Talmud on Yaqtan and the Hadhramaut

Alice C. Linsley


Joktan or Yaqtan the Elder was the father of Keturah, Abraham's cousin wife. The lines of Yaqtan are traced to the Joktanite clans that still inhabit the region of the Hadhramaut in Southern Arabia.

Dhara means earth in Hindi, but in the Dravidian language the word refers to channels of water, such as flow under Yemen. Maut in ancient Egyptian means mother, so Ha-dhra-maut could be a reference to the Yaqtan's motherland during the Neolithic Subpluvial (Holocene Wet Period) which lasted from 7000 to about 3000 B.C. This would have been a time when there was more surface water in Southern Arabia.

Joktan the Younger was Abraham's firstborn son by his cousin wife Keturah. He was named after his maternal grandfather and lived c. 1987-1912 B.C. Joktan the Elder would have been a contemporary of Abraham's father Terah, but very likely he was not the first named Joktan in that ruling line.

The Joktanite clans spread across Southern Arabia, and according to Rabbinic tradition, Joktan the Elder was a "humble and upstanding citizen."

Sholom Lew wrote, in an article titled "Where Bin Laden Went wrong":

In describing Noah’s offspring born after the flood, the Torah (Genesis 10:26) speaks of an individual named Chatzarmavet—or “Courtyard of Death.”

It would seem to be very poor judgment on the part of parents to name their child “Courtyard of Death.” Imagine the psychological effects on a child in a playground setting saddled with a name like this! What is even more curious about this narrative is that according to our tradition, the father of this child, Joktan, was a fine fellow, not to mention a humble and upstanding citizen!

Our sages address this question by teaching that Chatzarmavet was not the given name of Joktan’s son, but the name of the location where he settled. And it is a testament to the profound effect this person had upon his community that he earned the accolade of having an entire region named for him.

The citizens of Chatzarmavet were known for their inclination to forgo the instant gratification of transitory consumerism that plagued the milieu they lived in—favoring instead a life of enduring value and infinite existence. These were a good, simple folk, unfazed by credit crunches, toxic debt, or loss of equity and monetary value. These people lived a simple and austere lifestyle, eschewing a life of glitz and glamour in favor of a thrifty but happy existence.

It is evident that Chatzarmavet is a corrupt variant of Hadramaut, perhaps resulting from someone's attempt at word play.

Related reading: Evidence that Yaqtan Was Abraham's First Born Son; Rabbi Akiva and Shimon Bar Yohai of the Talmud and Mishnah are Fictional Characters

Are Rabbinic Interpretations of the Bible Accurate?

Alice C. Linsley

A great deal of misunderstanding can result from the mechanical reproduction of previously published ideas either because those ideas are taken out of context or because they are based on factual errors. The manner in which authors sort and select data, without verifying the source or checking the facts, can lead to distorted interpretations. This problem must be anticipated in Bible interpretation where it is common to rely on what the rabbis have written.

As the Bible is viewed as a Jewish religious text, it is natural to seek rabbinic guidance. American Christians tend to read the Old Testament through rabbinic sources. Many seminaries and pastors use commentaries written by non-believing Jews. This is especially true among American Evangelicals. They appear to be unaware of the antecedents of Messianic expectation among Abraham's Nilo-Saharan and Saharo-Nubian ancestors. They also are generally unaware that Hebrew is an African language.

Rabbinic interpretations have influenced how Christians read the Old Testament from the start of the Church era. Sometimes the early Christians agreed with the rabbis' interpretations, but often they did not. The Church Fathers condemned Jewish attempts to discredit the testimony of the Apostles and many others. They also attempted, some more successfully than others, to refute rabbinic interpretations of the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, and rabbinic interpretations of Messianic passages, such as Psalm 101:1:

The Lord says to my lord:

“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”

And Psalm 110:4. The Rabbinic community has made many inflammatory accusations against the Christian interpretation of this verse.

The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind:
“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”

Some rabbis insist that Christians tampered with the passage. One contemporary Rabbi has written: “Psalm 110 represents one of the New Testaments’s most stunning, yet clever mistranslations of the Jewish scriptures. Moreover, the confusion created by the Christianization of this verse was further perpetuated and promulgated by numerous Christian translators of the Bible as well…The story of the church’s tampering with Psalm 110 is so old that it begins in the Christian canon itself.” (The treatise on Jewish Objections vol.111)

Rabbi Singer said, “No Jew who had even a superficial knowledge of the Jewish scriptures would have ever found Jesus’ argument compelling, let alone a conversation stopper.”

But if David wrote the psalm, then Jesus' question is well considered: If the Messiah is merely David’s son, as was universally agreed, how can David call him his Lord? If David wrote this, what was his source? He believed in the coming of Messiah based on his Edomite heritage. Edom was where the Horite kings ruled and where Abraham's territory extended between Hebron and Beersheba. The Horites had long expected a Righteous Ruler to overcome death and lead His people to immortality. They were a caste of ruler-priests who were devotees of Horus and his mother Hathor-Meri, the patroness of Horite metalworkers.

It appears that David drew on the Horite Hebrew tradition. His father was a great Horite ruler whose territory extended from Bethlehem in Galilee to Ramah. Ramah was the home of Samuel's Horite father. It was Samuel who anointed David in Bethlehem and for a time the Ark rested in Bethlehem. The Bethlehem of Obed, Jesse and David is specifically associated with the Horites in I Chronicles 4:4 which names Hur (Hor) as the "father of Bethlehem." David's sons are called "priests" in II Samuel because they were of the Horite ruler-priest bloodline. This is Jesus' bloodline through Mary.

It was universally agreed that the Messiah was the "son" or descendant of David, and according to the prophet Micah He would come from Bethlehem, David's royal city. Bethlehem of Galilee was known as a fruitful place and therefore called Bethlehem "Ephratha." This is the Bethlehem of David's ancestors Ruth and Boaz. It was a region known for fruit and grain. It was connected to the royal house of Tyre. Tyre was one of the ancient seats of wisdom. Hiram I of Tyre helped David build his palace. Tyrian craftsmen also helped Solomon build the temple. The rulers of Tyre were considered to have roots in ancient Eden.

The prophet Ezekiel traces the rulers of Tyre back to Eden. "Son of Man, raise a lament over the king of Tyre and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and flawless beauty. You were in Eden, in the Garden of God; every precious stone was your adornment... and gold beautifully wrought for you, mined for you, prepared the day you were created." (Ezekiel 28:11-18)

Jesus went to Tyre and there His true identity was recognized, according to Mark's Gospel (cf. Matt. 15:21). Hiram I, David and Jesus share a common Horite ancestry that extends back to Eden. The Horites believed that the promised Seed of the Woman would be born of their ruler-priest lines and they expected Him to visit them. In Mark 7:24, this expectation was fulfilled when the Son of God visited Tyre. Mark explains that there Jesus “could not pass unrecognized.”


The Riddle Jesus Posed to the Jews

Then He said to them, "How is it that they say the Christ is David's son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, 'The LORD said to my LORD, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet."  (Luke 20:21-45; Mark 12:35,36)

How can David's son/descendant also be called David's Lord? This was the riddle that Jesus posed to his disclaimers.

“Psalm 110 represents one of the New Testament’s most stunning, yet clever mistranslations of the Jewish scriptures. Moreover, the confusion created by the Christianization of this verse was further perpetuated and promulgated by numerous Christian translators of the Bible as well…The story of the church’s tampering with Psalm 110 is so old that it begins in the Christian canon itself.” (From here.)

The ruling Jews rejected Jesus as Messiah and the division took place when our Lord was manifested at His Baptism, in His Galilean ministry, and during His passion. He fulfilled all the signs of Messiah: feeding the people, calming wind and waves, healing the lame, giving sight to the blind and raising the dead, yet the ruling Jews refused to believe. They rejected the tradition of their own Horim (Horite Hebrew ancestors) who knew that the ultimate sign of Messiah's identity would be the third-day resurrection and an empty tomb. This is why Abraham's ancestors were buried with such care and their tombs sealed. They believed that the salvation of the people depended on a Righteous Ruler, who having overcome death, could led his people to immortality. The third-day resurrection was regarded as the most definitive sign whereby Messiah would be identified. The Jews knew this and therefore took great precaution to see that Rome sealed the tomb and posted a guard.

The Jews have spun a myth that Abraham was the first Jew. This is historically, anthropologically and linguistically inaccurate. Even Shaye Cohen, the leading Jewish scholar at Harvard, admits this in his interview with NOVA. To avoid the reality of Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors, the rabbis begin Jewish history with the calling of Abraham. But it just doesn't work. Since Abraham was Habiru (Hebrew) and not a Jew, the central narrative of Judaism shifted to Moses, and we came to think of Israel as having two different origins. However, Moses's family was Horite. That has been confirmed through analysis of Amram's marriage and ascendancy, which is distinctively Horite Hebrew.

The prophets were right to condemn Egyptian polytheism. The Horites were not polytheistic. They believed in a single Creator whose son was Horus and they spoke of the Father and Son as equals. So it is that Christianity emerges from a tradition much older than Judaism. In this sense, the core of the Christian faith is the oldest known religion. It took the Apostles a while to sort this out since they were brought up in post-exilic Judaism which is very far from the faith of Abraham and his Habiru ancestors. However, after the Resurrection, the Apostles recognized Jesus as Messiah and began to insist that unless one believed that He is the Son of God one cannot be saved. From that point, the division of Christianity and Judaism was inevitable. Rabbinic animosity toward followers of the Christ intensified after the destruction of the Temple, for which Christians were blamed. The Sanhedrin relocated to Jamnia and from there the campaign to paint Jesus as a fraud began in earnest.

When we consider the Horite beliefs concerning the Righteous Ruler we find close parallels. His mother was to be overshadowed. Because her animal totem was the cow she is shown in Nile temples holding her infant child in a stable. A Horite ceremony involved the priests bringing gifts and setting them before the Child. Another ceremony involved two days of mourning for the death of Horus and on the third day the priests cast grain into the fields as a sign of new life. When telling his disciples of His impending death, Jesus identified Himself as Seed or fallen grain in John 12:24: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."

As for Jesus' I Am designation, consider how Horus describes himself in the Coffin texts (passage 148): "I am Horus, the great Falcon upon the ramparts of the house of him of the hidden name. My flight has reached the horizon. I have passed by the gods of Nut. I have gone further than the gods of old. Even the most ancient bird could not equal my very first flight. I have removed my place beyond the powers of Set, the foe of my father Osiris. No other god could do what I have done. I have brought the ways of eternity to the twilight of the morning. I am unique in my flight. My wrath will be turned against the enemy of my father Osiris and I will put him beneath my feet in my name of 'Red Cloak'." (Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt by R.T. Rundle Clark, p. 216)

Here we find the words of David in Psalm 110:1 - The LORD says to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet."

Ultimately, the great divide centers on the question Who is Jesus? The rabbis have not been open-minded on this question. They have given ignominious names to Mary and her Son. In the Talmud Mary is called "Charia" which means dung or excrement. Yet they grant that she was of the ruler-priest lines. Sanhedrin 106a say, “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.” Jesus is called "Jeschu" which means May his name and memory be blotted out. His Hebrew name is Yeshua, which means Salvation. Sanhedrin 43a says that Jesus the Nazarene was executed because he practiced sorcery.


Related reading: The Substance of Abraham's Faith; Destruction of the Temple: Rabbinic Interpretations; Messianic Jews and the Antecedents of Judaism; Who Were the Levites?; The Talmud Versus the Doctrine of the Lord; Answering Rabbis Objections to Yeshua

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Destruction of the Temple: Rabbinic Interpretations

Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world. This article appears here.

Last month, in Tractate Shekalim, Daf Yomi readers encountered two priestly families known as the House of Avtinas and the House of Garmu. Each of these clans was the hereditary keeper of one of the Temple rituals: The House of Avtinas was responsible for making the incense burned in the Temple in Jerusalem; and the House of Garmu was in charge of baking the shewbread. In this week’s Daf Yomi reading, in Tractate Yoma, we heard once again about how these families refused to share their recipes, treating them as a kind of trade secret. This irritated the Temple authorities, who tried to bring in craftsmen from Alexandria as replacements; but the replacements proved unable to do things the right way, and the families had to be hired back at twice their old salary.

What should we think of the House of Avtinas—were they greedy and selfish for withholding their incense recipe, or did they have some more respectable motive? In Yoma 38a, the Gemara offers contrasting opinions about this. After the Temple was destroyed, Rabbi Yishmael recounts, he was walking along the road and he came across a descendant of the House of Avtinas. “I said to him: Your fathers sought to enhance their honor and sought to diminish God’s honor.” But now that the Temple was gone and the priestly families had lost their prestigious roles, “The honor of God remains as it was, and he diminished their honor.”

This anecdote suggests, though obliquely, what an enormous upheaval the destruction of the Temple must have created in Judean society. The priestly hierarchy was large and well-established, constituting the upper class of the nation; now they were suddenly rendered useless, like aristocratic émigrés during the French Revolution. There is even a hint of satisfaction in Yishmael’s words. The Talmud makes no secret of the fact that the priests’ ostentation and hunger for prestige sometimes made them unpopular. The fall of the House of Avtinas must have looked to some people like their just deserts.

Here, as often, it is useful to supplement the Talmud’s account of Second Temple-era Jerusalem with the one offered by the historian Josephus in The Jewish War. Josephus was himself a priest, and his sympathies were wholly with the established upper class of first-century Judea. But reading between the lines, it’s possible to see that the great Jewish revolt of 66-70 C.E., which attempted to cast off Roman rule and ended in catastrophe, was in large part a class revolt as well. The priests ruled Jerusalem under Roman authority, and during the war the priesthood was constantly urging the people to reconcile with their Roman overlords. The movement known as the Zealots—radical anti-Roman militants, who occupied the Temple at the beginning of the rebellion—were fighting against not just foreign rule, but priestly collaboration as well. (One of the first acts of the rebels was to burn down the offices containing debt records, a move that surely increased their popularity with the Jewish poor.)

It is typical of the Talmud’s apolitical approach that none of these conflicts are visible in the rabbis’ discussion of the priesthood and the Temple. The unpopularity of the House of Avtinas is attributed simply to their stinginess about the incense recipe, not to any larger economic or political grievance. And even this black mark is wiped away in another story told by Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri.

One day after the destruction of the Temple, Yochanan relates, he came across an elderly survivor of the House of Avtinas, who handed over a scroll containing the formula for making incense. “As long as the House of my forefathers was extant, they would not pass it on to anyone,” the old man said. But now the chain of transmission was broken, and he had no choice but to entrust it to Yochanan: “Be careful with it,” he begged. Now that they were so humbled, Akiba ruled that their bad reputation had been erased: “It is prohibited to mention them unfavorably.” The episode is like a parable of the way religious authority was handed over, after the Temple’s destruction, from the priests to the rabbis who interpreted Jewish law.

The fall of the House of Avtinas leads the Gemara to reflect on the matter of posthumous reputations. The rabbis mention a man named Ben Kamtzar, who knew a technique for writing with four pens simultaneously but refused to teach it to anyone. “About Ben Kamtzar and his counterparts,” the Gemara quotes a phrase from the book of Proverbs: “But the name of the wicked shall rot.” What this means, the rabbis explain, is that the names of wicked people become unpopular, so that people no longer give them to children—much as no one today would name a child Adolf.

More troubling is the rabbis’ conclusion that certain names are so tainted by wickedness that people who bear them are subject to divine punishment. In I Samuel 22, for instance, we read about one Doeg the Edomite, who carries out an order from King Saul to slaughter a family of priests who were in league with David against him. Doeg’s rampage—he is said to have murdered 85 priests in one day—is a good reason for him to be counted among the wicked whose names will rot.

In Yoma 38b, the rabbis tell about a young boy who lived during the time of the Jewish rebellion, named Doeg ben Yosef. This Doeg was his mother’s favorite: “Each day his mother measured his height in handbreadths and donated gold equivalent to the weight that he gained to the Temple.” When the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, however, the city fell victim to starvation, and Doeg’s mother ended up killing and eating him. (Josephus, too, reports cases of cannibalism during this terrible period.) Why did this happen to Doeg? The rabbis answer that it was because of his name, which was a wicked name: “See what befell him.”

Did the rabbis really believe that people deserve to die because their names? This seems manifestly unjust, and indeed it seems to have bothered Rabbi Elazar, who quickly revises the rule: “A righteous person is praised for his own actions, and a wicked person is cursed not only for his own actions but also for the actions of his wicked counterpart.” By this logic, a good person with a bad name will not suffer for it, but someone who lives up to the wickedness of his name will receive extra punishment. (Where this leaves poor Doeg ben Yosef, who was just a child, remains unclear.)

As the discussion goes on, the Gemara turns to other biblical examples of righteousness—such as Abraham—and wickedness—such as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Rabbi Elazar uses a biblical allusion to support the beautiful idea that “Even for one righteous person the world is created”: After all, when God created the world, he “saw that it was good,” “and good means nothing other than righteous.” Rabbi Yochanan adds that God never allows the world to be completely without righteous people: “No righteous person [tzaddik] departs from this world until another comparable righteous person is created.” Tzaddikim are rare, but God “planted some of them in each and every generation.” This statement seems to be connected to the Jewish folk tradition that there are 36 tzaddikim in each generation, though we might not know exactly who they are.

Toward the end of chapter 3 of Yoma, the Gemara turns to consider a line from Proverbs: “If it concerns the scorners, he scorns them, but to the humble he gives grace.” According to Reish Lakish, this saying is connected with the mystery of sin and free will. God gives us the freedom to sin, and he won’t stop us from doing evil; but if we resolve to do good, he will actively help us. Reish Lakish offers a metaphor: Imagine a merchant who is selling both foul-smelling naphtha and sweet balsam. If a customer comes to purchase naphtha, the merchant will sell it, but he says, “Measure it for yourself”: He doesn’t want to get too close to the bad smell. With balsam, on the other hand, the merchant says, “Wait for me until I can measure it with you, so that you and I will both be perfumed.” As always, the moral realism of the rabbis is impressive: They don’t deny the human propensity to evil, but they insist that goodness remains possible and divine.

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Alice C. Linsley

In response to Adam Kirsch's article, I would like to address the following four points:

1. Adam Kirsch makes the excellent observation that the ruler-priest class in the first century had become quite corrupt. To maintain power they had compromised with the Roman authorities. They made a display of righteousness, but were motivated by greed and the desire for power. When Jesus appeared they lumped him with the zealots, but some who knew him, recognized that he fit the pattern of the Messiah. These righteous priests accused others in the Sanhedrin of bringing false charges against Jesus and of trying to destroy him by acting contrary to the Law. This caused further division within the Sanhedrin and at least two priests risked everything to serve Jesus: Joseph, of the prestigious priestly line of Matthew, and Nicodemus. The two priests buried Jesus' body and bore witness to the empty tomb.

2. Names tainted by evilness include Cain, Esau, Onan, Er and Korah. Cain, though a murder, was granted grace and mercy and became a great ruler who established cities. He is one of the "mighty men of old."

Judah's sons Er and Onan were destroyed when they refused to fulfill the Levirate law and spilled their seed on the ground (Gen. 38). However, Er's line was not cut off. The name Er appears in Luke's ruler list as one of the Virgin Mary's ancestors. This is Er, the son of Joshua, shown in the diagram at left.

In Genesis, Esau is the victim of trickery and betrayal by his brother Jacob. When Jacob returns from Paddan-Aram, Esau greets him warmly and offers to help him settle his wives, children and flocks in the land. In this action, Esau embodies forgiveness. It has been noted that the name Esau is also spelled Issa and Yeshu, both variants of the name Jesus.

There are two named Esau in Genesis and both represent respected leaders among their people. Esau the Elder married the daughter of Elon. Their son Eliphaz married a daughter of Seir the Horite (Gen. 36). Esau the Younger, Jacob's brother, married a high ranking Horite woman named Oholibamah. Her name means Exalted Tent or High Tabernacle, and she is a type of the Virgin Mary.

Likewise, Korah, Moses' half brother, was destroyed in the rebellion in the wilderness, yet the name Korah is attached to many Psalms. The rabbinic attempt to paint all people with certain names as cursed clearly fails when we turn to the Scriptures themselves. Unfortunately, in modern Judaism the Talmud has greater authority than the Scriptures.

The Talmud encourages this perception: “My son, be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah." (Talmud Erubin 21b)

SUNY history professor, Robert Goldberg, writes; “The traditional Jew studies Talmud because it communicates ultimate truth—truth about God, truth about the world, and most important, truth about how God wants the holy community of Israel to live.”

Note that the Talmud is not studied for information about Messiah. It is largely anti-Christ in tone. In Sanhedrin 43a it says that Jesus the Nazarene was executed because he practiced sorcery. Sanhedrin 106a says Jesus' mother was a whore: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.” The Talmud teaches that Jesus was illegitimate and was conceived during menstruation; that he had the soul of Esau; that he was a fool, a conjurer, a seducer; that he was crucified, buried in hell and set up as an idol ever since by his followers.

The elevation of Talmud over Torah began well before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The hard line against Christians became more evident after the Sanhedrin relocated to Jamnia. The present form of the Talmud dates to about AD 500. By this time the rabbinic Judaism had hardened against the followers of Jesus Christ.

3. The idea that there are 36 tzaddikim in each generation is the rabbinic version of the Asian bodhisattva. The number 36 is half of the number 72 which was the number of deified rulers who would judge the world. They are called Horim. It was believed that half stayed in heaven and half served on earth. In the Qur'an these are called Houris. They have been cast as virgins in popular Islam. In a note to his fellow hijackers, September 11 ringleader Muhammad Atta reminded them of their impending "marriage in Paradise" to the 72 virgins promised in the Qur'an to the faithful departed. However, Islamic scholar Dr. Maher Hathout says that Houris refers to "beings of distinction."

These are deified rulers and to them we must add the saints. The seven angels with their seven trumpets of Revelation are accompanied by an angel who offers the prayers of the saints with a great amount of incense (Rev. 8:3). This angel is among the hosts that stand before the throne of God and who appear with the Lord at the Judgment. Consider Deuteronomy 33:2: "The Lord came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand." Seir was one of the principal regions belonging to the Horites (Gen. 36).

4. The various orders of the Temple were sub-castes including door guards, incense burners, makers of shewbread, lectors, tanners (tahash), and guardians of archives, etc. As castes, these were required to protect their trade secrets and attempts to force them to share the secrets represent a break with the traditions of the Fathers/Horim. The rabbinic interpretation that the Temple was destroyed because of the failure to share trade secrets is unfounded and represents obfuscation of the truth. Destruction of the Temple began at the very hour that Jesus hung on the Cross and the temple veil was torn from top to bottom. Jesus foretold this event when he told his disciples that the day was coming when not a single stone would remain in place. The destruction of the Temple in 70 AD was the final act in the great drama of Israel's self-destruction through the rejection of Messiah, the celestial Temple.

The true priesthood continued in the persons of Joseph of the Horite line of Matthew (Hara-mattayim or Hari-matthea), Nicodemus, and Jesus the Christ who today bestows the mantle of Melchizedek upon those He calls. In this sense, the Christian priesthood is the organic continuance of the one true priesthood that can be traced back to Eden.


Related reading: Who was Jesus?; Who was Melchizedek?; Horite Temples; Messianic Jews and the Antecedents of Judaism; Matthew's Testimony Concerning the Empty Tomb; Mary's Ruler-Priest Lineage; The Talmud Versus the Doctrine of the Lord; David's Royal City; Evidence of Castes in the Book of Ruth