This is my seventy-ninth monthly teaching letter and continues my seventh year of publication. Since we have completed a series of lessons in defense of Herodotus, we will now continue by defending Josephus; that he was also Anointed of Yahweh for the work he accomplished. In the August, 2004 lesson, #76, it was demonstrated that Herodotus’ writings go hand-in-glove with the prophecy of Daniel 11:1-3. It was shown that the “Darius the Mede” at verse 1 should be Cyrus. How very many have been confused trying to figure out the “three kings” spoken of in verse 2, and come up with all kinds of opinions without any meaningful success reading their KJV or other Bibles rendering that error. No doubt, you were amazed at how easy that passage is to understand once one understands that 11:1 should read “Cyrus.” Once we have established the reality that Josephus was also an Anointed witness to divine prophecy, many other passages of Scripture will be opened to us. 

IN DEFENSE OF JOSEPHUS 

After a long presentation of several lessons justifying the writings of Herodotus, we will now start our case in the defense of Josephus. The following is a portion of the “Introductory Essay” by the Rev. Henry Stebbing, D.D., from the book Josephus by William Whiston, printed by Kregel, Introduction pages XVI-XVII:

“‘Now as to myself, I have so described these matters as I have found them and read them. But if any one is inclined to another opinion about them, let him enjoy his different sentiments without any blame from me.’ But the personal character of a writer must not be passed over-in the estimate taken of the honesty of his narrative. In this respect Josephus may claim honourable attention. The predominant sentiment of his writings is veneration for God and his providence, nor does he omit any opportunity of showing the value of integrity, or the supreme beauty of holiness. His faults may, therefore, fairly be ascribed to somewhat of timidity on the one side, and of literary vanity on the other. Most of the errors with which he has been charged are clearly referable to these sources. Of the others, which cannot be so accounted for, there are some that appear to have originated in the different opinions which prevailed among the Jews of his time, and threw no small obscurity over portions of the Scripture narrative; while the remainder, whether omissions, or statements plainly opposed to the inspired history, must be left without conjecture, and are better disposed of by the acknowledgment that such discrepancies cannot be accounted for, unless by suppositions which involve us in new difficulties.

This is my seventy-seventh monthly teaching letter and continues my seventh year of publication. At this point in time, I am compelled to write additional lessons on Herodotus that I didn’t originally plan to write. As a result, I’m going to have to advance the numbers and dates on my next four lessons. All of this happened when I visited a used book store and found a book entitled  History Of Assyria by A. T. Olmstead. This is the same Olmstead who wrote a very informative book the History Of The Persian Empire. On the book History Of Assyria, the title page was missing, but gave the name of the author on page xvi of the preface, along with a date of 1923. The reason I’m compelled to address this subject one additional time is because a very dear friend of mine tried to dissuade my effort in publishing William Finck’s presentation on the Genesis 10 nations. Upon checking out Finck’s postulations, most of my sources vindicated his thesis.

My friend tried to convince me that the Medes and Persians were Israelites and that Herodotus and Josephus were bad guys, and that their histories couldn’t be trusted. Now, as much as I value this person’s friendship, I absolutely will not digress from what I comprehend to be the truth. I have since resolved that if the truth costs me a dear friendship, that’ll be the price I’ll have to pay, for the Kingdom comes first and foremost above everything else! I have reason to believe, though, it’s a third party’s bad influence that’s causing all the trouble! Anyway, it now becomes my responsibility to expose such false premises in order to protect others from these dangerous pitfalls.

While it is true that most of the Israelites taken captive by Assyria were settled in Media (II Kings 17:6), it is not true, however, that the Medes, as a people, were of any of the tribes of Israel! Rather, the Medes were White descendants from Japheth rather than Shem. On the other hand, a good share of the Persians were made up of Elamites, though surely there were a few pockets of Israelites who settled in both Media and Persia.

This is my seventy-fifth monthly teaching letter and continues my seventh year of publication. With this lesson, we are going to continue to show more evidence concerning Herodotus’ report as regards to the burial of the Scythians and their kings. The idea is to show the account by Herodotus pertaining to this and compare it to the report of the archaeologists. Not only that, but to compare this new evidence against what was offered in the last lesson. The following three articles are from the book The World Of The Past, edited by Jacquetta Hawkes (a set of two volumes) under chapter 5, “Europe”, pages 454-456:

HERODOTUS: The Burial of Scythian Kings

“THE Scythians formed the main clan of an enormously widespread group of nomads, whose territories may at times have stretched as far east as the Yenisei. Although there was no political unity among them, these nomadic tribes shared much in common in their way of life and in their art. The Scyths proper occupied the more westerly part of the range. By the seventh century B.C. they were established in southern Russia, the Kuban and the Crimea, and in time they pushed further into eastern Europe – into Roumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Prussia. At various points, and particularly along the Black Sea, they came into contact with the Greek colonists. Nomadic chiefs employed Greek craftsmen to work for them, and some Scythic art shows a blending of Hellenic with Persian and other oriental elements.

“The Scyths were so powerful in the fifth century B.C. that Herodotus devoted an entire Book to them. To collect material he went to Olbia, a Greek commercial outpost on the Black Sea by the mouth of the Bug. Some of the information he recorded was fanciful, but much has been proved correct. In particular his description of the burial of Scythic kings has been supported even in detail by graves excavated in south Russia and elsewhere.

This is my seventy-third monthly teaching letter and starts my seventh year of publication. In the last two lessons, we started a study with the purpose of defending Herodotus’ historical writings. It’s not a subject that can be passed over lightly. It is especially important in the Israel Identity Message, for without his Anointed witness, we as Yahweh’s kindred people would have far less evidence demonstrating the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. While it is important to have true prophets of the Almighty, it is likewise just as imperative to have witnesses to the fulfillment of their Yahweh-enlightened future foretelling. There are many Anointed witnesses, but Herodotus and Josephus are among the principal ones which, given time, we will cover. Without these two principal historians, much of our Bible would remain a mystery.

The following article on Herodotus is about as comprehensive and well done as one might find. It comes from an era when men were still reputable in their desires to print the truth to the best of their ability:

HERODOTUS

From The 1894 Ninth Edition Of The Encyclopedia Britannica

HERODOTUS, according to the best authorities, was, born in or about the year 484 B.C. He was a native of Halicarnassus, a city which belonged originally to the Doric Hexapolis, situated towards the south-western corner of Asia Minor, but which from a date considerably anterior to the birth of Herodotus had been excluded from the confederacy, and was an isolated Greek town, dependent upon the Persians. Herodotus was thus born a Persian subject, and as such he continued until he was thirty or five and-thirty years of age. At the time of his birth, Halicarnassus was under the rule of a queen called Artemisia, who had been allowed by the Persians to succeed to the sovereignty of her husband, and was mistress, not only of Halicarnassus, but also of Cos, Nisyrus, and Calydna. The year of her death is unknown; but she left her crown to her son Pisindelis (born about 498 B.C.), who was succeeded upon the throne by his son Lygdamis about the time that Herodotus grew to manhood. The family of Herodotus belonged to the upper rank of the citizens.  His father was named Lyxes, and his mother Rhæo, or Dryo. He had a brother Theodore, and an uncle or cousin called Panyasis, who was an epic poet, and a personage of so much importance that the tyrant Lygdamis, suspecting him of treasonable projects, put him to death. It is likely that Herodotus derived from this near relative that love of letters which led him at an early age to the careful study of the existing Greek literature, and determined him ultimately to engage in the composition of his great work. It is probable also that he shared his relative’s political opinions, and was either exiled from Halicarnassus, or quitted it voluntarily, at the time of his execution.

This is my seventy-first monthly teaching letter and continues my sixth year of publication. In the last lesson we discussed the “sin unto death” which is the sin of race-mixing. When a White commits miscegenation, he/she is literally shaking his/her fist in the face of the Almighty. This is also true for anyone who promotes “universalism” in any way, shape or form! We will now continue on a topic which would rank at the same level of seriousness. Most of us have the very bad habit of believing almost everything we hear or read! All the speaker or writer need to do is somehow make his ideas sound reasonable and wrap them up in an attractive package. Amazingly, some of the most intellectually inclined people seem not to be exempt from this detrimental influence. On trivial matters a misjudgment may not be so damaging, but on weighty topics an erroneous premise can cause injury beyond all comprehension. Once such incorrect concepts are set into motion, they can be as damaging as nature’s severest disasters; floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes. All this simply by not checking one’s premise. When such faulty conclusions are applied to Biblical matters, one can begin to imagine the detrimental consequences that can be produced. With the next few lessons, we are going to explore some consequences of these terribly unsound premises. This issue will start with the topic of Herodotus.

While some proclaim Herodotus as the “father of history”, others label him “the father of lies.” To show you why Herodotus was originally called the “father of lies”, I will quote The Portable Greek Historians, edited by M. I. Finley in the introduction on pages 6-7: 

“... Herodotus was no philosopher, he was not even a systematic thinker; but he was no less sensitive than the sophists and the tragedians to the great moral issues, and he made a unique contribution to the discussion. He found a moral justification for Athenian dominance in the role she had played in the Persian Wars, and he sought to capture that story and fix it before its memory was lost.

This is my sixty-ninth monthly teaching letter and continues my sixth year of publication. In the last lesson #68, we surveyed the teachings of Dan Gentry, Stephen E. Jones and Dave Barley. It was observed how, while teaching the Identity Truth, they nullify any beneficial building of the Kingdom they might have accomplished by disowning that Israel has an enemy. By refusing to identify Israel’s enemy, they scatter the Israel sheep rather than gather them (Matt. 12:30; Luke 11:23). They further sabotage the Kingdom by teaching universalism. They all seem to be following the subterfuge advanced by Stephen E. Jones. Since Jones wrote his The Babylonian Connection in 1978 (an effort to wreck the truth of Genesis 3:15), several others have picked up Jones’ toxic leaven. With this lesson we shall continue to expose Jones’ prevarications. I will now present an open letter to Stephen E. Jones written by William Finck.

Before making any comment, it will be necessary to review the offending passage at the heart of his postulation (for the entire quotation, refer to lesson # 68):

“The early Church began as the legitimate tribe of Judah, for they were loyal followers of the King of Judah, Jesus Christ, the legal heir of King David’s throne.

“When the Church was scattered by persecution into other lands, many other people of different ‘trees’ were converted to Christ. These ‘branches’ of other trees were cut off from their former trees and grafted into this Judah fig tree. Soon the number of foreign converts exceeded that of the genealogical Judahites, so that this fig tree began to look like a ‘gentile church,’ bearing peaches, pears, apples, and plums, with only a few branches bearing figs. Hence, men began to think of this tree as something other than Judah. But they were mistaken ...”