Genesis 10:2: Properly Ionia, the region of Turkey around Smyrna which was established by Greek colonists from Attica who worshipped Io and called themselves Ionians before they set up their own domain, about 150 years after the end of the Trojan War. However, the word was used by the Beney Yisra-El for the whole of what we now think of Greece (see also Isaiah 66:19; Dan 8:21; Zechariah 9:13).
That region of Turkey was, and remains known as Anatolia, which takes its name from the fertility goddess Anat, allowing us thereby to connect Io and Anat in Greece and Turkey long before she became established (probably by the Hittite Anatolians) in Kena'an (Canaan).
Ezekiel 27:13 also mentions it, but the context suggests it is not Greece on this occasion but rather Yawan, a city of the Yemen.
The word also appears in Psalm 40:3 and 69:3; on these occasions it is the Yehudit word Yavan (יון) = clay rather than the Yehuditised Greek Ionia.
Worth noting - and see for this the notes to Yah-Io - the name of Yonah (יונה - Jonah), later the infamous Yisra-Eli prophet of Nineveh and the whale's belly (and even Nantucket). Yonah in Yehudit came to mean "a dove". In Chaldean the moon-god Ea was symbolised by a dove in the flood story of Utnapishtim (like No'ach, Utnapishtim sent out a dove to see if the waters had subsided; unlike him, he did not first send a raven). The dove was also sacred to Io, the moon-goddess after whom Ionia is named. Yahu, the earliest masculine form of the moon-god in Yehudit, means "exalted dove". And of course the dove is sacred to Eshet (Isis), to Mother Mary, to Diana - to all mother-goddesses - though the ancients were as inept as we are today when it comes to distinguishing the dove from its close relative, the boring old pigeon (click here).
Ezekiel 27:13 also mentions it, but the context suggests it is not Greece on this occasion but rather Yawan, a city of the Yemen.
The word also appears in Psalm 40:3 and 69:3; on these occasions it is the Yehudit word Yavan (יון) = clay rather than the Yehuditised Greek Ionia.
Worth noting - and see for this the notes to Yah-Io - the name of Yonah (יונה - Jonah), later the infamous Yisra-Eli prophet of Nineveh and the whale's belly (and even Nantucket). Yonah in Yehudit came to mean "a dove". In Chaldean the moon-god Ea was symbolised by a dove in the flood story of Utnapishtim (like No'ach, Utnapishtim sent out a dove to see if the waters had subsided; unlike him, he did not first send a raven). The dove was also sacred to Io, the moon-goddess after whom Ionia is named. Yahu, the earliest masculine form of the moon-god in Yehudit, means "exalted dove". And of course the dove is sacred to Eshet (Isis), to Mother Mary, to Diana - to all mother-goddesses - though the ancients were as inept as we are today when it comes to distinguishing the dove from its close relative, the boring old pigeon (click here).
References to doves in the sacred liturgy of Judaism are frequent, and suggest a continuing, if tacit, reverence for the mother-goddess. See especially the Song of Songs 1:15; 2:14; 4:1; 5:2; 6:9; but also Leviticus 5:7 where she is named among the tabooed creatures. This too needs explaining; the taboo was not as we imagine it today, a mere matter of hygiene or abnegation. Creatures were not eaten precisely because the god or goddess lived in them; they were the deity. Being taboo did not mean they could never be eaten; quite the contrary. On the festival of the deity, they were actively required to be eaten. Even the pig! Even the prawn!
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