https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=HNQEcbRwydw
So, once you start to understand that there’s this overlap and this polyvalence between India and Ethiopia, you know, the extreme east and the extreme west, we can understand the way what you just said, like the way that Ethiopia participates in the symbolism of being the extreme edge of something, right? That it’s both the source of great wealth, this is where all the really great gold comes from, right? Solomon gets it, you know, when the queen of Sheba comes, you know, she brings spices, that nobody’s ever, you know, beaten, like these are the best spices that anyone has ever seen, right? So, it’s a source of great wealth, of great potential, it’s also a source of great danger. Yeah. And so, this danger is often expressed in the scriptures as being, and I’m going to tease the queen of Sheba, but we can’t get there yet. But so, just, but it’s often expressed in the scriptures as being sort of like the mysterious feminine, or even the idea of what, you know, the book of Proverbs would call the strange woman. Yeah. And the idea is that a stranger who comes as a captive, but then who captivates in her turn. So, there’s this reference in Ezekiel, when it talks about Ethiopia, it speaks of it as being the land of all of the mingled people. And it says, Ethiopia and Libya and Lydia and all the mingled people in Chubb and the men of the land that is in league shall fall by the sword. So, this is a prophecy. But the reference here to Ethiopia is as Ethiopia is a land of mingled people. And of course, you’ve talked a lot about hybridity being on the edge. So, when we come to the edge of something, this is what we would expect to find. Yeah. And you can see, like, that’s why, that’s why, for example, in the Greek culture, the Sphinx was said to come from Ethiopia. Right. So, this is this hybrid. It’s dangerous, but it also hides a secret. It keeps this secret. And if you can unlock the secret of the Sphinx, then you have access to this almost like secret knowledge or this secret, all these these these possibilities that you didn’t have before. But it’s also dangerous if you play with it, then it can eat you. Right. So, and on any level you want to look at, this is true. Like ancient Ethiopia itself was made up of multiple nations. Like it would be way too complicated and time consuming to talk about, like, all the different dynasties and migrations and things like this. And although they’re sort of originally what is considered an Afro-Asian or Afro-Asian or a Kushite language, that’s actually Kush, like gave his name to that particular family of languages even today. They’re made up of multiple nations. And so they came to speak a Semitic language. So it’s this Kushite people who then come to speak a Semitic language through an influx of a people group called the Sibians, who are descendants of Shem in the biblical narrative. So they represent this very interesting kind of a hybrid between the Gentile and the Jew, between the descendants of Ham and the descendants of Shem. And this is a hybrid that results, let’s say, in certain elements of the original becoming more extroverted and therefore more strongly preserved. And by the way, this is you see the same kind of hybrid repeated, for instance, on a smaller scale in somewhere like Samaria. So the Samaritans were originally this this in the biblical story, this hybrid between the nations that the Assyrians brought in who intermarry with the Israelites who are left in the land. Right. And so they develop their own particular culture, their own particular religion. And even though they’re excluded from the Jewish people through through whom salvation comes, as Christ says, they do preserve certain things that we, for instance, their version of the Torah agrees more closely with like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the and the Septuagint than the Masoretic text, the modern like the medieval Hebrew text that everyone uses for the Hebrew Bible now. So it’s like it’s like they’re more they’re they’re they’re a hybrid, but somehow that hybridity has resulted in preserving a more extreme or more extroverted element of the original. Yeah. And the way to understand that in terms of pattern is to understand that the edge of the world is also a container. And so if you can understand the word as the mountain, as the pyramid, the way I show it, the bottom of the world is like a cup. And so things get preserved in the cup. Right. No, the edge of the world is a place where things get get preserved in a way that. How can I say that? Like you said, preserved outside of almost kind of outside of the narrative in a way, they’re just kind of held there almost like in as a secret that’s hidden in the waters or this pearl that’s hidden in the field. And so you can imagine something like Ethiopia, the edge of the world, as the field in which the pearl gets hidden in the fish in the bottom of the fish shining in the ocean. It’s all of that type of imagery that that the edge also can represent. As we were we were talking a little bit earlier before we hit the record button about the symbolism of the nest. Right. So the nest is something that’s made up of remainders. It’s like little bits of twig and fur and lint and whatever else. But then it forms a protective shelter around around the egg, the seed of life right at the center. Right. When I think there’s something something similar going on here. Right. Yeah. And you can understand why then something like the Ark of the Covenant has cherubs on it. Yes. But it has these hybrid preachers on it as a kind of seat. You know, talk about the mercy seat or whatever. It might be a bad, bad translation. But there’s a reason why we say that, that it’s like this container, this resting place for the glory. And it’s and so this is all of these things are kind of coming together as we understand the role that Ethiopia plays in the stories.