Brit-Am Research Sources (15 April 2016, 7 Nisan, 5776)
Contents:
1. Archaeological Evidence. Non-Israelites in the armies of Judah and Israel
2. Oxhide [from Cyprus] ingots in Scandinavian rock art
3. John Henry Patterson, the 'godfather of the Israeli army', reinterred near Tel Aviv
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1. Archaeological Evidence. Non-Israelites in the armies of Judah and Israel
The presence of non-Israelites serving in the armies of Judah and Israel is confirmed by the following new item (April 2016) forwarded to us by Mark Williams in the UK:
[This also shows early contact between the Ancient Civilizations of Greece and Israel]
Greek Mercenaries serving in Ancient Judah.
Mark Williams wrote concerning the news item below:
One detail that stands out is the mention of Greek mercenaries being
employed by the Judahites. Something not mentioned, or mentioned only
in a very obtuse way, in the Bible
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New Evidence on When Bible Was Written: Ancient Shopping Lists
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/world/
middleeast/new-evidence-onwhen-bible-was-written-ancient-shopping-lists.html?_r=2
Extracts:
TEL AVIV - Eliashib, the quartermaster of the remote desert fortress, received his instructions in writing, notes inscribed in ink on pottery asking for provisions to be sent to forces in the ancient kingdom of Judah.
The requests for wine, flour and oil read like mundane, if ancient, shopping lists. But a new analysis of the handwriting suggests that literacy may have been far more widespread than previously known in the Holy Land around 600 B.C., toward the end of the First Temple period. The findings, according to the researchers from Tel Aviv University, could have some bearing on a century-old debate about when the main body of biblical texts was composed.
"To Eliashib: And now, give the Kittiyim 3 baths of wine, and write the name of the day," Â read one of the texts, composed in ancient Hebrew using the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, and apparently referring to a Greek mercenary unit in the area.
The new study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, combined archaeology, Jewish history and applied mathematics, and involved computerized image processing and the development of an algorithm to distinguish between the various authors issuing the commands.
Based on a statistical analysis of the results, and taking into account the content of the texts that were chosen for the sample, the researchers concluded that at least six different hands had written the 18 missives at around the same time. Even soldiers in the lower ranks of the Judahite army, it appears, could read and write.
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2. Oxhide [from Cyprus] ingots in Scandinavian rock art
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?
fromPage=online&aid=9543295&fileId=S0003598X14000015
Antiquity / Volume 89 / Issue 343 / February 2015, pp 191-209
Representations of oxhide ingots in Scandinavian rock art: the sketchbook of a Bronze Age traveller?
Johan Ling and Zofia Stos-Gale
Bronze Age trade networks across Europe and the Mediterranean are well documented; Baltic amber and bronze metalwork were particularly valued commodities. Here it is argued that demand for copper and tin led to changes in Scandinavian trade routes around 1600 BC, which can be linked to the appearance of figurative rock art images in southern Scandinavia. Images identified as oxhide ingots have been discovered in Sweden and suggest that people from Scandinavia were familiar with this characteristically Mediterranean trading commodity. Using trace element and lead isotope analysis, the authors argue that some bronze tools excavated in Sweden could have been made of Cypriot copper; these two discoveries suggest that Scandinavians were travelling to the Mediterranean, rather than acting through a middle man.
http://dienekes.blogspot.co.il/2015/03/
oxhide-ingots-in-scandinavian-rock-art.html
Im surprised that people are still flummexd by direct trade to the baltic from the med.
The minoans cut out the iberian middle men and took trade to the british isles, minoan daggers have been found at stonehenge.
After the minoan trade empire collapsed from the loss of thera, their client states in greece, the myceneans, continued the trade and pushed into scandanavia.
The stone ships mark the locations where the ships put in, the scandanavian elite class even took on the mycenean practice of being clean shaven, with their newly aquired bronze razors.
Tuesday, March 03, 2015 6:48:00 pm
Jim said...
"After the minoan trade empire collapsed from the loss of thera, their client states in greece, the myceneans, continued the trade and pushed into scandanavia."
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-nordic-razor.html
Can we please put to bed the notion that Minoan culture was ended by the Thera eruption? That volcanic event has been conclusively dated to around the end of the 17th Century BCE, whereas Minoan culture on Crete continued and flourished for another 150 years until the mid 15th Century. This has got to be one of the most pernicious and persistant misunderstandings in Bronze Age archeology. Knossos fell to Mycenae, not Santorini!
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3. John Henry Patterson, the 'godfather of the Israeli army', reinterred near Tel Aviv
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/john-henry-patterson-the-godfather-of-the-israeli-army-reinterred-near-tel-aviv-9904191.html
Anglo-Irish adventurer led the first Jewish fighting force in two millennia
by Cahal Milmo
Thursday 4 December 2014
Extracts:
In a life crammed with swashbuckling incident, John Henry Patterson pursued causes from shooting man-eating lions to expanding the British Empire. But it was for his devotion to the founding of the state of Israel that he was honoured today.
The remains of the Anglo-Irish adventurer, who was by turns an officer, a big game hunter and a writer, were laid to rest alongside the Jewish soldiers whose bravery during the First World War played a role in turning him into an ardent Zionist.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attended the ceremony in Avihayil, north of Tel Aviv, paid tribute to Patterson as the 'godfather of the Israeli army' because of his leadership of Jewish volunteers on the battlefields of Gallipoli and Palestine.
Benjamin Netanyhau and his wife Sara attend a ceremony to bury the ashes of Lt Col John Henry Patterson and his wife Frances Helena (AFP)
The moustachioed lieutenant colonel had come to British-controlled Palestine from east Africa after a colourful existence as a colonial officer, which included his famed dispatch of two 9ft-long lions. The creatures had turned into maneaters and threatened to halt construction of a railway bridge in present-day Kenya being overseen by Patterson.
After commanding a volunteer force which became known as the Jewish Legion during the war, Patterson paid glowing tribute to his men and became a committed supporter of the creation of a Jewish state. During his subsequent campaigning for the creation of Israel in New York, he became a close friend of Mr Netanyahu's father, Benzion.
Mr Netanyahu, whose brother died leading the daring Entebbe hostage rescue in 1976, said: "[Patterson] had absolute confidence that the Jews would make remarkable soldiers - not adequate soldiers, but remarkable soldiers. And I think he had a lot to do with that. He began the reconstitution of the ability of the Jews to defend ourselves."
Born in 1867 in Westmeath, Ireland, to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother, Patterson followed many of his compatriots in signing up for the British Army in search of opportunity and adventure.
While largely forgotten in Britain, Patterson continues to be regarded as a hero in Israel. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, one of the soldiers commanded by the Briton who went on to play an important role in the creation of the Jewish state, said: "In all of Jewish history we have never had a Christian friend as understanding and devoted."