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Hyksos, Habiru, and the Hebrews


kmt_sesh

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Unexplained-Mysteries is full of posts where members try to identify the Hyksos or the Habiru as the Hebrews. Sometimes it's the Hyksos and the Habiru, as though the poster can't make up his or her mind. Doesn't much matter because every one of these posts is incorrect. Much of this, I feel, stems from posters' unfamiliarity with the very complex facts involved, and in fact such generalizations lean toward the grossly simplistic. I don't mean to sound harsh, but a proper study of these facts is all it takes to get them straight in one's head.

I realize a lot of this is due to the writings of ancient authors like Herodotus, Manetho, and Josephus. Unfortunately their material is all over the internet, so it makes for an easy and convenient source for the average enthusiast, as well as a scapegoat to ignore the mountains of professional literature where facts are relayed clearly and in full detail. It takes a significant amount of work and effort to gain a proper perspective on this, and I know this from first-hand experience. Most real answers are not to be found on the internet unless one has access to professional databases like JSTOR. Most real answers are not to be found in the writings of Herodotus, Manetho, Josephus, and the like--none of whom were actually historians as we would think of the word.

That said, I wanted to provide a summary of the Hyksos, Habiru, and Hebrews, and demonstrate why we simply cannot regard them as the same people. UM posters probably grow tired of my ever-present admonition to adhere to proper timelines, but it's just as necessary to adhere to a proper understanding of how cultures and socio-politics developed in the ancient Near East. We cannot meld all of these ancient people together as though they were the mixings of a salad.

HYKSOS

Many modern fringe writers are particularly guilty of trying to paint the Hyksos as the Hebrews. There is no possible connection between them. For one thing the word "Hyksos" is merely a Greek corruption of the ancient Egyptian HKA-xAswt (Heka-Khasut), "foreign rulers." Though it appears the Hyksos rulers eventually adopted this term for themselves, it does not identify the Hyksos people as a unified cultural entity, such as were the Hebrews. In Egyptian inscriptions the term HKA-xAswt is only sparingly used to identify these people who had taken control of much of Egypt by Dynasty 15 (1650-1535 BCE). A much more common reference for them in Egyptian inscriptions is the word aAm (Ah-ahm) or styw (Set-ee-u), either of which most historians translate by the generic term "Asiatic."

I am guilty of some exaggeration. There is a bit of connection one can draw between the Hyksos and the Hebrews. Both were speakers of a Western Semitic dialect, and both came from the Levant. But trust me, that's not much of a connection. It's far from any realistic means by which we can view the Hyksos as similar to the Hebrews, the worshipers of Yahweh. We can say that certainly most of the Hyksos were from Canaan, especially southern Palestine. That some people from Mesopotamia may have been part of the Hyksos population seems certain, especially since the relatively recent discovery in Avaris of a seal fragment written in a form of cuneiform identifiable from Babylon. To date, this is the only form of writing ever found in a Hyksos context aside from Egyptian hieroglyphs.

But the preponderance of Canaanite people in the population is crystal clear. Through the years excavators have been able to identify eight different Hyksos tomb types--all are Canaanite in design (Booth 2005: 31). One of the main temples at Avaris, designated Temple II, is also clearly Canaanite in design (ibid: 27). Almost all known examples of Hyksos pottery are also Canaanite in design and appear to have been imported into the Delta from Palestine. Of those wares manufactured at Hyksos sites from Egyptian clay, the design is, again, Canaanite. Of the many Hyksos amphorae subjected to neutron activation analysis (NAA), 74% are shown to have been made from clays in southern Palestine (ibid: 40). Perhaps more telling, however, is the nature of religion. Evidence for deities venerated at Hyksos sites tells us of the popularity of Baal (often venerated as a form of the Egyptian god Set), Qedesh, Reshef, Astarte, Anat, and Harru--all Canaanite deities. Yahweh appears in no Hyksos context, period.

It must be remembered that the very earliest record for the Hebrews, archaeologically and textually, comes from the reign of Merneptah (1212-1201 BCE), of Dynasty 19. It is in the form of a victory stela listing a myriad of cities and peoples the Egyptian army had conquered under Merneptah, and the stela dates to about 1207 BCE. On it appears the people identified as ysriAr (Ees-rih-air), the Egyptian rendering of Israel. To date, no evidence of any kind for the Hebrews predates this monument, anywhere in the Near East. This was almost 350 years after the Hyksos period.

The Hyksos simply no longer existed. After Ahmose I had driven the Hyksos remnants into the Levant around 1550 BCE, the Hyksos took refuge in the town of Sharuhen, in southern Palestine. Ahmose I laid siege to Sharuhen and eventually took the town, after which he slaughtered the population. At that point the Hyksos disappeared from the historical record.

The Hyksos were not the Hebrews.

HABIRU

The appeal to many people here is that the words "Habiru" and "Hebrew" sound quite alike. Well, at least they do in modern rendering. This is not really how either word sounded by the ancient peoples who spoke them. The truth is, the situation is similar to the one with the Hyksos: the Habiru were never a unified cultural entity, such as were the Hebrews. As any first-year student of history will tell you, an argument based on the fact that two words might sound alike, is a very poorly based argument indeed. The word Habiru first appears in first half of the 18th century BCE and disappears from the historical record by the 11th century BCE (Na'aman 1986: 272). This in fact means that while "Habiru" had fallen out of use by around the time the earliest traces of the Hebrews appeared, it was used in written texts long before the Hebrews existed. The people identified as Habiru, moreover, ranged across a much wider geographical area than the Hebrews ever did. There is no connection.

The meaning of the word "Habiru" can be traced back into Akkadian to a verb from which the word derived. It means "migrant," although "refugee" is also cited (ibid: 274-75). It was only around the time the Amarna Letters of Egypt were being written that the word started to take on a derogatory meaning, such as "outlaw." At this time, the Egyptian Dynasty 18, Habiru people were on the fringes of society and were a constant nuisance to cities and villages of the Levant. This is why the Habiru are so prevalent in the Amarna Letters: vassal princes of the Levant were writing to Egypt in the time of Amunhotep III and Akhenaten to report the problems the Habiru were causing.

But in fact the Habiru were not a single, cultural, or socio-political entity. They represented a wide range of peoples from around the Levant and Mesopotamia who had fallen away from society. They spoke different languages and worshipped different gods. They were organized in loose and unconnected bands. Another important source for the Habiru is Nuzi tablets, which records many names of Habiru people. In this case they were slaves, primarily. These tablets record that various Habiru people had come from Babylon, Assur, the Land of Akkad, and from the Mitanni (Chiera 1933: 117-118).

The Habiru were not the Hebrews.

HEBREWS

I've already cited the very earliest proof for the existence of the Hebrews: the Merneptah victory stela, dating to around 1207 BCE. If we try to place the Hebrews before this time, it can be done only by loose speculation, and this is not a solid foundation for any historical argument or theory. In fact, it simply would not and could not be taken seriously. Interestingly, archaeology of the Holy Land has demonstrated that by around 1200 BCE, a different people with a different material culture were starting to rise in the highlands of Judaea (Dever 2003: 75-79). This corresponds very nicely with the Merneptah victory stela.

Textual evidence is also telling. Excavations at the site of Ketef Hinnom unearthed a tiny pair of amuletic silver scrolls from a tomb. Inscribed onto these amulets was a priestly blessing that would later appear in the Bible, specifically Numbers 6: 24-26 (Barkay 2009: 35, 124). The amulets date to the 7th century BCE and constitute the oldest definitive evidence for the sacred writings of the Hebrews. The oldest versions of the Old Testament were probably penned for the first time shortly after this.

The most distinctive trait by which the Hebrews are known is their worship of Yahweh. As important as the story of Exodus is to modern Jews and indeed to Christians and Muslims, it is considerably unlikely that the ancient Hebrews came in as an invading force and conquered Canaan. The brunt of archaeological evidence has revealed to us that the Hebrews were most likely a sect of people who had broken off from the larger Canaanite population, and set off on their own. The strictures against consuming pork and the vilification of Baal, among other things, are most likely the means by which these people who would become Hebrews were setting themselves apart from their Canaanite kin. Again, the course of history puts things in perspective: this was all happening at the collapse of the Bronze Age, when the Levant and environs were in chaos and the old city-states were falling. This sect of Canaanites set off for the highlands of Judaea to make a world of their own, and became 'Ibrim (Hebrews).

That Hebrew religion developed and evolved is quite clear to historians. The Hebrew religion was not originally monotheistic but henotheistic; in fact, there is evidence that originally Yahweh even had a consort, a wife (Dever 2005). It was during their captivity in Babylon that the Hebrew religion developed most rapidly, quite possibly being heavily influenced by the Persian elite religion of Zoroastrianism. You will recall that the Old Testament preserves a very high regard for Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who conquered Babylon, freed the Jews, and helped them to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. The god worshiped by Cyrus was Ahura Mazda. It is after this point that Judaism swiftly seemed to develop into a true monotheistic religion in which Yahweh was the one true God.

The Hyksos were not the Hebrews. The Habiru were not the Hebrews. The Hebrews were the Hebrews.

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:tu: Excellent information Kmt. Learning from your esteemed self in no way vexes me, even if it does contradict what I'd like to be true. Do pardon me if I make points that overlap what you have said but there is still a great deal of room for discussion on this topic. Well done starting a new thread by the way.

I found this

The inference I draw is that a new population spread down from Syria along the King’s Highway over the course of the 13th century. This is the population the Bible identifies as Hebrew, an ethnicon, it will be recalled, that is used in the Bible only when foreigners are referring to Israelites. At least at the end of the Iron Age, the Bible portrays the Hebrews as the rightful successors of an indigenous population of Canaanites, Amorites or Rephaim. [4]

What could have impelled the new population to settle among the non-Hebrews in Transjordanian and Cisjordanian Canaan? The 13th century was a period of extreme turmoil in northern Syria and the Balih basin—the plain of Aram in south-central Turkey and northern Syria—to which Israelite folklore traces Israel’s roots. [5] In that century, Assyria gradually dismantled the indigenous Mitannian states and turned them into provinces. A considerable element of West Semitic speakers lived in the region north of the Euphrates along the Balih and Habur rivers. Some of them were pastoralists or dimorphic agrarians [6] in background, associated with hill territory and later referred to as Arameans. No doubt many converted their assets into livestock and migrated away from heavy taxation.

http://theophyle.wordpress.com/tag/habiruapiru/

Theer seems like some good info in the link. The four hundred year stele stood out as potentially signiifcant, is there an explanation for this contrary to the articles authors view.

Here is a link of the more fringier side of the debate but they do at least attempt to make a timeline compatible with OT

DATE BC - - - - EVENT

1780 - - - - - - Abraham enters Egypt for the first time (aged around 30)

1740 - - - - - - Isaac born (Abraham aged 70)

1680 - - - - - - Jacob born (Isaac aged 60)

1620 - - - - - - Joseph born (Jacob aged 60)

1570 - - - - - - Joseph Vizier (aged 50)

The ages are true to the information available in the Bible. Abraham’s entry into Egypt is the precise year that has been identified as the beginning of the Hyksos reign! Abraham was a Hyksos – high-born from Ur.

http://www.angelfire.com/ne/spiraltiger/Hiram/Hiram8.html

Not saying I agree with it as it doesn't seem to fit with the Thera eruption as occuring around that time as questionmark pointed out.

Isn't it possible that although all are separate groups they did retain some link? Also, I am not convinced the Hyksos were wipedout during the siege as they would have known the land well and could have escaped. It seems like the habiru the 'refugees' received special treatment on occasions and were considered fierce fighters.

The rise of the hebrews as you mentioned (in 12th century was it?) could correspond with a shifting of central authority within the people from Reuben towards Judah. Hence why today we have jews and not rubes

I agree with questionmark also that Habiru or Hapiru were nomads, probably from around the Euphrates and became widespread hence why they were synonymous with refugees. They have no organization to speak of but are formed from various disparite groups of Sumerians, Hittites, Armeneans, etc. I also notice they are sometimes called Sa.Gaz, what is that about?

Anyway, perhaps it was only after Akhenaton that his supporters in exile deceided to start putting everything together from the past and then presented the story to the habiru and convinced them to become hebrews. That is the only way I can see how it could fit and justify the biblical account. I am not saying it is perfect or true but it does seem a possibility.

Some of the craziest stuff I ever read in the link below, I do not agree with any of it but just wanted to show the variety of disinformation on the net.

http://www.angelfire.com/hi5/cubaqui/tahutiEG.html

If you feel it necessary, by all means pull my pants down and tan my hide but I still don't think this is a open and shut case but that is just my opinion and I look forward to hearing more of yours. ;)

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If you feel it necessary, by all means pull my pants down and tan my hide but I still don't think this is a open and shut case but that is just my opinion and I look forward to hearing more of yours. ;)

The point everybody has to remember is that the so-called "race of the Jews" is a multi-ethnicity in which about every ethnic group of the then-known-world is represented, from Black Africa to Northern Europe.

Not that it matters if somebody "belongs" to a race, but it tells us something about the origins of a group, and the origins here are that one day most were at one place and identified, by religion or by political interest, as having a common bond.

It is always said that Cyrus let them go home and make their own Kingdom, which is absolutely wrong. Cyrus freed all from Babylonian bondage, sent the people to Canaan and appointed his son in law governor of the area. During that time there was a great bit of assimilation of either the locals taking in the new-comers or the new comers taking in the locals (my bet goes to the second option because the group of new-comers was bigger than that of the locals) and later assimilating the Persians who lived in Judah. That is also the explanation why no traces of so-called kings are found...unless forged by Oded Golan

The other aspect one has to consider is that Judah, as the province was called by the Persians, never gained independence (to the contrary of the legends) from it, as proven by the fact that it simply went over to Alexander's possession after defeating the Persians, or does anybody remember a battle between Greeks and Hebrews (if we discount David and Goliath)?

So, were there contacts between the "Hebrew" and the Egyptian of the New Kingdom and Habiru? Yes, the remnants of them who lived in Judah was assimilated by the Hebrews. And their traditions were integrated in the common cultural canon.

So we have a bunch of circumstantial evidence out of which one can construct all kind of things, especially if one uses a myth as guidance.

Edited by questionmark
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Would this tape be from The Teaching Company, per chance? There are only a couple TTC lecture sets exclusively for Egypt and Brier narrates them both. In one of them he stretches too far, in my opinion, to find evidence for Exodus. He is also wrong on other counts, such as the heiress theory, which few historians consider tenable today.

Yep, I enjoyed the lectures myself, but was a bit annoyed when he drew very iffy conclusions, or went out of his way to try to include the old Testament.

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The point everybody has to remember is that the so-called "race of the Jews" is a multi-ethnicity in which about every ethnic group of the then-known-world is represented, from Black Africa to Northern Europe.

Not that it matters if somebody "belongs" to a race, but it tells us something about the origins of a group, and the origins here are that one day most were at one place and identified, by religion or by political interest, as having a common bond.

It is always said that Cyrus let them go home and make their own Kingdom, which is absolutely wrong. Cyrus freed all from Babylonian bondage, sent the people to Canaan and appointed his son in law governor of the area. During that time there was a great bit of assimilation of either the locals taking in the new-comers or the new comers taking in the locals (my bet goes to the second option because the group of new-comers was bigger than that of the locals) and later assimilating the Persians who lived in Judah. That is also the explanation why no traces of so-called kings are found...unless forged by Oded Golan

The other aspect one has to consider is that Judah, as the province was called by the Persians, never gained independence (to the contrary of the legends) from it, as proven by the fact that it simply went over to Alexander's possession after defeating the Persians, or does anybody remember a battle between Greeks and Hebrews (if we discount David and Goliath)?

So, where there contacts between the "Hebrew" and the Egyptian of the New Kingdom and Habiru? Yes, the remnants of them who lived in Judah was assimilated by the Hebrews. And their traditions were integrated in the common cultural canon.

So we have a bunch of circumstantial evidence out of which one can construct all kind of things, especially if one uses a myth as guidance.

Precisely, I agree with all that including various conclusions being drawn from the same circumstantial evidence. Ancinet history is never as easy to comprehend as one would like and it manages to just about evade categorical evidence for one conclusion over another. This is particularly evident when you find later peoples distorting the events of the distant or recent past, much as seems to be the case with the hebrews or jews.

I liked Kmt's point about true monotheism arising under Cyrus due to the influenec of is beliefs in Ahura Mazda. The first hebrews were possibly not to disimilar to pagans although they opposed the worship of Baal. It does seems likely that Yahweh had a consort as was typical for the region but who reallys knows?

You make an important point about 'hebrews' not being a 'race' as such aswell. It is far more likely that they were a conglomerate of tribes that joined together. Strength in numbers and all that but if you create some kind of myth about yourselves then all the better. Maybe this is why there were stories of the Ark.

One of the greatest enigmas, to me at least is the presence of the chaldeans. I am interested as to whether you think there is any relevance to them or if they were relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

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One of the greatest enigmas, to me at least is the presence of the chaldeans. I am interested as to whether you think there is any relevance to them or if they were relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

They matter in as far as they overthrew ancient Babylon creating New Babylon, which eventually took Judah away from the Egyptians. One tends to throw many things together because the places have the same names. But we are talking millenia.

If we talk about "obscure" tribes that does not mean that some kind of bushmen overran a cultured nation. That is more the exception than the rule.

The Hyksos, for example, were capable of overrunning the Egyptians because they had two pieces of equipment that the Egyptians did not: The war chariot and the composite bow. Even if we don't know their origin, we must state that they were technologically advanced.

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They matter in as far as they overthrew ancient Babylon creating New Babylon, which eventually took Judah away from the Egyptians. One tends to throw many things together because the places have the same names. But we are talking millenia.

If we talk about "obscure" tribes that does not mean that some kind of bushmen overran a cultured nation. That is more the exception than the rule.

The Hyksos, for example, were capable of overrunning the Egyptians because they had two pieces of equipment that the Egyptians did not: The war chariot and the composite bow. Even if we don't know their origin, we must state that they were technologically advanced.

Yeah the chariot and bow would have made a significant difference and I can see how they could conquer Egypt but I am intrigued by their motives. Was it just something to do or somewhere to go or did they really have some memory of god Set? The Hyksos worshipped other deities I understand but Set first it seems. Was this just to instill fear or were they returning after at least a millenia in the wilderness of Mesopatamia? You need not tell me I am wrong as I know it is fantasy but I think it offers an explanation why the Hyksos sought to conquer Egypt. Thus it was interesting when I reading about the=at Senqare (spelling?) Tao fellow who the Apophis wished to gain the secrets of Egypt from.

You see I don't see bushmen or nomads as necessarily uncultured. It is hard for us to understand but within the disorganized or chaotic there is a unity and an order. If that can be harnessed then it is a powerful thing.

Evidence for the Chaldeans in ancient history is thin on the ground but they were secretive aswell as astronomers, seers and magi. I think in them lies a great mystery but I don't want to push it further than stating two origins for the name I have come across. One is caldera and the other is the armenian word for ram that is khaldi. Abraham is mentioned as a chaldean from Ur and it is possible that they originated neat Mt Ararat. Don't expect you to agree but those are my speculative thoughts on the subject.

Thanks for the information and apologies for any discrpencies in my logic or errors in spelling.

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Yeah the chariot and bow would have made a significant difference and I can see how they could conquer Egypt but I am intrigued by their motives. Was it just something to do or somewhere to go or did they really have some memory of god Set? The Hyksos worshipped other deities I understand but Set first it seems. Was this just to instill fear or were they returning after at least a millenia in the wilderness of Mesopatamia? You need not tell me I am wrong as I know it is fantasy but I think it offers an explanation why the Hyksos sought to conquer Egypt. Thus it was interesting when I reading about the=at Senqare (spelling?) Tao fellow who the Apophis wished to gain the secrets of Egypt from.

The problem here is that we suppose to know what the Hyksos worshiped, our problem is that we have very little historical material to go on, and most of what we have comes from a second party who was first oppressed by them and later defeated them, so the accuracy there is, to be well mannered, lacking.

The Hyksos could have come from about anywhere, we know of advanced cultures all over Asia, even as far a Siberia that moved westward. In fact, until the 19th century there always was a westward displacement of Euro-Asiatic cultures that only ended when there was nothing left to the West to settle and they were sitting in California and Alaska.

The way I see it, the Hyksos were moving West to find a place to settle and stumbled upon Egypt being weak and in disarray and seized the opportunity. They committed the same error as the Chaldean, to underestimate millenia deep cultural roots and traditions and were eventually expulsed by the original inhabitants.

Edited by questionmark
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It depends on what time scales we consider. Egytpian religion is dea though making a come back :o if any connection can be made between Hyksos and hebrew at the end of all this then thoguh defeated they suceeded in creating the longest lived of all organized religions. Change that as if that is tru then it would not have been created by Hyksos but more likely by people more contemporaneous with New babylon thus making hinduism and the Rig Veda older.

Hyksos could have been armenians, hurrians, kurgans - maybe even mitanni or hittites or other culture I am not aware of. I am guessing that Akkadians were obsolete by the time frame we are talking. Hard to pin point with evidence where the Hyksos came from other than Asia because the world was incredibly chaotic at that time.

Do you know why habiru were also called Sa.Gaz?

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It depends on what time scales we consider. Egytpian religion is dea though making a come back :o

I doubt that Egyptian religion is, just as the Druid religion is not. What some people consider to be Egyptian religion or Druid religion or ancient Greek God worship is appearing on the scene. But we know nothing about its rituals and only superficially its theology, so it cannot come back as it was.

These are not the ancient religions but modern ones with an interpretation of the fragmentary knowledge that survived through history. But if the adherents want to claim to believe in something that is 5000 years old so be it.

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We cannot meld all of these ancient people together as though they were the mixings of a salad.

Nice turn of phrase :tu:

Can't wait to read the rest!

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I doubt that Egyptian religion is, just as the Druid religion is not. What some people consider to be Egyptian religion or Druid religion or ancient Greek God worship is appearing on the scene. But we know nothing about its rituals and only superficially its theology, so it cannot come back as it was.

These are not the ancient religions but modern ones with an interpretation of the fragmentary knowledge that survived through history. But if the adherents want to claim to believe in something that is 5000 years old so be it.

Good point I was being a little facetious. I was referring to the various cults that go under the names of Isis or Bast but without correctly identifying how egypts' religion worked, accurate comparisons cannot be drawn. Same with druids as you infer. They were so secretive that we only know a fragment of how they operated and so the same applies. Modern renderings with ancient precepts or longings is the closest we could get these days.

I had better stop before I start trying to conecting Abraham with Brahmins with Bran and the druids. :rolleyes:

What does the suffix 'br' mean as it is found it hebrew?

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In the PBS Nova Documentary "Bible's Buried Secrets" there are a couple of theories about the origin of the Hebrews -

  1. Some scholars belive that the Hebrews were originally refugees/escaped slaves from Egpyt, who had passed through Midian and the place called YWH, the land of the Shasu, who's patron God is also named YWH. The slaves took on the theological idea of YWH and adapted it to form tgheir own religion. But the Merneptah reliefs identify the Shasu as a separate entity than the Israelites.
  2. The Hebrews or the Israelites was a mixture of Cananite commoners who migrated into the area and escaped slaves from Egpyt.

Edited by The Spartan
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Good point I was being a little facetious. I was referring to the various cults that go under the names of Isis or Bast but without correctly identifying how egypts' religion worked, accurate comparisons cannot be drawn. Same with druids as you infer. They were so secretive that we only know a fragment of how they operated and so the same applies. Modern renderings with ancient precepts or longings is the closest we could get these days.

I had better stop before I start trying to conecting Abraham with Brahmins with Bran and the druids. :rolleyes:

What does the suffix 'br' mean as it is found it hebrew?

Do you mean <br> ?

That is a wrong HTML coding. Somebody messed up when making the website. It is the code for line break.

But if you want to connect Isis to a modern religion, all you have to do is go to the next Catholic community when they have a Marian Procession. That ritual was copied 1:1 from the Isis cult.

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I had better stop before I start trying to conecting Abraham with Brahmins with Bran and the druids. :rolleyes:

People are already doing that - connecting Abraham to Brahma, the Hindu god of creation.

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In the PBS Nova Documentary "Bible's Buried Secrets" there are a couple of theories about the origin of the Hebrews -

  1. Some scholars belive that the Hebrews were originally refugees/escaped slaves from Egpyt, who had passed through Midian and the place called YWH, the land of the Shasu, who's patron God is also named YWH. The slaves took on the theological idea of YWH and adapted it to form tgheir own religion. But the Merneptah reliefs identify the Shasu as a separate entity than the Israelites.
  2. The Hebrews or the Israelites was a mixture of Cananite commoners who migrated into the area and escaped slaves from Egpyt.

Could be, in its form they are both typical theories from the "Bible is gospel" fraction. The problem is that the archeological evidence does not seem to back that.

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Do you mean <br> ?

That is a wrong HTML coding. Somebody messed up when making the website. It is the code for line break.

But if you want to connect Isis to a modern religion, all you have to do is go to the next Catholic community when they have a Marian Procession. That ritual was copied 1:1 from the Isis cult.

Good one but there are probably hundreds if not thousands of groups taking direct or indirect influence from ancient Egypt. I don't know them by name thankfully but they are ten a penny it seems.

Hee hee no not <br> just the 'br' part of hebrew and or Abrahamn. I have read before that Ur as in Aryan, Armenia, etc comes from original but I am skeptical with priginal being a modern english word d'uh. However, 'Br' is perhaps more interesting. I found this:

BDB and Gesenius agree that the root of )BYR is )BR, from

the Assyrian root abaru, meaning be strong. In Biblical Hebrew, )BR

usually means fly or wing, but in days of old, )BR in Hebrew had originally

meant mighty.

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/2009-March/037879.html

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/2008-September/036242.html

Another translation is 'crossing over' and this is related to Ivri and important to note that Abraham is said to be a descendant of Eber. Occasionaly it is said to mean 'grain' but this is all just speculation from what I ca gather as there is no archeological evidence of any OT characters.

http://www.ijs.org.au/Origins-and-Early-History-of-Israel/default.aspx

Some crazy stuff in link below from the world of fringe mentality

http://www.meru.org/Press/Atlantisrising.html

Edited by SlimJim22
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People are already doing that - connecting Abraham to Brahma, the Hindu god of creation.

I have been since I joined UM but I didn't want to clog up this thread with links to druidism or brahminism as the egyptian aspect is more interesting and feasable to some.

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Could be, in its form they are both typical theories from the "Bible is gospel" fraction. The problem is that the archeological evidence does not seem to back that.

haha! You are completely mistaken.

The program airs archaeologists' assertions that:[2]

* The Bible's first books have been traced back to multiple authors writing over a span of centuries.(see Documentary hypothesis)

* There is no evidence for the actual existence of patriarchs such as the biblical Abraham.

* The Exodus appears to have involved just a small segment of the Jewish population rather than all Jews.

* The Land of Canaan was not taken over by conquest - rather, the Israelites actually might have been Canaanites who migrated into the highlands and created a new identity for themselves.

* Of the 31 sites the Bible says that Joshua conquered, few showed any signs of war. "Joshua really didn't fight the Battle of Jericho," Dever said.

* Some events of the Israelite kingdom given in the Book of Kings is more or less accurate as history.

* The early books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Samuel and Kings, reached almost their present form during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BCE.

* The Israelite religion was not exclusively monotheistic. Before the 6th centry BCE, the early Israelites were polytheistic and worshipped Yahweh alongside his "wife," a fertility goddess named Asherah.

* The emergence of monotheism and universality of Yahweh was a response to the tragic experience of the Babylonian exile of the Israelites in the 6th century BCE.

Most of the above assertions (95%) are contra as what is stated in the bible.

Now, would you call that typical theories from the "Bible is gospel" fraction??? :rolleyes:

see the Documentary first.

The christian fundamentalists were up in arms against the documentary.

The producers surveyed the evidence and take positions that are mainstream among archaeologists and historians, although they continue to raise objections among both Christians who believe in the literal truth of the Bible and minimalists who assert that the Bible has no historical validation.
The conservative American Family Association has issued an online petition urging Congress to cut off federal funding for PBS.[6] "PBS is knowingly choosing to insult and attack Christianity by airing a program that declares the Bible ‘isn't true and a bunch of stories that never happened,’" signers of the petition are encouraged to declare to members of Congress.

All quotes in this post are from - The Bible's Buried Secrets - from PBS Nova.

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Spartan, thank for you posting about the Midianites. I hadn't come across this theory and wiki has got some decent information of it. I think it definitely was a contributing factor into the mix but there could be more to it as always.

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From what I studied the topic on the origin of the Hyskos, I came to suggest an older theory before the current Hebrew hypothesis: They were the ancestors of the Armenian people, whom call themselves "Hay", resided in the Iranian plateau before nomadic tribes of Indo-European speaking peoples (related to Persians and Pashtos or Afghans) moved west and south into present-day Iraq, Turkey and Syria about 3,000 yrs. ago.

Armenian mythology spoke of a legend of a great leader by the name of "Hayk" led his wanderer tribe out of the Syrian desert into the Caucasus (where Armenia presently stands today) to founded the glory of all civilization...and additions to the Hayk story claimed the tribes went into Mesopotamia, the Levant and the Nile Delta of Egypt; and finally, the Hyksos crossed Asia Minor to settle in Greece or Italy in Europe.

But, it is clearly understood the Egyptians and Babylonians are of Semitic not Indo-Iranian origins, and the language of Hyksos is evidence of their West Semite culture. Then comes the Turanian theory of the Turkic origin of Akkadian, Sumerian and ancient Levantine peoples inhabited Assyria (Syria and Lebanon) and the Trans-Jordan (Palestine and the Sinai), therefore the Hyksos who were "Asiatic" are in fact proto-Turk people.

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haha! You are completely mistaken.

Most of the above assertions (95%) are contra as what is stated in the bible.

Now, would you call that typical theories from the "Bible is gospel" fraction??? :rolleyes:

see the Documentary first.

The christian fundamentalists were up in arms against the documentary.

All quotes in this post are from - The Bible's Buried Secrets - from PBS Nova.

The point I am trying to make here is not if the fundamentalists like it or not... they would not talk about escaped slaves anyway but 144,000 liberated by the Lord and biblical plagues.

Nobody disputes that there are some Egyptians remnants in Judah when the Jews (or what was to become the Jews) were released from Babylonian bondage and nobody disputes that there were small bands of escaped slaves living like nomads. The point is more that the liberated by far surpassed the numbers of those living in Judah, and while one seeks futile a cohesion among those who were there previously from ~500 BC on that cohesion exists. From that time on there is archeological evidence of large Jewish settlements that you cannot find previously (though it took a while for them to count 144,000).

If I talk about the "Bible is gospel" fraction I mean those who still use the bible as a guideline to explain the events in the middle East... which is very easy if you stem from a society with Judeo-Christian-Muslim traditions. Not about those who actually believe that the blood is the home of the soul.

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Not getting off topic, but I thought , i would pop in this stuff

did you know that the Hebrew God had a 'Wife"?

Did you know that even after Judaism was established as a Monotheist religion, the Hebrews did worship his "wife"?

God's wife's name was Asherah

The Book of Jeremiah written circa 628 BC possibly refers to Asherah when it uses the title "queen of heaven" in chapters 7 and 44.[1] For a discussion of "queen of heaven" in the Old Testament, please see Queen of heaven (Antiquity).
Figurines of Asherah are strikingly common in the archaeological record, indicating the popularity of her cult from the earliest times[13] to the Babylonian exile. More rarely, inscriptions linking Yahweh and Asherah have been discovered: an 8th century BCE ostracon inscribed "Berakhti etkhem l’YHVH Shomron ul’Asherato" (Hebrew: בירכתי אתכם ליהוה שומרון ולאשרתו‎) was discovered by Israeli archeologists at Quntilat 'Ajrud (Hebrew "Horvat Teman") in the course of excavations in the Sinai desert in 1975. This translates as: "I have blessed you by YHVH of Samaria and His Asherah" (or perhaps "... by YHVH our guardian and His Asherah", if "Shomron" is to be read "shomrenu"). Another inscription, from Khirbet el-Kom near Hebron, reads: "Blessed be Uriyahu by Yahweh and by his Asherah; from his enemies he saved him!".[14] Tilde Binger notes in her study, Asherah: Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament (1997, p. 141), that there is warrant for seeing an Asherah as, variously, "a wooden-aniconic-stela or column of some kind; a living tree; or a more regular statue." A rudely carved wooden statue planted on the ground of the house was Asherah's symbol, and sometimes a clay statue without legs. Her cult images— "idols"— were found also in forests, carved on living trees, or in the form of poles beside altars that were placed at the side of some roads. Asherah poles are mentioned in the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, the Books of Kings, the second Book of Chronicles, and the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah. The term often appears as merely אשרה, Asherah; this is translated as "groves" in the King James Version and "poles" in the New Revised Standard Version, although no word that may be translated as "poles" appears in the text.

An interesting book on the topic is Did God have a Wife? by Syro-Palestinian archaeologist and biblical scholar William G. Dever (Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona).

Edited by The Spartan
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