Cronus

The Lost Tribes of Israel and the Mythology of Cronos, Saturn, Baal Tsaphon, Typhon, and Cernunnos

Ancient peoples identified the Ten Lost Tribes with the mythological figure of Saturn whom they said had gone with his followers to live in Ireland and Britain.

Introduction.
The Lost Ten Tribes were exiled by the Assyrians to different areas. At different timers and in various stages all descendants of Israel eventually moved to the west and congregated there. They emerged as participants in the Celtic Civilization of Western Europe and the British Isles, as the Bronze and Iron Age settlers of Scandinavia, and amongst the Gemanic-speaking nations headed by the Angles, Saxons, Franks, and other nations.
See:
Migratory Movements of the Ten Tribes of Israel.

We have demonstrated these movements from historical records, archaeology, and other sources.
Mythology also provides evidence for the identifications made and the migrations that took place.
Traditions surrounding the deity known as Cronos and its various permutations (Saturn, Typhon, Baal, Bile, etc) are one (out of the many) facet of this study.

Background:
The Greeks and Romans identified the People of Israel with their mythological deity Cronos or Saturn as the Romans called him. They also said that Saturn and his people had been deposed from their base in the Eastern Mediterranean (which could mean the Land of Israel) and gone first to Italy and then to the British Isles where they were still to be found. In their own way they were in fact saying that the Lost Ten Tribes had gone to Britain and Ireland.
See:
Did the Ancients identify the Lost Israelites with Saturn in the British Isles?

The Exiled Israelites were equated with Saturn who was also known as Cronus, and as Typhon, and was identified with the baal god of Canaan whom the ancient Israelites also worshipped and identified with. Remember the northern Israelites were exiled for worshipping idols and following the customs of the peoples around them (2-Kings chs. 17 & 18).

The Israelites had been exiled by the Assyrians into areas of the Assyrian Empire including the cities of the Medes (2-Kings 17). The Prophet Amos spoke of the Israelites being exiled.

Amos 5:
26 You also carried Sikkuth your king
And Chiun, your idols [Hebrew: Tslamaycem, i.e. your idolatrous images],
The star of your gods [Hebrew: Kokav Elohaicem, i.e. Your god, the star]
Which you made for yourselves.
27 Therefore I will send you into captivity beyond Damascus,
Says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.

Damascus in the Bible often refers to an area by the Euphrates River in the far north and not the city known as Damascus today.
See:
The Brit-Am Commentary (BAC) to Ezekiel 47:16
"Brit-Am Now"- 402: The NORTHERN BORDERS of Biblical Israel

The Israelites are described by Amos in the above verses as carrying with them their gods, Siccuth their King, and Chiun their gods, the star.
The name Siccuth may be related to the term Scythians also known as the Sakai.
The Israelites in their places of Exile were to be identified with the Gimmiri (Cimmerians), Guti (Goths), and Sakai or Scythians.

John R. Salverda shows that chiun meant the planet Saturn. In Persia Saturn was known as Kevan or Kaivan which is an alternative pronunciation of the Hebrew Chiun [KYVuN].
See: The Identification of Israel with Saturn by John R. Salverda
What exactly this verse (Amos 5:26) means is not clear to us BUT it is obvious that Saturn was an object of worship and it was identified with them.
The Scythians were called Umman-Manda by the Babylonians. Umman apparently means "People of". Manda is another way of pronouncing the name Manasseh (as pointed out by Immanuel Velikovsky). Manasseh was a leading tribe of the Israelite Nations. [The "d" and "s" sounds were interchanged in northern dialects such as that used in Media. "Manda" may, or may not, have been an existing name but due to it being pronounced similarly to how the name Manasseh was enunciated the two terms would have conflated.] In Babylonian Cosmology the name Manda was given to the star (in our terms planet) Saturn.

We see here that, according to Amos, the Israelites considered the pagan god Saturn to be particularly theirs. The name (Manda) given to Saturn may be also associated with both the Scythians and with Manasseh.
The Scythians later settled in Scandinavia and also gave rise to the Angles, Saxons, Franks, and related nations. Additional evidence, including legends of their own, confirm the Israelite origins of these peoples.
A Phoenician scribe known as Sanchuniathon was quoted by Eusebius as saying that:

"Kronos, whom the Egyptians call Thouth, excelled in wisdom among the Phoenicians ...Kronos then, whom the Phoenicians call ISRAEL, who was king of the country and subsequently after his decease was deified as the star Saturn had an only begotten son ..called Jehud...he arrayed his son ...in royal apparel and sacrificed him".

CORY, I.P. "The Ancient Fragments", London, 1828

Other versions of this passage render it as saying:

# For Cronus, whom the Phoenicians call IL, and who after his death was deified and instated in the planet which bears his name, when king, had by a nymph of the country called Anobret an only son, who on that account is styled Ieoud, for so the Phonicians still call an only son: and when great dangers from war beset the land he adorned the altar, and invested this son with the emblems of royalty, and sacrificed him. For Cronus, whom the Phoenicians call IL, and who after his death was deified and instated in the planet which bears his name, when king, had by a nymph of the country called Anobret an only son, who on that account is styled Ieoud, for so the Phoenicians still call an only son: and when great dangers from war beset the land he adorned the altar, and invested this son with the emblems of royalty, and sacrificed him.

The version quoted by Cory corresponds more closely with additional evidence along the same lines.
# Eusebius informs us that El, a name used also in the Bible as a name for God, was the name of Saturn. (Praeparatio Evangelica IV.xvi: "Kronos [El] was deified in the star Saturn." This statement is quoted by Eusebius from Philo's redaction of the lost Phoenician History of Sanchuniathon. Some classical writers, among them Tacitus (Histories V.4) alleged that the Jews were worshippers of Saturn.

The Romans called Cronos Saturn and considered him the god of the Jews. The name Saturday was named after Saturn. The Jews kept Saturday as the Sabbath and considered it sacred. Some explain the Romans identifying the God of Israel with Saturn as due to the Jews keeping the Sabbath on Saturday the day of Saturn; Old English Saeternesdaeg, translation of Latin "Saturni dies".

The Online Etymological Dictionary gives the following entry for Saturn.
Saturn
Old English Saetern "Italic god," also "most remote planet" (then known), from Latin Saturnus, Italic god of agriculture, possibly from Etruscan. Derivation from Latin serere (pp. satus) "to sow" is said to be folk-etymology.
Identified with Greek Kronos, father of Zeus. Also the alchemical name for lead (late 14c.). In Akkadian, the planet was kaiamanu, lit. "constant, enduring," hence Hebrew kiyyun, Arabic and Persian kaiwan "Saturn."

Many Latin words and concepts have parallels amongst the Hebrews and neighboring peoples. Rome had been settled by a mixture of peoples including Edomites, Babylonians, and others. At some stage they had also been influenced by the Hebrews.

The name Saturn may be derived from the Hebrew word-root "SaTeR" meaning hide. Saturn (Kronos) was also known as Kronos and as Typhon and as Baal Zephon. "Typhon" is another form of Zephon which means "Hidden" in Hebrew (from the root Ts-F-N) and so does Saturn mean "Hidden" (from the root S-T-R). Baal Zephon is recalled in the Bible.

Exodus 14:
1 Now the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2 Speak to the children of Israel, that they turn and camp before Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, opposite Baal Zephon; you shall camp before it by the sea.

Baal-zephon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal-zephon
# Baal-zephon ( Hebrew) is a Hebrew name which means 'lord of the north', and refers both to a god the Hellenes knew as Zeus Kasios, the god of Mount Aqraa on the Syrian shore who was associated with thunderbolts, the sea and a protector of maritime trade, and to a place named in the Book of Exodus as being near Migdol and Pi-hahiroth where the Hebrews (Israelites) were said to have made their Passage of the Red Sea following their exodus from Egypt.

The word Zephon in Hebrew connotes both "hidden" (Tsaphon or Tsaphun) and north -Tsaphon. In Greek and Latin Tsaphon was transliterated as Typhon.
Baal Zephon was an aspect of Baal.

Cronos-Saturn-Baal Zephon-Typhon- were identified as the God of Israel in the eyes of foreigners and maybe in the eyes of Israelites themselves, e.g.

Hosea 2:
16 And it shall be, in that day, Says the Lord,
That you will call Me My Husband,
And no longer call Me My Master, [Hebrew: Baali]
17 For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals,
And they shall be remembered by their name no more.

Soo too, the same root "sater" (to hide) as that found in the name Saturn was also employed by the Prophet Isaiah in connection with the God of Israel:

Isaiah 45:
15 Truly You are God, who hide Yourself O God of Israel, the Savior!
[In Hebrew the expression translated as "who hide Yourself" is "miStaTeR" derived from the verb-root SaTeR which is also the root of Saturn without the vowels]
Isaiah continues:
# They shall be ashamed And also disgraced, all of them; They shall go in confusion together, Who are makers of idols (Isaiah 45:16).

KRONOS, SATURN AND THE TITANS
In ancient mythology the god of a nation was identified with that nations.
The Egyptians identified Baal Zephon (i.e. Kronos) with Seth who figured in their own mythology as representative of the Hyksos and/or Israelites, cf. Martin Bernal ("Black Athena. The Afro-Asiatic Roots Of Classical Civilisation", Vol.1, London, 1987, p.66) from an Egyptian point of view:
"The Hyksos Seth was the Israelite God".
Cronos and Typhon were originally the same.
A source used by Plutarch (Isolde and Osira 31, no.259) says that the Titan, Typhon, fathered "Hierosolymus" [i.e. Jerusalem] and "Iudaeus" meaning Judah:

The Greeks (and after them, the Romans) said that Uranus was the first god. Uranus begat the Titans from his wife Thera (i.e. earth). Amongst the Titans was Saturn also known as Kronos and Typhon.
Saturn (i.e. Kronos) deposed Uranus and became king of the gods in his place. Saturn, in his turn, was also deposed by his son, Jupiter called Jove by the Romans. Jupiter expelled Saturn (from the east) who went to Italy and after a sojourn there continued to Britain where he and the Titans established a kingdom and lived happily ever after.

In their own terms the Roman story of Saturn being expelled from the east and going to Britain meant that part of the Hebrews had migrated to the British Isles.
In Jewish-Arabic folklore the same account is given where the people of Aid the brother of Hud (i.e. the Jews) was expelled and went to live in the Isles of the Dead in the west meaning Britain. Other legends exist along the same lines, as we have shown.

We saw how the god Ball Tsaphon equated both Cronos (Saturn) and a form of baal
The god baal was frequently depicted as a two horned deity and the name "Kronos" derives from the Hebrew "Keren" meaning "horn " in Hebrew. Similarly a horned god of the British Celts was known as "Cernunnos".

Plutarch wrote that Saturn was banished far to the west to the Isle of the Blessed near Britain. The Isle of the Blessed is usually understood to refer to Ireland.
See:
The Names of Ireland and the Ten Tribes
Other sources imply one of the British Isles.
"Cronus..and all the defeated Titans, except Atlas, were banished to a British island in the farthest west (or some say confined in Tartarus..." R.Graves, "Greek Myths", London 1958, p.40
Other traditions also located the Titans and Saturn in the west. One version said that the Titans had been thrown into Tartarus meaning an underground region located (said Homer) in the Atlantic Ocean. Strabo understood Homer as connecting Tartarus with the vicinity of Tartessus (i.e. Tarshish on the Spanish Atlantic coast) and the west.
Schulten quotes Kallimachos (Hymns of Delos, 174) as referring to the GALLI (of Gaul) as Titans. A similar source (Etym.Magnum 220,6) states that Cyclops (one of the Titans) was the father of Galatos (i.e. the Galatians) and ancestor to the Galli. The Galli (Gauls) are also known from Irish sources as settlers in ancient Ireland and are referred to as Galion. Alternately the Galli are the Gaels meaning the Milesian descendants of Nial.

At all events Saturn represented the Ten Tribes of Israel and the myths relate that they ended up in the British Isles and surrounding regions.