Murdock goes on to work Abraham into this concept.
Another inhabitant of the crossroads of Sumeria was purported to be the biblical “patriarch” Abraham, whose story in fact reflects the merger of the Aryan/Egyptian cultures. [1, p. 384]
So, first Murdock comes up with a way of pretending that Sumeria was Aryan, then she uses this to show that Abraham is a symbol of Aryan-Egyptian cultural merger. This is not just conjecture, it is conjecture stacked on top of conjecture. Even then, Murdock is pretty unclear on what she means by any of this, but no matter what interpretation I can come up with, there's still quite the striking lack of evidence.
As demonstrated, the Abraham myth is paralleled in India, such that the “Ur of the Chaldees” apparently represents not the Sumerian city but an “Ur of the Culdees” in India, and the story of Abraham’s migration to Harran reflects the movement of an Aryan Brahmanical tribe into the Levant. [1, p. 384]
I have previously dealt with this particular claim, which is much weaker than Murdock's reference to it here implies.
The Abraham myth evidently represents the fanatic patriarchal followers of Brahma leaving India during a war over gender brought about by the change of the equinoctial ages, i.e., that from Taurus to Aries. [1, p. 384]
Is there any evidence for such a war? If there is evidence of such a migration out of India due to such a war at the time specified, where can we find it? How did the change of the equinoctial ages trigger this war? Where Murdock previously referred to it, no credible evidence was presented, only conjecture.
This Brahmanic tribe ostensibly migrated from the Indian region of Oudh (Judea), possibly from the village of Maturea, westward through Persia, ending up in Goshenz, “the house of the sun,” i.e., Heliopolis in Egypt, where it established a place named Maturea/Mathura. As the tribe migrated from India, it named various landmarks wherever it settled by the same or similar name as those of its homeland. The Abramites or Brahmans later moved back into Canaan from Egypt to create their own nation, dividing the land and extant peoples into the 12 zodiacal sections under “Jacob,” or Seth the Supplanter, and his “sons,” who were in reality tribal gods.[1, p. 384]
Where is the evidence for this movement out of Oudh? One reason India is very useful for this kind of unbridled speculation where names look like names elsewhere is the sheer size of India - there is a huge lot of towns and villages, many of which have names in multiple languages; historical regions overlap each other and have multitudes of names as well, thus making the likelihood of finding similar names elsewhere almost certain. The name of "Mathura" in Egypt seems to be more recent - al-Matariyyah seems to be a name that was given after Roman times. Arabic etymological dictionaries are few and far between, so I have no handy way of verifying this, however.
This kind of argument is particularly shoddy, as it can be used to prop up any claim - again, the Birthday Paradox explains why it's likely to find similar names of towns in distant lands even though they share no language.
Among numerous other etymological examples to support this migration theory, many of which have already been provided, Higgins points out that Hebrews are called “Yehudi” and that the Sanskrit word “Yuddha” means warrior, which the Yehudi certainly professed to be in their sacred texts. In addition, the father of Krishna was Yadu/Yuda/Yudi, or Judi, and the word “Shaitan”—“adversary,” whence comes “Satan”—is the same in Hebrew and Sanskrit. Higgins further states that the cradle of Buddhist and Jainist faith was in the Indian town of Jessulmer, evidently the same as Jerusalem, which, as we have seen, is also found in Egypt. [1, p. 385]
However, in the Hebrew language, Judah clearly is from a root meaning 'praise', whereas in Sanskrit the root means 'fight'. Also, Judah was only one of the Israelite tribes. I do not find anything along the lines of Satan for such a meaning in Sanskrit. Some reasonable transliteration, or the actual Sanskrit form would be helpful in verifying that I am right about this, however.
I am forced to conclude this Jessulmer is the same as Jaisalmer, founded in 1156. CE.[2, p. 406] That does pose quite the problem for the claim that Jessulmer is the cradle of Buddhism and Jainism, and it also undermines pretty strongly the idea that Jerusalem is named for it.
As for the assertion "Jerusalem, which, ... is also found in Egypt", let us review Murdock's claim:
As for the assertion "Jerusalem, which, ... is also found in Egypt", let us review Murdock's claim:
Jerusalem, the Holy City
The word “Jerusalem” simply means “City of Peace,” and it is evident that the city in Israel was named after the holy city of peace in the Egyptian and Babylon sacred texts. As Graham says:
The word Salem is not Hebrew in origin. In a Babylonian poem of 1600 B.C. we find a city called Salem, home of a might hero Daniel on whose exploits the scriptural Daniel is based.dccxlix
I have left in the references to sources here - notice how no reference to any evidence regarding the Egyptian claim can be found? Other problems in this particular passage will be dealt with in an upcoming post about chapter 15.
Jerusalem in the Egyptian mythos is “Arru-Salaam,” or Salam, Shiloam, Siloam. Arru is the garden or fields where the wheat or barley is sown and harvested, the Elysian fields, where Osiris, the sun, takes his rest. It was said that in order to “reap” the Egyptian paradise or Arru-Salaam, one’s “sowing” had to be in proportion to the reward; hence, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” Arru-Salaam is the celestial Holy City to which the “angels” ascend and descend the zodiacal ladder of Set/Jacob. The Holy City has no single location on Earth but appears first in the heavens and afterwards is constructed around the globe, being “the Eternal City, the City of the Blessed, the Holy City, the City of the Great King, the Heavenly City, the Eternal City that was the model of Memphis and Annu, Thebes and Abydos, Eridu and Babylon, Jerusalem, Rome, and other sacred Cities of the world.”dccl [1, p. 259]
This is followed by a bunch of assertions, occasionally backed up by Jackson or Higgins, that Egypt and India were the same culture. The lack of evidence backing it up is well obscured by the amount of times the same mantra is repeated throughout this chapter. Murdock goes on to make quite the statement regarding the Rosetta stone:
The meanings of the mysterious Egyptian hieroglyphics were purportedly lost and only rediscovered with the unearthing of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon’s troops and his linguist, Champollion. However, Higgins averred that the Rosetta Stone is a fake. If this assertion is true, and it certainly could be, considering that fakery and forgery have been all too common, it would indicate that the meanings had never been lost and that the stone was made by members of the brotherhood, which had maintained the ancient knowledge. We may speculate that in releasing this hidden information these individuals either were interested in the glory of its discovery or wished for the hieroglyphics to become known,“rediscovery,” of course, that eventually led to the exposure of the Egyptian pre-Christian mythos and ritual echoed in the New Testament.[1, p. 384]
I do not think I need to comment the level of delusion this hints at. After this, Murdock goes on to debate the druids.In the 19th century, some scholars - Higgins among them - wanted to show that the early settlers of Britain were Buddhist missionaries.
The debate as to the origins of western culture does not end with Egypt and India but extends to the mysterious Druidic brotherhood, composed of ancient priests of the sun and masons who inhabited the British Isles. Like many others, A. Churchward averred that the Druids were an “exodus of Solar Cult people from Egypt.” As Pike also says: The first Druids were the true children of the Magi, and their initiation came from Egypt and Chaldea, that is to say, from the pure sources of the primitive Kabalah. They adored the Trinity under the names of Isis or Hesus, the Supreme Harmony; of Belen or Bel, which in Assyrian means Lord, a name corresponding to that of Adonai . . . The Druids, in fact, shared the same ancient “Chaldee” culture with the Egyptians, Indians and Phoenicians, including the proto-Hebraic sacred language. We have seen many demonstrations of the linguistical connection in cultures from Egypt to India, but the correspondence is also found in Britain. For instance, in Hebrew “Brith” means not only “covenant” but evidently also “holy land,” the same as the Sanskrit “Bharata,” meaning “pure or holy land,” which in turn is related to the “Britain” of the Druids. [1, p. 386]
Bharata is a cognate to English 'bear' (the synonym of 'carry', that is), with a secondary meaning of 'maintain'. Brith does not mean 'holy land' in Hebrew, although it appears in collocations with eretz - land -, to mark 'the land of the covenant'. Britain comes from a Proto-Celtic word kwriteni - we know this since likely cognates in Q-Celtic languages have a k there, i.e. Old Irish Cruthne. Both the Welsh cognate prydyn and Old Irish cruthne refer to the picts. Linking Britain to Hebrew 'brith' is a favorite fallacy of the British Israelites. Again, very short words and bad linguistics cause unscholarly conclusions. The idea that the Celtic Druids "had" proto-Hebrew is weird and based on very shoddy linguistics, although indeed the Phoenician traders with whom we know they interacted spoke a language closely related to Hebrew.
Pike further reveals the difficulty of disentangling the influences on the British Isles:
The Druidical ceremonies undoubtedly came from India; and the Druids were originally Buddhists. The word Druidh, like the word Magi, signifies wise or learned men; and they were at once philosophers, magistrates, and divines. There was a surprising uniformity in the Temples, Priests, doctrines and worship of the Persian Magi and British Druids. The Gods of Britain are the same as the Cabiri of Samothrace. Osiris and Isis appeared in their Mysteries, under the names of Hu and Ceridwen. . .[1, p. 386]
This similarity can be accounted for by assuming that both are branches of Indo-European religion, the same religion from which the Brahmanical religion developed. Religion naturally changes over time, by external influences as well as internal ones. There is no need to posit any particularly weird hypotheses to explain this - what Murdock essentially is giving great support to here without realizing it, is the idea that Indo-European cultures derive from an Indo-European culture with a number of external influences.
And Hislop says:
Some have imagined that the Druidical worship was first introduced by the Phoenicians, who, centuries before the Christian era, traded to the tin-mines of Cornwall. But the unequivocal traces of that worship are found in regions of the British islands where the Phoenicians never penetrated . . .
[1, p. 386]
Are Celts who have adopted religious trappings from Phoenician traders incapable of disseminating it further by themselves? This ascribes a very passive role to the Celtic peoples, which I guess fits with 19th century British views of imperial subjects.
Throwing yet another side into the debate, some authors, such as Conor McDari in Irish Wisdom: Preserved in Bible and Pyramids, have attempted to demonstrate that Western and Near Eastern culture emanated out of the British Isles, specifically Ireland, instead of the other way around. McDari’s hypothesis recognizes that “the pyramids and the Bible, when properly deciphered, reveal that the oldest and truest religion is sun worship.”mxliv [1, p. 386]
Similar contentions are made by any number of nationalist crackpots. Almost every nation has its pseudo-scholars whose sole desire it is to demonstrate that European culture or even global culture emanated out of their own native lands. Finland had Ior Bock, Turkey had the sun language hypothesis, the British isles have Conor McDari, the Greek have a number of them as do the Indians. Less extreme fabrications - in that global/western cultural origins are not posited, but in that a significant load of local history is invented from scratch can also be found among scholars from minority background. My own ethnicity of Swedish-speaking Finns have our very own crackpot along these lines, who interprets every archaeological find and toponym she can work into her thesis as evidence that the speakers of Swedish settled Finland before the Finnish-speakers. References to such pseudoscholars are not convincing.
As a final comment on this paragraph, it is a fact that sun worship goes back very far in human history. McDari's hypothesis recognizing such a claim, however, does not per se make his wider hypothesis true.
The chapter goes on with even wilder conjectures.
[1] D.M. Murdock, The Christ Conspiracy, 1999, Adventures Unlimited.
[2] (Balfour, Edward (1885). The cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia:. Original from Oxford University: B. Quaritch. p. 406.) Credit for finding this source goes to Wikipedia.
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