Yevus (Jebus)

יבוס

Literally means "a place trodden down" from the root Bus (בוס); i.e. a threshing-floor; not "trodden down" in the sense of "bullied" or "oppressed" but in the sense of it having been first established as a shrine or temple to the corn-god, the place where the harvested corn was taken in order to separate the inedible chaff from the edible grain.

The photograph above, taken in Falastina in the 19th century, shows a process hardly changed from Biblical times - horses replacing donkeys is about the sum of it. That the work is being done by a woman is unchanged too - which is why the threshing-floor which David purchased as the site of the Temple carries a woman's name, Ornah, or Araunah (2 Samuel 24:18), of the Beney Yevus; 1 Chronicles 21:18, which is usually the text that gets things wrong, prefers a male name (prefers to masculine it?), Ornan.

The final Samech (ס) suggests the word was not Hebrew, but probably Hurrian, and the threshing-floor temples - a development of the temple-cave and misrepresented in the Gospels as a "manger" - was one of the most ancient forms of shrine.

Yevus (Jebus) was the ancient name for one of the seven parts of pre-Yeru-Shala'im; when we read the name in Judges 19:10 and 1 Chronicles 11:4, we should not misunderstand this as a synonym, but as an explanation to somebody who knows the whole but can't be expected to know the ancient parts - the equivalent of telling you that someone was hanged in Tyburn - "that is, London" - or landed in America at New Amsterdam - "that is, New York".

At its very beginning it would literally have been a threshing-floor, the place where the corn was brought at harvest-time; and then rendered sacred through the establishment of cultic rites and artefacts, because to thresh the corn was to kill the corn-god, as in the great English folk song - or its Scottish version in the one I have mischievously linked - about John Barleycorn.

The equivalent practice of animal sacrifice would have happened in the same way, with the establishment of an abattoir (the altar in the shrine or temple effectively served as such), and then the cultic rites and artefacts established to "make sacred", which is what "sacrifice" means; the religious legitimisation of the act of killing for the purpose of eating it. The threshing or the slaughtering remain banal and quotidian, but the sanctity increases with time, until eventually what was a stone idol or an image of the deity in clay expands to become a fully-fledged Temple complete with choir, orchestra, Levitical priests in administrative and judicial and teaching roles, and a Kohanic priesthood officiating at the rites of worship. This description applies universally, but is especially significant in Yeru-Shala'im, where the Temple site purchased by King David is known to have been both a threshing-floor - the shrine of Ornah or Araunah - and an abattoir - the great rock on the summit of Mount Mor-Yah.

The "manger" in Beit Lechem (Bethlehem) where Yeshu'a (Jesus) was born, was also a threshing-floor of the same kind, and in that case specifically dedicated to Tammuz, the Babylonian corn-god, who was also worshiped in Yeru-Shala'im (Ezekiel 8:14).

Yevusim or, in English, Jebusites (יבוסי) is the name given to the Kena'ani (Canaanite) people who inhabited the hillside town; though conquered by David when he also took the other hillside villages (Nov, Shalem, Tsi'on, Yevus et cetera) which would become conurbated into Yeru-Shala'im, they were still in existence in the time of Ezra, which suggests that they were not a tribe as such at all, but actually the cultic group focused on the shrine, or perhaps the name for a trade (like the English Cornwallader, a defunct trade yet still in its various forms a fairly common name). References can be found in Genesis 10:16 and 15:21; Numbers 13:29; Joshua 15:63; 2 Samuel 5:6; Ezra 9:1 et al.

One question remains unresolved by the historians and scholars and archaeologists, and probably will never be resolved. When David joined the various hilltop villages together to make his royal city, why did he name the secular part Tsi'on and the cultic part - whatever it was that he did name it: Iru-Shalem possibly (עירו-שלם), Ur-Shalom (עור-שלם) perhaps, some early version that evolved later into Yeru-Shala'im (ירושלים)? Why was it not called Nov - he had promised Achi-Melech the son of the murdered high priest that he would restore it fully, so naming the new city Nov would have been a great fulfillment of that oath. The Tsi'un was an obelisk to Moloch, so it is logical that he didn't choose to honour that deity in the city's name. But he wasn't a worshipper of Shalem either (see below), and yet that was the name that he chose, for the city, and for two of his sons, Shelomoh (Solomon) and Av-Shalom.

My inabiluty to name the city was not a mere failure of scholarship. There are questiins here too. I offered Iru-Shalem and Ur-Shalom, but that could as easily have been Uru-Salima, Yerusalem, or several other options. Key to this are the Yud (י) and the Ayin (ע), which appear to be interchangeable here, as they are on other occasions in the Yehudit language; we simply do not know where or when the changes took place, nor why, though the last is probably: dialect variations, in the way that Londoners say "you" but Wolverhamptoners say "yow", or in that strange distinction between "Oui" and "Hoc" among the French. Josephus certainly accepted this, writing the name on different occasions as Ierusalem (Ἰερουσαλήμ) or Hierosolyma (Ἱεροσόλυμα).

Shalem (Salem) before King David was a separate town, on a separate hilltop, from Yevus; indeed there were seven hills, and each housed either a village or a shrine, or both. Shalem is identified adjacently with Tsi'on according to Psalm 76:2, though elsewhere Mount Tsi'on is described as the site of the Yevusite fortress, and elsewhere again as the hilltop where the Tsi'un, the vast obelisk depicting Moloch, overlooked the Valley of Hinnom so that the god could watch the little children being dashed upon the rocks. It was in Shalem that Av-Raham encountered Malki-Tsedek, its king (Genesis 14:18).

A city called Rušalim is mentioned in the Execration texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, around the 19th century BCE; scholars would like to identify this as Jerusalem, but the date may be too early.

Yeru-Shala'im is called Urušalim (ú-ru-ša-lim) in the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba, around 1330 BCE, and in later letters from the same site as Beit-Shalem, the house of Shalem. Shalem is thought to have been a Kena'ani god of the evening, or specifically the twilight.

The definition of Yeru-Shala'im as "City of Peace" comes from the Midrash, in the 2nd century CE; it is based on a pleasing but narrow definition of the word "Shalom", which does indeed mean "peace", but in reality means "cosmos", in the Greek sense of "wholeness", "completeness", "harmony". Perhaps that is the answer to the unresolved question of why David chose it.

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