2. Cimmerians, Celts, and Hebrews.
Other Possibilities Refuted.
Brit-am Answers, Part 2, to:
Brit-Am Exposed -
Is Long John Really Avraham Sandor?
As mentioned above, it has come to our attention that the article by
Longtom is none other than a COPY OF ANOTHER article.
It has been taken from:
Myths, Hypotheses and Facts Concerning
the Origin of Peoples
The "Lost Tribes" of Israel - They Are NOT British -
This article is written by a nasty piece of work who goes by several names
including that of Avraham Sandor of Hungary, Germany, Italy, and who knows where
else.
Maybe he is now in the USA under the name of Longtom?
Longtom is offensive and irrational. Nevertheless he needs to be answered.
The answers given to him may also be found useful against other antagonists.
LT
Semitic and Japhetic peoples
The Israelites are a Semitic people like the Assyrians - indeed, both of them
were
Akkadian in origin. ...
Cimmerians and Celts: According to the biblical account these peoples
descend from Gomer (Genesis 10:2), and this identity is also reported by the
Assyrian chronicles, concerning a very primitive people settled in the area of
Asia Minor whom they called Gimirrai and known in secular history as
Kimmerii or Cimmerians. While
Shalmanesser V was besieging Samaria, the
Cimmerians were in war against Rusa, king of Urartu (ancient Armenia),
before the deportation of the Israelites in 721 BCE. This chronological proof
should be enough to discard any possibility of identification between
Israelites and Cimmerians...
BAC
Hosea (chs 1,2,3) predicted a union between the Ten Tribes and Gomer.
The Cimmerians were referred to as Gimirru by the Assyrians and others. They are
identified with Gomer.
Areas associated with Gomer and the three sons of Gomer (Ashkenmaz, Riphat,
Togarma) are also associated with the exiled Ten Tribes.
The Cimmerians are first recalled in conflict in Sargon in either 714 or 705 BCE
(the records are not clear).
They were indeed then found on the outskirts of Armenia.
Hebrew Scripture itself in Prophecy mentions this area as a future place of exile.
cf.
[Amos 4:3] AND YE SHALL GO OUT AT THE BREACHES, EVERY COW AT THAT WHICH IS BEFORE HER; AND YE SHALL CAST THEM INTO THE PALACE, SAITH THE LORD.
“INTO THE PALACE” in Hebrew is “Harmonah” meaning to the Mountains of Mannae and Armenia as explained in Lost Israelite Identity and justified by the Aramaic (Talmudically-affirmed) translation of Yehonathan.
The Cimmerians were referred to bythe Assyrians as rebels and former colonists on behalf of Assyria.
The Scythians emerged from the ranks of the Cimmerians in ca. 676.
The Israelites had been exiled in stages.
The earliest exile is dated to ca. 740 BCE with the exile of the Tribes of
Reuben, Gad, and half-Manasseh by Tiglathpileser.
See:
Assyrian captivity of Israel.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A federation of Israelites took place with the descendants of Gomer.
That is what we claim and all we have to prove. Nothing more.
LT
The Cimmerians did not leave any written record of themselves, as
they were nomadic and illiterate, so the first mention we have of them
after the Bible is in Assyrian chronicles. Their language was completely
alien for the Assyrians (who spoke Aramaic, closely related to Hebrew).
Would the Israelites completely forget the art of writing in few years
and become even unable to speak their own language? Would they
ignore their past and not leave the slightest trace of themselves if they
were able to escape their captors and reorganize as a nation? It is
utterly impossible!
The Cimmerians are described by the Assyrians as "red-haired", an
unusual feature that caught their attention, while the Israelites were
hardly distinguishable from the Assyrians, both represented in the
ancient documents as normally having olive complexion as most
Semites are still today. Would the Israelites achieve such an ability of
camouflage so that they became unrecognizable, changing their hair
colour and becoming very pale?
Not even modern surgery has reached
such a prodigy!
BAC
There are no such ancient documents representing Israelites with olive
complexions. They may have had them for all we know.
Olive complexions have a way of blanching in places were olives do not grow.
I have never come across any source describing the Cimmerians as red-haired. I
doubt that such exists and if it does would like to know about it.
Red hair however was known amongst the ancient Israelites. David was red-haired (1-Samuel 16:22) and so was Esau the twin-brother of Jacob (Genesis 25:25).
Egyptian pictures of Israelites and of some of the peoples around them show groups, and individuals, of blonds and red-heads
as well as brunetttes and black-haired specimens.
A picture of a red-haired person in Egyptian art is often considered a typical depcition of someone from the region of Ancient Israel.
See:
THE PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE HEBREW PEOPLES.
Hebrew Pictures.
Sandor or Longtom or whatever he calls himself is very hung up over racial
matters.
He seems to think that one needs be darkish and olive skinned to be an
Israelite!
Incidentally the fictional character Conan the Barbarian who stars in comic
scripts and movies is also known as the Cimmerian.
Conan the Barbarian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Conan the Barbarian (also known as Conan the Cimmerian, from the name of the
character's homeland, Cimmeria) is a fictional sword and sorcery hero that
originated in pulp fiction magazines and has since been adapted to books,
comics, several films...television programs, video games, roleplaying games and
other media. The character was created by writer Robert E. Howard in 1932 .
The various stories of Conan the Barbarian occur in the fictional "Hyborian Age", set after the destruction of Atlantis and before the rise of the known ancient civilizations.
... Conan has "sullen" or "smoldering" blue eyes and a black "square-cut mane".
...Howard imagined the Cimmerians as a proto-Celtic people with mostly black
hair and blue or grey eyes.
LT
The Cimmerians' social system was disgusting even for the Assyrians,
as for any civilized people of the Middle East. They did not know the
family as it was structured in Semitic cultures, but were arranged by
clans, sharing the women and children (whose father was not always
known - in fact, children belonged to the clan, not to their parents).
They also practised prostitution and children sacrifice.
Far from "keeping their statutes that they had not kept in their own
land", if the Israelites were the Cimmerians, they became even worse
than what they were in Kanaan!
BAC
Were does Longtom Sandor get his information from??? We will assume this is fiction until a source is quoted. Maybe LT
should audition to screenwrite the next Conan movie?
There were however reports of peoples in Ireland and the British Isles who so behaved. We are not sure how reliable these sources are.
The Ten Tribes and even Judah) however are recorded as practising the sacrifice of children and lewdness.
In our own society with rampant abortions, child-abuse, and condoned adultery etc are we really much better?
LT
Exile was the consequence of their
having followed the customs of the Kanaanites concerning religious
practices, yet they did not lose their social structure and family values.
The exile would have improved their behaviour, because Assyrians
were bellicose but not immoral like the Kanaanites, and did not
perform the abominable sacrifices that the Kanaanites included in
their rituals. The Assyrian idolatry was rather "moderate".
Definitively, the alleged transformation of the Israelites into
Cimmerians is completely contrary to Scriptures, history, genetics and
mental health, being a conception of somebody suffering of
irreversible insanity.
BAC
This sounds like a description of some of the Jewish groups
after the Babylonians and later the Romans had expelled them. Jews in Exile often had to become more religious or they would disappear.
This is not however pertinent to the Ten Tribes.
Like it or not the Israelites were bad before they were exiled and they got
worse afterwards.
Longtom-john should try to keep his johns on.
The apocryphal Book of Esdras says that the Israelites in their places of exile became more religious
than they had been beforehand.
Previously LT went to some length to discredit Esdras but now he is pushing the same opinion.
It just is not so.
Sandor evidently is sympathetic towards the Assyrians and once claimed to be a descendant of theirs!
Sandor (aka Longtom) at one stage joined an e-mail discussion group and presented himself as an Assyrian Christian.
There is such a thing. The Assyrians are members of a Catholic type church in the Middle East, especially Iraq, who call themselves Assyrians!
Recently, in the era of Obama, most off them have been driven out by their Muslim neighbors.
The Ancient Assyrians were lewd and bestial. That is one of the reasons they lost their Empire and were virtually destroyed shortly afterwards.
A. T. E. Olmstead (History of Assyria) quotes from an Assyrian medical text recommending copulation with animals for theraputic purposes!
The Assyrians were hardly the type of people by whom the Israelites would have been improved by emulating!
The Israelites were bad then and remained bad for a good while afterwards.
Hosea and the other Prophets describe how right up until the end the Lost Israelites will
continue to worship the baal.
Hosea 2:
17 For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals,
And they shall be remembered by their name no more.
LT
The Cimmerians were ethnically related to the Celts, that in those times were
already dwelling in central and western Europe. Traces of the Celts are found in
Europe since some centuries before the Cimmerians appeared in the Ararat and
Asia Minor areas. The Celts called themselves "Cymry", a term that recalls their
kin people in Anatolia and their ancestor Gomer. This is the word still used to
indicate Wales. The term "Celt", "Celtic" derives from "Keltoi", as Greeks
called
them. Romans knew them as "Galli" (Gauls), and "Britanni", a Roman name
applied to some Celtic groups. Such word is not at all related to the Hebrew"B'rit", as Romans did not speak Hebrew,
and Britons did never call themselves
that way. The alleged meaning of "Brit-ish" as the Hebrew "covenant-man" is
utterly ridiculous and shows that who has suggested such a simplistic equation
has no knowledge of Hebrew language nor the slightest idea of philology. It is
well established by history that the term "Briton" is a Latin word and was
adopted only in modern times, when the English language took a definitive
shape strongly influenced by Latin and the Roman culture (even the kilt, a
"typical Celtic", Scottish garment, is indeed a derivation of the Roman
soldiers' suit). The Celts of Great Britain still call their land "Cymru", not Britain - a
word that sounds foreign to them.
The Celts were present in Europe since early times: in the late Bronze Age
around
the year 1200 BCE they were in the area of present-day Germany, and settled in
the British Isles around the 9th century BCE. There is no need to explain that
in
those times the Israelites were dwelling in Kanaan, not in exile. Therefore, the
chronology once again absolutely disavows Brit-Am's theories. What about the
Celtic society? Let us have an overview:
Most of the information we have about
the Celts was not written by
themselves because, as well as the Cimmerians, they were unable to write,
and only in a later period they developed a sort of elementary script. It is
unlikely that a people that allegedly had knowledge of the Aramaic and
Phoenician alphabets in the 8th century bce had completely lost the ability of
reading and writing! This means that the Celts had never known any alphabet
of their own.
BAC
Encyclopedic articles about the Celts often conflate them with other peoples who
were in Europe before them.
True Celtic Culture only begins with LaTene from ca. 450 BCE though a possible precursor, in part, may be found in Late
Halstatt of ca. 600 BCE.
The term Brit-ish really can be understood as Hebrew for Covenant Man.
This is important in its own right beyond the question of its origin.
My impression is that the term Brit for an inhabitant of Britain predates the
Romans.
Brit means covenant.
As for the kilt and Scottish tartan we have written of this at length elsewhere.
See:
The Scottish Tartan Cloak of Joseph.
It is true that the Israelites knew how to read and write. The Phoenicians were
also literate
and gave the Greeks their alphabet.
It is not certain however how literate they really were. Very little remains.
Phoenicians inscriptions from the area of Canaan (Lebanon and Israel)
that have been found number less than ten though a few more have been found
elsewhere, e.g. in Cyprus.
Hebrew inscriptions pertaining to the Ancient Israelites from the northern
Tribes number less than the fingers of one hand.
In the course of their Exile, they may have lost their literary abilities to the extent that they ever had
any.
On the other hand we do later find in Scandinavia the Runic Script based on
Hebrew-Phoenician lettering.
"Scandinavian Secrets. The Hebrew Code of the Runes" by Orjan Svensson
shows how in many cases Runic Inscriptions may be understood as conveying a
message in Hebrew or in a mixed Hebrew-Aramaic dialect such as some of the Ancient
Israelites spoke.
We also have the testimony of Julius Caesar that the Gauls wrote in Greek
presumably meaning in Greek characters that were in effect
Hebrew or Phoenician.
We have other evidence that Celts wrote but exactly to what degree is not
certain.
[Somewhere amongst the ca. 3000 articles on our site there are a few notes on
this subject.]
cf.
Wikijunior:Ancient- Civilizations/Celts
What did their writing look like?
Celts didn't have a very high opinion of the written word. Instead, they
recorded their history and culture in an oral tradition; that is, they recorded
their past by telling stories. Early examples of Gaelic Celtic writing have been
recovered in Europe, based on the Phoenician alphabet.
In Ireland, a different alphabet was used, primarily in Gaelic Celtic languages
like Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic. This alphabet was called Ogham, sometimes
referred to as the "Celtic Tree Alphabet." It developed as a way for Irish monks
to write in stone.
The Celts: A History by Peter Berresford
Ellis.
Book Review by Ursus
Ellis points out the Celts could write when they had to, but otherwise frowned
on doing so as the Druidic caste did not want to lose its intellectual control
over the people, or have its knowledge stolen by enemies.
ABSENT VOICES: THE STORY OF WRITING SYSTEMS IN THE WEST
by Rochelle Altman, 2004, argues for a group of Phoenician [Hebrew]-speakers in
Britain before the Romans.
In addition we have intricate works of art and feats of engineering such as
Stonehenge etc. These are not the works of primitive peoples.
LT
The Celtic peoples were the most Aryan of the Europeans, namely, they were
a branch of the same Aryans that invaded India and imposed the Vedic
culture - hence comes the denomination "Indo-European" applied to the
Japhetic peoples and used also to replace the term "Aryan" that by obvious
reasons has fallen into disrepute. Archaeological and other documentary
proofs link the Celts with the Vedic culture as having the very same origin:
The Celts had a well defined caste system, in which the druids were at
the top level, immediately followed by the warriors, and then a "working class",
exactly in the same way as brahmins, kshatryas and
vaisyas in the Vedic society. The
druids and the Indian brahmins have
quite similar characteristics: The druids usually wore simple clothes;
Pliny the Elder portrayed them wearing loose white robes and cutting
mistletoe with a golden sickle - How different from the Hebrew Kohanim, whose clothing was
rather sophisticated! Among their practices, the druids performed ritual
baths in the rivers early in the
morning, at sunrise - exactly as brahmins do until today.
The privileges and rules of the brahmin caste and the druids are quite
similar, so that some scholars assert that both priesthoods do not only
resemble to each other, but that they are exactly the same.
Both the Celts and the Aryans believed in the transmigration of souls, a
concept that is completely alien to all Semitic cultures. The early Celts
burned their dead as well as the Aryans, while the Israelites bury them.
Not only the Celts' religion was identical to the Aryans' Vedic one, but
also their laws, institutions, traditions, myths, etc. Both peoples
venerated the oak, considered a sacred tree. The oak worship was
indeed practiced by all the branches of the Aryan stock and by most
European cultures, including Greeks and Romans. Even the term
"druid" seems to be related with the name of the oak tree.
Besides the oak, all the most significant symbols of Aryans and Celts
are the same, like the swastika and the sunwheel, commonly known as
"Celtic cross" - it is difficult to imagine that they may have any
relationship with the Jewish Nation.
BAC
It is true that researchers have found parallels between Celtic civilization and
that of Ancient India.
This dovetails with the linguistic theory of Indo-European languages and the
Aryan race. There could be something in this.
The Ten Tribes in the Middle East received cultural influences from the
Canaanites and Hittites some of whom had Indo-European characteristics.
They were then exiled to different regions including the cities of the Medes
(2-Kings 17:6) after which they merged with the Children of Gomer and together
with them
moved westward. They had plenty of time, opportunity, and unfortunately
inclination to take in external influences.
Things however are not so clear as all that.
The Brahmans of India probably descend from Abraham and themselves received much
from the Middle East and also from the Hebrews.
Incidentally their writings are actually quite recent. They claim to be based on
older traditions and previous texts etc but who knows?
Our enlightened academics naturally reject Biblical evidence while putting
confidence in that of pagan peoples.
Echoes of the Bible may be found in Hindu writings.
The Celts did not really have a caste system. One did not have to be born a
Druid to become one.
They did have an aristocracy and it may be supposed that they who were born to a
certain station stayed in it.
And even if so,
A kind of caste system existed in Ancient Egypt:
Caste, race and Durban conference
There was a more elaborate system of seven castes in Ancient Egypt of the
Pharaohs. The lowest was that of pigherdsmen against whom a mild form of
untouchability was practised.
What kind of clothing the Druids actually did wear is not certain.
Just for the record however and assuming Pliny is correct about the Druids, in the Temple Service in Jerusalem the Priests (cohanim)
wore simple white linen garments, just like the Druids were reported as doing!
Only the High Priest (Ha-Cohen Ha-Gadol) wore a more elaborate costume of eight
pieces.
"Cutting mistletoe with a golden sickle" reminds us of the cutting of the first
sheafs of barley on the day after Pesach (Leviticus 23:10) with a sickle.
Ritual bathing and immersion in bodies of water is part of the Biblical
requirements (e.g. Deuteronomy 23:11).
The Essenes were a heretical sect but probably due to their maverick
interpretations of Scripture rather than foreign influence. They also
emphasized ritual immersions as do many Orthodox Jewish groups in our own time.
Cremation is forbidden by Jewish Law but it was not unknown to the Hebrews or to
other peoples in the region. Different groups of Celts had different practices,
some had cremation, others inhumation.
The Hebrews and Canaanites may have also venerated the oak.
The transmigration of souls (reincarnation) was an Egyptian belief.
According to Josephus the Pharisees may also have believed in it, though this is
not clear.
cf.
Know you not that they who depart this life in accordance with the law of nature
and repay the loan which they received from God, when He who lent is pleased to
reclaim it, win eternal renown; ... that their souls, remaining spotless and
obedient, are allotted the most holy place in heaven, whence in the revolution
of the ages, they return to find in chaste bodies a new habitation? But as for
those who have laid hands upon themselves, the darker regions of the nether
world receive their souls, and God, their father, visits upon their posterity
the outrageous acts of the parents.
Jewish War 3.374-375 (transl. H. St. J. Thackeray)
See:
Did the Essenes believe in some form of reincarnation?
Elsewhere Josephus compares the Essenes to the Getae of Dacia and these
were not that different from the Celts apparently believing in One God as well as
in metempsychosis (reincarnation).
They too were from the Ten Tribes and later moved to Scandinavia as well as participating (according to Bede) in the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England.
Swastika and sunwheel symbols are also found in the Middle East.
In the 1800s the swastika began to be associated with Aryan racialism but not
before then.
Ancient Peoples tended to borrow from each other.
Arcaheologists have found pagan Temples in northern Syria built along the lines
of the Temple in Jerusalem.
The mythology of the Greeks and Romans often borrowed from Hebrew sources.
See:
"Helleno-Yishurin. The Hebrew Origin of Greek Legends"
by John R. Salverda
cf.
Scandinavian Legends and the Hebrew Bible
by John R. Salverda
Nevertheless we find quite a few parallels between the Celts and Hebrews that
may be traced to their Hebrew ancestry:
Tithes, firstfruits, a long apprenticeship of learning the Oral tradition,
exemption of Druids from military service, rites of purification, food taboos,
etc.
TO BE CONTINUED!
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