By Steven
Collins
An article in the 1991 edition of the
Epigraphic Society Occasional
Publications (ESOP) entitled "The Davenport and Newark Inscriptions," by
Charles Moyer asserted that certain ancient North American artifacts and
inscriptions could not be Hebrew because "the ancient Hebrews feared and hated
the sea and have never shown any evidence of being a sea-faring people..." I do
not believe that assertion can be substantiated, and the word "never"
particularly misstates the historical reality of the ancient Hebrews. This
article will document that the ancient Hebrews (i.e. "Israelites") had
well-developed sea-faring skills. It will also show why historians have failed
to recognize this fact.
Concerning ancient Israel's pre-monarchial period, it is
stated in Judges 5:17; "Why did Dan remain in ships?" This comment is made in
what is called "Deborah's song," and is a commentary describing what various
tribes of Israel did (or did not do) in a victorious military battle. This biblical comment indicates that the tribe of
Dan was, at that time, closely identified with a maritime way of life. Some
Bibles offer a date of 1200 B.C. as a guide for dating that battle.
Interestingly, Egyptian and Greek sources record that one of
the tribes of the Sea Peoples, a sea-raiding people in the eastern Mediterranean
at that time, were called the "Danauna" or the "Danaans." The Encyclopedia
Britannica (1943 Ed., see Heading "Troy") cites the Egyptian and Greek accounts
of these sea raiders and dates them to being present in the Levant "between 1230
and 1190 B.C." [Other sources render the spelling of these people as Danaouna or
Danaoi, but all spellings cited include the easily recognizable root word
"Dan”]. It is noteworthy that the secular historical dates coincide with the
biblical dates for the tribe of Dan being a maritime tribe. Since one of the
traits of the tribe of Dan was naming things after its tribal name (Joshua
19:47), it is not surprising that this maritime tribe would have its name
recognizable in Egyptian and Greek accounts about
them.
Also, the Hebrew tribes of Israel developed very strong maritime skills
during the reign of King Solomon via their close alliance with the Phoenicians.
Indeed, this alliance was so close that Solomon's alliance with King Hiram of
the Phoenician city-states (which began under King David) led to many thousands
of Israelites working in Phoenicia and vice-versa as the Hebrews and Phoenicians
jointly implemented Solomon's prodigious building projects (I Kings 5). King
Hiram shared the special maritime skills of the Phoenicians with the Israelite
Hebrews (II Chronicles 8:18 records that Israelite mariners were taught by
Phoenicians "who had knowledge of the sea.") II Chronicles 9:21 notes that the
Israelites and Phoenicians jointly crewed a common navy. II Chronicles 9:10 and
21 mention Ophir and Tarshish as ports of call for their joint fleet, and the
cargo manifest of "ivory, apes and peacocks" indicates their trading fleet had
(at a minimum) African and Asian ports-of-call. Contained in my pending
four-book set on Israelite history will be information documenting the specific
technologies used by the Israelite/Phoenician mariners to navigate the world’s
oceans. As readers will see when these book are realeased, the Phoenicians had
invented ingenious devices to enable them to navigate planned courses and
headings on the open oceans, even in unfavorable weather! These ingenious
devices were shared with the Israelites as part of the “knowledge of the sea.”
After receiving these technologies, the oceans began navigable highways for the
Israelite mariners.
I Kings 9:26-27 records that King Solomon built a fleet which was home-ported
in Ezion-geber on the Red Sea, in which Phoenicians also served to teach the
Israelites the “knowledge of the sea.” This indicates that King Solomon's
Israelite navy became a “two-ocean fleet” as his Mediterranean fleet could sail
to Atlantic destinations, and his Red Sea fleet could sail to African, Asian and
Pacific ports. I Kings 10:22 adds that the Israelites had at sea a “navy of
Tharshish.” Does this refer to a trading fleet that sailed to “Tarshish,” or is
there distinct and separate meaning in the word “Tharshish?” Since “Tharshish”
was the proper name of one of the patriarchs of the tribe of Benjamin (I
Chronicles 7:10), it is possible the writer of I Kings used an Israelite clan
name to designate a particular group of Israelites who were assigned to naval
service. If so, they would have been readily known to the writer’s
contemporaries , but not to readers in the 20th century.
At any rate, Israelite mariners learned their “knowledge of the sea” from
what are widely-acknowledged to be the very best maritime teachers available in
the ancient world! There is no indication that the Hebrews "feared and hated the
sea.” Indeed, it appears King Solomon and the tribes of Israel under his rule
were eager to learn the secret maritime skills of the Phoenicians and build
their own naval fleets. Why wouldn’t they be eager to learn such knowledge?
There would have been a tremendous commercial, economic advantage to joining the
Phoenicians’ monopoly of the ancient world’s sea routes.
The Egyptians were also very skilled mariners at that time,
and Solomon's first father-in-law was the Pharaoh of Egypt (I Kings 9:9-16).
This marriage between the royal houses of Israel and Egypt resulted in a
tripartite Phoenician-Israelite-Egyptian alliance in Solomon's time.
After the Hebrew tribes divided into a northern kingdom
(Israel) and a southern kingdom (Judah), the Bible records that they became
perennial enemies, fighting many wars against each other (albeit with a few
interludes of peaceful relations). Biblical accounts show that while the
northern kingdom, Israel (which was more populous as it contained ten Israelite
tribes and Judah retained only two tribes), remained in alliance with Egypt and
Phoenicia, Judah was afterward excluded from the Phoenician alliance. Indeed,
the first ruler of the northern kingdom of Israel after the Israelite schism was
Jeroboam, a prominent Israelite noble who had previously been a courtier of
Egypt's Pharaoh Shishak (I Kings 12:40). This would have resulted in very
favorable relations between Egypt and the ten-tribed kingdom of Israel. Evidence
that Jeroboam retained a very strong affinity to Egypt is clear in his
instituting Egyptian religion (calf-worship) in the northern kingdom of Israel
(I Kings 12:25-30). It is evident that Israel’s alliance with the Phoenicians
was long-lasting as, almost a century later, we find the royal houses of Israel
and the Phoenician city of Sidon intermarried during the reign of King Ahab of
Israel (I Kings 16:31). Likewise, Israel's long-standing attachment to the
fertility practices of the Phoenicians also argues that the Israelite-Phoenician
alliance was quite durable.
The alliances of Israel, the northern Hebrew Kingdom, with Phoenicia and
Egypt, and their longstanding fealty to Egyptian and Phoenician religions, would
have caused the northern kingdom of Israel to become culturally more like their
allies, and progressively less like the Jews, their fellow Israelites from whom
they were estranged. The Bible records that the Kingdom of Israel never
seriously returned to the worship of the Bible's God, but remained steadfastly
in the cultural and religious camp of the Egyptians and (especially) the
Phoenicians. This would have resulted, as decades and centuries passed, in the
"Hebrew" language of the kingdom of Israel becoming more like the already
similar Semitic tongue of their close allies (the Phoenicians) and less like the
"Hebrew" language of Judah (the Jewish Hebrew nation). I Kings 12:25-33 records
that severing his people’s religious and cultural ties to Judah was a
deliberate, state policy of King Jeroboam of Israel! Given this fact, the
northern kingdom of Israel would have progressively merged with the culture of
their close allies in Tyre and Sidon. Modern archaeologists, who do not realize
this fact, routinely label as “Phoenician” the artifacts and inscriptions made
by Israelites of the northern Kingdom of Israel. The people of Judah, who
retained a more distinctly “Hebrew” culture and language were much less numerous
and were excluded from the Phoenician alliance, giving the mistaken impression
that ancient “Hebrews” were an insignificant and land-bound people.
Given the historic alliance and affinity between the
Phoenicians, Egyptians and Israelite Hebrews (all of whom were maritime powers
during their mutual alliance in Solomon's reign), it would not be surprising to
see them cooperating in maritime ventures long after Solomon's death. The
"Davenport inscriptions" are evidence of such cooperation, as it has Egyptian as
well as Phoenician-Hebrew characters. In America B.C., Dr. Barry Fell
observed on page 263 the presence [on the Davenport stele] of "some signs
resembling Hebrew and others resembling Phoenician." This is what one would
expect to find if Israelite Hebrews were a part of this ancient exploration
fleet which reached central North America (the modern state of Iowa). The
Israelites, having become closely linked to the Phoenicians (politically,
economically, culturally, and religiously), would also have become
linguistically like the Phoenicians as well! One would expect the written
language of the northern kingdom of Israel to reflect a Phoenician/Hebrew
amalgam. Because of the longstanding hostility and mistrust between Israel and
Judah, the language and writing of Israel would inevitably have become more
"Phoenician" in nature and less like the "Hebrew" of the Kingdom of Judah. For
this reason, epigraphic remnants of the Israelites of the ten-tribed, northern
kingdom of Israel will be found in Phoenician (i.e.
Punic) contexts, not in those of the Hebrew language of the kingdom of
Judah. When inscriptions are found that seem to blur the distinction between
Hebrew and Phoenician, it is very possible (indeed, likely) that those
inscriptions are a product of Israelites from the northern Hebrew kingdom of
Israel who had blended their cultural identity with the Phoenicians.
There is an event in King Ahab's reign that also argues for
a diffusionist perspective in biblical historical accounts. In I Kings 17 and
18, it is recorded that the prophet Elijah was hiding from Israel's King Ahab,
and that Ahab searched in every nation for him. I Kings 18:10 cites the
following incredulous response of one of Ahab's officials when he finally found
Elijah "in his own backyard" in the nation of Israel:
"As the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom
whither my lord [King Ahab] has not sent to seek you; and when they would say,
'he is not here, ' he would take an oath of the kingdom or nation, that they had
not found you."
This is one of those biblical passages that biblical critics
huff and puff about, regarding it as an example of hyperbole or outright
fabrication, believing that there was no way that King Ahab of Israel could
command enough respect among the nations to "take oaths" of them or demand that
they conduct national searches for a missing prophet. They also scoff at the
idea that Ahab cou1d have had access to "all nations and kingdoms" on the earth
at that time. However, now that the discoveries and efforts of The Epigraphic
Society have demonstrated the diffusionist nature of the ancient world, a
context for a literal understanding of this episode readily presents itself.
King Ahab and Israel were still closely allied to the Phoenicians, the dominant
maritime power of that time. Indeed, King Ahab was married to a Phoenician
princess, Jezebel, daughter of the king of Sidon. His continuing close alliance
with the Phoenicians meant that Ahab had the ability via the Phoenician (and his
own) fleets to send searchers wherever these fleets sailed and traded in either
the Old or New Worlds. The Davenport stele, with its record of "mixed Hebrew and
Phoenician signs," and the other Phoenician inscriptions found in the New World
argue that the sailors of the allied Phoenicians and Israelites (of the northern
kingdom) were present in the New World as well. Therefore, there was a means,
readily available to King Ahab, to send ships to nations all over the world in
search of Elijah. His ability to demand a national search for Elijah, and exact
oaths from the leaders of those nations indicates considerable influence on the
part of King Ahab of Israel. What was the nature of that power?
The answer is obvious. The long-standing
Phoenician/Israelite alliance on the sea controlled access to the ancient
world’s maritime commercial routes. Any nation that did not cooperate with
Ahab's request could have had their goods and ships forcibly embargoed from the
sea routes by the Phoenician/Israelite navies. If the Egyptians were then
still cooperating with the Phoenicians and Israelites (the Davenport stele
argues that periods of such cooperation between their language groupings still
did exist), Ahab's threat would have been backed by not two, but three powerful
navies! Ahab was not an insignificant king on the land either. An alliance of
nations (including King Ahab's Israel) fought the Assyrian Empire under
Shalmaneser III to a stalemate in the battle of Karkar (or "Qarqar") in 854
B.C. Ahab's search occurred during what the Bible records as a three and
one-half year drought caused by God at the instigation of Elijah. Ahab's period
of searching would have occurred during that drought. There was time enough for
Ahab to send messenger ships to all known nations, have those nations search
for Elijah (basically checking to see if anyone answering to Elijah's
description had arrived on any vessel from Israel's region of the world), and
send word back to Ahab via the same messenger ships.
Regarding Judah, one biblical account shows that the Jews
(the Hebrews of Judah) were also unafraid of sea travel. I Kings 22:44-49 and II
Chronicles 20:36-37 record that during one of the rare reapproachments between
the estranged Hebrew kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Jehoshaphat, the king
of Judah attempted to build a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, the home-port of
one of Solomon's previous international fleets. This is hardly the action of a
people who "feared and hated the sea." The project was wrecked by an "act of
God," but it is interesting to note that Israel's king (Ahab's son) offered to
let his sailors assist the crews of the new ships that Judah was building. Since
Judah was trying to reestablish itself as a maritime force, this offer only
makes sense in the same vein in which King Hiram's offer was made to Solomon
when Solomon was building his fleets--that Israel's king was offering to share
"the knowledge of the sea" with Judah's novice sailors. This offer provides
biblical confirmation that the Israelites of the northern kingdom possessed the
sophisticated maritime skills of the Phoenicians during the time of King Ahab
and Israel’s subsequent kings. It also indicates that Judah's intent in building
these ships was to create a fleet capable of long, "open-water" voyages, not
mere coastal-hopping trips down the Red Sea. For such a fleet, Judah would have
needed skilled mariners to teach them such arts as celestial navigation, sailing
to take advantage of trade winds, recognizing predictable oceanic currents, etc.
The king of Israel knew Judah would need such help, and his offer was likely an
effort to ingratiate himself to the Jewish king, Jehoshaphat (who was wealthy
and powerful). Such skills would have been completely unnecessary in small
coastal vessels that were intended for short, land-hugging voyages. Jehoshaphat
was clearly attempting to restore some of Solomon's glory by replicating
Solomon's construction of a major fleet at Ezion-geber, but the effort was
abortive.
The effort of the Jews during Jehoshaphat's reign should not
be construed to mean that they finally worked up the courage to venture forth on
the "fearful sea." Rather, it is a reflection of the role national economic
strength played in determining maritime power in the ancient world. It took a
great deal of money to build a fleet, train sailors, finance its operation over
time, etc. As is clear from the Bible's accounts, the reign of King Jehoshaphat
was a time of restored economic power and national wealth for the kingdom of
Judah. Therefore, Jehoshaphat's effort to build a great fleet was simply a
predictable function of his nation's restored ability to fund and support a
large trading fleet.
The above observations refute any contention that the
Hebrews were either afraid of the sea or insignificant maritime powers. Indeed,
during the time that all the tribes of Israel were united under King Solomon,
the Hebrews built large fleets and became privy to the Phoenicians' “knowledge
of the sea." After the Israelite tribes divided into two nations, the northern
kingdom of Israel remained closely linked to the Phoenicians, sharing the strong
maritime tradition of their allies. Even the smaller Jewish kingdom of Judah,
excluded from a Mediterranean maritime presence by the more powerful
Phoenician/Israelite alliance, displayed an eagerness to build a large fleet of
ships on the Red Sea as soon as economic and political circumstances allowed
such a project to be implemented.
Charles Moyer's article, in commenting on the biblical
commandment against graven images, states: "history has shown us that the Jewish
people have quite thoroughly followed this commandment." His line of reasoning
was that the Newark stones [artifacts inscribed in ancient Hebrew which were
found in the Mound-Builder sites in ancient America’s Ohio River Valley] were
not likely to be ancient Hebrew artifacts because of an assumed depiction of a
deity. Such an assertion indicates a lack of awareness that there were two very
different Hebrew nations in the ancient world. It is a common historical
misconception that the terms "Jew" and "Hebrew" were synonymous in the ancient
world. That was not the case. As we have seen, the larger, non-Jewish Hebrew
kingdom of Israel was usually an enemy of the Jewish kingdom of Judah. The
northern kingdom of Israel regularly disregarded the biblical laws of God,
including the injunction against making or depicting a graven image. Therefore,
Hebrews from the kingdom of Israel would rarely have had any qualms about making
or depicting a figure of a deity.
However, Jews from the southern kingdom of Judah also
sometimes made or depicted graven images. There were several periods in Judah's
history where fealty to the laws of God was forgotten (and even scorned) for
extended periods of time. Consider the following examples. King Manasseh of
Judah instituted infant sacrifice, compelled the Jews to worship foreign gods,
and was openly-contemptuous of God and his laws.Judah was also once ruled by
Queen Athaliah, a devotee of Baal and foreign gods. She also caused the Jewish
nation to openly disobey biblical laws (including the one against graven
images). Indeed, by the time Josiah became king of Judah, the Jews had become so
lax about the laws of God that no one even knew what the laws of God were any
more! In Josiah's eighteen year as king (circa 621 BC), the Jews found a
forgotten scroll of the law and had to relearn the laws of god "from scratch."
[The above examples are described in II Kings 11 and II
Chronicles 33.] Therefore, one has to be cautious about asserting that Jews
would never make graven images because there are periods of Jewish history when
their making graven images would have been common! Coupled with the fact that
their fellow Israeltie tribes in the northern kingdom of Israel regularly made
and served graven images associated with the gods of Phoenicia (or other lands),
there is no basis to reject an inscription as being Hebrew simply because it
depicts a graven image.
While the supposed "graven image" on the Newark stones is
actually a representation of Moses (not a deity), as noted in Bill Rudersdorf's
article "Lost Horizons," ESOP, 1991, it is worth noting the inaccuracy of
asserting that a particular inscription could not be Hebrew merely because it
contained a depiction of a deity. Additionally, the discussion of the Hebrews'
maritime alliance with the Phoenicians and the Phoenicians' willingness to share
"the knowledge of the sea" with the Israelites meant that the ancient kingdom of
Israel would have been a maritime power for much (if not all) of its existence.
On the other hand, the Jews (the kingdom of Judah) were apparently not a
significant maritime power after the division of the Israelites into two
kingdoms. However, they were eager enough to build a large fleet of ships when
their national strength and finances permitted them to do so. Given the above, I
see no evidence that the Hebrews ever "feared the sea." Indeed, the Bible's
historical accounts describe events which make literal sense when considered in
light of the political alliances of that time and a diffusionist view of ancient
mankind's actual abilities and far-flung contacts.
....
Taken from: http://stevenmcollins.com/html/did_ancient_israel_fear_the_se.html
