Palestinian Arabs are Jebusites? ROFL!

God told Moses: But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them — the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite

Obviously... the Jews didn't do a great job of this. Damn PEACE HIPPIES always getting in the way.

The Palestinian-Jebusite linkage first appeared in the Arabic literature. Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian activist and historian, wrote that in the mid- or late 1960s, Palestinian nationalism developed a historiography that "anachronistically read back into the history of Palestine over the past few centuries, and even millennia, a nationalist consciousness and identity that are in fact relatively modern." In an accompanying footnote, he wrote that this historical "outlook" created a "predilection for seeing in peoples such as the Canaanites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Philistines the lineal ancestors of the modern Palestinians."...

(Araunah the Jebusite offering his threshing floor to David:)

(EOZ (h/t Dan)From CNN:) Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich stands by his support for a Palestinian state, his spokesman said Saturday, despite his comment about an "invented Palestinian people" that has drawn fire from leaders in the West Bank.

Gingrich made the comments in an interview that aired Friday with The Jewish Channel, a U.S. cable channel.
"I believe that the Jewish people have the right to have a state," Gingrich said in the interview. "Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, who are historically part of the Arab community."
He added, "And they had a chance to go many places and for a variety of political reasons, we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s. I think it's tragic."...
Fatah Revolutionary Council member Dimitri Diliani said Gingrich's remarks reflect "the ignorant, provocative, and racist nature of Mr. Gingrich," according to WAFA.
"The Palestinian people descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites that inhabited the ancient site of Jerusalem as early as 3200 B.C.E.," Diliani said. The "Gingrich remarks are ignorant of the basic historical facts of the Middle East."

This is too good.
The only confirmed mention of the historic Jebusites is in the Hebrew Bible. That's the only source that says that the Jebusites lived around Jerusalem. This exact same source says that one of their leaders, Araunah, offered to give the Temple Mount to King David; David insisted that he pay for it, and he did  - for the amount of fifty silver shekels.
So if you believe that the Palestinian Arabs are actually Jebusites, you must believe that they sold the Temple Mount to the Jews in a legal transaction.
(Since such a sale to a Jew would get Araunah the death penalty today, perhaps the Palestinians should atone for their sin!)
There is another problem, though.
The Constitution of Palestine refers numerous times to the "Arab Palestinian people" and that "Palestine is part of the large Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation." The PLO Charter similarly states "Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation."
But Jebusites were not Arabs. They were not even Semites! No self-respecting Jebusite (if any had still existed) would identify with the Arab hordes who overran his homeland in the seventh century. He would probably want to behead the infidel invaders.
Is the constitution and charter wrong? When they call themselves Arab, are they all lying?
Perhaps "Palestine" should quit the Arab League and re-assert its nebulous Jebusite ancestry.
If it isn't obvious enough already, note how Diliani chooses the Jebusites, not the Hittites or Amorites or other residents of Canaan, to be their ancestors - choosing the one tribe that is associated with Jerusalem.
A real people knows their own history; an invented people will invent their history - and change it whenever it is convenient for them. And since Jerusalem has only become important to the Arab residents of Palestine in the past hundred years, it is convenient to choose specifically that tribe that lived there to be their invented ancestors today.
In other words, Diliani's absurd assertion is actually proof for Gingrich's claims.

Many Palestinian Arabs, including such figures as Yasir Arafat and Faisal Husseini, have claimed that Palestinians descended from the Jebusites. Yet there is no historical proof to back up this claim. This modern claim has appeared in the Palestinian Encyclopedia and in Palestinian Authority school textbooks but lacks support in the scholarly communit.

Christian Biblical ethicists claim God didn't promise Israel to Jews

(EOZ) In September, David P. Gushee and Glen H. Stassen, two Christian ethicists, wrote "An Open Letter to America's Christian Zionists." The main point of this letter was to dispute the biblical idea that God gave Israel to Jews alone:

Not to put too fine a point on it, we wish to claim here that the prevailing version of American Christian Zionism—that is, your belief system—underwrites theft of Palestinian land and oppression of Palestinian people, helps create the conditions for an explosion of violence, and pushes US policy in a destructive direction that violates our nation’s commitment to universal human rights. In all of these, American Christian Zionism as it currently stands is sinful and produces sin. We write as evangelical Christians committed lifelong to Israel's security, and we are seriously worried about your support for policies that violate biblical warnings about injustice and may lead to the outcome you most fear—serious harm to or even destruction of Israel.
We write as evangelicals to you, our fellow evangelicals. On the shared basis of biblical authority, we ask you to reconsider your interpretation of Scripture, for the sake of God, humanity, the United States, and, yes, Israel itself, the Land and People we both love.
We acknowledge that your evangelical-fundamentalist American Christian Zionism (henceforth simply “Christian Zionism”) is a product of a Christian community that loves and reads the Bible. This is on its face a good thing--for there appear to be fewer and fewer American Christians whose love of the Bible and whose devotion to reading it can be taken for granted. We commend your love for the scriptures.
Both now and in the past, whenever Christian Zionism emerges its essential origin is simply Christian reading of the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians call the Old Testament. Our love of the Bible takes Christians into the pages of the Old Testament; there we cannot help but discover the centrality of a Promised Land for the Jewish people. The trajectory of the canonical Old Testament moves inexorably toward and away from the Promised Land—the patriarchal narratives in which a people and land are promised despite humble origins; enslavement in Egypt; the miraculous Exodus and grim wilderness wanderings under Moses; the conquest of the Promised Land; the establishment, split, and eventual conquest of Israel as a political entity; the Babylonian exile and dispersion of the Jewish people; and a partial return to the land, at which point the OT historical narrative ends.
...
We suggest to you that contemporary Christian Zionism is well-intentioned but needs correction at some very important points. This requires some careful biblical and theological work—from within the basic framework of evangelical Christianity. This means that the relevant scriptural texts need to be studied in detail, and that Christian theology needs to do its proper work with those texts.
For example, we suggest that Christian Zionists who move from a generalized love of Israel to a specific claim that the contemporary state of Israel has divine title to the entire Holy Land, need to take more seriously the complexity of what the Bible actually says about God’s promises to Abraham.
Genesis 15:18 reads: “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” The next verse goes on to name the various peoples to whom the land belonged at the time.
The territory denoted by the space between these two rivers includes modern-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, half of Iraq, half of Egypt, parts of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, the modern state of Israel, as well as the occupied Palestinian territories.
A literal reading of the text that assumes that the descendants of Abram are only the Jewish people faces a problem here. Either God is not very good at keeping his promises, or God’s plan is for contemporary Israel ultimately to conquer all of these other countries and occupy their land. That would result in an Israel ruled by its 90% majority Arabs, or an Israel attempting to subjugate that 90% by force.
But the promise looks very different if we take seriously all of the offspring of Abraham. Genesis 15:4-5 has God taking Abram outside and telling him that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the heavens. Genesis 17:4, probably the pivotal text, has God saying to Abraham: “This is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.” Many nations, a multitude of nations; many offspring, many kings—read Genesis 17 again and see the plural nouns here.
Close readers of Scripture will know that in fact Abraham did become the father of many nations. With Sarah he became the father of Isaac and the ancestor of all in his line, via Jacob and Esau. With Hagar he became the father of Ishmael and all in his line. And with the long-forgotten Keturah (Gen. 25:1) he became the father of Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. The Old Testament clearly positions Abraham as the father/ancestor of not only the Jewish people but of a vast number of other peoples, all scattered through the territories promised in Genesis 15. Abraham becomes the father of dozens of peoples, exactly as the Bible says! It is certainly true that the Old Testament primarily tells the story of the line of Isaac and therefore of what became the Jewish people, but that cannot cancel the significance of the promises to Abraham and the many peoples credited to him in Genesis.
...Perhaps you will respond by saying that God promises the land of Canaan specifically to the Jewish people. You might cite here Genesis 17:8: “I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding.” This interpretation would require restricting the “offspring” in question to Abraham’s offspring through Sarah via Isaac and then on to Jacob and excluding Esau. But the promise to possess the land includes the offspring of Isaac, and the offspring of Isaac includes Esau, with his five Edomite sons and their offspring, as Genesis 36 states, and that includes multitudes of Canaanites, not only Jews. It would also require the assumption that we know what Gen. 17 means territorially with the term “Canaan” and that it corresponds with the Zionist’s version of the proper boundaries of the modern state of Israel.

In a later letter, published November 12, the same two wrote:

The responses that disagreed did not discuss the biblical passages, but shifted the topic to the politics of the present government of Israel and the West Bank, and Hamas, and whether Israel forced Palestinians out of their homes or not.
These are important topics, but we are hoping for biblical discussion.
What we are asking is whether our readers see Genesis 15 and 17 saying that Abraham is the father of many nations, with descendants as many as the stars of the universe. And whether the territory includes all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates, which of course includes many nations, most all Arab. We believe ours is the plain, literal reading. No one has explained a different reading in response.

I have no idea why no Christian Zionist took it upon themselves to answer this letter within the worldview of Christian theology. Honestly, if it is true, it is a bit disappointing.
So, even though I am not a Christian nor a Jewish Biblical scholar by any means, I would like to make a point.
It seems strange that the authors' arguments that God's promises apply to all of Abraham's descendants do not take into account later declarations by God.
For example, God explicitly told Jacob in Genesis 28:13 that "I am the LORD, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac. The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed."
This happened at Bet El (Bethel). One can argue about the size of the land promised by God at that point, but one cannot argue that the promise was made to anyone but the Jewish people. And Bet El is on the "wrong" side of the Green Line. Would the authors admit that, Biblically, this must remain a part of Israel?
More explicitly, in Exodus 23, God tells the Israelites:

But if thou shalt indeed hearken unto his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. For Mine angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Canaanite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; and I will cut them off. ...And I will set thy border from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the River; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.

And in Deuteronomy chapter 1:

The LORD our God spoke unto us in Horeb, saying: 'Ye have dwelt long enough in this mountain; turn you, and take your journey, and go to the hill-country of the Amorites and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the Arabah, in the hill-country, and in the Lowland, and in the South, and by the sea-shore; the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD swore unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.'

The straight translations of these passages are somewhat contradictory and without further study I imagine it is difficult for Christians to know how to reconcile them. But it is extraordinarily dishonest to interpret only one of God's promises to Abraham and his children in a vacuum without even considering the more explicit promises He made later to Jacob, Moses and the children of Israel. Is it not the same God who made all of these promises? Are not all of them of equal weight? If so, then the issue is not interpreting one of them, but reconciling and interpreting all of them together.
Beyond that, it seems to me that the entire Biblical narrative would be problematic if most of the peoples who were God's covenental partners simply disappeared from the story or played only bit parts. If the children of Israel were not the main intended recipients of God's promises, then why would the Bible spend so much time only dealing with them and all but ignoring the Ishmaelites and the Edomites?
The writers make other arguments about whether today's Jews should still be considered to be within the same covenant, but that is a much bigger topic. And before I spend time on that, I would love to know how they interpret and reconcile the many other Biblical verses tying the Land of Israel with, specifically, the Jews.

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(Parenthetically, I think it is not clear at all that you can consider Esau's progeny to be "Canaanites." While Gen. 38 says they lived in Canaan, the Canaanites were presumably the descendants of Canaan, Noah's grandson through Ham. Which means, ironically, that Canaanites are not Semites, but rather "Hamites." So don't accuse me of anti-Semitism :) )

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I am afraid that this might turn into a very big theological thread, and I am not really comfortable with that here; Christian theology is not a topic that belongs on this blog. Hopefully  it will spark discussion among Christians that will take place elsewhere.

Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?

The military conquest of the land of Canaan by the Hebrews in about 1200 B.C.E. is often characterized as “genocide” and has all but become emblematic of biblical violence and intolerance. God told Moses:

But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them — the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite — just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God. So Joshua [Moses' successor] conquered all the land: the mountain country and the South and the lowland and the wilderness slopes, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord, God of Israel had commanded.

...God clearly ordered the Hebrews to annihilate the Canaanites and surrounding peoples. Such violence is therefore an expression of God's will, for good or ill. Regardless, all the historic violence committed by the Hebrews and recorded in the Old Testament is just that—history. It happened; God commanded it. But it revolved around a specific time and place and was directed against a specific people. At no time did such violence go on to become standardized or codified into Jewish law. In short, biblical accounts of violence are descriptive, not prescriptive.
This is where Islamic violence is unique. Though similar to the violence of the Old Testament—commanded by God and manifested in history—certain aspects of Islamic violence and intolerance have become standardized in Islamic law and apply at all times. Thus, while the violence found in the Qur'an has a historical context, its ultimate significance is theological. Consider the following Qur'anic verses, better known as the "sword-verses":

Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way.
Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day, and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden – such men as practise not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book – until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled.

....MORE
Summer 2009 | Middle East Quarterly,
Volume XVI: Number 3, pp. 3-12 |
by Raymond Ibrahim
and image via wilybadger.wordpress.com

Canaanite (or Hebrew?) Idol.

will the feminists ever shut the hell up?

When the Israelite women baked cakes for the Queen of Heaven (mother of the gods) the image was easier to produce in bread dough:

The original bread of life. Hebrew and Canaanite women molded loaves of this figure which were blessed and ritually eaten, the precursor of the communion wafer (sun god image). Her idols were found under every green tree, were carved from living trees, or erected as poles or pillars beside roadside altars. Crude clay images of her as tree of life later evolved into the more refined Syrian Artemis. Ancient sexual rites (dismissed to this day by male scholars as cult prostitution) associated with worship of Asherah insured that matrilineal descent patterns, with their partnership rather than dominant values, would continue. Hebrew priestly iconoclasts finally uprooted Asherah, supplanting matrifocal culture with patriarchy. via piney.com

Reported:

Some scholars say early versions of the Bible featured Asherah, a powerful fertility goddess who may have been God's wife. Research by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter, unearthed clues to her identity, but good luck finding mention of her in the Bible. If Stavrakopoulou is right, heavy-handed male editors of the text all but removed her from the sacred book.
What remains of God's purported other half are clues in ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in an ancient Canaanite coastal city, now in modern-day Syria. Inscriptions on pottery found in the Sinai desert also show Yahweh and Asherah were worshipped as a pair, and a passage in the Book of Kings mentions the goddess as being housed in the temple of Yahweh.
J. Edward Wright, president of The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, backs Stavrakopoulou's findings, saying several Hebrew inscriptions mention “Yahweh and his Asherah." He adds Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors.
"Traces of her remain, and based on those traces... we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant," he told Discovery News.
...Aaron Brody, director of the Bade Museum and an associate professor of Bible and archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion, says the ancient Israelites were polytheists, with only a “small majority” worshipping God alone. He says it was the exiling of an elite community within Judea and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 B.C that lead to a more "universal vision of strict monotheism."

Well, as for Biblical references, we do have these
וַיָּקֶם מִזְבְּחֹת לַבַּעַל, וַיַּעַשׂ אֲשֵׁרָה כַּאֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה אַחְאָב מֶלֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל, וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ לְכָל-צְבָא הַשָּׁמַיִם, וַיַּעֲבֹד אֹתָם.
and he reared up altars for Baal, and made an Asherah, as did Ahab king of Israel,
2 King 21:3
וְהִנֵּה נֻתַּץ מִזְבַּח הַבַּעַל, וְהָאֲשֵׁרָה אֲשֶׁר-עָלָיו כֹּרָתָה
the altar of Baal was broken down, and the Asherah was cut down that was by it
Judge 6:28
But the Torah has this:
לֹא-תִטַּע לְךָ אֲשֵׁרָה, כָּל-עֵץ:  אֵצֶל, מִזְבַּח יְ וָה אֱלֹהֶ-יךָ
Thou shalt not plant thee an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of the LORD thy God, which thou shalt make thee
Deuteronomy 16:21
(A Hebrew-language Wikipedia summary.  A larger one in English.)
Seems to me Asherah is very prominent and well-known in  the Bible.  So what's the big deal?  Does one have to possess weird theories to be famous?

via myrightword.blogspot.com

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Violent Ancient Feminism Confronting the Hebrew

I was reading some interesting things about Ba'al. the Assyrian god was El... who is the creator god that some people believe Judaism turned into Elohim. El's wife was Asherah. This character called Ba'al kept the god El in check by castrating him. These religions were deeply lunar, matriarchal and violent. Kind of a mother goddess Gloria Steinem religion before contemporary feminism. El is apparently some kind of Bull who is castrated. Ba'al acts within the control of Asherah who is a woman. Kind of like Hilary Clinton but worse.

Asherah: The Goddess of the Sea and wife of El. An important council to El with a minor association to fertility.

Ba'al was apparently a war god. the bible does not clarify this. he is not the big cheese. kind of funny that the Hebrew word for "Master" comes from Ba'al. like Ba'al Shem Tov.... meaning "Master of the Good Word"

but it is interesting to me that the creator god gets castrated by the "Master". it would seem that women had a lot of power in this theology.

Yes, The So-Called "Palestinian Arabs" Are Canaanites

MOLOCH, god of the Canaanites

An "alternative history narrative" has been promoted by Arab propagandists and their fellow-travellers.

The Arabs who reside in the territory of the former Mandate of Palestine, which dissolved on May 15, 1948 after the UN recommended on November 29, 1947 it be partitioned as a Jewish state, and Arab state and a special regime which was rejected by the Arabs, claim to be the direct descendents of the pagan peoples of the Bible who lived in this region 4000 years ago. The ramifications of this are critical to any peace process.

In August 1996, an official "Culture festival" was held at Sebastya (p. 163) with Arab youth dresses as "Canaanites". Others appeared as Girgashites, Ammorites and Perizites, et al.
As explained in this article by David Wenkel who holds a master's degree in Christian thought from Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois:
Many Palestinian Arabs, including such prominent figures as Yasir Arafat and Faisal Husseini, claim that Palestinians descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites. Such declarations should not surprise. History is political. Many Middle Eastern cultures and states retroactively claim roots to the ancient tribes and empires in order to legitimize their modern nationalism...How significant, then, is the Palestinian-Jebusite link? Connections between modern Palestinians and ancient Jebusites would trump the Jewish claim by predating it and legitimize the Palestinian claim to Jerusalem and Israel. The political and diplomatic impact is clear, especially as Palestinian leaders insist that Israel forfeit sovereignty over Jerusalem....

And in further detail:
The claim to Jebusite heritage within the Palestinian community is a recent construct... Andrew S. Buchanan, then a doctoral candidate in international relations from St. Andrews University, Scotland, framed this claim to "uninterrupted continuity" with Jebusites and Canaanites...The Palestinian-Jebusite linkage first appeared in the Arabic literature. Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian activist and historian, wrote that in the mid- or late 1960s, Palestinian nationalism developed a historiography that "anachronistically read back into the history of Palestine over the past few centuries, and even millennia, a nationalist consciousness and identity that are in fact relatively modern." In an accompanying footnote, he wrote that this historical "outlook" created a "predilection for seeing in peoples such as the Canaanites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Philistines the lineal ancestors of the modern Palestinians."...
...the 1978 Al-Mawsu'at Al-Filastinniya (Palestinian encyclopedia)...declared, "The Palestinians [to be] the descendants of the Jebusites, who are of Arab origin," and described Jerusalem as "an Arab city because its first builders were the Canaanite Jebusites, whose descendants are the Palestinians...By 2001, what Khalidi once attributed to anachronistic revisionism, he came to promote when he attached his name to an article published by the American Committee for Jerusalem which declared, without corroborating evidence, that "According to a number of historians and scholars, many of the Arabs of Jerusalem today, indeed the majority of Palestinian Arabs, are descendants of the ancient Jebusites and Canaanites." Khalidi now argued that Palestinians did not descend from those who arrived with Muhammad's armies, but rather, "native Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim Arabs, are of a mixed race whose connection with the land reaches back into very early history."...

PASSIA, an official Arab body, has a rather unique Jerusalem chronology which 'establishes' the Jebusite basis the predates the Jews but also links it to the Arabs by a simple trick: it minimizes and ignores Jewish existence in any form.
(And, by the way, read this dispute.)
I have dealt in a series of posts (here; and here; and here and see other references there) on the "In Canaanite Eyes" theory of Nur Masalha.
But perhaps there is something to all this hocus-pocus. Maybe some Arabs are descended from pagan Canaanites, like those that engaged in human sacrifice. Some dispute that practice. Others do not (and here; and also here; as well as here).
The act of ritual murder committed on the Fogel family in Itamar on Shabbat night was "worthy" of Arabs who champion their Canaanite roots. The barbarism, the immorality, the inherent evil in such an act will forever signify the futility of coexistence and peace with such people.
And the only hope is that they will disappear just as the Canaanite and Jebusite and Ammorite civilizations did.
written by My Right Word

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image via spiritualsatanist.com

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