What’s interesting is that the Semitic language group all use the word Sem:[ul]
[li]Amharic - sm[/li][li]Arabic - isme[/li][li]Hebrew - shem[/li][li]Maltese - isem[/li][/ul]
Since the group was named after the biblical figure Shem, who’s name literally means name, all the Semitic languages use the name of their language group when saying their word for name.
Other than Mordechai, did anybody identify themselves as Benaminite post-exilic?
Part of this seems uncontested. Variations of “Haibiru” (with huge resemblance to “Hebrew”) are attested from ancient Sumeria and Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, as well as Hittites, Ugarites, etc. Perhaps it referred to different groups, but always with a meaning of ‘outsider.’
Two questions arise: (1) Are “Haibiru” and “Hebrew” the same word? (2) If so, did they refer to the same ethnic group?
This source implies that “Hebrew” was an ancient word used by both Egyptians and Philistines to refer to the Israelites.
Based on the two sources cited in this thread it seems very likely that Haibiru and Hebrew are cognates.
It does not seem mentioned yet, there are no Jews in the world until the covenant takes place at Sinai.
Semite would technically be anyone from the people who spoke semitic language
which could consist of several ethic groups of people.
Hebrew technically refers to the family/children/tribe of Jacob AKA Israel, grandson of Abraham.
The Beastie Boys were almost named Yo-Semite.
Captain Amazing:
Several passages in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah would seem to imply that the Benjaminites retained their tribal identification after the Babylonian exile - see Ezra 1:5, 4:1, 10:9, Nehemiah 11:4, 7-9, 31-36. Also, the book of Chronicles, has a detailed geneology by tribe, Benjamin separate from Judah, the purpose of which, according to many, is to establish the lineage of those who returned from the Babylonian exile.
Actually, I was a bit too tentative about my cite from Chronicles - I Chronicles 9:3 makes it pretty clear that it is written post-exile, and that the Benjaminites are distinct from the Judahites as in the Ezra/Nehemiah cites in the post above.
I don’t know the book, and I haven’t traced the etymology of the terms, but I can give a high level overview of some of the (more generally accepted) archaeology of the time and place.
From a map standpoint, you can view everything as three lines, the Egyptian line (bottom left), the Canaanitic line (in the middle), and the “Other” line (on the top and right).
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/ \ \
/ \ \
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The vertical line, in the bottom left, is the Nile river, along which Egypt runs. It spreads out a bit along the Mediterranean (the horizontal bit at the top). The city of Avaris is in the junction of the T.
The gap between Egypt and the next line is the Sinai peninsula. This was an uninhabited desert at the time.
The vertical section across from Egypt is Canaan / Israel-Judah / Israel (depending on time period).
At the bottom of Canaan, leading into Sinai, were the Philistines.
Along the top of the curve that leads into Canaan is an area that was mostly controlled by the Amorites.
Above the Amorites, in Anatolia, were a number of groups (depending on era) including the Hittites, Assyrians, and Akkadians. To the East and South of the Amorites were the Akkadians, Mitanni, Sumerians, Mesopotamians, and Babylonians.
In the most ancient of archaeology, it seems that the Philistines, Canaanites, and Amorites were all related Semitic, Canaanitic groups. While they had some gods specific to themselves, they also had many shared gods (El, Baal Hadad, Astarte, etc.)
Despite my naming and describing these as three separate groups (Philistines, Canaanites, and Amorites), in many ways that’s a misleading way of handling them. The Amorites, for example, were a coalition between a number of Amorite rulers controlling different city states and kingdoms. The Canaanite regions were probably, similarly divided into many sub-groups with a wide number of leaders. For example, Ugarit was effectively its own kingdom within “Canaan”. There’s no real reason to call the Philistines separate from Canaan nor the Amorites (nor the Edomites, Moabites, etc.) Overall, the middle line was composed of a wide variety of Canaanitic peoples, divided into dozens or hundreds of independent kingdoms, princedoms, tribes, and coalitions that changed from century to century.
The Bible references twelve different tribes, possibly as a reference to some (but almost certainly not all) of these ancient divisions. The Northern chunks of the Canaanitic region were taken over by other groups as time went on.
From Biblical mythology, we see Abraham coming from the Amorite regions and this could be a reference to a general Amorite migration West and South which occurred between 2500-1600 BC. But archaeology first shows worship of Yahweh as coming from the Southern tip of the Canaanite region (around 900 BC), and Moses interacted a lot with the Midianites and Kenites, who seem to have been Southern groups. Between ~1800 and ~1500 BC, Avaris at the top of Egypt was controlled by a group called the Hyksos, who seem likely to have been Canaanitic and possibly Amoritic.
From the fragmentary data available, it seems like the Amorites were pushed out of the East, gradually. Mostly, they settled North of Canaan, but some continued on and made it all of the way into Egypt, capturing the Northern portion, along the ocean. The Egyptians, eventually kicked them out, then proceeded to take over Canaan (including some of the Amorite areas). They continued to hold it until the Hittites came from the North and took over the region (around 1350 BC). The Assyrians quickly took it over from them and controlled it.
At the time in which the Old Testament was first starting to be written, it had been taken over from the Assyrians by the Achaemenid Empire, and the Emperor Cyrus the Great was considered a hero in the Canaanite region for returning a bunch of people that the Assyrians had held hostage in the East (near the home of Zoroastrianism) and funding the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem.
Abraham’s tale seems, most likely, to reference the migration of the Amorites. Moses’ escape from Egypt could be a reference to when the Hyksos fled Avaris, or it could reference when Canaan was later freed from Egyptian rule. The idea that Moses interacted with the people in the South (the Midianites and Kenites) could be a reference to the fact that Yahwism does seem to have begun in that area.
The conquest of Canaan doesn’t seem to reference anything that we know of from archaeology.
Thanks.
Interesting analysis, **Sage Rat. **
How do the Phoenicians fit in? I know they’re from the Lebanese coast and spoke a language very similar to Hebrew. Were they simply Canaanites with boats?
To my understanding that is exactly who they were.
ETA: The name “Canaanites” (כְּנָעַנִיְם kǎnā‘anīm, כְּנָעַנִי kǎnā‘anī) is attested, many centuries later, as the endonym of the people later known to the Ancient Greeks from c. 500 BC as Phoenicians, and following the emigration of Canaanite speakers to Carthage, was also used as a self-designation by the Punics (chanani) during Late Antiquity. From wikipedia.
In my opinion, the Jews were the first major movement to believe in the concept of one god and were disliked for it. Being small in number they overcame Pharaohs, and Romans, which were to dangerous power to be at odds within the times.
The odd thing is Jesus himself was a Jew ( his real name you can look up ) and the Mohammed the prophet was said to be a direct demented of Abraham himself, meaning he too was at least part Jewish.
The records show Jesus had human parents and later claimed to be the son of god. I’ll leave the religion out, but if true, then god is Jewish. The Jews did not believe him.
Muhammad actually tried to covert the Jews, who declined. That is how Islam came to be.
Because of these two acts from Jewish decents, anti-semitism was born.
Catholicism was a dead virtually religon for decades after Christ’s death. Some Roman adopted it, and then used an older holiday on December 25th.
The interesting thing is these old bible stories of building and rivers, many of which have vanished are now viewable from salaries in space or below the ground penetration devices…simply amazing.
The Phoenicians, Moabites, Edomites, Arameans, Amonites, etc. are all Canaanites.
The Midianites and Kenites may have bridged the gap between the Arabic peoples and the Canaanite peoples, being mostly Arabic but picking up a few deities from the Canaanites. There’s a fair amount of circumstancial evidence that Yahweh, Qos, and Dushara were originally the same god, referenced by different names. The Bible directly links Qos and Yahweh, seeming to accept worship of either as a good thing. But we see the remnants of Qos and Dushara among the Nabateans, who seem likely to have been descendants of the Midianites. But, like most Arabic tribes of the time, their primary gods were female. And, in general, Qos compares more closely to Zeus, Baal Hadad, and Teshub than he does to the male, Arabic gods of the time, so it seems more likely that the Qos god originates was brought into the Arabic region from Canaan, rather than that he was brought into Canaan from the Arabs (which is why I did not include a Midianites/Nabatean line on my map). What evidence we have of Midianite religion would seem to support that their top deities were female.
Besides the obvious, and sometimes hilarious, grammatical mistakes, most of this post is incorrect. So little is correct that it would best to just ignore the whole thing, and I don’t have the time or the inclination to go point-by-point to refute the errors.