Hello there!
I have found this topic to be absolutely fascinating. I always wondered if 'Israel' in the Bible was referring to some other place. I always found it strange that the Israel we know was only founded relatively recently, and the Bible was written long, long ago. How long, who can be sure.
I also found it odd that all of the disciples in the New Testament have names that sound distinctly British to me.
I wanted to make two small contributions to the thread. I dont know if they will be of help or of any interest. One of them may be a little frivolous.
The first is in regards to your mentions of the Gauls, and its connections with the Rooster.
I was reviewing another thread about lost technology -
The Lost Key: Part 1
In particular I saw this image:
This is 'The Tollbooth' in Scotland. As you can see, it has a golden Rooster on top. It immediately occurred to me that many Churches in the UK have a weather vane with a Rooster on top. I do not know if this feature appears only in the UK, or if it is prevalent elsewhere.
It may also be worth pointing out that this is actually a government building of some sort, and not a Church - I believe its function was a courthouse and jail, or similar.
I wonder if this has any connection with your topic, in general.
Imo the weathervanes could be more mythologically related to the stories of roosters signifying great danger, like in
The Tale of the Golden Cockerel or
Gullinkambi. But anything is possible.
Meanwhile, here's some more text from the book:
Chapter 10. Nuances of entourage
If lapti, sauerkraut, samovar and bird-troika are woven into the narrative, then it is clear that we are not talking about Vietnam or Indonesia. If in the story someone drinks sake, professes Shintoism, rejoices for matsuri and is proud of Fujiyama, the action definitely does not happen in Lapland. If the Chukcha is waiting for the dawn (waits for six months), this is clearly not the lyrics of Ancient Egypt.
The context matters. And is defining. After all, if you are politely told that, according to the most reliable historical sources, courtly knights, wearing a kimono, devoured sauerkraut and raced to the top of the pyramid of Cheops to get acquainted with Santa Claus, you laugh, and for some reason you do not believe it. Here it is, the context.
But for some reason, serious people, having heard about the herds of pigs in evangelical Israel, about the cuckooing of a rooster in Jerusalem, about the storm in the Genisaret puddle, about coins with the image of Caesar, about the presence of several high priests in a place where there can be only one, do not smile at all. And they even believe it and in all seriousness explain how sauerkraut ended up at the top of the pyramid on top of Santa's torn beard.
What confuses them? That's right, context. Entourage. Especially the abundance of Aramaic words and toponymy. After all, if you remove this colorful part of the New Testament discourse, today's Israel would be the last place to be pointed to as the land of the Gospels. For the customs described in the Gospels are anything but Jewish, the parables of Jesus are addressed to people clearly not of the level of shepherds, the abundance of wine and pork do not indicate the kosher places, and the geography of the travels of Christ and the apostles clearly does not imply that everything happened in the Syrian Palestine. Adding to this that all the primary sources on the topic are not written in Aramaic, we get very far from the Middle Eastern landscape.
But you can't throw the words out of the song, serious people say. Now, if there were no heaps of Semitisms and Hebrew names of cities and towns, then there would be something to talk about. But as of now – it’s an empty matter.
That’s reasonable, of course. But there is a caveat. The fact is that many so-called Aramaic words are not at all such. Moreover, some of them were introduced into the text of Scripture after the fact on the basis of the opinion of "learned men" that it would be more correct in this way. That is, speaking in Russian
[English], pieces of middle Eastern entourage were simply falsified.
Don't believe me? Just look like everything unpretentiously blurs.
Anyone interested in the history of Scripture knows a place called Akeldama.
Here's what Wiki tells us:
"Akeldama, Land of Blood or Land of the Potter (Field of Blood, Village of Blood, Haceldama, Aceldama or Akeldama, modern name Hakl-ed-damm, from Aramaic
արյան դաշտը - 'blood field' or 'village of blood'; Greek: πεδίο αίματος αίμα χωριό, Potter’s field) - according to the New Testament, a plot of land in Jerusalem bought for the burial of wanderers with money received by Judas Iscariot from the high priests for the betrayal of Jesus Christ".
Here is the Encyclopedia of Archimandrite Nicephorus:
"Akeldama (Acts. 1:19) (The Syriac word meaning: field or village of blood) appears only in this quotation, as the name of the part of the land bought for 30 pieces of silver received by Judah for the betrayal of the Savior and which were returned by him again to the Jewish high priests, who, however, considering it impermissible to invest them in the treasury of the Church, because this is a price of blood, bought on them the land of a potter for the burial of wanderers (Matt. 27:6, 8). Hence the name of it: Akeldama. The specified place was on the southeast of Gion valley, south of Zion and was originally called, as mentioned above, the land of the potter, as it delivered a known kind of clay suitable for pot production. Akeldama continued to serve as a burial place until relatively modern times. Back in the VII century, Armenian Christians who lived in Jerusalem were buried here. In the Middle Ages, it was generally believed that the land taken from this field had a special property of decomposing the bodies of the dead in a few days; that is why at the specified time whole ships of the Akeldam land were brought for the cemeteries of Pisa in Italy. In Akeldama, there is still a stone, now dilapidated building with an arched roof, deep into the ground, but without any exit. According to D. Stanley, it in ancient times served as a tomb for the burial of wanderers. This monument of antiquity is visible from afar, and, as it seems, is a part of the ancient, and a part of the new building".
Here is Eric Nyustrem's Bible Dictionary:
"Akeldama (land of blood), the land of the potter, which the high priests bought for 30 silver coins of Judas Iscariot (Matt. 27:7, 8). Under the pretext that it was not permissible to contribute this money to the treasury of the temple, since it was the price of blood, they bought a field for the burial of wanderers. In Acts. 1:18, 19 it is said that Judas Iscariot acquired the land because it was bought with his money. According to legend, this field is located on the steep slope of the Evil Conference Mountain, near Jerusalem, to the south of it.
Among the many strange tombs on the southern slope of this mountain are ruins called Hakl Dama or El Ferdus with stone walls and columns lying deep in the ground, and with roofs above the ground, having 3 or 4 holes for lowering the dead. Probably, these are the remains of a Jewish grave building. On this place the Greek monastery of St. Onuphry was built".
And for the sake of completeness, The Brockhaus Bible Encyclopedia:
"Akeldama ("land of blood"), a piece of land also called "potter's land". The high priests bought A. for the same 30 silvers that Judas received for betraying the Lord (Matt. 27:3-10; Acts 1:19). A. was probably located in the south of the valley of Yennom, south-east. Jerusalem, and was intended for the burial of wanderers, i.e. foreign Jews who came to worship in Jerusalem and died there. See city plan on page 377".
It would seem that everything is orderly, noble and called by its own names. And Semitic.
That's just for some reason in the Slavic version of the Gospel of Matthew there is no Akeldama, but there is the village of Skudelniche
[translates to Potter’s land]. And in Luther's 1522 version there is no Akeldama. And even in the Greek source is Άγρόç, Аϊματόҫ and Άγρôν τόύ Kéραμέωҫ. That is, the potter is mentioned, no Akeldama here. That's marvelous!
And where does the colorful translation with an untranslatable Aramaic (Syriac?) word appear. It turns out that from the gentlemen Latins, in the Vulgate. That is, in the Greek original there is no Aramaic word left untranslated and no Middle Eastern toponym is present, this is a medical fact. And what, then, is the name of the Latin "translation" of the Greek expression "land of the potter" or "land of blood"? In my opinion, this is a forgery. What do you think?
Along the way, we note that the village of Skudelniche does not necessarily have to be located in Israeli lands. There is nothing typically Jewish (Arabic, Aramaic...) in the craft of a potter. But the land from this New Testament "Potter‘s village", according to legends, was in the cemeteries of Pisa, Paris and Rome. Wasn't it far from Palestine?
And if someone thinks that this is an isolated case, this someone is greatly mistaken. A creatively reimagined translation in Scripture is enough. It's just that time and unwillingness to dig deep do the trick. Much can no longer be restored with accuracy, but something else lies on the surface, for it is impossible to hide and cover everything.
Here, for example, it is impossible to translate from Greek the name of Mary's hometown "Magdalene". After all, in the most ancient copies of the Gospels there is no Magdala, but there is Magadan. Moreover, in a parallel place Mark has no Magadan, but there is Dalmanufa. And there is not a single settlement with similar parameters on the territory of modern Israel, and the names, frankly, are not at all Semitic. Reluctantly, even the Orthodox Encyclopedia admits the corruption of the text:
"According to other theories, this name appeared as a result of damage to the text, in which initially there could be a fairly well-known name of the area or settlement, which is confirmed by the variability of the manuscript tradition. The expression "within the Dalmanufian limits" (
εіς τα μέρη Ϫαλμανουθά is "reading of the majority" (in the Vatican Codex -
Ϫαλμανουθά, but there are other variants:
εіς το όρος Ϫαλμουναι (in the Washington Codex, V century);
εіς τα μέρη ΜαΥαλά (in the Greek codex Korideti (Georgia), IX century; in a number of minuscules, in some Syrian and Georgian versions, in Gothic translation);
εіς τα μέρη ΜαΥεδά (RNB Greek 53, IX century; in old Latin versions);
εіς τα ȍρια ΜελεΥȁδα (in the original reading of the Beza codex), etc.; in the papyrus fragment P45 (III century), the name of the area is restored as
ΜαΥεδȁν (Metzger. 1994. P. 32-33, 83). In parallel text from Matt. 15:39 The area where the dispute with the Pharisees took place is also called "Magadan" (
ΜαΥαδάν or
ΜαΥεδάν. In the present time the area with this name is unknown. Eusebius of Caesarea believed that the
ΜαΥεδάν mentioned by the evangelists Matthew and Mark is a village near Gerasa (Euseb. Onomast. 655). Perhaps the evangelists were referring to Magdala (otherwise called Tarihea), and
ΜαΥαδάν is a distorted form of the accusative case from
ΜαΥδαλά (compare
ΜαΥαδαΥαδ and
ΜαΥδαλΥαδ in Joshua 15:37 [LXX]). Given the lack of a definitive solution to the synoptic problem, the question of the exact identification of Dalmanufa in the Gospel of Mark remains open".
That is, what today is considered to be the Middle Eastern Magdala could be Dalmanufa, Magadan or something else at the behest of the interpreters (or proofreaders in the sutans) of the biblical text. And it also could be not the first, nor the second, nor the third variant. And the topic of Israel here, to put it mildly, is not disclosed.
Nor is it revealed in the case of the famous Jerusalem bath of Bethesda, which was located next to the Sheep's Gate. It is believed that in this place the Savior healed a weakened person (the episode is described in John, 5:1-16). And here is how Eusebius of Caesarea saw this place: "Bethesda is a bath in Jerusalem, it is also called Sheep’s, which in ancient times had five narthexes; and is now shown in the two pools there, of which one is filled with annual rains, the other has miraculously painted red water, showing, as they say, the trace of the sacrifices who were washed in it, which is why it is called Sheep’s, because of the sacrifices".
But from the modern critical bell tower, everything is seen not so rosy and symbolic. Here is an excerpt from
Mark Abramovich's “Jesus, the Jew from Galilee”:
... at the Sheep's Gate there was a market for the sale of sacrificial animals: it was called the "Sheep Market". The people here really crowded, but they did not wait for healing in the waters of the pool, but for the levites, who washed future sacrifices from the dirt, for a dirty animal could not be led to the Temple. People never plunged into the pool, because for people it was unclean! Indeed, many sacrifices were made in the Jerusalem Temple. Every day hundreds of animals were washed from the mud in this pool. You can imagine what kind of water there was in it! This pool has never been a bath. As for the legend of the "disturbance of the waters by the Angel of the Lord", it was in a completely different place, in the south-western part of the city, and this legend is connected with the source of Tikhon. The Jewish king Hizkiahu (Hezekiah), fearing an Invasion by the Assyrians, took a number of steps to prepare the city for a long siege. Among other measures, he decided to divert the spring water through an underground tunnel to the city. The tunnel was built from two sides. Both groups of workers met at a point that can be identified today. The total length of the tunnel is 533 meters, and it ends with the Schilloach basin (the famous Siloam bath). This significant event is mentioned in the Bible. In the Second Book of Kings it is written: "... He made a pond and a conduit and led the water into the city". The water in the tunnel seemed to pulsate - first arrived, then decreased. At the right time for the townspeople, it rose, as if facilitating access to water for those in need. People said that it was the angel of the Lord who raised the water. These two pools are located at different ends of the city and were intended for different purposes, but neither of them served as a bath."
So, people in the pool at the Sheep Market never plunged, and this reservoir served only for the washing of sacrificial animals. A compelling statement. At least for Middle Eastern Jerusalem. Perhaps the evangelist John once again mixed everything up? Strange: he was confused, but gave the exact name of the place? And even reported a large number of weak people lying around the bath, where only sheep were washed?
Is Abramovich right when he insists on the fictionality of evangelical Palestine?
If we mindlessly put the text of the Gospel on the contemporary realities of the Middle East, this is the conclusion that arises. But if you do not identify the current Jerusalem with the epoymous biblical city, there are nuances. And the most curious nuances, I dare say.
And everything lies on the surface, written in the text itself, it is only necessary not to read like the Pharisees and scribes, but to understand the essence of what is written. And not to invent what this Bethesda could mean in dead Aramaic. Because no ancient Gospels in this language exist and, most likely, never existed in nature! After all, what is Bethesda according to the Scriptures? That's right, the bath. And John clearly notes that this is not just a bath, but a place next to which lay many suffering people waiting for healing. So what smart person and when did he decide that Bethesda is a proper name and not a lowercase word? After all, if you take a dozen ancient manuscripts and compare them, it turns out that there are no capital letters in them (once), the text is written down in a merged way (two), and the desired word "Bethesda" is transliterated in a variety of ways (three). And since the purpose of the early disseminators of the good news was not to care about spelling and punctuation, but to evangelize, some poorly understood, incorrectly written or unclear words of the original text remained dark for generations of readers of the Bible, and only much later, under the supervision of authoritative figures of the Church, were explained in one way or another, and the spelling of these words was unified. Most likely, this is the path that Bethesda passed, which began to be tied to the terrain at a time when the interpretation of the Gospels and their reference to the Middle Eastern landscape began.
But the meaning of the word is transparent in both Greek and Latin. But just with the recording the word was not so lucky, so the Greco-Roman bath-baptistery (
βαπτίζω (that is, initially the bath, the place of dipping, and then, in Christianity, the baptismal church) turned into an obscure Bethesda. Although, it would seem, Bethesda and
βαπτίζω (they sound similarly, and reflect exactly the same concept (about the Latin "baptista" in general I am silent)). It is next to such "baths" the weak could lie, waiting for the miracle of God. And John the Evangelist did not confuse anything, he described everything quite correctly, only baptistery existed not in the land of ancient Israel, but in Europe. And even specially built baths were either at the temples, or separately from them. You can see beautiful examples of baptistery in Florence, Poitiers, Fréjus, Aix, Rome, Parma and other places much closer to the Gospel events than desert Palestine.
Oh well. After all, not only proper names are in the evangelical text. There are many simple words in it, which, according to experts, give out the Aramaic ancestor written in Greek Gospels. And what are these words? - We ask. The experts will answer gladly. The first thing that comes to mind is that the word "amen" clearly refers to the ancient Hebrews. Or the name of the treasury of the Jewish temple: corvan (Mark 7:11). Or, for example, the word "raka" from the Savior's speech (Matt. 5:22) is a typical Semitism left untranslated. Enough?
Well, well, for the first time - enough. If typical - then typical. If Semitism - then Semitism. I just want details, they are usually the most juicy.
Let's start with amen. Quite often used in Scripture.
John (6:26):
"Jesus answered and told them, amen, amen I say to you, seek me, not as a sign, but as if I am the bread, and be satiated".
And John (1:51):
“And says to him: amen, amen I say to you, see the sky and the Angels of God ascending and descending over the Son of Man”.
Usually these passages are explained from an etymological point of view as follows: "The word "amin’" (more precisely "amen", Hebrew “true, exactly, correctly”) left in Greek without translation. Usually, Jews would say the word at the end of a prayer read by someone else as a sign of agreement with his words..." (quoted:
Kuznetsova V.N. Gospel of John. Commentary. M., 2010).
And now a little experiment. Replace the "Jewish" word "amen" with the Slavic "именно/imenno"
[means “true, exactly, correctly”]. What will change? Exactly, I tell you, nothing will change in meaning or sound. And why then is "amen" a translation from Hebrew and not from Slavic? In addition, it would be nice to explain the metamorphosis with the transfer of stress. After all, in Latin, for example, the stressed syllable is the first syllable: Amen, and not the second, as in the Hebrew amEn. From what language did Latin draw this word?
There is another metamorphosis with the word "amen". Compare the "Jewish" root with the Egyptian Amon (Amen/Ammon/Amun) and with the Slavic имя/имени
[name/of the name]. So isn't the Egyptian god Amun the "god of the word (i.e., name)" referred to in the Bible? By the way, in all other Indo-European languages we do not have an imya, but an onoma, or a noma, or name, or a neym, that is, a reading backwards. Such miracles! And then clever zalizniaks tell about amateur linguistics and the absolute randomness of coincidences.
Semitism, you say? Well-well.
Let's move on. Corvan (In Greek - korbonas). For example, Matthew 27:6:
"Archpriest, while taking the silvers, says: they are not worthy of being put to korvana, because this is a price of blood"
Or Mark (7:11):
"you say: if a person speaks to the father or mother: korvan, which is a treasure, you can use it".
It is usually explained as follows:
"Corvan (Hebrew Korban, "sacrificed", "sacrificial gift" (Lev. 1:2; Num. 5:15; in the Synod, trans. - "sacrifice"). In the Greek text of NT, this word came from Hebrew. Language. In Matt. 27:6 K. denotes temple treasures (in the Synod, trans. - "treasury of the church"), to which the high priests did not want to add the silver of Judas, considering them "the price of blood." In Mk. 7:11 The word "K." is explained as "a gift to God". According to the teachings of the scribes, any Jew could claim that his property became a "sacrificial gift" to God. Such a statement was made in the form of a vow. The person who made such a promise withdrew from himself all obligations to continue to help others. What his loved ones could get from him was henceforth dedicated to God. Such a statement was considered binding, although in practice it was not always followed by factual transfer of property to the temple" (
Rieneker F., Mayer G. Brockhaus Bible Encyclopedia. 1994).
Finding it difficult to explain how the Hebrew word "sacrifice" turned into Greek
temple treasures, I note that in the Gospels the word is used in the latter sense, that is,
treasures, and not
sacrifice. That’s firstly. But secondly needs to be expanded. To ask an unflattering question.
And what, the word
korbonas exists only by itself, in an airless and wordless space? And the German-Slavic karbovans did not exist in the world? And the authors of countless dictionaries do not know from what root, which is related to coinage, these words grow?
Okay, but the Old Russian
skarb in the sense of the
treasury etymologists also missed? Is this also an ancient Aramaic or Syriac word? Questions, of course, close to rhetorical, but still I would like to hear at least some answer.
And finally, the proverbial
raka. A fairly famous word due to the personality of the pronouncer:
"And I say to you, anyone who is angry with his brother is guilty to the court: if he utters to his brother: raka, he is guilty to the court: and if he also says: urode
[freak, bastard], he is guilty to the Gehenna of fire".
It is translated and explained as follows: "Raka (Matt. V, 22) (a Syriac word meaning: empty, unfit man) - this swear word seems to have been in great use among Jews in the time of Jesus Christ and was considered very offensive. For naming the closest ones with the word
raka, there is a greater punishment than for one vain anger against him in the heart, because here anger is not hidden in one’s heart, but breaks out in words offensive to the name and honor of the closest one. The guilty is subject to the Sanhedrin, i.e. the supreme Jewish court" (Bible Encyclopedia).
Yeah, empty man. "Apparently, it was in great use". Science, however, does not know, but there is hope that it will. And how do you, good people, translate this word, if only "apparently" it was in use? On the basis of what sources did you determine the frequency of use? How did you figure out what the Word was Syriac if you can't say exactly what it meant or what its nature was? Eh...
It's not a Syrian word! And not an
empty man! And it is still used in half of the countries of Europe. True, you won’t be called to the court now, but it is very possible to get slapped in face. French racaille (pronounced: rakay) is
scum, riffraff, bastard, English rascal (with the same meaning), German Rekel (
rude one), etc. come from an ancient root, denoting a dog (obsolete English rack, German Rekel, etc.). That is, in the Gospels we are talking about the fact that you should not call your brother a dog (or, as the Latins would say, the canalya - from the Latin canis). Just like that. And no incomprehensible Syrian words with unclear meanings. Call a relative a dog, get public shaming from the elders (court, also the Sanhedrin).
And now there is no Middle Eastern context in sight. And there are the usual Mediterranean landscapes that can be seen from Portugal to Turkey. And there are words and names familiar to a European, but not very clear to Semites. There is a winemaking culture that permeates the gospels but is alien to Israeli history. There are Roman and Greek monetary units of Scripture in the total absence of local (despite the fact that other people's money could not fill the treasury of the Temple!). There are members of the Sanhedrin with Greek names (an unreal fact from the point of view of Judaism), a noble member of this very Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea, who for some reason has a coffin next to the place of executions (did not find a better place?). There is Simon the Cyrenean walking on a festive day for Jews from the field (sic!) and carrying then the cross of Christ, there are the Pharisees who found themselves on the Sabbath (sic!) in the field and condemning Christ and his companions for tearing off wheat. yes, many other interesting things, completely denying the Middle Eastern context of the Gospels.
But if someone still believes that Jesus entered through the city gates into the Arab village of Nain, let him continue to think so. Courtly knights in kimonos have not yet been canceled.
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A few thoughts that recently visited me:
Among the quotes provided by A. Khrustalyov there was one that talked about Poland and its periphery being Palestine (just compare Polska and Palestine or, even better, Polish + Lithuanian = Palestinian). Now, how does that change the context of
crusades against Poland and the Baltic? Is
Battle of Grunwald a testament to a failed attempt to move the narrative a bit eastward, so they decided to choose Middle East instead? Is that why right now
history of Lithuania is limited to start at the 13th century? The time, around which the Gospel events have taken place (in the framework of this theory of course).
Also, could the first and only king (karalius) of Lithuania Mindaugas/Mindowg have any relation to Merovech/Merowig?
And the curious fact that Lithuania is supposed to be the last European country that was christianised (
14th century).
And another thing - crusaders are called крестоносцы in Russian, which means cross-bearers, but there were knights who were called
меченосцы, meaning sword-bearers. They were situated in Livonia and were supposed to conquer Lithuania, but the local swamp-dwellers disintegrated the knights. This kind of mirrors the story of August's legions in Germania. But that's besides the point. See this:
Could it be related to this:
Connection to the Arthurian legend?
. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on them.
