The Christ Conspiracy, chapter 17: The Meaning of Revelation pt 2

The more general discussion Murdock presents regarding Revelation is very unclear. She identifies a lot of motifs in the book - there is no discussion of the use of these motifs. Murdock generally seems content to identify motifs and stop there - throughout the book, there is very little in ways of analysis of the actual use of motifs. Let us compare this with the following excerpt from E.P. Sanders' Paul and Palestinian Judaism:

The case is not quite so clear when one considers the comparison of individual motifs. The notion that a religion is the sum of its parts is not a ridiculous one, and therefore the comparison of numerous parts is not so obviously inadequate as the comparison of reduced essences. Nevertheless, it is inadequate for the true comparison of religions, for two reasons. In the first place, it is usually the motifs of one of the religions which are compared with elements in the second religion in order to identify their origin. The two religions are not treated in the same way. The history of the comparison of Paul and Judaism shows this clearly. One starts with Pauline motifs and looks for their origins in Judaism, but the various elements of Judaism are not taken up for their own sake. It follows that there is no true comparison of the two religions. In the second place, motif research often overlooks the context and significance of a given motif in one (or sometimes both) of the religions. It is conceivable for precisely the same motif to appear in two different religions but to have a different significance. One may consider the analogy of two buildings. Bricks which are identical in shape, colour and weight could well be used to construct two different buildings which are totally unlike each other. One could knock down a building and build another, unlike the first, from the same bricks. In motif research, one must consider function and context before coming to an overall conclusion as to similarity or dissimilarity. [3, p. 13]

Sanders' piece of reasoning here is something Murdock would do well to consider. However, that would require her to acknowledge that the lack of any method (and consequently, lack of discussion of advantages and disadvantages of the method) to her research is a problem. That lack of method is painfully visible in this chapter, where assertions are made without hesitation, and few or no attempts to establish any facts are made, and any attempt whatsoever to create a coherent picture of the assertions is curiously absent. As an instance of such assertions we have the following:

In fact, Revelation records the mythos of the precession of the equinoxes, or the

“Great Year,” and was apparently originally written to usher in the Age of Aries,

which began around 4,400 years ago.[1, p. 267]

This is a fairly remarkable claim - one that really requires significantly more elaboration and, indeed, evidence. Nothing in the chapter connects the various motifs to particular things relevant to that particular time. An astronomical investigation regarding what particular things happened in the skies at about the time the Age of Aries was entered, in combination with star-related imagery from Revelation could demontstrate a connection. No such comparison is made, she just points to star-related imagery again and again, asserting that these somehow demonstrate her point. She never demonstrates that these things are connected in the way she asserts they are.

There further is a bunch of rather weird claims that have little or nothing to do with astrotheology, yet contain shoddy sources and claims that would require quite a bit more in ways of support:

As noted concerning the same cherubim in Ezekiel, these four animals represent

the four cardinal points of the zodiac. The throne is the sun, and the multitudinous

“eyes front and behind” are the infinite stars. The three pairs of wings of each beast

represent the three signs of each of the four zodiacal quadrants. These “living

creatures” were also found in Egypt. As Walker says, “Spirits of the four points of the

year were sometimes called Sons of Horus.” [1, p. 268]

It is worth noting that Walker indeed says this, but does not provide any further references, thus - as so frustratingly often - making it difficult to verify. Further, she is willing to ascribe fairly modern ideas to the authors of Revelation, courtesy of John G. Jackson:

Jackson relates that the four beasts also represent Noah and his three sons, i.e., the various races. In this scenario, the lion is the lion of Judah, or Shem, “father” of the Semites; the bull symbolizes the Hamites of Egypt; the eagle is Japheth, progenitor of the Aryans; and the man is Noah, who is of the “Adamic” or “Atlantean” race.[1, p. 268]

The kind of obsession with an Atlantean race that she here infers that the author of Revelation shares with various modern theosophists and other people seems quite badly justified. Even though she does provide a source - Jackson - from what I know of this author I have a hard time imagining there to be anything of any value to it. Why would the four beasts represent these groups? What makes this statement in any way meaningful or verifiable? Do any early Christian writers understand it in such a manner?

One particular bit in Revelation that clearly has astrological origins (but the use of which, as a motif, is not necessarily entirely pro-astrology in Revelation*) is discussed, in its own subchapter:

The “woman clothed with the sun” is both the moon, which reflects or “wears” the sun, and the constellation of the Virgin, who has the moon under her feet and the stars above her head.  [...] At the Temple of Isis at Denderah was an image of a woman “seated at the center of a blazing sun crowned by twelve stars and with her feet resting on the moon. The woman was the symbol of Mother Nature; the sun represented creative strength; the twelve stars stood for the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the Moon signified Matter and its domination by Spirit.” Walker relates the eastern custom regarding the woman:  According to Tantric tradition, the Goddess concealed herself behind the sun’s brightness; it was “the mayik vesture of Her who is clothed with the sun.” This image reappeared in the New Testament as “the woman clothed with the sun.” (Revelation 12:1).[1, p. 269-270]

The temple of Isis at Denderah makes a new appearance in Suns of God, but the same mistaken claim appears in this volume as well:

As to the antiquity of this motif, it should be noted that the temple at Denderah has been averred to be possibly 10,000 years old, based on the astrology it depicts.[1, p. 270]

No serious archaeologists claim that the Denderah temple is 10,000 years old. There is pretty clear evidence that it stems from the time of Cleopatra. I have previously discussed this particular topic.[4 also provides a more direct source regarding Denderah.]

The much ballyhooed number, 666, mentioned in Revelation as the “mark of the

Beast,” was in fact held sacred in the goddess-worshipping cultures as representative

of female genitalia.[1, p. 271]

Which cultures exactly? Murdock does not tell. Nor give any kind of source.

 When the Goddess was vilified by the patriarchy, she became the

“Beast” and her sacred number the “mark.” The number 666 was not held to be evil

or a bad omen in Judaism, as is evidenced by the biblical story of Solomon

possessing 666 talents of gold. In fact, it is a sacred number. [1, p. 271]

I have not, in years of studying Judaism, come across any statement to the effect that 666 is particularly sacred in Judaism.[3 provides one particular statement to the effect that it is not.] Certainly, there is a significant amount of numerology in kabbalah, and 666 appearing somewhere in there is entirely possible. If such a number can be found, showing that it indeed is an old tradition would be pretty important in order to make that particular claim - providing a medieval kabbalistic work does not suffice. The further analysis of the number is fraught with unbridled speculation taken as fact:

As Higgins says:

The Hexad or number six is considered by the Pythagoreans a perfect and sacred number; among many other reasons, because it divides the universe into equal parts. It is called Venus or the mother. It is also perfect, because it is the only number under X, ten, which is whole and equal in its parts. In Hebrew Vau is six. Is vau mother Eva or Eve?

In addition, Anderson points out that “666” also corresponds to the sun rising at 6:00 a.m., reaching its height six hours later, and setting at 6:00 p.m. [1, p. 271]

Of course, the earliest manuscript we have has the number 616 there. The early manuscript evidence is rather firmly divided on those two. Any theory that purports to explain it should also explain this discrepancy. Higgins' speculation is as usual fairly amusing. Six apparently divides the universe into equal parts. Tell me which number does not! Where is six called 'the mother' or Venus?

Higgins' understanding of the notion of perfect numbers is finally lacking - perfect numbers were among the first classifications of numbers in number theory after the rather fundamental classes of odds, evens, primes and composite numbers. A perfect number is a composite number whose positive divisors (excluding itself) add up to itself - 6 is perfect because it is divisible by 3,2 and 1, which added together equal 6. 10 is not, since 5, 2 and 1 add up to 8. The next perfect number is 28 - divisible by 1,2,4,7,14, which as we can easily see add up to 28. (1+2+4=7, 7+7 = 14, 14 + 14 = 28). I guess 'whole and equal in its parts' may signify something like that, but it's far from clear. Since Higgins clearly was no mathematician, it is possible he was just imperfectly parroting a definition he had heard and misunderstood. Alternatively, he was using some obsolete way of talking about arithmetics, but I can find no other source using similar wording to describe perfect numbers. Ultimately, of course, he is correct in saying that it is a perfect number - but even then that says nothing about 666 - which is not written as three sixes in neither Greek, Latin or Hebrew. (χξς in Greek, DCLXVI in Latin, ת״רסו or somesuch in Hebrew.) Parsing the number does seem easily to lead into pareidolia and too many assumptions. Numerology makes it way too easy to find false positives.

As for Eva/Eve, one would think the other letters in the name would also have contributed to the gematria - the sum of her Hebrew name's letters, after all, is 21 - thus connecting it to 666 also seems weak.

Its true meaning, of course, has been lost to the masses, as they have been told that astrology is “evil,” a deliberate device to prevent them from studying it, because, with such astrological knowledge, they would understand clues such as in Revelation (22:16), where the true nature of Jesus is clearly identified when he is called the “morning star,” i.e., the sun, which is the real “revelation.” [1, p. 272]

I suggest Murdock study the concept of metaphor, which she claims the Bible is full of. I would suggest reading the above as a metaphor - i.e. conveying something that is not its literal meaning. The entire book of Revelation is full of such metaphor, and I am surprised to see Murdock repeatedly call for a literal reading of it in the name of reading it metaphorically.

[1] D.M. Murdock, The Christ Conspiracy

[2] E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism

[3] http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm

[4] http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/07/decoding-the-ancient-egyptians-stone-sky-map.html

The Christ Conspiracy: Chapter 15, pt 1

Chapter 15, The Patriarchs and Saints are the Gods of Other Cultures, at its core presents a thesis that probably is shocking to true believers, but nothing new to those who are somewhat well-read on these topics. Nevertheless, to some extent it also exaggerates the thesis, making statements that do exceed what can be known as though these statements were fact. As usual, it also intersperses a fair share of speculation mixed with tendentiously presented facts.

The most fascinatingly weird claim she makes is present in the segment on Noah. It is well known that the Noah myth derives from older myths, but Murdock is not content with that:

Xisuthros or Ziusudra was considered the "10th king," while Noah was the "10th patriarch." Noah's "history" can also be found in India, where there is a "tomb of Nuh" near the river Gagra in the distrct of Oude or Oudh, which evidently is related to Judea and Judah. The "ark-preserved" Indian Noah was also called "Menu." Noah is also called "Nnu"[SIC] and "Naue," as in "Joshua, son of Nun/Jesus son of Naue," meaning not only fish but also water, as in the waters of heaven. Furthermore, the word Noah, or Noé, is the same as the Greek νους, which means "mind," as in "noetics," as does the word Menu or Menes, as in "mental." In Hebrew, the word for "ark" is THB, as in Thebes, such that the Ark of Noah is equivalent to the Thebes of Menes, the legendary first king of the Egyptians, from whose "history" the biblical account also borrowed.[1, p. 238]

This is so full of mistakes, that I figure a list will help keep track of the debunking.

• Xisuthros/Ziusudra being the tenth king.
• Oude/Oudh having anything to do with Judea (see 'short words' further down).
• No source provided regarding the tomb of Nuh, no attempt to establish its age - is it potentially more recent than the arrival of Islam in India?
• Naue or Nun signifying "water" - which particular language? We cannot all be superlinguists who can identify languages on sight just based on one monosyllabic word! Since no language is mentioned, it is also quite difficult to verify the relevance of the claim.
• The far-fetched stretch of etymologies Noah → νους → mentes → Menes, Tevah → Thebes
• She clearly mentions the (significantly more recent form) "Noé" to make the apparent similarity to "Noetics" (also a much more recent word) greater. Noé is a much more recent rendering of נוח, the comparison should be nous or noos to Noach, not noetics to Noé.

As it happens, the Hebrew word for 'ark' is TBH, תבה, rather than THB. Of course, Thebes is not T+H+B either, it's Θῆβαι - the "TH" bit is a single sound that in some languages - particularly English - is written using a sequence of letters (here, the fact that letters and sounds are separate things is relevant). It being represented as a sequence TH does not signify it having any actual resemblance or relation to the actual sequence T+H. (In fact, though, Hebrew ת was probably sometimes pronounced a lot like English th is, which does not support my case particularly much.)  What we reach here, however, is a phenomenon Mark Newbrook calls 'very short words'[2]. The designation refers to the phenomenon where the shorter the words that we go looking for, the greater the chance that we find similar stems embedded in words in other languages. Thebes/Θῆβαι and Tevah share rather little - just one single syllable. Further, we have several forms for Thebes: Thebes, Θῆβαι, Ta-Opet (Classical Egyptian), Ta-Pe (Demotic), wꜣs.t (Classical Egyptian, not strictly related to the other words but signifying the same town). There is thus lots of space to come up with potential cognates for biblical names, and little material to falsify such claims with (consider Ta-Opet vs. Tabitha or Tappuah, Ta-Pe vs. Tappuah, Topheth or Tobiah, etc. What makes Tevah more favorable for linking to any of these than the above, equally spurious suggestions?).

What takes this a step beyond Newbrook's label for similar bogus cognates is that there is not even any similarity between the meanings of תבה and Ta-Opet. There is nothing that makes the connection apparent. Murdock could keep going through towns and kings of antiquity until she found anything to connect Noah to, there is nothing that per se forces Thebes to be the preferred alternative - and this opens up a huge space of unfalsifiable claims. Let us be generous and say there are only twenty relevant names in the Bible (considering how insignificant some of the characters she's pointing to are, the number could easily be argued to be significantly larger). Let's also be generous and say there are only two hundred kings in antiquity. This gives us a whopping four thousand potential pairings - analogously to the birthday paradox, it is more than likely that quite a few of them are similar.

A significant problem here is also the number of languages she has to use for this reasoning to make sense - does anyone really believe that there is a quadri- or pentalingual pun involved? For real?

Keep in mind, as well, the number of other flood-heroes: Utnapishtim, Δευκαλίων, Noah, ... would we not expect these names to have some kind of similar connections? We would also probably expect more clearly explicit such connections.

Obviously, then, Noah's famous "ark," which misguided souls have sought upon the earth, is a motif found in other myths. As Doane relates, "The image of Osiris of Egypt was by the priests shut up in a sacred ark on the 17th of Athyr (Nov. 13th), the very day and month on which Noah is said to have entered his ark." Noah is, in fact, another solar myth, and the ark represents the sun entering into the "moon-ark," the Egyptian "argha," which is the crescent or arc-shaped lunette or lower quarter of the moon. This "argha of Noah" is the same as Jason's "Argonaut" and "arghanatha" in Sanskrit. Noah's ark and its eight "sailors" are equivalent to the heavens, earth and the seven "planets," i.e., those represented by the days of the week. As to the "real" Noah's ark, it should be noted that it was a custom, in Scotland for one, to create stone "ships" on mounts in emulation of the mythos, such that any number of these "arks" may be found on Earth.[1, p. 238]

Indeed, the ark did not exist, yet Murdock manages to turn even such an almost trivially true claim into pseudoscience. There are two separate words natha in Sanskrit (assuming nāthá, नाथ, is the word Murdock intends, since she does not follow any scholarly transliteration we cannot know!), one signifying 'lord, master' and a whole complex of similar meanings, the other signifying a refuge or resort. The first one is in the masculine gender, the other neuter. The greek -naut is instead cognate with Greek ναῦς, Latin navis and Sanskrit नौ, नाव (nau, nava), all these signifying ships. Again, it would have been helpful had Murdock provided some kind of scholarly transliteration of arghanata. A list of the problems may help in keeping track of the problems:

• argha noah is irrelevant, as ark only appears in the tradition of biblical texts about 700 years after they were originally composed, when Jerome translated them into Latin, until then you had had tevah and  the greek kibotos in the main versions of the text. 
• argha noah is a theosophic 19th century invention with no evidence in support of it. It is basically just as made up as the religions it is made up to subvert.
• argha noah is clearly made up to correspond to the English phrase 'ark of Noah' (compare the phrase in some other languages - Noas ark, Nooan arkki, kovček Noya, something like kidobani nois (or maybe nois kidobani) in Georgian,  whereas the phrase in Biblical Hebrew would've been Tevat Noah, and in Biblical Greek kibotos tou Noe or something in the vicinity of that (I do not know Biblical Greek well enough to make any promises). Had these fanciful authors spoken Georgian, their "Egyptian" concept would go by a name like kidobanois or somesuch. (The nature, btw, of this 'egyptian' concept differs significantly from one author to another - one author says it is a yearly festival, another says it's a monthly lunar occurrence, and so on. See, for instance, Jordan Maxwell's The Naked Truth, where he attributes argha noah to something entirely different - this suggesting to me that there is no validity to the concept whatsoever.) 

Murdock goes on and makes improbably claims about the meaning of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japhet:

The sons of Noah, of course, are also not historical, as Shem "was actually a title of Egyptian priests of Ra." The three sons of Noah, in fact, represents the three divisions of the heavens into 120° each. As characters in the celestial mythos, Noah corresponds to the sun and Shem to the moon, appropriate since the Semitic Jews were moon-worshippers.[1, p. 239]

Claiming that a given set of three persons corresponds to a division of something into three does require some kind of supporting evidence. What about these three make this correspondence obvious? Why does one of the three - a whopping 120 degrees of the heaven - also correspond to the moon? This claim again comes from Hazelrigg the astrologer, rather than from any actual scholarly sources.

Also, duly note that the word 'Semite' and related forms as a designation for the Semitic peoples is a term that only goes back to the 18th century. The Biblical Jews did not describe themselves as Semites, and such a connection between moon-worship, Shem-as-the-moon and Semites cannot have occurred to the authors of the biblical narratives.

Abraham also seems to have been related to the Persian evil god, Ahriman, whose name was originally Abriman. Furthermore, Graham states, "The Babylonians also had their Abraham, only they spelt it Abarama. He was a farmer and mythological contemporary with Abraham."[1, p. 240]

Please provide a source for Ahriman's name originally being Abriman? The accepted etymology among most scholars has it stemming from Angra Maynu. As for the quality of Graham's work, I will actually refer to a source I would usually avoid using, but whose summary of this book seems fairly legit, viz tektonics.org's review[3] .

Furthermore, Abram's "Ur of the Chaldees" apparently does not originally refer to the Ur in Mesopotamia and to the Middle Eastern Chaldean culture but to an earlier rendition in India, where Higgins, for one, found the proto-Hebraic Chaldee language. [1, p. 240]

Murdock's obsession with moving the Semitic family of languages to India grows absurd at times. Her reliance on Higgins' bumbling amateur linguistics is laughable. However, one step further, this is worse than pure conjecture. It is counterfactual conjecture at best. At the very least, a claim such as this requires significant amounts of supporting data. Murdock provides but one datapoint for that, and that datapoint - Higgins' finding the Chaldee language in India - is nothing but wrong. Finally, Chaldee is not proto-Hebraic. Chaldee is closer to proto-Semitic than Hebrew is (time-wise), but they are in different branches of Semitic.

In fact, the Greek name for the constellation of Bootes, or Adam, is Ιοσεφ or Joseph.[1, p. 250]

The source given for the claim that Bootes is Adam and is called Iosef in Greek is Karl Anderson (p. 126, Astrology in the Old Testament). Anderson fails to provide any source for this. Modern sources such as tufts.perseus.edu makes it possible to search a very huge corpus of ancient Greek texts for words such as Ιοσεφ. It turns out not a single instance of the word is in a context where the surface meaning of the text has anything to do with any asterism, nor is there any large number of instances of it in the first place. A similar claim is made in a quoted portion from Hazelrigg - another 19th century astrologer who, as I keep emphasizing, did not bother with providing sources.

This kind of fabricated linguistics being included in the work of a person that regularly labels herself a linguist is saddening. The chapter itself could have been good - had she decided to go no further than the idea that most Old Testament characters have no historical background. But as it stands, she included way too much in ways of 19th century theosophy,

[1] D.M. Murdock, The Christ Conspiracy, 1999
[2] Mark Newbrook, Strange Linguistics, 2012. There is an entire chapter devoted to the phenomenon. The opening pages of the chapter describe the relevant problems with this kind of approach to evidence.
[3] http://www.tektonics.org/gk/grahamlloyd01.html

Quality of Sources: Godfrey Higgins, pt 3

Higgins, pt 3: Anacalypsis: Preface, Preliminary Observations

Higgins lived during a pre-neogrammarian age, and hence at the time, comparative linguistics had not reached the point where it could be called a science. 

For a very long time, and during the writing of the greater part of my work, I abstained from the practice of many etymologists, of exchanging one letter for another, that is, the letter of one organ for another of the same organ; such, for instance, as Pada for Vada, or Beda for Veda, in order that I might not give an opportunity to captious objectors to say of me, as they have said of others, that by this means I could make out what I pleased. From a thorough conviction that this has operated as a very great obstacle to the discovery of truth, I have used it rather more freely in the latter part of the work, but by no means so much as the cause of truth required of me. The practice of confining the use of a language while in its infancy to the strict rules to which it became tied when in its maturity, is perfectly absurd, and can only tend to the secreting of truth. The practice of indiscriminately changing ad libitum a letter of one organ for another of the same organ, under the sanction of a grammatical rule, - for instance, that B and V are permutable, cannot be justified. It cannot, however, be denied that they are often so changed; but every case must stand upon its own merits. [1, preface]

At the time of his writing, historical linguistics did indeed operate a bit along these lines - although some basic idea of regular sound change had occurred to the scholars of the time. It was this kind of completely ad hoc approach to historical linguistics that lead the neo-grammarians to come up with less ad hoc reasoning.

The idea that languages go from infancy to maturity is not generally taken seriously by anyone these days. Certainly, languages change over time, and assuming that the same rules apply now as a thousand years ago in some language would be misguided.

In a somewhat better speculation on how language may have come about, he expounds:

4. After he [early mankind] had arrived at the art of speaking with a tolerable degree of ease and fluency, without being conscious that he was reasoning about it, he would probably begin to turn his thoughts to a mode of recording or perpetuating some few of the observations which he would make on surrounding objects, for the want of which he would find himself put to inconvenience. This I think was the origin of Arithmetic. He would probably very early make an attempt to count a few of the things around him, which interested him the most, perhaps his children; and his ten fingers would be his first reckoners; and thus by them he would be led to the decimal instead of the more useful octagonal calculation which he might have adopted; that is, stopping at 8 instead of 10. ... There is nothing natural in the decimal arithmetic; it is all artificial, and must have arisen from the number of the fingers; which, indeed, supply an easy solution to the whole enigma. Man would begin by taking a few little stones, at first in number five, the number of fingers on one hand. This would produce the first idea of numbers. After a little time he would increase them to ten. ... To these heaps or parcels of stones, and operations by means of them, he would give names; and I suppose that he called each of the stones a calculus, and the operation a calculation. [1, p. 1]

Indeed, it is generally agreed by all linguists today that the preponderance of the decimal system is closely related to our ten fingers - however, it is also noted that there is a preponderance of vigesimal systems (base-20), with sub-bases of 5 or 10. It is unclear whether Higgins genuinely meant that the early humans called these stones (or pebbles or fingers or whatever) and the act of counting calculation and calculus, or whether he is just giving a name to these things so as to be able to talk of them later on.

5. The ancient Etruscans have been allowed by most writers on the anitquities of nations, to have been among the oldest civilized people of whom we have any information. In my Essay on the Celtic Druids, I have shewn that their language, or that of the Latins, which was in fact their language in a later time, was the same as the Sanscrit of India. This I have proved not merely by the uncertain mode of shewing that their words are similar, but by the construction of the language. The absolute identity of the modes of comparison of the adjective, and of the verb impersonal, which in my proof I have made use of, cannot have been the effect of accident.  [1, p. 2]

As it turns out, precious little is known of the Etruscan language. One entire book is extant - liber linteus zagrabiensis. Scholars have not been able to read it - despite knowing the alphabet. If it were (closely) related to Latin, it would undoubtedly be possible to read by recourse to Proto-Indo-European or somesuch. Robert Ellis' The Armenian Origin of the Etruscans listed about 200 words - other sources give about the same amount even 150 years later. Some of these words have been obtained through Greek and Latin sources. It is generally agreed that it is not an Indo-European language [2].

Its grammar is rather different from Indo-European languages of the time as well [3]. It shares the rather notable feature of suffixaufnahme with a bunch of other languages, including Old Georgian, Hurrian, Urartian and Lycian - of which only Lycian is Indo-European. 

Suffixaufnahme, for those who are interested, is a generalized congruence phenomenon. Normally, a noun (and maybe its adjectives and other determiners) are marked for a case - e.g. Latin meo antiquo malleo - my(dative, masculine) ancient(dative, masculine) hammer(dative, masculine). In languages with suffixaufnahme, such case markings can be stacked, obtaining things like - and this is fake Latin - artificiso antiquo malleo. "the builder(masc,genitive)(masc, dative) ancient(masc,dative) hammer(masc,dative)".

Considering how successful Indo-Europeanists have been with both Hittite and Tocharian, basically showing what regular sound changes and other changes needed to take place to derive those languages, the failure to do so with Etruscan - for which evidence has been available for a much longer time - indicates something about the problem.

Considering how ignorant Higgins has proven to be already about linguistics, I will not ascribe any credibility whatsoever to his claim to have shown Etruscan to be identical to Sanskrit; he seems unaware it is not even related to Latin.

7. A very careful inquiry was made by Dr. Parsons some years ago into the arithmetical systems of the different nations of America, which in these matters might be said to be yet in a state of infancy, and a result was found which confirms my theory in a very remarkable manner. It appears, from his information, that they must either have brought the system with them when they arrived in America from the Old World, or have been led to adopt it by the same natural impulse and process which I have pointed out. [1, p. 2]

Today, we know there are numeral systems of varying complexity in the Americas, with some especially simple ones in Brazil, for instance the Pirãha language. Other bases than 10 do occur - Higgins does point out 5, but he fails to point out the vigesimal systems. [4]

8. The ten fingers with one nation must have operated the same as with the other. They all, acccording to their several languages, give names to each unit, from one to ten, which is their determinate number, and proceed to add an unit to the ten, thus ten one, ten two, then three, &c., till they amount to two tens, to which sum they give a peculiar name, and so on to three tens, four tens and till it comes to ten times ten, or to any number of tens. This is also practised among the Malays, and indeed all over the East: but to this among the Americans there is one curious exception, and that is, the practice of the Caribbeans.

Exceptions also occur in Papua New Guinea, where various strange systems obtain in languages, even ones where it does not make great sense to talk of bases. Bases of size 4,5,6,8,10, 12, 20 (subbases 5 or 10), 24 (subbase 6), 32, 60 (subbase 10) and 80 (subbases 20, 10 and 5) are attested. Some both in the Americas and the Old World, some exclusively in the Old World, etc.

They make their determinate period at five, and add one to the name of each of these fives, till they complete ten, and they then add two fives, which bring them to twenty, beyond which they do not go. They have no words to express ten or twenty, but a periphrasis is made use of. From this account of Dr. Parsons', it seems pretty clear that these Americans cannot have brought their figure and system of notation with them from the Old World, but must have invented them; because if they had brought it, they would have all brought the decimal system, and some of them would not have stopped at the quinquennial, as it appears the Caribbees did. If they had come away after the invention of letters, they would have brought letters with them: if after the invention of figures, but before letters, they would all have had the decimal notation.

Although he is probably somewhat right about counting not having developed very far at the time the Americas first were settled, the logic here still is terrible. Certainly there could have been tribes with more advanced counting systems in parts of Eurasia at the time the first tribes had passed into America without the numbers being taken along. Ultimately, he presents a theory of convergent evolution for the numeral systems. Now, it seems today this evolution is more one of assimilation into the predominant systems of the big languages of the world - small languages in Latin America adopt it from Spanish and Portuguese, Aborigines from English, Africans from English, French and Arabic, and so on. Comrie even apparently noted that unusual numeral bases are going extinct faster than the languages that have them!

From that point on, the numbered paragraphs go on for a few pages elaborating on things about the development of astrological things, such as the zodiac and lunar mansions and so on. In paragraph 16 he claims that "the science of the Babylonians and Egyptians was but the débris of former systems, lost at that time by them, as it is known to have been in later times lost by the Hindoos" [1, p. 4]. I think this seems to be a strawman argument - he assumes they were more advanced than they were, their achievements were entirely achievable with the tools we know them to have used, and so on. At the very least in order to make the claim that they had lost some knowledge, he should provide some actual argument that shows they knew of things or had calculated things they should not be capable of with their tools.

22. A traveller of the ancients, of the name of Jambulus, who visited Palibothra, and who resided seven years in one of the oriental islands, supposed to be Sumatra, states, that thei nhabitants of it had an alphabet consisting of twenty-eight letters, divided into seven classes, each of four letters. There were seven original characters which, after undergoing four different variations each, constituted these seven classes. I think it is very difficult not to believe that the origin of the Chinese Lunar Zodiac and of these twenty-eight letters was the same, namely, the supposed length of the Lunar revolution. The island of Sumatra was, for many reasons, probably peopled from China.

Took me a while to find anything on Jambulus, since his name apparently normally is written Iambulos. His works are considered absurd and mere fiction [5].

I guess the reason for the probable Chinese origin of the Sumatran population has to do with both the Chinese and the Sumatrans being Asian? Now, the source he quotes to support this entire thing - Asiatick Researches vol X, says:

The two alphabets of the Sumatrans consist only, one of twenty-three, and the other of nineteen letters: but it is probably that there were two sorts of them formerly, as in India, and which were originally the same. One was used by the more civilized and learned classes, and at court, the other was current among the lower classes, whose poor and barren dialect had fewer sounds to express. 

Speculation instead of fact. What makes this even less easy to figure out is that on Sumatra, over 50 languages are spoken, none of which goes by the name Sumatran. At this point, it is basically unfalsifiable - sure, some group might very well entirely by accident have had 28 letters. Until I know which one, it is impossible to check the reason - maybe they just so happened to distinguish 28 sounds.

One interesting thing regarding "fewer sounds" and so on, is how until fairly recently - and even to this day in some pseudo-scientific circles - Sanskritists and Hindu nationalists were so certain about the perfection of the Sanskrit language, that they denied the existence of speech sounds that were not distinguished in Sanskrit. Thus, if a language derived from Sanskrit had increased the amount of sounds it distinguished, this was denied - the new sounds were really just versions of the same sound, since it was inconceivable that sounds unavailable in Sanskrit even existed. Therefore, many of the orthographies of the languages of India mark fewer distinctions than the spoken languages do, in this charade to make Sanskrit seem superior.

Generally, though, languages' alphabets do not tend to have a specific number of letters due to doctrine or dogma, but due to either tradition (which changes over time, of course), or due to functional concerns: these are the sound-units we need to distinguish, let us make up letters to distinguish them.

29. About the time this was going on [dividing of time into smaller units, development of astrology], it would be found that the Moon made thirteen lunations in a year, of twenty-eight days each, instead of twelve only of thirty: from this they would get their Lunar year much nearer the truth than their Solar one. They would have thirteen months of four weeks each. They would also soon discover that the planetary bodies were seven; and after they had become versed in the science of astrology, they allotted one to each of the days of the week; a practice which we know prevailed over the whole of the Old World.

Except we know it did not. Weeks of every conceivable length are attested, and the spread of seven-day weeks is ultimately rather recent - starting out at about 2000 years ago.

After arguing that the wide spread of "X" as a symbol for ten - and ad hoc explanations as to why it is absent as such in some places (not even honestly mentioning multiple places where X was not used to denote ten, which is the majority of places). This goes on to

32. General Vallancey observes, That from the X all nations began a new reckoning, because it is the number of fingers on both hands, which were the original instruments of numbering: hence יד (id) iod in Hebrew means both the hand and the number ten. [1, p. 7]

Except this is not the case! יד adds up to 14, although י itself does signify ten, and has for its name iod. However, the name of the number is עֶשֶׂר , 'eser.

He further claims to have proven that the alphabet of the Hebrews, Samaritans, Phœnicians, Greeks and so on all had sixteen letters. This sounds like so much bull, but the actual argument is in The Celtic Druids and I will not read that book just yet.

84. There have been authors who have wasted their time in inquiries into the modei n which the inventor of the alphabet proceeded to divide the letters into dentals, labials and palatines. There surely never was any such proceeding. The invention was the effect of unforeseen circumstance - what we call accident; and when I consider the proofs, so numerous and clear, of the existence of the oldest people of whom we have any records, the Indian Buddhists in Ireland, and that in that country their oldest alphabet has the names of trees, I cannot be shaken in my opinion that the trees first gave names to letters, and that the theory I have pointed out is the most probable. [1, p. 15]

The bolded part is not bolded in the book. I think the bolded part needs no actual further debunking, it quite sufficiently debunks itself. There are no such records. We have no earlier attestation of the Ogham alphabet than a few hundred years CE. There is some internal evidence that requires the Ogham alphabet to be maybe a couple hundred years older than the earliest attestation.

Generally, Higgins seldom provides sources for his claims. His writing is dense, boring and so full of misconceived notions that pointing out any starting point where he first went wrong is near impossible. It seems the lack of quality research of his time, a wild imagination, and even further lack of any kind of requisite education on how to understand linguistic evidence conspired to create some very wild claims. I have only reached paragraph #100 at this point, and I know there's a few between #84 and #100 I should explain why they are wrong; I have omitted quite a few earlier ones as well, since they repeat previous assertions or hinge upon ones I have noted already. The times he gives sources, the reference is often not to a particular page in a book, but to the book in its entirety. 

This must be among the most frustrating stuff I have ever read.

[1] Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol 1 1.

[2] http://multitree.org/codes/ett.html

[3] http://paleoglot.blogspot.fi/2007/01/lingua-files.html#etruscan

[4] http://wals.info/chapter/131

[5] http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=ACL3129.0002.001, more precisely http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/ACL3129.0002.001/560?rgn=full+text;view=image. What is known of his works to this day can be found in English translation here.