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Friday, June 17, 2011

The Myth of Israel's Dual Origins

Alice C. Linsley


In Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible, the Swiss Bible scholar, Konrad Schmid, argues that the Genesis ancestor narratives and the story of Moses present competing pictures of Israel's origin. This is a common idea, but one which is not supported by analysis of the kinship patterns of both men.  In fact, analysis of their kinship patterns reveals that they are identical in every detail.



The myth of dual origins appears to be true until one investigates the genealogical information and finds that the kinship pattern of Abraham and Moses is the pattern identified with and unique to the Horites. This should not surprise us since the Bible claims that Moses is a descendant of Abraham and Abraham's people were Horites whose cultural context was that of Egypt and Kush.

Schmid notes that “Explicit literary connections between Genesis and Exodus appear only in Priestly texts or in texts that presuppose P.” This is an important observation because both Abraham and Moses are of the ruler-priest lines. These lines exclusively intermarried, so we should not be surprised to find that a comparison of their kinship patterns reveals that both were Horites.

Moses’ father was Amram. His name means Ruler (ram) of the People (am). He had two wives. Abraham’s father was Terah, also a great ruler, and he had two wives.

By his cousin-wife Amram had a son Korah and daughter Miriam. By his cousin-wife Terah had a son Haran and a daughter Sarah.

By his half-sister wife Amram had two sons: Aaron (which is Harun in Arabic, a Horite name) and Moses. By his half-sister wife, Abraham had a son Isaac and according to Horite law, Ishmael by Sarah’s surrogate Hagar.

Amram’s youngest son was Moses and he was sent away. Terah’s youngest son was Abraham and he too was sent away. (See the essay “Sent-Away Sons.”)

It is clear from analysis of the kinship patterns of Moses and Abraham that they are the same and that both figures of Israel's history were Horites.
 
 
Related reading:  The Genesis Record of Horite Rule; Who Were the Horites?; Two Named Esau; Who Was Oholibamah?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aarin in Yoruba means centre or middle and is used in names like

Aarinade: the centre of the crown

Aarinola: the centre of wealth

Alice C. Linsley said...

The root appears to be AR or ARI. There is probably a relationship to the Ar Clans. See
http://biblicalanthropology.blogspot.com/2011/07/clans-of-ar.html


Happy New Year!

Alice C. Linsley said...

The true priests stands at the metaphysical sacred center. For the Horites high noon marked the temporal sacred center and the top of the mountain marked the spatial sacred center. Many Biblical figures had encounters with God on the mountain top!

AlDahir said...

Alice:

Amram is not a Hebrew name and it is a good example of what happens when a Western interpreter attempts to make sense out of a foreign word that is not Hebrew. According to the Western authors of Strong's Hebrew Lexicon, (עַמְרָ֣ם)Amram is divided into 2 words in Hebrew 'am' and 'rwm' to mean 'the people' (am) are 'exalted' (rwm). It is one word in Arabic (عمران) and has one meaning which is prosperity, civilization, bustling life. As Amram is the father of Moses and Aaron, the founders of Yahwism aka Judaism, he is credited for being the progenitor of Judean civilization. According to Genesis, before these two brought the civilizing influence of an organized religion and code of law, the Hebrews were landless slaves without a formalized law or country. Amram, like so many Biblical names, is a title and not a true name. Other names that follow this pattern of names that describe the role of the Biblical character are Adam, Eve, Cain, Cainan, Abram, Sarai, Hagar, Keturah, Jacob, Leah, Rachel, Judah, Levy, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon and a host of others. Unfortunately, Western interpretation only causes confusion. For instance, the name Jacob in Arabic means ‘Yah (Yhwh) established succession’ or ‘Ya granted many sons'. The Hebrew meaning is ‘heel catcher meaning oath thief’. Because his name is not of Hebrew origin, the Judean authors of Genesis explained his name in a creative story. So, his name in Hebrew refers to a Biblical episode (Gen 25) in which Jacob is born holding the heel of his twin, Esau. Jacob later tricks his twin into giving him his inheritance. Heel is a euphemism for testicle, which is a reference to the oath of the giving of the hand where the parties involved grab each other’s testicles and swear an oath. The 'grabbing' of the testicle is symbolic of Jacob's role as a thief who stole his brother's inheritance. So,the Biblical interpretation of his name makes Jacob a thief and a liar while the Arabic meaning explains his role as the father of 12 sons who founded the Hebrew nation in Canaan. By the way, the red pottage story doesn't hold water as the law of primogeniture (Deut 21:15-17) would have prevailed as long as Isaac was alive. The transference of property through trickery could only happen after Isaac died. As the law states not even a father's favoritism could deprive the firstborn of his rights. Isaac, according to the law, could not concede Esau's rights to Jacob even if Jacob thought he could trick his brother. The whole episode is an attempt to explain Jacob's foreign name to a Hebrew audience.

Alice C. Linsley said...

Old Arabic is very useful in understanding the Biblical material. Amram is indeed a word found in Arabic. It is also found in Akkadian. Ararat is another Arabic word and it doesn't refer to a mountain in Armenia. It appears in the story of God's vehemence shown in bringing flood waters. Understanding this puts the story of Noah's flood in a more proper perspective.

Yacob, Yaqtan, Yitzak, Yishmael, Yeshua, etc. have the solar cradle, indicating divinely appointed men. See this:
http://biblicalanthropology.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-urheimat-of-canaanite-y.html

Yahweh was first used among the Nubians. The name did not originate with the Jews, but with Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors.
http://biblicalanthropology.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-nubian-context-of-yhwh.html

Alice C. Linsley said...

Also, Jacob did not inherit the territory of Isaac. That went to Isaac's first born, Esau, who was connected through his mother's side to the Horite rulers of Edom (Gen. 36). See this:
http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2014/09/isaacs-wealth.html