"Hi Allen, how do you feel about the Hapiru ,or Habiru…I have heard somewhere that these were semitic mercenaries,possibly being linked with Abraham and the origins of the word hebrew? wishful thinking? I have been told that Old Test.Abraham was a mercenary general with a small private army which was very effective"
The hapiru, or "dusty ones", were the Semitic-language-speaking nomads of the ancient Middle East. "Hapiru" is generally acknowledged to be the origin of "Hebrew".
For generations upon generations, the nomads ranged and raided on the periphery of cultivated areas, taking their tents and flocks (and later, camels) with them. Their descendants and cousins became Midianites and Bedouin and Israelites: all related, all speaking related languages (proto-Aramaic or Aramaic for the most part), intermarrying when they weren't on a razzia, and cheerfully pursuing internecine warfare for thousands of years.
Being raiders by nature, they were often "bought off" as mercenaries: by the Babylonians, by the Assyrians, by the Mitanni and Hurrians, by the Hittites, and even by the Egyptians. And the Egyptians imported numbers of them both as laborers and, in some cases, to rise to important positions in the Egyptian hierarchy (Moses, Joseph). Slaves in Egypt? Well, you write the books, you get to use the words that fit your agenda… I see Exodus as more of a labor action, a walkout.
Abraham doesn't strike me so much as a mercenary general as a hapiru chieftain, traveling great distances over his lifetime (follwo his itinerary sometime) with his extended family/clan/tribe, their impedimenta, and so on. By the nature of that lifestyle, raiding and temporary employment to raid an enemy or *cease* from raiding the employer, are part of the job description.
Abraham's main contribution to the history of mankind appears to be the then-new concept of monotheism. Wandering the desert in a bleak quest for survival can lead you to that form of epiphany just as easily as it can result in a belief in numerous, minor, petty godlets or djinn, usually localized--as the djinn of a mountain, or the djinn of that rock over there, or the djinn of some mysterious burning creosote bush--sometimes requiring humans to construct a box or something to carry one about, if he wishes to accompany them away from his locus.
Most Bedu believed in a similar multitude of desert djinn, generally tied to holy places, until that Mohammed fellow came up with another form of monotheism a while later.
It's all there in the books. You just have to look at what they say and don't say.
Deserts make people crazy. Look at Lawrence. Look at me.
Abraham wandered in the desert and conferred with something he believed to be the Almighty. That resulted--in time--in two of the great monotheistic religions. Moses wandered in the desert and conferred with something that told him He was the Almighty; that led to one of the two, and eventually--through some misdirection--to the other. Mohammed wandered the desert and conferred with somthing that told *him* He was the Almighty.
I expect most any day now, Something will check in with some human in a desert somewhere and like Dr. Phil, ask, "How's that workin' out for ya?" I hope it's not me. I'll tell Him.
Allen
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tim-wood box theory. Rabbi postulates that space aliens messing with us (or conducting an experiment, which is much the same thing) is as valid an explanation.