Rechavia Berman – GangstaYid

The Minister of Education and the God of Mt. Nevo

Not a political post

FML. By the time you get inspired enough to write an actual, old school, longer than 140 character post (rather than lob the quick gist out there and engage in back and forth all day as you develop the idea with someone or someones among a first circle of over a thousand), you’z inspired enough to write about a million different things. These can only all fit not-annoyingly in a painfully constructed custom made grab-bag, if at all. So we’re not gonna do that.

As you may or may have not noticed, I have kinda resigned as a functioning political blogger. Why have I quit? This is due to a sense that Alea Jacta Est and what the fuck’s the point and there aren’t even close-to-maybe-not-really-enough-people-on-either-side who see things clearly¹ for there to be any chance of changing the current crash trajectory. That said, I may have enough muse left in coming days to to touch on current events too in a totally separate post, just cause sometimes you can’t keep your mouth shut regardless of whether there’s anyone listening. But that’s not why we’re here right now. This here’s a linguist-historical-academic post.

So, my sister-of-choice, wisest and most venerable of priestesses to Goddess Bast, i.e Dena Bugel @Shunracat (you should follow her. Fascinating eclectic feed) – she’s studying ancient Mesopotamian history right now (with an emphasis on ancient textile materials, yarns and twine and such – that’s not the important part. Ancient Mesopotamia is. Deep ancient. Not the Babylonians who conquered Jerusalem. 1500+ years before that.

Now, Dena is my sister as in I’m her brother from another mother (and-father). I would die for her (and by extension her immediate loved ones) and anyone that says any impolite shit to or about her (debate her fiercely, just be notified) will be banned from my blog and any social media I have. Because I said so.

However, sis and I – for all that many would consider us “fellow travelers” in politics, and we think alike in some ways cause we’re both members of a professional/neurological-tic group called “translators” –we really do not always see eye to eye, be it on the bic picture or the many side alley stories. In addition to that, she is more given than I am to conspiracy theories in general and those that undermine Zionist or current official Jewish narratives in particular – and I ain’t shy about either myself. With me so far?

So sis says to me she made a discovery. I know from whatever in the when and how she said it she means linguisto-sleuthing. So she says, the word prophet (this whole conversation takes place 95% in Hebrew, in which prophet is “navi”  (nun-bet-yod-alef) – where do you reckon it comes from?

I say: “The (pretty much identical modern and ancient Hebrew) root “come” (and by extension “bring”) – bo (bet-vav-_[silent]alef). He’s the one who brings the word of god.

Says she: “One would think that, right? But no.” Before I have a chance to begin suspecting this is an idea unfounded by anything outside her own surmise, she quickly adds that she has two quotes, both by Primary and quite definitive Hebrew lexicographer Avraham Even-Shoshan, as in the dude who if you EVER read a Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary, odds are it’s his; a guy who even if you point out he lived and wrote dictionaries before a bunch of recent archeological finds, had no bias whatsoever against Zionism and definitely not against Judaism, unlike many of us :-).

So, the word Navi, according to the Merriam and Webster of modern Hebrew dictionaries, comes from the words navu/nevo/nabu in Chaldean (Casdite) and Sumerian. These are words for “read/reader/reading” and –this is the important bit – these words in turn come from the name of Nabu, the god of reading and wisdom. King of Gods Marduk’s personal scribe-god in the pantheon. Not Zeus, but like Apollo. A major god.

So far fascinating if you’re into history AND language, but doesn’t prove any new meta-insight to me. True, Nabu is mentioned and found in sculpture prominently as late as the very end of the 2^nd Babylonian empire (just think of those kings and their chief ministers: Nebu-chadnezzer, Nebu-zadran, etc);

But Nabu lived long and started waaaay before that, being fully formed in mention as early as around 2,000 BCE. That’s some 100 years at least before common chronology puts Abraham, and some 500-800 years before anyone puts Moses and his fully-formed-or-not Torah.

(explanation of the above graph. Feel free to skip to the next one if you choose).

Whether or not you buy jack shit of what the bible has to say about any aspect of events, by the 10^th century BCE, which is to say around 1,000 BCE, there begins to emerge an undeniable, slightly yet significantly distinct culture in what is modern-day Israel/Palestine. This culture is referred to in research as Israelite. By that time Nabu had been around as the god of wisdom of the wisest cultures around for at least 1,000 years. So it is entirely possible that by the time the Israelites are proven to have existed, which is to say after 1000 BCE for certain and by some indication at least in some part(s) of the land as early as around 1200 BCE, The notion of Nabu and his name’s connection to the very concepts of writing, knowledge (and by extension, foreknowledge and concentrated knowledge) was so cemented in the language of the entire region that it was unavoidable regardless of the pagan origin for the word not be used for a prophet. Even by the Jeohava-centric and pagan-detesting bible.

To sum up to here: It sounds a lot like another episode in the “Dena thinks she has something, I see what she thinks she sees but don’t see any real evidence for it.” It’s not.

The twist takes us on a lil detour to early 16^th century Florence, and a highly successful artisan, prone to throwing tantrums at his very rich and powerful patrons, who turned out to be the most influential figure in Western art history.

The double-barreled dynamo known to his intimates as Micky (well michele [mi-ke-le] if you wanna be show-your-work about it) still has a few top 10 hits, including a ceiling he painted at this chapel and a couple of very famous statues, one of which is of Moses. You know, the one with the horns?

Now, folks who know about this stuff tend to attribute the horns, with a snort of derision, to late-medieval European ignorance, in this case a mistranslation of the Hebrew “karnu panav”, which means “his face radiated” rather than “his face grew horns”, even though the two meanings share an identical root and are obviously related on the visual imagery level.

So while you’re beginning to catch the drift, it’s important to make clear: It’s entirely possible that the reason for the horns WAS a funny Christian misreading of Hebrew and not the following you’re about to read. But be that as it may, we’re about to see that there may be a very real, vital-at-the-time reason to sculpt Moses with horns.

Remember the god Nabu? God of reading and wisdom, from whom the “Nabi” or “Navi” – i.e. prophet – receives wisdom and special knowledge? So guess what Mr. Nabu Deus looks like in the statues and engravings we have of him. Yup. He has horns. Not rendered rays of light or even power shining from his face. Horns. Physical growths from the cranium.Like so or so and also so.

So what did “Karnu Panav” mean to the first folks rendered this story into writing – his face radiated (non mass energy) or his face literally grew horns as he became like onto Nabu. And even if we accept it really meant radiated from the very first (with a solid case as it happens. Some of the most ancient examples Jewish art show renditions of a [relatively abstract] Moses figure with rays coming out of his head, more like pictures of saints and Jesus in Christianity than like Nabu and his budding antlers. Also, various biblical verbal imagery likens the presence/attention/will of Jehovah to the sun, sunlight, sun rays, etc.) , That still leaves us with a wording designed inescapably to make us – and much more so, a person of the ancient fertile crescent – think of horns and an inescapably famous (pagan!!) god whose effect produces horns. In addition to, or instead of, making us think about Jehovah, who is not rendered or painted or engraved of sculpted in anything rightly called Jewish art. That’s a big, fundamental, difference-from-all-the-rest kinda thing Judaism is known for. #2 with a bullet on the .OG Top10 list.

Now, the Hebrew version has a bit here about the worship of Pagan gods alongside and/or in place of Jehovah in post-Moses biblical narrative. If you want I’ll get into that in the comments section (do stop by there on your way out, if only to say “It was interesting enough to make it all the way here”). For now we’ll end this first of two insights with the fact that the mountain where Moses died is called Mount NEVO. It is spelled with the exact same letters (though different vowel signs, but same letters) as Nabu in short-spell writing.

And to truly wrap up the Nevo-Nabu-Navi-Moses segment, a word from her most revered feline-ness who made the original find that got the ball rolling:

“What I’m saying is that the tension [in the biblical narrative]between prophets [who tend towards a sort of universal humanism] and the priests [kohanim, cohens], who are more into the jealous, exclusive, intolerant of any whiff of otherness aspect of Jehovah, can be explained by a latent universal sociological tension between prophets [charismatic, deriving power from random and time-specific personal experience of the divine, have to prove themselves true by personal success {miracle, true foretelling of events}] and priests [hierarchical, deriving power from set ritual and organizational continuation and procedure, do not have to prove themselves personally, and maintain power by serving and fortifying the organization that say that each of them as an individual has special powers and privileges and must be listened to, in whatever degree according to spelled-out rank].

This, Dear Dena points as she signs off, makes the whole thing both more and less consp-feeling at the same time. Which in geek-speak means it’s as much fun as a coupla cats with a flashy light ball o’yarn.

Going on to a somewhat unrelated but totally in the same ballpark kinda thing: Another great rabbi of the female side, the most amazing woman on earth who happens to be the mother of my children, heard about alla the above over Friday dinner (Christian readers: read Sunday family dinner), mulled it over with me some and then threw a similar curveball of her own, not dictionary-backed as of yet but blindingly obvious as true when you know the back-story

Y’all ever heard of the Metatron, be ye from synagogue, church or jum3a oriented cultures? Kevin Smith fans? If so, skip this link. If not, read the link.

Long story short:

The Metatron, who is a type of Prometheus (giver of divine basic knowledge to mortals) and also akin to Moses in his very early career, is Enoch, son of Yered (Anglophone-change alert: That’s where you all get “Jared” from, I believe.) Genesis 5:18-24.

In the original Hebrew the name is Chanoch (and who knows what it was in a pre-Hebrew, way-pre-Israelite Mesopotamian predecessor). What makes him unique among the many antediluvian people mentioned in Genesis is simple: Like Elijah the prophet thousands of years later, he was born like any hiuman and unlike elijah had progeny, but he never died. He was taken up to heaven without dying and given a gig in the immortal scheme of things, making him an immortal member of the heavenly host, the guys generally referred to as “angels”, although unlike almost all other angels, mortal-born.

Metatron is significant in Jewish mysticism no less than he is in The “Dogma”-inspiring Christian variety, but it’s more low key in Judaism, though equally accepted as true by believing scholars of both religions (He’s in Islam too. A primordial deity/deified culture hero powerful enough to remain, with name intact AND mortal biography and same general post-mortal job description and career history, through all the languages and empires and religious upheavals, with the requisite variation according to which kind of cleric is telling you the story behind the scripture.

So, the big insight, yeah? In Hebrew, the ,main word for education, from at least the time of the writing of Proverbs and on, is chinuch. Chanoch → Chinuch.

If you speak Hebrew and know the whole extra-biblical sory of Chanoch, this is a big “Oh man that makes perfect obviously true sense” moment. That’s the woman who loves me thought about that. And she be a babe too. Eat y’alls heart out.

Oh, and just to really tie the two segments together, like The Dude’s rug, Check it:

Metatron’s primary function (at least in Judaism, which is linguistically relevant, and  contrary to portrayal in “Dogma” ), is not really as God’s full time, primary “voice”, or herald, that is, repeater of divine knowledge by sound, but his scribe, recorder and repeater of divine knowledge by written words. And naturally he’s the one who taught humans writing, among other similar “secrets from heaven.”

And the god Nabu? He’s the scribe of Marduk, King of the Mesopotamian pantheon (Think Zeus/Jupiter). Like Hermes has a specific job in the Olympus as the messenger of the gods, in addition to “patron god of [commerce, tricks, deceit, misdirection, clever ploys etc. kinda like the Norse Loki only that’s not his all-consuming aspect])’. Nabu is also patron god of this and that like any other god, but in addition has a day job. He is depicted sitting like a scribe in a mortal king’s palace – closest to (much lower than, obviously), the heavenly king, same thing as Chanoch the Metatron (meta-tron in Greek – meta you know and tron is instrument, tool). be it Jehovah or Marduk.

Ya dig? If so, give your grapho-maniac host and humble narrator some love down below. Most obliged.

Like I said, I can’t promise that there’ll be a current events post too, seeing my past year or so’s rate, but I’mma give it a try, I think. No friggin neder.

Oh, someone donated after the last post and that behooves acknowledgment. Bolshoi spasiba, droog.

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1. And for the record though both sides are being stupid, Israel has the power  and is being the more stubborn and is inflicting MUCH more day-in-day-out friction (and more casualties, needless to say, merely by being the much bigger gun in the fight, regardles of right/wrong, wise/stupid.