by
Damien F. Mackey
Scholars have wondered about the incredible
size of the Persian army.
“Almost all are agreed that Herodotus’ figure
of 2,100,000, exclusive of followers, for the army (Bk VII. 184-85) is impossible”
wrote F. Maurice in 1930.
Introductory
Professor Paul Cartledge’s well written book
about the alleged Battle of Thermopylae between the Spartans and the Persians
in 480 BC holds firmly to the familiar line of British writers and historians
that our Western civilisation was based front and centre upon the Greeks.
Thus, for instance, he writes in his book, Thermopylae: The
Battle That Changed the World (Macmillan, 2006, p. 4):
“The Greeks were second to none in embracing
that contrary combination of the ghastly and the ennobling, which takes us
straight back to the fount and origin of Western culture and ‘civilization’ -
to Homer’s Iliad, the first
masterpiece of all Western literature; to Aeschylus’s Persians, the first surviving masterpiece of Western drama; to the
coruscating war epigrams of Simonides and, last but most relevantly of all, to
Herodotus’s Histories, the first masterpiece of Western historiography”.
And this is not the only occasion in his book
where professor Cartledge expresses such effusive sentiments.
The problem is, however, that - as it seems to
me, at least - these very foundations, these so-called ‘founts and origins’ of
‘Western culture and civilization’, had for their very own bases some
significant non-Greek influences and inspirations.
An important one of these non-Greek influences
was the Book of Judith, traditionally thought to have been written
substantially by the high-priest Joakim in c. 700 BC. See my article:
Author of the Book of Judith
Compare that to the uncertainty of authorship
surrounding those major works labelled Homeric
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer):
The Homeric
Question—by whom,
when, where and under what circumstances were the Iliad and Odyssey
composed—continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion falls
into two groups. One holds that most of the Iliad and (according to
some) the Odyssey are the works of a single poet of genius. The other
considers the Homeric poems to be the result of a process of working and
re-working by many contributors, and that "Homer" is best seen as a
label for an entire tradition.[
On previous occasions I have suggested that
parts of The Iliad had appropriated
key incidents to be found in the Book of Judith, with ‘Helen’ taking her cue
from the Jewish heroine, Judith.
Accordingly, I have written:
“As for Judith, the Greeks appear to have substituted this beautiful
Jewish heroine with their own legendary Helen, whose ‘face launched a thousand
ships’. Compare for instance these striking similarities (Judith and The
Iliad):
The beautiful woman praised by the elders at the city gates:
"When [the elders of Bethulia] saw [Judith] transformed in
appearance and dressed differently, they were very greatly astounded at her
beauty" (Judith 10:7).
"Now the elders of the people were sitting by the Skaian gates….
When they saw Helen coming … they spoke softly to each other with winged words:
'No shame that the Trojans and the well-greaved Achaians should suffer agonies
for long years over a woman like this - she is fearfully like the immortal
goddesses to look at'" [The Iliad., pp. 44-45].
This theme of incredible beauty - plus the related view that "no
shame" should be attached to the enemy on account of it - is picked
up again a few verses later in the Book of Judith (v.19) when the Assyrian
soldiers who accompany Judith and her maid to Holofernes "marveled at
[Judith's] beauty and admired the Israelites, judging them by her … 'Who can
despise these people, who have women like this among them?'"
Nevertheless:
'It is not wise to leave one of their men alive, for if we let them
go they will be able to beguile the whole world!'
(Judith 10:19).
'But even so, for all her beauty, let her go back in the ships, and
not be left here a curse to us and our children'.
The dependence of The Iliad
upon the Book of Judith may go even deeper, though, to its very main theme.
For, previously I had written:
“Achilles
Many similarities have been
noted too between The Iliad and the Old Testament, including the
earlier-mentioned likenesses between the young Bellerophon and Joseph. Again,
Achilles' being pursued by the river Xanthos which eventually turns dry (Book
21) reminds one of Moses' drying up of the sea (Exodus 14:21).
Was there really a
person by the name of Agamemnon? [See Is Homer Historical? in Archaeology
Odyssey, May/Jun 2004, pp. 26-35]. The interview of Professor Nagy
of Harvard says `no, there wasn't.'
Achilles’ fierce argument with Agamemnon,
commander-in-chief of the Greeks, at Troy - Achilles' anger being the very
theme of The Iliad [Introduction, p. xvi:
"The Iliad announces its subject in the first line. The poem will tell of
the anger of Achilleus and its consequences - consequences for the Achaians,
the Trojans, and Achilleus himself"] - is merely a highly
dramatized Greek version of the disagreement in the Book of Judith between Achior
[a name not unlike the ‘Greek’
Achilles] and the furious Assyrian
commander-in-chief, "Holofernes", at the siege of Bethulia,
Judith's town”.
And the famous Trojan Horse?
I continued:
“If the very main theme of The
Iliad may have been lifted by the Greeks from the Book of Judith, then
might not even the Homeric idea of the Trojan Horse ruse to capture Troy have
been inspired by Judith's own ruse to take the Assyrian camp? [According to R. Graves, The Greek Myths (Penguin Books,
combined ed., 1992), p. 697 (1, 2. My emphasis):
"Classical commentators on
Homer were dissatisfied with the story of the wooden horse. They suggested,
variously, that the Greeks used a horse-like engine for breaking down the walls
(Pausanias: i. 23. 10) … that Antenor admitted the Greeks into Troy by a
postern which had a horse painted on it….Troy
is quite likely to have been stormed by means of a wheeled wooden tower, faced
with wet horse hides as a protection against incendiary darts…".
(Pausanius 2nd century AD:
Wrote `Description of Greece'.)].
What may greatly serve to
strengthen this suggestion is the uncannily 'Judith-like' trickery of a
certain Sinon, a wily Greek, as narrated in the detailed description of the
Trojan Horse in Book Two of Virgil's Aeneid. Sinon, whilst claiming to
have become estranged from his own people, because of their treachery and sins,
was in fact bent upon deceiving the Trojans about the purpose of the wooden
horse, in order "to open Troy to the Greeks".
I shall set out here the main
parallels that I find on this score between the Aeneid and the Book of Judith.
Firstly, the name Sinon may
recall Judith's ancestor Simeon, son of Israel (Judith 8:1; 9:2).
Whilst Sinon, when apprehended
by the enemy, is "dishevelled" and "defenceless",
Judith, also defenseless, is greatly admired for her appearance by the members
of the Assyrian patrol who apprehend her (Judith 10:14). As Sinon is asked
sympathetically by the Trojans 'what he had come to tell …' and 'why
he had allowed himself to be taken prisoner', so does the Assyrian
commander-in-chief, Holofernes, 'kindly' ask Judith: '… tell me why
you have fled from [the Israelites] and have come over to us?'
Just as Sinon, when brought
before the Trojan king Priam, promises that he 'will confess the whole
truth' – though having no intention of doing that – so does Judith lie to
Holofernes: 'I will say nothing false to my lord this night' (Judith
11:5).
Sinon then gives his own
treacherous account of events, including the supposed sacrileges of the Greeks
due to their tearing of the Palladium, image of the goddess Athene, from her
own sacred Temple in Troy; slaying the guards on the heights of the citadel and
then daring to touch the sacred bands on the head of the virgin goddess with
blood on their hands. For these 'sacrileges' the Greeks were doomed.
Likewise Judith assures
Holofernes of victory because of the supposed sacrilegious conduct that the
Israelites have planned (e.g. to eat forbidden and consecrated food), even in
Jerusalem (11:11-15).
Sinon concludes – in relation to
the Trojan options regarding what to do with the enigmatic wooden horse – with
an Achior-like statement: 'For if your hands violate this offering to
Minerva, then total destruction shall fall upon the empire of Priam and the
Trojans…. But if your hands raise it up into your city, Asia shall come
unbidden in a mighty war to the walls of Pelops, and that is the fate in store
for our descendants'. Whilst Sinon's words were full of cunning, Achior had
been sincere when he had warned Holofernes – in words to which Judith will
later allude deceitfully (11:9-10): 'So now, my master and my lord, if there is
any oversight in this people [the Israelites] and they sin against their God
and we find out their offense, then we can go up against them and defeat them.
But if they are not a guilty nation, then let my lord pass them by; for their
Lord and God will defend them, and we shall become the laughing-stock of the
whole world' (Judith 5:20-21). [Similarly, Achilles fears to become 'a
laughing-stock and a burden of the earth' (Plato's Apologia, Scene I, D. 5)]. These, Achior's words, were the very
ones that had so enraged Holofernes and his soldiers (vv.22-24). And they
would give the Greeks the theme for their greatest epic, The Iliad”.
But all of this is as nothing when compared to what I have found to
be the multiple:
this Semitic literature presumably well pre-dating the fairy-tale
Greek efforts.
Unsatisfactory Foundations
“It concerns a supposed night attack by
loyalist Greeks on Xerxes’s camp in the very middle of the Thermopylae campaign
with the aim of assassinating the Great King”.
Herodotus
So much concerning the truth of the supposed
Battle of Thermopylae rests with Herodotus, whose Histories are thought to come closest of all to being a primary
source for the account. “He and [the poet] Simonides” are, according to
professor Paul Cartledge, the “principal contemporary Greek written source for
Thermopylae”. And, on p. 224: “… Herodotus in my view remains as good as it
gets: we either write a history of Thermopylae with him, or we do not write one
at all”.
One problem with this is that Herodotus was
known as (alongside his more favourable epithet, the “Father of History”) - as
professor Cartledge has also noted - the “Father of Lies”.
Where does Greek history actually begin?
The history of Philosophy - of whose origins
the Greeks are typically credited - begins with shadowy ‘Ionian Greeks’, such
as Thales of Miletus, whose real substance I believe resides in the very wise
Joseph of Egypt (the genius Imhotep of Egypt’s Third Dynasty).
Likewise the legendary Pythagoras.
For an overview of all of this, see my:
Re-Orienting to Zion the History of Ancient Philosophy
Already I have de-Grecised such supposedly
historical characters as Solon the Athenian statesman (who is but a Greek
version of the Israelite King Solomon, and whose ‘laws’ appear to have been
borrowed, at least in part, from the Jew, Nehemiah); Thales; Pythagoras;
Empedocles, an apparent re-incarnation of Moses (Freud).
And I have shown that Greek classics such as The Iliad and the Odyssey were heavily
dependent upon earlier Hebrew literature.
The ancient
biblical scholar, Saint Jerome (c. 400 AD), had already noted, according to
Orthodox pastor, Patrick H. Reardon (The Wide World of Tobit. Apocrypha’s
Tobit and Literary Tradition), the resemblance of Tobit to Homer’s The
Odyssey. The example that pastor Reardon gives, though, so typical of the
biblical commentator’s tendency to infer pagan influence upon Hebrew literature,
whilst demonstrating a definite similarity between Tobit and the Greek
literature, imagines the author of Tobit to have appropriated a colourful
episode from The Odyssey and inserted it into Tobit 11:9:
“The resemblance of Tobit to the Odyssey in
particular was not lost on that great student of literature, Jerome, as is
evident in a single detail of his Latin translation of Tobit in the Vulgate.
Intrigued by the literary merit of Tobit, but rejecting its canonicity, the
jocose and sometimes prankish Jerome felt free to insert into his version an
item straight out of the Odyssey—namely, the wagging of the dog’s tail on
arriving home with Tobias in 11:9—Tunc praecucurrit canis, qui simul fuerat in
via, et quasi nuntius adveniens blandimento suae caudae gaudebat—“Then the dog,
which had been with them in the way, ran before, and coming as if it had
brought the news, showed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail.”16 No
other ancient version of Tobit mentions either the tail or the wagging, but
Jerome, ever the classicist, was confident his readers would remember the
faithful but feeble old hound Argus, as the final act of his life, greeting the
return of Odysseus to the home of his father: “he endeavored to wag his tail”
(Odyssey 17.302). And to think that we owe this delightful gem to Jerome’s
rejection of Tobit’s canonicity!”
Reardon, continuing his theme of the dependence of Tobit, in part, upon, as
he calls it here, “pagan themes”, finds further commonality with Greek
literature, especially Antigone:
“Furthermore, some readers have found in Tobit similarities to still other
pagan themes, such as the legend of Admetus. …. More convincing, I believe,
however, are points of contact with classical Greek theater. Martin Luther
observed similarities between Tobit and Greek comedy … but one is even more
impressed by resemblances that the Book of Tobit bears to a work of Greek
tragedy—the Antigone of Sophocles. In both stories the moral stature of the
heroes is chiefly exemplified in their bravely burying the dead in the face of
official prohibition and at the risk of official punishment. In both cases a
venerable moral tradition is maintained against a political tyranny destructive
of piety. That same Greek drama, moreover, provides a further parallel to the
blindness of Tobit in the character of blind Teiresias, himself also a man of
an inner moral vision important to the theme of the play”.
In light of all this - and what I have
given above is very far from being exhaustive - and appreciating that those
conventionally labelled as ‘Ionian Greeks’ may actually have been, in their
origins, Hebrew biblical characters,
then just how real is Herodotus of Ionian Greece (Halicarnassus)?
And, can we be sure that the Histories attributed to him have been
(anywhere nearly) properly dated?
His name, Herod-, with a Greek ending
(-otus), may actually bespeak a non-Greek ethnicity, and, indeed, a later
period of time (say, closer to a Dionysius of Halicarnassus, C1st
BC).
Xerxes
But, whatever may be the case with Herodotus,
his classical version of “Xerxes” seems to have been based very heavily upon
the Assyrian Great King, Sennacherib - another Book of Judith connection, given
my view that Sennacherib was the actual Assyrian ruler of Nineveh named
“Nebuchadnezzar” in Judith. E.g. 1:1: “In the twelfth year of the reign of
Nebuchadnez′zar, who ruled over the Assyrians in the great city of Nin′eveh …”.
Emmet Sweeney has marvellously shown this in the following comparisons (The Ramessides, Medes and Persians):
SENNACHERIB
|
XERXES
|
Made war on Egypt in his third
year, and fought a bitter war against the Greeks shortly thereafter.
|
Made war on Egypt in his second
year, and fought a bitter war against the Greeks shortly thereafter.
|
Suppressed two major Babylonian
rebellions. The first, in his second year, was led by Bel-Shimanni. The
second, years later, was led by Shamash-eriba.
|
Suppressed two major Babylonian
rebellions. The first, in his third year, was led by Bel-ibni. The second,
years later, was led by Mushezib-Marduk.
|
The Babylonians were well-treated
after the first rebellion, but savagely repressed after the second, when they
captured and murdered Sennacherib’s viceroy, his own brother
Ashur-nadin-shum.
|
The Babylonians were well-treated
after the first rebellion, but savagely repressed after the second, when they
captured and murdered Xerxes’ satrap.
|
After the second rebellion,
Sennacherib massacred the inhabitants, razed the city walls and temples, and
carried off the golden stature of Marduk. Thereafter the Babylonian gods were
suppressed in favour of Ashur, who was made the supreme deity.
|
After the second rebellion, Xerxes
massacred the inhabitants, razed the city walls and temples, and carried off
the golden stature of Bel-Marduk. Thereafter the Babylonian gods were
suppressed in favour of Ahura-Mazda, who was made the supreme deity.
|
Though I do not deny for a moment that Persia
had a King Xerxes, a shortened version of Artaxerxes, the “Xerxes” of the
Greeks is, however, purely fictitious.
Diodorus of Sicily, C1st BC (presuming he did
actually write later than Herodotus), will contribute to the fiction by
including a Judith element (not mentioned by Herodotus) to the tale of “Xerxes”
at Thermopylae. It is, in my opinion, just a re-run version of the
assassination of “Holofernes”, admixed, perhaps, with the regicide of
Sennacherib.
Professor Cartledge has written of it (op. cit., p. 232): “It concerns a supposed night attack by
loyalist Greeks on Xerxes’s camp in the very middle of the Thermopylae campaign
with the aim of assassinating the Great King”.
Based on the Book of Judith Drama
Morton Scott Enslin has intuitively referred to the
Book of Judith’s Bethulia incident as the “Judean Thermopylae” (The Book of Judith: Greek Text with an English Translation, p. 80).
Comparisons between Book of
Judith
and the Battle of
Thermopylae
In
both dramas we are introduced to a Great King ruling in the East, who
determines to conquer the West with a massive army.
Scholars
have wondered about the incredible size of the Persian army.
“Almost
all are agreed that Herodotus’ figure of 2,100,000, exclusive of followers, for
the army (Bk VII. 184-85) is impossible” wrote F. Maurice in 1930 (“The Size of the Army of Xerxes in the Invasion of Greece 480 B. C.”, JHS, Vol. 50, Part 2 (1930), p. 211).
Sennacherib’s Assyrian army of 185,000 was likely - discounting, as an
unrealistic translation, the one million-strong army of “Zerah the Ethiopian” -
the largest army ever to that time (and possibly even much later) to have been
assembled. Apart from Kings, Chronicles and Isaiah, the same figure is referred
to again in Maccabees, and in Herodotus’ Histories.
The figure is not unrealistic for the neo-Assyrians, given that King
Shalmaneser III is known to have fielded an army of 120,000 men. (Fragments of the royal annals, from
Calah, 3. lines 99–102: “In my fourteenth year, I mustered the people of the whole wide
land, in countless numbers. I crossed the Euphrates at its flood with 120,000
of my soldiers”).
Invading from the East, the armies must of necessity approach, now Greece,
now Judah, from the North.
Having
successfully conquered everything in their path so far, the victors find that
those peoples yet unconquered will speedily hand themselves over to their more
powerful assailants. This process is known as ‘Medizing’ in the classical
literature.
In
the Book of Judith, the all-conquering commander-in-chief, “Holofernes”, will
receive as allies those who had formerly been his foes. And these, like the
treacherous ones in the Thermopylae drama, will prove to be a thorn in the
flesh of the few who have determined to resist the foreign onslaught.
The
armies arrive at a narrow pass, with defenders blocking their way.
Thermopylae
in the Herodotean account – Bethulia (best identified as Shechem) in the
biblical Book of Judith.
Dethroned
Spartan King Demaratus, now an exile in Persia, will answer all of Xerxes’s
questions about the Greek opposition, promising the King “to tell
the whole truth—the kind of truth that you will not be able to prove false at a
later date”.
Most
similarly Achior, probably born in
Assyrian exile, will advise “Holofernes” about the Israelites, promising his
superior (Judith 5:5): ‘I will tell you the
truth about these people who live in the mountains near your camp. I will not
lie to you’.
A
traitorous Greek, Ephialtes, will betray his country by telling the Persians of another pass around the mountains.
Likewise,
the turncoat local Edomites and Moabites will advise the Assyrians of a
strategy better than the one that they had been intending.
Conclusion
The
so-called Battle of Thermopylae never happened.
No
band of 300 pederastic homosexuals ever held the line against a massive Persian
army.
The
classical Xerxes is a complete fiction.
“Thermopylae:
the Battle that changed the word”, in fact “changed” nothing.
Now,
the Battle of the Valley of Salem at “Bethulia” (Shechem), on the other hand,
changed a heck of a lot. For (Judith 16:25):
“As long as Judith
lived, and for many years after her death,
no one dared to
threaten the people of Israel”.
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