PROOF: Moses, Prince of Egypt, Son of Israelite Slaves: Finding Our Genealogy in the Y Haplogroup Line of J1 or J2.

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

 

 Jochebed saving her newborn son, Moses, by placing him in a basket to float down the Nile, out of harm's way.  With her is her daughter, Miriam.  Women who converted would be given the Hebrew name of Miriam.  

                                                                               

The Parents of Moses (1391-1271 BCE)  were Amram and Jochebed of the tribe of Levi, where the Jewish line of Cohens originated from.  Moses had been united with his older brother, Aaron, and had deemed him to be the priest of the new religion he was creating, later to be called Judaism.  From Aaron's descendants came the Cohens or Priestly line with special duties.  Aaron died on  Mt. Hor, on the bordeer of Edom, at the age of 123.  In rabbinic legend he is regarded as the personification of piety and the spirit of peace, but he was also showed with his faults as well.  He was persuaded to make the Golden Calf while Moses was on Mt. Sinai.  It shows the mentality of the people at that period.  Moses had a big undertaking ahead of him.  

Why should I believe in this tale of our history that comes from the 5 books of Moses, the Torah?  Most all the world doesn't give it much credence, including many some of today's Jews.  Many refer to it as a fairy tale set up to push the political beliefs of the Jews and their hold on the land once called Palestine.

I believe in this story and so do others.  I love it when DNA , a science of today that can find something like a tag each of us carries showing where we were made, proves the case of the Torah's authenticity.                                 

The connection between the Egyptians and Moses and the Israelite tribes shows much in DNA.  J1, which is the tag of a DNA test of Y haplogroups, is called the Cohen gene.  Actual men serving as the ancient Cohen in the synagogue, bear this DNA .  We had a Hochfeld cousin who was a Cohen in the synagogue, reading first from the Torah before the Levites who were 2nd, and then the Israelites.  DNA showed that he was also the bearer of the J1 Cohen gene, the Y haplogroup.  It's true.  This is not a matter of a fairy tale.  People of Moses's day knew nothing of DNA.  

Genetic studies among Cohanim from all over the world reveal the truth behind this oral tradition. About 50 percent of Cohanim in both Sephardic and Ashkenazic populations have an unusual set of genetic markers on their Y chromosome. What is equally striking is that this genetic signature of the Cohanim is rarely found outside of Jewish populations.

The Y chromosome also keeps track of time. Small mutations occur in the DNA being passed on, and these changes build up with each generation. Like the tick of a clock, the number of these mutations is a measure of time passed. By looking at the differences between Y chromosomes in the Cohanim, researchers can estimate roughly how many generations ago members of the priesthood had a common ancestor. Remarkably, the evidence suggests the Cohanim chromosomes coalesce at a date that corresponds with when the priesthood is thought to have begun.

What researchers may have found is a marker indicating paternal connection to the people from whom the ancient Hebrews emerged—potentially a powerful tool that enables us to look into the history of many Judaic populations.

J-M267 , the J1 Cohen marker of the Y haplogroup of my relative, Hochfeld, is very common throughout the Levant and Semitic dominations  by J-P58, but some specific sub-populations have notably low frequencies. Syrian Sunnis of Hama  have 47.2%.  The Ismaili group of Damascus, Syria, had 58.8%.  Palestinians had 32.7%, and they had many coming from all over the Middle East that called themselves Palestinians.  

Cohanim Jews had 46.0%.  Their test was run by Hammer and Behar in 2009.  Those tested were the remnant of Cohens left after the Holocaust, a group of 215 tested.  Think how many Cohens were slaughtered in the Holocaust, lost to us.  it shows that many of today's Jews have been of the Cohen line of Aaron.  

Jerusalem, Israel. A group of Cohanim (Members of Levi Tribe) and models of Herod's temple ritual tools during a simulation of the Passover sacrifice.

It happens that Jews are divided between the Cohens, the Levites, and the Israelites.  The Levites were a special group being Aaron and Moses were of this tribe.  Moses gave his closest relatives the greatest responsibilities to bear.  Scientifically, Cohens are the descendants  of Aaron specifically.  Levites are all the descendants of of Levi, and Israelites are all the other 11 tribes out of the 12 of Jacob.  They all 12 tribes would be 1st cousins with a lot of ? times removed from each other.  So, those Jews bearing J1 are from the tribe of Levi and specifically from Aaron, the brother of Moses.  They have the biggest job of all of the Jews and were never allocated land by Joshua after entering Canaan.  Big Job-no land means no pay in real- estate.  That's the way it was to be.  They were to be the teachers of their religion and go from tribe to tribe, teaching.  They would live with their cousins.  

One does have family membership in being Jewish with the occasional converted included, as long as they had a Jewish mother.  Even that is changing in this generation, for there are many Jews where only the father was Jewish and the mother did not convert.  However, many Romans had been converting into Judaism at the exasperation of Roman emperors who put a stop to that in the 300s CE (AD) in their meetings.  From thereon, Jews did not proselytize.  After Christians had used forced conversions on Jews, Jews realized it was one of those things they did not want to ever do to others; so it has been the practice that if any person asked to be converted to Judaism, they would be turned down 3 times, needing to consider the steps they are taking and then will be considered.  So the DNA of Jews has been that which scientists love to study.  

Going way back to the 12 sons, patriarchs of the 12 tribes, , Levi  was the 3rd son of Jacob and Leah.  Levi had one daughter, Jochebed, who was the mother of Moses, and 3 sons;  Gershom (Gershon)s, Kohath (whose son, Amram was the father of Moses) , and Merari.  Levi died in Egypt at the age of 137.  

Arabs also have many men that carry the J1  Y haplogroup, but theirs shows a slight difference, making the tag able to show of the male was of the Jewish or Arab line.  What that tells me is that there was this Y haplogroup connection between the Arabs and the Jews.  The fact that a son is a Cohen is related from father to son, so it's been an oral communication, and one that is visual as probably the son has been taken to the synagogue along with the father and has seen the process.  Today, since the Holocaust, is another story.  Some men have no idea what they are and can take a DNA test to find out.  

Going back to our Torah, Abraham and his niece, Sarah, who was his wife, had a son, Isaac.  Abraham also had another son,  Ishmael,  by Sarah's handmaid, Hagar, who was an Egyptian. Isaac was his 1st son.   The reason for this story was to stress the relationship between the Israelites and Ishmaelites and to account for the nomadic nature of the latter.  Who did the Ishmaelites become?  They were people who also divided into 12 tribes as told in Gen.25:12) who lived in Northern Arabia between Egypt and the Assyrian border.  The Bible refers several times to their trade with Egypt.  Traditionally, they are the Arab descendants of ISHMAEL and modern Arabs still claim this descent, so it's a part of the Arab history as well.  Jews have always said that the Arabs were their cousins.

                                                               

                                                       Esau and Jacob

Jacob himself was a twin, but we never hear much about his older brother, Esau. They were the sons of Isaac and Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel, an Aramean man, the youngest son of Nahor and Milcah, the nephew of Abraham, and the father of Laban and Rebecca.    

Jacob was the son of Isaac, son of Abraham, and Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees,  an ancient Babylonian  city.  Archaeologists have found evidence of a flood, an extensive one, at an earlier date.  Abraham, when younger and known as Abram, had migrated with his family to Haran, the site where Abram's brother had settled, named Haran, who was the father of Lot.  This nephew of Abram had traveled further with him.   Haran was a trading town in NW Mesopotamia.  Assyrian inscriptions from this period mentions a Habiru (Hebrew) community  in the vicinity which links with Moses's father, Terah, there.                                              

                                                           Esau and Jacob

                                                                     

By the late 12th century BCE, the Arameans were firmly established in Syria; however, they were conquered by the Middle Assyrian Empire, as had been the Amorites and Ahlamu before them.

So our Jewish patriarch, Jacob himself was half Aramean.  

Arameans were also a group of Semitic tribes who had invaded the Fertile Crescent in the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium BCE (when Abaham was born) and roamed between the Persian Gulf and the Amanus Mountains.  Aram and Israel had a common ancestry and the Israelite patriarch were of Aramaic origin and maintained ties of marriage with the tries of Aram.  Thus, they both carry J1 or J2 male (Y) haplogroup line.  How could false historian writers glean all this information way back and make up a story line so clever?  Truth is always stranger than fiction.  Some of that Y haplogroup must have a few Aramean genes.  

They must have been fraternal twins, for they were  not identical twins at all, being very different.  Jacob had to trick Esau in gaining the birthright of their father, Isaac, for the betterment of the future, he must have thought.  Nothing was held back as far as telling all of Jacob's faults, making the reader feeling quite sorry for Esau, the hunter in the family, while Jacob was the stay at home, cook for the family.  The story relates, showing that the twins have become enemies of each other.  Esau is later identified with the people, possibly descended from him, of Edom (Gen. 36:1).  In the Talmud, Esau was synonymous with villainy and violence.  Later, Esau in late Hebrew literature implies a coarse materialist.  

                                                                  

The Edomites were also called the people of Idumea, which lay south of the Dead Sea and bordered on the Red Sea at Elath and Ezion Geber.  They also were of Semitic origin, traditionally descendants of Esau, and lived by hunting.  They in turn had dispossessed the Horite inhabitants of Seir, the area of Mt. Seir, a mountainous and easily fortified area with fertile land. Then they copied their environment by organizing themselves along tribal lines headed by a chieftain called  the Allooph, later consolidating into a monarchy.  The Edomites, of course, were traditional enemies of the Israelites.  They fought Saul and were defeated by David who partly annexed their land.  The Edomites regained their independence during the reign of King Jehoram of Judah (854-844 BCE)  but wars between the two states were frequent.  

                                                                    

They later became vassals of Assyria.  At the time of the destruction of the 1st Temple, they plundered and looted in association with the Babylonians, and, being driven out from Seir by the Nabateans, occupied Southern Judah during or after the period of exile when Jews were forced by the Babylonians to walk to Babylon.  The Edomites were FINALLY conquered by John Hyrcanus who forcibly converted them to Judaism , and from then on they constituted a part of the Jewish people.  That means we might be carrying some of their genes, too.  

Resource;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J-M267******

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Edomites.html

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/israel/familycohanim.html

https://aramean-dem.org/English/History/Evidences_of_our_Aramean_origin/Evidences_of_our_Aramean_origin.htm

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Aaron

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4728368

Why Israelites Evaded The Canaanites and Their Religion

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

To enter Canaan, the Israelites had to conquer it first in order to return,  They found the country divided into small city-states, and renamed the land as Eretz Yisrael (The land of Israel.)  The Canaanites were a people of polytheism, having many gods, something the Israelites did not wish to return to.  

Canaanite religion and Yahwism

Second Temple Judaism and Rabbinical Judaism are emphatically monotheistic. However, its predecessor, the cult of Yahweh (used as a name for G-d)  as it was practiced in ancient Israel during the 8th and 7th centuries BCE (Yahwism)

Many words denoting G-d are not names proper but circumlocutions or epithets used instead of a name.  The most important are:  El, occurring in all Semitic languages.  This is an element in proper names, as Eleazar, Nesthaanel, Eloah.  The plural is Elohim which is used both in the plural for gods, idols, etc and singular-God. YHVH is the Tetraurammation of Shem ha-Mepherash, the particular name of the G-d of Israel and occurs nearly 7,000 times in the Bible.  Its original pronunciation is unknown.  Yahweh as been conjectured.  By the 2nd BCE it was no longer pronounced except by the high priest on the Day of Atonement, but read as Adonai (My Lord).  Today, HaShem is used (the name).  

Yahwism—has been described as henotheistic or monolatric, meaning believing that one g-d out of a group of 3 or 4, etc, is the one to believe, a step towards monotheism.

For example, the Moabites worshipped the god Chemosh, the Edomites, Qaus, both of whom were part of the greater Canaanite pantheon, headed by the chief god, El. 

                                                   

      Chemosh was the national deity of the Moabites whose name most likely meant "destroyer," "subduer," or "fish god." While he is most readily associated with the Moabites, according to Judges 11:24 he seems to have been the national deity of the Ammonites as well.  His presence in the Old Testament world was well known, as his cult was imported to Jerusalem by King Solomon (1 Kings 11:7).  The reason he had done this was because at the time he had 700 wives who were noblewomen and 300 concubines, and his wives swayed his heart.  So it was that when Solomon grew old, his wives swayed his heart after the gods of others. He had finally weakened.  His heart was not as complete with Hashem, his G-d, as it had been like the heart of his father, David.   The fact was that though every one of Solomon's spouses converted, he committed 2 offences.  A king should not marry many wives, and as mentioned in the Tanakh, even a commoner is not permitted to marry an idolater.  

The Hebrew scorn for his worship was evident in a curse from the scriptures: "the abomination of Moab." King Josiah destroyed the Israelite branch of the cult (2 Kings 23).  

                                              

The Moabite Stone or Mesha Stele, was a monument bearing an inscription commemorating the c. 860 B.C.E. endeavors of King Mesha to overthrow the Israelite dominion of Moab. The vassalage had existed since the reign of David (2 Samuel 8:2), but the Moabites revolted upon the death of Ahab, King of Israel (876-853 BCE).  

                                                

Chemosh seems to have also had a taste for blood. In 2 Kings 3:27 we find that human sacrifice was part of the rites of Chemosh. This practice, while gruesome, was certainly not unique to the Moabites, as such rites were commonplace in the various Canaanite religious cults, including those of the Baals and Moloch. Mythologists and other scholars suggest that such activity may be due to the fact the Chemosh and other Canaanite gods such as the Baals, Moloch, Thammuz, and Baalzebub were all personifications of the sun or the sun's rays. They represented the fierce, inescapable, and often consuming heat of the summer sun (a necessary but deadly element in life; analogs may be found in Aztec sun worship).  (Eleventh-century Jewish commentator, Rashi, quotes a tradition that Solomon's wives built the temples to Chemosh and other deities, and that Solomon is considered responsible for not stopping them.) On the Moabite stone, Mesha (2 Kings 3:5) ascribed his victories over the king of Israel to this god, "and Chemosh drove him out from before me.                                      

                                                                                      

 Chemosh and the Moabite Stone seem to reveal something of the nature of religion in Semitic regions of the period. Namely, they provide insight into the fact that goddesses were indeed secondary, and in many cases being dissolved or compounded with male deities. This may be seen in the Moabite Stone inscriptions where Chemosh is also referred to as "Asthor-Chemosh." Such synthesis reveals the masculinization of Ashtoreth, a Canaanite goddess worshiped by Moabites and other Semitic peoples. Biblical scholars have also noted that Chemosh's role in the Moabite Stone inscription is analogous to that of Yahweh in the book of Kings. Thus, it would seem that Semitic regard for respective national deities operated similarly from region to region. 

 Mark Stratton John Matthew Smith is an American ancient historian, theologian, biblical scholar, and professor, and argues that Yahweh underwent a process of merging with El and that acceptance of cults of Asherah was common in the period of the Judges. 2 Kings 3:27 has been interpreted as describing a human sacrifice in Moab that led the invading Israelite army to fear the power of Chemosh. "The King of Moab took his 1stborn son, who was to reign after him, and sacrificed him as a burnt-offering upon the wall, and a great wrath took effect against Israel, so they turned away from Mesha and returned to the land."   For his own act, he blamed Israel.  

                                                                     Asherah-below

The Canaanite pantheon consisted of El and Asherah as the chief deities, with 70 sons who were said to rule over each of the nations of the earth. These sons were each worshiped within a specific region. 

      

                                                  El Shaddai, the god with breasts;  “And Jacob said to Joseph, “El Shaddai appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and He blessed me, and said to me, ‘I will make you fertile and numerous…’ And Shaddai who blesses you…blessings of the bosom and womb.” Genesis 48:3-4; 49:25

Kurt Noll states that "the Bible preserves a tradition that Yahweh used to 'live' in the south, in the land of Edom" and that the original god of Israel was El Shaddai.

Several Biblical stories allude to the belief that the Canaanite gods all existed and were thought to possess the most power in the lands by the people who worshiped them and their sacred objects; their power was believed to be real and could be invoked by the people who patronized them. There are numerous accounts of surrounding nations of Israel showing fear or reverence for the Israelite God despite their continued polytheistic practices.                   

For instance, in 1 Samuel 4, the Philistines fret before the second battle of Aphek when they learn that the Israelites are bearing the Ark of the Covenant, and therefore Yahweh, into battle. The Israelites were forbidden to worship other deities, but according to some interpretations of the Bible, they were not fully monotheistic before the Babylonian captivity. Mark S. Smith refers to this stage as a form of monolatry. 

                                               

Going north to Syria, At 3rd-millennium Ebla the most important god was Dagan, “Lord of Gods” and “Lord of the Land.” Other gods of Ebla included El, Resheph, the storm god, Ishtar, Athtart, Chemosh, and the sun goddess. The gods of the city included several referred to by their Sumerian names.

                                                                        

                                       199 Gods of Phoenicia found in a shipwreck

                                              

The Israelites would face another set of gods of another pantheon in Babylonia, as they had been attacked and forcibly taken there..  Babylonia mainly focused on the god Marduk, who is the national god of the Babylonian empire. However, there were also other gods that were worshipped.  They would live there for 70 years before they could return to Jerusalem.  Marduk, in Mesopotamian religion, the chief god of the city of Babylon and the national god of Babylonia; as such, he was eventually called simply Bel, or Lord. Marduk. Originally, he seems to have been a god of thunderstorms.  The Israelites have been exposed to so many gods.  It is amazing that they will stick with their one unseen god.  

Canaanites believed that following physical death, the npš (usually translated as "soul") departed from the body to the land of Mot (Death). Bodies were buried with grave goods, and offerings of food and drink were made to the dead to ensure that they would not trouble the living. Dead relatives were venerated and sometimes asked for help.

It is considered virtually impossible to reconstruct a clear picture of Canaanite religious practices. Although child sacrifice was known to surrounding peoples, there is no reference to it in ancient Phoenician or Classical texts. The biblical representation of Canaanite religion is always negative.

Canaanite religious practice had a high regard for the duty of children to care for their parents, with sons being held responsible for burying them, and arranging for the maintenance of their tombs.

                                               

Canaanite deities such as Baal were represented by figures which were placed in shrines often on hilltops, or 'high places' surrounded by groves of trees, such as is condemned in the Hebrew Bible, in Hosea (v 13a) which would probably hold the Asherah pole, and standing stones or pillars.  Canaan had fertility cults.  Only recently have scholars begun to unravel the complex religious rituals of Israel's Canaanite neighbors. Much of our knowledge of the origins and character of these fertility cults remains tentative and widely debated. What we do know reveals dark, seductive practices that continued to entice the people God had chosen to be his witnesses.  One had to be stiff-necked for sure to ignore all that!

      Resource;

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

https://robincohn.net/el-shaddai-the-god-with-breasts/

https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/metkids/2020/solomons-temple-model-judaica

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Part III: Edomites: Traditional Enemies of Israel South of Dead Sea on Mt. Seir

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    

One of the other Semitic enemies of Israel and living in today's Jordan were the Edomites, hunters living on Mt. Seir in the SE part of Canaan.  Their land was easily fortified being mountainous and their land was fertile.  They were located South of the Dead Sea.  One border was on the Red Sea at Elath and the other border was Ezion Geber, an ancient port at the head of the Gulf of Akaba from which King Solomon's ships sailed to Ophir.  After the Edomites had taken this port, it was recovered by Jehoshaphat, King of Judah (875-854 BCE)  whose fleet was wrecked as it sailed to Ophir.  Uzziah/Azariah, King of Judah (780-740 BCE)  moved the port to a new site at Elath, though it still was used.

"Edom (/ˈiːdəm/ ^[1] or /ˈiː.dʌm/;^[2] Hebrew: ,דוֹםאֱ Modern Edom, Tiberian ʼĔḏôm; , lit.: "red"; Assyrian: Udumi; Syriac: ܐܕܘܡ) is the name of a country and a people located initially in Transjordan, between Ammon to the north, the Dead Sea and the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian desert to the south and east.
                                                                               

                                                                             

Esau and Jacob, twins of Isaac and Rebekah.
Isaac was 60 years old when they were born.  His father, Abraham,
almost sacrificed Isaac on Mt. Moriah, but was saved by Divine Intervention.  

They were not descendants of Lot like the Ammonites and Moabites were, but were descendants of Esau, a twin son of Isaac, brother of Jacob.  Esau was born first, and lost his 1st son standing in the family over a bowl of stew that meant more to him than his position in the family.  As it turns out, it was his twin brother, Jacob, who tricked him into giving up this status in order to get it for himself.  Both boys made poor choices as time tells.  Being Abraham, father of Isaac,  lived around 1948 BCE of the 2nd millennium BCE, this was about 4,000 years ago. We are told in Deuteronomy that we are not to marry any Ammonite or Moabite.
                                                                                   

 We are also told not to reject  an Edomite, because he is the brother of the Israelites.
                                                                                 

The Edomites lived by hunting.  They in turn had taken over land previously lived in by the Horites, who had originated South of the Caucasian mountains, who invaded Syria and Canaan in the 17th Century BCE. The Horites had lived near Mt. Seir in Abraham's time but their territory was conquered by the Edomites as told in Gen. 14:6; 36: 20-30;  and in Deut. 2:12, 22.   Egyptian documents  from the 16th century called Canaan "Haru." Before that it was called "Rutenu."  Some scholars believe that the Horites were pushed back by the Amorites and Canaanites to the Mt. Seir region where they were later driven out by the Edomites.  Edomites lived much like our native Americans did, being organized along tribal lines headed by a chieftain who was called an Allooph.  Later they consolidated into a monarchy.
                                                                             

These Edomites, being Israel's enemy, had fought against Israel's first king Saul of the 11th century BCE of the tribe of Benjamin, and were defeated finally by King David (1010-970 BCE)  who partly annexed their land.  The Edomites regained their independence during the reign of King Jehoram of Judah (851-844), but wars between the 2 states were many.
                                                                                 

II Chronicles 28:16, 17 said that "At that time King Ahaz sent to the kings of Assyria to come to his aid.  furthermore, the Edomites came and struck Judah and captured captives." Ahaz, king of Judah (735-720 BCE) , had led Judah to disgrce and betrayed G-d.  

During the 8th century  CE, the Edomites became vassals of Assyria.  It had been the Assyrians who had also attacked Israel in 722 and 721 BCE.  When the Israelite's Temple of Solomon was destroyed by the Babylonians in 597 BCE and again in 586 BCE, the Edomites also plundered it and looted along with the Babylonians.  "Edomites first established a biblical kingdom ("Edom") in the southern area of modern Jordan.   Edomites later migrated into southern parts of the Kingdom of Judah ("Idumea", or modern southern Israel/Negev) when Judah was first weakened, then destroyed by the Babylonians in the 6th century BC.
                                                                               

 Then the Edomites were driven out of Seir by the Nabateans, who were people of Arab extraction who occupied Edom in the 6th Century BCE and established their capital at Petra (Rekem).   Nabateans were typical nomads and soon learned to develop agriculture under almost desert conditions by an elaborate system of water conservation.   So they occupied Southern Judah during or after the period of the Exile.
                                                                                 

b: 164 BCE-d: 104 BCE

John Hyrcanus conquered the Edomites.  He was the son and successor of Simon the Hasmonean and ruled from 135 to 104 BCE.  The Hasmoneans were a priestly family (Cohens carrying J1 haplogroup DNA) and dynasty found by Mattathias of Modiin.  In turn, Mattathias's ancestor was Hashmon, and Hashmon could have received his name as a place-name found in Joshua 15: 27.  In this case, the Hasmoneans were from Aaron, brother of Moses.   John  was the governor of Gezer, (a town in Canaan which held a Jewish population of late 1st Temple and 2nd Temple times) during his father's lifetime, but after the murder of his father and 2 brother by his brother in law, Ptolemy, escaped to Jerusalem, where he seized power before Ptolemy could get control.  Eventually John was made a high priest but by his  poor decisions, the Hasmonean state of Judah became a tributary to Syria.   It was after all this that John overran the territory of the Edomites, who by this time were also called the Idumeans, (Edomites now living in Southern Judah) and forced them to embrace Judaism.                                                       

King Herod of Judah  (73 -4 BCE) was one of the Edomite descendants.  He was the son of Antipater the Idumean by his Nabatean wife, Cypros.  Antipater ruled Judea from 63 to 43 BCE.  Antipater was a ruler who assisted the Romans and had joined Julius Caesar in war.  He had recruited Jewish and Nabatean troops for his army.  It was Caesar who had made Antipater the financial administrator of Judea in 47 BCE.  No wonder Herod was easily put into power.   I'm amazed by how easily these enemies married into the Israelite households.
                                                                               

In 70 CE,  Titus, a Roman General, had taken siege of Jerusalem for 5 months and then destroyed the city of peace and its Temple, and the Edomites of Idumea marched into Jerusalem to reinforce the extreme elements and killed all they suspected of peace tendencies.  After this, they were no longer mentioned in Jewish history.  The name of the Edomites or Idumeans turned out to be used as a synonym for an oppressive government, especially for Rome.  During the Middle Ages, it was used to describe to Christian Europe-being they were oppressors of the Jewish people who had been refugees there.
                                                                               

 Rome built the Arch of Titus in Rome, which was erected by their Senate in honor of Vespasian and Titus who had arrived in Rome marching the Jews taken captive as slaves and all the goods stolen out of the Temple.  The present Arch was built during the reign of Domitian (81-96 CE).

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Tanach, The Stone Edition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edom

Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Egyptians: Ancient Kingdoms: Part I What Happened to Them?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                         

Israel was not alone as a kingdom.  There were others who were most warlike.  There were the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites and of course the only one who survived to this day;  the Egyptians.  Above is a map showing the kingdoms after King Solomon died when Israel divided into Israel and Judah after 920 BCE.

We were told by Moses not to intermarry with these other kingdoms' men.  Interestingly, Ruth, a central figure in our history, was a Moabite.  It's almost as if Moses was told of the Y haplotypes of men, and didn't want his haplotype to intermix with theirs.  The problem was that these kingdoms did not continue to exist forever, and people were moved by the prevailing conquerors.  What would happen to these men was not known then.  Evidently there was more to it than haplotypes.
                                                                           

 The cultures of the others and their knowledge of good and evil acts differed.  They called their ancient god Chemosh, translated as "DESTROYER, or FISH GOD."  The Ammonites worshipped him, too.  "His cult was imported to Jerusalem by King Solomon (1 Kings 11:7).  The Hebrew scorn for his worship was evident in a curse from the scriptures:  "the abomination of Moab."  King Josiah of Judah (637-608 BCE) destroyed the Israelite branch of the cult (2 Kings 23).   
                                                                            

They believed in human sacrifice!  "Rites were commonplace in the various Canaanite religious cults, including those of the Baals and of Moloch.  Mythologists and other scholars suggest that such activity may be due to the fact the Chemosh and other Canaanite gods such as the Baals, Moloch, Thammuz, and Baalzebub were all personifications of the sun, or of the sun's rays.  They represented the fierce, inescapable, and often consuming heat of the summer sun (a necessary but deadly element in life; analogs may be found in Aztec sun worship)." "Goddesses were indeed secondary, and in many cases being dissolved or compounded with male deities."  One wonders what was so appealing to people when human sacrifice is involved in their beliefs.  Most all  the people of that period had a limited viewpoint of G-d and G-d was a national figure then who only helped that group.  Writer Judd H. Burton said, "Thus, it would seem that Semitic regard for respective national deities operated similarly from region to region." 
                                                                               

Moabites and Ammonites became Assyrians
King Abdulah I of Saudi Arabia moved to Jordan for his Arabian tribe which he brought with him.  

The Moabites, as you can see by the map, lived in where Jordan exists today.  The boundaries then were laid out to be in the North by the river Heshbon; The South by the river Zered; the Jordan River and the Dead Sea to the West,  and The Syrian Desert on the East.   They were blood relations to the Israelites because they were also descendants of Lot, Abraham's nephew. So were the Ammonites.   They shared genes with the Israelites.   Even their language was similar to Hebrew.

During  our patriarchal era, they had settled in Moab which had been captured from the Rephaim as told about in Deut. 2:10-11.  The Rephaim lived, we think, south of the Sinai peninsula, or in the North.  It was between the Wilderness of Sin and the Sinai Desert and was a stopping place for the Israelites led by Moses.  They also were an ancient people living in today's Jordan in Abraham's day.  Some had settled near Jerusalem in the "Valley of Rephaim."  I'm going back over 4,000 years now to Abraham's day which would have been about 1948 BCE, otherwise known as the 2nd millennium BCE!!! It's wonderful to find such
bands were recorded for history.

The Moabites during Abraham's life were ruled by a king named Sihon.  He was defeated by the Israelites who occupied the land on their journey back to Canaan.  This of course was a cause of contention then with not only the Moabites but also with Ammonites.  The Moabites themselves were a divided people still in tribes, and this caused the tribes to unite into one kingdom.  Their 2nd ruler turns out to be Balak who called on Balaam to curse the Israelites.  As time went on, they had a king named Eglon, and they extended their territory to the Jericho region until Eglon was killed by Ehud, an Israelite Judge-leader before kings were needed for Israel.  He was from the tribe of Benjamin.  Ehud saved Israel from Eglon, king of Moab and his  oppression.
                                                                         

King David   ruled from 1010 BCE to 970 BCE over Israel.  His ggrandmother was a Moabite, however.  He conquered the Moabites who remained under the rule of  Israel down to the rebellion in the 9th century of  King Mesha of Moab.  At first King Mesha was nice to  Israel's King Omri (887-876 BCE) , but exploited Israel's weakness after the death of Israel's King Ahab (876-853 BCE)  and threw off Israel's ruling over them.  King Mesha set up the
                                                                                           

Mesha Stele, a stone with writing that commemorated his successful revolt against King Joram/Jehoram  (853-843 BCE) of Israel.  This stone was found in the Moabite capital, Dibon, in 1868, and is now in the Louvre.  It tells of Omri's subjection of Moab and Moab's liberation from Israel.  The language is similar to Hebrew.  It almost looks like the  tablet of today, doesn't it?
                                                                             

Assyrians taking Israelites as prisoners

Moab became an Assyrian province when Tiglath-Pileser III ruled.  The Assyrians had attacked Israel in 722 to 721 BCE.   During the Persian period, Arabs penetrated the country and assimilated with the Moabites.   Moab was conquered by the Jewish Hasmoneans and was later incorporated by the Romans into Arabia.
                                                   

Deut. 23:4 tells us that intermarriage between Jews and Moabites is forbidden, but the Talmud understood this referred only to males, so by the Mishnaic Period, the prohibition was abolished.  They knew Ruth was a Moabite and she was good.  Here's a case where one person made a difference in attitude.
                                                                           

Ruth is famous for being an ancestor of King David, his great grandmother.  Her story took place in the days of the Judges, before King  Saul, first king of Israel in the 11th century BCE.  Being from Moab,  she  had married an Israelite, Mahlon, and when he died after 10 years of marriage, Ruth stayed with his mother, Naomi and went with her back to Bethlehem.   Mahlon's brother, Chilion,   also died young. He had married a Moabite woman, too.    A few years later, Naomi introduced Ruth  to one of her relatives, Boaz, and he married Ruth.  Naomi was an interesting character.  She was also a widow, and had been married to the Israelite, Elimelech.    They had wandered into Moab when famine had hit their own city of Beth-lehem in the southern part of Canaan, later to be Judah.   When he died unexpectedly, she found herself left with only her 2 sons who later married Moabite women.  

Naomi urged her two daughters in law to go back to their own homes, but Ruth was insistent upon staying with her, and said her famous lines  that I repeated in my Confirmation:
   For where you go, I will go;  where you lodge, I will lodge;  your people are my people, and your G-d is my G-d;  where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.  Thus may Hashem do to me, and so may He do more, if anything but death separates me from you."

                                                                              Descendants of Boaz

1   Boaz b: in Bethlehem, cousin of Elimelach, Naomi's husband.
.. +Ruth of Royalty b: in Moab
. 2   Oved Obed Judah b: in 11th century BCE
..... 3   Jesse b: in Bethlehem
......... +Ithra's Daughter
......... 4   Zeruiah
......... 4   [1] King of Israel David b: in 1000 BCE Bethlehem
............. +Bathsheba b: in Giloh, Judah
......... *2nd Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Ahinoam of Jezreel
......... *3rd Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Michal the First, Daughter of Saul
......... *4th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Abigail b: in Carmelite
......... *5th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Maachah Fromgeshur
......... *6th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Merab
......... *7th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Haggith
......... *Partner of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Abital
......... *8th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Eglah
......... *9th Wife of [1] King of Israel David:
............. +Maacah

Descendants of Judah-Tribe of Judah came from him-one of the 12 sons of Jacob.

1   [2] Judah
.. +Daughter of Shua
. 2   Boaz b: in Bethlehem
..... +Ruth of Royalty b: in Moab
. 2   Hur
. 2   Er
..... +[1] Tamar
. 2   Onan
..... +[1] Tamar
. 2   Shelah
*2nd Wife of [2] Judah:
.. +Canaanite Woman
. 2   Er
..... +[3] Tamar
. 2   Onan
..... +[3] Tamar
. 2   Shelah b: in Chezib
*3rd Wife of [2] Judah:
.. +[3] Tamar
. 2   Perez
. 2   Zerah

Research:  Tanach;  The Stone Edition
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/cgodsandgoddesses/a/chemosh.htm