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Spectatio generalis
Argumentum ex grammatica
Argumentum ad hominem
Argumentum cognoscere quot sint numerum
Annotatia
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For nearly twenty centuries, one of the most fascinating riddles and frightful figures in the Bible has been the mysterious Beast whose number is 666 in Revelation 13:18. According to church tradition, Revelation also known as the Apocalypse of John was written on the island of Patmos in the first or second century. John may be the disciple in the New Testament named John the Evangelist, who is credited with writing the Gospel of John. In the Anchor Bible series Revelation, J.M. Ford argues that John the Baptist is the author of the Apocalypse, but that two or three centuries may have passed before it was written down, in which time John’s Apocalypse was blended with other Hebrew and Christian Apocalypses.¹

No one has ever satisfactorily deciphered the meaning of various riddles in Revelation. There is probably a very good reason for that. Riddles by definition can range from simple to complex to unsolvable. Even more complicating of the task of deciphering Revelation as a whole is the necessity to bring all the riddles together into a coherent system of Apocalyptic symbolism. Perhaps accordingly, the amount of speculation and commentary on Revelation is quite vast. From this body of commentary, several currents or trends of thought have evolved over the centuries.

Some theories attempt to tie the number 666 to the initials of specific historical persons. The most widely accepted theories connect the cryptogram of the Greek numerals to the letters of the alphabet, since numbers in ancient Greek were represented by letters. Gematria, a type of cryptogram that assigns numerical values to alphabetic characters, is one form of this numerological exercise. The numeric 666, DCLXVI in Roman numerals which like Greek represents numbers with alphabetic letters, in ancient Greek was represented as χξς Chi, Xi, and Vau. These characters may, in turn, represent a man’s initials. This method for cracking the riddle has been applied since the earliest commentaries on Revelation. Nominations from this branch of speculation run from Antiochus Epiphanes in the age of Daniel and Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Judea who slaughtered the innocents in an attempt to murder the Messiah, to Caligula and Nero of later Roman history. Other candidates have included Augustus Caesar, Tiberius, and Claudius. In most cases, only by sleight of hand can the initials be made to match the numerals exactly. One example is the hidden assumption that the letters from official titles can be included in the alphabetic/numeric correspondence. It is by this substitution that Caesar - a title synonymous with King or Czar - can be included in the correspondence of letters to numbers. Historically, 666 has been applied to many figures, including Hitler and Stalin.

Another approach relies on counting the number of letters in each of three names. An example of this argument was a widely circulated bit of popular wisdom during the 1980s that the number of letters in the name Ronald Wilson Reagan proved that he was the beast, by virtue of having six letters in each of the three parts of his name. Forget that RWR bears little resemblance to χξς. The flaw in this is that the modern system of using three parts to an appellation, first, middle, and last name, did not exist at the time the text of Revelation was written. The name, as we understand it today as having three elements, came into wide usage only after the 1600s in Europe. Before that time, most persons bore the names of their place of birth, their trade, or the name of their owner/master if they were slaves. The other flaw in using letter counting is that we have absolutely no basis on which to assume that the riddle actually operates on this principle. Revelation does not say "count the number of letters in each of a man's three names in which each of his names has six characters."

Still another approach is adding up the numeric/alphabetic values to reach a sum of 666. J. M. Ford cites the example of Marcius Aurelius as “the only emperor who satisfies the numerical value 666.”² Ford translates the passage as the “number of a human being” and explains, “This may mean a number which is intelligible from a human point of view, that is, does not require supernatural wisdom to understand it.”³ She quite rightly points out that the riddle can operate on different levels of abstraction.

The problem with this approach, of course, involves the huge number of assumptions one must be willing to indulge. In the case of transliteration of the Greek characters into Latin, there is the blind assumption that literal alpha-numerical correspondences carry over from one language substrate into another, and that a gematric riddle as understood in one language, with one alphabet, will be understood in the same way in the other language, using a different alphabet. The same problem exists with trying to make such correspondences operate in English names. In Latin and English, both of which use the Latin alphabet, there are no corresponding characters for "Chi" and "Vau" -- they can only be represented with a two letter combination in the case of "ch" and with the common "s" which is represented by the same character in English and Latin medial and terminal positions. The weight of "what-if" assumptions is really too much to bear. In fact, if there is a gematria operating in the original text, it can be understood only in the context of Koine Greek. Numerological and other metaphysical speculation can go on forever so long as some hypothetical assumptions are taken as given, and then imagined correspondences can be forced upon the cryptogram.

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Argumentum ex grammatica

Tradition⁴ connects the beast with the Anti-Christ and with the old dragon ( δράκων ) who is called Satan, and the accuser. Revelation 19:20 and 20:10 support this connection, although it remains unclear whether the Anti-Christ is an abstraction, or a personification of evil, or a real person. In these parallel scenes, “The beast ( θηρίον ) was taken, and with him the false prophet ( ψευδοπροφήτης ) that wrought signs ( θηρίον ) before him” are cast together with the Devil “alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone” (19:20). Thus, a specific identification links the “pseudo-prophet” ψευδοπροφήτης and the beast θηρίον . The pseudo-prophet comes before the beast: he “wrought the signs” that misled the peoples into practicing idolatry and worshiping the beast. These signs are demonstrative miracles, such as “bringing the fire down from heaven”, intended to prove the supernatural authority of the Prophet by means of empirically verifiable phenomena, perhaps to persuade the rationalist mentality that demands to be shown miracles to justify belief in God.

In Revelation 13, two beasts are described, a point frequently obscured by speculators on the beast’s literal identification with a particular man. The first beast rises out of the sea, has “seven heads and ten horns,” and has the body of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion. This composite creature utters blasphemy and is given authority for forty-two months. The second beast, which rises out of the earth, is described as having two horns, like those of a sheep or goat. It “exercises all the powers of the first beast before him, and causes the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast” (13:12). The second beast works the great signs ( ποιεί θηρίον μεγάλα ) causing “fire to come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.” The second beast also causes men to make an image ( ’εικόνα ) of the first beast and places a mark upon all people rich or poor, free or slave, upon either the right hand or the forehead. The “mark of the beast” allows them to buy or sell goods in the marketplace. The second beast bears the cryptic initials χξς .

Before advancing my own arguments about the meaning of this description, I would reevaluate the text of the passage containing the arithmatical riddle. The original Greek reads as follows:

‘ο ’έχων τον νούν , ψηφισάτω τον ’αριθμον τού θηρίου ·
’αριθμος_-γαρ ’ανθρώπου ’εστιν , και ‘ο_-’αριθμος_-’αυτού χξς .
(He who has understanding [or “a mind”] let him count the number of the beast:
for a man’s number it is, and its number [is] 666.)

The riddle depends on the interpretation of “arithmos” and “anthropos” (given in the genitive case, “anthropou” indicating possession or attribution). The traditional interpretation of “a man’s number” has rarely been challenged on a grammatical basis. Ford’s argument for translating the passage as “the number of a human being” does just that, by taking the general “man” to a higher class of abstraction, “human being.” In English, we similarly speak of “man” or “mankind” to represent the broadest class of all people, including men and women.

However, “anthropou” standing as an adjective in relation to “arithmos” may represent an idiomatic singular where one would naturally look for a plural. In Koine Greek, sometimes a neuter singular word can be used to sum up a whole mass, such as in Revelation 7:9, where is gathered ’οχλος πολύς , ‘όν ’αριθμήσαι ’αυτον ’ουδεις ’ηδύνατο (a great crowd which no one was able to number). The phrase as a whole signifies a “multitude” but is represented by the singular ’οχλος . In Matthew 12:35 the phrase ‘ο ’αγαθος ’ανθρώπος (the good man) stands for the whole class and is also translatable as “good men.” The “anthropou” of Revelation 13:18, though genitive singular, may in fact represent an idiomatic expression, “a number of men.”

Over the ages, New Testament grammarians have bemoaned the irregularities of the Greek in John’s Apocalypse. His earliest critic, Dionysis of Alexandria, called the language of the Apocalypse barbaric and ungrammatical because of the numerous departures from the usual Greek assonance. Some of the “idiotisms” that Dionysis finds, though, are common in the Κοινή Greek. The word Koine as applied to Greek is analogous with “Vulgate” Latin, as κοινή means “common” speech in the same sense as “vulgar” Latin refers to the language of the laity, as opposed to the “high” or Classical Latin of the clergy. John represents a viewpoint toward Greek language that exercises freedom and individuality within idiom. John may have chosen against the more artificial kind of Classical Greek perpetuated by past teaching in favor of the common, vulgar speech, often emancipated from strict grammatical rules but alive and vigorous with nervous energy.

’Ανθρώπος as representative of an idiomatic designation for a group or class shows an additional feature. The consonant cluster - νθ (nth) - is frequently cited by linguists to indicate a word of non-Greek origin, which supports the idea that the phrase in Revelation may represent an idiomatic expression that deviates from classical Greek grammar. Borrowed words and phrases do not always observe the standard rules of the borrowing language. The - νθ - grouping is found in pre-Greek place names ( Κορίνθος - Corinth, Τιρύνθος - Tiryns), names of specific localities (the Λαβυρίνθος - Labyrinth in Knossos), botanical names ( ‘υάκινθος - hyacinth, ’ακάνθος - acanthus, and τερεβίνθος - the terebinth or turpentine tree ), and names of many mountains, rivers, and other natural landmarks of the Mediterranean region.

The - νθ - form may have originated in western Anatolia in the pre-Greek era, in languages such as Carian, Phrygian, Lycian, Lydian, or Luwian, all languages geographically centered in and around Asia Minor (modern Turkey). In Revelation 1:11-19, 2, and 3, John addresses an Epistle to the seven churches in Asia Minor:

• ’Έφεσον - Ephesus
  
• Σμύρναν - Smyrna
  
• Πέργαμον - Pergamon
  
• Θυάτειρα - Thyatira
  
• Σάρδεις - Sardis
  
• Φιλαδέλφειαν - Philadelphia
  
• Λαοδικιείαν - Laodicea
  

In fact, all these cities are geographically located in the area of the world where Koine Greek would most likely have retained idiomatic expressions and vocabulary from the pre-Greek languages, even though the earlier are separated in time from the later by more than a thousand years.⁵

The word ’ανθρώπος , as analyzed by the early Greek grammarians, was thought to root from ’ανηρ + ’ωψ (which, however, leaves the θ unaccounted for). Later grammarians prefer to derive the word from ’ανδρ + ’ηωρος , meaning “having the appearance of a man.” A number of Carian family names contain the ’ανδρ- root, characteristically preceded by the letter “m” as in ’Αναξιμάνδρος - Anaximander, Μάνδρωκλης - Mandrocles (or Androcles), and Μάνδρωλυτυς - Mandrolytus. In the Cycladic island Πάρος (Paros), there is a family name Μάνδρωθεμιος - Mandrothemius. The word origin is in itself not particularly important, but the fact that it is non-Indo-European may point to its maintaining a greater frequency of irregular usages when mixed in with Greek, the dominant tongue.

If we accept the argument that “anthropou” may represent an idiomatic expression, “a number of men,” it must also be allowed that one or more of the numerological elements (seven heads, ten horns, six hundred sixty-six, etc.) of all the riddles in Revelation may be playing a dual role, both mythopoetic and figurative, as well as a quite literal role of a number as number. The same operation may be at work in the other numerological riddles in Revelation, such as the σφραγϊσιν ‘επτά, the seven seals in chapters 5-6, the ‘ημέρας χιλίας διακοσίας ‘εξήκοντα , the 1260 days of the woman and child in the wilderness in chapter 12, and the chronicling of the twelve tribes in chapter 7. This issue will be taken up in greater detail in the section on numbers.

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Argumentum ad hominem

The specialization of research in archaeology, epigraphy, and philology has fed a distorted view of the Aegean peoples in relation to the broader genealogy of the Eastern Mediterranean. Classical scholarship has long had a tendency to separate and compartmentalize these cultures, as if the Greeks and other Aegean tribes existed in pristine isolation, rarely in contact with the non-Classical peoples of Canaan and Egypt. Given the maritime fame of the Greeks alone, common sense should lead one to the conclusion that the Aegean region was widely cosmopolitan in peoples, languages, ideas, religion, commerce, and artistic influences. Despite the fact that history and mythology contain vivid descriptions of contacts of the Greeks with other cultures, and despite ample archaeological evidence of extensive trade among these various peoples, many astute critics continue to dispute the extent of cultural contacts, or ignore them. This controversy persists to this day.⁶ However, cross-cultural studies are no longer automatically dismissed, and the ties between Canaan, Egypt, and the Aegean have become clearer.

Sea Peoples

A major contributor to the base of knowledge about the cultural history in regions around the Mediterranean has been the infant science of underwater archaeology, along with a recent spectacular bronze age shipwreck on the southern coast of Turkey, which have provided incontrovertible evidence of routine trade of material goods around a large loop from Egypt, the Levant, and Asia Minor, to the Aegean mainland and islands, across the Adriatic as far west as Sicily, to the northern coast of Africa from Carthage to Cyrene, and back to Egypt. The peoples of Argos had a maritime fame, even in prehistory, as the “Argonauts.” Greek tradition called the pre-Greek languages and peoples, generally, Πελάσγος - Pelasgian. In ancient Greek Πελάσγος was often confused with Πελάργος , the name of the stork Ciconia alba, a migrating bird, and the analogy was explained by equating the bird with a wandering tribe. In Homer Pelasgians are found in the Iliad in Thessaly and in the Odyssey on the island of Crete.

The name may be related to the tribe of Sea Peoples called the Peleset in Egyptian historical records and the Philistines by the Israelites. The Sea Peoples known to the Egyptians as Peleset were defeated by Ramsses II and driven out of the Nile delta region. As they continued north and eastward, they encountered and settled on the Canaanite coast at sites such as Gaza, Sidon, and Tyre. The harbors of the Sea Peoples, as with their successors the Phoenicians, were characteristically organized around a large rock protrusion that abutted the sea. These rock hills could be fortified with Cyclopean block construction, and docking facilities for their ships could easily be built. At Tell Fara, Philistine bench tombs of the 13th century B.C. resemble those of the bronze age Mycenean type. In the Bible it was in this context, and in the geographical locations around the plain of Philistia, that the Israelites encountered the Philistines.⁷

The Tribe of Dan

In the books of Joshua and Judges, the Philistine coastal holdings were parceled out to the tribes of Dan and Judah. Joshua 19: 40-48 sets forth the final seventh lot, apportioned to the tribe of Dan,

According to its families.
And the territory of its inheritance included Aorah, Eshtaol, Irshemesh,
Shaalabbin, Aijalon, Ithlah,
Elon, Timnah, Ekron,
Eltekeh, Gibbethon, Baalath,
Jehud, Beneberak, Gathrimmon,
And Mejarkon and Rakkon with the territory over against Joppa.
When the territory of the Danites was lost to them, the Danites went up and fought against Laish, and after capturing it and putting it to the sword they took possession of it and settled in it, calling Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their ancestor.
This is the inheritance of the tribe of Dan, according to their families - these cities with their villages.⁸

The Bible recounts in parallel passages how the tribes failed to expel the native Amorite populations from their own land holdings on the coastal plain. In Judges 1: 34-35, the failure of the Danites is described:

The Amorites pressed the Danites back into the hill country, for they did not allow them to come down to the plain;
The Amorites persisted in dwelling in Harheres, in Aijalon, and in Shaalbim

Numbers 26: 46-47 gives the names of the sons of Dan “according to their families” as:

Of Shuham, the family of the Shuhamites. . . All the families of the Shuhamites, according to their number, were sixty-four thousand four hundred.

Genesis 46: 23, however, gives the following: “The sons of Dan: Hushim.” Numbers 1: 38, which describes the census of the tribes by Moses in the Sinai wilderness, gives the number of the tribe of Dan as sixty-two thousand seven hundred. Later, during the reign of King David, their numbers are reckoned again in 1 Chronicles: 35 as “twenty-eight thousand six hundred men.”

In the struggle to capture the allotted parcels of land, the singular figure who emerged from the tribe of Dan as a true hero was Samson, who was the son of “a man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah” (Judges 13: 2). Samson’s mother, who was barren of children, is not named, but oddly, she shares with with other women such as Rachel and Mary the messianic myth of a series of visitations from an “angel of the Lord” who tells her that she will conceive and that her future son will “begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines” (Judges 13: 5). Similarly, the conception is not directly described, but “the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field; but Manoah her husband was not with her” (Judges 13: 9). Subsequent to the last visitation from the angel, Manoah’s wife gives birth to Samson, whose destiny it is to become a Nazarite in the service of Jehovah.

In Numbers 2: 25, which catalogs the various tribes’ offerings for dedication of the altar, one of the leaders of the tribe of Dan is named as Ahiezer the son of Ammishaddai. Two more names appear in Numbers 34: 22, “Of the tribe of the sons of Dan a leader, Bukki the son of Jogli.” Later, in 1 Chronicles 27: 22, in the list of officers and counselors to King David, there is a representative, “for Dan, Azarel the son of Jeroham.”

In 2 Chronicles 2: 13-15, another is named, “Huramabi, the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre,” who “worked in gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, and in purple, blue, and crimson fabrics and fine linen, and to do all sorts of engraving and execute any design that may be assigned him.” 2 Chronicles 4: 11 presents the same craftsman with a shortened name, “Huram also made the pots, the shovels, and the basins. So Huram finished the work that he did for King Solomon on the house of God.” But earlier, in Exodus 36: 1-2, and 38: 22-23, in which the artisans who built the tabernacle, ephod, and breastplate for Moses are mentioned, “Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made all that the Lord commanded Moses; and with him was Oholiab the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, a craftsman and designer and embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet stuff and fine twisted linen.” In this connection of the Danites with artisans or craftsmen, there is perhaps a foundation being constructed to explain their later association with idolatry, and in particular with the making of a silver image of Jehovah. The Greek word that signified “purple” or “crimson”: Foinix : Phoenix, forms the root for the tribes that inhabited Tyre and Sidon called the Phoenicians, famed for their maritime empire.

The Song of Deborah (Judges 5:1-31) asks the question, “Why did Dan take service on ships?” (Judges 5: 17) implying that the Danites were associated with the maritime trades. The tribe of Dan failed to secure a stronghold on their allocation of land, and the verse attributed to Deborah may indicate that the tribe of Dan collaborated with the Philistines in their maritime empire. Finally, the same Egyptian list of the Sea Peoples in which the Peleset are recorded mentions another tribe named Dananu, which may be a reference to the maritime tribe of Dan.

Some have speculated that the tribe of Dan is represented in the Greek Danaoi - Danaoi , named after the legendary patriarch DanauV - Danaus. Danaus was the king who ordered his fifty daughters, the DanaidV - Danaïds, to murder their fifty Egyptian husbands. The names Danai - Danaï , and DanaanV - Danaäns, the old name of the Argives, were believed by early Greek etymologists to derive from Da - , Dh - variants of Ga - , Gh - , meaning “Earth” or “Earthborn.” This latter analysis, however, represents ancient "folk etymology" and therefore may not be strictly correct. The same derivation, for example, is used by ancient grammarians to equate the earth goddess Gaia (from Ga - , Gh ) with the more recent persona of the pre-Greek Demeter (from Da - , Dh ). So it is possible that the "Danaus, Danaoi, Danoi, Danaïds, Danaäns" may actually derive from a different language substrate that is related to the Semitic-Hamitic place origin with which they are connected in the mythos.

One account of how Dan got his name is found in Genesis 30:6. The verse says that Rachel cried out at the birth of the child ,“dânanni,” meaning “God hath judged me.” Dan is identified as the son of Jacob with Bilhah or Bala, Rachel’s maid. Thus, Dan as a name would indicate “a judge.” As if to reinforce this meaning, at the end of Genesis, Dan appears as one of the twelve sons of Jacob who receive his blessing. In Genesis 49, the “Blessing of Jacob,” the phrase “Dan shall be judge (yâdin ) of his people” occurs. However, from this point on, the “blessing” of Dan seems more like a curse. The tribe is called “a horned serpent in the path” that will bite the horse’s heel and cause the rider to fall backward. An interesting connection may be made with what is both a Greek and pre-Greek story: the rape of Europa by Zeus in the form of a white bull that carried her across the sea from her home in Tyre to the island of Crete. Europa bore three sons by Asterion, king of the Cretans, Minos, Sarpedon, and Rhadamanthys. The name ‘RadamanqouV contains the embedded - nq - described earlier as an indicator of a pre-Greek word formation. ‘Radamn - as a root element, probably means a “twig, young shoot, branch” of a tree, but also connoting inflexibility. But note also the embedded - mandr, manq - form, that we had earlier shown was related to the ’anqr - formation for “man.” As one of the three judges in the underworld, Rhadamanthys is attributed by Hesiod with “The Saying of Rhadamanthys”: “If a man sow evil, he shall reap evil increase; if men do to him as he has done, it will be true justice.” ⁹ This saying is obviously equivalent to “an eye for an eye.” Manq - may also point to the root represented by the Greek manqanw , to learn by inquiry, understand, comprehend, from the root maqh - learning, knowledge.

The deeper into the story of the tribe of Dan one goes, the more apparent become the links of this tribe with some of the Revelation’s mysterious symbols. When the list of all the Israelites who returned from Babylon is enumerated in 1 Chronicles 9: 1, it is written that “So all Israel was enrolled by genealogies, and these are written in the Book of the Kings of Israel.” Dan is named as one of the sons of Israel in 1 Chronicles 2:2. However, a careful examination of 1 Chronicles 2-12 reveals that the genealogy of Dan is entirely missing. In Revelation also, the family of Dan is conspicuous by its absence. One of the most profound mysteries of the Bible revolves around the question of why John omitted the tribe of Dan from the catalogue of twelve tribes in Revelation 7:4-9.

The “half-tribe” of Manasses is substituted for Dan in Revelation 7:6. Manasses was one of two sons of Joseph, the other being Ephraim. This interchangability of Dan with Manasses has no precedent in Chronicles or in the blessing of Jacob in Genesis 49. What was it about the tribe of Dan that provoked not just condemnation but a complete shunning, and obliteration of the tribe’s name from the record?

Some commentators, such as J. F. Schleusner¹⁰ make an equation, “permutatione facta vocum DAN et MAN” to explain the substitution. Still, a careful examination reveals that after 1 Chronicles 27:22, the tribe of Dan virtually disappears from the Bible. The tribe of Dan makes its last significant appearance in the book of Judges 18, where another direct tie with Genesis 30:6 and 49:16-18 can be found. It is in the book of Judges, containing several stories of the tribe of Dan, that the meanings of “he judges” or “God hath judged” gain full play. That Dan’s final episode in the Bible should be found in Judges is not a coincidence, but the title Šóp^etím (“judged”) refers to the act of governance rather than that of pronouncing acquittal or condemnation upon an accused. The twelve persons named as Judges have the word hóšía often describing them, a word meaning “salvation” or “Saving” related to the Greek swzw . The twelve Judges were:

• Othniel
• Ehud
• Shamgar
• Deborah, the only female Judge
• Gideon, also known as Jerubbaal
• Tola
• Jair
• Ibzan
• Elon
• Abdon
• Jephthah
• Samson

These "judges" should have been saviors of their people, leaders who deliver Israel from destruction; instead, by connection with the tribe of Dan, they become emblematic of eternal condemnation. The entire book of Judges represents a period of social and political chaos and anarchy in Judeo-Christian history.

Dan, through specific verbal parallelism, is consistently associated with the the Anti-Christ, Satan as the accuser, (‘o katagoroV) misleader (‘o planwn), or tempter (peirozwn), his Pseudo-Prophets, and Pseudo-Priests. The early Church father Irenaeus (V. 30.2)¹¹ says that Dan was omitted from John’s Apocalypse because it was believed that the Anti-Christ would arise from that tribe, a viewpoint supported by other commentators. The phrases in Revelation 12:5-9 virtually echo the passages in Joshua and Judges where the tribe of Dan fails to secure their allocated parcels of land on the plain of Philistia:

tou polemhsai	made war upon
’ouk ’iscusan	were not able to overcome; prevailed not
’oude topoV ’eureqh	neither was their place found

All three phrases are reminiscent of the circumstances surrounding the failure of the tribe of Dan to secure the plain of Philistia and their rightful land allocation, before their ultimate decision to move northward and annihilate Laish. In the passage from Revelation in which the Dragon and his host of unholy angels appear, the same parallel phrasing occurs. The host "makes war" upon the elect tribes, but they "prevail not" against their heavenly opponents, the result being that "neither was their place found" in heaven any more. They are dispossessed of heaven in the same way that the tribe of Dan was dispossessed its land rights. The specific verbal echoes all recall the stories found in Joshua and Judges in which six of the tribes (Dan, Manasses, Ephraim, Asher, Naphtali, and Benjamin) for one reason or another are unable to secure their complete fiefdoms from the Canaanite native populations. Surely something more is working on a semantic level far more profound than Schleusner's simple explanation as a "vocal permutation." Revelation singles out the tribe of Dan for excision from the record, while at the same time, through other language cues, dramatically signaling the reader to look in sections of the Old Testament where Dan is prominently featured. One possible reason for this may be found in the Old Testament itself. Dan as a tribe disappears from all the chronicles shortly after the return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile. It may be something as simple as explaining the Song of Deborah's reference to "taking service on ships" to signify, on a political and historical level, their joining the enemy.

The Order of False Prophets

One other remarkable personage occurs in Judges 17, found in close association with the tribe of Dan. This text marks the first appearance of the Old Testament "Pseudo-prophets." His name is Micah, and he is identified as being from the hill country of Ephraim. The story of this first false prophet is troubling, to say the least. As it is told, Micah comes to his mother and tells her that "eleven hundred pieces of silver" (or shekels) that previously belonged to her have now come into his possession. At some earlier time, the text informs us, Micah's mother did possess the silver shekels, but then the hoard was stolen from her and she "cursed" it. Now Micah says, "Behold, it is with me: I have it." The specific number of eleven hundred pieces of silver, which occurs nowhere else in the Bible, yokes the identity of this unnamed woman back to the notorious Delilah (of the Samson and Delilah story in Judges 16:5). Delilah obtained the sum of eleven hundred shekels of silver from the five lords of the Philistines, in exchange for her betrayal of the hero Samson. According to the story, Samson is the son of Manoah of the tribe of Dan. So an imaginative linking of the two stories in Judges 16 and 17 may work as follows: After Samson's death, the Philistines who were not killed by the toppling of their temple simply stole back their silver from the prostitute they had hired (Delilah). Later in her life, her son Micah, possibly born of the seed of Samson and therefore in the lineage of Dan, craftily steals the silver back and spirits it away to his home in the hills of Ephraim.

Micah returns the silver shekels to his mother, and she in turn gives back to him two hundred pieces of silver, with which he casts a molten image of Jehovah. The entire episode in Judges 17 wears superstitious trappings, with baffling, riddling suggestions that involve the creation of an idolatrous worship of the Hebrew God.

The history of the "Pseudo-prophets" or "false prophets" is picked up in 2 Chronicles 18:21ff. (parallel to 1 Kings 22:11ff.). Here, a true prophet named "Micah" delivers the prophecy that God will "put a lying spirit in the mouths of his prophets" (lying spirit="pneuma pseudes"). In this scene, Micah (the son of Imlah), perceived as one of the true prophets, accuses his opponent Zedekiah of false prophecy. Still another Micah is named in Jeremiah 26:18 as one of the false prophets: he is Micah of Moresheth. Others who join in the ranks of the infamous pseudo-prophets are:

• Uriah (2 Kings 16:10), high priest who built an altar for Ahaz
• Hananiah (Jeremiah 27: 12-22 and 28:1), son of Azzur, also called the "prophet from Gibeon"
• Shemaiah (Jeremiah 29: 24-35), son of Nehelam, who prophesized against going to war with the northern kingdom (in 1 Kings 12:22) and against Shishak, the King of Egypt (2 Chronicles 11:2)
• Jahazaniah (Ezekial 11:1), son of Azzur
• Peltiah (Ezekial 13), son of Benaiah

These seven names of the pseudo-prophets constitute a kind of roster of infamy, an anti-prophet order working in tandem with the Anti-Christ against the true prophets. In Revelation, John concentrates this old idea into one figure, that of the second beast who arises from the Earth, synonymous with Micah, the false prophet of the hill country of Ephraim.

In addition to his silver graven and molten idol, the Micah of Judges 17 uses the "Ephod" and "Teraphim" of the Canaanite religions of Ba'al and Ashtoreth. "Teraphim" simply refers to small statues of gods and goddesses kept in ones household, the proverbial "household gods" of the early Old Testament. In the apocryphal "Epistle of Jeremy" 8, a graphic description of the apparatus and effect of the false prophet is evoked. Describing the "Ephod" thus, he sustains the image of the "false tongue" of the prophecy of Micah of Imlah (that God will put a "lying tongue" in the mouths of his prophets):

Glossa gar ’autwn ’esti katexusmenh ‘upo tektonoV
’auta te pericrusa kai periargura,
yeudh d’esti, kai ’ou dunantai lalein
(As for their tongue, it is polished by the workmen,
and they themselves are gilded and laid over with gold,
but they are false and cannot speak.)

The "Ephod" or "breastplate" is a ventriloquilist's contraption, controlled by the false prophet. The image of a face is engraved on the breastplate and from the mouth protrudes a mobile tongue, which appears to move as the prophet speaks. The "mouth, including tongue" are engraved and wrought into the metal breastplate.

The false prophets mislead the peoples of the nations and their leaders, rendering it impossible to distinguish true from false prophecy, or to know which gods they actually served. In such a social and political environment, people are near to being unable to distinguish truth from falsehood in general. Jeremiah warns, "Both prophet and priest are ungodly" (23:11) and he extols the people with this enigmatic, riddling formulation:

Behold I am against the prophets, says the Lord,
Who use their tongues and say, 'says the Lord,'
Behold, I am against those who prophecy lying dreams, says the Lord,
And who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness. (23:31-32)

"Tongues" may refer to that part of the "Ephod" that may actually have appeared to speak to listeners during the false prophet's oracular pronouncements, or to their "glossa" or cult language consisting of mysterious incantations like that of the Sibylline Oracle. Words such as "abracadabra" were supposed to invoke the god, but in fact represent mumbo-jumbo religious idolatry. The image of the "two horns as of a lamb" in all likelihood derives from the tradition that prophets wore as a headpiece the lamb's head, designating themselves as symbolic shepherds of their flocks. The false prophet Zedekiah (1 Kings 22:11, 2 Chronicles 18:10) "made for himself horns of iron" as he delivers his oracle. The corruption of symbolism implicit in the act of the false prophet or priest donning the lamb's head makes him the original, the prototype so to speak, of the children's fairy tale figure of "the wolf in sheep's clothing."

To continue with the story of Micah of Ephraim, in Judges 17:7-13, a man said to be a Levite from Bethlehem, a son of Gershom in the lineage of Moses, named Jonathan, comes to Micah's house and is persuaded by the false prophet to take on the role of Priest of his fledgling temple. Micah, overjoyed upon learning of Jonathan's descent from Moses, excitedly fosters this "false priest." Into this scene, then, come the five spies from the tribe of Dan (Judges 18:1-6). They have been sent by the "Camp of Dan" (Mahanach-Dan) to look for a new land which the tribe may inhabit. Their allotment of land remained a stronghold of the Philistines. They lacked the strength or resources to drive out the Philistines. The "Camp of Dan" is inhabiting an area near Kiriath-jearim, above the valley of Sorek. This allusion once again links this story back to the tale of Samson and Delilah, who was identified as a woman of Zorek in Judges 16:4.

The five spies are only the advance party to the armed phalanx that arrives shortly. In Judges 18:16, the Camp of Dan is specifically named as:

‘oi ‘exakosioir ’andreV ‘oi ’anezwsmenoi ta skeuh thV parataxewV ’autwn ‘estwteV para quraV thV pulhV, ‘oi ’ek twn ’uiwn Dan
(the six hundred men of the sons of Dan who were girded with their weapons of war, standing by the door of the gate.)

The armed host seizes Jonathan and Micah, and the gadgetry of their priesthood including the silver idol, the "Terephim" and the "Ephod." After gaining their blessing and being told that they "Go in God's name," the 600 men of the tribe of Dan descend on the village of Laish and put it to the sword. Laish, a peaceful habitation of shepherds, and unwalled city with no defenses or armed military, is an easy target "far from Sidon" and isolated between the mountain passes in the valley of ‘Raab (Judges 18:27-29).

The crime, or sin, committed by the tribe of Dan seems to be that of placing the defenseless, peaceful village of Laish under the dreaded ban, or holy war. According to this practice, no human beings — man, woman, or child — are to be left alive. Indeed, even all the animals must be slaughtered as nothing must be taken for loot. All must be massacred, annihilated, destroyed in a holocaust ritually committed as a ceremony of purification of the land. In doing this, Dan acts alone, out of concert with the other tribes, and only with the "blessing" of the false prophet's idolatrous god. Moreover, the slaughter of the unwalled village is undertaken as an act of desperation after the tribe's failure to win the land of the Philistines, which the True God, Jehovah, had given to them. The Old Testament thus makes a distinction between the annihilations which are seen in so many episodes of Joshua, Judges, Kings, and Chronicles, when the Israelites destroy fortified strongholds of foreign gods. However, a slaughter of innocents can not be forgiven, especially when it is committed in the name of god of a false prophet, who has blasphemed by making a molten and graven idol, setting it up and worshipping it in a false temple, and then making military orders appear to be justified in its name.

Although Laish is defenseless, the 600 troops from the tribe of Dan, using the commandment of Micah's idolatrous god, proceed to slaughter all the men, women, children, and animals, assume control of the village and rename it "Dan." This action takes place during the anarchic and bloody period when "there was no king in the land" and "every man did whatever he thought was right" (Judges 18). Ezekial 38:11-12, specifically recalling this period of Canaanite history, warns Israel not to fall upon innocent villages, lest they the conquerors, too, fall prey to this same treatment at the hands of their enemies: "I will come upon them that are at ease in tranquility, and dwelling in peace, all inhabiting a land in which there is no wall, nor bars, nor have they doors; to seize plunder, and to take their spoil." Ezekial prophesies the return of the giant Magog, who will be an "instrument of the Lord's vengeance" against Israel for its disobedience. In the same vein of prophecy, John warns in Revelation 13:10:

’Ei tiV ’aicmalwsaian synagei, ’andreV ‘oi ’eiV ’aicmalwsian ‘upagei.
’ei tiV ’en macaira ’apoktenei, dei ’auton ’en macaira ’apoktanqhnai.
(If anyone leads into captivity, into captivity he goes.
If anyone with the sword will kill, he must with the sword be killed.)

This passage almost seems to restate verbatim the "Saying of Rhadamanthys."

Isaiah 9:15-16 speaks of the godless period of Israelite history thus:

The elder and honored man is the head,
and the prophet who teaches lies is the tail;
for those who lead this people lead them astray,
and those who are led by them are swallowed up.

According to Isaiah, the king of Assyria will act as the agent of Jehovah's wrath against the wickedness of the Israelite nation in failing to maintain their covenant: "Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff of my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder" (Isaiah 10:6).

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Argumentum cognoscere quot sint numerum

The Significance of Numbers

The significance of the number 600 as a military unit cannot be underestimated, even when considered against the formulaic exaggerations of "thousands" frequently found in the Old Testament. The number 600 was the ideal for the military unit called the "phalanx." The phalanx unit formed a tight, compact, highly mobile, and utterly devastating fighting unit. As it could operate light and deploy rapidly, the phalanx could march through rugged, uninhabited terrain and strike into the heart of inhabited villages suddenly or at night. This is illustrated in the story of Shechem in the book of Genesis, the revenge for the rape of Dinah. A small, provincial locality could easily be laid waste in a matter of minutes. The number 600 as a fighting force also occurs in other passages in Judges, designating a Philistine brigade (3:31) and the Benjamites who survive at the Rock of Rimmon (20:47). The number may thus represent an optimum, or "ideal" unit capable of striking terror into the mind of a reader familiar with the period of anarchy in Israel's early history.

The number 66 is found in Genesis 46:26, in the passage just before the Blessing of Jacob, quoted earlier in this essay, in which the identification of Dan as the "horned serpent in the path" is made. In the passage from Genesis 46:26, it is stated,

All the persons belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt,
who were his own offspring, not including Jacob's sons' wives,
were sixty-six persons in all.

The exact accounting is of the number of Jacob's entire extended family (excluding the wives of the sons of Jacob), who migrated into Egypt after Joseph's establishment there. Once again, the period of history, some 250-300 years before the book of Judges, represented instability and migration to a foreign land. Israel, driven by famine in Canaan, moves into the land of Pharaoh seeking a better life. The emigration is depicted as peaceful, and Genesis 46 and 47 even leads us to believe that the Hebrews were welcomed into Egypt. However, this "official family" of sixty-six probably could be identified as the earliest in the period of Egyptian history known as the "Hyksos" dynasties, which are known to have been Semitic in ethnic character.

The combination of the two numbers — six hundred, and sixty-six — represents in symbolic terms the designated "official family" or amphictyony of twelve tribes, with their state religion and all of its trappings, united with the idealized military force. Put more succinctly, 666 is a union of the craft of War with State Religion, brought together by pressure of circumstance, into unholy alliance for the purpose of "destroying unwalled villages" and slaughtering innocent populations in order to gain the land for itself. The injunctions of Ezekial 38 attain a clear and terrifying vision of Israelite history. The warnings of all the prophets against unwarranted slaughter, which leads only into the cycle of revenge, trace all the way back to Genesis 34 and the story of the vengeance for Shechem's violation of Dinah. Jacob, after learning that Simeon and Levi have slaughtered the Shechamites, says:

You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household. (34:30)

After the slaughter at Shechem, the Hebrew tribes move on to Bethel, where God changes the name of Jacob to Israel (Genesis 35:1-10). Thus the whole clan must suffer in eternal mortal terror of its neighbors, all because of the impulsive actions of two of the brothers.

This analysis seems to make sense of the image in Revelation that we found troubling at the very beginning: that of two beasts, one of which comes from the sea and has seven heads and ten horns and the other of which arises from the land and has two horns and apparently only one head. The second beast is the one which “exercises all the powers of the first beast before him, and causes the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast” (13:12). The second beast works the great signs causing “fire to come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.” The second beast also causes men to make an image of the first beast By this description the text seems to point exactly at Micah of Judges 17. He is first of the order of false prophets. He is from the mountainous region of Ephraim. He installs the priesthood which permitted idolatry in the temple. The temple, in turn, becomes a "marketplace" exactly like that seen in Jerusalem when Jesus overturns the tables of the moneychangers, who are set up right outside the front doors. The temple also is a place where one finds "harlots" hanging around in the streets outside. This temple is the place wherein is found standing the "abomination of desolation" described in Matthew 24:15 and Daniel 9:27 ( Bdelugma thV ’erhmwsewV ), thought to be the "Teraphim" idols of foreign gods such as Ba'al and Ashtaroth. The second beast has two horns, like that of a lamb or goat, because he wears the symbolic headpiece of the priesthood as shepherd to his flock.

By this reckoning, the first beast is almost certainly associated with the tribe of Dan, who, paraphrasing the Song of Deborah once again, "took service in ships." The description of this beast as like a lion indicates that it is "devouring"; the association with the leopard is calculated to evoke swiftness, suddenness; and the association with the bear conjures images of savage, mauling brutality, as in Proverbs 28:15, "Like a roaring lion or a charging bear is a wicked ruler over a poor people." Thus the outcast tribe, having the number of the military phalanx unit, are all utterly devouring of the people of their own kingdom, as well as others who "dwell in unwalled villages." It is utterly indifferent to the innocent and the peaceful. They exist to prop up the order of false prophets, their priesthood, and the kings they support, with the savage authority of the professional military terror force.

The numerical combinations of heads and horns can be interpreted in various ways. The seven heads are represented in the candelabra, or menorah, of the temple priesthood. Again, this is its "debased" or false form. With the true menorah the seven branched candelabra represents the light emanating from the seven eyes of God. In the false priesthood, it is embelmatic of the Canaanite "tortured serpent" Shalyat (šlyt), a seven-headed dragon, and an attempt to present a cosy, and too simplistic, synchronicity with foreign, pagan religions for the purposes of gaining novelty or popularity or perhaps even political advantage with the rulers over those peoples. This, of course, represents a corruption of the original purity of the mystical symbolism. Recall, also, from Joshua 19:40 and Genesis 49, that Dan's was the "seventh lot" in the Blessing of Jacob.

The ten horns may represent the ten tribes in the federation of Israel after the division of the kingdom: Judah alone became the southern kingdom, the priestly class of Levi is excluded, while the other ten tribes took the form of the notorious northern kingdom, perfectly represented by the northerly stronghold of Dan. In the times of Joshua and Judges, what archaeologists today call the Late Bronze Age—Early Iron Age, horns had multiple meanings and purposes just as they do today and their symbolic connotations are similarly parallel. Thus, the horn of a beast such as a ram or goat, removed and worked a little bit by an artisan, becomes a horn one can play as a musical instrument by blowing through the small end. Similarly, by gilding or plating with bronze, iron, or steel, it can become a weapon of war for stabbing, slashing, or impaling. We know from recent archaeological finds among Scythian tombs near Almatay, Kazakhstan that the Scythians, who dominated the vast stretch of steppe land from Southern Siberia to the Black Sea roughly between 800 and 300 B.C., that they routinely dressed their horses with long single and double horns to add a fearsome aspect to their appearance when charging a victim. In fact the mythological unicorn almost certainly derives from images drawn from this cultural nexus.¹² So it would seem, that "horns" per se can merely refer to decorative regalia and do not necessarily impart any metaphysical transporting of an image to the realm of a riddle. In fact what seems to us in the modern world as "strange" or "enigmatic" may have been quite commonplace in its own time.

Leaping Ahead to 1798

A form of this hypothesis, though unpublished and considerably less developed, was expressed in 1798 by William Blake, writing in the margins of his copy of R. Watson, Bishop of Landoff's An Apology for the Bible,

The Beast & the Whore rule without control. . . A defence of the Wickedness of the Israelites in murdering so many thousands under pretence of a command from God is altogether Abominable & Blasphemous. . . the Jewish Scriptures which are only an Example of the wickedness & deceit of the Jews & were written as an Example of the possibility of Human Beastliness in all its branches.¹³

Blake is not writing this in an attempt to express his own anti-Semitism. Rather, Blake interpreted scriptural figures such as the "Beast" and the "Whore" of Revelation, as "aggregates" or groups of man (clumps or agglutinations of many men) seen from a distance ("from afar"). In this Allegorical perception, really a direct transference of objective vision into subjective imagination, men grouped as such, assumed what Blake calls a "dragon form." A mass of marching men in a column, for example, seen from a great distance advancing down any typically winding road, would appear from that distance to be a huge, metallically gleaming snake coiling slowly over the land. The Greek word dragon ( drakwn ) itself derives from derkomai ( derkomai ), which means to see or took at, or to "behold."

Blake, going against the tide of all other pietistic Biblical analysis up to and including his own time, asserts,

The destruction of the Canaanites by Joshua was the Unnatural design of Wicked men [.] To Extirpate a nation by means of another nation is as wicked as to destroy an individual by means of another individual which God considers (in the Bible) as Murder & and Commands that it shall not be done. ... The laws of the Jews (both ceremonial & real) the basest & most oppressive of human codes. & being like all other codes given under pretence of divine command were what Christ pronounced them The Abomination that maketh desolate. i.e. State Religion which is the Source of all Cruelty.¹⁴

William Blake saw, I believe, that the "Beast" would arise of itself from the natural inclination of humanity (or "human nature") toward cruelty and evil. Man's predisposition to commit acts of atrocity or violence always finds some "rational" or "rationalized" cause or precedent, whether it be Simeon and Levi taking vengeance on Shechem, or Joshua mobilizing against the Canaanites, or Dan slaughtering innocents at the village of Laish. This evil animus John of Patmos, in Revelation, named "the Beast," and he brought together the numbers 600 and 66 to show the union of military power — the phalanx — and "State Religion" — the Amphictyony of the Twelve Tribes — as represented in the number of men in the twelve tribes of the Israelite court, its "royal family." These focused forces, brought together by the union of the military with State Religion, are the true servants of Satan and the anarchic, dark impulses that perpetuate evil in the world. When W. B. Yeats wrote in his famous line, "And what rough Beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"¹⁵, he may well have more appropriately used the verb, "marches."

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Annotatia

¹ Josephine Massyngberde Ford, Revelation, A New Translation With Introduction and Commentary, Vol. 38 of the Anchor Bible series, William F. Albright and David. N. Freeman, Eds. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1985, pp. 28-29.

² Ibid., p. 216.

³ Ibid., p. 215.

⁴ In the passages that follow, for Greek words and their translations I have relied upon Dr. Passow’s Greek Dictionary, 1869, and J. F. Schleusner, Novum Lexicon Graeco-Latinum in Novum Testamentum, London, 1808. New Testament references are found in George Ricker Berry, The Greek New Testament, Chicago, Wilcox & Follett, 1943. The notion that substrate influences in a language can persist for centuries, particularly in isolated regions, is not as outlandish as it may seem, as is brilliantly demonstrated by Raymond A. Brown, Pre-Greek Speech on Crete, Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1985. Brown found in Aegean dialects, for example among the “Eteocretan” inhabitants of villages in eastern Crete, traces of words that are pre-Greek in origin. For them, these words are “native.” In many cases, these same word roots still exist in modern languages. An example is the borrowed word (from Greek) ‘labyrinth,’ which in English is more or less synonymous with “maze” and does not necessarily conjure up an image of a monstrous bull-man.

⁵ Archaeology, Vol. 45. No. 5, September/October 1992, Special Report: Did Egypt Shape the Glory that was Greece?. See John E. Coleman, “The Case Against Martin Bernal’s Black Athena,” pp. 48-52, 77-81, vs. Martin Bernal, “The Case for Massive Egyptian Influence in the Aegean,” pp. 53-55, 82-86.

⁶ This problem reflects something I call the critical fallacy, defined as the tendency not to see evidence or not to perceive it correctly because the subject critic projects his or her own prejudices and ideologies onto the evidence and discovers proof in a limited selection of anecdotal examples which are chosen precisely because they fit the hypothesis. Questions of the critics’ taste (what they like), as well as of the critics’ values and beliefs, should never enter into a critical evaluation of an artist’s work (what the artist does, in his or her own terms).

⁷ The list of Sea Peoples derives from monumental texts describing the campaigns of Ramsses II, Merenptah, and Ramesses III against their invasions of Egypt and gives 12 tribal names. The full list includes peoples who are generally designated “foreign tribes.” See Kathleen Kenyon, Archaeology in the Holy Land, NewYork & Washington: Praeger Publishers, 3rd Edition, 1971, and Amorites and Canaanites, British Academy Schwiech Lectures, London: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Ekwesh : Hittite Ahhiyawa : Homeric Achaeans Greek ’Acaiaoi	Sherden, Sherdanu : Sardinian from the island of Sardinia.
Luka : Lycian, from Lycia on the western coast of Asia Minor (related to luka : wolf)	Teresh (Tyrrhenians, Greek TurrhnourghV)
Kode, Qode : Cilicia, with its largest city Tarsus	Tjekker or Zakkala : Zakros on the western coast of Crete Bernal: Teucer Egyptian T_kr
Karchemish, Carchemish : Kargamiš, Barak, lying on the upper Euphrates, near the Turkish border with Syria.	Weshesh or Washasha Egyptian Wšš
Shelekesh or Shekelesh : Sicily Greek Sikelia Egyptian Šklš	Danunu, Dene, Denyen, or Tanaya : Danaoi, Danaans, Dan Greek Danaoi, Danaan, Daanid Hittite (or Luvian) and Phoenician Dnnym Egyptian Dnn
Hatti : Named after the tribe, Hatti, Hittite (generic), Hattusas, their capital city. The Hittite empire in Central Anatolia. Biblical Hebrew Hittï	Pulasati or Peleset : Pelasgians, Philistines Egyptian Prst
Arzawa : from central Anatolia	Alashiya : Cyprus
Tyrsenoi : Trojans, northwest Anatolia, with their capital Ilium, or Troy, on the coast of the Aegean Sea where it meets the Dardanelles. Neo-Hittite Sarawanas or Tarawanas. Ugaratic Srnm, Princes. Greek TurannoV, tyrrany, tyrant. Biblical Hebrew serånîm Egyptian Trš Tyrians, from Tyre Biblical Hebrew Tîrås	Pamphylian : From Pamphylia, the region along the southern coast of Asia Minor lying between Lycia to the west and Cilicia to the east. Port city was Pargamon, also Pergamum. Greek Pergh, also Pergamhnh, a name designating the citadel of Troy. Also related Scythian Bergh, a citadel.
Luvian : or Luwian, from Luwia in Southwestern Anatolia	Keftiu : Caphtorians, from the island Kaphtôr, today Crete. Biblical Hebrew Kerêtî and Pelêtî
Syrians : from Syria	Lydians : from Lydia in Southwestern Anatolia
Canaans : from Canaan the old name of Palestine	Telchines : Greek TelcineV, “Enchanter” Biblical Hebrew Tûbalcain
Sidonians : from Sidon	Hurrians : from Ammuru the Biblical Ammon
Carians : from Caria in Western Anatolia	Etruscans : from Etruria west-central Italy Also Tyrrhenians, Greek TurrhnourghV.

⁸ Quotation from The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Dallas, Texas: Melton, 1952. Septuagint Greek equivalents from Lancelot C. L. Brenton, The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English, London: Saumel Bagster & Sons, 1851, reprinted by Hendrickson Publishers, 1995.

⁹ Hesiod: The Homeric Hymns & Homerica, Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982, pp. 75 and 171.

¹⁰ J. F. Schleusner, Volume 1, p. 540.

¹¹ Irenaeus, Works (2 Volumes), translated by A. Roberts and W. H. Rambaut, Ante-N.CH.LIB.EDIN., 1868-1869.

¹² Zainullah Samashev and Henri-Paul Francfort, "Scythian Steeds: Blocks of frozen earth yield the remains of horses bearing extravagant regalia," Archaeololgy 55:3, May-June 2002, pp. 32-35.

¹³ David V. Erdman, ed., The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, Garden City and New York: Doubleday and Company, 1970, pp. 603-604.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 607.

¹⁵ "The Magi".