Showing posts with label Jochebed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jochebed. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Troy and Sparta In The Days of Moses

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

   Sparta in Greece (lower left) and Troy in Turkey (center)

The ancient Greeks believed that Troy was located near the Dardanelles and that the Trojan War was a historical event of the 13th or 12th century BCE, but by the mid-19th century CE, both the war and the city were widely seen as non-historical.  They must have thought it had just been a myth, as they started thinking about the Torah.  Today, excavations prove that the Torah is full of facts, proven facts. 

Troy as also been excavated.  "It is this record of a people and their city that is preserved in archaeology. Each layer of occupation, one on top of the other, represents a phase in the city's history, which archaeologists over the last 150 years have been exploring. These layers have been labelled  Troy I to IX, with Troy I being the earliest settlement and Troy IX the most recent. Much remains to be discovered, but we now know enough today to get a good sense of the city's development over time."   "Troy was situated at the entrance to the Dardanelles strait, and in ancient times lay much nearer to the sea than it does today – the coastline has changed as river deltas have silted up. Its position was key to its prosperity, as the city could trade by sea as well as by land. It may also be that ancient ships, waiting for the wind and currents they needed to pass through the straits, provided a captive market for Trojan goods and services." 

                                 Istanbul
  

The ancient, legendary city of Troy really did exist - and travelers can reach it easily with a one-hour drive from Istanbul.                            

Total War:  Menelaus, king of Sparta, and Helen's husband of Greece.  

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy of Turkey by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad. The core of the Iliad (Books II – XXIII) describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes.       

     The Trojan Horse fooling everyone:  The war stirred the imagination of the ancient Greeks more than any other event in their history and was celebrated in the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, as well as a number of other early works now lost, and frequently provided material for the great dramatists of the Classical Age. It also figures in the literature of the Romans (e.g., Virgil’s Aeneid) and of later peoples down to modern times.

Menelaus, son of the famed king Atreus, was the younger brother of Agamemnon of Mycenae and husband of Helen – the Spartan princess with which he ruled as king in Sparta. The two brothers rose to power after each married a princess of Sparta, thus securing an alliance with the Lacedaemonians.

Although not in his prime, Menelaus is still a mighty warrior who inspires awe and fear on the battlefield. Clad in heavy armour and wielding a great spear, he looks like the God of War’s equal.

Menelaus enters the Trojan War as the aggrieved party and is rightfully seeking bloody revenge on Prince Paris and his wayward wife. Even if it means bringing down the entire kingdom of Troy.    

Spear-famed Menelaus must answer the slight to his honour dealt by Paris, the Trojan prince who dared steal his wife!

This audacious deed has shaken the very foundations of Menelaus’ authority in Lakedaimon. So he must take Helen back and assert his authority once more!        

This would have happened during the lives of Amram and his wife, Jochabed, the parents of Moses, so it's going back pretty far.  Moses was born about 1391 BCE and died 1271 BCE.  They were slaves in Egypt during this period.  

It was much later in  333–332 BCE, Alexander's Macedonian forces conquered  Judea (Levant and Palestine. At the time, Judea was home to many Jews who had returned from exile  in 538 BCE in Babylon thanks to the Persians. They had been taken away in 597 BCE and then again more were taken away in 586 BCE.  At least they had had 205 years of peace in their own land before this next Greek attack.  

It was because of this Greek Attack and takeover of the Temple that we have Chanukah to remember this historic event.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabean_Revolt#:~:text=In%20333%E2%80%93332%20BCE%2C%20Alexander's,Babylon%20thanks%20to%20the%20Persians.

https://www.totalwar.com/games/troy/menelaus/

https://www.britannica.com/event/Trojan-War

https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/search-lost-city-troy

Monday, March 11, 2013

The Women in Moses's Family and Possible MT DNA Haplogroups

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                       
Noah's wife was Naamah.  They were the parents of Shem, Ham and Japheth.  The Babylonian Gilgamesh epic tells the flood story but instead of Noah, has a hero named Utnapishtim.  This was a Sumerian poem from the 3rd Dynasty of Ur found on clay tablets dating back to 2,150 -2,000 BCE.  The story of the flood  with Noah is  in Genesis in the Bible (Torah). 

1. Levi, son of Jacob, was the father of Kohath and the female Jochebed.  His wife, mother of his children was Milkah, a daughter of Aram.  Aram was one of the sons of Shem.    As Abraham came from the line of Arpachshad, Aram had fathered Uz, Hul, Gether and Mash.
 2. Kohath was the father of Amram, Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel
  3. Amram and his wife, Jochebed  were the parents of Moses and Aaron.
   4. Moses was the father of Gershom and Eliezer.
   4. Aaron was the father of Nadab, Abihu, Elazar and Ithamar.  Produced lots of descendants.  
     5. Elazar was the father of 16; Jehoiarib, Harim, Malchijah, Hakkoz, Jeshua, Eliashib, Huppah, Bilgah, Hezir, Hapizzez, Pethahiah, Jehezkel, Jachin, Gamul, Delaiah, and Maaziah.
    5. Ithamar was the father of Jedaiah, Seorim, Mijamin, Abijah, Shecaniah, Jakim, Jeshebeab and Immer.

Leah and Rachel, sisters and the two wives of Jacob were the daughters of Laban and Adinah and lived at Haran in Aram-Naharaim.which was on the upper Euphrates River in Mesopotamia.  Leah had a daughter, Dinah.  Dinah had been raped by Shechem which was avenged by her 2 brothers, Simeon and Levi who killed all the people of Shechem for doing it.  Dinah would have carried the same mt dna as Leah and Rachel.    Laban was Rebekah's brother.  He had given his sister Rebekah in marriage to Isaac.  Laban and Rebekah were the children of Bethuel.  Rebekah was the mother of Esau and Jacob.  Bethuel was an Aramean, "Syrian,"  the youngest son of Nahor and Milcah and was the nephew of Abraham.  He was a descendant of Arphaxad "Arpachshad" who was the grandson of Noah. .   Nahor was Terah's father and Terah was the father of Abraham.

Jochebed carried a special mtDNA that was inherited by Moses and Aaron who carried the Ydna of their father, Amram as well.  Amram's Ydna was the very same haplogroup as Levi's DNA.  Jochebed was married to Amram who was also his aunt.  She had been the daughter of Levi, just like he was. She would have the same mtdna as her mother, Milkah.   According to Chabad, Jochebed was born 2,238 years after the Creation just when Jacob and his household of 70 people entered Egypt because of the famine.  She was the youngest of the 70.

Jochebed  must have had one of 7 possible haplotypes for mt DNA.  Bryan Sykes had identified only 7 types, which he called the 7 daughters of Eve.  The copyright of his book by the same name was in 2001, and since then a few more have been found.  Mt dna does not change very much and can stay the same for about a  thousand years.

*My first thought is that Jochebed could have been of the J, J1 or J2 which originated about 45,000 years ago in central Asia and is associated with the spread of farming and herding in Europe during the Neolithic Period beginning 10,000 years ago.  Moses lived from about 1391 to 1271 BCE, so his mother was born about 1,410 BCE.  These haplogroups are common in the Near East, , Europe, the Caucasus, North Africa and the Middle East and among Jews.  J2 is more localized in the Mediterranean.  Sykes calls J's "Jasmine."  He places her about a mile from the River Euphrates in today's Syria when the ice age had ended.  Because food could now be produced and the landscape was under human control, the population increased relentlessly.  Of course it was a famine that drove Jacob's children into Egypt where they stayed for 400 years.  When they left, their count had gone from 70 to 600,000.  They had this same population to intermarry with for the 400 years.

It could also have been haplogroup I.  This started some 30,000 years ago in Eurasia and found in Egypt and Arabia as well as southern Europe.  The handmaids, Zilpah and Bilhah could have been of this group.

A 3rd possiblity could have been K.  This is a subbranch of U that appeared in the early part of the Holocene Epoch after the last glacial maximum.  About 1/3 of people with Ashkenazi ancestry carry a subclade of this K haplogroup.  Sykes named K's Katrine, who is more centered in Italy.

One more that can't be overlooked after 400 years of living in Egypt is N haplogroup together with M make up 2 superhaplogroups.  N is the daughter of one of the NE African lineages thought to have originated in Africa some 60,000 years ago.  It's common in the Middle East.  N1b is also found in the Near East, Egypt and Arabia and radiated around 39,000 to 52,000 years ago.  Sykes other daughters, H (Helena) , J (Jasmine) , T (Tara)  and U (Ursula)  come out of this line.

References: Abraham's Children race, identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People by Jon Entine
The Seven Daughters of Eve, the sicence that rteveals our genetic ancestry by Bryan Sykes
The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Tanakh, The Stone Edition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jochebed
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112040/jewish/Jochebed.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethuel
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3227-bethuel
http://www.mts.net/~arphaxad/arphaxad.html
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9568-laban
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_names_for_the_biblical_nameless  TERRIFIC WEBSITE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh