The Land Of Purple

MORE ON THE ARCHEOLOGICAL RECORD:

To review: “Israel” is the name for a group defined by a shared Faith, not by a shared homeland. In Psalm 147, the diaspora is described as “outcast” (from Judea), but all those who have been dispersed are STILL IDENTIFIED AS “Israel”. Whether or not they should–or might even want to–return to Judea is another matter. It is no secret that one can see “the Promised Land” from, well, anywhere. It refers to a spiritual disposition, not a geographical location.

So why the preponderance of misconceptions? Unscrupulous Zionist historiographers claim that four archeological discoveries use the term “Israel” to refer to a Jewish kingdom in Canaan:

• The Merneptah stele (written in Egyptian hieroglyphs)
• The Tel Dan stele (written in Aramaic using the Phoenician alphabet)
• The Mesha stele (written in a Moabite dialect of Old Canaanite, using the Phoenician alphabet)
• The Kurkh stelae [monoliths] (written in Akkadian cuneiform)

This characterization is fallacious. There was no such reference in any of these places; and such nomenclature was never used. Let’s look at each in turn.

Merneptah’s victory stele (c. 1209 or 1208 B.C.) roughly reads: “the foreign people are laid waste, bereft of seed [no longer able to propagate].” This formulaic hieroglyphic phrasing is used to refer to certain residents of Canaan. Interestingly, it does this EVEN AS it describes other defeated people in the same passage according to a PLACE: the coastal city of Ashkelon, Gezer (at the northern edge of the Shefela), and Yenoam (in the far-north of Canaan). Thus the defeated Hebrews were not associated with a specific land; they were referred to simply as a people. This is very telling. (The oft-touted translation of the hieroglyphs for “foreign people” as “Israel” is fallacious.)

To reiterate: This nomenclature was used even as OTHER defeated peoples were associated with a specific place.  In other words, the region was not associated with the Yahweh-ists (likely the Jebusites).  How do we know they did not use the term “Israel” for the area in question?  Because they ALREADY HAD a label for it: “Ret[j]enu”.  They referred to the southern half (Edom up through the Judean Hills) as “D[j]ahi”; and they referred to the northern half (Samaria, through the Galilee, up to Phoenicia / Iturea) as “Rmnn”, including what the Canaanites dubbed “Amurru” (land of the Amorites).

Recall that the Egyptians used “Peleset” as an ethnonym, which was likely based on the Assyrian (Old Aramaic) “Palashtu”.  The only toponym that was eventually used for an explicitly proto-Judaic dominion would have been “Judea”, the land on which the southern Kingdom of Judah was later situated.  But that would not be until the 9th century.

And so it went that the Egyptians referred to a “foreign people” when they were boasting that they had conquered the proto-Judaic peoples of Canaan (effectively: the Amorite forebears of the Hebrews). The Egyptians did this INSTEAD OF referring to a sovereign territory.

So if not the Egyptians, might anyone ELSE have used the term “Israel” in their inscriptions? As it happens: YES. The victory stele found at Tel Dan was written (in Old Aramaic) on behalf of Aramaean king Hazael of Damascus [Aram] c. 841 B.C. It boasts of having killed the “king of Israel”. Who was that? It was the ruler of the pagan kingdom in the north (likely J[eh]oram ben Ahaziah ben Ahab ben Omri). The inscription also boasts of having killed a potentate of “byt-dwd”, taken to mean the “house of David”, which was likely referring to the king of Judah, Ahaziah ben J[eh]oram (not to be confused with the northern king by the same name). This is very telling, as it does NOT specify a Jewish people. (Nor does it even refer to the relevant city as “Yerushalem”.)

The Mesha stele was written on behalf of the king of Moab c. 841 B.C. It cites the “House of Omri” when referring to the northern kingdom (i.e. the pagan Kingdom of Israel, located in Samaria). To reiterate: The Jewish people were AT WAR with this northern kingdom–as is made clear in Second Kings 16:5-6. Put another way: Beth Israel was FIGHTING the Kingdom of Israel. Predictably, such idiosyncratic nomenclature has precipitated much of the confusion surrounding the term, “Israel”.

The two stelae from Kurkh (Anatolia) are also from the 9th century B.C. They were written for Assyrian king Ashur-nasir-pal II and his son, Shulmanu-asharedu III. The commemoration of the latter’s defeat of “A[c]hab Sir’lit” [alt. “A-ha-ab-bu Sir-ila-a-a”] is likely a reference to King Ahab (again: of the pagan kingdom in the north: the Kingdom of Israel). Interestingly, Ahab’s kingdom was assigned the Biblical name “Shomron” [“Samaria”].

Here’s the thing to bear in mind: Pace the alternate moniker for the disdained land of “Shomron” (where the pagan Kingdom of Israel was located), it is clear that “Yisra-El” was a term that originally referred to the progeny [alt. seed] of Jacob; and, more specifically, for those who were affiliated with the House of David. The northern kingdom (the Kingdom of Israel) worshipped Baal and Asherah…and was the NEMESIS of the seed of Jacob (Beth Israel). It was the pagans vs. the Abrahamic monotheists. Both were Canaanites; the latter were Hebrews (who dwelled in Judea).  Other than “Kinahhu” / “Kn’n” (Canaan), the area in question was “Palashtu” / “P-L-S-T” (Palestine).

So what about the nomenclature for the relevant geography? During Persian (Achaemenid) rule, the region was typically referenced as “Y-H-D”, an Aramaic moniker (typically rendered “Yehud”). THAT would become the basis for the original label for the Jewish people, “Yehudi[m]”…rendered “Yehuda” in Classical Hebrew and “Judeans” in English. Thus “Judah” is the name for the Biblical figure and the eponymous southern kingdom (the Judaic kingdom in Judea).

But where might this moniker have ORIGINALLY come from? We can only speculate. One possibility is that the term was derived from the Old Aramaic appellation for the Aramaean city-state of Sam’al located on the northern outskirts of Canaan (at what is now referred to as “Zinjerli”): “Ya’udi”. Lo and behold: “Ya’udi” is found in inscriptions using the Phoenician alphabet, as on the Kilamuwa Stele from the 9th century B.C. (The appellation seems to have been a reference to the patron deity of Sam’al, “Ya’u”.)

This explanation becomes even more plausible once we consider that the “Ahlamu” [Aramaeans] invariably shared some of their culture with other Canaanites–notably: the Amorite godhead, Hadad. In fact, 65:11 in the Book of Isaiah even concedes that many Hebrews (that is: the Judeans) were known to worship the Aramaean god of fortune, Gad during the Exilic Period. Clearly, there was cross-cultural pollination.

Indeed, such memetic transference was not uncommon in the region. After all, the Judaic godhead, Y-H-W-H was likely adopted from the Shasu…whom the ancient Egyptians associated with “Yah-w”–yet another occurrence of the same morpheme. That the earliest Judaic peoples were influenced by (extant) Babylonian and (antecedent) Amorite lore makes perfect sense, given that their lore was first composed by Babylonian scribes during the Exilic Period. Note that the first four kings of Babylon were Amorite–beginning with Su[mu]-Abu[m] in the 19th century B.C.

How else did the ancients refer to the Land of Purple? There is an inscription on the stele at Memphis on which Ptolemy IV commemorated his victory over the Seleucids at Raphia (near Gaza) c. 217 B.C. That inscription refers to the region as “Coele-Syria” [“Greater Syria”] in Greek; and then denotes “the land of the Assyrians and the land of the Phoenicians” in Demotic Egyptian. So far as Levantine lands went, there was nothing referred to as “Israel”.

That just about covers it. The inscriptions enumerated here are an exhaustive account of salient evidence. This is not the result of having cherry-picked only the inscriptions that happen to comport with the present thesis. So far as I’ve been able to find, these inscriptions account for the entirety of what is now available from the archeological record. There is no countervailing evidence of which I am aware.

That takes care of geographical onomastics. Let’s revisit the nomenclature for the people-in-question: “Hebrews” / “Yehudi[m]” (viz. residents of Yehud; alt. “Judeans”). It is telling that the alternate moniker for Hebrews eventually became “Israelites”. That term ALSO refers to a people, irrespective of country affiliation. So what’s the distinction?  “Beth Israel”, based as it was on the notion of a HOUSE, intimated a body of people; whereas “Israelites” referred to a kind of people (DENIZENS OF that house).  This adjustment in terminology enabled an individual to be designated an “Israelite” (that is: a member of “Israel”).  Such nomenclature made sense because the term “Israel” was not tied to any specific place.

But what about the etymology of the moniker, “Israelite”?  It is the Anglicized version of the term “Yisraeli”–a label that originally meant that one was a member of “Yisra-El”.  Tellingly, that included not only Jews, but Samaritans as well. {32}

Thus “Israelites” is the equivalent of “B’nei Yisra-El” (the sons / children of Israel)–which is to say: the progeny of Jacob.  It is quite telling that even the denizens of the pagan kingdom in the north (who weren’t necessarily Jewish) were ALSO referred to as “Israelites”.  (In other words: some “Israelites” were not even part of Beth Israel.)  This onomastic parity was illustrated in Exodus 24:9-11, where “elders of Israel” is synonymous with “leaders of the Israelites”. The passage refers to a period when “Israel” was migrating from Egypt, and was located at Sinai; so it clearly had nothing to do with a specific place. One could be an “Israelite” wherever one happened to reside–be it in the Levant or anywhere else.  Thus the label “Israelite” said nothing about country of origin. (Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt…so that they could go to “the Promised Land”.)

The bottom line is that NONE of this had anything to do with a particular tract of land.

During the Iron Age and on through Classical Antiquity, residents of the region-in-question (Canaan) who emphasized their Jewish identity would have considered themselves “Judeans” / “Yehudi[m]”. Why? Because the land from which they hailed was called “Judea” / “Yehud”. Yet referring to themselves as “Israelites” would have said nothing about where their country of origin might have been. Hence the term “Israelites” can be rather misleading because it does not refer to people who are from a PLACE; as there was no place known as “Israel” (barring the designation of the pagan kingdom located in Samaria).

To reiterate: “Beth Israel” is the name of a group qua UNITY (a house), whereas “Israelites” refers to a collection of individuals, each of which is an “Israelite” (a member of the tribe known as “Israel”).

Hebrews hailing from the place-in-question were first known as Canaan-ites, as the place’s ORIGINAL name was Canaan. Later, they were simply known as Judeans, as they hailed from Judea, wherein was located the (Judaic) Kingdom of Judah. Later still, they were thought of as Jewish Palestinians, as they were practitioners of Mosaic law who hailed from Palestine. Their ETHNIC designation came to be “Hebrew”. (I discuss this nomenclature in a forthcoming essay.) It might also be noted that alternate labels were used when referring to BELIEVING Hebrews–such as “Nazirite” [one who is consecrated; one who has taken a vow]. That is the descriptor used for Samson in the sixth chapter of Numbers. (Later, “Nazarene” was a synecdoche used for Christians, as their Christ hailed from Nazareth.)

How large was the exiled Jewish community during the Exilic Period? Likely just three to four thousand. Most did not actually end up residing in Babylon proper, but in Nippur, just to the south. The most fabled of the Exilic scribes was Ezra, who would have written in (Babylonian) Aramaic script–as Classical Hebrew script (itself derived from Semitic antecedents, like Samaritan and Old Aramaic) did not yet exist. (It was not until the 1st century A.D. that Judaic scripture was re-written in the familiar block letters of Classical Hebrew…which was derived from the Samaritan variant of Old Aramaic.) Later Babylonian scribes would include Jeremiah and Baruch. Tellingly, in the Book of Baruch, “Israel” speaks in the FIRST PERSON: “Happy are we, O Israel”. In other words: We are “Israel”, regardless of where we happen to be.

It is worth bearing in mind that the Torah and other Deuteronomic texts were composed in Mesopotamia during the Exilic period.  The material was first written down by Babylonian scribes in the 6th century B.C.  They were harking back to the halcyon era of the fabled King Josiah of Judah (who’d ruled the southern kingdom in the 7th century B.C.) so as to retroactively establish an exalted Davidic legacy.  The “catch” is that anything prior to Josiah is, in all likelihood, farce–tailored post hoc so as to legitimize Judaic claims centuries after the fact.

So what about AFTER the Exilic Period? The archeological record continues to furnish us with clues. The so-called “Edict of Cyrus” was the reputed means by which the Hebrews were repatriated to Canaan at the conclusion of the exile in Babylon. That this fabled edict designated a putative “Land of Israel” (to which the Hebrews would be repatriated) is an enticing bit of apocrypha. Such phraseology is based on tales of Joshua found in Second Chronicles and the Book of Ezra. There is no archeological evidence that any edict used such wording.

In the 530’s B.C., pursuant to overtaking Babylon, the (Persian) Achaemenids gave the Jewish community freedom of movement throughout the region. This began what would be dubbed the “Second Temple Period” (inaugurated by Ezra) in Judaic lore. It is revealing that at the conclusion of the Exilic Period, in 538, when the Persians invited the Hebrews of Babylon to return to Canaan (spec. “Judea”) if they so wished, the majority of them opted to remain in Babylon. Others opted to settle in Egypt instead (esp. in Elephantine and Alexandria). In other words, they were mostly what we would now consider NON-Zionists. There was obviously no (perceived) pressing need to go back to the tract of land located immediately to the west of the Jordan river. This would make ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE if we were to take Revisionist Zionist historiography seriously.

The Achaemenids retained control over Canaan until it fell to Alexander the Great c. 332 B.C. Shortly thereafter, it fell under Ptolemaic control; during which time much of the Jewish community opted settle in Egypt (primarily in Alexandria), as exemplified by the writer, Yeshua ben Sira[ch] in the 2nd century B.C. And how did “Ben Sira” phrase things? Lo and behold: He equates “in Jacob” with “in Israel” (ref. his “Wisdom” texts; chapt. 24).  He was referring to the progeny of a patriarch.

In 200 B.C., the Levant fell to the Seleucids, who maintained control until c. 164 B.C., when the (Maccabean) Hasmoneans took over.  There was a century of Hasmonean rule (164 to 63 B.C.), starting with the Maccabean revolution.  The Maccabees referred to the land as “Judea” (as referring to it as “Israel” would not have made sense). THEY were Israel, not the territory on which they lived.

When the Book of Amos was written, the topic of having been uprooted from a land (and the prospect of returning to it) was broached. This was for the simple reason that the Hasmoneans wanted to legitimize their rule in the Levant. Making use of etiological myth, while invoking Providence, was the obvious way to do this. Even then, it was a PEOPLE who were referred to as “Israel” (9:14-15). This is illustrated by the fact that the Abrahamic deity addresses “Israel” (i.e. the Jewish people, wherever they happen to be)–as in, say, 4:5. Indeed, throughout the Book of Amos, the Abrahamic deity refers to “my People, Israel”.  In scolding wayward Hebrews, the Abrahamic deity addressed “Israel” in 4:11-12.  We are told that god punished Israel because “you did not return [reaffirm your fealty] to me… Therefore I will do this to you, O Israel.  And because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your god, O Israel.”  (Hence it was the Abrahamic deity that ensured Babylon would defeat the Hebrews.)

The only OTHER sense in which “Israel” was used was to name the disdained pagan kingdom in the north–against which Amos railed for its socio-economic injustice. (Though he conducted his ministry in the Galilee, the land to the north, the prophet hailed from Judea–wherein was located the Judaic kingdom: “Judah”.) Amos lamented the fact that a corrupt regime (the kingdom of Israel) existed in northern Canaan, and so looked forward to the day that his fellow believers (the progeny of Jacob; i.e. “Yisra-El”) would triumph. Triumph over whom? Over the derided (non-Judaic) Kingdom of Israel. This irony is lost on today’s Revisionist Zionists.

There do occur a few instances where the phrase “land of Israel” occurs (as with, say, First Samuel 13:19); but it is not referring to a sovereign land CALLED “Israel”. Rather, it is referring to the land on which “Israel” (i.e. the Hebrews) happened to reside at the time. It was not until the development of the Mishnah in the late 3rd century A.D. that the neologism “Land of Israel” appeared in the normal discourse using the nomenclature “eretz X” (where X was “Israel”), whereby the insinuation was that there was a LAND that might itself be thought of as “Israel” (i.e. the people with whom it was associated).  To name a place after the people who live there (and claim the land as their own) is a common phenomenon–from, say, the Barbary Coast to the Swahili Coast.

Even then, this was not necessarily intended as an instantiation of “Israel” as a particular PLACE. Note that X in this nomenclature refers to PEOPLE. This is in keeping with Arabic nomenclature. In the phrasing used by medieval Arabs, the Jews were referred to as “Bani Isra’il”. “Bani X” indicated a tribe [sons of X], where X was not a place, but a bloodline. Hence the title of the Koran’s 17th Surah.

Other instances of this nomenclature illustrate the point. During the Late Middle Ages, the Rhineland was dubbed “Ashkenaz”; so the Jews who lived there were dubbed “Ashkenazim”. The Iberian Peninsula and North Africa was dubbed “Sepharad”; so the Jews who lived there were dubbed “Sephardim” (ref. the Book of Obadiah 1:20).

Thus there was a recursivity to the naming scheme: “Eretz Ashkenaz” for “Germany” (with the connotation: “Land of the Jews from Ashkenaz”; where “Ashkenaz” was ITSELF an appellation for Germany). This nomenclature hardly entailed that Germany was thought of as a Jewish land; it was simply a place (Ashkenaz) wherein were located Germanic Jewish communities (Ashkenazim). Indeed, the Rhineland (and, more broadly, eastern Europe) was but ONE OF the many places where Beth Israel could be found in the world. Alas, such onomastic recursivity convolutes the etymology of “Ashkenaz”, as it served simultaneously as an ethnonym and as a demonym–thereby conflating the two. This is analogous to the conflation of ethnonym and demonym with regard to the term “Israel”. (Dual meaning also exists for the term “Jew[ish]”. It can mean either religious affiliation or ethnicity.)

The ensuing etymological “the chicken or the egg” conundrum is resolved by the morpheme’s ACTUAL etymology. The moniker seems to have been derived from the Assyrian term for people of the Eurasian Steppes: the “Ashguza”. This makes sense, as the Ashkenazim are primarily descendants of the [k]Hazars (see my essay: “The Forgotten Diaspora”).  Note that a similar onomastic convention is found with “Sephardi[m]”, which is based on the medieval Judaic moniker for the Iberian peninsula: “Sepharad”.

To recapitulate: When the nomenclature “Eretz X” was originally used to refer to a place, X always referred to a group of people, not to a place (as “eretz” means land). However, in the cases of European Jewry, even as X was the moniker for a people, it was itself derived from the name they coined for the place in which they lived. This is why it made sense that when medieval Jews referred to Germany, they used “Eretz Ashkenaz” (ostensibly: land where the Ashkenazim dwelled); and when they referred to Andalusia, they sometimes used “Eretz Sephard” (ostensibly: land where the Sephardim dwelled).  To reiterate: This is redundant, as it is based on onomastic recursivity: “Ashkenaz” and “Sepharad” were originally the names of the places in question.

Rarely was the moniker “Eretz Israel” used; for the Jewish people (qua “Israel”) were located in no one particular place.  So using such nomenclature would not have made any sense.