spin

In Ezek 38:1 The prophet Ezekiel, in the history of the text datable to the exilic period (circa 590 BCE), is told to set his face "toward Gog of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal". One wonders who this Gog of the land of Magog is until we turn to the inscriptions (circa 660 BCE) of Ashurbanipal of Assyria who tells us about king Gugu, whose land is called Mat-Gugi in Akkadian ("the land of Gugu"), a king who Herodotus tells about as king Gyges of Lydia. The Lydians were closely related to the Phrygians, whose most famous king was Midas, known to the Assyrians 50 years earlier as Mita of the Meshkhi (biblical Meshech). It was Mita who turned the Assyrian client state Tabal, which lay to the east of the Taurus mountains, to his side, an act which brought a swift response from Sargon. He reduced Tabal to an Assyrian province and sent Mita packing. This Mita also apparently had put his son on the throne of Til-Garimu (Tegarama in Hittite and Togarmah in the bible) another state near Tabal.

Gyges, instead, our biblical Gog, when threatened by the Cimmerians (the biblical Gomer) sought help from Ashurbanipal, but found that he could deal with the Cimmerians by himself, so never sent tribute to Ashurbanipal. Sadly though, the irrepressible Cimmerians made their presence felt again and Ashurbanipal refused to aid Gyges. So Gyges died in the far north-west attempting to defend his kingdom from the Cimmerians.

The prophecy of Ezekiel against Gog was ostensibly written around 590 BCE against king Gyges who lived circa 660 BCE and involved the Meshkhi who disappeared from history circa 700 BCE. I can only say that the writer of Ezekiel's prophecy was somewhat chronologically handicapped.

In another prophecy, Jer 51:27, in a passage ostensibly about the doom of Babylon, we read of of the command to summon against Babylon, Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz. These are Urartu, Minni (or the Mannai) and the Scythians (called Iskuzi by the Assyrians). Minni was a buffer state between Assyria and Urartu and was in league with the Scythians against Assyria. Urartu at this stage was in constant strife with the Indo-European hordes (Scythians, Minni and the Cimmerians) and eventually fell to the scythians in 585 BCE. Why Jeremiah shifts these groups from a prior Assyrian context to the Babylonian is quite a mystery.

The Assyrians developed a pact with the Scythians (Iskuzi or Ashkhenaz) and the Scythians saved Assyria from siege by the Medes. The Scythians proceeded to trample through Palestine on their way to Egypt to be bought of by Psamtik, the father of Necho who killed Josiah.

I've mentioned a few examples of material from the prophets which were clearly not prophecy in the way we understand the term, filtered through Christianizing manipulation of the Hebrew bible. We must look elsewhere for an understanding of what these texts are really doing.


By means of an epilogue I'd like to pull many of the names together from the above and return to Genesis 10:2-3, which talks about the sons of Japheth, who we can identify now:

• Gomer: the Cimmerians (Gimri in Akkadian)
• Magog: Mat-Gugi, the land of Gugu (Gyges of Lydia)
• Madai: the Medes
• Javan: the Ionians (Javan in Hebrew IWN)
• Tubal: the Neo-Hittite state of Tabal
• Meshech: the Phrygians (Midas of Phrygia in Greek sources is Mita of Meshkhi in Akkadian), and
• Tiras: probably Thrace (though there's not enough information available to really tell)

And further, the sons of Gomer:

• Ashkhenaz: the Scythians (Iskuzi in Akkadian)
• Riphath: Arpad, a city in northern Syria
• Togarmah: Til-Garimu, a Neo-Hittite state

With many of the names listed above we are clearly dealing with the 7th century conflicts between Assyria and the various groups outlined above. These few verses of Genesis can be no earlier than the seventh century. They may of course be later as the names appearing in Ezekiel demonstrate. We don't know when Ezekiel was really written, but then again we don't know when Genesis was.


spin

Vorkosigan

That's fascinating, spin. It raises the issue of how a later writer knew this history, even in garbled form. Was there a considerable tradition of chronicles to draw on? Or had he been some peripatetic Polybius, could he have traveled around look at inscriptions? Would a Royal archive have contained the necessary information?

Anat

I would guess the prophets were the writers of the editorial/opinion columns of their times, interpreting the present and what they knew of the past in light of their personal beliefs. Of course, all the prophets whose interpretations disagreed too much with the beliefs of the cannonizers were lost and forgotten. And we don't know how much individual prophecies were edited at later times for better fit with later events or with later ideology.

spin

The Assyrians always published the deeds of their kings, so, in the deeds of Sargon, you'd read about Mita of Mushkhi (Midas) and, in the deeds of Ashurbanipal, you'd read about Gugu of Mat-Gugi (Gyges), but there is nothing to explain the threading of the periods together to reflect Ezekiel or Genesis. Both the Assyrians and the Babylonians had chronicles written in this later era, though Assyrian records got extremely scant towards the latter part of Ashurbanipal's reign, post 630 BCE and the Babylonian chronicles started with Nebuchadrezzar and dealt with strictly Babylon-centric matters.

What comes to mind is that most of the tradition involved turns around one major area, northern Syria and the adjacent part of Asia Minor to the north. Togarmah, Tabal, Arpad, the arrival of Mushkhi in the area, the Cimmerians pushing through there, and further north, Urartu (Ararat). It's as though there has been a mishmash of memories from that general area. Maybe it's that the area was so problematic for the Assyrians, but I don't think that would explain the transmission or the mixture of periods. I can imagine people, for example, from the area moving south, taking the mixture of recollections with them.


spin

rlogan

Yes, interesting. "Garbled" is a way to phrase it if it is not oriented with a theme.

I take it that you do not see an organized theme, spin.

Danhalen

though it may seem a little funny, i work with a guy that is studying to become an episcopal preist, and he told me that is exactly how prophets worked. apparently prophets were just smart people making social commentary on the world around them. they never saw into the future, but merely spoke of events after they happened. odd that a theologian told me that prophets were not seers.

Anat

spin, were those areas conquered by Assyria or were those countries that remained relatively independent? Did the Assyrians exile any of them?