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  • From: Brian Roberts <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>
  • To: MarianneLuban AT aol.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Evidence for the Exodus
  • Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 16:08:13 -0400

Marianne,

My responses to your posts are below:


On Thursday, August 5, 2004, at 02:21 PM, MarianneLuban AT aol.com wrote:

In a message dated 8/5/2004 10:25:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
yonsaf AT beitberl.ac.il writes:




Sometimes the authentic info may contained in slips of the pen or "between
the lines" or in cryptic passages or passages that seem out of place.
Take for example Num. 12:1, where both Miriam and Aaron seem to be angry
with Moses over his Cushite wife, "for he took a Cushite wife". What has
this to do with the berit, the Exodus, the desert wanderigs (unless yu want
to claim that these particular Cushites were a Sinai sesert tribe) or the
consquest of Canaan?

There is an ancient tradition that Moses was a "king of Cush" (or Kush) and
that he had led the Egyptians to attack a "royal city of Ethiopia" named Saba
hemmed in by three rivers, the Nile, the Astapus and the Astaboras.

Ancient tradition documented first by whom? Would you be referring to one of the many Books of Jasher, or by Josephus? (Book II, Chapter 10, Antiquities)

Josephus
said that this same placed later came to be known as "Meroe", which we all know
had a considerable civilization with pyramidal structures and beautiful
jewelry that was Egyptian-like but different. I have little doubt that this was
the home of the Queen of Sheba.

You do realize that there was no ancient city named Saba in Ethiopia in the time of Moses? The earliest coastal civilization settled in Ethiopian was the Dia'amat polity, whose mukarribs date back to the late 8th century BCE based in Yeha, but who migrated from and still communicated with Saba (through its capital Ma'rib) in SW Arabia.

Josephus is confusing Meroe and Saba here. There was no "Ethiopia" at the time of Josephus. The civilization there was known as the Aksumites (Axoumitoi in Greek), and it flourished from the first century CE to the 7th century. Josephus is using that inaccurate system inherited from the Greeks that began to conflate the Nubians, Cushites, and "Ethiopians". The King of the Ethiopians mentioned in Josephus was likely a Meroitic king. In Moses' time there wasn't a Meroitic king, but very likely a Kushite king. "Aethopian" and "Nubian" were mostly terms the Greeks used to describe any African who was more or less dark-skinned.


There he married a king's daughter called
"Tharbis", which seems to me just a version of an Egyptian word for "princess"--tA
rpyt. Otherwise, she is called "Ra'osa", which I think is "rsyt" or "woman of
the south". Her father is called "Zoros", which is the same as Zerah the
Ethiopian conquered by King Asa in Chronicles. Perhaps this was thought a good
name for an Ethiopian king--or perhaps there is some truth behind it.
Regardless, there was a New Kingdom title, "King's Son of Kush", which did not
necessarily mean a son of the pharaoh but meant the Viceroy of Kush when it was a
conquered territory. According to Josephus, Moses married the Kushite princess
by way of a political move. If one can accept the truth of this and that Moses
also married Zipporah, a daughter of a chief of Midian, one has to
wonder--just where was Midian? There were some desert dweller of Ethiopia called
"Medjai" by the Egyptians. These were a hardly people and made up a goodly portion
of the pharaohs' armies and also their police force. There was also a land
called "Mitanni" by them--but that seemed to lie to the east and was once quite
a powerful nation. Maybe Midian was the Egypt "mDA"--the grapheme /D/ often
being interchangeable with just plain /d/ and /A/ very often being pronounced
"ee"-- or "an" in final place. (The grapheme /A/ is one of the most complex
things in all of Egyptian philology). If Moses had to leave Saba, as Josephus
claims, when one of the sons of his wife rebelled and was made king--but feared
to go back to Egypt for some reason, then to dwell among the Medjai would have
been a logical move. Nowadays the Ethiopians speak Amharic, a Semitic tongue
written with a syllabary. Just what these Medjai spoke or where they came
from (being nomads) is unknown. If Miriam and Aaron were disgruntled about the
Cushite wife of Moses (for which they were punished by God) it makes little
sense they would be unless she was right there in the midst of the populace.
But where was Zipporah? Perhaps "she" was the Cushite wife, after all. It also
doesn't make sense that the princess of Saba would have gone into exile with
Moses once her son forced Egypt's viceroy to leave. This is all speculation,
but probably there is something to this "Cushite wife" business.

You're assigning far too much credibility on these matters to Josephus. There is far more evidence linking the land of the Queen of Sheba with Saba in present Yemen. Come over to the good side, Marianne. :)


Best Salaams,

Brian





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