Who Really Is Israel? The Secrets Uncovered! | Dr. Gad Barnea

Don't any of you have the guts to pay for blood? I'm your huckleberry. That's just my [Music]

What's up everybody? Derek Lambert, nilgnostic informant. What's What's going on? What's going on? Huh? I'm just excited to talk to G, Dr. Gad Bara and get some get some the scoop on the the latest in the archaeology over there in that world right on the right on the scene right in that part of the world. You can't get you're get we're getting right from the source. Not only not only the source like Gad, you're going in and you're you're you're uh grading the scholars who've been around for a while and checking some of their stuff out and going, "Ah, no, we got to read this ourselves. Sorry. they just they're making mistakes and we need to re-evaluate this."

So I I figured look I contacted you last minute notice yesterday said man I came across your article on who is Israel what is Israel and I wanted to well plugging your book here Yahwis under the is it how do you pronounce this I always mess this up aid that's the way I pronounce it at least that's how I say yeah empire the book is free you can go right now download it for um we're going to be talking about a few articles he has like who is Israel kind of the development of that getting into Samaritanism and I'll be interested to hear your take because I just crafted a script wondering were the Samaritans in Garazim in the fifth century during the Persian period while elephantine we have evidence of polytheism was there polytheistic or was it universally polytheistic at the same time up here in Garazim and so hopefully we can tackle that question as you un unravel who Israel is and then get into Canon and his attack upon Yah or the people of Yah in Elephantine. And I I like to put it as like the gods are battling because often times there's a political tension between groups or factions and uh it's Yah versus Canon. And uh I love to hear your take. So uh if you don't mind, let's let's show you.

Do you have headphones by any chance? Me? Yeah. There's a little bit of a noise going on. I think it might be because if Gad doesn't have headphones and you don't have headphones, then you're both talking through your computers. Okay. Is this better? Yeah, I don't have so I probably Let's Yeah, this will fix that. This will fix that. Okay, fantastic. Okay, cool.

There's one one comment there. One comment, Derek, on what you said. I mean, I'm not fixing um you know, per se what my predecessors have done. Um I I mean in a sense I am but uh it's only because today we have better technology and uh so I'm able to use really high resolution images and even micros you know a microscope to uh a really good electronic microscope to go and get some infrared imaging and things like that that allows us to to read some of the detail better. Um so it's not um yeah you know my my predecessors were really brilliant people uh and and and kudos to them. Um I just um am a beneficiary of of of the technology that that comes with the territory of being in the 21st century. Absolutely. Uh so let's shamelessly plug real quick here if you don't mind. I'd like to pop up. Me and Nil are both fighting. I was I thought I was going to do it for you. You got it. Kum versus Yah right now. Can Kum is is fighting to struggle over who gets to share uh what on the live stream. It's all good. Um so this article on academia. Go to his academ academia web page and be sure to go download for free the article we're going to cover today. And uh here is the academia. It is in the description of the YouTube channel. We're going to be touching on this one here. This one here. Maybe maybe a little a small comment on this. So this is basically just the slide deck from my uh presentation my paper yesterday that I presented in Berlin. I I was supposed to be physically in Berlin but I couldn't for personal reasons but uh so I just presented via Zoom but this is the paper that I I presented at the conference uh in Berlin yesterday. It's not the article. The article behind this is actually going to come out in a couple of months as an actual article um in the uh the journal for of the American Oriental Society. Um so that's that would be an actual academic article. Sounds good. I'm interested. And then the birth uh and evolution of early Samaritan identity between the Persian and TMIC empires. Be sure to subscribe to Gnostic informant if you're at Mythvision and vice versa. If you're over at Gnostic Informant, subscribe to Mythvision. It's the only way to get true nosis and uh salvation. So anywh who uh coming coming to you Gad Neil, how do we want to start this? You want to want to answer the question who is Israel? Do we want to tackle that or did you have any questions?

Yeah, I mean what where is the identity of Israel coming from? Um basically I would I would I would start with that and where what's the progression look like? When when do we get a from all the stuff in the archaeology like is there 12 tribes is the a lotment of the 12 tribe map is that a true thing that type of stuff is that we start with that.

Well, we're yeah, these are all these are all very big questions so we'll we'll address them one by one I guess if we have enough time. Yeah, it's it's a lot uh it's a lot to unpack here. So, um, I'd say the first thing about Israel as a as a name, I mean, it sounds to us today, you know, a very kind of it's obviously a household name. Um, the first record of this name is in the Merak steel from about 1208 before the current era. So that's from Marin and um and who was the son of Ramsey's II, Ramsey's the great and had a campaign um in the Levant and uh he noted a people group an actual people group called Israel. um in the um 9th or 8th century before the current era, we have uh two um stella in uh Canaanite Stella, basically the Teldan Stella and the and the um um Marisha Stella. Um and um and these two Stella mention Israel, but they mention Israel as what is probably a uh a uh geographic location rather than a people group. Okay. So if we're looking at a people group in in the bandastella, it's clear, it's clearly a people group. There's the uh identifier in, you know, in in many ancient languages have a a kind of an identifier that shows what the meaning of a name is next to the actual name. Um and so it has the identifier of a people group in Egyptian. So we can we know that it is a people group, not a not a geographic location, um in the Canaanite uh uh uh inscriptions, it's uh if you analyze the parallelism that it's that is done there, it looks more like a location, a geographic location, even though we can't be 100% sure if it's really a people group or a geographic location. in cases where it is from the 8th century for example in in the Neoasyrian uh sources where Israel is mentioned as Sarah it's it's not Israel but it's it's mentioned as Sila so it's the name is is mentioned with a with a certain inversion there um when it's mentioned there it's mentioned as as Ka so the land of Sarah so the it's mentioned clearly as land not as a people group the people group is mentioned as as betri or the the house of Omry, the king king Omry or the Omorites uh who are obviously who's al also mentioned in the Bible. Um, but the people group is not called Israel ever at that at that point at least. It's not documented at that during that period uh in an unambiguous way. Again, you can go and and say that some parts of the um of the Meshast, excuse me, I said earlier Maha, that's obviously not true. Mast um parts of it might be the people group. Um my analysis based on parallelism is um is that uh that this is this is more of a geographic location in these in the Teldan and the Misha state. Um, in contrast, for example, the Aramean, the Arameans, uh, the Armenian people group, um, is, uh, is defined as a, as a group of people, lui. So, it means lu from aum for the man of Aram. And so there was a very clear way in the Assyrian records um to distinguish between a people group and, uh, and a geographic location. Um, so long story short this means that um, there is no unambiguous record of Israel being a people group after mea. So peripa clearly they are a people group. There is a people group called Israel. Um, but then it's it's more of a land sarila than a u than than a people group called Israel at that point. Of course sila is you can we can understand how it's related to Israel. It's a it's a it's an inversion but it's a very uh understandable uh kind of corruption of the name. Um, but so it's clearly there a memory of this name still clearly persists at at that during that time. Um, and then what time is this again? Just so we're talking about 8th century at that point. 8th century is the last yeah is the last record we currently know of uh with Sila is that is mentioned after that point. Um, we only have bet omri. So betri. Um, and and please note the the in the Bible it's Omry with an in the a sound and in the in the in the Assyrian records it's with sound. Um this interchange is going to play a role later on in our discussion. Okay. Um but the um so we have uh we have that in um in the Neo Assyrian records which is which is obviously very uh very very important. It's really the the only actual uh official records that we have from from that time period. This is not an administrative entity. Uh this is uh basically just a designation of a land. Um, kings like Ahab for example who is noted in the new Assyrian record are called Ahab Kuril. So Ahab of the land of Israel, not of the people but of the land. Um, and and again betri or betri are the uh is the the people or the palace or the dynasty but that's basically the uh uh when when people are are are referenced that's the way they are referenced. Um, then the designation Israel disappears for a very long time for about 500 years from that point on. Okay.

Th this if I may just let me chime in for one second here Gad and Neil to give a shout out first of all I know I don't want to get off topic but this is an important point that distance that gap. Why are they not using this term in the record? But first of all, shout out to Kyle Daniel Kyle for both you uh hooking up Myth Vision and for hooking up Nosticformant with five gifted memberships. Wow. Uh five lucky souls have been saved and five lucky souls get nosis. So uh and then there's American culture in the chat with the new membership. So again, thank you for helping us out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so if I may get I don't if I'm throwing you off, say shut up. Let's keep going. Feel free. I'm happy for you guys. That's fine. Well, I just want to say shut up to me if I'm derailing because you're going to get to this. But this is why me and Neil were like, what if these guys later are looking back at the records? they have access and see the antiquity like Plato talks about and say, you know what, that name that appears over here in the mat still in in ancient sources, we're going to tie ourselves in a fictive way back here. I don't know. Anyway, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll come to that. Yeah, we'll come to that. And then the question, you know, in the title of this uh of this uh talk today is the uh is who is Israel? And we're we're going to see we'll get there, but we're going to see that there was a a uh a lot of uh and we still don't have a complete answers to this. Uh but both Judeans and Samarans um identified it to some degree as Israel. And that's a that's a big that's a that's an open question in in many ways. I have a proposal a proposal again not a final um a final uh um u you know final thesis on this but just a proposal right now uh it's still work in progress it's a it's a very very complex subject before you resume with what you were saying I just have one question on the mepta steelli okay and the man the mepta is pretty ancient I'm I'm what 13th century BC right something like that y um and that's the first time anyone known as Israel is ever mentioned. Now, correct. From my I I you showed me because I was when I read this for the first time. I was looking at the translation and it was like is is like huh that's weird. It doesn't even say Israel. But then you pointed out to me that the hieroglyphics has to fit that way. But I also I wanted to get your thoughts on there's a couple people there's like five different scholars that I was reading through who said that Jezrael and Israel would actually look the same in those hieroglyphs. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I mean, it's a people group, right? So um so Jez Jezel would be a valley. I mean the way it's it's usually it's a it's a location. Um and this is here it's a people group. Um yeah, they probably would look the same. Um but um but is it possible that is Israel and Jezrael are the same place? They're just different one of because I the way you say Jezrael in Hebrew was jizrael but not Israel. It almost looks like the same name. Yeah, it sounds especially in English it sounds similar but it's really the the uh the um the meaning of Israel is is l will the the dity l would seed is from zera from the from from zer and Israel is something different um so there is a a very substantial difference between is and is even though they sound very similar in uh in English um so I don't I don't think they are the same uh they might I mean of it's it's the same area where Israel right same exact place it's exactly the same but that does not mean that they're related um they might simply mean be the same in the same place we don't have any any reason to believe that they are directly related uh they might have been you know fetmology I always go back to falmology um when studying uh when or at least when considering options for antiquity um because fetmology played a major major role in the daily lives of people in antiquity. But wouldn't that mean that there's a possibility that ye Israel could be comrael and Israel Jezrael and Israel could come could be kind of the same name going into different folk etmologies. Yeah. I don't I don't think that because again the Israel is is the Israel with a Z, right? With a with a Z. Yeah. um comes from the idea of of planting or seeding. Um but then you got Zion and I mean it's it's the most fertile valley in the area. It is also Zion and Sinai. You get the Z and the S there. Why not over here? Yeah. This is this is where I'm I I feel this is a little bit too speculative for you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh to go to go that far. Um I don't I don't see any reason to to connect the two um actual I mean actually connect them. there might have been um a fault ethmology in even in antiquity that did connect them. People tend to look just like you did now. people did also you know 2500 and 3,000 years ago they they looked for connections uh between names and so fetmology is a huge huge force in antiquity um and needs to be always taken into account um and we will come back to to falcmology as well um I I believe later on um but um but yes so melasti I think it's it's really um pretty uh pretty clear that uh that it refers to a people group that identifies with the name Israel. Now, they're not they are not Yaoists. Notice that, right? They are L. Their deity is L or at least the deity that they identified with or the theophoric element in their ethn their ethnic name um is L. So, they're not the Canaanite god. The Canaanite god. Exactly. So, they're not Yowists um or at least they're not identified as Yist. Of course that name persists and it persists well into uh into the um the hellistic period as an identifier for the uh yaists. Okay. Which is interesting. Um so they identify as that but as you mentioned and we'll come back to this but as you mentioned in in the later periods it's an archaizing um tendency that they are trying to uh to adopt. So they are trying to archaize their origin stories. Right. So that's why that's why the Israel is so is is suddenly becomes so popular and we'll talk about another important element that becomes very popular later on.

Now we we talked about the 8th century. We went from end of the 13th century before the current era and then 9th century um with the Teldan and and and the um measel 9th century 8th century um and the neoasyan uh records going into the seventh century now with Sarah and and and things like that. Um and Samaria is mentioned as as a city as well in these records. Um now in the so now moving to the end of the seventh century a very interesting phenomenon happens. So end of the seventh century and into the sixth century and I have an article about that um where I analyze the the historical record. I analyze the actual uh you know, the primary records themselves from Samaria and from Judea end of 7th century early 6th century. Now before the end of the seventh century in the north, so in Samaria or Israel if you want. Um so I I should obviously say that uh in case uh that needs further clarification that either Shelman the 5th or Sargon II — exiled the Samrians or Israel or the northern kingdom — in five in 722 before the current era. According to the biblical record that was Shel Manessa, according to the Neo Assyrian record that was Sargon II.

And real quick comment on that is sure were they called they weren't house of Omry at the time, right? Or at least descendants of it. Correct. So they weren't called the house of Israel outside the Bible, but within the Bible they keep calling it Israel. They're never called house of Israel anywhere outside the Bible. Got it. Yeah. Um and so so um 7:22ish we have the exile of um and it was in the reason I say ish is it was clearly in waves. It wasn't just a one-time event. Um it was a kind of a long-term not not long not very long but it was a a wave of of of exile um at that time or at least a few a couple of of of exile um events and um 8 late 8th century after that period um still a lot of people remained in Samaria. It wasn't it wasn't um it did not become empty. we don't see in archaeology, we don't see much of a difference in the material culture um at that time. Um so it's not the exile was mostly from the city of Samaria itself, not the entire region. Um and um and he says if I remember correctly something like 27,000 or 7 27500 or 600 something like that that he took from the city of Samaria um and exiled them to Assyria and be instead in their place he moved people from the in internal parts of Mesopotamia and and and transplanted them in in Samaria. Again we don't have any u trace of that in the material record. we don't seen any material culture from Mesopotamia popping up in um in Samaria at that time. So um or almost none and so we um I mean nothing I mean what we do see might have come just through trade not from people actually um actually moving there. So um so that's the 7th century. there was an exile but you know the extent of it it was I mean it was it certainly left a mark u and it caused some people there's a a discussion in scholarship just how many but some of the northern northern um um um people from Samaria from Israel if you will um came down to uh and lived and and just migrated to uh to Judea to their Judea yah yahist brethren and um so That's 7th century.

End of the seventh century and into the sixth century, there is a very interesting phenomenon. Prior to that point in time, the uh naming conventions were very clear. The theophoric element in a in a personal name. What I mean by theophoric element is the name of the deity in the name in a personal name. So for example, you have a a name like Yahushua or Yahusha, right? Like Jesus, right? Yahushua. Yeah. Okay. So, it means Yahusha. Yahushua means Yho is the theophoric element because it's the name of the deity and then added add to it a a an adjective or a verb that describes that deity. So, that's how these theophoric names are composed. A name or an adjective added to a um combined with a um with a uh a name of a daty. So, a verb or an adjective with a name of a daty that's aoric name. And in the north uh the theophoric element for Yahweh was just yo okay yodv yo and very consistently and in the north in the south it was uh yah okay y hw right yw exactly so these are and it was very clear you could identify a name from the north because it had y and a name from the south because it was yo very clear distinction end of the seventh century and into the sec the the the sixth century there is a grassroots reform happening across everywhere where Yowists are um settling. Okay. So you have all the the the y names the YW names get completely eradicated from the onasticon from the list of names. All the names become ya standardized with the yahoo element. Now this is a reform. This is what time is this? Seven end of the seventh century and into the sixth century after the uh after the um the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 before the current era. Oh right at that time the names are completely standardized at after that point. So just so I have you correct from 7:22 when the Assyrians disperse up to the Babylonian there's a solidifying of YHW universally in the north included so that every so it's it's 522 is the end of the 8th century I'm talking about the end of the seventh century and into the sixth so it did it wasn't it wasn't a linear process 600 600 it happened yeah exactly so um and so it happened from the late um uh uh 7th century and into the sixth um there were exceptions even in elephantian we find yo one single yo name that's the exception that makes the rule right but but about 99% of thea of the cases these um uh the names change now a name change is a big deal because especially in antiquity uh that was the most intimate component of one's identity you inherit the name from your father or your grandfather and and and they inherited the name from their grandfather. So this is the this is the um uh the the most kind of central identity component of your own personal family if not tribe just your family your immediate family identity. Now to change as an all-encompassing change of names for an entire people group from the north accepting to standardize their names according to the standard of Judea. That is a big deal. That is a huge change. Now what's important again it's a grassroots reform. It's not part of Judea's reform example. It's not part of it's not a king who who who ordered this reform. It is from it it starts from the grassroots from for whatever reason. Uh and that's that also explains why it stuck for so long. You know when a king when when the king imposes something usually it doesn't stick very long. It sticks for the for the time the lifetime of that particular king and then you know people don't like you know things that are imposed from above. But this one is a um this is this has all the all the hallmarks of a uh of a um a grassroots reform. We don't know a lot about this and it's not a full Celtic reform. It's not a it's certainly not a cult centralization reform or anything like that. It is a name reform but it is it it touches on the most intimate part of one's familial identity and to accept and we even have in my article I showed this we have a we have a case of of the same person changing their name. Okay. Um and so appearing with a yo element and then with a yahoo element in their name uh for the exactly the same person. So we have we know that there was this and then this reform is is is is is important and was uh really previously did not come up on the radar but the data as I show in my article is very very compelling. It's I mean it's so it's so it's so clear that there is this um this y your names get completely eradicated uh in the early 6th century before the common era. Now what that means also is that a what an identity is established here that is powistic. Okay, it's not just Judean. It's not Samrian. Now there's a consolidation of the identity of all Yists. So this is the Midianites, the and you know, dwellers down. Is that what you're saying? Only Yowists. So those people aren't Yawist yet. Uh no, not yet. No. Well, I mean there might have been some. We don't know. But uh but we don't have uh Yahwists and is Yawist mentioned or at least recorded at that point. Um, so, so you don't you don't subscribe to the idea that the Midianites were the first people to really put y to beat are the first Yahwist? Okay. Well, no. I mean, I think that the uh the first Yahwists were were um Well, it's it's I mean, we have a Hittite. We talked about Oh, that's right. You talked about this. The Hittite. Yeah. So, you really think that that the Hittites were the first Yahwist? Well, it's hard to know. Oh, we have one one person who is a Hittite who is mention who is called Take your scholarly head off for one second. If you had to guess, we're just we're just three guys drinking some beers and you're just throwing throwing on something at the wall. What would you say? You think that you think it's the Hittite Hite the Hittite sources? Well, I I don't know if it's it's Hittite necessarily, but it is from the north. I think Yahweh um Yahweh as a as a deity came from uh northern Syria of today. So, from Wow. Would this be in line with Giovani Garbini? Because I love that guy's book. Uh he jabbed at the jugular of some academic stuff. And I brought this to Neil's attention where he said that the scholars, they didn't realize that even within the Ugaritic text, there's one source. Right. Right. But still, Giovani thinks when you get to the older stuff. Yeah. He says, "Yah is my son." Um, most scholars want to try and Okay, hold on. He's talking about Yam. He's not talking about Yahweh. Whereas Giovani is like, man, they'll do anything they can to get Yahweh out of the north and and like not realize this guy's all they don't want him to be in the pantheon because that's that's an they want Yahweh to be special and alone. There's there's a push to do that. Yeah. Whereas I think you might be on to something there. And now the Syrian Hittite thing makes it even more interesting because I mean, who knows? I mean that's there's a lot going on there. You got the god I over there. The Hittites adopt this guy. Well, I mean the the thing about Yaobidi. So Yaobidi is the is the guy we're talking about from Kamat and he was a Hittite king of Kamat. So he was a Hittite king of an Aramian city. Okay. So that's al already an interesting situation there. Uh who rebelled uh against the Neoyans and and was uh flayed alive according to their records uh because of his rebellion. Um anyway, so but but that's why we we know of him because he is recorded as as a as an enemy of of the new Syrian Empire and um and his fate uh was accordingly. Um but in his his name is and sometimes now it's interesting because his name is sometimes spelled with yah as as the theophoric element and sometimes with l as a theophoric element. So so that's also a very interesting uh um data point right there. But so there is some kind of identification right there which is obvious to us of course but and the Hittites the Hittites were actually down in that Syrian region for a while. Oh yeah yeah yeah. So this was this this actually checks out I think. Yeah. Absolutely. Now with u what's what's nice is that we have the identifier for a daty. So there's it's called the dingir identifier right or the determinative that shows that this this element in the name is the name of a deity okay it's not just a you know it could be yah as a as a who knows as a name of a forefather or a name of a whatever it might be right it could be a name of we don't know right a word in Hittite that we're not familiar with whatever it is but here it's very explicit we know that it is a um a a theophoric element in the name. So we know that it is the deity Yahweh in this Hittite name. This is what you're talking about. That's right. The ding gear identity. You know, some people might be like, what is he talking about? Ding gear. I just want to make sure people know. Right. Thanks. That's that's important. Um so we his name has that but for L and for um and for Yahweh. Uh but his name is I mean clearly also a Yistic name. Okay. Um and so that's a that's a very important uh certainly a very important character. We I wish we knew more about him and maybe we will find out more about him with excavations uh in the future in Syria um as well and I I'm always hopeful to to learn more about him as I am about several other Have you or anyone published yet on the are arguing for a possible Hittite import of Yahweh? Not that I know of. I'm working on on Yeah, cuz you better get on that. Some someone watching this right now might steal it. That's a this is a big deal. That's big news. Yeah. You know what? I don't mind people stealing this. We all working together. So, I don't mind I don't think someone will. But we're all working together. Um I you know there are scholars who like to keep secrets and you know that's all I don't believe that. I believe in open scholarship. Yeah. We're here to learn. You know, we're not here to compete with each other. Someone beats me to the punch, there's a lot more that I can contribute otherwise as well. So, I don't I'm not too too worried about that. Um and so um okay so back to the um the name reform uh in the name in the uh what's really important there is that we are we have in the sixth century a powistic um ethno religious or ethnoculttic identity that is not unique to Judea even though it is yahood. Okay. So it it because it comes from the theophoric name. Uh we find these names in Elephantine. We find these names in the Babylonia area, right? In El Yahudu and other places like that and of course in Samaria and Judea as the these these administrative provinces. Now um so there is a standardization of names. It's also interesting to note and I should mention in this in passing that often when when uh tribes migrate or not often but we know of this phenomenon that when tribes migrate they take on names that reflect the place that they are migrating to. Um I don't believe that this is the case here because they did migrate. We know that there was a migration from the north to Judea. that might explain some some of the uh of this name reform or it certainly does explain some of this name reform. Of course, that's that's an impetus when you are when you're trying to um uh to to um kind of uh uh uh um um plant yourself within a host society that where the name difference is just one letter. It's very easy and it's uh to to try to assimilate uh by just changing that theophoric element in your name. But the fact is that it happened not just in again not just in Judea but it hap it also happened in sources in Samaria happened in Elephantine happened in um in Babylonia as well. So we see it across the board and again it's not due to migration because they migrated to Elephantine they migrated to Babylonia they did not change their names there um that name reform migrated with them. So um so it was a a an important certainly an important again grassroots effort by the people to establish a an identity. Now here I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Of course. Yes. Um well you know what but it's interesting because there might have been a memory that persisted that there was some kind of reform in the late 7th century. Okay. So some they might have not connected you to the right reform to the correct reform but there but they might there might have been some some memory maybe and of course this is completely speculative but um that they they remember that there was some kind of reform at that at that period in time.

Now um so it now this is where we come back to this um to this uh uh um fetmology that we talked about earlier. Falconology is extremely important. Um, and I I repeat this again and again again both in my lectures and me in my in my teaching. Uh, we tend to discount folk ethmology because it's not scientific really. It's bec scientific ethmology looks at actual documents where you can see the evolution of a certain a certain word or certain right but people in antiquity had no clue. They didn't know what the scientific ethmology might be. Right? that that that takes really uh you need to to to spend time with primary sources and what and study the evolution over time. They didn't do that. Um they looked at fault ethmology and we need to we need to work with that and see if we can find any any um any proof of of actual fetmology being uh being being followed at at that time. So um once you establish a common identity, a common cultic identity around a certain um variant of the divine name Yahweh. So the ya yuda or Yahweh Yahoo as the name the name of the province of of Judah, right? The province of Yehuda sounds like a theophoric name. Now, the scientific ethmology of of Judah is still an open question. We don't know. We we can't really explain the dal the the duh sound in the name. So, we don't know ethmologically to explain um the name Judah yet. There are different theories, but we don't have a a an actual explanation in the Bible. They explain this name as a theophoric name. The name of Judah is explained in the book of Genesis when Leia gives birth to Judah to the tribe of Judah or to Judah as the kind of the progenitor of the of the of the tribe. She explains the name as she explains the daled in the name as deriving from the the the um the verb to give thanks. Okay. So now I shall give thanks to Yahweh. That's the name. So this is a folk ethmology. We have that recorded at least in the Bible much later of course but it's still recorded in the Bible much later at least according to my studies. Of course a lot of people would disagree with that. Um, but we have this this um this folk ethmology recorded somewhere where Judah as a place name as a place as the name Judah is explained as a theophoric name. I will give thanks to Yahweh to Yahoo. And if you live in a society where all or a big part a big chunk of the names around you that you live in of the people that you're surrounded with um their names have this theophoric name and you live in a um in a province that has exactly the same theophoric element then fetmology is is only natural. Um and again it is recorded in the Bible such for ethmology and so people would identify with the name Judah whether or not they live in Judah just by virtue of participating in this name reform. Okay. So Judah becomes more than just a name of a province at that point. It is also um it it would also be connected to uh to a global identity or not global but but a a much wider identity that goes all over the the interesting because it's interesting because today Jew has two meanings too. It can be ethnicity, it could be religious. And you're seeing but Judah as you're pointing out almost has those early on it almost has that sort of those roots of that basically. That's right. That's right. Absolutely.

And I think there's a lot of especially in biblical studies a lot of um of uh scholars put too much um um kind of accept this idea that there was this this absolute dichotomy between the north and the south as is mentioned in the Bible in certain places. Um so that was that does not seem to have been the historical uh profile at at that point in time. We have in elephantine we have letters that are sent to both Samaria and Judea um and responses coming back from Samaria and Judea. We have in papyrus Amherst 63 which I think we already mentioned in our discussions um papyrus Amherst 63 very important document. That document mentions um a Judean that talks about his brother from Samaria. So literally calls him brother. Uh that document is is dated to about the 4th century now before the common era. Um we don't know exactly when to date it to but about fourth or early third century before the common era found in uh in Egypt somewhere. We don't exactly know where. Um and anyway so we have we do have records and even second Makabes. So now we're going into the second century before the common era. Even second Mcabes um identifies the um the the Samrians as being of the same goenos meaning of the same race as the Judeians. So they are brothers I mean literally genetically related literally the word gene go. Exactly the same go exactly in that's in second mangabes. So, we have a very long-term um long dur what's called the long dur long-term um memory here or long-term effect of Judeans um and Samarans seeing each other as brothers. Okay.

What I mentioned in my in my talk yesterday as well is that we might may have and this is this is um this is for now I can't be sure but there is the on Mount Garisim. So on Mount Garisim, there was a temple, a Samaran temple, a Yahwistic temple, a temple to Yahweh on Mount Garisim. From the middle of the of the or I would say from the end the the final quarter of the fifth century before the common era onwards, there was an actual monumental temple on Mount Garisim. And there we have a lot of inscriptions. And one of these inscriptions that's very interesting is um has Yahood and Yehuda on it. And that's a very I mean technically that's a name that would you would expect from someone from Judah not from a Samrian. Um again but I do I do as I I do want to remind that we us that we just talked about a panauistic identity. So it could be we cannot discount a a Samaran also be being called Judah although we have no record of that. Um, but if this is the case, we have a Judeian that came to actually offer a sacrifice on Mount Garazine rather than Jerusalem or and that's just like someone from Elusus going to Delelfi would be which was common. Exactly. It's the same distance probably. That's great. That's that's a great point. We have ab absolutely recorded cases where where people from Samaria, the city of Samaria went to Mount Gerism to offer their sacrifice. There was almost certainly also a temple in Samaria itself. Okay. Also point out the fact that it's not centralized. this what the biblical portrayal is a romanticized really southern uh attempt to say it was always here and it was always meant to be here even though there are echoes of Garazine prior to the north was really there prior to the Judeian whoever the Judeian or at least seemingly southern scribe well you know in the book of Deuteronomy is non-committal it doesn't commit to the place that Yahweh will choose okay right what's What? Deuteronomy is not committed to Jerusalem at all. No. I thought the Deuteronomist was Is it the priestly source then that spec that that we call priestly source? Well, not I mean the Torah. The Torah does not mention the Torah does not mention um um Jerusalem as the as a place of cultic centralization. Um now we have in Deuteronomy I missed that for some reason. I guess I wasn't paying attention. Yeah. So in Deuteronomy 12 you have the place that in the maseretic text the place that Yahweh will choose. Okay. And that's where you will um serve Yahweh in the place that he will choose. In the Samaritan Pentatuk uh that place is already chosen. It's not will choose but he has chosen. Um and that connects to Deuteronomy um 27 where that place is is Mount Garisim um in uh but you have to connect that it's not explicit. Um you have to actively read the text and and ident how do you connect that? Take us through this. This is this to me someone might be might understand why you think that. Is that is that too long? No, no. I mean, it's a very easy it's it's basically in both cases it says that that's where you you will serve God and in but in Deuteronomy 12 it says at least in Maseretic text it's about the future and then in 2728 it's it's about Mount Garazim because they've arrived to Mount Gerisim already um and and and in in a in a very similar uh uhh formulation of the text appears there again so it makes it gives you this kind of narrative echo of these two of these areas it's Not explicitly connected. It's connected. Yeah, because it's it's it's about the one place of worship. Deuteronomy 12, right? That's right. That's right. But it doesn't it never says Jerusalem. It doesn't say where it is. Oh my. I never even thought about that. I never even It's clever how the Samaritan pentitute though literally nails it down into Garazim. I wonder if they were the first to try and centralize worship in a sense, but I don't know. We don't we don't really know. Um, but what's interesting in Deuteronomy is that Deuteronomy certainly chapters it's certainly 2728 um in and and really the Penetuk as a whole um tends to be more northern than southern and especially in the in Deuteronomy. where where you have the scene in front in front of Mount Ebal and Mount Garazim when you write down the law, right? When you write down the words uh that you need to write down on the stones, um then that's in Samaran territory that's in that's in Nablus. That's right in in so the the words of the Torah are written down in in the heart of Samaran territory. Not just the heart, but that Nabilus and or Shm and these two twin mountains, Mount Abal and Mount Gar. That's what I was going to say. This that's so mount Mount Abal. This is in Samaria. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and so these two mountains, um, why did I think this was in the south? Oh, no. There's Mount Garazim right here. Okay. Okay. Wow. I'm learning something. I I thought I was pretty well read on the Torah stuff. I guess I'm not. This is Whoa. This is I didn't know this. What's interesting is this is in the Maseretic in in chapter 27 and 28. This is in the Maseretic, which kind of makes you realize like this if anyone had a closer if they were disputing power struggle over whose mountain,

Let's just say, like, even the Masoretic seems to at least be closer with the few chapters later in Deuteronomy, wouldn't you say? Or yeah.

Well, I mean, in the Samaritan text, which is not, we know from Qumran and from late, really early, um, translations, uh, um, you know, very early Greek translations, and and even the Vetus Latina, the Latin, the the Old Latin translation, that, um, the Mount, the blessed mountain is Mount Gerizim, as opposed to the Masoretic, which is the cursed Mount Ebal. Exactly.

So, we know that from Qumran, and we know that which would, and Qumran were not Samaritans. I mean, the community in Qumran were not Samaritans. Uh, they would not, you know, necessarily conserve Samaritan texts. I think there is pretty much scholarly consensus now that the, uh, the older version of, uh, Deuteronomy 27 had Mount Gerizim as the blessed mountain and not Mount Ebal. Um, and that's, so that's the Samaritan view. That's the Samaritan, uh, um, um, view. That's pretty wild that these guys get cursed, and that's, and like, is that it? That's, that's the end of them. Think about. I mean, there's also another. Exactly.

But there's also another thing to to keep in mind here. Um, we found this in Qumran. Okay. So that's about maybe second century before the Common Era. But in the Masoretic text, it's not, it's Mount Ebal, right? And, um, so they were still editing the Pentateuch, even Deuteronomy period, before the Common Era, right? That's wild. So, I mean, the Pentateuch was still being edited at the time. That's, that's really important to, to. And even, I mean, even a single word, right? Gerizim instead of Ebal, or Ebal instead of Gerizim, even to the editing, one word for polemical reasons, right? Um, that's why I call the, the biblical text really a battlefield of ideas, right? Battlefield of ideas.

Even, even the, the, take the Greek, for example, where in the, in the oldest manuscripts from, um, Oxyrhynchus and Qumran, you have the the tetragrammaton or YHWH in the Greek. And in some versions, they, they stop, they go from Greek to Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew, and change just for the name of Yahweh, goes from right to left, Yahweh, and then back to Greek again, right? And the fact that that gets systematized by the Christians later, that they just take all that out and put in Kyrios, and it's the Lord, the Lord, the Lord, that shows you the battleground of ideas happening in the text. Absolutely. Absolutely.

That is this, this, um, this obsession with working on the most authoritative text and the, and the, that that comes from Alexandria, and, um, which we already talked about a lot, but that, that idea of this, this obsession with the authoritative text, and now I'm going to, me and my, you know, my kind of ideological group, are going to work and try to produce this text that we believe is more, more, that we want to be more authoritative. And you're going to have, so, you know, the Hesychastians would produce texts that they want to be more, more authoritative, and then different sects would would maybe adopt parts of that and not adopt other parts. But this was a period post-Alexandria where this obsession by people on having an authoritative text what became, became truly. And of course, that continued into into Christianity as well, um, this obsession.

I just want people to see what I'm talking about real quick. You see how this is a Greek manuscript? And then look at this right here where the arrow is. It turns into Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew for a second, and then back to Greek. So, anyways, back to, right, back to what you were saying.

Yeah. So, um, so we, we, uh, we talked about this consolidation of identity in the sixth century and into the fifth century, and really into the fourth century as well, and the close relations between Samaritans and, uh, and Judeans throughout that period. Um, now, in the fourth century, I mean, of course, even before that, we already have diasporas of Judea, of of Yahwists. We don't know because of the name reform, we don't know if people in Babylonia, because of it's the same name. Uh, so we don't know if people in Babylonia were from the from the north or the south. Again, not, it's, it's, it's really impossible to know because they had the same names at that point in time already. Um, same thing for Elephantine. We don't know if they are, um, if they are from the north or the south. There are reasons to believe that part, at least part of the community in Elephantine, and we'll get to that in, in a, in a minute, um, part of the community was Samaritan as well, in, in Elephantine. So, there are reasons to believe that. Um, but there's no reason why they wouldn't co-mingle. Again, they saw themselves as part of the same basic entity. Um, so that is that transcends the, uh, the administrative borders of Judea. Okay. They are Yahwists. So they identify as Yehudi. Now, identifying as Yehudi post-name reform does not mean that you are from Judah necessarily. Okay. This is where that broadening kind of umbrella starts to begin. Exactly. Exactly. Via this folk etymology that we also find documented even in the Bible. Right? So this folk etymology, which was, which was also so natural for people to have, um, if you, all the names around you look like the name of the province, then you, you would make the name of the province also to be theophoric. Uh, whether that's, that's the actual, um, etymology of that name, the the scientific etymology of, of, of, of Judah or not, the folk etymology would certainly have people see it as an expression of you being of one person being a Yahwist. So I don't think that identifying as Yehudi necessarily makes you Judean post the the name reform. Got it. And the people in Elephantine identifying as Yehudi does not necessarily make them Judean post-name reform as well.

Just for people who don't get it, the geography of where you're from, you would imagine that's what the name identifies them as. No, this is where you see a break. You can live in New York and still be a Philadelphian, is the point, so to speak. I know it's much more religious and and central to the devotion of Yahweh. It's religious. Like you can be Jewish in New York, and you can be Jewish in Jerusalem. You can be Jewish, and you, like, that's that's a, it's really, it's, it's a cultic, it's an ethno-cultic or ethno-religious identifier. Got it. Um, and that's really what it is. I mean, it's very, it's very simple for us to understand. Uh, but in scholarship, we tend to, um, uh, to, to, to, um, uh, to, uh, to see things, uh, up until now, we we saw things, and I did that as well, up until the, where I saw that the data doesn't correspond to that necessarily.

But you did, you did, how you mentioned how the etymology of Judah, Yehud, might have this Yahweh in it, right? So, would you, folk etymology, right? Folk, do you think that the Elephantine Yehudim were aware of this and like made this, like, carried this tradition themselves? Yeah, I think it's, well, I don't know if they, they were aware of this specific folk etymology that is also mentioned in the Bible. We can't know. But again, when you're living amongst people and your own personal name might be, might have the YHWH theophoric element in the name, and, and, and you have Yehudah as a geographic identifier, uh, it's very easy to just say, well, this is the, this is my, this is my identity. I identify as a Yehud, um, because I am a Yahwist, basically. I mean, the name, of course, they, no one said Yahwist in antiquity, right? Um, so to identify as a Yahwist, basically, is just to be, to be Yehudi, right? Uh, it, we, we tend, and I used to do this, uh, also for a very long time, to basically just say Yehudi is Judean, up until the, uh, the second century, before the Common Era, where we have Judaism actually coming into being. But now I think it's, it's, it's basically is someone who is basically identifying as part of this name reform, somewhere from the sixth to fifth centuries BCE, but someone who is identifies, basically, this is, this basically says I'm a Yahwist rather than I am a, a Judean. Um, and so, and this is, of course, this will be controversial in scholarship, but I think that the, uh, the data bears me out on on this. Uh, this is very, this is very new, right? This is very, in many ways, cutting edge. Um, so we have, we have this, but certainly, we have, uh, whether it's, whether the, the, they, the identified, the identifier Yehudi, uh, is that related to that or not, there was clearly a consolidation of the identity under at that time, and, and all the names are standardized again, which in itself is, it's truly a striking, um, striking, uh, event.

Once the names are standardized, we, we, and, and, and as we, as we said there, we have Judeans and Samaritans seeing each other as, as, as brothers. Um, and, um, and, and we have, uh, we move into now the late fourth century, now Alexander the Great. We are moving out of the, of the, um, uh, of the Persian Empire. And so Alexander the Great, when he conquers, uh, Tyre and then Gaza, he uses, according to Josephus, 8,000 Samaritan troops that he. Oops, sorry about that. Um, so, um, he uses 8,000 Samaritan troops in his, uh, in his army, and he gives them, according to Josephus, land, um, in, um, in the Thebaid area. So, in, in upper Egypt, to southern Egypt, so they get actual land, they get, they get land grants for participating in Alexander's army, and they, uh, move to Egypt. So, we, we know that there was a significant, and that's, that's a very plausible thing when I read Arrian, and he gives the Scythians land for fighting in the army. Yeah. So, this is, this sounds like something that checks out that Alexander would do. You fight in his army, he's going to get, we know that he did that for others as well, of course. Yeah.

Now, he did that for for Judeans as well in Alexandria. So, we have, we know that there was a very large, um, community in Alexandria, um, that, and probably also Samaritans. I mean, not just not just Judeans, but also Samaritans, uh, in, in Alexandria, right down the street from the library.

I got to ask you this, because recently it's come up in some of my conversations that I've been having in a lot of these spaces is the, the Josephus story of Alexander going into Jerusalem and doing a sacrifice. What do you think this is historical? What do you think? I, who knows? I mean, I don't think I, you know, I mean, the honest answer is, who knows? Um, who knows? I think I think it's apocryphal because when you read it carefully, I mean, not to say there isn't a kernel, but he, he supposedly is presented the book of Daniel. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that didn't happen. But Arrian, Arrian cites all the sources like Herodotus and Callisthenes, all these journals, the guy who's walking around with Alexander, and these are the sources that were passed down, and none of them have this. So, I just wonder maybe, yeah, I mean, again, like like Derek said, I mean, it's a, there might be a kernel of truth into that. He might have gone into Jerusalem just to recruit mercenaries. I mean, right? That's, that could have been the case. Uh, which he did everywhere. I mean, his army was very heavily mercenary-based. Um, and so, uh, there might be a kernel of truth in him just going to Jerusalem because of that. Um, meeting the high priest, certainly being presented the, uh, the book of Daniel, that's, that's, that's that seems mythological. Hey, this book has you in it, by the way. Like, here, this book talks about you. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So, um, absolutely. So, you know, there, myth often often has a kernel of truth in it. Sure. Um, it might be very, very far removed from what we get in the final version of the myth, but there is a, there might be. We do know for sure that he was in Beth Shean, and they set up that city of Scythopolis, and he gave the Scythians that city to fortify, and then they set up a temple or they set up a grotto to Pan. The Grotto of Pan was built in that that time by Alexander's army. So, we know he's in that region. It's not that crazy. Oh, he's definitely, of course, he's in that region. He laid siege to, uh, to Tyre and conquered Tyre for about, I think it was eight months siege, to Tyre and then conquered, huge battle. And the Samaritans definitely participated, probably some Judeans as well, but the Samaritans definitely participated in that battle, and then down Gaza as well, laid siege, took that, and then down to Egypt, and of course, conquered Egypt. So, and then gave land. We know that he gave land to Samaritans in Egypt, not in Samaria. In Egypt. Um, so we have a major, uh, uh, um, diaspora, very powerful diaspora forming in Egypt that is Samaritan and Judean, in Alexandria and in the Faiyum. The Faiyum is a, um, an oasis in Egypt where in the third century, before the Common Era, there was a village called Samaria. Hm. So, literally a village of Samaritans. Oh, that's neat. Yep. Samaria. Oh, Samaria. Okay. Samaria. And, uh, that village, like New, like New Samaria. Like New York. New Samaria. Yeah. New York. Exactly. Yeah. Um, and, um, and so in, we have papyri from Samaria, and they have Yahwistic names there. Um, and there, even we have quite, I think about 19 people that identify as Yehudim. Now, there's been a lot of discussion in scholarship about that. Are they, they're in Samaria, but they identify as Yehudim. Are they Judean? Are they converted? Some scholars have even suggested a conversion from, I guess, Samaritanism to, to Judaism. Uh, that, that does, I don't, I don't subscribe to that. Again, I said, in according to my research, they had a unified identity already from the sixth century. So, there was no need to convert, so to speak.

That's interesting because a lot of times today, you get, especially just, I'm just talking on the internet, not in scholarly circles, there's this like need to separate Jews from Israelites and Samaritans. They're all different. They're. But you're saying actually, no, this is very nuanced. This is very gray, these terms. This is, and, and, you know, for for us in the mo, in modern times, um, we tend to be too way too, uh, too, uh, strict about these things.

Well, then, what to your point about it, though, in this community, they have this, uh, this name. What is your explanation? What do you think is most likely on why they have those names? Is it just simply these particular names are just to these people, but everyone also fell under that same umbrella? No, we're talking about Samaria, the village of Samaria, the new village of Samaria. So, before we do that, I'll just take us a little detour to make to make that, to to explain what I mean. Uh, in Elephantine, the same people identifying as Yehudi also identify as Aramean. Okay. In Elephantine, you have the same person. Aramean. Aramean. Yeah. Huh. Because Arameans are like, aren't they Indo-European people? No. No. No. No, no, they're Semitic. Oh, I'm, think I'm sorry. I'm thinking Armenian. Okay. Armenian, Ar. Okay. Sorry. My, my fault. I heard you wrong. I heard you wrong. So, uh, they identify as Aramean. Aramean. Got it. The same person. So, I have an article on that, also. It's called Identity in the Achaemenid Period. Um, and so, and, and there I trace these, these cases and I try to explain them. Um, and so we have, we have people identifying as Yehudi and then also identifying as Aramean, which is very interesting as well. So, it's not, so identity was much more fluid in antiquity than we tend to think today. Um, that it was a very static thing. Um, no, it was, it was pretty fluid. I am personally not that surprised to have someone in Samaria identify as a Yehudi, or, Uda. There was also a female, um, Samaritan who identified as Uda, not Yehudi. And so Uda, I should say. So, you have, um, and they might, might still be Samaritans, you know, they don't have to be Judean to identify as Yehudi or Uda. Again, because they are already living in, in, in a situation where there, there is a pano-Yahwistic identity already. So, um, so, yeah, so you have, this village of Samaria in the third century, before the Common Era. Now, we're already talking about the diaspora. This is the diaspora in Egypt in Hellenistic times. Now, going much to the north, to the, to the Cyclades Islands, to Delos. To the island of Delos. Oh, yeah. Little island. Do I was there? Oh, you were there. Fantastic. They had that synagogue there, but it's not really a synagogue, right? Right. Right. It's, well, Theosebastos. I think it's a Theosebastos temple. It's there. Well, there's a Serapion there. That's the main structure there. Serapis. And, um, and then there is next to it, there is a, um, a place where they found two inscriptions that are written by the Israelite. So, the Israelite, right? So, the, that's now the first time. So, we're talking about roughly around 200 BCE. We don't know exactly when to date that, but I'm kind of giving you the kind of the median between different, different, um, dating proposals that were proposed up until now. So, around 200 BCE, we have, um, we have the first time that we have a people group identifying as Israel since, uh, Greece, out of all places, again, since, uh, Megiddo. So, since for a millennium. Wow. For an entire millennium. Because you said it was, it was a place name after the Megiddo. So, like, it's not a people name necessarily. That's right. For over a thousand years. That's right. But, but this is not exactly a thousand years. This is not the same place as the so-called Delos synagogue, though. This is a different spot. No, no, it's exactly the same place. Really? Cuz I was, I was under the impression that it's not, it's exactly, it's, it's next to the Serapion. Okay. Because I was going to say, you have the Delos synagogue, and this turned out to not be a synagogue because all they have was Theosebastos. But this could be a, we know now this is actually, there's a god, a pagan god called Theosebastos. God Most High. This, well, I mean, Hypsistos is El Elyon in the Bible, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying it's not. I'm not saying it's not. This is why they thought it was a synagogue, but then it turned out like this might not be a synagogue because the Hypsistos were around this time, Greek Hypsistarians. Yeah. But there was, I, Yahweh and Hypsistos have a long, yeah, oh, history. Gregory of Nyssa writes about this how they kind of the Hypsistarians all became Christians eventually. Yeah. Yeah. Gregory was one of these. He was one of them, actually. And El Elyon, of course, in Canaanite, in Canaanite sources, goes way back, and we have it in the Bible as well. I mean, we have, we have an actual, I think we talked about this, um, but we actually have a, a triad in the Bible of Shaddai, El Elyon, and Yahweh, yeah, um, as, as a triad. So, um, that's fascinating. Yeah. So, we have trinitarians are going, yeah, it's not a trinity. It's very different. Yeah. Um, a triad is three. It's not three in one. It's three. Right. It's supposed to be three in one. And their triads are extremely common. Extremely common. Oh, I mean, they are the standard, really. Triads are extremely common. Capitoline Triad, for example. Rome. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, um, and so, so, so over a thousand years, it shows the name Israel in Delos, up here in Greece. I wouldn't say over, it's almost exactly a thousand years. I mean, we're talking about 1208, and now we're talking 200. Got it. So, it's almost exactly 1,000 years, um, where we don't have, at least not any recorded so far. We might tomorrow find another record of, um, Israel being being documented somewhere as a people group somewhere during that millennium. We don't know. But from the records we have today, um, we have a 1,000-year gap of, um, of the, um, the people group called Israel actually documented, uh, during that, that entire time. Now, some people might read the Mesha Stele as as a people group. I, again, from just because of the parallelisms and comparing it to the Neo-Assyrian sources of the time, um, I don't see that as a people group in the Mesha Stele, but you know, some people might argue, um, might argue in that case, we have, you know, about 750 years instead of a millennium. Um, between I'll tell you what, though, about half a millennium, instead of a millennium. This island of Delos is so mysterious to me because like, you go there and it's got these like, like the Serapion, you mentioned, it's got the House of Dionysus, it's got a temple of Apollo, and then there's like this house called the Poseidonist Club that was there. And apparently, this is what they explain it. This Poseidonist Club was a place for merchants, Phoenician, Egyptian, Roman, Greek, and they would all go and gather here, and they had triads that they all, there was a Phoenician triad, uh, Egyptian triad, a Roman triad, all, all in this one place. Um, and then now you're mentioning that this is where the Israelites were at too. So, and then the whole Delos, the whole League of Delos, all these places are all the Hegemony is right there in Delos. Now, one more, one more, one more data point on this, which is important. They, they say, we are the Israelites who send, uh, tribute, tax to Mount Gerizim. So, it's not just, they don't just say, okay, we're Israelites, but they are clearly Samaritan. Ah, so this is, this is, uh, Israelites. So, after, again, according to the records we have today, after the, only Israelites are actually the Samaritans, not the Judeans. Okay. Um, in the extra-biblical record, in the Bible, a very interesting phenomenon happens where, um, in Ezra and Nehemiah, I mean, books that are, uh, Judean talk about their God as the God of Israel, and the people as the sons of Israel, right? And so, but they are Judeans identifying as Israel and identifying their God as the God of Israel, but they are Judeans. I was able to pull up, I was able to pull up an article real quick just to show people where it says the Samaritan Samaritans and Delos inscription as Israelites and develop into the form. Yeah. So, this is. Wow. I didn't. This is fascinating. Yeah. Derek, if you want to pull up the, uh, my, my, Oh, you had this in yours, too? Sure. Um, I actually have the, the Greek text and, and the translation of the Delos. Uh, yeah, just go. Let me know where. I think it's further down, uh, from here. Yeah, there it is. No, no, this is, this is, okay. So, this, but, but this one is also interesting. We'll come back to this. Let's go to Delos now for for a second here. And so, this is diaspora, Egypt, and Delos. This, there you go. So, this is the, uh, these are the Delos, um, this is the two Delos inscriptions. And you can see is that thing with a red, uh, red frame around it, and then Gerizim in one word, which is also very Samaritan. We see that also in the Samaritan Pentateuch. Um, and, and, and you see that both in the Greek and in Aramaic. Yeah. And, uh, so these are the two Delos inscriptions. Now, in a different inscription in the Serapion on Delos, we have, and if you go, scroll down one more slide down, you have, um, we also have, that's right, Praxios the Samaritan, who is mentioned in the list of contributors to the, yeah, he's a Samaritan, um, contributing to the Serapion for, for the sake, for the benefit of his brothers. And what? This. So, they're they're related to the Serapion, too. Yep. Whoa. Derek, we were just talking about how the Talmud has Serapis as a deified version of Joseph. Yes. Gad, you know this. You know this, right? No. No. No. There's a passage in the Talmud that says that the god Serapis is Joseph from the Bible deified. Okay. So, they're obviously extremely Hellenized. What I find interesting is we, when we get to this whole phenomena of God-fearers in the synagogue, and everyone acts like this is a shocking phenomena when you're looking at the reverse here. You've got Samaritans and people from Judea and all over going to these temples to these other places, and they might have found common ground to have their own triad, but they're participating and funding, like you see here. Come on. It seems to be the common trope. I mean, it's, it's not just, it's not just here, but it's, I mean, it's everywhere. And, and again, in scholarship, we tend to to see things way too, uh, black and white, and, and, and things were a lot more colorful in antiquity. Um, now, even in the, in the, in the Pseudo-In letter of Pseudo-Aristeas, the, what's called the Letter of Aristeas, which is a, um, basically a kind of a legend, um, that was written in order to explain, explain several things about Alexandrian Judaism, but, but specifically the translation of the, of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. So, that letter, that letter, um, of Aristeas, or Pseudo-Aristeas, e, even in that letter, which is second century, before the Common Era, um, even late second century before the Common Era, even in that letter, he writes to Ptolemy, again, it's a mythical letter, but it still represents how people thought at the time. He says that the deity that we call Zeus, they call Yahweh. Okay. So, but he says, it's the same deity. Yeah. Right. It's just a different name. Right. That was I'll go even further. Even in Acts chapter. So, even in the New Testament, I love this. Acts chapter 17, uh, the words that were put in the, in the mouth of of Paul, um, in Athens, where he says that God, that the unknown God that you worship, that's the God that I'm, I'm preaching to you. It's the same God, right? Yeah. Just a different. So, this idea of assimilation, I mean, there, this is assimilation, right? It's exactly the same God. And Paul is doing the exact same assimilation. Paul is not monotheistic. I mean, Paul is doing exactly the same assimilation here as everyone in his day and age did, right? I mean, people did not even think about the concept of actual strict monotheism at the time. They wasn't. Yeah, that's kind of the Middle Platonist, the Middle Platonist, like idea that there's this one God, but there's all the gods, you know, they're all just, they're all together. I mean, strict monotheism is a much later development. In fact, it's a, it's a, it's an Islamic development. Strict. And even in that case, it doesn't really, really exist because you still have the jinn, and you still have it cannot. You're right. It cannot. Strict monotheism is, is almost a, a, almost impossible. It's almost impossible. And then here's, yeah. So, here's, here's, here's this passage right here, um, where it says, this is from Avodah Zarah 43, and Rava said, the entire sentiment of Rava is referring to a case where one finds vessels with these figures, and in the middle clause is in accordance with Rabbi Yehuda. It is taught in the baraita that Rabbi Yehuda adds forbidden figures as a figure of nursing woman. You know, the image of Isis and Horus and Serapis. The figure of a nursing woman symbolizes Eve, who nurses the entire world. The figure of Serapis is worshiped as symbolizes Joseph, who ruled over Sar and appeased the entire world. Yeah. Well, that's just a word game. It's because a play on words. Yeah. But, um, yeah, I don't think it necessarily reflects a tradition. It's just a play on words. But maybe it does. But they both come from Alexandria, like, you know, the stories that, that's what I'm saying. We're looking at Alexandria, Ptolemy, and then they're kind of both coming from that part of the world. It makes sense, correct, why they would, why they would know this. In any event, so we have, we have, I mean, it's really interesting that this, this community on Delos, this Samaritan community on Delos, identifying as Israelite. Um, now, in the third century, around the same time that we have this community in Delos, we start seeing in Samaritan contexts, YHWH names returning. Remember that they, they disappeared, they were eradicated by the sixth century before the Common Era. The YHWH names, the Y names. Yeah. These names. Now, because of archaizing, because of the need to archaize your, um, people, uh, your, your, your, your ethnicity, to archaize your history, or even the mythological history of your people. Now, they also start going back to adopting the old style names. So, the name Yosef, or the name Yonatan, right? Not, not just by the Samaritans, although it's recorded, the earliest records of this are in Samaritan contexts, both in Egypt and on Mount Gerizim, but in the second century, even Yonatan Apphus, the the Maccabean, the Hasmonian, um, has the old style name Yo, not Yahonatan, but Yonatan. So, that's also archaizing the name structure back, going back to the way it was before the name reform. So, here we can start to see, not necessarily kind of the parting of the ways between Samaritan and Judeans yet, that will happen later on with, uh, John Hyrcanus and ultimately try destroying the temple on Mount Gerizim in the end of the second century. But, but we still, we see, we see a differentiation, and there were always a little, I mean, there was always differences between the north and the south. I don't want to make it sound homogeneous throughout that there was a name reform, but it doesn't mean that they became the same, identically the same, during. Now, I want to tie this to what we saw in Delos and then what we are about to see in Sicily as well, during the fourth century, um, during the fifth century and the fourth century in Samaria, the dynasty, the reigning dynasty in Samaria was the Sanballat dynasty. And they started minting coins late fifth century. And the coins from, uh, from the Sanballat dynasty, if you want to scroll up here, um, the, the, the, the coins that Sanballat is minting has very, very clear Phoenician and a, um, um, Persian period. Huh. Yeah. So, I mean, there you go. Here it is. These are the, the Samaritan coins, and you see this Sidonian galley on the coin at the top here. So, this is very clearly Phoenician. Yep. And we see the rose there, and you see the, you know, all the oars there, and the, um, so you actually have a Phoenician ship. Excuse me. I'm sorry about that again. You're good. Um, and, um, so you have the Phoenician galley, and you have a, a satrap next on the other side of the coin, and then you have beneath that also a satrap and a, um, and a Persian king. So, you have very, very, very clear Achaemenid iconography being used in Samaria. Samaria, according to many scholars that I, some of them, of which I quote here, was very, very close to the crown. Um, it had, as opposed to Judea, during the Persian period, in Samaria, the dynasty was aristocratic, enjoyed, of course, land grants that go with being an aristocrat. It also, um, be, the role of being a governor passed from father to son rather than an appointment by the crown. And in Judea, the governor was appointed. It's the exact opposite of the, the image we get in the New Testament where the Samaritans are sort of low. Yeah. And the, and the Judeans are are up high. Back in the Persian period, they were the aristocrats. But in the New Testament, it's much later, of course, and you were talking after the, the Hasmonians, after Alexander, after time, but in the Persian period, the, um, Samaria was, was, uh, very close to the crown, um, and very Achaemenid influenced and Phoenician influence. So, in Sidonian, what does SMY mean? Why does it say SM? Yeah. And I think that that explains, and they were also very, very educated as well. Um, I mean, the populace in general in, in Samaria, probably Oh, that's what that means. Samaria, SM. Samarine. Yeah. Shamarine. Yeah. Shamarine. Okay. Um, and I think that's why we find them in Delos and in Sicily as well, because they were with the Phoenicians. They, they also traveled with the Phoenicians. It's interesting. You got a bull. You got a bull slaying image, kind of like Mithras. Yeah. I mean, that's a later, that's a later rendition, but, you know, it is. Yeah. But we find this in Corpus. We find it really, this is part of a, a Achaemenid iconography, and it goes back, you know, it's, it's a very old type of iconography of a bull slaying. Um, yeah, so, uh, but this is very, very common in, in the Achaemenid, uh, period. If you scroll down almost to the end, um, you'll see what I mean by the, the Sicilian. Yeah, there you go. So, here, this is a column. Wow. That was found in Sicily. Um, that's an interesting script right there, of the Samaritan script. Yeah. Now, Samaritan script is dated anywhere between the second century before the Common Era to about the third century of the Common Era. I would actually date it earlier only because we, we see how conscious they were of separating themselves. Of the Samaritans. Is it going left to right? Themselves? What's that? Is it going left to right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's Oh, wow. Yeah. Um, right to left, right? Oh, it's right to left. Why is it looks like it's the backwards? The the he? Is that a he or is that a shin? No, that's a Y and a he. Yeah. Those are yods. Yeah. It's, uh, upside down here. Oh, okay. Um, and so that makes sense. That makes sense. And so, um, and, and this is actually, well, this could be, I mean, this is "Rise up, Yahweh, and may your enemies be scattered." What's written on this column in Sicily, in Syracuse. Okay. So, I mean, it's far from Palestine. It's, it's far from the Levant. And, um, and so this, but this is found in Sicily. We don't know when to date it to. I mean, it's, it might be anywhere between the second century before and third century after, or it might have been simply just imported from somewhere else. We don't really know. Um, but it has a, a, it has text on it that does correspond to number 10, numbers, 1035. Now, I want to point out something that that is a recurring, uh, theme. Um, the fact that there is this short quote from a biblical text, this late, could be an actual quote from the biblical text. Sure, it might be. It might, but it can also be something that comes from a common tradition. Okay. That also made it into the biblical text, but also made it here. It's not necessarily because we have only this, you know, part of a verse. Yeah. It, it's not necessarily a quote, actual quote from the Bible. Is there anything word for word the same or no? It's word for word the same in these four words, right? Just the four words. Okay. But again, this, this formula could have been much older and predated the Bible, um, and, and, and have impacted this, the person writing this, independently of the Bible. Right? The formula might have been, this might have been an apotropaic formula that was carved on amulets. Who knows, right? I mean, we know, we don't, this, the fact that it appears here and it, it's also, it also appears in the book of Numbers does not mean that the person necessarily quoted from the book of Numbers here. We don't know. Yeah, I would give him, I would give him. Well, I mean, this late, it is likely. Exactly. There's no reason not to, not there's no reason that it. Yeah, but, but then you go to the Ketef Hinnom amulet. So, the Ketef Hinnom that you, I assume you're familiar with. Yes. Um, I would need to see it. Everyone, everyone thinks the Ketef Hinnom is the oldest biblical amulet. So, even, um, our friend, uh, what's his name? Uh, the one where the one I'm going back and forth with Daniel on right now. Derek. Uh, oh. Justin. Even Justin thinks this is a biblical manuscript. He called it a biblical manuscript. I was like, gotcha. Now he's a, he's a smart guy. He, but like, for some reason, Ketef Hinnom, if I can pull it. Derek, can you pull it in? I can pull it up. You want to pull it up because I'm not sure how to spell that. I got it. It's right here. All right. And the people really think that this is evidence of the Bible going back to whatever this is dated to. This is a good topic to 600 BC. Got it. Well, I mean, it's dated. It's The problem is it's really hard to date because it was found in a, in a, in a dump, basically. So, it's not stratified. Yeah. Um, so it's really hard to. What exactly does it say? That's what I'm trying to figure out. Oh, here it is. Yahweh, can't read it. The great who keeps the covenant. Is any of this word for word in the Bible at all? From, well, certainly if you go back to the, you know, "May He keep you and make His face shine upon you," you know, that's very famous, you know, the kind of the Priestly Blessing that we know from, from, from the book of Numbers. Um, so, yeah, the end here, but we have two versions that are different, but this is, um, now, this is shorter than what we have in the Bible. This version of this text is shorter than we have in the Bible. Um, Gabi Bar-Gal, who was the archaeologist who found these amulets, right here, published this. This guy's awesome, by the way. I, I used to watch him on the Naked Archaeologist. So, he, when he published this, in general, in scholarship, we tend to to say that the shorter, short, in general, we prefer the shorter text being earlier than the longer text because usually, not always, but usually, we prefer the the shorter text. When he published this, he says, "Yeah, he, here he actually writes in a footnote, 'Usually the photo text is older, but not in this case,' and he doesn't explain why, but he says, 'Not in this case.'" And I write that in an article that's not out yet. I haven't finished it yet, but I have an article on these amulets. Um, and, um, and he was pretty biased. He was pretty, I wouldn't call him an apologist, but he's close. But I mean, when you say, when you say something like this, it's, I usually prefer the shorter, the shorter version, but not in this case, and don't explain why not in this case, right? That's problematic. Like, we can go to Deuteronomy 32 and realize the Masoretic chops out four verses. But there's explicit evidence to why the Masoretic changes the name from gods to, you know, sons of Israel. It, it wants to remove the the pantheon. It's, it's, it's definitely got an axe to grind. Whereas something like this seems to be, "Make His face shine." "Make." But here's why you can't call this a biblical manuscript, right? You, even if it does have a few lines that match, it's not the same. It, it has to be at least like, n, it has to be like, at least more than half the same, at least to even. I don't even think that that's not, that's not even, I mean, that's. Yeah. I mean, what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, if it's not the same, it's not the same. You. So, the only, the only argument you can make is parts of this shared tradition, and parts of this have a shared tradition, right? That's as far as you can really go on on what you just said. And just playing the devil's advocate, devil's advocate here, even within the different versions of the Bible that we have between Qumran, the Masoretic, the, uh, Samaritan Pentateuch, and we see that texts evolved even within the Bible. So, within the different, you know, kind of iterations of, you know, editorial activity on the Bible, that that would not be enough of an argument. I do agree with the second part of what you said, uh, because nothing in this text, um, can serve to to show that this was not simply a very, very popular text at the time. Now, these are, what is clear is that these are amulets, meaning people wore them in order to fight the evil eye, basically, to to ward off the evil eye. Oh, that's right. These are amulets. That's, that we do know. So, clearly, they had this, these verses, these, this text had a magical power associated with it. So, it was popular. Mhm. It was popular as an amulet. So, it would make perfect sense for this popular text to later also be adopted by the biblical authors. And that just sounds the most likely scenario going forward. So, this is, this is not enough proof to show that this is, even though it's very similar to the text in, to, to the text in, um, in, in the book of Numbers, it's not enough to say that this, this person knew of the book of Numbers. Right. Exactly. Yes. Or even the Balum inscription. They are common name, common character. It's a, it's a gentile. You have a lot of common things. I mean, you have, you know, you have modern authors quoting from from, uh, um, you know, uh, uh, from popular, popular idiomatic expressions. You know, you, it does not mean that they necessarily, uh, authored that expression, but it was an idiomatic expression that was that was, um, popular at the time. I mean, it's idiomatic expressions. Certainly, I mean, the thing is that the, I mean, I think that the most incriminating evidence here is that this, these are amulets, right? Right. Right. Okay. These are amulets. You know, amulets from around the, you know, the Mediterranean basin, across the Mediterranean basin, they use formulas. So, this was a popular formula to ward off the evil eye. The one thing we can do though, Gad, is say there is an extensively deep into the past tradition from which later authors are working from. And so, therefore, it's when we talk about dating material, that these are, there's so many questions and you have to formulate what you mean because if you say, well, a lot of this material is ancient. No joke. I mean, a lot of stuff goes way, way back. But exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Now, now, if this was, if the, I'll give you a counter example. If we had found a papyrus, okay, where, um, someone blesses his address, the person he's writing to at the end of the, of a letter and says, "May Yahweh bless you and make His face shine upon you, etc., and give you peace, etc." Um, then it would be more likely that this was, is an actual quote, even though it's not necessarily the case. Even then, he might simply be repeating that that very popular formula. It's not necessarily quoting from the Bible, but this would be more of a, this would be in, in, if it's a personal letter rather than an amulet, I would say it's a little bit higher probability that that person knew something about an evolutionary stage of of the biblical text. But since this is an amulet, these are two amulets, two amulets with this with a very similar text showing that this text was very popular. Right? We have two of those. That's true. That's true. Um, so this text was popular at the time. It's not, not, it's really no evidence for knowledge of the Bible. It just means that the, that the biblical author also adopted this text, which was popular for their own purposes. It's exactly what I'm saying. Like the fact that it has all this extra stuff that's not in Numbers means it's a different text. Period. Right. Can't call it a biblical manuscript. You can say, "Oh, look. This this text has a lot in common with this biblical manuscript." That's it. That's all we can say. That's right. That's right. Absolutely. You, you just don't want Joshua to be the guy who wrote the Ebal tablet. That's all. You just. That's all I want. I'm anti-Joshua. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Sorry we took you off road here. No, no worries. We have. We really have. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is a big, this is a big subject. Yeah. Okay. So, we're back here. We get what you're saying and. Yeah. We, we're with you. We actually 100% agree. I mean, it could be, but it also could just be shared tradition, common thing. Who knows? I mean, the, the difference, I guess you could point out the differences between the example you just gave about the supposed sixth century amulet. Uh.

And this is that. This seems every letter here does reflect what we find in numbers, but it might be just a common tradition at the same time. Yeah.

Because it's much later, right? We know that the we know that that there was a Bible at that time. Even if it's if it's if it's dated to the second century, if this uh column inscription from Sicily is dated to the second century before the common era, which I don't believe would be the case, but if it if it is to be dated uh that early, um at least we know that there was some Bible, some form of a of a biblical text in the second century before the common era. If it's dated um in the common era um then um then you know it's even more likely that this would be a biblical a biblical uh a but it could have been because it's on a column it's it's column inscription. Now this is laminal column of course often defines the entry point right to a certain structure. Uh so it could have served also an amuletic type purpose. It could have served as a magical uh purpose here to say rise up Yahweh and may your enemies be scattered against the evil eye. So it might have served for protection uh at at the entry point to a certain place maybe a synagogue or whatever it might have been.

If I one more comment about this point, rise up Yahweh, may your enemies be scattered. That's such a generic statement. It's like Christians today. uh they might say, you know, all things are possible through Christ. It may not be at all whatsoever related to Paul writing a letter to this particular church, but a generic statement of saying, I can make it today. I I've I've got to get through this surgery or anything like you said. It could be a generic there are a lot of parts of the New Testament as you know that that clearly came from you know from just idiomatic expressions that people said in early Christian or the Jesus movement in in the in its early days and then made it into the uh the New Testament. So right. Right. Right. Yeah.

I mean, you know, uh, a lot of that, um, you know, when you write, um, an authoritative text that that that wants to define a, uh, an identity, um, it's very it's it's it's almost necessary to use idiomatic expressions that are already popular. Um, so yeah, it's it's uh it's it's obvious. So this is this is really what what we've done now is go and study this the identifier Israel from Marinpar to at least Delos about the thousand years um where this the the people group is identified um as Israel but not for a thousand years but but you know at the at the book ends of this thousand of this millennium period. Mhm. Um, so that's um that's a that's for that's on uh on Israel.

I spoke yesterday on Kanya. I don't know if we have time to talk about this. It's it's going to be very long, but um but the in um and that ties back to this idea of Samaritans and Elephantine. Uh so in Elephantine we have um the famous so-called Passover letter and um I don't call it the Passover letter and the and I published on this point. I I don't see it as related directly at least not to the Passover. It might be a kind of prefiguring the Passover but but it's certainly not related to the p not directly related to the Passover. In any event, this letter, if you scroll down one more slide, you can people could could be able could could see what we have from this papyrus. Not a lot is remains. It's very fragmentaryary. Uh but basically, a guy a person by the name of Kananya writes to his brothers Yedona and his colleagues the Yodia, the the Judeian group of people. I read Kala not as as military troops but as um as as in the Persian sense of the word which means just a a an ethnicity basically a group of people which in Persian would be ka I won't get into details in my article I I go into more details on that but any event he talks to his he he addresses his colleagues here and and calls them his brothers. May the peace of my uh the peace of my brothers may the gods plural seek after at all times. So this these are clearly yaist um and as is very very common I mean really ubiquitous in the elephantine sources they're greeting each other's each other by the blessing of the gods plural and that's the common um you know formula and then he says and now this year year five of king dawahush darus something or as I see it someone has been sent from the king to our shama. Now so shall you appoint again fragmentaryary and from day 15th or to the 21st of Nissan you need to do something and you need to keep yourself pure and beware. You need to do some kind of work. You need to drink something and something of levan. Um and again the 21st of Nissan you need to do to be in your chambers or do something in your chambers or enter your chambers between certain period and that's really all we have in from this very fragmentaryary papyrus and they they kind of they forced that into being the the pak huh they forced this into being the Passover and I understand why I mean the the date range of the 15th to the 21st of Nissan kind of for anyone being raised in a Jewish or Christian household It's also almost automatic to kind of connect this this date this date range uh to unleaven bread. Yeah, exactly. To to uh which is something they do in Persian religion too though they have the So that's in my in my article I go to a lot of detail into why this is not necessarily Passover. And actually it it makes sense for this to be more um influenced by Iranian uh Iranian cultic practices than than the Passover. Wow. Um it's this is the this is really just the first full moon of the year. The 15th of Nissan is simply the first full moon of the year. It's not it's not that special. And in the Zorastrian uh religion um that was a very almost a very also a very important day. Now in that article just so the because people listening to this would say well why why do you think there was a connection to the Zorastrians? I show that they that the Yowists at Elephantine had a fire holder in their very good good job. I remember I remember so they had they had this fire holder in the temple or associated with their temple at Elephantine. So the level of assimilation that existed between the Yawists at least in Elephantine but I think it wasn't just limited to Elephantine. There's no reason to believe it was limited to Elephantine. the level of assimilation which we also see later on right among the Samrians in Delos and I mean we see this assimilation really everywhere. Um so you know assimilation with different practices of either maybe the Greeks or the or the Canaanites or the you know or or the or the Persians. Um but the assimilation that they had in the uh temple in at Elephantine was with um with uh with a a fire holder or what what's called also erroneously a fire altar which is kind of the central piece in the um in the Zoroastrian tradition. So they had that and I show that there what we do have documented is is their assimilation with Zoroastrian practices. We don't have the Passover documented yet at that point in time. Good point. Um anyway, so we so but what I want to focus on here is about the person of Khadanya and Kanya is writing this letter very authoritative and he is clearly a leader above the leaders. He is clearly far above in terms of authority the leaders of the community at Elephantine. He orders them what to do. He gives them cultic observances to follow. Right? So he is far more authoritative than anyone within the yowistic community in elephantine. But not only that, we have also uh if you scroll down one more one more slide, we have a another document from around the same time period where um we have kind of accelerating events of persecution on the yawistic community in upper Egypt. And one of these cases we have Ma who is um detained thrown in jail by the local governor of Upper Egypt. A very powerful man. I mean this is the local governor of Upper Egypt. Wow. Half of Egypt is governed by him. Um and that's the man throwing him with and his name is Widanga. Very infamous name in the elephantine history and in the history of the island of Elephantine. and um he throws them into jail and a a pair of servants called Jeho and uh win his freedom. They are able to negotiate with the governor for the freedom of this person. Okay, these servants are said to be servants of kanya in one place in this same document and in another place of anani or anana. Okay. You remember when we talked we talked earlier about the interchange which we see also with the bait of house of and Mhm. right interchange. We see it again here the interchange between and in the same document the same having the same servants. Now what we need to point out here is that this person Ana or Kanya this person negotiates with the local governor through his servants. He doesn't dain to go himself to negotiate with the governor. He sends his servants to do this and and they do it successfully. So Kanya Ananani here is much more authoritative than the governor. Okay.

Now in Egypt in the um Persian period and in general the Persian Empire the hierarchy was king right Darius Arto Xerxes Xerxes etc. You had the king below the king you had a system of satraps which were kind of uber governors. they had there were governors of several provinces and then beneath the the satraps you had governors. Okay. So for example, Neahhemiah assuming he is a historical figure would be a governor of of Judea. Didn't Israel have its own a different name that's not Israel or Judea according to the sad trap system? Yeah. No, it's not mentioned at all. Okay. I mean in in that system um it's part of the Ebanari. That's what I meant. That's what Ebanari. That's what I meant. Well, but Eberahari is all the way from the Euphrates to uh to the border of Egypt. So it's a it's a Okay. So they don't Yeah. This is just this is just a different system. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I got you. And it's actually Well, that's that's that's one version of Ebanari. Eahari's border, so to speak, changed over time. Okay. But that and that's not representative here. But um anyway, so so you have um you have um Kanya sending his servants to negotiate with the local governor. So as I said the hierarchy is is uh satrap and then governor. Kanya is above far above the governor but at the level or below or right below the level of the satrap right so we have this Kanyan anani who who is mentioned in several documents from the same time both I mean these are clear yistic names right um in at a time that have satre like authority in Egypt at the time this is already striking for Yahweh to have authority that is almost parallel to that of the strat the the govern the one who rules all of Egypt both upper Egypt and lower Egypt right and he's again has a level of authority that is higher than the local governors so you have a yaist and who by the name of Khananya at that level of of authority now this Anani again Anani Kanya is the same person. He is never mentioned with a patronymic. Now that name is very very popular. We find it also in the Bible. We find it also in other documents from Egypt at the time. Very popular name ana because it's so popular. It needs to be the per if you if you're referring to a person by that name, you have to also use a patronmic showing saying kanya son of s so and so, right? But this particular khalanya/ani is never introduced with a patronymic. It never said son of or anani son of okay never he that means that he is so well known so notorious so authoritative that you cannot mistake him for a different anan in a given context right he is well known that's why we are not using he's he's introduced now he's introduced even in the in the letters we have two draft of a that the that the um elephant was sent to Jerusalem to Bagoi, the governor of of Judea at the time. In these drafts, Anani appears uh that name appears without a patronic. Even Bagoi, even the the governor of Judea, not just in Egypt, but even the governor of Judea knows who this person is without the the need of a patronic. Even though this name is very very popular that it would require further identification if that person if the address does not know who we're talking about, they just say Anani and that's enough. they know the governor knows who they are referring to. Okay. So this person was very well known was very very authoritative at um at that time. Now at the same time and now he and he's mentioned in this in this letter to Judea he is mentioned together with a person called Ostan. Okay. And he's called Ostan the brother of Anani. Now at the same time exactly the same period where Kanya was in Egypt, we have an Ostan also mentioned also documented in Sakara in the center of power of of imperial power in Egypt. And this Ostan is a very very rare rare name Ostan. This name appears again only in the Wadidalia papyrie in the four in the middle of the fourth century. If you want to pull up the Wadi Dalia papyrie, middle of the 4th century now BCE and also um this o this name Ostan or a variant of Oan and I'll explain appears again in the Wadidalia papyrie with at the same time that the governor of Samaria is called Kananya. So we have this pairing of a patronymicless Kanya and his second in command being Ostan or Aceton and I've explained the v this variant in the name both in the letter that was sent to from Elephantine to Judea in Egypt at the time unrelated to this document as well and in Wadidara. about 80 years later. Okay, excuse me, about about 60 years later. So, uh my my argument here is that these connections I mean Ostan is a very rare name. This is the first almost the only occurrence of the name Ostan. Now, Frank Morross already suggested this name as it was found in in Wadidalia that this name is Phoenician meaning Isis has given is okay. Oh really? It's like Yonatan, right? Yahweh has given. Oh so this is I Isis has given which makes a lot of sense. Now the variation between Aceton and Ostan simply records the variation of the spelling of the of the of the theophoric name Isis. Is this the right here? Um looks like it but they all look the same so I don't Okay. Uh but uh yeah they're all they're all very fragmentaryary and kind of yeah you can barely see that but go ahead in any in any so we have Oan iseton clearly I think uh this is the name ISIS has given and it's a very rare name it's really um documented in this name and in one other case from from that particular period and so finding this very rare name with a patronymicness less kananya maintaining the same uh the same type of of relation between them. In one case being a satrap or satrop in training and a and a um and in and his uh seag which is his kind of his uh his um second in command. And um and also again the same names in the uh in the petition from Elephantine to Yehud and the same names appearing again in Wadidalia. I think for this to be a coincidence is uh is hly highly unlikely for this level of authority at the same time. Now clearly also what's interesting is that means that by the middle of the 4th century they were about 18 years old. Okay would have been about 80 years old. That's a very long, not unheard of, but it's a very long lifespan for the Persian period. Interestingly, Josephus notes that the the house of San Balat, which I claim Kanya is is a san of um the house on Balot was known for its longevity. So that's Josephus also pointing that out. Um, in any case, my I I think that by from the evidence that we have, clearly Kanyan, Anani are the same person and clearly they were at a level of of authority that is only rivaled by the satrap or identical to that of the satrap at the time. So that's already striking and and again this association in three different places uh of Kanani and Ostan and this ISIS has given u at that level at the these levels of of authority I think is also very striking and and and cannot be considential. So I would I argue that the Kanya of the so-called Passover letter is also the person who would become governor of Samaria. Now this was I see we are talking about the end of the uh fifth century now about 410 before the common era. Kanya arriving at in Egypt around 419 before the common era. Now the satrap in Egypt at the time was around 410 B.CE was already satrop held that role for 45 years. Our Shama so he has already been Satra for 45 years clearly needed to be replaced. the um it was a rule and and history bears it out that every time there was a change in uh in in administration, so a new satre every single time they there was a change in in administration either in a satrap or even a governor uh the Egyptians rebelled to test the new the new power coming in. So they would would uh would use this switch this change to rebel against the uh the Aminid empire. And they succeeded that time. They succeeded when when Alsham left Egypt they rebelled and they succeeded. It was it was um it was in in that during this rebellion this this rebellion of the Egyptians against the the Persians that the uh yawistic temple in Elephantine was destroyed. It was just simply part of the rebellion. Uh people have suggested that it might have been have had something to do with the Passover or whatever. No, it was simply part of the rebellion. Um but because they knew that Arsham was already very old, he may he may die, you know, he was already over over 70 years old. They had to bring in someone to be satrop in training to replace Arsham. Now again, Kanya is the only person in all of our docu documentary record to be above a governor but at the level of a satrap or a little bit below a satrap uh at the time. So he is the really the only candidate we have. There might be we may you know maybe there's someone that we don't have recorded but I don't think so because the um the Yists in Elephantine write to Yehood write to Bago and they mention Anani they mention Arsham but they don't mention a different satre they they would they would have had to mention a different satrap because they're saying that we have appealed to the the authorities and we haven't received an answer etc etc so they would have explained why they appealed to the satrap they do mention Anani and I believe that they um I mean this is a this this uh I'm getting a little bit too technical here but this is a uh a draft that was sent after they after a different draft that we don't have that they say that they already sent which might have already explained why how they they contacted um Anani and he didn't respond what I believe happened here is this Kanya was a Samrian again we we see that in Vadidalia um by this association with Ostan. Khalana was Samaran was a son or a grandson of San Balot an aristocrat. Okay, as I said the difference between Samaria and Judea was in Samaria. All of the the the post of of being a governor was aristocratic. It went from father to son. And the aris as aristocrats they also enjoyed the benefits of being aristocrats with land grants etc etc. Mount Gerisim might have been one of these land grants and and as part of Nablus as well. Now we know from sources not many sources but some sources that we have from the Amin period that they that that the Aminids regarded aristocrats from across the empire as special. Not only did they they gave them land grants but sons of aristocratic families would go to be educated in the palace. So they would go to Susa to be educated and they would grow up in the palace. That means that he would have grown up with Darus. Darius II. Wow. That's pretty fascinating. And I believe that what we have in the so-called Passover letter when he says Darus has sent something. He basically says Darus sent me. Okay. Kanya basically says Darus has sent me. And and again the rest is fragmentaryary. Now we have this aristocrat sent from Susa to basically take over from these aging satrap and a very long period of training is necessary for such a complex satropy as Egypt was and to get this person you know into you know the army already being being familiar with him etc to in order to um to help with the rebellion that was sure to come when Arsham leaves and did come that rebellion did come and eventually was successful in driving out the Persian Empire uh from Egypt. So that was the final rebellion. Now what the so according to what year is this? Just so we're on the same that's 410 410 before the common era into around 47 and then lower Egypt was was already taken um by the Egyptians by 404 and upper Egypt probably a little bit later about 400 B.CE. CE what you're what you're describing with Han Han and Darius is like the formation of a new religion kind of formulating like he's sort of like Han Hananya is almost like one of the creators of protojudaism maybe possibly the ball he's planting the seeds maybe maybe I mean there's there I mean he is clearly a a a religious figure. I mean, a cultic figure because he writes this this letter that that gives them that gives them these this observance to uh the so-called Passover letter, this observance to to follow. But what's really striking here is this. You have basically a Juda a a a Yowist, a Samaran, becoming the ruler of Egypt, Joseph. Exactly. So these in the Bible and and the Isis thing you brought up, the Isis is my uh whatever the name the theophoric name you were has given. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's literally the template in my opinion. Well, I mean that's that's a different person. That's not that's Ostan and Ysef just means to have. Okay. Um but but but what is what is I think the the historical kernel of the Joseph story might be this absolutely striking case of a Yowist becoming the ruler of Egypt even for a short period of time and even though he failed he failed and he was demoted from the position of Satra to being to being the governor of Samaria which where we find him in the 4th century. Huh. Now, we got a lot of pu of push back from some of the reviewers of this article that is coming out now that say, well, how could a non-Persian become SAT, right? How how would a non a non Iranian become Oh, there's no examples of other say we have at exactly the same time we have. So, what the hell are they talking about then? Yeah, exactly. I that's what I wrote back. Yeah. I mean, we have examples exactly at the same time. What is up with these scholars, man? I know. I know. We have we have um we have a good example exactly the same time of Belshunu from Babylon. So from the satropy of Babylonia becoming Satrop of Eahari which we mentioned earlier uh which was not Babylonia. So a different a a neighboring satropy and he is Babylonian. He's not Iranian. Okay. We of course also have Greeks becoming satreps. That's that's a a different story much more well known but exact yeah but Bunu right in the neighboring set we're talking now about about IARI at the same time almost the same time as as Kalano would have been in exactly the same role in Egypt um a non Iranian a Babylonian becoming satre of a satropy where uh that is neighboring to a neighboring satropy to the one where he grew up. Okay, exactly the same thing as we have from Samaria a satrop becoming a satrop of a satropy that is neighboring to the one of his to the one he grew up in. So this is a truly incredible uh story. I mean if if my analysis is correct and I think that again because of all of these different things coming together there the the uh the logical inference here based on the evidence that we do have which is very I I think very solid um but again it does require some speculation uh but speculation that is based on logical inference I mean we don't have too many options here I mean someone being at that level of authority is you don't have too many c too many players in that level. I'm looking at a I'm looking at a name right now who's a sat trap of Ionia and he was a he was a Spartan Spartan. Yep. Yep. Yeah. You just debunked that entire CL. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean Bunnu is even better because Bunu is is at the same time in the neighboring satropy also in Ebernari which is which is I mean it's this entire region um had had non-Persian sats. Yes, at the same time. This is an interesting thing. I know this is a jump to biblical text about Joseph, but as we've done our interview before talking about the origins of Moses and placing this in the Hellenistic period, there's good reason to think here are the literally like not like Neil was saying this proto something's coming up. You almost are expecting within the next decades for biblical material to really start being constructed because in the biblical text when Joseph tricks his brothers putting the gold, you know, he puts like gold inside their bags. I believe it says a golden cup. Well, in Ahikar, literally the Persian famous myths of their day, that he is accused and being sentenced to death for stealing gold, a golden cup. Um, and I can't remember the details. It's been a while since I read it, but there's an academic I read who pointed out that the Aikar, which was, you pointed this out, is the like most well-known story in the Persian period. It was the first uh bestseller really, the glo kind of international bestseller in history. So the fact that Genesis is echoing this and also this echo by the way goes all the way down to the golden ass. I mean like there is a trope that just continues all the way. I I'm I'm looking at that going man Genesis comes sometime after the 410s. Uh this period you're describing likely into the 300s or at least this material in Genesis seems to have come after that inspired by this. Uh yeah, I think I think having a Yahwist be the ruler of Egypt um and a Samaran. Now Joseph is Samaran of of course as well right from the area of Shahim and Doan that area. So you have a Samaran son of Jacob who was a leader uh a local leader in in in at least the way the Bible portrays him. So you have Joseph as a Samaran becoming the ruler of Egypt. Right. Right. Um, and so I think that that I mean, but certainly for the Yaoists, knowing that a Yoist now is ruler of Egypt is a big deal. And that's something that would, you know, pass from generation to generation saying, well, you know, that we had a Yahwist at some point in time, we had a Yahwist as as as ruler of Egypt. And, you know, the the Joseph story could have developed um, you know, based on this kernel of truth. um 100 years later, 150 years later, who knows? But it could have developed from this um at you know at some point later on. Um, but I believe this this this makes sense for this to be a candidate for uh for the historical kernel behind the the Joseph story. Absolutely. In any event, even without this um just the uh the career of Kanya is absolutely striking. I mean again a person born in Samaria educated in Souza probably again as as an aristocrat and then becoming satrap for a short period of time because again he could not quell this rebellion. I mean this rebellion was successful. They drove out the the Persians at least for a while for a number of decades. Um there was another the person did did reconquer Egypt later on um for again for a very short period of time until Alexander but um but this person became satrep and and immediately had to deal with with with the rebellion. It was unsuccessful. Uh we know we know that Arsham probably returned to Egypt in around 407 again probably to help with the rebellion. both of them failed. The rebellion was just too strong at that point in time and and so that that that changed. But but but just the the career of this person going being born there, being educated in Susa, becoming Satrap, having to deal with this and then being demoted back to becoming a governor of of um of Samaria in the in the 4th century. Um, I mean, just a tremendous story um of of a Yowist becoming the the governor of Egypt. Wow. I was trying to find the name of that scholar. I would love to get it to you. I'll probably have to get it after so that you can check out what I'm talking about with the Ihikar stuff in Joseph. It it really just adds more value to everything you're saying. It compliments it at the very least. Um well Aikar had a tremendous I mean Aikar also impacted a lot of Egyptian works as well. They have the Aikar translation in the James Charles warigrapha. Nice. Yeah. I I recommend I highly recommend viewers become familiar with Aikar. Aikar has kind of two sections. I mean a lot of it is just wisdom sayings. Yeah. Um and also a story. Uh so Aikar and Akikar was found in Alfantine. They did find they did have a manuscript at Elephantine of Aikar. They didn't have the Bible, right? Isn't that fascinating? They had they had I think Charles did the right thing for classifying it as pseudopigura, even though it's not really Judaism, but I think it's it still is part of the tradition. It's like a proto protojudean text that that's is not really Judea. I mean, I don't I don't see it as as necessarily Akar was very popular amongst Yaoists. Right? That's what I'm saying. And the name the name Aikar in Babylonia became very um in the uh sixth century into the fifth century became very especially fifth century became very popular the So do you think do you think would you if you were James Charlesworth and you're putting together all the pseudopagraph tax would you put that in there as well or no? Yeah because it's related. It is related. It's not necessarily, but it is related because it had an impact on the uh so I I don't I don't have a problem with that. But but but what's really interesting is that the the um um the name Aikar at least it seems it's not absolutely conclusive but it seems to have been very popular amongst Yowists in Babylonia. Um so they would name their children uh after a literary hero Aikar. But nowhere, as you know very well, are children named after a biblical hero like Moses or Abra like Moses for example until well into the Hellenistic period and that's and even then very very even then it's very rare but but nowhere and that's why it's so fascinating that Aikiar shows up in Elephantine because it suggests that they are knowledgeable of previous literature of course and so if there was a Bible they should you would expect to find it. I know we talk about this all the time and we're repeating ourselves, but the fact that Aikar is there is like okay they're not totally blocked off from the previous people's literature. They can find absolutely they were not opposed to literature. Absolutely. I mean they had also the Bisuton description, right? That's also literature and they had that in Lefantine as well. And they had the Bahesh legend as well. So they had at least three literary texts uh that we have found uh at elephantine and of course we there's a lot that we don't have that has not survived at elephantine but but there is no not even the slightest hint of any knowledge of of the bible we talked about this extensively at elephantine or anywhere between before the helenistic period this this right here Joseph Aikar and the elephantine the Joseph story is daspora nolla the possible Egyptian Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's this and then there's also an academia Neilie Shupac. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. From an Egyptological perspective. Uh I I just found this. So um yes, this is this this is uh just come out. Yeah. This is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to dive I think she actually quotes me in that article. Yours truly, huh? She's she's great. She's a she's she's a great scholar and she actually I mean now she's a a Marita she she's she's retired but she uh her office is right across the corridor from mine at the University of Hifa. Anyway, so um can we talked about a lot of stuff. I wonder if we can just kind of sum up that what is Israel based on what we talked about. Unless you unless you weren't done. I don't I don't know if you were done or not. Well, I mean I'm obviously I mean I could go on for hours. week. Yeah, dude. You are the man for that. By the way, we we did it in person. I was like, "Are you sure?" I felt bad. I was a little pissed. Neil went first and I was like, "Nil's going to get all his good energy. Neil's going to like get all the good questions." But then I had the I had the sounds, yeah, the the construction sounds. So, it didn't really work out too well. And then Gad pops up like Well, so you know, y'all I'm like, "Okay, cool. He's on fire with me, too." So, yeah. Okay. Um, we do have super chats. Keep that in mind before we wrap up. I just want to Yeah, that's why I'm saying maybe we can do a little tie it all together, answer the question, and then we'll do supers. I think the main thing that I'd like to do to tie this all together is just to say that um we tend to um to focus on Judea. I mean, for good reason. Um but you know, from the perspective of biblical scholarship, we look too much on at Judea. I think uh Samaria was certainly in the Persian period um was more powerful um more connected to the central uh uh central central power structure in the in the empire um and and more well educated than Judea was at the time. I think that Samaria Samaria's uh impact uh on Judeans and on even Judean literature and on the Bible is still underressearched. I think most scholars would agree that there was some kind of collaboration between northern scholar authors and and southern scholars. But I would I think that we we tend to minimize the amount of of northern uh impact on on the composition of the Bible. We just talked about Deuteronomy earlier on how it's everything is set in the north. Even the writing down of the Torah is set on stones uh is set in the north. So it said right facing Mount Gerizim, right? So I think that um that the um the northern um the northern Yaoists um need to be uh given much more uh prominence in biblical studies and in general historical studies of that period um in and around Yaoism um than they are today. Um and I think many scholars would agree with me on that point but we are still there's a lot more a lot of open questions this we're still at the beginning of this um and and yeah still a lot of work to be done but this is this is these are fascinating um fascinating topics you know even Kanya as as a as a northerner just shows you how much authority the north had um to to have a um a uh a Samrian become um by the will of the empire become a satrap in Egypt. So um yeah so so the Samaria or Samar or the Samaritans usually we use the word Samaritans only after the schism between the you know the Judeans and the Samaritans. Before that we used the the term Samaran not Samaritan with a T. So so yeah the Samrians need to be I think um taken much more seriously. So if I'm if I'm understanding you correctly, we have the first mention of Israel going back to the MPelli 13th century B.CE right around there. And then there's it's kind of like we don't really know what there's there's not a lot of primary sources that talk about Israel till way later. But we can see in the archaeology there seems to be two major areas. Samaritans in the north, the Judeans in the south, but they're it's kind of a gray area as in them being separated. They're kind of they're kind of together by culture and language and they're kind of all Judans, but you know, the they're just different. They have different kingdoms going on in two different temples. Is would that would that be safe to say? You know, as always in history, things are more complicated. Uh so I guess you guys you guys are both familiar with Yes. Yeah. And which is certainly has relationship with Samaria, but it is in Sinai. So it's to the south and to the west of of Judea. Mhm. Um and so and but it is connected to to the north, right? It's connected to the to the northern uh to the to to Sam to Samaria itself. And um yeah, so we have things are a little bit more complicated because of this. But look at Yahweh with his big uh big member there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The gold and his asher. Yeah. Absolutely. Big D. Yahweh like a horse. Any What does it say on here? Yeah. And then do you remember what it says? The harp. Uh the harp playing in the background. Oh, that's pretty cool. Oh, that's like Orpheus. Yep. Nice. I like that. Very, very popular at the time, of course. But this is so this this has Samrian connections here. Um Yeah, it says it right here. Yeah. And um by the way, I'd love to I'd love to um study this epigraphically, but no one knows exactly where these are where these uh fragments are today. They're somewhere in Egypt. What? Yeah. Anyway, so um wait, so how do we know what it looks like? Someone took a picture. Someone drew Yeah. Some pictures they they were we had drawings and uh but then after the peace accords with Egypt, we returned Israel returned it to Egypt. So uh there are somewhere in Egypt, but no one knows exactly where. Wow. Um anyway, so things are always more complicated. There are always exceptions to every rule. I mean, things are always that's what I love about about the field that I'm in. It's always there's always a there's always a wrinkle somewhere. Um Oh, look. Your your name's on it. Yep. Oh, yeah. Says Gad. That's right. That's right. Oh, that's that's my last question to you. The the tribes, you know, you see these maps of these 12 tribes of Israel. Yeah. Tribes Israel map. Let me just pull it up right now. Location. Yeah. And so it seems like I think it's from Judges where there's a lotment made, right? Is it the judges? I think it happens or Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean and Joshua Joshua. Yeah. Is this is there any historical of course in the independent talk? Of course. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any historical precedent for this ever happening in history of what of of um of in the time of Judges which would be like 900 what is it 900 BC or something like that or before that? No it's probably it's before that. I mean, if if the biblical, right, then we're talking about around about, you know, about 1100. Yeah. So, would would this was this is this really what we're looking at? I from reading Israel Finkelstein, I think the answer is no. But what do you think? Yeah, I agree. I agree with Israel Finkelestein on this. Yeah. Um and also, I mean, we talked about the Greek sources if you remember, and the Greek sources have uh Moses dividing the people into 12 tribes, right? And um so not Moses dividing them into 12 tribes, not sons of Jacob, right? But Moses doing this. So there was clearly in so in the late fourth in the into the 3rd century uh before the common era, we there was already a tradition about 12 tribes of Israel. But again 12 is a very typological number. Um and um and you know it's it's there is no the tribes are simply not recorded. Gad is recorded in in the mesh as well. Uh in in Mesha he says that he has destroyed Gad. He's destroyed that that that's what I'm saying because I just saw interesting by the way. What's very interesting and I mentioned it in my talk yesterday. um the tri that that people group God is is called eshod or the man of God meaning it's a people group it's not a geographic location but there is not there is no ish is in extra biblical sources okay so that would corresponds to the lu ar so the ailum the the people group designation of arians that I mentioned earlier earlier in our discussion today So Gad is mentioned as a people group in the Misha but Israel is not. But then you have also in the Kundal Azer mentions Gad. So is there time is there some sort of area that's labeled as the the area of well is probably somewhere in the in the um in the uh to the east of the Jordan River there was a there was a tribe um or group of people known as Gad, but we don't have I mean the others we don't really have. Um, and so, um, I think there was there's a there's a book out, uh, recently, um, about the 12 tribes that really kind of argues that there this this I think it's actually called the myth of the 12 tribes or something like that. It's a it's a serious book and um really goes into detail into into all of this, but simply there is no record of the of these tribes. I mean, gathered ga I mean, Judah of course appears, but as a as a as a location, uh, but we don't have a prime. We don't have Naftali, we don't have u you know Mina, we don't have as tribes. None of this exists anywhere in the u in the sources. Okay. So it looks like what we got is we have two major kingdoms connected by culture and language and it every century is going to look different as what the layout is. Yeah, pretty much. But also uh we don't have any proof of a unified kingdom either, right? That's why I said two. That's why I didn't I didn't say one. That's what remind me to point that to point that out to the left. That's true. There is no unified kingdom unless we get to the unlessabe period. That might be the only time. Well, it's again it's not really a unified I mean it's a it's a it's a completely different story there. They conquer the Galilee and Edom. Yeah. Slowly kind of that's the first time that Israel at its height and force converting. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So that's it. That's your unified kingdom is Makabe period. That's it. Yep. So, all right. That's for me. Look, I'm going to start us at the top and we'll try to blast through some of these so you're not here all night. Daniel Kyle, thank you for being a member and gifting five memberships to five people here at Myth Vision. We really appreciate that. Daniel again on the Gnostic Informant side, gifting five memberships, man. Thank you so much for helping both of us out. Thank you for being a member. American culture super sticker by the real daddy Abe. Thank you so much. Thank you Dave. Daniel Kyle says uh member for 11 months. He used his uh his membership uh comment. Could it could it be possible that writings from one of the prophets or another popular teaching writing caused popular reform of the name of Yah? Good question. Who knows? I mean I I don't we know we don't know what

caused this, um, this grassroots reform. It was a grassroots reform. I think we don't have any reason to believe that one of the prophets was, I mean, there's simply no, no evidence for that at all.

Uh, but at the same time, we really don't know what caused it. What we do know is that that period of the end of the seventh century and into the sixth century was extremely unstable. Um, it was the Babylonian Empire coming in and and kicking out the Neo-Assyrian Empire and ultimately destroying the Neo-Neo-Assyrian Empire. 705 BCE, we have the the, um, big battle in Carchemish, um, where the, um, uh, the Egyptians, um, are are defeated. Um, and so a lot of instability, um, waves of, uh, of exile by the Babylonians, uh, that culminated, of course, in 586, but before that, you had waves of exiles in the, in the south in, in Judea as well. Um, so I think there was a period here where people kind of came together, understood that they have some kind of shared destiny, um, and, um, and and unified their their identity on with with a very simple, in a very simple manner by simply standardizing the theophoric element in their name.

Thank you so much. That, I think, is that's that's it. But what, what was the trigger, the historical trigger? I don't think there is any reason to believe that it was one of the prophets, but it could have been, um, simply just the the historical background. But who knows? Maybe we'll find at some point in time some other documents that would give us more, more information. Thank you, Isaac Cespedes. If I said that properly, I get $100. If I didn't, then that's just what I usually do is butcher names.

Samaritans today pronounce reading the Torah today, Israel as Yesharel. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. L. Okay, that's interesting. Interesting. Yeah, thank you for sharing. Yeah, TWWPB, thank you for the super chat. Nosis goal. Let's hit that nosis goal. Hit it. Hit it. Enduring motifs. Sargon I, analyze be can also be translated as Elu Bey. The Elu is a generic designation for any deity. Nothing inherently to do with Yahweh. So we talked about this, um, that is that we have El and Yahweh in that name, both with the dinger identifier. So, yeah, I, I agree, uh, we have both, both of them, and they were, we know that El and Yahweh were were assimilated. Yeah, you guys talked about it a lot. So, yeah, that's, but that is, but that is interesting how you find it in a Hittite king's name. He's already sinking the two king of an Aramean city, right? Before the Bible. Before the Bible, he's already sinking the El with Yahweh. Yeah, but he's not, he's not from Israel. He's not from Judea. I mean, he's a Hittite from from. So, Yahwism, I mean, these are Yahwists. I mean, if you want to, I really, I really want to track down where Yahweh comes from. I'm so interested in this topic. I mean, I think that the evidence points to the north. I mean, the the evidence does point to, um, to, um, it makes me wonder if those Ionians are coming from a common like the Ionian god, Yay, which one of the, jumping ahead. Yeah, but it becomes one of the names of of Apollo and then even might maybe Dionysus as well, but, but Apollo more, more easily to to prove that. I wonder if they're both going to a common ancestor at some point. Maybe. Who knows?

Thank you so much, Daniel Kyle. Thank you again for the super chat. The Hittites and the Phoenicians were in the same area. Is it possible that trading metal works were involved in the spread of Yah? Cathonic metalwork from Yari area, Mesopotamia spreading south? So, the Hittites and the Phoenicians, well, I mean, that's the Phoenicians were, depending on what time you're talking about. The Phoenicians were of course spreading, um, around the across the Mediterranean. Um, but the Hittites, I mean, they were, let's say neighbors. The Hittites and the Phoenicians, uh, were were, it again, depending on what time period you're talking about, but they were neighbors. Uh, trading, trading of metal was everywhere. I mean, obviously everyone needed metal and they would trade with anyone who could give them, provide metal and and and so everyone traded metal with everyone, right? Um, so, yeah, was that related to the spread of Yah? Who knows? Who knows? I think it's, uh, it's a, there was some migration of Yahweh south. Again, it's really interesting. Genesis or, uh, um, sorry, Exodus points, pushes, uh, Moses finding Yahweh in the Midianite territory. Yeah. So, there might be, they might have knew something. I don't know. Just, just, just trying to, just helping Daniel out. That's all. Yeah. I don't think that the person knew anything much about the, the person writing that part, passage of of Exodus knew much about the actual history. Um, but behind this, this was, you know, for theological reasons or whatever. Yeah. Um, but there was a well-known metallurgical site where they did mine, right there near, kind of right there where Arabia meets the peninsula. Yeah. The Midianites and stuff. So maybe there was still trade and they used geographic, I mean, kind of like what, uh, Bob Cargill says, cities that built the Bible, geographies that they kind of, yeah. The five Midianite cities were dug up and the archaeology shows, um, they had, they had, um, Aegean pottery. Yes. Yeah. Not surprising. Yeah. During the Bronze Age, which is kind of like, huh? Yeah. Cool stuff, too. Yeah. Aegean pottery was was found across the entire, you know, it was, yeah, it was very. Thank you so much, Daniel. You're the man. S7, thank you for the super chat. Connection between Yah in Egypt versus Yave of India. Is that how you say that? Yave. Yave. Yave. Yeah, in India. I don't know. I never heard of Yave of India. I've, I haven't heard of Yave in India. But me neither. That would be something to call our buddy. Uh, yeah, have to look into that. That's interesting. Any connection to Kuber Godfrey Higgins? Yhovah is related to Yakub. How are y'all? How are all related? Okay, that's a, it's a lot. Okay, so, I mean, the Yah in Egypt is really Yah. It's not Yah, and it means the, it's the moon god. The moon god. So, the Egyptian Yah is Yak, and that's not related to Yahweh. And I don't, it's different spelling for the hieroglyphics. Remember me, you and I talked about this. Yeah. So, the the Shashu, the Shashu Yahweh has a different spelling than the Yah. That's the moon. What? It's like Yay. No, no, no, no, no. So, he's not talking about the the Yah, the the Shashu of Yahweh, right? What he's talking about is the deity Yah in Egypt, which is the moon god. The moon god. But I'm saying, what I'm saying is the Shashu is is written with a Hey, not with a. That's what I said. I said the Yah, the moon god Yah has a different spelling than the Shashu Yahweh. Correct. That's what I'm saying. That's good. That's good. Now, the Yah, the the the Shashu of Yahweh. Yeah. Of course, it's not, it's inconclusive, but, um, if you just read that that, um, the inscription, the hieroglyphics in context, there's a list there of Shashu of different deities, including Anat and including Baal. So, the Shashu of Yahweh, that can mean that this is a deity Yahweh. I'm not, again, it's not conclusive. I cannot, you know, I cannot guarantee that this that it actually does, um, and this would be earlier than Med. So, um, and and this would be, this would, uh, record a people group who has who is identified with Yahweh, if this is the case. Um, so, but that's the Shashu of Yahweh or of Yah, if this, again, if this reading is is to be trusted. Yak in Egypt is a different, uh, deity, the moon god. Yav of India, not familiar with that, so that would be interesting to to learn more. Um, yeah, so, um, yo related to Jacob, um, I don't see that, but, uh, yeah, thank you, S7. Daniel Kyle, again, Dr. Gad, do you think that the Deuteronomist reform could have happened in Hellenistic times? Do you think that Josiah had an aniconic reform rather than finding the law? Or do you think he found Deuteronomy? I question the whole Josiah thing. But anyway, as do I, as you know. Um, yeah, I don't, I don't think that that there was a, a, a reform in the time of Josiah. Um, not a Deuteronomistic reform. And, um, yeah, it could have been, uh, I mean, again, that reform as such is not historical. Okay. Um, it's, um, it's, it's, it's an, it's an attempt to make this book, um, or or to make an authoritative book, um, seem ancient. Okay. And so, and and this, this, uh, literary trope, as it is in the case of Josiah, a literary trope of a, we found this old book and now it's going to change everything, right? And we're, we're going to open it up and we're going to read it and we're going to get, you know, enlightened by it and it's going to now change everything. That's a very, very popular literary trope across the ancient Near East. Um, and even the scroll from Qumran that I restored has exactly the same trope in it. Uh, so it was a very popular literary trope. It does not mean that it, this, this is historical. Now, um, this entire, uh, polemical position of, you know, where should cult, cultic practice be centralized, if at all centralized? Um, yeah, that, that seems to me to be very, very late. Um, there was no need to be, uh, I mean, we, we know, of course, that Elephantine, um, that Elephantine had a temple. They, they had no problem. They wrote about their own temple to Jerusalem, not needing to even justify why they have another temple. Right. Yeah. Um, there were Yahwistic temples, clearly, um, in other places as well. So, there was no actual cult centralization well into the Persian period. But remember, even in Heliopolis, we had the, um, Onias, as a priest from Jerusalem, building a temple in Heliopolis in Egypt, right? So, um, that's, and that's, uh, um, early second century, uh, before the Common Era. So, we have, um, other temples being, being, other Yahwistic temples being, uh, built without any acknowledgement of a cult centralization. Some scholars say, well, maybe this cult, Josiah cult centralization was only effective for a while during the time of Josiah. There are different theories around this. I just think that there was no actual cult centralization. That's probably the, that's the Occam's razor approach. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel Kyle, again. Thank you for the super chat. Do you think that Yao and Yah are the same deity as Dionysus, and that they switched to Kyrios as a way to distance themselves from the name, even going as far as saying Hashem instead of using Yah? Again, a loaded, very loaded question. Thanks for these questions. Um, well, um, look, um, we know that Yahweh, or the the Yahwistic deity, was assimilated with Dionysus. We know that. Yeah, there are many, many records for that. And so, were they the same deity? Well, in antiquity, that's the way people saw their deities as the same deity by different names. As again, I, as I said, even in the Letter of Aristeas, and even in the New Testament, they say, well, the, this, this deity that you call this, I call, you know, you call it this deity X, I call it Y, and, so assimilation was absolutely. The Greeks, the Greeks said that Dionysus was born in some sources in that part of the world, puts, puts Mount Nysa in between the Nile and Phoenicia, right? That's Israel. And then you have another source that puts his his birth in Bethshean, Scythopolis. Yeah. So, there, so there's something going on with Yahweh coming from, or Dionysus and Yahweh coming from that part. If I may, Gad, have you checked out Nissan Amzelog's work on this? Because he actually does an interesting, he wrote an interesting article actually trying to point out biblically, the parallels with Dionysus and how odd they are. That, uh, he starts with metallurgy, as I mentioned earlier, to kind of show that there was travel and trade, and that the art of metallurgy, I think Murca Iliad kind of talks about this a little bit as well, that you're like a, a mage or a very powerful, almost godlike human when you could do that. And the fact that you have narratives of Moses and and, um, Aaron, you know, melting metal to craft a golden calf, and and the golden, or the bronze serpents, and stuff has like metallurgical tendencies. And that Hephaestus is literally Dionysus's brother. The very first. There's so much. They both get depicted as riding donkeys. Yeah. It's very, very common for them. But I wanted, I wanted to throw a wrench in here real quick, and because there's another god, Apollo, who is very close to Dionysus, especially in Thracian, in the Thracian cults. Dionysus and Yahweh are like two coins of the same face, anyways. And then in Delphi, the Apollo's work is on top, and then he leaves for part of the year, and Dionysus comes from the bottom, anyways. Yeah, I mean, it's all over. This is, this is, we should, I mean, you know, but I wanted to point something out with the name. For me, now, this would be the expected. I mean, I am not, it's not only not surprising, this was the rule. Uh, I mean, assimilation across the board. Uh, I think we mentioned, it's in one of our previous, uh, episodes, we mentioned this, this truly striking coin, um, of a Yahwist who has his name, a clearly Yahwist nickname with the theophoric element Yahoo, yeah, in it on one side, and on the other side, Zeus. Yeah. But look at this. Do you know what this is right here, Gad? You know what this is? Yeah. It's a digamma. Yeah. That's Yahwo. So, the etymology of the name of the Ionians is, and and Beeks points this out. Beeks is the top of the line, you know, Indo-Europeanist scholar, Greek scholar. He points out that the name of the Yahweh, or the Ionians, Yahwoness, it means devotees of Apollo. It's a theophoric name. Yeah. So, there's this old name of Apollo called Yayos. Now, the reason why I think this is interesting for this conversation is because when you look at the, going to your work with the, um, with the Hittites, look, let me just pull this up real quick. Look at this map of the Hittite Empire. They stretch all the way to the Ionians. Yeah. Ionians would be right here. Miletus is an Ionian city. So, I'm wondering if the Ionians are adopting Yahweh from the Hittites in the same way that the, that the Judeans are borrowing Yahweh from the Hittites. That to me makes a lot of sense. But, but look at the, uh, legend there of this image that you're showing right here. Look at the periods. I mean, look at the time periods there, expansion, right? It says this color right here. They got it in the. We're talking 13th century BCE, right? So, that's a lot before the time that we're talking about. That. Well, that's what I'm saying. Maybe that, that point in time, that's when they start bringing over this Yay character to this part of the world. Who knows? Who knows? That's. You never know, right? Yeah. I mean, to me, to me, that's a little bit too, too, too speculative. And then you have Ia, the god, the god Ia. And I'm wondering, I'm just saying, maybe that's the origins of all of these gods. Yeah. But, you know what? I got, there's been some scholarship on the name and Yahweh being related. There's a critical, I got a critical thing that predates this though that carries the Yah, the Yah in it. And Giovanni Garbini in his book points out, we got to look east, not northwest. And he says something about the Ar, not the Arameans, but, uh, we have these these tablets from like 2000 BCE. They're like second and third millennium tablets. They have Yah in them. And, um, so, so like, talk about the god, the god Ia, right? No, no, no. Uh, I don't think so. I don't think there's any Yahweh mentioned before, before it's not Yahweh. No, it's not Yahweh. It's just this, this, um, Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it, it, it's there, though. That the, what you're looking at in the, uh, Yeah. The sound is already there. And Giovanni Garbini not only argues with Gad, saying he thinks it's northern, meaning it's already Canaanite. There's already a pantheon that seems to have him there, but that there's also 2000 to 2500 BCE tablets that carry that name, that sound, that phonetic sound that you're also pointing over here. So rather than going to the Ionians in the 13th century, you can go a whole another thousand years earlier and go east and find it. So, and look at this right here. Some, some scholars identified Yah with in the Canaanite religion. And I looked, and I know this is, I know this is Wikipedia, so it's like, who cares, but I've actually found some of these, some of these articles out there from some scholars who made this argument, and I, I don't know how strong it is. Well, I mean, I mean, let me, let me throw a wrench here. This is, this is all to me personally, to my taste. It's a little too speculative, and I don't, I don't personally go. Yeah, I know. I know. I know. I go up to YaoD. I figured, I thought I figured you were, we're going too deep. Yeah. But, but let me throw a wrench, um, on into this as well. In, as we said, in the north, the theophoric element was Yo, not Ya, and not Yaho. Only in the south, it was Yo and Yah. And, um, and, and now the the Elephantine Yahwists, the main reason why I think many of them were Samaritans is because they identify as Arameans. Now, it would make sense for someone in the north to to identify as an Aramean rather than someone from the south, right? Because they share a border. They share a border, and actually they share a lot of history together, and their material culture is almost identical. Okay? So, in many ways, and in some places, as I show in my article, in in some places, the the, um, um, the house of Omri is listed as as part of the Aramean Federation of tribes. I mean, the Arameans were a federation of tribes. It's not just, there was no Aramean tribe. So, um, so, so the northern Israelites were part of this Aramean world, as was Yaobidi, right? Yaobidi, king of Kamat, which is an Aramean city. And so, um, we're talking about Yahweh starting, I think somewhere in this Aramean sphere of influence, of which from which the Israelites inherited, and from that also the Ya, the the the Judeans inherited from in turn. That's as far as I could, I'm feeling com, I feel comfortable going. No, that's interest. You are saying there's something, there's like continuity, you just have no way to pin it down. I'm full, I'm, I'm fully, obviously YBD was not, did not invent something new. Something happened, and then clearly there was something before him, um, even far before him. But I think that, um, that that this is a northern, uh, phenomenon. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you for that super chat. Es, thank you for the super chat. Any idea what their first book or theosophical scroll to get significant circulation from the Hebrews? So, I, I think the question is, what is the first written work by the Hebrews that to get significant circulation? Yeah. Um, Ahiqar is, I don't think was composed by the Jews, by the Hebrews. Oh, it was very popular among them, but it is not, that's not it. It's in Aramaic. All right. It's in Aramaic. Yeah. But Aramaic was the the language of the entire area. It's not, not Hebrew. That's true. So, um, yeah, the first book to get to to get significant circulation. I don't know. Maybe Job? Or Yeah, maybe Job. No, no, no, no, no. I don't think. No, but it's, it's, I mean, in terms of circulation, we're talking now post-Alexandria. So, we're talking somewhere in where, you know, deep into the Hellenistic period. It could, it was probably some part of the Pentateuch. Yeah, because that's, that's what he is writing about is Moses, and that's what he is writing about. That's what would appeal to Hellenistic tastes. So, makes sense. Thank you. I don't know about Genesis, but yes, some, some part of the Pentateuch. Yeah, thank you. Sera Knight, thank you for the super chat. Israel equals Is Rael, the three gods? Oh, I know you've heard. Have you heard this? Well, we've all heard this one. Dude, I grew up. Yeah, man. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I know. That's not. No, dude. Neil, did we not go through like a phase like 10 years ago when we heard this? It sounds interesting because it fits so perfectly, but Isis, Ra, why Ra? Why not Is? Also, I don't, I personally don't know if any any, uh, name of an an area or a people group or even a personal name that's composed of three gods. Yeah. Usually you have one deity and a verb or a, uh, an adjective, but three, or a triad, like a, not Yahoo. Yeah. But three, three deities. Yeah. I mean, again, you have, you have, I mean, I can imagine maybe a, a triad referred to as such, kind of glued together, but not as a, again, not as a name of a people. And then why, and then if that was the case, why hide it? Why, why change it to something else? If you, if this was the case, if they're worshippers of Isis, Ra, and El, then we'd see it in the history. And why would they just stop doing it? And then two of these, exactly two of these deities are never explicitly connected with it, with with Israel in any way. Yeah. Yeah. But there is, uh, in Jerusalem, Salem, the god Salem is in the name of Jerusalem, right? But of course, we don't get a Bible, you know, story about it. But Asher's son, you know, the moon and sun. I think Jericho has a moon god, Yuk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that kind of stuff, man. These are the kind of like deep dive documentary videos that me and Neil will like spin. And then Salam and Okay. Okay. Next super chat. Dustin, Dustin Ellerby here for the party. Welcome, party. Nice, Dustin. Enduring motifs. Thanks for the super chat. Israel is always being used as an exonym and geopolitical term. First attestation 9th century BCE. Simultaneously Jezreel appears as an endonym, Jezreel city. Interesting. Yep. Thank you, American culture. Yeah, seriously, thank you for the super sticker. Uh, Richard Eper, thank you for the super chat. What about the proto-Deuteronomy Shapiro scrolls translated by Eden Dersowitz? Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I, I'm, I'm firmly in the camp that think that of the of scholars who say that this is a forgery. Wow. Don't let, uh, our buddy know this. What's his, um, Yeah, Ross Nichols. Yeah. Don't let Ross see this clip. They think that the, he's looking for those scrolls right now. But you think even if he found them though, you think they're forged? Yeah, I would, I'm not going to mention names, but, uh, people in Berlin told me, uh, that the letters that are, um, Berlin are kept in the archives from the the scholars who actually met Shapi, um, I mean, they, they, they describe, um, just how, you know, how untrustworthy he is, and and basically just that how, how they analyzed this forgery at in real time, at at the. So, you know, but that's just one, one, one, uh, parameter. I mean, this, this has all the hallmarks, in my, at least in my view. I'm always, always ready to be corrected on this, as anything else that I say, but, um, the, um, in my view, this is, uh, this is a forgery. Damn. Thank you, Richard. American culture. I don't know what this says at all, but thank you. Looks like Tibetan, Tibetan script. Tibetan script. I have no clue. Thank you for the support of Gnostic Informants channel here. Thank you. Oh, that's, uh, that's, um, go back. That's, uh, what's it called? Not Sanskrit. Um, Tibetan. Yeah. Yeah. He just said, "Oh, okay." Uh, Mr. Y, I don't even know how to pronounce your name here. Based on your research, do you three believe Judaism was created as a psychological operation, or that it was formed authentically and later corrupted? Dude, the way that question even, well, I mean, all religions, yeah, they all form, they all kind of form naturally from culture, and then people take a hold of it, and then it becomes, well, I mean, let's, let's just, let's just take a step back. I mean, Judaism, so we have Yahwism, we talked about Yahwism quite a bit. Um, Judaism spawned off Yahwism, right? And Yahwism, as you know, as I've said several times, um, continued unabated for a few, many, several centuries later, until about Gnosticism. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not. I mean, Gnosticism, Christianity, I mean, they were all, you know, related to Yahwism. And Yahwism, as such, independently of Gnosticism and etc., and Samaritanism, and all of that, uh, continued unabated. But, um, Judaism was was, um, certainly not created as a, as a scop. But, um, but Judaism was was, as I already talked about several times, was a product of basically the the spirit of Alexandria, creating an authoritative text and an authoritative set of laws that need to be followed. Sounds like Gnosticism right now, in the spirit of Alexandria. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. But, um, so, yeah, so, uh, so this was it was created, again, not as a psychological operation, not with any national identity. Not even a national identity necessarily, but is a, is a, is a, is an adoption of the spirit of Alexandria by Yahwists, ultimately evolving into becoming that, separating and kind of spawning off from Yahwism into becoming its own thing. But it's not really an identity because, um, it became later on when when the when the books became authoritative, then the, um, the, um, kind of the, it's, I, I'm using the word canonized, even though it's, it's completely anachronistic here, but I want to say that something that kind of has a seal of approval on it, that became a factor in the development of the Jewish, later on. So, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, all of that, um, later on became, became a political position. So, again, I don't, it's not really a, a question of corruption. It's certainly not a question, a question of scops. Um, it's authentic, but it's based on, it's, it's, it's, it's the, it derives from the spirit of Alexandria and the, this, this obsession with a, uh, an authoritative text. That's what gave rise to Judaism and, uh, yeah, so it's in that, in that sense, it is, you know, organic. Sure. Thank you so much, Adrian. Thanks for being a member, my friend. I really appreciate you. Constellation Pegasus, good to see you here, man. Can Gad go to Bart Ehrman's BCA Academy and make a course about this? I feel jealous. I'm like, why not MVP courses? I mean, come on, we do courses too. But, yeah, uh, have you thought about possibly wanting to do a course with us? Why not? Sure, why not? Yeah, let's make it happen. Great idea. Let's do it. Let's do it. Doc Plommanot, thank you for being a member and this big super chat. If Yahweh in Kuntillet Ajrud of Samaria, Teman reflects a pre-Israelite theonym, did the shift to Yahweh mark Canaanite vowel assimilation or a scribal strategy to mask Midianite Canaanite cultic origins? Good question. Midianite is the is the origin for for this, right? So I guess he's saying if we're presupposing that, right? I guess so. I mean, I think that, uh, yeah, so in Kuntillet, um, and, um, and I think that Yahweh, I mean, we, we have it earlier on also, we have Yahweh also in in the, um, the 9th century inscriptions, 8th century inscriptions as well. Um, and so I think Yahweh and Yaho, um, were also very, very, uh, very popular, very common names as well. Um, yeah, it's a, I don't think it's a pre-Israelite. I'm, I'm having a problem here with the term pre-Israelite theonym, because again, we have Israel in the already in the 13th century. Um, and, um, so I don't know about that, but, um, yeah, there is no, Yahweh was always an option. I mean, the name Yahweh was always an option as a name. Uh, it was not, there was no shift to that, uh, at a later stage. So, I'm not sure, I'm not understanding the question completely. I imagine in this question, and correct me if I'm wrong, Doc, is that there is this shift from El in Canaanite to to a transition to to to Yahweh. So, the the typical standard view, I understand scholars to take is that Yahweh comes from the south. El is authentically, you know, that's his hometown, but Yahweh is a foreign deity who who interjects and somehow takes over. Um, I imagine that's in the mind of what Doc's saying. Correct me if I'm wrong if you're in the chat, Doc. One more thing to say also is that Yahweh was clearly a, um, you said correct, Neil, earlier for whatever Neil said before you started talking about it. I don't know. Oh, I was saying if we're, if this is truly a Midianite religion, and then he's saying, would this be what's going on here? I, I just don't see any any extra-biblical evidence at all for this to being a Midianite. Okay. He says it's asking whether the change from Yahw to Yahweh was just a natural Canaanite vowel shift or a deliberate scribal move to hide Yahweh's non-Israelite, Midianite, Canaanite origins. Yes. So, I don't see any Midianite Canaanite origins for Yahweh at all in the extra-biblical record. So, I don't know about that. Um, I don't, uh, um, I'm, I'm not sure about the change from Yaho to Yahweh. Both existed in parallel. Uh, Yaho simply in, because we're talking about names, personal names, uh, it's just natural to have Yaho in the name rather than the full Yahweh. Uh, also, we don't know exactly how they were pronounced. Um, and there were different dialects as well. So, it could be that Yahweh was simply pronounced Yaho, and the, and the final H was silent as well. Gotcha. So, um, yeah, we, we, there's too, there are too many open questions on this, but I don't see anything that needed to be hidden, um, by the scribes. Thank you. Thank you, GD, for the super chat. Thank you. Would the Yahweh worshippers in Elephantine also have been more influenced by the Phoenicians compared to the Judeans? Um, probably. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't, do we find Punic gods in Elephantine? I don't know if we find like Baal-shamem or any of those figures or or Melqart. I don't know if we see those gods there. I think it's, we kind of, we kind of, I mean, again, there was a Phoenician, um, community there, in, in, in, in the area, and Oh, okay. Are there gods there too? Yeah, there are gods. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, we have that. Um, we know that there was a large, Phoenician, uh, there were communities in Egypt at the time. Um, in fact, this Ostan that I talked about earlier with Kanya, he, the community that he, he was in was very heavily Phoenician as well, and the name, as Funkmore Cross suggested, is Phoenician as well. And, um, the coins that we saw were Phoenician, right? The coins that were that were minted by by Sanballat were Phoenician. So, yeah, certainly the, um, the, the, the, uh, the, uh, Samar, Samaritans were much closer to, to Phoenician influence than Judeans. H thank you so much, Warlite. Thanks for the super chat. A possible etymology of A is the Semitic root is was that hey, something? Uh, now this is, this should be, if it means to live. To live. Okay. Similar to the Hebrew verb, or to be, which is a derivative origin for Yahweh. No, no, I mean, the root. I know he, he's, is writing he or she is writing this in as as an hy y, but is this a y to live? There is a, there is a scholar from what year is this? Uh, oh, this is from 2018. Okay, not that old. And this is, it is actually titled "To Be or Not to Be." Let me, Yahweh and Ia. Go ahead. So, there is, there is some scholarship on this question that, so I would read this article. Maybe this will answer your question. I mean, clearly this is again going back to to popular, uh, folk etymology. We have, um, I mean, going from Yaho to to the verb to be, um, is very, very logical step, just from a perspective of folk etymology. Yeah. They have an article that is that would should be, should come out later this year that talks about this as well. It says, in this article, I propose that the Semitic concept of Yahweh, deity, a deity's name who's formed from this root, began in the east when Enki, the Sumerian god of the subterranean waters, acquired the Semitic name Ia. So, look, I'm just saying there are, there's some scholars out there who's throwing this stuff around. It's a trickster too. Genesis. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I have a whole, I got a whole book about Ia over here. It's from, um, from what's his name, Walter, or I can't remember his name right now, but anyways. But that doesn't etymologically, though, I guess, is the point. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you for that super chat. The Real Daddy Abe. Thanks for the super sticker. And then the mother freaking Wendyberg. Love the name. Happy two months. Thank you for being here as a member. And I think she's been a member of yours too, Neil. Oh, yeah. Wendy, Wendyberg. I think about the same time. Yeah. So, we, we have literally ran through all of these supers. Dad, you're a champion, man. You've been here for so long. Uh, putting up with me and Neil. How do you put up with us? I didn't mean to press that. Sorry. What did you do that for? I was looking for something. Oh, but I couldn't find it and I clicked that and exit. It's all good, man. It's all good. Um, Gad, wrap things up, if you will, on what you presented. Maybe, um, I'd like to have people go to the links that are in our descriptions. They can get your book for free. They can download, uh, your Academia page. Go follow him, download any articles he has on there for free. Yeah, I try to to publish as much open access as possible. So, a lot of these articles are open access, meaning that you can read them for free. You don't need to be subscribed to any journal or book or or buy a book. Uh, you can buy the physical book if you want, and some people have opted for that, but, uh, that's not necessary. You can just download the PDF, um, of this to read at your leisure. Um, yeah, it's pretty much it. Absolutely. Neil, what's up, man? What? We're at the end of the show, bro. This is, I got nothing to add. I think this has been a great show. Subscribe to my channel. And if you're watching on my channel, subscribe to Mythvision. And then I have the links in the description for Gad's articles and all his books and his Wikipedia and his, uh, his, uh, page, whatever it is. It's all in there. Yeah. Academia page. So, dude, I loved this. I love how you think. It's, it's, uh, it's pushing the boundaries. It's kind of stuff me and Neil like to do. We like to see what the scholars say and how they wrestle with each other. We'll probably do an episode at some point, and the scholar will say something, we'll be like, "Oh, but Gad Barnetta disagreed with that." And so we like that. Uh, it's fun to wrestle with these ideas and, um, we thank you for your friendship and giving us your time, coming on here to educate the world, and we hope you'll come back and join me and Neil for future episodes. Always a pleasure. Absolutely. Guys, seriously, maybe eventually, I'm throwing this out there because me and Neil would like to put some tours together over there in that very region we keep talking about. Maybe we can link up with you in person if the stars align on a tour at one point when the world stops burning to the ground for a moment. I'm sure we all are ready for that. So, when that happens, we hope you'll join us. Absolutely. It'll be a pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. I will be in DC in a month, a month from now, in Washington DC. I have a, I'm, I'm going to talk about Kanya as well. So, uh, yeah, I'm excited, man. I, look, anything new comes out, hit me and Neil up. We want you on the show. And, uh, of course, there's also Jacob Berman. You join him, too. We want to make noise for you, promote you, help you, you know, get your ideas out there. So, we really appreciate it. I appreciate you guys. Absolutely. Thank you. But ladies and gentlemen, don't ever forget we are Mythvision, and you have just attained trunosis. Trinosis. Son, do you want to know what the truth is? After this, there's no turning back. You take the blue pill and you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more. Oh, [Music] ooh. Ooh. Ooh. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. [Music]