Greetings!

Brit-Am, as you say, rides on scriptural, historical and scientific

evidence.  One area where a bit of expertise would do a lot of good is

historical linguistics.  And not just in finding linguistic evidence for

Hebrew migrations into NW Europe (evidence that would impress a historical

linguist), but Brit-Am also needs to grapple with the reality of the waves

of Indo-European speaking peoples who have dominated world history.

Why is it, for example, that great civilizations arose in Iran (Elamite) and

India (Indus Valley) and Italy (Etruscan) which were neither Semitic nor

Indo-European in language, yet the empires that issued from those lands were

Indo-European in language (Persian, Sanskrit, Latin)?  The ancient Iberians

had their own languages, but those died out and when Iberia arose in 1492

she spread Indo-European (Spanish and Portuguese) over a major portion of

the globe.  The forests of Russia were anciently the home of Finnic speaking

tribes, but the language of the Russian and Soviet empires was

Indo-European. The pre-Celtic and pre-Germanic peoples of Northwestern

Europe were probably not Indo-European in language, but the imperial peoples

who have flowed from those shores have been.  Some thousands of years ago

there was but one Indo-European speaking nation in a world deeply divided by

language.  Today half the human race speaks dialects of that ancient

language--dialects now as divergent from one another as Singhalese and

Icelandic.

It should all make sense from a biblical perspective.  I find it a bit

disconcerting that folks tend to be uncomprehending and uninterested in this

side of the Brit-Am coin (speech is so central to our humanity that we

almost completely take it for granted--we use language to talk about

everything but language).

But I don't have the answers!  ...Cyrus Gordon once suggested--in

the papers cited below--that Abraham entered Canaan as a speaker of

Indo-European.  Hebrew being the language of Canaan (Is 19:18) meant that

Abraham's children would grow up speaking Hebrew (NW Semitic) ... but if

Abraham were originally of Indo-European linguistic stock (perhaps the

language that Peleg had inherited at Babel) it would be natural for his

exiled children (from memory or by God's direction) to migrate back into the

ancient landscape (language and culture).

Keep up the good work!

N Rude

Cyrus Herzl Gordon.  1958.  Abraham and the merchants of Ura.  JNES 17, pp.

28-31.

Cyrus Herzl Gordon.  1963.  Abraham of Ur.  Pp. 77-84 in Hebrew and Semitic

studies. Festrischrift presented to Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver in celebration

of his seventieth birthday 20 August 1962. Edited by D. Winton Thomas and

W.D. McHardy. Oxford: Clarendon.

PS: ..When Rome conquered Judea she subordinated a third of the scepters of Israel

(Judah, Levi, Benjamin, Simeon), which suggests that two thirds of the

scepters (Reuben, Issachar, Zebulun, Gad, Asher, Dan, Naphtali, Joseph)

remained beyond the reach of Rome, which would seem to be echoed by Josephus

(Jewish Antiquities, XI. 133): "But the Israelite nation as a whole remained

in the country.  In this way has it come about that there are two tribes in

Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while until now there have been ten

tribes beyond the Euphrates--countless myriads whose number cannot be

ascertained."

Josephus' two tribes versus ten tribes reflects 1Kings 11:30-32.  Initially

only one tribe was left to the house of David (1K 12:19-20), but Benjamin

chose to remain also (2Chron 11:12) as did the bulk of Levi (out of a job

under Jeroboam).  And Simeon's inheritance was with Judah from the beginning

(Josh 19:1, 9).

So where were ...Josephus' "countless myriads

whose number cannot be ascertained"?  We're they being absorbed into the

Indo-European homeland whence they would later emerge clothed in another

language and culture?