The curious case of the name Golgotha

Golgotha is the name of the place where Jesus was crucified. The gospels of Matthew, Mark and John mention the name Golgotha, but add that this name means κρανιον τοπος (kranion topos; meaning: place of a skull, Matthew 27:33, Mark 15:22, John 19:17). Luke merely mentions that the place was called Skull, using the same wording (Luke 23:33; by some translations interpreted as Calvary). It's obviously very important that the reader realizes that the death of Jesus occurred on The Skull, but what's with that? Every detail of the gospels was carefully chosen and nostalgia was certainly not a concern. It must mean something.

Jesus dies "at the Skull" -- what's with that?

Driven by nostalgia and super-hero worship, early Christian relic-hunters scoured Jerusalem's immediate environs in search for a place that looked like a skull, and Jerusalem's lands being quite cavernous, it didn't take them long to find one. Quite conveniently, the place they identified as the Skull happened to already be enclosed by a Venusian temple from the time of emperor Hadrian. True to form they re-declared it holy, put a fence around it and began to charge admission.

Others believed that the place called Skull was in fact a place of execution or burial, assuming that there would be skulls all over the place. But a place like that would first of all violate Jewish law and would not exist (Numbers 19:16, Deuteronomy 21:23, also see Ezekiel 39:15 and Josephus, Apion.ii-29-30, "not to let anyone lie unburied"), secondly be known by a plural epithet (skulls), and thirdly more likely be known as a place of bones rather than just of skulls. Still, the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, in which Jesus was buried, was close to where He was crucified (John 19:41), and tombs usually existed in clusters or necropoleis (Matthew 8:28, 27:52). The second century document called Epistula Apostolorum explicitly states that not the place of Jesus' crucifixion but rather the place where he was buried was called Kranion, or Skull (verse 9). But still, there seems to be very little reason to refer to an entire graveyard as Place of the Skull, then or now.

Slightly more critical Bible critics realized that the ratio between the importance of Golgotha in the gospels and the importance of Golgotha in the rest of ancient writings was thoroughly askew. Why would the evangelists emphasize a place that no one else ever mentions? They surely were not tour guides pitching an important landmark for us to visit, because if they had been, they would certainly have also told us where that place precisely was. They don't.

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Feet and erotica in the Bible

It's been overly reported that in Hebrew "feet" may be a euphemism for the male genitals, but that's jumping the gun a bit. Men would wear long tunics and any kind of laborious activity would require hoisting up the tunic to free one's feet (that's where the "girding of the loins" comes from; 1 Kings 18:46). The colloquial expression "covering one's feet" is the opposite of that, and describes a pose of rest. All this is on a par with keeping one's ears and eyes open during periods of activity and alertness, and covering ears and eyes during periods of slumber.



The expression "covering one's feet" is in English almost perfectly reflected in the expression "taking a load off," which also describes a pose of rest after performing labor. When judge Ehud had murdered fat king Eglon of Moab, Eglon's servants didn't dare to go into the room he lay bleeding and spilling his refuse because they figured he was "covering his feet," which in this case strongly implies that they thought he was taking a load off by taking a dump (Judges 3:24). Likewise, during one of Saul's campaigns to apprehend David, Saul went into a cave to "cover his feet," which only means that he went in there to take a load off (1 Samuel 24:3). In this case it is implied that Saul was taking a nap.

When at the end of a working day or long journey, a man came into a home — his own or someone else's — the "covering of his feet" would be preceded by the washing of them (Genesis 18:4, 1 Samuel 25:41). One would obviously not recline to dine and certainly not slide into bed with one's wife with unwashed feet, and that ties the washing of feet with taking a rest after a period of work, having diner and sleeping with one's wife. When David sent Uriah home to "wash his feet" (2 Samuel 11:8) he didn't express his concerns for Uriah's smelly feet but literally told him to go home and take a load off, implying that he would subsequently sleep with his wife Bathsheba. When Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, He also implied that He had brought them into a period of domestic rest (John 13:5), but when Mary anointed Jesus' feet with fragrant oil, she unmistakably prepared Jesus for His wedding night (John 12:3, see for more on this our article on the name Nicodemus).

Commentators usually miss the sexual connotation of Mary anointing Jesus' feet, but erroneously ascribe a sexual connotation to Ruth's dealings with Boaz (Ruth 3:1-18). Naomi told Ruth to go into Boaz' quarters after he had dined and gone to sleep (for which he had washed and covered his feet), and uncover his feet and lay herself at his feet. When Boaz woke up in the middle of the night he noticed that his feet were uncovered and a lady was sleeping at his feet.

Boaz was obviously a man of honor who not only wanted to honor the levirate law but also wanted to allow a closer relative to marry Ruth (Ruth 3:12-13). What women back in those days still knew was that no woman can catch an honorable man by putting out on the first date. If Ruth had uncovered Boaz' privates that night, he would doubtlessly have kicked her out of his tent. Now that she had uncovered his feet and lay herself at his feet, she indicated that she placed herself at Boaz' service and also respectfully asked Boaz to go to work for her. Boaz got the message, did the honorable thing and even protected her from the walk of shame (3:14). Boaz contacted Ruth's close relative and offered him his rights to Ruth (4:1), but the relative declined and demonstrated as much by removing his sandal, which is also a symbol of the foot-genre (4:7). Someone who puts a sandal on his foot indicates he's fixing for action (Exodus 12:11, Isaiah 5:27); someone who removes a sandal indicates his standing down (Exodus 3:5). When John the Baptist said he was unworthy to untie Jesus' sandal, he also indicated that he could not possibly take over Jesus' work and give Him a break (Luke 3:16).

Another much quoted reference to feet possibly euphemizing genitals is Isaiah 7:20, where Isaiah states that YHWH will use the king of Assyria as a razor with which He will shave Judah's head and "hair of the feet," which is then explained to denote pubic hair. Here at Abarim Publications we have no objection to pubic hair but see no reason to let hair of the feet denote pubic hair. It simply reads that the Lord will shave Judah head to toe, from top to bottom.

Keep reading:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Dictionary/r/r-g-l.html

Deep cries out to deep

As the deer pants for the waters so my soul longs after thee

Everybody knows about the panting deer of the opening line of Psalm 42, and many experience the sentiment that gave rise to this image. But few realize the exquisite and valiant choice of words the sons of Korah display, especially in the seventh verse.

Psalm 42 is a dance of fluidic words. Meticulously, the author breaks a continuum, evokes contrasts and has elements congrue into new onenesses.

The word for "deer" comes from a root that generally denotes a protruding or something that stands proudly and quietly ('wl; other derivations are words meaning: belly, leader, porch, ram, door post, terebinth).

Its longing or panting is penciled with the verb arag, a very unusual word that, judging from equivalents in cognate languages, rather means a bending, declining or even ascending.

Contrary to common interpretation, the image is gentle and still and charged with great tension. The deer emerges from the forest — early morning perhaps; mist in elongated blurs rests nimbly on the grass — and as it stands attention the observer feels its thirst. Slowly the animal stoops towards the flow of water below.

The author yearns to emerge from the throngs of those who challenge his trust in the One he desires. But in stead of drinking Him, he drinks his own tears, and all that pours is his own soul within him, descended, like the very water that the deer yields towards. The author's soul is depressed, like the Jordan (means Descender or Descended, follow the link below to visit our Biblical Name Vault). That is why he remembers God from the Jordanian low land, but also from the high peaks of the Hermon, and thus he creates the maximum vertical stretch possible from his local perspective. The author fills the entire leap from highest point of the earth to the lowest; the deepest depth, and cries out to the deepest depth after which he was created.

Creation began when the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, and darkness lay on the face of the deep (tehom; same word; and note that the word for 'to' is 'el, which is also the word for God). In Romans 8 we read about creation groaning and suffering anxiously from longing for the revelation of the sons of God, and we must recognize that in the private ardor of Psalm 42, the voice of the entire universe resounds, perhaps even as primary intend. But that's far from all.

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http://www.abarim-publications.com/Bible_Commentary/Deep_Cries_Out_To_Deep.html

Of course ancient Hebrew had vowels!

It's often said that vowels were added to ancient Hebrew by the Masoretes. This is wholly incorrect.

The oft repeated rumor has it that Biblical Hebrew has no vowels, and any now existing vowels were added later. This is incorrect. The great success of the Hebrew language lies precisely in the Hebrew invention of vowel notation. This invention was made around the time of king David (roughly 1000 BC, at the dawn of the Iron Age), and it gave ordinary people access to vast amounts of information. Prior to vowel notation, reading and writing was a magical affair for which one had to train in special priestly schools. Vowel notation allowed ordinary people to access vast vaults of information after a relatively simple education. Upon vowel notation, simply everybody could learn, share and add to what mankind knew, and this in turn led to the surge of human modernity that is still in full swing today.

Even in the Stone Age there was a highly sophisticated wisdom tradition — to give a hint: all domesticated crops such as potatoes, rice and corn, and animals such as sheep, dogs and pigs, were bred from feral ancestors in the Stone Age; folks from the Stone Age also invented metallurgy, music, painting, architecture, international trade, and pretty much everything (shy of the electric grid) that makes modern man modern — but a major problem was how to preserve data. When wisdom was shared orally, it only took an accident, battle or bout of some disease to knock out the village wizard (= wise-ard) and hence delete the village's data. The consonantal alphabet and later vowel notation not only turned every Tom, Dick and Harry into a sagely priest (hence a kingdom of priests — Exodus 19:6) it would also allow data to be preserved in a medium other than a fleshly brain.

The Hebrews understood that a happy life went hand in hand with knowledge of creation, and made science their form of worship (Psalm 19:1, Zechariah 8:23, John 4:23, Romans 1:20). They defined the deity as the Creator, who, per definition, had to exist separate from creation. But in a brilliant feat of deductive reasoning, they also surmised that between the creation that so closely followed the Creator's character and nature, and the Creator Himself, there had to be a kind of transition that was both: where Creator and creation met and were one; that "attractor" upon which the whole chaotic universe was designed to converge and would settle in (not merely the First Mover but more so the Ultimate Destiny of everything that exists).

This bottom-line from which everything that exists derives its existence, this attractor to which everything that evolves must evolve, this intermediate between the Creator and creation, this they called "the Son" (Psalm 2:12), and "the Word" (Genesis 15:1). In later Scriptures this semi-natural phenomenon famously became personified in Jesus Christ (John 1:1, 1 Timothy 2:5).

Keep reading:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Masoretes.html

Red is both the color of dawn and the name of the first human

Red is the color of dawn and the beginning of civilization

Perhaps by coincidence and perhaps not, the דום root-cluster contains roots that all seem to have to do with stillness or productivity, with a clear nod to the color red.

Red is the color of dawn and is also the first color a human baby learns to see. It seems plausible that to the Hebrews the color red signified the rudiments or principal beginnings of civilization, which of course is a mere manifestation of the beginning of a wisdom tradition, or as we would call it today, the preservation of information (in a cultural expression). That would link the beginning of wisdom to typical red items such as wine (Noah's vineyard: Genesis 9:20) and blood (hence the covenant of blood: Exodus 24:8), and since the art of understanding is metaphorized in a standing on dry land (Noah again), a partial understanding would be similar to mud and mire (in which Noah's dove couldn't find a foothold; Genesis 8:9).

A strikingly similar relationship between tranquility, muddy substances and the color red is demonstrated by the root-group חמר (hamar; see the name Homer), and perhaps even by the root group יון (ywn; see the name Javan, which is the Biblical word for Greece).

Read on:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Dictionary/a/a-d-mfin.html

The word זית (zayit) means olive and is a complicated symbol

The Hebrew word for olive tree is זית (zayit; Deuteronomy 8:8, 2 Kings 18:32, Amos 4:9), or the fruit of it; olives (Micah 6:15) and olive-oil (שמן זית, shemen zayit; Exodus 27:20, Leviticus 24:2).

A person who occupied any of the few highest earthly ranks — the king, high priest and a prophet had no earthly superiors — was called an anointed (see the name Messiah), and anointing was done with olive oil (Judges 9:9). A failure of the olive harvest was a disaster because that would mean that Israel's social structure couldn't be maintained (Deuteronomy 28:40).

And it also caused the olive tree to be one of the most symbolical entities in the Bible. What is symbolizes, however, is commonly not very well understood, but it's by no means an accident that Jesus' passion began with His arrest on Mount Olivet.

That the symbolism of the olive is really quite complicated is demonstrated in the story of Noah, where after the flood a released dove returns to the Ark with in her mouth a עלה-זית טרף, ('ayle-zayit tarap; Genesis 8:11), which literally means: the violently torn leafage of an olive (tree), but which translations of the Bible usually generously interpret as a freshly picked olive leaf.

This image has further been developed into a dove carrying a whole olive branch, which then became interpreted as a symbol of peace. But this evolution is faithful only to that odd human persistence to warp whatever is out there into whatever we want. In short: Noah's dove has not a thing to do with offering peace to anyone.

The word יונה (yona; see the name Jonah), meaning dove, is closely similar to יון (yawen) meaning mire or being without foothold, and even ינה (yana), meaning to vex, oppress or wrong someone. The earth had been flooded for 150 days (Genesis 8:3). The Ark wrecked on Ararat in the seventh month, and in the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible (Genesis 8:5). Forty-seven days later, the dove came back with our 'ayle-zayit tarap in her beak. And whatever that was, it certainly was not a freshly picked leaf from a cheerfully blooming olive tree.

Whatever remained of the drowned olive trees was at that time still below a vast amount of water. It took three whole months for the water to recede the height of the draught of the Ark (three months between running aground and seeing the ground). Forty-seven days after that there were only high mountain summits above water. What the dove had managed to harvest was a hardy helping of whatever little plants or mosses had sprouted on the mountain tops.

Ergo: the word by which the Hebrews knew the olive also meant something more basic, namely a freshling, or firstling, or even herald of a lot more to come. And that's not all that odd, as we shall see.

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The name Isaac means laughter

The root-verb צחק (sahaq) means to laugh, or rather: to have fun, in pretty much the same range of applications as in English (Genesis 39:14-17, Exodus 32:6, Judges 16:25).

Laughter makes us human and was the first formal result of the covenant God made with Abraham.

The first people to laugh in the Bible are Abraham (Genesis 17:17) and Sarah (Genesis 18:3, 21:6), but when Ishmael, the son of Abraham with Hagar also starts laughing, Sarah drives him and his mother out (Genesis 21:9). Sarah's son Isaac is named after the verb to laugh, and as he marries Rebekah, he appears to have ways to make her laugh as well. That their 'laughing' wasn't restricted to mere merriment is attested by the outcry of the local king Abimelech, "Behold, certainly, she is your wife!" (Genesis 26:8).

Laughter, like speech, is an acquired ability which developed in our past for reasons that have long been obscure. This obscurity in turn was due to the obvious fact that laughter is a continuation of the fear reflex — that's why it's so contagious, so hard to stop when you're at it and often so unclear whether someone is laughing or crying: it's basically the same sound produced by the same body parts.

In the last few decades, the study of natural synchronicity has made the connection clear. Humanity's incredible success in the world is not due to our intelligence, but much rather to our ability to tune into each other: synchronicity, or the mentally blending together at the reflex and subconscious level. Many closely monitored and double-blinded experiments have shown that humans (and particularly kin and romantic partners) have the ability to synchronize their heart beat, skin conductivity and even general mood. Women living together often menstruate at the same time.

In the natural world, one "naked ape" isn't much of a foe, but fifteen of them could be problematic, unless of course these fifteen don't want anything to do with each other. Should they, however, demonstrate a very high level of synchronicity, namely by exclaiming their alarm cry in utter synchronicity (perhaps even in multiple voices and snazzy rhythms, hence vocal music) any enemy with any sense at all will realize that the group is not simply fifteen times a naked ape, but rather one super-organism like a dragon with fifteen heads and a transparent body.

Human singing and laughing originated not in entertainment but in shows of force and are similar to an animal's standing upright, showing teeth or flapping brightly colored feathers. The name Abraham means Their Strength (or They Are Now Protected) and expresses international synchronicity. His son's name Isaac means Laughter.

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Beyond sacrifice in the Bible

From our article on the verb זבח (zabah), meaning to slaughter or sacrifice:

The act of sacrificing animals is very common in the Bible as well as in classical cultures at large, but it's often overlooked how profound a concept sacrifice really is. Sacrifice has two main functions, and these reflect almost perfectly the greatest command and the second one that is equal to the first (Matthew 22:36-40):

(1) Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, soul and mind

When humans were hunter-gatherers, survival depended largely on the clan's ability to stick together, to have clan members diversify and specialize, and thus form a sort of super-organism. The quintessential human ability to use language actually developed from a universal proto-language called syntax (discussed in Genesis 11:1) not as a tool to convey data, but as a tool to forge and strengthen bonds — meaning that small-talk is language's main function; laughter and music probably stem from similar considerations, see our article on the verb צחק (sahaq).

Formal religion too appears to have arisen mainly as a tool to keep the clan together; a shared devotion to an entity which was not only imagined to protect the group from an outside perspective but which also strengthened bonds between clan members from within. In effect, a clan's deity was the clan; its spirit was the clan's spirit, its culture and its life.

The acquisition and preparation of food was obviously a main occupation of the clan, and sharing this food with the clan members effectively was equal to sharing this food with the deity. Cultural evolution may have forged formal and complicated rites, but the idea remained the same. (1 Corinthians 9:13, 10:18-22).

(2) You shall love your neighbor as yourself

Equally important to forging a clan's internal bond is its collective understanding of the general operating principles of creation, and its local role on the grander stage — or in other words: that a clan understands that its internal integrity is as important and of the same essence as its external integrity. A clan's internal symbiosis is as important as the harmony of creation at large: the whole of creation is a super-clan and the local clan fits the super-clan the way one person fits the local clan.

There's nothing wrong with a good theory, but buzz-words like "competition" and "survival of the fittest" are not the main driving principles of the biosphere. If they were, we would have had a winner by now. This winner creature would have eaten all the others and hence ended bio-diversity, while at the same time find a way to halt the hallowed mutations to prevent diversity from emerging again — it's a self-contradicting scenario.

Variety makes all the difference

In stead, the biosphere is endowed with all sorts of mechanisms that promote and preserve diversity at all costs. If one particular creature becomes too populous, its food will automatically run out, multiple predator populations will increase, and even viruses and such will slay with greater efficiency too much cloning or near-cloning (that's what caused the famous 19th century famine in Ireland).

Sacrificial rituals are secondarily designed to express and instill gratitude and acknowledgement towards the sacrifice. The sacrifice sustains the sacrificer, and the sacrificer in turn becomes a sacrifice. This sounds like a lot of wasting, but that's only because that's what the word sacrifice has come to mean to us. The word sacrifice comes from the same Latin root as does the word sacred. Sacrificing something doesn't mean to do away with it, but to sanctify it; to utilize it into the great circle of life. Sacrifice means sanctify and has the same effect as love. The biosphere is an ongoing cycle of servitude; death is not the enemy but a worthless and unapplied and unshared life is (Matthew 10:39).

It's tempting to project human feelings of individuality upon the biosphere, but our human feelings may be delusional rather than natural. Like a tree that is eager to give up its fruits for the benefit of its customers as much as its own, so is a large herd of animals or school of fish designed to give up some of its members. The herd-mind consists of all the minds of all the animals together, and is much more dominant than one individual mind. That may seem unfair, but our own human mind is in fact the mini-minds of all our cells combined, like a choir of a trillion voices. Our separate cells die and are replaced every few months, and none of them objects as long as the total continues.

To almost every human individual, the wish to matter to others is far stronger than the wish to overwhelm them. Asking someone for help benefits both; you don't have to go it alone and the other feels valuable. This basic driver of social evolution is based on the primary operating principle of life on the collective biosphere scale, and even explains the death and resurrection of the Christ.

Biblical names that come from the word Shalom - meaning Peace

These graceful Biblical names all derive from the familiar noun שלום (shalom), meaning peace:

Abishalom
Absalom
Bishlam
Islam
Jerusalem
Meshelemiah
Meshillemith
Meshillemoth
Meshullam;
Meshullemeth
Muslim
Salem
Salome
Shallum
Shallun
Shalmai
Shalmaneser
Shelemiah
Shelomi
Shelomith
Shelumiel
Shulammite
Solomon
YHWH-shalom


Everybody knows the familiar noun שלום (shalom), meaning peace, but the general meaning of its root-verb שלם (shalem) is that of wholeness, completeness or "unbrokenness" (and see for the opposite the verb רעע, ra'a). Our verb is used to characterize the uncut stones of the altar (Deuteronomy 27:6) and the temple (1 Kings 6:7). It tells of a "full" or perhaps "righteous" wage (Ruth 2:12), and the entirety of a population (Amos 1:6). It also tells of "full" and just weights, which are God's delight (Deuteronomy 25:15 and Proverbs 11:1), and of "whole" hearts devoted to the Lord (1 Kings 8:61). This verb may even denote the completeness of sin (Genesis 15:16), and in some rare cases it may denote friendship (Jeremiah 20:10, Psalm 41:10).

In the Hebrew language it's quite simple to indicate not only a condition (like shalem), but also the means to get there (to "shalem-ize"). The usage of this shalem-ize form in Scriptures is quite revealing. Wholeness is achieved or restored most often by some kind of restitutory payment or covenant: God pays a man according to his work (Job 34:11), but the wicked borrows and does not pay back (Psalm 37:21). The owner of an accidentally killed ox is paid restitution (Exodus 21:36); oil is sold to pay off a debt (2 Kings 4:7); and the Gibeonites swindle Joshua into making a covenant with them (Joshua 10:1). Likewise, shalem is used when vows are to be paid to the Most High, or when days of mourning are to be completed (Isaiah 60:20), and ties in directly to the Messiah and his salvific work (Joel 2:25).

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The Hebrew word for peace - shalom - comes from a verb that means to be whole an unbroken

Abaddon is destruction personified

Abaddon is destruction personified, and it's curious (not to mention evident of a lopsided theological tradition) that Abaddon never received the popular recognition that generally befalls Armageddon and Sheol.

John the Revelator depicts Abaddon (Αβαδδων) as the angel of the abyss, who is king over the swarm of hellish locust that appear under the fifth trumpet (Revelation 9:11), and dubs his name in Greek Apollyon.

In the Old Testament, Abaddon appears alongside Sheol in Proverbs 15:11 and 27:20 (spelled אבדה, Abaddah) and Job 26:6, and alongside Mawet (Death — commemorated in names like Hazarmaveth) in Job 28:22, and along qeber (the grave) in Psalm 88:11. In Job 31:12 fire occurs as a route to Abaddon.

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Why the sons of Abraham are not religious

In English, the words "father" and "son" primarily denote two people who are biologically related, and when we use these words in a figurative sense we ask our audience to apply the familiar bond between a father and his son to two not related people (or items) of which we would like the audience to understand that these are closely familiar or similar.

In Hebrew this works precisely the other way around.

In Hebrew the idea of "father and child" comes from something even more fundamental

The primary idea behind the words for father ('ab) and son (ben) is: the performing of the commands, skills or defining character of one person (the 'ab, or father) by other persons (the benim, or sons).

Sometimes this 'ab is indeed one living person (Isaiah 22:21, 2 Kings 2:12) but quite often the 'ab is the instigator of a guild (hence the "father of all who play flute"; Genesis 4:21) or even the guild itself (hence "son of the prophets"; 2 Kings 9:1). The word ben, in turn, probably comes from the verb bana, meaning to build (such as a "house").

In other words: when in Hebrew we call a flute-player a "son of Jubal" we're not deploying a metaphor but the primary meaning of the word "son". Specifically talking about physical descent requires additional contexts.

So shall your descendants be (Genesis 15:5)

Both Paul and Jesus paid quite some attention to explaining that being a son of Abraham has nothing to do with physical descent and everything with one particular state of mind. It's said that Jesus fulfilled the covenant which God began in Abraham, and Abraham's defining characteristic is that he believed the Lord and was subsequently reckoned righteous (Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:3, Galatians 3:6).

The key-verb is 'aman, which does not convey a pliant compliance or a gullible acceptance, but primarily means to confirm or uphold, even to demonstrate and thereby prove (hence the familiar word Amen). Abraham's believing YHWH has nothing to do with Abraham being religious, or nationalistic, or adhering to a particular school of thought, or being somehow in the know, or obedient to some formal code of conduct. It means precisely the opposite; it means that he was free of all that.

On the "mountain" of human mentality Abraham represents that level of complexity at which a person no longer identifies with one particular box but with the whole of creation and everybody in it.

It begins where someone takes leave from any category (Abraham) and results in complete freedom (Jesus Christ). Despite the noisy claims of many, both Abraham and Jesus Christ have per definition nothing to do with any formal religion. Formal religions are political creatures; they serve to identify and separate groups of tax payers and have nothing to do with serving the Creator. The Creator is served by freedom; His only law is natural law, His only temple is creation.

Sons of the free market

Whoever perpetuates the will of the Lord of Life is a son of Abraham. Hence not just Abraham's physical sons were circumcised, but also all the hundreds of men who were part of his operation; men who were either bought or born of bought people (Genesis 17:10-14, compare with 14:14). Abraham basically gave them their freedom.


When folks returned from the Babylonian exile, heavily funded and protected by the Persian king in order to rebuild the temple of YHWH (Ezra 7:11-26), it became for once in history attractive for everybody to claim Jewish descent.

Subsequently it became important for the Jews to exclude people who had no proof that they indeed belonged to Israel and could well be freeloaders looking for a handout (Ezra 2:59-62).

These rejected folks peopled Samaria and the folks who had proof of their Israelite roots peopled Jerusalem.

By the time of Jesus, the phrase "son of Abraham" had acquired a meaning it never had before, namely that of physical descent or religious-political affiliation; a label of segregation rather than a blessing for all the families of the earth. Jesus offered these "believers" the freedom of Abraham, and they responded by stating that they had never been enslaved (John 8:33). This probably caused a roar of laughter from both local bystanders and the Roman legionaries who kept an eye on them.

Jesus said that if they were indeed the sons of Abraham, they would do the deeds of Abraham (John 8:39), and not perpetuate a blatant and ridiculous lie. They subsequently responded by calling Him a Samaritan (8:48).

More significantly, however, is that the "believers" declared Abraham dead and buried (John 8:53-54) while Jesus declared him alive and well (Matthew 22:32, Luke 20:38).

The camel is the 'unit' of international trade,
and in the Bible mostly associated with Abraham

Most commentators will piously explain this by stating that Abraham is alive in heaven (Luke 16:22) but that may only satisfy the most theoretically inclined readers.

Seekers of earthly reality might surmise that the name Abraham didn't stop to cover something real and earthly with the death of the historical figure called Abram, just like the name Israel didn't begin to denote something dead when Jacob died.

On the "mountain" of human cultural evolution, the tower of Babel denotes the complexity level of national hoarding and Abraham denotes the level of international trade -- also read our article on the word gamal, meaning either camel or 'unit of investment'.

Although the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10), the free, voluntary and unthwarted exchange of any kind of wealth gives life to human culture, quite like electrons give life to matter. This free currency of ideas again follows the second law of thermodynamics; a divine law that feels like freedom simply because it's a law we're designed to operate on.

Why Nobel Prize winners are so often Jewish

So why is such a disproportionally large portion of Nobel Prize laureates Jewish?

Jews comprise 0.2% of the world's population and 2% of the American population. Yet 22% of Nobel Prize recipients world-wide have been Jews and 36% of all US recipients were Jews. Women score even better: 33% and 50% of women recipients, worldwide and American respectively, were Jews.

Jews are not inherently more intelligent than non-Jews (and intelligence is only a factor of success in science) and conspiracy theories aside, there shouldn't be any reason why Jews do better science. Or should there...?

Shalom

An often neglected requirement of good stewardship is an understanding of what's going on. In my nearly three decades as a professional engineer, I've seen great numbers of well-willing morons destroy things simply because their actions were sanctioned by a complete lack of applicable knowledge.

Here at Abarim Publications we understand that good stewardship of the earth goes hand in hand with a proper scientific knowledge of Creation. Even theology should be permeated by the principles of natural law, since no less than the very character and attributes of the Creator are manifested in nature (Romans 1:20).

Paul speaks twice of the renewing of one's mind (Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:23) and although that's often explained to mean that a renewed mind is a pious and unquestioning mind, but there's no real reason to conclude that a new mind isn't one that resonates with the rings of creation. Here at Abarim Publications we're pretty sure that where an old mind is riddled with superstitious nonsense, a renewed mind is a scientific mind.

At the end of His earthly ministry, Jesus addressed His disciples and "opened their minds to understand the Scriptures" (Luke 24:45). Since creation and revelation are God's two witnesses, the two should (1) work the same way, and (2) explain each other, and that's where the Nobel Prizes come in.

People who have been exposed since early childhood to the fabric and workings of Biblical Scriptures have in effect been exposed to the very workings of creation. They have more familiarity with it and thus a slight advantage over people who find themselves looking at wholly new things.

Just like a child that grows up in a household of violin players might some day have a demonstrable advantage in piano class, so does a Jewish kid who's been steeped in Hebrew Scriptures have an measurable advantage in the scientific arena over people who grew up watching Barney the Dinosaur and MacGyver.

In case you haven't seen Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, you really should. And if you thought that Close Encounters was about people having telepathic hunches about spaceships, you really should watch it again. Steven Spielberg is one of those Jewish story tellers and particularly his earlier work is deeply steeped in natural and Torahic principles.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Exodus 19:16-17)

The Hebrew word for light is 'or and the word for lamp is nahar. Those two words don't look much alike transliterated into Latin script but in Hebrew they are so similar that one could pass for a conjugated form of the other so that the word for lamp literally means 'lighting' in the sense of 'illuminating'.

Calling a lamp an illuminator isn't such a big deal, but the deal gets a whole lot bigger when we look at the regular Hebrew word for river: nahar, which is identical to the word for lamp. This noun comes from the identical verb nahar, which means to flow. The regular Hebrew word for Nile is ye'or, which also comes from the word for light, 'or, and means something like 'it shall illuminate'.

Guess who

Imagine being six years old, and hearing the old stories. Wouldn't you wonder why rivers would be known by a word that also means lamp or illuminator? Why is the word that describes the flowing of water the same as the word that describes what light does?

Most ancient cultures sprung up around rivers, so the link between a river and a tribe's central fire may seem obvious apart from the paradox of calling water after a word for fire (in the old world, all light came either from flames or celestial bodies). But still, on the mental desktop of a Hebrew six year old, the icon for river was the same as the icon for lamp, whether intentional or not.

Light, we know now, travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometer per second, which is geek-speak for saying that light is either there or it isn't and you don't see it coming or going. It's too fast; you can't see it move. Light does not visibly travel, and the fact that it travels should not have been known to the ancients. It's therefor a mystery why the Hebrews would associate light with water, but this association is both anti-intuitive and spot on.

What nobody in the ancient world was supposed to know is that light propagates, that it is substantial and obeys the laws of gravity, precisely like water. As Max Planck spectacularly discovered in the early 1900's, light, like water, is not as continuous as it seems but consists of droplets called photons. But light, like water, also comes in waves.

There is absolutely no intuitive connection between matter and light, but everybody now knows that matter is polarized light. Yet the Hebrews calmly maintained that dry land arises from water (Genesis 1:9). The fundamental natural force of electromagnetism is carried by photons, and this same force is what keeps atoms together. That means that light indeed comes before all things, and indeed holds all things together (Colossians 1:17).

Imagine being a six year old, reviewing all these things. And then ending up working in some dusty patent office, wondering why your life is slipping away like sand through stretched fingers. And then you wonder if there isn't more to reality than meets the eye. And then you remember that in Hebrew the word for eye, 'ayin, is the same as the word for fountain.

Wouldn't that make you glad that you never heard of MacGyver?

Abraham the instigator; the first of a lot of things

International trade arose from curiosity

When the beginning of global trade is discussed, scholars commonly emphasize the exchange of goods and violence, and neglect to mention that the exchange of ideas, skills and knowledge (and even DNA) did most of the shaping of humanity's early cultural world.

Various crafts emerged simultaneously all over the Eurasian landmass, which nowadays is admitted to be caused by a huge prehistoric network of blather. Sensational history telling has us believe that the people of the old world were continuously at war with each other, but that is as illogical as far from the truth.

Fighting is a supremely inefficient means to get by, and population densities were so low that very little competition resulted in very little friction and very little wars. Even in today's overcrowded day and age, most violent conflicts happen on TV and not outdoors.

It takes some getting used to but Biblical time is not the same as historical time. It's rather a schedule in complexity, somewhat similar to the "four years" of high school which actually takes you six years of historical time to complete. Hence, when we discuss Biblical history, the word "first" marks a level of complexity not a particular point in time.

As such, Abraham is the "first" character in the Bible who properly itinerates and even circulates (and read our article on the name Hebrew for a look at the typical inquisitive nature of Abraham's journey), the first to be rich (in cattle and precious metals; Genesis 13:2), the first to compete and to establish a peaceful economic pact (with Lot; 13:6-12), the first to view the entire world as his oyster (13:14-15) and to whom the sky was the limit (15:5).

Abraham was the first to pay property tax, namely 10% (to Melchizedek; Genesis 14:20), and this was adopted into Israel's national policy (Genesis 28:22, Numbers 18:26, Hebrews 7:5). The first time the Bible speaks of a commercial purchase is in Genesis 17, where circumcision is instituted as sign of the great covenant, and YHWH orders Abraham to include the men he had acquired via purchase (miqna, which is related to the name Cain).

The first monetary transaction occurs as restitution for Sarah's disgrace by Abimelech (Genesis 20:16; because Abraham was also the first to pimp off his wife, twice: Genesis 20 and 12:11-20).

A first century Shekel

The first actual purchase with money described in the Bible is Abraham's flamboyantly negotiated acquisition of the cave of Machpelah from Ephron, son of Zohar of Heth. Abraham wanted that cave and wanted to pay for it in order to properly burry Sarah (Genesis 23). He paid 400 shekels for it (23:16), according to the "passing of trade" ('aber lasahar, from the same root as the name Hebrew).

The shekel probably started out as a standard weight (proper monetary coinage was probably invented by the Lydians in the 8th century BC), although it's a mystery how this standard was obtained or maintained. Still, a commercial standard based on the common usage of a unit of wealth demonstrates an advanced level of social sophistication.

Abraham the camel man

A somewhat more hairy unit of wealth was the camel, but where the English word "camel" is solely reserved for that humped beast of burden, the Hebrew cognate gamal, meaning camel, comes from the identical verb gamal, which means to trade or invest. In other words: the Hebrew noun gamal does not denote a specific biological genus, it describes a particular economic function, namely that of investing and long-distance trading.

The unit of long distance trade

The camel too gets its Biblical introduction in the Abraham cycle, namely when the Egyptian Pharaoh reimburses Abram for the Sarai incident with sheep, cattle, donkeys, servants and camels (12:16).

The next time Abraham's proverbial camels are mentioned is when Abraham sends his chief of staff (probably Eliezer) north to his family's land with "ten" camels and the whole of Abraham's wealth in his hand (24:10), in order to obtain a wife for Isaac (and note the emphasis on the personal freedom upon which all trade is based: 24:5-8).

The first time the verb gamal is used, surprisingly enough, is in the statement, "The child grew and was weaned (or more literally: invested in during its startup period), and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned" (21:8).

Since the name Isaac means joy or fun, this statement also explains that the result of international trade is play, leisure and entertainment.

Fun with Abraham and Zarathustra

Very few modern commentators will deny that the story of Jesus was told in such a way that besides convey absolute truth, it also responded to the hippest beliefs in the Greco-Roman world.

For instance, the signature Christian phrases "Savior of the World," "King of Kings" and even "Son of God" were not coined by Paul as is commonly thought, but came straight out of the Roman Imperial cult, and see our article on the name Homer for a lengthy look at Greek legacy in the New Testament.

Though doubtlessly conveyed from a very ancient past, the story of Abraham was written in its present form during the Babylonian exile and at that time, Babylon was wholly Zarathustrian in precisely the same way that the world in Jesus' time was totally Greco-Roman.

The Hebrew Old Testament is as much as response to its Babylonian world as the Greek New Testament was to its Greco-Roman world

Zarathustrianism, brilliant in its own right, was an intermediate phase between natural polytheism and the monotheism nowadays commonly ascribed to Abraham, and the story of Abraham from Ur (which means Light or Wisdom) of the Chaldeans (an ethnically diverse learned class of Babylon, comparable to the Levites of Israel) most probably came about as both a respectful review of Zarathustrianism and a formal objection to some of its tenets.

It's not clear to which extend the literary Zarathustra represents an actual historical individual, but it's altogether quite probable that the function of the literary character of Zarathustra in the Avesta marks a level of complexity, just like Abraham in the Torah, namely the level associated with an unrestricted global currency of ideas. As we made clear in our article on the name Abraham, the world-wide exchange of ideas pretty much began with the domestication of the camel, which explains why the camel is so important in the Abraham cycle.

In the name Zarathustra

Zarathustra, the celebrated
inventor of monotheism

It's not wholly clear what the name Zarathustra means but scholars generally agree that it consists of two parts and that the second part means camel. In other words: Like Abraham, Zarathustra too reflects international exchange.

The first part of the name Zarathustra is the mystery bit; we don't even know for sure whether it's "Zarath-" or "Zara-", which means that the second part is either ushtra, meaning camel, or thushtra, which, we can't help notice, has some phonetic similarity to the name Terah, which belongs to Abraham's father but which doesn't seem to mean much in Hebrew.

But Abram and his family were natives of Chaldea and their names may in fact be not Semitic but Indo-European and transliterated into Hebrew in such a way that they seem Semitic (something similar was done to Levite names such as Moses and Aaron, which were most probably originally Egyptian names, made to look Semitic).

The Greeks appear to have thought that the first part of the name Zarathusthra was "Zara-" because they transliterated it as Zoroaster (zoro aster = Gold Star, the second part being similar to the name Esther, also Persian). Whatever the "Zarath-" or "Zara-" part of the name Zarathustra might have meant, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the name Sarah, belonging to Abraham's wife and half sister. Some scholars even believe that the first part of the name Zarathustra contains a Vedic element har, which immediately brings to mind the name of Abraham's brother Haran (the -an part being a very common Hebrew formative extension).

Perhaps the Hebrew authors were bound by historical events and names and all these similarities are coincidences, but probably more likely is that the Hebrew authors reflected the real past of mankind in forms they chose freely. More attractive still is the possibility that these names reflect concepts that stem from very deep antiquity, when language was being formed by the same forces that formed the rest of humanity.

The kinship of Abraham and Zoroastrianism is nevertheless clearly and respectfully demonstrated by Matthew, in whose nativity account the infant Christ was tracked down via the cosmology of Zoroastrian priests long before anybody else had any idea what was going on (Matthew 2:1).

Happy days are here again

The primary symbol of Zarathustrianism is the Faravahar, the famous winged disk that still dominates the symbology of modern Iran. It is thought to depict a fravashi, a person's private spirit, perhaps not unlike the personal angel recognized by the New Testament authors (Matthew 18:10, Acts 12:15).

The Faravahar depicting a depicting a fravashi

It's unclear what the word fravashi precisely means but it's generally considered to derive from the element var-, which may mean to choose (so that fravashi means He Who Chooses), or to cover (so, He Who Covers). That's again significant because (1) the name Lot means precisely that: Covering, and (2) the ab-part of the name Abram means father, which in turn may stem from a verb that means to chose, or rather "having the statutory right to chose".

The Bible also obviously recognizes personal angels of whole nations (Exodus 23:23, Daniel 10:20) and although the origin of the Faravahar is formally obscure, it may very well represent the spirit of free global exchange; the fravashi of Abraham, so to speak.

The meaning and etymology of the name Abraham are obscure and much debated, but one possibility is that is contains the element 'abar, meaning to use wings or feathers (in order to protect), from the majestic root 'br, meaning to be strong or firm. This verb is also the root of the divine name Abir (the Mighty One; Genesis 49:24).

The Faravahar is commonly depicted with a little man sitting in the disk. This is thought to be Asshur, the chief deity of Assyria. It's not clear what idea the divine name Asshur may originally have reflected, but in Hebrew it is nearly identical to the name Asher (son of Jacob with Zilpah, and thus great-grandson of Abraham) and means to go straight (just) or to be happy, as in the statement be'asheri kay asheruny: in my happiness they'll deem me happy (Genesis 30:13). Abraham's son-of-the-promise was named Isaac, meaning joy, which clearly reflects the same or a similar sentiment.

Both Asshur and Isaac possibly reflect the insight that comedy is a very safe vault to store wisdom in. Had the wisdom of the Hebrews been stored in any other medium than the riveting stories of Abraham, Moses and David, but, say in mathematical symbology or long lists of statements, it would have not survived. In that sense the Ark of the Covenant is as important as the Covenant itself.

Fun with the name Abraham

Abraham, the father of all believers
 (Galatians 3:29)

The etymology of the name Abraham is an admitted enigma; the Jewish Encyclopedia even laments that "the form 'Abraham' yields no sense in Hebrew," which is a bit curt and if anything demonstrative of a failing imagination. But it's true that no degree of imaginativeness can render the name Abraham the meaning of Father Of Many Nations.

When the Lord changed Abram's name to Abraham (by apparently inserting the letter he before the final mem) He said, "For I will make you the father of a multitude of nations" ('ab hamon goyim; "father of a multitude of nations" -- Genesis 17:4-5) and for millennia people have concluded that Abraham must mean Father Of A Multitude.

In recent times we've recognized that this is nonsense. When we name our dog Charlie because that seems a good idea at the time, it's by no means insinuated that Charlie means "good idea at the time." The name Abraham isn't remotely similar to the phrase 'ab hamon goyim.

The 'ab- part of our name Abraham is traditionally thought to correspond to the Hebrew word 'ab (meaning "father" as used in our phrase 'ab hamon goyim), but that too is without any base. The original name Abram could indeed be construed to be 'ab plus rum and translated with Father of Elevation, but if the new name Abraham starts with 'ab, we're left with rhm, which doesn't occur elsewhere in the Bible.

This means either that Abraham is the father of something that nobody in the Bible ever mentions, or that rhm isn't a Hebrew word. The latter option is much more probable, and strongly suggests that the first part of the name Abraham is not Hebrew either, and certainly not 'ab, meaning father.

The second word of our phrase 'ab hamon goyim is the noun hamon, which does not express simply a large number of people or nations, but the rain-like noise that emerges from a unified but seething throng. The third word is the plural of goy, meaning nation, tribe or any culturally distinct entity.

The phrase 'ab hamon goyim positively does not mean that Abraham would be the biological ancestor of the horde of conflicting political nations we recognize today, but rather the bee-busy mentality from which all global exchange stems. Both the words 'ab and hamon demonstrate not a multifariousness but a unitedness, and the whole phrase much rather reflects convergence and unification than expansion and divergence. The phrase 'ab hamon goyim should be understood as a sanctified (that is natural and organic) alternative to the rejected (that is artificial and mechanic) tower of Babel.

Abraham is not a border-maker; he is a border-breaker, the embodiment of the second law of thermodynamics, the world-wide free exchange of knowledge and skills. His patriarchy is one of consilience; in him are summed up the peacemakers of which Jesus said they would be called Sons Of God (Matthew 5:9).

Read our article on the familiar Hebrew word shalom for a look at the actual, fundamental meaning of the often misunderstood Biblical concept of peace. Abraham was famously considered righteous and he met the King of Righteousness (Melchizedek) at Salem (from the same root as shalom, which is no coincidence; Genesis 14:18).

More fun with the name Abraham

As stated above, the original name Abram could be construed as purely Semitic and consist of 'ab, meaning father, and rum meaning elevation. But Abram originated in Chaldea, and although Chaldea was Semitic, it was situated on the border with the Indo-European realm: Persia, where Zoroastrianism came from. The root rum was widely attested of all over the Semitic language area, and there is some indication that it was used in Persia as well. The 'ab-part may therefore be Zoroastrian as well and since Abram was called Hebrew, which literally denotes someone who wades through and arrives on the dry side, what readily jumps to mind is the word Abas.

Abas is the Avestan word for "the waters" which in Zoroasterianism clearly corresponds to the Torahic waters of the first three days of creation. This word Abas comes from a proto-Indo-Iranian stem ap- meaning water, and the name Abram, all together, might have been designed to specifically remind of the two, later three, great water walks of the Bible:

• The Spirit of God hovering over the prime ordeal waters (Genesis 1:2), 
• Noah and company floating on the great flood (Genesis 7:17), 
• Jesus' walk on water (as obvious fulfillment of the previous two; Matthew 14:25).

The name Abraham, therefore, may be not merely an extended version of Abram, but rather a completely different name, a semi-similar sounding Semitic answer to an Indo-European original, as different as Bart and Burt (Bart is Aramaic, short for Bartholomew, means Son Of Talmai; Burt is the old English word "beorht" meaning bright and is related to Robert).

Still, in all its mystery, the name Abraham clearly contains a marvelous wink to the Hebrew sensitivity for word play. As noted above, to a creative audience, the first part of the name Abraham could be construed to be similar to Abir, meaning "strength" and the final bit could be taken for the personal pronoun ham, meaning "their".

In Genesis 17:4-5 God says (liberally paraphrased): "My covenant (berit) is with you, and you will manifest international exchange. No longer will you manifest Self-Enrichment, but you will be Their Strength; because I have made you the manifestation of international exchange."

Also noted above, the literal difference between the names Abram and Abraham is the insertion of the letter he in between the R and the M. This same letter occurs twice in the Lord's personal Name, YHWH, as if the Lord poured His own Spirit into the heart of Abram when He made him Abraham.

But it gets better.

The first letter of the name Abraham is the 'aleph, which sometimes serves as a mere cosmetic addition to a word without essentially changing it. The final letter of our name is the mem, which at the end of a word also often serves to mark a grammatical construction without essentially altering the meaning.

When we drop the 'aleph at the beginning and the mem at the end, what's left is the root brh, from whence comes the noun berit, meaning covenant.

In other words: the meaning of the name Abraham is generally listed to be obscure, but that's not because we have no ideas. Rather the opposite...