TheBibleNet: Search results for chaman

Showing posts sorted by relevance for query chaman. Sort by date Show all posts

Ba'al

בעל

The principal Phoenician god, whose cultic centre was in Tsur (Tyre) and whose wife - in some versions of the myth his mother - was Astarte, though in Beit Anatot (Bethany) she was named Anat, which links back to the Beney Chet (Hittites) of Anatolia. Ba'al means "lord", "master", "possessor" or "owner", and came to mean "husband"; like the word Adon, Adonis or Adonai, it is a way of addressing the deity.

There are innumerable references to Ba'al in the Tanach, amongst which Judges 2:11; 3:7; 6:25; 8:33; 10:10; 1 Samuel 7:4; 12:10; 1 Kings 16:32; 1 Kings 18:22; 2 Kings 10:18.

Phoenician proper names reflect their god, e.g. Yeruv-Va'al (ירבעל - see my note to Judges 6:32), who is also known as Gid'on (Gideon), Et-Ba'al (אתבעל), and the famous Hannibal Barca, Carthaginian general in the Punic wars (הנבעל). The Aramaean equivalent was named Bel (בל), who the Romans called Belus and who re-appears in various similar name-forms in Celtic mythology, particularly as Beli.

In Tsur (Tyre) his full name seems to have Malkeret Ba'al Tsur (מלקרת בעל צד) = "king of the city of Tyre". The Greeks took him over and attached him to their own equivalent god, likewise son of the moon-goddess, Hercules (properly Hera-Kles, "the glory of Hera"). He was first known in Greece either as Herakles Tyrius or Herakles Melkarth(מלקרת), but the Tyrius was later dropped. Scholars have argued about Ba'al's planetary association, though it seems more probable that the Jupiter proponents are correct and the sun proponents incorrect. The Phoenicians worshiped the stone idol Chaman (חמן, sometimes pronounced Chamon) as the sun, and later associated the two under the combined name of Ba'al-Chaman (the same Chaman/Haman who asks to be worshipped as a stone idol in the Purim story).

The legends of Herakles are reflected both in the Celtic myths of Cúchullain and Ar-Thur and, more relevantly, in those of the Danite (Phoenician) sun-hero Shimshon (Samson).

His major appearance in the Septateuch (the first seven books of the Tanach) is as Ba'al Berit (בעל ברית), "the Lord of Covenants", for it is undoubtedly this deity who has been expurgated from the covenant accounts of Av-Raham, Yitschak and Ya'akov. Judges 8:33 and 9:4 both place the worship of this particular epiphany at Shechem, which is precisely where key covenants with the patriarchs were formulated (see AV-RAHAM).

Ba'al-Zvuv (בעל זבוב) is Beelzebub, "the Lord of the Flies"; he was also known as Ba'al Zvul (בעל זבול), and was the same Ugaritic or Phoenician deity in the form in which he was worshiped at Ekron. King Achaz-Yah insulted him in 2 Kings 1:2 ff. The Galileans later accused Jesus of worshipping him as the Prince of Demons (Matthew 12). His "wife" (presumably) was Jezebel (איזבל), properly Iy-Zevel, the daughter of the Et-Ba'al (אתבעל) king of Tsur (Tyre) mentioned above, who married Ach-Av (Ahab) and supported both Ba'al and Asherah worship in Yisra-El until Eli-Yahu (Elijah) swept it away. (1 Kings 16:31; 18:4; 21:5; 2 Kings 9:7).

The Beney Mo-Av (Moabites) worshiped him as Ba'al Pe'or (בעל פער); cf Numbers 23:28, Deuteronomy 3:29, Joshua 22:17 et al.

Many place names also reflect his worship, and naming a place for a god usually indicates the presence there of a shrine. One particularly interesting place is Ba'al Gad at the foot of Mount Chermon. Gad means "fortune", and is of course also the name of one of the twelve tribes. I believe we have here an indication of the nature of the Beney Gad, that they were distinguished from other Yisra-Elite tribes precisely by their honouring of Ba'al above other deities, in the same way that Asher was distinguished through its worship of either Osher (Osiris) or Asherah, and Yisaschar through its worship of either Yah-Shachur, the "Black Madonna", or Yah Shachar, the daen-star,d epending on how you prefer to read each of their names. I would suggest Gad was originally the Beney Ba'al Gad, and that all the tribes are associated with a particular member of the polytheon, as they were with each of the constellations (click here for more on this).

Ba'al-Hamon (בעל המון) should not be confused with Ba'al Chamon (see above), the latter with a Chet (ח), this with a Hey (ה). It is probably a misreading of Ba'al Ammon (בעל אמון) where Shelomoh (Solomon) had a vineyard, according to Songs 8:11; it was sacred to Amonite Jupiter.

Ba'al-Chatsor (בעל חצור) is mentioned in 2 Samuel 13:23 as a village near the tribe of Ephrayim, and another of the same name in Nehemiah 11:33, this one in the tribe of Bin-Yamin.

Ba'al-Chermon (בעל הרמן) is mentioned in 1 Chronicles 5:23 and Judges 3:3 as lying at the foot of Mount Chermon, and may well be an alternate name for Ba'al-Gad.

Ba'al-Tsephon (בעל צפון) appears in Exodus 14:2 and Numbers 33:7, both of which site this shrine to Typhon in the wilderness between the Nile and the Red Sea - appropriately enough, for Typhon was the demon-god of uninhabitable places. The naming is nonetheless slightly surprising, because there is Typhon, but the name here is Tsaphon, and Tsaphon, or Tsaphan, Sapan, Zaphan, even Jebel Aqraa, "Bald Mountain" Mount Casius and many more, all of them the names by which various people at various times knew Ba'al's sacred mountain, his Olympus or Valhalla.

Ba'al-Shalisha (בעל שלשה) in 2 Kings 4:42 is a town in the mountains of Ephrayim.

Ba'al-Tamar (בעל תמר) is mentioned but not described in Judges 20:33. The link of the Phoenician Ba'al with the date-goddess Tamar is surprising, and I wonder if this is not a misreading for Be'er-Tamar, which would be an oasis-shrine - Be'er meaning "well" as in "water-hole". Geographically it is located very close to other, similar shrines, such as the famous Be'er Lechi Ro'i in the story of Hagar (Genesis 16:14).

Ba'aley Yehudah (בעלי יהודה) in 2 Samuel 6:2 is likewise too preposterous to be plausible - or is it? These are surely not "the pagan idols of the tribe of Yehudah", though such a translation would be theoretically valid? And yet...1 Chronicles 13:6 tells us that King David, in order to take the Ark to Yeru-Shala'im, which he had just conquered and was about to make his capital, "went up, and all Yisra-El, to Ba'alah, that is to Kiryat Ye'arim, to bring up thence the ark of ..." (the following phrase then adds confusion, because it attributes the ark to Ha-Elohim, which supports the pantheism of Ba'al worship, but then corrects the god-name to "Adonai yoshev ha-keruvim - my Lord who is seated on the keruvim", יְהוָה יוֹשֵׁב הַכְּרוּבִים, which both is and is not the YHVH with whom we are familiar). Let us take this slowly:

Ba'alah (בעלה) means either "mistress" or "city". King David's Ba'alah is also mentioned in Joshua 15:9, where it is said to be at the foot of Mount Ye'arim, hence its alternate nomenclature. But 15:11 goes on to mention a Mount Ba'alah, from which 15:60 states, and 18:14 confirms, that there is a third name for the town, namely Kiryat Ba'al. So Ba'alah is Kiryat Ba'al (Kiryat - קרית- simply means "village") is Kiryat Ye'arim; and Ye'arim (יערים) means "a thicket of trees" - in other words, once again, we are at a shrine of the twin gods Ba'al and, in this case, Astarte Nemorensis, to use Frazer's phrase. What, we may well wonder, was the Ark of the Covenant, the Mosaic Tablets of Law, doing in such a pagan place for all that time? The answer, it seems to me, is entirely plain: the Beney Yisra-El were worshippers of Ba'al and Astarte, or Ba'al and Anat, or Av-Ram and Sarai, or Av-Raham and Sarah, or El and Chavah, or Yah and YHVH, or quite likely several other variations of the same sun-god moon-goddess relationship, right up until the time of King David, and quite possibly for a long while afterwards; and no notion of monotheism yet existed, or would, for another five hundred more years.

Which leaves only one other unanswered question: for what purpose precisely was David removing the Ark from Kiryat Ye'arim? The obvious answer is: to bring it to Yeru-Shala'im, where he was planning to build a Temple and his political capital, and there to centralise the political and religious confederacy. But none of that required the Ark, which could have been left where it was for ever, and not had any negative impact on his aspirations. The answer to the question lies, I would suggest, in the ancient superstition called "The Tablets of Destiny", or sometimes "The Tablet of Destinies", of which the first of the two links here suggests a precursor to the Genesis Creation tales themselves. For that is what the Ark really contained, made manifest in a set of commandments. It was not the Ark, nor even the Commandments, that were being relocated to Yeru-Shala'im, but the god of Mount Sinai himself, soon to be housed, like Ba'al on Mount Tsaphon, on Mount Tsi'on.

The Argaman Press

Joshua 14:1-15

SurfTheSite

Joshua 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

14:1 VE ELEH ASHER NACHALU VENEY YISRA-EL BE ERETS KENA'AN ASHER NICHALU OTAM EL-AZAR HA KOHEN VI YEHOSHU'A BIN NUN VE RASHEY AVOT HA MATOT LI VENEY YISRA-EL

וְאֵלֶּה אֲשֶׁר נָחֲלוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּאֶרֶץ כְּנָעַן אֲשֶׁר נִחֲלוּ אֹותָם אֶלְעָזָר הַכֹּהֵן וִיהֹושֻׁעַ בִּן נוּן וְרָאשֵׁי אֲבֹות הַמַּטֹּות לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל

KJ: And these are the countries which the children of Israel inherited in the land of Canaan, which Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers of the tribes of the children of Israel, distributed for inheritance to them.

BN: And these are what the Beney Yisra-El inherited in the land of Kena'an, which El-Azar the priest, and Yehoshu'a bin Nun, and the heads of the fathers of the tribes of the Beney Yisra-El, shared among them.

As with "inheritances" in the previous chapter, KJ and other translators append the word "countries" to clarify the meaning of the verse. Unfortunately what the Beney Yisra-El inherited, as per the lists and descriptions, was not countries at all, but valleys, towns, hills, villages, tribal areas of other peoples; the societal structure at this epoch did not include "countries" in the way we would understand the term today, or only the broader geographical concept of Kena'an (Canaan) as a whole, though there was no nation of that name with a unified body politic.

We also need to read this endlessly repeated word NACHALAH with caution, even cynicism. "To inherit" usually infers a will, a bequest, a legal document, a proof of previous ownership. Even in the Tanach, before Ya'akov took the Beney Yisra-El down to Mitsrayim, there is very little evidence of anybody in the tribe owning any land at all: Av-Raham purchased what was probably no more than a grave-plot in the Cave of Machpelah (Genesis 23), Yitschak disputed the access to many wells, but appears to have been nomadic, and other than the home and farm in Be'er Sheva, Ya'akov spent most of his adult life in Padan Aram, around Shechem, then back at the family home in Be'er Sheva. But the "inheritance" covers most of Asia Minor! Inherited, then, from whom? YHVH? Does that count, without his signed documents, in a court of law? "Inherited", then, as a propagandistic euphemism for "conquered". Or might we use today's terminology, and prefer "annexed"?

EL-AZAR: Important that the share was done by the heads of the tribes and a representative of the priesthood, and not just by the political leader.

14:2 BE GORAL NACHALATAM KA ASHER TSIVAH YHVH BE YAD MOSHEH LE TISH'AT HA MATOT VA CHATSI HA MATEH

בְּגֹורַל נַחֲלָתָם כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוָּה יְהוָה בְּיַד מֹשֶׁה לְתִשְׁעַת הַמַּטֹּות וַחֲצִי הַמַּטֶּה

KJ: By lot was their inheritance, as the LORD commanded by the hand of Moses, for the nine tribes, and for the half tribe.

BN: By lot was their inheritance, as YHVH instructed through the hand of Mosheh, for the nine tribes, and for the half-tribe.

Despite searching through hills, mountains, villages and even countries of encyclopaedia, I am unable to find anything, anywhere, that explains how a conquered land, which has not by a long way been completely conquered, gets to be divided among the tribes "by lot". Did they create a written list of the places that we have read about in the last two chapters, categorised by general areas - the north-west, the Negev - and then drop the list into a container of some sort, after which the clan chiefs came along, dipped their hand in without looking, and pulled out their personal plum? Yay, I got the whole of the Mediterranean coast, lucky me! I got the Sea of Galilee - great fishing lands. Sorry mate, I see you got the marshlands of the Yazar-El valley. Bad luck. I find it hard to believe that either YHVH or Mosheh thought up quite such a stupid way of doing this. So it has to mean something else...

... and the festival of Purim, which Zeru-Bavel, or perhaps Ezra and Nechem-Yah, brought to Yehudah when they returned to Yehudah from exile with the support of the Medean Persians, the festival of Purim, which is a Judaisation of the ancient Persian and Babylonian spring-fertilty feast of Ishtar (Easter, in the Christian world), is also known as the Feast of Lots, and it has to do with an abstruse verse (Esther 3:7) in the Biblical version of the tale, in which the wicked Prime Minister Chaman (Haman; cf Leviticus 26:30) draws lots to decide on which date the pogrom against the Jews should take place... might it have something to do with this, which is obviously a mythological tale, because Esther is Ishtar and Mordechai is Marduk and Chaman is a sun-idol, and the lots fall on the twelfth month, in what happened to be the twelfth year of the king's reign; and then, in verse 12, on the 13th day of the 1st month... but what all this means, and how this "lot" connects with the one in Joshua, I am unable to explain; but it is a coincidence that this is the second time in consecutive chapters that precisely this piece of Persia has cropped up in the text (see Joshua 13:30).

Perhaps it was just a mythological metaphor, a poetical way of expressing the amount of chance and randomness and haphazard (the continuance of Tohu and Bohu) in the god-made world (though, on reflection. those two mythological characters are Babylonian-Persian too).

14:3 KI NATAN MOSHEH NACHALAT SHENEY HA MATOT VA CHATSI HA MATEH ME EVER LA YARDEN VE LA LEVIYIM LO NATAN NACHALAH BETOCHAM

כִּי נָתַן מֹשֶׁה נַחֲלַת שְׁנֵי הַמַּטֹּות וַחֲצִי הַמַּטֶּה מֵעֵבֶר לַיַּרְדֵּן וְלַלְוִיִּם לֹא נָתַן נַחֲלָה בְּתֹוכָם

KJ: For Moses had given the inheritance of two tribes and an half tribe on the other side Jordan: but unto the Levites he gave none inheritance among them.

BN: For Moshe had given their inheritance to the two tribes, and to the half-tribe, on the other side of the Yarden; but to the Leviyim he bequeathed no inheritance.

This is now at least the fourth time that this has been restated. And it still isn't true - well, yes, it's true, but somewhat disingenuously true. Imagine a clause in Magna Carta which stated repeatedly that the Barons had not been granted the right to offer themselves as serfs and vassals, because they had generously sacrificed themselves to the sacred task of land ownership and governance. Something of that order.

14:4 KI HAYU VENEY YOSEPH SHENEY MATOT MENASHEH VE EPHRAYIM VE LO NATNU CHELEK LA LEVIYIM BA ARETS KI IM ARIM LASHEVET U MIGRESHEYHEM LE MIKNEYHEM U LE KINYANIM

כִּי הָיוּ בְנֵי יֹוסֵף שְׁנֵי מַטֹּות מְנַשֶּׁה וְאֶפְרָיִם וְלֹא נָתְנוּ חֵלֶק לַלְוִיִּם בָּאָרֶץ כִּי אִם עָרִים לָשֶׁבֶת וּמִגְרְשֵׁיהֶם לְמִקְנֵיהֶם וּלְקִנְיָנָם

KJ: For the children of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim: therefore they gave no part unto the Levites in the land, save cities to dwell in, with their suburbs for their cattle and for their substance.

BN: For the Beney Yoseph were two tribes, Menasheh and Ephrayim; therefore they gave no part to the Leviyim in the land, save cities to dwell in, with their suburbs for their cattle and for their substance.

How does the Beney Yoseph being two tribes equate to "therefore... the Leviyim..."? This only makes sense if there was an inherent requirement for the number of tribal regions to be twelve: if Yoseph were one, then Levi could make up the total; but why couldn't there be eleven regions, or thirteen? Which endorses the oft-stated conviction that the tribal structure was an earthly reflection of the cosmic: twelve constellations, so twelve tribes. But this also works a second way around, which would be more ingenuous: that it became necessary to find a twelfth tribe, precisely because the Leviyim had been raised to the theocracy. And which tribe could that be: only the firstborn of either Rachel or Le'ah were eligible; Rachel was the favoured wife; Re'u-Ven was disqualified because of his incest with Bilhah. Therefore Yoseph, and therefore the tale of the grandsons in Genesis 48.

One last thought, by way of a however. In Genesis, the firstborn is always supplanted by the youngest, which leaves open the question: why Yoseph and not Bin-Yamin? When it comes time to choose a king, the man chosen will be Sha'ul ben Kish of the tribe of Bin-Yamin - I have explored the whys and wherefores of this in the first volume of "City of Peace". His successor, David, comes from the tribe of Yehudah, but will establish his capital, and the site for YHVH's permanent home, in Yeru-Shala'im, which is in the tribal territory of Bin-Yamin. By the time of Ezra, only two tribes will be left: Yehudah and Bin-Yamin. So the oracle will be fulfilled!

KI IM ARIM LASHEVET: As noted above, and previously - the understanding is that the blemished among the Leviyim (Levites) will be allowed to farm and keep animals in compensation for their preclusion from priestly duties, and that the tribes will not only give them "refuge cities", which is to say priestly residences and shrines, but also a secular living. For this purpose they were given the land beside the city walls, and the homes that were built on those walls; the best houses in the city, but also the most dangerous at a time of siege.

14:5 KA ASHER TSIVAH YHVH ET MOSHEH KEN ASU BENEY YISRA-EL VA YACHLEKU ET HA ARETS

כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוָּה יְהוָה אֶת מֹשֶׁה כֵּן עָשׂוּ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיַּחְלְקוּ אֶת הָאָרֶץ

KJ: As the LORD commanded Moses, so the children of Israel did, and they divided the land.

BN: As YHVH instructed Mosheh, so the Beney Yisra-El did, and they shared out the land.

YACHLEKU: That word CHALAK again! And yes, it means "divide", and they did indeed divide it; but "divisions" are negatives, and the objective was a unified nation, ultimately a confederation: so "shared out" in my translation.

pey break

14:6 VA YIGSHU VENEY YEHUDAH EL YEHOSHU'A BA GIL-GAL VA YOMER ELAV KALEV BEN YEPHUNEH HA KENIZI ATAH YADA'TA ET HA DAVAR ASHER DIBER YHVH EL MOSHEH ISH HA ELOHIM AL ODOTAY VE AL ODOTEYCHA BE KADESH BARNE'A

וַיִּגְּשׁוּ בְנֵי יְהוּדָה אֶל יְהֹושֻׁעַ בַּגִּלְגָּל וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו כָּלֵב בֶּן יְפֻנֶּה הַקְּנִזִּי אַתָּה יָדַעְתָּ אֶת הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְהוָה אֶל מֹשֶׁה אִישׁ הָאֱלֹהִים עַל אֹדֹותַי וְעַל אֹדֹותֶיךָ בְּקָדֵשׁ בַּרְנֵעַ

KJ: Then the children of Judah came unto Joshua in Gilgal: and Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite said unto him, Thou knowest the thing that the LORD said unto Moses the man of God concerning me and thee in Kadeshbarnea.

BN: Then the Beney Yehudah came to Yehoshu'a in Gil-Gal: and Kalev ben Yephuneh the Kenizi said to him: "You know what YHVH said to Mosheh the man of Elohim concerning me and you in Kadesh Barne'a...

KALEV BEN YEPHUNEH HA KENIZI: Is Kalev a Kenizite or a Yehudi - it matters, because of the dispute over Chevron later, when David becomes king there, but the heirs of Kalev dispute his right, claiming the city and their own (2 Samuel 2). Need to go back to the tribal Toldot to clarify this (click the link under Kenizite), but this verse appears to state that the Kenizites were a sub-clan of Yehudah.

KADESH BARNE'A: See the link.

ATAH YADA'TA: The phrasing is very colloquial (he is using the past tense for a statement in the present tense), and also very "chummy" - which is not surprising: Kalev and Yehoshu'a were spies together many years ago, and joined by their mutual positivity. But it is also very... I hate to use the word "stupid", but if this was Shakespeare we would assume he had given the line to Bottom in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", or maybe Andrew Aguecheek in "Twelfth Night", but not to someone intellectual like Hamlet.

14:7 BEN ARBA'IM SHANAH ANOCHI BISHLO'ACH MOSHEH EVED YHVH OTI MI KADESH BARNE'A LERAGEL ET HA ARETS VA ASHEV OTO DAVAR KA ASHER IM LEVAVI

בֶּן אַרְבָּעִים שָׁנָה אָנֹכִי בִּשְׁלֹחַ מֹשֶׁה עֶבֶד יְהוָה אֹתִי מִקָּדֵשׁ בַּרְנֵעַ לְרַגֵּל אֶת הָאָרֶץ וָאָשֵׁב אֹתֹו דָּבָר כַּאֲשֶׁר עִם לְבָבִי

KJ: Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadeshbarnea to espy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in mine heart.

BN: "Forty years old I was, when Mosheh the servant of YHVH sent me from Kadesh Barne'a to spy out the land; and I brought back word to him just as it was in my heart...

EVED YHVH: In the previous verse he was ISH HA ELOHIM - clearly Kalev is unclear which is whom, but trying to use the correct diplomatic language. As with his portrayal in the Book of Samuel... as I said above, I do not like to use the word "stupid" to describe another person.

And anyway, why is he telling Yehoshu'a what Yehoshu'a obviously already knows, given that he was there at the time?

14:8 VE ACHAI ASHER ALU IMI HIMSIV ET LEV HA AM VE ANOCHI MIL'E'TI ACHAREY YHVH ELOHAY

וְאַחַי אֲשֶׁר עָלוּ עִמִּי הִמְסִיו אֶת לֵב הָעָם וְאָנֹכִי מִלֵּאתִי אַחֲרֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהָי

KJ: Nevertheless my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt: but I wholly followed the LORD my God.

BN: "But my brothers what went up with me made the hearts of the people melt; while me, I was totally with YHVH my god...

And despite my previous comment, my translation here is absolutely accurate to the original; I have translated it "with my heart", as sincerely as Kalev reported back his observations of Kena'an to Mosheh.

14:9 VA YISHAV'A MOSHEH BA YOM HA HU LEMOR IM LO HA ARETS ASHER DARCHAH RAGLECHA BAH LECHA TIHEYEH LE NACHALAHU LE VANEYCHA AD OLAM KI MIL'E'TA ACHAREY YHVH ELOHAY

וַיִּשָּׁבַע מֹשֶׁה בַּיֹּום הַהוּא לֵאמֹר אִם לֹא הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר דָּרְכָה רַגְלְךָ בָּהּ לְךָ תִהְיֶה לְנַחֲלָה וּלְבָנֶיךָ עַד עֹולָם כִּי מִלֵּאתָ אַחֲרֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהָי

KJ: And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance, and thy children's for ever, because thou hast wholly followed the LORD my God.

BN: "And Mosheh made me a promise that day, saying: 'If the land on which your feet have trodden does not come to you as your inheritance, and your children's for ever, because you wholly followed YHVH my god...'

My god, his god, your god! see verse 14.

My translation appears to leave this as an unfinished sentence; it is, however, once again completely accurate to the original.

14:10 VE ATAH HINEH HECHEYAH YHVH OTI KA ASHER DIBER ZEH ARBA'IM VE CHAMESH SHANAH ME'AZ DIBER YHVH ET HA DAVAR HA ZEH EL MOSHEH ASHER HALACH YISRA-EL BA MIDBAR VE ATAH HINEH ANOCHI HAYOM BEN CHAMESH U SHEMONIM SHANAH

וְעַתָּה הִנֵּה הֶחֱיָה יְהוָה אֹותִי כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֵּר זֶה אַרְבָּעִים וְחָמֵשׁ שָׁנָה מֵאָז דִּבֶּר יְהוָה אֶת הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה אֶל מֹשֶׁה אֲשֶׁר הָלַךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל בַּמִּדְבָּר וְעַתָּה הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי הַיֹּום בֶּן חָמֵשׁ וּשְׁמֹונִים שָׁנָה

KJ: And now, behold, the LORD hath kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, even since the LORD spake this word unto Moses, while the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness: and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old.

BN: "And now, as you can see, YHVH has kept me alive, like he said he would, these forty-five years, ever since YHVH spoke this word to Mosheh, while the Beney Yisra-El were wandering in the desert: and now, as you can see, today is my eighty-fifth birthday...

Now that we have had a meeting with the man - we never did in the Mosheh version - I am left wondering why Mosheh chose him in the first place. (Or is all this merely a deliberate cartooning of the man by the writer, to make him come across as an ignorant and illiterate peasant, and thereby put him down?)

14:11 ODENI HAYOM CHAZAK KA ASHER BE YOM SHELO'ACH OTI MOSHEH KE CHOCHI AZ U CHE CHOCHI ATAH LA MILCHAMAH VE LATS'ET VE LAVO

עֹודֶנִּי הַיֹּום חָזָק כַּאֲשֶׁר בְּיֹום שְׁלֹחַ אֹותִי מֹשֶׁה כְּכֹחִי אָז וּכְכֹחִי עָתָּה לַמִּלְחָמָה וְלָצֵאת וְלָבֹוא

KJ: As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in.

BN: "And I am still as tough today as I was on the day that Mosheh sent me; as strong as I was then, that's how strong I am now, for war, and for the old in-out...

CHAZAK...CHOCHI: KJ translates both as "strength", but if the original wanted to convey a single idea, it would have repeated the same word. CHAZAK is about muscular strength, the power to bind, to wrestle; KO'ACH is much more about inner strength, natural vitality.

LATSET VE LAVO: Some will no doubt question my literality here, or at least its vulgarity; but these are "old mates" who have seen hard times together, and no doubt supped a flagon of mead together of an evening while eyeing up the ladies. But the point about his continuing vigour is also a threat, as the next verse will confirm.

14:12 VE ATAH TENAH LI ET HA HAR HA ZEH ASHER DIBER YHVH BA YOM HA HU KI ATAH SHAMA'TA VA YOM HA HU KI ANAKIM SHAM VE ARIM GEDOLOT BE TSUROT ULAY YHVH OTI VE HORASHTIM KA ASHER DIBER YHVH

וְעַתָּה תְּנָה לִּי אֶת הָהָר הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְהוָה בַּיֹּום הַהוּא כִּי אַתָּה שָׁמַעְתָּ בַיֹּום הַהוּא כִּי עֲנָקִים שָׁם וְעָרִים גְּדֹלֹות בְּצֻרֹות אוּלַי יְהוָה אֹותִי וְהֹורַשְׁתִּים כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְהוָה

KJ: Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the LORD spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities weregreat and fenced: if so be the LORD will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD said.

BN: "So now you are going to give me this hill, the one that YHVH spoke about that day. You heard that day how the Anakim were there, and that those cities were huge, and fenced. Maybe YHVH will be with me, and I'll be the one to drive them out, like what YHVH said."

HA HAR: Since when was Chevron a mountain? A hill maybe, high enough, and rocky enough, for a large cave.

ASHER DIBER YHVH: Earlier he said that it was Mosheh who made this promise; but I guess that amounts to the same thing.

Does he want the mountain, or the town? Or the mountain with any towns that happen to be located there? Again, this will be significant to the inheritance of Chevron later, when David takes over the kingship from Kalev's descendants.

ANAKIM: are they really still there?

VE HORASHTIM: see Joshua 15:14, when Kalev does indeed achieve this.

14:13 VA YEVARCHEHU YEHOSHU'A VA YITEN ET CHEVRON LE CHALEV BEN YEPHUNEH LE NACHALAH

וַיְבָרְכֵהוּ יְהֹושֻׁעַ וַיִּתֵּן אֶת חֶבְרֹון לְכָלֵב בֶּן יְפֻנֶּה לְנַחֲלָה

KJ: And Joshua blessed him, and gave unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh Hebron for an inheritance.

BN: And Yehoshu'a blessed him, and gave Kalev ben Yephuneh Chevron as an inheritance.

As above, this will become important later, when Sha'ul dies and there are multiple claims to the succession; especially competition over David's claim to the kingship of Chevron.

14:14 AL KEN HAYETAH CHEVRON LE CHALEV BEN YEPHUNEH HA KENIZI LE NACHALAH AD HA YOM HA ZEH YA'AN ASHER MIL'E ACHAREY YHVH ELOHEY YISRA-EL

עַל כֵּן הָיְתָה חֶבְרֹון לְכָלֵב בֶּן יְפֻנֶּה הַקְּנִזִּי לְנַחֲלָה עַד הַיֹּום הַזֶּה יַעַן אֲשֶׁר מִלֵּא אַחֲרֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל

KJ: Hebron therefore became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite unto this day, because that he wholly followed the LORD God of Israel.

BN: Chevron therefore became the inheritance of Kalev ben Yephuneh the Kenizi until this day, because he wholly followed YHVH the god of Yisra-El.

Given the change in David's time, can we now date the text? Not later than 950 BCE, which is five hundred years before the Redaction (and why did they not correct the text as part of that Redaction?) [But that reading depends on our acceptance of the tale of David as history, rather than mythology.]

14:15 VE SHEM CHEVRON LEPHANIM KIRYAT ARBA HA ADAM HA GADOL BA ANAKIM HU VE HA ARETS SHAKTAH MI MILCHAMAH

וְשֵׁם חֶבְרֹון לְפָנִים קִרְיַת אַרְבַּע הָאָדָם הַגָּדֹול בָּעֲנָקִים הוּא וְהָאָרֶץ שָׁקְטָה מִמִּלְחָמָה

KJ: And the name of Hebron before was Kirjatharba; which Arba was a great man among the Anakims. And the land had rest from war.

BN: But before this time Chevron was named Kiryat Arba for the founding chieftain of the Anakim. And the land had rest from war.

KIRYAT ARBA: See the link.

ANAKIM:

HA ADAM HA DADOL: "Great man", or, literally, "great Adam", in the sense that Adam was the "first human" in the world of the Yisra-Elim, and Arba the equivalent among the Anakim.

SurfTheSite

Joshua 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

The Argaman Press

Milkah

מלכה

Genesis 11:29: Haran's daughter who married Nachor (נחור), her uncle; Av-Ram, Nachor's other brother, was also her uncle.

Genesis 22:20 tells us that her children were Uts (עוּץ), Buz (בּוּז), Kemu-El (קְמוּאֵל) the father of Aram (אֲרָם), Kesed (כֶּשֶׂד), Chazo (חֲזוֹ), Pildash (פִּלְדָּשׁ), Yidlaph (יִדְלָף) and, Betu-El (בְּתוּאֵל), all of which are Arabian tribes, and worth a comparison with the children of Av-Raham's second wife Keturah to see which parts of Arabia were regarded as Milkah's and which Keturah's; generally Milkah's are in the northern regions, towards Anatolia, and therefore identified with "Queen" Anat, Keturah's in the southern, towards the Yemen, and therefore identified with "Queen" Ishtar.

Betu-El will later father Rivkah (רִבְקָה - Rebecca), who would become the wife of Yitschak (Isaac).

Genesis 22:23 records how her husband's concubine Re'umah (רְאוּמָה) bore him Tevach (טֶבַח), Gacham (גַּחַם), Tachash (תַּחַשׁ) and Ma'achah (מַעֲכָה). Given the ancient laws that we hear about in relation to Sarah, Le'ah and Rachel, through which the woman seems to claim as her own children those fathered upon handmaidens and concubines, these can also be treated as Milkah's children, which just happens to bring the total up to the zodiacal twelve, and all of them sons, just like the offspring of Ya'akov, Yishma-El, Shim'on et al.

The name stems from the root Malach (מלך) = "king"; this is the feminine, "queen", though it is elsewhere pronounced Malkah (Esther 1:9), or written (Daniel 5:10), in Aramaic rather than Yehudit, as Malk'a (מלכא).

In Jeremiah 7:18 and 44:17 the alternate Chaldean form Melechet (מלכת) is used instead; probably not in the original however; much more likely this was the Redactor using Chaldean anachronistically, or perhaps to make a political point, as it was the Babylonian conquerors of Yeru-Shala'im who released the prophet from his imprisonment and allowed him to live out his last years in Mitspeh of Bin-Yamin.

The Queen was of course very different from the Pilgashim (פלגשים), the royal concubines, though all would have been of royal blood. The queen surrogated for the Queen of Heaven - the mother-goddess - on Earth, functioning as her high priestess, as the king surrogated for the sun-god, the King of Heaven. Hence the twelve constellatory children, each of whom was given a "tribal" portion to govern, a set of specific cultic duties, and a month in which that tribe took primary responsibility for all cultic matters through the rotational priesthood, known as the Mishmarot. Milkah is thus not a person's name but a description of her office or a royal title, in precisely that same way that Hadasah became Ester (Ishtar - Esther) when she was made queen for a year in Persia (Esther 2). Av-Raham's wife Sarah was Milkah in this sense, though actually Sarah means "princess" rather than queen.

Uts (עוצ): In Chaldean Malkah is also used to mean "counsel", presumably because the queen's advice was often sought. Uts, her firstborn according to Genesis 22, in Chaldean likewise means "to consult" (cf Judges 19:30). More relevantly, Uts means "soft and sandy earth" and refers to the northern Arabian desert. The Romans called it Ausitis.

Buz (בוז): is used to mean "contempt". The Buzim were another tribe of northern Arabia (cf Job 32:2 and 1 Chronicles 5:14).

Kemu-El (קמואל): taken to mean "congregation of El", but see the notes to Kemu-El, where this is disputed. Importantly he was the father of Aram, which is to say the Aramaean people; Ya'akov went to Padan Aram, to the house of Betu-El, to find a wife; as Av-Raham's servant Eli-Ezer had done before him. What we can thus say is that with Kemu-El we are in the geographical heartland of Biblical ancestry, and the fact that the god-name El is suffixed is not without significance.

Kesed (כשד): Chaldea, southern Arabia, also known as Mesopotamia. Av-Raham was said to have come originally from the city of Ur Kasdim, Ur of the Chaldeees in English, the capital and royal moon-city of Kesed, though this is in fact highly unlikely.

Chazo (חזו): literally "a seer", the augurer or soothsayer or fortune teller of the ancient world, though he worked almost exclusively by astrological readings.

Pildash (פלדש): the etymology is obscure; it may it be an error for Pilgash (פלגש) = concubine?

Yidlaph (ידלף): the name means "weeping", from the root Dalaph (דלף). There are no other references from which to deduce his territory or function; however the Book of Esther 9:7 refers to Dalphon (דלפון) as a son of Haman - but this link only takes you to the Haman of the Ester story; for the real significance in the context of Milkah you need to follow the link to Yidlaph. In brief, the Book of Esther is a Judaic corruption of the Babylonian Creation myth and New Year ceremonies, in which Haman (originally Chaman with a Chet not a Hey, from the root Chaman - חמן = a stone idol) was the statue of the sun-god (cf Leviticus 26:30), torn down to symbolise his death at the end of one year, re-established as the statue of his son to symbolise his rebirth in the new year. Dalphon thus is the sun-god in his resurrected aspect, akin to Jesus at the Epiphany; and given the geographical location of the tribe of Milkah, we may read Yidlaph in the same regard.

Betu-El (בתואל): the father of Lavan (Laban) and Rivkah (Rebecca); Lavan was the father of Ya'akov's wives, Le'ah and Rachel; Rivkah was the wife of Yitschak (Isaac) and the mother of Ya'akov and Esav. Thus out of Betu-El comes the entire patriarchal dynasty, even more strongly than it comes out of Av-Raham, who is both his uncle (through Nachor) and his great-uncle (through Milkah). Betu-El may originally have been a female, which would also have interesting implications for the Yisra-Eli patriarchy! Bat (בת) means "daughter"; Betulah (בתולה) means "virgin", and both of these are connected to the root. More significant is the dialect link to Beit-El (Bethel), of which many scholars believe Betu-El may be the original form, or at the very least a dialect variation, in the same way as English God and German Gott, or French Dieu and Spanish Dios. In Phoenician a baetylus was a standing stone, something in the manner of a menhir, a priapic symbol of the fertilising mother-goddess, and central to her worship. It is not insignificant that of all of Milkah's children, Betu-El should be the principal patriarchal parent.

This leaves the five children of the concubine Re'umah, and Re'umah herself:

Re'umah (ראומה): the name means "exalted", which is self-explanatory, and links her to Av-Ram ("exalted father"). However the root is Re'em (ראם), that so-significant beast the Reem or antelope-ox which in Psalm 29:6 gives YHVH the epithet Ben Re'eymim (בן ראמים) = "son of the horned ox", which is as clear an epithet of the Bull-God El as we could ask for.

The same root also gives Ramot (ראמות) = "high places" or mountain shrines, and various towns bear the name. Re'umah as concubine thus represents the moon-goddess as Cow (Hat-Hor, Io, Eshet, Le'ah), "married" to the sun-god as Bull (El, Zeus, Kayin). This is vital to our understanding the zodiacal inferences of this tribal list. It also allows us to see a union of two moon-cults (that of Milkah as Queen of Heaven, with that of Re'umah as Moon-Goddess) through the "marriage" to Nachor. Nachor himself means "the river-god", a Chaldean equivalent of Poseidon, who was Zeus's "brother" in the same way that Nachor was Av-Raham's. The river in question was the Perat (Euphrates), whose shores and plains all the peoples mentioned in this list inhabited.

Tevach (טבח) is the slayer of the cattle and connected with the Temple sacrifices. Modern Ivrit has taken the word Mitbach (מטבח) = "kitchen" from the root.

Gacham (גחם): literally "to flame". The Tevach killed the sacrificial beast; it was then roasted on the fire, and Gacham presumably tended that fire.
Tachash (תחש): literally "hide"; the skin of the animal removed for tanning before the beast was cooked. The word is used to mean both "seal" and "badger" at various points in the Tanach, because the hides of these two animals were often used to make clothing, and even, according to the Talmud, as a covering for the holy tabernacle.

Ma'achah (מעכה): another name that should be treated as feminine, or even as androgynous-hermaphroditic. In brief: her priestesshood, at the time of King David in particular, was elevated to become one of, if not the primary priestesshood, of the divine marriage. The root Ma'och (מעך) is used to mean "castration", which in the series of sacrificial acts pertaining to the four "sons" of Re'umah, would have come first. Her children should be listed in reverse order: Ma'achah (castration), Tachash (tanning), Tevach (slaying), Gacham (roasting). It may well be that the Redactor knew this, and deliberately reversed the order to conceal the truth at an epoch when eunuchisation was no longer acceptable, and the patriarchalisation of the cult was diminishing, though not yet eliminating, the roles of women.

What we appear to have then is an earlier or alternate version of the zodiacal calendar, and no doubt a deeper analysis, such as has been undertaken in the essay on the Number 12, would be most revealing. Is the order in which they are given correct, bearing in mind the four-wife interpolations of the Beney Yisra-El list? Is the geographical region significant of an earlier and larger El territory, divided on the same tribal principle? And is the Beney Yishma-El list an Edomite version of the same?

It may also be worth asking: does this alternate calendar reflect a calendric reformation at the time when the new year moved out of Taurus and into Aries, circa 2000 BCE, or is it simply a regional variation?

Given that Betu-El, like Terach, like Nachor, like several others of Av-Raham's elder family, disappear from the stories altogether once Av-Raham is on the scene, we can probably treat this as Greek mythologists treat Ouranos and Chronos in relation to Zeus - a more ancient Olympian order reformed and up-dated.

The Argaman Press

Creation

In the beginning, in just six days, Elohim created the Heavens and the Earth. In this order: Light; the Division of the Waters; the formation of Land and Sea, Grass, Herbs and Trees; the establishment of the Sun, Moon and Stars; the making of Sea-Monsters, Fish and Birds; the making of Land-Monsters, Mammals and Reptiles; and finally Humankind, to whom was given the task of caring for Creation on Elohim's behalf. Then Elohim rested on the seventh day, his work ordained, made, named, completed. And it was very good. This is the Jewish version of Creation.

Presented at the beginning of Bere'shit (Genesis), it appears to be the Hebrew myth of Creation as well (I make the distinction between "Jewish" and "Hebrew" on the basis that "Judaism" came into existence in 70 CE, after the destruction of the Temple and the loss of sovereignty in the homeland; what existed before was not called Hebrewism, but we have no other name for it, although Israelitism might serve for the latter years.) In fact, an earlier "Hebrew" version almost certainly existed, and this is not it. What appears in Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a post-exilic, proto-Judaisation of a Creation myth that had predominated throughout the Middle East since Palaeolithic times. Its retelling - in some cases its dramatic re-enactment in mime and monologue - formed the central aspect of the New Year rites, either in the spring, when the world was reborn out of winter, or in the autumn, when the Earth revived with the first rains after the long summer drought (and in Tanist cults, both).

The tablets excavated at Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit, the earliest known site of a written alphabet) in northern Syria in 1929, date from circa 1400 BCE, known as the Amarna Age, from Tel el-Amarna in Egypt. In them is recorded the Canaanite version of that myth which formed the other major aspect of the New Year rites. It places El at the head of the pantheon of the gods, as King, as Father of Years (Ib-Rachum - almost certainly a variant form of Av-Raham/Abraham), with his consort, his sister-wife, Asherah (almost certainly a variant form of Sarah). Beneath them, probably their son, came Ba'al, the storm-god (and as such linked to fertility), who was the ruler of the gods and the creator of humankind. Like El, he took the form of a bull. His sister, who was also his consort-wife, was the warrior goddess Anat, a goddess of considerable sexual passion and sadistic violence. Ba'al's prominence was achieved by his defeat of the primordial water-dragon known as Prince Sea or Judge River - Rahab, Leviathan, Tiamat (Tahamat), Mot and others take this role in various other Hebrew texts. Ba'al's attempts to build a temple to celebrate his victory (possibly the original Tower of Babel) were however interrupted by Mot, the god of the summer drought and the winter dearth, who killed Ba'al and took his body down to the Underworld, She'ol. Distraught, his sister Anat went after him to find him; she fought and killed Mot, brought Ba'al back to life, and returned with him to the world of light. Parallels with the story of Osher, Isis and Set in the Egyptian traditions hardly need stating.

Like the fisher-king, like Jesus in the later Christian re-incarnation, Ba'al's return guaranteed the end of both the summer drought and the winter dearth, and a return to fertility. It was for this reason that one of the two New Year festivals was placed in the autumn, and why there were two priest-kings in every year (this may also be an explanation of the continuous supplanting of the elder brother by the younger; a Tanist cult in which the elder served first, and then the younger. If so, the act of stealing Esav's birthright is now explained, and the move of New Year from spring to autumn can also be understood: it was not a move at all; rather there would have been two new years, and the coronation of the new priest king would have coincided with each).

The origins of this myth are Beney Chet (Hittite), though we may well recognise in them such later myths as those of Ceres and Persephone in the Greco-Roman world, of Osiris, Tammuz, Attis and Adonis across the Middle East, and later Jesus, Bran and King Arthur too. The Hittites came from Anatolia, which today we think of as Turkey, but would then have been identified with Urartu, or Mount Ararat. Somewhere around 2200 BCE, they established an immense empire which extended north, to the far side of the Black Sea and the sources of the River Danube, and a good deal further south, to encompass Syria, Egypt and Kena'an (Canaan). Later tribes descended from them include the Dana'ans, who became first the inhabitants of Argos and the Biblical tribe of Dan, and later the Celts of western Europe, as well as the Phoenicians, the "People of the Sea", a group of whom re-entered Kena'an (Canaan) from Crete after the fall of Kenossos - and displaced, or perhaps replaced, the tribe of Dan - bearing the name Pelishtim or Philistines (see the essay "The Leprachauns of Palestine").

Anatolia means the land of Anat; Ba'al to the Hittites was Bel, which means Lord. Ephron, from whom Av-Raham purchased the Cave of Machpelah in Chevron (Hebron), was a Hittite (Genesis 23:5 ff), but a god not a man - the same god whom the Greeks knew as Phoroneus. Several of the Biblical patriarchs took Hittite wives, of whom the best remembered is Esav, both of whose wives were Hittite (Genesis 36:2). The cult of Anat and Ba'al became the predominant cult of Kena'an for the next two thousand years. Traces of it can be found in the legends of Av-Raham and Sarah, and it is echoed throughout the Tanach; it finds (perhaps) its final form in the mythical tale of Yesha-Yahu ben Yoseph and his sister-spouse Miriam, better known by their Latin names as Jesus and Mary. Bethany, where Mary's twin-sisters Miriam and Martha lived, was called in Hebrew Beit Anatot, the House of Anat; Anatot was also the town in which the Prophet Yirme-Yahu (Jeremiah) was born, and where his father was a priest - we must presume of Anat. Yechezke-El (Ezekiel) records in horror that the women wailed for Tammuz at the north gate of the Temple in Yerushalayim (Ezekiel 8:14), which means on the north side of the altar. Tammuz was the Mesopotamian name for Ba'al, his mother-spouse being Ishtar, or Inanna previously, when he was Utu or Dumuzi. Variations of the tale can be found throughout the Middle East, and all make their appearances in the Old Testament: Egyptian (Isis and Osher), Assyrian (Astarte and Adonis), Mesopotamian (Ishtar and Tammuz), and the oldest of the oriental versions of the same myth, the Sumerian (Inanna and Dumuzi). The Hebrew tales of Av-Raham and Sarah reflect an earlier Aramaean version of the same myth. For essentially the vast majority of myths and legends recounted in the Tanach are in fact reworkings in liturgy, song and folk-tale, of the same constant theme, the Grand Theme so to speak, the "Common Source", of these two parts of the New Year Myth: the slaying of the Cosmic Dragon and the Journey to the Underworld. When the Hebrews made their historic claim that "YHVH Is One", they had first to transform the previous Unity of this Grand Theme, from many variants of the myth to a single one, from pantheism to at least the illusion of monotheism, and particularly from the female to the masculine.

This is the story of Creation as recorded in one of the oldest known texts, the Babylonian "Enuma Elish" (the illustration shows Marduk chasing Tiamat, but in the language of the Common Source it could as well be St George or King Arthur chasing the Dragon, or indeed Siegfried chasing Fafner in the Nibelungenlied; and note that the depiction of Tiamat here is not simply as a dragon, but an early form of what will become, in one culture, the Keruvim or cherubs, in another the angels):

"When on high the heavens had not yet been named, and the Earth beneath did not yet bear a name, Apsu the Begetter and Tiamat the Mother of All Living Creatures produced a brood of dragon-like monsters (their waters were mingled together and the gods were created in the midst of Heaven)..."

Several generations passed, and the descendants of these primeval beasts became the gods of the Earth and the heavens. But Apsu, who is the abyss, was disturbed at finding his domain invaded by the new gods, and so he induced Tiamat (Tohu = תהו) and Chaos (Vohu = בהו) to join him in contesting their supremacy; he, however, was subdued by the cunning of Ea, the God of Wisdom, who challenged and killed Apsu. Tiamat was left to carry on the struggle alone.

Tiamat (or Tahamat as she is sometimes called) then married her own son Kingu and bred another race of monsters from him, intending to use them to take vengeance on Ea. But Ea's son, the sky-god Marduk, was appointed as their champion by the alarmed gods. Marduk dared to oppose Tiamat. Tiamat's army was her eleven monsters, Marduk's the seven winds, plus his bow and arrow and his storm-chariot, and a terrible coat of mail. He smeared his lips with a prophylactic red paste, and applied to his wrist a herb that made him immune to poison; he also put a crown of flames around his head. The first battle was verbal. When the real fight started, Marduk caught hold of Tiamat and sent one of the winds with a bolt of lightning into her belly to rip out her guts, then brained her and shot her full of arrows. He seized Tiamat in a huge net, and "with his merciless club he crushed her skull". Then, having bound the corpse with chains and proclaimed his victory, he likewise chained the eleven monsters and cast them into prison, where they became the gods of the underworld. Finally he snatched the "Tablets of Destiny" from Kingu's breast and fastened them to his own breast. Tiamat's carcase was hacked in two pieces, one of which he fixed on high, to stop the upper waters flooding the earth (i.e. the vault of the heavens which the Bible calls the Rakia - רקיע); the other half he used as a rocky foundation for the earth and seas themselves. He then also made the sun, moon, five lesser planets and the stars, and gave his kinsmen charge over them; finally he created Humankind from the blood of Kingu, who he had also condemned to death for instigating Tiamat's rebellion."

There is much here that needs explaining:

Apsu the Begetter was the seed of original creation, the void of uncreation within which the possibility of Creation was latent. He reappears in Jewish legend as Ephes (אפס) = Nothingness; and in the Hebrew language as the number Nought (אפס). In the Genesis version of the story he has been replaced by his Phoenician counterpart Baou or Bohu, likewise the god of primal nothingness, here rendered as Vohu (בהו). From King Arthur to St George, by way of Beowulf and the Hydra who protected the Golden Fleece, it is this legend of the slaying of Tiamat by Marduk which provides the source for the all the dragon myths of Europe, the Middle East, and even China.

Ea in Hebrew becomes Yah (יה), the moon god, the oldest form of Yahweh or Jehovah (יהוה) - at least, according to orthodox Jewish explanation - or, much more likely, the female counterpart of YHVH, as the Greek Io is to Jove. His ownership of Wisdom is reflected in the Seven Pillars of the Temple. At the same time, Io the sister of Phoroneus (Ephron), likewise becomes Yah in the Hebrew, the Greek and Babylonian forms distinguished only by their gender; and still today many Jews argue for Yah as a masculine lunar deity.

In another Jewish borrowing from the same Babylonian New Year cosmogony, Marduk becomes Mordechai; his wife Ishtar - Tiamat as the Queen of Heaven - becomes Mordechai's niece Ester (Esther). The story, recounted in the Book of Esther, forms the centrepiece of the festival of Purim, which for many centuries after the Exile was the date of the Hebrew New Year in the Spring. The name Chaman (חמן - Haman), likewise associated with the festival, comes from the Babylonian word chaman = a stone idol (cf Leviticus 26:30), and in fact the whole tale of Ester reflects the New Year rituals still practiced by the Farsis of Iran today.

The Tablets of Destiny occur in several Celtic myths. As well as marrying the High Priestess, ownership of them was vital in claiming the sacred kingship; as Moshe acquired predominance from his two similar tablets.

The emergence of Earth from the primeval watery chaos is metaphorical of the dry land emerging annually from the floods of the Tigris and Euphrates - as is the Flood story itself. The festival at which this story is retold belongs to the Babylonian New Year, on the first of Nissan, in the spring. In today's aetiology, we can read the emergence as the birth of a child from the womb, but scholars claim that we cannot say for certain if this would have been understood in Biblical times as well; I would disagree, and refer you to the paragraph beginning "but in every case", below.

By contrast, the Canaanite New Year was the first of Tishrey in the autumn. (Hebrew New Year followed this date until the exile, when it was moved to the 1st of Nissan). However, because the process took seven days, and the Rabbis held the creation of Humankind to be the central event of Creation, it was deemed to have begun five days earlier, on the 25th of Elul, with Adam's birthday on the 1st of Tishrey.

This anthropomorphic description of the violent eruptions of the primal elements and their evolution into the universe (no less credible nor meaningful a metaphor than is the "Big Bang"), is the commonplace myth of the ancient world, albeit with regional variations.

In the Hittite version, Bel (Canaanite Ba'al) and not Marduk is the hero.

In one Greek version, Mother Earth is named Tiamat, who created the giant Typhon, whose birth caused all the other gods to flee to Egypt, until Zeus played the Marduk role, killing both Typhon and his monstrous sister Delphyne with a thunderbolt.

In another Greek version, the central figure of Creation is not Tiamat but Eurynome, goddess of all things, who rose naked from Chaos (Chaos is rendered in the Hebrew by Tohu - תהו- as the deeps of the sea are by Tehom - תהום - both of them sourced from the root-word Tiamat), divided sea from sky, danced among the waves, stirred up the wind, was impregnated by it in the shape of a great serpent named Ophion or Ophioneus, and laid the World Egg.

(In the Orphic myth Night, the Creatrix, lays a silver egg from which Love - Eros or Phanes - is hatched to set the world in motion. Night inhabits a cave, displaying herself alternately as Night, Order and Justice. But just as the Orphic is generally discarded as belonging to a mystic tradition, so too its Hebrew equivalent. This figure of Night appears only in those late Jewish myths recorded in the Mishnah, where she is known is Lilith - from the Hebrew Layil - ליל = Night. The Lilim were Night Spirits akin to the Greek Erinnyes; Lilith is said to have been the first wife of Adam, before he was given Chava (Eve). In the Genesis account, the god of darkness Choshech - חשך - supplants her).

In Berossus' version (9th century), Marduk becomes El. After the death of Tahamat, the goddess Aruru forms Man by mixing El's blood with clay.

An alternate Syriac version borrows the story of the Egyptian sky-goddess Nut and her union with the earth-god Geb, a story which is itself paralleled in the Greek account of the sky-god Ouranos (Uranus) mating with the earth-goddess Gaia; on this occasion the hero Shu simply lifts Nut out of Geb's arms, where Marduk had literally cut Tahamat in half to disengage her from Apsu.

But in every case the pattern is identical: Creation is achieved by the god struggling with water, personified as a (phallic) sea-monster or sea-serpent (Leviathan, in the Job version; elsewhere Lotan, Rahab, the Great Dragon of King Arthur, Beowulf's Grendel et cetera). Water is the creatrix, equally male and female; for birth to take place, the waters must literally break; likewise the dividing of the waters establishes the male and female principles necessary to the engendering of life; just as, previously, for the seed to be implanted there must first be the bloody cutting of the hymen. The upper waters (shemayim - שמים) are always male, the lower (mayim - מיים) female. The rite of circumcision reflects the cutting in twain of the sea-serpent, at once breaking the female hymen (in female circumcision) and pruning the male vine that it may run to seed.

Above all, the story of Creation is a rite of the fertility goddess, who is also, in one of her aspects, the sea-goddess who rises on the foam of the tides like Aphrodite, is served by the cultic skin-sloughing serpent, and is worshipped in the form of the moon, because it is the moon whose gravity pulls the tides and whose orbits reflect the menstrual cycle. Sea, snake, moon - fertility. We see this repeated throughout chapter after chapter of the Tanach, the matriarchal deity whom the pious, paternalistic, patriarchal Pharisees expelled from her caves and her hill-shrines and her sacred groves, but never finally from the hearts and souls of Yisra-El. Her name - this female principle, triple-goddess of earth-sea-sky and of maidenhood-maternity-grandmotherhood? In Babylon Ishtar, in Assyria Asherah, among the Aramaeans Sarah, in Phoenicia Astarte, among the Canaanites Ashtoreth, among the Hittites Anat, among the Jebusites Anatha, in Egypt Isis, in Lybia Nethe, amongst the Greeks Kore, Io, Demeter or Circe, among the Danaans Athene, among the Christians Mary, in Rome Diana, among the Danaans Hebe, among the Hittites Chawa, and in the tribe of Yehudah Chava Em Kol Chay - Eve, the Mother of All Living Things - the fertility goddess. To the Celts she was Guenevere, or Brigit.

Tahamat's army contains just eleven monsters, for she is herself the 12th, as Nisan is the first month among the twelve calendrical deities. Nor is it difficult therefore to know what sort of monsters they were - any glance at the horoscope will do, though the horoscope has changed considerably over the past two thousand years, its symbols frequently substituted, so perhaps a glance at the beasts of Hercules' Twelve Labours would be more sensible. Ea by contrast does not fight, but sends out the seven planetary deities on his behalf. That the planets were victorious is visible in the subordination of the 12 deities to the underworld, and on Earth of their organisation into 12 tribes (Yisra-El, Yishma-El, the Greek amphictyony, the 12 Lords of Brittany et cetera) ruled by the 7 principal gods in Heaven (or by the god of the seventh day, who subordinated all the others, in the Hebrew version). The defeat of Tahamat by Ea may also explain the subservience of female to male throughout the cosmic order!

Once victorious, a pantheon of seven ruling gods, seven planetary deities, is formed, and together these create the world, each fashioning his or her own day, complete with appropriate physical phenomena. The order of their hierarchy is reflected in the order of creation (that the Hebrews held at least some residual belief in the seven is clear from Zechariah 4:10).

TABLE OF GODS PLANETS DAYS (see also Number 7)

Note how the principal god of each cult rules the fifth day, where the Hebrew rules the seventh. Note how the Hebrews resolve the problem of [not wanting to identify] identifying the gods in the days of the week by giving each day a number instead of a name. A reconstruction of the Hebrew ruling pantheon might give us:

SUNDAY: Shemesh (שמש)

MONDAY: Lavanah (לבנה). Ya'akov's "Uncle Laban". Yareyach (ירח), possibly derived from YAH (יה); whence the important moon-shrine of Yericho (Jericho), the third major shrine alongside Ur and Charan.

TUESDAY: Nergal (cf 2 Kings 17:29/30, an extremely important fragment to understand how the "Common Source" came into being).

WEDNESDAY: Nevi (נבא), whence the word for Prophet. Or possibly Adonay Tsevaot (יי צבאות).

THURSDAY: YHVH (יהוה), El (אל) or Ba'al (בעל).

FRIDAY: Shechinah (שכינה), the Sabbath Bride as Queen of Heaven, would be interesting, but in fact is too late an addition; much more likely Sarai (שרי), the Aramaic equivalent of Asherah.

SATURDAY: Elohim (אלהים) or YHVH.

But for the editors of the Tanach, this could not be made to work, because to Ezra and his generation all gods were the same god, each day and each planet being ruled by YHVH or Elohim, with the seventh day treated as special, the day of rest that is hallowed above all other days. In the Temple, however, each of the seven retained his or her pillar of wisdom - the names of two, Bo'az (בעז) and Yachin (יכין), being known - a place that is to say at which oracles were delivered on different days of the week; each too retained its branch on the Menorah (cf Zechariah 4:10), its colour in the No'achic rainbow, and its share of the sevenfold vengeance for the killing of the scapebull Kayin (Cain). A suggestion of divine marriage between gods and goddesses is also hinted at through a pairing of god days, excluding the seventh, who is predominant: thus the first and fourth connect light and darkness (the heavens made and separated from darkness on the first day; the sun, moon and stars created on the fourth); the second and fifth days connect the upper and the lower waters of the firmament, (division of the heavens by means of a firmament on the second day, the filling of the sky above and the waters below with birds and fish on the fifth day); and the third and sixth days marry the two earth divinities, giving birth thereby to earth itself, as well as to vegetation, on the third day, mammals, reptiles and humans on the sixth). For centuries the strange phenomenon has been noticed of light appearing to have been created before the sun, moon and stars came into existence: this explains why.

The fact that the middle branch of the Menorah - the great seven-branched candlestick that stood in the Temple with a branch for each day - grew into the fourth day, as the middle of seven, rather being placed at the beginning, seems to indicate that:

a) the week may have begun on Friday, with Shabbat on Thursday, a logical positioning that coincides with the principal deity in all other cults

b) it is highly unlikely to have begun on Sunday until the post-exilic reformation.

What Zechariah 4:10 actually says is, that the seven deities of the seven lamps of the Menorah are "the eyes of YHVH that run to and from through the universe." The central stem runs into the fourth day, which is the day of the creation of the heavenly bodies, sacred to Nabu, inventor of astronomy, who becomes the Hebrew Nevi, Prophet, Interpreter of the Heavens. It is in this capacity that the Hebrews refer to Adonay Tsevaot, the Lord god of Hosts; but Nov also means a high place, as in a hill-shrine (Nov of pre-Yerushalayim was destroyed by King Sha'ul in 1 Samuel 22 ff as part of his Set-pursuit of Tammuz-David into the Underworld). The connection of Nabu with Mercury reinforces the role of the Prophets as "messengers of God".

The monsters depicted on the Menorah are presumably those defeated with Tahamat, and it is interesting that they should have been depicted at all on so sacred an object as the Menorah, which held so central a place in the Temple. They are shown as:

Lower left panel: 2 dragons facing each other, probably the Fleeing Serpent and the Crooked Serpent.

Upper left and right: 2 fish-tailed creatures, presumably the great Dragons of Genesis 1:21.

Lower Centre: probably Rahab, whose moon-priestess was so important to the capture of Yericho (Jericho).

Lower Right: probably Tehom or Ephes.

Upper Centre: 2 winged creatures in the predominant panel beneath the central stem; presumably keruvim (cherubim), who are likewise represented on the Ark of the Covenant. (Represented? Surely not? But in fact the edict against representation is a Rabbinic interpretation of the commandment against the making of graven images, itself only added to the original Seven Commandments after the exile.)

It seems hardly necessary after all this to note that the seven archangels were also held to have had a day of the week in their demesne, for the archangels were the earliest means used by the Hebrews to transform this polytheism into the cult of the One god. The angels were quite simply a lowering of the status of the gods, expelling them from the inner palace of Heaven. Hence the Christian mythology of the Fall of Lucifer.

Josephus' "Wars" (5:5) confirm this picture of the Menorah and its links to the gods (Josephus is not reliable about the history of his own time, which he wrote for the Roman Emperor after defecting from Jewish leadership to Rome; but he is generally very reliable when it comes to artefacts and details of the Hebrew cult).

In the Enuma Elish (see above) the order of Creation is: separation of Heaven from Earth and Sea; creation of planets and stars; creation of trees and herbs; creation of animals and fish; 5th and 6th tablets damaged; Marduk forms Man from the blood of Kingu, mixed with earth.

Blood in Hebrew is Dam (דם). The blood-red Earth of Edom (אדומ) is Adamah (אדמה). The first man, created from the earth, was Adam (אדם).

We can deduce that a second, parallel battle must have taken place on land, from the pairing of of Tohu (Chaos) with Bohu (Nothingness) in pre-Creation, and the pairing of sea-beasts (Tahamat) with land-beasts (Behemot) after the Creation. The serpent in this case being named Bahamat, and probably treated as a twin of Tahamat. Tohu (Chaos) and Bohu (nothingness) are present in Genesis 1:2; Tehom becomes the deep, so we can deduce Baham for the land. And indeed Behemot (בהמות) is the later name for cattle, and is used in this story; Job 40:15 however makes it a great monster, which translators usually render as the hippopotamus.

In the Genesis 1 version of Creation there is no mention of the god YHVH (יהוה), nor of a garden in Eden, nor of a snake, nor of a temptation to eat fruit, nor of a fall from grace. There are no sacred trees, no moral blandishments, no human banishments. Even the gods are absent, for in Hebrew theology all gods are One god, under the common name of Elohim, which is in fact multiply plural. In seven days the seven gods created the world, the order of Creation tallying with the order of the divine hierarchy (even if this does lead to the seeming absurdity of Light pre-existing the Sun and grass coming before stars). Though this myth may well have been brought back by the exiles from Babylon, it is also sufficiently ancient, and as we have seen sufficiently similar to other ancient myths, that it must almost certainly have been the nub of cosmogony among the Canaanite ethnoi for centuries; even, perhaps, in something closer to its original form. What appears in Genesis is the sanitised version, pagan elements plucked out, the whole bowing to Ezraic dogma. We cannot know at what point the fertility goddess and the world serpent were expunged, but as with the parable of the Garden of Eden version of Creation, there is no doubt that both were indeed expunged, driven out, and anathematised by the pharisaic Rabbis of literal Judaism; their sacred groves and cultic shrines guarded shut by "cherubs bearing flaming swords". There are sufficient stories in the patriarchal collection, and sufficient references, vilifications and attacks in the Prophetic collection, to suggest that the old pagan ways - and especially the worship of the moon-goddess and the cult of her ever-dying ever-reborn son and spouse who is at once the right-hand of the deity and the Lord of the Underworld - continued to be as prevalent amongst ordinary people as pagan Christmas is amongst Europeans today; and that the re-emergence of the Cult of the Risen Lord, through the issuing of the first Gospel in the 70s CE, was not entirely coincidental of the fact that Jewish hegemony, which suppressed the cult, had come to a sudden end in 70 CE.

In the Genesis 1 version of Creation Chava (Eve) is unnamed and human creatures unmentioned except in passing, in verse 26, where Adam stands for the species, not the individual; and not even the species Man, but the Promethean precursor and progenitor of Man, member of the aboriginal tribes of Nephilim and Anakim, the Hebrew Titans, the pre-human demi-gods who were the 'kinsmen' Marduk appointed to rule the Earth in his place. The myth exists, it should be added finally, not to explain the origins of the world to Man - which is how we tend to read it today - but that the gods might be exalted, and the workings of the heavenly court understood by all. The myth would have been recited, possibly even acted out by masked priests, as part of the New Year festivities - much as we [still, occasionally!] perform Nativity Plays today.

Finally, it is hardly possible to avoid registering the curiously logical pattern of evolution that appears to run through this story; quite remarkable in fact how close the ancient view was to the Darwinian, and how consistent with "Big Bang" (our modern equivalent of "Let there be light"). Beginning only with the elements in liquid form, substance comes from the sudden appearance of light, out of which the universe is born in an instant. An atmosphere (firmament) forms around the Earth and gradually Earth itself emerges with the continents separating from the seas. Life then issues from the earth in the form of plants. The Earth is now placed in the cosmos, galaxied with the sun and moon and stars. From the sea animal life next emerges, becoming birds beasts insects et cetera out of these first reptiles. And finally Humankind itself, the last act before the accomplishment of Creation. Perhaps it is the understanding of this that has allowed even the most religious Jews to take Darwin on the bearded chin.

RU'ACH ELOHIM (רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים): The mysterious Wind or Spirit which the Christians would name the Holy Ghost, the tangible yet intangible, visible yet invisible, the beating pulse which is anthropomorphised as the deity. The wind is linked to the sun, as water is linked to the moon. In one Phoenician version of Creation, the primary chaos (Tehom) was acted upon by the wind, which became enamoured of its own elements. In another, Baou (a variant of Bohu) the female principle, is impregnated by the wind-god, who is her husband Kolpia (identified with the Greek Nix, Night, who in the Genesis version becomes Choshech (חֹשֶׁךְ), Darkness. According to Hesiod, Nix was the Mother of All Things, a now familiar epithet. The Hellenic Greeks identified Nix as Eurynome, who took the serpent Ophion for her lover.) In the Genesis account the Wind does not impregnate, but merely 'hovers' (merachephet - מְרַחֶפֶת); however, note that Deuteronomy 32:11 similarly describes the Ru'ach Elohim as "an eagle hovering over her young".

But which wind is it? Leviticus 1:11 places sacrifices, and quite specifically the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb, at the north side of the altar, as at Athens - and remember Ezekiel 8:14, which finds the women weeping for the very paschal lamb that was sacrificed by Av-Raham in place of Yitschak! The Greeks named the north wind Boreas, and Pliny the Elder in his "Natural History", as well as Homer, suggest that mares often turn their hind-quarters to the north wind and breed foals without a stallion. In mating thus with Boreas, and in laying the World Egg, Eurynome was described as a dove; her Sumerian counterpart, Iahu, means "exalted dove"; and it was disguised as a dove that Marduk sliced Tahamat in two. The dove re-appears as a symbol of the mother goddess in the Jesus story.

In creating the seven planetary powers, Eurynome set a Titan and Titaness over each (Titan, like Adon and Ba'al, means "Lord") These were: Theia and Hyperion for the sun; Phoebe and Atlas for the moon; Dione and Crius for Mars; Metis and Coeus for Mercury; Themis and Eurymedon for Jupiter; Tethys and Oceanus for Venus; Rhea and Cronus for Saturn (Cronus the Titan is not the same as Chronos, the Father of Time). The Eurynome myths belong to an early Greek people named the Pelasgians. It is thought that these people migrated to Greece from Kena'an at about 3500 BCE. Euripides, Homer and others tell us that they later called themselves Danaans; (see "The Leprachauns of Palestine"), this is the Greek version of the tribe of Dan who also gave their name to Denmark and to the Tuatha de Danau, the original "leprachauns" of Ireland. Danaus arrived in Argos with 50 daughters, the classic college of priestesses.

The later Greeks identified the seven planets as Helios/illumination; Selene (Moon)/enchantment; Ares (Mars)/Growth; Hermes (Mercury)/Wisdom; Zeus (Jupiter)/Law; Aphrodite (Venus)/Love; Cronus (Saturn)/Peace.

Beside the Horse's Tomb at Sparta, seven planetary pillars were set up, according to Pausanias, to be adorned by worshippers. On each day of the week oracles were delivered at the base of the pillar. Presumably the pillar which Ya'akov set up was a megalithic stone (baetyl or Beit-El) of similar type.

According to the Orphics, Nix (Night) was black-winged. Zeus was terrified of her, and the creature hatched from the World Egg which the Wind seeded was not Eros but Phanes, who the Oracle of Colophon named Iao. Eros had golden wings, was both male and female, and had a different head for each season: a ram in the spring, a lion in the summer, a snake in the winter and a bull at the New Year in autumn. The river that went out of Eden in Genesis 2:10 is also said to have had four heads; we will see later that they are the same foursome. Nix lived with Eros in a cave, guarded by the Great Mother Rhea, wife of Cronus, the Greek Saturn. In Greek mythology Cronus was overthrown by his son Zeus, who then became chief of the gods. Can we, identifying Iao with YHVH, and noting he was the equivalent son of Cronus, therefore presume that the Hebrew god likewise overthrew his father, claimed Saturday for his day, Saturn for his planet, and Rhea-Eve for his wife? Saturn’s attribute was peace, and the Temple of YHVH was set up in the City of Peace, Yerushalayim - Uru-Sala'am (ערו שלם).

The Argaman Press