OVER THE SEAS TO BRITAIN
from the "National Message" magazine 1961
by L.Buxton Gresty
The mass migration of exiled Israel from the Caspian region
moved westward via the European mainland. This involved by far
the greater bulk and main body of the people who were later to
become the Celto-Saxons of Britain and the maritime countries of
north-west Europe. Of great importance, however, is the fact that
there were MINOR OFFSHOOTS of the main stream which took other
routes, at different times. These moved by way of the
Mediterranean and western European seaboards to the isles and
coast-lands of the West mentioned by the prophets. The treks of
these smaller sections of Israel are of absorbing interest and
worthy of attention.
Before proceeding to deal with these movements, it is
necessary to get a perspective of the racial position in the
Bible lands both at and before the period of Israel's eclipse. It
is of little use our claiming a connection between the Israelites
of old and the Celto-Saxons of today if we do not at least make
passing reference to those related peoples of the Middle East who
were of greater antiquity, or contemporary with Israel; for if
the latter moved west, their kinsmen must have gone somewhere,
and must be accounted for. It is futile, for instance, to claim
that all the Nordic peoples of today are Israelites, for we know
full well that the clans from which Israel sprang had other
descendant nations of the selfsame racial stock. Furthermore, we
are bound to do what we can to equate the three main streams of
the civilizing race which descended from Noah, with the cultured
peoples of today. We are glad to accept that Jesus believed that
Noah was a historic personage. We must therefore maintain that
the three main groups of clans which proceeded from the patriarch
did so in the manner which scripture describes and we must deduce
the modern racial position from that premise. Noah had three
sons: Shem (renown), Ham (swarthy) and Japheth (fair). The
oracles of God were committed to Shem and it is inferred by
scripture and reasonable to assume that the ordered progress of
civilized man would be carried on the shoulders of the peoples
stemming from him. God had promised that He wouldn't dwell in the
tents of Shem.
Early movements
The Bible gives a terse account of the early general
movements of some of the clans of Noah. Many of the descendants
of Shem settled first in what is now modern Iran and in the
Tigris-Euphrates region. The Hamites moved off in the direction
of Canaan and North Africa whilst the clans of Japheth settled in
the region of the Aegean and in south-east Europe. It is mainly
from these three streams of Noahic pioneers that the culture of
the West developed. As the centuries went by, pioneering urge and
pressures from heathen hordes caused renewed migrations over
great distances. For instance, venturesome parties of restless
voyageurs moved from the Caspian region right across Asia, over
the Behring Sea and down the western side of North America to as
far south as Peru. There is little doubt that, as the writer of
"Kontiki" infers, the red giants of Easter Island were restless
spirits who had their roots in Bible lands. Notwithstanding these
eastern adventures, it is manifest that the ultimate main
movements of the clans of Noah were westerly and so we find
culture creeping steadily westwards. Often the reason was threat
of conquest: sometimes it was to seek virgin, un-ruined land for
purposes of agriculture. Frequently a small section would settle
among an established community of indigenous primitive peoples.
Inevitably such a section became an 'aristocracy' imposing its
will upon its cultural inferiors. In course of time, the latter
acquired knowledge and 'know-how' from their masters and often,
from sheer weight of numbers, overthrew them. In such cases,
those of the aristocrucy who lived to escape fled further west
and commenced the process again. A case in point is that of the
Indo-Europeans who broke into northem Palestine just before the
period of Abraham, to co-ordinate and control the so-called
'Hittite' empire of Hethites and Armenoid aboriginals. These
Indo-Europeans came from the Caspian region - Shemite territory -
and Bible students have good cause to believe that they were
indeed Shemites. After a period of ascendancy their Hittite
empire was overthrown, but it seems clear that out of the
wreckage they saved the Syrian portion of northern Palestine.
These 'Arameans' were Shemite kinsmen of the Hebrews. God said,
'Have I not brought up the Syrians from Kir?' It is not
sufficiently realized that this Syrio-Hittite link is a key to
the relationship between the Indo-Europeans of the historian and
the Hebrews of scripture.
Origins
The Shemites included a number of emergent nations - the
Hebrews (including Israel, Edom, Moab and Ammon), the Syrians,
some of the original Arab clans and the section called
Indo-Europeans not mentioned as such in scripture. The latter
remained mainly in the Caspian home territory, whilst the others
moved out to Mesopotamia and Palestine. Some sections drifted
towards India, to build the Indus Valley civilization, now
yielding up its secrets to Sir Mortimer Wheeler and his
colleagues. In following Israel westwards, we should bear in mind
that - as descendants of the Godly line - they were part and
parcel of the westward-moving Indo-European culture which,
through a succession of phases, has produced the Celto-Saxon
nations of today. Further, that God formed and developed the
Israelite section of the great race of Shem for the express
purpose of becoming the nucleus of His earthly Kingdom. Thus,
under the hand of God, Israel became an 'aristocracy within an
aristocracy'. To them He re-committed His oracles and charged
them with responsibility for consolidation of His Kingdom and the
guardianship for the Church of His Son.
We need briefly to follow the movements of the clans of Ham
and Japheth. The former, after occupying much of the south and
east Levant coastal areas, pushed elements through North Africa.
The Hamites appear generally to have become merged among the
dark-skinned Latin-type peoples now classed as 'Mediterranean'.
Ham's name (swarthy) may have had prophetic bearing on this. Of
Japheth's subsequent movements we have but little scriptural
advice, but his progeny seem to have been forced westwards and
northwards, to become dominant among the Slavonic peoples.
Japheth's name signified 'fair' and this is certainly
appropriate. The Shemites, now led by Israel, must be equated
with the people termed Nordic. With David in mind we realize that
an early racial characteristic was that they were ruddy-fair, and
we recall that the ancient Celts were frequently referred to as
'red'. Their Anglo-Saxon kinsmen, too, were fair complexioned. We
cannot and do not claim that the Israelites - or their Shemite
kinsmen - preserved absolute purity of race, for even in Canaan
God's people disobeyed the Divine command on this. But we do
maintain that the Shemite-Hebrew stock substantially survived. As
Huxley and his co-authors in their "We Europeans" have stated:
'The Nordic stock preponderated' in the peoples who formed the
broad base of Celto-Saxondom, i.e. Celts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes,
Danes, Northmen, and so forth.'
Events before migration
Having briefly followed the early movements of the clans of
Noah which provided the background against which the Israel
nation was cradled, we may now review the situation that preceded
their migrations from Bible lands via the coastal routes. We must
not imagine that all the ancient peoples who arrived in the
'utmost bounds of the West' were Israelites. Indeed, there were
racial movements along the selfsame routes centuries before the
birth of Abraham, which continued on and off until the early
period of the Christian era. These pioneered the way for an
assortment of early peoples, including Hebrews, Hebrew-Israelites
and Canaanites, which followed in their steps.
The seaward trail was thus blazed long before the days of
Jacob. A fascinating proof of this is still with us in the form
of a succession of stone circles and monuments of various types
which delineate a clear path from Palestine by way of North
Africa, Spain and France, to the British Isles and the fringe
countries of the North Sea. Professor Sayce, the great
Assyriologist, associated the stone monuments with a
fair-skinned, blueeyed race whose 'jumping-off point' was
Palestine? The Bible has numerous references to such stone
monuments erected in patriarchal times. The westward 'creep' of
these circles, cromlechs, dolmens and menhirs dates from the
period of emergence of the Hebrews as a pioneering race. Abraham
himself was a part of that migration. When he left Ur, he went to
a Habiru colony in Syria, among Indo-European kinsfolk. Professor
Coon's testimony supports our claim that this westward moving
stream was racially akin to the present-day Celto-Saxons. He says
that the people who lived in Mesopotamia in patriarchal times
were 'identical in skull and face form with living Englishmen'.
These venturesome clans were 'civilizers'. And why not? For they
emanated from the very cradle of culture, pushing southwards into
Egypt, and thence, in the course of centuries, along the
inevitable 'sunset' trail. They established trading posts and
settlements which later became bases, not only for further waves
of their own people but also, generations later, for contingents
of their offspring nation, the Israelites.
There is no doubt whatever that much of the commerce which
opened up the West, and often attributed vaguely to the
'Phoenicians', was borne by Hebrew mariners. The trade in the tin
of Cornwall and the amber of northern Europe was shared as much
by the seafaring ancestors of the Israelites as it was by the
merchants of Canaanite Tyre and Sidon. Even in the time of
Solomon, Israel's navy ranked with that of Tyre in trading
enterprises to Tarshish of the far west. Thus we can see that,
when it became necessary for the smaller sections of Israel to
take the road to the isles of the west, they were not in the
position of first occupants venturing into unknown territory.
They followed well-trodden ways and marked passages to a sea-girt
home which had already been explored and, to some extent, opened
up. Moreover, in addition to the ubiquitous Hebrews, they had
been preceded also to their new homeland - the 'Appointed Place
prepared of God'- by some of their hereditary enemies, the
Canaanites. Expelled by Joshua from Israel's Promised Land, hosts
of these fled from Tyre and Sidon to found communities in North
Africa. Dido and her Carthaginians were largely of Canaanite
stock. Mommsen remarks that even as late as the commencement of
the Christian era there were North Africans who still called
themselves Canaanites. Procopius of Caesarea, a reliable
Byzantine historian, writing about A.D.500, stated that in his
day there were near Tangier two columns of white stone upon which
- in the language of Canaan - appeared the inscription:
'We are they who fled before the face oŁ Joshua, the robber, the
son of Nun.'
These Phoenician Canaanites later became known as Moors.
Long before this, however, large numbers of them had crossed from
Africa to Spain to the Iberian Peninsula, to settle in Europe as
swarthy Iberians. In later years parties of them continued their
trek by way of the Atlantic coastal strip to northern France and
the westerly extremities of Britain and southern Ireland. Relics
of Canaanite worship and Baalish placenames still stand as
testimony to their arrival.
It has been necessary to take cognisance of these
pre-Israelite pioneering movements in order to show that, as He
had promised, Almighty God had indeed prepared a place for His
people where 'children of wickedness' should no longer afflict
them as beforetime. In causing them to be expelled forcibly from
Palestine, He had used the only means which would bring about
their complete uprooting. It is important, too, to demonstrate
that - despite the lberio-Canaanite infusion - the people who had
quietly been infiltrating the islands and coastlands of the West
were chiefly of the same racial stock as the Israelites who later
fought their way in. The stalwart, adventuring clans of Shem had
made it comparatively easy for God's ancient people to enter into
their inheritance.
References
Phoenicia and Western Asia. By R. Weill
Early Israel and The Hittites. By Professor Sayce. °
Races of Europe. By Professor Coon, p.83.
TheBook of Amber. Williamson.
History of Rome, Vol.2, Book iii. Mommsen.
History of the Wars. Book iv, Chap. X. Procopius of Caesarea.
................
THE PHOENICIANS Renowned Traders
by Evelyn Janes
Phoenicians is a name applied by the Greeks and Romans from
Homer's time onwards, to the dwellers in the coastal strip of
Palestine irrespective of race. It is used especially for the
sea-traders who plied the seas in the first millennium B.C.,
carrying merchandise from the eastern Mediterranean to far
distant shores, even to Britain.
These people comprised elements of several peoples, the
chief of these being Canaanites (using the name in its Biblical
sense), Hebrews, and Israelites. It is significant that the trade
of Phoenicia reached the peak of its importance during the period
of Israel's greatest ascendancy, and that its decline commenced
with the disappearance of the great bulk of Israel from the Holy
Land.
The Canaanites and the Hebrews had been long in the land
when the Israelites arrived. Sidon, grandson of Ham, is reputed
to have founded the city bearing his name in 2750 B.C. Tyre also
claimed its foundation from the same period. In this connection
Herodotus wrote that the first colonizers of Phoenicia were
located originally on the Persian Gulf (the Red Sea, according to
Rawlinson). Trogus considered that they moved in from the Dead
Sea area. The Ras Shamra and Telel-Amarna tablets reveal that
Hebrew invaders established themselves in Phoenicia before the
entry of the Israelites into their Promised Land.
Modern authorities have evinced various views on the racial
characteristics of the Phoenicians, Rawlinson, like many others,
calls them not a racial but a linguistic classification. Ripley
and Waddell both claim them to be Nordics of a totally different
racial type from the modern Jews. Though the Hebrew and Israelite
sections conform to this Nordic classification, it would be going
too far to say all the Phoenicians were Nordics, especially when
one considers the physical make-up of such well known examples as
the Carthaginian Hannibal and also the Moorish type which has
survived in the Iberian Peninsula until the present day.
In the division of Canaan by lot, under Joshua, the whole of
the country as far north as Sidon was apportioned among the
tribes. The coastal towns of Sidon and Tyre, Akka and Dor are
particularly mentioned as being awarded to the tribes of Asher
and Manasseh. It is definite however, that some localities were
never occupied at all by the tribes, and others only partially
so. The Bible record makes it clear that the Israelites came to
some sort of unauthorized "live and let live" arrangement with
the existing inhabitants. The narrative positively states that
the inhabitants were not destroyed, the Israelites "dwelt among
the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land." (Judges 1).
It will be remembered that the tribe of Dan forcibly
colonized a portion of the Sidonian hinterland when they found
their own territory too small. This territory only about twenty
miles from Tyre, they also named Dan, though it was not actually
part of their tribal allotment (Judges xviii). It is of interest
to note that Hiram, the renowned overseer in the work of building
and embellishing Solomon's temple, a resident of Tyre, was of
Danite descent on his mother's side, though his father was of the
tribe of Naphtali, whose territory also lay very close to Tyre.
(I Kings 7:13,14, 2 Chron.2:14).
There can be no reasonable doubt that a goodly proportion of
these seafaring merchants were Israelites of the tribes of Asher,
Dan and Manasseh, whose territory marched and mingled with that
of Tyre and Sidon.
The concern of Dan and Asher for their shipping earned a
rebuke from Deborah when these two tribes failed to do their part
in the war against Sisera (Judges 5). Ezekiel recounting the
former glories of Tyre, mentions the Danites as having a part in
the trade of that world mart, in conjunction with Javan (Aegean
Area). The Danaans of ancient Greece, who settled in Argos after
their arrival from Egypt, furnish a glimpse of the seafaring
propensities of this pioneering tribe.
The Phoenicians spoke a branch of the Semitic language so
closely allied to Hebrew that Phoenician and Hebrew though
different dialects, may practically be regarded as the same
language. They were attributed with introducing their letters
(alphabet) to the Greeks by both Romans and Greeks.
Of supreme interest to the Bible lover, however, is the fact
that some portion of God's ancient Israel played a dominant role
in the early maritime accomplishments, which paved the way for
the subsequent development of Western Civilization.
The great trading community of the Phoenician cities headed
by Tyre and Sidon, attained its greatest power about B.C.1300. It
had a great caravan trade with Babylonia, Arabia, Assyria,
Armenia etc. and its mariners traded along the whole coast of
southern and western Europe as far as the shores of the Baltic.
It planted colonies in Cilicia, Rhodes, Crete, Malta, Cyprus,
Sicily, Sardinia, Marseilles, the Balearic Islands, Southern
Spain and Northern Africa.
Colonies, settlements and trading posts were established by
the "Phoenician" traders throughout the Mediterranean and beyond
the Pillars of Hercules, to the limits of navigation as then
known. In many of these places Hebrew, Israelite or Canaanite
pioneers had already blazed the trail. As early as the time of
the Exodus, Danaus had led a section of the Danites to the Aegean
area. At the same time Cadmus a so-called "Phoenician," stated to
have been a citizen of Egyptian Thebes - who was probably of
Hebrew extraction - had taken a band of followers from Tyre also
to Greece. Agenor and Phoenix also led colonies from Phoenicia to
Greece. Hordes of Canaanites expelled by Joshua fled to the North
African coastal areas, reaching as far west as Tangier.
The more important of these western colonies were: Tarshish,
Carthage, Gades and Ictis.
ISSACHAR
One of Jacob's sons migrated to the geographic area now
known as Finland. We ought to remember the valiant and brave
conduct of the Finns prior to, and during World War 2. In the
face of an overwhelming Russian invasion of their country in
1939, Field Marshall Mannerheim was quoted as saying, "Sons of
Issachar, stand and die, but let only scorched earth fall into
the hands of the antichrists." Obviously, Mannerheim was both
aware and knowledgeable of the Israel truth.
.............
Entered on this Website January 2008
