SYRIA: That Neighbor Next Door to Israel and Their Long Long Relationship Part I

 Nadene Goldfoot                                          

The area roughly corresponds to the Levant, with biblical Syria generally referring to the northern Levant, including the region of Aram and its principal city, Damascus. Biblical Israel, in turn, would be shown in the southern Levant, including the area of Canaan. 

Syria and Israel go back to the Bible Days of the Old Testament.  Then, Syria's name was Aram.  There's a significant connection between King David and ancient Syria, particularly evident in the Tel Dan Stele. Discovered in 1993, this stone inscription, believed to be from an Aramean king, refers to the "House of David", suggesting the existence of a Davidic dynasty recognized beyond Israel. This is notable because: The stele dates to around 140 years after David's death, indicating his legacy persisted.  It provides independent, extra-biblical evidence for the historical existence of King David and his royal line.

Ruling Aram were kings who never did succeed to create a homogeneous state, probably because their coastal strip was settled by the Phoenicians, since Jews and Greeks also lived there, too, with other people.    Listed in both I and II Kings, there was constant friction with the kingdoms of Israel and then when only Judah was left of the 12 tribes until the 8th century BCE when Syria was overrun by the Assyrians who also took as slaves 27,290 Israelites to Assyria and Media and Syria in 721 BCE. Some of the Israelites from the northern kingdom were relocated to areas that were part of the Assyrian provinces in what is now modern-day Syria. 

Its Jewish population, especially at Antioch, was of special importance in the Seleucid Era, a dynasty that lasted for two centuries, during which time Hellenistic art, a fusion of Greek and Near Eastern artistic traditions, developed and flourished. Antioch, established in 300 BCE,  is the name of several locations, most notably an ancient city in Turkey (historically Syria). 

(The Seleucid Era began in 312 BCE. This era was established by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, to mark his victory and consolidation of power in Babylonia after Alexander's death, according to historical records. The Seleucid Empire, founded in this era, lasted until 63 BCE.)   

Jews suffered from the hostility of the Greeks.  A few Jews lived there during the TALMUDIC PERIOD and under Theodosius II (408-50), their religious freedom was restricted, with many synagogues being converted to churches. 

The situation in Syria improved with the Arab conquest (634-7) when Jews were allowed to maintain their faith but were forced to pay poll-tax.  The largest communities in the 12th century according to Benjamin of Tudela, researcher/traveler were at Aleppo with 5,000, Damascus with 3,000 and Palmyra with 2,000. Even in 1980 in Damascus there is a Jew Street.  In fact, the Jewish population increased after (1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue) by refugees from Spain and Sicily and was important in the transit trade between Europe and Asia.  

Then there was the Damascus Blood Libel in 1840 which evoked worldwide reaction.  The Superior of the Franciscan Convent and his servant had disappeared and this  led to a search of the Jewish Quarter on the instigation of the local Catholics who were supported by the French Consul.             

The burning of heretics at stakes (auto-da-fé) in a marketplace during the Spanish Inquisition (1492)-after heretics in Mexico later.

The torture of leading Jews with one dying under the ordeal elicited a confession of murder.  This led to a campaign of incitement against all Jews.  The public outcry in the western world and the personal intervention of Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Cremieus, who went to Alexandria to interview Mehemet Ali, ruler of Syria, led to the quashing of the charges and the release of the survivors.  Montefiore then visited the Sultan in Constantinople and procured a firman   

condemning the Ritual Murder libel and confirming Jewish rights.  The episode had important consequences in stimulating the political consciousness and organization of Western European Jewry.  

 In 1920, following the collapse of the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria with  the French mandate in 1920, Jews obtained equal rights. 

Chaim Weizmann and Faisal bin Hussein, who for a short period was king of Syria;  picture of both who became friends in Paris meeting.                      

                                                   King Faisal bin Hussein

As a kingdom the state existed a little over four months, from 8 March to 25 July 1920. During its brief existence, the kingdom was led by Sharif Hussein bin Ali's son Faisal bin Hussein. Despite its claims to the territory of the region of Syria, Faisal's government controlled a limited area and was dependent on Britain which, along with France, generally opposed the idea of a Greater Syria and refused to recognize the kingdom. After a four month-long war, the kingdom surrendered to French forces on 25 July 1920.

 France established its mandate over Syria, as authorized by the League of Nations. This mandate, formalized in 1923, included the territories of modern-day Syria and Lebanon. The French administration implemented a system of governance that involved dividing the region into smaller states, including Damascus, Aleppo, the Alawite State, and the Jabal Druze State, as well as Greater Lebanon. This division was partly based on sectarian demographics, but also aimed to weaken nationalist movements by fostering localized identities, according to a Wikipedia article. 

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.crivoice.org/othassyrian.html#:~:text=In%20734%2C%20Tiglath%2DPileser's%20armies,and%20ravage%20the%20Syrian%20territories.

https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/the-seleucid-empire-323-64-b-c

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius_II

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Syria_and_the_Lebanon#:~:text=Arriving%20in%20Lebanon%2C%20the%20French,being%20realized%20under%20the%20French.

 

Abram, An Urian of Chaldees, And Where The Chaldean Tribe Came From Part 2

 Nadene Goldfoot                                      

Standing on the Ziggaret of Ur;  perhaps their Royal Family.  Good morning from UR, royal city of the #Chaldeans.  Iraqis proud to share their native #Chaldean and #Sumerian heritage through creative and beautiful native fashion design. Reflecting the genius people of #Mesopotamia and the builders of the first human civilization in human history.

Abram's tribe seems to be those that came to Ur from the Chaldees, since the Bible refers to his city as Ur of the Chaldees.  This differentiates the native Urians who were not Semites from the tribe who came and settled there from the Chaldees who were Semites, meaning they were people speaking a Semitic language such as Hebrew or Arabic.

    Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are in Iraq; so Chaldea was more in Iran.  That's where his tribe came from; that became part of Ur of the Chaldees, a Semitic (Hebrew-speaking tribe) or language like Hebrew.  Portuguese and French are both Latin, or Romance, languages while Farsi and Arabic represent two different language groups: Iranian and Semitic, respectively. In fact, Farsi is not only in a separate language group from Arabic but it's also in a separate language family.  Farsi is what they speak in Iran.  So I would say that the Chaldean tribes were not happy in Persia, either because they did not speak the same language.  Maybe that's why they moved on to the Euphrates River and Ur.    

Chaldea (/kælˈdiːə/) was a small country that existed between the late 10th or early 9th and mid-6th centuries BCE, after which the country and its people were absorbed and assimilated into the indigenous population of Babylonia.  Semitic-speaking, it was located in the marshy land of the far southeastern corner of Mesopotamia and briefly came to rule Babylon. The Hebrew Bible (Torah) uses the term כשדים (Kaśdim) and this is translated as Chaldaeans in the Greek Old Testament, although there is some dispute as to whether Kasdim in fact means Chaldean or refers to the south Mesopotamian Kaldu.  

 The name appears in Hebrew in the Bible as Kaśdim (כשדים) and in Aramaic as Kaśdāy (כשדי).

In the Torah (Bible) (Book of Genesis 22:22), the name "Kesed"(כשׂד, ancient pronunciation /kaɬd/) , is the singular form of "Kasdim"(כַּשְׂדִּים), meaning Chaldeans. 

Kesed is identified as son of Abraham's brother Nahor ((Genesis 11:26 NIV). When Terah had lived 70 years, he begot Abram, Nahor,, and Haran.  Haran became the name of a town that Abram reached on the way from Ur to Canaan and lived there until he was 75 years old.  

          Aram-Damascus land or Syria to us:  The Levant c. 830 BCE

and King Jehu (843-816) ruled Israel .  He was unsuccessful in his wars with Aram and paid tribute to Shalmaneser III of Assyria to obtain his protection.  On repelling the Assyrian threat, Hazael of Aram deprived Jehu of much of his territory.  His dynasty continued to reign for a century.  

 Scripture also shares that Nahor was married to Milkah, the daughter of his brother Haran) (and brother of Kemuel ( Genesis 22:21 as the nephew of Abraham, son of Nahor, brother of Bethuel (father of Rebekah) and the father of Aram), residing in Aram Naharaim. (ie, Aram of the Two Rivers, (Tigris and Euphrates) the NE area of Mesopotamia.  It is the land of origin of the patriarchs, and nearly all the names of the ancestors of Abraham, such as Serug, Nahor and Terah correspond to place-names in this region.  Aram means Syria and Aram-Dammesek was the most important Aramean kingdom in Syria in the 10th to 8th centuries BCE.  After the division of Solomon's kingdom, Aram was a constant danger to Israel. The Arameans were a group of linguistically related Semitic peoples living in what is today Syria and western Iraq. Their influence and presence spanned the region of the Fertile Crescent. According to the Table of Nations in Genesis 10:22, Aram, the ancestral father of the Arameans, was a grandson of Noah and a son of Noah's firstborn son, Shem. Genesis 22:20-24 

Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37 – c. 100) also links Arphaxad (Arpachshad alternatively spelled Arphaxad or Arphacsad, is one of the postdiluvian men in the Shem–Terah genealogy.) and Chaldaea, in his Antiquities of the Jews, stating, “Arphaxad named the Arphaxadites, who are now called Chaldeans.”  Remember that Terah is the father of Abram.                              

The name Chaldaea is a latinization of the Greek Khaldaía (Χαλδαία), a hellenization of Akkadian māt Kaldu or Kašdu, suggesting an underlying /kaɬdu/.

The Torah holds the genealogy of mankind, starting with Adam and Eve and Seth, and through Seth that the human race survived.  The flood story is told and then the Tower of Babel when all people spoke the same language and then were dispersed in world, and wound up speaking different languages.  Trying to identify The Chaldeans is like trying to find a needle in the Tower of Babel. It's taken my Semitic tribes of Chaldees to Persia's land for an origin so far.  The descendants of Noah and the Flood were in Shinar and their building tried to reach heaven.  The story is that G-d frustrated their work by confusing their languages, leading to the diversity of tongues (Gen.11:1-9).  Modern scholars have seen a similarity between the tower and the Sumerian Ziggurat, or step-temple.  

 Bit Yâkin was the name of the largest and most powerful of the five tribes of the Chaldeans, or equivalently, their territory. The original extension of Bit Yâkin is not known precisely, but it extended from the lower Tigris into the Arabian Peninsula. Sargon II mentions it as extending as far as Dilmun or "sea-land" (littoral Eastern Arabia). "Chaldea" or mat Kaldi generally referred to the low, marshy, alluvial land around the estuaries of the Tigris and Euphrates, which at the time discharged their waters through separate mouths into the sea.                                      

      The Chaldean States in Babylonia during the 1st millennium BCE.

Important Kaldu tribes and their regions in southeastern Babylonia were Bit-Yâkin (the original area the Chaldeans settled in on the Persian Gulf), Bet-Dakuri, Bet-Adini, Bet-Amukkani, and Bet-Shilani.  These nomadic Chaldeans settled in the far southeastern portion of Babylonia, chiefly on the left bank of the Euphrates. Though for a short time the name commonly referred to the whole of southern Mesopotamia in Hebraic literature, this was a geographical and historical misnomer as Chaldea proper was in fact only the plain in the far southeast formed by the deposits of the Euphrates and the Tigris, extending about 640 kilometres (400 mi) along the course of these rivers and averaging about 160 km (100 mi) in width. There were several kings of Chaldean origins who ruled Babylonia.  From 626 BC to 539 BC, a ruling family referred to as the Chaldean dynasty, named after their possible Chaldean origin, ruled the kingdom at its height under the Neo-Babylonian Empire, although the final ruler of this empire, Nabonidus (556–539 BC) (and his son and regent Belshazzar) was a usurper of Assyrian ancestry.

The tribal capital Dur Yâkin was the original seat of Marduk-Baladan.

The king of Chaldea was also called the king of Bit Yakin, just as the kings of Babylonia and Assyria were regularly styled simply king of Babylon or Assur, the capital city in each case. In the same way, what is now known as the Persian Gulf was sometimes called "the Sea of Bit Yakin", and sometimes "the Sea of the Land of Chaldea".

Ur of the Chaldees was a special group of people who lived in Ur who were Hebrew speakers.  The natives of Ur did not speak their language.  Abram was one of them.  His tribe, a member of 5 tribes, seemed to come from a section of Persia, that was even further east than Ur was to Canaan.  They had been a nomadic society.  Abram's tribe was Semitic, meaning speaking a Semitic language such as Hebrew or Arabic.  Farsi, the language spoken in Persia (today's Iran) is not a Semitic language.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaldea 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.lingualinx.com/blog/farsi-vs-arabic-comparision#:~:text=Language%20Groups%20and%20Families&text=Portuguese%20and%20French%20are%20both,in%20a%20separate%20language%20family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aram_(region)

Ebla of Ancient History and Its Clay Tablets

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

     Ruins of the outer wall and the "Damascus Gate" of Ebla

In Syria, we find the ancient city of Ebla, a place where 20,000  clay tablets with writing have been found telling us about the ancient history of that place.               

Tell Mardikh — Ebla, written by Faja Haj Muhammad that gives a short presentation of the history and remains of the kingdom of ancient Ebla. I will share a couple of photos with some brief info from that book.  The first photo shows the reconstruction of the Palace of the Crown Prince (Palace Q or Western Palace). This palace, built of mud brick, is “located in the lower town, west of the Acropolis.” In the portion of the palace shown here you will see “a well preserved room, used for the grinding of cereals, in order to prepare bread for hundreds of persons.”  

Also, the city that Abram came from UR, also had clay tablets.  "About 1,100 of the tablets date from the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, (ca. 2112–2004 BCE). They were discovered in the administrative archives of 2 towns in southern Mesopotamia, Umma and Puzrish-Dagan.

      Ebla is on this map.  

Syria (Aram)  originally was vastly huge.  Aram, Ancient country, Middle East, southwestern Asia. It extended eastward from the Anti-Lebanon Mountains to beyond the Euphrates River. It was named for the Aramaeans, who emerged from the Syrian desert to invade Syria and Upper Mesopotamia (c. 11th century BCE) and who built numerous city-kingdoms, including Damascus. It lends its name to the Aramaic language.                          

First Kingdoms: The Forgotten Mesopotamian Kingdom of Ebla

Ebla, modern Tall Mardīkh, also spelled Tell Mardikh, ancient city 33 miles (53 km) southwest of Aleppo in northwestern Syria. During the height of its power (c. 2600–2240 BCE), Ebla dominated northern Syria, Lebanon, and parts of northern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and enjoyed trade and diplomatic relations with states as far away as Egypt, Iran, and Sumer. 

Isaiah 7:2 (CJB) It was told to the house of David that Aram (Syria) and Efrayim (Ephraim, younger son of Joseph, the hill country in central Eretz Yisrael noted for its fertility with Solomon's son,, Jeroboam, from there-1st king after Solomon's death) (had become allies with Aram, an enemy. Achaz's heart began to tremble, as did the hearts of his people, like forest trees shaken by the wind.  In (Gen.10:22) we learn that Aram and Israel had a common ancestry and the Israelite patriarch were of Aramaic origin and maintained ties of marriage with the tribes of Aram.  

Jewish comments: "Ebla is a site in northern Syria (Tel Mardikh) where an ancient royal archive was discovered, consisting of over 15,000 tablets written in Sumerian and a language similar to ancient Akkadian.  They date back from the mid-third millennium BCE.  while only a few texts have been published, it is apparent that they are of great value for biblical texts and throw new light on the early history of the Land of Israel."

Ebla maintained its prosperity through a vast trading network. Artifacts from Sumer, Cyprus, Egypt and as far as Afghanistan were recovered from the city's palaces. The kingdom had its own language, Eblaite, and the political organization of Ebla had features different from the Sumerian model.

 Women enjoyed a special status, and the queen had major influence in the state and religious affairs. The pantheon of gods was mainly north Semitic and included deities exclusive to Ebla. The city was excavated starting in 1964 and became famous for the Ebla tablets, an archive of about 20,000 cuneiform tablets found there, dated to around 2350 bcE. Written in both Sumerian and Eblaite and using the cuneiform, the archive has allowed a better understanding of the Sumerian language and provided important information over the political organization and social customs of the mid-3rd millennium bcE's Levant.

At the beginning of the process of deciphering the tablets, Giovanni Pettinato made claims about a possible connections between Ebla and the Bible, citing an alleged references in the tablets to the existence of Yahweh, the Patriarchs, Sodom and Gomorrah and other Biblical references. However, much of the initial media excitement about a supposed Eblaite connections with the Bible, based on preliminary guesses and speculations by Pettinato and others, is now widely discredited and the academic consensus is that Ebla "has no bearing on the Minor Prophets, the historical accuracy of the Biblical Patriarchs, Yahweh worship, or Sodom and Gomorrah". 

 In Ebla studies, the focus has shifted away from comparisons with the Bible; Ebla is now studied as a civilization in its own right. The claims led to a bitter personal and academic conflict between the scholars involved, as well as what so described as political interference by the Syrian authorities.  I'm not surprised that that the non-religious element refuses to 

see any connection.  If there is at least a 51% possibility, it 

should be considered.  DNA below,  shows a  connection that 

Jews have to Ebla.  

According to ancient DNA analyses conducted by Skourtanioti et al. (2020) on 10 human remains from Tel Mardikh from Early and Middle Bronze age, the inhabitants of the kingdom of Ebla were a mixture of Copper age Levantines and Mesopotamians, and were genetically similar to contemporary Levantines from Alalakh and Sidon. 

One Early Bronze Age (2700-2500 BC) individual carried haplogroup E1b1b1b2a-M123, a lineage likely linked to the diffusion of Afroasiatic languages.  This is pretty exciting because many Jews tested carry E-L117.   the YDNA haplogroup E-L117 (if that has not also changed) has undergone several name changes, and is still often referred to as 'E1b1b1' or even 'E-3b'. Google those 'E codes' and all becomes clear, as there are numerous references to the Jewish link to the haplogroup including http://e1b1b1-m35.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/e1b1b1-jewish-haplogroup.html .

In a nutshell, the group's origins had previously been assumed to have arose in East Africa and the haplogroup was often incorrectly described as African, leaving a misimpression regarding the origin and complex history of this haplogroup. According to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG) and National Geographic's Genographic Project, E1b1b1 may have arisen instead in the Near East or the Middle East, and then expanded into the Mediterranean with the spread of agriculture.

 Another Early Bronze age (2572-2470 cal BCE) individual belonged to J1a2a1a2-P58, while four Middle Bronze Age (2000-1800 BC) individuals carried haplogroups G2a, J1a2a1a2-P58, and the West Asian T1a1-L162 which was present since the middle PPNB Levant. Jews have been found to carry J1 (Cohen gene), and G.  

Resource:

https://www.britannica.com/place/Ebla

https://ferrelljenkins.blog/2011/05/25/the-golden-age-of-ebla-%E2%80%94-before-the-biblical-patriarchs/

https://groups.jewishgen.org/g/main/topic/70311032

https://www.biblestudytools.com/isaiah/7-2-compare.html