Was Achilles a Jew?: Hebraic Contributions to Greek Civilization

By Larry S. Milner

Significant interest has always existed about the origin of Classic Greek culture, but despite the long-standing attention, scholars continue to disagree on where this amazing civilization got its start. The Mycenaeans were the earliest Greek-speaking people on the mainland, but the country entered a Dark Age following the end of the Trojan War, and in the Archaic Age which followed, the fundamentals of Greek political and literary thought suddenly emerged, without a clear source of derivation. Historians have sometimes given credit to the Egyptians, Phoenicians, or other Eastern civilizations for this evolution, but no serious consideration has been given to the ancient Hebrews, despite the fact that the Exodus from Egypt took place during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenae was at its peak of influence in the Mediterranean Basin. In Was Achilles a Jew? Hebraic Origins to Greek Civilization, Dr. Larry Milner argues that a group of Hebrews devoted to the traditions of the patriarchs left the Exodus following the parricidal reprisals instituted by Moses during the modification of Judaism into a monotheistic faith, and migrated to Mycenae, where they became immersed into Mycenaean culture, taking part in the Trojan War. His analysis provides the most persuasive argument to date about where the Eastern influence in Greece was generated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 14, 2008
• ISBN: 9781465333155

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Copyright © 2008 by Larry S. Milner, MD, JD, MLS.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

ANCIENT NEAR EAST

CHAPTER 2

EGYPT

CHAPTER 3

THE HISTORY OF THE HEBREWS FROM ABRAHAM TO THE EXODUS

CHAPTER 4

EXODUS: THE PREPARATION

CHAPTER 5

EXODUS: THE EVENT

CHAPTER 6

EXODUS: THE DATE

CHAPTER 7

MYCENAE AND CLASSICAL GREECE

CHAPTER 8

THE TROJAN WAR

CHAPTER 9

ABRAHAM AND AGAMEMNON

CHAPTER 10

TRIBAL AMPHICTYONY

CHAPTER 11

GODS

CHAPTER 12

SACRIFICE AND CELEBRATIONS

CHAPTER 13

FLOOD MYTHOLOGY

CHAPTER 14

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

In a recent lecture on The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations, Cyrus Gordon, the renowned professor emeritus of Brandeis and New York universities, compared Achilles, as described by Homer in the Iliad, with the young King David of Israel, from the Old Testament book of Samuel.¹ In a previous publication, Gordon had elaborated on the many similarities between the plots and characters in the writings of Homer and the Old Testament, concluding that this resemblance was due to the ancient Hebrew and Greek civilizations having both developed from a common societal heritage in Ugarit, the ancient Syrian city that functioned as a center for international trade in the second millennium BCE. Gordon has created much controversy among biblical scholars with this view, and his findings, outlined in numerous papers and books, have been hotly debated for years. His conclusion that the similitude between the Hebrew and Greek accounts indicate that the two societies are parallel structures built upon the same East Mediterranean foundation,² is not accepted by the majority of historians, although most critics agree that unique similarities of structure and form do exist between passages in the Homeric epics and the tales of the Old Testament.³ Following this particular well-received talk, an elderly lady, intrigued with the implications of his theory, came up to Gordon and boldly asked, Does that mean, Professor Gordon, that Achilles was Jewish?⁴ Gordon’s response is not recorded, but I am sure that those around him smiled at the frivolity of the question, quickly brushed the remark aside, and turned their attention to other more important matters.

That the participants did not give serious consideration to the lady’s suggestion is due, I believe, to the fact that few modern scholars have postulated that the ancient Greeks and Hebrews had any connection whatsoever, despite the intriguing correlation between their ancient texts. Although many articles have identified similar styles and literary motifs between the writings of Homer and the Old Testament, no one has suggested that Homer was influenced by encountering biblical texts, or that the Greeks owed any of their remarkable development to ancient Israelite infiltration during the Late Bronze Age (1600-1200 BCE). This attitude is typified by H. D. F. Kitto, the late professor of Greek at Bristol University, who noted that here were two races, each very conscious of being different from its neighbors, living not very far apart, yet for the most part in complete ignorance of each other and influencing each other not at all until the period following Alexander’s conquests.⁵ Even Gordon never suggested that a direct connection between the two societies ever took place, and provided only a cursory explanation of how the Ugaritic culture influenced both the Hebrews and Greeks by postulating that it was transmitted by human agency, either by tribal units seeking grass and water for their flocks of sheep, or by transplantation of colonies or enclaves.⁶ Since migrations of many diverse people throughout the ancient Near East continued throughout the second millennium BCE, such a postulate adds little to our knowledge of how Homer and the compilers of the Old Testament happened to develop such intricate correlations in their literary style.

One reason so little attention has been paid to a possible interaction between the ancient Greeks and Hebrews of the pre- and post-Mosaic era is the clear dissimilarity in the evolution of the two societies following their origins in the Late Bronze Age. With respect to the nature of religious practice, Judaism became a monotheistic faith, with Abraham, the first patriarch and progenitor of the Jews, generally acclaimed by religious scholars as the first person to worship the all-encompassing authority of a solitary God. The Classical Greeks (500-323 BCE), on the other hand, remained a polytheistic faith, like most ancient cultures from the Middle (2000-1600 BCE) and Late Bronze ages, worshiping multiple deities that had their origin in adjacent contemporary civilizations. Although Zeus may have been the most powerful of the gods who lived on Mount Olympus, the Greeks believed that proper homage to a great number of deities was required if divine retribution was to be avoided. Such veneration has become associated with the concept of paganism in the present day, and many scholars find it difficult to accept that both the Hebrews and Greeks could have owed their germination to a single culture alone, given the obvious differences in the nature of their theology.

In addition to the profound variation in their religious beliefs, there are also social differences, which have categorized the ancient Hebrews and Greeks as diametrically opposed. The Hebrews were a pastoral people who fostered strict obedience to the Mosaic Law, downplaying the importance of individual achievement and prohibiting any attempt to compare mortal beings with the deity. The patriarchs and Moses may have appeared heroic in the way they were portrayed in the legends of the Old Testament, but rabbinic tradition has never attempted to clothe these men with the attributes of a god, since such a characterization would have been forbidden as an apostasy.⁷ The Greeks, on the other hand, promoted the concept of independent thought and heroism, elevating the status of select individuals who surpassed others in strength and valor, such as Heracles and Achilles, to the level of a demigod. In Greek mythology, gods mated with humans and allied themselves on the battlefield with their favorite warriors, creating heroes who surpassed the common man in numerous ways, as vividly portrayed in the Iliad and the Odyssey, by Homer. This hero cult has been compared to the Christian hierarchy of saints, but such conceptions were abhorrent to the Orthodox Jewish faith because they demeaned the sanctity of the Lord by allowing comparisons to mere mortals. Cyrus Gordon recognized this disparity between the two cultures while postulating their common origin, and admitted that Israel and Greece were basically two water-tight compartments, totally different from each other.⁸ The two civilizations may have been siblings of the same parent in the opinion of Gordon, but they certainly were not identical twins.

The characterization of the Golden Age of Greece as the primary generator of Western civilization has also created an aura of uniqueness to the Classical Greek Age (500-323 BCE) that interferes with any consideration that its success was due to contemporary sources which were not inherently Greek. The glory that was ancient Greece has fascinated not only historians and scholars, but also the imagination of the entire Western world for centuries. The English poet Percy Shelley romantically noted, We are all Greeks . . . our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece.⁹ It is easy to see where this impressive characterization of the Greeks has come from. The origins of Western architecture, sculpture, philosophy, literature, ethics, and even the democratic form of government have all had their germination in ancient Greece. The truly remarkable era of Homer and Hesiod, of the famous Greek tragedists Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, of the celebrated philosophical schools of Plato and Aristotle, and of the founder of historical writing, Herodotus—to name a few seminal figures—are filled with scholarship that truly seems to be at the very beginnings of modern Western thought. This incredible epoch of Greek history, from the seventh to the fourth centuries BCE, spawned the dawn of free speech, independent thought, and a vision of life that promoted the virtuous elements of courage and justice.

Since most Western scholars have accepted this derivation on all levels of historical research, attempting to interpose an alternate evolutionary level—as I do by positing a Hebraic influence upon the Greek mind—would be expected to be met with an air of incredulity, since it is natural to protect an ancestry that carries such an exclusive image of scholarship and dignity. This issue has been raised by Martin Bernal, professor of government and Near Eastern studies at Cornell University, who suggested in Black Athena that the Classical Greek culture owed its development to dark-skinned emigrants from ancient Egypt, rather than to white-skinned pioneers from Europe. Bernal claimed that the reluctance of scholars to accept his alternate evolutionary theory of the Classical Greek culture was due to racism, which he believed characterized academic debate in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries CE, causing the dark-skinned Egyptians to be seen as fundamentally alien to Western man.¹⁰ This accusation has created a much-heated debate among academicians, and Bernal’s critics have recently published their response to his charges in a rebuttal book labeled Black Athena Revisited. While I do not intend to suggest that antisemitic feelings would be behind any negative reactions to my theory that the Hebrews were an important component of the early Classical Greek culture, it would not surprise me if many scholars would immediately respond with an attitude of disbelief, simply because it would tend to downplay the unique advancements made by the Classical Greek culture alone.

Despite the resilient loyalty that many historians retain to the Classical Greek origin of Western civilization, the ancestry of this remarkable society remains an unsolved mystery, and attempting to better understand the origin of the Classical Greek culture is an appropriate academic endeavor. All that can be said of the early Greek population today is that it was composed of those citizens who used the Greek language based upon documents written in a syllabic script known as Linear B.¹¹ Linear B documents, along with those in the related Linear A script, have been found in ancient sites on Crete and the Greek mainland from 1750-1400 BCE, and are accepted by most scholars as the precursor language of the Classical Greek alphabet. Linear A is primarily the language used by the ancient Cretin populace, while Linear B was the language of the Mycenaeans, who dominated the Greek mainland during the Late Bronze Age. Since it is the Mycenaeans who are believed to have initiated the Linear B script, it is generally accepted that they functioned as the earliest ancestors of the Classical Greek culture. Although few scholars deny this close relationship, details of this remarkable society are sparse indeed. Who these Mycenaeans were, where they came from, and how they formulated the magnificent culture they did are entirely unknown.

The reason for this informational gap is that the Mycenaean society suddenly disappeared from the geopolitical scene shortly after the Trojan War (c.1183 BCE), and the Greek mainland then entered into an unknown era known as the Dark Age (1000-850 BCE). A few centuries later, the Homeric era emerged, to be followed by the Classical Greek civilization. Both the Mycenaean civilization and the society that remained during the Dark Age left very little archaeologic data defining the details of their philosophy and heritage, and therefore very little is known about the people who acted as the progenitors of the Classical Greeks. Unlike the Egyptians, who left a veritable storehouse of history on hieroglyphic recordings, written material uncovered at Mycenaean archeologic sites has been restricted to simple commercial lists, and no detailed historical records have yet been found to explain the pathway from Mycenae to Classical Greece. Evidence of their culture shows up in pottery ware and architectural designs all along the trade routes throughout the Levant, but the written historical slate is so far blank with respect to the development of their legendary traditions.

Although there is little documentation of Mycenaean culture in the archaeologic record, stories of the Mycenaean civilization nevertheless abound in the traditions of the Classical Greeks, and it is this material that I believe holds the key to understanding how the writings of Homer and the Old Testament are so closely related. There are many similarities between the ancient Hebrews and Greeks that are too analogous to be explained by mere chance alone, and I believe that the explanation lies in the fact that direct contact was made between the two societies at an early stage of their development, before the completion of the Exodus and the Trojan War. This interaction came about, in my opinion, through a group of dissident Hebrews who left the Exodus and migrated to Mycenae, fearing for their lives after parricidal reprisals were ordered by Moses against those participants who refused to convert to the type of monotheism mandated by the Mosaic Code.¹² Many of the Hebrew participants had fought to remain faithful to the religious preferences of their ancestors, and the parricidal punishments inflicted upon the rebels by Moses led to such a dangerous environment that they had no choice but to flee to a distant land in order to survive. The refugees brought with them ancient legends and practices, which so profoundly influenced the Mycenaeans that they were integrated into the evolution of the Classical Greek culture, as well as being incorporated into the new Jewish state by the biblical compilers. Foremost among these traditions was the legend of Abraham and Isaac, which told of the attempted sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham in order to obey the wishes of God. In my study of infanticide, Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life: The Stain of Human Infanticide, I pointed out that although infanticide was very common throughout human society during the Late Bronze and Iron ages (1200-587 BCE), no other society or tribe ever made infanticide as prominent a part of their tradition as did the ancient Hebrews and Greeks.¹³ Rabbinic heritage extolled Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice his only son in fulfillment of the request made by God that he prove himself worthy of becoming the ancestor of the chosen people. Abraham’s capacity to put the commandment of God above the life of his own son proved to faithful adherents that his piety to the Lord was more important than attachment to another human being, and his unselfish devotion to God became the hallmark act of monotheism, as ultimately defined in the Ten Commandments of the Mosaic Code.

A similar obedience to a divine infanticidal directive was seen in ancient Greek lore, where Agamemnon finally agreed to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, when told by the seer Calchas that the goddess Artemis was preventing the Greek armada from sailing to the Trojan War because homage had not been given by a proper sacrifice. This action was used by Classical Greek philosophers and playwrights to demonstrate that the survival of the Greek State was more important than the survival of any cherished individual, even if that person was the leader’s own child. The choice Agamemnon made has survived to the present day as a model of how far a leader may have to go to assure fulfillment of a valid political aim.¹⁴

Both of these stories emphasized the mandate that the instructions given by God, or a god, were to be carefully and literally followed. In the Jewish faith, the requirement was based upon the covenant made between Abraham and YHWH, thereby identifying the Hebrew descendants as the chosen people, while with the Greeks, the need was based on the overriding importance of the survival of the Greek state over the survival of any individual person.¹⁵ Both stories were handed down within each culture from generation to generation as evidence of morally appropriate behavior, and every member of society was taught to accept the actions of Abraham and Agamemnon as models for their own future conduct. Although many individuals were applauded by other societies for their willingness to immolate themselves or their loved ones for the sake of a higher authority, no other culture on earth, except for the ancient Hebrews and Greeks, elevated the sacrifice of a child by its parent to the level of a laudable parable, which was divinely approved or demanded. The story of the infanticide was not only part of their traditional lore, it was told with few comments to suggest that the act was not acceptable under the circumstances presented. The similarity between the two legends is so great that I believe it strongly suggests—as Jean-Pierre Vernant, the well-known literary critic and scholar of Greek myths, has pointed out about Hellenic legends in general—that congruence can be used to conclude that there was an established kinship between them.¹⁶ The fact that these two widely separated societies could independently develop this concept, at exactly the same time in history, in almost the same region of the earth, cannot, in my opinion, be due to chance alone.

Supporting this likelihood of direct transference of attributes from the ancient Hebrews to the Greeks are many other congruencies, including the political framework of amphictyony, the nature of religious worship in both cultures, and other heroic legendary themes. In addition, I believe that the evidence presented in this book bolsters the concept that the Hebrews transmitted this material to the Greeks before the Trojan War, for although there are conflicting theories about when the Exodus took place, almost every hypothesis has placed the Hebrew migration out of Egypt during the same era when the Mycenaeans were expanding their sphere of influence into the Levant at the end of the Late Bronze Age. This would have been during the palace-oriented period; and the arrival of Hebrew slaves would explain, better than any other theory to date, how the Mycenaeans were able to rapidly construct their fortresses using large blocks of stones that resembled, in many ways, the type of masonry that was present in Egypt.

Mycenae was the logical final destination for this group of dissident Hebrews, since remaining in Canaan would have been far too dangerous, given the fact that they were despised by almost every inhabitant of Canaan at that time, including the Egyptians, the Hebrews who remained with the Exodus, and the indigenous Canaanite population. Rather than search for safety on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Basin, the Hebrews looked toward Mycenae on the western shore, where stories of religious freedom and economic opportunities would have been supplied by the many commercial contacts that had developed throughout the ancient Near East by the time of the Exodus. The Mycenaeans were known throughout the Levant during the Late Bronze Age, and, as noted by Cyrus Gordon, they differed from the Hebrews less than either did from the Upper Egyptians.¹⁷ Recommending a migration to Mycenae would not have been seen as an unreasonable move by the leaders who directed the Hebrew dissidents away from the ravages of Moses. Booking passage to the Aegean shore would have been relatively easy, since the Mycenaeans distributed their goods to the international market through Ugarit at the time, using the island of Cyprus as a primary market base. Once the Hebrews reached their destination, they would have found work as either mercenaries or construction workers, given their vast experience as slaves building large stone projects in Egypt. The city of Mycenae, as well as other cities in Greece, was undergoing extensive development at that time, and archaeologic finds have shown evidence of fortified walls built with large stones, called Cyclopean because of their size, with which the Hebrews would have been very familiar. Although most scholars have theorized that it was the Phoenicians who were instrumental in engineering these projects, I believe it is much more likely that it was the Hebrews who suggested the technique to the Mycenaeans and then provided the necessary manpower and experience to successfully carry out the complex construction plan.

The Hebrews also could have supplied much-needed assistance as military conscripts becoming an integral part of the Mycenaean military machine. The expansion of their influence into the ancient Near East and eventually participating in an extended military conflict on foreign shores took its toll on the available manpower in Mycenae, and the Hebrews were a force to be reckoned with, as evidenced by their numerous victories in the accounts of the Old Testament. As one biblical commentator put it, the ancient Hebrews could pray and they could fight.¹⁸ Their victories showed an impressive degree of fortitude and strength, and the Mycenaeans would have seen this as a cause for admiration and reward, rather than the censure that Moses reaped on those who were in disagreement with his commandments and rules. If the dissident Hebrews arrived in Mycenae before the thirteenth century BCE, it is likely that they would have fought as advisers and soldiers at the side of King Agamemnon during the ten-year Trojan War, and the traditions and stories they brought would have been incorporated into the Greek heritage, as were many other aspects of their knowledge and training, including the amphictyony political organization. Through this valuable assistance, the Hebrew legacy would have easily become an integral part of the Greek heritage, helping to formulate the storylines that later became famous in Homer’s the Iliad and the Odyssey. In addition to providing a much-needed infusion of manpower, the Hebrews were very familiar with the topography of the region from their years of travel during the Sinai wanderings, and this knowledge would have made them invaluable as translators and advisers to the Mycenaean expeditionary forces.

That the Mycenaeans would have incorporated Hebrew traditions into their own set of beliefs is supported by evidence, which shows that Mycenae welcomed, rather than shunned, external influences in their heyday during the Late Bronze Age. Unlike the Egyptians, who never assimilated the religious tenets of Semitic inhabitants, the Mycenaeans readily adapted to foreign peoples in everything—from their social structure to the nature of their religious beliefs. John Chadwick, the well-known Mycenaean historian and late professor emeritus of Cambridge University, has noted that they almost always took over and absorbed into their own system other religious systems with which they came into contact.¹⁹ Like a dry sponge placed in a pan of water, they imbibed new data and modified the information to fit the growing nature of their own creed. This may be why they were able to advance to a position of power in such a relatively short period of time, for rather than ostracize those they confronted, they expanded their own base of knowledge through mutual understanding and modified their views to include the beneficial social, military, and religious offerings of the foreigners.

While eccentric at first glance, this somewhat heretical conception of the early Greek civilization is clearly supported by social conditions during the Late Bronze Age. Mercenary forces were very commonly utilized by many countries during that era, and successful empires like Mycenae incorporated warriors from adjoining lands to supplement their own limited supplies. It was not possible to provide enough manpower at home to continue an adequate production of food supply while at the same time gathering a large enough military force to assure victory and conquest of new lands. War brought about cultural interchange, not only through invasion and conquest, which led to exportation of slaves and development of colonization, but also by the importation of mercenary forces during the many armed conflicts. One of the ways in which soldiers were paid was to promise them land when their time of service was completed. The Hittite army, for example, depended upon charioteers and full-time soldiers who were paid for their services by land grants from the king.²⁰ For the Hebrews, such an offering would have been warmly welcomed after many years of wandering in the desert under the command of Moses.

As mentioned above, the key to connecting these ancient cultures is Ugarit, the city that Cyrus Gordon has championed as the forerunner of the Hebrew and Greek civilizations. The unique position of this city as the meeting place for international trade between Egypt, the Aegean, and the countries of the Near East during the second millennium BCE allowed various cultures to intermingle in a peacetime atmosphere that eventually led to a coalescing not only of ideas, but of migrations of inhabitants who became an integral part of the societies we know today. Cyrus Gordon was correct in emphasizing the importance of Ugarit in the development of many societies during the Late Bronze Age, but rather than being the primary generator of the ancient Greek and Hebraic worlds directly—as he has championed in his many articles and books—the city simply functioned, in my opinion, to bridge the two societies by providing an easy access route for the Hebrews to take after they fled the Exodus and the parricidal actions of Moses.

Ugarit was the natural place for the outcast Hebrew conclave to make this initial contact with the Mycenaeans, for it was the meeting place of Semite and Indo-European in many commercial endeavors. Ugarit acted as a bridge because of its vital placement as a seaport situated at the juncture between Anatolia on the northern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, and Syria-Palestine on the eastern edge. If one studies a map of the countries that surrounded the Mediterranean Sea during the second millennium BCE, it is easy to recognize why sea travel was the most effective means of communication. Travel by land was seriously impeded: to the north were the Taurus mountains of the Anatolian Plateau, which prevented the migration of large numbers of people over short periods of time due to the uneven terrain; to the east, caravan routes were able to effectively move material goods and people, but could not provide an outlet to the Aegean Sea; and to the south, Egypt was a formidable obstacle to traffic over the northern coast of Africa, and no ports-of-call were available in Egypt or along the southern Canaanite coast. Sea travel from Phoenicia and Ugarit, however, was readily available as many islands with safe harbors dotted the sea route between Greece and the Levant, and ships were generally able to sail within sight of land, providing a relatively safe passage during intervals of unstable weather. It is for this reason that civilizations prospered on the islands of Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus, since they were the links that bound the economies of the countries that bordered the Mediterranean Sea. Ugarit lay at the point where ships traveling north up the coast from Egypt would then turn west toward Cyprus and the Aegean Sea, and for that reason almost every country had offices in Ugarit in order to provide contacts to multiple nationalities. In Ugarit, the Hebrews would find agents who spoke a multitude of languages, and offered a ready supply of opportunities, either to work the land or to be hired as mercenaries in distant countries.

To see why my theory of Hebrew migration to Mycenae explains better than any other theory to date the origin of many aspects of the Classical Greek culture, we have to look to the Late Bronze Age, a period of chaos and cultural change throughout the ancient world. The political upheavals that shook the international community during this pivotal era involved the entire Mediterranean Basin, and the results of those violent struggles helped shape the social structure of our modern society. Robert Drews, professor of classics and history at Vanderbilt University, has referred to this epoch as the dawn time in which the ancient people of Israel, Greece, and Rome sought their origins.²¹ What seems evident to me is that those origins are more intimately entwined than has heretofore been realized.

My analysis will center on two specific Late Bronze Age events that are of particular interest to the Western world: the Trojan War, made famous by Homer, the man who instituted the fictional heritage of Western civilization, said to have taken place in the thirteenth or twelfth century BCE; and the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt, as chronicled in the Old Testament, the backbone of the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem religions, the date of which is generally placed between the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries BCE. Both of these incidents have no extant historical accounts to prove that either one actually took place, but the fictional narratives have become so ingrained in academic historical circles that a majority of scholars have accepted the fact that both are based on factual events. A third incident, closely intertwined with both of these narratives, will also be discussed because it may have helped camouflage the migration of the Hebrews out of Egypt, explaining why the Exodus is absent from contemporary chronicles: the invasion of the People of the Sea into Syria, Palestine, and Egypt at the end of the thirteenth century BCE. It is very likely that both the Mycenaeans and the Hebrews were part of this mix of marauders, and it is possible to garner some understanding of how the ancient Hebrews may have had contact with Mycenae before the Trojan War by looking into the composition of the People of the Sea in more detail. This will particularly involve the historical origins of the Philistines, since the migration of these invaders from Crete into Canaan during the Late Bronze Age provides support for a similar migration of the Hebrews in the opposite direction to Mycenae a few generations before.

As to when the Exodus took place, I intend to show that the historical data of the Mediterranean Basin during the Late Bronze Age supports the contention that Joseph invited Jacob and his family to enter Egypt during the rule of the Hyksos, and that the Exodus occurred shortly thereafter, in the fifteenth or fourteenth century BCE. This sequence fits well with the presumed dates of the emigration of Abraham from Mesopotamia to the Levant, and the period of time the Hebrews lived in Canaan and Egypt before the Exodus, although it is earlier than those estimates that place the Exodus during the reign of Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE). The forty-year wandering in the Sinai would then have taken place during the Amarna Age (1353-1336 BCE), when the Habiru were ravaging the countryside in a fashion similar to the movements of Moses and the Hebrew contingent.

In the chapters that follow, I will expand upon the evidence supporting this theory of Hebrew immigration and assimilation into Mycenaean society in great detail. While no sole piece of the puzzle is thoroughly convincing, I believe that no other theory of Greek heritage fits the facts so completely, and that consideration of Hebrew influence on the development of Classical Greek culture must be given serious consideration. As Martin Bernal has argued, one cannot and should not require proof or certainty, but merely competitive plausibility when considering the murky regions of Mediterranean prehistory.²² Despite the criticism of scholars such as Thomas L. Thompson, from the biblical studies program of the University of Copenhagen, who has cautioned against accepting as enough evidence the accumulation of sufficient coincidence to bring about a judgment of ‘historical probability’,²³ it is unlikely that we will ever uncover more direct evidence of Hebrew life during the era of the patriarchs and the Exodus, and we must therefore evaluate the data we have in the most critical way we can and draw conclusions, which at least fulfill the test of reasonable interpretation. Was Achilles a Jew? Perhaps not, but the Classical Greek culture incorporated much ancient Hebrew tradition, in my opinion, and this amalgam of Late Bronze Age legendary material formed the society that became the backbone of our modern Western world.

CHAPTER 1

ANCIENT NEAR EAST

The two events which are of primary importance to my thesis that ancient Hebrew legendary material was incorporated into the Classical Greek culture by dissident Hebrews who traveled to Mycenae during the Late Bronze Age (1600-1100 BCE) are the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, as described in the Old Testament, and the Trojan War, as recorded in the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer.¹ While the exact dates of each are not firmly established, it is generally believed that the Exodus took place somewhere between the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries BCE, as will be discussed in chapter 6, and that the Trojan War was fought in the twelfth century BCE, c. 1183 BCE, as will be discussed in chapter 8. The Hebrew patriarchs and Mycenaean colonists are generally dated to the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1600 BCE), and despite the fact that no one has heretofore suggested that the pre-Mosaic Hebrews and early Greeks ever had direct contact with each other, it is clear that both societies were contemporaries during the Late Bronze Age. To understand why I believe many of the Hebrews rebelled against the monotheistic regulations imposed by Moses and then found comfort in the Mycenaean society, providing a linkage that would explain a Hebraic contribution of ideas, it is necessary to first analyze the history of the region in which both cultures evolved, in order to set the groundwork for what took place during the Exodus from Egypt. To this end, I will summarize the history of the ancient Near East in part 1 of this book, beginning with Mesopotamia and the Levant in this chapter, and Egypt in chapter 2. I will then discuss the background of the Hebrews in chapter 3 and their Exodus from Egypt in chapters 4-6, before concluding with a description of the Mycenaean Greeks in chapter 7 and the Trojan War in chapter 8. In part 2, I will analyze various aspects of the ancient Hebrew and Classical Greek cultures, which I believe support the theory that the Greeks derived many of their characteristic features from traditions eventually recorded in the Old Testament.

A.   Mesopotamia

In the Early and Middle Bronze ages, the regions that dominated the ancient Near East included Mesopotamia, which gave birth to the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian kingdoms; the Levant, which was the land that abutted the eastern coastline of the Mediterranean Sea between Egypt and Mesopotamia, including Canaan and Syria; and Egypt, which included the region of the Sinai wilderness. All these regions played a prominent role in the stories of the Torah, as Abraham was born in Mesopotamia, left his homeland to live in Canaan, briefly immigrated to Egypt during a period of famine, and then returned to Canaan, where the Lord promised that his descendants would have dominion over the Promised Land. Each territory is therefore important to the development of the Hebrew faith, and since Mesopotamia was the birthplace of Abraham, I will begin my discussion with the history of that region.

The name Mesopotamia is derived from the Greek words mesos, or middle, and potamoi, or river, referring to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which in contemporary usage included the regions of modern Iraq, eastern Syria, and south-eastern Turkey. Although most anthropologists now point to East Africa as the location where humanoids first evolved from the apes, Mesopotamia has generally been accepted as the figurative birthplace of mankind, for it was there that civilization made the greatest strides toward the complex systems of language and economy, which characterize our modern societies. One reason for the rapid progress made in this region was the ability to provide an adequate food supply through agricultural methods, first evidenced by the cultivation of wild cereals in the Fertile Crescent in c. 9000-8000 BCE, followed shortly thereafter by th domestication of wheat and barley. Because early hunter-gatherers could only stay in camps for a short periods, given the seasonal nature of their food supply, reliable plantings allowed for the formation of permanent communities, so that by 7500 BCE, in the Neolithic or New Stone Age period (8800-4700 BCE), dense farming settlements of a few hundred inhabitants began to appear in the uplands of the Levant, southern Anatolia (Asia Minor), and the Zagros mountains.² Soon thereafter, other aspects of civilized metropolises began to appear in rapid fashion, as evidenced by archaeologic remains at Catal Huyuk in Turkey, where a town-sized settlement of over six thousand people has been uncovered, making it the largest Neolithic collective yet found. This transformation has frequently been referred to as the urban revolution, since from that time forward, people tended to gather in collective communities rather than remain in mobile, transitory abodes.³

A number of cultures have been identified in Mesopotamia during this Neolithic era, including the Hassuna, which was centered in northern Mesopotamia from 6500-6000 BCE; the Halafian, named after the site of Tell Halaf, which succeeded shortly thereafter, c. 5200-4800 BCE; and the Ubaid, which controlled southern Mesopotamia from c. 5500-4000 BCE, and laid the foundations for the Sumerian civilization, the direct ancestors of our modern age.⁴ With the invention of the plow in the fifth millennium BCE, and the discovery of artificial watering techniques in the fourth millennium BCE, the ability to maintain a secure food supply strengthened, allowing for the formation of large city-states during the fourth millennium BCE, an era known as the Uruk Period (4000-3000 BCE).⁵

By this time, most of the population of Mesopotamia lived in cities, the majority of which had a population of between two and eight thousand people, although the capital city of Uruk (modern Warka) is estimated to have had over ten thousand inhabitants, reaching a level of fifty thousand by 2900 BCE.⁶ Such an intense concentration of people in so small an area required a strong political structure to maintain a hierarchy of legal and economic authority. Tribal cohesiveness was no longer reliable with such an expanded populace, and to assure a stable transfer of command, most cities chose to form a monarchal government, whereby jurisdiction was invested in a single autocratic ruler, thereby redirecting loyalties from kin to kings.⁷ These monarchs were at first appointed by a governing council, and then, to solidify their power base and legitimize their autocratic control, a concept of divine dominion was invoked whereby the authority of the king was assimilated into the power of a god. Since each region had its own interpretation of which deity was more powerful, a continuous struggle for domination ensued that has lasted until modern times.

In the Early Bronze Age (3000-2000 BCE), southern Mesopotamia became politically divided between cities, which coalesced into the Akkadian Dynasty in the northern region of Akkad (Agade) and those which united into the Sumerian Dynasty in the southern region of Sumer. For the next one thousand years, these two empires vied for control of the region, and historians have generally categorized the sequence of events into the Sumerian Early Dynastic period (c. 3000-2300 BCE), which ended with the accession of Sargon I of Akkad (c. 2334-2279 BCE); the Sargonid Era (c. 2300-2150 BCE), named for Sargon I and his followers; the Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2150-1950 BCE), founded by Ur-Nammu (fl. 2060 BCE);⁸ and finally, the Old Babylonian Era (1950-1600 BCE), which included the reign of Hammurabi (1848-1806 BCE), the Amorite king of Babylon.⁹

The first of these eras, the Sumerian Early Dynastic Period, offers our initial opportunity to obtain clear details of the historical record, since Sumeria was the first culture to introduce writing, thereby leading to its designation as the Protoliterate Period. Although their language has no known surviving close relatives, the information provided by their archaeologic records confirms the advanced level of their civilization. The name Sumeria comes from the ancient name of the southern part of Iraq, Sumer or Shumer, an area that would later be referred to as Babylonia. Political unity in the region was maintained by the cooperation of about a dozen city-states, each ruled by a king who was nominated to his position by the leading deity of the city.¹⁰ Although comprising an area less than the size of Belgium and devoid of many natural resources, Sumer became the dominant force in Mesopotamia during the Early Bronze Age. It was in the important Sumerian city-state of Ur (Tell Muqqayar) that Abraham was born, so the culture of the region obviously played an important part in his childhood and early adult training. The importance of Sumerian mythology to the biblical compilation is evident in the story of Noah and the Great Flood, which is very akin to the Sumerian legend of Gilgamesh, as well as in multiple other legendary motifs.¹¹ Although the Bible never actually mentioned the Sumerians by name, the Hebrew word sin’ar, which represents the Sumerian term for Sumer-Akkad, occurs eight times in the Old Testament.¹²

The Sumerians solidified their position of power by building massive walls around many of their cities to protect the populace from invasion by neighboring forces. This imposing defensive technique, which came to characterize much of Early Bronze Age architecture, was necessitated by the introduction of bronze weapons, which enabled armies to quickly conquer an unprotected city and convert the entire populace into slaves for the first time in the historical record. Importing nonmilitary prisoners of war to provide a readily available labor force at home allowed these early city-states to free up their own adult male population to join mobile military maneuvers abroad, and the resultant institution of slavery became a characteristic of the civilized world that has lasted into our modern era. As we will see in the next chapter, Egypt also imported a large number of Semitic captives during this era to assist in the building of the pyramids, a process which continued into the Late Bronze Age, eventually resulting in the enslavement of the entire Hebrew population. The Sumerian fortifications worked quite well at first, and their culture became so widespread that by the end of the third millennium BCE, their influence had penetrated as far east as India, south to Ethiopia, and north to the Caspian Sea.

As the second half of the third millennium BCE neared, the dominance of the Sumerians began to wane, and their northern neighbors, the Akkadians, began to gradually expand their authority over the Sumerian provinces. The Akkadians were a Semitic people who first began to aggregate from their original homeland in the Arabian Desert on the northern fringes of Sumer around 2900 BCE. Eventually, they coalesced into the region’s mightiest military force under the leadership of their first king, Sargon I (Sargon the Great), who overthrew his former master in a palace revolt and ruled the Akkadian realm, incorporating both the Sumerian and Akkadian city-states into a vast kingdom that extended as far away as Egypt, Ethiopia, and India.¹³ His capital city at Agade flowed with great wealth, and although his influence during his lifetime was spread across the entire Near East, his empire soon began to fall apart after his death. Around 2200 BCE, the Gutians invaded Agade from the northeast and literally wiped the city from the face of the earth.¹⁴ No archaeologic remains of the Akkadian capital have ever been discovered, and the richness of Sargon I’s realm was

lost forever.

Although the lifespan of the Akkadian reign was relatively short when compared to other Bronze Age dynasties, they were nevertheless important in the evolution of Hebrew tradition, for the legends of their kings, like those of the Sumerians, influenced the folktale motif of most of the surrounding cultures. This can particularly be seen in the legend of the birth of Sargon I, whose mother was said to have set him adrift on the Euphrates River in a watertight wicker basket soon after his birth. He eventually was saved by Aqqi, who raised him as his adopted son, a storyline so similar to that of Moses that most biblical scholars believe that the authors of the Torah directly incorporated the material from the ancient Akkadian sources into the legend of Moses’s birth.

In addition to legendary material, the effect of the Akkadians on the future development of the region was prodigious because the Semitic Akkadian language became the dominant dialect in the ancient Near East for the next two thousand years, gradually becoming modified into separate and distinct tongues by the cultures that they engendered.¹⁵ Today, the Semitic languages are generally divided into three categories: the East Semitic, which includes the Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians; the Northwest Semitic, which includes the Canaanites, Hebrews, Aramaeans, Amorites, and Phoenicians; and the Southwest Semitic, which includes the Arabs and Ethiopians.¹⁶ Although the modern dialects of descendants of these groups are not often intelligible from one subgroup to another, intercourse between diverse peoples in ancient times was possible since the early modifications were not of major proportions. This is evident in the biblical patriarchal tales, where the Hebrews interacted quite extensively with other people in the region who spoke the Northwest Semitic tongue.¹⁷ It is likely that a similar situation existed generations later when Moses communicated with various Canaanite kings as he tried to obtain passage through their lands on the way to the Promised Land. This ability to converse with foreign dignitaries would have enabled the dissident Hebrews to make their wishes known as they migrated north to Ugarit, as will be discussed in chapter 5.

As the second millennium BCE began, initiating the Middle Bronze Age, the Sumerian and Akkadian cultures disappeared from the political scene, and various Semitic and Indo-European tribes infiltrated throughout Mesopotamia, gaining control of local city-states and dividing the resources of the region into feuding empires. In the north, the Assyrians took control of the territory, which was originally part of the Akkadian empire, while in the south, the Babylonians gathered enough strength to dominate the former political scene of Sumer. I will not delve into the details of these later cultures at this time, as by now Abraham had left Mesopotamia and the patriarchal families were living in Canaan, leaving the evolution of the Hebrews to be affected more by the Levantine environment than by the cultures which remained in Mesopotamia. It should be noted, however, that the Babylonians remain pertinent to understanding the background of the Mosaic Law, since the Code of Hammurabi is believed by many scholars to have played an important role in the legal precepts that are found in the biblical text. Hammurabi was the sixth in line of the Old Babylonian Dynasty, ascending the Babylonian throne during the Hyksos era, when many scholars believe Joseph arrived in Egypt.¹⁸ The biblical lex talionis punishment of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is literally taken verbatim from the Hammurabi text, and it is likely that the biblical compilers were aware of this treatise when the Torah underwent its final collation.

It is at this juncture, when mass migrations took place across the entire Mediterranean Basin, that the beginnings of both the early Greek and Hebrew civilizations first appeared on the geopolitical scene. The Greeks are believed to have been derived from Indo-Europeans (Aryans) who moved onto the Greek mainland and Anatolia from the north and east, while the Hebrews were one of a number of Semitic tribes who spread into the Levant in a movement commonly called the Amorite Invasion, as will be discussed in chapter 3.¹⁹ Although the Indo-European ancestors of the Greeks are related to the invaders who generated the Akkadian civilization, their heritage is quite different and will be discussed in chapter 7.

   1.   Indo-European Hittites and Hurrians

It is not known from exactly which region the Indo-European immigrants began to spread into the Fertile Crescent and Greece around 2000 BCE, with scholars favoring such diverse areas as Europe, the region around the Caucasus mountains, and the distant district of Russia. But wherever they began their trek, the settlers eventually populated an extensive area across the entire Fertile Crescent, concentrating their strength in a powerful kingdom that arose in mineral-rich Anatolia in present-day Turkey. This region was part of the great mountain system that extended from the Himalayas to the Atlantic seaboard of France, Spain, and North Africa. It formed a huge peninsula between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, creating a land bridge between Asia and Europe, much as the Levant connected Asia and Egypt. Nestled in between the Pontus Mountains on the north and the Taurus Mountains to the south, the fertile Anatolian highland plateau was rich in timber and agricultural products, as well as in abundant mineral wealth such as copper, silver, tin, and iron. During the Middle Bronze Age, these resources were particularly valuable, and the migrating Indo-Europeans took advantage of the productivity of the land to gain a reliable foothold in their struggle for economic power and survival.

The autochthonous population, which inhabited central Anatolia before the Indo-Europeans appeared, were referred to as Hattians; so when the new immigrants settled in the land and gradually took control of the region, the surrounding cultures referred to them as Hittites, which meant from the land of Hatti.²⁰ In time, they built their capital city at Bogazkoy (Hattusas, Kushshar), a vast fortification that stretched for three miles, a site as large as classical Athens. A cache of thousands of tablets written in a script known as Arzawan have been uncovered in the remains, providing historians with a wealth of information on the workings of the city.²¹ One reason why the Hittites were able to so successively expand their authority throughout Anatolia in such a short period of time was that after they defeated the state of Arzawa, they were able to utilize the established Arzawan language and have access to the Aegean Sea at Apasas, which later became Ephesus.²² In addition, they were the first army in the region to use chariots, which enabled them both to defend their capital city and to make successful long-distance raids.²³

The first known Hittite King was Labarna I, who is believed to have ruled from 1680-1650 BCE, according to the middle chronology.²⁴ This was the same era that the Hyksos ruled in Egypt, and because Egyptian influence in the Levant was significantly reduced during that period of time, a power vacuum was created, which was quickly filled by the Hittites. Little is known of Labarna I, and many scholars have therefore regarded Hattusilis I (c. 1660-1620 BCE), or man of Khattusha, as the first true Hittite king, since he was able to establish a program of territorial expansion by defeating the state of Arzawa and Yamhad, which was aimed at controlling the trade route running from Babylonia to the Mediterranean coastlands. He died before he could completely subdue the city of Aleppo (Haleb), however, and it was his grandson, Mursilis I (c. 1620-1590 BCE), who finally destroyed the city in c. 1595 BCE, overthrowing the dynasty that Hammurabi had extended in Babylon, and putting an end to the celebrated First Dynasty of Babylon.²⁵ As a result of these victories, the Hittites were elevated to supremacy in the ancient Near East, but their reign of glory did not last very long. Mursilis I did not have the force to control such a vast area of land; and upon his return to Bogazkoy, his kinsmen revolted, and he was assassinated by his son-in-law. Hantili I (1590-1550 BCE), a coconspirator, ascended the throne, and Hittite influence quickly began to ebb. By the time Telepinus (1525-1500 BCE) reigned, the Hittite kingdom was once again confined to central Anatolia.

With the withdrawal of the Hittites from Canaan, and the eviction of the Hyksos from Egypt, the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs took advantage of their military superiority and quickly extended their authority once again into the Levant. Almost immediately after sacking the Hyksos capital of Avaris, Ahmose I (1539-1514 BCE) pursued the enemy along the Via Maris into Palestine and captured the city of Sharuhen, which was then under Hyksos control.²⁶ The succeeding line of Thutmoside kings maintained this process of expansion and impelled Egypt into her most glorious period, accompanied by great material prosperity. By the time of Thutmose III (1479-1425 BCE), Egypt controlled most of Syria-Palestine and turned the region into an Egyptian province, which they referred to as Retenu.

The only remaining force that could oppose the Egyptians were the Hurrians, a non-Semitic people who had earlier begun to infiltrate Syria and Mesopotamia during the first few centuries of the second millennium BCE. They are believed to have originated in the mountains of eastern Anatolia and then spread both to the east and south, occupying the land between the Hittites and Assyria. Their movements were very diverse, and they often fractured into many groups, joining other migratory forces to inhabit regions throughout the Levant. Although the Hurrian kingdom was primarily based in Mesopotamia, many Hurrian names also appeared among the Hyksos, indicating that some of their numbers accompanied the migration of Semites into Egypt. With time, the Hurrians consolidated their forces into a large kingdom centered in northwestern Mesopotamia, with its capital at Alalakh (Tell Atchana), which the Assyrians called Mitanni or the land of the Hurrians.²⁷ Around 1480 BCE, they advanced a united force under Parrattarna (c. 1480-1450 BCE), and from that point forward their growth was so impressive that the Egyptians referred to the inhabitants of Syria-Palestine as Hurru, because of the predominant presence of the Hurrian population.²⁸

Despite their significant numbers, the Hurrians were simply not strong enough to withstand the expansive Egyptian military power of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs, and Amenhotep II (1427-1392 BCE) followed up the success of Thutmose III by taking over thirty-six thousand Hurrians captive in one campaign alone. During the reign of Thutmose IV (1392-1382 BCE), just before the period of the Amarna Age (1353-1336 BCE), enough Hurrian prisoners were taken at Gezer to form a colony at Thebes.²⁹ It was clear to the Hurrians that they could not survive as enemies of Egypt, and to protect their waning interests, they sealed a treaty of peace with the Egyptians by agreeing to a marriage alliance between Tuthmosis IV and the daughter of the King Artatama I (c. 1410-1400 BCE). This enabled the Egyptians to become the primary military force in the region, and to administer their realm they set up a framework of districts, which included the southern Phoenician coast, the northern coast along with the district of Amurru, and the district of Apu, which covered the inland regions. Although this dominance during the fifteenth and early fourteenth centuries BCE has prompted some scholars to doubt whether the Exodus could have been expected to succeed when Egyptian control of the area was strong, it must be remembered that the main focus of the Egyptians was in the populated areas near the Via Maris, and they did not exert as much control in the Sinai and the hill country of Palestine, where most of the Hebrew movement took place. In addition, much of the Egyptian military force was busy expanding their dominance in the Levant, so the number of soldiers in the homefront would have been reduced, thereby allowing for a successful Exodus of Hebrew slaves.

While the Egyptians appeared to be invincible during this early phase of the Late Bronze Age, their power base began to wane as Egypt entered the Amarna Age. As will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, the Amarna Age refers to the time when Amenhotep III (1382-1344 BCE) and Amenhotep IV (Akenhaten)(1352-1336 BCE) sat on the throne of Egypt. The name came from the capital city which Amenhotep IV built at Tell el-Amarna, and during this period Egyptian control of the region began to ebb as pharaonic support for local regimes diminished under Amenhotep IV, the pharaoh who attempted to radically change the religious nature of his country by promoting the worship of only one god, the sun god Aten. As he concentrated his efforts at home on social change, he diverted his attention away from the regional princes in Canaan who were loyal to the Egyptian monarchs, isolating himself from their desperate pleas for assistance. This shifted the balance of power in Palestine away from Egypt and toward the Hittite realm.

It was not only Egyptian laxity in the affairs of the region that led to a resurgence of Hittite power, but also the exceptional military and organizational skills of Suppiluliuma I (1380-1340 BCE), the Hittite king who parlayed his squadrons into such a mighty military force that victories once again assured his taking control of much of Syria and the northern Levantine region. His first undertaking after ascension to the throne was to consolidate the Anatolian realm by successfully campaigning against the provinces of Azzi, Arzawa, and the Kashka lands. He then took advantage of the fact that Amenhotep IV was neglecting his Syrian allies and made an alliance with a rival claimant to the Mitannian throne, moving against the forces of the Mitanni king Tushratta (c. 1450 BCE). After finding that his capital city of Wasshukkani was captured, Tushratta withdrew and Suppiluliuma I then brought the important Syrian states of Halab, Allakh, Qadesh, Nukhasshe, and Amurru within the Hittite sphere of influence.³⁰ Eventually, he subdued Mittani completely, including the allied state of Carchemish (Jerablus), and after his death, Hittite power continued to thrive as his son Mursilis II (1339-1306 BCE) defeated the troublesome Anatolian state of Arzawa, which had been allied with the distant power of Ahhijawa.

The rivalry between Egypt and the Hittites for control of Syria was to culminate decades later in a great battle at Kadesh-on-Orontes, where the Hittite army under Hattusilis III (1275-1250 BCE), the son of Mursilis II, clashed with Ramesses II (1279-1213 BCE) in a battle that matched numerically equal forces of over twenty thousand men. I will discuss this engagement in more detail in chapter 2, but the peace treaty that was eventually concluded gave control of Syria to the Hittites, while the Egyptians ruled over Palestine. Although a century of peace between Egypt and the Hittites followed, both countries entered an era of severe decline that was precipitated by invasions of the People of the Sea, a band of marauders who invaded the Levant at the end of the Late Bronze Age. As the Iron Age emerged, the Hittites disappeared from the geopolitical scene, to be replaced by the Assyrians and Babylonians.

Although the Old Testament does not describe any event which relates to the military intrusion of the Hittites into the Levant, there are numerous references to contacts between the Hittites and patriarchal families, which indicate that the relationship between the two culturally diverse peoples was congenial. The book of Genesis described how Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite for the burial of Sarah after she died in Hebron in a transaction that followed Hittite law.³¹ Since Abraham is generally believed to have lived well before Labarna I or Hattusilis I, it is uncertain if the biblical compilers were applying what they understood Hittite law to have been in the patriarchal era, or whether they simply applied principles which were contemporary in their own time. In either case, despite the fact that the early Hebrews interacted peaceably with the Hittites, intermarriage between the two cultures was strictly forbidden by the patriarchal families.³² When Abraham sent his servant to find a Hebrew wife for Isaac, he made him swear not to let Isaac marry one of the local Canaanite girls. Esau did not obey this tradition; and after his birthright was stolen by Jacob, he married two Hittite women, so disturbing Rebekah by his choice of wives that she sent Jacob to her relatives in Paddan-aram to find a wife, fearing he might do the same.³³

The Hurrians were also mentioned in the Old Testament, but there is little evidence that they cooperated with the Hebrews in a manner akin to the Hittites. The Hurrians were usually referred to as Horites or Hivites in the Bible, and were connected with two of the seven nations of