Written Communication versus Spoken Communication

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

People seeking to read the Bible in the original languages study biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek. Most of the biblical texts appear in these languages.

Koine Greek was the language of the Hellenistic, Roman, and early Byzantine Empires. It was the language of trade, education, and the New Testament. 

Some texts in both the Old Testament and the New Testament appear in Aramaic, the ancient language spoken by many in Jesus' time and before. Portions of Ezra and Daniel are in Aramaic. 

None of these languages were spoken by Abraham and his Hebrew ancestors. They are relatively recent forms of communication. 

The languages of trade, education, and religion in Abraham's time were Ancient Akkadian and Proto Egyptian. Ancient Akkadian is the oldest known Semitic language. "Proto-Egyptian" predates the emergence of Egypt as a political entity. Both Ancient Akkadian and Proto-Egyptian diverged from the Afroasiatic language family, the oldest known language family.

The older material in the Bible contains some words that scholars have identified as Akkadian. Understanding that material requires considering roots or radicals that are older than the Hebrew language. We may speak of those roots as "Proto-Semitic".

Dr. Christopher Ehret believes that pre-Proto-Semitic roots are closely related to the Proto-Afroasiatic roots, making consideration of the Semitic etymology secondary rather than a prerequisite for the reconstructive work of comparative linguistics.

The relationship of ancient spoken languages is difficult to trace. Linguistic affinities have been verified among Berber, Ancient Egyptian, Coptic, Chadic, Semitic and Cushitic languages. These are classified as Afroasiatic. All of these spoken languages suggest connection to the Ancient Nile River Valley (ANRV). 

The Early Hebrew Used More than One Language

Abraham and his Hebrew ancestors lived in many parts of the Ancient World and spoke the languages of the peoples among whom they lived. They were a caste of ruler-priests who probably had a secret language used exclusively among themselves. This is not uncommon among castes. For example, the Inadan metal working caste uses a secret language which they call TeNeT (TNT), and they claim to be related to David of Judah (National Geographic, Aug. 1979, p. 389).

Further, the linguistically skilled Hebrew served as royal scribes. They used different scripts depending on the recipient of the ruler's missive. However, the scripts they used do not indicate the languages they spoke.

As Ahmed Achrati notes, "The names used for the designation of ancient scripts are sometimes purely taxonomic inventions, with no known connection to the referent ethnic group. The vexing question of identifying the people who used a given script is further complicated by the fact that people who use a script do not necessarily speak the language of that script."

There is a clear connection between the scripts used in the Nile Valley and the Indus Valley, two regions where the Hebrew were influential. Compare the Egyptian and Indus pottery inscriptions above. 

There is linguistic and archaeological evidence pointing to the African origin of the Dravidian speakers in India (Aravanan 1980; Winters 2007). The Indian archaeologist B.B. Lal (1963) believes that the Dravidian speaking people may have belonged to the C-Group people who dispersed from Nubia into Arabia, Iran, and India as evidenced by the presence of their distinctive Black-and-Red Ware (BRW). The C-Group people lived in northern Nubia, southern Egypt, and southward to the modern Sudan between 2300-1500 B.C. 

Lal explains: "At Timos the Indian team dug up several megalithic sites of ancient Nubians which bear an uncanny resemblance to the cemeteries of early Dravidians which are found all over Western India from Kathiawar to Cape Comorin. The intriguing similarity extends from the subterranean structure found near them. Even the earthenware ring-stands used by the Dravidians and Nubians to hold pots were identical."

The Nubian megaliths of which Lal speaks date to about 3000 years before the present.

There are linguistic connections between the ancient languages spoken by Abraham's ancestors and the Dravoid peoples. They share ancient Akkadian roots, as has been recognized by Hindu scholars. The Indian scholar, Malati J. Shendge, concluded that the language of the Harappans of the Indus Valley was Akkadian.

Ajay Pratap Singh has written, "Comparisons of Akkadian and Sanskrit words yielded at least 400 words in both languages with comparable phonetic and semantic similarities. Thus, Sanskrit has, in fact, descended from Akkadian."

 

Pre-Islamic Arabian scripts

Numerous scripts have been found throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Some of the oldest Arabic scripts are called "Dedanite" because the highest concentration of these scripts has been found in the region of Dedan. The Dedanites were involved in trade and commerce, as mentioned in Isaiah and Ezekiel. They are described as descendants of Cush and Abraham by his cousin wife, Keturah. The Dedanites were kin to the people of Sheba and Tema,

At least one of these scripts also has been found in East Africa. The "monumental script" on the Almaqah altar found near the city of Wuqro in the region of Tigray, Ethiopia has been identified as Thamudic (Giovanni Garbini, 1976). Approximately 11000 Thamudic inscriptions have been found scattered from Syria to Ethiopia. Most are found in Yemen.

The bulk of the Thamudic texts, about 9000 of the inscriptions, were collected by the Philby-Ryckmans-Lippens expedition in central Arabia. The remaining Thamudic inscriptions come from north-west Arabia. These have been divided by Winnett into three groups: Thamudic B, C, and D. A fourth group E has been added by G. King.

Related reading:  Thamudic and Nabataean Inscriptions from Umm Al-Rasas by M.C.A. Macdonald; Thamudic Scripts; Early Written Signs; Religious and Cultural Exchanges Between Africa and India; Nimrod and the Nile-Indus Connection

The Hebrew and Their Donkeys

Donkeys were first domesticated from wild asses around 7000 years ago in East Africa.

(Photo Credit: Eric Lafforgue/Getty Images)

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Wild donkeys were domesticated by the East Africans between 7000 and 4000 BC in the Red Sea Hills and the northern fringe of the Ethiopian highlands. (Ehret, Ancient Africa, p.64).

Donkeys enabled the transport of cargo across the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia and Pakistan. As Roger Blench states, "The spread of the donkey across Africa was linked with the proliferation of long-distance caravans." He notes that "Donkeys are used mainly as pack animals, either for carrying loads or for riding. In arid regions they are used together with camels to pull water from deep wells."

Historically, donkeys pulled carts, dragged mill stones, and drove olive presses. With the development of sedentary communal agriculture, they were used to plow the fields. However, the greatest claim to be made on their behalf involves their role in the emergence of trade across vast distances. And the early Hebrew were largely responsible for that development. They controlled many of the ancient trade routes, such as the Hula Valley and commerce along the major water ways. One means of control was to build twin settlements on opposites sides of the river. 

The early Hebrew (4000-2000 BC) dispersed widely in the ancient world, traded valuable commodities, established themselves in new territories, and influenced the religious beliefs of the people among whom they lived. There is little doubt that the donkey heled them to become wealthy. 

The Horite Hebrew of Edom and Seir are mentioned in Genesis 36.

The Horite Hebrew bred donkeys. Job's Horite Hebrew clan was associated with donkeys, the beasts of burden that make trade possible across vast regions. Job 30:3-7 portrays Job's people as "donkeys braying among the bushes". According to Genesis 36:24, Anah, the son of Zibeon and grandson of Seir the Horite, pastured his father's donkeys in the wilderness.

An early representation of donkeys is on an Egyptian palette dated c. 3100 BC. Donkeys were buried in elite cemeteries of the Nilotic peoples. In a royal funerary complex at Abydos, donkey skeletons were found in mudbrick graves. Donkeys indicated a clan's status.

The earliest known site of Horite Hebrew worship is at Nekhen on the Nile. Historical and archaeological data indicates that this was one of the early breeding grounds of the donkey. As Dr. Christopher Ehret notes, "Africans were the domesticators of the donkey, and animal that became a major stimulus for change in the relations of trade, there came the emergence of a new kind of town. Previously towns, where they did exist, as in Egypt and in the Levant and Mesopotamia, were principally temple centers and/or the governing centers of kingdoms. The new kind of town served instead primarily as a production center of goods destined for commerce or else as a trading center located as the crossroads of trade routes from one region to another, or both." (Ehret, Ancient Africa, pp. 67-68.)

Related reading: How donkeys changed the course of human history; Interview with Christopher Ehret; The Wealth of the Mesopotamian Rulers

Interview with Christopher Ehret

Dr. Christopher Ehret

Christopher Ehret, UCLA
Interviewed by World History Connected Co-editor Tom Laichas

Editor's note: Apart from the Nile Valley, Ethiopia, and the Bantu migration, African history before 1000 CE hardly appears in world history classrooms and texts. Most of us assume that there simply isn't enough documentary or archaeological evidence to say anything about social and technological change.

Christopher Ehret wants to change that. Among the most innovative and provocative scholars working in African history, Ehret has made a career of studying the development of African languages, teasing from the linguistic history evidence for ancient social, economic, technological, and religious development. Ehret acknowledges that some readers may have trouble "getting comfortable with language evidence."1 The effort is worth the trouble. Languages "contain immense vocabulary resources that express and name the full range of cultural, economic, and environmental information available to their speakers."

Want to know when a particular people first domesticated animals? Take a look at their vocabulary for breeding and raising the animals. Look for similar vocabulary in languages spoken by related groups. If you can determine how long it has been since all these groups shared a common language, you may be on your way to dating the origins of stock raising. This is not easy work; it means applying a fine-grained knowledge of linguistic structure, while avoiding coincidental or misleading relationships. One test of the work is how well it predicts later archaeological discoveries. By that measure, Ehret has done well.

The Africa Ehret reveals cannot be described as unchanging or peripheral to world history. Among his most exciting ideas is that of an "African classical age," from about 1000 BCE to about 300 CE. During this period, he argues, peoples from four language families ­ Khoisan (sometimes known as Khoi-San and best known for the "clicks" in their languages), Afrasan (a.k.a., Afrasian or Afro-Asiatic), Nilo-Saharans and Niger-Congo peoples—encountered one another in the African Great Lakes region and along the eastern Rift Valley. That encounter helps account for the southward expansion of Bantu-speaking Niger-Congo communities, who adopted cattle-raising from Nilo-Saharan groups and independently worked iron. Recently, Ehret summarized much of this work in The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800.2

Read the interview here.

Christopher Ehret has been a valuable resource for Biblical Anthropology. His linguistic research resembles the detective work of Biblical anthropologists. Linguistically, the language of Nimrod's kingdom - Akkadian - has close affinity to the languages of the ancient Nile Valley, as has been demonstrated by Ehret's research. Ehret also recognizes that cattle were domesticated in Sudan as early as 9000 year ago. These cattle-herding Proto-Saharan or Saharo-Nubian peoples were among Abraham's ancestors. Messianic expectation originated with these peoples.

Dr. Ehret has written: "The linguistic, genetic, and archaeological evidence combine in locating the origins of this [Afrasian] family far south in Africa, in Eritrea or Ethiopia, and not at all in Asia. A complex array of lexical evidence confirms that the proto-Afrasian society belonged to the pre-agricultural eras of human history." (History of Africa, p.4)

Related reading: The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; When is the Evidence Sufficient?; The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y