I agree with the basic pillars of Immanuel Velikovsky's Egyptian
chronology (Middle Kingdom Exodus with the Hyksos invading some time
after the Red Sea incident, Thuthmosis III as Shishak, El Amarna era
during the divided Kingdom, Ramses II as Necho, Ramses III as Nectenbos
of Diodorus with the Prstt being the Persian Empire and Sea Peoples as
Ionian Greeks, The Maunier Stele depicts Alexander's visit to the Siwa Oasis).
I don't agree with his weird theories about the planets
though.
Rohl I don't agree with on Egyptian chronology, but I
like his identification of Enmerkar with Nimrod and Eridu with Babel and
have written my own study on that subject.
I do want to discus some of the details of Velikovsky and his contemporary supporters' model I disagree with.
On
the Hyksos Amalekites connection which I've touched on elsewhere I just
want to say I feel it's not that simple. The Hyksos were many tribes
of Asiatic peoples. They included the Amalekites and possibly other
Edomite tribes (I think the king remembered by Greek myth as Belus was
an Edomite King connected in some way to Bela son of Beor of Genesis
36:32&33), I think they had a Midianite aspect too (Hor II of the
13th Dynasty I think was the Midanite king Hur mentioned in The Bible).
Archaeology clearly shows they had an Amorite aspect at all.
The
most prominent is Hatshepsut as the Queen of Sheba. If she was an
Egyptian queen The Bible wouldn't have obscured that, it dealt with
Solomon's interactions with Egypt unambiguously both before and after
this. Also since Tuthmosis I must be the Pharaoh who's daughter Solomon
married, Hatshepsut was her Sister. If this Queen was Solomon's sister
in law that wouldn't been overlooked.
Yeshua calls her the "Queen of The South"
in Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31. And then Daniel 11 is cited where the
"King of The South" is consistently Egypt. South in Biblical geography
is south of Israel/Jerusalem, in the context of Alexander's successors
only Ptolemy is south of Israel, and Egypt was the core of his Kingdom
but not all of it.
There are three Shebas on the Table of
Nations, Two in Genesis 10 and another being Abrahamic. The two in
Genesis 10 are one Hamitic/Cushite and the other Semitic/Joktanite. But
in both I Kings 10 and II Chronicles 11 the Queen of Sheba narrative is
linked to Ophir another Joktanite name. And the other two Shebas are
virtually inseparable from the Dedan who is their brother, but no Dedan
is alluded to here.
Serious Archaeologists all know that Sheba
was the name of a Kingdom in southern Arabia, modern Yemen. ( Israel
Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman,David and Solomon: In Search of the
Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition p. 167).
The Saba that was a capital of Nubia/Ethiopia didn't appears till very
late, Meroƫ was their Capital until after the fall of the 25th Dynasty
(When Nubia ruled Egypt). The Cushite Sheba of Genesis 10 I believe
settled in Ancient India where he was deified as Shiva and his rather
Ramaah as Rama an avatar of Vishnu.
I do believe the Ark of the
Covenant came to Ethiopia. But the Menelik legend is propaganda created
by the Christian Auxomite kings to give them a Biblical lineage. I
believe Graham Hancock and Bob Cornuke's theory for how it got there.
First being at Elephantine island from sometime after King Manasseh's
reign of terror to the time of Cambyses.
The Arabic traditions of
Balqis/Bilqis/Bilquis did exist in Pre-Islamic times (Mohammed didn't
really come up with much of anything new) and so have good reason to be
viewed as more Ancient and Valid then the purely invented Ethiopian
legend.
I do believe Hatshepsut probably visited Solomon also.
The Bible says many rulers come to visit Solomon and witness his Wisdom.
The Queen of Sheba is singled out NOT because she's the most important
by secular standards, but because she became a Saved individual, so
Yeshua cited her as such.
So I do agree that Punt was an Egyptian
name for Canaan/Israel. And I don't think the similarity between
Make-Ra (A name of Hatshepsut) and Makeda (The name of the Queen of
Sheba in the Ethiopian traditions) is a coincidence. I think various
Egytpian Jews, first at Elephantine and then latter in Alexandria and
the Onias colony, drew the same false conclusion and began giving her
that name. And this may have influenced Josephus who was very familiar
with Alexandrian Jewish traditions.
El Amarna period.
I
agree with Velikovsky's on Jehoshaphat as Ebed-Tov/Abdi-Heba King of
Jerusalem and Mesha King of Moab with the Mesh of the Amarna letters.
The Amarna letters also lsit 3 of the Captains of Jehoshaphat from II
Chronicles 17:14-19. Addudani/Addadani=Adna and Ada-danu mentioned by
Shalmaneser in 825 BC, "Son of Zuchru" = "son of Zichri",
Iahzibada=Iehozabad/Jehozabad.
And I agree about the Habiru being bandits or mercenaries, not an ethnic term.
But
his identity for Ahab is very problematic. Gubla is the Amarna letters
name for Byblos not Jezreel. So Rib-Addi/Rib-Hadda was not Israelite.
Labaya
I feel is logically is Ahab, (or whoever the Northern Kingdom ruler was
at the time). The whole Jezebel-Nefertiti connection suggested by
SpecialtyInterests I don't like however.
Velikovsky's references to "Sodomites" is really weird, he's unaware that that is a reference to Sodom only in English.
Velikovsky
did NOT believe in the infallibility of Scripture. Which of course is
an assumption many critics of revised chronology make about all revised
chronologists. This fact about him is most apparent in the part of Age
sin Chaos about the Death of Ahab. He basis it on what he saw as a
contradiction between this verse.
II Kings 1:17 "So he died
according to the word of the LORD which Elijah had spoken. And Jehoram
reigned in his stead in the second year of Jehoram the son of
Jehoshaphat king of Judah; because he had no son."
And these two verses.
II
Kings 3:1 "Now Jehoram the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in
Samaria the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned
twelve years."
II Kings 8:16 "And in the fifth year of Joram the
son of Ahab king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah,
Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah began to reign."
There
is no contradiction here however, he'd know this if he'd studied
Ussher's chronology. Jehoshaphat made his son a co ruler for the latter
years of his reign, this is why the 18th year of Jehoshaphat can also
be the second year of Jehoram.
As for the fact that Ahab did
Repent after Elijah rebuked him over the Naboth business. That was
negated when Ahab sinned again believing the False Prophets over
Micaiah.
But Velikovsky creates a whole convoluted theory that Ahab survived the battle of Ramoth-Gilead and lived another 9 years.
Mesha
of Moab's rebellion was right after Israel's defeat at Ramoth-Gilead,
Velikovsky sees the Moabite stone documenting this event as saying it
was in the Middle of Ahab's reign, not after he died. First off the
stone sounds like he's relating a Prophesy made by a Prophet of Chemosh,
who's Prophecy may have came true not not completely accurately. But
also if it was made immediately at the start of the rebellion he may not
have heard of Ahab's death yet.
Regardless of those arguments,
not all readings of the Mesha Stele even agree with the one Velikovsky
used to support his theory.
The Denyen of the Greek Islands
I
said I agreed about the Prstt being the Persian Empire and Sea Peoples
as Ionian Greeks. But his Identity of the "Peoples of the Islands" the
Denyen as Athens I think is silly. The Denyen are also in the Amarna
letters where they are in northern Syria, very northern, by the modern
Turkish border. Associated with Hammath. Their also identified with
Adana is Cilicia.
"And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion's whelp: he shall leap from Bashan." Deuteronomy 33:22
The
Tribe of Dan originally settled north of the Philistine Lands, around
the port city of Joppa/Jaffa modern Tel-Aviv. The books of Joshua and
Judges both record events when Danites left their allotted land traveled
north conquered a city and renamed it Dan.
"And the coast of the
children of Dan went out too little for them: therefore the children of
Dan went up to fight against Leshem, and took it, and smote it with the
edge of the sword, and possessed it, and dwelt therein, and called
Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their father." Joshua 19:47
The
Judges 18 account, where the City is Laish, is often assumed to be the
same event. There are however several differences between the two
accounts:
1. In the Book of Joshua the
children of Dan had received an inheritance in the south but it was
insufficient for them and so they went to fight against Leshem. In
Judges though the Danites were in the region of Zorah and Eshtaol (in
the south) they had yet not taken possession of their own.
2. In
Judges, at least at first, only six hundred went forth after receiving
the report of a reconnoitering mission: on the other hand, the Book of
Joshua may be understood to say that all (or nearly all) of Dan went to
fight.
3. In the Book of Joshua the city taken is called Leshem:
In Judges the city is called LAISH. Some Commentators have tried to
state that "Leshem" and "Laish" are different forms of the same word but
"leshem" in Hebrew is a type of precious stone (maybe amber) while
"laish" means a young male lion.
The Joshua account refers to the
Dan that is frequently used as an idiom of the Northern Border of the
Kingdom, where Jeroboam built one of his Idols, and which on the map of
modern Israel is in the Golan heights on the Lebanon border.
The
Judges event is clearly much further north. They encountered Sidonians,
but those Sidonians are also implied to be far from home. Laish is
also know as Luash and the Danites who migrated there became known as
Dananu.
The king of Sma'al in the valley north of ASI (Orontes
embouchemont) on the edge of LUASH (LIASH) called himself "KING of the
DANIM" i.e. of the Danes of Dan. The Danes (Dananu) also controlled the
neighbouring area of Cilicia and at one stage their capital was Adana by
Tarsis of Cilicia and their suzerainity reached as far north as
Karatepe. A bi-lingual inscription of theirs found at Karatepe employs a
Phoenician type of Hebrew and a version of Hittite. Branches of the
Hittites in Anatolia neighboured the Dananu of Cilicia. This northern
portion of Dan is referred to variously as Dananu, Danau, Denye, Denyen,
Danuna.
Above I've borrowed a great deal from Britam's "Dan and
the Serpent Way" study. I don't agree with all of Britam's premise
obviously, or any other form of British Israelism, but Dan does have a
unique history.
Secular scholars agree on connecting the Denyen
to the Tribe of Dan, you can read about it on Wikipedia's Denyen and Dan
pages, but the sequence is reversed. They believe the Denyen traveled
south and became incorporated into the Hebrew confederation. This supports their desire to claim that the various Tribes of
Israel didn't even really have a common origin. Traditional chronology
makes that argument easy for them but still doesn't make the Biblical
picture impossible. But revised chronology makes it indisputable which
Dan came first.
The connection Dan has to Greece, is Biblically alluded to in Ezekiel 27.
This Blog is where I shall discus my views on Revised Chronology. Form my perspective as a Bible Believing Six-Day Young Earth Creationist. I agree with most of the Basic pillars Immanuel Velikovsky laid out in Ages in Caos. But disagree with many details.
Nice work Jared. I enjoyed seeing that someone is taking this type of historic speculation seriously. Perhaps you have seen some of my stuff on the BritAm website also ( http://www.britam.org/salverda/salverdacontents.html ) but if not , I would like to refer you to my "The Hebrew Danites as the Greek Danaans" (at https://www.academia.edu/4112686/The_Hebrew_Danites_as_the_Greek_Danaans ) I think that you may find it of some interrest. Keep up the good work -John
ReplyDeleteThank you, I will check out those Links
DeleteI believe the Dan and Greece connection is more complicated then generally assumed however, because I believe there is also an Edomite element. Andromeda was a Danite of Joppa, but I believe the Egyptian king Belus was actually an Edomite Hycsos ruler.
DeleteI've created a new post expanding on the Danite aspect of this one, and will be doing the same for other subjects of this first post I made.
DeleteIn your Amazon article, I feel compelled to say I disagree with your perception that Miriam and her company of Women from Exodus 15:20-21are meant to be viewed negatively.
DeleteI mentioned you in the post I made today. And I"m thinking of commenting more on your interesting theories in the future.
Deletehttp://mithrandironchronology.blogspot.com/2017/06/amazons-and-tribe-of-dan.html
I've given my own thoughts on many theories of yours here.
Deletehttp://mithrandironchronology.blogspot.com/2017/07/my-thoughts-on-some-theories-of-john-r.html
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