Brit-Am Research Sources (18 November, 2012. 4 Kislev, 5773)
Contents:
1. Dwelling in the Land of Israel and Keeping the Covenant of Circumcision.
2. The Hebrew Language and Hebraic Ancestry?
(a) Mark Williams: Article from Israeli Government Website
(b) The Mother of Languages. The Influence of Hebrew on other Languages by
Norman Berdichevsky
3. Parallels in the Physical Geographical Configuration of Tribal Inheritances.
1. Dwelling in the Land of Israel and Keeping the Covenant of Circumcision.
Shnei Luchot HaBrit (SheLaH, Isaiah Horowitz c. 1565 - 1630, Prague), the Covenant of Circumcision is linked to the Promise of Inheriting the Land
Genesis 16:18
cf.
Nachmanides: The Connection Between Law and Land
2. The Hebrew Language and Hebraic Ancestry?
====
(a) Mark Williams: Article from Israeli Government Website
Shalom Yair
I trust you're in good health. Hope you're keeping safe during the
current emergency (I'm guessing you're a little over the call up age).
If any of your kids get the call I trust the Big G will bring them home
safe and well.
I found this article and I was wondering if you were aware of it. It's
about the debt Western civilisation owes to the Hebrew language. There
are some salient points within the text which may be relevant to
Brit-am beliefs. The fact that the English parliament actually debated
changing the day of rest from Sunday to Saturday in 1649, for example
Apologies if it's something you were already aware of. I'm not exactly
the world's greatest researcher,
Anyhoo
Toodle pip for mow
Mark
(b) The Mother of Languages
The Influence of Hebrew on other Languages by Norman Berdichevsky
Extracts:
The Round Tower in Copenhagen is engraved with ...Gods name (the four Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton), indicating that the doctrine of the Protestant monarch was to let his heart be ruled by Gods word.
The Hebrew letters were there to demonstrate that the Kings fidelity was to the "original" word of God in Hebrew rather than through inaccurate translations. This fidelity to the original Hebrew of the holy works had previously been demonstrated by the Christian scholar, Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), whose study of the Hebrew scriptures resulted in strong support among enlightened clergymen to prevent the burning of the Talmud as a work of heresy.
Both because of a desire to read the Bible in its original tongue and a belief in Hebrew as "The Mother of Languages," it figured prominently in the Puritan movement in England, culminating in the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. A motion introduced into the House of Commons in 1649 sought to substitute Saturday as the "True Sabbath" in place of Sunday as the Lords Day. The poet, John Milton (1608-1674), was a devoted Hebraist and was appointed by Cromwell as "Secretary for Foreign Languages." John Selden (1584-1654) was a noted legal scholar whose study of the biblical and talmudic sources of ancient Jewish law (in Hebrew and Aramaic) helped reshape the British system of jurisprudence and establish the privilege of the individual against self-incrimination.
English Puritan emigrants were also instrumental in promoting Hebrew as part of the curriculum in such prominent American universities as Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth and Pennsylvania (Yale, Columbia and Dartmouth still bear Hebrew inscriptions on their seals). In Harvards early years, more time was devoted to the study of Hebrew than Latin or Greek. This role of Hebrew in the curriculum endured until the 1820s. Graduates of the School of Divinity had to be able to read the Old Testament in the original Hebrew - a practice still required in Denmark.
Some Hebrew words of biblical origin were so distinctive that no attempt was made to find equivalents for them in English or in the other languages which likewise adopted them. One of them, shibboleth, described a biblical story which had very modern applications, directly repeating the biblical event.
Shibboleth (the Hebrew word for an "ear of corn") was pronounced with the "sh" sound by the Gideonites, whereas the hostile tribe of Ephraimites could not say the "sh" and pronounced it sibboleth. The self-same strategy of detection was used in a peasants revolt in Flanders in the town of Brugge (Bruges) in the 13th century. The Flemish-speaking peasants distinguished their comrades from French-speaking nobility who were clad in peasant garb by asking them to repeat the Flemish slogan "Friend and Shield." The French speakers could not pronounce the "sch" in the Flemish word for shield. A similar shibboleth technique was used in World War II by the Dutch resistance and British intelligence to uncover German SS officers pretending to be Dutch civilians, who were unable to pronounce the name of the town of Scheveningen.
Many scholars during the Renaissance and later under the sponsorship of several monarchs, such as James IV of Scotland, tried to establish Hebrew as "the mother of all languages." They believed that Hebrew was the original source from which all other languages developed. It was for this reason that Columbus brought Luis de Torres, a converso (Jewish convert to Catholicism) with him on his voyage to the Americas. De Torres was a skilled interpreter who first addressed the Indians they met in Hebrew. The assumption was that such far-flung peoples were probably related to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and therefore must have been influenced by the Hebrew language. De Torres remained in the New World and is thought to have been responsible for the origin of "Turkey" as the name for the strange new bird he observed - a corruption of the Hebrew tukki ("parrot").
3. Parallels in the Physical Geographical Configuration of Tribal Inheritances.
A work about the Vikings (name to be found somewhere in our notes) remarks on the fact Viking adventurers from Sweden went to areas in Russia where the landscape was similar tot hat they had left in Sweden. The Vikings from Norway went to areas in England similar the coastlands of Norway. The Vikings from Denmark went to areas similar to those of Denmark.
Dean Smallwood (see below) compared our map of Greater Israel to that of the USA.
Steven Collins (see below) compared the ancient inheritance of Manasseh to that of the USA with the Mississippi running down the middle just like the Jordan River divided one half of Manasseh from another.
Perhaps in the future we (or others) could compare Tribal Inheritances within the Land of Israel to areas amongst Western Nations where we understand different Tribes to now be found?
Meanwhile see the extracts below:
#12. Question. (a) What Parallels Exist between the borders of the USA and those of Ancient Israel? (b) What does this tell us?
Comparisons Pointed Out by Dean Smallwood
Notice the Similarities Between the Map of the Land of Israel as Promised in Scripture to that of the Borders of the USA!
Steven Collins: Menasseh, the River Jordan, and the Mississippi
"Brit-Am Now"-221 (A)
#5. Steve Collins: Menasseh and Ephraim: Some Considerations
Manasseh also received by far the largest territory in the ancient Promised
Land and its territory was split down the middle into western and eastern
halves by the Jordan River flowing from north to south. The modern USA is
split down the middle into eastern and western halves by the Mississippi
River flowing from north to south. Modern America mimics the geography of
ancient Manasseh's territory. The ancient inheritance of Ephraim was much
smaller than Manasseh's and more cramped. The homeland of the British
Isles is also much smaller than that of the USA. The ancient Ephraimites
exported much of their growing population to the colonies of the
Israelite/Phoenician Empire, and the British did the same thing, exporting
much of their growing population to colonies overseas. The British
homeland and empire have mimicked the role of Ephraim in ancient Israel.