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Alexander Militarev
THE JEWISH CONUNDRUM

IN WORLD HISTORY
Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History
THE JEWISH
CONUNDRUM
IN WORLD
HISTORY
Alexander
M i l i t a re v
Boston
2010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Militarev, A. IU.
The Jewish conundrum in world history / Alexander Militarev.
p. cm. — (Reference library of jewish intellectual history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-934843-43-7 (hardback)
1. Jews — Civilization. I. Title.
DS112.M465 2010
909’.04924 — dc22
2010022359
Copyright © 2010 Academic Studies Press

All rights reserved
Book design by Ivan Grave
“Parting of the Red Sea”. Haggadah, 14th century.

Reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Director,
The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester.
Published by Academic Studies Press in 2010

28 Montfern Avenue
Brighton, MA 02135, USA
press@academicstudiespress.com
www.academicstudiespress.com
To my most beloved:
daughter Asya,
granddaughter Sonya
and son Mishen’ka —
lest they lose touch with their roots
v
Alexander Mil itarev. THE JEW ISH CONUNDRUM IN WORLD HISTORY
vi
CONTENTS
List of illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Foreword and Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Crisis of Modern Jewry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Being Jewish: Religion or Nationality? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Jewish Identity in Russia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Jews and the Russian Intelligentsia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
“Universal Values” and Their Biblical Roots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Anthropocentrism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
“Adamism” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Monotheism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Common Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Life After Death and the Biblical “Agnosticism” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Foundation of Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
The Principle of Personal Responsibility and Freedom of Choice . . 67
“Feel of History” and the Concept of Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Canon as the Foundation for “Cultural Construction” . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Cognition as a Value and Claims to “Theo-Parity” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Antinomy as a Tool of Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
The Categories of the Abstract and Absolute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
How Deep are the Biblical Roots and How Old are the Jews? . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
vii
Contents
The Unique Nature of the Jewish Phenomenon in History ............. 96

Why the Jews? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Persecution of the Jews and Anti-Semitism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Tradition of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
The Factor of Genetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
The Jewry as a Civilization and the Debatable Issue
of Jewish Uniqueness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
The Diaspora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
The Myth of the Chosen People and Its Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
The Myth of the Eternal Exile and the Promised Land . . . . . . . . . . 135
Common Semitic and Afrasian Cultural Legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
The Random Factor: Etymopoesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
A Chain of Random Events or a Pattern of Historical Behavior? . . . . . . . . . 154
The Jews and the Strategy of the Species’ Survival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
A Chance Congruence of Factors or a Design of Mother Nature? . . . . . . . . 171
The Meaning of the Holocaust? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Anti-Semitism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Appendix 1: Etymology of Selected Hebrew Terms Related to

Intellectual/Spiritual Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Appendix 2: The Significance of Etymology for the Interpretation of
Ancient Writings: From the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament . . . 212
Appendix 3: The Genealogical Tree of World Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Conventional Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Appendix 4: The Genealogical Tree of Afrasian (Afroasiatic) Languages . . . 262
Transcription Signs and Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Bibliographic Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Genealogical Tree of World Languages

compiled by the author basing on research and evaluation
as of the early 3rd millennium
by the Sergei Starostin Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics
The Genealogical Tree of Afrasian (Afroasiatic) Languages

compiled by Alexander Militarev mainly basing on Starostin’s method
in lexicostatistics and glottochronology
ix
x
Foreword and Acknowledgements
FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is an updated and extended version of my previous book in

Russian on the same subject, entitled “Воплощенный миф (“Еврейская
идея” в цивилизации)” (“A Myth Come True (“The Jewish Idea” in Civili-
zation)”), The Natalis Press, Moscow, 2003.
A reader not entirely unfamiliar to scientific pursuits and research
will instantly realize after opening this book at any page that he/she is
not really looking at a scientific work. That will become obvious due to
one unmistakable sign: an inadequately limited number of references
to specialized works. A scientific work pales into insignificance in their
absence. Yet, any single individual will be hard put, when faced with the
prospect of selecting, reading, evaluating and drawing upon heaps of
specialized literature on all aspects of the entire range of problems debated
herein — this is precisely why I opted for the genre of essay.
Incompetence is still, however, quite out of place in a lighter genre
as well. One alternative remained for me to resort to: harass specialists.
Fortunately, liberal arts answering the exactitude of world class requirements
have still survived in Russia — it is in Moscow where the main bulk of this
book was composed — and there are still a few around to harass and then
some. Friendly contacts with certain Israeli scientists have come in handy,
too. I would like to express my heart-felt gratitude to all of my colleagues,
friends and relations who for a dozen years have had to put up with reading
draft versions and the definitive one, supplied me with materials and
recommended what to read next, participated in debates at workshops and
over a bottle of vodka: corrected, added, argued, swore at me, answered my
questions on Egyptian, Assyrian, Indian, Chinese, Israeli, Russian studies,
Jewish history, philosophy, Biblical studies, Hellenism, early Christianity,
xi
Alexander Mil itarev
medieval studies, archeology, sociology, demographics, psychology,

genetics.1 Let me emphasize: on a score of issues — both general and
specific — there was plenty of debating and tearing one another to pieces
going on. Consequently, the entire extent of risk and all responsibility
for whether I construed all that I had heard correctly and in more general
terms — for everything written on these pages — is solely mine. Let me
specifically single out here: there are people very dear to me, who reject
outright both my approach to the subject, my hypotheses and conclusions,
and a stylistic “encasement” of this work: I approach their arguments with
a full measure of respect in the light of my own doubts on the many issues
I will refer to repeatedly.
I am also grateful to the United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York
who supported in 2000–2001 the project in Jewish identity and civilization
I headed, with the grant that made the publication of the Russian version of
this book possible as well as setting up fruitful workshops and discussions
bearing on these subjects both in Moscow and Jerusalem. Those aspects
of this book that refer to Biblical etymologies, Semitic and Afrasian
(Afroasiatic) studies, history and prehistory of the ancient Near East were
elaborated upon by me within the frames of several projects: Evolution of
Human Languages, supported by the Santa Fe Institute; The Tower of Babel,
supported by the Russian Jewish Congress, the Ariel Group and personally
Dr. Evgueny Satanovsky; Featuring early Neolithic man and society in the
Near East by the reconstructed common Afrasian lexicon after the Afrasian
database, supported by the Russian Foundation for Sciences; and Semitic
Etymological Dictionary, supported by the Russian Foundation for the
Humanities. I am much thankful to all of the supporters.
My gratitude also goes to those who helped me with the English
translation at various stages of the work on it: Anatoly Kovalev, Gordon
Sullivan, Sergei Gitman, Elena Yakovleva, Yakov Pechersky and, especially,
Roman Borukhov whose highest professionalism and unselfish assistance
made the preparation of this book for publication possible.
I am also much thankful for friendly attitude and long patience to the
team of Academic Studies Press: Igor and Kira Nemirovsky, Angela Levkina
(make-up and a lot of improvements in the book) and Sara Libby Robinson
for editing my text and having suggested to me the title of this book.
1 The list of them adduced in the Russian version of this book is so long that I have
opted not to reproduce it here.
xii
PREFACE
I am unaccustomed to composing essays like this one. I am, essentially,

an etymologist working in comparative linguistics, a field which, although
one of the humanities in its object, is closer in method to the hard sciences.
General speculation and passionate polemic in the service of a favored
Weltanschauung are rarely called for in papers devoted to individual
etymologies or proto-language reconstruction. Such papers owe less to
inspired thoughts or elegant phrasing than to thorough — and to the non-
specialist, thoroughly dull — argumentation sustained by hundreds of
dictionaries and grammars regularly scanned and native speakers of various
languages interviewed.
Further, this field is much more specialized than “pure” humanities.
Fundamental philosophical ideas and even famous tractates are not always
authored by professional philosophers. Gifted artists occasionally proffer
deep thoughts on art, and no one is surprised when a serious novelist
produces striking literary criticism, or a scholar of general interests, some
pointed insight into a particular historical controversy. But an amateur, or
a historian, or a hermeneutist of a scriptural text, or even a linguist with
a specialty other than historical and comparative linguistics coming up with
an etymology1 or proto-language reconstruction would be inevitably wide of
the mark: even his or her considerations about these matters have no more
1 A wide-spread temptation of inventing — and even sometimes publishing! — false

etymologies or what is called Volksetymologie, or popular etymology (a pheno-
menon interesting in itself), is irresistible in many a naïve or otherwise prudent
and intelligent people; my teacher Prof. Igor Diakonoff called it “the Siren of
Semblance”. Even in linguistic works, including etymological dictionaries, what I
call “scholarly mythetymologies” are fairly current — and very tenaciuos.
xiii
scientific value than a literary critic’s discourse on nuclear physics. Besides,

the commitment required to contribute to such a discipline would seem to
be total. No doubt it is with good reason that etymologists so rarely appear
outside the dense thickets and demanding wilds of their own specialized
journals and conference proceedings.
Why then, you might ask, has this particular etymologist chosen
to venture into the field of essay writing, despite a general uneasiness,
and a specific anxiety about the effect that years of chasing down elusive
proto-language roots have no doubt wrought upon his own literary
abilities? And why, more particularly, has he chosen to venture into
the “Jewish issue?” The genre of essay has been a constrained choice.
A serious comprehensive up-to-date research taking into account all
relevant literature on the Jewish or any other subject of similar breadth
can be handled only by a large team of specialists in various fields
of knowledge, while essay, is “a short literary composition on a single
subject, usually presenting the personal view of the author”2 or, according
to Aldous Huxley, “is a literary device for saying almost everything
about almost anything, usually on a certain topic … the essay is a short
piece, and it is therefore impossible to give all things full play within the
limits of a single essay.”
According to various definitions, this genre implies conciseness
and may be fraught with: insufficient argumentation, overlooking of
alternative interpretations and numerous nuances, quite important
in certain cases; oversimplification of the most intricate problems;
subjectivism, anachronism, and the neglect of historical facts; outdated
commonplace notions picked up not from specialized scientific, but from
popular scientific literature, vulgar in the eyes of professionals, or from
encyclopedia never abreast of the newest scholarly achievements or,
in recent years, from the Internet sources, arguably quite irresponsible;
and even factual errors. In other words, blameworthy of all things that
incite extreme irritation on the part of specialists which I fully share when
running into something like this involving my professional field. This
field, etymology and comparative study of Semitic and Afroasiatic (or
Semito-Hamitic, or Afrasian — the latter name will be used in this book)
languages, the one where I feel more or less confident, will also show up
in the present composition representing a hard scholarly ingredient in this
partly indiscriminate semi-amateurish salad.
2 According to The American Heritage College Dictionary.
xiv
Preface
Any of the above peccancies (plus the fact that this essay is not a short
piece, violating the above definitions) can be detected in the present
composition by a qualified reader in spite of the author’s dozen year
long efforts to get rid of them by consulting specialists in various fields,
discussions at workshops and conferences, endless corrections, additions,
and withdrawals. Nevertheless, after perennial musing and many a Hamletian
doubt, I ventured upon publishing this composition first in Russian and now,
its updated version, somewhat adapted for an English-speaking audience.
What has been underscored earlier does not at all mean that I am not
responsible for what I have written. An essay happens to be no more than
genre-forced “watered down” and somewhat less accountable in its claims
and conclusions narrative mode (too ticklish and risqué-laden is the Jewish
subject — both scientifically, politically and religiously) as compared with
a scholarly paper or monograph; however, underlying and paving the way
to it is a kind of scientific research. In this book, just as in my professional
works I allow myself to wander from the viewpoints and authorities-laid-
down generally accepted opinions. I am convinced that any serious specialist
is duty-bound to treat everything done before him/her in his research field,
what his colleagues are busy doing concurrently with him, and — sure
enough — the universally recognized authorities, with attention and due
respect. However, all of this holds true for the intermediate, quest stages of
research work. At the end of the day, what is of paramount importance for
him ought to be not the fact of universal recognition or authoritativeness of
this or that tenet per se — including those laid down by him earlier (even
if — all the more so if — this tenet has become universally accepted, and
he/she enjoys the status of authority), but only and solely the force of
argumentation supporting the above: the extent of a problem’s elaboration,
intelligibility and logical lucidity of exposition, and the correspondence of
conclusions to facts.
That is precisely why any non-trivial idea that is one’s own, any self-
induced conclusion laying claims to novelty ought to be subject to one’s
own severe critical and skeptical test. The extent of doubting the correctness
of one’s stance may vary — including assessing the hypothesis put forward
as curious, though unlikely. All the doubts in one’s correctness referred to
above and the counter-arguments against one’s attempts at proving the case
as right — one would wish from my point of view to explicitly lay down
and present for the audience’s judgment whether professional or student or
the “general readership” kind. Their concealment is both unethical and
impractical: well, one can “snow-job” or pull the wool over the eyes of
xv
the public — moreover — the scientific colleagues’ eyes for a certain while,
but then somebody will come following in your own steps, somebody who
will inevitably know more and think faster than you do: this “somebody”
will go carefully into the gist of the matter — and bust! goes your authority
like an air balloon, and your children or grandchildren will be ashamed of
their ancestor.
I set about writing this book taking precisely all of these considerations
into account — and plead in advance for the readers’ forgiveness for
constantly showing my doubts and vacillations displayed in importunate
refrains, such as “on the one hand — on the other hand,” “it cannot be ruled
out that,” “one may suggest,” and so on and so forth.
As for the question “Why Jewish issue?” an intense preoccupation
with the fact that I am Jewish is not, I must say at the outset, the answer.
In my pantheon of self-identities, “Jewishness” does not occupy the first
rung. I am far from indifferent to being Jewish (work on the present book
helped me to realize why), but more important to me have always been
both personal identity, and a sense of membership in a greater mankind.
Like my parents and their parents — like, in fact, most of my Jewish friends
and colleagues — I am as much a cosmopolite as a Jew. Besides, I identify
myself as a member of the liberal Russian intelligentsia, generally speaking,
a designation that at times in my life has meant more to me than that of Jew.
(I find the voguish disdain for the intelligentsia in current-day Russia nearly
as repulsive as anti-Semitism and xenophobia in general.)
I feel a sense of kinship to any Jew belonging to the Russian intelligentsia
wherever he lives in Moscow, Jerusalem or San Francisco. And a Russian
of the same clan, with whom I share the Russian language, Russian culture
(with such a conspicuous 20th century Jewish influx), humanistic worldview
and common life of our and a few past generations, is more comprehensible
and closer to me than, say, a Jewish American professor, though I have quite
a few colleagues and pals in the American academia. At the same time, it is
much more difficult for me to feel something greater than a common human
bond towards a Chabadnik in Moscow, a Jewish broker in Manhattan, or
a Jewish Moroccan butcher in Jerusalem, suggesting that, in everyday life,
in “real time,” my choice of friends and companions is more linguistically,
culturally, and socially than ethnically bounded.
History and politics are a different matter. I feel a special association
with the Jewish history,3 both legendary and well-attested — from Jacob
3 Naturally, as nearly every Russian Jew, I am not indifferent to Russian history either.
xvi
Preface
the patriarch to Janusz Korczak, from the first pogrom in Alexandria to

Treblinka, from the Babylonian captivity to the ongoing war on Gaza.
I think that even were I not a Jew, my professional and intellectual
interests might well compel me to look into the questions dealt with in this
essay. After all, it is not clanship that underlies my interest and research
in the ethno-linguistic history of Afrasians, Semites, Sumerians, Berbers,
Libyan Garamants, or aborigines of the Canary Islands.
Several close friends and colleagues, Jews and non-Jews, whose
judgment on both life and scholarly matters is important for me, warned me
upon reading this text that it may be perceived as a partisan claim: “Jews are
an exclusive people endowed with some outstanding merits or privileges in
the face of other nations.” Indeed, someone may draw such a conclusion,
which is, to put it straight, completely alien to me. What I really mean is
quite a different thing. Let me try and explain this concisely.
It seems to me quite obvious that for over two millennia the Jews have
played (and continue to play, though not without lulls) an outstanding
role — in disproportion to their relatively small number — in the shaping of
the “Western” civilization — the most universal, progressive and advanced
one, the leader in the humankind for the time being. By doing this, the Jews
have made a great contribution to the elaboration of one of the possible
strategies of the homo sapiens sapiens species’ survival and its consolidation
on the planet.
Can we be sure that this strategy — and not other ones, more isolationist,
resource-saving, perhaps less conflictive — is the most efficient or infallible?
Of course not. Can one measure — by what scale? — the advantages and
achievements gained by this civilization and by this strategy (from which
only part of humankind has benefited, at that) versus all the calamities
accompanying what is called Progress: large-scale wars, genocides,
ecological damages already inflicted and yet pending, the ruthless
deprivation from so many people of consolatory hopes for the immortality
of the soul, life after death, and “salvation”? What measurement should
be used to portion out this balance of gains and losses with debits and
credits on the accounts of other civilizations and local cultures — statistics?
ethics? Whose ethics should it be? “Western”? Chinese? Hindu? Commonly
consented? I do not have definite answers to these questions, and I am
suspicious about those who do.
However, the lot that befell me is to live in this chronotopos, in this time
and place, in this civilization, and to grow up on its ethics and aesthetics.
What I mean is of course the so-called European, Western, humanistic
xvii
civilization, not the Soviet one: Russian and World culture and literature,
on which my cultural milieu was nourished usually taught good; as for
the Soviet ideology, we repelled it or gradually wrung it out of ourselves.
I cannot imagine my life in any other system of coordinates — either in
modern cultural zones principally different from mine or anywhere in
ancient or medieval epochs (though I would of course grasp at a chance of
scanning all these zones in a time machine). That is how I see life there:4
lack of freedom (relative, relative, I’ve been told!) and minimal privacy;
maximal dependence on the powers-that-be ever meddling into your life;
barrack collectivism; mandatory-for-all ideology-mythology-religion. I’ve
had enough of it under communists for nearly half a century, and it made
me feel like spewing. Though my acquaintance with the Western World for
the past twenty five years has brought me no small disillusion (while there
are many more repulsive things for me in today’s Russia, to say nothing of
the former Soviet Union), I stand fast on a slippery ground of “Western”
civilization with its humane values — at least those proclaimed and verbally
accepted.
At this juncture I would like to explain my position, which lays claim
neither to originality, nor any depth with respect to humanism, morals,
religion, predilection of the human race and similar “lofty matters” —
a position that might enable the reader to better comprehend the main ethos
and the predominant goal of this book.
With respect to religion I am an agnostic rather than anything else. The
verb “to believe” suggests a certainty, an assurance. As to certainty over the
fact of God’s existence or life after death — alas, it is not there in my case,
although I grant you that much: it is definitely a more exuberant existence
with faith and belief. Yet, I am prepared to “accept” and believe not in
any God at all, or — rather — not in just any ideation of him. The thing is,
working at a given passage in the Hebrew Bible I make myself, at the first
stage, ignore both conscious and involuntary theological associations, the
tenets of exegetic traditions and biblical criticism I am familiar with, as
well as neglect the hazards of my anachronistic modernization of ancient
thought or “reinventing the wheel”. Trying to look at the text with a “virgin”
eye of an unbiased uncommitted present-day cultured reader I gather there
are two opposite if interacting tendencies in the ideation of God suggesting
either two main latently polemizing “schools of thought”, two worldviews
4 With an exception of such rare “Eastern democracies” as India, of course, but its
life-style and dominant religion and philosophy are too alien to me.
xviii
Preface
“counterpointed” — deliberately rather than haphazardly — in the canon

(which seems to me more likely) or a certain ambivalence in the Bible
authors’ and redactors’ minds.
One of these tendencies appears to me to contain the component of an
Oriental despot of sorts — vain, totally authoritarian, demanding idolatry,
verbose adulation and the obeisance of slaves, and, at the same time, self-
sufficient, standing aloof of human perception of good and evil and not
caring at all about man’s understanding of his actions. It is this image of God
that, as I see it, dominates in the three “Abrahamic” religions developed,
with all their differences, from the Hebrew Bible — Judaism, Christianity
and Islam — in their orthodox, mainstream versions at least. And it is this
image of God — rather than somewhat naive “scientific proof” of his non-
existence — that makes atheists of many a conscientious people, causes them
to reject such a God and his ways of creating and running the world with
its immeasurable suffering and evil. The other tendency more consonant
with modern humanistic worldview — which it spawned to a considerable
extent — is the image of the Creator as the personification of fatherly love,
mercy, compassion and understanding, who restricts his own omnipotence
by the ethical values he himself initiated (“… to keep the way of the Lord
by doing what is right and just” Gen 18:19). If one is to allow the existence
of such a God,5 then the Maker may have allowed the creation — and belief
in — this image of a super-boss as the only way to keep the human race
delivered from evil in its infancy. He may have done it then with a view to
watching humankind be progressively divorced from evil and increasing
its conscious attitudes along with acquiring maturity — not obeying the
decree of a high authority at all, but following its own free will — in full
awareness of what the world’s Creator wishes and expects of it.
Referring to humanism (an imprecise term suggesting just the homo
species, yet we will use it with a broader implication — with reference
to all of live nature) I invest it with the suggestion of the same basic
things — kindness, compassion, etc. I hope (only hope — knowledge is
inscrutable to me) that humankind has a simple enough pre-destination, at
the minimum — to render the world more humane, kinder, better suited for
the life of a human being and for other living beings, to alleviate suffering,
5 It is hardly worth my while to bother believing in a different one — it happens

to be worthier to accept and resign oneself to the hopelessness of the world
and individual human existence inexorably coming to an end with nihil, nada,
nothingness.
xix
to delay death and, last but not least, to grant everyone an opportunity
of benevolent creative activity.6 That is, as I see it, the nearest if not the
ultimate goal and all the rest — religion, culture, art, science, progress,
organization of the society are but means towards that end’s attainment.
Any of those means is honorable and noble inasmuch as it paves the way
for that declared goal. If it does not, but does not impede this progress,
I approach it neutrally — let it be. If, however, it is an impediment, my
attitude to it is downright bad and I wish it would go hang.
When any of the means in question replaces the goal, becoming an end
in itself, nothing good results. Religion becomes one continuous adulation
and ritual and/or an egotistic transport ensuring one’s own personal
“salvation,” nonchalant to the rest of the world in the best case scenario;
the stance of aggressive fanaticism in the worst. In art, in literature, the
didactic proclamation of any goals and their straight pursuance often
happens to be aesthetically vulgar, yet if the author of any work does not
set any humane goals at all (or the goals set are in-human) and they are not
expressed — with any degree of latency — a work like that is unpalatable
for me and in my observations does not leave an imprint in the culture for
long. A scholar swept up by research gusto and aplomb and not worrying
too much if the results of his work contribute to good or occasion harm
may — given a certain set of circumstances — morph into a monster
spawning golems. The organization of society, politics — is a particularly
fine matter, a cause replete with all manner of dangerous temptations and
risks — and very seldom successful. When it becomes an end in itself,
Bolsheviks emerge taking upon themselves the task of treating a gravely
diseased, yet still living patient, eventually resulting in his metamorphosis
into a corpse with its consequent galvanization and transformation into
a zombie.
Returning to the issue of identities, there are two marked positions in it.
The first position: for me, to belong to any outlined group of people
(ethnic, religious, social, family, etc.) or even to humankind means little or
nothing: I am responsible for my, and only my, actions. In other words, I do
not need to exist as a part of the whole either synchronically, in my current
life, or diachronically, in history.
6 At this last point I anticipate an obvious objection: the results of a creative activity
may be unpredictable and prove harmful. To that I can only answer: let us hope the
humanity would become mature enough to settle this problem as it copes with the
other ones.
xx
Preface
The second position: belonging to the Jews (Eskimos, Russian

intelligentsia, Buddhists, Hohenzollerns’ or a village blacksmith’s family,
all humankind) is meaningful for me; I feel inscribed in the history of
the group or several groups I belong to, and of mankind as a whole and
prepared to bear responsibility — nominal, of course — for this history,
sharing with my group(s) and even the whole humankind both our virtual
laurels and thorns, our merits and guilts.
What I would like to stress, is that in respect of the second position,
I am speaking neither of people over-preoccupied with their own or
others’ national or ethnic identification who seem hopelessly boring to me
(naturally, I make an exception for these feelings at the time of ethnic
persecutions or threats to national safety) nor aggressive nationalists who
are disgusting to me. I am speaking of those whose ethnicity or nationality
is part of their self-identity, but not an exclusive or dominant one. I agree
with the saying “When a person has nothing else to say about himself, he
yells: I am Jewish! (or: I am French!)” but with one important reservation:
there are extreme situations when this has to be pronounced. (“I am Jewish”
were the last words of Daniel Pearl murdered by Moslem fanatics; see
I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel
Pearl, ed. by Judea and Ruth Pearl. Woodstock, 2004.)
I respect the first position provided it is combined with personal ethics,
but the second position is becoming closer to me with the years: with it,
life is more interesting.
Closer and more interesting for me are people far from indifferent
to these matters: such as a German brought up on the national culture
but burdened with a heaviest guilt complex for his country’s Nazi past
even though his father and grandfather might not be personally involved
in the Nazi’s crimes; a true Russian patriot despising anti-Semites and
bitterly ashamed of the national disgrace — the penalty paid with Russian
youngsters’ and Chechen kids’ lives for ambitions, avarice and the mediocrity
of generals and politicos on both sides of the fence; an American justly
proud of his country’s achievements and democracy but actively opposed
to imperial self-assertion and arrogance periodically pervading her foreign
policy. And I feel deep respect for an Israeli who has gone through the recent
wars and is prepared to fight in the coming ones, but has not learned to
indiscriminately hate Arabs (polls suggest 20 percent of Muslims, Arabs and
even Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state — see Accepting Israel as
the Jewish State by Daniel Pipes in Jewish Voice, May 14, 2010, p. 21), calls
Palestinians “cousins” and forgets not that, however monstrous is Arabic
xxi
extremists’ terrorism (none the worse than any other one), Israel is no hosts
of angels without guilt in the present confrontation.7
If I choose the second position, it would be appropriate, before
speaking about the invaluable Jewish contribution to human culture and
of the Jewish uniqueness and its possible causes, to remind the reader and
myself of the most shameful episodes of Jewish history, of what I feel as
a historical disgrace of the Jews, of my ancestry, and, in a sense, of my own.
It will hardly be a discovery.
What I mean here are certain biblical passages repelling any
unprejudiced reader, such as an ideologically based — for the first time
in history! — genocide of the conquered Canaanite peoples, described in
the Book of Joshua; or an entranced enthusiasm with which the Book of
Isaiah poetizes holocaust by “the sword of the Lord” of Edom, offspring
of Esau, the “cousin” people of Jews (Isa 34:6); or a blood-thirsty call
to an ancient Polizei so realistically echoed in the latest Jewish history:
7 These are not imaginary types or the kind one only reads about. I have met some
people of this kind myself. Let me recount one of such encounters. I was in
Berlin early in the 90s and my German acquaintance introduced me to his friend,
a German already quite advanced in years, with a rough-hewn bloodshot face with
the looks of a classical “burger,” a habitué of Bavarian “suds parlors.” It was in
such a “suds parlor” that we were sitting and the “red face” asked me emphatically
all of a sudden: “Are you Jewish?” Being a Russian Jew used to this question often
followed by an aggressive behavior and given that telltale look of the interlocutor
I got a little tense inside. “I am. Why?” — “Your associations are all out on the
surface” — the “red face,” who turned out to be a sociology professor replied with
a smirk. “Want to hear a story?” — “Go ahead.” “My father was married to a Jewish
woman in his first wedlock, then they got divorced and he married my mother-to-
be. When the hunt for Jews and round-ups started, mother talked dad into hiding
his first wife in a cellar in our house in Berlin, where she was ensconced till the end
of the war. As a boy it was my duty to bring her food and take bedpans out for her
while she helped me with homework on school subjects and, being a well-educated
person, lectured me on infinite subjects. My father’s brother was a zealous nazi in
a high rank, a prosecutor or something. Somehow he was aware of our “lodger”
and kept kicking up rows with father whenever he came over, calling him now
an enemy of the nation, now an irresponsible moron risking the life of his family
for the sake of a Verfluchte Jude … Yet — incomprehensibly, he did not report her.
When the war came to an end and there was hunger, our “guest” came out of the
cellar and provided food for the entire family on the food stamps that she was
entitled to as the victim of Nazism. My parents have long been dead and she had
nobody in the world but me, so she lived under my roof till very old age. She was
another mom, a mother figure to me. So, relax, I could not possibly be an anti-
Semite even if I wished to.”
xxii
Preface
“O Daughter of Babylon … happy is he who … seizes your infants and dashes

them against the rocks” (Ps 137:8).8
No intricate theological justifications of these atrocities — Judaic,
Christian, Muslim — will convince me of the opposite. Arguments against
this are self-evident, well-known and uncontestable. If it is possible to
justify by the superior necessity (divine commandment, eventual benefit of
the chastised themselves, etc.) actions of this nature against one category —
I mean here not the criminals and villains that must be punished, but the
“infants” irreparably spoilt from the vantage point of an advocate of such
action by mere belonging (kindred, national, religious) to the chastised
object — then why would it be impossible to justify with respect to others?
If, for instance, an orthodox Jew that is denied any right to doubt a single
word in the Torah, justifies the massacre of the “incorrigible” infants
whose only blame is the fact of being born in Babylon wallowing in sin,
then what is the difference in principle between his views and the views
of an orthodox shahid who staunchly believes that the will of Allah is
in eradicating the unfaithful or an Inquisitor, confident that the fire of auto-
da-fe will deliver the sinner burnt at stake from eternal fire-to-be — or
a Nazi confident of the irreparable depravity of the entire “Jewish race”?
What I mean here is a Jewish active hand in the medieval and later
slave trade. Or the participation of the “New Christians,” los conversos,
the converted Jews, in the persecution of unconverted Jews in Spain of
the Inquisition epoch: I am referring neither to the wretched ones forced
into Christianity under the fear of death, exile or simply loss of a relative
wellbeing, nor to those whose change of faith was voluntary, disinterested
and sincere — anyone has the right to choose his own truth — but to
persecutors and torturers like Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, said to be
of Jewish descent.
What I mean is of course the notorious Jewish activity in the extremist
revolutionary movement in Russia, in the very Bolshevik upheaval,
and in the bloody Bacchanalia unleashed by the Cheka, Extraordinary
Commission, and the NKVD, People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs:
8 All quotations (and abbreviations of the individual books with the exception of Ge
for Genesis rendered below as Gen) from the Bible are after Zondervan The Holy
Bible, New International Version (NIV), copyright 2002 unless otherwise referred.
I have finally chosen this version of the Scripture accepted in the Western World, not
the Jewish one, because the present book is designed for any interested audience,
not specifically for the Jewish one — part of which is familiar with the Book in its
“Western” rather than traditional Jewish version and interpretation at that.
xxiii
the Jewish “quota” in these cannibalistic guilds was, as it would seem

characteristic for the involvement of Jews in any cause — good or
bad — disproportionately high.
It is also participation of Jews, or, one may say, Germans of Jewish
descent in Hitler’s military campaigns and even in the National-Socialist
Party, and not only as rank-and-file members.
One may object, of course, that such were the ancients mores and that
murdering all prisoners captured in a battle (not only men, but women,
elders and children, too) appears to have been a current practice everywhere
in the ancient Near East; that a total massacre of the local population
which allegedly accompanied the conquest of Canaan was more likely
the customary bragging of ancient warriors. That such little respected
professions as usury or the slave trade were often taken up by the Jews
because of the ban on more “decent” occupations, such as farming or
military service. That quite a few cases are known of the “New Christians”
having hidden their brethren faithful Jews from the inquisitors risking their
head not less than French, Ukrainian, or Polish Righteous among the Nations
who hid Jews from the Nazis. That Jews in Russia were active in the liberal,
social-democratic and constitutionalist movements as well while many of
them were thrust into the revolution’s embrace by the idiotic and suicidal
policy of the last czar of Russia and his governments. That many highly
cultured and educated Germans took the bait of the Nazi propaganda — and
for an army man, a disguised Jew, or a German with hidden Jewish roots,
what was the alternative to holding the line? A death camp?
However, at will, every wrong can be given explanation and every
recreancy, justification. But we have endeavored here to call disgrace, not
justifications, to account.
Returning to the modern “Western” civilization: two ancient peoples
stood at its cradle, Greeks and Jews, though, of course, they also had their
progenitors. Who of the two contributed more to molding its present aspect,
who has provided to a greater extent the direction for its further progress —
Jews or Greeks — is a debatable issue. Later, many nations became party to
its onward march, but it is these two that are responsible for the inchoate
model.
Where, to what destination, will this civilization’s locomotive deliver
the human race — to universal well-being, a symbiosis with all living
nature, dissemination throughout the Universe and creative comprehension
of itself and the world? — To self-destruction by way of a global war, mass
terrorism, overpopulation, famine or “greenhouse” effect?
xxiv
Preface
If the development follows the first route, it is a grand merci to everyone,

as they say, — Greeks and Jews among others. Victors need never explain.
What, however, if it does the second? Contemporary Greeks are “off the
hook”: one is hard put trying to hold them responsible for anything: they
have long moved out of the historical spot light, from the center stage to
the wings of historical life, the son is not responsible for the father. — Not
Jews, however: here they are, always “in the thick of it” in all kinds of
developments. Well, in a sense Jews are responsible for this civilization, for
its defeats and victories, for its future. Not just them alone, of course, but
that does not cancel out their responsibility.
Each individual must, nonetheless, have an entirely free and equally
respected choice — to lift the responsibility off of oneself or to shoulder
it. It is, probably, true of all human communities: committing no special
anti-human acts since the end of the Second World War, contemporary
German society could allow itself not to give a damn (many do just that)
about the uncomfortable guilt anxiety for the crimes committed not even
by their fathers, but grand- and great- grandfathers, but those who set
the tone there don’t do it for some reason and try to cure others of this
amnesia. As for the Jews, whenever I am reminded (or remind myself) of
the Holocaust and the Jewish ordeal in general (actually one always latently
remembers that and never quite forgets), I always feel like telling all this
“role in civilization, mission, predestination” — or whatever else you would
choose to call them go f… themselves! Quit, run away as an entire people,
get the hell out, quietly “dive in one’s backwater” and live one’s own life
avoiding involvement in anything, bothering nobody, saving nobody, out of
everybody’s way. May the world live pretty much as it pleases, down with
“tikkun olam” — setting the world straight! To live, that is, precisely the
way Zionists invoked and organized — or tried to — life in the Jewish state.
How I understand them in moments like this!
The problem is — alas! — that it does not work out this way — whether
we wish it or not, whether we embrace this historical destiny or it only
makes our blood boil. It did not work out throughout the Jewish history,
it does not happen now either — neither in the Diaspora, nor in Israel
where initially it seemed like it might work out. I am no prophet, neither
am I a futurologist, so I won’t stake my life on it, but I have in fact developed
some analytical thinking facilities in the over-thirty-year course of doing
research and they prompt to me ahoy, “that cat won’t jump” — shrink,
cowl up, “sit it out” … And even take some time out to “play it cool” as
an entire people for any length of time. No chance: they won’t let us. More
xxv
importantly: we won’t let ourselves. A historical awl in one virtual place.

One question remains unanswered: who would stab with it there and what
the heck for … ?
What was this text written for? What do I want to communicate in
writing it?
For one thing, I would like to attract attention to the exceptionality
of the Jewish phenomenon in human history once again and by doing so,
show that many extraordinary paradoxical attributes and manifestations
of this phenomenon are impossible to explain away through historical
fortuitousness or exogenous factors alone. Looming behind them and
showing occasionally through is an intrinsically indivisible process that is
bound to have a set of reasons apparent on a macro-historical level.
I, moreover, venture that this set of reasons may have an even more
general explanation. It is not entirely hopeless to look for it on a meta-
historical level as it is. What is implied here is a transgression beyond
the boundaries of observable historical facts and processes (the historical
level) — and even generalizations and hypothetical regularities (the macro-
historical level) — in a quest for parallels and answers to questions put forth
by history in other areas of knowledge: evolution theory, ethology, genetics,
sociobiology. From my point of view, the quest for meta-historical approaches
to the historical process is not just promising, but — moreover — comprises
the only serious alternative to explanations of a metaphysical or religious
nature. It is never too late to capitulate to metaphysics, but one feels
disinclined to do so: for me, metaphysical and meta-historical approaches
differ in that the former soars above the natural laws and regularities
already established or rejects accepting them altogether, while the latter
cautiously transcends the framework of more or less known and described
parts of the historical process so as to make an attempt to correlate them
with the selfsame natural laws and regularities.
Let me also note in parenthesis that in a purely existential aspect
I may not be placated by the metaphysical or religious answer also
because it is served to me like baby food, like a spoon of undifferentiated
gruel — perhaps tasty, granted, but selected for me by someone else,
orchestrated by a flourish “shut your eyes, open your mouth.” I, however,
am — alas! — long a grown-up and ready to eat only with eyes open and
only what I have chosen myself — even if it is a prison camp “nosh” or
a pie with poison hemlock filling.
The purpose of the given work — as follows from the above — is
to arouse research interest in the Jewish subject matter highlighted in
xxvi
Preface
detail in both scientific and popular writings, but lacking, in my view,

a sufficiently serious interpretational and systemic foundation answering
the level of contemporary scientific consciousness.
Apparently, it is only a representative inter-disciplinary and interna-
tional team that is in a position to research this subject matter in all
seriousness, that would comprise historians with expertise in different
periods, social anthropologists, sociologists, demographers, mythologists,
religions scholars, linguists, psychologists (ideally, there should be among
them experts not in Jewish studies and related areas alone, but also those
in other cultures — for comparative and typological analysis). If, however,
we graduate to the level of what is suggested here as a meta-historical level,
geneticists, zoologists, specialists in evolution theory, ethology and system
theory, mathematicians, etc. will also be called for.
What may the raison d’être of such a project be? It is called for in
my opinion as the Jewish cultural and historical phenomenon as a whole
and many of its particular elements specifically fail to fit in well —
apparently much worse than any other — with the accepted scientific
and plainly rational framework and scope of notions. If academia (and
public opinion of the civilized world paying ever more heed to it) does not
become concerned about — if not the solution to that conundrum, then at
least putting it on the “day’s agenda” — then the science of a human species
and all of our civilization as a whole may run the risk of ending up in
a precarious situation of an army forging ahead with battles on a battlefield,
yet leaving far behind in the rear a fortress that had not been stormed and
conquered.
If a project like this were to materialize, it could become a ballon
d’essai for similar projects for investigating other ethno-cultural models —
Russian, for instance, as an alternative to a purely ideological, political
or metaphysical approach to the “Russian idea,” normally offered at
a dilettante, pre-scientific level at that. In that sense the work contained
herein is to be considered as a ground or — if you will — a provocation for
a scholarly debate.
A couple of other tasks that I set myself transcend the framework of
scientific and popular science problems spectrum.
Just like many individuals of my acquaintance in Russia as well as many
different people in different countries living by latter-day humanitarian and
liberal values, I am not spared the gnawing doubts over whether the national
consciousness is rather more productive of benefit or harm — even in its
mildest form compatible with universalistic, generally humanistic position.
xxvii
Obviously, there are quite a few “pro’s” and “con’s” here. Vastly
different points of view on this score abounded in preceding epochs as well:
everyone remembers a manifestly polemic appeal of Paul’s in Message to
Colossians invoking them to free themselves of national separation: “Here
there is no Greek or Jew … , barbarian, Scythian … ” (Col 3:11).
In the course of these recent years, as I have said before, I have been
swayed to perceiving ethno-cultural, national identity and the attendant
historical heritage as a thing of value and I would like to share my notions
with my readers on that score.
As for the “Jewish question” specifically, then if the hypothesis outlined
below regarding some particular Jewish function in the choice, production
and realization of survival of the species strategy has any grounds for
consideration, then the crisis of Jewish identity that is yet to be discussed
later may yield losses, possibly fateful — not just for Jewry alone, but also
for the entire species Homo sapiens.
That happens to be a sufficient enough incentive for an open, well-
considered discussion of both the Jewish subject and — in general
terms — the ways of human civilization development, present-day results
and comparative analysis thereof — the discussion not just in a narrower
scientific aspect, but on a more extensive scale — in an interested general
audience. I am of the opinion that for a discussion of the kind the beginning
of the 3rd millennium is an entirely relevant occasion.
THE JEWISH
CONUNDRUM
IN WORLD
HISTORY
Introduction
INTRODUCTION
An obscure semi-nomadic community that had formed by the last

third of the 2nd mill. B.C.E., the Jews have gradually become one of the
most prominent players on the stage of universal history. The intellectual
revolution that had been growing in the minds of that nation’ intellectual
elite for centuries bore fruit by the second half of the 1st mill. B.C.E. in
the shape of the Bible, a collection of scriptures which obviously played
a most significant part in the history of human civilization. The revolution
in question is most commonly associated with one of its achievements,
monotheism, i.e., a fundamentally new religious concept that, in this or that
form, survived in the post-Biblical Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
It is monotheism that represents the main point of similarity between the
three above religious systems, with the two latter having spread all over the
world, defining new ways of development for a large segment of mankind.
However, the significance of another achievement of this revolution — which,
in my opinion, is no less important and from which, as I see it, monotheism
might well derive — is perceived much more vaguely. I speak here of
an entirely new model of the world that was delineated in some passages
in the Prophets and other books of the Bible, but most systematically in the
few opening chapters of Genesis (Bereshith), a model that can be termed
anthropocentric or humane, because, for the first time in history, it has in its
focus the Man, Homo sapiens sapiens, as a species purposefully set off from
all other creatures populating both real and imaginary worlds.
The idea of the one universal God who unites all human individuals
and peoples, as opposed to local “gods of nations” dividing them and
indifferent to the unity and special standing of humankind in the universe,
corresponds to the entirely new concept of the humanity as a single whole,
1
or the Adam. It is only from this anthropocentric, “Adamic” world view that
modern civilization (which can also be called Christian, Judeo-Christian,
Mediterranean, European, Western: I deliberately avoid becoming involved
in discussions about terminology), with its principles of humanism, human
rights, human life as an absolute value, etc., could arise.
The old prophets, sages and teachers of the Jewish people left us
the two great books, the Bible and Talmud, either of which continues to
influence world history and culture in its own way and to different degrees.
In the course of their long history, the Jews have survived ancient Egypt,
the kingdoms of Assyria, Babylonia and Persia, the Roman Empire, Arabic
conquests, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the banishment from many
European countries, the Jewish Pale, both the bloodless — limitations
imposed on marriages and, ergo, childbirth — and the bloody genocide.
The Jewish people persisted through the two millennia of persecution,
banishment, humiliation, extortion, rights limitations and pogroms to which
they were subjected in turn for their monotheism (by polytheistic heathens),
for the wrong sort of monotheism (by other adepts of monotheism which
they had created), and, finally, for “wrong” blood (by other fellow
representatives of the jointly created civilization).
Having literally risen from the ashes of the Holocaust, these people,
the Phoenix of human history, created a state of its own that withstood all
the wars it had to wage against a foe a hundred times as numerous. After
practically losing Yiddish, the language spoken for a millennium by the
largest and most advanced group of the Diaspora by the 20th century, the
Jews of Israel started to speak the long-unspoken Hebrew. By the early 3rd
millennium of the Christian era, or, according to the Jewish chronology, by
the beginning of the last quarter of the 6th millennium, Israel grew from
scratch into the most advanced and developed country of the Near East,
while Jewish communities of most countries of the Diaspora are among the
most prosperous and successful sections of the population. The phenomenal
Jewish contribution to the 20th and early 21st century science and culture is
quite out of proportion to the actual low percentage of Jewish population in
the world.
The long road down which the Jews trudged through epochs, fighting
enormous odds, losing and succeeding, and finally achieving the ultimate
victory of survival in the face of everything, seems to belong in mythology
rather than in history.
Ironically, it is at this, apparently most favorable — in spite of the
ever-critical situation in Israel and a new pandemic of never-ending
2
Introduction
Judeophobia — moment of their history that the Jews face a dire crisis that
is in its own way graver than all crises of the past. This is a crisis of identity,
when the scientific outlook and, especially, modern values system begin to
contradict the accustomed equation of Jews with Judaism as a religious-
traditional phenomenon only and when, due to the general slackening, as
compared with the preceding centuries, in the most civilized countries, of
anti-Semitism — a factor that always both generated Jewish assimilation
and drastically limited it — many people begin to find fewer motives and
reasons to feel Jewish.
In some paradoxical way, the Jewish contribution was decisive
in creating early preconditions for and fairly important in the actual
implementation of the new stage in the development of ideas incompatible
with xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism and barely compatible with
traditional religiosity. The identity crisis affects primarily the Jews of
the Diaspora. However, it did not leave Israel wholly untouched, which
manifests itself in the dangerous antagonism between different sections
of the Israeli population — the consolidating factor of being Jewish is
being periodically defeated by political, cultural and religious differences.
The feeling of belonging to a common state, Israeli patriotism rekindled
by the sensation of permanent menace, unites most — but by no means
all — Israeli Jews. In this case, however, we must speak of an Israeli identity
rather than the Jewish one; it is even conceivable that, in a not so remote
future, an Israeli Jew would feel about his Jewish roots in the same way as
an Italian-American feels about Italy, or even a modern Greek feels about
ancient Hellas.
The identity crisis is severely aggravated by a demographic one, i.e.,
the dramatic decrease in childbirth typical for the Western civilization of
today. Besides, there is a positive growth of mixed marriages in that ever-
increasing “vanguard group” within which individualistic values become
stronger, as behavioral motivation, than national and religious values.
The crisis of the Diaspora can become one of the most striking of
Jewish paradoxes — the most “velvet” genocide in history, a kind of
a collective euthanasia, quiet and bloodless, protracted over several
generations. Personally, no one would be harmed; nothing would happen
against anyone’s will, and there would be no one to blame. This would
merely signify suspension points put at the bottom of one of the longest,
brightest and most interesting pages in human history that was never read
to the end, the history of the Jews. One might argue that Israel is likely to
endure, but that would be a different kind of history, it seems.
3
A joke of the Soviet epoch told of the game of survival (fashioned as

a series of soccer games) played by the Jews against many opponents: Egypt
vs. The Jews (where is that Egypt now?), Babylon vs. The Jews (show me
that Babylon on the map, then!), The Roman Empire vs. The Jews (halloo,
Empire, where have you vanished?), The Inquisition vs. The Jews (what is
left of those inquisitors?), Hitler vs. The Jews (how did Hitler end up?), etc.,
the last words of the joke being, “We came as far as the final at last.” This,
of course, implied the final game The Soviet Power vs. The Jews, to hope to
win which was possible only in view of all the previous games mentioned
in the joke. However, another miracle happened, and the Jews, who had
once contributed so much to the establishment of the Soviet regime, won
the game with it. The only snag was that that was not the final yet. The final
game is seemingly played by The Jews vs. Themselves, and its outcome is
far from being obvious.
There is a vast sea of literature written about the Jews by Jews
themselves, as well as by objective and impartial non-Jewish scholars, or by
anti-Semites. Can we add anything new and of some importance, without
drowning in that sea?
4
The Cr isis of Modern Jewr y
THE CRISIS OF MODERN JEWRY
The severe crisis experienced by the Jewry of today is obvious. Its

aggravation came during a favorable epoch of Jewish history, when Israel
enjoyed a spell of relative political and economic stability, when the
position of Jewish communities within the U.S.A. and Europe was stable
(in the U.S.A. it still is while in Europe it is much less so), when the ugliest
manifestations of popular and, especially, state anti-Semitism in the Slav
republics of the former U.S.S.R. were on the decline. The crisis in question
has three principal causes.
Firstly, a modern man who lives in the Diaspora and agrees with the
“Western” humanistic and universal values (mainly rooted in the Hebrew
Bible, of which this man usually has rather vague ideas) has less and less
personal motivation for feeling Jewish in the traditional sense of the term.
This is true of a large section of North American Jews and of the majority
of the Jewish population in the former U.S.S.R. and Europe. In Israel, of
course, the situation is special. There, the feeling of belonging to a single
unity is much stronger, even among liberally oriented groups. However,
the motivation seems strong not so much because of the feeling of Jewish
identity as due to an Israeli identity, which is not quite the same, or even is
quite different in some cases — and in future prospects.1
1 By the results of latest statistical surveys 52% individuals born in Israel identify
themselves first and foremost as Israelites and only 22% — as Jews; among
immigrants from other countries 34% identify themselves as Israelites and 27% — as
Jews. The highest rate of self-identification as Jews is in evidence in olim from the
former USSR: half the surveyed consider themselves Jews in the first place and only
20% identify themselves as Israelites.
5
It is in Israel that the second cause of the crisis — the notorious

Jewish discord — presents an urgent problem. This is the growing mutual
misunderstanding and enmity that arise — especially at times when the
outward threat to the country is at its lowest — between two major groups
of the Israelis that we would conventionally call “traditionalists” and “non-
traditionalists,” with much infighting going on within either, at that.
The third cause, the demographic crisis whose main feature is a low
birthrate, is a problem common to all economically and culturally advanced
populations, but especially dangerous to the Jews of the Diaspora in view
of increasing assimilation, considerable loss of Jewish identity, and high
rate of mixed marriages. In Israel, the demographic situation is dramatically
better — mostly owing to high birthrate among the most religious population
groups, which is, however, fraught with the upsetting of political equilibrium
and therefore further conflict.
Turning to the first cause of the Jewish crisis, we get an impression that
the non-traditional, liberally oriented Jews (primarily U.S. and E.U. citizens;
let’s refer to them as Group A) have gotten into a sort of intellectual trap.
If they agree that religion and observance are the indispensable attributes
of being Jewish,2 then one of the possible logical steps on their part is to
consider themselves not quite Jewish or not Jewish at all. Their attitude to
religion (ranging from “mild” agnosticism to uncompromising atheism),
as well as what they perceive as the conflict between the universal,
humanitarian and cosmopolitan values and the traditional Jewish ones,
primarily ethnocentrism, only makes them take that step more readily.
Another possible move for them is to change their way of life, reverting
to a “truly Jewish life” which implies keeping the Sabbath, celebrating
numerous festivals, eating kosher food, etc. This “Jewish life,” implying
the observation of customs and tradition, seems to be an even more
important and indispensable part of being Jewish in the eyes of modern
Jewish traditionalists (let’s refer to them as Group B) than, for instance,
belief in the God of Israel, or that which is called “religious feeling.”
However, it is this change of lifestyle that is least acceptable for the Group
A representatives for both practical (for our hectic life, too much bother) and
2 For the US Jews, it is hard to disagree with this in view of the fact that “Jewish” is
a religious category both in the official documents and in the stereotypical public
opinion-Jewish and non-Jewish, though more and more people in America, Jews
and non-Jews, realize that it is less and less so in real life. To me, a Russian Jew that
I am, it looks like the Orwellian “double-think” fraught with a collapse.
6
The Cr isis of Modern Jewr y
motivation reasons: why bother if the desire to feel oneself Jewish — or to

be considered Jewish by others — is not very strong. The very observation
of the Jewish customs is, for the modern psyche, a profound anachronism;
the famous, allowing no objection, argument of a Jewish believer, “For it
is written … ”, is devoid of any meaning for a modern man: many kinds
of things have been written, so what? On top of everything, we also have
rampant individualism, both Weltanschauung and behavioral, especially
common in the West — a standpoint that has little use for any collective
values, including ethno-cultural.
A third solution, which I feel is rather a palliative, is especially typical
of U.S. Jewry. This is the conversion to non-traditional trends of Judaism:
Conservative, Reform, etc., that are far less exacting in their demands of
sticking to “proper Jewish life” or even not exacting at all.
A palliative is, however, no more than a palliative: traditional Judaism
does not acknowledge all these groups, and, despite their growth and
relative attractiveness, they look more and more like a temporary measure
for preserving Jewish self-identification. It seems that the U.S. Jews them-
selves are alarmed by this, feeling a growing anxiety about their relationship
with children whose motivation to preserve their Jewish identity is even
weaker, especially on the emotional plane: the older generation is still
supported in its national sentiment by warm recollections of traditional
Jewish grannies and grandfathers, whereas younger Jews have none of these
and the memory of the Holocaust, once very much alive, and all the efforts
to keep it that way notwithstanding — is on its way to regrettably becoming
a chapter from a history textbook.
Membership in a Jewish community, attending a local synagogue,
and participating in charities remain the major features of Jewish life in
America. We might also name such traditional values as good, sound family,
attachment to children, setting great store by education, etc. that are still
typical of Jews, but they equally distinguish, on a higher-than-average level,
several other population groups in the U.S. The question is, would all that be
enough to preserve Jewish identity in younger generation?
For a secular Jew, an alternative to religion and tradition as determinants
of identity consists in being Jewish biologically. However, this is a difficult
solution for the liberal mentality. Such notions as “Jewish blood” tend to
smack of racism, the least suspicion of which is a shameful stain on one’s
reputation — specially in the American society. Besides, the high proportion
of mixed marriages both in the West and in the former U.S.S.R. makes the
biological criterion fairly vague.
7
The situation can hardly be repaired with the help of the “peoplehood”
concept, “the word of the hour in the Jewish community” (see E. Brown and
M. Galperin. The Case for Jewish Peoplehood. Can We Be One? Woodstock,
2009) — whatever attractive it may be.
In Russia and the Ukraine, containing an overwhelming majority of the
former Soviet Jews, the crisis in question assumes a somewhat different
form. Out of the three above-mentioned constituents of the crisis, the
third problem (the demographic crisis with its low childbirth and mixed
marriages) applies to these countries and their Jewish population to the full
extent, while the second one — the conflict between “traditional” and “non-
traditional” Jews — is far less urgent owing to a very low percentage of the
“traditionalists.”3 As for the first issue, being Jewish was viewed in the former
Soviet Union by the powers-that-be, as well as by the population — Jewish
and non-Jewish alike — as a matter of blood rather than religion.
One of the possible ways to tackle the identity issue can be, for a secular
American Jew, via the following syllogism: “Being Jewish is about religion
and observance. I am neither religious nor observant/I am observant to a very
moderate degree. Therefore I am not a Jew/a bad, defective, or hypocritical
Jew.” It is especially hard to view oneself as a bad or defective something
or a hypocrite for an American with his or her accustomed self-confidence,
individualism, and love for personal freedom; perhaps, it is more logical to
give up this annoying factor.
An approach typical of many Russian Jews, who were raised either in the
traditions of the proclaimed Soviet internationalism or in the atmosphere of
the genuine cosmopolitism, could be described through another syllogism:
“Being Jewish is about nationality. For me, anyone’s nationality is of no/
little importance. Therefore, it doesn’t matter/matters very little to me if
I am a Jew or non-Jew.” An extended version of the last syllogism would be
something like this: “My mother and/or father are Jewish, that is to say, I am
Jewish/partly Jewish by birth. I am Russian as regards language and culture.
3 Thus, for instance, though the influence of a group of Lubavitch hassidim, headed
by Berl Lazar, one of the two “Supreme Rabbis of Russia”, has increased in Russia
of late (they have been spending no mean money on semi-indigent indigenous
Jews which should be highly appreciated), it does not seem anything more than
a temporary success: I perceive no great prospects for Jewish religious life in
Russia — just like I don’t in Israel or the USA or Europe either: what one can just
witness, perhaps, is some growth of affectionate disposition towards the moving
ancient customs, a superficial if quite nice and not really burdensome game playing
which also serves to set off one’s special identity.
8
Being Jew ish: Rel igion or National ity?
Therefore, it’s impossible to say/not important who I am (too much bother

to sort it out, and anyway, there’s no real need).” However, recent public
opinion polls dealing with the issue of Jewish identity show significant
changes in the responses of many interviewees that can be summed up in
the following “irregular” syllogism: “I am completely/partially Jewish by
descent. I am Russian as regards language and culture. I have more Jewish
than Russian traits in my psychological type/mentality/world view, though
the latter are also present. Therefore I am a Russian Jew.”
There is an interesting trend in Russia observed in the self-identification
of children (regardless of age group) born of mixed marriages during the
last twenty years: an increasingly larger portion of “half-castes” considers
themselves Jews or, at least, incorporates the Jewish element in their identi-
fication pattern. This phenomenon partly compensates for demographic
losses caused by emigration and even creates a certain potential for growth.
In this connection, the current processes affecting the Jews of Russia
deserve a more detailed consideration.
BEING JEWISH:
RELIGION OR NATIONALITY?
As it was already mentioned, for an overwhelming majority of Jews in

Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union, Jewish status is a matter
of blood, or ethnicity, but not religion. It is possible to argue that such a view
of Jewish identity was instilled in the population as a result of Bolshevist
policy, and that it is at variance with traditional Jewish values (but not with
the Halakhic criterion!). However, it’s a fact that, for most Russian Jews, the
equation “Jew by blood = Jew by religion” is as much of an anachronism
as the “Russian = Orthodox” equation. Both equations are bound to cause
much argument among some educated Jews and Russians who would point
out that there are few believers among the Jews now (and even those few
are not restricted to Judaism alone), and that not all Russians are Orthodox,
whereas not all people of Orthodox faith are Russian. All in all, despite the
obvious historical link between the two concepts, Jewish nationality and
Judaism, as well as Russian nationality and Orthodox Christianity, both have
become separate entities by now and are to be placed in different categories.
On the other hand, all this means very little to the man in the street: for him,
Russian is Orthodox, to this day.
9
The traditional Jews, similarly, do not accept the divergence between

concepts “Jewish by blood” (or, rather, by Halakhah) and “Jewish by
religion”: for them, a non-believer, non-observant, and even a convert born
of a Jewish mother is still a Jew, though a bad one. Furthermore, many non-
traditional — and even unbelieving — Israeli and U.S. Jews, as well as non-
Jewish Americans (except the most discriminating liberals), view the issue
from the same angle. Verbally, of course, the situation might look different:
people would tell you that, naturally, no Jew is necessarily an adherent of
Judaism, but in the traditional ethnic subconscious (going hand-in-hand with
the state-induced practice — and public opinion), both Jewish and non-Jewish,
a Jew is a believer in Judaism. It is in a similar manner that even an educated
Russian may make the typical slip of the tongue talking about Western and
Eastern Christians whom he/she, prompted by his/her archaic ethno-religious
subconscious, divides into Christians (meaning Orthodox Christians) and
Catholics rather than into the Orthodox Christians and the Roman Catholic
Christians, as he/she may have been taught at school (or may have not).
This divergence between the conscious and the subconscious (we use
the terms only loosely here) can be explained simply enough. History
knows cases when an ethnic entity is either formed out of several originally
different ethnic components on a common religious basis or, on the contrary,
develops from a section of a once unified ethnic group that got separated
for religious reasons. After a certain period of time, such a religious
community grows into a “people,” a “nation” and begins to show in its
functioning all the signs of a true ethnic entity.4 Therefore, in this crucial
time of transition, traditional groups (normally people of older age) still see
this entity as a religious unity, while innovative groups consider it ethnic,
with those “betwixt and between” combining new ideas with the old ones
that continue to exist in the cultural subconscious.
The transformation of part of the Diaspora from a religious-ethnic unity
into an ethnic one started in the late 18th c. (though not without precedents in
Jewish history) in Western and Central Europe and dramatically accelerated
today, when, due to modernization, more and more people deviate from
traditional religious principles.
It is hardly accidental that the Russian Jews, to a larger degree than any
other group of the worldwide Diaspora, lead in this trend, feeling themselves
4 In this process, prestigious pedigrees have always been easily forged — long before
a need of written evidence arose — take, for example, some arabicized Berber tribes
proud of their noble Yemenite genealogy.
10
Being Jew ish: Rel igion or National ity?
Jewish in an ethnic sense and out of religious context. For quite a number
of reasons, including the Bolshevist-enforced modernization, the policy
aimed at eliminating religious and national traditions (in the case of Jews,
the Soviet authorities seem to have achieved an unqualified success), and
a series of other historical factors, the Soviet Jews became the most well-
educated section of the population in the U.S.S.R. (perhaps in the world) and
show the highest level of urbanization. Let’s quote some figures: in 1979, 58
percent of adult Jews living in the Russian Federation had higher education;
that figure goes up to 65 percent for Moscow in 1989 (as for the U.S. Jews,
according to the statistics of 1990, only 53 percent of people aged 25 and
older had higher education).5 Besides, as far back as in 1959, 95 percent of
Soviet Jews lived in cities; according to the census of 1989, half the Soviet
Jews lived in Moscow and Leningrad, and according to the census of 2002,
80% of Jews in the Russian Federation lived in Moscow (nearly 60%) and
St. Petersburg (over 20%).
Thus the essence of the problem seems to be clear: the Jewish people
originally formed as a tribal unity, then consolidated as an entity based on
common religious tradition, but in the 20th century, as that tradition began
to erode, the trend toward transforming into a purely ethnic unity became
stronger — especially in the U.S.S.R., where the process was most advanced.
However, here we have to deal with another question: is there any
objective factor that still makes the Jews of Russia (or the former U.S.S.R.)
feel that they belong to a certain distinct unity? Let’s drop all the relevant
terms with their distinctions for a time: people, nation, nationality, ethnicity,
etc. If we suppose that, in Russia, the Jews are a unity of the same order as
Russians, Tartars, Germans or the Gypsies, and not of the same order as
Christians, Muslims or Buddhists, then what makes them such a unity? What
does unite them, separating them from Russians? Could it be the language?
No — it’s Russian, because Yiddish has already been forgotten nearly
everywhere for three or four generations, while Hebrew is known by few,
and as a foreign language at that. Could it be the territory? No — the Jews
and the Russians inhabit the same land. Could it be the culture? No — the
Jews and the Russians have a common culture. Could it be the racial type?
To a certain extent, yes, though many Russian Jews belong to an average
5 Interestingly, according to surveys, the Jewish immigrants from the FSU have in
average more years of education than American Jews or Americans in general, and
53% of them also have a degree from the U.S. higher education institutions (I owe
this information to Dmitri Glinski).
11
European type, while the proportion of mixed marriages in the several recent
generations is so high (from 60 to more than 80 percent for the Russian
Jews) as to severely reduce the role of physical factor as a determining trait
that unites them and divides them from Russians.6
Is it possible, then, that there are practically no Jews left in Russia and
that there are Russians of Jewish descent instead7 — like Americans of Irish
or Italian origin, like Austrians of Slavonic descent, etc.?
And if one is to stop poking their inborn disability in their eyes — the ill-
starred Jewishness of theirs which they bear no guilt for, will they become
like everyone else then: the “normal” Russian people?
JEWISH IDENTITY IN RUSSIA
The issue of defining the terms “Jew,” “Jewish,” “Jewishness,” i.e.,

of establishing the so-called “Jewish identity” is interesting as regards its
scholarly and cultural aspects, and from political and practical angle as
well. It is also extremely far from being solved. Even in Israel, with its
heterogeneous and multicultural Jewish populations, it presents a difficult
case for solution. Of course, one can just ignore it for ideological reasons,
referring to the traditional criterion of the Halakhah as the only possible
approach, but that would not really make the problem non-existent. The
solution of this question as a whole, and in Russia and the former Soviet
republics in particular, obviously requires complex, interdisciplinary
approaches.
6 The talk is about visible physical traits betraying a Jew in the eyes of other Jews
and non-Jews; the modern genetic means of determining — and revealing — one’s
ancestral characteristics invisible to a plain eye is quite a different matter. It’s worth
mentioning in passing that one can envisage that genetic tests for “ethnic diseases”
to become more and more current everywhere as a way of prophylaxis and treatment
of these diseases would create in the near future a radically different situation
with ethnic identities, inter-ethnic relations and xenophobia (including Anti-
Semitism) both in Russia and the world. Imagine a prominent Russian or Iranian or
Palestinian champion of Anti-Semitism learning about his/her Jewish roots — and
the information about it somehow passed to his/her comrades-in-arms …
7 It is precisely this way, with an insignificant exception, that the Russian-speaking
Jews are perceived in America by the American Jews (not only because they are called
“Russians” — just due to the language they speak — by everyone in America).
12
Jew ish Identity in Russia
Recently I have been asked to review a study on Russian and Ukrainian

Jews conducted by the most serious and independent sociological center in
Russia. The study protocol, research and analysis, however, were conducted
by a respected Israeli institute that came to a conclusion that in Russian and
Ukrainian Jews’ subjective views differing from the views accepted in the
rest of the Jewish world, Judaism is not necessarily based even on ancestry,
but rather on the very existence of Jewish identity. This highly formalistic
and fantastic conclusion demonstrates how risky it is to tackle a live, not
purely scholastic, problem if you do not live with it.
To answer questions typical, say, for an American audience (like: “What
is the proportion of Jews/non-Jews among the students of this or that center
of Jewish studies in Moscow?”, “How many Jews live in Russia/the former
U.S.S.R./Moscow/St. Petersburg?”, etc.), we have to realize what the word
“Jew” really implies in Russia. I have counted eight criteria to choose from:
1. The official Soviet criterion: Jewish according to the record in the

passport.8
2. The traditional (though not strict) ethnic Russian criterion: Jewish due
to one’s father being Jewish.
3. The Jewish halakhic criterion: Jewish by virtue of having a Jewish
mother (or else — for everyone who does not meet this criterion — exposure
to the giyur, the ritual of conversion into Judaism).
4. The official Israeli criterion, in accordance with the Law of Return
which gives the right of return to those born Jews (having a Jewish mother
or maternal grandmother), those with Jewish ancestry (having a Jewish
father or grandfather) and converts to Judaism (the Law of Return is
currently subjected to heated discussion in Israel, which would possibly
lead to adopting a stricter law).
8 The notorious passport “article #5.” For a Soviet (or ex-Soviet) citizen a passport
per se — and for a Soviet Jew, the passport “article #5” in particular — is “culturally
loaded” and has many historical, social and legal connotations not easy to explain
to an American reader for whom it has no connotations as it has always been
conceptually different and passport per se has never had the social significance that
it had throughout the history of Russia and the Soviet Union especially. After the
record of citizens’ nationality got canceled out, the passport criterion has gradually
been losing its topicality even though in a number of other identifying papers that
record is still in evidence and goes on being required in filling out certain types of
questionnaires: the watchful eye has not gone blind yet.
13
5. The religious criterion: Jew as a person (born of Jewish mother, of

course) observing the precepts of Judaism and Jewish tradition — “living
a Jewish life.”
6. The outside Jewish criterion: Jew as identified so by other Jews.
7. The outside non-Jewish criterion (“exoidentification”): Jew as
identified so by non-Jews.
8. The personal criterion: Jew by self-identification; normally implies
having real or imaginary Jewish ancestry in the family.
None of the above criteria, however, presents a sufficiently valid basis for
statistics. On the one hand, for instance, a Jew who had a corresponding
record in his or her passport might not comply with some other criteria
(e.g., # 3, 5 or even 8, according to our classification), which is to say that
he/she either does not consider him/herself Jewish or cannot make up his/
her mind in this matter (a case which can be called a “floating” personal
criterion). On the other hand, a person who had a different record in the
passport (usually “Russian”), might comply with any of the proposed
criteria of being Jewish, including the strictest, traditional # 3 and 5.
For all that, if we study the prospective trends of Jewish life in Russia,
none of these criteria can be ignored. The following situation is fairly
common: you do not consider yourself Jewish or simply do not care about
it, but your non-Jewish milieu — neighbors, colleagues, strangers in the
street and sometimes militant anti-Semites — now and then remind you that
you are Jewish, often in a malevolent and even threatening way (the outside
non-Jewish criterion). Such a situation often compels Jews to emigrate.
Censuses of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods were based, to some
extent, on the personal criterion: every respondent was to determine his
or her nationality (children’s nationality was determined by the parents).
The statistical data obtained in this way are far from being error-free. For
example, respondents, especially of older and middle age, might never
reveal their Jewish nationality because of the inbred habit not to trust the
authorities or, for that matter, any stranger pestering you with questions
concerning this far-from-innocent subject.
Establishing Jewish antecedents according to the halakhic definition is
also no easy task due to Russia’s turbulent 20th century history, especially
if we look for a grandmother, with all the papers possibly missing and
the archives in a mess or empty. For all technical difficulties of obtaining
statistical data, the use of this criterion seems to be of little avail. The
14
Jews and the Russian Intell igentsia
limitation imposed on the definition of “Jew” by the Halakhah leaves fairly

numerous population groups (hardly less than two million people in Russia
and from several hundred thousand to half a million in Ukraine, I think) of
mixed Jewish-Russian origin outside the scope of statistics. In Russia, these
groups are especially prominent and influential among the intellectual and
business circles in Moscow and St. Petersburg, though they are also present
in many other cities and towns — including small ones — of Russia where
they usually play an important part in local economic, social and cultural
life. It is in these groups that resides the main potential for the development
of the incipient Jewish communal life in Russia.
The growth of Jewish activity and self-awareness during the “post-
assimilation” period of Jewish history in Russia has created a unique
situation exactly opposite to that in the US. In Russia, mixed marriages of
the past twenty years do not seem to contribute to the rate of assimilation.
On the contrary, the number of children born of such marriages who
consider themselves Jewish constantly increases. This trend inspires
cautious optimism, though, due to the decreasing childbirth in Russia and
the West and the crisis of Jewish identity everywhere, the general situation
in the world and in Russia remains grave.
JEWS AND THE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENTSIA
When I previously discussed the question of how Russian Jews can

be characterized as an ethnic group differing from ethnic Russians without
having any generally accepted qualities of a nation or even an ethnic
group — no own language, not a separate territory, not a unique culture —
I reserved one significant caveat.
Yes, Jews and Russians share the same territory. However, the specific
territory where most Jews live (what we call “the smaller motherland”) is
shared only with those Russians who live in cities, primarily big ones, like
Moscow and St. Petersburg (former Leningrad).
It is true that the culture of Russians and Russian Jews is the same. Yet,
this — again — calls for a reservation: if different social strata have different
cultures, then most Russian Jews have a culture common with that of the
one social group that enjoys the same educational and urbanization status,
i.e., the Russian Intelligentsia.
15
Now let us discuss such a phenomenon as assimilation. It’s a universally

recognized fact that in the Soviet Union, the assimilation of Jews was
an intense process — a “physical” one, through mixed marriages, as well
as a cultural one; we can only marvel that the assimilation has not yet
been complete. Similar processes in ethnic histories are well known: lesser
nations and ethnic groups, which do not have their own state or at least their
own well-confined territory to live in, unfortunately, have a tendency to
assimilate, losing their own identity, and from some point onwards, they, as
a distinct entity, pass on to history’s casualty list.
Now let us look at what happened to the Jews in the Soviet period from
a different angle.
“To assimilate,” when used as a transitive verb, requires not only the
grammatical object, the object of assimilation, but also the subject. It is
interesting, who in the Soviet Union was assimilating Jews.
To start with, let us try to answer the question: which percent of the
population did the intelligentsia make up, and what percent were Jews
in the Russian Empire before the Revolution, and in the USSR before
the mass emigrations at the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s? It is
not a completely correct question, because as we have encountered, the
definition of a Jew varies, and about the intelligentsia, even less can be said.
There are irreconcilable arguments about what the intelligentsia is — and
arguing about it has been the favorite pastime of the Russian intelligent.
Nevertheless, there is such a thing as “intuitive knowledge.” It survives
without strict scientific definitions, and applies commonly — although
far from always — quite “operationally,” that is, matches up pretty well
with reality. Try to give a consistent definition to the concepts of “human
being,” “life,” “language,” and many others, such that at least one of your
opponents agreed with you! However, in practice, everyone can distinguish
a man from an animal, life from death, and language from other forms of
communication. Similarly, an attentive observer — a Jew, an anti-Semite,
or the shrewd neighbor — will more often than not recognize a Jew even
without side-locks, a yarmulke, or a shtetl accent. In all likelihood, in the
Soviet time, an intelligent individual in a line for food, on board a streetcar,
or even at a fourchette party would be immediately picked out by a fellow-
intelligent, a tipsy jerk, and a KGB agent.
But seriously, in all of the ambiguity of the different criteria for
intelligentsia and intelligent, I submit one, which of course is also slippery:
the intelligent in the old and modern Russia, and in the Soviet Union — is
a person that consciously holds to the humanistic values. It can be argued
16
that such values need strict definitions, but everyone relevant in the present
context had and still has at least an “intuitive” understanding of them. On
both sides of the barricade, so to say.
The Russian intelligentsia, which one can belong to without regard to
nationality, is a flexible and not closed category. One can enter it, and one call
fall out of it. Not a higher education, nor a learned profession, nor the highest
academic degree guarantees the title of a “Russian intelligent,” which is never
officially awarded to or by anyone. The forerunners to intelligentsia were the
freethinkers of the eighteenth century, while it was formed during the nineteenth
century from nobility, raznochintsy9, clergy, military, even merchants, even
peasants. The group consisted not only of the metropolitan “highbrow
ones” — writers, philosophers, professors. Many people were professionals
that were becoming more common across the country: engineers, doctors,
teachers, librarians, officers. The overwhelming majority could be agnostics
or atheists — but hardly the militant ones — or the believers — but not the
bigoted orthodox from any religion; “cosmopolitans,” and “patriots,” but not
nationalists; those that liked a market economy, and the supporters of social
programs, but hardly — if only temporary, while young10 — political extremists.
The venerated figures or spiritual leaders of the group in different
periods of history beginning from 19th century were people11 with such
different positions and fates as Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, even Kro-
potkin12, but no Pobedonostsev13 or Nechayev14, and in the post-Stalinist
9 Educated persons of non-noble origin.

10 There is a Russian (probably borrowed from the West, I am not sure) political jokey
saying: the one who was not leftist when young, is a scab, the one who did not
become rightist (or, in our case, moderate) when old, is a fool.
11 Most of the biographic data following below are quoted, with my minor editing,
withdrawals and additions, from Wikipedia wherein — wherever I am competent to
evaluate them — they are exact and tactfully exposed.
12 Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842–1921), “the Anarchist Prince,” was a
geographer and zoologist, a contributor to the “Encyclopedia Britannica” (Eleventh
Edition) and one of Russia’s first and foremost advocates of anarchist communism.
13 Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (1827–1907) was a reactionary Russian
statesman and adviser to three Tsars. He was the “gray cardinal” of imperial politics
during the reign of his disciple Alexander III of Russia, holding the position of the
Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod, the highest position of the supervision of the
Russian Orthodox Church by the state.
14 Sergey Gennadiyevich Nechayev (1847–1882) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist
associated with the Nihilist movement and known for his single-minded pursuit of
revolution by any means necessary, including political violence.
17
era, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelshtam and Pasternak15, Solzhenitsyn16,

Brodsky17, Vysotsky18, Galich19, Sakharov20, but not the reactionary writer
Sholokhov21, sly Communist ideologist Chakovsky22, a Jew at that, a courtier
15 Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova (1889–1966) and Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892–

1941), two most acclaimed female Russian poets. Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam
(1891–1938), one of the greatest Russian poets; a victim of Stalin’s regime, perished
in the Gulag. Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890–1960), a Nobel Prize-winning
celebrated Russian poet and writer (best known in the West he is for his epic novel
“Doctor Zhivago”).
16 Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), a prominent Russian novelist
(Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970) and dissident. Through his writings he made the
world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union’s forced labor camp system. While his
contribution to the unmasking of the communist ideology is unrivalled, his world
views (including on the Jewish issue) are highly controversial.
17 Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (1940–1996), an outstanding Russian poet, a Nobel Prize
for Literature winner (1987); after expulsion from the USSR (1972) lived in the USA.
18 Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (1938–1980), an iconic Soviet singer, songwriter,
poet, and actor of mixed Jewish and Russian descent whose popularity was incredibly
high with all the strata of Soviet society including “people in the street” — rivaling in
that Pushkin and Esenin (Sergei Alexandrovich Esenin (1895–1925) was a talented
lyrical poet of a peasant origin extremely popular with the “common people”;
his son Alexander Esenin-Volpin born in 1924 of a Jewish mother, a prominent
mathematician and political prisoner (for 14 years), was a leader of the human rights
movement; emigrated to the USA in 1972); according to some surveys of public
opinion in Russia, he is alternately named as “the 20th century cultic figure” Number
One or Number Two, rivaling in that Juri Gagarin.
19 Alexander Arkadievich Ginzburg, a pen-name Galich (1918–1977), an outstanding
Russian poet and bard of Jewish origin, songwriter and performer of his songs
ranging from brilliant satire conveying with much finesse the richness of the Russian
“people-in-the-street” vernacular to penetratingly tragic laments over the victims of
the Revolution and communist regime, Second World War, the Holocaust and simply
of everyday Soviet life’s burdens and abominations. He was extremely popular with
the intelligentsia in the 60–70-ies. In 1974 was forced to emigrate and in 1977 died
in Paris either in an accident or, less likely, murdered by the KGB’s conspiracy.
20 Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (1921–1989), an eminent Soviet nuclear physicist,
dissident and fearless human rights activist, an advocate of civil liberties and reforms
in the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.
21 Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov (1905–1984), a Soviet Russian novelist and
winner of the Stalin Prize (1926) for his novel “And Quiet Flows the Don” (probably
plagiarized) and Nobel Prize in Literature (1965); his other and later novel, “The
Virgin Land Raised” is mediocre and much inferior to “And Quiet Flows the Don”.
A hard-core aggressive communist with a touch of anti-Semitism.
22 Aleksandr Borisovich Chakovsky (1913–1994), a Soviet public figure and novelist,
editor-in-chief of “Literaturnaya Gazeta” in 1962–1988. Swaying from a hard-
18
painter Glazunov23, or the once fashionable writer and nationalist-Bolshevik

Limonov24.
The group was far from always firmly standing on a “humanitarian
platform,” it swayed to the left and right, when its marginal affiliates, and
sometimes even its mouthpieces fell into Nietzschean ideology, terrorism,
Bolshevism, Soviet ideology, chauvinism, nationalism, and religious
fanaticism. However, such people were quickly dropped, that is — they
purged themselves out, reasonably not trusting the intelligentsia (let us
remember Lenin, coming from a typical provincial intelligentsia family,
who called it dirty names). During Stalin’s rule, semi-destroyed, swollen
from the influx from the “ordinary Soviet people,” the largest part of
intelligentsia almost fatally caught the disease of conformism. But when the
“mustached man-eater kicked the bucket,” it gradually became clear that it
survived — like the Russian Jews! — and even learned how to suppress the
bacillus of Soviet slavery in itself.
It was Russian prose from the 19th to the 20th century, Russian religious
philosophy of the end of the 19th to the 20th centuries, with its expatriate
outgrowth, and the Russian poetry of the 20th century that reflected, with
a width and strength unparalleled by any Western culture, the grievous and
morbid sprouting from the traditional Christian mentality of the humanistic
and universal values, that trickled down in small streams from their ancient
Hebrew Biblical source.
line to a “liberal-minded” Communist, he served as an unofficial cultural arbiter

through his position in the powerful Soviet Writers’ Union. Called “Enforcer
of Soviet Line on Writers” by New York Times. My late father (who had operated
on him and to whom Chakovsky, as it often happens in such cases, was much
attached) told me a curious story: once, being under the impression of one of
Chakovsky’s ghastly public statements, he accused him, in a private conversation,
of course, of villainy, to which Chakovsky replied: you do not understand! By
behaving this way, I am holding back the anti-Semitism of the powers-that-be:
I am their Courtier Jew-in-Chief! It’s hard to say whether he believed in earnest in
his mission of the Soviet Jews’ savior or it was just an attemp to look better in my
father’s eyes.
23 Ilya Sergeyevich Glazunov (born in 1930), a contemporary Russian artist, a founder
of the Russian “high realism” (I would rather call it “glossy realism”) artistic school.
In the 1980s was associated with far-right “Pamyat” society and became known
for his nationalist (“patriotic”) views. Awarded “For Service to the Motherland”
decoration by the then President Putin.
24 Eduard Veniaminovich Limonov (Savenko), born in 1943; a pert writer and the
founder and leader of Russia’s unregistered “National Bolshevik Party”.
19
Having paid with a lot of blood, the young Russian intelligentsia,

with all its tottering and swaggering, turned out to be perhaps the most
persevering keeper and carrier of these values. Values, it would seem, that
Jews had to relegate (it turned out later, they really had not) for the sake of
self-preservation. Values that “authoritative”, mainstream Christianity once
declared, but has never realized, concentrated on the otherworldly, or rather
worldly — politics and the suppression of other thought. Values digested
and then little by little discharged by enlightened Western society on the
way to growing individualism and rational egoism.
The fate of Soviet and “sub-Soviet” intelligentsia in the 20th century,
squeezed in to seven decades, provides a tragic match with the Jewish
fate in the Diaspora, stretched out for over twenty centuries. A match with
pressure and chase: like in Christian Europe, where not only Jews were
persecuted, intelligentsia, in fact, was never the only game under the
Soviet regime (a substantial part of it had, unfortunately, taken an active
part in creating it — just like a substantial part of the Jews), but always,
like Jews, the juiciest one. A match with survival owing to the rulers’
want of “specialists.” A match with a belittled and fragile existence in the
cultural Diaspora in the midst of the “worker-peasant” dominant population
hounded upon intelligentsia — and upon Jews, of course — by the same
powers-that-be who were reducing this population to wretchedness.25
A match with a notorious (or, shall we say, famed) unrequited love for “the
common people”26 and Fatherland27. A match with bribery and debauchery
of the worst part of its elite; exile or destruction of the best. It also matches
25 My aunt’s colleague, a gifted Leningrad architect, a pureblood Russian and refined

offspring of an aristocratic stock, complained to her in the seventies of the last
century: Once you are a Russian intelligent, you always run a risk of being taken for
a Jew in the street — and attacked.
26 Let us remember if only narodniks, “the populists,” with their “going to the people”
selfless mass movement in the 1870s Russia village: the young democratically and
idealistically minded intellectuals, mostly students, were often beaten by the much-
favored peasants and reported by them to local police.
27 This well-rewarding attachment (much more intensive than to the Promised Land)
to one’s country of birth or even sojourn only — any country, Poland, Germany,
Russia, her culture, nature, language — has been typical of many a secular Jew.
There is a suggestive Russian joke about two new Russian — ethnic Russian — thugs
sipping beer in a London pub. One asks: Why so downbeat today? What’s eating
you? The other mumbles: nostalgia, dammit. — Shit! For what? — Well … for Mother
Russia, you know, … birches … churches … — Fancy that! Ne’er would have thought
you’re Jewish!
20
accusations of group egoism and conceit; of being “too smart” and having
odd beliefs; of “breaking away from the soil”; of lack of patriotism and being
“fifth column” of the West.
So here, a loose question ad hoc: how much of such an intelligentsia
existed in Russia at the dawn of the twentieth century, and how much now?
This question I asked of many people that are used to answering for their
own words. Everyone waved it off and grumbled, but, when I reminded
them about “intuitive knowledge” and promised that they would not be
held responsible nor quoted in my book, I got the response that: well, in the
beginning of the twentieth century there were several hundred thousands,
rather a million, but in the end — well, very roughly three to five million.
Let us grade these exact figures taken from the air: during the course of
the 20th century, this intelligentsia grew from a few hundred thousand or
a million to several million people. It is true, if we orient ourselves to the
voters that were for the liberal-democratic parties — of course, not the party
of Zhirinovky is meant28 — then I would increase the number to seven or
eight million, or otherwise, who, apart from intelligentsia and part of petty
and middle-class proprietors, formed the lists of supporters of groups like
“Vybor Rossii” (The Choice of Russia)29, “Yabloko” (The Apple)30, or
28 Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky (born 1946 as Eidelstein of a Jewish father),

an influential and scandalous Russian politician, founder and the leader of the
Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), Vice-Chairman of the State Duma,
and a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Despite its
name, the LDPR is an ultra-nationalist Russian party.
29 The “Choice of Russia” was a Russian liberal political movement that was founded
by then acting prime minister (1992), recently deceased Yegor Gaidar, the author of
controversial economic reforms of 1992, which, nevertheless delivered the country
from the imminent famine and, probably, chaos; in spite of certain political blunders,
one of the brightest and rarely “transparent” figures in the obscure pantheon of
Russian, to say nothing of Soviet, state and political leaders. In 1995, the party
contested the election in a coalition of minor like-minded groups, forming the
Democratic Choice of Russia — United Democrats. Later in 1990s, it evolved into
the Union of Right Forces.
30 The “Russian United Democratic Party Yabloko” (“Apple”) is a Russian social-
democratic party. The party stands for the greater political freedom and civil
liberties in Russia, for greater integration with the Western world and membership
in the European Union. The party opposed president Yeltsin’s and his prime
ministers’ policies, earning the reputation of a determined opposition movement that
nevertheless was devoted to democratic reforms (in contrast, most of the opposition
was communist and/or nationalist at that time). Similarly, it has continued to oppose
Vladimir Putin for his increasing authoritarianism. Originally established as a public
21
“The Union of the Right Forces”31 (It is with little enthusiasm that I am
uttering the names of these parties or movements, which I have never been
a member of, as a lifelong independent, but unfortunately, there are no and
have not been better ones in Post-Soviet Russia than these outright political
losers). It is also clear that included in these millions are almost all, if not all
the Russian Jews.
There are of course official demographics about Jews. In the Russian
Empire in 1914, there were 5.25 million Jews. In the Soviet Union in 1939,
there were 3 million; after the annexation of western Ukraine, western
Byelorussia, Baltic States, Bessarabia, and the influx of refugees from
western Poland there were 5.4 million. As a result of the Holocaust and
the war, the number of Jews dropped more than twice, and with a smaller
birth-rate, continues to fall: in 1959 there were 2.26 million, 1970 had 2.15,
1979 — 1.81, 1989 — 1.45. In Russia, after massive emigration, at the end
of 1993, there were less than 400 thousand left, and according to the 2002
census, 259 thousand.
The figures from the USSR and post-Soviet Russia are based on the
censuses, which I do not consider definitive: a lot of people of mixed
origin, for various reasons, fall out. The last figure looks especially funny:32
organization in 1993, it transformed into a political party in 2001. It contested the

Russian legislative election with the following results (vote percent/seats in the
Duma won): 1993 — 7.86/ 27; 1995 — 6.89/ 45; 1999 — 5.93/ 20; 2003 — 4.30/ 4;
2007 — 1.6/ 0 (when Yabloko lost its representation in the State Duma). In 2005,
Yabloko-United Democrats, a coalition formed by Yabloko and the Union of Right
Forces, won 11% of the vote in the Moscow municipal elections.
31 The “Union of Right Forces”, or SPS, was a Russian liberal democratic opposition
party associated with free market reforms, privatization, and the legacy of the ‘Young
Reformers’ of the 1990s. The Party is considered by most western media organs to
be one of the few Russian parties that support western-style capitalism. SPS was
established in 1999, following a merger of several smaller liberal parties, including
Democratic Choice of Russia. In the Russian 1999 parliamentary elections, the Union
of Right Forces won 8.6% of the vote and 32 seats in the Russian State Duma. The
party won 0.96% of votes in the Russian legislative 2007 elections, far from breaking
the 7% barrier, and thus no seats in the Duma. On October 1, 2008, Federal political
council of the party voted to dissolve the party, with an eye on possible merger with
Civilian Power and Democratic Party of Russia (newly cooked, very likely by the
Government) to form a new liberal-democrat party called Right Cause.
32 This figure incited me to coin up a joke, some overstatement: I know that many
Jews, or, perhaps, fewer than that, — personally (I have recently read that the same
joke was first coined by a delegate of one of the first Zionist congresses). The entire
demographers’ approach to the issue of “counting the Jews” reminds me of another
22
I can only repeat my personal opinion, that Russia now holds not less
than two million people that by wide criteria, or by their combination, as
discussed previously, would count as Jews and that would most probably
add themselves if other methods of selection had been used.33 Anyway, it
is clear enough which socio-cultural group Jews mostly turned to in search
of partners for the “mixed marriages” over the course of the twentieth
century. Of course, the husbands Jewish ladies captured included Joe-the-
plumbers, Red Army commanders, Chiefs of the Politburo, and captivating
Caucasian Dzhigits, while the Jewish men, as it happens to be, married in
prewar time village Russians or Ukrainian beauties, and in postwar, sex-
appealing “limitedesses”34 or exotic Koreans. However, in general, it was
another ethno-social layer into which Jews entered more and more, as they
were becoming a more urban and educated group of the population (this is
clearly shown in demographic dynamics).
This layer was the Russian intelligentsia.
Then a new question arrises: can one group of one to several millions
assimilate another, of about the same size, if both groups are on the same
cultural level and represent the same social medium?
Then what happened in the Soviet Union to the Jews and the
intelligentsia? My answer is — at the risk of appearing unpleasant to the
“adherents and hoarders of purity of nation,” both Russian and Jewish:
they mutually assimilated each other (still, of course, partially, not
completely as yet — hey, come on! Lord forbid!)
However, the issue here is not only in biological mixing; again I will
emphasize: the Russian intelligentsia can hold an Armenian, and a Latvian,
and a Tatar — it is “Russian” by ethnic identity of its major part and by
attachment to the Russian culture, while the crucial criterion is the Russian
language.
old Jewish joke: — Rabinovich, you are a happy father of four kids, you wife is
still young. Why don’t you make the fifth? — You know, I read somewhere that the
global population is some three billion heads, some 600 thousand Chinese including.
Means every fifth of the whole mess must be a Chinese. With my luck, what I am
still lacking is a Chinese in the family!
33 The problem of counting the Jews (“Satan … incited David to take a census on Israel”
1Ch 21:1) and getting equivocal results goes as far back as the Biblical episodes,
described in 2 Sa 22 and 1Ch 21:1–8, 27:23–24.
34 During the Soviet period, there were not enough workers in the cities, so people
were brought in from the villages and smaller towns on a limited stay to work on
projects. The female workers are mentioned here.
23
There was a rather unique “mating” of two cultural entities. Cultural

assimilation could not be but in only one direction. In late 19th and early
20th centuries, Jews — those of them that aimed to leave the Pale to go to
cities — came into Russian culture “blank,” torn from their religious tradition
and from their own language, Yiddish, and with no skills of European or
Russian, close to European, education. However, they came with another
baggage — Jewish drive and energy, many centuries experience of survival,
and the habit of the People of the Book to learning. Russian education
and the Russian language were gained in record speed. The Jewish burst
to Russian culture was streamlined and fruitful — both for Jews and for
Russian culture.
During the course of such assimilation a dynamic group formed
which was part of — of course, without strict boundaries — the Russian
intelligentsia, and is part, in post-Soviet Russia, of a nascent middle class.
In it, few are interested in the difference between people of mixed —
mostly Russian-Jewish — blood and halakhic or “whole” Jews. This group,
although severely weakened in Russia because of massive emigration and
brain drain, steps out with its cultural and energetic potential from other
enclaves of the Russian population as well as from other groups of the
Jewish Diaspora; its branches hold increasingly important positions not
only among other Jewish communities in Israel, but already in America.
There is a chance (a little one, to be realistic) that in Israel, America,
Germany, and in other countries of the new Russian Jewish Diaspora,
this group — its core at least — the fruit of Russian Jews and Russian
intelligentsia, will keep the Russian language, Russian culture, a Jewish
Russian identity, and will continue its historic existence as one of the most
civilized and humanistically minded communities in the world.
“UNIVERSAL VALUES”
AND THEIR BIBLICAL ROOTS
Is there a way to overcome this identity crisis? Is there a values system

that would at once suit the Jews to the extent of stimulating the growth
of self-awareness (or, at least, of stopping its disintegration) and also
correspond to the values accepted by civilized Western society? Can such
a system contribute to achieving a certain degree of understanding between
24
“Universal Values” and Their Bibl ical Roots
the secular liberal-thinking Jews and the traditionalists (at least, the most
tolerant members of that group), the agnostics or non-believers and the
believers? Can we find such values as would, for instance, enable the young
American or Russian Jews to answer “yes” to the fatal question, “Do we
really need all this?”
To get somewhat closer to the answers, let’s try to determine what
values and ideas are most basic for modern Western civilization. The most
succinct adjectives here would be “universal” and “humanistic”: they
indicate, on the one hand, the central role of the concept of mankind as
a single whole and proclaim, on the other hand, the absolute value of human
life and the idea of Man as the measure of all things. This idea might be
called anthropocentric, or generic, because it establishes the priority, or the
absolute value of the species Homo sapiens sapiens. The idea of progress is
at once another central concept of the civilization process and its stimulus.
According to it, human history is seen as forward movement in the course
of which mankind — in spite of all tragic zigzagging and retreating — yet
advances in the general direction of more affluent, safe and decent life,
i.e., the species succeeds in surviving and consolidating its position in the
surrounding world; a new element herein is the growing realization of
a careful attitude to this world that is called for.
It was in two cultural traditions that the prototype of such ideas is
rooted — the ancient Greek and Hebrew. Here we will speak of the Biblical
texts where a set of these ideas was first outlined — and, to a considerable
degree, even formulated. The texts in question, namely the opening chapters
of Genesis, are dated by most specialists to the period not earlier than
the mid-first millennium B.C.E. There is no reason to believe that these
concepts were borrowed by the Jews elsewhere, though it is quite likely that
the notions in question stemmed from the rather earlier concepts and their
evolution fell under the sway of the adjacent great Near Eastern cultures.
We are going to discuss each of these ideas here, as well as the
conclusions that they imply. Before considering briefly the ideas
this set comprises — along with certain conclusions that these ideas
suggest — I would like to remind the reader what has been referred to
in the “Introduction” in connection with the genre specificity: one can
find simplifications, common knowledge data and purely subjective
interpretations of things. To wit: the use with respect to the Bible of such
categories as ethics, the feel of history, the absolute, a conception — are sure
to court a reproach in overestimation of “advanced level” of ancient thought,
its anachronistic modernization, the transfer of our contemporary — at
25
that “Euro-centrist” — notions into another epoch and a different culture.

Possibly, it would be rather more proper to place all similar terms in the
inverted commas each time I use them. However, in the process of writing
this text and keeping up a permanent argument-dialogue — both external
(with readers and listeners of preliminary versions) and internal (with
myself) — I perceive also the arguments in favor of a direct muster of such
categories — and not just as of a meta-language device alone.
The point is, while pouring over the reconstruction process of the basic
and cultural proto-Semitic word stock35 dating back to a far more archaic
epoch than Biblical36 I fell to approaching with wariness the widespread
opinion that in antiquity, particularly the pre-historic (pre-written) era,
human thinking was far more primitive. It seems to suggest also that it was
incapable of shaping up abstract notions and the place of rational intellection,
generalization, fragmentation of the surrounding world was filled by
mythology. This opinion as a whole was also shared by I.M. Diakonoff, my
teacher and senior co-author:37
One ought not to overestimate the force of a primeval man’s inducement

to making sense of the world around him … the practical character of
response to outside stimuli predominated … It was only the philosophers
of a later period of antiquity that acquired the interest, leisure time, and the
practical ability for rational, unemotional generalizations of the universe
all around them … no philosophy is possible without generalization,
and the primeval man — even already in possession of a lexical symbol
system — was still lacking the linguistic (ergo — rational one, in general
terms) apparatus for abstracting phenomena in their dynamics.38
This extract refers to “land-tillers and cattle breeders populating the Earth
in the pre-urban … period between the 9th millennium B.C. and the 1st
millennium A.D.” Diakonoff avers that “a conscious discrete thought (not
35 In Militarev, A., & Kogan, L. Semitic Etymological Dictionary. Vol. I. Anatomy of

Man and Animals (2000); Vol. II. Animal Names (2005). Ugarit-Verlag, Münster.
(Other six or seven volumes hopefully to follow.) Further quoted as SED I and II.
36 The Proto-Semitic period dates, by various estimations, between last third 5th and
mid-4th millennia B.C.E.
37 Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff (Diakonov in Russian), 1915–1999, an eminent
Russian historian of the ancient world, pre-historian and linguist, one of the founders
and leading figures of Afrasian linguistics.
38 Diakonov, I.M., Архаические мифы Востока и Запада (The Archaic Myths of
The East and West). Moscow, 1990, p. 11 (translated from Russian).
26
an emotion) is equivalent to a word … whatever lacks in the language is

accordingly absent from the consciousness either.”39 This is a very strong
declaration, perhaps an overstatement; the reverse assertion “whatever
lacks in the consciousness is accordingly absent from the language” is more
evident and less contradictory, to my mind.
It is evident that notions are expressed via terms, or words. Though
the lexical meaning and even the sum of contextual meanings of a word
merely point at the notion they designate and describe it without conveying
the entire range and richness of everything it implies, the very existence
of notional terms in the lexicon of a language — even of a long-dead
one — indicates that the corresponding notions were also present in the
culture of the human society that once spoke the language in question.
This assertion is also true in regard to reconstructed languages (“proto-
languages”) — common ancestors of extant and extinct languages, whose
kinship is proved by the comparative and historical method in linguistics.
If the same word is attested to in several languages with a common
ancestor, and it is possible to rule out the possibility of borrowing by one
cognate language from another or from a non-cognate language, then it
was already present in the proto-language.
This calls for a minor linguistic digression now. Ancient, classical, or
biblical Hebrew, in which the major part of the Hebrew Bible is couched,
belongs to the Semitic language family along with such languages as
Akkadian (Assyro-Babylonian); Eblaitic; Ugaritic; Aramaic ones (Judaic,
Syrian, Mandaic et al.); Epigraphic South Arabian (Sabaic et al.); Arabic,
extinct (classical Arabic, Andalusian Arabic et al.) and the extant (numerous
Arabic dialects or, rather, languages spread in Asia and Africa including
Maltese); Ethiopian, extant (Tigre; Tigrai, or Tigrinya; Amharic; Harari;
Gurage dialects et al.) and the extinct (Ancient Ethiopic, or Geez); Modern
South Arabian (Mehri, Harsusi, Jibbali, Soqotri). All of these languages go
back to a single ancestor — the proto-Semitic language reconstructed on
the basis of descendant languages comparison into which it started dividing
in the course of the last third of the 5th — early 4th millennia B.C.E.
The Semitic language family happens to be part of a larger Semito-
Hamitic, or Hamito-Semitic (the traditional names still used in European
scholarship), or Afro-Asiatic/Afroasiatic (in use in the USA), or Afrasian
(a more technical term adopted for better convenience by Russian
linguists — the one to be used in this book) macro-family other branches
39 Ibid., p. 190, note 4.
27
of which are comprised by the following languages: ancient Egyptian

and its direct successor — Coptic; Berber-Canarian;40 Chadic;41 Cushitic
and Omotic.42
Proto-languages of all the branches listed above are the descendants
and were at one time the dialects of their common ancestor — the Proto-
Afrasian language the separation of which into these dialects is dated
back to approximately mid-10th millennium B.C.E. Calculations have
been performed by me by way of glottochronology method devised in the
fifties of the 20th century by an American linguist Maurice Swadesh and
radically improved and further elaborated by Sergei Starostin, a Moscow
linguist.43
There now, the reconstructed word stock of the proto-Semitic and — to
a lesser degree — of the proto-Afrasian language testifies to the ability of
that “primeval man” to comprehend and generalize — the ability reflected
in terms, words.
It is only by knowledge and profound enough intellection of the
surrounding world and the human nature that the presence in proto-Semitic
lexicon of nearly two hundred terms — and not less than a hundred of proto-
Afrasian ones — from the semantic area of human and animal anatomy can
be explained. And what else other than the ability to generalize and classify
facts can explain the fact that while there are sets of etymologically related
words denoting cat, leopard, lion or other animals of the feline family and
sometimes the civet — and therefore “confusing” these particular animals,
shifting the name of any one of them to another — in various Afrasian
languages alongside other sets denoting by the related terms in various
languages — and thus lexically confusing — dog, wolf, jackal, and fox of the
40 Canarian are the extinct (presumably since the 17th century C.E.) languages of the
Canary islands aborigines; the Berbers are the linguistic and biological descendants
of ancient Libyans resident in Northern Africa and Sahara.
41 Hausa and several hundred non-literate languages of Central and Western Africa.
42 Beja, or Bedauye; Oromo (Galla), Somali, Sidamo, Welaitta, Yemsa, Kafa and
dozens of others, non-written languages of Eastern Africa.
43 Sergei Anatolievich Starostin (24.03.1953 — 30.09.2005), member of the Russian
Academy of Sciences, Head of the American-Russian Project “Evolution of Human
Languages”, one of the (if not the) most profound and productive linguists of our
time, author of fundamental works in Altaic, North-Caucasian, Indo-European, Sino-
Tibetan, Yenissean and Nostratic languages, Chinese and Japanese, basic principles
of long-range comparison, new methods in lexicostatistics and glottohronology, etc.,
etc. His bold discoveries have practically revolutionized some of these fields.
28
canine family (in a couple of cases also hyena) these two sets are normally
not confused with one another?44 The same can be said about sets of terms
denoting equidae (donkey and horse)45 distinctly set apart from words
denoting bull/cow, antelope and goat, ram lumping the hollow-horned ones
together. And even when — it would seem — a confusion ensues to the effect
of denoting in different descendant languages such vastly different animals
as elephant and rhinoceros or elephant and hippopotamus with cognate
words continuing the same proto-language term, it signifies their unification
by some taxonomic attribute, most likely the pachydermous-ness — rather
than inability of the ancient humans to tell them apart.
To these linguistic arguments countering the primitive nature of
an ancient human yet another one should be added — the one exemplified
by rock paintings. I can only talk about the rock-carved images found in
Sahara of neolithic period that I studied when I was writing together with
I.M. Diakonoff the Afterwords and commentary to the book by Henry
Lhote.46 The above images unquestionably qualify for one of the peaks of
world representational art in a purely artistic, aesthetic aspect — may we also
observe at this juncture many millennia before the time when, in established
opinion, art got set apart as an independent occupation and pastime as well
as an object for reflection. It also happens to be an amazing phenomenon
with respect to human resource expenditure and technical materialization.
Suffice it to mention that paints retain their brightness after eight or ten
thousand years of exposition to the elements under the open sky — or the
rock-wall panel of 120 square meters featuring a magnificent depiction of
a herd of giraffes. When a copy of it was delivered to Paris by Henry Lhote
and his team, André Malraux, a famous writer and art theorist, came to the
conclusion upon seeing it, that pre-historic humans could not have painted
44 Except for two cases uniting wolf, hyena and lion/leopard — obviously denoting any
dangerous predator in Proto-Afrasian.
45 Interestingly, out of a dozen Proto-Afrasian terms for equidae, half of them include
camel; I cannot think of any feature that could associate such different animals
as camel and donkey in the minds of Afrasian speakers (on the proto-branch
level — Proto-Semitic or Proto-Cushitic, etc.) other than common function of
serving as a beast of burden or riding animal, though pre-historians would hardly
“buy” it — the 6th or 5th or even 4th millennium seems to be a too early date for
domestication of beasts of burden, to say nothing of riding animals.
46 Afterword and notes to the Russian edition of the book: Анри Лот “К другим
Тассили. Новые открытия в Сахаре” (H. Lhote, “Vers d’autres Tassilis. Nouvelles
decouvertes au Sahara”). Leningrad, pp. 190–208.
29
figures that large and perfectly shaped without pre-considered composition

carefully thought over and that in those times way back there already must
have existed something like “art schools.”47 It is also a testimony to the
richest and most complex human perception: among dozens of thousands
of realistic and symbolic petroglyphic images one comes across the magic-
ritual and cattle-breeding and hunting and battle and everyday life and even
sexual and humorous scenes.
Back to the language, however: is it at all possible to aver that such
common Semitic — dated, as I said, to the late 5th — early 4th millennia
B.C.E., i.e. at least a thousand years prior to the earliest written texts in
Mesopotamia and Egypt — words as nouns “past times, ancient times”
(*ḳVdm-,48 attested in all Semitic languages); *ʔaḫr- “future, later time”
(in all Semitic languages except Ethiopian and Modern South Arabian); or
verbs “to know” (*ydʕ; in all Semitic branches, with Afrasian cognates); “to
think, to count” (*hb in Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, Arabic, Ethiopian
and Modern South Arabian, with a cognate hsb “to reckon, count, calculate”
in Egyptian of the Pyramid texts) signify “the practical character of
response to outside stimuli” and may have appeared without the “linguistic
apparatus … for abstracting phenomena”?
Is it then not to the legal and ethical notions of the prehistoric people
that the common Semitic words testify with semantics like *wrt  “to inherit,
take possession of” (in all Semitic languages), *dyn “to judge” and, of the
same root, *d–n- “justice, process, lawsuit; legal decision; sentence, etc.”,
*dayyan- “judge” (all Semitic except modern South Arabian wherein they
are Arabisms); *sdḳ “to be just, right, true, righteous” (everywhere except
Akkadian), *rhm “to be merciful, compassionate, kind to so., have pity” (in
all Semitic languages), *ḫṭʔ “to miss, fail, lack; mistake, err; do wrong, sin”
(in all Semitic languages), *b(h)t̲ “to be ashamed” (in Akkadian, Ugaritic,
Hebrew, Aramaic, and very likely Arabic wherein baht̲at- means “son of
a whore”), *ḫpr “to be ashamed, timid, bashful” (in Hebrew, Aramaic,
Arabic and Ethiopian) or *zny “to commit adultery, fornicate” with
an apparently negative overtone in all the descendant languages (Hebrew,
Aramaic, Arabic, Ethiopian and Modern South Arabian), along with verbs
with a “neutral” meaning “to copulate, have sexual intercourse”, such
47 That copy had not gone on display as a large enough display space was not available
in France then.
48 The symbol * indicates that the term it precedes is a form in the proto-language
reconstructed by comparison of akin forms in the related languages.
30
as *nyk (in Akkadian, Arabic, Ethiopian and Modern South Arabian; of

Afrasian origin being attested in Egyptian, Berber, Chadic and Cushitic)?
Neither do I bring myself to agree that the ancient ones always implied
something simpler, more specific or principally different than what we
imply in using such terms denoting those notions; it’s a different matter
altogether that some of those meanings do actually go back to those simpler
“proto-meanings” reconstructed on a chronologically more profound pre-
proto-language level, and for yet others such “proto-meanings” have not
been found, but one may suppose that they once were there.49
Thus, the word “soul” denoting a fairly complex concept ensconcing
an entire system of notions that change and vary from culture to culture
derives from mere “breath,” but the meaning “soul” is testified to in all
Semitic languages, i.e. already in proto-Semitic language the word *napi-
or *nap- featured that meaning and the heads of proto-Semites conjured up
the corresponding notion. It may have differed from the much later Judaic,
Christian and Muslim concepts only in certain nuances; what we all imply
referring to “soul” has actually stemmed from the Biblical notion of it, which
eventually evolved from an earlier still, proto-Semitic one. The common
Semitic “mercy” in ancient texts in different Semitic languages harking back
to the anatomical term “uterus, mother’s womb” (*rahm-/*rihm- attested
in all Semitic languages and having cognates in Cushitic, i.e. of common
Afrasian origin) signifies in general terms the same implication we invoke
to suggest mercy, compassion, kindness, generosity, humane attitude,
etc., and it is totally groundless to infer that proto-Semitic speakers had
meant something substantially different — say, man-eating. If it is true of
the language and mentality of a human individual existing six or seven,
nay! twelve millennia ago, then it is even truer and more so with respect
to an individual who lived at the time when Biblical texts were taking their
shape, whose mentality as a whole was different from ours no more than
the consciousness of a Siberian peasant or a Breton fisherman of the early
20th century, i.e. prior to the modernization epoch, is different from that of
a latter-day intellectual.
Modern terminology and the set of notions that I use in talking of the
Bible hark partially precisely back to it and partially — to the antique and
Hellenistic tradition. Is it all that important — come to think of it — that,
49 Prof. Diakonoff’s joke was that in the Sumerian language, the earliest written
language ever known, “to think” had originally meant “to wamble” used of an upset
stomach.
31
say, in the 8th century B.C.E. the prophets started making pronouncements
on the issues of ethics and morals not knowing what these substances were
to be called? Or called them otherwise totally unaware that such matters
would not be set apart exactly soon by the “real” philosophers-to-be as
a separate set of tenets for reflection and area of research?
Let us then take a closer look at the basic Biblical ideas that appeared
innovative for their time and with time developed into fundamental values
and concepts system of latter-day civilization.
Anthropocentrism
It is the idea of Man as the crown of Creation and its principal end. Man
is radically different from animals as a holder of the divine license to own
the earth and everything that inhabits it (Gen 1:28). It is precisely the Man,
Adam, that the Creator authorizes to give names to other living creatures
(Gen 2:19). That right is an indicator of an exceptionally lofty status of
Man, considering the magic-sacral role of a name in the ancients’ system
of notions: it is not for nothing that in many other mythologies “naming” is
the Gods’ privilege.
Let’s adduce an example to demonstrate the revolutionary nature
of such a view. If we were to ask a citizen of ancient Athens, the most
advanced ancient democracy of the time that the texts discussed herein also
belong to, to divide four creatures — a Hellene, a barbarian, a slave, and
an ass — into two groups, he would almost certainly have drawn the dividing
line between the Hellene and all the rest: Aristotle is said to instruct his
disciple Alexander the Great that the king ought to care about the Hellenes
as his friends and to treat barbarians as domestic animals. There is a remote
possibility that the barbarian would have been placed in the same group as
the Hellene: such a broad outlook would have been expected of Herodotus
who had proclaimed as the goal of his “History” the glorification of both
Hellenes’ and barbarians’ deeds. There is little doubt, however, that the
slave together with the ass would have remained in the other group.
In the Bible, however, Adam, the First Man (ergo, all his posterity, i. e.
all the humankind) was created in God’s image and likeness; besides, man
is called “God’s slave” which in itself is incompatible with excluding slaves
from the category of people par excellence and their identification with
animals (cf. also: “A wise servant will rule over a disgraceful son, and will
share the inheritance as one of the brothers” Pr 17:2).
32
What is the new import of this idea in actual fact and what is its
importance for us?
Let’s arrange an imaginary situation to demonstrate the radical
difference between the anthropocentric (humanistic, universalistic) world
view and everything resulting from it (ethics, legal concepts, etc.) on the one
hand and certain particularistic principles on the other. Imagine a public,
universal “Nuremberg Trial” somewhere in Berlin, New York, Moscow, or
Jerusalem at which the most bloody evil-doers of modern human history
are standing trial, many — alas! — posthumously. (By the way, I am sure
that such a trial is necessary and that, some day, it will take place.) The
dock is occupied by Talaat Pasha and other organizers of the Armenian
massacre of 1915, Lenin and Stalin, Hitler and Mao Zedong, the cannibal
emperor Bokassa and his neighbor Idi Amin, Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge
regime, the terrorists Carlos, Baader and Meinhof, the heroes of the “Arabic
street” Saddam Hussein, Osama bin-Laden and Sheikh Yassin, and other
famous characters of this sort (let us note parenthetically that all of them
are males).
The whole of humankind is sitting petrified — “glued” to TV screens or
computer monitors. The select few are the audience present in the courtroom
to listen to the case being argued.
We have just finished listening to a shocking account of the
defendants’ crimes against humanity given by the prosecutor who, having
adduced irrefutable evidence of their being guilty of genocide and other
large-scale evil deeds demanded a death sentence for all of them. It is
now for the defense to speak. Humane laws of human society allow the
criminals the right to be defended at court: monsters they are, but still
human monsters.
The lawyer starts his speech in a somewhat unusual manner. He asks
of the judge a permission to address everyone present at court with the
following question: “Ladies and gentlemen, are there vegetarians among
you? If so, I ask them to raise hands.”
Since the trial is unprecedented and due to its social significance the
judge allows this. Many dozen hands go up amidst the perplexed audience.
“Now, may only those who abstain from meat because they are against
killing animals on principle, and not for dietary reasons, raise your hands,
please.” Hands go up again, albeit noticeably fewer this time.
“As you can see,” proceeds the lawyer, “the overwhelming majority of
those present are not against killing animals for food, while being against
killing their own kind, Homo sapiens. I suppose that the ratio of the “dietary
33
vegetarians” to the “humane vegetarians” in this courtroom reflects the

actual public opinion prevailing in modern Western society. I can hardly
be mistaken in assuming that most people adhering to Western values
and having no objection to killing animals for purely practical reasons
regard this phenomenon as a necessary evil. Many of us, though silently
acquiescing to the slaughter of living beings, would never participate in it
personally, and have a sincere pity for animals to be slaughtered. On the
other hand, I doubt that we’ll be able to find many people objecting to pest
control, i.e., the extermination of living creatures harmful to man — like
rats, roaches, bugs, etc., or, say, rabid dogs, although we have to admit that
all those creatures are quite innocent of being what they are, for Nature or
the Maker has made them so.”
“Let’s think about why we discriminate so radically between humans
and animals. The answer is obvious to me: we do so because our Western
civilization is based upon the Biblical anthropocentric world view,
according to which Man radically differs from the other living creatures,
and homicide, let alone genocide — mass murder of humans — is viewed
as the most hideous of crimes. However, this is evidently but one of the
possible world models or standpoints which is far from being shared by all
human communities, now or in the past.
Let’s call to mind some examples: the Hindu see in the killing of a cow
a crime nearly more serious than the murder of a man; the Jains have the
ahimsa (“non-hurting”) principle they extend even to poisonous insects.
Just imagine the opinion that the most consistent Hindus and Jains must
have of our own civilization engaged in mass bovicide (from Latin bos,
bovis, “ox, cow”) as part of permanent zoocide which is a norm.
Turning to my clients now, I muster the audacity to declare that each of
them has his own viewpoint — not anthropocentric but more particularistic.
Mr. Lenin is, for example, an exponent of a “proletarian-centriс” position,
while Mr. Hitler, of “Aryan-centric” and Mr. bin-Laden, of “Islamo-centric”
one. It means that the exceptional position reserved for us in the picture of
things for Homo sapiens is allotted by Mr. Lenin not to all humans but to
the exploited classes, primarily the proletariat, by Mr. Hitler, to the Aryan
race, and Mr. bin-Laden, to the adepts of Islam — or to those of them whom
he regards as true Moslems.”
“According to the world view of each of my clients, there are two
types of communities of such living beings that ought to be used to ensure
the survival and prosperity of the most valuable groups of their choice,
and also communities of such living beings that disturb this prosperity
34
(like rats and mosquitoes disturb ours). The exploitation — or, as you
could put it, consumption of the communities of the former type and the
elimination of the communities of the latter type are objectively conducive
to the attainment of these lofty goals (from my clients’ point of view). In
the case of Mr. Lenin, such communities are represented by the peasants,
“intelligentsia” (type one) and exploiting classes (type two); in Mr. Hitler’s
case, by non-Aryan nations (type one) and by the Jews, the Gypsies,
homosexuals and mentally unsound persons (type two); while in Mr. bin-
Laden’s case, by enemies of Islam, by the American imperialists and —
a curious coincidence with Mr. Hitler — the Jews (type two) and by their
Russian and other collaborationists (type one).”
“It was this necessary evil, this difficult and thankless task — the task
of disinfection, or pest control — that my clients were forced to assume.
I assure you that they will go out of their way to assure us they did not
sustain any animosity (sometimes — nay, even as a rule — they felt sincere
pity) for the objects of their burdensome activity, not to mention the strong
personal attachment they might have had to certain individuals until they
were forced to make the tragic, though necessary decision.
What is it, then, that the esteemed prosecutor accuses my clients of,
choosing to pay heed in a case of this exceptional social significance — rather
than to the multicultural experience of the entire mankind and the impartial
voice of his conscience — to an overstated point of view once expressed
in one bygone written artifact (and with any degree of lucidity in a few
passages only: it is commonly known that rather than this, universalistic
position — a totally particularistic, Hebrew-centric one predominates in the
Bible!) and later consolidated in our civilization as a result of a series of
historical fortuities.
In fact, he charges them with thinking differently. Every action of
theirs as much logically follows from their very special beliefs as our own
extermination or consuming of many kinds of living creatures other than
Homo sapiens follows from our anthropocentrism. I affirm that any of my
clients is ready to embark upon an infinitely sophisticated and lengthy
academic discussion with any opponent in order to make them understand
each other better or even bring their respective points of view closer to
each other.
However, what has the penal code to do with it? Is it fitting for our
civilization — with all its pluralism, tolerance and the striving to get to
the true essence of things and the ultimate raison d’être — to condemn so
grossly men to the loss of freedom it values so much or even to death —
35
TO DEATH! — just for having a point of view different from ours? Do we

not just exercise the right of the strong, the right of those who, by virtue of
workings and vicissitudes of history we can’t comprehend yet, have become
the ultimate winners (or think they have) imposing on everyone their view
of things most complex, subtle and unsolvable as the only true one? Do
we not pave the way for people like radical vegetarians or the Jains (let’s
admit, inter parenthesis, that their view of these things is, ethically, more
superior to ours, which restricts the principles of compassion, love and non-
violence to one kind only, though ours, I admit, presents a higher level in
the evolution of ethics, as compared to the more particularistic position of
my clients) who, should they attain the topmost position in human society,
might bring all of us, the criminal meat-eaters and wicked flea-killers to
a trial of universal proportions, demanding a death sentence — perhaps
not for all, but surely for our spiritual leaders — philosophers, theologians,
writers, leading scientists?”
So much for our fictitious trial story. Let the reader find objections
to these imaginary arguments and ponder the significance of the
anthropocentric world model and the correlation between universalism and
particularism both for mankind and for himself or herself.
“Adamism”
There is something I would call “adamism”: the idea of human

race based upon the understanding that all humans and all nations have
a common origin. The concept in itself, being widespread in various
mythologies, is not a Biblical innovation. However, the fact that it was
postulated twice — in the myth of the first couple (Adam and Eve) and in
the account of the postdiluvial humanity (Noah and his descendants) —
as well as the carefully described genetic tree (Gen 10) and the Tower of
Babel story (Gen 11: 1–9) with its idea of a language originally common
to all humans attest to a great significance that the authors of these texts
attached to the idea of human unity. If in the center of the world picture
created in the opening chapters of Genesis there stands Man, then in other
ancient cultures where the opposition Man — not-Man is meaningful in
principle, in a picture like this normally figures not a generic Man and not
a human race either, but a man of “one’s own” kind, “one’s own” culture.
It is “we” — not “they” — who are exclusively, or par excellence, human
beings.
36
According to Egyptian myths, Egypt was the land that had been
created first and the Egyptian were the first-created people (let us note
parenthetically that in the Biblical passages discussed herein the original
birthplace of the humankind is not the “Promised Land,” not Canaan,
while Abraham’s descendants are but one of the peoples, a late-in-the-day
branch on the genetic tree of the tribes populating the Earth); for an ancient
Egyptian all sorts of Libyans, Nubians, the “Asians” were foes, aliens or, at
best, hired workers and mercenaries. The Chinese showed the same attitude
to the barbarians living outside the “Central Empire.” The ancient Greeks
were interested in neighboring peoples more than others; it seems that the
idea of humanity as an entity different from the realm of gods, on the one
hand, and the animal kingdom, on the other, had some significance for
them. It is, nevertheless, obvious that this division was neither absolute nor
the only conceivable for them as it was for the Jews — let us recall if only
heroes born of the intercourse between gods and humans.
One might argue that numerous Biblical texts contain the idea of the
Jews as God’s chosen people that opposed them to other nations and has, in
many respects, predetermined further evolution of Jewish ethno-religious
consciousness. Obviously, this idea prevails over the idea of a single
human race. The universalism/particularism opposition reflects the polemic
intermittently dwindling and flaring anew, stemming from a contradiction
among various social groups, ideologies and schools of thought represented
in the ancient Hebrew society in the course of many generations, the
polemic, that is, that went on throughout all the consecutive periods of
Jewish history. This opposition seems to be distributed between two groups
of Biblical texts that are attributed to the “priestly” and “royal” schools or
ideological trends respectively.50
A dramatic lack of this polemic’s completion is conspicuously
manifest in the following example. A famous episode from Mishnah goes:
“This is why Adam was created alone. It is to teach us that … whosoever
destroys a single soul … , Scripture imputes [guilt] to him as though he had
destroyed a complete world; and whosoever preserves a single soul … ,
Scripture ascribes [merit] to him as though he had preserved a complete
50 It is interesting that universalistic motifs are associated with the author(s) supposedly
belonging to the “priestly” group or school, whereas particularistic and ethnocentric
trends are evident in the secular, “royal” group — is it not an evocation of sorts of the
discourse on the “Jewish role, or mission in the world” among the religious Jews and
secular Zionists?
37
world … When a man mints a number of coins from a single die, they are all
identical; but the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One blessed be He,
minted every human being from the die of the primal Adam, and not one of
them is like any other.”51 However, in some manuscripts the words “a single
soul” are followed by “of Israel” which changes the meaning of the entire
pronouncement totally and utterly. It is precisely this version that was used
as the original source for Mishnah translation into English by J. Newsner,
a famous early Rabbinical literature American specialist. Passionately
contesting such a choice, Marvin Hope, another major American Bible
expert and Assyrologist wrote in his article “Adam, Edom and Holocaust”
shortly before his demise:
… Adam/humanity was created singly (yəhi^di^ ) to teach you (and me)
that whoever destroys a single soul Scripture charges as if he destroyed
a world full, and whoever saves a single life Scripture credits as if he
saved a world full. The latter is the motto which in Spielberg’s cinedrama
Schindler’s List was engraved in the ring given by those whose lives
Schindler had saved. ‘Who saves a single life saves a world entire’ is one
of the noblest sayings in all human literature. Unfortunately, someone
who did not believe all human life to be of equal value added twice the
limitation ‘from Israel’, making Israelite lives all that matter. The phrase
‘from Israel’ sticks out like two sore thumbs and contradicts the continuing
larger context, which goes on to elaborate the unity and community of the
whole human family since the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be he,
cast every human from the same mould (used) for the first Adam and yet no
human is (exactly) like another. Accordingly, each one is obligated to say
‘for me the world was created’. This latter assertion may take the coveted
‘chutzpah prize’, but because anyone and everyone may say this, and some
seem really to believe it, no one has more right than another to make such
a claim, and hence it is meaningless except for the point that every life is
precious. One might wish that Spielberg had taken more care at this point
to make clear the context and import of the inscription in Schindler’s ring,
for all humanity needs to understand and take this message to heart and
to know that it applies to all life, not just human life, and is certainly not
limited to Israelite lives. It is thus startling to read in J. Neusner’s recent
translation of the Mishnah the concern limited to Israelite life with no note
that this limitation (miyyisʹrʔl) is absent in some manuscripts, obviously
51 Mishnah 4.5, The Babylonian Talmud, Soncino English translation, translated by

Jacob Shachter, University Press, Oxford, 1935, pg. 234, Sanhedrin 37a.
38
the original reading since the interpolated restriction contradicts the

repeated emphasis of the passage on the unity and equality of all humanity
as a single species all made from the same mold.52
It is nonetheless of crucial importance that such an opposition emerges
within humanity as one of the sequential acts of the drama that tells us
of God’s relationship with all nations, the children and descendants
of Adam. God concludes his first covenant with Noah and his posterity
(Gen 9:9), i.e., with all mankind. The emergence of this mankind as a result
of Creation and its further splitting explain the model of a single world
inhabited by different related tribes and nations and fill it with meaning.
This model prevails in modern anthropocentric civilization, without being
the only possible one, of course. A debate used to be topical, in anthropology
and genetics, between proponents of polygenesis and monogenesis of
modern human races until the recent discoveries in genetics tipped the
balance towards the universality of origins of all human populations
inhabiting our planet.53
Besides, we must not forget that, regardless of how occasional and
undeveloped were universalistic ideas in other Biblical texts and how
marginal and unimportant they may seem for the further evolution of
Jewish tradition, it was these ideas that were given the most prominent
place in the process of shaping the Biblical canon. The fact that the entire
complex of these ideas was placed in the opening chapters of the first
book of the Hebrew Bible — i.e. was given the most “prestigious” place in
the canon — is by no means accidental.
Therefore the opinion heard by me during one of discussions to the
effect that the universalistic ideas of the Bible inherited by Christianity
reflect but the views of one of the many schools of Jewish thought of
that epoch — most probably, of some obscure, “marginal” sect — seems
unconvincing to me precisely due to their locum in the canon structure. In
that case, it would be logical to assume that the compilers of the Biblical
canon did not belong to the mainstream of religious thought either (also
belonging to “marginals” or popularizing the views of same), which would
seem preposterous even with the apparent reflection in the Bible of the
strife of various schools and trends.
52 Pope, M.A., Adam, Edom and Holocaust. Boundaries of the Ancient Near Eastern
World. A Tribute to Cyrus H. Gordon. Sheffield, 1998, p. 203.
53 On an alternative theory see fn. 215. Cf. also recent discoveries about Neanderthal
genes in part of human population only.
39
Monotheism
Monotheism is an entirely new concept of the Deity and God-Man

relationship which is inseparable from the two afore-mentioned ideas.
Biblical monotheism may be described as anthropocentric by its very nature
(as anthropocentrist supreme is Lord God himself). Ancient mythologies other
than Biblical normally populate the universe with supernatural entities as well
as humans and animals; gods live their own lives among their own kind treating
humans like inferior creatures and sometimes playing games with their lives.
In any case, humans are far from occupying a central place in that world (in
Sumerian mythology, for instance, gods create man to work for their benefit).
Conversely, the God of the Bible, upon completing the act of Creation,
turns his attention exclusively to man, settling him, punishing him, fostering
him, etc. Aside from man, God has no other partner, interlocutor, or object
of activity. Other supernatural beings, the angels, are mere messengers
running errands: in Hebrew malʔk̲ means “angel” and “messenger”; both
meanings also occur in Aramaic including the earliest Old and Official (or
Empire) Aramaic, Arabic, Ethiopian and Modern South Arabian (wherein it
must be an Arabism). This derived noun is a nomen agentis from the verbal
root lʔk “to send a message or a messenger” occurring in Ugaritic, Arabic
and Ethiopian; strangely, in biblical Hebrew (and all Aramaic dialects) only
the derived nouns, and not the primary verb, occur which may point to
the borrowing of this noun by Hebrew from another language (Aramaic?
Ugaritic?). The exclusive role of man among all creation is highlighted
by the distance separating him — and all creation in general — from the
transcendent God, the Creator (true, peeping through the transcendence in
question are some anthropomorphous traits left over from the former tribal
patron-god): the distance that was pushed in the Biblical picture of the world
to the farthest conceivable limit which is infinity.
This exclusive role is even more obvious if we take a look at the relation
between the “upper” and “lower” worlds as seen in non-Biblical religious
and mythological systems: e.g., the Hindu system with its metempsychosis
and vague distinctions between animals, humans and supernatural beings
all of which are emanations of a single divine entity, or the classical Greek
mythology with its “interbreeding” of gods and mortals resulting in the
birth of heroes as some kind of intermediate creatures.54
54 Cf. also Gen 6:1–4 fairly vaguely mentioning the “sons of God” who “went to
the daughters of men and had children by them” the end result of which was the
40
Hebrew ʔl, ʔlah, plural ʔlh–m, “God” continues Proto-Semitic *ʔil-

with a variant *ʔilh- (with no known Afrasian cognates) present in all the
languages except Ethiopian and Modern South Arabian. Interestingly, unlike
some other divine names common in Semitic-speaking area, which have
a certain primary and simple meaning by which we can get the idea of the
corresponding deity’s nature,55 this one has no other meaning than “God,”
is, in all probability, not an interborrowing and looks like a candidate to the
main Common Semitic deity or the generic term “God.”
This amazing Biblical paradox — the transcendence of the Maker in
relation to the world he created and the violation of this transcendence, his
exclusive attitude toward man — is revealed in an important divergence from
the apophatic principle of describing God: aside from general epithets, such as
“great” (gdl), “almighty,” “hero” (gibbr), “holy” (ḳd), “living” (hay),
etc., terms that really impart individual features to God refer to his attitude
toward man in general and his chosen people in particular — “merciful”
(hannn), “jealous” (ḳannʔ), “long-suffering” (ʔrk̲ ʔappayim, lit. “long
of anger”), and the like.
A relationship with humans also represents the only explicable motivation
for God’s actions, as well as for his “repentance” that he performed some of
those. Here are some examples: “The Lord was grieved that he had made
man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Gen 6:6), “And the
Lord was grieved that he had made Saul king over Israel” (1 Sa 15:35). Let’s
also remember the flood story: “So God said to Noah, “I am going to put
an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.
I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth” (Gen 6:13) and also:
“The Lord … said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because
of man … ” (Gen 8:21).
The sentence that follows, however, presents a problem relevant for our
topic and, therefore, worth discussing. The Hebrew original goes: k– ysr
lb̲ h-ʔd̲m raʕ minnəʕurw — literally: “because (or even though) the
inclination of man’s heart (is) evil from (or since, or because of) his youth … ”
appearance of “the heroes of old, men of renown,” literally “men of the name.” In
connection with this last phenomenon one may observe that the early Christians — as
a Jewish sect addressing large, mostly Greek and Latin speaking, audiences — seem
to have consciously sacrificed the principle of absolutely transcendent nature of the
Deity, borrowing the Greek notion of hero born of a god and a mortal woman, albeit
in an extremely transformed and spiritualized form.
55 Like Hebrew Baʕal (Akkadian Belu), whose primary meaning is “lord, owner, master”
(in all Semitic languages), or Hebrew Rp¯, whose primary meaning is “flame.”
41
The key words for the interpretation of this passage are (1) k–, which
can be translated both as “because,” “for” and “even though,”56 and (2) min,
which corresponds to English “from,” “out of” (with a local meaning),
“since,” “after” (with a temporal meaning), “because,” “in consequence of”
(specifying the logical cause), etc.57
The King James Version’s translation of Gen 8:21, “And the Lord said
in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for
the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” — if from stands here
for since and not because of — creates a logical problem: how can it be that
the Lord promises or decides not to curse the ground any more because the
man is evil from his youth?
The NIV’s translation “Never again will I curse the ground because of
man even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood” seems
more consistent: the Lord decides not to curse the ground any more because
of man in spite of his evil inclination from childhood.
Both versions, however, do not seem to be in agreement with the whole
context: while “for the man is evil” in the former, cannot be the cause of
not cursing the ground any more (but should rather have been the cause of
the reverse), “even though” in the latter, can neither account for the Lord’s
radical change of strategy towards mankind.
If one accepts either of the two interpretations, the only reasonable
explanation of the Lord’s decision has to be looked for in the preceding
passages: “Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all clean
animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it” (Gen 8:20). And
then: “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: Never
again will I curse the ground … ” (Gen 8:21).
I have an impression, far-fetched perhaps, that both English version
translators’ choice between two opportunities — of interpreting min as “from”
in the temporal meaning “since” or as “because of, in consequence of” — was
motivated not so much by philological considerations as by that very per-
ception of God, ingrained in mainstream Christianity (as well as in orthodox
Judaism and Islam), which I discussed in the Preface — as a vain Oriental
despot demanding and enjoying idolatry (“smelled the pleasing aroma”).
56 L. Koehler and W. Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old
Testament. I–III, Leiden-New York-Köln, 1994–1996; IV–V, Leiden-Boston-Köln,
1999–2000 (Revised by W. Baumgartner and J.J. Stamm), pp. 470–71. Further
quoted as HALOT.
57 Ibid. 597–8.
42
A translation of the passage in question that is more compatible with

the “humane” image of God would be as follows: “ … as the inclination of
man’s heart (is) evil because of his youth … ” — and of the whole verse 21:
“The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: Never again
will I curse the earth because of man as the inclination of man’s heart is
evil in consequence of his youth.58 And never again will I destroy all living
creatures, as I have done.”
It is by way of the prophets that the Almighty appeals to the chosen
people and other peoples, admonishes, puts conditions forward, threatens
awful retributions — not just for alien gods adoration at that, but also for
inhuman, immoral in an entirely contemporary sense, understandable to us
today — attitude to people. There and then he goes on to break his promises
and solemn oaths to send those awful retributions down onto people explaining
the lassitude by bouts of pity and compassion, trying to vindicate himself and
arguing with Man. Here is what he has to say through Ezekiel’s mouthpiece:
“Also with uplifted hand I swore to them in the desert that I would not bring
them into the land I had given them … Yet I looked on them with pity and did
not destroy them or put an end to them in the desert” (Eze 20:15–17). And
elsewhere: “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the
Sovereign Lord God. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways
and live?” (18:23). And with an entirely human, really Jewish intonation:
“Yet the house of Israel says, “The way of the Lord is not just.” Are my
ways unjust, O house of Israel? Is it not your ways that are unjust?” (18:29).
Monotheism of the Bible is connected to the second notion — “Adamism,”
or the unity of human race — by what I understand as the affirming of God’s
status not so much as the one God but as the God of one single mankind,
for all emphasis on his role as the God of his chosen people. Unlike post-
Biblical Jewish, Christian and Islamic doctrines, some Biblical texts, rather
than deny the reality of other gods, imply it — sometimes in the words of
58 The reason for NIV’s having translated nəʕurw as “his childhood” is transparent:
every (there is no word for "every" in the original) inclination of man’s heart is
evil from its very origin implying original sin and sinfulness into which humans
are born — a Christian doctrine shared neither by Judaism nor Islam. Actually, the
term undoubtedly means “youth, time of youth” — not “childhood” — in all Biblical
contexts (see HALOT 704) being a derived form from naʕar “lad, adolescent, young
man” and also “fellow, servant, attendant” (ibid. 707), which is further confirmed
by cognate words in Phoenician (nʕr “youth; young boy; servant”) and Ugaritic
(nʕr “boy, lad; assistant, serving lad”). To me, it looks like a falsification of sorts — out
of piety. The question is, what do the Heavens favor more: piety or honesty?
43
“the LORD God of gods” (Jos 22:22)59 himself, cf.: “God standeth in the
congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. How long will ye
judge unjustly? … I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of
the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes”
(Ps 82:1–7).60 Let us note here that “true God” and “false gods” are named
by the same word in the plural form — ʔlh–m; cf. also “All the nations may
walk in the name of their gods; we will walk in the name of the Lord our
God for ever and ever” (Mic 4:5) and “The man has now become as one of
us (kə-ʔahad mi-mmnn), knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:22).
Here, however, all similarity ends: the universal and omnipotent God-
absolute, whom the creation cannot contain, has nothing whatever in
common with local and virtually impotent puny gods.
Common Task
The idea of a single aim, a common task that the Maker set mankind,
is a novel notion for the ancient mentality. That which might be called the
first stage of this task is expressed in the commandment, “Be fruitful and
increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28) and “Be fruitful
and increase in number and fill the earth” (9:7); cf.: “ … he is God; he who
fashioned and made the earth, … he did not created it to be empty, but
formed it to be inhabited … ” (Isa 45:18).
The final stage of the divine plan regarding man has much to do with
the mission of the “chosen people”: it is to lead all humanity, all nations
to some common goal. “And I will make you into a great nation … ” says
God to Abram, “and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
59 In The King James Version’s translation in this case not theologically biased unlike
NIV that seems to have tried to veil this motif by translating Hebrew ʔl ʔlh–m
yəhw ʔl ʔlh–m as “God, the Lord.”
60 The King James Version. Again, NIV is trying to cope with the inconvenience by
placing “gods” within quotation marks and by the following commentary (which, to
me, does not seem convincing but outright partisan): “In the language of the OT — and
in accordance with the conceptual world of the ancient Near East — rulers and judges,
as deputies of the heavenly King, could be given the honorific title “god” (p. 880,
note to 82:1). This interpretation also presupposes the use of ʔdm in the meaning
“ordinary men” (“you will die like mere men”) — which it does not have — as
opposed to ʔlh–m referring to “rulers and judges”; one wonders how to explain
another opposition — of “rulers and judges” to “every other ruler” (“ … you will fall
like every other ruler” 82:7); all this appears illogical, forced and baseless to me.
44
(Gen 12:2–3) In the Book of Isaiah we also read: “In the last days the
mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established … and all nations will
stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the
mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his
ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” The law will go out from Zion, the
word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” (Isa 2:2–3) And later, in the same book:
“In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing
on the earth. The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt
my people, Assyria my handwork, and Israel my inheritance.” (Isa 19:24–25)
We find the same contentions in other prophets: “He will judge
between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and
wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into
pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they
train for war anymore. Every man will sit under his own vine and under his
own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has
spoken” (Mic 4:3–4); “Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that
day and will become my people.” (Zec 2:11)
Taking the risk of another repetition, I am going to forestall the predictable
objection: indeed, the above theme occurs in the Bible, yet not throughout its
entirety, but rarely — predominantly as points made by certain prophets — and
marks a rarefied dotted line in the post-Biblical rabbinical tradition, and
indeed the “chosen people” itself gets, both in early and later texts, much
more attention than the universally humanistic mission it has to complete
and the humankind itself with its common goal. However, the unversalistic
motif cannot be dismissed as accidental either; having once emerged, it never
disappears, attaining more and more prominent place in the history of ideas.
Ethics
The anthropocentric model of a single human race presupposes both

generally human and personal ethics — and philanthropy as love and humane
attitude of man to man — after the set example of the Creator’s attitude to
man in general and to any man. From the thesis of Adam’s creation in divine
image and likeness (Gen 1:26 and 9:6) the principle of the absolute value
of a human personality is deduced, albeit in a generalized and symbolic
aspect, — the prototype of humanistic morality-to-be.
Biblical books, particularly prophetic ones, are shot through with a bare
nerve of a moralizing sermon, a most high-voltage debate on moral issues.
45
Such intense attention to ethical problems has no analogies in other ancient

written monuments. As an eminent Assiriologist and historian of ancient
Near East H. Tadmor and his co-author R. Nadel would write,
… in the sermons of Amos and all of the following prophets (i.e. starting
with the 8th century B.C.E. — A.M.) … social and ethical aspects become
dominant in their world view and activity … The principle originally
promulgated by Amos was not just novel with respect to Judea, but also
went against the world outlook of all of Ancient East. The principle in
question was about social justice and strict compliance with the law being
the foundation of any state’s existence. The state where arbitrariness rules
supreme — either king-induced or produced by the officialdom — in which
the indigenous are oppressed by the rich or nobility has no right to exist
and is inexorably bound to fall … The ideas of Amos were then taken on to
further develop by Isaiah, Judea’s greatest prophet … Isaiah is convinced
that the idea of universal peace will emanate from Jerusalem … In this view
of the future, universal world outlook and the national consciousness of the
prophet blended into one inseparable whole … he rejects point blank the
exculpatory power of sacrificial rituals that the aristocracy violating the social
injunctions of Torah pins hopes on and counter-poses to them — as the loftiest
expression of true piety — observance of the laws of justice and humanism.61
Sure enough, one ought not to think of the Hebrew Bible as a kind of
compendium of peaceable stories and lofty-moralistic discourses. In
it — just like in other ancient monuments — there is much repulsive, cruel,
naturalistically sadistic, archaically savage stuff. Let us recall if only
Moses’ command to Levi’s sons in the name of God of Israel to slay for
apostasy “each killing his brother and friend and neighbor” (Ex 32:27) or
the disgusting episode with prophet Elisha who cursed — in the name of the
Lord — “little children” who mocked him and called him “bald head” which
resulted in two she-bears coming forth out of the wood and tearing “forty
and two children of them” (2 Ki 2:23–24).62
61 История еврейского народа (History of the Jewish People), ed. by Sh. Ettinger,
Moscow, 2002, pp. 76–77 (translated from Russian).
62 Here, too, The King James Version is quoted, while the NIV translators practically falsify
the original by manipulating the words: putting “some youths” for “little children”
(-nəʕr–m ḳəṭann–m, literally “and little youths/lads”, i.e. certainly “children”), again
providing a sophisticated commentary with somewhat strained historical background
re these youths’ ghastly behavior and its implications as if feeling uneasy — but
trying deliberately to conceal it — about recognizing a death sentence of 42 children
(with the youths it’s ok!) for such a hideous crime as calling a bald man a bald man.
46
What also comes to mind is the story of Job, the ample sufferer, who is
easily consoled by the new children bestowed on him for the staunchness of
his faith — forgetting all about the old ones abolished by the Almighty in a bet
with Satan; curiously, by the way, in the comprehensive and sophisticated
commentary of John Chrysostom on the Book of Job the discussion of such
minor circumstances found no space. One might object, of course: “Many
children were born and died soon thereafter then, there was no personal
consciousness as yet to tell them all apart!”,63 but that would not be true — as
it is said in Jeremiah: “ … Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be
comforted, because her children are no more.” (Jer 31: 15)
As it is underscored in the Introduction to the “History of the Jewish
People” quoted above,
… in the Biblical literature, just like in the creative work of other peoples of
antiquity, there survived lots of evidence of … sorcery and magic, of human
sacrifices, of cruel attitude to the vanquished enemy, of the humbled status of
a woman and the like. A distinctive characteristic of the Bible, however, that
sets it apart in comparison with other literary monuments of antiquity is the
opposite trend brought out in bold relief, one of ever increasing humaneness,
accentuating moral and social consciousness of the collective and a single
individual. Its highest imperative is: “That which is altogether just shalt thou
follow … ” (Deuteronomy XVI, 20). This trend discerns in the aspiration to
justice the peak of moral relations between people — as well as between
a single individual and the collective that individual lives among (p. 8).
And further:
The Bible happens to be the source of creativity in the realm of ideas for
the Jewish people, the most characteristic expression of which were the
individual morality and socio-ethical laws … In Biblical legislation these
principles laid the foundation for a ramified system, like the laws of Sabbath,
the seventh day of the week, that is a mandatory day of rest; the laws of
“shemitah” (debts absolution) and “jubilee” (the fiftieth year), the goal of
which is return — upon passage of certain periods of time — to the original
equality in possession of earthly property; edicts on slaves protection
(setting a slave free after six years of service and issuance of remuneration
to him); various kinds of benefits to the indigenous in the fruit of the
field … ; equality before the law … ; just attitude and aid to a foreigner and
63 Let us recall a Gipsy from a Russian (or Russian Jewish as most of the jokes seem to
be) joke looking his grubby children over: “Shall I wash these clean or make some
new ones instead?”
47
stranger … in opposition to discrimination of foreigners in the majority of

ancient societies. It is not surprising that movements that struggled against
social injustice in Europe in the Middle Ages and in the newer time drew
inspiration from the Biblical sources and used Biblical shibboleths … The
Bible also becomes a source of a particular world outlook that rejected the
military power and political success — even if they resulted in the creation
of a formidable empire and domination over enthralled peoples — as
a criterion of historical justice in any way: conversely, it is the weak people
enthralled by others that may be the exponent of the ideas of humanism
and justice … These basic tenets were to provide a spiritual ideal for both
the entire people as a collective and a single individual: that precisely in
the epoch of Oriental despotic regimes when a common individual was
considered just the work force element servicing the ruling class and could
in no way have been an exponent of spiritual values.
The idea of being chosen exceptional for the Jewish people weighing it
down with overbearing responsibilities left its imprint on the entire Bible.
It imparts a certain bias even to its historiographic parts. It is precisely
this bias, however, that leads to Biblical historiographers appraising kings
by their adherence to religious-moral principles rather than by military or
political successes they scored. Thus, instead of deification of the kingdom
and power universally accepted in Oriental despotisms the creators of the
Bible erected the religious and moral criterion onto the pedestal of the
loftiest ideal (pp. 8–10).
Ultimately, it is the introduction of these ideas per se into the inventory

of culture that is paramount, even irrespective of many Biblical passages
contradicting them — as well as the extent of persistence orchestrating
their materialization in real life in the course of further history of both
Judaism and Christianity with the latter’s value system initially derivative
from ancient Biblical and further complemented by late-Hellenistic Greek
and Roman notions of a single individual’s dignity and freedom of choice.
All of this, clearly, does not mean that many lofty ethical principles
that were promulgated by the Biblical prophets and preceptors had not
been known to the ancient world. The history of Mesopotamia, for one,
bears witness to both cruelty of morals, despotism of the rulers, cases of
populace extermination that put up resistance against conquerors — and
faith tolerance, peaceful side-by-side coexistence and blending of different
ethnic groups, say Sumerians and Semitic Akkadians. In the earliest among
known codes, “Ur-Nammu Laws” of a Sumerian king who ruled at the end
of the 3rd millennium B.C.E. Ur-Nammu says this about himself:
48
I did not give an orphan to a rich person, a widow — to a strong one …

I did not give (tyrannical) orders. Enmity, violence … I abolished. Justice
in the country I established.64
And the Egyptian “Book of the Dead” dated to the 15th century B.C.E.
provides a list of eighty bad acts known to any Egyptian perpetration of
which in the lifetime each deceased denied at postmortem judgment
administered by omniscient and impartial gods. Moral norms that follow
from that list do not differ in principle from the later Biblical ones. Here are
some of the denied sins:
— I was not covetous; I did not steal;
— I have not killed everyone [or: I have not killed, not commanded to
kill], I have not killed the “divine cattle” [=people];
— I have not increased the prescribed workload at the beginning of each
day, I have done no orphan any harm on his property.
— I have not robbed portions, not practised grain usury, I have only been
interested in what is my own;
— I have not lied, not scolded, I have not quarreled, sued, terrorised,
spoken unnessesary words, raised my voise, nor spoken rashly.
— I have not secretly listened to others, nor winked my eye at them, I
have not puffed myself up or raised myself above my station,
— I was not heated [or: ‘hot-mouthed’], not choleric, not violent, I have
not turned a deaf ear to the words of truth. I have not denigrated anyone
to their superiors.
— I have inflicted no pain, I have not let others go hungry, I have not
caused tears, I have done no one any harm.65
Nonetheless certain ethical principles of the Hebrew Bible are apparently

innovative for the ancient world. Neither for the Egyptians who “Without
recourse to revealed law … had succeeded in building a state and a society as
fabled for their stability as for their wisdom, justice, and piety”,66 nor for the
Babylonians with their advanced Laws of Hammurabi, nor for the Athenians
with their democracy, nor even for the Romans with their developed
64 Translated from the Russian translation from Sumerian by V.A. Jacobson, quoted
by История древнего Востока (History of Ancient East. Texts and Documents)
Moscow, 2002, p. 161.
65 Quoted after: Assmann, I., The Mind of Egypt. History and Meaning in the Time of
Pharaos. New York, 2002, pp. 165–166.
66 Ibid. p. 162.
49
law — at least till the turn of eras — was characteristic the view of savages
from remote lands, barbarians and slaves as kinsmen, avowedly distant, yet
descendant form the same ancestor with them and as legitimate individuals
of full value graced with bearing the same ideal image with them.67
From the set of Biblical ethical concepts also eventually stem the ideas of
social justice and philanthropy as a behavioral norm, the moral foundations
of jurisprudence and critical attitude to authority — all the heritage that
following different historical ways and in combination with Greek and
Roman philosophical, ethical and legal innovations has persisted till our
time and was laid at the foundation of the institutes of social protection and
charity, doctrines of separation of powers, independent court, limitation of
rights of the state and the “Declaration of Human Rights.”
Life After Death and the Biblical “Agnosticism”
The main problem of man — just like of any living being — is one of
survival, both as an individual and as a species. The second most important
issue man is faced with is the prospect of death, one of individual existence
discontinuation. That subject is, probably, not alien to animals either. Let
me tell you an episode from real life. When our dog perished and his dead
carcass stayed in the house for several hours, five cats living in the house,
with whom his relations had been far from idyllic (he had been stern and
unsentimental), kept circling around him as if in performance of a ritual of
sorts, and then refused to take food for a couple of days thereafter. I am not
inclined to ascribe anthropomorphous characteristics to cats, but the fact
that they were cognizant of the dog’s death and reacted to it with unusual
behavior was perfectly obvious.
One can also recall a recent story that gained extensive popularity
involving the gorilla Koko, a butt of biological tests, whose reaction to
the death of her favorite cat was accompanied by a phrase conveyed by
a succession of gestures the primatologists had taught her: the cat had
departed where nobody returns from.
Anyway, mankind has ever been concerned by this problem, to which
the data of archeological burial sites point among other things, as do
67 In Greece that kind of attitude starts noticeably changing only in the 3rd-2nd
centuries B.C.E. in stoics for whom all the people — Greeks and barbarians, free and
slaves alike — are the citizens of one cosmos, equal before the “universal law”.
50
petroglyphic images and mythology along with ancient written artifacts.

The answer to the question of immortality particularly common in different
cultures, mythologies and religions has been — and remains — a belief in
the continuation of life after physical death. The forms of this imaginary
life vary from reincarnations into any living and supernatural beings to
impersonalized merger with a certain supreme substance, from inexpressible
spiritual bliss in divine light — to combustion in infernal flame, from eking
out a paltry existence as ethereal shadows — to an “improved” earthly
existence orchestrated by entirely carnal blessings.
Sure enough, already in antiquity there were certain individuals and entire
schools of thought that denied beliefs in life after death. Skeptical attitude
to traditional notions of posthumous life based on ritualistic providing for it
was already expressed by an ancient Egyptian intellectual in the so-called
“Harpist’s Song” (Song from the Tomb of King Intef, circa 2000 B.C.E.):
The old kings slumber in their pyramids,

Likewise the noble and the learned, but some
Who builded tombs have now no place of rest,
Although their deeds were great.
Lo! I have heard the words Imhotep and Hordadaf spake.
Their maxims men repeat — Where are their tombs?
Long fallen — e’en their places are unknown,
And they are now as though they ne’er had been.
No soul comes back to tell us how he fares
To soothe and comfort us ere we depart
Whither he went betimes. But let our minds
Forget of this and dwell on better things.
Revel in pleasure while your life endures
And deck your head with myrrh. Be richly clad
In white and perfumed linen; like the gods
Anointed be; and never weary grow
In eager quest of what your heart desires
Do as it prompts you — until that sad day
Of lamentation comes, when hearts at rest
Hear not the cry of mourners at the tomb,
Which have no meaning to the silent dead.
Then celebrate this festal time, nor pause
For no man takes his riches to the grave;
Yea, none returns again when he goes hence.68
68 Mackenzie, Donald. Egyptian Myth and Legend, 1907, p. 246f.
51
The main idea of the Sumerian-Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh is one of

inaccessibility of eternal life; the only individual on whom immortality had
been bestowed was Ut-napishti, the witness of the world deluge. It is also
possible to recall Epicure, the great Greek: there is no immortality and so
death is nothing to us; when we exist death is not, and when death exists
we are not.
Yet people holding such views always had to be in the minority. In the
course of his evolution Homo sapiens gradually departed from the relative
simplicity of biological existence; spawned culture — the richest alternative,
non-biological non-genetic channel of handing down information relayed
from generation to generation; he then devised the finest system of inter-
personal relations, attachments and obligations; formed a most complex
self-consciousness, enabling everyone to consider oneself as an individual,
consciously or subconsciously — even if that runs counter to the religious
or world outlook doctrine one professes — the center of the universe,
the accretion of everything that is dear to him in this world. It is hard
for a human individual to reconcile himself to the idea of the inevitable
and time-wise unpredictable discontinuation of his — or his dear and
near’s — personal existence, particular and irreproducible, of the void that
would gape in lieu of the place filled by him — and them — for the time
being in this world going on living its indifferent life without him. Not
many are consoled either by the idea of the surrogate of after-death being
in the form of a short-lived memory of the people who used to know him
and still go on living — or even in the longer-lived memories of the people
aware of his existence, if he had been blessed with having performed
something that left a mark in human memory — an illusory incentive for
many a great exploit and crime alike.
It is only in the nouveu temps, the time of skepticism and “belief in the
proof,” the time of what we call “scientific thinking” that the number of
people reconciling themselves to the idea of termination of personal being as
the inescapable given or considering life after death unsupportable and hence
highly unlikely has started growing. That — latter — position, agnosticism,
“non-knowledge,” is now particularly common among the unbelieving, un-
religious part of contemporary socium of a Western (including Russian) type.
One may be an agnostic re a number of vastly different issues, but within the
context discussed here an agnostic is someone who answers “don’t know” in
reply to two questions: “Is there God (gods, supreme powers, extraterrestrial
intelligence, etc.)?” and “Is there life after death (posthumous existence,
soul immortality, metempsychosis — transmigration of souls, et al.)?” — just
52
like an atheist is someone who in reply to the same two questions answers:
“No (I know/believe there is not).”69 I think that the second of the two
questions — how shall I put it in a more precise manner? — is the more
fundamental, topical and historically more primordial of the two.
I will lay down yet another heretical point at this juncture. I am not
particularly convinced by the explanations known to me of how the notions
of supernatural forces and beings were conceived. Thus, the “mythological
school” theory of the 19th century — believed to be scientifically obsolete,
but indestructible and impossible to expurgate from mass consciousness —
held that spirits and gods personify natural forces, and the notions of them
arose from the need of an archaic human being in an explanation of the natural
phenomena of the “why does thunder roar?” type. I believe, however, that
the human being was to have much more natural, specific and practical —
even if incorrect from the positions of modern knowledge — answers to
the questions of this kind, based on the rich life’s experience and survival
“in nature,” and do without answers to other, less vital questions altogether.
No more convincing are the “evolutionist” interpretations of the cult of
gods as the continuation of the cult of ancestors; or deduction of that belief
from magic or fear of the unknown; or Tylor’s animism with the spirits as
embodiment of reasons; or Freud’s idea that “primitive men” came up with
the animistic system by observing the phenomena of sleep and dreams and
his speculations re the sublimation of father’s image in the image of God and
of mother — in the image of goddess; or even Lévy-Bruhl’s sophisticated
theory of pre-logical mentality with its “mystical participation”. One
perceives a vicious circle in such theories: for the explanation of one kind
of mysterious things others are drawn on — just as incomprehensible and
improvable.
One can, of course, spread one’s hands and declare that the mentality
of our distant ancestors was so vastly different than ours, that to explain
their motivations from the positions of common sense and contemporary
logic is impossible. To me this position does not appear productive or even
scientific. I am inclined precisely towards acknowledgement of pragmatic
hard common sense in ancient and even primordial man that enabled him
69 Let me note here that the position of an agnostic appears to be more logical than
atheist’s to me: I do not quite comprehend how one can claim with any degree
of confidence, to know that God (or afterlife) does not exist; for me “I know that
something is not” — is in essence but a euphemism for “I believe that something
is not” or the gentler “I don’t believe there is,” but the argumentation supported
by the verb “believe” has but little effect on me.
53
to win in the toughest inter-species strife for survival. He must have had
realistic enough notions of the world around that hardly left any potential
for populating it — for no good reason — with supernatural beings and
forces that nobody sober of mind had ever seen.70
On the contrary, the imaginary — or suggested — life after death that
fails to lend itself either to visual observation or to experiential check-
up ought to be the jurisdiction of precisely the entities unidentifiable in
experienced reality, in the current time: deceased ancestors, spirits, mythical
characters, demons and deities. Conceived of the reflections on death and
after-death existence, notions of the supernatural — in certain human groups
at least — evolved further in various ways filling out also other cultural
niches in effect.71
There is an opinion that at the early stages of Homo sapiens evolution
and until the present day also in the “archaic” cultures, the apparently
manifest personal “existential” interest to discontinuation or extension
of existence after death is not there, that death is perceived only as
a disruption of a normal activity of the collective brought about by the
supernatural causes evil play (harm-occasioning magic, taboo violation and
the like). Even if this observation is true, I have a guarded attitude to direct
projection to developed ancient proto-written and written cultures of the
pictures of archaic, “primitive” communities put together on the basis of
ethnographic data accumulated in the course of several recent centuries.
I have grave doubts about the habitual idea of significant affinity of the
archaic communities preserved intact up till the new and newest time like
the Papuan, Australian or Bushmen that practically have not been subject to
change in the course of dozens of thousand years — Lévi-Strauss’s “cold”
cultures — with the most ancient dynamic cultures of the Proto-Afrasian,
Proto-Semitic or Proto-Indo-European type that paved the way for — and
staged — a whole succession of revolutionary leaps in human development,
and further spawned both the great civilizations of antiquity like Egyptian,
Mesopotamian, Greek or Indian, and the sufficiently advanced ancient
cultures like Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Hittite or Median — more or
less corresponding to Lévi-Strauss’s “hot cultures”.
70 I am writing this for the sake of those among the readers who have had no experience
of socializing with wood-goblins, brownies, nymphs and devils.
71 Apparently, this purely speculative hypothesis requires a serious scientific
verification — and it is not for me, in no way an expert in these issues and mythology
in general, to dabble in it; that said, yet to me it appears the most natural and logical
explanation.
54
Reverting to the Bible: in contrast to the enthusiastic confidence defying

blasphemous doubts in the answer “yes!” to the first question — about
God — the entire aggregate of Biblical texts in actual fact fails to provide
the answer to the second question — about the afterlife. It is inconceivable
that it did not browbeat the authors of these texts that bring up nearly all
aspects of material and spiritual life of an ancient man. It is all the more
surprising because against the background of advanced notions of afterlife
in the peoples around them — with whom ancient Jews had to be familiar,
one would have expected open or at least latent polemic, an assertion of
their particular convictions in counter-balance to “pagan” ones, just like in
numerous other issues of faith, ethics, ritual, etc. However, nothing of the
kind is evidenced by the Bible.
The place where the deceased depart, the dead’s abode, most often
referred to as əʔl is mentioned fairly often, over 60 times, but its
description — meaningful to any extent — is absent. An impression is
created that it denotes — rather than an elaborate picture of life beyond
the grave — a somber poetic image, a popularly used, but “hackneyed”
metaphor72 that has survived since distant times or has been influenced
by other cultures. (The latter is not to be ruled out — considering that the
notion of the world beyond the grave as an inferno, the somber Hades,
the underworld of shadows is characteristic for both Egypt where the
human souls “filtered off” by the posthumous court of Osiris end up,
Mesopotamia, and ancient Hellas.)
In one of the suggested etymologies of the term connecting it with the
Hebrew verb ʔal “to ask, to question” a certain archaic layer of semantic
notions of the realm beyond the grave as if comes looming through — that
has to do with divination, contact with the souls of the dead, etc. That
etymology in itself, however, looks like Volksetymologie, suggested by the
commentators who grasped at the most similar root73 for lack of a better one.
The likeliest etymological meaning of the Jewish əʔl that has nearly
become a de-semanticized proper name — the meaning that has not survived
in the biblical Hebrew itself and which I suggest on the grounds of parallels
from other Semitic languages: “precipice, gully, waterbed of a current”, cf.
Arabic sll-, plural form sawll- “a gully with steep slopes, the bottom of
72 Similarly, a frequent reference to the devil in any European or Russian vernacular

does not evoke deep cultural associations in a modern man.
73 All three root consonants coinciding, əʔl “the underworld” and ʔal “to ask” are
obviously homonyms, i.e. looks-alike of different origin.
55
a valley, the waterbed of a gully” and the South Ethiopian dialect Endegen
et al. səwel “abyss, chasm, precipice.”74
This supposition is indirectly supported by another Jewish word with
an entirely transparent connotation — br, a Biblical parallelism to əʔl
translated as “Hades,” “underworld” and “grave:” “Yet into Hades (əʔl)
thou have been expunged, into the depths of the inferno (br)” (Ex 14:15).75
Its other meaning in Hebrew: “reservoir with water (often a depression in
a rock bed where rain water is accumulated)”; in other Semitic languages
that root has the meaning of “pit, tank with water, well” and “grave,”
possibly, “underworld”, too, and in the kindred Afrasian ones — “moat,
ditch, pit” and, in some, “grave,” “to dig” and “to bury.”76 Yet another
parallel to əʔl is a word combination nahl bəliyyaʕal — “currents of
bale, malice” (2 Sa 22:5 and Ps 18:5); semantics of the second word are not
quite clear, but the meaning of the first one — nahal — exactly coincides
with the suggested meaning of əʔl: “moat, ditch, waterbed of a current.”
Here is what Biblical Kohelet — Ecclesiastes77 — thinks about life and
death:
What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has
laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set
eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done
from beginning to end … I also thought, “as for men, God tests them so
that they may see that they are like the animals. Man’s fate is like that
of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: as one dies, so dies the
other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal.
Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust,
and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if
the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”
So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work,
because that is his lot. For who can bring him to see what will happen after
him?” (Ecc 3:9–22).
74 Perhaps, also related are Arabic sayl- “a current”, sla “to flow (of water), carry off
(of a current)”, Akkadian alu^ “to submerge, go underwater (especially in ordalia,
a test by water)” and Jibbali sɛ~l “to flow down (into a river), pour (of a rain)”.
75 The King James Version Bible.
76 In all likelihood, it points to the burial method practiced since the Proto-Afrasian
epoch.
77 That book is considered a latter-day work and occupying a separate place in the Bible
due to the author’s somewhat unusual perception of the world wherein Hellenistic
influence is claimed by some scholars — not necessarily so, it seems to me.
56
The idea of resurrection, of being raised from the dead, is initially

distinctly expressed only in the latter half of the latest Biblical book — of
Daniel (2nd century B.C.E.) That idea, along with the notions of Paradise
and Hades as posthumous abodes of the soul, not encountered in the
Hebrew Bible, is developed already in the post-Biblical period — in
apocalyptical and rabbinical literature.
Is it possible to infer from all of the above that ancient Jews were
the first “collective agnostics” re the issue of life after death, first at least
in the Near East?78
If it is so, then another non-trivial parallel with world disposition of
a contemporary “humanistic” man is perceivable here.
Is that parallel a chance one? Has contemporary agnosticism developed
irrespective of the pre-Christian Biblical notions or grown out of Hellenistic
ideas taken in the Renaissance epoch? If there is continuity between the
Hebrew Biblical and contemporary world disposition after all, then what
historical ways may it have come about in the new and newest time
“leapfrogging over” Christianity with its fundamental concept of eternal
life and post-Biblical Judaism wherein obvious development of afterlife
notions is perceivable?
The answer to these questions remains an enigma to me. The enigma
is especially curious in the light of yet another similar parallel — in laying
down the foundation of ethics.
Foundation of Ethics
What are the grounds for an ethical position in life and ethical demeanor
in a fairly common type of contemporary non-religious individual with
a somewhat vague “generally humanistic world disposition”?79
A model of such an individual for me is my late mother who had worked
over fifty years as a doctor — from a city borough and manufacturing plant
physician — to the department chief doctor of one of the best polyclinics in
Moscow. She was a wide-range therapist and close to infallible diagnostician.
I remember her deep affliction on account of every incurable patient case
78 In the world outlook of ancient Greeks, afterlife, though described in much greater
detail, does not seem to play a particularly significant role, either.
79 We are not referring here to the relatively small-numbered group of people seriously
immersed in ethical-philosophic problems range.
57
(which caused her to grumble her entire life that she should not have gone
to study at the medical college: she should have studied languages instead),
and how she could bolt from home in the dead of night at a telephone call:
“Doctor, help, he is so poorly!” Home visits to her regular patients in her
extra-hours were not part of her duties, but she took her Hippocratic oath
seriously. Though for a long time — since my parents divorced and my
grandfather died — mother was the only bread-winner in the family and
was making “a job and three quarters,” she accepted remuneration for the
frequent “private visits” quite unwillingly (only the taxi-fare money, if it
was a night-time visit), seldom and if the people were total strangers to her
and only if it was done insistently and at the same time — delicately, but
there were always flowers and chocolates around the house, not exactly
the indispensable necessities in our universal Soviet semi-poverty. Mother
was not at all an angel, had not committed — to the best of my knowledge
(however, who is to judge?) — any great exploits and, conversely, like the
rest of us must have done certain deeds that she regretted later. Yet, she had
lived a life of dignity in complete accordance with the ethical principles
accepted in the milieu of liberal Russian (and, naturally, of the Russian
Jewish) intelligentsia — the principles that I consider some of the most
advanced in the humankind, particularly taking into account all the burdens
and abominations of Soviet history.
What is one to reply to people like my mother and millions of others like
her to Dostoyevsky’s famous maxim “ if there is no God, then everything
is permissible,” if they do not believe in God and in retribution beyond the
grave or approach that with great doubt, yet tend to believe that it is not
enough not to violate the criminal code, but the proper thing is to do good,
help people, treat them and other living creatures well and try to behave just
like that in their “everyday life”?
Ask around among your acquaintances, dear reader, — among those you
believe in good faith are nice, decent, un-egoistic people disposed towards
altruism reasonably within their powers and other humane virtues of similar
nature — but with no religious motivation, at that. If only — in your heart
of hearts — you refer yourself to the same category as well, ask yourself
the same question. Ask them and yourself about both — the motivation
of people’s ethical behavior “in general” and about what makes them
individually and you personally act in a certain way and not otherwise. You
will be surprised, but having critically analyzed the replies you heard, you
most likely will come to the conclusion that no convincing rational reply to
the above has been given — either by you or by others.
58
The replies that I could imagine or happened to have heard I tried to

systematize, classifying them tentatively in some way — and parenthetically
critically appraise them; it is obvious that I am not discovering America
here, the list of possible answers and interpretations may be far from
comprehensive, and this home-spun investigation may only justly cause
a smirk on the face of a serious psychologist or sociologist.
Nonetheless, the answers in question got grouped as follows:
Evasive: (a good person refuses to talk about himself out of modesty).

Naively metaphysical: “There is such a thing as conscience after all”
(provocative questions: what kind of organ is that, where is it located in
a human body? Does everyone have one? Where is it gone in villains? etc.)
Naively ethical: “Well, behaving this way is good/right/human and to
carry on another way is bad/wrong/not human (sincere and dignified, but
declarative and proof-free — there is even nothing to say against it).
Naively historical: “All the world’s religions teach good, the entire bulk
of human experience does” (alas, a diametrically opposite conclusion may
be drawn from human experience, too; religions teach, but the flocks fail to
learn: let us look around: aren’t there a hundred times more religious people
in the world than real kind ones? and have not religious wars, persecutions,
fanaticism brought enough evil in their wake?)
Naively psychological: “It is intrinsic for a human being to do good;
evil, crimes are but a consequence of psychic or moral pathology” (yet,
expert psychiatric analysis tends to fail to find any psychic maladies or even
deviations in many criminals and “moral pathology” is nothing other than
a “game of terms”; and where — given such a diagnosis not sanctioned by
medical science and practice — lies the demarcation line between an evil
deed perpetrated by psychopathological and one staged by a psychologically
sound individual? serial murders — “single” murder? And genocide and
political reprisals, and the “pyramid schemes” that impoverished lots of
people — are these crimes committed by lunatics?).
Naively rationalistic (especially typical of intelligent American
youngsters): “A civilized society is organized (or, rather, ought to be
organized) so that compliance with the accepted ethical norms be possessed
of a rational motivation, namely yield a practical benefit (or even gain) not
just to the milieu around and society in general, but also to the individual
in compliance with those norms (oh, for that confidence in the rational
organization of the society — even the American one, arguably the most
rationally organized of all! Relative veracity of this position extends too far
59
from all human actions, has well-defined boundaries and tends to be erratic
and malfunction in the periods of instability and crises).
Naively pragmatic: “If one is to treat people well, then they will pay you
with the same coin … ” (to really believe so one must either have unique,
absolutely lucky life’s experience — or be “somewhat feeble-minded”).
Cynically pragmatic: “It is accepted practice in a decent society, that
will, sure, provide for a positive repute” (a solid, rational motivation, but for
one thing it fails to operate too well — forced, “extorted” nobleness may not
be camouflaged by any actor’s affectation — and for another it is no good
for any extreme situations: “for a positive repute” one does not share one’s
uttermost with others and does not put his life at stake; if, however, one
does, it means one’s motivation is but self-deception, and one is a better
person than one thinks one is).
Superficially emotional, often verbalized by young people: “To do good
to people is fun and to harm people is no fun” (and what is to be done with
the same extreme situations, when a good deed is replete with grave or even
fatal consequences for the do-gooder himself and “fun” or “no fun” is then
the least of his worries? and why it, conversely, appears natural or even
gives pleasure to some people to “snatch” one’s own or somebody else’s, to
torment or harass others, to “transgress”?).
Deeply emotional: “It is hard, a shame to see how people (or animals)
are suffering, it is so pitiable, something ought to be done” (a most worthy
motivation, but also entirely irrational: why is another also ashamed or
pitiful, but it never gets as far as “do the deed”, and yet a third is neither
ashamed, nor filled with pity?)
Deterministically genetic: “What a person has been born that he ends
up being” (to a degree that is actually so, but, for one thing these days
experts maintain that genes are responsible only about forty percent for personal
traits of an individual — cf. in The Factor of Genetics section of the Chapter
Why the Jews?, and for another, it is true about a human being in general, but
how does one go about figuring out the role of genes in each particular case?)
Deterministically cultural: “This is how my parents have brought me up,
the cultural milieu I was growing in has shaped me, I am used since childhood
years to a certain way of thinking and patterns of behavior (that, surely,
is a weighty reason, but it may not explain everything, since it obviously
underestimates the personality factor, the freedom of choice: there are quite
a few people brought up in a “good family” who grew up scoundrels or ran
with a bad company and became criminals or — the other way around — the
people who did not get a good up-bringing, but chose quite a worthy life path).
60
All these answers are given by people not particularly well-versed in

ethics as a section of philosophy. Yet, an individual familiar with philosophy
will, most likely, allude to Kant’s authority with his categorical moral
imperative. Substantive for our discourse is, however, the following: Kant
himself, capable of so convincingly substantiating his other tenets, that the
measuring stick for contemporary scientific reasoning was in many respects
supplied by him, considered the imperative in question neither subject to
an explanation, nor lending itself to providing grounds for in principle.
What, however, will a religious person reply? A Jew will, most likely,
start with “for it is written,” refer to the behests, to the Torah as a whole;
a Christian will say: so the Lord has ordered — if he remembers any by
heart, he will also quote commandments, other selected places from the
Scriptures; a Muslim will refer to the Quran, the prophet, Allah’s will. And
all of this will be correct, but a reference to an authority, even supreme, is
not a rational foundation, convincing for an individual who does not share
your initial positions, for whom your supreme authority is alien and your
God-inspired text is but a literary monument.
Such a rational basing of ethics is nonetheless present in different
traditional cultures and great religions of the world. Its essence is reducible
to one thing only: hope for a retribution in the afterlife, strife for a better lot
in future life or in the whirlpool of regenerations modified by death.
The earliest of the fragmentary written testimonies to the belief in
posthumous remuneration have reached us in the Egyptian inscriptions of
the Old Kingdom epoch; in its classical form this concept has been known
since no later than the 15-th century B.C.E.:
For an Egyptian, two ideas had to be accorded axiomatic status if justice

was to reign on earth: the immortality of the soul and the existence of
a punishment or rewarding authority who decided on the fate of soul.80
Depending on the demeanor of the human individual in his earthly life,

his relationship with other people and gods he is either doomed to eternal
existence as a pale shadow in the realm of the dead or is rewarded with
eternal life in the abode of gods while keeping intact his individual
consciousness; having lost his case in the divine court, he disappears as
a person, but having won it, he is preserved intact as a person.81
80 Assmann, Ian, op. cit., pp. 163–164.

81 Ibid., p. 160.
61
Naturally, an individual dreams about ending up in paradise, rather

than hell; to acquire eternal bliss, rather than eternal torment; to improve
rather than downgrade his karma. That is, perhaps, not the only incentive
for the people believing in “life after death”, but yet a formidable
one. As a motivation of these people’s behavior it is convincing and
understandable even for a non-believer. A modern non-religious person,
however, lacks such an incentive.
An ancient Jew lacks it, too.82 The supreme authority — God — calls
upon him through the prophets’ mouthpiece “to evade the evil and do
good.” The authority of the call is, on the one hand, unequivocal and
absolute, and on the other, sort of “optional”: we know from the Bible that
despite all the promises and threats not at all everyone even in the “chosen
people” abide by his behests, — quite few rather, otherwise the prophets
would not have expended their powerful poetic and oratorical gift on
admonitions and exposures.
Yet, the talk is not about the authority — it is, rather, about the rational
reasoning comprehensible for all, that adepts of other religions do have. Is
retribution for deeds — both good and evil — promised in the Hebrew Bible?
Yes, but in the lifetime!
In their lifetime the wicked ones will be given their due according to their
deserts, in his lifetime an upright man shall be rewarded for his righteous-
ness. It is precisely the retribution for both Job, the omni-sufferer, who “died,
old and full of years” (Job 42:17) and Ruth, the Moabite, whose vicissitudes
are rewarded by “a happy end.” And even when the Lord “will execute
judgment upon all men” and “will create new heavens and a new earth,”
Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old
man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be
thought a mere youth.83
In other words: even there, in the “new earth,” under the “new heavens” —
the analog of the New Testament Kingdom of Heaven — people are
82 True, “competitors” to ancient Jews are here again ancient Greeks: the idea of
posthumous retribution is not characteristic of them either (only very few heroes
end up in Champs Elysees, Menelaus, for instance, but most likely, as next of kin to
Zeus, celestial father of his wife Helen); Platonists would claim that virtue is good
in that it introduces harmony and serenity into human soul and stoics believed that
virtue is precious in — and of — itself, which greatly resembles the same Kantian
imperative.
83 Isa 66:16; 65:17; 65:20.
62
not promised immortality. Promised is only a long and happy life, when
a hundred-year-old will die not a helpless senile wreck from infirmity and
diseases, but full of vim and vigor, “full of years”!
Does this not bear resemblance to the efforts of the civilized world not
devoid of success — to ensure healthy old age and the hopes of modern
man, not quite groundless, for the successes of medicine and genetics in
extending a human life of full value to at least a hundred years?
How does a Biblical parent explain to his son why it is good to be
a moral person and bad — to be an immoral one? That is because
… the upright will live in the land, and the blameless will remain in it;
but the wicked will be cut off from the land and the unfaithful will be
torn from it. My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands
in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you
prosperity … Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God
and man … Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.
This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones … then
your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with
new wine.84
What is promised the righteous and threatens the dishonorable?

Yet if you devote your heart to him and … if you put away the sin that is
in your hand and allow no evil to dwell in your tent, then you will lift up
your face without shame; you will stand firm and without fear. You will
surely forget your trouble, recalling it only as waters gone by … Life will
be brighter than noonday … You will be secure, because there is hope; you
will look about you and take your rest in safety. You will lie down, with
no one to make you afraid, and many will court your favor. But the eyes of
the wicked will fail … their hope will become a dying gasp.85
Here is another typical fragment of a moral sermon (preached by Eliphaz

the Temanite unjustly exposing Job, but it is immaterial in this context):
… Is not your wickedness great? And not your sins endless? You … stripped
men of their clothing, leaving them naked. You gave no water to the weary
and you withheld food from the hungry … And you sent widows away
empty-handed and broke the strength of the fatherless. That is why snares
are all around you, why sudden peril terrifies you … Will you keep to the
84 Pr 2:21–22; 3:1–10.
85 Job 11:13–20.
63
old path that evil men have trod? They were carried off before their time,
their foundations washed away by a flood … The righteous see their ruin
and rejoice: the innocent mock them, saying, Surely our foes are destroyed,
and fire devours their wealth.86
And in another place:
The lowly he sets on high, and those who mourn are lifted to safety. He
thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success … So
the poor have hope, and injustice shuts its mouth … From six calamities
he will rescue you; in seven no harm will befall you. In famine he will
ransom you from death, and in battle from the stroke of the sword.87
Bringing this impressive and imaginative poetry that all similar biblical
texts are imbued with down to earth, let us now boil it all down to the “dry
book-keeping balance.” The righteous man is promised: protection from all
life’s squabbling and woes; well-being, success in all endeavors; “favor and
a good name in the sight of God and man”; mental equilibrium and physical
well-being; finally — a long life. Evil-doers, on the contrary, will exist in
long-lived fear and disarray; all the troubles will be brought down on him.
Now let us glance at all this not from the point of view of the subject
of a moral sermon, the owner of highly spiritual mentality, whose calling
and duty is to teach people good and piety and warn against evil, but
from the point of view of that sermon’s object possessed of “everyday”
sober, pragmatic mentality, that — let me repeat here — the ancient man
was endowed with in no lesser degree than modern one: did he take these
promises and threats literally? Did he believe in their realization and that
that would be an unequivocal consequence of his behavior? I am afraid, not.
An ancient Egyptian believed in a just posthumous judgment that defined
either the reward or the retribution for his lifetime behavior. A Christian and
a Muslim believe in Eden and Hades, a Hindu and a Buddhist — in karma
and reincarnation; all of them believe that what falls to their lot in the future
life depends on their behavior in this one. Yet, it is easy to believe, if there
is no way to check. It is more difficult to believe in something that can be
checked out and that is not exactly borne out by your life’s experience — and
it is applicable to the ancient man just like it is to us. The realization of
life’s bitter truth, a sane outlook on the world forces its way here and there
86 Ibid. 22:5–20.
87 Ibid. 5:11–20.
64
through the moralizing pathos of biblical texts contingent upon the lofty
moral mission of their authors.
Here is what Job has to answer his denouncers:
If I have denied the desires of the poor or let the eyes of the widow
grow weary, if I have kept my bread to myself, not sharing it with the
fatherless — but from my youth I reared him as would a father, and from
my birth I guided the widow … If I have seen anyone perishing for lack
of clothing, or a needy man without a garment … If I have raised my hand
against the fatherless … , then let mine arm fall from the shoulder, let it be
broken off at the joint. For I dreaded destruction from God, and for fear of
his splendor I could not do such things.88
In the story of Job justice triumphed, and the righteous man got rewards
according to his deserts. Yet,
Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me,
my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the
arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles;
their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens
common to man; they are not plagued by human ills … Surely in vain have
I kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence. All
day long I have been plagued; I have been punished every morning. If
I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed your children.89
Paraphrasing (and simplifying, of course) this lament in our modern

language: in theory, everything is wonderful — God is good to Israel and
to the righteous and pure. Not to me, however, though I am pure and
innocent — to the wicked, yes. And I cannot even complain — it would be
regarded as an abuse of my people (sacrilege, state treason, whatever).
And in Ecclesiastes:
Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the
sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed — and they have no comforter; power
was on the side of their oppressors — and they have no comforter. And
I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living,
who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who
has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.90
88 Ibid. 31:16–23.
89 Ps 73:1–5, 13–15.
90 Ecc 4: 1–3.
65
So it is not about “myself” as in the previous passage — it’s about man

in general.
That happens to have the ring of the words of a sufferer from the so-
called “Babylonian Theodicy,” an Akkadian poem dating back to the 11th
century B.C.E.:
Dear success are those who do not seek God

Weakened and fell into decay praying to the goddess.
Since childhood, I followed the will of God,
Prostrate in prayer, searching for the goddess.
[But] I was attracted the yoke of a non-profit service (70)
Persecuted righteous one, that honored the will of God.
Filled with gold casket villain (270).91
Thus, a good biblical person knew the commandments and the law, heeded
to the moral sermon and acted accordingly (the wicked one knew, heeded
or did not heed, but did not act it out — or acted precisely the wrong way
round). — Act he did, though he guessed that the reward he would receive
neither in this, nor in the future life, which did not provide any unequivocal
indication if it is there or not at all. All of these promises he was to perceive
as good wishes (or wishful thinking), ritual incantations or poetic allegories,
of sorts, but not at all as a pledge of any kind of compensation for the hard
toil on the field of the good.92
What has he toiled for then? For the fear of Lord? Well, “for the fear”
one — at best — will not do the evil deeds for which Almighty’s right hand
may chastise in this life yet (and may, as life’s experience amply shows, not
chastise), like a modern man refrains from committing criminal acts warned
against in the Criminal Code for fear of the chastising right hand of the
Law. But good … done for fear? Without a reward, without a retribution?
91 Translation taken from: Lambert, W. G., Babylonian Wisdom Literature, Oxford, 1959.
92 In anticipation of a natural enough objection that I am making an effort to put together
a cohesive picture “snatching” quotations from different books of the Bible written
in different times and by different authors — I am answering: yes, it is, indeed,
so; yet in keeping with my notions (which are, surely, contestable) the Biblical
canon is couched purposefully and consistently enough for such a voluminous
and heterogeneous text and so early a period in history to reflect — adequately to
an utmost possible extent — a most complex and diverse realm of concepts of its
authors and editors rather than be considered a chaotic scrap dump of elements
haphazardly heaped together.
66
Perhaps, out of love for God, of deep faith in God’s word, out of mercy,
love for one’s neighbor, not for fear, but for clear conscience?
Yes, certainly. Certainly, yes. Now we have eventually found the
foundation for ethics in an ancient Jew. Except it is as irrational, idealistic,
profitless and — proof-free. Similar to the pathetic, unconvincing starry-
eyed patter of an idealistic good contemporary man not believing in
retribution and not expecting it. Like the categorical imperative.
And nothing better the humankind has devised as yet.
The Principle of Personal Responsibility

and Freedom of Choice
In the majority of biblical texts — just like in all of the ancient literature
of the Near East the principle of collective and patrimonial responsibility
predominates:
… I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the
sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate
me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and
keep my commandments.93
The principle of personal responsibility, however, is already in evidence,

making its first steps, the earliest available testimony to which is a place
from the Book of prophet Jeremiah, who lived in the 7th — early 6th
centuries B.C.E.:
In those days people will no longer say, ‘The fathers have eaten sour
grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Instead everyone will die
for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes — his own teeth will be set on
edge.”94
The same tenor is also continued in Ezekiel:

The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt
of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness
of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the
wicked will be charged against him.95
93 Ex 20:5–6 and Dt 5:9–10.

94 Jer 31: 29–30; cf. also Eze 18:2–3.
95 Eze 18:20; similar in Dt 24:16.
67
So decisive in other ancient cultures, such factors as the weird,

predestination, prediction, damnation or incantation, vicissitudes of fate
at the whim of supreme powers not motivated by one’s behavior or not
motivated by anything at all — usually do not play any role in the life of
biblical personages. In the Bible, there are several terms translated into
various languages and quoted in the dictionaries as “fate,” but actually they
convey somewhat different notions — share, lot, chance, future, misfortune,
punishment — but not exactly what underlies the notion of fate in Western
culture taking from ancient Greeks.
However exorbitant or disproportionate and inhuman the retribution
might be, it seldom befalls totally innocent victims like in the case of
Achan, for whose sin not only he himself was murdered, but his sons and
daughters were as well — of whose guilt no mention is made — and even
the cattle that belonged to him (Jos 7:24–25). In the episode with Korah,
“well-known community leaders … who … came as a group to oppose
Moses and Aaron” (Nu 16:2–3), those for whom “the earth opened its
mouth and swallowed them with all their households” (16:31–32), were,
after all, his accomplices; the children of Levi slay at Moses’s order “each
killing his brother and friend and neighbor” (Ex 32:27) for having made
themselves a golden calf to worship together with Aaron.
Divine retribution is often a consequence of the personal choice of
the person being punished (an exception that comes to mind is innocent
Job’s sufferings, but he “received his reward,” and that book is somewhat
unique). Even when it comes down upon the entire people for the sins
of that people’s spiritual or political leader, one may perceive personal
responsibility beyond the collective one. As in the case of Elijah who came
out against the king and the people (“Then Elijah said to them, “I am the
only one of the Lord’s prophets left, but Baal has four hundred and fifty
prophets.”96) a human individual usually has a choice at the expense of
well-being, expulsion, life itself to go against the flow, to become one of
“fifty righteous people in the city”97 or of the “seven thousand in Israel — all
whose knees have not bowed down to Baal.”98
The idea of motivated retribution and — ideally at least — of the
freedom of choice is a formidable step forward as compared with the ancient
principle of collective responsibility that is in no way, shape or form based
96 I K 18:22.
97 Gen 18:24.
98 I K 19:18.
68
on the real common guilt and leaves no choice to the object of retribution
“for company.” That principle follows, for instance, from the incantations
completing the laws of Babylonian king Hammurabi (1792–1750 B.C.E.)
who — entreating with the king-to-be against any change or distortion of
his edicts or replacement of his name on the tablet of laws with his own
name — promises horrid retributions not just to this king, but also to all of
his people: “Let the great gods of heaven and earth … curse him, his seed,
his country, his soldiers, his people and his army … ”99
“Feel of History” and the Concept of Progress
It is precisely in the Bible that the phenomenon is provided testimony

for — that might be called the birth of the “feel of history.” The talk here
is not so much about the genesis of history as a field of knowledge, but
rather about the experienced sensation of existence within both linear
and historical time for the first time being taken account of and recorded
precisely in Hebrew. The ancient cultures known to us perceived time as
a cyclical phenomenon related to the natural and biological rhythms, day
and night interchange, the alternation of the months, seasons and of longer
time periods — the succession contingent on the observable change in the
position of the moon, the sun, of the planets, zodiacal constellations, and
other luminaries.
The above is also indicated by some of the terms, denoting the
notions of time, duration, eternity, derived from the roots with semantic
meaning of “circle,” “round,” “to go around,” “to turn,” or “to rotate.”
Thus, there is a common Semitic term *dawr- meaning “time, lifetime,”
“era,” “eternity,” and “descent, generation” attested to in all Semitic
languages which is almost certainly derived from common Semitic *dwr-
(with a variant *drdr) “to turn, rotate, surround, go around.” Yet another
example is the Ancient Egyptian tr “time, moment,” akin to common
Semitic noun *tawr- “turn, row, sequence, period” and verb *twr “to turn,
repeat, go around” both having cognates in Berber, Chadic and Cushitic,
all going back to, and justifying the reconstruction of, the Proto-Afrasian
*tV(w)r- “to turn, go round; range,” *tawr- “range, row, order; moment,
time,” wherein the notions of time and going around or turning are
practically inseparable.
99 Driver G., Miles J.C. The Babylonian laws. 1–2. Oxford, 1955–1956.
69
Moreover, the perception of past and future times by ancient Semites

is “inverted”: the past is ahead, in front of us while the future is behind
which is clearly seen from the objective evidence of the language: common
Semitic *ḳVdm- “past, earlier times, ancient times” (in all Semitic except
Modern South Arabian where the term for ‘ancient’ is borrowed from
Arabic) is derived from *ḳudm- “front, front part; in front of,” *ḳdm “to
go in front of, precede” (in all Semitic languages), while common Semitic
*ʔaḫr- “future, later time” (in all Semitic) is derived from *ʔḫr “to be,
go behind; delay, be late”, *ʔaḫar- “back, last, rear part; behind” (in all
Semitic).
True, in the Hellenistic period in Greeks and later in Romans these
notions start going through a change, an idea of development from the
lower to higher takes shape, one of advancement from primeval savagery
towards civilization; yet time-wise the priority seems to belong to the
Hebrews, even though both issues — one about whether such notions
developed in Hebrews and Greeks concurrently and independently from
each other or, conversely, mutual penetration of these concepts was in
evidence, the other about whether they have eventually reached the present
day handed down to us by Hebrews or Greeks — remain in a confused
tangle.
Whatever the case may be, in the Bible, history is perceived as a drama
of the relationship of a human being with the Creator. That drama happens to
have an opening, a beginning (creation of the world and man); a succession
of consecutive acts still inside the “mythical time,” “the sacred history”
(the Fall of Man, the expulsion from Paradise, the Flood, the scattering
of the Tower of Babel builders); egress into “historical time” — complete
with acute realization of no-less-unique nature and significance of historic
events for the entire drama (let us refer here to at least the Exodus from
Egypt or the building of the first and second temples) than those of the
mythological events; and finally, the anticipated eschatological ending: the
coming of Israel — or all nations led by Israel — to God.
Such scenarios created the perception of historical time as not a repeated
circle of movement in rounds, but of a linear process, its development
imbued with profound sacral meaning. The past, the “yesterday,” is
something principally different from the present “today,” where the latter
is rooted in and partially determined by the former. Partially but not at all
completely: given the freedom of choice between good and evil a human
individual holds sway over the present and the nearest future — let us at
least recall the history of the Israelite and Judean kingdoms, upward flights
70
and downfalls of which were accounted for by the chronicler qualifying

as the moral — or immoral — demeanor of the king and the people. The
future “tomorrow” is, however, also quite different: it is determined by
the goal set, the way traveled, but also by the behavior freely chosen in
the present — due to last how much longer yet there is no telling. Out
of such perception of history, yet again in combination with Hellenistic
ideas of development from the lower to the loftier, from barbarity to
culture, the concept of historical progress is characterized precisely for
what modern civilization has brought forth.
It is significant to note at this juncture that the biblical narrative,
particularly — which is natural — its historical parts, also contains
an embryo of the future historical science. It is full of references to sources,
overt and concealed quotations taken from them, analysis and estimates
of some or other historical events and the demeanor of certain persons,
futurological prognostications, recommendations, and cautionary warnings
(“prophecies”). All of this — in this measure at least — is not to be found in
either ancient Egyptian or Mesopotamian or Greek literature, nor is it there
even in the works of Herodotus, the “father of history.”
Here is what Alexander Rofe, an Israeli historian writes in his book
S–p_ry h-nəb̲–ʔ–m (“Writings of the Prophets”)100:
The Israeli historiography originally emerges approximately two

generations after the establishment of monarchy, in the heyday of
Solomon’s kingdom. It must be then that the full history of King David’s
reign was created comprising the major part of the material featured
in I Samuel 27 through 2 Kings 2. A shorter account known … under
the heading “the narration of succession to the throne” … in 2 Samuel
7–20 and I Kings 1–2 … , lays bare numerous traits characteristic for
historiography: an account of political events, a realistic — rather than
metaphysical — description of what happened, a cohesive narrative con-
necting the events with a cause-consequence relationship … In that text one
can also point out a certain measure of historical criticism: the absence of
the practice typical for the Bible of representing the same episode in two
or more versions — as if the talk was of dissimilar events … Contemporary
researchers qualify this history of king David’s reign as the beginning of
ancient historiography that emerged approximately five centuries before
Herodotus.101
100 Jerusalem, 1983.

101 pp. 83–84.
71
Canon as the Foundation for “Cultural Construction”
Yet another Biblical innovation was an action that set out to select
and edit assorted texts, a whole library in actual fact, featuring a set of
genres common for the bulk of ancient written literature — cosmogonic and
etiological myths, family chronicles and historical legends, epics, lyrical
poetry, economic and legal documents, etc., bringing them all together into
a compendium of sorts and assigning an unusually high value status to the
compendium in question. This action may be regarded as the invention of
a canon or the Scripture as the foundation of culture upon which the entire
ensuing cultural process is destined to be more or less consciously built.
The issue of canonization time, or at least of the composition of each
of the Bible’s sections, is debatable, the discord among experts’ opinions
ranging from the period of Babylonian captivity (6th century B.C.E.) for the
Pentateuch and the beginning of the Hellenisic period (year 323 B.C.E.) for
the prophetic canon to the first centuries C.E. for the entire Bible. In favor
of the late canonization, besides other evidence, an argument is provided
of the context variance in the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch and
apocryphal works — variant readings particularly significant in the Qumran
scrolls. On the chronology issue the question of the Hebrews’ priority in
creating the canon is entirely dependent — against the background of
similarly complex problems of dating the Chinese and Indian canonic texts
(see below in the section The Jewry as a Civilization and the Debatable
Issue of Jewish Uniqueness of the Chapter Why the Jews?).
An opinion is in existence that the canonic principle of written
monuments organization had been there in ancient Near East much
earlier — it is suggested that the famous library of Ashurbanipal, king of
Assyria (669–626 B.C.E.) had been organized in accordance with this
principle already in the 7th century B.C.E. It is nonetheless obvious that
the principle per se that was destined to play such a significant role in the
further progress of culture has been inherited by Christianity and Islam
from the Hebrew Bible canon’s creators.
Cognition as a Value and Claims to “Theo-Parity”
Biblical attitudes towards cognition as the supreme value mastering

which leads to “equality with God,” “being as gods” is represented in the
symbol of the tree of cognition of good and evil. God forewarns Adam
72
against partaking of its fruit, for “when you eat of it you will surely die”
(Gen 2:17). The serpent tempts Eve: “You will not surely die … For God
knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like
God, knowing good and evil” (3:4–5). After the fruit is eaten the forecast is
confirmed from the mouth of the Almighty: “The man has now become like
one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his
hand, and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever” (3:22).
If in this episode the original humans violate the Creator’s command
as if through inexperience and inability to think things out, then the story
of building a city “with a tower that reaches to the heavens” demonstrates
the conscious aspiration of humanity in its youth to break away from
parental control, to achieve independence, construct their separate identity
(“name”):
… let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so
that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face
of the whole earth.102
God reacts to this challenge approximately the way he does to the first
violation of the ban:
If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this
then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.103
One can, however, hear not so much a censure in such a reaction as

a statement of a sentiment that all these willful actions and intentions run
counter the supreme master plan as far as humans are concerned — namely,
their dispersion and population of the earth and the limitation of their life
span:
Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he
is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”104
The motif known well in mythology, one of “hijacking” by humans or

for humans from gods of the fruits of eternal youth, fire, various abilities,
knick-knacks and knowledge, etc., acquires a special aspect here.
102 Gen 11:4.

103 Ibid. 11:6.
104 Ibid. 6:3.
73
Mankind that already got to know good and evil is in a position to acquire
perfect knowledge, immortality and — on a path towards unification,
unity — unlimited potential for spontaneous action (“then nothing they plan
to do will be impossible for them”): the qualities bringing the humankind
up to put it, in a sense, on a par with God (“you will be like God,” “The
man has now become like one of us”). God is wary of such turn of events
and hampers it by expelling the original couple from Eden and dispersing
their descendants around the earth; however, when he really punishes the
human race it is not for the claims to “theo-parity” at all, but for the evil,
evil deeds.105
The subtext of this story shines through. The divine plan about human
beings was initially characterized by some wavering, or to put it more
scientifically: it was endowed by variance. Adam may have received
both knowledge and immortality all at once: otherwise it is impossible
to figure out what was the idea of planting in paradise two trees bearing
such unpalatable and dangerous fruit and causing humankind to fall into
such misfortune and trouble. In the course of the experiment it turned out
that a human being is not ready for such an eventuality. An impression is
created that the author (authors?) of the biblical text, shy of advertising the
sacrilegious idea106 of man’s perfect knowledge, immortality and unlimited
possibilities, reserves for it the opportunity to get back yet — even though
somewhat later, towards the end of the suggested path. And even of
“theo-parity,” otherwise the “anthropo-deity,” so vividly described — and
anathematized as the claim of Antichrist — in the late 19th-20th century
Russian religious philosophy.
105 (Cf. the motives for the extermination of human race by deluge in Gen 6:5, 11.)
These words in Hebrew — raʕ and hms — mean the same as in English, i.e. in the
long run, evil, bad attitude of man to man.
106 On the other hand, why sacrilegious? If God is our Father (“But you are our
father” Isa 63:16), educator (“I reared children and brought them up” Isa 1:2),
and the pattern to follow (“Have mercy because God is merciful” says Epistle of
Aristeas [Andrews H., The Apocrypha and Pseudoepigrapha. Oxford,1913. Vol. 2,
paragraph 208] written, according to most scholars, in the 2nd century B.C.E.; cp.
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” later repeated in Lk 6:36) then one is
to expect that a child aiming to get a nail in the eye of a neighbor playing next to
him in a sandbox will be flogged by him or will end up removed from the sandbox
altogether, and a child arguing with father and displaying superfluous independence
will end up being shaken a warning — and caring — finger at. Let us again recall Job
reproaching God of injustice and demanding arbitration tribunal between himself
and Him — and not punished or even reproached for such a sacrilegious challenge.
74
It is not inconceivable that by the author’s design and the entailing

concept of divine anthropocentricity the Creator does not deny Adam the
Man, or the humankind, a prospect and the privilege — when he grows up
to graduate to maturity — of rising from the status of “God’s slave” to that
of “God’s friend” or even “God’s son” to become a worthy interlocutor and
collaborator — an “anthropo-deity.”
Vice versa even: it seems that God created him precisely towards that
end.
Antinomy as a Tool of Cognition
As one more component of the new system of ideas, it is possible to

mention what may be described as the process by which cognition becomes
a value in itself, with antinomy chosen as its tool. What the discourse was
about in the previous section, the image of a coveted-forbidden fruit, for
instance, appears to be an apparent antinomy. The Bible has quite a few
similar antinomies.
From the beginning, the very attitude of Man to his Maker, contains
an element of contradiction, opposition, and rebellion; the Almighty’s
reaction is described now as a “naturally” ireful response (anger followed
by punishment), now as quite out-of-the-ordinary benevolent attention to
the motivation and arguments of his opponent: remember his bargaining
with Abraham over the necessary number of righteous men in Sodom and
Gomorrah (Gen 18:23–32), his argument with Lot about Zoar (19:18–22),
his reaction to Sarah’s quizzical disbelief regarding the promised pregnancy
(18:10–15), and his reply to the complaints of Job.
Of course, similar motifs occur in other ancient writings, but it seems
to be only in the Bible that antinomy is first employed as a way to see
the world and to comprehend it. Antinomy and paradox become the
prevalent methods of thought in the Talmud — a book that, ironically, came
to symbolize uncritical dogmatism in common opinion. In actual fact,
however, the prevailing tone of the Talmud is that of argument with any
authority and on any issue, of critical all-round analysis of any statement
or opinion.
The Haggadah (the non-legal part of the Talmud) contains an episode
in which, while engaged in argument over some particular matter, the great
Rabbi Eliezer addresses the divine authority directly, and a voice from the
heavens confirms that he is right. This by no means disturbs his opponents
75
who declare: “Since the giving of the Torah, we heed no voices from
heaven” — in any other tradition this would be a blasphemy. The reaction
that Talmudic writers ascribe to the “source of the voice” is striking.
According to the Prophet Elijah (ʔliyyh), the Most High God laughed,
saying, “My children have defeated me, my children have defeated me!”
The skepticism of the Talmud, its anti-dogmatic and polemical nature,
the various, often directly opposite viewpoints, at times irreconcilable but
normally not deadly inimical, perceived as if the debate itself were the most
natural way of getting at the gist of things — all this is closely akin to the
modern scientific and critical way of thinking.
According to experts in ancient Near Eastern texts, the Talmud is
one of the most difficult as regards its translation and interpretation. This
difficulty can be to a large degree attributed to the specific nature of the
Semitic (in this case, Hebrew and Aramaic) languages, which rests on the
structure of the consonantal root and the ensuing associative relationship
between consonantal roots of similar composition. This relationship — in
the Bible it was employed as a text-forming technique that was perceived
by native speakers of Hebrew as the revealing of profound spiritual realities
concealed in the language (see below) — becomes in the Talmud a play on
words, a pun, something like a deliberate linguistic game, a comprehensive
intellectual exercise. Owing to the most complex superstructure pervaded
with this philological game (references, cross-references, digressions,
critical commentary on commentary, “multi-layered subtext,” explicit and
implicit quotations) the early rabbinical literature inclusive of the Talmud
became a paragon of “inter-textual discourse” purportedly so much in tune
with the Post-modernist perception of the world.
As of now, it is difficult to decide whether we deal here with the
“impersonal” cultural continuity or whether the acquaintance with Talmudic
texts had a direct impact on some of the founders and leading exponents of
modern scientific thought, on the one hand, and on some representatives
of Post-modernist culture, on the other.107 Whatever the true answer might
be, the ostensibly not so conspicuous role of the Talmud becomes revealed
every day more in the on-going cultural process.
107 We must not forget the role of Jewish intellectuals in the shaping of either
phenomenon.
76
The Categories of the Abstract and Absolute
What is implied here is the emergence of a set of notions which, together

with the achievements of Greek thought, contributed to the shaping of
theology, philosophy, and later even the basics of scientific thought. One
of such notions is the Biblical concept of “amorphism,” “formlessness”
of God; the other, a “negative” way of describing him which gave rise
to apophatic, or negative, theology, both Christian (Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite, Maximum the Confessor, et al.) and Jewish (Moses
Maimonides, the Rambam) and, later, the apophatic method in philosophy
and science, which describes the object not through a number of its
definable traits but through the negative statements towards its description.
Unlike anthropomorphic and zoomorphic characters of other known
mythologies, the “living God” has no visible image or form — he is
amorphous in principle, the notion reflected in the second commandment
(Ex 20:4) laying a ban upon depicting God.
In Biblical Hebrew, “image” (as in Gen 1:26) is slm, two other
meanings of this term being “statue” and “idol.” That the word’s meaning
of a figurative, plastic, first and foremost, representation of an animate
object was primary in respect to the metaphoric “image” follows from
parallels in other Semitic languages: Akkadian salmu “statue, figurine
(used in magic), relief, drawing; likeness,” Ugaritic slm, Sabaic slm and
zlm “statue, image,” Aramaic salm “statue, image, idol,” Arabic sanam-
“idol” (considered a loan from Aramaic) and zalam- “figure, form (seen in
the distance),” Jibbali seʹlɛʹm “a dummy given to a she-camel to suckle in
place of her colt.” The meaning “figure, statue, idol” of the Proto-Semitic
noun *salam- or *ṯ̣alam- deduced from these related forms, indicates the
evolution of the concept of imageless God — evolution beginning from
a tribal idol.
Nor has the God of the Tanakh — or can have — any “biography,” any
history of his origin. Such an idea of God’s unknowability is indicative of
another step from concrete to abstract thought and, perhaps, anticipates
a turn-to-be of modern science from a somewhat naive confidence in its
unlimited cognitive abilities to a more cautious agnosticism in certain
issues.
Still another related step in this direction is represented by the
emergence of the idea of the absolute as an important category of the
future philosophical method of thought: the God of the Bible embodies the
77
principle of absolute freedom of divine acts (like the creation of the world)
without having the usual mythological motivation — with the partial
exception of God’s attitude to man (see above).
HOW DEEP ARE THE BIBLICAL ROOTS

AND HOW OLD ARE THE JEWS?
Thus, some of the ideas that evolved later on into fundamental principles
and notions of latter-day civilization are first attested to in the Hebrew Bible
in the period of recording it in writing, i.e. in the middle 1st millennium
B.C.E. or later. Do they in turn derive from some notions of a still earlier
epoch? One of the difficulties of getting an answer to this question lies
in the fact that it was only in the opening books of Genesis that the most
fundamental of these ideas (monotheism, Man as the center and crown
of the universe, his creation in God’s image, the humankind’s unity and
mission, etc. — see above) were expounded in a form resembling a single
concept — or a prototype of such. Some of these notions occur under this or
that guise in other books of the Bible, but rarely enough and as if en passant
which causes doubt regarding the early provenance or wide popularity of
the corresponding Genesis texts (which must have been oral then) among
the Hebrews before the Captivity.
According to the views prevailing in modern Biblical studies,
universalistic and ethical ideas of these texts took their shape during the
Babylonian Captivity, or perhaps even in the post-Captivity time, i.e.,
no earlier than the mid-1st millennium B.C.E. Some of these concepts
are attested to in the post-biblical rabbinic literature. Analyzing the
Epistle of Aristeas (see above) D. Flusser, a prominent Israeli expert in
early Christianity and the rabbinic literature avers that many rabbinical
fragments integrated into this composition evidence that already in the
2nd century B.C.E. there existed a concept among the Jews of Palestine
asserting the necessity of love for all humans, both righteous and
sinful — a kind of boundless mercy. The requirement to be “merciful
progeny of the merciful” stemmed from the notion of the Almighty as the
humane and merciful God — therefore, a believer in God should strive to
imitate Him in humanity and mercy. Flusser finds the same idea in the
Testament of Benjamin (the last of the “Testaments of 12 Patriarchs,” one
78
How Deep are the Bibl ical Roots and How Old are the Jews?
of the apocrypha of the 2nd or 1st century B.C.E.): a good man must be
merciful toward all people making no distinction between the good and
the evil ones. One can also remember here the idea that, by killing a single
person, you destroy an entire universe, which derives from the Biblical
thesis that man was created in God’s image — rather than from the tenets
of later Hellenistic ethics becoming more and more familiar to the Jews.
The widespread opinion, in any case, holds that similar ideas as a system
were not in demand until the emergence of Christianity.
However, there are some grounds for believing that the Biblical notions
we discuss here were, to a certain degree, integrated into the Jewish oral
tradition of a much earlier period, sometime in the 2nd millennium B.C.E.
Some of those were probably influenced, in various periods, by the highly
developed neighboring cultures — Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hittite,
Ugaritic — though direct analogues can be rarely proved. According to the
opinion that goes back as far as Voltaire (and later supported by Freud in
his “Moses and Monotheism”), these ideas were borrowed by the Hebrews
from Egypt. This implies primarily to monotheism as having hypothetical
roots in the religious reform of Akhenaton (second quarter of the 14th
century B.C.E.). Today, many experts in ancient Near Eastern cultures have
a different point of view, according to which quite a few Biblical themes
and concepts derive from Mesopotamia and Ugarit. Without going into
detail including the debates raging for decades about the issue of Biblical
monotheism (that appeared in its familiar form relatively late), we intend to
discuss here one aspect only.
Borrowing an entire system of thought, rather than individual
artifacts or cultural innovations, usually involves borrowing terminology
to match. This adopted vocabulary includes direct lexical borrowings,
loan translations, and also “indirect” cultural influence and some cases
of popular etymology that are much harder to detect. There are mass and
single cases of borrowing. However, even most complicated cases can
be traced, provided the languages in question — the “recipient language”
and the linguistic family it belongs to, on the one hand, and the “donor
language,” on the other — are mastered by the comparative method well
enough.
I find neither Egyptian nor Sumerian, nor later Iranian borrowings108
in the lexical stratum referring to the innovative ideas from the sphere of
108 There is an opinion that Biblical Judaism might have been influenced by
Zoroastrianism, which finds no linguistic confirmation, however.
79
spiritual and intellectual culture, ethics, social justice, etc.,109 though loan-
words from these languages are, of course, present in other sections of the
Biblical lexicon, for instance, pertaining to the economy, social practices,
politics, or everyday life.
On the contrary, most if not all of these Hebrew terms have cognate
words in other Semitic and, sometimes, even more distantly related Afrasian
languages, which implies that they belong to the lexicon inherited from
much earlier times.
These are such terms as “God”: Hebrew ʔl, ʔlh, plural ʔlh–m
from Proto- Semitic *ʔil-, ʔilh- id.; “angel’: Hebrew malʔk̲ “messenger;
messenger of God, angel” from Proto-West Semitic *malʔak- “messenger;
angel” from *lʔk “to send” from Afrasian *laʔakʷ- “to send”; ‘man,
mankind’: Hebrew ʔdm “mankind, people; individual man; Adam” from
Proto-Semitic or Proto-West Semitic *ʔadam- “man; people; mankind”; “to
create”: Hebrew brʔ (also attested in Aramaic, Sabaic and Arabic) and ḳny
(ḳn “Creator”) from Proto-Semitic *ḳny “to create (of gods)” (attested in
Phoenician, Ugaritic and Arabic; also related is Soqotri ḳanin-hin “the Lord”
which allows to qualify this root as Proto-Semitic); “soul; life; living being”:
Hebrew np from Proto-Semitic *nap(i)- “soul; vitality, life; person,
personality; self”; “to love, take pity on someone”: Hebrew rhm from Proto-
Semitic *rhm “to be merciful, compassionate, kind to so., have pity”; “to
be in the right, be right, be just”: Hebrew sdḳ from Proto-Semitic (except
Akkadian) *sdḳ “to be just, right, true, righteous”; “to be holy”: Hebrew ḳd
from Proto-Semitic *ḳd “to be clean, holy; consecrate”; “priest”: Hebrew
khn from Proto-Semitic *kahin- “priest, fortune-teller; adult, clever,
cheat”, *khn “to have second sight, prophesy”; “to do wrong, sin”: Hebrew
hṭʔ (also “to miss (a mark); to wrong (morally), offend; be culpable”) from
Proto-Semitic *ḫṭʔ “to miss, fail, lack; mistake, err; do wrong, sin”, etc.
What does the reconstruction of numerous Proto-Semitic terms
pertaining to the sphere of spiritual and intellectual culture of the 5th-4th
109 This is also true, in general, of Akkadian and Ugaritic borrowings, though it is
more difficult to tell cognate words inherited from the common ancestor language
from direct lexical loans and, especially, indirect influences in a cultural lexicon of
closely enough related languages belonging to the same geographical and cultural
zone at that; there is at least one example of a plausible Akkadian loan-word in
the Biblical Hebrew terminology in question (namely Shabbat), according to one of
the proposed etymologies. Things are still more complicated with loanwords from
Aramaic, though in a vast majority of cases Semitists have learned to tell them from
common Hebrew (or Canaanite)-Aramaic lexica using various criteria.
80
millennia B.C.E. and found in many records, including the Hebrew Bible,
written in various Semitic languages several millennia later indicate? On
the one hand, it attests to a sufficiently well-developed notional system
of the earliest Semites, on the other, it shows that the tradition of using
the same cultural terms (and, ergo, similar notional systems) was never
interrupted, up to the moment when they became committed to writing,
e.g., in the Bible.
There is another important, albeit indirect, piece of evidence pointing
to a great antiquity of many Biblical ideas that seem to have taken root
sometime well before the writing of the Bible. We speak of one of the most
fundamental (and, alas, one of the least studied) features typical of the world
view, thought patterns and culture of ancient man — a play on words. He
saw in words and in associations between similarly sounding words a kind
of “compressed” reality that was put there by supernatural forces, a reality
that can be extracted from there and, using certain methods like magic or
ritual, incorporated in the actual, visible reality. A particular attraction for
the ancient man was “mystery of a name.” According to Igor Diakonoff,
It is well known that in the Ancient Orient naming was an essential part
of the act of creation: as long as its name was non-existent, a creature
was … non-existent or not alive.110
The strong interest that the ancient Hebrews, as well as other Semitic
peoples, seem to show in homonymous, or simply similar-sounding, roots
has the additional explanation in the specific structure of the Semitic root.
Thorough investigation of this similarity was, in all probability, equivalent to
penetrating the mystery of the word — the word whereby the Universe was
created by God (or gods). Extracting this mystery which was concealed in the
language, actualizing it in a text, unfolding it in a myth, crystallizing it into
a concept were experienced by ancient authors as magical or sacred acts.111
110 I. Diakonoff. Father Adam. Archiv für Orientforschung, 19, 1982, pp. 16–24, 18.
111 Such ideas were first developed, and most interesting observations concerning this
fascinating subject made, to the best of my knowledge, by my grandfather Solomon
S. Maizel, a Moscow linguist and Middle East scholar in his unpublished work
“Semitic Mythology in the Light of Allothesis and Metathesis” initially written as
a chapter of a draft doctoral thesis (disrupted by the death of Solomon Maisel in 1952
and published over 30 years later by the present author — complete with a foreword,
supplements and emendation of the text — see S.S. Maisel. The Ways of Semitic
Languages Root Stock Development, Moscow, 1983), but retrieved thereupon by
Maisel from both the typewritten version of the thesis and the table of contents.
81
I call this phenomenon “etymopoesis,” i.e., “invention of etymologies,”

or “the fashioning/creation of the true meaning” (from Greek etymon “the
true meaning (of a word)” and poisis “creation, making”) to distinguish
it from a related but different phenomenon known as “popular etymology.”
Etymopoetic technique widely occurs in the Hebrew Bible, where it
is often used to explain what seemed to the ancient “etymopoet” the true
meaning of names of certain characters. There are but two well-known
examples of this: (1) “Adam named his wife Eve (Haww), because she
would become the mother of all the living (hy)”;112 (2) “After this, his
brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel (ba-ʕaḳb̲); so he was
named Jacob (Yaʕaḳb̲)”.113
However, as a special analysis reveals, what really takes place is often
exactly the opposite: proper names are primary: prior to having been
incorporated in this or that text they had existed in some earlier oral tradition,
while the compilers (authors, editors) of Biblical texts strove to explain these
names, which compelled them to invent circumstances capable of providing
such an explanation. The author by no means regarded this as a fabrication
or fantasy intended to achieve some preset goal in his narrative: for him,
this was the revelation of the sacred mysteries of the word, something like
decoding concealed meanings.
Thus, there are reasons to believe that the names Esau (ʕŝw) and Jacob
(Yaʕaḳb̲) of our second example originate from certain more archaic texts
(cf. the two names for “quail” in Arabic — yaʕsb- and yaʕḳb- — that show
a striking similarity to our names), and that the entire “heel-holding” episode
was invented to provide an etymology for the name of Jacob.
Another typical case is an explanation of the name Moses (M) in
Ex 2:10: “She named him Moses saying, ‘I drew him out of the water.’”
( … wa-tiḳrʔ əm M wa-tʔmr k– min ha-mmayim mə–tih).
M is explained from the verb my “to draw out” attested to in the Hebrew
Bible in two more contexts only114 — in all three cases followed by the
words “from the water” (mi-mmayim). The name M is considered by
most scholars a Hebrew rendering of Egyptian msy “to bear (a child)” or ms
“child”;115 anyway, it is obviously primary in relation to the extremely rare
112 Gen 3:20.

113 Ibid. 25:26.
114 2S 22:17 and Ps 18:17.
115 Cf. also Takács, G., Etymological Dictionary of Egyptian, Vol. Three. Leiden-
Boston, 2008.
82
verb my, whose meaning “to draw out” is luckily transparent due to the
clear stereotypic context (“from the water”).116
As for the plot involving the double deception of Esau by Jacob who
obtained both the primogeniture and the paternal blessing it may have been
suggested to the text’s creators by the verbal root ʕḳb “to betray” with
the same root homonymous of ʕḳḇ “heel” (cf. also ʕḳḇ̲ “deceitful,
sly”): “Esau said, ‘Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? He has deceived me
(wa-yyaʕḳəb̲-nn–) these two times: He took my birthright, and now he’s
taken my blessing!’” (Gen 27:36).117
Coming back to discussing the time at which the earliest Genesis texts
in question were created, we have to pay some attention to one — even
subtler — point. The invention of episodes and circumstances explaining the
characters’ names was stimulated not only by similarity of corresponding
words in Hebrew (the native language of the Biblical writers) but also by
their likeness in other Semitic languages. Here are a few examples of such
similarly sounding words in Hebrew and Arabic.
While the fact that the name of Abel (Hb̲l) killed by his brother Cain
finds a perfect correspondence in the Arabic verb habila “to lose a son (said
of a mother)” might possibly be explained away as a chance coincidence,
the name Yaʕaḳb̲118 has such Arabic parallels as to leave little room for
the chance coincidence hypothesis: ʕaḳb- “worthy heir” (with the same
root consonants), and still another metathetic noun in Arabic — bḳiʕat-
“clever, cunning man.” There is one more Arabic word with metathesis in
relation to the name Jacob: the verb ʕabiḳa “to be permeated with the smell
of something, to emit fragrance.” All these Arabic parallels show suspicious
correspondences to the Biblical story of Jacob, the youngest son who obtained
the blessing of his father by cunning and became his rightful heir, at which the
father said, “Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord
116 Cp. Arabic msy “to draw out, pull out” and “to wipe off (with one’s hand)” and
Aramaic: Syrian mʔ “to gather, remove”, Judaic mʔ “to wash”, Mandaic my “to
wash (hands in water)” and “stretch (one’s hand)”; we have here either a common
Proto-West Semitic verb with a rather unusually complex meaning — some like “to
put something into water and take it out” or two homonymous verbs — “to put into
water, wash” and “to draw out, remove”, having possibly influenced each other at that.
117 Cf also a Hebrew verb with a metathesis — another sequence of the same root
consonants — ḳbʕ “to rob” or “to betray” (which of the two meanings is true is
an object of discussion in literature).
118 With root consonants — on whose similarity such associations are normally built —
ʕ, ḳ and b.
83
has blessed.”119 Finally, such Arabic words as miʕḳab- (with the same three
root consonants ʕḳb) “experienced shepherd, herdsman” and baḳaʕ (with
metathesis) “speckled, piebald, black-and-white coloring of skin/hair (of
cattle)” surprisingly correlate with the story of the “speckled and spotted cattle”
that Jacob took away from Laban using unorthodox livestock techniques.120
If all these parallels are not accidental (which is improbable), if the
author was borrowing the associations he used in his narrative from Arabic
lexicon, then he must have known Arabic! Similar parallels between Biblical
texts and Aramaic quoted by Maizel imply that the author knew something
of this language too. However, to hypothesize the existence of a polyglot
writer who knew Arabic that by the mid-1st millennium B.C.E. had diverged
from Hebrew so significantly as to become mutually incomprehensible (this
does not apply to Aramaic, a language genetically closer to Hebrew, and
that the Hebrews could have known due to cultural contact) would be a bit
too revolutionary. An alternative, and more probable, explanation involves
dating the emergence of these texts to an earlier epoch, when the languages in
question still remained mutually comprehensible dialects. The “texts” must
have been, of course, oral then. Since the common linguistic ancestor of
Hebrew and Arabic split sometime in the first third — middle 3rd millennium
B.C.E., the period we speak of must date back to the first third or the middle
of the 2nd millennium B.C.E. (and no later) when these two languages were
separated only by about a millennium of independent development. That is
approximately the period in years that separate, for example, Spanish from
Portuguese or Yiddish from German; partial intelligibility among related
languages is normally lost outside this time framework — like between such
West Germanic languages as English and German separated by nearly two
millennia of independent development or between Spanish and Rumanian
whose common ancestor, Proto-Romance (historically, what is called vulgar
Latin) had branched approximately by the middle 1st millennium C.E.
Having once touched the subject of chronology, it would be appropriate
for us to discuss the sufficiently complicated and ambiguous issue of what
time the historical beginnings of the Jews might be dated to. If we take the
ethno-linguistic criterion for our point of departure (“people is language”),
then the history of the Jews proper is to be counted from that conventional
moment when Hebrew, as known to us by its extant written records, separated
119 Gen 27:27.

120 Ibid. 30: 32–42. All these examples are borrowed from the above-mentioned work
by S. S. Maizel.
84
from those Semitic languages that were closest to it genetically. If so, then
the situation can be reconstructed as follows.
The closest relative of Hebrew was Phoenician; both languages being
members of the Canaanite group within the Semitic family.121 The Aramaic
language (or the Aramaic linguistic group) is a cognate language closest to
the Canaanite group, next closest is Ugaritic and next Arabic and Ethiopian
Semitic languages. According to my estimate done using two independent
methods — glottochronology and etymostatistics developed by Starostin (see
above) — Hebrew and Phoenician separated ca. the 13th century B.C.E.,122
proto-Canaanite and proto-Aramaic separated in the early 2nd millennium
B.C.E.,123 the common ancestor of Canaanite and Aramaic (what I call Proto-
South Levantine) seems to have separated from Ugaritic a little earlier — at
the turn of 3rd and 2nd millennium, and the common ancestor of all the
above-listed languages (what I call Proto-Levantine), from proto-Arabic
prior to the middle of the 3rd millennium.
Therefore, following the principle of the separation of languages and
sticking to the above chronology, we get the 13th century as the approximate
time when the separate Jewish (or Hebrew speakers’) history started.124 This
is the date post quae non, the one “not after which” the Hebrew history
begins. What is, then, the time ante quae non, “not prior to which” — i.e. its
earliest dating possible?
The answer would depend upon how the known historical facts and the
chronology, accepted by most specialists — never by all — correlate with
the legends of the Hebrews’ (or their ancestors’) migration from “Ur of the
Chaldeans” in Lower Mesopotamia via Haran in Northern Syria to Canaan,
121 Including several other languages besides, which preserved very poorly and which,
therefore, we do not take into account here.
122 The presumably earliest, originally oral, Biblical text (The Song of Deborah) and
the earliest Phoenician inscriptions are also dated by contemporary scholars to the
late 2nd mill. B.C.E.
123 This date does not contradict the traditional Biblical chronology, according to
which the two clans got separated in the early 21st century B.C.E. — that of Abram
the Hebrew (Gen 14:13) who moved to Canaan and that of Bethuel the Aramean
(25:20) who was staying in Haran. It would be natural to suppose that, after a few
generations, the language the former spoke can be qualified as Proto-Canaanite and
the latter, as Proto-Aramaic.
124 Interestingly, the first mention of the name Israel in an ancient Egyptian text, the so
called Merneptah Stele also known as the Israel Stele, is dated to the late 13th century
(1209/1208). The title “Israel Stele” may be misleading, though, because the stele only
makes a brief mention of Israel and Canaan (cp. Wikipedia,The Merneptah Stele).
85
their 430-year long sojourn in Egypt and their exodus from it. The question
is, whether tenable dates can be deduced from juxtaposing such independent
sources as archaeological findings and written texts from Mesopotamia,
Syria, Canaan and Egypt with the “inner” biblical chronology.125
In theory, Terah could have left Ur, together with other Amorite
nomadic herders during the “Dark Age” of the Akkadian Empire prior to
or soon after its collapse ca. 2083 B.C.E. from the invasion of Gutians
or/and rapidly increasing aridity. This presumption is fairly in keeping with
the Bible dates. If the gradual separation of Abram’s clan and his Aramaic
kin (say, in the period between Abram’s move from Haran to Canaan and the
adoption by Jacob126 of his new anthroponym-ethnonym Israel) reflects the
historical process of the Proto-South Levantine127 branching off into Proto-
125 Cf.: “After Terah had lived 70 year, he became the father of Abram … ” Gen 11:26,
“In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt,
in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel … he began to build the temple
of the Lord” 1 K 6:1 (the years of Solomon’s reign are calculated fairly exactly by
historians using independent sources), etc.
126 Who was still called “a wandering Aramean” (ʔaramm– ʔb̲d̲ ) in Dt 26:5.
127 Which, I hypothesize, was called Aramaic — the name retained by the Aramaic
language group proper and, if this hypothesis is true, replaced by other autolinguonyms
by the Canaanite-speakers. (One of the peoples presumably speaking Aramaic,
Chaldeans, whose dynasty ruled over Neo-Babylonian Empire in 625–539 B.C.E.
and who was well known to the Hebrews at least since then, is not mentioned in the
genealogies of Genesis [cf. HALOT 502], the significant fact not to be neglected
while discussing the time of committing this book to writing.) This hypothesis, if true,
would have resolved the difficulty discussed by I. Diakonoff: “ … in a general way
ʔaramm– meant simply “nomad” without reference to the language of the tribe; thus
ʔaramm– ʔb̲d̲ “a wandering nomad” is said of the ancestor of the Hebrews who first
settled in Egypt, i.e. either Joseph or Jacob (Dt 26:5), although nobody could have
supposed that the Hebrews’ ancestors ever spoke Aramaic. This is another example
of how the name of a tribal eponym might be transferred from one tribal group to
another, depending upon the historical circumstances” (Father Adam, pp. 19–20).
It must have been, of course, not the Aramaic historically attested in writing that
the Hebrews’ ancestors spoke but the common ancestor language of Aramaic and
Canaanite (Proto-South Levantine) likely called Aramaic; the toponym A-ra-meKI
referring to an area in the Middle Euphrates is attested to in an Assyrian inscription
as early as in the 23rd c. B.C.E. In favor of this hypothesis also speaks the Egyptian
(from the Old Kingdom on) name for “Asians”, Egypt’s western neighbors — ʕȵm in
all probability rendering Semitic ʔaram — either with metathesis (while Egyptian ȵ
regularly corresponds to Semitic ʔ and Egyptian m, to Semitic m, Egyptian ʕ in certain
cases reflects Semitic and Afrasian *r — see EDE I, 280–82) or with a change — as
the result of dissimilation — of ȵ (pronounced as a glottal stop [ʔ]) into ʕ in Egyptian
in the vicinity of another ȵ [ʔ] which, in this case, would convey the uvular r regularly
corresponding to Semitic and Afrasian r (see below).
86
Aramaic and Proto-Canaanite dialects — then the beginning of the Hebrew

history should be dated by that period (roughly the first quarter of the
2nd millennium B.C.E., more precisely — and less reliably — 18th century).
In this case, however, the inevitable question arises about the position of
other Canaanite dialects, Phoenician first of all; it implies that the speakers
of all Canaanite dialects should be considered progeny of the biblical
patriarchs, while the speakers of Phoenician (from which, as I said above,
Hebrew must have separated circa the 13th century, i.e. after the biblical
Exodus) are to be looked at as one of the “lost tribes of Israel,” which is
difficult to prove or disprove.
As for the correlation of Biblical narrative with historical facts, scholars’
opinions vary radically. I.Finkelstein and N.A.Silberman state in their much-
discussed book, The Bible Unearthed:
Archaeology has always played a crucial role in the debates about the
composition and historical reliability of the Bible. At first, archaeology
seemed to refute the more radical critics’ contention that the Bible was
a rather late composition, and that much of it is unreliable historically.
From the end of the nineteenth century, as the modern exploration of the
land of the Bible got underway, a series of spectacular discoveries and
decades of steady archaeological excavation and interpretation suggested
to many that the Bible’s accounts were basically trustworthy in regard to
the main outlines of the story of ancient Israel. Thus it seemed that even if
the biblical text was set down in writing long after the events it describes,
it must have been based on a substantial body of accurately preserved
memories.128
Expressing opposite views, Prof. Z. Herzog of the Archaeology Faculty at

the University of Tel Aviv asserted:129
Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel,
archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs’ acts are legendary, the
Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not
conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and
Solomon, nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts have
been known for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody wants
to hear about it.
128 I.Finkelstein and N.A.Silberman. The Bible Unearthed. Archaeology’s New Vision
of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. New York-London-Toronto-
Sydney-Singapore, 2002.
129 In his article “Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho” (Ha’aretz, 29 October 1999).
87
As I have stressed more than once, the main goal of the present book
is not to supply answers but rather to outline a scope of pertinent questions
and, wherever possible, offer new approaches, one of them from the
standpoint suggested by my main professional field, comparative linguistics.
While I can hardly add anything of importance to purely archaeological
debates, I will try and interfere with two sets of linguistic evidence into the
controversy about whether the Israelites as a large enough ethnic community
did or did not sojourn in Egypt for a long enough period of time.
One of these sets refers to Hebrew loanwords in Egyptian. While the
well-studied fact of a few dozens Egyptian loanwords in Hebrew can be
easily accounted for by Egyptian influence on the population of Canaan
(to which the Egyptian sources often referred as an Egyptian province)
during the second half of the 2nd and the first half of the 1st mil. B.C.E.,
a few hundred Hebraisms (or Canaanisms) in Egyptian present a difficult
historical problem.
Let us have a look at a few selected loanwords, both certain and
presumed:130
Egyptian (Middle Kingdom) ȷḳr “trustworthy, skillfull, excellent,

pleasing, etc.” — Hebrew yḳr “scarce, precious, valuable, noble” (from
Proto-Semitic *wḳr, also in Akkadian and Ugaritic).
Egyptian (Middle Kingdom) ȷȵḳ “leech; greens, vegetables” — Hebrew
yrḳ “greens, vegetables” (from Proto-Semitic *warḳ- “leaf, greens”
< *wrḳ “to be green, yellow”).
Egyptian (Middle Kingdom, literary texts) ḳdm “Eastern land” — Hebrew
ḳd̲m “the east” (also Ugaritic ḳdm “the Levant, the East (?), from Proto-
Semitic *ḳVdm- “front”).
Egyptian (18th Dynasty, reign of Thutmose III, 1479–1425) msty.
wt “small galley propelled by oars, a many-oared boat” — Hebrew mṭ
“rudder” (in Eze 27:6–29), Post-Biblical Hebrew and Judaic Aramaic
130 It is, of course, difficult sometimes to tell a loanword from a generically common
term, but even when the fact of borrowing does not undoubtedly follow from the
form of the Egyptian word (like in ssm.t “horse” — cf. Hebrew plural ss–m) or its
semantics (like ḳdm “Eastern land,” cf. Hebrew ḳdm “East” from “front part”)
or historical circumstances (no horses and chariots attested to in Egypt before
the 18th Dynasty), the very fact of the late fixation as in most examples quoted
below — in the New Kingdom period — of the Egyptian term and its absence in the
earlier texts versus, say, an inherited Hebrew term with a sound Semitic etymology
gives enough grounds for assuming borrowing into Egyptian.
88
mṭ “oar; a light ship” (from Semitic *wṭ “to beat, stir, row”, cf.
EDE III 589–90).
Egyptian (18th Dynasty) ym “sea” — Hebrew ym “lake, sea” (from
Proto-West Semitic *yamm-).
Egyptian (18th Dynasty) mktr/ mgdr/ mkdr “tower, fortress” — Hebrew
migdal “tower” from Proto-West Semitic (also in Ugaritic) *migdal- “tower”
(EDE III 673–674).
Egyptian (18th Dynasty) kȵm “vineyard, garden; grapevine” — Hebrew
krm “vineyard” (from Proto-Semitic including Ugaritic).
Egyptian (18th-20th Dynasty) rmnn “Lebanon” — Hebrew ləb̲nn
“Lebanon” (also Phoenician and Aramaic; Ugaritic lbnm).
Egyptian (18th Dynasty) mtn “to give, present”, mtn.w “gift, reward,
recompense (for making an object)” — Hebrew mattn, mattn “gift,
present” (also Phoenician and Aramaic as well as Ugaritic mtn — all from
ntn “to give”), a derived deverbal noun with a clear Semitic origin.
Egyptian (18th Dynasty) pḫȵ or pḫ “trap, snare (for birds)” — Hebrew
pah “trapping net, used by fowlers” (also Aramaic and Arabic; Ugaritic
debatable).
Egyptian (18th Dynasty) hdm.w “footstool” — Hebrew had̲m (and
Ugaritic hdm) “footstool (of God, of the king)”.
Egyptian (18th Dynasty) msktw “armlet (of gold or leather)” — Hebrew
mokt (hapax, only in Job 38:31) “bracelet, fetter” (also Arabic masakat-
“bracelet or anklet, armband”; cf. EDE III 587).
Egyptian (18th Dynasty) ssm.t “horse” — Hebrew ss, plural ss–m
“horse” (common Semitic; the Egyptian term is clearly a loanword with
a typical Canaanite language group — and Ugaritic — plural suffix -m).
Egyptian (18th Dynasty) ȷbr “stallion” — Hebrew ʔabb–r “stallion”
(and “bull”, both regarded as metaphors from “strong, powerful” which is
debatable; also Ugaritic ibr “horse” and “bull”).
Egyptian (from 18th Dynasty) mrkb.t “chariot” — Hebrew mrkb̲
“chariot” (the same form and meaning also in Ugaritic and Aramaic).
Egyptian (New Kingdom) ʕgr.t “cart” — Hebrew ʕag̲l “wagon, cart”
(also in Phoenician and Aramaic).
Now let us forget for a moment about the Biblical story of the Hebrews
in Egypt and their exodus from it and pose a few questions. Question one:
can these loanwords be explained in the same way as the Egyptian loan-
words in Hebrew — by many centuries of contacts in Canaan? Normally
in ethno-cultural contacts, the more advanced partner — which the
89
Egyptians undoubtedly were — donates terms reflecting his higher cultural

or technological level to the culturally inferior community — which the
Hebrews in Canaan seem to have been, at least in the eyes of the Egyptian
conquerors: in the “Stele of Israel,” the name “Israel” is provided with the
hieroglyph determinative sign for “foreign people” used by the Egyptians
to signify “Nomads” without a fixed city-state, thus implying that ysrỉr
“Israel” was in the late 13th century the ethnonym for a semi-nomadic
or rural population.131 The 18th Dynasty in Egypt when most of the
presumably Hebrew borrowings listed above occurred is dated to the period
from 1550 to 1292 B.C.E., i.e. prior to the “Stele of Israel” and it is only
logical to reason that the Hebrews of Canaan (or their direct ancestors) had
not been substantially more advanced by the early 13th century than their
descendents in the late 13th century. What kinds of words do dominant
nations in general and conquerors in particular normally borrow from the
conquered lands and dominated populations? Some terms referring to local
specifics — flora, fauna, names of deities, social ranks and titles, household
items, clothes, quaint customs and beliefs, etc.; their usage is often limited
by sources describing these lands and peoples. Though this kind of
loanwords from Hebrew abound in later Egyptian texts,132 it is not the case
with the above examples: why should the language of the great dominant
empire borrow such terms as “trustworthy, excellent” or “vegetables” or
“sea” or “tower, fortress” or “gift” from the non-literate vernacular of some
conquered and defeated semi-nomads?133 And, still stranger, why a whole
set of terms related to horses and chariots?
131 Wikipedia, The Merneptah Stele.

132 I have asked several specialists about the reasons for this impressive number of
Hebraisms in later Egyptian, but I cannot say I am satisfied with the answers
like “Well, the contacts with Egypt were intensive in the 2nd and the first half of
the 1st mill. B.C.E. and Canaan was a fairly advanced country.” So what? Was
Canaan — and the Hebrews in particular — that advanced that Hebraisms (or Ca-
naanisms) in Egyptian seem to outnumber ten times Egyptisms in classical Hebrew?
133 In the “Israel Stele,” the line mentioning Israel is grouped together with three other
defeated states in Canaan (Gezer, Yanoam and Ashkelon) in a single stanza. The line
referring to Merneptah’s Canaanite campaign reads:
Canaan is captive with all woe. Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer seized, Yanoam
made nonexistent; Israel is wasted, bare of seed.
The phrase “wasted, bare of seed” is formulaic, and often used of defeated nations.
It implies that the store of grain of the nation in question has been destroyed, which
would result in a famine the following year, incapacitating them as a military threat
to Egypt. (Wikipedia, The Merneptah Stele).
90
Chariots and horse-driven carts are thought to have been introduced to

Egypt, together with the horse, in the early 17th century by the Hyksos,134
apparently leaving no borrowed lexica different from the quoted examples
in the Egyptian language of that period which is surprising per se. Since
there had not been native Egyptian names for either horse or chariot prior
to their appearance in Egypt, should we admit that these two remained
nameless (or their names were later expurgated from all Egyptian written
sources) until at a certain lucky moment during the 18th Dynasty the
Egyptian conquerors clapped their eye on the Canaan horses and chariots,
memorized their local names and carefully delivered them to their native
land — to bless the Egyptian horses and chariots with Jewish (or, not so
compromising, with Canaanite) names?
Let’s try it another way. All of these loanwords are not from Hebrew but
from some closely related Canaanite dialect spoken by some quite advanced
people who generously donated a lot of cultural terms to Egyptians and then
disappeared leaving no vestiges. Another piece of guesswork: some — but
certainly not all — of these terms were borrowed from Ugaritic (note the
Ugaritic cognates to most of the above Hebrew words). In theory this is
possible but very unlikely.
And the last possibility: the Hyksos were this Canaanite people or they
were the Hebrews (the earliest version of the secret anonymous Jews’ story);
they ruled the eastern part of the Lower Egypt for over a hundred years and
their language could have naturally been the source of cultural borrowings.
There is much controversy among specialists about the origin of the Hyksos,
the main suggestions ranging from the Hurrian135 speaking migrants with
a strong Indo-Arian ethnic component to the Hebrews or some other
Canaanite or West Semitic people. While I am not qualified to comment
upon pros and cons of the Hurrian version, the Canaanite one meets with
the same objection as the one mentioned in the previous paragraph plus the
strange absence of the enigmatic Hyksos language’s loanwords in Egyptian
written sources before the 18th Dynasty which started with the driving of
the Hyksos away from Egypt. As for the Hebrews’ version supported by
Josephus Flavius and being in certain agreement with the Biblical story, the
134 Driven away from Egypt by Ahmose I, the first pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty; ruled
in 1550–1525 (some sources give 1580 or 1570 as the first year of his rule).
135 Hurrian and closely related Urartian languages are, according to I.Diakonoff and
S.Starostin (Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian Language. Mnchen, 1986),
an ancient branch of the North Caucasian linguistic family.
91
big question remains: how come the glorious fact of having ruled over part
of Egypt for five or six generations was overlooked and not glorified by the
authors of that story?
The analysis of West Semitic loanwords in the 18th Dynasty
Egyptian — and there are still a few similar loanwords in the Middle
Kingdom texts and plenty in the 19th Dynasty texts — rather speaks for
their Canaanite, or proto-Hebrew, origin. This purely linguistic evidence
better fits into — or, more cautiously, less than other thinkable explanations
contradicts to — the longtime Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt in the capacity
of an “exceedingly numerous” and influential enough minority with
whom “the land was filled” (Ex 1:7) prior to “coming to power in Egypt”
of “a new king, who did not know about Joseph” (1:8). It would be only
logical to suppose that this king may have been one of the first pharaohs
of the new, 19th Dynasty, namely, Ramses I (1292–1290 or 1314–1312)
or Seti I (1290–1279 or 1312–1301) or the great Ramses II (1279–1212 or
1301–1234), who should have felt free of the previous dynasty’s obligations
and attachments — as it so often happens in history.
The second linguistic evidence I promised to adduce is about the
“Rhotic consonant” (sometimes known as “French language R”), a guttural
or uvular pronunciation of r,136 or, in a plain language, the famous — or
notorious — Jewish “burring,” an object of a Judeophobe’s neighing joy. This
peculiar phonetic trait whose origin is rather obscure137 occurs in a limited
number of world languages or some of their dialects — French, Spanish,
Portuguese, Dutch, German, Sorbian,138 Danish, Swedesh and Norwegian.
In Yiddish, a Middle High German language and the historical vernacular of
Ashkenazi Jews, “burring” is naturally considered a German feature.
Allow me an extensive quotation from Wikipedia:

Though … Eliezer ben Yehuda based his Standard Hebrew on the Sephardic
dialect originally spoken in Spain, and therefore recommended an alveolar
136 See a comprehensive and highly professional entry “Guttural R” in Wikipedia.

137 Thus, as to the Continental West Germanic, “many Low Franconian and Low
Saxon varieties adopted a uvular rhotic … many Central German varieties also
adopted a uvular rhotic. The development of a uvular rhotic in these regions is not
entirely understood, but a common theory is that these languages adopted a uvular
rhotic because of French influence, though the reason for uvular rhotic in modern
European French is not itself well understood. (Wikipedia. Guttural R).
138 A West Slavic language spoken in Eastern Germany.
92
R (not “burring” — A.M.) … the first waves of Jews to resettle in the Holy
Land were Northern Ashkenazi, they came to speak Standard Hebrew with
their preferred uvular articulation as found in Yiddish or modern standard
German, and it gradually became the most prestigious pronunciation for
the language. The modern State of Israel has Jews whose ancestors came
from all over the world, but nearly all of them today speak Hebrew with
a uvular R because of its modern prestige and historical elite status. Many
Jewish immigrants to Israel spoke Arabic in their countries of origin,
and pronounced the Hebrew rhotic as an alveolar trill … Under pressure
to assimilate, many of them began pronouncing their Hebrew rhotic as
a voiced uvular fricative.
And about Arabic:

While most dialects of Arabic retain the Classical pronunciation of rʔ as
an alveolar trill … or tap [r], a few dialects use a uvular trill ([R]). These
include:
• The dialect of Mosul in Iraq
• The Christian dialect in Baghdad
• The Jewish dialect in Algiers
• The dialect of Fes in Morocco
And about Hebrew:

In Hebrew, the classical pronunciation associated with the consonant … re^
was an alveolar flap … [r], and was grammatically treated as an unge-
minable phoneme of the language. In most dialects of Hebrew among
the Jewish Diaspora, it remained a flap or a trill ([r]). However, some
Ashkenazi dialects as preserved among Jews in Northern Europe carried
a uvular rhotic … That was because many (but not all) native dialects of
Yiddish were spoken that way, and their liturgical Hebrew carried the
same pronunciation. An apparently unrelated uvular rhotic is believed to
have appeared in Tiberian Hebrew … ”
And in the entry “Tiberian vocalization”:

Tiberian Hebrew designates the canonical yet extinct pronunciation of the
Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh and related documents. This traditional medieval
pronunciation was committed to writing by Masoretic scholars based in
the Jewish community of Tiberias in the period ca. 750–950 CE.
Now, the entry “Dagesh”:

Dagesh Hazak … ( … “strong dot” — i.e. gemination dagesh … ) may
be placed in almost any letter, this indicated a gemination (doubling)
93
of that letter in pronunciation in forms of Hebrew earlier than modern

Hebrew … The following letters, the gutturals, almost never have a dagesh:
aleph … , he … , chet … , ayin … , resh.
What does the last quotation imply? That in the Masoretic Bible the
consonant r was generally not subject to doubling sharing this peculiarity
with four guttural consonants — ʔ, h, ʕ and h. I see the only explanation to
this: r was pronounced as a guttural, or “burring” R.139 Obviously, neither
this fact nor the same guttural pronunciation of R in four Arabic dialects
(especially mind The Jewish dialect in Algiers) can be explained by the
Yiddish influence.
This conclusion leads me to the following hypothesis revising the
whole “burring” issue: the guttural pronunciation of r goes as far back
as Biblical Hebrew (or at least some of the ancient Hebrew dialects). It
was inherited by the part of the Jewish Diaspora which carried this feature
to the new “Jewish languages” in Europe (France, Germany, Spain,
Portugal) and some of the Arabic dialects spoken by the Jews in Iraq and
North Africa. Perhaps, it is even not coincidental that the same feature
occurs in some of the “non-Jewish” languages of the classical areas of the
medieval and later Jewish Diaspora in Europe — French, German, Spanish,
Portuguese and Dutch, but this question is outside my competence. What
is within my competence is the question of the origin of the presumed
guttural pronunciation of r in classical Hebrew. It goes without saying
that this pronunciation trait can be either inherited from the earlier stage
of a language or be accounted for by the influence of another language,
i.e. borrowed. In no living Semitic language (with the exception of the
above mentioned Arabic dialects wherein this trait can be ascribed to the
Jewish influence140) r is known to have a guttural pronunciation; similarly,
not a single ancient Semitic language except biblical Hebrew has ever
139 It is only natural that the Masoretic Philologists (and they were Philologists with
a capital letter), either still speaking the Tiberian dialect — half millennium later
than the latest date to which specialists ascribe the death of spoken Hebrew — or,
more likely, preserving in generations the traditional local way of reciting the
Scriptures, based their notation of the Biblical text on their native dialect. However,
I suspect that it was not a dialectal Tiberian trait brought to the text edited in the
8–9th centuries C.E., but rather a phonetic feature of the language in which the
Hebrew Bible had been created many centuries earlier.
140 I see the most plausible explanation in the islamization — forced or voluntary — of
certain Jewish groups preserving guttural r who eventually assimilated completely.
94
been, to my knowledge, suspected of such a pronunciation which means

that it was not a common Semitic feature and thus could not be inherited by
Hebrew. Then the only explanation to look for is influence. The question
is, from what language?
Now, what are the implications of the “burring tale” for the subject in
question — the controversial Jewish sojourn in Egypt? Let us make another
digression and dwell upon one peculiar trait of Egyptian phonology and
hieroglyphic.
In ancient Egyptian, the consonant r was conveyed by two different
hieroglyphic signs: one depicting mouth and transliterated as r conveys r
and l (there is no special hieroglyph for l), the other depicting vulture and
traditionally represented in the Egyptological notation as ȵ (the “double
aleph”) conveys r, l and the glottal stop ʔ ; this is confirmed by a lot of
generic parallels from Semitic and other Afrasian languages,141 Coptic
reflexes written in Greek letters of Egyptian words, Akkadian rendering in
cuneiform syllabograms of Egyptian words, etc. Omitting the most difficult
problem of Egyptian l irrelevant in the present context, I tend to see the
most tenable explanation of the unusual fact of rendering two such different
sounds as ʔ and r by one and the same hieroglyph in the assumption that
there were two r-phonemes or, rather, two positional variants of the same
r-phoneme in Egyptian — one, alveolar vibrant [r], the other, guttural, or
uvular, or “burring” [R] conveyed by the same hieroglyphic sign as the
glottal stop.
If this assumption holds water (I hope it does), it remains to put two and
two together to fathom who the ancient Jews could pick up the “burring”
from. However, such things as pronunciation novelties are not “picked up”
by one language community from another incidentally, in passing: they
require close contacts uninterrupted in generations and are better explained
by cohabitation of the two language communities in question implying
mixed marriages or sexual unions and bilingualism of their posterity, with
the donor one more numerous or influential or prestigious than the recipient
one (more likely but not necessarily so, with males belonging to the former
and females, to the latter).
With all the “buts” and doubts in every point: ideally, it matches the
long-time Jewish sojourn in Egypt, does it not?
141 See EDE I 273–5.
95
THE UNIQUE NATURE OF

THE JEWISH PHENOMENON IN HISTORY
Aside from the above-mentioned innovative ideas of the Hebrew

Bible, we could name a number of other specific traits of the Jewish ethno-
cultural type — and also the ways they became actualized in the course of
history — many of which may occur individually in other ethnic cultures and
civilizations, but present an extremely unusual phenomenon as a complex.
I would like to make another digression here, for a few observations
regarding the modern humanities, in which I again lay no claim to originality
or depth. It seems that at the turn of the new millennium and still during
its first decade, the humanities — as well as social sciences that began
to separate from them as early as in the 19th century — as regards their
theoretical, methodological and interpretational aspects experience a certain
crisis. This crisis is a normal and expected one, such as regularly recurs on
a new plane at the end of another period of massive data accumulation.
The present crisis is caused by the enormous bulk of factual information,
owing to various factors emerging over the past few decades: high tech, the
improvement of world communication systems, the “computer revolution,”
the Internet and the creation of a single information field with its vast
resources,142 unrestricted (or less restricted) access to all information
sources and subjects that used to be off limits as classified in some formerly
totalitarian countries where totalitarianism collapsed, and the development
of the system of foundations and grants acquisition. This information was
acquired by scholars who have their hands full with collecting and arranging
it, and therefore have little opportunity to interpret it adequately.
At its current stage, science develops within boundaries of strict
positivism, revealing a very guarded attitude to any explanatory schemata
and global theories.143 Any attempt to explain phenomena by their unique
nature meets an equally skeptical reception: since everything has to be
142 Among which I would like to mention “Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia” as
a comprehensive and, as a whole, reliable enough resource — at least, not less so than
any published encyclopedia I have come across. Its authors’ anonymity, deliberate
volunteerism and lack of censorship would be an ideal combination to have resulted
in the outright irresponsibility and carelessness of the presented materials — that it
has not is, for me, a striking fact and a rare credit to our civilization.
143 I do not include post-modernist trends in the humanities into the discussed topic:
I do not perceive them as strictly scientific and thus relevant in the present context.
96
The Unique Nature of the Jew ish Phenomenon in Histor y
classified, it takes much more effort and strong arguments to prove that
any given phenomenon is unique than merely to state that it is common and
show its similarity to other phenomena.
In my opinion, this period of data accumulation and systematization
gradually comes to an end as regards the humanities (I am no judge of
natural and “hard” sciences but, supposedly, the above statement refers to
them too), and the next stage of evolution that normally follows the data
accumulation is ripening latently. A period when more large-scale and
complicated problems would be formulated, a time of another boom in
theoretical and explanatory models, of growth of interdisciplinary research
and, consequently, of important discoveries is at hand.
I can substantiate this assessment with examples from my own domain:
comparative-historical linguistics. Until quite recently, it was not accepted
in learned circles to talk in earnest about the origin of language families,
to say nothing of macro-families, especially to the effect that all the languages
of the world derive from a single protolanguage, though from the standpoint of
logic and common sense such an assumption is quite natural. This subject
was outside the range of science. It was usually taken up by half-amateurs
and romantics among scholars, and their argumentation, though at times
sound, was never taken seriously, partly out of general skeptical agnosticism
about the whole subject, partly — and first and foremost — because of the
inferior technique and quality of the data they adduced: a person of thought
soaring sky-high, a master of broad stroke could not possibly be bothered
messing with details (of which scholarship in general, and etymology resp.
comparative linguistics, in particular, inevitably mainly consists.)
The same period of time witnessed major advances in comparative
historical linguistics, a discipline based on the principles developed in the
late 19th century by the school of Neogrammarians who studied primarily
Indo-European languages. That authoritative, positivist branch of study
succeeded in accumulation and arrangement of a huge amount of linguistic
information. So when a few individual scholars highly qualified in their
particular fields of study took up the problem of the origin of language
families, the attitude of the linguistic scholarly scene toward them was
extremely guarded and skeptical for quite a while, especially on the part of
many Western colleagues.144
144 Partly because, for many years now, the main world center of those studies is
Moscow, Russia, whose streets, as every Westerner knows, were recently roamed
by wild bears and mafiosi with Kalashnikovs at the ready.
97
However, the problem began to yield to scholarly analysis, and said

attitude is slowly beginning to change. The extremely complex and
unwieldy — but nonetheless perfectly tangible — work of reconstructing the
protolanguages of principal families and macro-families is being performed
right now. At this stage, we have a sufficiently clear idea of what exactly to
do and how to move toward the point of the “proto-linguogenesis,” to the
very first fork on the genetic tree of the world languages — in other words,
to the protolanguage of mankind.
Another global interdisciplinary subject, currently coming to the fore
from the more “shady” areas of research and getting increasingly prominent
place, is the correlation of features of the prehistoric (preliterate) human
societies that became known from archaeological excavations and from the
reconstructed lexicon of protolanguages. Comparing these two large groups
of data enables scholars to identify the nameless creators of well-studied
archaeological cultures with the speakers of this or that protolanguage
and — with the help of molecular genetics — with the biological ancestors
of contemporary peoples. Currently these, even quite recently semi-taboo,
subjects elicit prestigious international conferences and research papers see
publications in serious “solid” scientific periodicals and publishing houses.145
Coming back to our main topic, the Jews, we have to admit that to speak
of the Jewish (or, for that matter, any other) phenomenon as a unique one is
currently out of fashion. This contradicts the accepted scholarly style. I think,
nevertheless, that such a view of these things is not permanent. A scholar
intending to tackle such macro-historical issues as the Jewish (or any other)
ethno-cultural model would be fully justified in doing so provided he is
guided in his work by those fundamental principles that are the only possible
and true ones for any science: a strictly rational and exact approach to facts
studied and an unbiased critical appraisal of any interpretation, hypothesis or
theory, both established and newly proposed, including one’s own. I likewise
see nothing seditious in the interest taken in meta-historical issues, in the
145 It suffices to mention the conferences organized by the McDonald Institute for
Archaeological Research in Cambridge and its director, the eminent archaeologist
lord Colin Renfrew, and those organized by the Santa Fe Institute (NM) under
the auspices of the Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann within the frame of
the American-Russian Project “Evolution of Human Languages” headed by the
outstanding Russian linguist Sergei Starostin (see above) until his premature demise;
at the fountainhead of those forums two Moscow conferences organized by the
present author (in 1984 and 1989) under the heading “Linguistic Reconstruction and
Prehistory of the East” have left their imprint.
98
The Unique Nature of the Jew ish Phenomenon in Histor y
search for parallels and even in interpreting historical and cultural processes
in terms of the more methodologically advanced natural and exact sciences,
once the above fundamental principles are strictly adhered to. This search has
but one alternative, which is the surrender to the incognizability of the subject
of study (the universe, human nature, world history, Jewish phenomenon,
whatever), to the determining role of chance or to a religious credo.
Let’s return once more to the two principal features of the Jewish
ethno-cultural phenomenon that are unusual and unique. One of them is
the matchless ability of the Jews to survive over the course of history. On
the one hand, this ability manifests itself in their unparalleled flexibility,
adaptability to any situation, the skill of surviving under the most severe
conditions and succeeding in circumstances least favorable for them. One
of the many examples of the above observation is the restriction imposed
in medieval and modern Europe on Jewish participation in any activities
except trade, crafts, usury and the “free professions,” that resulted in the
Jews of many countries obtaining leadership in these spheres developing
into the world market, technology, banking, and arts and sciences crucial
for the progress of human civilization.
On the other hand, this ability to survive manifests itself in the
uncommonly persistent attachment of the Jews to their identity — whatever
changes this identity would undergo. This can be illustrated by the
correlation between language and ethno-cultural identity. Adoption by
an ethnic group of a new language — such cases are well documented in
history — normally entails changing identification models and disrupting
cultural traditions. These are followed either by absorption of the language-
borrowing group by the community whose language is adopted or by the
forming of a new ethno-cultural unity. This happened to a good number
of peoples in the past: the Sumerians switched to the Semitic Akkadian
language and gradually became Akkadians; the Akkadians switched to
Aramaic and became Arameans; the Egyptians who adopted Islam and,
consequently, the Arabic language became Egyptian Arabs; part of North
African Berbers in the same manner became Maghreb Arabs; many Greeks
of Asia Minor became Turks; the Baltic Prussians became Eastern Germans,
etc., etc. In a sense, people is language.
The case of the Jews is entirely different. Neither their adoption of
Aramaic in Mesopotamia and Palestine, nor their switching to Greek,
Spanish (Ladino), Georgian, Arabic, Iranian languages, Middle High
German (Yiddish), Polish, Russian, and other languages in the Diaspora
turned the Jews into Arameans, Greeks, Arabs, Poles, etc. Naturally, we
99
mean here the core of the people that preserved their self-identification, not
its “outside” assimilated sections — however large they could be at times.
The second of the unique Jewish traits is their innovative activity going
far beyond the ethnic boundaries and aimed, either subjectively or objectively,
at the solution of tasks common to all humanity. We can mention the three
highest peaks of this activity. These are (1) the forming of the system of
anthropocentric and universalistic ideas contained in the Hebrew Bible;
(2) the initiation of Christianity (and, to some extent — though I’m still not
quite clear what — Islam) as a world religion; (3) the unique contribution
to the civilization process of the contemporary epoch. The ratio of leading
Jewish scholars, including the Nobel prize winners, in all spheres of sciences
(modern physics being but one example) and technology, philosophers and
social thinkers, spiritual leaders dominating the minds of millions, major
figures of culture and art is incredibly high compared to the insignificant
overall Jewish population of the world.
Of course, many of those prominent figures are not recognized as Jewish
by the Halakhah, and very few of them can be counted as adherents — at
least, the fervent ones — of Judaism as a religion. Not all of them would
unhesitatingly identify themselves as Jews. In other words, in addition to
non-recognition of part of them as Jews by the traditionalists, practically
anyone might feel some doubt as to the degree to which Marx, Freud,
Niels Bohr, Pasternak or Derrida comply with the criteria of “being Jewish.”
And still, the ratio of (at least partly) ethnic Jewish figures who made
a valuable contribution to human culture is many times bigger than what is
termed “mathematical expectation” in statistics — the expected value or the
mean of a random variable. This, like any factual piece of statistics, must
have its causes and be capable — and worthy — of explanation.
WHY THE JEWS?
One of the principal questions is why have the Jews, a small tribe lost
in its insignificance against the backdrop of the great ancient Near Eastern
civilizations, put forward the revolutionary ideas we discuss? Another, more
general question: what are the possible explanations of Jewish historical
“success” contrasting with the fading to obscurity, decline and fall of many
well-known civilizations and cultures, great and small?
100
Why the Jews?
At the very outset we discard the two explanations, either of which would
have made the whole further discussion, and even more so any research of
the issue, pointless: by the metaphysical or supernatural reasons — you can
take it or leave it but you cannot argue against it — and the one that refers
to a chance combination of factors which for some reason act sporadically,
but consistently enough, throughout the history of the Jews (of course, to
rule out a considerable element of chance here would be stupid). We intend
to discuss explanations that allow of rational analysis. Perhaps the causes
we speak of influenced each other and superimposed onto each other in the
course of history.
Persecution of the Jews and Anti-Semitism

Toynbee’s challenge-and-response theory seems to have found a proof
in the Jewish experience: having, at some point of their history, become
a persecuted people, they developed a counteraction reflex which manifests
itself in their ability to survive through epochs. Excellent examples of this
are controlling the Jewish population growth and the peculiar primogeniture
right system (when all sons of a family except the eldest one had no right
of inheritance and marriage) practiced in Germany in the 18th and 19th
centuries, as well as the recruitment and the Pale in the 19th century Russia.
These limitations and oppression resulted in the adoption by German and
Russian Jews of the “make it big or perish” rule and, as a consequence,
contributed to the ever-increasing social and cultural activity of the Jews
that grew, in the 20th century, into the real boom.
The above cause of the Jewish hyper-activity is plainly observable and
obviously presents one of the principal points in explaining the Jewish
phenomenon. It seems, however, that the limitations and persecution cannot
be the only explanation.
We have already offered the arguments to prove that one of the most
important contributions of the Jews into the universal civilization was
developing a system of universalistic ideas in Genesis and elsewhere
in the Bible, the process that must have started if not completed prior to
the beginning of the persecution era. If these notions were spawned only
in the period of captivity and don’t date back to an earlier time, it is not
entirely clear how these particular historical circumstances could have
been instrumental in bringing them about: it would seem that the threat
of a people’s dispersal, of loss of their religion and their identity should
have pushed their spiritual leaders to incline towards isolationism, to induce
101
their people to total concentration on “their own” ignoring the “bother” about
the “universally human” (which would have been natural given precisely
their resistance to assimilation, embracing a foreign culture).
Moreover, neither the sack of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians
(732 and 722 B.C.E.), nor the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple
by the Babylonians (586 B.C.E.) can be, strictly speaking, defined as the
beginning of intentional persecution of the Jews. These conquests and the
ensuing forcible resettling of significant Jewish populations to Mesopotamia
are mere examples of the normal policy practiced by ancient Near Eastern
despotic rulers of states, beginning with Tiglatpalassar III, in regard to
many other peoples of the area. Was it by accident that, from among all
those peoples, only one, the Jews, rose to the challenge, survived and came
to occupy a distinct niche in history?
Signs of negative attitudes toward Jews, the symptoms of the future
anti-Semitism, or Judeophobia, became noticeable no earlier than the 3rd-
2nd cc. B.C.E.146 — in other words, about three centuries after the Babylonian
Captivity and one of the early (though not the earliest, as it seems) waves
of the Jewish diaspora in Egypt during the Persian conquests of the 6th c.
B.C.E. “Inception of anti-Semitism” does not follow the initial “brush” of the
Hellenistic world with Jews by accident at all — given their unusual beliefs
and customs mentioned for the first time by Greek authors Theophrastus
(372–288/7 years B.C.E.) and Hekataeus (second half of the 4th — early 3rd
cc. B.C.E.) — rather sympathetically than not.
The earliest of the known, purposeful persecutions of Jews — perse-
cutions rather more qualifying for the Toynbee pattern — was Antiochus IV
Epiphanes’ attempt to hellenize Jews and rename the Jerusalem temple
as Zeus of Olympus’ sanctuary in 167 B.C.E. that led to the Maccabees’
uprising. The first mass pogroms of Jews came to pass in Alexandria in the
years 38 and 117 C.E.
These signs are contemporaneous — which is no mere coincidence — with
the period when the Jewish monotheism began to spread in the early
Hellenistic world and when the Septuagint, a Greek version of the Hebrew
Scriptures translated by Jews in Alexandria, appeared.
As for the “classical” anti-Semitism, there is the widespread opinion
(especially popular among Russian Jews) that if it had not been for anti-
146 The first document believed to have contained certain anti-Jewish sentiments is
a work of an Egyptian priest Manetho in the first half of the 3rd century B.C.E. that
has come to us related by Joseph Flavius.
102
Why the Jews?
Semitism, the Jews would have long ago forgotten that they are Jews.
Laying a cover of scientific veneer on the entire issue: the permanent exo-
identification of the Jews accompanied by negative connotations maintains
Jewish self-identification. In other words, the Jews paradoxically owe their
survival to anti-Semitism. This explanation, which echoes the previous one
(i.e., persecution), doubtless contains a kernel of truth. It is not by coincidence
that given the theoretical incompatibility of Judeophobia (having appreciably
and gradually abated after the Holocaust) with Western humanistic
values — the crisis of Jewish identity is at its worst in Europe and the United
States where anti-Semitism has, until recently, been on the decline.147
It is not that simple, however: there is no direct linear sequence here.
There are counter-arguments: e.g., in Russia and the Ukraine, the end of
the state-directed anti-Semitism — or camouflaging it in much more
“civilized” and latent forms — evoked in the course of two recent decades
an unprecedented rise of Jewish self-awareness and cultural activity.
To be able to explain certain traits of the Jewish pattern (or “model”)
and Jewish history by anti-Semitism, one has to realize first to what degree
specific features of anti-Semitism are dependent on the specifics of the
Jewish pattern, or even defined by them (see the Chapter Anti-Semitism
below). On the other hand, it is not quite clear what parameters of anti-
Semitism derive from its specifically anti-Jewish (as regards both race,
culture and religion) nature and what from general xenophobia, one of the
manifestations of which it ultimately exemplifies.
In any case, getting answers to all these questions involves thorough
scientific research both of the history of the Jews and their position in the
modern world. As it is, these questions are being formulated on the plane
of “common” consciousness and rhetorical demagogy, so that it would
be somewhat premature or even irrational to picture anti-Semitism as the
principal factor defining Jewish behavior in the course of history.
Tradition of the Book

The ancient tradition of reading and studying the Tanakh, which later
became to a large degree supplanted by the Talmud (the whole complex
is traditionally referred to as the Torah) and the nearly total literacy
147 Will this crisis abate under the reverse sway of the wave of latter-day anti-Israeli and
anti-Jewish sentiments in Europe — and now in the United States as well already,
though less conspicuously — is difficult to prophesy as yet.
103
among Jewish men throughout many generations doubtless claims to be

an important, not to say one of the main, factors contributing to Jewish
achievements in many different walks of life. Attention to the symbolism
of the letter, word play, antinomic and paradoxical nature of many
Biblical texts (and, still to a larger degree, of Talmudic texts), profound,
or even superficial, knowledge of the tradition of commentary, the skill of
discussion and argument over hair-splitting legal or textual details (many of
which look strange or preposterous to the modern psyche), to say nothing
of the conversance in such a treasury of texts per se — all of this refined the
mind and perfected the art of polemics. In other words, it formed that kind
of thought pattern which gave a wide range of opportunities to those Jews
who ventured beyond the narrow confines of the Jewish world, contributing
to their success in the spheres of business, politics, philosophy, literature,
medicine and science.
Jewish achievements in all these spheres of activity during the recent
hundred and something years can in all probability be attributed to the above
factor. The great role of the Jews in the fields having no direct association
with the tradition of literacy and reading (e.g., performance of music or
cinema, some sports such as boxing or fencing) is harder to explain.
It would be interesting to make a statistically accurate analysis of
those spheres of activity in which the Jews of different periods (and,
possibly, of different countries and cultural areas of the Jewish Diaspora
and, recently, Israel) succeeded/not succeeded and then try to see how it
bears, among other things, on Jewish literacy. To do this, we’ll have to
make representative samples from among different categories of “people of
success” from different periods (of course, the data for more recent periods
would be more complete than for older ones): famous political and public
figures, successful businessmen, outstanding scholars, prominent cultural
and artistic figures. This might include Nobel Prize winners and winners
in prestigious musical contests and cinematic festivals, politicians and
journalists of the year, leading athletes, etc. In accordance with the broadest
criteria, we find the proportion of Jews and people of other nationalities
within each of these “nominations.”148 Then we should establish the ratio
of successful Jews to the total Jewish population in the world and given
cultural area and similar ratio for each non-Jewish group represented in our
sample. It would also be interesting to establish the ratio of the successful
148 Certain methodological complications are bound to emerge; e.g., what group
a person who is half-Jewish and half-French is to be put in? In two?
104
Why the Jews?
group not to the overall Jewish population of the world/the Diaspora but
to the number of Jews employed in that sphere from which the sample is
being taken, comparing resultant proportion to similar ratios for other, non-
Jewish, groups.
Using such techniques, we’ll be able to demarcate the areas of activity
in which the proportion of successful Jews exceeds/does not exceed the
expected statistical probability and to establish a relevant number of standard
deviations that would indicate that the obtained figures are not accidental.
We can make a guess in advance that, e.g., the ratio of successful Jews in
physics, music performance and the movie industry would go up whereas
in mathematics, painting, and singing performances it would probably not.
How can such a research help answer the question of the “book” factor?
The thing is, one of the relevant problems is the well-known fact that
Jewish literacy was always exclusively a male feature; women normally
did not study the Torah.149 Therefore, to study the “book factor” properly
we must make our representative samples separately among men and
among women. If in the areas of statistically significant “Jewish success”
this success will extend to men only, with Jewish women showing average
figures comparable to those shown by non-Jewish women, then we will
be able to postulate the “male book tradition” as a decisive underlying
factor of Jewish success. If so, this is a very remarkable phenomenon, for
in many cases this factor continues to function several generations after
this specifically Jewish tradition of the separate male education ceased to
be observed and was supplanted, in case of non-orthodox Jews at least, by
conventional systems of formal education and professional training used
in the Western countries of the Diaspora. On the other hand, if the success
level of Jewish women in certain spheres will also turn out to be relevantly
higher than the average level shown by their non-Jewish counterparts, then
the Jewish achievement is common to both sexes and is to be attributed
to some other factors in addition to what is called here the tradition of
the Book.
Thus the issue of the literary tradition and its role can be solved by means
of the methodologically more simple research we have just described, as
compared with the problem of other hypothetical factors of Jewish success
that are either too evasive as regards choosing a proper scientific approach
or require much more considerable research effort.
149 Bruria, Rabbi Meir’s wife and one of few female personages in the Talmud being the
often-quoted exception.
105
The Factor of Genetics
Putting aside the considerations of political correctness, shared by the

present author in general but not so much in scientific matters (and not at
all in, say, treating terrorists, a fashion in our over-civilized world) — in my
opinion, no scholarly discussion should be taboo — we could theorize that
the Jewish specifics may derive from certain genetic traits.
Contemporary genetics estimates the genes’ contribution in shaping
up personality traits at somewhere circa 40%; if that estimate finds any
confirmation in fact, all we have to do is wonder — and be impressed — by
the precision of that science’s quantitative methods that provide an answer
to the question of correlation between the inherited and acquired personality
traits that, for centuries, have been the “bone of contention” among
philosophers, writers — and in recent time also anthropologists, sociologists,
psychologists, educators.
As geneticists would have us believe, genes affect the emotional
characteristics of an individual, intellect, and choice of behavioral
strategy.150 Genes, culture, historical and geographic conditions — each
of these factors151 is capable of inexorably determining the destiny of
an individual and even allow its prognostication with a certain degree of
probability. Yet, the above factors merely make one’s life path more or less
likely — ending up in a whimsical twist by slapping these factors together,
plus multiplied by a chance factor, or the best we make of it given our
present level of knowledge of the world around us.
It seems entirely likely that all of the above is also true with a measure of
correction factored in — about the destiny of entire ethnic communities. Yet,
if the genetic peculiarities of a people may — and even must — play a certain
role in its historical destiny, the feedback is also in evidence: a people’s
historical uniqueness stimulates the formation of this or that set of genetic
characteristics and national peculiarities.
This historical specificity may be indicated by the population frequencies
of various alleles — variants of genes. Changes in the alleles frequencies may
occasionally happen stochastically (the so called “genetic drift”), irrespective
of the individuals’ characteristics, as a result of natural cataclysms, for
150 Should one, for instance, display active impulsive response to a dangerous
situation — or conversely, check oneself and retire into oneself in wait?
151 Let’s say as an incurable inherited disease; bringing up a child in a criminal
environment; inevitable war or genocide; inescapable natural disaster or calamity.
106
Why the Jews?
instance — and then they fail to affect the adaptability of the consecutive
generations, their capacity for resistance against untoward factors from
which the previous generation died out. However, if individuals possessed
of certain qualities do survive, then in the next generation the incidence of
these qualities may increase, i.e. the point here is the “survival of the fittest,”
of sorts, under the impact of historical, social, and cultural factors.
Jews’ genetics (like that of other nations) has not been studied to
a degree sufficient to claim with any confidence that their history has been
under the impact of some specific genetic peculiarities or — conversely,
that their particular historical path has been instrumental in molding certain
specifically Jewish genetic characteristics. Geneticists promise that along
with data accrual replies to these questions will become a possibility — and
in quite the foreseeable future at that.
Given the presently available level of knowledge, however, the following
is patently evident. If it is true that Jews — owing to numerous relocations,
diaspora, and persecutions — has lived through a considerable length of
their history in rather faster and more frequently changing cultural and
geographical environments than many other peoples — then their specific
character must owe to a kaleidoscopic change in adaptation strategies or
the devising of some permanent strategy that would be relevant for any
cases of abrupt changes. All of this must find reflection in the value system,
mythology, religion, social structures — the entire range of systems of
cultural information communication.
Those individuals who were unable to implement that strategy
either died out leaving no (or leaving vanishingly small) posterity or got
assimilated to the extent beyond which their descendants no longer consider
themselves Jewish or plainly know nothing about their Jewish roots. It is
precisely following this pattern that the selection of certain alleles bearing
on the required behavioral strategies may have done its “forty per cent bit”
in contributing it to adaptation.
Yet another conjectural factor instrumental in subjecting Jews to a most
severe selection is their considerable and repeated fluctuations in population
numbers — both the reduction thereof as a result of mass persecutions
and assimilation and the increase resultant from less obvious and well-
researched historical processes. The above factor was also destined to have
had an impact on the Jews’ genetic characteristics and, in turn, held sway
over their behavioral strategy.
During recent years, genes have been identified that bear on such
psychological peculiarities as levels of anxiety and propensity for spells of
107
a depressed state, novelty seeking, and an aptitude for learning (specifically,

mastering reading skills). I am not sure if research of these genes has been
done in Jews specifically, but it would not come as a surprise at all that such
a study would reveal a high level of seeking — and capacity for — innovations,
and the mutations frequency depleting, for instance, reading capability would
register a fairly low value — possibly utterly low (cf. the previous section).
Jews, just like a number of other peoples, have so far been studied
by several genetic characteristics only. The most interesting results have
been yielded by the characteristic of Y-chromosome variety, i.e. down the
masculine heredity line. This characteristic has nothing particularly specific
except for the characteristic of Y-chromosome in Jewish priests, cohens
(kohanim). Here the early religious tradition and custom152 had the effect of
nearly all of the currently living and examined cohens and their descendants
being related, traceable back to one common ancestor. Interestingly, the
genetic dating of that cohens’ common ancestor’s life time corresponding
with the known description of same for the legendary Aaron, is more or
less coincidental with supposed Biblical chronology (or — to put it more
cautiously — does not contradict it). Even though it is still little known what
biological human qualities apart from a few — not too many — diseases
bear on the Y-chromosome, the genetic peculiarity of this chromosome
referred to earlier (“modal haplotype”) in cohens would not seem to have
any adaptive significance: it is just a tag, a “genetic last name” making
next-of-kin identification possible.
In research done on this subject, a conclusion has been drawn that the
available genetic data on cohens and certain other groups of Jews indicate
different rates for different groups, but generally a low (in the case of
cohens — very low) level of Jews blending with the peoples around them.
However, the high probability of various non-Jewish groups being converted
to Judaism at different points of Jewish history,153 which seems to imply
intermarriages at that – as well as the obvious variety of anthropological types
among Jews even within each of the Diaspora groups – cannot be ignored.154
152 Only a cohen’s son was able to make a cohen, and cohens often lived in closely-
grouped clusters, so they usually married right inside their milieu.
153 Otherwise it is hard to explain the conspicuous “splash” in numbers of Jews at the
turn of eras (another expansion — of Ashkenazi population — from 50,000 in the
early 15th century to 5,000,000 in the early 19th century remains enigmatic).
154 See the recent data on the subject in G. Atzmon et al. Abraham’s Children in the
Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic
108
Why the Jews?
If one is to look for only a partial explanation of Jewish specificity

in the genetics of the “nucleus” of the Jewish population, averring cohens
to represent it, then this calls for a historical-sociological study that
would either support or refute the hypothesis stemming from here — claiming
that Jewish achievements owe it only (or for the most part) to cohens
and their descendants. However, here a contradiction is discernible as well:
if cohens got married in the course of a long succession of generations
predominantly inside their narrow group, the likely result of an in-breeding
of this kind should have been a degeneration — rather than the preservation
and multiplication of traits like giftedness, high adaptability, etc.
Finally, the presence of a certain set of dominant genes in the “original”
Jewish population is theoretically also a possibility, programmed to be
handed down to posterity in “mixed” marriages, even though geneticists
claim that for the majority of genes that are possible to dwell on in this
discourse so far the so-called incomplete dominance is characteristic, i.e.
a dominant trait as such is not all that essential.
In conclusion of this section one would do well to emphasize that
considerations given above are not pure figments of imagination fantasized
by a liberal arts scholar ad-libbing on biological subjects, but are based
on consultations with geneticists. However, all these considerations
paraphrased by a dilettante can be of little value: what we need here — as in
any other scholarly matter — is the direct opinion of professionals.
The Jewry as a Civilization

and the Debatable Issue of Jewish Uniqueness
As I have explained in the Preface the book’s genre does not elicit any
in-depth scholarly research. It is in essence but a cursory (“slapdash”) review
of the pivotal problems to do, in my opinion, with the Jewish phenomenon
in human history and an attempt to envisage the paths and approaches to this
phenomenon’s systemic research and reliance on contemporary sciences’
methods. However, I wish to dwell on the subject matter of this section in
somewhat greater detail for a number of reasons.
For one thing, the answer to the question of the uniqueness of the
Jewish historical phenomenon is important for me entirely on principle.
Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry. The American Journal of Human
Genetics, Vol. 86, Issue 6, 850–59, 03 June 2010.
109
Though I am inclined to answer this question positively, yet I naturally

lack a full measure of confidence in doing so: an answer in the affirmative
breeds many new questions, quite difficult to answer again, and in general
terms, as I have underscored earlier, an allegation of some phenomenon’s
uniqueness in the context of latter-day science is not exactly “trendy” and is
in itself a challenge, of sorts.
Secondly, I was fascinated by the prospect of subjecting M.Chlenov’s
hypothesis to analysis as the only attempt known to me to provide a more
or less aggregate and unequivocal solution to the “Jewish conundrum”
in the framework of scientific and rationalistic approach — rather than
a religious or “ideologized” one — to figure out to what extent (if at all)
such a solution was cogent for me (it turned out not to be the case).
Thirdly, the response to “Chlenov’s challenge” provided me with
an interesting opportunity to play the game of “compare and appraise” —
i.e. take a look at the Jewish story in comparison with other cultural and
historical phenomena. I have certainly done it on a very superficial, quasi-
scientific level with possible mistakes sneaking in — let me once again
underscore the fact that I am no expert in the majority of the subjects
brought up in this book (although I seriously doubt the existence of any
experts of that versatility anywhere on the face of Earth). Even though I tried
and sought the expert advice of specialists in their respective fields on the
entire range of these subjects, yet any serious scholar will admit that to be
an expert in “one’s own” sphere or base judgments on specialists in other
areas’ verdict155 are two vastly different things.
I would not feature this polemic with Chlenov’s theory that has been
published — to the best of my knowledge — only in Russian in the book
intended for an audience reading in English but for the hope (possibly
misplaced) that the issues discussed in this section and transcending the
framework of purely Jewish range of problems156 may whet the curiosity
of a reader interested in contemplating a broader range of issues concerning
human civilization.
The concept of Jewry as a civilization was expounded by the Russian
ethnologist and leading expert on the whole range of disciplines bearing
155 These judgments obtained from two different ones occasionally fail to jibe and
dovetail — as it regrettably happens sometimes in the medical profession.
156 Like many others brought to bear here: isn’t it the business of the “essay” genre to
set one at liberty rather than feel constrained by the obligation to keep within the
protocol of the stricter genres — like a monographic research, for instance?
110
Why the Jews?
on the Jews, M. A. Chlenov, in a series of lectures and in his paper “The

Jewry in the System of Civilizations.”157 All the quotations cited below are
from that paper. Chlenov’s concept is one of the extremely rare attempts
at approaching the question of “Jewish uniqueness” and of explaining the
Jewish phenomenon as a whole by incorporating it into the notional system
of modern science.
A scholar lacks a clear understanding — Chlenov points out with
full justification — of what to do about something unique; should he
just describe it with a helpless shrug, or should he perhaps try to invent
the correct paradigm for the description of this supposedly unique thing,
finding such a series of phenomena in which the phenomenon in question
would not appear “the odd man out”? Society, like nature, brooks neither
a vacuum nor any singularity. Anything unique calls for scientific
interpretation (p. 41).
He writes further:
What then to do about this Jewish uniqueness? Is Jewry to be ranked with

other ethnic entities with which they … have almost nothing in common?
Or should we view it as a mere religion, and see in the Jews a sort of
confessional group? But Jewish self-identification based on the idea of
the ‘Jewish people’ (or `am-Yisra’el) precludes this … The notion of
civilization is the most acceptable means of describing this phenomenon;
it enables us to discuss, on the socio-anthropological plane, a Jewish
civilization rather than the Jewish people (pp. 42–43).
Recognizing the vague and ambiguous nature of the very term “civilization,”
Chlenov constructs a paradigm of his own, which is based on the works
of his forerunners: the “extra-scientific, purely theological” concept of
Mordechai Kaplan158 (who treats Judaism as an emanation of the Divine
Absolute spread throughout the Cosmos and inducing man to fulfill his
predestined purpose) and the “non-operational” by Chlenov’ characteristic
definition of civilization by S. Eisenstadt.159
157 Диаспоры. Hезависимый научный журнал (The Diasporas. An Independent

Scholarly Journal, issue 1, Moscow, 1999).
158 M. Kaplan, Judaism As Civilization. Contemporary Jewish Thought. A Reader.
Ed. by S. Noveck. Washington D.C., 1963.
159 S.N. Eisenstadt. Jewish Civilization. The Jewish Historical Experience in
a Comparative Perspective. Albany, 1992. P. 1.
111
Chlenov defines civilization as:

A macro-cultural model forming historically on the basis of a specific
complex of cultural texts, traditionally fixed in writing, [a model] that
defines the limits within which forms of cultural and social expression of
human communities belonging to it may vary (p. 46).
He points out then,

Civilizations meeting this definition are not very numerous in human
history. Excluding Classical antiquity and the ancient Near East, we
have the following good examples of what I, following most researchers,
call a civilization: the Christian civilization (its Western and Eastern
versions perhaps to be treated separately), the Islamic, Indian and Chinese
civilizations (p. 47).
Let’s quote another statement of Chlenov, crucially important for him:

Unlike many other authors, I intentionally emphasize the interrelation
between civilization and written culture (p. 46).
Chlenov picks out six universal parameters that, obviously, define the
above-mentioned historical civilizations:
1. More prolonged existence, as compared to ethnic unities (the author

gives no definition of the latter term; we are going to treat it as self-
explanatory, just like the term “ethnos” used below in the same sense).
2. Significant, in comparison with ethnic unities, influence on the
development of human culture as a whole.
3. The presence of a meta-language of civilization, which does not serve
the means of everyday speech communication.
4. Poly-ethnicity (multiethnic composition) as a form of historical
adaptation.
5. Tendency toward pan-ecumenism, i.e., toward spreading over those
parts of inhabited territory that are at present culturally identifiable.
6. Trend toward proselytism, i.e., the striving to absorb representatives
of other civilizations, as well as human communities outside any civilization.
Let’s see how these universal parameters relate to the examples

of civilizations chosen by Chlenov, adding to them, in the capacity of
112
Why the Jews?
a control group, Mesopotamian,160 Egyptian and Classical ancient Graeco-

Roman civilizations. Chlenov does not include these three universally
recognized civilizations in his list for an obvious reason: none of them
possesses a clearly marked complex of cultural texts in the author’s sense
of the term, i.e., a canon or something functionally analogous to it. It
is not quite so obvious why Chlenov included the Buddhist civilization
in the Indian one (which follows from his including into the latter the
Buddhist Cambodia and Laos), instead of allotting it a position of its own.
I think that the Buddhist civilization should be treated as a distinct one;
it diverges from Indian proper, i.e., Hindu, civilization nearly in every
respect (see below).
The first point to cause objections is the universal parameter #1, the
more prolonged existence of civilization in comparison with that of ethnic
groups. The thing is that we know more or less everything there is to know
about the time of existence of civilizations,161 whereas we know little or
nothing about how long various ethnic unities — or ethnic groups, or ethnic
cultures — have been in existence.
It seems obvious that, according to the universal parameter #3 and to
Chlenov’s definition of civilization, the span of a civilization’s life should
be reckoned from the moment at which its macro-cultural “model,” based
on the complex of cultural texts committed to writing becomes fully formed,
while the language of these texts ceases to be the means of communication,
i.e., dies as a “living,” extant language. Since both processes — the shaping
of the macro-cultural model and the dying of the language — are often
protracted, the issue of chronological limits of a civilization is, as a rule, not
easy to solve, and tends to cause much discussion. In this connection, I’d
like to introduce another chronological parameter that makes civilizations
appear “older,” namely, the time of writing down that which Chlenov refers
to as the complex of cultural texts. This time is, in most cases, recorded
more precisely and reliably than the debatable moment of the emergence of
a civilization, which, according to Chlenov, must be dated somewhat later.
Despite the lapse between the two events, the moment of committing the
cultural texts to writing should be taken into account as a useful starting
point from which to trace a civilizations’ origins.
160 Where there is the alternative of discussing separately Sumerian culture and
Akkadian culture that superseded it.
161 That the chronological limits may in each concrete case be conventional and open to
controversy is another matter.
113
Taking all of this into account, we are going to discuss the chronological
limits of each civilization now. All civilizations selected by Chlenov
have one thing in common: they continue to exist to this day, which,
strictly speaking, casts some doubt upon the “trivial fact that every
civilization … comes at certain point of time into existence (a statement
no one can refute — A. M.) and vanishes sometime in a different historical
epoch” (p. 46). One might, of course, speak with some degree of probability
of the current crisis (p. 53) and decline of any of the civilizations in question,
or of its transformation into an ethnic culture162 — developments postulated
by Chlenov with regard to the Jewish civilization. However, this would be
a mere estimation prognosis; you can hardly fix the date of death of a living
man, no matter how old and decrepit he is. Therefore the author’s statement
that civilizations exist “for several thousand years” (p. 48) seems unfounded
in the light of the examples chosen by himself. On the other hand, two of
the three ancient civilizations (Mesopotamian and Egyptian) I have added
to Chlenov’s list, do fully comply with his chronological criterion, but fail
to fall within other parameters.
In this connection, let’s discuss those ancient civilizations of whose
final demise there can be no doubt. The beginnings of the Egyptian
civilization can be conventionally dated to the time of the invention of
hieroglyphics, i.e., the early 3rd mil. B.C.E., and its end either to the
conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great (332 B.C.E.) when the land
began to be hellenized or to Egypt’s annexation by Rome (30 B.C.E.)
The Mesopotamian civilization, if we refrain from subdividing it into
the Sumerian and Assyro-Babylonian ones, can be dated between the
late 4th (or early 3rd) millennium B.C.E., when the first written artifacts
in Sumerian language and cuneiform script appear and the turn of the
eras — the time of dying away of the cuneiform writing tradition and the
Late Babylonian dialect.
Thus the two great “written” Near Eastern cultures both existed for about
three thousand years, which agrees with Chlenov’s estimate. On the other
hand, this is not quite true in regard to the Graeco-Roman civilization, whose
period of existence hardly exceeds a single millennium; even if, otherwise,
we consider the written Grecian culture, i.e., pre-Christian and Christian
periods combined, we get no more that two-odd thousand years — from
the beginning of Greek literature (mid 9th century B.C.E.) to the fall of the
Byzantine empire (mid 15th century C.E.) — after which, if we are to follow
162 It is this term that I intend to use here.
114
Why the Jews?
Chlenov’s pattern regarding the Jews, the Grecian civilization transforms

into an ethnic culture.
However, the problem is, as we stated before, that none of the three dead
civilizations possesses the most important universal parameter of Chlenov’s
definition: their rich literary traditions contain nothing that would play the
role of a body of cultural texts upon which the macro-cultural model of
a civilization can be built. The author understands the notion “cultural text”
in broad terms; it includes in his opinion “various ideological manifestations
of sufficiently general nature.” According to him, however, “cultural texts
are exemplified most often by various collections of sacred scriptures or
analogous holy writings,” though “in some cases the function of cultural
texts is performed by secularized codes of rules and general principles of
understanding the world” (p. 46).
Such a broad understanding of the complex of cultural texts is,
however, restricted by the necessity of placing this body of texts within
comparatively narrow temporal limits: otherwise it would be impossible
to locate that relatively short period of time during which civilizations
emerge.163 This restriction also applies to the vital universal parameter (in
Chlenov’s work, #3) of the transformation of the living language of cultural
texts into the meta-language of the civilization they belong to. None of
the three ancient civilizations (Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Classical
world) brought forth anything even remotely comparable in its role to the
Bible in Judaism or the Qur’an in Islam. Moreover, in none of them do we
observe a decently compact body of texts that would fit even the broader
definition of Chlenov. It remains to add that the Sumerian language that
became extinct sometime in the beginning or the middle of the 2nd mil.
B.C.E. ideally fills the role of the “meta-language of [the Mesopotamian]
civilization,” whereas Egypt did not seem to have such dead language. As
for the Classical world, this role, in the Roman period, was only partially
played by Classical Greek.
Let’s come back to the subject of chronology, though. Christianity and
Islam present no problem in this respect, if we set the time of the creation
of their cultural texts as a starting point: the duration of their existence
is respectively about 1,950 and 1,400 years. The time of the emergence
of the “meta-languages” — or, more exactly, the point at which the living
163 Let’s imagine that, in addition to the Old and New Testaments, we have to include
in the cultural texts of the Christian civilization, works of medieval Church Fathers
in the capacity of “various ideological manifestations of sufficiently general nature”.
115
languages, in which this or that cultural text had been written, transformed
into what Chlenov terms meta-languages — is harder to establish: it turns
out that the same cultural text is sometimes written in more than one meta-
language.
In the case of Islam we have a clear picture: it uses classical Arabic,
a language of well-known chronology. As for Christianity, as soon as we
begin to consider its meta-language,164 it becomes evident that the Christian
civilization has no single meta-language. In other words, one of the most vital
parameters of a civilization (perhaps the most important for Chlenov) is absent
in Christianity, which therefore immediately starts to split into lesser “sub-
civilizations.” Indeed, in the case of Eastern Christianity we have the Greek
koine of the New Testament,165 the meta-language of Western Christianity
is the Latin of the Vulgate (the late 4th C. E.), and for Protestantism, which
derives from it, this is — at least for a part of Protestants — the German of
Luther’s translation of the Bible. Besides, there is a very considerable mass
of Slavs constituting, after the fall of the Byzantine empire, the main ethnic
component of Eastern Christianity and using Church Slavonic (its early
samples dating to the 10th and 11th cc. C. E.) in this capacity. We must also
not forget more peripheral — but nonetheless important enough, especially
at earlier stages of Christianity — areas of the Christian civilization, such as
Syrian, Arabic, Ethiopian, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian; starting with various
periods of the 1st mil. C.E., all of them have their own “candidate” for the
post of meta-language.
The origins of the Indian civilization should be technically dated to the
3rd c. B.C.E., the time of the earliest texts that were written in the Brahmi
script. By that time the ancient languages of India — Vedic and Sanskrit of
the Vedas (supposedly the early 1st mil. B.C.E.), Brahmanas, Aranyakas
and Upanishads (the 6th–5th cc. B.C.E.) all of which comprise the body of
cultural texts (though oral) as understood by Chlenov — had been dead for
two or three centuries and therefore fully qualified as meta-languages.
In accordance with our above-mentioned criteria, we must date the
Buddhist civilization to the 1st c. B.C.E., the time when the Buddhist canon
was put in writing in Sri Lanka (Ceylon). The Pali language of these texts
ceased to be spoken from the 3rd c. B.C.E. and therefore complies with
164 Its “cultural texts” present no problem — these are primarily the books of the New
Testament and then of the Old Testament.
165 As well as the somewhat artificial Greek of the Septuagint, the Old Testament of the
Eastern Christians.
116
Why the Jews?
Chlenov’s definition of a meta-language, a function it performs only for

a portion of the Buddhist area — in Sri Lanka and several countries of South
East Asia. Other than that, the Buddhist canon survived for the most part in
Chinese and Tibetan translations. Therefore, as regards meta-language, the
situation here rather resembles the one existing in Christianity.
The beginning of written culture in China has several possible datings:
(a) the early 1st mil. B.C.E., when the Shu Ching (Book of History), the
Shih Ching (Book of Songs) and the I Ching (Book of Changes) — the books
destroyed in the 3rd c. B.C.E. — were, as it seems, first put in writing; (b) the
2nd c. B.C.E., from which extant copies of the above texts and the Confucian
canon survive; (c) the 3rd — 4th cc. C.E., when Old Chinese, the language
of all these texts is no longer understandable as a spoken tongue and can be
classified as a meta-language.
Lastly, the Jewish civilization develops, according to Chlenov, from
the Jewish ethnic culture sometime between mid-1st mil. B.C.E. and
mid-1st mil. C.E. (p. 52).
Let’s now compare these dates with several others, relating not to
civilizations, but to “ethnic unities or cultures.”
Modern Tuaregs of the Sahara, in spite of their rather superficial
conversion to Islam166 still resemble in most respects their ancestors, the
ancient Libyans. The Berber languages, with Tuareg representing their
Southern branch, continue ancient Libyan languages. The Tuareg way of
life and everyday habits hardly differ, or at least hardly differed until quite
recently, from those described by Herodotus in the 5th c. B.C.E. The Libyans
are first mentioned in Egyptian texts of the early 3rd millennium B.C.E.167
We can therefore assume that the Tuareg (and the Libyo-Berber in general)
ethnic unity has five thousand years of history attested in written sources
behind it.168
Another such case is exemplified by the inhabitants of the island
of Socotra (or Soqotra) and the peoples of Mehri and Jibbali in South
Arabia. Their common ancestor language — Proto-South Semitic, in my
166 For instance, they approve of premarital women’s sex.
167 Under the names t̲mh (likely to be read [kimh]) and t̲hnwy.w (likely to be read
[kihnu]).
168 Which is not only much more than any of Chlenov’s “historical civilizations” has
but, interestingly, more than any other people of those who have survived to the
present day with a long and uninterrupted attested history, including such champions
of historical longevity as Chinese, Indians or Jews — if, of course, we rely on the
mentioned criteria.
117
classification — branched off from Proto-Semitic about the last third of the
5th mil. B.C.E., according to glottochronological calculations. During some
six millennia that have since elapsed, their life must have been going on
without any major changes169 so that there is little room for doubt that the
speakers of that common ancestor language at its early stages are basically the
same ethnic community as the Soqotri, Mehri and Jibbali speakers of today
(or, otherwise, of a thousand years ago — before their conversion to Islam).
Many of the traditional human groups to be classified by Chlenov as
ethnic unities as opposed to civilizations have a similarly uninterrupted
history. Their cultural type and way of life remain almost unchanged until
they come into close contact with modern civilization, and they speak
languages continuing those spoken by their ancestors from time immemorial.
Slicing time into periods, classifying languages, peoples, cultures, etc. is
done by scholars, while people continue to live in the endless sequence of
generations without bothering to know that some future Mr. Clever will
establish that their actual generation lived in the mid-5th mil. B.C.E., spoke
Proto-Indo-European and their remote descendants in the late 3rd mil. B.C.E.
were going to be, e.g., Proto-Indo-Iranians.
Now, civilizations are quite different: their emergence is marked by
cardinal — sometimes gradual, sometimes abrupt (e.g., during the lifetime
of a single generation) — changes in the life of human communities,
when the old historical epoch comes to a close giving way to a new one.
That’s why civilizations have a beginning170 and can be in principle dated,
whereas the history of “ethnic unities” seldom has obviously distinct (from
our perspective) points of starting and ending, unless its course undergoes
conspicuous dramatic changes. The latter might include conquests, natural
cataclysms, a change of language or religion, migrations, spreading into
a diaspora, and other similar events that have to leave enough traces to
enable us to postulate the end of this or that “ethnos,” the death of this or that
language, the end of this or that culture, and the birth of a new community.
Vestiges such as these are seldom found in ancient history.
Let’s sum up all these chronological considerations, putting them in the
form of a table:
169 If we suppose that their conversion to Islam was such a major change, let this period
be reduced to five millennia to consider it finished a millennium and something
ago.
170 And sometimes, an end — or are expected, logically, to have it though nobody knows
when.
118
Why the Jews?
[Table 1. Chronology of Civilizations]
Duration
No. Civilization Beginning End
(years)
1 Christian The 1st c. C.E. — Ca. 1,950
2 Islamic The 7th c. C.E. — Ca. 1,400
3 Indian The 3rd c. B.C.E. — 2,300
4 Buddhist The 3rd or 1st c. B.C.E. — Over 2,000
5 Chinese Early 1st mil. B.C.E. or between — Ca. 3,000 or
2nd c. B.C.E. and 3rd-4th c. C.E. 1,600–2,200
6 Mesopotamian Turn of 4th-3rd mil. B.C.E. (the The turn of 3,000 or
emergence of Sumerian writing) the eras ca. 2,000
or early 2nd mil. B.C.E. (Sumerian
becomes the meta-language of
Mesopotamian civilization)
7 Egyptian Early 3rd mil. B.C.E. The 4th or 1st 3,000 or 2,500
c. B.C.E..
8 Greco-Roman Early 1st mil. B.C.E. The 5th c. C.E. over 2,300
(or 15th c., or over 1,200
including
the Byzantine
empire)
9 Jewish Mid-1st mil. B.C.E — mid-1st mil. — From 2,500
C.E. (according to Chlenov) to 1,500
Let’s discuss the rest of Chlenov’s criteria of civilizations, starting with

their multi-ethnic nature or “poly-ethnicity.” Whether the Jews are mono-
ethnic or poly-ethnic (the view maintained by Chlenov) is rather a matter of
convention than a moot point, and as such more or less irrelevant. That it is
so not only because there is no single authoritative definition of an “ethnos”
(ethnic community) that would at once be all-embracing and academically
precise, but also because it is in the case of the Jews that “working” defi-
nitions currently used in anthropology and social sciences do not work.
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and the Graeco-Roman civilization are
beyond any doubt multi-ethnic. The Egyptian civilization is equally beyond
any doubt mono-ethnic, though one can find in it, as in any other civilization,
certain outside elements in the form of the Libyans, inhabitants of the reign of
Meroe, Nubians, “Asians”, etc. The Mesopotamian civilization is technically
multi-ethnic, though we have to make a reservation to the effect that it was
created by two ethnic groups, the Sumerians and the Semitic Akkadians,
in the course of two historical stages that were partly sequential and partly
119
coincided in time: the “Sumerian” stage lasted from the turn of 4th and 3rd
mil. B.C.E. to the early 2nd mil. B.C.E., and the “Akkadian” from some point
after mid-3rd mil. B.C.E. to the turn of the eras (keeping in mind, though, that
Mesopotamia was always “a melting pot” of various ethnic groups).
The Indian and Chinese civilizations are more difficult to analyze. Both
are markedly local by nature. Each of them tended to spread beyond its
proper territory almost exclusively in the form of Buddhism. “And yet, for
Christian, Islamic and Indian worlds, poly-ethnicity is natural, accepted and
non-controversial,” maintains Chlenov (p. 51). We can apply this statement
to the Indian civilization only after incorporating Buddhism in it, which
Chlenov does, though such a solution seems unsatisfactory to me.
The fact that Chlenov failed to include the Chinese world in this group
probably implies his uncertainty about the issue. In another passage, the
author states that, in his view, the Chinese civilization is similar to the Jewish
one in being “quasi-ethnic”, and points out that,
In actual fact, the Chinese are divided into a good number of communities,
which could be objectively regarded as distinct ethnic groups, but are
classified by the Chinese as intra-ethnic subdivisions (p. 52).
The weak point of this argument is, in my opinion, in the adverb

“objectively”: as I have already said there is no valid definition of “ethnos”,
but even from the “natural” and “accepted” point of view the question of
the Chinese ethnicity is rather debatable.
Chlenov justly sees the most important criterion of poly-ethnicity in
language. He states that the Jewish poly-ethnicity emerges during the second
half of the 1st mil. B.C.E. “with the start of Babylonian Aramaic-speaking
diaspora and the Greek-speaking diaspora of Alexandria” (p. 52).
Let’s see how this criterion applies to the Chinese. Differences between
the most genetically distant Chinese dialects (Bay, Min and, say, Mandarin)
are roughly of the same proportions as differences between various modern
Romance languages or Slavic or Turkic languages or, say, English and
German whose speakers are never regarded as a single ethnic group — either
the “Romance” or the “Slavic” or the “Turkic” or the “West Germanic” one.
On the other hand, the same degree of remoteness of different living Arabic
languages from each other171 prevented no one from treating them as dialects
171 Protolanguages of each of the above six groups — Chinese, Romance, Slavic, Turkic,
West Germanic and Arabic — split roughly some 2,000–1,600 years ago, according
to glottochronology.
120
Why the Jews?
of the single Arabic language and, at least until recently, from regarding all
Arabs as one people.172
As for other peoples, they “break up into new ethnic entities, as it was
with the British who colonized North America, South Africa, Australia, and
New Zealand” (p. 50); though we must not forget that this division — which
led to the emergence of different “versions” of English — started only
several centuries ago, a negligibly short time for linguistic divergence (the
forming of new languages from the common ancestor).
Judging from Chlenov’s interpretation of Jewish and Chinese civiliza-
tions as “quasi-ethnic,” he is not inclined to consider self-identification
an important criterion in determining mono- or multi-ethnic nature of
a civilization. For me, it is nearly the most vital one. The above examples
show that the definitions “the same people” or “different peoples” are not
given on some objective grounds, but are rather assigned to each concrete
people depending on the actual historical situation, which includes political
factors — primarily, self-identification of the people in question at this or that
point of history as well as its identification by outsiders (“exoidentification”)
which, in most — but not all — cases, coincides with the people in question’s
self-identification and is also of some significance. To illustrate the point,
let’s picture public, or even academic, response to a hypothetical school
announcing its discovery of a universal objective scale, according to which
the Jews, the Chinese and the Arabs are multi-ethnic formations, whereas
the English-speaking inhabitants of Britain, North America and Australia
(or, say, the Russians, the Ukrainians and the Byelorussians of today)173 are
objectively the same people.
By their self-identification, the Chinese are apparently one people. The
Indians seem to present a less certain case: on the one hand, their ethnic
self-identification, at least until recently, has not been as solid as Chinese,
on the other hand, the overwhelming Hindu majority of India is firmly
united by a powerful religious (or, rather, ritual-emotional) bond and by
common everyday practices. As for the degree to which the most genetically
distant of the living Indo-Aryan languages (such as, e.g., Sinhalese, Nepali,
172 Though practically all modern Arabic nations — the Egyptians being the most
conspicuous example — tend to have a distinct separate self-identity, while the claim
to belong to one “Arabic people” is rather part of rhetoric depending on the concrete
political situation.
173 Or, still better, the French and Italians whose languages belong to the Central
Romance group that started branching some 11–12 hundred years ago.
121
Marathi, Bengali and Hindi) differ, it is comparable to that of Chinese

dialects, or slightly higher.
Let’s now sort out the three remaining universal parameters that are
closely related to each other.
Speaking of proselytism, I’d prefer to subdivide it into two types:
subject-initiated, or donor, and object-initiated, or recipient. The former type
manifests itself both in the form of aggression, involving coercive — often
to the point of physical extermination of the unwilling — conversion of the
“infidel” to one’s faith, and in missionary activity. Both forms are typical
for Christianity and Islam, and the second one seems typical for Buddhism.
There is also that which I would call Kulturtrger activity (i.e., spreading or
upholding civilization), a strategy typical primarily for the Graeco-Roman
civilization, which implies the vigorous spreading of a definite level and
type of culture (first of all, political and material) rather than the imposing
of a strictly defined ideological system and way of life, as is the case with
religious civilizations. All these forms of proselytism have one common
characteristic: they are determined by the more or less pronounced initiative
on the part of the subject originating the whole process, the giving party,
the “donor.”
In the latter type of proselytism the initiative belongs, either entirely
or for the most part, to the object — the receiving party, the “recipient.”
Apart from the cultural influence of the Mesopotamian civilization on
neighboring peoples (first of all, it is the spread of cuneiform writing
all around the West Asia), I would place in the object-initiated category
historical relationship of the Jews with the gerim (comers from outside
settling among the Jews) and with the “Judaicized” — those groups that were
converted to Judaism in different periods and regions. This relationship is
characterized not so much by intentional propagation of faith and conversion
as by an example that is more or less — not without certain impediments and
restrictions — open to imitation.174 Besides, from a certain angle, the entire
Jewish literature of the Hellenistic epoch was, to a considerable degree,
religious propagation. It is not yet clear whether the earliest version of the
Jewish Bible known to us, the Septuagint, a Greek translation made by Jews
in Alexandria was intended for the exclusive use of the Greek-speaking
Jewish audience or for the local Greek-speaking non-Jewish audience as
174 Of course, this is only a dominating tendency: we cannot omit such a fact as mass
compulsory conversion of Idumeans and Itureans to Judaism during the rule of the
Hasmoneans in the 2nd c. B.C.E.
122
Why the Jews?
well. The answer depends on whether we take as true the information of

Aristeas (often referred to as Pseudo-Aristeas) in his Epistle (or Letter)
to Philocrates about seventy two Jewish translators who were allegedly
requested from Jerusalem by the king of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus
urged by the librarian of Alexandria. If it is so, the king’s expectations
of the Greek audience’s interest to the Book would be quite tenable: he
would hardly care about the enlightenment of the local Greek-speaking
Jews. Though most of modern scholars regard the whole story of the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures as fictitious and the letter as a forgery,
some of its detail are verisimilar and even revealing (thus it contains the
first mention of the city and the library of Alexandria) — and, after all, there
is the Greek translation, the Septuagint! According to many scholars, the
“Letter of Aristeas” is a text typical of Jewish apologetics, aiming at self-
defense and propaganda, and directed to the Greeks (Tcherikover); having
an apologetic and propagandist tendency (Tramontano), striving to convert
Greek speaking Gentiles to Judaism (Pheiffer); propaganda for Judaism
among the Gentiles (Schürer).175
Anyway, we must point out that, though on the whole intentional
proselytism is not typical for Judaism, at certain points in history, its effect
has been comparable in its scope to analogous activities by Christians and
Muslims.
As for the Chinese (with its Buddhist component excluded) and Egyptian
civilizations, they are, as I see it, devoid of any kind of proselytism or, at
most, manifest the second type in its slightest form. The same is true of
Hinduism — according to a well-known Hindu maxim, you can’t become
a Hindu, you can only be born one.
Chlenov’s criterion of “significant, in comparison with ethnic unities,
influence on the development of human culture as a whole” is the most
“evaluative” one — and the most evasive. I would distinguish here the same
two types of influence: (a) subject-initiated (or simply “active”), when the
subject exerting influence consciously or “intuitively” affects the whole
mankind or its significantly representative section and takes an active
part in the shaping of universal human culture, and (b) object-initiated
(“passive”, “spontaneous”), when the initiators of cultural innovation
accomplish purely local tasks, doing so for their own purposes and having
no use for, or idea of, the concepts of one humanity, universal culture and
the like. It seems natural that the enormous influence that Graeco-Roman,
175 Cp. Wikipedia, Letter of Aristeas.
123
Christian, Islamic176 and Jewish civilizations deliberately exert or once

exerted on universal culture should be classified as of the former type, while
the significantly lesser influence of Chinese and Indian civilizations (which
is of the same scope as that of local “ethnic cultures”), of the latter. However,
saying so I play the game here, and in some other instances, to the rules
proposed by Chlenov, which obviously require further substantial elaboration.
As we consider the second universal parameter of Chlenov, a number of
questions immediately arise. What is meant by “the development of human
culture as a whole”? Is it the sum total of all known cultures of the Earth?
Or perhaps just the part of that whole comprising the “Western civilization,”
increasingly predominant in the modern world? Should we include here
those historical cultural systems that have made, at different points of
history, vital contributions to this civilization, and then either disintegrated
(like Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Graeco-Roman civilizations) or ceased to
influence its progress in any noticeable way (like Islam)?
On the other hand, what is to be included in the idea of “culture”? Is
it primarily material culture with its advance of technology and, later, of
science? Should the contribution of each of these historical entities be
estimated according to the number and importance of innovations and
inventions that it produced and that subsequently spread all over the world?
What measure should be used to establish the relative degree of Chinese
influence (early printing, gunpowder, silk, porcelain) or Mesopotamian
impact (earliest cities, irrigation technology, astronomy, cuneiform writing)
on human culture at large? How to determine the scope of influence of the
important, if prehistoric, Natufian and Post-Natufian Mesolithic and Early
Neolithic archaeological cultures of the Levant whose representatives (they
can be described at least as an ethnic community) created the first nuclear
area of agriculture — and, likely, also animal husbandry — spreading these
revolutionary innovations over the greater part of the globe? How to fathom
the universal significance of the alphabet invented and propagated by
a relatively small ethnic community (Phoenicians), yet rivaling in importance
the influence of some civilizations discussed here?
176 The Islamic Golden Age, or the Islamic Renaissance, is traditionally dated from the
8th to 13th centuries A.D., but has been extended to at least the 15th century by recent
scholarship. During this period, artists, engineers, scholars, poets, philosophers,
geographers and traders in the Islamic world contributed to agriculture, the arts,
economics, industry, law, literature, navigation, philosophy, sciences, sociology,
and technology, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding inventions and
innovations of their own (Wikipedia, Islamic Golden Age).
124
Why the Jews?
Must “culture as a whole” incorporate such components as legal and

political culture, the evolution of society and the state? If so, more importance
ought to be attached to the role of ancient Rome. Should we broaden the
definition of culture to the point of taking into account the role of various
national and ethnic entities in the modern geopolitical process? If we do so,
then we must reconsider the overall influence of such entities and states as
Muslim peoples, India, and China.
At last, how are we to tackle intellectual culture, influences in the sphere
of the evolution of ideas, philosophy, and religion? It is obvious that, e.g.,
India’s influence in this domain — starting from the 19th century when the
West begins to show evergrowing interest in its spiritual cultural legacy — is
much greater than its role in the development of material culture.
The last criterion, pan-ecumenism (i.e., the physical spread of a culture’s
representatives), remains to be discussed. The Christians, the Muslims and
the Graeco-Romans unambiguously represent pan-ecumenical civilizations.
The same, to a large extent, applies to Buddhism, though the area of its
dissemination is much smaller (being limited to South and East Asia which is
perhaps not accidental). Chinese and Indian civilizations are, on the contrary,
local and not pan-ecumenical at all — that is, again, if we exclude the
Buddhist component and the recent migrations. Mesopotamian and Egyptian
civilizations were also located within more or less confined territories.
The Jews, as always, present particular problems. Let’s resort to quoting
Chlenov:
Pan-ecumenism is highly typical of the Jewry; it manifests itself constantly,
starting from the emergence of the Diaspora in mid-1st mil. B.C. This
feature is so inherent in the Jewish people that any proof of its existence
is to be thought redundant. It would suffice … to refer to the “victimizing”
or sacrificial essence of the Jewish golus (the Yiddish version of the
Hebrew glt̲ “exile” — A. M.) as an endless chain of banishment and
disgrace … Pan-ecumenism, however, is an attribute of a civilization,
not of a people. Let’s remember, for instance, the undoubted territorial
confinement, even isolation of the Jewish people prior to the Babylonian
exile of mid-1st mil. B.C. This period witnessed no slightest migrations
or territorial expansions, let alone pan-ecumenism. Nevertheless, we
know cases of territorial expansionism by other peoples. In these cases,
they, as a rule, either preserve their territory intact (e.g., the Russians in
their eastward movement) or break up into new ethnic formations (e.g.,
the British who colonized North America, South Africa, Australia and
New Zealand). On the other hand, the spread of a civilization does not
necessarily lead to division and change of ethnic structure (pp. 50–51).
125
I can’t quite agree with the thesis concerning the Jewish territorial
isolationism supposedly existing prior to mid-1st mil. B.C.E., i.e., before
the moment when the Jewish civilization emerged (according to Chlenov).
Aside from the “Egyptian Captivity” (a fact that was nor proved by other
sources than the Bible, neither refuted), we have the following facts
speaking against total isolation of the Jews: one may well refer to dozen
thousands of Samaritans displaced and relocated by Assyrians after the
fall of Israeli capital in 722 B.C.E. throughout Northern Mesopotamia
and Media, to recruitment of Jewish mercenaries in Egypt under pharaoh
Psammetichus I (mid- 7th c. B.C.E.); the foundation of a Jewish military
settlement in Elephantine, Upper Egypt (early 6th c. B.C.E.). Cp. also
Isaiah (11:11–12):
In that day the Lord will reach out his hand … to reclaim the remnant that
is left of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt,
from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the
islands of the sea. He … will gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble
the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.
Even if this text should be dated to the Post-Captivity period (which has
not been substantially proved), i.e. not before the late 6th century B.C.E., it
apparently refers to the previously formed Jewish Diaspora that, if small in
number, had spread to the confines of the ecumene, the known part of the
inhabited world.
The opposition of the nature of expansion “by other peoples” (that is,
ethnic communities) to that of the spread of civilizations is also debatable:
a classic example of an ethnic diaspora that did not lead to the splitting of
a people into new ethnic units is presented by the Armenians (and, to some
extent, by the Gypsies). Besides, Chlenov seems to somewhat contradict
himself by maintaining, on the one hand, that expansion of a civilization
does not inevitably lead to division and modification of the ethnic structure
of its representatives and, on the other, that after transforming from
an ethnic community into a civilization, Jewry became multi-ethnic. If
this be really the case, then the “not necessarily” reservation must bear on
none other than the Jews. In other words, one must concede that the Jews
are unique at least in this respect, which is obviously not what Chlenov
implies above.
Curiously enough, such inconsistencies seem to reflect the “sub-
conscious,” and quite understandable uncertainty of Chlenov regarding the
126
Why the Jews?
issue of whether the Jews are mono-ethnic or poly-ethnic.177 This uncertainty

underlies his mutually contradictory statements about pan-ecumenism
as an inherent feature of the Jewish people and about pan-ecumenism as
an attribute of a civilization, not a people.
However, the principal contradiction in the whole matter of pan-
ecumenism lies elsewhere. The fifth universal parameter of civilization is
formulated by Chlenov as “tendency toward pan-ecumenism.” The term
“tendency” does not necessarily imply deliberate intention, but the parallelism
between the fifth and the sixth (“trend toward proselytism, i.e., the striving
to absorb … ”; p. 48) universal parameters as well as the phrase “expansion
of a civilization” used synonymously with “pan-ecumenism” (p. 50) implies
such an interpretation. Intentional expansion is typical for those civilizations
that, from my point of view, can be classified as pan-ecumenical.178 However,
this would mean that either pan-ecumenism — viewed as tendency toward
spreading and intentional expansion — completely fails to comply with
Chlenov’s idea of the Jews179 or that the Jews devised their own way to be
pan-ecumenical occurring in none of the above-mentioned civilizations but
resembling that of “ethnic communities.”
It seems that, to remove such a contradiction, we’ll have to sacrifice
one of the three theses: (a) the Jewish pan-ecumenism as an attribute of
civilization; (b) the Jewish Diaspora as an “endless chain of banishment”;
(c) the absence of unique features in the Jews (at least, in this respect).
Paradoxically, and even to the detriment of my own theory of the Jewish
uniqueness, I am inclined to doubt that the Jewish Diaspora was from the
very start and always forced. I rather think that it was an integral part of the
Jewish historical strategy, which will be discussed below.
Let’s now digress from these difficult and entangled issues and present
Chlenov’s criteria of civilization (after removing the duration parameter
and adding “a specific complex of cultural texts” from the definition of
a civilization by Chlenov) and their distribution in our extended list of
the candidates for “civilizationship” in the shape of a matrix. The “+” and
177 Cf. his reference to the fact that “in 1988, I managed to persuade [the Publishers] to
publish an encyclopedic entry that opened with the words ‘The Jews are a people …’ ”
(p. 38).
178 But if we are to view as such Chinese and Indian civilizations, leaving the Buddhist
component — in accordance with Chlenov — included, then their expansion beyond
their original boundaries is, likewise, not forced.
179 Which fully corresponds to the Jewish self-awareness, according to which the
Diaspora is golus, galut, coercive banishment from the homeland.
127
“-” symbols reflect my estimates and not those of Chlenov; the sequences
“+/-” and “-/+” indicate my uncertainty regarding issues in question (to be
scored as 0.5).
[Table 2. Сivilizational parameters]
Universal parameters
Significant
Civilization Specific
Meta- Poly- Pan- influence
complex of Proselytism
language ethnicity ecumenism on universal
cultural texts
human culture
Christian + -/+ + + + +
Islamic + + + + + +
Indian + + + - - -
Buddhist + -/+ + +/- + -
Chinese + + - - -/+ -/+
Mesopotamian - + + - - +
Egyptian - - - - - -/+
Greco-Roman - -/+ + + +/- +
Jewish + + -/+ + -/+ +
According to the above matrix, all of the nine cultural unities fall into
the following groups:
1. Civilizations having the complete or almost complete set of attributes
(five to six scores): Islamic (six “+” marks = 6 scores), Christian (five “+”
marks and one “+/-” mark = 5.5 scores), Jewish (four “+” marks and two
“-/+” marks = 5 scores).
2. Civilizations having four scores: Buddhist and Graeco-Roman (both
having three “+” marks, one “+/-” and one “-/+” mark).
3. Civilizations having three scores: Indian, Mesopotamian (three “+”
marks) and Chinese (two “+” marks and two “-/+” marks).
4. Civilization having a half score (one “-/+” mark): Egyptian.
Summing it all up, it seems that only three antropocentric civilizations,
which can be placed under the common epithet “Abrahamic” fully meet
Chlenov’s definition of civilization (in my interpretation, of course open to
dispute, of their correspondence to his parameters).
Finally, let us try and see how several ethnic, cultural and religious
entities hardly claiming the status of a civilization for themselves in the
sense of the term proposed by Chlenov qualify for the same set of attributes.
128
Why the Jews?
[Table 3. Parameters of communities not to be considered civilizations,

according to Chlenov’s principles]
Ethnic, cultural, Complex

Meta- Poly- Pan- Prose- Cultural
or religious of specific
language ethnicity ecumenism lytism influence
entity cultural texts
+
Phoenician - - - + - (Alphabetic
script)
+
Ethiopian + + (Amharic,
(Bible in (Geez/Old Tigrai, and - - -
(Christian) Geez) Ethiopic) Gurage
peoples)
+
(liturgical + +
Armenian - - -
literature in (Grabar) (Diaspora)
Grabar)
Afrasian- + +
speaking (split into (first farmers
+
Post- Proto- and the most
(spread all over
- - Semites, - advanced
Natufians Near East and
Proto- culture at that
and their North Africa)
Egyptians, period on
descendants and others) the planet)
+
+
Zoroastrian (Middle + +/- +/- -
(Avesta)
Persian)
+
Manichaean (Manichaean - + + + -
canon)
With Zoroastrianism and Manichaeanism having four scores (same as

Buddhist and Graeco-Roman civilizations) and Ethiopian, Armenian and
Post-Natufian having three (same as Indian, Mesopotamian and Chinese
civilizations), it appears obvious that, on the one hand, the various features
of civilization listed in Chlenov’s classification sometimes apply to ethnic,
cultural or confessional entities not to be qualified as civilizations and, on the
other hand, far from all criteria of civilization can be applied to the examples
of civilizations Chlenov himself proposed, like Indian or Chinese — the
examples, at first glance, asking to belong there.
As for the Jews, listing their unusual features and admitting that they are
somewhat unique among both other nations and other religious communities
129
(p. 37), Chlenov makes one of his main conclusions: “the Jewry in its pure
form does not fit into the paradigm of a normal ethnic community” (p. 38).
While it is with difficulty and not without horror that I bring myself
to try and visualize Jewry “in its pure form” I nonetheless am in total
agreement with this conclusion. Yet in total contradiction to even more
overbearingly main conclusion of the author — re Jewry as a civilization
that in accordance with his concept is to cancel out the problem of Jews’
uniqueness — I would complement the above conclusion of Chlenov with
another one of my invention: “the Jewry either in pure or in “impure” form
does not fit into the paradigm of a normal civilization either — and of any
normal community for that matter.”
The Diaspora
Living in the Diaspora for over two and a half thousand years (if
one starts counting from the Babylonian Captivity), which roughly
corresponds — come to think of it! — to some hundred generations, is one
of the most salient features of the Jewish phenomenon that has inevitably
affected the shaping of the ethno-cultural type of the Jews and the specifics
of their historical path. The Jews, however, are not the only people that
lived — and still live — in a diaspora. Entire ethnic communities, and their
parts, living in a “scattered” state have a number of common features that
make them different from “non-diaspora” communities. How does one
recognize those Jewish peculiarities that are common to all peoples living in
a diaspora from those that are typical exclusively for the Jewish Diaspora?
Here, as with the previously discussed issues, there is a need for
large-scale research of the typology and specifics of different diasporas
(incidentally, it is this subject that, riding the tide of growing public interest,
is currently undergoing a research boom). However, the general theoretical
foundations of “diasporistics,” or even the terminology seem to still be
at an incipient stage, and are quite inadequate for answering the above
questions. Let’s discuss this problem in detail.
What is a diaspora?
On closer examination, it becomes evident that the term, as it is commonly
used, is devoid of any “universal content” and is not, strictly speaking, a term.
All sketchy definitions of diaspora I have come across are either incomplete,
inconsistent and vague or based — mostly or exclusively — on the notions
associated with the Jewish Diaspora. Dictionaries and encyclopedias
130
Why the Jews?
have entries entitled “Diaspora” with occasional references to the Gypsy,

Armenian and later diasporas, or sometimes, to the Christian diaspora
(metaphorically implying the scattering of the “New Israel”). But it is the
Jewish Diaspora, the Diaspora par excellence, that comes first and foremost.
Let’s have a few typical examples:

(1)
Diaspora n. the dispersed Jews after the Babylonian Captivity ||
their dispersion [Gk fr. diaspeirein, to scatter]
(New Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus of the English Language,
Danbury, CT, 1993)
(2)
Di·as·po·ra
NOUN:
1. The dispersion of Jews outside of Israel from the sixth century
B.C., when they were exiled to Babylonia, until the present time.
2. Often diaspora The body of Jews or Jewish communities outside
Palestine or modern Israel.
3. diaspora
a. A dispersion of a people from their original homeland.
b. The community formed by such a people
(The American Heritage Dictionary)
(3)
diaspora
1 capitalized a: the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside
Palestine after the Babylonian exile b: the area outside Palestine
settled by Jews c: the Jews living outside Palestine or modern Israel
2 a: the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from
an established or ancestral homeland <the black diaspora to
northern cities> b: people settled far from their ancestral home-
lands <African diaspora> c: the place where these people live
(Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)
(4)
A diaspora … is any movement of a population sharing common
ethnic identity. While refugees may or may not ultimately settle in
a new geographic location, the term diaspora refers to a permanently
displaced and relocated collective.
(Wikipedia. Diaspora)
131
Obviously, these are not precise definitions which would enable us to

distinguish a diaspora from a variety of migrations occurring in different
human communities, and from such resettling groups themselves.
I would suggest the following working definition:

The term “diaspora” describes both the process of the scattering of
an entire human community or of two or more of its parts and the body
of more than one human subgroups which
(1) derive (or claim to derive) from such a community;
(2) live outside their historical homeland on a territory already
populated by other ethnic communities;
(3) represent a population minority;
(4) do not belong to the dominant population group;
(5) share the idea of their common origin, common past, beliefs,
“historical fate,” etc. (I call this notion “diaspora consciousness”).
None of these criteria, taken separately, is sufficient to define diaspora. For

example: while dispersed Jewish and Armenian populations doubtless have
their “diaspora consciousness” (the case of the Gypsies is not as clear),
cannot other groups — like the descendants of the Spanish colonizers now
living in Mexico, Peru or Uruguay or the descendants of the Eastern Slavs
(currently Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians) that once settled the East
European Plain — be aware of their common origin and past and perhaps
common “historical fate”?180 Haven’t they dispersed over lands inhabited by
other ethnic communities: in the former case, by Indian (Native American)
tribes, in the latter, by Baltic and Finno-Ugric tribes? Nonetheless, the term
“diaspora” cannot be applied in either case as not complying with criteria
3 (both cases do not represent a population minority) and 4 (they belong
to the dominant population group). Another example: the term “diaspora”
180 One of the problems of “diaspora consciousness” is that it is hard to detect it in the
past, especially with non-literate peoples (like the Gypsies), and even in the present.
A typical example is provided by the Berbers (though they are a non-diasporic
minority): all, or most, Berber groups inhabiting countries of North Africa, Sahara
and Sahel (an area in North-Central Africa south of the Sahara desert) are now
aware of their common linguistic and historical origin, though this awareness takes
fairly quaint forms. What is not clear is how they came by that knowledge — by
maintaining for three millennia an uninterrupted “ethnic memory” or via the
comparatively recent acquaintance of the Berber intellectual elite with European
Berber studies (including the present author’s ones), which is more likely.
132
Why the Jews?
could not be applied to the Dutch settlers of South Africa as they do not
comply with criteria 4 (belonging, until recently at least, to the dominant
population group).
What features are then typical for the Jewish Diaspora? What makes
it similar to other analogous phenomena (like the Armenian and Gypsy
dispersals), and to what degree is this similarity true? What makes it possible
to extend the use of the term “diaspora” to later or modern migrations of other
peoples (the Chinese moving to South-East Asia, the Russians to Europe and
the States, the Indians to Africa, North America and Britain, the Africans
to Europe and America, etc.) and to other groups (national, religious and
“trade” minorities, “foreigners”, “outsiders”, etc.)?
Laying no claim to completeness or precision, I’ll make an attempt
to reveal the most typical features common to Jewish Diaspora groups of
different regions and periods (in diasporic Jewish groups in the contemporary
Western world some of these features, of course, are becoming history or
already belong to the past) — at least those lying on the surface:
1. Being a minority.
2. Marked corporative proclivity.
3. Compulsory labor and occupational restrictions.
4. Incomplete civil rights.
5. Restrictions on changing social status, primarily affecting access to
membership in higher estates, land-owning and military career.
6. Isolation, normally deliberate, from other population groups,
manifesting itself in:
6.1. a negative attitude toward apostasy, i.e., to forced or voluntary
conversion to another religion;
6.2. a taboo on mixed marriages;
6.3. living within a small, restricted area, a ghetto.
7. Trends toward assimilation, manifesting themselves in:
7.1. apostasy involving almost exclusively conversion to the religion
of the dominant population group;
7.2. violation of the taboo on mixed marriages concluded principally
with members of the dominant population group;
7.3. a craving for leaving the ghetto, the territory of one’s Diaspora
group;
7.4. an eager and thorough mastering of language and culture of the
dominant population group;
133
7.5. a vigorous infiltration into the most prestigious fields of activity

outside their living areas and traditional spheres of activity.
8. “Diaspora consciousness”: the awareness of commonality with
kindred Diaspora groups, including:
8.1. common origin;
8.2. common cultural and, in certain cases, “sacred” history;
8.3. originally common territory (the “Homeland”);
8.4. common language prior to the dispersion;
8.5. equating the dispersal with exile;
8.6. equating the dispersal/banishment with Divine punishment;
8.7. the dream of returning to the historical homeland;
8.8. viewing themselves as “aliens” and “newcomers” among the
autochthonous groups.
It is obvious that some of these features are typical for the Jewish Diaspora
only and some for other diaspora and non-diaspora minorities. It goes
without saying that they cannot be applied to all Jewish Diaspora groups
and even less so to all historical epochs, including the present. All this
is no more than a rough working draft, hopefully a suggestive stimulus
and a starting point for someone’s future research — as well as another
demonstration of “Jewish paradoxes”.
The Myth of the Chosen People and Its Mission
Perhaps the Jewish way can be explained as follows. The myth of the
Jews as God’s chosen people formed almost haphazardly (e.g., Moses was
spreading some obscure Egyptian ideas among Jewish slaves) at the early
stages of Jewish history and influenced the shaping of ethno-religious
consciousness that determined the behavior of Jewish people for ages to
come. (An explanation half-jokingly suggested by A. B. Kovelman.)
In my opinion, this explanation is not to be completely discarded,
though it obviously needs some explaining in its turn. Let’s try deriving
from it, in a most sketchy way, the principal Biblical innovations. As we
can see, the idea of the chosen nation took its shape, for some unknown
reasons, in the midst of Jewish people. The idea of “choosing” necessarily
implies the chooser (subject), the chosen thing (object) and a number of
objects from which to choose. The “best” possible choice obviously takes
place when the most authoritative chooser chooses from the largest possible
134
Why the Jews?
number of objects. Hence the naturally following — but truly revolutionary

to the archaic psyche — Jewish innovation, viz.: (a) the range of objects
available for choice was widened to the utmost, resulting in the idea of
a single humanity consisting of different nations, and (b) the search of the
one subject of ultimate authority led to the notion of the one transcendent
Deity of that humanity. These two postulates (the single humanity and the
one most high Deity) logically following from the idea of the chosen people
might well be, to a varying degree of probability, the starting points for
other Biblical innovations we have already discussed.
It is common knowledge that the Jewish idea of the chosen people is
unique for the ancient world. The peoples who created great civilizations
of antiquity — Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans,
Chinese — did have the feeling of cultural superiority, but no more than
that. The very fact that the myth of the chosen people emerged among the
Jews and not elsewhere requires explaining.
The perception of one’s nation as the chosen people (ʕam səgull — see
the etymology of səgull in Appendix 1 #2.5) is related to the myth that
Israel’s mission is to save mankind — cf. “ … and all peoples on earth will be
blessed through you.” (Gen 12:3; cf. also Isa 49 and 2:2–3; Mic 4:1–3; etc.).
The latter myth appears, in comparison with the myth of the chosen people,
much less significant. Besides, it occurs in Biblical texts much more rarely;
everything else that is true of the entire body of the Hebrew universalistic
ideas — a part of which it represents — applies to it as well. Nevertheless,
this line of Jewish thought continues uninterrupted into the post-Biblical
period: the idea that the redemption (gəʕull) of Israel will be the saving
of the entire world is present both in the Haggadah and the Kabbalah.
The weak link in this apparently coherent chain of reasoning is that, as
it was stressed elsewhere, no traces of the idea of the chosen people and its
universal mission are observable in either the Egyptian or any other ancient
literature. Therefore, one has to look for this idea’s genesis on the very
same Jewish ground.
The Myth of the Eternal Exile and the Promised Land
Another important myth that contributed to the shaping of the Jewish

cultural type does not follow directly from the myths of the chosen people
and its mission. We speak here of the Jews’ perception of themselves as
the eternal exiles (until the coming of the Messiah-Mashiah, according
135
to later, post-Bible concepts) and of the related notions of the Diaspora,

galut, as an eternal banishment, with persecution and oppression as due
punishment of God testing and educating his people in this way (“victim’s
consciousness”). The faith in an ultimately favorable outcome and return to
the Promised Land makes it easier for the Jews to bear this path of woe.
The epithet “unique” used in regard to the Jews must have made the
reader sick and tired; however, it seems appropriate in this case as well. The
Bible pays extremely close attention to where and how the Jews come and
go, attaching much significance to the migrations themselves: suffice it to
mention Terah and his stock’s migration from Ur of the Chaldeans to Haran,
the Lord’s order to Abram to set out for Canaan (Gen 11:31, 12:1–2), and
the Exodus from Egypt.
The historical homeland enjoys a very high status in the Biblical
values system — a fact easily explained, at first glance, by the “diaspora
consciousness” of the people subjected to the banishment from their
Motherland. However, there are grounds to believe that not all of the
Diaspora waves from Palestine were forced.
As for the earliest forced replacements of the Jews, the conditions under
which the former inhabitants of the Kingdom of Israel found themselves
in North Mesopotamia and Media where they were driven by the Assyrian
invaders (732 and 722 B.C.E.) proved, given those times (if one is to believe
the scanty historical evidence), sufficiently mild, sometimes even favorable.
The same goes for the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judea resettled in
Central and Southern Mesopotamia181 subsequent to the sacks of Jerusalem
by the Babylonians (597 and 586 B.C.E.). Thus, in Assyria, the Israeli exiles
“received parcels of land and the majority of them went in for farming. Part
of them went into crafts. Some individuals who belonged to the higher,
ruling strata in Israel had been extended administrative offices.”182 Settlers
relocated from Judea at the beginning of the 6th century B.C.E. ended up in
a similar situation.
It is not quite clear how these re-settlings — which were coercive, but
quite normal for the time and the place in which they were happening — could
have led to the emergence of such a violently outcast-flavored “diaspora
consciousness” (of course, the counter-argument that no information of other
deported communities’ consciousness has reached us is always at hand).
181 According to some estimates, only 10% of the total population of Judea were
deported.
182 История еврейского народа (op. cit. — see footnote 71), pp. 76–77.
136
Why the Jews?
That consciousness seems to already be manifest in the early prophets,

Amos and Isaiah (“For I will give the command, and I will shake the house
of Israel among all nations … ” Am 9:9), who lived in Judea in the 8th
century B.C.E. Isaiah prophesied after the fall of Samaria whereas Amos
had — most likely — prophesied before that event. Yet, if one is to accept
even the latest, post-Babylonian captivity dates of the Tanakh creation
in its entirety or to admit all the debated episodes and spots — in Isaiah,
among others — as the post-captivity insertions, how is one to explain
where the notions of banishment to the “four quarters of the earth” (“ … he
will gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of
Judah from the four quarters of the earth” Isa 11:12) come from even, say,
in the 5th century B.C.E., if the Jews had been banished to only one of
them — Eastern, to Mesopotamia?
In contemporary Bible studies, it would seem that the “rejuvenating”
approach to dating texts is prevalent. That is a natural enough reaction to the
straightforward acceptance as claimed of the authorship of the legendary,
semi-legendary and even historical personages: David’s psalms were all
written by King David, the Proverbs — by King Solomon alone and the
book of Isaiah — by prophet Isaiah (or were recorded later, but in full
accordance with the oral tradition). Skepticism of this sort in the majority
of specific and sufficiently proven cases is apparently justified. However,
there are also some counter-arguments to this.
One of them is of a general nature, based on hard common sense.
A number of events, facts, and plainly the scenes of everyday life, morals
and customs, etc. described in the Bible and subject to verification
by independent historical sources, archeological and ethnographic
data — indicates a “long memory of the people,” a fairly lengthy period in
the course of which the oral tradition is preserved intact. Let me refer to just
one instance: Oleg D. Berlev, the late St. Petersburg Egyptologist, a great
connoisseur of Egyptian literature, history and, especially, its economy, told
me that in the Biblical story of Joseph, the picture of life in Egypt as a whole
looks similar enough for the Middle Kingdom epoch (that ended in the
16th century B.C.E.) even to some minute details. Could the Jewish authors
of the 6th or 5th centuries B.C.E. have written that history having no detailed
and intact legend dating back at least a millennium to rely on — granted that
the contemporary Egypt they might be familiar with was a country quite
different from the one described in the Bible? Also, does this not mean that
some other similar facts and notions looking sufficiently similar, although
not confirmed by other sources, could have taken place?
137
A more specific argument is based in the following. Many arguments in

favor of the later dating of some texts or other are based on the analysis of
their poetics and language, specifically, on the choice and repetitiveness of
their vocabulary. Aspiration to a certain extent of various sources unification,
their feasible agreement among themselves and the creation of integral
mythology, history and ideology was dictated to authors and editors of the
Babylonian captivity and post-captivity period by the tasks they were faced
with: to rally the people, to countervail the temptations of assimilation, to
confirm the right of Jews to their “historical Motherland,” to motivate them
to return to Canaan, for the erection of the temple, etc. The result of such
unification, by the logic of things, should have become the use in various
contexts of the same collocations, set-phrases, terms — even though the
Bible in the opinion of specialists is an “advanced” enough type of literature
with its cultivated style characterized, among other things, by the tendency
towards re-phrasing the quotations and lexical variety.
Whatever the case might be, it appears to me that using in diverse texts
of various terms for the description of the same event or phenomenon — in
this particular instance the talk is about the “dispersion” of Jews — bespeaks
not just the stylistic refinements of late-day compilers, but also betrays
a certain “lack of coordination,” testifying rather to the authenticity of these
texts preserved intact from various sources in the oral communication since
earlier times.
Let us see how the Diaspora-formed mentality is reflected in the
language. As to the origin of the Greek term diaspora, it is derived from the
verb diaspeirein “disperse, spill, give away, dissipate,” comprising a prefix
dia- and a verb speirein “sow, strew, plant seed.” The noun diaspora is
initially testified to in Septuagint precisely in the meaning “dispersion of
Jews among pagans”; later on this word is mentioned in Plutarch, Philo and
still later Christian authors.
In modern Hebrew “diaspora” in the sense of “Jewish diaspora” per
se is conveyed by the traditional term galut. It is used in different Jewish
communities of the world communicating in different languages and has
a well-defined and expressed negative connotation. This noun has two
meanings — “exile” and “exiles, the exiled” and it derives from — like
its variant form gl — from the verb gl “to go into exile.” The Greek
equivalents of Hebrew glt̲ and gl in the Septuagint are apoikesia,
“emigration”; metoikesia, “deportation”; aichmalosia, “captivity”; but not
diaspora. The original meaning “exile” of galut and the choice of its Greek
equivalents made by the Alexandria Jewish translators present a linguistic,
138
Why the Jews?
and therefore objective and weighty evidence, of Jewish vision of their

Diaspora as a forced and tragic phenomenon.
Historical implications of the terms “to exile,” “exile,” and “exiles”
seem at first sight to be of relatively late origin. Therefore it would be
natural to assume that these terms formed in the Biblical Hebrew, having
developed from simpler meanings of the verb gl, which also means “to
leave, disappear” and “to uncover, lay bare.” In the most authoritative and
newest dictionary of Biblical Hebrew — “The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon
of the Old Testament,”183 all these meanings are united under one and the
same heading and in the same entry as if related. This is hardly the case,
however. The verb *gly “to go into exile” is attested to in nearly all Semitic
languages; i.e., it can be reconstructed as early as on the Proto-Semitic level,
though certain peculiarities of its distribution among languages allow for the
possibility that the meaning — and, hence, the historical phenomenon — in
question developed at a later date, in the Proto-West Semitic, yet, in any
case, no later than the first third of the 3rd mil. B.C.E.
On the whole, the subject of dispersal is one of the dominant motifs of
the Hebrew Bible. There are several more terms that, aside from the verb
gly and its derivatives, are used to render related notions. Two of those,
the verbs nps and pws, mean “to scatter, disperse.” The former verb, nps,
occurs in three different contexts: “ … when you rise up, the nations scatter”
(Isa 33:3); “Saul replied, ‘When I saw that the men were scattering … ’ ”
(1 Sa 13:11); “Those were the three sons of Noah: and from them came the
people who were scattered over the earth.” (Gen 9:19)
The latter, pws, is more frequent. Here are several samples of its use:
“Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that
reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and
not be scattered over the face of the whole earth’ ” (11:4); “So the Lord
scattered them from there over all the earth” (11:8); “Later the Canaanite
clans scattered … ” (10:18); “And I will disperse the Egyptians among
the nations” (Eze 29:12); “He will … gather the exiles of Israel; he will
assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.”
(Isa 11:12)
While in the last verse, “scattered” renders the Hebrew nəp¯ust _ ,
feminine plural of the Passive Participle derived from pws, the word “exiles”
translates the masculine plural form of the Participle of the verb ndh in
the Passive meaning “to be scattered (said of animals and people).” It is
183 HALOT 191–2.
139
different forms of this verb — and not the forms of gly, pws and nps — that
are rendered in three passages of the Septuagint by the Greek word
diaspora.184 Here are the passages in question: “ … Even if you have been
banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord
your God will gather you and bring you back” (Dt 30:4); “ … even if your
exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and
bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name” (Neh 1:9);
“The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel” (Ps 147:2).
The other Hebrew verb rendered in a few cases in the Septuagint (mostly
in Ezekiel) by the Greek diaspeirein is zr (of the root zry) “to scatter,
winnow,” e.g.: “I will scatter you among the nations … ” (Lev 26:33).
In all the above mentioned verbs (except gly with the primary meaning
“to go into exile” confirmed by the same meaning in other Semitic
reconstructible, therefore, already in the ancestor language) the meanings
“to scatter,” “to disperse” and the like when applied to people are secondary
and metaphorical — attested in Hebrew alone.
Thus, pwṣ goes back to Proto-Semitic *py “to overflow” (one of the
meanings of Hebrew pwṣ and the main meaning of Arabic fyd, Mehri fəyẑ
and Jibbali fɛẑ̲; here also belongs Aramaic Syrian pyʕ “to dissolve, wash
away”) with derived meanings “to scatter, disperse” in Hebrew pws and
“to spread” in Aramaic Judaic pʕpʕ (said of odor) and Mehri fyẑ (said of
disease, evil talk).
Hebrew ndh, with its meanings “to be scattered (of animals)” (nif.) and
“to drive away, scatter (animals)” (hif.) continues Proto-Semitic *ndh “to
be out to pasture, be scattered (of animals)” (Akkadian nadu^ and nadaʔu
“to put animals out to pasture”, Arabic ndh in two derived verbal forms “to
scatter over the meadow (of sheep)”) and “scatter, drive, push” (in Akkadian,
Aramaic185 and Ethiopian).
The main meaning of Hebrew zry is “to scatter, winnow” from Proto-
Semitic *d̲ry “to scatter, spread (seed), winnow.”
Various forms of another verb, pzr (with no reliable cognates in other
Semitic languages), meaning “to be scattered, dispersed” apply to the
people of Israel in one context in Joel (4:2) and Esther (3:8), to enemies in
184 Aside from this, diaspora is used in the Septuagint as the translation of several other
Hebrew words unrelated to the notion of dispersal; it seems that we deal here with
extremely free and, perhaps, even incorrect translation.
185 In Judaic Aramaic, the meaning “to be in exile” is obviously secondary, developed
under the influence of the Hebrew verb.
140
Why the Jews?
Psalms 89:11, and to sheep and bones elsewhere; it is also attested to in the
meaning “to distribute freely, lavish.”
Finally, a very interesting case is Amos 9:9, where derived forms of the
verb nwʕ translated in HALOT as “to tremble” and “to roam around” are
used. Here is the verse:
k– hinn ʔnk̲– məsaww wa-hniʕt̲– b̲ə-k̲ol ha-ggyim ʔt̲ bt̲ yirʔl
ka-ʔr yinnaʕ ba-kkəb̲r wə-lʔ yippl sərr ʔrs
As it contains two more rare and obscure terms, there are a few different
versions of its translation into various languages. Let us compare two of
them in English. One is the classical “The King James Version”:
For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all
nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall
upon the earth.
The other is “New International Version” (NIV):

For I will give the command, and I will shake the house of Israel among
all the nations as grain is shaken in a sieve, and not a pebble will reach
the ground.
This is how it is commented in NIV:

sieve. Separates the wheat from small stones and other refuse gathered
with it when scooped up from the ground. not a pebble will reach. Only
the grain drops through, the refuse being screened out to be discarded.
Both translations stress the same motif in question (the latter one more
clearly than the former) — dispersion of the Jews among all the nations.
This motif is of particular significance here since the ninth verse of the
ninth chapter seems not to be as suspect of later insertion by modern Bible
scholars as many other passages of Amos. Therefore, this evidence of
the “dispersal notion” seems to be the earliest one (dated to the mid-8th
century).
I am unaware of what the NIV version choice of words was based
on and whether etymological considerations played any role in it; anyway,
I’ll adduce mine.
The Hebrew nwʕ has the following cognates in other Semitic languages:
Judaic Aramaic nwʕ “to move about” and nʕnʕ “to shake,” Arabic nwʕ
“to shake a tree branch with much force (said of wind),” nyʕ “to bend,
vibrate (of a tree branch under the wind),” nʕy “to scatter, disperse (of
141
camels)” and “to scamper to and fro (said of an animal under the rider
who has lost control,” nʕnʕ “to sway” and “to move away, detach,” Tigrai
nʕaw “to move here and there.” From these examples varying in form
and semantics, two main meanings — likely to have been associated in
the ancient Semites’ language consciousness186 — are reconstructible: “to
shake” and “to move about, roam, wander.” Therefore, instead of “(I will)
sift” (in “The King James Version”) the second verb in Amos 9:9 was justly
translated in NIV — fully in accordance with the contextual meanings
attested to in the Bible and with the etymology — as “(I will) shake,” but
there is an untranslatable undertone “I will make it roam” (hniʕt̲– is
a causative verbal stem).
Another debatable word, a typical hapax legomenon, attested to in the
whole corpus of the Bible, only in Amos 9:9 is kəb̲r correctly translated
by both Versions as “sieve”; the meaning is strangely not confirmed by
any external parallels in the Hebrew etymological dictionaries187 which is
highly desirable in such cases. In effect, such parallels do exist: besides
the word’s occurrence in post-Biblical Hebrew in the meaning “a large
round vessel, a basket used as a sieve” there are Ugaritic kbrt “sieve” and
Ethiopian: Geez kabaro “woven basket” and metathetic karabo id. and
Amharic krbo “basket.”
The suggested meanings of the third debatable term in Amos 9:9,
sərr,188 are “the least grain” in The King James Version and “pebble” in
NIV; while the former is baseless, the latter relies on its post-Biblical Hebrew
and Judaic Aramaic (the evidence of this language greatly influenced by
Hebrew is of little significance when not supported by akin terms in other
Aramaic languages) cognate sərr “pebble, flint.” The interpretation of
a rare term having no established etymology at that is inevitably conjectural;
in the present case, however, the kindred words if few can be found: they are
Mehri swər and Harsusi seʹwwer “stone, pebble” (probably also Syrian sr
and Arabic sirrat- “dust”) from Proto-Semitic *sVrVr- ⁓ *sawVr-.189
186 Like Russian шататься meaning both “to shake” and “to move about, wander”.
187 HALOT quotes with a question mark the Arabic girbl-, kind of sieve, which is
phonetically improbable.
188 Also occurring only in 2 Sa 17:13 in an obscure context; while the Septuagint
renders it as lithos “stone” and Vulgate as lapillus “small stone” or “pebble”, the
NIV translates it otherwise.
189 The assertion of HALOT that Hebrew sərr is a by-form of sɔr “flint” is less
probable as the latter continues a different Proto-Semitic root *ṯ ̣u/ir- ‘flint, rock’.
142
Why the Jews?
In view of all these meanings, I would suggest the following translation

of the discussed passage different from the above ones:
… I will make the people of Israel shake among all the nations like what is
shaken in a sieve, and not a pebble will fall out on the ground.
Then, we have a live and comprehensible metaphor: the Lord will shake
like in a sieve, make the people of Israel roam among all other nations, but
not a single pebble will fall out. It is with pebbles, and not grain or corn
(there is no word for either of them in this passage) that the people of Israel
seem to be compared; however, it will not eventually be lost (fall to the
ground) — cf. the previous verse (Am 9:8): “ … yet I will not totally destroy
the house of Jacob … ”
As it has been stressed before more than once, nearly all of the cited
passages indicate that the dispersal was understood as punishment.
Therefore, returning to our analysis of the “Diaspora consciousness,” we
can state that viewing the Diaspora as a forced and undesirable (though it
was, in a sense, well-deserved — as God’s punishment for the collective
transgressions of the people) event, as banishment from the Promised Land
was always a vital part of that consciousness for the Jews. It is obvious that
such a perception of the Jewish Diaspora was borrowed by the neighboring
cultures — the pre-Christian heathen ones and especially Christianity and
Islam — from the Jews themselves.
The subject of exile and banishment is projected in the Bible onto the
“prehistoric” past of the human race as well: the first galut was Adam’s
banishment from Eden and the first diaspora was the dispersal of the
builders of the Tower of Babel.
We have to observe once more, however, that the implied interpretation
of these events contains a certain ambiguity: on the one hand, they
are God’s punishment for disobedience (of Adam and Eve) and “non-
authorized activities” (the building of the tower), on the other, they present
an immediate, and apparently “orchestrated,” opportunity to set about
fulfilling God’s task: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and
subdue it” (Gen 1:28). He says the same to Noah and his sons (9:1). Created
in Adam and Eve and renewed in Noah and his posterity — the humankind
is called upon to populate Earth, to fill it out and to be in charge of it. How
could they do it without scattering and dispersing?
One gets the impression that the dispersal, the Diaspora was not always
restricted in the Jews’ “ethnic consciousness” and historical behavior to
143
galut, i.e., enforced exile. Its other aspect is a way of fulfilling their mission
in the world — religious, mythological or really historical depending on the
angle we see it from.
Another component of the Jewish “diaspora consciousness” is the
idea of a return to the Promised Land (or the “land of the forefathers,” the
“historical homeland,” etc.), which is one of the central concepts of the
entire Jewish history. In the post-Bible period it is expressed (only on coins
of the first Jewish uprising where it is written gʔlt meaning “deliverance,
liberation”) via the Hebrew noun gəʔull occurring in the Tanakh with the
legal meaning “right and obligation of repurchase” deriving from the verb
gʔal “to redeem,” which occurs in different books of the Bible both as
a legal term and in the meaning “to redeem, claim for oneself” (said of God
mainly in regard to the people of Israel). In different epochs and in different
Jewish communities, manifestations of this idea ranged from a metaphysical
concept to a political actuality, when the Biblical prophecy came true in the
form of the state of Israel and the aliyah.
Perhaps it is the conviction of the secular and the non-Orthodox
majority of Israelis that the return from the exile is a fait accompli (for
many Orthodox Jews, the gəʔull is still a prophecy which will be fulfilled
only with the coming of the Mashiah) that has taken the tragic edge off
the idea of the Diaspora and led to the emergence of two new terms with
the same meaning in modern Hebrew. Both terms — təps and pəzr —
have been derived from the verbs that also occur in the Bible; the former,
from the verb pws and the latter, from the verb pzr (see above). It seems
that the both are used by modern Hebrew speakers as fairly neutral words
lacking any dramatic implications.
The attachment that various ancient peoples felt for their homelands,
and for the lands they inhabited in general, was a perfectly usual
phenomenon. (E.g., the Egyptians perceived themselves as the people
living on the banks of the Nile; Egypt was for them the first-created land,
the first terra firma created by Atum.) Besides, the Jews were far from
being the only people that had to move — sometimes unwillingly — out of
their original territory. From the earliest stages of its existence, the genus
Homo sapiens is constantly on the move — the spread of cognate languages
and archeological cultures, sometimes over enormous distances, bears
witness to that. Migration and resettling of various peoples of antiquity was
taking place in different forms — suffice it to remember the Greeks or the
Phoenicians — but there is no evidence indicating that, in the case of the
Jews, these forms were in any way unique prior to the 1st century C.E.
144
Why the Jews?
It is obvious that the complex of notions that any historical community

has regarding itself and its place in the scheme of things is formed under the
influence of various geographical, social, historical and genetic conditions.
Expressed as a part of a mythological or religious frame of reference, these
notions may assume disguised and metaphorical forms that, no matter how
fantastic or bizarre to the modern psyche, cannot but have direct relation to
the actualities of the life of that community.
The goal of a researcher is to establish the exact nature of that relation.
Our old question remains unanswered: what were those special conditions
and abnormal developments that made Jewish life prior to or at the time of
committing the Bible to writing so different from the life of neighboring
peoples as to bring forth the myths (concepts, notions, whatever) of the
Jews as the chosen people, of the exile and of the ultimate return to the
Promised Land — the myths that have no visible parallel elsewhere?
You could answer that evasively, of course: this happened by a strange
conjunction of some random factors some of which are well-known while of
some of which we know little or nothing at all, etc., etc. But even if we accept
such an answer, we still won’t be able to answer two more questions.
One: Why then it was on the Jews that these myths had such a strong
impact as to determine their values system and historical behavior for ages
to come?
Two: is it not odd that Jews (and, it seems, Jews only) managed to turn
their myths into reality?
Common Semitic and Afrasian Cultural Legacy
As was said before, the Semitic group of languages, of which Hebrew

is part, is in turn a member of the Afrasian (a.k.a. Afro-Asiatic and Semito-
Hamitic) macro-family. Proto-Afrasian, the language from which all
Afrasian languages derive, existed, according to my estimate, until the
10th mil. B.C.E., when it began to split into descendant, or “daughter,”
languages. It is to this period that the reconstructed Proto-Afrasian lexicon
is dated. This lexicon can give us some idea of where and how ancient
Afrasians lived twelve thousand years ago.
Ample evidence indicates that the area inhabited by proto-Afrasians
“superimposes” onto that of the so-called Natufian and Post-Natufian
archeological cultures that existed prior to and approximately at the same
time in the Levant with a presumed center in what is now Israel, partly
145
Lebanon and Syria, and was one of the two earliest food-producing cultures
of the Earth (the other was in the Zagros mountains separating Iraq and
Iran; today it is viewed by most archaeologists as derived from the Post-
Natufian culture).
There are a large number of reconstructed Proto-Afrasian terms proving
that the speakers of that language were early farmers and animal breeders.
These are words like “to till soil,” “arable land, field,” “hoe,” “sickle,” “to
sow,” “wheat,” “barley,” “beans, leguminous,” “goat,” “sheep,” “cow” (the
animals were clearly domesticated, since wild ungulates typically have
distinct names),190 “donkey,” “camel” (both, perhaps, domesticated), “rope
(as part of harness),” “fodder, forage” and so forth.
Various groups speaking languages deriving from Proto-Afrasian (proto-
Semites, proto-Egyptians, proto-Chado-Berbers, proto-Omotic and proto-
Cushitic speakers) spread further — mainly along those routes by which
archeological cultures and single artifacts from the Eastern Mediterranean
were spreading to Mesopotamia, Arabia and East and North Africa (where
they got, according to the recent archaeological data, likely via Cyprus).
This speaks in favor of identifying Afrasians as the creators of the Natufian
and Post-Natufian cultures. The reconstructed Proto-Afrasian lexicon
indicates the existence of a culture that was highly advanced for its time and
not significantly inferior to the much later proto-civilizations of Mesopotamia
and Egypt that were in many ways its inheritors. The traditional view of
our Mesolithic and Neolithic ancestors as savages that occurs in scholarly
literature to this day can no longer be supported in the light of linguistic
evidence. For example, the opinion that promiscuity, indiscriminate sexual
relations, prevailed during the epoch in question prior to the emergence of
marriage contradicts the evidence of Proto-Afrasian terms implying the
existence of the institution of marriage (there are, for instance, words for
“in-law” and even “co-wife”) and a complex system of kinship by blood
and marriage. Words like “rich,” “chief,” “master,” and “dependant/
servant/slave” attest to sufficiently developed social relations. There are
also reconstructed terms that shed light on various notions and beliefs of
Afrasians, their relations with the world of spirits and many other aspects.
The Proto-Afrasian culture — which, in all probability, can be equated
with Natufian — was, beyond doubt, the most advanced one of the Mesolithic
190 While there are, of course, mixed terms denoting domesticated animals in some
languages and wild ones in others, which I do not qualify as proofs of domestication;
I am guided by the same principle re wild and domesticated cereals as well.
146
Why the Jews?
and early Neolithic; it is no wonder that later its “heirs,” the Egyptians and
Semites, created the most advanced cultures of their time. Judging by the
lexicon of Proto-Semitic, the culture of the human community that spoke
it in the late 5th — early 4th mil. was also highly developed for that time
both materially and intellectually — and, by various considerations, should
be located in the same territory of ancient Canaan and modern Israel.191
This territory is characterized by a rarest combination of the most diverse
geological, geographical and climatic conditions within a rather small
area which gave the local population the unique opportunities for both
hunting a large variety of highland and lowland wild hoofed mammals
and domesticating the most adaptable of them; for intensive collecting
wild crops, legumes, and fruits and for domesticating some of them; for
fishing; for manufacturing tools and weapons; for building various types
of dwelling, etc. etc. By all accounts, this territory continued to function
as a sort of cultural fountainhead originating highly developed cultures
that grew one into another, superseded one another, but still managed to
preserve a certain succession, a certain continuity of development. Despite
all local migrations, ethnic mixtures and changes of language for many
millennia affecting the bulk of the area’s population involved in creating
and accumulating cultural skills, generations mainly succeeded each other
in an un-interrupted manner.
It seems likely that the Jews happened by lucky chance to live in that
“cultural garden” and to become cultural (and — at least partially — genetic?)
“heirs apparent” to the Afrasian Natufians, and later to the proto-Semites.192
They have also inconceivably survived in this capacity throughout history.
The Random Factor: Etymopoesis
As I said, I don’t believe that the Jewish phenomenon can be

explained by a mere conjunction of random factors, though an element
of randomness appears quite probable. I will attempt here to illustrate
191 One of them being a composition of animal names list reconstructed for common
Semitic (see SED II and Appendix 2, pp. 225–6). A great variety of environmental
Proto-Semitic terms also, rather than not, point to this area.
192 In view of the fact that all other Afrasian-speaking and nearly all other Semitic-
speaking communities gradually migrated from this presumably original habitat to
Mesopotamia, Syria, Arabia and Africa.
147
one such random factor using the example of etymopoesis (or “popular
etymology”). As regards the Bible, this phenomenon can be described as
an effort on the part of the author(s) or editor(s) to reveal sacred meaning
hidden beneath similar sounding words (this similarity is, as a rule, purely
accidental, involving complete or partial homonymy) by explaining it
using a mythical etymology devised specially for the occasion (for more
detail, see pp. 81–82).
One of relevant examples is the phonetic similarity between the terms for
such significant notions of the Jewish world as “exile, banishment” (glt)
in the meaning “Jewish Diaspora” and geula “redemption” (gəʔull) — see
above. The former noun derives from the verb gl (root: gly), the latter
from the verb gʔal (root: gʔl). It was Semitic consonantal roots conveying
generalized meanings, rather than concrete words that presented perfect
material for etymopoesis. The difference between gly and gʔl, as regards
their consonantal composition, is insignificant: in Hebrew as in all Semitic
languages, y and ʔ often correspond to one another in different related
variants of the same root. In this concrete case, however, the roots are not
related; they are partial homonyms sounding alike by sheer coincidence.
Cf. the two distinct etymologies:
1. Common Semitic *gly “to exile, be deported, shifted”: Hebrew gly “to
go into exile” (glt “exile; exiles”); Aramaic: Syriac gly id. (glt
“captivity, exile,”gl–l “captive, exile”), Mandaic gla id.; Arabic ly
id. (al “exile, emigration,” liyat- “banishment, captivity far from
one’s motherland; contribution”193); Ethiopian: Geez ta-galgala (stem
reduplicated) “to go into captivity, be taken into exile,” Tigrai gll
“to move away from a place”, Amharic glggl “to separate two
people who are coming to blows”; Akkadian galu^ “to be deported,
banished” (considered an Aramaic loanword); Jibbali egoʹli “to shift
(animals) from one place to another,” guʹtli “to shift (from a place),
change (a religion)”.
2. Hebrew gʔl “to redeem, buy back, recover, reclaim as one’s own,” the
original meaning most likely having been “to return” — cf. Arabic ʔl
“to circle; to go away and then return”; both possibly derived from
common Semitic and Afrasian biconsonantal root *gl “to be round, go
around, etc.”
193 While ʔal-lt- “captivity of the Jews” must be a borrowing of Hebrew glt.
148
Why the Jews?
Of course, it is impossible to supply undoubted proof that one of the

mythical explanations (most likely, that of the “redemption” — “return”)
developed under the influence of the other (“exile”) owing to the chance
homonymy that must have impressed the Biblical writers. It is fairly
probable, however, that this was the case.
Another example that bears on the etymology of the name Adam is, in
my opinion, much more convincing.194 Let’s try answering the question:
What are the principal components that comprise the Biblical idea of
mankind? They would obviously include the sum of human beings inhabiting
the created world; their common origin and the kinship between them; their
common task or mission of inhabiting the earth; and, finally, the creation
of Adam in God’s image and after his likeness. Let’s examine how these
notions are reflected in the language, in words.
(1) The name of the Man/mankind is in Hebrew ʔdm. The word has
a certain collective shade of meaning; being formally used in singular, it
sometimes agrees with verbs in plural and is interchangeable with plural
pronouns: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man (naʕasʹ ʔdm) in our image,
in our likeness, and let them rule (wə-yird) …’ ” (Gen 1:26); “God created
man... man and female he created them (br ʔtm).” (1:27)
The semantics of the collective Hebrew noun ʔdm referring to mankind
as a sum of humans goes back to the pre-Hebrew, Common Semitic phase.
This is demonstrated by the range of meanings of this word in other Semitic
languages: Phoenician ʔdm “man”; Ugaritic ʔdm “man; man (collective
noun), mankind, people” (ab adm “the father of mankind”, of the god Ilu,
etymologically the same name as Hebrew ʔlh–m “god” and Arabic ʔallh-
“Allah”); Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic ʔdm, ʔdwmt, ʔdym (collective
noun) “vassals, subjects; servants, devotees (of a deity)” (i.e. “someone’s
people”), Qatabanian ʔdm “men, people; subjects, vassals (of a king, etc.)”;
Modern Arabic: Hadramawt ʔawdim “people, mankind,” Dat̲–na ʔawdim
“man” (both — pluralia tantum from the unattested singular form *ʔdam-);
Ethiopian: Tigre ʔaddam (coll.) “men, people” (the Tigre example does not
look like an Arabism); probably Akkadian adntu (pluralis tantum) “world
(as to extend and inhabitants)” contextually translated as “mankind” is
< *ʔadmtu and thus related.
On the basis of the above data, the noun *ʔadam- can be reconstructed
that would mean in Common Semitic “a community of men” and something
like “the human race.”
194 In more detail see Appendix 2, example #8.
149
(2) The Biblical idea of mankind has one more fundamental principle:
it is a single whole, being united by the fact of common origin that was
confirmed twice (by God’s covenants with the “first couple,” Adam
and Eve, and with Noah), in other words, by kinship. Unlike an Indo-
European, whose idea of kinship implies blood (cf. “blood relationship,”
“consanguineous,” etc.), an ancient Hebrew saw the embodiment of kinship
primarily in the flesh. Thus, Judah instructs his brothers regarding Joseph
(Gen 37:27): “ … and not lay our hands on him; after all he is our brother,
our own flesh and blood”; we find only “our flesh” (bərn) in the Hebrew
original — “blood” is added for an English reader who may not guess that
“flesh” here means consanguinity.
However, the idea of blood also plays a part in the concept of
kinship — cf. the expression gʔl ha-ddm “revenger for one’s kin” (the
King James Version: “the revenger(s) of blood,” lit. “redeemer of the blood”
2 Sa 14:11 et passim). The normal Hebrew word for “blood” is dm, though
there is, perhaps, a variant form *ʔadm occurring in Dt 32:43 in the
form ʔadmt “his blood” (another, more accepted translation: “his land”).
Anyway, in Common Semitic we have the main form *dam(m)- and the
derived form *ʔadam- which has the prefix ʔa- and is much rarer in all those
Semitic languages where it occurs, both meaning “blood” and going back
to Common Afrasian *dam- (Berber *i-damm-ən, plural “blood”; Egyptian
dmȵ, verb related to the blood in the heart; West Chadic *dam- “blood”, etc.).
(3) The idea of mankind also includes the notion of the inhabited world,
the Earth. “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue
it”, says the Lord to Adam (Gen 1:28). He says the same to Noah and his
sons. Created in Adam and Eve and renewed in Noah and his descendants,
humanity is expected to settle the whole earth, to replenish it. In this
context, the Hebrew word commonly used for “earth, ground” is ʔrs,
though ʔadm occurs as well; e.g., “ … but streams came up from the
earth (min-h-ʔrs) and watered the whole surface of the ground (kol pən
h-ʔadm)” (ibid. 2:6) or “As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth
(ʕal h-ʔadm) … ” (1 Sa 20:31).
The term ʔadm is translated in the latest edition of “The Hebrew
and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament” as “earth, arable ground with
water and plants” with a note: “orig. the red tilled soil.” (This note reflects
a tradition of etymologizing ʔadm “earth” from ʔdm “red”.) The only
formal difference between ʔadm “earth” and ʔdm “man” is the feminine
suffix -; furthermore, in several Biblical passages occurs the variant stem
ʔdm “earth,” which fully coincides with ʔdm “man.”
150
Why the Jews?
The Biblical man (ʔdm) is also bound to the earth (ʔadm) by

another, inner, bond: he is made of it. To be exact, the Maker made (yisr,
lit. “modeled, shaped”) the animals out of the ground; as for man, he was
formed of ʕpr min-h-ʔadm — “the dust of the ground” (Gen 2:7).
A closer analysis, however, shows that Hebrew ʔadm “earth” and
ʔdm “red” are homonyms — they are not related as each of them has
a reliable Semitic and Afrasian etymology of its own. While the latter
continues Semitic and Afrasian *ʔdm “(to be) red” (perhaps eventually
related to *dam- “blood”), the latter goes back to Semitic *daym(-m)-
⁓ *damdam- ⁓ *ʔadam(-at)- “(the entire) earth, the earth’s surface, land”
and further, with prefixed ʔa-, to Afrasian *(ʔa-)day/wm- with the same
spectrum of meanings as in Proto-Semitic — a notion which includes
inhabited and non-inhabited area, cultivated ground/field and uncultivated
ground/desert”:
Phoenician (Punic) ʔdmt “earth, country”; Aramaic: Judaic ʔadamt
“earth”; Arabic ʔad–m- “earth; the entire visible space in the earth and
heaven,” ʔ–dmat- “hard soil without stones; the earth’s surface”; Geez
ʔadym “area, region, bordering cities, district, province, etc.”; likely also
Akkadian dadm “the inhabited world (settlements and inhabitants)”;
Egyptian dmy “town, quarter, abode, vicinity”; East Chadic: Mokilko doome
“field”; East Cushitic: Kambatta udmaʔa “desert”, etc.
A combined analysis of all these meanings leads us to the conclusion that
they developed from the common meaning “earth (as locality or territory),”
and not from “earth, soil (as substance).” Therefore the probability of genetic,
etymological connections of the Semitic words for “earth”, including Hebrew
ʔadm, with the root *ʔdm “(to be) red,” including Hebrew ʔdm “red”,
is quite slim — even in spite of the fact that the soil in quite a few areas of
Canaan/Palestine/Israel is reddish, indeed.195
(4) Creation of Adam in God’s image and after his likeness (Gen 5:1;
1:26). “Likeness” is rendered by Hebrew noun dəmt meaning “likeness,
appearance, sample, outline, form” with the root dmy based on the same
two “stable” consonants, dm, as all the terms analyzed above. It has the
following parallels in other Semitic:
Aramaic: Official, Palmyrian dmʔ “to be like, comparable, equal,” Old,
Official dmw “conformity, singularity; statue,” Judaic dmʔ/y “to be like,”
195 Which may account for a possible “contamination” — a secondary association of the
two similarly sounding words with compatible meanings — in the ancient speakers’
(and modern scholars’) heads.
151
dəmt() “resemblance, image, esp. man’s divine image,” Syrian dəm “to
be like,” dəmt “resemblance, image, form, example,” dmy “similarity,
image, figure, form,” Mandaic dma “to be (a)like, resemble,” dmu, dmut(a)
“likeness, archetype, kind, shape, form, portrait, picture”; Arabic ʔadm-
“model, example, pattern to follow” (dumyat- “figure, statue; marble; idol;
pretty woman” is, perhaps, borrowed from or influenced by Aramaic); Tigre
dumat “uncertain outlines of a figure or of an object” (possibly an Arabism),
etc. It is possible to reconstruct a Hebrew-Aramaic (Proto-South Levantine,
in our classification) verb *dmy/ʔ “to be like, resemble” and, combined with
the Arabic ʔadm-, a Proto-West Semitic noun *ʔa-dVm(-Vt)- “likeness,
resemblance, image, sample.” It has a fairly likely Afrasian parallel in Berber
*(H)udVm- “face, appearance, figure”196 obviously akin to certain Cushitic
and Omotic forms197 which gives us grounds to reconstruct Proto-Afrasian
*(ʔa-)dam(-at)- “appearance, face, figure, image” to develop into “likeness,
resemblance, image” in Semitic.
The formal, phonetic, similarity, based on the biconsonantal root dm,
between these Hebrew terms — ʔdm “mankind, man,” ʔdm “earth,” dm
(with a presumed variant stem ʔadm) “blood” and dəmt “likeness” — is
obvious. It is likewise obvious that the similarity of these forms could not
pass unnoticed by the Jewish tradition of commentary and the European
etymological tradition. Quite naturally, it was exploited by various authors
many times over. Biblical texts demonstrate a close connection among all
these terms as regards their associations and content, which presents ample
material for surmise, especially in view of their similarity — both in form
and content — to another Hebrew term ʔdm “dark red, maroon (of blood,
grape juice, skin, etc.).” The variant with reduplicated stem, ʔadamdam,
means “bright red, reddish.”
Here are some of the popular interpretations. Blood is naturally associated
with the red color and its name derives from that color (with the variant
explanation of “red” deriving from “blood”); the reddish-brown color of
the earth has obviously given it its name. The name Adam (“man”) derives
from the word “earth/ground” because he was formed out of this substance.
(The theme of man being made of clay/ground is common enough in various
mythologies of the world; cf. parallels like Latin homo “man” — humus
196 Ahaggar, etc. udəm “face,” Tawllemmet, etc. udəm “face, appearance, figure”,
Adghaq a-damum “idol.”
197 North Omotic: Kullo dimmo “face,” Wolane deemuwa “forehead” and East Cushitic:
Hadiya, Kambatta deemma “eyebrow,” etc.
152
Why the Jews?
“earth.”) Another possible explanation of the name Adam is its origin from
the red color; this finds proof in several analogous cases of ethnonyms being
derived from the names of colors, including red (e.g., the Egyptians called
themselves km.t, a name derived from km “black”).
All these quite plausible interpretations of the terms in question
apparently imply that their phonetic similarity is more than mere chance.
However, a more serious analysis shows that quite the opposite is true. The
four Hebrew words we talk about are no more than homonyms.
As we have demonstrated, each of the Hebrew words in question has
a sound — and entirely distinct — Semitic, and even Afrasian, etymology.
This means that it is impossible for any of them to have derived from any of
the remaining ones.198 Now let’s formulate our question in this manner: is it
a chance coincidence that all the four words that are related as regards their
content, being the constituents of the Biblical idea of “man, mankind,”199
show both phonetic likeness and semantic association?
There are two possible answers to this question. Answer one: yes, the
phonetic similarity between the four words in question is accidental and
has nothing to do with the notions they express, and the entire situation
has been overlooked or ignored by the authors/compilers/editors of
corresponding Biblical texts. Anyone who studied the texts of the Hebrew
Bible professionally would hardly find such an answer satisfactory,
given the special attention paid by the Biblical authors (and by native
speakers of Semitic tongues at large) to likenesses among different roots
and word play.
Answer two: the situation is not accidental. This leaves us two possible
explanations. The first one is that we deal with a semantic shift that, due to
the development of meaning, resulted in deriving one of our three words
(leaving dəmt “likeness” apart) from another (for instance, according to
the possibility we have already discussed, the name ʔdm “Adam, man,”
derives from ʔadm “earth,” while the latter in its turn develops from the
words “red”/”blood”). However, such an explanation is at variance with
the already established fact that the three words are mere homonyms that
198 Speaking of “blood,” it is possible for the word to be related to the verb “to be red”
at the pre-Proto-Afrasian stage, but this matters little to us here.
199 Two of them, “man” and “earth,” are directly compared in the texts, with “blood” as
a qualifying item of kinship presenting a logical addition; the forth, dəmt, features
one of the (if not the) most significant and distinctive characteristics, from the
viewpoint of the Biblical author(s), of Adam the humankind — his creation in God’s
likeness.
153
have originally and independently existed in Hebrew, being inherited from

a much older stage of Semitic languages.
This is where logic leads us to the only remaining explanation: the
entire idea whose constituents were the notions expressed by all the terms in
question was brought forth by a chance phonetic similarity, homonymy — in
other words, by a situation when the four terms for such basic and all-
important notions as “man(kind),” “earth,” “blood,” and “likeness”
happened to sound alike in one single language, Hebrew. But mythological
consciousness has no use for randomness: the mystery of phonetic likeness
had to be explained and its hidden meaning, revealed.
Thus a chance word play could have given rise to the idea of humanity
as shaped in the Bible, that later developed into one of the most fundamental
ideological constructs of civilization.
A CHAIN OF RANDOM EVENTS

OR A PATTERN OF HISTORICAL BEHAVIOR?
Still, the question remains: was it by chance that the ancient Jews made
such a substantial contribution to the development of the most dynamic of
the future civilizations. Was that fact an isolated case in the Jewish history?
The principal argument that is normally adduced is that all these Hebrew
ideas spread all over the world and gained considerable influence, primarily
through Christianity.
Does it not imply that — having brought forth all these principles
(or, more exactly, their “germs”), having induced the birth of such global
universalistic religions as Christianity and Islam and having made its
invaluable contribution to human history — the Hebrew culture “shut itself
off,” becoming an isolated local culture that, like many others of this kind,
has very little influence on further development of the universal civilization?
In an attempt to answer this question, we intend to make a brief overview
of the entire phenomenon of Jewish history with the goal of revealing more
unusual features and qualities that might bear on the discussed Jewish
contribution to human history.
The most obvious of these qualities is that the Jews are nearly the
absolute winners in the game of historical life longevity in combination
with a considerable contribution to universal human culture. They are
154
A Chain of Random Events or a Pattern of Histor ical Behav ior?
among those few peoples that became known in antiquity and managed to
survive to this day preserving their ethno-cultural identity uninterrupted.
Other similar cases are very rare: the Chinese, the Indians, the Romans
(who became Italians), the Greeks, and the Persians, (the last two or even
three nations being included here with serious reservations), Chinese and
Indians being quite the multitudinous peoples — whichever way you look at
it, populating “fenced in” territories, that is it after all.
Speaking of the unique Jewish experience of survival under extreme
historical conditions, it would be appropriate to discuss a more general
problem of what the prime mover controlling the whole vital activity of
living organisms and their communities is. Answering broadly, this is
obviously the striving to survive. In the case of human communities (ethnic,
cultural, religious, etc.) it is suitable to suggest a certain strategy of survival,
while it is not at all clear to what extent it can be instinctive, manifest on
the level of “ethnic subconscious,” and to what — rational, even though it
is logical to believe that the element of rationality increases in the course of
the civilization process. It is quite an exciting, though more difficult, task
to look for that strategy — and its possible flaws — in peoples and cultures
extinct or devoid of their identity, replacing it with another one. It may
be more fruitful, however, to try and establish the nature of this survival
strategy in “successful” communities among whom the Jews present the
most promising object of study.
And indeed, is it possible to attribute the Jewish vitality and historical
longevity exclusively to a mere collection of outside factors and random
events? Or should we rather look for something special in the very mode of
the Jewish functioning in history, some permanent or recurrent principles
and techniques of behavior that would indicate a definite, steady pattern of
behavior, a survival strategy, and that would make it possible to reconstruct
the Jewish ethno-cultural model?
Searching for the answers, we immediately face the phenomenally
paradoxical Jewish behavior in history. Below, we list these main
paradoxes. The extreme conservatism and attachment to the traditions
goes hand in hand with a most marked trend toward innovation that can
be observed starting from the Biblical epoch. Jewish ethnic isolationism
and particularism (Judaism is the only one of significant religions that is
inseparable from the ethnic factor) exist alongside the great role the Jews
played first in creating the Biblical idea of the single human race and
the one God thereof and then in contributing to the emergence of such
universalistic religions as Christianity and, to a certain degree, Islam.
155
Finally, their contribution to the civilization process of the recent epoch is

also disproportionately substantial.
Thus we have, on the one hand, these remarkable and contrasting features
typical for Jews’ behavior through various periods of their long existence
in history and, on the other, the fact of their successful survival. This leads
us to the conclusion that it was these features that formed the basis for
the collective survival strategy of the Jews. This hypothesis finds proof in
many other facts. If we take it as a basis for our argumentation, then Jewish
ethnocentrism, traditionalism and particularism may be defined as centripetal
trends, and universalism and innovation as centrifugal trends; the entire
pattern of Jewish historical behavior can then be conventionally described
as some kind of dynamic equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces.
A curious fact: about 80 years ago, some of these terms were used by
the famous historian of Jewry, Shimon Dubnov, who wrote: “During various
epochs, in certain sections of the Jewish society the centrifugal force was
beginning, under the influence of universal cultural movements, to prevail
over the centripetal force; the attraction of the periphery toward universal
human culture over the attraction toward the original national culture.
This was the case in Palestine, at the time of Phoenician and then Assyro-
Babylonian cultural domination, in the whole Western Asia and Egypt
under the domination of Graeco-Roman culture, in the epoch of Arabic
Renaissance in the East and in Spain. After several centuries of extreme
isolation, the Jews of the West have yielded to the influence of the 18th-
century European Enlightenment and its ideology of cosmopolitism. ‘From
the national to the universal!’ became the slogan of the day.”200
Having started to shape under the influence of some of the above
factors, this model of behavior proved the most flexible, and therefore the
optimum one for successful survival. Each of its constituents could become
dominant during this or that period of Jewish history. The centripetal trend
obviously prevailed in medieval times, while the centrifugal trend was,
and is, dominant in the contemporary epoch; it is important to stress that
the both seem equally necessary for the stable functioning of the model as
a whole.
The isolated ethno-religious “core” would almost inevitably have been
doomed to cultural stagnation, while Jewish populations of the Diaspora
would have degenerated were it not for the periodical expulsion by the
200 S. M. Dubnov. Новейшая история еврейского народа (Contemporary History of

the Jewish People), 2nd edn.,Vol. 1, Petrograd, 1919, pp. 46f.
156
Jewish community of some of its members who were willy-nilly bound to

spread Jewish modes of thought and standards of behavior in the world of
the “Gentiles.” In this hypothetical case, survival of the Jews as an ethnic
community would have been unlikely; at best they would have to be
content with the role of an unimportant local culture playing no part in the
development of the mainstream civilization — a sort of a billiard ball stuck
in the pocket or, as Ephraim Speiser, a great connoisseur of the ancient Near
East and an insightful historical thinker, put it, “at best only a footnote to
history.”201
We must make an important reservation here: the “ejection” or “ex-
pulsion” of certain members from the Jewish community can only be
considered efficient from the viewpoint of the general survival strategy of
the Jews if those who left the community (at least part of them) would not
just dissolve in the surrounding populations, but begin to play a significant
role in the cultures of the latter. (The question of “to what degree and for
how many generations the assimilated Jews manage to preserve this or that
form of Jewish self-identity” is of great interest, as well as to what extent
the non-Jewish milieu continues to identify them as Jews.) On the other
hand, excessive prevalence of the centrifugal trend and erosion of the Jewish
“core” would have led to complete if gradual assimilation of the Jews among
the populations dominant in this or that zone of the Diaspora.
The conclusion drawn from this reasoning, no matter how paradoxical
and even shocking that may sound would be as follows: both partial
assimilation (involving the preservation in some form of Jewish self-identity)
and complete assimilation of a part of the Jewish population (involving
the preservation in some form of a Jewish mode of thought and standards
of behavior even if for a limited period) are, in all likelihood, an organic
constituent of the Jewish model. In other words, this is a component
of the survival machinery — don’t let us forget that it also includes the
accomplishing of the “mission” of the Jews — not only of the assimilated
periphery but the “core” itself.
As we have demonstrated more than once, notions and concepts can, on
a deep level, be expressed and reflected in a language, and sometimes can
be even shaped by it. In the biblical language, the interaction of centrifugal
and centripetal forces constituting the Jewish model is paralleled by and,
in a sense, corresponds to the opposition of two main terms meaning
“people” — ʕam and gy.
201 E. Speiser. Oriental and Biblical Studies. Philadelphia, 1967, p. 170.
157
Hebrew ʕam “people” in reference to the people of Israel occurs in the

Bible hundreds of times, and dozens of times, in reference to other peoples,
non-Jews. This word is well attested in other Semitic languages — Phoenician,
Aramaic, Sabaic, Arabic — continuing Proto-West Semitic *ʕamm- “people;
gathering, multitude of people; general populace, common people”. The
Hebrew ʕam “people” entirely coincides phonetically with ʕam “(paternal)
relationship, clan, kin” going back to Proto-Semitic *ʕamm- “paternal uncle,
male agnate; ancestor.” This coincidence is hardly accidental — the semantics
“people” most likely evolved from the latter meanings. Even if these two
terms had been not generically akin homonyms, the very fact of their complete
if accidental similarity could not but affect the notion of ʕam “people” giving
it certain overtones stemming from the meanings “uncle, kin, ancestor.”
Hebrew gy “people, nation” (Post-Biblical gayyt̲ “gentile status”),202
on the contrary, occurs in the Bible hundreds of times in reference to non-
Jews, and dozens of times in reference to the people of Israel. The only
parallel usually quoted is from Epigraphic South Arabian, but, in fact,
there are enough (Phoenician gw “community”; Aramaic: Syrian gaww
“community; monks’ communal dwelling,” Mandaic giuiata “congregation,
company of people”; Sabaic gw-m, gwy “community group”; Arabic
wyin- “encampment; military tent camp”; Ethiopian: Geez ge “territory,”
Amharic, Argobba ge “country, town,” Harari g “the city of Harar, city”,
etc.) to be traced to Proto-West Semitic *gaw(V)y- “community group
sharing a common territory”.
We may assume then that the original (etymological) meaning of Hebrew
gy was close to the Proto-West Semitic one, i.e. “people, population sharing
a common territory (community not based on consanguineous conne-
ctions).” Let us see whether such a meaning is confirmed by extra-linguistic
evidence. That is what Speiser says about the difference between these terms:
… against the slender minority of passages that do correlate ʕm
(mistakenly for ʕam — A.M.) with gy, the overwhelming majority
indicate a clear and manifold distinction between the two nouns … when
Israel is spoken of as God’s people, the forms employed are ʕamm–,
ʕammək̲, or ʕamm, but never gy with possesive suffix. In fact, ʕm is
found hundreds of times with pronominal endings, as against only seven
with gy, each in connection with land.203
202 It is with this semantics that the term goy meaning “a non-Jewish person, a Gentile”
passed into many languages.
203 Ibid. 162.
158
Asserting that “One begins to see now that the rendering “people” and
“nation” are not one-to-one correlatives of ʕm and gy,” he again stresses
“the affinity of gy to land”204 and “kinship connotation of ʕm” and
concludes:
ʕm was essentially a term denoting close family connections, and hence
secondarily the extended family, that is, people in the sense of a larger,
but fundamentally consanguineous, body … In contrast, there is not the
least hint of personal ties under the concept of gy. The noun labels large
conglomerates held together, so to speak, from without rather than from
within.205
Speiser’s interpretation is confirmed in later studies:

The individual Israelite may not have had his clan foremost in his mind;
yet it is through his clan that he found his social, juridical, and religious
identity. Certainly in the early period the nation did not play that role.
The people with whom the individual identified himself were not his
compatriots; his people (ʕm) were primarily the members of his clan.206
The usage in the Bible of the two terms discussed has a fairly conceptual
character. That is how Speiser describes it:
It thus becomes clear that where the Bible juxtaposes ʕm and gy, it
does so deliberately and for purposes of subtle distinction … The main
difference lies in the suggestion of blood ties … On the other hand, gy
comes rather close to the modern definition of “nation”. In any case,
the gap between Hebrew ʕm and gy is greater than that between our
“people” and “nation”.207
Further on, comparing the Hebrew society with the Mesopotamian one,
Speiser comments:
… in Mesopotamian society man was fitted into a pattern that differed
sharply from the biblical, and with it from other West-Semitic groups.
The main emphasis in Mesopotamia rested on the political unit and its
204 Ibid., footnote 6.

205 Ibid. 163.
206 K. van der Toorn. Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel. Continuity and
Change in the Forms of Religious Life. Studies in the History and Culture of the
Ancient Near East. Vol. VII. Leiden-New York-Köln, 1996, 203. Further quoted
as Toorn.
207 Speiser 164–5.
159
administrative subdivisions. The overriding factor had come to be the

state,208 regardless of ethnic composition, indeed a structure composed
of diverse ethnic elements. The family played a part, inevitably, but its
autonomy was severely restricted by political and economic considerations.
Though blood was thicker than water, bread and taxes rated still higher.
That is why adoption, which tends to loosen blood ties, became such
a prominent factor in Mesopotamian society; contrariwise, the institution
of the levirate, which stands guard over blood relationship, never took hold
in Mesopotamia proper. And the ultimate component of the Mesopotamian
community was the citizen rather than individual as such.209
In the light of the above evidence, Speiser poses a question “whether Israel
was an ʕm or a gy” and his answer is “Israel was both”. This conclusion
“yields further significant disclosures”:210
According to the biblical record, the history of ancient Israel begins with
Abraham’s migration from Mesopotamia … we are concerned with the
wording of the call that led to the migration. It contains the promise …
(Gen 12:2) “I will make you into a great nation.” The term in question is
gy, not ʕm; and rightly so. For Abraham was an ʕm to begin with, in
the primary sense of the word, so long as he had a nephew named Lot.
There is nothing casual or accidental about this phraseology. It is
consistent, invariable, and exclusive. The reason … behind the patriarch’s
departure from Mesopotamia and the Israelites’ liberation from Egypt was
that Israel might be a nation. The ʕm had been in Egypt for centuries
anyway, where its numbers are stated to have become very large (Ex 1:9).
Yet we are told also on many occasions … that, in terms of God’s own
connection with the people, Israel was his ʕm. It was chosen and treated
as such. But to carry out God’s purpose, as that purpose is expressed by
the Bible as a whole, the ʕm was not enough; what was needed was the
added status and stability of nationhood in a land specifically designated
for that purpose.
208 That in recent years, first and foremost with the progress in Mari studies, the picture
has turned out to be more complicated can be well seen from Daniel E. Fleming’s
Democracy’s Ancient Ancestors (Cambridge, 2004). As Fleming puts it:
Syria-Mesopotamia offers us the particular gift of some of the earliest known
writings … This writing shows us a complex interaction of many different social
and political players, including large entities ruled by kings, alliances that acted as
a single polity, tribal groups of varying scale and character, and the unit centered
at a single settled site called the “town”. (p. XII)
209 Speiser 166–7.
210 Ibid. 169.
160
With this last affirmation … we touch on one of the very roots of the
biblical process. The essence of that process was the undeviating quest for
a worthy way of life, “the way of Yahweh,” in the words of Gen 18:19. To
be successful, that quest could not be confined to the care of an obsolescent
nomadic society. It required the medium of an up-to-date civilization,
a medium that could not function short of the institution of nationhood.
But such an institution alone is but an empty form unless animated by
the human element. As a historic process, therefore, a process that made
world history, Israel can be understood only as both an ʕm and a gy.
One without the other would be at best only a footnote to history.211
There is another little studied factor, viz. the supposed replenishment of the
Jewish community through the joining proselytes and the return of some
of the assimilated Jews or their descendants. The widespread view that
proselytism is not typical for Judaism and that the numerically significant
assimilation of the Jews — aside from the cases of forced conversion to
Christianity and Islam — is an exclusively recent phenomenon seems to
require reconsidering (see above).
The process of Jewish assimilation is attested to at a sufficiently early
date. It is obvious that among the population of Mesopotamia a significant
part of the Israeli kingdom’s ex-inhabitants driven there by Assyrians
and relocated by the Babylonians were dissolved. A certain percentage of
Hellenized Jewish population of Egypt and Rome, that staked a full-fledged
citizenship and economic parity above the “fathers’ faith” could not have
failed to get assimilated. An obvious and substantial “drain” occurred in
connection with the spread of early Christianity.
However, it is not ruled out that both the introduction of Christianity and
the participation, active or passive, in the emergence of Islam six centuries
later are in some way related to the Jewish survival “strategy.” (We put the
term in quotes because it is hard to determine to what degree this pattern of
behavior was pursued consciously; a “strategy” of the survival of an animal
group would be perhaps a more exact analogy here; see below.)
According to the parameters described earlier, which we consider
fundamental, the three “Adamic,” or “Abrahamic” monotheistic religions,
with all their differences, even irreconcilable ones, belong in a sense
within the frame of a single cultural type distinctly opposed to all others.
Differences between monotheistic and polytheistic world outlooks and
ways of life are enormous. One of the main distinctions is that polytheism
is religiously tolerant of heterodox polytheistic groups. The intolerance of
211 Ibid. 169–70.
161
foreign gods shown by monotheism, the refusal of its adherents to worship

them appears to have been one of the principal causes of early persecution
of both Jews and Christians, especially the most zealous ones.
As can be easily imagined, Roman authorities of the Imperial epoch,
with their fairly earthly pragmatism, lip service to and moderate equanimity
toward religious issues, saw in both Jews and Christians uncivilized and
not very intelligent fanatics persistently shoving their unpalatable, boring
and therefore unchallenged religious preferences — not exactly interesting
for anyone and therefore uncontested — in everyone’s teeth. In other words,
people who cannot enjoy life with its values and pleasures and prevent
others from doing so. What they would not tolerate was the attitude of these
fanatics toward authority, i.e. themselves, with its claim of sacredness. As
these views were spreading wider and the influence the Jews and, later,
Christians exerted on both the upper and lower classes of the Roman
population increased, the authorities had to recur to severe restrictions
and persecution. The troublemakers were accused, among other things, of
atheism — a charge far more serious than heterodoxy in the eyes of common
citizens still living within the framework of traditional values.
Rome of the early 1st millennium C.E. indeed had many items of value.
Even with all the atrocities of ancient — and Roman with all its notorious
corruption — history, this was the island of safety, law, order, hygiene and
the quite rare for that time relative well-being of citizens212 in the roaring
ocean of barbarism. So it was not accidental that the main zone of the ancient
Jewish Diaspora was in the Empire: of all the lands inhabited by Gentiles,
Rome offered the best chance of survival and even success.
However, the roaring breakers of the barbarian sea were already
beginning to assail the yet unassailable shores of the great isle, and the
more keen of hearing already heard the growing boom of the subterranean
faults fraught with an imminent earthquake. Less than a couple of dozens
generations will pass, and the urbs aeterna will fall.
It is rather fruitless to speculate about what would have happened if,
shortly after the fall of the Empire, the ocumene had not divided into the
Christian (even two main and several minor) and Muslim spheres, leaving
the place to the polytheistic heathendom it was before. History cannot be
analyzed after the manner of a game of chess or a musical play — perhaps
because it has not been played to the end yet, and, hopefully, never will be.
212 Even the slaves here had a somewhat better life than outside the Empire; however cruel
the rules of the game were, they were proclaimed, well-known and normally observed.
162
The Jews and the Strategy of the Species’ Sur v ival
We can still assume that the Jews would have much slimmer chances of
survival in that hypothetical world. Despite all the continual persecution of
the Jews in Christendom and the Islamic world, despite all the oppression
and humiliation inflicted on them by their “brothers in monotheism,” the
destruction of the Jews as such was seldom viewed by Christian and Muslim
authorities, either spiritual or secular, as something pleasing to God, or rightful.
To both Christians and Muslims (of course, we speak here of the
inflamed “spiritual” psyche rather than the common everyday attitude),
the Jews were a sacred if “improper” people, a witness to and participant
of the sacred history provoking a strange mixture of hatred, contempt and
awe. This people can be subjected to persecution, extreme extortion, forced
conversion and other forms of oppression, but no one can just erase them
from the face of the earth. You “cannot” do it both because you are not
allowed to and because it is impossible to achieve.
The attitude of Christianity to the Jews, as formulated by Augustine,
has also played its part in this: the pitiful life to which the Jews are reduced
proves the rightness of Christianity, because God has turned away from
the Jews — ergo, this proof has to be preserved. According to Muslims, the
Jews, even though not the adherents of the “true faith,” still worship the
same one God; they are yet ʔahl-ul-kitb, the people of the Book. The ardent
Jews, with their intolerance of beliefs other than their own, their claim to
the status of a chosen people, their values system that was fairly unusual
for heathens, would have hardly found similar safeguards in a polytheistic
world not bolted by the Roman state.
Does it mean that, to the great delight of those who like to talk
about a universal Jewish conspiracy, we are stating that the Jews created
Christianity and were conducive to the inception of Islam in order to pave
the way for their own survival?
THE JEWS AND THE STRATEGY

OF THE SPECIES’ SURVIVAL
We are coming to a matter still more controversial and hypothetical than

anything discussed earlier. As we have already pointed out, it can be assumed
that the main stimulus determining the functioning of any living being or
a community of living beings is the striving to survive (though there must be
certain exceptions open to discussion, e.g., suicide). In the course of history,
163
the human way of surviving has become increasingly intentional, an object

of reflection, a part of culture. It was transforming into a survival strategy.
This strategy manifests itself in what might be called axiological activity,
involving the search for various values, their selection and elaboration, as
well as the construction of complete system of values, i.e., axiology. Any
human society, any culture has a values system, an axiology of its own.
No matter how grotesque, fantastical, or irrational (from the standpoint
of the modern Western observer) are the forms this axiology sometimes
assumes — myth, magic, ritual — it always reflects and expresses this or that
survival strategy. The latter, naturally, is based on practical experience and
knowledge of the real world. Cognition, in the form of any accumulation
of experience and its interpretation, is the tool of axiology; its function in
regard to axiology is instrumental.
The axiological source of the new anthropocentric, humanistic
civilization is to a great extent to be found in the Bible, in the opening
chapters of Genesis. The tree of knowledge of good and evil (not just the tree
of knowledge!) can be interpreted as the allegory of axiology, not only of
knowledge as such. Is it possible that the words “The man has now become
like one of us, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:22) should be understood
so: after eating of the tree, humans have got such an idea of good and evil
(= system of values) as enables them to develop the only true strategy of the
species’ survival, and even become immortal (“live forever”) after taking
“also from the tree of life” (ibid.)?
What is the essence of this strategy of survival of man as a species,
then? The prominent Russian geneticist Vladimir Efroimson213 put forward
213 This is one of the “great Russian (or Russian-Jewish) lives” of the 20th century and
as such deserves to be shortly presented here (see Wikipedia). V.P. Efroimson (1908–
1989) is one of the most prominent Russian geneticists, a former student of Nikolai
Koltsov, who was among the geneticists that had to struggle against the persecution
of genetics in the Soviet Union. In 1929 Efroimson was expelled from Moscow
State University for his speach in defense of Serghei Chetverikov, the founder
of population genetics. In 1932 he published six scientific works and discovered
the formula of mutation rate in humans and in the same year was arrested for his
participation in the “Free Philosophic Society.” In 1935 he was freed and soon made
important discoveries in the silkworm genetics at the Trans-Caucasian Institute for
Silkworm Growing. In 1937 he was expunged from the institute under the pretext of
inefficiency of his works, the pure-bred lines of silkworms he had bred were killed
and his book “Genetics of Silkworm” published by the USSR Academy of Sciences
was destroyed. During World War II Efroimson fought in the army from August 1942
through November 1945 and was awarded military decorations. In February 1945
he reported to the Military Council of his Army about unacceptable excesses against
164
the following concept of the evolution of the genus Homo sapiens (his article
Родословная альтруизма [The Genealogy of Altruism] was first published
in the Novy Mir magazine in 1971 — four years before E. O. Wilson’s
Sociobiology popularizing similar ideas of this new and promising if
controversial scientific discipline).
Efroimson criticizes the widespread view about the inborn human egoism,
which allegedly follows from the Darwinian theory of natural selection, the
idea that everyone incapable of self-preservation ought to die out, making
way for those who survive sticking at nothing, using all available means to
destroy all foes and competitors. He refers to the Scottish anthropologist
Sir Arthur Keith who stated that conditions provoking war — the division
German civilians including the mass rape of German women. In 1946–1948 he

worked for Kharkov State University wherein he obtained his “Doktor Nauk” (Doctor
of Sciences) degree. In August 1948, after the infamous session at the Academy
of Agricultural Sciences which finally destroyed scientific genetics Efroimson
was stripped of his degree. In 1948 Efroimson wrote his report “On the Criminal
Activities by Trofim Lysenko” with an elaborate analysis of the activities by that
influential and sinister, pseudo-scientific figure. In 1949 Efroimson was sentenced
for his “Libel against the Red Army” to seven years in Gulag. The formal reason for
his arrest was his February 1945 report about the violence against German civilians
although the real reason was probably his criticism of Lysenko. In 1956 after being
freed from the camps he wrote reports to the Prosecutor General of the USSR “On
the undermining of agriculture in the Soviet Union and the international authority
of Soviet science” and “On the losses caused by pseudo-innovations in agricultural
biology.” In 1956–1961 he worked as a librarian in the Library of Foreign Literature,
Moscow; since 1961 he worked for the Mechnikov Institute of Vaccines and Serums.
In 1962 his doctoral degree was returned to him. In 1965 he received a prestigious
Mendel medal. In 1968 Efroimson became the head of the Genetics Department of
Moscow Institute for Psychiatry. In 1976–1989 he was a consultant for the Institute
of Developmental Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The main works of
Efroimson were devoted to the broader area of genetics including: the effects of
ionizing radiation, mechanism of carcinogenesis and radiation sickness, mechanism
of immunity genetics, genetics of human pathologies, etc. He wrote the first Russian
monograph on genetics, “The Introduction to Medical Genetics” (1964) — the book
that triggered the revival of human genetics in the Soviet Union. He was the author
of three monographs and over 100 scientific papers and the editor of many books
on different issues of genetics. The last years he worked on the genetics of social
behavior. With onset of Perestroyka, his results in all these areas were posthumously
published in three books: “Geniality and Genetics,” “Pedagogical Genetics”
(2003) and “Genetics of Ethics and Aesthetics” (1995). He is the author of many
philosophical works including his “Origin of Altruism” (1971). Efroimson entered
the annals of Russian science as an outstanding researcher, but also as an unblinking
fighter for the truth, an uncompromising opponent of antiscientific directions in
biology, an ardent advocate of genetics and the moral standard of a true scientist.
165
of animals into social groups, the “right” of each group to its own territory,
the development of the enmity complex aimed at defending those plots of
land — had emerged on the earth long before man made his appearance.
According to Keith, man has an inalienable, genetically programmed, passion
for domination, property, weapons, killing and wars. Efroimson considers
this reasoning only partially true and writes that it implies that “all ethical
principles in man are generated by upbringing, faith and conviction; those
are features that have to be acquired entirely anew by each individual in the
course of his personal development under the influence of environment, in
other words, [they are] not inborn. On the other hand, outbursts of mass
violence are more than the mere result of the cultivation of cruelty; they are
a reversion to animal instincts, to primeval, beastly properties that were being
suppressed for ages, being nonetheless entirely natural.” Attacking these
views, Efroimson demonstrates that “the enormous if contradictory potentials
to do good, which are being constantly revealed in man, also have genetic
nature; they are embedded in the genes owing to special biological factors
that played an important part in the machinery of natural selection and in
the process of evolution of our ancestors.” The author points out elements
of altruism in animal behavior (care for the young, instances of mutual help
among members of the same group/pack and so on), affirming that the gradual
growth of altruistic principle, social behavior turned out to be the conditio
sine qua non for the survival of the “unarmed bipedal ancestors of man
who descended from the safe trees to the ground swarming with powerful
predators” and the means of that survival during their further evolution.
Efroimson quotes the following passage from “The Ethics” by
P. Kropotkin:
It is natural that, from among the very large number of hominid species
with which man competed for survival, survived the one that possessed
better developed feeling of mutual support, the one in which the
preservation of the group prevailed over the preservation of an individual
that could at times endanger the clan or the tribe.
Getting back to the Foundation of Ethics section in the Chapter “Universal

Values” and Their Biblical Roots, in actual fact, I won’t be surprised, if
science establishes that it is precisely the flippant-minded young with their
fun who are the closest to the truth. It may very well turn out that good feelings
and deeds, love for the near and distant ones, satisfaction induced by the
duty fulfilled raise both the tone and immunity, serve as anti-depressants,
strengthen the endocrine system, lower the level of toxic substances in the
166
blood-stream, etc. Moreover, my colleague, a Moscow anthropologist, told

me that a comparative medical examination of two groups of people had
been undertaken in California not long ago — those with liberal, democratic
views and those with pro-fascist, totalitarian ones — and the first group
registered a much higher immunity level as a whole.
If all of this does not happen to be wishful thinking, then one can
suggest — following in Efroimson’s steps — the following process: at the
dawn of the history of the human species, inside those enclaves of humanity
that were successful in groping around for reliable survival strategy, based
on consolidating feeling of mutual support, “altruism” — individuals
endowed with these qualities proved the best survivors, and the ensuing
generations produced an increased incidence of these qualities, i.e. they got
consolidated on the genetic level. The organism also gradually adapted to
the changes in question on the physiological level as well: in the better
accommodated individuals the biochemical processes would progress
not entirely as they did in the less accommodated ones; the correlation
among behavior, genetic characteristics and psycho-physical condition of
an individual was reinforced from generation to generation.
Yet, a perilous question arises at this juncture. By a theory dominant in
today’s genetics, all modern humans directly descended from two persons,
although they lived thousands of years apart (most likely in East Africa).
One is the so-called “mitochondrial Eve” who is our matrilineal most recent
common ancestor generally estimated to have lived around two hundred
thousand years ago. The other is “Y-chromosomal Adam,” the patrilineal most
recent common ancestor for all living men roughly estimated to have lived
less than one hundred thousand years ago.214 To the best of my understanding
the following picture is implied. Two hundred thousand years ago of all the
female segment of the entire human population existent at that moment only
“Eve”’s progeny survived and a hundred years later — only “Adam”’s posterity
out of its entire male segment. The descendants of these two cross-bred “great
families” that migrated, as is suggested, out of Africa to Eastern Mediterranean
area around 40–60,000 years ago settled consequently in an exodus out of that
area all over the planet.215 The question of whether the results of adaptation
214 See Wikipedia, Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam.

215 A competing modern theory, known as the Multiregional evolution hypothesis holds
that the evolution of humanity from the beginning of the Pleistocene 2.5 million
years BP to the present day has been within a single, continuous human species,
evolving worldwide to modern Homo sapiens, in other words, that modern human
167
and correlative processes dealt with here had enough of a chance and time to
spring root and consolidate in the human kinds before the separation of the
original community, ergo go to characterize the entire species Homo Sapiens
Sapiens or consolidated their hold after it, ergo they characterize only a part
of human populations; yet a third possibility seems to be: these processes
never abated and go on to the present day and their results get unevenly
distributed among the populations and even among separate individuals.
The first version of an answer that would suit everyone as entirely kosher
means that all the groups of human population gone before their separation
through the stage of “altruization” and its consolidation on the genetic
and psycho-physical level are equal from the point of view of genetic and
psycho-physical predilection for the pattern of behavior that we consider
moral; the third, less “politically correct” version would mean that different
groups may be prone to such behavior to a different degree, but the situation
is dynamic and open for amelioration.
The worst of the three would be the second version of the answer
which suggests that some groups are prone to this behavioral pattern
rather more, others — rather less, the third — are not at all, but most
importantly — that is not wont to change, for the process of consolidation is
complete. From the above, an even more unsavory question stems — the one
about whether some groups had ever been able to survive due to the strategy
of mutual assistance, peaceful co-existence with the neighbors, curbing
rapacious instincts, and others — conversely — by way of aggression,
violence, etc., that, too, was to sink fast in the genes and the organism as
a whole. In this case the situation is, certainly, not hopeless either, though
hampered. Let us recall that genetics estimates the contribution of genes in
shaping the personality traits on the level of 40%. If that is, indeed, so — then
the “amelioration of morals” in groups and separate individuals genetically
and psycho-physically not inclined to “moral” behavior or prone to
“immoral”216 one will require much more strenuous efforts of humankind.
The “genealogy” of altruism attests to its growth starting with smaller
human units (families, clans) and then embracing increasingly larger groups:
populations evolved in situ in various regions (e.g. Neandertals to Europeans in

Europe, Homo Erectus to East Asians in Asia, Sumatran erectines to Indigeonous
Australians in Australia). See Wikipedia, Multiregional evolution hypothesis.
216 I am putting these terms in inverted commas, anticipating the objection that the
notion of what is good and what is bad varies from society to society, from culture to
culture, but I hope that the grounds for these notions are still common.
168
tribes, nations, religious or state unions and, finally, mankind. The mainstream
development of civilization of this planet seems to be hopefully heading in
that direction; it is this process that shows an anti-entropy tendency opposing
anti-universalistic, particularistic trends. Survival and further prosperity
of man as a species depends, in all likelihood, on the ability of different
states, religious confessions, vastly differing cultures and great and small
peoples inhabiting the Earth to reach an agreement and create such a unity
in diversity under which mankind, in pursuit of common interests and goals,
would be able to safeguard the rights of both any non-criminal group or
human community and any individual.
The historical phenomenon of the Jews fits in this somewhat simplified
picture with amazing snugness. The unusually great attention focused on
the idea of a single human race, the universalism and innovative activity
in combination with the rarely found, lasting for ages, adherence to their
ethno-cultural identity as well as other above-mentioned features, not to
mention the very fact of their living in the Diaspora,217 seem to indicate
that the Jews turned out to be that “pioneer group” of the genus Homo
sapiens which at a certain point undertook the task of developing one of
the strategies of the species’ survival — a strategy that, after negotiating
the complicated paths of history, became a prevalent one, being adopted
by many other human groups, perhaps even by the majority of mankind.
Why it had to be a small tribe occupying a quite unremarkable niche in
the ancient world by mid 1st millennium B.C.E. (rather than one of the
peoples who created the great civilizations and empires of antiquity, like
Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians or Persians) that came forward with this
universalistic axiology, is not quite clear.
In this connection, speaking of the old “Athens and Jerusalem” argu-
ment — i.e., is the Hellenic or Hebrew constituent more important for
modern Western civilization — I make so bold as to affirm that the Greek
contribution to this civilization, from the Classical through the Late
Hellenistic period, while having played an extremely important part in the
evolution of cognition, including its such advanced forms as philosophy,
science, arts, and aesthetics, is still much less significant than the Hebrew,
Biblical component as regards its contribution to the system of basic values,
ethics.
217 As I’ve tried to demonstrate elsewhere, not only a forced living in the Diaspora, but
rather a deeply rooted “Diaspora mentality,” the perception of it as an inalienable
and inevitable part of their historical “mission.”
169
That which we refer to as the ratio between cognition and axiology as

the survival strategy, could be demonstrated via human attitudes toward
the supernatural. At the stage of borderline survival, man sought for
patrons and protectors beyond the immediately perceived reality where he
lived, among his ancestors or zoomorphic and anthropomorphic phantoms
who were supposed to be more powerful than himself.218 As the human
experience of surviving accumulates, the “altruistic” constituent of the
species behavior — mutual help and support on larger and larger scale — is
increasing and gains more importance. The necessity to survive is also
gradually shaping a new survival strategy: many scattered human “packs”
are merging together to form increasingly larger and better organized
communities — tribes, peoples, states. This strategy has a new values system
to match, including a new mythology. Family and tribal ancestors, puny tribal
and local gods make way for more large-scale deities who protect larger
human units. Entire pantheons of gods come into existence, and primitive
magic is gradually replaced with intricate ritual systems.
Finally humanity, represented by the ancient Hebrews and several Greek
schools of thinking moving in parallel directions, become aware of its unity.
Thus the range of “altruism” extends to embrace the whole species. A part of
mankind begins to change its survival strategy. Kept intact, “crystalized” and
unperturbed for ages in the canonical text of the Scriptures, universalistic
ideas of the Bible gradually spread across the Hellenistic ocumene by the
growing Jewish Diaspora and “Judaicized” gentiles and eventually find
fertile ground for inculcation and rapid growth. The ground is that of the
Roman empire, a state entity that erected itself “on the shoulders” of the
ancient Greek civilization and unified under its rule numerous and vastly
different ethnic and cultural communities presenting in a sense a model of
one future humanity. That great formation was closer than any other to the
adoption of the universalistic values system, one of whose main components
is the idea of the protector, defender and authoritative guarantor of the new,
the entire species axiology — the one God of all men.
As mankind consolidates its position on the planet, the conditions for
the survival of the species hopefully become more secure and the “altruistic”,
humanistic component of the values system gains more and more weight
218 On the hypothesis of the earliest notions of the supernatural having rooted in the
reflection on death and possible postmortem existence see section Life After Death
and the Biblical “Agnosticism” of Chapter “Universal Values” and Their Biblical
Roots above.
170
A Chance Congruence of Factors or a Design of Mother Nature?
while concurrently scaling back the need for the supernatural patronizing,
interceding force and accordingly — the necessity to believe in it. If some of
the groups in the vanguard of the anthropocentric civilization keep religious
beliefs, their faith will less and less feed on the fear of reality and the
subconscious feeling of species weakness and helplessness;219 it will have
different — more and more personal, creative, freely chosen — motivations.220
A CHANCE CONGRUENCE OF FACTORS

OR A DESIGN OF MOTHER NATURE?
Let’s now attempt to arrange the hypotheses, explanations and historical

facts we discussed earlier in a sort of sequence, going on the assumption that
the hypothesis concerning the non-accidental nature of Jewish historical
experience is true. Is there some inner logic underlying not only individual
links of this metaphorical chain but the chain as a whole? In other words,
is there a chain?
The starting point: at a certain stage of evolution, a new kind of living
creature emerges: Homo sapiens sapiens. Judging by what is known of the
general direction taken by evolution from simpler to more complex forms, it
is possible to advance a cautious guess that nature (or, in religious terms, the
Maker)221 has intended the species in question to dominate the Earth — maybe
219 Of course, another overpowering and insurmountable motivation of religious belief

will persist — the only natural fear of death.
220 If our reasoning is not groundless, then there is hope that today, when we observe two
trends — (a) the decline of religious consciousness in general and of the attraction of
Jewish religious tradition in particular and (b) the growth of individualistic values — it
is the realization (such realization, as it seems, is at variance with neither religious
nor humanistic values) of the Jews’ role (“mission”) in the “world improvement”
(tikkun olam) process that will perhaps become the basis for a rebirth of Jewish self-
awareness and even for a rapprochement between different ideologies within the Jewry.
221 In this context, the difference between God and nature is irrelevant. If there exists
an ultimate intelligent power, it acts only through “nature”, i.e., the all-embracing
system of laws created by said power. Acting differently — for instance, breaking the
laws of nature by, say, working miracles — God would have violated the principle of
freedom of human will (which he himself introduced; who else?), forcing man into faith
and obedience through irrefutable evidence of his existence. (The Russian religious
philosophy of the late 19th–20th centuries laid much focus on this controversial
subject.) As for the controversy between religious and modern (“post-Judaism” and
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even not the Earth alone — as well as to achieve eventually a rational

organization and preservation of the environment. Perhaps that’s why,
after a long history of purely predatory exploitation of natural resources,222
mankind begins to think about environmental protection in earnest, taking
practical steps in that direction.
Man begins to actualize his historical purpose by spreading across the
Earth in small separate groups speaking more and more divergent languages
that become mutually incomprehensible. In his dire struggle for survival
against other species, including ones very similar to him (like the Neanderthal
man), that compete for domination in the universal contest run by Mother
Nature, he is searching for an optimum strategy of survival. This strategy
develops down the pathway of developing speech abilities and language
structures, social consolidation, corporatism and altruism which transforms
small individual groups, often in conflict with one another, into increasingly
larger and more cohesive communities — the latter kind has better chances
“post-Christian”) secular mentality in the “God or Nature” issue, it boils down to

three principal points that distinguish the one from the other: personality, ideal and
freedom. Unlike nature, God as represented in Judaism and Christianity is perceived
by us as a person, regardless of our status as believers, agnostics or atheists. He is
the embodiment of the ideal of man evolved by this historical civilization — an entity
incorporating good, truth, mercy, love and fatherly justice. Lastly, he is absolutely free,
“omnipotent” in his powers. It is these most important features of the divine image that
give supplicants the hope that their prayers will be answered. Conversely, it would
not occur to anyone to pray to what we refer to as nature, though we do ascribe to it
certain actions not devoid of some consistency, inner logic and purpose. (Otherwise,
how would the Teacher Science explain to us simple souls craving for his truths
where did the evolution or biogenesis or the unthinkably sophisticated genome’s
design come from? Perhaps they emerged “spontaneously,” but then is “spontaneous”
not a synonym for nature?) Nature is impersonal, it has nothing to do with our
notions of good, evil, justice and the like. Besides, its freedom and omnipotence
are also restricted by the “laws of nature” the efficiency of which is proved not only
by increasingly sophisticated methods of science, but also by common everyday
experience. Religious mentality is expected to receive God’s miracles and retribution
with equal readiness, though it might grumble or even revolt. The modern secular man
expects no deliberate actions on the part of nature that are not “sanctioned” by science
and which it is not able to explain. On the other hand, being on the receiving end of
some nature’s inevitable foul “deed,” he has no right to complain; you can’t blame
anyone for an earthquake or typhoon, except perhaps the weatherman.
222 It is ascribed, probably not quite justly, only to our technologically advanced
civilization; let’s remember though that the transformation of the Sahara into an arid
desert, was caused¸ if we are to believe one of the existent explanations, by the
irrational pasture cattle-grazing.
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of survival. The logical direction of this change is toward interaction,

communication and, ideally, global unification. To achieve this, humans
have to become aware that they constitute a single community, a single kind
of living beings. Intuitively picked out and experientially reinforced ways
of survival that were originally obtained through the trial and error method
become implanted, according to Efroimson, both on the genetic and cultural
planes. Greater success at surviving shown by this or that group manifests
itself in better quality of life and faster population growth. We can judge how
successful these ancient groups were largely by the current spread of their
physical descendants (recent achievements of population genetics make this
simpler now) and of the languages that derive from the proto-languages the
groups in question once spoke.
Quite naturally, we must look for cases of the more consistent
development of survival strategy and the more noticeable vestiges of its
success among the more advanced of the known pre-historical and ancient
cultures. The speakers of Proto-Afrasian, as the likely creators of the
Natufian and Post-Natufian archaeological cultures, whose descendants
founded great ancient civilizations, seem to fit the bill perfectly. It is obvious
that the Egyptians and the Semites were those two branches that, of all the
direct linguistic descendants of the proto-Afrasians, carried on their cultural
tradition. However, the Egyptian civilization, as well as most of those created
by peoples speaking Semitic languages (Eblaite, Babylonian, Assyrian,
Ugaritic, etc.) are long dead; they represent some of the greatest peaks of
the particularistic, pre-universalistic stage in the development of mankind.
The Hebrews (and the Greeks, in a way), on the contrary, introduced
the universalistic stage. It is possible to understand why it was they — one
of the peoples inheriting the great Common Semitic and Afrasian cultural
tradition — that proved capable of such an achievement. What is less
understandable is why they alone of all those “cultural heirs” did it, though
searching for an answer doesn’t appear entirely hopeless. Certain facts might
be worth remembering in this connection — e.g., let us remind ourselves at
this juncture that both the geographical position and constant shifting around
the Near East put the Jews in a position to maintain close contact with the
great civilizations of the 2nd–1st millennia B.C.E. and to learn much from
them, whereas the ancestors of other Semitic peoples that have survived to
this day — Arabs, Ethiopians and the communities now speaking the extant
languages of South Arabia — inhabited the periphery of the ancient cultural
world. Speaking of the great civilizations as such, it seems that the feeling of
self-sufficiency and cultural superiority typical for each of them (especially
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for Egypt, where these features preserved up to the latest stages of its history)
prevented them from showing too much interest in foreign cultures and from
perceiving themselves as part of a bigger human whole.
Let’s now try to figure out what would be the course of action taken by
a human community basing its historical behavior on the mythical notion
of being a chosen people that has a mission — aimed at no less than the whole
of mankind — to accomplish. In other words, how would a group, a part of
the species that, in groping for survival has instinctively (or consciously?)
made — or imagined to have made — a major breakthrough in the search
for an optimum survival strategy, behave? Or, to put the question more exactly:
how would nature itself “lead” that group in accordance with the vector of
the evolutionary process?223 Let’s consider all possible ways of spreading
and implanting this new strategy = axiology. They seem to be relatively few:
— the creation of the axiology as such, its structuring, regularization,
and giving it a sacred status (sacred teaching, revelation from high,
canon, etc.);
— the demonstration and propagation of new ideas;
— the physical spreading of the propagators of these ideas with the
aim of implanting them on the biggest possible territory and — by
examples of their behavior or their success — attracting new
followers;
— the partial merging with or assimilation by other groups
(“infiltration”);
— the initiation of similar value systems/ axiologies adapted for other
groups but preserving what the initiators think essential;
— being continuously or sporadically in the focus of attention of the
biggest possible number of other groups.
The preservation of the “vanguard group” itself is, of course, the
prerequisite, the indispensable condition of the success of the whole
business. This condition is, in a sense, at variance with the mission of that
group, since this historic work involves running high risk, whereas self-
preservation consciously aimed at the ultimate survival is best compatible
with stability, cautious unobtrusiveness, inconspicuousness and the general
“keeping oneself to oneself.”
223 To note inter parentheses: when an animal species consolidates its position and
attains a better status in the environment, this process must similarly have been
started by a smaller group within the species and then extended in some way to the
whole species.
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As noted above, no people but the Jews combine paradoxically in their

historical behavior the two strategies: preserving the impregnable core of
the nation (cf. in The Factor of Genetics section of the Chapter Why the
Jews? the story of cohanim who turned out to be closely related by the
Y-chromosome) and striving to accomplish their mythical (evolutionary?)
mission. The latter trend is being actualized using all the methods we have
just listed, and it is only to be expected that the milestones of this activity
stand out as unique events and phenomena of human history. These — while
not particularly numerous, it seems — include:
— initiation, collection of all parts, editing and departmentalization of
the Scriptures, i.e. the creation of the canon and “sacralization” of
the axiology;
— its “presentation” and propagation among gentiles (the translation
of the Hebrew Bible into Greek);
— the spread of the Jews via the Diaspora;
— the occasional assimilation of parts (never the core!) of the
community;
— initiation of comparable axiologies adapted for the needs of other
groups while keeping intact what the “initiating group” qualifies as
the most substantive (monotheism, anthropocentrism, “adamism”,
a concept of linear history, cognition as a value) — see Chapter
“Universal Values” and Their Biblical Roots): setting Christianity
going and a passive, perhaps, but significant role in initiating
Islam;
— innovative activity and sporadic vigorous involvement in various
historical events and developments (a manifestation of the famous
“Jewish energy”).
If, starting from a certain moment in history, we apply this viewpoint to

historical events that Jews were involved in making happen, they will
strangely look more like a well-planned scenario rather than like an average
statistically probable sequence of random episodes.
The questions are: to what degree this activity started and continues
as conscious on the collective and personal plane (meaning the named and
nameless authors of the Biblical texts and ideas, the leaders and teachers of
the people, etc.) and to what extent and when the Jews as an entire community
realized their supposed historical mission? Or, resorting to a fashionable
term: can we regard the most outstanding instances of their activity, both
literary-ideological and socio-political, as “projects”? I rather think we can.
175
For instance, what does the following remarkable fact testify to, if
not the authors’ sophisticated logic and deep insight? The first chapter of
Genesis gives us an almost exact, if simplified, picture of the emergence
and evolution of the universe and the Earth as seen by modern science:
(a) the creation of inanimate nature out of the “void” or “emptiness” (the
famous Biblical th wa-b̲h);224 (b) the biogenesis and evolution of
living forms from simpler to more and more complex, until it culminates
in (c) the emergence of man. Only a thoroughly developed (for its epoch,
of course) anthropocentric — and, at the same time, teleological, asserting
purposeful evolution — perception could have given birth to such a logic of
development, which progressed from the most distant (in relation to man)
items of creation to the making of man himself as the culmination of the
entire process. I see no other rational alternative to the purely religious
explanation of the Biblical account of the Creation.
Another example is represented by Christianity, which can also be
regarded as a consciously planned project, an implementation of the ideas
of a certain school and tradition. In this respect, Christianity is similar, in its
historical “design” (of course, not from the point of view of their value), to
such projects as, e.g., Communism or Nazism: the latter two also have a long
224 The second verse of Bereshit, The Genesis: “wə-hʔrs hyt th wa-b̲h”,
translated not quite adequately, “Now the earth was formless and empty” (Gen 1:2).
The etymology of these rather obscure terms throws light on their primary meanings:
1. Hebrew th “wilderness, wasteland, desert; emptiness, nothing” (as in HALOT).
The original meaning must be “desert” continuing Semitic *tVhw- “desert” related
to the verb *tw/yh “to go astray, lose one’s way (in the desert), perish; be perplexed,
afraid”: Ugaritic thw “steppe, desert”, Aramaic: Syrian twh “to be alarmed, startled”,
Arabic t–h- “wilderness”, twh “to get lost (crossing the desert), wander about; be
perplexed”, tyh “to wander about, get lost”; Ethiopian: Geez tayyhi “fearful,
terrified”, Tigre twh “to wander about”. This common Semitic term, in its turn,
continues Afrasian *thw/y “to lose one’s way, be lost, perish”: Egyptian thy “to go
astray, transgress, trespass, err”; West Chadic: Hausa tawai, tawaiwai ‘being at a loss,
perplexed (e.g. which road at a fork to follow)”, Bolewa twu “to stray from road”
and East Cushitic: Dirasha taw-ad- “to get lost, perish”, etc.
2. Hebrew bh “emptiness, wasteness.” This somewhat abstract meaning goes
back to Semitic *bahw- “cavity, void, gap” inherited by Arabic bahw- “chest or
abdomen cavity”, bh-in “hollow, void”, etc. and Ethiopian: Tigrai bəhahu “fully
open, ajar, gaping” continuing Afrasian *bahw- “pit, cavity, hole” yielding East
Cushitic: Oromo boww “cliff, abyss, canyon, deep natural rift, gulley,” Darasa
bwoʔaˋ “precipice, chasm, abyss” and South Cushitic *boho- “pit, hole.”
A more exact translation of the verse based on etymological considerations would
be: “And the earth was (a) desert and void.” The rendering of th as “formless”
seems groundless.
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history of ideas behind them, as well as the apparent conscious will of those
figures who put these ideas — when ripe and in demand — into practice. With
certain reservations, this similarity might be extended to a number of historical
events, like the conquests of Alexander the Great,225 Napoleon,226 etc.
The propagation of the new principles, the adoption of the new strategy
by a sufficiently large part of mankind requires certain historical conditions
that were initially absent. So they begin to take shape.
Novel ideas are not in demand in the world of mid-1st mil. B.C.E.; even
the Jewish culture that had gradually worked out the new ideology through
painstaking efforts and insights of its intellectual elite is only able to embrace
and try putting into practice those of its aspects that are at least partially
compatible with the prevalent notions of the epoch. Finally, after a torturous
process of indoctrination that witnessed many relapses into paganism, the
idea of monotheism takes root among the bulk of Jewish population. Every
effort of spiritual leaders is directed at rallying the Jews around this idea, at
preserving the people in the difficult situation when most Jews are scattered
between Palestine and Mesopotamia, the Temple is destroyed, and they
have no state of their own. Only the centripetal constituent of the model
works under these conditions. The entire body of the recently developed
ideas has to be safely preserved and conserved for the time being, which is
eventually done by the 3rd–2nd cc. B.C.E., when we have the Scriptures in
their final — or nearly final — form of a canon.
This is not enough, however; the new ideas have to be spread abroad in
a gradual, cautious manner. Given the current situation, this can be done in
two ways. Firstly, through immediate communication, for example, by word
of mouth: by the turn of eras, the larger and smaller Jewish communities
disperse all over the Hellenistic ocumene and some beyond, covering larger
areas than before. Jews living outside Palestine outnumbered those staying
in Palestine by far; they were spread throughout Egypt, North Africa,
Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Greece, the Mediterranean islands, Italy, the Crimea
and Caucasus, Persia and, probably, further eastward. Secondly, it is possible
225 The pre-Hellenistic tradition devised a new value system, the ocumene “matured”
to the level of imbibing it and Alexander — fostered and tutored by Aristotle
personifying this value system to a considerable extent — took upon himself the
mission of instilling it.
226 A comparable situation: the new axiology, for which the way was paved by the Age
of Enlightenment and the Great French revolution and the grand Napoleon’s scheme
to instill it in the “backward” anachronistic world — the Ottoman Empire, Russia,
Spain, etc. — to the benefit of its population.
177
to make the Scriptures available for the neighboring peoples by translating

them into Greek, the international language of the Hellenistic world. And
so, a literary project stupendous in its scale is undertaken by certain Jews
in Alexandria,227 who toiled away in the course of several generations of
translators’ lifetimes — as a result of which the Hebrew Scriptures become
the Greek Septuagint. Admittedly, this “broken” Greek is teeming with loan
translations from Hebrew and a Greek must have had a hard time figuring
it out; we may also admit that the end goal of the project was educating
the Jews of Egypt who had increasing difficulties with understanding
Hebrew (even if it had been undertaken at the edict of the Egyptian king, the
profitable commission may hardly have been the only incentive for the Jewish
translators). The result is in evidence in any case: the Hellenistic world was
given an opportunity to get acquainted with the Jewish Scriptures.
The time of the breakthrough is drawing near. Rome becomes a great
empire, a model of a single world, despite all its diversity. It is multi-ethnic
and religiously tolerant, although it has a fashion for a uniform culture and
lifestyle — at least among the upper classes of the metropolis and provinces.
Traditional local cults gradually lose their attraction, primarily in the eyes
of the above-mentioned upper classes. The quality of life superior to that
outside the empire also contributes to the development of universalistic
mentality. However, it all seems to be happening in an ideological vacuum:
there are no novel, “fresh” ideas to match the new mode of thought. The
ground for the new axiology is prepared; it is time to sow the seeds.
By the 1st c. C.E., Jewish ideas are sufficiently widespread in non-
Jewish milieu. According to various modern estimates, people identified
as Jewish constituted 7 to 10 percent of the total population of the Roman
Empire at the turn of common era. This makes four to six million people,
compared to the estimated one million or even less living in Palestine at
that time. This phenomenon can be explained most satisfactorily by mass
conversions to Judaism.
However, this is obviously not enough to make the universalistic
survival strategy dominant in the Hellenistic world. It seems that the new
values system is initially more popular with the elite than with the bulk of the
heathen population. The Hebrew Scriptures are available only in a difficult-
to-read translation into a peculiar kind of Greek. They are much too long-
227 The megapolis with the world’s largest Jewish (historians estimate it in the range
from several hundred thousand to half a million people) and multitudinous Greek
population.
178
winded, much too overloaded with extraneous and uninteresting — especially

for the Gentiles — themes and details; they are much too ethnocentric. While
necessary for the consolidation of the Jewish population and for keeping it
within the faith of Yahweh, the strict rules and precepts and the emphasis
laid on the chosen status of the Jews are bound to repel the Gentiles. A new
colorful “summary” of Biblical texts is now in demand; a summary free from
all that is superfluous, obsolete and no longer of interest to both the Hellenistic
world with its complete and partial new converts to Judaism and a significant
part of the Jews, themselves powerfully influenced by the Hellenistic culture,
especially in the Diaspora. These population groups might form a responsive
audience of the old teaching updated and adapted to the new conditions.
However, the text in question has to comply with a number of
requirements to be popular. It ought to be written in the most understandable
Greek. Its creators must take into account the novelty of monotheism for
a polytheistic audience, the wavering attitude toward this issue on the part
of the “Judaicized” milieu and the “Hellenized” Jewish periphery; they must
make some concessions to the popular polytheistic concepts of the divine.
Its purely Jewish constituent has to be made less pronounced, since it would
be intended for everyone, definitely not for the Jewish “core.” On the other
hand, the new Scripture must not reject the authority of the existing Biblical
texts and the Law upon which the “core” firmly rests, though the possibility
of conflict and schism is to be taken into account. However, of the two
tasks — to preserve the core of the nation and to spread the doctrine further
abroad — the former task is more or less complete at this stage: the people,
on the whole, sticks to monotheism and observes the Law, the universal
literacy among the Jews rests on the Book, the Second Temple is built anew.
To accomplish the latter task, the centripetal component of the model has
now to give way to the centrifugal one.
The new text should by no means be composed as a narrative of the
bygone times, an endless list of legal norms, rules and prohibitions, or as
an abstruse treatise. Rather, it should be a popularly understood moral sermon
accessible for a Lybian slave’s and Syrian land-tiller’s comprehension while
comprising at the same time intimations of Biblical wisdom of the highest
order — also capable of evoking interest in a Roman nobleman conversant
in Greek philosophy. In this text, the ancient Hebrew prophets’ vigor and
passion must revive. Finally, it must be a living testament to something
happening at once here and now — and always, in eternity. The most
important thing, though, is to respond to the expectation: by the middle of the
1st century C.E. both in the Hellenistic and in Hebrew milieu the expectation
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of large-scale sweeping changes is acutely tangible. Jews are expecting the

Messiah. The oikumena population is awaiting the end of the world.
What has this decisive “something” to be, then, to make the sermon
successful? Is there anything else to conquer those spectacle-loving, miracle-
craving pagan and half-Jewish masses with? That thick dough wants a pinch
of leaven — a living myth, a handful of déja vu — never seen before yet, but
vaguely familiar wondrous events surfacing from some “nooks and crannies”
of the archaic subconscious, from the mythologized past, rumor of which is
capable of setting off the avalanche of popular emotions.
This is where the wandering Pharisee rabbi Jehoshua-Jesus from Nazareth
comes in, in the background of multiple other Jewish preachers of that time.
He comes in strong with his sermon put together in a precise ratio between
keeping the old axiology intact and anticipation of a new expanded audience
and orchestrated by a drama of personal destiny conceived and acted out as
a work of a genius. Then, hot on the heels of these events, 20–30 years later,
the “Letters of the apostle Paul” start spreading around, where the gist of the
new teaching is expounded, and the brilliant polemicist, theorist and organizer
Saul-Paul makes the new doctrine fully “marketable.” Together with other
participants of the project he gets down to building the organizational network
of the nascent movement all over the Roman world and some beyond.
With the aim of using the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures, the most
“universalistic,” panhuman (or allowing of being interpreted as such)
individual passages are being picked out from the old texts: from the
prophets — Isaiah, Hosea, Zachariah, from the Psalms, certain excerpts
from Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Genesis, the Book of Jonah. The
consolidation and development in Judaism of the trend represented by the
Prophets (viz., the prevalence of ethics giving rise to what will be later
known as the “universal values” and of the principles of social justice over
a religious cult whose nature was much more hermetic and ethnocentric) is
a very important manifestation of universalism.
I, sure enough, am far from promulgating the idea that everything was
acted out by a pre-arranged scenario. It is unwarrantable to doubt that Jesus
was a historical personage and the Gospels, at their foundation, have quite
real events and a real sermon delivered as a paragon of the most outstanding
Biblical texts; it is hardly within the realm of the possible to invent
something like this. Apparently, Jesus, who had the perception of self as
of a long-expected Messiah, was one of the most talented Jewish preachers
throughout the entire history, a profound connoisseur of the Scriptures and
quite an inimitable personality.
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The idea of Messiah’s advent somewhat vaguely outlined in some of the

prophets, in the book of Daniel, in Qumran literature, in the pseudo-epigraphs
received a powerful impetus in the epoch of general expectation of the end
of the world. By that time it had not acquired the canonized teaching status
yet was already embraced and accepted by both the elite and the Jewish
masses leaving many opportunities for theological and literary creativity
rampant in minor and marginal schools and sects. The main difference of
the new teaching with the canonical is the promulgation of Jesus’ divine
nature,228 the one and only notion totally unacceptable for most Jews.229
It appears obvious that this teaching — its universal character notwith-
standing — was intended for the Jews in the first place (“These twelve Jesus
sent out with the following instructions: ‘Do not go among the Gentiles or
enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel,’ ”
Mt 10:5–6), which is only natural at the first stage of the project.
Yet, news of it could not have failed to spread about — the time and place
for the entire drama’s culmination point had been selected unmistakably.
For the celebration of the Pentecost festivals Jerusalem had played host
to “Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and
Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of
Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism);
Cretans and Arabs … ” (Ac 2:9–11). Let us add to them “ … an Ethiopian
eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace,
queen of the Ethiopians”230 (ibid. 8:27) and we end up with nearly all of the
inhabited world known circa that time, perhaps less India and China.
Not surprising either is the fact that the four gospels and other New
Testament texts were popularized in Greek translation,231 though the Jews
228 In post-Biblical Judaism, the Mashiah is definitely described as a mortal man.

229 There are many others, of course, like the Christian notions of Trinity, the original
sin and atonement through the death of Jesus, etc.
230 In fact, Candace [Kandaka] was the title of the queen of Meroe, a state situated to
the north of the Blue Nile and White Nile confluence.
231 It is presumed, though, to my knowledge, neither definitively proven nor refuted,
that a certain text (or several such texts) in a West Semitic language — Aramaic or
Hebrew — stands beyond the canonic Greek Gospels or at least their separate parts. It
is believed that certain word collocations and expressions testify to that, uncommon
or not quite common for the Greek koine of its time and possible to explain as
Semitisms — loan translations from Aramaic or Hebrew. See in the Appendix my
arguments in favor of the “proto-text” — rather in Hebrew than Aramaic — in my
paper “The Significance of Etymology for the Interpretation of Ancient Writings:
from the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament” (examples 9–11b).
181
of Palestine, the more educated among whom had a command of Greek,

yet spoke Aramaic in the 1st–2nd centuries C.E. And though the Jerusalem
Christian community looks disapprovingly, it would seem, at the sermon
of the gospel in the non-Jewish milieu and even the “Apostle to the
Gentiles” — Paul himself seems to occasionally experience grave doubts
on this score, but the seed has been planted: one of the most profound
tectonic shifts in the course of world history has been set in motion. The
shift, that is, easily deduced from the condition of Hellenistic culture,
from “the geopolitical situation” in the world and distribution of forces
in the Empire, social tension and intellectual fermentation, along with
the combination of these and other circumstances, but for some reason
accidentally (as we have seen repeatedly throughout Jewish history) initiated
precisely by Jews in little provincial Palestine.
The sermon of Jesus, judging by the synoptic gospels, to a much greater
degree is based on the Biblical canon and the norms of Judaism generally
accepted at the time than the teaching preached by Paul and his followers,
who by virtue of their doings make the next, telling step in paving the way
for Christianity to assume two and a half centuries down the road the status
of a state religion of the Roman Empire and spread around half the world.
At the initial stage of a slow-paced and limited spread of Christianity
the part of Jews embracing it is very great. The problem of the role played
by the Jewish Diaspora and proselytes of Judaism in spreading Christianity
does not seem exhaustively studied so far, though, during the first two or
three centuries of our era, it must have been enormous. At the early stages of
Christianity, both its leaders and followers doubtless perceived themselves
as adherents of Judaism and the solely rightful upholders of the Biblical
tradition, in which they perfectly resembled other numerous and competing
schools and trends of Judaism of that time. Roman authorities and non-
Christians regarded early Christians in exactly the same way — as another
Jewish sect. Moreover, other schools of Judaism viewed them up to a certain
point as they viewed one another, i.e., as Jews and gerim, but improper ones.
The Hellenization, or “de-Judaization” of Christianity speeded up
in the second half of the 2nd century, when scholars who carried on the
tradition of Classical ancient philosophy (Justin the Philosopher and other
“apologetics”) became engaged in developing its ideology. However, the
overtly Jewish component in Christianity seems to remain very significant
until the Council of Nicaea (325). But even after it, in the late 4th century, the
passionate anti-Jewish sermons of John Chrysostom, that were forerunners
of Nazi propaganda, were intended for the “Judaicizing Christians” whom
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he condemned for observing Sabbath and Jewish holidays, pilgrimage to

the sacred Jewish places, visiting the synagogues, turning to Jewish courts
and circumcision. Even in the iconoclasm of the 8–9th centuries with all
the fanciful intertwining of social and political interests of the time the
reverberations of the same Judaic component are still tangible.
Since then, the Jewish Diaspora proper is severely reduced as a result of
assimilation processes (“Here there is no Greek or Jew”). The Jews ceased
to be a prominent ethnic minority both in the Roman Empire and in adjacent
lands. Subsequent to the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Second
Temple, and another wave of dispersal, the Near Eastern Jewish core was
reduced to several comparatively small communities. As Christianity was
gradually paving the way for its triumphant march across the Old World, the
Jews were to close ranks, lie low and lick their wounds; in short, to concentrate
on survival. The centripetal component of the model works at full capacity
again. The slackening of the universalistic, international if often undercurrent
trend of the old doctrine, that was intercepted and modernized by the new
Christian teaching, has to be compensated for by an internal Jewish revision
and a new interpretation of the Scriptures, which quite naturally became
more difficult to read and understand as regards both content and language.
This challenge received an adequate response: the 2nd–7th cc. C.E.
witnessed the emergence of the Jerusalem and Babylonian versions of the
Talmud. These were entirely new texts combining the age-old Hebrew
mentality with the late Hellenistic influences; in some aspects, they differ
from the old Canon, according to many modern scholars, not less or even
more than the New Testament of the Christians. The universalistic tendency
shrinks, though it does not disappear altogether. The Talmud is a text
addressed to the Jews, a brilliant collection of “exercises” for perfecting the
mind, developing the antinomy of thought, the art of dialogue, and the skill
of paradoxical argumentation. The unbroken tradition of common literacy
among men was now concentrated on the Talmud: to read and study the Torah
meant, first of all, to read the Talmud; as for the Tanakh (the complete text
of the Hebrew Bible), it is now chiefly studied at special schools for rabbis.
At the same time, the Diaspora, which had been seriously depleted
by conversions to Christianity, began to consolidate and expand. The
Jewish Diaspora of the early medieval epoch was different from that of
the Hellenistic period: more impervious, closed to outside influences, less
successful economically and more backward culturally. Given the fall of
Rome and the general chaos, it was only natural that the Jews were pushed
even further into the periphery of the cultural ocumene.
183
Nevertheless, having gotten over these difficulties and having put on

some weight, that people, the everlasting bouncy tumbler of world history,
rolls over and starts waking from this temporary lethargy. Contact and
understanding between small Jewish colonies gradually spreading from
Britain to Yemen and from Morocco to China greatly contributed to the
success of transnational trade. The evidence provided by Chrysostom at
the end of the 4th century is of unique value: he claims that Jews, devoid
of their home country and dispersed throughout the entire world, become the
teachers of this world — successfully competing with Christians in doing so.
Important changes that are yet to play a great role in Jewish and world
history occur in the early 7th century: Muhammad comes up with the Qur’an
and Islam begins its conquest of the Middle East and North Africa. The Jewish
and Christian roots of Islam are quite obvious, if insufficiently studied:232
in many of its important tenets (strictest monotheism, the transcendence of
God, etc.) Islam comes closer to — or departs less from — Biblical Judaism
than does Christianity. At any rate, certain Jewish groups have doubtless
merged with the Muslim majority of the Near East.233
Of course, Islam is also, in a sense, a step toward a single humanity.
However, unlike Christianity whose influence mainly embraced the
territory of the Roman Empire, Islam started as a form of “partial univer-
salism” — universalism for the East, a region which, after the collapse of the
great Near Eastern civilizations, became a cultural periphery and was much
less ready to adopt the new axiology. For all that, Islam provided a powerful
cultural impetus for this vast territory that lasted for several centuries.
Muslim centers successfully competed with the capitals of Christendom.
The Jews gained more than they lost as a result of that competition;
they obtained a greater freedom to maneuver. Despite the ideological
opposition of Judaism to the both greater religions, various limitations and
sporadic persecution, the Diaspora expanded and its elites came to occupy
a prominent, though invariably unstable, position in trade, finance (usury),
crafts, and free professions (medicine, etc.). It seems that the role of Jewry
232 In the linguistic aspect, besides well-studied Hebraisms in classical Arabic, usually
referring to the Jews, there seem to be some unrevealed Hebraisms (e.g. such a key
term as ha- “hajj” from hag — see Mil. Feast).
233 This process seems to have played a part in the ethno-genesis of certain groups
like the Palestinian Arabs who, according to recent genetic surveys, share certain
specific genetic differences with the Jews suggesting they, with the advance of
genetic techniques, might turn out to be genetically closer to the latter than they
would be happy about.
184
in the shaping of the world market during the late medieval epoch is not yet
fully appreciated. Apparently due to now lost, now re-established contacts
between Jewish communities all over the world234 it had to be, at the very
least, hugely out of proportion to the actual ratio between the number of
Jews and non-Jewish population.
The Jews again stick their head out of the shell here and there, resuming
their part of the world culture. Their position in the Diaspora and mastery of
many languages (including Arabic and Latin) made them mediators between
the worlds of Christianity and Islam. In the 11th–14th cc., an enormous
number of works on medicine, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and
other fields of knowledge were written in Arabic by both Jewish (e.g., Moses
Maimonides) and Muslim authors who were translated into Hebrew. Certain
works translated from Arabic into Hebrew, which had been earlier translated
into Arabic directly from Greek or via Syrian Aramaic (including texts that
are basic for Western philosophy and science — for instance, Aristotelian
works235) present a major contribution to the reclaiming by Europe of the
Classical ancient heritage. Many of these works were translated in the 13th–
16th cc. by Christian and Jewish translators from Hebrew into Latin, which
was important for the shaping of the future Renaissance movement. Jewish
poetry, philosophy, mysticism derived from the treasury of the Biblical
and Talmudic tradition and enriched by Jews’ acquaintance with works in
Arabic, Greek, Latin and, later, the new Romance and Germanic languages
especially flourish in Spain, beginning to influence European culture. In the
course of recent decades of years the role of Jewish kabbalistic teachings and
Christian kabbalism that branched off it is getting progressively highlighted
in the set of reading and even in the world outlook of a number of eminent
figures, prime movers of Italian Renaissance.
Favorable periods alternated with new ordeals — the crusades, the
Inquisition, the forced conversion to Christianity and Islam, European
religious wars … All these events, in combination with the decline of the
Islamic world and the eventual expulsion of Muslims and Jews from the
Iberian Peninsula, lead to the division, in the late 15th c., of the European
Jews into two major, increasingly divergent cultural zones — Ashkenazic
and Sephardic. Ashkenazic communities and small number of Sephardic
234 And, in all of them, due to mastering Hebrew to this or that extent, which provided
for sufficient mutual understanding.
235 Like Zerahyah’s Hebrew translation made in late 12th c. of Aristotle’s De Anima
based on the lost Arabic translation.
185
communities that joined them continued, on the whole, to grow and

thrive (though this process was never stable), preserving certain contacts
with Christian cultures of European countries, especially those strongly
influenced by the Reformation, a movement in general more tolerant
towards Jews. Together with Europeans, small groups of Jews explored new
lands in the Americas, India and China. As for the Sephardic Diaspora, most
of it became more and more capsulated, fading together with the Islamic
world into the background.
The Modern epoch opened new prospects for the Jews. In response
to the ideas of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the reforms
of Napoleon, the movement of the Haskalah (from ŝkl “to have insight,
be wise” used to render the idea of “enlightenment”) arose among the
Ashkenazim. The centrifugal tendency of the Jewish model got stronger
again. In the 20th century, this trend gained powerful acceleration. However,
Western civilization itself, with its deep Biblical roots and growing Jewish
component, now entered a dire crisis.
THE MEANING OF THE HOLOCAUST?
World War One lacked, as it seems, any fundamental ideological

underpinnings, yet it aggravated and laid bare the axiological rift in the
civilization process. However one cares to verbalize this rift it is reducible to
just two polarized positions with respect to anthropocentrism and humanistic
universalism. Deduced from the ancient Biblical model and charting its path
in a dotted-line fashion in the Jewish tradition, adopted by Christianity and
further developed in the European humanistic tradition the hierarchic system
of values was spawned: the good of united human race personified by
Biblical Adam, in latter-day parlance — Homo Sapiens — is superior to the
good of any of its parts taken separately. It is stemming from this principle,
from the notion of a human being as the image and likeness of God, from
the very best there was in the Torah and teaching of the prophets in the
area of ethics and social norms, that the priority of rights of every human
individual — each of the species making up the whole — has developed.
The opposite to this general principle is the particularistic principle that
asserts the priority of a nation (not differing much, on the surface, from the
ethnocentric trend in the Tanakh), a class, a religion, or any other community
186
The Meaning of the Holocaust?
over mankind and the individual; this principle, if it is translated into reality
in its utmost manifestation, will inevitably lead to irreparable conflicts,
totalitarian rule and anthropocide. In the period between the two world wars
the second principle found its full embodiment in Communism and Nazism;
one of the ominous accompanying symptoms of these processes was their
attractiveness to some groups of people, including some of the intellectual
elites of the civilized world, and an ambiguous wait-and-see or indifferent
attitude on the part of others. The civilized world was in a state of unstable
equilibrium — it was beyond any prediction whether it would head towards
anthropocentric, universalistic and anti-entropic tendencies taking over or,
conversely, would continue to slump deeper and deeper into the bogs of
universal hatred and animosity.
According to the proposed logic of the historical (or evolutionary)
process, tipping the scale in the direction of continued movement — achieved
at the cost of great sacrifices and great blood — towards anthropocentric
humanistic values, could only be achieved by a global event that, by
shocking the world, would make the peoples and their leaders see in horror
what retreating in the face of evil could lead to.
The Holocaust was such an event.
In the genocide of the Jews staged by the Nazi regime a principal
difference — of sorts — is discernible from all other atrocious genocides and
anthropocides of the 20th century, both those past and those that followed.
Sacrilegious as it may sound, the Holocaust was the only catastrophe of this
kind pronouncedly imbued with historical meaning.
All the others — be it the slaughter of Armenians in Turkey, the Nazi
extermination of the mentally ill or the Gypsies, genocide of one’s own
people through artificially-induced famine, global-scale reprisals and
deportations of the “national minorities” in the USSR, the mass murders
perpetrated by the Communists in Cambodia or by Islamists in Sudan —
all these are perceived as the ultimately senseless manifestations of human
viciousness and madness evoking the Ivan Karamazov’s wish to “hand back
the ticket” to God.
All the characteristics of the other atrocities fully apply to the Holocaust.
Yet, beyond this, something greater looms. About it one can say what on
the present-day level of historical process comprehension is impossible
to verbalize in connection with other mass catastrophes: it was only the
Holocaust that changed the civilized world.
Why was it the Holocaust? Why was not the world duly shocked by
the first large-scale genocide in the illuminated 20th century — the 1915
187
massacre of Armenians that was well known in the West? Why was the West’s
cowardly indifference and sympathetic attitude towards Communism not
affected by the sweeping war unleashed by the Bolshevist regime against its
own people;236 news of this war found its way to the West from time to time
only to be rejected or ignored.237 Even in the Soviet Union where the crimes
of the regime had affected practically every family and caused millions of
unwarranted deaths in the war against Nazism, even there the reaction of the
populace was inadequately moderate, and even that was invariably — and
unwittingly — triggered by some or other intriguing Kremlin boss struggling
for power: the passive opposition to the Communist ideology on the part
of the intelligentsia during the “Thaw” of the sixties, dissenting movement
of an even smaller its part in the seventies and eighties, or, finally, a wave of
exposés and denunciations in the media during the perestroika.
It seems quite unclear how, against this background of universal
indifference, the death of six million Jews had such a catalytic effect on the
otherwise extremely slow and languidly “toned-down” historical process,
which multiplies any positive experience by drop-size increments, if at
all. The Holocaust helped along what had been only prepared but far from
realized by the Christian civilization in its almost two millennia allowed for
it by history. The ethical principles and ideals inherited from their ancient
Hebrew and Greek prototypes have, in the intervening 2,000 years, become
accepted as a behavioral norm rather than a declaration by a relatively small
group of people, to say nothing of the norms of state policy, inter-group
relations and public life. But it was the impact of the Holocaust on the hard-
necked mankind (at least on its most prepared segment — Western cultures
spawned by Christianity) that egged on a sufficiently expeditious infiltration
of those principles and ideals in the consciousness of large numbers of
people and, consequently, on their becoming a real norm of behavior for
236 In that war casualties were counted by dozens of millions: according to some
estimates, which I am not competent to evaluate, the total loss was of the order of
60 million — ten times more than the estimated number of the Jews exterminated
in the Holocaust.
237 Or become the butt of outrageous jokes: let us recall the most famous European wit,
playwright and “free-thinker” Bernard Show who after returning from Moscow in
1933 publicly disclaimed reports of famine in Ukraine (deliberately forced by Stalin’s
regime, it killed no less than six million people) — not when he had partaken there
of one of the finest dinners of his life. For me, another case of moral deafness is
the infatuation of even such brilliant figures as Hannah Arendt, Paul Celan, Levinas
and Derrida — Jews at that — by Heidegger who combined refined philosophical
revelations with involvement with Nazism and support for Hitler.
188
The Meaning of the Holocaust?
a significant and growing number of people and the proclaimed norm of

operation for the growing number of state and public institutions.
Suffice it to recall the Nuremberg trials and the ensuing denazification
of Germany, the Marshall Plan and its motto “Never Again!” and, of course,
the event unprecedented in history: the sanction of the world community to
allow the people who had survived the genocide to create a national home.
Whatever the motives (from the most idealistic to the most mercenary-
minded and cynical) underlay the decisions of each of the states who lent
their support to the establishment of Israel, it was the pressure of public
opinion and the fear to lose face that compelled them to do so. Such a motive
was present even in the ambiguous position of the Soviet Union.238
One may, certainly, see in the institution of the state of Israel the secret
mainsprings of history239 or remonstrate that the determinant role was played
by the dramatically intensified ethnic self-realization of the Jews (wherein
ethnic is of paramount importance: let us not overlook the fact that Nazis
exterminated the Jews by their ethnic — not religious characteristics), the
process that actuated both the Jewish financial elite and the Jewish lobby in
the mass communications media and ruling circles — in the United States first
and foremost. Added to this may also be the consideration that throughout
the entire history of Israel’s struggle for survival, public opinion in various
countries and in the course of different periods has treated it differently and
still does so — ranging from compassion to indifference to malevolence.
All the aforementioned issues notwithstanding, the significance of
the reaction to the Holocaust in the West should not be underestimated.
Moreover, it did affect the rising anti-racist sentiments in the United States,
where racism had been legally acceptable until the 1950s–60s.
Does the obvious fact that the reaction to the Holocaust brought about
changes in the Western system of values and, consequently, that of mankind
as a whole — does it fit the pattern that the present book proposes? Let
238 I will venture a wary suggestion, that the loss by the British Empire of its
reputation of one of champions of “Western values” was due, among other things,
to its opposition, sometimes in a most cruel and inhuman form, to the coming of
Jews — especially the post-war Holocaust survivors — to Palestine and to the
recognition of the Jewish state.
239 Let’s recall a tale vaguely featured in literature about certain Jews from the Yeshuv
who prior to the decisive vote at the General Assembly of the United Nations came
with their compromising material to Rockefeller to blackmail him into rendering
pressure on some Latin American governments, somehow dependent on him, in
order to talk them over to vote for the creation of the Jewish state.
189
us consider once again the reaction of the Jews to the adversities of their
historical destiny over the past three thousand years.
Events in Biblical, post-Biblical and later Jewish history witness the
gradual slackening of the people’s “fighting spirit” — the semi-legendary
conquest of Canaan, wars against the Philistines, the Maccabean revolt,
the two anti-Roman “Judean wars” of the years 66–73 and 132–135 C.E.,
the uprising in Alexandria joined by Jews of many other regions of the
Roman Empire, several pro-Persian anti-Byzantine uprisings in Eretz Israel
in early 7th c. After that, however, there seem to be no hints evidencing
armed resistance — until the last century Jews’ clashes and wars with the
Arabs – to either the forcible Christianization or Islamization or medieval
oppression and expulsions, or inquisition, or — with few exceptions — to
the pogroms, and Nazi genocide. Why? Can this be traced not only to
the attitude towards persecution as “divine punishment” (the notorious
“victimity”) and an understandable fear of complete annihilation of the
people, but also to the taboo on anthropomachia, killing of humans? Not
only a conscious adherence to the “thou shall not kill” commandment, but
also as a ban — inculcated in the “ethnic subconscious” — to kill one of one’s
own species? (Welcome to compare the adherence to this commandment by
Christendom and Islam — obligatory for both — throughout their history...)
Strange as it may seem, it is perhaps the same “ethnic subconscious”
that is at work in the policy of the State of Israel. I fail to recall a precedent
in history involving several generations of statesmen (with vastly dissimilar
ideologies — ranging from the reconciliatory left to the militant right) waging
negotiations … on the return of territories captured as a result of defensive
wars — and giving them back in the end!
Let us also recall the unheard-of situation when one Israeli soldier taken
prisoner is exchanged for a thousand Arab prisoners or hundreds of convicted
terrorists. From the point of view of common sense it can be but perceived
as an irrational and even insane practice on the part of a government and
a society otherwise seemingly of sound mind: the released terrorists are
a threat to hundreds of new Israeli victims. People who lived their lives in
the totalitarian and, later, post-totalitarian quasi democratic state,240 find
240 To say nothing of the Soviet powers-that-be’s treatment as traitors of millions of

Soviet military men taken prisoners by the Germans during the Second World War
due to lack of weapon and ammunition (I wonder what else they were expected to
do. Kill themselves with bare hands?), the attitude of today Russia’s — and many
other states’ — military and civil authorities to the country’s citizens taken prisoners
by the enemy in any kinds of military actions is very cold, to say the least of it.
190
Anti-Semitism
it difficult to imagine that there exists a society (far from being an ideal
society in many respects, including the ethical241) in which the life of
a citizen is officially valued so highly — higher in a way than the interests of
the state. The state, it must be added, actually waging a permanent war.
ANTI-SEMITISM
Let’s try to examine the problem of anti-Semitism in the light of all that
has been said. It is obvious that, on the one hand, the negative attitude toward
Jews is a widely occurring kind of generic xenophobia. On the other hand, it
is equally obvious that anti-Semitism differs from other forms of xenophobia,
religious intolerance and cultural incompatibility in being more tenacious,
enduring, intense and diverse in its manifestations and motivation.
The seemingly paradoxical quality of what the Jews are charged with is
quite amazing. They are blamed at once for isolationism and aspirations to
world dominance; both for nationalism and for cosmopolitism; for having
invented Christianity (as a “Judaism for the goyim”) and for siding with
the Antichrist; for the creation of the exploitative capitalism and for the
revolutionary struggle against it; for the victory of Bolshevism in Russia
and for its collapse; for religious fanaticism and for atheism. On closer
examination, however, we see that all these accusations reflect, as in
a distorting mirror, the “paradoxical” Jewish model of behavior, the extremely
unusual nature of the Jewish way in history, its special “markedness.”
Having created the revolutionary anthropocentric values system, initiated
the new, universalistic way for the development of mankind, assumed the
leadership (or at least becoming one of the leading groups) in that process,
the Jews — or their spiritual leaders — have also taken the whole weight of
responsibility for these steps. Very likely, they did so consciously in a way
(certain texts in the Prophets seem to point that way), and they pay for it in full.
If there is any veracity in the allegation that any initiative is punishable,
what punishment should be inflicted on the insolent small group for choosing
the survival strategy for the entire species? The strategy risky enough at that,
warranting no guaranties — like any strategy for that matter!
241 Ideal societies non-existent on this globe, it’s a regrettable common knowledge that
corruption in Israel is exuberant for a democratic country — at all levels including
the government one at that.
191
From a certain point in time, the Jews share their responsibility for the
way they chose with those whom they made or who made themselves their
“traveling companions” — the peoples that adopted Christianity. (Islam,
as I pointed out more than once, occupies a special place in this order of
things, which is not quite clear to me.) The Christian world, it seems, has
been paying a much smaller price for its historical choice — its casualties for
it are much lower (much higher are those in the inter-Christian wars), given
the number of Christians in the world. As for the Jews, one might, three
centuries ago, get the impression that they had long abandoned the way of
universalism and innovation, receding into obscurity to survive, to live out
their days. However, as becomes obvious by the end of the first decade of
the 3rd millennium, this is not the case. The Jews are again in the center of
goings-on and active as never before.
The strategy of survival chosen by them proved in many ways
successful: the genus Homo sapiens doubtless dominates the planet,
a part of mankind attained a much better quality of life, the average life
expectancy of all humanity increased, it became more united, grew gentler
in some ways, etc., etc. This road is nonetheless painful and burdened with
inconceivable losses for all concerned — for those who pave it, for those
who travel along it willingly or who are driven (let’s remember the peoples
forcedly converted to Christianity), for those who just “get in the way.”
Of course, the alternative ways of survival used by individual peoples and
entire civilizations (Chinese, Indian, Moslem) are also painful in their own
way; they keep their own score of successes and losses. The tragedy of the
whole situation is that even now — when the anthropocentric civilization,
after sacrificing innumerable lives, apparently dominates the Earth — one
can’t be sure that the right strategy has been chosen and whether it leads to
survival, and whether that survival will be dignified.
What would contribute to finding answers, tentative at least, to these
questions is an international, inter-confessional and inter-cultural discussion
of these matters and an attempt now, at the dawn of the new millennium,
to develop consensual criteria and to find optimum solutions based on
scientific, professional approaches. However, a number of factors prevents
this: the methodology of systemic research in the humanities and social
science is not yet adequately developed; the sociological and statistical
data are incomplete (which attests to the dangerously flippant attitude of
governments and society toward the survival strategy of mankind); there
exists a high ideological and political tension in the world, one of whose
most vivid manifestations is the “Jewish issue.”
192
CONCLUSION
Let’s sum it all up now.

Jews, just like any other human community gestating and eventually
taking shape in a particular epoch, initially gropingly, through trial-and-
error, selected and developed the behavioral strategy that would be best
suited for the goal of survival under “suggested circumstances.” As time
went on they implemented it ever more consciously and persistently. The
result is in evidence: Jews as a community have survived. More than
that: they have made an impressive contribution to the universal human
civilization — and what is of particular significance — keep on making it.
Their efficiency is stunning. Their “bit,” as is well known, is far out of
proportion to their tiny 0,2–0,25 percent of the currently estimated world’s
population (“for you were the fewest of all peoples” Dt 7:7).
The Jewish way is, in my opinion (as well as in the opinion of many
others), unique and defying classification: it is quite difficult to find the
right box for it in the taxonomy table. To be sure, any historical fact and
phenomenon is unique in its own way, as one-of-a-kind and inimitable — one
may, perhaps, only allow for the “extent of uniqueness.”
The significance of Jewry for human history and for the dominant
civilization of the Earth is hard to overestimate. At the same time, this
significance is hard to evaluate. We must entertain no illusions here.
Jewish history is not all spiritual achievement and innocent suffering.
It has its shameful pages as well: there were Jews among the prominent
figures of the Inquisition, the Jews played no small a part in the Russian
Revolution and Bolshevist terror of the two following decades; let’s not
forget such facts as a massacre in the Palestinian village Deir Yassin by
the “Irgun,” headed by the future Israeli prime-minister Menachem Begin,
193
likened by Albert Einstein to the Nazi’s atrocities, or the massacre by

the Lebanese phalangists in 1982 in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps
allowed — or not prevented from — by the then Defense Minister and
another future Israeli prime-minister, Ariel Sharon.
But the question is not whether Jews behaved better or worse than any
other peoples in the course of their long history: in many respects, they
behaved like many other peoples did — their behavior was determined by
concrete historical conditions. In many, though not in all respects — that
is what really matters. I can’t shake off the impression that they managed
to preserve something through the ages — something that is impossible to
explain as a mere reaction to said historical conditions. Having created at
the dawn of their history a unique complex of myths — or a single complex
myth — the Jews, as it seems, have done everything in their power to make
that myth true.
Apparently they succeeded. However, such an impression (opinion,
conviction, prejudice, belief — whatever) shared by too many people in no
matter how many different phrasings1 presents a serious challenge to the
science of history. It ought to be either refuted by grave counter-arguments
or transformed into a serious scholarly hypothesis demanding a thorough
and comprehensive research better not to be put off for long. The only
reaction on the part of those who are really qualified to do that is, in my
opinion, irrational and counterproductive. They seem to ignore the problem
for reasons of political correctness or because it is incompatible with the
temporary paradigm of modern science. But the blunder of brushing the
“Jewish issue” aside may painfully recoil — to the grave effect for both the
Jews, Western civilization, and even the entire humankind.
As for the reproof — or compliment — addressed to me by some of my
friends and colleagues of being a eulogist for Jewry, I am inclined to say
the following in conclusion of this text. I have attempted to find approaches
to the rational explanation of some of the uncommon particularities of
the Jewish historical phenomenon in it (what I claim as true or plausible
in respect to each of them is open to both criticism and refutation), while
avoiding the estimating categories; due to infatuation with the subject I may
have done a poor job of it. If one is to admit if only some of the above
particularities, such a position as mine on the “Jewish issue” appears to me
less apologetic than some of the others, at first sight more well-considered
1 Ranging from the special historical path of God’s chosen people to a Jewish
malevolent worldwide conspiracy.
194
Conclusion
and objective. Let me explain this resorting to many people’s — including

Jewish intellectuals — sharply critical attitude towards the policy of Israel in
its conflict with the Palestinians as an example.
I want to stress it: the talk here is not at all about deliberate anti-Semites2
or, say, fascistic skinhead scum, who do not care a rap about the Palestinian
people, for that matter: dare it or any other people get in their way — they
would wipe them out if they could without hesitations and doubts.
I am talking without a shade of irony about the well-intentioned,
humanistically “tuned” contemporary American, Israeli, European and scant
Russian moderate “left” (in the Western sense of the term) who can hardly
be suspected of anti-Semitism and who sincerely feel for the Palestinian
people in their woes — cornered by the intrinsically egotistical in some
aspects and, as the case happens to be, not exactly far-sighted national policy
of several generations of Jewish leaders (“the national hearth” was set not
upon an empty territory after all), but to an even much greater extent — by
the cynical and mercenary-minded political wrangling and intrigue of their
own and neighbors’ leaders.
These intellectuals’ criticism of the Israeli policy — just in some respects
(yet, much more castigating and impassioned than in a number of other similar
instances) is based to a great degree it seems to me on the subconscious
idealistic attitude to the Jewish state: it is expected to demonstrate the extent
of justice and humaneness not at all expected not only of its adversaries, but
also of other civilized modern states for that matter. From this point of view,
usually not pronounced nor admitted nor often even realized on a rational
level of consciousness by its adherents, Israel and/or Jews in general are not
expected — and ought not! — to behave in the same way as other peoples
would or do behave in a similar situation: implacably entrenching their
interests, professing the moral principle “might is right,” and finding plenty
of beautifully looking excuses for that.
Needless to say, I mention this position not so much as to express
my disagreement with it, but rather to focus once and again not only on
the uniqueness of the Jewish phenomenon per se, but on the exclusive
attitude it enjoys on the considerable part of the “civilized world’s”
intellectual elite.
2 Incidentally, the grounds for anti-Semitism is the same idealizing apologetics with
respect to Jews, albeit turned inside out: they happen to be attributed the role in the
world blown out of proportion along with exorbitant qualities eliciting concealed
envy.
195
(The position in question remotely reminds me of the present-day

hyper-critical attitude of many liberal ex-Soviet intellectuals towards the
West — and especially towards America. Having every ground to disbelieve
the mendacious communist propaganda — we, occasionally not being
entirely aware of it, tended to grossly overestimate the virtues of Western
democracy, and when the “iron curtain” was blown away, experienced
a severe disappointment because the democracy in question turned out to
be much more egoistical, cynical and not quite rising to the level of our
secret ideals. However, we tend to overlook the obvious fact that a human
individual is much better off living by far an easier and freer life in it than
under a totalitarian regime.)
To say nothing of the military incursions of the USA in Grenada, Iraq
and Yugoslavia, let us try and imagine the likely reaction of the American
administration and society to the intifada of black fundamentalists in
Alabama, an outbreak of white racists’ terror in the state of Georgia or
an armed foray of Texas separatists. I suggest the reaction to any of the
above would be much more resolute and tougher than the response of the
Israeli governments and society to Palestinian terrorism as we know it, even
though it would be unwise to deny the existence of malignant problems in
the American past and present: shameful racist persecutions of the black
population of America — along with grave problems of, to put it mildly, the
social and cultural compatibility of various ethnic communities or the fact
that annexation of Texas by the United States seized from Mexico in 1845
was nothing but a foreign territory usurpation.
Let us also recall at this juncture the uncompromising position of Great
Britain that settled the 1982 military conflict with Argentina by strong-arm
force alone — the conflict that sparked off over the status of the Falkland
Islands six hundred kilometers away from Argentina and thirteen thousand
kilometers away from the British shores. And the response of self-same Great
Britain to Irish separatism, Spain’s — to Basque, France’s — to Corsican,
Russia’s — to Chechen, Georgia’s — to Abkhasian? What is there to say
about Turkey’s, Iran’s or Iraq’s reaction to the strife of Kurds — at least no
less just than Palestinians’ — to acquire their “national hearth”?
Do we know of many situations — even in the newest “civilized”
history — in which a territorial or inter-ethnic conflict3 would be settled
by way of concessions on the part of the stronger of the adversaries, the
3 That normally involves no party that is right — or conversely — each party is right
and wrong in its own way.
196
Conclusion
victor, even if only temporary? The only precedent that I was able to
recall — apart from the quiet and dignified divorce between the Czechs
and Slovaks — was the division of the USSR. Whatever imbroglio of
objective and subjective factors, gainful self-interest and ambitions may
have precipitated this historical fact, post-Soviet Russia, endowed with
a pretty good touch of savagery, both inherited and newly acquired, then
set an extraordinary paragon of state altruism. Whether the subject of the
altruism in question — and the objects even more so — stood to gain from
it is a different story, but the argument that Moscow had no power to keep
the Union together as a whole fails to convince me: given the aggressive
underpinnings of the government structures, a leverage of brutal force would
not have been long in suggesting itself (as shortly after this event in the case
of Chechnya).
Why then is the account one advances of the Jews different? Why are
such disproportionately high moral demands made of them? Is it then not
camouflaged exaltation and idealization of Jewry?
I have but laid down a supposition that it somehow fell to the Jews’ lot
to end up as the authors — or co-authors — of one of the strategies of the
species Homo Sapiens Sapiens survival. That strategy has eventually proved
instrumental in spawning a civilization — far from perfect, questionable and
risky — yet the only one of the known civilizations and local cultures, that
partly verbally and partly in actual fact follows the humanistic principles
devised by it in the course of its onward progress — principles that I
personally share totally and entirely.
The eventual correctness rather than fatality of the path this civilization
is treading down defies any certainty by all counts. Consequently, I request
that any exaltation with respect to Jews (or prehistoric Afrasians or ancient
Greeks or Russian intelligentsia for that matter) — suppose it treacherously
sneaks into this opus — be excused as inappropriate or, at least, premature.
Likewise, one can aver that, say, monotheism was introduced into human
culture by Hebrews; I fail to discern any apologetics here. One can, however,
re-formulate the same apologetically: the Jews invented monotheism,
which happens to be a great achievement and a stride ahead in the human
culture. Yet, any apologetics go out the window, if one allows for one of the
opinions present in today’s anthropology, not entirely groundless, though
debatable — to the effect of polytheism being much more tolerant, democratic
and pluralistic and that it was precisely monotheism — not polytheism at
all! — and monotheistic civilizations that provided the breeding grounds not
only for humanism, human rights and the like, but also spawned the global
197
totalitarian ideologies like religious fundamentalism (both Christian and

Islamic), Communism or Nazism.
Nothing is new under the sun. This includes the issues we discussed
here, and, possibly, their proposed interpretations. In the late 19th century
and especially in the first third of the 20th century, the subjects of Jewish
identity, the Jews’ purpose and role in human history were heatedly discussed
by Jewish intellectuals in Austria, Germany, Russia, Poland, Palestine …
The Jews of the Talmudic times, likewise, argued about this as did their
ancestors in the Biblical epoch. The “Gentiles” also argued about the Jews
since as early as the Hellenistic antiquity. There must be something special
about this small, yet restless and irrepressible people. Sometimes there’s
nothing to talk about, were it not for the Jews, eh?
Now, does the “Jewish idea” in civilization or the “Jewish conundrum”
in world history exist for real after all or is it but a brainchild of anti-historical
imagination? To me it would seem that at least there is a problem all right
ergo there is something to work at.
How about a Russian, American, Chinese, Chukchee4 idea and
conundrums? Why not also look around and think?
4 Prof. Sergei Arutyunov, a major Moscow ethnologist, a great connoisseur of

the Caucasus, Far North and Far East, is known to have said once upon hearing
yet another joke of a “dumb Chukchee” series very popular in the Soviet Union
in the seventies — early eighties: “If you want to know the truth, Chukchees and
Eskimos are the most intelligent people I have met.” He was asked what it is
manifested by. He answered: “They are the best at coping with their life. — The only
one that fell to their lot to live.”
198
APPENDIX 1
ETYMOLOGY OF SELECTED HEBREW TERMS RELATED TO
INTELLECTUAL/SPIRITUAL CULTURE
(Reconstructed Semitic and Afrasian proto-forms are adduced contradicting

the widespread opinion that in the pre-historic era human thinking was primitive
and incapable of shaping up abstract notions, generalization and fragmentation
of the surrounding world)
1. Cognition and perception

1.1. Hebrew ydʕ ‘to notice, hear of, learn, know (incl. sexually),
have understanding’
< Proto-Semitic *ydʕ ‘to know’: Akkadian idu^ ‘to know (incl.
a woman sexually)’; Ugaritic ydʕ; Phoenician ydʕ; Aramaic: Old, Syrian, Judaic,
Mandaic, etc. ydʕ ‘to know’; Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic dʕw ‘to know’
(metathesis), ydʕ ‘to find out’, h-ydʕ (causative) ‘to inform’; Arabic ʔaydaʕa
(verbal stem IV, causative) ‘to inform’; Ethiopian: Geez ʔaydəʕa (causative) ‘to
make know, inform, declare, report, etc.’, Harari da ‘to know’; Modern South
Arabian: Mehri wda, Jibbali ʔedaʕ, Soqotri edaʕ id.
< Afrasian *yVdaʕ- ‘to know’:1 Chadic (Central): Mandara, Zaghawa
diya id.; Cushitic (South): Iraqw daʕ-ati ‘withchcraft, sorcery, magic’.2
1 Further related to Indo-European *wEdwV id.

2 To ‘know’ often derives from or evolves into the meanings ‘to have secret or sacred
knowledge’, ‘to master sorcery, be a magician’, etc. Cf. Old Indian veda- `knowledge,
sacred knowledge or lore’, Russian ведать ’to know’ and ведун ’wizard’ (both <
Indo-European *wEdwV ‘to know’.
Cf. also Arabic ʕalima ‘to know’); be able to distinguish; learn smt.’ and ʕalama
‘to mark, distinguish by a mark’ < Semitic *ʕlm ‘to discern hidden signs’: Ugaritic
199
1.2. Hebrew hb ‘to respect, hold in high regard; assume;

reckon, etc.’, (pi.) ‘compute; think of’3
< Proto-Semitic (except Akkadian) *hb ‘to think, count’: Phonician
hb; Aramaic: Biblical, Nabatean, Palmyrian, Syrian, Mandaic hb ‘to think’;
Arabic hasiba id., hasaba ‘to calculate, count’; Ethiopian: Geez hasaba ‘to think,
believe, impute, consider, estimate, appreciate’, hassaba ‘to compute, count,
reckon, calculate’, Tigre hasba, Tigrai hasb, Amharic assb, Gurage asb
‘to think’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri hesb, Jibbali hsɔb ‘to count, reckon’,
Soqotri hoseb ‘to count’
< Afrasian *hsb ‘reckon, think, count’: Egyptian (Pyramid texts)
hsb ‘to reckon, count, calculate’.
1.3. Hebrew ʕr ‘to know of, about’

< Proto-West Semitic *VʕVr- ‘to know, investigate’: Aramaic:
Judaic sʕr ‘to look after, investigate’, Syrian sʕr ‘to concern so. about so., visit
so.’, Mandaic sar, sur ‘to inspect, care for, travel about, visit’; Epigraphic South
Arabian: Sabaic 2ʕr ‘to be aware’, ‘knowledge, awareness’; Ethiopian: Geez
əʕra ‘to heal, be cured, cure’, Amharic ra ‘to heal’
< Afrasian *VʕVr- ‘to know, investigate, be clever’: Chadic
(West): Kirfi ba ira ‘clever’ (ba — nomen agentis), (Central): Gude aʹrəˋwaʹ
‘one accomplished in a skill’, (East): Bidiya ‰ir, pl. ‰iraw ‘to excel’, ‰rloʹoloˋ
‘knowledge’, Ubi ‰iri ’brains’.
1.4. Post-Biblical Hebrew hishs ‘the cartilages forming the

ear, helix, etc.’
< Proto-Semitic *has–s- ‘helix, cartilages of ear’: Aramaic:
Judaic has–s, hashst ‘the system of cartilages of the ear, helix and antihelix’,
hishs ‘the cartilages forming the ear’, Syrian hashs (pl.) ‘cartilages’; Arabic
ʔal-has–s-ni (dual) ‘the two blood-vessels behind the ears’; Akkadian ḫas–su
‘aperture of the ear, ear; (faculty of) hearing’
related to Proto-Semitic *h/ḫss ‘to hear, to perceive’: Ugaritic
ḫss ‘to remember’; Arabic hss ‘to listen; feel, perceive’; Akkadian ḫassu ‘to
think of; to be mindful of, to listen to’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri həs ‘to
have feeling, be conscious of’, Harsusi hes ‘to feel, perceive, notice’, Jibbali
hess ‘to feel, notice’, s~-hsɛseʹs ‘to sense, hear’ [SED I No. 127]
ʕlm ‘to be hidden, unknown, pass unnoticed’, Hebrew ʕlm (nif.) ‘to be concealed’,
Geez taʕalma ‘to be hidden, disappear from sight’, Mehri ʕlm ‘to brand (with
a rag), to make a mark’ (JM 22), etc.
3 Also ‘to weave’: according to HALOT, the original meaning, which is untenable.
200
Appendix 1
< Afrasian *hVc(ic)- ‘hearing, perception’: Cushitic (Central)

*was- ‘to hear’: Bilin, Qemant was-, Khamir w-, Khamta, Kailin~a wa-;
Omotic *siʔ- ⁓ *sis- ⁓ *wes- ‘to hear; know’: (North): Wolaitta siy-, Kullo sis-,
Basketo sisi, Koyra sii-, Yamma wees-, Bworo sisa, Dizi sis ‘to hear’, (South):
Ari ɛs(s)-, Ongota cii-, siiʔ ‘to know’.
2. Belief and religion

2.1. Hebrew malʔk̲ ‘messenger; messenger of God, angel’
< Proto-West Semitic (?) *malʔk- ‘messenger’ > ‘angel’:4
Aramaic: Old, Official mlʔk ‘delegate, envoy; angel’, Syrian malaʔk ’messenger,
angel’; Ugaritic mlak ‘messenger’; Arabic malʔk- ‘messenger, angel; message;
mission’; Ethiopian: Geez malʔk ‘angel’, malʔəkt ‘message’, Tigre, Tigrai
mlʔak, Amharic, Argobba mlak, Harari mlk ‘angel’, Gurage mlʔak id.,
mlak-tnn ‘messenger, envoy’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri məlk, Jibbali
meʹlik, Soqotri mlak ‘angel’
< Proto-West Semitic *lʔk ‘to send a message or messenger’:
Ugaritic lʔk ‘to send a message; to write to so.’; Arabic lʔk ‘to send so. as
a messenger or with a mission’; Ethiopian: Geez laʔka, Tigre lʔaka, Tigrai
lʔak̲, Amharic lak, etc. ’to send’.
2.2. Hebrew np ‘soul; life; living being’

< Proto-Semitic *nap(i)- ‘soul; vitality, life; person,
personality; self’:5 Phoenician np ‘self, person’; Aramaic: Old np ‘life;
person’, Syrian nap ’soul; person’, Judaic nəpa ‘soul; will’, Mandaic napa
‘soul, personality, self’; Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic nfs1 ‘soul, life, person,
self’; Ugaritic np ‘soul; person’; Arabic nafs- ‘soul, spirit, vitality; person;
blood’; Ethiopian: Geez nafs ‘soul, spirit, breath, life’, Amharic nfs ‘soul, spirit,
4 It is not clear when the meaning (and, accordingly, the notion of) ‘angel’ developed
from ‘messenger’: it may have taken place on the Proto-West Semitic level (mid-
3rd mill. B.C.E.). However, the fact that the primary verb occurs neither in Aramaic
nor in Hebrew implies borrowing into these languages (from Ugaritic where the
meaning ‘heavenly messengers’ — mlak mm — is attested to?); then the meaning
‘angel’ might have been borrowed from Aramaic into Arabic (whence, with the
spread of Islam, into Tigre, Harari and Modern South Arabian) and Geez (whence,
with the spread of Christianity, into Tigrai and Amharic).
5 Though eventually derived from ‘breathing’ [SED I Verb No. 46], *nap(i)-
undoubtedly had the above set of meanings (or, rather, one complex meaning) and
a corresponding notion as early as in Proto-Semitic dated not later than the end of
5th millennium B.C.E.).
201
life’, Gurage nfs ‘soul’, etc.; Akkadian napitu ‘life, vigor, vitality’; Eblaitic na-
pu-u-tu-um ‘soul (?)’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri nəfst ‘individual, soul’,
Jibbali nəfsɛʹt ‘soul’, Soqotri nafh- ‘soul; myself’.
2.3. Hebrew khn ‘priest’

< Proto-Semitic *kahin- ‘priest, fortune-teller; adult, clever,
cheat’, *khn ‘to have second sight, prophesy’:6 Phoenician khn;
Aramaic: Egyptian khn, Syrian khən, Mandaic kahna; Ugaritic khn ‘priest’;
Arabic khn ‘to have second sight, prophesy’, khin- ‘fortune-teller, deviner;
priest’ (the former meaning must be from Aramaic); Ethiopian: Geez khən
‘priest, clergyman’ (considered an Aramaic loan-word), Tigrai, Amharic kahən
‘priest’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri khən ‘cunning; cheat’, kaʹthən ‘to pretend
to st. in order to attain one’s object’, Harsusi, Jibbali khen ‘adult, clever’
< Afrasian *ki(ha)n- ‘to know, learn’: Egyptian (Middle Kingdom)
t̲ny (<*kny) ‘learn’: Chadic (West): Kirfi kinn- ‘to know’, (Central): Bachama
kanaʹ ‘truth’, Buduma kaʹni ‘true’, (East): Mokilko koʹnyaˋ ‘knowledge’; Cushitic
(North): Beja kan-; (Central): Bilin kən-t-, Khamir, Qwara kin-t-; (East): Hadiya
ken- ‘to know’.
2.4. Hebrew ḳd ‘to be holy, removed from common use,

subject to special treatment, forfeit to the sanctuary’
< Proto-Semitic *ḳd ‘to be clean, holy; to consecrate’:
Phoenician ḳd (yif.) ‘to consecrate’, ḳd ‘sanctuary’; Aramaic ḳd: Palmyrean
(af.), Syrian, Mandaic (pa.) ’to consecrate, dedicate’ (also used derisively),
Judaic (pa.) ’to make holy, declare as holy’, (af.) ’to consecrate’; Epigraphic
South Arabian: Sabaic ḳds1 id.; Ugaritic ḳd ‘holy; the Holy One’, ‘sanctuary’,
ḳdm, a member of the cult personnel, a class of priests; Arabic ḳds ‘to be holy,
clean’, II ‘to consecrate, dedicate’; Ethiopian: Geez ḳaddasa ‘to sanctify, declare
holy, make holy, consecrate, dedicate’, Tigrai, Amharic ḳdds ’to sanctify,
celebrate Mass’, Tigre ḳddsa, Gurage ḳidds ’to perform Mass’; Akkadian
ḳadu ‘to be clean, free of claims’, ḳudduu ‘to clean, purify’, ḳaum
(< *ḳadum) ‘consecrated, holy’; Modern South Arabian: Harsusi ḳeds ‘shrine’
(likely an Arabism).
2.5. Hebrew səgull ‘Israel as the property of God; (personal)

property (of the kings and the provinces)’
< Proto-Semitic *sigu/il- ‘(sealed, registered, spelt) property,
possession’: Aramaic: Hatra sgyl ‘possession’ (prob. designating temple; name
6 With a secondary -h- inserted.
202
Appendix 1
of the temple of Shamash at Hatra); Ugaritic sglt ‘treasure, private property’;

Arabic sl ‘to register’, ʔasala ‘to be rich’, siill- ‘a scroll, roll for writing on
it’ (cf. also si–l- ‘a mysterious stone’); Ethiopian: Geez ʔasgala ‘to practice
magic, augury, divine, take omens, have divining power’, sagalt (pl.) ‘magical
instruments’, Amharic nggl ‘to propitiate, appease the spirits’; Akkadian
(Old Babylonian on) sikiltu ‘possession, acquisition, private possessions’, sug/
kullu ‘herd (of cattle, horse, other animals)’; Modern South Arabian: sgl ‘to
register’ (from Arabic)
< Afrasian *cigul- ‘sealed property, treasure (?)’: Egyptian
(Old Kingdom) sd̲ȵw.t (very likely <*sVgi/ul-) ‘seal’, sd̲ȵwt ‘precious things,
treasures’; cf. sd̲ȵw ‘rings (?)’.
3. Conduct, judgement, morals

3.1. Hebrew rhm ‘to love, take pity on someone’, raham–m
‘a feeling of love, loving sensation, mercy’
< Proto-Semitic *rhm ‘to be merciful, compassionate, kind
to so., have pity’: Aramaic: Official rhm-n ‘compassion, love, mercy’,
Biblical raham–n ‘compassion, mercy’, Mandaic rhm ‘to have pity’; Epigraphic
South Arabian: Sabaic rhm ‘to be merciful’; Ugaritic rhm ‘to have feelings, be
compassionate’; Arabic rhm ‘to be merciful, have compassion on’; Ethiopian
(metathesis): Geez mhr ‘to have compassion’, Tigre, Tigrai mhar ‘to have
pity’, Amharic mar ’to pardon, forgive, to have mercy’, etc.; Akkadian (Old
Bab. on) rmu, r–mu ‘compassion, mercy (of deity, king)’, rmu ‘to be merciful,
have compassion on; forgive’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri rəhm ‘to be kind
to so.’, Harsusi rehm ‘to pity’, Jibbali rahaʹm ‘to be kind’
< Proto-Semitic *rahm-/*rihm- ‘womb, uterus’: Hebrew rhm,
raham ‘womb’; Phoenician *rhm ‘bosom’; Aramaic: Deir Alla rhm ‘womb’,
Judaic raham, rahm ’orifice of the matrix, womb’, Syrian rahm ‘uterus’;
Ugaritic rhm ‘womb’; Arabic rahim-, rihm- ‘womb, uterus’; Ethiopian: Tigre
rəhm ‘womb, descent’, Tigrai rəhm-u ‘(crawling) on one’s belly’; Akkadian (Old
Bab. on) rmu, r–mu ‘womb’; Eblaitic ri-mu-um /rehmum/ id.; Modern South
Arabian: Mehri, Jibbali mərhm id. (also rahm, the word borrowed from Arabic).7
< Afrasian *ri(h)m- ‘womb’: Cushitic (East): Oromo riimaa ‘pregnant
(of animals)’, Somali rimay ‘womb, uterus’, rim-an ‘pregnant (of animals)’,
Rendille rim-; Burji rim-ees- ‘to be pregnant’ (likely from Oromo).
7 [SED I No. 231]. Cf. [ibid.] another meaning of an areal usage — in Ugaritic and
Canaanite languages only — derived from ‘womb’: Ugaritic rhm ‘maid’, Hebrew
rhm ‘slavegirl’ (in Jdg 5:30), Moab rhmh ‘female slave’.
203
3.2. Hebrew hnn ‘to favour so.’, hannn ‘merciful (God); kind,
gracious (human beings)’, hn ‘grace, charm (e.g. of a woman);
favor, popularity (e.g. of a wife with her husband)’
< Proto-Semitic *hnn, ‘to be merciful, kind to so., do a favor’:
Phoenician hnn ‘to be benevolent’, hn ‘favor’; Aramaic: Old, Official hn
‘favor’, Palmyrean hnn ‘clement, merciful’; Ugaritic hnn ‘to be, appear kind’,
hnt ‘kindness, favor’; (?)Amorite hnn, a proper name (“Merciful”?); Arabic
hnn ‘to be emotional, excited; be fond of so., have compassion toward so.’,
hannat- ‘compassion’, hann-, hannn- ‘merciful, kind’; Akkadian ennu ‘to
pray, ask for mercy’ (Old Babylonian, New Assyrian), ‘to grant a privilege,
do a favour’ (Old Akkadian on)
< Semitic *hann- ‘womb, uterus’ [SED I No. 122]:8 Aramaic: Official
hn ‘vagina’,9 Syrian hannt ‘uterus’ (hann ’penis; vagina; lap, bosom’), Judaic
hn ’lap, bosom’, Mandaic hana ‘lap, loins, embrace, privy parts’; Arabic hann-
at- ‘woman, wife’ (a frequent semantic shift in Semitic languages); Ethiopian:
Tigre hənot ‘foetus’, hann ’to be with child’, hante ‘lap, the lower parts’.
3.3. Hebrew dyn ‘to plead one’s case; to execute judgement’,

dayyn ‘judge’
< Proto-Semitic *dyn ‘to judge’, *d–n- ‘justice, process,
lawsuit; legal decision; sentence, etc.’, *dayyan- ‘judge’: Aramaic:
Official dn ‘justice, process, lawsuit; legal decision; claim’, Mandaic dun ‘to
judge’, daiana ‘judge’; Epigraphic South Arabian: Qatabanian dyn ‘judgement,
punishment’, Sabaic dn ‘to submit’, t-dyn ‘loyalty’; Ugaritic dn ‘to judge’;
Arabic dyn ‘to pass judgement, condemn’, dayyn- ‘judge’ (perhaps < Aramaic);
Ethiopian: Geez dayyana ‘judge, sentence, punish, condemn, convict’, dayyni
‘judge’, Amharic dan~n~ ‘to arbitrate, judge’, dan~n~a ‘judge’, etc.; Akkadian
dinu ‘to judge’, dayynu ‘judge’.
3.4. Hebrew sdḳ ‘to be in the right, be right, be just’ (sdḳ ‘the
right thing, what is honest; equity, what is right; justness (ascribed
to God); communal loyalty, conduct loyal to the community;
salvation, well-being’, sad–ḳ ‘(juridically and morally) in the
8 Reconstructed for Proto-West Semitic, the weak point of this equation being that
the nominal stem with the hypothetical original meaning ‘womb, uterus’ is not as
widespread in Semitic languages as its assumed derivative, the verbal stem ‘to be
merciful’. (Besides # 3.1. there is perhaps a parallel to this isosemantic equation
outside Semitic: Hittite genzu ‘lap, privy parts’ and ‘love, friendliness’.)
9 And hn-t ‘servant-girl, female slave’ — cf. the same semantic shift in # 3.1. (footnote 7).
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Appendix 1
right, innocent; a social justice (in respect of the community, true

to the c.); (in a religious sense) just, upright, devout’
< Proto-Semitic *sdḳ ‘to be just, right, true, righteous’:10
Phoenician sdḳ ‘just’; Aramaic: Official zdḳ ‘just’, Egyptian sdḳ (pe.) ‘to be just,
receive justice’, (pa.) ‘to consider so. as just, innocent’, sdyḳ ‘entitled, having
the right to’, Christian-Palestinian sdḳ (pa.) ‘to justify’, Judaic sdḳ ‘to be just’,
Syrian zdəḳ ‘it is right’, Mandaic sdḳ ‘to be right, be just’, sadiḳ, zad–ḳ ‘just,
righteous’; Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic sdḳ ‘to perform, fulfil (a duty,
obligation), maintain in proper order, justify so.’, sdḳ (noun) ‘right, justice,
justification, truth’; Ugaritic sdḳ ‘justice, legitimacy, lawful’ (lawful wife,
legitimate king); Arabic sdḳ ‘to be sincere, speak the truth; realize, accomplish;
believe so.’, sidḳ- ‘truth, sincerity; excellence, etc.’, sadaḳ-at- ‘alms’; Ethiopian:
Geez sadḳa ‘to be just, justified, righteous, true, speak the truth, be certain,
faithful, honest, innocent’, sədḳ ‘justice, righteousness, truth, innocence,
deliverance, salvation, holiness, pious deeds’; Tigre sӓdḳa ‘to be just, God-
fearing’, sӓddӓḳa ‘act justly, be honest’; Tigrai sdḳ̲ ‘to be righteous, honest,
just’; Amharic sddḳ ‘to be righteous, honest, just’, ṭadiḳ ‘bread partaken of
at the monthly gathering’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri sadḳ ‘truth’, sədḳ ‘to
tell the truth’, əsdḳ ‘to believe, believe so. is telling the truth’, sədaʹyḳ ‘neutral;
one not an enemy’; Jibbali sɔʹdɔʹḳ ‘to tell the truth’, essoʹdḳ ‘to give alms (us. in
atonement)’, sudḳ ‘truthful; friend, not an enemy’.
3.5. Hebrew hṭʔ ‘to miss (a mark); to wrong (morally), offend;

be culpable; do wrong, sin’, hṭəʔ ‘offence (against human being);
sin (against God)’, haṭṭʔ ‘sinner’
< Proto-Semitic *ḫṭʔ ‘to miss, fail, lack; mistake, err; do wrong,
sin (involuntarily?)’: Aramaic: Syrian hṭʔ ‘to sin, err, fail’, haṭṭy ‘sinner’,
Mandaic hṭa ‘to sin, err, fail’; Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic ḫṭʔ ‘to commit
offence; pay amend (for sin)’, ‘sin, offence’; Ugaritic ḫṭʔ ‘to make a mistake,
sin; do evil’; Arabic ḫṭʔ ‘to be mistaken; sin, commit an error’, (causative) ‘to
miss the target, to lose the way’, ḫaṭʔ ‘error; sin’; Ethiopian: Geez ḫaṭʔa ‘to
lack, be deprived of, miss, be bereaved, be desolate, fail; sin’, ḫaṭiʔat ‘lack, fault,
offense, sin, trespass’, Tigre haṭʔa ‘to be wanting’, Tigrai haṭʔe ‘to sin’, haṭiʔat
‘sin (noun)’, Amharic aṭṭa ‘to lack, be wanting, miss’, aṭiyat, Gurage haṭiat ‘sin
(noun)’;11; Akkadian ḫaṭu^ ‘defective; criminal’ (Bab., Old Ass.), ‘to do wrong;
10 In personal names in Ugaritic, Phoenician and ESA also occurs as a deity.

11 The meaning ‘sin’ in Ethiopic is considered to be borrowed from Aramaic which is
debatable; cf. also Geez ḫeṭa ‘to deceive, cheat, seduce, corrupt, flatter, etc.’, ḫeṭawa
‘seduce, persuade’ — with a similar meaning and obviously not borrowed.
205
commit crime; be faulty, unsatisfactory, bad; neglect (work)’, ḫaṭṭʔu ‘sinner,

criminal’, ḫ–ṭu ‘defect, lack; crime, sin, error’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri ḫṭ
‘to hit, injure by mistake’, Jibbali ḫaʹṭeʹ ’(cow) to get lost’, aḫṭeʹ (causative) ‘to
injure accidentally, lose (an animal) through straying’, ḫaṭit ‘accidental shot’,
Soqotri haʹṭaʔ ‘to sin’, haṭoʹʔoh ‘sin’ (rather from Arabic).
3.6. Hebrew bw ‘to be ashamed’, b ‘shame, shamefulness’

< Proto-Semitic *b(h)t̲ ‘to be ashamed’: Aramaic: Official bwt,
Syrian bht ‘to be ashamed’, behtt ‘shame’, Mandaic bwt ‘to be ashamed’;
Ugaritic bt̲ ‘to be ashamed’, bt̲-t, bht̲ ‘shame’; Ugaritic bt̲ ‘to be ashamed’, bt̲-t,
bht̲ ‘shame’; Akkadian (Old Bab.) ba^u ‘to be ashamed’, baʔu (likely <*bht̲)
‘to come to shame’, bayyu (Young Bab.) ‘modest, decent’.12
< Afrasian *bu‰- ‘(feminine) pudenda’: Berber: Siwa baa, Semlal
bəssi, Iznassen a-bət-un ‘vagina’; (?) Chadic (West): Hausa buabua ‘person of
dirty habits’ (semantic connection with the present root questionable); Cushitic
(North): Beja bus ‘podex, croupe’; (East): Saho, Afar bus-, Hadiya bisso ‘vagina’;
Omotic (North): Janjero boosaa ‘vulva’.
3.7. Hebrew hpr ‘to be ashamed’

< Proto-Semitic *ḫpr ‘to be ashamed, timid, bashful’: Aramaic:
Syrian hpr ‘to be ashamed’; Arabic ḫfr ‘to be timid, shy, bashful’; Ethiopian:
Geez ḫafara ‘to be shy, shun, ashamed, embarassed, disgraced; fear, revere’
(note məḫfr ‘genitals’), Tigre hafra ‘to be in awe’, Tigrai hafr ‘to be
ashamed, shy’, Amharic affr ‘to be shy, timid’, Argobba affra, Soddo affar
‘bashful’.
3.8. Hebrew zny ‘to become involved with another man, to

commit fornication; to be unfaithful in a relationship with God’,
zn ’prostitute, harlot’13
< Proto-Semitic *zny ‘to commit adultery, fornicate’: Aramaic:
Palmyrean znyh ‘prostitute’, Judaic zny ‘to be a prostitute’, Syrian zny, Mandaic
zna ‘to fornicate, be unchaste, adulterous’; Arabic zny ‘to commit adultery’,
zn- ‘adultery’; Ethiopian: Geez zanaya ‘to fornicate’, zənyat ‘fornication’
(and ‘sperm’; cf. also zanawa ‘to be dirty, unclean’), Tigre znna ‘to commit
adultery, fornicate’, Amharic znna ‘to horse around, flirt, indulge in suggestive
play’ (otherwise may derive from *d̲Vn- ‘fornication’); Modern South Arabian:
12 Possibly also Arabic baht̲at- ‘son of a whore’ (“the shameful one”?).

13 Less likely derived from *d̲Vn- ‘fornication’: Epigraphic South Arabian: Minean
t-d̲n-t ‘fornication’; Ugaritic dn-t ‘lechery, fornication’.
206
Appendix 1
Mehri zən ’to commit adultery, fornicate’, Jibbali zini ‘to fornicate’, zini
‘fornication’.
< Afrasian *ʒVnVy ‘commit adultery, fornicate; commit evil’:
Berber: Ayr, East Tawllemmet zunəy ‘to commit evil, do wrong, damage so.’
(a term not borrowed from Arabic because of a difference in meaning, but
cognate of Semitic *zny).
3.9. Hebrew zimm ‘infamy, shameful behaviour (esp.

fornication and incest)’
< Proto-West Semitic *d̲mm ‘to behave lasciviously,
fornicate’:14 Ugaritic dm ‘to behave lasciviously’; Arabic d̲mm II ‘to blame,
expose so’s defects, vices; commit blameworthy actions’; Ethiopian: Geez
zammawa ‘to fornicate, commit adultery, whoredom, have illicit intercourse’,
zamm ‘harlot, prostitute, adulteress’, Tigrai zmmw, Amharic zmma ‘to
fornicate’.
14 The presence in Semitic of three variant roots — *zny, *d̲Vn- and *d̲mm (cf.
SED I Verb Nos. 14 and 84) — with more or less the same meaning but partly
differing phonetically seems to point out to their specific stylistic status — most
likely they were perceived as tabooed or obscene terms, the most ancient, original
one, *zny (the only one of the three which has Afrasian parallels) being replaced
by “euphemistic” *d̲n, which, when in its turn became perceived as indecent, was
replaced by *d̲m.
Cf. two verbal roots (having no direct cognates in Hebrew) with a “neutral”
meaning ‘to copulate’ not tinged with moral indictment: (1) Proto-Semitic
*nyk ‘to have sexual intercourse’ (cf. SED I Verb No. 53): Arabic nyk
‘to have intercourse with a woman’; Ethiopian: Amharic nkka ‘to have carnal
knowledge of a woman’; Akkadian (Old Bab. on) na^ku, niku ‘to have sexual
intercourse’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri nəyk ‘to have sexual intercourse with,
sleep with’, Harsusi neyk ‘to sleep with’, Jibbali nɛk ‘to sleep with’ < Afrasian
*nVyVkʷ- ‘to have sexual intercourse’: Berber: Ahaggar enki ‘to make
movements in a sexual intercourse’; Egyptian (Pyramid texts) nk ‘to copulate’;
Chadic (West): Bokkos nyo^k ‘to copulate with, beget’; Cushitic (North): Beja
nekʷi ‘to conceive, become pregnant’; (2) Proto-Semitic *rkb ‘to copulate’
(derived from, or influenced by Proto-Semitic *rkb ‘to ride a horse’ — cf.
SED I Verb Nos. 60): Aramaic: Syrian rkb ‘to mount (female), impregnate’;
Arabic rakab- ‘pubis; pudenda’, Dat̲ina dial. rikeb ʕale^ha ‘to mount (a woman),
make love’; Ethiopian: Geez tarkaba ‘to have intercourse’, rukbe ‘intercourse’,
Tigre tərkkb ’to copulate’; Akkadian (Old Bab.) rakbu ‘to mount each other
(sexually — of pigs, dogs and snakes)’, (Mid. Bab.) rikibtu ‘coitus’; Modern South
Arabian: Mehri rəkb ‘to sleep with a woman’, Jibbali reʹkəb ‘to ride, to mount
(also with sexual connotations)’.
207
4. Time
4.1. Hebrew zəmn ‘appointed time, hour’15

< Proto-Semitic *zaman- (with a variant root *zaban-, with
dissimilation of nasals m/n) ‘time’: Aramaic: Biblical zəman, Syrian zabn,
Mandaic zaman, zban ‘time’; Arabic zamn-, zaman- ‘time’ (derived verbal
stems VII and XI mean ‘to have a chronic disease’); Ethiopian: Geez zaman
‘time, period, season, year’, Tigre zbn, Tigrai, Amharic, Gurage zmn
‘time’; (?) Akkadian simnu (with irregular s-; probably of different origin);
Modern South Arabian: Mehri zemn, zubn, Soqotri zem, zman (the latter
form likely an Arabism) ‘time’
< Afrasian *ʒamVn- (possibly < *ʒam-Vn-, with the -n suffix) ‘time;
period of time; staying for some time’: Egyptian (Pyramid texts) zmn
‘to stay, dwell’; Chadic (West): Hausa zaˋmnaˋ `to sit down, settle down in
a place, be a long time’ (cf. also Diri aman, Pa’a zəman ‘morning’); (Central):
Mafa eʹmeʹʔe ‘too late, after some time’ (cf. East: Somrai omni ‘morning’).
4.2. Hebrew ʕlm ‘long time, duration, eternity; future time;

a long time back; everlasting (God)’
< Proto-West Semitic *ʕalm- (1) ‘eternity; long, indetermined
span of time’, (2) ‘world, universe’:16 Aramaic: Deir Alla ʕlmn, Old,
Egyptian, Nabatean, etc. ʕlm ‘indetermined span of time, eternity; world,
universe’, Syrian ʕalm ’world’; Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic ʕlm ‘world’;
Ugaritic ʕlm ‘eternity, perpetuity; for ever’; Arabic ʕlam- ‘world’; Ethiopian:
Geez ʕlam ‘world, this world, the secular world, universe, mankind, eternity,
lifetime, time’, ʕallama ‘to create the world’; Tigre, Tigrai ʕalm, Amharic,
Gurage alm ‘world’.
4.3. Hebrew dr ‘cycle, lifetime; descent, generation’

< Proto-Semitic *dawr- ‘era, eternity; cycle, lifetime;
descent, generation’: Phoenician dr ‘perpetuity’; Aramaic: Syrian dr
‘generation; humankind’; Ugaritic dr ‘generation’; Arabic dawr- ‘period’
(and a variant root with inserted -h-: dahr- ‘time; age, century; end; fortune,
15 Perhaps, borrowed from Aramaic. Other Semitic terms are usually treated as
a borrowing either from Akkadian simnu (though s- > z- is difficult to explain)
or Old Persian zamna (HALOT, LGz). Both suggestions are unlikely because of
a wide spread of the term in Semitic (especially notable is the variant root with *-b-)
and its very tenable Afrasian origin).
16 The latter meaning is probably the result of inter-borrowing.
208
Appendix 1
lot, vicissitudes; misfortune; habit, usage’, dihr- ‘a long period of time’);

Ethiopian: Geez dor ‘age, generation’ (perhaps a loan from Hebrew), possibly
dr ‘dry season’ (as a cyclic repeated period); cf. also dərr ‘dinner, supper,
supper time, food, vigil’, Tigre, Tigrai dərar ‘meal’, Amharic dərar ‘eve of
a festival, supper eaten at that time’; Akkadian (Old Akk.) dru ‘era, eternity’,
itum dr ‘from time immemorial’, ana-dr ‘for ever’, dar ’to last, continue’;
(?) Modern South Arabian: Mehri dɛʹhər ‘time’, Soqotri deʹhər ‘always’ (rather
from Arabic).
Very likely < Proto-Semitic *dVwVr-, var. *drdr ‘to turn, rotate,
surround, go around’: Hebrew dwr ‘to stack in circles’, drdr ‘to turn, rotate’;
Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic dr-m ‘(one) occasion’, drm drm ‘turn by turn’;
Ugaritic dr ‘to surround’; Arabic dwr ‘to rotate, go round, move around’, II ‘to
turn’, drat- ‘circle; halo’; drdr ‘to turn, rotate’; Ethiopian: Tigre dora ‘to go
around’, dəwar ‘circle’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri dr ‘to wander around,
go and come back’, dawr ‘turn’, adaʹrdər ‘to go around’, mədaʹwwər ‘round’,
Jibbali dɛr ‘to wander around’
< Afrasian *dwr, *drdr ‘to turn, rotate’: Chadic (East): Kabalai
wəˋdəˋraˋ (metathesis) ‘to turn’, Migama kaˋ-dardiro ‘to turn around’; Cushitic
(Central): Aungi dərdər ‘to turn, rotate’.
4.4. Hebrew tr ‘sequence, turn’ (in “a turn came to go to the

king”)
< Proto-Semitic *twr ‘to turn, repeat, go around’, *ta(w)r- ‘turn,
row, sequence, period’:17 Ugaritic tr ‘to scour, travel through’; Arabic twr
‘to go around’, IV (causative) ‘to repeat’, trat- ‘turn, period’, trat-an ‘once,
sometime’; Ethiopian: Tigre trtra ‘to rotate’, Tigrai, Amharic, Gurage tra ‘area,
section, turn, row’; Akkadian (Old Akk. on) ta^ru ‘to turn; return; become (again);
repeat, do again’, (Neo-Bab.) turru ‘turned’, astronomical term — of month of
29 days?
< Afrasian *tV(w)r- ‘to turn, go round; range’, *tawr- ‘range,
row, order; moment, time’:18 Egyptian (Pyramid texts) tr ‘time, moment’;
Berber: Ahaggar eʹtəttər ‘range, row’ (cf. ətru ‘to inherit’), Seghrushen tur
17 With the same meaning shift ‘to turn, go round, repeat; row, sequence’ > ‘(period of)
time’ as in # 4.3.
18 Of interest is Berber-Chadic *tVr- ‘celestial body (star, moon)’, which
may be eventually related to the above terms: Berber: Nefusa i-tri, Ahaggar a-tri,
Qabyle i-t̲ri, etc. ‘star’; Chadic (West): Angas tar, Tangale tɛrɛ, Guruntum tarri,
Ngizim təˋraʹ, etc.; (Central): Tera təra, Daba tiraˋ, etc.; (East): Jegu tɛʹrɛʹ, Mokilko
teʹre, Mubi tiri, etc. ’moon’.
209
‘moment’; Chadic (West): Kirfi tir- ‘to go round, in circles’, Kwami tiri ‘round’,
(Central): Mofu -taʹtaʹr-, Gude taˋri ’to turn’, (East): Mokilko tariri ’turning
around; giddiness’; Cushitic (North): Beja tr ‘existence’; (Central): Bilin tari
‘fixed moment, moment, order’, tar-t ‘to range up’, Qwara tar-ta ‘to range, order’;
(East): Oromo tr ‘to delay, continue, spend (time)’.
4.5. Hebrew ḳdm ‘prehistoric times, primeval time’

< Proto-Semitic *ḳVdm- ‘past times, ancient times’: Phoenician
ḳdm ‘prehistoric times’; Aramaic: Egyptian, Palmyrean ḳdmyn ‘past times’;
Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic ʔḳdm ‘former, previous’ (but ḳdmt
‘forthcoming’); Ugaritic ḳdm ‘former, remote time’, ḳdmy ‘ancient, ancestral’;
Arabic ḳidm- ‘ancient times, past centuries’, ḳdm ‘to be ancient’; Ethiopian:
Geez ḳadmi ‘first, previous, ancient, original, prior, former, earlier’ (e.g. applied
to the Old Testament), ḳədma ‘formerly, aforetime’, ḳaddamt ‘forefathers,
ancients, men of old’; Akkadian (Old Bab.) ḳadmu ‘former time’, Mid.-Young
Bab. ‘primordial (of temple, ritual, etc.)’19
< Proto-Semitic *ḳudm- ‘front, front part; in front of’, *ḳdm ‘to
go in front of, precede’: Phoenician ḳdm ‘in front of’; Aramaic: Palmyrean,
Nabatean ḳdm ‘in front of’; Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic ḳdm ‘to act as
vanguard; confront’, also ‘shoulder (of a beast)’ (as a front part of the body);
Ugaritic ḳdm ‘front, front part, in front of; East, the Levant’; Arabic ḳdm ‘to
precede, go in front of’, ḳudm- ‘the front part, line’, ḳadam- ‘step; foot’;
Ethiopian: Geez ḳadama ‘to go before, precede, begin, be first, be ahead of’, Tigre
ḳddma, Tigrai, Gurage ḳdm, Amharic, Argobba ḳddm, Harari ḳdma
‘to precede’; Akkadian (Old Bab. — Young Bab.) ḳudmu ‘front (side)’, ḳudmi
‘in front of’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri ḳədm ‘to come, go before’, ḳəddm
‘to go forward’, Jibbali ḳədmɛʹt ‘forwarded’, s~əḳeʹdəm ‘to precede, go in front
of’, Soqotri ḳəʹdɔm ‘to precede’.
4.6. Hebrew ʔaharn ‘in the future’, ʔahar–t ‘the following

period, future; descendants’
< Proto-Semitic *ʔaḫr- ‘future, later time’: Aramaic: Official,
Nabatean ʔhrh ‘future; posterity’, Judaic ʔahəryt ’future’; Epigraphic South
Arabian: Sabaic h-ʔḫr ‘henceforth, (for the) future’; Ugaritic ʔḫr ‘last, final;
posterity, offspring, descendants’, ʔḫryt ‘final; destiny, final destiny’; Arabic ʔal-
ʔaḫray ‘afterlife, future life’; Akkadian (Old-Young Bab.) aḫru^, aḫritu, aḫra^tu
‘later time, in future (days)’, aḫr–ti ‘for the future’; Modern South Arabian:
Jibbali ʔḫərt ‘afterlife, life to come, the hereafter’
19 In Modern South Arabian the terms for ‘ancient’ are likely borrowed from Arabic.
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Appendix 1
< Proto-Semitic *ʔḫr ‘to be, go behind; delay, be late’, *ʔaḫar-

‘back, last, rear part; behind’: Hebrew ʔahar ‘behind, after, back, rear end’,
ʔaharn ‘at the back, last; western’, ʔahar–t ‘hind part, end (e.g. of the year)’,
Phoenician (Punic) ʔhr ‘after (temp., loc.)’; Aramaic: Old, Official, Nabatean
ʔhr ‘after (temp., loc.)’, Syrian ʔhr (afʕel) ‘to tarry, delay, be late’, Mandaic
ahuria ‘behind’; Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic ʔḫr ‘to delay, remove,
prolong; other, second, latter, last’; Ugaritic ʔḫr ‘to go behind’, ʔaḫr ‘afterwards,
then, after’; Arabic ʔaḫr- ‘back part’, ʔuḫur- ‘back, last part, end’; Ethiopian:
Geez ʔaḫara ‘to be kept back, be delayed’, Tigre har, Harari hr-le ‘behind’;
Akkadian (Old-Young Bab.) aḫru ‘to be behind, late, delayed, (of days) be left,
remain’; Modern South Arabian: Mehri awḫər ‘to postpone’, wətḫaʹwr ‘late,
behind, come late, last’, Jibbali ʔḫər ‘to delay’, ʔaʹḫər ‘end’, ʔaʹḫəri ‘late, last;
second; behind’, Soqotri herhen ‘behind’.
211
APPENDIX 2
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ETYMOLOGY FOR
THE INTERPRETATION OF ANCIENT WRITINGS:
FROM THE HEBREW BIBLE TO THE NEW TESTAMENT 1
This paper is in effect a word in defense of etymology and the classical

comparative-historical method in linguistics in its Neogrammarian application
evolved by the end of the 19th century on the material of the Indo-European
languages. The method was enriched in the 20th century by a formidable corpus
of data on other language families and, in the course of its last decades, by new
approaches and supplementary methods.
It might seem that the business of defending etymology and comparative
linguistics as a whole, of proving their value not just in the narrowly specialized,
but also in the general cultural aspect — is so much “forcing an open door.”
Certainly, there are quite a few people of science treating this area of language
study with the proper respect it deserves and ready to draw on its achievements;
a vivid interest of the public at large in different countries to the origins of the
words of their mother tongue, — and occasionally a foreign one as well — is also
quite well known.2
1 The present study is an updated English version of the author’s paper А.Ю. Ми-
литарев “Значение этимологии для интерпретации древнеписьменных текстов
(на примере еврейской Библии и Нового Завета)”. Вестник Российской
академии наук (отделение историко-филологических наук), 2006. Москва, 2007,
(Journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Section of History and Philology,
2006. Moscow, 2007, pp. 284–327). This study — being a scholarly work and partly
overlapping, in some points, the above essay — is designed for a reader with more
specific interests in linguistic, philological and Biblical studies than the “general”
reader more interested in the “Jewish issue.”
2 Due to the objective difficulty in perception of etymological studies (and virtual
impossibility to appreciate the quality of each specific etymology for a non-
212
Appendix 2
In the world of science, however, since about the mid-20th century, an attitude
towards language affinity became prevalent that was indicative of a fairly low
significance for linguistics attached to this factor. As for etymology, many
linguists view it as an area of language study not entirely devoid of fun, though
marginal and ancillary, capable of giving rise to utterly hypothetical conclusions,
if not based entirely on guesswork (some exception is made only for Indo-
European studies that have retained their status of a more or less solidly positivist
discipline). The results of etymological research may be, of course, referred to in
passing, yet there seems precious little use in it for both — describing individual
languages and the interpretation of ancient monuments; comparison with related
languages may be helpful if only for decoding and reading texts in little-studied
dead languages, which, in their opinion, for the most part serves to justify the
existence of traditional comparative method.
If one is to talk about the language area in which the author is engaged (even
though it also relates to other language families with a certain exception provided
for the same Indo-European), then factored into consolidating this somewhat
disparaged position to a degree must be the argument that in almost all the
dictionaries of individual ancient Semitic languages comprising an etymological
section this last is of appreciably inferior quality standard than the philological
section of dictionary entries.3
The thing is, for the most part the compilers of these dictionaries are philo-
logists specializing in a certain particular area of Semitics (Assyriology, Hebrew,
Aramaic studies et al). It takes many years, if not decades, to professionally
master any of the above areas. No less time and effort will go into mastering the
comparative-historical method, acquiring the expertise of etymological work,
the ability to operate the data derived from a multitude of languages — related
and not, ancient and modern. It is almost impossible to combine profound
specialist), evocative more of treatises on mathematics or chemistry than the

research studies in other areas of liberal arts normally more accessible for a cultured
reader, this social interest occasionally falls victim to incompetent and irresponsible
authors. Not happening to be professional etymologists or comparative linguists,
ergo missing the target nearly one hundred per cent, they ardently fabricate pseudo-
etymologies — those that might be pigeonholed as “authorized popular etymologies”,
prompted according to my teacher Professor Igor Diakonoff’s observation by the
“sound semblance siren”.
3 One of the exceptions confirming the rule is eminent Semitologist Wolf Leslau’s
etymological dictionary of ancient Ethiopian language Geez (LGz), where the
etymological component is on the highest level for that area and its time, but the
philological one is rather superfluous and scantily informative (as a rule, there are
no references to the Geez texts, where the etymologized term is come across; it is
adduced outside the contexts et al.).
213
philological command of ancient languages with high professionalism in

etymological work.4
The general drop in the level of prestige of comparative-historical language
studies in the second half of the 20th century5 and the attitude to it on the part of
4 “Almost” because the rarest exceptions to this rule in Semitic studies do happen
while the author definitely does not imply himself belonging to the type of “pure”
comparative linguist and etymologist, possessed of general enough knowledge of
various Semitic and Afrasian (Afroasiatic) languages — for the most part, on the
vocabulary, rather than contextual or speech level.
5 In Europe tempestuous development of structuralism and semiotics was conducive
to that. It should be noted, however, that Ferdinand de Saussure, who stood at
the fountainhead of these trends, was a qualified Indo-Europeanist and his novel
contribution was a methodologically correct division of a synchronic and diachronic
description of the language — and not blatant disregard for the language history. The
historical linguistics once spawned in the USA that brought forth several stalwart
figures of world class was thereupon almost reduced to naught — and has not
totally recovered until now — by dint of a sweeping infatuation about the theory of
generative grammar by Prof. Noam Chomsky, further enhanced by the fad on his
left-wing political position in the university milieu (it is, I suspect, that position that
contributed to a rather cold attitude to Chomsky’s theories and personality by most
Russian linguists, who have always been part of the “intellectual elite” of the Russian
intelligentsia highly distrustful, especially in 1960–80-ies, towards any Western
Leftist ideology seeing in it — justly or not — a pro-Soviet one or an alleviated
version of the hateful Soviet). With all that the process made a perfectly American
headway — moderately humanely, economically reasonably and complete with
“brainwashing” freely selected by each separate individual for himself/herself. I
have repeatedly happened to hear from American linguists of my acquaintance heart-
rending stories about their love for comparative and historical studies having been
flouted by the students merely passing up signing for the classes announced by them:
nobody stooped so low as to forbid anything — Lord forbid! — but that tended to cost
a pretty penny, and since delving into science propelled forth by pure enthusiasm
is not exactly done in a civilized society, one was reduced to venturing afield for
generative grammar — even though there was no predisposition for it. Just for
comparison, I would like to recall a famous Russian linguist Alexander Reformatsky,
the author of a classical manual for students, Introduction into Linguistics, who,
not being a comparative linguist himself, would include this section in his manual
(whose first edition was in 1947) and university courses on general linguistics in the
most dangerous of years running various risks — from losing his university position
to getting into Stalin’s labor camp. In the USSR a sinister role in stifling comparative
linguistics — the “third venal tart of imperialism” (ranked in seductiveness after
genetics and cybernetics) — one or two generations preceding the soft “American
tragedy” had been played by “Marrism,” “Marxist Linguistics,” “Stadial Linguistics”
and similar pseudo-scientific crap. Yet the operation made a perfectly Soviet
headway — with human sacrifices and mutilated destinies. The second half of the
50-ies, however, saw the renaissance of this science, conceivably as a historical quirk
of fate: it so happened that several dashing young — and not so young — researchers
214
Appendix 2
specialists in individual languages and cultures6 as to an outdated science of the

19th century that gained currency, resulted in an abrupt reduction in the number
of professional comparative linguists (that against the background of geometrical
progression in the increase of original materials in hundreds, if not thousands of
languages requiring processing by comparative-historical method), which — in
turn — entailed a noticeable drop in the level of quality standards of comparative
(among them Vyacheslav Vs. Ivanov, Vladislav Illich-Svitych, Aharon Dolgopolsky,

Vladimir Dybo in Moscow and Igor Diakonoff in Leningrad) took to language
kinship — inclusive of distant — and in the 70-ies the young ones followed in their
wake. The explanation to this I tend to discern in the fact that in this science more
conspicuously than in any other a happy concurrence of lofty humanitarian goals
and an austere formalized method was in evidence (providential — for profession
choice — resolution of heated in the late 50-ies and 60-ies arguments between the
“lyricists” and “physicists”). A consequential factor was also a “gulp of freedom”:
the ideological and academic administrative officialdom keeping a zealous eye on
the humanities poised on the front line of struggle with “capitalist encompassment”
like philosophy, history, literary criticism or fine art studies fell short of the supply
of vigilance for comparative linguistics (a bit too complicated for them at that), on
top of that — with the rout of Marr-ism — haphazardly rehabilitated by the moustache
of the coryphaeus of all sciences, Stalin himself — the authority formidable also
posthumously. Of those young towards the late 1980-ies “Starostin’s group” took
shape — a small one, but the one destined to make Moscow the center of world com-
parative and historical linguistics — at least in the sphere of distant language affinity.
6 Contrary to the logic of science progress and the obvious truth that most if not all
well-established language families cannot but be eventually akin (it would be crazy
to think each of them originated independently) inside the comparative studies
department per se the lack of trust on the part of the “close” language affinity
specialists — not among all of them, of course — is still in evidence re the legitimacy
of identifying the distant affinity (for instance, towards the Altaic hypothesis among
Turkic linguists and towards the Nostratic one among the Indo-Europeanists, etc.)
That said, there have always been — and the recent years have seen an increase
in — a number of historians, archeologists, ethnologists, and now geneticists as well
approaching linguistic reconstructions with great interest, particularly on the macro-
family level, and open for the juxtaposition of their data with the data drawn from the
proto-language lexicons. The above has been witnessed by a series of interdisciplinary
forums of recent years bringing together comparative linguists, archeologists, cultural
anthropologists and geneticists. I can mention here the international conferences
organized by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge and
its director, the eminent archaeologist lord Colin Renfrew, and those organized by
the Santa Fe Institute (NM) under the auspices of the Nobel Prize winner Murray
Gell-Mann within the frame of the American-Russian Project “Evolution of Human
Languages” headed by the outstanding Russian linguist Sergei Starostin until his
untimely demise; at the fountainhead of those meetings two Moscow conferences
convened by the present author (in 1984 and 1989) under the heading “Linguistic
Reconstruction and Prehistory of the East” have left their imprint.
215
and etymological research, a prevalence of pseudo-comparative opuses and the

appearance of such an “alternative approach” as the mass comparison method
authored by J. Greenberg.7
The result of all of the above happened to be the attitude of even the authors
of nearly all the dictionaries of separate Semitic languages to their etymological
part as to something optional and of secondary importance and failure on their
part to grasp the gist of many principles of comparative/etymological research.
One of these principles, for example, is the impossibility of constructing quality
etymology without attracting complete data, in all kindred languages, on lexemes
laying claim to affinity with the word/root being etymologized; and, when
borrowing is suspected, also on the suggested source lexemes in the related or
non-related languages comprising the same cultural/historical and geographic
area. The absence of zeal and interest in fine-combing and overly painstaking
etymological work results in replacement by many authors of individual language
dictionaries of a thorough search for the new parallels in all the languages
being compared and in all the sources available — with copying the outdated
etymologies of their predecessors complete with all of their lacunas and mistakes.
The reader is capable of verifying if our estimates have any foundation by the
etymological commentaries given below by the two most authoritative relatively
recent compendia of biblical vocabulary — “The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon
of the Old Testament”8 and the multi-volume edition of “Theological Dictionary
of the Old Testament”9 whose publication was started in 1974 as well as by the
7 Joseph Greenberg, an outstanding American linguist who recently passed away

at a respectable age (one of the creators of linguistic typology, a pioneer in the
area of root-internal phonotactics as well as plenty of other areas) introduced this
method as a way to envisage the preliminary and approximate genetic classification
of linguistic families that comprise a huge number of languages, poorly studied
in the comparative aspect, with relatively “little carnage” — without establishing
sound correspondences and reconstructing proto-language states. Endowed with
a remarkable intuition, Greenberg advanced far ahead that path, which cannot
be said for most of his followers, few as they are, whose handling of the mass
comparison method is as distinct from the much more labor-intensive comparative-
historical method (which the Moscow school steadfastly holds on to) as the job of
a lumberjack is distinct from that of a jeweler — and thus, somewhat discredits the
very idea of distant affinity in the eyes of the skeptics.
8 L. Koehler and W. Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old
Testament. I–III Leiden-New York-Köln, 1994–1996; IV–V Leiden -Boston-Köln,
1999–2000 (Revised by W. Baumgartner and J.J. Stamm.). Further quoted as
HALOT.
9 Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Ed. G. Botterweck et al. Vol. I–. Grand
Rapids, 1974-. Further quoted as TD.
216
Appendix 2
etymological commentaries of an outstanding specialist in Biblical and Hurritic

studies Ephraim Speiser in the chapter dedicated to Biblical terms gy and ʕam
of his book “Oriental and Biblical Studies.”10
To illustrate a sufficiently characteristic “estranged” attitude of many
a contemporary researcher — even philologists among those — to the material,
phonetic nature of the word, to its origin, allow me to bring an example here,
although without alluding to the dictionary or etymological literature, but
to a research in textual analysis.11 In one of the papers featuring an entirely
useful analysis of comparative usage and distribution of the terms gy and ʕam
“people,” in the Jewish Bible, the former is mistakenly construed as goy, with
a short vowel, and the latter as ʔam (the work of Speiser already referred to
features another mistake: ʕm with a long a instead of the short one) — that
given the fact that in Hebrew  and o are different vowels and ʕ и and ʔ are as
different consonants as, for instance, the English p and f. Such spellings might
be mistaken for trivial misprints or typographical mistakes if they were not in
evidence in all (!) the cases of quoting those terms throughout the length of the
entire work and but for a similar mistake in a Hebrew word ləʔm “people,”
conveyed as le-om (ibid. 21: taking into account the separation of morphemes
and enclitic particles with a hyphen in the transliteration accepted in Hebrew
studies, it is hard to figure out what is meant — a preposition lə “to” with a noun
om impossible in Hebrew?).
I will venture a supposition that the crux of the matter here is not at all the
inadequate command of the authors of ancient Hebrew, but rather the trendy
attitude to a word as a pure sign that must be regarded strictly in synchronous
aspect. The authors of the work mentioned refer to the thesis put forward by the
Israeli Semitist Ch. Rabin regarding each word acquiring its meaning in opposition
to other words in the language and particularly the other words that are used
within the same sphere of objects and notions [ibid. 16]. In actual fact, in strictly
synchronous aspect the words may, in principle, be analyzed as conventional and
unmotivated algebraic symbols, “incorporeal” sememes or clusters of sememes,
existing or “meaningful” only in opposition to other similar symbols, as if their
sound “body” were devoid of its specific genesis and individual history, i.e. its
etymology. However, it is not an ontological characteristic of the word, but rather
10 E. Speiser. Oriental and Biblical Studies. Philadelphia, 1967. Further quoted as

Speiser.
11 D. Fishman, R. Mayerfeld and J. Fishman. ʔAm and Goy as Designations for
Ethnicity in Selected Books of the Old Testament. J. Fishman et al. The Rise and
Fall of the Ethnic Revival: Perspective on Language and Ethnicity. Berlin-New
York-Amsterdam, 1986.
217
an epistemological device — abstracting oneself while working on one level of

research from other levels — a device not just permissible, but in a certain way
also forced given the current level of advancement of science and training of
narrowly specialized experts.12
Reverting to the word, though: yes, it is true that the meaningful aspect of
a word as a sign, smeion, its meaning is manifest in opposition (in the same
language and/or in a given context) to other words. At the same time, the Bible
scholars must be well aware of the situation involving rare words ambiguous
in the context that lack an opposition in both — given context and in the entire
corpus of contexts that survived intact in a given language, and the only possibility
to learn something (sometimes quite a bit) about them is to find reliable parallels
for them in kindred languages or identify the source of their borrowing, i.e.
establish their etymology.
However, even outside this situation, a formal, material aspect of any word,
its individual “body” is connected with other words both genetically — via
a common root, etymological relationship — and associatively by way of phonetic
affinity or similarity. Such affinity may happen to be not a chance one, based
on a real kinship (established by a “correct” scientific etymological analysis),
but may, conversely, be stochastic (complete or partial homonymy) — for the
common linguistic consciousness, both collective and individual, in which
associative connections are formed, it is of no consequence. However, it is
associative connections among words that play a significant, in-depth role
very hard to bring out in so many kinds of conscious and spontaneous word
creations — ranging from myth-making and poetry to the changes in word
semantics and the creation of new words and roots (the phenomenon of linguistic
analogy or contamination).
I would wish to avoid being misunderstood and suspected of under-
appreciating the role of synchronous languages description and contextual analysis
(a lion’s share of linguistic and philological work falls on these operations), as well
as of the apology of diachronic linguistics and etymological way of ancient texts
interpretation.13 The goal of the present article happens to be — to overcome, if
12 Exactly in the same fashion practical healthcare featuring “simultaneous”

diagnostics and diseases treatment, does not routinely delve into a patient’s genetic
history in earnest (I do not mean questions of the “what was your mama sick with?”
type) and that is correct, otherwise — while it were going into all that the way it
is wont to do today — the patient would be no more; nonetheless the future of
healthcare is unimaginable without highly professional and practical interaction
with genetics.
13 Carrying on with a medical analogy: the implication here is that even in a case of
a vertebral column mechanical trauma the genetic information of a patient — excessive
218
Appendix 2
only partially, the prejudice against etymology, against the comparative-historical

linguistics, a science exact enough in its methods (to me it appears to be the
most exact of the humanities) possessed of a powerful informational potential.
Naturally, the prejudice in question did not spring up out of nowhere.
Linguists and philologists borrowing extensively from related languages for
the elucidation of words in the newly discovered dead languages and ancient
texts — with all their indisputable successes — have occasionally contributed to
the down-grading of comparative-historical method’s authority by virtue of proof-
free comparisons and, even in the case of correct comparisons, of an inability or
unwillingness to comment on or substantiate their decisions. An illustrative case
in point is the “Sabaic Dictionary,”14 the fruit of major and serious analytical
work of a number of authors and their predecessors’ work — it should be
stressed here — to a great extent precisely etymological. It is well known that
the epigraphic South Arabian Sabaic inscriptions have been read with various
Semitic dictionaries in hand, and the meanings of Sabaic words — established
by the parallels from other Semitic languages, Arabic first and foremost.
Nonetheless, the dictionary lacks any etymological commentaries, even Arabic
cognates of Sabaic words for that matter: neither did the most topically needed
contexts made their way there, yet — presumably out of considerations of political
correctness, strange and out of place in a most narrowly specialized research
work — translations into Arabic of Sabaic words are provided (M. Ghul, one of
the authors of the dictionary and a great connoisseur of Sabaic texts, happens to
be an Arab), needed for their comprehension no more than the French translations
for some obscure reason duplicating the English ones also provided there. As
a result the users are reduced to trusting the authors’ interpretations, not at all
always indisputable, like a shaman’s sorcery ritual.
My personal experience in comparative Semitics and our joint experience of
work at the etymological dictionary of Semitic languages15 with my ex-student
Leonid Kogan including ancient Hebrew vocabulary as one of its components
inspires me with a measure of optimism regarding the interpretational potential of
etymology. In the framework of our other projects (“A Computerized Dictionary
or pleonastic as it might seem at a glance — might come in handy: what if his/her

brittle bones are the end product of genetic processes and that knowledge has to be
factored as data of substance into the choice of a treatment course?
14 A. Beeston, М. Ghul, W. Mller and J. Ryckmans. Sabaic Dictionary (English-
French-Arabic). Louvain-la-Neuve, 1982. Further quoted as SD.
15 A. Militarev and L. Kogan. Semitic Etymological Dictionary. Vol. I. Anatomy of
Man and Animals. Mnster, 2000. Vol. II. Animal Names. Mnster, 2005. Further
quoted as SED I and II.
219
of New Interpretations of Disputed Biblical Hebrew Terms and Contexts

in the Light of Semitic Etymological Data” and the “Electronic Dictionary
of Hebrew Biblical Etymologies”) quite a few cases have been put together,
when the comparative Semitic material, the etymology of classical Hebrew
words shed additional light on the semantics of even well-known terms, enrich
their comprehension, and for the words rarely come across provide the sole
source for their interpretation. The etymological aspect also assists at contexts
analysis in laying bare the underestimated and, quite likely, an exceptional role
in creating the notions, episodes, narratives, ideas and concepts, and possibly
whole myths of such a little-studied phenomenon as “popular etymology,”
or — as distinct from this last — I suggest here it be called “etymopoetics” or
“etymopoesis” (see below).
The mission to specify, augment, enrich, and in a number of cases, correct
the accepted interpretations and exegeses calls for the sampling and registration
of respective debated words and contexts of the Bible, taking into account
the available interpretations and their authenticity appraisal, along with the
analysis of existent etymologies and the elaboration of new ones in case they
hold forth a promise of new interpretational potential. Particular attention ought
to be paid to the materials of live Semitic languages insufficiently taken into
account in comparative Semitics, such as — first and foremost — extant South
Arabian and Ethiopian; if need be — and inasmuch as possible — the data on
non-Semitic Afrasian16 languages should be drawn on, supporting and enriching
some etymology or another and indicative of a greater chronological depth of
a respective notion.
It must be noted at this juncture that the widespread opinion of etymology
as an area of subjective, libertarian or equally possible alternative decisions is
mistaken. Each word has one single origin, one etymology equally undeniable
as the presence of just one mother to each individual.17 It’s another matter that
in any language there are quite a few words (the more at that, the worse studied
16 This is the name accepted in the Russian school of linguistics — and used more and
more often by our colleagues in Europe and the USA — for the macro-family called
Afro-Asiatic (or, more recently, Afroasiatic) by most of the American linguists and,
traditionally, Semito-Hamitic or Hamito-Semitic in Europe.
17 We abstract ourselves here from such obvious cases as, for instance, compound
words comprising two stems, consequently featuring two different etymologies, or
from such much finer phenomenon requiring a deep analysis as contamination that
does not cancel out that rule, but in extension to our analogy — besides “mother”
also implies the presence of a “father” or “donor”, i.e. of a lexeme that exercised
an influence on the etymologized word and caused irregular unusual changes in its
form or meaning.
220
Appendix 2
a given language is along with a group of related languages it is part of — in

the comparative-historical aspect) for which a choice of different comparisons
exists. It is because of this that debated and alternative etymologies arise, but the
real etymology is still always unique, even though we don’t always know which
specifically, not by a long shot. Objective reasons for our lack of knowledge
may be: the isolation of the language lacking a reliably established affinity, like
Sumerian or Basque; the system of written language in which the texts created in
this language have reached us that conceals substantial phonetic differences like
in Sumerian; the loss by a language or a group of languages in the course of its
development of many phonetic and morphological differences — like in a number
of languages of South-Eastern Asia; lexical borrowings from the languages that
vanished without a trace, etc.18
Frequently subjective factors are also at work — a low level of mastering
the command of a given language family or language area by a comparative-
historical method and insufficient professional competence of the author(s) of
etymologies. One should bear in mind, however, that there are no one hundred
per cent “hopeless” etymologies: theoretically there is always a chance to bring
out — with the advancement of descriptive linguistics — the comparative materials
unknown earlier and to establish — with the progress of comparative-historical
linguistics — distant affinity of languages opening up new possibilities for quest
for kindred roots.
To form a notion of the interpretational potential of etymology it makes sense
to introduce the concept of “etymological meaning” of a word (or a range of
meanings). It is established on the grounds of comparison with kindred forms in
the same language or other languages and may completely or partially coincide
or substantially differ from the meaning(s) of a given word revealed from the
contexts. Of particular interest for us is the case, when the etymological meaning
of a word in a given language is based on comparison with other languages and
does not entirely coincide with its evidenced semantics following from available
contexts. It is important to emphasize that in this case the etymological meaning
is reconstructed for the virtual moment or initial period when a given language
had just separated from the language(s) genetically closest to it or branched
off its immediate predecessor — the proto-language common for a group of
related languages comparison with which contributes to bringing out the given
etymological meaning. That initial “original” meaning(s) reliably or hypothetically
18 Precisely along similar lines the identification of a baby-foundling may be legally

moot, and even a genetic analysis is impotent, if the baby’s parents are not among
subjects of such an analysis, even though hardly anybody will dare to dispute the
fact of the baby’s birth to just one and the same mother.
221
reconstructed through comparison with related languages may — in the language

evidenced by written sources, in our case in the biblical Hebrew — hold fast and
confirm the interpretations obtained on the basis of contextual usage or help
specify them or even result in the principally new interpretation enriching or even
totally altering our comprehension of the given term or context.
Thus, it may be postulated that the etymological meaning of Hebrew gy
(cf. in greater detail below) — apart from the meanings directly apparent
from Biblical contexts, i.e. “people, nation, persons, swarms of animals, etc.”
provided in HALOT 182–3, happens to comprise the semantic component of
territoriality — “a community, a common settlement; a group of people sharing
residence on a particular territory; (local) populace.” This component is
hypothetically postulated on the basis of its comparison with such related forms
in other languages (to the best of my knowledge never attracted for comparison
hitherto) as Aramaic: Hatra gwy “citizen; domestic (servant),” Syrian gaww
“a body of people, congregation, community” and “convent, monastery (the
buildings), monks’ residence,” Arabic wyin “encampment; military tent
camp,” Geez ge (<*gay) “territory” and with parallels from non-Semitic Afrasian
languages. Among the Semitic languages quoted the closest to ancient Hebrew
is Aramaic,19 so we can reconstruct the meaning complete with the semantic
component of territoriality for the proto-form that later on spawned Hebrew gy
and refer it to the period when the Proto-Canaanite language, the closest ancestor
of Hebrew, branched off the Proto-Aramaic (that period is dated by me through
the application of the glottochronology method elaborated by Starostin,20 circa
18th century B.C.E.21).
What is at issue is whether the given semantic component suggested by
the etymology of the word gy is still preserved in any historically witnessed
and attested period of ancient Hebrew, i.e. in the text of the Bible. As the case
turns out to be, the “territorial community” semantic aspect, not at all apparent,
yet essential for the comprehension of this term in its historical and ideological
development, is also confirmed by the in-depth minute analysis of Biblical
contexts (see below).
19 Even closer is Phoenician belonging to the Canaanite language group which

ancient Hebrew was also part of, albeit a kindred Phoenician term gw is traceable
in surviving Phoenician texts only in the meaning of “community” and does not
comprise any additional information in this instance.
20 See S. Starostin. Comparative-historical linguistics and lexicostatistics. Time Depth
in Historical Linguistics, Vol. 1, 223–265. The McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research. Cambridge, 2000.
21 Cf. the genealogical tree of Afrasian in Appendix 4 to this book.
222
Appendix 2
Yet another example from a different semantic filed. In various Biblical texts
there is a repeated reference to əʔl “underworld” [HALOT 1368] as a place
where the deceased depart; however any intelligible description of the notion is
nowhere in evidence: one gets the impression that it suggests a macabre poetic
image, an overused, but “hackneyed” metaphor — rather than a fundamental
notion — that survived since older times or borrowed from other cultures. There
are several etymological suggestions about this term like the one establishing its
connection with the homonymic Hebrew verb ʔal “to ask, question, demand”
which happen to be typical cases of the phenomenon that may be described as
“pseudoscientific popular etymology” suggested by the commentators for lack
of a better option. The likeliest etymological meaning of Hebrew əʔl that has
not survived in Biblical Hebrew per se — “precipice, gulch, river/current-bed”,
cf. Arabic sll-, plural salln- and sawll- “gulch with steep slopes, the valley
bottom, a current-bed” [BK 2 1117], sayl- “a current,” syl “to flow (of water),
carry off (of a current); to be in trouble” [ibid.1177]; Modern Ethiopian (Gurage
group): Endegen~ səwel, Soddo siyol “cliff, abyss, precipice” [LGur 568].22
Semitic proto-form *ay/w/ʔal- “gulch, precipice, current-bed” goes back to
Proto-North Afrasian *sayl- “current-bed” featuring cognates in West Chadic:
Mangas salaˋ, Guruntum saʹl “river” and East Chadic: Mokilko seloˋ “water
reservoir, basin”.23
The above etymology is indirectly confirmed by another Hebrew word — br,
a Biblical parallelism to əʔl: “Yet into Hell (əʔl) were you overthrown,
into the depths of the underworld (br )” (Isa 14:15; The King James Version’s
translation) and br ʔn translated as “a pit of wasteland” meaning the under-
world [HALOT 1370]; its main meanings are “cistern” (also as the entrance to
əʔl [ibid. 116]), “pitfall” (often — deep hollow in rocky ground, used to store
the water from the winter rains) and “grave” [ibid.]. In other Semitic languages
a related root has the meaning of “pit, cistern, well”, “grave” (in other Afrasian
languages — “a moat, a ditch, a pit,” “a grave” and “to dig”, “to bury”), and
in some “the underworld”, too (cf. Akkadian bru “pit, hole, well” and “world
of the dead” and Arabic dr-ul-bawr- “hell,” literally “house of pit” [ibid.])
suggesting that the notion of underworld or world of the dead as a precipice,
current-bed or pit filled with water was known to the Semitic-speaking peoples
and, perhaps, goes back to common Semitic times.
22 Less reliable, but also possible is the connection with Akkadian alu^ (salu^) “to
submerge oneself (especially referring to the river ordeal)” [CAD 1 273] and
Modern South Arabian: Jibbali sɛl “to drain, run off; to rain” [JJ].
23 See Afrasian Data Base (Further quoted as ADB) compiled by the author and Olga
Stolbova (to be viewed at http://starling.rinet.ru and http://ehl.santafe.edu).
223
From the point of view of etymology possibilities in word interpretation,

specifically in Biblical texts research, one may isolate several basic situations
(exclusive of the cases for which no verisimilar — or plainly no — etymology
has been found):
1. A word is come across frequently, its meaning (or the range of meanings)
is evident enough and does not suggest any special semantic nuances or complex
cultural associations — or else they, conversely, are in evidence, but expand
well enough in respective contexts while parallels from other languages do not
add anything new in semantic aspect (say, Hebrew yd “hand” from common
Semitic *yad-/ʔid- “hand” or Hebrew m “name” from common Semitic *im-
“name”). The etymology, substantive in itself, is immaterial for the semantic
interpretation.
2. The meaning of a word is unclear (most often it is a rare term, the so-
called hapax legomenon, or a word encountered albeit often but in stereotypy
contexts only) whereas reliable, uniquely possible or semantically unambiguous
parallels to it may be discovered in related languages or else a reliable source of
borrowing in a related or not related language is found. Etymology is essential.
3. A word is not entirely clear, has debatable interpretations and the found
parallels from related languages may specify or make its meaning clearer or at
least narrow down the range of possible interpretations. Etymology is useful.
4. A word is well-known whereas comparison with cognate words of the
same and other — which is normally more productive — languages lays additional
nuances bare in it, imparts greater “stereoscopic” depth to it, highlighting
its initial etymological meaning. Exhaustive etymology may happen to be
exceptionally productive, particularly if the word being analyzed — or a group
of words — is to be referred to the conceptual sphere.
5. A word is well-known whereas comparison with words not etymologically
related, but close phonetically lays bare the effect on the semantics of the word
in question along the etymopoetic line having all the advantages mentioned
in situation 4. In this situation, however, any proposed interpretation cannot
be but less reliable in principle than in situation 4 and still less so than in
situation 1 which increases the risk of artificial interpretations, of a “research
phantom” and consequently requires a much more laborious argumentation in
both — comparative-historical and philological aspects.
Since situation 1 is common knowledge and sufficiently trivial, let us bring
examples of situations 2, 3, 4 and 5.24
24 In the examples considered below a Biblical Hebrew term is given first accompanied
by a reference to the meaning and etymologies that are adduced in HALOT and,
whenever relevant, in TD, then parallels to this term in other Semitic languages
224
Appendix 2
Examples of situation 2.
1. Hebrew pn “rock badger, hyrax, dassie” [HALOT 1633]. Attested

twice in the dietary laws (Lev 11:5 and Dt 14:7) as forbidden for food (ruminant
but not hoofed though the former definition is zoologically incorrect as hyrax
is not a ruminant). The other two attestations are in the poetic texts Ps 104:18
and Pr 30:26 where the rocky habitat of pn is described (hr–m haggəbh–m
layyəʕl–m // səlʕ–m mahs lapann–m “high mountains are for ibexes // rocks
are the abode of hyraxes”; əpann–m ʕam l(ʔ) ʕsm // wayyŝ–m basslaʕ
btm “hyraxes are not a strong people // but place their house on the rock”).
HALOT adduces parallels from Samaritan (*afan) and Old Sinaitic in-
scriptions (t̲pn) with the following remark: “the creature was known as t̲afan by
the South Arabians”). In fact, the term is present in Modern South Arabian: Mehri
t̲fən [JM 416], Jibbali t̲ɔʹfun “rock hyrax” [JJ 283] (see also SED II No. 240).
The latter terms phonetically perfectly match Hebrew pn confirming
its identification with the rock hyrax. However, this case has much deeper
implications highlighting a difficult question of the original habitat of Proto-
Semitic speakers.25 It is not accidental that the word for hyrax is not attested
follow with a reference to corresponding dictionaries, that are often graded

depending on the genetic proximity of this or that language to ancient Hebrew —
from Phoenician to Akkadian and Modern South Arabian (cf. the diagram of
suggested genealogical classification of Semitic languages as part of the Afrasian
genealogical tree in the Appendix 4 while bearing in mind that it is mainly based
on the method of lexicostatistics/glottochronology devised by Starostin [Star], and
in a number of substantive instances is distinct from the generally accepted). At the
end of the etymological entry a common Semitic proto-form and its meaning are
adduced, and — if need be — parallels from other Afrasian languages with common
Afrasian proto-form are quoted. Translations from ancient Hebrew into English
are given after Zondervan New International Version (NIV Study Bible). Further
referred to as NIV.
25 This question is eventually connected with another much-debatable problem — of
Proto-Afrasian speakers’ original habitat or “home”. Practically all writers who have
treated this issue (with the exception of the present one) put forth their arguments in
favor of Africa. These arguments relying on general considerations like “economy of
movement” (it is easier to imagine one branch of Afrasian, Semitic-speakers, having
migrated from Africa to Asia, than the reverse movement of the five remaining
branches’ speakers; common sense, however, cannot be the only criterion in scientific
matters) and scarce, chaotic and carelessly compiled lexical examples look very
weak (see, for example, Ch. Ehret. Ethiopians and East Africans. The Problems of
Contacts. Nairobi, 1974 or R. Blench. Archaeology, Language and the African Past.
Lanham, 2006). An exception is to be made for I. Diakonoff’s study (I. Diakonoff.
Earliest Semites in Asia. Agriculture and Animal Husbandry According to Linguistic
225
to anywhere else in Semitic besides Hebrew and modern South Arabian (which
nevertheless guarantees its Proto-Semitic status) since there is no — and has never
been, it seems — rock hyrax anywhere else in the Semitic-speaking Western Asian
area besides Israel, Sinai, Syria and South Arabia. This is an isolated26 — though
a serious enough — argument in favor of looking for the Proto-Semitic “home”
in any of these two locations, the Levant and South Arabia. However, in view of
a reliable Proto-Semitic term for another animal, the bear,27 the latter hypothesis
is not compatible with the fact that bear, while attested in the past in the Levant
seems to have never been attested to in South Arabia. The implication is that
a combination of such two creatures as a rock hyrax and a bear features, of all the
places in West Asia, the Levant only — which, hence, must be the most plausible
candidate for a Proto-Semitic original habitat.
Data (VIIIth-IVth Millennia B.C.). Altorientalische Forschungen 8, 1981, 23–74)

which is methodically impeccable, but had been outdated even by the moment of
its publication in what concerns the lexical materials its conclusions were based on.
By that moment, a lot of new data contradicting these conclusions had been already
accumulated — earlier due to the work on the comparative Afrasian lexicon initiated
and headed by Diakonoff himself and then in HSED (Orel, V. and Stolbova, O. Hamito-
Semitic Etymological Dictionary. Materials for a Reconstruction. Leiden — New
York — Kln, 1995) and in the works by the present author. Later, Diakonoff
recognized the validity of my linguistic evidence in favor of the West Asian home
(in: И.М. Дьяконов. Шумеры и афразийцы глазами историка. Вестник древней
истории, No. 4, 1996, 81–86 [I. M. Diakonoff. Sumerians and Afrasians through the
eyes of a historian. Journal of Ancient History, No. 4, 1996, 81–86]).
The evidence in question (see A. Militarev. The Prehistory of a Dispersal: the
Proto-Afrasian (Afroasiatic) Farming Lexicon. Examining the Farming/Language
Dispersal Hypothesis, eds. P. Bellwood & C. Renfrew. McDonald Institute
Monographs, Cambridge, 2002, 135–50 and A.Militarev. Reconstructed lexicon
for the West Asian home of Proto-Afrasians: pastoralism. Journal of Language
Relationship, № 1, 2009, 95–106) speak in favor of the Proto-Afrasian speaking
community’s identification with the early Levantine villagers associated with the
Early Neolithic Post-Natufian culture; these villagers left some of the earliest known
archaeological evidence for the cultivation of domesticated crops (cereals and pulsed)
and the raising of domestic livestock (see, for example, O. Bar-Yossef. The Natufian
Culture and the Early Neolithic: Social and Economic Trends in South-Western
Asia. Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis, eds. P. Bellwood
& C. Renfrew. McDonald Institute Monographs, Cambridge, 2002, 113–126).
26 Paradoxically, the problem of Proto-Semitic home is far more difficult than that of
the Proto-Afrasian home allowing for a much more systematic approach.
27 Proto-Semitic *dubb-: Akkadian dabû (dabbu), Eblaite da-buˋ(-um), dab6-buˋ = AZ
(Sumerian term for bear); Ugaritic db; Hebrew db; Aramaic: Old dbhh, Official
db, dwb, Biblical db, Syrian debb, Arabic dubb-; Ethiopian: Geez, Tigre, Tigrai,
Amharic dəbb [SED II No. 65].
226
Appendix 2
2. Hebrew *badd- attested with pronominal suffixes in three contexts only,

according to [HALOT 109]: two identical (Isa 44:25 and Jer 50:36 translated
in NIV as “false prophets”) and one, Hos 11:6, slightly different in wording
but clearly of the same stereotype (strangely translated by NIV as “bars of their
gates”). This is a typical hapax legomenon glossed as “oracle priest” in HALOT,
where it is compared only with an obscure Amorite baddum “official”.
However, there are a few tenable parallels: Arabic ʔabdd-, plural bidadat-
“temple of idolaters” [BK 1 93] (cf. also bdd “to cause harm to someone” [ibid.
92]) and Ethiopian: Geez bud “one who causes harm by means of the evil eye”,
Tigrai, Amharic, Harari buda “magician, man who has the power of casting the
evil eye” [LGz 86]28, Gurage dialects buda “tanner, man who has the power of
casting the evil eye” [LGur 132] (neither the Hebrew nor Arabic terms are drawn
to comparison in any of the sources quoted). The term is widely spread in East
Africa and, of course, looks as an interborrowing — the question is where from
where to? In view of the Hebrew and Arabic cognates of the Ethiopian terms, the
latter ones are rather inherited than borrowed, then the Cushito-Omotic parallels
to be considered either loanwords from Ethiopian Semitic or, at least part of
them, cognate terms continuing Proto-Afrasian *bVd(d)- “magician, witch-
doctor, one who curses, causes harm”. There are also a few Chadic matches:
West Chadic: Ngizim baʹdəˋ-raˋ (if not <*ba-dəra) “sorcerer”, Central Chadic:
Lame, Zime-Dari bidaˋ “blacksmith”29 and, perhaps, East Chadic: Mobu bə ʹbə ʹdeʹ
and Ndam buˋbbuˋdde “to curse” (both, with reduplication, <*bu-bud-, eventually
likely <*bu-budʔ-).
Anyway, the “etymological meaning” of Hebrew *badd- deduced from its
Semitic and non-Semitic parallels clearly confirms a negative, hostile profile of
the personage in question.
3. This is a case when etymology can throw light on unclear, but key terms
in ages-long theological and philosophic discussions about “formless and empty”
from Gen 1:2: “wə-hʔrs hyt th wa-b̲h”. Avoiding to overtax the reader
with an analysis of corresponding places from the early versions of the Bible — the
Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgata or Syrian Peshitta it is possible to show
28 With a comment: “also in Cushitic: Bilin bda, Oromo, Saho, Afar bud, Kafa bdo
‘potter’. Cerulli … considers the root to be of Nilotic origin: Shilluk bdo ironsmith’.
Tanners and ironsmiths are considered to be buda”.
29 The Central Chadic forms are compared with the Ethiopian and Cushito-Omotic
terms in EDE II 132.
227
how traditionally those terms are understood taking examples of translation into
English (“Now the Earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface
of the deep”). Here is how their combination is commented on in HALOT 1689:
“it signifies the terrible, eerie, deserted wilderness, and this is a primary idea that
functions in creation”.
Now, what is the “etymological meaning” of these terms?
3a. Hebrew th translates as “wilderness, wasteland, desert” (and also
“emptiness, nothing”) [HALOT 1689].
Quoted parallels — Ugaritic thw “wasteland, wilderness”30 and Arabic t–h-
“wilderness” (the latter with a strange comment “among the cognate languages
possibly also relevant,” though it is undoubtedly relevant) — are given for a good
reason [ibid.].31
The etymological meaning is “desert” (to be more precise, “the desert one
can lose one’s way in, the kind scary to go to” — see Appendix 2, footnote 31).
3b. Hebrew bh translates as “emptiness, wasteness” [HALOT 111].
Derived (with a question mark) from the verb bhy “to be astonished”
represented in post-biblical Hebrew which, due to an inexplicable semantic
30 In a more recent “A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition”

by G. del Olmo Lete and J. Sanmartin (further quoted as DUL) thw is translated as
“steppe, desert.”
31 Along with post-Biblical Hebrew th “to be rigid” having nothing to do with it. Then
a sophisticated commentary follows: “A verbal form, together with a verbal form
relevant to the derivation of bh, is found in Egyptian by Grg ZAW 92 (1980) 431–
34: Egyptian thʔ “to deviate, miss”, Eg. bhʔ “to flee in panic”; Kilian VT 16 (1966)
433f: through Egyptian there is a connection with Chaos, or rather interminableness,
that is characteristic of the primaeval deities”. In actuality, Egyptian bhȵ (not bhʔ !)
is etymologically in no way connected with Hebrew bh (cf. EDE II 273–5), and
consequently the entire affected idea of Kilian — a typical case of fundamental
conclusions based on false etymologies — about the connection of the Biblical image
“through Egyptian(!) … with Chaos” — and moreover — with “interminableness
(sic!) … characteristic for primordial deities” amounts to nothing.
As for Egyptian thȷ (otherwise rendered as thy or thj, but not thʔ !) it translates
as “to go astray, transgress, err, overstep” [Faul. 300] and stems from common
Afrasian *taw/yh- “(to be afraid) to lose one’s way; get lost, perish (in the desert);
desert (noun)”: Semitic (besides noun meaning “wilderness, desert” — see above):
Syrian twh “to be alarmed, startled, astounded” [Marg. 606], Arabic twh “to get lost
(crossing the desert), wander about; be perplexed” [BK 1 211], tyh “to wander about,
get lost” [ibid. 213], Geez tayyəha “fear”, Tigre twha “to wander about” [LH 318]
(perhaps an Arabism); West Chadic: Bolewa twuˋ “to stray from road” [ADB]; East
Cushitic: Dirasha taw-ad- “to get lost, perish” [Lamb. 386]; North Omotic: Kafa,
Sheko tah-, Wolamo toʔʔ- “to be extinguished (fire), come to an end”, Yemsa ti-
(causative) “to come to an end, get lost, perish,” Bworo, Sheko tah- “to extinguish,
come to an end,” Kafa tah “to perish” [ibid.].
228
Appendix 2
association of this particular dictionary entry’s author, is compared with

Arabic bhy “to be empty” [ibid.]. Sure enough, it is not the Hebrew verb “to be
astonished” but the Hebrew bh that can be compared with the Arabic verb bhy
“to be empty” (said of a furniture-free house) and forms like bh-in “empty”,
bahw- “valley” and “chest cavity” [BK 1 174], and also with Judaic Aramaic verb
in the causative h-bhy “to clear (the field, thickets)” [Ja. 142] (i.e. to clear out,
create an empty space ?).
The etymological meaning of Hebrew bh (though not as obvious as
in the case with th) is “void, empty space.” Derived from the listed forms
fairly poorly preserved Semitic *bahw- “empty, void” is consolidated and
highlighted by parallels from West Chadic (Tangale ba “hole, pit,” Kirfi boˋɣoʹ
“hole,” Gera buˋwaʹ “well” [ADB]); East Cushitic (Oromo boww “cliff, abyss,
canyon, deep natural rift, gulley”, Darasa bwoʔaˋ “precipice, chasm” [ADB])
and South Cushitic (*boohoo-nta “pit, pitfall, hole in the ground” and *boohoo-
ngw “valley, hole in the ground” [KM 74–5]), all originated from Proto-Afrasian
*bahw- “empty, void, hole, chasm.”
Thus, proceeding from etymological considerations and taking into account
the parallelism th w-b̲h, one can suggest the following translation of
wə-hʔrs hyt th wa-b̲h: “And the earth was (a) desert and void.” The
rendering of th as “formless” seems unwarranted.
4. This is another case when etymology can shed light on the much-discussed
correlation between two other key terms in the Hebrew Bible — ʕam and gy
both often rendered as “people”. This is what E. Speiser says about the subtle
and controversial enough difference between these terms: “ … against the slender
minority of passages that do correlate ʕm with gy, the overwhelming majority
indicate a clear and manifold distinction between the two nouns … when Israel is
spoken of as God’s people, the forms employed are ʕamm–, ʕammək̲, or ʕamm,
but never gy with possesive suffix. In fact, ʕm is found hundreds of times with
pronominal endings, as against only seven with gy, each in connection with
land” [Speiser 162]. Maintaining that “One begins to see now that the rendering
“people” and “nation” are not one-to-one correlatives of ʕm and gy”, he refers
to “the affinity of gy to land” again [footnote 6] and to “kinship connotation
of ʕm” and concludes: “ʕm was essentially a term denoting close family
connections, and hence secondarily the extended family, that is, people in the
sense of a larger, but fundamentally consanguineous, body … In contrast, there is
not the least hint of personal ties under the concept of gy. The noun labels large
conglomerates held together, so to speak, from without rather than from within”
[Speiser 163].
Let us see how this conclusion drawn from the textual analysis alone
correlates with the etymological evidence.
229
4a. Hebrew ʕam (ʕamm- with pronoun suffixes, plural ʕamm–m) “people
(with an emphasis on connections of kinship and religious ceremonial)”, “race,
population, inhabitants, etc.” (also indicates different non-Jewish communities,
“the heathen”) [HALOT 837–9].
Parallels are given from Phoenician, Moabite and all Aramaic languages;
also quoted are Akkadian ammum considered a Canaanite loanword and
ammnu(m) “crowd of people, army, gang of workers” (perhaps mistaken for
Babylonian ummnu “army, troops, (occasionally) crowd, common people”
[CDA 422]), which more likely originates from a different common Semitic
root *ʔumm-at-/*ʔumm-n-. The Arabic and Sabaic cognates, to say nothing
of somewhat less reliable Ethiopian ones, are not registered. In [Speiser
165–6] this term is described as common Western Semitic (the implication
here being Canaan-Aramaic or, by our classification, South Levantine) with
an indication to preserving in Arabic its original meaning “father’s brother” even
though this meaning — just like the meaning “father’s sister” of the feminine
gender noun of the same root — is common Semitic (cf. below). Let us muster
all the parallels:
Post-Biblical Hebrew ʕam “gathering, crowd, people” [Ja. 1086], ʕamm
“people,” plural ʕamm–n “gentiles; the seven peoples inhabiting Canaan” [ibid.
1089]; Phoenician ʕm “people; community, group of people” [Tomb. 248];
Aramaic: Old ʕmʔ, Official ʕmmʔ, Nabatean ʕmh “people” [HJ 864–5], Judaic
ʕam, ʕamm “gathering, crowd, people” [Ja. 1086], ʕamm “people” (gy
ʕamm “gentiles”) [ibid. 1089], Syrian ʕam, plural ʕaməm “people; Christians,”
ʕaməmy “plebs, uncultured people, ordinary people” [Brock. 529]; Sabaic ʕmt
“general populace” [SD 17]; Arabic ʕamm- “big crowd”, ʕamam- “multitude of
people; general populace, population” [BK 2 358], ʕmm “to spread everywhere,
be general, common” [ibid. 357]; Geez ʕamama “be numerous” [LGz 63]32,
Amharic ammm “to be numerous” (from Geez, according to Leslau) [ibid.]. All
from Proto-West Semitic*ʕamm- “people; gathering, multitude of people; general
populace, common people.”
The Hebrew ʕam “people” coincides phonetically with ʕam meaning
“(paternal) relationship, clan, kin” [HALOT 837–9] going back to Proto-Semitic
*ʕamm- “paternal uncle, male agnate,” *ʕamm-at- (fem.) “paternal aunt, father’s
sister” [DK 149]: Syrian ʕammət “aunt” [ibid.]; Sabaic ʕm “uncle, male agnate”
[SD 16]; Ugaritic ʕm “lineage, ancestors” [DUL 163]; Arabic ʕamm- “father’s
brother,” ʕammat- “father’s sister” [BK 2 358]; Tigre ʕmmt “father’s sister”
[LH 450] (since unattested in other Ethiopian languages, rather an Arabism);
32 Leslau supposes the Geez word may be an Arabism.
230
Appendix 2
Jibbali ʕom “ancestor, grandfather” [JJ 19], Mehri ʔm id., ʔmt “grandmother,
aunt” [JM 36], etc. Formally, it is impossible to prove that Hebrew ʕam “people”
and ʕam “(paternal) relationship, clan, kin” are not homonyms but two cognate
terms (or two meanings of the same term) — since each of them has a distinct
etymon on the Proto-West Semitic level (when the meaning “people” derived
from the primary, Proto-Semitic meaning “paternal uncle, male agnate” started
its history as a separate term), whereas on “the common sense” level their kinship
is evident; however, even if they had been actual homonyms, i.e. two words not
related etymologically/genetically, their material and semantic affinity if even
haphazard would have likely all the same added a semantic component “clan,
kin” to the notion of “people” along the popular etymology line (see below
examples of situation 5).
Let us get back to the ancient Hebrew ʕam in the contexts where this term
refers to the people of Israel. What I suggest should be called “etymological
meaning” may be described for this term as “people, an aggregate of individuals
initially united by common kinship down the paternal ancestral line.” The question
is, though, whether the semantic component of “common kinship” was retained
in the linguistic consciousness of the speaking and communicating collective
(or the authors of respective texts) throughout the period of these texts’ taking
shape — from their oral currency to their written records. In other words, was
the connection between ʕam “people” and ʕam “paternal uncle, male agnate”
perceptible in the linguistic consciousness? Judging by the emotional/stylistic
coloration of ʕam in the meaning “people (of the people of Israel)” the answer
to this question must be positive rather than otherwise — cf. the analysis of
contextual meanings range for this term in [Speiser 162–3]: “ʕm is something
subjective and personal” and “ʕm was essentially a term denoting close family
connections” [ibid. 163].
The given point of view is also shared in later works: “The individual Israelite
may not have had his clan foremost in his mind; yet it is through his clan that he
found his social, juridical, and religious identity. Certainly in the early period
the nation did not play that role. The people with whom the individual identified
himself were not his compatriots; his people (ʕam) were primarily the members
of his clan.”33
4b. Hebrew gy “people; nation; pagan peoples; persons; (of animals)
swarm (of mosquitoes, birds)” [HALOT 182–3], gw “community” [ibid. 182],
Post-Biblical gayyt “gentile status” [Ja. 236].
33 K. van der Toorn. Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel. Continuity and
Change in the Forms of Religious Life. Studies in the History and Culture of the
Ancient Near East. Vol. VII. Leiden-New York-Kln, 1996, 203.
231
The only parallel usually quoted is from Epigraphic South Arabian (gw
“tribes” [HALOT 182]) or it is asserted that “Hebrew gy has practically no
cognates” [Speiser 166]. Surprisingly, missing are not only the Arabic and
Ethiopian parallels (whose kinship with Hebrew gy is not so evident in view
of differences in meaning), but undoubtedly cognate Phoenician and Aramaic
forms, too. Practically all sources (cf. [HALOT], [Speiser], [TD II 426]) also
quote Akkadian (Mari) gʔum, gwum “people” [AHw 284] or gʔu “group,
gang (of workmen)” [CAD g 58] as a West Semitic loanword.
Let us list all relevant parallels: Phoenician gw “community” [Tomb. 63];
Aramaic: Hatra gwy “citizen; domestic (servant)” [HJ 218], Syrian gaww
“a body of people, congregation, community” [Marg. 62], “convent, monastery
(the buildings)” [Marg. Suppl. 68] (“community; monks’ communal residence”
[Brock. 107]), Judaic gayyt “gentile status” [Ja. 236] (rather from Post-Biblical
Hebrew; cf. also gt “flock, herd” [ibid. 243]), Mandaic giuiata “congregation,
company of people” [DM 89];34 Sabaic gw-m, gwy “community group” [SD
51]; Arabic wyin- “encampment; military tent camp” [BK 1 360] (the so
called “broken plural”, no singular form attested); Ethiopian: Geez ge “territory”
[LGz 172] (<*gay), Amharic, Argobba ge “country, town” [LGur 254], Harari g
“the city of Harar, city” [LHar. 66], Wolane ge, Selty g “country, land, village”
[LGur 254]. All from Proto-West Semitic *gaw(V)y- “community group sharing
a common territory”.35
The etymological meaning of Hebrew gy is “people, population sharing
a common territory; community not based on consanguineous connections” —
remember Speiser’s “large conglomerates held together, so to speak, from without
rather than from within.”
34 Explained as plural of giuta “body, interior, inside, entrails,” etc. which is untenable
as well as deriving Syrian gaww “community; monks’ communal dwelling” from
the homonymous gaww “interiors, stomach, viscera” (from Common Semitic
*gaw(w)iʔ- “body; chest; belly; interior” [SED I 92–93]) or the adverb/ preposition
“inside, in, inward” likely related to the latter: this is a typical “scholarly folk
etymology”, or what I would call “scholarly mythetymology.”
35 Cf. D. Cohen. Dictionnaire des racines sémitiques ou attestées dans les langues
sémitiques. La Haye, 1970–, 107 (further quoted as DRS) and [DK 149] with
a different choice of examples and a different interpretation. The Ethiopian terms
quoted above are inconvincingly connected by some authors (cf. [LGz 174],
[DRS 107]) with homonymous Semitic *gay/wVʔ- “valley, depression, lowland,
glen, wady, waterlogged area” (i.e. area rather than not unfit for habitation): Hebrew
gay(ʔ) “valley” [HALOT 188], Judaic Aramaic gayy “glen, wady” [Ja. 233]; Arabic
aww-, pl. iwʔ- “depression, lowland, bottom of a valley, field” [BK 1 348],
awiyy- “bad-smelling water; bad, unfit for habitation (of area or climate)” [ibid.
360], iyyat- “swamp with stagnant and ill-smelling water” [ibid. 361].
232
Appendix 2
5а. Hebrew bṭ “tribe” [HALOT 1388–90].

Only the Aramaic parallels are given, whereas the Arabic one is missing.
Let us adduce all of them: Aramaic: Biblical *əbaṭ “tribe” [HALOT 1990],
Judaic əbaṭ id. [Ja. 1513], Syrian abṭ “clan, tribe (of Israelites)” [Brock. 751];
Arabic sibṭ- “tribe (especially of Israelites); family; nephews, grandchildren”
[BK 2 1044]. While the Aramaic forms and the meaning “tribe” in Arabic are
obviously borrowed from or at least influenced by Hebrew, the other meanings
of the Arabic noun suggest it is an inherited term cognate of Hebrew bṭ.36
Common West Semitic (Hebrew, Arabic and, perhaps, Epigraphic South Arabian)
*ibṭ- “tribe, clan, progeny” most likely from “offshoot” from “rod, branch” (see
#5b), with the same meaning shift as in #6.37
5б. Hebrew bṭ “rod; staff; scepter, etc.” [HALOT 1388–9].
Some of the Aramaic, the Akkadian and Sabaic cognates are quoted, while
the Arabic, Ethiopian and Modern South Arabian are missing. Here are all the
cognates: Aramaic: Judaic əbaṭ, ibṭ “rod; staff; scepter” [Ja. 1513], bṭ “to
strike (with a rod)” [ibid. 1512], Syrian abṭ “stick, rod, cane; staff; scepter;
streak of lightning; punishment” [Brock. 751]; Sabaic s1bṭ “to beat, defeat
(enemy); stroke, blow (as punishment)” [SD 123]; Arabic sabaṭnat- “a hollow
cane; a pipe for shooting birds” [BK 2 1044]; Ethiopian: Geez səbṭ “pointed rod”
[LGz 485] (strangely enough, Leslau also overlooked the obviously related Arabic
sabaṭnat- “a hollow cane” in his comparanda), etc.; Akkadian (Old Bab.) abbiṭu
“staff; scepter” [CAD 1 10], abṭu “to strike, hit (said of demons, illness); to blow
(said of the wind)” [ibid. 8]; Mehri səbṭ “to hit (with a stick)” [JM 340], etc. All
from Proto-Semitic *VbVṭ- “stick, branch, rod”,38 *bṭ “to hit (with a stick, rod).”
36 Cf. also Epigraphic South Arabian (Maʕin) s1bṭ-t “to miscarry, abort (of a woman)”,
s1bṭ “parturient” [LM 81] and Arabic sbṭ “to miscarry, abort (of a woman and female
animal)” [BK 2 1043] (not to rule out the borrowing of one of these languages into
another) with a possible evolution of the meaning: “progeny” > “to give birth” >
“miscarry.”
37 Anyway, the etymological decision offered in [HALOT 1388] is much more
complicated — and less convincing: “It should be noted that in General Semitic
the basic meaning of bṭ is stick, staff, scepter. The substantive then develops in
meaning from “the sceptre of authority” … to signify a group of people under the
command of “one who holds the sceptre” … , people who have blood relationship
with one another … , on which see Rost Die Vorstufen von Kirche und Synagoge im
Alten Testament.” From examples brought below it becomes apparent that the basic
meanings of the noun bṭ in Semitic are “rod, branch, stick” (with a derived verb
“to beat, hit”), while “scepter, staff” are secondary.
38 Egyptian (late) bd “stick” is a West Semitic loanword [EG IV 442].
233
The implied primary, etymological meaning of Hebrew bṭ would be “rod,

branch, offshoot” > “offshoot of a tribe” — it is for the Biblical philologists and
historians to judge whether this meaning is confirmed by the textual analysis.
6. A case of meaning shift very similar to #5.
6а. Hebrew maṭṭ “tribe” [HALOT 573] (wherein it is combined in one entry
with maṭṭ “stick, staff”), [TD VIII 241–5].
No Semitic cognates for the term meaning “tribe” are adduced in HALOT or
elsewhere. One may suggest the following parallels neatly fitting phonetically,
but featuring different, but in principle compatible meanings: Arabic miṭw-
“friend, companion” (originally “junior companion”?), mṭw “to join someone
as a companion, fellow-traveler” [BK 2 1124]; Ethiopian (Gurage): Selti mṭa
“junior, younger brother”, mṭt “small sister” [LGur 437] (according to Leslau,
from East Cushitic Oromo mṭa “junior,” which is not particularly likely in the
light of comparative Semitic data), Chaha, Eza, Ennemor, Gyeto mʷəṭa, etc.
“plant that begins to grow; living being that begins to grow, young child, young
of an animal, immature (person, tree)” (ibid.; according to Leslau, from East
Cushitic Kambatta, Hadiya muta “shoot of a tree,” unlikely); Soqotri mṭṭ “to
ripen, maturate,” meṭeʹṭe, meṭiṭa, moʹṭeʹṭa “young; strong; serious”, fem. mtiṭoʹʔoh
“young and mature (girl)” [LS 241]. All these forms permit to reconstruct
a hypothetic Proto-Semitic *ma/iṭṭ- “young(er), junior, maturing, growing,”
very likely derived from the meaning “stick, staff” (see 6b); the meaning shift
“branch, offshoot” > “posterity, progeny, children” is common of many world
languages.
A presumed etymological meaning in Hebrew maṭṭ would be then “offshoot,
younger generation (of a tribe), younger age group”, which is not quite the same
as “tribe” (cf. a frequent usage in the Bible of the term maṭṭ with bən “sons,”
followed by a name of one of the Israelite tribes, in Joshua, see [TD VIII 246]) .
6б. Hebrew maṭṭ “stick, staff” [HALOT 573], [TD VIII 241–5].
In both sources, only the Ugaritic parallel is adduced.39 Neither draws the
clearly pertinent Akkadian word to comparison, to say nothing of the Arabic,
Ethiopian and Mehri forms whose relashionship with the Hebrew term is not so
evident.
It is all the more amazing since maṭṭ “stick, staff” is conjoined with such
an important term as “tribe” which presupposes the evolution of the latter from the
former, but clearly wants a semantic basing. In [TD] a possibility is allowed for
the descent of this noun from the verb *nṭy that did not survive in Hebrew (which
is formally acceptable: prefix of an instrument’s name m- and the assimilation
of -n- to -ṭ, i.e. maṭṭ < *manṭ < *ma-nṭ) implying the development from the
39 TD also compares Eblaitic ma-ṭi-um = gigu-RUurudu and gigu-RU-kakurudu.
234
Appendix 2
verb *nṭy “to beat” — that survived intact only in Akkadian — into “a stick”
as an instrument for beating. The corresponding term for “stick”, however, is
represented, as we shall see, on the Proto-Semitic and even Proto-Afrasian level,
which makes this explanation much less likely for that. In either source Janssen’s
claim is provided re the borrowing from Egyptian mdw (possibly from mṭw)
“stick, baton, staff” — yet, for chronological reasons this Egyptian word may
hardly have been borrowed on a Proto-Semitic level, so it ought to be interpreted
as a cognate of Semitic *ma/iṭ(ṭ/w)- ⁓ *mVyṭ- “branch, rod, stick” reconstructed
on the basis of the following comparison: Ugaritic mṭ “rod, staff, riding crop”
[DUL 602]; Arabic maṭw-, miṭw- “palm branch divided lengthwise in half used as
a string” [BK 2 1124]; Tigre məṭ ʔabl “to beat with rods” [LH 143]; Akkadian
(Old Bab.) miṭṭu “mace” [CAD m 147]; Mehri m–ṭaʹyn (<myṭ) “tree the wood
of which is very hard and so heavy that it sinks in water (a favourite wood for
making sticks and clubs)” [JM 276]. 40
7. Hebrew miph “extended family, clan (group in which the sense of
blood relationship is still felt), sub-unit of bṭ, ʕam, maṭṭ ” [HALOT 651];
iph “slave-girl” [ibid. 1620–21].
In [HALOT 651] and [TD IX 79], parallels are given for miph from
Phoenician-Punic and Ugaritic, and in the latter source, also from Epigraphic
South Arabian. As for iph, its relationship with miph, both of these words
having the same root consonants ph, is usually doubted (“It is also questionable
whether to make a connection with miph ” [HALOT 651]). Justly rejected in
the latter source as an outdated is point of view re the derivation of iph from
the verb *ph not witnessed in Hebrew with a function artificially ascribed to
this class of she-slaves to pour water over the hands of their masters. Conversely,
in [TD] with an allusion to Arabic sfh (<*ph) it is averred that miph most
likely originates from the verb ph “to pour” (let us remind at this juncture: it
is not in evidence in Hebrew). Since in this connection “seed” is mentioned,
apparently another meaning of the Arabic verb sfh “to have an extramarital affair,
to commit adultery with someone, fornicate” is implied with its interpretation as
“to spill seed” (the same is also suggested in [DK]); from my point of view the
meanings “to pour” and “to commit adultery” in Arabic belong to two different
homonymous verbs (cf. below). Since it appears “strained” to directly deduce the
40 From Proto-Afrasian *ma/iṭ(ṭ/w)- ⁓ *mayṭ- “stick, (palm) branch”: Egyptian (Old

Kingdom) mdw “stick, baton, staff” [EG II 178]; West Chadic: Hausa muʹ‰iya, plural
m³taˋitai (possibly < *muṭ-) “stirring stick, pole” [Abr. Hs 679]; East Cushitic *mayṭ-
“palm tree”: Oromo meeṭii [Gragg 284], Burji maye, Darasa meeṭṭe [Hudson 110]
(probably borrowed from Oromo); North Omotic *mi(n)ṭ-: Kafa, Sheko miṭo, Gofa
mia, Zaisse mina, etc. “tree” [from Lamb. 360].
235
meaning “family” (together with Phoenician “clan,” Ugaritic “family”, etc.) from
the verb “to pour, to spill”, such etymology likely appears to suggest a semantic
transition “to pour” > “to spill seed” > “seed, posterity” > “family”; it is not clear,
however, how this series may be connected with Sabaic s1fh “to summon, call”
adduced as a parallel in [DK].41
I suggest the following Semitic parallels to be considered: Phoenician ph
“clan” [Tomb. 320], Ugaritic ph “family, offspring, descendants, clan” [DUL
835]; Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic s1fh “to summon, call, place s.o. under
the orders of” [SD 124], Maʕin m-s1fh-t “unalienable public land (?)” [LM 81],
Qatabanian s1fh “to issue a decree, order, announce”, (-t- stem) ys1tfhwn “to
be obliged” [Ricks 161]; Arabic sfh (stem II) “to work for free, without profit
or reward”, (stem III) “to have an extramarital affair, to commit adultery with
someone, fornicate” [BK 1 1097]; South Ethiopian: Amharic fff “to gather”,
(Gurage) Soddo, Goggot uff bal “to sit crowded in a group, be crowded, be in
a bunch, be gathered” [LGur 573].
All of the Semitic parallels provided regularly correspond to one another
phonetically, but display a great variety of meanings, at a glance having little to do
with one another. It may be suggested, however, that all these examples — apart
from those that have to do with the homonymous verb “to pour” (above) are
traceable back to one common Semitic root. This root in its nominative base
*iph- corresponds to the social and kinship term denoting a clan, an expanded
family, inclusive of its non-full members as well (slaves, children by women-
slaves, freedmen, “clients”), not connected by blood ties to its “nucleus”, and in
its verbal base *ph, means “to hold or be in subordination, servitude,” i.e. in
the long run “to belong to *iph-, to be its member (full-fledged or dependent)”.
Interestingly, further semantic development of both bases — the nominal and the
verbal — as far as the descendant languages are concerned was defined, so it
41 For the sake of comparison let me adduce this homonymous Semitic root *ph
(or *sph: in Arabic and Geez * and *s fused, while in Akkadian where they have
two different reflexes, both variants of this term are represented) “to spill, scatter,
disperse”: Akkadian sapḫu, apḫu “to scatter, disperse (materials, social groups
and military units), spill, waste, squander, ruin (financially), etc.” [CAD s 151]
(ḫ in Akkadian sometimes renders Semitic *h); Arabic sfh “to spill (water, blood);
shed (tears)” [BK 1 1096–97]; perhaps Geez sufhe “sacrifice, offering” [LGz 488]
(if it developed from the meaning “libation”) and, finally, a problematic Modern
South Arabian: Mehri fh “to eat food put aside, left” [JM 392], Jibbali efaʹh “to
leave (food) after eating enough”, ɔfh “remains of food, leftovers” [JJ 260] (with
possible development of the meaning “garbage, waste, offal” from “to throw out,
away”); if the Modern South Arabian examples are referable to this root, it ought to
be reinstated as *ph, i.e. it coincides completely with the root *ph “to hold/be in
subordination, servitude” analyzed herein; yet, cf. below).
236
Appendix 2
looks, by whom the “semantic focus” was placed on, i.e. on all of the *iph-,
on its full-fledged or its dependent member(s) only (significantly, in such
cases as Qatabanian and Arabic that difference could be conveyed in a purely
morphological way, by virtue of a system of derivative verbal stems). Thus, the
common Semitic nominal term *iph- semantically coincidental with Sabaic byt
“household, expanded family” (by the information from Sabeist A. Korotayev)
and Latin familia “family, (all) next of kin, home (as the aggregate of all the
household, inclusive of servants),” seems to retain its meaning pointing at all
the *iph- in Phoenician and Ugaritic — though their limited contexts do not
allow for more detailed inferences — whereas the verbal root *ph got down to
a simple meaning “to gather” in modern South Ethiopian. In Hebrew, the nominal
root developed into a noun iph “slave-girl” (the accent is on the dependent
member of *iph-) whereas the verbal root survived intact only in the form of
a noun miph, formally derivative from *ph “to be member of *iph-” not
attested in Hebrew (it is natural to explain miph as a verb-derived form),
while semantically reproducing the Proto-West Semitic nominal root *iph- with
the meaning “all iph-”.
The etymological meaning of miph as “expanded family inclusive also
of its dependent members” is supported by both — a very likely kindred relation
with iph “slave-girl” and contemporary interpretations in Bible studies.42
In favor of the interpretation based on the etymological evidence a contextual
argument may be provided. In Jos 6:23 Rahab the prostitute’s “entire family”
(kl mipəhth “her entire family”) is inclusive of “her father and mother and
brothers and all who belonged to her” (kl ʔar-lh; cf. [TD IX 79]). To “all who
(is/are) of her” and not “all that (is/are) of her,” i.e. inanimate property, points
the parallelism in Jos 6:25: “But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her
family and all who belonged to her” (kl ʔar-lh). The definition kl ʔar-lh
may be interpreted also as both “all who belonged to her” meaning slaves, and
“all related to her” meaning relations; in favor of the first interpretation speaks
the fact that the relations in Jos 6:25 are already included, as it appears, in “the
household of her father” (bt ʔb̲–h) and the addition “and all who belonged to
her” ought to imply the slaves.
In other languages the original semantics developed in alternative ways. In
epigraphic South Arabian languages — Sabaic and Qatabanian — one can suppose
without much difficulty the development of the common Semitic verbal root *ph
“to hold/be in subordination, servitude” into “to order, to command” (in Qatabanian
42 Cf. Toorn 202. Re the usage of the term miph in the Bible and its meaning cf. also
J. W. Rogerson. Anthropology and the Old Testament. Atlanta, 1979 and W. Thiel.
Die soziale Entwicklung Israels in vorstaatlicher Zeit. Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1985.
237
in the passive form logically yielding the meaning “to be bound by obligations,”
“to be subject”), in Maʕin the suggested meaning “inalienable communal land/
property” could in principle have been an extension of the common Semitic
nominal term — as the land belonging to *iph-. In Arabic the common Semitic
verbal root “to hold/be in subordination, servitude” may have developed in two
directions: sfh in the second stem (intensive action) with the meaning “to work for
free, without profit or reward” presupposes a slave as a subject of this intensive
action whereas sfh in the third stem (action directed at someone) means “to have
an extramarital affair, to commit adultery with someone, fornicate” apparently
suggesting a sire, a member of blood-related family as a subject and a slave-girl
as an object; let us recall Sarah’s slave-girl Hagar in this connection who bore
Ishmael to Abraham and two women-slaves (əpht) each of whom bore Jacob
two sons (Gen 16 and 30).
All the examples listed above comprise one Proto-West Semitic root with
which it is tempting to juxtapose roots with “social” semantics in two other
branches of the Semitic family — North Semitic (Akkadian) and what I call South
Semitic (Modern South Arabian), though with a much higher degree of conjecture.
Akkadian sapḫu, apḫu “to scatter, disperse (materials, social groups and
military units), spill, waste, squander, ruin (financially)” may naturally go back to
the homonymous *ph or *sph “to spill, scatter, disperse” (see above), but I would
not rule out an alternative possibility of development from Semitic *ph “to hold
in subordination” (or contamination with this verb), taking into account that this
Akkadian verb conveys, in actual fact, all the basic ways of replenishment of the
dependent part of *iph-, i.e. the transformation of conquered enemies, groups
with abolished free status and impoverished population strata — into subordinated
social categories.
Finally, the meanings in Modern South Arabian (Mehri fh “to eat food put
aside, left” and Jibbali efaʹh “to leave (food) after eating enough”, ɔfh “remains
of food, leftovers”) may have developed from both “to throw out, away” (from “to
scatter, to spill”, though, let us point out: unlike the discussed verbs in Akkadian
and Arabic in Modern South Arabian the meanings “to pour, to spill, to dispel,
to scatter” are absent), and from “to hold/be in subordination, servitude”, getting
transformed into meanings indicating ways of providing sustenance for slaves
and servants.
Examples of situation 5:
8. Hebrew ʔdm “mankind, people; individual man; Adam” [HALOT 14]

wherein parallels are given from Phoenician, Judaic Aramaic, Ugaritic, Arabic
and Tigre (also from Epigraphic South Arabian ʔdm allegedly meaning “slave”
238
Appendix 2
and being a source of borrowing for Arabic (ʔibn-)ʔdam “(son of) Adam”; both
assertions seem incorrect); in [TD I 75] only parallels from Phoenician, Ugaritic
and Arabic are quoted. Though [HALOT] qualifies the etymology of the Hebrew
term as unclear, it quotes two theories, one deducing it from Hebrew ʔdm
“red”, the other relating it to Arabic ʔadam “skin” (both are improbable since
Hebrew ʔdm “mankind, man” continues the common Semitic term (see below)
with the same meaning).
Let us adduce all possible parallels: Phoenician ʔdm “man” [Tomb. 4];
Aramaic (all obviously from Hebrew): Judaic ʔdm “man, Adam” [Ja. 17],
Syrian ʔdmmy- “descendant of Adam, human” [Brock. 6], Mandaic adam
“Adam” [DM 7]; Ugaritic ʔdm “man; man (coll.), mankind, people” (ab adm
“the father of mankind”, of the god Ilu, etymologically the same name as Hebrew
ʔlh–m “god” and Arabic ʔallh-) [DUL 17]; Epigraphic South Arabian: Sabaic
ʔdm, ʔdwmt, ʔdym (collective noun) “vassals, subjects; servants, devotees (of
a deity)” [SD 2] (i.e. “someone’s people”), Qatabanian ʔdm “men, people;
subjects, vassals (of a king, etc.)” [Ricks 5]; Arabic ʔdam- “Adam, forefather of
mankind” [BK 1 20], ʔadamiyy- “human” [ibid.] (borrowed from or influenced
by the Hebrew word), Modern Arabic: Hadramawt ʔawdim “people, mankind”
[Land. 521], Dat̲–na ʔawdim “man” [GD 73] (both — pluralia tantum from
the unattested singular form *ʔdam-);43 Ethiopian: Geez ʔaddm “Adam”,
ʔaddmwi “human” [LGz 7] (borrowed from Hebrew, Syrian or Arabic),44 Tigre
ʔaddam (coll.) “men, people,” plural ʔaddamatat “crowds of men”, ʔaddemay
“little man” [LH 384] (none of the Tigre examples looks like an Arabism, the
alternative being inherited Semitic terms); one wonders if Akkadian (Standard
Babylonian) adntu45 (pluralis tantum) “world (as to extend and inhabitants)”
43 Both forms may as well continue the common Semitic term since they do not
look like loanwords either from classical Arabic where the plural “men, people” is
expressed only by the word combination ban ʔdam “sons of Adam,” or from the
quoted Epigraphic South Arabian forms with somewhat different semantics, or from
Hebrew ʔdm).
44 Cf. also dom “slave” [LGz 133] (a related form without the fossilized prefix *ʔa-?
On the latter see A. Militarev. Root extension and root formation in Semitic and
Afrasian. Proceedings of the Barcelona Symposium on comparative Semitic, 19–
20/11/2004, Aula Orientalis 23/1–2, 2005, 83–130); cf. the meanings in Epigraphic
South Arabian.
45 Assimilated from *admtu? Cf. a similar case of -n- < *-m- before -d- in Standard
Babylonian adanatu and adamatu “black blood” [CAD a1 94], the latter being the
original form. Cf. also esemtu (the original form) and esentu “bone” [CAD e 341],
esemsru (the original form) and esensru “backbone, spine” [ibid. 343] with
a similar yet regressive assimilation of -m into -n before forelingual consonants).
239
contextually translated as “mankind” [CAD a1 128–29] is related. All from

Proto-Semitic (if the Akkadian example belongs here) or Proto-West Semitic
*ʔadam- “man; people; mankind.”
This particularly interesting case deserves dwelling on in detail. The idea
of unified humanity, of the human race in an obviously conveyed form is, most
likely, originally registered in antiquity, in the Near East at least, in the first
chapters of Genesis (corresponding to it is a far-from-trivial idea of an originally
single language: “Now the whole world had one language and a common speech”
Gen 11:1). God creates a human-humankind ʔdm; that name in ancient Hebrew
undoubtedly has a collective shade of meaning: formally it is in the singular,
but may agree with the plural form of a verb and be replaced by pronouns in
the plural: “Then God said, “Let us make man (naʕasʹ ʔdm) … and let them
rule (wə-yird) … ” [Gen 1:26]; “God created man... man and female he created
them (br ʔtm)” (1:27).
The semantics of collectiveness, of humanity as an aggregate of people in
Hebrew ʔdm is inherited from the pre-Hebrew state. This is indicated by the
meanings of this word in those Semitic languages where there are no grounds
whatever to discern a borrowing from Hebrew or its influence — in Epigraphic
South Arabian, Tigre and, even less so, in Ugaritic or Akkadian (if our assumption
about adnatu from *admatu is correct).
It appears that the Biblical idea of humanity is comprised by five basic notions/
concepts, all of which were conveyed by the practically completely coinciding
words or those sounding very much alike (or else those that might be associated
with words like that): of a human being as a special, particular entity, distinct
from both the supreme beings abiding in heavenly realm (angels) and the animals
inhabiting the earthly world; of the aggregate of all people; of their common
origin; of the general mission of populating the Earth; and of the “image and
likeness” to God by which Adam was created. Let us consider all five concepts:
8.1. Man. This is the central concept expressed by Hebrew ʔdm (and
bnʔdm) from Common Semitic *ʔadam- “man; people; mankind” (above).
8.2. The aggregate of all people. The common Semitic semantics of
collectiveness, as was underscored, was already enclosed in the Hebrew term
ʔdm. One may assume that such semantics developed already in Proto-Semitic
under the influence of a homonymous Proto-Semitic verbal root *ʔdm “to
participate, join, be part of an aggregate, comprise a whole” (not preserved in
Hebrew)46: Akkadian (Old Assyrian) admu “to own a share in a common fund”
46 This Semitic verb with a fossilized and lexicalized prefix *ʔV- “in-grown” into the
root (cf. above) has cognates in other Afrasian languages with approximately the
same meanings: Egyptian dmy (Old Kingdom) “to join, be attached to so.,” (New
240
Appendix 2
[CAD a1 95], admtu “share in a common enterprise” [ibid. 128]; Arabic ʔdm
“to join, aggregate; reconcile; integrate someone into one’s clan,” ʔad–m- “whole,
entire” [BK 1 19]; Geez ʔadamdama (reduplicated stem) “to go together (army)”
[LGz 133].47
8.3. Common origin. The fundamental principle of the Biblical idea of
humankind — its unity, twice substantiated (in the “original couple” — Adam and
Eve — and in Noah with his progeny) commonality of all people’s origin, i.e.
consanguinity. In what anatomical notion is a blood tie incarnated for an ancient
Jew? Unlike an Indo-European for whom it is blood (“blood kinship”) kinship
for him is, first and foremost, the flesh. The English version of Genesis 37:27
is a remarkable illustration of that difference: “ … and not lay our hands on him;
after all he is our brother, our own flesh and blood”; we find only “our flesh”
(bəŝrn) in the Hebrew original: “blood” is apparently added for an English
reader who may not guess that “flesh” here means consanguinity.48
Yet, blood is also associated with the idea of kinship in the Bible — cf., for
example, an expression gʔl ha-ddm “revenger for one’s kin” [2 Sa 14:11
and passim], literally “(one) redeeming the blood” [HALOT 169]. The same
in Phoenician: dm means “blood” and “kinship” [Est. 102], ʔdm-y “his kin, his
blood” [ibid. 60]. Not just with flesh, but also with blood is kinship associated
also in Akkadian — damu “blood” is metaphorically used for “kinship, relatives”,
cf. anku aḫuka i-ir-kaˋ uˋ da-mu-kaˋ “I am your brother, your flesh49 and blood”
and arru … da-mu a ardniu la umaar “the king will not forsake the kin (da-
mu, lit. blood) of his servants” [CAD d 79].
In Hebrew “blood” is dm [HALOT 224]; there is also a hapax *ʔadm
(attested as ʔadmt in Dt 32, 43), which, if its interpretation as “blood” is correct
(cf. [HALOT 15–16]), is a variant of dm with ʔa-, which reflects the general
Kingdom) “to share with so. (joy, crops),” (Middle Kingdom) s-dmy (causative)
“to attach (of family attachment)”; Chadic: West: Tangale domi “to collect, put
together”, Boghom dume “to gather”, etc. (cf. perhaps also Hausa doma “to urge
smb. to an evil course”), Central: Zeghwana dəʹmme (< *dVʔVm-) “together”, etc.;
Cushitic: Central: Khamir edem, yedem “to invite to a feast”, East: Hadiya dumm-
“to gather (of people),” South: Iraqw dam- “to copulate” [ADB]. All < Proto-
Afrasian *(ʔa)dVm- “to come together, join (of people).”
47 Otherwise from “to go, march, stamp” — cf. Tigre dmdma “to step,” Amharic
dmddm, Soddo dəmddm “to stamp” [LGur 208] — the meaning “together”
then probably being due to contamination with the present root.
48 Another word for flesh, əʔr, renders the same idea of consanguinity, cf.: “Do not
disclose bareness of your father’s sister: she is of the same blood (əʔr, lit. flesh) as
your father” [Lev 18:12].
49 i-ir-, etymologically the same as Hebrew əʔr.
241
Semitic situation: *dam(m)- is the main term for “blood” (continuing Afrasian
*dam(m)-):50 Akkadian damu [CAD d 75]; Ugaritic dm [DUL 272]; Aramaic:
Judaic [HALOT 224], Syriac dəm [Brock. 156], Mandaic dma [DM 111]; Arabic
dam- [BK 1 736] (damm, in many spoken Arabic languages); Sabaic dm [SD
36]; Geez dam [LGz 133], etc.; and there is a form *ʔadam- derivative from this
root with a fossilized prefixed ʔV- 51 and much more uncommon in each of the
languages where it is to be found: Akkadian adamatu “black blood” [CAD a1
94]; Phoenician (Punic) ʔdm-y “his kin, his blood” [Est. 60] (cf. Augustine:
punice edom sanguis dicitur [HALOT 15]); Aramaic: Judaic ʔadm, ʔadm,
ʔidm [Ja. 17], Mandaic adma “blood” [DM 8]; Arabic ʔudmat- “blood relations,
consanguinity” [DRS 9].
8.4. The Earth. Closely related to the Biblical idea of Adam and the
humankind is a notion of earth. “Proliferate and multiply”, says the Lord
to Adam, “and fill the earth” [Gen 1:28]. The same he says to Noah and his
sons. Created in Adam and Eve and renewed in Noah and his progeny — the
humankind is called upon to populate the entire Earth, fill it out. The “Earth”
in this meaning is mainly ʔrs, though in a number of Biblical contexts the
synonym ʔadm also occurs quite often, cf: “ … but streams came up from the
earth (min-h-ʔrs) and watered the whole surface of the ground (kol pən h-
ʔadm)” [ibid. 2:6] or “As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth (ʕal h-
ʔadm) … ” [1 Sa 20:31].
The term ʔadm is translated in [HALOT 15] as “earth, arable ground
with water and plants.” Formally ʔadm “earth” differs from ʔdm “man” as
a feminine noun from a masculine one, though in a number of Biblical contexts
the variant stem ʔdm “earth” [HALOT 14–15] fully coinciding with ʔdm
“man” also occurs. The Man ʔdm is connected with the Earth ʔadm by yet
another — internal — bond: he is made out of it. To be more precise: the Creator
made (wa-yysr — literally “molded”) animals out of earth, and Man — “from
the dust of the ground” (ʕpr min-h-ʔadm ) [Gen 2:7].
Of the parallels in [HALOT 15] and [TD I 88] only Syrian ʔadamt,
Nabatean proper name ʔdmth and Arabic ʔadamat (without a translation; absent
in BK) are given. Let us adduce the entire set: Phoenician (Punic) ʔdmt “earth,
country” [Est. 60]; Aramaic: Judaic ʔadamt “earth” [Ja. 17], Syrian ʔadamət
“earth; dust; farina, starch” [Brock. 6]; (?) Ugaritic udm “mythical city of king
50 Berber *(i-)damm-ən (plural) “blood”; West Chadic *HV-dam- “blood”; Egyptian

(medical texts) dmȵ, verb related to the blood in the heart; North Omotic: Kafa dam,
Mocha damo “blood” (perhaps borrowed from Amharic), etc. [ADB; EDE I 240].
51 Usually explained in accordance with a common point of view re similar cases as
*ʔV- prothetic which is not true (see [SED I, CXLII–III]).
242
Appendix 2
Pbl” [DUL 18];52 Arabic ʔad–m- “earth; the entire visible space in the earth and
heaven (tout l’espace du ciel et de la terre que l’oeil peut embrasser)” [BK 1
19], ʔ–dmat- “hard soil without stones; the earth’s surface” [ibid. 20]. All from
Proto-West Semitic *ʔadam(-at)- (with variant stems in Arabic) “earth; the earth’s
surface”. Likely eventually related are forms without *ʔa-: Arabic daymm-,
daymmat- “vast waterless desert” [BK 1 729]; Geez ʔadym “area, region,
bordering cities, district, province, etc.” [LGz 146] (rather the plural of *daym
than a form with ʔa- prefixed); Akkadian (Old Bab.) dadm (pluralis tantum) “the
inhabited world (settlements and inhabitants)” [CAD d 18]. By the fairly unusual
Arabic stem daymm(-at)- and Geez ʔadym (a clearly derived stem pattern) the
common form *daym(-um)- is tentatively reconstructed; just as unusual a stem
dadm in Akkadian is difficult to explain other than by it ultimately going back to
the reduplicated stem *damdam-.
The varying Proto-Semitic stem tentatively reconstructed by all the quoted
examples as *daym(-m)- ⁓ *damdam- ⁓ *ʔadam(-at)- “(the entire) earth, the
earth’s surface, land” has parallels with the same root consonants *dm and similar
meanings in other Afrasian languages: Egyptian (Pyramid texts) dmy “town,
quarter, abode, vicinity”; Berber: Nefusa dəmna “certain cultivated areas” (not
quite reliable as an isolated term in Berber); Chadic (West): Tangale tɔm (t- <
*d-) “place”, (Central): Tera daˋm “field”, Ngwahi daˋma “place,” Gude wuʹdam
“village” (possibly < *ʔudam-), (East): Mokilko doˋoˋmeʹ “field” (<*dVHVm-,
perhaps metathetic <*ʔa-dam-); Cushitic *wVdmaʔ- (metathetic <*ʔa-dawm-?)
“uncultivated land, desert”: Central: Aungi wudani “uncultivated land, pasture”,
Qemant widim “desert,” East: Oromo uduma, Kambatta udmaʔa “desert” [ADB].
For all these variant and hard-to-reconstruct stems with *ʔa- prefix in part
of Semitic, with its possible traces in part of Chadic and in Cushitic, and without
*ʔa- in all other examples, the Afrasian proto-form *(ʔa-)day/wm- with the same
spectrum of meanings as in Proto-Semitic can be proposed.
8.5. Creation in the likeness of God. “When God created man, he made him
in the likeness of God” [Gen 5:1; see also 1:26]: “likeness” here renders Hebrew
dəmt translated as “model; shape; something like; likeness” in [HALOT 226]
([TD III 257] is inclined towards the opinion of a borrowing of the Hebrew term
from Aramaic which for us is immaterial in the given context) derived from the
verb dm “to be like, resemble” [HALOT 225], [TD III 250] of the root *dmy
with the same two “hard” root consonants d and m as all the examples analyzed
here in connection with ʔdm “man” .
52 Originally, probably, “earth”: the city of udm is a gift of God, father of mankind
(ab adm) — see M. Pope. Adam, Edom and Holocaust. Boundaries of the Near
Eastern World. A Tribute to Cyrus H. Gordon. Sheffild, 1998, 201, passim.
243
In [HALOT 225 and 226], besides Aramaic parallels to both dm and dəmt
(in [TD] only Aramaic ones are mentioned), the latter word is compared with
Arabic dumyat- “shape, statue” and Tigre dumt “indistinct outline of a figure or
an object”.
Let us list all tenable parallels: Aramaic: Official, Palmyrian dmʔ “to be
like, comparable, equal” [HJ 251], Old, Official dmw “conformity, singularity;
statue” [ibid. 252], Judaic dmʔ/y “to be like” [Ja. 312], dəmt() “resemblance,
image, esp. man’s divine image” [ibid. 319], Syrian dəm “to be like”, dəmt
“resemblance, image, form, example”, dmy “similarity, image, figure, form”
[Brock. 156], Mandaic dma “to be (a)like, resemble”, dmu, dmut(a) “likeness,
archetype, kind, shape, form, portrait, picture” [DM 111]; Arabic ʔadm- “model,
example, pattern to follow” [BK 1 19] (dumyat- “figure, statue; marble; idol;
pretty woman” [ibid. 736] is, perhaps, borrowed from or influenced by Aramaic);
Tigre dumat “uncertain outlines of a figure or of an object” [LH 516] (possibly
an Arabism); (?) Akkadian damtu (dattu) “figure (of a man)” (in a lexical list;
reading unreliable) [CAD d 74]. It is possible to reconstruct a Hebrew-Aramaic
(Proto-South Levantine, in our classification) verb *dmy/ʔ “to be like, resemble”
and, combined with the Arabic ʔadm-, a Proto-West Semitic noun*ʔa-dVm(-Vt)-
“likeness, resemblance, image, sample”; if the Akkadian example is not a phantom
word, then this root has a Proto-Semitic status. It has a fairly likely Afrasian
parallel (already noted in [DRS 272]) in Berber *(H)udVm- “face, appearance,
figure”53 obviously akin to certain Cushitic and Omotic forms54 which gives us
grounds to reconstruct Proto-Afrasian *(ʔa-)dam(-at)- “appearance, face, figure,
image” to develop into “likeness, resemblance, image” in Semitic.
Thus, on the Proto-Semitic (or Proto-West Semitic) level five words with quite
different meanings but phonetically very close one to another, are reconstructed
summarily comprising a certain conception in the Biblical text: *ʔadam- “man;
people; mankind”, *ʔdm “to participate, join, be part of an aggregate, comprise
53 Nefusa, Ahaggar, Mzab, Qabyle udəm “face”, Tawllemmet, Semlal, Izdeg udəm
“face, appearance, figure”, etc.; cf. also Adghaq a-damum “idol” [ADB and DRB
334–6, 341].
54 North Omotic: Kullo dimmo “face”, Koyra demoo, Kachama deemo, Doka deema,
Wolane deemuwa “forehead”, Zayse deemo “eyebrow” and Cushitic: East: Somali
daˋan, plural daʹam-aʹn “one half of the jaw”, Hadiya, Kambatta deemma, Harso teem-
i‰‰e, Gollango teeme (t- < *d-) “eyebrow” and, perhaps, Saho dambar “forehead”,
Afar dambar “eyebrow” (looks like a composed word, though the element -bar is
not clear) [ADB]. As there is little doubt that all these forms are related, the semantic
shifts from “face” and “forehead” (the development of the former meaning into
the latter one is trivial) to “one half of the jaw” and, especially, to “eyebrow” are
peculiar.
244
Appendix 2
a whole”, *dam(m)-/*ʔadam- “blood” (as consanguinity), *ʔadam(-at)- “earth”

and *ʔa-dVm(-Vt)- “likeness, resemblance, image, sample.”55 Of these words four
are evidenced in ancient Hebrew per se: ʔdm “mankind, man”, ʔdm “earth”,
dm (with a presumed variant stem ʔadm) “blood” and dəmt “likeness”. All
five Semitic roots ought to be considered homonymous, on the Proto-Semitic
level at least, and the four of them that have clear Afrasian parallels — also on
the Proto-Afrasian level since each has a reliable etymology and an entirely
separate one at that (the analysis of hypotheses re the etymological connections
among some of these roots and the possibilities of such connections on a deeper
level — cf. below).
The above begs a question: is it entirely accidental that words inter-connected
substantively as components comprising the Biblical concept of the “human
race” happen to be similar also sound-wise — and not as a result of polysemy?
The answer inevitably arising is — hardly so: too many coincidences. However,
if these common Semitic words are homonyms, i.e. do not come one from
another, and four of them ended up coexisting in the same language — ancient
Hebrew — due to reasons not contingent one on another, then the answer must
be: yes, by accident. The only logical, though paradoxical explication of this
contradiction appears to be the following: the concept components of which
happened to be the notions expressed by the words considered here was brought
forth precisely by a chance phonetic similarity (homonymy) of these words.
How could something like this have come about in reality? Let us try and find
an answer.
It is ensconced in one of the most fundamental peculiarities (apparently
deserving more attention on the part of mythologists, historians of antiquity
and pre-historians, linguists, philologists researching ancient text, cultural
anthropologists, etc.56) of world perception, thought process, culture of an ancient
55 Cf. also re the interpretation of the name Adam in the Tanakh with the help of
phonetically similar words in M. Garsiel. Biblical Names: A Literary Study of
Midrashic Derivations and Puns. Ramat-Gan, 1991, 99–100, 138–9, 199–200.
56 Interest to this phenomenon on the part of classic and ancient Near East scholars
has considerably increased in recent years — see Bibliography on “Wordplay” in the
Hebrew Bible and Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts by Scott B. Noegel at http://
faculty.washington.edu/snoegel/Wordplay-Bibliography.pdf. That said, the purely
methodological aspect appears substantive: while the literary-performative direction
(as qualified by Prof. Noegel in a personal letter) of interpretation of play-on-word
instances in a language does not necessarily require comparison with other languages,
the linguistic analysis of the most intricate and inconspicuous cases of etymopoetics,
especially those involving other related or unrelated languages (see below) ought to be
conducted — just like in the case involving the “correct” scientific etymologies — by
245
man that can very tentatively be called “play with a word” while it is not entirely
clear whether this peculiarity was universal, characteristic to this or that extent
for the mentality of an “average person” or emblematic only of the cultural
elite — priests, potentates and their milieu, the creators and reproducers of
mythological and folkloric texts, scribes, etc. In a word, in associations among
words similar of their sound image the ancient consciousness discerned a kind of
“contracted” reality infused there by higher powers that is to be retrieved from
there, “to expand” thereupon and somehow, by way of particular magical and ritual
manipulations or interpretations, incorporate it into reality observed, perceived.
Particularly fascinating for an ancient person was “the mystery of a name.”
As Igor Diakonoff writes: “It is well known that in the Ancient Orient naming
was an essential part of the act of creation: as long as its name was non-existent,
a creature was … non-existent or not alive, cp. the prologue to Enma eli”
[Diak. FA 18].
Ancient Hebrews, apparently like other Semitic peoples, displayed
a particularly great interest towards homonymous — and just similar — roots
also due to a specific structure of a Semitic root ensuring a wide leeway for
such associations. Taking account of such similarity was to be realized as
fathoming out the mysteries of a word — the word that was an instrument
for God in creating the world. The retrieval of this mystery concealed in the
language, its unfurling to expand into the text being pronounced and listened
to, its enhancement into a myth, crystallization into a notion were perceived by
the ancient authors and their audience as a kind of magical or sacral act (such
ideas in the discussed aspect were first developed, to the best of my knowledge,
by S.S. Maizel in his unpublished work “Semitic Mythology in the Light of
Allothesis and Metathesis”).57
professional etymologists working with precisely these languages; otherwise the

elaboration of such a subject may lead to the creation of a new, this time pseudo-
scientific, mythology. Here is the thing: each case in which a phenomenon or act of
etymopoetics may be suspected that was conducive to the origination of a new element
of a myth, ritual, custom, prediction — i.e. of a conception of the world in general
terms — is defined with great difficulty, high level of hypothetical conjecture and
a considerable risk of an error. As a rule, cases like this are not at all obvious and their
exposure requires a very extensive, complete — inasmuch as possible — scientific,
linguistic above all, research (the establishment of all possible genetic and associative
connections of juxtaposed words, of the entire range of possible sources of borrowing
or influences et al.) making it possible not only to offer a tenable interpretation but to
evaluate any alternative interpretations or rule them out.
57 This work was initially written as a chapter of a draft doctoral thesis (disrupted
by the death of Solomon Maizel in 1952 and published over 30 years later by the
author of this paper — complete with a foreword, supplements and emendation of
246
Appendix 2
I suggest this phenomenon be called “etymopoetics,” i.e. “invention of

etymology,” literally “creation, the art of creating of authentic meaning (from
the Greek etymon “authentic meaning (of a word)” from etymos “real, genuine”
and poitik “the art of creation” from poiein “to create”); less relevantly it is
described by an expansive and not well-defined term “popular etymology,” rather
more applicable to folksy notions of the “on Vlas58 (Orthodox saint’s day) hair
grows” type. In Hebrew Bible etymopoetic devices are applied extensively and are
often used to explain the “authentic” meaning of this or that character’s name.
Here are several generally known examples: “Adam named his wife
Eve (Haww), because she would become the mother of all the living (hy)”
[Gen 3:20] and “After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s
heel (ba-ʕaḳb̲); so he was named Jacob (Yaʕaḳb̲)” [ibid. 25:26].59
In actual fact, as a special analysis illustrates, normally the state of things is
precisely the reverse of the above: the proper name is primary, it ended up in this
or that text due to some earlier oral tradition and aspiration of the text’s creator
(author, editor) to explain this name motivates him to invent the explaining
circumstances; the author himself, sure enough, did not treat what he was doing
as a fabrication or fantasy “on the suggested theme” — for him it is precisely the
inspired exposure of a word’s mysteries, something akin to concealed meanings
decipherment. Thus, there are grounds to aver that in the second of the adduced
examples Esau (ʕŝw) and Jacob (Yaʕaḳb̲) go back to more archaic texts
(cf., for example, the wondrous similarity noticed by S.S. Maizel with these
“twin” names of two words for quails in Arabic — yaʕsb- and yaʕḳb-), and
the entire episode with holding by the heel was invented to explain away the
name Jacob60.The plot involving the double deception of Esau by Jacob who
obtained both the primogeniture and the paternal blessing may have been
suggested to the text’s creators by the verb ʕḳab “to betray” [HALOT 872] with
the text — see С.С. Майзель. Пути развития корневого фонда семитских языков
[S.S. Maizel.The Ways of Semitic Languages Root Stock Development], Moscow,
1983), but was retrieved thereupon by Maizel from both the typewritten version
of the thesis and the table of contents; he may have believed this chapter to be
incomplete or outdated and, perhaps, was going to make a separate paper out of it.
58 Happens to coincide with a truncated Old Russian form vlas for Russian volos
“(a) hair.”
59 The “firm” root consonants — on whose similarity all such associations are normally
built — ʕ, ḳ and b are the same in both Hebrew words (heel and Jakob).
60 Re the correlation between scientific etymology and Biblical “etymopoetic”
interpretation of names Israel and Jacob cf. L. Kogan. On Etymology of the
Ethnonym “Israel” (South Semitic elements in Amorite Onomastics). The Bible.
Literary and Linguistic Research. Issue 1. Moscow, 1998, 179–186.
247
the same triconsonantal root; cf. also ʕḳb̲ “deceitful, sly” [ibid.]: “Esau said,
‘Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? He has deceived me (wa-yyaʕḳəb̲-nn–) these two
times: He took my birthright, and now he’s taken my blessing!’” [Gen 27:36];
cf also a Hebrew verb with a metathesis — another sequence of the same root
consonants — ḳbʕ “to rob” or “to betray” (see discussion in [HALOT 1062]) and
still another metathetic noun in Arabic — bḳiʕat- “a clever, sly, cunning, wily
person” [BK 1 150]).
The whole conception of Biblical ʔdm is a fairly probable case of
an etymopoetic creation.
Thus, let us revert to the question: how could the coincidence described
above have happened about? Naturally enough, taking the etymopoetic interest
of ancient Hebrews for similar roots and words. The next legitimate question
arises: how could that root *ʔdm “to be part of the whole, share, join, aggregate”
have ended up a component of the postulated conception that in ancient Hebrew
is not ascertained and should not have been known to the Biblical text’s creators?
One can, surely, reiterate that the semantics of collectiveness, of mankind as
an aggregate of people in Hebrew ʔdm have been inherited from the pre-
Hebrew state, i.e. had already been incorporated in its meaning.61 One would,
however, wish to take advantage of the opportunity and dwell on yet another
debated issue worthy of investigation.
Judging by certain examples one can suppose that etymopoetic process,
i.e. the composition of episodes and circumstances explaining the names of
characters was encouraged by the consonance of words not just in the language
native for these texts’ creator, but also in other related languages. Here are several
examples of associations of “like” words in ancient Hebrew and Arabic of those
adduced by S.S. Maizel. One example: to the name of Biblical Abel (Hb̲l) slain
by his brother Cain completely corresponds the Arabic verb hbl “to lose a son (of
mother)” [BK 2 1382–3]. Another example: by the consonant root composition the
Arabic ʕaḳb- “a worthy heir” [ibid. 310] coincides with the Biblical name Jacob
(Yaʕaḳb̲). Cf. also the Arabic verb ʕabiḳa “to be(come) permeated with the smell
of something” and “to diffuse redolence” with a metathesis re the name of Jacob.
Both these roots remind one of the Biblical tale of Jacob who became a legitimate
heir of his father who remarked at that: “ … the smell of my son is like the smell
of a field that the Lord has blessed” [Gen 27:27]. And finally such Arabic words
as miʕḳab- (with the same three root consonants ʕḳb) “a skilful shepherd, a cattle
breeder” [BK 2 310] and baḳaʕ- (with metathesis) “speckled color pattern, black-
and-white spotted coloration (of wool)” [ibid. 1:150] amazingly call to mind the
61 Cf. Speiser’s comment: “Small wonder that ʔd̲m is itself originally a collective
noun, a mass term, which is why it cannot form a plural” [Speiser 164].
248
Appendix 2
story of “speckled and spotted” flocks expropriated by Jacob from Laban by way
of a livestock-manipulating stratagem [Gen 30:32–42].
If all these parallels are not stochastic, however (which is unlikely), if
the creator of the text was drawing on the Arabic vocabulary to come up with
associations for his plots, then he would have known that language! The examples
of similar parallels from Aramaic dialects adduced by Maizel suggest to one the
idea of the text creator’s familiarity with them, too. However, if there is nothing
surprising about the Jews’ familiarity with Aramaic dialects genetically closer
to Hebrew,62 one of which the Jews might have mastered a command of in the
mid-1st millennium B.C.E. at that due to cultural contacts, then the hypothesis
of a polyglot — connoisseur of Arabic which by that time had parted ways with
ancient Hebrew by a fairly wide margin looks too bold. An alternative and
somewhat less risky explanation appears to be an earlier dating of the period
when such texts were created. In that period the languages must have been still
close enough mutually intelligible dialects; the texts in question must, naturally,
have been only oral. By glottochronology the common ancestor language of
ancient Hebrew and Arabic (Proto-West Semitic, by our classification) had
started branching somewhere in the first third of the 3rd millennium. This means
that such period must have been the time hardly later than the first third-mid 2nd
millennium B.C.E., when these two languages were separated by no more than
ten hundred years of independent development.63
Finally, let us dwell on the problem of the origin of Hebrew ʔdm as
of an object of not an etymopoetic analysis anymore, but of one of scientific
etymology, of the quest for deeper genetic connections than those that give
ground for reconstructing Proto-Semitic or West Semitic *ʔadam- “man; people;
mankind.” On that score there are different opinions. It appears obvious that the
phonetic affinity between the Hebrew dm “blood”, ʔdm “man/mankind” and
ʔadm “earth” could not possibly have by-passed the Jewish commentators’
and scholarly etymological traditions and may not have failed to be played
up by various authors. A close substantively associative connection among all
three words in the Biblical contexts presents several possibilities for inferences,
particularly taking into account the affinity, both formal and substantive, between
62 And avowedly yet preserving mutual understanding with it (by the mid-first
millennium B.C.E. — presumably the time of Biblical texts recording — there were
about 12–13 centuries separating them from the ancestor-language common with
Hebrew, i.e. the Proto-South Levantine in our classification).
63 I.e. about the time period that separates German from Yiddish, or Spanish from
Portugese; beyond this timeframe “easy” mutual comprehension among related
languages is normally lost.
249
these words and yet another Hebrew term — ʔdm “reddish(-brown), of blood,
grape-juice, lentils, cow, horse, skin” [HALOT 15] (cf. also its reduplicated
stem variant ʔadamdm “bright red, reddish” [ibid.]) of common Semitic origin:
Ugaritic ʔadmnu “red (earth)” [Huehn. 104]; Arabic ʔudmat- “red color,”64 dmm
“to paint red” [BK 1 728]; Geez ʔadama “be red”, ʔaddmwi “red” [LGz 8],
Amharic addm “to be blood-red” [LGz 8] (otherwise < “blood”), dama “brown
(mule, horse), reddish” [LGur. 207], Gurage (all dialects) dama “brown (mule,
horse), reddish” [ibid.], Masqan dmy “red (maize)”, Chaha, Muher, etc. dmyt
“red, reddish” [ibid. 210],65 Akkadian (Old Akkadian on) adamu (adammu,
adumu) “a red garment” [CAD a1 95] (cf. metathetic (Standard Babylonian)
daʔmu “dark-colored, dark-red” [ibid. d 74]. All from Proto-Semitic *(ʔa-)dm-
“red” from Proto-Afrasian *(ʔa-)dVm- ⁓ *diʔm- “red.”66
The connection between the Afrasian *dam(m)- “blood” and *(ʔa-)dVm- ⁓
*diʔm- “red” is hard to prove without leaving the premises of Proto-Afrasian,67
but it is quite likely, with “blood” being primary (rather than not) here.
Here are some of the interpretations of the terms discussed herein common
in literature: blood is naturally associated with red color from the name for
which the word “blood” arose (possibly — the other way around, too: “red” from
“blood”); the red earth apparently sprang from the name of the color (“orig. the
red tilled soil” [HALOT 15]). The origin of the name “Adam, man” descended
from the word “earth” is contingent on his creation out of that material: the
motif of fashioning a human out of clay/earth is quite well-known in different
mythologies of the world, cf. also a parallel like the Latin homo “man” — humus
“ground”; another possible explanation of the name Adam is directly from “red”
(cf. [HALOT 14] with a reference to Pedersen), which may also be confirmed
by the development of a number of ethnonyms comprised of names for color
(for example, self-name of the Egyptians km.t [EG V 126] from km “black”
[ibid. 122]); cf. also a discussion in [Diak. FA 17].
64 R. Blacheˋre, M. Chouémi, C. Denizeau. Dictionnaire arabe-franais-anglais. Paris,

1964–, 63.
65 According to Leslau, all South Ethiopian forms are from Oromo dama, which is
hard either to prove or disprove.
66 Egyptian (Old Kingdom) ȷdm.y “red cloth”; Berber: Tashelhit adəmmani, Tamazight
adəmman “brown, bronze coloured”, Qabyle ddəmdəm “violet”; Cushitic: Central:
Aungi dəʹmmaʹ, Kunfl demeʹ, East: Saho duma, Oromo dim, Konso t–m-, Sidamo
duuʔmo “red”, Darasa diimma “to become red”, South: Qwadza dimayi- “red”;
Omotic: Kafa damme “red”, Ongota damaʔtə “yellow” [ADB; EDE I 240].
67 Formally, we can speak about two different roots on the Proto-Afrasian level,
hypothesizing about their going back to one bisemantic common root on a Pre-
Proto-Afrasian level only.
250
Appendix 2
Yet another hypothesis expressed by Bauer (see [HALOT 14]) and

supported by Diakonoff [Diak. FA 17] — that of Hebrew ʔdm “man”
going back to the meaning “skin” represented by Arabic ʔadam- “man’s skin”
[BK 1 19] (or, as Diakonov puts it, “ … “skin, leather” known in Arabic and
in Cushitic” [Diak. FA 17]) — does not appear likely to me either. The Arabic
word has some, if rather weak, parallels in Semitic68, but they may hardly
be the source of common Semitic *ʔadam- “man; people; mankind” (for
which Diakonoff does not give any forms in idividual Semitic languages
other than Hebrew ʔdm). To support the idea of the meaning shift “skin”
> “man”69 — not implausible, in principle — Diakonoff quotes Arabic ʔanm-
“created beings (men and jinns)” (considered by Th. Nldeke a variant of
ʔadam-70) justly relating it with Cushitic *nam- and Omotic (Kafa) anm-
“man”71 continuing: “Especially revealing is Egyp. ȷnm, certainly from the
same root but meaning ‘red skin, leather’” [ibid.]. The latter comparison quoted
68 Cf. parallels not mentioned by Diakonoff: Hebrew ʔdm “leather” (a hapax attested
in Hos 11:4 only) and Ethiopian: Geez ʔadim “skin, hide, leather (of reddish color)”
(Leslau considers it a loan from Arabic ʔad–m-, a variant stem of ʔadam-), Tigre,
Tigrai ʔadam “leather”, Amharic adim “red leather”, Harari ad–m “tanned hide
(mostly red)” [LGz 8]; however, all modern Ethiopian forms can as well eventually
be Arabisms or all the Ethiopian forms quoted may be inherited Semitic but derived
from “red”, not “skin”. This Hebrew-Arabic-Ethiopian term has a few not quite
reliable parallels in other Afrasian (Berber: Ahaggar tə-ddumman “piece of skin”;
Cushitic: North (Beja) ada “skin, hide”, East: Afar aˋdda “hides, skins”, Yaaku ata
(possibly from *ada) “bull hide” (it cannot be completely ruled out that the three
latter examples retain the primary Afrasian form *ʔad- without fossilized *-m
suffixed, cf. [Mil. RE]), Somali idin, plural idmo “tanned skin” (according to Leslau,
borrowed from Harari ad–m [LGz 8]).
69 Somehow Diakonoff connects this shift with “red”: “ … it is clear that … the term
ʔadam- and, evidently, its connection with “red”, “red leather” and ʔadam-at- “red
ground” (perhaps as the red skin of the earth’s body??) are inherited from Common
Afrasian.” (Diak. FA 17).
70 In [DRS 25] Arabic ʔanm- is reasonably compared with Sabaic ʔnm (quoted in [SD
6] as “populace in general” with a question mark) and Syrian ʔnmʔ “troop of soldiers”
with a strange comment “< ʔdm par assimilation de nasalite?”; both this assumption
and the interpretation by Nldeke hold no water being another “mythetymology”: in
Arabic as well as in all other Semitic languages, d and m are fully compatible, and the
change of *-d- > -n- by assimilation with -m is a mere phantom.
71 There are in fact the following cognates of West Semitic *ʔanam- “people, men”:
Chadic: West: Barang nyam “person”, East: Tumak neʹmi-naʹm “people”, Kwang
nom-to (with a feminine suffix -t) “woman”; Cushitic: East: Saho nm, Oromo,
Konso, Gidole nama, Somali nin (regularly < *nim-) “man”; Omotic: Kafa anm
“man”, Mocha nmo “son” [ADB]. All from Afrasian *(ʔa-)nVm- “man.”
251
from one work to yet the next72 is most probably erroneous: Egyptian (from Old
Kingdom) ȷnm, the main Egyptian term for “skin” must in all likelihood render
*ʔilm73 comparable with the main Berber term for “skin,” *ilm [ADB], making
Proto-North Afrasian74 *ʔi/alm- “skin, hide”75 having genetically nothing to do
either with Semitic *ʔadam- “man” or Afrasian *(ʔa-)nam- “man” or hypothetic
Afrasian *ʔad-am- “skin.”76
From my point of view, yet for none of the etymologies proposed above
there are sufficient proofs as all of them are based on guess-work as far as the
unique semantic developments leading to the meaning “man” are concerned.77
A somewhat more promising solution here would be the only Afrasian parallels
fitting phonetically and at the same time denoting humans: Chadic: West: Mupun
ada^m “legitimate child,” Central: Podoko dama “brother, sister,” Cuvok dɛˋm
“daughter,” də°maˋ “sister,” Sukun dəm “daughter; female”; South Cushitic:
Asa daʔam-ok (with metathesis if belonging here) “elder, married man” [ADB]
enabling one to reconstruct Proto-Afrasian *(ʔa-)dam-, whose meaning, however,
is hard to delineate due to the diversity of meanings in various languages quoted.
Unless we accept this — not first-rate — etymology, one should state that the
origin of the word *ʔadam- “man” established on the Proto-Semitic (inclusive
of the Akkadian) or Proto-West Semitic level (if the Akkadian parallel is not
accepted), and its deeper connections are not clear.
72 See also in F. Calice. Grundlagen der gyptisch-semitischen Wortvergleichung.

Wien, 1936, No. 237; M. Cohen. Essai comparatif sur le vocabulaire et la phonétique
du chamito-sémitique. Paris, 1947, No. 15, etc.
73 In Coptic ʔanom “skin” continuing Egyptian ȷnm (see W. Vycichl. Dictionnaire
étymologique de la langue copte. Leuven, 1983, 12), -n- may be explained by the
assimilation *-l-> -n- near -m.
74 According to my classification, North Afrasian branch includes Semitic, Egyptian
and Berber-Chadic while Cushitic and Omotic comprise the South branch of the
Afrasian macro-family (see Appendix); the position of Omotic is problematic.
75 Also including West Chadic: Bade alm-ən “skin”, Ron lamoʔ (with metathesis)
“to skin” and, perhaps, Amharic ʔalim “tanned hide used as a cushion” isolated in
Semitic [ADB].
76 The latter, in its turn, has nothing to do with the homonymous Semitic and Afrasian
terms meaning “earth” and “red”: all three roots are unrelated, while their “crossing”
in some languages (like Geez ʔadim “skin, hide, leather (of reddish color)”, even if
not an Arabism) is due to semantic contamination caused by a secondary association
in the “linguistic consciousness” of various Semitic-speaking communities.
77 This happens to be exactly the case, when any etymology is possible in principle
(only one of them being correct in the final analysis, of course), while the
semantic contamination — the influence of other phonetically similar roots on the
meaning — may not be disregarded either.
252
Appendix 2
* * *
Let me bring a few more examples of the presumed etymopoetic factor’s

role, not just in the composition of certain episodes and narrative details of
ancient texts, but also in couching or even emergence of fundamental religious
and cultural ideas and notions, this time not from the Hebrew Bible — the
Christian Old Testament, like all of the previous examples, but from the New
Testament.78
To the best of my knowledge, nobody has definitively proven, nor has
anybody refuted the supposition that beyond the canonic Greek Gospels — or
at least their separate parts a certain West Semitic language text is possible to
discern, or several such texts. It is believed that certain word collocations and
expressions testify to that, uncommon or not quite common for the Greek koine
of its time and possible to explain as loan translations from Aramaic or Hebrew.
In favor of the Semitic language “proto-text” also testify examples given below.
9. In the Christian tradition and interpretation, one of the main — if not the
main — “good news” (Greek euangelion) brought out by the Gospels is the news
of the Incarnation. The verb “to incarnate” is, naturally, derived from “body,
flesh” (“And the Word became flesh” Jn 1:14). In Hebrew one of the two terms
for “flesh” (more common than əʔr) is bŝr with meanings in different contexts
“flesh,” “skin,” “meat,” “body,” “relatives,” “living flesh,” kl bŝr “all flesh”
meaning “man and beast,” “mankind,” “animals” [HALOT 164]; a corresponding
term in Biblical Aramaic is bəŝar “flesh” and “mankind” [ibid. 1840], in Judaic
Aramaic — bəsar and bisr “flesh, meat, body” [Ja. 199]. Both Hebrew and
Aramaic terms go back to Proto-Semitic *biŝr-/*baŝar- “flesh with skin” with
secondary metaphorical meaning “people, mankind, the world” (in Hebrew,
Biblical Aramaic, Arabic and Maʕin), likely evolved from the intermediate
meaning “relation by blood (“by flesh”)” (see SED I No. 41).79
Another key notion here is “good news.” In Hebrew it is a noun bəŝr
“(good) tidings” related with the verb biŝŝar “to bring news (good or bad); to
78 With an allowance for the fact that I am not an expert on early Christianity and not
capable of keeping track of inundation of literature on the subject.
79 Akkadian biru “small child” (found in one SynList only: biru = e-e-ru); Ugaritic
br “meat”; Phoenician br “type of sacrifice”, Hebrew bŝr; Aramaic: Official
br, Biblical bəŝar “flesh”, Syrian besr, Mandaic bisra “flesh, meat”; Epigraphic
South Arabian: Sabaic bs2r “flesh”, Maʕin bs2r “all flesh, all men, mankind”; Arabic
baar- “human skin; man, mankund”; (?) Ethiopian: Geez bsor and bŝor “flesh”
(according to Leslau, from Hebrew), Gafat bsr, Harari bsr “meat”, Gurage
bsr “meat, flesh”; Modern South Arabian: Mehri bəŝərt “skin, complexion,
maiden head,” Jibbali bəŝərɛʹt “skin, complexion.”
253
bring good news; to tell, announce” [HALOT 163]; in the Aramaic group, both the
noun and the verb are attested in Judaic and Christian-Palestinian. The Hebrew-
Aramaic terms originate from the Proto-Semitic verb *bŝr “to announce, bring
(good) news” (Akkadian bussuru — with irregular -ss- instead of --, Ugaritic br,
Arabic baara, etc.) and noun *buŝr-at- ⁓ *biŝ(ŝ)ur-at- “(good) news, tidings”
[cf. ibid. 199 and ADB].
The most interesting thing here is a complete consonant root homonymy
of Hebrew-Aramaic terms for flesh and for good news (tidings) going back to
two genetically unrelated Proto-Semitic roots.80 Just like in the case with Adam
(cf. example 8), a question arises: may such a double coincidence (unlike the
example with Adam only two roots coincide here) be a chance one — material,
phonetic affinity of the terms81 and their substantive connection as components
of one of the basic concepts of Christianity? — And shouldn’t one consider the
concept itself as yet another case of etymopoetic construal of such a coincidence
by the creators of this concept?
10a. The Greek Isous “Jesus” rendering the Hebrew proper name Yaʕ
[HALOT 446] is almost entirely coincidental with the noun yəʕ “help,
80 One can, surely, hypothesize — with a certain flight of fancy — the inchoate
connection between these notions in the joyous call “meat, meat!” after a trophy-
yielding hunt, but that would hardly appear to be a serious explanation. Semitic
*biŝr-/*baŝar- “flesh with skin”, or, rather, “skin with flesh” (cf. Jibbali bɔŝɔr “to
skin (orange)” JJ 29) is likely to go back to Afrasian *bV(Vr)- (with fossilized -r
suffixed, v. Mil. RE) “peel, skin (with flesh); peeling, skinning”: Berber: Ghadames
b̲zər “to be peeled”; (?) East Chadic: West Dangla beˋeˋse “to slit the skin by knife”,
East Dangla beʹseʹ “to make a slit in the flesh, meat” (if -s- in the Inlaut renders *--;
according to Stolb. 8, in the Dangla group *- yields ‰- in the Anlaut); Cushitic:
Central: Khamir bas- “to make a slit in the skin, tattoo”, East: Somali b-e “chaff”,
South: Maʔa buŝe “skin”; (?) North Omotic: Kafa b- “to cut throat”, Anfillo ba
“to slaughter cattle” [cf. EDE II 322].
As for Semitic *bŝr “to announce, bring (good) news”, the only very tentative
parallel I can suggest is Berber *i-bdər “to announce”: Ghadames i-b̲d̲ər, Sus i-bdər,
Qabyle yə-b̲d̲ər [K.-G. Prasse. A propos de l’origine de H touareg (tahaggart).
Copenhagen, 1969, 22]; a semblance of triconsonantal root in combination with
identical meaning is as stunning as to suspect a “missing” Afrasian phoneme *ʒ^
(voiced lateral affricate) in support of which I am collecting some, if scarce, examples
(I hope to present the data on this hypothetic consonant in a future publication).
81 In this case, true, not in the Greek language — in which the corresponding texts
have reached us in our day, but in the language of the hypothetical “proto-text”;
what is of substance here is: for the main protagonists of the gospels the language
of conversation should have been Aramaic whereas ancient Hebrew — the
language of cultural tradition, i.e. characteristic for them was Semitic “linguistic
mentality” — rather than Greek.
254
Appendix 2
salvation” (“God’s help”) [HALOT 446]82 from the causative of the verb “to save,
help” with the consonant root yʕ [ibid. 448]83.
The given example is yet another indication to the Semitic language
association. Its value is also in the difference from the examples with “flesh” and
“good news” (where the phonetically similar lexemes with these meanings are
present both in Hebrew and in Aramaic), accentuating the association precisely
in Hebrew — words with the root consonants yʕ and meanings “help, save” seem
to be absent from the Aramaic group.84
10b. Let us point out another curious coincidence: in Hebrew there is
a participle m–aʕ “deliverer, savior” [HALOT 562] (from the causative of
the same verb yʕ “to save, help”) phonetically very close to still another
82 And, conceivably, evolved from it, too, though for an etymopoetic device it is not
significant — what is important, though, is for the words to be similar to the extent
sufficient for being associated in linguistic consciousness; sure enough, a ticklish
question arises: how is a contemporary researcher supposed to define what extent
and pattern of similarity were acceptable for this to be associated by speakers, but in
this case the similarity is entirely apparent.
83 Here, like in other similar cases, too, a question arises re how this similarity is to
be interpreted. I discern three conceivable answers to it: (1) the “skeptical” one — it
is stochastic (to my liking, there tend to be a tad too many chance coincidences);
(2) “theological” — Jesus was given the name that anticipated his mission (“ … and
you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their
sins” (Mt 1:21); (3) “etymopoetic” — the soteriological motif in the New Testament
doctrine was under the impact of the similarity of the word yəʕ “salvation“ and
the proper name Yaʕ bestowed on Jesus the usual way — outside any mystical
connection with his destiny-to-be (the name Yaʕ comes up in various books of
the Hebrew Bible — cf. HALOT 446). The choice between the second and the third
answers (the first one I would rather discard as unlikely) ends us up in a typical
situation of perennial dispute between the “religious” and “scientific” types of
mentality. Trying to stick to the latter I realize “all too well” that this game — in
chess terms — is doomed to a draw. Even though some of the facts, it would seem,
have no rational explanation other than etymopoetic, the following answer would
be exactly the move of the opponent, the exponent of religious mentality, the very
“sacrifice of the queen” — the admission of both predestination and coincidences
with their etymopoetic explanation — that entails a stalemate situation: O.K.,
these coincidences do occur, but they are not at all the chimeras spawned by the
imagination of the discussed texts’ author, but the connections laid bare by him,
implanted in the language from on high and reflective of the profound ontological
realities.
84 In Greek, it would seem, there is no phonetic association to speak of between the
proper name Isous and the noun str “savior” from szein “to save”, though
a certain similarity with saos “unharmed, intact” from which the verb is derived is
perceivable (if one “yens for it”).
255
participle — m–ah85 “Messiah, the anointed one (the king of Israel, Saul,
David and his descendants)” [ibid. 645] (the Greek Khristos is a loan translation
from Hebrew attested as early as in the Septuagint) from the verb mah “to
smear with liquid (oil, dye), to anoint (to be king, priest)” [ibid. 643]. May one
consider this phonetic and substantive similarity unnoticed and not utilized by the
“etymopoetic-minded” author(s)?
11a. Finally, the last example of how a number of narrative details may be
explained etymopoetically — by associations evoked by a “given” proper name,
in this case toponymic, with words completely or partially homonymous by the
root consonants. The talk is about the toponym Nazareth (post-Biblical Hebrew
Nasrat, Nsrt, the first written record in the non-Christian source dating back
to the 3rd-4th centuries; Arabic Nsira(t-) [BK 2 1272]), the connection of Jesus
with which is underscored with the New Testament repeatedly — it is not without
reason that precisely the term Nazarene (Post-Biblical Hebrew Nosr–, Syrian
Nsəry, Arabic Nasrn-) was originally used in the Near East in the meaning
of “Christian.”86
The most apparent association is played up — perfectly in the spirit of
Hebrew Bible — in the Gospel of Mathew: “and he went and lived in a town
called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: “He will
be called a Nazarene” [Mt 2:23]. In the Greek rendering of these Hebrew words
(Nsrt and nz–r) as Nazarat “Nazareth” and Nazarnos “Nazarene,” only the
endings are different; in reality, however, the Hebrew words are etymologically
unrelated partial homonyms differing by the second root consonant. Hebrew nz–r
“Nazirite, someone devoted to God” (nzr “consecration, dedication”) [HALOT
683–4] continues Proto-Semitic *nd̲r “to vow, swear”: Aramaic: Official,
Palmyrean ndr “to vow” [HJ 717–18]; Ugaritic ndr (with an allophone nd̲r)
“vow (noun)” [DUL 621–2]; Arabic nd̲r “to consecrate something or someone to
85 These two forms have different first vowels (which is immaterial for the Semitic
linguistic perception) and the last root consonants — ʕ and h, which are close
pharyngeal phonemes different only by the voiced-voiceless opposition which
thwarts etymopoetic associations in no way.
86 Curious here is a juxtaposition with Mandaic nasuraia with the same root consonants
as Nsrt-Nazareth (though not derivative from this toponym — as in DM 285),
denoting a certain group of people adept in secret knowledge, exponents of
an esoteric teaching, but not the followers of [John] the Baptist [ibid.]. The same
source maintains that the Mandaic term is apparently older than Syrian Nsəry
and Arabic nasr, and also with a reference to Zimmern, that it derives from
Akkadian nsir piristi (“guard of secrets”), although if one is to talk of the Akkadian
source of borrowing, here, conceivably, nisirtu “arcane, secret (localities, rites, etc.)”
[CAD n2 276] fits the bill rather more.
256
Appendix 2
God” [BK 2 1231], nad̲–r- “devoted to God” [ibid. 1232]; Akkadian nazru “to
blaspheme, curse the gods; curse, abuse, insult” [CAD n2 139]; Jibbali end̲eʹr “to
make a vow; warn, threaten” [JJ 181]. Thus, the play on words in Greek reflects
a typical Semitic — Hebrew, not Aramaic, in this case since Greek Nazarnos
renders Hebrew nz–r 87 — association of words with a similar root composition
differing by only one close-sounding consonant (s in Nsrt and z in nz–r).
The fact that Jesus, by this association, is called “Nazarene” — that just in one
context, too, hardly refers to the substantive moments of the new teaching, but
demonstrably puts the etymopoetic model in action on display instead.
11b. The toponym Nsrt-Nazareth features also other associations
deserving attention, possibly, instrumental in the couching of New Testament
texts (specifically, in the choice of references to the old canon). One of these
associations is a full root homonymy of Hebrew Nsrt with nsr “sprout,
offshoot” [HALOT 718],88 cf. “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch (nsr) will bear fruit” [Isa 11:1] and “And again, Isaiah
says, ‘The root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nation’ ”
[Ro 15:12].
87 With z from Semitic *d̲ reflected as d in Aramaic which would not be rendered by
Greek z.
88 Unwarrantably identified in HALOT with Arabic naḍrat- “florescence,
blossoming” — a noun derived from the verb “to shine, to be radiant, to prosper”
[BK 2 1280] having nothing to do with it. In actual fact, connected with Aramaic:
Syrian nsar “bough, offshoot”, Judaic nisr “sprout, offshoot” [Brock. 443] from
*nVs(a)r-.
257
APPENDIX 3
THE GENEALOGICAL TREE OF WORLD LANGUAGES
compiled by the author basing on research by the Sergei Starostin

Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics: I am especially thankful
to Prof. Anna Dybo and Dr. George Starostin for sharing the data and
comments. (The original graphic design of the Tree in Russian was made
by Irina Livshits, the English version, by Dmitry Shklyarov.)
258
Appendix 3
Conventional Signs:
(1) Numbers inside the “Leaves” of the Tree and, in the notes, after a language
name followed by a colon convey provisional datings in thousand years re
C.E. of corresponding protolanguages on the verge of split, obtained by
Starostin’s method in glottochronology, e.g.:
–5,6 means year 5,600 before Common Era;
0,25 means year 250 of C.E.
(2) “+” before a language name means the language is extinct.
(3) Dotted line points to a highly hypothetic genetic link.
(4) Circles contain a note number.
(5) Comma separates closer related languages, semicolon separates more
distantly related languages.
Notes:
(1) The genetic unity is debatable. (2) 32 groups, some 300 languages.
(3) Same as Papuan; over 800 languages in some 20 unities, part of which
looks like different macrofamilies with no special genetic affinity. (4) Includes
Malay-Polynesian group with some 1,100 languages. (5) Includes over 80
Mon-Khmer languages. (6) Athapaskan (over 50 languages), incl. Apachean
and Navajo, Tlingit and possibly Haida. (7) Nakh: 0,2 (Chechen, Ingush and
Batsbi); Daghestan: -1,6 (Avaro-Andian, Tsez, Laki, Dargwa, Khinalugh and
Lezghian). (8) Perhaps closer to Abkhaz-Adyghe. (9) Likely closer to Nakh-
Daghestan. (10) Likely two dialects or even (not very closely) related languages:
“Standard Sumerian” (EME-GIR) and “Woman’s Language” (EME-SAL).
(11) Georgian-Zan (Megrel and Laz) and Svan. (12) Telugu, Brahui, Kurukh,
Gadaba, Malayalam, Tamil, etc. (some 30 languages). (13) Nivkh; Chukotko-
Kamchatkan: -1,0; Eskimo-Aleut: -0,5. (14) Bulgar (Chuvash, +Old Bulgar);
Yakut, Dolgan: 1,7; +Old Turkic (Yenisei-Orkhon inscriptions); Soyon: 1,3
(Tofalar, Tuva); Khakas; Central-Eastern (Altai, Kirghiz); Kipchak: 1,5 (Kumyk;
Karachai-Balkar; Tatar, Bashkir: 1,6; Crimean Karaim, Lithuanian Karaim:
1,3; +Polovtsian); Noghai: 1,5 (Karakalpak, Kazakh, Noghai, Crimean Tatar);
Karlik: 1,2 (+Chagatai, Uighur, Northern abd Southern Uzbek); Oghuz: 1,1
(East: 1,4: Turkmen, Azerbaijani; West: 1,4: Gagauz, Turkish, Judeo-Crimean
Tatar, etc.). (15) Khalkha, Buriat, Oirat-Kalmyk, Dongxiang, Yugur, etc.
(16) Evenki, Nanai, Udehe, Xibo, Negidal, Manchu, etc. (17) Korean-Japanese
unity hypothetic. (18) Northern: Nenets, Enets, Nganasan; Southern: Selkup,
Kamas, Mator. (19) Hungarian; Khanty, Mansi. (20) Permic: 0,6 (Komi and
Udmurt); Finno-Cheremisik: Mari, Finno-Mordvinic (Mordvinic; Finno-Lappic:
-1,2: Lappish = Sami; Finnic: 0,3: Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, Vepsian, etc.).
(21) +Gaulish; +Celtiberian; Brythonic: 0,2 (+Old Welsh, Welsh; 1,0: +Cornish,
259
Breton); Goidelic: 0,3 (+Old Irish, Manx; 0,8: Irish, Scottish). (22) East
Germanic: +Gothic, +Burgundian, +Vandalian; North Germanic: 0,8 (insular:
Icelandic, Faroese; mainland: 1,3: Norwegian; 1,6: Riksmal, Swedish, Danish);
West Germanic: 0,2 (Frisian, English; High German, Yiddish; Low German,
Flemish, Dutch, Afrikaans). (23) +Oscan, +Umbrian, +Ligurian; +Venetic;
Faliscan, etc.; +Latin (Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin vernaculars): 0,4: Western:
1,3: Ibero-Romance (Spanish, Ladino = Judeo-Spanish; 1,4: Portuguese,
Galician; Catalan, Valencian), Gallo-Romance (Occitan; French, Rhaeto-
Romance); Eastern: Italo-Dalmatian (Italian, Sardinian, +Dalmatian), Balkan
Romance (Rumanian, Moldavian, etc.). (24) Latvian, Lithuanian, +Yatvingian).
(25) South: 0,7 (+Old Church Slavonic = Old Bulgarian, Bulgarian, Macedonian,
Slovene, Serbo-Croatian); East: 0,7 (Russian; 1,4: Ukrainian, Belorussian); West:
0,4 (+Polabian, 0,8: Sorbian Upper and Lower; 0,7: Polish-Kashubian, Czech-
Slovak); +Old Novgorod. (26) +Old Indic (Vedan, Sanskrit); +Middle Indic
(Pali, Prakrits); Sinhalese; Nepali; Sindhi; Marathi, Gujarati; Bengali, Assamese,
Romani (Gypsy); Hindi, Urdu, Panjabi, etc. (over 40 languages). (27) Kashmiri
and others (some 20 languages). (28) Over 40 languages; East: -0,8: +Scythian-
Sarmatian, +Avestan, +Sogdian, +Khorezmian, +Bactrian, +Khotanese-Saka,
North-East (Ossete, Yaghnobi), South-East (Pamir: -0,5: Shughni, Yazgulami,
etc.; Pashto, etc.); West: 0,9 (North-West: +Midian; +Parthian; 0,4: Kurdish,
Balochi, Gilaki, Talishi, Ormuri, etc.; South-West: +Old Persian, +Middle
Persian; Modern Persian (Farsi), Tadjik, Dari, Judeo-Bukharic; Tati; Kumzari,
etc.). (29) Hebrew (+Biblical = Classic —> +Post-Biblical/Middle; Modern),
+Phoenician, +Moab, etc. (30) Aramaic: +Old; +Official, +Biblical; +Jewish
Palestinian, +Samaritanean, +Qumranic, +Christian Palestinian; +Nabatean,
+Palmyrean; +Syrian (Syriac), Mandean (+Classic, New), +Jewish Babylonian;
Ma’lula, Turoyo, Modern East Aramaic (“Assyrian”), etc. (31) +Sabaic,
+Qatabanian, +Hadramaut, +Ma’in = Minean. (32) +Safaitic, +Lihyanic and
+Thamudic. (33) +Classical (> Literary or Standard A.), +Andalusian A.,
+Sicilian A., Modern A.: Syrian, Palestinian, Lebanese, Meccan; Iraqi, Egyptian,
Sudanic; Yemenite, Hadramaut, Libyan, Algerian, Moroccan; Maltese, etc.
(34) +Geez, Tigrai (Tigrinya), Tigre. (35) Amharic, Gurage dialects, Harari,
etc. (36) Same as Modern South Arabian. (37) Sahidic, Ahmimic, Bohairic,
Fayyumic, etc. (38) Dialect or language cluster of the islands of Tenerife
(“Guanche”), Gran Canaria, Palma, etc. (39) Some 100 languages. (40) Siwa,
Ghadames, etc. (41) Ahaggar, Ghat, Taneslemt, etc. (42) Rif, Shawia, etc.
(43) Two groups: Tamazight (Beraber) and Shilh (Tashelhit). (44) Up to 200
languages. (45) Hausa, Ron, Sura, etc. (46) Mubi, Somrai, Tumak, etc. (47) Tera,
Margi, Kotoko, etc. (48) Some 40 languages: Ometo: -1,3, Bworo, Mao, etc.
(49) Ari, Hamer, Dime; Ongota. (50) Bilin, Qwara, Kemant, Khamir; Aungi,
260
Appendix 3
etc. (51) Sidamo, Darasa, Harso, etc. (52) Somali, Oromo (Galla), Saho-Afar,
etc. (53) Iraqw; Ma’a (Mbugu); Asa; Dahalo, etc. (54) Some 350 languages;
unity problematic (relation of part of the languages with Afroasiatic cannot
be ruled out). (55) Otherwise Niger-Kordofanian, or Congo-Kordofanian;
some 1,000 languages: Kordofanian (25 languages); Atlantic (Wolof, Fula-
Serer, etc.; some 50 languages); Idjo-Defaka (9 languages); Mande (Malinke,
Soninke, etc.; over 50 languages); Volta-Congo (about 800); Kwa (over 60),
Adamawa-Ubangi (about 120); Gur (about 70); Benue-Congo (Yoruba; Bantu:
Suahili, Ruanda, Zulu, etc. — about 100 languages), etc. (56) Same as Bushman-
Hottentot (about 40 languages). (57) Considered Khoisan; however, many
common words with Afroasiatic, incl. those belonging to the core lexicon, have
been recently discovered. (58) Central: Nama-Hottentot, Kwe, etc.; Northern:
Akhoe, Maligo, etc.
261
APPENDIX 4
THE GENEALOGICAL TREE OF AFRASIAN (AFROASIATIC) LANGUAGES
compiled by Alexander Militarev chiefly basing on Starostin’s method in lexicostatistics and glottochronology
Note: there is certain discrepancy in the datings of the same protolanguages between this Tree and the Afrasian section of the
Genealogical Tree of World Languages; the glottochronological work is in progress and some of the provisional datings are
yet to be specified (this reservation especially concerns the position of Omotic re other branches of Afrasian: due to a number
of yet unrevealed loanwords in the Omotic diagnostic list, it may turn out that Proto-Omotic branched off earlier)
TRANSCRIPTION SIGNS
AND CONVENTIONS
c — alveolar voiceless affricate [ts]

ʒ — alveolar voiced affricate [dz]
‰ — palato-alveolar voiceless affricate [t]
 — palato-alveolar voiced affricate [dz]
s — hissing emphatic voiceless fricative
 — alveolar emphatic voiceless affricate
 — palato-alveolar emphatic affricate
ŝ — lateral voiceless fricative
 — lateral voiceless affricate
 — lateral emphatic affricate
ḳ (or q) — emphatic velar stop
ɣ — uvular voiced fricative (Arabic “ghain”)
ḫ — uvular voiceless fricative
h̲ — uvular voiceless fricative (only in Egyptian)
h — pharyngeal voiceless fricative
ʕ — pharyngeal voiced fricative
h — laryngeal voiceless fricative
ʔ — glottal stop
a — short a-vowel
ə — neutral vowel
p¯ — bilabial voiceless fricative
264
Transcr iption Signs and Conventions
ḇ — bilabial voiced fricative

ṯ — dental voiceless fricative
ḏ — dental voiced fricative
ṯ — dental voiceless emphatic fricative
ḏ — dental voiceless emphatic fricative
ḡ — velar voiced fricative
ṗ, b — emphatic bilabial stops
ˉ above a symbol for a vowel indicates a long vowel, e.g.  denotes

the long a-vowel
- separates the stem from affixed elements
* indicates the reconstructed proto-form
< means “from”
> means “into”
in the reconstructed proto-forms:

V indicates a non-specified (in other words, any) vowel, e.g. *bVr- should
be read ‘either *a, or *i, or *u’
H indicates a non-specified laryngeal or pharyngeal consonant
S indicates a non-specified sibilant
/ between two two symbols means ‘or’, e.g., *gaw/y- is to be read
‘*gaw- or *gay-’
( ) a symbol in round brackets means ‘with or without this symbol’,
e.g. *ba(w)r- should be read ‘*bawr- or *bar-’
⁓ means ‘and’ pointing to two or more co-existing proto-forms,
e.g. *ʕ–d-at- ⁓ *ʕidd- indicates two reconstructed variant proto-forms.
265
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ADB — Afrasian Data Base compiled by the author and Olga Stolbova
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1860.
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Dictionary of the Oriental Institute, the University of Chicago.
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DRB — Nait-Zerrad, K. Dictionnaire des racines berbères. Paris-Louvain.
I — 1998, II — 1999, III — 2002.
266
Bibl iographic Abbrev iations
DRS — Cohen, D. Dictionnaire des racines sémitiques ou attestées dans

les langues sémitiques. La Haye, 1970–.
DUL — Olmo Lete, G. & J. Sanmartin. A Dictionary of the Ugaritic
Language in the Alphabetic Tradition. Leiden–Boston, 2003.
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b-, p-, f-. Leiden, Boston (MA) & Cologne, 2001.
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EG — Erman, A. and H. Grapow. Wörterbuch der aegyptischen Sprache.
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GD — Landberg, С. Glossaire Dat̲i^nois. Leiden, 1920–42.
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267
Lamb. — Lamberti, M. Die Shinassha-Sprache. Materialen zum Boro.

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comparaisons et explications étymologiques. Paris, 1938.
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(Mrs. Margoliouth). Oxford, 1903.
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S.T.P. Collected and arranged by his daughter J.P. Margoliouth.
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Dictionary (English-French-Arabic). Louvain-la-Neuve, 1982.
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Bibl iographic Abbrev iations
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Anatomy of Man and Animals. Münster, 2000.
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Animal Names. Münster, 2005.
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The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Cambridge,
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Punic Languages. Ann Arbor, 1978.
269
INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Agnostic(s), agnosticism VII, XVIII, 6, 212, 216–218, 220, 222–223, 227–229,

53, 57, 77, 97, 172 234, 237, 240–242, 244–245, 247–249,
Altruism, altruistic 58, 165–168, 170, 253, 255–256
172, 197 Bolshevik(s), Bolshevist, Bolshevism XX,
American Jew(s), U.S. Jews, Jewry 5, XXIII, 9, 11, 19, 188, 191, 193
7–8, 10–12, 25 “Burring” (uvular or guttural pronun-
Anthropocentric, anthropocentrism, ciation of “r”) 92–95
anthropocentrist, anthropocentricity
VII, 1–2, 25, 32–36, 39–40, 45, 75, 100, Canon, Biblical canon VII, XIX, 39, 66,
164, 171, 175–176, 186–187, 191–192 72, 113, 116–117, 129, 174–175, 177,
“Anthropo-deity” 74–75 182–183, 253, 257
Anti-Israeli 103 Christian(s), Christianity, Christendom
Anti-Jewish 102–103, 182 XI, XIX, XXIII–XXIV, 1–2, 9–11,
Antinomy, antinomic VII, 75, 104, 183 19–20, 31, 39, 41–43, 48, 57, 61, 64,
Anti-Semite(s) XXI–XXII, 4, 14, 16, 195 72, 77–79, 100, 112, 114–117, 119–
Anti-Semitism VIII, XVI, 3, 5, 12, 18–19, 120, 122–125, 128–129, 131, 138,
101–103, 191, 195 143, 154–155, 161–163, 172, 175–176,
Assimilation, assimilate, assimilated 3, 181–186, 188, 190–192, 198, 201,
6, 15–16, 23–24, 93–94, 100, 102, 253–254, 256
107, 133, 138, 157, 161, 174–175, 183 Cognition VII, 72, 75, 164, 169–170, 175
Atheism, atheist(t) XIX, 6, 17, 53, 162, Communist(s), Communism XVIII, 17–
172, 191 18, 21, 176, 187–188, 196, 198
Axiology(-ies), axiological 164, 169–170, Conversion, convert(s), converted, los
174–175, 177–178, 180, 184, 186 conversos XXIII, 10, 13, 108, 117–118,
122–123, 133, 161, 163, 178–179, 181,
Bible, Biblical VII-VIII, XI–XII, XVIII– 183, 185, 192
XIX, XXII–XXII, 1–2, 5, 19, 23–27, Crisis (of identity), identity crisis XXVIII,
31–32, 34–41, 43, 45–51, 55–57, 62– 3, 5, 6, 8, 15, 24, 103
72, 74–87, 89, 91, 93–94, 96, 100–101,
104, 108, 115–116, 122, 126, 129, 134– Diaspora VIII, XXV, 2–3, 5–6, 10, 20,
139, 141–145, 148–155, 157–161, 164, 24, 93–94, 99, 102, 104–105, 107, 109,
169–170, 175–176, 179–186, 190, 198, 111, 118, 120, 125–127, 129–134, 136,
270
Index of Subjects
138–140, 143–144, 148, 156–157, 162, Glottochronology, glottochronological IX,

169–170, 175, 179, 182–6 28, 85, 118, 120, 222, 225, 249, 259, 263
Dominant population, nation(s) 20, 90, God, God’s XVIII, XIX, 1, 6, 32, 39–46,
132–133, 157 51–53, 55–56, 58, 61–67, 70, 72–81,
87, 136, 140, 143–144, 149–151, 153,
Ethics, ethical(ly) VII, XVII, XIX, XXI, 155, 158, 160, 163, 170–172, 184, 186–
25, 30, 32–33, 36, 45–50, 55, 57–59, 187, 240, 243, 246
61, 67, 78–80, 165–166, 169, 180, 186, god(s), goddess 1, 37, 40–41, 43–44, 49,
188, 191 51–53, 61, 66, 69, 72–73, 81, 162, 170
Ethnic, ethnicity, ethnos, ethnical(ly), God’s (chosen) people 37, 134, 158, 194,
ethno- XVI–XVII, XX–XXI, XXVII– 229
XXVIII, 7, 9–13, 15–16, 20, 23, 37, 48,
84, 88–89, 91, 96, 98–100, 106, 111– Halakhah, Halakhic 9–10, 12–15, 24, 100
121, 123–132, 134, 143, 147, 155–157, Haskalah 186
160, 169–170, 183–184, 189–190, 196 Hebrew(s), Hebrew language VIII, 2, 11,
Ethnic diseases” 12 25, 27, 35, 37, 40–42, 54–55, 69–70,
Ethnocentric, ethnocentrism 6, 37, 156, 72, 74, 76–95, 102, 123, 135, 138–140,
179–180, 186 142, 144–145, 148, 150, 152–154, 159,
Etymology(-ies), etymological(ly), etymo- 169–170, 173, 178–181, 183–185, 188,
logist(s), etymologized(-ing) VIII, XII– 197, 199, 207, 209, 213, 217, 219–220,
XIV, 26, 28, 55, 80, 82, 88, 97, 135, 222–228, 233–235, 237, 239–241, 243,
141–2, 148–153, 158, 176, 199, 212– 245–249, 251, 253–257, 260
214, 216–229, 231, 233–234, 236–237, Hebrew loanword(s), Hebraism(s) in
239, 241, 245–247, 249, 252, 256 Egyptian 88, 90
Folk, popular, Volksetymologie, Hellenism, Hellenistic, Hellene, Hellenic,
pseudo-etymologies, mythical, hellenize(d), Hellenization XI, 31–32,
“mythetymology(-ies)” XIII, 55, 48, 56–57, 70–72, 79, 102, 114, 122,
79, 82, 148, 213, 223, 232, 247, 251 161, 169–170, 177–179, 182–183, 198
“Etymopoetic(s),” “etymopoesis,” “ety- Holocaust VIII, XXII, XXV, 2, 7, 18, 22,
mopoet,” etymopoetically VII, 82, 147– 38, 103, 186–189
148, 220, 224, 245–249, 253–257 Humanism, humane, humanistic, huma-
Evolution, evolutionary, “evolutionist” nitarian, humanity XVI–XX, XXVII,
XII, XXVI–XXVII, 25, 28, 36–37, 39, 1–2, 5–6, 16, 19–20, 25, 31, 33–34, 43,
52–4, 77, 97, 125, 165–169, 171–172, 45–46, 48, 57–58, 78, 103, 164, 170–
174–176, 187, 215 171, 186–187, 195, 197, 215
Evolution of Human Languages 28, 98, Hyksos 91
215
Exodus (from Egypt) 70, 86–87, 89, 136 Identity, identities, self-identity VII, XII,
XVI, XX–XXI, XXVIII, 3, 5–9, 12–13,
Fanatic(s), fanaticism XX, XXI, 19, 59, 15–16, 23–24, 73, 99, 101, 103, 121,
162, 191 131, 155, 157, 159, 169, 198, 231
Freedom VII, XVIII–XIX, 8, 21, 35, 48, Immortality XVII, 51–52, 61, 63, 74
60, 67–68, 70, 78, 171–172, 184, 215 Imperative, Kantian, categorical 61–62, 67
Individualism, individualistic 3, 7–8, 20,
Galut, golus 125, 127, 136, 138, 143–144 171
Genocide(s) XVII, XXII, 2–3, 33–34, 59, Inquisition, inquisitor(s) XXIII–XXIV, 2,
106, 187, 189–190 4, 185, 190, 193
271
Intelligentsia, Intelligent Metempsychosis, reincarnation(s) 40,

Russian VII, XVI, XXI, 15–17, 18, 51–52, 64
20, 23–24, 58, 197, 214 Monotheism, monotheistic, monotheist
Russian Jewish XVI, 58 VII, 1–2, 40, 43, 78–79, 102, 161–163,
Soviet 20 175, 177, 179, 184, 197
Interdisciplinary 12, 97–98, 215
Islam, Islamic, islamization, Muslim(s) Natufian(s), Post-Natufian(s) 124, 129,
XIX, XXI, XXIII, 1, 11, 31, 34, 42–43, 145–147, 173, 226
61, 64, 72, 94, 99–100, 112, 115–120, Nazi(s), Nazism XXI–XXIV, 176, 182,
122–125, 128, 143, 154–155, 161–163, 187–190, 194, 198
175, 184–186, 190, 192, 198, 201 Nuremberg trial(s) 33, 189
Israel, Israeli(s), Israelite(s) XI, XXI–
XXII, XXV, 2, 3, 5–6, 8, 10, 12–13, Palestinian(s) XXI, 12, 184, 193, 195–196
24, 38, 65, 70–71, 78, 85–88, 90, 92– Pan-ecumenism, pan-ecumenical 112,
93, 102, 104, 126, 131, 135–136, 140, 125, 127
143–145, 147, 151, 158–161, 189–191, Paradox(es), paradoxical(ly) XXVI, 3, 41,
193–196, 217, 226, 229, 231 75, 103–104, 127, 134, 155, 157, 175,
Israel Stele, Stele of Israel (Merneptah 183, 191
Stele) 85, 90 Particularism, particularistic 33–37, 156,
169, 173, 186
Jewishness XVI, 12 Peoplehood 7, 10
Jews’ genetics, Jewish genetic cha- Platonists 62
racteristics 103, 107–109 Political correctness 106, 194, 219
Joke(s), jokey 4, 17, 20, 22–23, 31, 47, Poly-ethnicity, poly-ethnic 112, 119–120,
188, 198 127
“Judaicized”, “Judaicizing” 122, 170, Polytheism, polytheistic 2, 161–163, 179, 197
179, 182 Posthumous 51–52, 55, 57, 61–62, 64
Judaism, Judaic XIX, 1, 3, 7, 9–10, 13–14, Post-modernism, post-modernist 76, 96
31, 42–43, 48, 57, 79, 100, 108, 111, 115, Progress VII, XVII, XX, XXIV, 25, 69,
122–123, 155, 161, 171, 178–184, 191 71–72, 99, 124, 197
Judeophobia, Judeophobe 3, 92, 102, 103 Proselytism, proselytes 112, 122–123,
127, 161, 182
Kabbalah, kabbalistic, kabbalism 135, 185 Pun, play on words 76, 81, 245, 257
Liberal(ly) XI, XVI, XXIV, XXVII, 5–7, Rational, rationalistic, rationality XXVII,
10, 18, 21–22, 25, 58, 109, 167, 196, 213 20, 26, 58–62, 98, 101, 110, 155, 172,
Life after death, afterlife, eternal life VII, 176, 194–195, 255
XVII, XVIII, 50–55, 57, 61–62 Religion(s) VII, XVIII–XX, XXVII, 6,
Linguistics, comparative, historical XIII, 8–10, 17, 51, 59, 61–62, 100–101, 103,
27, 88, 97, 212, 214–215, 219, 221– 107, 111, 118, 125, 133, 154–155, 161,
222, 258 182, 184, 186, 201
Revolution, revolutionary XXIII–XXIV,
Мashiah, Messiah 135, 144, 180–181, 256 1, 16–18, 32, 54, 84, 96, 100, 124, 135,
Marriage(s) (mixed, intermarriages) 2–3, 177, 186, 191, 193
6, 8–9, 12, 15–16, 23, 95, 101, 108– Russia VII, XI, XVI, XVIII, XXIII–XXIV,
109, 133, 146 8, 11–24, 97, 101, 177, 190–191, 196, 198
Masoretic 93–94 Post-Soviet 22, 24, 197
272
Index of Subjects
“Russian idea” XXVII, 198 Universalistic, universalism XXVII, 33,

Russian Jew(s), Jews of/in Russia, Russian 35–37, 39, 78, 100–101, 135, 154–156,
Jewish XVI, XXII, 6, 9–12, 15, 19, 22, 169–170, 173, 178, 180, 183–184, 186–
24–25, 47, 58, 101–102, 164 187, 191–192
Russian religious philosophy 19, 74, U.S.S.R. 5, 8, 11, 13
171
Value(s)
Secular 7–8, 20, 25, 37, 144, 163, 172 absolute 2, 25, 45
Septuagint 72, 102, 116, 122–123, 138, cosmopolitan 6
140, 142, 178, 227, 256 modern 3
Soviet national 3
Jew(s) 8, 11, 13, 19 religious 3, 171
Union XVIII, 8, 9, 13, 16, 18, 22–23, spiritual 48
164–165, 188–189, 198 traditional Jewish 7, 9
Strategy(-ies) VIII, XVII, XXVIII, 42, universal VII, 5, 6, 19, 24–25, 180
106–107, 122, 127, 155–157, 161, 163– Western 34, 103, 189
164, 167, 169–170, 172–175, 177–178,
191–193, 197 Western civilization XVII–XVIII, XXIV,
Supernatural 40, 51, 53–54, 81, 101, 170– 3, 25, 34, 124, 169, 186, 194
171
Xenophobia XVI, 3, 12, 103, 191
Talmud, Talmudic 2, 38, 75–76, 103–105,
183, 185, 198 Yiddish 2, 11, 24, 84, 92–94, 99, 125,
249, 260
Underworld, Hell, Hades 55–57, 62, 64,
223 Zionism, Zionist(s) XXV, 22, 37
INDEX OF NAMES
Ahmose I 91 Dybo, Anna 258
Akhenaton 79 Dybo, Vladimir 215
Akhmatova, Anna 18
Efroimson, Vladimir 164–167, 173
Alexander III 17
Einstein, Albert 194
Alexander the Great 32, 114, 177
Epicure 52
Antiochus IV Epiphanes 102
Esenin, Sergei 18
Arendt, Hannah 188
Esenin-Volpin, Alexander 18
Areopagite, Maximum 77
Aristeas (Pseudo-Aristeas) 74, 78, 123 Finkelstein, Israel 87
Aristotle 32, 185 Flavius, Joseph 91, 102
Arutyunov, Sergei 198 Fleming, Daniel 160
Assman, Ian 49, 61 Flusser, David 78
Augustine 163 Freud, Sigmund 53, 79, 100
Begin, Menachem 193 Gagarin, Juri 18
Bohr, Niels 100 Gaidar, Yegor 21
Bokassa 33 Galich (Ginzburg), Alexander 18
Brodsky, Iosif 18 Galperin, Misha 7
Brown, Erica 7 Gell-Mann, Murray 98, 215
Glazunov, Ilya 19
Carlos, Baader and Meinhof 33
Greenberg, Joseph 216
Celan, Paul 188
Chakovsky, Alexander 18–19 Hammurabi 49, 69
Chetverikov, Serghei 164 Hekataeus 102
Chomsky, Noam 214 Heidegger, Martin 188
Chlenov, Mikhail 110–121, 123–130 Herodotus 32, 71, 117
Chrysostom, John 47, 182, 184 Hitler, Adolf XXIV, 4, 33–35, 188
Hope, Marvin 38
Derrida, Jacques 100, 188
Hussein, Saddam 33
Diakonoff, Igor M. XIII, 26, 29, 31, 81, 86,
Huxley, Aldous XIV
91, 213, 215, 225, 226, 246, 251, 266
Dolgopolsky, Aharon 215 Idi Amin 33
Dostoyevsky, Feodor 17, 78 Illich-Svitych, Vladislav 215
Dubnov, Shimon 156 Ivanov, Vyacheslav Vs. 215
274
Index of Names
Jacobson, Vladimir 49 Pushkin, Alexander17

Jesus 180–182, 254–7 Putin, Vladimir 19, 21
Justin the Philosopher 182
Rabbi Eliezer 75
Kant, Immanuel 61 Rabin, Chaim 217
Keith, Arthur 165 Ramses I 92
Kogan, Leonid 26, 219, 247 Ramses II 92
Koltsov, Nikolai 164 Reformatsky, Alexander 214
Korczak, Janusz XVII Renfrew, Colin 98, 215
Koveman, Arkady 134 Rockefeller, John 189
Kropotkin, Pyotr 17, 166 Rofe, Alexander 71
Rogerson, John William 237
Lazar, Berl 8
Lenin, Vladimir 19, 33–35 Sakharov, Andrei 18
Leslau, Wolf 213 Sharon, Ariel 194
Levinas, Emmanuel 188 Sheikh Yassin 33
Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien 53 Sholokhov, Mikhail 18
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 54 Show, Bernard 188
Lhot, Henry 29 Silberman, Neil Asher 87
Limonov (Savenko), Eduard 19 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander 18
Lysenko, Trofim 165 Saussure, Ferdinand de 214
Speiser, Ephraim 157–160, 217–232, 248
Maccabees 102
Stalin, Iosif (Joseph) 17–19, 33,188, 214–
Maimonides, Moses 77, 185
215
Maizel, Solomon 81, 84, 246–249
Starostin, George 258
Malraux, André 29
Starostin, Sergei 28, 85, 91, 98, 215, 222,
Mandelshtam, Osip 18
225, 258–259, 263
Manetho 102
Swadesh, Maurice 28
Mao Zedong 33
Marx, Karl 100 Tadmor, Hayim 46
Muhammad 184 Talaat Pasha 33
Tcherikover, Victor 123
Napoleon 177, 186
Theophrastus 102
Nechayev, Sergey 17
Thiel, W. 237
Neusner, Jacob 38
Tiglatpalassar III 102
Osama bin-Laden 33–35 Tolstoy, Lev (Leo) 17
Toorn, Karel van der 159, 231, 237
Pasternak, Boris 18, 100
Torquemada XXIII
Pearl, Daniel XXI
Toynbee, Arnold Joseph 101–102
Paul XXVIII, 180, 182
Tramontano, R. 123
Pfeiffer, R. 123
Tsvetaeva, Marina 18
Philo 138
Tylor, Edward Burnett 53
Philocrates 123
Pipes, Daniel XXI Ur-Nammu 48
Plutarch 138
Voltaire, François 79
Pobedonostsev, Konstantin 17
Vysotsky, Vladimir 18
Pol Pot 33
Psammetichus I 126 Zerahyah 185
Ptolemy II Philadelphus 123 Zhirinovsky (Eidelstein), Vladimir 21
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THE JEWISH CONUNDRUM

Copyright © 2010 Academic Studies Press

Book design by Ivan Grave

“Parting of the Red Sea”. Haggadah, 14th century.

Published by Academic Studies Press in 2010

Foreword and Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

The Unique Nature of the Jewish Phenomenon in History ............. 96

Appendix 1: Etymology of Selected Hebrew Terms Related to

Transcription Signs and Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

Bibliographic Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

The Genealogical Tree of World Languages

The Genealogical Tree of Afrasian (Afroasiatic) Languages

FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is an updated and extended version of my previous book in

medieval studies, archeology, sociology, demographics, psychology,

I am unaccustomed to composing essays like this one. I am, essentially,

1 A wide-spread temptation of inventing — and even sometimes publishing! — false

scientific value than a literary critic’s discourse on nuclear physics. Besides,

2 According to The American Heritage College Dictionary.

the patriarch to Janusz Korczak, from the first pogrom in Alexandria to

“counterpointed” — deliberately rather than haphazardly — in the canon

5 It is hardly worth my while to bother believing in a different one — it happens

The second position: belonging to the Jews (Eskimos, Russian

“O Daughter of Babylon … happy is he who … seizes your infants and dashes

the Jewish “quota” in these cannibalistic guilds was, as it would seem

If the development follows the first route, it is a grand merci to everyone,

importantly: we won’t let ourselves. A historical awl in one virtual place.

detail in both scientific and popular writings, but lacking, in my view,

An obscure semi-nomadic community that had formed by the last

A joke of the Soviet epoch told of the game of survival (fashioned as

THE CRISIS OF MODERN JEWRY

The severe crisis experienced by the Jewry of today is obvious. Its

It is in Israel that the second cause of the crisis — the notorious

motivation reasons: why bother if the desire to feel oneself Jewish — or to

Therefore, it’s impossible to say/not important who I am (too much bother

As it was already mentioned, for an overwhelming majority of Jews in

The traditional Jews, similarly, do not accept the divergence between

JEWISH IDENTITY IN RUSSIA

The issue of defining the terms “Jew,” “Jewish,” “Jewishness,” i.e.,

Recently I have been asked to review a study on Russian and Ukrainian

1. The official Soviet criterion: Jewish according to the record in the

5. The religious criterion: Jew as a person (born of Jewish mother, of

limitation imposed on the definition of “Jew” by the Halakhah leaves fairly

JEWS AND THE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENTSIA

When I previously discussed the question of how Russian Jews can

Now let us discuss such a phenomenon as assimilation. It’s a universally

9 Educated persons of non-noble origin.

era, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelshtam and Pasternak15, Solzhenitsyn16,

15 Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova (1889–1966) and Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892–

painter Glazunov23, or the once fashionable writer and nationalist-Bolshevik

line to a “liberal-minded” Communist, he served as an unofficial cultural arbiter

Having paid with a lot of blood, the young Russian intelligentsia,

25 My aunt’s colleague, a gifted Leningrad architect, a pureblood Russian and refined

28 Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky (born 1946 as Eidelstein of a Jewish father),

organization in 1993, it transformed into a political party in 2001. It contested the

There was a rather unique “mating” of two cultural entities. Cultural

Is there a way to overcome this identity crisis? Is there a values system

that “Euro-centrist” — notions into another epoch and a different culture.

One ought not to overestimate the force of a primeval man’s inducement