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Monotheism, History, and Divination
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In the New Testament, there are several references to a language called Hebrew which can only mean Aramaic. But who were the
‘Hebrews’, particularly in relation to ‘Israelites’ and ‘Jews’? We suggest that the failure on the part of non-Aramaic speaking
non-Jews led to the incorrect identification of Aramaic as the ‘Jewish’ language (then known as ‘Hebrew’) and thus of Jews
as ‘Hebrews’. Neither the Bible nor (overwhelmingly) the rabbinic literature identify as ‘Hebrew’ the language now known by
that name. But the Jewish Bible does mention Hebrews, who are often identified in modern research as ancient Israelites. More
probably however, the designation means inhabitants of the area known since neo-Assyrian times as ‘Beyond the River’, Trans-
Euphrates, Aramaic ‘abar nahara, whence the short name ‘Hebrew’ or ‘Transite’. Very many of these Aramaic speaking and circumcizing ‘Hebrews’ were assimilated
into the Hasmonean kingdom and thus became identified also as ‘Judaeans/Jews’, while both Israelites (Samarians) and Judaeans
were equally part of the ‘Hebrew’ population of Trans-Euphrates. The Bible recognizes the ancestor of this ethnos in Abraham, to whose descendants the territory of Trans-Euphrates was promised. When, then, did ‘Hebrew’ come to be generally
adopted as the name for the language of the Bible? This is hard to say, but it may have been as recently as the nineteenth
century.
En Mesopotamie, des le quatrieme et jusqu'au deuxieme millenaire, on trouve la representation de l'arbre de vie, souvent designe, de maniere plus neutre, comme arbre sacre. Ce symbole dont la signification ne nous est pas toujours claire, est present dans une vaste region du Proche-Orient, en Grece, Egypte et dans les civilisations de l'Indus. Associe a la royaute et en l'absence d'informations ecrites, on le suppose representant l'ordre du monde divin, le roi assyrien figure a ses cotes illustrant l'image du dieu ou homme parfait. Dans cet article, les elements stylises de cet arbre de vie sont compares et une interpretation est proposee par le biais de la Kabbale. Pour l'auteur, la presence de l'arbre de vie prouve la survivance de la religion et de la philosophie mesopotamiennes dans les philosophies et mysthiques juive, chretienne et orientale.
In summary, then, the circumscription theory in its elaborated form goes far toward accounting for the origin of the state. It explains why states arose where they did, and why they failed to arise elsewhere. It shows the state to be a predictable response to certain specific cultural, demographic, and ecological conditions. Thus, it helps to elucidate what was undoubtedly the most important single step ever taken in the political evolution of mankind.