Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

398 ROD NOT EMPLOYED—REASONSKing, Rogers, and Jastrow in their laterworks have seeminglyadopted the date arrived at by Kugler from stellarresearches for the first Babylonian Dynasty. If Abram were,as is now thought, the contemporary of Hammurabi, hisflitting must have occurred between 2120 and 2080 B.C., butsince Egyptian chronology beyond the fifteenth century isfluid, and no early positive synchronisms with Babylon survive,we cannot definitely designate any particular king in Egyptas the contemporary of either Hammurabi or Abram.The Bible is our main authority for the continuance of theassociation. The stories of Jacob, of Joseph (in whose titleAhrek ^ some detect a Babylonian influence and a connectionwith that of Abara-rakku, the designation of one of the fivegreat officers of state), and of Moses, are but episodes of anintercourse which, if we begin with Abram and end withOnias, lasted (with intervals of war and invasion) for some2000 years.Evidence of intercourse crops up again and again throughoutthe four centuries of the Jewish Monarchy. Thus weread (i Kings iii. i) of the marriage of Solomon with thedaughter of Pharaoh. From Solomon's reign onward till thebirth of Christ and long afterwards, the connection betweenEgypt and Israel, friendly or hostile, never fails. The flightof Jeroboam to Shishak (i Kings xi. 40) and the giving ofpresents, probably tribute, by Hosea to the King of Egypt(2 Kings xvii. 4) present but two instances.Papyri recently discovered prove the settlement nearAssouan of a considerable Jewish, or rather, more correctly,Palestinian colony from (say) 500-400 B.C. This, like thesimilar but older community at Tahpanhes, exhibits a martof wide and keen trading. The papyri " show that theAramaic—the common language of Syria—was regularly usedat Syene (Assouan), and we readily see how five cities in the landof Egypt speak the language of Canaan and swear to Yahwehsojourn in Goshen. The name used by the older sources is Ibrim, probablyidentical with the Egyptian word Aperu or Apriu.1 This is probably a shortening of the Sumero-Babylonian Abarrakku,equalling seer. H. de Genou iliac was the first to connect the word with theHebrew Abrek, in his Tablettes Sumeriennes Avchaiques.