Herod the Great (73 BC - 4 AD)

Herod was born in Ashkelon, a Mediterranean seaport. His father, Antipater, was from Idumea or Edom ("land of red people"), the same region where Abraham established his territory. Antipater II was Procurator of Judaea.

Herod's mother, Kypros, was a Nabatean princess from Petra.

Edom was recognized as a seat of wisdom, but unlike Solomon who sought wisdom from the LORD, Herod the Great sought power. He executed his own relatives out of paranoia.

Herod the Great was the Roman-appointed king of Judaea who built many fortresses, aqueducts, theatres, and other public buildings and generally raised the prosperity of his land but who was the center of political and family intrigues in his later years. He ruled for 33 years and died a horrible death, possibly from intestinal cancer.

The BAS Library archive has some excellent articles on Herod, "the cruelty that defined his rule, and his horrific demise. Also, learn about the archaeological examinations of his building, and the Roman-inspired style that came to be known as “Herodian.”

Follow the links below.

In “Building Power,” Kenneth G. Holum takes the excavations of Caesarea’s harbor, built by King Herod.

In “Herod’s Roman Temple” David Jacobson explores Herod’s building project and what motivated him as he completed it.

In “Wooden Beams from Herod’s Temple Mount,” Peretz Reuven attempts to answer that question archaeologically, following the possible paths of re-use or destruction.

In “Reimagining Herod’s Royal Portico,” Orit Peleg-Barkat undertakes the difficult process of modeling what the Portico must have looked like in Herod’s time.

In “Searching for Portraits of King Herod,” Ralf Krumeich and Achim Lichtenberger attempt to discover what can be known about Herod’s appearance from the scanty evidence that remains.

In “Was Herod’s Tomb Really Found?”, Hershel Shanks examines the evidence and weighs in as the hunt for Herod’s tomb continues.

Judean Refugees in Ancient Galilee?

Biblical Archaeology Review
Oil Lamps Shedding Light on an Ancient Migration

Were there human migrations and refugees in antiquity? Yes, of course. Environmental change, wars, religious conflicts, and poverty are among the most powerful factors that have been driving human migration for millennia—from the Sea Peoples to the Huns to the Quakers to modern Syrians or Guatemalans. How do we learn about forced or voluntary migration in antiquity, with no newspapers or TV coverage to inform us? Can human displacement be detected archaeologically, if contemporary written records are not available?

In his article “Shedding Light on the Judean Refugees,” in the Spring 2020 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, James Riley Strange of the Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, focuses on a very specific ancient migration: Judeans fleeing their homes and resettling in Galilee as a result of the First Jewish Revolt and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.

Photo by Gabi Laron
 Courtesy of the Shikhin Excavation Project

“Archaeologists studying Galilee normally do not have much cause to think about refugees arriving in the region following 70 C.E. This is because we have little archaeological evidence of the abandonment of Judean villages after the revolt,” says Strange, explaining why we never hear about Judean refugees in Galilee. If there are no signs of people leaving Judea in any considerable numbers, is there any archaeological evidence of Judean refugees arriving in Galilee? This is also problematic, because material culture and the underlying customs and religion of Judeans and Galileans in this period were virtually the same.

This fragment of a ring around the lamp’s fill hole shows a seven-branched menorah flanked by palms (lulavs) growing from the menorah’s base. This mold-made lamp is an example of the Darom type, which likely originated in Judea and might be an evidence for Judean refugees.

Read more here.

Artifacts of great antiquity (23,000+ years) have been found in Galilee at Ohalo II, an Upper Paleolithic encampment on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. At Ohalo II, archaeologists also found wooden objects on brush-hut floors. They include a bark plank, pencil-shaped specimens with longitudinal shavings that may have been decorative or symbolic, and an incised wooden object that is identical in size and incision pattern to a gazelle bone implement found in a grave.


Related reading: The Eighteenth Division of Priests in Nazareth; Early Christian Amulet Found in Galilee; The Significance of Galilee in Matthew's Gospel

Ashkenazi Represent Judeo-Khazar Admixture

Ashkenazi Jews are a greater mix of genetic ancestries than previously thought. The majority of males studied have the R1a-Y2619 lineage with an ancestral origin in the Middle East around 2000 years before the present. R1a is the most prevalent Y-chromosome haplogroup in Eastern Europe.

However, the Ashkenazi show evidence of gene flow from Slav, Scythian, Hunnic-Bulgar, Iranian, Alan and Turkic peoples. These formed the Khazar empire which at its height stretched from Kiev to the Aral Sea. Clearly, Jewish racial purity was not sustained during the dispersion of the Jews before the time of Jesus Christ.

The Khazar empire fell in the 13th century AD, having been weakened by the Plague and Mongol invasions. Many Jewish refugees fled into Eastern Europe. Today these are known as Ashkenazi Jews. The future generations of many of these Jews was one of suffering under the Nazi regime. Their story is told in Elie Wiesel's Nobel Prize winning book Night.

A study published online in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution by Dr. Eran Elhaik, a geneticist at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, supports the Khazar Hypothesis. However, the Khazar Hypothesis has been dismissed by some geneticists and continues to be disputed. 

The "Rhineland Hypothesis" is another view. According to this theory, descendants of the Canaanite Jews left Palestine for Europe following the Muslim conquest of Palestine in the 7th century AD. In the beginning of the 15th century, approximately 50,000 left Germany for eastern Europe. By the 20th century their numbers were estimated at about 8 million.

Under the Rhineland Hypothesis, European Jews would be very similar to each other and would have a predominant Middle Eastern ancestry. However, this is not the case.

'The missing link of Jewish European ancestry: contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses' examined a comprehensive dataset of 1,287 unrelated individuals of 8 Jewish and 74 non-Jewish populations genotyped over 531,315 autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).

This was data published by Doron Behar and colleagues in 2010, which Elhaik used to calculate seven measures of ancestry, relatedness, admixture, allele sharing distances, geographical origins, and migration patterns. These identified the Caucasus-Near Eastern and European ancestral signatures in the European Jews' genome along with a smaller, but substantial Middle Eastern genome. The results were consistent in depicting a Caucasus ancestry for all European Jews. The analysis showed a tight genetic relationship between European Jews and Caucasus populations and pinpointed the biogeographic origin of the European Jews to the south of Khazaria, 560 kilometers from Samandar, Khazaria's capital.

Further analyses yielded a complex multi-ethnical ancestry with a slightly dominant Caucasus-Near Eastern, large South European and Middle Eastern ancestries, and a minor Eastern European contribution."

Dr. Elhaik writes, "The most parsimonious explanation for our findings is that Eastern European Jews are of Judeo-Khazarian ancestry forged over many centuries in the Caucasus. Jewish presence in the Caucasus and later Khazaria was recorded as early as the late centuries BCE and reinforced due to the increase in trade along the Silk Road, the decline of Judah (1st-7th centuries), and the rise of Christianity and Islam. Greco-Roman and Mesopotamian Jews gravitating toward Khazaria were also common in the early centuries and their migrations were intensified following the Khazars' conversion to Judaism… The religious conversion of the Khazars encompassed most of the Empire's citizens and subordinate tribes and lasted for the next 400 years until the invasion of the Mongols. At the final collapse of their empire in the 13th century, many of the Judeo-Khazars fled to Eastern Europe and later migrated to Central Europe and admixed with the neighbouring populations."

Elhaik's study showed a major difference among Caucasus populations explained by the early presence of Judeans in the Southern and Central Caucasus. When we explore the genetic lineages of the Judeans we discover a Nilotic-Kushite ancestry.

The Ashkenazi have roots much older than either of these hypotheses grants. R1a and R1b share common ancestry before 25,000 years ago that can be traced back to Africa as shown on this map. 

The ancestors of the Ashkenazi were likely merchants who settled in the shrine cities that were located on major water systems. In the ancient world merchants were called GR. There appears to be a relationship between the words gir, gar and ghar or khar. Bulghar was spoken by the Asiatic Ghars (Khars) from which the territory of Bulgaria takes its name. The Bulghar language was spoken in the Onogur tribal confederation into which Genghis Kahn married. Ono pertains to On or ancient Heliopolis, the Horite shrine city to which the great pyramids of Giza, Saqqara, and Abusir are aligned.

The word ghar means house, as in royal palace or royal city and is a cognate to word khar. In ancient Egyptian, khar refers to a measure of fuel used to offer sacrifice in the temple. The temple was in the precinct of the royal palace. Among the Guruntum-Gar, a West Chadic people, khar appears as har in last names. An example is Andrew Haruna. Haruna is the Chadic name for Aaron, suggesting a very ancient connection between the priesthood of Israel and their Kushite ruler-priest ancestors.

The Horites have been identified with references to Khar, a unit of measurement used in trade in the Egyptian inscriptions. The word khar is related to gur. In Akkadian gurguri means metalworkers or copper smiths. In Oromo gurguru means to sell (gurgurtaa = sale, gurguraa = seller). In Somali gur- means to collect something and gurgure means "one who collects." The Gurgure clan of the Dir refers to traders who collect wares and resale them. Among the Dir guri means stick, rod or firearm.

The Persian and Urdu word saudagar means trader. This contains the gr root in connection with Arabia. Horite traders dispersed across the ancient world. The association of the roots Ghar/GR (traders) and Khar/HR (Horites) is evident in India in place names such as Gurgaon Haryana.

The Gir-gam tells the story of Abraham's ancestors Cain, Seth, and Noah. All were merchant rulers who controlled the water ways of their territories.

The word "Horite" takes many forms including Hur, Horonaim, Horoni, and Hori. Hori was the son of Lotan son of Seir. Seir the Horite is mentioned in Genesis 36. A linguistic connection to the Horites is retained in the name Horowitz (Hurwitz or Gurvich), a surname commonly found among the Ashkenazi.

The oldest texts known to come from the Horite and Sethite Hebrew date to 4200 years ago, long before the Ashkenazi and the Judeans appeared on the stage of history.


Related reading: Who Were the Horites?; Horite Mounds, Noah's Sons and their Descendants; The Kushan-Kushite Connection; Were Abraham's People Refugees or Rulers?; Sub-Saharan DNA of Modern Jews; The Kushite Marriage Pattern Drove Their Expansion

Galit Dayan: "Jews" Lived in Dynastic Egypt

Pharoah’s papyrus scrolls may not seem the most reliable sources for investigating the story of the Israelite’s Exodus, but Egyptologist Galit Dayan has found in them much compelling evidence to support the historicity of the biblical tale.

Two weeks before Passover, on March 17, Dayan presented her research to an audience of more than 200 at Sinai Temple. Dayan, who earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is the wife of Jacob Dayan, Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles, told the group that linguistic evidence reveals an ancient and deeply involved Jewish presence in Egypt that eventually disappears. To illustrate, she drew remarkable parallels between the language of Egyptian papyrus (hieroglyphs), the haggadah and the Bible, all of which contain references to the Exodus story. In piecing together these manuscripts, Dayan framed an Exodus narrative based on facts of Egyptian history and language to prove her theory that a mass Exodus did occur and that it happened during the reign of Ramses II.

In each of the Egyptian manuscripts Dayan discussed, the same familiar characters are mentioned: Moses (“an Egyptian name”), Pharoah, the Red Sea/Sea of Reeds (“Yam Suf” in Hebrew), Hebrews, Israelites and the presence of slaves in Egypt.

In one manuscript, known as the Ipuwer papyrus, there is an eerie description of chaos in Egypt: “Plague is throughout the land,” Dayan’s translation reads, “blood is everywhere — the river is blood ... and the hail smote every herd of the field ... the land is without light and there is a thick darkness throughout the land ... the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt — from the firstborn of Pharoah that sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the prison. ...”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Dayan said with dramatic effect, “this is an Egyptian papyrus that is describing the same plagues that we have in our haggadah.” She explained her view that the 10 plagues were not random punishments inflicted by the Jewish God upon Egypt, but a “declaration of war” on the entire Egyptian system. Each plague, she said, corresponds to a different Egyptian god and the element of creation over which they held dominion. This means the plagues were not merely grave misfortunes but the most humiliating insults to the Egyptian people.

Read it all here.

Do you see the flaws in this Dayan's presentation?

Moses and his kin cannot be termed "Jews" as that term can be applied only after the Babylonian period. Moses' family was Horite. His brothers Aaron and Korah were Horite priests. Aaron is Harun, a reference to Horus. Korah means "shaved one" as the priests in Egypt shaved their heads and bodies before their term of service in the temples.

The Habiru in Egypt were the Shasu of YHWY. Nubia is the point of origin of the Holy Name.

The examples Dayan cites are all found in published texts from the Ancient Near East.  For example, the Nile water turning to blood relates to the fact that the ruler-priests mixed red ochre powder into the Nile water and mixed it with barley to make it look like blood (See James B. Pritchard's The Ancient Near East, Vol. I, page 4). This "blood water" was ritually consumed in their "communion" with Re, whose solar rays gave life to the Nile. Given the solar symbolism, this pertains to Ra and his son Horus and is a Christological image, not an image of the Passover. See The Urheimet of the Canaanite Y.


Related reading:  The Nubian Context of YWHY; Horite Temples; Moses' Wives and Brothers