>DOUGH
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-02-08/ty-article-magazine/.premium/prophet-ezekiel-didnt-live-in-biblical-tel-aviv-the-city-that-never-was/00000194-e26f-d617-a9dd-eeef5c990000
https://archive.is/TBjWB
Prophet Ezekiel Didn't Live in Biblical Tel Aviv, the City That Never Was, New Research Reveals
New research cracks the myth of biblical Tel Aviv: How a dark metaphor evolved into a persistent urban legend
The ancient term "Tel Aviv" returned to the Hebrew language only in 1902, when Nahum Sokolow used it as the title of his translation of Theodor Herzl's utopian novel "Altneuland" (literally, "Old New Land"). A few years later, Tel Aviv became the name of a new neighborhood, originally called Ahuzat Bayit, that was founded outside the walls of Jaffa, and which in time would become the country's second-largest city and its economic hub.
Somewhat less known is the biblical origin of "Tel Aviv": "And I came to the exile community that dwelt in Tel Aviv by the Chebar Canal," (Ezekiel 3:15). The "community" here refers to the Babylonian exile in which Ezekiel arrived, along with King Jehoiachin), together with "all the artisans and the smiths" (in 597 B.C.E., per 2 Kings 24), 11 years before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the better-known Babylonian Exile of 586 B.C.E.
Scholars argue about the stages of the writing of the Book of Ezekiel and its redaction, but it's generally accepted that the original nucleus of the book does in fact refer to an exiled, educated Judean who was active in Babylon in the 6th century B.C.E. It's thought that Ezekiel did in fact live in Tel Aviv, a modest village in eastern Babylon on the banks of the Chebar.
However, the prophet's precise address didn't especially concern biblical commentators and scholars. So, in the course of time, history became legend and legend became myth, and for 2,500 years Tel-abib, or Tel Aviv, as they say, passed out of all knowledge.
But then something came along that no one had prophesied: the science of Assyriology. Together with Sokolow's inspired translation of the title of Herzl's book – "Old New Land" became "Tel Aviv" (Tel of Spring, referring to the season of the year) – it was the Assyriologists who fished "Tel Aviv" from the depths of the biblical text and contextualize it in the day-to-day Babylonian world in which Ezekiel was active.
>Prophet Ezekiel Didn't Live in Biblical Tel Aviv, the City That Never Was
Already at the end of the 19th century, scholars identified Nar Kabari, which appears in several Babylonian texts, as the river mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel (and rendered Chebar in English translations). In fact, it was a canal that carried water from the region of the central Babylonian cities toward the southeast. The Akkadian name, Nar Kabari, means "the great canal," similar to the word kabir (large) in Arabic and Hebrew.
The same Babylonian records in which we find the Chebar Canal also mention many dozens of Judean exiles living in its vicinity. These people, some of whom were from the first and second generation of the exile, worked state lands that were leased to them in an area of eastern Babylon, and many resided in a village that was named for their place of origin: Yahud.
From the Al-Yahudu tablets, many of which can be seen at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, we learn of the economic hardships endured by the exiles in the Babylonian periphery, the Sisyphean tilling of the soil, as well as their efforts to cope with the Babylonian bureaucracy and other aspects of their acclimatization in their new surroundings.
Assyriologists have also discovered the source and meaning of the term "tel aviv." Even though the Hebrew word "aviv" connotes renewal and flowering, it is today undisputed in scholarly research that Ezekiel, active as he was in Babylonia, actually Hebraized the Akkadian word abubu, which has a very different meaning: "flood" or "destruction." And because the word tel means "mound" in both Hebrew and Akkadian, the meaning of Tel Aviv is actually "Mound of Ruins."
Indeed, a number of Assyrian kings boast in their writings that they laid waste to this or that city and turned it into a til abube – a mound of ruins. Moreover, the settlement of Tel Aviv itself was identified as the place where a promissory note found in excavations of the city of Ur (of the Kashdim/Chaldees) was written in the 11th year of the reign of Darius of Persia (510 B.C.E.). Cross-checking the Babylonian and biblical sources makes it possible to surmise the general region where the settlement was located in the Babylonian agricultural periphery, and to reconstruct many of the features of its life through a comparison with the Al-Yahudu tablets.
If so, the prophet Ezekiel, like many exiles from Judah, resided in the Babylonian periphery in a settlement called Tel Aviv on the banks of the Great Canal. Although we have not (yet) encountered Ezekiel himself in Babylonian sources, his neighbors, his audience and the world in which he was active continue to be revealed as research progresses.
Still, not everything is easy, simple and clear. Some of the correlations between the biblical text and the Babylonian sources are more complex than the somewhat superficial picture that was drawn above, and some are simply nonexistent.
First, we need to return to the source we began with, namely the only biblical appearance of "Tel Aviv": "And I came to the exile community that dwelt in Tel Abib by the Chebar Canal, and I remained where they dwelt. And for seven days I sat there stunned among them." A straightforward reading of the text doesn't name Tel Aviv as the prophet's place of residence. On the contrary: Ezekiel isn't from there, he "came to the exile community," which is to say, from outside, and sat with them (where "they dwelt") for a week in distant silence (mashmim, in the Hebrew text). It's a temporary sojourn.
Whether these are the words of Ezekiel himself, of his acolytes, or even of a later author who wrote in the first person singular, there is no doubt that the tradition did not view that settlement as his permanent place of residence.
Like Tel Aviv in the Book of Ezekiel, the Babylonian settlement of Til-Abube is known from only one source: the promissory note from Ur. And in this case, too, despite the broad, even absolute, agreement – of Bible scholars and Assyriologists alike – reading the name of the place is far from simple. Some of the characters on the tablet are marred, others indicate a spelling that cannot be reconciled with Til Abube.
To begin with, the reading of the first element, til, is completely speculative and probably wrong. Unfortunately, it's not possible at the moment to re-examine the tablet and improve the reading of the signs. And second, this is actually not the first sign in the name of the settlement, so that the reading "Tel Abube" is simply not possible (the reading of the last character in the settlement's name is also in dispute). In the end, not only did Ezekiel not live in Tel Aviv – no such place existed in Babylon at all.
In light of all this, what is Ezekiel's Tel Aviv? His prophecies are replete with Babylonian expressions and images, and indicate a deep familiarity with the Babylonian space in which he was active. Accordingly, there is no doubt that the phrase Tel Aviv is indeed based on the Akkadian expression Til Abube – but that was not the name of a settlement. Rather, it was a phrase denoting a "mound of ruins" – which was used to describe devastated communities and lands. If so, it's far more reasonable to understand Tel Aviv not as the name of the exiles' place of habitation, but as a description of their condition.
That reading, though difficult for modern ears, was not problematic at all for St. Jerome, for example, who translated the Bible into Latin in the fourth century CE. He understood "aviv" according to the Hebrew meaning (not the Akkadian, which had long been forgotten), but for him it was not the name of a settlement. The source of Tel Aviv, thus, is indeed biblical, though not as the name of a place, but as an expression of the wretchedness of the Babylonian exile in its initial period and of the despair that seized the people involved in it.
Finally, is it possible, after all, to say something about the Babylonian context in which Ezekiel lived? To begin with, even though many exiles were indeed settled in the agricultural periphery, like the farmers documented in the Al-Yahudu tablets, the Book of Ezekiel contains no image, prophecy or hint of any such way of life. In fact, the biblical author constantly reiterates that the prophet belongs to the Judean elite who were exiled together with King Jehoiachin. That constitutes the chronological framework of the entire book. Even if this is a case of later editing, the identification of Ezekiel among the Jehoiachin exiles is not in doubt.
That exile, which is described in 2 Kings 24, is also documented in the Babylonian chronicles written about five years after the event (that is, before the destruction of the Temple): "The seventh year, in the month of Kislev, the king of Akkad mustered his troops, marched on Hatti [the Levant], and set up his quarters facing the city of Yehud [Judah – Jerusalem]. In the month of Adar, the second day, he took the city and captured the king [Jehoiachin]. He installed there a king of his choice [Zedekiah]. He colle[cted] its massive tribute and went back to Babylon."
A few dozen of these exiles are mentioned in the archive of Nebuchadnezzar's palace as recipients of subsistence allowances from the Babylonian authorities. Their identification as Judeans from the Jehoiachin exile is based not only on the dates of the documents – between the exile of the artisans and the smiths and the exile of the destruction of the Temple – but also on the fact that Jehoiachin himself, called "king of Judah," is mentioned, along with his sons, in the list of recipients of the allowances.
Rare documentation like this seems almost too good to be true, but the fact that the tablets were uncovered in well-run archaeological excavations rules out, happily, the possibility of forgery.
These exiles were settled by the Babylonians in the capital city and given administrative and diplomatic tasks throughout the kingdom. Ezekiel, as an educated and skilled Judean, could have been integrated into this system with no difficulty. In fact, it's possible that he arrived in the community of exiles who had been settled on the banks of the Kabar/Chebar within the framework of an assignment of this kind from the palace. This scenario is also consistent with Ezekiel's positive attitude toward Babylon and with his thorough acquaintance with high – urban – Babylonian culture.
Along with these exiles, we also know of a number of royal merchants who were active in urban commercial centers north of the city of Babylon. As can be gleaned from the description of them, these exiles also operated (and lived) under the auspices of the palace, albeit not in the capital itself. Again, Ezekiel's education and his familiarity with the local landscape enabled him to take part in activity of this sort. In addition, like the exiles from the palace documents mentioned above, the merchants in northern Babylon traveled back and forth in their trade, so in this case too a journey of a few days to the Kabar river is a quite reasonable scenario.
If so, even if Ezekiel's exact address remains unknown at this stage, all the sources we have – biblical and Babylonian – indicate the urban space as his place of residence and (principal) activity. Even if, on one occasion or another, he visited communities of Judean farmers along the Kabar River, that was not his home.
https://nypost.com/2025/02/07/opinion/after-squandering-nycs-trust-anthony-weiner-wants-to-rise-again/
After squandering NYC’s trust, Anthony Weiner is determined to rise again: ‘I’m really good at this’
Anthony Weiner met me for breakfast. He ordered toast, two eggs, corned beef hash and a third chance at politics.
But before we broke bread at Cozy Soup and Burger near Astor Place, he made a prediction — that I would refer to him as “disgraced” in the headline or the first line of this column.
It felt like part provocation, part defense mechanism. Get the punches over with. Rip off the Band-Aid. After all, he has a lot of self-inflicted wounds.
https://x.com/paulsperry_/status/1887900108886356350
Disgraced ex-FBI official Peter Strzok's wife Melissa Hodgman has left her top enforcement job at the SEC, pressured out in Dec. Hodgman, a Hillary supporter, never recused herself from SEC probes of Trump Media & Technology. Strzok ran FBI's Russiagate op against Trump
>Kanye
<Kenya
https://archive.is/uClYc
Military not being deployed to border, but Canada will send drones
The Canadian Armed Forces will not be sent to the Canada-U.S. border, but it will sending more drones to the RCMP and assist with logistics
The Canadian Armed Forces will not be sent to the Canada-U.S. border, but it will sending more drones to the RCMP and assist with logistics, according to National Defence Minister Bill Blair’s office.
Calls to send the military to the border rang out Monday from Opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who requested Prime Minister Justin Trudeau do so as the clock ticked down to the U.S. imposing 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports and 10 per cent on energy resources.
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Earlier that day, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced she and Trump has agreed to a one month delay on the 25 per cent tariffs he planned to slap on Mexican imports after she committed to put 10,000 members from her National Guard at the border,.
A Canada-U.S. trade war was ultimately averted following a second phone call between Trudeau and Trump Monday afternoon, which saw the prime minister announce the U.S. had agreed to delay its tariffs by 30 days.
In exchange, Trudeau announced on X that Canada would continue executing its six-year $1.3-billion border security plan which his government unveiled in late 2024, adding that “nearly 10,000 frontline personnel are and will be working on protecting the border.”
Neither the Prime Minister’s Office or Public Safety Minister David McGuinty’s office have provided a breakdown of those figures, but the Canada Border Services Agency, which is in charge of official ports of entry, says it has 8,500 front-line employees. The Mounties are responsible for policing between official entry points and several provinces say they have sent local police to help with those efforts, since Trump first threatened to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods last November.