Achior and Demaratus. Part Two: Achilles and Piyamaradu

Achior of the Book of Judith, like Judith herself, gets picked up in various mythologies and pseudo-histories. I already noted this in Part One of this series: https://www.academia.edu/38293852/Achior_and_Demaratus where I wrote:

“Another important character in the Book of Judith, Achior, has similarly been reproduced. I gave an example of this in my university thesis:

A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judahand its Background

AMAIC_Final_Thesis_2009.pdf

(Volume Two, p. 60, n. 1286):

“This fiery confrontation between the commander-in-chief, his subordinates and Achior would be, I suggest – following on from my earlier comments about Greco-Persian appropriations – where Homer got his idea for the main theme of The Iliad: namely theargument at the siege of Troy between Agamemnon, supreme commander of the Greeks, and the renowned Achilles ( Achior?).…”.” 

And again:

“Deborah Levine Gera has drawn a comparison between the Achior of the Book of Judith and the Spartan king Demaratus in Herodotus ( Judith.Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature,2013), which is rather interesting in light of the statement in I Maccabees 12:20-21 that the Spartans were, like the Jews, descendants of Abraham”.

Achior himself was, of course, a real person. He was the famous sage Ahikar, nephew of Tobit, and Naphtalian Israelite.

Now, Konstantinos Kopanias has come up with another ancient historical figure, Piyamaradu, to whom the mythological Achilles may well be compared (“Deconstructing Achilles. The Stories about Piyamaradu and the Making of a Homeric Hero”). He concludes his well-argued article as follows:

Conclusions

Achilles and possibly also Piyamaradu were sons and grandsons of kings.Teir father (and respectively grandfather) lost their kingdom and foundrefuge on an island near the Anatolian coast. Interestingly, Aiakos wasactive in west Anatolia and Achilles was connected with Ephesos. Achil-les and Piyamaradu never became kings. Tey both found refuge in anAegean island, where they left their family, in order to attack cities inWest Anatolia. Tey both were fearsome military leaders, conducted raidsin Anatolia under the command of the Achaean king, shared their bootywith him, but had a great degree of autonomy from him. Tey both foundrefuge in Miletos: Piyamaradu after his defeat in Lycia, Achilles afterkilling rambelos, a name connected with Lycia. Tey both campaignedagainst Mysia and made its king a subject of the king of the Achaeans, atleast temporarily. Tey both attacked Lesbos. Tey both fought in roy,under the command of the Achaean king. But, in both cases, an opponentcalled Alexandros/Alaksandu prevailed in the end, although not becauseof his own military valor. Achilles also defeated Kyknos, whose name isconnected with Kukkunni, the predecessor of Alaksandu of Wilusa. Teyboth fought against expeditionary forces sent against them from the east.

󰀶󰀳They both found refuge in anAegean island, where they left their family, in order to attack cities inWest Anatolia. Tey both were fearsome military leaders, conducted raidsin Anatolia under the command of the Achaean king, shared their bootywith him, but had a great degree of autonomy from him. Tey both foundrefuge in Miletos: Piyamaradu after his defeat in Lycia, Achilles afterkilling Trambelos, a name connected with Lycia. Tey both campaignedagainst Mysia and made its king a subject of the king of the Achaeans, atleast temporarily. Tey both attacked Lesbos. Tey both fought in roy,under the command of the Achaean king. But, in both cases, an opponentcalled Alexandros/Alaksandu prevailed in the end, although

In my opinion, the similarities between what we know about thedeeds of Piyamaradu from the Hittite texts and Achilles from the EpicCycle are too many to ignore. No other single person, especially one whowas not even a king, ever caused so much trouble to the Hittites as Pi-yamaradu. Not only is the longevity of his career extraordinary in itself(Beckmanet al. 2011, 251–252), but he also proved to be a mortal threat, thatneither military force, nor diplomacy, nor even magic could eliminate.Te remarkable deeds of Piyamaradu most certainly impressed his con-temporaries. We can presume that they inspired stories and songs, whichlater evolved into legends in both sides of the Aegean. Already during hislifetime, people of the land of Ahhiyawa would have transformed his Lu-wian name into something more convenient to their language. Was his name maybe hellenized as Pyrisoos, or simply Pyrrhos? ….

theSpartans were, like the Jews, descendants of Abraham: 

Polydore Vergil and Virgilius

This is interesting:

Figures

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Figures

This article has a follower with the status of a permanent page, which will be regularly (or I hope so) enriched with new and pertinent information :

Figures continued…

• Claudio Tolomei (1492-1556) is « Claudius Ptolemy » (his family name is Ptolemaeus or Ptolomaeus in latin). He is a versatile erudite of his times, except that he did nothing regarding geography and astronomy.

• Peter von Benewitz « Apianus » (1495-1552) is the old latin author « Appianus ». Contrary to Ptolemy, it is the Renaissance author who is a geographer and an astronomer, while his antique counterpart is an historian.

• Polydore Vergil (1470-1555) is Virgilius

There is a « Giovanni del Virgilio » who is an author from the beginning of the 14th century, without precision about the dates. He was a friend of Dante. Polydore had a brother named Giovanni Matteo Virgilio who teached at the universities of Padua and Ferrara but of whom nothing more is said.

• Agostino Chigi (1466-1520) is « Saint-Augustine ».

 Saint-Augustine… in cardinal attire

He was a incredibly wealthy banker who lived in Sienna, very involved in the church and close to the popes.

In Sienna there is the yearly horse race called the Pallio, not in Hippone (town of horses) in northern Africa. The cathedral in Sienna is called Saint-Agostino. In it, there is the funerary monument of Agostino Chigi

It is no wonder that the Roman church has since a lot to do with banking activities. The reforms of the council of Trent have concern for the question of banking : the Jubilees are abandoned and usury brought by the swiss Calvin is now accepted. It is known that the medieval church practiced the Jubilees (as in the Old Testament) until at least the 15th century.

Chigi was part of the League of Venice against France. It probably means the league against the Franks (of Charles V).

• Girolamo Savonarole (1452-1498) is « Saint-Jerome » (Fomenko said Erasmus, but it does not concur with the life of Erasmus who writes in greek).

He overruled the Medici in Florence. He is said to be a reformer. He welcomed Charles VIII king of France in Florence (in fact Charles V) and started a religious dictatorship in Florence (1494-1498). Jerome wrote the latin « translation » of the Bible. The french translation in 1530 is based upon the Vulgate of Jerome. He predicted the coming of « a new Cyrus » that woud cross Italy to bring back the order. The prophecy is said to have been fulfilled with the coming of Charles VIII of « France » (Carolus magnus of the Franks). He called the roman curia a « proud and lying whore », which shows how he remained « roman catholic » all the way. He is in fact an enemy of the jewish Temple in Rome.

Savonarole was against the use of indulgences and the sackcloth in the church. This is similar to statements made about other reformers like Loyola or Luther.

• Tommaso d’Aquino (1584-1651) is the name of a bishop of Mottola from 1648 to 1651. This is not surprinsig as his master Aristotle lived probably as Gennade Scholarius in the 16th century. His teachings influences René Descartes whos lives in the same times. The pope of his beginnings was Innocent X. The pope of the beginnings of the 13th century Thomas was Innocent IV.

• Hector Boèce (1465-1536) is the old « Boethius ». Both were called Boethius or Boèce, and both were scottish. He is one of the first disciples of Aristotle and is cited by Thomas de Aquino.

• Bartolomeo di Sebastiano Neroni (1505-1571), artist and architect : probably the architect of the antique « amphitheater of Nero », that was destroyed in remote times. There is a second amphitheatre like the Coliseum in some 17th century maps.

• Traiano Caracciolo is the template for the emperor Trajan. He was the duke of Melfi and good friend of the pope Clement VII (1478-1534).

• Tito Livio Burratini (1617-1681) is Titus Livius

He is essentially a mathematician and engineer. It is said he was involved in the history of Egypt where he lived a part of his life. It is not said he ever was a historian. His time of life concurs with a knowledge of the 17th century wars of religion, whose which the Roman jewish and christian insurrections are a reflection.

• Sallustio Bandini (1677-1760) : churchman and from Sienna, which are always good markers for an original of the « old » latin figures. Here Sallustius

• Apostolo Zeno  (1668-1750) is the greek Zeno. He is a venitian author for the theatre and a philosopher. Possibly we should search in Venice for the original of the greek figures, while the latin figures are italian, from Tuscany mostlty

• Johann Christoph Jordan (died 1748) is the antique Jordanes.

He wrote in latin and published in 1745 De Originibus Slavicis. Jordanes published in the 6th century « History of the Goths ».

It is said by Fomenko that the german historians in Russia made a new history up. To his detriment, Else Löser said August Schlözer was the one who fashioned the word « Slav » in Saint-Petersburg. Possibly it was in fact Jordan who lived before Schlözer (1735-1809). Or it is the opposite : the late Jordan (of whom very little is known) is made upon the authentic Jordanes (15th century).

It shall be said that many popular songs in Poland are sung in german in the 19th century. Yiddish is a germanic language and not at all a slavic language. So Maybe Mrs Löser was true to say that all « slavic » languages were made up.

Ancient scientists and religious authors are basically the very same Renaissance characters whose biographies have been made up lately. But the books would then be authentic. This would be the case for Ptolemy or Augustine. The books have only been parted in two halves : one for the Renaissance author, one who would be attributed to the old double.

This is probably not so for an ancient historian or a roman emperor, for obvious reasons.

The roman emperors cannot be the double of the medieval « Holy roman emperors » (from 1520 and later) because the chronology which is needed is much longer, and a simple copy of the two historical periods would be too obvious. So the roman emperors carry the names of Renaissance artists, like Neroni, or scientists. Probably the emperor Claudius is again Claudio Tolomei, whose name is said to signify « crippled » like the emperor Claudius was said to be.

Many authors have now plainly displayed – but not rightly concluded – that the biographies of many ancient roman emperors have been built upon the life of Jesus. They concluded erroneously the opposite : that Jesus was built upon Julius Caesar (Francesco Carrota), built upon the three flavian emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitian (Joseph Atwill). But the « Lives of 12 Caesars » by Suetonius have the same elements of Jesus in them.

For an historian like Titus Livius it has been pointed that he lived in the good times to write about the Wars of religions. There are two possibilities then. Either he wrote a true history but the names of characters have been edited later to make it « ‘ancient roman ». Or it had been entirely written based upon the Wars of religions with the purpose to create an ancient history. The habit to use a Renaissance character to name the « ancient » author was kept.

I personnaly support the second hypothesis, because this process goes on very lately. The team Chronology 2.0 displayed the absolute fact that the period 27 BC-325 AD is a phantom reflexion of the period 1527-1870. Both end with a council (Nicaea the first evern, and the last at the times of Mommsen and Fustel de Coulanges, Vatican I). Ancien roman emperors of later times have been shown by Fomenko to be doubles of the « first » roman empire (Diocletian = Pompeo, Constantine = Augustus, etc.). What comes next ? The barbaric invasions by Odoacer and Theodoric, the « Ostrogoths » and « Vandals ». What do we see in 1870 ? France at war with Prussia, precisely the place named « Prusse » or « Vandalie » in a 1660 french map. The prussian leader is « Otto » von Bismarck with his emperor Willhelm-Friedrich, king of Prussia, and first to carry the title of « german emperor », long after the end of the « roman empire » in 1806.

Claudius Ptolemy and Claudio Tolomei

This is interesting:

The real Claudius Ptolemy

SEPTEMBRE 11, 2017 · 1:05↓ Sauter aux Commentaires

The real Claudius Ptolemy

The russian school of New Chronology has managed to show the true and modern identities of many of the « ancient » characters.

Plato is Gémiste Plethon (1355-1452), a byzantine scholar, known to have stood for the works of Plato, and written « Laws » , a book by the same name of an ancient work of Plato.

Aristotle is Gennade Scholarius (1400-1473). This Scholarius is supposed to have been kept in charge by Mehmet II after his conquest of Constantinople in 1453.  Why would a muslim ruler would care about the name of the orthodox patriarch ? The ottoman empire is depicted on the maps only at the times of Mehmet III near 1600, so in my own opinion, Scholarius must have really lived in these times. Mehmet III is the author of the Koran and the latest of the four « czars » found by Fomenko to have incarnated the fabricated Ivan the Terrible. He is known in Russia as Simeon Beckboulatovitch.

Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) is the old Vitruvius. They wrote the exact same book « The ten books on architecture », with the same title and content !

Copernicus is Aristarchus and Tycho Brahe Hipparchus.

An important identification has note been made. It is the person hidden behind Claudius Ptolemy. This is quite easy, as he shares the very same name. His name is Claudio Tolomei, born in Asciano in 1492 and dead in 1556 in Rome. In italian, the old Ptolemy is called Claudio Tolomeo !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudio_Tolomei

In the middle ages, Ptolemy is always depicted as a bearded man, as Claudio Tolomei.

the old Ptolemy, in medieval dressing !

He was known as a multifaceted intellectual, gifted with all the talents, but he is not known as an astronomer and a geographer. This is quite curious as he lived precisely at the times when the first atlas by Ptolemy was published in France, in the beginning of 1525, from the « old » treatises (which are now all lost) by the « old » Ptolemy. The style of the maps is typically just a bit more crude than the little later maps by Abraham Ortelius and Oronce Fine. One can see here that Oronce Fine is placed among the « ancient » Ptolemy, Strabo and Pomponius Mela as the creators of geography in this map dated 1551:

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8458817z/

The tribes mentioned by the « old » Herodotus are mentioned on this very same map : Guaramantes, Lotophages (Lotus eaters) for example. Hyperborea is a now lost archipelago at the north pole (quite as Herodotus described it).

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Tolomei

The late Giovanni Battista Tolomei is called in the legend of the picture « Ptolemaius ».

The Tolomei family is said to have claimed to come from the old Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt. This sounds quite ridiculous if this family lived in the Nile delta in the 4th century. But Egypt meant the old localisation of the empire : near Constantinople. Alexandria is probably Andrinopolis.

It is a known fact that in the middle of the 15th century, Constantinople was conquered and that many byzantine families came to live in Tuscany, notably in Florence were the Medici ruled.

This is not exactly true : Constantinople would be conquered much later as we said, around 1600. The byzantine that came to live in Florence were not the remnants of the old rulers of Byzantium. They colonised the west. Fomenko proved the russian origin of the Etruscans and their identification with Tuscany in the 15th century. Curiously he still said that Byzantium was conquered in 1453, and did not make the two elements in sync. Another proof of this is this map, which he did not display. One can see the two words Tuscia and Etruria in the same picture. And Florence as the capital. We wan see the Etruscans towns of Veii and Care in the Tarquinii area too. At the right, we see the tribes of the Umbrii, the Sabinii and the Latii.

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b5963870n/f1.item.r=thusciae.zoom

There is no year and no author upon this map. But the style is the same as the 17th century maps. And Florence, Sienna are there too.

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84947162/ by Antonio de Salamanca, 16th century.

Etruria is not mentioned, but the neighbouring people at the right are called Umbria, Sabinae and Latii. Rome is at the frontier between the Latii and Tusciae. It is already a big city.

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53042014b/f1.item.r=thusciae.zoom

by Girolamo Bellarmato, 1560

same people at the frontiers. Notice the Lucus Etruriae, near the Vulsinus lacus in the south.

Maybe the family that ruled Byzantium (but this is a false and late name. The name of the country must have been Egypt) in the beginning of the 15th century was not Palaeologus, but Tolomeo.

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10722980m/

Here is the greek text of one of the main works by Ptolemy, Cosmographia.The document is said to be from the end of the 15th century. Nowhere it is said to have been compiled « according to the ancient works of Ptolemy ». It can be assumed this is an original.

Ptolemy is said to have lived between 90 and 168, at the times of roman hegemony. But the geography is closer to Herodotus (5th century BC). There are seleucids strategies all across Cappadocia. The Seleucid empire is said to have disappeared in 64 BC. (But the Seldjukid empire is alive and well in the 15th century. As we said, there is no Ottoman empire before 1600.)

Italy, Tusques, Samnites, Latins, and even Roma are mentioned. But not the « roman empire ».

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53040746f/f1.item.r=ptol%C3%A9m%C3%A9e.zoom

Here is a map by Ptolemy. We can find Lotharingia, a carolingian kingdom. This is at odds with the date of the map, published in 1541, too. Russia is an area at the east of Poland.

A little later map by Gerard de Jode mentions the « Francie orientale », another carolingian kingdom.

There are anomalies regarding the history of astronomy too. After Ptolemy in the 2d century, we have to wait the 16th century to have some new descriptions of constellations. ….

Ancient Greek Repetitions?

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

Has the list of Greek archons been duplicated?

 

  

There may be duplications in the list of ancient Greek archons.

But there may also be characters listed there who did not even belong to Greece.

I have already argued that Solon, appointed archon in the Athenian government in c. 600 BC, was in fact a non-historical figure, based largely upon the sage King Solomon of Israel:

 

Solomon and Sheba

https://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba?sm=b

 

but whose supposed laws and reforms appear to owe much to another famous Jew of antiquity, Nehemiah. (See, on this, “Two reformers compared: Solon of Athens and Nehemiah of Jerusalem”, E. Yamauchi and G. Rendsburg).

 

Now Clark Whelton of NY has just alerted me to an article of historical revision by professor Gunnar Heinsohn: https://q-mag.org/rome-and-jerusalem-a-stratigraphy-based-chronology-of-the-ancient-world.html

Rome and Jerusalem – a stratigraphy-based chronology of the Ancient World

 

in which the author runs these intriguing parallels between supposedly separate Greek archons:

 

462 BC	A KONON becomes archon in Athens.
398 BC	A KONON tries to win Akhaemenid Artaxerxes II for Athens.

 

The pressure by KONON of Athens to stop Sparta’s assistance for Egypt’s rebellion against Akhaemenids in 395 BC is a duplication of 460 BC (time of a KONON in Athens) when the Akhaemenid Satrap Achaimenes is murdered in Egypt.

 

460 BC	Walls are built in Athens.
393 BC	Walls are built in Athens.

 

459 BC	A PHILOKLES becomes archon in Athens.
392 BC	A PHILOKLES becomes archon in Athens.
450 BC	Athenians win at Salamis (Cyprus).
384 BC	Ceasefire is negotiated at Salamis (Cyprus).
449 BC	Peace of KALLIAS strengthens “1st“Attic Maritime Alliance.
377 BC	A KALLIAS is archon in Athens; “2nd” Attic Maritime Alliance).
424 BC	OCHOS (Darius II) crowned after brief rule of predecessor.
358 BC	OCHOS (Artaxerxes III) crowned after brief rule of predecessor.
419 BC	An Archias becomes archon in Athens.
345 BC	An Archias becomes archon in Athens.

 

….

Duplicitous Ben-Hadad I of Syria

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

“Ben-hadad of Aram breaks his treaty with Baasha and enters into a military alliance with Asa. Ben-hadad attacks Baasha from the north, in the territory of

Ijon, Dan, Abel-maim, and other cities of Naphtali. To defend his northern territories, Baasha has to abandon his fortifications and Ramah, and Asa and Judah move in to seize the materials to put to work in their own building projects.”

 Peter Liethart

 

 

BEN-HADAD’S EL AMARNA IDENTIFICATON

 

Along with the archaeological identification of the Exodus Israelites with the Middle Bronze I people, a most solid starting-point for biblico-historical revision is, I think, Dr. Velikovsky’s connection of the El Amarna [EA] pair of kings of “Amurru”, Abdi-ashirta and Aziru, with, respectively, Ben-Hadad I and Hazael of Syria.

 

I have frequently built upon this sturdy foundation, having previously written (for instance):

 

We are now in the C9th BC, about 500 years after the well-documented EA period of the 18^th dynasty pharaohs Amenhotep III (c. 1390-1352 BC) and Amenhotep IV [Akhnaton] (c. 1352-1348 BC), according to the Sothic chronology, but squarely within EA according to Velikovsky’s revision.[1]

Courville had accepted Velikovsky’s basic 18^th dynasty scenario, without adding much to it. My starting point here will be with what competent revisionists in the late 1970’s to early 1980’s, who had followed Velikovsky, considered to have been a most convincing aspect of Velikovsky’s EA restructuring: namely, his identification of the two chief EA correspondents from Amurru, Abdi-ashirta and Aziru, with two successive Syrian kings of the Old Testament in the C9th BC, respectively, Ben-Hadad I (c. 880-841 BC, conventional dates) and Hazael (c. 841-806 BC, conventional dates). Thus James had written, favourably:[2]

 

With [these] two identifications [Velikovsky] seems to be on the firmest ground, in that we have a succession of two rulers, both of whom are characterised in the letters and the Scriptures as powerful rulers who made frequent armed excursions – and conquests – in the territories to the south of their own kingdom. In the letters their domain is described as “Amurru” – a term used, as Velikovsky has pointed out … by Shalmaneser III for Syria in general, the whole area being dominated by the two successive kings in “both” the el-Amarna period and the mid-9th century.

 

From Assyrian evidence it is known that Hazael succeeded to the throne between 845 and 841 BC, and thus we have a reasonably precise floruit for those el-Amarna correspondents who relate the deeds of Abdi-Ashirta and Azaru [Aziru], particularly for Rib-Addi, whose letters report the death of Abdi-Ashirta and the accession of Azaru [Aziru].

Bimson for his part, referring to the second of these two kings of Amurru, would write:[3]

 

In the first volume of his historical reconstruction, Velikovsky argues that … Aziru of Amurru, well known from the Amarna letters, should be identified with Hazael of Damascus …. The identification is well supported, and has implications for the slightly later period now being discussed.

 

The same writer, using the Hittite records for the late to post-EA period, would in fact take Velikovsky’s Syrian identification into even a third generation, his “slightly later period”, when suggesting that Aziru’s son, Du-Teshub, fitted well as Hazael’s son, Ben-Hadad II (c. 806- ? BC, conventional dates), thus further consolidating Velikovsky’s Syrian sequence for both Amarna and the mid-C9th BC:[4]

 

The Hittite treaties with Amurru also throw light on another issue raised earlier in this paper. It was noted that, according to the Old Testament, Ben-Hadad [II] was militarily active in the reign of Jehoahaz while his father Hazael was still king. It is gratifying to find this same relationship between father and son referred to in the treaty between the Hittite king Mursilis and Aziras’ grandson, Duppi Tessub.

The treaty refers to Duppi-Tessub’s father (i.e. the son of Aziras) as DU-Tessub, and if Aziras is the Bible’s Hazael, this DU-Tessub must be Ben-Hadad [II]. The meaning of the ideogram which forms the first part of his name is obscure …. But Tessub is the name of the Hittite/Hurrian Weather-god known to be the equivalent to Adad or Hadad.

Part of the treaty refers to past relations between the two powers, and says of Aziras: “When he grew too old and could no longer go to war and fight, DU-Tessub fought against the enemy with the foot-soldiers and the charioteers of the Amurru land, just as he had fought …” …. This parallel neatly supports the double identifications, Aziras = Hazael; DU-Tessub = Ben-Hadad [II].

 

These revisionists of the ‘Glasgow School’, as they became known, including Sieff, Gammon and others, were able, with a slight modification of Velikovsky’s dates, to re-set the EA period so that it sat more comfortably within its new C9th BC allocation. Thus pharaoh Akhnaton, James argued, was a more exact contemporary of king Jehoram of Judah (c. 848-841 BC, conventional dates) – and hence of the latter’s older contemporary, Jehoram of Israel (c. 853-841 BC, conventional dates) – rather than of Velikovsky’s choice of king Jehoshaphat (c. 870-848 BC, conventional dates), father of Jehoram of Judah and contemporary of king Ahab of Israel (c. 874-853 BC, conventional dates).[5] Correspondingly, Sieff determined that:[6]

 

The great famine of II Kings 8:1, found by Velikovsky to be a recurrent theme in the letters of Rib-Addi … was that of the time of Jehoram. The earlier drought of King Ahab’s time lasted 3½ years rather than 7 [cf. 1 Kings 17:1; Luke 4:25] … and was associated with the activities of Elijah, and not his successor Elisha, who figures in the famine of Ahab’s son.

 

With this relatively slight refinement in time, then the results could be quite stunning. James, for instance, found that the king of Jerusalem (Urusalim) for EA, Abdi-hiba, an obviously polytheistic monarch, who had not identified well with the pious king Jehoshaphat of Jerusalem, Velikovsky’s biblical choice, however, matched Jehoshaphat’s son, Jehoram, down to the last detail. ….

 

Whereas Ben-Hadad’s father, Tab-rimmon-Tibni, had apparently been allied with the King of Judah, Abijah-Asa, against the King of Israel, Jeroboam I-Omri (as we have read), that situation must have changed by the time that Baasha, ever inimical to Judah, was ruling Israel.

For King Asa has to prise Ben-Hadad away from his alliance with Baasha with a hefty payment.

Peter Liethart tells of the King of Judah’s grievous mistake here, in “The Tragedy of Asa”:

https://theopolisinstitute.com/the-tragedy-of-asa/

 

King Asa of Judah made a strong start, purging the land of idols, altars, and images, and winning a war against the ginormous Cushite army led by [Zerah]. It all unraveled in his final years. From his thirty-fifth year to the forty-first year, when his reign came to an end, Asa was plagued by war and eventually suffering from a disease.

Things start to go badly with another war. When Zerah attacked with his overwhelming force, Asa prayed, presumably toward the temple, and Yahweh heard (2 Chronicles 14:11-12). When Baasha of Israel fortifies Ramah, near the border of Israel and Judah, Asa’s response is very different.

… in the time of Asa, Baasha, who overthrew the dynasty of Jeroboam, tries to recover that lost territory, and making Ramah his base of operation.

Asa doesn’t pray. He doesn’t seek the Lord. He does go to the temple but not to worship or sing. He goes to the temple in order to strip the storages rooms of silver and gold, so that, along with treasure from his own house, he can offer a bribe to the Arameans.

The Arameans have been allied with Baasha, but Asa hopes that his treasure will entice the king of Aram to break that covenant (16:3). It works. Ben-hadad of Aram breaks his treaty with Baasha and enters into a military alliance with Asa. Ben-hadad attacks Baasha from the north, in the territory of Ijon, Dan, Abel-maim, and other cities of Naphtali. To defend his northern territories, Baasha has to abandon his fortifications and Ramah, and Asa and Judah move in to seize the materials to put to work in their own building projects.

It’s a clever move, and a successful one. It’s the kind of political manipulation by which the world runs. It’s also one of the stupidest things that a king of Judah ever does. How is it stupid? Let me count the ways.

For starters, Asa uses the treasures of the temple to buy off Ben-hadad. These are the same treasures he has just devoted to Yahweh as part of the covenant-renewal between Judah and Yahweh (2 Chronicles 15:18). Even if Asa didn’t believe that Yahweh was real, it would be dumb for him to devote treasure to the temple only to remove it. But Asa is a Yahweh-worshiper, and taking Yahweh’s stuff is really stupid. Asa consecrates silver and gold to Yahweh, making it holy, Yahweh’s possession. Then he takes the silver and gold away from Yahweh. The treasure isn’t his to use. He steals from God, commits sacrilege in order to secure a victory. He commits the sin of ma’al, trespass, a sin that always leads kings into disaster.

Asa doesn’t seem to realize the implications of what he does. Ben-hadad has been in an alliance with Baasha to attack Judah. Asa pays him off to break his covenant and attack Israel. How clever is it to cut a covenant with a partner who is willing to abandon a covenant When a better offer comes along? How reliable can Ben-Hadad be?

Asa inflicts a wound on his own realm. Asa funds an Aramean attack on the northern kingdom. He’s funding Gentiles to attack his brothers. But it gets worse: Asa is the legitimate king of the whole territory of Israel. The towns in the north that Ben-hadad attacks are as much a part of Asa’s realm as the cities that Baasha was trying to recover. Asa funds an Aramean attack on his own territory. He’s not only betrayed and stolen from Yahweh. He’s effectively renounced his own standing as Davidic king. He’s acting as if the northern territories belonged to someone else.

Asa’s disloyalty makes him stupid.

The prophet Azariah met Asa as he returned from his war with Zerah (2 Chronicles 15:1-7) with an encouraging message: “Be strong and do not lose courage, for there is a reward for your work.” In response, Asa re-initated his efforts to reform Judah’s worship. After the war with Baasha, another prophet, Hanani, meets the king. He doesn’t bring a message of encouragement but one of rebuke.

….

Ben-hadad’s very name highlights the contrast. Ben-hadad means “son of hadad,” and Hadad is the proper name of the god usually known as “Baal.” Ben-Hadad is in the same position in Aram as Asa is in Judah (William Johnstone), a son of Aram’s God. Supporting Ben-hadad isn’t just relying on a Gentile power; it amounts to a confession that Hadad is stronger than Yahweh. Asa’s political action is a breach of faith with Yahweh, a confession of faith in Hadad.

Hanani reminds Asa that the Lord delivered Judah from an immense army of Ethiopians and Libyans. The same could have happened in the war with Baasha.

Asa could have trusted God to deliver him from Baasha, but Aram itself would have been brought under his power (16:7).

Instead, Asa allows Aram to become a power that will threaten the northern kingdom for several generations. Aram’s rise to regional power depends on Asa’s gold and silver, Yahweh’s gold and silver.

Asa has been faithless in war, and Hanani warns that he will have war for the remainder of his reign. When he sought Yahweh, he had rest. When he gave treasure to Yahweh, the land was at peace. When he stole from Yahweh and allied with the son of Baal, his borders became porous and he had to fight wars the remainder of his life.

Asa began well, but his breach of faith leads to defeat, disease, and … ignominious death. Asa’s life and death is a cautionary tale, both personal and political. ….

 

 

[1] Ages in Chaos, vol. 1, ch. 6. Also, his Oedipus and Akhnaton.

[2] ‘The Dating of the El-Amarna Letters’, p. 80.

[3] ‘Dating the Wars of Seti I’, p. 21.

[4] Ibid, p. 32.

[5] Op. cit, pp. 82-84.

[6] ‘The Two Jehorams’, p. 89.

Can Amenhotep II and III be merged?

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

Similar patterns emerge, again, with the course of the reign of Amenhotep II, III –

some early military activity followed by years of peace and prosperity, allowing

for major building projects.

 

 

 

As well as Thutmose III and IV needing to be merged into just the one pharaoh, as I have done, so also, do I think, the same just may apply to Amenhotep II and III.

The first (II) is rightly considered to have been the son of Thutmose III, whilst the second (III) is thought to have been the son of Thutmose IV.

Here, though, I shall be arguing that Amenhotep II = III was the son of my Thutmose III-identified-as-IV.

 

STRONG, A SPORTSMAN, HUNTER  

 

Some patterns of similarity emerge also with Amenhotep II and III.

For example:

 

Being fathered by a predecessor “Thutmose”.

And sharing the name Aakhepeh[-erure].

 

Having as wife:

[Amenhotep II] “Tiaa (Tiya) “Great Royal Wife” Daughter of Yuya and Thuya”.

http://www.phouka.com/pharaoh/pharaoh/dynasties/dyn18/07amenhotep2.html

[Amenhotep III] Having a Great Royal Wife, “Tiy, daughter of Yuya and Tuya”.

http://www.phouka.com/pharaoh/pharaoh/dynasties/dyn18/09amenhotep3.html

 

Having as son-successors a Thutmose, and then an Amenhotep:

[Amenhotep II] “Children Thutmose IV, Amenhotep …”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amenhotep_II

[Amenhotep III (and Tiy)] “Their eldest son, Thutmosis … died as a child. This left the kingdom to their second son, Amenhotep … who changed his name and is better known as Akhenaten”.

https://study.com/academy/lesson/amenhotep-iii-biography-family-death.html

 

Well known about Amenhotep II is that he was a very physically strong sportsmen and hunter.

But so, too, was Amenhotep III: https://681308714824908458.weebly.com/hunter.html

 

…. Amenhotep III’s reign encompassed peace and because of this there was no real need to have a ‘warrior’ pharaoh to protect Egypt, so instead the role of ‘Hunter’ became more prominent. Amenhotep still needed to seem strong and powerful. Skills taught to pharaohs previously to fulfil the role of being a warrior were transferrable to the role of being a hunter. Hunting was an important role as the representation of a hunter was Ma’at.

 

Inscriptions praised the pharaoh for his physical power as a sportsman giving emphasis on his strength, endurance, skill and also his courage. Two scarabs were also issued promoting his success as a hunter. One scarab is pictured on this page from 1380BC [sic] in the 18th Dynasty. To the Right is the bottom of the scarab presenting the hieroglyphics and below is the picture of the detailed top of the artefact with markings indicating the head, wings and scorching on its legs imitating its feathering. This scarab records that the king killed 102 lions within his first ten years of his reign. He stated that he did this with only a bow and arrow. This presents his strength and power without having to win thousands of wars.

 

Historian A. Gardiner wrote in 1972 a quote the relates strongly to the topic of a hunter ‘with the accession of Amenhotep III, Dynasty 18 attained the zenith of its magnificence, though the celebrity of this king is not founded upon any military achievement. Indeed, It is doubtful whether he himself ever took part in a warlike campaign’.’ This quote is explaining further how Amenhotep III was more involved with a warrior role than a military role. He may of [have] not had war but he managed to keep his magnificence through hunting as the skills were transferrable.

 

Hunting was an important role in the 18th dynasty and specifically during Amenhotep’s reign as it was up to him to withhold the concept of ma’at.

It was significant as the role of being a warrior was not necessarily needed throughout his reign, so the role of a hunter arose to ensure that the pharaoh was presented as strong.

Amenhotep contributed to this role by creating the commemorative scarabs and recording any hunting successes. This provided the people with reassurance that their pharaoh could protect them and also it is significant because it provides historians and archeologists with evidence about the pharaoh and hunting.

 

Sometimes the strength and sporting prowess of Amenhotep II are presented as if being his main claim to fame. The following piece exemplifies the pharaoh’s outstanding sporting skills:

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/amenhotep2.htm

 

Notably, Amenhotep II was well known for his athletic abilities as a young man. A number of representations of him depict his participation in successful sporting pursuits. He lived in the Memphite region where he trained horses in his father’s stables, and one of his greatest athletic achievements was accomplished when he shot arrows through a copper plate while driving a chariot with the reins tied about his waist. This deed was recorded in numerous inscriptions, including a stele at Giza and depictions at Thebes. So famous was the act that it was also miniaturized on scarabs that have been found in the Levant. Sara Morris, a classical art historian, has even suggested that his target shooting success formed the basis hundreds of years later for the episode in the Iliad when Archilles is said to have shot arrows through a series of targets set up in a trench. He was also recorded as having wielded an oar of some 30 ft in length, rowing six times as fast as other crew members, though this may certainly be an exaggeration. ….

 

The Odyssey, which (like The Iliad, “Achilles” above) has borrowed many of its images from the Bible, no doubt picked up this one of Amenhotep II also and transferred it to its hero, Odysseus (Latin variant: Ulysses).

(Book 21):

 

Penelope now appears before the suitors in her glittering veil. In her hand is a stout bow left behind by Odysseus when he sailed for Troy. ‘Whoever strings this bow’, she says, ‘and sends an arrow straight through the sockets of twelve ax heads lined in a row — that man will I marry’.

 

The suitors take turns trying to bend the bow to string it, but all of them lack the strength.

 

Odysseus asks if he might try. The suitors refuse, fearing that they’ll be shamed if the beggar succeeds. But Telemachus insists and his anger distracts them into laughter.

As easily as a bard fitting a new string to his lyre, Odysseus strings the bow and sends an arrow through the ax heads. ….

 

Similar patterns emerge, again, with the course of the reign of Amenhotep II, III – some early military activity followed by years of peace and prosperity, allowing for major building projects.

 

Amenhotep II:

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/amenhotep2.htm

Some references refer to his first expedition taking place as early as his 2nd year of rule, though others provide that it was during his 7th. Still other references indicate that he made both of these campaigns. Regardless, he fought his was across the Orontes river and claims to have subdued all before him. One city, Niy, apparently had learnt their lesson under his father, and welcomed Amenhotep II. But at Tikhsi (Takhsy, as mentioned in the Theban tomb of Amenemheb – TT85), he captured seven prices, returning with them in the autumn.

They were hung face down on the prow of his ship on the return journey, and six of them were subsequently hung on the enclosure wall of the Theban temple. The other was taken south into Nubia where his was likewise hung on the walls of Napata, “in order to cause to be seen the victorious might of His Majesty for ever and ever”.

 

According to the Stele recording these events, this first campaign netted booty consisting of 6,800 deben of gold and 500,000 deben of copper (about 1,643 and 120,833 pounds respectively), as well as 550 mariannu captives, 210 horses and 300 chariots.

 

All sources agree that he once again campaigned in Syria during his ninth year of rule, but only in Palestine as for as the Sea of Galilee.

 

Yet these stele, erected after year nine of Amenhotep II’s rule, that provide us with this information do not bear hostile references to either Mitanni or Nahrin, the general regions of the campaigns. This is probably intentional, because apparently the king had finally made peace with these former foes. In fact, an addition at the end of the Memphis stele records that the chiefs of Nahrin, Hatti and Sangar (Babylon) arrived before the king bearing gifts and requesting offering gifts (hetepu) in exchange, as well as asking for the breath of life.

Though good relations with Babylon existed during the reign of Tuthmosis III, this was the first mention of a Mitanni peace, and it is very possible that a treaty existed allowing Egypt to keep Palestine and part of the Mediterranean coast in exchange for Mitannian control of northern Syria. Underscoring this new alliance, with Nahrin, Amenhotep II had inscribed on a column between the fourth and fifth pylons at Karnak, “The chiefs (weru) of Mitanni (My-tn) come to him, their deliveries upon their backs, to request offering gifts from his majesty in quest of the breath of life”. The location for this column in the Tuthmosid wadjyt, or columned hall, was significant, because the hall was venerated as the place where his father received a divine oracle proclaiming his future kingship. It is also associated with the Tuthmosid line going back to Tuthmosis I, who was the first king to campaign in Syria. Furthermore, we also learn that Amenhotep II at least asked for the hand of the Mitannian king, Artatama I, in marriage. By the end of Amenhotep II’s reign, the Mitanni who had been so recently a vile enemy of Egypt, were being portrayed as a close friend.

 

After these initial campaigns, the remainder of Amenhotep II’s long reign was characterized by peace in the Two Lands, including Nubia where his father settled matters during his reign. This allowed him to somewhat aggressively pursue a building program that left his mark at nearly all the major sites where his father had worked. Some of these projects may have even been initiated during his co-regency with his father, for at Amada in Lower Nubia dedicated to Amun and Ra-Horakhty celebrated both equally, and at Karnak, he participated in his father’s elimination of any vestiges of his hated stepmother, Hatshepsut. There was also a bark chapel built celebrating his co-regency at Tod. ….

 

Amenhotep III:

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/amenhotep3.htm

While as usual, an expedition into Nubia in year five of his reign was given grandiose attention on some reliefs, it probably amounted to nothing more than a low key police action. However, it may have pushed as for as south of the fifth cataract. It was recorded on inscriptions near Aswan and at Konosso in Nubia. There is also a stele in the British Museum recording a Nubian campaign, but it is unclear whether it references this first action, or one later in his reign.

There was also a Nubian rebellion reported at Ibhet, crushed by his son. While Amenhotep III was almost certainly not directly involved in this conflict, he records having slaughtered many within the space of a single hour. We learn from inscriptions that this campaign resulted in the capture of 150 Nubian men, 250 women, 175 children, 110 archers and 55 servants, added to the 312 right hands of the slain.

Perhaps to underscore the Kushite subjection to Egypt, he had built at Soleb, almost directly across the Nile from the Nubian capital at Kerma, a fortress known as Khaemmaat, along with a temple.

 

The Prosperity and International Relationships

 

However, by year 25 of Amenhotep III’s reign, military problems seem to have been settled, and we find a long period of great building works and high art. It was also a period of lavish luxury at the royal court. The wealth needed to accomplish all of this did not come from conquests, but rather from foreign trade and an abundant supply of gold, mostly from the mines in the Wadi Hammamat and further south in Nubia.

 

Amenhotep III was unquestionably involved with international diplomatic efforts, which led to increased foreign trade. During his reign, we find a marked increase in Egyptian materials found on the Greek mainland. We also find many Egyptian place names, including Mycenae, Phaistos and Knossos first appearing in Egyptian inscriptions.

We also find letters written between Amenhotep III and his peers in Babylon, Mitanni and Arzawa preserved in cuneiform writing on clay tablets.From a stele in his mortuary temple, we further learn that he sent at least one expedition to punt.

It is rather clear that the nobility prospered during the reign of Amenhotep III. However, the plight of common Egyptians is less sure, and we have little evidence to suggest that they shared in Egypt’s prosperity. Yet, Amenhotep III and his granary official Khaemhet boasted of the great crops of grain harvested in the kings 30th (jubilee) year. And while such evidence is hardly unbiased, the king was remembered even 1,000 years later as a fertility god, associated with agricultural success. ….

 

Estimated reign lengths vary somewhat, with 38 years commonly attributed to Amenhotep III, whilst figures for Amenhotep II can range from, say, 26-35 years:

https://www.crystalinks.com/Amenhotep_II.html

“The length of [Amenhotep II’s] reign is indicated by a wine jar inscribed with the king’s prenomen found in Amenhotep II’s funerary temple at Thebes; it is dated to this king’s highest known date – his Year 26 – and lists the name of the pharaoh’s vintner, Panehsy. Mortuary temples were generally not stocked until the king died or was near death; therefore, Amenhotep could not have lived much later beyond his 26th year.

There are alternate theories which attempt to assign him a reign of up to 35 years, which is the absolute maximum length he could have reigned. …”.

 

Complicating somewhat the matter of reign length is the possibility of co-regencies – even perhaps quite lengthy ones: (a) between Amenhotep II and his father, Thutmose III, and (b) between Amenhotep III and his son, Akhnaton.

The most extreme estimate for (a) is “twenty-five years or more” (Donald B. Redford): https://www.jstor.org/stable/3855623?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents whilst for (b): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amenhotep_III#Proposed_co-regency_by_Akhenaten

“In February 2014, the Egyptian Ministry for Antiquities announced what it called “definitive evidence” that Akhenaten shared power with his father for at least 8 years …”.

 

Apart from Asa’s (as Abijah’s) significant war with Jeroboam I, the King of Judah would also have to deal with a massive invasion from the direction of Egypt/Ethiopia: Zerah’s invasion. Dr. I. Velikovsky had aligned this biblical incident with the era of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh, Amenhotep II, son of Thutmose III.

 

This is very close to what I think must be the right biblico-historical synchronisation.

According to my own estimate, with the Shishak campaign (in King Rehoboam’s Year 5) approximating to Thutmose III’s Year 25, then the 54-year reign of Thutmose III would have extended beyond Rehoboam’s reign, his Year 17 (I Kings 14:21), and would have penetrated as far as Asa’s (identified as Abijah) (54-25-12 =) Year 17.

That Year 17 occurred probably a little after Zerah’s invasion, which Raymond B. Dillard estimates to have taken place in Asa’s Year 14 (2 Chronicles, Volume 15).

Peter James and Peter Van der Veen (below) – who will include in their calculation the 3 years attributed to King Abijah (who is my Asa) – will situate “the Zerah episode in a fairly narrow window, between the years 11 and 14 of Asa”.

 

Now, with the distinct likelihood that Amenhotep II shared a substantial co-regency with his long-reigning father, even as much as “twenty-five years or more”, as we read above, then Velikovsky may be entirely correct in his synchronising of the Zerah invasion with the reign of Amenhotep II – to which I would add that Thutmose III was also still reigning at the time.

Once again Velikovsky had – as with his identifications of the Queen of Sheba and Shishak – the (approximately) right chronology.

But once again he would – as we are going to find out – put it together wrongly.

In this particular case, Zerah, Dr. Velikovsky would actually identify the wrong (as I see it) candidate.

 

In this article I have enlarged pharaoh Amenhotep II to embrace also the one known as Amenhotep III ‘the Magnificent’. I have also enlarged Asa to embrace his supposed father, Abijah (Abijam). And I have enlarged Thutmose III, the father of my expanded Amenhotep, to embrace Thutmose IV.

 

 

Baasha as Ahab

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

Baasha’s sudden irruption onto the scene has its later ‘justification’,

I would suggest, in the far more detailed biography of Ahab.

 

  

Baasha of Israel is so Ahab-like that I feel it necessary to return to an old theory of mine,

once written up but then discarded, due to complications, that Baasha was Ahab.

 

Previously I had written on this:

 

What triggered this article was the apparent chronological problem associated with the reign of King Baasha, thought to have been the third ruler of Israel after Jeroboam I and his son, Nadab.

There is a definite problem with King Baasha of Israel, who bursts onto the biblical scene during discussion in the First Book of Kings about Jeroboam I’s wicked son, Nadab (15:27), and who, though he (Baasha) is said to have reigned for 24 years (15:33), is actually found as king of Israel from Asa of Judah’s 3rd to 36^th years (cf. 15:33; 2 Chronicles 16:1), that is, for 33 years. Thus we have the headache for chronologists of their having to account for how Baasha – although he should have been dead by about the 26^th year of King Asa – could have invaded Asa’s territory about a decade after that, in Asa’s 36^th year (2 Chronicles 16:1).

 

While some can offer no explanation at all for this, P. Mauro, who has complete faith in the biblical record (and with good reason, of course), has ingeniously tried to get around the problem as follows (The Wonders of Bible Chronology, Reiner, p. 48):

 

Baasha’s Invasion of Judah

 

In 2 Chron. 16: 1-3 it is stated that “in the six and thirtieth year of the reign of Asa, Baasha, king of Israel, came up against Judah.” But the 36th year of Asa would be nine years after the death of Baasha, this being what Lightfoot referred to in speaking of “Baasha fighting nine years after he was dead.” The Hebrew text, however, says, not that it was the 36th year of the reign of Asa, as in our A. V., but that it was the 36th year of the kingdom of Asa. So it is evident that the reckoning here is from the beginning of the separate kingdom of Judah. Hence the invasion of Judah by Baasha would be in the 16th year of Asa, and the 13th of his own reign, as tabulated [in Mauro’s lists].

[End of quote]

 

Whilst Mauro may be correct here – and I had initially accepted his explanation as being the best way out of this dilemma – I now personally would favour quite a different interpretation; one that is far more radical, greatly affecting the early history of northern Israel. I now consider Mauro’s albeit well-intentioned explanation to be splitting hairs: the ‘reign’ and ‘kingdom’ of Asa being surely one and the same thing, and so I think that it is not, as he says, “evident that the reckoning here is from the beginning of the separate kingdom of Judah”. It clearly refers to Asa (a sub-set of Judah) and not to Judah. My explanation now would be that Baasha of Israel was in fact reigning during the 36^th year of King Asa of Judah, and that Baasha and Ahab were one and the same king. I came to this conclusion based on, firstly the distinct parallels between Baasha and Ahab; and, secondly, the parallels between their supposed two phases of the history of Israel, especially with Zimri, on the one hand, and Jehu – whom Jezebel actually calls “Zimri” (2 Kings 9:31) – on the other; and, thirdly, on the very similar words of a prophet in relation to the eventual fall of the House of Baasha and to the House of Ahab (cf. 1 Kings 16:4; 21:24). I had previously thought, as other commentators customarily do as well – and necessarily, based on the standard chronology that has Zimri reigning some 40 years before Jehu – that Queen Jezebel was just being scornful when she had called Jehu, ‘Zimri”, likening him to a former regicide; for Jehu was indeed a regicide (2 Kings 9:23-28). But I have recently changed my mind on this and I now believe that the queen was actually calling Jehu by his name, “Zimri”.

 

So, the basis for this article will be the likenesses of Baasha and his house to Ahab and his house, and the reforming work of Jehu now as Zimri. But also the words of a prophet in relation to the eventual fall of the House of Baasha (the prophet Jehu son of Hanani), and of the House of Ahab (the prophet Elijah). From this triple foundation, I shall arrive at a re-casted history of early northern Israel that I think will actually throw some useful light on my earlier revisions of this fascinating period.

It will mean that the scriptural narrative, as we currently have it, presents us with more of a problem than merely that of aligning Baasha with the 36^th year of Asa (which will now cease to be a problem).

 

This history must be significantly re-cast.

 

What has happened, I now believe, is that these were originally two different accounts, presumably by different scribes using alternative names for the central characters, of the same historical era.

Since then, translators and commentators have come to imagine that the narratives were about two distinctly different periods of Israel’s history, and so they presented them as such, even at times adjusting the information and dates to fit their preconceived ideas.

 

So, apparently (my interpretation), some of the narrative has become displaced, with the result that we now appear to have two historical series where there should be only one, causing a one-sided view of things and with key characters emerging from virtually nowhere: thus Baasha, as we commented above, but also the prophet Elijah, who springs up seemingly from nowhere (in 17:1).

Admittedly, one can appreciate how such a mistake might have been made. The use of different names can be confusing, retrospectively, for those who did not live in, or near to, those early times. It will be my task here to attempt to merge the main characters with whom I now consider to be their alter egos, in order to begin to put the whole thing properly together again – at least in a basic fashion, to pave the way for a more complete synthesis in the future.

My new explanation will have the advantage, too, of taking the pressure off the required length of the life of Ben-hadad I, a known contemporary of Ahab’s, who must also be involved in a treaty with king Asa of Judah against (the presumedly earlier than Ahab) king Baasha of Israel (1 Kings 15:18-21). The same Ben-hadad I will later be forced to make a treaty with Ahab, after the latter had defeated him in war (20:34).

Whilst my explanation will manage to do away with one apparent contradiction, Baasha still reigning in Asa’s 36^th year when it seems, mathematically, that he could not have been, my theory does encounter a new contradiction from 1 Kings 21:22, where the prophet Elijah tells Ahab that his house will become “like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah”, as if the house of Baasha and Ahab were quite distinct and separated in time. My bold explanation for this is that the original text (21:22) would have simply threatened the house of Ahab with the same fate as that of Jeroboam’s house, but that an editor, basing himself on Jehu’s denunciation of Baasha in 16:4, thought that this too needed to be included in 21:22 as a separate issue, not realising that Baasha’s house was Ahab’s house. The way the narrative reads, with Baasha’s early arrival on the scene, he is not recorded as having done sufficient evil deeds, one might think, to have warranted so severe a condemnation from the prophet Jehu son of Hanani – until, that is, Baasha is ‘filled out’ with the wicked deeds of his alter ego, king Ahab.

 

But with Baasha now (in my scheme) completely removed from roughly the first half of king Asa of Judah’s long reign of 41 years (15:10), what will now fill that apparent void?

….

 

 

Baasha and Ahab compare quite favourably

 

 

 

Baasha’s sudden irruption onto the scene has its later ‘justification’,

I would suggest, in the far more detailed biography of Ahab.

 

 

As to reign length, we have almost a perfect match in that Baasha reigned for 24 years (I King 15:33) and Ahab for 22 (16:29).

But that becomes quite a perfect match when we further realise that Baasha reigned for 2 years at Tirzah.

Though, in conventional terms, Samaria (at the time of Baasha) was not yet a capital city, according to my revision it would already have been. And king Ahab of Israel is said specifically to have reigned for 22 years “in Samaria”.

Putting it all together, we get Baasha’s 2 years at Tirzah, and then a further 22 years (making his total 24 years); 22 years being the length of Ahab’s reign.

In other words, Baasha-Ahab (if it is the same person) reigned for 2 years at Tirzah, and then for 22 years at Samaria, a total of 24 years of reign.

 

This must have been after Ahab’s presumed father, Omri, had built Samaria (16:24).

I say ‘presumed’, because I have, in my related articles, followed T. Ishida in his view that the Bible does not mention a House of Omri, but does refer to one of Ahab, thereby allowing for me to make the tentative suggestion that Ahab was probably related to Omri only though marriage.

And that would further allow now for Ahab’s direct father to be, not Omri, but – as Baasha’s father: “Ahaziah of the house of Issachar” (1 Kings 15:27). In “Omri and Tibni” I had noted (T. Ishida’s view) the possibility of Ahab’s connection to Issachar:

 

Tomoo Ishida instead suggested that the narrative of dynastic instability in the Kingdom of Israel suggests an underlying rivalry between tribes for its throne.^[1] In the biblical narrative, the House of Jeroboam was from the Tribe of Ephraim, while the House of Baasha was from the Tribe of Issachar.^[1] The Omrides are connected in this narrative with the city of Jezreel, where they maintained a second palace. According to the Book of Joshua, Jezreel was controlled by the Tribe of Issachar. Ishida views the narrative as suggesting that the Omrides themselves were members of the Tribe of Issachar.^[1] ….

 

I would modify this, though, to say instead, not “the Omrides”, but the Ahabites “were members of the Tribe of Issachar”.

 

 

 

Judith and Huldah

Part One:

Era of Josiah merged with Era of Hezekiah

by

Damien F. Mackey

Why did king Josiah, upon the finding of the Book of the Law, send his chief ministers to consult, not the male prophets, Jeremiah and Zephaniah, but a mysterious female prophetess named Huldah (חֻלְדָּה, a Hebrew name supposedly meaning “weasel” or “mole”)? (2 Kings 22:8-20).

The situation becomes even more extraordinary in the context of my revision which merges the era of king Josiah with that of king Hezekiah, showing that the king’s servant “Asaiah” of Josiah is to be identified with the great Isaiah himself. Previously I wrote on this:

“What has king Hezekiah of Judah to do with Jeremiah? it may well be asked.

That is all explained in my most recent article:

De-coding Jonah

https://www.academia.edu/43239120/De-coding_Jonah

in which I merge the era of king Hezekiah with the era of king Josiah, Jeremiah’s era. And so we find:

Hezekiah becomes Josiah;

Hilkiah becomes Hilkiah the high priest;

Shebna the secretary becomes Shaphan the secretary;

Joah the recorder becomes Joah the recorder;

Isaiah becomes Asaiah.

And there will be more names to be added to this list”. [End of quote]

Indeed, I have since added Jeremiah as Eliakim son of Hilkiah:

Jeremiah was both prophet and high priest

https://www.academia.edu/43300977/Jeremiah_was_both_prophet_and_high_priest

Two things to be noted here.

Firstly, the prophet Isaiah (= Asaiah), to whom the king was wont to send his officials for consultation (Isaiah 37:2), is now to be found amongst those of the king’s officials consulting the woman, Huldah. And, secondly, regarding my statement “there will be more names to be added to this list”, we need a female from the era of king Hezekiah to merge with Huldah of king Josiah’s era – a female pairing to restore some balance for all of those male connections.

Can we find such an incredibly famous woman at the time of king Hezekiah?

To achieve this, which is the purpose of this present article (see Part Two), will fully serve to answer the question in my title above, “Huldah who?”

Part Two: Huldah’s identity

in reign of king Hezekiah

There is only one woman, and one woman alone, at the time of king Hezekiah of Judah, who can possibly be identified with the famous prophetess Huldah.

That is the Simeonite heroine, Judith.

Before I had realised that the era of Hezekiah had to be merged with the era of Josiah, Huldah’s era – and having already come to the conclusion that Huldah must be Judith – I had been forced, chronologically, to regard Huldah as Judith in her old age.

That interpretation, for me, accounted, perhaps, for how Huldah – traditionally a mentor of king Josiah – had been able to speak so bluntly about the pious king: ‘Tell the man …’.

2 Kings 22:15-16: “She said to them, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Tell the man who sent you to me, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am going to bring disaster on this place and its people, according to everything written in the book the king of Judah has read’.’”

Here was an aged and famous prophetess, I had thought, bluntly speaking her mind.

{Although it may have been that Huldah was merely quoting verbatim the words that the Lord himself had directed her to speak}.

Huldah appeared to me to have had the same sort of bluntness that Judith had exhibited when addressing the elders of “Bethulia” (e.g., Judith 8:11-13):

‘… you were wrong to speak to the people as you did today. You should not have made a solemn promise before God that you would surrender the town to our enemies if the Lord did not come to our aid within a few days. What right do you have to put God to the test as you have done today? Who are you to put yourselves in God’s place in dealing with human affairs? It is the Lord Almighty that you are putting to the test! Will you never learn?’

And I had compared Judith, in this regard, with the forthright and outspoken Joan of Arc:

Judith of Bethulia and Joan of Arc

https://www.academia.edu/8815175/Judith_of_Bethulia_and_Joan_of_Arc?sm=b

With Josiah’s era now to be merged into the era of Hezekiah, though, there must take place a major chronological reconsideration. Instead of Huldah’s statement belonging to an historical phase significantly later than the victory of the young (or young-ish) Judith over the Assyrian commander-in-chief (on this, see my):

“Nadin” (Nadab) of Tobit is the “Holofernes” of Judith

https://www.academia.edu/36576110/_Nadin_Nadab_of_Tobit_is_the_Holofernes_of_Judith?sm=b

the Huldah incident must now be regarded as pre-dating by some several years Judith’s victory.

This would mean that Huldah was quite young when she uttered her words, making it even more extraordinary that king Josiah had chosen to send his chief ministers, including the great Isaiah (= Asaiah), all males, to consult the gifted woman.

In this way, we might understand Isaiah’s praise of Judith when he, a fellow Simeonite, said of her, as Uzziah, that Judith’s wisdom was known ever since she was a child (Judith 8:28-29):

“Then Uzziah answered Judith,

‘Everything you have said makes good sense, and no one can argue with it. This is not the first time you have shown wisdom. Ever since you were a child, all of us have recognized the soundness and maturity of your judgment’.”

Uzziah (= Isaiah) also calls Judith here ‘a deeply religious woman’ (v. 31).

This, therefore, must go a long way towards explaining why the woman Huldah (= Judith) was consulted by king Josiah’s most eminent male officials – even over the great Isaiah himself.

So, adding to our former merger:

Hezekiah becomes Josiah;

Hilkiah becomes Hilkiah the high priest;

Shebna the secretary becomes Shaphan the secretary;

Joah the recorder becomes Joah the recorder;

Isaiah becomes Asaiah;

Eliakim son of Hilkiah becomes Jeremiah son of Hilkiah,

Judith becomes Huldah.

This last identification is not without several difficulties pertaining to genealogy and geography that will need to be addressed now in Part Three.

Part Three:

The heroine’s husband

Happily, we know something about Judith’s husband, about Huldah’s husband.

But is the former husband the same person as the latter husband?

Whereas Judith’s husband seems to have been situated in “Bethulia”, identified as Bethel-Shechem in the north, Huldah, and presumably her husband, appears to dwell in Jerusalem, in the south.

The apparent geographical problem, at least, can easily be accounted for with reference to Isaiah and his father, Amos, the father-son combination of, respectively, Uzziah and Micah, of the Book of Judith. Like Judith, these men were Simeonites, and were no doubt related to her. They spent large portions of their time in the northern Bethel, but were also often found residing in Jerusalem as advisers to a succession of kings of Judah.

Jewish legend even has Amos as the “brother” (no doubt a marriage relationship) of king Amaziah of Judah.

Judith’s husband, “Manasseh, who belonged to her tribe and family”, had died only about three years before the Assyrians invaded Israel (Judith 8:2-5):

Her husband Manasseh, who belonged to her tribe and family, had died during the barley harvest. For as he stood overseeing those who were binding sheaves in the field, he was overcome by the burning heat, and took to his bed and died in his town Bethulia.

So they buried him with his ancestors in the field between Dothan and Balamon. Judith remained as a widow for three years and four months at home where she set up a tent for herself on the roof of her house. She put sackcloth around her waist and dressed in widow’s clothing.

He had left Judith a very wealthy woman (v. 7): “Her husband Manasseh had left her gold and silver, men and women slaves, livestock, and fields; and she maintained this estate”.

And Judith never married again (16:21-24):

After this they all returned home to their own inheritances. Judith went to Bethulia, and remained on her estate. For the rest of her life she was honored throughout the whole country. Many desired to marry her, but she gave herself to no man all the days of her life after her husband Manasseh died and was gathered to his people. She became more and more famous, and grew old in her husband’s house, reaching the age of one hundred five. She set her maid free. She died in Bethulia, and they buried her in the cave of her husband Manasseh; and the house of Israel mourned her for seven days. Before she died she distributed her property to all those who were next of kin to her husband Manasseh, and to her own nearest kindred.

That is all that we learn about Manasseh.

We also need to take into account the fact that names in the Book of Judith have become confused over time. See e.g. my article:

Book of Judith: confusion of names

https://www.academia.edu/36599434/Book_of_Judith_confusion_of_names

Thus Manasseh, for instance, may be found elsewhere in the Scriptures under a different name.

Perhaps, for example, the name “Manasseh” has been derived (in Greek) from a name like Meshelemiah, Meshillemith, Meshillemoth, Meshullam, Meshullemeth, all being “related names” to Shallum, the husband of Huldah.

Shallum was renowned in Jewish legends. We read of Huldah and Shallum in the article, “Huldah”: https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/biblical-proper-names-biographies/huldah

HULDAH (Heb. חֻלְדָּה; “weasel”), wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, the “wardrobe keeper” of the king; one of the five women in the Bible referred to as nevi’ah, “female prophet”) and the only woman prophet in the book of Kings (ii Kings 22:14–20). She was consulted by *Josiah when he sent to “inquire of the Lord” concerning the Book of the Law discovered during the restoration of the Temple. She prophesied God’s ultimate judgment upon the nation. However, this judgment was to be postponed until after Josiah’s peaceful death because of the king’s acts of repentance. Inasmuch as Josiah’s death was not peaceful hers may be a genuine predictive prophecy. Most of her prophecy is molded by the authors of the Book of Kings in Deuteronomistic style. It is of interest that women prophets are well-attested in roughly contemporary Neo-Assyrian sources.

[Tikva S. Frymer /

1. David Sperling (2^nded.)]

In The Aggadah

She was one of the seven prophetesses (by rabbinic count) mentioned by name in the Bible. After Josiah found the copy of the Torah in the Temple, he consulted Huldah rather than Jeremiah, because he felt that a woman would be more compassionate and more likely to intercede with God on his behalf (Meg. 14b).

Since Jeremiah was a kinsman of the prophetess, both being descended from Joshua and Rahab, the king felt no apprehension that the prophet would resent his preference for Huldah (ibid.). While Jeremiah admonished and preached repentance to the men she did likewise to the women (pr 26:129). In addition to being a prophetess, Huldah also conducted an academy in Jerusalem (Targ., ii Kings 22:14). The “Gate of Huldah” in the Temple (Mid. 1:3) was formerly the gate leading to Huldah’s schoolhouse (Rashi, ii Kings 22:14). Huldah’s husband Shallum, the son of Tikvah, was a man of noble descent and compassionate. Daily he would go beyond the city limits carrying a pitcher of water from which he gave every traveler a drink, and it was as a reward for his good deeds that his wife became a prophetess. Huldah’s unattractive name which means “weasel” is ascribed to her arrogance when she referred to Josiah as “the man” (ii Kings 22:15) and not as king.

[Aaron Rothkoff]

Bibliography:

Ginzberg, Legends, index. add. bibliography: M. Cogan and H. Tadmor, ii Kings (1988), 295; S. Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies (State Archives of Assyria vol. ix; 1997), xiviii-lii”. [End of quotes]

Huldah’s husband must have been very old (article, “Shallum”, Jewish Encyclopedia):

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13490-shallum

“…. Even at the time of the prophet Elisha, Shallum was one of the most eminent men (“mi-gedole ha-dor”) in the country. Yet he did not think it beneath his dignity to lend personal aid to the poor and the needy. It was one of his daily habits to go outside the gates of the city in order that he might give water to thirsty wanderers. God rewarded him by endowing him and his wife Huldah with the gift of prophecy. Another special reward was given him for his philanthropy, for it is he who is referred to in II Kings xiii. 21, where one who was dead awoke to life after being cast into Elisha’s sepulcher and touching the prophet’s bones. A son was granted him, who became distinguished for exceeding piety—Hanameel, Jeremiah’s cousin (Jer. xxxii. 7; Pirḳe R. El. xxxiii.)”.

This brings us to a deeper problem, genealogy.

Whereas Judith’s husband, Manasseh, would appear to have been a Simeonite, as he “belonged to her tribe and family”, Shallum was clearly a Levite. He was “son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe” (2 Kings 22:14).

They, apparently, “lived in Jerusalem, in the New Quarter”.

Shallum’s ancestors, Tikvah and Harhas, were Kohathite Levites (I Chronicles 6:33, 37): “From the Kohathites ….  the son of Tahath [Tikvah], the son of Assir [Harhas] …”.

My tentative explanation would be that Manasseh was Shallum, a Kohathite Levite, hence related to the prophet Jeremiah, whose ancestors had set up home in the city of Shechem. “The hill country of Ephraim gave the Kohathites Shechem, which was a city of refuge …”. (Giver of Truth Biblical Commentary-Vol. 1: Old Testament, pp. 405-406). There, Shallum had married into the family of Simeon, as the Ephraimite (?) father of Samuel may have married a Levite. “It is possible that Elkanah was an Ephraimite who married Hannah, ostensibly a woman from the tribe of Levi” (Robert D. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel, p. 64). Shallum, or Manasseh, may have married a daughter of Judith’s ancestor, Merari.

Judith may have been a wife of Shallum’s old age, his second wife.

Shallum, or Manasseh, “belonged to her tribe and family”, but only, I suggest, through marriage.

“Before [Judith] died she distributed her property to all those who were next of kin to her husband Manasseh, and to her own nearest kindred”.

Shallum may also have possessed a field in Anathoth (Jeremiah 32:7).

 

 

Joah recorder for Hezekiah, Joah recorder for Josiah

  

 

“They called for the king; and Eliakim son of Hilkiah the palace administrator,

Shebna the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder went out to them”.

2 Kings 18:18

 

“In the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, to purify the land and the temple, he sent Shaphan son of Azaliah and

Maaseiah the ruler of the city, with Joah son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the Temple of the LORD his God”.

2 Chronicles 34:8

 

 

Part One:

Merging as one “Joah” of Hezekiah and “Joah”  of Josiah

There is an apparent repetition of names between the above two texts, in Shebna-Shaphan and Joah-Joah, which is perfectly understandable in my revised context, according to which Hezekiah, “the king” of 2 Kings 18:18, was the very same person as king Josiah in 2 Chronicles 34:8. See e. g. my article “Jonah resurrected”: https://amaic-alphaomega.blogspot.com/2020/04/jonah-resurrected.html

But such a coinciding of names is apparently worrisome to the text book commentators – who would conventionally estimate that the two incidents occurred about 90 years apart – who may be inclined, like Thenis, to ‘pronounce these personages fictitious’, and say that “Joah the recorder [of king Josiah] seems to have been borrowed from [the Joah of king Hezekiah] 2Kings 18:18 …”. https://biblehub.com/2_kings/22-3.htm

It is an indication of the correctness of my revision of the later kings of Judah, however, that king Hezekiah, king Josiah, could have officials of (near to) identical names, holding identical positions.

Thus Joah is “the recorder”, ha mazkir (הַמַּזְכִּיר) in both cases, Hezekiah and Josiah. Shebna is “the secretary” ha sopher (הַסֹּפֵר) as his counterpart, Shaphan (סֵפֶר), is found to have been upon further scrutiny (2 Kings 22:8).

And in my “Jonah” article (above), I have identified another parallel character in Isaiah (for Hezekiah) and Asaiah (for Josiah): thus, Isaiah = Asaiah.

The “Hilkiah” referred to in 2 Kings 18:18 as the father of “Eliakim” is met again in the era of Josiah as the identically named “Hilkiah” (3 Chronicles 34:9): “They went to Hilkiah the high priest …”.

Eliakim himself, whom I have identified as high priest in my article:

Hezekiah’s Chief Official Eliakim was High Priest

https://www.academia.edu/31701765/Hezekiahs_Chief_Official_Eliakim_was_High_Priest

does not (I think) appear in any of the accounts of king Josiah. There may he a good reason for this. He, as I have argued in this article, had replaced Shebna as commandant of the fort of Lachish (= “Ashdod”). In the Book of Judith, in which Eliakim (Douay), var. Joakim, is the high priest, we are specifically told that: (Judith 4:6): “The High Priest Joakim, who was in Jerusalem at that time, wrote to the people in the towns of Bethulia and Betomesthaim, which face Jezreel Valley near Dothan”. This geographical information, “who was in Jerusalem at that time”, could indicate that Eliakim was sometimes stationed outside Jerusalem, say, for military and defensive purposes.

But Eliakim had by no means died out by the time of king Josiah, for we find him as “the high priest” even as late as Baruch (1:2): “… in the fifth year, on the seventh day of the month, at the time when the Chaldeans took Jerusalem and burned it with fire”. Eliakim, or Joakim, is there called by the related name of “Jehoiakim” (on “related names” see e.g., https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Jehoiakim.html#.Xsxq8e0vPnE), and commentators (following an enlarged chronology) do not know who he was (this being especially complicated by the fact that they have failed to realise that the Eliakim of Hezekiah was a high priest). The Baruch text, which identifies Jehoiakim as “son of Hilkiah”, as we know him (as Eliakim/Joakim) to have been, reads thus (vv. 5-7): “Then they wept, and fasted, and prayed before the Lord; they collected as much money as each could give, and sent it to Jerusalem to the high priest Jehoiakim son of Hilkiah son of Shallum, and to the priests, and to all the people who were present with him in Jerusalem”.

The office of “recorder” was apparently a highly significant one, some placing it as high as vizier to the king. Thus we read in Bible study tools: https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/recorder/

“Recorder …

(Heb. mazkir, i.e., “the mentioner,” “rememberancer”), the office first held by Jehoshaphat in the court of David ( 2 Samuel 8:16 ), also in the court of Solomon ( 1 Kings 4:3 ). The next recorder mentioned is Joah, in the reign of Hezekiah ( 2 Kings 18:18 2 Kings 18:37 ; Isaiah 36:3 Isaiah 36:22 ). In the reign of Josiah another [sic] of the name of Joah filled this office ( 2 Chronicles 34:8 ). The “recorder” was the chancellor or vizier of the kingdom. He brought all weighty matters under the notice of the king, “such as complaints, petitions, and wishes of subjects or foreigners. He also drew up papers for the king’s guidance, and prepared drafts of the royal will for the scribes. All treaties came under his oversight; and he had the care of the national archives or records, to which, as royal historiographer, like the same state officer in Assyria and Egypt, he added the current annals of the kingdom”. [End of quote]

Note that only three supposed individuals are specifically designated as “recorder” in the OT, Jehoshaphat, at the time of kings David and Solomon, and the supposedly two Joah’s – who, though, I think, need to be trimmed down to just one. One would expect, however, that there must have been a continuation of those holding the office of recorder from Joah all the way back to Jehoshaphat, who will soon become of significance with regard to the ancestry of Joah.

The office of recorder may have involved, also, “herald”, or trumpet-blower, shofar (שׁוֹפָר), in the case of an emergency. Joah may have, for instance, overseen or commanded the trumpet-blowing Levites. John Strazicich has written on trumpet-blowing in the Bible, especially with reference to the Book of Joel (to be considered in Part Two), in his book Joel’s Use of Scripture and the Scripture’s Use of Joel (1960, p. 116):

“The primary theological OT text for the blowing of trumpets is Num 1:1-10. The trumpets function for gathering the cultic community, for use at time of war, and at the time of sacrifice. According to Milgrom, the blowing of trumpets, whether for religious purposes or for war, serves as instruments of prayer in Num 10:9-10. …. Whether for sacrifice or deliverance at times of war, the use of trumpets for prayer has theological significance in Joel’s liturgical context of the [Day of the Lord], as well as for the cultic gathering of the nation. The priestly trumpet blast noted above is an alarm which functions militarily, so that the community is be [sic] remembered before Yahweh. The cultic connection to Joel’s use of the trumpets acts in concert with the prayers of all the community to plead for Yahweh’s mercy (2:15-17)”. [End of quote]

Other “instruments of prayer”, such as cymbals, may also have been part of the recorder’s repertoire. Psalm 150:1-6 lists various such instruments: “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!”

As this article progresses, I shall have something to say, as well, about the apparently different patronymics of my main character, Joah. For example, Joah is “son of Asaph” in the account of king Hezekiah, but he is the “son of Joahaz” in the account of king Josiah.

And now, in Part Two, we are going to acquire yet another patronymic for our Joah, one which may be compatible with the above-mentioned recorder, Jehoshaphat, who is given in 2 Samuel 8:16 and I Kings 4:3 as “son of Ahilud”.

 

Part Two:

Joah as the prophet Joel

 

The Book of Joel opens with the raising of the alarm about a devastating invasion of “locusts” (Joel 1:2-4):

“The word of the Lord that came to Joel son of Phatuel.

^‘Hear this, you elders;
    listen, all who live in the land.
Has anything like this ever happened in your days
    or in the days of your ancestors?
Tell it to your children,
    and let your children tell it to their children,
    and their children to the next generation.
What the locust swarm has left
    the great locusts have eaten;
what the great locusts have left
    the young locusts have eaten;
what the young locusts have left
    other locusts have eaten’.”

This, I had argued in my university thesis:

A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background

http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5973

is a symbolical reference – under the form of “locusts” – to the invasion of Israel and Judah by the armies of Sennacherib, king of Assyria. It is a brilliant image of the utter destruction to the land caused by the marauding Assyrians. These were described as “locusts”, both in history, and in the Bible. For example, “Assyrian documents link armies and locusts …”. (Pablo R. Andiñach, “The Locusts in the Message of Joel”, Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 42, Fasc. 4, Oct., 1992). And Judith 2:20 describes the massive invading host of “Holofernes” as: “A huge, irregular force, too many to count, like locusts, like the dust of the earth …”. (Cf. Amos 7:1).

Joel then becomes more specific (and less symbolical) when he describes this host as both a “nation” and an “army” (1:6): “A nation has invaded my land, a mighty army without number …”. The Douay version of Joel 2:20, referring to “the northern enemy”, includes this footnote: “The northern enemy”: Some understand this of Holofernes and his army: others, of the locusts”. The corrrect view is, I believe, “Holofernes and his army”.

The name of Joel’s “father”, or ancestor, is given as “Phatuel” (or “Pethuel”), which I now take to be a long-ranging reference back to that earlier recorder, Jehoshaphat, the two names sharing the common element “phat” as well as each having a theophoric. Joah of Hezekiah’s father, ancestor, “Asaph”, may perhaps be seen, then, as part of that name, Jehoshaphat – both names sharing the “shap[h]” element.

Joah of Josiah’s ancestor, “Joahaz”, is not so apparent. If, as I am saying, he is to be merged with the Joah of Hezekiah, then presumably “Joahaz” is another reference to Jehoshaphat.

 

Part Three:

Joah-Joel as the prophet Zephaniah

 

“Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble,

for the day of the Lord is coming. It is close at hand—”

Joel 2:1

“The great day of the Lord is near—near and coming quickly.
The cry on the day of the Lord is bitter; the Mighty Warrior shouts his battle cry.

Zephaniah 1:14

 

The “Day of the Lord” [DOL] is a theme common to the prophet Joel and to Zephaniah, who, again like Joel – at least according to my reconstruction of Joel – was prophesying in the days of king Josiah (1:1): “The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, during the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah”.

Joel and Zephaniah share another similarity, as we shall read below, regarding trumpet-blowing in the case of an emergency. Hence my inclusion in Part One of “herald” or trumpet-blower as relevant to the role of the recorder.

Indeed, there are so many likenesses between the messages of Joel and Zephaniah (see Comparisons below), that I am convinced that this was just the one prophet at the time of king Josiah (who is my king Hezekiah).

Some difficulties – genealogy

– Contrary to my connecting of Zephaniah to the Levite line, though, is a tradition that Zephaniah was a Simeonite.

– It is also thought by most that Zephaniah had royal connections going back to king Hezekiah as attested by his unusually long superscription back to a “Hezekiah” (Zephaniah 1:1).

Regarding the first point, the Simeonite tradition, we read in The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testament, and Apocrypha, Volume 2:

“According to Epiphanius, [Zephaniah] was of the tribe of Simeon, and of mount Sarabatha, a place not mentioned in Scripture. Dr. Gray thinks it probable, that the place of his nativity was Saraa, near Eshthaol, in the tibe of Simeon, which, by the addition of the common word beth to the name of places, would come near to Sarabatha. The Jews are of opinion, that the ancestors of Zephaniah, mentioned at the beginning of this prophecy, were all prophets themselves. Some have pretended, but without any foundation, except from the enumeration of his ancestors, that he was of an illustrious family”. [End of quote]

The tradition does not appear to have been unanimously received: “An ancient tradition declares that Zephaniah was of the tribe of Simeon, which would make it impossible for him to be of royal blood; but the origin and value of this tradition are uncertain”. https://www.internationalstandardbible.com/Z/zephaniah-book-of.html

Regarding the second point, a connection back to king Hezekiah, some have expressed doubts about this: For instance, according to the Jewish virtual library: “The genealogy given in Zephaniah 1:1 traces Zephaniah’s ancestry back four generations to a certain Hezekiah, who some have identified with Hezekiah, king of Judah (715–687 B.C.E.), although this identification is sometimes doubted because Hezekiah is not referred to as king …”: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/zephaniah

Given that Zephaniah was a contemporary of king Hezekiah, in my view, then I must reject for him any descent from king Hezekiah. Moroever, some texts replace the name “Hezekiah” with the variant readin “Hilkiah” in Zephaniah’s superscription. And I am going to show a bit further on that “Hilkiah” is in fact the correct reading.

If Zephaniah were Joah-Joel, as I am saying, then he must have had Levite ancestry. And that is what we are now going to find. Our prophet was a Merarite Levite.

A character who is obviously of the same lineage as Zephaniah emerges in the Book of Jeremiah. I refer to Jehudi, who was sent by the princes to invite Baruch to read Jeremiah’s roll to them (Jeremiah 36:14; 36:21). This Jehudi, too, has an impressive genealogy, “son of Nethaniah, the son of Shelemiah, the son of Cushi”, which includes an ancestor of the same name as does Zephaniah’s genealogy, “Cushi”. Given that Jehudi, at the time of Baruch, was at least a close contemporary of the prophet Zephaniah, the latter’s “Cushi” could not have been his actual father, as Zephaniah 1:1 might seem to imply. Cushi was at the very least the great grandfather of Jehudi, and hence a few generations removed from Zephaniah. Remember that Eliakim (son of Hilkiah), high priest at the time of king Hezekiah, was still in office, as Jehoiakim (son of Hilkiah) in the days of Baruch, Jehudi’s contemporary.

The possibiity that Zephaniah was this same Jehudi, “the Jew”, which may be a nick-name, can now be considered as well. Was he specified a “Jew” because of his ancestor’s ethnicity, as a Cushite (“Cushi”)? T. K. Cheyne has argued for what he considers to have been a North Arabic, or “Cushite”, influence amongst the Levites (“From Isaiah to Ezra: A Study of Ethanites and Jerahmeelites”, The American Journal of Theology, 5, no. 3 (Jul., 1901): 433-444). I cannot agree with all of his assertions. But I was interested in his linking of the name Ethan with Nethaniah, for reasons that will now become apparent. Thus T. K. Cheyne writes (p. 435): “Elnathan is a variation of Nethaniah, which is an altered form (note the reflex action of n) of the ethnic Ethani”.

In I Chronicles 6 we finally seem to find our genealogical pathway.
Firstly, we are given the chronological location to the time of king David (vv. 31-32) “These are the men David put in charge of the music in the house of the Lord after the Ark came to rest there. They ministered with music before the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, until Solomon built the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. They performed their duties according to the regulations laid down for them”. Note that these men were Levite musicians, as I have claimed our central figure prophet to have been.

Then follows the crucial name information (vv. 44-45):

“… and from their associates, the Merarites, at his left hand:

Ethan son of Kishi, the son of Abdi,

the son of Malluk, the son of Hashabiah,

the son of Amaziah, the son of Hilkiah ….”

I see here four names from the Zephaniah-Jehudi genealogies: Ethan (= Nethaniah, as explained); Kishi (var. Kushaiah = Cushi); Amaziah (for Amariah) son of Hilkiah (not Hezekiah). Compare Zephaniah 1:1: “The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hilkiah, during the reign of Josiah …”.

John Strazicich has recorded a plethora of intertextual comparisons between the books of Joel and Zephaniah – he regarding Joel as dependent upon Zephaniah – in his book, Joel’s Use of Scripture and the Scripture’s Use of Joel (1960). I now give just some of these to seal our Joah-Joel as Zephaniah:

Pp. 91-92: “Berlin notes that the general dates given for the book [of Zephaniah] range from 630-520 B.C.E. …. Thus, the case for Joel’s dependency upon Zephaniah can be upheld”.

P. 92: “Zephaniah 3 presents a global restoration, where Zion becomes a praise in the earth. Peculiarly, Joel 3-4 particularizes the aspects of Zephaniah’s universalistic purposes (Zeph 3:9)”.

Pp. 96-97: “The motif of theophany is readily observed in Zephaniah, with the association of clouds, thick darkness and the sound of the shofar. All these elements are associated with Yahweh’s theophany on Mt. Sinai (Exod 19:16; Deut 5:22), and are transferred to the DOL.118 Joel adapts these elements for his depiction and incorporates them into the approaching metaphoric locust army of 2:1-11″.

P. 113:

“Particularly important to the task at hand, in the call to alarm, are are the passages from Zeph 1:14-16, Hos 5:8, and Jer 4:5–6 and 6:1. Joel’s call is inseparable from its attachment to the DOL. …. The only passage previous to Joel that brings together these two motifs is Zeph 1:14-16. Although Zephaniah’s formulation for the Alarmbefehl is different, the influence of this passage is undeniable. Joel’s use of this motif is made from two imperative verb forms in synonymous parallelism …. Joel has received this tradition combined with the DOL from Zeph 1:14-16 ….  The controlling motifs which Zephaniah provides are the characteristics of theophany and the call to alarm for battle. Note that Zephaniah’s DOL is a Day of an Alarmbefehl and Lārmzeichen … which is in synonymous parallelism, but minus the verb forms. … petinent references from Zeph 1 … show parallels to Joel 2:1-2 a…”.

P. 114: “Zephaniah’s influence on Joel’s account of the call can be established by its correspondences of borrowed metaphors, such as the nearness of the Day of Yahweh …. the theophanic darkness … and th call to alarm …. These ideas are evidently appropriated into Joel’s own account”.

“Zephaniah’s call to alarm functions as a spring board from which Joel takes the idea of this motif and expands it”.

P. 116:

“The trumpet blast in the book of Joel announces Yahweh’s march against Jerusalem. It is also a theme firmly connected to the theophany at Sinai in Exod 19:16. The Sinai tradition flows into the book of Joel via Zephaniah. This latter prophet connects the Sinai theophanic motifs to the DOL The trumpet blast has precise;ly the same annunciatory connotation as in Joel”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be continued ….

Jonah and Isaiah

by

Damien F. Mackey

The author intends to demonstrate in this article that the prophet Jonah’s intervention in Nineveh was a true historical event.

Part One:

Focus on Esarhaddon

A: Historical ‘moment’

The historical ‘window of opportunity’ that I am going to propose here as best fitting the Jonah narrative will be one that I have already suggested before.

However, due to a then imperfect appreciation of the degree of historical revision required, I had had to drop that particular model as being unworkable.

Since that first effort, however, I have streamlined the histories of Israel, Judah,  Assyria and Babylonia, and that will now make all the difference.

The historical moment that I identify as that best suiting the intervention in “the great city of Nineveh”, נִינְוֵה, הָעִיר הַגְּדוֹלָה, by the prophet Jonah (Jonah 1:2), is the ‘moment’ when King Esarhaddon was in the throes of trying to secure Nineveh from his older brothers, two of whom had assassinated the previous Assyrian king, Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:37).

There may never have been a more dire or foreboding moment in time for the Assyrian people.

Had it not only recently been preceded by the utter rout of the proud king Sennacherib’s Assyrian army of 185,000 men. (v. 35)?

And, as we are going to find out, Esarhaddon’s crisis situation, now, was very much due to the fact that he had been personally involved in that horrendous and unprecedented humiliation of the highly-vaunted Assyrian army.

The Book of Tobit – which will actually refer to Jonah’s mission to Nineveh (Tobit 14:4) – seems to parallel Jonah’s threat (Jonah 3:4): “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown”, when it repeats that very same time period (Tobit 1:21): “But not forty days passed before two of Sennacherib’s sons killed him, and they fled to the mountains of Ararat. A son of his, Esarhaddon, succeeded him as king”.

Sennacherib himself – who was, just prior to his demise, in the process of hunting down the honourable Tobit to kill him (Tobit 1:19) – would seem to be a least likely candidate, amongst the Assyrian kings, for Jonah’s repentant “the king of Nineveh” (Jonah 3:6). And I don’t think any commentator has ever put forward Sennacherib as being a possible candidate. Esarhaddon, on the other hand – {who (under the benign influence of Ahiqar) would allow for Tobit to return home (Tobit 1:22): “Then Ahiqar interceded on my behalf, and I returned to Nineveh. Ahiqar had been chief cupbearer, keeper of the signet ring, treasury accountant, and credit accountant under Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians; and Esarhaddon appointed him as Second to himself”} – seems to have been surprisingly tolerant towards exilic Israel.

A footnote to this Jonah-Tobit connection: The non-historical, composite character, the Prophet Mohammed, whose biography tells of his various associations with “Nineveh”, all quite anachronistic of course (as Nineveh was completely lost from sight long before the supposed AD era of Mohammed), claimed that the prophet Jonah was his brother. “Muhammad asked Addas where he was from and the servant replied Nineveh. “The town of Jonah the just, son of Amittai!” Muhammad exclaimed. Addas was shocked because he knew that the pagan Arabs had no knowledge of the prophet Jonah. He then asked how Muhammad knew of this man. “We are brothers,” Muhammad replied”.” (Summarized from The Life of the Prophet by Ibn Hisham Volume 1 pp. 419–421).

And the names of Mohammed’s parents, ‘Abdullah and Amna, are virtually identical to those of Tobit’s son, Tobias, namely Tobit (= ‘Obadiah = ‘Abdiel = ‘Abdullah) and Anna (= Amna) (Tobit 1:9).

Islam also quotes from the wise sayings of Ahiqar, and even has its own Ahiqar in Luqman, “the Ahiqar of the Arabs”: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=_zvXrQ7W7PEC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=luqman+and+ahiqar

B: Esarhaddon a repenting king

Moreover Esarhaddon was, as we shall learn, a king who, like Jonah’s “the king of Nineveh”, was known to have clothed himself with sackcloth as if in the guise of a sinner.

And he certainly favoured the issuing of royal edicts or decrees – (“a public proclamation”, see below).

He also, early, appears to have had the solidarity-support of his people (cf. Jonah 3:5-6).

Thus Izabela Eph’al-Jaruzelska, “2016 Esarhaddon’s Claim of Legitimacy in an Hour of Crisis: Sociological Observations” (p. 126):

https://www.academia.edu/25716205/2016_Esarhaddons_Claim_of_Legitimacy_in_an_Hour_of_Crisis_Sociological_Observations/

“The Apology mentions the oath sworn to Esarhaddon by the people of Assyria and the king’s brothers before the gods at his nomination as Sennacherib’s successor. …. This public ceremony was intended to express submission and obedience to the king in a solemn way. This oath is invoked as the basis of the loyalty manifested by the people of Assyria when they refused to join the rebellion of those who opposed Esarhaddon’s accession to the Assyrian throne. ….

“It also furnished grounds for the homage the people of Assyria paid to Esarhaddon after his victory over the rebels. …. A public proclamation of Esarhaddon as king during his struggle with the rebels also manifests the people’s consent”. [End of quote]

Esarhaddon will turn out to be amongst the most strange and complex kings of antiquity, possibly the most pious and superstitious of all kings, certainly one of the most cruel and vengeful, and terrifying, at times quite mad, highly literate, a veritable god, a phenomenal (no doubt, at times, lying) propagandist, yet a king also capable of deep contrition and acknowedgement of a supreme deity.

But we shall need to meet him in his various powerful guises, or alter egos, which is an integral feature of my revision. (See Appendix A and B.)

It ought to be noted that, apart from his name, Esarhaddon (“Akkadian: Aššur-aḫa-iddina, meaning “Ashur has given me a brother”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esarhaddon), “Esarhaddon had the further name of Ashur-etil-ilani-mukin-apli”. (http://www.attalus.org/armenian/kvan1.htm). “Akkadian: Aššur-etil-ilāni … , meaning “Ashur is the lord of the gods”,” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashur-etil-ilan), and “mukin-apli” meaning [Ashur] “(is) establisher of a legitimate heir,”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nab%C3%BB-mukin-apli

As Esarhaddon alone (qua Esarhaddon), though, we know from one of the king’s inscriptions that he humbled himself with “sackcloth”. Thus writes John H. Walton (Genesis, 2001): “The Akkadian term for sackcloth is basamu. The most relevant usage of it is in an Esarhaddon inscription in which he is said to have “wrapped his body in sackcloth befitting a penitent sinner” ….”.

Cf. Jonah 3:6: “When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, wrapped himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust”.

There may be an even more relevant text, I think – which could be, in fact, the very Jonah incident – concerning when Esarhaddon went so far as to clothe the horses (or animals) in sackcloth when faced with the threat of a northern enemy. Most unfortunately, however, I cannot at present lay my hands on it – which, from memory, was quoted by D. E. Hart-Davies, Jonah: Prophet and Patriot (1925).

Cf. Jonah 3:7-8: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God”.

(Cf. Judith 4:10-14)

Perhaps a reader may be able to help me out with that missing text. It may well be tied up with the above: “A public proclamation of Esarhaddon as king during his struggle with the rebels also manifests the people’s consent”. 

Don E. Jones will write (Searching for Jonah: Clues in Hebrew and Assyrian History, 2012): “The ceremony of fasting and putting on sackcloth and ashes was not at all alien to Assyria [111] … the custom … goes back to Sumerian civilization and beyond”.

In the Keil and Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament, we read: https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/kdo/jonah-3.html

“Even the one feature which is peculiar to the mourning of Nineveh – namely, that the cattle also have to take part in the mourning – is attested by Herodotus (9:24) as an Asiatic custom.

“(Note: Herodotus relates that the Persians, when mourning for their general, Masistios, who had fallen in the battle at Platea, shaved off the hair from their horses, and adds, “Thus did the barbarians, in their way, mourn for the deceased Masistios.” Plutarch relates the same thing (Aristid. 14 fin. Compare Brissonius, de regno Pers. princip. ii. p. 206; and Periz. ad Aeliani Var. hist. vii. 8). The objection made to this by Hitzig – namely, that the mourning of the cattle in our book is not analogous to the case recorded by Herodotus, because the former was an expression of repentance – has no force whatever, for the simple reason that in all nations the outward signs of penitential mourning are the same as those of mourning for the dead.)” [End of quote]

As for fasting, we know that at least during Esarhaddon’s most terrible and enduring illness: “For days, he withdrew to his sleeping quarters and refused food, drink …” (K. Radner, The Trials of Esarhaddon: the Conspiracy of 670 BC, 2003, p.169). But that might simply indicate a lack of appetite at the time, rather than signifying a penitential fast.

“Greatest to the least”, “small and great” – Compare Jonah 3:5: “The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth”, with: “The use of this general term with the addition of the idiom TUR GAL (ṣeḫer u rabi), “small and great,” simply signifies the totality of Assyrians who were involved in the oath”. 

(Izabela Eph’al-Jaruzelska, op. cit., p. 127)

C: Is Esarhaddon too late for Jonah?

Presuming that Esarhaddon were Jonah’s repentant king, then we must be prepared for a very extensive floruit for the prophet Jonah. He had to have been already prophesying as far back as king Jeroboam II of Israel (2 Kings 14:25): “[Jeroboam] was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher”.

It should be noted that many commentators believe that aspects of the biblical text around 2 Kings 14 are hopelessly corrupt, that v. 28, for instance, about Jeroboam II, “how he recovered for Israel both Damascus and Hamath, which had belonged to Judah”, “probably should be understood as referring” (for example, according to the Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, p. 419), “to the fact that Jeroboam II reconquered territory in Galilee and Transjordan held by Hamath and Damascus during the days of [Jeroboam’s predecessor kings of Israel]”.

In conventional terms, from the death of Jeroboam II (c. 740 BC) to the beginning of the reign of Esarhaddon (c. 680 BC), is about 60 years, meaning that Jonah at Nineveh would have to have been around 85-90 years of age.

That is a very old age for someone to have been tossed into a raging sea and swallowed by a sea monster.

The time span, at least, is easily covered by the traditional Jewish estimations of Jonah’s very long life: “[Jonah]  is said to have attained a very advanced age: over 120 years according to Seder Olam Rabbah; 130 according to Sefer Yuchasin …”.

In terms, though, of my revision of Israelite and Assyrian history (see Appendix A.), I would estimate Jonah then to have been in his early – mid seventies.

Many commentators favour for Jonah’s king, Adad-nirari III (c. 810-783 BC), a contemporary of Jeroboam II. Adad-nirari’s supposed preoccupation with the worship of Nebo is often taken as a sign of the king of Assyria’s conversion to monotheism. It has been likened to pharaoh Akhnaton’s Aten worship (actually henotheism). Adad-nirari may simply have been copying that earlier reform. However, according to Don E. Jones (op. cit.): “… as soon as Adad-Nirari could act on his own, he appears to have given the reform no support”. Adad-Nirari had been very young when he came to the throne. “… Adad-nirari III … was too young to rule. It would be left to Queen Sammu-ramat [Semiramis] to restore stability to Assyria through her regency”: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2017/09-10/searching-for-semiramis-assyrian-legend/

Some commentators favour the troubled reign (plague, rebellion, even a solar eclipse) of Ashur-Dan III (c. 772 to 755 BC).

Bill Cooper (see D. below) is convinced that Tiglath -pileser III (c. 745-727 BC) was that biblical king.

Despite Cooper’s enthusiasm for his choice, Tiglath-pileser was, like Adad-nirari, like Ashur-Dan III, a typical Assyrian king with nothing during his reign to indicate a phase of repentance with a corresponding edict.

Is there any biblical prophet who can meet the chronological requirements of my revised Jonah, spanning from Jeroboam II to late king Hezekiah of Judah (when Esarhaddon came to the throne)?

There is one, and only one, whose superscription, at least, covers that approximate time span. He is the prophet Hosea, according to whose superscription (Hosea 1:1): “The word of the Lord that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel”.

From Jeroboam (II) all the way down to Hezekiah – the same approximate chronological span as in my revised scenario for Jonah. (Some critics have difficulty accepting Hosea’s alleged lengthy prophetic range, and must needs ‘correct’ it,  by replacing Jeroboam (II) in Hosea 1:1 with some later king(s) of Israel).

Hosea is straightaway told, like Jonah, ‘Go …’ (לֵךְ) (cf. Jonah; Hosea 1:2). That is an immediate likeness.

An immediate unlikeness is that, whereas Jonah was “son of Amittai” (as above), Hosea was “son of Beeri”.

The question of suitable alter egos for the prophet Jonah (e.g. Hosea) will be properly discussed in Part Two.

For example, the prophetic career of Amos also commenced at the time of Jeroboam II (Amos 1:1), and did extend – at least according to my own revision of Amos – all the way down to king Hezekiah of Judah.

Can Amos be Jonah?

Or, was Hosea, Jonah?

D: Why “king of Nineveh”?

One of the many arguments thrown up against the prospect of the Book of Jonah’s being an historical account is its supposed historically inaccurate usage of the phrase “the king of Nineveh” – which actual description the kings of Assyria are said never to have applied to themselves. I shall come back to this point.

The complete rejection in modern times of the Book of Jonah as an historical document is well described by Bill Cooper in The Historic Jonah (EN Tech. J., vol. 2, 1986, p. 105) https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j02_1/j02_1_105-116.pdf):

“Ever since the prophet Jonah first penned the little book that is known by his name, some two thousand six hundred years ago, the most extraordinary notions have circulated concerning both him and his ministry. Some early rabbis claimed that he was the son of the widow of Zarephath, the lad whom Elijah had restored to life. …. Others, yet again, imagined him to have been the servant whom Elisha sent to anoint King Jehu. …. Jonah is also pointed out as having two tombs! One lies at Nineveh, and the other at Jonah’s home-village of Gath-hepher, just a stone’s throw from the town of Nazareth. And so it has gone on down the ages, until today we are informed that Jonah did not even exist! The book of Jonah, we are asked to believe, is nothing more than a pious fable, a moral tale written some time after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian Exile; a story told around camp-fires that has all the historical validity of a Grimm’s fairy-tale.

“Unfortunately, and not without incalculable loss, this latest view has prevailed. Most modern Christian (and Jewish) authors will, if they mention Jonah at all, speak of him only in terms of parable and myth, usually in tones that amount to little less than an apology. Very few indeed, and I personally know of none, will attempt to speak of Jonah in a purely historical sense. …. This is very odd, to say the least, because Jonah enjoys more support from Jewish and Assyrian history than a great many other characters of the ancient world whose existence few historians would doubt. There is, indeed, something very sinister about the out-of-hand way in which Jonah is dismissed from serious discussion by modernist critics and historians. This sinister aspect has, perhaps, to do with the fact that Jesus spoke of Jonah in a historical sense, and He referred to Jonah in direct reference to His own forthcoming

resurrection from the dead. …. Could it be, perhaps, that if modernists can cast doubt upon the historicity of Jonah, then they will also have license to cast doubt upon the words and teachings of Jesus Christ and the truth of His resurrection? The two are intimately connected, and any dismissal of the historicity of Jonah should be treated with a great deal of suspicion”. [End of quote]

“A pious fable”, “a moral tale”. I have also heard a priest employ the description, “a didactic fiction”, for the Book of Jonah. These very sorts of terms are used, once again, to describe the Book of Judith, e.g., “a literary fiction”, about whose historical defence I can largely say with Bill Cooper: “Very few indeed, and I personally know of none, will attempt to speak of [Judith] in a purely historical sense”.

Commentators who do take seriously the Jonah narrative – yes there are indeed some – such as Paul Ferguson in his article, “Who Was The ‘King Of Nineveh’ In Jonah 3:6?” (Tyndale Bulletin, Issue 47.2, 1996) – will attempt to show that the title, the “king of Nineveh”, can be considered genuine historical usage. Ferguson, whose article is well worth reading as an overall commentary on the Book of Jonah, offers the following “Summary” (p. 301): https://www.galaxie.com/article/tynbul47-2-05

“This article seeks to show the title ‘king of Nineveh’ is not an anachronism. Comparison with Aramaic use of the north-west Semitic mlk, important in a north Israelite context, may suggest that a city or provincial official might have been under consideration. Cuneiform evidence seems to suggest that no distinction is made between city and province in designating a governor. Common custom was to give provincial capitals the same name as the province. This could explain the fact that the book of Jonah says the ‘city’ was a three day walk (3:3).

“I. The ‘King Of Nineveh’

The Hebrew phrase melek nînĕveh (‘king of Nineveh’) is found in the Old Testament only in Jonah 3:6. It never occurs in any contemporary documents. Most literature proceeds on the assumption that the author used this expression to refer to the king of the Assyrian empire. It has often been suggested that this wording indicates the author wrote centuries after the fall of this nation. ….

“1. ‘King Of Nineveh’ Vs ‘King Of Assyria’

If this be the case, then one must consider why, if the author of the book lived centuries after the ‘historical Jonah’ of 2 Kings 14:25, he would ignore the usual designation ‘king of Assyria’. This phrase is found thirty times in 2 Kings 18-20. …”. [End of quote]

Arguments such as this one by Paul Ferguson had led me, in the past, to wondering whether the Jonah incident may have occurred when Assyria did not have an actual king – say, in between the assassination of Sennacherib and the triumph of Esarhaddon – when, as I had considered, the city of Nineveh may have been represented by a stand-in high official, such as Ahiqar, who, too, presumably, would have been favourable to the message of Jonah. The king soon afterwards – but seemingly only after the people themselves had begun to repent (Jonah 3:5-6) – received the message. But there was a time delay. Perhaps, I had pondered, the future king may still have been on his way: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Esarhaddon

“Sennacherib was murdered (681) [sic] by one or more of Esarhaddon’s brothers, apparently in an attempt to seize the throne. Marching quickly from the west, Esarhaddon encountered the rebel forces in Hanigalbat (western Assyria), where most of them deserted to him, and their leaders fled. Esarhaddon continued on to Nineveh, where he claimed the throne without opposition” [sic].

(Compare instead, below, “persistent resistance by the opposition”).

It is interesting that Jesus Christ himself, who will refer specifically to “the Queen of the South”, will fail to make any mention whatsoever of the king of Nineveh, but only his subjects (Matthew 12:41-42): “The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it …”.

It can be (and is) debated as to the degree of conversion of the Ninevites – that it should not be understood that they had converted to a strict Yahwistic monotheism. Theirs was a general sort of repentance from their wicked ways of living. “The Ninevites believed God” [Elohim] (Jonah 3:5). For, when we turn to consider the parallel case of the Queen of Sheba (of the South), we find that she will refer to the God of Solomon as your, not as my, or as our, God (I Kings 10:9): ‘Blessed be the Lord thy God …’. Isaiah 7 is most instructive in this regard as the prophet begins his discussion with king Ahaz with the words (v. 11): ‘Ask the Lord your God for a sign …’, but then soon switches in disgust to this (v. 13): ‘Will you try the patience of my God also?’

Consider, too, in light of all of this, the startling case of Rudolph Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his dramatic return to his Catholic roots just before he was hanged: “‘It was a hard struggle’, Höss had written toward the end. ‘But I have again found my faith in my God’.” (My emphasis):

https://www.thedivinemercy.org/articles/divine-mercy-and-commandant-auschwitz

I have since dropped any former notion of an official running Nineveh at the time of Jonah’s preaching there. Esarhaddon, according to the article by Izabela Eph’al-Jaruzelska from which I have been quoting, was confronted by revolutions and hostility all over the place, forcing him even at one stage to flee for his life (op. cit. p. 133):

“According to the Babylonian Chronicle: “On the twentieth day of the month Tebet Sennacherib, king of Assyria, was killed by his son in a rebellion (ina sīḫi). For [twenty-four] years Sennacherib ruled Assyria. The rebellion continued in Assyria from the twentieth day of the month Tebet until the second day of the month Adar. On the twenty-eighth/ eighteenth day of the month Adar Esarhaddon, his son, ascended the throne in Assyria” (Chron. “The early royal correspondence reflects this long struggle, which lasted about two months. According to Bel-ushezib (see above, section III), Esarhaddon “evaded execution [by fleeing] to the Tower (URU.a-ši-t [i…])” (SAA X 109). Likewise, Mardi, probably a Babylonian, mentions in his letter to the king how he escaped to the tower (URU.i-si-ti) together with Esarhaddon (SAA XVI 29). These two early letters corroborate Esarhaddon’s reference to his asylum (RINAP 4 1 i 39). Bel-ushezib’s emphasis that plotting the murder of Esarhaddon and his officials continued “every day” (ūmussu SAA X 109 12′) implies persistent resistance by the opposition”. [End of quote]

I therefore suggest that the author of the Book of Jonah referred to the Assyrian ruler as “the king of Nineveh” because that is all that he actually was at that particular, most critical moment in time.

Esarhaddon was under extreme duress, in part because of the great debacle that had occurred in Israel, near Shechem (= “Bethulia”, the Judith incident), which late sources wrongly refer to as a defeat by Egypt. Thus Izabela Eph’al-Jaruzelska (op. cit., p. 123): “For example, the Babylonian Chronicle yields information on Esarhaddon’s great failure in Egypt, which is known only from here (Chron. 1 iv 16)”.
And again: “The Babylonian Chronicle mentions the expedition of B.C. 675 [sic], but the recently translated tablet shows why it was without results. Having ordered the investment of Jerusalem and Tyre, Esarhaddon marched against Pelusium … Egypt’s chief fortress on her north-east frontier. He was overtaken by a storm. …. The number of men who perished as given in the Bible must be an exaggeration, but as the storm wrecked Esarhaddon’s plans for the year his army must have suffered severely”. [End of quote]

(E. A Wallis Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology, 1893, p. 75)

This late testimony as recalled by E. A. Wallis Budge needs a lot of tidying up.

Although the ultimate goal of king Sennacherib’s last great western campaign was Egypt (cf. Judith 1:10-12), the Assyrian king would by no means succeed in getting that far. For, as Isaiah had rightly foretold (37:33): ‘He will not enter this city [Jerusalem] or even shoot an arrow here. He will not fight against it with shields or build a ramp to attack the city walls’ – all of which Sennacherib had succeeded in doing on the earlier occasion. In that last major western campaign, this time led by Sennacherib’s eldest son, Ashur-nadin-shumi (the Nadin, or Nadab, of Tobit 14:10), and not Esarhaddon, his youngest, the Assyrian behemoth will not reach even as far as Jerusalem, having been stopped in its tracks in the north, near Shechem, by the ruse of Judith the Simeonite.

As with Herodotus, “Pelusium” in Egypt (perhaps confused with the like sounding “Jerusalem”) has irrelevantly been brought into the Babylonian Chronicle account. There was no “storm” involved. The Judith ruse would precipitate a rout, with many soldiers of the massive Assyrian army perishing. As Budge correctly observed, the Assyrian “army must have suffered severely”.

But the Bible, when properly read, does not (as Budge thought) ‘exaggerate’ this rout.

It took Esarhaddon, who succeeded Ashur-nadin-shumi (“Holofernes”), some time to get his army back to its full strength, ‘wrecking his immediate plans’. Historians wrongly attribute the demise of Ashur-nadin-shumi to, instead, an un-mentioned (though added in square brackets) “Sargon”.

I quote again from Izabela Eph’al-Jaruzelska (op. cit., p. 131):

“Another example is the tablet K.4730 (+) Sm.1876, called The Sin of Sargon, allegedly attributed in the text itself to Sennacherib, which resembles the Naram-Sin epic in style and content. This text explains that Sargon’s death on the battlefield was a result of his sin: “Was it because [he honored] the gods o[f Assyria too much, placing them] above the gods of Babylonia [ ……, and was it because] he did not [keep] the treaty of the king of gods [that Sargon my father] was killed [in the enemy country and] was not b[uried] in his house?” In light, then, of this attitude about divine support, Esarhaddon must have been highly embarrassed by his military failure in Egypt, particularly as it followed a four-year period (from the end of 677 until around 673) [sic] devoid of military achievement”. [End of quote]

Part Two:

Focus on Jonah

A: Retracing my earlier steps: Elijah to Amos

My search for the prophet Jonah has led me ‘all around the mulberry bush’. Or perhaps, to be more contextual, all around the ‘kikayon’ (קִיקָיוֹן) bush (Jonah 4:6).

With 2 Kings 14:25 in mind, I did what other commentators tend to do, and that was to search for the Jonah incident during the time of an Assyrian ruler contemporaneous with king Jeroboam II of Israel.

Elijah

But I also went even further back than that, to a possible connection of Jonah with Elijah, based on the following sorts of smiliarities between this pair of prophets, taken from: http://seminary.csl.edu/facultypubs/TheologyandPractice/tabid/87/ctl/Details/mid/494/ItemID/40

“If we add to this list the fact that the phrase in Jonah 1:1 (“now the word of Yahweh came”) also introduces Elijah in 1 Kings 17:2, 8; 21:17, 28 then we are subtly led to this conclusion; one of the goals of the Jonah narrative is to compare the prophet from Gath-hepher with Elijah.

“More specific – and indeed more satirical – connections between Jonah and Elijah begin in Jonah 1:2 where Yahweh calls Jonah to, “arise, go” to Nineveh. This call to go to a foreign land is paralleled only in 1 Kings 17:9 where Yahweh commands Elijah also to “arise, go to Zarephath which is in Sidon.”

“Usually Yahweh’s word is the perfect performative, where to speak is to create. The God who says “Let there be light” and “it was so” (Gen. 1:3), commands Elijah to “Arise go to Zarapheth” (1 Kings 17:9) and Elijah “arises and goes,” (1 Kings 17:10). Following this normal biblical pattern we expect the Jonah narrative to continue, “So Jonah got up and went … to Nineveh.” But, instead, Jonah says nothing to Yahweh and rises to flee. It’s as though outside his door Jonah hangs a large sign with the words, “Do Not Disturb!” Jonah is certainly no Elijah!”

Perhaps I should have taken that last hint.

The prophet Elijah disappears from the scene, at least qua Elijah, during the reign of Jehoram of Judah (2 Chronicles 21:12). That was well before the time of Jeroboam II. But there is always, for me, that possibility of an extension of a biblical floruit through an alter ego.

Elisha

The extraordinary prophet Elisha, ‘miracles on tap’, also loomed for me as a possible Jonah. He, like Jonah in the case of Jeroboam II, had advised a king of Israel, Jehoash, about the extent of his military conquests (2 Kings 13:14-19). Even though Elisha died shortly after this (v. 20), I shall be having more to say in Appendix A about the Jehoash-Jeroboam II connection, about a shortening of Israelite history, and about the identification of the “saviour” of 2 Kings 13:5.

Obviously, though, Elisha could not qualify for my prophet Jonah at the time of Esarhaddon.

My termini a quo and ad quem for Jonah have so far been determined as, respectively, Jeroboam II and early Esarhaddon. One would think, however, that there must have been more to the ministering of the prophet Jonah than just these two, chronologically far apart, occasions.

And we are going to find out that there was much more activity than that involving Jonah.

Amos

A far more promising candidate for Jonah, however, began to loom in the person of Amos, whose prophetic witness commenced “when … Jeroboam … was king of Israel” (Amos 1:1). Amos, too, as with Elijah, can be likened to Jonah. Thus I have previously quoted from the book by Hadi Ghantous, Elisha-Hazael Paradigm and the Kingdom of Israel ( p. 180):

… Jonah and Amos

The connections between Jonah and Amos are not as clear as those with Elijah although it is more clear that the fate of nations surrounding Israel is a major concern in both Amos and Jonah (Andersen and Freedman 1989: 236). The superscription in the book of Amos (Amos 1:1) sets Amos in the days of Jeroboam II and makes Amos a contemoprary of Jonah. In 2 Kings 14:23-29, Jeroboam II recovers territories from the Entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, and restore [sic] Damascus and Hamath to Judea in Israel. Similarly, Amos 1:3-5 is an oracle against Damascus; Amos 5:27 threatens Israel with an exile beyond Damascus. In Amos 6:2, Zion and Samaria are called to compare themselves with Hamath. Amos 6:14 refers to oppression from the Entrance of Hamath to the Valley of the Arabah (Pyper 2007: 351-3). In other words, both prophets deal with Damascus, Hamath, and the region from the Entrance of Hamath to the Sea/Valley of the Arabah. Amos refutes the prophetic title (Amos 7:14); Jonah is never said to be a prophet in Jonah. Amaziah warns Jonah to flee … for his life (Amos 7:12), while Jonah almost loses his life while fleeing (Jon, 1).

“Other topical similarities can be found; singing (Amos 8:3// Jon. 2), sackcloths (Amos 8:10// Jon 3:6), wandering from sea to sea (Amos 8:12// Jon. 1:3-2:10), thirst (Amos 8:13// Jon. 4:8), and sheol (Amos 9:2// Jon. 2) (Edelman 2009: 162). These similarities pose the question whether they go beyond a mere imitation of details and indicate a fundamental similarity and connection between Amos and Jonah. …”. [End of quote]

Jonah is well-known as ‘the reluctant prophet’, and this, too, may have been a trait of Amos (7:14): ‘I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet …’.

There is also a very Jonah-like note in Amos 9:3: “Even if they tried to hide from me at the bottom of the sea, from there I would command the Sea Serpent [הַנָּחָשׁ] to bite them”. Don E. Jones (op. cit.) has made this very same connection: “There is something ominous in Amos’s prophecy, the first part of which [9:3] certainly applies to Jonah …”.

While Amos qualifies chronologically as being a contemporary of Jonah’s at the time of Jeroboam II, he will fall just short of early Esarhaddon (the ‘moment’ of Jonah’s intervention at Nineveh). See next.

Micah

Amos is, according to my revision of Israel and Judah, the same as the prophet Micah, known as “Amos redivivus”. Micah (Amos) is also the Micaiah who prophesied the death of king Ahab of Israel (I Kings 22:8-28). This controversial connection (Micaiah = Micah), which has the support of some Jewish tradition (see e.g., Ginzberg, Legends, 6:355, n. 20), pitches Micah back well before king Jeroboam II. Amos is also generally considered to have been the father of Isaiah, “son of Amoz” (Isaiah 1:1). I have also identified Isaiah son of Amos with the “Uzziah son of Micah, of the tribe of Simeon” of Judith 6:15. Uzziah must have followed his father Amos northwards to Bethel (the “Bethulia” of the Book of Judith), which is the strategically vital city of Shechem, where Uzziah later became the chief magistrate. He is also described as “the prince of Juda[h]” and “the prince of the people of Israel” (Judith 8:34; 13:23. Douay), perhaps due to his father Amos’s apparently royal connection with king Amaziah of Judah. “The rabbis of the Talmud declared, based upon a rabbinic tradition, that Amoz was the brother of Amaziah (אמציה), the king of Judah at that time (and, as a result, that Isaiah himself was a member of the royal family)” (article, “Amoz”): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoz

The prophet Micah must not have lived to have witnessed the Judith incident.

He is not mentioned there (Book of Judith) as still being alive.

The Book of Jeremiah tells that Micah was yet prophesying during the reign of king Hezekiah of Judah (26:18): “Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spoke to all the people of Judah, saying, ‘Thus said the LORD of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest’.”

This prediction pertained to Sennacherib king of Assyria’s earlier successful invasion of Judah and Jerusalem. Micah, though, apparently was no longer alive when Ashur-nadin-shumi (“Holofernes”), son of Sennacherib, came to the region of “Bethulia” (Bethel-Shechem) with an army of 185,000 men. Thus the prophet Micah cannot qualify for my Jonah early in the reign of Esarhaddon, who succeeded Sennacherib. Micah just misses out – he must have been extremely old when he died.

B: Hosea, Isaiah

The prophet Hosea is, as determined in Part One, the only one of the prophets who – at least according to his superscription (Hosea 1:1) – spanned my requisite era from Jeroboam II unto Hezekiah. His prophetic floruit is closely matched by Isaiah’s, but without (in the case of Isaiah) the inclusion of Jeroboam II (Isaiah 1:1): “The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah”.

The names of Hosea and Isaiah, as well, are very close in meaning, both pertaining to “Salvation”. Abarim Publications lists Isaiah as a name “related” to Hosea (article, “Isaiah meaning”): https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Hosea.html#.Xp5Y6u0vPnF

Previously I have written regarding the striking similarities between Isaiah and Hosea:

“The names Isaiah and Hosea are indeed of very similar meaning, being basically derived from the same Hebrew root for ‘salvation’, יֵ֫שַׁע

– “Isaiah” (Hebrew יְשַׁעְיָהוּ , Yeshâ‘yâhû) signifies: “Yahweh (the Lord) is salvation”.

– “Hosea” (Hebrew הוֹשֵׁעַ) means practically the same: “Yahweh (the Lord) is saviour”.

….

“Hosea’s/Isaiah’s Family

Though no doubt young, the prophet was given the strange command by God to marry an ‘unfaithful’ woman: “‘Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry, for the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord’. So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim …” (Hosea 1:2-3). Biblical scholars have agonised over the type of woman this Gomer might have been: adulteress? harlot? temple-prostitute? But essentially the clue is to be found in the statement above that she was a citizen of the ‘land of great harlotry’: namely, the northern kingdom of Israel. ….

“A further likeness between Isaiah and Hosea was the fact that ‘their names’ and those of ‘their’ children were meant to be, in their meanings, prophetic signs. ….

– The prophet Isaiah tells us: “Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and portents …” (Isaiah 8:18).

– Similarly, the names of the children of the prophet Hosea were meant to be prophetic (Hosea 1:4, 6, 9).

“Charles Boutflower (The Book of Isaiah Chapters I-XXXIX, 1930), who has written perceptively on Isaiah’s children, has rightly noted the prophetic significance of their names and those of Hosea’s children, without however connecting Isaiah and Hosea as one: …. “Isaiah like Hosea had three known children, all of whose names were prophetic”. [End of quote]

“It is most unlikely, one would have to think, to have two great prophets contemporaneously operating over such a substantial period of time, and each having three children whose names were prophetic. The fact is, I believe, that it was just the one prophet, who may possibly have had six children in all”.

[End of quotes]

For these, and for other reasons, I have identified Hosea and Isaiah as “just the one prophet”, ministering to both Israel and Judah. That to go with my already mentioned identification of the prophet Isaiah with the princely “Uzziah” of the Book of Judith.

Hosea-Isaiah is the only possible prophetic candidate, in my revised context, for Jonah son of Amittai.

Jonah’s otherwise unknown father, “Amittai”, must then be Amaziah, that is, Amos.

Jonah’s (or probably his father’s) home of “Gath-hepher”, which cannot possibly have been the place of that name in Galilee – since, as the learned Pharisees well knew (John 7:52): ‘…. Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee’ – must then be the southern Gath of Moresheth, the home of Micah-(Amos) (1:1): “The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth …”.

“Micah is called the Morasthite, probably because he was a native of Moresheth-gath, a small town of Judea, which, according to Eusebius and Jerome, lay in a southwesterly direction from Jerusalem, not far from Eleutheropolis on the plain, near the border of the Philistine territory” (“The Twelve Minor Prophets”): https://biblehub.com/library/barrows/companion_to_the_bible/chapter_xxiii_the_twelve_minor.htm

Although “the vision … concerning Israel” as seen by Amos will occur at “Tekoa” (Amos 1:1), I have previously written on this:

“There are reasons, though, why I think that Tekoa would not have been the actual home of the prophet Amos. When confronted by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, Amos retorted (7:14-15): ‘I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees.  But the Lord took me from following the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel’.’

“Now, commentators such as Eugene Merrill have been quick to point out “that sycamores were abundant in the Shephelah but not around Tekoa” (The World and the Word: An Introduction to the Old Testament, 2011, p. 431, n. 4).

“So, my first point would be that Amos’s cultivating of sycamore-fig trees would be most appropriate in Moresheth, but highly unlikely in Tekoa. Moresheth, we read, “is the opposite exposure from the wilderness of Tekoa, some seventeen miles away across the watershed. As the home of Amos is bare and desert, so the home of Micah is fair and fertile” (“Micah 1”, Expositor’s Bible Commentary).

“My second point is that Amos, apparently a herdsman (בַנֹּקְדִים) – some think a wealthy “sheepmaster”, whilst others say that he must have been poor – was, as we read above, “following the flock” מֵאַחֲרֵי הַצֹּאן)), meaning that, seasonally, he was a man on the move. Stationed at his home town of Moresheth in the Shephelah, I suggest, where he trended the sycamore trees, the prophet also had to move with the flock from time to time.

And this is apparently where Tekoa (about 6 miles SE of Bethlehem) comes into the picture”.

[End of quotes]

The reason why such striking similarities can be found between Amos and Jonah (as we read above in A.) is because this was a father-son prophetic combination ranging from Israel to Judah. It is the very same reason why we find some almost identical statements and actions emanating from Micah (= Amos) and from Isaiah (= Jonah). Read, for example,  Micah 4:1-3 and Isaiah 2:2-4.

“But who quoted whom?”, it is asked: https://abramkj.com/2012/12/11/which-came-first-isaiah-or-micah-comparing-isaiah-22-4-with-micah-41-3/

Well, Micah was the father, and Isaiah was the son.

Compare also Micah 1:8: “Because of this I will weep and wail; I will go about barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and moan like an owl”, and Isaiah 20:3: “Then the LORD said, ‘Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush …’.”

No doubt Jonah’s prediction regarding Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:25): “[Jeroboam] was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher”, was uttered with all due awareness of his father Amos’s own prediction (cf. 6:14):

“For the Lord God Almighty declares,

    ‘I will stir up a nation against you, Israel,

that will oppress you all the way

    from Lebo Hamath to the valley of the Arabah’.”

More tellingly, from my point of view, commentators have suggested that some parts of the Book of Isaiah (my Jonah) may actually have originated with Jonah. Don E. Jones, again, writes of it (op. cit.):

“Spurred by the reference in II Kings 14:25, scholars over the years have searched diligently in the Scriptures for the “Lost Book of Jonah”. Hitzig and Renan have attributed the prophecies of Isaiah 15-23 to Jonah as being inconsistent with other parts of the book. Allusions to Moab, Egypt and Ethiopia, would certainly give Jonah a wider scope of action. He would know conditions in Tyre, Sidon and Damacus from the Assyrian venture. Sargon’s reign in Assyria (Isaiah 20:1) began in 721. It was by no means impossible that Jonah could still have been alive at the time of Isaiah”. [End of quote]

The view of Hitzig and Renan enables us to fill out the prophet Jonah all the more. His prophetic mission beyond Israel was not just limited to Nineveh. Isaiah, like Jonah (1:3), appears to have been very familiar, too, with the “ships of Tarshish” (e.g., 2:16; 23:1; 60:9).

As to why (we read this earlier) the name of Hosea’s father would be given as “Beeri”, whereas Isaiah’s father is given as “Amoz”, the Book of Judith may provide something of a clue. Judith was, like Uzziah (my Isaiah-Hosea) of Bethulia, a Simeonite (cf. Judith 8:1; 9:2). The Bethulians were a closely knit bunch, with Judith’s husband, Manasseh, belonging “to the same tribe and clan” as she (8:2). Uzziah, also a Simeonite, may well have been a relative of both Judith and her husband. Judith seems to have been immensely proud of her ‘father’, Merari, she singing, after her great victory over “Holofernes”:

‘For their mighty one did not fall by the hands of the young men,

    nor did the sons of the Titans strike him down,

    nor did tall giants set upon him;

but Judith daughter of Merari

    with the beauty of her countenance undid him’.

Hosea’s father, “Beeri”, could possibly be that Merari, given what C. Conder will refer to (I noted this in my postgraduate university thesis on King Hezekiah of Judah) as the “occasional instances in Syrian nomenclature” of the substitution of M for B. Conder was hoping with this to establish the fairly unimportant site of “Mithilia” (or Mesilieh) as Judith’s “Bethulia”.

Somewhat coincidentally, we read in Genesis (26:34): “When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite …”. Obviously no relation, though.

Consulting Abarim Publications, I find that the name “Merari” does not have Amoz (Amos) listed as a “related” name: https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Merari.html#.XqER-O0vPnE

Perhaps Merari could have been an ancestor, rather than a direct father, of both Hosea and Judith.

One name “related” to Merari in Abarim is “Imrah”, which is very much like the biblically rare name, Imlah (Imla), father of Micaiah (I Kings 22:8) – hence grandfather of Hosea-Isaiah (and Judith?).

A special mention is made in I Chronicles 4:33 to the Simeonites keeping “a genealogical record”.

Part Three:

Deeper Focus on Jonah

A: A Revised life of Jonah

Here (A-B) I intend to trace in outline the life of the prophet Jonah, largely through his better known alter ego (that is, according to my revision), Isaiah (= Hosea). The historicity of the prophet Isaiah (and hence of Jonah) may perhaps be attested by a clay seal found in Jerusalem (Amanda Borschel-Dan’s, “In find of biblical proportions, seal of Prophet Isaiah said found in Jerusalem”): https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-find-of-biblical-proportions-proof-of-prophet-isaiah-believed-unearthed/

“The oval-shaped bulla, however, is not intact. On its legible portion, there is an inscription with First Temple Hebrew letters that seem to spell out the name l’Yesha’yah[u] (Belonging to Isaiah). On a line below, there is the partial word nvy, which presumably spells out “prophet.” Because the bulla has been slightly damaged at the end of the word nvy, it is not known if it originally ended with the Hebrew letter aleph, which would have resulted in the Hebrew word for ‘prophet’ and would have definitively identified the seal as the signature of the prophet Isaiah,” [Dr. Eilat] Mazar said”. [End of quote]

Isaiah likely began his prophetic career as Hosea (1:1) “When the Lord began to speak though Hosea …”. As we know, this was during the reign of king Jeroboam II of Israel. Hosea, I have suggested, had followed his (= Isaiah’s) father Amos to Bethel (= Judith’s “Bethulia”), which is Shechem, in the north. There, the prophet must have made the prediction about king Jeroboam of 2 Kings 14:25 that is attributed to Jonah.

Isaiah-Hosea fluctuated between Israel and Judah. He famously recorded (Isaiah 6:1): “In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the Temple”.

And, later, in Judah, he will offer a sign to a recalcitrant King Ahaz (Isaiah 7:11).

Uzziah, Ahaz, Hezekiah, these are all historically verifiable kings. Thus, for instance, we read in Christoper Eames’ “Archaeology unearths historical fact – and proves the biblical record at the same time”: https://www.thetrumpet.com/18639-so-much-archaeological-proof

“You’ve probably heard the names of many of Israel’s and Judah’s biblical kings. Do you know just how many have had their existence proved—independently—through archaeology?

These are the names thus far that have turned up in early, original contexts: kings David, Omri, Ahab, Jehu, Joash, Jeroboam ii, Uzziah, Menahem, Ahaz, Pekah, Hoshea, Hezekiah, Manasseh and Jehoiachin. The existence of these kings has been verified through scientific discovery even by the most stringent of analytical standards.

“Several years ago, the personal seal impression of King Hezekiah was found during excavations on Jerusalem’s Ophel mound. The tiny stamped clay piece reads: “Belonging to Hezekiah, [son of] Ahaz, king of Judah.” The impressive find is one of many that refer to King Hezekiah. His name also turns up in inscriptions belonging to his arch-nemesis, Assyria’s King Sennacherib”. [End of quotes]

According to Sirach 48:22-25:

“For Hezekiah did what was pleasing to the Lord,
    and he kept firmly to the ways of his ancestor David,
as he was commanded by the prophet Isaiah,
    who was great and trustworthy in his visions.

In Isaiah’s days the sun went backward,

    and he prolonged the life of the king.

By his dauntless spirit he saw the future,

    and comforted the mourners in Zion.

He revealed what was to occur to the end of time,

    and the hidden things before they happened”.

After Isaiah’s strong warnings to King Hezekiah and his subjects about the futility of turning to Egypt for help against Assyria – just he had warned Hezekiah’s father, Ahaz, not to depend upon Assyria – Sennacherib will come up against Jerusalem and will successfully lay siege to the city.

Isaiah will, at that approximate time, cure King Hezekiah of a life-threatening illness, and will afterwards promise a better outcome against the Assyrians in the face of Sennacherib’s subsequent blasphemy (2 Chronicles 32:9-19).

Isaiah (as Uzziah) is back in the north, in “Bethulia”, when the ill-fated Assyrian army of 185,000 arrives at his doorstep. The great man will, in fact, be soundly reprimanded by the beautiful, and younger, Judith, for agreeing upon oath to deliver the city to the Assyrians within five days if rain does not come (Judith 8:9-27). It is Moses all over again, in a watery situation, but, in the case of Moses, the reprimand had come directly from Yahweh (Numbers 20:9-13).

As Uzziah, the prophet will receive into his household the abandoned Achior (Tobit’s nephew, Ahiqar), left by “Holofernes” to die amongst the Israelites whom he had verbally defended (Judith cf. 5:5-21; 6:10-19). This is the Nadin-Ahiqar situation of betrayal as recalled by Tobit (14:10-11):

“Tobias, my son, leave Nineveh now. Do not stay here. As soon as you bury your mother beside me, leave; do not stay another night within the city limits. It is a wicked city and full of immorality; the people here have no sense of shame. Remember what Nadin [Nadab] did to Ahikar his own uncle who had brought him up. He tried to kill Ahikar and forced him to go into hiding in a tomb. Ahikar came back into the light of day, but God sent Nadin down into everlasting darkness for what he had done. Ahikar escaped the deadly trap which Nadin had set for him, because Ahikar had given generously to the poor. But Nadin fell into that fatal trap and it destroyed him. So now, my children, you see what happens to those who show their concern for others, and how death awaits those who treat others unjustly”.

Ahiqar “came back into the light of day” thanks in large part to the courageous intervention of Judith (14:6-10):

“So they called Achior [Ahiqar] from Uzziah’s house. But when he came and saw the head of Holofernes in the hands of one of the men, Achior fainted and fell to the floor. When they had helped him up, Achior bowed at Judith’s feet in respect. ‘May every family in the land of Judah praise you’, he said, ‘and may every nation tremble with terror when they hear your name. Please tell me how you managed to do this’.

“While all the people were gathered around, Judith told him everything that she had done from the day she left the town until that moment. When she had finished her story, the people cheered so loudly that the whole town echoed with sounds of joy. When Achior heard all that the God of Israel had done, he became a firm believer. He was circumcised and made a member of the Israelite community, as his descendants are to the present day”.

Achior (Ahiqar), (var. Arioch) wrongly called “the leader of all the Ammonites” (Judith 5:5) – when he was actually governor of the Elamites (cf. Tobit 2:10; Judith 1:6) – was ethnically an Israelite, and the nephew of the holy Tobit. Hence he already had the background for a proper conversion to Yahwism. This needs to be contrasted with the Ninevites and their king, who – though they, too, may have imbibed some good influences from Tobit and his family long dwelling in Nineveh – had only a pagan background.

Not to be outdone in praise of Judith, but before Ahiqar had thus been summoned (Judith 14:18-20):

“Then Uzziah said,

‘Judith, my dear, the Most High God has blessed you more than any other woman on earth. How worthy of praise is the Lord God who created heaven and earth! He guided you as you cut off the head of our deadliest enemy. Your trust in God will never be forgotten by those who tell of God’s power. May God give you everlasting honor for what you have done. May he reward you with blessings, because you remained faithful to him and did not hesitate to risk your own life to relieve the oppression of your people’.

All the people replied,

‘Amen, amen!'”

One can perhaps well imagine why our prophet – after his having been an eyewitness to the greatest military victory in the history of Israel (at least to that point in time), and over the hated Assyrians, no less – chafed at the bit when, not too long afterwards, he was thus ordered by Yahweh (Jonah 1:2): ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me’. The prophet , who would no doubt have shared the sentiments of his fellow-Simeonite, Judith (16:17):

‘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’ [,]

knew what this, Yahweh’s new command, probably meant (Jonah 4:2-3) ‘That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live’. 

Compare Isaiah 30:18: “Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!”

B: The name “Jonah”

The Hebrew name, “Jonah” (יונה) is generally regarded as meaning “dove”.

Abarim Publications adds “vexer” (article, “Jonah meaning”):

https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Jonah.html#C.XqStmu0vPnE

The word “Jonah” is used in Hosea 7:1, for instance: “Ephraim also is like a silly dove without heart: they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria”. And again in Isaiah, where the prophet recalls the seriously ill king Hezekiah’s use of the word (38:14): ‘I cried like a swift or thrush, I moaned like a mourning dove’.

Given that the prophet’s father had at least two names, with variations thereof, Amos (Amittai) and Micah (Micaiah), it would be expected that the son, who so faithfully (though not slavishly) imitated Amos, would likewise have had more than the one name, Isaiah (Hosea, Uzziah) and Jonah. Even more so, considering that the names of Isaiah-Hosea and his children (which may have undergone changes: cf. Hosea 1:4-11) were meant to have a symbolical significance for Israel. The prophet Isaiah, in his flight from the Lord, might later have acquired the name mindful of “a silly dove” (Hosea 7:11), that is, Jonah.

The father of the Apostle Peter is variously given as “Jona[h]” (Matthew 16:17) and as “John” (John 1:42).

There is a Babylonian tale – but written centuries after Jonah, it needs to be appreciated – that features a Jonah-like sage called Oannes, a name considered to be very close to the name, Jonah.

Bill Cooper tells of it (op. cit., pp. 110–111):

“In his book, Chaldean Genesis (1876), George Smith, the Assyriologist, cites the writings of Berosus (c.330–260 BC), a Babylonian priest who recorded many of the myths and legends of the early Mesopotamians. Among many other things, Berosus records the fascinating story of a certain ‘Oannes’.

He writes:

“At Babylonia there was (in these times) a great resort of people of various nations, who inhabited Chaldea, and lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the field.” …. In the first year there appeared, from that part ofthe Erythraean Sea … which borders upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, by name Oannes, whose whole body was that of a fish; and under the fish’s head he had another head, with feet also below similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish’s tail.

His voice too, and language were articulate and human; and a representation of him is preserved to this day.”

“This being (Oannes) was accustomed to pass the day among men, but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed them how to collect the fruits; in short, he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften manners and humanize their lives. From that time, nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions.”  ….

“It is clear from Berosus’ own narrative that the Assyrians and Babylonians held Oannes in the highest esteem. ….

“While we cannot know for certain the Assyrian equivalent of Jonah’s name, we can at least be sure that it was not dissimilar to that of Oannes. The resemblance between the two names, even before such transposition, is remarkable. …. Unknown to the Assyrians, however, was the fact that a greater than Oannes was here. Here was no mythical figure dreamed up by an undiscerning pagan philosophy. Here was a living prophet of the Ever-Living God to Whom the Assyrians, in common with all mankind, owed their very creation and continuing existence!

“Judging by the attention that marooned sea monsters attract in our own day, it is easy to envisage the tremendous impact of such a monster disgorging a living man who then proceeded to a certain city to warn it of coming destruction. To those who had been nurtured on the story of Oannes, such an event would seem that Oannes himself had returned according to all that was laid down in the ancient legends. How else could God have achieved the effect that was so necessary to the accomplishment of His Will? The Assyrians would hardly have heeded a prophet (and a despised Israelite, at that), who rode into Nineveh on donkey, or as a passenger in a desert caravan. There was only one way, it seems, in which to startle and surprise the Assyrians into a positive response to Jonah’s message, and that was by God Himself staging what has proved be one of the most spectacular events of history.

“On its own even this, perhaps, may not have been sufficient to drive the Assyrians into a response to the message that Jonah brought them. They would also need to be in particularly distressed state of mind, driven into a corner by political, economic and military events over which they had no control, and which were pushing them inexorably further towards complete devastation. We have seen, in fact, that just such conditions prevailed at this very point in history, and thus the Assyrians may even have been importuning their gods for a teacher or deliverer of the stature and wisdom of their beloved Oannes …. Most assuredly, they were both psychologically and spiritually prepared for just such an event and message as Jonah was about to deliver”. [End of quotes]

Some of what Bill Cooper has written here makes perfect sense to me. But parts of it don’t. As already noted, the story of Oannes is a late legend, post-dating Jonah. It is typical for historians to presuppose that any pagan account that resembles a biblical one always has the chronological precedence. I have spent many articles arguing that the opposite is the case. So, when a presumed c. 300 BC writer records a tale that is, in some instances, uncannily like the much older Jonah story – as Bill Cooper has well noted – my immediate reaction to this is that the Oannes legend must have arisen from the Jonah story.

Certainly the latter resonates with Berosus’s description of the Mesopotamians who “lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the field”. And, again, the two names, “Jonah” and “Oannes”, are indeed very similar. It is common to identify Oannes with the the Mesopotamian water god, of knowledge, Ea (Sumerian Enki). And the account of Berosus seems to have commingled Mesopotamian theology with a garbled recollection of the biblical Jonah incident.

Some of the geography of Berosus, however, “Euxine Sea” (Black Sea), “Erythrean Sea” (Indian Ocean?), is completely irrelevant to Jonah and is, moreover, internally contradictory.

Bill Cooper is right on the mark in describing what must have been the mental state of the Ninevites at the time of Jonah’s arrival – except that he has located all this to the era of king Tiglath-pileser III. Things were far, far worse, I have suggested, at my preferred moment in time of early Esarhaddon.

Moreover, God was never going to use a pagan ‘theology’ to reinforce his message.

The “representation of [Oannes] … preserved to this day” (Berosus) is the well-known fish man (kulullu) of which Bill Cooper has provided a photo on his p. 111 (fig. 7).

It is the prophet Jonah himself, depicted on a wall of the palace of Nimrud (Calah).

But it will be chronologically too early for Jonah in the context of the conventional system.

More of that in Appendix A.

Later, it is said, the figure came to be associated with the god, Dagan: (“Kulullu (“Fish Man”) “Dagon”): http://symboldictionary.net/?p=300

“

This figure was known to the Assyrians as Kullulû, meaning “fish man.” The kullulu was a guardian figure, a dweller of the sacred Absu, the watery underground domain of the God Ea. Figures of the fish-man were often concealed in the construction of buildings to serve as protective charms.

From about the fourth century, the figure was associated (probably erroneously) with the god Dagan (meaning “grain”), most commonly known by his Hebrew name, Dagon. Dagan was a vegetation god, the father of the god Baal, the mythological creator of the plow. Dagon is mentioned several times in the Hebrew scriptures, where he is associated with the Philistines. It is to Dagon’s temple that the Ark of the Covenant is taken after being captured from the Hebrews; the next morning, they discover the statue of the god lying on the floor, sans head and hands”. [End of quote]

Another note on ‘AD’ pseudo-history. Earlier on (Part One, A.), I argued for the Nineveh-connected, and hence quite anachronistic Prophet Mohammed to have been a non-historical composite, partly based on Tobias, the son of Tobit of Nineveh. Although Mohammed would be regarded by most as being a true historical character, whilst Jonah would not, I would insist upon the very opposite.

The same comment would apply to that muddle-headed navigator, Columbus (meaning “Dove”), whose maritime epic is, for me, the story of Jonah ‘writ large’. Christopher Columbus sets sail (rather more enthusiastically than had Jonah) to convert the pagans.

Many, many centuries before Columbus, 1492 and all that, the Late Bronze Mediterraneans (Cretan Philistines and the Phoenicians) were mining tons of nearly pure copper, for their precious bronze, from far-away Lake Superior in Northern America (Gavin Menzies, The Lost Empire of Atlantis, 2001). 

“Columbus” (whoever he/it may have been) did not discover America!

Not surprisingly, though, “Columbus” is supposed to have encountered “a great fish” – a description that accurately translates Jonah 2:1’s dag gadol (דָּג גָּדוֹל) (“… Columbus sees a Sea Monster”):

http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/1494-september-114-columbus-sees-sea-monster

“From a modern English translation of [his son] Ferdinand’s biography, we read that sometime between September 1~14 in 1494, this curious event occurred to Columbus and his men:

“Holding on their course, the ship’s people sighted a large fish, big as a whale, with a carapace like a turtle’s, a head the size of a barrel protruding from the water, a long tail like that of a tunny fish, and two large wings. From this and from certain other signs the Admiral knew they were in for foul weather and sought a port where they might take refuge.”

“As far as I know, no such creature exists. So what did Columbus see?

‘Did It Happen…?

“This is one of those moments where the gray zone of what is considered history and what is considered not history is fully exposed.

“History is often just stories that have been agreed upon and accepted, with no hard evidence past this agreement to support it… and in the case of most of Christopher Columbus’ voyages, this is the case. Ferdinand’s account of his father’s life is taken as authoritative on many details that no other document can confirm; yet the story above is quietly ignored, even though it has the same amount of evidence to support it as anything else in Ferdinand’s biography”. [End of quotes]

To be continued ….