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The Hittites (also Hethites) and Children of Heth, translating Hebrew חתי HTY and בני-חת BNY-HT are the second of the eleven Canaanite nations in the Hebrew Bible. Canaanites redirects here For the 1940s social and political movement in Israel, see Canaanites (movement. The term Hebrew Bible is a generic reference to those books of the Bible originally written in Biblical Hebrew (and the related Biblical Aramaic They are purportedly descended from one Heth (Hebrew: חֵת, Standard Ḥet Tiberian Ḥēṯ), a son of Canaan, son of Ham, and they are mentioned in Genesis as having sold land to Abraham. Tiberian Hebrew is an extinct (yet very well documented Oral tradition of pronunciation for ancient Hebrew, especially the Hebrew of the Tanakh, that was Canaan is a Biblical figure who according to the Old Testament, was the son of Ham and the grandson of the patriarch Noah. Ham (; Greek Χαμ, Cham; Arabic: ar حام, xam, "hot" according to the Table of Nations in Genesis, was a Abraham ( Ashkenazi   Avrohom or Avruhom; ابراهيم, {{Unicode|Ibrāhīm}}; Ge'ez:

In the early 20th century, the Biblical Hittites were identified with a newly discovered Indo-European-speaking empire of Anatolia, a major regional power through most of the 2nd millennium BC, who therefore came to be known as the Hittites. Anatolia (Anadolu Ανατολία Anatolía) or Asia minor, comprising most of modern Turkey, is the geographic region bounded by the Black The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family and established This nomenclature is used today as a matter of convention, regardless of debates about possible identities between the Anatolian Hittite Empire and the Biblical Hittites.

Contents

Identification hypotheses

Given the casual tone in which the Hittites are mentioned in most Old Testament references, Biblical scholars before the age of archaeology traditionally regarded them as a smaller tribe, living in the hills of Canaan during the era of the Patriarchs, including Abraham. Archaeology, archeology, or archæology (from Greek grc ἀρχαιολογία archaiologia – grc ἀρχαῖος archaīos This picture was completely changed by the archaeological finds that placed the center of the Hatti/Hattusas civilization far to the north, in modern-day Turkey, relegating Hittites in Canaan to a periphery.

The question whether the Biblical Hittites of the first half of the first millennium BC are identical to the earlier Anatolian Hittites is still disputed in academic Biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies.

The case for identity

Some scholars take the view that the two peoples are identical. [1] Apart from the similarity in names, the Anatolian Hittites were a powerful political entity in the region before the collapse of their empire in the 14th-12th centuries BC, so one would expect them to be mentioned in the Bible, just in the way that the HTY post-Exodus are. A stone lion relief found at Beth Shan, near the Sea of Galilee (now at the Israel Museum), dated to about 1700 BC, has been interpreted by professor Bill Humble as confirming this identification, since lions are often pictured in Hittite art. The lion ( Panthera leo) is a member of the family Felidae and one of four Big cats in the Genus Panthera. (בֵּית שְׁאָן بيسان Bayt Šān or بيسان, Beisan or Bisan) is a city in the North District of Israel The Sea of Galilee, also Sea of Genneseret, Lake Kinneret or Lake Tiberias (Hebrew ים כנרת) (Arabic بحيرة طبريا) The Israel Museum Jerusalem (מוזיאון ישראל ירושלים Muze'on Yisrael Yerushalayim) was founded in 1965 as Israel 's National museum. [2] Moreover, in the account of the conquest of Canaan, the Hittites are said to dwell "in the mountains" and "towards the north" of Canaan — a description that matches the general direction and geography of the original Hittite empire, which had been influential in the region prior to the Battle of Kadesh. } The Battle of Kadesh (also Qadesh) took place between the forces of the Egyptian Empire under Ramesses II and the Hittite Empire under

Modern academics propose, based on much onomastic and archaeological evidence, that Anatolian populations moved south into Canaan as part of the waves of Sea Peoples who were migrating along the Mediterranean coastline at the time of the collapse of the Hittite Empire. Onomastics or onomatology is the study of proper Names of all kinds and the origins of names The Sea Peoples is the term used for a confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BC who sailed into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, caused political Many kings of local city-states are shown to have had Hittite and Luwian names in the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age transition period. Luwian (sometimes spelled Luvian) is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of the The term Bronze Age refers to a period in human cultural development when the most advanced Metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use included techniques for This article is about the archaeological period known as the Iron Age for the mythological Iron Age see Ages of Man. Indeed, even the name of Mount Zion may be Hittite in origin. Zion ( Hebrew: צִיּוֹן ( Persian: صهیون tziyyon; Tiberian vocalization: tsiyyôn; transliterated Zion [1]

Some people have conjectured that the Biblical Hittites could actually be Hurrian tribes living in Canaan, and that the Hebrew word for the Hurrians (HRY in consonant-only script) became the name of the Hittites (HTY) due to a scribal error. The Hurrians (also Khurrites; cuneiform Ḫu-ur-ri 𒄷𒌨𒊑 were a people of the Ancient Near East, who lived in northern Mesopotamia Others have proposed that the Biblical Hittites were a group of Kurushtameans. [3]

The case for separation

Because of the perceived discrepancy between the picture of the Hittites as developed in the Bible and the archaeological discoveries, some Biblical scholars reject Archibald Sayce's identification of the two peoples, and believe that the similarity in names is only a coincidence. The Rev Archibald Henry Sayce ( 25 September 1846 - 4 February 1933) was a pioneer Assyriologist and linguist, who held In order to stress this distinction, E. A. Speiser called the Biblical Hittites Hethites in his translation of the Book of Genesis for the Anchor Bible Series. Ephraim Avigdor Speiser ( January 24, 1902 &ndash June 15, 1965) was a Polish -born American Assyriologist. The Anchor Bible Project consisting of the Anchor Bible Commentary Series, Anchor Bible Dictionary and Anchor Bible Reference Library is a scholarly

Trevor Bryce suggests that biblical references to Hittites may be separated into two distinct groups. Trevor Robert Bryce (born 1940 is a Hittitologist specializing in ancient and classical Near-eastern history [4] The first, the majority, are to a Canaanite tribe as encountered by Abraham and his family. The names of these Hittites are for the most part of a Semitic type; for example Ephron at Genesis 23:8-17 etc, Judith at Genesis 26:34 and Zohar at Genesis 23:8. These were presumably the Hittites who were subject to Solomon (1 Kings 11:1-2, 1 Kings 9:20-21, 2 Chronicles 8:7) and who were elsewhere in conflict with the Israelites (Deuteronomy 20:17, Judges 3:5). King Solomon ( Ge'ez: ስለሞን Arabic: ar سليمان, Sulayman, all from the Triliteral root S-L-M, "peace" They were a small group living in the hills, and clearly to be distinguished from the Hittites of the Anatolian Kingdom.

But there are other biblical references which are not compatible with the notion of a small Canaanite hill tribe. Most notable among these is 2 Kings 7:6: "For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us. "

This conveys the impression that the Hittite kings were commensurate in importance and power with the Egyptian pharaohs. A similar impression is conveyed by 2 Chronicles 1:17: "And they fetched up, and brought forth out of Egypt a chariot for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty: and so brought they out horses for all the kings of the Hittites, and for the kings of Syria, by their means. " In these cases there can be little doubt that the references are to the neo-Hittite kingdoms of Syria. The states that are called Neo-Hittite, or more recently Syro-Hittite, were Luwian, Aramaic and Phoenician -speaking political entities of

If the references to the Canaanite tribe are distinct from those to the neo-Hittite kingdom, the similarity between the names (only two significant consonants) could easily be due to chance.

List of Biblical references

Source and ordering of citations

Listed below are all the occurrences of the word "Heth", "Hittite" or "Hittites" in the King James Bible (KJB), found through a University of Virginia search service. The University of Virginia (also called UVa, UVA, Mr Jefferson's University, or The University) is a highly selective public research [5] The same information is available in book form in Jones[6]

The citations were arranged approximately in chronological order, more precisely according to the epoch in which the events in question are supposed to have occurred. Note that this is not always the time in which the words were supposedly or actually written. (In particular, the covenant with Abraham about the future conquest of Canaan is sorted as if it were contemporary with the latter. ) The epochs are indicated by the names of the Biblical characters (Patriarchs, Judges, Kings, or Prophets) prominent at the time.

From Noah to Abraham

The Biblical view of humanity is set forth in Genesis:10, where various peoples are described as different lines of descent from Noah. Noah (or Noe, Noach;; Nūḥ; Arabic: نوح; "Rest") was according to the Bible, the tenth and last of In particular, Canaan is one of the sons of Ham, who is also said to be the ancestor of the Egyptians, and the Philistine. Canaanites redirects here For the 1940s social and political movement in Israel, see Canaanites (movement. Ham (; Greek Χαμ, Cham; Arabic: ar حام, xam, "hot" according to the Table of Nations in Genesis, was a This article is about the contemporary North African ethnic group The Philistines ( Hebrew פלשתים plishtim) (see "other uses" below were a people who inhabited the southern coast of Canaan, The sons of Canaan are given as Sidon, Heth, then the (ancestors of?) the Jebusites, Amorites, Girgasites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites, and the Hamathites. Sidon,or Saïda, ( Arabic ar صيدا; Phoenician phoenician yodh or H̱et (also spelled Khet, Kheth, Chet, Cheth, Het, or Heth) is the reconstructed name of the eighth letter According to the Hebrew Bible, the Jebusites ( were a Canaanite tribe who inhabited the region around Jerusalem prior to its capture by King David Amorite ( Sumerian MARTU, Akkadian Tidnum or Amurrūm, Egyptian Amar, Hebrew ’emōrî This list contains tribes or other groups of people named in The Bible of minor notability about whom either nothing or very little is known aside from any family connections The Hivites were one of the sons of Canaan according to the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 This list contains persons named in The Bible of minor notability about whom either nothing or very little is known aside from any family connections This list contains persons named in The Bible of minor notability about whom either nothing or very little is known aside from any family connections This list contains persons named in The Bible of minor notability about whom either nothing or very little is known aside from any family connections This list contains persons named in The Bible of minor notability about whom either nothing or very little is known aside from any family connections

Noah

From Abraham to Egypt

In this period, which is conjectured to start sometime after 2000 BC and end sometime before 1200 BC, the "sons of Heth" or "children of Heth" (בני-חת, BNY-HT) and the label "Hittite" (HTY) are mentioned multiple times, but referring to essentially only two events. The 20th century BC is a Century which lasted from the year 2000 BC to 1901 BC

In Genesis 23:2, towards the end of Abraham's life, he was staying in Hebron, on lands belonging to the "children of Heth", and from them he obtained a plot of land with a cave to bury his wife Sarah. Sarah (; Arabic: سارة, Sārah; "a woman of high rank" is the wife of Abraham as described in the Hebrew Bible One of them (Ephron) is labeled "the Hittite", several times. Ephron is the surname of a family of American writers Henry Ephron (father Phoebe Ephron (mother Amy Ephron (b This deal is mentioned three more times (with almost the same words), upon the deaths of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph.

Decades later, in Genesis 26:34, Abraham's grandson Esau is said to have taken two Hittite wives, and a Hivite one. This claim is repeated, with somewhat different names, in Genesis 36:2. In Genesis 27:46, Rebekah is worried that Jacob will do the same. This article is about the biblical matriarch For other uses of the word Rebecca see Rebecca (disambiguation Rebecca (also Rebekah also Jacob ( Hebrew: יַעֲקֹב, Standard   Yaʿaqov Tiberian   Yaʿăqōḇ;

Abraham

Esau and Jacob

Joseph

Exodus and the conquest of Canaan

This period is conjectured to start sometime after 1800 BC and end sometime before 1000 BC. The 18th century BC was the Century which lasted from 1800 BC to 1701 BC In this period (in which can be included the promise made to Abraham, centuries earlier, and its recall by Nehemiah half a millennium later), the Hittites are mentioned about a dozen times as part of an almost fixed formula that lists the "seven nations greater and mightier than [the Hebrews]" whose lands will be eventually conquered. Nehemiah or Nechemya ( Five other "major nations" are mentioned in almost all instances of the formula: Canaanites, Amorites, Hivites, Jebusites, and Perizzites. Canaanites redirects here For the 1940s social and political movement in Israel, see Canaanites (movement. Amorite ( Sumerian MARTU, Akkadian Tidnum or Amurrūm, Egyptian Amar, Hebrew ’emōrî The Hivites were one of the sons of Canaan according to the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 According to the Hebrew Bible, the Jebusites ( were a Canaanite tribe who inhabited the region around Jerusalem prior to its capture by King David Perizzites - villagers dwellers in the open country the Girgashite Canaanite nation inhabiting the fertile regions south and south-west of Carmel The Girgashites are mentioned only five times. This list contains tribes or other groups of people named in The Bible of minor notability about whom either nothing or very little is known aside from any family connections Abraham's covenant in Genesis 15:18 omits the Hivites but includes the Kadmonites, Kenites, Kenizzites, and Rephaim. The Hivites were one of the sons of Canaan according to the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 Kadmonites: The name of a people inhabiting the land promised to Abraham in Genesis 1519 In the ancient Levant, the Kenites were a nomadic clan sent under Jethro to priest Midian. Rephaites (רפאים also known as Zamzummites Anakites and Emites were a grouping of tall peoples mentioned in the Hebrew Bible that lived between the Nile River

Among the five references to the Hittites that cannot be classified as a variant of that formula, two (Numbers 13:29 and Joshua 11:3) declare that the Hittites "dwell in the mountains", together with the Jebusites, Amorites, and Perizzites, whereas the Canaanites live "on the east and on the west", on the coast of Jordan, and the Amalekites live "in the south". According to the Hebrew Bible, the Jebusites ( were a Canaanite tribe who inhabited the region around Jerusalem prior to its capture by King David Amorite ( Sumerian MARTU, Akkadian Tidnum or Amurrūm, Egyptian Amar, Hebrew ’emōrî Perizzites - villagers dwellers in the open country the Girgashite Canaanite nation inhabiting the fertile regions south and south-west of Carmel According to the Book of Genesis and 1 Chronicles, Amalek ( Arabic, عماليق, was the son of Eliphaz and the grandson of In Joshua 1:4 the land of the Hittites is said to extend "from the wilderness and this Lebanon", from "the Euphrates unto the great sea". In Judges 1:18, the Bethel traitor who led the Hebrew into the city is said to have gone to live among the Hittites where he built a city called Luz. Finally in Judges 3:5 it is said that the Hebrew lived and intermarried with the Hittites as well as with the other five "major nations".

Abraham's covenant

Moses

Joshua

Judges

Kingdoms period

In this period the Hittites are mentioned as the ethnic label of two military commanders under king David (around 1000 BC), Ahimelech and Uriah; the latter is murdered by David for the sake of his wife Bathsheba. Ahimelech (Hebrew אחימלך "brother to the king" the son of Ahitub and father of Abiathar (1 Sam Uriah the Hittite (Hebrew אוריה החתי was a soldier in King David ’s army mentioned in the Hebrew Bible According to the Hebrew Bible, Bathsheba (בת שבע Bat Sheva) was the wife of Uriah the Hittite and later of David, king of the

In Solomon's reign (around 950 BC), the Hittites are listed as people whom the Hebrews had not been able "utterly to destroy" in their conquest of Canaan and who paid tribute to Israel. Events and trends 959 BC — Psusennes II succeeds Siamun as king of Egypt. The kings of the Hittites are mentioned (in two similar passages), together with Egypt and the kings of Syria, as senders of lavish tribute to Solomon. Syria ( سوريّة or) officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic ar الجمهورية العربية السورية Then Hittites are said to be among the "strange women" that Solomon loved, along with "the daughter of the pharaoh" and women from the other peoples in the region.

In the time of the prophet Elisha (around 850 BC) there is a passage in 2Kings:7:6 where the Syrians flee in the night after hearing a terrible noise of horses and chariots, believing that Israel had hired "the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians". Elisha ( Greek el Ελισσαίος Elisaios) is a Biblical prophet Events and trends 859 BC — Assurnasirpal II died 859 BC — Shalmaneser attacked Syria and Palestine.

Saul

David

Solomon

Elisha

Babylonian exile and return

In Ezekiel 16:1, Jerusalem is said to be the daughter of a Hittite mother and an Amorite father, sister of Samaria and Sodom. Jerusalem (יְרוּשָׁלַיִם, he-Latn Yerushaláyim; Arabic: ar القُدس, ar-Latn al-Quds) is the Samaria, or the Shomron ( שֹׁמְרוֹן, Standard Šoməron Tiberian Šōmərôn The intent is clearly offensive, but it is not clear whether the reference to the Hittites is concrete or only symbolic. However, a century later, Ezra is dismayed to learn, on his arrival from Babylon, that the leaders who had remained on the land had been "polluted" by mixing with other people, including the Hittites. Babylon was a City-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which can be found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq

Ezekiel

Ezra

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Mendenhall, George (1973). The Hattians were an ancient people who inhabited the land of Hatti in present-day central and southeastern parts of Anatolia, Turkey. Habiru (Ha biru or Apiru or prw (Egyptianwas the name given by various Sumerian Egyptian, Akkadian Hittite, Mitanni The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family and established Uriah the Hittite (Hebrew אוריה החתי was a soldier in King David ’s army mentioned in the Hebrew Bible The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition. The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801816548.  
  2. ^ Humble.
  3. ^ See Doctrines of Causality in Hittite and Biblical Historiography: A Parallel, A. Malamat, 1955. Available through JSTOR. JSTOR (short for Journal Storage) is a United States -based online system for archiving Academic journals founded in 1995
  4. ^ Bryce, Trevor (1998). Trevor Robert Bryce (born 1940 is a Hittitologist specializing in ancient and classical Near-eastern history The Kingdom of the Hittites. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 389-391. ISBN 0-19-814095-9.  
  5. ^ University of Virginia.
  6. ^ Jones, Alfred [1856] (1990). Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names. Kregel Publications.  

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