Passion Week Chronology Completely Rethought

 I decided to post this new Chronology on my Main Bible Blog, but I'll also promote it here.

https://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/2022/04/passion-week-chronology-completely.html

Asher and Phoenicia

The first mention of Tyre in The Bible is in Joshua 19:29 as a City in the Allotment of Asher.

There is a lot of overlap between what the Greeks and later Romans called Phoenicia and what was allotted to the Tribe of Asher in the days of Joshua.  Zidon/Sidon itself is listed in Joshua 19:28.  Dor was basically the southernmost city of what they called Phoenicia and Joshua 17:11 lists it as a City originally meant for Asher but that Manasseh wound up taking.  And Aphek/Aphik of Joshua 19:30  is Apheca up in the Jibel district of Lebanon east of Byblos and west of Baalbek.

I also have a hunch the name of the nearby Jezzine District of Lebanon comes from the Jesuite clan of Asher from Number 26:44.  Of course a few verses later there are a couple clans of Naphtali with arguably more similar names but I feel Jezzine is to far east to be Nephtali.

Of course many of these are cities the Canaanites weren’t chased out of, as we’re told of Dor in Judges 1:27 and five proper Asher allotted cities in Judges 1:31, and the five in that verse weren’t even made tributaries like the others, they were fully independent.  That verse lists Zidon, Acco/Acho (the city known today as Akka and to the Crusaders as Acre but in Acts was Potlemias), and Aphek.  The Asherites are also described different then the tribes preceding them in Judges 21, they dwell among the Canaanites rather then the Canaanites dwelling among them.

But it doesn’t mention Tyre, and that gets me to wondering, was Tyre an Asherite city for more of its ancient history than we usually think?

Hiram was the King of Tyre contemporary with David and at least the early reign of Solomon.  1 Chronicles 22:4 and 1 Kings 5:6 refers to Hiram and his kingdom as distinct from the Zidonians, not from Sidon as a city but from the Sidonians as a tribe.  It seems weird that he is merely allied with the House of David and not part of their Kingdom if he’s an Israelite, but maybe being surrounded by so many Canaanite cities cut them off.

Isaiah 23 refers to Tyre as the Daughter of Sidon, meaning the population of Tyre had become Sidonian by then.  And other Prophets like Joel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah constantly pair Tyre and Zidon together as practically twin cities, but all these are much later, so when did the change happen?

Ethbaal/Ithobaal the father of Jezebel you may have seen referred to as a King of Tyre, but The Bible in 1 Kings 16:31 calls him king of the Sidonians and never mentioned Tyre in its Ahab & Jezebel narrative at all.  The source for him being a King of Tyre is chiefly the Phoenician Historian Meander as quoted by Josephus in Against Apion.  These sources also tell us he did not descend from Tyre’s prior Kings but founded a new Dynasty, he was a Priest of Astarte who killed the previous king Phelles implying this was a Coup d'etat perhaps religiously motivated.  

But that also wasn’t the first time this happened, Phelles’s own dynasty gained power the same way decades earlier.  According to Meander Hiram/Hirom was succeeded by a Son then a Grandson but then his Dynasty ended.  Meander’s names for the Father, Son and Grandson of Hirom seem to imply Tyre was already worshiping Baal and Astarte even then, but those names could have been altered by the later Baalist record keepers.

When you study the Etymology of Phoenicia and why the Greeks gave that name to this region, you'll discover it's tied to a Greek word for Purple and to Phoenicia being a source of Dates and a rare Purple Dye, and that this is also tied to how Purple became a color associated with Royalty, this Purple is even specifically associated with Tyre being called Tyrian Purple.  

So Jacob's blessing for Asher in Genesis 49:20 is arguably fulfilled by Asher being Phoenicia, the Royal Dainties are the Dates and Tyrian Purple Dye.  Moses' blessing from Deuteronomy 33:24 can fit as well.

I also think the Rehob paired with Aphek in Joshua 19:30 and Judges 1:31 is probably the same as the Bethrehob in Judges 18:28, and I suspect that site is Yanouh north of modern Afik in the Byblos District.  The Asherites never drove out the Canaanites there but Dan after leaving their original allotment did.  This region is also where The Greeks believed the Adonis mythology happened, the Canaanites preferred Baal to Adonai as a word for Lord applied to the Divine, so I think the Adonis cult had its origins in Polytheistic Israelites.

1 Kings 15:18 in the Hebrew and Young's Literal Translation says Giblites (people of Byblos) were involved in building The Temple.  These were workers supplied by King Hiram of Tyre and led by the very similarly named half Danite Architect.  That architect's Danite mother was also a Widow of Naphtali.

Just as Asher was allotted Western Lebanon up to the Byblos region, Naphtali included Eastern Lebanon directly parallel.  I think the Bethshemesh allotted to Naphtali in Joshua 19:38-39 that they didn't drive the Canaanites out of in Judges 1:33 is Baalbek, because the Greeks called Baalbek Heliopolis like they did the Bethshemesh of Egypt, simply changing House of The Sun to City of The Sun.  As for the Bethanath of those verses, of the already proposed sites for Beth-Anath I favor Aynata or Safad El Battikh both in the Bint Jbeil District of the Nabatieh Governorate of Lebanon.

The Phoenicians had a major influence on the early Prehistory of Ancient Greece.  The Greek Alphabet is basically an adaptation of the Phoenician Alphabet, Aphrodite was basically just Astarte coming to Greece via Phoenician colonies on Cyprus.  This is reflected in Greek mythology in a number of ways but with the Aeolians specifically linking themselves to Tyre, Thebes was supposedly founded by Cadmus (credited with inventing the Alphabet) son of Agenor and brother of Phoenix King of Tyre, while the Heroes of Thesely descend from a woman named Tyro.  

Later in the Hellenistic era Zeno of Citium and Chrysippus of Cios were Hellenized Phoenicians who were core to founding the Stoic School of Philosophy which would be the dominant Theistic school of Greek Philosophy during the era of The New Testament.

I don’t believe in British Israelism so I don’t see this as evidence that the Ancient Greeks as a whole literally primarily genealogically descended from Asher or Dan.  But the cultural influence is interesting, and perhaps adds some poetic symmetry to how, if my theories are correct, the modern Descendants of Asher follow liturgically Greek Rites of Christianity.

As I discussed in my last Lost Tribes post, DNA research seems to show that the Christians of Lebanon are kin to The Jews.  My focus in that post was on arguing for the Maronites being Dan.  But I also think the Christians in the Tyre, Sidon, Jezzine and Nabatieh Districts of Lebanon, as well as the Haifa and Akko districts of Israel mostly descend from Asherites who converted to Christianity at some point in the first four centuries AD.  Those that follow Greek Rites from Asherites who were Hellenized by the First Century, and the Syriacs those who were not Hellenized.  The Melkite Greek Catholics are the largest Christian group in these districts followed by the Greek Orthodox as a somewhat close second.

Acts 11:19 tells us that one of the regions the Hellenized Jewish Christians we met in chapters 6-7 were scattered to during the persecution following the Martyrdom of Stephen was Phenice in the KJV which is a well known shortened form of Phoenicia, these Christians in Phenice are mentioned again in Acts 15:3, 21:3-7 and 27:3-12 where in this time Acco was called Ptolemais.

The North in Daniel 11 is Turkey not Syria

That is IF it has End Times application at all.  

The most mainstream view among Futurists has been that Daniel 11 up to verse 35 is about the Hellenistic Era, but then 36-45 jumps forward to the End Times and is Antichrist relevant, and then within that is an internal debate on if the "Willful King" who is the subject of those verses is still a King of The North or if the North is a separate entity in verse 40, I was when I held the standard view in the Willful King being separate camp.

I have on this blog broken with Futurist orthodoxy and argued that the Willful King is Augustus Caesar (with the King of the North in verse 40 being Anthony and his Son by Cleopatra who was given the former Seleucid domains).  But I've found on YouTube those who brake with the orthodoxy in the opposite direction have been increasing in popularity, most of them still see some connection to the Hellenistic Kingdoms but see it's leap forward to the "End Times" as being more amorphous.  But those who reject any connection to the Hellenistic era do exist.

So I've decided to play Devil's Advocate with those types as well as the standard view.

The Seleucid Kingdom is by historians sometimes treated as synonymous with "Syria" the same way Ptolemy is with Egypt, so that's why trying to map any part of this chapter onto the borders of the modern Middle East tends to involve identifying the North with Syria.  But at it's greatest extent the Seleucid Empire also controlled almost all of modern Turkey, all of Iraq and Iran, stretched even into Pakistan and Afghanistan, held sway over Lebanon and Jordan and even for a time of course had Israel.

To the Ancient World a Civilization's Capital City was even more important to understanding it's identity then it is in our modern Cosmopolitan way of thinking.  And the Seleucid Kingdom's Capital was Antioch which was still part of Syria during Roman times and in the initial post WWI redrawing of the Middle East was original in the French Mandate of Syria and Lebanon but as part of Hatay which became briefly independent and then a province of Turkey.

When one attempts to trace the royal genealogical legacy of the Seleucid Dynasty beyond when the Seleucid Kingdom proper ended, it very heavily involves the Hellenistic ruling dynasties of regions in modern Turkey like Pontus, Commagene, Cappadocia, Pergamon, Galatia and Cilicia. Also two of the cities that housed the Seven Churches in Asia of Revelation were founded or renamed by Seleucid Kings, Laodicea and Thyatira, and most of them were part of that kingdom at some point in their history.

Then there is the view of The Little Horn I've been developing, that it never represented an individual per se, in Daniel 8 it's the Seleucid Empire with the bigger horn it came out of being Ptolemy, then in Daniel 7 it's the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire which was in many ways the legacy of the Seleucid Empire continued.  Then the Ottoman Empire was simply the Byzantine Empire with a change in Religion and Language, and then at the end of WWI what was left of the Ottoman Empire became modern Turkey.

But the Key Argument for the North being Turkey and not Syria in modern geopolitics is the very word "North" itself.  In the Hellenistic Context why was the Seleucid Kingdom the North when it wasn't actually the most northern since there were rivals based in both Macedon and Thrace?  

It's because the Hebrew word translated "North" here is Zaphon which was also the Semitic name of a mountain the Greeks and Romans called Kasios/Casius but is today called Jebel Aqra/Acra.  This mountain was just south of the city of Antioch and Seleucus I Nicator decided to found Antioch where he did after performing a Sacrifice to Zeus on that mountain, at least that was the city's official founding myth.

Today it is officially right on the Syria-Turkey border, but due to Turkey's involvement in the Syrian Civil War it's functionally all under Turkish control.  But also just think about it poetically, the Mountain Named "North" is the Sothern most tip of Turkey.  For the small group who want to throw the Hellenistic Kingdoms out of how to interpret Daniel 11 entirely, this mountain is the only clue we have and it favors Turkey.

And yes the word for "South" in this chapter is also the name of a specific Geographical location, the Negev Desert which was under Ptolemaic Control when the wars between the Ptolemies and Seleucids that Daniel 11 is talking about started.  I think the Ancient definition of the Negev was a bit broader then how it's properly defined today and might have overlapped with The Sinai to include places like Ras Kouroun and so was to some extent still Ptolemaic even after the Seleucids took Judea/Jerusalem.

I now believe the Image of The Beast is going to be an NFT project of some sort.

And the Mark of The Beast and Number of the Beast will also be connected somehow.  

I am NOT identifying it with anything specific that already exists, it probably doesn't already exist, so don't just throw Chris White's little flowchart at me, I disagreement with aspects of that anyway but regardless that's only applicable when someone is pointing at something specific that's already in operation.

Why have I come to believe this?  It builds naturally off theories I've always leaned towards about the Mark being a Microchip and the Image being at least in part an A.I. on the Internet.  As well as my Whore of Babylon is Capitalism position

Folding Ideas has a great video on NFTs and how dystopic it would be if they succeeded call Line Goes Up, he's a Secularist, but that video has informed what I no suspect about the role NFTs will play in the Destiny of Capitalism.

I'll genuinely be surprised if I no Bible Prophecy internet scholars have already considered this possibility.  I have no predictions on details or anything.  I just now feel this is a possibly we need to start considering.

Assyria was the Asshurim of Genesis 25 rather then Asshur of Genesis 10?

In Genesis 25 we learn that after the passing of Sarah Abraham took a new wife named Keturah.  In verse 2 one of the sons by Keturah is named Jokshan.  In verse 3 Jokshan has two sons named Sheba and Dedan, and then Dedan's descendants are referred to as the Asshurim, and Letushim, and Leummim.  

Asshurim is the plural form of Asshur the second born son to Shem in Genesis 10:22 but also the name of a region in northern Mesopotamia and south-western Turkey.  Asshurim is the exact same spelling as what's translated "Assyrians".

The modern Assyrians who tend to be members of one of three East-Syriac Churches (The Assyrian Church of The East, The Ancient Church of The East, or The Chaldean Catholic Church) actually claim to descend from the Asshurim of Dedan.  One could dismiss that as Christian Assyrians wanting to take an opportunity to strengthen their ties with Abraham.  However the Assyrian Kings List does list a Didanu among the "kings who lived in tents" which is a memory of when they were a more nomadic people before settling in the area of Nineveh.  The Assyrian people in Assyria don't securely enter recorded history till around 2000 BC, I currently date the death of Joseph to about 2036 BC, 430 years before my date for the Exodus.

Now it's possible both Genesis Asshurs are relevant to the early history of the civilization that history would come to know as Assyria.  Asshur son of Shem founded a settlement on the Tigris river roughly contemporary with Nimrod founding his three cities there and thus the region around it became named after him, later one of the nomadic tribal groups to come from Dedan migrated to that region and become called Asshurim because they were dwelling in Asshur.  In time both of them along with other descendants of Arphaxad and Aram contributed to the population of Northern Mesopotamia but the Dedanites became numerically dominant, at least among those identifying as Assyrians, because YHWH did promise Abraham's Seed would be Numerous like the Stars of Heaven and Sands of the Sea.

As far as the other two tribes of Dedan go, Leummin I think is a form of the Lihyan the people who controlled the cities of Dedan and Hegra at the start of classical Antiquity.  So it's only the Letushim who are a mystery, I am personally hoping for a way to link them to the Lakhmids, that would result in them sharing the Assyrians' connection to the Church of The East..

I found this discussion on Reddit of the Y-Chromosomal Haplogroups of the Assyrians.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Assyria/comments/at5332/the_most_common_ydna_haplogroups_among_assyrians/

They are mostly either the same as or related to the Haplogroups prominent in Jewish and Arab populations (as well as those I've argued descend from the Lost Tribes), R1b, J1, J2,, E1b1b, and even T and G show up in a few Jewish populations.  

The below digression is a tangentially related theory I may abandon it, everything above holds together perfectly without it..

You might want to check out my other Blogs.

Looking at the stats it seems this Blog currently gets the most views of the blogs I run, even when I haven't posted or promoted anything on it recently.  There must be some people coming here regularly, perhaps annoyed how little I've been posting lately.

My interest in Bible Prophecy fluctuates, lately I've been posting once a month here, but there will likely be a time in the future when I'll have more to say.  I do have some ideas for future posts currently in my head, I'd like to get one up before the year's over but no promises.

The posts I'll link to are ones I figure are of relevance or interest to people interested in my takes on Bible Prophecy.

My strong position on The General Resurrection of The Dead being a literal and physical Resurrection is vital to my understanding of Prophecy, as shown by the post I made for November.  But it's relevant to more then just Prophecy, it's one of the core doctrines of The Faith.  So my posts most directly about that have actually been on my more general Theology blog.  Posts like Spiritual and Heavenly, what do they mean? and The Sects of First Century Judaism, and that overlaps with my opposition to Platonic/Pythagorean influences on mainstream Christianity, which come up in my posts about the Origins of Puritan Sexual Morality, or God and The Universe, or Divine Impassability/Immutability.  I also talk about Politics sometimes, and that informs how I look at Prophecy as well.  I've made a couple posts on my secular reasons for being a Zionist, and there is more I want to add to that subject in the future.

Then there is the blog where I talk about fiction and entertainment media I enjoy, for the last few years it's been dominated by Anime.  That's the one I generally try to post to most consistently.

For all of us interested in Bible Prophecy, how we visualize it is pretty intentionally or not viewed through the lens of a lot of the fiction we like, and in turn certain kinds of fiction always make us think of Bible Prophecy.  A lot of the popular tends in Futurist speculation of the last 30 or even 40 years feel like premises for a Cyber-Punk novel, many views on the Mark of the Beast and Image of the Beast lend themselves to transhumanism.  Rob Skiba is literally trying to make a SciFi TV show out of his theories, which I've already talked about on that blog once.

So yeah Bible Prophecy is constantly on my mind when I'm watching Steins;Gate, Robotics;Notes, Chaos;Head or Code Geass.  Though I try to restrain myself from actually bringing it up there.  I haven't posted anything on the new Dune or Wheel of Time yet, but I intend to.

Horror stuff can also overlap with Bible Prophecy.  I have after all come close to literally arguing The Antichrist is a Mummy, and elsewhere used my False Prophet speculations to justify certain Vampire Lore.  October is a month in which Horror stuff is more likely to come up.  

And the theory I proposed in my latest Zelda post is based on stuff I was able to notice because of the studying of Byzantine architecture I've done while trying to determine where I think The Temple stood.

Eschatology views Tier Ranking

I'm going to rank various positions on Eschatology in terms of how I personally feel about them at the time of my writing this post on Saturday November 13th of 2021.

S Tier: The Position(s) I currently favor.

I'm currently a Pre-Millennial Futurist with a Rapture Position that can be called "Mid-Trib", but not what many assume Mid-Trib means in that what The Rapture is I view mostly the same as Post-Tribbers, it is the Second Coming, and from my position's own POV the Tribulation by definition ends at The Rapture.  And The Last Trump is the Seventh Trumpet.

I also consider some Idealist readings of Revelation also true, it is also a symbolic summery of The Entire Biblical Meta narrative, but that doesn't conflict with it also being future events, because that's what every good final episode of a saga should be.

A Tier: Positions I'm currently very open to being converted to.

Historicism in it's Pre-Millennial form, Partial-Preterism and Revivalist post-Millennialism, or something that combines elements of those. 

I kind of want to be convinced of something like that now given other things I believe.  But it wouldn't be likely to be any in their current most well known forms, since my hypothetical Preterism wouldn't be 70 AD focused (not for Matthew, Mark or Revelation anyway) and my Historicism would be less fixated on The Vatican viewing Christian Monarchy in general as the Abomination of Desolation.

If I did abandon Futurism I would probably retire this blog and start a new one.

B Tier: Views I consider firmly wrong but not in any way heretical.

Middleism, only in that separating Matthew's Olivette Discourse from Revelation I view as untenable, whichever time period one is about so is the other.

Also any views where my only or main objections come down to not interpreting Revelation as Chronologically as I do.  But thus far everyone I've seen doing that is also guilty of something down below, (It's mainly associated with Post-Trib, Chris White's Pre-Wrath and Preterism).

C Tier: Views I consider tied to Heresy but merely minor ones

Dispensationalism (Pre-Trib, some forms of Mid-Trib, the Pre-Wrath view of Chris White), Supersecessionism (Most forms of Post-Trib, probably some hypothetical forms of Mid-Trib, and also today most Non Futurists).

And also Domminionism which mainly manifests as Reconstructionist Post-Millennialism but can be made compatible with other views.

D Tier: Views heretical in their rejections of core doctrines of the Faith.

Any view that denies a literal bodily Resurrection of The Dead.  Which is firmly required for Full Preterism and Amillenialism.

F Tier: Basically not even really Christian at all anymore.

Any view that identifies the Satan of The New Testament with YHWH The God of The Hebrew Bible.  Like Marcionism and the most well known forms of Gnosticism.

Often goes hand in hand with throwing out Revelation altogether as a False Prophecy.  But they may also selectively use stuff from Revelation.  Also these people are generally also doing the D Tier Heresy.