Eber, the son of Shelah and the father of Peleg (and Abraham’s great great great great grandfather) outlived Abraham by four years. The traditions he established in his 464 year life have continuously affected the world ever since, and a clue as to how both simple and complex these traditions are can be seen in The Code of Eber . The word ‘Hebrew’ is not just derived from his name, it is exactly the same word.
The cultures that formed the dawn of history can be seen as rising from the flux between Nimrod’s city model, and Eber’s mobile nation model, a brief account of which is The Days of the Deluge, Peleg, & Eber. The subsequent history of mankind has been written almost solely about the ‘civilized’ world of cities and nations, ignoring the far more stable and peaceful world of mobile tribal living. The history of Abraham reflects this dichotomy; and in Genesis Unfolded (available in the Book Shop) the footnotes carefully peel back the layers of simplicity that result from shallow readings.
Even Israel’s early history as given in Judges, Ruth, and Samuel shows a fierce underlying conflict during the shift from a tribal culture to a tenuous monarchy. Joab emerges as the last champion of freedom who finally paid the ultimate price for standing up against the newly instituted taxation system. While this could be called an ‘invisible’ conflict (like Paul’s Mystery), it has permeated every action of every empire from Egypt’s land allocations to America’s manifest destiny.
Eber’s Language, the simplification of which is today called ‘Hebrew’, is the language of the living, the land, and their God. This is the beginning of its restoral... though to the indigenous and tribal people of the world, it was never gone.
