Macedonia = Greece in the eyes of ancient Jews, Persians

[Tsontos]

posted by Artimedoros on another forum:

Most ethno-linguistic groups of antiquity used no form of written speech. Even fewer have left useful accounts of their history or culture.
As a result, most of what we know about the ancient Greeks comes either from archaeological excavations or is what they let us know about themselves. Unfortunately they neither always agreed with each other, nor is what they said always unambiguous. For example there has been endless controversy in the past over who were Greeks and who were not. Politically motivated statements, and in many cases the pure snobbism of the most culturally developed city-states, have in the past led well meaning historians to believe that the Macedonians or the Epirotes were non Greek.
Archaeological excavations have now put the matter to rest, for well meaning historians, by proving that Epirotes and Macedonians were Greek speaking. There are still a few though who refuse to lose face by admitting defeat and wage a guerrilla war in the sidelines. Slavs who now inhabit the ancient region of Paeonia and attempt to present themselves as Macedonians do their best to promulgate such claims. Since they know their extravagant claim of descend from the ancient Macedonians is not going to be believed, they are trying to even the score by obscuring the Hellenic nature of ancient Macedonia.

Let us see how other nations that have left written evidence saw the Greeks and their relation with the Macedonians.

PERSIANS

The Persians did not leave us much but it is quite conclusive. They called all Greeks “Yauna”, meaning Ionians. The Macedonians were called “Yauna takabara” (epigraphic evidence from Darius’ tomb), meaning the “Ionians with the hat”. A reference to the “kausia”, the beret type hat the Macedonians wore. I must stress here the kausia was also worn by the Aetolians of central Greece and possibly other Greek highlanders. For the Macedonians were originally highlanders before conquering the Macedonian plains from the Thracians. If the Macedonians were some kind of Thracian tribe, why didn’t the Persians call them “Phrygians with the hat”? The Phrygians were an Anatolian nation of Balkan origin, well known to the Persians and closely related to their Thracian neighbours across the Straits.

Philip of Macedon wearing the kausia



Aetolian coins





JEWS

Some Greeks in their efforts to prove the Hellenism of Macedonians quote the New Testament and the Acts of the Apostles. There are numerous references there about natives of Macedonia being Greek. It proves nothing though, since the term Greek in Roman times had lost its ethnic connotations. It was simply a way to say “pagans”, to differentiate between Jews (and later Christians) and non Jews This was the reason the Greeks dropped the name Hellenes after adopting Christianity. It no longer described their ethnic group. It was synonymous to pagans.
The meaning of the term Greeks in the New Testament though does not mean that for the Jews the term had never had an ethnic meaning.. In the Old Testament there are references to Greeks as an ethnic group. The Jewish term for Greeks was, and is still today, Yavan (obviously another reference to the Ionians).
In Genesis, we have a list of all nations known to the Jews and their perceived ancestry in what is known as the Table of Nations. It is obviously not very accurate, it reflects what the Jews knew, believed or had heard at the time.



Yefeth or Yaphet is the Iapetus of the Greek mythology. In Greek mythology Iapetus was a Titan, the son of Uranus, the father of Prometheus and Atlas and an ancestor of the human race.
Japhetic languages is an outdated term that used to describe Indo-European languages.



http://godsview.com/kjvtx01/kt001010.html

It is accepted beyond doubt that Kittim refers to the inhabitants of Kition in Cyprus, near present day Larnaca. It is also a reference to all Cypriots. Dodanim (later also Rodanim) is a term that is believed to describe the Rhodians but may have initially described the most ancient Greek homeland of Dodona or stand for Danaoi. Elishah is very similar to Hellenes, though some link it to the Aeoleis and even to the ancient name of Cyprus, Alasia.
Who were the Tarshish though? Were they really Greeks? They were the inhabitants of Tartessus, an incredibly rich kingdom in southern Iberia. They had the monopoly in the production of tin along with other metals. Tin was then precious because it was used in turning copper into bronze. They also seem to have been a link to goods from Africa, such as ivory.

Why did the Jews then include the Tartessians in the Greek tribes?

Some, amongst them many Slavs, claim that by Yavan the Jews called all Europeans. Or at least those along the northern coast of the Mediterranean. That is how they explain the inclusion of Tartessus in the Yavan tribes. This same view is used to claim that the Jews of antiquity used the word Kittim to describe not only Cyprus, not only Greece and the Greek islands, but the entire Mediterranean coast of Europe.

In support of this view comes a quote from Josephus who in Roman times says the Jews called Kittim “all the islands and most of the sea-coast”. But what is more natural than that? All the known to them coastal areas and islands, from southern Anatolia to Sicily and southern Italy were at the time Greek speaking. We have no reason to assume they knew or were concerned with Sardinia or the Balearic islands (not that those islands had been completely immune to either Greek settlement or culture).

As a result of the view that the terms Yavan and Kittim had no ethnic meaning, many translations of Daniel 11:30 (see the ancient Greek text below) interpret the Chittim or Greek Kitioi as ships “from the west” or even “Roman ships”.

http://septuagint.org/LXX/Daniel/Daniel11.html

But the enemy of Antiochus Epiphanes was not Rome. Rome was simply playing a balancing act and did not send a fleet or an army against him. It was Ptolemaic Egypt, of which Cyprus was a province, that was at war with them. It was the Hellenistic Egyptian and Cypriot ships the Jews were hoping would defeat Antiochus. There is no reason to assume that Daniel meant anything else other than what he said.

How else then can the inclusion of Iberians in the Greek ethne be explained? Especially since we have evidence from other texts the Jews considered Tartessus Phoenician. The best example is Isaiah 23.

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bible/asv.Isa.23.html

The association of Tarshish with Tyre and its mother city, Sidon is evident. Please note that Isaiah wrote towards the end of the 8th century BC and the above refers to the attacks on Tyre and Sidon by the Assyrians. Also note the association of Cyprus with the Phoenicians. Ezekiel one century later speaks of islands of Elishah and islands of Chittim (27.6-27.7) thus making the distinction between Greek and Phoenician territories.

How did the Jews, a nation that did not possess a navy, know Tartessus? Please bear in mind that the Tartessians did not possess a navy either. They obviously knew them through their representatives. Those that brought their goods to the markets of the eastern Mediterranean along with tales of their immense wealth. These people were the Phoenicians. They had the monopoly of trade from Tartessus until the beginning of the 6th century BC. At around that time the Phocaeans, who traded in the western Mediterranean, allied themselves with the Tartessians breaking the stranglehold the Phoenicians had over them. The Phocaeans in turn represented Tartessus in the east.
Here is an example of Greek influence in Iberia.

Iberian Lady of Elche (southern Spain).



Artemis of Ephesus, not far from Phocaea



This lasted until the battle of Alalia at 525 BC in which the Greeks were defeated by a combined force of Carthaginians (Phoenicians) and Etruscans. The Carthaginians blockaded Tartessus and gained again the upper hand around Gibraltar. Soon after this, Tartessus was conquered by the Carthaginians.

http://libro.uca.edu/stanislawski/Chap7.htm

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-8388...B2-1&size=SMALL


So if Tarshish was associated with the Phoenicians in the 8th century BC, when was Genesis written?



http://netministries.org/Bbasics/BBGen.htm

So tradition “P”, the one that interests us was written down at 539 BC, when the trade of Tartessus was in Greek hands and had been so for decades. What we see here is that the ethnic meaning of Tarshish changed and adapted to the altered political reality. Similarly the ethnic content of Kittim changed. At around the middle of the 1st millennium BC Hellenism had, as we know, started to gain the upper hand in Cyprus at the expense of the Phoenician influence. The Eteocypriot kingdom of Amathus had been under Hellenic influence for over a century and Salamis was very much contested from the Phoenicians. Only Kition remained Phoenician still but, in spite of having given its name to the whole island, the name now signified the rival and dominant ethnic group, the Greeks.
As for Tarshish, in yet another twist, it was later in Hellenistic times translated as Carthage (Karhedon), since it was destroyed and replaced by a Carthaginian colony.


It is not a surprise that many scholars came to the conclusion that Jewish perception changed over time.

http://bible.crosswalk.com/Dictionaries/Sm...tionary/smt.cgi

So it was the changing perceptions of the Jews and adaptation to political reality that led to what appeared to some as inconsistencies and not that the words Kittim and Yavan represented all maritime people or all Europeans. After all we know they called the Romans Romaim. Many scholars believe, based on fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that in the 2nd half of the 1st century BC (or AD since the dating of the Scrolls is disputed) the anti-Roman Jews of occupied Judah referred to Romans cryptically as Kittim. This is in my opinion more of a conspiracy theory than a scientific approach but it does not affect what I am examining in this post, so I will not elaborate.

Kittim came to represent, especially geographically, not just Cyprus but the entire Hellenic world. From the 6th century BC gradually to the 2nd. Macedonia was very much part of it. We read in the first Book of Maccabees:

http://www.hope.edu/academic/religion/band...LE/1MA/1MA1.HTM

More importantly in Chapter 8 of the Book of Maccabees (Apocrypha), we read:

http://www.4thewordofgod.com/maccabes.htm

Perseus was the last king of Macedonia. Not of Cyprus, not of Greece but of Macedonia. To the 2nd century BC Jews, Macedonia was Greece.

[pankration]

When you use other ethnicities' descriptions of Hellas you prove that our interpretation of history is correct because foreigners only reinforce our findings not the Slavic ones.