Were Jews Originally Non-Semitic Elamites of Babylonia?

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Before Abraham was born, his father, Terah,  had been in the traveling crowd of the Ivrim  from the East who had settled in Ur, now a part of Iraq.  Coming from the East, they must have come from the area of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Who were these people?  We call them Hebrews today.  They spoke Hebrew.  Were they from Babylonia, also called the land of Shinar or of the Kasdim (Chaldees)?  It was looked upon as the cradle of humanity and the scene of man's first revolt against G-d with the Tower of Babel.  Many biblical stories have a parallel in Babylonian literature such as the FLOOD.  Abraham was born in UR, a symbol of pagan tyranny, city of idols, made by Terah, Abraham's father.
                                                                             

Terah, Abram's father

In Genesis 14: 13, Abram was called Abram, the Ivri, spelled from right to left with an ayan, vet, and raishעִברִי, meaning-the other side.  Literally, the rabbis say this means the other side of the Euphrates River.  The name also means that he was a descendant of Eber.  Only Abraham's descendants are called "Ivrim" for they alone spoke Hebrew, which was Eber's language.  His other descendants spoke Aramaic, and are called Arameans.  Abram was one  who lived in the plains of Mamre, the Amorite, the brother of Eshcol and the brother of Aner who were Abram's allies.  HEBREW written in Hebrew looks like this:  עִברִית.  The letters, reading from right to left, are: ayin, vet, raish and to make it plural, a yud and a tuv. The first letters spell out Ivri.   


                                                                             

The Tel el Amarna tablets is an Arabic name of the site of the capital of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV of Middle Egypt.  In 1887, many cuneiform tablets were discovered there including letters from kings in Asia Minor from the archives of Amenhotep III of 1413-1377 BCE and Amenhotep IV of 1377-1361 BCE.   Other letters were found later.  Of special interest were several scores of letters from vassal kings in Canaan like the kings of Ascalon (Ashkelon) , Acre, Jerusalem, Megiddo, Sidon, Gebal, etc.  These complain of the disorder happening in the country following the invasion of the HABIRU.  We believe this referred to the Hebrews.  The disorder was the frequent wars among Pharaoh's vassal kings, and the letters requested Egyptian assistance.
                                                                             

 Almost all the letters were written in Akkadian.  A few lines were written in Hurrian and Hittite, and some have words in Canannite.  It figures correctly that Joshua had arrived.  
                                                                               

Akkadian was a Semitic language, formerly known as Assyrian owing to the prevalence of Akkadian inscriptions in the cuneiform script found in Asssyria.   Akkadians were the first people to use it in writing.  It was a spoken langue from the 4th millennium BCE and served as the language of diplomacy and commerce throughout the Middle East until the Greek conquest.  It resembles Hebrew and Aramaic in structure, phonology and vocabulary but is different from them in the verb formations, in the use of tenses, syntax and in the fact that its gutturals lost their distinctive character.  

 His people were called Habiru for a reason.  
"Habiru or Apiru (Egyptian: ˁpr.w) was the name given by various Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Mitanni, and Ugaritic sources (dated, roughly, between 1800 BC and 1100 BC) to a group of people living as nomadic invaders in areas of the Fertile Crescent from Northeastern Mesopotamia and Iran to the borders of ... Egypt in Canaan.    This sounds more like the Assyrian areas.  
                                                                               

Egyptian mural of slaves making bricks for building
 in c1700 BCE-1300 BCE

                                                                                 

Much later Assyrians leading away the 10 tribes as slaves in 722
and 721 BCE back to Assyria again. 

Habiru was the name used for  mercenaries or slaves, and was used in the Tel el-Amarna tables and in other documents of the 15th and 14th centuries BCE.  Many scholars are emphatic that Habiru is identical with Ivri (Hebrews) and some believe that the reference in the Tel el-Amarna tablets to the threat of the habiru to Canaanite cities alludes to one of the stages in the Israelite conquest of Canaan.  So we have a difference of dates here.  Abram lived in the 2nd millennium BCE or 2000 BCE and Joshua and the slaves from Egypt lived later and arrived in Canaan in about 1271 BCE, about 800 years difference, but both were referring to these Hebrew speakers, descendants of the first group.  How history repeats!
                                                                       "Hebrew, along with Moabite and Phoenician, belong to the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages.  Hebrew was spoken in Canaan before Joshua ever arrived with the 650,000 slaves from Egypt.  The Tel el Amarna Letters prove that Hebrew was spoken in Eretz Yisrael before the Israelite conquest.  Pre-exilic biblical Hebrew was a standardized literary language with distinct idioms for prose and poetry, full-sounding, rich in vocabulary and rhetorical devices.  It borrowed many words from surrounding languages".  

Elam was an ancient state of Babylonia, where the modern state of Khuzistan is today.  It's on the map above. It was on part of the SW Iranian plateau and included the river valley around Susa and the highlands beyond.  Elamite is an unknown language but Elam might have meant "THE LORD-COUNTRY.' In Mesopotamian it would be translated as "THE HEIGHTS."  In Akkadian etymology, it would be related to elu, meaning "HIGH."  Today, it's part of Iran since Susa is the Shushan of the Book of Esther, and the capital of Iran, and Iran not too long ago was called Persia, its ancient name.  Persians are not Arabs.  They are a different people.  It's hard to tell what kinds of people were in Elan since populations change frequently depending on who a country is making war with and taking prisoners. Persians or Iranians as they are now called, are not Semites or even Arabs.
                                                                           

Elam was connected closely with Mesopotamia for this is where they got their raw materials of wood, stone and metals.  It served as a route for getting precious metals and stones like lapis lazuli, the blue stone prized by the Mesopotamians which were brought from Afghanistan.  Elamites raided the valleys of the Diyala and the Tigris.  Elam ruled Sumer for a time.  The kings of the 3rd dynasty of Ur in Mesopotamia annexed Elam, and Susa became a seat of Sumerian governors.  Could it be that Ur was bringing back Elamites to live with them?  We know that Terah was an idol maker and that Abraham knew all along as a child that they were not gods but just statues made of clay by his father.

Being non-Semitic, the Elamites are classed by the Bible as children of Shem (Gen. 10:22).  Was Terah an Elamite?  I know that according to DNA, my father's DNA haplogroup of Q1b1a or Q-L245 came from Ur, Iraq most likely 2,000 years ago, This branch makes up only 5% of the Jewish population today.   Other places they could have come from were  Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and possibly southern Saudi Arabia.  Iraq is the location of Ur, where Abraham and Sarah came from.  They left, seeking their own land that would become free of idol worship with Abraham's leadership.

About half of present day Jews find they are haplogroup J1 and J2, which is called the Cohen gene, and many are Cohens in the synagogue.  This is the largest Jewish haplogroup, and we know it came from Moses and Aaron.  Other haplogroups such as E, I and R are found.

A very long time ago at the beginning of the 19th century BCE just after Abraham was born, there was an independent Elamite royal dynasty who reigned in Anshan in the uplands and Susa on the plain.  Elam had a lot of influence that covered a wide area, and had trading expeditions where they carried raw materials from their lands of Elam as far as Hazor in Canaan.  By the middle of the 18th century BCE, Elam was consolidated under the rule of Kutir-Nahhunte I, whose reign was during the same period of Hammurabi of Babylon and with his son, Samsu-iluna.  From about this time on and thoughout the whole period, Babylonian influence is noticed by the use of Akkadian as the written language of economic and cultural life.  Hammerabi (1728-1686 BCE)  had laws similar to our 10 Commandments.  It's penalties for breaking his legal code was more severe than in the 10 Commandments and its political nature is based on custom and obedience to the king's will instead of being like the 10 Commandments which depends on its appeal to the human conscience.   Both seem to have arisen in the Mesopotamian culture with the 10 Commandments coming from G-d,  given to the people by Moses.                                                                                

Twins, Esau and Jacob, with Esau leaving their father, Isaac  to join the Arabs.  Both are usually called Semites.  

What is a Semite?  Are Jews Semites being Elamites were not?  "The term Semitic people or semitic cultures (from the biblical "Shem",Hebrew: שם‎),  was a historical term for the people or cultures who speak or spoke the Semitic languages. "  a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs with  Semitic languages of: Arabic, Hebrew (Tiberian), Syriac, Ge'ez, and Akkadian.."The racial or ethnic use of the term, together with the parallel terms Hamitic and Japhetic, is now obsolete.  The term also came to describe the extended Semitic religions and ethnicities, as well as the history of these varied cultures as associated by close geographic and linguistic distribution.  Was it that Abraham was an Elamite? 
                                                     

Abram, later called Abraham

Abraham's people came from Shem, one of the 3 sons of Noah.  From him came the nations of Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad and Aram.  Arpachshad was the father of Eber and ancestor of Abraham.  People that speak language akin to Hebrew are called Semitic people and their languages are Semitic languages.  According to the experts, we did not come from Elam, then. Eber is not shown on the map because a whole group of Semitic people and tribes came out of him which included the Israelites who are therefore, according to the general opinion, called the Hebrews.   The title of the Israelites comes from Jacob, grandson of Abraham who had a name change to Israel due to something that happened to him when he was traveling home.  He had been gone from his father's house for 20 years and was returning with property he had accumulated.  He struggled as if wrestling  with a heavenly emissary, angel,  and overcame this angel, then being given the name Israel.  It was a name of accomplishment, overcoming a struggle-in his heart or mind.  He's buried in the Cave at Hebron.
Descendants of Shem

1   Shem
. 2   Elam
. 2   Asshur
. 2   Arpachshad b: in 2 years after flood
..... 3   Shelah
......... 4   Eber
............. 5   Peleg-Abraham
................. 6   Reu
..................... 7   Serug
........................... +Milcah
......................... 8   Nahor I
............................... +Iyoska
............................ 9   Terah b: in Ur of Chaldees, Sumeria, Mesopotamia Iraq
................................ 10   [1] Abram-Abraham
...................................... +Sarai-Sarah
................................ *2nd Wife of [1] Abram-Abraham:
...................................... +Hagar
................................ *3rd Wife of [1] Abram-Abraham:
...................................... +Keturah


Resource:  https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0006_0_05716.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/jewish-genes-what-haplogroup-could-they.html
The New Standard Jewish encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hebrews.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habiru

Arabs and How They Have Treated Jews Throughout History

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                          

King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia today

 Arabs, from their very name, are from Arabia, not Palestine.  Palestinian Arabs, therefore, are not native to the present day Gaza and Judea and Samaria.  They wandered there throughout the centuries to arrive and live all over the Middle East.  Gaza had long ago been an Egyptian expedition base in the 15th to 13th centuries BCE.   and then was captured by the Philistines.  The Temple of Dagon was there.  That was an ancient Semitic deity whose cult was adopted by the Philistines when they entered Canaan.  Dagon was an important god in the Ugaritic belief in many gods.  He was a god of the soil and plant-growth and widely worshipped in the Middle Eastern countries.

                                                                         

Judea and Samaria were part of Israel, the only Jewish land in the world created by Moses who led the Israelites there as commanded by G-d. On the map above, Jordan was a part of Israel.   Moses died just outside the land in about 1271 BCE and Joshua took over getting the people on the land.  The first king was Saul in the 11th century BCE, son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin.  Judah was the southern part of Israel and Samaria was the land around the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, founded in 880 BCE by King Omri on a hill bought from Shemer. They had to choose a new capital since Jerusalem, the original capital of Israel went to the Jews of Judah.   Samaria, the city was  NW of Shechem (Nablus today).  The city was on 25 acres and is all referred to now as Samaria.
                                                                           

It fell in 721 BCE to the Assyrians who resettled it with Cutheans, the Kutim,  who mixed in with the population and were the ancestors of the Samaritans.  According to records, "The emergence of the Samaritans as an ethnic and religious community distinct from other Levant peoples appears to have occurred at some point after the Assyrian conquest of the Israelite Kingdom of Israel in approximately 721 BCE. The records of Sargon II of Assyria indicate that he deported 27,290 inhabitants of the former kingdom. Then, "The Talmud accounts for a people called "Cuthim" on a number of occasions, mentioning their arrival by the hands of the Assyrians."  So this was another exchange of populations; those taken out and those brought in to replace them.  
                                                                                 

Arabs are also a Semitic people like the Jews.  Their home had been the Arabian peninsula and other regions close by.  After Mohammad's birth and death in 632 CE/AD, they were part of the hoard or very well could have been THE hoard that burst forth from their homeland for the reason to conquer the greater part of the then civilized world.

They speak Arabic which just happens to be a cognate to Hebrew and forms a branch of the Semitic languages.  They say Salaam whereas Jews say Shalom, a greeting that means peace, or hello or goodbye.
                                                                           

Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia

Our Tanakh (Bible) and Talmudic literature does mention the Arabs and their homeland.  At the time of our 2nd Temple before 70 CE, it is possible that there were some Arabs living in Israel.  Our Temple,  built by King Solomon (961 BCE-920 BCE) , was destroyed in 586 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia.  It was rebuilt  from 538 to 515 BCE during the period of Simon the Just, Judah the Maccabee, Simon the Hasmonean, and King Herod.  Then the Romans destroyed it in 70 CE.
                                                           
                                                                      Descendants of Eber

1   Eber (descendant of Shem) Shem was one of 3 sons of Noah
.     2        Peleg-ancestor of Abraham
.     2        Joktan ancestor of the Arabs

According to Genesis 10, Eber was the forefather of Abraham as well as of Joktan, the ancestor of the southern Arabs.  Several Arab tribes are also enumerated among the descendants of Abraham.
                                                                         

Ishmaelites buying Joseph, son of  Jacob by Rachel  

  The Arabs themselves trace their origin to Ishmael, the first son of Abraham by Hagar, the Egyptian handmaiden and former Egyptian princess of Abraham's wife, Sarah.  Sarah also happened to be Abraham's niece.  Sarah later gave birth to her first child, Isaac, and because of problems raising the 2 boys and bad feelings between the 2 women, Hagar and  son Ishmael left the family group at Sarah's insistence because she felt that Hagar was trying to usurp her position as wife and take over Abraham entirely.

 Egyptians were not Arabs, but Arabs invaded Egypt in 640 CE.  From there on the  population may have blended somewhat.  Jews had lived there as well.  During Philo's days from 25 BCE to 50 CE , 1,000,000 Jews lived there with the most in Alexandria.  Philo was a Jewish philosopher living in Egypt.

Jewish tribes were found living in Arabia by the 1st century CE, long after The Assyrian conquest of Israel in 721 BCE and then the Babylonian conquest of 597-586 BCE.  It's possible they were so far away from Israel through these conquests when Jews were taken as prisoners to the land of the conquerors. The 10 tribes of Israel were taken  by Assyria.  The Babylonian conquest took Jews to Babylonia.  Perhaps some escaped at either time to wind up in Arabia, which would have been far south and a little east of their homeland.

Many Jews were expelled from northern Arabia shortly after the rise of Islam because they refused to convert-and Arabs were on a strong convert or die bent.  The Jews in southern Arabia continued to live in considerable numbers until recent times.  Medina was a large city where Jews lived and met many Arabs including Mohammad.  Several whole Jewish tribes had been forced to convert or die this way.
                                                                         

The Islamic conquests extended to many countries with ancient Jewish communities.  On several occasions, the Arabs were looked upon as better overlords than the people of these European countries, so were welcomed by the Jews who even helped them in conquest and occupation as life under them was better.   This happened in  Palestine,  Syria (Aram) . and Spain.   Palestine received its name from the Romans who had taken Judah and destroyed the 2nd Temple in 70 CE.
                                                                             

Syria was never a homogeneous state.  The coast had Phoenicians living there.  In the 8th century it was overrun by the Assyrians, too.  The Jews living there then suffered from the Greeks who had taken it.   When the Arabs conquered Syria in 634, life was better for the Jews living there.  Aleppo had in the 12th century, 5,000 Jews;  Damascus had 3,000, and Palmyra 2,000.  After 1492, more Jews lived in Syria who came from the Spanish Catholic Inquisition.  WWII caused an immigration of 30,000 Syrian Jews to dwindle down to 14,000 by 1947.
                                                                                                         

Haj Amin al-Husseini

WWII also saw the affinity that Nazi Germany had for Arabs. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Sherif of Jerusalem known as the Grand Mufti, visited Hitler in Germany to talk him into killing European Jews.  He didn't want any in Palestine.  It was a mutual attraction between Husseini and many other Arabs with Nazis and vice- versa.  That seems to be the beginning seeds of bad blood between many  Arabs and Iranians and the Jews.
                                                                             

Bashar al-Assad

In Syria, an Alawite family of Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez al- Assad,  came down hard on the Jews and kept them confined in a ghetto.  He followed suit. The Alawites "are a religious group, centred in Syria, who follow a very highly contested and controversial branch of the Twelver school of Shia Islam.  The Jews of Syria  were finally rescued and taken out of  Syria by Judith Feld Carr, a Canadian musician and mother, who with her husband,  was actually buying Jews from Assad over 28 years and getting them out of Syria.  She started her humane project in about 1973.  The Alawites are a minority in Syria, populated more with people following Sunni Islam.  As we have seen, the Alawites rule with an iron hand.
                                                                           
 The Arab conquerors usually treated the Jews well and assured them of protection and freedom of religion as long as they paid the tax for doing it, called the poll tax.  This was written up in the Pact of Omar.  The Jews, like all the other non-Moslems, were called Dhimmis, or 2nd class citizens, and were subject to certain restrictions.  Outright persecutions happened not infrequently, especially in countries under sectarian rule, but in general, their position in the Arab world during the Middle Ages was actually better than in Christian Europe.

The surprising thing is that Jews sometimes were given a high governmental office in Spain and Fatimid Egypt.  In Spain, Jewish life under Arab rule was very good in the cultural field.  On the other hand, medieval conditions dominated the Arab world after Europe went into their age of Enlightenment, so Europe supposedly improved and uplifted themselves.  Under western European influence, conditions for Jews greatly improved in most place, but not in Yemen in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Then we see that the position of the Jews was badly affected by the anti-European attitudes and rising nationalism of the past generation.  The creation of the Jewish State of Israel in 1948 caused Jews to be expelled from Arab lands.  At the same time, Palestinian Arab leaders told their people to leave the newly announced Israel so that they could attack and take it over, which didn't work out for them.  There was an exchange of people from the land, coming into and leaving.

During 1967 During the Six Day War of Arabs attacking the Jews of Israel, there were 700,000 Arabs living in Israel.  About another million came under Israeli administration as a result of Israel winning the war-standing up against the attack.  
                               

Former Shah of Iran before Ayatollas

                                             

Ayatollah of Iran-All Powerful

Iranians are not Arabs. Called Persians till only a few years ago, Persia met Jews when the Babylonian Empire by Cyrus in 538 BCE attacked Judah and carted away its best of the population.  Jews lived there and can be read about in the Book of Esther.  However, Iran today is of the Shi'a sect of Islam while Arabs are of the Sunni sect-like a difference of Protestants and Catholics.
                                                                               

 They also have the Salafist sect now seen by the conquesting IS, who are radicals.  IS has taken much of Syria and Iraq and of course hates and will kill Jews either through planning or accident.  They are reliving the ancient days of Islam in their planning to take over the Middle East.

Reference:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Feld_Carr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans