I can give many other examples of etymologies I have worked out, but there are many more languages that I do not know anything about (such as Russian or Hungarian) than I know about. So, provisionally speaking, using some facts I have learned from others and facts I have discovered, I have this broad vision of the European and Mideastern languages.
For the Mideastern European geographical area: All indigenously developing [not "beginning"] languages started with a Middle Eastern linguistic substrate whose state of development is difficult to tell. This rudimentary or basic language may have been at the first or second phase before being carried by migrants (who in the course of time developed their distinct cultures in matters of religion, language, technology, and customs). At the first phase of speaking, there would be imperatives and verbs in the forms of first three persons of the present tense, singular pronouns with compliment-inflections, some numbers, vocative names, nouns in the functionally accusative case, and the like; in the second phase (prior to any writing), we have the development of verb and noun forms such as we know them historically, the prevalence of grammatical regularity in declensions and conjugations, a great increase in vocabulary, etc. By comparing the syncategorematic terms of languages (grammatical suffixes, prefixes, and infixes), we can see, if they are cognate, whether the compared languages arose from a language at its first or second phase of development. The lexical cognates alone point to a substrate pool on which on which distinct languages were then built. (In the third phase of a language, we have the articulations of the mind's discernments of aspects and differentiations in things; words for indirect discourse; the metaphorical use of names of things or activities to denote things or functions which are intangible [e.g., "contemplate" -- from an augur's "temple-divisions" of the sky; "consider" -- from the gazing upon stars/sidera; "theoria", from the seeing or gazing upon a god/planet]; the taking of different perspectives, evident in active and corresponding deponent verbs; and so forth. Few of the ancient languages ever reached the third phase of development. / Most of the logical fallacies are committed by those who merely use a rude langauge or use a refined language rudely. The analysis of reasoning and of fallacies could arise only among speakers of the Greek which had reached the third phase of development. The discerning mind that goes into the creation of language or the creative speaker is like the scalpel in the hands of a surgeon who severs tissues without cutting them. )
So, here is my tentative vision:
In Europe there are three families of language with a Mideastern substrate, mostly from west of the Euphrates. So, I call them the Euphratean languages: -- The Aegean super-family: Archaic Greek and its dialects, and its proliferations into the cognate Italic languages (Latin, Oscan, etc.), and Latin derivatives (the many dialects of "Romance" languages). / Hittite, Celtic, Briton, Latvian, Lithuanian, etc. -- The Germanic family (Longobard, Saxon, German, Dutch, etc.). (English is a hybrid language, as it consists of Briton and largely Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French.) -- The Slavic family (Russian, Polish, etc.)
The Euphratean languages may have a common Sumerian glossary from agricultural times. Germanic and Slavic may have Greek words acquired long before the diffusion of erudite Greek (which occurred after 600 B.C.)
Furthermore, Europe has or seems to have non-Eufratean languages such as -- Etruscan (with some cognates of archaic Greek, Sardinian (from Sardinia and the Anatolian Sardis), Albanian, and possibly Lydian and Armenian). -- Basque. -- Finno-Ugric languages (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, etc.), which have cognates with Greek and Latin from undetermined periods of time.
The Middle East has a family of languages with a Mideastern substrate, mostly from east of the Tigris. So, I speak of them as Tigrean [Tigrid] languages: Pharsi, Sankrit [wherefore people spoke of Indo-Iranian], and, in some degree, Armenian and possiby Bulgarian.
The Middle East has singleton languages, especially Sumerian and Armenian. Agricultural Sumerian entered all the neighboring languages (during the process of their distinctive developments). The Tigrean and the Euphratean languages have some words in common [prior to the diffusion of Sumerian] and are, in a way, what used to be called the "Indo-European" languages, but presently they are being seen in a quite new way. [They are not derivatives of either the real Sanskrit or of the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European, and their total substrate may consist of fewer than two hundred etyms. I assert and emphasize the autochthonous character of the diverse languages.]
The Middle East has also languages which are still called Semitic. Semitic is still classified according to geographical areas, with the belief that, for instance, Ethiopic, Arabic, Akkadian (north-eastern Semitic), etc., are varieties like Aeolic, Ionic, Attic, and the like, or Tuscan, Roman, and Aemilian. (What if they differ like Tuscan, Barese, and Longobardese [my native language], the latter two having Latin as the main language and different degrees of Greek in them as their substrate, one Ionic [with the "E" slant] and the other Attic [with the "A" slant or the meter/mater distinction]?
My final post in this short series will be about the ancient "Semitic" languages in the northern Middle East prior to the diffusion of Islamism and Arabic in the A.D. era. Then there are languages, like Kalash, which have no written tradition, wherefore nobody can know the nature of the language spoken by the remote ancestors of the present people, a mixture of blue-eyes light-skinned people and darker Arab-like people, who have preserved their own history and have resisted Islamic dominance in the area.
Linguistically speaking, there is no region on earth as confused and confusing as the Middle East. Mankind there used to have one language, but the builders of a great tower were inapacitated by Yahweh by confusing their language or, in more realistic terms, there was a commingling of languages, that is, of peoples with different languages and cultures in pre-literate times. (The gods always got credit for things humans did.)
Sumer was invaded by some Semitic-speaking people. The overtaken parts of Sumer were called Akkad. This name comes from the city of Agade founded by Sargon around 2330 B.C.
The Akkadians absorbed the Sumerian culture, including the language and the writing of language. Thus, when we read Akkadian texts we read a Sumero-Akkadian language -- words learned (and phonetically modified in the process to match their voicing style) from the Sumerians, words they coined out of Sumerian words, and words of their own ancestry (poor, uncultivated, and pre-agricultural). So, Akkadian, which is called a Semitic language, is actually a mixture of Sumerian and Arabesque (an Arabic-like) language.
In referring to the Akkadian language, linguistists such as Semerano distinguish Sumerian words, words of the Akkadians coined out Sumerian words, and purely Akkadian or "Semitic" words, which are often presently jointly with foreign cognate words (Canaanite, Arabic, etc.) However, none of the linguists I know of suspect that the other Semitic languages in the northern Middle East might also be hybrids (mixtures of Arabesque and some prior local language). So, a cognate between an Akkadian word and, say, an Eblaite word, does not prove that the etym is "Semitic". One way to determine whether a northern Semitic word [Akkadian, Eblaite, etc.] is strictly Semitic -- which I have been calling Arabesque -- is to find a cognate of it in Arabic or in Ethiopic, that is, in pristine Semitic languages. But here there is a practical problem: Arabic, for instance, was not written down before the A.D. era. So, any comparison with attested (written down) Arabic may be of a language which ACQUIRED some of its vocabulary from the "Learned Semitic" of the northern Mideast. Anyway, if a northern "Semitic" word does have have a cognate in Arabic, at least that word can be presumed to be based on a different language. This sifting process is essential and is the task of future linguistists who want to define the Arabesque language. (For practical purposes, Arabic shorn of Biblical words and of acquired European words, is Arabesque).
-- Biblical Hebrew --
The Hebrews were a pastoral people somewhere near Mesopotamia. There is a statement that Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldeans, which would be a city in Akkad, but the language of the Bible is not Akkadian. He may have been an Akkadian, but the Hebrew people may have lived in the pasture-lands near the Ur in north-western Mesopotamia. And this for three good reasons: The gods (elohim) spoken of in Genesis-1 are the very same as the Canaanites (west of the Euphrates); the Eden planted by Yahveh (in Genesis-2) is described by its rivers (the Euphrates, etc.), which happen to be in a north-west area of the Euphrates; and finally, when Abraham became suspicious of what else the Tower-builders might do and started moving toward Egypt, he promised himself and his children [or he thought El promised unto him] the whole stretch of land from the Euphrates to the Nile (Canaan and other territories). They moved into Egypt from the Euphrates, not from the lower Tigris or Akkad.
I will come back to an otherwise immense significance of Genesis-1 and Genesis-2. For the moment, let us consider a study of Biblical Hebrew made by a Jewish scholar. (The book is not obtainable anywhere, but I have not searched major libraries.) Quotes from an article: [>>>, <<< mine] http://www.grecoreport.com/hebrew_is_greek.htm
HEBREW is GREEK
THE WORK OF JOSEPH YAHUDA
A book that "mysteriously disappeared" soon after its publication*
In 1982, a suppressed, ages-old, historical truth, was resurrected through the publication of a book by Becket Publications of Oxford, England (ISBN O 7289 0013 O). The book, published in English, and titled Hebrew is Greek, was written by lawyer, linguist and researcher, Joseph Yahuda, the son of Isaac Benjamin Ezekiel Yahuda, an ethnic Jew and longtime researcher and linguist. .........
Following the book's publication, and while only a limited number of copies circulated for a few fortunate individuals, the book disappeared from the face of the earth. It was as if an invisible hand intervened and blocked its circulation. It cannot be found at any public library, it is not sold at any bookstore on earth, not even in a curiosity or antique shop. [Rare book dealers, in the U.S. and the U.K., have told TGR that there have been inquiries after the book, but that they have been unable to locate a copy anywhere. ed.] ...........
Concerns posed by another Jewish intellectual who wrote the preface of the book.
The research published in the book covers 718 pages. The introduction was written by Jewish professor Saul Levin, though no enthusiasm on his part was evident in his introduction. He admits that following the 1977 publication of his book entitled, The Indo-European and Semitic Languages, J. Yahuda got in touch with him, and they maintained a fruitful relationship through correspondence, though they never actually met in person. .........
Joseph Yahuda speaks about his work
In the preface of his book, J. Yahuda notes:
This ecumenical research will be reviewed by three separate specialists, one for each language researched, although each specialist does have knowledge of the other two languages. This is not an error committed only by me. I attempted repeatedly, yet unsuccessfully, to find more scholars who would be willing to assist me in my quests. As an example of what I was up against, at the very beginning of an hours-long meeting, one potential colleague exclaimed: "All of this is garbage and we are all wasting our time." My answer was: "Both you, and I, will be judged for the words we say, whenever we discuss my work." I hold no hostility or bitterness because of such small-minded opposition to my belief. In fact, during the progress of my research, I twice attempted to arouse [this man's] interest, but in vain. A little while after the meeting referred to above, I mentioned his degrading comment to Christodoulos Hourmouzios, a graduate of the University of Athens, and an acknowledged specialist on Homer, and he said: ' I think you are one of the greatest linguists I know'; he promised complete cooperation with me. Unfortunately, before we could begin our work, he passed away.
"There were others who admitted that they had been convinced; that something did really exist in my theory. However, they did think that my belief in the correspondence of Hebrew with Greek was rather exaggerated. They said I was too ambitious, and suggested, for my own good, that I expect less and adopt a 'less controversial view.' One of them, Sir Leon Simon (A British Lord of Jewish descent), a known classicist who knew Hebrew, attended my first lecture on the issue on the evening of Jan. 14th, 1959.He did this even though he was old and had to travel a long distance in bad weather and heavy fog. He introduced me, briefly and carefully, not wanting to commit himself to any decision until the end of my speech. Then, before the audience was asked to pose questions, he said the following, which I noted: 'I don't believe that everyone will agree with everything J. Yahuda has told us, as he may have thought that everyone understood what he was saying. Despite any doubts that may exist, I am sure of one thing.
>>>He has resolved a mystery that had created confusion for scholars for the past 2.000 years. For, if he is correct in stating that many Greek words that begin with sk were transformed in Hebrew as if sk was a digraph [a combination of two letters to make one simple sound. ed.], or one of the two letters lost, then Homer was not wrong when he left the vrachi [ abbreviated ] vowel at the beginning of the word Skamandros, as in his famous line: 'Ον Ξανθόν καλεουσι θεοί, άνδρες δε Σκάμανδρον'. [The Gods called Xanthos, mortal men Skamandros. ed.] <<<
>>> I also had a fruitful interview with a scholar of international fame, which was then followed by a series of exchanges of correspondence. This correspondence ceased after he sent me a note, wherein he wrote: 'It could also be possible that you would say that the English word ball comes from the Greek βάλλω, or that you discover a connection between chow and show since chows are exhibited at shows.<<<
"The result was that I was obliged to fall back on my own sources, and to depend only on my own efforts, thus devoting my free time to this research for the past 30 years or more. ...........
Yahuda realizes the significance of Greek Civilization
"I was somewhat familiar with the Bible, as stated above. My brother, Solomon, and I learned the New Testament in Hebrew translation from a copy that my father had, as part of his personal library. For years, the distant Biblical past was alive in my mind: I lived with the vision of the pyramids to such an extent, and my passion for the Bible was so great, that I developed hostile feelings for the Greeks and Romans. Strangely, this hostility did not involve the Egyptians, who were our enemies, had been the enemies of our forefathers and had so deeply influenced post-Biblical Hebrew. Neither had I been able to learn more than the necessary Latin needed for my law education and practice. However, my feelings for the Greeks and Romans have changed radically since then. Now I realize that our differences were similar to those of a civil war, as fratricidal as the taking of Troy had been,
>>>for I became convinced that the Jews are of Greek descent. This revolutionary transformation took place around the time I was thirty years old, following the publishing of my book Law and Life according to Hebrew Thought. That year (1932), I became interested in biology as a 'hobby'. During my haphazard study of the issue, I came across various Greek words that were strikingly similar to the Hebrew words of the Bible, and I drew the conclusion that the Greeks had borrowed them from us. I began debating the idea of whether or not I should one day begin a systematic comparison of the two languages. At that time, I was still fascinated with the more traditional studies, and, like everyone else, I believed without a doubt that the Semitic languages were Semitic and the Aryan languages were Aryan. These two could not be mixed. At the same time, though, I was thinking that it would be interesting to collect and deconstruct a complete list of groups of similar words so as to demonstrate the degree of influence of Hebrew on Greek at the time before Alexander the Great (considering that the reverse influence became stronger following his conquests). I knew very little of where this research would lead me and what the results would show.<<<
"I had such little knowledge of Greek that all I knew were the first letters of the alphabet, knowledge that I had acquired by chance during my studies of mathematics and geometry. I remember asking my friend Gerald Emanuel, in a teashop in 1932, to write the whole Greek alphabet on the bottom of a half-written page. The years passed, but when I published my book Biology and New Medicine in 1951, I then had the opportunity to spend all of my free time on researching those possible links that I suspected existed between Biblical Hebrew and Greek. Following the acquisition of some rudimentary knowledge of Greek grammar, I submerged into the translation of the Septuagint, solely based on my memory of the meaning of the numerous pages that I had chosen to read.
>>>>>Then I read Homer, comparing him to the Bible. One page from the translation of the Iliad, one page from the Old Testament, line for line, page by page; I started with Genesis and the first book of the Iliad, along with the last book of the Odyssey and the 2nd book of 'Chronicles.' Day after day, the list of similar words grew longer, until it reached 600 words -- including words related to different views and activities of life -- which could not be attributed only to the borrowing factor. In any case, history has not witnessed circumstances where such elaborate borrowing would be possible on such a large scale.<<<<<
I was convinced that this phenomenon went past the limits of borrowing, reaching the limits of a genetic relationship. The door of genealogical descent stood before me and I could not attempt to pass through it or climb above it. It should open freely and widely and the key to this was the grammar. The only grammatical characteristics that I knew of that were common to both Greek and Hebrew, concerned the definite article and the dual number nouns [count nouns. ed.]. I stopped reading and began thinking and re-thinking the results of my non-processed research. I used the materials I had: analyzing, classifying, comparing these with the Biblical variations and the dialectic interchanges of the Greek letters, selecting specific words to be compared. Thus, my theory began to develop. Some of the Greek dialectic letters could be used interchangeably, such as the letters 'k' and 't', 'o' and 'a', 's' and 'd.' I also noted a curious transformation with Hebrew words: a suffix to a Greek word changed to a prefix in a Hebrew word. Early on during my research, I tested the exactness of the words and verified their meanings. As the number of tests increased, the more effective my research became, and the confidence in my theory rose.
"From the beginning, I based a lot of my work on Arabic. With my theory, it became possible for me to correct the translation of the Septuagint, using the Septuagint and the translation of the Bible, using the Bible. These discoveries cured me of my dyslexia in relationship to Greek and Hebrew and made me capable of reading a Hebrew word as if it had been a variation of the word. I formed a series of phonetic and morphology rules. I gradually gathered a number of valuable facts. Some examples are that the declension dotiki [dative] exists in Hebrew, that the masculine plural is the same in Hebrew and Greek, and that, in general, a compound Greek verb is equivalent to a Hebrew compound verb.
>>>>>I estimate that 9 out of each 10 words of the [Jewish] Bible can be proved to have a purely Greek equivalent. Many issues were resolved which prove that the Greeks and Jews hold some customs and religious convictions in common, whereas the Hebrew language is proven to be richer and more beautiful than believed until today because of the existence of these groups of words. This whole matter is, in practice, consistent with the following two proposals: Biblical Hebrew is Greek; and, the Jews are Asian Greeks. In reality, the conclusion of this massive, extended and complicated research can be summarized in the following brief sentence: Hebrew is 'Greek wearing a mask.'"<<<<< .............. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments: The objection a friend made to Yahuda is still cogent: In other words, phonetic similarity (as between the English "ball" and the Greek "ballO") does not mean that the two words are necessarily cognate; they may be homonyms. However, it does not apply to Yahuda simply because the words he compared were known in their MEANING; any valid objection would have to be directed to his phonology: whether the sound shifts he found or postulated are methodically admissible. I would say that they are, if they are "regular" rather than "ad hoc." (Are two synomyms, in the two languages, always such that the k in one word is a t in the other word? Since I do not know any "Semitic" language, I cannot give an example; I will provide an explanatory example from other languages. There is an etym in Greek, Pharsi, and Armenian, AR, which means High or Elevated [aristos is not coined on agathos]. It is claimed that the same concept exists in Latin as AL: ALtus, tall. Does this shift occur ad hoc -- only FOR THIS word -- or in all situations? Maybe only some speakers made the shift to AL; but the Latin word ARbor, tree, was changed to ALbero by the Tuscans of Italy, whereas the southeners retained it in ARvuru. And the Latin ille/illud which was kept as the article IL by the Tuscans, while the grecisizing Southeners changed LU into RU. So, I would say that the shift in question is regular, not ad hoc.)
I do not know how accurate Yahuda's etymologies are, but even granting that he confused some homonyms with cognates, and that some cognates were decided on an ad hoc basis, still some hundreds of Hebrew words are Greek rather than Arabesque.
Hebrew contains Arabesque words and Greek words in an Arabesque phonological style. This means that the Hebrews, like the Akkadians had a simple language of their own and assimilated a local language (which happened to be Greek). So, we can speak of Greek as the substrate [whether large or small] of Hebrew. In pre-historic (pre-literate) times, earlier than the Akkadian conquest of Sumer, an Arabesque speaking populations moved into the Levant and constituted a hybrid language. The language of Ebla, Ugarit, and the Hebrews is a mixture of Greek and Arabesque. The Philistines (in parts of the territory the Romans called Palestine) were never assimilated and continued to speak their archaic Greek until they were conquered by the Hebrews returning from Egypt. The tale of the Tower of Babel alludes to a commingling of people and of languages. (The people of Persia were not overtaken by Arabesque speaking peoples and thus continued to speak the language they had been developing [namely a Tigrean language with some kinships with the Euphratean languages].
The popolation that migrated westwards from the west of the Euphrates, across the Levant and Anatolia, was the population that created archaic Greek, which spread, with the growing population, across the Aegean, and thence further west. (Other populations migrated in other directions, giving rise to Germanic and to Slavic; and eastwards, with linguistic results we need not enumerate. ) By historic times, the peoples with a distinctive or classical Greek language left in Anatolia were the Aeolians and the Ionians.
[to continue] ================================================================== A little work in the right direction (but ask: Did the ancient Arabs make wine or have bulls??):
This is a list of cognates for which no Akkadian cognate is known or attested. English..... (PWS) ARABIC HEBREW Syriac Geez Mehri wasp........ *dVb(V)r- dabr-, dibr- dəḇôrāh (> "bee") debbōr-ā, debbor-t-ā - - holy.......... *ḳudš- quds qōḏeš qudš-ā qiddus - son........... *bn- ibn bēn br-ā - bər, ḥə-brē white....... *laban- laban (> "buttermilk") lāḇān - - lbōn
A simple ethnicon is a group of people with near and remote family ties -- a tribe whose consanguineity is evident in the similar broad traits they inherit, such as the facial physiognomy, the surface colorations (of skin, eyes, and hair), skin texture, stature, and the like. When a tribe migrates to other habitats (or a tribe splits and one part migrates to other habitats) , inheritable physical mutation may occur. So, a tribe gets defined partially by the habitat in which it lives for some long period of time. The same tribe defines itself culturally, by the language it develops, its gods and heroes, its family and social organization, and its technologies and ways of living. An ethnicon is biologically and culturally defined.
By examining the language, the gods, and the complexion (or the genetics) of the Hebrews and their descendants, we can determine whether they were a simple ethnicon (a tribe or People) or a hybrid ethnicon. Until not too long ago, everybody took the Bible literally as a history of the Hebrews and believed they are one people, with one God, one language (mother of the other Semitic languages), and one "blood." It is also true that the composers of the first two chapters of Genesis, the ancient and modern people in general, and the philosophical physicists supposed that the succession of the things which emerged in the world or were created proceeded accoring to our classification of things in terms of simplicity/complexity or lower types and higher types or realities: the inanimate frame of the words, its simple bodies or regions [solid/earthy, liquid/watery, etherial/airy, burning/fiery], so that, for example, the earth contained water and oxygen from its very beginning; plants; animals, man [or animals, one man, more animals, and one woman]. The classification hirerchy seems most obvious and true... since nobody had empirical knowledge of anything new arising in or being created in the world. Similarly, the Biblical geneologists of the Hebrews and of other Peoples spoke in total ignorance of historical events. The Biblical tales, however, reveal more than those who wrote them down ever imagined or understood.
The People we are calling Hebrews, as apparently the Egyptians did, was founded (at the second beginning of mankind) by Shem, whose descendants will be organized as the Israelites. Canaan founded Canaan (the Country or People), wherefore we get the obvious idea that the Semites (Hebrews; Israelites) and the Canaanites were different peoples. On the contrary, clan-divisions aside), there is no drastic difference between the language of the Hebrews [Biblical Hebrew, or Aramaic] and the languages of the Canaaites; and there is no difference between the religion of the Canaanites and the religion of the Hebrews whose theology is stated in Genesis-1. The only difference which may have existed was political, in the broad sense of the term. (In fact the Canaanites appear in the Bible as enemies of the Hebrew, and Abraham vouched he would return and take the land of the Canaanites.)
The Canaaite or Hebrew ELOHIM [= the gods} are their prime or supreme gods. El is the male one, in charge of the government of the world, and has ministers, just as in a human political society. As they said, they created [ let be, by means of the word] man in their own image, that is, as they themselves say: a male and a female. (This is ancient, primitive, anthropomorphic, polytheism, which says no more than it states, despite the later rabbinical theologians.) After Genesis-1, only El is recognized. Anyway, the Elohim are divinities of Arabesque speaking people. The Arabs formulated their monotheism mainly through Mohammed in the A.D. era. So, all Arabs speak of The-God: al-Elah (Allah).
The second account of the genesis of the world (Genesis-2) starts with Yahweh -- introduced as the divine Yahweh [Yahveh elohim], problably because neither now nor at the time of the writing down of the Biblical tales did the Jews[Judeans] know the meaning of the word "yahweh," despite imaginative attempts by rabbical etymologists. The name is usually translated as Lord, since he is often addresses as adonai [= lord], but that is not the meaning of the name. (The translation of Yahweh elohim into "the Lord God" is a deceptive translation, since only "el" can be translated as "god". Yahveh is not El or the Elohim.)
Yawveh is a divine architect, sculptor, and planter -- a god of agricultural times, that is, times of land cultivation, urbanization, the rise or lords or warlors over non-nomadic societies, males with the capacity of begetting which used to belong to women only, and so forth. He divinely fashions the world in the manner of an artisan. And the Hebrews at any time before the conquest of Palestine [the lands of the Philistines and some of the lands of the Canaaites] were not agriculturists. It is true that Yahweh was called "the Lord my shepherd," but this Lord was not an indigenous Lord of that pastoral People. So, there is an interesting historical question, as to whether Yahveh was a god of the Hebrews before they and the Canaaites received the Elohim (together with the Arabesque language), or became a god of the Hebrews upon their return from Egypt (and their taking up of agriculture along the lush valley of the Jordan river, which Abraham had eyed).
Yahweh is mentioned outside and before the Bible in Eblaite tablets. We can say that he was a Levantine god and a god of agriculturalists. The Bible suggests that El was the god of Abraham, and that Yawhen was the god of Moses, who gave the Lord's Commandments to the Hebrew, the first being that the Lord is jealous and will not tolarate the acceptance of any other god. (A theological tension always existed among the Hebrews so that they eventually split into the kingdom of Judea, with Yahveh as their god in Jerusalem, and the Galileans who, all the way down to Jesus, prayed to El: Eli, Eli.... Probably Jesus looked like a modern Arab, while the Judeans looked more like the southern Europeans.)
After the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., it was many of the Judeans that left Palestine. The descendants of the Galileans and the Samaritans, must have easily blended with the Arab populations that moved into Palestine. Recent genetic studies of European Jews show this predominant result: The male Jews are genetically like the male population of Semitic speakers in the Middle East (Syrians, Lebanese, etc.), whereas the female Jews are genetically like the female population of Europe. Since the female markers of indicators are inherited from females, an article writer concluded that the male Jews who ran from Palestine into Europe started marrying European women, wherease today's Jewish females are like the European females! According to ths inference, the Jewish females of the exodus became extinct. This is contrary to all historical evidence, since intermarriages with Europeans (whether female or male) was always the exception, rather than the rule. What the genetic study really does is to suggest that, in the ancient Middle East, Arab-like males married European-like females who existed in the Levant. This in turn alludes to an Arab male conquest of the Levant, rather than a migration of Arab families into the Levant. In effect, the population of the Arabesque speaking Hebrews consisted largely of Arab males and ethnically Levantine women. (Probably Moses was part of a small remnant of Levantine males who re-established the more ancestral religion of Yahveh, a god of pre-Canaan agriculturists, while the Hebrews were a pastoral sector of that population o political society).
In addition to the Biblical description of the nature of Yahveh, and the more ancient mention of him in Canaan (in the Eblaite tablets), there is this very sacred name that shows its linguistic Euphratean ["Indo-European"] nature. (In order to avoid the old term "Indo-European" completely, when referring to the substrates of the Euphratean and the Tigrean languages, we can speak of that rudimentary language as the Proto-Mesopotamian language, which already tended to diverge into two groups as migrations took place over a long period of time.)
Here is the identification and the etymology of the sacred name that I made some time ago.
Greek and Mideastern-European Languages
Posted - 10 Feb 2006 : 23:53:06
