Scholars have wondered about the incredible size of
the Persian army.
“Almost all are agreed that Herodotus’ figure of
2,100,000, exclusive of followers, for the army (Bk VII. 184-85) is impossible”
wrote F. Maurice in 1930.
Introductory
Professor
Paul Cartledge’s well written book about the alleged Battle of Thermopylae
between the Spartans and the Persians in 480 BC holds firmly to the familiar
line of British writers and historians that our Western civilisation was based
front and centre upon the Greeks.
Thus,
for instance, he writes in his book, Thermopylae: The Battle That
Changed the World (Macmillan, 2006, p. 4):
“The
Greeks were second to none in embracing that contrary combination of the
ghastly and the ennobling, which takes us straight back to the fount and origin
of Western culture and ‘civilization’ - to Homer’s Iliad, the first masterpiece of all Western literature; to
Aeschylus’s Persians, the first surviving
masterpiece of Western drama; to the coruscating war epigrams of Simonides and,
last but most relevantly of all, to Herodotus’s Histories, the first masterpiece
of Western historiography”.
And this
is not the only occasion in his book where professor Cartledge expresses such
effusive sentiments.
The
problem is, however, that - as it seems to me, at least - these very
foundations, these so-called ‘founts and origins’ of ‘Western culture and
civilization’, had for their very own bases some significant non-Greek
influences and inspirations.
An
important one of these non-Greek influences was the Book of Judith,
traditionally thought to have been written substantially by the high-priest
Joakim in c. 700 BC. See my article:
Author of the Book of Judith
Compare
that to the uncertainty of authorship surrounding those major works labelled Homeric (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer):
The Homeric Question—by whom, when, where and under what circumstances
were the Iliad and Odyssey composed—continues to be debated.
Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion falls into two groups. One holds
that most of the Iliad and (according to some) the Odyssey are
the works of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to
be the result of a process of working and re-working by many contributors, and
that "Homer" is best seen as a label for an entire tradition.[
On
previous occasions I have suggested that parts of The Iliad had appropriated key incidents to be found in the Book of
Judith, with ‘Helen’ taking her cue from the Jewish heroine, Judith.
Accordingly,
I have written:
“As for Judith,
the Greeks appear to have substituted this beautiful Jewish heroine with their
own legendary Helen, whose ‘face launched a thousand ships’. Compare for
instance these striking similarities (Judith and The Iliad):
The
beautiful woman praised by the elders at the city gates:
"When
[the elders of Bethulia] saw [Judith] transformed in appearance and dressed
differently, they were very greatly astounded at her beauty" (Judith
10:7).
"Now
the elders of the people were sitting by the Skaian gates…. When they saw Helen
coming … they spoke softly to each other with winged words: 'No shame that the
Trojans and the well-greaved Achaians should suffer agonies for long years over
a woman like this - she is fearfully like the immortal goddesses to look
at'" [The Iliad., pp. 44-45].
This theme of
incredible beauty - plus the related view that "no shame"
should be attached to the enemy on account of it - is picked up again a few
verses later in the Book of Judith (v.19) when the Assyrian soldiers who accompany
Judith and her maid to Holofernes "marveled at [Judith's] beauty and
admired the Israelites, judging them by her … 'Who can despise these people,
who have women like this among them?'"
Nevertheless:
'It is not
wise to leave one of their men alive, for if we let them go they will be able
to beguile the whole world!' (Judith 10:19).
'But even
so, for all her beauty, let her go back in the ships, and not be left here a
curse to us and our children'.
The dependence
of The Iliad upon the Book of Judith
may go even deeper, though, to its very main theme. For, previously I had
written:
“Achilles
Many similarities have been noted too
between The Iliad and the Old Testament, including the earlier-mentioned
likenesses between the young Bellerophon and Joseph. Again, Achilles' being
pursued by the river Xanthos which eventually turns dry (Book 21) reminds one
of Moses' drying up of the sea (Exodus 14:21).
Was there really a person by
the name of Agamemnon? [See Is Homer Historical? in Archaeology Odyssey, May/Jun
2004, pp. 26-35]. The interview of Professor Nagy of Harvard says `no, there
wasn't.'
Achilles’ fierce argument with Agamemnon,
commander-in-chief of the Greeks, at Troy - Achilles' anger being the very
theme of The Iliad [Introduction, p. xvi:
"The Iliad announces its subject in the first line. The poem will tell of
the anger of Achilleus and its consequences - consequences for the Achaians,
the Trojans, and Achilleus himself"] - is merely a highly
dramatized Greek version of the disagreement in the Book of Judith between Achior
[a name not unlike the ‘Greek’
Achilles] and the furious Assyrian
commander-in-chief, "Holofernes", at the siege of Bethulia,
Judith's town”.
And the famous Trojan Horse?
I continued:
“If the very main theme of The Iliad
may have been lifted by the Greeks from the Book of Judith, then might not even
the Homeric idea of the Trojan Horse ruse to capture Troy have been inspired by
Judith's own ruse to take the Assyrian camp? [According
to R. Graves, The Greek Myths (Penguin Books, combined ed., 1992), p. 697 (1,
2. My emphasis):
"Classical commentators on Homer were dissatisfied with the
story of the wooden horse. They suggested, variously, that the Greeks used a
horse-like engine for breaking down the walls (Pausanias: i. 23. 10) … that
Antenor admitted the Greeks into Troy by a postern which had a horse painted on
it….Troy is quite likely to have been
stormed by means of a wheeled wooden tower, faced with wet horse hides as a
protection against incendiary darts…".
(Pausanius 2nd century AD: Wrote `Description of Greece'.)].
What may greatly serve to strengthen this
suggestion is the uncannily 'Judith-like' trickery of a certain Sinon, a
wily Greek, as narrated in the detailed description of the Trojan Horse in Book
Two of Virgil's Aeneid. Sinon, whilst claiming to have become estranged
from his own people, because of their treachery and sins, was in fact bent upon
deceiving the Trojans about the purpose of the wooden horse, in order "to
open Troy to the Greeks".
I shall set out here the main parallels
that I find on this score between the Aeneid and the Book of Judith.
Firstly, the name Sinon may recall Judith's
ancestor Simeon, son of Israel (Judith 8:1; 9:2).
Whilst Sinon, when apprehended by the
enemy, is "dishevelled" and "defenceless",
Judith, also defenseless, is greatly admired for her appearance by the members
of the Assyrian patrol who apprehend her (Judith 10:14). As Sinon is asked
sympathetically by the Trojans 'what he had come to tell …' and 'why
he had allowed himself to be taken prisoner', so does the Assyrian
commander-in-chief, Holofernes, 'kindly' ask Judith: '… tell me why
you have fled from [the Israelites] and have come over to us?'
Just as Sinon, when brought before the
Trojan king Priam, promises that he 'will confess the whole truth' –
though having no intention of doing that – so does Judith lie to Holofernes: 'I
will say nothing false to my lord this night' (Judith 11:5).
Sinon then gives his own treacherous account
of events, including the supposed sacrileges of the Greeks due to their tearing
of the Palladium, image of the goddess Athene, from her own sacred Temple in
Troy; slaying the guards on the heights of the citadel and then daring to touch
the sacred bands on the head of the virgin goddess with blood on their hands.
For these 'sacrileges' the Greeks were doomed.
Likewise Judith assures Holofernes of
victory because of the supposed sacrilegious conduct that the Israelites have
planned (e.g. to eat forbidden and consecrated food), even in Jerusalem
(11:11-15).
Sinon concludes – in relation to the Trojan
options regarding what to do with the enigmatic wooden horse – with an
Achior-like statement: 'For if your hands violate this offering to Minerva,
then total destruction shall fall upon the empire of Priam and the Trojans….
But if your hands raise it up into your city, Asia shall come unbidden in a mighty
war to the walls of Pelops, and that is the fate in store for our descendants'.
Whilst Sinon's words were full of cunning, Achior had been sincere when he had
warned Holofernes – in words to which Judith will later allude deceitfully
(11:9-10): 'So now, my master and my lord, if there is any oversight in this
people [the Israelites] and they sin against their God and we find out their
offense, then we can go up against them and defeat them. But if they are not a
guilty nation, then let my lord pass them by; for their Lord and God will
defend them, and we shall become the laughing-stock of the whole world' (Judith
5:20-21). [Similarly, Achilles fears to become 'a laughing-stock and a
burden of the earth' (Plato's Apologia,
Scene I, D. 5)]. These, Achior's words, were the very ones that had so enraged
Holofernes and his soldiers (vv.22-24). And they would give the Greeks the
theme for their greatest epic, The Iliad”.
But all of this
is as nothing when compared to what I have found to be the multiple:
this Semitic
literature presumably well pre-dating the fairy-tale Greek efforts.
Unsatisfactory Foundations
“It concerns a supposed night attack by loyalist Greeks
on Xerxes’s camp in the very middle of the Thermopylae campaign with the aim of
assassinating the Great King”.
Herodotus
So much
concerning the truth of the supposed Battle of Thermopylae rests with
Herodotus, whose Histories are
thought to come closest of all to being a primary source for the account. “He
and [the poet] Simonides” are, according to professor Paul Cartledge, the
“principal contemporary Greek written source for Thermopylae”. And, on p. 224:
“… Herodotus in my view remains as good as it gets: we either write a history
of Thermopylae with him, or we do not write one at all”.
One
problem with this is that Herodotus was known as (alongside his more favourable
epithet, the “Father of History”) - as professor Cartledge has also noted - the
“Father of Lies”.
Where
does Greek history actually begin?
The
history of Philosophy - of whose origins the Greeks are typically credited -
begins with shadowy ‘Ionian Greeks’, such as Thales of Miletus, whose real
substance I believe resides in the very wise Joseph of Egypt (the genius
Imhotep of Egypt’s Third Dynasty).
Likewise
the legendary Pythagoras.
For an
overview of all of this, see my:
Re-Orienting to Zion the History of Ancient Philosophy
Already
I have de-Grecised such supposedly historical characters as Solon the Athenian
statesman (who is but a Greek version of the Israelite King Solomon, and whose
‘laws’ appear to have been borrowed, at least in part, from the Jew, Nehemiah);
Thales; Pythagoras; Empedocles, an apparent re-incarnation of Moses (Freud).
And I
have shown that Greek classics such as The
Iliad and the Odyssey were heavily dependent upon earlier Hebrew
literature.
The ancient biblical scholar, Saint Jerome (c. 400 AD), had already noted,
according to Orthodox pastor, Patrick H. Reardon (The Wide World of Tobit.
Apocrypha’s Tobit and Literary Tradition), the resemblance of Tobit to
Homer’s The Odyssey. The example that pastor Reardon gives, though, so
typical of the biblical commentator’s tendency to infer pagan influence upon
Hebrew literature, whilst demonstrating a definite similarity between Tobit and
the Greek literature, imagines the author of Tobit to have appropriated a colourful
episode from The Odyssey and inserted it into Tobit 11:9:
“The resemblance of Tobit to the Odyssey in
particular was not lost on that great student of literature, Jerome, as is
evident in a single detail of his Latin translation of Tobit in the Vulgate.
Intrigued by the literary merit of Tobit, but rejecting its canonicity, the
jocose and sometimes prankish Jerome felt free to insert into his version an
item straight out of the Odyssey—namely, the wagging of the dog’s tail on
arriving home with Tobias in 11:9—Tunc praecucurrit canis, qui simul fuerat in
via, et quasi nuntius adveniens blandimento suae caudae gaudebat—“Then the dog,
which had been with them in the way, ran before, and coming as if it had
brought the news, showed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail.”16 No
other ancient version of Tobit mentions either the tail or the wagging, but
Jerome, ever the classicist, was confident his readers would remember the
faithful but feeble old hound Argus, as the final act of his life, greeting the
return of Odysseus to the home of his father: “he endeavored to wag his tail”
(Odyssey 17.302). And to think that we owe this delightful gem to Jerome’s
rejection of Tobit’s canonicity!”
Reardon, continuing his theme of the dependence of Tobit, in part, upon, as
he calls it here, “pagan themes”, finds further commonality with Greek
literature, especially Antigone:
“Furthermore, some readers have found in Tobit similarities to still other
pagan themes, such as the legend of Admetus. …. More convincing, I believe,
however, are points of contact with classical Greek theater. Martin Luther
observed similarities between Tobit and Greek comedy … but one is even more
impressed by resemblances that the Book of Tobit bears to a work of Greek
tragedy—the Antigone of Sophocles. In both stories the moral stature of the
heroes is chiefly exemplified in their bravely burying the dead in the face of
official prohibition and at the risk of official punishment. In both cases a
venerable moral tradition is maintained against a political tyranny destructive
of piety. That same Greek drama, moreover, provides a further parallel to the
blindness of Tobit in the character of blind Teiresias, himself also a man of
an inner moral vision important to the theme of the play”.
In
light of all this - and what I have given above is very far from being exhaustive
- and appreciating that those conventionally labelled as ‘Ionian Greeks’ may
actually have been, in their origins, Hebrew
biblical characters, then just how real is Herodotus of Ionian Greece
(Halicarnassus)?
And,
can we be sure that the Histories attributed
to him have been (anywhere nearly) properly dated?
His
name, Herod-, with a Greek ending (-otus), may actually bespeak a non-Greek
ethnicity, and, indeed, a later period of time (say, closer to a Dionysius of Halicarnassus, C1st
BC).
Xerxes
But,
whatever may be the case with Herodotus, his classical version of “Xerxes”
seems to have been based very heavily upon the Assyrian Great King, Sennacherib
- another Book of Judith connection, given my view that Sennacherib was the
actual Assyrian ruler of Nineveh named “Nebuchadnezzar” in Judith. E.g. 1:1: “In the twelfth year of
the reign of Nebuchadnez′zar, who ruled over the Assyrians in the great city of
Nin′eveh …”. Emmet Sweeney has marvellously shown this in the following
comparisons (The Ramessides, Medes
and Persians):
SENNACHERIB
|
XERXES
|
Made war
on Egypt in his third year, and fought a bitter war against the Greeks
shortly thereafter.
|
Made war
on Egypt in his second year, and fought a bitter war against the Greeks
shortly thereafter.
|
Suppressed
two major Babylonian rebellions. The first, in his second year, was led by
Bel-Shimanni. The second, years later, was led by Shamash-eriba.
|
Suppressed
two major Babylonian rebellions. The first, in his third year, was led by
Bel-ibni. The second, years later, was led by Mushezib-Marduk.
|
The
Babylonians were well-treated after the first rebellion, but savagely
repressed after the second, when they captured and murdered Sennacherib’s
viceroy, his own brother Ashur-nadin-shum.
|
The
Babylonians were well-treated after the first rebellion, but savagely
repressed after the second, when they captured and murdered Xerxes’ satrap.
|
After the
second rebellion, Sennacherib massacred the inhabitants, razed the city walls
and temples, and carried off the golden stature of Marduk. Thereafter the
Babylonian gods were suppressed in favour of Ashur, who was made the supreme
deity.
|
After the
second rebellion, Xerxes massacred the inhabitants, razed the city walls and
temples, and carried off the golden stature of Bel-Marduk. Thereafter the
Babylonian gods were suppressed in favour of Ahura-Mazda, who was made the
supreme deity.
|
Though I
do not deny for a moment that Persia had a King Xerxes, a shortened version of
Artaxerxes, the “Xerxes” of the Greeks is, however, purely fictitious.
Diodorus
of Sicily, C1st BC (presuming he did actually write later than Herodotus), will
contribute to the fiction by including a Judith element (not mentioned by
Herodotus) to the tale of “Xerxes” at Thermopylae. It is, in my opinion, just a
re-run version of the assassination of “Holofernes”, admixed, perhaps, with the
regicide of Sennacherib.
Professor
Cartledge has written of it (op. cit., p.
232): “It concerns a supposed night attack by
loyalist Greeks on Xerxes’s camp in the very middle of the Thermopylae campaign
with the aim of assassinating the Great King”.
Based on the Book of Judith Drama
Morton Scott Enslin has intuitively referred to the Book of Judith’s
Bethulia incident as the “Judean Thermopylae” (The Book of
Judith: Greek Text with an English Translation, p. 80).
Comparisons between Book of
Judith
and the Battle of
Thermopylae
In both dramas we are introduced to a Great
King ruling in the East, who determines to conquer the West with a massive
army.
Scholars have wondered about the incredible
size of the Persian army.
“Almost all are agreed that Herodotus’ figure
of 2,100,000, exclusive of followers, for the army (Bk VII. 184-85) is
impossible” wrote F. Maurice in 1930 (“The
Size of the Army of Xerxes in the Invasion of Greece 480 B. C.”, JHS, Vol. 50, Part 2 (1930), p. 211).
Sennacherib’s Assyrian army of 185,000 was likely - discounting, as an
unrealistic translation, the one million-strong army of “Zerah the Ethiopian” -
the largest army ever to that time (and possibly even much later) to have been
assembled. Apart from Kings, Chronicles and Isaiah, the same figure is referred
to again in Maccabees, and in Herodotus’ Histories.
The figure is not unrealistic for the neo-Assyrians, given that King
Shalmaneser III is known to have fielded an army of 120,000 men. (Fragments of the royal annals, from Calah, 3.
lines 99–102: “In my
fourteenth year, I mustered the people of the whole wide land, in countless
numbers. I crossed the Euphrates at its flood with 120,000 of my soldiers”).
Invading from the East, the armies must of necessity approach, now Greece,
now Judah, from the North.
Having successfully conquered everything in
their path so far, the victors find that those peoples yet unconquered will
speedily hand themselves over to their more powerful assailants. This process
is known as ‘Medizing’ in the classical literature.
In the Book of Judith, the all-conquering
commander-in-chief, “Holofernes”, will receive as allies those who had formerly
been his foes. And these, like the treacherous ones in the Thermopylae drama,
will prove to be a thorn in the flesh of the few who have determined to resist
the foreign onslaught.
The armies arrive at a narrow pass, with
defenders blocking their way.
Thermopylae in the Herodotean account –
Bethulia (best identified as Shechem) in the biblical Book of Judith.
Dethroned Spartan King Demaratus, now an exile
in Persia, will answer all of Xerxes’s questions about the Greek opposition,
promising the King “to
tell the whole truth—the kind of truth that you will not be able to prove false
at a later date”.
Most similarly Achior, probably born in Assyrian exile, will advise “Holofernes”
about the Israelites, promising his superior (Judith 5:5): ‘I
will tell you the truth about these people who live in the mountains near your
camp. I will not lie to you’.
A traitorous Greek, Ephialtes, will betray his
country by telling the Persians of another pass around the
mountains.
Likewise, the turncoat local Edomites and
Moabites will advise the Assyrians of a strategy better than the one that they
had been intending.
Conclusion
The so-called Battle of Thermopylae never
happened.
No band of 300 pederastic homosexuals ever
held the line against a massive Persian army.
The classical Xerxes is a complete fiction.
“Thermopylae: the Battle that changed the
word”, in fact “changed” nothing.
Now, the Battle of the Valley of Salem at
“Bethulia” (Shechem), on the other hand, changed a heck of a lot. For (Judith
16:25):
“As long as Judith lived, and for
many years after her death,
no one dared to threaten the people
of Israel”.
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