“… the plot structure itself draws a comparison between
Tattenai and Haman, backing the view expressed in Rashi
that Tattenai was indeed an enemy of the Jews”.
Zvi Ron
Zvi Ron has proposed that the situation of Tattenai, the “governor of the province of Beyond the River” in Ezra 6, is paralleled in the drama of Haman in the Book of Esther:
There is an unusual reference to Tattenai in the Geonic era work Targum Rishon to the Book of Esther. …. When Zeresh, the wife of Haman, is introduced in Esther 5:10, Targum Rishon writes that Zeresh was “the daughter of Tattenai, governor of the province of Beyond the River.” This is an idea that does not appear anywhere else in Rabbinic literature, even in Targum Sheni to Esther which generally contains more aggadic material than Targum Rishon. ….
It is not immediately clear what is the point of connecting Zeresh to Tattenai. The book Magen David, a 17th commentary on the Targum Rishon, explains that Haman had multiple wives but Zeresh was singled out for mention because she came from an important family, the family of Tattenai. …. However, a close reading of the Tattenai narrative reveals why the Targum made a connection with Zeresh.
Taking the traditional approach that Tattenai was an adversary of the Jews who wanted to halt the construction of the Second Temple, the story of Tattenai can be summarized as follows:
1. Tattenai, a government official, tried to cause harm to the Jews.
2. He turned to the Persian king for support.
3. A forgotten incident is recalled (the permission given by Cyrus).
4. Instead of receiving this support, the exact opposite result is achieved (to assist the Jews with the building of the Second Temple).
In terms of the plot structure, this “Persian backfire” story bears similarity to the story of Haman, (1) a government official who wants to kill Mordecai and (2) enlists King Ahasuerus to write a decree against the Jews. When Ahasuerus cannot sleep he is (3) reminded of how Mordecai saved his life. Ultimately Haman’s plan fails and (4) the exact opposite result is achieved, Haman must honor Mordecai and he is ultimately hanged on the wooden beam he had intended to hang Mordecai from.
This basic plot structure is also seen in Daniel chapter 6. There (1) government officials try to get Daniel in trouble with the king (Daniel 6:6). They (2) trick Darius into writing a decree that outlaws prayer (Daniel 6: 14). Daniel is rescued from death in the lion’s [sic] den, and (4) the king orders the officials to be put to death in the lion’s den (Daniel 6:25). In the Daniel story there is no element of the “forgotten incident”, however there is an element of the king having a sleepless night (Daniel 6:19) as in Esther 6:1. Additionally, there is a reverse parallel in that Daniel is in trouble for bowing in prayer (Daniel 6:11) and Mordecai is in trouble for refusing to bow (Esther 3:2).
The Tattenai/Haman parallel is particularly strong as both narratives not only contain a “forgotten incident” element, they even use a similar term regarding it, the sefer zichronot (book of records, literally “book of memories”) in Esther 6:1 and the decree of Cyrus, called a dichrona (memorandum, an Aramaic term parallel to the Hebrew zichron) in Ezra 6:2. Additionally, the punishment Darius issues for interfering with the building of the Temple, I also issue an order that whoever alters this decree shall have a beam removed from his house, and he shall be impaled on it and his house confiscated (Ezra 6:11), recalls the punishment of Haman, So they impaled Haman on the beam (Esther 7:10) and Mordecai was put in charge of Haman’s property (Esther 8:2). Furthermore, as in the punishment stated by Darius, the beam that Haman was impaled on was from his house (Esther 7:9). Note that “impaling was a Persian practice…generally reserved for the most serious crimes, especially sedition,” … adding an additional irony to the Tattenai reversal. While initially Tattenai accused the Jews of possible rebellion, Darius responds that failure to support the construction of the Temple will in fact make him accountable for treason!
The Targum was sensitive to this parallel between Tattenai and Haman, and so further connected the narratives by making Zeresh the daughter of Tattenai. When we read, There Haman told his wife Zeresh and all his friends everything that had befallen him. His advisers and his wife Zeresh said to him: ‘If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish stock, you will not overcome him, you will fall before him to your ruin’ (Esther 6:13), the question arises, how was Zeresh so sure that Haman would not be able to succeed against a Jew? The answer provided by the Targum is that she knew this from her own experience, seeing her father fail against the Jews at the time of the rebuilding of the Temple. ….
Mackey’s comment: In my estimation, Haman had already been executed before Darius’s response to Tattenai.
Zvi Ron continues:
From this perspective, the plot structure itself draws a comparison between Tattenai and Haman, backing the view expressed in Rashi that Tattenai was indeed an enemy of the Jews.
CONCLUSION Despite the fact that in the Tattenai narrative “the officials give the impression of being about their regular business, reporting on possibly significant developments in the territory under their jurisdiction, and having no axe to grind in local disputes between Judeans and Samaritans” and that the language used “is not charged with any antagonism,”… as noted by Malbim, we have seen that the plot structure of the episode links Tattenai to Haman, an idea reflected in Targum Rishon, and leads to the understanding that Tattenai is indeed to be counted among the many adversaries of the Jews.
“Unfortunately, what one might call “primary” source material …
for the political history of the reign is almost entirely lacking”.
Ronald H. Sack
One could be put off quite early when attempting to figure out King Neriglissar after learning just how meagre are the primary sources associated with him. Ronald Sack explains this at the beginning of his Chapter One (in Neriglissar – King of Babylon, 1994, p. 1):
Before an attempt at writing the biography of Neriglissar can be made, it is essential that available source material be noted and discussed. Unfortunately, what one might call “primary” source material for the political history of the reign is almost entirely lacking. One is therefore forced to use the numerous secondary works which have survived the ages. These, as their contents show, are interesting not only in the varied amounts of information they contain, but also because of the striking similarities or differences among them. Included in this group are the writings of the classical authors, as well as material from the Middle Ages. Some of these contain items not found elsewhere; others merely repeat what earlier writers have to say. … it is worthwhile to attempt a reexamination. ….
I would have to agree at least with this last suggestion of Ronald Sack’s, that “it is worthwhile to attempt a reexamination”. For Sack’s overall account does little to inspire much confidence.
So a re-examination is what it will be here.
Looking through the various neo-Babylonian king-lists, from cuneiform sources to the so-called Middle Ages, one finds how poorly attested, for instance, is King Labaši-Marduk, he sometimes dropping out of the lists altogether.
Sack writes about the poorly attested kings:
The reigns of a number of the monarchs of the Neo-Babylonian period are copiously attested either through the “Babylonian Chronicle” or numerous building inscriptions. Neriglissar, Amēl-Marduk and Labaši-Marduk are clearly exceptions. To date, no chronicle detailing any military campaign Amēl-Marduk or Labaši-Marduk may have conducted has ever been published. ….
On p. 9 Sack will write, referring to the king-list of Alexander Polyhistor, whom he calls “a late source, born 105 BC”: “The list is interesting for two reasons. First Labaši-Marduk is omitted, for what reasons we do not know. Secondly, and most important, is the fact that the figures given in all cases are correct save one – the assignment of twelve years to Amēl-Marduk”.
Regarding Sack’s puzzlement above that “… Labaši-Marduk is omitted, for what reasons we do not know”, I can immediately offer a reason – the reason that I usually tend to give for such situations, alter ego: in other words, Labaši-Marduk ought to be also someone else. And I have, in my neo-Babylonian revisions, told who that someone else is, namely Amēl-Marduk (var. Evil-Merodach). See for example my article:
Sack continues (p. 9): “This is a common feature throughout the series of king-lists, how wildly the reign-lengths of the kings can differ from one list to the next”.
Earlier he, telling of a neo-Babylonian king-list discovered at Uruk, had written (p. 3): “This list is interesting particularly because of the inaccuracy of the lengths of the reigns and the fact that no figure is given for Nebuchednezzar”.
In my article above I have suggested that Nebuchednezzar’s known son, Amēl-Marduk (or Evil-Merodach) – {Sack, p. 1: “… a few vase fragments … confirming the fact that Amēl-Marduk was the son of Nebuchadnezzar”} – was also the same as Labaši-Marduk, and was Belshazzar (the latter name being omitted from virtually all of the king-lists).
That identification would answer Sack’s above, “for whatever reasons we do not know”, regarding the omission of Labaši-Marduk from Polyhistor’s list.
Amēl-Marduk, the son of Nebuchednezzar, was also Labaši-Marduk, was also Belshazzar.
Moreover, I have further argued (logically, I believe), that Belshazzar, also a known son of Nebuchednezzar, but this time known from the Bible (Baruch 1:11, 12), was the same as the historically well-known Belshazzar (thought not to have been a king), the son of Nabonidus – Nabonidus being Nebuchednezzar.
The king-lists are consistent insofar that they have Neriglissar succeed Amēl-Marduk.
In biblical terms, that must lead to an identification of Neriglissar as “Darius the Mede”, who did indeed succeed King Belshazzar (Daniel 5:30).
So, our attention must now turn to Neriglissar, as a potential candidate for Darius the Mede.
Ronald Sack finds Neriglissar to be a little more promising from the cuneiform sources than, at least, Amēl-Marduk/ Labaši-Marduk (pp. 1-2):
Fortunately, several cylinder inscriptions and a short chronicle survive from Neriglissar’s reign. While the language of the cylinders is quite formulaic, it nevertheless details building activity in Babylon and elsewhere during the king’s reign. In attending to needed repairs in Esagila and Ezida, as well as necessary work on his palaces and the walls around Babylon, he was fulfilling a traditional responsibility of Babylonian monarchs. ….
The lists of Megasthenes with its funny kings’ names, also discussed by Ronald Sack, I find most interesting because it supports both the biblical data and my own revision. Sack tells of it on pp. 4-5:
…. Nabuchodrosorus [Nebuchednezzar] … was succeeded by his son Evilmaruchus [Evil-Merodach], who was slain by his kinsman, Neriglisares [Neriglissar] … Labassoarascus [Labaši-Marduk] … he also has suffered death by violence … Nabannidochus [Nabonidus] king, being of no relation to the royal race. ….
Let us unpack this.
Nebuchednezzar was succeeded by his true son, Evil-Merodach (i.e., Belshazzar).
The latter was slain by Neriglissar.
Belshazzar was likewise slain (though not necessarily by Darius the Mede himself), and was succeeded by his kinsman (that is, Darius the Mede).
A comparison of Jeremiah with Daniel attests that Darius was the ‘grandson’ (no doubt though marriage) of Nebuchednezzar.
“Labassoarascus” [Labaši-Marduk] is just a repeat story of Evil-Merodach, slain.
Nabonidus was “of no relation to the royal race”, he – claiming to be “Son of a nobody” – was, as Nebuchednezzar, a ‘son’ of Sennacherib only in the sense that Darius the Mede was a ‘grandson’ of Nebuchednezzzar, through marriage.
Nebuchednezzar (= Esarhaddon) commenced a new dynasty – the Chaldean one.
In my historical reconstructions, Darius the Mede was also Cyrus, and was the “Ahasuerus” of the Book of Esther. According to Jewish tradition, the wife of this Ahasuerus, Vashti, was the daughter of King Belshazzar.
Darius likewise commenced a new dynasty – the Medo-Persian one. He was Chaldean presumably only though marriage, but was “by birth a Mede” (Daniel 9:1).
A footnote to the The Jerusalem Bible claims of this Darius that “he is unknown to history”.
Well hopefully not any more, if he was Neriglissar.
How well does Neriglissar stack up with the biblical Darius the Mede?
We can make a few comparisons despite the dearth of available evidences (historical and biblical) for both names.
Neriglissar, “kinsman”, is related to the Neo-Babylonians by marriage only.
Berossus has Neriglissar as the brother-in-law (more likely son-in-law) of Evil-Merodach (Sack, pp. 7-8).
Neriglissar, like Darius, came to the throne owing to a coup d’êtat in which Darius must have been involved. Berossus tells of it (p. 6):
… Evilmerodachus … governed public affairs in an illegal and improper manner [seems to fit with Daniel’s “King Belshazzar”]; and, by means of a plot laid against him by Neriglissoorus, his sister’s husband [more likely his daughter’s husband], he was slain. ….
What here happened to Evil-Merodach, Berossus then repeats for Labaši-Marduk (“Laborosoarchodus”), his alter ego according to my view: “… on account of the evil practices which [Labaši-Marduk] manifested, a plot was made against him by his friends, he was tortured to death”.
My revised historical sequence for the succession from Sennacherib to Neriglissar is as follows:
Nabopolassar = Assyrian Sennacherib (Nabopolassar probably being his name as rule of Babylon).
New dynasty
Nebuchednezzar = Nabonidus (no blood relation to the Assyrian kings)
Belshazzar = Evil-Merodach, Amēl-Marduk and Labaši-Marduk
(and biblical Belshazzar, the evil son of Nebuchadnezzar).
New dynasty
Darius the Mede = Neriglissar (also Cyrus and Ahasuerus of the Book of Esther)
Josephus (Ant. Bk X, 11, 2) gives Neriglissar (“Eglisaros”) a reign of an incredible “forty years”, which is far longer than given to that king in any other list.
Similarly, the Talmud assigns “a twenty-three year reign to Amēl-Marduk” (Sack, p. 11).
More credibly, Josephus calls Neriglissar “son” of Evil-Merodach.
That fits with Jeremiah’s statement (27:7) regarding “grandson” of Nebuchadnezzar (but through marriage, as I have suggested).
Belshazzar, by that name, is usually missing form the king-lists. The Midrash Rabbah, though, explains why this may be. “… perhaps because of the similarity in the names Bel-sharra-uṣur and Nergal-sharra-uṣur …”.
This similarity of names was in fact a reason previously preventing me from making any proper historical sense of Neriglissar, thinking that he was yet another alter ego of Belshazzar.
As it turns out, he was nothing like that!
The books of Baruch and Daniel give the true sequence for the Chaldeans (only two kings). Thus Sack (p. 11): “… the Book of Baruch … fails to mention Amēl-Marduk [sic], but instead declares Belshazzar to be the direct successor to Nebuchadnezzar (as does Daniel 5)”.
This is because, as we have found, Amēl-Marduk was Belshazzar.
Neriglissar in the Bible
We more than likely meet Neriglissar about mid-way through the reign of Nebuchednezzar, at the siege of Jerusalem, as “Nergal-sharezer”, thanks to Jeremiah 39:3: “… all the officers of the king of Babylon marched in and took up their quarters at the Middle Gate: Nergal-sharezer, prince of Sin-magir, the chief officer, Nebushazban, the high official, and all the other officers of the king of Babylon”.
Ronald Sack comments on this passage (p. 20):
Although this passage has received much attention … and questions are still being raised as to the identification of the persons mentioned here, there seems little doubt, as Bright has already pointed out … that Nergal-sharezer is to be identified with our Nergal-šarra-usur of the cuneiform tablets.
In his note 61 on the same page, Sack will explain the place name associated here with Nergal-sharezer, “Sin-magir… a district of which Nergalsharezer is known from a contemporary inscription to have been governor (read sar simmagir)”.
Neriglissar in historical documents
Neriglissar can be found significantly earlier than this during Nebuchednezzar’s reign, as Sack tells on p, 22: “The earliest known mention of Neriglissar occurs in a contract dated in the ninth year of Nebuchadnezzar …”.
By biblical estimates, he (as Darius the Mede) would at that stage (Year 9) have been approximately 30 years of age (as a round figure).
This leads Sack to conclude – {and perfectly in accord with Daniel 6:1, that Darius the Mede was already old when he took the throne: “Darius the Mede received the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two} – that: “Our present evidence suggests not only that he was well advanced in age when he became king, but that he was a member of a prominent family known for its business activities in northern Babylonia.
He was apparently wealthy (p. 24): “… Neriglissar … undoubtedly already possessed considerable wealth …. Probably coming from a prestigious banking family … he can be found buying property and loaning money in the reign of Amēl-Marduk”.
This might explain the accountant-like tendency to be found in his various biblical guises, ‘that the king may suffer no less’ being a recurring theme (e.g. Ezra 4:22; Esther; Daniel 6:3). The Greek description of a “Darius” as a “shopkeeper” (or “huckster”) might be entirely relevant here.
A possible hint of the plot against King Belshazzar (as Amēl-Marduk) might be there in Sack’s account (pp. 26-27) of a seeming overlap in the reigns of Amēl-Marduk and Neriglissar, having “to my knowledge, no parallel in the Chaldean period”.
… it should not really be surprising to find a Sippar document identifying Neriglissar as “king of Babylon” earlier than was formerly thought. It would be remembered that the Babylonian priest Berossus asserted in his Babyloniaca that Amēl-Marduk’s reign ended through assassination and that Neriglissar thus seized the throne through a coup d’etat …. Information contained in sources from southern Babylonia have suggested for years that Berossus was correct in asserting that Neriglissar was a usurper.
He set about re-ordering the kingdom as Darius the Mede had done immediately (Daniel 6:20). Sack (p.27): “Once safely on the throne, Neriglissar appears to have 1) removed temple administrators from their positions of authority in areas where support for his rule would be minimal at best, or 2) established ties with prominent personnel in other temples”.
Neriglissar is perfectly placed chronologically (revised) to have been the well-advanced in years Darius the Mede. He may indeed have come to the throne, like Darius, through a coup d’êtat. He was a high military official and wealthy banker from quite early in the reign of Nebuchednezzar, and related to the royal family through marriage.
it is now a small step, I believe, to connect this sage also to the alleged ‘first user of the word philosophy’, Pythagoras – thought, however, to have been born at Samos in c. 570 BC.
As in the first part of the name Tha-les, so here again in the case of the name Pyth-agoras, the Egyptian divine name “Ptah”
has, I think, been Grecised.
Also once again, as with Thales, we appear to have the problem of a lack of first-hand written evidence [W. Guthrie, “Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism”, Ency. of Phil., Vol. 7, (Collier Macmillan, London, 1972), p. 39]: “The obstacles to an appraisal of classical Pythagoreanism are formidable. There exists no Pythagorean literature before Plato, and it was said that little had been written, owing to a rule of secrecy”.
Consistently though, Pythagoras, like Thales, was much influenced by Egypt.
I have suggested that, in fact, the great ‘Pythagorean’ contribution to mathematics (numbers, geometry, triangles) may also have been bound up with Egypt and with pyramid measuring and other activities of the architects.
Now consider the pattern of the life of Pythagoras and his descendants in relation to Joseph and the family of Israel (the Hebrews).
Pythagoras, like Joseph,
left his home country and settled in a foreign land, founding a society with religious and political, as well as philosophical aims. Compare the Hebrews settling in the eastern Delta of Egypt (Genesis 46:33).
The society gained power there and considerably extended its influence. Compare this with the growth of Israel in Egypt, and its spreading all over the country (Exodus 1:9, 12). After Pythagoras’ death,
a serious persecution took place. Likewise, about 65 years after Joseph’s death, the “new king” of Exodus 1:8, became concerned about the amount of Hebrews in Egypt and resolved upon a cruel plan.
Moses was born into this very era – the pyramid-building 4th dynasty era – at the approximate time that the founder-pharaoh Khufu (Greek Cheops)/ Amenemes I had resolved to do something about the increase of Asiatics (including Hebrews) in Egypt. The Prophecies of Neferti, “All good things have passed away, the land being cast away through trouble by means of that food of the Asiatics who pervade the land” (www.touregypt.net/propheciesofneferti.htm). The pharaoh thus ordered for all the male Hebrew babies to be slain (Exodus 1:10, 15-16).
(d) The (Pythagorean) survivors of the persecution scattered. This may equate with the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 12).
“Both Tadmor and Cogan mention Ahiqar, the Aramean adviser who served in the court
of Esarhaddon, Sennacherib’s son. …. Machinist, in his article on Rabshakeh, writes of “Hayim Tadmor’s now celebrated view,” … and they all cite the Babylonian Talmud
tractate b. Sanh. 60a, which suggests that “Rabshakeh was an apostate Israelite”.”
Yigal Levin
Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh, who verbally taunted king Hezekiah’s chief officials and those Jews manning the walls of Jerusalem during Assyria’s invasion of Judah, was indeed the historical and biblical Ahiqar (Ahikar). And, at that particular point in time, Ahiqar was apparently also, as according to the Babylonian Talmud, “an apostate Israelite”:
For this Ahiqar was the nephew of a northern Israelite, the pious Tobit, who, unlike his Naphtalian brethren, had remained faithful to Yahwism.
Sennacherib may well have chosen Ahiqar for his western (Judah) campaign because of the fact that the latter, as an Israelite, spoke, not only Aramaïc, but also Yehudit, which was akin to Hebrew, the spoken language of the Jews in Jerusalem.
The high officials, led by Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who had now replaced Shebna as high priest (“over the Tabernacle”), also – unlike the mass of people – spoke Aramaïc, which Ahiqar, as an exile in Nineveh, obviously knew.
King Hezekiah’s officials almost certainly knew of the Rabshakeh and knew that he spoke a form of Hebrew.
Yigal Levin has discussed the various view about Rabshakeh in his useful article (2015):
Though it is not apparent from the Gospels that a War
was raging during the Infancy of Jesus Christ
(the Holy Family was safely hidden in Egypt),
I would expect that there was.
The first version,found in Antiquities Book XII, is basically recognisable from what we read about the Jewish Revolt against the Macedonian Seleucids in I-II Maccabees.
The second version -Roman era presumably – found early in Antiquities Book XVII, provides us with an account of the Revolt against King Herod, late in life, by the Jewish pair, Matthias and Judas.
Compare Mattathias and his son, Judas Maccabeus.
This continues over in to the time of Herod’s son, Archelaus, whom Saint Joseph feared on the Family’s return from Egypt (Matthew 2:19-21).
This is what Gamaliel was talking about, “Judas the Galilean at the time of the Census”.
The Census, the one that greets us at the beginning of Luke 2 (:1-3):
Judas the Galilean vitally links Maccabean era to Daniel 2’s “rock cut out of a mountain”
In conventional terms, about 170 years separate these incidents, Mattathias and Judas Maccabeus, on the one hand, and Matthias and Judas the Galilean, on the other.
In my scheme, they pertain to precisely the same events.
This is only some several decades before the estimated birth of Josephus (c. 37 AD).
How come, then, that he has it all so badly tangled up?
Though it is not apparent from the Gospels that a War was raging during the Infancy of Jesus Christ (the Holy Family was safely hidden in Egypt), I would expect that there was:
Religious war raging in Judah during the Infancy of Jesus
The third version,found later in Antiquities Book XVII.
Athronges, Josephus’s new name for Judas (without his realising it).
Again, it was the time of Archelaus, son of Herod.
….
7. But because Athronges, a person neither eminent by the dignity of his progenitors; nor for any great wealth he was possessed of; but one that had in all respects been a shepherd only [were he and his 4 brothers shepherd priests at the time of the Nativity?] , and was not known by any body: yet because he was a tall man [Maccabees likens Judas to “a giant”], and excelled others in the strength of his hands, he was so bold as to set up for King. This man thought it so sweet a thing to do more than ordinary injuries to others, that although he should be killed, he did not much care if he lost his life in so great a design. He had also four brethren,20 who were tall men themselves, and were believed to be superior to others in the strength of their hands; and thereby were encouraged to aim at great things, and thought that strength of theirs would support them in retaining the Kingdom. Each of these ruled over a band of men of their own. For those that got together to them were very numerous. They were every one of them also commanders. But when they came to fight, they were subordinate to him, and fought for him. While he put a diadem about his head, and assembled a council to debate about what things should be done, and all things were done according to his pleasure. And this man retained his power a great while: he was also called King; and had nothing to hinder him from doing what he pleased. He also, as well as his brethren, slew a great many both of the Romans [???], and of the King’s forces; and managed matters with the like hatred to each of them. The King’s forces they fell upon, because of the licentious conduct they had been allowed under Herod’s government: and they fell upon the Romans, because of the injuries they had so lately received from them. But in process of time they grew more cruel to all sorts of men. Nor could any one escape from one or other of these seditions. Since they slew some out of the hopes of gain; and others from a mere custom of slaying men. They once attacked a company of Romans at Emmaus; who were bringing corn and weapons to the army: and fell upon Arius, the centurion, who commanded the company, and shot forty of the best of his foot soldiers. But the rest of them were affrighted at their slaughter, and left their dead behind them, but saved themselves by the means of Gratus; who came with the King’s troops that were about him to their assistance. Now these four brethren continued the war a long while, by such sort of expeditions: and much grieved the Romans; but did their own nation also a great deal of mischief. Yet were they afterwards subdued. ….
It sure beats Gamaliel’s miserable account of Judas the Galilean at least (Acts 5:37).
The fourth version,also found in Antiquities Book XVII, seems to be simply a duplication of Judas the Galilean at the time of the Census.
Certain scholars, at least, identify the two as one (see next):
Leader of a popular revolt against the Romans at the time when the first census was taken in Judea, in which revolt he perished and his followers were dispersed (Acts v. 37); born at Gamala in Gaulonitis (Josephus, “Ant.” xviii. 1, § 1). In the year 6 or 7 C.E., when Quirinus came into Judea to take an account of the substance of the Jews, Judas, together with Zadok, a Pharisee, headed a large number of Zealots and offered strenuous resistance (ib. xviii. 1, § 6; xx. 5, § 2; idem, “B. J.” ii. 8, § 1). Judas proclaimed the Jewish state as a republic recognizing God alone as king and ruler and His laws as supreme. The revolt continued to spread, and in some places serious conflicts ensued. Even after Judas had perished, his spirit continued to animate his followers.
Two of his sons, Jacob and Simon, were crucified by Tiberius Alexander (“Ant.” xx. 5, § 2); another son, Menahem, became the leader of the Sicarii and for a time had much power; he was finally slain by the high-priestly party (“B. J.” ii. 17, §§ 8-9).
Grätz (“Gesch.” iii. 251) and Schürer (“Gesch.” i. 486) identify Judas the Galilean with Judas, son of Hezekiah the Zealot, who, according to Josephus (“Ant.” xvii. 10, § 5; “B. J.” ii. 4, § 1), led a revolt in the time of Quintilius Varus. He took possession of the arsenal of Sepphoris, armed his followers, who were in great numbers, and soon became the terror of the Romans.
When did the Romans come to Judah?
This present article has arisen from a discussion I have recently had with a colleague in which we were trying to determine when the Greek (Seleucid) hold over Judah ceased, and the Romans took over – presuming that this is what actually happened.
That I have trouble with the conventional view of the Romans for this period will be apparent to readers of my article:
To my suggestion that Josephus, a political animal, had a political agenda, my colleague replied (26/04/2024):
Everyone has biases and agendas. That much can be tolerated by the discerning reader. I mean whether he is reliable witness to basic historical events. For instance I could read a newspaper columnist with whom I vehemently disagree but he is going to be working from the same basic historical backdrop – that Anthony Albanese is the prime minister etc. So, if Josephus is a witnesses to 1st century events and he says the Romans destroyed the Temple – then biases and agendas aside – I’d say that’s how it went down. ….
This led me to summarise some of my reasons for my minimilisation of the Romans:
….
Sounds reasonable.
But when do the Romans come into the Judean picture?
….
Augustus writes a decree to the whole Roman world.
Except, the word Roman is not there.
The Romans in Maccabees are allies of the Jews, not invaders. They promise the world, but Judas, then Jonathan, then Simon, all die violently.
What happened to the Roman promise of intervention?
There are Roman centurions in the Bible.
Except, the word Roman is not there.
And a Greek word (hekatóntarkhos), not centurion (centurio), is used.
We know from history that there was a Jewish centurion in the pagan army. May have been others.
My tip is that the centurion (?) Jesus praised was Jewish. No Faith like this in Israel, a builder of a synagogue. Would a Roman centurion build a synagogue?
Pilate writes in Hebrew, Greek, Latin (at least Fr. Brian Harrison reckons that that is the proper order).
Why Greek, before Latin?
Both Pontius and Pilate can also be Greek words.
Caiaphas (from memory) warns that the Romans might come – the only solitary mention of them I have found (except for Maccabees) before Paul.
If they might come, then does that mean that they are not actually there?
Revelation does not name Greek or Roman invaders by those words.
Gog and Magog get a look in late.
In Ezekiel 38, 39, Gog and Magog refer to the Macedonian Seleucids and their array – and, specifically, to the showdown between Judas and Nicanor.
Hence why I have remained non-commital thus far.
(That is not to say that the Jewish Revolt ending in 70 AD was not against Rome. I don’t know). ….
Name “Athronges”
As I noted in my “Religious war …” article (above):
We can even connect the name, Athronges, thought to mean a “citron” (etrog), to the Maccabees, once it is appreciated that the wrongly-named Second Jewish Revolt was actually that of the Maccabees. See e.g. my article:
An academic exchange regarding Hadrian and the Bar Kochba revolt
In 132–135 [sic], the last Jewish leader, Simon bar Kokhba, attempted a final uprising in the hope of restoring Judea’s independence. On his coins, he minted the facade of the temple destroyed sixty years earlier [sic]. We also see a bouquet (lulab) and a citron (etrog), symbols of the traditional cult that Simon intended to restore. We can also read the slogan of the revolt, written in Hebrew: “For the freedom of Jerusalem.” ….
“Velikovsky called this Rib-Addi king of Gubla and Sumur (var. Sumura) …
which EA cities he had tried to equate with Ahab’s chief cities of,
respectively, Jezreel and Samaria; though they are usually identified
with the coastal cities of Byblos (Gebal) and Simyra”.
What Sumur was not
Sumur cannot realistically have been Samaria, as Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky had hopefully argued (Ages in Chaos, I, 1952). For, as I explained in my postgraduate thesis (2007, Volume One, pp. 83-87):
…. Now EA’s [El Amarna’s] Lab’ayu, whom I shall be identifying with Ahab of Israel (c. 874-853 BC, conventional dates), appropriately straddles both part of Amenhotep III’s reign and the early part of Akhnaton’s.
Velikovsky, for his part, had … looked to identify Ahab with Rib-Addi of Gubla, the most prolific Syro-Palestine correspondent to the EA pharaohs (over 50 letters in number).[1] And this was surely a big mistake. For, in order for him to ‘make’ Ahab, like Rib-Addi, a very old man at death, Velikovsky was prepared to fly in the face of the biblical data and completely re-cast the chronology of Ahab’s life. He had convinced himself that there existed a contradiction between the accounts of Ahab in Kings and Chronicles so that, as he claimed, Ahab did not die at the battle of Ramoth-gilead as is stated in 1 Kings 22 (cf. vv. 6, 29 & 37), but rather reigned on for a further 8-10 years. Thus, according to Velikovsky’s view, king Jehoram of Israel (c. 853-841 BC, conventional dates), never truly existed, but was a ghost.
From a biblical point of view, the fact that Rib-Addi had been able to report the death of Abdi-Ashirta (Velikovsky’s Ben-Hadad I) meant that Velikovsky was quite wrong in identifying Rib-Addi with king Ahab; since Ahab’s death preceded that of Ben-Hadad (cf. 1 Kings 22:40 & 2 Kings 8:15). But this was Velikovsky in his favourite rôle as “the arbiter of history”,according to Sieff,[2] forcing historical data to fit a pre-conceived idea. Velikovsky called this Rib-Addi king of Gubla and Sumur (var. Sumura),[3] which EA cities he had tried to equate with Ahab’s chief cities of, respectively, Jezreel and Samaria; though they are usually identified with the coastal cities of Byblos (Gebal) and Simyra. ….
Velikovsky greatly confused the issue of Ahab of Israel for those coming after him, since Rib-Addi was chronologically and geographically unsuitable for Ahab. Revisionists have since rightly rejected this part of Velikovsky’s EA reconstruction, with Sieff suggesting instead that Rib-Addi may have been Jehoram of Israel.[4] Liel favours this view from the perspective of her linguistic name studies. She has analysed the EA name, Rib-Addi, in the context of Israel’s Divided Monarchy … and has come to the same conclusion as had Sieff, assisted by James, but in her case on name basis alone:[5]
…. problematical to the Rib-Addi = Jehoram of Israel theory though are the geographical difficulties, as Liel now admits:
Certain questions remain regarding the identification of the Rib-Yauram [Rib-Addi] of the Amarna letters and the biblical Jehoram son of Omri.
The main one is geographical; i.e., can Sumur and Gubla be identified with Samaria and Jezreel? This question will be dealt with in a forthcoming paper to be entitled “The Hebrew-Phoenician-Aramean Kingdom of North Israel.”
… whether Jehoram could feasibly have been the aged Rib-Addi is another consideration. Whether or not Rib-Addi turns out to be Jehoram of Israel, a far better EA candidate for Ahab than Rib-Addi, in my opinion, and indeed a more obvious one – and I am quite surprised that no one has yet taken it up – is Lab’ayu, known to have been a king of the Shechem region, which is very close to Samaria (only 9 km SE distant); especially given my quote earlier (p. 54) from Cook that the geopolitical situation at this time in the “(north)[was akin to that of the] Israelites of a later [sic] time”. Lab’ayu is never actually identified in the EA letters as king of either Samaria or of Shechem. Nevertheless, Aharoni has designated Lab’ayu as “King of Shechem”in his description of the geo-political situation in Palestine during the EA period (Aharoni, of course, is a conventional scholar writing of a period he thinks must have been well pre-monarchical):[6]
In the hill country there were only a few political centres, and each of these ruled over a fairly extensive area. In all the hill country of Judah and Ephraim we hear only of Jerusalem and Shechem with possible allusions to Beth-Horon and Manahath, towns within the realm of Jerusalem’s king.
… Apparently the kings of Jerusalem and Shechem dominated, to all practical purposes, the entire central hill country at that time. The territory controlled by Labayu, King of Shechem, was especially large in contrast to the small Canaanite principalities round about. Only one letter refers to Shechem itself, and we get the impression that this is not simply a royal Canaanite city but rather an extensive kingdom with Shechem as its capital.
Against all objections already discussed, this description sounds very much to me like the distinct northern and southern realms during the split kingdom era! Note, too, how the more northerly region of Galilee is missing from this description. We might recall that Ben-Hadad I and/or Tab-rimmon had taken these towns from Israel’s king Baasha.
De Vaux considered Aharoni’s identification of Shechem as the capital of Lab’ayu’s kingdom as being by no means certain:[7]
Lab’ayu was not, however, given the title of king of Shechem and it is very doubtful whether he ever was. It would seem too that he did not live at Shechem; his authority was probably exercised from elsewhere by means of an agreement made with the inhabitants.
The latter took care of the internal administration of the city and recognised Lab’ayu’s authority as a kind of protectorate….
In the light of this, the conclusion of Rohl and Newgrosh is valid:[8] “In most scholarly works Labayu is referred to as the king or ruler of Shechem and this, we feel, has been misleading”.
Neither is Lab’ayu, as I already have noted, ever specifically mentioned in EA as a ruler of Samaria.
However, given the close proximity of Shechem to Samaria – and given the apparently “extensive” rule of Lab’ayu – then he stands, in a revised context, as the ideal identification for king Ahab of Israel. I am encouraged in this by the fact that Aharoni’s description of the kingdom over which Lab’ayu reigned appears to correspond very well with the realm of Ahab as far as we know it:[9]
Lab’ayu was a serious contender with the kings of Jerusalem and Gezer. EA 250 indicates that … he even dominated the entire Sharon, having conquered Gath-padalla (Jett in the central Sharon) and Gath-rimmon (apparently the biblical town of this name …). Even in the north Lab’ayu was not content to possess only the hill country; he tried to penetrate into the Jezreel Valley, laying siege to Megiddo (EA 244) and destroying Shunem and some other towns (EA 250).
[End of quotes]
Conclusion
The city of Sumur of the EA correspondence could not have been Samaria of Israel as Dr. Velikovsky had proposed, but was, as according to the standard interpretation, the port of Simyra.
What Sumur may also have been
That the port of Sumur/Simyra lies north of Byblos (my Babylon) and south of Ullaza (my Arzawa, tentatively) is apparent from what Dr. Mahmoud Elhosary has written (2009, p. 149):
…. In his thirtieth regnal year, Thutmose [III] attacked the Lebanon coast in earnest, mounting an amphibious invasion. He left Egypt in early June and arrived in Lebanon a week later. Although the Annals do not tell us where he landed, the most logical place was the port city of Simyra, located about thirty miles by sea from the friendly port of Byblos. Lying just south of Ullaza, Simyra was the closest port to the mouth of the Eleutheros Valley. ….
Gabriel, R.A., “Thutmose III: The Military Biography of Egypt’s Greatest Warrior King”, Potomac Books, Inc. (2009)
Arzawa, with its satellites Mira, Kuwaliya, Hapalla, and the “Land of the River Seha …”.
The latter might just possibly refer to the Chaldean Sealand, re-located from Sumer to NW Syria by Royce (Richard) Erickson in his groundbreaking article (2020):
Sumur (Biblical Hebrew: צְמָרִי [collective noun denoting the city inhabitants]; Egyptian: Smr; Akkadian: Sumuru; Assyrian: Simirra) was a Phoenician city in what is now Syria. It was a major trade center. The city has also been referred to in English publications as Simyra,[1]Ṣimirra, Ṣumra,[2]Sumura,[3]Ṣimura,[4]Zemar,[5] and Zimyra.[6]
could then be Mira, an abbreviation of Ṣimirra.
Thought to be situated far away in the Arzawan Lands of Anatolia,
Mira (Simyra) and the Seha River Land (Sealand?) can probably take their place, instead, as approximate neighbours of Ullaza (Arzawa) and Byblos (Babylon).
[2] ‘Velikovsky and His Heroes’, p. 115. Velikovsky is referred to in the same article (on the very next page) as the ‘conquistador of history’,p. 116.
[3] Velikovsky had noted that: “… not only personal but even geographical names were spelled in the letters in different ways: … Biridia (in one instance he wrote his name Biridri) announced to the pharaoh that he was defending Makida; another time he wrote that he was defending Magiidda. There are many similar examples in the letters”. Urusalim also appears in the letters as Buruzilim, whilst Sumur is also given as Sumura.Ages in Chaos, p. 300.
“While many Egyptologists have been reluctant to allow Ramesses III
any military action in western Asia north of Sinai, archaeologists were identifying a phase at the transition from the Bronze to Iron Age in Palestine as a period
of “Egyptian empire”—largely under the early 20th Dynasty”.
Peter James
That Ramses II ‘the Great’, and Ramses so-called III, need to be identified as being just the one mighty pharaoh, I have argued in articles such as:
only serves to reinforce me in my view that, to minimalise Ramses III, as one merely aspiring to – but by no means succeeding in – emulate (ing) Ramses II, does a great disservice with regard to the stupendous achievements of Ramses III.
Beginning on p. 65 (through to p. 73), Peter James will write about the minimalising assessments of the career of Ramses III:
…. “MINIMALIST” VIEWS OF RAMESSES III’S CLAIMS
Returning to trends in attitudes towards Ramesses III’s campaigns, in 1906 Breasted was prepared to see both land and sea battles with the “Sea Peoples” as having taken place near the coast south of Arvad (northern Phoenicia). …. British Egyptologist Henry Hall was far more cautious, placing the land and sea battles with the Sea Peoples close to the frontier of Egypt itself; he did allow, however, that Ramesses III later marched to Amurru to restore Egyptian authority there, although not as far as the Euphrates. ….
In Hall’s understanding the place names from the Euphrates region in Ramesses III’s toponym lists (such as Carchemish) were “due probably to a very bad habit begun in his reign, that of copying the names of cities captured in the wars of Thothmes III…”
Mackey’s comment: Ramses III was copying no previous pharaoh.
His records are likely genuine accounts – allowing for some degree of pharaonic embellishment – of his own achievements.
Attitudes against the reality of Ramesses III’s claimed campaigns continued to harden in the mid-to-late 20th century. By then it was becoming the received wisdom that Ramesses III did not campaign as far as northern Phoenicia. This view was symptomatic of a more general one regarding the originality of his war records, which casually dismissed them often in toto as copies from the records of the “great” Ramesses. Of the Medinet Habu war records Faulkner wrote that “the inscriptions contain but a halfpenny-worth of historical fact to an intolerable deal of adulation of the pharaoh …”
Regarding the Nubian battle scenes, the magisterial Alan Gardiner felt that they “seem likely to be mere convention borrowed from earlier representations.” …. Likewise Faulkner: “…the scenes of a Nubian war at Medinet Habu are surely only conventional with no historical reality behind them.” ….
Gardiner dismissed a Syrian campaign entirely. …. Faulkner was only slightly more generous: “…the scenes in question are anachronisms copied from a building of Ramesses II. Yet there may be a substratum of historical fact beneath them…” ….
Mackey’s comment: If Ramses III were II, as I am claiming, then there was involved no “copying” whatsoever.
Surprisingly, after his generally scathing remarks, Faulkner allowed that Ramesses III “may have attempted to follow up his success [defeating the “Peoples of the Sea”] by “pushing on into Syria to drive the enemy farther away from Egypt…”
Mackey’s comment: Now it’s a two bob each way bet.
George Hughes stressed “the fact that Ramses III patterned his mortuary temple after that of Ramses II, but on a smaller scale.” …. Nims listed the many comparisons he observed between the two buildings, from the general arrangement to specific details of iconography and text:
The evidence of the copying of the Ramesseum reliefs by the scribes who planned the reliefs in Medinet Habu shows that a large number of the ritual scenes in the latter temple had their origin in the scenes in the former and occupied the same relative positions in both temples. ….
Mackey’s comment: Same pharaoh, probably same architects and same scribes.
Most of the similarities concern cult and religious scenes per se, though with some differences with respect to the placement of military scenes:
Ramses III used the rear face of the first pylon of Medinet Habu for accounts of his military exploits, just as Ramses II used the equivalent space at the Ramesseum for his. The long account of Year 8 of Ramses III was carved on the front face of the north tower of the second pylon at Medinet Habu; the parallel wall at the Ramesseum seems to have been occupied by the famous battle poem of Ramses II. The rear face of this pylon at the Ramesseum, on the other hand, shows battle reliefs below scenes of the Min Feast, as does the lower register of the east wall of the first hypostyle hall south of the axial doorway, while in Medinet Habu the corresponding walls have religious scenes. ….
Mackey’s comment: Same pharaoh, probably same architects and same scribes.
Building on the observations of Nims, Lesko took the extreme position that all of Ramesses III’s war records at his mortuary temple of Medinet Habu and elsewhere, were copied from the work of predecessors—with the exception of his second Libyan campaign, dated to Year 11. …. In Lesko’s view, even the famous records of the “Sea Peoples” battles were borrowed from the nearby (and now-destroyed) mortuary temple of Merenptah.
A major factor in the dismissal of Ramesses III’s northern campaigns has been the assumption that the Medinet Habu reliefs show his troops storming two Hittite towns (see above). Indeed, the inhabitants of the two towns look Hittite in appearance. One is labelled “Tunip,” while the name of the second has been frequently read as “Arzawa.” As the location of the Hittite vassal kingdom of Arzawa in western Anatolia (on the Aegean seaboard) is certain … the idea that Ramesses III would have been able to campaign this far, Sesostris-like, strikes as absurd.
Mackey’s comment: The location of Arzawa if far from “certain”.
I have grappled with it in my recent article:
More uncertain ancient geography: locations Tarḫuntašša and Arzawa
“Arzawa … a poorly-recorded state with uncertain borders …”.
Peter James continues:
Gardiner flatly stated that:
All these pictures are clearly anachronisms and must have been copied from originals of the reign of Ramessēs II: there is ample evidence that the designers of Medinet Habu borrowed greatly from the neighbouring Ramesseum. Confirmation is given in the papyrus [Harris I] cited above; this has no mention of a Syrian campaign, still less of one against the Hittites.
All that is said is that Ramessēs III “destroyed the Seirites in the tribes of the Shōsu”; the Shōsu have already been mentioned as the Beduins of the desert bordering the south of Palestine, and ‘the mountain of Se‘īr’ named on an obelisk of Ramessēs II is the Edomite mountain referred to in several passages of the Old Testament. It looks as though the defeat of these relatively unimportant tent-dwellers was the utmost which Ramessēs III could achieve after his struggle with the Mediterranean hordes….
With these words, a nadir was reached in the assessment of Ramesses III’s military activities. It still prevailed forty years later when Kenneth Kitchen wrote:
There is no evidence that he invaded Palestine in Year 12 (a rhetorical text of that date itself proves nothing). The Medinet Habu Syrian war-reliefs are most likely merely copies from those of Ramesses II, as they include entities no longer extant for Ramesses III to battle against. Ramesses III attacked not Israel, but Edom in south Transjordan, as the factual descriptions in Papyrus Harris I make clear. ….
By the “entities” which Kitchen described as “no longer extant for Ramesses III to battle against,” he meant various Anatolian states such as Hatti and Arzawa which were allegedly swept away by the “Sea Peoples” invasion of Ramesses III’s Year 8. …. Otherwise it is clear that in 1991 Kitchen, like Gardiner, was arguing that Ramesses III did not campaign any further than the Sinai/Negev area—as no campaigns further north are mentioned in the “factual descriptions” from Papyrus Harris. More recently Strobel went even beyond Gardiner, Kitchen, Lesko and others, writing what can only be described as a tirade against Ramesses III. For reasons of space only a few quotes follow:
Ramses III started his triumphal report on the walls of the temple in Medinet Habu, which was finished in his year 12, with his “Nubian War.” However, this war never happened. The same is true for the “Asiatic or Syrian War”, the last of the reported military deeds. Ramses’ ideological invention of these wars should bring his deeds on the same level as the triumphs of Ramses II and Merenptah, especially Merenptah’s Asiatic war. The texts and reliefs of Ramses III are no “war journal” or realistic picture of his military campaigns, but a triumphal self-representation on a highly ideological degree. The texts are first of all rhetorical and formulaic; the events are presented and described in a fixed ideological scheme and language…Ramses III was a “plagiarizer and self-aggrandizer of the first order.” He ordered direct copies from the records and illustrations of the Ramesseum and without doubt, from the today destroyed funerary temple of Merenptah in his direct neighbourhood. He even took a quite important amount of blocks, recuts and not recuts, by quarrying other temples, especially those of his predecessors. ….
Were we to take all the negative opinions together, Ramesses III’s military efforts would have been confined to repelling Libyan invaders in his year 11 and a minor raid against “bedouin” in the Sinai area.
Such a picture seems unrealistic, to say the least. Ramesses III’s records talk of tribute from northern lands, the supply of his temples by goods and tribute from foreign lands (notably Djahi and Kharu), and the revenues drawn from temples maintained in the empire, including the construction of a new one in “Canaan.” …. Ramesses III ruled Egypt for 31 years in relative security and prosperity, with tribute drawn from Levantine domains. One wonders how this feat was achieved, in economic terms, if the Egyptian army was so idle, only fighting defensive wars and never active beyond the frontiers—with the exception of an allegedly trivial foray against the Shasu of Edom. Such a picture goes totally against the grain of what we know of New Kingdom dominion and economics. It has also long run counter to the archaeological evidence from the Levant.
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
In the days of Sayce (see above) the Amarna and Boghazköy archives were the “smoking guns” proving the reality of the campaigns of Thutmose III and Ramesses II. Was there an equivalent for Ramesses III? No, but what Ramesses III lacked in terms of new literary documents was amply recompensed in terms of archaeological finds—from small finds such as numerous scarabs … a statue fragment from Byblos … the “pen-case” of an of an officer at Megiddo … to the plethora of discoveries at Beth-Shean, beginning in 1923 with a seated life-size statue outside the “northern temple” to inscriptions from its doorways and jambs, and the “pen-case” of another local official. …. Most of these finds had been made by the mid-20th century, such as the Megiddo pencase in 1937. Taken together they should have had an impact on views about the reality of his Levantine expeditions further north than the Sinai region (where inscriptions are known from the mining centre of Timna, etc.).
So how did Egyptology react to such finds?
An interesting dichotomy arose. …. While many Egyptologists have been reluctant to allow Ramesses III any military action in western Asia north of Sinai, archaeologists were identifying a phase at the transition from the Bronze to Iron Age in Palestine as a period of “Egyptian empire”—largely under the early 20th Dynasty. Evidence for this comes most clearly from southern sites like Tell esh Shari‘a, Tell el Far‘ah (south), Gaza and Deir el-Balah and, to the north, Megiddo and Beth-Shean in the Jezreel Valley. ….At the latter, pottery and other evidence suggest an increased Egyptian presence during the early 20th Dynasty. …. It is clear that his successor Ramesses IV maintained a presence at Beth-Shean … 51 though it seems that he was the last pharaoh to hold sway so far north. ….
With respect to the reality of Ramesses III’s campaigns, the arch-minimalist Lesko noted: “Archaeological evidence should help to resolve these problems.”53 But he restricted his comments here to an alleged destruction of Beth Shean by Ramesses III (for which there is not a shred of evidence), mentioning but failing to appreciate the significance of an inscription of his Chief Steward from that site, i.e. the power of Ramesses III reached as far as the Jezreel Valley. The idea that Ramesses III’s campaigning in Palestine was limited to Edom overlooks the archaeological evidence. Other mid-to-late 20th century Egyptologists, such as Wilson, appreciated more fully the importance of the archaeological finds:
Ramses III still held his Asiatic empire in Palestine. His statue has been found at Beth Shan and there is record of him at Megiddo. He built a temple for Amon in Palestine, and the gods owned nine towns in that country, as his duepaying properties. The Egyptian frontier was in Djahi, somewhere along the coast of southern Phoenicia or northern Palestine. ….
Wilson allowed Ramesses III’s empire a fairly generous reach, but the implication is that he merely “held” it as an inheritance from his 19th dynasty predecessors (see below) without any active campaigning. Likewise, Kitchen states that “the Egyptians under Ramesses III maintained their overlordship over both the Canaanites and the newcomers…” ….
Weinstein was more positive. Stressing the scarcity of late 19th dynasty remains from Palestine … coincident with “Egypt’s domestic problems,” he clearly attributed a more active policy to Ramesses III than one of inheritance: “Ramesses III seems to have done his best to restore a measure of control in Palestine.” …. Likewise Redford: “… Ramesses III had been able, by dint of military activity, to reassert his authority over much of Palestine and perhaps parts of Syria as well…” …. So also Morkot:
Ramesses III certainly did emulate Ramesses II—but in no superficial way. Archaeology is now showing that Ramesses III did, in fact, manage to renew Egyptian control over parts of western Asia….
These writers appreciated the obvious: the “smoking” gun for Ramesses III is provided by the archaeological and inscriptional remains from both southern Palestine (e.g. Lachish) and the Jezreel Valley (notably Beth Shean and Megiddo).
With “Shishak” properly identified by Dr. I. Velikovsky … with Thutmose III,
the mighty pharaoh of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty … then pharaoh Shoshenq I
must needs be lifted right out of the C10th BC and located some centuries later.
Conventional dates for Smendes, considered to have been the first ruler of Egypt’s Twenty-First Dynasty, are c. 1069-1043 BC.
Conventional dates for Shoshenq I, considered to have been the first ruler of Egypt’s Twenty-Second Dynasty, are c. 945-924 BC.
In terms of biblical chronology, pharaoh Smendes would probably have been a younger contemporary of Samuel; whilst pharaoh Shoshenq I has famously been identified (e.g. by Jean François Champollion) as the biblical “Shishak king of Egypt” at the time of King Rehoboam (I Kings 4:25-26).
However, I have – along with other revisionists – rejected Monsieur Champollion’s view of Shoshenq I as “Shishak”:
The Third Intermediate Period usually refers to the time in Ancient Egypt from the death of Pharaoh Ramesses XI (reign 1107–1078/77 BC) during the Twentieth Dynasty to the foundation of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty by Psamtik I in 664 BC, following the expulsion of the Nubian rulers of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty. ….
Smendes, apart from being considered as the founder of the Twenty-First Dynasty, is also thought to have been the first ruler of TIP.
A possible solution to early TIP would be to identify Smendes with Shoshenq I of supposedly a century later.
That there was a degree of similarity between Smendes and Shoshenq I is apparent from this quote from N. Grimal (A History of Ancient Egypt, Blackwell 1994, p. 332): “Shoshenq I immediately sought to prove that his claim to the throne went back to the preceding dynasty, and did so by adopting a set of titles based on those of Smendes I”.
Similarity can – but does not always – mean identity.
However, it is at least worth considering that Smendes and Shoshenq I were one and the same, with the possibility of aligning dynasty 21 with 22 to overcome at least some of the dynastic crushing of TIP.
Shoshenq I considered a ‘new Smendes’
“… Shoshenq was, so to speak, ‘another Smendes’ … a ‘new Smendes’.
Kenneth Kitchen
As I noted above: “Similarity can – but does not always – mean identity”.
And, just because someone is described as ‘a new’ someone else, or ‘a second’ someone else (e.g. ‘a new king David’; ‘another Solomon’, ‘a second Judith’) does not necessarily mean that the ‘second’ version is the same person as the original.
Hitler, for instance, is considered to have been a new Haman (of the Book of Esther).
But Hitler was not Haman, who was, though – like Hitler – an historical character.
(Volume One, p. 335), with reference to Kitchen’s text, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, 1100-650BC, pp. 287-288):
[Shsohenq I’s] very titulary exemplifies his qualities and policies. By taking the prenomen Hedjkheperre Setepenre, that of Smendes I, founder of the previous dynasty, Shoshenq proclaimed at one stroke both his continuity with the past – i.e. that he was, so to speak, ‘another Smendes’ – and a new beginning. Like Smendes, he now opened a new era. Nor is the concept of a ‘new Smendes’ limited to Shoshenq’s prenomen. He also adopted Horus, Nebty, and Golden Horus names reminiscent of those of Smendes I. Just as the latter had been Horus ‘Strong Bull, beloved of Re’ plus epithets (whose arm Amun strengthened to exalt Truth), so now Shoshenq I was Horus ‘Strong Bull, beloved of Re’ plus epithets (whom he (= Re) caused to appear as King to unite the Two Lands).
[End of quote]
Whilst similarity does not necessarily mean identity, there are reasons to think that, in this case, it might.
For one, the obviously significant pharaoh Smendes is, yet, so poorly attested, is crying out for an alter ego.
And, in the context of the revision at least, a crunching of Smendes with Shoshenq I would provide far more room for chronological manoeuvring.
More room is needed.
Smendes so poorly attested
“… most of what we know of Smendes predates his rise to the throne”.
“… we can only guess at Smendes’ origins”.
“… there is a great deal of confusion concerning the origin of Smendes”.
Jimmy Dunn
Statements like the above from Jimmy Dunn (Tour Egypt) would suggest that pharaoh Smendes, said to have reigned for as many as 26 years, may be sorely in need of an alter ego – with Shoshenq I being my suggestion for another face of Smendes.
Smendes (Smedes), who we believe founded the 21st Dynasty, ending the New Kingdom at the beginning of the Third Intermediate Period, is a very difficult individual with almost intractable origins and affiliations. His reign, which Manetho assigns 26 years, produced only a tiny handful of monuments and we have never discovered either his tomb or his mummy (though many believe his tomb to be NRT-I at Tanis, this structure offers up no clues concerning Smendes).
Smendes is a Greek rendering of this king’s name. His birth name and epithet were Nes-ba-neb-djed (mery-amun), meaning “He of the Ram, Lord of Mendes, Beloved of Amun”. His throne name was Hedj-kheper-re Setep-en-re, meaning “Bright is the Manifestation of Re, Chosen of Re”.
In fact, most of what we know of Smendes predates his rise to the throne. From the Report of Wenamun, dating to Year 5 of the “Renaissance Era” during the last decade of the reign of Ramesses XI, we learn much of what we know of this future king. While on the way to Lebanon to obtain wood for the renewal of the divine barque of Amun-Re, Wenamun stopped at Tanis, which he describes as “the place where Smendes and Tentamun are”. Smendes is specifically described as being the one to whom Wenamun gave his letters of credence from Herihor, the High-Priest of Amun and a powerful general in the south. Wenamun was then sent in a ship by Smendes to Syria. Smendes, along with Herihor and others, was cited as having contributed money to this expedition.
Smendes, together with Tentamun, are therefore shown to be of great importance in Egypt’s Delta, equals at least of the High-Priest of Amun in the south. Consider the fact that Ramesses XI at this time presumably lived at Piramesses, only about 20 kilometers to the southwest of Tanis, and yet Wenamun came to Smendes for assistance rather than to the king. In fact, Herihor assumed some royal titles even while Ramesses XI was still alive, and the implication would seem to be that Smendes had a similar standing in the north.
Nevertheless, we can only guess at Smendes’ origins. It has been suggested that he was a brother of Nodjmet, the wife of Herihor, but it has also been suggested that Nodjmet could have been a sister of Ramesses XI. However, Tentamun, who was presumably Smendes’ wife, may have been a member of the royal family. She could have been a daughter of another woman named Tentamun, who may have been the wife of Ramesses XI (or possibly another Ramesside king). The older Tentamun was certainly the mother of Henttawy, who later became the wife of the High-Priest of Amun, Pinedjem I, who also acquired kingly status in the south. As a royal son-in-law, Smendes’ status is more easily understood, though perhaps not his total eclipse of the king.
Obviously there is a great deal of confusion concerning the origin of Smendes. Nevertheless, it is very probable that the families of Smendes and Herihor, or at least their descendants, were linked.
Whatever his original status, after the death of Ramesses XI, Smendes became a king of Egypt, and is recorded as such in most reference material. However, only two sources specifically name him as pharaoh, consisting of a stela in a quarry at Dibabia near Gebelein (Jebelein), and a small depiction in the temple of Montu at Karnak. Interestingly, while there are no known unambiguously dated documents from his reign, the contemporary High-Priests of Amun used year numbers without a king’s name, and it is generally believed that, at least through year 25, these refer to Smendes’ reign.
In fact, Smendes probably never ruled over a united Egypt as such, a condition which probably also existed at the end of the reign of Ramesses XI. During much of what we refer to as the 21st Dynasty, there was also a dynasty of High-Priests of Amun at Thebes who effectively ruled Upper Egypt, while the kings at Tanis ruled the north. However, there appears to have been a rather delicate balance of powers, and perhaps even a formal arrangement for this division of Egypt. The Priests at Thebes seem to have held sway over a region which stretched from the north of el-Hiba (south of the entrance to the Fayoum) to the southern frontier of Egypt, and their aspirations became apparent around year 16 of Smendes’ reign, when Pinedjem I apparently began to take on full pharaonic titles, yet at all times he continued to defer to Smendes as at least a senior king. ….
May Psusennes I and II be the actual same person?
“On the Dakhleh Stela of the Twenty-second Dynasty reference is made to
the 19th year of ‘Pharaoh Psusennes’. …. As Gardiner observes, one cannot determine from this statement whether Psusennes I or II is intended”.
Beatrice L. Goff
If my suspicion in this article that Smendes of Egypt’s Twenty-First Dynasty was the same pharaoh as Shoshenq I of the Twenty-Second (Libyan) Dynasty, then this is going to assist in the necessary curtailing of the difficult Third Intermediate Period (TIP), so-called, of Egyptian history.
It will the open the door for further shrinkage, enabling, e.g., for the Psusennes I at the time of Smendes to have been the same as the Psusennses II at the time of Shoshenq I – as some have already suspected.
Conventionally, the Twenty-First Dynasty is set out something like this:
some have been suggesting an identification of Psusennes I and II:
While some authors, including New Chronology followers claim that Psusennes I may actually be identical with Psusennes II, this is impossible because Psusennes II is clearly distinguished from Psusennes I by Manetho and is given an independent reign of 15 years in the author’s Epitome. Moreover, Psusenness II’s royal name has been found associated with his successor, Shoshenq I in a graffito from tomb TT18, and in an ostracon from Umm el-Qa’ab. This shows that Shoshenq I was Psusennes II’s successor. In contrast, Psusennes I died almost 40-45 years before Shoshenq I’s appearance as Chief of the Ma, let alone King of Egypt.
[End of quote]
“Psusennes I died almost 40-45 years before Shoshenq I …” according to the conventional calculations.
But that would no longer apply if Smendes were Shoshenq I, and Psusennes I and II were also the same person.
And this brings in the possibility, now, that Dr. I. Velikovsky
was almost right in identifying Hattusilis with Nebuchednezzar.
But I think that, instead, Hattusilis was Sennacherib.
Responding to a Brazilian researcher concerning a series of letters of Sennacherib that are generally thought to constitute his correspondence, as Crown Prince, with the Assyrian king, Sargon II, I concluded that Sennacherib (who actually is my Sargon II) must instead have been writing, as King of Assyria, to a contemporary foreign brother-king of equal power with whom he shared a treaty:
which enabled me to establish, for Sargon II/Sennacherib of Assyria, a “contemporary foreign brother-king of equal power with whom he shared a treaty”, namely pharaoh Ramses II ‘the Great’.
He, the great pharaoh, would be, I believe, the only contemporary of Sennacherib (Sargon II) to whom the Assyrian king would deign to have shown such deference as to write (Letter # 029):
[To] the king, my lord: [your servant] Sin-ahhe-riba [Sennacherib]. Good health to the king, my lord! [Assyri]a is well,[the temp]les are well, all [the king’s forts] are well. The king, my lord, can be glad indeed ….
in such a way as could suggest a treaty had been established between the mighty pair.
Now, with the mention of Ramses II and a treaty with another Great King, one must think only of the famous treaty made between Ramses II and Hattusilis so-called III.
And this brings in the possibility, now, that Dr. I. Velikovsky was almost right in identifying Hattusilis with Nebuchednezzar.
But I think that, instead, Hattusilis was Sennacherib.
Obviously there is a lot that must be worked out to solidify this identification.
But there appears to be a parallel scenario between (a) Hattusilis, his formidable wife, (b) Pudu-hepa and (c) Tudhaliya so-called IV, on the one hand, and – {in my revision, according to which Sennacherib was succeeded by his (non-biological) son, Esarhaddon, a Chaldean, who is my Nebuchednezzar} – (a) Sennacherib, his formidable wife, (b) Naqī’a (Zakūtu) and (c) Esarhaddon (Nebuchednezzar).
I need to note here that I have multi-identified each (a-c) of this second set. Thus:
Sargon II/Sennacherib is, all at once, Tukulti-ninurta; Shamsi-Adad [not I];
Esarhaddon is, all at once, Ashur-bel-kala; Ashurnasirpal; Ashurbanipal; Nebuchednezzar [I and II]; Nabonidus; Artaxerxes of Nehemiah; Cambyses’;
Naqia/Zakutu is, all at once, Semiramis (of Tukulti-ninurta’s era); Sammu-ramat; Adad-Guppi.
But how can an Assyrian king, or a Chaldean king, become confused as a Hittite?
Well, perhaps we may consider a few things here. For example:
In this article I referenced Brock Heathcotte as follows:
Brock Heathcotte has written on this in his article “Tugdamme the Hittite” (January 28, 2017):
The theory espoused here is that Mursili II and Tugdamme were the same person.
This does not mean that his subjects, euphemistically called the “Hittite” people in modern times were ethnic Cimmerians. They almost certainly were a people of many ethnicities including prominently Luwian, based on language. The cold hard fact that has been distorted by decades of talking about the Hittites is that there is no such people as the Hittites. The tablet people we spoke of never called themselves Hittites, and nobody else called them Hittites either at the time. This is actually not controversial. It is just obscured by convention.
Academics could argue all day and night about the ethnic composition of the people who lived in Anatolia, and which of them were the rulers we know as the Hittite kings. The argument is not susceptible to resolution, especially not in the current mistaken historical context the Hittites are placed. The rulers called themselves the Great Kings of Hatti. They could be any ethnicity. We should think of “Hittite” as the same sort of location-based moniker for a people as “American.” It doesn’t make sense to say there is an American ethnicity, and it doesn’t make sense to say there is a “Hittite” ethnicity. Americans come in many different ethnicities, as did the Hittites. ….
[End of quote]
Moreover, some time before I wrote any of this, I had already penned this article about Ashurnasirpal, who is my Esarhaddon (Nebuchednezzar), a Chaldean:
Hittite elements in art and warfare of Ashurnasirpal
These Assyro-Chaldean kings, who conquered the lands of the Hittites, could easily have assumed titles akin to King of the Hittites.
Tudhaliya’s accession like that of Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon, Tudhaliya, had no real prospect of succeeding to the throne.
The ancient term for someone in that position, not of the royal line, was “son of nobody”. And I found this characteristic in Esarhaddon’s alter egos, having written:
…. Another common key-word (buzz word), or phrase, for various of these king-names would be ‘son of a nobody’, pertaining to a prince who was not expecting to be elevated to kingship.
Thus I previously introduced Ashurbanipal-as-Nebuchednezzar/Nabonidus with the statement: “Nabonidus is not singular either in not expecting to become king. Ashurbanipal had felt the same”. ….
And we read in the following Abstract that that was also the former status of Tudhaliya:
In his early years, the prince Tudhaliya could have had little thought that he would one day become king. But he was installed by Hattusili ‘in kingship’, that is, Tudhaliya probably now assumed the role of crown prince. This chapter examines the career path which Hattusili had mapped out for Tudhaliya in preparation for his becoming king of the Hittites, Puduhepa’s effort to arrange her daughter’s marriage to Tudhaliya, problems and potential crises inherited by Tudhaliya from Muwattalli as Hittite ruler, political developments in western Anatolia during Tudhaliya’s reign, the impact of establishment of a pro-Hittite regime in Milawata on Ahhiyawan enterprise in western Anatolia, political problems that arose from the marriage alliance contracted between the royal families of Ugarit and Amurru, Tudhaliya’s war with Assyria, possible coup instigated by Kurunta to wrest the throne from his cousin Tudhaliya, Tudhaliya’s conquest of Alasiya, and the achievements of Tudhaliya IV as ruler of the Hittite kingdom.
The whole thing seems to have been arranged by the formidable Queen, as was the case again with Esarhaddon and his mother Naqī’a/Zakūtu:
“[Esarhaddon’s] energetic and designing mother, Zakutu (Naqia), who came from Syria or Judah [sic?], used all her influence on his behalf to override the national party of Assyria”.
I would expect now to begin finding many parallels between Esarhaddon/ Nebuchednezzar, in his various guises (alter egos), and the so-called Hittite emperor, Tudhaliya.
“Next Abimelek went to Thebez and besieged it and captured it.Inside the city, however, was a strong tower, to which all the men and women—all the people of the city—had fled. They had locked themselves in and climbed up on the tower roof.Abimelek went to the tower and attacked it. But as he approached the entrance to the tower to set it on fire,a woman dropped an upper millstone on his head and cracked his skull”.
Judges 9:50-53
Account of Abimelech
Gideon’s illegitimate son, Abimelech (Abimelek), in killing the seventy sons of Gideon as his potential rivals to the rulership (see text below), was setting a precedent that the bloody Jehu of Israel would later follow, when he arranged for king Ahab’s seventy sons to be beheaded (2 Kings 10:1-11).
Judges 9:1-57
Abimelek son of Jerub-Baal went to his mother’s brothers in Shechem and said to them and to all his mother’s clan, “Ask all the citizens of Shechem, ‘Which is better for you: to have all seventy of Jerub-Baal’s sons rule over you, or just one man?’ Remember, I am your flesh and blood’.”
When the brothers repeated all this to the citizens of Shechem, they were inclined to follow Abimelek, for they said, ‘He is related to us’. They gave him seventy shekels of silver from the temple of Baal-Berith, and Abimelek used it to hire reckless scoundrels, who became his followers. He went to his father’s home in Ophrah and on one stone murdered his seventy brothers, the sons of Jerub-Baal. But Jotham, the youngest son of Jerub-Baal, escaped by hiding. Then all the citizens of Shechem and Beth Millo gathered beside the great tree at the pillar in Shechem to crown Abimelek king.
When Jotham was told about this, he climbed up on the top of Mount Gerizim and shouted to them, “Listen to me, citizens of Shechem, so that God may listen to you. One day the trees went out to anoint a king for themselves. They said to the olive tree, ‘Be our king’. But the olive tree answered, ‘Should I give up my oil, by which both gods and humans are honored, to hold sway over the trees?’
“Next, the trees said to the fig tree, ‘Come and be our king.’
“But the fig tree replied, ‘Should I give up my fruit, so good and sweet, to hold sway over the trees?’
“Then the trees said to the vine, ‘Come and be our king.’
“But the vine answered, ‘Should I give up my wine, which cheers both gods and humans, to hold sway over the trees?’
“Finally all the trees said to the thornbush, ‘Come and be our king.’
“The thornbush said to the trees, ‘If you really want to anoint me king over you, come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, then let fire come out of the thornbush and consume the cedars of Lebanon!’
“Have you acted honorably and in good faith by making Abimelek king? Have you been fair to Jerub-Baal and his family? Have you treated him as he deserves? Remember that my father fought for you and risked his life to rescue you from the hand of Midian. But today you have revolted against my father’s family. You have murdered his seventy sons on a single stone and have made Abimelek, the son of his female slave, king over the citizens of Shechem because he is related to you. So have you acted honorably and in good faith toward Jerub-Baal and his family today? If you have, may Abimelek be your joy, and may you be his, too! But if you have not, let fire come out from Abimelek and consume you, the citizens of Shechem and Beth Millo, and let fire come out from you, the citizens of Shechem and Beth Millo, and consume Abimelek!”
Then Jotham fled, escaping to Beer, and he lived there because he was afraid of his brother Abimelek.
After Abimelek had governed Israel three years, God stirred up animosity between Abimelek and the citizens of Shechem so that they acted treacherously against Abimelek. God did this in order that the crime against Jerub-Baal’s seventy sons, the shedding of their blood, might be avenged on their brother Abimelek and on the citizens of Shechem, who had helped him murder his brothers. In opposition to him these citizens of Shechem set men on the hilltops to ambush and rob everyone who passed by, and this was reported to Abimelek.
Now Gaal son of Ebed moved with his clan into Shechem, and its citizens put their confidence in him. After they had gone out into the fields and gathered the grapes and trodden them, they held a festival in the temple of their god. While they were eating and drinking, they cursed Abimelek. Then Gaal son of Ebed said, ‘Who is Abimelek, and why should we Shechemites be subject to him? Isn’t he Jerub-Baal’s son, and isn’t Zebul his deputy? Serve the family of Hamor, Shechem’s father! Why should we serve Abimelek? If only this people were under my command! Then I would get rid of him. I would say to Abimelek, ‘Call out your whole army!’”
When Zebul the governor of the city heard what Gaal son of Ebed said, he was very angry. Under cover he sent messengers to Abimelek, saying, ‘Gaal son of Ebed and his clan have come to Shechem and are stirring up the city against you. Now then, during the night you and your men should come and lie in wait in the fields. In the morning at sunrise, advance against the city. When Gaal and his men come out against you, seize the opportunity to attack them’.
So Abimelek and all his troops set out by night and took up concealed positions near Shechem in four companies. Now Gaal son of Ebed had gone out and was standing at the entrance of the city gate just as Abimelek and his troops came out from their hiding place.
When Gaal saw them, he said to Zebul, ‘Look, people are coming down from the tops of the mountains!’
Zebul replied, ‘You mistake the shadows of the mountains for men’.
But Gaal spoke up again: ‘Look, people are coming down from the central hill, and a company is coming from the direction of the diviners’ tree’.
Then Zebul said to him, “Where is your big talk now, you who said, ‘Who is Abimelek that we should be subject to him?’ Aren’t these the men you ridiculed? Go out and fight them!”
So Gaal led out the citizens of Shechem and fought Abimelek. Abimelek chased him all the way to the entrance of the gate, and many were killed as they fled. Then Abimelek stayed in Arumah, and Zebul drove Gaal and his clan out of Shechem.
The next day the people of Shechem went out to the fields, and this was reported to Abimelek. So he took his men, divided them into three companies and set an ambush in the fields. When he saw the people coming out of the city, he rose to attack them. Abimelek and the companies with him rushed forward to a position at the entrance of the city gate. Then two companies attacked those in the fields and struck them down. All that day Abimelek pressed his attack against the city until he had captured it and killed its people. Then he destroyed the city and scattered salt over it.
On hearing this, the citizens in the tower of Shechem went into the stronghold of the temple of El-Berith. When Abimelek heard that they had assembled there, he and all his men went up Mount Zalmon. He took an ax and cut off some branches, which he lifted to his shoulders. He ordered the men with him, ‘Quick! Do what you have seen me do!’ So all the men cut branches and followed Abimelek.
They piled them against the stronghold and set it on fire with the people still inside. So all the people in the tower of Shechem, about a thousand men and women, also died.
Next Abimelek went to Thebez and besieged it and captured it. Inside the city, however, was a strong tower, to which all the men and women—all the people of the city—had fled.
They had locked themselves in and climbed up on the tower roof. Abimelek went to the tower and attacked it. But as he approached the entrance to the tower to set it on fire, a woman dropped an upper millstone on his head and cracked his skull.
Hurriedly he called to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword and kill me, so that they can’t say, ‘A woman killed him.’” So his servant ran him through, and he died. When the Israelites saw that Abimelek was dead, they went home.
Thus God repaid the wickedness that Abimelek had done to his father by murdering his seventy brothers. God also made the people of Shechem pay for all their wickedness. The curse of Jotham son of Jerub-Baal came on them.
Afterthe death of Gideon his son Abimelech asserted authority in the land and ruled from Shechem, reigning for 3 years until his death.
“MB IIC at Shechem was a major destruction,
so almost certainly it was the city of Abimelech”.
Dr. John Osgood
SHECHEM OF ABIMELECH
Back in 1980’s, I, then following a pattern of biblical archaeology different from the one that I would embrace today, had raised with Dr. John Osgood this query about the city of Shechem in its relation to the Joshuan Conquest:
“Techlets”, EN Tech. J., vol. 3, 1988, pp. 125-126:
…. I think too that Shechem might be a problem in your scheme of things. From the Bible it would seem that Shechem was a small settlement at the time of Abraham, but a city at the time of Jacob. It seems to me that according to your scheme Shechem would be the same size in Jacob’s time as in Abraham’s.
Correct me if I am wrong. Also Prof. Stiebing, who has criticised at various times the schemes of allrevisionists (see Biblical Archaeological Review,July/August 1985, pp. 58-69), raises the problem of the absence of LBA remains at Samaria as regards theEBA Conquest Reconstruction.
Looking back now on Dr. Osgood’s reply to this, his view on Shechem, at least, makes perfect sense to me. He seems to have arrived at a proper overview of the archaeology of Shechem, from Abraham to Jeroboam I (and beyond).
Here, again, is what Dr. Osgood wrote about it:
Shechem: This is no problem to the revised chronology presented here, since the passage concerning Abraham and Shechem, viz. Genesis 12:6, does not indicate that a city of any consequence was then present there.
On the other hand, Jacob’s contact makes it clear that there was a significant city present later (Genesis 33 and 34), but only one which was able to be overwhelmed by a small party of Jacob’s sons who took it by surprise.
I would date any evidence of civilisation at these times to the late Chalcolithic in Abraham’s case, and to EB I in Jacob’s case, the latter being the most significant.
The Bible is silent about Shechem until the Israelite conquest, after which it is apparent that it developed a significant population until the destruction of the city in the days of Abimelech. If the scriptural silence is significant, then no evidence of occupation would be present after EB I until MB I and no significant building would occur until the MB IIC.
Shechem was rebuilt by Jeroboam I, and continued thereafter until the Assyrian captivity.
Moreover, Shechem was almost certainly the Bethel of Jeroboam, during the divided kingdom. So I would expect heavy activity during the majority of LB and all of Iron I.
This is precisely the findings at Shechem, with the exception that the earliest periods have not had sufficient area excavated to give precise details about the Chalcolithic and EB I. No buildings have yet been brought to light from these periods, but these periods are clearly represented at Shechem.
MB IIC at Shechem was a major destruction, so almost certainly it was the city of Abimelech. The population’s allegiance to Hamor and Shechem could easily be explained by a return of descendants of the Shechem captives taken by Jacob’s son, now returned after the Exodus nostalgically to Shechem, rather than by a continuation of the population through intervening periods (see Judges 9:28, Genesis 34).
For Jeroboam’s city and after, the numerous LB and Iron I strata are a sufficient testimony (see Biblical Archaeology, XX, XXVI and XXXII). ….
[End of quote]
The city of Shechem, which has already figured prominently in this book, will become of most vital significance when, in the era of king Hezekiah of Judah (c. C8th BC, conventional dating), I proceed to discuss the opposing kings, Hezekiah and Sennacherib, and Israel’s famous defeat of the 185,000-strong Assyrian army.
A combination of Dr. Osgood’s identification of Shechem with the northern Bethel, and Charles C. Torrey’s early identification of Shechem as the strategic town of “Bethulia”, which was Judith’s city, has enabled me to bring a full biblico-historical perspective to both the Book of Judith and the Assyrian incident.
[Jan] Simons thinks that the reference in the Vulgate to the Assyrians coming
at this stage to “the Idumæans into the land of Gabaa” (Judith 3:14) should more appropriately be rendered “the Judæans … Gabaa”. Gabaa would then correspond to the Geba of the Septuagint in the Esdraelon (Jezreel) plain.
Let us follow the march of the Assyrian commander-in chief through the eyes of Charles C. Torrey, in his article “The Site of Bethulia” (JSTOR, Vol. 20, 1899), beginning on p. 161:
When the army of Holofernes reached the Great Plain of Jezreel, in its march southward, it halted there for a month (iii. 9 f.) at the entrance to the hill country of the Jews. According to iii. 10, “Holofernes pitched between Geba and Scythopolis.” This statement is not without its difficulties. We should perhaps have expected the name Genin, where the road from the Great Plain enters the hills, instead of Geba. The latter name is very well attested, however, having the support of most Greek manuscripts and of all the versions. The only place of this name known to us, in this region, is the village Geba (Gěba‘) … a few miles north of Samaria, directly in the line of march taken by Holophernes [Holofernes] and his army, at the point where the road to Shechem branches. It is situated just above a broad and fertile valley where there is a fine large spring of water. There would seem to be every reason, therefore, for regarding this as the Geba of Judith iii. 10; as is done, for example, by Conder in the Survey of Western Palestine, Memoirs, ii, p. 156, and by G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, p. 356. There is nothing in the sequel of the story to disagree with this conclusion. Accordingto the narrator, the vast ‘Assyrian’ army, at the time of this ominous halt, extended all the way from Scythopolis through the Great Plain to Genin, and along the broad caravan track … southward as far as Geba.
Torrey will proceed to make excellent sense of the geography of this impressive (but ill-fated) Assyrian campaign.
Jan Simons (The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament, E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1959) will later do a reasonable job of accounting for the earlier part of the Assyrian campaign, from its leaving from the city of Nineveh until its arrival at the plain of Esdraelon – the phase of the campaign that Torrey will dismiss as “mere literary adornment” (on p. 160):
With regard to a part of these details, especially those having to do with countries or places outside of Palestine, it can be said at once that they are mere literary adornment, and are not to be taken seriously. Such for example are the particulars regarding Nebuchadnezzar’s … journey westward ….
I quoted Simons, for instance, in Volume Two, pp. 49-51 of my university thesis:
A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
Commentators have not found it easy to unravel geographically, in its various stages, the [Book of Judith] narrative of the Assyrian army’s march westwards (2:19-3:9). A difficulty is that the account of its route, from Nineveh to its eventual arrival in northern Israel, varies from version to version. …. Nevertheless, Simons has made quite a good attempt to unravel [Book of Judith’s] geography here. He begins with the Assyrian army’s departure, from Nineveh: ….
a) v. 21: after mentioning NINEVE [Nineveh] as Holofernes’ starting-point this verse deals with the first stage of the expedition, i.e. a “three days march” which brings the army to the border of the enemy country, viz. to “the plain of Bectileth”, which was apparently the site of a base-camp close to the general area of military operations (similar to the camp on the plain (of) Esdrelon [Esdraelon] … before the final stage of these operations: iii 10);
b) v. 22 relates the opening proper of the military operations, viz. by saying that the army leaves the base-camp on the plain and moves up the mountain-land εἰςεἰς τὴν ὀρεινήν
ὀρεινήν
c) V. 27: (from this mountain-land) the army “descends into the plain of DAMASCUS”, the territory first to suffer;
d) V. 28: the chastisement of the land of DAMASCUS causes a panic in the “coastland” (παραλία) from where several cities mentioned by name send ambassadors to offer submission (iii 1 ff.).
As regards the cartographic interpretation of this part of the expedition preceding that attack on Judaea … itself we submit the following remarks:
Independently of every hypothesis or reconstruction of Holofernes’ expedition it appears that the transmitted text does not mention Cilicia … (v. 21) as its objective or partial goal.
Moreover, “Upper Cilicia” as an indication of the location of “the plain Bectileth” (“Bectileth near the mountain which lies to the left – north – of Upper Cilicia” or Cilicia above the Taurus Mountains) is completely out of the way which starts at NINEVE and is directed towards Syria-Palestine.
We suspect, therefore, thatτῆς ἄνω Κιλικίαςhas been inserted (perhaps in replacement of some another original reading) in order to adjust the account of the campaign to the terms of I 7 and I 12.
Secondly, “the plain of Bectileth” mentioned as the terminus of the first stage of Holofernes’ advance seems to us simply the Syrian beqã‘ … between Libanos and Antilibanos … mentioned in I 7.
Holofernes’ base-camp was not in the centre of the plain (“ἀπὸ Βεκτιλὲθ” must have developed from or be the remaining part of a statement to this effect) but “near the mountains on the left (north) side”, in other words: at the foot of the Antilibanos … (cp. Its modern name “gebel esh-sherqi”: …).
It is this mountain-ridge (ὀρεινή) which the army has to climb (v.22) before “sweeping down (κατέβη) on the plain of DAMASCUS” (V. 27).
In the third place the text names (v. 28) the coastal towns, where the fate of DAMASCUS raises a panic. Most of these names create no problems:
SIDON = saidã
TYRUS = sûr
JEMNAA = Jamnia ….
AZOTUS = isdûd ….
ASCALON = ‘asqalãn ….
Some mss. add: GAZA = ghazzeh.
Though Simons does not specify here to which particular ‘mss.’ he is referring, Moore tells us that “LXXs, OL, and Syr add “and Gaza”.” …. Simons continues:
The remaining two are obscure. OCINA seems to have been somewhere between TYRUS and JEMNAA and is for this reason usually identified with ‘ACCO = ‘akkã …. which neither because of the name itself nor on the ground of its location … can be reasonably considered to render Hebrew “DOR” … is probably but a duplicate of TYRUS (cp. Hebr: SOR). It is possible that the distinction between the island-city and the settlement on the mainland (Palaetyrus) accounts for the duplication.
[End of quotes]
Further down p. 51, and continuing on to p. 52, I wrote – again making reference to Simons:
The next crucial stopping point of the Assyrian army after its raids on the region of Damascus will effectively be its last: “Then [Holofernes] came toward Esdraelon, near Dothan, facing the great ridge of Judea; he camped between Geba and Scythopolis, and remained for a whole month in order to collect all the supplies for his army” (v. 9).
Simons thinks that the reference in the Vulgate to the Assyrians coming at this stage to “the Idumæans into the land of Gabaa” (3:14) should more appropriately be rendered “the Judæans … Gabaa”. …. Gabaa would then correspond to the Geba of the Septuagint in the Esdraelon (Jezreel) plain. (It has of course no connection at all with the ‘Geba’ discussed on p. 6 of the previous chapter, which was just to the north of Jerusalem). Judah’s reabsorbing of this northern region (Esdraelon) into its kingdom would have greatly annoyed Sennacherib, who had previously spoken of “the wide province of Judah” (rapshu nagû (matu) Ya-û-di). …. Naturally the Israelites would have been anticipating (from what Joel called the “northern army”) a first assault in the north. And that this was so is clear from the fact that the leaders in Jerusalem had ordered the people to seize the mountain defiles in Samaria as well as those in Judah ([Book of Judith] 4:1-2; 4-5):
When the Israelites living in Judea heard how Holofernes, general-in-chief of Nebuchadnezzar king of the Assyrians, had treated the various nations, first plundering their temples and then destroying them, they were thoroughly alarmed at his approach and trembled for Jerusalem and the Temple of the Lord their God. … They therefore alerted the whole of Samaria, Kona, Beth-horon, Belmain, Jericho, Choba, Aesora and the Salem valley.
They occupied the summits of the highest mountains and fortified the villages on them; they laid in supplies for the coming war, as the fields had just been harvested.
Here we encounter that “Salem valley” region that I believe was, rather than Jerusalem, the location of the great Melchizedek.
I continue now with Charles Torrey’s article, where he has just noted the crucial strategic importance of Bethulia (p. 162):
This city could ‘hold the pass‘ through which it was necessary that Holofernes, having once chosen this southward route, should lead his army in order to invade Judea and attack Jerusalem. This is plainly stated in iv. 7: …. “And Joachim wrote, charging them to hold the pass of the hill-country; for through it was the entrance into Judea, and it would be easy to stop them as they came up, because the approach was narrow”.When the people of Betylūa comply with the request of the high priest and the elders of Jerusalem, and hold the pass. (iv. 8), they do so simply by remaining in their own city, prepared to resist the approach of Holofernes. So long as they continue stubborn, and refuse to surrender or to let the enemy pass, so long their purpose is accomplished, and Jerusalem and the sanctuary are safe. This is made as plain as possible in all the latter part of the book; see especially viii, 21 ff., where Judith is indignantly opposing the counsel of the chief men of the city to surrender: “For if we be taken, all Judea will be taken … and our sanctuary will be spoiled; and of our blood will he require its profanation. And the slaughter of our brethren, and the captivity of the land, and the desolation of our inheritance, will he turn upon our heads among the nations wheresoever we shall be in bondage. And we shall be an offence and a reproach in the eyes of those who have taken us captive …. Let us show an example to our brethren, because their lives hang upon us, and upon us rest the sanctuary and the house and the altar.”
That is, the city which the writer of this story had in mind lay directly in the path of Holofernes, at the head of the most important pass in the region, through which he must necessarily lead his army. There is no escape from this conclusion.
After making this emphatic statement, Torrey will refer to two other sites “which have been most frequently thought of as possible sites of the city, Sanur and Mithiliyeh” (see below).
The latter of these, Mithiliyeh, or Mithilia, was my own choice for Judith’s Bethulia – following Claude Reignier Conder – when writing my thesis, but it was based more on a romantic view of things rather than on any solid military strategy – though the name fit had seemed to be quite solid. Thus I wrote (pp. 70-71):
Conder identified this Misilya – he calls it Mithilia (or Meselieh) – as Bethulia itself:[1]
… Meselieh … A small village, with a detached portion to the north, and placed on a slope, with a hill to the south, and surrounded by good olive-groves, with an open valley called Wâdy el Melek (“the King’s Valley’) on the north. The water-supply is from wells, some of which have an ancient appearance. They are mainly supplied with rain-water.
In 1876 I proposed to identify the village of Meselieh, or Mithilia, south of Jenin, with the Bethulia of the Book of Judith, supposing the substitution of M for B, of which there are occasional instances in Syrian nomenclature. The indications of the site given in the Apocrypha are tolerably distinct. Bethulia stood on a hill, but not apparently on the top, which is mentioned separately (Judith vi. 12).
There were springs or wells beneath the town (verse 11), and the houses were above these (verse 13).
The city stood in the hill-country not far from the plain (verse 11), and apparently near Dothan (Judith iv. 6). The army of Holofernes was visible when encamped near Dothan (Judith vii. 3, 4), by the spring in the valley near Bethulia (verses 3-7). ‘The site usually supposed to represent Bethulia – namely, the strong village of Sanûr – does not fulfil these various requisites; but the topography of the Book of Judith, as a whole, is so consistent and easily understood, that it seems that Bethulia was an actual site’.
Visiting Mithilia on our way to Shechem … we found a small ruinous village on the slope of the hill. Beneath it are ancient wells, and above it a rounded hill-top, commanding a tolerably extensive view. The north-east part of the great plain, Gilboa, Tabor, and Nazareth, are clearly seen. West of these are neighbouring hillsides Jenin and Wâdy Bel’ameh (the Belmaim, probably of the narrative); but further west Carmel appears behind the ridge of Sheikh Iskander, and part of the plain of ‘Arrabeh, close to Dothan, is seen. A broad corn-vale, called “The King’s Valley”, extends north-west from Meselieh toward Dothan, a distance of only 3 miles.
There is a low shed formed by rising ground between two hills, separating this valley from the Dothain [Dothan] plain; and at the latter site is the spring beside which, probably, the Assyrian army is supposed by the old Jewish novelist to have encamped. In imagination one might see the stately Judith walking through the down-trodden corn-fields and shady olive-groves, while on the rugged hillside above the men of the city “looked after her until she was gone down the mountain, and till she had passed the valley, and could see her no more”. (Judith x 10) – C. R. C., ‘Quarterly Statement’, July, 1881.
[End of quotes]
But Torrey tells us why neither Mithilia, nor Sanur, would even have figured in the march of Holofernes (p. 163):
This absolutely excludes the two places which have been most frequently thought of as possible sites of the city, Sanur and Mithiliyeh, both midway between Geba and Genin. Sanur, though a natural fortress, is perched on a hill west of the road, and “guards no pass whatever” (Robinson, Biblical Researches, iii. 152 f.). As for Mithiliyeh, first suggested by Conder in 1876 (see Survey of Western Palestine, ‘Memoirs’, ii. 156 f.), it is even less entitled to consideration, for it lies nearly two miles east of the caravan track; guarding no pass, and of little or no strategic importance. Evidently, the attitude, hostile or friendly, of this remote village would be a matter of indifference to a great invading army on its way to attack Jerusalem. Its inhabitants, while simply defending themselves at home, certainly could not have held the fate of Judea in their hands; nor could it ever have occurred to the writer of such a story as this to represent them as doing so.
He the proceeds to contrast the inappropriateness of these sites with the significant Shechem:
Again, having once accepted the plain statement of the writer that the army during its halt extended from Scythopolis to Geba, there is the obvious objection to each and all of the places in this region which have been suggested as possible sites of Betylūa (see those recorded in G. A. Smith, /. c, p. 356, note 2; Buhl, Geographie des alien Paldstina, p. 201, note), that they are all north of Geba.
From the sequel of the story we should be led to look for the pass occupied by Betylūa at some place on the main road not yet reached by the army. It is plainly not the representation of the writer that a part of the host of Holofernes had already passed it.
And finally, Betylūa is unquestionably represented as a large and important city. This fact is especially perplexing, in view of the total absence of any other mention of it. Outside of this one story the name is entirely unknown. On the other hand, nothing can be more certain than that the author of the book of Judith had an actual city in mind when he wrote. Modern scholars are generally agreed in this conclusion, that whatever may be said of the historical character of the narrative, the description of Betylūa and the surrounding country is not a fiction.
Shechem, he says, “meets exactly the essential requirements of the story” – it and no other site in the entire area (p. 164):
… no other city between Jezreel and Jerusalem can compete with [Shechem] for a moment in this respect. When the advance guard of Holofernes’ army halted in the broad valley below Geba, it was within four hours’ march of the most important pass in all Palestine, namely that between Ebal and Gerizim. Moreover, this was the one pass through which the army would now be compelled to proceed, after it had once turned westward at Bethshan and chosen the route southward through Genin. We see now why the narrator makes Holofernes encamp “between Scythopolis and Geba.” It is a good illustration of the skill which he displays in telling this story. Having advanced so far as this, it was too late for the ‘Assyrians’ to choose another road. As for the city Shechem, which was planted squarely in the middle of the narrow valley at the summit of the pass … its attitude toward the invaders would be a matter of no small importance.
As to why Shechem might be called “Bethulia” in the Book of Judith, the explanation may be in the following statement by Dr. John Osgood: “W. Ross in Palestine Exploration Quarterly (1941), p. 22–27 reasoned, I believe correctly, that the Bethel of Jeroboam must be Shechem, since it alone fills the requirements”. https://creation.com/techlets
Both the unidentified woman of Judges 9, and Judith, will slay a male foe, attacking the enemy’s head, in the environs of Shechem.
God also made the people of Shechem pay for all their wickedness.
The curse of Jotham son of Jerub-Baal came on them.
Judges 9:56-57
‘Woe to the nations that rise up against my people! The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment; he will send fire and worms into their flesh; they shall weep in pain forever’.
Judith 16:17
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; she will crush your head, and you will strike her heel.
Genesis 3:15
[1]Survey of Western Palestine, vol. II, pp. 156-157. Emphasis added.
Parallel Lives, Also BC Afterglows In AD 