Was Hagar an Egyptian woman? (grace, hell, prophets, atheism)

[dtango]

Originally Posted by NoCapo

Umm, I don't think this has any bearing on... anything. You are drawing a parallel between egyptian myth and hebrew myth, which is all well and good, but what does that have to do with Canaan? I was pointing out to Bideshi that Canaan the nation is not named after nor descended from Cain in the Biblical account.

NoCapo

I see now what you mean.
He wrote Ca’ananites implying perhaps that they were descendants of Cain and you correctly pointed out to him that they were not.
I myself thought that you were referring to Cain’s genealogy which appears to have been ended abruptly while it is just another variation of the genealogy.

[Bideshi]

Originally Posted by NoCapo

Biblically speaking, the Canaanites are supposed to have been descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham, who was cursed for having seen Noah's nakedness. According to the Biblical account they have nothing to do with Cain.

-NoCapo

Thank you for pointing out my error. Do you also take the position that the Philistines have nothing to do with modern day Palestinians?

[NoCapo]

Originally Posted by Bideshi

Thank you for pointing out my error. Do you also take the position that the Philistines have nothing to do with modern day Palestinians?

I really don't know. I haven't dug into it. My hunch would be that they are different, as I understood the Philistines to be a non-semitic phoenecian people group, and I think modern Palestinians are pretty definitely semitic. I kind of assume that there was some mixing somewhere along the way, but I don't think there is a clear link. I could be wrong on that, I have not ever really tried to trace that out...

-NoCapo

[Oleg Bach]

Originally Posted by Bideshi

If correct, that means today's Arabs are descendants of Cain through Ishmael. This would perhaps explain today's immpassable enmity between Israel and the Arabs and God's remarkable instruction to totally exterminate the Ca'ananites. Interesting speculation, but speculation only unless confirmed by the Bible.

The wild man was not a primitive..He was a common Yahoo/ a beast in human form..in other words just a nasty and dangerous person- a crazy man.

"God's remarkable instruction to totally exterminate the Cainanites" ? Do biblical scholars really take a phrase like this seriously? Small wonder the problems of yesterday remain in today's world..This mindset is so Islamic..It makes no sense that God would give human being instruction to exterminate other human beings- If this was the will of God - God would carry out this task himself. Don't mean to be an interloper here but GOD is all mighty and does not need the assistance of mortals to do his bidding.

The enmity between the two Shemite sects called Arab and Jew..is just some old family feud that started when one brother stole a basket of carrots from the other...There are brothers who have not spoken to each other in years over the smallest slight. Imagine the same thing in this case..but toss in a few thousand years- same thing.


I know that I don't belong in this thread but I could not help but notice that scholars such as yourselves like to justify the poor behavior of to days people through scripture. I think it is a dis-service to man and God. For instance the glorification of ALL of the Old Testament is wrong- For the most part it is a history not of good but bad human behavior...not to be copied or used to justify the poor actions of people today....sorry for sticking my nose in but I just wish that biblical scholars would stop worshiping the book and get back to goodness and GOD.


"

[Na'vi]

Is that the same ALL LOVING god? Funny 'bout that isn't it?

[whoppers]

Hagar was a common ancient Arabian name for a female, and since she was deemed the ancestress of the strong and independent Ishmaelites it makes sense to see her as an Arabian. The peoples from that area are much older than the Genesis Account would presume to indicate.
There may be political motivations behind the ascription of her ancestry to Egypt - see Hezekiah's pro-Egyptian policies, the virulent condemnations of this in various writings, and the disastrous consequences. Bear in mind that the Yahwist might have been writing in his period.

At any rate - Hagar is not portrayed negatively (except for the instance in which he "lorded it over her mistress" - but Sarai was guilty of mistreatment, and Abram of initially ignoring the situaion: so they all erred in this particular situation), but is even recorded as having a divine theophany and receiving her own Promise. She also happens to have the privilege of giving God a name: El Roi. This is unusual.

I agree that it's highly likely that Hagar was not an Egyptian, and I do appreciate the use of the different sources in a semi-thoughtful way (though I find it ironic that the OP falsely claims that "We are faced here with a problem for biblical scholars who are not used in solving problems! So, let’ see what can we accomplish by our non-educated brains" and then proceeds to use scholarly data and models), but the eventual conclusions reached are untenable. I assume the one verse in which Esau marries is the main impetus towards the theory that Hagar was a Canaanite? And Giants, again?

P.S. The references to "the primitive man" are very interesting, and the language used of both Esau and Ishmael is reminiscent of the Akkadian term lullû-amēlu, (the initial word being a loanword from Sumerian) used in Gilgamesh for Enkidu (as pointed out already); for the first human created, in Atrahasis, and used until after the Deluge occurs and mankind is given it's social and physical regulations which transform it from "primitive man" to "man".

Originally Posted by NoCapo

I really don't know. I haven't dug into it. My hunch would be that they are different, as I understood the Philistines to be a non-semitic phoenecian people group, and I think modern Palestinians are pretty definitely semitic. I kind of assume that there was some mixing somewhere along the way, but I don't think there is a clear link. I could be wrong on that, I have not ever really tried to trace that out...

-NoCapo

The consensus is that the Philistines were one group of the "Sea-Peoples" that ravaged, and then settled on, the Western coast of Canaan in the early Iron Age. They were a terror, apparantly. Some convincing suggestions have been made that they were from the Aegean area - thus of proto-Greek stock. The stories about them have a definite "Homeric" quality.
The Phoenicians were mostly Semitic, by the way.

Originally Posted by Oleg Bach

"God's remarkable instruction to totally exterminate the Cainanites" ? Do biblical scholars really take a phrase like this seriously? Small wonder the problems of yesterday remain in today's world..This mindset is so Islamic..It makes no sense that God would give human being instruction to exterminate other human beings- If this was the will of God - God would carry out this task himself. Don't mean to be an interloper here but GOD is all mighty and does not need the assistance of mortals to do his bidding.

The enmity between the two Shemite sects called Arab and Jew..is just some old family feud that started when one brother stole a basket of carrots from the other...There are brothers who have not spoken to each other in years over the smallest slight. Imagine the same thing in this case..but toss in a few thousand years- same thing.


I know that I don't belong in this thread but I could not help but notice that scholars such as yourselves like to justify the poor behavior of to days people through scripture. I think it is a dis-service to man and God. For instance the glorification of ALL of the Old Testament is wrong- For the most part it is a history not of good but bad human behavior...not to be copied or used to justify the poor actions of people today....sorry for sticking my nose in but I just wish that biblical scholars would stop worshiping the book and get back to goodness and GOD.


"

I think you'll find that Biblical Scholars do not worship "the Book", but strive for a very objective, critical view of it. And the idea that Israel emerged from Canaan and exterminated the Canaanites has not been seriously considered by Biblical Scholars for decades now. The consensus view is that the Israelites emerged from Canaan - they WERE Canaanites. The exact details of why they decided to differentiate themselves is still under debate, but the archaeological, linguistic and epigraphic evidence points to a definite shared culture and non-Conquest.

I totally agree with you about the damage such passages have caused, but you can place the blame for this continuting attitude in the modern world on fundamentalist and orthodox believers, and on Nationalists who use Scripture (whether Biblical or Koranic) as a justification for their ideology - not on Biblical Scholars. Marvin Pope (a Biblical Scholar) wrote an excellent essay on the Nationalist ideologies contained in the Bible (especially those dealing with Israel's hatred for Edom) and decried their use today. He mentions the rabbinic phrase (familiar from it's usage in Schindler's List) "Who saves a single life saves a world entire" but points out that some rabbinic sources frequently added the words "from Israel" to the phrase, making it a Nationalist, racist sentiment: "Who saves a single life from Israel saves a world entire". Pope prefers ommiting the addition, and his entire essay is on the commonality of all mankind that transcends national and ethnic boundaries (especially focusing on the Biblical idea that all mankind comes from one source), the regrettable Nationalism that is found in the Bible in many places (but not in all of it - see Jonah or Ruth, for example) and wonders when it will ever stop. ("Adam, Edom and Holocaust", in Boundaries of the Ancient Near Eastern World: A Tribute to Cyrus H. Gordon, JSOTS 273).

You might like the article. It should be required reading for modern Nationalists - whether Jewish or Arabic or Christian.

Originally Posted by Na'vi

Is that the same ALL LOVING god? Funny 'bout that isn't it?

It depends on which author of the Bible you're dealing with. I gave a few examples above where Biblical authors rejected the Nationalistic tendencies of the other writers. With that said - yes, the proposition that God is "all loving" definitely offers problems to those who would claim divine inspiration of the entire Bible's contents!

[dtango]

Originally Posted by whoppers

Hagar was a common ancient Arabian name for a female,

Whoppers dear, let us stop playing games. In the Bible the same story is told in more than one ways or by more than one storyteller. In this case it is not about Hagar’s nationality but about an Israelite Patriarch (aka son of gods) having sons by using a slave girl (aka daughter of men) with the approval of his wife.
In Lot’s case there is another Israelite Patriarch who is forced to have sons only with women of his own family/tribe/race/ because he had just accomplished the extermination of all available slave girls penned into the enclosures of the area of Sodom-Gomorra.
Lot’s wife is removed from the story in order for the incest event to be possible and thus let the reader of the story understand what the story is about.

Originally Posted by whoppers

P.S. The references to "the primitive man" are very interesting, and the language used of both Esau and Ishmael is reminiscent of the Akkadian term lull

Originally Posted by whoppers

û-amēlu, (the initial word being a loanword from Sumerian) used in Gilgamesh for Enkidu (as pointed out already); for the first human created, in Atrahasis, and used until after the Deluge occurs and mankind is given it's social and physical regulations which transform it from "primitive man" to "man".

That is scholarly, straightforward and unbiased! How can I complain now?

Creation Epic, tablet VI, line 6

Benjamin Foster translating

I shall make stand a human being (lullu), let 'Man' be its name

E. A. Speiser translating

I will establish a savage * “man” shall be his name.

*Gloss by Speiser: For this value of the term, probably a derivative of the ethnic name Lullu, cf. B. Lansaberger e.t.c.
That the Lullu were linked by Akkadian sources with the remote and dim past may be gathered from the evidence which I listed in JAOS, e.t.c., as well as from the fact that the flood ship (Gilgamesh XI, 140) lands on Mount Nisir, in Lullu country.

The wild men, especially the wild-donkey-men, are primitive men. Enkidu’s description matches the description of a Neanderthal (shorter than Gilgamesh but heavier with thicker bones), the Lullu peoples’ memory fades away in the mist of the dim past but we (I mean we, the wise moderns) refuse to recognise that our ancestors’ memory could reach that far, although the first objects of worship fashioned in Europe were made while the European Neanderthals were still alive.

In the Egyptian language there is the word nnw or nnyw which is determined by the ideogram of a man (A7) sinking to ground from fatigue and is translated as weary, weak, inert ones (even the dead) but never primitive ones, although in the History of Creation, which is written twice in the Bremmer-Rhind papyrus, nnw is the name used for the first people the god made.

Ts.n \ =j \ im \ =sn \ m \ nw \ m \ nnw
Put together \ I \ in there \ those \ in \ primeval waters \ as \ primitive ones

I put together (some) of them in Nun as weary ones, translates J.A.Wilson who comments as follows:

There is a play on the name Nun, the primordial waters in which creation took place, and nnw “the weary,” usually a designation of the dead, but here those in inchoate pause.

A variation of the Myth of the Creation is found in spell 80 of the Coffin Texts. It is worth quoting a part of it so that you can... enjoy the reaction of Faulkner (one the most famous translators of the Egyptian) to the tern nnw:

I was alone with Nu in lassitude, and I could find no place in which to stand or sit, when On (Heliopolis) had not yet been founded that I might dwell in it, when my throne (?) had not yet been put together that I might sit on it; therefore I had made Nut that she might be above me, before the first generation had been born, before the Primeval Ennead (the nine superior gods) had come into being that they might dwell with me.
Thus said Atum to Nu: I am on the flood waters, being very weary, and the patricians are inert*

The gloss corresponding to (*) reads: Still unborn?

Patricians pat (pat) are the aristocrats, the gods, and thus the term is used both for men and gods. In Utterance 570 Horus is called a patrician:

R.O Faulkner translating:

...by command of Horus the patrician, King of the Gods.


James Allen translating:


...by command of Horus, the member of the elite and king of the gods

The hieroglyphic text has:

Hr \ r-pat \ nsw \ nt \ nTrw

Horus \ patrician, prince, hereditary prince \ king \ of \ gods

Whether gods or men, the patricians are still primitive. They have not evolved yet into proper men or gods and the Creator is complaining for being lonely. To wonder whether it is meant that they are still unborn or not, is a bit ridiculous.

[AREQUIPA]

Originally Posted by dtango

I think that the Bible did all that it could do and that it is up to us now to understand it.

I quite agree with you that the Arabs (but not only the Arabs) are descendants of Cain through Ishmael.
The Israelites (but not only the Israelites) are what is left of Abel. They are the pure ones, as the famous Followers of Horus and Osiris were in the Egyptian tradition where Seth killed his brothers Osiris who managed to come back to life; the Israelites produced their own edition of the story.

In the Greek tradition there are the Titans who give birth to gods and men. Much simpler and underastandable: The Arabs and the Greeks are the men and the Israelites with the Germanic peoples are the gods.
Since then however, I mean since the time of Hagar, there has been so much sex making between gods and men that it is difficult to say who is who.

I have to say that I was impressed by thge work you put in, but while I was struck by the revelation that Esau took Canaanite wives though he was told not to, I thought that Hagar NOT being an Egyptian (though the name doesn't sound Egyptian, much can change in a different language tradition) was based on nothing other than the supposition that it was changed for some reason -not made clear.

I will look as soon as I have been out for my daily puff and pant, but I betcha I will find that Esau was told not to take a Canaanite wife simply so that he would do do against instructions as part of his loss of birthright. The polemic point being that his Edomite descendents were fully deserving of conquest and forced conversion by the Hasmonean Jewish state.

What you think of that, mate?

Later. Gen 36.8 So Esau (that is, Edom) settled in the hill country of Seir.

I am tempted to say that the scientific method says Predictability is verification, but the story is a bit open to interpretation and I may have had some pointers already. But the while thrust of thus mytholgical - sounding and often rather disreputable tale is that it comes up with ancient origins for all places of Israel and Judah being named after the sons of Jacob named by God Israel (twice, just to make sure) not for any reason other than to make him the ancestry of the Judean state with a backdated prophecy of seed as numerous as the sands of the beach (not that they actually are, were or ever shall be. There ARE other people on the planet.

Both Jacob and Esau were told not to take Canaanite wives and Esau, (it says later) had though after being so roundly dispossesed of his Birthright that he and his people did not even practice the circumcision enjoined on Abraham (Gen 17) and it is not even clear that they still worshipped God. In fact by Gen. 38, the identification with edom is so strong that any jewish ancestry has been lost other than enough kinship to justify its later incorporation in Judea.

[AREQUIPA]

Ok..later

Both Jacob and Esau were told not to take Canaanite wives and Esau, (it says later) had though after being so roundly dispossessed of his Birthright that he and his people did not even practice the circumcision enjoined on Abraham (Gen 17) and it is not even clear that they still worshiped God. In fact by Gen. 38, the identification with Edom is so strong that any Jewish ancestry has been lost other than enough kinship to justify its later incorporation in Judea.

Now, what about Hagar, as she is much earlier as an Egyptian slave of Abraham's wife which is not surprising as they had come from Egypt to a Canaan which is remarkably anachronistic Since (Gen 14) there is a king of Shinar (Sumer) which is damn' early (so is Elam -even Assyria comes in for a mention) but also a Hittite state in Canaan, which was only the case with the 'Neo - hittites' a small Syrian - Hittite state set up after the collapse of the Hittite Empire in Asia minor. The whole story niffs strongly of a much later concocted semi mythical 'history' designed to validate the Jewish belief that they were enjoined by (their own tribal) God to conquer an many other states as they could.

Hagar attempts to flee but is turned back by God's promise of a numerous progeny, who (he generously assures her next minute) shall be the descendents of a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man and every man's hand against him (16 12.) This is Ishmael and already there is respective prophecy of non - Jewish states which of course have to be dispossessed.

We pass over Sodom and Gomorrah (which may have indeed been real places just as Moab and Ammon were real states) and the point of the story seems to be to smear Ammon and Moab as the eponymous descendents of an incestuous coupling of depraved daughters (who had to come from the cities which, being destroyed by flood or earthquake must have been very sinful, so a great place for such people to come from) and their sottish father.

Repeating the order not to take a Canaanite wife, Abraham's son Isaac runs across Rebekah, of all things daughter of Nahor, a brother of Abraham. (Lucky eh?) But oddly by 25. 20 she was the daughter of one Bethuel, an Aramean, so maybe dtango has a point about alteration. Perhaps the confusion is because Rebekah has two sons, the barbaric Esau (later the founder of Edom ) and the scholarly Jacob, founder of Israel.

I confess that I though there would be a connection to Hagar, And there it is - Laban, son of Hagar, buggered off to Haran before the circumcision - covenant with Abraham was given,(where 28.2 Jacob-Israel goes to get a wife, because he can't marry a Canaanite. So Hagar's descendents are ok and cannot be Canaanites), and Esau was a 'Jewish' as was Israel. Which is why I can't imagine why his Edomite people gave up the worship of God, let alone the practice of circumcision.

In the end there is no real reason to see why Hagar has to be Canaanite. She isn't Jewish and that is apparently enough to justify her descendants being excluded from the Abrahamic birthright (21.10 and she said to Abraham, "Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.") There is not a shred of evidence for it other than dtango's suggestion that the Bible was amended to change it. I am an atheist and I don't believe the Bible but even I don't rewrite what's in it and claim that was what it must originally have said (though I know it sounds like it at times).

so to sum up, Hagar must be Egyptian as her descendents through Jacob and the daughter of her son, Laban (notwithstanding the wild ass as every mans' hand against him), are Israelites. Isaac's sons Jacob (Israel) and Esau (Edom) are all perfectly good non - Canaanite Abraham descendents of Hagar's son Laban through his daughter Rebekah. The only reason that Esau loses his Abrahamic rights (since just the smear of being hairy and rough is not reason enough) is that he was swindled out of it by the crafty Jacob.

[dtango]

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

..so to sum up, Hagar must be Egyptian as her descendents through Jacob and the daughter of her son, Laban (notwithstanding the wild ass as every mans' hand against him), are Israelites. Isaac's sons Jacob (Israel) and Esau (Edom) are all perfectly good non - Canaanite Abraham descendents of Hagar's son Laban through his daughter Rebekah. The only reason that Esau loses his Abrahamic rights (since just the smear of being hairy and rough is not reason enough) is that he was swindled out of it by the crafty Jacob.

I view mythology through a lens that focuses at a point 40,000 years ago and you do it by using a lens that allows you to watch only recent events and developments.
I care only about the kernel of the stories and not the layers of fairy tale that cover it.

The wife of a Patriarch urges her husband to commit adultery with a slave girl in order to have the sons he wants. Why write such a story?

The descendants of slave Hagar may be Israelites, because they were fathered by a Israelite, or they may be half Israelites half slave-like or they may be just slave-like and not at all Israelite-like.

RACISM! Utter, extreme racism where in the upper end stands the god-like person and in the lower end crawls the animal-like person. That is the framework of the gods’ story which religion inherited and made it its foundations.

Purification means to be pure like a god-like person. We are used to it because it has been practised for thousands of years all over the earth and we are unable to detect the unbelievable racism under the poetic term.
Original sin! We are born animal-like and we have to be purified in order to become god-like and get rid of the original sin.

The Egyptian funerary texts, which according to official verdict by the Academy are petty magical incantations, narrate how the gods (the Israelites in our case) assessed, in the judgment they were practicing, whether the person brought in for assessment was a god, a man or an animal.
These are the older religious texts of the world! How could the Academy let the people, scholar and layman alike, learn such a barbarous, sacrilegious piece of news? No! The ancient Egyptians were savages basing their religion on magic (officially the word “HkAw,” which means “The Word of God,” is translated as “magic words” and the god named HkAw is said to be the... god of magic.

The redactors of the Old Testament were well aware of this situation and decided to reveal it through incomprehensible stories that would compel the reader to seek the message under cover.