File:  <hidden.htm>                                                                                                          <Bronze Age Index>         <Migrations Index>         <Archeology Index>          <Home>

 

 

             [Note:  All Basque words are in Italics and Bold-faced Green]

 

      

  BIBLICAL NAMES REFLECT HISTORY *

       [Contacts]

 

Next►

Introduction

 

          Where do the Biblical names come from? How were the letters assembled? Is it possible to find out exactly what they mean?  If so, Nyland (2001) believed that it might give us a deeper insight into the origin of Christianity.  Alternatively, will it create more questions? Our faith is being debated and analyzed more than ever before and that is good because it feels like a fresh wind is blowing through our church, so this may be the right time to ask these questions.

 

          Edo Nyland has searched many years for the true meaning of names and words in different languages. It began with a study of the Ogam inscriptions, carved by early Irish missionaries on pre-Christian standing stones in Ireland and Scotland, on cave walls, spindles, knife handles etc. They were written in a form of short hand in which one consonant often represented one full word, yet were arranged in such a way that the original meaning could be recovered. Most of the messages were evangelical such as: “Come to Christ, he will heal you and give you peace”. This study eventually led to the names of the Bible which, surprisingly, turned out to be written in exactly the same language as the more recent inscriptions carved by the Irish monks. In Genesis 11:1 we are told "Now the whole world had one language" and the challenge for me became to discover if this was factual and if so, what language this was. Would it be possible to show that this single language had indeed been spoken over the entire world?

 

          In 1825 the French Abbot Diharce de Bidassouet wrote in his "Histoire des Cantabres" that Basque was the original language spoken by the Creator. For that remark, he has been ridiculed ever since. At about the same time the Basque priest Erroa maintained that Basque was the language spoken in the earthly paradise. For that his colleagues treated him as a harmless lunatic, however, Erroa was so convinced that he was right, that he appealed to the Bishop of Pamplona (Navarro) who referred the appeal to the Chapter of the Cathedral of Pamplona. This august body considered the matter seriously and, after several months of deliberations, it solemnly gave judgment in Erroa's favor and publicly subscribed to his theory (Gallop p4).

 

          Abbot Dominique Lahetjuzan  (1766-1818) had earlier concluded that Basque was the language of the Garden of Eden and wrote a book with the interesting title: "Essai de Quelques Notes sur la Langue de Basque par un Vicaire de Campagne sauvage d'origine" (Bayonne, 1808). In it he showed that the names of the main characters in the Book of Genesis were all Basque in origin and had appropriate meanings. However, the church leaders in Rome were neither pleased with, nor supportive of, his findings and the abbot's research was forgotten.

 

NAMES MAY BE DECODED

 

          In Edo Nyland’s Ogam research he had discovered that the first three letters, usually vowel-consonant-vowel, of each Basque word were used to agglutinate the inscription and that several vowels were subsequently removed according to a system which allowed only specialists to decode the message. However, the consonant was never removed, unless it was an 'h'. As an example let us take Mozes, which has three consonants to be separated as follows: .mo - oze - es. and immediately the letters 'oze' make sense in Basque, because they are the first letters of the word ozen, meaning 'penetrating voice'. Now the problem was to find out the two missing vowels, the first and the last. In both cases they had to be 'a' because no other vowels created words which matched with the penetrating voice:

 

Mozes
.mo - oze - es.
amo - oze - esa
amorrazio - ozen - esan
anger - penetrating voice - to express
"He expresses his anger in a penetrating voice".

 

          The majority of Biblical names can be decoded by this method so let's take some simple names:

 

Zion
.zi - on.
azi - one
azitoki - onetsi
place where I grew up - to bless
"Bless the place where I grew up".

 

          A slightly more complicated one because the 's' is pronounced as 'z':

 

Israel
is. - .ra - el.
ize - era - eli
izendu - eraspen - elizlur
celebrated - devotion - holy land
Devoted to our celebrated Holy Land@.

 

Nod
.no - od.
no - odo
norberaganatu - odolbateko
to attact to oneself - of the same kinship
"He attacted to himself someone of the same kinship".

 

Euphrates
eu - uf. - .ra - ate - es.
eu - ufa - ara - ate - esi
eurizaparada - ufatu - arao – aterp

 

 

     Bibliography