Just a note of apology. I threw out my back last Friday and have been basically immobilized since. I still can’t sit for more than a few minutes (standing is a bit better), but I’ve managed to figure out a way to type and use the computer while basically reclining. Hopefully only a few more days of this and then I get be more consistent blogging (among other things).
I noticed that the Hebrew font didn’t come through, so I reposted the post and included a link to a PDF file that explains Barker’s problem. Just scroll down.
I *think* I can manage my schedule now. As noted (I think) earlier, I’ve been asked to teach at a local university this year, and that has really bitten into my time. I feel like I’ve got a routine down now – which means I believe I can post at least once a week on this and other blogs. Thanks for your patience!
Sorry for the unannounced hiatus. I’ve been asked to teach a sequence of ancient history courses at a local university, so I’ve been prepping. Classes start today, so I should be “in the flow” now and more able to budget my time.
Sorry it’s been a while. I noted on my main blog that I’d be away for a bit. Back now, so blogging will resume.
Here’s one item of interest right away – the Westminster Leningrad Codex is now available online. For all those who want free access to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, this is the place. Of course, it’s NOT an interlinear, but if you learn the alphabet (check out the PowerPoint files and videos for that over at my other blog, Scribal Practices), you can at least find the words behind the English and follow the discussions in academic commentaries and lexicons.
NOTE: For proper viewing of foreign Egyptian and Hebrew characters, download the PDF version of this document – the blog messes up the fonts.
One of the readers of PaleoBabble recently asked me to take a look at some of the claims of Jordan Maxwell. I’d heard of Maxwell before, but had never really taken much of an interest in his work (presented on his website), mostly because it was hard to navigate. I’ve given it more of a look now and it seems I’ve been directed to yet another treasure trove of PaleoBabble.
One of Maxwell’s claims is that the name “Israel” derives from three deity names: Isis-Ra-El. This is utter nonsense for two basic reasons: (1) The Bible itself points to a derivation (there is more than one possibility, none of which are anything near to what Maxwell says), and (2) Hebrew and Egyptian come from different language families (one Semitic, the other Afro-Asiatic), and so the syllables in the Hebrew word “Israel” do not line up phonetically to the Egyptian words “Isis” and “Ra”, thus marring Maxwell’s analysis (hate to call it an analysis really).
1. The Old Testament vs. Maxwell
Let’s start with the first reason – the one that Maxwell utterly ignores. What a surprise. Those readers familiar with the Old Testament patriarch stories will likely recall that the name “Israel” was given to the patriarch Jacob after he wrestled with a divine being. Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, and hence Jacob’s twelve sons became known as the twelve tribes of ISRAEL. Anyone who has actually read that Old Testament story (Genesis 32) knows that when the name of Jacob is changed, an explanation is given. Here’s the passage:
22 The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. 24 And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, ”I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27 And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then he said, ”Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, ”Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh.
According to Genesis 32:28, the name “Israel” (ישׂר×ל) is connected somehow to the idea of “struggling.” As a result, many Hebrew scholars relates “Israel” to the verb שׂרה (sarah; “to struggle, fight”; note the similar consonants – the last of which would drop off if another element is added). This would mean that “Israel” (if it comes from this verb root) literally means either “El (God) fights” (presumably for his people), or “he fights (with) El (God).” The point could also be wordplay – “God fights” in a passage where Jacob us fighting with God. The former option follows predominant Hebrew word order for predicate + subject, but the narrative in Gen 32 favors the latter. There is another option, though. Other scholars think “Israel” comes not from verb שׂרה (sarah; “to struggle, fight”) but from the verb שׂרר (sarar; “to rule, be strong”). In this case the name would mean “El (God) is strong” and would likely point to Jacob being subdued by the embodied God in the Genesis 32 story. A third option is that the proper root is יש×ר (yasar; “just, right”), and so the meaning would be something like “El (God) is just.” In favor of this third option is the alternate word for Israel found in the Old Testament, Jeshurun (y-s-r-n) in Deut 32:15; 33:5, 26.
At any rate, Jacob’s old name recalled his past underhand dealings (“Jacob” means “supplanting” – and it was Jacob who stole his brother Esau’s birthright; it can also mean “deception” and the narratives of Jacob’s life give abundant testimony to this character flaw of his). His new name, Israel, recalled this incident in which he wrestled with God and prevailed with a blessing.
The point here is that the Old Testament telegraphs what Jacob’s name means according to three semantically similar Hebrew options / roots. Think of that – interpreting a Hebrew name with Hebrew! That’s just too boring for Jordan Maxwell. Why read the biblical story associated with the name “Israel” when we can just make up something cooler? That brings us to Maxwell’s second problem.
2. Egyptian and Semitic Language / Linguistics vs. Maxwell
Just as I’d bet that Maxwell counts on his followers not knowing the Genesis 32 story and its own explanation of the name “Israel,” I’m betting Maxwell knows nothing of Egyptian or Hebrew or Semitic languages. I’d also bet he doesn’t care, since his real agenda is creating some sort of link between Israelite religion and Egyptian mystery religion. When that’s your goal, who cares about boring facts about language.
One sidebar note before we get to the material. Maxwell is apparently from the William Henry school of determining word meanings by dicing, slicing, and splicing syllables of words. If a sound of one word sounds like a word in another language, there MUST be a connection! This is crap. The human mouth is only capable of making a finite number of sounds (this is what phonology is concerned with, a sub-discipline of linguistics). Since there are only a finite number of sounds a human can make with tongue, lips, teeth, throat, cleft palate, and nasal passages, it is no surprise that humans all over the world make the same sounds. What else would they make? But human people groups assembled and inflect those sounds in specific and divergent ways. People who are in close proximity geographically will often share how sounds are put together – hence we get “language families” like “Semitic.” The languages in that family share certain features. But people groups who have no proximity put the sounds together quite differently. The result is that the three sounds (two consonants and a vowel) in “bat” in English (an Indo-European language) mean “flying rodent” or “stick you hit a baseball with” while in Hebrew “bat” means something quite different (“daughter”). Unless you’re William Henry, that is. Or Jordan Maxwell.
First, it should be apparent from the discussion in #1 above that Maxwell does get one syllable right – the last one (“el”). Hard to mess that up. But the more important ones are the first two, since they are the Egyptian elements to his agenda.
In the world of Maxwell the first syllable in “Israel” (“is” or “yis”) must come from “Isis”. Why? Because they sound the same. Yeah, they sound the same IN ENGLISH! Unfortunately for Maxwell, the Egyptians didn’t write or speak English. “Isis” was not the way the Egyptians pronounced the name of this goddess. That pronunciation comes from Greek and Coptic, languages that came into the biblical world centuries after Hebrew. The Egyptian pronunciation of the name of this goddess was something like “Waset” or “Awset.” No resemblance to “is” or “yis”. Here’s how “Isis” is spelled in hieroglyphs:
Starting at the lefthand side, the first glyph (a throne; Gardner sign Q1) is pronounced “ws” or “as” or “aws” depending on which Egyptologist or grammar you’ll pick up. If you want a detailed linguistic description of the pronunciation issues and development, see A. Loprieno’s linguistic introduction to Egyptian. The next glyph at the top is the “t” sound. The other two are determinatives and are unpronounced. The final determinative (female) denotes this is a goddess.
The point: the first syllable of Israel does not correspond to “Awset.” One down, one to go.
The second syllable in “Israel” (ישׂר×ל) also requires a bit of unpacking. In Hebrew, we have the first syllable ישׂ (yis), and the next syllable is ×¨× (rʾ in transliteration – I’ll get to what that apostrophe mark means in a moment). The aleph letter (×) is also shared by the last syllable – ×ל (ʾl). The second syllable (ר×) is composed of the Hebrew “r” plus the Hebrew aleph (ʾ). What is the apostrophe? That is the English character that denotes A SILENT LETTER. That’s right, aleph is silent. What this means is that these two consonants by themselves are not pronounced “ra” (though they can be). But that’s a minor issue. More important is that in Egyptian, the deity name “Ra” is NOT spelled with the Egyptian aleph (falcon). It’s spelled with the sun disk sign and the arm sign (when spelled phonetically). Therefore, this “equivalence” is also marred. But even more damning to Maxwell’s idea is the fact that the name “Ra” is actually present in the Hebrew Bible, so we know how the Hebrews would have spelled it! Is “Ra” in Hebrew letters ר×? Nope. It’s רע, and so it cannot be part of the name “Israel”. Where in the Hebrew Bible do we find the name “Ra”? Just where you’d expect it – it’s part of an Egyptian Pharaoh’s name in Jeremiah 44:30 -
Thus says the Lord, Behold, I will give Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies . . .
The name Hophra is the combination of the familiar “hepher” (“khepher” – the verb formed by the sign of the dung beetle which means “to become”) + “Ra” – and so the name Hophra means “he becomes Ra” (no surprise there with respect to Egyptian religion). And so how is Hophra spelled in Jeremiah 44:30 in Hebrew? חפרע (note the red underlined portion – it’s רע not ר×). Maxwell is 0-for-2. His contention is bogus, and so any claims he makes on its basis are equally bogus.
Aeneas asked a question in a comment to an earlier post about the faked giant human skeleton:
I’d like you to comment on the dinosaur bones angle as well. It is certainly not an unreasonable theory for all the stories of giants in the past, including the Bible. I lean towards believing your theories on Gen. 6, but I think this one should at least be considered.
Aeneas (and others) may not be familiar with all my views of Genesis 6, namely the giant issue, so I thought I’d answer this question with a post.
I don’t think for a minute that the biblical giants were 10-20-30 feet tall. I think they were (like today) 6-8 feet tall. The giants of the Bible were not unusually tall BY OUR STANDARDS. Based on human skeletal remains that have been recovered from the biblical period (and there aren’t many – they didn’t embalm, and less than 10% of the Holy Land has been excavated by any standard of thoroughness), the average male height was a few inches over five feet tall, with women shorter. This is typical around the world for ancient times. Great height was unusual. The average height in modern times on into today is greater because of better nutrition, longer life spans, medical advances, etc. I personally don’t believe that the biblical giants were much over seven feet tall, which would have been HUGE compared to the norm (imagine walking into a settlement where 6-7 feet was the norm when everyone you knew was a foot shorter!). According to the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew OT, which has as a slightly different text than the one Jews have used since the first century AD) and Dead Sea Scroll readings for the Goliath story, Goliath was actually 6 feet 6 inches (and for those who wonder, it is Og of Bashan’s COFFIN that measures around 12 feet, not Og – read Deut 3:11 – so we really don’t know how tall he actually was — I’d guess he’s within my proposed range). That is the best reading for the original text based on the cumulative text-critical issues in 1 Sam 17-18 and the broader book of Samuel itself (i.e., textual critics have long known that the Masoretic text of 1 Samuel is in poor shape in many places, compared to the Septuagint, which is frequently agreed to by the Dead Sea scroll text of Samuel). If yo u know Hebrew and might enjoy reading about the textual mess of 1 Samuel, I’d recommend P. Kyle McCarter’s 1 Samuel commentary in the Anchor Bible series. There are more thorough and technical discussions of the text of 1 Samuel, but this one is more readable (still, it won’t be easy for those uninitiated in academic biblical studies and textual criticism).
Consequently, there is no need to appeal to dinosaur bones for the biblical giants. Dinosaur bones as the explanation for purported giants in non-biblical writings like Josephus are a good explanation. That issue was the subject of Adrienne Mayor’s Princeton dissertation (or maybe it was a thesis – can’t recall just now) which was published:
The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times.
Mayor now has a second volume, devoted to the same issue in Native American legends:
Fossil Legends of the First Americans
Good question, Aeneas!
I’ll be back tonight from vacation. I was (literally) in one of the most unwired places in the US (only dial-up, and even that was rare). Thought I was ready for that, but my pre-planning went awry. It was like a Dilbert cartoon!
I’ll be posting and answering comments starting tomorrow!
Mike
Just a note – I’m on vacation with limited online access. I’m sure I’ll fall behind on posts and comments. Back July 2.
I can remember my first Indiana Jones experience. I’d always been interested in anything old and strange, so there was a natural hook. I was graduating from high school and had only recently been exposed to this book we call the Bible when Raiders of the Lost Ark was released. From the incredible opening scene where that immense boulder came thundering down on Indy after an incredible sequence of death-defying stunts, to the vaporization of Nazis in the hands of angry God, I was awestruck.
The only thing that struck me about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was the thought that Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas had again done the impossible: transforming one of the coolest movie franchises in the world into a colossal bore. I never thought I’d say that, but it’s true. This latest film is awash with unsurprising sight gags, lifeless dialogue, disconnected scenes, meaningless characters, desperate attempts at humor, contrived relationships, and an unforgivably unimaginative storyline. It was truly a spectacularly supine experience.
In the same way I struggled for superlatives as a high school senior who’d just seen the movie event of his lifetime, it’s difficult to express how bad this movie really is. I thought about conveying my contempt through alternative titles: Indiana Jones and the Tarnished Legacy, Indiana Jones Owes Me a Refund, Indiana Jones and the Search for a Plotline, Indiana Jones and the Uninspired Director, Indiana Jones Gets a Lobotomy or, my current favorite, Barnaby Jones Meets ET (that’s for the over-forty crowd especially insulted by this cheesefest). I kept hoping I’d see the Mystery Science Theatre robots in the lower right-hand corner so I’d be assured this was all in good fun, but alas, it wasn’t to be. I think maybe my teenage daughter said it best: “Dad, I grew up watching the Indiana Jones movies and now it’s all ruined.” Yep.
So who’s to blame for this steaming pile of cinematic crap? It’s easy to blame Steven Spielberg, whose name was splashed across the screen in the TV ads. Sure, Harrison Ford looks old in this movie, but it’s Spielberg who’s showing his age. Frankly-and be honest-what’s the last really entertaining film you saw that Spielberg was connected with? Yeah. It’s been a long time. Your streak is still intact, Steven.
Actually, I blame George Lucas for making my daughter cry. (Okay, she didn’t cry; she just dozed off a few times). After all, he wrote the story. He’s the one who anesthetized us with this mind-numbing dreck. Surely the movie gods of clever script writing must have killed a kitten with each keystroke. But then again, this is the guy who gave us the memorable dialogue of Anakin Skywalker to Natalie Portman (“you’re soft, not like sand”), not to mention Jar-Jar Binks. George, to quote Darth Vader from way back when you could write a good script, “You have failed me for the last time.”
Well, if you’ve enjoyed this review so far I have to warn you that the fun is over. Sorry, but I have to talk about what’s actually in the movie. It’ll only going to be one paragraph so I don’t expect to lose many of you. You may want to have the defribillator handy, just in case.
Basically, the thing – that – would – normally – be – called – a – plot has Indy being forced by Soviet Commies to direct them to an alien corpse hidden away by the government in a warehouse located at what would become AREA-51 in the Nevada desert. Turns out Indy was involved with the Roswell recovery n 1947, ten years earlier. He escapes, is solicited out of the blue by Shia LeBeouf to find an old friend who had discovered a crystal skull, fully detailed with alien almond eye sockets and elongated cranium. The Soviets are after it soon enough, too, since their scholar – babe – in – charge (Kate Blanchett) believes it holds the key to paranormal knowledge and power. (If you’re anticipating the clever connections crafted by Lucas to tie all these elements together, recall the dead kittens I told you about earlier). All of this is just a vehicle, though, for Lucas and Spielberg to promote the idea that space aliens were the gods of antiquity. Wow. Never heard that before. Just one more agonizingly inane lesson for the masses about how humanity owes everything to extraterrestrials. Zecharia Sitchin ought to get a credit at the end. Those of you who are familiar with me of course know what I think of the ancient astronaut nonsense. If not, you do now. In honor of the moment I’m going to begin rewriting (and expanding) my Sitchin critiques right here on PaleoBabble earlier than expected (as in tomorrow). My own happy ending!
I could end here but a spasm of wishful thinking for another cool Indy movie compels me to say something constructive. I know Indy is done, especially since Lucas and Spielberg aren’t going to give up control of this cash cow to anyone who can actually write a great story that would do the Indy tradition justice. But how cool would an Indy movie focused on some real ancient mysteries be? Wouldn’t it be great to see Indy find the lost tomb of Alexander the Great? How about something having to do with what happened to the Anasazi, or Easter Island? How about the Takla Makan mummies or a search for Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat? Heck, even unearthing a giant human skeleton would be light years more interesting than what we just got. Hard to believe that in all the years since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade the best that Lucas and Spielberg could do was this twaddle.
All in all, I can honestly say Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has no redeeming qualities. It was a disappointing, insulting bore.
