Powered By Blogger

Sunday, July 27, 2025

Joah the recorder for Hezekiah, Joah the recorder for king Josiah

by Damien F. Mackey “They called for the king; and Eliakim son of Hilkiah the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder went out to them”. 2 Kings 18:18 “In the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, to purify the land and the Temple, he sent Shaphan son of Azaliah and Maaseiah the ruler of the city, with Joah son of Joahaz, the recorder, to repair the Temple of the LORD his God”. 2 Chronicles 34:8 Merging, as one, “Joah” of Hezekiah and “Joah” of Josiah There is an apparent repetition of names between the above two texts, in Shebna-Shaphan and Joah-Joah, which is perfectly understandable in my revised context, according to which Hezekiah, “the king” of 2 Kings 18:18, was the very same person as king Josiah in 2 Chronicles 34:8. On this, see e. g. my article: Damien F. Mackey’s A Tale of Two Theses (8) Damien F. Mackey's A Tale of Two Theses But such a coinciding of names is apparently worrisome to the text book commentators - who would conventionally estimate that the two incidents occurred about 90 years apart - who may be inclined, like Thenis, to ‘pronounce these personages fictitious’, and say that “Joah the recorder [of king Josiah] seems to have been borrowed from [the Joah of king Hezekiah] 2Kings 18:18 ...”: https://biblehub.com/2_kings/22-3.htm It is an indication of the correctness of my revision of the later kings of Judah, however, that king Hezekiah, king Josiah, could have officials of (near to) identical names, holding identical positions. Thus Joah is “the recorder”, ha mazkir (הַמַּזְכִּיר) in both cases, Hezekiah and Josiah. Shebna is “the secretary” ha sopher (הַסֹּפֵר) as his counterpart, Shaphan (סֵפֶר), is found to have been upon further scrutiny (cf. 2 Kings 22:8). And, elsewhere, I have identified another parallel character in Isaiah (for Hezekiah) and Asaiah (for Josiah): thus, Isaiah = Asaiah. The “Hilkiah” referred to in 2 Kings 18:18 as the father of “Eliakim” is met again in the era of Josiah as the identically named “Hilkiah” (3 Chronicles 34:9): “They went to Hilkiah the high priest ...”. Eliakim himself, whom I have identified as high priest in my article: Hezekiah’s Chief Official Eliakim was High Priest https://www.academia.edu/31701765/Hezekiahs_Chief_Official_Eliakim_was_High_Priest does not (I think) appear in any of the accounts of king Josiah. There may be a good reason for this. He may have replaced Shebna as commandant of the fort of Lachish (= “Ashdod”). In the Book of Judith, in which Eliakim (Douay), var. Joakim, is the high priest, we are specifically told that: (Judith 4:6): “The High Priest Joakim, who was in Jerusalem at that time, wrote to the people in the towns of Bethulia and Betomesthaim, which face Jezreel Valley near Dothan”. This geographical information, “who was in Jerusalem at that time”, could well indicate that Eliakim was sometimes stationed outside Jerusalem, say, for military and defensive purposes. But Eliakim had by no means died out by the time of king Josiah, for we find him as “the high priest” even as late as Baruch (1:2): “... in the fifth year, on the seventh day of the month, at the time when the Chaldeans took Jerusalem and burned it with fire”. Eliakim, or Joakim, is there called by the related name of “Jehoiakim”. On “related names” see e.g., https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Jehoiakim.html#.Xsxq8e0vPnE and commentators (following an enlarged chronology) do not know who he was (this being especially complicated by the fact that they have failed to realise that the Eliakim of Hezekiah was a high priest). The Baruch text, which identifies Jehoiakim as “son of Hilkiah”, as we know him (as Eliakim/Joakim) to have been, reads thus (vv. 5-7): “Then they wept, and fasted, and prayed before the Lord; they collected as much money as each could give, and sent it to Jerusalem to the high priest Jehoiakim son of Hilkiah son of Shallum, and to the priests, and to all the people who were present with him in Jerusalem”. The office of “recorder” was apparently a highly significant one, some placing it as high as vizier to the king. Thus we read in Bible study tools: https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/recorder/ “Recorder ... (Heb. mazkir, i.e., "the mentioner," "rememberancer"), the office first held by Jehoshaphat in the court of David ( 2 Samuel 8:16 ), also in the court of Solomon ( 1 Kings 4:3 ). The next recorder mentioned is Joah, in the reign of Hezekiah ( 2 Kings 18:18 2 Kings 18:37 ; Isaiah 36:3 Isaiah 36:22 ). In the reign of Josiah another [sic] of the name of Joah filled this office (2 Chronicles 34:8 ). The "recorder" was the chancellor or vizier of the kingdom. He brought all weighty matters under the notice of the king, "such as complaints, petitions, and wishes of subjects or foreigners. He also drew up papers for the king's guidance, and prepared drafts of the royal will for the scribes. All treaties came under his oversight; and he had the care of the national archives or records, to which, as royal historiographer, like the same state officer in Assyria and Egypt, he added the current annals of the kingdom”. [End of quote] Note that only three supposed individuals are specifically designated as “recorder” in the OT, Jehoshaphat, at the time of kings David and Solomon, and the supposedly two Joah’s - who, though, I think, need to be trimmed down to just one. One would expect, however, that there must have been a continuation of those holding the office of recorder from Joah all the way back to Jehoshaphat, who will soon become of significance with regard to the ancestry of Joah. The office of recorder may have involved, also, “herald”, or trumpet-blower, shofar (שׁוֹפָר), in the case of an emergency. Joah may have, for instance, overseen or commanded the trumpet-blowing Levites. John Strazicich has written on trumpet-blowing in the Bible, especially with reference to the Book of Joel (to be considered further on), in his book Joel’s Use of Scripture and the Scripture’s Use of Joel (1960, p. 116): The primary theological OT text for the blowing of trumpets is Num 1:1-10. The trumpets function for gathering the cultic community, for use at time of war, and at the time of sacrifice. According to Milgrom, the blowing of trumpets, whether for religious purposes or for war, serves as instruments of prayer in Num 10:9-10. .... Whether for sacrifice or deliverance at times of war, the use of trumpets for prayer has theological significance in Joel's liturgical context of the [Day of the Lord], as well as for the cultic gathering of the nation. The priestly trumpet blast noted above is an alarm which functions militarily, so that the community is be [sic] remembered before Yahweh. The cultic connection to Joel's use of the trumpets acts in concert with the prayers of all the community to plead for Yahweh's mercy (2:15-17). [End of quote] Other “instruments of prayer”, such as cymbals, may also have been part of the recorder's repertoire. Psalm 150:1-6 lists various such instruments: “Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!” Joah as the prophet Joel The Book of Joel opens with the raising of the alarm about a devastating invasion of “locusts” (Joel 1:2-4): “The word of the Lord that came to Joel son of Phatuel. ‘Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten’.” This, I had argued in my post-graduate university thesis (2007) is a symbolical reference - under the form of “locusts” - to the invasion of Israel and Judah by the armies of Sennacherib, king of Assyria. It is a brilliant image of the utter destruction to the land caused by the marauding Assyrians. These were described as “locusts”, both in history, and in the Bible. For example, “Assyrian documents link armies and locusts ...”. (Pablo R. Andiñach, “The Locusts in the Message of Joel”, Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 42, Fasc. 4, Oct., 1992). And Judith 2:20 describes the massive invading host of “Holofernes” as: “A huge, irregular force, too many to count, like locusts, like the dust of the earth ...". “ (Cf. Amos 7:1). Joel then becomes more specific (and less symbolical) when he describes this host as both a “nation” and an “army” (1:6): “A nation has invaded my land, a mighty army without number ...”. The Douay version of Joel 2:20, referring to "the northern enemy", includes this footnote: “The northern enemy”: Some understand this of Holofernes and his army: others, of the locusts”. The correct view is, I believe, “Holofernes and his army”. The name of Joel’s “father”, or ancestor, is given as “Phatuel” (or “Pethuel”), which I now take to be a long-ranging reference back to that earlier recorder, Jehoshaphat, the two names sharing the common element “phat” as well as each having a theophoric. Joah of Hezekiah's father, ancestor, “Asaph”, may perhaps be seen, then, as part of that name, Jehoshaphat - both names sharing the “shap[h]” element. Joah of Josiah's ancestor, “Joahaz”, is not so apparent. If, as I am saying, he is to be merged with the Joah of Hezekiah, then, possibly, “Joahaz” is another reference to Jehoshaphat.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Sorting amongst the Old Testament prophets to find Jonah

by Damien F. Mackey “If we add to this list the fact that the phrase in Jonah 1:1 (“now the word of Yahweh came”) also introduces Elijah in 1 Kings 17:2, 8; 21:17, 28 then we are subtly led to this conclusion; one of the goals of the Jonah narrative is to compare the prophet from Gath-hepher with Elijah”. Community ConneXions Church A: Elijah to Amos My search for the prophet Jonah has led me 'all around the mulberry bush'. Or perhaps, to be more contextual, all around the 'kikayon' (קִיקָיוֹן) bush (cf. Jonah 4:6). With 2 Kings 14:25 in mind: “He was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher”, I did what other commentators tend to do, and that was to search for the Jonah incident during the time of an Assyrian ruler contemporaneous with king Jeroboam II of Israel, say, an Adad-nirari III, or a Tiglath-pileser III. Elijah But I also went even further back than that, to a possible connection of Jonah with Elijah, based on the following sorts of similarities between this pair of prophets, taken from Community ConneXions Church: http://seminary.csl.edu/facultypubs/TheologyandPractice/tabid/87/ctl/Details/mid/494/ItemID/40 “If we add to this list the fact that the phrase in Jonah 1:1 (“now the word of Yahweh came”) also introduces Elijah in 1 Kings 17:2, 8; 21:17, 28 then we are subtly led to this conclusion; one of the goals of the Jonah narrative is to compare the prophet from Gath-hepher with Elijah. More specific – and indeed more satirical – connections between Jonah and Elijah begin in Jonah 1:2 where Yahweh calls Jonah to, “arise, go” to Nineveh. This call to go to a foreign land is paralleled only in 1 Kings 17:9 where Yahweh commands Elijah also to “arise, go to Zarephath which is in Sidon”. Usually Yahweh’s word is the perfect performative, where to speak is to create. The God who says “Let there be light” and “it was so” (Gen. 1:3), commands Elijah to “Arise go to Zarephath” (1 Kings 17:9) and Elijah “arises and goes,” (1 Kings 17:10). Following this normal biblical pattern we expect the Jonah narrative to continue, “So Jonah got up and went ... to Nineveh.” But, instead, Jonah says nothing to Yahweh and rises to flee. It’s as though outside his door Jonah hangs a large sign with the words, “Do Not Disturb!” Jonah is certainly no Elijah!” [End of quotes] Perhaps I should have taken notice of that last hint: “Jonah is certainly no Elijah!” The prophet Elijah disappears from the scene, at least qua Elijah, during the reign of Jehoram of Judah (2 Chronicles 21:12). That was well before the time of Jeroboam II. But there is always, for me, that possibility of an extension of a biblical floruit through an alter ego. Elisha The extraordinary prophet Elisha, 'miracles on tap', also loomed for me as a possible Jonah. He, like Jonah in the case of Jeroboam II, had advised a king of Israel, Jehoash, about the extent of his military conquests (2 Kings 13:14-19). Even though Elisha died shortly after this (v. 20), I shall be having more to say about the Jehoash-Jeroboam II connection, about a shortening of Israelite history, and about the identification of the "saviour" of 2 Kings 13:5. See, for example, my article: King Jeroboam II a ‘saviour’ of Israel https://www.academia.edu/41064679/King_Jeroboam_II_a_saviour_of_Israel It needs to be said, at this stage, that I eventually came to the conclusion that the repentant “King of Nineveh” of the Book of Jonah: Putting together the pieces for Jonah 3:6’s “King of Nineveh” (8) Putting together the pieces for Jonah 3:6's "King of Nineveh" was - much later than as is generally thought - the powerful ruler, ESARHADDON (including his various guises). This most un-anticipated identification rigorously defines the parameters for this present article. Obviously, now, Elisha could not qualify for my prophet Jonah at the time of Esarhaddon. My termini a quo and ad quem for Jonah had so far been determined as, respectively, Jeroboam II and early Esarhaddon. One would think, however, that there must have been more to the ministering of the prophet Jonah than just these two, chronologically far apart, occasions. Amos A far more promising candidate for Jonah, however, began to loom in the person of Amos, whose prophetic witness commenced "when ... Jeroboam ... was king of Israel" (Amos 1:1). Amos, too, as with Elijah, can be likened to Jonah. Thus I have previously quoted from the book by Hadi Ghantous, Elisha-Hazael Paradigm and the Kingdom of Israel (p. 180): ... Jonah and Amos The connections between Jonah and Amos are not as clear as those with Elijah although it is more clear that the fate of nations surrounding Israel is a major concern in both Amos and Jonah (Andersen and Freedman 1989: 236). The superscription in the book of Amos (Amos 1:1) sets Amos in the days of Jeroboam II and makes Amos a contemporary of Jonah. In 2 Kings 14:23-29, Jeroboam II recovers territories from the Entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, and restore [sic] Damascus and Hamath to Judea in Israel. Similarly, Amos 1:3-5 is an oracle against Damascus; Amos 5:27 threatens Israel with an exile beyond Damascus. In Amos 6:2, Zion and Samaria are called to compare themselves with Hamath. Amos 6:14 refers to oppression from the Entrance of Hamath to the Valley of the Arabah (Pyper 2007: 351-3). In other words, both prophets deal with Damascus, Hamath, and the region from the Entrance of Hamath to the Sea/Valley of the Arabah. Amos refutes the prophetic title (Amos 7:14); Jonah is never said to be a prophet in Jonah. Amaziah warns Jonah to flee ... for his life (Amos 7:12), while Jonah almost loses his life while fleeing (Jon, 1). "Other topical similarities can be found; singing (Amos 8:3// Jon. 2), sackcloths (Amos 8:10// Jon 3:6), wandering from sea to sea (Amos 8:12// Jon. 1:3-2:10), thirst (Amos 8:13// Jon. 4:8), and sheol (Amos 9:2// Jon. 2) (Edelman 2009: 162). These similarities pose the question whether they go beyond a mere imitation of details and indicate a fundamental similarity and connection between Amos and Jonah. ...". [End of quote] Jonah is well-known as 'the reluctant prophet', and this, too, may have been a trait of Amos (7:14): 'I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet ...'. There is also a very Jonah-like note in Amos 9:3: "Even if they tried to hide from me at the bottom of the sea, from there I would command the Sea Serpent [הַנָּחָשׁ] to bite them". Don E. Jones has made this very same connection: "There is something ominous in Amos's prophecy, the first part of which [9:3] certainly applies to Jonah ...". [I no longer have the precise reference, but presume this quote came from his book, Searching for Jonah: Clues in Hebrew and Assyrian History, 19 September 2018]. While Amos qualifies chronologically as being a contemporary of Jonah's at the time of Jeroboam II, he will fall just short of early Esarhaddon (the ‘moment’ of Jonah's intervention at Nineveh). See next. Micah Amos is, according to my revision of Israel and Judah, the same as the prophet Micah, known as "Amos redivivus": Prophet Micah as Amos (8) Prophet Micah as Amos Micah (Amos) is also the Micaiah who prophesied the death of king Ahab of Israel (I Kings 22:8-28): Micaiah and Micah (2) Micaiah and Micah This highly controversial (chronology-wise) connection (Micaiah = Micah), which has the support of some Jewish tradition (see e.g., Ginzberg, Legends, 6:355, n. 20), pitches Micah back well before king Jeroboam II. Amos is also generally considered to have been the father of Isaiah, "son of Amoz" (Isaiah 1:1). I have also identified Isaiah son of Amos with the "Uzziah son of Micah, of the tribe of Simeon" of Judith 6:15. See e.g. m y article: A Shepherd-prophet of Israel foretells great Shepherd King (2) A Shepherd-prophet of Israel foretells great Shepherd King Uzziah must have followed his father Amos northwards to Bethel (the "Bethulia" of the Book of Judith), which is the strategically vital city of Shechem, where Uzziah later became the chief magistrate. He is also described as “the prince of Juda[h]” and “the prince of the people of Israel” (Judith 8:34; 13:23. Douay version), perhaps due to his father Amos's apparently royal connection with king Amaziah of Judah. "The rabbis of the Talmud declared, based upon a rabbinic tradition, that Amoz was the brother of Amaziah (אמציה), the king of Judah at that time (and, as a result, that Isaiah himself was a member of the royal family)" (article, "Amoz"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoz The prophet Micah must not have lived to have witnessed the Judith incident. He is not mentioned there (Book of Judith) as still being alive. The Book of Jeremiah tells that Micah was yet prophesying during the reign of king Hezekiah of Judah (26:18): "Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spoke to all the people of Judah, saying, 'Thus said the LORD of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest'." This prediction pertained to Sennacherib king of Assyria's earlier successful invasion of Judah and Jerusalem. Micah apparently was no longer alive, though, when Ashur-nadin-shumi (= "Holofernes"), son of Sennacherib, came to the region of "Bethulia" (Bethel-Shechem) with an army of 185,000 men. Thus, the prophet Micah cannot qualify for my Jonah early in the reign of Esarhaddon, who succeeded Sennacherib. Micah just misses out time wise. He must have been extremely old when he died. B: Hosea, Isaiah The prophet Hosea is, in fact, the only one of the prophets who - at least according to his superscription (Hosea 1:1) - spanned my requisite era from Jeroboam II unto Hezekiah. His prophetic floruit is closely matched by Isaiah's, but without (in the case of Isaiah) the inclusion of Jeroboam II (Isaiah 1:1): "The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah". The names of Hosea and Isaiah, as well, are very close in meaning, both pertaining to "Salvation". Abarim Publications lists Isaiah as a name "related" to Hosea (article, "Isaiah meaning"): https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Hosea.html#.Xp5Y6u0vPnF Previously I have written regarding the striking similarities between Isaiah and Hosea: "The names Isaiah and Hosea are indeed of very similar meaning, being basically derived from the same Hebrew root for ‘salvation’, יֵ֫שַׁע - “Isaiah” (Hebrew יְשַׁעְיָהוּ , Yeshâ‘yâhû) signifies: “Yahweh (the Lord) is salvation”. - “Hosea” (Hebrew הוֹשֵׁעַ) means practically the same: “Yahweh (the Lord) is saviour”. …. "Hosea’s/Isaiah’s Family Though no doubt young, the prophet was given the strange command by God to marry an ‘unfaithful’ woman: “‘Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry, for the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord’. So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim …” (Hosea 1:2-3). Biblical scholars have agonised over the type of woman this Gomer might have been: adulteress? harlot? temple-prostitute? But essentially the clue is to be found in the statement above that she was a citizen of the ‘land of great harlotry’: namely, the northern kingdom of Israel. .... "A further likeness between Isaiah and Hosea was the fact that ‘their names’ and those of ‘their’ children were meant to be, in their meanings, prophetic signs. …. - The prophet Isaiah tells us: “Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs and portents ...” (Isaiah 8:18). - Similarly, the names of the children of the prophet Hosea were meant to be prophetic (Hosea 1:4, 6, 9). "Charles Boutflower (The Book of Isaiah Chapters I-XXXIX, 1930), who has written perceptively on Isaiah’s children, has rightly noted the prophetic significance of their names and those of Hosea’s children, without however connecting Isaiah and Hosea as one: …. “Isaiah like Hosea had three known children, all of whose names were prophetic”. [End of quotes] It is most unlikely, one would have to think, to have two great prophets contemporaneously operating over such a substantial period of time, and each having three children whose names were prophetic. The fact is, I believe, that it was just the one prophet, who may possibly have had six children in all. For these, and for other reasons, I have identified Hosea and Isaiah as "just the one prophet", ministering to both Israel and Judah. That to go with my already mentioned identification of the prophet Isaiah with the princely "Uzziah" of the Book of Judith. Hosea-Isaiah is the only possible prophetic candidate, in my revised context, for Jonah son of Amittai. Jonah's otherwise unknown father, "Amittai", must then be Amaziah, that is, Amos. Jonah's (or probably his father's) home of "Gath-hepher", which cannot possibly have been the place of that name in Galilee - since, as the learned Pharisees well knew (John 7:52): '.... Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee' - must then be the southern Gath of Moresheth, the home of Micah-(Amos) (1:1): "The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth ...". "Micah is called the Morasthite, probably because he was a native of Moresheth-gath, a small town of Judea, which, according to Eusebius and Jerome, lay in a southwesterly direction from Jerusalem, not far from Eleutheropolis on the plain, near the border of the Philistine territory" ("The Twelve Minor Prophets"): https://biblehub.com/library/barrows/companion_to_the_bible/chapter_xxiii_the_twelve_minor.htm Although "the vision ... concerning Israel" as seen by Amos will occur at "Tekoa" (Amos 1:1), I have previously written on this: "There are reasons, though, why I think that Tekoa would not have been the actual home of the prophet Amos. When confronted by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, Amos retorted (7:14-15): ‘I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. But the Lord took me from following the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel’.’ "Now, commentators such as Eugene Merrill have been quick to point out “that sycamores were abundant in the Shephelah but not around Tekoa” (The World and the Word: An Introduction to the Old Testament, 2011, p. 431, n. 4). "So, my first point would be that Amos’s cultivating of sycamore-fig trees would be most appropriate in Moresheth, but highly unlikely in Tekoa. Moresheth, we read, “is the opposite exposure from the wilderness of Tekoa, some seventeen miles away across the watershed. As the home of Amos is bare and desert, so the home of Micah is fair and fertile” ("Micah 1", Expositor's Bible Commentary). "My second point is that Amos, apparently a herdsman (בַנֹּקְדִים) - some think a wealthy “sheepmaster”, whilst others say that he must have been poor - was, as we read above, “following the flock” מֵאַחֲרֵי הַצֹּאן), meaning that, seasonally, he was a man on the move. Stationed at his home town of Moresheth in the Shephelah, I suggest, where he tended the sycamore trees, the prophet also had to move with the flock from time to time. And this is apparently where Tekoa (about 6 miles SE of Bethlehem) comes into the picture". [End of quotes] The reason why such striking similarities can be found between Amos and Jonah (as we read above in A.) is because this was a father-son prophetic combination ranging from Israel to Judah. It is the very same reason why we find some almost identical statements and actions emanating from Micah (= Amos) and from Isaiah (= Jonah). Read, for example, Micah 4:1-3 and Isaiah 2:2-4. "But who quoted whom?", it is asked: https://abramkj.com/2012/12/11/which-came-first-isaiah-or-micah-comparing-isaiah-22-4-with-micah-41-3/ Well, Micah was the father, and Isaiah was the son. Compare also Micah 1:8: "Because of this I will weep and wail; I will go about barefoot and naked. I will howl like a jackal and moan like an owl", and Isaiah 20:3: "Then the LORD said, 'Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush ...'." No doubt Jonah's prediction regarding Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14:25): "[Jeroboam] was the one who restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher", was uttered with all due awareness of his father Amos's own considerations (cf. 6:14): "For the Lord God Almighty declares, 'I will stir up a nation against you, Israel, that will oppress you all the way from Lebo Hamath to the valley of the Arabah'.” More tellingly, from my point of view, commentators have suggested that some parts of the Book of Isaiah (my Jonah) may actually have originated with Jonah. Don E. Jones, again, writes of it: "Spurred by the reference in II Kings 14:25, scholars over the years have searched diligently in the Scriptures for the "Lost Book of Jonah". Hitzig and Renan have attributed the prophecies of Isaiah 15-23 to Jonah as being inconsistent with other parts of the book. Allusions to Moab, Egypt and Ethiopia, would certainly give Jonah a wider scope of action. He would know conditions in Tyre, Sidon and Damacus from the Assyrian venture. Sargon's reign in Assyria (Isaiah 20:1) began in 721. It was by no means impossible that Jonah could still have been alive at the time of Isaiah". [End of quote] The view of Hitzig and Renan enables us to fill out the prophet Jonah all the more. His prophetic mission beyond Israel was not just limited to Nineveh. Isaiah, like Jonah (1:3), appears to have been very familiar, too, with the "ships of Tarshish" (e.g., Isaiah 2:16; 23:1; 60:9). As to why the name of Hosea's father would be given as "Beeri", whereas Isaiah's father is given as "Amoz", the Book of Judith may provide something of a clue. Judith was, like Uzziah (my Isaiah-Hosea) of Bethulia, a Simeonite (cf. Judith 8:1; 9:2). The Bethulians were a closely knit bunch, with Judith's husband, Manasseh, belonging "to the same tribe and clan" as she (8:2). Uzziah, also a Simeonite, may well have been a relative of both Judith and her husband. Judith seems to have been immensely proud of her 'father', Merari, she singing, after her great victory over "Holofernes": 'For their mighty one did not fall by the hands of the young men, nor did the sons of the Titans strike him down, nor did tall giants set upon him; but Judith daughter of Merari with the beauty of her countenance undid him'. Hosea's father, "Beeri", could possibly be that Merari, given what C. R. Conder will refer to (I noted this in my postgraduate university thesis, A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background: https://www.academia.edu/3822220/Thesis_2_A_Revised_History_of_the_Era_of_King_Hezekiah_of_Judah_and_its_Background) as the "occasional instances in Syrian nomenclature" of the substitution of M for B. Conder was hoping by this means to establish the fairly unimportant site of "Mithilia" (or Mesilieh) as Judith's "Bethulia". Somewhat coincidentally, we read in Genesis (26:34): "When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite ...". Obviously no relation, though. Consulting Abarim Publications, I find that the name "Merari" does not have Amoz (Amos) listed as a "related" name: https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Merari.html#.XqER-O0vPnE Perhaps Merari could have been an ancestor, rather than a direct father, of both Hosea and Judith. A special mention is made in I Chronicles 4:33 to the Simeonites keeping "a genealogical record".

Friday, July 18, 2025

The self-confessed “dog”, who became the King of Syria and a great Pharaoh of Egypt

by Damien F. Mackey “Hazael said, ‘How could your servant, a mere dog, accomplish such a feat?’” 2 Kings 8:13 Introduction This, one of the more incredible stories of (ancient) history - yet to be fully told - has become possible due only to Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s felicitous recognition, in his Ages in Chaos (I, 1952), that the El Amarna (EA) age must be re-located down the timescale from the C14th to the C9th BC. Arguably the most convincing thesis to be read within this context was Dr. Velikovsky’s identification of two EA strong men of Amurru, the succession of Abdi-ashirta and Aziru, with the Syrian (biblical) succession of, respectively, Ben-Hadad and Hazael. This Amurru-Syrian pairing was well received amongst readers of Dr. Velikovsky’s revised historical series - even by some who would later abandon Dr. Velikovsky’s entire corpus to pursue so-called ‘new’ chronologies. Two of these former enthusiasts were Peter James (RIP) and Dr. John Bimson, the latter even going so far as to add a “third generation” as I noted in my postgraduate thesis (2007, Volume One, p. 52): …. The same writer, using the Hittite records for the late to post-EA period, would in fact take Velikovsky’s Syrian identification into even a third generation, his “slightly later period”, when suggesting that Aziru’s son, Du-Teshub, fitted well as Hazael’s son, Ben-Hadad II (c. 806- ? BC, conventional dates), thus further consolidating Velikovsky’s Syrian sequence for both Amarna and the mid-C9th BC. [‘Dating the Wars of Seti I’, p. 21]. 1. Hazael and Aziru Dr. Velikovsky had picked up what he would call “three turns of speech” from Hazael in the Bible common to what we read about his proposed alter ego, Aziru, in the EA letters. I referred to this in my thesis (ibid., pp. 96-97): This chapter [4] will be built largely around the terms of the Sinai commission to the prophet Elijah … (1 Kings 19:15-17): Then the Lord said to [Elijah], ‘Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael … as king over Aram. Also you shall anoint Jehu … son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha … son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill …’. Thus Hazael, Jehu and Elisha were to form a triumvirate to wipe out the House of Ahab and to eradicate the worship of Baal in the region. …. Velikovsky had already ‘enlarged’ Hazael by his identifying of him with EA’s Aziru, son of Abdi-ashirta. …. Velikovsky had also, in his discussion of idioms that he thought were common to EA and the Old Testament, referred to certain texts culminating in the prophet Elisha’s weeping at the prospect of the mighty deeds – but terrible to Israel – that Hazael would accomplish. He had observed that certain idiomatic phrases in the EA correspondence occurred again in the Old Testament for the C9th BC. For instance, the use of the term ‘brother’, or ‘my [thy] brother’, was, as we have seen, very common amongst the more powerful of the EA kings. Another recurring EA idiom was the use of the term/phrase: ‘[a] [the] dog[s]’. Velikovsky had noted for instance in regard to Hazael of Syria’s reply to the prophet Elisha, ‘… is thy servant a dog [כִּי מָה עַבְדְּךָ הַכֶּלֶב], that he should do this great thing?’, when Elisha had foretold that Hazael would set on fire Israel’s strongholds (2 Kings 8:13), that: [Hazael’s] expression, ‘is thy servant a dog ...?’ which incidentally escaped oblivion, was a typical figure of speech at the time of the el-Amarna letters. Many chieftains and governors concluded their letters with the sentence: ‘Is thy servant a dog that he shall not hear the words of the king, the lord?’ Velikovsky found the idiom used again by Rib-Addi of Gubla with reference to Aziru and his father Abdi-Ashirta: Letter 125: Aziru has again oppressed me …. My cities belong to Aziru, and he seeks after me … What are the dogs, the sons of Abdi-Ashirta, that they act according to their heart’s wish, and cause the cities of the king to go up in smoke? Whilst that was an encouraging find, some of these idioms - including the two just mentioned (‘am I a dog’ and ‘[my] brother’) - were also used at the time of kings David and Solomon (cf. 1 Samuel 17:43 and 1 Kings 9:13), and the second at least is found again in the C6th BC Lachish letters, a fair spread of time of about half a millennium; so these idioms apparently were not peculiar to EA. I had also pointed out that ‘brother’ was a term used by Iarim-Lim of Iamkhad to the prince of Dêr in Mesopotamia; though not in a fraternal, but in a threatening, business-like context. Velikovsky, as we saw earlier, had quoted another EA letter, too, in connection with the Old Testament, in which Rib-Addi had reported that Abdi-Ashirta had fallen seriously ill: Letter 95: Abdi-Ashirta is very sick, who knows but that he will die? About which Velikovsky commented: “He died on his sickbed, but not from his disease; he was killed”. Then, connecting all this with Elisha’s statement, Velikovsky was able to make this most striking observation: In the only dialogue preserved in the Scriptures in which Hazael participates, there are three turns of speech that also appear in his [EA] letters. The context of the dialogue - the question of whether the king of Damascus would survive, and the statement that he, Hazael, the new king, would cause the cities of Israel to go up in smoke - is also preserved in the el-Amarna letters. It is therefore a precious example of the authenticity of the scriptural orations and dialogues. While Dr. Velikovsky here had used the typical translation of 2 Kings 8:13, ‘… is thy servant a dog? …’, it more likely means that Hazael was a mere low-born commoner, not expecting to be elevated to the throne - what the ancients called “son of a nobody” (Akkadian: mār lā mamman), or “a dog”. Thus Nabonidus, who became King of Babylon, had proclaimed himself in like terms: ‘I am Nabonidus, the only son, who has nobody. In my mind there was no thought of kingship’ (Beaulieu, Paul-Alain, The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon. 556-539 B.C., 1989, p. 67). First conclusion: Hazael, king of Syria, is EA’s Aziru, king of Amurru, as Dr. Velikovsky had discovered. So far so good. But did Dr. Velikovsky also miss a trick here by not taking further his Aziru identification, to include the Irsu, or Arsa, of the Great Papyrus Harris (GPH) - whom Dr. David Rohl calls Aziru - enabling for Aziru (Hazael) to penetrate right into Egypt and overthrow the Egyptian gods, “… plundered their (the Egyptians’) possessions. They made gods like men and no offerings were presented in the temple”. I think that he well may have. 2. Aziru (Hazael) and Irsu In my thesis (2007, p. 226), I referred to: …. the ‘Great Papyrus Harris’ which tells of an ‘Aziru’ (var. Irsu, Arsa), thought to have been a Syrian, or perhaps a Hurrian. …. I have already followed Velikovsky in identifying Hazael with EA’s Aziru; though Velikovsky, owing to the quirks of his revision, could not himself make the somewhat obvious (to my mind) connection between EA’s Aziru and Aziru of the Great Papyrus Harris. …. And further, thesis pp. 227-228: This document was perhaps inspired by Horemheb (e.g. Doherty calls it ‘Horemheb’s Manifesto’); Horemheb having carved his name on it over Tutankhamun’s name. • The Papyrus Harris narrative continues on to the next phase, though closely connected to the first I believe, with the introduction of one ‘Aziru [the] Syrian’, or Hurrian, during those “empty years” (when the throne was considered effectively to have been vacant, or usurped). This Aziru I am convinced can only be EA’s Aziru (biblical Hazael). (I have taken the liberty here of changing Rohl’s version of this person’s name, Arsa, to the equally acceptable variation of it, Aziru): This was then followed by the empty years when [Aziru] – a certain Syrian – was with them as leader. He set the whole land tributary before him. He united his companions and plundered their (the Egyptians’) possessions. They made gods like men and no offerings were presented in the temple. LeFlem, borrowing a phrase from Gardiner, has asked this question with reference to Aziru: …. “Who was this so-called ‘Syrian condottiere’?” LeFlem’s question by now I think emphatically answers itself: he was EA’s Aziru! This was the foreign takeover of Egypt, an action of the Sinai commission, to depose the irresponsible Akhnaton and his régime and to re-establish ma'at (order, status quo). Though Aziru’s involvement was not necessarily so highly regarded by later Ramessides. [LeFlem, K. A., ‘Amenophis, Osarsiph and Arzu. More on the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt, SIS Workshop, vol. 5, no.1 (1982), p. 15. Cf. footnote 61 above]. Except Aziru and his army did not come to Egypt to, as I wrote above, “depose the irresponsible Akhnaton and his regime” (see, below, section: Aziru and Akhnaton). Second conclusion: Aziru (Hazael), king of Syria, is GPH’s Syrian, Irsu. 3. Hazael’s Syrian origins Why did the Lord choose Hazael, a Syrian, to assist the prophet Elijah and his coalition in the extermination of the House of Ahab and the pagan Baal worship? Presumably this Hazael was, prior to his rise to the throne, a typical Syrian official of the time, himself a worshipper of pagan gods. Well, yes and no. Hazael, also known as Na’aman, had been a typical Syrian of the time, the right-hand man of the mighty king, Ben-Hadad, who rested on his official’s arm when bowing down before the god Rimmon in the temple (2 Kings 5:18): ‘But may the Lord forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I have to bow there also—when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the Lord forgive your servant for this’. Now, ironically, the god Rimmon was basically the same as Baal, whose religion Hazael would be commissioned at Sinai to help exterminate: https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/encyclopedia-of-the-bible/Rimmon “Rimmon …. A Syrian deity, a local representation of Hadad the god of storm, rain and thunder. In Syria this god is called “Baal,” ie the lord par excellence”. The leprous Na’aman, as a pagan Syrian, would have considered the rivers of Syria to have been a gift of his gods, meaning that there is much more to his proud rejection of the prophet Elisha’s offer for a cure than simply bathing in the Jordan River. What Elisha was asking of the Syrian was nothing less than to embrace the sacred river of Yahweh (once the river of Eden: Genesis 2:10) in preference to the rivers of his own gods. He was asking Na’aman to convert to the religion of Israel, to place his full trust in Yahweh. This, Na’aman was not initially prepared to do (2 Kings 5:11-12): But Naaman went away angry and said, ‘I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?’ So he turned and went off in a rage. Thanks to the intervention of his servants, Na’aman calmed down and did what the prophet Elisha had asked of him – no small ask, despite the simplicity of the action (vv. 13-14): Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. More than half a millennium later, Jesus Christ, preaching in Nazareth, will recall this wondrous moment (Luke 4:27): ‘And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian’. These words so enraged those in the synagogue that they attempted to throw him over a cliff (vv. 28-29). A vital connection between the converted Na’aman and King Hazael, chosen as a leader of the Sinai triumvirate (I Kings 19:15-16): “The Lord said to [Elijah], ‘Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet’”, perfectly answers my earlier question: Why did the Lord choose Hazael, a Syrian, to assist the prophet Elijah and his coalition in the extermination of the House of Ahab and the pagan Baal worship? No longer was Hazael (Na’aman) the typical pagan Syrian worshipper of Baal. He was now a thoroughgoing Yahwist (Kings 5:17): “… said Naaman, ‘please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the Lord’.” As we are going to learn, the Syrian stuck to his promise, even to the extent of enforcing his newly-acquired religion upon idolatrous Egypt, whose supreme god (state deity) was the Baal-like Amun(-Ra). No wonder that the Lord had chosen him! Third conclusion: Aziru (Hazael) is the Syrian convert, Na’aman. In 2 Kings 5:1, we learn that Na’aman was “a great in the sight of” his king, having delivered Ben-Hadad an important military victory: “Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram [Syria]. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier …”. Ben-Hadad, EA’s Abdi-ashirta (Dr. Velikovsky), is generally considered to have been amongst the vassal kings of the EA era, who appeared to grovel before the Pharaohs and before several other Great Kings. Nothing, I think, could be further from the truth, at least in the case of Abdi-ashirta. As Ben-Hadad, he was what I have called ‘a master-king’, having 32 other kings in tow (I Kings 20:1). Now who in antiquity, to that stage, was like this? The great Yarim-Lim of Yamkhad had had an impressive 20 kings in tow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarim-Lim_I “By the time of his death, Yarim-Lim, had more than twenty kings as vassals and allies. According to Historian William J. Hamblin he was at the time the "mightiest ruler in the Near East outside of Egypt” …. Ben-Hadad would have more than half of that again. On this basis, I have concluded that Ben-Hadad/Abdi-ashirta, the master-king of his era, could not have been confined just to Syria (Damascus), but that he was the same as the famous EA correspondent, Pharaoh of Egypt, Nimmuria, better known as Amenhotep ‘the Magnificent’. In other words, before the forceful incursion of Aziru into Egypt, his predecessor’s kingdom had already spilled over into that country, not to mention his control of much of the Levantine coast, threatening Byblos. In various articles, I have merged this great Pharaoh into Amenhotep II, making him even greater (but reducing his III to a II). We have briefly considered the good relationship between Ben-Hadad and his chief official, Hazael (Na’aman). It was so good that Ben-Hadad had no problems with his official going to Israel for a potential cure for his leprosy (2 Kings 5:5): “By all means, go,” the king of Aram replied. “I will send a letter to the king of Israel”. Now, can we find an official with the same sort of very good relationship with pharaoh Amenhotep ‘the Magnificent’, an alter ego of mine for Ben-Hadad/Abdi-ashirta? All our attention now turns to Egypt. 4. Hazael as Amenhotep son of Hapu Yes, he is the enigmatic Amenhotep son of Hapu, fittingly a commoner, who rose to the highest honours in Egypt: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Amenhotep-son-of-Hapu Amenhotep, son of Hapu, was a high official of the reign of Amenhotep III of ancient Egypt (reigned 1390–53 bce) [sic], who was greatly honoured by the king within his lifetime and was deified more than 1,000 years later during the Ptolemaic era. Amenhotep rose through the ranks of government service, becoming scribe of the recruits, a military office, under Amenhotep III. While in the Nile River delta, Amenhotep was charged with positioning troops at checkpoints on the branches of the Nile to regulate entry into Egypt by sea; he also checked on the infiltration of Bedouin tribesmen by land. On one of his statues, he is called a general of the army. Some time later, when he was placed in charge of all royal works, he probably supervised the construction of Amenhotep III’s mortuary temple at Thebes near modern Luxor, the building of the temple of Soleb in Nubia (modern Sudan), and the transport of building material and erection of other works. Two statues from Thebes indicate that he was also an intercessor in Amon’s temple and that he supervised the celebration of one of Amenhotep III’s Heb-Sed festivals (a renewal rite celebrated by the pharaoh after the first 30 years of his reign and periodically thereafter). The king honoured him by embellishing Athribis, his native city. Amenhotep III even ordered the building of a small funerary temple for him next to his own temple, a unique honour for a nonroyal person in Egypt. Amenhotep was greatly revered by posterity, as indicated by the reinscription of the donation decree for his mortuary establishment in the 21st dynasty (1075–c. 950 bce) and his divine association with Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, during the Ptolemaic period. [End of quote] Though essentially based in Syrian Damascus, the mobile Ben-Hadad could have, during his decades-long reign, had a significant impact upon Egypt as well, he being well served in both significant locations by Hazael. But how to explain why the now Yahwistic Hazael would murder his king and patron, Ben-Hadad? That is not an easy question to answer. Maybe he was prompted by Elisha’s telling him the shock news that he was going to be the King of Syria (Aram) - and/or realizing that he, being a commoner, was never going to be elected king, but would have to force the issue himself. Moreover, Ben-Hadad would now represent for Hazael the idolatrous world that he had been divinely commissioned to eradicate. Our account of the Syrian “dog” made good, which received an enormous boost with the hero’s dramatic conversion to Yahwism, after experiencing a miracle, now goes into overdrive with the recognition that the brilliant Amenhotep son of Hapu, was to become the pharaoh known as Amenhotep IV (now my III), or Akhnaton (Akhenaten). All of a sudden, the completely mysterious shroud that surrounds Akhnaton prior to his ascension to the throne of Egypt - for instance, did he spend his early years amongst the Mitannians? - has been lifted right away in the new knowledge that Akhnaton was indeed Amenhotep, but the one who had long served Amenhotep ‘the Magnificent’, who, as Ben-Hadad, had been well served by Hazael (Na’aman). Fourth conclusion: Aziru (Hazael) was Amenhotep son of Hapu. 5. Hazael as the semi-legendary Osarseph As now inimical towards his idolatrous master, Ben-Hadad, Hazael perhaps emerges in a garbled tradition from Josephus as the renegade Osarseph/Osarsiph, especially given the latter’s association with lepers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osarseph According to Josephus, the story depicts Osarseph as a renegade Egyptian priest who leads an army of lepers and other "unclean" people against a pharaoh named Amenophis, who was the son of Ramses and the father of another Ramses, and whose original name was Sethos (Seti).[1] The pharaoh is driven out of the country and the leper-army, in alliance with the Hyksos (whose story is also told by Manetho) ravage Egypt, committing many sacrileges against the gods, before Amenophis returns and expels them. Towards the end of the story Osarseph changes his name to Moses.[2] Fifth conclusion: Aziru (Hazael) could just possibly have been the model for Josephus’s garbled Osarseph. There appears to be evidence that Amenhotep ‘the Magnificent’ showed some favouritism towards Atonism (Atenism): https://media.australian.museum/media/dd/documents/New_Kingdom_Egypt_Amenhotep_III_to_the_Death_of_Ramesses_II_-_Activity_two.bc57759.pdf “Amenhotep III’ would put an increasing emphasis on the worship of Aten elevating them from a minor god to a solar disc that provided life-giving energy to the world. He would give Aten royal patronage through temples such as Maru Aten and his own epithet Aten-tjehen, which means ‘the Dazling Sun Disk”. Whilst he did not promote Aten as an exclusive god, his successor Akhenaten would. Akhenaten made radical changes to the religious landscape of Egypt, imposing the status of the sun god Aten as an exclusive deity, replacing Egypt’s polytheistic belief system, and displacing the state-deity Amun-Re. This period became known as the Amarna period after Akhenaten’s relocation of the capital from Thebes to modern day Tell el-Amarna …”. 6. Hazael as pharaoh Akhnaton By now I have written various articles connecting the Syrian convert Na’aman (Hazael) to the extraordinary pharaoh Akhnaton. The following one covers much of it: Akhnaton one of the most influential men who ever lived https://www.academia.edu/103257906/Akhnaton_one_of_the_most_influential_men_who_ever_lived “Novelists and historians, essayists, cultists, cranks, theologians, archaeologists, documentary makers and Hollywood film makers all give very different interpretations to his life, his beliefs, his personality, his motivations, what he intended to do and what he did”. Mohamed Hawass What to make of pharaoh Akhnaton, his lovely wife, Nefertiti, and the city of Akhetaton? Mohamed Hawass tells of the vast range of opinions expressed about Akhnaton, in his article: Akhenaten and Nefertiti: The Controversy and the Evidence (3) Free PDF Download - Akhenaten and Nefertiti: The Controversy and the Evidence | Mohamed Hawass - Academia.edu (pp. 3-5): …. Akhenaten has often been acclaimed not only as the founder of monotheism and the first man to worship a benevolent God, but as the first individual in history: he also emerges as one of the most controversial. Despite massive amounts being written about both him and Nefertiti, despite being amongst the few figures from Ancient Egypt to achieve lasting fame, few writers can give a shared overall opinion. They do not even agree on how to spell Akhenaten’s name, giving at least four choices! Some writers may agree on what some points mean, but even there wide disagreement seems more common. Novelists and historians, essayists, cultists, cranks, theologians, archaeologists, documentary makers and Hollywood film makers all give very different interpretations to his life, his beliefs, his personality, his motivations, what he intended to do and what he did. Fascination with Akhenaten has long ago reached the stage where that fascination itself has become the subject of a book, Dominic Montserrat’s interesting Akhenaten: History Fantasy and Ancient Egypt. (2003). Montserrat asks the very good question why are people fascinated by an Egyptian pharaoh who died over three thousand years ago? First he remains an enigma and they always fascinate. This enigma takes a form, being also a mystery that essentially divides between resolving him to be either a hero or a villain, which was he? Many people still see personalities in this simple, divisive way. A third point is that his intensely dramatic story attracts creators of fiction, historians and their readers. The final reason concerns what may well be his great importance on influencing human history. His attempt to establish monotheism, and a seemingly benevolent monotheism for all humanity, may have been an isolated attempt that was several hundred years ahead of its time and died out unremembered and unknown – or it may have heavily influenced the development of Mosaic Judaism, which of course went on to influence Christianity and then Islam. Did the religion of the Aten stop without further influence? Or was there a now untraceable and developing path from Atenism into Judaism? The answer remains unknown; thin evidence exists for this, but that evidence offers no proof, only grounds for speculation. Even so, most of the world remains dominated by laws and religions which now express concept’s [sic] first expressed in Akhenaten’s Hymn to the Aten, inscribed on the wall of the Amarna tomb of Ay, a leading Atenist. …. If the links are ever found this would make Akhenaten one of the most influential men who ever lived. It would also change our perceptions of the origins of the world’s dominant religions. Much of this theological development may have come from Nefertiti. While some consensus on Nefertiti exists, the listing below gives some idea of how numerous, divergent and oppositional views of Akhenaten are. This is of course simplified as many writers are cautious in expressing opinions. Others allow for mixtures of the views listed below. Akhenaten was a visionary and a religious genius aiming to unite all the peoples of his empire in a rule of peace. He was an internationalist and a pacifist. Akhenaten was a short sighted political leader who probably could not see that his empire was disintegrating. If he could see he did not care. Akhenaten was a great man, hundreds of years ahead of his time, brought down by small minded people. Akhenaten was a naïve fool and perhaps a lunatic, who devastated Egypt and had to be stopped. Akhenaten was a liberator, aiming to establish a humane religion based in one benevolent God who would overcome the darkness and fear that came from superstition. Akhenaten was a tyrant and a megalomaniac, enforcing a cruel religion with a god he created as a reflection of himself. Akhenaten was a uxorious husband and a devoted family man to his children. Akhenaten was a bisexual, a womaniser and an incestuous paedophile who exiled Nefertiti. Akhenaten was a true and original revolutionary, rapidly changing Egyptian religion, society and culture. Akhenaten was only developing ideas and trends that had emerged in his father’s reign. Akhenaten was the first monotheist. Akhenaten was not a monotheist. He allowed other religions and never denied the existence of other gods. Fiction writers give us many such views and all of these views have some basis in evidence. In Mika Waltari’s Sinuhe The Egyptian (1949) Akhenaten talks like a 1930s peace pledge parson, making naïve sentiments about peace, the brotherhood of man and the love of God. While he dreams of such a world his undefended kingdom experiences invasion and near civil war rips Egypt apart. The same idea emerges in the 1954 film version of that book, The Egyptian. Both these works show a mentality influenced by the 1930s failure of those European leaders who wanting peace, and in striving for that, failed to contain Hitler. These 1950s depictions also reflect the naivety of those in the west who hoped for peace during the Cold War. Coming from the opposite direction, seeing humanist calls for peace and equality as desirable, something of this mentality seems evident in historian F. Gladstone Bratton’s admiring 1961 work The Heretic Pharaoh. Here Akhenaten’s humanity and genius is emphasised and he seems to be a figure striving for peace and international goodwill. In Allen Drury’s A God Against the Gods (1976) and the sequel Return to Thebes (1977) this novelist strives to create an epic explaining the conflicting evidence. Here Akhenaten emerges as a well-intentioned religious genius, but a disastrously inept politician unable to make judgements on realities. He is naïve and his homosexual relationship with Smenkhkare alienates Nefertiti, the mainstay of his religion. Something of the mid 1970s disillusionment with the idealism of the Vietnam War era comes through in Drury’s two books. By 1984 when Pauline Gedge’s The Twelfth Transforming was published, the world was very disillusioned with alternative religions, utopias, and radical messiahs of assorted kinds. This attitude comes through in her portrayal of Akhenaten, a simpering, egocentric, hideously deformed megalomaniac with a taste for incest. He has to be stopped before his wild schemes to transform Egypt destroys that civilisation. By the time this novel was written Akhenaten had been the subject of over a hundred novels. …. Clearly writers perceive Akhenaten not only through interpreting primary source evidence, but through the developments of their own eras and the influence of the dominant or striking personalities of their times. [End of quote] I myself had once, in a university thesis (2007), simply dismissed Akhnaton as “the oddest of pharaohs” (Volume One, p. 210), without having been able - {nor even really being concerned about it} - to penetrate the mystery. What I did fully realise back then, though, and am still convinced of to this day (13th June, 2023), was that any mystery surrounding Akhnaton and his city of Akhetaton would be more easily solved were one to embrace Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s downward revision of this era (as argued in Ages in Chaos and Oedipus and Ikhnaton) to the C9th BC (conventional dating). This massive alteration brings with it a radical new perspective. Akhnaton’s Hymn to the Aten, so like in many ways King David’s Psalm 104 - as many have recognised - far from having influenced the Hebrew version, would have post-dated the latter by over a century. So, if anyone was doing the influencing here, then it was King David. And that chronological fact alone would require a modification of the suggestion in the article of Mohamed Hawass above - based upon a conventional dating of Akhnaton to the C14th BC - that Akhnaton’s “… attempt to establish monotheism … may have heavily influenced the development of Mosaic Judaism …”. Apart from the fact that Moses preceded Akhnaton by a good half a millennium, the best one could say is that Akhnaton had been influenced by (and had not influenced) a “Mosaic Judaism” filtered through an updated Davidic Judaism. What one might be able to say, and some indeed have said it, is that the religious monotheism of pharaoh Akhnaton is akin to that one reads about in the Pentateuch, and which kings David and Solomon had inherited. The latter brought some of this to Egypt where he, as Senenmut, famously officiated as ‘the power behind the throne’ of the woman pharaoh, Hatshepsut. On this, see e.g. my article: Solomon and Sheba (4) Solomon and Sheba | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu So who, then, was this, the most unusual character in ancient Egyptian history, Akhnaton? And from whence did he come? To answer the last question first, as King Hezekiah had done in the instance of Isaiah’s uncomfortable interrogation of him regarding the Babylonian envoys of King Merodach-baladan (Isaiah 39:3), Akhnaton was a Syrian, not a native Egyptian. Hence he was geographically closer, than were the Egyptians, to the Israelites, and to their prophets and teachings - during the era of the Divided Kingdom of kings Ahab (with Jezebel) and the godly Jehoshaphat. Not entirely surprising, then, that we find it likely that: Akhnaton’s Chief Minister [was] an Israelite? (4) Akhnaton’s Chief Minister an Israelite? | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu The one who came to be called Akhnaton (meaning “Effective for the Aten”) in Egypt - {and whose prenomen would be Neferkheperure (Waenre) (meaning “Beautiful are the Forms of Re, the Unique one of Re”), which name (Neferkheperure) is the occasionally-met variant, Naphuria, or Napkhuria, of the El Amarna correspondence} - was, in fact, a Syrian military man and foreigner with regard to Egypt. That would explain also why his new city of Akhetaton (meaning “Horizon of the Aten”) was like a military camp, and why many of its inhabitants were ‘Asiatic’ (read Syro-Palestinian): Akhetaton was ‘an armed camp’ (4) Akhetaton was 'an armed camp' | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu So, any naïve suggestion that pharaoh Akhnaton was like some ancient version of New Age “pacificist” (a word we encountered above) is always going to be very wide of the mark – for any ruler in ancient times, let alone for one like Akhnaton, who obviously flaunted his military. Like the prophet Jonah, before he could minister to the Assyrians, the Syrian Na’aman must needs be ‘baptismally’ immersed in the water before he was deemed “clean” (2 Kings 5:14) enough to spread his monotheism (to the Egyptians). Verse 17: ‘… please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the LORD’. This: Akhnaton’s Theophany (8) Akhnaton's Theophany | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu is, I believe, the key to understanding pharaoh Akhnaton and his monotheistic Atenism. Sixth conclusion: Aziru (Hazael) was Pharaoh Akhnaton (Akhenaten).

Sunday, July 13, 2025

James D. Tabor claims the Shroud of Turin to be an early C14th medieval relic

by Damien F. Mackey Commenting on an article that I put up at academia.edu Mysterious Shroud of Turin James Tabor informed me (13th July, 2025): Hi Damien, I recently did a two hour video examining all claims about the Turin Shroud. I hope you will find it beneficial. Here is the link: https://youtu.be/uXhkVCdr2KU Is This The Face of Jesus? Getting the Facts Straight on the Turin Shroud James Tabor The description here reads: This video is TWO HOURS, as I cover the topic so thoroughly! Millions of sincere Christians believe the Turin Shroud offers something very close to a photographic image of the historical Jesus--including selected scientists, Bible scholars, and theologians--and further that it offers tangible scientific proof that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead! But what are the facts. In this video I present what I consider to be convincing evidence that this cloth is a Medieval relic, created in the early 14th century by methods that can be duplicated today. …. What is the 14th century? Sounds like a really silly question, doesn’t it? Funnily enough, just a few weeks ago, I uploaded to academia.edu my appraisal of the very next century, the C15th AD (or CE as James Tabor would designate it): Bible-themed people and events permeate what we call C15th AD (3) Bible-themed people and events permeate what we call C15th AD Jehanne (Joan of Arc), a “second Judith”, channelling Jehudith (Judith); Girolamo (Jeremiah) Savonarola, and Abravanel, channelling the biblical prophet Jeremiah – “Savonarola … like a second Jeremiah” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2376715); Colombus (Dove) channelling Jonah (Dove), the epic voyage of Columbus manifesting itself as the Book of Jonah writ large, including the requisite great fish (whale); the mischievous Machiavelli channelling the Achitophel with whom he is often compared, and so on. Regarding Machiavelli and Cesare, has the “ancient land of Israel” (see next quote) been thrust out of its proper BC situation and been artificially projected into the so-called C14th AD? In Bringing the Hidden to Light: The Process of Interpretation (edited by Kathryn F. Kravitz, Diane M. Sharon), we find the requisite (if Achitophel is Machiavelli) comparison now between Absalom and the Prince, Cesare Borgia (p. 181): …. As Melamed pointed out, although Luzzatto's interpretation followed the literal the literal meaning of the text and traditional Jewish commentators such as Kimḥi and Abrabanel, nevertheless he expressed it in the spirit and vocabulary of Machiavelli and the tradition of raison d’état; in Melamed's most felicitous formulation, “the House of Borgia in the ancient ... land of Israel”, Ahitophel plays Machiavelli to Absalom – his Cesare Borgia”. …. However, it should be observed that Luzzatto was not endorsing the behaviour of Absalom but only indicating, in the context of his refutation of the allegation of Tacitus that the Jews were sexually immoral, how in the spirit of Machiavelli and raison d’état, a prince might acquire power. …. “The House of Borgia in the ancient land of Israel …”. Hmmmm. [End of quote] Just compare the two names: But what I really find staggering is just how closely the names of the like pair, Achitophel and Machiavelli, phonetically resemble each other: ACHI T OPHEL M ACHI AVELL I Is the presumably earlier, “the early 14th century” (James Tabor video), likely to be any less shaky than this? I have since started work on another supposedly AD century, the ripe-for-picking C7th: Mohammed; Nehemiah; Chosroes; Shahrbaraz; Heraclius. The latter, Heraclius, would have to qualify as the most weird, made-up ‘historical’ character of all time! Just a few tasty morsels on the subject to be presented here, beginning with a piece also on Queen Elizabeth I, amongst those many women of ‘history’ considered to have been a second, or another, Judith: …. Whilst I am aware of Mark Twain’s famous quote, that: “History Doesn't Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”, I can be somewhat sceptical when I read of a supposedly historical figure as a ‘second’, or a ‘new’, version of someone else: for example, a second King David, a new King Solomon, the new Deborah, a second Judith. Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), whose life occurred, according to the textbooks, outside our C15th focus, outdoes just about every other female character in adopting biblical personae, including a heavy emphasis on Judith whom she is said to have emulated. I say “female”, because it is hard to beat the Byzantine emperor Heraclius in this regard, as told in my article: Something almost miraculous about our emperor Heraclius (6) Something almost miraculous about our emperor Heraclius According to Aidan Norrie (2016), in the Abstract for his article on Elizabeth I: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/rest.12258 Elizabeth I as Judith: reassessing the apocryphal widow's appearance in Elizabethan royal iconography 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. …. Now, here is our ‘miraculous’ Heraclius. What a treat! But what a joke!: A composite character to end all composites Heraclius seems to have one foot in Davidic Israel, one in the old Roman Republic, and, whatever feet may be left (because this definitely cannot be right), in the Christian era. What a mix of a man is this emperor Heraclius! What a conundrum! What a puzzle! I feel sorry for Walter Emil Kaegi, who has valiantly attempted to write a biography of him: Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium. The accomplishment of this scholarly exercise I believe to be a complete impossibility. And I could simply base this view on what I read from Kaegi’s book itself (pp. 12 and 13): The story of Heraclius, as depicted in several literary historical traditions, is almost Herodotean in his experience of fickle fortune's wheel of triumph and tragedy, of ignorance or excessive pride, error, and disaster. My comment: To classify the story of Heraclius as “Herodotean” may be appropriate. Herodotus, ostensibly “the Father of History” (according to Cicero), has also been called “the Father of Lies” by critics who claim that his ‘histories’ are little more than tall tales. Heraclius, as we now read, is spread ‘all over the place’ (my description): At one level his name is associated with two categories of classical nomenclature: (1) ancient classical offices such as the consulship, as well as (2) many of the most exciting heroes, places, precedents, and objects of classical, ancient Near Eastern, and Biblical antiquity: Carthage, Nineveh, Jerusalem, the vicinity of Alexander the Great's triumph over the Persians at Gaugamela, Noah's Ark, the Golden Gate in Jerusalem, Arbela, the fragments of the True Cross, Damascus, Antioch, perhaps even ancient Armenia's Tigra-nocerta, and of course, Constantinople. My comment: According to a late source (conventionally 600 years after Heraclius): “The historian Elmacin recorded in the 13th Century that in the 7th Century the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius had climbed Jabal Judi in order to see the place where the Ark had landed”. http://bibleprobe.com/noahark-timeline.htm Biblically, Heraclius has been compared with such luminaries as Noah, Moses, David, Solomon, Daniel, and even with Jesus Christ. And no wonder in the case of David! For we read in Steven H. Wander’s article for JSTOR, “The Cyprus Plates and the “Chronicle” of Fredegar” (pp. 345-346): https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1291381.pdf …. there is one episode from the military career of Heraclius that bears a striking similarity to the story of David and Goliath. Byzantine chroniclers record that during his campaign against the Emperor Chosroes in 627, Heraclius fought the Persian general Razatis in single combat, beheading his opponent like the Israelite hero. …. George of Pisidia, the court poet, may have even connected this contemporary event with the life of David. In his epic panegyrics on Heraclius' Persian wars, he compared the Emperor to such Old Testament figures as Noah, Moses, and Daniel; unfortunately the verses of his Heraclias that, in all likelihood, dealt in detail with the combat are lost. …. [End of quote] That fateful year 627 AD again, the year also of the supposed Battle of Nineveh said to have been fought and won by Heraclius! [Nineveh disappeared in c. 612 BC] According to Shaun Tougher, The Reign of Leo VI (886-912): Politics and People: “Heraclius … appears to have been intent on establishing himself as a new David …”. Likewise, in the case of Charlemagne’s father, as I noted in my article: Solomon and Charlemagne. Part One: Life of Charlemagne (4) Solomon and Charlemagne. Part One: Life of Charlemagne | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu …. Charlemagne has indeed been likened to King Solomon of old, e.g. by H. Daniel-Rops (The Church in the Dark Ages, p. 395), who calls him a “witness of God, after the style of Solomon …”, and he has been spoken of in terms of the ancient kings of Israel; whilst Charlemagne’s father, Pepin the Short, was hailed as “the new king David'. …. [End of quotes] What I have written here is only a tiny tip of a gigantic iceberg. And then there is the massive overhaul required of BC history (or BCE as James Tabor would designate it). For a condensed read of my envisioned program for a comprehensive BC revision, I recommend that one commences with my article: Damien F. Mackey’s A Tale of Two Theses (3) Damien F. Mackey's A Tale of Two Theses What on earth has any of this got to do with the Shroud of Turin? It is all about dating. What would James Tabor, an archaeologist in Israel, who claims to be a “truthseeker” (very commendable), and who is also close to the Jewish people, make of this horrific archaeological anomaly as discovered by an Israeli archaeologist? I wrote about it in my article: Dumb and Dumbfounded archaeology (3) Dumb and Dumbfounded archaeology “I was lookin' for love in all the wrong places Lookin' for love in too many faces”. Johnny Lee Sounds a bit like the modern archaeologist! Aligned to, and burdened by, a chronological timetable (Sothic) that can be anything from hundreds to thousands of years out of kilter with reality, they can invariably find themselves digging “in all the wrong places” at all the right times, or vice versa. Dumbfounded archaeologists ‘ratchet’ downwards to dumb level when, faced with a shock such as the one Moshe Hartal encountered in Tiberias, leave the matter there. The stratigraphical data at Tiberias had revealed that the Romans at roughly the time of Jesus Christ were contemporaneous with the Umayyads, supposedly succeeding Mohammed in the mid-600’s AD. A discrepancy of more than half a millennium! That means that the prophet Mohammed could not have existed in the C7th AD. Nor could the Umayyads have been what the history books tell us they were. Dumb archaeology fails to take the matter any further. Why? As Dr. Frank Turek has explained: … the opinions of … colleagues before … ever entertain[ing] making a shift on such a monumental question … so entrenched in tradition, politics … that any shift in opinion would be met with great resistance. It’s not a shift one should make overnight. Not “overnight”, or, probably, ever – unless one is Truth driven. “we’ll see.” …. [End of quote] A legitimate truthseeker, who has been schooled in a particular system of thought, and who has never felt the need to question it, may perhaps, therefore, be excused for being “dumbfounded” by some most unexpected outcome. Here “dumbfounded” is alright, as long as it does not stop there. Dumbfounded becomes dumb, though, when one just shrugs one’s shoulders, throws it into the ‘too hard basket’, and moves on. Or, perhaps the circumstances of one’s life may not permit anything more than that. The beauty of being a revisionist is that one is not – or rarely is – dumbfounded, ever expecting the conventional unexpected. The consequences of Moshe Hartal’s Tiberias find cannot be over-stated. The ramifications are far-reaching - the so-called C7th AD swallowed up in the C1st AD. A 600-year slice taken out of text book history! Not only that, but the whole succession of Islamic Caliphates is now undermined: Oh my, the Umayyads! Deconstructing the Caliphate (3) Oh my, the Umayyads! Deconstructing the Caliphate Back to the Shroud In 1988, the Vatican gave permission to a group of scientists to use radiocarbon dating in an effort to date the Shroud. Four samples were sent to three different labs (one to Oxford University, one to the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, and two to the University of Arizona). The results: the Shroud dated to 1260–1390 AD. While many people continued to believe the Shroud was still authentic, the scientific evidence seemed to have shown that it could not have been. A highly tentative thought: Presuming that the samples for radiocarbon dating were legitimate ones (many have queried this), then what if the now-deemed necessary (by some revisionists, at least) chronological overhaul of AD time means that, just as the C7th AD Umayyads (probably Nabataeans) coincided approximately with the Nativity, so might the c. 1300 AD carbon dating (James Tabor’s “14th century”) coincide with the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ? 13th July, 2025

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Qadesh doubly problematical for Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky

Part One: Qadesh of the Annals of Thutmose III by Damien F. Mackey “The north side of my town faced east / And the east was facing south”. The Who In somewhat similar fashion, with geography all askew, Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky once had Qadesh (Kadesh) facing southwards, when it should have been facing northwards, and once had Qadesh facing northwards, when it should have been facing southwards. The first instance concerned Kadesh in the records of Thutmose III, the warrior-pharaoh whom Dr. Velikovsky would re-locate from his conventional placement in the mid-C15th BC to the C10th BC era of King Solomon and his son, Rehoboam. (Ages in Chaos, I, 1952). Despite this radical downwards time-shift, I fully accept the correctness of it, as well as accepting Dr. Velikovsky’s identification of Thutmose III, ‘the Napoleon of Egypt’ (professor Henry Breasted), as the biblical “Shishak king of Egypt” (I Kings 14:25-26): “In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. He carried off the treasures of the Temple of the Lord and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made”. Thirdly, I am likewise convinced with Dr. Velikovsky (though by no means in harmony with his details) that this, the First Campaign of Thutmose III, his Year 22-23 (c. 1460 BC, conventional dating; c. 922 BC, revised), was the same as the biblical episode as narrated above in the First Book of Kings. It is commonly agreed that Kd-šw/Qd-šw in the Egyptian Annals refers to Kadesh/ Qadesh, though not all agree as to which geographical location was intended. Ironically, in this singular instance, Dr. Velikovsky’s reconstruction would rigidly follow the conventional path, northwards from Gaza (Egyptian G3-d3-tw], to Yemma? (Egyptian Y-hm), via a narrow defile, Aruna (Egyptian '3-rw-n3), to Megiddo (Egyptian My-k-ty). Megiddo’s close association with Taanach (Egyptian T3-'3-n3-k3) in the Egyptian Annals, appears positively to secure the identification of My-k-ty with Megiddo - as both professor James Henry Breasted and Dr. Velikovsky had accepted. Whilst I, also, shall be embracing their identifications of Gaza, Megiddo and Taanach, I shall be vehemently rejecting those of the in-between locations of Yehem (Y-hm) and Aruna. A conventional path was never going to hold Dr. Velikovsky too long in its embrace. For, while the conventionalists had the Egyptian army continuing its push northwards, to Syrian Qadesh - which progression I think is correct - Dr. Velikovsky, in order to make this campaign fit his brilliant “Shishak” identification, will have the Egyptian army suddenly lurch back southwards from Megiddo, to attack Jerusalem, the “Holy” - Dr. Velikovsky here attempting to draw a connection between the Kd-šw/Qd-šw of the Egyptian Annals and the Hebrew word for “Holy”, qodesh (קֹ֔דֶשׁ). Consequently, Egypt’s “wretched foe”, the king of Qadesh, Dr. Velikovsky will now identify as King Rehoboam of Jerusalem, in full southward flight from the Egyptians, only managing to have himself hauled into Jerusalem before the Egyptians can seize him. A similar narrow type of escape is narrated in the Egyptian Annals in the case of the real King of Kd-šw. Those ever hoping to find evidence for the Bible in historical records can be thrilled by such excitingly reconstructed scenarios as this. Now, though Dr. Velikovsky’s reconstruction (and also its conventional counterpart) of the right biblical campaign, is wrong, those thrilled by the prospect of having a biblical event confirmed in the historical records need not cease being thrilled. The First Campaign of Thutmose III, in his Year 22-23 (c. 922 BC, revised), was, indeed the same as the biblical episode as narrated above in I Kings 14:25-26. But it needs to be properly re-presented. This was typical Dr. Velikovsky, intuiting the correct conclusion - namely, here, that Thutmose III was the biblical “Shishak”, whose assault on Jerusalem occurred during the pharaoh’s First Campaign - but erecting his thesis in a most unconvincing fashion. Glaringly wrong is the conventional identification (accepted by Dr. Velikovsky) of the Aruna ('3-rw-n3) road with some obscure Wadi 'Ara near Megiddo. Thankfully, Dr. Eva Danelius came to the rescue here with her most important article, “Did Thutmose III Despoil the Temple in Jerusalem?” (1977/78): https://saturniancosmology.org/files/egypt/thutmos.htm Breasted identified this defile, the road called "Aruna" in Egyptian records, with the Wadi 'Ara which connects the Palestine maritime plain with the Valley of Esdraelon (4). It was this identification which aroused my curiosity, and my doubt. …. As an afterthought, Nelson warns not to be deceived by the Arabic name (wadi) 'Ara: "Etymologically, it seems hardly possible to equate (Egyptian) 'Aruna with (Arab) 'Ar'arah." (51). …. Not only etymologically, but, far more importantly, topographically - the major contribution made by Dr. Danelius - does the Wadi 'Ara not at all fit the Egyptian description of the dread Aruna road, whose Egyptian rendering, '3-rw-n3, however, transliterates perfectly into the Hebrew Araunah. This road was connected, via the name of Araunah the Jebusite (2 Samuel 24:15-16), directly to Jerusalem and its Temple. To conclude, without repeating all the details of what I have already written by way of correction of Dr. Velikovsky, and modification of Dr. Danelius, in: The Shishak Redemption (1) The Shishak Redemption and: Yehem near Aruna - Thutmose III’s march on Jerusalem (2) Yehem near Aruna - Thutmose III's march on Jerusalem - with Yehem (Y-hm) newly identified as Jerusalem itself - here is the brief summing up of my “Yehem near Aruna …” article: The Aruna road, the most difficult, but most direct, was the one that the brilliant pharaoh chose, for a surprise assault upon Megiddo. Jimmy Dunn writes regarding pharaoh’s tactic …: … the Aruna road was through a narrow and difficult pass over a ridge that was presumed (particularly for the enemy coalition) to be too difficult for any army to use. Taking that route meant that ‘horse must follow horse, and man after man’…. Also, many modern commentators, and perhaps the Canaanite coalition as well, seem to forget the major virtues of the Egyptian Chariots. They were light vehicles, and it was certainly conceivable that many could be carried through the pass, while the horses were led separately …. The pass was named from its beginning at Araunah, near king Rehoboam’s capital, Jerusalem, “Yehem near Aruna”. Dr. Danelius had got the name right, but she had the Egyptian military negotiating it the wrong way around, with Araunah as its destination point, rather than its being … [the] starting point. This road is variously known to us today as the Way of the Patriarchs, the Hill Road, or the Ridge Route, since it included, as we read, “a narrow and difficult pass over a ridge”. It was not a proper road, even as late as the time of Jesus, not one of the international highways then to be found in Palestine. This would have been a most tricky road, indeed, to negotiate, especially for an army that greatly relied upon its chariots. From Gaza (as all agree), pharaoh marched to Jerusalem (Dr. Danelius got the sequence right, but mis-identified Jerusalem), and then by the narrow Aruna road (Dr. Danelius got the name right only, not the direction) on to Megiddo (as per the conventional view and Velikovsky), and then on to Syrian Kadesh (as per the conventional view ….). For Dr. Velikovsky, this one was a case of: Qadesh facing southwards, when it should have been facing northwards. Part Two: Battle of Pharaoh Ramses II near Qadesh “The north side of my town faced east / And the east was facing south”. The Who In somewhat similar fashion, with geography all askew, Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky once had Qadesh (Kadesh) facing southwards, when it should have been facing northwards, and once had Qadesh facing northwards, when it should have been facing southwards. The second instance concerned Kadesh in the inscriptions of Ramses II ‘the Great’ and in those of his mighty foe, the Hittites. Dr. Velikovsky would re-locate Ramses II from his conventional placement in c. 1300 BC to c. 600 BC, identifying him as pharaoh Necho II of Egypt’s Twenty-Sixth Dynasty. And the Hittite king, Hattusilis, known to have made a treaty with Ramses II, Dr. Velikovsky would shockingly (by conventional estimates) identify with the Chaldean king, Nebuchednezzar ‘the Great’. (Ramses II and His Time, 1978). Despite this radical downwards time-shift, I believe that Dr. Velikovsky was very much on the right track here. However, rather than Ramses II being Necho II, and Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty being the same as the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty, my preference would be for Ramses II being, instead, Tirhakah (Taharqa) of the (Ethiopian) Twenty-Fifth Dynasty. For my comprehensive treatment of this subject, see my article: The Complete Ramses II (3) The Complete Ramses II which is no less shocking than Dr. Velikovsky’s thesis. In fact, it is more so, considering that I claim here that textbook ancient history has scattered the bits and pieces of Ramses II ‘the Great’ over almost a whole millennium, from c. 1300 BC to c. 350 BC (Tachos = Taharqa). Importantly, Ramses II was the same as Ramses Psibkhanno (Twenty-First Dynasty), leading me to conclude that: Sargon II’s Šilkanni of Egypt was Psibkhenno, not Osorkon (3) Sargon II’s Šilkanni of Egypt was Psibkhenno, not Osorkon This conclusion of mine, that Ramses II was a contemporary of Sargon II, would probably strain (even with my radically truncated chronology) Dr. Velikovsky’s identification of Nebuchednezzar with Hattusilis. It was considered in Part One that Dr. Velikovsky had been compelled - to keep alive his “Shishak” thesis - to re-identify Thutmose III’s Qadesh as Jerusalem. Now, similarly, to keep alive his thesis that Ramses II was the same as Necho II, who is known to have marched towards Carchemish (Jeremiah 46:2; 2 Chronicles 35:20), Dr. Velikovsky will geographically force Qadesh in this case - no longer as the “Holy” city of Jerusalem - into becoming what he called “the Sacred City” of Carchemish. (Ramses II and His Time, Chapter. 1: THE BATTLE OF KADESH-CARCHEMISH …. Carchemish, the Sacred City). Given that Necho II had fought “on the plain of Megiddo”, where King Josiah of Judah was slain (2 Chronicles 35:22-24), and given that pharaoh Shoshenq so-called I campaigned against Megiddo, I would rather suggest that (along with Ramses II as Tirhakah) Necho II was the same pharaoh as Shoshenq. https://cojs.org/shoshenq_megiddo_fragment/ A fragment of Pharaoh Shoshenq’s commemorative stele found at Megiddo. The fragment is not well-preserved and only the name of the king and some phrases glorifying him can be read. Although the fragment does not prove that Shoshenq conquered Megiddo, it does imply that he had some control over the city. Taking an Occam’s Razor approach, the whole thing can be simplified by identifying Qadesh (Kadesh) in the records both of Thutmose III and of Ramses II as Syrian Qadesh on the Orontes. This is the usual interpretation in each case. AI Overview The ancient city of Kadesh is believed to have been located near the Orontes River in modern-day Syria, while Carchemish was situated on the west bank of the Euphrates River, also in modern-day Syria. The distance between the two locations is approximately 150-200 kilometers (93-124 miles). For Dr. Velikovsky, this one was a case of: Qadesh facing northwards, when it should have been facing southwards.