Sunday, May 4, 2025

Hebrew influences permeated the lore of the ancient pagans

by Damien F. Mackey “The name of Aqht, the son of Danel, returns as Qehat, the grandfather of Moses. The name of the locality Mrrt, where Aqht was killed, figures in the gentilic form Merarî as the brother of Qehat in the Levite genealogy. The name of P?t, the daughter of Danel and the devoted sister of Aqht, is met in the Moses story as Pû'ã, a midwife who saved the life of the new-born Moses”. Michael Astour Law and Government Moses The great Lawgiver in the Bible, and hence in Hebrew history, was Moses, substantially the author of the Torah (Law). But the history books tell us that the Torah was probably dependent upon the law code issued by the Babylonian king, Hammurabi (dated to the first half of the 18th BC). I shall discuss this further on. Also, the famous Spartan lawgiver, Lycurgus, seems to have been based upon Moses: Moses and Lycurgus (4) Moses and Lycurgus For Egyptian identifications of Moses, see e. g. my article: Realisation of who was the Egyptianised Moses (4) Realisation of who was the Egyptianised Moses The Egyptians may have corrupted the legend of the baby Moses in the bulrushes so that now it became the goddess Isis who drew the baby Horus from the Nile and had him suckled by Hathor (the goddess in the form of a cow – the Egyptian personification of wisdom). In the original story, of course, baby Moses was drawn from the water by an Egyptian princess, not a goddess, and was weaned by Moses’ own mother (Exodus 2:5-9). But could both the account of the rescue of the baby Moses in the Book of Exodus, and the Egyptian version of it, be actually based upon a Mesopotamian original, as the textbooks say; based upon the story of king Sargon of Akkad in Mesopotamia? Sargon tells, “in terms reminiscent of Moses, Krishna and other great men”, that [as quoted by G. Roux, Ancient Iraq, Penguin Books, 1964, p. 152]: .… My changeling mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose not over me. The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me as his son and reared me …. Given that Sargon is conventionally dated to the C24th BC, and Moses about a millennium later, it would seem inevitable that the Hebrew version, and the Egyptian one, must be imitations of the Mesopotamian one. Such is what the ‘history’ books say, at least. The fact is, however, that the extant Sargon legend is very late (C7th BC); though thought to have been based upon an earlier Mesopotamian original. Dean Hickman has re-dated king Hammurabi of Babylon to the time of kings Solomon and David (mid-C10th BC), re-identifying Hammurabi’s older contemporary, Shamsi-Adad I, as king David’s Syrian foe, Hadadazer (2 Samuel 10:16) (“The Dating of Hammurabi”, Proceedings of the Third Seminar of Catastrophism and Ancient History, Uni. Of Toronto, 1985, ed. M. Luckerman, pp. 13-28). For more on this, see e. g. my articles: Hammurabi and Zimri-Lim as Contemporaries of Solomon (4) Hammurabi and Zimri-Lim as Contemporaries of Solomon and: (4) Hammurabi and Zimri-Lim as contemporaries of Solomon. Part Two (b): Zimri-Lim's Palace and the four rivers? According to this new scenario, Hammurabi could not possibly have influenced Moses. Greek and Levant 'Moses-like Myths' Michael Astour believes that Moses, a hero of the Hebrew scriptures, shares "some cognate features" with Danaos (or Danaus), hero of Greek legend. He gives his parallels as follows (Hellenosemitica, p. 99): Moses grows up at the court of the Egyptian king as a member of the royal family, and subsequently flees from Egypt after having slain an Egyptian - as Danaos, a member of the Egyptian ruling house, flees from the same country after the slaying of the Aigyptiads which he had arranged. The same number of generations separates Moses from Leah the "wild cow" and Danaos from the cow Io. Mackey’s Comment: The above parallel might even account for how the Greeks managed to confuse the land of Ionia (Io) with the land of Israel in the case of the earliest philosophers. Astour continues (pp. 99-100): Still more characteristic is that both Moses and Danaos find and create springs in a waterless region; the story of how Poseidon, on the request of the Danaide Amymona, struck out with his trident springs from the Lerna rock, particularly resembles Moses producing a spring from the rock by the stroke of his staff. A ‘cow’ features also in the legend of Cadmus, son of Agenor, king of Tyre upon the disappearance of his sister Europa, who was sent by his father together with his brothers Cilix and Phoenix to seek her with instructions not to return without her. Seeking the advice of the oracle at Delphi, Cadmus was told to settle at the point where a cow, which he would meet leaving the temple, would lie down. The cow led him to the site of Thebes (remember the two cities by that name). There he built the citadel of Cadmeia. Cadmus married Harmonia, the daughter of Ares, god of war, and Aphrodite and, according to the legend, was the founder of the House of Oedipus. Astour believes that "even more similar features" may be discovered if one links these accounts to the Ugaritic (Levantine-Canaanite) poem of Danel, which he had previously identified as "the prototype of the Danaos myth" (p. 100): The name of Aqht, the son of Danel, returns as Qehat, the grandfather of Moses. The name of the locality Mrrt, where Aqht was killed, figures in the gentilic form Merarî as the brother of Qehat in the Levite genealogy. The name of P?t, the daughter of Danel and the devoted sister of Aqht, is met in the Moses story as Pû'ã, a midwife who saved the life of the new-born Moses. The very name of Moses, in the feminine form Mšt, is, in the Ugaritic poem, the first half of Danel's wife's name, while the second half of her name, Dnty, corresponds to the name of Levi's sister Dinah. Michael Astour had already explained how the biblical story of the Rape of Dinah (Genesis 34) was "analogous to the myth of the bloody wedding of her namesakes, the Danaides". He continues on here with his fascinating Greco-Israelite parallels: Dân, the root of the names Dnel, Dnty (and also Dinah and Danaos), was the name of a tribe whose priests claimed to descend directly from Moses (Jud. 18:30); and compare the serpent emblem of the tribe of Dan with the serpent staff of Moses and the bronze serpent he erected. …Under the same name - Danaë - another Argive heroine of the Danaid stock is thrown into the sea in a chest with her new-born son - as Moses in his ark (tébã) - and lands on the serpent-island of Seriphos (Heb. šãrâph, applied i.a. to the bronze serpent made by Moses). Moses, like Danel, is a healer, a prophet, a miracle-worker - cf. Danel's staff (mt) which he extends while pronouncing curses against towns and localities, quite like Moses in Egypt; and especially, like Danel, he is a judge…. Roman 'Moses-like Myth' The Romans further corrupted the story of the infant Moses, following on probably from the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Levantines and Greeks. I refer to the account of Romulus (originally Rhomus) and Remus, thought to have founded the city of Rome in 753 BC. Both the founders and the date are quite mythical. Did the Romans take an Egyptian name for Moses, such as Musare, and turn it into Rhomus and Remus (MUSA-RE = RE-MUS), with the formerly one child (Moses) now being doubled into two babies (twins)? According to this legend, the twins were put into a basket by some kind servants and floated in the Tiber River, from which they were eventually rescued by a she-wolf. Thus the Romans more pragmatically opted for a she-wolf as the suckler instead of a cow goddess, or a lion goddess, Sekhmet (the fierce alter ego of Hathor). The Romans may have taken yet another slice from the Pentateuch when they had the founder of the city of Rome, Romulus, involved in a fratricide (killing Remus); just as Cain, the founder of the world's first city, had killed his own brother, Abel (cf. Genesis 4:8 and 4:17). Mohammed: Arabian `Moses-like Myths' ... An Islamic lecturer, Ahmed Deedat ["What the Bible Says About Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) the Prophet of Islam" (www.islamworld.net/Muhammad.in.Bible.html)], told of an interview he once had with a dominee of the Dutch Reformed Church in Transvaal, van Heerden, on the question: "What does the Bible say about Muhummed?" Deedat had in mind the Holy Qur'an verse 46:10, according to which "a witness among the children of Israel bore witness of one like him…". This was, in turn, a reference to Deuteronomy 18:18's "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him." The Moslems, of course, interpret the "one like him [i.e. Moses]" as being Mohammed himself. Faced with the dominee's emphatic response that the Bible has "nothing" to say about Mohammed - and that the Deuteronomic prophecy ultimately pertained to Jesus Christ, as did "thousands" of other prophecies - Deedat set out to prove him wrong. On the deft apologetical ploy used here, see my article: Zakir Naik’s apologetical tactic meant to embarrass Christians (4) Zakir Naik's apologetical tactic meant to embarrass Christians For some of my own views on the Prophet Mohammed, see my article: Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History (4) Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History Some Conclusions regarding Mohammed (c. 570-632 AD, conventional dating) Whilst Mohammed supposedly lived much later than Moses, there nevertheless do seem to be Arabic borrowings of the Moses story itself (and even appropriations of certain very specific aspects of the life of Jesus, as we shall read later) in the legends about Mohammed, who especially resembles Moses in: (i) the latter's visit to Mount Horeb with its cave atop, its Burning Bush, and angel (Exodus 3:1-2), possibly equating to Mohammed's "Mountain of Light" (Jabal-an-Nur), and 'cave of research' (`Ghar-i-Hira'), and angel Gabriel; (ii) at the very same age of forty (Acts 7:23-29), and (iii) there receiving a divine revelation, leading to his (iv) becoming a prophet of God and a Lawgiver. Mohammed as a Lawgiver is (like the Spartan Lycurgus) a direct pinch, I believe, from the Hebrew Pentateuch, and also from the era of Jeremiah. Consider the following by M. O'Hair ("Mohammed", A text of American Atheist Radio Series program No. 65, first broadcast on August 25, 1969: www.atheists.org/Islam.Mohammed.html "Now the Kaaba or Holy Stone at Mecca was the scene of an annual pilgrimage, and during this pilgrimage in 621 Mohammed was able to get six persons from Medina to bind themselves to him. They did so by taking the following oath. Not consider anyone equal to Allah; Not to steal; Not to be unchaste; Not to kill their children; Not willfully to calumniate". This is simply the Mosaïc Decalogue, with the following Islamic addition: "To obey the prophet's orders in equitable matters. In return Mohammed assured these six novitiates of paradise. The place where these first vows were taken is now called the first Akaba". "The mission of Mohammed", perfectly reminiscent of that of Moses, and later of Nehemiah, was "to restore the worship of the One True God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, as taught by Prophet Ibrahim [Abraham] and all Prophets of God, and complete the laws of moral, ethical, legal, and social conduct and all other matters of significance for the humanity at large." The above-mentioned Burning Bush incident occurred whilst Moses (a) was living in exile (Exodus 2:15) (b) amongst the Midianite tribe of Jethro, near the Paran desert. (c) Moses had married Jethro's daughter, Zipporah (v. 21). Likewise Mohammed: (a) experienced exile; (b) to Medina, a name which may easily have become confused with the similar sounding, Midian, and (c) he had only the one wife at the time, Khadija. Also (d) Moses, like Mohammed, was terrified by what God had commanded of him, protesting that he was "slow of speech and slow of tongue" (Exodus 4:10). To which God replied: "Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be your mouth and teach you what you are to speak' (vv. 11-12). Now this episode, seemingly coupled with Moses’s call, has come distorted into the Koran as Mohammed's being terrified by what God was asking of him, protesting that he was not learned. To which God supposedly replied that he had 'created man from a clot of congealed blood, and had taught man the use of the pen, and that which he knew not, and that man does not speak ought of his own desire but by inspiration sent down to him'. Ironically, whilst Moses the writer complained about his lack of verbal eloquence, Mohammed, 'unlettered and unlearned', who therefore could not write, is supposed to have been told that God taught man to use the pen (?). But Mohammed apparently never learned to write, because he is considered only to have spoken God's utterances. Though his words, like those of Moses (who, however, did write, e.g. Exodus 34:27), were written down in various formats by his secretary, Zaid (roughly equating to the biblical Joshua, a writer, Joshua 8:32, or to Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch). This is generally how the Koran is said to have arisen. But Mohammed also resembles Moses in his childhood (and Tobit also) in the fact that, after his infancy, he was raised by a foster-parent (Exodus 2:10). And there is the inevitable weaning legend (Zahoor, A. and Haq, Z., "Biography of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)", http://cyberistan.org/islamic/muhammad.html 1998.): "All biographers state that the infant prophet sucked only one breast of his foster-mother, leaving the other for the sustenance of his foster-brother". There is even a kind of Islamic version of the Exodus. Compare the following account of the Qoreish persecution and subsequent pursuit of the fleeing Moslems with the persecution and later pursuit of the fleeing Israelites by Pharaoh (Exodus 1 and 4:5-7) [O’Hair, op. cit., ibid.]: When the persecution became unbearable for most Muslims, the Prophet advised them in the fifth year of his mission (615 CE) to emigrate to Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia) where Ashabah (Negus, a Christian) was the ruler. Eighty people, not counting the small children, emigrated in small groups to avoid detection. No sooner had they left the Arabian coastline [substitute Egyptian borders], the leaders of Quraish discovered their flight. They decided to not leave these Muslims in peace, and immediately sent two of their envoys to Negus to bring all of them back. The Koran of Islam is basically just the Arabic version of the Hebrew Bible with all of its same famous patriarchs and leading characters. That is apparent from what the Moslems themselves admit. For example [ibid.]: The Qur'an also mentions four previously revealed Scriptures: Suhoof (Pages) of Ibrahim (Abraham), Taurat ('Torah') as revealed to Prophet Moses, Zuboor ('Psalms') as revealed to Prophet David, and Injeel ('Evangel') as revealed to Prophet Jesus (pbuh). Islam requires belief in all prophets and revealed scriptures (original, non-corrupted) as part of the Articles of Faith. On this, see e.g. my article: Durie’s verdict on Prophet Mohammed (4) Durie's verdict on Prophet Mohammed Mohammed is now for Islam the last and greatest of the prophets. Thus, "in the Al-Israa, Gabriel (as) took the Prophet from the sacred Mosque near Ka'bah to the furthest (al-Aqsa) mosque in Jerusalem in a very short time in the latter part of a night. Here, Prophet Muhammad met with previous Prophets (Abraham, Moses, Jesus and others) and he led them in prayer" [ibid.]. Thus Mohammed supposedly led Jesus in prayer. The reputation of Ibn Ishaq (ca 704-767), a main authority on the life and times of the Prophet varied considerably among the early Moslem critics: some found him very sound, while others regarded him as a liar in relation to Hadith (Mohammed's sayings and deeds). His Sira is not extant in its original form, but is present in two recensions done in 833 and 814-15, and these texts vary from one another. Fourteen others have recorded his lectures, but their versions differ [ibid.]: It was the storytellers who created the tradition: the sound historical traditions to which they are supposed to have added their fables simply did not exist. . . . Nobody remembered anything to the contrary either. . . . There was no continuous transmission. Ibn Ishaq, al-Waqidi, and others were cut off from the past: like the modern scholar, they could not get behind their sources.... Finally, it has to be realized that the tradition as a whole, not just parts of it as some have thought, is tendentious, and that that tendentiousness arises from allegiance to Islam itself. Mohammed, a composite figure, seems to have likenesses even to pre-Mosaïc patriarchs, and to Jesus in the New Testament. Thus Mohammed, at Badr, successfully led a force of 300+ men (the number varies from 300-318) against an enemy far superior in number, as did Abraham (Genesis 14:14); and, like Jacob (Genesis 30, 31), he used a ruse to get a wife (in Jacob's case, wives). And like Jesus, the greatest of all God's prophets, Mohammed is said to have ascended into heaven from Jerusalem. Modern Myths about Moses From the above it can now be seen that it was not only the Greeks and Romans who have been guilty of appropriation into their own folklore of famous figures of Israel. Even the Moslems have done it and are still doing it. A modern-day Islamic author from Cairo, Ahmed Osman, has - in line with psychiatrist Sigmund Freud's view that Moses was actually an Egyptian, whose Yahwism was derived from pharaoh Akhnaton's supposed monotheism [Out of Egypt. The Roots of Christianity Revealed (Century, 1998)] - identified all the major biblical Israelites, from the patriarch Joseph to the Holy Family of Nazareth, as Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian characters. Thus Joseph = Yuya; Moses = Akhnaton; David = Thutmose III; Solomon = Amenhotep III; Jesus = Tutankhamun; St. Joseph = Ay; Mary = Nefertiti. This is mass appropriation! Not to mention chronological madness! I was asked by Dr. Norman Simms of the University of Waikato (N.Z.) to write a critique of Osman's book, a copy of which he had posted to me. This was a rather easy task as the book leaves itself wide open to criticism. Anyway, the result of Dr. Simms' request was my article, "Osman's 'Osmosis' of Moses" article [The Glozel Newsletter, 5:1 (ns) 1999 (Hamilton, N.Z), pp. 1-17], in which I argued that, because Osman is using the faulty textbook history of Egypt, he is always obliged to give the chronological precedence to Egypt, when the influence has actually come from Israel over to Egypt. [This article, modified, can now be read at: Osman’s ‘Osmosis’ of Moses. Part One: The Chosen People (4) Osman's 'Osmosis' of Moses. Part One: The Chosen People and: Osman’s ‘Osmosis’ of Moses. Part II: Christ the King (4) Osman's 'Osmosis' of Moses. Part Two: Christ The King The way that Egyptian chronology is structured at present - thanks largely to Dr. Eduard Meyer's now approximately one century-old Ägyptische Chronologie (Philosophische und historische Abhandlungen der Königlich preussischen Akad. der Wissenschaften, Berlin, Akad. der Wiss., 1904).) could easily give rise to Osman's precedence in favour of Egypt view (though this is no excuse for Osman's own chronological mish-mash). One finds, for example, in pharaoh Hatshepsut's inscriptions such similarities to king David's Psalms that it is only natural to think that she, the woman-pharaoh - dated to the C15th BC, 500 years earlier than David - must have influenced the great king of Israel. Or that pharaoh Akhnaton's Hymn to the Sun, so like David's Psalm 104, had inspired David many centuries later. Only a proper revision of ancient Egyptian history brings forth the right perspective, and shows that the Israelites actually had the chronological precedence in these as in many other cases. It gets worse from a conventional point of view. The 'doyen of Israeli archaeologists', Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, frequently interviewed by Beirut hostage victim John McCarthy on the provocative TV program “It Ain't Necessarily So”, has, together with his colleagues, virtually written ancient Israel right off the historical map, along with all of its major biblical characters. This horrible mess is an inevitable consequence of the faulty Sothic chronology with which these archaeologists seem to be mesmerized. With friends like Finkelstein and co., why would Israel need any enemies! The Lawgiver Solon Whilst the great Lawgiver for the Hebrews was Moses, and for the Babylonians, Hammurabi, and for the Moslems, supposedly, Mohammed, the Lawgiver in Greek folklore was Solon of Athens, the wisest of the wise, greatest of the Seven Sages. Though Solon is estimated to have lived in the C6th BC, his name and many of his activities are so close to king Solomon's (supposedly 4 centuries earlier) that we need once again to question whether the Greeks may have been involved in appropriation. And, if so, how did this come about? It may in some cases simply be a memory thing, just as according to Plato's Timaeus one of the very aged Egyptian priests supposedly told Solon (Plato's Timaeus, trans. B. Jowett, The Liberal Arts Press, NY, 1949), 6 (22)) and /or Desmond Lee's translation, Penguin Classics, p. 34]: "O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes [Greeks] are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. …" Perhaps what the author of the Timaeus really needed to have put into the mouth of the aged Egyptian priest was that the Greeks had largely forgotten who Solomon was, and had created their own fictional character, "Solon", from their vague recall of the great king Solomon who "excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom" (1 Kings 10:23). Solon resembles Solomon especially in roughly the last decade of the latter's reign, when Solomon, turning away from Yahwism, became fully involved with his mercantile ventures, his fleet, travel, and building temples for his foreign wives, especially in Egypt (10:26-29; 11:1-8). Now, it is to be expected that the pagan Greeks would remember this more 'rationalist' aspect of Solomon (as Solon) rather than his wisdom-infused, philosophical, earlier years when he was a devout Jew and servant of Yahweh (4:29-34). And, Jewish, Solon apparently was! Edwin Yamauchi has studied the laws of Solon in depth and found them to be quite Jewish in nature, most reminiscent of the laws of Nehemiah (c. 450 BC) ("Two reformers compared: Solon of Athens and Nehemiah of Jerusalem," Bible world. New York: KTAV, 1980. pp. 269-292). That date of 450 BC may perhaps be some sort of clue as to approximately when the Greeks first began to create their fictional Solon. Solomon was, as I have argued in my "Solomon and Sheba" article ("Solomon and Sheba", SIS C and C Review, 1997:1, pp. 4-15), the most influential Senenmut of Egyptian history, Hatshepsut's mentor; whilst Hatshepsut herself was the biblical Queen [of] Sheba. This article can now be read at: Solomon and Sheba http://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba I have also identified Hatshepsut/Sheba as the biblical Abishag, who comforted the aged David (I Kings 1-4), and the beautiful virgin daughter of David, Tamar. See e.g. my article: The vicissitudinous life of Solomon's pulchritudinous wife (4) The vicissitudinous life of Solomon's pulchritudinous wife Professor Henry Breasted had made a point relevant to my theme of Greek appropriation - and in connection too with the Solomonic era (revised). Hatshepsut's marvellous temple structure at Deir el-Bahri, he said, was "a sure witness to the fact that the Egyptians had developed architectural styles for which the Greeks later would be credited as the originators" (A History of Egypt, 2nd ed., NY (Scribner, 1924), p. 274). One need not necessarily perhaps always accuse the Greeks of a malicious corruption of earlier traditions, but perhaps rather of a 'collective amnaesia', to use a Velikovskian term; the sort of forgetfulness by the Greek nation as alluded to in Plato's Timaeus. There is also to be considered that the Levantines and/or Jews had migrated to Greece. In 1 Maccabees 12:21 [Areios king of the Spartans, to Onias the high priest, greetings: "A document has been found stating that the Spartans and the Jews are brothers; both nations descended from Abraham." By this late stage the earlier histories would already have been well and truly corrupted. The Abrahamic emigrants would naturally have carried their folklore - not to mention their architectural expertise - to the Greek archipelago where it would inevitably have undergone local adaptation. The Jewish philosopher, Aristobulus, was one who claimed that the Greeks had borrowed heavily from the Hebrew Torah. Thus we read an article by E. S. Gruen (2016), “Jewish Perspectives on Greek Culture and Ethnicity: file:///C:/Users/Damien%20Mackey/Downloads/10.1515_9783110375558-011.pdf [Pp. 181-185. Note: Whereas the author himself, E. S. Gruen, believes that the Jews greatly manipulated the Greek texts to make these conform to their own point of view – I believe, on the other hand, that the Greeks appropriated, but distorted, the original Hebrew writings]: Aristobulus, a man of wide philosophical and literary interests … wrote an extensive work, evidently a form of commentary on the Torah, at an uncertain date in the Hellenistic period. …. Only a meager portion of that work now survives, but enough to indicate a direction and objective: Aristobulus, among other things, sought to establish the Bible as foundation for much of the Greek intellectual and artistic achievement. Moses, for Aristobulus as for Eupolemus and Artapanus, emerges as a culture hero, precursor and inspiration for Hellenic philosophical and poetic traditions. But Aristobulus’ Moses, unlike the figure concocted by Eupolemus and Artapanus, does not transmit the alphabet, interpret hieroglyphics, or invent technology. His accomplishment is the Torah, the Israelite law code. And from that creation, so Aristobulus imagines, a host of Hellenic attainments drew their impetus. Foremost among Greek philosophers, Plato was a devoted reader of the Scriptures, poring over every detail, and faithfully followed its precepts. …. And not only he. A century and a half earlier, Pythagoras borrowed much from the books of Moses and inserted it into his own teachings. …. …. Other philosophers, too, came under the sway of the Torah. So at least Aristobulus surmised. The “divine voice” to which Socrates paid homage owed its origin to the words of Moses. …. And Aristobulus made a still broader generalization. He found concurrence among all philosophers in the need to maintain reverent attitudes toward God, a doctrine best expressed, of course, in the Hebrew Scriptures which preceded (and presumably determined) the Greek precepts. Indeed, all of Jewish law was constructed so as to underscore piety, justice, selfcontrol and the other qualities that represent true virtues—i.e., the very qualities subsequently embraced and propagated by the Greeks. …. Aristobulus thereby brought the whole tradition of Greek philosophizing under the Jewish umbrella. That was just a part of the project. Aristobulus not only traced philosophic precepts to the Torah. He found its echoes in Greek poetry from earliest times to his own day. The Sabbath, for instance, a vital part of Jewish tradition stemming from Genesis, was reckoned by Aristobulus as a preeminent principle widely adopted and signaled by the mystical quality ascribed to the number seven. …. And he discovered proof in the verses of Homer and Hesiod. …. Aristobulus … interpreted a Hesiodic reference to the seventh day of the month as the seventh day of the week. And he (or his source) emended a line of Homer from the “fourth day” to the “seventh day.” …. The creative Aristobulus also enlisted in his cause poets who worked in the distant mists of antiquity, namely the mythical singers Linus and Orpheus. Linus, an elusive figure variously identified as the son of Apollo or the music master of Heracles, conveniently left verses that celebrated the number seven as representing perfection itself, associating it with the heavenly bodies, with an auspicious day of birth, and as the day when all is made complete. …. The connection with the biblical origin of the Sabbath is strikingly close …. Aristobulus summoned up still greater inventiveness in adapting or improvising a wholesale monotheistic poem assigned to Orpheus himself. The composition delivers sage advice from the mythical singer to his son or pupil Musaeus (here in proper sequence of generations), counseling him to adhere to the divine word and describing God as complete in himself while completing all things, the sole divinity with no rivals, hidden to the human eye but accessible to the mind, a source of good and not evil, seated on a golden throne in heaven, commanding the earth, its oceans and mountains, and in control of all. …. The poem, whether or not it derives from Aristobulus’ pen, belongs to the realm of Hellenistic Judaism. It represents a Jewish commandeering of Orpheus, emblematic of Greek poetic art, into the ranks of those proclaiming the message of biblical monotheism. Aristobulus did not confine himself to legendary or distant poets. He made bold to interpret contemporary verses in ways suitable to his ends. One sample survives. Aristobulus quoted from the astronomical poem, the Phaenomena, of the Hellenistic writer Aratus of Soli. Its opening lines proved serviceable. By substituting “God” for “Zeus,” Aristobulus turned Aratus’ invocation into a hymn for the Jewish deity. …. The campaign to convert Hellenic writings into footnotes on the Torah was in full swing. In that endeavor Aristobulus had much company. Resourceful Jewish writers searched through the scripts of Attic dramatists, both tragic and comic, for passages whose content suggested acquaintance with Hebrew texts or ideas. …. Verses with a strikingly Jewish flavor were ascribed to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and others to the comic playwrights Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon, again a combination of classical and Hellenistic authors. On Aeschylus, see my series: Ezekiel and Aeschylus. Part One: Aeschylus a Greek appropriation of Ezekiel? beginning with: (4) Ezekiel and Aeschylus. Part One: Aeschylus a Greek appropriation of Ezekiel? The fragments are preserved only in Church Fathers and the names of transmitters are lost to us. But the milieu of Jewish-Hellenistic intellectuals is unmistakable. …. Verses from Aeschylus emphasized the majesty of God, his omnipotence and omnipresence, the terror he can wreak, and his resistance to representation or understanding in human terms. …. Sophocles insisted upon the oneness of the Lord who fashioned heaven and earth, the waters and the winds; he railed against idolatry; he supplied an eschatological vision to encourage the just and frighten the wicked; and he spoke of Zeus’ disguises and philandering—doubtless to contrast delusive myths with authentic divinity. …. Euripides, too, could serve the purpose. Researchers found lines affirming that God’s presence cannot be contained within structures created by mortals and that he sees all, but is himself invisible. …. Attribution of comparable verses to comic poets is more confused in the tradition, as Christian sources provide conflicting notices on which dramatist said what. But the recorded writers, Menander, Philemon, and Diphilus, supplied usefully manipulable material. One or another spoke of an all-seeing divinity who will deliver vengeance upon the unjust and wicked, who lives forever as Lord of all, who apportions justice according to deserts, who scorns offerings and votives but exalts the righteous at heart. ….

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Dsemschid (Jamshid), a Babel era hero or Iranian imitation of King Solomon?

by Damien F. Mackey “In this profile Solomon resembles another mythic king whose rise and fall is told in another book in Meḥmed's library at Topkapı: Jamshīd, the culture hero of Abū’l-Qāsim Firdawsī's Iranian epic Shāhnāma”. Carlos Grenier The first time that I ever heard of this character with the impossible name of Dsemschid was in reading stigmatist Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich’s supposed visions of the Old Testament. I had never heard of Dsemschid, who does not appear in either the Bible, or in any history of which I am aware. Who was he? Below one will find Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich’s detailed account of Dsemschid, “one of the grandsons of Thubal”, an antediluvian patriarch. Just yesterday (22nd April, 2025), I came across Dsemschid’s name in the variant form of Jamshid, a figure from Iranian mythology, who, some think, was King Solomon. Thus Carlos Grenier writes in his article: Solomon, his temple, and Ottoman imperial anxieties Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2022 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bulletin-of-the-school-of-oriental-and-african-studies/article/solomon-his-temple-and-ottoman-imperial-anxieties/6647CBD2FB994F8E80D29594F088548B Abstract Several works focusing on the complex figure of Solomon appeared between 1450 and 1580, each offering variations on the themes of empire-building, sedentarization, sacral kingship, and technological change.The Dürr-i Meknun, written around the time of the conquest of Constantinople, uses Solomon to illustrate the risks of urbanization, imperial hubris and potential tyranny. The second, the Süleyman-name by the technically inclined author Uzun Firdevsi, portrays Solomon in the image of Sultan Bayezid II. The prophet, using his bureaucratic capacities, enacts Ottoman dreams of control over the eastern Mediterranean. Finally, the accounts given of the deeds of Sultan Süleyman, notably the reconstruction of the Temple Mount and the construction of the Süleymaniye complex in Istanbul, show the Solomonic myth consciously enacted by the state itself. These sources trace a trajectory whereby anxieties surrounding the transformations of early modernity are expressed and worked through by means of the vocabulary of a prophetological sacred history. …. In his library in Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451–81) kept a copy of the Testament of Solomon, an anonymous Greek text of disputed date.Footnote1 It tells of the Biblical Solomon's encounters with demons and spirits and closes with a cautionary tale in which the prophet-king falls in love with a princess from a pagan land. This pagan princess says she will not marry him unless he worships her gods, which Solomon, as prophet of the one God, refuses to do. She insists and lays before the king “five grasshoppers, saying ‘Take these grasshoppers, and crush them together in the name of the gods Raphan and Moloch; then I will sleep with you’”. Solomon confesses, “And this I actually did. And at once the Spirit of God departed from me … Wretch that I am, I followed her advice … and my spirit was darkened, and I became the sport of idols and demons”.Footnote2 Elsewhere in Topkapı's library were preserved closely related stories. Several versions of the ubiquitous medieval collections of prophet tales known as Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyā (“Tales of the Prophets”) present Solomonic narratives derived in part from the sources of the Testament. Emerging out of a body of lore on pre-Islamic prophetology collectively termed isrā’īliyyāt (“Israelite lore”),Footnote3 the Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyā of al-Thaʿlabi and al-Kisā’i tell of a pagan princess whom Solomon had married, and who was secretly devoted to the cult of her own father whom she had re-imaged as an idol of gold in her private palace.Footnote4 The wise vizier Asaf discovers this and informs Solomon, who, distraught, loses his divine guidance as the demon Sakhr steals the king's signet ring and sits on his throne. Exiled from kingship and prophecy, the disgraced Solomon is forced to repent fully for his wife's paganism before he can regain his throne. The Solomon of the Qiṣaṣ of Ibn ʿAsākīr hews even more closely to that of the Testament: the king sacrifices a locust to his wife's idols.Footnote5 As for the Quran itself, the standard by which Muslim readers would measure the authenticity of the others, Solomon is rehabilitated,Footnote6 but not before he is for a time made absent from his throne, replaced by a “mere body”.Footnote7 This exiled Solomon, whose love for his wives leads him to dabble in pagan worship and to rush towards a hubristic fall, is based on the canonical Solomon of the Hebrew Bible. “As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods …”, reads 1 Kings, and God resolves to take his kingdom away from him.Footnote8 This complex Biblical Solomon presents to the Jewish and Christian exegete a certain problem: the ultimate builder, possessed of wisdom and kingly virtues, nonetheless succumbs to a temptation that squanders his gifts.Footnote9 In this profile Solomon resembles another mythic king whose rise and fall is told in another book in Meḥmed's library at Topkapı: Jamshīd, the culture hero of Abū’l-Qāsim Firdawsī's Iranian epic Shāhnāma. “[Jamshīd cried] ‘Who would dare say that any man but I was king?’ All the elders inclined their heads … By saying this he lost God's farr, and through the world men's murmurings of sedition grew … Jamshīd's days were darkened, and his world-illuminating splendor dimmed”, writes Firdawsī.Footnote10 For this reason, Jamshīd and Solomon were commonly interpreted by Muslims from India to the Ottoman lands as two names for the same person.Footnote11 Indeed, the conflation of Solomon and Jamshīd seems to have created in the minds of Muslim commentators the same problem that vexes Biblical exegetes. How could Solomon and Jamshīd have been the same, when the latter clearly sinned? How can a glorious king and prophet fail so spectacularly? Although the fifteenth-century Persian historian Mīrkhwānd absolves Solomon of Jamshīd's sins by noting the many centuries that separate the two,Footnote12 Solomon, in the imagination of many, had absorbed Jamshīd's darker aspects. Seen together, the several Solomon stories that shared the shelves of Sultan Meḥmed's library speak with deep multivalence. While remaining the ultimate archetype of sacral kingship and the overseer of monumental urbanism, Solomon presents at the same time a counter-narrative critical of monarchy. In showing Solomon succumbing to the allure of power as his domain expands to pagan territories and as his household grows to include polytheist women, the story seems to give voice to an awareness of dangers of imperial expansion and the centralization that complements it. The story alludes to the precarity of the imperial model, always at the verge of a fall, a fall precisely connected to the cosmopolitanism of empire. The strength of empires in accommodating difference here leads to their disintegration. …. [End of quote] Now, According to Blessed Anne Catherine Emmrich’s completely different account of Dsemschid (in Life of Jesus Christ): …. I saw them, Thubal's fol¬lowers, on a high mountain where they dwelt one above another in long, low huts like arbors. I saw them digging the ground, planting, and setting out trees in rows. The opposite side of the mountain was cold. Later on the whole region became much colder. In consequence of this change in the climate, one of the grandsons of Thubal, the ancestor Dsemschid, led them further toward the southwest. With a few excep¬tions, all who had seen Noe and had taken leave of him died in this place, that is, on the mountain to which Thubal had led them. They who followed Dsem¬schid were all born on the same mountain. They took with them the few surviving old men who had known Noe, carrying them very carefully in litters. When Thubal with his family separated from Noe, I saw among them that child of Mosoch, Hom, who had gone with Thubal into the ark. Hom was already grown, and later on I saw him very different from those around him. He was of large stature like a giant, and of a very serious, peculiar turn of mind. He wore a long robe, he was like a priest. He used to go alone to the summit of the mountain and there spend night after night. He observed the stars and practiced magic. He was taught by the devil to arrange what he saw in vision into a science, a religion, and thereby he vitiated and counteracted the teaching of Henoch. The evil inclinations inherited from his mother mingled in him with the pure hereditary teach-ings of Henoch and Noe, to which the children of Thubal clung. Hom, by his false visions and revela¬tions, misinterpreted and changed the ancient truth. He studied and pondered, watched the stars and had visions which, by Satan's agency, showed him deformed images of truth. Through their resemblance to truth, his doctrine and idolatry became the mothers of heresy. Thubal was a good man. Hom's manner of acting and his teaching were very displeasing to Thubal, who was greatly grieved to see one of his sons, the father of Dsemschid, attach himself to Hom. I heard Thubal complaining: "My children are not united. Would that I had not separated from Noe!" Hom conducted the waters of two springs from the higher part of the mountain down to the dwellings. They soon united into one stream which, after a short course, swelled into a broad torrent. I saw Dsemschid and his followers crossing it at their departure. Hom received almost divine homage from his followers. He taught them that God exists in fire. He had also much to do with water, and with that viscous root from which he derived his name. He planted it, and solemnly distributed it as a sacred medicine and nour¬ishment. This distribution at last, became a ceremony of religion. He carried its juice or pap around with him in a brown vessel like a mortar. The axes were of the same material. They got them from people of another tribe that lived far away in a mountainous country and forged such implements by means of fire. I saw them on a mountain from which fire burst forth, sometimes in one place, sometimes in another. I think the vessel which Hom carried around with him was made out of the melted metal or rock that flowed from the mountain, and which was caught in a mold. Hom never married nor did he live to be very old. He published many of his visions referring to his own death. He himself put faith in them as did also Derketo and his other followers at a later period. But I saw him dying a frightful death, and the evil one carried him off body and soul; nothing remained of him. For that reason his followers thought, that, like Henoch, he had been taken up to a holy dwelling place. The father of Dsemschid had been a pupil of Hom, and Hom left him his spirit in order that he might then be the one who would succeed him. On account of his knowledge, Dsemschid became the leader of his people. They soon became a nation, and were led by Dsemschid still further south. Dsems¬chid was very distinguished; he was well-educated, and had embraced Hom's teachings. He was unspeak-ably lively and vigorous, much more active and better also than Hom, who was of a dark, rigid disposition. He practiced the religion formulated by Hom, added many things of his own thereto, and gave much atten¬tion to the stars. His followers regarded fire as sacred. They were all distinguished by a certain sign which denoted their race. People at that time kept together in tribes; they did not intermingle then as now. Dsem¬schid's special aim was to improve the races and maintain them in their original purity; he separated and transplanted them as seemed best to him. He left them perfectly free, and yet they were very sub¬missive to him. The descendants of those races, whom I now see wild and barbarous in distant lands and islands, are not to be compared with their progeni¬tors in point of personal beauty or manly character; for those early nations were noble and simple, yet withal most valiant. The races of the present day are also far less skillful and clever, and possess less bodily strength. On his marches, Dsemschid laid the foundations of tent cities, marked off fields, made long roads of stone, and formed settlements here and there of cer¬tain numbers of men and women, to whom he gave animals, trees, and plants. He rode around large tracks of land, striking into the earth with an instrument which he always carried in his hand, and his people then set to work in those places, grubbing and hack¬ing, making hedges and digging ditches. Dsemschid was remarkably strict and just. I saw him as a tall old man, very thin and of a yellowish-red complex¬ion. He rode a surprisingly nimble little animal with slender legs and black and yellow stripes, very much like an ass. Dsemschid rode around a tract of land just as our poor people go around a field on the heath by night, and thus appropriated it for cultivation. He paused here and there, plunged his grubbing axe into the ground or drove in a stake to mark the sites of future settlements. The instrument, which was after¬ward called Dsemschid's golden plough share, was in form like a Latin cross. It was about the length of one's arm and, when drawn out, formed with the shaft a right angle. With this instrument, Dsemschid made fissures in the earth. A representation of the same appeared on the side of his robe where pockets gen¬erally are. It reminded me of the symbol of office that Joseph and Aseneth always carried in Egypt, and with which they also surveyed the land, though that of Dsemschid was more like a cross. On the upper part was a ring into which it could be run. Dsemschid wore a mantle that fell backward from the front. From his girdle to the knee hung four leath¬ern flaps, two behind and two before, strapped at the side and fastened under the knee. His feet were bound with leather and straps. He wore a golden shield on his breast. He had several similar breastplates to suit various solemnities. His crown was a pointed cir¬clet of gold. The point in front was higher and bent like a little horn, and on the end of it waved some¬thing like a little flag. Dsemschid constantly spoke of Henoch. He knew that he had been taken away from the earth with¬out undergoing death. He taught that Henoch had delivered over to Noe all goodness and all truth, had appointed him the father and guardian of all bless¬ings, and that from Noe all these blessings had passed over to himself. He wore about him a golden egg shaped vessel in which, as he said, was contained something precious that had been preserved by Noe in the ark, and which had been handed down to him¬self. Wherever he pitched his tent, there the golden vessel was placed on a column, and over it, on ele¬gant posts carved with all kinds of figures, a cover¬ing was stretched. It looked like a little temple. The cover of the vessel was a crown of filigree work. When Dsemschid lighted fire, he threw into it something that he took out of the vessel. The vessel had indeed been used in the ark, for Noe had preserved the fire in it; but it was now the treasured idol of Dsemschid and his people. When it was set up, fire burned before it to which prayers were offered and animals sacri¬ficed, for Dsemschid taught that the great God dwells in light and fire, and that He has many inferior gods and spirits serving Him. All submitted to Dsemschid. He established colonies of men and women here and there, gave them herds and permitted them to plant and build. They were now allowed to follow their own pleasure in the mat¬ter of marriage, for Dsemschid treated them like cat¬tle, assigning wives to his followers in accordance with his own views. He himself had several. One was very beautiful and of a better family than the oth¬ers. Dsemschid destined his son by her to be his suc¬cessor. By his orders, great round towers were built, which were ascended by steps for the purpose of ob¬serving the stars. The women lived apart and in subjec¬tion. They wore short garments, the bodice and breast of material like leather, and some kind of stuff hung behind. Around the neck and over the shoulders they wore a full, circular cloak, which fell below the knee. On the shoulders and breast, it was ornamented with signs or letters. From every country that he settled, Dsemschid caused straight roads to be made in the direction of Babel. Dsemschid always led his people to uninhabited regions, where there were no nations to expel. He marched everywhere with perfect freedom, for he was only a founder, a settler. His race was of a bright red¬dish yellow complexion like ochre, very handsome people. All were marked in order to distinguish the pure from these of mixed descent. Dsemschid marched over a high mountain covered with ice. I do not remem¬ber how he succeeded in crossing, but many of his followers perished. They had horses or asses; Dsem¬schid rode on a little striped animal. A change of cli¬mate had driven them from their country. It became too cold for them, but it is warmer there now. Occa¬sionally he met on his march a helpless tribe either escaping from the tyranny of their chief, or awaiting in distress the advent of some leader. They willingly submitted to Dsemschid, for he was gentle, and he brought them grain and blessings. They were desti¬tute exiles who, like Job, had been plundered and banished. I saw some poor people who had no fire and who were obliged to bake their bread on hot stones in the sun. When Dsemschid gave them fire, they looked upon him as a god. He fell in with another tribe that sacrificed children who were deformed or who did not reach their standard of beauty. The lit¬tle ones were buried up to the waist, and a fire kin-dled around them. Dsemschid abolished this custom. He delivered many poor children, whom he placed in a tent and confided to the care of some women. He afterward made use of them, here and there, as ser¬vants. He was very careful to keep the genealogical line pure. Dsemschid first marched in a southwesterly direc¬tion, keeping the Prophet Mountain to the south on his left; then he turned to the south, the mountain still on his left, but to the east. I think he afterward crossed the Caucasus. At that period, when those regions were swarming with human beings, when all was life and activity, our countries were but forests, wildernesses, and marshes; only off toward the east might be met a small, wandering tribe. The Shining Star (Zoroaster), who lived long after, was descended from Dsemschid's son, whose teachings he revived. Dsemschid wrote all kinds of laws on bark and tables of stone. One long letter often stood for a whole sen¬tence. Their language was as yet the primitive one, to which ours still bears some resemblance. Dsem¬schid lived just prior to Derketo and her daughter, the mother of Semiramis. He did not go to Babel him¬self, though his career ran in that direction. I saw the history of Hom and Dsemschid as Jesus spoke of it before the pagan philosophers, at Lanifa in the isle of Cyprus. These philosophers had in Jesus' presence spoken of Dsemschid as the most ancient of the wise kings who had come from far beyond India. With a golden dagger received from God, he had divided off and peopled many lands, and had scattered bless¬ings everywhere. They questioned Jesus about him and the various wonders related to him. Jesus responded to their questions by saying that Dsem¬schid was by nature a prudent man, a man wise ac¬cording to flesh and blood; that he had been a leader of the nations; that upon the dispersion of men at the building of the Tower of Babel, he had led one race and settled countries according to a certain order; that there had been other leaders of that kind who had, indeed, led a worse life than he, because his race had not fallen into so great ignorance as many others. But Jesus showed them also what fables had been writ¬ten about him and that he was a false side picture, a counterfeit type of the priest and king Melchisedech. He told them to notice the difference between Dsem¬schid's race and that of Abraham. As the stream of nations moved along, God had sent Melchisedech to the best families, to lead and unite them, to prepare for them lands and abiding places, in order that they might preserve themselves unsullied and, in propor¬tion to their degree of worthiness, be found more or less fit to receive the grace of the Promise. Who Melchisedech was, Jesus left to themselves to deter¬mine; but of one thing they might be certain, he was an ancient type of the future, but then fast approach¬ing fulfillment of the Promise. The sacrifice of bread and wine which he had offered would be fulfilled and perfected, and would continue till the end of time.

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Saint Vincent Ferrer channelling Apostle John the Evangelist?

by Damien F. Mackey Some common factors here are the references to the ‘Angel of Judgment’ of the Book of Revelation (14:6-7) and to an impending terrible judgment. Many amazing similarities between biblical (mainly OT) characters (even their names) and events, on the one hand, and notables of, supposedly, the C15th AD (1400’s), on the other, were pointed out in my recent article: Bible-themed people and events permeate what we call C15th AD (1) Bible-themed people and events permeate what we call C15th AD The C15th characters chosen to illustrate my point here were the following nine: 1. Joan of Arc: 1412-1431 2. Isaac Abarbanel: 1437-1508 3. Girolamo Savonarola: 1452-1498 4. Christopher Columbus: 1451-1506 5. Leonardo da Vinci: 1452-1519 6. Cesare Borgia: 1475-1507 7. Niccolò Machiavelli: 1469-1527 8. Martin Luther: 1483-1546 9. Suleiman the Magnificent: 1494-1566 But I could comfortably have brought this list up to a rounded ten (10) had I remembered to include the wonderworking Spanish Dominican saint, Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419), who (a) fits early into this time period, and who (b) can come across as being somewhat too good to be true, and who - like the nine others - bears about him a biblical stamp. In this case, though, unlike the others in the main, Vincent Ferrer emerges like a veritable NT character, notably, like John the Beloved Apostle. Introduction I once held a very different view about Saint Vincent Ferrer, based on the research of Fr. Herman B. Kramer, whose writings had intrigued me. I refer to his captivating study on the Apocalypse, The Book of Destiny (Tan, 1975), in which the author made some startling connections between John the Evangelist and Vincent Ferrer. According to Fr. Kramer’s novel interpretation of the Apocalypse, each chapter can be linked literally to an important era of Christian history. For instance, Revelation chapters 8 and 9 Fr. Kramer aligned with, respectively, the Great Western Schism (C14th-15th AD) and the Protestant Reformation (C16th AD). Perhaps Fr. Kramer’s lynchpin for all of this was his identifying of the Eagle, or Angel of Judgment, of Revelation 8:13, or 14:6, with St. Vincent Ferrer, OP. He wrote (ibid., pp. 208-9): By a wonderful co-incidence a great saint appears at this stage [the Western Schism] in the history of the Church. His eminence and influence procured for him the distinction of an eagle flying through mid-heaven. This was the Dominican priest, St. Vincent Ferrer. When in 1398 he lay at death’s door with fever, our Lord, St. Francis and St. Dominic appeared to him, miraculously cured him of his fever and commissioned him to preach penance and prepare men for the coming judgments. Preaching in the open space in San Esteban on October 3, 1408 he solemnly declared that he was the angel of the judgment spoken of by St. John in the Apocalypse. The body of a woman was just being carried to St. Paul’s church nearby for burial. St. Vincent ordered the bearers to bring the corpse before him. He adjured the dead to testify whether his claim was true or not. The dead woman came to life and in the hearing of all bore witness to the truth of the saint’s claim and then slept again in death (Fr. Stanislaus Hogan O.P.). Just as this, St. Vincent Ferrer’s extraordinary miracle, had convinced the Dominican Fathers, his superiors, that he was correct in his claim to be the Angel of Apocalypse, so was it all the proof that I needed back in the 1980’s to accept Fr. Kramer’s opinion that Revelation 8 and 14 (which include references to a warning Angel) were fixed to the very time of St. Vincent Ferrer. Thrilling stuff, all of it - but could it be true? Was Vincent Ferrer the wonderworking thaumaturgist that tradition claims him to have been, even to the extent that his miracles seemed to outdo those recorded of the twelve Apostles combined? Or, is “Vincent Ferrer”, like possibly the other nine candidates listed above, a biblical person (or combined persons) mysteriously projected into a fantasy C15th AD time? The Book of Revelation Despite the superficial ingenuity of Fr. Kramer’s interpretation, it does not – on closer scrutiny – match itself appropriately to St. John the Evangelist’s own words. Whereas Fr. Kramer tumbled out, like far flung dice, the events that the Evangelist described, spinning them right down through the centuries, even to our own time, St. John was clearly telling about an early fulfilment of the events that Jesus Christ had revealed to him. On this, see e.g. my article: Theme of Apocalypse – the Bride and the Reject (2) Theme of Apocalypse – the Bride and the Reject As noted in that article, I am greatly indebted to the insights of Dr. Kenneth L. Gentry on this subject. There is a pronounced dichotomy here between the standard interpretations of the Book of Revelation and the actual words of the author. St. John had said emphatically that these events were to happen “soon”; that is, soon for St. John’s era and generation of the C1st AD. St. John meant that soon-ness literally (indeed he repeats it in various ways). Thus a literal fulfilment of Revelation 8 and 14 in St. Vincent Ferrer’s time, almost a millennium and a half after St. John, as Fr. Kramer had proposed, would not seem to be at all compatible with St. John’s “soon”. In St. Vincent’s case, the matter of typology is further complicated by the difficulty of deciding whether his type is the Eagle/Angel of Revelation 8 or Revelation 14; a difficulty that Fr. Kramer obviously had at least – just as the author also seems to stumble over the fact that the Dominican was, like the Evangelist, utterly convinced that the judgments he foretold were to be fulfilled very soon (op. cit., p. 209): The above testimony [of the miracle] is accepted by all biographers of St. Vincent as a proof of his claim. But they make his reference to the Apocalypse indicate chapter XIV. 6, for they say he often chose it as his text, ‘Fear God, and give Him honor, for the day of His judgment is at hand’. They do not prove that he pronounced himself that particular angel. And he seems to have had only the general revelation that he was appointed “the angel of the judgment”. By designating him the angel of chapter XIV.6, the commentators run into inexplicable difficulties. For St. Vincent emphatically and repeatedly asserted that the day of Wrath was to come “soon, very soon, within a short time”, cito, bene cito et valde breviter. St. John announced that the judgment was to come very quickly (Apoc. III. II), which meant that it would begin to operate soon. Since St. Vincent uttered these prophecies, five centuries have elapsed, and the end of the world and last judgment have not come. Some try to explain it by saying that the saint meant the particular judgment; but that is meaningless. Others contend that he predicted the approach of the last judgment conditionally, as Jonas predicted the destruction of Nineveh …. But these are all conjectures of biographers. St. Vincent did not aver that he was the angel of chapter XIV. or that the General Judgment was very near. Fr. Kramer, after writing at some length in this rather tortuous vein, goes on to wonder whether St. Vincent might not have been entirely correct about his own apocalyptical identification, because he certainly estimated wrongly in another major matter (ibid., p. 211): Now that St. Vincent himself might have been mistaken about the place assigned to him in the apocalyptic prophecies need not appear strange. He adhered to the anti-pope, Benedict XIII, and sincerely believed him to be the legitimate pontiff. This was a matter in which his human judgment gave the decision. And this judgment can easily err. So also, since it was not explicitly revealed to him what angel of the Apocalypse he was, he may have drawn the mistaken conclusion that it was the one of chapter XIV. 6. However, it has not been proven that he claimed to be that angel or even thought he was. This latter angel has the commission to preach to EVERY “nation and tribe, and tongue, and people”. St. Vincent, even though his fame spread over it all, so that he was like “one flying through mid-heaven”, personally reached only a small part of Christendom. Fr. Kramer seems to be getting tangled up here. Confusion is exacerbated by failure to recognise that the apocalyptical judgment about which St. John was referring was intended for that generation (c. 30-70 AD), culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem (70 AD), and that it equates with the “coming” that Our Lord and the Apostles frequently referred to in regard to the generation that had crucified Him: a “coming” in judgment. Not to recognise this is to make a mockery of Our Lord’s clear words and of other New Testament prophecies. It also takes away the concreteness intended by Our Lord. When, prior to his Passion, He had placed before Him by “some people” the examples of (i) those slain by Pilate’s Roman troops, and (ii) others killed by a falling tower, He had insisted: ‘Unless you do penance you will all perish as they did [that is, by a violent death]’ (Luke 13:1-5). Whilst this statement is also open to spiritual interpretation, it should immediately be understood in the concrete sense, that this is exactly what was going to happen physically to that wicked generation of Jews if they did not have a change of heart within the allotted period of mercy. At the end of the 40 years of probation thousands upon thousands of Jews did die violent deaths at the hands of the Roman troops, with towers likewise falling upon them, as well as missiles, stones and fire. Could one man, Vincent Ferrer - whose predictions were dubious, to say the least - have achieved all of the amazing things accredited to him? Sunil Saldanha tells the incredible story of his life, which often seems to borrow from that of John the Beloved: https://medium.com/@suniljepc/st-vincent-ferrer-and-the-stories-of-those-he-raised-from-the-dead-3a3d0f48d057 St Vincent Ferrer and the stories of those he raised from the dead One of greatest miracle workers-thaumaturges in the history of the Catholic church was the Dominican priest St. Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419). He moved in the limelight before both ordinary people and the great of the world. He once converted 10,000 Jews at one time by marching right into their synagogue and preaching to them; the Jews turned their synagogue into a Catholic Church. So great a missionary was St. Vincent Ferrer that he can only be compared to the 12 Apostles. His accomplishments were incredible and rare in the whole history of the Church; his life story contains one amazing story after another, many of these are documented in the book “St Vincent Ferrer –The Angel of the Judgment” by Father Andrew Pradel, O.P. When St. Vincent Ferrer was 46 years old, suffering from a grievous illness, Our Lord appeared to him, accompanied by St. Francis and St. Dominic; Our Lord said to Vincent, among other things, “Arise, then, and go to preach against vice; for this have I specially chosen thee. Exhort sinners to repentance, for My judgment is at hand.” Our Lord told St. Vincent that his preaching before the coming of Antichrist would be for mankind a merciful occasion of repentance and conversion. During this vision St. Vincent was immediately cured. Two years later, in 1398, he was given permission to begin his apostolate of preaching. St. Vincent travelled all over western Europe preaching penance, attracting enormous crowds, and followed by thousands of disciples. He converted St. Bernardine of Siena and Blessed Margaret of Savoy. Vincent had the gift of languages; preaching in his Valencion idiom he was understood wherever he went; and in conversation he spoke French, Italian, German or English as fluently as his native tongue. St. Vincent Ferrer identified himself as “The Angel of the Judgment” and preached as if the end of the world were near. Some would say that since it did not end, Vincent, at least in that respect, failed as a prophet. It would seem there is a simple answer: All such prophecies or predictions by individuals are contingent upon reform and penance. Through Vincent’s thunderous words and the results of his preaching, the end of the world was simply delayed again. Many who are informed in the ways of God, of prophecy and reparation, believe this has probably happened more than once in the history of the world. To cite two examples from Holy Scripture: Jerusalem was spared again and again before its final destruction by the Romans and also the city of Ninevah was spared through the conversion of the people due to the preaching of Jonah the prophet. Some would consider it a conservative estimate that St. Vincent Ferrer converted 25,000 Jews and 8,000 Moors; his total number of conversions was around 200,000 souls - among them Moors, Jews, heretics, and apostate Catholics. At Toulouse he spoke on the Passion for six hours without a break before a crowd of 30,000 at the packed Place St. Etienne. When he cried out, “Arise you dead, and come to Judgment!” the whole crowd fell on their faces begging for mercy. Learning about the many other wonders of St. Vincent makes it easier to accept the accounts of his death-to-life miracles. The Acta Sanctorum records 873 miracles performed by the saint, but there were actually many more. In 1412 Vincent himself told a crowd, “God has wrought in His mercy, through me a miserable sinner, three thousand miracles.” After that Vincent lived seven more years, which was a period of even greater miracles. The Bollandist hagiographers tell of 70 persons who were delivered from diabolical possession by St. Vincent Ferrer. He had such power over devils that it was often enough for him to touch a possessed person for him to be freed; at other times, a possessed person would be freed from the devil merely upon going to the same place as where Vincent was or even simply when Vincent’s name was pronounced. St. Antonius (Antoninus), Archbishop of Florence, another learned Dominican about 30 years old when Vincent died, stated that St. Vincent had raised 28 persons from the dead. But others claimed that St. Antonius’ estimate fell far short of the actual number raised. Perhaps there is some confusion in distinguishing those Vincent personally raised during his life and those raised through his intercession after his death. The author Fr. Andrew Pradel states that St. Vincent Ferrer “resuscitated more than 30 persons during his lifetime.” Near Palma of Majorca St. Vincent Ferrer stilled a storm in order to preach from a wharf. At Beziers he stopped a flood. At the gates of Vannes he cured a great number of the sick. At Guerande he delivered a man possessed by the devil and more dead than alive. In France he had the British victors at Caen praying together with the defeated French for a sick man, who was then cured — and all of them, enemies or not, shouted for joy. At Leride he cured a cripple in the presence of the king. St. Vincent Ferrer is often pictured with wings. Multitudes of people have witnessed him, in the middle of preaching, suddenly assume wings and fly off to help some suffering person; he would return in the same manner and continue preaching. On some occasions, when St. Vincent was exhausted, he would commission somebody else to go perform miracles instead; the helper would then do so. Vincent once said to a novice, Alphonso Borgia, “You will become pope and will canonize me.” And years later that novice, then Pope Callixtus III, did exactly that. Vincent also told St. Bernardine of Siena that he (Bernardine) would be canonized before himself — and so it happened. Once a mute woman signed to him, and then she spoke, asking for speech and bread. He promised her bread, but took back her speech, saying that she would make ill use of it. He made beautiful an ugly woman who had been beaten by her husband for her looks. We learn from St Vincent Ferrer that one must never mock the gifts God has given to His saints. As has happened in similar cases, on one occasion a boy pretended to be dead, while his friends snickered. St. Vincent leaned over and shook-a corpse! Vincent said: “He pretended to be dead to amuse you, but evil has come upon him; he is dead!” A cross was erected to commemorate the event. Happenings like that can save many souls by instilling in them a healthy fear of the Lord. At Pampeluna an innocent man had just been condemned to death. St. Vincent knew of his innocence and pleaded for him, but in vain. As the grim procession led the poor man to the scaffold, they met another procession, that of a man already dead. The corpse was being borne on a stretcher to the burial place. Vincent seemed to have a sudden inspiration. He stopped suddenly and addressed the corpse: “You no longer have anything to gain by lying. Is this man guilty? Answer me!” The dead man sat up, then spoke the words: “He is not!” As the man began to settle down again on his stretcher, Vincent offered to reward him for his service. He gave him the opportunity of remaining alive on earth. But the man re-sponded, “No, Father, for I am assured of salvation.” With that he died again as if going to sleep, and they carried his body off to the cemetery. In another miracle credited to Vincent, the Venerable Father Micon is reported as claiming that a number of witnesses, gathered at Lerida before the Church of St. Jean, saw Vincent encounter a corpse there. With the Sign of the Cross Vincent returned the corpse alive to its feet. The Fathers of the convent at Calabria gave guarantees of this miracle. In another report a priest judged a child to be dead. The child’s whole body was mangled and broken. A vow was made, and the child was restored to life. It is not known for certain whether this is the same child as that in the following miracle. Fifty years after Vincent’s death, young Jean de Zuniga, son of Don Alvar de Zuniga, Duke of Placensia and Arevola, and of his Duchess, Leonor de Pimentel, died at the age of 12. The Duchess’ confessor, Jean Lopez de Salamanque, O.P., counseled the noble lady to invoke his fellow Dominican, the newly canonized Vincent Ferrer. The mother made a vow to build a church and convent in St. Vincent’s honor. As soon as she had formulated her vow, the boy came back to life. This boy became the Grand Master of Alcantara, the Archbishop of Seville, and a Cardinal. The Duchess became very devoted to Vincent and fervently desired that his life, virtues, and miracles be written about. When a grand ceremony was held at the newly finished cathedral, the Duke and Duchess presented their son, and the raised boy then understood all about his resuscitation. On the feast day of St. Vincent Ferrer at that same cathedral, the scheduled preacher became ill and did not appear. But a wonderful, charming, unknown preacher appeared from nowhere - and mysteriously disappeared after giving his sermon. Many believed it was Vincent repaying the honors given him. There are two different accounts of either the same or very similar miracles. In one account Vincent summoned a dead man on the way to burial to attest that Vincent was the “Angel of the Judgment.” In another account, it was a woman who was summoned. (Since Vincent performed a great number of miracles of many kinds, it is possible, even if unlikely, that he performed this action on more than one occasion.) On an occasion when St. Vincent was preaching to thousands at Salamanca, he suddenly stopped and said: “I am the Angel of the Apocalypse and am preaching Judgment!” Then he directed: “Some of you go near St. Paul’s Gate, and you will find a dead person borne on men’s shoulders on the way to the grave. Bring the corpse hither, and you shall hear the proof of what I tell you.” The men went on their errand, the multitude waited, and soon the bier was brought with a dead woman upon it. They raised the litter and set it up so all could see. St. Vincent bade her return to life, and the dead woman sat up. “Who am I?” Vincent asked her. She answered: “You, Father Vincent, are the Angel of the Apocalypse, as you have already told this vast assembly.” In the case of the woman, after her testimony she died again. In another almost identical account, this time it was a man, Vincent asked him which was his preference, to live or to die again. The man asked to live, and St. Vincent responded, “Then be it so!” The man is reported as having lived for many more years. Another miracle seems to involve either a Jew or Jewess. (Recall that Vincent converted 25–30,000 Jews. It is reported that at a church in Vera Cruz a host of little white crosses once fell upon the Jews in the congregation.) There was a rich Jew of Andalusia, named Abraham, who began to leave a church in anger while Vincent was preaching. The Jew did not like what he was hearing. As some people at the door opposed his passing through, St. Vincent cried out: “Let him go! Come away all of you at once, and leave the passage free!” The people did as he ordered, and at the instant the Jew left, part of the porch structure fell on him and crushed him to death. Then the saint rose from his chair and went to the body. He knelt there in prayer. Abraham came to life, and his first words were: “The religion of the Jews is not the true faith. The True Faith is that of the Christians.” In memory of this event the Jew was baptized Elias (in honor of the prophet who had raised the boy from the dead). The new convert established a pious foundation in the church of the “accident” and the miracle. Bishop Peter Ranzano’s account was used for this version of the miracle. The father of a certain child had given Vincent lodging while he was on a missionary journey. His wife, a virtuous woman, suffered from bad attacks of nerves, and at times was close to madness. Upon his return from hearing one of Vincent’s sermons, the father came upon a terrible tragedy. His wife had gone mad, cut their small son’s throat, then chopped up the boy’s body and roasted a portion of it, which she then attempted to serve her husband. When he realized what had happened, the man fled in horror and disgust to St. Vincent Ferrer. Vincent told him that-as in the case of the crushed Jew-the tragedy would be for the glory of God. St. Vincent went with the father back to the home and prayed as he gathered the bloody pieces together. He said to the father: “If you have faith, God, who created this little soul from nothing, can bring him back to life.” Vincent knelt and prayed. He made the Sign of the Cross over the reassembled body. The pieces became united together, the body came to life again, and Vincent handed over to the father a living child. This event is depicted in a painting by Francesco del Cossa in the New Picture Gallery in the Vatican. Bishop Ranzano claimed this as one of the miracles submitted in the canonization process for St. Vincent Ferrer. Some may be surprised to know that he above miracle is not without some real, though lesser, counterparts. St. Francis of Paola restored a lamb from its mere bones and fleece, and in the palace of the King of Naples he revived an already-cooked fish; also, St. Philip Benizi restored a child partially devoured by a wolf. A similar wonder was worked for a young man who was with his parents in a group of pilgrims on their way to the famous shrine of Santiago (St. James) de Compostella in Spain. They stopped at La Calzada, where the young man was falsely accused and hanged. The poor bereaved parents continued their pilgrimage, and on their return journey were astonished to find their son still alive eight days later. Perhaps it was a reward for their tears and for faithfully continuing on to the shrine in hope, rather than succumbing to rebellion and grief. But the story goes beyond this wonder. When the lad’s mother rushed to tell the magistrate (he was at dinner), the magistrate said, “Woman, you must be mad! I would as soon believe these pullets which I am about to eat are alive as that a man who has been gibbeted for eight days is not dead.” At his words the pullets on the dish rose up alive. There was a great procession with the live birds to the shrine of St. James at Compostella. The Bollandists relate this miracle, as do many other authors. And there have been other miracles similar to it in the lives of the Saints. One should note that none of these miracles were performed for mere sensationalism, which the saints despise. They were worked for various good purposes, especially the conversion of sinners and the strengthening of faith. As St. Vincent told the bereaved father, miracles are worked for the glory of God. This was also stated by Christ at the grave of Lazarus, and to His Apostles. The saints’ powers are of course limited by God, to whom all power belongs. Otherwise, with unrestricted powers, the saints could be “as gods.” The hagiographer Henri Gheon relates that Pere Fages, a patient researcher, found and visited the house of the last related miracle of Saint Vincent. He described the room, the placement of the oven, and the lower room, where a part of the child was served at table. The place had not changed since the fifteenth century. A chapel stands there now and two inscriptions, one inside and one out, attest to the truth of the miracle. St. Vincent Ferrer died at Vannes, Brittany, France in 1419, and the canonical process at Vannes brought to light an incredible number of wonders, including a surprising number of resurrections from the dead. In the French work - “Histoire de St. Vincent Ferrier” by Pere Fages, O.P., there are a number of accounts of the dead raised through St. Vincent. ….

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Bible-themed people and events permeate what we call C15th AD

by Damien F. Mackey And in the article, “How Sultan Süleyman became ‘Kanuni [Lawgiver]’,” we find Suleiman likened to, not only King Solomon, again, but also to King Solomon’s law-giving alter ego, Solon, and to Solomon’s contemporary (revised) Hammurabi, King of Babylon. 1. Joan of Arc: 1412-1431 2. Isaac Abarbanel: 1437-1508 3. Girolamo Savonarola: 1452-1498 4. Christopher Columbus: 1451-1506 5. Leonardo da Vinci: 1452-1519 6. Cesare Borgia: 1475-1507 7. Niccolò Machiavelli: 1469-1527 8. Martin Luther: 1483-1546 9. Suleiman the Magnificent: 1494-1566 1. Joan of Arc Judith and Joan of Arc Joan of Arc has also been described as a “second 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. …. Joan of Arc has likewise been described as a “second Judith”. But this is far from being the only case down throughout textbook history, whether BC or AD, of women being likened to the Simeonite heroine at the time of King Hezekiah of Judah (c. 700 BC), Judith. For instance, a certain Ethiopian queen, Judith, or Gudit (Gwedit), has also been likened to Judith. For a full range of such Judith types, both BC and (presumed) AD, see my article: Judith’s fame continued to spread (6) Judith’s fame continued to spread Perhaps the heroine with whom Judith [Jehudith] of Bethulia is most often compared is the fascinating Joan [Jehanne] of Arc. Donald Spoto, in his life of Joan, has a chapter five on Joan of Arc that he entitles “The New Deborah”. And Joan has also been described as a “second Judith”. Both Deborah and Judith were celebrated Old Testament women who had provided defensive assistance to Israel. Spoto, having referred to those ancient pagan women (Telesilla, etc.), goes on to write (p. 74): Joan was not the only woman in history to inspire and to give direction to soldiers. .... Africa had its rebel queen Gwedit, or Yodit, in the tenth century. In the seventh appeared Sikelgaita, a Lombard princess who frequently accompanied her husband, Robert, on his Byzantine military campaigns, in which she fought in full armor, rallying Robert’s troops when they were initially repulsed by the Byzantine army. In the twelfth century Eleanor of Aquitaine took part in the Second Crusade, and in the fourteenth century Joanna, Countess of Montfort, took up arms after her husband died in order to protect the rights of her son, the Duke of Brittany. She organized resistance and dressed in full armor, led a raid of knights that successfully destroyed one of the enemy’s rear camps. Joan [of Arc] was not a queen, a princess, a noblewoman or a respected poet with public support. She went to her task at enormous physical risk of both her virginity and her life, and at considerable risk of a loss of both reputation and influence. The English, for example, constantly referred to her as the prostitute: to them, she must have been; otherwise, why would she travel with an army of men? Yet Joan was undeterred by peril or slander, precisely because of her confidence that God was their captain and leader. She often said that if she had been unsure of that, she would not have risked such obvious danger but would have kept to her simple, rural life in Domrémy. [End of quote] I think that, based on the Gudit and Axum (read Assyrian?) scenario[s], there is the real possibility that some of these above-mentioned heroines, or ancient amazons, can be identified with the famous Judith herself – she gradually being transformed from an heroic Old Testament woman into an armour-bearing warrior on horseback, sometimes even suffering capture, torture and death - whose celebrated beauty and/or siege victory I have argued on many occasions was picked up in non-Hebrew ‘history’, or mythologies: e.g. the legendary Helen of Troy is probably based on Judith, at least in relation to her beauty and a famous siege, rather than to any military noüs on Helen’s part. In the name Iodit (Gwedit) above, the name Judith can be, I think, clearly recognised. The wisdom-filled Judith might even have been the model, too, for the interesting and highly intelligent and philosophically-minded Hypatia of Alexandria. Now I find in the Wikipedia article, “Catherine of Alexandria” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Alexandria that the latter is also likened to Hypatia. Catherine is said to have lived 105 years (Judith’s very age: see Book of Judith 16:23) before Hypatia’s death. Historians such as Harold Thayler Davis believe that Catherine (‘the pure one’) may not have existed and that she was more an ideal exemplary figure than a historical one. She did certainly form an exemplary counterpart to the pagan philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria in the medieval mindset; and it has been suggested that she was invented specifically for that purpose. Like Hypatia, she is said to have been highly learned (in philosophy and theology), very beautiful, sexually pure, and to have been brutally murdered for publicly stating her beliefs. Interestingly, St. Joan of Arc is said to have identified Catherine of Alexandria as one of the Saints who appeared to her and counselled her. There have been those who have questioned the reliability of the story of Joan of Arc. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_historical_interpretations_of_Joan_of_Arc#:~:text=Graeme%20Donald%20also%20argues%20that,the%20French%20army%20by%20Chastellain. “Graeme Donald also argues that Joan was not executed for witchcraft and that much of the story of Joan of Arc is a myth. He says there are no accounts or portraits of Joan of Arc’s victories during her time period, nor is she mentioned as a commander of the French army by Chastellain”. The Book of Judith may hold the key to Joan of Arc. 2. Isaac Abarbanel If my instincts are correct regarding Abarbanel (Abravanel) and his contemporary - with the not dissimilar name - Savonarola, the Book of Jeremiah may hold the key here. For numerous are the comparisons that can be made between the ancient Jewish prophet, Jeremiah, on the on hand, and Abarbanel and Savonarola, on the other. While Abarbanel may be the Jewish face of Jeremiah, Savonarola, whose first name was a Jeremiah-like Girolamo (Jerome), would be Jeremiah’s Italian face. “Abravanel, then, is the prophet to the Jews, whilst Savonarola is a prophet to the Florentines”. I wrote on the pair, Abarbanel and Savonarola, linking them to Jeremiah, in my article: Is “Savonarola” worth canonising? (6) Is “Savonarola” worth canonising? …. And indeed there does seem to be a distinct Jewish-Israelitish connection with Savonarola (who some even suspect was Jewish). It is with his Jewish contemporary, Abravanel, who can be somewhat like a ghostly projection of the real Jeremiah. Thus Benzion Netanyahu asks (in Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher?, Cornell University Press, 5th edition, 1998, as quoted by Mor Altshuler at Haaretz.com Wed, January 19, 2011 Shvat 14, 5771. Emphasis added): How did [Abravanel] this Jewish version of Savonarola, the fundamentalist monk who prophesied the fall of corrupt Rome-Babylonia, come up with the format for a democratic, constitutional Jewish state hundreds of years before one was established? Netanyahu believes he took his cue from the Venetian republic, which had democratic components not often seen in those days. Perhaps throwing off the yoke of this world made it easier for him to offer Europe in general, and the Jews in particular, an improved model of government that would only come into being centuries later. …. [End of quote] Netanyahu has even more to say about Savonarola as a veritable mirror-image of Abarbanel. According to Todd Endelman (Comparing Jewish Societies, p. 85, n. 36, emphasis added: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Abrabanel”): “Netanyahu notes the parallels between the prophecies of Savonarola and Abravanel. Often the only substantial difference is that one [Savonarola] is referring to the Florentines and Florence, while the other [Abravanel] is referring to the Jews and Jerusalem”. Abarbanel, then, is the prophet to the Jews, whilst Savonarola is a prophet to the Florentines. Hence Abarbanel is the more accurate version of Jeremiah than is Savonarola because he, like Jeremiah, was an Israelite preaching to the Jews, and he was not physically martyred; whereas with Savonarola, a Catholic, he preached largely to the Catholics of Florence, with his life terminating in a real martyrdom. But it is remarkable how closely the names accord: ‘Savonarola’ and ‘Abravanel’ (whose variants are Abrabanel, Abarbanel, Barbonel). He was a “Portuguese Jewish statesman, philosopher, Bible commentator, and financier of Lisbon and Venice” – belonging to a famous family of the time that claimed to trace its roots back to King David of the tribe of Judah. The name ‘Isaac ben Judah Abarbanel’ reads like (to me) a kind of generic Hebrew name, with the latter part, Abarbanel, comprising Ab (father) Rabban (priest) and El (God). It may even be some sort of a title, since he is “commonly referred to as The Abarbanel”. By de-Italianising the name, ‘Savonarola’, converting the ‘v’ to a ‘b’ and the ‘arola’ ending to a more Hebrew ‘arel’, we get Sabonarel, somewhat like Barbonel (Abarbanel). Due to lack of available data on the Jews of this time, a researcher such as Benzion Netanyahu has to attempt to tie together various disparate threads. Altshuler (op. cit.) tells of the difficulties here, where “Netanyahu takes advantage of the fact that he is a biographer, and hence endowed with hindsight”: …. Jewish historical research is short on biographies despite their importance for understanding the spirit of the times, possibly because shifting attention from a person’s work to his private life was perceived as presumptuous in Jewish tradition. Source material from which one can assemble a solid picture of the lives of great Jews is rare. Benzion Netanyahu grappled with this paucity of Jewish sources by plumbing the archives of the European monarchies under which Abravanel lived, from documents on the Inquisition to the correspondence of Christian scholars. The outcome is a comprehensive, two-part biography divided into sections on Abravanel’s life with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and the annihilation of Jewish life in the Iberian Peninsula, and the evolution of Abravanel’s thinking. Combining these elements in one book allows Netanyahu to examine the relationship between the events of the time and Abravanel’s spiritual outlook. The conclusion he comes to is that Abravanel, in the face of this cruel and senseless expulsion, began to despair whether the world would ever operate in a logical and just manner. This despair led him to give up his rationalist approach to history and to base his political theories on messianic theocracy, launching the age of Jewish messianism and heralding European utopianism. Useless fire and brimstone. In the same way that Don Isaac Abravanel was an admirer of Maimonides, but had no qualms about exposing flaws in his thinking, Netanyahu lauds Abravanel’s greatness but is not afraid to point out his weaknesses. As a leader of Spanish Jewry, he failed in his primary mission: alerting the Jews to the fact that expulsion was imminent and that a safe haven should be sought elsewhere, perhaps in the Ottoman Empire, which Abravanel, as a diplomat, knew was more tolerant. Abravanel’s nonchalance proved tragic. …. [End of quote] The key phrase in the above is (I think) “the evolution of Abravanel’s thinking”. Of Jeremiah it could largely be said, as Netanyahu writes of Abarbanel, that he, “in the face of this cruel and senseless [he did warn of it, though] expulsion, began to despair whether the world would ever operate in a logical and just manner. This despair led him to give up his rationalist approach to history and to base his political theories on messianic theocracy, launching the age of Jewish messianism and heralding European [read Jewish] utopianism”. This could be considered an ‘evolution’ of Jeremiah’s thinking. Abarbanel also suffered a tri-part loss like the prophet Job (op. cit.): …. Don Isaac Abravanel was born in 1437 to a wealthy and influential Jewish family in Spain that traced its ancestry back to King David. …. …. [Abravanel] lost everything he had three times in a row − once when he fled to Portugal after his father converted to Christianity and the family went bankrupt; a second time in 1482, when he was accused of participating in a conspiracy of Portuguese nobles seeking to overthrow Juan II and was forced to take refuge in Spain; and a third time, in 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain. The prophet Job, too, like Abarbanel, had famously suffered three catastrophic losses ‘in a row’ (Job 1:13-19). …. Thanks to his diplomatic and financial skills, [Abravanel] managed to recover each time. Latin, Portuguese, Castilian and Hebrew − he spoke them all fluently. He was a Jewish scholar, an expert in philosophy, including the works of Aristotle and the Arab philosophers Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina − and knowledgeable in the sciences of his time − magic, medicine and astrology. My comment: But, on the Arab philosophers, see e.g. my article: Melting down the fake Golden Age of Islamic intellectualism (5) Melting down the fake Golden Age of Islamic intellectualism His biblical exegesis put him on par with Rashi and the Ramban. His ability to spot contradictions in the writings of Maimonides led Rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal) to describe him as the conqueror of the Jewish Aristotelians. As the author of a messianist trilogy, the historian Zeev Aescoly called him “the greatest codifier of messianism in his day”. If there was any Jew toward the end of the medieval period and the beginning of the modern period who deserved a royal title, it was Don Isaac Abravanel. …. But what we also find is that Abarbanel’s writings also greatly influenced Christians [certainly the case with the biblical prophet Jeremiah]. Wikipedia again: …. Christian scholars appreciated the convenience of Abravanel’s commentaries, and often used them when preparing their own exegetical writing. This may have had something to do with Abravanel’s openness towards the Christian religion, since he worked closely with Messianic ideas found within Judaism. Because of this, Abravanel’s works were translated and distributed within the world of Christian scholarship. Exegesis His exegetical writings are set against a richly-conceived backdrop of the Jewish historical and sociocultural experience, and it is often implied that his exegesis was sculpted with the purpose of giving hope to the Jews of Spain that the arrival of the Messiah was imminent in their days. This idea distinguished him from many other philosophers of the age, who did not rely as heavily on Messianic concepts. Due to the overall excellence and exhaustiveness of Abrabanel’s exegetical literature, he was looked to as a beacon for later Christian scholarship, which often included the tasks of translating and condensing his works. …. [End of quote] Altshuler continues: …. Many of the Jews of Spain fled to Portugal, falling into a trap: Juan II closed the borders and forced them to convert. Others were herded onto ships bound for the Mediterranean. Plague epidemics broke out on the overcrowded vessels, which were then refused entry to the ports of Italy. Only in Genoa were the passengers allowed to disembark for a short time, on a dock surrounded by water on three sides. “One might have mistaken them for ghosts”, an eyewitness wrote. “So emaciated they were, so funereal, their eyes sunken in their sockets. They could be taken for dead, if not for the fact that they were still able to move”. Cf. Lamentations 2:10: “The elders of daughter Zion sit on the ground in silence; they have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth; the young girls of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground”. 2:11-12: “Infants and babies faint on the streets of the city. They cry to their mother, ‘Where is bread and wine?’ As they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mothers’ bosom”. 4:7, 8: “Her princes …. Now their visage is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as wood”. [Altshuler]: …. By the summer of 1492, in less than three months, the Jews of Spain, whose cultural achievements had been a beacon to the Jewish world for hundreds of years, were wiped out. …. Netanyahu tells of Abarbanel in words that could, in the main, be re-directed back to Jeremiah, but with one needing to replace all of the modern European history references now with ancient Jewish history and the Chaldeans. Thus the invader from across the Alps, Charles VIII of France takes the place of Nebuchednezzar the Chaldean invading from the north; Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’ reminds (as according to Cheyne above) of king Jehoiakim of Jerusalem. [Continued in the next section, on Savonarola]. 3. Girolamo Savonarola …. Allow me to supply the parallels, of Abravanel, with both Jeremiah and with Savonarola: …. Jews dwell securely in all the countries of Spain, feasting on delicacies in peace and tranquility. (Jeremiah 6:14): “They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying “Peace, peace”, when there is no peace”. …. The alarm should have sounded with the onset of the pogroms of 1391, which was followed by waves of forced conversion and reached a peak when the Inquisition was established, 11 years before the final expulsion edict. Despite centuries of oppression, the Jews of Spain dismissed the dangers and became hooked on the illusion that the pogroms were a lightening rod that would divert the hatred toward the converts and away from the Jews. …. (Jeremiah 7:4): “Do not trust in the deceptive words: “This is the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord”. …. It is an intriguing tale about a man who soars high and falls low, who watches helplessly as ships [in Jeremiah’s case, probably carts] laden with Jews sail [roll] off to their deaths, and who hobnobs with princes and dukes in the palaces of Naples and Venice. Jeremiah mixed with high and low alike. …. The drama reaches a pinnacle in the final chapters: Abravanel, shattered and depressed by his people’s fate, disgusted with the vanities and temptations of this world, consolidates a pessimistic view of the world as Sodom and Gomorrah, fated to be destroyed in an apocalyptic war. Cf. Savonarola: “After Charles VIII of France [cf. Nebuchednezzar the Chaldean] invaded Florence [Jerusalem] in 1494, the ruling Medici were overthrown and Savonarola [like Jeremiah] emerged as the new leader of the city, combining in himself the role of secular leader and priest. He set up a republic in Florence. Characterizing it as a “Christian and religious Republic,” one of its first acts was to make sodomy, previously punishable by fine, into a capital offence. Homosexuality had previously been tolerated in the city, and many homosexuals from the elite now chose to leave Florence. …. (Jeremiah 23:14): “… the prophets of Jerusalem … all of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah”. (Lamentations 4:6): “For the chastisement of my people has been greater than Sodom”. …. His belief in the end of history is supported by intricate eschatological calculations proving that sometime between 1501 and 1513, salvation will arrive: An end-of-days war between Christians and Muslims will destroy evil Rome; from beyond the Sambatyon [akin to the Euphrates] River a Jewish army of the Ten Tribes will arise and take revenge on the enemies of Israel; the dead will return to life, and the Messiah, now revealed, will lead the last revolution − the revolution of the Kingdom of Heaven. …. So did Savonarola foresee a New Jerusalem?: The reward for the self-sacrifice of the Florentines, he promised, would be the elevation of the city of Florence to the stature of the New Jerusalem, a model of Christian purity and the capital of the millennial kingdom. And Jeremiah?: (Jeremiah 31:31): “The days are surely coming says the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the House of Israel and the house of Judah”. (38, 40): “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when the city [of Jerusalem] shall be rebuilt … sacred to the Lord. It shall never again be uprooted or overthrown” …. This era of geographical exploration and the sense of space conjured up by the New World, which contrasted starkly with the gloomy prospects of the Jews, prompted Abravanel to fantasize about a mythical solution for his persecuted people. In this Jewish theocracy that he predicted would arise at any moment, he envisioned a humane and democratic government in which everyone would have the right to vote; in which the judges would be chosen by the people rather than the king; in which officials would serve the public, not their superiors. (Jeremiah 33:14-15): “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land”. One has to ask why God would so favour the city of Florence of all places, so as to make of it a ‘New Jerusalem’. Jerusalem renewed, yes. Or Rome, the eternal city. These two holy cities. But Florence? Like Jeremiah, Savonarola was a rather reluctant prophet. He burned to engage in the work of saving souls, yet shrank for some years from entering on the priestly office. This might be ascribed to his sense of its responsibility and of the high qualifications which it demanded. No preparatory studies, no Church ceremonial, neither Pope nor prelate, he boldly averred, could make a man a priest; personal holiness, in his judgment …. (Jeremiah 1:6): “Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a [Hebrew na’ar, usually translated as] ‘boy’.”. As a result, Savonarola is always cast as being lambasted for being “ungainly, as well as being a poor orator”. But it was Jeremiah’s actual words that were ridiculed, with his listeners mocking his mantra: ‘Terror on every side’. Jeremiah also, like Savonarola, had a disdain for both priests and prophets. And so did Abarbanel (though supposedly of the Catholic clergy). Thus Netanayahu (Don Isaac Abravanel … p. 323): An echo of Savonarola’s campaign against official Rome may be heard in the following statement of Abravanel: “All the priests of Rome and her Bishops pursue avarice and bribery and are not concerned with their religion, for the sign of heresy is upon their forehead”. (Salvations, p. 3, 4a). Now this is again an entirely Jeremian image in relation to Unfaithful Israel (Jeremiah 3:3). “You have the forehead of a whore, you refuse to be ashamed” (the image taken up again later by St. John in Revelation 17:5). Indeed, Savonarola called the Vatican “…. a house of prostitution where harlots sit upon the throne of Solomon and signal to passersby: whoever can pay enters and does what he wishes”. But Jeremiah was, like Savonarola, virtually the only good man left, so he had to be chosen. “Search …. If you can find one person who acts justly and seeks truth …” (Jeremiah 5:1). Savonarola is supposed to have claimed: “It is not the cowl that makes the monk – being not only the highest qualification for that office, but one indispensable and essential”. This qualification he is thought to have possessed in a pre-eminent degree. In no Church has there been many men so holy. Fra Sebastiano da Brescia, a very devout Dominican, who was vicar of the congregation of Lombardy, and for a long time his confessor, declared his belief that Savonarola had never committed – what he calls – a mortal sin, and bears the highest possible testimony to the purity of his life. …. Perhaps his reluctance arose also from the degraded position into which those who filled it had brought the sacred office. So openly abandoned to vice were most of them at that time, that he was in the habit of saying, “If you wish your son to be a wicked man, make him a priest!” …. Savonarola, like Jeremiah, would suffer greatly for this: “Little did this gentle spirit, lover of peace as of purity, dream, as he entered the gates of the monastery, of a day when he would exclaim with Jeremiah, “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife, a man of contention to the whole earth!” [a reference to Jeremiah 15:10]. But so it turned out”. One could do worse than to view, in a Jeremian context, the apocalyptical warnings of Abravanel and Savonarola and their denunciations of the rulers and the clergy. The Book of Jeremiah may hold the key to Girolamo Savonarola. 4. Christopher Columbus Who am I? indeed! If my instincts are correct regarding Christopher Columbus, the Book of Jonah holds the key in this case. I think that the story of Christopher Columbus, a fiction, is the tale of Jonah writ large. Here is what I wrote about the situation, as I see it, in my article: Book of Jonah elements in the story of Columbus Academia.edu | Search | Book of Jonah elements in the story of Columbus The name Colombo is synonymous with the name “JONAH,” which means, “dove.” In “America’s Hebraic Heritage And Roots. The Hebraic Prophetic Roots Of America’s Discovery”, we read of an apparent Jewishness in Christopher Columbus: http://www.threemacs.org/docs/Americas%20Hebraic%20Roots%20-%20Columbus%20and%20the%20Discovery.pdf 1. Christopher Columbus was believed to have been of both Jewish and Italian descent. Born in Genoa, Italy, his roots actually were from Spain. 2. His paternal grandfather was a [converso] who had his name changed from Colon to Columbo. 3. Conversos were Jews who had, by choice or necessity, converted to Christianity. 4. To survive Jewish annihilation during the Spanish Inquisition, Columbus was raised a Christian. 5. His use of the Spanish form of his name in his dairies and letters along with certain oddities lend great credence to the fact that he was Jewish. 6. Colon is a Spanish-Jewish name. 7. The name Colombo is synonymous with the name “JONAH,” which means, “dove.” 8. Jonah was the first Hebrew prophet sent to a Gentile nation but rebelled and found himself thrown overboard by lots during a fierce storm. 9. Prior to discovering America, Columbus found his fleet being tossed at sea by a violent storm on his return from the New World. The storm was so strong he recommended that the crew appease God with a sacrificial vow. One from among them was to vow to make a pilgrimage to a particular monastery if they survived. Columbus took 39 beans and marked a cross on one of them. They drew lots a total of four times and each time Columbus drew the marked bean. 10. Jonah’s mission was to go to a Gentile nation and be a light but when he disobeyed, God intervened with a storm. God used a storm to likewise push Columbus to discovering what we know today as North and South America. 11. Columbus sometime signed his name in a peculiar triangular form. Some historians believe this alluded to his Jewish heritage. 12. In 1484, Columbus was 33 years old. This is the year of a man’s life known in Italy as “anno de Christo,” the year of Christ, which according to tradition is reserved for revelation. 13. He felt he had received divine revelation to sail west and to take the name of Christ to the ends of the earth. Later in his dairies he likened himself to a modern day Moses. 14. It is possible that Columbus quest for gold was in his heart more for the restoration of Israel and the Temple than just lust for riches. …. {Speaking of Colon, I am reminded of the famous Australian poet, professor James McAuley, my English teacher at the University of Tasmania around 1970, who - ever the grammarian - is reputed to have quipped, after he had to have part of his colon removed due to bowel cancer, ‘better a semi-colon than a full stop’}: Memories of Australian poet, professor James P. McAuley https://www.academia.edu/79766119/Memories_of_Australian_poet_professor_James_P_McAuley In 1503, as we are told, Columbus and 116 sailors were stranded on Jamaica with little prospect of recue. According to Ronald A. Reis (Christopher Columbus and the Age of Exploration for Kids, p. 112): “The Spaniards, after four days of hell, felt as if they had been delivered from the whale’s belly, like the prophet Jonah”. Perry F. Stone writes (Nightmare Along Pennsylvania Avenue: Prophetic Insight into America's Role, p. 61-62): … Christopher Columbus … Spanish … Cristóbal Colón … was Jewish. … Research of the name Colombo reveals that it is synonymous with the name Jonah, which means “dove”. It is interesting to compare Jonah’s story in the Bible to the events surrounding Columbus. (See the Book of Jonah in the Bible). The book The Light and the Glory says that on the return journey home from the New World, Columbus, having been deceived by the lust for gold, found his fleet being tossed at sea by a violent storm. …. The storm was so strong that Columbus recommended they appease God with a sacrificial vow that one of them would make a pilgrimage to a particular monastery. The men agreed, so Columbus took thirty-nine beans and marked a cross on one of them. They put the beans in a hat, drew lots, and the first time the beans were drawn, Columbus drew the marked bean. They drew lots three more times, with the marked bean being drawn by Columbus twice more. The odds of this happening are rare. It seems that Columbus was living up to the heritage of his namesake, and God was trying to get his attention! Jonah was the first Hebrew prophet sent to a Gentile nation. His mission was to go to Nineveh and be a light unto them. When Jonah strayed from this, God intervened with a storm. Likewise, Columbus’s mission was to open the curtain on the New World. This New World would create a nation that would further the mission of bringing Christ to the nations, and God would not allow greed to undermine His plan. …. The Jonah-Columbus comparison would not be complete without the Big Fish. As I wrote in my article: De-coding Jonah (9) De-coding Jonah Another note on 'AD' pseudo-history. Earlier on … I argued for the Nineveh-connected, and hence quite anachronistic Prophet Mohammed to have been a non-historical composite, partly based on Tobias, the son of Tobit of Nineveh. Although Mohammed would be regarded by most as being a true historical character, whilst Jonah would not, I would insist upon the very opposite. The same comment would apply to that muddle-headed navigator, Columbus (meaning "Dove"), whose maritime epic is, for me, the story of Jonah 'writ large'. Christopher Columbus sets sail (rather more enthusiastically than had Jonah) to convert the pagans. Many, many centuries before Columbus, 1492 and all that, the Bronze Age Mediterraneans (Cretan Philistines and the Levantines) were mining tons of nearly pure copper, for their precious bronze, from far-away Lake Superior in Northern America (Gavin Menzies, The Lost Empire of Atlantis, 2001). “Columbus” (whoever he/it may have been) did not discover America! Not surprisingly, though, “Columbus” is supposed to have encountered “a great fish” - a description that accurately translates Jonah 2:1's dag gadol (דָּג גָּדוֹל) ("... Columbus sees a Sea Monster"): http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/1494-september-114-columbus-sees-sea-monster "From a modern English translation of [his son] Ferdinand's biography, we read that sometime between September 1~14 in 1494, this curious event occurred to Columbus and his men: "Holding on their course, the ship's people sighted a large fish, big as a whale, with a carapace like a turtle's, a head the size of a barrel protruding from the water, a long tail like that of a tunny fish, and two large wings. From this and from certain other signs the Admiral knew they were in for foul weather and sought a port where they might take refuge." "As far as I know, no such creature exists. So what did Columbus see? 'Did It Happen...? "This is one of those moments where the gray zone of what is considered history and what is considered not history is fully exposed. "History is often just stories that have been agreed upon and accepted, with no hard evidence past this agreement to support it... and in the case of most of Christopher Columbus' voyages, this is the case. Ferdinand's account of his father's life is taken as authoritative on many details that no other document can confirm; yet the story above is quietly ignored, even though it has the same amount of evidence to support it as anything else in Ferdinand's biography". 5. Leonardo da Vinci “Over 1500 years before Leonardo Da Vinci became the Renaissance Man, antiquity had its own in the form of Archimedes, one of the most famous Ancient Greeks”. Charles River Editors If Leonardo da Vinci has been modelled to some degree upon a possibly fictitious Archimedes, then how much of what we have about Leonardo is truly reliable? Or, to put it another way, we might ask: What is the real Da Vinci Code? Yet again, if Archimedes, in turn, was (as I think) derived from Akhimiti of Lachish: Did the Greeks derive their Archimedes from Sargon II’s Akhimiti? (9) Did the Greeks derive their Archimedes from Sargon II's Akhimiti? then this would make a Leonardo Da Vinci derived from Archimedes doubly suspect. The two names, Archimedes and Leonardo, are constantly found mentioned together. For instance, there is this article, “Archimedes and Leonardo Da Vinci: The Greatest Geniuses of Antiquity and the Renaissance”: https://www.createspace.com/4430132 Authored by Charles River Editors …. “Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world.’"– Archimedes “Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.” – Leonardo Over 1500 years before Leonardo Da Vinci became the Renaissance Man, antiquity had its own in the form of Archimedes, one of the most famous Ancient Greeks. An engineer, mathematician, physicist, scientist and astronomer all rolled into one, Archimedes has been credited for making groundbreaking discoveries, some of which are undoubtedly fact and others that are almost certainly myth. Regardless, he’s considered the first man to determine a way to measure an object’s mass, and also the first man to realize that refracting the Sun’s light could burn something, theorizing the existence of lasers over two millennia before they existed. People still use the design of the Archimedes screw in water pumps today, and modern scholars have tried to link him to the recently discovered Antikythera mechanism, an ancient “computer” of sorts that used mechanics to accurately chart astronomical data depending on the date it was set to. Mackey’s comment: Ah, but these water pumps were actually used by Sennacherib in Assyria in c. 700 BC, well before the Greeks. See Dr. Stephanie Dalley’s book (2015): The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon An Elusive World Wonder Traced The article continues: It has long been difficult to separate fact from legend in the story of Archimedes’ life, from his death to his legendary discovery of how to differentiate gold from fool’s gold, but many of his works survived antiquity, and many others were quoted by other ancient writers. As a result, even while his life and death remain topics of debate, his writings and measurements are factually established and well known, and they range on everything from measuring an object’s density to measuring circles and parabolas. The Renaissance spawned the use of the label “Renaissance Man” to describe a person who is extremely talented in multiple fields, and no discussion of the Renaissance is complete without the original “Renaissance Man”, Leonardo da Vinci. Indeed, if 100 people are asked to describe Leonardo in one word, they might give 100 answers. As the world’s most famous polymath and genius, Leonardo found time to be a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. It would be hard to determine which field Leonardo had the greatest influence in. His “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper” are among the most famous paintings of all time, standing up against even Michelangelo’s work. But even if he was not the age’s greatest artist, Leonardo may have conducted his most influential work was done in other fields. His emphasis on the importance of Nature would influence Enlightened philosophers centuries later, and he sketched speculative designs for gadgets like helicopters that would take another 4 centuries to create. Leonardo’s vision and philosophy were made possible by his astounding work as a mathematician, engineer and scientist. At a time when much of science was dictated by Church teachings, Leonardo studied geology and anatomy long before they truly even became scientific fields, and he used his incredible artistic abilities to sketch the famous Vitruvian Man, linking art and science together. …. [End of quote] Then there is this one by D. L. Simms, “Archimedes’ Weapons of War and Leonardo” (BJHS, 1988, 21, pp. 195-210): https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0007087400024766 INTRODUCTION Leonardo's fascination with Archimedes as well as with his mathematics is well known. There are three fairly extensive and eccentric comments in the surviving notebooks: on his military inventions; on his part in an Anglo-Spanish conflict and on his activities, death and burial at the siege of Syracuse. Reti has examined the first of the three, that about the Architronito or steam cannon, mainly considering the origin of the idea for the cannon and its attribution to Archimedes, but with comments on the later influence of Leonardo's ideas. Marshall Clagett has produced the most comprehensive attempt to try to identify Leonardo's sources for the third. …. Reti's analysis can be supplemented and extended in the light of more recent comments and Sakas' experimental demonstration of a miniature working model, and Clagett's proposed sources modified. The origins of the other reference, Leonardo's belief that Archimedes played a part in an Anglo-Spanish war, can also be rendered slightly less baffling. Any conclusions must necessarily be tentative given the generally accepted opinion that much less than half of Leonardo's manuscripts survive. …. ARCHITRONITO Leonardo's earliest surviving mention (late 1480s-1490) of Archimedes' weapons of war is perhaps the most startling (Ms.B 33r): …. Architronito. Gunsight. Ensure that the rod en is placed over the centre of the table fixed beneath so that the water can fall with a single shot on to this table. The Architronito is a machine of fine copper, an invention of Archimedes, and it throws iron balls with great noise and violence. It is used in this manner:—the third part of the instrument stands within a great quantity of burning coals and when it has been brought to white heat you turn the screw d, which is above the cistern of water abc, at the same time that you turn the screw below the cistern and all the water it contains will descend into the white hot part of the barrel. There it will instantly become transformed into so much steam that it will seem astonishing, and especially when one notes with what force and hears the roar that it will produce. This machine has driven a ball weighing one talent six stadia. …. Origins of the attribution Reti demonstrated that Leonardo's source of the idea for this weapon was the drawings of cannons in De Re Militari by Valturius, who stated that the cannon had been invented—ut putatur—by Archimedes. …. [End of quote] “Who knows which of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions were really the brainchild of Archimedes of Syracuse?” https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/159447 6. Cesare Borgia If Leonardo da Vinci may possibly be fake history, then what does that do to his supposed contemporary, Cesare Borgia? For as we read further from smashwords.com : …. In 1499 Leonardo di Vinci is hired by Cesare Borgia as a military engineer. He begins to work on a steam canon that had originally been an idea of Archimedes 1500 years earlier. Leonardo tells Cesare the story of Archimedes and how he made many discoveries in mathematics and science. Archimedes visits Alexandria and falls in love with Princess Helena, and in spite of their age difference, they marry and return to Syracuse. Soon Helena gives birth to their only child, a daughter they name Arsinoe. For nearly fifty years of peace, Syracuse is drawn into the war between Rome and Carthage. Archimedes must use all his vast knowledge to defend Syracuse and his very family. Cesare offers to purchase the chest of ideas from Leonardo but he declines the offer. [End of quote] Mackey’s comment: Ah, Cesare Borgia! He, too, may be under a bit of a credibility cloud. As I wrote in my article: Achitophel and Machiavelli (4) Achitophel and Machiavelli | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu 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 sprit 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 quotes] Cesare Borgia seems to me to be yet another of those composite characters of which Heraclius (mentioned above) is a most extreme example. Apart from the likeness of the House of Borgia to Israel, as just quoted, Cesare, appropriately, channelled something of his namesake Julius Caesar, himself a composite (and fictitious) figure: Jesus Christ was the Model for some legends surrounding Julius Caesar. Part Two: Hellenistic Influence. https://www.academia.edu/14805253/Jesus_Christ_was_the_Model_for_some_legends_surrounding_Julius_Caesar_Part_Two_Hellenistic_Influence Cesare is thought to have deliberately propagandised himself as a new Julius Caesar: https://sophieswertsknudsen.com/aut-cesare-aut-nihil/ ‘Aut Caesar, Aut Nihil’ which means ‘Either Emperor or Nothing’ is the resonant, powerful motto we immediately associate with Italian Renaissance Prince Cesare Borgia. The phrase most likely coined by Julius Caesar himself, indicates sky high ambition for power and fame and the desire to succeed at all cost. Cesare was however not the only one to use it. Others did as well, both before and also after him. Like marketing campaigns in our modern day, Cesare used various tools such as mottos, paintings, weapons and costume to make strong statements about himself, his culture, power, taste and ambition. Many of these tools were directly related to the Roman General Julius Caesar with whom Cesare Borgia liked to identify himself. His marketing campaign had only one purpose: to signal to his enemies and the people in Italy that a new powerful leader had risen; one that would stop for nothing. ‘Aut Caesar, aut nihil’ was probably first used by Cesare on banners that hung from the walls of Castel Sant’Angelo when he made his triumphant entry into Rome in 1500. After his downfall, the motto would be ridiculed by his enemies and they scoffed at the fact that he had reached ‘nihil’ (nothing). 7. Niccolò Machiavelli If Niccolò Machiavelli truly had Cesare Borgia well in mind as a model for his Prince, as is generally thought, then, based on the above (# 6), the historicity of this malignant and mischievous master of manifold manipulations must also be up for grabs. Even more so, given how notably Machiavelli shares likenesses with the biblical Achitophel, particularly in his sinister association with King David’s Prince son, Absalom: Achitophel and Machiavelli (9) Achitophel and Machiavelli 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 8. Martin Luther Martin Luther is commonly thought to resemble the biblical reformer, Nehemiah. Pope Paul IV, who wanted Savonarola's books placed on the Index of Forbidden books, had in mind a different comparison: When Pope Paul IV examined [Savonarola’s] writings, he said “This is Martin Luther, this doctrine is pestiferous!”. Who, we might ask, was Martin Luther? 9. Suleiman the Magnificent The much-touted Islamic Caliphate is now on very shaky grounds, indeed, as I have determined both historically and archaeologically: Oh my, the Umayyads! Deconstructing the Caliphate (9) Oh my, the Umayyads! Deconstructing the Caliphate Moreover, King Suleiman I as “a second Solomon”, and “a new Solomon”, might come under suspicion based on what I wrote at the beginning: “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 …”. Suleiman the Magnificent, King of the Ottoman Turks --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Suleiman … is therefore called the second Solomon by many Islamic scholars …”. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- King Suleiman ‘the Magnificent’, a supposedly C16th AD Ottoman emperor (but born in the C15th AD era under consideration here) was, according to this source http://everything2.com/title/Suleiman+the+Magnificent “a new Solomon”. And, similarly, Suleiman was “the second Solomon”. A new Solomon is risen Süleyman I was everything a magnificent ruler should be. He was just, making the right decisions in cases set before him. [Cf. I Kings 3:16-28] He was brave, leading his armies in battle until he had greatly expanded his sultanate. He was wealthy, living in luxury and turning his capital Istanbul into a splendid city. And he was cultured, his court teeming with philosophers and artists, and the Sultan himself mastering several arts, especially that of poetry. …. Süleyman ascended to the throne in 1520 and stayed there for all of 46 years. During his reign he furthered the work of his forefathers until he had made the empire of the Ottomans into one of the world’s greatest. The Sultan was named after Solomon, who was described as the perfect ruler in the Quran. Like the legendary king of the Jews, Süleyman was seen as just and wise, and a worthy follower of his namesake. He is therefore called the second Solomon by many Islamic scholars, although he was the first of that name among the Ottomans. Like the Solomon of old, this ruler was surrounded by splendour and mystery, and his time is remembered as the zenith of his people. …. [End of quote] Problems with Islamic ‘History’ In some cases, Islam and its scholars have shown a complete disregard for historical perspective. I had cause to discuss this in my review of Islamic scholar Ahmed Osman’s book, Out of Egypt. The Roots of Christianity Revealed, in: Osman’s ‘Osmosis’ of Moses (4) Osman's 'Osmosis' of Moses. Part One: The Chosen People | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu (4) Osman's 'Osmosis' of Moses. Part Two: Christ The King | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu his books being a diabolical historical mish-mash in which the author, Osman, sadly attempts to herd a millennium or more of history into the single Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. But getting right to the heart of the situation, the historical problems pertaining to the Prophet Mohammed himself are legendary. My own contribution, amongst many, to this subject, is, for example: Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History (4) Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Scholars have long pointed out the historical problems associated with the life of the Prophet Mohammed and the history of Islam, with some going even so far as to cast doubt upon Mohammed’s actual existence. Biblico-historical events, normally separated the one from the other by many centuries, are re-cast as contemporaneous in the Islamic texts. Muslim author, Ahmed Osman, has waxed so bold as to squeeze, into the one Egyptian dynasty, the Eighteenth, persons supposed to span more than one and a half millennia. Now, as I intend to demonstrate in this article, biblico-historical events that occurred during the neo-Assyrian era of the C8th BC, and then later on, in the Persian era, have found their way into the biography of Mohammed supposedly of the C7th AD. Added to all this confusion is the highly suspicious factor of a ‘second’ Nehemiah, sacrificing at the site of the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem during a ‘second’ Persian period, all contemporaneous with the Prophet of Islam himself. The whole scenario is most reminiscent of the time of the original (and, I believe, of the only) Nehemiah of Israel. And so I wrote in an article, now up-dated as: Two Supposed Nehemiahs: BC time and AD time https://www.academia.edu/12429764/Two_Supposed_Nehemiahs_BC_time_and_AD_time This … later Nehemiah “offers a sacrifice on the site of the Temple”, according to Étienne Couvert (La Vérité sur les Manuscripts de la Mer Morte, 2nd ed, Éditions de Chiré, p. 98. My translation). “He even seems to have attempted to restore the Jewish cult of sacrifice”, says Maxine Lenôtre (Mahomet Fondateur de L’Islam, Publications MC, p.111, quoting from S.W. Baron’s, Histoire d’Israël, T. III, p. 187. My translation), who then adds (quoting from the same source): “Without any doubt, a number of Jews saw in these events a repetition of the re-establishment of the Jewish State by Cyrus and Darius [C6th BC kings of ancient Persia] and behaved as the rulers of the city and of the country”. [End of quote] So, conceivably, the whole concept of a Persian (or Sassanian) empire at this time, with rulers named Chosroes, again reminiscent of the ancient Cyrus ‘the Great’, may need to be seriously questioned. Coins and Archaeology And how to “explain inscriptions on early Islamic coins – the ones that showed Muhammed meeting with a Persian emperor [Chosroes II] who supposedly died a century before”? http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/place-london/plain/A85654957 Emmet Scott, who asks “Were the Arab Conquests a Myth?”, also points out major anomalies relating to the coinage of this presumed period, and regarding the archaeology of Islam in general, though Scott does not go so far as to suggest that the Sassanian era duplicated the ancient Persian one: http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/160197/sec_id/160197 Note the remark [in Encyclopdaedia Iranica]: “The Arab-Sasanian coinages are not imitations,” but were “designed and manufactured by the same people as the late Sasanian issues.” We note also that the date provided on these artefacts is written in Persian script, and it would appear that those who minted the coins, native Persians, did not understand Arabic. We hear that under the Arabs the mints were “evidently allowed to go on as before,” and that there are “a small number of coins indistinguishable from the drahms of the last emperor, Yazdegerd III, dated during his reign but after the Arab capture of the cities of issue. It was only when Yazdegerd died (A.D. 651) [in the time of the Ummayad Caliph Mu'awiya] that some mark of Arab authority was added to the coinage.” (Ibid.) Even more puzzling is the fact that the most common coins during the first decades of Islamic rule were those of Yazdegerd's predecessor Chosroes II, and many of these too bear the Arabic inscription (written however, as we saw, in the Syriac script) besm Allah. Now, it is just conceivable that invading Arabs might have issued slightly amended coins of the last Sassanian monarch, Yazdegerd III, but why continue to issue money in the name of a previous Sassanian king (Chosroes II), one who, supposedly, had died ten years earlier? This surely stretches credulity. The Persian-looking Islamic coins are of course believed to date from the time of Umar (d. 664), one of the “Rightly-guided Caliphs” who succeeded Muhammad and supposedly conquered what became the Islamic Empire. Yet it has to be stated that there is no direct archaeological evidence for the existence either of Umar or any of the other “Rightly-guided” Caliphs Abu Bakr, Uthman or Ali. Not a brick, coin, or artifact of any kind bears the name of these men. Archaeologically, their existence is as unattested as Muhammad himself. …. [End of quote] But surely what Scott alleges about these early Caliphs, that: “Not a brick, coin, or artifact of any kind bears the name of these men”, cannot be applied to Suleiman the Magnificent himself, evidence of whose building works in, say Jerusalem, are considered to abound and to be easily identifiable. A typical comment would be this: “Jerusalem’s current walls were built under the orders of Suleiman the Magnificent between the years 1537 and 1541. Some portions were built over the ancient walls from 2,000 years ago. The walls were built to prevent invasions from local tribes and to discourage another crusade by Christians from Europe”: http://www.generationword.com/jerusalem101/4-walls-today.html Previously, I have discussed Greek appropriations of earlier ancient Near Eastern culture and civilization. But might Arabic Islam have, in turn, appropriated the earlier Byzantine Greek architecture, and perhaps some of its archaeology? There appears to be plenty written on this subject, e.g.: “The appropriation of Byzantine elements into Islamic architecture”, by Patricia Blessing, “art and architecture of the Muslim World, focusing on trans-cultural interactions in the Middle Ages, the appropriation of Byzantine elements into Islamic architecture, the transfer and authentication of relics in East and West, historical photographs of architecture and urban spaces”: http://cmems.stanford.edu/tags/appropriation-byzantine-elements-islamic-architecture And, again: http://www.daimonas.com/pages/byzantine-basis-persian.html “This page is related to the Byzantine origins of what are claimed to be "Islamic" ideas. This page is limited to showing the Byzantine/Greek basis of Sassanian ideas which were absorbed by the even less original Arabs who replaced the faith of Zoroaster with one more brutal; that of Mohammed”. A rock relief of Chosroes II at Taq-I Bustan “clearly shows the symbol which was to be appropriated by Islam, the crescent moon …”. As for the archaeology of the walls of the city of Jerusalem itself, relevant to Sultan Suleiman the supposed wall builder there, the exact identification of these various wall levels is highly problematical, as attested by Hershel Shanks, “The Jerusalem Wall That Shouldn’t Be There. Three major excavations fail to explain controversial remains”: http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=13&Issue=3&ArticleID=5 So perhaps art and architecture attributed to the direction of Suleiman the Magnificent might need to be seriously re-assessed for the purposes of authentication. Words are put into the mouth of a supposed Venetian visitor to the glorious kingdom of Suleiman the Magnificent that immediately remind me of the remarks made by the biblical Queen of Sheba upon her visit to the court of the truly magnificent King Solomon. Compare (http://everything2.com/title/Suleiman+the+Magnificent): “I know no State which is happier than this one. It is furnished with all God’s gifts. It controls war and peace; it is rich in gold, in people, in ships, and in obedience; no State can be compared with it. May God long preserve the most just of all Emperors.” The Venetian ambassador reports from Istanbul in 1525 with (I Kings 10:6-9): Then [Sheba] said to the king [Solomon]: “It was a true report which I heard in my own land about your words and your wisdom. However I did not believe the words until I came and saw with my own eyes; and indeed the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity exceed the fame of which I heard. Happy are your men and happy are these your servants, who stand continually before you and hear your wisdom! Blessed be the Lord your God, who delighted in you, setting you on the throne of Israel! Because the Lord has loved Israel forever, therefore He made you king, to do justice and righteousness.” And in the article, “How Sultan Süleyman became ‘Kanuni [Lawgiver]’”, we find Suleiman likened to, not only King Solomon, again, but also to King Solomon’s law-giving alter ego, Solon, and to Solomon’s contemporary (revised) Hammurabi: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/how-sultan-suleyman-became-kanuni.aspx?pageI The first written, complete code of laws is nearly 4,000 years old, from the time of Hammurabi, the king of Babylon (r. 1792 B.C. to 1750 B.C.), although fragments of legal codes from other cities in the Mesopotamian area have been discovered. Hammurabi is still honored today as a lawgiver. In the Bible, it was Moses whom the Jews singled out as a lawgiver and among the ancient Greeks, Draco and Solon. …. …. Süleyman oversaw the codification of a new general code of laws. Not only were previous codes of law taken into account, new cases and analogies were added. Fines and punishments were regularized and some of the more severe punishments were mitigated. …. The kanunnames are collections of kanuns or statutes that are basically short summaries of decrees issued by the sultan. The decrees in turn were made on the basis of a particular individual, place or event but when issued, these particular details were not included. The publication of such a general kanunname throughout the empire was the responsibility of the nişancı, an official whose duty it was to attach the sultan’s imperial signature on the decrees issued in his name. …. The sultan held the judicial power and judges had to follow what he decreed. …. What Kanuni Sultan Süleyman did to earn his sobriquet as ‘lawgiver’ has often been compared to the just ruler King Solomon, from the Old Testament. [End of quote]