2, Genesis, Chapter 13 - a hot real estate deal in Sodom
Chapter 13 is what I would call a transitional chapter, in that nothing really significant happens. Rather, the chapter serves to set the stage for upcoming events in future chapters. For this reason, as in the last chapter, I thought we might take a little time and chat about a few other things that are also important for upcoming events in future chapters.
I previously mentioned that the residents of beautiful downtown Southern Mesopotamia were Sumerian, a small, round-faced, smooth-shaven people of possibly Sino-Turkish descent. The inhabitants of Northern Mesopotamia were taller, relatively long-faced, and bearded: these were genetically known as Semites.
Scholars of the era believe the Mesopotamian valley may have been settled as early as 8,000 BCE - roughly 4,000 years before, according to Ussher and Lightfoot, the creation of the universe, which goes a long way toward explaining the head-start these people seem to have gotten in civilization-building. Maybe these were the guys who watched Yahweh create Adam and made a note of it for future reference.
The first Semitic invasion of the area appears to have occurred about 5,000 BCE, and seems to have come from Arabia.
Although it has been amply demonstrated that the Bible's flood story was simply a plagiarized version of the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, written hundreds, if not thousands of years earlier, there is at least a possibility that someone in history had the name, Shem. This does not lend even a grain of veracity to the Bible's flood fable, it merely suggests that at some point in the entire history of Mankind, there may have been one single person named, Shem. The reason I mention this, is that Sem is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name, Shem, and from that root word, comes the word, Semite, describing, not so much actual descendants of the biblical Shem, as an Arabic tribe known as the Shemites, whose language, in turn, may well have come from Egypt (well removed from the "mountains of Ararat"). As much as Arabs might prefer to distance themselves from Jews (and vice-versa), they nevertheless share a common language base, but we all know how relatives squabble.
As previously noted, the Bible assures us that the accursed Ham was doomed to serve his brothers, Shem and Japheth, forever. In fact, this incident became the biblical justification for American slavery. America's early Religious Right concluded that part of Ham's curse involved the darkening of his skin, and that his descendants became the Negroid races of Africa. Since - according to the Bible - there were only three sexually-active men on earth after the flood, if Ham's skin had been magically darkened by Noah's curse, then all races that were not black, must have descended from Shem or Japheth, which makes it OK for those of dark skin to serve the rest of us - after all, it's in the book!
Unfortunately for credibility, it's also in the book that through Nimrod (as I mentioned, a fictional archetype of the historical Sargon I of Mesopotamia ), the descendants of Ham became the leaders of Akkadia and ultimately of all of Mesopotamia, finally branching throughout the Fertile Crescent, all the way to the Mediterranean Sea and possibly along the coast to modern-day Israel, while Japheth and his descendants seem to have dropped off the face of the earth (possibly, like Enoch, they all walked with god, and were not), while the descendants of Shem, after sharing their language, appear to have been relegated to Arabia, Egypt, and northern Africa.
Antonio Loprieno (Ancient Egyptian: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1995) relates: "Of the language families included in the Afroasiatic phylum, Egyptian shows the most affinities to the Cushite, Semitic, and Berber families."
In the Afroasiatic map below, considering that the orange areas represent nations whose root languages are basically Semite, it can be seen that that language, in some form, was spoken extensively throughout North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
Mesopotamians, living in all-encompassing city-states, were constantly at war with each other and among themselves. One city-state would conquer another, occupy and rule it for a number of years, then another city-state would arise and conquer both of them, ad nauseam.
One result of this preoccupation was that language lines became blurred. As I mentioned in "Gods r Us, Part 6," Akkadian ultimately became the language of the land, while Sumerian, the language of a society that functioned admirably for four thousand years, became relegated to being used strictly for the purpose of religious ceremonies, much as the dead language of Latin has become within the Catholic church of our own era, and the original language of Egypt, replaced by Arabic, is spoken only in ceremonies of Egypt's Christian Coptic Churches.
As much as their languages were shared, so too were their gods. If I were an ancient Mesopotamian, with a certain god or pantheon of gods upon whom I superstitiously depended to keep me safe from harm, and my City-State was attacked and overthrown by the army of another City-State, I might seriously question the potency of my own god of choice versus theirs - in short, theirs beat mine - ergo, there's a good chance that I would be inclined to add their god or gods to my own worship itinerary, just to be on the safe side. Thus religious lines also became blurred.
The city of Babylon in Sumeria, for example, hosted an enormous ziggurat presumed to be the earthly throne of the Akkadian god, Marduk, and just down the road a tad (would you believe "tad" is an actual unit of measurement? - sorry, just a gullibility-check!), could be found the city of Ur, with its ziggurat dedicated to the Sumerian moon god, Nanna, whose features, in the confusion, became so intertwined with those of the Akkadian moon god, Sin, that the two were ultimately worshipped as one, though originally, they were two, separate, distinct, fictional characters.
Remember, in Genesis, Chapter 5, I showed you four of the six Sumerian Kings' Lists, and told you to, "pay close attention to just how many of those kings' names begin with 'En' - that will be important later"? Of course you do, why wouldn't you? But just to refresh your memory, here they are again:
The importance lies in the fact that the phrase, "En" was the Sumerian word for, "Lord," while "El," or "il," was the word for "god." Thus we have, Lord Tnenluanna, etc. The chief god of the Sumerian pantheon was En-l-il, "Lord of (the) Gods," whereas in Akkad, it was El-l-il, "God of (the) Gods" - not much of a stretch to see the similarity.
As a side-note, El-l-il, who wore a horned cap, was the father of the Akkadian moon god, Sin, (he had a matching one made for his son, Sin - they looked adorable together on weekend trips to the zoo, as long as they kept their distance from baloons!), the symbols of which we will encounter again when we meet Ba'al, the Canaanite bull god, a son of El. El-l-il was so powerful that the other gods couldn't even look at him. He guarded the "tablets of destiny" (www.mesopotamia.co.uk/gods/explore/ellil.html), stone tablets upon which he wrote, in cuneiform, the fate of everything on earth. Are we starting yet to see where some of the biblical elements originated? Later, when we encounter Moses, he will be seen to worship a god who is so powerful, he will only show Moses his holy ass (as opposed to his, well, never mind), which we can only assume was pretty much the image of our own. He also writes on stone tablets and later, found a publisher for his, "Lamb's Book of Life". Now had the Bible described the "Lamb's Laptop of Life," I wouldn't be writing this, I'd be down on my knees, groveling with the Fundies!)
Then enter Abram, whose name, incidentally, was Hebrew for, "Father is the high," unlike Noah, whose name possibly should have been, "Father is high." Some scholars speculate that the reason Abe was known as a Hebrew may have been because his Great-great-great-great-grandfather - again, according to the Bible - was mentioned in the post-deluge Begatitudes, as being, Eber, which in ancient Semitic Akkadian, would have been, "Eber-u." Believe at will.
The Jewish Encylopedia informs us that in the Book of Jubilees, considered an apocryphal piece of literature (apocryphal: "a story or statement of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true" - wait a minute, doesn't that describe everything we've so far read in the Bible?), the occupation of Abram's father, Terah, was that of idol-maker - he made and sold idols of various gods - which, if true, doesn't make it much of a stretch to assume that Abram left Ur with a great deal of information about the various gods and goddesses of Mesopotamia that, had his father been fanatically religious, young Abe would have had drilled into him.
Speaking of Ur - while the Bible tells us that that is the city from which Abram, his father, Terah, and his brothers, Nahor and Haran, as well as their other assorted kin, kith and kindred came (I like a lot of alliteration) - and we all know how inerrant the Bible is - there is a competing theory that isn't getting much attention (due for the most part, to the fact that it doesn't appear in the Bible), that I find equally credible, for what that's worth. There is a city in Turkey, named, Urfa. I possibly should have mentioned earlier that the name, Ur, simply means, "city". Urfa was originally called Ur-ha, which, translated, meant "Ur of Haran", and it is not located very far from the city of Haran, to which Abe migrated and where his father died, or so the legend goes. To this day, Urfa is touted by the Turks as being the birthplace of Abraham. Amazing it's lasted this long, unlike Constantinople. You see, you can't go back to Constantinople, now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople, been a long time gone, old Constantinople - but I digress.
Much as is this Chapter, so too is the information above transitional - I'm trying to provide you with a basic background with which to better understand future exposition. If you were to take two things from what I've said above, it would be that over time, throughout Mesopotamia and areas of the Fertile Crescent controlled by Mesopotamia, language and religious lines were blurred. The second would be that Abram, being a typical Mesopotamian, took all of this knowledge, whether conscious or subconscious, with him in his wanderings.
Oh yeah, there just might be a third thing with which I should leave you, though it's likely not only to spoil this Chapter for you, but the remainder of Genesis as well.
William G. Dever was born the son of a fundamentalist preacher. From a small Christian liberal arts college in Tennessee, he went to a Protestant theological seminary that exposed him to "critical study" of the Bible, a study that he at first resisted. In 1960 he went on to Harvard and a doctorate in biblical theology. For thirty-five years he worked as an archaeologist, excavating in the Near East, and more recently, as professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona.
In his book, What Did the Bible Writers Know and When Did They Know It, he informs us:
Oh? You just rented it and were going to watch it tonight for the first time?
Oops --
Chapter 13:1 begins with Abe coming up out of Egypt with his now-dishonored sister/wife, Sarai, "...and all that he had," and adds as a seeming afterthought, "...and Lot with him, into the south." That couldn't have been "south" of Egypt, so we're left to assume the area north of Egypt, but south of Canaan, i.e., the strip between the Mediterranean coast and the Arabian desert (most of which is now Saudi Arabia) - basically, the area now occupied by Israel.
But the Bible just won't let it go - the writer seems to want to make sure you understand just how profitable it had been for Abe to pimp out his sister/wife: (13:2) "And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold." Interesting what a far cry that attitude is from what we'll encounter in the New Testament, when we read, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" - or to put it in more realistic terms, his honor and self-respect and that of his wife. But hey, gold and silver and cows are important too, right?
13:3 "And he went on his journeys from the south, even to Beth-el, unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Beth-el and Hai."
There (13:4), we're told, he located the stone altar he'd made in the last chapter, "...and there Abram called on the name of the Lord."
Lot too (13: 5) somehow came out of Egypt with apparently more than he went in: he had, "...flocks, and herds, and tents." No mention of gold and silver though - we later learn he had a wife, but obviously decided not to pimp her out.
13:6 relates that between the two of them, they had so much "substance" that they couldn't coexist together. It seems that Egypt had been very, very good to them. Sarai, not so much.
Also (13:7), Abe's and Lot's herdsmen were not getting along and there seemed to be some problems with local tribes of Canaanites and Perizzites, so Abe and Lot (13:8-9) decided to separate, to alleviate the tension. Abe, ever the man of honor as long as there's no threat to himself, let Lot choose which direction he would take, with Abe agreeing to go in the opposite one of whichever Lot chose.
Lot (13:10-11) looked out at the plain of Jordan and saw it was lush and green, so he went in the direction of Sodom. Abe (13:12) chose to dwell in the land of Canaan. 13:12 though, makes a curious statement concerning Lot: "...and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom." It's not clear as to exactly how Lot could live in a city, while at the same time, pitch his tent, unless Lot, with all of his multitude of livestock and herders, actually brought his tent and entire entourage within the city. That's hard to envision, but it must be true, it's in the book. Possibly he became a "Gentleman Rancher," living in a metropolitan townhouse and visiting his herd on the weekends.
13:13 Provides us with a foreshadowing of events to come: "But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly." Looks like the ladies and the kiddies were OK though. Don't you just know what's coming next?
Genesis 13:14-16 relates how, once Lot had gone (convenient that no one but Abe ever hears this), god told Abe to look in all four directions, that as far as he could see, god would give the land to him and to his progeny forever. God promised Abe his descendants would be more numerous than the grains of dust on the earth. One would think an omniscient god would be more of an environmentalist, but we've already seen that this god doesn't always think things through. If there were a human for every grain of dust on earth, how could that many people be fed? For that matter, where would that many people stand?
In 13:17, god tells Abe to simply walk through the land, length and breadth, and he (god) would sign the deed over.
Honest Abe, with a terminal case of the "gimmes" and always glad to get more, (13:18) "...removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the Lord."
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
One result of this preoccupation was that language lines became blurred. As I mentioned in "Gods r Us, Part 6," Akkadian ultimately became the language of the land, while Sumerian, the language of a society that functioned admirably for four thousand years, became relegated to being used strictly for the purpose of religious ceremonies, much as the dead language of Latin has become within the Catholic church of our own era, and the original language of Egypt, replaced by Arabic, is spoken only in ceremonies of Egypt's Christian Coptic Churches.
As much as their languages were shared, so too were their gods. If I were an ancient Mesopotamian, with a certain god or pantheon of gods upon whom I superstitiously depended to keep me safe from harm, and my City-State was attacked and overthrown by the army of another City-State, I might seriously question the potency of my own god of choice versus theirs - in short, theirs beat mine - ergo, there's a good chance that I would be inclined to add their god or gods to my own worship itinerary, just to be on the safe side. Thus religious lines also became blurred.
The city of Babylon in Sumeria, for example, hosted an enormous ziggurat presumed to be the earthly throne of the Akkadian god, Marduk, and just down the road a tad (would you believe "tad" is an actual unit of measurement? - sorry, just a gullibility-check!), could be found the city of Ur, with its ziggurat dedicated to the Sumerian moon god, Nanna, whose features, in the confusion, became so intertwined with those of the Akkadian moon god, Sin, that the two were ultimately worshipped as one, though originally, they were two, separate, distinct, fictional characters.
Remember, in Genesis, Chapter 5, I showed you four of the six Sumerian Kings' Lists, and told you to, "pay close attention to just how many of those kings' names begin with 'En' - that will be important later"? Of course you do, why wouldn't you? But just to refresh your memory, here they are again:
En-tnenluanna
En-mengalanna
En-sipazianna/En-sipaizianna
En-mendurunki/En-meduranki
En-mendurauna/En-menduranna
En-mengalanna
En-sipazianna/En-sipaizianna
En-mendurunki/En-meduranki
En-mendurauna/En-menduranna
The importance lies in the fact that the phrase, "En" was the Sumerian word for, "Lord," while "El," or "il," was the word for "god." Thus we have, Lord Tnenluanna, etc. The chief god of the Sumerian pantheon was En-l-il, "Lord of (the) Gods," whereas in Akkad, it was El-l-il, "God of (the) Gods" - not much of a stretch to see the similarity.
As a side-note, El-l-il, who wore a horned cap, was the father of the Akkadian moon god, Sin, (he had a matching one made for his son, Sin - they looked adorable together on weekend trips to the zoo, as long as they kept their distance from baloons!), the symbols of which we will encounter again when we meet Ba'al, the Canaanite bull god, a son of El. El-l-il was so powerful that the other gods couldn't even look at him. He guarded the "tablets of destiny" (www.mesopotamia.co.uk/gods/explore/ellil.html), stone tablets upon which he wrote, in cuneiform, the fate of everything on earth. Are we starting yet to see where some of the biblical elements originated? Later, when we encounter Moses, he will be seen to worship a god who is so powerful, he will only show Moses his holy ass (as opposed to his, well, never mind), which we can only assume was pretty much the image of our own. He also writes on stone tablets and later, found a publisher for his, "Lamb's Book of Life". Now had the Bible described the "Lamb's Laptop of Life," I wouldn't be writing this, I'd be down on my knees, groveling with the Fundies!)
Then enter Abram, whose name, incidentally, was Hebrew for, "Father is the high," unlike Noah, whose name possibly should have been, "Father is high." Some scholars speculate that the reason Abe was known as a Hebrew may have been because his Great-great-great-great-grandfather - again, according to the Bible - was mentioned in the post-deluge Begatitudes, as being, Eber, which in ancient Semitic Akkadian, would have been, "Eber-u." Believe at will.
The Jewish Encylopedia informs us that in the Book of Jubilees, considered an apocryphal piece of literature (apocryphal: "a story or statement of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true" - wait a minute, doesn't that describe everything we've so far read in the Bible?), the occupation of Abram's father, Terah, was that of idol-maker - he made and sold idols of various gods - which, if true, doesn't make it much of a stretch to assume that Abram left Ur with a great deal of information about the various gods and goddesses of Mesopotamia that, had his father been fanatically religious, young Abe would have had drilled into him.
Speaking of Ur - while the Bible tells us that that is the city from which Abram, his father, Terah, and his brothers, Nahor and Haran, as well as their other assorted kin, kith and kindred came (I like a lot of alliteration) - and we all know how inerrant the Bible is - there is a competing theory that isn't getting much attention (due for the most part, to the fact that it doesn't appear in the Bible), that I find equally credible, for what that's worth. There is a city in Turkey, named, Urfa. I possibly should have mentioned earlier that the name, Ur, simply means, "city". Urfa was originally called Ur-ha, which, translated, meant "Ur of Haran", and it is not located very far from the city of Haran, to which Abe migrated and where his father died, or so the legend goes. To this day, Urfa is touted by the Turks as being the birthplace of Abraham. Amazing it's lasted this long, unlike Constantinople. You see, you can't go back to Constantinople, now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople, been a long time gone, old Constantinople - but I digress.
Much as is this Chapter, so too is the information above transitional - I'm trying to provide you with a basic background with which to better understand future exposition. If you were to take two things from what I've said above, it would be that over time, throughout Mesopotamia and areas of the Fertile Crescent controlled by Mesopotamia, language and religious lines were blurred. The second would be that Abram, being a typical Mesopotamian, took all of this knowledge, whether conscious or subconscious, with him in his wanderings.
Oh yeah, there just might be a third thing with which I should leave you, though it's likely not only to spoil this Chapter for you, but the remainder of Genesis as well.
William G. Dever was born the son of a fundamentalist preacher. From a small Christian liberal arts college in Tennessee, he went to a Protestant theological seminary that exposed him to "critical study" of the Bible, a study that he at first resisted. In 1960 he went on to Harvard and a doctorate in biblical theology. For thirty-five years he worked as an archaeologist, excavating in the Near East, and more recently, as professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona.
In his book, What Did the Bible Writers Know and When Did They Know It, he informs us:
"While the Hebrew Bible in its present, heavily edited form cannot be taken at face value as history in the modern sense, it nevertheless contains much history." (emphasis, mine)He adds:
"After a century of exhaustive investigation, all respectable archaeologists have given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob credible 'historical' figures." (Again, emphasis, mine).On his own website, which he admits he was reluctant to create, he writes,
"I am not reading the Bible as Scripture… I am in fact not even a theist. My view all along—and especially in the recent books—is first that the biblical narratives are indeed 'stories,' often fictional and almost always propagandistic, but that here and there they contain some valid historical information." (Once again, emphasis, mine).He has insights too, regarding Moses, as well as two of the other "Moses'" books, Leviticus and Numbers, but we'll save that until we get there. I wouldn't want to be known as the kind of guy who, if you've ever watched a DVD of the great Alfred Hitchock black and white classic, "Pyscho," says just before you put the disk into the player, "Anthony Perkins did it, he dresses up like his dead mom!"
Oh? You just rented it and were going to watch it tonight for the first time?
Oops --
Chapter 13:1 begins with Abe coming up out of Egypt with his now-dishonored sister/wife, Sarai, "...and all that he had," and adds as a seeming afterthought, "...and Lot with him, into the south." That couldn't have been "south" of Egypt, so we're left to assume the area north of Egypt, but south of Canaan, i.e., the strip between the Mediterranean coast and the Arabian desert (most of which is now Saudi Arabia) - basically, the area now occupied by Israel.
But the Bible just won't let it go - the writer seems to want to make sure you understand just how profitable it had been for Abe to pimp out his sister/wife: (13:2) "And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold." Interesting what a far cry that attitude is from what we'll encounter in the New Testament, when we read, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" - or to put it in more realistic terms, his honor and self-respect and that of his wife. But hey, gold and silver and cows are important too, right?
13:3 "And he went on his journeys from the south, even to Beth-el, unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Beth-el and Hai."
There (13:4), we're told, he located the stone altar he'd made in the last chapter, "...and there Abram called on the name of the Lord."
Lot too (13: 5) somehow came out of Egypt with apparently more than he went in: he had, "...flocks, and herds, and tents." No mention of gold and silver though - we later learn he had a wife, but obviously decided not to pimp her out.
13:6 relates that between the two of them, they had so much "substance" that they couldn't coexist together. It seems that Egypt had been very, very good to them. Sarai, not so much.
Also (13:7), Abe's and Lot's herdsmen were not getting along and there seemed to be some problems with local tribes of Canaanites and Perizzites, so Abe and Lot (13:8-9) decided to separate, to alleviate the tension. Abe, ever the man of honor as long as there's no threat to himself, let Lot choose which direction he would take, with Abe agreeing to go in the opposite one of whichever Lot chose.
Lot (13:10-11) looked out at the plain of Jordan and saw it was lush and green, so he went in the direction of Sodom. Abe (13:12) chose to dwell in the land of Canaan. 13:12 though, makes a curious statement concerning Lot: "...and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom." It's not clear as to exactly how Lot could live in a city, while at the same time, pitch his tent, unless Lot, with all of his multitude of livestock and herders, actually brought his tent and entire entourage within the city. That's hard to envision, but it must be true, it's in the book. Possibly he became a "Gentleman Rancher," living in a metropolitan townhouse and visiting his herd on the weekends.
13:13 Provides us with a foreshadowing of events to come: "But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly." Looks like the ladies and the kiddies were OK though. Don't you just know what's coming next?
Genesis 13:14-16 relates how, once Lot had gone (convenient that no one but Abe ever hears this), god told Abe to look in all four directions, that as far as he could see, god would give the land to him and to his progeny forever. God promised Abe his descendants would be more numerous than the grains of dust on the earth. One would think an omniscient god would be more of an environmentalist, but we've already seen that this god doesn't always think things through. If there were a human for every grain of dust on earth, how could that many people be fed? For that matter, where would that many people stand?
In 13:17, god tells Abe to simply walk through the land, length and breadth, and he (god) would sign the deed over.
Honest Abe, with a terminal case of the "gimmes" and always glad to get more, (13:18) "...removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the Lord."
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
Posted by archaeopteryx at 12/30/2011 12:56 PM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Religion Atheism Judaism Christianity plain of Mamre Lot Sodom Abram Hebron Nanna/Sin Sumerian Kings' Lists En = "lord" "El" = "god" El-l-il En-l-il Hebrew Eber-u Jewish Encylopedia Book of Jubilees apocryphal Terah Nahor Haran Urfa Turkey Ur-ha the Fertile Crescent William G. Dever biblical inerrancy biblical mythology Canaanites Perizzites Bible Islam Plain of Jordan
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Religion Atheism Judaism Christianity plain of Mamre Lot Sodom Abram Hebron Nanna/Sin Sumerian Kings' Lists En = "lord" "El" = "god" El-l-il En-l-il Hebrew Eber-u Jewish Encylopedia Book of Jubilees apocryphal Terah Nahor Haran Urfa Turkey Ur-ha the Fertile Crescent William G. Dever biblical inerrancy biblical mythology Canaanites Perizzites Bible Islam Plain of Jordan
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