Mesopotamia meaning

Meaning

Between Rivers, Imperial Mix, Melting Pot

Etymology

From (1) μεσος (mesos), middle or in between, and (2) the plural of ποταμος (potamos), river of flow.

The name Mesopotamia occurs in the New Testament in Acts 2:9 and 7:2 only. It is the name the Greeks gave to the area that was in Hebrew (and similarly in related languages) known as Aram-naharaim, namely the land dominated by the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. This proverbially fertile area was the homeland of Abraham and Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, Leah, Zilpah and Bilhah, which means that Isaac and Jacob (and Esau) and all the sons of Israel were full-blood Mesopotamians (the only grandchildren of Jacob who also became tribes were Ephraim and Manasseh, who were sons of Joseph and the daughter of an Egyptian priest; hence, like the tribes of Ishmael, half-Egyptian).

As we discuss in much more detail in our article on the Gospel of Impurity, the House of Israel was never "pure" and has always been a catch-all for all sorts of folks, who were driven out of their native homes and ended up on the strain on the drain of human refuse: the old world's version of Rick's Café Américain (because yes, that's what Casablanca is all about), albeit not in Morocco but in Canaan, in between the great empires of Egypt and Persia.

The Bible is not at all interested in politics and military endeavors, and really only in wisdom (and information technology: writing, story-telling, mail delivery). Hence, the Bible uses the familiar names of the Tigris and Euphrates really solely to refer to wisdom traditions and not so much any geographic locations (although there's an obvious and inescapable link between some place and the wisdom of that place). As such, Mesopotamia is the north-eastern counterpart of the south-western region of Egypt and Cush. In the Bible, the People of the Promise swing like a pendulum between these two centers, with a curious oscillating pattern of hate when moving into Mesopotamia but love when moving out, and love for Egypt when moving in and hate when moving out.

Note that Egypt is associated mostly with the sun, while Joseph rose to the top because of his ability to explain dreams. That same ability had Daniel in Persia (the empire that at that time dominated Mesopotamia), where astrology dominated (hence queen Esther, or Star, and the Persian magi who came to look for Christ by following a star).

The name Mesopotamia consists of two elements. The first one is μεσος (mesos), middle or in between:

The second element of our name comes from the noun ποταμος (potamos), river:

The name Mesopotamia means Between Rivers, but does not simply denote the geographical land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates but much rather the principle of the mixing of various wisdom traditions into a single multi-cultural entity, emphatically not a single and "pure" tradition but a Federation or Imperial Mix consisting of the best of many kingdoms: a φυραμα (phurama) or mix, that in a sufficiently great fire becomes a αρτος (artos), a bread, that feeds the world.

In modern times, the United States formed precisely such an integrated Melting Polt, with a level of success that easily compares to that of ancient Persia. As modern analysts increasingly realize, the founding of the US legislative state was strongly informed by the Hebrew Scriptures — Madison was fluent in Hebrew, and several other founding fathers showed strong interest in it, and even considered reviving Hebrew as spoken language in the US (also see The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought by Eric Nelson, 2011).

An example of a modern empire that formed from a single-source by assimilation would be China. Note that, like Egypt "for most of its history, China maintained the highest standard of living in the world — even England only really overtook it in perhaps the 1820s, well past the time of the Industrial Revolution" (says David Graeber in chapter ten of his most excellent book Debt; the first 5000 years, 2011).

And in case you're wondering: the obelisk is essentially a giant sun dial. It symbolizes the sun, which in turn symbolizes the tyranny of government. Egypt was obsessed with them (and dabbed a few stars here and there on walls), whereas Mesopotamia (Assyria, specifically) was obsessed with stars and toyed with an obelisk here and there to commemorate a particularly memorable king or emperor. The world's tallest obelisk is the Washington Monument, but unlike its Egyptian counterparts, is not solid and consists of many elements. (And it's hollow.)

With its Star Spangled Banner, its star-wreathed Statue of Freedom, and even its Hollywood "stars", the US is decidedly star-obsessed. China rather favors solar symbols: the single five-pointed "star" is not actually a star (also see the Bue Sky with White Sun flag of ROC), and the Monument to the People's Heroes on Tiananmen Square is an obelisk. The government is China's unmovable sun; its former emperor strongly associated with the number 9 (and see our article on the importance of the number nine, εννεα, ennea, in Indo-European mythology).

As said above, the polar opposite of Mesopotamia is Egypt, whose Hebrew name Mizraim (מצרים, mizraim) is a plural so as to emphasizes that Egypt is the result of the assimilation of two previous states (or even its 42 provinces; see our article on Bethel). That means that Mesopotamia relates to Egypt the way Integration relates to Assimilation — this same dynamic exists between Star Fleet and the Borg (and between young Skywalker and Darth): it's the old tension between Republic and Empire, between democracy and tyranny, between the Body of Christ and Rome.

And while solar Egypt was considered an enemy of House Israel and was subsequently abandoned and left for destruction, the homeland of starry Mesopotamia was honored and respected until long after Biblical times. The Jews maintained schools there (the Talmud was written in Mesopotamia in the fifth century CE), whose insightful wisdom is alluded to in Matthew's magi and Luke's "shepherds" abiding in "the field" and keeping watch over their flock by night — the magi and the shepherds are rather obviously the same people, namely the leaders of the Jewish communities in Babylon.

Despite its glory in Biblical times, John the Revelator foresees the complete destruction of Babylon's celebrated and unequaled market (Revelation 18:2), having to do with the "drying up" of the Euphrates (Revelation 16:12). Or in the words of Isaiah: "He will break [the Euphrates] up into seven streams so that people can cross over in sandals" (Isaiah 11:15).

There are many ideas but no consensus on what that might allude to, although most commentators seem to agree that these reference to the Euphrates are probably not about the actual physical river that is still known as the Euphrates today. Instead, it's probably a symbol for something. Here at Abarim Publications we don't know either, of course, but if we were to guess, we would guess that the Euphrates in this context is what facilitates or supports the global market, not so much anybody's currency (like the dollar) that will collapse in favor of crypto (say BTC or Cardano), but rather the great conversation between all the languages of the world upon which the global economy is founded. Or even more specific: the English language in which most international trade is conducted.

English is the "melting pot" of languages and probably the least pure language in the world: part Germanic, part Latin, part Norsk and part Celtic, with etymologies that go all over the place — so that very few people actually know what words historically mean and most English speakers use words like they are index numbers (thing one, thing two, and so on). And although that may be the sole linguistic reality of many of us, a language like Hebrew works entirely different. It's important that we realize this, because our mind and our language are very closely related. We may even say that every language has its own mind or mentality or intellectual character.

When people want to improve themselves, they aim to get better or better informed in the language that their mind already speaks. An actual change of one's mind requires a radical change in the operating system of our mind. This requires learning to think in a whole other language. Not simply by learning the equivalents of words (thing one, thing two) in some new language (cosa uno, cosa dos) but rather the filaments and historic associations between the words that breathes life into the language. Our translation of "thing one, thing two" into cosa uno, cosa dos fails to convey that the phrase "thing one and thing two" comes from The Cat in the Hat, and that in 1957, the word cat could refer to some man, a dude, and a high-hatted figure would associate to a banker or circus director and remind a reader of the pandemonium caused by finance, make-belief, propaganda or even the impending invasion of crazy foreign systems of government. When Paul wrote about the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2, Ephesians 4:23, Colossians 3:10; also see John 3:3), he was speaking about learning a new language. Paul, of course, was talking to Jews who had embraced Greek and were forgetting how very different the Hebrew language is and why that is important.

In Hebrew, every word is based on a (usually) three letter code (called a root), from which a larger cluster of nouns, verbs and adjectives derive. That means that when we invoke any Hebrew word, we immediately evoke that word's whole family of brothers and sisters, plus the paternal root that hovers non-corporeally over them and governs them out of some linguistic heaven, where he lives with his own brethren and uncles and such (there are statistically significant semantic relations between roots like ABC and ACB and CBA, and that's just one example). And all of these siblings and cousins help to explain the meaning of our first word, whose meaning is not only demonstrated by its own contexts but also by the contexts of all its siblings. In English, two words side by side is merely a very short sentence. Two words side by side in Hebrew, however, is like a wedding feast in which all the members of two entire families grab hold of all the others and start dancing around the happy couple in semi-chaotic unison. Translations of the Bible can only convey the explicit action of the Hebrew text, but fatally miss out on the vast world of implicit or sub-conscious thought that fills the Biblical universe with angelic song.

In Hebrew, every word starts out from a (usually) three letter code, but then gets dressed up with pre- and post- and in-fixes (particles consisting of one or two letters) according to the word's employ, its practical or executive function. That means that long before a reader starts to read the story, all words (which, as said, are already part of their etymological tribe) also cluster according to their job, like workers dressed for the occasion regardless of what family they come from. All words that express, say, what a bunch of women are doing (they are walking, talking, washing, laughing, whatever), look the same because despite their different roots, they are dressed up in the same pre-, post- and in-fixes. All words that express what a group of men are doing likewise look the same. A word that says what "I" am doing looks different from a word that says what "you" are doing, and whether we are male or female, and alone or together. And all words that do the same look the same.

In Hebrew, there are seven basic actions that a verb can express (active, passive, intensive, causal and combinations thereof), and each of these seven can either be perfect or imperfect and all fourteen come with their signature pre-, post- and in-fixes, plus the ones that additionally inform the reader the gender and number of the subject and often of the object as well. And all these pre-, post- and in-fixes are written with the same letters in which the roots are written, so that it is often not immediately clear where a root stops and an pre-, post- or in-fix begins. All this may seem unnecessarily complicated and one may be tempted to abandon it in favor of a simpler language. But it needs to be remembered that this complicated language arose from an equally complicated mind, and a simpler language will produce a simpler mind.

This complicated mind also gave the world the genius of the alphabet (and the republic, the formal postal system, science, the day off), and it seems reasonable to suspect that there's an essential link between this complicated mind and its many wonderful inventions. That in turn means that a simpler language may be able to use the alphabet (and the republic, and science) but won't be able to sustain it. In that sense, any simpler language is like a domesticated animal, which lives comfortably, house-broken and entirely adapted with us in our human house but would not be able to maintain the house if we humans were to leave it. If this is so, then the world's languages and all the correspondence and literature (and web-pages) are, from some deeply invisible place, kept together by the Hebrew language from which the alphabet natively emerged.

When God commanded that these words are to be on our hearts, and these words are to be taught to our children, and these words are to be remembered from dusk till dawn and discussed whether we sit down at home or walk on the road, without adding to them or taking away from them, he meant these words. No other words; these ones (Deuteronomy 4:2, 6:6-9).

A vast amount of information is conveyed within the similarity of Hebrew words from the same root, and the similarity of Hebrew words with the same job. Translations miss out on all of that. That means that when we read the Bible in any other language than Hebrew, we miss out on most of it. If intelligence has to do with a sensitivity to patterns, then the Hebrew language is incomparably more intelligent than any other language. And it's also vastly more efficient. English is the world's largest language; the language with the most words — and although that seems impressive, the more words you need, the less clever you really are. The Hebrew Bible has 300,000 words, whereas its English translation has 600,000 words, while the 600,000 English words convey a mere fraction of the meaning conveyed by the original 300,000 Hebrew ones.

English is also the world's most spoken language. This means that people who speak English natively, don't have to bother with learning another one. This sounds wonderfully convenient but actually, people who speak multiple languages are notably better at problem solving and adapting to new circumstances, have a less insular view of reality and are less prone to think that "we" are the good guys whereas "they" are incomprehensible barbarians. Something similar is true for people who only read one alphabet: people who also read other alphabets (like Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic or Georgian) are more likely to understand how meaning becomes attached to symbols, which in turn helps tackle enigmas like the mind-body problem, which is a rather urgent problem to solve if we want to understand if and how humans differ from intelligent machines.

Furthermore, despite its many native speakers who know no other language, most people who speak English speak it as a second language. That in turn means that the English language is the one in which the most mistakes are made, while most of its speakers couldn't care less about correctness and only about whether the meaning of their (usually very short) message gets across. English is the world's public toilet.

Today's Twitter English is what Koine Greek was in Alexander's time: little more than a handy tool for short instructions but not exactly something to cherish or honor. In fact, despite the marvels of thought that were once penned down in it, today the English language is little more than the world's biggest prostitute (who sits on many waters, so to speak), in whom the merchants of the world get their business done, but to whom they withhold any further affections.

As we discuss in more detail in our article on the name Jesus, here at Abarim Publications we suspect that the Anglophone world has not enough respect for language to keep itself together. And even if some professional niche depends on its proper use of language, the English speaking world is increasingly developing pools of domain specific jargon in which not only specialized terms float about but common words are used in domain specific ways. The reader may be horrified to learn that rather straightforward terms like "goal" or "object(ive)" or "intentional state" mean something different for philosophers of mind, neurosurgeons and computer programmer, and the three cannot have an interdisciplinary conversation without some intermediary or translator. Likewise, an engineer and a social worker may speak the same English language but have no idea what the other is trying to say. Even the best informed non-theologians will insist that when theologians speak about God, they speak about an imaginary entity like the Loch Ness Monster, whose sole claim to reality is the misguided tradition of hopefuls and the cottage industry that brings wealth to the clever locals. Cosmologists abhor theology, but massively commit to the universe's grand symmetry and preservation laws that was once simply called monotheism. Philosophers likewise abhor mythology, but commit to the conscious mind, the subconscious mind (or "sub-personal cognitive processes") and the physical brain in utter oblivion that they've resurrected the three-tier cosmology of mythology. They're painting the same picture in the same language, and yet feel like they're building a wholly separate world. And so they are.

The Anglophone world simply lacks a foundational text (now that the King James has been largely abandoned). And the purpose of such texts (like the Hebrew Bible, the Iliad and the Quran) was not to tell the audience what to believe, but rather to demonstrate the language. There were no dictionaries or grammar books back then, and once a language had been standardized (by the folks who had produced these foundational texts), specially trained bards would travel from oasis to oasis to recite the same text over and over (Judges 5:11), so that everybody across very large language basins would be constantly reminded of what words occur in which context, and which archetypes tell the great story of being human. English no longer has such a text and its language basin (plus those of comparable European languages) will lose consistency, go supernova and burst apart.

An overwhelming majority of modern speakers of English can't be bothered with the intricacies of, say, the perfect tense, let alone past perfect, or phrasal verbs and irregular spellings. Because why bother? Thanks to conveniences such as YouTube and Zoom and clickable icons and such, literacy rates are plummeting, and people's breadth of interest and depth of perception is shrinking, and folks increasingly cluster around conflicting bumper-sticker convictions.

If a language has a word for a phenomenon, then that phenomenon is consciously considered by the speakers of that language. If that language doesn't, then the phenomenon isn't. In English we may ask someone about their health, or warn them about a dangling icicle, or recommend a nice film, because we have words for those things. But what if we have a feeling for which there is no word? How can we ask if anyone else has ever had that same feeling, where such feelings come from and how to deal with them? What if everybody has such feelings but, unlike love and anger, these feelings aren't popularly discussed in popular lore and songs and such? And so, even though everybody has them, we have no words for them, which means we can't talk about them even if we wanted to. What if being confused is really only a simple matter of not knowing the names of feelings?

If we only know the names of the three primary colors (red, blue and yellow), then a conversation about some painting will be rather short, and much of the profundity of the painting will not be considered. If we only know the word "tree", then a walk through a forest will be not as exciting as when we know the names of all the trees and with those names the specific qualities of those trees. When we know the names of our emotions, we can explain precisely how we feel. When we don't, we feel confused, and that's all we know.

In addition to not having a foundational text, English also has no genders or cases or even proper diminutives (apart from some arcane ones that nobody uses). That means that real-life phenomena that were originally encased within the languages that do, cannot natively be understood by people who only speak English. Some extreme unfortunates may even completely lose their ability to understand femininity and masculinity, or tell the difference between them.

English can't natively consider self-similarities, or how big relates to small, let alone how the One relates to the Many, and thus how the individual relates to the collective. With its tenses, English tethers its verbs to the temporal axis of progression (the timeline), which it requires to be linear and infinite. So doing, it cannot consider what "happens" before time "began" or after it ends. Since time is an effect of the way the universe works (the universe did not begin at some point in time but time "began" at some point in the universe), English cannot natively consider the nature of physical reality, let alone having a go at the universal human mind. The English language can never be the one-size-fit-all of human experience, or hope to shoehorn all humans into a common consensus.

Human experience has no mass and takes up no volume, which means that human experience (and consciousness in general) exists not in spacetime but relates to photonic energy (which has neither mass nor volume nor location nor age and literally marks the edge of spacetime), so that memory is explained by speeds greater than c and the mind-body problem is solved by quantum electrodynamics. All this sits natively baked into Hebrew, into the connections between the words, and English is oblivious to all of that. English doesn't comprehend the cyclic nature of time, or the relativity of reality, or the variation of perspectives, or even the divine Oneness of All Things from which all things come and in which all things relate. English has no Theory of Mind. It understands the essence of things to be absolute and fixed, independent of their contexts. English doesn't cherish the etymological origins of words, and has no native sense of family and the interconnectedness of identities, and emphasizes absolute existence rather than relative existence.

English lacks the wisdoms that are native to most other languages, and that would not be so worrisome if all these obvious deficiencies of the English language didn't create the English-speaking mind and the English-speaking consciousness. The qualities (and lack thereof) of the English language go a long way in explaining much of the popular theology, philosophy and even scientific theory that arises from the Anglophone world.

A sick person who doesn't realize they are sick, is certainly sicker than they think, and telling them this is surely the first step of their recovery, should they choose recovery (Zephaniah 3:9). Entirely likewise, people who only speak English cannot realize how fantastically obtuse and murky their language really is, particularly compared to certain others. But those others are presently on the rise, like yeast that wafts in on the breeze, and ever more people are exposed to them, and reach for them as if for water on a hot day. Learning another language (i.e. learning to think, learning to "put one and one together" in another language) literally changes one's mind and renews the "spirit of the mind" (Ephesians 4:23, Romans 12:2, Colossians 3:10, also see Luke 24:45, 1 John 5:20, Psalm 119:18).

Like an egg that hatches, the consistency of the English language will fracture, because common words will have lost their meaning to such an extent that communication in English will essentially mean nothing, and the dry land of certainty turns to a swamp of doubt. The same thing that happened to the Greek and Latin language basins will happen to English. Pools of regional and occupational slang will pinch off from the standard and form their own daughter languages, but daughters that are mutually unintelligible and hate each other's guts.

When English collapses it will take the entire Indo-European language basin with it, and a monstrous wall of madness will sweep over the earth as international conversation goes up in smoke. When that happens, only the people who speak Hebrew (and Arabic and perhaps some other languages) will keep their sanity. Everybody else will go bonkers — or rather more precise: they will lose their speech and thus their humanity and become animals again and either learn to eat grass (Daniel 4:32) or else begin to prey on each other for food. Civilization for those many unfortunates will stop to exist, and most will die within a few years.