Archaeologists Announce Discovery Of Underwater Man-Made Wall (Very Old)

China Post ^ | 11-26-2002

[William Terrell]

Good points. I think a lot of truth can be found by applying logic and common sense to the facts that are known.

[VadeRetro]

Doesn't hunt? Have you read the 12 pages I refered you to? What, do you want me to type them for you? Check out the book and read it yourself.

I suppose I should know what you're talking about here, having been on the thread talking to you, but I don't. Don't type the twelve pages, just tell me what you're talking about. The particular transformation you describe would not occur unless the Celts essentially already existed to provide a dominant culture to provide both a model of the new-to-the-Hebrews language family and pressures to learn a new language. And the problem with that scenario is that the only necessary element is the pre-existing Celts. The rest can go and you still have the same history.

Polytheisms? I wouldn't doub it. The ten tribes had already left their Israelite roots and dipped into paganism long before the Assyrians captured them.

Their "roots" were already polytheist. Monotheism was a late development which was apparently stronger at first among the nomadic herdsmen population than in the cities. If you have a different order of events, you have a scoop.

Metalworking. Yes, tell me about the metalworking. Don't just refer to it.

The Celts did very distinctive ornate metalworking. I'm not an expert on the subject but basically you can tell one pre-tech culture from another by the stuff you find in a dig and the Celts have a signature of their own. Are you challenging this?

Differences? No doubt. Metalworking and such technologies don't evolve over a millenium?

What millenium? The Celtic digs in Austria go back to 1200 BC or so. The Celtic digs in the British Isles go back to 2000 BC or so, first wave. What's your story? How did they wind up in the same language family with the Persians if their origins are Semitic and they went to England in 2000 BC? Tell a coherent story and deal with the objections!

[VadeRetro]

Me: Here you basically punt on the evidence and say that your theory is true because Biblical prophecy is true.

William Terrell: Why, yes. You haven't gotten that until now?

I just wanted to get it out there for the lurkers. Never mind getting back to me on the other stuff. ;)

[William Terrell]

Never mind getting back to me on the other stuff. ;)

Before we go any further and I use time digging out references and making logical links, do you believe, this to say, accept as gospel, the prophesies of God in the Old Testament have come to pass and will continue to come to pass?

[Little Bill]

There is some thought that the Sea People displacement was caused by the westward movement of the q-celts. If this is true it would place the time at around 1150 BC.

[William Terrell]

I suppose I should know what you're talking about here, having been on the thread talking to you, but I don't. Don't type the twelve pages, just tell me what you're talking about.

(You can find the list of roots words in "Missing Links Discovered in Assyrian Tablets" by E Raymond Capt, pp 187-198)

Their "roots" were already polytheist. Monotheism was a late development which was apparently stronger at first among the nomadic herdsmen population than in the cities. If you have a different order of events, you have a scoop.

Israel was monotheist. Remember? This is what gave Abraham special favor with God, he left the many gods to hold Faith in one God. Have you read the Old Testament?

I have no evidence that proto-celtic metal working differed in any significant way from that of the Israelite tribes in Egypt, or any influence that Egyptian technology had on Israeelite technology. Do you? Can you show me examples?

Haven't I already shown you that the language issue is unreliable in prior posts? Where is your examples of language in the Halstatt and La Tene relics? Where did the peoples of Halstatt and La Tene come from? People don't just appear out of thin air. Archeologists have no answers to these questions, and neither do you, evidently.

Current knowledge of ancient cultures and movements are foggy at best and the interpretations thereof are speculative at best. And none of it to date has taken into consideraton the writings on the Assyrain tablets. So what you have is allegations made using incomplete data.

When you factor in all the existing evidence plus all the unanswered questions, you have the peoples of the Western world as the prime candidates for the remnants of the Northern Kingdom, in spite of any small details in interpretation of ancient findings.

I keep asking you, and you keep avoiding. What people would you pick for the descendents of the Northern Kingdom?

[Sabertooth]

OK, I've read the thread and chased a lot of the links, and I'd like to pose a question.

First, let me establish a couple of things. I've got a healthy curiosity about archaeology, always have. I also believe in the Bible, allegorically where not literally, literally where not allegorically. I find remarkable congruence between the Biblical account of the History of Civilizations and the archaeological record. It's one of the qualities I find most compelling about the Bible.

I also believe in Biblical prophecy, though interpreting it can be sometimes be as dicey as interpreting dreams. Some prophecies are rather literal, though, and I take them at face value. I think the restoration of Israel is a prophecy in the midst of fulfillment. I believe the Ten Lost Tribes exist somewhere, or perhaps many somewheres, and that they have a role in that fulfillment.

I've got a fair curiosity about the Lost Tribes, so I've got an ear for theories.

Those are my biases.

Oh, I have one other: anyone with a claim about the Ten Tribes needs to make the case for it. They need to be able to provide compelling evidence and reasoning to unbelievers that is accessible on its face, without resorting to saying, "no wonder you don't believe it, you're an unbeliever." Unfortunately, having read this thread, it appears to me that we've reached such a threshold.

A theory has been put forth suggesting that the Celts represent some or all of the Lost Tribes. I haven't yet reached a conclusion myself.

VadeRetro, among others, has raised a number of issues that look to be problematic for this theory. I'd like to focus on one: language.

The best information I have is that everywhere we find them, the Celts spoke Indo-European languages. I've chased the links here and looked elsewhere, and that doesn't appear to be in dispute. It's also settled that the Ten Tribes of Israel spoke Hebrew, a Semitic language. Both the Bible and archaeology appear to be in full agreement on that.

These accepted facts present a substantial hurdle for the theory that the Celts are somehow related to the Lost Tribes. An explanation is necessary. How did millions of Semitic speakers give rise to hundreds of millions of Indo-European speakers?

That question has not been answered on this thread. If a link was provided, I missed it, and I was clicking links several times removed in the looking.

Language families are like trees, with trunks, boughs, limbs, branches, and twigs all representing individual languages. However remote one twig may seem from another, they all branch out from the same trunk-- unless they're on a different tree altogether. That's the situation we have with the Celts and the Lost Tribes, with the Indo-European and the Semitic language trees.

Much of what we know about the movements of and relationships among ancient peoples comes from this model of linguistic heritage and development, Unlike, say, textual criticism of the German school, I'm not aware of any significant challenges to this type of linguistic analysis. Relationships between languages connote relationships between the people that spoke them. The farther apart the languages, the more the distant relationships between the peoples associated with them. I'm open to new insights, but as it stands, these generalizations are quite solid.

That doesn't disprove a relationship between the Celts and the Lost Tribes, but it does leave us with my question, which places a genuine burden on those making the claim…

What is the explanation and where is the supporting evidence for such a radical linguistic transformation by Lost Tribes in order to become the Celts?

There are a few possibilities:

1. The Lost Tribes were absorbed by some or several Indo-European peoples in their wanderings, and assumed the new indigenous languages as their own. If this happened, however, it's probable that a good number of Semitic words would have survived, just as a good number of Latinate words survived the Norman Conquest of Germanic England. The general rule of antiquity is that if a people survived conquest so did some or all of their language. Where are those relic Semitic words in the languages of the Celts?

Or, if the Semitic relic words didn't survive assimilation, why not?

2. Semitic and Indo-European languages are from the same tree, and the languages of the Celts are derived from Hebrew and Semitic sources. This is doubtful, but hey, I'm open-minded.

3. The understood processes by which languages are transmitted and transmuted are completely wrong, and a new linguistic paradigm provides a better explanation. In the new explanation, it will become clear that the Celts are the linguistic kin of the Lost Tribes of Israel.

4. Some other mechanism.

The ball is now fairly in the court of the Celtic theorists. Counteer-questions such as "Well then, where do you think the Ten Tribes are?" will be met with "I don't know, that's why I'm asking you to make your case."

I do not accept the Celts as the default explanation requiring a substitute candidate as a prerequisite for informed discussion, I want a sound linguistic explanation for the available evidence regarding theory that the Celts are descendents of the Lost Tribes.

Thanks in advance.

[PaulKersey]

What people would you pick for the descendents of the Northern Kingdom? He probably thinks they were "assimilated". That is the usual cop-out and means "I don't have a clue". Bet he doesn't have any evidence for "assimilation". I haven't seen any.

[VadeRetro]

You claim that the Assyrian records somehow--but how?--make my linguistic objections in 281 go away. Just a non-sequitur. The Egyptians, the Hebrews, and the Assyrians were all Semitic. Where and when did all these people learn or invent an Indoeuropean language? What are you even saying? I've asked it twenty times on this thread and I get shamming and mumbling.

You're bizzarely and blindly plowing ahead, ignoring the hundreds of years of non-cult scholarship. You've already explained what's going on. It's a cult thang, we wouldn't understand. There's not much more to it than that. Why pretend?

You've invoked the right to ignore all inconvenient differences, which covers basically all the evidence that there is. Most scholarship--I can Google^TM, you can Google^TM--thinks the Celts had a distinct culture parallel and not subsequent to the Hebrews. They think they can tell from the archaeological record in a given spot when it replaced pre-existing culture. Most of those replacements are too early for your story, to the extent that you have a story. That material is there for anybody. I'm not going to dump a bunch of it on this thread because you've already reserved the right to wave away evidence of such nature in advance.

You have failed to tell a coherent story of how the Semitic Hebrews are supposed to have become the seemingly-already-dispersed-in-Europe Indoeurpean Celts. I have tried to prompt you to address some of the deficiencies of your account, but you seem to think the ball is in my court.

All I'm pointing out is that what you're scoffing away is everything we know. Nothing in your few data points of record justify the wild tale you're telling. You've extrapolated all of it. You attempt to bludgeon with your ability to misunderstand or instantly forget everything that has been learend outside of your special cult insights.

That's the formula for preaching to the choir. You'll never reach a single non-believer by pretending to be puzzled at why your performance is unconvincing.

[Little Bill]

a sound linguistic explanation for the available evidence regarding theory that the Celts are descendents of the Lost Tribes.

No such animal, lingustically, culturally, or Anthropologically. The Bible is amazingly accurate in describing the Holy Land but gets kind of fuzzy when it wanders outside of that venue.

[VadeRetro]

A very well-reasoned post. One thing: if Indoeuropean and Semitic are related, it's in some kind of superfamily thing, separate branches on a bigger tree. As I said earlier, superfamily relationships (which are hard to pull out of the linguistic noise and not universally accepted) don't make family relationships go away.

Basically, the Hebrews wouldn't have learned/invented Celtic without having pre-existing non-Hebrew Celts around as some kind of dominant culture. Certainly they would not have learned or invented such in Assyrian or Egyptian captivity. They have to run into pre-existing Celtic speakers somewhere else later. However, the minute you do that, the need to make the Lost Tribes into the Celts goes away from the standpoint of accounting for the Celts if not the Lost Tribes.

[blam]

"The Celtic digs in Austria go back to 1200 BC or so. The Celtic digs in the British Isles go back to 2000 BC or so, first wave. "

The fabrics found with the Tarim Basin mummies (see Cherchen Man) 2,000BC, are identical to those found at Halstatt in style, material and production methods. These people are thought to have spoken Tocharian A & B. The language is extinct.

[Sabertooth]

The Bible is amazingly accurate in describing the Holy Land but gets kind of fuzzy when it wanders outside of that venue.

Since I'm not aware of a chapter and verse Biblical claim that the Lost Tribes became the Celts, I'm not sure the Good Book has wandered at all.

Like I said, though, I'm open-minded, so I'm in no rush to judgement. I'm curious to see whatever case is made.

Even if I decide I don't agree with it, it might lead to a worthwhile insight.

[LostTribe]

Thank You for that coherent post.  Your question about language is a valid one, and a fairly common one as well.  I believe the reason there is such widespread interest in the language aspect is that anthro and archeology courses place so much emphasis on it.  That of course has nothing to do with whether use of language is a valid tool for tracing peoples.  

Ask any real archeologist and he will tell you that language is the poorest way to attempt to determine who went where. Think about it, how many generations does it take immigrants to America to lose ALL linkeage with their ancestors language?  Linguistics is an academic nicety, but it is a TRAILING indicator, not a leading one.  If, after a migratory path has been established by other means the languge trail seems to also agree, that is just a pleasant afterthought.  Language is an understandable "tool" for linguists, but not of much value for real archeologists trying to uncover a real trail.

Having said that, there are a large number of links from ancient Hebrew to contemporary English. 

In the Capt book (#313 above) analyzing the 23,000 Assyrian Tablets in the British Museum, 12 pages in Chapter 11 are devoted to the "LANGUAGE LINK".  Most of those pages are filled solid with charts comparing the Hebrew and English words.  It is most impressive, but I'm not going to try to retype those charts here nor violate copyright by scanning them.  But I do think you would find that chapter very impressive if not overwhelming, and probably even convincing.  

But here is a narrative excerpt from the final paragraph of that chapter:

It was in God's great plan that Israel was to lose the knowledge of their origin. Yet this could not have taken place had Israel retained their language. "For with foreign lips and another tongue will he speak to this people." (Isa. 28:11)  Therefore, their Hebrew language had to be replaced with other tongues. But according to the findings of modern ethnologists there is not that great difference between the Hebrew and the Saxon tongue as is generally supposed.......

Hope this is of some help.

-LT

[Sabertooth]

Basically, the Hebrews wouldn't have learned/invented Celtic without having pre-existing non-Hebrew Celts around as some kind of dominant culture. Certainly they would not have learned or invented such in Assyrian or Egyptian captivity. They have to run into pre-existing Celtic speakers somewhere else later. However, the minute you do that, the need to make the Lost Tribes into the Celts goes away from the standpoint of accounting for the Celts if not the Lost Tribes.

Yeah, I haven't found that questions of "Who are the Celts if not the Lost Tribes? or "Who are the Lost Tribes if not the Celts?" compel me to any particular conclusion. They're interesting questions, but they don't make a case.

[freedumb2003]

Lately I have been lurking at the DU site and I guarantee I have seen nothing in terms of the scholarly and intelligent discourse of the type underway in this thread. What is really cool is that this is the norm for FR!

Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread -- Reading all 300+ posts has been tough going bit intellectually rewarding!

[PaulKersey]

I keep waiting for you to ANSWER WilliamTerills simple questions.  He asks:

1) What people would you pick for the descendents of the Northern Kingdom?

2) do you believe, this to say, accept as gospel, the prophesies of God in the Old Testament have come to pass and will continue to come to pass?

3) ........................I'm reminded of Hosea 1:10,11:

10 Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God.

11 Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land: for great shall be the day of Jezreel.
 

...and add my question:

Do you always only TALK TALK TALK but never listen???  I'll bet you are hell of a lot of fun to be around.

[Little Bill]

If you look at the geography included in the Bible, you cover an area from central Iraq, vaguely, to Gaza and the Nile. A large portion of the place names in the Bible have been located.

I can't think of another area outside of this triangle that is mentioned in the Old Testiment until after Cyrus. If there was a wandering off oth the Ten Tribes, it would seem to me that there would be a tradition, some where.

The wandering refers to the events happening off of the central stage in Israel.