Glenn Morton wrote:
>They spoke Akkadian or Assyrian which is related to Hebrew like Russian is
>related to English, but it wasn't the same language. The encyclopedia
>Britannica on the web writes:
>
>" Assyrian language"
>
>"also spelled Accadian, also called Assyro-babylonian, extinct Semitic
>language of the Northern Peripheral group, spoken in Mesopotamia from the
>3rd to the 1st millennium BC.
>
>Akkadian spread across an area extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the
>Persian Gulf during the time of Sargon (Akkadian Sharrum-kin) of the Akkad
>dynasty, who reigned from about 2334 to about 2279 BC. By about 2000
>Akkadian had supplanted Sumerian as the spoken language…"
Hi Glenn, nice to have you back. Hope you can stay a while :>).
Accadian is to Hebrew more like German is to English. Incidentally,
"Akkadian" is the German spelling. Russian is a Slavic language with its
own alphabet, English does not have Slavic roots, although there is obvious
crosstalk. My grandmother spoke Bohemian, a Slavic language which could
best be described as a Czech dialect. She never spoke English - it was too
difficult for her to understand, where my German-born grandfather was able
to pick up English easily.
But I think it is safe to assume that Hebrew-speaking peoples were the
direct descendants of the Accadians (English spelling), who would have been
Adamites, Hamites, Japhethites and Semites. But history books only
recognize "Semites." And thus you will read that Canaanites, descendants
of Ham, spoke an "eastern Semitic language." Why didn't they speak
"Hamite"? It's because that's some Bible story, and historians attach no
credibility to that.
And that is part of the same problem. Historians give insufficient weight
to biblical narratives and Bible translators do not give enough weight to
the historical evidence. We could profit from a better blending of
historical, biblical and scientific evidence, which has been my point all
along. We have tended to study three different disciplines in mutual
isolation to the detriment of all three. (Okay, how science could benefit
from the Genesis narrative is a bit obscure.) But certainly Bible and
history can be viewed as more compatible than has been assumed to this point.
Here is one quick example, but this is indicative of many such
examples. In Genesis 10:10: Nimrod's "kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and
Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar." All those cities have been
found except Accad including one the Bible did not mention, Birs
Nimrud. Gen 10:11: Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded
Nineveh. Mallowen excavated Ninevah and uncovered the library of king
Asshur-Banipal named after his famous biblical ancestor. His grandfather
was Sargon II who warred against the biblical Hezekiah. Tablets uncovered
at Ninevah, attributed to Sargon II, describe the war from his vantage
point and name Hezekiah by name.
History designates the biblical Sargon as Sargon II because there was a
previous Sargon, a Semite, who united southern Mesopotamia by bold conquest
and changed the official language from Sumerian to Semitic. Sargon's
childhood included being placed in a reed basket as a baby and floated on
the Euphrates river where he was discovered by a Sumerian farmer. In all
likelihood, Moses' mother used this same method because it was known from
ancient tradition.
From the change in pottery style, Mallowen was able to determine the
arrival of Asshur and his followers. Notice I said "change." The city
pre-existed Asshur by roughly 1,000 years and had been called Ninua from
the beginning. Asshur did not build from scratch, he took over or
conquered an existing city. So who were the people living there before
Asshur arrived?
And so it goes. History and Genesis do intertwine, but only if we allow
for it and recognize it.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago"
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