From "Maddeningly Unthinkable Road to Megiddo", we can look into more additional history. I found the explanation of the path that the presumed lost tribes of Israel took to make good the promise of, "a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee" even more intriguing. If anything, the predictions surrounding their plight and eventual fate may have at the very least a host of circumstantial evidence or to the skeptics a bunch of coincidences. A little more digging and I think I found both.
But first another historical example of migrations from a relatively earlier era to put some context and insight.
From 19,000 to 11,000 years ago during the last ice age, also known as the Last Glaciation Maximum (LGM), sea levels went much lower than it is today when much of the water was frozen at both polar regions, resulting in "land bridges" that connected many island archipelagos and present day island nations from Japan to the Philippines to Indonesia. During that time those bridges enabled ancient migration on foot from island to island. The Philippine population today traces its roots to Indo-Malay origins. In fact, Filipinos and Indonesians even today are indistinguishable from one another in physical features and skin color.
At the end of LGM as the planet warmed up, sea levels around the world rose again (there were a total of five glacial and warming epochs in earth's history) thus isolating the present day island nations. Not only that, but island nations like Indonesia and the Philippines presently have 11,000 and 7,000 separate islands, within each country, respectively. People, pockets of populations, as a result were isolated from each other from island to island. Language and culture evolved. In the Philippines, distinct "island languages", not just dialects, are spoken today. For example, in one of the central islands where I grew up, we speak one particular "language" different from the other side because at one time the mountain range in between separated the people from the west to the eastern side of the island. On the other hand, we speak the same "language" as those from the island directly across from our shores because trades existed between both sides through sea going vessels.
Today, lots of words have common etymologies between Indonesian and Philippine languages.
That little backdrop from one side of the world gives us a comparative perspective to the plight of the Hebrews from the time of the exodus from Egypt, the exile that followed and centuries of population growth, relocations, displacements, assimilations, political and cultural, even religious turmoil that fueled conflicts only to be settled by warfare, subjugation that led to enslavement, in many cases. Keep in mind we are talking about a time frame that took centuries of history.
As depicted in the Biblical story, Jacob was the son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham. Jacob's name was later changed to Israel and he had 12 sons from whom descended the 12 tribes. While Reuben was the eldest and Benjamin was the youngest, we will only focus on the fifth son named Dan and what happened to his tribe.
Dan's lineage was a warring tribe, adventurous and prone to restless movement to other lands. Genesis 32: prophesied that "Dan will be a serpent by the roadside, a viper along the path, that bites the horse's heels, so that its rider tumbles backward".
One interpretation of the first half of the verse, "A serpent, when it slithers and crawls, leaves a trail or track in the sand. Even so the tribe of Dan would leave signs or "waymarks" showing where it had journeyed. They tended to leave their "name" behind as an identifying sign!" More on this in a bit.
The Danites were descendants of Dan. For centuries that followed they ventured into lands farther away. They, among some of the other tribes who did stray from their faith and traditions, were the most to rebel. They developed a close affinity to the Phoenicians with whom they battled against for a period of time before making peace with them. The Phoenicians were pagans, master shipbuilders and experts at navigation. Danites worked in shipyards and on ships, perhaps as slaves in the beginning but later acquired the skill to build their own vessels and mastery of seafaring to further their restless and adventurous nature. By that time, they had become idol worshipers and practiced paganism.
Do we see the signs and waymarks that Dan's tribe left behind? In prophecy, the Israelites were to follow "Road Signs' and "Guideposts", to pave the way for those who were following behind. The tribe of Dan was the trailblazer and the path they took was dubbed the serpent's trail. Now always remember the timeline to be centuries long.
{Note: "In ancient times, when the Hebrew writing system was developed, vowels were not used. Native speakers could understand the words without the use of vowels, just as you can probably make out this sentence:
Tr wrtng wtht vwls. (Try writing without vowels."}
So, the name Dan would have been written simply as DN, or its equivalent in Hebrew. Phonetically then, Din, Den, Dan, Don, Dun would have all correspondingly represented the name Dan.
A quick look into the World Atlas will show us a possible route the Israelites took from the time of the exodus from Egypt. They spent forty years "in the wilderness" that would have placed them in and around the area of Mt. Sinai. They could not go east from there because they would have faced hostility from the people that occupied those lands that earlier had pushed them towards Egypt in the first place. Those land areas that prevented the Israelites from going east then are the same places today occupied by Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, just to name the major ones.
What follows are what I've read from a few sources who espouse one area of history apart from what is generally accepted.
So, they could have traveled up along the coastline to reach what is now Turkey and by sea to reach Greece. Let's get the quote earlier: Even so the tribe of Dan would leave signs or "waymarks" showing where it had journeyed. They tended to leave their "name" behind as an identifying sign!" Along the way, territories changed hands through tribal skirmishes and all-out warfare.
A quick look at the map of the upper Middle East and Europe helps to see the trail they took and the waymarks along the way.
The Strait of Gallipoli in northwestern Turkey is also known as The Dardanelles. Easterly, still along the coast is today the fourth largest city of Sidon in Lebanon. By sea to Greece and from there they would have reached a place later named Macedonia. Thus begun the naming of "waymarks and guideposts"
The island of Sardinia may have come from Shardana or Sardana. In Hebrew Shar or Sar meant princely, or chief from which the words tsar, Caesar, kaiser came from. The Shar Danas were the prosperous Danites that occupied that island for a time.
They moved east and north reaching what is now Germany, Poland, Ukraine and Russia. Rivers like the Danube and Dnieper are still called that today; so is Gdansk, Poland. Before the state of Israel was created, it is widely known that the known Jewish population was in all places in Europe. Hence, preceding WWII, German and Polish Jews suffered the most from Hitler's regime.
But here is something even more intriguing. The tribe of Dan kept moving and northerly they settled in what we now know as the Scandinavian countries; most prominently, Sweden and Denmark. Today citizens of Denmark are called Danes.
From there they went down southwesterly in ships. They reached Ireland first. In Irish folklore we come across the "Tuatha Dé Danann". There are many explanations for that phrase, such as to describe tuath Dé as the tribe of gods; Tuatha (plural) Dé for tribes of the gods. In Irish mythology, supernatural beings are described as well in reference to the same. On the other hand, a more natural explanation could be that Tuatha de Danann simply referred to "the tribe of Dan".
Now, there are so many places and names in Ireland and Scotland and throughout the British isles with dan, dun, din, etc. but just to name the popular ones, we see that the capital of Scotland is Edinburgh and of course we have London.
All of these are circumstantial when taken alone or simply coincidences?
The Roman geographer Ptolemy described northern Scotland as Caledonii or Caledonia, "such as Dùn Chailleann, the Scottish Gaelic word for the town of Dunkeld meaning "fort of the Caledonii". In Ptolemy's map was a region there called the Otadini. Further down into the "lowlands" of Scotland we find places like Averdeen, Dundee and of course the capital named Edinburgh.
The last one geographical patch I see that was a pivotal place in English modern history was a place called Dunkirk, France, when in May, 1940 close to 350,000 British soldiers were rescued with British ships and civilian vessels who risked their small boats to cross the English Channel to ferry the survivors of a defeated British force back to England. 'Operation Dynamo' was hailed as a miracle or providential because for some reason the Germans did not pursue the British soldiers to their end as they were fleeing. Many of those soldiers went back on D-day to liberate Europe. It was at the end of the war when the world found out about the concentration camps and the death of six million Jews.
Do these places prove the prophecy about Dan's tribe/s fulfilling their task to name "waymarks and guideposts" to pave the plight of the lost tribes of Israelites? The reader can look up the maps, as I did, and one may take the position that these are all circumstantial or total coincidences or perhaps mere misinterpretations. Are Biblical prophecies, such as, "for a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee" (Genesis 35:11) to be interpreted as Great Britain and the United States just lucky guesses? Where does that put the rest of the world? That will be for another day of discussion.
From today's headlines the world seems headed towards an unprecedented escalation of antisemitic protests as a result of Israel's push against Hamas in Gaza. Some of the chants heard were, "Go back to Europe'', a clear reference to where most of the Jewish population used to reside. This takes us back to an Old Testament prophecy, “For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land” (Ezek. 36:24), fulfilled in 1948 on the creation of the state of Israel.
Unfortunately, history has provided us, time after time, humanity's proclivity for conflict that goes back thousands of years. However, lessons remain unlearned, forgotten and ignored. My previous musing on the road to Megiddo is not an exaggeration if only to agree with this quote, "The history of man is a history of war."
Perhaps, "wars and rumors of war" (Matthew 24:6) will finally end in that one last battle at Megiddo if only for that to be the last war man will ever have to fight. And never again because either we have at last learned our final lesson or because there is no one left to do any more battles.
No comments:
Post a Comment