Abstract
Identity and Peoples in History Speculating on Ancient Mediterranean Mysteries
Highlights
Mordechai Nisan* We are familiar with a philo-‐Semitic disposition characterizing a number of communities, including Phoenicians/Lebanese, Kabyles/Berbers, and Ismailis/Druze, raising the question of a historical foundation binding them all together
Jacob (Yaakov,) the third patriarch of the people of Israel, later known as ‘Israel’, awarded territory to the tribe of Zevulun which reached to Sidon in present-‐day
A millennium and more later, around the beginning of the Christian era, the Talmud mentions a Jewish tanner in Sidon in connection with his family relations.[1]
Summary
Mordechai Nisan* We are familiar with a philo-‐Semitic disposition characterizing a number of communities, including Phoenicians/Lebanese, Kabyles/Berbers, and Ismailis/Druze, raising the question of a historical foundation binding them all together. The possible consequence of military operations and population movements northward and southward between Israel and Lebanon means that the Lebanese are really Israelites, or at the least, that the two peoples intermixed. This intimates that the Phoenicians were “Jews,” perhaps pseudo-‐Jews, that is to say descendants from the tribes of Israel. The ancient Israelites and Lebanese shared the 22-‐letter alphabet, a writing system attributed to the Phoenician port-‐city of Byblos—a toponym with which the Greeks associated the word Bible This Byblian alphabet—Byblia Grammata in Maurice Dunand’s telling—was exceptionally similar to the ancient Hebrew script. The modern Lebanese were to lose their ancient language, while the Jews preserved theirs in letters and renewed it as a modern spoken tongue
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