Amedeo

You gave the perfectly correct answer. May I add that not only was Paul speaking is a synagogue, but also he would not be referring to the biological stock as such; he was referring to the Israelites, the children of Abraham who, by establishing a contract with his God, founded Israel. (Biological descendance is not necessary, as he implied elsewhere, since the circumcision whereby one is inducted into Israel is of the heart...)

Amedeo

As for the question that was raised in this thread, I agreed with Toto (as you can see). What I like to mention in connection with what you are saying is that not only the Arabs but also the Jews [understood as the people of the Bible] consider the Arabs as descendants of Abraham. As a matter of fact, rabbinical scholars would say that Hebrew or "Semitic" (as an 18th century German linguist called it) was inherited by the Arabs. Thus, biologically and linguistically, the Arabs are seen are children of Shem [Semites].

Lo and behold, Semitic comprises not only Hebrew (or Aramaic and Hebrew) and Arabic, but also the languages of the ancient Egyptians and Ethiopians. We can say that Semitic (with its dialect variations) is the language of Araboid people.

Notice that Semitic was also spoken in Canaan, the area which now includes Palestine, Lebabon, and Syria , at least up to the Euphrates River, and in Akkad and Babylonia. Let us speak of "Western Semitic" Peoples/Countries and "Eastern Semitic" peoples/Countries. Now we know as a historic fact that Akkad and Babylonia were superimposed on non-Semitic countries (primarily Sumer and environs). So we can say that the Semitic language was brought there from invading Arabs [Araboid peoples such as the Arabs or the Egyptians]. When we consider the Western Semitic countries...... nothing is ever said or known. It is tacitly assumed that Canaan was Araboid territory [excluding the Philistines and others who were Aegean Caucasoid peoples and spoke non-Semitic] and that the pastures of the Hebrews (in north-eastern Canaan) was the land whence the Semitc language spread.

There is no evidence that the Semitic speaking peoples (Canaanites, Akkadians, Babylonians, Arabs, Egyptians, and Ethiopians) are biological descendants of Abraham. And if that were the case, we should expect that the Jewish population (from another branch of the family) would be as vast as the Araboid population. The view that the Arabaoids are biological descendants of Abraham is a pure fiction. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Semitic (the language spoken by the Araboid peoples) was originally the language of the Hebrews. The view that this is the case is based on the assumption that man's original language was Semitic and that it continued amongst the Hebrews and the "Arabs." However, before the times of Abraham, there was a confusion of languages at Babel: Other languages originated there. These are the foreign or Gentile languages. Indeed, the tower of Babel was not being constructed by the Hebrews: When Abraham saw what the Gentiles were doing and "what they might do next," he packed and took the road to Egypt [where, of course, everybody spoke Semitic, too].
[My view is that the tower was a castle or fortress built by large landowners -- AGRICULTURISTS -- who were occasionally raided by pastoral or hunting peoples (such as the Hebrews -- the Habiri or "bandits, as they were called in Egypt, probably after they did their god-enjoined plundering and left Egypt for good).]

There is no evidence that man's first language was Semitic or that the first Semitic speaking people was the Hebrews. The chances are that Semitic is the original language of Ethiopians, Egyptians, and Arabs, and that the language was spread with the expansion of Araboid people into the upper Levant -- the territory of Canaan, Akkadia, and Babylonia. If this is so, the Semitic language and Araboid genes were engrafted on a population which was thereafter called "Hebrew". The Canaan territory continued to have non-Araboid peoples such as the Philistines (who are going to be battered by the Exodus Hebrews); Persia was never overtaken by the Arabs, wherefore it continues to be a country with an Indo-European language. (The partial race mixture is recent: from the influx of Islam in it).

To the pre-Canaanites, the Arabs brought their genes, their language, and their religion, or a religion of theirs. The Cananite pantheon has two supreme deities: EL and his spouse. His minister are Gabri-EL, Satana-EL, Micha-EL, and others. The two supreme deities are the ELOHIM [= the gods]. This is the Semitic plural form of the the singular "el".

The work of the Elohim is stated in Genesis 1, which I am not going to repeat except for the last part: The Elohim created humans in their own image, in their own likeness They created them: one male and one female... just as the two supreme deities are.

The Hebrews, however, undoubtedly after their experience in Egypt, adopted only one god: EL, and he is so named in most of the Bible. Eventually, the Galilean Jesus said on the cross, "Eloi, Eloi, [O God, O God]. why hast thou forsaken me?"

Meanwhile, the Arabs, too, became monotheists, and started speaking of THE-GOD: al-ELah, or Allah. The creating god of the Hebrews is the Canaanite EL, who is the Arabs' Allah. The god and language (actually: most of the language) of the Hebrews came from the "Arabs."

A Jewish Biblical scholar has discovered [to the chagrin of the Jews] that hundreds of Hebrew etyms [word-roots] are Indo-European, specifically Aegean [Greek]. This is part of the language which was spoken before the influx of Semitic.

The Hebrews had another god. He is called Yawveh and his work is stated in Genesis 2. (This is the god that survived from the times before the Arab influx. [I have dealt extensively with the two books of Genesis and with the two gods.] Yawveh is a renmanent also in Canaan (apart from the Hebrews) and is mentioned in the tablets of Ebla, ca. 2500 B.C., just as the pre-Israelitic Jerusalem is mentioned. There is a history of Indo-European speaking Caucasoids hidden beneath the history of Semitic speaking Caucasoid-Araboid hybrids.

What language did Abraham speak? It is assumed that he spoke Semitic on the basis of Semitic being the primordial human language; he was a Shem-ite.
But if Abraham lived after the Babel affair, which I take to be the commingling of [already existing] languages, and if Semitic was not the language of the Hebrews before the invasion and the linguistic commingling, then the availables tongues were "Semitic" and "Indo-European". Abraham spoke a commingled language [Hebrew], but Hebrew is TRADITIONALLY called a simply Semitic language, for the commingled nature of Hebrew has been discovered only very recently. Biologically, Abraham could have been Araboid, Caucasoid, or a hybrid. As he was a leader, I presume he was in the caste of the occupying "Arabs." He was undoubtedly an Araboid man.

To the extent that a racial differention of God's People could be maintained, the state of Israel [Isra-EL], which included Galilee, was a state of El-worshipping Araboids. Judah was the state of Yawveh-worshipping Caucasoids, with the Temple in Jerusalem. Yawveh (the legislator and lord) is the God of Moses. When the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., many Judeans [now called Jews] scattered throughout the Roman empire. Probably most Israelites (the kins of Abraham) commingled with a new advancing wave of Araboid people and eventually became Islamic. Well, their gods were already one and the same. (The majority of contemporary Jews are Caucasoid, recognizably distinct from the Araboid minority.)

The Bible is an important document for an ethnologist, since its constitutive myths, facts, poems, and its very language, provide information about the living/concrete nature, the culture, of a human population in a certain time and place. For those who take it as the encyclopedic word of truth (as science; as the biography of God, the world, and mankind), it is not worth the paper on which it is written.

Toto

Could you give the name of this person?

I am rather skeptical about the assumptions in your post. You seem to assume that Abraham had descendants, that the Jews were in Egypt, etc.

Toto

Let me make it clear that I do not agree with you.

This does not seem to be the opinion of modern linguistics, which does not classify Coptic as a Semitic language.

Afro-Asian languages

From Ask a Linguist

And Araboid??

No evidence - because Abraham was a mythological character.

This does not follow. In fact, it does not make any sense at all.

The Tower of Bable is mythology. It didn't happen, and it is not the origin of language differences.

Araboid genes?

Except that there is no archeological or other evidence that the Hebrews were in Egypt.

. . .

I will allow the specialists to try to make sense of the rest of your pseudo-history.

So why do you attribute historical meaning to Abraham and the Tower of Babel?

Amedeo

" Hebrew is Greek" by Josephy Yahuda.
Refer to:

http://www.grecoreport.com/hebrew_is_greek.htm

Jewish Symbols, etc., are Greek:

http://www.grecoreport.com/Jewish Symbols_are_Greek.htm

On some other occasion, I'll present my etymology and meaning of "yawveh."
Rabbinical interpreters are tried in vain to derive that name from the Semitic verb "to be".

As far as what appear to be my assumptions, let me briefly express my evaluation of the Bible, of what it is all about:

The Bible has, besides poems, discourses about God, the world, and human history. So, in terms of the subject-matters, the discourses are theological, cosmological, and historical. However, all the discourses are pre-inquisitive and pre-critical; that is, they are pre-philosophical, pre-scientific, and do NOT present DISCOVERED facts or THEORIES about discovered facts. The discourses make use of available facts [that there is a sun, that there are animals of different kind, that the sun moves across the sky, that there are humans fighting wars, that there are religious leaders in the community of the Jews presently or in the past, and so forth]. What is taken by the Bible narrators to be a fact may not be a fact for us, or a personality which is narrated may not have existed, but by and lage, I don't think that the "utilized facts" are literary inventions. So, I have no special doubts about the existence of some person called Abraham, or of the Israelites having gone to Egypt, and back, or of warriors capturing the cities of the Philistines and the Amnorites, etc... And it is precisely in the realm of utilized facts that there can be suppororting evidence -- archeological, in Egyptian writhings, etc. When Jews clamor about the EVIDENCE for the veracity of the BIBLE, they are not talking about God; they are talking about evidence which concerns the FACTS WHICH WERE UTILIZED OR USED BY NARRATORS IN THEIR NARRATIONS.

The narratives, the discourses, however, are NOT simply an exposition of generally and commonly known facts of the times. The narratives are formally of three types: Theological, Epical, and Patriarcal.

A theological discourse is about the formations of the things of this world by a god, who operates magically. Genesis 1, for instance, is a theory about the formation of diverse things a long time ago. It gives a mythic explanation of ordinary facts. An epical discourse is about the heroic exploits by warriors who are graced by the gods. Hence, God stops the sun in order for a hero to bring his victory to completion. Finally there are accounts such as the genealogies of humans, the derivation of nations from some god-appointed patriarcs. All ordinary facts (or assumed facts) are not researched, are not theorized scientifically; they are assimilated in a theistic frameword. What is errouneos in the patriarcal [and other] accounts is not so much what is said, but what is omitted. Thus the Biblical human history and genealogy is like the earth in size as compared to the visible universe in size. But, in truth, it was never the objective of the narrators to narrate the true history of man. The Bible has no concention of what a truthful discourse is. What is actually presented is always a mythical account of generation (whether they are some or all of the real generations).

If we look THROUGH the Biblical myths, then we can see what a people actually knew or did, and whether they were the originators of their language, religion, cities, wealth, and so forth. The Biblical narrative is a mythical biography of God, the world, and mankind. Through this biography, and by means of our learnings of the historical world, we can narrate the biography of the People among whom the Bible narrators arose. It does not matter whether a certain Abraham really existed or not; the Abraham Character (like the character of a drama) embodies properties or characteristics of real people at certain times and places.

Similarly, it does not matter whether a Jesus Christ ever existed. The Gosplels, I have found, contain two distinct biographies of Jesus [with even different birth-dates], but Jesus became an "eidolon" which, like all invisible gods, speaks, acts, and leads. The Jesus-Character (or characters) is believed to be real, and people act on their beliefs. Thus Godfrey of Boullion fought to retrieve his kingdom of Jerusalem, whether he was a descendant of Jesus and King David or not. Yaveh may not have existed, by the Biblical god shows himself to be a divine farmer and the lord of humans. This tells me that he was narrated by somebody after the invention of agriculture in Sumer and during the time when the aftermath of agriculture was evident: the formation of rural territories, the establishment of cities, the rise or warriors who became lord of the cultivated land (in effect creating feudalism), and so forth. This is a god of 4000 B.C. or thereabouts, for that which is denoted by the narration has a nature derived from the culture of the narrator.

Of course, I am thinking as an ethnologist, not as a rabbi or a priest.

Chris Weimer

:rolling: :rolling:

You actually believe that garbage? Ha, his entire argument was refuted the day it was published. Next thing you know someone's going to say that all the American Indians were actually Greeks because a tribe in Oregen has the word for to breathe as pnimu (pneuma sound familiar?) :rolling:

Amedeo

I am not a person who just believes what a person claims. So, Ii personally regret that I cannot get hold of that book to examine and study it. I know that there is a great problem in any etymological work, and I have seen some great linguists making blunders. The fact is that sometimes (not all the times), it is virtually impossible to ascertain whether two words (in different languages or partially different languages) are homonyms or cognates.

Two words are homonymous if they sound (or look) alike. When some people find homonyms in two languages and assume that they are ONE word -- shared by the two languages -- they are dead wrong. In fact, there are homonyms with a give language. E.g., if you do not know Latin (if you do not know the meaning of Latin words) and you look at a Latin text, you find the word "amare" here and there, and you might assume that there are one and the same word. Well, "amare" can mean "to love" , and "amare" can mean "bitterly." [amare amare is likely to mean: to love bitterly. If you hear, "dominedominusest?" or read it before they used spacing, it says either "domi ne dominus est," =the lord is at at home?, or "domine dominus est" = O lord, is he the/a lord?] My breaking of a sentence into its component words exemplies the problem of breaking a word into its components. If the possibility of different components is not recognized, one cannot validly decipher the word and determine whether it is a homonym of a word in another language to begin with.

If this happens more than once in two languages, that two of their words are cognates -- sounding nearly the same and meaning nearly the same -- than those are ONE word which is shared by two languages, which means that it originated in one of those two languages, or borth originated from one previous language.

The Proto-Indo-Europeanist use a phonological method of derivation, which ends in contriving a language which never existed. They start with a word and, by rules of phonetic transformations, they create homonyms, which are supposed to be the parents of the words one starts with. Both makers of homonyns and finders of homonyms do not have a leg to stand on. A word presumed to be the parent of another word has to be attested, has to be found, in a real language -- with a certain sound and meaning comparable to the presumed offspring word. In other words, the etymologist must deal in real cognates only. (That the "historical method" of Semerano.)

There is no basis to say that what Yahuda presented is garbage (a bunch of homonyms); however, without reading the book, I cannot tell to what EXTENT, he found and presented cognates, rather than just homonyms. So, I do not really know HOW MANY Hebrew words are cognates of Greek words. Anyway, the Greek or Aegean words would be called a Substrate (an underlying layer) of Hebrew, which is the predominat language. For instance, I do not know either how many British words underlie English [ which is composed largely of Anglo-Saxon words and French/Norman words] and it may be often difficult to determine whether an Italic word present in English comes from the Britons, from the occupying Romans, or from the Normans. We may have good reason to suppose that "Westchester" comes from "west castrum," the latter being the name of a Roman encampment or fort. Hebrew words which have to do with farms or farming are likely to come straight from the Sumerians or from the Akkadians or from the Greeks. Knowing the character of a cultures is a good basis for determining that some of its words are of a foreign origin. Biblical Hebrew has some 30,000 words (and a much smaller number of etyms or radical words). The population was one of shepherds, food gatherers, and traders. So, we can practically figure out which of the Hebrew words are not really Hebrew. The words which the people of a culture create are not words which speak of things that are not part of that culture.

Finally, the Philistines seem to be Aegean people. Probably they occupied the whole of the upper Levant, west of the Euphrates, before the Arabian advance. The pasture people near the northern Euphrates may have been Aegean {Greek-like] speaking people before the advance of the Semitic-speaking Araboid people. The shepherd spoke of the Lord [Yawveh] as their shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. The Lord is the divine shepherd. Yawveh is not the god of the Semitic speaking people called Hebrews. They may have had no name other than Philistines.

When Abraham said farewell to his pasture land, God mercifully gave him and his children the land of Canaan, from the Euphrates to the Nile. The land was called Canaan after the people became Semitic speaking people (and God spoke Semitic). We do not know the prior name of the land. Was it Philistia, where a god was Yaveh and the language was nearly Greek? In Abraham's own times, the philistines were a distict people. He was coming from the whereabouts of agricultirits who built fortresses. Now he eyes the fertile lands by the Jordan River, the land of the Philistines. And God gave him these lands. Was he really on the road to Egypt, or was see in search of land so that his people might become farmers? If he was, he had to take it away by forece from the Philistines, he had to sojourn in Egypt, plunder, and after 40 years of preparation "in the desert", the Israelites conquered the lands of the Philistines. They became farmers or feudal lords of the farmers. The Bible does not say much but is very revealing.

Toto

From your first link:

I think I wasted enough time on this.

Amedeo

I have to go now. I will reply to messages in # 9 within a couple of hours.

spin

If you look at the website you cited, you'll find that it has almost nothing to do with Hebrew directly at all. In fact much of the work is done on Greek renderings of Hebrew names, which is not a basis to build the thesis for a Joseph Yahuda. Naturally one finds Greek indications in Greek renderings.

For example, although the Hebrew name of Noah is NX, it is rendered in Greek as nwe, allowing the musing on Greek similarities. Or take Cain, in Hebrew QYN, rendered in Greek kain, which allows our "Joseph Yahuda" to go off on a tangent which ends up ghinos. This is true butterfly rubbish.

Try this gem:The word that the Greek translators were translating to get kibwtos was the Hebrew TBH. Who knows where "Joseph Yahuda" got "Arg" from and who cares?

Or:Amedeo = a/mede/o

a = indefinite article
mede = member of a barbarous realm which existed before Persia
o = onomatopoeic indication of shock

Amedeo = Look out, there's a Mede

Much of the stuff you farm off internet is questionable at best. If you don't know anything about the field, you should ignore the stuff until you do know.


spin