I may be wrong, I am not a prophet, and I am basing the part about 444 being the number of the King of the South on someone else who also is not a Biblical Prophet. William Tapley likes to call himself "third eagle of the apocalypse" and "co-prophet of the end-times", but he does not claim to be an actual prophet, and he does claim to be studying prophecy as a scholar, partly in the light of unfolding events, as they fit ancient prophecy.
Now, he believes Barack Obama is NOT the Antichrist or King of the North, because he believes Barack Obama can be identified as King of the South. However, he also takes a hint from number of verses on diverse themes in both Daniel and Matthew 24 as indicating that the number of the King of the South is 444. And he ties this with Obama being the 44th President of the USA.
I think we have a better candidate for the King of the South. Look at SALMAN, in the Latin transcription, and the ASCII Code values.
S 83 80 3
A 65 140 8
L 76 210 14
M 77 280 21
A 65 340 26
N 78 410 34, 410+34=444
The reason I am saying this is that the Queen of Shebah needs not be the Pharao Hatshepsut. Whether they were contemporary or not, that is not my concern. Velikovsky seems to have identified them on the basis of them being contemporaneous and of her apparently having power also over ... sth South of Egypt, identifiable, loosely, as Ethiopia, even if the Meroë capital back then is not identical to the Aksum capital where Neguses were claiming to descend from Menelik, son of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba.
The fact is, Ethiopia (not necessarily same frontiers as either today's Ethiopia, or even including Erythrea) and Arabia had a very lively exchange even later. The century before Mohammed, South Arabia (the presumable power basis of Queen of Sheba) was divided between three religions, the star worship which centered on idolatrous Mecca (even Mohammedans think it was idolatrous before Mohammed changed that), the Judaism which was shared with Ethiopian Falasha Judaism, and the Christianity which was very clearly Ethiopian Christianity, depending on the Patriarch of Ethiopia who in his turn depended on the Pope of Alexandria, Monophysite lineage. The Wars between Jews and Christians in Ethiopia (where Christians to this day have bad memoraies of the Falasha Queen Judith) had spread to the Southern Part of Arabian Peninsula. Obviously, that may have contributed to Mohammed, while rejecting idolatry per se, being edgy about taking sides by becoming either a Jew or a Christian. After which, he "saw the angel Jibreel" and founded a new religion.
Not quite unlike a Joseph Smith who was also edgy about chosing between Presbyterians and Methodists, Baptists and whatever not, simply because the Protestant religious map of US was such a complete map of division. After which he in his turn "saw the angel Moroni" and even "the Trinity" (no, I don't think he really saw the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, I think someone was posing, as with Moroni, as with Jibreel).
How could this come up?
Obviously, I agree with Velikovsky that the Hyksos were Amalekites. But this does not make me a disciple of Velikovsky, and having to reject, with some probability at least, the identification of Queen of Sheba with Hatshepsut does not in the least make me regret identifying Hyksos with Amalekites taking Egypt after the Exodus. You see, I am NOT treating Velikovsky as "a prophet" and thus "either a true prophet" (if everything he says is true) "or a false prophet" (if anything he says is false, in which case the rest must be rejected too and cannot stand as prophecy). I am treating him as a scholar, whose idea has been taken up by another scholar.
And I read and agreed with that other scholar and still do.
This does not mean I reject the claim of the Kings of Aksum to descend from Menelik and of this Menelik having been the Son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. His mother need not have been a Queen of all Ethiopia (and I am not sure Hatshepsut reigned over Ethiopia either, not due to uncertainty in general of subject, but only due to my personal ignorance of it), supposing that Queen of Sheba was NOT Hatshepsut (though if she was Candace of Meroë, she might have ruled Sheba or Sabaea too), supposing she was not even in any other way a Candace of Ethiopia, that she was JUST the Queen of Sheba. It does not follow that the claim of the Menelik line is false. Very easily, if power structures in those areas were anything like those of Medieval Europe, i e Feudal, a Queen of Sabaea (which may have been not today's Yemen only, which may have extended into today's Saudi Arabia, see the gematria on SALMAN), may have also been owning a fief in Aksum under Meroë. And later Meroë lost power and Aksum rose to be the Imperial city of the Negus.
However, I am writing this in answer to an article where this claim of Velikovsky about Hatshepsut was discussed. It takes up a line of thought which I find worth answering.
Herodotus estimated that Homer lived 400 years before his own time, which would place Homer at around 850 BC. The consensus is that the Iliad and the Odyssey date from around the 8th century BC. Over the past few decades, some scholars have argued for a 7th century BC date. Taplin believes that the conclusion of modern researchers is that Homer dates to 750 to 650 BC. Solomon, by comparison, is securely dated to the 10th century BC, along with the Queen of Sheba. With the consensus ruling that Homer is 8th century or later, the mathematics of Homer being a near contemporary of Solomon are wrong. The QSQE assumed that Herodotus was correct about Homer’s placement in the historical timeline, but Herodotus has been shown wrong on many accounts due to the sources he used sometimes being corrupted. The claim that only 19 years existed between Solomon and Homer is incorrect, the consensus claims around two centuries—the earliest recording of Αιθιοπια did not appear in Homer’s text until at least 2–3 centuries after the time of Solomon and Sheba.*
I think Herodotus is being misunderstood. Homer was certainly 8th C or even mid 9th C (850) BC. But Homer was not writing about conditions close to his own day, the War of Troy took place in 1194 - 1184 (according to at least one of the traditional dates, and a very popular one). In my educated guess, Ethiopians were involved on the Trojan side because the Trojan side was in a way a Hittite side. And therefore Hittite material had been reworked into the Iliad. I think the reference to Ethiopia may really mean that Ethiopia sided with Hittites against Egypt in the battle of Kadesh. I think that epic poetry had among other functions that of glorifying the military and hospitable past of the nobility to which it is sung, and that in this case the nobility included quite a few ex-Hittite nobles who after fall of Hattusha wanted to forget all about Hittites, but not all about their own family. Kadesh material was thus reworked into Iliad. Aenaeas being "son of Venus" I have tentatively tied in with Aenaeas being a Hittite noble descended from the Venus-priestess and Sun-Goddess-priestess, the Hittite Empress Puduhepa.**
Now, this has mainly been about past events of interest to historians and, like to myself, to history buffs. I would usually have posted it on my Φιλολoγικά/Philologica blog. Except of course, for this little matter of King of the South in book of Daniel probably having showed his face already, and I mean SALMAN, not Obama. That is the reason why I placed the discussion here.
I came to read the old article by Patrick Clarke through the fact of its being linked to in today's article on Biblical Age of the Earth. Suspiciously, it touches a theme I was publishing on the other day, but does not mention me.*** If they do not want to give credibility to a Creationist who is a Catholic, why are they writing articles on Chesterton, as Catholic as I and less decidedly a Creationist? If they want to show forth no present day creationists they disagree with on any point, how come they have published an article by Benno Zuidam, who also is not in their team? Be that as it may be, I usually enjoy reading them, even when disagreeing with either a Protestant or a Heliocentric position of theirs.
Perhaps the problem is my attitude to Homer. I do believe he lived about 300 - 400 years after the Trojan War, and I still believe he reflects it fairly correctly, except for totally failing to mention the role of the Hittite Empire in it. They may think I am betraying Christianity and cowing down to Paganism, because I accept a Pagan tradition and a Pagan poet reflecting it as being mainly historical. I think I would be betraying Christian claims about the reliability of Genesis, if I were not also thinking the shorter paths of oral tradition between Odin and St Olaf and Snorre, or between Trojan War and homecoming of Ulysses and Homer were also reliable as history, even when they fail as theology.° Or perhaps some other reason which they have failed to mention.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Severus of Barcelona
Bishop and Martyr
6-XI-2015
Update or PS:
But he has a point in observing that the Hebrew text does not say ‘Queen of Sheba’ but ‘Queen Sheba’. If it is ‘Queen Sheba’ it is not apparent what is meant. If Sheba was a place it is true that most scholars identify it with Yemen in Arabia, but according to Genesis 10:7 Sheba was a grandson of Cush and the land of Cush was directly south of Egypt.°°
1) How would "Queen Sheba" have differed from "Queen of Sheba" in Hebrew? As far as I recall, the latter is expressed as "queen" in construvtive state (no, I didn't learn Hebrew, ma did, came far enough to read psalms at least) followed by "Sheba". Then how would "Queen Sheba" have been expressed?
2) Sheba being grandson of Cush and land of Cush being South of Egypt does not equate to land of Sheba being South of Egypt. In Black Africa, you have Cushites, but not necessarily all of them. I think it correct that Sheba is in Yemen, and Rahma even in India, and this probably originally in Dravidic and darker population. I think their Ramayana (though Hanuman was neither God nor even "a god", nor for that matter a monkey) records farily accurately the arrival or him there./HGL
Update or PS II:
Patrick Clarke gave an even better answer on point two°°:
Down seeks to dismiss all this sort of evidence by citing Genesis 10:7, while overlooking 10:28 which shows that another Sheba was also a son of Joktan, long regarded by conservative scholarship as a progenitor of tribes in the Arabian Peninsula.
That is, mainly of its southern part, since middle is more like Ishmael, in combination with Madianites who merged into the people of Ishmael./HGL
Notes:
*The Queen of Sheba and the Ethiopian problem
by Patrick Clarke in
[p.]55 || JOURNAL OF CREATION 27(2) 2013
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j27_2/j27_2_55-61.pdf
** Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Venus Mater = Puduhepa?
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2014/05/venus-mater-puduhepa.html
*** CMI : The biblical minimum and maximum age of the earth
by Chris Hardy and Robert Carter
http://creation.com/biblical-age-of-the-earth
Confer my own article:
Creation vs. Evolution : Longevity Charts as per LXX
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2015/11/longevity-charts-as-per-lxx.html
Similarily a little earlier:
CMI : Apparent difficulties with a CMAS cosmic ray–weather/climate link
by Jake Hebert [in archive set on October 23 huius anni]
http://creation.com/cosmic-ray-weather-climate-link
Before publication, but after correspondence published here:
Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Jay L. Wile on C14 Build-up
http://correspondentia-ioannis-georgii.blogspot.com/2015/10/with-jay-l-wile-on-c14-build-up.html
Two days both times between me saying sth and them publishing sth on each time its own same subject.
° These two essays make my point:
Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Historicity vs. Theology of Pagan Poets
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2012/11/historicity-vs-theology-of-pagan-poets.html
Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Hissarlik Blues and Achaian War Effort
http://filolohika.blogspot.com/2012/11/hissarlik-blues-and-achaian-war-effort.html
°° Is Hatshepsut the biblical ‘Queen of Sheba’?
David Down
Mount Colah, NSW
AUSTRALIA
Letters p. 39 and following JOURNAL OF CREATION 24 (3) 201
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j24_3/j24_3_39-41.pdf
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