brain sizes: Einstein's and women's
lojbab at lojban.org
Tue Sep 3 22:39:12 EST 2002
"John Knight" <jwknight at polbox.com> wrote:
>Even Mordecai's genealogy may have been a reference to ancestors
> rather than immediate relatives, because when immediate relatives are
> described, the Holy Bible usually specifies "begat".
They used "begat" when they were talking about begetting, i.e. parents
producing kids. When identifying a person by genealogy, they didn't
use "begat", because th Hebrew didn't use a word meaning "begat".
>> The first flaw with this belief is linguistic -- if the intent had
>> been to say that he was of the tribe of Cush, his name would have been
>> given as "Jehu'di the son of Nethani'ah, the son of Shelemi'ah,
>> a Cushite" instead of "son of Cushi" (Compare with "Mor'decai,
>> the son of Ja'ir, the son of Shim'e-i, the son of Kish, a Benjamite");
>Or, it could have been just like saying "he was a grandson of Pushkin who was the son of niggers".
>The words "Cushi", "Cushites", and "Ethiopian (-s)" are all patronymics from Cush.
So. Cush the Benjaminite seems to not fit your fairy tale.
Individuals, as opposed to tribes, were not necessarily named based on
ancestry, and names were reused, as they still are.
>Note from the "(-s)" that "Cushi" is also the plural of "Ethiopian".
>Either "the niggers" or "niggers" would be just as correct as saying either "the Cushi" or "Cushi".
No it wouldn't have been, in part because at the time the Bible was
written, no one considered there to be a "black" race.
>> The second is scriptural -- Cushi is mentioned elsewhere in the
>> Zephaniah 1:1 The word of the LORD which came unto Zephani'ah the
>> son of Cushi, the son of Gedali'ah, the son of Amari'ah, the
>> son of Hizki'ah
>If you trace this particular Cushi's genealogy back in the Holy Bible, you will find that he was born 18 generations after Jacob, by which time there would have been hundreds of thousands or even millions of Israelites.
But there weren't, because people did not reproduce like rabbits in
>So if this is the correct "Cushi",
No reason to believe that any two references to a person were the same
person unless there is an explicit match in the genealogies, which is
why genealogies were used to identify people.
>But then why would one obscure Israelite born more than 18 generations
> after Jacob, who was one of perhaps millions of Israelites, have been
> given the "honor" of having his descendants referred to as "jews"?
Because the word translated as Jews, does not mean "descendant of
Jehudi", but rather "descendant of Judah".
>It would mean that "jews" were only one out of every million
> Israelites, which makes "jews" an even smaller percentage of Judaea
> than the already small percentage they are believed to have been.
They and the Levites and the Benjaminites were ALL that were in Judea
after the return from captivity, as described in Ezra.
>> Note that Cush is not Cushi.
>Note that Cushi is patronymic from Cush:
When used for a tribe, patronymic definition is sufficient.
Individuals were given names for whatever reasons their parents chose,
as they still are.
>> The Seventh Psalm was written "concerning Cush the Benjamite".
>> Nor is there any way John can have made this mistake honestly. Cushi
>> is great grandfather of someone mentioned in Jerimiah -- long, long
>> after any children of Ham would have died of old age.
>Except that he was a descendant of the race called Cushi, and not the great- grandson of a person named Cushi.
You have no idea why he was called "Cushi". The Bible does not give
the reason. We KNOW that the Bible used patronyms for tribes. We
know that patronymic forms do not explain given names. Thus your
statement is pulled out of a strange orifice, and has no basis in
More information about the Neur-sci