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Cushites in the Hebrew Bible
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Djehuti: [QB] ^ I'm not "bashing" you just making inferences on your posts, particularly the one which you again question the label 'black'. This thread is not about the term black but about Cushites in the Hebrew Bible that is Old Testament. Are they the same as the Kshly Nubians? [QUOTE]Originally posted by the lioness,: [qb] https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/encyclopedia-of-the-bible/Cush biblegateway [b]Cush[/b] CUSH koosh (כּ֗וּשׁ, LXX Χουσί). [i]1) The name of an individual in the title of Psalm 7. The person is a Benjaminite against whose words David has uttered this psalm of lament in which he “prays for deliverance from his enemies, especially from a colleague who has betrayed him” (M. Dahood, Psalms I, Anchor Bible [1966], 41). 2) One of the sons of Ham listed in the Table of Nations (Gen 10:6-8; 1 Chron 1:8-10). Cush is both a person and a nation, for from him descended the southernmost peoples known to the Hebrews.[/i] CUSH kush, כּ֗וּשׁ; LXX Χους, and Αἰθιοπία, a land lying to the S of Egypt. See Ethiopia. [b]1. CONFUSION CORRECTED.[/b] In the OT only one word is involved—Kush, which is usually tr. as “Ethiopia,” with the exception of Isaiah 11:11, and in 2 Samuel 18:21-23, where the gentilic Kushi appears, which is rendered (KJV) as a proper noun “Cushi.” The LXX regularly trs. the word Αἰθιοπία (except Gen 10:6-8 and 1 Chron 1:8-10, where it has Χοῦς). Even RSV is not entirely consistent for it twice uses “Cushite” (viz. 2 Sam 18:21-23 and Num 12:1). [b]2. LAND AND PEOPLE.[/b] Sometimes the word Kush is clearly used to refer to the land. This is the case in Isaiah 11:11; 18:1; Zephaniah 1:1, Esther 1:1. The reference of the word to the people appears in Isaiah 20:5; Jeremiah 46:9; Ezekiel 38:5. [b]3. LOCATION.[/b] It would appear that originally Kush referred to a piece of territory lying between the second and the third cataracts of the Nile. Then it came to refer to a broader area corresponding to what is commonly known as Nubia. Sometimes reference is made to Arabia, for in [b]2 Chronicles 21:16 Moreover the Lord stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines, and of the Arabians, that were near the Ethiopians:[/b] the Arabians are said to be near the Ethiopians, which may be thought of as being two areas separated merely by the Red Sea. [b] Ezekiel 29:10 Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia.[/b] shows that Ethiopia lay at the southern extremity of Egypt, for Syene is the modern Aswan and lies at the first cataract. Passages like [b]Psalm 68:31; Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God. Psalm 87:4; I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me: behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia; this man was born there.[/b] [b]Zephaniah 2:12; Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by my sword. Zephaniah 3:10 From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, even the daughter of my dispersed, shall bring mine offering[/b] indicate that for Israel it lay on the edge of the southern horizon. At this point some contend strongly for the claim that Ethiopia did not have a negro population, even though the Gr. word Αἴθιοψ means “burnt face,” allowing only for the possibility that they were negroid but of an olive complexion. Jeremiah 13:23 does not necessarily conflict with this claim. [b]4. HISTORY[/b]. As far as the earliest reference to be found is concerned, it seems to indicate that Ethiopians first appear as part of Egypt in the days of the Egyptian monarch, Sesostris I (1971-1930). Around the year 1000 b.c. Ethiopia broke with Egypt and set up an independent capital at Napata. A few centuries later in the twenty-fifth, or Ethiopian, dynasty, i.e. from 715-663 b.c., Ethiopia ruled over Egypt. During this time it was that Tirhakah “king of Ethiopia” (Isa 37:9) came up to make war against Hezekiah. He was driven off by the Assyrians, when Ashur-banipal got the upper hand of them, somewhere between 689-676 b.c. [b]5. CONNOTATIONS.[/b] At times the reference to Ethiopia is merely one that implies a country lying as far off as possible (cf. Ezek 29:10). During the new kingdom (c. 1570-1085 b.c.) the term Cush takes on a much wider meaning, including at least all of what later became known as Nubia. From passages like Isaiah 45:14 one may deduce that the land of Cush was a land of merchants. It may also be inferred that there may have been Arabian Cushites (2 Chron 21:16). Lastly, one may correctly assert that the Ethiopians, as Judah knew them, were a race of striking appearance (see Isa 18:2). [b]6. PROBLEMS.[/b] A few problems are encountered in connection with the meaning of the term “Kush.” The first of these is the land of Cush (Gen 2:13), which is said to be encircled by the Gihon River. This reference demands a location near Mesopotamia and lies therefore almost as far N as Cush lies S. There is also the problem of the wife of Moses, the Cushite woman of Numbers 12:1. She either came from the area adjacent to the Sinai peninsula (the Zipporah of Exod 2:21) or possibly after Zipporah’s death may have been an Ethiopian who, in a manner not known to us, came into that same peninsula. Another problem has to do with Zerah the Ethiopian, who according to 2 Chronicles 14:9, 12, 13, appeared in the land of Judah in the days of King Asa with a huge army. History has yet to find an answer to the question how in a time when Ethiopia had no power in Egypt, Zera should have been able to muster so large a force. [b]7. PROMINENT PERSONAGES FORM ETHIOPIA[/b] Zerah and Tirhakah have already been mentioned as being great Ethiopian kings in their day. A character of less importance is the runner who brought the news of Absalom’s death to King David after the great battle near Mahanaim (2 Sam 18:21-23). Another Ethiopian is the foreigner employed somehow at the king’s court in the days of the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians (587 b.c.), the man who took pity upon the Lord’s prophet and secured permission to draw him up out of the cistern into which he had been cast by his adversaries (Jer 38:7ff.). __________________________________ I noticed this after I posted this, they say here at the bottom of the location section " At this point some contend strongly for the claim that Ethiopia did not have a negro population, even though the Gr. word Αἴθιοψ means “burnt face,” allowing only for the possibility that they were negroid but of an olive complexion. Jeremiah 13:23 does not necessarily conflict with this claim" there are large tribes in Ethiopia which can fit into "Negro", no doubt Kushites as depicted in 18th dynasty Egyptian unless Djehuti is right: [QUOTE]Originally posted by Djehuti: Again, many tend to translate "Cushite" as 'Ethiopian' or 'Nubian' but we have clear evidence that most Cushite figures encountered in the Old Testament were of Arabian extraction. I think that the label of Biblical Cush vs. Egyptian Kush resulted from the linguistic error of 'false friends' that is is words that seem to be cognate or even related but are not related at all. [/QUOTE][/qb][/QUOTE]You bring up some valid points in the above post for a change. The Table of Nations clearly delineates Cush, first born son of Ham and his sons (nations). As I pointed out before while a couple of thse nations (Seba and Havilah) maybe associated with Africa, the rest are all found in Arabia. The Hebrews spoke of Cush or Cushan to their south (in Arabia) but also conflated this label to the Keshli (Kushites) south of the Egyptians. Goldenberg and other Biblical scholars have noted that this close association or even synonymous identity speaks of some close relationship between both sides of the Red Sea one that nobody is quite sure of yet. You bring up the point of the term 'Arabia'. The root word 'arab' in Hebrew simply means wilderness or desert and thus Arabi is a person of the wilderness. The term is more generic than ethnic while 'Cushi' is an ethnic term. [IMG]https://biblemapper.com/blog/images/lo-res/ZerahAttacks_low.jpg[/IMG] from [URL=https://biblemapper.com/blog/index.php/2022/04/25/zerah-the-cushite/]Zerah the Cushite[/URL] I think another important source on this topic would be the Greeks. As Tukuler and I have pointed out before the Greeks applied the term 'Arabia' not just to the peninsula proper but also to the lands in Africa east of the Nile. [IMG]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Herodotus_world_map-en.svg/640px-Herodotus_world_map-en.svg.png[/IMG] This is why to this day in many maps the Eastern Desert of Egypt and Sudan is also called the 'Arabian Desert'. So apparently the Greeks saw these lands across the Red Sea as geographically continuous with each other. But was this view of continuity based on geology of the lands alone?? I can't find the sources at the moment but I recall one Greek author (Strabo?) describing those Ethiopians east of the Nile River having straighter hair in comparison to those west of the river and that Herodotus in his [i]Persian Wars[/i] explicitly states that the Arab and Western Ethiopian (Nubian) contingents were grouped together and that their languages were mutually intelligible. This makes me wonder what languages they were. Most scholars automatically presume them to be Semitic yet there are those linguists like Militarev who postulate the existence of Cushitic substratum in South Semitic languages of Arabia suggesting that language group was once spoken in that peninsula. Not to mention this finding: [i] There is no real doubt that the ancestors of both epigraphic (ESA) and Modern South Arabian (MSA) were languages spoken in the Near East rather than Ethiopia. But the date and processes whereby the speakers of these languages migrated and diversified are unknown. Apart from inscriptions that can be read, some contain evidence for completely unknown languages co-existing with ESA. Beeston (1981: 181) [b]cites an inscription from Marib which begins in Sabaean but then switches to an unknown language. He mentions several other texts which have similar morphology (a final –k suffix) and which may represent an unknown non-Semitic language (or possibly a Nilo-Saharan language such as Kunama, for which such a feature would be typical)[/b][/i] Blench (2012). So there was obviously some strong relation between both sides of the Red Sea. Here is another good source- [URL=http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S1010-99192023000100005&script=sci_arttext]The Cushites in Herodotus and Chronicles: Revisiting the Asa Narrative[/URL] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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