“Both Tadmor and Cogan mention Ahiqar, the Aramean adviser who served in the court
of Esarhaddon, Sennacherib’s son. …. Machinist, in his article on Rabshakeh, writes of “Hayim Tadmor’s now celebrated view,” … and they all cite the Babylonian Talmud
tractate b. Sanh. 60a, which suggests that “Rabshakeh was an apostate Israelite”.”
Yigal Levin
Sennacherib’s Rabshakeh, who verbally taunted king Hezekiah’s chief officials and those Jews manning the walls of Jerusalem during Assyria’s invasion of Judah, was indeed the historical and biblical Ahiqar (Ahikar). And, at that particular point in time, Ahiqar was apparently also, as according to the Babylonian Talmud, “an apostate Israelite”:
For this Ahiqar was the nephew of a northern Israelite, the pious Tobit, who, unlike his Naphtalian brethren, had remained faithful to Yahwism.
Sennacherib may well have chosen Ahiqar for his western (Judah) campaign because of the fact that the latter, as an Israelite, spoke, not only Aramaïc, but also Yehudit, which was akin to Hebrew, the spoken language of the Jews in Jerusalem.
The high officials, led by Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who had now replaced Shebna as high priest (“over the Tabernacle”), also – unlike the mass of people – spoke Aramaïc, which Ahiqar, as an exile in Nineveh, obviously knew.
King Hezekiah’s officials almost certainly knew of the Rabshakeh and knew that he spoke a form of Hebrew.
Yigal Levin has discussed the various view about Rabshakeh in his useful article (2015):
“Velikovsky called this Rib-Addi king of Gubla and Sumur (var. Sumura) …
which EA cities he had tried to equate with Ahab’s chief cities of,
respectively, Jezreel and Samaria; though they are usually identified
with the coastal cities of Byblos (Gebal) and Simyra”.
What Sumur was not
Sumur cannot realistically have been Samaria, as Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky had hopefully argued (Ages in Chaos, I, 1952). For, as I explained in my postgraduate thesis (2007, Volume One, pp. 83-87):
…. Now EA’s [El Amarna’s] Lab’ayu, whom I shall be identifying with Ahab of Israel (c. 874-853 BC, conventional dates), appropriately straddles both part of Amenhotep III’s reign and the early part of Akhnaton’s.
Velikovsky, for his part, had … looked to identify Ahab with Rib-Addi of Gubla, the most prolific Syro-Palestine correspondent to the EA pharaohs (over 50 letters in number).[1] And this was surely a big mistake. For, in order for him to ‘make’ Ahab, like Rib-Addi, a very old man at death, Velikovsky was prepared to fly in the face of the biblical data and completely re-cast the chronology of Ahab’s life. He had convinced himself that there existed a contradiction between the accounts of Ahab in Kings and Chronicles so that, as he claimed, Ahab did not die at the battle of Ramoth-gilead as is stated in 1 Kings 22 (cf. vv. 6, 29 & 37), but rather reigned on for a further 8-10 years. Thus, according to Velikovsky’s view, king Jehoram of Israel (c. 853-841 BC, conventional dates), never truly existed, but was a ghost.
From a biblical point of view, the fact that Rib-Addi had been able to report the death of Abdi-Ashirta (Velikovsky’s Ben-Hadad I) meant that Velikovsky was quite wrong in identifying Rib-Addi with king Ahab; since Ahab’s death preceded that of Ben-Hadad (cf. 1 Kings 22:40 & 2 Kings 8:15). But this was Velikovsky in his favourite rôle as “the arbiter of history”,according to Sieff,[2] forcing historical data to fit a pre-conceived idea. Velikovsky called this Rib-Addi king of Gubla and Sumur (var. Sumura),[3] which EA cities he had tried to equate with Ahab’s chief cities of, respectively, Jezreel and Samaria; though they are usually identified with the coastal cities of Byblos (Gebal) and Simyra. ….
Velikovsky greatly confused the issue of Ahab of Israel for those coming after him, since Rib-Addi was chronologically and geographically unsuitable for Ahab. Revisionists have since rightly rejected this part of Velikovsky’s EA reconstruction, with Sieff suggesting instead that Rib-Addi may have been Jehoram of Israel.[4] Liel favours this view from the perspective of her linguistic name studies. She has analysed the EA name, Rib-Addi, in the context of Israel’s Divided Monarchy … and has come to the same conclusion as had Sieff, assisted by James, but in her case on name basis alone:[5]
…. problematical to the Rib-Addi = Jehoram of Israel theory though are the geographical difficulties, as Liel now admits:
Certain questions remain regarding the identification of the Rib-Yauram [Rib-Addi] of the Amarna letters and the biblical Jehoram son of Omri.
The main one is geographical; i.e., can Sumur and Gubla be identified with Samaria and Jezreel? This question will be dealt with in a forthcoming paper to be entitled “The Hebrew-Phoenician-Aramean Kingdom of North Israel.”
… whether Jehoram could feasibly have been the aged Rib-Addi is another consideration. Whether or not Rib-Addi turns out to be Jehoram of Israel, a far better EA candidate for Ahab than Rib-Addi, in my opinion, and indeed a more obvious one – and I am quite surprised that no one has yet taken it up – is Lab’ayu, known to have been a king of the Shechem region, which is very close to Samaria (only 9 km SE distant); especially given my quote earlier (p. 54) from Cook that the geopolitical situation at this time in the “(north)[was akin to that of the] Israelites of a later [sic] time”. Lab’ayu is never actually identified in the EA letters as king of either Samaria or of Shechem. Nevertheless, Aharoni has designated Lab’ayu as “King of Shechem”in his description of the geo-political situation in Palestine during the EA period (Aharoni, of course, is a conventional scholar writing of a period he thinks must have been well pre-monarchical):[6]
In the hill country there were only a few political centres, and each of these ruled over a fairly extensive area. In all the hill country of Judah and Ephraim we hear only of Jerusalem and Shechem with possible allusions to Beth-Horon and Manahath, towns within the realm of Jerusalem’s king.
… Apparently the kings of Jerusalem and Shechem dominated, to all practical purposes, the entire central hill country at that time. The territory controlled by Labayu, King of Shechem, was especially large in contrast to the small Canaanite principalities round about. Only one letter refers to Shechem itself, and we get the impression that this is not simply a royal Canaanite city but rather an extensive kingdom with Shechem as its capital.
Against all objections already discussed, this description sounds very much to me like the distinct northern and southern realms during the split kingdom era! Note, too, how the more northerly region of Galilee is missing from this description. We might recall that Ben-Hadad I and/or Tab-rimmon had taken these towns from Israel’s king Baasha.
De Vaux considered Aharoni’s identification of Shechem as the capital of Lab’ayu’s kingdom as being by no means certain:[7]
Lab’ayu was not, however, given the title of king of Shechem and it is very doubtful whether he ever was. It would seem too that he did not live at Shechem; his authority was probably exercised from elsewhere by means of an agreement made with the inhabitants.
The latter took care of the internal administration of the city and recognised Lab’ayu’s authority as a kind of protectorate….
In the light of this, the conclusion of Rohl and Newgrosh is valid:[8] “In most scholarly works Labayu is referred to as the king or ruler of Shechem and this, we feel, has been misleading”.
Neither is Lab’ayu, as I already have noted, ever specifically mentioned in EA as a ruler of Samaria.
However, given the close proximity of Shechem to Samaria – and given the apparently “extensive” rule of Lab’ayu – then he stands, in a revised context, as the ideal identification for king Ahab of Israel. I am encouraged in this by the fact that Aharoni’s description of the kingdom over which Lab’ayu reigned appears to correspond very well with the realm of Ahab as far as we know it:[9]
Lab’ayu was a serious contender with the kings of Jerusalem and Gezer. EA 250 indicates that … he even dominated the entire Sharon, having conquered Gath-padalla (Jett in the central Sharon) and Gath-rimmon (apparently the biblical town of this name …). Even in the north Lab’ayu was not content to possess only the hill country; he tried to penetrate into the Jezreel Valley, laying siege to Megiddo (EA 244) and destroying Shunem and some other towns (EA 250).
[End of quotes]
Conclusion
The city of Sumur of the EA correspondence could not have been Samaria of Israel as Dr. Velikovsky had proposed, but was, as according to the standard interpretation, the port of Simyra.
What Sumur may also have been
That the port of Sumur/Simyra lies north of Byblos (my Babylon) and south of Ullaza (my Arzawa, tentatively) is apparent from what Dr. Mahmoud Elhosary has written (2009, p. 149):
…. In his thirtieth regnal year, Thutmose [III] attacked the Lebanon coast in earnest, mounting an amphibious invasion. He left Egypt in early June and arrived in Lebanon a week later. Although the Annals do not tell us where he landed, the most logical place was the port city of Simyra, located about thirty miles by sea from the friendly port of Byblos. Lying just south of Ullaza, Simyra was the closest port to the mouth of the Eleutheros Valley. ….
Gabriel, R.A., “Thutmose III: The Military Biography of Egypt’s Greatest Warrior King”, Potomac Books, Inc. (2009)
Arzawa, with its satellites Mira, Kuwaliya, Hapalla, and the “Land of the River Seha …”.
The latter might just possibly refer to the Chaldean Sealand, re-located from Sumer to NW Syria by Royce (Richard) Erickson in his groundbreaking article (2020):
Sumur (Biblical Hebrew: צְמָרִי [collective noun denoting the city inhabitants]; Egyptian: Smr; Akkadian: Sumuru; Assyrian: Simirra) was a Phoenician city in what is now Syria. It was a major trade center. The city has also been referred to in English publications as Simyra,[1]Ṣimirra, Ṣumra,[2]Sumura,[3]Ṣimura,[4]Zemar,[5] and Zimyra.[6]
could then be Mira, an abbreviation of Ṣimirra.
Thought to be situated far away in the Arzawan Lands of Anatolia,
Mira (Simyra) and the Seha River Land (Sealand?) can probably take their place, instead, as approximate neighbours of Ullaza (Arzawa) and Byblos (Babylon).
[2] ‘Velikovsky and His Heroes’, p. 115. Velikovsky is referred to in the same article (on the very next page) as the ‘conquistador of history’,p. 116.
[3] Velikovsky had noted that: “… not only personal but even geographical names were spelled in the letters in different ways: … Biridia (in one instance he wrote his name Biridri) announced to the pharaoh that he was defending Makida; another time he wrote that he was defending Magiidda. There are many similar examples in the letters”. Urusalim also appears in the letters as Buruzilim, whilst Sumur is also given as Sumura.Ages in Chaos, p. 300.
And this brings in the possibility, now, that Dr. I. Velikovsky
was almost right in identifying Hattusilis with Nebuchednezzar.
But I think that, instead, Hattusilis was Sennacherib.
Responding to a Brazilian researcher concerning a series of letters of Sennacherib that are generally thought to constitute his correspondence, as Crown Prince, with the Assyrian king, Sargon II, I concluded that Sennacherib (who actually is my Sargon II) must instead have been writing, as King of Assyria, to a contemporary foreign brother-king of equal power with whom he shared a treaty:
which enabled me to establish, for Sargon II/Sennacherib of Assyria, a “contemporary foreign brother-king of equal power with whom he shared a treaty”, namely pharaoh Ramses II ‘the Great’.
He, the great pharaoh, would be, I believe, the only contemporary of Sennacherib (Sargon II) to whom the Assyrian king would deign to have shown such deference as to write (Letter # 029):
[To] the king, my lord: [your servant] Sin-ahhe-riba [Sennacherib]. Good health to the king, my lord! [Assyri]a is well,[the temp]les are well, all [the king’s forts] are well. The king, my lord, can be glad indeed ….
in such a way as could suggest a treaty had been established between the mighty pair.
Now, with the mention of Ramses II and a treaty with another Great King, one must think only of the famous treaty made between Ramses II and Hattusilis so-called III.
And this brings in the possibility, now, that Dr. I. Velikovsky was almost right in identifying Hattusilis with Nebuchednezzar.
But I think that, instead, Hattusilis was Sennacherib.
Obviously there is a lot that must be worked out to solidify this identification.
But there appears to be a parallel scenario between (a) Hattusilis, his formidable wife, (b) Pudu-hepa and (c) Tudhaliya so-called IV, on the one hand, and – {in my revision, according to which Sennacherib was succeeded by his (non-biological) son, Esarhaddon, a Chaldean, who is my Nebuchednezzar} – (a) Sennacherib, his formidable wife, (b) Naqī’a (Zakūtu) and (c) Esarhaddon (Nebuchednezzar).
I need to note here that I have multi-identified each (a-c) of this second set. Thus:
Sargon II/Sennacherib is, all at once, Tukulti-ninurta; Shamsi-Adad [not I];
Esarhaddon is, all at once, Ashur-bel-kala; Ashurnasirpal; Ashurbanipal; Nebuchednezzar [I and II]; Nabonidus; Artaxerxes of Nehemiah; Cambyses’;
Naqia/Zakutu is, all at once, Semiramis (of Tukulti-ninurta’s era); Sammu-ramat; Adad-Guppi.
But how can an Assyrian king, or a Chaldean king, become confused as a Hittite?
Well, perhaps we may consider a few things here. For example:
In this article I referenced Brock Heathcotte as follows:
Brock Heathcotte has written on this in his article “Tugdamme the Hittite” (January 28, 2017):
The theory espoused here is that Mursili II and Tugdamme were the same person.
This does not mean that his subjects, euphemistically called the “Hittite” people in modern times were ethnic Cimmerians. They almost certainly were a people of many ethnicities including prominently Luwian, based on language. The cold hard fact that has been distorted by decades of talking about the Hittites is that there is no such people as the Hittites. The tablet people we spoke of never called themselves Hittites, and nobody else called them Hittites either at the time. This is actually not controversial. It is just obscured by convention.
Academics could argue all day and night about the ethnic composition of the people who lived in Anatolia, and which of them were the rulers we know as the Hittite kings. The argument is not susceptible to resolution, especially not in the current mistaken historical context the Hittites are placed. The rulers called themselves the Great Kings of Hatti. They could be any ethnicity. We should think of “Hittite” as the same sort of location-based moniker for a people as “American.” It doesn’t make sense to say there is an American ethnicity, and it doesn’t make sense to say there is a “Hittite” ethnicity. Americans come in many different ethnicities, as did the Hittites. ….
[End of quote]
Moreover, some time before I wrote any of this, I had already penned this article about Ashurnasirpal, who is my Esarhaddon (Nebuchednezzar), a Chaldean:
Hittite elements in art and warfare of Ashurnasirpal
These Assyro-Chaldean kings, who conquered the lands of the Hittites, could easily have assumed titles akin to King of the Hittites.
Tudhaliya’s accession like that of Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon, Tudhaliya, had no real prospect of succeeding to the throne.
The ancient term for someone in that position, not of the royal line, was “son of nobody”. And I found this characteristic in Esarhaddon’s alter egos, having written:
…. Another common key-word (buzz word), or phrase, for various of these king-names would be ‘son of a nobody’, pertaining to a prince who was not expecting to be elevated to kingship.
Thus I previously introduced Ashurbanipal-as-Nebuchednezzar/Nabonidus with the statement: “Nabonidus is not singular either in not expecting to become king. Ashurbanipal had felt the same”. ….
And we read in the following Abstract that that was also the former status of Tudhaliya:
In his early years, the prince Tudhaliya could have had little thought that he would one day become king. But he was installed by Hattusili ‘in kingship’, that is, Tudhaliya probably now assumed the role of crown prince. This chapter examines the career path which Hattusili had mapped out for Tudhaliya in preparation for his becoming king of the Hittites, Puduhepa’s effort to arrange her daughter’s marriage to Tudhaliya, problems and potential crises inherited by Tudhaliya from Muwattalli as Hittite ruler, political developments in western Anatolia during Tudhaliya’s reign, the impact of establishment of a pro-Hittite regime in Milawata on Ahhiyawan enterprise in western Anatolia, political problems that arose from the marriage alliance contracted between the royal families of Ugarit and Amurru, Tudhaliya’s war with Assyria, possible coup instigated by Kurunta to wrest the throne from his cousin Tudhaliya, Tudhaliya’s conquest of Alasiya, and the achievements of Tudhaliya IV as ruler of the Hittite kingdom.
The whole thing seems to have been arranged by the formidable Queen, as was the case again with Esarhaddon and his mother Naqī’a/Zakūtu:
“[Esarhaddon’s] energetic and designing mother, Zakutu (Naqia), who came from Syria or Judah [sic?], used all her influence on his behalf to override the national party of Assyria”.
I would expect now to begin finding many parallels between Esarhaddon/ Nebuchednezzar, in his various guises (alter egos), and the so-called Hittite emperor, Tudhaliya.
“St. John Paul II commented on how many events and figures of the Old Testament found their fulfillment in the New Testament in his encyclical Redemptoris Custos”.
14. After the presentation in the Temple the Evangelist Luke notes: “And when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him” (Lk 2:39-40).
But according to Matthew’s text, a very important event took place before the return to Galilee, an event in which divine providence once again had recourse to Joseph. We read: “Now when [the magi] had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him'” (Mt 2:13). Herod learned from the magi who came from the East about the birth of the “king of the Jews” (Mt 2:2). And when the magi departed, he “sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under” (Mt 2:16). By killing them all, he wished to kill the new-born “king of the Jews” whom he had heard about. And so, Joseph, having been warned in a dream, “took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son’ ” (Mt 2:14-15; cf. Hos 11:1).
And so Jesus’ way back to Nazareth from Bethlehem passed through Egypt. Just as Israel had followed the path of the exodus “from the condition of slavery” in order to begin the Old Covenant, so Joseph, guardian and cooperator in the providential mystery of God, even in exile watched over the one who brings about the New Covenant. ….
Joseph in the Old Testament shares many similar traits and events with St. Joseph in the Gospels.
St. Joseph is sometimes called the “New Joseph,” referring to the similarities he shares with the “Old Joseph” featured in the Bible’s Book of Genesis.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux shared his thoughts on the two Josephs in one of his homilies.
What are we to think of the dignity of Joseph, who deserved to be called and to be regarded as the father of our Savior? We may draw a parallel between him and the great Patriarch. As the first Joseph was by the envy of his brothers sold and sent into Egypt, the second Joseph fled into Egypt with Christ to escape the envy of Herod.
The chaste Patriarch remained faithful to his master, despite the evil suggestions of his mistress. St. Joseph, recognizing in his wife the Virgin Mother of his Lord, guarded her with the utmost fidelity and chastity.
To the Joseph of old was given interpretation of dreams, to the new Joseph a share in the heavenly secrets.
His predecessor kept a store of corn, not for himself, but for the whole nation; our Joseph received the Living Bread from heaven, that he might preserve it for his own salvation and that of all the world.
St. John Paul II commented on how many events and figures of the Old Testament found their fulfillment in the New Testament in his encyclical Redemptoris Custos.
The oft-repeated formula, “This happened, so that there might be fulfilled,” in reference to a particular event in the Old Testament, serves to emphasize the unity and continuity of the plan that is fulfilled in Christ.
With the Incarnation, the “promises” and “figures” of the Old Testament become “reality.”
The Joseph of the Old Testament was in many ways preparing the way for the Joseph of the New Testament, both participating in God’s divine plan. They both had their role to play in salvation history, echoing each other’s lives in many ways.
What’s in a name? Do people with the same name sometimes have much in common? We can look at two famous men in the Bible, both named Joseph, and see their similarities.
Joseph of the Old Testament is the first Joseph. The Church refers to him as a type, or foreshadowing, of Christ. But many saints hold that the first Joseph is also a prefigurement for St. Joseph. Let us consider ten parallels between Joseph of the Old Testament and St. Joseph.
First, both of them had a father named Jacob. Remember the biblical references to the great patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Jacob’s son was Joseph. Matthew’s gospel, which traces the family tree of Jesus, says that Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary of whom Christ was bom.
The second parallel is that both of them were royalty. The first Joseph was a patriarch, following the great line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was the last and perhaps the greatest of the Old Testament patriarchs. St. Joseph also was royalty since he was a descendant of King David. Some Scripture scholars speculate that if Rome had not occupied Palestine at the time, and if the Davidic line was still intact, St. Joseph would have been eligible for the throne.
The third parallel between the first Joseph and St. Joseph is that both of them suffered and put up with the difficulties of their daily life without complaint. The first Joseph was minding his own business going out into the fields to see his brothers, and they plotted to kill him. They seized him, stripped him and threw him into a well. Then, when they saw a caravan of gypsies going to Egypt, they sold him into slavery. Joseph could have said, “Lord, here I am; a good man. Why are you allowing this suffering in my life?” Isn’t that what we say at times? When we have difficult times in our life, we often ask “God, why me? What have I done wrong?” But, sometimes God allows us to go through suffering and pain for a greater good, just as he did with Joseph in Egypt. Because Joseph was able to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, Pharaoh made him lord and ruler over his house.
Joseph, formerly a shepherd boy, was now one of the most important men in Egypt.
St. Joseph had to go through many sufferings as well. Mary was well along in her pregnancy when, as members of the House of David, they had to journey to Bethlehem to take part in the census ordered by the Roman rulers. That involved a difficult journey of perhaps 85 miles on a donkey with no advance lodging reservations. But Joseph obeyed the law. He went and could find no lodging since Bethlehem was packed with other visitors who came for the same purpose. He kept knocking at the doors, but found no room. Think what was going through Joseph’s mind. He was the husband, the provider, and knew that Mary’s child was of divine origin. Finally, they found a cave in the countryside where the shepherds tended their sheep, and Jesus was bom in a place where animals were sheltered. The King of heaven and earth was laid in a manger – a trough where the animals ate. Think of the suffering, the difficult time that Joseph went through. But, looking at it, good came from even that trying experience. For example, the prophecy that the Messiah was to be bom in Bethlehem was fulfilled. It was not the prophecy that the Messiah was to be born in Nazareth. Additionally, the Holy Family had more privacy in the cave than they would have had in the crowded inn. A secondary benefit is that now we can sing songs like “Away in a Manger” rather than “Away in a Marriott.”
The fourth similarity between Joseph and St. Joseph is that both left their homes and went to Egypt. Joseph was sold into slavery and taken to Egypt. St. Joseph fled to Egypt with his family to escape Herod’s wrath.
The ability to understand dreams is their fifth similarity. In the Old Testament, Joseph gained fame for this ability. While still in prison, he was able to interpret the dreams of the baker and the cupbearer of Pharaoh. When Pharaoh had a strange dream of 7 fat cows being devoured by 7 skinny cows, he couldn’t understand it.
Pharaoh also had the dream of the stalk, which had seven healthy ears of corn. Suddenly there was a stalk with 7 withered ears of corn, which swallowed the healthy stalk. Pharaoh couldn’t understand these dreams, so he called his magicians but they could not interpret the dreams. Pharaoh had heard of Joseph’s ability, so he sent for him and asked him to interpret these dreams. Joseph gave Pharaoh the interpretation – that God was going to bless Egypt with 7 years of plenty, but after that would come 7 years of terrible famine. Because of this insight into the future, Pharaoh picked Joseph to be the manager of his house and ruler over all his possessions.
St. Joseph also understood the meaning of his dreams. The New Testament relates four dreams, which St. Joseph understood and unhesitatingly acted upon. The first was when he had doubts about whether to take Mary as his wife. The angel said “Fear not, Joseph, to accept Mary as your wife. It is by the Holy Spirit that she has conceived this Child.” Joseph recognized the guidance in the dream as coming from God and followed the angel’s bidding. Likewise, he recognized the urgency of the message conveyed in the second dream – “flee into Egypt. Herod is trying to kill the Child.” In the third dream, Joseph understood that it was safe to return to Palestine since Herod was dead. Lastly, in the fourth dream, Joseph accepted the angel’s advice to return to Nazareth because Herod’s son had become king. St. Joseph’s ability to recognize the divine guidance sent to him in dreams literally saved the Holy Family on several occasions.
The sixth parallel is that of being the ruler of the king’s house and possessions. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, made Joseph ruler and lord over all his possessions in Egypt. St. Joseph, as head of the Holy Family, was ruler over the King of the Universe’s home in Nazareth. Jesus, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega, chose Joseph to be the head of the Holy Family, to be the lord, master and ruler over the house.
The seventh similarity between the Joseph of the Old and Joseph of the New Testament is their purity and chastity. Remember what happened to Joseph. Joseph was a very strong man, a very handsome man, and Potiphar’s wife fell in love with him and tried to seduce him. Day after day she would ask him and try to lead him into having an adulterous affair, but Joseph steadfastly refused. Eventually, she lied and told Potiphar, “Look what this Hebrew tried to do to me.” Potiphar put Joseph into prison, where he stayed for two years.
In the New Testament, St. Joseph is the virginal husband of Mary.
St. Joseph, the most pure and chaste man that God ever created, married the Blessed Mother. They lived a virginal life their entire marriage. The beautiful virtues of purity and chastity are thus exemplified in both Joseph of the Old and St. Joseph of the New.
The eighth parallel is that they both experienced poverty. Joseph of the Old Testament had everything material taken from him – his brothers stole his inheritance, he was sold into slavery and owned nothing, and he was unjustly imprisoned for a few years.
St. Joseph knew poverty as well. We are told in the gospels that he was a carpenter, a member of the working class.
When he uprooted his family and went to Bethlehem and then to Egypt, he probably took his tools with him so he could continue earning a living, but that is about all he had in terms of material goods. We also know that the Holy Family was poor because at the Presentation they gave two turtle doves, the offering of the poor.
Both Josephs were responsible for feeding the entire world, which is their ninth similarity. Because of Joseph’s advice, Egypt was the only country in the world that had grain during the famine. The other nations came to Egypt to buy their grain. Thanks to Joseph, the peoples of the world had food, and Pharaoh became even richer and more powerful. How does that relate to St. Joseph? St. Joseph was the nurturer and the one who fed Jesus. He practiced his trade and earned the money to buy the food, which fed Jesus. St. Joseph, as head of the Holy Family, taught Jesus a trade and provided his initial religious instruction. He helped Jesus grow to manhood and become for us the Eucharist, feeding us with his own Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. Thus, indirectly Joseph has fed the entire world with the Bread of Life.
Lastly, we can go to both Josephs in times of need. The people of Egypt and the other nations went to Joseph for the grain they needed during the great famine. During this time of suffering there was a saying, “Go to Joseph for what you need.” Because Joseph had such tremendous influence with the Pharaoh, many peoples’ petitions were answered. We priests, religious and lay people can go to St. Joseph in our time of need. Whatever difficulties and sufferings we have, we go to Joseph because he has great influence with his Son, the King of the Universe. Jesus, good Son that he is, still follows the precepts of the Fourth Commandment and, so long as it is in accord with the will of the Father, does as his mother and foster father ask.
These, then, are ten similarities between Joseph of the Old Testament and St. Joseph, two of the greatest figures in the Bible. Let us now recognize how they have experienced many of the same trials and sorrows we face, and let us follow their example of steadfast love and service of God. They stand ready and able to help us, if we but “go to Joseph.”
One of the fascinating things about the Book of Daniel is how the life of Daniel mirrors that of Joseph in the Book of Genesis. There are three main parallels.
Firstly, both were exiled from home at a young age. Genesis 37 tells the story of how Joseph was sold as a slave by his brothers and taken to Egypt. He seems to have been 17 when this happened (Genesis 37:2). Likewise, it appears that Daniel was a teenager when he was taken into exile in Babylon (Daniel 1:3-6).
Secondly, they both have the ability to interpret dreams.
In both cases, this comes to the fore when they are able to interpret the king’s dream when the other experts fail. Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dream of the fat and skinny cows (Genesis 41) when the magicians of Egypt could not:
So in the morning Pharaoh’s spirit was troubled, and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt and all its wise men. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but there was none who could interpret them to Pharaoh.
(Genesis 41:8)
This perfectly mirrors the story of Daniel 2:1-11, where the magicians of Babylon are not able to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.
Both dreams contain a revelation of the future which God gives to the king. Joseph says “God has revealed to Pharaoh what he is about to do” (Genesis 41:25), while Daniel says:
There is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.
(Daniel 2:28).
In this way, both Joseph and Daniel downplay their own abilities and give God the credit.
Thirdly, both Joseph and Daniel are promoted to a position of political power. Both kings accept the respective interpretations of Joseph and Daniel and recognize that God has revealed things to the young men:
And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find a man like this, in whom is the spirit of the gods? Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is none so discerning and wise as you are. You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command. Only as regards the throne will I be greater than you”.
(Genesis 41:38-40)
Nebuchadnezzar responds in a similar way:
Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and paid homage to Daniel, and commanded that an offering and incense be offered up to him. The king answered and said to Daniel, “Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery.” Then the king gave Daniel high honors and many great gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon.
(Daniel 2:46-48)
Later on, in Daniel 4:8, Nebuchadnezzar also acknowledges that “the spirit of the holy gods” is in Daniel.
There are a number other parallels, but with these the order varies. Both Joseph and Daniel are given new names, but Daniel is named Belteshazzar on his arrival in Babylon (Daniel 1:7), while Joseph is named Zaphenath-paneah after his promotion (Genesis 41:45). Both Joseph and Daniel have their own dreams, but Joseph’s dream of wheat sheaves and stars comes when he is still in Canaan (Genesis 37:1-11), while Daniel’s dreams come when he is an old man, starting in the first year of Belshazzar (Daniel 7:1).
Finally, the Bible teaches us similar lessons in the stories of both men. Both focus on God’s sovereignty in using these men to preserve his people during their time of exile. At the end of Joseph’s story, he gives his brothers his view of their selling him into slavery:
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.
(Genesis 50:20)
This is not made as explicit in the Book of Daniel, but Daniel 1:21 says that Daniel “was there until the first year of King Cyrus” – that is, when the decree went out that the temple should be rebuilt (Ezra 1:1-3). In this way, Daniel himself ushers in the return from exile. The theme of God’s care for his people comes to the fore in the second half of the Book of Daniel:
But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, forever and ever.
(Daniel 7:18)
Thus, there are historical parallels between the lives of Joseph and Daniel, but there are also literary parallels between the accounts: the author of the Book of Daniel is writing it in such a way as to make us think about Joseph.
Joseph and Tamar comparisons
The Tamar intended here is “the beautiful sister of Absalom son of David” (2 Samuel 13:1), not the Tamar of Genesis 38:11, the daughter-in-law of Judah.
A parent’s favourite, given a special cloak, sold out by brothers, mocked, sexually harrassed, emerging from the desert on a spices-laden camel train, imprisoned, though much admired, capable of good management, ruling in Egypt as second only to Pharaoh.
These are just some of the similarities that Tamar at the time of King David shared with Joseph.
This comment presupposes my previous multi-identifications of Tamar as:
“Conclusion 2: Abishag, of uncertain name, the same as Tamar (her given Hebrew name), hailing from Shunem, was hence “the Shunammite” of King Solomon’s Song of Songs. Ethnically, she may have been Egypto-Canaanite, which thought will lead to the consideration … that she was also Velikovsky’s Hatshepsut = “Queen of Sheba”.”
Some of the Comparisons
Joseph, beloved of his father (Genesis 37:3): “Now Israel [Jacob] loved Joseph more than any of his other sons …”, was hated by his brothers (v. 4): “When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him”.
The “Shunammite” was (Song of Solomon 6:9): “… the favourite of her mother, perfect to the one who gave her birth”, but mis-treated by her brothers (1:6): “My mother’s sons [brothers] were angry with me and made me take care of the vineyards”.
Joseph’s father “made an ornate robe for him” (Genesis 37:3).
Tamar “was wearing an ornate robe, for this was the kind of garment the virgin daughters of the king wore” (2 Samuel 13:18).
The exact same Hebrew words to describe “ornate robe”, or “coat of many colours”, are used in the case of Joseph and of Tamar, ketonet passim (כְּתֹנֶת פַּסִּים).
Jacob sent Joseph to his brothers (Genesis 37:13): ‘As you know, your brothers are grazing the flocks near Shechem. Come, I am going to send you to them’.
‘Very well’, he replied.
David sent Tamar to her ‘brother’, Amnon (2 Samuel 13:7, 8): “David sent word to Tamar at the palace: ‘Go to the house of your brother Amnon and prepare some food for him’.
So Tamar went …”.
From “Hebron ….” (Genesis 37:14).
Six of Tamar’s ‘brothers’ were born to David at “Hebron” (I Chronicles 3:1-4).
Joseph asks a man at Shechem (Genesis 37:16): ‘I’m looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?’
Similarly the Shunammite asks her beloved (Song of Solomon 1:7): ‘Tell me, you whom I love, where you graze your flock and where you rest your sheep at midday’.
Joseph’s brothers “plotted to kill him” (Genesis 37:18).
Tamar was a pawn in a conspiratorial plot by Absalom and his adviser to kill Amnon.
“So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the ornate robe he was wearing” (Genesis 37:23).
“Tamar … tore the ornate robe she was wearing” (2 Samuel 13:19).
Joseph’s brothers “looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead” (Genesis 37:25).
Were they “flock of goats”-like?
(Song of Solomon 4:1): ‘Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from the hills of Gilead”.
“Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt” (Genesis 37:25).
(I Kings 10:1, 2): “… the Queen of Sheba … came … to … Jerusalem with a very great caravan—with camels carrying spices …”.
“Judah said to his brothers, ‘… after all, he is our brother’.” (2 Genesis 37:26, 27).
“Her brother Absalom said to [Tamar], ‘…. Be quiet for now, my sister; he is your brother’.” (2 Samuel 13:20).
“… his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver” (Genesis 37:28).
“Solomon had a vineyard in Baal Hamon; he let out his vineyard to tenants. Each was to bring for its fruit a thousand shekels of silver” (Song of Solomon 8:11).
“… the Ishmaelites … took [Joseph] to Egypt” (Genesis 37:28).
‘I liken you, my darling, to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariot horses’ (Song of Solomon 1:9).
“Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes. He went back to his brothers and said, ‘…. Where can I turn now?’ (Genesis 37:29, 30).
‘What about me? Where could I get rid of my disgrace? And what about you? You would be like one of the wicked fools in Israel’ (2 Samuel 13:13).
“Then Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and daughters came to comfort him …” (Genesis 37:34-35).
“The king stood up, tore his clothes and lay down on the ground; and all his attendants stood by with their clothes torn” (2 Samuel 13:31).
Given the above similarities, it would be no accident that the narrative concerning Joseph is suddenly interrupted by Genesis 38, the account of Judah and another “Tamar” who is treated with some disrespect by Joseph’s brother, Judah.
“Joseph found favour in his eyes and became his personal attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned” (Genesis 39:4).
“Abishag … took care of the king and waited on him …” (I Kings 1:4).
“And Achitophel said to Absalom. ‘Go in unto thy father’s concubines, which he hath left to keep the palace …’ (2 Samuel 16:21).
“Now Joseph was well-built and handsome …” (Genesis 39:6).
“… Tamar, the beautiful sister of Absalom son of David” (2 Samuel 13:1).
“… they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful young woman and found Abishag, a Shunammite” (I Kings 1:3).
‘O thou fairest among women …’ (Song of Solomon 1:8).
“… after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, ‘Come to bed with me!’” (Genesis 39:7).
“In the course of time, Amnon … grabbed her and said, ‘Come to bed with me’ …” (2 Samuel 13:1, 11).
{So Judah with the other Tamar ‘Come now, let me sleep with you’ (Genesis 38:16), before his having to concede: ‘She is more righteous than I …’ (v. 26) – something Amnon would fail to do in the case of the other Tamar}.
“But he refused. ‘…. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?’” (Genesis 39:8, 9).
‘No, my brother!’ she said to him. ‘Don’t force me! Such a thing should not be done in Israel! Don’t do this wicked thing’ (2 Samuel 13:12).
When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house’ (Genesis 39:15).
“Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the ornate robe she was wearing. She put her hands on her head and went away, weeping aloud as she went” (2 Samuel 13:19).
“When his master heard the story his wife told him … he was furious” (Genesis 39:19).
“When King David heard all this, he was furious” (2 Samuel 13:21).
“Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined’ (Genesis 39:20).
“[Amnon] called his personal servant and said, ‘Get this woman out of my sight and bolt the door after her’.” (Genesis 39:17).
“And Tamar lived in her brother Absalom’s house, a desolate woman” (39:20).
“When two full years had passed …” (Genesis 41:1).
“[Copernicus] seems to identify Nabonassar with the biblical Shalmaneser,
king of Assyria, whom, following Eusebius, he calls Salmanassar,
king of the Chaldeans”.
N. M. Swerdlow, O. Neugebauer
Having tradition supply an extra name for a potentate can sometimes serve to change the order of things.
Thus, thanks to the Chronicle of John [of] Nikiu (supposedly C7th AD), I learned that Cambyses had the other name of Nebuchednezzar (Nebuchadnezzar), thus enabling me to associate the mad, Egypt-conquering Cambyses with the mad, Egypt-conquering Nebuchednezzar.See e.g. my six-part series:
“(Ναβονάσσαρος; Nabonássaros). Graecised form of the Babylonian royal name Nabû-nāṣir. N.’s reign (747-734 BC) is not marked by any spectacular events. His fame is due to the fact that Claudius Ptolemaeus (Cens. 21,9) chose the beginning of the first year of N.’s reign (calculated to 26 February 747 BC) as the epoch for his astronomical calculations (‘Nabonassar Era’; in the ‘Ptolemaic Canon’, a continuous list of the kings ruling over Babylonia until Alexander [4] the Great, then continued by the rulers of Egypt …”
he is otherwise quite poorly known, as is apparent from what William W. Hallo wrote (in The Nabonassar Era and other Epochs in Mesopotamian Chronology and Chronography, 1988, p. 189):
The numerous innovations thus associated with Nabonassar stand in sharp contrast to the actual circumstances of his reign. Whatever high hopes he may have harbored at its outset, they were very soon dashed on the rocks of hard political reality. We have no royal inscriptions of the fourteen-year reign, and two private inscriptions of the time may be regarded as evidence of the relative strength of private dignitaries and corresponding weakness of the monarchy …. Only three years after Nabonassar’s accession in Babylonia, there occurred that of Tiglatpileser III in Assyria. He was a truly heroic figure, destined to lay the foundations of the neo-Assyrian empire. He too tampered with traditional historiographic conventions, reviving the age-old concept of the bala (in its Akkadian guise of palû) to date and count his annual campaigns, but beginning these with his accession year instead of waiting, like his predecessors, for the first full year of his reign. ….
[End of quote]
Some queries, and some suggestions, are immediately necessary here, I find.
That so apparently innovative and substantially reigning a king, of such a well-documented era as that of the neo-Assyrians, could have left “no royal inscriptions”, can only mean that – as according to my custom – an alter ego for him needs to be identified. And the most obvious candidate for this would be the likewise innovative, and contemporaneous, king, Tiglath-pileser so-called III, who is known to have ruled Babylon – and that under a non-Assyrian name. Especially if Tiglath-pileser was also named – as Nabonassar is said to have been – “Shalmaneser”.
And that I have often argued to have been the case, for instance:
So, it was the innovative Tiglath-pileser who had presumably, under his adopted name “Nabonassar”, as ruler of Babylon, inaugurated a new chronological era.
Tiglath-pileser was multi-facetted
This Tiglath-pileser was too larger-than-life a character for him not to have absorbed various alter egos, apart from Nabonassar.
In I Chronicles 5:26, he is also called Pul (or Pulu) in a waw consecutive construction:
So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, that is, Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria. He carried the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh into captivity. He took them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river of Gozan to this day.
And Tiglath-pileser so-called III was also Tiglath-pileser so-called I, according to my reconstructions, such as:
then Shalmaneser so-called I must likewise be folded into Neo kings “Shalmaneser”.
Was Nabonassar’s Assyrian alter ego an innovator?
“Tiglath–pileser III (745-727 B.C.E.) introduced a new era in the history
of the ancient Near East. He is the ruler who laid the firm foundations of
the Neo-Assyrian empire, developing new methods of military occupation,
political organisation and communications throughout his vast,
subjugated territories. It is not by chance”.
Bustanay Oded
To find the historical prophet Jonah – and also to fill him out biblically (a task upon which I was able to focus without much distraction during the period of lockdown) – I had to turn upside down, and inside out, the conventional sequence of Assyro-(Babylonian) kings. See e.g. my article:
Whilst I did not then come to the further conclusion that Nabonassar may have been a powerful Assyrian king who had ruled the city of Babylon, my Assyrian reconstruction around the prophet Jonah has important bearing upon the “Shalmaneser” of whom it was said that he was Nabonassar.
Without going back here through all of the complicated details, let me simply summarise the extent of the composite king, Shalmaneser – Tiglath-pileser.
My revised neo-Assyrian succession relevant to Jonah is as follows:
According to my Jonah article, the last of these kings, my enlarged king 4., was Jonah 3:6’s repentant “king of Nineveh”.
Now, was this Assyrian king [no. 2 above] in any way the inaugurator of a new outlook, or a new era?’ (as would seem to befit Nabonassar)
Bill Cooper, who has favoured (my potential Nabonassar) this same king 2. above – in his guise as Tiglath-pileser III – as Jonah’s Ninevite king, has written of this king as if he had indeed inaugurated a new sort of era (which Cooper himself would attribute, mistakenly, I believe, to the Jonah effect).
…. Almost overnight, it seems, the empire underwent a total revival. Where defeat had so recently been staring them in the face, the Assyrians were now enjoying decisive victories. Where there had been economic collapse, there was now available wealth and a reasonable stability.
Political turmoil and civil unrest now quietened down. In other words, the disaster-prone empire that Tiglath-pileser III had ‘inherited’ … was almost unrecognisable after the inauguration of his reign. Shortly after he took over the rule of the empire, something dramatic, almost disturbing happened to turn on its head Assyria’s forthcoming and imminent destruction. ….
Be that as it may, Tiglath-pileser (so-called III) – {who would also be, in my reconstruction, the enlightened “Shalmaneser” of Tobit 1, Tobit’s royal patron} – is definitely considered by Assyriologists to have inaugurated something of “a new era”.
Thus, for example, Bustanay Oded writes (“The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III: Review Article” (Israel Exploration Journal,Vol. 47, No. 1/2 (1997), pp. 104-110): “Tiglath–pileser III (745-727 B.C.E.) introduced a new era in the history of the ancient Near East.
He is the ruler who laid the firm foundations of the Neo-Assyrian empire, developing new methods of military occupation, political organisation and communications throughout his vast, subjugated territories. It is not by chance”.
“… it has become fully apparent that [T-P III’s] reign marked the beginning of the imperial phase of Assyria, and that this period of time should be regarded as a watershed in the history of the ancient Near East”.
“Her fame continued to spread, and she lived in the house her husband had
left her. Before she died, Judith divided her property among her husband’s
and her own close relatives and set her slave woman free. When she died
in Bethulia at the age of 105, she was buried beside her husband,
and the people of Israel mourned her death for seven days.
As long as Judith lived, and for many years after her death,
no one dared to threaten the people of Israel”.
Judith 16:23-25
Introduction
Judith became immensely famous in the eyes of the people of Israel, for, as we read in Judith 16:23 that “her fame continued to spread”. Even before her heroic action in the camp of the Assyrians, we are told of this goodly woman that (Judith 8:7-8): “[Judith] lived among all her possessions without anyone finding a word to say against her, so devoutly did she fear God”.
Moreover she had, according to the elder, Uzziah, shown wisdom even from her youth (vv. 28-29):
“Uzziah replied, ‘Everything you have just said comes from an honest heart and no one will contradict a word of it. Not that today is the first time your wisdom has been displayed; from your earliest years all the people have known how shrewd you are and of how sound a heart’.”
Aside from the recognition of her renowned beauty, by
the author (Judith 8:7; 10:4);
the elders of Bethulia (10:7);
the Assyrian unit and soldiery (10:14, 19);
Holofernes and his staff (10:23; 11:21, 23; 12:13, 16, 20), we learn that even the coarse Assyrians were impressed by her wisdom and eloquence (11:21, 23).
And Uzziah, after Judith’s triumph over Holofernes, proclaimed magnificently in her honour (Judith 13:18-20):
… ‘May you be blessed, my daughter, by God Most High, beyond all women on earth; and blessed be the Lord God, Creator of heaven and earth, who guided you to cut off the head of the leader of our enemies!
The trust which you have shown will not pass from human hearts, as they commemorate the power of God for evermore.
God grant you may be always held in honour and rewarded with blessings, since you did not consider your own life when our nation was brought to its knees, but warded off our ruin, walking in the right path before our God’.
And the people all said, ‘Amen! Amen!’
And the stunned Achior, upon seeing the severed head of Holofernes, burst out with this exclamation of praise (Judith 14:7):
‘May you be blessed in all the tents of Judah and in every nation; those who hear your name will be seized with dread!’
Later, Joakim the high priest and the entire Council of Elders of Israel, who were in Jerusalem, came to see Judith and to congratulate her (Judith 15:9-10):
On coming to her house, they blessed her with one accord, saying: ‘You are the glory of Jerusalem! You are the great pride of Israel! You are the highest honour of our race! By doing all this with your own hand you have deserved well of Israel, and God has approved what you have done. May you be blessed by the Lord Almighty in all the days to come!’
And the people all said, ‘Amen!’
‘Blessed by God Most High, beyond all women on earth’.
We may tend to recall the Judith of literature as being both beautiful and courageous – and certainly she could be most forthright as well, when occasion demanded it, somewhat like Joan of Arc (who was supposedly referred to, in her time, as ‘a second Judith’).
Yet, there is far more to it: mysticism.
T. Craven (Artistry and Faith in the Book of Judith), following J. Dancy’s view (Shorter Books of the Apocrypha) that the theology presented in Judith’s words to the Bethulian town officials rivals the theology of the Book of Job, will go on to make this interesting comment (pp. 88-89, n. 45.):
Judith plays out her whole story with the kind of faith described in the Prologue of Job (esp. 1:21 and 2:9). Her faith is like that of Job after his experience of God in the whirlwind (cf. 42:1-6), yet in the story she has no special theophanic experience. We can only imagine what happened on her housetop where she was habitually a woman of regular prayer.
[End of quote]
Although the women’s movement is quite recent, it has already provided some new insights and some radically different perspectives on Judith.
According to P. Montley (as referred to by C. Moore, The Anchor Bible. “Judith”, pp. 65):
… Judith is the archetypal androgyne. She is more than the Warrior Woman and the femme fatale, a combination of the soldier and the seductress …
…. Just as the brilliance of a cut diamond is the result of many different facets, so the striking appeal of the book of Judith results from its many facets. …
[End of quote]
M. Stocker will, in her comprehensive treatment of the Judith character and her actions (Judith Sexual Warrior, pp. 13-15), compare the heroine to, amongst others, the Old Testament’s Jael – a common comparison given that the woman, Jael, had driven a tent peg through the temple of Sisera, an enemy of Israel (Judges 4:17-22) – Joan of Arc, and Charlotte Corday, who had, during the French Revolution, slain the likewise unsuspecting Marat.
“If viewed negatively – from an irreligious perspective, for instance”, Stocker will go on to write, “Judith’s isolation, chastity, widowhood, childlessness, and murderousness would epitomize all that is morbid, nihilistic and abortive”.
Hardly the type of character to have been accorded ‘increasing fame’ amongst her people!
Craven again, with reference to J. Ruskin (‘Mornings in Florence’, p. 335), writes (p. 95): “Judith, the slayer of Holofernes; Jael, the slayer of Sisera; and Tomyris, the slayer of Cyrus are counted in art as the female “types” who prefigure the Virgin Mary’s triumph over Satan”.
Judith a Heroine of Israel
———————————————————————————————
The way that I see it, these early commentators had the will, if not the history/archaeology, to demonstrate the trustworthiness of the Judith story. Then, at about the time that the archaeology had become available, commentators no longer had the will.
———————————————————————————————-
What did the young Judith do to achieve her early fame?
Well, if the typical contemporary biblical commentators are to be believed, Judith did nothing in actual historical reality, for the famous story is merely a piece of pious fiction.
Here, for instance, is such a view from the Catholic News Agency [CNA]:
Judith is often characterized as an early historical novel. Yet ironically, its content is unhistorical. The book begins by telling us that Nebuchadnezzer was the king of Assyria ruling in Ninevah. But Ninevah was destroyed seven years before Nebuchadnezzer became king. And he was king of Babylon, not Assyria. It would be similar to an author beginning a book, “In 1776, when Abraham Lincoln was the president of Canada…” The author of Judith clues us in that he is not telling a typical story. While the story is replete with proper names of places and people, many of them are not placed “correctly” and many of them are unknown from other sources.
The book of Judith is not trying to narrate an historical event nor is it presenting a regular historical novel with fictional characters in a “real” setting. Rather, Judith is iconic of all of Israel’s struggles against surrounding nations. By the time of its writing, Israel had been dominated by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians and the Greeks. The name “Judith” means “Jewess.” The character of Judith is therefore representative of the whole nation of Israel. In an almost constant battle against the surrounding nations, the Israelites depended on the Lord for their survival and sustenance. Judith represents the best hopes and intentions of the Israelites-the vanquishing of the oppressors and the freedom of the land of Israel.
The general Holofernes, whom Judith assassinates, represents the worst of the oppressors. He is bringing 182,000 troops against a small city in a corner of Israel to force them to worship the head of foreign oppression: Nebuchadnezzer. The city is terribly outmatched, but Holofernes opts for a siege rather than a battle. When the people are at the point of despair because they have run out of water, Judith volunteers to try an unusual tactic. She leaves the city with her maid and gets close to Holofernes because of her beauty. She uses a series of tricks and half-truths to find Holofernes drunk and vulnerable. Then she beheads him with his own sword!
It is crucial to see the irony of the story and of Judith’s words. For example, the Ammonite [sic] Achior who Holofernes rejected was supposed to share the cruel fate of the Israelites at the hand of the Assyrians, but he is saved with the Israelites instead (6:5-9). Judith uses the phrase “my lord” (Adonai in Heb.) several times, but it is unclear whether she is referring to Holofernes or to God. The great nation is defeated by a humble woman. The story is similar to the famous David and Goliath episode. The reader should look for ironic moments where a character’s intentions or statements are fulfilled, but in the way that he or she would least expect.
The book of Judith is divided into basically two sections, ch. 1-7 and 8-16. The first seven chapters lay out the “historical” background and describe the political situation which led to Holofernes attack on Israel.
It is important to understand that the events are not historical, but they are full of details that one finds in a good novel. Achior plays a key role by narrating Israel’s history and firmly believing in God’s protection of his people (5). He eventually converts to Judaism after the Assyrians are defeated (14:10). The second half of the book (8-16) focuses on Judith herself and her heroic acts. Once the Assyrians discover Holofernes decapitated body, they flee in confusion and the Israelites rout them. Ch. 16 contains a hymn about Judith’s deeds. ….
Judith is a book of the Bible that is meant to be enjoyed. By enjoying the story and the Lord’s victory over the great nations through Judith, we can appreciate the paradoxical way God chooses to work on earth, using the weak to conquer the strong, the poor to outdo the rich.
[End of quote]
But this attribution of non-historicity to the Book of Judith was not the standard Catholic approach down through the centuries, until, say, the 1930’s. During that long period of time, Catholic scholars generally tended to regard the book as recording a real historical drama, whether or not their valiant efforts to demonstrate this were convincing.
The way that I see it, these early commentators had the will, if not the history/ archaeology, to demonstrate the trustworthiness of the Judith story. Then, at about the time that the archaeology had become available, commentators no longer had the will.
A combination of will and more scientific history/archaeology would make for a really nice change.
For, today it is very rare to find any who are prepared to argue for the full historicity of the Book of Judith.
I, in my university thesis, A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background (http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/5973), wrote regarding this situation (Preface, p. x):
I know of virtually no current historians who even consider the Book of Judith to be anything other than a ‘pious fiction’, or perhaps ‘historical fiction’, with the emphasis generally on the ‘fiction’ aspect of this. Thus I feel a strong empathy for the solitary Judith in the midst of those differently-minded Assyrians (Judith 10:11-13:10).
In that thesis I had argued (with respect to the book’s historical and geographical problems) for what I consider in retrospect to be the obvious scenario: that the Judith event pertains to the famous destruction of Sennacherib’s army of 185,000 Assyrians.
The heroine Judith initiated this victory for Israel by her slaying of the Assyrian commander-in-chief, which action then led to the rout and slaughter of the army in its panic-stricken flight.
For my up-dated version of this, see e.g. my article:
This is the incident that had made Judith so famous throughout Israel in her youth – a fame that apparently only increased as she grew older.
But Judith, even more than being the most beautiful and courageous woman that she was, had already, at a young age, exhibited – as we have read – amazing wisdom and even sanctity.
Her wisdom (some might say cunning) was apparent from the way that she was able to beguile the Assyrians with her shrewd and bitingly ironic words.
Judith was so formidable and significant a woman and one would expect to find further traces of her in the course of her very long life.
She has a further significant biblical presence in the form of Huldah, teacher and expounder of the Torah:
I believe that Judith has, as well, been picked up in many literatures and mythologies of many nations.
Judith a Universal Heroine
Glimpses of Judith in BC Antiquity
Some ancient stories that can be only vaguely historical seem to recall the Judith incident. Two of these that I picked up in my thesis appear in the ‘Lindian Chronicle’ (dated 99 BC), relating to the Greco-Persian period, and in Homer’s classic epic tale, The Iliad.
The Lindian Chronicle
Thus I wrote in my thesis (op. cit., Volume Two, pp. 67-68):
Uzziah, confirming Judith’s high reputation, immediately recognized the truth of what she had just said (vv. 28-29), whilst adding the blatantly Aaronic excuse that ‘the people made us do it’ (v. 30, cf. Exodus 32:21-24): ‘But the people were so thirsty that they compelled us to do for them what we have promised, and made us take an oath that we cannot break’. Judith, now forced to work within the time-frame of those ‘five days’ that had been established against her will, then makes this bold pronouncement – again completely in the prophetic, or even ‘apocalyptic’, style of Joan of Arc (vv. 32-33):
Then Judith said to them, ‘Listen to me. I am about to do something that will go down through all generations to our descendants. Stand at the town gate tonight so that I may go out with my maid; and within the days after which you have promised to surrender the town to our enemies, the Lord will deliver Israel by my hand’.
A Note. This 5-day time frame, in connection with a siege – the very apex of the [Book of Judith] drama – may also have been appropriated into Greco-Persian folklore.
In the ‘Lindian Chronicle’ it is narrated that when Darius, King of Persia, tried to conquer the Island of Hellas, the people gathered in the stronghold of Lindus to withstand the attack. The citizens of the besieged city asked their leaders to surrender because of the hardships and sufferings brought by the water shortage (cf. Judith 7:20-28).
The Goddess Athena [read Judith] advised one of the leaders [read Uzziah] to continue to resist the attack; meanwhile she interceded with her father Jupiter [read God of Israel] on their behalf (cf. Judith 8:9-9:14). Thereupon, the citizens asked for a truce of 5 days (exactly as in Judith), after which, if no help arrived, they would surrender (cf. Judith 7:30-31). On the second day a heavy shower fell on the city so the people could have sufficient water (cf. 8:31, where Uzziah asks Judith to pray for rain). Datis [read Holofernes], the admiral of the Persian fleet [read commander-in-chief of the Assyrian army], having witnessed the particular intervention of the Goddess to protect the city, lifted the siege [rather, the siege was forcibly raised]. ….
[End of quote]
Apparently I am not the only one who has noticed the similarity between these two stories, for I now find this (http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/judith.html): “The Israeli scholar Y. M. Grintz has pointed out the parallels between the theme of the book [Judith] and an episode which took place during the siege of Lindus, on the island of Rhodes, but here again the comparison is extremely weak”.
Yes, the latter is probably just a “weak” appropriation of the original Hebrew account.
I have written a lot along these lines of Greek appropriating, e.g.:
Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit
Whereas the goddess Athena may have been substituted for Judith in the Lindian Chronicle, she substitutes for the angel Raphael in the Book of Tobit.
I made this comparison in “Similarities to The Odyssey”:
The ‘Divine’ Messenger
From whom the son, especially, receives help during his travels. In the Book of Tobit, this messenger is the angel Raphael (in the guise of ‘Azarias’).
In The Odyssey, it is the goddess Athene (in the guise of ‘Mentes’).
Likewise Poseidon (The Odyssey) substitutes for the demon, Asmodeus (in Tobit).
It may also be due to an ‘historical’ mix up that two of Judith’s Assyrian opponents came to acquire the apparently Persians name of, respectively, “Holofernes” and “Bagoas” (http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/judith.html): “Holofernes and Bagoas are to be identified with the two generals sent against Phoenicia, Palestine and Egypt by Artaxerxes III towards 350 [BC]. The names are certainly Persian, and are attested frequently …”.
Greco-Persian history is still awaiting a proper revision.
“The Iliad”
Earlier in my thesis (pp. 59-60) I had written in similar vein, of Greek appropriation, regarding the confrontation between the characters in the Book of Judith, “Holofernes” and “Achior”:
Achior had made an unexpected apologia on behalf of the Israelites. It had even come with this concluding warning to Holofernes (5:20, 21):
‘So now, my master and lord … if they are not a guilty nation, then let my lord pass them by; for their Lord and God will defend them, and we shall become the laughing-stock of the whole world’.
These words had absolutely stunned the soldiery who were by now all for tearing Achior ‘limb from limb’ (5:22). Holofernes, for his part, was enraged with his subordinate. Having succeeded in conquering almost the entire west, he was hardly about to countenance hearing that some obscure mountain folk might be able to offer him any meaningful resistance.
Holofernes then uttered the ironic words to Achior: ‘… you shall not see my face again from this day until I take revenge on this race that came out of Egypt’ (6:5); ironic because, the next time that Achior would see Holofernes’ face, it would be after Judith had beheaded him.
Holofernes thereupon commanded his orderlies to take the insolent Achior and bind him beneath the walls of Bethulia, so that he could suffer, with the people whom he had just verbally defended, their inevitable fate when the city fell to the Assyrians (v. 6).
After the Assyrian brigade had managed to secure Achior at Bethulia, and had then retreated from the walls under sling-fire from the townsfolk, the Bethulians went out to fetch him (6:10-13). Once safely inside the city Achior told them his story, and perhaps Judith was present to hear it. Later she would use bits and pieces of information supplied by Achior for her own confrontation with Holofernes, to deceive him.
[End of quote]
In a footnote (n. 1286) to this, I had proposed, in connection with The Iliad:
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 the argument at the siege of Troy between Agamemnon, supreme commander of the Greeks, and the renowned Achilles (Achior?).
And further on, on p. 69, I drew a comparison between Judith and Helen of Troy of The Iliad:
The elders of Bethulia, “Uzziah, Chabris, and Charmis – who are here mentioned for the last time in the story as a threesome (10:6)” … – are stunned by Judith’s new appearance when they meet her at the town’s gate (vv. 7-8): “When they saw her transformed in appearance and dressed differently, they were very greatly astounded at her beauty and said to her, ‘May the God of our ancestors grant you favour and fulfil your plan …’.”…. Upon Judith’s request (command?), the elders “ordered the young men to open the gate for her” (v. 9). Then she and her maid went out of the town and headed for the camp of the Assyrians. “The men of the town watched her until she had gone down the mountain and passed through the valley, where they lost sight of her” (v. 10).
“Compare this scene”, I added in (n. 1316), “with that of Helen at the Skaian gates of Troy, greatly praised by Priam and the elders of the town for her beauty. The Iliad, Book 3, p. 45”.
We recall that Craven had grouped together “Judith, the slayer of Holofernes; Jael, the slayer of Sisera; and Tomyris, the slayer of Cyrus …”.
Whilst Judith and Jael were two distinct heroines of Israel, living centuries apart, I think that Tomyris, the slayer of Cyrus must be – given the ancient variations about the death of Cyrus – a fictitious character. And her story has certain suspicious likenesses, again, to that of Judith.
The details of Cyrus’s death vary by account. The account of Herodotus from his Histories provides the second-longest detail, in which Cyrus met his fate in a fierce battle with the Massagetae, a tribe from the southern deserts of Khwarezm and Kyzyl Kum in the southernmost portion of the steppe regions of modern-day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, following the advice of Croesus to attack them in their own territory.[68] The Massagetae were related to the Scythians in their dress and mode of living; they fought on horseback and on foot. In order to acquire her realm, Cyrus first sent an offer of marriage to their ruler, Tomyris, a proposal she rejected.
“Holofernes declares his intention of having sexual intercourse with Judith (12:12). Judith responds to his invitation to the banquet by saying “Who am I, to refuse my lord?”, clearly a double entendre! Holofernes, at the sight of Judith, is described as “ravished.” But he does not get any further with Judith than Cyrus would with Tomyris, for Judith, upon her return to the camp, will proclaim (13:15-16):
‘Here’, she said, ‘is the head of Holofernes, the general of the Assyrian army, and here is the mosquito net from his bed, where he lay in a drunken stupor. The Lord used a woman to kill him. As the Lord lives, I swear that Holofernes never touched me, although my beauty deceived him and brought him to his ruin. I was not defiled or disgraced; the Lord took care of me through it all’.
Wine will also play a vital part in the Cyrus legend, though in this case the defenders [i.e., the Massagetae – replacing the Israelites of the original story], rather than the invader, will be the ones affected by the strong drink:
[Cyrus] then commenced his attempt to take Massagetae territory by force, beginning by building bridges and towered war boats along his side of the river Jaxartes, or Syr Darya, which separated them. Sending him a warning to cease his encroachment in which she stated she expected he would disregard anyway, Tomyris challenged him to meet her forces in honorable warfare, inviting him to a location in her country a day’s march from the river, where their two armies would formally engage each other. He accepted her offer, but, learning that the Massagetae were unfamiliar with wine and its intoxicating effects, he set up and then left camp with plenty of it behind, taking his best soldiers with him and leaving the least capable ones. The general of Tomyris’s army, who was also her son Spargapises, and a third of the Massagetian troops killed the group Cyrus had left there and, finding the camp well stocked with food and the wine, unwittingly drank themselves into inebriation, diminishing their capability to defend themselves, when they were then overtaken by a surprise attack. They were successfully defeated, and, although he was taken prisoner, Spargapises committed suicide once he regained sobriety.
It is at this point that Tomyris will be stirred into action, more as a warrior queen than as a heroine using her womanly charm to deceive, but she will ultimately – just like Judith – swear vengeance and decapitate her chief opponent:
Upon learning of what had transpired, Tomyris denounced Cyrus’s tactics as underhanded and swore vengeance, leading a second wave of troops into battle herself. Cyrus the Great was ultimately killed, and his forces suffered massive casualties in what Herodotus referred to as the fiercest battle of his career and the ancient world. When it was over, Tomyris ordered the body of Cyrus brought to her, then decapitated him and dipped his head in a vessel of blood in a symbolic gesture of revenge for his bloodlust and the death of her son.[68][69] However, some scholars question this version, mostly because Herodotus admits this event was one of many versions of Cyrus’s death that he heard from a supposedly reliable source who told him no one was there to see the aftermath.[70]
Herodotus’s claim that this was “the fiercest battle of … the ancient world”, whilst probably not befitting the obscure Massagetae, is indeed a worthy description of the defeat and rout of Sennacherib’s massive army of almost 200,000 men.
But this was, as Herodotus had also noted, just “one of many versions of Cyrus’s death”. And Wikipedia adds some variations on this account:
Dandamayev says maybe Persians took back Cyrus’ body from the Massagetae, unlike what Herodotus claimed.[72]
Ctesias, in his Persica, has the longest account, which says Cyrus met his death while putting down resistance from the Derbices infantry, aided by other Scythian archers and cavalry, plus Indians and their elephants. According to him, this event took place northeast of the headwaters of the Syr Darya.[73] An alternative account from Xenophon‘s Cyropaedia contradicts the others, claiming that Cyrus died peaceably at his capital.[74] The final version of Cyrus’s death comes from Berossus, who only reports that Cyrus met his death while warring against the Dahae archers northwest of the headwaters of the Syr Darya.[75]
[End of quote]
Scholars may be able to discern many more Judith-type stories in semi-legendary BC ‘history’.
Donald Spoto, in Joan. The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint (Harper, 2007), has referred to the following supposed warrior-women, a re-evaluation of whom I think may be worth considering (p. 73):
The Greek poet Telesilla was famous for saving the city of Argos from attack by Spartan troops in the fifth century B.C. In first-century Britain, Queen Boudicca [Boadicea] led an uprising against the occupying Roman forces. In the third century Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra (latter-day Syria), declared her independence of the Roman Empire and seized Egypt and much of Asia Minor.
[End of quote]
But there are also a plethora of such female types in what is considered to be AD history.
Glimpses of Judith in (supposedly) AD Time
Before I go on to discuss some of these, I must point out – what I have mentioned before, here and there – a problem with AD time, especially its so-called ‘Dark Ages’ (c. 600-900 AD), akin to what revisionists have found to have occurred with the construction of BC time, especially its so-called ‘Dark Ages’ (c. 700-1200 BC). Whilst I intend to write much more about this in the future, I did broach the subject again in my article:
Mohammed, a composite of Old Testament figures, also based upon Jesus Christ
and some of this will have a direct bearing upon Judith (see Axum and Gudit below).
But here is a different summary of attempts to expose the perceived problems pertaining to AD time, known as the “Phantom Time Hypothesis”, by a writer who is not sympathetic to it:
When Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz introduces his paper on the “phantom time hypothesis,” he kindly asks his readers to be patient, benevolent, and open to radically new ideas, because his claims are highly unconventional. This is because his paper is suggesting three difficult-to-believe propositions: 1) Hundreds of years ago, our calendar was polluted with 297 years which never occurred; 2) this is not the year 2005, but rather 1708; and 3) The purveyors of this hypothesis are not crackpots.
The Phantom Time Hypothesis suggests that the early Middle Ages (614-911 A.D.) never happened, but were added to the calendar long ago either by accident, by misinterpretation of documents, or by deliberate falsification by calendar conspirators.
This would mean that all artifacts ascribed to those three centuries belong to other periods, and that all events thought to have occurred during that same period occurred at other times, or are outright fabrications. For instance, a man named Heribert Illig (pictured), one of the leading proponents of the theory, believes that Charlemagne was a fictional character. But what evidence is this outlandish theory based upon?
It seems that historians are plagued by a plethora of falsified documents from the Middle Ages, and such was the subject of an archaeological conference in München, Germany in 1986. In his lecture there, Horst Fuhrmann, president of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, described how some documents forged by the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages were created hundreds of years before their “great moments” arrived, after which they were embraced by medieval society. This implied that whomever produced the forgeries must have very skillfully anticipated the future… or there was some discrepancy in calculating dates.
This was reportedly the first bit of evidence that roused Illig’s curiosity… he wondered why the church would have forged documents hundreds of years before they would become useful. So he and his group examined other fakes from preceding centuries, and they “divined chronological distortions.” This led them to investigate the origin of the Gregorian calendar, which raised even more inconsistency.
In 1582, the Gregorian calendar we still use today was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII to replace the outdated Julian calendar which had been implemented in 45 BC. The Gregorian calendar was designed to correct for a ten-day discrepancy caused by the fact that the Julian year was 10.8 minutes too long. But by Heribert Illig’s math, the 1,627 years which had passed since the Julian calendar started should have accrued a thirteen-day discrepancy… a ten-day error would have only taken 1,257 years.
So Illig and his group went hunting for other gaps in history, and found a few… for example, a gap of building in Constantinople (558 AD – 908 AD) and a gap in the doctrine of faith, especially the gap in the evolution of theory and meaning of purgatory (600 AD until ca. 1100). From all of this data, they have become convinced that at some time, the calendar year was increased by 297 years without the corresponding passage of time. ….
[End of quote]
As with the pioneering efforts of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky (Ages in Chaos) to reform BC time, some of this early work in AD revisionism may turn out to be extreme and far-fetched. But I would nevertheless agree with the claim by its proponents that the received AD history likewise stands in need of a massive renovation.
In my articles on Mohammed – {who, I am now convinced, was not an historical personage, but a composite of various biblical (pseudepigraphal) characters, and most notably (for at least the period from Birth to Marriage), was Tobias (= my Job), son of Tobit} – I drew attention to a very BC-like “Nehemiah”, thought to have been a contemporary of Mohammed.
Moreover, the major incident that is said to have occurred in the year of Mohammed’s birth, the invasion of Mecca by Abrahas the Axumite, I argued, was simply a reminiscence of Sennacherib’s invasion and defeat:
… an event that is said to have taken place in the very year that Mohammed was born, c. 570 AD, the invasion of Mecca by Abraha[s] of the kingdom of Axum [Aksum], has all the earmarks, I thought, of the disastrous campaign of Sennacherib of Assyria against Israel.
Not 570 AD, but closer to 700 BC!
Lacking to this Qur‘anic account is the [Book of] Judith element that (I have argued in various places) was the catalyst for the defeat of the Assyrian army. ….
But, as I went on to say, the Judith element is available, still in the context of the kingdom of Axum – apparently a real AD kingdom, but one that seems to appropriate ancient Assyrian – in the possibly Jewish heroine, Gudit (var. Gwedit, Yodit, Judith), ostensibly of the mid- C10th AD.
Let us read some more about her.
Judith the Simeonite and Gudit the Semienite
Interesting that Judith the Simeonite has a Gideon (or Gedeon) in her ancestry (Judith 8:1): “[Judith] was the daughter of Merari, the granddaughter of Ox and the great-granddaughter of Joseph. Joseph’s ancestors were Oziel, Elkiah, Ananias, Gideon, Raphaim, Ahitub, Elijah, Hilkiah, Eliab, Nathanael, Salamiel, Sarasadai, and Israel”, and the Queen of Semien, Gudit (or Judith), was the daughter of a King Gideon.
Bernard Lewis (1): The Jews of the Dark continent, 1980
The early history of the Jews of the Habashan highlands remains obscure, with their origins remaining more mythical than historical. In this they areas in other respects, they are the mirror image of their supposed Kin across the Red sea. For while copious external records of Byzantine, Persian, old Axumite and Arab sources exist of the large-scale conversion of Yemen to Judaism, and the survival of a large Jewish community at least until the 11th century, no such external records exist for the Jews of Habash, presently by far the numerically and politically dominant branch of this ancient people.
Their own legends insist that Judaism had reached the shores of Ethiopia at the time of the First temple. They further insist that Ethiopia had always been Jewish. In spite of the claims of Habashan nationalists, Byzantine, Persian and Arab sources all clearly indicate that the politically dominant religion of Axum was, for a period of at least six centuries Christianity and that the Tigray cryptochristian minority, far from turning apostate following contact with Portugese Jesuits in the 15th century is in fact the [remnant] of a period of Christian domination which lasted at least until the 10th century.
For the historian, when records fail, speculation must perforce fill the gap. Given our knowledge of the existence of both Jewish and Christian sects in the deserts of Western Arabia and Yemen it is not difficult to speculate that both may have reached the shores of Axum concurrently prior to the council of Nicaea and the de-judaization of heterodox sects. Possibly, they coexisted side by side for centuries without the baleful conflict which was the lot of both faiths in the Mediterannean. Indeed, it is possible that they were not even distinct faiths. We must recall that early Christians saw themselves as Jews and practiced all aspects of Jewish law and ritual for the first century of their existence. Neither did Judaism utterly disavow the Christians, rather viewing them much as later communities would view the Sabateans and other messianic movement. The advent While Paul of Tarsus changed the course of Christian evolution but failed to formally de-Judaize all streams of Christianity, with many surviving even after the council of Nicaea.
Might not Habash have offered a different model of coexistence, even after it’s purported conversion to Christianity in the 4th century? If it had, then what occurred? Did Christianity, cut off from contact with Constantinople following the rise of Islam, wither on the vine enabling a more grassroots based religion to assume dominance? While such a view is tempting, archaeological evidence pointing to the continued centrality of a Christian Axum as an administrative and economic center for several centuries following the purported relocation of the capital of the kingdom to Gonder indicates a darker possibility.
The most likely scenario, in my opinion, turns on our knowledge of the Yemenite- Axum-Byzantine conflict of the 6th century. This conflict was clearly seen as a religious, and indeed divinely sanctioned one by Emperor Kaleb, with certain of his in scriptures clearly indicating the a version of “replacement theology” had taken root in his court, forcing individuals and sects straddling both sides of the Christian-Jewish continuum to pick sides. Is it overly speculative to assume that those cleaving to Judaism within Axum would be subject to suspicion and persecution? It seems to me likely that the formation of an alternative capital by the shores of lake Tana, far from being an organized relocation of the imperial seat, was, in fact, an act of secession and flight by a numerically inferior and marginalized minority (2).
Read in this light, the fabled Saga of King Gideon and Queen Judith recapturing Axum from Muslim invaders and restoring the Zadokan dynasty in the 10th century must be viewed skeptically as an attempt to superimpose on the distant past a more contemporary enemy as part of the process of national myth making.
What truly occurred during this time of isolation can only be the guessed at but I would hazard an opinion that the Axum these legendary rulers “liberated” was held by Christians rather than Muslims. ….
Perhaps the heroine with whom Judith of Bethulia is most often compared is the fascinating Joan [Jeanne] of Arc.
Donald Spoto again, in his life of Joan, has a chapter five on Joan of Arc that he entitles “The New Deborah”. And Joan has also been described as a “second Judith”.
Both Deborah and Judith were celebrated Old Testament women who had provided military assistance to Israel.
Spoto, having referred to those ancient pagan women (Telesilla, etc.), as already discussed, goes on to write (p. 74):
Joan was not the only woman in history to inspire and to give direction to soldiers. …. Africa had its rebel queen Gwedit, or Yodit, in the tenth century. In the seventh appeared Sikelgaita, a Lombard princess who frequently accompanied her husband, Robert, on his Byzantine military campaigns, in which she fought in full armor, rallying Robert’s troops when they were initially repulsed by the Byzantine army. In the twelfth century Eleanor of Aquitaine took part in the Second Crusade, and in the fourteenth century Joanna, Countess of Montfort, took up arms after her husband died in order to protect the rights of her son, the Duke of Brittany. She organized resistance and dressed in full armor, led a raid of knights that successfully destroyed one of the enemy’s rear camps.
Joan [of Arc] was not a queen, a princess, a noblewoman or a respected poet with public support. She went to her task at enormous physical risk of both her virginity and her life, and at considerable risk of a loss of both reputation and influence. The English, for example, constantly referred to her as the prostitute: to them, she must have been; otherwise, why would she travel with an army of men?
Yet Joan was undeterred by peril or slander, precisely because of her confidence that God was their captain and leader. She often said that if she had been unsure of that, she would not have risked such obvious danger but would have kept to her simple, rural life in Domrémy.
[End of quote]
I think that, based on the Gudit and Axum scenario[s], there is the real possibility that some of these above-mentioned heroines, or ancient amazons, can be identified with the famous Judith herself – she gradually being transformed from an heroic Old Testament woman into an armour-bearing warrior on horseback, sometimes even suffering capture, torture and death – whose celebrated beauty and/or siege victory I have argued on many occasions was picked up in non-Hebrew ‘history’, or mythologies: e.g. the legendary Helen of Troy is probably based on Judith, at least in relation to her beauty and a famous siege, rather than to any military noüs on Helen’s part.
In the name Iodit (Gwedit) above, the name Judith can be, I think, clearly recognised.
The wisdom-filled Judith might even have been the model, too, for the interesting and highly intelligent and philosophically-minded Hypatia of Alexandria.
Now I find in the Wikipedia article, “Catherine of Alexandria”
that the latter is also likened to Hypatia. Catherine is said to have lived 105 years (Judith’s very age: see Book of Judith 16:23) before Hypatia’s death. Historians such as Harold Thayler Davis believe that Catherine (‘the pure one’) may not have existed and that she was more an ideal exemplary figure than a historical one. She did certainly form an exemplary counterpart to the pagan philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria in the medieval mindset; and it has been suggested that she was invented specifically for that purpose. Like Hypatia, she is said to have been highly learned (in philosophy and theology), very beautiful, sexually pure, and to have been brutally murdered for publicly stating her beliefs.
Interestingly, St. Joan of Arc identified Catherineof Alexandria as one of the Saints who appeared to her and counselled her.
Who really existed, and who did not?
Judith of Bethulia might be the key to answering this question, and she may also provide us with a golden opportunity for embarking upon a revision of AD time.
For there are also many supposedly AD queens called “Judith”:
Judith of Babenberg (c. late 1110s/1120 – after 1168), daughter of Leopold III, Margrave of Austria and Agnes of Germany, married William V, Marquess of Montferrat
Judith of Bavaria (925 – June 29 soon after 985), daughter of Arnulf, Duke of Bavaria and Judith, married Henry I, Duke of Bavaria
Judith of Bavaria (795-843) (805 – April 19 or 23, 843), daughter of Count of Welf and Hedwig, Duchess of Bavaria, became second wife of Louis the Pious
Judith Premyslid (c. 1057–1086), daughter of Vratislaus II of Bohemia and Adelaide of Hungary, became second wife of Władysław I Herman
Judith of Brittany (982 – 1017), daughter of Conan I of Rennes and Ermengarde of Anjou, Duchess of Brittany, married Richard II, Duke of Normandy
Judith of Flanders (October 844 – 870), daughter of Charles the Bald and Ermentrude of Orléans, married Æthelwulf of Wessex
Judith of Habsburg (1271 – May 21, 1297), daughter of Rudolph I of Germany and Gertrude of Hohenburg, married to Wenceslaus II of Bohemia
Judith of Hungary (d.988), daughter of Géza of Hungary and Sarolt, married Bolesław I Chrobry
Judith of Schweinfurt (before 1003 – 2 August 1058), daughter of Henry, Margrave of Nordgau and Gertrude, married Bretislaus I, Duke of Bohemia
Judith of Swabia (1047/1054 – 1093/1095), daughter of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor and Agnes of Poitou, married Władysław I Herman, successor to Judith of Bohemia
Judith of Thuringia (c. 1135 – d. 9 September after 1174), daughter of Louis I, Landgrave of Thuringia and Hedwig of Gudensberg, married Vladislaus II of Bohemia
‘Woe to the nations that rise up against my people!
The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment;
he will send fire and worms into their flesh;
they shall weep in pain forever’.
Judith 16:17
Judith of Bavaria
‘second Judith’ or ‘Jezebel’?
“The poems depict her as “a second biblical Judith, a Mary sister of Aaron in her musical abilities, a Saphho, a prophetess, cultivated, chaste, intelligent, pious, strong in spirit, and sweet in conversation”.
of a whole list of supposedly historical queens Isabelle (or variations of that name) who have been likened to the biblical Jezebel, or have been called ‘a second Jezebel’.
Now the Bavarians do not fare too well, because apparently they also had a C9th AD queen Judith who was likened to Jezebel – though, alternately, to the pious Judith:
Scandals: Contemporary criticisms of Judith’s role and behavior ….
However, the rise of Judith’s power, influence and activity in the court sparked resentment towards her. Agobard of Lyons, a supporter of Lothar, wrote two tracts Two Books in Favor of the Sons and against Judith the Wife of Louis in 833. These tracts were meant as propaganda against Judith from the court of Lothar in order to undermine her court and influence.
The tracts themselves attack her character, claiming her to be of a cunning and underhanded nature and of corrupting her husband. These attacks were predominantly anti-feminist in nature. When Louis still did not sever marital ties with Judith, Agobard claimed that Judith’s extramarital affairs were carried out “first secretly and later impudently”.[4]Paschasius Radbertus accused Judith by associating her with the engagement in debauchery and witchcraft … of filling the palace with “soothsayers… seers and mutes as well as dream interpreters and those who consult entrail, indeed all those skilled in malign craft”.
Characterized as a Jezebel and a Justina … Judith was accused by one of her enemies, Paschasius Radbertus, of engaging in debauchery and witchcraft with her purported lover, Count Bernard of Septimania, Louis’ chamberlain and trusted adviser. This portrayal and image stands in contrast to poems about Judith.[2] The poems depict her as “a second biblical Judith, a Mary sister of Aaron in her musical abilities, a Saphho, a prophetess, cultivated, chaste, intelligent, pious, strong in spirit, and sweet in conversation”.[2]
However, Judith also garnered devotion and respect. Hrabanus Maurus wrote a dedicatory letter to Judith, exalting her “praiseworthy intellect”[11] and for her “good works”.[11] The letter commends her in the turbulent times amidst battles, wishing that she may see victory amidst the struggles she is facing. It also implores her “to follow through with a good deed once you have begun it”[11] and “to improve yourself at all times”. Most strikingly the letter wishes Judith to look to the biblical Queen Esther, the wife of Xerxes I [sic] as inspiration and as a role model ….
[End of quote]
A tale of two more Judiths
“In the ninth century, two great families arose because of two women named Judith — a fortuitous name that recalled the widow who,
during the siege of Jerusalem [sic] by the Assyrians, saves her city
by pretending to offer herself to Holofernes only to behead him
If mythical women stood at the beginnings of origin legends, this may be because real flesh-and-blood women stood at the beginnings of great aristocratic families.
After all, such families of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries largely owed their status, their lands, and their power to women. As Constance Bouchard and before her Karl Ferdinand Werner have pointed out, the great comital families might often appear to spring from “new men” in the ninth or tenth centuries, but actually these new men owed their rise to fortuitous marriages with greater, established families. ….
Family chroniclers and genealogists were well aware of the importance of such marriages in preserving and augmenting family power and honor — it was a constant and essential element in generational strategies throughout the Middle Ages. As Anita Guerreau-Jalabert has argued, the image of a strictly agnatic descent through generations is more an invention of nineteenth-century genealogists than a reflection of medieval perceptions of kinship.2 At the same time, the question of how much credit for the successes of kindreds should be attributed to these women rather than to the men of the kindred remained very much in question. As Janet Nelson points out, elite women played a double symbolic role within their husbands’ lineages: first, they made possible the continuation of the lineage, but at the same time, because they did not themselves belong to it, they made possible the individualization of a particular offspring within the lineage.3 Thus reconstruction of family histories meant coming to terms, under differing needs and circumstances, with the relative importance of such marriages and of the women who put not only their dowries and their bodies but their personalities and kinsmen to work on behalf of their husbands and their children. Over time, the ideological imperative of illustrious male descent could best be fostered if memory of the women who made their rise possible was removed from center stage in favor of the audacious acts of men.
In the ninth century, two great families arose because of two women named Judith — a fortuitous name that recalled the widow who, during the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians, saves her city by pretending to offer herself to Holofernes only to behead him and return in triumph to her people.4 The biblical Judith was thus, as Heide Estes has pointed out, one of the few models of a woman playing an active role in public life available, although the reception of the story of Judith in the Middle Ages shows the dangerous ambiguity attached to this woman.5 The younger of the Judiths considered in this chapter was the grand-daughter of the elder, and their stories illustrate the two principal ways that women could be at the start of families’ fortunes. The story of how these beginnings were reformed over time suggests the complexities of aristocratic dynastic memory in the tenth through twelfth centuries.
….
… the alliance that moved this kindred to the very center of the Frankish stage was the marriage of Judith, daughter of Welf and Heilwig, to the emperor Louis the Pious in 819, following the death of Louis’s first wife, Irmingard. Judith, according to the Annales regni Francorum and the account of an anonymous biographer of Louis known as the Astronomer, was selected in a sort of beauty pageant, in which the emperor examined daughters of the nobility before making his choice, a practice some have seen as imitating Byzantine tradition.14 More recently, Mayke de Jong has pointed out that this description, and particularly that of the “Astronomer,” is less a reflection of Byzantine court tradition than an image of Judith modeled on the biblical figure of Esther, a comparison already made by Hrabanus Maurus in his defense of the empress. ….
[End of qu0te]
“… ideal of the Christian woman”
“Barbara Welzel has pointed out that Judith was first considered as
the ideal of the Christian woman … but became as well an important figure of identification for princesses, serving as a political exemplum”.
Maryan Ainsworth and Abbie Vandivere
The two authors write, with relation to Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen’s, famous painting of c. 1530 AD (conventional dating), “Judith with the Head of Holofernes” (pictured above):
When considering for whom this painting of Judith, expressing female power, wisdom, and fortitude, may have been painted, a likely candidate comes to mind — Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands. It may well have been through Jan Gossart or perhaps Bernard Van Orley (ca. 1491/92–1542) that Vermeyen was introduced to Margaret, who held her court in Mechelen.
He must have entered the service of Margaret in 1525, for a document of 1530 petitions the regent for back pay for a period of about five years, indicating that Vermeyen had already been working for her.37 During this time, Vermeyen seems to have been mostly engaged in making portraits of the royal family and other nobles, such as the Portraitof Cardinal Érard de la Marck that with the HolyFamilyformed a diptych which belonged to Margaret.
The importance of the widow Judith as a model of strength and feminine virtue for Margaret of Austria and the iconography of the Burgundian-Habsburg court cannot be underestimated. The reminders of Judith’s importance as a just, vigorous, and brave ruler took many forms. Some of these were ephemeral, such as the tableauxvivants devoted to Judith that were performed at the official entries of princesses, such as Margaret of York, Mary of Burgundy, and Juana of Castile, into Netherlandish cities.38 Margaret of Austria owned a Judith tapestry (no longer extant) that was originally part of her trousseau for her marriage to Juan of Castile, and when she returned to Flanders after Juan’s death, the tapestry accompanied her.39 Possibly commissioned by Margaret from Bernard van Orley (her court painter), although not mentioned in the inventory of her possessions, was a tapestry of the Triumph of Virtuous Women that survives only as a petit patron (Vienna, Albertina Museum, inv. no. 15463).40 Featured in the foreground before the triumphal all’antica chariot are Jael killing Sisera, Lucretia committing suicide, and Judith with the head of Holofernes on the tip of her sword. Margaret’s court sculptor, Conrad Meit, produced one of the masterpieces of Renaissance sculpture, a Judithwith the Head of Holofernes (Munich, Bayerische Nationalmuseum), circa 1525–28. Although it is not listed among Margaret’s belongings, it certainly reflects courtly taste and was most likely commissioned by a woman for whom Judith was a noble exemplar.41
Margaret’s library contained books on virtuous women, among them Giovanni Bocaccio’s De femmes nobles et renomées (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. Fr. 12420). Judith has a featured role in one of the most influential texts of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Parementet triumphe des dames, written in 1493–94 by Olivier de la Marche. Here the author gives lessons to a noble lady of the virtues of humility, wisdom, loyalty, fidelity, and so forth in prose stories of famous virtuous women. Margaret of Austria owned an early version of the text, published between 1495 and 1500 (Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, ms. 10961-70).42
In 1509, Agrippa of Nettesheim dedicated to Margaret his treatise De nobilitate et praecellentia foemini sexus, where he notes that Judith “depicted herself as an example of virtue, which should be imitated not only by women but also by men,”43
Barbara Welzel has pointed out that Judith was first considered as the ideal of the Christian woman44 but became as well an important figure of identification for princesses, serving as a political exemplum.45 Just as Judith saved her people from the Assyrians, so, too, did Margaret defend her people in a politically active role.
Her success in this endeavor was acknowledged in a monumental woodcut by Robert Péril (Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, inv. no. 849-21), showing the genealogy of the Habsburgs, which praised Margaret as: “the Regent and sovereign of the Low countries, which she wisely ruled for Emperor Charles, her nephew; she opposed the enemy with the force of weapons and transferred the lands of Friesland, Utrecht and Overissel into the following of his majesty [Charles V].”46
In terms of Margaret’s remarkable political acumen, a singular event comes to mind that may have a specific connection to Vermeyen’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes. In August of 1529, around the time of the painting’s presumed date, Jan Vermeyen accompanied Margaret to the signing of the so-called Paix des Dames or Ladies’ Peace, otherwise known as the Peace of Cam- brai: the most extraordinary diplomatic achievement of the regent’s career. Meeting her sister-in- law Louise of Savoy (mother of Francis I) almost in secret in Cambrai, Margaret — representing her nephew Charles V — negotiated a peace between the French and the Habsburgs. This treaty, which included the arranged marriage of Eleanor of Austria (sister to Charles V) to Francis I, ended, at least for a time, the fighting between the forces of King Frances I and Emperor Charles V. An obvious parallel exists between Margaret and Judith: two virtuous and powerful women, who managed to find a solution to the lust for battle of men and nations and create peace. Whether this painting commemorates a specific event or generally celebrates the heroic achievement of one woman, it is certainly a product of the milieu of Margaret of Austria’s court. ….
[End of quote]
Judith and Holofernes, Attila and Odabella
“Odabella implores him to kill her, but not to curse her.
She reminds his fiancé the story of the Hebrew Judith,
who saved Israel from the Babylonians [sic] by beheading
their leader Holofernes. Odabella has sworn to revenge …”.
“Attila” by Giuseppe Verdi
Judith and Holofernes, Attila and Ildico
“The tradition that Attila diedin a wedding-night may be true.
ButAttila is so much like Holofernesand Ildico so much like Judith…
thatwe suspect the tradition, even in its most sober version”.
[Attila’s] spectacular demise, on one of his many wedding nights, is memorably described by Gibbon:
Before the king of the Huns evacuated Italy, he threatened to return more dreadful, and more implacable, if his bride, the princess Honoria, were not delivered to his ambassadors…. Yet, in the mean while Attila relieved his tender anxiety, by adding a beautiful maid, whose name was Ildico, to the list of his innumerable wives. Their marriage was celebrated with barbaric pomp and festivity, at his wooden palace beyond the Danube; and the monarch, oppressed with wine and sleep, retired, at a late hour, from the banquet to the nuptial bed.
His attendants continued to respect his pleasures, or his repose, the greatest part of the ensuing day, till the unusual silence alarmed their fears and suspicions; and, after attempting to awaken Attila by loud and repeated cries, they at length broke into the royal apartment. They found the trembling bride sitting by the bedside, hiding her face with her veil…. The king…had expired during the night. An artery had suddenly burst; and as Attila lay in a supine posture, he was suffocated by a torrent of blood, which instead of finding a passage through his nostrils, regurgitated into the lungs and stomach. ….
The real story goes as follows (Judith 13:1-10):
When evening came, his slaves quickly withdrew. Bagoas closed the tent from outside and shut out the attendants from his master’s presence. They went to bed, for they all were weary because the banquet had lasted so long. But Judith was left alone in the tent, with Holofernes stretched out on his bed, for he was dead drunk.
Now Judith had told her maid to stand outside the bedchamber and to wait for her to come out, as she did on the other days; for she said she would be going out for her prayers. She had said the same thing to Bagoas. So everyone went out, and no one, either small or great, was left in the bedchamber. Then Judith, standing beside his bed, said in her heart, “O Lord God of all might, look in this hour on the work of my hands for the exaltation of Jerusalem. Now indeed is the time to help your heritage and to carry out my design to destroy the enemies who have risen up against us.”
She went up to the bedpost near Holofernes’ head, and took down his sword that hung there. She came close to his bed, took hold of the hair of his head, and said, “Give me strength today, O Lord God of Israel!” Then she struck his neck twice with all her might, and cut off his head. Next she rolled his body off the bed and pulled down the canopy from the posts. Soon afterward she went out and gave Holofernes’ head to her maid, who placed it in her food bag. ….
Elizabeth I as Judith: reassessing the apocryphal widow’s appearance in Elizabethan royal iconography
Abstract
Throughout her reign, Queen Elizabeth I of England was paralleled with many figures from the Bible.
While the analogies between Elizabeth and biblical figures such as Deborah the Judge, King Solomon, Queen Esther, King David, and Daniel the Prophet have received detailed attention in the existing scholarship, the analogy between Elizabeth and the Apocryphal widow Judith still remains on the fringes. Not only did Elizabeth compare herself to Judith, the analogy also appeared throughout the course of the queen’s reign as a biblical precedent for dealing with the Roman Catholic threat. This article re-assesses the place of the Judith analogy within Elizabethan royal iconography by chronologically analysing of many of the surviving, primary source, comparisons between Judith and Elizabeth, and demonstrates that Judith was invoked consistently, and in varying media, as a model of a providentially blessed leader. ….
On one … of the first portraits of [Elizabeth I] as a queen she appears in a religious context, she washes the feet of twelve poor women at a Maundy ceremony. …. On the title-pages of the different editions of the Bible Elizabeth’s figure appears: she is surrounded by the four cardinal virtues on the 1569 edition, while on the 1568 edition between the figures of Faith and Love she personifies the third New Testament virtue, Hope.
At the beginning of the Coronation Entry as she left the Tower she praised God for her deliverance from prison during the reign of Mary and compared herself to the prophet Daniel spared by God by special providence: “I acknowledge that Thou hast dealt as wonderfully and as mercifully with me as Thou didst with Thy true and faithful servant Daniel, Thy prophet, whom Thou deliverest out of the den from the cruelty of the greedy and raging lions. Even so was I overwhelmed and only by Thee delivered.” ….
During the first decade Elizabeth was mostly compared to figures of the Old Testament. In the fifth pageant of the Coronation Entry she appeared as Deborah, the Old Testament judge, listening to the advice of three figures representing the three estates of England, the clergy, the nobility and the commons. …. In sermons she was compared to Judith who rescued her people, and to Esther who interceded for her people. …. She was seen also as a new Moses leading his people out of the captivity of Egypt, and as Solomon the wise king.
“Easter begins by upsetting our expectations”, according to pope Francis.
Our God is a God of surprises. He upsets our ancestral traditions, good as some of those may appear to be. ‘You have heard it said …. But I tell you’.
Pray for your enemies; don’t lust after any person; restrain your anger.
The Hebrews thought that they had God pretty well worked out (as do today’s Fundamentalist Christians; ISIS; theoretical physicists). He was basically like they were. All you need to say is ‘’God [Allah] wills it”, and He just falls into line. He made us in his own image and likeness. Why not now re-make him in ours?
Scientists can turn God into a complex (though completely meaningless) mathematical equation, then declare that they have Him fully defined.
Job’s three friends, likewise, had God all (mathematically) cut and dried:
The Lord rewards the good and punishes the wicked – even in this life.
That idea was still circulating at the time of the Apostles (cf. John 9:1-3), who themselves apparently had not learned the lesson of their ancient Book of Job.
No, that old saying is clearly not true, exclaimed the righteous Job, who had grown up with this kind of thinking, but who now had serious cause to reject it. He was righteous – {had not God even declared him to be such?} – yet here was God attacking Job as if he were His own mortal enemy.
Well, you must have strayed from your formerly righteous ways, declared the three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. So now God is justly punishing you. Repent and return to what you were like before, and all will be well with you again, and with your family.
It was left to the wise young Elihu (was he the contemporary prophet Ezekiel?) to correct these three older ‘sages’, and to serve as something of a bridge between Job and God.
…..
But why focus so much upon the prophet Job in an article presumably about Habakkuk?
Well, you see, Habakkuk was Job!
Habakkuk (a name only a mother could love) was grappling with the same sort of problem that had so occupied the mind of Job (also of Jeremiah). Basically, it was ‘the problem of evil’, which a quick glance at the Internet tells is this:
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil
and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.
Specifically, Job-Habakkuk was wondering why God, who the prophet dearly wanted to be God, and to act like God (Habakkuk 3:2):
I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.
Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known [,]
had seemingly ceased to act like a just God (Habakkuk 1:2-4):
‘How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted’.
We know what you are capable of, Lord. Have not our ancestors passed on to us the accounts of your mighty deeds, such as at the time of the Plagues of Egypt and the Exodus. Here we are today oppressed by, not the Egyptians any more, but by those horrible Chaldeans. ‘Do those mighty things again in our day, in our time make them known’.
Had not the Chaldeans, with their basest of kings, Nebuchednezzar (Prayer of Azariah 1:9): ‘And thou didst deliver us into the hands of lawless enemies, most hateful forsakers of God, and to an unjust king, and the most wicked in all the world’,
who were making life miserable for Habakkuk and his compatriots, been the same people who had despoiled the hapless Job at the beginning of his troubles? (Job 1:17):
While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said,
‘The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels
and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!’
This is clear evidence that the elderly Job (young Tobias of the Book of Tobit) had belonged to the same era of Habakkuk, the era of the Chaldeans, and not – as many think and argue – to the Ice Ages, or to the time of the ancient Hebrew patriarchs, or, perhaps, to the Judges.
That name, Habakkuk (close your eyes now and try to spell it).
Habakkuk (חֲבַקּוּק) is not actually a Jewish (Hebrew) name.
It is Akkadian, khabbaququ, the name of a garden herb. We would expect Tobias (Job) to have had an Akkadian name in Nineveh, just as Daniel and his three companions were given Babylonian names (Shadrach looks Elamite, Shutruk).
Strangely, Habakkuk, had never been to Babylon.
Thus he tells the angel, who is about to take him by the hair – the first ever [h]air flight to southern Iraq: ‘Sir, I have never seen Babylon …’.
Daniel 14:33-36:
Now the prophet Habakkuk was in Judea; he had made a stew and had broken bread into a bowl, and was going into the field to take it to the reapers. But the angel of the Lord said to Habakkuk, ‘Take the food that you have to Babylon, to Daniel, in the lions’ den’. Habakkuk said, ‘Sir, I have never seen Babylon, and I know nothing about the den’. Then the angel of the Lord took him by the crown of his head and carried him by his hair; with the speed of the wind he set him down in Babylon, right over the den.
As a young man, Tobias, living in Nineveh, had needed an angelic guide, archangel Raphael, to show him the way to “Media” and “Ecbatana” (Bashan), beyond Charan (Haran) (Tobit 11:1, Douay). No doubt the same angel who lifted into the air an older Tobias-Job (= Habakkuk) and carried him to Babylon.
Again, presumably the same being as Job’s mysterious Advocate in heaven (Job 16:19).
The Prophet Mohammed was, in fact, a non-historical composite
based upon various Old Testament characters, but also –
as we shall find – based upon Jesus Christ.
Scholars and writers have come up with all sorts of views and theories in their attempts to explain the well-known problems associated with Mohammed and the Qur’an (Koran).
Regarding Mohammed, the correct attitude is, I believe, as I noted in my article:
Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History
I think that Spencer really gets close to hitting the nail on the head when he arrives at the conclusion that the Prophet Mohammed was, in fact, “a semi-legendary figure … whose exploits were greatly elaborated upon by later generations” – though my qualification of what he argues would be that this “semi-legendary figure” was based on real historical individuals, and not on figures as historically vague as the ones that Spencer will …. propose.
[End of quote]
My own firm conclusion is that:
The Prophet Mohammed was, in fact, a non-historical composite based upon various Old Testament characters, but also – as we shall find – based upon Jesus Christ.
Old Testament manifestations
I gave various of these in my “Biography of the Prophet Mohammed” article above, whilst excluding others, such as the prophet Jeremiah, who resembles Mohammed in, for example, his timidity when first called (Jeremiah 1:6), and his “23 years” (Jeremiah 25:3).
(“23 Years” indicates the duration of Muhammad’s Islamic ministry from 610 to 632 AD.)
Let us recall some of this here (not presented in biblical chronological order):
Nineveh, Tobias and Jonah
….
Yet we have found in … related “Heraclius and the Battle of Nineveh” articles (Heraclius supposedly having been a contemporary of Mohammed’s), that it is as if Mohammed had lived during the time of the powerful C8th BC neo-Assyrian kings. This would be in favour of my view that much of the life of the Prophet Mohammed was based on Tobias, son of Tobit, which family did actually live in ancient Nineveh:
The prophet Jonah, who had predicted the actual destruction of ancient Nineveh, and who was contemporaneously known to Tobit and Tobias (Tobit 14:4; cf. 14:8): ‘Go to Media, my son, for I fully believe what Jonah the prophet said about Nineveh, that it will be overthrown’, is incongruous as the “brother” of Mohammed, as the latter is supposed to have said of Jonah when speaking to a Christian slave supposedly from the town of Nineveh.
To make matters even worse, the Qur’an has those converted by Jonah as being Jonah’s own people:
The Quran and the Islamic traditions agree on Jonah being sent to Nineveh:
If only there had been a single township (among those We warned), which believed – so its faith should have profited it,- except the People of Jonah?
When they believed, We removed from them the Chastisement of Ignominy in the life of the present, and permitted them to enjoy (their life) for a while. S. 10:98
And remember Zunnün, when he departed in wrath: He imagined that We had no power over him! But he cried through the depths of darkness, “There is no god but Thou: glory to Thee: I was indeed wrong!” So We listened to him: and delivered him from distress: and thus do We deliver those who have faith. S. 21:87-88
So also was Jonah among those sent (by Us). When he ran away (like a slave from captivity) to the ship (fully) laden, He (agreed to) cast lots, and he was of the rebutted: Then the big Fish did swallow him, and he had done acts worthy of blame. Had it not been that he (repented and) glorified Allah, He would certainly have remained inside the Fish till the Day of Resurrection. But We cast him forth on the naked shore in a state of sickness, And We caused to grow, over him, a spreading plant of the gourd kind. And We sent him (on a mission) to a hundred thousand (men) or more. And they believed; so We permitted them to enjoy (their life) for a while. S. 37:139-148
Here is Ibn Kathir on S. 10:98:
“… The point is that between Musa and Yunus, there was no nation in its entirety that believed except the people of Yunus, the people of Naynawa (Nineveh). And they only believed because they feared that the torment from which their Messenger warned them, might strike them. They actually witnessed its signs. So they cried to Allah and asked for help. They engaged in humility in invoking Him. They brought their children and cattle and asked Allah to lift the torment from which their Prophet had warned them. As a result, Allah sent down His mercy and removed the scourge from them and gave them respite.
… In interpreting this Ayah, Qatadah said: ‘No town has denied the truth and then believed when they saw the scourge, and then their belief benefited them, with the exception of the people of Yunus. When they lost their prophet and they thought that the scourge was close upon them, Allah sent through their hearts the desire to repent. So they wore woolen fabrics and they separated each animal from its offspring. They then cried out to Allah for forty nights. When Allah saw the truth in their hearts and that they were sincere in their repentance and regrets, He removed the scourge from them.’ Qatadah said: ‘It is mentioned that the people of Yunus were in Naynawa, the land of Mosul.’ This was also reported from Ibn Mas’ud, Mujahid, Sai’d bin Jubayr and others from the Salaf.” ….
Ahab and Jezebel
Further possible confirmation that the Prophet Mohammed,
a non-historical character, is a biblical composite.
The biography of the Prophet Mohammed has borrowed so many of its bits and pieces from the Bible (Old and New Testaments) that it is no wonder that Mohammed has been portrayed as a most remarkable kind of man (verging on a superman), having such a breathtaking career.
The real miracle is that scholars down through the ages have been able to compile a coherent life of the man. The downside of it is – apart from religious implications – that it is historically a complete shambles. Better to view the whole thing as a marvellous work of fiction.
Now, a Turkish writer, Ercan Celik, believes that he has traced the so-called “uncle” of Mohammed, to the biblical king Ahab of Israel:
Who were Abu Lahab and His Wife? A View from the Hebrew Bible
by Ercan Celik*
In The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext, G. S. Reynolds observes that
…scholars of the Qur’an accept the basic premise of the medieval Islamic sources that the Qur’an is to be explained in light of the life of the Prophet Muhammad…
However, he proposes that critical Qur’anic scholarship not depend on prophetic biography (sīrah) or traditional Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr), but rather,
… the Qur’an should be appreciated in light of its conversation with earlier literature, in particular Biblical literature…This argument necessarily involves an examination of both the relationship of Muslim exegetical literature to the Qur’an and the relationship of the Qur’an to Biblical literature.
Sūrat al-Masad (Q 111) offers a valuable example for how a Biblical perspective can augment our understanding of the Qur’anic text. The text of the sūrah names its main character Abu Lahab, and mentions that he has a wife, but does not provide any further identifying information. Only extra-Qur’anic literature can give us more details about who he was. In this blog post, I compare how he may be identified through the Islamic literary sources and through the Hebrew Bible.
Abu Lahab In Islamic Literature
….
Abu Lahab, meaning “the father of flame,” is identified as the uncle of the prophet Muhammad, ʿAbd al-ʿUzza ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, nicknamed Abu Lahab on account of his reddish complexion. He is said to have been a rich and proud man, and he and his wife Umm Jamil, sister of Abu Sufyan, are depicted as fierce enemies of Muhammad and the early Muslim community.
There are many anecdotes in the Islamic literary sources about their verbal and physical attacks on the prophet. Some Qur’an commentators say that Umm Jamil used to litter Muhammad’s path with harmful thorns of twisted palm leaf fibres, and that this is the historical context for the final verse of Sūrat al-Masad: “Will have upon her neck a halter of palm-fibre” (Q 111:5).
Abu’l-Ahab in Biblical Literature
In searching the Hebrew Bible for a wicked man whose name resembles Abu Lahab, one finds Ahab (Hebrew: אַחְאָב), the seventh kings of ancient Israel (r. ca. 885-874 BCE), son of King Omri and husband of Jezebel of Sidon. We could read “Abu Lahab” alternatively, and without substantial change, as “Abu’l-Ahab,” father of Ahab. According to the Hebrew Bible, the father of Ahab is Omri, who is described in 1 Kings 16:25 as having acted “more wickedly than all who were before him.”
His son Ahab, in his own time, “married Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went to serve Baal and worshiped him . . . Thus Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him” (1 Kings 16:31-33).
….
As for Jezebel, it is said that she ordered the killing of prophets (1 Kings 18:4). The prophet Elijah escaped her persecution and with God’s command confronted Ahab with a challenge to the priests of Baal: “You call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord; the god who answers by fire is indeed God” (18:24). The supporters of Baal called upon their god to send fire to consume their sacrifice, but nothing happened. When Elijah called upon the name of the Lord, fire came down from heaven immediately and consumed their offering.
Eventually Ahab in killed in battle, and when Elisha, successor to the prophet Elijah, anoints Jehu king of Israel, the latter had the house of Ahab killed. Jezebel was captured by her enemies, thrown out of a window, trampled by a horse, and her flesh eaten by dogs.
A Comparison of the Qur’anic and Biblical Characters
There are some significant parallels between the qur’anic character of Abu Lahab and the biblical character of Abu’l-Ahab. To illustrate these, let us evaluate Sūrat al-Masad in light of the biblical account:
May the hands of Abu Lahab [Abu’l-Ahab] be ruined and ruined is he. The biblical story of Ahab fits well with this verse, in both linguistic and narrative/thematic terms. The father is invoked for ruin. Omri was the first person to introduce the worship of Baal in Israel, for which his progeny are to be ruined. In Qur’anic Arabic terminology, hands (here, yadā) are symbolic of power and of progeny. The fate of Omri’s progeny is pronounced not so much in the tafsir literature as in the biblical texts.
His wealth will not avail him or that which he gained. The Ahab of the Bible seems to have had greater wealth than the Abu Lahab of Islamic tradition; his great wealth failed to prevent his demise by God’s command.
He will [enter to] burn in a Fire of [blazing] flame. Hellfire is an eschatalogical concept associated with unbelief, especially with the sort of idolatry instituted by Omri and Ahab.
And his wife [as well]—the carrier of firewood. The feature of firewood (ḥaṭab) is key. The challenge at Mount Carmel consisted of sacrificing bulls on firewood in order. We can imagine Jezebel supporting the Baalist priests by collecting the best woods to burn the sacrifice easily. The image of Jezebel carrying firewood makes more sense of this verse than that of Umm Jamil dumping thorns.
Around her neck is a rope of [twisted] fiber. Traditional exegetes struggle to explain the meaning of the rope of palm-fiber (masad). It may be better understood in light of the Jezebel story. The term masad appears to be a hapax legomenon in the Qur’an that might have a Hebrew root and be related to Jezebel’s violent death. This term begs for further examination along these lines.
The ‘life’ of Mohammed will be shown to consist of, to a large extent,
a string of biblical episodes (relating to, for instance, Moses; David;
Job/Tobias; Jeremiah; Jesus Christ), but altered and/or greatly embellished,
and re-cast into an Arabian context. This has been achieved with the greatest
of skill, conflating all of these disparate sources, and re-arranging them
into a thrilling epic of literary magnificence.
The Neo-Assyrian Factor
Whilst it is not to be commonly expected for ancient Assyria to be discussed in the context of the Prophet Mohammed, given that the Assyrian empire had dissolved in the C7th BC, and here is Mohammed supposedly in the C7th AD, I have found compelling reason to raise this issue.
Why?
Because an event that is said to have taken place in the very year that the Prophet Mohammed was born, c. 570 AD, the invasion of Mecca by ‘Abraha[s] of the kingdom of Axum [Aksum], has all the earmarks, I thought, of the disastrous campaign of Sennacherib of Assyria against Israel.
Not 570 AD, but closer to 700 BC!
Lacking to this Qur’anic account is the [Book of] Judith element that (I have argued in various places) was the catalyst for the defeat of the Assyrian army.
But that feminine detail is picked up, I believe, in the story of the supposedly AD heroine, Gudit (possibly Jewish), who routed the Axumites.
Hence read: Gudit = Judith; and Axum can substitute for Assyria:
If that famous biblical incident involving neo-Assyria is some sort of chronological marker for the very beginning of those “biblical episodes” pertaining to Mohammed (as mentioned above), then the era of king Sennacherib of Assyria must be our (revised) starting point.
And, indeed, it is there that we find one who displays some striking resemblances to Mohammed: he is Tobias, the son of Tobit, who was born at this time, and whom I have identified with the prophet Job:
His father Tobit tells us about this arduous time for his family, continuing on into the reign of Sennacherib’s successor, Esarhaddon (Tobit 1:18-22):
I [Tobit] also buried any whom King Sennacherib put to death when he came fleeing from Judea in those days of judgment that the king of heaven executed upon him because of his blasphemies. For in his anger he put to death many Israelites; but I would secretly remove the bodies and bury them. So when Sennacherib looked for them he could not find them.
Then one of the Ninevites went and informed the king about me, that I was burying them; so I hid myself. But when I realized that the king knew about me and that I was being searched for to be put to death, I was afraid and ran away.
Then all my property was confiscated; nothing was left to me that was not taken into the royal treasury except my wife Anna and my son Tobias.
But not forty days passed before two of Sennacherib’s sons killed him, and they fled to the mountains of Ararat, and his son Esarhaddon reigned after him. He appointed Ahikar, the son of my brother Hanael over all the accounts of his kingdom, and he had authority over the entire administration. Ahikar interceded for me, and I returned to Nineveh. Now Ahikar was chief cupbearer, keeper of the signet, and in charge of administration of the accounts under King Sennacherib of Assyria; so Esarhaddon reappointed him. He was my nephew and so a close relative.
Ahikar and Luqman
More needs to be said, too, about the immensely important Ahikar, because his wisdom – for much of which he would have been indebted to his uncle Tobit – has been drawn upon in the Qur’an:
We pass on, in the next place, to point out that the legend of Ahikar was known to Mohammed, and that he has used it in a certain Sura of the Koran.
There is nothing a priori improbable in this, for the Koran is full of Jewish Haggada and Christian legends, and where such sources are not expressly mentioned, they may often be detected by consulting the commentaries upon the Koran in obscure passages. For example, the story of Abimelech and the basket of figs, which appears in the Last Words of Baruch, is carried over into the Koran, as we have shown in our preface to the Apocryphon in question. It will be interesting if we can add another volume to Mohammed’s library, or to the library of the teacher from whom he derived so many of his legends.
The 31st Sura of the Koran is entitled Lokman (Luqman) and it contains the following account of a sage of that name.
* We heretofore bestowed wisdom on Lokman and commanded him, saying, Be thou thankful unto God: for whoever is thankful, shall be thankful to the advantage of his own soul: and if any shall be unthankful, verily God is self-sufficient and worthy to be praised. And remember when Lokman said unto his son, as he admonished him.
….
O my son, Give not a partner unto God, for polytheism is a great impiety.
♦ ♦♦♦♦♦
O my son, verily every matter, whether good or bad, though it be of the weight of a grain of mustard-seed, and be hidden in a rock, or in the heavens, God will bring the same to light: for God is clear-sighted and knowing.
O my son, be constant at prayer, and command that which is just, and forbid that which is evil, and be patient under the afflictions that shall befall thee: for this is a duty absolutely incumbent upon all men.
♦ ♦♦#♦♦
And be moderate in thy pace, and lower thy voice, for the most ungrateful of all voices surely is the voice of asses.’
♦ ♦♦#♦♦
Now concerning this Lokman, the commentators and the critics have diligently thrown their brains about.
The former have disputed whether Lokman was an inspired prophet or merely a philosopher and have decided against his inspiration: and they have given him a noble lineage, some saying that he was sister’s son to Job, and others that he was nephew to Abraham, and lived until the time of Jonah.
Others have said that he was an African: slave. It will not escape the reader’s notice that the term sister’s son to Job, to which should be added nephew of Abraham, is the proper equivalent of the ἐξάδελφος by which Nadan and Ahikar are described in the Tobit legends.
Job, moreover, is singularly like Tobit.
A few comments are due here. Concerning the last statement “Job … is singularly like Tobit”, that is because, I believe, that Job was Tobias, the very son of Tobit.
Most interesting, too, that “Lokman … was a sister’s son to Job”.
Now, returning ‘Ahikar in the Koran’:
That [Lokman] lived till the time of Jonah reminds one of the destruction of Nineveh as described in the book of Tobit, in accordance with Jonah’s prophecy. Finally the African slave is singularly like Aesop … who is a black man and a slave in the Aesop legends. From all of which it appears as if the Arabic Commentators were identifying Lokman with Ahikar on the one hand and with Aesop on the other; i.e. with two characters whom we have already shown to be identical.
The identification with Aesop is confirmed by the fact that many of the fables ascribed to Aesop in the west are referred to Lokman in the east: thus Sale says: —
‘The Commentators mention several quick repartees of Luqman which agree so well with what Maximus Planudes has written of Aesop, that from thence and from the fables attributed to Luqman by the Orientals, the latter has been generally thought to be no other than the Aesop of the Greeks.
However that may be (for I think the matter may bear a dispute) I am of opinion that Planudes borrowed a great part of his life of Aesop from the traditions he met with in the east concerning Luqman, concluding them to have been the same person, etc. …’. *
These remarks of Sale are confirmed by our observation that the Aesop story is largely a modification of the Ahikar legend, taken with the suggestion which we derive from the Mohammedan commentators, who seem to connect Lokman with Tobit on the one hand and with Aesop on the other. ….
Comment: In all of this we find ourselves firmly grounded in the neo-Assyria era of the C8th BC.
The article now focusses upon the relevant Qur’anic text:
Now let us turn to the Sura of the Koran which bears the name Lokman, and examine it internally: we remark (i) that he bears the name of sage, precisely as Ahikar does: (ii) that he is a teacher of ethics to his son, using Ahikar’s formula ‘ ya bani ‘ in teaching him: (iii) although at first sight the matter quoted by Mohammed does not appear to be taken from Ahikar, there are curious traces of dependence. We may especially compare the following from Ahikar: ‘O my son, bend thy head low and soften thy voice and be courteous and walk in the straight path and be not foolish.
And raise not thy voice when thou laughest, for were it by a loud voice that a house was built, the ass would build many houses every day.’
Clearly Mohammed has been using Ahikar, and apparently from memory, unless we like to assume that the passage in the Koran is the primitive form for Ahikar, rather than the very forcible figure in our published texts. Mohammed has also mixed up Ahikar’s teaching with his own, for some of the sentences which he attributes to Lokman appear elsewhere in the Koran. But this does not disturb the argument. From all sides tradition advises us to equate Lokman with Aesop and Ahikar, and the Koran confirms the equation. The real difficulty is to determine the derivation of the names of Lokman and Aesop from Ahikar ….
Some of the Moslem traditions referred to above may be found in Al Masudi c. 4 : ‘ There was in the country of Ailah and Midian a sage named Lokman, who was the son of Auka, the son of Mezid, the son of Sar. ….
Comment: The mention of “Midian” in association with Lokman is also most significant in my context, because as I have argued in:
it was from Midian (wrongly given as “Media”) that the Naphtalian clan of Tobit and some of his relatives hailed.
Continuing with the article:
Another curious point in connexion with the Moslem traditions is the discussion whether Loqman was or was not a prophet.
This discussion cannot have been borrowed from a Greek source, for the idea which is involved in the debate is a Semitic idea.
But it is a discussion which was almost certain to arise, whether Lokman of whom Mohammed writes so approvingly had any special … as a prophet, because Mohammed is the seal of the prophets.
And it seems from what Sale says on the subject, that the Moslem doctors decided the question in the negative; Lokman * received from God wisdom and eloquence in a high degree, which some pretend were given him in a vision, on his making choice of wisdom preferably to the gift of prophecy, either of which was offered him.’ Thus the Moslem verdict was that Lokman was a sage and not a prophet.
On the other hand it should be noticed that there are reasons for believing that he was regarded in some circles and probably from the earliest times as a prophet. The fact of his teaching in aphorisms is of no weight against this classification: for the Hebrew Bible has two striking instances of exactly similar character, in both of which the sage appears as prophet. Thus Prov. XXX. begins :
* The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy*
and Prov. xxxi begins :
*The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him.’
Both of these collections appear to be taken from popular tales*, and they are strikingly like to the sentences of Ahikar. ….
At the conclusion of the Syntipas legends, when the young man is solving all the hard ethical problems that his father proposes to him, we again find a trace of Ahikar, for he speaks of the ‘ insatiate eye which as long as it sees wealth is so ardent after it that he regards not God, until in death the earth covers his eyes.’ And amongst the sayings of Ahikar we find one to the effect that * the eye of man is as a fountain, and it will never be satisfied with wealth until it is filled with dust.’ Dr Dillon points out that this is one of the famous sayings of Mohammed, and if that be so, we have one more loan from Ahikar in the Koran.
Cf Sura 102, ‘The emulous desire of multiplying [riches and children] employeth you, until ye visit the graves.’ ….
[End of quotes]
….
We also learned previously that Mohammed had encountered a young man from Nineveh – quite an anomaly. And the pair discussed the prophet Jonah whom Mohammed called his “brother”.
Tobit, for his part, well knew of the prophet Jonah, having warned his son, Tobias (14:4): “Go into Media [sic], my son, for I surely believe those things which Jonah the prophet spoke about Nineveh, that it shall be overthrown”.
I would re-set the childhood of Mohammed, therefore, to the reign of king Sennacherib of Assyria, and have Tobias/Job as a major biblical matrix for it. Tobias’s/Job’s long life in fact, which extends – according to my revision – from Sennacherib to beyond the Fall of Nineveh, will suffice to encompass “biblical episodes” attached to Mohammed from his birth to his marriage to Khadijah bint Khuwaylid.
My primary source here, serving as a biography of Mohammed,
will be Yahiya Emerick’s Muhammad (Critical Lives), Alpha, 2002:
Birth of Mohammed
Given as c. 570 AD, the “Year of the Elephant”. But revised here to the reign of Sennacherib. Mohammed’s parents are traditionally given as ‘Abdullah and Aminah, or Amna.
Now, this information is what really confirms me in my view that Tobias is a major influence in the biography of Mohammed, because the names of Tobias’s parents boil down to very much the same as those of Mohammed. Tobit is a Greek version of the name ‘Obad-iah, the Hebrew yod having been replaced by a ‘T’.
And ‘Obadiah, or ‘Abdiel, is, in Arabic ‘Abdullah, the name of Mohammed’s father.
And Amna is as close a name as one could get to Anna, the wife of Tobit (as we read above).
Tobias (my Job) is the biblico-historical foundation for the young Mohammed!
In articles of mine such as:
Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit
I have drawn many parallels between the Hebrew and Greek tales, showing how Odysseus and his son, Telemachus, can sometimes resemble, respectively, Tobit and his son, Tobias; the goddess Athena can sometimes assume the part played by the angel, Raphael {In the ‘life’ of Mohammed, we … find one “Maysara” performing a service akin to that of the angel Raphael in the Book of Tobit}; the cruel Poseidon is the demon, Asmodeus; there are the many suitors, as with Penelope, with Sarah; and then there is the common factor of the dog, given the name of “Argos” in The Odyssey.
These extremely popular and much copied books of Tobit and Job have also influenced Mesopotamian literature.
Egypt – according to the Testament of Job, the prophet Job had been a “king of Egypt”.
We are finding the Prophet Mohammed to have been no more real a person (though less obviously mythical) than was Odysseus, or Telemachus.
Now, as explained in my “Odyssey” article, it can happen that events associated with the biblical original, for example, the father, can be, in the mythological version, attributed to someone else, say, the son. And we now find that to be the very case in the biography of Mohammed. For, whereas Mohammed is thought to have been orphaned and to have been raised by his grandfather and uncle, in the Book of Tobit the father was orphaned (Tobit 1:8):
“I [Tobit] would bring it and give it to them in the third year, and we would eat it according to the ordinance decreed concerning it in the law of Moses and according to the instructions of Deborah, the mother of my father Tobiel, for my father had died and left me an orphan”. {“Deborah” here may be a distant ancestor, possibly even the famous Deborah of the Book of Judges, given her close association with the tribe of Naphtali (e.g., Judges 4:10; 5:18), Tobit’s tribe (Tobit 1:1)}.
Now poor ‘Abdullah, the father of Mohammed, in an episode that harkens back to the era of the Judges, to Jephthah’s terrible vow (Judges 11:30): ‘… whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering’, was elected by his father, ‘Abdel Muttalib, as the one of his ten sons to be sacrificed to God in thanksgiving.
Ultimately ‘Abdullah was spared that grim fate, due to an encounter between ‘Abdel Muttalib and the shamaness, Shiya – Emerick tells about this Shiya on p. 19.
Saul, Jephthah
Here we may have a reminiscence of king Saul of Israel’s clandestine visit to the witch of Endor (I Samuel 28:7).
Indeed, a further facet of the Jephthah story will recur again, later, in the quite different context of who will have the honour of placing the fabled Black Stone of the Ka’aba back on the eastern wall after repairs. (This whole wall building episode is like that of Nehemiah). Emerick recounts it on p. 48. Abu Umayyah will advise the assembled crowd to wait for the next person who will come through a nearby gate in the courtyard of the Ka’aba.
That person was, as fate would have it, Mohammed himself.
The situation of Mohammed, born into a Qureish environment of universal idol worship, and with the Jews as a separate entity, is very much the situation of Tobit and his little family, whose the tribe of Naphtali (separate from the Jews) had completely apostatised (Tobit 1:4): ‘When I was in my own country, in the land of Israel, while I was still a young man, the whole tribe of my ancestor Naphtali deserted the house of David and Jerusalem’.
Again, ‘Abdullah’s involvement in caravan trading into Syria is entirely compatible with what Tobit tells us about himself in 1:12-14: ‘Because I was mindful of God with all my heart, the Most High gave me favor and good standing with Shalmaneser, and I used to buy everything he needed. Until his death I used to go into Media, and buy for him there’ – compatible especially given my identification (in my “Geography of Tobit”) of “Media” as Midian, including Bashan, “a part of the province of Damascus”:
As with Tobit’s genealogy, with the repetition of names of the same root (Tobit 1:1): ‘I am Tobit and this is the story of my life. My father was Tobiel …’, so was the case with Mohammed’s grandfather, ‘Abdel Muttalib, and his son, Abu Talib.
Samuel, David
Youth of Mohammed
When the aged ‘Abdel Muttalib died, Mohammed was taken in by his uncle, Abu Talib, who, more than Mohammed’s short-lived father, ‘Abdullah (despite the common name), represents Tobit and his wise and kindly mentoring of the young Tobias. Emerick (p. 33): “Abu Talib took Muhammad in and treated him with great affection. Although Abu Talib was poor, he and his wife …”. Cf. Tobit 4:21:
‘We’re poor now, but don’t worry. If you obey God and avoid sin, he will be pleased with you and make you prosperous’.
In a famous story, an old priest, in the fashion of Samuel choosing to anoint the young David from amongst the sons of Jesse, will pick out the 12-year old Mohammed amongst many. Emerick tells of it (pp. 34-35):
Around the year 582, Abu Talib decided to join the great caravan going to Syria in order to boost his finances. …. After a couple of weeks of long, hard travel, the caravan and its attendants decided to make camp in a region called Bostra, just short of Syria. Just ahead on the road was a small Christian monastery where a solitary monk by the name of Bahira lived. …. He sent an invitation to the men of the caravan to come to the monastery for a banquet, asking that everyone attend. When the merchants arrived, the priest looked them over and found nothing special about any of them. He asked if everyone from the caravan was present and was told that everyone was there except a small boy who was left behind to watch the animals. Bahira requested that he also be invited, so someone went to fetch young Muhammad.
Compare (the strikingly similar) I Samuel 16:10-11:
Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, “The Lord has not chosen these.” So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”
“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered. “He is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down until he arrives.”
Like David, too, Mohammed (later) tended sheep (Emerick, p. 40): “Muhammad’s humble occupation as a shepherd impressed upon him the value of hard, honest work”.
Tobit, Tobias and Sarah
Marriage of Mohammed
The golden thread in the ‘life’ of Mohammed of the Book of Tobit (combined with Job) continues on, I believe, into the account of his marriage to the widowed beauty, Khadijah, also given as ‘Siti Khadijah’:
“Siti Khadijah Market (Pasar besar Siti Khadijah), as its name implies, is a local wet market. Its name after Prophet Muhammad’s wife, [who] is known for her entrepreneurial skill, as this market is mostly run by women”.
In the Testament of Job the prophet’s wife is similarly called “Sitis”:
“Job’s first wife is Sitidos (Sitis). Her name may have the same root as the word Satan in Hebrew or Sotah (unfaithful wife). She is a princess and Job a tribal leader”.
She is, I have argued, the same as the wife of Tobias, Sarah, meaning “princess”, “lady”.
Sarah was apparently, then, just like Khadijah, a woman of high status. She was likewise beautiful and full of quality, as described by the angel Raphael (Tobit 5:12): “She is sensible, brave, and very beautiful; and her father is a good man”. Just as with Khadijah, whose former husbands had died (Emerick, p. 41): “… Khadijah … married not once but twice …. Each husband died in turn, leaving her with a huge personal fortune”, likewise (though rather more spectacularly) Sarah (Tobit 3:8): “Sarah had been married seven times, but the evil demon, Asmodeus, killed each husband before the marriage could be consummated”.
The poor and rather insignificant Muhammad got his big break in life when that lowly life of his would – like with the young Tobias – converge with that of his future wife. And it similarly involved a journey to Syria for business purposes.
When (as Emerick tells, p. 42): “In about the year 595, Khadijah announced that she would hire a local man to lead a particularly important caravan to go to Syria”, Abu Talib suggested to Muhammad that he should apply. “Abu Talib, always on the lookout for opportunities for his own or any family member’s advancement, suggested to his nephew Muhammad that he try to get a job with Khadijah’s caravan”.
The part played by Abu Talib in this situation reminds one of Tobit, who instructed his son (Tobit 4:20-21): ‘Tobias, I want you to know that I once left a large sum of money with Gabrias’ son, Gabael, at Rages in Media. We’re poor now, but don’t worry. If you obey God and avoid sin, he will be pleased with you and make you prosperous’. In my “Geography of Tobit” I have proposed that “Rages” here equates geographically with the city of Damascus. Tobias was now a young man of marriageable age, and Muhammad was “twenty-five years old and still living with his uncle …” (Emerick, p. 42). Muhammad, similarly as with Tobit, “saw this caravan as an excellent opportunity to earn money …”.
“Abu Talib confidently told his nephew that he could get him double the salary of the man already hired … two camels”. And he duly informed Khadijah of it, “… we won’t accept less than four”.
Tobias, on the other hand, wants to give the disguised angel, who had guided him on the way, not “double the salary”, but “half of everything we brought back with us” (Tobit 12:2). And whilst that “two camels” can be found also in Tobit 9:1-2: “Then Tobias called Raphael and said to him:
“Brother Azariah, take along with you four servants and two camels and travel to Rages”,” we see from this text that those “four servants” have been ‘reincarnated’ in the Islamic version as “four [camels]”.
Khadijah here refers to Muhammad as “a close relative”. We find the identical description in Tobit 6:10-11, where the angel tells Tobias: ‘Tonight we will stay at the home of your relative Raguel. He has only one child, a daughter named Sarah, and since you are her closest relative, you have the right to marry her’.
Just as Tobit had looked out for a suitable travelling companion for his son, and had found in the angel-disguised-as-Azariah a good character (Tobit 5:13): ‘… you are from a good family and a relative at that! …. Your relatives are fine people, and you come from good stock. Have a safe journey’, so, in Maysara – whose name is phonetically compatible with Azariah – does Abu Talib perceive a good character and worthy travelling companion (Emerick, p. 43): “Abu Talib knew of Maysara’s good character and encouraged his presence on the journey”.
Khadijah, who “was known for rejecting all suitors” (p. 44), though for reasons less dramatic than in the case of Sarah’s loss of all suitors, now married the younger Muhammad, whose fortunes had just increased exponentially (p. 45): “not only was he suddenly getting married, his fortunes were also taking a dramatic turn for the better”.
So had the angel informed Tobias about Sarah (6:11): “… you have the right to marry her. You also have the right to inherit all her father’s property”.
“Muhammad and Khadijah would have six children together, two boys and four girls”. Tragically, the life of the sons would be cut off early, just as with Tobias/Job.
Recommended viewing:
…. Jay [Smith] DESTROYS THE BIOGRAPHY OF MUHAMMAD
in 20 minutes!
———————————————————————————————-
In 1. above we discovered that the Biography of Mohammed is based upon a notable bunch of Old Testament characters, such as (now in chronological order):
Jephthah;
Saul and the witch of Endor;
(Samuel and) David;
Ahab and Jezebel;
Tobit, Tobias (Job), Sarah;
Ahikar;
(Jeremiah)
which names by no means, I suggest, would exhaust the OT list.
Now we move on the consider the New Testament influences upon Mohammed and the Qur’an, culminating in Jesus Christ.
New Testament manifestations
…. But there is also a recorded incident in the otherwise unknown boyhood of Jesus (the Good Shepherd) at the age of twelve – and it, too, involves travellers (Luke 2:41-42):
“Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom.”
Emerick continues with the story of Bahira, with the boy Mohammed now present (p. 35): “After Muhammad joined the gathering, Bahira watched the boy carefully and noted his physical features and behaviour. He seemed to have an otherworldy look in his eyes, a strength in his bearing”.
David also had fine eyes and a good appearance (I Samuel 16:12): “Now [David] was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome”.
On pp. 56-57 Emerick, still in connection with the Bahira story which is here accepted as being quite “historically tenable”, will make this notable admission:
A fair amount of literature exists on the portents and signs prior to the rise of Muhammad as a religious leader. These writings may be based more on retrospective idealism than proven facts. One can logically assume that Muhammad had no knowledge of his future significance and that premonitions and recognition of his greatness by his contemporaries were greatly exaggerated. Beyond the episode with the monk Bahira when he was twelve, which was related not only by Abu Talib but also by several of his associates and thus gains more credibility, little except the predictions of a man named Waraqah seem historically tenable. The abruptness and unexpectedness of Muhammad’s rise may be simply inexplicable.
[End of quote]
Why I think that it might be very important for Islam to defend the veracity of the Bahira incident is because he is the one who would proclaim Mohammed as “the last prophet” in God’s great scheme of things. Thus Emerick (p. 35):
…. Muhammad boldly told the monk that he hated the idols. This statement impressed the aged Christian further. Then he asked for the boy to lift his shirt, and the monk found a birthmark on his back, just between the shoulder blades.
Bahira looked at the spot, which was about the size of a small egg, and declared, “Now I am most certain that this is the last prophet for whom the Jews and Christians [sic] await …”.
It is interesting that both Bahira and the Waraqah referred to above, seemingly lone individuals, non-Jews, but monotheists, are either Christian (Bahira) or, like Waraqah (Emerick, p. 31): “… [an] unaffiliated monotheist who also had some knowledge of Christianity”. ….
One might like also to read my article:
Dr Günter Lüling: Christian hymns underlie Koranic poetry
“Many a verse of the Koran goes directly back to Christian liturgy”.
Uwe Topper
From Luke’s Gospel
The account of the pregnancy of Mohammed’s mother is predictably extraordinary, and one might be inclined to think of, for example, the pregnancy of Elizabeth with John the Baptist, and of the Virgin Mary with Jesus. If so, it would be only one of many borrowings from the Gospels, in this case Luke’s.
Emerick tells of it (pp. 21-22):
About two months after her husband left [having joined a caravan trade to Syria], Aminah called her servant … “I’ve had a strange dream! I saw lights coming from my womb, lighting up the mountains, the hills, and the valleys all around Mecca”. Her servant then predicted: “You will give birth to a blessed child who will bring goodness”.
In Luke 1:11-17, we read about the miraculous encounter of the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, the Aaronite priest, with an angel who will be identified in v. 19 as “Gabriel”:
Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John.
He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born.
He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Common to the ‘life’ of Mohammed here are the visitation by the angel Gabriel (who also figures in the Book of Daniel); the avoidance of alcohol; and the exaltation of the child.
Further on in Luke’s Gospel it will be the Virgin Mary whom the angel Gabriel will address (Luke 1:30-32): ‘You [Mary] have found favor with God. You will become pregnant, give birth to a son … He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High’.
Luke 1:28 is sometimes translated as [Mary’s being] “Highly Favoured”.
Now, according to Emerick (p. 29):
“Highly Praised is the translation of the Arabic name Muhammad, which was an unusual name in Arabia at that time”. This name was given to the child by his grandfather, who had, in the ancient Israelite fashion of going around Jericho “seven times” (Joshua 6:15), walked with the new born baby “seven times around the Ka‘bah”. It was then that ‘Abdel Muttalib named the child, connecting him with an ancient House – as with the angel Gabriel’s (Luke 1:32-33): ‘The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end’. The joyful ‘Abdel Muttalib exclaimed: “Blessed child, I shall call you Highly Praised. The birth of this child coincided with the glory and triumph of the Ancient House, blessed be he?”
As in the story of Moses (Exodus 2:7-9), a wet nurse is provided for the child. “Aminah, frail from her depression and weakened by the arduous childbirth, engaged a wet nurse in the city …”. And also as with Moses (v. 10), “Muhammad would be raised by a foster mother …”.
Whereas both Moses and Jesus had to be saved from the wrath of a monarch, the situation with which baby Mohammed was faced was (p. 30): “An epidemic … going around the city …”. When it was safe to return, after some years had elapsed, exactly as with the young Jesus (Matthew 2:19-21), Mohammed came home.
Some of the Jesus Elements in Islam
Coins marked with Cross
There is that troublesome case of the Christian-ness of some supposedly Islamic coins.
Would the leader of a religious group whose founding prophet claimed that Jesus would return at the end of the world and “break all crosses”—as an insult to himself and a testament to the transcendent majesty of Allah—really allow a cross to be featured on any inscription carved anywhere in his domains?
Would the followers of this new prophet, whose new religious and political order was defiantly at odds with that of the “cross worshippers,” have placed any figure bearing a cross on any of their coinage? Perhaps this can be interpreted as a gesture of Islam’s tolerance, given that Christians overwhelmingly populated the domains of the new Arabian Empire. Yet Islamic law as codified in the ninth and tenth centuries forbade Christians to display the cross openly—even on the outside of churches—and there is no indication that the imposition of this law was a reversal of an earlier practice. So it is exceedingly curious that Muslim conquerors of Christians would strike a coin bearing the central image of the very religion and political order they despised, defeated, and were determined to supplant.
One of the most famous Islamic monuments in the world is the Dome of the Rock which stands on the site of the original Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. It is the third-holiest in the Muslim world after the Ka’aba in Mecca and Prophet’s Mosque in Medina and commemorates the alleged occasion of Muhammad’s ascent through the seven heavens to the very presence of Allah. It stands above the rock from which Muhammad is believed to have ascended to heaven. The narrative of this ascent is recorded in all the major works of Hadith in some detail, but there is only one verse in the Qur’an openly refer ring to the incident and in a limited context at that.
The traditions basically report that Muhammad was asleep one night towards the end of his prophetic course in Mecca when he was wakened by the angel Gabriel who cleansed his heart before bidding him alight on a strange angelic beast named Buraq. Muhammad is alleged to have said:
I was brought al-Burg who is an animal white and long, larger than a donkey but smaller than a mule, who would place his hoof at a distance equal to the range of vision. I mounted it and came to the Temple (Bait-ul Maqdis in Jerusalem), then tethered it to the ring used by the prophets. (Sahih Muslim, Vol. 1, p. 101).
Some traditions hold that the creature had a horse’s body and angel’s head and that it also had a peacock’s tail. It is thus represented in most Islamic paintings of the event. The journey from Mecca to Jerusalem is known as al-Isra, “the night journey”. At Jerusalem Muhammad was tested in the following way by Gabriel (some traditions place this test during the ascent itself):
Allah’s Apostle was presented with two cups, one containing wine and the other milk on the night of his night journey at Jerusalem. He looked at it and took the milk. Gabriel said, “Thanks to Allah Who guided you to the Fitra (i.e. Islam); if you had taken the wine, your followers would have gone astray”. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 6, p. 196).
After this began al-Mi’raj, “the ascent”.
Muhammad passed the sea of kawthar, literally the sea of “abundance” (the word is found only once in the Qur’an in Surah 108.1), and then met various prophets, from Adam to Abraham, as well as a variety of angels as he passed through the seven heavens. After this Gabriel took him to the heavenly lote-tree on the boundary of the heavens before the throne of Allah.
Then I was made to ascend to Sidrat-ul-Muntaha (i.e. the lote-tree of the utmost boundary). Behold! Its fruits were like the jars of Hajr (i.e. a place near Medina) and its leaves were as big as the ears of elephants. Gabriel said, “This is the lote-tree of the utmost boundary”. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 5, p. 147).
This famous tree, as-sidratul-muntaha, is also mentioned twice in the passage in Surah 53 describing the second vision Muhammad had of Gabriel (Surah 53.14,16) where he also saw the angel ‘inda sidrah, “near the lote-tree”. Gabriel and Buraq could go no further but Muhammad went on to the presence of Allah where he was commanded to order the Muslims to pray fifty times a day ….
[End of quote]
The correct story, I believe, is this one (Acts 1:9-11):
Jesus Ascends to Heaven
Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven’.
Moreover, what the two angels told the ‘Men of Galilee’, ‘This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven’, was perfectly fulfilled within ‘that same generation’ (Luke 9:27).
Further on in Luke’s Gospel it will be the Virgin Mary whom the angel Gabriel will address (Luke 1:30-32): ‘You [Mary] have found favor with God. You will become pregnant, give birth to a son … He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High’.
Luke 1:28 is sometimes translated as [Mary’s being] “Highly Favoured”.
Now, according to Emerick (p. 29):
“Highly Praised is the translation of the Arabic name Muhammad, which was an unusual name in Arabia at that time”. This name was given to the child by his grandfather, who had, in the ancient Israelite fashion of going around Jericho “seven times” (Joshua 6:15), walked with the new born baby “seven times around the Ka‘bah”. It was then that ‘Abdel Muttalib named the child, connecting him with an ancient House – as with the angel Gabriel’s (Luke 1:32-33): ‘The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end’. The joyful ‘Abdel Muttalib exclaimed: “Blessed child, I shall call you Highly Praised. The birth of this child coincided with the glory and triumph of the Ancient House, blessed be he?”
As in the story of Moses (Exodus 2:7-9), a wet nurse is provided for the child. “Aminah, frail from her depression and weakened by the arduous childbirth, engaged a wet nurse in the city …”. And also as with Moses (v. 10), “Muhammad would be raised by a foster mother …”.
Whereas both Moses and Jesus had to be saved from the wrath of a monarch, the situation with which baby Mohammed was faced was (p. 30): “An epidemic … going around the city …”. When it was safe to return, after some years had elapsed, exactly as with the young Jesus (Matthew 2:19-21), Mohammed came home. ….
Coupled with this, is the following extraordinary quote from my “Christian Cross” article above, which may just have managed to grasp the true situation:
“… it may be that the word muhammad is not a name at all but a title, meaning the “praised one” or the “chosen one”.”
….
Other coins from this period also bear the cross and the word Muhammad. A Syrian coin that dates from 686 or 687, at the earliest [sic], features what numismatist Volker Popp describes as “the muhammad motto” on the reserve side. The obverse depicts a ruler crowned with a cross and holding another cross. ….
The most obvious explanation is that the “muhammad” to whom the coin refers is not the prophet of Islam.
Alternatively, the figure on the coin could have evolved into the Muahmmad of Islam but was not much like him at the time the coin was issued. Or it may be that the word muhammad is not a name at all but a title, meaning the “praised one” or the “chosen one.” Popp, noting that some of these seventh-century cross-bearing coins also bear the legend bismillah—“in the name of God”—as well as muhammad, suggests that the coins are saying of the depicted ruler, “He is chosen in the name of god,” or “Let him be praised in the name of God.”
This could be a derivative of the common Christian liturgical phrase referring to the coming of Christ: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” In that case, the muhammad, the praised or blessed one, would be Jesus himself.
Supporting this possibility is the fact that the few times the Qur’an mentions Muhammad by name, the references are not clearly to the prophet of Islam but work equally well as general exhortations to obey that which was revealed to the “praised one,” who could be someone else. Jesus is the most likely candidate, because, as we have seen, the Qur’an tells believers that “Muhammad is nothing but a messenger; messengers have passed away before him” (3:144), using language identical to that it later uses of Jesus: “the Messiah, the son of Mary, is nothing but a messenger; messengers have passed away before him” (5:75). This opens the possibility that here, as elsewhere, Jesus is the one being referred to as the “praised one,” the muhammad.
The first biographer of Muhammad, Ibn Ishaq, lends additional support to this possibility.
Recall that in Qur’an 61:6, Jesus is depicted as prophesying the coming of a new “Messenger of God,” “whose name shall be Ahmad.” Because Ahmad—the “praised one”—is a variant of Muhammad, Islamic scholars take this passage to be a reference to the prophet of Islam. Ibn Ishaq amplifies this view in his biography of Muhammad, quoting “the Gospel,” the New Testament, where Jesus says that “when the Comforter [Munahhemana] has come who God will send to you from the Lord’s presence, and the spirit of truth which will have gone forth from the Lord’s presence, he (shall bear) witness of me and ye also, because ye have been with me from the beginning. I have spoken unto you about this that ye should not be in doubt. Ibn Ishaq then explains: “the Munahhemana (God bless and preserve him!) in Syriac is Muhammad; in Greek he is the paraclete.”
Ibn Ishaq’s English translator Alfred Guillaume notes that the word Munahhemana “in the Eastern patristic literature…is applied to our Lord Himself”—that is, not to Muhammad but to Jesus. The original bearer of the title “praised one” was Jesus, and this title and the accompanying prophecy were “skillfully manipulated to provide the reading we have” in Ibn Ishaq’s biography of Muhammad—and, for that matter, in the Qur’an itself.
Whichever of these possibilities is correct, the weakest hypothesis is that these muhammad coins refer to the prophet of the new religion as he is depicted in the Qur’an and the Hadith. For there are no contemporary references to Muhammad, the Islamic prophet who received the Qur’an and preached its message to unify Arabia (often by force) and whose followers then carried his jihad far beyond Arabia; the first clear records of the Muhammad of Islam far postdate these coins. ….
In other words, Mohammed is not the name of a person, but may be simply a Christian title for Jesus Christ himself.
Esarhaddon a builder of Babylon become strangely ill
“At that time it had become increasingly clear that Esarhaddon’s physical
condition was poorly: He was constantly struck with illness, mostly of a rather
severe nature. For days, he withdrew to his sleeping quarters and refused food,
drink and, most disturbingly, any human company …”.
Karen Radner
Nebuchednezzar ‘the Great’, the larger than life “Nebuchednezzar” (or “Nebuchadnezzar”) of the Book of Daniel, had, amongst his alter egos, Ashurbanipal and Nabonidus (whose son was, like the biblical Nebuchednezzar, named Belshazzar).
Further alter egos of his were Ashurnasirpal, and, so it seems, the mad, Egypt-conquering Cambyses.
Moreover, Artaxerxes so-called III – likely a composite character – appears to have been heavily based upon Nebuchednezzar, who bears the title “Artaxerxes” in the Book of Nehemiah.
Recently I have found cause to include Esarhaddon in this “Nebuchednezzar Syndrome” mix.
Here are the reasons why.
Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon, as a builder of Babylon, who, as we are going to find, suffered a protracted, debilitating and most mysterious type of illness, looms, from such a point of view, as a perfect alter ego for Nebuchednezzar.
He, a potent Mesopotamian king, was, of course, a conqueror of Egypt.
Added to this, it may be that the Ahikar (var. Achior) who thrived in the court of Esarhaddon, was present, as the high official Arioch, in the court of the “Nebuchednezzar” of Daniel.
Common to my “Nebuchednezzar Syndrome” candidates is a tendency to contrariness, or individualism, in the face of established religious or sapiential protocol.
I have already written about this as follows:
Messing with the rites
….
Regarding the rebellious behaviour of King Nabonidus with regard to the rites, I wrote …:
Confounding the Astrologers
Despite his superstitious nature the “Nebuchednezzar” of the Book of Daniel – and indeed his alter egos, Nebuchednezzar/Nabonidus – did not hesitate at times to dictate terms to his wise men or astrologers (2:5-6):
The king replied to the astrologers, ‘This is what I have firmly decided: If you do not tell me what my dream was and interpret it, I will have you cut into pieces and your houses turned into piles of rubble. But if you tell me the dream and explain it, you will receive from me gifts and rewards and great honor. So tell me the dream and interpret it for me’.
And so, in the Verse Account, we read too of Nabonidus’s interference in matters ritualistic in the presence of sycophantic officials:
Yet he continues to mix up the rites, he confuses the hepatoscopic oracles. To the most important ritual observances, he orders an end; as to the sacred representations in Esagila – representations which Eamumma himself had fashioned – he looks at the representations and utters blasphemies.
When he saw the usar-symbol of Esagila, he makes an [insulting?] gesture. He assembled the priestly scholars, he expounded to them as follows: ‘Is not this the sign of ownership indicating for whom the temple was built? If it belongs really to Bêl, it would have been marked with the spade. Therefore the Moon himself has marked already his own temple with the usar-symbol!’
And Zeriya, the šatammu who used to crouch as his secretary in front of him, and Rimut, the bookkeeper who used to have his court position near to him, do confirm the royal dictum, stand by his words, they even bare their heads to pronounce under oath: ‘Now only we understand this situation, after the king has explained about it!’
….
Paul-Alain Beaulieu, in his book, The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon, 556-539 B.C. (1989), gives another similar instance pertaining to an eclipse (Col. III 2), likening it also to the action of “Nebuchednezzar” in the Book of Daniel (pp. 128-129):
The scribes brought baskets from Babylon (containing) the tablets of the series enūma Anu Enlil to check (it, but since) he did not hearken to (what it said), he did not understand what it meant.
The passage is difficult, but its general implications are clear. Whether Nabonidus had already made up his mind as to the meaning of the eclipse and therefore refused to check the astrological series, or did check them but disagreed with the scribes on their interpretation, it seems that the consecration of En-nigaldi-Nanna [daughter of Nabonidus] was felt to be uncalled for. This alleged stubbornness of the king is perhaps reflected in the Book of Daniel, in the passage where Nebuchednezzar (i.e. Nabonidus), after having dismissed the plea of the “Chaldeans”, states that the matter is settled for him (Daniel II, 3-5) ….
But this does not imply that Nabonidus was necessarily wrong in his interpretation of the eclipse; on the contrary, all the evidence suggests that he was right. However, he may have “forced” things slightly ….
Again, in the case of Cambyses, we encounter this unconventional situation:
A badly damaged passage in the chronicle of Nabonidus contains a report that, in order to legitimize his appointment, Cambyses participated in the ritual prescribed for the king at the traditional New Year festival on 27 March 538 B.C., accepting the royal scepter from the hands of Marduk in Esagila, the god’s temple in Babylon (III. 24-28; Grayson, p. 111). A. L. Oppenheim attempted a reconstruction of the damaged text (Survey of Persian Art XV, p. 3501); according to his version, Cambyses entered the temple in ordinary Elamite attire, fully armed. The priests persuaded him to lay down his arms, but he refused to change his clothes for those prescribed in the ritual. He then received the royal scepter. In Oppenheim’s view Cambyses thus deliberately demonstrated “a deep-seated religious conviction” hostile to this alien religion (Camb. Hist. Iran II, p. 557).
Now, Esarhaddon is found to have behaved in just the same fashion as had “Nebuchednezzar”, as had Nabonidus, as had Cambyses. He, in order to justify and facilitate his re-building of the city, Babylon, “turned upside down” the decreed number of 70 years, attributing his subterfuge to the intervention of Marduk: “Seventy years as the measure of its desolation he wrote (in the Book of Fate). But the merciful [Marduk] —his anger lasted but a moment— turned (the Book of Fate) upside down and ordered its restoration in the eleventh year”.
Though the reign of Esarhaddon (c. 681 – 669 BC, conventional dating), like that of Nabonidus, is thought to have been relatively short, at least by comparison with that of Nebuchednezzar, I have suggested that what we have of Nabonidus constitutes only the early reign of Nebuchednezzar. And the same may apply to Esarhaddon.
“… in a society that saw illness as a divine punishment,
a king who was constantly confined to the sick bay
could not expect to meet with sympathy and understanding”.
Here, though, I – with Nebuchednezzar well in mind – want only to focus upon the illness aspect of Esarhaddon, as it has been wonderfully laid bare by Karen Radner, in “The Trials of Esarhaddon: The Conspiracy of 670 BC”. (The BC dates are her dates not mine):
Esarhaddon became king of Assyria in the year 681. Despite the fact that his father [sic] and predecessor Sennacherib (704-680) had made him crown prince two years earlier and had had the whole country take an oath on behalf of his chosen heir, this happened against all odds: Esarhaddon had not been Sennacherib’s first choice and in order to have him installed as crown prince, the old king first needed to dismiss another of his sons from the office ….
Mackey’s comment: Thus Esarhaddon had not expected to become king, as was also the case with Ashurbanipal, with Nabonidus.
Karen Radner continues:
This son, Urdu-Mullissi by name, had been crown prince and heir apparent to the Assyrian empire for well over a dozen years when he suddenly had to resign from the prominent position; the reasons for his forced resignation are unknown, but were obviously not grave enough to have him pay with his life. Despite the fact that Urdu-Mullissi had to swear loyalty to his younger brother, he opposed his elevation to the office of crown prince, conspired against Esarhaddon and tried to cause Sennacherib to take back the appointment; the king did not comply, but the situation was clearly very precarious, and the new heir was sent into exile for his own protection.
Sennacherib does not seem to have realised just how dangerous his decision to back Esarhaddon’s promotion was for his own life; otherwise it is a mystery how the former crown prince Urdu-Mullissi could be allowed to stay in his father’s closest proximity where, right under his nose, he plotted to become king. Sennacherib seems to have been caught completely off-guard when Urdu-Mullissi and another son of his attacked him with drawn swords in a temple of Nineveh: On the 20th day of the tenth month of 681 … Sennacherib was killed by the hands of his own sons whose deed caused a stir all over the Near East, best witnessed by the report found in the Old Testarnent …. Yet the kingship that Urdu-Mullissi craved for was not to be his. The aftermath of the murder saw fiction between him and his conspirators; his accession to the throne was delayed and ultimately never took place at all. Assyria was in chaos when Esarhaddon, leading a small army, entered the country from his western exile and marched towards the heartland of the empire. He managed to drive out the murderers of Sennacherib … and,
two months after the assassination, he became king of Assyria ….
These bloody events shaped the new king profoundly. It comes as no great surprise that after his accession to the throne Esarhaddon ordered all conspirators and political enemies within reach to be killed; yet he could not touch the leader of the conspiracy as Urdu-Mullissi had found asylum in Urartu ….
That Assyria’s northern neighbour would harbour the murderer of Sennacherib is not at all unexpected: The two countries had been in an almost constant state of war for the past two centuries.
At that time, chances were that Urdu-Mullissi still might become king and in that event, the Urartian king could reasonably expect to gain substantial influence over Assyria. In the meantime, Esarhaddon made an effort to ensure that his brother would not have any powerful allies at home, should he ever try to stage a coup d’etat from his exile: Many officials throughout the country who were suspected of entertaining sympathy for the enemy fraction were replaced. To give but one example, the complete security staff at the royal palaces of Nineveh and Kabu was dismissed … it is of course understood that these men were not sent into retirement:
They will have been executed.
Henceforth, Esarhaddon met his environs as a rule with overwhelming distrust. Routinely, he sought to establish by means of oracular queries whether certain courtiers,
officials and even members of the royal family wished him ill or actively tried to harm him ….
Mackey’s comment: Hence that complete distrust of “Chaldean” sages in the Book of Daniel?
Karen Radner continues:
If he seems to have been wary of his male relatives, he appears to have entertained less suspicions about the women of his family. This is certainly one of reason why Esarhaddon’s mother Naqi’a, his wife Ešarra-ḫammat and his eldest daughter Šerua-eṭirat were able to wield an amount of influence that has few parallels in Ancient Near Eastern history …. The power of his wife was much noticed even outside palace circles; it is quite extraordinary that her death in the year 673 is mentioned prominently in two contemporary chronicle texts”. The devoted widower had a mausoleum erected and special rites for his wife’s funerary care installed …. Even more remarkable, he did not get married again …
Mackey’s comment: But is that statement true only under his guise of Esarhaddon?
Karen Radner continues:
… the vacant position of the Assyrian queen was hitherto occupied by his mother Naqi’a … who had already played an important role in Esarhaddon’s appointment as crown prince and in his eventual taking of power: This is most obvious from a prophecy which records the encouraging words of Ištar of Arbela to Naqi’a during the time of Esarhaddon’s exile …. That also the daughter Šerua-eṭirat occupied a prominent position at her father’s court is known from some letters that speaks of her self-confidence …. Her far-reaching influence is apparent from the fact that in later years she acted as a mediator in the conflict between her brothers, the kings of Assyria and Babylon …; this is without parallel for any Near Eastern woman of that time.
Esarhaddon’s general distrust against his environment is also mirrored by his choice of residence. He had a palace in the city of Kalbu … adapted which his forefather Shalmaneser III (858-824) had constructed as an armoury some two centuries earlier. This building was situated far from the administrative and cultic centre of the city, on top of a seperate [sic] mound that protected it well from its surroundings. In the years between 676 and 672, Esarhaddon had the old building renovated and enhanced, turning it into a veritable stronghold: The gateways especially were turned into strongly fortified and impregnable towers that, if needed, could be used to seal off the palace against the rest of the city. The only access to the building was through a narrow entrance, leading into a long and steep hallway inside the enclosing wall which was protected by a sequence of severa1 heavy doors and which steeply ascended towards the palace.
Esarhaddon had a similar palace erected in Nineveh, also far removed from the acropolis proper at Kuyunjik on the separate mound of Nebi Yunus …; however, as this is today the site of one of Mossul’s most important mosques, the building is only insufficiently explored ….
In the first years of his rule, Esarhaddon proved himself a successful regent who, after a chaotic start, was able to consolidate his kingship and efficiently prevented segregation and territorial losses. Treacherous vassals, who had thought Assyria weakened and had tried to benefit from this, had to come to the painful realisation that Esarhaddon fully controlled his governors and his army and was able to take revenge for treason in the same way as his predecessors had done: As a consequence, the vassal kingdoms of Sidon and of Šubria were conquered and turned into Assyrian provinces …. The completion of a peace treaty with Elam, Assyria’s long-standing rival in Iran, in the year 674 must be seen as a skilful political manoeuvre, and the securing of the Eastern border provided Assyria for the first time ever with the chance to attempt and exploit the power vacuum in Egypt to its own advantages – Assyria’s first invasion into Egypt, however, ended with a defeat against Taharqa the Nubian, and a hasty retreat ….
At that time it had become increasingly clear that Esarhaddon’s physical condition was poorly: He was constantly struck with illness, mostly of a rather severe nature. For days, he withdrew to his sleeping quarters and refused food, drink and, most disturbingly, any human company …
Mackey’s comment: (Daniel 4:24-25): ‘It is a decree of the Most High, which has come upon my lord the king, that you shall be driven from among men …’.
Karen Radner continues:
… the death of his beloved wife in the year 673 may well have further damaged his already fragile health. For the all powerful king of Assyria, this situation was bizarre. Esarhaddon’s counsellors witnessed his deterioration first with apprehension and then with increasing objection, but were of course not in a position to actually change the state of affairs.
It is a testament to Assyria’s sound administrative structure that the country could take the king’s continuing inability to act his part. Modern day man may well be able to muster considerable sympathy for Esarhaddon whose symptoms were indeed rather alarming: As we know from the correspondence left by the roya1 physicians and exorcists … his days were governed by spells of fever and dizziness, violent fits of vomiting, diarrhoea and painful earaches. Depressions and fear of impending death were a constant in his life. In addition, his physical appearance was affected by the marks of a permanent skin rash that covered large parts of his body and especially his face. In one letter, the king’s personal physician – certainly a medical professional at the very top of his league – was forced to confess his ultimate inability to help the king: ,,My lord, the king, keeps telling me: ‘Why do you not identify the nature of my disease and find a cure?’ As 1 told the king already in person, his symptoms cannot be classified.” While Esarhaddon’s experts pronounced themselves incapable of identifying the king’s illness, modern day specialists have tried to use the reported symptoms in order to come up with a diagnosis in retrospect?’. However, it is not entirely clear whether the sickly Esarhaddon contracted one illness after the other or, as would seem more likely, suffered from the afflictions of a chronic disease that never left for good. Be that as it may, in a society that saw illness as a divine punishment, a king who was constantly confined to the sick bay could not expect to meet with sympathy and understanding.
He could, however, reasonably presume that his subjects saw his affliction at the very least as an indication that the gods lacked goodwill towards their ruler, if not as the fruit of divine wrath, incurred by committing some heinous crime. Therefore, the king’s condition needed to be hidden from the public by all means, and that this was at all feasible was very much facilitated by the ancient tradition that whoever came before the king had to be veiled and on their knee.
Because of his failing health, Esarhaddon saw himself permanently in death’s clutches; this alone made it necessary to provide for his succession: Who would be king after him? There were a great many possible candidates: Esarhaddon himself had fathered at least 18 children but, some of them suffered, like their father, from a frail condition and needed permanent medical attention”. It would appear that sickly sons were, just like all the daughters, deemed unfit from the start: After all, only a man without fault could be king of Assyria. ….
Parallel Lives, Also BC Afterglows In AD 