I think some of God’s names were edited away, because either someone played around with those names, or the Biblical editors thought someone did, or the Biblical editors thought that some Biblical readers would think someone did.
I am one of those readers.
We’ll also see that the editors weren’t paranoid:
A lot of Biblical material refers to Ancient Spookia, and a lot of puns as well.
And we’ll see that it was much closer to Ancient Israel than is let on.
I stress again that this does not change the Biblical message, which we mustn’t confuse with the attitude of some messengers.
Lords
Lords
Lords
Much as I’d like to cut right to the chase, we need a short vocabulary lesson for the link between human lords and divine lords.
In the Bible, there are mainly three Hebrew words for “God” or “gods”:
Adon
Baal
El
However, all three can also mean simply “lord”, as for human lords.
Like many other ancient languages, Hebrew has no exclusive word for gods. (Conversely, the English uppercase LORD in the Bible does not stand for “lord”, but for God’s name YHWH, which has no officially known meaning.)
There is also a hierarchy of sorts:
Adon (אדן (means “lord” as a title for people used in everyday language, just like “milord”.
It also appears as a title for Canaanite gods in inscriptions.
The Biblical God is also called Adon (lord), Adoni (my lord), but curiously also plural Adonai (my lords).
Baal has thus become a Biblical synonym for “foreign god” in the many warnings against idolatry, and the word became further demonized in Christian times (Baal-Zebub).
Baal appears a lot in theophoric names of Canaanites, but very rarely with Hebrews.
It’s assumed that this is only because later Biblical censors purged the Baal particle from all Hebrew names, such as by changing Ish-Baal into Ish-Boshet.
Interestingly, El appears in theophoric names very often, with both Hebrews and Canaanites.
That’s all common knowledge, so why did I put it up here?
Just to show that grammatically, gods were close to lords.
And it seems that either some aristocratic spooks made one giant pun out of it, or some editors thought they did, or they thought we’d think they did.
The Names of God
Okay, enough of the preliminaries.
I’ll now show you the link that led me to the Ancient Spookians.
That link itself is weak, yet what I found on the other side is such a mountain of evidence that I think it’s worth sharing the link as well.
Of all the things I found in the Bible, this is the strangest.
If it is what I think it is, then it would explain nearly everything.
Yet the little snippets I found are not enough for a conclusion.
And that is again due to censoring.
The most important names of God for our purpose here are the YHWH Tetragrammaton (English LORD) and the many variants of El.
Since El appears in many ancient texts all over the Levant and beyond as a term for gods, whereas YHWH appears only in the Bible, El is thought to be the older name.
Yet YHWH already appears in the Book of Genesis, the oldest book in content and style.
In the Biblical narrative, God reveals his name YHWH to Moses in the Book of Exodus, stating that this revelation is new and that the name YHWH has not been revealed before.
God spoke further to Moses and said to him, “ I am the LORD;EX 6:2
Yet in earlier verses from the Book of Genesis, God already appeared to Abraham and Jacob and revealed his name as YHWH, even using the exact same phrase:
“I am the LORD”
(הוהי ינא).
And He said to him,
“I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.”GEN 15:7
“I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants.GEN 29:13
The most famous explanation is that all books have been compiled from different sources, with an “Elohist” source using the El names and a “Yahwist” source using YHWH.
I have a different theory:
I think that YHWH was used to censor out older names of God that became unwanted in later times.
For this, the editors wouldn’t need a different source but would just copy the existing text and insert YHWH in place of the old names.
Why would the editors do that?
My initial guess was that some earlier names of God were derived from polytheistic religions, and later changed into YHWH as these religions were vilified and portrayed as enemies.
So, here’s what I did:
I looked up those few El-type names of God that still appeared in Genesis and Exodus and tried to find them in inscriptions outside of Ancient Israel.
Even Proto-Semitic scripts can be mapped 1:1 to modern Hebrew letters, so you can compare names very well. (I’ll start showing you letter-for-letter transcripts here to make that easier.
It’s not meant to be intimidating, so skip it if you don’t need it.)
Since the Canaanite religions often titled gods as Baal, I would also substitute El for Baal, since both words mean “lord” and were used for gods.
I actually did find some of these names, but to my astonishment they were not names of gods, but of people, powerful people even, with human “lords” among them.
Most matches can be explained by the fact that the patterns for naming people and gods are the same, with El or Baal, plus an attribute:
El-X or Baal-X.
For gods, this is interpreted as a divine name:
“Lord of X”.
For humans, the same pattern is interpreted as theophoric:
“The Lord is X”.
There’s nothing inherently wrong about this.
But the question is:
How do powerful people, who are lords of their own, interpret their own Lord-names?
Do they bow to a higher Lord, or do they feel they are themselves this Lord?
Shaphat
Here’s an easy example of these divine names:
God is very often called a “judge”.
A shaphat or judge (טפש) from the Book of Judges is a local ruler, who upholds law and order in his region.
In an allegory, this title is also applied to God many times in the Bible.
It is also used in a play of words:
God the Judge judges:
I therefore have not sinned against you, but you are doing me wrong by making war against me; may the LORD, the Judge, judge today between the sons of Israel and the sons of Ammon.JUDG 11:27
Was there wordplay there which has been thrown out?
In the extant examples, it’s only ever YHWH-Shaphat or just Shaphat; titling God as “El-Shaphat” seems to be avoided.
Why?
Because it’s also a personal name:
Elishaphat was an officer from the Chronicles of Kings, and more people might have used that theophoric name.
Personally, I don’t think there’s a problem with that.
A problem would arise if a human lord using that name was so powerful that he would be called an El or Baal himself, so you wouldn’t know whom the “lord” refers to.
Were there lords like that? Yes, I found indeed such an example: three kings of Byblos, a wealthy Phoenician merchant city in Israel’s vicinity, were written Shaphat-Baal (לעבטפש), usually vowelized to Shipit-Baal.
The first two are only known from Assyrian cuneiform, but the third has a Semitic inscription, dated somewhere around 900 BC, so we can see the spelling is the same.
The verse contains the word roi (יאר), “to see”, three times.
In the next verse, this is used to explain the geographic name of the oasis “Beer-lahai-roi”, so that might be a reason why the editors left that name in, and didn’t change it to YHWH.
A variant of that name appears on an Egyptian papyrus as the name of a messenger to a prince of Tyre, also a Phoenician merchant city.
This papyrus is one of the many texts passed down to us as a scribal exercise copy.
Several such papyri were sold to the British Museum by the wealthy merchant Anastasi.
Papyrus Anastasi three sheets 5–6 contain on their backs the:
“Extracts from the Journal of a Border Official”
from the Egyptian-Syrian border during the reign of Merneptah who ruled 1213–1203 BC.
They are on the British Museum website and the page seems to be this one, but I can’t read the Hieratic cursive script.
The lines containing the name have many translations, here’s one:
The Guardsman Baal-R oy, son of Zippor, of Gaza, went up, who had two different despatches for Syria:
the Commander of the Garrison Khay, one despatch; the Prince of Tyre Baal-Termeg, one despatch.
Gardiner’s transcript for the name is “bꜥrry”, which could be an Egyptian spelling for Baal-Roy.
The part has a hole, but you can still see the tops of the 2 reeds.
His transcription for the prince of Tyre is “bꜥrwtrmgw”, but that part is badly ripped, with only the Baal still visible.
So, perhaps there was a Phoenician official called Baal-Roy, just like God was called El-Roy.
Can you follow Gardiner here? Baal-Roy is supposed to start at the center of the first line with the L-shaped foot, and to end with 2 reeds barely visible under the large hole, written right-to-left.
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Was that worth the trouble to hunt down this snippet?
It’s like reading tea leaves.
What if Gardiner got it wrong?
Why am I bothering you with this?
Well, the interesting thing is how mainstream scholars treat that name:
They deviate from the straightforward translation “the servant Baal-Roy”, and make it “the servant of Baal, Roy”, desperately trying to split the “Baal” off that name.
Ancient Egyptian has no word for “of”, so that could theoretically be correct as well.
There went up the servant of Baʿ al, Roy, son of Zeper, of Gaza, who had with him for Syria two letters, as follows:
(for) the captain of infantry, Chay, one letter; (for) the chief of Tyre, Baalat-Remeg, one letter.
They wouldn’t do this just to bury “Baal-Roy” as a variant of “El-Roy”, or would they?
One indication is that they’re not splitting the “Baal” off the prince’s name “Baal-Termeg” or “Baalat Remeg”.
An even better indication is that in the same text, two other “servants” or “guardsmen” are recorded to pass the Syrian border, who are not servants “of” some deity.
So, everyone who knows the entire text can see that this translation is really garbage!
Gardiner himself even fought to correct it, yet it’s still in the majority of books.
Gardiner was an aristocrat as well, but maybe he had a bit of professional honor left in him here.
As an aside, there are several places called Elroy, including an Elroy close to King Ranch territory, officially named after a shop owner’s boy called “Leroy”.
Not very convincing.
El Qanna
A more famous example of a name of God that has been left in, at least partly, is the “Jealous God”, El Qanna.
The Israelites are instructed not to worship other gods, because God is named “jealous”, but the word qanna (אנק) for “jealous” occurs twice:
Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous [YHWH Qanna], is a jealous God [El Qanna].EX 34:14
הָאְנִק noun feminine ardour, zeal, jealousy (from color produced in face by deep emotion);
So, it was perhaps a color pun, with red maybe, the face color of deep emotion?
“The Red God is named Jealous God?”
Amusingly, there seems to be no Hebrew QN-word with the meaning “red”.
Sefaria lists qanna as derived from Arabic, so maybe that punny word got lost in Hebrew:
אנק (√ of foll.; (rare); Ar. َأأ أ َنأَق become intensely red (or black), with dye; NH האְָנִק jealousy; zeal, envy
That meaning of Arabic qana’a (َأأأ َنأأأأأَق) as “red”, is supported by other dictionaries.
Since our spooks were trading dyed cloth, it would be a pun they’d like as well.
That Arabic derivation was deleted from the BDB entry for qinah I cited above, even though it’s there in the original lexicon.
The online sites only list it for qimmos, that Biblical plant translated as “perhaps thistles”.
There’s also an ancient city called Qana (אנאק), next to the Phoenician city Tyre.
Tyre was famous for its dyed cloth, though mostly of purple color like the thistles, not red.
Qana is also one possible location for the Biblical Cana where Jesus of Nazareth turned water into wine, which would be another coloring of sorts.
Was that the word?
No, I think the pun had to do with the story context, which is:
WAR.
The verse about the “Jealous God” comes right after God promises the invading Hebrews that he will drive out their enemies but warns them that all foreign altars are to be smashed.
So, a fitting word in that vein, similar to qanna, is kana (ענכ), written with K instead of Q, which means “to subdue”.
While I don’t like the warmongering narrative and the vilification of foreign religions, this would have been great wordplay, worthy of the Biblical authors.
Kana.
Qanna.
It works.
But in today’s version, we have only Qanna.
What happened to Kana?
What was wrong with it?
Quick, a surprise Bible quiz:
What was the name of the land the Hebrews were invading in the first place, and of the native people that were supposed to be exterminated?
That land, flowing with milk and honey, was called Canaan (ןענכ), written exactly like kana, but with an added N.
Two verses earlier, in EX 34:11, the Canaanites are mentioned as one enemy group to be driven out.
Bad timing for using that letter combination in a name for God.
It would have read like this:
“El Canaa… is named El Qanna”
– the God of Canaa… is also named Jealous God.
So, a later editor likely pasted the Q over the K, because he felt that the original author had associated God with Israel’s enemies, though he hadn’t done it on purpose.
Or had he?
There are some interesting associations about Canaan.
For the previous 2two names of God, we found a Phoenician king and a Phoenician messenger.
2. a. land, west of Jordan, into which Hebrews came, and where they settled, subduing the inhabitants;
b. the coast, especially Phoenicia
merchant (s) (because Canaanites, especially Phoenicians, were traders);
So, Canaan means Phoenicia, coast, or merchant, because the Phoenicians on the Canaanite coast were merchants.
And although Canaan is written with K, it’s sometimes attested to be that missing Hebrew word for “red dye” corresponding to Arabic qana’a, because the entire coastline of Canaan was dotted with Phoenician merchant cities producing dye.
While “Phoenicians” is a Greek exonym, “Canaanites” is said to be a name Phoenicians used for themselves.
We can get all these etymological links from the Wikipedia page for Phoenicia:
The folk etymological association of Φοινίκη with φοῖνιξ mirrors that in Akkadian, which tied kinaḫni, kinaḫḫi "Canaan" to kinaḫḫu "red-dyed wool".
The land was natively known as knʿn (compare Eblaite ka-na-na-um, phn|ka-na-na) and its people as the knʿny.
In the Amarna tablets of the 14th century BC, people from the region called themselves Kenaani or Kinaani.
Much later, in the 6th century BC, Hecataeus of Miletus writes that Phoenicia was formerly called χνα khna, a name that Philo of Byblos later adopted into his mythology as his eponym for the Phoenicians:
"Khna who was afterwards called Phoinix."
The ethnonym survived in North Africa until the 4th century AD (see Punic language).
On the page about the Punic language, we read that the Carthaginians, who were Phoenicians, still called themselves “Canaanites” in Roman times:
According to him, Punic was still spoken in his region (Northern Africa) in the 5th century, centuries after the fall of Carthage, and there were still people who called themselves "chanani" (Canaanite: Carthaginian) at that time.
While the BDB entry finds the “etymology dubious”, Philo of Byblos states that Phoenicia, as Canaan, was named after the deified mythological ancestor Χνᾶ, transcribed as Khna or Chna.
For the pun to work perfectly with Qanna, the name shouldn’t have a trailing N, right? If you drop the El or Baal, then you get the shortform name Chanan (ןנח).
BDB lists for this name a Phoenician variant without N, with Aleph:
Chana (אנח), still interpreted as “Mercy”.
This name is usually transcribed “Hanno” in Roman texts, but these Latinizations are often misleading.
The Phoenician heartland was coastal Canaan, next to and overlapping with Israel, so I’ll stick to the Biblical transcription “Chana” here.
Same goes for the famous name Hannibal (לעבנח), which could be transcribed as Chan-Baal as with the El-form Chani-El.
The pun would have been:
“El Chana is named El Qanna”
– The Merciful God is also named Jealous God.
And this Hanno or Chana was an extremely prolific name – among Phoenicians!
And one Chana plus one Baal-Chana are on the aedilitary inscription from Carthage, dated within 400–200 BC, which lists people from a building project, though their designations are broken off.
Aedilitary inscription from Carthage. Hanno or Chana on line 3, starting with the 6th letter from the right. Baal-Hanno or Baal-Chana on line 4, starting with the 10th letter from the right.
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3. …qart son of Chana and associates. Presented this unto the kingdom: Abd-Melqart [...]
4. Bodmelqart son of Baal-Chana son of Bodmelqart engineer. Yahu-Elon […]
This “Hanno” spelling for henna is even used in 20th century Hebrew literature, see here, here, here, here.
It would have been a double pun:
The Merciful-Red God is also named Jealous God.
To conclude:
There are three K-like consonants in the Semitic script:
Qoph
Kaph
Ḥet
The pun for Qanna meaning jealous or read with emotion was very likely made with either Kana meaning subduing or with Chana meaning merciful and henna.
However, Kana was associated with Canaan and a Phoenician deified ruler.
Chana was a widespread theophoric name used by Phoenician rulers from Carthage.
In both cases, names used by powerful mortals would have been very close to that of God, so Kana or Chana was replaced by a second Qanna, destroying the pun.
Magen
After the Battle of Siddim, God appears to Abraham as a “word” (probably a “commander”, see Part I).
He calls himself magen, spelled MGN (ןגמ), which means “shield”, and offers the covenant to Abraham.
After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying:
Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great.GEN 15:1
Magen is a smaller shield, often translated as buckler, which only covers the arm.
Consequently, the derived word megginah (הנגמ) is yet another word for “cover”.
The meaning of “shield” in Abraham’s verse is disputed though, because another reading of MGN would be magan (ןגמ), spelled the same but vowelized differently.
It means:
“to bestow as a gift”
Since God offers a great reward to Abraham, MGN could also be translated as “bestow”, which would fit the context better than “shield”.
My opinion is that it has both meanings!
It’s a masterful pun again:
The Biblical authors purposefully used a spelling that connects to the previous battle as “shield”, and to the upcoming offer as “bestow”.
MGN is not officially a divine name, and is not used as a personal name anywhere in the Bible either.
The question is:
Was it used as a name anywhere else, say, in Ancient Phoenicia perhaps?
And here we’ve hit the purple jackpot again:
MGN was one of the most common and prolific Phoenician names ever!
A listing of Phoenician names shows over 400 attestations of MGN.
Votive stele from Carthage. Magon is the last word in line 2.
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Were there also Phoenician aristocrats with that name?
Yes, there were:
Ancient Carthage in 550 340 BC was ruled by a dynasty called the Magonids, after the Latin version of their name:
Mago.
How was is spelled in Phoenician script? No Phoenician records are left about them.
But since their common-folk Carthaginian namesakes are all spelled MGN, the rulers would be MGN well.
Of all the Magonids, only one English Wiki page admits this Phoenician spelling though.
As an aside, we have some strange name similarities inside Carthage as well, known from Greek and Roman sources.
The Magonids resided over an extending Carthage, while the later Barcids, including the famous Hannibal, resided over the fall of Carthage 100 years later.
even a Mago Barca, who combines the family names of both dynasties.
But back to the main topic:
Why does only one English Wiki page mention the MGN spelling, and precisely none of the Hebrew Wiki pages, which all go by a Hebrew transcription of the Latin Mago (וגאמ)?
Why do the Hebrew pages have no problem to put up the Phoenician spelling for the Barcids?
Is it such a problem if ancient Semitic rulers were written MGN, like the word “shield”?
It’s a guess, but maybe Abraham’s verse used a similar word as an actual name for God.
In the verse, God is called YHWH, though that name had not yet been revealed, according to EX 6:3.
The name Baal-Magon is attested as a divine name.
Perhaps a similar name had been used in the Bible, and was censored as YHWH because of the similarity to theophoric names?
As a final oddity, Magon is a Phoenician name with a trail through Ancient Rome into Ancient Britain, as we will see in Part IV.
We’ll also later meet a group of British “Phoenicophiles” from the 17th century, who tried to prove a Phoenician colonization of Britain with name similarities.
To link British towns suffixed -Magum, they do bring up the name Baal-Magon, but mean the Biblical town Baal-Meon, where they assume the Ayin pronounced as Ghayn, like with Gaza and Gomorrah.
Why they never mention all the Carthaginian lords named Magon is a mystery.
Or perhaps not.
Coincidence or Abuse?
So, we have four divine names, close or identical to theophoric names, used by Phoenician lords.
Only two of them are real evidence:
El Qanna because the ruined pun makes it obvious that the name was changed, and Magon because it’s a name never used by Hebrews but by countless Phoenicians.
The question is:
Did the ancient lords secretly view their own names as divine names, and enact themselves as god-kings?
Or were they mere theophoric names, similar by coincidence, and the censors just wanted to be extra sure?
The only clue I found comes from the “Phoenicophile”Samuel Bochart, and it’s a bit cryptic.
He switches between:
Latin
Greek
Hebrew
and his ligatures are a nightmare, so I did the best I could here.
Since he was from among the elites, I don’t expect any unvarnished truths from him.
Here’s the passage, found in Bochart’s “Sacred Geography” and other works:
A Phoenician history was written in the native language by Sanchuniathon, and copied in Greek by latter-day Herennius Philo of Byblos.
Porphyrius in “de Abstinentia”, vol. 2, mentions eight books:
The Phoenician History etc., which Sanchuniathon wrote in the language of the Phoenicians, and which Philon of Byblos translated into Greek in eight books.
However, Eusebius counts nine:
Philon then, he says, had divided the whole work of Sanchunyathon into nine books.
But Porphyrius likely is the first banned book in history, which pertains more to Phoenician Theology.
Excerpts of this can be read in Eusebius, where many stories may be found, of the creation of the world, of the origin of idolatry, of the abuse of God’s names:
Shaddai
Cabir
Elion
El
Elohim
of Baal
Dagon
Astarte
Berith
and others instead of God in Phoenician cults, of the foundation of cities, of the invention of the arts, of Chna or Canaan the Phoenician father, of the circumcision and sacrifice of Abraham who is called Kronos or Saturn, of Porphyrius Israelem and his wife Anobret and how she conceived through the grace of God, as explained above.
Phoenicum hiſtoriam Sanchoniathon patrio ſermone ſcripſit, ſed Graece reddidit Philo Byblius Adriano σύγχρονος. Porphyrius περί αποχής lib.
2. eam tradit octo libris fuiſſe comprehenſam:
ή φοινικική ιστορία andc. ήν Σαγχoυνιάθων μεν τη Φοινίκων γλώττη συνέγραψεν, Φίλων δε ο Βύβλιος εις την Ελλάδα γλώττην δι’ οκτώ βιβλίων ήρμήνευσεν.
Tamen Euſebius novem numerat:
ο δή Φίλων, inquit, εις εννέα βίβλους την πάσαν του Σαγχoυνιάθωνος πραγματείαν διελών.
Sed Porphyrium veriſimile eſt ex historicorum numero primum librum exemiſſe, qui pertinet potiùs ad Phœnicum Theologiam.
Hujus αποσπασμάτων in Euſebio legere eſt, in quo inter multas fabulas reperitur aliquid veri de mundi creatione, de idololatriæ origine, de abuſu Dei nominum ידש ʃaddai, elion, לא el, םיהלא ריבכ cabir, ןוילע elohim, de Belo, Dagone, Aſtarte, Berith and aliis pro vero Deo in Phœnice cultis, de fundatione urbium, de inventione artium, de Chna ſeu Chanaan Phœnicum parte, de circumciſione and ſacrificio Abrahæ, quem Κρόνος Saturmum vocat; and Porphyrius Iſraelem and uxoremejus Anobret תרבוענח id eſt quæ concepit ex gratia, ut ſupra explicatum.
I’m not sure if my translation is totally correct, but the important part is clear:
Bochart speaks of banished and missing books, and says that God’s names:
Shaddai
Cabir
Elion
El
Elohim
were abused.
As the context is about Phoenician religion, I assume he means the Phoenicians abused them.
These are uncensored, official names of God.
But the problem is:
I have not found any abuse of these specific names mentioned in extant works.
But I think the real reason why the books where banished was another one:
The same ultra-rich overlords ruled over both pagan and monotheistic religions and judging from the silly puns they’ve inserted in the Bible, they believed in neither of them, but only in themselves.
The banished books would contain only some boring official Phoenician history and theology.
But we’d find hundreds more Phoenician names, many of which would probably match up with names of historical persons or deities of other countries.
Perhaps even with those of God.
And just before anyone asks:
No, I do NOT think that Phoenician Beirut was named after the covenant berit.
But someone may have punned around with it and censoring of that might be the reason why this major city is not found in the Bible, and why the name “Lord of the Covenant” was vilified.
Similar puns might have been attempted with Phoenician Tyre, which means “rock”, and the many verses where God is likened to a rock.
In some instances, “God the rock” can still be literally translated into “Tyrian lord”.
So, again, we have four names and some cryptic passages.
Is that enough to construct any grand theories here?
Definitely not.
But it’s enough to pay a visit to Ancient Phoenicia.
And what we’ll find there will be very, very interesting.
Yes, the Ancient Phoenicians are my Ancient Spookians.
They might not be the ultimate originators of spookery, but almost every characteristic of today’s spooks matches their public profile perfectly:
The Ancient Phoenician elites were ultra-rich aristocratic merchants and financiers from the Levant, speaking and writing a language almost identical to Hebrew, with names almost identical to Hebrew, and a network of colonies that spanned the entire officially known world…
But visit Phoenicia with me and see yourself.
Don’t Lament for Tyre
Our first stop is Biblical Phoenicia.
Can we find more links from Biblical puns to Ancient Phoenicia?
In the times of the early Biblical kings, the richest and most powerful Phoenician city was officially Tyre.
Much of what is known about this city comes from the “Laments for Tyre” in ISAIAH 23 and EZEKIEL 27.
The Book of Isaiah is usually dated earlier and contains the most famous characterization of the Phoenician lords:
“merchants who are like princes”
i.e. rulers.
Since that is what today’s banksters are, this passage alone made an analysis of Phoenicia important to me.
If you were looking for a verse that admits that powerful merchants were already above kings, and appointed them, this is it!
The Hebrew word used here for crowning is atar (רטע).
This verse is usually explained away as irony, or by claiming that Tyre only bestowed crowns to its own colonies.
But you can also read it as hidden influence on all crowned rulers, especially since the “merchant princes” were also the “honored of the earth”.
The word for traders here is kenaan (ןענכ), which also translates as Canaan or Phoenicia.
He has stretched His hand out over the sea, He has made the kingdoms tremble; The LORD has given a command concerning Canaan to demolish its strongholds.ISA 23:11
The command is given “to” the merchants, or to Canaan, that the strongholds should be demolished.
Shouldn’t it be given to the besiegers?
Behold, the land of the Chaldeans– this is the people which was not; desert creatures– they erected their siege towers, they Assyria appointed it for stripped its palaces, they made it a ruin.ISA 23:13
If the tsi-im were ship people, Assyria would be founded for the Tyrians themselves?!?
What did the tsi people do?
Erect towers, not necessarily “siege” towers.
They “stripped the palaces”, but some translations say they “raised” them.
The Tyrians officially built many towers and palaces in Assyria and Babylon, supplying building material and craftsmen!
Then they “made it a ruin”, mapalah (הלפמ), but perhaps instead made it “of” special distinctiveness, me-palah (הלפ).
Ezekiel’s Lament for Tyre
Isaiah’s prophesy bestows grand titles upon Tyre, but pales in comparison to that of Ezekiel, the “son of man”.
Ezekiel’s prophesy contains so much praise and flattery that I can’t list it all here.
I’ll comment on the most important verses, as we’ll need this characterization of Phoenicia for Part IV.
“And you, son of man, take up a lamentation over Tyre;EZE 27:2
and say to Tyre, who dwells at the entrance to the sea, merchant of the peoples to many coastlands,
‘Thus says the Lord GOD,
“O Tyre, you have said, ‘I am perfect in beauty.’EZE 27:3
“Your borders are in the heart of the seas; Your builders have perfected your beauty.EZE 27:4
Does the author perhaps adore Tyre?
I see no rebuttal here.
“They have made all your planks of fir trees from Senir; They have taken a cedar from Lebanon to a mast for you.EZE 27:5
“Of oaks from Bashan they have made your oars; With ivory they have inlaid your deck of boxwood from the coastlands of Cyprus.EZE 27:6
Cedar from the Lebanon was one of the products on which Phoenicia had a monopoly.
Senir is Mount Hermon in the Anti-Lebanon mountains.
Cyprus was colonized early on by Phoenicians.
“Your sail was of fine embroidered linen from Egypt So that it became your distinguishing mark; Your awning was blue and purple from the coastlands of Elishah.EZE 27:7
The Phoenicians were the best sailors.
Much of their trade was with Egypt, which early on infused the Phoenician cities with pretty much all technology, also with linen.
“The inhabitants of Sidon and Arvad were your rowers; Your wise men, O Tyre, were aboard; they your pilots.EZE 27:8
“The elders of Gebal and her wise men were with you repairing your seams; All the ships of the sea and their sailors were with you in order to deal in your merchandise.EZE 27:9
More praise for another 3 major Phoenician cities, all next to each other.
“Persia and Lud and Put were in your army, your men of war.
They hung shield and helmet in you; they set forth your splendor.EZE 27:10
“Tarshish was your customer because of the abundance of all kinds of wealth; with silver, iron, tin and lead they paid for your wares.EZE 27:12
Tarshish again, this time with these resources:
silver
iron
tin
lead
We’ll locate Tarshish later.
“Judah and the land of Israel, they were your traders; with the wheat of Minnith, cakes, honey, oil and balm they paid for your merchandise.EZE 27:17
Many nations are listed to trade with Phoenicia, Judah and Israel as well, who apparently only exported agricultural goods.
All of Israel’s:
neighbors
rivals
enemies
are listed as well.
There’s much more of it, basically an entire chapter of glorification for Phoenician Tyre.
What other city got a memorial like this in the Bible, except Jerusalem?
But it doesn’t stop here!
There is a Lament for the King of Tyre, which contains more praise.
“Son of man, say to the leader of Tyre, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “Because your heart is lifted up And you have said, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of gods In the heart of the seas’; Yet you are a man and not God, Although you make your heart like the heart of God.EZE 28:2
Behold, you are wiser than Daniel; There is no secret that is a match for you.EZE 28:3
The first verse is criticism, but the second more praise for the god king?
With no rebuttal?
“By your wisdom and understanding You have acquired riches for yourself And have acquired gold and silver for your treasuries.EZE 28:4
“By your great wisdom, by your trade You have increased your riches And your heart is lifted up because of your riches.EZE 28:5
Not just wisdom, but great wisdom.
I would simply call it a global trade monopoly.
"You were in Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone was your covering:
The ruby, the topaz and the diamond;
The beryl, the onyx and the jasper;
The lapis lazuli, the turquoise and the emerald;
And the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets, Was in you.
On the day you were created They were prepared.EZE 28:13
“You were the anointed cherub who covers, And I placed you there.
You were on the holy mountain of God;
You walked in the midst of the stones of fire.EZE 28:14
This Phoenician king was in Eden and is called a cherub!
No other mortal in the Bible is likened to a cherub!
Also, we have another strange “cover”.
He was more likely an undercover overlord.
“By the multitude of your iniquities, In the unrighteousness of your trade You profaned your sanctuaries.
Therefore, I have brought fire from the midst of you; It has consumed you, And I have turned you to ashes on the earth In the eyes of all who see you.EZE 28:18
I’d also say that the Tyrian trade monopoly was unrighteous, but what are the other iniquities?
What sanctuaries were profaned?
Wouldn’t these be pagan sanctuaries, derided elsewhere in the Bible?
I don’t know what the authors intended with the laments, but the one for Tyre and its king reads like a love letter.
The authors of this passage had at least some special affiliation with Tyre.
The Siege of Tyre
Ezekiel is instructed to prophesy an attack by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II on Tyre (EZE 26:7).
The city is foretold to be destroyed and be made into a barren rock.
The name of Tyre itself means “rock”, though in another word.
The core city with its fortress and temple were built on a small rocky island half a mile off the shore, now a peninsula.
That might be where the “rock” stems from, though it may also come from a mainland settlement on Tell Mashuk, a rocky hill.
While the mainland city complex was apparently attacked and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, like so often in Tyre’s history, the elites simply retreated to their island fortress.
Bronze band from Balawat gate, dated 850 BC, showing Tyrian workers ferrying tribute for Shalmaneser III to the mainland from the fortress, then still on an island. How would you besiege such a place?
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Now, does anyone see a problem here?
Allegedly, Nebuchadnezzar II, without a fleet, was besieging a fortified island which had the best fleet around.
Not only that, but the island also hosted two north and south harbors, with the Assyrian Balawat band showing two gates and small boats bringing goods to the mainland.
So, trading ships would have arrived and anchored on the island.
Discussions of what the island looked like are found here:
So, while it seems to be a stupid idea to starve out an island when you have no ships, it seems downright idiotic if this island has ships with supplies coming and going every day.
Some things like drinking water would become more expensive, but the Tyrians could’ve held out pretty much forever or simply escaped to one of their many colonies.
So, why did Nebuchadnezzar keep up this expensive siege?
I’d say precisely because it was expensive!
Uruk temple documents from the time contain an often-cited receipt for flour for the king and his soldiers who went to fight against Tyre.
The tablet is broken off after his 11th year, so the siege of Tyre is usually nudged into those off-record years, often the 20th.
Miles:
So, another possibility is that the siege never happened.
It was made up like much of the rest of history. The rationing tablets about “Foreign Professionals in Babylon” come mostly from earlier years:
The clay tablets date to the year 10-28 during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II; one exception is a text from his 34th year.
In detail, most texts are from years 10-12 and years 19-20.
Ten very long lists of sesame oil distribution, the paper dates as follows:
As far as preserved datings on these tablets show, they are all from year 13 (592/3 BC) of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II.
So, if not all of the 100s of Tyrians are on the one tablet from year 34, then they were working for Nebuchadnezzar before or during the siege of Tyre, when he prepared attacking their cities!
In an inscription about Nebuchadnezzar’s 7th year, Tyre is even listed next to:
Gaza
Sidon
Arwad
Ashdod
as having contributed to building Nebuchadnezzar’s South Palace in Babylon.
just like they did for Sennacherib, and then he attacked them?
Just like Sennacherib used Phoenician ships for his conquests against Elam, trade seems to have gone well between Babylon and Tyre after the alleged siege.
“Business tablets” have been found, detailing the sale of agriculture products like sesame, cattle and dates from Babylon to Tyre, from the:
Remember those eight Egyptian soldiers from the rationing tablets, guarding the governor’s house?
No matter which tablet they’re on, they were there before the war.
Would a Babylonian king have his house guarded by Egyptians and then attack that nation?
It’s stated that the presence of this many Tyrians:
“could corroborate the assumption of a military campaign against the Phoenician cities, especially Tyre.”
Well, I say it more likely corroborates that Tyrian elites were in cahoots with Babylonian ones!
They may have been preparing these campaigns together.
Remember the housebuilders from Elam and Phoenicia?
They built palaces for the Assyrians, but perhaps also for their own elites, so they’d feel right at home, like Hezekiah’s daughters with their personal ivory-inlaid beds.
The authors of “Foreign Professionals in Babylon” admit that it’s:
“not easy to explain why all these foreigners were in Babylon and received oil in the royal palace.”
Most interesting to me is the friendship between the Phoenician king Hiram and Israel’s king Solomon.
I consider both to be historical persons, but don’t think that the accounts are entirely historical.
Let’s just analyze what the authors want to say.
They describe how Solomon builds an insanely expensive temple and palace out of nowhere, and in the process enters into many exchanges with the Phoenician king.
It could be a parable on how new rulers and their nations were indebted to the merchants right upon entering office.
The Phoenicians enter the stage with the establishment of monarchy, with David and Solomon.
As soon as David is king, the Phoenicians build a palace for him, supplying materials and craftsmen.
David became greater and greater, for the LORD God of hosts was with him.2 SAM 5:10
Then Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David with cedar trees and carpenters and stonemasons; and they built a house for David.2 SAM 5:11
Nothing is said about the costs for building that palace, and there’s no such thing as a free palace.
Did David pay for it?
With what?
Did he otherwise become indebted to the Phoenicians?
Or was the palace only a preparation for the next king?
Remember, David also wanted to build a house for the LORD, which could mean either a temple or a dynasty, but the LORD didn’t want him to build that house.
He wanted David’s successor to build it, or alternatively the “servant”.
That successor was Solomon, and two literal houses were again built by the Phoenicians.
Why did they do this?
Was the figurative house, the dynasty, also built by them?
As the Book of Solomon was lost, Solomon’s remaining story is split between the Book of Kings and Book of Chronicles.
In the Kings version, the Phoenicians get active by themselves.
King Hiram of Tyre had been a friend of David, which KJV even translates as lover, from Hebrew aheb ( בהא).
The project is at first a house for the “name” of God, but a house for Solomon himself creeps in later.
Now Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants to Solomon, when he heard that they had anointed him king in place of his father, for Hiram had always been a friend of David.1 KING 5:1
Then Solomon sent word to Hiram, saying,1 KING 5:2
"Behold, I intend to build a house for the name of the LORD my God, as the LORD spoke to David my father, saying, ‘Your son, whom I will set on your throne in your place, he will KING the house for My name.’1 KING 5:3
Chapters 5 and 6 are long and detailed lists of Phoenician timber from Lebanon, other expensive imported materials, the tens of thousands of workers employed, and their provisioning, shipping logistics, and the artwork created by Phoenician craftsmen.
In chapter 7, it’s revealed that while a house was built for the LORD, another house was built for Solomon himself.
With many verses it’s unclear which house they pertain to, since the words bayith (תיב) and hekal (לכיה) can refer to both temples and palaces.
Temples were opened to the public on occasions, but were mainly administrative centers built for lower elites, much like palaces.
The Chronicles version is more straightforward:
Both houses are planned from the start:
Now Solomon decided to build a house for the name of the LORD and a royal palace for himself.2 CHRON 2:1
Then Huram continued, "Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who has made heaven and earth, who has given King David a wise son, endowed with discretion and understanding, who will build a house for the LORD and a royal palace for himself.2 CHRON 2:12
In any case, two houses are built, both described as insanely expensive.
Who bankrolls these?
Since the Ancient Israel in the Bible produced mainly agricultural goods, Solomon provides:
flour
wheat
wine
and oil for the woodcutters in Chronicles (2 CHRON 2:10).
In Kings, Solomon enters an obligation to send wheat and oil to Tyre every year (1 KING 5:11).
In Kings, Solomon also pays the wages for the woodcutters (1 KING 5:6) and provides forced laborers from among Israel’s population (1 KING 5:13), either foreigners in Israel (2 CHRON 2:17), or conquered people (1 KING 9:21).
But all this accounts for the smaller part of the expenses.
The larger part is the cost for high-level craftsmen, shipping of material, but mostly the material itself, as so much gold was built into temple and palace.
Solomon ruled over a region which produced mainly agricultural goods, so you’d have to ask how he pays for all this.
David already conquered a vast region, and his palace was apparently cheaper, not good enough for Solomon.
There’s a passage in Kings, where Solomon sells 20 cities to Hiram for 120 talents of gold.
(Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress timber and gold according to all his desire), then King Solomon gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee.1 KING 9:12
So, Hiram came out from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him, and they did not please him.1 KING 9:13
He said, “What are these cities which you have given me, my brother?”
So, they were called the land of Cabul to this day.
And Hiram sent to the king 120 talents of gold.1 KING 9:14
In Chronicles, Hiram gives cities to Solomon instead.
that he built the cities which Huram had given to him and settled the sons of Israel there.2 CHRON 8:2
Several things to note:
First, 600 talents of gold were used in the inner temple (2 CHRON 3:8).
It was thus worth something like 100 cities.
Second, Hiram supplied Solomon with gold:
“according to all his desire."
This isn’t mentioned anywhere else.
They retrieve gold from a joint expedition to Ophir, but this happens after the sale of those 20 cities, in 1 KING 9.
Third, a part of Galilee, central to Christianity, was sold by an Israeli king to a Phoenician king.
How many other transactions like this took place?
Lastly, the Phoenician king Hiram calls Solomon “my brother” (1 KING 9:13), with the word ach (חא), used for:
Only later historians fleshed out their relationship, citing now lost sources.
Josephus names Hiram’s father as Abibalus (Ἀβιβάλου), which would be the Phoenician name Abibaal (לעביבא).
If we were to switch one letter in the Greek or 2 in Hebrew, we’d get Abdbaal (לעבדבע), another Phoenician name, “Servant of the Lord”, which could be the “servant” allowed to build David’s dynasty.
Another “servant” is given as Abdemon (Ἀβδήμουνόν), a smart “man of Tyre” employed by Hiram to cheat Solomon in a game of riddles, probably all of them about puns!
Solomon is said to have had 700 wives, and 300 concubines (1 KING 11:3).
Miles:
That's a big step up in wifage in one generation, which no one ever comments on, including Gerry.
Solomon is supposed to be the son of David, both kings, but lives nothing like him?
It is as if the entire set of customs changed at this point.
Also extremely curious is Bathsheba, Solomon's mother, previously married to a Hittite.
Which would imply she was also a Hittite.
Which of course goes against everything we are taught about Jewish lines being matrilineal.
Solomon is sold to us as the son of David, not as the son of Bathsheba.
At Wiki, Bathsheba's father is given as a Gilonite, but no mother is given.
So, Solomon's own matrilineal line is scrubbed immediately in the Bible itself—basically, the biggest red flag possible.
Eusebius quotes lost sources saying Hiram built a statue of his daughter with Solomon’s leftover gold, while Tatian quotes sources saying that Solomon married Hiram’s daughter.
For such a major king, that’s a little less than what you’d expect.
In fact, it is about 999 wives/concubines short.
Solomon the Merchant Prince
Officially, all Phoenician records were lost, so we do not know how the merchant princes set up and ran their enterprises.
But I think this is not true.
One account survived:
That of Solomon!
If you pluck a certain range of passages from Kings and Chronicles, then Solomon’s activities can only be described as that of a merchant prince setting up his trading empire:
He conquers key cities on trade routes
sets up supply lines
rebuilds new ports
and sends expeditions to tap new resources, all in collaboration with Phoenician city-states.
There’s nothing wrong with this, and I think the accounts are not entirely historical, so if Solomon is your personal hero, you can keep it that way.
But if we want to know how rich merchants and financiers conquered the world, and what they like about the Levant, then this might be the one piece of official extant scripture that explains it.
The Phoenician merchant princes were said to be insanely wealthy, and incredible wealth right from the start is one central theme of Solomon’s story.
While the Kings version has the Phoenicians supply Solomon with cedar and gold:
Solomon’s expeditions to Ophir are also mentioned in this context, but it’s not explained why (1 KING 10:11).
If they were navigating down the Red Sea, they could have run into the territory of Sheba, where local authorities might have blocked their journey to extract a toll, and that might have been the reason for the queen’s visit.
Again, none of the riddles is given as an example.
I’d say it’s not a loanword, but what they call their puns.
And they don’t list any examples, because they’d give away their pun camouflage.
Come to think of it, this infatuation with puns and riddles might be why the modern spooks have a grudging respect for a certain Texan/Taoseno truther, who usually solves all their riddles in no time.
Punny Merchant Cities
Some of the merchant cities that are related to Solomon’s trading in the story contain even more puns and secrets of their own. Let’s go explore some of them.
The ancient port at the Gulf of Aqaba, from which the Israeli-Phoenician expeditions to Ophir start is called Ezion-Geber (רבג ןויצע), located near Eilat or part of it.
And if you drop the Ayin from Ezion, you get the exact spelling for Zion (ןויצ).
The port’s name could be something like “Heroes of Zion”, since fleets like that of Solomon regularly sailed from there into little-known territory.
Why is that word mistranslated, and possibly prefixed with that Ayin on purpose?
Even if I’m wrong, why is this not discussed as a possibility?
I think it might be because the name Zion has become a taboo, though it shouldn’t be.
We will soon see why.
The Cities of Palms
As a preparation for Part IV, we need to analyze one more word in depth, because it has become the Greek word “Phoenicia”, and used for lots of punny symbolism.
but they also all lie on trade routes to the Mediterranean or into neighboring regions:
Gezer and Beth-Horon between Jerusalem and coastal Jaffa (Tel-Aviv), and Tadmor on the King’s Highway which connects Egypt to Mesopotamia and joins the routes from Phoenicia.
A trade empire is being built.
Let’s look closer at the city Tadmor, because we’re in for some punning around.
It’s Tadmor in Chronicles, but the city was originally written Tamar in Kings, which has been Qere-Ketiv’ed into Tadmor (1 KING 9:18).
and the Negev and the plain in the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees [or: of merchants], as far Jericho, the city of palm trees [or: of merchants], as Zoar.DEUT 34:3
Solomon also invested in the ships of Tarshish, from Isaiah’s and Ezekiel’s Laments for Tyre.
Chronicles says that Solomon and Hiram sent ships of Tarshish to Tarshish (2 CHRON 9:21),
which then bring home:
gold
silver
ivory
apes
and peacocks every three years.
Kings only says that the ships were of Tarshish (1 KING 10:22).
Later, king Jehoshaphat in Chronicles sends ships to Tarshish (2 CHRON 20:36), while Kings tells the story as ships of Tarshish going to Ophir from Ezion-Geber at the Gulf of Aqaba (1 KING 22:48).
Jonah embarks to Tarshish from Mediterranean Jaffa (JONAH 1:3), so it can’t be the same place.
The Tarshish from Ezekiel’s Lament for Tyre is then even translated as “Carthage” in the Greek Septuagint (Καρχηδόνιοι, inEZE 27:12, EZE 27:25, EZE 38:13).
So where is Tarshish, and why do they all confuse it?
Obviously, the many Biblical occurrences of Tarshish describe different locations, so there’s a lot of speculation about the actual location:
But we’ll see later that the network of Phoenician colonies was quite extensive.
And since colonists of all times recycled names of their ports of origin (York and New York), I’d say Tarshish might well be ALL of these locations together, and possibly more!
All have links to Phoenicia:
Cilician Tarsus traded with Phoenicia and is in that pocket of Anatolia where Phoenician script popped up after The Collapse.
It may be dawning on us why many Tells in Lebanon are left unexcavated.
More surprises may be slumbering there.
The ŠLM Family of Names
As Solomon and Hiram have almost no family members given, we cannot search there for a Phoenician-Israelite genealogy.
The mightiest tool that remains to us are name similarities, because the aristocrats are so fond of their names, they insert them into all historical records, even religious ones, as we saw.
When I looked for names similar to “Solomon”, I noticed something odd…
This statue has been given by Baal Shillem son of king Baana king of the Sidonians son of king Aber-Amun king of the Sidonians son of king Baal Shillem king of the Sidonians to the Lord to Eshmun at fountain Ydil.
I’m not claiming that the members of the ŠLM family are literally related.
But they prove a wider connection between Ancient Israel and Ancient Phoenicia, and other regions beyond.
And the different vowelizations of the very same letters ŠLM prove that the elites don’t want us to see that!
Answered Questions
Before we spread out too much, let’s stop for a moment, and think about what all this really means.
Why Phoenicia?
Why that region?
Why the connection of spookery and trade?
I will share here my grand theory, my attempt to explain it all.
I haven’t had the time to fully research the pre-Biblical periods yet, so it’s just a working hypothesis.
It goes thus:
The ancestors of our modern spooks were the top ruling families of Ancient Phoenicia, and of the Ancient Fertile Crescent at large, who united into one single bloc through their economic and family ties, ruled via trade and resource monopolies, and then rolled out this system to the rest of the planet, in the first big step via naval colonization originating from Ancient Phoenicia.
Why this specific theory?
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that spookery can be traced back to the Fertile Crescent, and Phoenicia specifically.
Their region was blessed with a hot climate, fertile soil, plus abundant water through seasonal flooding of Nile, Euphrates and Tigris.
But to harness that, and overcome flood and drought seasons, the people had to build vast irrigation canal networks.
And for that, they had to work together in very large collectives, and so formed these collectives earlier than others, out of necessity.
They thus had a head start on civilization as we define it:
With large settlements came specialization, and tools, and complex administration, and writing.
And steep hierarchies.
And a more powerful aristocracy.
Miles found out that spookery didn’t start with the CIA but goes back unchanged for centuries.
And if I was to single out the one piece of new information, we got out of all the ancient punnery I found, then I’d say it’s this:
Spookery goes back almost unchanged for millennia!
The spooks who rule our world reference Ancient Israel.
It was surely a great country but never looked overly advanced or powerful to me.
I always wondered how all this weirdness could have evolved from there.
Now I have replaced Ancient Israel with Ancient Phoenicia.
Is that any better?
I think Yes!
I think it makes a huge difference if we replace “Ancient Israel” with “Ancient Phoenicia” or the “Ancient Fertile Crescent” to include Mesopotamia and Egypt:
These regions were indeed advanced and powerful, the most advanced and powerful of their time!
The Ancient Spookians were not humble nomads, but almighty kings and overlords.
Power simply begets more power!
If we would assume that the world was really conquered by top dogs from above, and not by underdogs from below, then we could answer some recurring questions which always puzzled me about those:
lazy
sloppy
silly
spook aristocrats, who are mostly bumbling along, faking their deaths:
How did these people get so insanely powerful?
Answer:
They didn’t!
They were ultra powerful already in the Bronze Age and have mostly inherited that.
How did these people get so insanely wealthy?
Answer:
They didn’t!
They were ultra wealthy already in the Bronze Age and have mostly inherited that.
How did these people erect a global empire?
Answer:
They didn’t!
They had a global empire already in the Bronze Age, thanks to the Phoenician monopoly on durable wood and shipbuilding technology and have mostly inherited that.
How did these people overcome all opposition?
Answer:
They didn’t!
There never was any meaningful opposition.
Once the aristocracies of the most advanced civilizations made a pact and formed a bloc, the rest of humanity was toast.
How did these people conquer all the world?
Answer:
They didn’t!
They were rich enough to simply buy under-developed regions from local rulers, and let these rulers join the gravy train, by grafting them onto the global family tree.
How did these people manage to avoid leaving incriminating written evidence?
Answer:
They didn’t!
They didn’t have to!
People outside the Fertile Crescent hadn’t even invented script.
All people who could read and write were either in-the-know aristocrats from the Fertile Crescent, or their clerks.
A few puns would suffice to deter literate commoners.
[And by the time of later history, as now, such a pile of confusing and tangled data had accumulated that no one could sort through it.]
How did these people manage to achieve the power and wealth they had in the Bronze Age?
Answer:
They didn’t!
That’s simply a “regular” aristocratic inheritance, that likely goes back into pre-history.
The first ziggurats and pyramids were erected already under their cushioned royal behinds!
It seems these loafers never ever really achieved anything in the entirety of history.
Aliens from outer space could check off this planet as “confirmed” for the power-begets-power hypothesis.
I think the only three things the spook aristocracy ever “invented” were:
Global Trade.
How to scam their subjects.
After millennia of intra-aristocratic bickering and backstabbery, how to achieve some sort of truce among each other, while continuing to scam their subjects.
You’ll notice that this requires very little technology.
The only required ingredients are humans, available since the Apeman Age.
So, the aristocrats had, and likely needed, many millennia of prehistory to get their act together.
Script was invented for inventory lists, because temple bureaucrats couldn’t keep track any more of all the stuff and people they controlled.
“Regular” top-down corruption and scamming was thus likely already invented in prehistory.
Naturally, this does not mean that all of history, or civilization, is false or fake.
The un-recorded history of us little people is genuine.
We carried the civilization that archaeologists excavate.
And only a tiny part of recorded history is false, namely the part that portrays rich and powerful people as independent, while they’ve really long since agglutinated into one global blob of hoaxdom.
I don’t know when that inter-aristocratic pact formed, but I think it was in historic times.
Writing letters may have helped with relations among aristocrats of different regions.
But I think the institution that ultimately allowed these connections was likely another one:
Global Trade.
There’s nothing bad about trade in general.
But global trade, of things not easily substituted, turns quickly into a global monopoly, as it hands the key to entire nations to groups of rich and powerful people.
Remember that I claimed the Fertile Crescent was blessed with hot climate, abundant water and fertile soil?
Well, those were the only things it had, plus clay.
Mesopotamia was very resource- poor—even stone and wood had to be fetched from far away. I think that’s why Fertile Crescent people traded very far, very early.
As with their large settlements, this was a necessity.
It’s amazing what distances were covered by trade even in archaic times.
Local rulers had to recompense Assyrian merchants for any robbery, but if Assyrian merchants themselves were caught with crimes, they could always be bailed out.
Because like many laws and contracts from the time, it contained just such “Free” Trade provisions shielding financiers and owners from risk, burdening governors instead, who then tax it from “the people”:
§23. If the highwayman has not been caught, the man that has been robbed shall state on oath what he has lost and the city or district governor in whose territory or district the robbery took place shall restore to him what he has lost.
Not saying Hammurabi was as bad a ruler as today’s congressmen.
In theory his laws would also benefit small merchants.
But his allegiances were clearly with the rich and ultra-rich folks, his peers.
I haven’t yet decided if he was part of the global “spook” system, but signs are there:
Just like the Bible narrative concentrates on Hebrew nomads, Hammurabi’s family is cast as Amorites, another nomadic people from the Levant, who had conquered mighty Babylon, but allegedly:
Coincidentally, roughly at the time of the Babylonian and Ugarit Hammurabis, Egypt had been conquered by so called Hyksos, also from the Levant and traditionally styled as violent axe-swinging “shepherd kings”.
If I were to give a date at which some global pact between top aristocrats was made, I’d say it was somewhere around 1600 BC, when apparently aristocrats from the Levant had achieved, or been given, reign over both Mesopotamia and Egypt.
I still don’t know what exactly happened there. I suppose Levantine merchant princes were the initiators, but it was likely not a drive-by takeover as later with the illiterate Europeans.
I hypothesize it to be some merger, with all aristocratic parties bringing some tradition to the table:
Egyptian and Mesopotamian templars their bureaucracies, and Levantine operators their global reach.
These links to Mesopotamia and Egypt may be today downplayed even towards lesser spooklings, judging from Hammurabi’s controversial “rediscovery”, and from the way Gardiner’s harmless transcriptions are buried.
But there might be a wealth of archaic scamming practices inherited from those advanced empires:
The traditional temple bureaucracies were deceptive and unfair, but stable.
If they taxed away the loafer premium for the aristocrats directly, commoners would passively resist, and over time figure out ways to hide their stuff.
But with periodic wars and crises, people were caught off-guard.
And with a global monopoly, they would then have no choice but to actively go to the economic overlords and voluntarily hand over everything they had, for food.
If you have another good explanation, all the better.
To confirm or refute it, I’ll have to dig deeper into the archaic times.
But whatever the real explanation, I think it has something to do with aristocrats acting as merchants and financiers, and with them somehow working together, as these are the central discoveries of Miles.
So, I developed this theory of spookery coming from Ancient Phoenicia, and not Ancient Israel.
I think it answers some questions, as outlined above.
However, it opens up a new question:
If Ancient Israel was not the actual, ultimate identity of the Ancient Spooks, if the Ancient Hebrews were spooked just like the rest of us, then why do we have all these references to Israel?
This is not about if the spooks would lie to us, or assume fake identities, or falsify their own history.
Yes, yes, yes, they’d do all these things, and they’ve done them innumerable times.
However, the Bible verses I cited that contain puns or references to Phoenicia, were obviously cherry-picked.
For the most part, the Bible seems to be what it says on the tin.
But aristocrats are self-absorbed and want every little tidbit of history to be about themselves.
Why would they use a Biblical nation as a mask, and promote Biblical scripture to be the central pivot point of history, if it wasn’t about themselves?
I have to admit that for a while I thought the crypto-“Jewish” shtick was a deep-state internal scam, played on half-in-the-know lesser spooks.
When I first saw the cheerful dopeyness of fake event crisis actors on video, I thought that in addition to extra pay, they had been brainwashed into believing it was for a non-corrupt cause.
Like they’re humanity’s secret shepherds who bring about a holy kingdom, even though their “kings” really conquered the planet millennia ago.
Well, I don’t think that anymore.
You can’t employ people to scam humanity and prevent them from realizing they’re scammed themselves.
I think that these seals are either genuine, or at least convey a genuine truth:
The entire Levant, including Israel and Phoenicia, had deep cultural and economic ties to both Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Judging from what Miles has found out, there were also deep family ties among the aristocracy.
Is there more?
While old papyrus records were burned with the palaces, cuneiform tablets harden in fire, so incriminating internal records might have been preserved in ancient merchant cities like:
Palmyra
Ugarit
Mari
Ebla
We are sure to find more buried links as we dig deeper into archaic history.
all somewhat similar but not quite close to Zion and Zidon.
The most straightforward explanation is never given:
That the mountains of Zion here are really the mountains of Zidon, since that is where Hermon is actually located.
Naturally dew from Hermon would rain down on the lower mountains of Zidon.
If there are “mountains of Zidon”, is there also a Mount Zidon?
Apparently, the answer is yes.
It’s mentioned in some texts, though it’s very few.
Zidon still stands today, but with the Arabic name Zaida, so the similarity is gone.
Do local Lebanese folk perhaps call some peak Mount Zaida?
Hard to tell, because the Zidon municipality started to pile trash into a heap on the shore, dubbed “Mount Zaida” by the media, so all search engine hits to actual mountains are now literally buried under tons of rubbish.
Porro cum audissent Eleazar and complices ei adhaerantes, quod fugissent seniores populi and capita eorum, and quod essent in monte Zidon, abierunt ad eos, and pugnates contra eos, interemer ut multum populum ex eis.
Seeing this, the leaders of Israel, the sages, and the pious fled Jerusalem, because they feared Nero and the cruelty of the Romans.
They fled to Mount Sidon and settled there.
When Eleazar and his rebels heard that the leaders and the heads of the people had fled to Mount Sidon, they followed them there, fought them, and killed many of them.
What is that Mount Zidon they’re fleeing to?
We’d expect a Mount Zidon to be close to Zidon and Jezzine, somewhere around Mount Hermon.
From Jerusalem, that’s three days travel.
Does it make sense for elders to flee from Jerusalem to the region of Zidon, and for their pursuers to immediately find them there in the mountains?
Zidon Rabah and Zidon Haaretz
We can also locate that Mount Zidon in Hebrew texts:
The book “Borders of Israel” (ץרא תולובג לארשי) by Ibn Daud who lived 1110 BC equates a Mount Zidon Rabah (הבר ןודיצ רה), meaning “Great Zidon”, with a Mount Dshizin (ןיזישד רה).
But if the 2 Zidon settlements were next to each other as those of Tyre, would it make sense then to mention them separately, while there is no mentioning anywhere of a Great Tyre or Little Tyre?
Dshizin in that text is probably an old spelling for Jezzine.
Mount Zidon would then be at Jezzine, an ancient merchant stronghold connecting Zidon to trade routes in the mountains.
It’s the hometown of the humble storeowner father of Carlos Slim (ŠLM family?), likely the world’s wealthiest rags-to-riches biography faker.
These would seamlessly connect to the dew of Mount Hermon coming down on the mountains of Zion, and to the fortress of Zion being attacked through waterways or waterfalls.
It would also be a fitting location for “Little” Zidon, being smaller than coastal Zidon.
But the book Borders of Israel explicitly equates Dshizin with the “Great” Zidon, not the “Little” one.
And Akkadian ṣiḫru, translated as small, is close to siḫḫāru which denotes flat things such as a plate.
My personal guess would thus be that rabû and ṣiḫru refer to heights here:
Upper Zidon and Lower Zidon, which would be Jezzine in the mountains, and Zidon at the coast.
It would be the right distance to share one name, and far enough to be mentioned separately.
The Phoenician names would be Zidon Rabah and Zidon Haaretz (ןודיצ, ץרא ןודיצ הבר), as the latter occurs in the Eshmunazar inscription.
Jezzine, with Jezzine Waterfall, Zaida-Jezzine Road, and the mountain Taoumat Jezzine
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If you look at Jezzine on a map, you’ll see that it sits on top of a mountain looking towards coastal Zidon.
Since those 500 Franks descended onto Jezzine from Mount Zidon, that would be the mountain further up.
It’s today called Taoumat Jezzine (نأيزأج تاأموت), logged clean, and could be the ancient Mount Zidon.
The Zaida-Jezzine road would have been a Zidon-Zidon road.
Zion and Jerusalem
All the “synonymous parallelism” verses listing Zion and Jerusalem could be explained as well:
They would not be poetic parallels about one city, but about North and South of Israel.
This would mean that Ancient Israel extended a bit further to the north than is usually thought.
Would that be so terrible?
But there remains the question why the elders of Jerusalem would flee to Mount Zidon.
Was it perhaps really the elders of Zion, at Mount Zidon?
I’m not yet ready to believe that Jerusalem was someplace else, but maybe it’s a partial censoring?
Except for David’s conquest, there are no verses about Zion as a physical location.
But maybe there were, in earlier versions.
Maybe both cities were important, with some stories taking place at Jerusalem, and some at Zion.
Perhaps later editors copied Jerusalem over all physical instances of Zion, just like they likely copied YHWH over divine names that were too close to theophoric names.
Zidonians and Tyrians are even often mentioned together, in the same verse.
The difference is that “Zidonians” was a general term for “Phoenicians”.
If Zion was Zidon, then one major city of Ancient Israel would be named “Phoenicia”!
Even if this similarity was a coincidence, as soon as it was known to the public, the following “terrible” thing would happen:
Whenever we detected scams of ultra-rich aristocratic merchants and financiers from the Levant, they could call themselves “Jews” all they want – but these “Jews” couldn’t hide any more behind their common-folk namesakes.
No one would see humble Jews in these merchant princes.
All their political correctness protective screens would fizzle out, and their rags-to-riches camouflage with it.
We would look instead to Ancient Phoenicia, officially home region to ultra-rich aristocratic merchants and financiers.
And we’d find official colonization trails from there, into all of Europe and beyond.
I invite you all to see them for yourselves, in Part IV.
The Punny Rule of Spook Law
As a little preview to classical Roman times, I’ll offer one more explanation why the spooks would hide behind Judaism specifically.
I have concentrated on the conveniently indexed Bible so far, but perhaps it is a mere sideshow.
There’s the possibility is that the crypto-“Jewish” culture hijacking by the spooks is not centered around the Biblical narrative, but around special crypto-“Jewish” laws, which might really be written by and for spook aristocrats.
Since we’ve never found any trace of serious, deadly infighting among the spooks, I think there is some institution that upholds the uneasy truce between these greedy, malevolent people.
One clue is that all so-called “Free” Trade “Agreements” call for special Investor-State Dispute Settlement panels, where wealthy lawyers can decide that ultra-rich investors are right, and any law representing common people is wrong.
The Investor-State-Disputes are then settled by having money flow from the latter to the former.
Why all the trouble for that?
I think it’s because they’re secretly relying on such panels for intra-aristocratic disputes.
Conflicts may arise if spook clan A wants to fleece a country’s budget through some scam, while spook clan B is running another scam against the same country.
They both have their moles all over the government, so who’s to tell which clan ultimately owns the country?
A settlement court with laws custom-tailored for ultra-rich spooks could help them to peacefully decide who gets our money, without anybody getting hurt!
Jewish Law and “Jewish” Law
What if special laws like these have always existed, and were disguised by powerful aristocratic spooks as “Jewish”, even though they are not helpful to ordinary Jews?
I am not talking about the 7 Laws of Noah, or the 10 Commandments, or the 613 Mitzvot.
I am talking about the immeasurably vast body of legal expertise, commentaries and case studies that is preserved in both regular Jewish and crypto-“Jewish”Halakhic tradition.
Only a tiny part of it is compiled in Mishnah, Tosefta and other written works, which are already running 1000s of pages.
You can see it’s compacted to the point where you can hardly guess what they meant.
Here’s the official interpretation, in non-bold text, with only direct translations in bold:
One who vows that dates are forbidden to him is permitted to eat date honey.
One who vows that late grapes are forbidden to him is permitted to eat vinegar of late grapes.
Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira says:
In the case of any food that the name of its derivative is called after its name, i.e., the liquid that emerges from it bears its name, e.g., date honey or vinegar of late grapes, and one vows that the item itself, e.g., the grape, is forbidden to him, he is also prohibited from consuming the liquid that emerges from it.
But the Rabbis permit this.
It’s a totally harmless abstinence law, and I think the opinions of both the Rabbi and the sages are acceptable.
But we’d all agree that this rule is not overly useful or applicable, as very few people would vow to abstain from dates or late grapes specifically, and unless they produced the honey or vinegar themselves, they wouldn’t even know whether it came from dates or late grapes.
They seem to be citing a precedent case, but I cannot imagine anyone settling something like this in a court.
If it’s just a hypothetical case, I’d say they picked an unrealistic one.
So, the question is:
Could the same law be very useful and applicable to ultra-rich folks, if interpreted differently?
I chose this one as an example, because we know the aristocrats used the word tamar for dates and palms as a pun, referring instead to merchants and trade.
Are the “late grapes”, sethav-nivot, also a pun?
I have not found the second part nivot as grapes anywhere.
The first part sethav (ותס) indeed means autumn or winter.
But the full word is in its 1st occurrence written M-STW-NYWT, like “from winter housing”, and if you interpret the same letters differently, it could even be MST-W-NYWT, “tribute and housing”, from missat (תסמ) meaning tributes.
Either way, since tamarim as “trades” is a type of income, the grapes might be another type of income.
I found no pun for honey or vinegar, but we could interpret the liquids as revenue flows.
If we believe that the Nedarim are really about some kind of abstinence, and make a wild guess, the unofficial meaning could perhaps be something like this:
If one party agreed to refrain from conducting trade, it is still permitted to receive trade profits.
If it agreed to refrain from conducting housing business, it is still permitted to receive rental income.
The attorney argued that if the revenue is booked in that party’s name, and the agreement to refrain was also made in that party’s name, this should be forbidden, but the judges allowed it.
Say you wanted to arbitrate among ultra-rich clans who have carved up the entire planet among themselves and have a hard time refraining from trampling on each other’s turf.
Such a law might then be useful to settle borderline cases, where one clan derives profit indirectly from another clan’s property.
Of course, my Hebrew reading is poor, this is just a guess, and the Nedarim could really be about another sort of contract, or just about dates and honey.
Phoenician Law
But my grand theory was about the Phoenicians, right?
How does this tie in with the Phoenicians?
Phoenicia didn’t mint coins until very late.
How did they store their vast riches?
I think they invested it mostly in all the chunks of our planet.
Tablets from Ancient Mesopotamia already contain detailed:
It was obviously a trading port, since Egyptian art and Cypriot pottery were excavated at nearby Tell Abu Hawam and nearby Tell Shikmonah, though that’s omitted from the English pages.
To rehash, Judah I was president of the supreme court, but had edited and compiled the written laws himself.
His father had also been president, and initiator of the laws project.
The family was very wealthy and came from an area of industrial ports at the Phoenician coast, to which this supreme court was relocated, prior to them becoming presidents.
Judah I was revered in Rome and was friends with a Phoenician emperor of Rome.
What was this friendship about?
The Talmud has many anecdotes about the two, definitely more mythical than historical.
But let’s just see what the authors want to tell us.
There’s one anecdote of how the emperor would bring Judah to bed, then:
Antoninus had a certain daughter whose name was Gira, who performed a prohibited action, i.e., she engaged in promiscuous intercourse.
Antoninus sent a rocket plant [gargira] to Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, to allude to the fact that Gira had acted promiscuously [gar].
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi sent him coriander [ understood as a message to kill [ kos] his daughter [ kusbarta], which Antoninus barta], as she was liable to receive the death penalty for her actions.
Antoninus sent him leeks [ karti] to say:
I will be cut off [karet] if I do so.
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi then sent him lettuce [ḥasa], i.e., Antoninus should have mercy [ḥas] on her. AVODAH ZARAH 10B:2
I doubt that aristocrats ever killed their daughters.
But do you notice something here?
If not, have the modern commentary spell it out for you:
The Gemara asks:
But why not let him say his advice explicitly?
Why did Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi answer in such a circumspect way, which could have been interpreted incorrectly?
The Gemara answers:
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi said to himself:
If I answer openly, the important Romans might hear me and will cause me anguish.
The Gemara asks:
But why not let him say his advice quietly?
The Gemara explains:
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi was still worried that they might hear what he had said, because it is written:
“Curse not the king, no, not in your thought, and curse not the rich in your bedchamber, for a bird of the air shall carry the voice” Ecclesiastes 10:2
The Talmud advises to follow the man who compiled the Mishnah because he always used puns to disguise important topics, so that other people wouldn’t know what a conversation is about!
If I haven’t convinced you yet that Ancient Spookian culture was all about puns, including their laws, I hope you can now consider this possibility!
And you probably noticed that only the bold text is translated from Hebrew, the rest is Steinsaltz commentary.
Either you failed to uphold the law that should protect us all, or you failed to even write it in the first place!
I suggest you start doing your job and work with us to fix this mess, or your cozy ways of blissful punnery will soon become a thing of the ancient past.
But enough ranting.
Dear readers, let’s wrap it up, close the old books, and breathe some fresh air.
We’re done here, for now.
Conclusion
Okay, that was it.
This part of my analysis of ancient spookery, linking Ancient Israel and Ancient Phoenicia, was the most difficult, both emotionally and because of all those glyphs.
I hope it has not offended or overly bored you, that you still believe in whatever you believed before, and that you got some new insights out of it, nonetheless.
While it’s a downer to see that aristocratic scamming goes back to ancient times, I find it at the same time consoling that we common people have survived practically all of history with these idiots around, and still made a lot of headway.
I admit it’s a giant handicap having to drag the aristocratic dead-weight along, but at least we can safely ditch all those end-of-world scares.
We kept our world spinning, and we will keep it spinning.
And if you think you’re ready for some more truthing around, I’ll invite you all to join me again for Part IV, where the “Phoenician angle” will serve us much of classical antiquity on a silver plate, including the heads of some head spooks.
I promise there will be no more difficult Bible analysis, just a good old Wikipedia walkthrough, Miles-style.
Thanks a lot for joining me and hope to see you again!
Miles:
I said I would save most of my comments for the end of Part IV, and that still holds.
I want to let Gerry have his say.
However, some of what he says here can be misread, and will be misread, I think, so I will tell you my reading before we go any further.
Some will think Gerry is trying to say the Jews are really Phoenicians, to deflect blame or otherwise misdirect.
I don't think that is what he is doing, or saying.
In my mind, you could just as easily say the Phoenicians were really Jews, and that might be a better way of putting it in our context.
What he has shown is evidence the Israelites and Phoenicians were two arms of the same beast, with the Phoenician arm later suppressed because it was known to be a rich arm.
The modern Jews prefer to sell themselves as victims and underdogs, as Gerry says.
We see that every time I do the genealogy of a Hollywood star, where they want you to believe they are the sons and daughters of truck drivers and waitresses, instead of the children of the elite that they are.
So it isn't that the Jews aren't really Jews or Zionists or Israelites or Hebrews.
They are.
But they are also:
Phoenicians
Egyptians
Canaanites
Assyrians
and Sumerians.
What we now call the Jews were behind all those civilizations, comprising the elite class hiding in the dark beneath them all. . . just like now.
Modern elite Jews are cosmopolitans, being:
American
Canadian
French
English
Dutch
Russian
Polish
and every other designation.
In exactly the same way, the ancient Jews were everywhere there was money to be made and things to be traded.
After a certain point, which even Gerry can't specify, we may assume they were deeply lodged in all the famous old civilizations, running all or most of them from behind the scenes.
Israel and Phoenicia stand out in this list, the former for obvious reasons and the latter for the reasons Gerry has laid out for you.
Phoenicia was so obviously Jewish its records had to be permanently hidden.
And Solomon's links to Phoenicia were so obvious they had to be likewise hidden or tweaked.
But Gerry's greater point here is that the Phoenicians are a better tag for the modern Jews in some ways since the Phoenicians were admitted being rich traders, with their paws in all civilizations in Europe and the Near East going back to 2500 BC and before.
Also because the admitted history of the Phoenicians helps us understand the current Jews.
As when Herodotus tells us the Persian historians claimed the:
“Phoenicians began the quarrel.”
Substitute Jews there and you have it.
Also, because it helps us understand the East India Company, a later Jewish construct.
For this reason, linking them to the Phoenicians is useful in understanding who they really are, what is important to them, and how they see themselves.
Although Gerry may overstress some things and under stress others for my taste here, I think he has put a lot of good data on the table.
Some may stand and some may fall, but I thought it was worth putting in front of you.
Even if you or I decide his answer is not right, what we learned here may help us see a better answer.
