Hexaplex trunculus is a medium-sized species of sea snail was found on the north part of Israeli coastal plain near Tel Shikmona
Leviticus 11:9-12
King James Version (KJV)
9 These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.
10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
11 They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.
12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.
A guide from the Ptil Tekhelet Foundation shows how a piece of wool, dipped into the solution for the Hexaplex (Murex) trunculus based dye, turns into leek-like green in sunlight, and eventually into (dark) blue with a purple hue.
Numbers 15 :
37 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
38 Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue:
39 And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them ; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring:
40 That ye may remember, and do all my commandments, and be holy unto your God.
41 I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the Lord your God.
Tzitzit (tassel) with blue thread produced from Hexaplex (Murex) trunculus
Structural formula of Hexaplex (Murex) spp. based blue, the tekhelet indigo
(note the two bromides: in marine environments,
sodium bromide is abundant,
not so in terrestrial ones)
Tekhelet (Hebrew: תכלת təḵêleṯ, "blue-violet", or "blue", or "turquoise" (alternate spellings include tekheleth, t'chelet, techelet and techeiles) is a blue dye mentioned 49 times in the Hebrew Bible/Tanakh. It was used in the clothing of the High Priest, the tapestries in the Tabernacle, and the tassels (Hebrew: ציצית, Tzitzit (or Ṣiṣiyot) [tsiˈtsit], pl. Tzitziyot or Ṣiṣiyot) affixed to the corners of one's four-cornered garment, such as the Tallit (garment worn during prayer, usually).
According to the Talmud, the dye of Tekhelet was produced from a marine creature known as the Ḥillazon (also spelled Chilazon). According to the Tosefta (Men. 9:6), the Ḥillazon is the exclusive source of the dye.
After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, the sole use of the Tekhelet dye was in Tzitzit. A set of Tzitzit consists of four tassels, some of their strands being Tekhelet, which Rashi describes as green as “poireau,” the French word for leek, transliterated into Hebrew. There are three opinions in Rabbinic literature as to how many are to be blue: 2 strings; 1 string; 1 half string. These strands are then threaded and hang down, appearing to be eight. The four strands are passed through a hole 25 to 50 mm away from the corners of the four-cornered cloth.
Making Sense of Kosher Laws - Biblical Archaeology Society
Biblical Archaeology Society Staff
This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in July 2012. It has been updated.—Ed.
The origins of Jewish dietary or kosher laws (kashrut) have long been the subject of scholarly research and debate. Regardless of their origins, however, these age-old laws continue to have a significant impact on the way many observant Jews go about their daily lives. One of the more well-known restrictions is the injunction against mixing meat with dairy products. Not only do most Jews who observe kashrut avoid eating any meat and milk products together, many also wait a certain amount of time—30 minutes to a few hours—between eating meat and dairy. Everything the foods touch must be kept completely separate. A fully kosher household, for example, might have two or more different sets of flatware, tableware and cooking ware for making and serving meat dishes separate from dairy-based dishes. Some families even use two different dishwashers in order to maintain the separation. Outside the house, some Jews keep kosher by eating only at kosher restaurants while others have no problem eating non-kosher foods, so long as they maintain a kosher home.
But what are some of the other laws of kashrut, and how are they to be explained? Many of the dietary restrictions outlined in Deuteronomy and Leviticus prohibit the consumption of certain “unclean” animals that either don’t chew their cud or don’t have cloven hooves, such as pigs, camels and rabbits. Likewise, while the Hebrew Bible permits the eating of fish with fins and scales, shellfish like lobsters and crabs are an abomination. Why were such seemingly innocuous physiological traits so objectionable to the early Israelites?
One possible reason may be that the Israelites wanted some way to distinguish themselves from their non-Hebrew neighbors. Archaeological excavations of Iron Age I sites in Israel have shown that while pigs were a popular part of the Philistine diet, they were entirely absent from the herd-based economy of the Israelites. According to Ronald Hendel, such culinary distinctions soon became codified markers of cultural identity, whereby “the Philistine treat became an Israelite taboo.”
*
Perhaps similar efforts to affirm Israel’s uniqueness lay at the heart of other animal prohibitions.
But according to kashrut, even permissible animals have to be prepared in a certain way in order to remain kosher. As explained in Deuteronomy 12:23-24, for example, the blood of a slaughtered animal cannot be ingested, for “the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh.” The Israelites, like many ancient peoples, believed that an animal’s blood carried the soul of the animal and therefore should not be consumed.** Thus, before a piece of meat could be cooked, it had to be fully drained of its blood. Though not discussed in the Bible, traditional kosher methods for doing this include broiling the meat or a combination of soaking and salting.
Kosher law also forbids the consumption of wine that has been made, bottled or handled by non-Jews. Although this prohibition does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, it seems to have been followed as early as the second century A.D. In antiquity, wine was often used in libation rituals to various deities; for Jews this meant that any “pagan” wine could potentially have been made or used as a sacrifice to a foreign god. Thus, in order to avoid coming into contact with contaminated wine, Jews began making and bottling their own wine in accordance with Jewish law.
Notes
*Ronald S. Hendel, “Of Sacred Leopards and Abominable Pigs,” Bible Review, October 2000.
**Bryan Bibb, “What’s a Pleasing Sacrifice?” Bible Review, October 2004.
Or...
Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, by Ignatius Donnelly, [1882], at sacred-texts.com
CHAPTER III.
THE GODS OF THE PHŒNICIANS ALSO KINGS OF ATLANTIS.
NOT alone were the gods of the Greeks the deified kings of Atlantis, but we find that the mythology of the Phœnicians was drawn from the same source.
For instance, we find in the Phœnician cosmogony that the Titans (Rephaim) derive their origin from the Phœnician gods Agrus and Agrotus. This connects the Phœnicians with that island in the remote west, in the midst of ocean, where, according to the Greeks, the Titans dwelt.
According to Sanchoniathon, Ouranos was the son of Autochthon, and, according to Plato, Autochthon was one of the ten kings of Atlantis. He married his sister Ge. He is the Uranos of the Greeks, who was the son of Gæa (the earth), whom he married. The Phœnicians tell us, "Ouranos had by Ge four sons: Ilus (El), who is called Chronos, and Betylus (Beth-El), and Dagon, which signifies bread-corn, and Atlas (Tammuz?)." Here, again, we have the names of two other kings of Atlantis.
These four sons probably represented four races, the offspring of the earth.
The Greek Uranos was the father of Chronos, and the ancestor of Atlas. The Phœnician god Ouranos had a great many other wives: his wife Ge was jealous; they quarrelled, and he attempted to kill the children he had by her.
This is the legend which the Greeks told of Zeus and Juno. In the Phœnician mythology Chronos raised a rebellion against Ouranos, and, after a great battle, dethroned him. In the Greek legends it is Zeus who attacks and overthrows his father, Chronos. Ouranos had a daughter called Astarte(Ashtoreth), another called Rhea. "And Dagon, after he had found out bread-corn and the plough, was called Zeus-Arotrius."
We find also, in the Phœnician legends, mention made of Poseidon, founder and king of Atlantis.
Chronos gave Attica to his daughter Athena, as in the Greek legends. In a time of plague be sacrificed his son to Ouranos, and "circumcised himself, and compelled his allies to do the same thing." It would thus appear that this singular rite, practised as we have seen by the Atlantidæ of the Old and New Worlds, the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, the Hebrews, the Ethiopians, the Mexicans, and the red men of America, dates back, as we might have expected, to Atlantis.
"Chronos visits the different regions of the habitable world."
He gave Egypt as a kingdom to the god Taaut, who had invented the alphabet. The Egyptians called him Thoth, and he was represented among them as "the god of letters, the clerk of the under-world," bearing a tablet, pen, and palm-branch.
This not only connects the Phœnicians with Atlantis, but shows the relations of Egyptian civilization to both Atlantis and the Phœnicians.
There can be no doubt that the royal personages who formed the gods of Greece were also the gods of the Phœnicians. We have seen the Autochthon of Plato reappearing in the Autochthon of the Phœnicians; the Atlas of Plato in the Atlas of the Phœnicians; the Poseidon of Plato in the Poseidon of the Phœnicians; while the kings Mestor and Mneseus of Plato are probably the gods Misor and Amynus of the Phœnicians.
Sanchoniathon tells us, after narrating all the discoveries by which the people advanced to civilization, that the Cabiri set down their records of the past by the command of the god Taaut, "and they delivered them to their successors and to foreigners, of whom one was Isiris (Osiris), the inventor of the three letters, the brother of Chua, who is called the first Phœnician."(Lenormant and Chevallier, "Ancient History of the East," vol. ii., p. 228.)
This would show that the first Phœnician came long after this line of the kings or gods, and that he was a foreigner, as compared with them; and, therefore, that it could not have been the Phœnicians proper who made the several inventions narrated by Sanchoniathon, but some other race, from whom the Phœnicians might have been descended.
And in the delivery of their records to the foreigner Osiris, the god of Egypt, we have another evidence that Egypt derived her civilization from Atlantis.
Max Müller says:
"The Semitic languages also are all varieties of one form of speech. Though we do not know that primitive language from which the Semitic dialects diverged, yet we know that at one time such language must have existed. . . . We cannot derive Hebrew from Sanscrit, or Sanscrit from Hebrew; but we can well understand bow both may have proceeded from one common source. They are both channels supplied from one river, and they carry, though not always on the surface, floating materials of language which challenge comparison, and have already yielded satisfactory results to careful analyzers."
("Outlines of Philosophy of History," vol. i., p. 475.)
There was an ancient tradition among the Persians that the Phœnicians migrated from the shores of the Erythræan Sea, and this has been supposed to mean the Persian Gulf; but there was a very old city of Erythia, in utter ruin in the time of Strabo, which was built in some ancient age, long before the founding of Gades, near the site of that town, on the Atlantic coast of Spain. May not this town of Erythia have given its name to the adjacent sea? And this may have been the starting-point of the Phœnicians in their European migrations. It would even appear that there was an island of Erythea. In the Greek mythology the tenth labor of Hercules consisted in driving away the cattle of Geryon, who lived in the island of Erythea, "an island somewhere in the remote west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules." (Murray's "Mythology," p. 257.)
Hercules stole the cattle from this remote oceanic island, and, returning drove them "through Iberia, Gaul, over the Alps, and through Italy." (Ibid.) It is probable that a people emigrating from the Erythræan Sea, that is, from the Atlantic, first gave their name to a town on the coast of Spain, and at a later date to the Persian Gulf--as we have seen the name of York carried from England to the banks of the Hudson, and then to the Arctic Circle.
The builders of the Central American cities are reported to have been a bearded race. The Phœnicians, in common with the Indians, practised human sacrifices to a great extent; they worshipped fire and water, adopted the names of the animals whose skins they wore--that is to say, they had the totemic system--telegraphed by means of fires, poisoned their arrows, offered peace before beginning battle, and used drums. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 77.)
The extent of country covered by the commerce of the Phœnicians represents to some degree the area of the old Atlantean Empire. Their colonies and trading-posts extended east and west from the shores of the Black Sea, through the Mediterranean to the west coast of Africa and of Spain, and around to Ireland and England; while from north to south they ranged from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf. They touched every point where civilization in later ages made its appearance. Strabo estimated that they had three hundred cities along the west coast of Africa. When Columbus sailed to discover a new world, or re-discover an old one, he took his departure from a Phœnician seaport, founded by that great race two thousand five hundred years previously. This Atlantean sailor, with his Phœnician features, sailing from an Atlantean port, simply re-opened the path of commerce and colonization which had been closed when Plato's island sunk in the sea. And it is a curious fact that Columbus had the antediluvian world in his mind's eye even then, for when he reached the mouth of the Orinoco he thought it was the river Gihon, that flowed out of Paradise, and he wrote home to Spain, "There are here great indications suggesting the proximity of the earthly Paradise, for not only does it correspond in mathematical position with the opinions of the holy and learned theologians, but all other signs concur to make it probable."
Sanchoniathon claims that the learning of Egypt, Greece, and Judæa was derived from the Phœnicians. It would appear probable that, while other races represent the conquests or colonizations of Atlantis, the Phœnicians succeeded to their arts, sciences, and especially their commercial supremacy; and hence the close resemblances which we have found to exist between the Hebrews, a branch of the Phœnician stock, and the people of America.
Upon the Syrian sea the people live
Who style themselves Phœnicians. . . .
These were the first great founders of the world--
Founders of cities and of mighty states--
Who showed a path through seas before unknown.
In the first ages, when the sons of men
Knew not which way to turn them, they assigned
To each his first department; they bestowed
Of land a portion and of sea a lot,
And sent each wandering tribe far off to share
A different soil and climate. Hence arose
The great diversity, so plainly seen,
'Mid nations widely severed.
Who style themselves Phœnicians. . . .
These were the first great founders of the world--
Founders of cities and of mighty states--
Who showed a path through seas before unknown.
In the first ages, when the sons of men
Knew not which way to turn them, they assigned
To each his first department; they bestowed
Of land a portion and of sea a lot,
And sent each wandering tribe far off to share
A different soil and climate. Hence arose
The great diversity, so plainly seen,
'Mid nations widely severed.
Dyonysius of Susiana, A.D. 3,
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