskiagkasher led his Afroasiatic followers as Mizraim "from Asar" along the Puntian sea routes to the Nile valley heavily equipped to conquer. While there an opportunist band of Noahites followed general Seth to destroy unsuspecting Sumerian-Asar before turning to take over Mizraim's Egyptian campaign. Hor-Meskiagkasher sent his grandson EnmerKar back to Asar whereupon finding the destruction EnmerKar saved the throne of Asar from extinction. Hearing of the Sethian plan to ambush Mizraim's conquest of the Nile Valley Enmerkar enlisted help from Elam and sent troops to help Mizraim defeat the Sethians. A wedding between Mizraim and a princess from amongst the followers of Seth burried the hatchet. As reward Meskiagkasher left Sumerian-Asar under the total command of EnmerKar as the hero king of that land. Integral to his claim in Asar was the repair of the sacked temple of Asar's patroness Innana. To this end EnmerKar proceeded to carve out a great empire for himself starting with Nun.Ki then Erech, Accad, Calneh, and expanding Asar out to Nineveh and Calah building the canal between them. Conquering Aratta he brought wat was required to his city but encouraged by the submitted Sethians Enmerkar planned a new cult temple in Nun.ki but opposition from different tribes of the area led to its incompletion and the eventual disintegration of the empire he had carved out for himself. In time however groups of grateful Kiengi-Sumerians at Eridu & Lagash redeemed the Afroasiatic not only as the continuation of their own Sumerian ancestor Asar but also child of Enki once more despite his opposition to Enki to whom was attributed the disruption of his Temple plans. Thus it was that the Egyptians became known as "Masri" or those "From Asar" and Nimrod became known as Asar and the mystery cults came to survive amongst the Babylonian Amorite Canaanites. …. Some of this, of course, is quite fanciful. Ninus and Semiramis belonged to, as we are going to find later, the neo-Assyrian era, more than a millennium after the time of Cush and Nimrod – despite the efforts of over-zealous revisionists to force an identification of the Akkadians with the Assyrians. Sargon of Akkad (see next section) may have arisen in Kish. But which Kish? I would have to fancy, not Sumerian Kish - which is too far distant from the Shinarian kingdom of Akkad, and may not yet have been but founded - but, say, for instance, the geographically closer Urkish (Tell Mozan). Sargon I, or ‘the Great’, as he is known, is thought to have influenced the Exodus account (2:1-10) of the baby Moses afloat in a basket (tebah), with this tale: https://evidenceforchristianity.org/how-do-you-respond-to-the-claim-that-the-story-of-moses-being-placed-in-a-basket-is-borrowed-from-the-story-of-sargon-i-from-2400-bc/ “My mother was high priestess, I did not know my father. My father’s brothers loved the hills. My city is Azupiranu, which is located on the banks of the Euphrates. My mother high priestess conceived me, secretly gave birth to me. She left me In a reed basket, he sealed the lid with bitumen. He threw me into the river, which rose above me. The river carried me and carried me to Akki the water carrier. Akki the water carrier took me as his son and raised me. Akki the water carrier named me his gardener. Although I was a gardener, Ishtar granted me his love, and for four and […] years I have held the monarchy.” Now, I have found consistently that pagan legends that are supposed to have influenced the Hebrew scriptures actually turn out to be later in time than the latter when the revision of ancient history is applied as it will be throughout this book. Hammurabi of Babylon’s so-called Law Code, for instance, did not influence the Torah of Moses, as is claimed, because Hammurabi belonged (as we shall find later) to the era of King Solomon of Israel, roughly half a millennium after Moses. Pharaoh Akhnaton’s Hymn to Aton did not influence Psalm 104, as is believed, because King David, its author, reigned more than a century before Akhnaton. And so on. The case of Sargon of Akkad (c. 2334–2279 BC, conventional dating) is somewhat different, though, inasmuch as he does indeed have historical precedence over Moses. However, the legend about him as a baby floating in a reed basket is actually a very late tale (neo-Assyrian literature) that post-dates the era of Moses by almost a millennium. It is one of ancient literature’s many copycat stories based on the Exodus account of baby Moses, with elements even of the New Testament thrown into the Indian version. https://triangulations.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/basket-cases-moses-sargon-and- Basket Cases: Moses, Sargon, and Karna Introduction: Founder Stories Many, many religions and nations have founder stories where the founder has some unique beginning so as to tell the listeners, “Look, this guy/gal is special!”. Below I describe three basket cases (smile): stories of three important religious/political figures which started with a basket: Sargon, Krishna and Moses Moses — Judaism & Christianity Moses in Basket In Jewish Bible (embraced also by Christians), the book of Exodus tells the myth about how the Jews were exiled to Egypt and then later Moses led them out of captivity. Very few scholars would doubt this story is fictionalized, the question is how fictional is any part of the story. See my “Jesus, myth or fact” post to see the various percentages of fiction in bible stories — or any story. Part of Exodus myth is the part about Moses being put in a basket. Moses was born to a Jewish woman (Levite) in Egypt at a time that the Pharaoh supposedly commanded all Jewish male babies be killed. So that Jewish woman, hid her child then three-months old, but when she could no longer hide him, she put him in a basket and sent him down a river. The daughter of the Pharaoh apparently saw the child Moses in the basket and adopted it as her own. Eventually, after baby Moses grew up in the Pharaoh’s house hold, he had a powerful position in the court and later help his people (Jews) to escape from the Pharaoh. (Exodus 2). Sargon the Great — King of Akkadian Empire Sargon the Great Sargon the Great, was the King of Akkadian around 2,300 BCE and had a similar basket beginning to the Jewish Moses. Sargon was born as the illegitimate son of a priestess or low-class woman. In shame she secretly hid her child and then placed in a basket of reeds and floated him down a river where baby Sargon was found by a man and raised as his own son — only later to become a great King and leader. The similarities to the Moses story are uncanny. But which story came first? The earliest copy of the Sargon story we have is from the 600s BCE found in the Library of Ashurbanipal. But the original story is much earlier, of course, passed on in oral tradition. Likewise, the oldest Hebrew Bible we have are the Dead Sea Scrolls with texts dated from 150 BCE to 70 CE but the stories were likely also written in the 600s. Due to all these stories being passed on orally for most likely centuries before their recording, and not knowing when the original recording took place, dating these events is very difficult. So, did they borrow from each other, or just use an obvious literary technique or, and this is unlikely, all just tell the truth about their founders. See my post illustrating models for how Greeks and Jews shared similar stories …. Karna — Hindu Hero My daughter and I are now reading the Mahabharata were a similar basket story came up. I copied the page with the picture on it for you. • Karna In this story, a virgin is impregnated by the sun god (sound Christian?). In shame the child is sent down a river and found by a charioteer (low caste) who found him a famous teacher of war. This child was Karna who would become major warrior in the Mahabharata. https://ztevetevans.wordpress.com/2016/07/27/world-folklore-the-child-cast-adrift/ Many myths and legends from many cultures around the world revolve around the theme of a child deliberately abandoned in the wilds or cast adrift on the ocean or a river. The story involves a helpless and defenseless baby committed by adults to take their chances of survival but against all odds and often with the help of divine intervention the baby survives to grow up and play a significant part in the culture of a society. More often than not they become great leaders saving or inspiring their people. Usually, those that cast the helpless babe adrift are not doing so with the intention of actually killing the child but are offering up for the chance of divine intervention, or luck, in the hope that the baby will survive the ordeal. Sometimes it is the only chance the baby will have of survival because it has been rejected in some way by those who have power over it or others who wish it harm. Presented here are four ancient examples from folklore and mythology around the world concluding with an example from modern fiction. …. SHINARIAN-AKKADIAN CULTURE Following PPNA, and PPNB, which “shows evidence of a northerly origin, possibly indicating an influx from the region of northeastern Anatolia”, from which approximate region we would expect influxes at this time to emanate, we arrive at the more significant Halaf culture. This culture is wildly mis-dated to anywhere from 6,500-5,100 BC. In my scheme, however, Halaf would be far closer to 2,000 BC, and would basically represent the Shinarian-Akkadian culture. Dr. John Osgood, in his articles, attributes Halaf to the Arameans – with whom there may be an overlap, anyway. We know that the Arameans- Chadeans lived in Shinar. My own estimation is that the mighty Akkadian kingdom is represented by the sophisticated Halaf culture, currently dated to approximately (a massive) four millennia before King Sargon of Akkad. This Sargon I, ‘the Great’, may most likely be Nimrod himself, to be considered further on. As we are now going to find, the conventional picture regarding the archaeology for the famous Akkadian and also Ur III kingdoms is hopelessly inadequate. Here is what I have previously written on this subject: Uncertainty in identifying exclusively Akkadian pottery has made it impossible to reconstruct Akkadian settlement patterns with any confidence” (Nissen 1993: 100). … geographical re-location of the Babel incident: … finds a most significant and sophisticated ancient culture to accompany it: namely, HALAF. …. The long Akkadian empire phase of history … so admired by subsequent rulers and generations, is remarkably lacking in archaeological data. I noted this [before] …. “The Akkadian kings were extensive builders, so why, then, so few traces of their work? Not to mention, where is their capital city of Akkad? The Ur III founder, Ur-Nammu, built a wall at Ur. Not a trace remains”. …. here I want to highlight the enormity of the problem. Archaeologists have actually failed to identify a specific pottery for the Akkadian era! This is, of course, quite understandable given that they (indeed, we) have been expecting to discover the heart of the Akkadian kingdom in Sumer, or Lower Mesopotamia. We read of this incredible situation of a missing culture in the following account by Dr. R. Matthews, from his book, The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: Theories and Approaches (2003): (https://books.google.com.au/books?id=9ZrjLyrPipsC&pg=PA152&lpg=PA152&dq=uncer): The problems of fitting material cultural assemblages, especially pottery, into historical sequences are epitomised in the ongoing debate over what, if anything, characterises Akkadian material culture in Lower Mesopotamia (Gibson and McMahon 1995; Nissen 1993; J. G. Westenholz 1998). Uncertainty in identifying exclusively Akkadian pottery has made it impossible to reconstruct Akkadian settlement patterns with any confidence (Nissen 1993: 100). The bleakest view has been put thus: ‘If we didn’t know from the texts that the Akkad empire really existed, we would not be able to postulate it from the changes in settlement patterns, nor … from the evolution of material culture’ (Liverani 1993: 7-8). The inference is either that we are failing to isolate and identify the specifics of Akkadian material culture, or that a political entity apparently so large and sophisticated as the Akkadian empire can rise and pass without making a notable impact on settlement patterns or any aspect of material culture. …. Obviously, that “a political entity apparently so large and sophisticated as the Akkadian empire can rise and pass without making a notable impact on … any aspect of material culture” is quite absurd. The truth of the matter is that a whole imperial culture has been almost totally lost because - just as in the case of so much Egyptian culture, and in its relation to the Bible - historians and archaeologists are forever looking in the wrong geographical place at the wrong chronological time. …. It is my view now, regarding an archaeology of the Akkadian empire, that one needs to look substantially in the direction of Turkey-Syria and the Mosul region, and on to the Mediterranean, rather than to “Lower Mesopotamia”, the Halaf culture to be fused with that of the Akkadians. The potentate Nimrod had, as one might now expect, begun his empire building, not in Sumer, but in the Shinar region of Harran, and extending westwards (following Lugalzagesi of Uruk?) even as far as the Mediterranean coast, the port of Ugarit (IKAT). He had then moved eastwards on to northern Assyria (as it would later become). Thus Genesis 10:10-11: “The beginning of [Nimrod’s] kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went forth into Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth-Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah—which is the great city”. And, as can be seen on the map on p. 65, these are basically the regions where we find that the spectacular Halaf culture had arisen and had chiefly developed. Understandably once again, in a conventional context, with the Halaf cultural phase dated to c. 6100-5100 BC, there can be no question of meeting these dates with the Akkadian empire of the late C3rd millennium BC. That is where Dr. Osgood’s “A Better Model for the Stone Age” (http://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age) becomes so vital, with its revising of Halaf down to the Late Chalcolithic period in Palestine, even to the time of Abram (Abraham): …. In 1982, under the title 'A Four-Stage Sequence for the Levantine Neolithic', Andrew M.T. Moore presented evidence to show that the fourth stage of the Syrian Neolithic was in fact usurped by the Halaf Chalcolithic culture of Northern Mesopotamia, and that this particular Chalcolithic culture was contemporary with the Neolithic IV of Palestine and Lebanon.5:25 .... …. This was very significant, especially as the phase of Halaf culture so embodied was a late phase of the Halaf Chalcolithic culture of Mesopotamia, implying some degree of contemporaneity of the earlier part of Chalcolithic Mesopotamia with the early part of the Neolithic of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria …. This finding was not a theory but a fact, slowly and very cautiously realized, but devastating in its effect upon the presently held developmental history of the ancient world. This being the case, and bearing in mind the impossibility of absolute dating by any scientific means despite the claims to the contrary, the door is opened very wide for the possible acceptance of the complete contemporaneity of the whole of the Chalcolithic of Mesopotamia with the whole of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of Palestine. (The last period of the Chalcolithic of Palestine is seen to be contemporary with the last Chalcolithic period of Mesopotamia.) …. Dr. Osgood himself, however, regards the Halaf people as the biblical “Aramites” [Arameans]. (“A Better Model for the Stone Age Part Two”: http://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age-part-2). Since the Arameans, though, tended to be a wandering nomadic people (Deuteronomy 26:5), I would not expect their existence to be reflected in a culture so sophisticated as Halaf. Though they themselves may have absorbed much of it. My preference, therefore, would be for Halaf to represent the Akkadians. It apparently preceded the Jemdat Nasr culture with which Dr. Osgood will equate Chedorlaomer, the Elamite king of Genesis 14. This is how Dr. Osgood sees the spread of the Halaf culture. But he may have it going in the wrong direction, westwards, from Mosul to Sinjar: Now if we date Babel to approximately 2,200 B.C. (as reasoned by implication from Noah's Flood 3) and if Abraham came from Mesopotamia (the region of Aram) approximately 1875 B.C., then we would expect that there is archaeological evidence that a people who can fit the description generally of the Aramites should be found well established in this area .... What in fact do we find? Taking the former supposition of the Jemdat Nasr culture being identified with the biblical story of Genesis 14 and the Elamite Chedarloamer,4 we would expect to find some evidence in Aram or northern Mesopotamia of Jemdat Nasr influence, but this would only be the latest of cultural influences in this region superseding and dominant on other cultures. The dominant culture that had been in this area prior to the Jemdat Nasr period was a culture that is known to the archaeologist as the Halaf culture, named after Tell Halaf where it was first identified. One of the best summaries of our present knowledge of the Halafian culture is found in the publication, 'The Hilly Flanks'5. It seems clear from the present state of knowledge that the Halaf culture was a fairly extensive culture, but it was mostly dominant in the area that we recognise as Aram Naharaim. It is found in the following regions. First, its main base in earliest distribution seems to have been the Mosul region. From there it later spread to the Sinjar region to the west, further westward in the Khabur head-waters, further west again to the Balikh River system, and then into the middle Euphrates valley. It also spread a little north of these areas. It influenced areas west of the Middle Euphrates valley and a few sites east of the Tigris River, but as a general statement, in its fully spread condition, the Halaf culture dominated Aram Naharaim …. The site of Arpachiyah just west of Nineveh across the Tigris River appears to have been the longest occupied site and perhaps the original settlement of the Halaf people. This and Tepe Gawra were important early Halaf towns. The settlement of the Halaf people at these cities continued for some considerable time, finally to be replaced by the Al Ubaid people from southern Mesopotamia. When Mallowan excavated the site of Tell Arpachiyah, he found that the top five levels belonged to the Al Ubaid period. The fifth level down had some admixture of Halaf material within it. He writes: ‘The more spacious rooms of T.T.5 indicate that it is the work of Tell Halaf builders; that the two stocks did not live together in harmony is shown by the complete change of material in T.T.l-4, where all traces of the older elements had vanished. Nor did any of the burials suggest an overlap between graves of the A 'Ubaid and Tell Halaf period; on the contrary, there was evidence that in the Al 'Ubaid cemetery grave- diggers of the Al 'Ubaid period had deliberately destroyed Tell Halaf house remains.’6 He further comments the following: ‘It is more than probable that the Tell Halaf peoples abandoned the site on the arrival of the newcomers from Babylonia; and with the disappearance of the old element prosperity the site rapidly declined; for, although the newcomers were apparently strong enough to eject the older inhabitants, yet they appear to have been a poor community, already degenerate; their houses were poorly built and meanly planned, their streets no longer cobbled as in the Tell Halaf period and the general appearance of their settlement dirty and poverty stricken in comparison with the cleaner buildings of the healthier northern peoples who were their predecessors.’7 He further writes: ‘The invaders had evidently made a wholesale destruction of all standing buildings converted some of them into a cemetery.’8 It is clear from the discussion of Patty Jo Watson9 that the later periods of the Halaf people were found in the other regions, particularly in a westward direction across the whole area of Aram Naharaim, namely the Sinjar region, the Khabur head-waters, the Balikh River system and the middle Euphrates”. [End of Osgood’s article] Dr. Osgood’s reconstructions necessitate earliest humanity in southern Iraq (Sumer), whereas the main movement of the peoples seems to have been the other way around, not SE to NW, but vice versa. The earlier Halaf culture of the Shinarians was later replaced in southern Iraq by the lesser ‘Ubaid culture, the beginnings of Sumerian civilisation. It is apparent from this that Sumer was far from being the Cradle of Civilisation as so long has been thought. The first city built in Sumer was, traditionally, Eridu (a name that has been associated with Cain’s grandson, Irad – a not uncommon ancient type of place name (also Irridu and Arad). Eridu was built and re-built many times, which might indicate, as we found with regions affected by the Flood, and by subsequent heavy rain – also marshiness. https://www.britannica.com/place/Eridu Eridu, ancient Sumerian city south of modern Ur (Tall al-Muqayyar), Iraq. Eridu was revered as the oldest city in Sumer according to the king lists, and its patron god was Enki (Ea), “lord of the sweet waters that flow under the earth.” The site, located at a mound called Abū Shahrayn, was excavated principally between 1946 and 1949 by the Iraq Antiquities Department; it proved to be one of the most important of the prehistoric urban centres in southern Babylonia. Founded on sand dunes probably in the 5th millennium BC, [sic] it fully illustrated the sequence of the preliterate Ubaid civilization, with its long succession of superimposed temples portraying the growth and development of an elaborate mud-brick architecture. …. Dr. Osgood will make three fascinating observations regarding ancient Mesopotamian gods, such as Enki, An, and Ea, that he thinks indicate that humanity after the Flood initially worshipped just the one supreme God. This: “The whole universe, the people in unison, To Enlil in one tongue give praise…..’, may perhaps have ramifications for interpreting the Babel incident. In his book, Over the Face of All the Earth, on pp. 53-55, Dr Osgood thus writes: On reading the average archaeological textbook, one is given the impression that ancient man started off with polytheistic notions and gradually came to the idea of one God. However as one follows the actual historical records, evidence emerges that in fact the opposite occurred. Man had the true knowledge of God and turned from it. This fact is confirmed in the records of ancient Sumer where there are at least three clear examples. To see this, the first example is a passage from the poem ‘Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta’ (we will see later that Enmerkar is in fact the Biblical Nimrod), where we have the following quote: ‘Once upon a time, the lands Shubur and Hamazi, Many(?) tongued Sumer, the great land of princeship’s; divine laws, Uri, the land having all that is appropriate. The land Martu, resting in security, The whole universe, the people in unison, To Enlil in one tongue give praise….. (The Sumerians, Kramer, p. 285). The people gave united praise to the god they called Enlil prior to the dispersion of languages. Now whilst it is granted that the latter ideas of this deity were quite different, we find that the original concept was as follows: ‘Enlil was the most important deity of the Sumerian pantheon, ‘the father of the gods’, ‘the king of heaven and earth’, the king of all the lands’. According to the myth ‘Enlil and the creation of the Pickax’, he was the god who separated heaven from earth, brought up ‘the seed of the land’ from the earth, brought forth ‘whatever was needful’, fashioned the pickax for agricultural and building purposes and presented it to the ‘black-heads’ - ie. the Sumerians, or perhaps even mankind as a whole. According to the disputation ‘Summer and Winter’, Enlil was the god who brought forth all trees and grains, produced abundance and prosperity in ‘the land’, and appointed ‘Winter’ as the ‘Farmer of the Gods’ in charge of the life-producing waters and of all that grows.’ (The Sumerians, p. 145) Now the name Enlil is Sumerian. In the semitic Akkadian he was called Elllil. This is equivalent in the Semitic Hebrew to El (the mighty one), the abbreviated general name of God. The Hebrew full singular would be Elohh, but is most commonly met with in the scriptures in the plural form Elohym. The Chaldean is Elahh. In the book of Daniel, when Daniel talks to Nebuchadnezzar he uses Elahh but at other times he uses Elohym. Clearly the Sumerians had the knowledge of the true God – the Almighty – but later turned their concept into an anthropomorphic god with sinful human characteristics (Rohl, Legend, p. 221). The second example is found in relation to Enmerkar’s (Nimrod) city Uruk (Biblical Erech). Uruk was originally known as Eanna - the house of An, who was originally known as the God of Heaven. ‘There is good reason to believe that An, the heaven-god, was at one time conceived by the Sumerians to be the supreme ruler of the pantheon. An continued to be worshipped in Sumer throughout the millenniums, but he gradually lost much of his prominence. He became a rather shadowy figure in the pantheon, and he is rarely mentioned in the hymns and myths of later days, and by that time most of his powers had been conferred upon the god Enlil’. (The Sumerians, p. 118). Instead if the city being referred to as the house of An, it appears that the name was changed to Uruk, and its worship was changed to the worship of Inanna, a goddess of sexual love, fertility and procreation, and associated with a ritual in the temple called ‘holy marriage’ (but no doubt the forerunner of temple prostitution). Inanna in Semitic is Ishtar, later Astarte, and Ashteroth known from the Bible in association with Baal worship which was considered an abomination by God. The Sumerians turned from the true God of heaven. The third example is even more interesting. This involves the god known to the Sumerians as Enki. He was the god of Eridu which was the same people that built Ur – a Chaldean city where Abraham came from. [Mackey: I believe that Abram came from Ur (Urfa) near Harran]. This is highly significant. Now Enki in the semitic Akkadian is Ea (Rohl, Legend, p. 206-207). Apparently this is pronounced Eya. The Hebrew equivalent is Eyah – the name God said Moses was to call Him to the Israelite people – the I AM (Exodus 3:14). Then revealing Himself in the expanded name Jahweh (Exodus 3:15). He declares that he was known by this name by the Patriarchs – the name of the covenant-making God, as he asks the rhetorical question in Exodus 6:3 ‘… by my name Jehovah (Jahweh) was I not known to them?’ (sadly most versions misinterpret this question and turn it into a negative statement). It however brings great significance to the statement in Genesis 9:26, ‘Blessed be Jahweh, the God of Shem’. The root behind the name Eyah and thus Jahweh is a root that means ‘to exist’, and thus the self-existent God, the eternal God, is the God that the people of Ur rejected in favour of the moon god Nanna and turned the idea behind Enki into an anthropomorphic being like sinful man. …. [End of quotes] Perhaps the same sort of early tendency to monotheism may be discernible in Egypt, with the first god there, Atum (a name arising from Adam?). Dr. Osgood had estimated the Halaf culture as having spread from east (Assyria) to the west: “First, its main base in earliest distribution seems to have been the Mosul region. From there it later spread to the Sinjar region to the west, further westward in the Khabur head-waters, further west again to the Balikh River system …”. Most likely, it was the other way around, with Nimrod (= Sargon of Akkad/Halaf culture) firstly having established his kingdom in the “Shinar region” (Genesis 10:10): “The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah—which is the great city”. Andrew Moore had, as we read before, argued for a contemporaneity of the Chacolithic phase of Halaf culture with the Neolithic IV of Palestine and Lebanon …. Archaeologically, we are now on the eve of the city building phase (inspired by Nimrod?) that will be a feature of Syro-Palestine’s Early Bronze Age. Presumably the Canaanites were heavily involved in all of this work (Genesis 10:18): “… the Canaanite clans scattered and the borders of Canaan reached from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Gaza, and then toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, as far as Lasha”. Ham himself, though, a son of Noah and the father of Canaan, would give his name to the land of Egypt (e.g., Psalm 78:51): “He struck down all the firstborn of Egypt, the firstfruits of manhood in the tents of Ham”. (http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/T2OTBS4EEA84MJ67P/p2): “According to the Bible the ancient Egyptians were descended from Ham through the line of Mizraim. Ham had four sons: Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan (Genesis 10:6). The name "Mizraim" is the original name given for Egypt in the Hebrew Old Testament. Many Bibles will have a footnote next to the name "Mizraim" explaining that it means "Egypt." The name "Egypt" itself actually comes to us from the Greeks who gave the Land that name (i.e. "Aegyptos" from the Greek). In addition to the name "Mizraim," the ancient Egyptians also referred to their land as "Kemet" which means "Land of the Blacks." Western historians, however, say that the word "Kemet" refers to the color of the soil of the land rather than its people. But, the word "Kemet" is actually an ethnic term being a derivative of the word "Khem" (Cham or Ham) which means "burnt" or "black." Ham, who was one of the three sons of Noah and the direct ancestor of the Egyptians, was black”. Some have suggested that the ancient site of Carchemish was named after Ham (Cham). Chemosh, however, is a whole name, it referring to one of the ancient gods. More likely, I think, Ham’s son, Cush (Genesis 10:6), is considered to have been the father of the Cushite Ethiopians, who were (are) black. Ham’s brother, Japheth, became the god-Father of the Indo-European peoples such as the Greeks, who would identify him as Iapetos, the Titan, and the Indians, who called him Prajapti, “Father Japheth”. Regarding Shem, I follow the Jewish tradition that Shem was the great Melchizedek - which view is chronologically acceptable. Genesis 10:10-11: “Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad. And after he became the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived 500 years [long enough to have been able to meet Abram] and had other sons and daughters”. Jerry Beasley has written recently (2021) about “The Halaf Generation …”: https://thinkingandpraying.com/2021/the-halaf-generation-g5/ Several quality pottery styles took the world by storm. They were named after settlements in the Fertile Crescent, as seen on the map below: Tell Halaf, Tell Hassuna, and Samarra. These three types of pottery were so popular that they were adopted by surrounding localities. The reason why this happened is highly debated, but a Biblical explanation would include family ties and tribal traditions. Of these three, Halaf was by far the most widespread. “The most remarkable aspects of these cultures are their wide geographical coverage and their long-distance contacts. Keeping in mind the fact that these were small communities without any organization beyond the village level, the spread of a cultural assemblage such as that of Halaf from the central Zagros to the Mediterranean coast is astonishing.”(1) In other words, Halaf pottery was used throughout most of the Fertile Crescent… [Refer back to map on p. 64] Secular archeology places great importance on pottery, since it’s one of the few keys it has to link sites together and create a chronology. Conventional history imagines that there were between 4 and 20 million people scattered across all the continents when a few of them came to the Middle East and invented pottery. After using stone for millions of years [sic], this would have truly been revolutionary. A better explanation is that Noah’s children were very creative and were able to make pottery as soon as they found clay. Cayonu, for instance, didn’t have clay, so they built with stone there. Tell Halaf and Samarra had the right resources. Pottery breaks easily, so it was only desirable for people who lived in permanent settlements throughout the year. Migrating tribes did not use pottery until they settled. The map below depicts the care and detail that went in to decorating pottery in different regions. …. How much do we really know about pottery? Sadly, great conclusions have been draw from limited facts. Most sites only have a small portion that is excavated or archeologists just examine what is lying on the surface. Much work remains unpublished or the interpretation may be contested. For instance, an entire Halaf village has never been excavated, even though it’s the key to an entire period. Very few sites really show a clear record of change over time, so the knowledge of many sites does not necessarily mean we have great certainty. The average person can’t get to the facts, which is why we need to make the facts more accessible. The first thing thrown in our face is that the first settlements are dated to 9000 BC and pottery to 6000 BC, which are both before the Flood even happened. We’re expected to accept these dates without question and reject the Bible or adjust it accordingly. Carbon dating, however, is not conclusive, but that’s an entirely different discussion. When we forego rate-based dating methods, there is nothing else that prevents pottery from having begun almost immediately after the Flood. The key pottery sites do not have significant building layers without pottery. Many begin with pottery, and they are close to the Middle Euphrates where we believe Noah started farming [sic]. Tell Halaf, Tell Aqab, Tell Brak, Tell Arpachiya, Tepe Gawra, Tell Sotto, and Yarim Tepe all began with pottery. Tell Hassuna began as a campsite and then produced pottery, but it’s the exception. The map below gives the impression that every settlement had pottery, but it is based on only a limited number of sites. Still, why would any town want to copy another town’s artwork instead of creating their own? The rapid spread of culture was truly amazing. …. …. Part Five: Sargon of Akkad as Nimrod Contents: Nimrod as Sargon ……………………. p. 75-81 Nimrod and Abram legends ………. p. 82-83 Abraham’s contemporaries …..….. p. 84-93 NIMROD AS SARGON I consider Halaf as likely to have been the culture of the world’s first great potentate, Nimrod, about whom Shem’s history advises us (Genesis 10:8-12): Cush was the father of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD.” The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah—which is the great city. I would consider Halaf also to be the missing archaeology of the great Akkadian kingdom (c. 2350-2150 BC, conventional dating), Sargon of Akkad being my favoured historical candidate for Nimrod. Yigal Levin, when referring to “… “The Table of Nations” recorded in Genesis x”, has described as “arguably the most fascinating passage in the Table – the Nimrod story recounted in verses 8-12” (“Nimrod the Mighty, King of Kish, King of Sumer and Akkad”, VT, Vol. 52, Fasc. 3, July 2002, p. 350). Historical candidates who have been proposed for the imposing character of biblical Nimrod are Enmerkar (Uruk, c. 4500 BC); Gilgamesh (Early Dynastic, Uruk, c. 2900 BC); Sargon of Akkad (c. 2330 BC) and Naram-Sin of Akkad (c. 2250 BC). The biblical Nimrod may perhaps encompass, all in one, some two, or more, of these. Enmerkar (Enmer “the hunter”) is Dr. David Rohl’s choice for Nimrod; whilst Dr. David Livingston, for his part, favours the semi-legendary Gilgamesh for Nimrod. David Rohl has also linked the famous Narmer, perhaps of non-Egyptian origins, with Nimrod – a connection I, too, would seriously consider as being a possibility. Sargon of Akkad is, again, Dr. Douglas Petrovich’s choice for Nimrod; whilst, regarding Naram-Sin, Dr. Yigal Levin has - as I, too, have recently favoured - identified Nimrod with a combined Sargon/Naram-Sin, though, in Levin’s case (not in mine), Sargon and Naram-Sin remain separate historical entities. Thus he has written: After surveying previous attempts to identify an “historical” Nimrod, the author then suggests that the biblical figure is modeled after the combined traditions about Sargon of Akkad and his grandson, Naram-Sin. Nimrod is the son of “Cush”; Sargon began his royal career at Kish right after the flood. The Sargon-Naram-Sin traditions reached the Levant during the second millennium BCE, being combined by time and distance into a composite personality. [End of quote] Or, perhaps “time and distance” have caused, to be split in twain - into presumed grandfather and grandson - he who was originally just the one Akkadian potentate. For instance: https://www.britannica.com/place/Ebla The prosperity of Ebla caught the attention of the Akkadian dynasty (c. 2334–2154 BC). Although Sargon of Akkad’s claim to have conquered Ebla was cast in doubt by the discoveries in the excavations, the fire that destroyed the city was probably the result of an attack by Sargon’s grandson Naram-Sin (c. 2240 BC). From a combination of intriguing data (some of this has yet to be discussed) such as Dr. John Osgood’s archaeology for Abram (Abraham); the tradition of Abram’s having been a contemporary of Menes of Egypt; Dr. W. F. Albright’s argument for this same Menes having been conquered by Naram-Sin of Akkad; Narmer (possibly = Naram-Sin) being archaeologically attested in Palestine at this time; my location of Akkad on the Mediterranean coast (as Ugarit); biblical Amraphel of Shinar a contemporary of Abram’s; and the tradition of Nimrod’s having accompanied Chedorlaomer of Elam against Palestine at the time of Abram, then I can ultimately arrive at only this one conclusion: Sargon of Akkad (in Shinar) = Naram-Sin (= Nimrod) = Narmer (?) must be the biblical “Amraphel … king of Shinar” (Genesis 14:1). The name “Amraphel” may, or may not, be a Hebrew name equating to a Shinarian one. Abarim Publications appears to have trouble nailing this name, Amraphel: http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Amraphel.html#.XQmBvuQ8R9A Meaning Unclear, but perhaps: One That Darkens Counsel, or The Commandment Which Went Forth Etymology Unclear, but perhaps from (1) the verb אמר (amar), to talk or command, and (2) the verb אפל ('pl), to be dark. Before concluding: “The name Amraphel can mean One That Darkens Counsel, or in the words of Alfred Jones (Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names): One That Speaks Of Dark Things”. There may be needed at least one further Akkadian addition to my equation above: Sargon of Akkad = Naram-Sin = Nimrod, relating to my identification between: Sargon and Shar-Kali-Sharri given the same apparent meaning of these two names, but more especially that the name “Sargon” (Shar-Gani) is actually included in a presumed version of the name, Shar-kali-sharri. E.g. compare this: https://dinromerohistory.wordpress.com/tag/sargon “Sargon of Akkad (also known as Sargon the Great, Shar-Gani-Sharri, and Sarru-Kan, meaning “True King” or “Legitimate King”) …”. with this: https://nl.qwerty.wiki/wiki/Shar-Kali-Sharri “Shar-Kali- Sharri (shar-Gani-Sharri; rc 2217-2193 BC …”. Here is some of what I had written previously on the need to recognise alter egos: The biblical Nimrod has, at least as it seems to me, multi historical personae, just as I found to have been the case with the much later (Chaldean) king, Nebuchednezzar. The historical Nebuchednezzar - as he is currently portrayed to us - needs his other ‘face’, Nabonidus of Babylon, for example, to complete him as the biblical “King Nebuchadnezzar” (or “Nebuchadrezzar”); Nabonidus being mad, superstitious, given to dreams and omens, statue-worshipping, praising the god of gods (ilani sa ilani); having a son called “Belshazzar”. [Cf. Baruch 1:11, 12] The biblico-historical Nebuchednezzar also needs Ashurbanipal to fill out in detail his 43 years of reign, to smash utterly the nation of Egypt – Ashurbanipal also having a fiery furnace in which he burned people. But Nebuchednezzar also needs Esarhaddon (conquering Egypt again) whose mysterious and long-lasting illness is so perfectly reminiscent of that of Nebuchednezzar in the Book of Daniel; Esarhaddon especially being renowned for his having built Babylon. Nebuchednezzar has other ‘faces’ as well, he being the so-called Persian king, Cambyses, also named “Nebuchednezzar”, again quite mad, and being a known conqueror of Egypt. Extending matters yet still further, our necessary revisionist folding of ‘Neo’ Babylonia with ‘Middle Kingdom’ Babylonia has likely yielded us the powerful (so-called) Middle Babylonian king Nebuchednezzar I as being another ‘face’ of the ‘Neo’ Babylonian king whom we number as Nebuchednezzar II. In similar fashion, apparently, has our conventional biblico-history sliced and diced into various pieces, Nimrod the mighty hunter king. I have already ventured to re-attach Nimrod to his Akkadian personae as: Sargon of Akkad; the deified Naram-Sin; and Shar-kali-sharri. And to the biblical “Amraphel … king of Shinar” (Genesis 14:1). Other possibilities being Narmer, and those semi-legendary names, Enmerkar and Gilgamesh. Regarding my thesis (2007) identification of Sargon II with Sennacherib, I wrote: Other factors seemingly in favour of the standard view that Sargon II and Sennacherib were two distinct kings may be, I suggest, put down to being ‘two sides of the same coin’.” And I went on to liken that situation to Sargon of Akkad and Naram-Sin, two sides of the same coin. [End of quote] My tentative view is that the Akkadian dynasty needs to be reduced from the customary seven kings, to just five, or even to three, with Sargon himself duplicated in Naram-Sin and Shar-kali-sharri, followed by his two sons, Rimush and Manishtusu. Perhaps Dudu and Shu-turul followed as separate kings (or may, too, be duplicates). On the other hand, whilst the Akkadian kings were greatly celebrated down through the centuries (ibid., p. 68): “There was no doubt in the public imagination that Sargon and Naram-Sin had been the greatest kings who ever ruled. They became the paradigms of powerful rulers and were the subjects of numerous detailed stories, created and preserved for almost two millennia”, this was by no means the case with the Ur III names. On this, I have written, contrastingly: “…. as M. Van de Mieroop tells (A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 – 323 BC, p. 72): Virtually no period of ancient Near Eastern history presents the historian with such an abundance and variety of documentation [as does Ur III]. Indeed, even in all of the ancient histories of Greece and Rome, there are few periods where a similar profusion of textual material is found”. Yet (ibid., p. 72): “Remarkable is the lack of interest in this period by later Mesopotamians when compared to how the Akkadian kings were remembered. …. In later centuries, only a handful of references to the Ur III kings are found”. And this, despite the massive volume of Ur III documentation! Obviously, the Ur III dynasty needs to be subsumed into a viable alter ego dynasty. Dr. Stephanie Mary Dalley - {who showed that the legendary Hanging Gardens were actually situated in Nineveh, not in Babylon (The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced, 2015)} - here is writing for Britannica on the “Sargon ruler of Mesopotamia”: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sargon Sargon, byname Sargon of Akkad, (flourished 23rd century BCE) [sic], ancient Mesopotamian ruler (reigned c. 2334–2279 BCE) who was one of the earliest of the world’s great empire builders, conquering all of southern Mesopotamia [sic] as well as parts of Syria, Anatolia, and Elam (western Iran). He established the region’s first Semitic dynasty and was considered the founder of the Mesopotamian military tradition. Life Sargon is known almost entirely from the legends and tales that followed his reputation through 2,000 years of cuneiform Mesopotamian history, and not from documents that were written during his lifetime. The lack of contemporary record is explained by the fact that the capital city of Agade (Akkad), which he built, has never been located and excavated. It was destroyed at the end of the dynasty that Sargon founded and was never again inhabited, at least under the name of Agade. Damien Mackey’s comment: Some of Dr. Dalley’s article will need geographical correction if I am on the mark in my re-setting of the Shinarian-Akkadian kingdom. For example, Sumer would be irrelevant. Also Kish and Uruk below (and possibly even Elam above) are most unlikely, I think, the well-known sites of those names in Sumer. And Akkad (Agade) is now to be recognised as Ugarit (IKAT). Just like Nimrod, as we shall read further on, Sargon of Akkad was “of humble origins”: According to a folktale, Sargon was a self-made man of humble origins; a gardener, having found him as a baby floating in a basket on the river, brought him up in his own calling. His father is unknown; his own name during his childhood is also unknown; his mother is said to have been a priestess in a town on the middle Euphrates. Rising, therefore, without the help of influential relations, he attained the post of cupbearer to the ruler of the city of Kish, in the north of the ancient land of Sumer [sic]. The event that brought him to supremacy was the defeat of Lugalzaggisi of Uruk (biblical Erech, in central Sumer). Lugalzaggisi had already united the city-states of Sumer by defeating each in turn and claimed to rule the lands not only of the Sumerian city-states but also those as far west as the Mediterranean. Thus, Sargon became king over all of southern Mesopotamia [sic], the first great ruler for whom, rather than Sumerian, the Semitic tongue known as Akkadian was natural from birth, although some earlier kings with Semitic names are recorded in the Sumerian king list. Victory was ensured, however, only by numerous battles, since each city hoped to regain its independence from Lugalzaggisi without submitting to the new overlord. It may have been before these exploits, when he was gathering followers and an army, that Sargon named himself Sharru-kin (“Rightful King”) in support of an accession not achieved in an old-established city through hereditary succession. Historical records are still so meagre, however, that there is a complete gap in information relating to this period. Not content with dominating this area, his wish to secure favourable trade with Agade throughout the known world, together with an energetic temperament, led Sargon to defeat cities along the middle Euphrates to northern Syria and the silver-rich mountains of southern Anatolia. He also dominated Susa, capital city of the Elamites, in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran, where the only truly contemporary record of his reign has been uncovered. Such was his fame that some merchants in an Anatolian city, probably in central Turkey, begged him to intervene in a local quarrel, and, according to the legend, Sargon, with a band of warriors, made a fabulous journey to the still-unlocated city of Burushanda (Purshahanda), at the end of which little more than his appearance was needed to settle the dispute. As the result of Sargon’s military prowess and ability to organize, as well as of the legacy of the Sumerian [sic] city-states that he had inherited by conquest and of previously existing trade of the old Sumerian city-states with other countries, commercial connections flourished with the Indus Valley, the coast of Oman, the islands and shores of the Persian Gulf, [sic] the lapis lazuli mines of Badakhshān, the cedars of Lebanon, the silver-rich Taurus Mountains, Cappadocia, Crete, and perhaps even Greece. During Sargon’s rule Akkadian became adapted to the script that previously had been used in the Sumerian language, and the new spirit of calligraphy that is visible upon the clay tablets of this dynasty is also clearly seen on contemporary cylinder seals, with their beautifully arranged and executed scenes of mythology and festive life. Even if this new artistic feeling is not necessarily to be attributed directly to the personal influence of Sargon, it shows that, in his new capital, military and economic values were not alone important. Because contemporary record is lacking, no sequence can be given for the events of his reign. Neither the number of years during which he lived nor the point in time at which he ruled can be fixed exactly; 2334 BCE is now given as a date on which to hang the beginning of the dynasty of Agade, and, according to the Sumerian king list, he was king for 56 years. The latter part of his reign was troubled with rebellions, which later literature ascribes, predictably enough, to sacrilegious acts that he is supposed to have committed; but this can be discounted as the standard cause assigned to all disasters by Sumerians and Akkadians alike. The troubles, in fact, were probably caused by the inability of one man, however energetic, to control so vast an empire without a developed and well-tried administration. There is no evidence to suggest that he was particularly harsh, nor that the Sumerians disliked him for being a Semite. The empire did not collapse totally, for Sargon’s successors were able to control their legacy, and later generations thought of him as being perhaps the greatest name in their history. Legacy Attributing his success to the patronage of the goddess Ishtar, in whose honour Agade was erected, Sargon of Akkad became the first great empire builder. …. Although the briefly recorded information of his predecessor Lugalzaggisi shows that expansion beyond the Sumerian homeland had already begun, later Mesopotamians looked to Sargon as the founder of the military tradition that runs through the history of their people. …. Two older contemporaries of Sargon are known, Lugalzaggisi (Lugalzagesi), as met above, and Ur-Zababa. Thus: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Ur-Zababa According to the King List, Ur-Zababa was a son of King Puzur-Suen. His mother is unknown.[1][2] His grandmother was the famous Queen Kubaba. Sargon legend The Sargon legend is a Sumerian text purporting to be Sargon's biography. In the text, Ur-Zababa is mentioned, who awakens after a dream. For unknown reasons, Ur-Zababa appoints Sargon as a cupbearer. Soon after this, Ur-Zababa invites Sargon to his chambers to discuss a dream of Sargon's, involving the favor of the goddess Inanna. Ur-Zababa was deeply frightened. In an attempt to kill him, Ur-Zababa sends an unwitting Sargon to deliver his bronze mirror to the E-sikil, where the chief smith, Belic-tikal, will receive it. Ur-Zababa instructed the smith to throw Sargon and the mirror into the statue molds upon arrival. However, on his way to the E-sikil the goddess Inanna instructs Sargon to not enter into the E-sikil, but only meet Belic-tikal at the gate of the E-sikil. This ruins Belic-tikal's chance to kill Sargon, and five to ten days later Sargon reappears in the courts of Ur-Zababa. When Sargon returns to Ur-Zababa, the king becomes frightened again, and decides to send Sargon to Lugal-zage-si of Uruk, with a message on a clay tablet asking him to slay Sargon.[3][4] …. Note the (north) westerly thrust of many of Sargon of Akkad’s conquests: Syria, Anatolia, Agade (Akkad), Crete, Greece, (one can include) Ebla, suggesting that Sargon’s empire was not likely based in the SE, in Sumer. NIMROD AND ABRAM LEGENDS Nissan Mindel tells about this in “Nimrod and Abraham. The Two Rivals”, at: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112333/jewish/Nimrod-and-Abraham.htm Nimrod's Humble Heritage Nimrod the mighty hunter was one of the sons of Kush. Kush was the son of Ham, the lowest and least important of Noah's three sons. Nimrod came from a line which was cursed by Noah: "Cursed be Canaan, a slave of slaves shall he be unto his brothers." By birth, Nimrod had no right to be a king or ruler. But he was a mighty strong man, and sly and tricky, and a great hunter and trapper of men and animals. His followers grew in number, and soon Nimrod became the mighty king of Babylon, and his empire extended over other great cities. As was to be expected, Nimrod did not feel very secure on his throne. He feared that one day there would appear a descendant of Noah's heir and successor, Shem, and would claim the throne. He was determined to have no challenger. Some of Shem's descendants had already been forced to leave that land and build their own cities and empires. There was only one prominent member of the Semitic family left in his country. He was Terah, the son of Nahor. Terah was the eighth generation removed, in a direct line of descendants from Shem. But Nimrod had nothing to fear from Terah, his most loyal and trusted servant. Terah had long before betrayed his family, and had become a follower of Nimrod. All of his ancestors were still living, including Shem himself, but Terah left his ancestral home and became attached to Nimrod. Terah, who should have been the master and Nimrod his slave, became the slave of Nimrod. Like the other people in that country, Terah believed that Nimrod received his kingdom as a gift from the "gods," and was himself a "god." Terah was prepared to serve Nimrod with all his heart. Indeed, he proved himself a very loyal and useful servant. Nimrod entrusted into his hands the command of his armies and made Terah the highest minister in his land. Terah was short of nothing but a wife. So he found himself a wife, whose name was Amathlai. They looked forward to raising a large family, but they were not blessed with any children. The years flew by, and Terah still had no son. His father was only twenty-nine years old when he, Terah, was born. But Terah was getting closer to seventy than to thirty, and yet there was no son! He prayed to Nimrod and to his idols to bless him with a son, but his prayers were not answered. Little did he know that Nimrod felt happy about Terah's misfortune. For although Nimrod had nothing to fear from Terah, he could not be sure if Terah's sons would be as loyal to him as their father. Therefore, he was inwardly very pleased that his servant Terah had no children, and probably would never have any. But he could not be, sure, and Nimrod was not taking chances. He ordered his stargazers and astrologers to watch the sky for any sign of the appearance of a possible rival. Damien Mackey’s comment: The next part reads suspiciously like the Nativity, Magi, and King Herod: The Rise of Abraham One night the star-gazers noticed , a new star rising in the East. Every night it grew brighter. They informed Nimrod. Nimrod called together his magicians and astrologers. They all agreed that it meant that a new baby was to be born who might challenge Nimrod's power. It was decided that in order to prevent this, all new-born baby-boys would have to die, starting from the king's own palace, down to the humblest slave's hut. And who was to be put in charge of this important task? Why, Terah, of course, the king's most trusted servant. Terah sent out his men to round up all expectant mothers. The king's palace was turned into a gigantic maternity ward. A lucky mother gave birth to a girl, and then they were both sent home, laden with gifts. But if the baby happened to be a boy, he was put to death without mercy. One night, Nimrod's star-gazers watching that new star, saw it grow very bright and suddenly dart across the sky, first in one direction then in another, west, east, north and south, swallowing up all other stars in its path. Nimrod was with his star-gazers on the roof of his palace, and saw the strange display in the sky with his own eyes. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded. "There can be only one explanation. A son was born tonight who would challenge the king's power, and the father is none other than Terah." "Terah?!" Nimrod roared. "My own trusted servant?" Nimrod's Rage Nimrod had never given a thought to Terah as becoming a father at the age of seventy. However, if he did become a father, he would surely be glad to offer his first-born son to his king and god! Nimrod dispatched a messenger to Terah at once, ordering him to appear together with his newly born son. That night Terah and his wife Amathlai had indeed become the happy parents of a baby boy, who brought a great light and radiance into their home. Terah had hoped it would be a girl, and he would have no terrible decision to make. Now he could not think of giving up this lovely baby, born to him at his old age after such longing. He had managed to keep his wife's expectancy a secret. None of his servants knew about the birth of his son. There was a secret passage leading from his palace to a cave in the field. He took the baby to that cave and left it there. As he was returning to the palace, past the servants' quarters, he suddenly heard the cry of a baby. What good fortune! Terah cried. It so happened that one of his servants had given birth to a boy about the same time as his own son was born. Terah took the baby and put him in silk swaddling and handed him to his wife to nurse. Just then the king's messenger arrived. When Terah with the baby in his arms appeared before Nimrod, Terah declared: "I was just about to bring my son to you, when your messenger came." Nimrod thought it was mighty loyal of Terah to give up his only son, born to him in his old age. Little did he know that it was not Terah's son who was brought to die, but a servant's. Abraham Emerges For three years little Abraham remained in the cave, where he did not know day from night. Then he came out of the cave and saw the bright sun in the sky, and thought that it was G d, who had created the heaven and the earth, and him, too. But in the evening the sun went down, and the moon rose in the sky, surrounded by myriads of stars. "This must be G d," Abraham decided. But the moon, too, disappeared, and the sun reappeared, and Abraham decided that there must be a G d Who rules over the sun and the moon and the stars, and the whole world. And so, from the age of three years and on, Abraham knew that there was only one G d, and he was resolved to pray to Him and worship Him alone. A life full of many and great adventures began for Abraham …. Abram (Abraham) was indeed, I believe, a younger contemporary of Nimrod. ABRAHAM’S CONTEMPORARIES From Genesis 14, a most important historical document, the toledôt or family history of Terah, father of Abram - who would become Abraham - we learn that Abram’s northern contemporaries were (14:1): “… Amraphel … king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Kedorlaomer king of Elam and Tidal king of Goyim …”. In the next verse (14:2), we learn of five contemporaneous kings in (what we know today as) Palestine, the kings of Pentapolis, against whom the northern kings “… went to war [against] Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar)”. Even though this incident will occur after Abram’s sojourn in Egypt, due to a famine (Genesis 12), I have addressed it first because of its historical and archaeological importance, it thereby serving as a firm base for establishing the true era of Abraham. Dr. John Osgood, who has not succeeded in identifying any of the four invading kings, nor really cares about that: “The problem is not so much one of identification of the kings, for they are named in the narrative and their nations are given”, has nevertheless wonderfully established the foundations for all of this by anchoring, archaeologically, the invasion event, and hence the era of Abram. We find this set out in his article, “The Times of Abraham” (EN Tech. J., vol. 2, 1986, pp. 77–87), and, more recently, in his book, They Speak with One Voice (2020). This is so important that I must take the relevant section from the article (pp. 79-82): A NEW PLACEMENT OF ABRAHAM'S TIME AGAINST THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD In order to arrive at an approximate guide as to where we should look for the times of Abraham we start with the biblical dates from the Flood to Christ, as years B.C., and attempt to reinterpret all the archaeological data against that time scale. This has been done before in “The Times of the Judges — the Archaeology” (see Osgood, EN Tech. J., this volume). The resultant chronological table is reproduced here in Figure 3 with the area of Abraham pin-pointed. It can be seen against this archaeological table that Abraham fits somewhere towards the end of the Neolithic of Jericho passing into the Chalcolithic of Jericho. It is around that approximate area we will now look in the archaeological record to see if we can make positive identification of the times of Abraham. The reader will no doubt appreciate the huge difference in time on the accepted scale between the Chalcolithic of Palestine and the MB I of Palestine. What I am insisting here is that the whole archaeological chronology must be re-evaluated against the biblical record. Let us begin that reevaluation. In order to make positive identification of the period of Abraham we will begin with a narrative in the life of Abraham as taken from Genesis 14. Genesis 14 is a narrative which begins with a confederation of four Mesopotamian kings:– (1) Amraphel, king of Shinar (2) Arioch, king of Ellasar (3) Chedorlaomer, king of Elam (4) Tidal, king of Goiim (Genesis 14:1) These extended their empire to include Palestine, or at least the Jordan valley, and in particular they brought under their suzerainty the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim and Bela — the five cities of the plain. For twelve years (verse 4) this 79 Times of Abraham Figure 3. Composite archaeological table. continued, but in the thirteenth year the kings of the plain rebelled, so in the fourteenth year the four kings of Mesopotamia, apparently with Chedorlaomer as chief, came and attacked the whole region. Now many have been the attempts to identify these kings, for most have realised that if they can be identified in the archaeological record, then the times of Abraham can be found for certain. As R.K. Harrison has put it: “The chronology of the patriarchal period would be stabilized if a reliable identification of the four invading Mesopotamian kings could be made. This may emerge as the result of future excavations in the area, but in the meantime the chronology of the period under consideration must be placed between the twentieth and the late seventeenth centuries B.C.”4 The problem is not so much one of identification of the kings, for they are named in the narrative and their nations are given. Rather it is a problem of identifying the period from which these kings came in an archaeological context. So far this has defied success. However, it is my hope that the discussion here will lay to rest that search as we identify the only period when such a confederation could conceivably have existed. In order to achieve this we will continue the narrative and the search for the details of this narrative in the life of Abraham. When the four kings of Mesopotamia attacked, they followed a particular course which can be seen on the maps in Figures 4 and 5. They came down through Syria into the Bashan area where they attacked the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim (Genesis 14:5). Then they proceeded southwards into Trans Jordan to the later Ammonite area and attacked the Zuzim in Ham. (These are later mentioned in Deuteronomy 2:20.) Moving further south into the region later identified as Moab, they attacked the Emim (Deuteronomy 2:10), and then on they went down into the region which later became Edom, where they attacked the Horites in Mt Seir (see Deuteronomy 2:22). Having completed their conquest of Trans Jordan, they crossed the Arabah into the Negev of later Israel and attacked both En Mishpat (Genesis 14:7) (most likely Kadesh Barnea), and the area later inhabited by the Amalekites which was westward of Kadesh Barnea. Having completed that, they then headed northwards again along the Jordan valley and attacked the Amorites in Hazezon-tamar. Continuing further north, they met in battle the kings of the five cities of the plain, defeated them, took captives and headed north. They were then pursued by Abram with his own private army allied with Aner, Eshcol and Mamre, the Amorite chieftains (Genesis 14:24). They overtook the Mesopotamian kings in Syria, defeated them, and returned with the spoils to Canaan. As is often the case, the positive clue comes from the most insignificant portion of this passage. In Genesis 14:7 we are told that the kings of Mesopotamia attacked “the Amorites who dwelt in Hazezon-tamar”. Now 2 Chronicles 20:2 tells us that Hazezon-tamar is En-gedi, the oasis mentioned in Scripture a number of times on the western shore of the Dead Sea. The passage in Genesis chapter 14, therefore, allows us to conclude that in the days of Abraham there was a civilization in En-gedi on the western shore of the Dead Sea, a civilization of Amorites, and that these were defeated by Chedorlaomer in his passage northward. FOCUS ON EN-GEDI Happily for us, En-gedi has been excavated.5,6 The excavations found only three major periods of settlement at En-gedi:– 1. The Roman period — not relevant here 2. During the Kingdom of Israel — not relevant here 3. During the Chalcolithic of Palestine — the largest and most prolific settlement period. In fact, a building complex was discovered situated on a hill terrace above the spring of En-gedi approximately 150 metres north. This appeared to be a sacred enclosure, similar to the Chalcolithic sanctuary discovered in Stratum XIX at Megiddo. Notably, the enclosure at En-gedi was not destroyed, but was abandoned with the people apparently taking their cult furniture with them. I believe it is more than coincidental that corresponding to our new match on the archaeological table we find that there was in fact a civilization in En-gedi during this archaeological period. The picture becomes even more illuminated when we are led into the various caves around the En-gedi region, and particularly to one called the Cave of the Treasure. In 1960 an expedition of urgency into the Judean desert was conducted by the Hebrew University, the Department of Antiquities, and the Israel Exploration Society with help from the armed forces of Israel. The precipitating motive was to rescue antiquities, such as finds like the Dead Sea Scrolls, from destruction, and to do a complete search of the caves of the Judean desert to look for antiquities for preservation (see Figure 6). Many caves were found and finds were such that it was clear that the greatest time of occupation was the Chalcolithic period. Although the caves themselves were apparently occupied for only a brief period, they testified to prolific civilization and a significant population density in this area greater than for any later one. The conclusion can almost certainly be drawn that the sanctuary at En-gedi was the focal point for their worship. One of the most remarkable caves was the cave of the treasure in Nahal Mishmar. Details have been fully published in ‘The Cave of the Treasure’ by Pessah Bar-Adon.7 A significant treasure of cult artifacts and weapons was found, testifying to a wealth of culture at this period. Bar-Adon comments: “It took us three hours to remove the articles, which were wrapped in a straw mat, from their hiding place — four hundred and twenty nine in all. Apart from six of haematite, six of ivory and one of stone, all the rest are of metal. They were all of a surprisingly high technical standard of workmanship.”8 And he goes on:– “The hoard comprised the following: axes and chisels; hammers; ‘mace heads’; hollow stands decorated with knobs, branches, birds, and animals such as deer, ibex, buffalo, wild goats, and eagle; ‘horns’ [in one of which there was still a piece of thread running through the perforations at the edge); smooth and elaborately ornamented ‘crowns’; small baskets; a pot; a statuette with a human face; sceptres; flag poles; an ivory box; perforated utensils made — as subsequently determined by Prof. Haas — from hippopotamus tusks; and more.”8 They dated it to the Chalcolithic period. Bar-Adon queried the reasons for the articles in this context as if somebody had left them there and intended to return but was not able to. He continues on:– “What induced the owners of this treasure to hide it hurriedly away in the cave? And what was the event that prevented them from taking the treasure out of its concealment and restoring it to its proper place? And what caused the sudden destruction of the Chalcolithic settlements in the Judean Desert and in other regions of Palestine” 8:226 The remarkable thing about this culture also was that it was very similar, if not the same culture, to that found at a place in the southern Jordan Valley called Taleilat Ghassul (which is the type site of this culture), and also resembles the culture of Beersheba. The culture can in fact be called ‘Ghassul culture’ and specifically Ghassul IV. The Ghassul IV culture disappeared from Trans Jordan, Taleilat Ghassul and Beersheba and the rest of the Negev as well as from Hazezon-tamar or Engedi apparently at the same time. It is remarkable when looked at on the map that this disappearance of the Ghassul IV culture corresponds exactly to the areas which were attacked by the Mesopotamian confederate of kings. The fact that En-gedi specifically terminates its culture at this point allows a very positive identification of this civilization, Ghassul IV, with the Amorites of Hazezon-tamar. If that be the case, then we can answer BarAdon’s question very positively. The reason the people did not return to get their goods was that they had been destroyed by the confederate kings of Mesopotamia, in approximately 1,870 B.C. in the days of Abraham. Now as far as Palestine is concerned, in an isolated context, this may be possible to accept, but many might ask: What about the Mesopotamian kings themselves? Others may ask: What does this do to Egyptian chronology? And still further questions need to be asked concerning the origin of the Philistines in the days of Abraham, for the Philistines were closely in touch with Abraham during this same period (Genesis 20). So we must search for evidence of Philistine origins or habitation at approximately the end of the Chalcolithic (Ghassul IV) in Palestine. All these questions will be faced. …. [End of quotes] According to Dr. Osgood’s most invaluable biblical-archaeological synchronisations, Abram belongs to Late Chalcolithic En-geddi, which was synchronous with Ghassul IV in Palestine’s southern Jordan Valley; Stratum V at Arad; and the Gerzean period in Egypt. To this approximate stratigraphical phase belongs as well the enigmatic Narmer. It was the time of the four kings of Genesis 14, who raided Palestine, both east and west of the Jordan, and who successfully made war upon the kings of Pentapolis. The northern coalition was eventually harried and discomforted (unlikely defeated) by Abram and his band, recovering nephew Lot and his possessions (Genesis 14:14-16). The great priest Melchizedek then makes an appearance before the victorious Abram (vv. 18-20). As already noted, he is Noah’s son, Shem, priest and king of Salem. Salem is not Jerusalem, though, as is widely thought. It is clearly a northern town, identified as Shiloh by Fr. John Wijngaards in his article (pp. 2-3): An alternative location for the ancient sanctuary of Shiloh? (1) (PDF) Alternative location for the ancient sanctuary of Shiloh? An alternative location for the ancient sanctuary of Shiloh | John N M Wijngaards - Academia.edu In this essay (1) I will first elaborate how and why topographic information about biblical sites has been lost. (2) I will spell out my reasons for doubting Shiloh's identification with Khirbet Seiloun. (3) I will, from biblical sources, add a brief reconstruction of what Shiloh’s sanctuary must have looked like. (4) I will explain why biblical texts seem to favour a location of Samuel’s Shiloh in the valley of Shechem. (5) I will then proceed to illustrate why Ta'anath Shiloh, i.e. present-day Khirbet et-Tana or Kirbet el- Fauqain the valley of Shechem, could have been the location of early Shiloh. My view on the identification of the biblical Nimrod, as expressed earlier, is that: Sargon of Akkad (in Shinar) = Naram-Sin (= Nimrod) must be the biblical “Amraphel … king of Shinar” (Genesis 14:1). And this is only strengthened by what follows, the legend of Nimrod as a contemporary of Chedorlaomer, with whom, he invaded Palestine. The leader of the invasive force, though, appears to have been the Elamite, Chedorlaomer (Kedorlaomer). And that would accord with what we read in the JewishEncyclopedia article, “Nimrod”: https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11548-nimrod … Nimrod came to wage war with Chedorlaomer, King of Elam, who had been one of Nimrod's generals, and who after the dispersion of the builders of the tower went to Elam and formed there an independent kingdom. Nimrod at the head of an army set out with the intention of punishing his rebellious general, but the latter routed him. Nimrod then became a vassal of Chedorlaomer, who involved him in the war with the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, with whom he was defeated by Abraham ("Sefer ha-Yashar," l.c.; comp. Gen. xiv. 1-17). …. Whilst our composite Nimrod, the tyrant, was indubitably a Great King, the Elamite, Chedorlaomer, apparently had once been merely his ‘general’. And quite possibly the two other coalitional kings, Tidal and Arioch, may also have been more governors, or generals, than actual emperors. While Chedorlaomer (Kudur lagamar) certainly appears to be an Elamite name, I have had cause to wonder if a king from so far away as Elam could have held Palestine in subjugation for twelve long years, as according to the Genesis 14 account. And we have noted that the region of Sumer, and so, likely Elam to some degree (although PPNA did penetrate there), was not highly settled at this particular stage of history. Could there be - given our findings of names duplicated, W to E - another Elam, one closer to Palestine? Furthermore, the Awan with which Elam was then associated has not been identified. King David fought at a Helam (Elam?), for instance (2 Samuel 10:15-18), across the Jordan, but on his side of the Euphrates River, against the Syrians under Hadadezer. We shall meet Hadadezer later in this book as the ‘Assyrian’ potentate Shamsi-Adad I (c. 1800 BC, conventional dating). This Helam, whose “exact location is unknown”, is variously placed, and unhelpfully, either N or S of Damascus. I would favour the latter, S of Damascus in Transjordanian Hauran (the traditional home of the prophet Job = Tobias). https://www.biblicaltraining.org/library/helam HELAM (hē'lăm, Heb. hēlām). A place in the Syrian desert east of the Jordan where David defeated the forces of Hadadezer, king of Zobah (2Sam.10.16-2Sam.10.17). The exact location is unknown. ________________________________________ HELAM he’ ləm (חֵילָ֑ם). The place to which the Syrians under Hadadezer retreated and were defeated by David (2 Sam 10:16, 17), after Joab initially beat them before the city of the Ammonites. The location is uncertain, although Ezekiel 47:16 LXX, would indicate its location was N of Damascus toward Hamath. It is possibly identical with Alema (modern ’Alma), mentioned in 1 Maccabees 5:26 and the Egyp. Execration texts (c. 1850 b.c.), S of Damascus, in Hauran. In this case, Genesis 14’s “Elam” (if Helam) would be situated far more conveniently than the Elam in far-distant Iran, for Chedorlaomer to have subdued Palestine (14:4): “For twelve years they [the kings of Pentapolis] had been subject to Chedorlaomer, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled”. Note, also, that the invasion of coalitional kings begins approximately in the Hauran region, at Ashteroth Karnaim against the Rephaïtes (vv. 5-7): In the fourteenth year, Chedorlaomer and the kings allied with him went out and defeated the Rephaites in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzites in Ham, the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim and the Horites in the hill country of Seir, as far as El Paran near the desert. Then they turned back and went to En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and they conquered the whole territory of the Amalekites, as well as the Amorites who were living in Hazezon Tamar. This region of Hauran, with Ashteroth [and] Karnaim, was directly south of Damascus (refer to map). In the Book of Tobit, as we now have it, Damascus is wrongly called “Rages” (Rhages), whilst Bashan is given as “Ecbatana”, thereby confusingly suggesting a Median geography. I have corrected this as follows: … I had specifically claimed that “Rages”, a city in the mountains, must be the city of Damascus that dominated the province of Batanaea”. Damascus, almost 700 m above sea level, is actually situated on a plateau. Secondly, I gave very specific geographical details in order to identify this “Rages” in relation to “Ecbatana” (Tobit 5:6), which I had in turn identified (following the Heb. Londinii, or HL, fragment version of Tobit) with “Bathania”, or Bashan (possibly Herodotus’ Syrian Ecbatana as opposed to the better known Median Ecbatana). According to Tobit, “Rages is situated in the mountains, two days’ walk from Ecbatana which is in the plain”. Now Damascus is precisely two days’ walk from Bashan in the Hauran plain, as according to Jâkût el-Hamawi who says of Batanaea’s most central town of Nawâ …: “Between Nawa and Damascus is two days’ journey”. What further consolidates the fact that Tobit’s ‘Ecbatana’ was in a westerly direction, rather than an easterly one, is that his son Tobias, leaving Nineveh, arrived at the Tigris river in the evening; an impossibility were he heading for Median Ecbatana in the east. And, according to the Vulgate version of Tobit, Charan, that is, Haran, is situated “in the halfway” between Nineveh and Ecbatana. The traveller is clearly journeying towards the west. Whilst Bible scholars today tend to dismiss the whole geography of the Book of Tobit as nonsensical, a simple adjustment based on a genuine version (Heb. Londinii), makes perfect – even very precise (“two days walk”) – sense of it. …. With Chedorlaomer’s Elam now potentially Helam, conveniently situated in N Transjordan, we may be in a position to identify the so far unlocated Awan that is associated with Elam. W.F. Albright refers to a Kefr ‘Awân in the region, in his article, “The Jordan Valley in the Bronze Age” (The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 1924 - 1925, Vol. 6): https://www.jstor.org/stable/3768510 The Mut-ba‘lu named here will re-emerge later in this book as the oldest son of the notorious King Ahab of Israel. Albright explains it geographically (pp. 40-41): … Mut-ba‘lu suddenly mentions a certain Šulum-Marduk, with a Babylonian name, and proceeds to say that Aštarti (‘Aštarôt of the Bible), modern Tell ‘Aštarah in western Haurân, has been rescued, but that seven (other) towns of the land of Gari have become hostile, while the towns of Ḫawini and Yabiši have been captured - by whom is not clear. The latter two towns are apparently not in Gari, and may be identified with Jabesh-gilead not yet identified, but situated on the Wâdī Yâbis six miles southeast of Pella … with Kefr ‘Awân, situated two or three miles north of the neighborhood indicated for Jabesh. …. If the geography of the four invading kings has need to be shifted further westwards (as indeed I have done already in the case of Amraphel’s “Shinar”), then Arioch’s “Ellasar” could perhaps be the important Mediterranean port of Ullaza; whilst Tidal’s “Goiim” might have been as close to Abram as Harosheth-Ha Goiim (Judges 4:13), where Tidal perhaps served as a general for Chedorlaomer – just as Sisera would later serve there for king Jabin of Hazor (4:2): “So the LORD sold them into the hands of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. Sisera, the commander of his army, was based in Harosheth Haggoyim”. With Amraphel identified potentially as a composite Nimrod (Sargon/Naram-Sin/ Shar-kali-sharri), then we find that there was indeed a time here of prominence (and sometimes dominance) by a state (or fort?) called Elam. In the case of Naram-Sin, for instance, there was a treaty with Elam (or Awan): https://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=the_old_elamite_treaty_of_naram-sin The Treaty of Naram-Sin This royal treaty between Old Akkadian king Naram-Sin and an unnamed Elamite ruler is one of the oldest and most important witnesses for Old Elamite language, written in an Old Akkadian ductus. The document begins by invoking the names of Elamite gods, and includes also a few Sumerian and Akkadian deities. Old Elamite is poorly understood, and the text presents many difficulties, but since Scheil’s initial publication, one particularly important line has been often quoted: “L’ennemi naramsinien est mon ennemi, l’ami naramsinien est mon ami!” (Scheil 1911: 6) On top of this text’s linguistic and paleographic interest, it also offers a rare look at regional diplomacy during the Old Akkadian period, the presumed Sargonic ‘state archives’ never having been found (Westenholz: p 102). While Cameron suggested in 1936 that “the Elamite is obviously admitting his vassalage to the ruler of Agade”, Hinz (and following publications) later argued that the document does not represent one party’s submission to the other, but rather records an alliance between the two kings and the exchange of gifts presented by envoys (Hinz 1967: 95). Since Cameron (1936 pp. 34) it has been generally maintained that Hita, 11th king of Awan, is the most likely ruler represented by the text (though see comments by Lambert 1991: p 54). Naram-Sin is not deified in the text, perhaps suggesting that the agreement was concluded early in his reign, before his traditional scribal deification, or that the writing is a function of political posturing with respect to the Elamites (Hinz: 96). This document is also a rare representative of an Elamite-speaking elite at Old Akkadian Susa, providing for a different characterisation of the city than the otherwise traditionally Old Akkadian administrative texts from the same site would have allowed (Lambert 1991: 54). It stands as an important early witness to a long history of cultural and political tension and interaction between Mesopotamia and the various entities associated with the name Elam. And Van de Mieroop likewise tells (op. cit., p. 63. My emphasis): Naram-Sin concluded a treaty with an unnamed ruler or high official of Susa, a document written in the Elamite language. The agreement specified no submission to Akkad, only a promise by the Elamite to regard Naram-Sin's enemies as his own. The autonomy of Elam should not be underestimated. In the case of Shar-kali-sharri, Elam may have conquered Akkad. And we know the name of the Elamite king at the time, who would now become my favoured candidate for the biblical Chedorlaomer: namely, Puzur-Inshuhinak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzur-Inshushinak Puzur-Inshushinak (Linear Elamite: Puzur Šušinak, Akkadian: 𒌋𒌋𒀭𒈹𒂞, puzur3-dinšušinak, also 𒅤𒊭𒀭𒈹𒂞, puzur4-dinšušinak "Calling Inshushinak"), also sometimes thought to read Kutik-Inshushinak in Elamite,[3] was king of Elam, around 2100 BC,[4] and the last from the Awan dynasty according to the Susa kinglist.[5] He mentions his father's name as Šimpi-išhuk, which, being an Elamite name, suggests that Puzur-Inshuhinak himself was Elamite.[6] In the inscription of the "Table au Lion", he appears as "Puzur-Inshushin(ak) Ensi (Governor) of Susa, Shakkanakku (Military Governor) of the country of Elam" (𒅤𒊭𒀭𒈹𒂞 𒑐𒋼𒋛 𒈹𒂞𒆠 𒄊𒀴 𒈣𒋾 𒉏𒆠 puzur-inshushinak ensi shushiki skakkanakku mati NIMki), a title used by his predecessors Eshpum, Epirmupi and Ili-ishmani as governors of the Akkadian Empire for the territory of Elam.[2][7] In another inscription, he calls himself the "Mighty King of Elam", suggesting an accession to independence from the weakening Akkadian Empire.[8] His father was Shinpi-khish-khuk, the crown prince, and most likely a brother of king Khita. Kutik-Inshushinak's first position was as governor of Susa, which he may have held from a young age. About 2110 BC, his father died, and he became crown prince in his stead. Elam had been under the domination of Akkad since the time of Sargon, and Kutik-Inshushinak accordingly campaigned in the Zagros mountains on their behalf. He was greatly successful as his conquests seem to have gone beyond the initial mission. In 2090 BC, he asserted his independence from king Shar-Kali-Sharri of the Akkadian Empire, which had been weakening ever since the death of Naram-Sin, thus making himself king of Elam.[9] He conquered Anshan and managed to unite most of Elam into one kingdom.[9] According to the inscriptions of Ur-Nammu, Puzur-Inshushinak conquered numerous cities in central Mesopotamia, including Eshnunna and Akkad, and probably Akshak.[10] His conquests probably encroached considerably on Gutian territory, gravely weakening them, and making them unable to withstand the Neo-Sumerian revolt of Utu-hengal.[11] The Elamite name of Puzur-Inshushinak: Pu-zu-r Šu-ši-na-k in the Linear Elamite script (right to left).[12] He built extensively on the citadel at Susa, and encouraged the use of the Linear Elamite script to write the Elamite language. This may be seen as a reaction against Sargon's attempt to force the use of Akkadian. Most inscriptions in Linear Elamite date from the reign of Kutik-Inshushinak. …. Elam fell under control of the Shimashki dynasty (also Elamite of origin).[14] Surely, now, this “Shimashki” must refer to – in my revised geographical context – the ancient city (state) of Damascus, of which the Arabic Dimašq (Dimashk) is almost a perfect transliteration. I shall have cause, later in this book, to reject the new idea that the reign of the Elamite, Puzur-Inshuhinak, overlapped into the Ur III dynasty: It is now known that his reign in Elam overlapped with that of Ur-Nammu of Ur-III,[15] although the previous lengthy estimates of the duration of the intervening Gutian dynasty and rule of Utu-hengal of Uruk had not allowed for that synchronism. Ur-Nammu, who styled himself "King of Sumer and Akkad" is probably the one who, early in his reign, reconquered the northern territories that had been occupied by Puzur-Inshushinak, before going on to conquer Susa.[16] As Nimrod (Sargon) later expanded eastward, to Nineveh, so it appears that Chedorlaomer (if Puzur-Inshuhinak), apparently quite a cultured individual, began the real civilisation of Susa in eastern Elam. The Akkadian dynasty is supposed to have been ended by the Guti, a people Dr. Osgood has associated with the Elamites, Kassites and Lullubi. The King List records twenty or twenty-one Gutian kings ruling Sumer and Akkad, totalling 125 years, although it is uncertain whether at the time of the invasion they had a king or were still barbarian hordes. One suspects that these Guti, too, may be in need of a dynastic alter ego. Part Six: Patriarchs and Egypt Contents: Abram and Egypt .……………………. p. 94-96 Isaac and Egypt ……………….………. p. 97-103 Jacob and Egypt …………………..….. p. 104-125 ABRAM AND EGYPT The era of Abram in Egypt, and during the raid of the four kings, is to be located archaeologically in Late Chalcolithic En-geddi, as we have found. This corresponds to the Gerzean period in Egypt. (Abram) Abraham’s very long life (Genesis 25:7): “Abraham lived a hundred and seventy-five years”, will continue on into the Early Bronze I Age of city building. I like Dr. Osgood’s neat arrangement of: Abraham (Early Bronze I) Jacob (Early Bronze II) Moses (Early Bronze III It is not going to be far from the mark. Tradition has Egypt’s first dynastic king, Menes, as the Egyptian contemporary of Abraham – a view that I would be inclined to support. The rulers of Egypt were not known that far back as “Pharaoh”, a Greek word from the Egyptian Per-aa, meaning “Great House”. Scribal editors have obviously inserted a title that would actually have been quite anachronistic at the time of the Patriarchs, this usage not having come into effect until Egypt’s New Kingdom (Eighteenth Dynasty). We are currently almost a millennium before that (in revised terms). Matters historical begin to co-ordinate rather well now, because it seems that we can know who was Menes’ Akkadian contemporary. Menes’ Akkadian contemporary was apparently Naram-Sin who boasted of having subdued Manium, or Mannu (Dannu = the Great), of Magan, which, as we learned, was Egypt. Mannu the Great was Menes of Egypt’s First Dynasty. Here we must thank W. F. Albright for making this vital connection even in the face of the accepted 3100 BC for Menes and the beginning of Egyptian dynastic history. (“Menes and Narâm-Sin”, JEA, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Apr., 1920), pp. 89-98) Albright can be like that, a rigorous conventionalist who sometimes makes a startling push beyond the textbook envelope. Narmer, generally presumed to have been a pre-dynastic Egyptian ruler, and who may be accepted so by Dr. Osgood, is archaeologically located by the latter in “late Gerzean” (“A Better Model for the Stone Age”, EN Tech. J., vol. 2, 1986, p. 100): The supersedure of Gerzean culture seems to indicate a pre-Dynastic Northern dominance. …. It would be against this that the South fought in the wars that finally led to unification and the Dynastic history of Egypt, firstly under Scorpion then under Narmer, and then under Menes/Hor-aha. Narmer was apparently late Gerzean — Chalcolithic, and was contemporary with Arad I … or the end of Ghassul IV in Palestine, the end of which has before been dated at around 1870 B.C. during the days of Abraham. For the archaeology of Abram, I have been indebted to Dr (Medical) John Osgood, a Creationist, and his vital research in “The Times of Abraham”, Ex Nihilo TJ, Vol. 2, 1986, pp. 77-87: https://creation.com/the-times-of-abraham Regarding the location of Narmer, Osgood explains as follows: We have placed the end of the Chalcolithic of the Negev, En-gedi, Trans Jordan and Taleilat Ghassul at approximately 1870 B.C., being approximately at Abraham’ 80th year. Early Bronze I Palestine (EB I) would follow this, significantly for our discussions. Stratum V therefore at early Arad (Chalcolithic) ends at 1870 B.C., and the next stratum, Stratum IV (EB I), would begin after this. Stratum IV begins therefore some time after 1870 B.C.. This is a new culture significantly different from Stratum V.112 Belonging to Stratum IV, Amiram found a sherd with the name of Narmer (First Dynasty of Egypt),10, 13 and she dates Stratum IV to the early part of the Egyptian Dynasty I and the later part of Canaan EB I. Amiram feels forced to conclude a chronological gap between Stratum V (Chalcolithic) at Arad and Stratum IV EB I at Arad.12:116 However, this is based on the assumption of time periods on the accepted scale of Canaan’ history, long time periods which are here rejected. The chronological conclusion is strong that Abraham’s life-time corresponds to the Chalcolithic in Egypt, through at least a portion of Dynasty I of Egypt, which equals Ghassul IV through to EB I in Palestine. The possibilities for the Egyptian king of the Abrahamic narrative are therefore:- 1. A late northern Chalcolithic king of Egypt, or 2. Menes or Narmer, be they separate or the same king (Genesis 12:10-20). [End of quote] The beginnings of Egyptian dynastic history, once Sothically dated to 4240 BC, but now to 3100 BC, need to be lowered even further to c. 1900 BC, based on the synchronism of the first dynastic king, Menes, with Abram. Dr. (as he then was) Albright, leaving convention right behind him for a moment, made Menes a contemporary of Naram-Sin of Akkad, who will correspondingly need to be lowered to c. 1900 BC, but not as far down as Menes (3100 BC, conventional) has to be lowered, because Naram-Sin is conventionally dated to c. 2250 BC. Given the archaeological presence in Canaan at this time of Narmer - he showing, perhaps, certain non-Egyptian characteristics - then this Narmer now, I think, becomes a prize candidate for either Naram-Sin, or his ally, Chedorlaomer. Abram lived at a time of, as we are finding, some extremely famous and influential biblico-historical characters. A Note: During the Covid lockdown I was in the process of writing a highly ambitious history of the world which included the AD era as well, I being aware that that, too, was in need of a radical revision. This ‘book’ I had entitled: From Genesis to Hernán Cortés. Some of AD so-called ‘history’ is actually non history, BC history projected into an alleged AD world. Now here is an example of this BC to AD projection pertaining to Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, of Genesis 14. Previously I have written about this: “… Chlodomer shared in the fourfold partition of his father’s kingdom in 511 …”., Encyclopaedia Britannica The name of the supposed C6th AD Frankish king, Chlodomer (Clodomir or Clodomer, c. 495 - 524 AD), immediately hit me - on first hearing of it - as being almost identical to the biblical name, Chedorlaomer. And the belief that the kingdom which Chlodomer “shared” involved, as in the above quote, a “fourfold partition”, has not done anything to diminish this first impression. For Chedorlaomer, too, was part of a fourfold coalition of kings (Genesis 14:1-11): Chlodomer, like Chedorlaomer, attacked in an easterly direction, with the assistance of three other kings (Chlotar I, Childebert I and Theodoric I): https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chlodomer …. The eldest son of Clovis I by Clotilda, Chlodomer shared in the fourfold partition of his father’s kingdom in 511, receiving lands in western and central France; his was the only one of the four kingdoms to form a single geographical unit on both sides of the Loire River. …. ISAAC AND EGYPT Upon close examination, the Book of Genesis appears to provide us with several vital clues about the “Pharaoh” encountered by Abram and Sarai, and, later, by Isaac and Rebekah. There may be such clues from a study of the structure of the relevant Genesis passages, from toledôt and chiasmus, as can assist us in determining just who was, in the Egyptian records, this enigmatic ruler. Toledôt and chiasmus, the keys to the structure of the Book of Genesis, may lead us to a real name for this “Pharaoh”. 1. The Toledoth Guide Since it was common in ancient Egyptian documents for the ruler of Egypt to be referred to therein simply by a title, not by a personal name, critics are not correct, therefore, in their claim that the lack of an Egyptian name (such as e.g. a “Khety”, “Thutmose”, or “Ramesses”) for the ruler in the case of the Abram and Joseph narratives of Genesis (cf. 12:15 and 39:1) is a further testimony, as they think, to these texts being unhistorical. Since these texts refer to the ruler of Egypt only as “Pharaoh” (an anachronistic term with regard to pre-New Kingdom Egypt, as noted on p. 95), it is argued that we ought not to take them as being serious histories. It appears, however, from a consideration of the structure of the Book of Genesis, that the Holy Spirit may have a trick for us all, at least in the case of Abram’s history. From the now well-known theory of toledôt (a Hebrew feminine plural), we might be surprised to learn that so great a Patriarch as Abram (later Abraham), did not sign off the record of his own history (as did e.g. Adam, Noah, and Jacob). No, Abram’s story was recorded instead by his two chief sons, Ishmael and Isaac. “These are the generations of Ishmael ...” (Genesis 25:12). “These are the generations of Isaac ...” (Genesis 25:19). So, there were two hands at work in this particular narrative, and this fact explains the otherwise strange repetition of several famous incidents recorded in the narrative. And it is in the second telling of the incident of the abduction of Abram’s wife, Sarai (later Sarah), that we encounter the name of the ruler who, in the first telling of it, is called simply “Pharaoh”. He is “Abimelech” (20:2). Admittedly, there are such seeming differences between the two accounts, as regards names, geography and chronology, as perhaps to discourage one from considering them to be referring to the very same incident; and that despite such obvious similarities as: - the Patriarch claiming that his beautiful wife was his “sister”; - the ruler of the land taking her for his own; - he then discovering that she was already married (underlined by plagues); - and asking the Patriarch why he had deceived him by saying that the woman was his sister; - the return of the woman to her husband, whose possessions are now augmented. The seeming contradictions between the two accounts are that, whereas the first narrated incident occurs in Egypt, and the covetous ruler is a “Pharaoh”, the second seems to be located in southern Palestine, with the ruler being “King Abimelech of Gerar”, and who (according to a somewhat similar incident again after Isaac had married Rebekah) was “King Abimelech of the Philistines” (26:1). Again, in the first narrated account, the Patriarch and his wife have their old names, Abram and Sarai, whereas in the second account they are referred to as Abraham and Sarah, presumably indicating a later time. In the first narrated account, the “Pharaoh” is “afflicted with great plagues because of Sarai”, whereas, in the second, “God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children” (20:17). The differences can be explained fairly easily. Ishmael understandably wrote his father’s history from an Egyptian perspective, because his mother, Hagar, was “an Egyptian slave-girl” in Abram’s household, and she later “got a wife for [Ishmael] from the land of Egypt” (cf. 16:1 and 21:21). Ishmael names his father “Abram” because that is how he was known to Ishmael. Moreover, the incident with “Pharaoh” had occurred while the Patriarch was still called Abram. Isaac was not even born until some 25 years after this incident. His parents were re-named as Abraham and Sarah just prior to his birth. So, naturally, Isaac refers to them as such in the abduction incident, even though they were then Abram and Sarai. Again, there is no contradiction geographically between Egypt and Gerar because we are distinctly told in Ishmael’s account that it was just before the family went to Egypt (12:11) that Abram had told his wife that she was to be known as his sister. Gerar is on the way to Egypt. Finally, whether the one whom Isaac calls “Abimelech” was still, in Isaac’s day, “Pharaoh” of Egypt - as he had been in former times - he most definitely was, at least, ruler over the Philistines at Gerar. Perhaps he ruled both lands, Egypt and Philistia. Be that as it may, the Holy Spirit has apparently provided the name of Abram’s “Pharaoh”. But one needs to respect His literary structures to discover that name. We now know his personal name: “Abimelech”. In Hebrew (אֲבִימֶלֶךְ) this name means “Father is King”, or “Father of the King”. Since Abimelech is not an Egyptian name, and since the other designation that we have for him is simply “Pharaoh”, that data, in itself, will not take us to the next step of being able to identify this ruler in the Egyptian historical (or dynastic) records. But that our Abimelech may have - according to the progression of Ishmael’s and Isaac’s toledôt histories - ruled Egypt and then gone on to rule Philistia, could well enable us to locate this ruler archaeologically. Dr. John Osgood has already done much of the ‘spade work’ for us here, firstly by nailing the archaeology of En-geddi at the time of Abram (in the context of Genesis 14) to the Late Chalcolithic period, corresponding to Ghassul IV in Palestine’s southern Jordan Valley; Stratum V at Arad; and the Gerzean period in Egypt (“The Times of Abraham”, Ex Nihilo TJ, Vol. 2, 1986, pp. 77-87); and secondly by showing that, immediately following this period, there was a migration out of Egypt into Philistia, bringing an entirely new culture (= Early Bronze I, Stratum IV at Arad). P. 86: “In all likelihood Egypt used northern Sinai as a springboard for forcing her way into Canaan with the result that all of southern Canaan became an Egyptian domain”. 2. The Chiasmus Guide Kenneth Griffith (his co-written articles have previously been quoted), in an e-mail, came up with the very interesting proposal of chiasmus that he thought might even verify my view, Abimelech = Pharaoh. He wrote: …. Though men can write chiastically, only God can write historical chiasmus by causing events to happen in a symmetrical manner. I am quite open to the idea that Abimelech might have been the [Pharaoh]. However, you need to deal with the literary structure of the passage in question. I think chiasmus is a far better explanation in this case than having two authors. …. Kenneth has thus further confirmed my merging of “Pharaoh” with “Abimelech” by kindly providing the following chiastic structure for this part of the Book of Genesis: Genesis 12- A - Promise, Test (leave father's house), Worship Promise of Blessing Leave and go to another land. Abraham and Lot Depart Promise of Land Builds Altar B - Crisis, Attack, Conflict, Child 1 - Attack on Woman (Pharoah) Famine Goes down to Egypt Call yourself my sister Plagues Abram leaves with wealth 2 - Crisis with Lot and Canaanites (Sodom plundered) Abraham "comes up" from Egypt Great Wealth Parts the land with Lot God promises all the Land he can see. dwelt by Terebinth trees of Mamre Amraphel 4 kings invade Abram Rescues Lot Melchizedek blesses Abram Bread and Wine Plunderestored 3 - Promise Hagar Sarah Conflict I Vision "I am your shield and reward" Abram - I have no children Your descendants shall be as stars Proof of giving land Covenant with halved animals Prophesy of Egyptian bondage God goes between pieces Promise of land from Nile to Euphrates Sarai No children Gives Hagar in 10th year Child Conceived Hagar offends Sarai Hagar flees pregnant, prophecy of Ishmael Hagar returns, bears Ishmael, Abram 86 C. Abram 99, God makes new covenant Abram – and Abraham, father many nations, very fruitful Circumcision Sarai – and Sarah, will have son Abraham circumcised Ishmael, and household B' – Crisis, Attack, Conflict, Child (Sodom destroyed) 2'. Crisis with Lot and Canaanites Lord appears by terebinth trees of Mamre, judgment on Sodom Son will appear in a year Sarah laughs, his name shall be laughter (Isaac) Abraham intercedes for Sodom If there were 50 I would save it. If there are 10 I would save it. God and Abraham depart Angels enter Sodom Lot gives lodging Men of City demand men Angels blind them Angels say, collect your family Son in laws don't listen Lot flees with family Lot escapes to Zoar God overthrows cities Lot's wife turned to vapor Abraham goes to where he had met with God Sodom and Gomorrah and plain smoking like furnace God remembered Abraham and delivered Lot Lot with his daughters Birth of Moab and Ammon 1' - Attack on Woman II leading to Child (Abimelech – and Isaac) Abraham journeys South (goes down), dwelt between Kadesh and Shur "she is my sister" Abimelech King of Gerar sends for Sarah God warns in dream Abimelech judges Abraham sends him away with money. Lord visits Sarah as promised, Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son, at set time. Abraham calls his son Isaac. Abraham circumcised Isaac. Sarah rejoices. 3.' [ Promise + Sarah – and Hagar conflict II ] (This time Hagar gets the promise.) Child weaned and feasted. Ishmael scoffed and sent away. Hagar meets God again in desert. God promises great nation to Ishmael Hagar finds water and gets a wife for her son from Egypt. Abraham makes a covenant with Abimelech Abraham finds his own well of water at Beersheeba. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, in land of Philistines. A' Promise, Test, Worship God calls Abraham, tells him to go to Land of Moriah Abraham goes. God tests him with Isaac. Builds Altar Abraham obeys. God promises many descendants, stars of heaven and seashore, possess gates of enemies. Blessing. Abraham returns to Beersheba and dwelt there. [End of Kenneth’s chiasmus] Note how B. 1 and B’. 1’ merge beautifully with “Pharaoh” in B. 1 reflecting “Abimelech in B’. 1’. We have thus learned that the biblical “Pharaoh”: Was the same as the Abimelech of Gerar, ruler of the Philistines, contemporaneous with both Abram (Abraham) and Isaac. Which means that: This particular pharaoh must have reigned for at least 60+ years (the span from Abram’s famine to the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah). The era of Abram also closely approximated, we have found - as archaeologically determined by Dr. John Osgood - the time of Narmer. Now, while some consider this Narmer to have been the father of Egypt’s first pharaoh, Menes, my preference is for Narmer as the invasive Akkadian king, Naram-Sin, or, alternatively, as the Elamite, Chedorlaomer. I am also inclined to accept the view that the classical name “Menes” arose from the nomen, Min, of pharaoh Hor-Aha (“Horus the Fighter”). Most importantly, according to Manetho, Hor (“Menes”) ruled for more than 60 years (http://www.phouka.com/pharaoh/pharaoh/dynasties/dyn01/01menes.html). Moreover, Emmet Sweeney has provided a strong argument for a close convergence in time of the Patriarch Abraham and Menes (http://www.emmetsweeney.net/article-directory/item/70-abraham-and). My tentative estimation would be that Abram came to Egypt at the approximate time of Narmer, and right near the beginning of the long reign of Hor-Aha ‘Min’ (Menes), who in his youthfulness had fancied Sarai. However, by the end of the Pharaoh’s long reign, at the time when Isaac had married Rebekah, the Pharaoh (as Abimelech) no longer sought personal involvement with the young woman, but rather commented (Genesis 26:10): ‘What if one of the men had taken Rebekah for himself?’ Now, I cannot help noticing that (and it may be just a coincidence) the presumably Hebrew name, Abimelech, is virtually a perfect anagram for Lehabim, one of the sons of the Hamitic Mizraim, who is variously known as Egypt (Genesis 10:6, 13): The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt [Mizraim], Put, and Canaan. …. Egypt fathered Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, Casluhim (from whom the Philistines came), and Caphtorim. This could have significant ramifications. The father of Hor-Aha (Menes) is not known for certain – though Narmer is often presumed to have been that father. This would not be the case, of course, if Narmer were to be found, as I have suggested, amongst the four invading kings of Genesis 14. The father could well be Mizraim himself, the legendary founder of dynastic Egypt, who, though, can also be identified as Menes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizraim However, according to George Syncellus, the Book of Sothis, attributed to Manetho, identified Mizraim with the legendary first Pharaoh Menes, who is said to have unified the Old Kingdom and built Memphis. Mizraim also seems to correspond to Misor, who is said in Phoenician mythology to have been the father of Taautus, who was given Egypt, and later scholars noticed that it also recalls Menes, whose son or successor was said to be Athothis. If the biblical Abimelech were Hor-Aha ‘Min’ (Menes), as I favour, then Mizraim, potentially his father, would possibly be the last pre-dynastic king, say, Scorpion (“the Scorpion King”). In our reconstruction of ancient Egyptian history - along with that of Mesopotamia, and other regions - we are going to find that kings, dynasties, and even major Kingdoms and Intermediate periods, can overlap, can be synchronous, and with much duplication of rulers and locations going on. The First Dynasty of Egypt, for instance, may well be contemporaneous with, at least in part, the Second Dynasty of Egypt. Now, there is a king’s name in the Second Dynasty, namely Raneb, that may translate with at least the same meaning as Abimelech. Previously I have written on this: Abimelech (אֲבִימֶלֶךְ) is a Hebrew name comprising two elements, “father” and “king”, and it is generally translated as “Father is king”. But the first element of the name can also mean “Creator”, hence: “Creator is king”. Now let us compare this, “Creator is king”, with the meaning of Raneb. Raneb (or Nebra) means “Ra is lord”, or “Ra is king”. But who was Ra? “Ra … represents sunlight, warmth and growth. It was only natural that the ancient Egyptians would believe him to be the creator of the world …”. http://www.ancient-egypt-online.com/egyptian-god-ra.html Basically, then, the two names, “Abimelech” and “Raneb”, can be translated broadly as: “[THE] CREATOR IS KING [LORD]”. So it is encouraging to find at least that during the approximate era of Abraham and Isaac the structure and meaning of the name of the one I have proposed as being Abram’s “Pharaoh” are mirrored by the name of a known pharaoh of the Archaïc dynastic era of Egypt. JACOB AND EGYPT Most interesting that Jacob went to relatives in Harran (my “Babel”), or Paddan Aram, to get a wife for himself, and, on the way, had a vision of a Ladder, or a Stairway to Heaven (perhaps something like Nimrod had envisaged, but for devious purposes). Genesis 28:1-5: So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him: ‘Do not marry a Canaanite woman. Go at once to Paddan Aram, to the house of your mother’s father Bethuel. Take a wife for yourself there, from among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham’. Then Isaac sent Jacob on his way, and he went to Paddan Aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, who was the mother of Jacob and Esau. The advice that Isaac gives to his son, Jacob, would be repeated by Tobit to his son, Tobias (= Job), who recalls “Isaac and Jacob” (Tobit 4:12): ‘Above all, marry a woman of our tribe, because we are descendants of the prophets. Do not marry anyone who is not related to us. Remember that Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, our earliest ancestors, all married relatives. God blessed them with children, and so their descendants will inherit the land of Israel’. Jacob got more than he expected, returning home with four wives, many children, “large flocks, and female and male servants, and camels and donkeys” (Genesis 30:43). The name Bethel, “House of God”, was given to more than one location in Israel. It was the name Jacob gave to the place where he had the vision of the Ladder-Stairway (Genesis 28:10-19): Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it[c] stood the LORD, and he said: I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you’. When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it’. He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven’. Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz. The northern Bethel, where King Jeroboam of Israel (much later) would set up one of his golden calves (I Kings 12:29), was the important Shechem, where Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, would be raped by a Canaanite prince called Shechem, leading to the mass execution of the Shechemites by Jacob’s fiery sons, Simeon and Levi (Genesis 34). Though Jacob was horrified by his two sons’ violent action (34:30): ‘You have brought trouble on me by making me obnoxious to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land. We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed’, they quipped back (v. 31): ‘Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?’ About a millennium later, the Simeonite heroine, Judith, residing at Shechem (“Bethulia”), will praise her ancestor Simeon’s defence of Dinah (Judith 9:2-3): ‘O Lord God of my ancestor Simeon, to whom you gave a sword to take revenge on those strangers who had torn off a virgin’s clothing[a] to defile her and exposed her thighs to put her to shame and profaned her womb to disgrace her, for you said, ‘It shall not be done’—yet they did it, so you gave up their rulers to be killed …’. Tradition has Dinah as the mother of Asenath, whom Jacob’s son Joseph would marry in Egypt (Genesis 41:50). By age seventeen, this Joseph, loved more by his father Jacob than any of his brothers, and given an ornate coat by his father, had become an object of jealousy for Jacob’s other sons (Genesis 37:1-4). Joseph is very much of a Daniel figure, a perfect youth, who dreams and has the power to interpret dreams. But his interpretations only further rankled his brothers (37:5-11). Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. He said to them, ‘Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it’. His brothers said to him, ‘Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?’ And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. ‘Listen’, he said, ‘I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me’. When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, ‘What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?’ His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. Cf. Luke 2:19 Those interested in the Scriptures can be fascinated, I have found, by astronomy - the zodiac, and its relation to the twelve tribes of Israel (Jacob). There is a false astrology, condemned by the Bible (e.g. Deuteronomy 18:10-12; cf. Leviticus 19:26; Isaiah 47:13-14; Jeremiah 10:2), and a true astrology based on God’s structural design - from the beginning - of the heavenly bodies for “signs and seasons” (Genesis 1:14). Since everything that God has created through his Wisdom has been effected with marvellous precision and meaning, there must be a profound significance to the structure of the universe. Wise souls down through the ages have sought to make sense of it all, with the wisest - those prepared to be instructed by the Designer - such as King Solomon, being able to claim, as Solomon did, a ‘sure knowledge’ and an ‘understanding of the structure of the universe’, and of more besides (Wisdom 7:17-21): He it was who gave me sure knowledge of what exists, to understand the structure of the universe and the action of the elements, the beginning, end and middle of the times, the alternation of the solstices and the succession of the seasons, the cycles of the year and the position of the stars, the natures of animals and the instincts of wild beasts, the powers of spirits and human mental processes, the varieties of plants and the medical properties of roots. And now I understand everything, hidden or visible, for Wisdom, the designer of all things, has instructed me. Dr. Ernest L. Martin had concluded, from scrutinising the biblical data, that there was a common Divine pattern regarding the structure of the universe; the Garden of Eden; the Hebrew camp in the wilderness; and the Temple built by King Solomon. Others have attempted to do the same. What I like about this sort of approach regarding the universe - whether any given effort be actually correct, or not - is that it is at least a search for a meaning that must surely be there, rather than one’s simply considering the universe as a vast and unintelligible mass. (And the Sun, 93 million miles away). We read of Dr. Martin’s particular view in Roger Waite’s “The Lost History of Jerusalem” (pp. 37-38): http://www.rogerswebsite.com/articles/TheLostHistoryofJerusalem.pdf Another way we see this pattern between what is on earth and what is in the heavens is in the comparison between the three general compartments within the Temple and the three heavens noted in scripture. …. This is what Ernest Martin writes about the similarities between the three compartments of the Temple and the three heavens: The Temple and its environs were further patterned after God's heavenly palace and its celestial surroundings that existed in the north part of the heavens…The Bible shows these "three heavens." Numerous texts show that the "first heaven" is the atmosphere where the birds fly and where all weather phenomena take place. The "second heaven," however, was beyond the earth's atmosphere and embraced all the visible planets and stars, including the sun and the moon. The "third heaven," that the apostle Paul referred to in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4 that he called Paradise, was that of God's official residence in his heavenly region which was separate from the other two heavens. These "three heavens" were symbolically pictured in the Temple at Jerusalem. In fact, the three main sections of the Temple were designed to show these three heavens. When an Israelite entered the main Temple from the east, he or she would first be within the Court of the Israelites. This first section of the Temple (which continued westward up to the eastern portion of the priests' court in which was the Altar of Burnt Offering) was not covered with a roof. The first section was open to the sky and to all weather phenomena. Birds could also fly within it. This area of the Temple answered in a typical manner with the "first heaven," which was like our atmosphere surrounding the earth. The "second heaven" in the Temple in a symbolic sense began at the eastern curtain in front of the Holy Place. Josephus tells us this curtain had the principal stars of the heavens displayed on it in tapestry form. It represented the entrance into the starry heavens beyond our atmosphere. Josephus tells us that west of this curtain, one could witness the center of the zodiacal circle with the seven [visible] planets displayed on the south side in the form of the Menorah (the seven lamps) with the twelve signs of the Zodiac denoting the twelve months displayed on the north side by the twelve loaves of the Table of Shewbread. This second court of the priests represented all the starry heavens above the earth's atmosphere. But beyond this "second heaven," there was yet a "third heaven." This "third heaven" was the Heaven of Heavens, or in Temple terminology, the Holy of Holies, which equaled God's celestial abode where his palace and divine precincts were located which the apostle Paul called Paradise (Temples, p.253). “Jesus was born of Judah … Leo the Lion … and the first sign in a counterclockwise direction that anyone within the camp would encounter would be Virgo, the Virgin … . And certainly, Jesus was accepted by Christians as being born of a virgin”. We read the following in Roger Waite’s “The Lost History of Jerusalem” (p. 28): http://www.rogerswebsite.com/articles/TheLostHistoryofJerusalem.pdf In fact, the design of the biblical Zodiac that the tribes of Israel displayed in their encampment prefigured the history of the Messiah of Israel as certainly interpreted by the early Christians… Jesus was born of Judah (Leo the Lion, the month of Ab) and the first sign in a counterclockwise direction that anyone within the camp would encounter would be Virgo, the Virgin (Elul, the 6th Hebrew month). And certainly, Jesus was accepted by Christians as being born of a virgin. Then, in the New Testament narrative, Jesus at the start of his ministry then met Satan for his temptation as shown by Dan (the sign of the venomous serpent or scorpion). He later came into deep waters (e.g. Psalm 124:4) through his apprehension, trial and crucifixion at Jerusalem (which is symbolized by Reuben, the sign of the Water Bearer a man carrying water). But then comes the Springtime (as indicated by the Joseph tribes, particularly Ephraim, Taurus the Bull) and this represented the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Finally, one returns in this circular (or celestial) journey within the camp to the first part of the tribe of Judah (Leo the Lion, back to the first fifteen degrees of the month of Ab) where the chief star called Regulus the King Star is located (which happens to be the closest star in the heavens to the ecliptic, the path of the Sun), and this represents the Christ being crowned King of Kings and sitting on the right hand of the Father, whom the Sun represents (Malachi 4:2). The four cherubim which represent the four seasons (and the four principal tribes) are the primary actors in this zodiacal or celestial design of the fortunes of the Messiah within the Camp of Israel. It is reflected in the story found in Psalm 19 where the Sun comes forth as a bridegroom and begins to tell a prophetic history that Israel can understand. Indeed, the apostle Paul quoted Psalm 19 (Romans 10:18) and referred it to Jesus and his message as going forth like the messages in the sun, moon and stars into all the world. The early Christians saw the astronomical message found in the zodiacal arrangement of the tribes of Israel within their encampment as giving highlights of the career of Jesus in his role as the Christ of God (Secrets of Golgotha [referred from here on as Golgotha], p.53-60). E.W. Bullinger in his book “Witness of the Stars” has gone into much detail about how the plan of God can be seen in the various constellations in the heavens. One can't help but wonder about that and the evidence of design in the heavens when one sees the Southern Cross. Two of the brightest stars, Alpha and Beta Centauri, point to it and seem to highlight how Christ died on the cross to pay for our sins. Each one of the twelve tribes of Israel had a zodiacal sign associated with it. “Moses positioned each of the twelve tribes of Israel as representing a particular zodiacal sign in its regular astronomical order”. We read the following in Roger Waite’s “The Lost History of Jerusalem” (p. 28): http://www.rogerswebsite.com/articles/TheLostHistoryofJerusalem.pdf In addition to the symbolism of the three compartments of the tabernacle and Temples, according to Ernest Martin, there was also an astronomical pattern in the design of the camp in the wilderness and where each of the tribes of Israel were placed in relation to the tabernacle. This pattern was also established around the environs of Jerusalem itself. Ernest Martin writes the following about the position of the tribes around the tabernacle: Though the Holy Scriptures in other areas utterly condemn the use of Astrology as conceived by the Gentiles and when the celestial motions are used for wrong purposes (Isaiah 47:11-13), the placement of the twelve tribes of Israel around the Tabernacle was intended by Moses to provide the authorities in Israel with a knowledge of God's plan for the nation of Israel .…The Gentiles actually corrupted the prophetic teaching found in the design of the "Camp of Israel" and placed on it a hodgepodge of heathen interpretations that completely obliterated the true prophetic meaning that God gave to Moses… So, what about this astronomical design of the "Camp"? The outer boundary of this zodiacal design was an imaginary circle positioned by the Jewish authorities to be 2000 cubits (a radius of about 3000 feet) from that central point in the Holy Place of the Temple. It is important to realize that the outer boundary of this circle denoted the limits of the "Camp." Moses positioned each of the twelve tribes of Israel as representing a particular zodiacal sign in its regular astronomical order. The tribe of Judah was given the prime position in this zodiacal design by being located directly east of the entrances to the Tabernacle and the later Temples. Let me explain. Four principal tribes were selected to denote each of the four seasons of the year. Judah was first, Dan was second, Reuben was third and Ephraim was fourth. The positions of these four prime tribes were arranged 90 degrees from each other (within a 360 degrees circle) to accord with those four seasons of the year. Judah was selected to be the tribe directly east of the Tabernacle and it was given first place... The zodiacal story is a prophetic account that actually centers on the Messiah of Israel who was destined to come from the tribe of Judah. For this reason, Judah was reckoned as the chief tribe and it was located in Moses' arrangement of the "Camp" directly east of the Temple. The tribe of Judah had for its tribal symbol the Lion (called Leo today). Judah had a subsidiary tribe of Israel located on each of its sides. As the chief tribe, Judah (Leo) and its sign was positioned to dominate the summer season in prophetic and calendar matters…The twelve tribes in their arrangement in the encampment also represented the twelve months of the year. The next pivotal tribe proceeding counterclockwise around this zodiacal design of this "Camp of Israel"… was Dan with a subsidiary tribe of Israel located on each of its sides. It was positioned on the north side of the Temple and Jerusalem as a venomous creature, sometimes displayed as an eagle with a snake in its talons (called Scorpio, the venomous scorpion today). It dominated the autumn season in the prophetic calendar of Israel. Reuben…with a subsidiary tribe of Israel located on each of its sides was placed on the west side of the Temple and Jerusalem in the original arrangement. Reuben was connected with water, as a Man bearing water (called Aquarius today), and it dominated the winter season in the original prophetic calendar…. And finally there is Ephraim…with a subsidiary tribe of Israel located on each of its sides. He was on the south side of the Temple and Jerusalem as a bullock (called Taurus today). It was positioned to dominate the spring season in a prophetic and calendar sense. And, of course, if one continued…another 90 degrees, one would then return to Judah (Leo) for the start of another calendar or prophetic year… Another form of this astronomical arrangement surrounding the Temple and Jerusalem (and patterned after God's abode in heaven) was the four sides of the cherubim mentioned by Ezekiel (1:4-14) and the Book of Revelation (4:6-7). The cherubim were reckoned by the biblical writers as encompassing the throne of God in heaven. These angelic cherubim also had the four zodiacal signs representing the seasons of the year associated with them (Lion, Eagle, Man, Bullock which are today called Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius, Taurus and they were analogous to the four principal tribes of Israel: Judah, Dan, Reuben and Ephraim)…. The above view may be supported by what we read in the following intriguing article (http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2005/12sons.html): Twelve Sons, Twelve Constellations by John P. Pratt There is a strong Hebrew tradition that each of the twelve tribes of Israel was associated with one of the twelve constellations of the zodiac. The precise identification of which constellation goes with which of Jacob's sons has only been known with certainty for four of the tribes. Each of the twelve carried a banner or flag, and the many of those flags are believed to have displayed one of the zodiac symbols. Thus, those figures came to symbolize the entire tribe to a large degree, much as the eagle represents the United States. This article proposes a correspondence of each of those tribes to one of the zodiac emblems, based on proposed dates for the birth of each. Knowing those dates then leads to greater understanding of the holy days on the Hebrew Calendar, and testifies of the Lord's foreknowledge of all things and of his great plan of salvation. What does the zodiac have to do with the twelve tribes of Israel? Aren't the zodiac signs the basis of astrology, and isn't that a false belief system? Wasn't Israel admonished over and over not to worship the hosts of heaven? Why would Israel put zodiac figures on their flags? It is not surprising if these are your first questions as you read this article, especially if this is the first you've read on the subject. As has been pointed out in numerous earlier articles,[1] the Book of Enoch records that an angel revealed the constellation figures to the prophet Enoch some 5,000 years ago, and many scholars claim they symbolize the key features of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Last month's article proposed that each of the twelve constellations of the zodiac, through which the sun appears to travel during the year, represents one of the twelve principal roles of the Savior.[2] Satan twists truth and perverts it for his own purposes, which he has clearly done with the zodiac signs. That causes many to avoid the entire subject, but the symbolism of these figures is so rich that it would be a tragedy not to learn of the beauty of their meaning, and the clarity of their symbolism. So my articles on the subject attempt to ignore the perversions and focus on the good. My position is that the sun, moon, and planets are like the hands on a huge clock, with the twelve zodiac constellations through which they move being the 12 numbers on the clock face. The Lord uses his clock to time key events in world history. But when Israel began to worship the hands on the clock, as did the pagan nations, then they were told they had missed the whole point, and to desist. Similarly today, if someone believes the planets are controlling his life, rather than merely keeping time, then Satan could falsely convince him that he is not responsible for his actions. Having that disclaimer in mind, let us look at the evidence, even from the Bible itself, that the twelve sons of the prophet Jacob were each identified with a different sign of the zodiac. First, consider the dream of Jacob's son Joseph, of the sun, moon and 11 stars (11 constellations?). He dreamed that they all bowed down to him (Gen. 37:9). When he told the dream to his family, they immediately knew that the 11 stars referred to his 11 brothers. Was that just because of the number eleven, or what it also because they already knew that each was associated with a different zodiac constellation? Evidence for answering this question affirmatively comes from noting that most of their names have close ties to the zodiac constellations, as discussed below. Secondly, when the tribes received blessings under the hands of their father Jacob and many years later by Moses, many unmistakable references were made to zodiac constellations. Moreover, visions such as those of Ezekiel and John, describe figures with the heads of a man, lion, ox, and eagle, which just happen to match the four "cornerstone" constellations (Ezek. 1:10, Rev. 4:7).[3] It is precisely these four key figures which are the most easily matched with the four principal sons of Israel because each is mentioned in the blessings. Reuben is compared to a man and to water, Judah is compared to a lion, Dan to a serpent (counterpart of the eagle), and Joseph's two sons to the horns of the wild ox. Those link to the constellations of the Water Bearer, the Lion, the Scorpion, and the Bull, respectively (Gen. 49: 4, 9, 17; Deut. 33:17). Those four sons are each also assigned to four directions (Num. 2:3, 10, 18, 25), and those four constellations are evenly spaced around the circle, as are the four points of a compass. And even non-Israelite prophets, such as Balaam, have used the same figures to represent the tribes (Num. 24:7-9). All of this has been discussed in detail in earlier articles, and is summarized here only as review and to make it clear that the Lord himself uses the symbolism. There is something very profound going on here, and it is certainly seems worth investigating. Until now, the identification of the constellations associated with the other eight tribes has not been known with any degree of confidence. The other references to the zodiac are sketchy, and different scholars have proposed a variety of associations based on scriptural clues. But historical evidence of exactly what emblems were shown on which flags has been weak, and is based mostly on tradition. Thus, the information about the zodiac associations has been lost. This article proposes a correlation based on the "brute force" method of actually determining the birth dates of the twelve sons, and then looking at which constellation the sun was in at their birth. …. “So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak”. Genesis 32:4 Wrestling with a young man was also a feature of the ancient Egyptian Heb-Sed festival, as is apparent from the case of pharaoh Zoser, builder of the Step Pyramid, which I have held to be a ‘material icon’ of Jacob’s dream of a Stairway to Heaven. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=wLUjtPDyu- Celebrating the rejuvenation of the king's powers every 30 years, the heb-sed festival was a demonstration of a king's strength and prowess. During the festival the king ran around a heb-sed court performing feats of strength to demonstrate his ability to continue to rule Egypt. In doing so he experienced rebirth, maintaining his position as a god on Earth. The heb-sed court of King Zoser at Saqqara is a long rectangular open court where the king performed the heb-sed ritual, part of which was to wrestle with a young man in order to prove he was strong enough to continue ruling Egypt. A limestone relief in a chamber under the Step Pyramid shows King Zoser during his heb-sed festival running between the markers representing Upper and Lower Egypt. On the east and west sides of the open courtyard are several symbolic chapels—the interiors were filled with rubble—and only the platforms in front of the chapel were used. Statues of the king and the gods were placed in niches along the wall, and the platforms may have been used for ceremonies during the festival. …. [End of quote] King Zoser’s vizier, Imhotep, is thought by many to have been Jacob’s son, Joseph. We located the patriarch Abram to the very beginning of Egypt’s dynastic history, to its First Dynasty, and perhaps also, at least in part, the Second Dynasty. The era of the substantial Third Dynasty pharaoh, ZOSER (c. 2670 BC, conventional dating) has been favoured by some revisionists - myself included - as being the most likely time for Jacob and Joseph in Egypt, with Zoser’s vizier, Imhotep, thereby accepted as Joseph. That would necessitate a lowering of Pharaoh Zoser on the time scale by about a millennium. Among the “patterns of evidence” for this scenario are the highly important reference to a seven-year famine; the Step Pyramid, reminding one of Jacob’s dream of a Stairway to Heaven; and, with reference to Genesis 32:4, Jacob’s wrestling with the man (angel): “wrestling with a young man was also a feature of the ancient Egyptian Heb-Sed festival, as is apparent from the case of pharaoh Zoser”. http://www.arabworldbooks.com/egyptomania/sameh_arab_sed_heb.htm “One of the more remarkable signs of the Heb Sed can be found at the Djoser (3rd Dynasty) Step Pyramid complex at Saqqara, where remnants of the Heb Sed court were found, as well as an inscription on a false doorway inside the pyramid”. A further potential “pattern of evidence” is the testimony of the Papyrus Chester Beatty IV (British Museum ESA 10684) that Imhotep, among others, could tell the future with certainty: (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/literature/authorspchb.html): Is there another like Imhotep? …. Those who knew how to foretell the future, What came from their mouths took place …. Joseph, of course, knew the future and accurately interpreted the pharaoh’s dream (Genesis 41:38-44): And Pharaoh said to his servants, ‘Can we find a man like this, in whom is the Spirit of God?’ Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are. You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command. Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you’. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt’. Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph’s hand, and clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck. And he made him ride in his second chariot. And they called out before him, ‘Bow the knee!’ Thus he set him over all the land of Egypt. Moreover, Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I am Pharaoh, and without your consent no one shall lift up hand or foot in all the land of Egypt’. Included in Papyrus Chester Beatty IV is Ptahhotep, a legendary seer, who, like Joseph, lived to be 110 years old (Genesis 50:26): “So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt”. Some of what follows has been suggested to me by John R. Salverda. See also his: The Hebrew Origins of Argolian Mythology https://www.academia.edu/4065204/The_Hebrew_Origins_of_Argolian_Mythology Interestingly, the wise Imhotep was said to have been the son of Ptah. The Greeks recognized the Egyptian god Ptah as their “Hephaestus,” who had a permanent limp as a result of contending with the chief god, Zeus (cf. Genesis 32:24-32). The image of Ptah is a mummified man (Jacob was mummified. See Genesis 50:2). Ptah is the main god of the city of Memphis, where the “Theology of Memphis” shows a remarkable affinity to the theogony of Genesis. As Professor Yahuda explained, Egyptology failed to provide a solution [to the era of composition of the Pentateuch], not because the Egyptian element was lacking but "only because after the rise of the Graf-Wellhausen school some of the leading Egyptologists accepted its theories without having sufficient knowledge of Hebrew and the Bible to enable them to take any initiative in these questions". According to what two colleagues and I wrote more than three decades ago, in an article entitled “A Critical Re-appraisal of the Book of Genesis”, Part Two (SIS C and C Workshop, 1987, No. 2, p. 3): …. The Graf-Wellhausen system has dominated the field of Biblical research for more than a century, as was explained in Part One. Consequently the entire Pentateuch is considered by scholars to be a late product - even those parts which deal with the "Egyptian Epoch" of Israelite history (i.e. from the Patriarch Joseph to the Exodus). Biblical critics today claim that those narratives which deal with the sojourn of Israel in Egypt were the work of authors who had very little knowledge of Egypt and matters Egyptian [1]. As Professor Yahuda explains, Egyptology failed to provide a solution, not because the Egyptian element was lacking but "only because after the rise of the Graf-Wellhausen school some of the leading Egyptologists accepted its theories without having sufficient knowledge of Hebrew and the Bible to enable them to take any initiative in these questions" [1]. Due to the fact that the average Egyptologist could find no more than occasional connections between Hebrew and Egyptian because of a lack of expertise in Hebrew, they simply took it for granted that Egyptology had very little to yield for the study of the Bible, as Yahuda points out [1]. Professor Adolf Erman, a renowned Egyptologist, went so far as to affirm that "all that the Old Testament had to say about Egypt could not be regarded with enough suspicion" [2]. Yahuda explains that such a statement and others like it, coming as they did from Egyptologists of established authority, brought about a situation where students who perhaps might have undertaken to penetrate more deeply into a study of Egyptian-Hebrew relationships were intimidated and deterred from approaching the matter [3]. On the other hand, he says, Biblical critics could always refer to such statements by renowned Egyptologists as being highly authoritative in support of their views on the late origin of the Pentateuch, and the unreliable character of those parts which deal with Egypt. The endeavours of those few scholars who dared to go beyond "the limits prescribed by the official view," as Yahuda puts it, "were either ignored altogether or only condescendingly considered, the results of their research being contemptuously rejected as unscientific and even fantastic" [3]. But fortunately for Biblical scholarship Professor Yahuda was not only prepared to be numbered amongst those few daring scholars who did break the bonds of the stifling "official view" of representative Egyptologists, but he was also qualified to do so. He was one of those extremely rare Egyptologists who had a masterful knowledge of classical Hebrew and the Bible as well. …. Notes and References 1. A. S. Yahuda, The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian (Oxford U. P., 1933), p. i. 2. A. Erman, Agypten und agyptisches Leben im Altertum (1885), p. 6. 3. Yahuda, op. cit., ibid. Whilst I may not now agree with professor Yahuda’s explanation afterwards of “The Evolution of the Hebrew Language”, nor of the degree of Egyptian influence upon it - because some of this apparent influence may actually have been from the Hebrew side, instead - his detection of Egyptian idioms in the Joseph history is compelling (“A Critical Re-appraisal”, p. 4): Of course the very thought that anything like a literary language or literary activity existed before the complete conquest of Canaan by Joshua and his forces (after the death of Moses) is scoffed at by modern Biblical critics. They cannot accept any view point which does not accord with their notions about the religious evolution in Israel. Thus, as Yahuda writes, everything leads these critics "to a conclusion diametrically opposed to every Biblical statement about the composition of any part of the Pentateuch, and to rank it on linguistic and literary-historical grounds as quite a late product" [4]. Professor Yahuda throws out a challenge to critics of this sort. If by comparison with the Egyptian it could be proved that the Egyptian influence on Hebrew was "so extensive that the development and perfection of this language can only be accounted for and explained by that influence," then it would be quite clear that it can have happened only in "a common Hebrew-Egyptian environment"! [5] Now there was only one period in Israelite history during which the sort of close intimacy necessary for that degree of influence of Egyptian on the Hebrew language prevailed: this was the "Egyptian Epoch" of Israelite history. Yahuda is convinced, therefore, that only in this epoch, from the time of Joseph to Moses, would Hebrew have begun to develop gradually into a literary language, "until it reached the perfection which we encounter in the Pentateuch" [5]. Let us then turn towards Egypt. As we are told in the Joseph (Genesis) and Exodus stories, the Israelites spent a long time in Egypt (Exodus 12:40) - in excess of 200 years by any view - as a tribe apart (Exodus 1:8); with their own manners and specific customs (Genesis 43:32); with their own worship (Exodus 5:17); living in a separate area assigned to them in the Delta near the Asiatic border (Genesis 47:6); with their own organisation (Exodus 4:29); as a self-contained entity in the midst of an Egyptian environment [5]. In this long period between Joseph and the Exodus, the Israelites "cannot possibly have escaped the influence of Egyptian culture and Egyptian life," Yahuda claims [5]. On the contrary, he believes, in spite of their segregation, that they must have adapted themselves from the start to Egyptian conditions, conceptions and customs [6]. Moreover, Yahuda submits that the dialect which they brought with them from their Canaanite home could not but have absorbed Egyptian elements in the course of this lengthy period [7], "and in adaptation to the Egyptian have continued to develop, to extend, and even to modify its original grammatical form and syntactical structure" [7]. But, he adds, any attempt to decide these questions, however, depends upon the following points: (a) those constituents of the language which reveal a higher cultural level must reveal the spirit and style of Egyptian if it is to be taken as conclusive that it was under the influence of Egyptian that "Hebrew soared from a primitive Canaanite dialect into a literary language" [7]. (b) this influence must also be extensive and distinctly traceable in all matters dealt with in Genesis so that there can be no question of mere accident or of a faint influence reminiscent of a dim past [7]. Professor Yahuda goes on to explain that in a more special sense the dependence of one language upon another is revealed chiefly in the following phenomena: (1) In the adoption of loan-words, (2) In the coinage of new words and expressions, technical terms, turns of speech, metaphors, and phrases quite in the spirit of, and even in literal accordance with, the other language, "in which case the characteristic of such new formations is that they are alien to the spirit of the adopting language and to the conceptions and institutions of the people speaking it - but reflecting throughout the spirit of the other language and the conditions of the alien environment" [7]. (3) In the adoption of grammatical elements and adaption to some syntactical rules of the alien language, so that even in structure and style there is a close assimilation in many respects [7]. Notes and References 4. Ibid., p. xxxi. 5. Ibid., p. xxxii. 6. Ibid. Note: see Genesis 50:2f and 11, also Exodus 1:16. 7. Ibid., p.xxxiii. With Yahuda’s thesis well in mind, the question then needed to be asked (“A Critical Re-appraisal”, pp. 4-5): But What of the Akkadian Influence? One of the main reasons why modern Biblical scholars cling to the theory that the Book of Genesis, in the main, was written around the period of the Babylonian Exile [9], hundreds of years after Moses' death, is because parts of the book contain clear Assyrian and Babylonian elements. Assyriologists have rightly concluded that some parts of Genesis must have originated in a period when the Israelites (or Hebrews) were connected closely with Mesopotamia. As is well known, according to the Bible there were two periods during which the Israelites were in immediate contact with Mesopotamia: • the first in the time of the Patriarchs (e.g. Noah to Jacob), before the time of Moses, and • the second during the Babylonian Exile of the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. Pp. 4-6: Now the point which we wish to emphasise as regards this - and it is a very important point - can be seen in the following passage written by Yahuda: “Whereas those books of Sacred Scripture which were admittedly written during and after the Babylonian Exile reveal in language and style such an unmistakable Babylonian influence that these newly-entered foreign elements leap to the eye, by contrast in the first part of the Book of Genesis, which describes the earlier Babylonian period, the Babylonian influence in the language is so minute as to be almost non-existent." [10] It is an amazing fact that where there are similar details in the Genesis account of Creation and in the Akkadian myths, almost without exception the Akkadian uses different words and expressions from the Hebrew. Yahuda notes that, whilst some Akkadian words and expressions are used in the Hebrew, they do not occur in the Genesis story [11]. Therefore, any attempt to argue for a so-called strong literary or linguistic "dependence" of the Genesis stories on the Akkadian myths can have no convincing proof to support it. If such a close dependence actually existed, Yahuda argues, one would expect such Akkadian words which are frequent in all Akkadian creation and flood stories, "to be preferentially and in a much higher degree represented in the Genesis stories" [11]. But it is quite another matter when we come to consider the dependence of the Genesis narratives on Egyptian. Whilst, perhaps, we may have expected a strong Egyptian influence in that part of the Book of Genesis which deals with Joseph and the "Egyptian Epoch" of Israel (i.e. Genesis chapters 39-50), we find that the entire book is saturated with Egyptian elements. The Egyptian influence is to be found even in the pre-Egyptian Epoch (i.e. Genesis chapters 1-38), though it builds up to a crescendo in the Joseph narrative. In the pre-Egyptian part of Genesis, Egyptian loanwords occur, as do idioms and phrases considered by Biblical scholars as being typical of this portion of Genesis, but which can be explained only from Egyptian. Added to these, according to Yahuda, are "other highly significant Egyptian influences on the composition, style and mode of narration," and on many conceptions concerning the well-known stories of Genesis such as the Creation, the Flood, and even the Tower of Babel. One can only conclude, he says, "that the whole pre-Egyptian narrative, too, was written from an Egyptian perspective" [12]. The Egyptian Elements … In the Creation Story The Hebrew word 'bereshith' with which the Creation story begins, is found on closer examination to be an exact adaptation to the Egyptian expression 'tpy.t' for earliest time, "primeval time." Just as 'bereshith' is formed from the Hebrew word for "head," so also is the Egyptian word formed from the word for "head" [13]. The Hebrew word for "heaven" occurs only in the plural form. This is all the more remarkable as its stem is the basic root from which the conception "heaven" is formed in all Semitic languages, yet it is only in Hebrew that "heaven" is used in the plural form. Now such a conception was quite familiar to the Egyptians, says Yahuda, for they accordingly spoke of 'p.ty' "two heavens!" [14] The Hebrew word 'tehom' for primeval deep, which is also used in the Flood story, has long been regarded by scholars as being an Akkadian (Assyrian) loan-word. Nevertheless, Yahuda considers it necessary to investigate whether the more or less unanimous interpretation of this word given by Assyriologists is at all tenable and, if not, what is the real meaning of 'tehom', and consequently what place does it occupy in the Genesis story of Creation? [15] Assyriologists and almost all of the modern Biblical critics, he says, still take for granted that 'tehom' is identical with 'tiamat', the name of the dragon of darkness which the god Marduk slew in bitter conflict before the creation of the world [15]. But, he goes on to say, "the positiveness with which this assumption is put forward, and the stubbornness with which it is maintained, are based on no intrinsic or philologically well-founded facts; since, besides the similarity of sound of 'tehom' with 'tiamat', no other proofs for such an identification can be put forward" [15]. The argument that 'tehom' must be identified with 'tiamat' because like the latter it is feminine, is untenable, says Yahuda, "for the simple reason that in our particular passage the gender of 'tehom' is not apparent, and further because there are examples of its being used in the masculine as a poetical expression for sea" [16]. Both Yahuda and Wiseman would concur that this whole approach to Biblical interpretation is due to "mythologising tendencies" which, employing all possible and impossible kinds of combinations, in Procrustean fashion, seek to work into the Genesis stories - and even into the narratives of the Patriarchs - features and elements drawn from the Babylonian myths which are absolutely remote from and completely alien to the Hebrew spirit. One only has to compare the Genesis account of Creation with the Babylonian one to realise how intrinsically different they are: The two accounts are as follows: Bible Babylonian Creation Tablets 1 Light 1 Birth of the gods, their rebellion and threatened destruction. 2 Atmosphere and water 2 Tiamat prepares for battle. Marduk agrees to fight her. 3 Land, vegetation 3 The gods are summoned and wail bitterly at their threatened destruction. 4 Sun and Moon (regulating lights) length; defeats Tiamat, splits her in half like a fish and thus makes heaven and earth. 4 Marduk promoted to rank of 'god'; he receives his weapons for the fight. These are described at 5 Fish and birds 5 Astronomical poem. 6 Land animals 6 Kingu who made Tiamat to rebel is bound and, as a punishment, his arteries are severed and man created from his blood. The 600 gods are grouped; Marduk builds Babylon where all the gods assemble. A comparison of the two accounts shows clearly that the Bible owes nothing whatever to the Babylonian tablets, despite the efforts of commentators to make us believe that whoever wrote this portion of Genesis was borrowing from these corrupted Mesopotamian myths. If we rely solely on the text of Genesis, without being biased by the Babylonian mythology, we find no trace of any contest with a living monster in the sense of the Babylonian myth of the fight of the gods. Thus there in no intrinsic ground whatever for the identification of 'tehom' with 'tiamat'. Here 'tehom' means nothing else but the primeval water, that ocean which filled the chaos, says Yahuda [16]. This is clearly shown, he stresses, by its context as part of the phrase "on the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2), "which unmistakably indicates the real nature of 'tehom' as water" [16]. From this Yahuda concludes that ('tehom') ought to be identified philologically with a different Akkadian word. It is not ('tiamat'), but ('tamtu'), with which ('tehom') is identical [16]. The Akkadian word ('tamtu') often occurs - not only in creation myths, but also in many other kinds of myths - most distinctly in the sense of primal ocean, exactly like ('tehom') "and not as the personification of any divinity like ('tiamat')" [16]. … In the Paradise Story We recall that in the Garden of Eden there was "every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food" (Genesis 2:9). Likewise, in the Egyptian "Fields" 'sh.wt', and in the "Garden of God" 'k3n ntr', there were all kinds of trees with sweet fruits such as sycamores, figs, dates and vines, as well as other "lovely trees" 'ht ndm' [17]. Of most importance for us, however, is the fact that among the trees of the Egyptian Paradise was also the "Tree of Life", says Yahuda [17]. The idea that the food of the gods was also the food for eternal life is quite natural and was not confined to Egypt, he says [18]. This idea was also common to the mythology of the Babylonians. But whereas the Akkadian expression 'akãl balãti', "Food of Life," is quite different from the Hebrew, Yahuda explains, the Egyptian 'ht n 'nh', "Tree of Life," "corresponds literally with the Hebrew phrase in Genesis 2:9 [18]. Another expression common to Egyptian and Hebrew is that found in Genesis 3:14 when God says to the serpent, "upon your belly you shall go." Yahuda points out that this is the same expression used for reptiles in Leviticus 11:42 as well, where "it is a distinctive denomination for a special category of animals" [19]. It corresponds exactly, he says, "to the elliptic expression" in Egyptian 'hry h.t-f' "that (which goes) on its belly" for snakes and reptiles generally. Again, a very remarkable parallel to the condemnation of the serpent to the eating of dust is provided in the Egyptian verse: "Behold their sustenance (or food) shall be (Geb or) dust 'm.k grt ir hr.t-sn ntf pw'." [19]. … In the Flood Story Yahuda believes that no more striking evidence in support of his thesis that the Babylonian stories are later versions of the Hebrew originals is to be found in the story of the Flood. The Flood story is not told by Noah, according to Wiseman's explanation. Noah's account concludes at Genesis 6:9, "These are the generations of Noah," immediately before the account of the Flood. It is the three sons of Noah - Shem, Ham and Japheth - who record the story of the Flood and who, like Noah, were eye-witnesses of that great catastrophe. To begin with, the most characteristic fact is that for the chief feature of the whole story, the Ark, neither an Akkadian word is used, says Yahuda, nor the Canaanite one current elsewhere in the Bible [20]. Instead a Hebrew word, in which the Egyptian word 'db.t', "box, coffer, chest," has been recognised, is used by the writer. Yahuda exclaims: "It is astonishing that a narrative supposedly set in Babylonia, uses for the Ark an Egyptian loan-word!" [20] As, however, the same Hebrew word also occurs in the story of the finding of the infant Moses (Exodus 2:3), a comparison of both passages at once suggests itself. Such a comparison is all the more instructive for our whole thesis as, on the one hand, it clearly reveals the Egyptian character of the Flood narrative, and, on a secondary level, shows how much more powerfully Egyptian influences prevailed in the Exodus narrative. Then Joseph brought his father Jacob in and presented him before Pharaoh. After Jacob blessed Pharaoh, Pharaoh asked him, ‘How old are you?’ And Jacob said to Pharaoh, ‘The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers’. Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence. Genesis 47:7-10 Continuing on with “A Critical Re-appraisal of the Book of Genesis”, from Part Two we arrive at the era of Joseph (SIS C and C Workshop, pp. 7-8): … In the Joseph Narrative The important story of Joseph and his rise to governorship of Egypt occupies almost one quarter of the entire Book of Genesis. Because the narrative is set largely in Egypt, it is most significant from the point of view of our thesis. The fact is that the Joseph narrative is saturated with Egyptian elements, a full appreciation of which one would gain only from reading right through Yahuda's book [25]. Again we only can summarise some of the most striking examples. The "kernel of the Joseph narrative," Yahuda notes, is his appointment as Grand Vizier to Pharaoh [26]. For this office, Genesis 41:43 gives a Hebrew word containing a root which has the meaning "to do twice, to repeat, to double," in the sense that Joseph represented in relation to the king a sort of "double," acting as his deputy, "invested with all the rights and prerogatives of the king". Yahuda explains that exactly in the same way the Egyptian word 'sn.nw', "deputy" was formed from 'sn', "two" [26]. In the same verse, the command is given for all "to bow the knee" before Joseph. The Hebrew word, which is probably an imperative, is generally considered to have been taken from an Egyptian word [27]. Joseph was called "Father to Pharaoh," and, according to Yahuda, the Hebrew expression 'Ab', "father," is a reproduction of the Egyptian title 'itf', "father," a very common priestly title, and one borne also by viziers [28]. For instance the wise and celebrated vizier of the Fifth Dynasty, Ptah-hotep - who incidentally, like Joseph, may have lived for 110 years - "referred to himself as 'itf ntr mryy-ntr', "father of god, the beloved of god" [29]," Yahuda explains [30]. At the beginning of his conversation with Joseph, Pharaoh says: "I have had a dream... I have heard that you understand a dream to interpret it" (Genesis 40:15). For "understand" the Hebrew has the verb to "hear": "you hear a dream" - a usage which has been so difficult for commentators, says Yahuda, but which corresponds entirely to the Egyptian use of 'sdm', "to hear" or "to understand" [31]. In Genesis 41:40, Pharaoh says to Joseph, literally, "According to your mouth shall my people kiss." Again this verse has been a headache for commentators and translators, as the verb to "kiss" seems to be completely out of place, Yahuda says [31]. But on comparison with Egyptian, he explains, "kiss" proves to be "a correct and thoroughly exact reproduction of what the narrator really meant to convey. Here an expression is rendered in Hebrew from a metaphorical one used in polished speech among the Egyptians" [31]. Instead of the ordinary colloquial expression 'wnm' for "eating," the Egyptians spoke of "kissing" 'sn' the food. Our passage thus is to be taken literally, says Yahuda, "but in the sense of the Egyptian metaphor" [32]. Pharaoh is saying to Joseph "by your orders shall my people feed," whereby Pharaoh simply meant that the feeding of the whole country would be regulated solely "by the measures and ordinances of Joseph" [32]. Court Expressions of Deference Addressing the Egyptian king in the third person: "Pharaoh was angry with his servants" (Genesis 41:10): "Let Pharaoh do this" (41:33), and many other such passages, corresponds entirely to the court etiquette of old Egypt and is wholly official. This usage dates back to ancient times, and so we read in a letter addressed in the name of Pharaoh Pepi II of the Old Kingdom of Egypt: "... your letter to the king in the palace so that one (= the king) should know" [33]. A characteristic formula also is the phrase recurring in several passages of Genesis: "in the face of Pharaoh," or "from the face of Pharaoh" (e.g. Genesis 47:2, 7 and 41:6), meaning "before Pharaoh" [34]. According to Yahuda, this corresponds completely to hierarchic court custom, whereby one might not speak to his Majesty 'r hm-f', "to his face," but only 'in the face of his Majesty" 'm hr hm-f' [34]. The same respectful expression was used for viziers, and so we have the phrase "before Joseph's face" (Genesis 43:15 and 34). Yahuda tells us that a very peculiar form of expression which has often been noted, but remained unexplained, is the Hebrew word for "lord" in the plural, with reference to either Pharaoh or Joseph [35]. Thus, for instance, a literal translation of Genesis 40:1 would read: "the butler of the king of 'the two lands' (i.e. Egypt) and his baker offended their lords," instead of their "lord" in the singular. The same ceremonious turn of speech occurs also in Genesis 42:30 and 33 with reference to Joseph. Now we find that already in quite ancient times, again in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Pharaoh, besides being referred to as 'nb' "lord," in the singular, also is spoken of as 'nb. wy' in the plural [35]. We could multiply passage upon passage as regards the Egyptian influence in the language of the Book of Genesis, but we shall content ourselves with just one more example. This is that difficult passage in Genesis chapter 47 describing Jacob's first meeting with Pharaoh. One line in particular has defied interpretation by commentators who did not consider to look for the solution in the Egyptian records. To Pharaoh's question to Jacob: "How many are the days of the years of your life?", Jacob replies in the following enigmatic fashion: "The days of the years of my sojournings are 130 years; few and evil have been the days of the years of my life" (Genesis 47:9). Let us see first what a modern Biblical expert has to say about this exchange. Eugene Maly, the expert on Genesis in the Jerome Biblical Commentary, whom we met briefly in Part One, ascribes this portion of Genesis to the Priestly tradition again, or P. Now his only comment on this peculiar and difficult dialogue between Jacob and Pharaoh is that "The presentation of Jacob to Pharaoh is narrated by P with a sobriety that gives it a touch of grandeur" [36]. No attempt to explain the meaning of the words: nor does he show the least awareness that a great part of the language in the Joseph narrative is modelled on set formulae and expressions used in Egyptian court and official parlance as customary, or even prescribed, in Egyptian hierarchic circles, especially in conversation with exalted persons and the Pharaoh. But getting back to the meaning of Jacob's reply, for which undoubtedly he was primed by his son Joseph, we gather from Egyptian texts that his words were purely a formal convention with no literal meaning [37] but, in the light of Egyptian court etiquette, so rich in the niceties of speech, quite appropriate and well chosen. As Yahuda puts it, "such remarks as Jacob's, coming from the lips of a foreigner, must have appeared to Pharaoh and his court as being very tactful and thoughtful" [38]. We pointed out in Part One that Joseph's story, the longest in the Book of Genesis, neither contains any catch-line phrases nor concludes with a Toledoth colophon. Does this fact severely damage our thesis? On the contrary, it enhances it! The explanation again is very simple. Unlike the Babylonians and Assyrians, the Egyptians - under whose influence the Israelites were living by the time of Joseph - used neither of these literary methods of catch-lines or "Toledoths." The Egyptians did not write on clay tables, but on papyrus rolls, and hence their literary methods were quite different from the Mesopotamians. In typically Egyptian fashion, the story of Joseph ends with his death and embalming, not with the colophon ending of the other Patriarchs. It is quite consistent with our thesis, therefore, that the Joseph narrative should be devoid of these Mesopotamian literary techniques. Notes and References 25. Yahuda, op. cit., p.3-99. 26. Ibid., p.20. 27. E.g. in Langenscheidt's Pocket Dictionary. But W. W. Hallo, Biblical Archaeologist 46 (1983), p.25, disagrees with this. He claims that the Hebrew 'Abrekh' = Akkadian 'Abarakku,' a fact which he says dates the Joseph story to the Assyrian period. In reply we might say that, even were the equation accurate (and some think it very doubtful), our article demonstrates that Genesis is more ancient than the Mesopotamian texts; so it would be the Assyrians who were doing the borrowing. 28. Yahuda, op. cit., p.23. 29. Papyrus Prisse, ed. Devaud, p.17, 43 (= Lit., p.56 n.1). 30. Yahuda, op. cit., p.24. 31. Ibid., p.7. 32. Ibid., p.8. 33. J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt (Chicago, 1906-7), i. 351. 34. Yahuda, op. cit., p.13. 35. Ibid., p.14. 36. JBC 47:9. 37. Prisse Dev., p.52, 640f. = Lit. 65. 38. Yahuda, op. cit., p.17. ________________________________________ Jacob and Joseph were not ‘godly’ Christian gentlemen It is a mistake to impose, as Creationists are wont to do, modern religious and scientific standards upon the Genesis worldview and its characters. We saw, from Jacob’s reply to Pharaoh, that the Patriarch was prepared to defer to some degree to Egyptian court etiquette. And, in the Book of Daniel, the young Jews are given pagan names. Now Creationist, Patrick Clarke, who has argued for an Eleventh Dynasty location for Joseph, based on the name given to him by Pharaoh: Zaphenath Paaneah (Genesis 41:45), is critical of Dr. David Down’s identification of Joseph with a Twelfth Dynasty high official, Mentuhotep, since this is a non “godly” name: Down’s choice of Mentuhotep is all the more surprising given that this specifically (and popular) Middle Kingdom name means Content is Mentu. How happy would the godly Joseph have been to bear the name of the Egyptian god of war? Sesostris I was served by a Mentuhotep and this official is one of the best attested from the Middle Kingdom. He was ‘Overseer of all Royal Works’ and this included overseeing Sesostris’ construction projects at the Temple of Amun in Karnak; again the question must be asked, ‘How happy would the godly Joseph have been to oversee work that glorified the god Amun?’ In my scheme, this Mentuhotep is an actual candidate for Moses. Clarke dismisses the stand-out candidate for Joseph, Imhotep, for the same reason of ‘godliness’: Wyatt creates far greater problems by linking Joseph to the famous Imhotep. Firstly, Wyatt, like several other supporters of this idea, believes that Imhotep’s name means ‘he who comes in peace’. Imhotep’s name is attested on the base of a statue of Zoser as iy m ḥtp unearthed at Saqarra. Certainly there is a verb ii m ḥtp but the very manner that Imhotep’s name was written indicates a different meaning to that claimed. The sign M18 is vocalized as iy, which is an epithet of the god Horus (all the Egyptian gods and goddesses had multiple epithets which people incorporated into their personal names); the sign G17 signifies who is; the sign R4 is hotep which means content. Brought together, Imhotep translates as Content is Horus (lit. Horus who is content). Again the question must be asked, ‘How happy would the godly Joseph have been to bear the name of the Egyptian sky god, Horus?’ [End of quotes] Whilst I, from the biblical trend as discussed, would not agree with Clarke in these two cases, I find that he has made an excellent case for Joseph, and his name, in the context of the Eleventh Dynasty – an era that is not out of the question in my scheme, based on the following Table Patriarch Old Kingdom Middle Kingdom Archaeology Abraham 0-I-II X (?) EBI Joseph - III XI EBII Moses IV-VI XII (XIII) EBIII Joshua (Conquest) MBI on EB III/IV Anarchy in Egypt VII-IX (?) XIII-XVII aligning the Eleventh Dynasty with the Third Dynasty.