Literally the East, it is also used metaphysically to mean time past.
Genesis 15:19 gives us Av-Raham's covenant, and makes reference to a Kena'anite tribe called the Kadmoni (קַּדְמֹנִי); but as Kedem (קדם) means "ancient" or "former" as well as being used for "east", this could simply mean "the people who were there before Av-Raham came" – i.e another of the many aboriginal peoples.
Genesis 25:15 names Kedmah as a son of Yishma-El.
Joshua 13:18 and 21:37, as well as 1 Chronicles 6:64 (1 Chronicles 6:79 in some Christian translations) have Kedemot (קְדֵמֹת) as a town of the Beney Re'u-Ven, and the surrounding desert bears the same name. In Arabic this desert is known as Al-Nafūd or the Nefud al Kabir, made famous, for Brits at least, by Prince Feisal and Lawrence of Arabia's crossing of it in 1917 to take Aqaba from the Turks.
Judges 6:3 has Beney Kedem (בני קדם), which is often mis-translated as "people of the east" or "sons of the east", but simply means the inhabitants of Arabia Deserta, from Kena'an eastwards through what is today Jordan but was then Gad and Mo-Av, as far as the Euphrates; whence Genesis 25:6 has Erets Kedem (ארץ קדם) and Genesis 29:1 Erets Beney Kedem (ארץ בני קדם) for their land, while Genesis 10:30 has Har ha-Kedem (הר-הקדם) for the mountains.
Joshua 13:18 and 21:37, as well as 1 Chronicles 6:64 (1 Chronicles 6:79 in some Christian translations) have Kedemot (קְדֵמֹת) as a town of the Beney Re'u-Ven, and the surrounding desert bears the same name. In Arabic this desert is known as Al-Nafūd or the Nefud al Kabir, made famous, for Brits at least, by Prince Feisal and Lawrence of Arabia's crossing of it in 1917 to take Aqaba from the Turks.
Judges 6:3 has Beney Kedem (בני קדם), which is often mis-translated as "people of the east" or "sons of the east", but simply means the inhabitants of Arabia Deserta, from Kena'an eastwards through what is today Jordan but was then Gad and Mo-Av, as far as the Euphrates; whence Genesis 25:6 has Erets Kedem (ארץ קדם) and Genesis 29:1 Erets Beney Kedem (ארץ בני קדם) for their land, while Genesis 10:30 has Har ha-Kedem (הר-הקדם) for the mountains.
Kedem is also called Mesha (משא) and Mash (מש), for example in Genesis 10:23, from which we get the word Mesopotamia, "potamus" being the Greek word for a river, Mesha having the same meaning as Greek "mesis" (Μέσης - "middle"), and the two rivers in question being the Euphrates and the Tigris.
The Greeks likewise treated the word Kadmus (Cadmus) as meaning "east". King Cadmus of Thebes had a daughter named Semele with whom Zeus had a love affair in his customary mortal disguise. The legend tells that Hera found out, and tried to persuade Semele to make him revert to his normal form. Semele was terrified what that form might be, and so stayed away from his bed; Zeus in anger consumed her with thunder and lightning. Hermes saved the six months old child in her womb, sewed him up inside Zeus' head, and delivered him thence. Thus the child is called "twice-born", which in Greek is Dionysus.
Semele is in fact "the moon", and Cadmus of Thebes suggests an Egyptian origin for the myth though there is also a Greek Thebes (the two links take you to each). Cadmus' wife was named Harmonia. In the account of myth told by the Laconians of Brasiae, Cadmus shut Semele and her child in an ark when he learned of the affair; Semele died and was buried, but Ino reared Dionysus. The ark in mythology is the boat or chariot in which both the sun and the moon traverse the sky. The link to the myths of both Osher (Osiris) and Mosheh (Moses) should be so obvious as to not require commentary.
In the battle between Typhon and Zeus, which is reflected in the Set legends, it was Cadmus who recovered the sinews of Zeus' limbs which Typhon had removed, thereby restoring Zeus to power. Likewise it was Cadmus who brought the Phoenician alphabet (supposedly invented by Io) to Boeotia in Greece as the Pelasgian alphabet; this legend is probably based on the fact that Alpha in Greek (A), which is Aleph in Yehudit (א), means "an ox", as does the name "Boeotia".
Other than the Dionysus links that we have already noted elsewhere (see GAD et al), none of this seems to help us much in deducing who the Kadmonin were. However, Cadmus' origins make clear that he was not a person at all, but a generic name for the lore, cults, gods and peoples of the east in general, so that anything whose origins were further east than the coast of Phoenicia and Kena'an became attributed to Cadmus. Agenor (Kena'an), Libya's son by Poseidon and the twin of Bel, left Egypt (hence the Theban link) to settle in Kena'an; there he married Telephassa, who is also called Argiope, and fathered on her Cadmus, Phoenix, Cilix, Thasus, Phineus, and a girl named Europa. Phoenix is the Phoenicians, and the legends say that he founded Carthage, whose inhabitants called themselves the Punics, before returning to Phoenicia and fathering Adonis. Cilix became Cilicia. Phineus became a tribe of the Black Sea region; and Europa hardly needs explaining. As with the Dana'ans, Kena'an again appears to be the origin for the dispersal of a major ethnic group, in this case the Pelasgians (who in fact the Dana'ans later defeated and substantially replaced). The sons and daughters cover the Mediterranean completely, leaving Cadmus the east.
In fact, he too first sailed west, (in pursuit of Zeus who had raped his sister Europa), building a temple to Poseidon and a cauldron to Athene at Rhodes, visiting the Delphic Oracle after the death of his mother Telephassa, and taking her advice to "follow a cow and build a city where she goes to sleep". The cow stands symbol for the moon-goddess (cf Le'ah, Io/Yah, Hat-Hor, others), as does his daughter Semele; the Delphic Oracle, like her equivalents in Kena'an, was a prophetess of Ba'al's wife Anat, whom the Greeks called Athene and the Phoenicians Onga. Cadmus built Thebes in - guess where? - Boeotia.
The Greeks likewise treated the word Kadmus (Cadmus) as meaning "east". King Cadmus of Thebes had a daughter named Semele with whom Zeus had a love affair in his customary mortal disguise. The legend tells that Hera found out, and tried to persuade Semele to make him revert to his normal form. Semele was terrified what that form might be, and so stayed away from his bed; Zeus in anger consumed her with thunder and lightning. Hermes saved the six months old child in her womb, sewed him up inside Zeus' head, and delivered him thence. Thus the child is called "twice-born", which in Greek is Dionysus.
Semele is in fact "the moon", and Cadmus of Thebes suggests an Egyptian origin for the myth though there is also a Greek Thebes (the two links take you to each). Cadmus' wife was named Harmonia. In the account of myth told by the Laconians of Brasiae, Cadmus shut Semele and her child in an ark when he learned of the affair; Semele died and was buried, but Ino reared Dionysus. The ark in mythology is the boat or chariot in which both the sun and the moon traverse the sky. The link to the myths of both Osher (Osiris) and Mosheh (Moses) should be so obvious as to not require commentary.
In the battle between Typhon and Zeus, which is reflected in the Set legends, it was Cadmus who recovered the sinews of Zeus' limbs which Typhon had removed, thereby restoring Zeus to power. Likewise it was Cadmus who brought the Phoenician alphabet (supposedly invented by Io) to Boeotia in Greece as the Pelasgian alphabet; this legend is probably based on the fact that Alpha in Greek (A), which is Aleph in Yehudit (א), means "an ox", as does the name "Boeotia".
Other than the Dionysus links that we have already noted elsewhere (see GAD et al), none of this seems to help us much in deducing who the Kadmonin were. However, Cadmus' origins make clear that he was not a person at all, but a generic name for the lore, cults, gods and peoples of the east in general, so that anything whose origins were further east than the coast of Phoenicia and Kena'an became attributed to Cadmus. Agenor (Kena'an), Libya's son by Poseidon and the twin of Bel, left Egypt (hence the Theban link) to settle in Kena'an; there he married Telephassa, who is also called Argiope, and fathered on her Cadmus, Phoenix, Cilix, Thasus, Phineus, and a girl named Europa. Phoenix is the Phoenicians, and the legends say that he founded Carthage, whose inhabitants called themselves the Punics, before returning to Phoenicia and fathering Adonis. Cilix became Cilicia. Phineus became a tribe of the Black Sea region; and Europa hardly needs explaining. As with the Dana'ans, Kena'an again appears to be the origin for the dispersal of a major ethnic group, in this case the Pelasgians (who in fact the Dana'ans later defeated and substantially replaced). The sons and daughters cover the Mediterranean completely, leaving Cadmus the east.
In fact, he too first sailed west, (in pursuit of Zeus who had raped his sister Europa), building a temple to Poseidon and a cauldron to Athene at Rhodes, visiting the Delphic Oracle after the death of his mother Telephassa, and taking her advice to "follow a cow and build a city where she goes to sleep". The cow stands symbol for the moon-goddess (cf Le'ah, Io/Yah, Hat-Hor, others), as does his daughter Semele; the Delphic Oracle, like her equivalents in Kena'an, was a prophetess of Ba'al's wife Anat, whom the Greeks called Athene and the Phoenicians Onga. Cadmus built Thebes in - guess where? - Boeotia.
What follows reads like a variant on the legend of Jason. Seeking water at the Spring, Ares (his second wife Harmonia was Ares' daughter by Aphrodite), Cadmus' men were killed by a serpent. Cadmus then killed the serpent with a rock, and sowed its teeth (the origins of Saint Patrick too, before he was reinvented as an Anglo-Catholic saint!). Up sprang armed men, but Cadmus threw a rock at them, and there ensued a quarrel amongst themselves as to who had thrown it. The five who survived the battle became servants of Cadmus (one of them would later father Jocasta, the mother of Oedipus).
The serpent of course is another moon symbol, and the notion of "five survivors" makes us think of the five days intercalated to bring the lunar year of 360 days (12 months of 30 days) in line with the solar calendar of 365 days. Cadmus can thus be treated as the moon-god himself, or more specifically as the spouse of the full moon.
Cadmus' marriage to Harmonia was the first mortal marriage ever to be attended by all the Olympian gods, seated on 12 thrones (see Robert Graves 59) All the descendants of Cadmus bore the mark of the serpent on their bodies (see Graves 76:c and 106:m) which may help explain the "Mark of Cain".
Copyright © 2019 David Prashker
The serpent of course is another moon symbol, and the notion of "five survivors" makes us think of the five days intercalated to bring the lunar year of 360 days (12 months of 30 days) in line with the solar calendar of 365 days. Cadmus can thus be treated as the moon-god himself, or more specifically as the spouse of the full moon.
Cadmus' marriage to Harmonia was the first mortal marriage ever to be attended by all the Olympian gods, seated on 12 thrones (see Robert Graves 59) All the descendants of Cadmus bore the mark of the serpent on their bodies (see Graves 76:c and 106:m) which may help explain the "Mark of Cain".
Copyright © 2019 David Prashker
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