Freumh à Talamh Tioram

CH. 5. COMMON LAW AMONG THE VERY

ANCIENT MIGRANTS TO THE BRITISH ISLES

The right religion requires that man worship and serve only the true Triune God. Men are to serve this Jehovah Elohim in all human actions (including even man's judicial activities). This was revealed to man at his creation and first days in the Near East. Man then knew this truth, both before and after the fall. Genesis 2:8-17 cf. 3:15-24.

When the fallen but gospel-believing Adam left Eden, he trekked forth into Mesopotamia. Genesis 2:8-14 cf. 3:24. Indeed, when Noah and the entire surviving human race later left the ark, they found themselves on the Ararat Mountain Range – in the northern area of the Near East and somewhere in Greater Armenia. Genesis 8:4 cf. Jeremiah 51:27. It is from this spot that man spread forth – first into Babel (Genesis 10:10f), and shortly thereafter out into all the World (Genesis 11:1-9).

The Japhethites preserve the Ancient Common Law

after the Babelic Dispersion

God's original and subsequent early revelations to man were transmitted – whether writtenly or orally – to Adam's descendant Noah. Genesis 3:1-6f & 5:1-5f & 6:9. After the great flood, they were again transmitted by Noah – and preserved especially by his sons Shem and Japheth, and their descendants. Genesis 9:1-19. Though usually perverted traditions later obscured these revelations, many of the latter were long preserved. Romans 1:18-20 & 2:14-16.

Especially Japheth would "dwell in the tents of Shem" (Genesis 9:27) – and thus maintain those ancient customs. Even Dewey's Philosophy of Law rightly asserts 1 that custom is a fruitful source of law. Indeed, whenever customs are common and well-established, they have the binding effect of law – yes, of Common Law . Thus, and rightly so, declared State Legislator and Law Editor H.B. Clark (LL.M.) – in his important book Biblical Law . 2

Perhaps nowhere is this better seen, than in the area of marital customs and common morality. When Ham and his Hamites departed therefrom – it was precisely the Japhethites who clung to the ancient and good customs, such as those of monogamy and morality, handed down to them by Japheth the son of Noah. Genesis 2:24f & 9:22-27 with 10:1-5. Cf. too: Proverbs 5:18f; Ecclesiastes 9:9f; Malachi 2:14f; Matthew 19:5f; First Corinthians 7:1f; Ephesians 5:31f; First Timothy 3:2-12.

Yet this does not preclude divorces on grounds permitted in the Bible. Deuteronomy 24:1f; Isaiah 50:1; Jeremiah 3:8; Hosea 2:2f; Matthew 19:9; First Corinthians 7:15-28f. Yet the ancient and good customs certainly preclude bigamy etc . For "polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe and...was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and African people. At Common Law , the second marriage [of a bigamist] was always void.... From the earliest history of England, polygamy has been treated as an offense against society." Thus Chief Justice Waite, in Reynolds v. United States (1878) 98 US 145 25 L Ed. 244-50.

Again according to these ancient and good customs, a husband is bound to honour his wife. First Corinthians 7:3 & First Peter 3:7. At Common Law, he even has to pay debts that she contracted before their marriage. Again at Common Law, he is bound to support her "in a manner suitable to her situation and his condition." Thus the famous Chief Justice Richardson, in the 1836 New Hampshire case of Poor v. Poor (8 NH 369f).

So Japheth shared in the divine blessings and kept the ancient and good customs of his brother Shem and their father Noah. Indeed, Japheth's first-mentioned and pre-eminent son Gomer apparently became the ancestor of the Gomer-ians alias the Celtic Cimmer-ians – Gen. 9:26 to 10:3f. From them descended the Ancient British ' Cymri ' alias the Brythonic Britons.

Japheth's brother Shem was the father of Eber or Heber (the ancestor of the Heber-ews). Then came the days of Peleg the son of H-eber. In those days, after the destruction of the tower of Babel in Mesopotamia (and no later than 2250 B.C.), the descendants of Shem and Ham and Japheth started moving out into all the World. Genesis 10:25; 11:9; Deuteronomy 32:8; Acts 17:26f.

Indeed, shortly below, we shall be arguing that the true religion of Shem (acknowledging God in all human affairs) would – even in and since the days of Heber – have had some influence also among the sons of Japheth. Compare the Iber-ians in Spain, and the H-iber-nians in Ireland. This was so, specifically as regards Japheth's descendants through his first-mentioned son Gomer – the Celtic Gomer-ians or Cimmer-ians. Genesis 9:26 to 10:5; cf. the Celt-Iberians. Indeed, some of them settled in Ancient Britain.

It is quite likely that Semitic influence accompanied the Japhethitic Gomerians even during their very first journeys towards the British Isles. Genesis 9:27 cf. 10:1-5. Indeed, there is also some possibility of the wise Darda – a descendant of Judah – colonizing the Darda-nelles (whence the Trojans later migrated toward Britain). First Kings 4:31 & First Chronicles 2:4-6.

Judahite Dardanian migration to the British Isles after the Trojan War

In light of both archeology and First Kings 4:31 and First Chronicles 2:4-6. S.M. Bishop writes 3 that the Judean Darda(nus) was the founder of the Trojan State. The Darda-nelles were named after Darda. His son Erichthonius had the reputation of being the richest man of his age. Erichthonius was succeeded by his son Tros. Ilus son of Tros founded that celebrated city called from his name: Ilion [alias Ilium] – but more familiarly known as Troy, a name derived from the father of Ilus.

After the Trojan War, various clusters of refugees from Troy resettled throughout the Northern Mediterranean. Bishop further explains that following the fall of Troy about 1184 B.C., these various groups spread along the southern coasts of Europe as far as Spain.

From the Ancient-Irish Leabhar Gabhala (alias The Book of Invasions ), we glean that at least some of the early inhabitants of Ireland had come from Iberia alias Spain. They called their new habitat 'New Iberia' alias 'Hibernia' – later abbreviated first to 'Ierne' or 'Erne' and then to 'Eire' and 'Erin.'

The feasibility of the above claims can to some extent be seen in the ancient languages concerned. Quite apart from the Celtic source of many 'Later-European' words, one should also consider the grounds there may be for tracing many Hebrew words to an origin similar to the source also of Celtic. Both Proto-Celtic and Proto-Hebrew can to some extent be seen to derive from common roots – either Pre-Babelic or Early-Postbabelic. Thus Crawford's Ereuna – subtitled: Investigation of the Etymons of Words and Names, Classical and Scriptural, Through the Medium of Celtic .

Moreover, as Crawford further remarks, 4 Japheth shall be found to dwell in the tents of Shem. Genesis 9:26f. In Herodotus, the oldest of historians, it is mentioned that the Celts were the most western people of Europe. They had, in fact, penetrated to the most remote recesses of the British Isles.

Colonists from Phoenicia were the founders of States in Greece – and even as far as Britain. Doubtless they brought their customs and language with them. The early language of Phoenicia seems to have been understood by Abraham, who conversed with her inhabitants without an interpreter.

Consider the identity or similarity of some of the commonest words in Hebrew (H), in Anglo-Saxon (A), in Irish (I), and in Welsh (W). There is: ab (HI), father; adon (HW), lord; and ain (HI), eye. Ish (H) is comparable to aesc (A) & eis (I), man. Asaf (H) and osap (I) both mean: gather. Arur (H) and airire (I) mean: curse. Ben (H) and bin (I) mean: son.

Then there is berith (H) and breith (I), meaning: covenant. Dag (HI) means: fish. Dad (H) and did (I) mean: breast. Gever (H) and gwr (W) mean: strong man. Tan (HA) means: basket. Malal (H) and maelan (A) mean: speak. Phar (H) and fear (A) means: bull. rosh (H) and reswa (A) mean: chief. And ur (HI) means: fire. 5

In passing, we must also note the relationship between the Hebrews and the Habiru or Hapiru . The latter – states the Encyclopedia Judaica , 6 refers to an element of society in the Fertile Crescent during the greater part of the second millennium B.C.E. Ugaritic and Egyptian writings indicate that the root of the word Habiru is `apiru (noun form). The existence of the `ayin in the cuneiform, in the sign HA , points to a Western-Semitic origin. It is certain that Abraham was called `Ivri – alias a Hebrew. Genesis 9:27; 10:1-5; 10:22-25; 11:10-26; 14:13.

Development of British Law during the second millennium B.C.

Let us now take a detailed look at the development of law and political government in Ancient Britain from the end of the third millennium onward (2000f B.C.). For recent archeology reveals British importance at least as early as 2000 B.C. Thus Dr. W.S. McBirnie (D.R.E., Ph.D., F.R.G.S.). 7

Indeed, as Professor R.E.M. Wheeler (the Director of the Natural Museum of Wales) has written in his book Prehistoric and Roman Wales , 8 the Beaker-folk (of circa 2000 B.C.) have been regarded as the first Celtic invaders of Britain – by Sir William Boyd Dawkins, Lord Abercromby, and M. Loth. They themselves were three of the most outstanding authorities on the archaeology and history of the Ancient Britons.

The roots of the Common Law of the British Isles are really as old as humanity itself. The great 1765 British jurist Sir William Blackstone remarked in his famous Commentaries on the Laws of England 9 that British Common Law arose "from the Natural and Revealed Laws of God."

Too, in his own book on The Law of the Lord or the Common Law , the eminent jurist and theologian Rev. Dr. William Pascoe Goard (LL.D. & F.R.G.S.) has observed 10 that British Common Law is as old as from the lifetime of Adam, the father of the Adamic race. The book of Jasher (or 'Righteousness'), mentioned in the book of Joshua (10:13) states that Abraham [ cf. Genesis 18:18f] learned the Law in the household of Noah and Shem – the brother of Japheth the ancestor of the western nations. Genesis 9:1-7,27 cf. 10:1-5.

For the Ancient Britons descended from Noah's son Japheth via the latter's son Gomer. The Noachic Laws were brought by the Japhethitic Gomer-ites alias the first wave of the Proto-Celtic Cimmerians or ' Cymri ' – to Ancient Britain before B.C. 2000. Genesis 9:1-27 & 10:1-5.

Phoenician fleets traded with Britain perhaps even as early as Heber-ew Abraham-ic times – and thus even before the building of Stonehenge (around 1860 B.C.). Later Phoenician vessels, quite possibly with Dan-ite crews, may well have brought the (1440 B.C.) Mosaic Law to Devon in Britain by around 1300 B.C. Indeed, it seems that the Celto-Thracian Brut-us of Troy (a descendant of the Judean Darda?) founded London as early as around 1190f B.C.

In its article on the ( circa 1200 B.C.) 'Trojan War' – and also in its further article on 'Troy' – the 1979 New Illustrated Columbia Encyclopedia is quite insistent 11 it has definitely been established that the Troy of the Trojan War was a Phrygian city alias a colony of Phoenicia. For the Phrygians in what is now Northwestern Turkey (in Asia Minor), like the Phrygians who settled in Carthage and gave Aphrygia (alias 'Africa') its name, originally migrated there from Phoenicia – just north of Palestine and Judea.

Owen Flintoff, M.A., was a prominent nineteenth-century British Barrister-at-Law. His valuable book Rise and Progress of the Laws of England and Wales 12 was published in London at the Temple-Bar.

Flintoff explains 13 that in the earliest ages, when the different inhabitants of the Earth were divided into families – Genesis chapter 10:5f and Deuteronomy 32:8 – the representative in the highest degree of the common ancestor was the head of each. To him allegiance was paid in respect of his person and hereditary descent. Indeed, this was the situation among the Japhethitic ancestors of the Ancient Britons – even before they had emigrated from the Near East, via Eastern Europe, to Britain.

In the early bardic times, the Britons possessed their lands – as well as all their other rights – in respect of their forming part of their family or clan. Each family with its connections formed a separate community. At the head of each of these communities, was its hereditary chieftain called pen-cenedl or 'headman of the hundred' which he represented in right of his birth at the Gor-sedd or 'Great Session' alias the Ancient British Parliament.

Customs and laws in Ireland and Britain

during the second millennium B.C.

Let us at this point take a brief look at the customs and laws within the British Isles – within Britain, Anglesey, Man, the Hebrides and Ireland – during the second millennium (2000-1000 B.C.). It is possible that the Celto-Gaels – who preceded their kindred Celto-Brythons in the journeys of both toward the British Isles – were themselves first in Britain before they went on into Ireland. However, let us look at the clearer situation especially in Ireland – among those Celto-Gaelic Japhethites who had migrated (possibly by way of Britain) to Ireland.

Flintoff explains that besides the Gomeric or Cymric Britons – also the Scythian (alias the Magogic) inhabitants of the British Isles originally possessed their lands in tribes. Genesis 10:2 cf. Colossians 3:11.

So, in Ierne or Ireland, each tribe or sept held its territory by a custom. But the chief could not transmit the inheritance to his posterity. For his heir, called the tanaist , was elected by the sept . This custom of 'tanistry' also partially prevailed amongst the Scythians of Scotland, amongst whom each male heir was entitled to an endowment of land.

Indeed, Ancient Irish Law goes right back through Magog and Japheth to Lamech the father of Noah. Genesis 5:28f; 6:10f; 10:2. This is set out in the Chronicles of Eri , and also in Dr. James Parsons's book The Remains of Japhet . Furthermore, also Ancient British Law seems to reach back to the times of Abraham – even before the times of the Codex Hammurabi . See the Ancient Welsh Triads and Edward Lluyd's monumental Archeologia Britannica . These claims will become apparent later, as our argument unfolds. Meantime, even at this point we note the following statement from a very ancient Irish document.

The Book of Invasions , claims Delaney in his book The Celts , 14 says that the first arrivals in Ireland were relatives of Noah. Such were stated to have consisted of fifty-one women and three men who failed to gain entry into the ark and so instead sailed to Ireland.

States that Book of Invasions : "Fleeing from threatened flood, they sailed – seeking the fair island.... From the deck of their hasty barque, they watched the soft edge of Ireland draw near."

It is not too easy (yet nevertheless quite possible) to reconcile all the details of this account, with the inspired Genesis history of Noah. However, even according to the Irish account, two of the three men expired and the other fled from the women – so that the whole would-be 'colony' nonetheless failed even from the very moment of its intended inception.

Preservation of original revelation among the Ancient British Celts

Thus, in spite of increasing sin – and also in spite of inaccurate later embellishments added to the extra-biblical records – God's revelations (both general and special) early penetrated into Mesopotamia. Thenceforth, history spread into Europe – and, anciently, also into the British Isles. There, probably under Heber-ew influence, the Magog-ians or the Scyt-hs settled in Scot-ia alias Ireland (and later in Scot-land) – and the Gomer-ians or Cimmer-ians in Britain's Cumbr-ia (and later in Cambr-ia alias Wales) etc .

Indeed, perhaps already before B.C. 2000 – even Job in the land of Uz reflected a knowledge of the Patriarchs' paradise tradition. This included its references to creation, providence, the fall, redemption, and immortality. See: Job 10:8f; 14:1f; 15:14f; 19:25; 25:4; 31:33f; 33:4,14f; and chapters 37 to 41.

At approximately that same time, some of the Heber-ews or the Eber-ians seem to have established early Celt-Iberian colonies in Iber-ia alias Spain (or Tarshish). Genesis 10:1-4 & 10:22-25. Thenceforth they went on to Hiber-nia, alias Ireland.

The latter is adjacent to the (either prior or contemporaneous or subsequent) colonies of the Japhethitic Gomer-ians in Cymr-ic Wales and Britain. Indeed, some of the smaller islands between Britain and Ireland (such as Man) were occupied by Iro-Scotic Celto-Gaels, and others (such as Anglesey) by Cymric Celto-Brythons. In some areas, the Pan-Celtic Gaels and Brythons probably started intermarrying at early dates – which would then have produced intermediate Celtic dialects or languages such as Pictish etc .

Also the ancient geographer Ptolemy mentions the Scottish Hebr-ides ( Eboudai ). The Gallic Pliny refers to the Hebudes . 15 Indeed, both Pliny and Ptolemy were well acquainted with the Heber-ews – and with their colonies throughout the then-known civilized world.

Around 1900 B.C., God's Commandments and Statutes and Laws were (by divine inspiration) handed down untarnished – to the Shem-itic Heber-ew Abraham. Genesis 26:5. By special providence, they were then also progressively unfolded even to his descendants. Genesis 18:18f. Then, just a little later (and perhaps around 1750 B.C.), a remarkable though degenerating form of Ancient Law was found among some Non-Abrahamic Semites: the Codex Hammurabi .

Very much later again, many of the Shem-itic Heber-ew Northern Israel-ites were brought into captivity in Assyria from B.C. 721 onward. Similarly, Southern Israel-itic Judeans were exiled in Babylonia from 598f B.C.

Perhaps as a result of contact with these ancient covenant people, Zoroaster in Persia and Buddha in India then started the process of codification of degenerated law – even in those lands. These latter legal systems, however, continued to worsen (generally speaking) – until the later arrival and regenerating influence of Christian Missionaries in their territories.

Migrations of Japhethites in general and Japhethitic Celts in particular

Let us now look more closely at the long migrations (first into Europe and then into Britain) of the Ancient Celts. For such, it seems – viz. Gomer and Magog – had descended from Japheth, the son of Noah, after the great flood.

Noah's son Japheth was the father of those whom Elohim the Triune God would enlarge. For "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem" (alias the tabernacles of the true 'Messianic line'). Genesis 9:26f. Thus Shem's Triune God would enlarge the Japhethites – and they in turn would embrace His Trinity, even when the Shemites themselves would repudiate Him.

Immediately after recording this prediction, the Bible names seven sons of Japheth. Of those seven, 'Gomer' is the first-mentioned – listed in the place of pre-eminence. Of those seven, two of them (Gomer and Javan) are mentioned together with their further descendants. As will soon be demonstrated, 'Gomer' suggests a Northern European nation – and 'Javan' the Southern European Greeks.

All this clearly anticipates that God would give the Japhethites not only spiritual blessings ( viz. dwelling-places in 'the tents of Shem'). In addition, God would also 'enlarge' them – and thus give even imperial blessings to the Japhethites in general and to the Northern Europeans in particular.

Thus, and most importantly, the prediction here seems to be foreshadowed that the Triune Elohim would powerfully visit the Japhethites in general and the Gomerites in particular – with the true religion then to be found precisely in the tents of Shem. This was to be expected to occur probably even long before and certainly even more so soon after the predicted incarnation of that 'Greater Shem' – Jesus Christ.

As God's Messianic Prophet and Priest and King, Jesus Himself would then indwell Shem's tent – and transform it into Christ's Church. Then, particularly from that time of the incarnation onward – through their own response to the missionary mandate – especially the Japhethitic Gomerites would indwell those tents of Shem alias Christ's churches. Isaiah 49:1-12f; Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:6-8 & 13:14-27.

Speaking as a divinely-inspired Prophet, Noah predicted: "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem." Genesis 9:27. Indeed, God Himself says: "Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah – Shem, Ham, and Japheth.... To them, sons were born after the flood. The sons of Japheth – Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan.... And the sons of Gomer – Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. And the sons of Javan – Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. By these, were the isles [or 'coastlands'] of the Gentiles divided – in their lands; every one according to his language, according to their clans, in their nations." Genesis 10:1-5.

They were so divided, and progressively so, only after the ( circa 2250 B.C.) destruction of the tower of Babel. That occurred in the days of Peleg the son of Heber (the father of the Heber-ews and the ancestor of Abraham). Genesis 10:25 & 11:9-27. "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam – He set the boundaries of the people according to the number of the children of Israel." Deuteronomy 32:8.

After the deluge, Noah's ark had come to rest somewhere to the south and not too far from the Caucasus – among the Mountains of Ararat. Genesis 8:4. Now the Japhethites are apparently the Caucasian alias the Eurasian-European peoples – and the later nations descended from them.

Indeed, according to the consensus of Bible commentators (and even of secular archeologists and classical historians), we can identify Genesis 10:1-5's 'Gomer'-ites with the Gimir-rai alias the Cimmer-ians. Compare the ancient Cymr-ic Celts of British Wales etc .

'Magog' means the Scyth-ians of ancient Southern Russia. As will later be argued, there is some evidence (in ancient Irish and later British records) that some of them migrated even to Ireland and indeed also before the time of Moses. The great celtologist Professor Kenneth Jackson discerns "a common Brittonic legal tradition of considerable antiquity." This is apparent from the Laws among the Brythons and the Gaels – a compilation of the customs in Cumbrian Strathclyde and those in Iro-Scotic Dalriada.

'Madai' means the Medo-Persians, the Ar-y-ans of Ir-an. 'Javan' means the ancient Greeks (or Ion-ians) – including all the nations descended from them such as 'Elishah' (the Ancient Cypriots), Tarshish (the ancient Spaniards), and the Kittim (or the ancient Greco-Romans); etc . Genesis 10:4.

Interestingly, in listing the descendants of Japheth, the God-breathed Genesis 10:2-3 concentrates on the Western or European (alias the major) branch of the Japhethites. For, at the time Genesis ten was first inscripturated, some of the Iranian Aryans had not yet moved eastward from Persia into Southern Asia – nor the Northern Aryans yet crossed over the Himalayas and moved thence southward into India.

Moreover, among those Western Japhethites indeed listed, Genesis 10:2-3 gives the pre-eminent place to the descendants of Gomer (alias the ancient Celts). "The sons of Japheth: Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan.... And the sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah.

Gomer, as one of the sons of Japheth, also includes Gomer's descendants. Gomer is mentioned in Genesis 10:2f, First Chronicles 1:5f and Ezekiel 38:6. Gomer's brother Magog is similarly mentioned in Genesis 10:2, First Chronicles 1:5 and Ezekiel 38:2 & 39:6. Among Gomer's mentioned sons, were Ashkenaz and Riphath and Togarmah. Genesis 10:3.

Togarmah is also mentioned in Ezekiel 27:14 and 38:6, where his descendants are noted as famed horsetraders and horsemen. Robert Young, Doctor of Law (LL.D.) – in his famous Analytical Concordance to the Holy Bible 16 – places Togarmah in the North of Armenia. There is no doubt that 'Togarmah' signifies the ancient Armenians just south of the Caucasus.

A-shken-az [ cf. 'A-Sguz' alias 'Scyth'] is also mentioned by Jeremiah (51:27) at the end of the seventh century (B.C.). At that time, the Scyth was some distance to the north of Palestine – and is described by Young 17 as being "the people or tribe whose original seat was in the neighbourhood of Armenia" in Transcaucasia.

Later, the Scyths settled as far south as the town of Scythopolis – the old Beth-Shean, west of the Jordan between Galilee and Samaria in Palestine. Significantly, the word 'Ashkenaz' was later applied also to the Germans ( cf. the Anglo-Saxons). To this very day, the Jews themselves call the German Jews: Ashkenazim .

Riphath, observes Young, 18 was a son of Gomer. Genesis 10:3 cf. First Chronicles 1:6. His descendants the Celts marched northbound across the Riphaean alias the Carpathian or 'Ca-Riphath-ian' Mountains – and then into Western Europe. Riphath therefore seems to include also the Northern Celts of the western part of the European Continent. Later, the Swiss identified the Riphaean Mountains with their own Alps – and the Riphaeans with themselves.

The picture drawn by Genesis 10:1-5 anent the populating of "the Isles of the Gentiles" – is very clear. It is that of the Japhethites in general and the Gomerites (alias the Cimmerians) and the Magogians (alias the Scythians) in particular steadily moving westward – from the Near East; across the face of Europe; and toward the British Isles.

The identities of Gomer and Magog in the various parts of Holy Scripture Now the mention of Gomer, Magog and Togarmah in Ezekiel 38 (at its verses 2 & 6) – and of Magog at Ezekiel 39:6 and in Revelation 20:8 – is easily reconcilable with the above identifications. We begin with the latter verse.

Revelation 20:8 is apparently referring to an action by Magog at the time of some event which – clearly being as yet still future – is not germane to his past or present identity. That future event, however, may well be the final resurrection of long-dead ancient Magogians. 19

The interpretation of the events described in Ezekiel 38:2 to 39:29, however, is easier to establish – and of some importance to our dissertation. Ezekiel 39:29 ( cf. Acts 2:1-4f & 1:5-8) seems to date the fulfilment of those events around the time when God pours out His Spirit upon the house of Israel. This would place the time of fulfilment within the generation which commenced on Pentecost Sunday – and which some four decades later ended with the destruction of Jerusalem in (70 A.D.) at the hands of the armies of the pagan Romans and their foreign mercenaries. Acts 2:17-40 cf. Luke 17:24-37 & 21:20-32.

Ezekiel 38:2f might then very well imply that God would deliver His elect from among ethnic Israel, at the very time when 'Gog' – alias the Roman armies and their many mercenary allies from Scythia, Persia, Ethiopia, Gomer, Togarmah, Arabia and Spain – would attack Palestine (especially from 66 till 70 A.D.). Cf. Ezekiel 38:2-6 & 38:13 & 39:29 with Luke's Gospel 17:24-37 & 21:20-32, and with Acts 2:1-20f (authored by the same Luke).

The great commentators Adam Clark, Albert Barnes and Patrick Fairbairn 20 all point out that Ezekiel chapters 38:2 through 39:29 were fulfilled in Old Testament Israel's "terminal generation" – which commenced with the outpourings of God's Spirit on Pentecost Sunday. Acts 2:1-18f. As such, Ezekiel's Gomerites (or Cimmerians) and his Magogians (or Scythians) would refer not just to East-Cimmerians and East-Magogians but also to 'West-Cimmerians' and West-Magogians. The latter two groups would include western nations such as also the Cymric or Celto-British, the Germanic or Anglo-Saxon, and the Gaelic or Iro-Scotic. It is important to know that the kindred Cymri and Gaels and Germans all supplied mercenary troops in the Roman armies which assailed Palestine around 64f B.C.

Significantly, Josephus 21 and other writers 22 quite bear out this fact. Our own main concern here, however, is with the identification of Gomer and Magog not in Ezekiel chapters 38 & 39 but rather when first mentioned (way back in Genesis 10:1-5). It is this matter which we must now address.

Writes the (480-408 B.C.) famous historian Herodotus of Greece: 23 "The Kelt-oi are beyond the pillars of Hercules" alias the Straits of Gibraltar; and are "the furthest to the west of all the peoples of Europe." The geographer Strabo adds (a decade or two before the birth of Christ): 24 "The ancient Greeks...who became acquainted with those natives towards the west, styled them Kelt-oi and Iberi-een – sometimes compounding the names into Kelt-Iberieen or Kelto-Scythieen ."

Indeed, Strabo's contemporary, the Roman writer Vergil, refers to "the Britains almost severed from the World." 25 By "the Britains," Vergil here apparently meant the British Isles – viz. Britain, the Channel Islands, Anglesey, Man, the Hebrides, the Scyllies, and Ireland (all of which were known to various classical writers before the incarnation of Christ).

Consequently, also Tindal states in his 1757 Introduction to the Frenchman Rapin's History of England that Great Britain was peopled by the Celtae . Indeed, McQueen told Samuel Johnson 26 in 1773 that the Scythians had settled in Skye, and were the ancestors of the Celts in the Hebrides.

Significantly, (the 75 A.D.) Josephus 27 describes how Rome had over the previous two centuries conquered the entire Mediterranean. By the time of Josephus, the Roman Empire in fact embraced: Italy, Greece, Illyria, Dalmatia, the Danube, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, parts of Persia, Arabia, Egypt, parts of Ethiopia, Libya, Cyrenaica, Carthage, the Pillars of Hercules, Spain, Gaul, most of Southern Britain, and even parts of Germany.

How exactly these areas correspond to those listed in Ezekiel chapters 38 & 39! For Josephus, 28 Suetonius 29 and Tacitus 30 – all then alive at that very time – each note German and Celtic and other mercenaries in the first century (A.D.) Roman armies. So too does Dion Cassius, 31 writing around 229 A.D.

In 1831, Dr. Pritchard – in his book Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations – described the British Celts as Aryans alias Japhethites. Indeed, in 1851, the famous and learned antiquary Sir Daniel Wilson – sometime Bishop of Calcutta – called the British Isles the insular home of the Keltai . 32

Various evidences that the Gomerites became the British Cymri

So the Japheth-ites in general, and the Japhethitic Gomer-ites alias the Cimmer-ians or the Celts in particular, spread forth (from circa 2200 B.C.). They moved out, especially westbound, into the coastlands or "the isles of the Gentiles" – including the British Isles. Thus the (1440 B.C.) 'Mosaic' – and probably also the much earlier 'Pre-Mosaic' – Genesis 9:19 & 10:3-5. See too (the 740 B.C.) Isaiah 49:1-12 & 66:19.

We have just suggested that the (1440 B.C.) Mosaic list of "the sons of Japheth" in Genesis 10:1-5 may very well also have been Pre-Mosaic. By this we mean that God may well have preserved and disclosed to Moses – for subsequent infallible inscripturation by him – even Pre-Mosaic and centuries-old accurate documents or oral traditions. Such might well have included 'the generations of Noah' in Genesis 6:9f, and 'the generations of the sons of Noah' in Genesis 10:1f etc . 33

Gomer was one of the sons of Japheth, the son of Noah. Genesis 10:1-5 cf. Hosea 1:3 etc . Indeed, the Genesis 10:1-5 Mosaic/Pre-Mosaic list has "Gomer" – cf. the Gi-mir-ri or the Cim-me-ri-ans – in its very first place of pre-eminence. Those Cim-me-ri-ans are apparently further to be identified with the 'Cym-ri' – alias the westerly ancient Celto-Brythons who ultimately settled in British 'Gomer-ia' alias Cumbria (and Cambria).

As evidenced even from modern place-names, those Cymri settled: in Gomer-set alias Somer-set, in what is now the southwest of England; in Cambr-ia, alias British Wales; and in Cumbr-ia, alias British Westmorland etc . 34 See too: Cromar-ty in Northern Scotland, and Mont-Gomer-y alias "the Mount of Gomer" or "the Mount of the Cymr-i" in Wales etc .

Beale Poste remarks in his book Ancient Britain that the word 'Cambries' is used by the famous sixth-century Brythonic church historian Gildas as the title for the Brythonic kingdom of Strathclyde. That included Western Scotland south of the Clyde, Cumbria, Cambria, and Mercia – viz. the area stretching from Dumbarton or Dunn-Breatann on the Clyde right down to Warwick. 35

The B.C. 850 Greek writer Homer 36 mentions the Cimmer-ians as then being at "the Frontiers of the World." The B.C. 450 Greek historian Herodotus describes how the Cimmer-ian Celts had before his time already moved westbound from Eastern Europe – when the Olbio-Scyths had pressured them onward. 37 Even the socialist historian H.G. Wells refers 38 to Assyrian princesses, like Esarhaddan's daughter, who were married to Scythian chiefs.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica declares 39 that Gomer, the eldest son of Japheth, in the table of nations listed in Genesis ten represents the people known to the Greeks as Cimmer-ians and in the cuneiform inscriptions called Gi-mi-ra-a-a. Their earlier known home is the district north of the Black Sea. They appeared on Assyria's horizon first in the reign of Sargon, when they overthrew Urartu or Ararat in Armenia and settled there. By 700 B.C., they migrated into Asia Minor – and thence into Western Europe.

The Elizabethan antiquary and chronicler Raphael Holinshed observes 40 that the ancient historian Athenaeus of Greece records how the Celtic Gauls had their first dwelling-place surrounding Isther. This was the Lower Danube to the northwest of the Black Sea, near 'Kelt-town' alias Galati. They afterwards divided themselves. Others who inhabited the dominion of Tyrol were called Brenni (whose seat was on the Mount Brehere part of the Alps).

Welsh Britons have plenty of pedigrees and genealogies in their own tongue. Many of them can without stopping readily derive the same either from Brut or some of his band such as Aeneas and other of the Trojans – and so on, even right back to Noah. Their ancient bards were very diligent in their collections of those genealogies. In times past they – learning them no doubt from the Hebrews ( cf. Genesis 10:2-5 & 10:22-25) – very solemnly preserved the catalogues of their descents, showing themselves to be of an ancient and noble race.

The Cimmer-ians' kinfolk – the Scyth-ians ( cf. Genesis 10:2's 'Magog') and the Celto-Scythians – perhaps also included the ancient Sakka or Sacae ( cf. the Saxons). They seem to have been but another energetic branch of the Gomer-ites who, around especially 600f B.C., pushed the 'Cymri' westward.

These Sacae themselves then later following them into Western Europe. They did so perhaps first as the (100 B.C.) Cymbri of Dan-mark, and certainly as the later Anglo-Saxons. Indeed, around 429f A.D., these Sacae pushed on even into Britain itself.

Celtologist Rev. Edward Davies remarks 41 that Herodotus understood it was the custom of the (Celto-Cimmerian?) Hyperboreans to deliver their sacred gifts into Scythian hands. Herodotus enquired from the Scoloti (whom the Greeks of his age eminently termed Scythians), respecting the Hyperboreans. The Celto-Scythians, explains Davies, then occupied the southwest of Germany. It is unquestionable that the British Belgae were their relatives.

Rev. Professor Dr. Edwin Yamauchi on

the Gomerites and the Scythians

Gomer-Cimmer has been identified also by Japanese-American Ancient History Professor Dr. Edwin M. Yamauchi of Miami University. He states 42 that the Biblical 'Gomer' (Genesis 10:2-3 & Ezekiel 38:6) may be associated with the tribe known in nonbiblical sources as the Cimmer-ians (Akkadian 'Gimmir-aia'; Greek 'Kimmer-ioi').

In the eighth century B.C., Homer 43 associated the Cimmerians with a fogbound land, perhaps the Crimean peninsula on the north shore of the Black Sea. In the fifth century B.C., Herodotus 44 related that the Cimmerians were driven by the Scythians – as the Scythians themselves were pushed westward. This is a development which can be correlated 45 with Chinese records.

Though the Assyrians distinguished between the Cimmerians and the Scythians, later texts of the Neo-Babylonians and Persians (sixth-fifth century B.C.) use the term 'Gimmiraia' also for Scythians. The Cimmerians' name Gimmiraia still survives in the Akkadian segment of Darius's Behistun inscription, as a designation for the Scythians ( Saka in Old Persian).

Some Cimmerians may have settled in Cappadocia in Eastern Turkey, 46 which the Armenians would later call Gomir. Later writers, such as the (20f B.C.) Strabo, 47 seem to use the term 'Cimmerian' interchangeably with 'Scythian.' In the first century A.D., Josephus 48 identified the 'Gomerites' with the Celtic Galatians.

Specifically the Scythians were apparently of Gomeric-Magogian-Ashkenazic extraction. See Genesis 10:1-5. Thus Yamauchi adds 49 that in the Old Testament the Hebrew word 'A- sh-k -enaz' ( cf. Scy-th ) occurs in Genesis 10:3.

It occurs also in a parallel place at First Chronicles 1:6 – and again in Jeremiah 51:27. The word has been identified 50 too as an equivalent of the Akkadian name for the Scythians, 'I- sh-k -uza.'

The Persians called the various Scythian tribes 'Saka' ( cf. the 'Sax-ons'). The Greek name, Skythees , appears once in the New Testament in a very significant passage. Colossians 3:11. In the narrow sense, the Scythians were the tribes who lived in the area which Herodotus during the fifth century B.C. designated as Scythia – i.e. , the territory north of the Black Sea.

Some Scythians even married Greeks. Aeschines frequently taunted his rival Demosthenes – the greatest Greek orator of all time – with the fact that his maternal grandmother was a Scythian. Herodotus 51 tells us the remarkable tale of Scyles, whose father was a Scythian king in the city of Olbia ( cf. the later 'Albion'). Anacharsis (sixth century B.C.), though not in the earliest list of the Seven Sages, later took the place of Periandros. Thus Professor Yamauchi.

One should further compare the favourable mention of Anacharsis the Scythian by the fourth century B.C.'s Menander – and again by Tatian in his (second-century A.D.) Oration to the Greeks . Indeed, also the (first-century A.D.) Jewish historian Josephus 52 recounts that the wisdom of Anacharsis the Scythian won the admiration of the Greeks.

Hastings's Encyclopaedia & Gladys Taylor

both identify Scythians with Scots

The Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics declares 53 that the Irish and Scottish Picts were derived from Scythia. The Welsh tradition found in the Brut , represents the Picts as coming together with their King Roderic from Scythia to Alban alias Scotland – probably after the arrival of the Welsh in Britain.

The Scot-s are so called, because they come from Scyth-ia. Bede brings also the Picts from Scythia to Ireland – whence the Iro-Scots directed them to go on into North Britain. There, they inhabited the northern part – the Brythons being in possession of the southern.

In her famous book The Celtic Influence , Gladys Taylor agrees. There she states 54 that according to that famous Early-English document known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , the Britons came from Armenia. Cf. Genesis 8:4 & 9:27 to 10:5. She adds that the Chronicle further records that the Picts came from the 'south' of Scythia. That could be any region from the mouth of the Dan-ube to the Cimmer-ian Crimea. The Picts themselves, as ancient inhabitants of both Ireland and Scotland, spoke of Thrace (which is in that general region). The Welsh Brut speaks of the Picts as being 'men of much might' – and as having come from "over the sea-flood" with their king "Roderic out of Scythia."

Diodorus, Josephus and Selden on the identity

of the Gomerites and the Cymri

The (60f B.C.) Diodorus Siculus was a Grecian Sicilian – a Greek-speaking 'universal historian' from Sicily. He wrote a forty-volume Historical Library (or 'World History') – stretching from the more ancient times right down to Julius Caesar's (58f B.C.) Romano-Gallic Wars.

It is very significant that Diodorus tells us 55 "the Britons [also]...dwell in Iris" alias Ireland. Indeed, he adds that they "in ancient times overran all Asia" – meaning Asia Minor alias the modern Turkey.

Diodorus continues: "They were called Cimmer-ians" ( cf. Gomer-ians in Genesis 10:2-5) – "time having corrupted the word into the name Cimbri-ans , as they are now called.... They are the people who...settled themselves" in Northwestern Europe – "being called in time Greco-Gauls ." Compare too the Celtic 'Gomer' with the Grecian 'Javan' in Genesis 10:3-5.

Also the first century's Tacitus adds: 56 "Bordering on the [Atlantic] Ocean, dwell the Cimbri " – especially in what is now Dutch and Danish Zealand. "Of their ancient glory, widespread traces yet remain" among the Dutch and the British Belgae – and also among the Danes of the Cimbrian Peninsula.

Kindred peoples were then ranged all the way from Estonia in the East to the British Isles in the West. In their midst, explains the (first-century A.D.) Tacitus, were "the Anglii " alias the Anglo-Saxons in Ancient Germany – "fenced in by rivers or forests." In the East, were "the tribes of the Aestii " – alias the red-haired pre-ugric Ancient Estonians – whose "rites and fashions and style of dress are those of the Suevi [in Germany], while their language is more like the British" in the West.

It is further significant that also the great Jewish historian Josephus 57 wrote (around 93 A.D.): "Japhet, the son of Noah, had seven sons. They inhabited so, that – beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus [in the modern Turkey] – they proceeded along Asia [Minor] as far as the river Tanais, and along Europe to Cadiz [in the ancient Celt-Iberia alias the modern Spain]....

"Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Gal-atians [alias the Gaels or the Celts], but who were then called Gomer-ites. Magog founded those that from him were named Magogites, but who by the Greeks are called Scyth-ians."

Indeed, adds Josephus, 58 "the Germans...composed the Celtic." He even refers, in one and the same breath, to the strong "Germans themselves" – as well as to "the Ocean with which the Britons are encompassed." 59 For with the British Channel and the Irish Sea – "what a 'wall' the Britons had" beyond "the Pillars of Hercules" 60 alias the Straits of Gibraltar!

In his famous seventeenth-century book Collected Anglo-British Miscellanies , the great legal antiquary and Westminster Assembly hebraist Dr. John Selden points out 61 that sources such as the renowned chronicler William "Camden (and others) – quoting Genesis 10:1-5 and Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews " 62 – clearly establish that the Ancient Cymri descended from Gomer. Selden states the following were derived from Gomer: "the Gomerites , the Cimbri , the Cimmerians , the Cambrians , or the Cumbrians . For that is what these names signify among the Ancient Britons.... That these conjectures are very greatly probable, 63 W. Camden has proven." 64

In his Notes on [the 1492f Lord Chief Justice] Sir John Fortescue's 'In Praise of the Laws of England' – Selden also states 65 that "much more is to be had from the antienter and true origination of the Britons , which is from Japheth and his posterity. See Camden. And in the Greek Scaligerian Chronicle of Eusebius, the British Isles with all the West are given by Noah's last will and testament to Japheth." Cf. Genesis 9:27 to 10:5.

In his England's Epinomis (alias 'The Legal Rights of England'), Selden further states 66 that the famous (third-century B.C.) Babylonian historian the "Chaldee Berosus, refers to one 'Samothes' – alias the 'Meshech'" mentioned in Genesis 10:2. That Meshech was the "brother to Gomer and Tubal, of Japheth's line.

According to Berosus, adds Selden, this 'Samothes' was the ancestor or "author of the Celts.... His commentator Annius de Viterbo adds 67 that 'Samothes was the brother of Gomer and Tubal. He had Japheth as his ancestor, from whom first the Britons and thence the Gauls descended.'"

The earliest travels of the Cymric Proto-Welsh from Ararat to Britain

In the narrower sense, the Gomer-ians alias the Cymri were especially the Brythons. By such, we mean the 'Proto-Welsh' who settled in Britain – perhaps only after the Iro-Scotic Gaels had lived in parts of Britain, and certainly while the Iro-Scots were yet living in Northern Ireland.

The Encyclopedia Americana states 68 that the Cymri are a branch of the Celtic family of nations. Those Cymri appear to have succeeded the Gaels in the great migration of the Celts westward. The Cymri seem to have driven the Gaels westward into Ireland and the Isle of Man, and northward into the Highlands of Scotland. The Cymri themselves there and then thus gained occupation of the southern parts of Great Britain.

During the fifth and subsequent centuries A.D., the Cymri were themselves driven out of the Lowlands of Great Britain by the invasions of Germanic tribes – and compelled to take refuge in the mountainous regions of Cambria, Cornwall, and Cumbria (alias Cumberland and Westmorland). A part of them also crossed over into Gaul and settled in Brittany.

Wales may now be regarded as the chief seat of the Cymri (a name which the Welsh give to themselves). On account of the similarity of the name, the Cymri have been identified both with the Cimbri and the Cimmerii .

To this, the Encyclopaedia Britannica adds 69 that Cumber-land in Cumbria was the land of the Cymri. It was first inhabited by Celts ( cf. their stone monuments and inscriptions); then conquered by Agricola the Roman in 80 A.D.; and thereafter renamed `Cumbria.' This 70 is the Latin name for Cumberland – which had been inhabited by the Cymric Celts before the Roman occupation of Britain, and which remained so inhabited also thereafter.

Significantly, also Barrister Owen Flintoff records 71 in his book The Rise and Progress of the Laws of England and Wales that the ancient Britons form part of the great Cimmerian or Gomerian nation. At the time of the Trojan War, which took place about 1200 years before the Christian era – and therefore about 1000 years after the time when Noah's son Gomer the founder of their race left the mountains of Ararat – their principal seat was the country bordering on the Caspian and Black Seas. There appears a strong resemblance between the customs of the nations engaged in the Trojan War ( circa 1200 B.C.), and the Britons ( circa 1190f B.C.). Compare Genesis 10:1-5 & 38:30f with First Kings 5:31 and First Chronicles 2:6.

Flintoff further argues 72 that the religion of the Britons had its origin in truth – and was preserved despite their long wanderings from the East. It was principally founded on their traditions of the deluge, considering Noah the restorer of mankind. They retained traces of the Trinity, as indeed seen also among the Ancient Greeks at the time of the Trojan War. See Homer's Iliad XVI:384. Accordingly, the cromlech or 'triune' tri-lithon or threefold stone arch – of which there are many in Britain – was intended to represent the Noachic ark and also to point to the Trinity. See Davies's Mythology of the Druids .

Even the by-now-thoroughly-secularized more recent editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Encyclopedia Americana do not disagree with this perception. Thus, in its article on 'Japheth' the 1929 Britannica states 73 that the table of nations in Genesis chapter ten represents Japheth as the ancestor of the northern peoples – including those of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean as well as Armenia.

Indeed, the 1951 Americana adds 74 that Japheth was a son of Noah and the progenitor of the branch of the human race called Japhetic. Married before the flood, he and his wife were saved in the ark. The birth of his seven sons occurred after the deluge (Genesis 10:1). It seems the name in Genesis 9:27 is derived from an Aramaic root signifying 'to expand' – an allusion to the wide expansion of Japheth's descendants in the west of Europe. Others trace it to the root 'fair' – in reference to the light complexion of his posterity.

There is also considerable archeological and other evidence in support of the above identifications. We refer to our various Addenda 75 later below. Here and now, however, we (much more importantly) first demonstrate from the history of exegesis that the above claims are indeed the clear implications of that most important Biblical passage – Genesis 9:27 to 10:5.

The Lutherans Delitzsch, Kurtz, Hengstenberg &

Keil on Japhethitic Gomer-ites

We now support the above statements by citing from perhaps the most epoch-making commentary on Genesis yet written. We refer, of course, to that of the great Hebrew-Christian German-Lutheran Bible Scholar – Rev. Professor Dr. Franz Delitzsch.

Delitzsch writes 76 concerning the seven sons of Japheth that the people 'Gomer' are those who were called Cimmerians already in the Odyssey (11:14) – authored by Homer (around 850 B.C.). They are known in The Histories of the (450 B.C.) Ancient Greek Herodotus as the nation in the Tauric Chersones alias the modern Ukraine – who are not racially different to the Kimbroi (of Denmark and Northwestern Germany). The old sound of their name has still maintained itself in the mouth of the inhabitants of Wales, who call themselves Cumri or Cymri – and their country Cymru .

Rev. Professor Dr. Franz Delitzsch further insists that 'Magog' – as the (first-century A.D.) Josephus has explained 77 – means the Scyths of the Caucasus. The 'Madai' are the Medes. 'Gomer' is the father not just of the Cymri but also of Ashkenaz or the 'Germans' (according to the Jewish tradition). He further fathered also 'Togarmah' – meaning the Armenians, who still call themselves the 'House of Thorgom.'

The famous Old Testamentician (and Church History Professor) Dr. Johann Heinrich Kurtz agrees with Delitzsch. In Genesis 9:26f, states Kurtz, 78 Noah intends to bless Shem. Kurtz then refers to Hengstenberg's Christology , Hofmann's Predictions , and Haevernick's Theology of the Old Testament .

Hengstenberg renders the passage: 'Japheth shall dwell in the (spiritual) tents of Shem' – i.e. , he shall be received into the fellowship of that salvation which is to proceed from the race of Shem. Thus the Triune God Elohim prepares for Japheth a way to the tents of Shem, where he is to find both Jehovah and His salvation.

Japheth was adapted only for the North, and for the temperate zone. His descendants constitute the moving and impelling element in history, settling all over Europe. Compare Horace's Odes (I:3). The descendants of Japheth develop into the Caucasian race. Thus Kurtz.

The famous Old Testamentician Rev. Professor Dr. C.F. Keil, in his celebrated Commentary on Genesis , insists 79 that the promise to the family of Japhet embraced not only a wide extension but also prosperity on every hand. This blessing was desired by Noah from [the Triune] Elohim , God as Creator and Governor of the World. It had respect primarily to the blessings of the Earth, not to spiritual blessings – although Japheth would participate in these as well. For he should come and dwell in the tents of Shem.

Now among those Japhethites, continues Keil, "Gomer" is most probably the tribe of the Cimmerians from whom are descended the 'Cumri' or 'Cymri' in Wales and Brittany – whose relation to the Germanic 'Cimbri' (in Danish Jutland) is still in obscurity. "Magog" is connected by Josephus with the Scythians on the Sea of Azov and in the Caucasus. "Madai" are the Medes. "Javan" corresponds to those from whom the Ionians are derived – the parent tribe of the Greeks.

Keil then lists the descendants of "Gomer." They include: "Ashkenaz" – according to the old Jewish explanation, the 'Germani'.... "Riphath" – in Knobel's opinion the Celts, part of whom according to Plutarch crossed the ' Montes Rhipaei ' towards the Northern Ocean to the furthest limits of Europe.... "Togarmah" is the name of the Armenians, who are still called...'Torkomatisi' in Transcaucasia. Indeed, it is precisely from that general region of Transcaucasia's Ararat that this great westward movement of Japhethites commenced. Genesis 8:4 cf. 10:1-5.

Japheth's Gomerites as viewed by the Calvinists

Kuyper, Noordtzij and Pink

After the above German Lutheran explanations of 'Gomer' – let us next consider some Calvinistic identifications. We refer to those of the great Dutch Reformed theologians Rev. Professor Dr. Abraham Kuyper Sr. and Professor Dr. A. Noordtzij – and to that of the celebrated British Commentator, Arthur W. Pink.

Abraham Kuyper, the late-nineteenth-century Prime Minister of Holland, wrote 80 that we are Japheth. Japheth's name means: 'Expansion.' And Noah's blessing to Japheth was: 'May God expand Japheth!' It also came to pass, according to this name. The prophetic blessing was fulfilled. Japheth has expanded. To sum up all of Japheth's descendants, you have to trek across Europe and America.

Kuyper also pointed out that Jehovah is the God of Shem. This means that Shem would be the carrier of particular grace. Israel is from Shem. Christ is from Shem. From Shem comes the 'Tent' in which we would dwell – i.e. , the Church of God in the blood of Calvary. From Japheth come the nations of the Greeks and of the Romans. From Japheth come the Germans and the Gauls [ cf. the Gaels].

In the course of centuries: everything done to conquer nature; to penetrate the secrets of science; to bring art and commerce to glory – all has flowed from the fountain of Japheth. Shem has today left his own Tent. The Jew no longer lives there; neither does the Moslem.

We [Japhethites] have not gone to live with Shem in his Tent. But Shem has vacated his own Tent. That is when the (Triune) Lord God led Japheth into Shem's Tent. And Japheth still lives in the Tent of Shem – alias the Christian Church. Thus Kuyper.

Similarly, the well-known Calvinist Professor Dr. A. Noordtzij explained in the twentieth-century Dutch Christian Encyclopedia 81 that Japheth is one of the three sons of Noah. In the list of nations in Genesis ten, he is in verses 1 to 5 called the ancestral father of seven nations. They are part of what we call the Indo-Germanic or Aryan group. They live to the North (the Cimmerians, the Scyths, and the Medes) – and to the West (the Ionians etc. ) – of Palestine.

Let us now look at a modern commentary from America. In 1922, the famous Calvinist Arthur W. Pink – an Englishman who long ministered in America and Australia before moving on to Scotland – wrote his celebrated book Gleanings in Genesis . There, he discusses also the verse: 'God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tent of Shem.' Genesis 9:27.

Pink remarks 82 that two things were predicted of Japheth. First, he would be enlarged. Second, he would dwell in the tents of Shem – or, in other words, would receive blessing from Shem. The accomplishment of this prediction is witnessed to by history both sacred and secular. Those nations which have been most enlarged by God, have descended from Japheth.

Recently, the European Powers have entered into the rich possessions of Asia. Today the Anglo-Saxon[-Celtic] race, which occupies more territory than any other people, are all the descendants of Japheth's firstborn [Gomer]. In Genesis ten, where a list of Japheth's sons is found, we read, 'By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands.'

Rev. Prof. H.C. Leupold and Dr. Basil Atkinson

on the Japhethitic Gomerites

During 1942, in Columbus (Ohio), the Lutheran Rev. Professor Dr. H.C. Leupold of Capital University Seminary wrote 83 anent Genesis 9:27 that Shem has the most prominent fame among his brethren. Similarly, Japheth is in the blessing. It is foretold and hoped for, that Japheth will be what his name implies – 'expanded.'

In reality, his descendants the Indo-European Aryans do spread out over vast stretches of territory – from India across all Europe and, of a later date, over the Western Hemisphere. With surprising accuracy, this feature of his history is foretold. Japheth is to dwell in the tents of Shem. The Japhethites have now very largely come in to share Shem's blessings, for as Gentiles they have been grafted on the good olive tree. Romans 11:16f.

Genesis 10:2 states: "The sons of Japheth: Gomer and Magog and Madai and Javan and Tubal and Meshech and Tiras." Here, Leupold explains that commentaries offer a fair measure of unanimity – especially since inscriptions on monuments serve to confirm the historical character of many of the names on the list. The Japhethites are the ones we are wont to identify with the Indo-Europeans.

Leupold insists that "Gomer" is to be identified with the Cimmerians, who then came from the Caucasus into Asia Minor and who in the reign of the Assyrian King Sargon are called the ' Gimirrai .' According to Josephus, "Magog" represents the ancient Scythian hordes found southeast of the Black Sea. The "Madai" are the Medes. "Javan" alias the Greek Ioouan means the Ionians – which name was applied to all Greeks. First Chronicles 1:5-7; Isaiah 66:19; Ezekiel 27:13,19; Daniel 8:21; 10:20; 11:2; Joel 3:6; and Zechariah 9:13. "Tiras" (compare Thrace) might be identified with the later E-trus-cans.

Finally, Leupold concludes with details about the Celtic "sons of Gomer." One such, "Ashkenaz," in Jewish tradition identified with the Germans – for whom it is used to this day. From their old seat in Asia Minor, these Indo-Europeans migrated to Germany – a thought found also in Luther. Thus the Japhethites are seen to be spread abroad over a well-defined area extending from Media in the East to Spain in the West – and, to their north, all the way from Esthonia in the East to Ireland in the West.

It is from these Japhethites that also the 'Ijjey Ha-Goyyim – the Neesoi toon Ethnoon alias the 'Isles of the Nations' – were populated. See Genesis 10:5, respectively in the Massoretic Hebrew and the Greek Septuagint. Such regions include especially the 'Isles of the West' and the 'Inhabitants of the Sea' at the 'Ends of the Earth' – to 'the North' and to 'the West' of Palestine. Isaiah 42:10f; 45:22; 49:1,6,12.

In 1954, Dr. Basil F.C. Atkinson, the Under-Librarian of Cambridge University, published an interesting commentary on Genesis. There, he made the following valuable remarks about the important passage Genesis 9:27 to 10:4.

Atkinson writes 84 that the descendants of Japheth are the nations of Europe. The enlargement of these nations has been one of the most conspicuous features in the history of the World. It may be seen in the domination of most of Europe by the peoples who spread over a region between the Black Sea and Denmark in the third and second millennia B.C. They imposed their language almost wherever they went. It may also be seen in the Greek colonization; in the construction of the Roman Empire; and in the virtual domination of the World in modern times by the peoples of Europe and their descendants in America.

Dr. Atkinson then states that Japheth would be associated with Shem, particularly in the worship of the true God. Genesis 9:27. In this case, we have a prediction of the evangelization of the nations – and their grafting into Israel. Romans 11:17-24 and Ephesians 2:13,19 & 3:6. The Gentiles who were first evangelized and are spoken of in the New Testament, were predominantly Japhethitic nations.

We may also perhaps see some significance, in view of this prediction – in the fact that it is the nations of Europe and their offshoots who have been regarded for centuries as 'Christian nations.' It at least means that the descendants of Japheth would make – and now for a long time have made – an outward profession of worshipping Shem's God.

Finally, declares Atkinson, among the sons of Japheth 'Gomer' means the people known as Cimmerians – who lived to the northwest of the Black Sea. Their name survives in the ethnic name of the Welsh people, Cymru . 'Magog' was a people identified with the Scythians." Further, 'Madai' are the Medes. 'Javan' means the Greeks. 'Ashkenaz' was a northern people (Ezekiel 38:6) whom modern Jews identify with the Germans. 'Tarshish' is usually identified as Tartessus in Spain.

J.J. Davis, F.D. Nicol, Calvin, Greijdanus,

Ridderbos & J.B. Lightfoot on Gomerites

Last, we mention the views of the great Protestant Reformer John Calvin, Professor S.J. Greijdanus, Dr. J.B. Lightfoot – and the 1975 studies in Genesis [9:27 to 10:5] of Grace Theological Seminary's Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, Rev. Dr. John J. Davis. We begin with the latter.

Davies writes 85 that Noah's statement 'God shall enlarge Japheth' shows his descendants would experience remarkable prosperity and dispersion. Japtheth's name (meaning 'Enlarge') makes clear his descendants would inhabit vast areas, migrating westward and northward into Europe.

Coming now specifically to the various tribes descended from Japheth, the Old Testamentician Dr. Davis adds that usually Gomer is identified with the Cimmerians – in Assyrian inscriptions, Gamir or Gimirrai ( cf. Ezekiel 38:6). The Cimmerians were pushed westward by the Assyrians.

Thus too Dr. Francis D. Nichol, editor of The Seventh-Day Adventist Bible Commentary . The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah. Ashkenaz was most likely an ancestor of the Indo-European Ashkuza. Also Speiser and Kidner associate them with the Scythians, and Jewish tradition with the Germans.

Davis further mentions that the Phoenicians imported much silver, iron, tin, and lead from Tarshish (Ezekiel 27:12), and that Solomon had a 'fleet of Tarshish' (First Kings10:22). Recent studies have indicated that the navy of Solomon was, in effect, a very specialized 'smeltery' or 'refinery fleet' responsible for bringing smelted metal home from the colonial mines – an enterprise in which the Phoenicians 86 probably were also very much engaged. Sites proposed for Tarshish, have ranged to western Anatolia in Spain.

As the great Celto-Gallic commentator Rev. Professor Dr. John Calvin rightly remarked: 87 "Among the sons of Japheth, of Ham, and of Shem – Moses enumerates those only who had been celebrated.... When Moses says that 'the islands of the Gentiles' were divided by the sons of Japheth – we understand that the regions beyond the sea were parted among them."

Calvin is even more specific concerning the identity of that part of the Japhethites known as the Gauls (of Western Europe). They were, at least from about the fourth century B.C., the original Celtic inhabitants of Gal-atia.

The Genevan genius then argues: 88 "The Galatians ...were Gauls .... Strabo [writing between B.C. 20 and A.D. 19] thought" those Galatians "were Celts ; and nearly all have followed this.... I [Calvin] think it...probable they were Belgae " or Western Celts – some of whom settled in Britain around 80 B.C. Also Jerome of Bethlehem, who had lived in Celtic Gaul, could understand the similar dialect spoken in Galatia as late as 415 A.D.

Similarly, Rev. Professor Dr. S.J. Greijdanus affirms 89 that Galatia was so called – after the Galatians or Galli who came to live there in the third century B.C. Again, also Rev. Professor Dr. H.N. Ridderbos declares 90 that Galatia received its name from the Celtic tribes. Indeed, this may in part even help explain the 'judaizing' tendencies of the later Galatian Christians. See Galatians 2:12f; 3:5; 4:9f; 5:3f.

Also Rev. Dr. J.B. Lightfoot, in his famous commentary St Paul's Epistle to the Galatians , speaks 91 of their Celtic affinities. The great subdivision of the human family which at the dawn of European history occupied a large portion of the Continent, modern philologists have agreed to call Celtic. They were known to the classical writers of antiquity by three several names – Celtae , Galatae and Galli . Of these, Celtae is the most ancient – being found in the earliest Greek historians Hecataeus and Herodotus. 92

Lightfoot continues: "Large influx[es] of Jews must have invaded Galatia.... Antiochus the Great had settled two thousand Jewish families in Lydia and Phrygia.... Inscriptions found in Galatia...present here and there Jewish names and symbols amongst a strange confusion of Phrygian and Celtic.... At the time of St Paul, they probably boasted a large number of proselytes and may even have infused a beneficial leaven into the religion of the mass of the heathen population.... Luke mentions two [Pauline] visits to Galatia."

The Romans generally designated this people Galli – for example, in Julius Caesar's book On the Gallic War . 93 The term Galli is sometimes adopted by later Greek writers. Generally, they prefer Galatae .

Lightfoot then concludes 94 that there is every reason for believing the Galatian settlers in what is today called Turkey were Celts. "Of the two main subdivisions into which modern philologers have divided the Celtic race, they seem rather to have belonged to the Cymric – of which the Welsh are the living representatives.

"Thus, in the age when St Paul preached, a native of Galatia [in Asia Minor] spoke a language essentially the same with that which was current in the southern part of Britain.... We picture to ourselves one of his Asia-tic converts visiting the far West – to barter the hair cloths of his native country for the useful metal which was the special product of this island.... We can imagine that, finding a medium of communication in a common language, he may have sown the first seeds of the Gospel and laid the foundations of the earliest Church in Britain." Thus Lightfoot.

Ancient Celtic movements through Western Europe

toward Britain and Ireland

All nations now on Earth, descend from Noah – through his three sons Shem and Ham and Japheth. The Bible mentions by name those of them apparently known to ancient Israel. It seems that after the destruction of the tower of Babel, the children of Japheth or the Caucasians moved away from one another – especially westward. They then started to become respectively: the Celts (including those who later migrated to Ancient Britain); the Germans; the Russians; the Persians; the Greeks; the Armenians; the Cypriots; the Italians and the Spaniards etc .

Of the sons of Japheth, perhaps first the 'Magogic' Celts and most certainly then the 'Gomeric' Celts started moving westward to colonize Western Europe and Britain – apparently first in a Goidelic and then more conspicuously in a Brythonic wave. As they went, they celtified the Pre-Celtic Iberian Japhethites of Spain and Ireland into those later called Celtiberians.

The Celts themselves were later followed by Germanic waves of Angles and Saxons and Jutes. They were of the same Japhethitic race, and of fair complexion. At first, they had much the same customs as did the Celts.

The above largely-westward movement of the Japhethites started to happen shortly after Shem's son Arphaxad begat Eber (the father of the Eber-ews or the Heber-ews alias the Hebrews) – when Eber fathered Peleg the ancestor of Abraham. "Two sons were born to Eber. The name of the one was Peleg (or 'Divided'). For in his days, the country was divided" (Genesis 10:25) – namely divided after God destroyed the tower of Babel and incipiently began to divide mankind also upon linguistic lines (Genesis 11:9-11).

From the Ararat Ranges of mountainous Northern Mesopotamia, then, mankind started trekking forth into different directions – after God confused human speech at the Tower of Babel. Indeed, of all of the various Post-Babelic nations – it is precisely the Japhethitic Proto-Gomerites and the Proto-Magogites who are first mentioned in the Ancient Holy Scriptures. Genesis 10:2.

The early Gomerites alias the Cimmerians all spoke what we may call Proto-Q-Celtic alias Proto-Brythonic. They were the ancestors of all those who till just several centuries ago spoke Cumbric and Cornish – and of those who even today still speak Breton and Welsh alias Cambric or Cymro.

The eartly Magogians alias the Scythians all spoke what could be called Proto-C-Celtic or s Proto-Gaedhelic. They were the ancestors of all those, some of whom even today still speak Erse and Gaelic and Manx – with the now-extinct Pictish tongue apparently halfway between Brythonic and Gaedhelic.

Thus "were the Isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands – every one according to his language, clan, and nation." Genesis 10:5. This drove mankind out into all the World – and the Celts especially toward Western Europe and the British Isles.

It should be remarked that there is some evidence, both right after the destruction of the tower of Babel and subsequently, to suggest that the Semitic H-Eber-ews would have some influence even on the Japhethitic Gomer-ites etc . Such influences would prove most durable especially in the isolation of the British Isles.

We have already seen the prediction of Genesis 9:27 that Japheth would dwell in the tents of Shem. We saw too the linguistic evidence for some degree of resemblance between certain words in Hebrew and Ancient Celtic. Also, we saw that the Gomer-ian Japhethites only trekked away toward the 'Isles' – in the days of Eber's son Peleg (Genesis 10:2-25). Now we shall look at some evidence of further Early-Semitic influence, in several successive waves, upon especially those Ancient Celts who – probably via Spain and/or Britain – finally settled in Ireland.

Postellius, in a lecture on the famous first-century pagan writer Pomponius Mela, declares that " Ire-land or Er-in was then called Jur-in – quasi ' Jews-land .'" Ireland was so called, explains Postellius, "because in the distant past the Jews as great 'soothsayers' knew that the future empire of the World would come to those parts."

Indeed, the great Jurist Sir Henry Maine declared that we who are able here to examine coolly the ancient Irish Law in an authentic form, see that it is a very remarkable body of archaic law. Moreover, he added, it is unusually pure from its origin. 95

Barrister Flintoff, in his book The Rise and Progress of the Laws of England and Wales , 96 has on good grounds identified Ancient Ireland's Iro-Scots with the ancient Scyt-hians . He declares that Walsingham in his ( circa 1380 A.D.) Historia Anglicana says that ' Scyt-hae ,' ' Schyt-hici ,' ' Scot-i ' and ' Scot-ici ' are all one. The Welsh historian Nenni (around 825 A.D.) expressly calls the Scots ' Schyt-thae '; and the (520 f A.D.) Brythonic historian Gildas calls the Irish Sea ' Vallem Scyt-hicam .'

The Anglo-Saxon or 'Anglish' King Alfred, in his ( circa 875 A.D.) English translation of the Spanish historian Orosius's Seven Books of History , calls the Scots Scyt-than . The Germans call both Scythians and Scots, Scut-ten (and the latter also Schot-ten ). Indeed, the Ancient Britons called them Y-scott .

The Irish sometimes styled themselves Scoit-agh or Scuit-eigh . Ireland retained the name of Scot-ia – with the addition of Major or Vetus – up to the fifteenth century" A.D. Thus Rev. Archbishop Dr. James Ussher's Philosophical Survey of Ireland . 97 Thus, Scotland was 'Lesser Scotia' – and Ireland was 'Older Scotia' or 'Greater Scotia.'

Rev. Dr. Thomas Foster mentions 98 that in the official Irish Chronicles of Eri there are many references to "the race of Iber " and "the prince of the race of Er ." Those references also regard Iber – or Heber – as a prince or forefather of the Eri race of Ireland.

This "Heber" is mentioned in Genesis 10:21. Those Chronicles of Eri state that "Iber, the firstborn of Er, was chosen to rule over Ullad" alias Ulster. Indeed, the Irish are known as ' H-Iber-nians ' or ' Ib-Eri-ans ' or the ' Er-i ' – and their land is known as ' Er-in .' The Islands to the North are known as the Hebr-ides – meaning 'The Islands of the Hebrews.' Thus Dr. Foster.

The movement toward Ireland and Britain of the Scots and the Picts

The Scyt-hian Scot-s were comparative late-comers to the British Isles. They apparently first arrived (from the Eastern Mediterranean by way of Spain) in Northern Ireland – in successive waves (from about 1200 to 250 B.C.). That was well after the Ancient Irish had arrived in Ireland, and generally after the followers of the Trojan Brut had arrived in Britain around B.C. 1185. Only in much later years, from about B.C. 400 to A.D. 400 onward, did the Scots move on from Ulster in Ireland – to Scotland in Northern Britain.

The Picts were kin to the Scots. The (565f A.D.) Iro-Scot Columba often understood them, albeit occasionally using an interpreter. The (731 A.D.) Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian learned scholar Bede says that the Picts came from Scythia , via Ireland, to Britain. 99

Rev. James Mackenzie, in his History of Scotland , states that the name 'Pict' – in the old Celtic language Pictish (alias Pightiaid ) – signifies a 'Fighting Man.'" According to the (825 A.D.) Celto-Brythonic historian Nenni, the Picts – whom the Ancient Irish called the Cruithne – did not arrive even in the Orkneys until after 400 B.C. Only later still did they then invade the mainland of Northern Britain 100 – yet indeed long before the Iro-Scots themselves went there from Northern Ireland.

Henry of Huntingdon's famous (1154 A.D.) History of Britain was itself compiled from many much more ancient sources such as those of Geoffrey Arthur and the Venerable Bede etc . Henry declares: 101 "The Britons [or Cymri ] occupied Britain in the third age of the World; the Scots in the fourth.... It is certain that the Scots came from Spain to Ireland..., part of them migrating from thence to Britain.... The part which remained [in Spain] still speak the same language."

"The Picts," explains Henry, were "a Scythian race" which "reached the north of Ireland. There they found the nation of the Scots already in possession.... Crossing over to Britain, the Picts then began to colonize the northern parts of the island. For the Britons were already settled in the South ."

Much earlier, around B.C. 1450 – continues Henry – "the Egyptians were drowned in the Red Sea.... The survivors [of the Hebrews in Egypt] banished from among them a certain noblemen named Scyt-icus.... The banished man...in Africa at last came with his family to...Mauritania...(to the Pillars of Hercules). Thus they arrived in Spain, where they dwelt many years and their posterity multiplied greatly. Thence they came into Ireland –1200 years after the passage of Israel through the Red Sea."

Dr. Thomas Foster adds 102 that the Milesians who garrisoned the town of Tahpanes in Egypt were a people of special interest. The Milesian Kings were descendants of Zarah-Judah ( cf. Genesis chapter 38), and therefore had a Hebrew origin. A Milesian Prince called Niul was friendly with Pharaoh in Egypt. Pharaoh Nectonibus made 'Milesius' the Army Marshal, and gave him his 'adopted daughter' Scota in marriage.

In the Royal Irish Academy address for 1821 – referring to Dr. Keating's researches into Ancient-Irish history – one reads of Milesius that "Scota bore him two sons." Such were "Eibhear [or Heber] in Egypt, and Eireamhon [or Heremon] in Galicia" (or Northwestern Spain).

Precisely at this point, the Scottish Declaration of Independence – dated A.D. 1320 – is very significant. It reads: "We know from ancient acts and records...that this nation, having come from Scythia...and having for many ages taken its residence in Spain" etc ., "removed from those parts [ viz . from Spain to the British Isles] twelve hundred years after the coming of Israelites out of Egypt."

Also the famous 25-volume Historians' History of the World , is helpful. It records 103 that according to the Ancient Irish Leabhar Gabhala (or 'Book of Invasions'), Partholan and his people were supposed to have come from Middle Greece ( alias Pre-Achaean Graeco-Celtica).

The next comers were the Nemedians – from Scythia. The race to colonize Ireland, the Firbolgs – cf. the [ Viri ] Belgae in Southern England from B.C. 80 onward – were very apparently of Brythonic origin. The fourth race of colonists, were the Tuatha De Danann (apparently from Greece). The last were the Scots (from Mosaic Egypt via Spain).

The Scots were sometimes called the Milesians. The former carried their pedigree back, without a break, to Noah. The immediate eponym of the new race, was Galam ( cf. Gaul and Gael). The word is derived from Gal (alias valour), a name which might be expressed by the Latin ' miles ' (a knight). Thence came the names 'Milesia' and 'Milesians.'

The Irish ethnic legends express the broad facts of the peopling of Ireland – and are in accordance with the results of archaeological investigation. At the earliest period, the country was occupied by a sparse population doubtless of the Iberian race of Western and Southern Europe – the Celtiberi.

The story of Partholan represents the coming in of the first bronze-armed Celts, who were a Goidelic tribe akin to the later Scots. In the north of Ireland, the people were Cruithne , or Picts of the Goidelic branch of the Celts. In the very east and centre of the country of Ireland, were Brythonic and Belgic types. And in Munster – when not distinctly Iberian – they were of a Southern or Gaulish alias Gaelic type.

There was a two-way traffic between Britain and Ireland. Many of the 'Irish' were first in Britain, and then went on to Ireland (perhaps as a result of Cymric pressure upon them). From Ireland, many Celtiberi and Picts and Scots later went to Britain. Indeed, from Britain, many missionaries (like Palladius and Patrick and Gildas) yet later went to Ireland. Thus the Historians' History .

Rev. T. M'Laughlan (M.A.) – Fellow of the Scottish Archaeological Society – has written an important work titled The Early Scottish Church , subtitled Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the First to the Twelfth Century . There 104 he writes that Porphyry, in his argument against Christianity (written about 267 A.D.), uses the expressions ' Scythicae ' and ' Scotticae gentes ' interchangeably for 'Scythians' and for the 'Scottish nation.'

The Greeks called all northern nations Skuthoi . The (825 A.D.) Welsh historian Nenni tells us 105 "that the Scythians, that is the Scots – in the fourth century after the creation – obtained Ireland."

Thus M'Laughlan concludes 106 that the name Scot – like that of Pict – appears to be a corruption of Scyth. It seems to have originated in the common idea among the Romans that these people had passed over from Scythia. The distinguished (530 A.D.) Brythonic historian Gildas says that around A.D. 420f – many parties of "Scots and Picts crossed the Scythian Valley" into the Roman Province of " Britannia " alias South Britain. Here, the "Scythian Valley" would mean either the Irish Sea – or, perhaps alternatively, the Scottish Lowlands.

The migrating Gomeric Celts preserved much

of God's original revelation

Now the Gomer-ian Celts seem to have started their migrations from somewhere near an area northwest of the Black Sea – alias the basin of the Rivers Danube, Dniester, Dnieper, Donets and Don. Some Celts went eastbound, into what is now the Eastern Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus. Others went southeast, into the later Galatia or Gaul-asia (or 'Land of the Gauls') in what is now Central Turkey.

Most, however, went in the opposite direction. Many went southwestward, into what is now Northern Italy. Many more went westbound, into ancient Spain. Indeed, yet more went to the northwest – into Western Europe.

Of the latter: some went northbound into Scandinavia; others westbound into the Ancient Gaul or 'Gal-lia' in what is now France and Belgium; and others, in successive waves, went westbound into the Britain which was then either empty or but sparsely inhabited. Possibly there were then some Picts inhabiting the far north, and Gaels living in the far west. But it is clear that the Gomeric Celts easily achieved numerical superiority, if not exclusive possession of Britain, at that time.

There, the Gomeric Celts alias the Cymri established 'Cumbria' (in Cumber-land) and 'Cambria' in Wales. Soon thereafter, Gaelic Celts and/or Picts came from 'Gal-way' (alias "Gaul-way" or "Gael-way") in Ireland – and established Galloway near Argyle or Ar-Gael alias "the Land of the Gaels" in Southern Scotland.

Especially those Celts who settled to the West of the European Continent in the British Isles, preserved their ancient culture and religion. Being separated from Europe, they were relatively isolated and insulated from the paganistic influences which periodically swept through the Continent itself.

In Britain and Ireland they stayed. In those Western Isles, their ancient druidic religion only slowly degenerated. In those isolated territories, they long retained many of the features of primordial revelation. Cf. too: Acts 14:17.

Throughout, a considerable standard of culture was maintained. Thus Delaney claims in his book The Celts 107 that archaeological excavations in Ireland have unearthed royal courts and ceremonial trumpets – even from the fifth century B.C.

Norton-Taylor rightly maintains in his book The Celts 108 that it is not always easy to sort out the Celts from their Non-Celtic neighbours – particularly from such very near neighbours and close relatives as the Teutons. The latter were a collection of Germanic-speaking tribes who lived in the areas to the North and East of the Celtic heartland. However, especially the ancient culture of Ireland best reveals the way of life of the Ancient Celts – including their early customs even before some of them reached the Emerald Isle.

On the religion of the Ancient Celts, Norton-Taylor observes 109 that their Deity was a Celtic Trinity – having either three heads, or alternatively [and more usually] having but one head with three faces or personalities. Compare the Greek Prosoopa , referring to the Three Persons (or ' Faces ') within the Triune Hebrew Deity Jehovah . This 'three-headed' or rather 'three-faced' and triple-personality God seems to have paralleled the concept of the Christian Trinity – one Sacred Being embracing three different 'Persons' ( viz. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit). Indeed, having three heads or faces also displayed God's might" – as also seen in the Hebrew word Elohim .

It was on that interpersonal 'trinitarian' basis, continues Norton-Taylor, 110 that Ancient Irish Law was practised. Men were responsible to one another, personally, rather than to the impersonal institution of the State. Thus, wrongdoing was not a civil offence – but a transgression of private rights. A man who harmed another, paid his debt to the injured person's family – not impersonally to society as a whole. Celtic Law was rooted in the notion of a divine order. It was enforced by a priestly panel of jurists ( viz. the druids).

Roth and Duval point out in their book Celtic Lands 111 that Julius Caesar declared all Gauls claimed to be descended from ' Dis Pater ' (alias 'God the Father'). Such was, in fact, the teaching of the druids. The modern historian Camille Jullian was of the opinion that the Celts had a sovereign God. Thirty-two effigies were uncovered, most of them from Northeast Gaul, showing a Deity with three 'heads' or 'faces.' The multiplication of 'heads' and/ or 'faces' was one of the practical ways of increasing the 'powerfulness' of God – as regards the human perception of Him.

The divine name ' Bilee ' (in Irish) or ' Beli ' (in Brythonic) – compare the Hebrew ' Eli ' – seems to correspond to ' Dis Pater ' also in Gaul and Spain. Indeed, Sir Winston Churchill has observed 11 that the Ancient British Isles in general and especially Ancient Britain was the prime centre of the druidical religion – which profoundly influenced the life also of Gaul and Germany.

The religious execution of the death penalty among the Ancient Celts for capital crimes once duly proven, is well-established – maintain Roth and Duval 112 – from the skulls of severed heads of criminals. Never, however – as is sometimes falsely alleged – was the ritual murder of non-criminals performed among the Ancient Celts of the British Isles. 113

The primordial picture of Celtic life is

best preserved in Ancient Irish records

An informative and adequate picture of life among the westernmost Early Celto-Gaels, even before their arrival first in Britain and then in Ireland, can be gained from extant Early-Irish literature. For such not only discloses the nature of Celtic life in the Ancient British Isles. It further preserves even the previous behaviour patterns of those Early Celts – also before their westbound crossing first of the British Channel, and then of the Irish Sea. Very significantly, the Noachide Code (compare Genesis 9:1-7) here looms large.

Thus, much of the famous Irish epic Tain Bo Cuailnge (alias 'The Cattle Raid of Cooley') deals with the boyhood of the legendary Cuchulain – who defended Ulster from the end of summer until Candlemas. It portrays the movement, certainly no later than B.C. 200 to 150, of mighty armies within Ireland. It also shows that while King Conor MacNessa was playing chess with Fergus MacRoich, other boys were wrestling. In Ancient Ireland – as too among the Ancient Anglo-Saxons – thirteen seems to have been the age of manhood.

When Cuchulain lay on his sick-bed, it was reported to him that his pupil Lughaidh had been chosen Ard-Ri alias 'High King' of Eire. Thereupon Cuchulain told his pupil 114 "how to comport himself in his kingly dignity. He was to bear himself with meekness in his exalted place; to be courteous to the weak and respectful to the old; to be discreet in his conversation; to be careful in the choice of friends; and to be generous without being prodigal."

Furthermore, Cuchulain told Lughaid that a ruler should be: "an upholder of justice ; temperate at feasts; brave and undaunted in battle; faithful to his cause; vigorous in the discharge of his duties ; [and] the champion of ancient laws and of hereditary privileges ."

Also in the Fenian tales – and notably in the Battle of Ventry – the boys of Ancient Ireland were early taught the arts of fighting and chess-playing. Indeed, in the Colloquy of the Ancients – one reads that when the fourth-century A.D. Christian Missionary St Patrick asked regarding Ancient Irishmen: "Who or what was it that maintained you in your life?" – his addressee Caoilte replied on behalf of the Pre-Christian Irish: " Trut h that was in our hearts ; strength in our arms ; and fulfilment in our tongues."

In the same Colloquy , we also find Fionn's Advice to MacLugach . It relates to training Irish children in the ways of their forefathers, and runs euphonically and rhymingly (even better in Erse than in this translation into English) as follows: 115

"Thou, MacLugach, shalt discern – what the warrior-order learn.

Keep in heart a courteous mood, though in brunt of battle rude.

Blame thy spouse not, without thought; never beat thy hound for nought.

Never strive with senseless loon – wouldst thou war with a buffoon?

Never thou thy chief forsake, till red earth thy life shall take.

Nor for gem nor gold reward, fail in warrant to thy ward....

Food to foodless ne'er refuse, nor for friend a niggard choose.

Never on the great intrude; nor give cause for censure rude!"

We find the same values being taught in their boyhood to the later Pre-Christian Irish Ard Ri – to Ancient Ireland's "High Kings" alias Erin's supreme political rulers. This is seen in the cases: of Conn of the Hundred Battles; of Niall of the Nine Hostages; and of Cormac MacAirt.

Thus, in the Book of Ballymote , Cairbre asks: 116 "What were your habits, when you were a lad?" Doubtless reflecting age-long druidical values, Cormac then replies:

"I was a listener in the woods; I was a gazer at the stars....

I was gentle towards allies; I was a physician of the sick.

I was not close, lest I should be burdensome.

I was not arrogant, though I was wise....

I would not speak about anyone in his absence.

I would not reproach, but I would praise.

I would not ask, but I would give."

Phoenician influences on the Ancient Celts by way of international trade

In its insightful article on Ancient Europe (from circa 2000 to 1800 B.C.), the A.D. 1974 Encyclopaedia Britannica has pointed out 117 that regional bronze-working traditions were developing during those ancient times in both Britain and Ireland. That gave birth to a distinctly Hiberno-British style.

The use of tin as an alloy, laid a great emphasis on organized systems of exchange. These involved the movement not only of ingots but also of finished artifacts. This may be seen in the export of Hiberno-British forms of axes to Denmark.

The Aegean, and by this time specifically the Mycenaean World, became enmeshed in this wide-ranging system of exchange. That was due, in all probability, to their need for tin from Cornwall. The occurrence of segmented faience beads of a kind invented in Egypt but also notably in Wessex [alias the southernmost central portion of what was later to be called England] – a territory that probably controlled the earliest supplies of Cornish tin – is suggestive of international trade. Faience beads of local shapes were produced also in North Britain.

In his book The Sea Traders , M.A. Eden describes 118 how Phoenician merchants supplied – from Britain – many of the raw materials for use in the Near East (and later even in King Solomon's Temple). It was the lure of rich tin deposits in Spain that first drew the Phoenicians westwards. From there, they proceeded to Brittany – and especially to the British Isles where tin was produced.

In the sixth century B.C. Himilco's expedition went to the Northwest, from Carthage. This voyage tends to confirm that the Phoenicians were involved with the metal trade in Britain. Himilco sailed up the coast, around the peninsula of Brittany, and on to the British Isles.

It is certain merchants were going there from Spain during the Iron Age (from B.C. 1000 onward). Traces of such visitation, turned up in Cornwall. Phoenician voyagers went to Britain over a period of many centuries; and they appear in the Iliad as master craftsmen.

Sir Bertram Windle is the author of the book Life in Early Britain . In his article 'Arts and Crafts of Ancient Britain' he writes 119 that the C- or K-Celts (alias the Iro-Gaels) first appeared in England circa B.C. 1150 – cf. the approximately B.C. 1185 fall of Troy. They arrived, armed with leaf-shaped bronze swords – at the Thames and the Wash, as well as at the Wessex ports and perhaps even at Totnes in Devon where Brut is alleged to have set foot from Troy.

Moving westward, they passed by the upper Severn and the Bala Gap – into Wales. Then they moved across the Channel – to Ireland. Later invasions, which brought the La Tene P-Celtic or Brythonic-Welsh culture into Britain, arrived there no later than about 450 B.C.

Wheel-made pottery is found in the famous cemetery at Aylesford. Another art which the Celts introduced, one of great beauty and interest, was that of enamelling. The method they used, consisted in excavating recesses in the metal background – into which molten glass could then be poured. They used enamels of various colours – including red, blue, yellow and green.

The Celtic artists and their goldsmiths and scribes reached a pitch of excellence which has never been excelled in the area of geometrical decoration. In the Cork University College Museum, in Ireland, there are three curious long cones of thin bronze – most beautifully made and with their edges united by the tiniest of bronze rivets. They are marvels of workmanship. Almost certainly the ornaments are some kind of head-dress. They were found along the River Lee (below Cork). All show the same flowing spiral.

The same curve was used also by wood-workers in Britain. It is to be found on a wooden bowl discovered at the B.C. lake village near Glastonbury in Somerset.

This form of curvilinear geometrical art is to be met with on many of the ornaments and articles of daily use dating from that period. Thus the backs of bronze mirrors found at various places – of which those discovered at Birdlip in Gloucestershire are beautiful examples.

Ireland was the El Dorado of the Western World. Most of her gold was then collected by the people of the day. This accounts for the extraordinary richness of the gold ornaments still displayed in the Dublin Museum – despite the untold quantities of objects which had been found but then melted down for bullion.

When the Celt, especially in Ireland, took to Christianity – he took to it with all his heart. The great monasteries of the Celtic type – quite different in discipline from the Benedictine abbeys of later introduction – were of great size and existed in considerable numbers. In the abbeys lived the men who cultivated the wonderful art of script. There is admittedly no more beautiful example of illuminated manuscript, than the Book of Kells – now in the library of Dublin University. Thus Sir Bertram Windle.

Clear evidence of links between the Near East

and the Ancient British Isles

Bertrand L. Hallwand, in his chapter 'The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians' within the well-known book Hutcheson's Story of the Nations , 120 shows that the Phoenician sea-traders had by about B.C. 1100 already founded Tartessu or Cadiz – beyond the Pillars of Hercules alias the Straits of Gibraltar. Their very name – 'Gibraltar' (from Jebel - Tarik ) – is Phoenician.

In their temples of Malkart – the Phoenician predecessor of the later Greek Heracles – there were set up two pillars. These were not unlike the Jachin and Boaz of the temple of Jerusalem – and rather similar to the pillars Herodotus saw at the temple in Tyre. Those ancient temple pillars evidence that the Phoenicians had already travelled into the North Atlantic Ocean – beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. See Second Chronicles 3:17 cf . 20:35f.

Indeed, the Egyptian beads found around Stonehenge may have gone through many intermediate hands, in barter between the Tyrian exporters and the British recipients. What is certain, is that it was the tin of Cornwall – as the alloy required for the production of bronze from copper – that was the mainspring of those long voyages.

It was from Hiram of Tyre that Solomon borrowed skilled workmen – who brought the materials to Jerusalem. The principal worker in metal and apparently also a designer, was a namesake of the king – but, in fact, the son of a Tyrian father by a woman of Naphtali. The whole narrative in First Kings chapters 6 to 8, is well worth studying. For it gives us a picture of the expertness of the Phoenicians at that time.

Hutcheson's further chapter on 'The Jews' is authored by the late Chief Rabbi of England, Dr. I. Abrahams. He states 121 that the Phoenicians exchanged their famous purple dye – the product of Tyre (Ezekiel 27:3-7f cf. Acts 16:14 & Revelation 2:18-20f) – with the tin which Cornishmen extracted from their mines. Even from a period prior to the ( circa 1400 B.C.) entrance of Israel into Palestine – the country was, in part, already under some degree of Semitic influence.

It seems also that even the very westernmost coast of Ireland was reached by sea-traders from Ancient Phoenicia – perhaps accompanied also by crew-members from Ancient Israel. See: Genesis 49:13; Deuteronomy 33:18f; Joshua 19:10-19; Judges 5:17; Second Chronicles 20:35f; Psalm 107:21-24f; Jonah 1:3f; Ezekiel 27:3-25f.

This can be gathered also from the chapter 'The Strange Forts of Aran' by E.W. Lynam, Assistant in the British Museum – in editor J.A. Hammerton's twentieth-century volume titled Wonders of the Past . There, Lynam describes 122 the present inhabitants of the three Aran islands on the western rim of the known Old World, six miles from the nearest point on the coast of Galway in Western Ireland.

Lynam explains that many unusual plants, such as maidenhair fern and spring gentian, grow profusely in the rock-crannies and fields. The Gulf Stream, which flows close to these islands, renders the climate exceptionally mild. The present inhabitants – some 2,500 souls in all – are a handsome hardy race whose fair skin, blue-grey eyes, and dark hair and eyebrows seem to indicate an early mingling of fair and dark stocks in their ancestry. Very conservative and preserving many ancient customs and beliefs, they still wear the 'pampootic' shoe – and use the 'coracle' boat described by Himilco the Phoenician traveller 2400 years ago.

These ocean-girt rocks are crowded with ancient stone monuments of the most varied types. Among these, a group of great stone forts stands out conspicuously. Dun Aengusa – the 'Fort of Angus' – is the largest. It was evidently the residence and walled city of a ruler. These structures are truly wonderful for their time and place.

Sadly, the A.D. 793f Scandinavian sea-rovers plundered Ancient Erin's golden ornaments. Nevertheless – the ancient Aran forts still stand. They are also the last great monuments, in time and place, of the proud Bronze age civilization in Europe. Thus Lynum.

Also the Encyclopedia Americana 123 describes the inhabitants of the Aran Islands as perhaps the most ancient people of Europe, in their mode of life and thought. Gaelic is the common tongue. Here, even today, may yet be seen a curious intermingling of Christianity and Druidism.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica too refers 124 to the circular cyclopean tower known as Dun-Aengus . It is ascribed to the Fir-bolg or [ Viri- ] Belgae in the first century B.C. Indeed, the New Illustrated Columbia Encyclopedia adds 125 that even today on the Aran Islands, there are not only many Early-Christian but also many prehistoric remains.

We conclude, then, that Japheth's Gomeric peoples took their Noachic religion and culture – including Genesis 9:1-7's Noachide Code later reflected in the Ancient Common Law of the British Isles – from the Near East to the British Isles, in successive waves. The first wave was probably prior to 2000 B.C. Those migrations then continued right down to the Christian Era. Each wave enlarged the Japhethites. Indeed, each wave strengthened their Ancient Common Law brought even from the very tents of Shem to the outermost western fringe of the ancient world.

Summary of the Common Law among

very ancient migrants to the British Isles

Summarizing , in this chapter we saw that the Japhethites in general and especially the early inhabitants of the British Isles in particular, are those who over the centuries best preserved the Ancient Common Law and its Noachide Code – after the Babelic dispersion. More especially was this the case among the Early Gaels of Britain – who later moved on into Ireland. Yet it continued in Britain also through the (Proto-Judean?) Darda-nian migration to the British Isles, after the Trojan War.

There was thus a sustained development of law and government in the British Isles also during the second millennium B.C. For both before and after their arrival there, these Japhethitic Celts – then still 'dwelling in the tents of Shem' – long preserved God's original revelation.

We then looked at the migrations of the Japhethites in general and of the Japhethitic Celts in particular. We examined the identity of Gomer and Magog in the various parts of Holy Scripture, and saw its connection with the Western Celts. Also helpful here were: the Ancient Jewish historian Josephus; the Ancient Irish Leabhar Gabhala and the Chronicles of Eri ; the Ancient Welsh Triads and Brut ; and the Old-English Anglo-Saxon Chronicle .

Next we considered various evidences that Magog fathered the Scyths (some of whom became the Iro-Scots), and that Gomer fathered the Cimmer-ians (some of whom became the British Cymri ). Helpful in that regard were the profound scholarly views: of Professor Yamauchi on the Gomerites and the Scythians; of the famous Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics on the Scots and the Picts; of Gladys Taylor in her identification of the Scythians with the Scots; and of Diodorus Siculus and the erudite antiquary John Selden in identifying the Gomerites with the British Cymri .

In reviewing the earliest history of the Cymric Proto-Welsh, we next had occasion – from Homer, Herodotus, Strabo, Tacitus, several articles in various Encyclopedias, and Ancient-Brythonic sources cited by Barrister Flintoff – further to trace their origin all the way back to the Japhethitic Gomerites. These Ancient-Cymric Proto-Welsh moved toward Britain from Ararat, via the area of the Black Sea.

Here it was seen that this link is, in general, perceived also by many leading theologians. In that regard, references to illustrate this were given from the writings of Rev. Professor Drs. Delitzsch, Keil, Kurtz, Hengstenberg, Kuyper, Noordtzij, Pink, Leupold, Atkinson, J.J. Davis, F.D. Nichol, Calvin, Greijdanus, H.N. Ridderbos and J.B. Lightfoot.

Finally, we considered the Ancient Celtic movement toward Britain and Ireland – whether of Brythons, Iro-Scots or Picts. The migrating Celts were seen to have preserved much of God's original revelation. For the primordial picture of Celtic life has been preserved very adequately in the records of Ancient Ireland – such as the Tain Bo Cuailgne , the Battle of Ventry , the Colloquy of the Ancients , the Advice to MacLugach , and the famous Book of Ballymote .

In addition, there were also ongoing Phoenician influences on the Ancient Celts by way of international trade – not just in Britain's Cornwall but even as far as the Aran Islands off the westernmost coast of Ireland. It is even possible that, especially in the later centuries B.C., also Israelitic and/or Judean mariners visited those Western Isles. In all of this, there is thus clear evidence of abiding links between the Near East and Ancient Britain and Erin.

CH. 6. COMMON LAW AMONG THE

ANCIENT IRISH AFTER B.C. 2600

Sir James McIntosh once explained that the Irish nation possesses genuine history several centuries more ancient than any other European nation possesses its present-day spoken language. Dr. Johnson held Ireland was in early times the school of the whole of the West, and also the quiet habitation of sanctity and learning. Lord Lyttleton added that most light which in times past cast its beams over Europe, proceeded from Ireland. Even the great German rationalist historian Dr. J.L. Mosheim admitted that Ancient Ireland supplied Gaul, Germany and Italy with their scholars and professors. 1

The Historians' History of the World argues that Ancient Ireland's stable tribal government and its professional class of suide (or sages) and their ancient writings in Ogham, created circumstances favourable to the growth and preservation of annals. Early extant accounts rightly seek to synchronize Biblical history with Irish history. Yet later, some accounts also try to syncretize true history with false myth. Even some modern accounts would similarly syncretize revised myths with an evolutionistic approach to history. 2

Nevertheless, as also the critical Professor Dr. L.A. Waddell (LL.D.) has rightly pointed out, 3 the relative historicity of a considerable part of the traditions of Ancient Ireland is quite apparent. The reliable old traditions found in the Ancient Irish Book of Ballymote , the Book of Lecan and the Book of Leinster are indeed quite disfigured by the later legends which there encrust them. Yet those books do contain a residual outline of very consistent tradition. See, on this, the end of our previous chapter. Indeed, such books also preserve some genuine memory of the remote prehistoric period.

This is true also of the Irish Chronicle – alias the Chronicum Scotorum . That claims to be and is "a Chronicle of Irish Affairs from the Earliest Times to A.D. 1135." Inscripturated in its present form at that latter time, it includes a lot of much older material.

Thus, it tells us that God created the World through His Word; and that He sabbathed in man whose name was his very soul ( ainm ). Then follow the seven ages of man, the first of which contains "1656 years" alias "ten generations" 4 ( cf. Genesis chapter 5). This, of course, is describing the age before Noah's ark and the deluge.

There are also the Ancient Irish fursundud poems. These trace genealogies for Munster's Eoghanacht Kings in the southwest of Eire right back to Adam.

Was Ireland inhabited before the tower

of Babel, or even before Noah's ark?

According to the great Irish scholar Dr. G. Keating's famous book Elements of the History of Ireland , 5 three daughters of Cain visited Ireland together with their husbands and a colony of beautiful ladies. All of them, however, perished during the deluge. This is a remarkable claim. However, it is not in any way irreconcilable with the Holy Scriptures. Cf. Genesis 4:16-23 & 7:23.

The Irish Chronicle itself declares 6 that even before Noah and the great flood, a woman came to Ireland and gave her name to it. For it claims: "In the year of the world 1599...the daughter of one of the Greeks – whose name was hEriu [ cf. 'Erin'] – came to Hibernia." Indeed, also Doyle's Illustrated History of Ireland from the Earliest Period 7 – later published by Kenmore Convent in County Kerry – asserts that Ireland was colonized even before the time of Noah.

However, as the Irish Chronicle itself rightly explains, during the flood – except for those on the ark – "all...perished in the deluge.... Thus do the Gaedhel express the number of this age: 'Six years, fifty, and six hundred – as I reckon – a great thousand I count from Adam to the Flood.'" 8

The Irish Chronicle continues: "The World's second age begins, which contains 292 years – that is, according to the Hebrews." Cf. Genesis 11:10-29. It then continues: "As the poet says: 'From the flood to Abraham who was happily born – two full, prosperous years, ninety and two hundred.'" 9

Thus, concludes the Irish Chronicle , in the year of the World "1859" – it was "ten years after that to the demolition of the tower [of Babel]"; and "nine years after that to Fenius. In that year, Fenius composed the language of the Gaeidhel from seventy-two languages. Cf. Genesis 10:1-32. He subsequently committed it to Gaeidhel, son of Agnoman – viz. in the tenth year after the destruction of Nimrod's tower." Cf. Genesis 10:1-10 & 11:1-9.

Wright, elaborating on this in his famous three-volume History of Ireland , 10 supplies further details. He relates that Scythians descended from Gomer settled to the north of the Near East. Gomer's grandson Feniusa Farsa (alias Phenius), the king of the Scyths, was a prince who applied himself to the study of letters and of all seventy-two languages. Cf. Jeremiah 50:41f & 51:27f with Colossians 3:11.

This Phenius established a college of languages, and invented Ogham 11 – the native Celtic script. He also appointed Gadel to regulate Irish after him into five dialects called Gaoidhealg – alias Gaelic.

Phenius then sent his son Nial to the Egyptians, namely at their request, to instruct them. He returned to Ireland with Princess Scota and her Scyths – via Gothland and Spain.

There is also an apparently later 12 story claiming that Noah's niece (or grand-daughter?) Ceasair and her followers came to Eire – in an endeavour to escape the pre-announced deluge. This story is found in the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland from the Earliest Times . The latter was written down in its present and final form by the (1616 A.D.) 'Four Masters' – and yet later translated from the Gaelic into English, and then edited by the multilingual nineteenth-century Irish scholar, Barrister-at-Law Dr. John O'Donovan.

Those Annals of Ireland comprise many much earlier traditions. One such tradition is the story of Caesair. This story alleges that in the "age of the World...2242" – alias twenty-two centuries after Adam – "forty days before the deluge, Ceasair came to Ireland with fifty girls and three men." 13

It is true that also the above (1616 A.D.) story about Ceasair rests upon earlier beliefs. However, according to the Puritan Holinshed's (1582 A.D.) work First Inhabitation of Ireland 14 – that country is presumed to have been uninhabited before the time of Noah.

Regarding the account of Ceasair, the renowned chronicler Raphael Holinshed remarks: "This story bewrays itself...if the time and other circumstances be examined thoroughly.... It shall be sufficient for the glory of Irish antiquity to grant that Ireland was discovered and peopled by some of Noah's kindred even together with the first islands of the World.... The likelihood is great, according to that which is set forth in their histories."

The Magogian Scyths' colonization of Ancient Ireland from Europe

According to Holinshed in his update of Stanihurst's Description of Ireland : 14 "About three hundred years after the general flood – immediately upon the confusion of tongues – [Noah's son] Japheth and his posterity, emboldened by Noah's example, adventured to commit themselves by ship to pass over the sea and to search out the unknown corners of the World. Thus, they discovered several isles in these western parts of the World." See Genesis 10:1-5 & 11:9f cf. Isaiah 49:1,6,12 and Acts 1:8.

Indeed, adds Holinshed: "Among Japheth's sons, we read in Genesis [10:2] that Magog was one. He planted his people in Scythia near Tanais, about the year of the world 2317. Nemod with his four sons...[and] a fair company of people went into Ireland."

This agrees with the renowned Irish Antiquarian, Dr. G. Keating. In his book Forus Feasa (compare his Elements of the History of Ireland ), 15 he declares that the race of Magog, according to the [Ancient-Irish] Book of Invasions , was called the Cin Drom Snechta 16 – compare the 'kin of the Scythians.'

Edward LLuyd, in his great book Archaeologia Britannica , argues 17 that Irish Gaels were in Britain before the arrival there of the Brythonic Cymri . Many such Gaels were driven by the Cymri from Britain into Ireland.

The Iro-Scots, shows Dr. Lluyd, were originally the Kin Skuit or Scyth-ians of Ancient Basquish Spain – adjacent to the modern Galicia alias "Gael-icia" in Northwestern Iberia. Yet another group, the Fir Bolg , were either Belg-ic Brythons or German-ic Teutons – who came, through Britain, also as far as Ancient Ireland.

Dr. James Parsons (in his own celebrated book Remains of Japhet ) 18 largely follows Lluyd. Yet Parsons himself also argues that the Ancient Irish were Japhethitic Magog-ians alias Scyth-ians who arrived in Ireland from Ancient Scythia and/or the Near East through Ancient Spain – even before the Cymric Gomer-ians reached Britain. Genesis 9:27 to 10:5.

Dr. Parsons says it is recorded of the original Irish in the ancient Psalter of Cashel that they began their genealogy from Lamech the father of Noah. Genesis 5:28f. It is from Magog the grandson of Noah that the Scythian kings and heroes are derived. Cf. Genesis 10:1-2f. There arose, according to this Ancient Irish Magog-ian history, a variety of tongues – from the building of Babel by the Hamitic sons of Nimrod. Genesis 10:8-12 & 11:1-9.

While they were busied about this tower, the fili or 'wise men' of Ancient Ireland say that Heber from the family of Shem admonished men against such an enterprise, and himself refused to join in. Heber, for his pious behaviour upon this occasion, had his language preserved pure in his family – say these records of Ancient Ireland. Cf. Genesis 9:27f; 10:1-5; 10:25; 11:9-17.

Finusa the Scythian monarch of Ancient Ireland, from his desire to attain the language of Heber, sent out several learned men to accomplish that noble design. He also commanded them to instruct the Scythian youths of Ancient Ireland.

Dr. Parsons further explains that the Scythian philosophers mentioned in Irish records always had corresponded with the Gomer-ian sages – the druids – even from the time of Japheth. The worship of God was untainted in Britain and Ireland then, even many ages after its adulteration elsewhere.

In Ireland, some centuries before Christ, was Conla. He wrote the history of the whole system of the druids. The druids of Britain and of the Continent never committed their mysteries to writing, but taught their pupils from memory. On the other hand those of Ireland, the Scotic druids, wrote theirs – but in characters different from the common mode of writing.

Those descendants of Magog on the northwestern edges and those also of Gomer on the southwestern edges of the European Continent, then travelled yet further westward. They kept their original Celtic languages uncorrupted, also in their ultimate residence in Britain and Ireland. They also kept pure their worship of the true God – for many centuries – in both places. They long continued to worship the true God in those kingdoms of Britain and Ireland – as is recorded in the Annals of Ireland . 19

S. O'Grady's History of Ireland describes 20 these Scythians as being tall, fair-haired and blue-eyed. Southern European Russia was the vast nest of that fair-haired race. In strong pulsations, those great Celtic migrations were jetted forth. The Scythian flood was pouring through Germany into France and through Scandinavia and the Baltic into the British Isles. From the Scythian stock, branches shot forth over Europe: namely the Cymri, the Gaels, and the Teutons.

The Celts were the foremost wave of that great Scythian tide which swept westward across Europe. There is not a product of the human mind in existence so extraordinary as the Annals of Ireland . For in them, from a time dating more than two thousand years before the birth of Christ, the stream of Irish history flows down uninterruptedly.

The Early Proto-Celtic migrants in Ireland

O'Rahilly – in his book The Goidels and Their Predecessors , and again in his great work Early Irish History and Mythology – distinguishes four successive later immigrations. First, that of the Cruithin – some time before 500 B.C. Second, that of the Eraiin (alias the Fir Bolg ) – perhaps in the fifth century B.C. Third, that of the Laigin (together with Domnainn and Galioin) – in the third century B.C. Finally came the Goidel – around 100 B.C.

The notion of a series of invasions into Ireland is both historical and traditional. The oldest extant record thereof, is that written down by the Welsh historian Nenni (in 825 A.D.). He clearly knew of three – those of Partholan, Nemed and the Children of Mil. The latter, the Mil-esians or Goidels , came from Spain – as also the Book of Invasions declares.

The second-millennium differentiation of the Proto-Celtic language into Goidelic (alias C-Celtic cf. Irish-Scottish-Manx) and Brythonic (alias P-Celtic cf. Welsh-Cornish-Breton), originally took place after the settlement of the British Isles at some period between circa B.C. 2000 and B.C. 600. C-Celtic is sometimes also called Q-Celtic, on account of the similar pronunciation of those two consonants. Details of this feature will be given later.

The Nemedians' descendants, the Fir Bolg , were defeated around B.C. 1900 by the sea-faring Fomor – who came perhaps from Africa or Egypt. These Fomor in their turn were overwhelmed by the 'supernaturally' powerful Tuathan de Danaan – perhaps the Israelitic Danites (Judges 5:17 & 13:2f & 18:1f?). They, in turn, were later in turn overcome by the Celtiberian Milesians from Spain. 21

The allegedly Pre-Celtic or rather Proto-Celtic inhabitants of Ireland alias Hibernia, seem to have been either Gael-s or Basqu-es from near Gal-icia on the Bay of Bisc-ay in today's Northwestern Spain alias Iberia. The 1974 Encyclopaedia Britannica explains 22 that the O-type blood group is particularly frequent among the Basques, the Irish, the Scots, and the Icelandic peoples. Moreover: Continental Celtic or Gaul-ish languages were once spoken widely in France; in Gal-icia on the Iberian Peninsula; throughout Central Europe; and in Gal-atia (in Asia Minor alias what is now Turkey).

The family-community system in which the property belongs to the family and in which the family-head chooses his successors, is very common in Ireland and to the whole Pyrenean region. The Basques – blonder than their neighbours – also show some linguistic kinship to tribes in Ancient Caucasia. Genesis 8:4 to 9:19f.

The Celtic settlement of the British Isles – remark Dillon and Chadwick in their 1972 book The Celtic Realm 23 – is difficult to trace. About 2000 B.C., came Bell-Beaker people. The common opinion among archaeologists seems now to be that there was no large-scale immigration into the British Isles between 2000 and 600 B.C.

Archaeology has made great strides in recent years. The very great archaism of the old Irish traditions, has now been established quite firmly.

According to Haverty's very well-researched History of Ireland , 24 the first migrations brought with them (into that island) abilities far removed from barbarism. Ancient Ireland had reached a point relatively advanced in the social scale. It even then achieved a state of intellectual and moral preparation superior to that of most other countries.

According to the various histories of Ireland, after Noah's great flood, successive waves of migrants arrived in the Emerald Isle. Thus there were, inter alios : Partholan and his party; the peaceful followers of Neimheadh; the Fomorians; the Firbolgs (alias a feisty group of Neimheadhians whom the Fomorians had exiled from Ireland to Greece); and the Tuatha de Danaan (who are stated by some to have brought the Genesis 28:11f 'Stone of Destiny' from Palestine together with Princess Eri). Finally, it is recorded (and can indeed also be demonstrated) that the Milesian Gaelic Celts arrived by way of Spain.

Throughout, Ancient Irish writers have never (like those of pagan Greece) claimed that their ancestors were autochthonic. To the contrary, the Ancient Irish writers have always asserted that none of the above groups was native to Ireland – and that all had migrated there from countries to its east. This gives these accounts an authentic quality almost unknown in the national legends of other peoples.

K. Neill's secular hypothesis anent the Ancient Irish

This authenticity is recognized even according to the secularistic and modern hypothesis presented by K. Neill – in his recent Illustrated History of the Irish People . There, states Neill, 25 the first Irishmen were a Mesolithic race who came to the country by way of the North Channel from Scotland – and seem to have settled primarily in Ulster. Around 3700 B.C., however – during the New Stone Age – a second group of settlers are believed to have begun crossing over from Scotland. Thirdly, Bronze Age skills probably came to Ireland directly from the Continent – sometime between 2000 and 1700 B.C.

Neill further considers that the Celts were originally a people from Eastern Europe – cf. the Ancient Scyths within what is now the Ukraine; and the Gomerian Cymri, from what is now the Crimea. By the time some of them arrived in Ireland, however, the rest were then distributed throughout the Continent – from modern Poland, to modern Spain.

Two distinct groups of Celts settled in Ireland. One came into the country from Britain, by way of the traditional northeastern route into Ulster. The other group arrived in the southwest of Ireland directly from the Continent, perhaps from the Iberian Peninsula and apparently straight into Munster.

Racially, the original Celts were certainly fair in complexion. 26 They had red hair. Their kindred, the Ancient Germans, were blond. Both Celt and German came westward into Central Europe, through regions round the Danube 27 – and, before that, apparently from near Armenia. Cf. Genesis 8:4f & 10:1-5.

The arrival of Partholan in Ireland around 1500 B.C.

The World's third age – explains the Irish Chronicle – began in Ireland as follows: "In the sixtieth year of the age of Abraham, Partholan arrived in Hibernia. This Partholan was the first who occupied Erinn after the flood. On a Tuesday the 14th of May he arrived, his companions being eight in number – viz. , four men and four women." Cf. Genesis 6:10 & 7:7 & First Peter 3:20.

"They afterwards multiplied [ cf. Genesis 9:1-19f] – until they were 4050 men and 1000 women in number.... Erinn was waste for thirty years, after the death of Partholan – until Nimhedh son of Adhnoman came.... He occupied Erinn afterward, as is related in the Invasions of Erinn ."

The famous Edward Gibbon could be both sceptical and sarcastic. Yet, following the great Irish Antiquary Dr. G. Keating, even Gibbon states in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 28 that the giant Partholan was the son of Seara, the son of Esra, the son of Sru, the son of Framant, the son of Fathaclan, the son of Magog, the son of Japheth, the son of Noah. Cf. Genesis 10:1f.

Keating and Gibbon both record that Partholan landed on the coast of Munster in Ireland on the 14th day of May in the year of the World one thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight. The German or Swedish detachment – which according to Genesis 10:3f marched under the command of Askenaz the son of Gomer the son of Japheth – distinguished itself by a more than common diligence in the prosecution of this great work. Thus Gibbon – who, however, seems to give too early a date to Partholan.

According to the more traditionalistic nineteenth-century Irish historian Haverty, 29 this Partholan's party reached Ireland only three hundred years after the deluge and thus about 2500 A.M. (alias anno Mundi or 'in the year of the World' since God created Adam). This agrees with the Four Masters' Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland . 30 Yet the latter work claims that Partholan arrived in Ireland in the year 2520 and died in 2550 A.M. (alias about 1500 B.C.).

Declares the very ancient Irish Book of Invasions : 31 "Ireland was waste thirty years after the plague-burial of Partholan's people – till Nemed son of Magog...reached it [Genesis 10:1-5].... He came from Scythia, westward, a-rowing the Sea – till in his wanderings he reached the great Northern Ocean.... Thirty-four ships were his number, thirty in each ship..., till he reached Ireland. They remained in it."

The previously-mentioned Irish Chronicle (according to the Annals of the Four Masters ) also briefly notes the following later dates. "[Year of the World] 2355" when, "at this time, the Fir Bolg occupied Eirinn . [Year of the World] 2390: in this time, the Tuatha De Danann ...overcame the Fir Bolg ."

Furthermore, it goes on to say, in "[the Year of the World] 2544 – Nel, son of Fenius, learned in many languages, went to Egypt.... Miledh, son of Bile, proceeded then from Spain [' a hEasbain '] to Scythia [' don Scithia '], and from Scythia to Egypt, after the slaying of Reflor son of Neman....

"It was not soon after the death of Nel in Egypt, but many years indeed after it, that Miledh departed from Scythia.... Scota, Pharaoh's daughter, married Miledh.... They rowed afterwards...to the Mouth ( Inbher ) of the Sea...until Caister the druid [ draoi ] rescued them.... Caister the druid said to them, 'We shall not stop, until we reach Erinn '....

"They occupied Spain...thirty years.... It was there [that] Miledh's two sons Eremon and hErennan [compare 'Erin'] were born. These were the two youngest.

"The two oldest were Donn [ cf. the River Don near the Ukraine] and Ebhir [ cf. Heber and his Heber-ews]. For in the East, in Scythia, Donn was born; and Ebhir in Egypt.... They subsequently proceeded to land in Erinn, at Inbher Slaine " alias the Mouth of the River Slaney.

The Ancient Irish Annals of the Four Masters on the Nemedians etc.

The peaceful followers of Neimheadh arrived in Eire a further three centuries later, around 2850 A.M. (alias 1150 B.C.). Thus the Irish Annals of the Four Masters . 32

Some assume the next alleged migrants, the 'undersea' or 'down under' Fomorians, 33 were indeed mythical. Yet they may well simply have come up 'from across the Sea' (and hence 'up from the Sea').

Haverty 34 shows from the Irish traditions that the next group of migrants (the Tuatha de Dannann ) who followed, claimed to be Scythian. The Four Masters 35 date the arrival of the Firbolgs who succeeded the Danaans , at A.M. 3266 (alias around 730 B.C.) – and the arrival of the sons of Milidh alias the Milesians 36 in fleets around A.M. 3500 (alias about 500 B.C.).

Now there is some little evidence that a group of Semites settled in Ireland shortly after the above-mentioned Nemedius. To that effect, Grimaldi's Israel in Ireland 37 cites from Joseph Ben Jacob's Precursory Proofs that Israelites came from Egypt into Ireland and that the Druids expected the Messiah .

Joseph ben Jacob maintains 38 Irish antiquaries state the first settlers in Ireland were destroyed by a plague. They were succeeded by the Japhethitic Nemedians. During their time came a Semitic people – being a colony from Africa (either Hebrews from Egypt or Phoenicians from Carthage). Camden says this was about the time of the Exodus (B.C. 1540), and thus long before any later alleged visit of Jeremiah from Egypt to Ireland after B.C. 600.

These Semitic migrants to Ireland were called 'Africans' by the Older Irish. Perhaps this is so because, together with Phoenician sailors, they had come from Palestine either via Egypt or via Carthage in North Africa – right before settling in Northern Ireland.

Indeed, there they declared that they had left Africa because they desired to escape the curse uttered by Noah upon Ham . Genesis 9:22 to 10:5 cf. Psalm 105:23f.

Rabbi Eleazar in his Yolkut on Exodus 13:17 says they were called out of Egypt by the Deity. Another Jewish Midrash says that they went to Carthage, with which place the Irish had a very early intercourse. See O'Halloran's History of Ireland . A third Jewish writer records in a Chaldee Midrash that they went to "Erim" – that is, to Erin. (For the Chaldee uses 'm' for 'n').

Also the ancient Irish Pedigree of Milesius traces the ancestry of the Iberian Milesians – before they came to Ireland immediately from Spain, and ultimately from distant Scythia. The Pedigree goes all the way back through Magog and Japheth and Noah, to the latter's father Lamech the Sethite.

At the post-flood time when the tower of Babel was built, the ancient Irish filids state that Heber resisted that enterprise. God accordingly blessed him. Indeed, the Scythians who later settled in Ireland secured the services of Heber-ew professors to teach their youths.

This maintained a long-standing contact between the Hebrews and those various waves of Scythians who (from about B.C. 2000 onward) ultimately went to and inhabited Ireland. See Dr. Parsons's Remains of Japhet .

According to M. & C.C. O'Brien in their 1972 Concise History of Ireland , 39 even before the birth of Christ – also the Belgae moved from Northeastern Gaul to Southeastern Britain and later to Ireland. There, in the invasion traditions, they became the ' Fir Bolg ' – being the Ancient Irish words, it would seem, for 'Men of Belg(ium).' Consequently, the Leabhar Gabhala (or 'Book of the Gaels') thus begins to look a lot more plausible.

If the O'Briens are right, there may well have been at least two westward movements of the Ancient Belgians. The first could have been a Proto-Celtic movement as long ago as B.C. 1900 – initially into Britain, and then on into Ireland. The second, and specifically a Late-Celtic one, would have occurred around B.C. 80 – straight from the Continent, and then via Southeastern Britain to Erin.

The Milesians, chronicles Haverty, 40 defeated the Firbolgs around B.C. 1620 – and established triennial Parliaments at Tara from B.C. 1300 onward. The Milesians bring us right down to Mosaic times. Thus it is certainly possible and even likely that the Milesians, who claimed to have come via Spain from Egypt , brought Israelitic institutions with them to Ireland.

There are discrepancies from one Irish authority to another as to the arrival date of these Milesians in Ireland. Yet this may merely indicate the arrival there of more than one group of Milesians, and indeed each at a different time. Thus, one group of Milesians would then have arrived in Ireland during Mosaic times, and another group almost a millennium later.

Yet also earlier, around B.C. 2000, C-Celtic Ireland already had urban and rural Counties confederated into commonwealths of freemen. There were conventions under chiefs or governors of those Counties (or 'States') – where representatives of the citizenry met in common assemblies and nobles from each County convened together in regional Senates. Cf. Numbers 10:1-4.

Now according to the writer MacGoeghegan in his famous History of Ireland Ancient and Modern 41 – that nation is without doubt one of the oldest (if not quite the most ancient) in Europe. He says the situation of Ireland having rendered it difficult of access to invaders – her inhabitants cultivated the arts and sciences and letters which they had borrowed from the Egyptians and Phoenicians.

A system of government founded on the Laws of Nature and humanity , influenced their morals. Princes , possessed of a justice worthy of the first Christians , appeared like so many stars – and gave vigour to the laws enervated by their predecessors. Those learned in jurisprudence , who flourished in the different reigns, assisted the princes .

MacGoeghegan notes 42 the similarity, prior to the incarnation of Christ, between the earlier Irish fili (or 'poets' and 'scholars') and the draioithe [alias their 'judges' or 'wise-men'] on the one hand – and the later Brythonic bards and druids on the other. The bards of Wales, as David Powell remarks, 43 were employed for preserving the heraldry and genealogies. This office enjoined the Irish bard to write about the annals, genealogies, alliances, wars, voyages, and transmigrations of that people who (in tracing them from father to son) are descended from Japheth via Magog. Genesis 10:1-2.

In his work Concerning the World (section 3), the B.C. 384-22 Aristotle called Ireland Iernee . So too did the B.C. 20f Strabo. And in B.C. 60f, Diodorus Siculus called it Iris .

Soon thereafter, Pomponius Mela called it Iverna ; and Pliny, Hybernia . Around 46f A.D., Plutarch called it Ogygia – signifying 'very ancient.' Indeed, the Irish really did draw their history from the most remote antiquity – so that the history of other nations is new when compared to Ireland's. 44

Ollamh Fodhla the B.C. 1383 "Father of Ireland's Laws"

Around 1383 B.C., Ollamh Fodhla fathered the laws of Ireland – and her Parliament. 45 Especially the judges alias the druids (who upheld concepts of the Trinity and immortality and legality) here played a prominent role – even as regards the most important decisions taken there. The Irish historian Isabel Hill Elder explains 46 that in Ireland – as too in Britain – the druids were exempt from bearing arms, yet still made the final determination concerning peace or war.

They wore white surplices, and great numbers of them were drawn from the aristocracy. This sumptuary law most of the Irish historians say was enacted under the famous Achaius – alias Eochaidh Ollamh Fodhla the First, a king of the Irish in 1383 B.C. Thus O'Curry on The Manners and Customs of Ireland , 47 and C.C. O'Connor in his Dissertation on Irish History . 48

Isabel Elder also states 49 there were three great encouragers of learning among the early Irish monarchs. The first was King Ollamh Fodhla alias Achaius, 1383 B.C. He was surnamed the 'Doctor of Ireland' – and is said to have built at Tara an academy called the Court of the Learned.

The next promotor of letters, was King Tuathal – during the first century A.D. He timely appointed a triennial revision of all the antiquaries' books – by a committee of three kings or great lords; three druids; and three antiquaries.

Their laws were termed 'Celestial Judgments.' They were committed to writing at the command of Conor Macnessa (the King of Ulster in A.D. 48).

The third patron of literature was King Cormac McArt, 266 A.D. He renewed the laws about the antiquaries. He distributed justice, having written numerous laws which are still extant. Thus Cusack's Irish Nation .

Irish writings also mention various expeditions. The Annals of the Four Masters , quoting the Annals of Tigernach , relate that Cormac (the grandson of Cond) sailed and obtained the sovereignty of Alba (alias North Britain). He ruled in style at Tara from about 254 to 277 A.D., even introducing water-mills into Ireland. He also established schools for the study of law, military matters, and the annals of the country. (A later Cormac visited the Orkneys, and discovered the Faroe Islands and Iceland.)

There also appear to have been three distinct settlements of Irish tribes in Britain: (1) of Munster tribes in South Wales, Devonshire, and Cornwall; (2) of Erimonian Scots in the Isle of Man, Anglesey, and other parts of Gwynedd or North Wales; and (3) of the same Erimonian Scots in Scotland, who were called the Dal-Riada. The Cruithni or Picts of Galloway seem to have been a fourth settlement. The first invasion and the extent of the settlement of the Irish in Southwest Britain, are established from the Ogham inscriptions.

Basil Jones, Bishop of St. Davids, by his valuable book Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynnedd (alias North Wales), has contributed largely to the knowledge of this subject. He came to the conclusion that the Irish occupied the whole of Anglesey, Carnarvon, Merioneth, and Cardiganshire – in addition to at least portions also of Denbighshire, Montgomeryshire, and Radnorshire. The same tribes who occupied Anglesey and Gwynedd, also occupied the Isle of Man.

The first occupation of Man, Anglesey and Gwynedd took place before the dominance of the Scots. The position of the Goidelic population in Galloway (within Southwestern Scotland) is, however, so peculiar – that one has no hesitation in saying it is derived from an emigration of Irish Cruithni or Picts, consequent on the Scotic invasion of Ulster. Bede is the earliest authority for such a migration. 50

The contact between Ireland and Britain at that time implies also reverse direction traffic – from Britain to Ireland. Nowhere is this seen more clearly – than in the evangelization of Ireland from Britain.

Rolleston points out 51 that Ollamh was the Lycurgus or Solon of Ireland, giving to the country a code of legislation – under the ard-ri or 'high king' at Tara – among the various provincial chiefs. This was a "one-and-many" confederacy, still reflecting the primordial revelation of God's Tri-unity. Cf. First Corinthians 12:3-20. The great triennial fair or festival took place at Tara, where the sub-kings and historians and musicians from all parts of Ireland assembled to enact laws, hear disputed cases, and settle succession.

Ollamh ordained that historical records be examined in triennial assembly, and that copies be inserted in the so-called Psalter of Tara . The latter has been lost, but part 52 of it has been preserved in the later though still ancient Psalter of Cashel . That great antiquary – the Westminster Assembly's Puritan Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland – speaks also of the Annals of Tigernach . 53

The 1951 Encyclopedia Americana states 54 that clear proof of existence of an ancient civilization, marvellous for its time, was the institution of Feis Teomran (alias the 'Triennial Parliament') of Tara. The monarch, Ollamh Fodhla – who reigned as ard-ri or high-king of Erin about 1383 years before Christ – established this Parliament.

Possibly following the model given in Numbers 10:2-4 (through international contact with the Israelites in the Near East), Ollamh Fodhla was in fact the Irish originator of the first bicameral constitutional Parliament in Europe. This was later exported from Ireland to Pre-Christian Britain.

In Ireland, continues the Encyclopedia Americana , the various subordinate royal chieftains constituted one branch; the ollavs or scholars and bards, law-givers, judges and historians, another branch; and the third consisted of the military commanders. Under the ard-ri or high-king, were the kings of the Provinces (or governors of the States); and under each king were the clans. They were governed locally by a chief, each clan selecting its own.

In the Irish Chronicles , during the reign of Eochy the First – more than a thousand years before the birth of Christ – society was classified by men of learning. Eminent scholars were by law ranked next to royalty.

The first records of the Irish people show that they were far advanced in civilization. The ancient bards were called filidhes or feardanos . Julius Caesar mentions the advancedness of Celtic bards, in his Gallic Wars . He and Pliny, and also other authors, say that also the Celtic druids – who inhabited Ireland too – were learned. They knew philosophy and the sciences.

The Milesians , the Tuatha de Danaan and the Firbolgs were distinct. The differences among themselves do not seem to have affected their union, whenever attacked by a common foe. Thus, at the birth of Christ – when Rome was mistress of nearly all of Europe – she never gained possession of Ireland, even though she traded with it.

Now the ancient Irish Celts and the (later) ancient Brythonic Celts themselves both derived from the same Proto-Celtic Gomer-ian and/or kindred Magog-ian stock – before settling in the British Isles. For ideologically, both were 'insulated Japhethites' of the coastlands and islands who long kept on dwelling in the tents of Shem. Genesis 9:27 & 10:2-5 cf. First Chronicles 1:1-5f.

Even later, this situation apparently obtained not just in Eire but also in the British Isles as a whole. For traces of this have been found in Ireland, in the Hebrides, on the Isle of Man, on Anglesey, in the Scylly Islands, and also in Britain (alias the later Scotland and Wales and England).

The Greek Diodorus and the Roman Tacitus on the Ancient Irish

The learned Greek Diodorus Siculus rightly observed in his famous (60 B.C.) Historical Library : 55 "The Britons...[also] dwell in Iris [or Ireland].... It is they who in ancient times overran all Asia [Minor] and were called 'Cimmer-ians' [or Gomer-ians] ( cf. Genesis 10:2-5) – time having corrupted the word into the name 'Cimbr-ians,' as they are now called....

"They are the people who...[soon] settled themselves upon the lands of the peoples they had subdued." They were "in time called Greco-Gauls – because they mixed with the Greeks" (or the pre-Hellenic Javan-ians alias the Thracio-Etruscan Japhethites).

Also the great Roman historian Tacitus remarked in 98 A.D.: 56 "Ireland, being between Britain and Spain..., is small when compared with Britain.... In soil and climate – in the disposition, temper and habits of its population – it differs but little from Britain. Part of Britain [ viz. Scotland & Cumbria & Wales & Cornwall]...looks towards Ireland .... We know most of its harbours ...through the intercourse of commerce ."

Indeed, whether Brythons, Gaels or Picts – all of the various different groups of the most ancient inhabitants of the British Isles certainly seem to have derived from basically the same ancestral Japhethites – whether Proto-Celtic, or even Pre-Celtic. All of them had as it were the same general culture, law and religion. Only later were there several migrations of many more of their descendants – across the British Channel and/or the Irish Sea, into Britain and/or Ireland.

Gladys Taylor in her book The Celtic Influence writes 57 that the early-mediaeval Anglo-Saxon Chronicle begins by telling us the Britons came from Armenia. Cf. Genesis 8:4 & 9:18-29 & 10:1-15. That Chronicle further states that the Picts came from 'the South of Scythia' – which could be any region in the area between the mouth of the Danube in the west and Crimea in the east, and between the Ukraine in the north and the Balkans in the south.

The Picts themselves – compare the ancient Pictish Chronicle – speak of Thrace as being their ancient ancestral home. Thrace is within the above area. Indeed, also the Welsh Brut speaks of the Picts as being "men of might" – coming "over the sea-flood" with their King Roderic "out of Scythia."

The Pictish C -Celts in Ireland & North

Britain and the Brythonic P -Celts

It seems then that also the Picts were Celts (at least basically). They were living in Ulster during the days of the Old Testament. This was before they went to Northern Scotland in intertestamentary times (B.C. 420 to A.D. 33) – even while the Celtic Brythons were living principally in South Britain.

The Brythons and the Picts were kindred 'cousins' – so that Ninian the Brythonic Christian missionary to the Picts well understood their language even as late as around 400 A.D. For, as Dr. Diana Leatham points out in her book Celtic Sunrise , 58 the Pictish dialect differed far less from Brythonic than from Scotic (alias the Gaelic of the Iro-Scots).

In their 1972 Concise History of Ireland , M. & C.C. O'Brien discuss 59 the contrast between the initial consonants ' P -' in Old- P retannic (alias Old-Brythonic) and ' C -' in Old- C ruithni (alias Old-Pictish) – and the initial consonant ' P -' in the later P -Celtic Welsh as well as in the later ' P -Pictish.' The earlier contrast and the later change is explained by the fact that at some point, tentatively around 700 B.C., one group of ancient people speaking C-Celtic (namely the Cruithne alias the Picts) began to substitute P- for C- at the beginning of words.

Thus, the ' C ruithne' thereby became the ' P icts.' Yet even before this change, also the older C -Gaels and the P -Brythons (as well as the intermediate C -Cruithne alias P -Picts) were mutually intelligible to one another. Indeed, even though the insulated C-Celtic and the equally-insulated P-Celtic constantly drifted further and further apart from one another and also away from their common Proto-Celtic roots – at the period of the conquest of Britain by the Romans from A.D. 43 onward (and indeed even as late as the A.D. 400 f Ninian), the two groups were still mutually intelligible to one another.

Pictish itself occupied an intermediate position between C-Gaelic and P-Brythonic. Or it adopted the P-feature of Brythonic after the approximately B.C. 360 f Pictish migrations from Spain via Ireland to North Britain. If the latter is correct, it might well have been due to the influence of the more vigorous Brythons to the south of the Picts even within Britain itself.

A similar view is shared by F.T. Wainwright, in his 1955 book The Problem of the Picts . There he affirms 60 the opinion held almost universally among Celtic scholars from at least the time of Stokes in 1890. This is the view that Pictish was a P-Celtic language.

The Irish Celts, just like the Scots and the Manx, are included among the Gaels – alias the so-called C-Celts. If the prior Proto-Celts had no consonantal prefixes, the Celto-Gaels gradually seem to have prefixed a 'c-' before unprefixed roots of Proto-Celtic words. The Picts and the Welsh, on the other land – just like the Cornish and the Bretons – fall under the Brythons, alias the so-called P-Celts. They gradually seem to have prefixed not a 'c-' but a 'p-' before the unprefixed Proto-Celtic words they amended.

According to the great Erse scholar Rolleston, 61 C-Celt Irish is probably an older form of speech than Welsh. He suggests that the Brythonic ancestors of the Welsh, who arrived in the British Isles probably only after the Gaels, gradually seem either to have substituted an initial 'p-' for an initial 'c-' – or otherwise to have prefixed a 'p' before prefixless Proto-Celtic roots.

Thus the root ' a ' (alias 'what') in Proto-Celtic – became ' ca ' in Gaelic Irish and ' pa ' in Late-Brythonic Welsh. Again, the root ' en ' (alias 'head') in Proto-Celtic became ' c-ean-n ' in Irish and ' p-en ' in Welsh. Similarly, the root ' lan ' (alias 'child') in Proto-Celtic, became ' c-lan-n ' in Irish and ' p-lan-t ' in Welsh. Some words acquired also a different suffix (respectively ' - n ' and ' - t ') – as in the Irish ' clan- n ' and the Welsh ' plan- t .'

Rev. Canon J.A. McCullogh of Skye in the Hebrides, in his scholarly article 'Celts' (within the Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics ), 62 remarks that the Celts had settled (probably during Neolithic times) between the headwaters of the Rhine, Elbe, and Danube – coming from the Crim-ea as the Gomer-ic Cimmer-ians. They became known to the Greeks as the Hyperboreans or 'Far-Northern' people (regarded as dwelling in bliss).

Thence, they migrated in different directions. By the ninth century B.C., the Goidels – belonging to the 'C' group of Celts – had probably reached the British Isles. Thither, at a much later date, came the Brythonic tribes of the 'P' group – advancing ahead of pressure from the Scythians ( cf. the Saxons). The different groups were strongly homogeneous.

Especially in Ireland, Celtic Law has been preserved in purity. There seems to have been an ongoing contact between the Emerald Isle and the Near East's Semites. This appears to have been so not only religiously with the Hebrews but also nautically with the Phoenicians and with the Danites.

This close contact between Ireland and the Near East was maintained by sea via Cornwall, Spain, the French Riviera, Carthage and Phoenicia. It was also maintained even overland, through Europe, via the Scythians and the Greeks. Genesis 9:27; 10:1-5; 10:11-26; Judges 5:17; Ezekiel 27:12-19 f ; Jonah 1:3.

Ulster's celebrated Pre-Christian hero Cuchulainn 63 is reputed to have come probably from near the Mersey in Greater Cumbria. He is stated certainly to have made his way to the famous 'school' of Scathach in 'Scythia' (beyond Alba in the Cimmerian Crimea), and thence to have gone on to the daughter of the King of the Greeks. 64

Herodotus on the Celtiberian connection between Eire and Spain

Herodotus, around 450 B.C., reported Celts as then being in Iberia. Moreover, symbols on rocks at Clonfinlough in Central Ireland – are practically identical to those in neolithic cave-paintings in Spain.

The Celtic Milesians settled in Irish Hibernia from Spanish Iberia. They are described as tall and golden-haired warriors, with iron swords and "eyes like blue-bells." They soon subjugated the earlier peoples in their own Hibernian 'New Iberia.' Both there and then, they confederated the various regions of Ireland under an elected 'high king' – who could be deposed before or re-elected during the week-long national convention held every three years. 65

MacGoeghegan explains in his History of Ireland 66 that the ancient monuments of the Milesians evidence that the Scots were the only possessors of Ireland for many centuries before Jesus Christ. They were of Scythian origin – even though they do seem to have reached Ireland by way of Spain (if not priorly also by way of Egypt and/or Greece).

The very name 'Ireland' evidences its Iberian origin. Explains the famous sixteenth-century antiquarian Richard Stanihurst in his Description of Ireland : 67 "The founders of the Irish, out of devotion toward Spain, then called it 'Iberia' – from Iber [alias Heber] the descendant of Jubal [Genesis 4:21 f & 6:1-13 f cf. 10:22-25].... For they themselves that had dwelled beside the famous river Iber-us [in Spain], named the [Irish] land 'Iber-ia.' For so Leland and many foreign chroniclers write it; or '[H]iber[n]ia'....

"From 'Ibernia' proceeds 'Iberland' or 'Iverland'; from 'Iverland' (by contraction), 'Ireland'.... It was also named 'Scotia' – in reference to Scotach the wife of Gathel(us), the ancient captain of those 'Iberians' that flitted from Spain into Ireland.... The said Scotach was old grand-dame to Hiber [or Heber] and Hermon, according to the Scottish Chronicles ....

"The Bastolenes [compare the modern Basques] – a branch of Japheth which first seized upon Ireland – brought thither that same kind of speech...which fell to this family at the desolation of Babel [Genesis 9:27f; 10:1-32; 11:1-9]. They were succeeded [in Ireland] by the Scythians, Grecians [or Pre-Achaean Greco-Celts], Egyptians [alias or including Mosaic Hebrews?], Spaniards, Danes.... But it especially retained the steps of 'Spanish' then spoken in Granada – [ cf. the later Basque in the Bay of Biscay] – as coming from their [the Bastolenes'] mightiest ancestors." 68 Thus Stanihurst.

According to the great Chronicler Raphael Holinshed: 69 "Among Japheth's sons, we read in Genesis [10:2] that Magog was one. He planted his people in Scythia...about the year of the World 2317. Nemod(us) with his four sons Star(ius), Garbanal(es), Anvin(us), Fergus(ius) – captains over a fair company of people – went into Ireland. Passing by Greece, and taking there such [Pre-Achaean Greco-Celts there] as were desirous to seek adventures with them [ cf. Genesis 10:2-5] – at length they landed in Ireland; inhabited the country; and multiplied therein.... This was [then] about the year 2533 after the creation – according to their account.

"These things – coming to the knowledge of the Greeks [ alias the Pre-Achaean Celto-Gaels then dwelling in Greece] – moved five brothers (sons of one Dela). They, being notable seamen and skilful pilots, rigged a navy – and attempted the conquest of this island [of Ireland]. These were of the posterity of Nemod – and named Gand(ius), Genand(ius), Sagand(us), Rutheran(ius) and Slan(ius).... To satisfy all sides and to voiden contention – they concluded by fixing a mere-stone in the mid-point of Ireland.... These are also [then] supposed to have invented the distribution of shires into cantreds [ cf . Exodus 18:12-21 f ] – every cantred [or 'hundred'] or baron-y [alias count-y] containing one hundred townships."

Perhaps around 1500 B.C., the followers of the Celto-Thracian Gathel the Gael (and his wife Scota) are reputed to have left Pre-Achaean Greece. First via Egypt and then by way of Spain, they are stated to have landed in Ireland.

In his knowledge especially of many languages, Gathel was highly honoured. For he not only enriched and beautified the Irish tongue. He also taught them letters, sought up their antiquities, and practised their youth in warlike feasts – after the manner of the Pre-Achaean Greco-Gaels of Thrace who went to Egypt, from whom he had descended.

Gathel was so acceptable to the earlier inhabitants of Ireland that they agreed to name their island 'Gathelia' after him and 'Scotia' after his wife. It is certain that Ireland was indeed anciently named Scotia, and the people Scots. This may sufficiently be proved from several old writers. The residue of Gathel's people who remained in Spain, however, founded the city of Baion in the confines of Gascoigne – the territory of the Basques.

In the (360 f B.C.) days of King Gurgunt of the Britons, the Chief Governor of Baion with his four brother Spaniards (of whom two are said to be Hiber and Hermion), learned that several of the Western Islands were empty of inhabitants. They assembled a great number of men, women and children.

Embarking with the same in sixty large vessels, and directing their course westward, they hovered a long time around the Orkney islands. Thereafter, they met with Gurgunt, who was then returning from the conquest of Denmark.

Holinshed then concludes: 70 "Gurgunt, learning of this, remembered with what trouble he had held the Irish in subjection.... He took oaths from those Spaniards...and, furnishing them and their ships with all things needful – he sent them over into Ireland. There, [and] assisted by such Britons as Gurgunt had appointed to go with them for their guides – they made a conquest....

"The Spaniards, substantially aided by the Britons, settled themselves and divided their seats into quarters. The four brothers reigned severally apart, in four sundry portions – in good quiet, and in increase of wealth.... These parts, appointed in this way, at length grew to five Kingdoms."

These included Leinster, Connaught, Ulster, Munster and Meath. Then, around B.C. 300, Cimbaoth created a united Ireland.

Theological and historical evidence of

early literacy in the British Isles

The preservation of handed-down historical records and the constant compilation of new ones, was prevalent among the earliest Celts of the British Isles. Before them, it seems also their ancestor Adam was literate – and that he carefully chronicled at least the names of his more important descendants. Genesis 5:1 f . So too was Noah, as is evidenced by his very meticulous chronicling of the dates of the flood events. Genesis 7:11 f . So too were his first descendants, such as Shem-Heber-Abraham – and Japheth-Gomer-Magog etc .

Literacy as such always pre-dates even the most ancient extant manuscripts. Also the old Hebrew people enjoyed very many centuries of literacy, before inscripturating the oldest surviving Hebrew manuscript (no earlier than the second century B.C.). Yet precisely the earliest extant manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament – even by virtue of their very own internal testimony – evidence the much more ancient literacy of the Hebrew people.

In Dr. James Parsons's famous book The Remains of Japhet , 71 one finds a big mass of evidence especially from Ancient Ireland to this effect. For it is clear that the Proto-Celts who went and settled in the Emerald Isle – as descendants of the primordial Trinitarians Adam-Noah-Japheth-Heber – were fully literate even throughout their first ten generations from the death of Noah onward. Genesis 9:27-29 & 10:1-5 cf. 11:10-26 f . Indeed, an Irish inscription on an ancient Celtic medal reads: "The acceptable holy image of God in three images. Gather the holy will of God!"

The Encyclopedia Americana has an informative article on 'Gaelic Literature' by Professor Dr. Thomas Gaffney Taaffe of Fordham University. It rightly remarks 72 that although the oldest existing manuscripts in Gaelic are of no earlier date than the seventh century, there is ample evidence that the literature of the Gaels – not only the traditional but also the written literature – is of much greater antiquity.

The internal evidence furnished by the ancient sagas, songs and chronicles preserved in mediaeval manuscripts – indicates a rather regular development extending from a period antedating the beginning of the Christian era by many centuries . Both the internal and external evidence point to the existence of a written as well as a traditional oral literature long before the Gael came into close contact with the civilization of the other nations of Western Europe.

As Dr. James Parsons remarks in his book Remains of Japhet , 73 both the Irish and the Welsh were ever well-versed in the arts of music, poetry, government and war. The Irish initiated their children in it very early. In music, no nation was equal to Ireland. Polydore Virgil says they were distinguished for their skill in music.

Still discussing the Ancient Irish, the mediaeval Welshman and famous historian Giraldus Cambrensis states: in musicis...prae omni natione quam vidimus incomparabiliter est instructa gens haec – namely "in music...this [Irish] race has been instructed incomparably more than any nation we have seen." It is impossible to suppose a people barbarous or savage, who were thus versed in the arts of government and music – or that such a people could have been illiterate till the time of St. Patrick. Thus Dr. Parsons.

Apart from archeological there are also written records dating from even before the later invention of the Gaelic letters still used in Irish typography. Clearly, the Ancient Celts also bequeathed many inscripturations (some of which are still extant) in their virgular writing known as Ogham. 74 As Kuno Meyer the great German celtologist declared, Gaelic literature is the earliest voice from the dawn of Western European civilization . 75

Thus, the well-known statements of old biographers that the (432 f A.D.) Briton Padraig alias St. Patrick gave "alphabets" to some of his converts – should be taken to mean: (a) the Greek alphabet used by the Pre-Roman Britons; and (b) the subsequently-standardized Romano-Brythonic Celtic alphabet. As such, it no more evidences the absence of Pre-Christian writings in Ireland than the arabization of Egyptian disproves the pre-existence of hieroglyphics in Egypt; or the recent latinization of Chinese calligraphy disproves the prior existence of China's age-old ideograms.

Ancient Ireland had two different systems of writing, Bobelloth and Ogham . Irish was written during B.C. times in characters called Bobelloth or Beith-Luis-Nion – alias the Milesian alphabet, which had some Hebraic features. 76 Before the later invention of parchment, the Milesians made use of birchen boards, upon which they engraved their own characters. These then were called in the Irish language orauin or taibhle fileadh – that is, 'philosophical tablets.' Their characters were also called by the ancients ' feadha ' – that is, 'wood.' Cf. Isaiah 30:8-11 & Habakkuk 2:2.

Besides the characters which were in common use, the Milesians also had a mysterious manner of writing which was called Ogham-crev and Ogham-coll . That was a writing which represented trees. 77

For the letters used, all signified the names of trees or plants. Thus: beithe (birch); luis (wild-ash); fearn (alder); suil (willow); nion (ash); huath (white-thorn); duir (oak); timne (meaning unknown); coll (hazel); muin (vine); gort (ivy); peth-boc (meaning unknown); ruis (elder); ailm (fir); onn (broom); ur (heath); egdhadh (aspen); and idho (yew).

There were also the written Poems of Amergin the Druid , the brother of Heber. An extant fragment thereof, reads: Eagna la heaglius adir; agus fealtha laflaithibh . A preserved translation of this into Latin, was rendered: Ars praeposituis fit doctior, aptior armis .

Dr. G. Keating, in his massive book Elements of the History of Ireland , says that Ethrial wrote a history of the voyages and migrations of the Milesians. Ethrial also wrote on history, genealogies, medicine, philosophy, and the laws. Indeed, it has already been seen 77 that the (1383 B.C.) Ollamh Fodhla had historical and legal records examined – and had copies thereof inserted in an ancient version of the Psalter of Tara .

Also the historian Haverty has referred 78 to the many passages in Ireland's most ancient annals and historical poems. Thus he has demonstrated that not only the Irish Ogham but also a style of alphabetic characters suited for the preservation of public records (and for general literary purposes) was known from very ancient times – already many centuries before the introduction of Christianity. Thus the Ogham inscriptions found in the cave of Dunloe in Kerry, for instance, clearly antedate Christianity.

In the Immrain Brain , the Pre-Christian writer Bran is stated to have written down more than fifty quatrain of poetry in Ogham. In the story of Baile MacBuain, and also in the Leabhar na Nuachonghbala (alias the 'Book of Leinster'), one reads of a whole library or ' tech screpta ' of 'rods of the Fili ' cut in Ogham onto tree-bark.

Other ancient books in Irish should also be mentioned. Thus there are also: the poems and the grammatical treatise Uraicept na nEigeas of Feirceirtne; the poems of Adhna and his son Neide; and Atharine's code of laws Breithne Neimhidh .

Irish writing as such, then, clearly antedates the time of St. Patrick. This can also be seen from the records regarding Pre-Patrician Irish rulers.

There are many such records. Such include those of: the (9 A.D.) Crimhthain; the (14 A.D.) Carby and Morann; the (57-123 A.D.) Conn of the Hundred Battles; the (250 A.D.) Cormac MacArt and his son Carby (268 A.D.); and the famous (279 A.D.) Niall of the Nine Hostages. 79

Further evidence: Pre-Christian antiquity of Irish Ogham writings

The great German celtologist Zeuss was profoundly impressed with the vast antiquity, even from B.C. times, of Ogham. The fact is, even books were then being written in Ireland – and had already been written for a very long time – ere the start of St. Patrick's life-long mission there in 432 A.D. Thus also MacManus, 80 in The Story of the Irish Race .

In the second century one encounters the writings of Feredach, Modan, Ciothruadh, and Fingin; and in the third century, many poems and much prose. Thus Aethicus, in his A.D. 417 Cosmography of the World , states he had earlier gone to Ireland and examined whole "volumes" of books in Irish.

No later than the third century, Cormac MacArt inscripturated 81 the extremely ancient Psalter of Tara . He also required all his fianna warriors to memorize twelve books of poetry. 82 Note: twelve books!

Used by the druids before the advent of Christianity, Ogham consists of twenty-five runic or cuneiform-like letters similar to characters also found in the Orient. Most of its extant inscriptions are to be found on stones (and especially on gravestones). Yet some were also used in antique books.

More than three hundred Ogham writings have been discovered in both Gaelic and Pictish. Most are from Kerry and Cork in Ireland – yet some are from the Isle of Man, Scotland, the Shetlands, Wales, Cornwall, Devon, and Hampshire. 83

O'Flaherty shows in his great book Ogygia 84 that the Pre-Christian Irishmen Forchern MacDeagh, Neidhe MacAidhna and Aithirne MacAmhnas once composed many works on poetry and on the laws and on celestial judgments. Again, King Cormac Ulfada addressed his written work called The Education of a Prince – to his own son. That work not only evidences a written tradition of educational methodology, but also an established practice of teaching children how to read.

Indeed, also the Scot Sir George MacKenzie states 85 that he himself saw manuscripts in Columba's Abbey written by Cairbre Liffeachar, who lived six generations before St. Patrick. Other manuscripts he saw there, clearly dated from about the time of our Saviour. Indeed, he saw too yet other manuscripts of the royal genealogies even from Pre-Christian times.

Patrick himself noted the native literacy of the Chief Druid Dubthach O'Lugair – before the latter's christianization. Indeed, St. Patrick even supervised the burning of some 180 volumes of unacceptable writings 86 – as distinct from a much greater number of which he approved. Very clearly, then, this suggests that certainly in Ancient Ireland also druidic doctrines had long been in writing. Indeed, the fact that Patrick also updated the Senchus Mor alias the Irish Law Code – again presupposes its Pre-Patrician inscripturation.

When the above-mentioned 180 volumes of unacceptable writings were destroyed, many more hundreds of volumes of acceptable druidic writings – constituting the bulk of Pre-Patrician Irish literature – were then spared. Patrick deemed such not just innocuous, but positively valuable. For it was Patrick himself who then approved the overwhelming bulk of druidic Irish Law and then ordered it to be preserved – because in harmony with the Law of God in Nature Revelation as well as in Holy Scripture.

Not only does this illustrate the extensive scope of literacy and the huge treasury of written records in Pre-Patrician Ireland. In addition, all books not right then destroyed, themselves formed the continuing basis of a christianized Ireland's incipient literature and laws (in the Senchus Mor and other writings). It remains a great tragedy that the later pagan Vikings, during their many attacks against the Celts, destroyed so many of those writings of Ancient Ireland – during the course of the ninth and tenth centuries A.D.

Ogham itself, however, died out with the advent of Christianity and the introduction of the latter's conventional alphabet and typography. Just before that happened, even as late as 350 f A.D., 87 invading Free Brythons and Iro-Scots and Picts from Celtic North Britain beat back the Romans in the latter's southern province of Britannia . Having done that, the northern invaders then erected their own suitably-inscribed 'Ogham Stones' – as far south as Hampshire's Silchester.

Yet quite apart from Ogham, there is also very much other evidence of literacy in Ancient Ireland. Dr. Todd is confident that some fragments found in the Brehon Laws, are of very high antiquity.

Aethicus of Istra, according to his own book Cosmographia , visited Ireland and examined various books of the Irish. Furthermore, the Book of Ballymote and the Book of Lecan compare Gaelic even with Greek and Hebrew. Indeed, quite the bulk of the well-known Ancient Irish Grammar – is attributed to the scholars of Pre-Christian Ireland. 88

Now if Pre-Patrician Ireland were to have been illiterate – it is inconceivable how, within a century of Patrick's death, the scholarship of a previously-isolated Ireland could then have become incomparably the finest in the World. Indeed, the eminent German celtologist Dr. Heinrich Zimmer (author of the celebrated textbook The Celtic Church in Britain and Ireland ) 89 – concludes that Irish Colleges were known in Western Europe even before Ireland's missionary Mansuy became Bishop of Toul in Gaul during the fourth century.

Also other ancient documents of the British Isles suggest the very early literacy of their inhabitants. Thus the extremely ancient Irish Book of Invasions has not inappropriately been characterized by Norton-Taylor in his book The Celts 90 as an Irish version of the Books of Genesis and Exodus (with the additional hero Cuchulainn featured as a sort of 'Irish Moses').

It deals with the various migrations to Ireland of the Partholans, the Milesians, the Tuatha De Danaan , the Fir Bolg , and so on. The Tuatha de Danaan , explains Wright in his History of Ireland , 91 came to the Emerald Isle from Greece and by way of Dan-mark (alias Denmark) – bringing Lia Fail or the 'Stone of Destiny' with them.

P.B. Ellis, in his book The Druids , 92 records very many examples of Pre-Christian Irish writings. Norton-Taylor comments 93 on the Book of Invasions and also other ancient Irish documents that there are elements in many of the ancient tales that are not at all pure fiction. The famous Ulster Cycle, which contains the mid-second-century-B.C. 94 tale The Cattle Raid of Cooley , has its hero Cuchulainn write down his songs in Ogham – and describes an Ireland divided into four kingdoms. Before then, Ireland was known as Eriu, and its dominant people (by the fifth century B.C.) were the Goidels.

Early Irish wealth in gold required a

sophisticated trading and legal system

A few references to Benedict Fitzpatrick's article on 'Irish Archaeological Remains' – published in the Encyclopedia Americana – are very appropriate at this point. It points out 95 that Ireland has been called the wonder of Europe – because of the wealth and beauty of its relics in the past.

Its ancient edifices evidence their vast antiquity. Its dazzling collections of gold ornaments exhibit a delicate minuteness as to their finish.

Ireland's Ogham stones have been preserved in great numbers. In architecture, sculpture, metal work and the production and ornamentation of manuscripts – the Ancient Irish were the Western World's chief exponents and teachers.

Truly marvellous collections of solid gold ornaments are even today to be seen in the Royal Irish Academy, and elsewhere. Even if these known extant remains were to represent the total wealth of gold of the Bronze Age in Ireland, the amount – as Sir Hercules Reid points out – would probably still exceed that of any ancient period in any country.

Yet all of the known remains can only be a small portion of the original wealth of Ireland. Vast quantities must have been discovered, from mediaeval times onward – nearly all of which would then have been melted down and carried out of the country.

In the literature of no other country are there quite as many references to gold – as in Irish literature down to the fifteenth century. The Annals of the Four Masters , for example, declare that "Donough Ua Cerbhaeil, Lord of Airgialla, died after bestowing three hundred ounces of gold."

Ireland's wealth in gold from the Bronze Age onward, if stated soberly, says Sir Hercules Reid – would appear so enormous as hardly to be credible. In the Dublin Museum may be seen circlets, fibulae, diadems, torques, bracelets, rings, garters, crescents, brooches, braid balls, tiaras and ear-rings – all of pure gold and the most exquisite workmanship.

Also the Encyclopaedia Britannica states 96 that rich deposits of copper in the counties of Wicklow, Waterford, Cork and Kerry – added greatly to the importance of Ireland in the Bronze Age. Wicklow was rich also in gold.

The findings of gold lunulae of Irish origin in Western France, Southern Scotland and also Central Europe – suggest that there was commercial intercourse with the Baltic as well as with Southwest Europe. Such indicate that much in the Irish saga is indeed historical.

The chambered tumulus of New Grange near Ireland's Drogheda has a fine corbelled roof. It resembles Maes Howe in Orkney, as well as graves in Brittany and the Iberian peninsula.

As Archaeology Professor Dr. R.E.M. Wheeler declares in his own textbook on prehistoric Wales, 97 Ireland is known to every text-book of British prehistoric archaeology as the 'El Dorado' of the Ancient World. Great masses of wrought gold have been found in Irish soil. There is also a glittering profusion of golden ornaments in the Irish saga-literature.

In her important book Irish Nationality , the important Hibernian historian Alice Stopforth Green declares 98 that Irish chroniclers tell of a vast antiquity reaching back for at least some two thousand years before Christ. They tell of the smelting of gold near the River Liffey around B.C. 1500 – and of the Wicklow artificer who made cups and brooches of gold and silver, and silver shields and golden chains for the necks of kings.

Irish commerce went back at least some fifteen hundred years before our era. Ireland was the most famous gold-producing country of the West. Mines of copper and silver were worked. A race of goldsmiths carried on the manufacture of bronze and gold, on what is now the bog of Cullen.

Even the famous evolutionist and socialist Mr. H.G. Wells has noted 99 in his Outline of History that Irish prehistoric remains are particular rich in gold. Indeed, also Rolleston has noted 100 that an astonishing number of prehistoric gold relics have been found in Celtic Ireland.

Wright insists 101 that Irish urns were better made and much more richly ornamented than the British, and Irish gold far more abundant. Indeed, during B.C. times, the Ancient Irish King Eochy played chess with Etain on a silver chessboard with jewel-studded gold pieces. 102

K. Neill declares 103 in his 1979 Illustrated History of the Irish People that gold was a popular and plentiful raw material. Mined in the Wicklow Mountains, it was the catalyst of the island's first foreign trade. Baltic amber and Egyptian faience beads have been found in sites dating from this period. These were no doubt imported, in exchange for Irish gold.

A.S. Green on the political and social structures of Ancient Ireland

A.S. Green further explains 104 that the name of Eriu recalls the ancient inhabitants of Ireland – viz. the Celtiberian Hibernians or Pre-Gaelic though nevertheless Celtic groups of Japhethites (before their later linguistic gaelicization). The Gaels themselves first entered Ireland across the Gaulish Sea. One invasion followed another. An old Irish tract gives the definite Gaelic monarchy over a United Ireland as beginning in the fourth century B.C.

Green declares the Gaels gave their language and organization to the country. Out of the groupings of the tribes, there emerged a division of the island into districts. Each of the provinces – Ulster, Leinster, Munster and Connacht – had its stretch of seaboards and harbours. All met in the middle of the island in the newly-created province of Meath, at the hill of Usnech where the 'Stone of Division' still stands. There, the 'high-king' had his court, as the chief lord in the confederation of the many States.

Regarding the law and government of the Ancient Irish, Green further elucidates 105 that the law with them was the law of the people. They never lost their trust in it. They never exalted a central authority. The administration was divided into the widest possible range of self-governing communities, which were bound into a willing [con]federation.

The Early-Irish Confederacy was led by a presiding elected officer, who had strictly limited powers. As the Irish writer Walter Bryan observes, 106 the Celts applied their theories of 'equality' as well as their theories of 'aristocracy' even to the succession to the throne. And under the law of tanistry, it went to the oldest and most worthy man of the same blood.

The system bore an uncanny resemblance to the presidential system in the United States – in that kings were elected from among a number of candidates vying for public favour. If the condition of the country deteriorated during his reign – he was deposed, and another king elected.

Tanaistry – the Law of Succession in Ancient Ireland

According to Haverty, 107 one of the most ancient native laws of Ireland was that of succession – called tanaisteacht or tanistry. This law was a compound of the hereditary and the electives principles, and is thus briefly explained by Professor Curry.

Professor Curry himself states 108 that there was no invariable rule of succession in the Milesian times. However, according to the general tenor of the ancient accounts, the eldest son succeeded the father – to the exclusion of all collateral claimants. Compare Genesis 9:18-27 f .

Yet he might nevertheless be disqualified by personal deformity or blemish; by natural imbecility; or by crime. Cf. Genesis 25:23-33 f . Again, as happened especially in later ages, the succession could be alternated by parental testament or mutual compact. Cf. Genesis 49:3-8 f .

The eldest son, being thus recognized as the presumptive heir and successor to the dignity, was denominated tanaiste alias 'second' to the testator. All the other sons or persons that were eligible in case of his failure, were simple all together called righdhamhna – that is, 'king-material.'

This was then the origin of the tanaiste (alias the successor) and the tanaisteacht (alias the successorship). Tanaisteacht did not involve any disturbance of property or of the people. It only affected the position of the person himself – whether king, chief, or professor of any of the liberal arts. Tanistry regulated the transmission of titles, offices, and authority.

Haverty explains 109 that the Ancient Irish custom of gavailkinne was another of the ancient institutions of Ireland – but one common also to the Brythons, Anglo-Saxons, Franks and other peoples. It adjusted the partition and inheritance of landed property. The Ancient Brythons called it gavelkind .

Thereby, the property was divided equally between all the sons. In addition to his own equal share which the eldest son obtained in common with his brothers, he received the dwelling-house and other buildings which would have been retained by the father or kenfine – if the division were made (as it frequently was) during his own lifetime. Cf. Luke 12:13 f & 15:11 f .

This extra share was given to the eldest brother as head of the family, and in consideration of certain liabilities which he incurred for the security of the family in general. All the members of a tribe or family in Ireland had an equal right to their proportionate share of the land occupied by the whole. The equality of title and blood thus enjoyed by all, must have created a sense of individual self-respect and mutual dependence.

The Ard-ri or 'High-King of Ireland'

was both elected and replaceable

In his famous History of Ireland , Haverty elucidates 110 that the dignity of the ard-ri or monarch of Ireland was one rather of title and position than of actual power. It was always supported by alliances with some of the provincial governors – to secure the respect of the others. There was a reciprocity of obligations between the kings on the one hand and their subordinate chieftains on the other.

In her Irish Nationality , A.S. Green explains 111 the ard-ri alias supreme arbitrator was surrounded by his counsellors. They were, variously: the lawmen or brehons ; the bards and chroniclers; and the druids, teachers, and scientists.

The power of the ard-ri rested on the traditions of the people – and on the consent of the tribes. He could impose no new law, nor demand extra-legal service. He was never a law unto himself but always subject to the rule of law .

The political bond, which seemed so loose, drew all its strength from a body of national tradition and a Universal Law Code . Separate and independent as the tribes were, all alike accepted the one Code which had been fashioned in the course of ages. The same law was recited in every tribal assembly .

There were schools of lawyers to expound the law . Thereby, the spirit of the Irish found national expression in a code of law showing not only a well and truly extraordinarily acute and trained intelligence – but also a true sense of equity .

Scholars in their degrees ranked with kings and chiefs, and professors sat by the high-king and shared his honours. It is in the exaltation of learning in the national life that we must look for the real significance of Irish history – the fine idea of a society loosely held in a political sense, but bound together in a spiritual union.

Under the competent leadership of trained and educated legal scholars, also the common people themselves were deeply involved. As A.S. Green explains, 112 in Ireland every community and every individual was interested in maintaining the law of the people and the protection of the common folk. Irish land laws, in spite of all the changes that gradually covered the land with fenced estates, actually preserved popular rights throughout all the centuries – viz .: fixity of rates for the land; fixity of tenure; security of improvement.

Rights of inheritance and due solemnities of election were accurately preserved. Said Sir John Davis, the English Attorney-General of Ireland under King James the First: "The Irish are more fearful to offend the law than are the English – or any other nation whatsoever. No nation loves equity and justice better. The Irish are satisfied to see it executed – even against themselves."

That was certainly the case in Ancient Free Ireland, while under her own Brehon Law. Then, they were never 'feckless' – nor were they a nation of rebels constantly 'against the government' etc . Such perceptions about Irishmen must be attributed only to Ireland's later reaction against the forceful imposition of foreign and by-then-divergent legal systems upon her – in relatively recent times.

In his book Ireland , McCarthy records 113 that ancient Irish kings were surrounded by lawmakers, soldiers, musicians and poets. All such kings only presided over legislative assemblies. The various kingdoms of Ireland were politically and militarily strong, and the land was a centre of learning.

The early rulers of Erin were Gaelic Celts with blond and reddish hair. They came to Ireland about 350 B.C., carrying iron weapons that enabled them to subdue the earlier inhabitants. The latter were a Celto-Basque or Celtiberian people from northern Spain who were armed with bronze.

One of the most ancient kings was Cormac MacArt. Cormac, around 250 A.D., fortified and enlarged the ancient castle on the sacred hill of Tara near what is now Dublin. He was supported by a renowned force of warriors called the fianna – under the command of the legendary hero Finn MacCool.

To qualify for membership in the fianna , a recruit first had to memorize twelve books of poetry. This too presupposes Irish literacy, centuries before Patrick.

Later, 'Niall of the Nine Hostages' ruled Tara from 380 to 405 A.D. The O'Neills kept on ruling as the lords of Ulster, until 1603.

'Niall of the Nine Hostages' made a series of attacks on Britain and Gaul, which were both then under the declining colonial government of Rome. For a while, he kept threatening to conquer Wales and Scotland. Yet also after his death, the high-king at Tara merely chaired a council of independent provincial kings.

These were the times of the Briton St. Patrick's childhood. Norton-Taylor in his book The Celts explains 114 that Loeghaire (or Leary) was the high-king of all Ireland from A.D. 427 onward. Upon the conversion of Ireland by St. Patrick at that time, Erin's Ancient Common Law was solidly strengthened with a vigorous Biblical Christianity.

Many of those Irish then intermarried with the Christian Britons – in Cumbria, Wales and Cornwall. In that way, the christianized Irish strengthened the Celtic culture and ancient Common Law not just of Ireland but also of Western Britain herself – even as the Anglo-Saxons were invading from the East.

Laws and politics in Ancient Ireland many centuries before Christ

Norton-Taylor rightly explains 115 that all the general outlines of Celtic society can be grasped by reading between the lines of the Irish epics. Moreover, many of the details of that social order are preserved in the Ancient Irish law tracts – the so-called Brehon Law.

At the highest level of Irish society were the kings, who were themselves arranged together in grades. Each Tuath or State had its king. But some of these monarchs were strong enough to become over-kings or 'high-kings.'

Yet none of these 'kings' in this royal chain of command enjoyed real sovereignty in the ultimate sense. They did not make or unmake laws; nor did they judge or punish violators. In an early version of the doctrine of 'separation of powers' – the king, at whatever level, was primarily concerned with the tribe's military business and with intertribal diplomacy. His subjects looked to him for military leadership in time of trouble.

The king was entitled to an annual tribute from his subjects. In return, he gave them gifts of property. The benefits of this contractual arrangement, were mutual. The 'kings' were elected by their peers, or by men of noble birth – and were thus a 'republican' aristo-cracy. Politics played an important role in the final selection of a king. Yet the king-elect was always deemed to have gained his kingship through divine disposition.

In the ancient legal tracts, a typical freeman possessed seven cows and a bull. The free client's contractual obligation to the overlord ran for seven years. The overlord rented him stock, and received in return seven years of personal service within his household. At the end of the seven years, the rented stock became his to own. Cf. Genesis 29:20 f & Exodus 21:2 f & Deuteronomy 15:12 f . Thus the freeman was then at liberty to enter into another contract – either with the same overlord, or with a different one.

Under Irish Law, every man had an economic value – pegged by the community – as to his standing in it. If the base client was injured while performing all his obligations to the social unit, he was to be given compensation based on his honour price. Cf. Exodus 21:32.

Regarding the laws of the druids also in Ireland, already the B.C. 20 Strabo had noted that "the druids are considered the most just of men." Their moral system distinguished the lawful ( dleathach ) from the unlawful ( neamhdhleathach ) – and was enforced by a series of sanctions (or geasa ). Indeed, the Ancient Irish Leabhar na gCeart or 'Book of Rights' states: "The learned historian who does not know the prerogatives and prohibitions of the kings, is not entitled to visitations."

In the first century A.D., one encounters the Audacht Morainn alias the will and testimony of Judge Morann. His own instructions to the High-King Feradach Finn Fachtnach (A.D. 95-117) included the following advice: "Let him magnify the truth; it will magnify him.... Through the ruler's truth, every law is glorious.... Through the ruler's truth, all the land is fruitful." And somewhat later, the Aire Echta or Chief Magistrate Aonghus MacAirt was reported to have seen it as his own most important task to "right the wrongs of his people as well as protecting the weak and poor."

According to the Annals of Ulster , the first codification of Irish Law in A.D. 438 was inscripturated in the then-archaic format of Berla Feini (thus evidencing a long-standing tradition of Irish script). Too, in the biographer Muirchu's Life of Patrick – one reads how Laoghaire the High-King proposed that an Irish book of the druids and a Christian book both be tested by way of ordeal.

Indeed, the Annals of Ulster record how nine prominent men – viz. three brehons (Chief-Druid Dubhthach Maccu Lugir, Rossa and Fergus); three kings ( viz. the Irish High-King Laoghaire, King Dara of Ulster, and King Corc of Munster); and three leading of the most prominent Christians in Ireland ( viz. Patrick, Benignus and Cairnech) – then studied and refined the Ancient Irish Law or Fenechas for three years. Only thereafter did they finally codify it as the Senchus Mor or national law of Cain – as distinct from the Urrad or local law, and also as distinct from the criminal law set down in the Book of Acaill .

Familial solidarity in educational fosterage, torts and suretyship

Norton-Taylor declares 116 that the Celts attached special importance to the education of their children. This was accomplished through 'fosterage' alias oileamhain . Literally, this means 'education.'

It took children from their homes before they were seven, and then it introduced them to the wider world. The foster-families were relatives and friends, who were reimbursed by the child's father.

The education of girls cost more than boys. A girl remained with her foster-parents only until fourteen. A boy stayed three years longer. Each foster-child learned the skills he or she would need in later life.

There are numerous allusions to fostering. The most famous is Tain Bo Cuailge or 'The Cattle Raid of Cooley' – a B.C. 200 f writing of the very first importance in assessing the life-style of the Ancient Irish.

Norton-Taylor further points out 117 that as late as the sixteenth century A.D., there were still pockets of Ireland in which traditional Irish Law was practised. Codified and written down almost a thousand years beforehand, these archaic laws went directly back to ancient Celtic times and were based on a tribal society in which men were responsible to one another rather than to the impersonal institution of a State.

Thus, wrongdoing was not a civil offence but a trangression of private rights. A man who harmed another man, paid his debt to the injured party's family – not to society as a whole. Compare Exodus 21:19-34 & 22:1-9 etc .

Under the Celtic Law of the old Irish tracts, all of a culprit's immediate relatives could be held responsive for his misdeed. Cf. Achan in Joshua chapter 7. Thus, a man who had allowed his cattle to trample his neighbour's fields – might be ordered to turn over his own fields to his neighbour for a full season. The offender's family was responsible for seeing that the order was obeyed. By holding the family legally responsible in a dispute, Celtic Law brought tremendous pressure to bear upon wrongdoers.

Besides involving whole families in legal judgments, Ancient Celtic Law had also other means of discouraging wrongdoers. One was the institution of suretyship. When a man had committed an infraction, he was fined according to his status – and he was obliged to provide guarantees of his ability to pay.

If that failed, ostracism could follow. Celtic Law was rooted in the divine order, and was enforced by a panel of jurists – the druids.

Post-Abrahamic developments specifically in Ancient Ireland

We must now supply some solid citations from ancient documents, illustrating historically the quality of life in Ancient Ireland. Here, from those sources, we attempt to reconstruct a picture of society in the Emerald Isle – from Abraham's time onward.

Gleaning from much more ancient materials, the A.D. 1393 to 1464 historian Capgrave wrote a Chronicle of England . There, concerning the year 2895 after Adam, he firmly declared: 118 "This year Saragh was born [ cf. Genesis 11:19-20].... In this same year began the kingdom of that people which they called Scythians.... This people sprang from Magog, who was son unto Japheth." Cf. Genesis 10:2 f . The Scythians then spread out "from the Great Sea unto the end of Germany" – and unto the "Araxes" River in what is now Southwestern Armenia.

There is also the popular story of Albine and her sisters – all of them daughters of King Diodicias of Syria. They fled to Albion before the (1200 B.C.) Brut arrived and renamed that island 'Brut-ain' alias 'Brit-ain.' Difficult to date (though perhaps around B.C. 1500) – the story is evidently of great antiquity. 119

The Book of Invasions , writes MacGoeghagan, maintains some fifty-four people landed in Erin before the Noachic Deluge ( cf. Genesis 5:4-22). Yet soon thereafter, all then perished there. Genesis 5:25-27.

After the Great Flood, Partholan's colony of considerably over a thousand settlers came from Greece (alias Javan) – via Sicily and Spain (or Tarshish). Compare Genesis 10:1-5. Certainly, even the coasts of Ireland were known to the Ancient Phoenicians for perhaps fully two millennia before Christ. 120

Wright, in his massive three-volume History of Ireland , agrees. There he states 121 that to Ireland came Partholan the Japhethite, ninth in descent from Noah and a contemporary of Abraham. Genesis 10:1-5 & 11:10-26 f .

Partholan's party of migrants included four "scholars" and three druids – together with three generals and two merchants. Some time later, he was followed from the Black Sea by another Japhethite – Nemhidh the eleventh from Noah, who spoke Irish. Thereafter came some Fomorians. They seem to have been either Pelasgian, Greek or Phoenician sea-rovers.

According to the Ancient Irish Book of Invasions 122 – thirty years after that Partholan, Nemhidh brought a colony to Ireland from Scythia alias A-sguz or Ashkenaz. Cf. Genesis 10:3 and Jeremiah 50:41 & 51:27 f . He brought them through the Euxine or Black Sea, past the Alps alias the Rhiphean Mountains or the Chain of Rhiphath ( cf. Genesis 10:3b) – to the North Sea.

Thence, he sailed further, to Ireland – together with his four sons. Those sons included Jarbhainel Faidh, whose grandson Jobaath started a colony in Den-mark etc . The party also included Fergus Leithderg, whose son Briotan Maol later established a settlement in the north of Alban alias Britain.

Later, continues the Book of Invasions , the earth-mining Firbolgs arrived in Ireland from Thrace. Finally, the Tuatha De Dan-aan came there from Den-mark – under Prince Eochaidh the son of King Erc. These Dan-aans founded four cities in Ireland, but also migrated back and forth to Scotland.

Next, the Milesians alias the sons of Miledh arrived in Ireland with the Scots – from Spain or Tarshish. Cf. Genesis 10:4b. Miledh had married Scota, a Scythian princess, in Egypt. Cf. Genesis 10:4-6 & 10:21-25. His son Eire-amon became the first Milesian king of Erin.

The B.C. sixth century's Orphic Argonaut 123 knows of voyages from Grecian lands to "the Iernian Isles" 124 – and also from Spain. Indeed, also the B.C. fourth century's Aristotle 125 knew of ' Iernee ' alias Erin. Then, there was sustained contact and religious intercourse between the British Isles, Iberia, Greece, Scythia, and the Near East (Phoenicia, Judah and Egypt).

The Cruithnigh (alias the Picts) came to Ireland from Thrace with nine ships and some 309 colonists. First they built the city of Pictavis in France; next they settled in Ireland; and finally they started a colony in Alban or Britain (initially in the extreme northeast of what is now Scotland).

According to the ancient Book of Leinster , the Picts were descendants of Fenius who came from Scythia to Nembroth. Cf. Genesis 8:4 & 10:1-2 & 10:8-12. There Nembroth alias Nimrod built a great tower, and founded a school for languages. Cf. Genesis 11:1-9. Too, Fenius's son Nel then in Egypt married Princess Scota, who begot their son Gaedhel.

All three – Fenius of Scythia, Scota, and Gaedel – then gave their names to the Irish. Thus, in Ireland, we find: Feni, Scuith ( cf. 'Scot'), and Gael. Leaving Egypt via Scythia, and then negotiating the Rhiphaean Mountains or the Alps for Spain ( cf. Genesis 10:3-5 f ) – they later went on to Ireland. There, the Milesian Prince Eber – cf. Genesis 10:21-25 f – allied himself with the Tuatha Dea (or the Tuatha De Danaan ). They took the south of Erin.

Ancient History Professor Nora Chadwick declares 126 that among the very first Celtic peoples, the inculcation of poetic inspiration and what she calls the mantic art were well developed and elaborated to an unparalleled degree. Thus, those Ancient Celts were quite unique as regards the preservation of original revelation and its predictions – and also as regards their endowment with a high measure of common grace with which to apprehend and to appreciate it.

There was constant and frequent contact between New Iberia alias Ireland on the one hand and Ancient Britain on the other. There was also constant and frequent contact between the whole of the British Isles on the one hand and both Old Iberia as well as all the rest of Western Europe on the other.

Indeed, in her essay Intellectual Contacts between Britain and Gaul , 127 Professor Dr. Chadwick rightly remarks that Ireland has preserved (in all her great wealth of manuscript material) a vast storehouse of ancient tradition which has been lost in Britain. But there are indications in Irish tradition that Western Britain (alias ancient Cumberland and Wales and Cornwall) at least shared the ancient Irish culture – and even that Britain was regarded as the source of much of the early intellectual life in Ireland.

A fundamental unity of culture existed between Ireland and Western Britain. At least in some measure, this Celtic culture was identical also with that of Ancient Gaul.

Scotland's Skene on the Iro-Scots of Ancient Ireland

In his famous work Celtic Scotland (subtitled A History of Ancient Alban ), S.F. Skene – the great nineteenth-century Scottish Antiquary and Historiographer Royal – expressed important opinions about the Iro-Scotic motherland in Ireland of the Scots in Scotland. For he wrote 128 that the ancient history of Ireland presents detailed annals of reigns and events from a period reaching back to many centuries before the Christian era – the whole of which has been adopted by her historians as genuine.

Now the famous Old-Irish document called The Annals of the Four Masters – itself but a compilation of Ireland's various even more ancient manuscripts – begins its account with the year of the deluge. This it states occurred 2952 years before Christ. 129 Skene points out that the actual compilation of those Annals themselves – from a wealth of many more ancient manuscripts – began around 1632 A.D. Cf. too Dr. Keating's work, written in Irish during 1640.

Nevertheless, Skene also admits that 130 the contents of the ancient Irish tract called the Book of Conquests apparently already antedated the (400 f A.D.) St. Patrick. This can be seen from the fact that it was disclosed to Patrick. Indeed, that Book of Conquests was in turn itself founded upon yet older documents – such as the Leabhar Gabhala (or the Book of Invasions ).

Also Barrister Ginnell 131 traces the precompilation of the Annals right back to 438-441 A.D., or just six years after the British Christian missionary St. Patrick had the Irish recite and purify and then re-inscripturate their centuries-old Senchus Mor (alias their Common Law). Moreover, those Annals of the Four Masters also describe the codification of Irish Common Law – which had itself existed from time immemorial.

Now the Annals state that the sons of Miledh – by way of Spanish Tarshish ( cf. Genesis 10:1-5) – arrived in Ireland many years after Adam. Subsequently, Heremon and Heber ( cf. Genesis 10:21-25) are said to have assumed the joint sovereignty of Ireland.

Four centuries later (from about B.C. 1383 onward), seven successive Milesian kings ruled over Eire. The first, Ollamh Fodhla, established the feis teamhrach (or great annual feast) at Tara. He also appointed a toshech [or chief] over every cantred or district containing a hundred heads of families. Cf. Exodus 18:12-21 & Ruth 4:2 etc . 132

In later times, Diodorus Siculus (around 60 B.C.) and Cornelius Tacitus (around 98 A.D.) – as well as D. Sullivan, T.H. Huxley and W.F. Skene later during the nineteenth century – all apparently concluded 133 that the Celtiberian Basques (from the Southwestern part of Europe), who went to the British Isles as the Picts etc. , were later subjugated there by at least two successive waves of blonder Northern Celts or 'Greco-Gauls' (from Southeastern Europe).

First came the Gaels, and later the Cymri. Their Celto-Gaelic and Celto-Cymric languages and cultures, the earlier Celtiberians then adopted.

Also Professor Sullivan 134 notes this, in his own Introduction to O'Curry's great book Lectures on the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish . Sullivan observes that there were two distinct physical types in Ancient Ireland. One was a high-statured and golden-haired or red-haired, fair-skinned and blue-eyed or grayblue-eyed race. The other was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, pale-skinned, medium-statured race.

The latter, comments Skene, 135 corresponds to the Firbolg (or the gold-miners of Ireland and the tin-miners of Cornwall). They belong to the same class with the Silures mentioned by Tacitus, and may represent the Celtiberian race which preceded the Celto-Gaelic. But of the fair-skinned race, the Tuatha De Dan-aan correspond in character with the large-limbed and red-haired Caledonians described by Tacitus. Then again, the other brown-haired Milesians or Iro-Scots – present a less Germanic type.

Indeed, continues Skene, 136 even "the original Irish (or Pictish?) colony of Partholan, soon after the Noachic Flood – seems to have been the same with the Firbolg . Also the various Welsh Brut documents seem to have considered them as Iberian or Basque. Thus Gwyrgant (the Early-Brythonic king) – when "passing through the Isles of Orc[kneys]" – seized their chief whose name was Partholym.

Hereupon this chief prayed for Gwyrgant's protection, telling him that they had all been "driven from Spain." He therefore entreated Gwyrgant to grant them permission to abide in some part of the island of Britain. Gwyrgant having thus learned whence they were, directed them (with his goodwill) "to go to Ireland. Thither therefore they went, and there they settled."

Skene himself then comments 137 on the above early colonizations of Ireland – in the following way. In the Book of Conquests , he points out, there are five successive colonies in Ireland. The first two, those of Partholan and Nemhidh, are separated from each other – and from the latter three – by long intervals. The last three, beginning with the Firbolg , are continuous – each succeeding the other without interval.

What we are told of the Fir Bolg , harmonizes with the accounts of the mine-workers of Cornwall and the Tin Islands. It is not difficult to recognize in the tradition that the Fir Bolg [possibly meaning 'men of the bag'] – derived their name from the big leather sacks which they filled with soil from the pits they dug. This would then mean: the people who worked the tin by digging in the ore-laden soil and transporting it in bags.

The traditions of the characteristics of those early colonists of Ireland, also lead to the same conclusion. The traditions are quoted in the preface to M'Firbis's Book of Genealogies in the following way. Those who are brown of hair; bold, honourable, daring; prosperous; bountiful in the bestowal of property and wealth and rings – descend from the sons of Miledh (alias the Milesian Celtiberi ) in Erinn. Those who are fair-haired; every musical person adept in all druidical arts – descend from the Tuatha De Dan-aan in Erinn. Those who are black-haired among the people – descend from the Fir Bolg . 138

The Irish Acts of Saint Cadroee state 139 that the Scots were Greeks from Chorischon near Lydia. They sailed through the Hellespont or Darda-nelles southbound – and then, via Crete and Spain, through the Columns of Hercules or Straits of Gibraltar to Ireland. That latter land they called Chorischia and also Scotia (after Scota the 'Egyptian' wife of Niul the son of Aeneas) – before their descendants heeded the preaching of St. Patrick.

The Pictish Chronicle – translated into Latin from an ancient Celtic original (though with further material from the sixth century A.D. added by Isidore of Seville) – claims that the Scots were so called because they had come from Scythia and also descended from the 'Egyptian' Princess Scota. It states the natives of Scythia were called Albani – because of their fair hair. The Picts of 'Alban' alias Britain, and of 'Erin' alias Ireland, thus originally formed one people closely connected with each other. 140

The Pan-Celtic culture of the Ancient British Isles

Furthermore, at least initially, Proto-Celtic and Proto-Germanic customs both seem to have proceeded from an even earlier and common 'Proto-Aryan' (or Proto-Japhethitic) root. This is seen in the very early historic period characterized by extant written remnants.

Professor Nora Chadwick explains 141 that in early Norway, in the Norse Kingdom of Orkney, and in Iceland – probably all (or almost all) of the earliest historical saga material is based ultimately on the poetry which was composed and handed down by all the native poets or skalds . The only European country which has an elaborate extant tradition of prose development analogous to that of the ancient Norse world, is Ireland – though it is certain that Wales also once had a similar prose literature.

The Celtic presence from Ireland in Pre-Scandinavian Iceland, is well-known. So too is the earlier Celtic presence in Pre-Germanic Continental Scandinavia. So too is the later Celtic influence on the Anglo-Saxons of Britain, and the Christian Celtic and Culdee influences of Irish and English Missionaries in Europe from the seventh century A.D.

So too is the strong and ongoing Celto-Brythonic influence upon and in the early Anglo-Saxon Wessex of Cerdic and Alfred. Indeed, so too is the claim of the great Anglo-British Christian King Alfred – whose immediate ancestors were both Saxons and Brythons – to have descended from Noah.

Even from ancient druidic times, there was a Pan-Celtic culture in the Ancient British Isles. As Professor Nora Chadwick explains, 142 in Scotland and Wales functions similar to those of the Irish filid seem to have been carried on by the court bards. In Ireland, the filid seem to have possessed the actual functions ascribed by such classical authors as the (55 f B.C.) Julius Caesar to the Gaulish and especially to the British druids.

In ancient Ireland, the close corporations to which the filid belonged – were known as the 'schools of the filid .' The final organization of these 'schools of the filid ' was probably stimulated and re-inforced from the 'schools of the rhetors' of Gaul. For they attached themselves to the native princes of Ireland and Britain. Along with other literati , they bequeathed to them their own inherited learning and literary conventions both written and oral.

The famous Oxford University Professor of Jurisprudence Sir Paul Vinogradoff (D.C.L., LL.D., D.His., Dr.Jur.) 143 rightly noted 144 that information on the laws of the Celts can be gathered from classical writers such as Caesar and Strabo. He further added that a vast body of custom has been preserved – also by Welsh Law and by the Brehon tracts of Ireland.

Even the renowned legal 'Anglophiles' Pollock and Maitland – not at all enthusiasts about the Pre-English laws and customs of the Celto-Brythons – nevertheless concede 145 that there are many points of real organic connexion between Celtic and English Law, even if there were to have been no 'borrowing' from the Welshman on the part of Englishman. This, feel Pollock and Maitland, may well go back to a common stock of Proto-Aryan (or Japhethitic) tradition antecedent to the distinction between German and Celt.

Some usages may be relics of a prehistoric society and of an antiquity now immeasurable. By such an allegedly prehistoric society, Pollock and Maitland probably mean one before the B.C. 1440's Moses; one before the B.C. 1750's Hammurabi; or even one before the B.C. 1920's Abraham.

Anent Anglo-Saxon alias Early-English Law, Pollock and Maitland admit: "We cannot say that no element derived from the Celtic inhabitants of Britain, exists in it.... There is [also] the possibility that Celtic [and indeed even British-Brettanic] details assimilated in Gaul by French Law during its growth [460-1060 A.D.], passed into England right at the Norman Conquest [1066 f A.D.].... It has been maintained...that [these Ancient British] institutions persisted after Britain was abandoned by the Roman power [in 397 f A.D.], and survived the Teutonic invasions in such force as to contribute in material quantity to the formation of our laws" – viz. the substance of the Common Laws of England.

Sociological similarities between the Ancient Irish

and the Ancient Britons

The 'earlier' Irish and the 'later' Welsh apparently arrived in the British Isles at different times to one another. Nevertheless, they still shared a common Proto-Celtic ancestry even before that time. Indeed, the two groups constantly migrated from Britain to Ireland and vice-versa – thus interacting with one another even since Pre-Christian times. See The Historians's History of the World , XXI, pp. 331 f (and our Addendum 4 below).

The earlier Irish are the most important example of the C-Celts, just as the later Welsh are the chief body of P-Celts. As already explained, C-Celts are those whose words often acquired a initial c – and P-Celts are those whose words often acquired an initial p – in front of the common Proto-Celtic root.

Thus, the root -a- (meaning 'what') in C-Celtic Irish became ca ; while in P-Celtic Welsh it became pa . Here, the joint root -a- evidences an ultimate common ancestry of both Irish and Welsh .

There is thus a relationship between the earlier 'Irish' C-Celts and the later 'British' P-Celts – even from the time both of them were first in Eurasia and then in Europe, before either of them arrived in any part of the British Isles. However, that kinship is not just linguistic. To a far greater extent, and much more importantly, it is also sociological.

As Dillon and Chadwick remark in their good book The Celtic Realms , 146 the famous Cymric antiquarian Lluyd says at the beginning of his discussion of Early-Welsh society that four institutions supply the framework. These are: cenedl , tref , cantref , and brenin – kindred, hamlet, tribe and chief.

The corresponding terms in Irish are fine , baile , tuath , and ri . Each cantref had its own law-court, and in South Wales this was the old assembly of freemen. This assembly could even pass judgment on the king's conduct. By dedfryd gwlad or 'judgment of the people' it could declare him to have acted oppressively. As already seen, so too in Ancient Ireland.

Thus, as among the Ancient Iro-Scots, also too among the Ancient Celto-Brythons – all totalitarianism was taboo. The king was never above the law, but the law itself was always above the king . Indeed, as that later Scot Samuel Rutherford would rightly remark: not Rex lex , but Lex rex – not 'the King is law' but 'the Law is king!'

How different to the situation in the Pagan Roman Empire! How different also even to the situation in the so-called 'Holy Roman Empire' as its successor! Indeed, even after the break-up of the latter – the romanized King Louis of France was still proclaiming: " C'Etat c'est moi [I am the State]!"

Influences from the Near East upon Ancient Ireland

Ancient Ireland has been inhabited continuously from perhaps B.C. 2300 onward. It is very possible that many of the 'C-Celtic' Gaels, before going on to live in Ireland, at first resided in Britain. At any rate, the Gaels seem to have inhabited Britain some time before the Brythons did. Indeed, the Gaels seem to have preserved their same Gaelic culture – itself not very dissimilar to the Ancient Brythonic culture – even after moving westward into Ireland. That occurred especially after the arrival of the Brythons in Britain.

Perhaps the first Irish Gaels arrived in Ireland 'overland' from Northwest Europe via Britain – or 'by sea' from Celtiberian Spain. Or perhaps they came, almost simultaneously – in both ways and from both places.

Further, there may well have been Proto-Celtic 'Basques' or 'Picts' in Celtiberian 'Spain' or in Pre-Brythonic Britain or in H-iber-nian 'Ireland' or all of those lands – even before the arrival there of the kindred Irish Gaels. Yet if so, the latter then certainly imposed their language and culture upon most of the former – even while largely absorbing them.

At any rate, once in Ireland, it is certain that the Celto-Irish literary tradition became what is now the oldest extant in Europe. Indeed, the Celto-Gaelic Irish later influenced (and were influenced by) the Celto-Brythonic Britons – who only later (from perhaps B.C. 1900 onward) arrived in Britain, where many of the Irish themselves had formerly lived.

Even then and subsequently, there was also considerable Semitic influence upon the Celts of the British Isles. At that early period, this came not only by way of some of all the 'Heber-ew' descendants of Heber. Genesis 9:27 f ; 10:2-5; 10:22-25. It occurred also by way of Phoenician sea-traders – seeking tin and other precious metals from the British Isles. Indeed, there may even then also have been Pelasgian or Proto-Thracian or Proto-Etruscan alias Greco-Gael and Celtiberian mariners who at that very time visited the British Isles.

Thus Rev. L.G.A. Roberts mentions 147 the book Etruria-Celtica – by Sir William Betham (formerly Ulster's King-of-Arms). There, Sir William shows the origin of the Hiberno-Celt – from colonization, from language and from antiquities. He compares it with the Etruscan and Phoenician influences. The latter, of course, signifies Hebraic or Shemitic connection.

The Phoenicians were the earliest known traders with the British Isles – from the Near East. Dr. Pritchard, in his Physical History of Mankind , gives us the clue to trace the Celtiberian tribes in Spain – back to a Phoenician origin. The Celt and the Iberian are the sources whence the Gauls and the Cymri came – and maybe also the Belgae, and further the Britons too.

Phoenicians from the Mediterranean sailed by way of Gibraltar to Britain and to Ireland – bringing back tin, gold, pearls and other products. Too, British jet found in Spain dates from B.C. 2500 – and Egyptian beads found in Britain are dated from about 1300 B.C. Compare: Genesis 10:2,5,21,25 and Ezekiel 27:3 f ,12 f ,19 f ,25 f .

Pan-Celtic antiquarian perspectives on

Ancient Ireland and Ancient Britain

According to the extant records of Ancient Ireland, in remote antiquity that country was first visited after the Noachic Deluge by Adhna – who is said to have taken away a handful of soil and grass. Then, 300 years later, the Scythian Partholans landed – perhaps around B.C. 2000. Next came the Nemedians; then, other groups; and ultimately, the Milesians – in several waves, from perhaps B.C. 1600 or 1400 onward. Indeed, there is even some possibility that Israelitic Danites, both before and after the Israelitic Exodus from Egypt, might well have reached Ancient Ireland. See Parsons's Remains of Japhet – throughout.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica relates 148 that the Neolithic and Copper period are well represented in Ireland. The Bronze Age in Ireland has left evidences sufficiently abundant and vivid. To it belong numerous tombs of massive structure, with a very great variety of designs symbolic or ornamental. These evidence a settled population under opulent rulers. Bronze was abundant, and there were rich copper mines.

The distinctive feature of this period in Ireland was the production of native gold, of which it is certain that there were comparatively rich deposits. Irish ornaments of the Bronze Age have been found in various parts of Britain, in Northern Frisia, Luxembourg, Hanover, and Denmark.

Finds of the ancient apparatus of bronze-founding, are likewise recorded in places far away from copper mines and from seaports through which tin could be obtained. All these facts point to a development of commerce – both internal and external. Indeed, the commerce and interchange of legal ideas among the Pan-Celtic British Isles in general and Ancient Ireland and Ancient Britain in particular was very vigorous.

Before the later emergence of the Anglo-Saxon Law Codes in Mediaeval Britain, there seems to have been a 'general core' of common customs at the root of both Ancient Pan-Celtic Law as well as Ancient Pan-Germanic Law. We may call this common core Ancient Pan-Japhethitic Law. It shows many similarities with some aspects of the Abrahamic Law and the Mosaic Law, either or both of which may well have influenced also those northern systems either directly or indirectly or both. Genesis 9:27 cf. 10:25.

Thus the vows of the Fianna Knights show what the Ancient Irish expected of one another – high regard for their property, and even higher regard for their persons. For it was then vowed: 149 "Never to seek a dowry together with a wife, but to choose her for her good manners and virtue; never to offer violence to a woman; never to refuse any mortal in need anything which one possesses; never to flee from less than ten adversaries." Cf. : Genesis chapters 18 to 29 f ; Leviticus 19:18 f ; Deuteronomy 20:7 f .

As the Irishman Bryan explains, 150 any man who did another man an injury had to pay him compensation. This included the cost of maintaining him and his family while he was unable to work. Cf. Exodus 21:18 f . Anyone who defaulted on his payments, lost face in the community and was debarred from receiving compensation himself.

Then there is all the influence of Proto-Celtic customs upon the Common Law of the later England. "The second branch of the unwritten laws of England," observes the great Sir William Blackstone, 151 consists of "particular customs." These include "the custom of gavelkind in Kent and some other parts of the kingdom."

Now gavelkind or gavailkinne , as we have seen earlier above (at note 109), is essentially an Irish institution. Explains Blackstone, gavelkind "ordains...that not the eldest son only of the father shall succeed to his inheritance, but all the sons.... Such is the custom...that [even] the youngest son shall inherit the estate." Cf. Genesis 25:23-33.

The Iro-Scots brought Irish Law, including its gavelkind (or rather gavailkinne ), over from Ireland to Scotland. Accordingly, explains Blackstone, "this custom prevailed [also]...in Scotland (under the name of mercheta or marcheta ) – till...Malcolm III [King of the Scots from 1057 to 1093 A.D.].... This custom, wherever it prevails, may be the remnant of that pastoral state of our British and German ancestors – which Caesar and Tacitus describe ."

The Scots originally came to Scotland from Ireland. It will further be seen that even the Brythonic or Celto-Kentish gavelkind was itself found at a much earlier stage not just in Kent but also in Ireland (as gavailkinne ). See at notes 109 above and 164 below.

The Jurist Sir Henry Maine on the Laws of Ancient Ireland

Also the A.D. 98 f Tacitus, it will be remembered further, clearly stressed the kinship of the Ancient Britons and the Ancient Irish (alias the Iro-Scots). "Ireland," he explained, "in the disposition, temper and habits of its population...differs but little from Britain." Agricola , 24.

The similarity between Ancient Irish Law and Ancient Brythonic Law was stressed also by the famous English jurist and historian. Sir Henry James Sumner Maine. He, sometime Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge and author also of the famous book Ancient Law , exhibited a comparative and a critical spirit of legal inquiry. Precisely for this very reason, Maine's testimony anent the relationship between Ancient Irish Law and Biblical Law – is all the more compelling (from a Christian perspective).

Thus Maine observes in his Lectures on the Early History of Institutions 152 that the Scottish Highlands retained many of the political characteristics of a more ancient condition of the World. The collections of Welsh laws published by the Record Commission, though their origin and date are uncertain, are undoubtedly bodies of genuine legal rules. Indeed, also many things in Irish custom connected it with the archaic practices still known to be followed – or to have been followed – by the Germanic races.

Notable here is the Ancient Irish Brehon Law. That pre-existed Christianity, but it was inscripturated in Non -Oghamic letters as Gaelic law-tracts – only during the time of St. Patrick (and with his approval).

Maine explains that Brehon Law is not only a very authentic monument to a very ancient group of Aryan alias Japhethitic institutions. It is also a collection of rules which have been developed gradually in a way highly favourable to the preservation of archaic peculiarities. Indeed, it is the oldest institution of the Western European portion of the human race.

Maine further maintains 153 that the ancient Irish Law in an authentic form is a very remarkable body of archaic law – unusually pure, even from its very origin. It has some analogies with Old-Germanic Law. It is manifestly the same system in origin and principle with that which has become the Law of Wales. The Brehon law-tracts, then, enable us to connect the races at the western extremities of the Ancient Aryan or Japhethitic World.

Further, continues Maine, 154 retaliation – cf. Exodus 21:22-25 – prevailed in Erin ere Patrick [432f A.D.]. The Senchus Mor or written Code of 'Irish Customs' describes the legal rules embodied in its text as being formed from the 'Law of Nature' and from the 'Law of the Letter.'

The 'Law of the Letter' is the Scriptural Law. The reference in the phrase 'Law of Nature' is not to the memorable combination of words familiar to the Roman lawyers – but to the text of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans: "For when[ever] the Gentiles...do by nature the things contained in the law, these...are a law unto themselves." Romans 2:14.

Maine on the Law of Nature in Ancient Ireland

The Law of Nature, explains Maine, is the ancient Pre-Christian ingredient in the system of Ancient Irish Law. The Senchus Mor says of it: "The judgments of true nature which the Holy Ghost had spoken through the mouths of the brehons [or judges]...of Erin from the first occupation of Ireland...were all exhibited by Dubhthach [the Chief-Druid of Ireland in the fifth century]...to Patrick.

"What did not clash with the Word of God in the written [Mosaic] Law and the New Testament and the consciences of believers, was confirmed in the laws of the Brehons by Patrick and by the ecclesiastics and chieftains of Ireland." For the Law of Nature was (and is) quite right.

Thus states the Senchus Mor – the 'Grand Old Law' of Ancient Ireland). The Preface to the Senchus Mor actually contains disquisitions on all matters. It in one place sets forth how God made the Heaven and the Earth.

Now the Brehon Law contained in the Senchus far antedates Patrick – and antedates also even the time of the incarnation of Christ. Maine traces 155 the pedigree of the Brehon Code to a system enforced by supernatural sanctions. It consists, then, of what was in all probability an original basis of Aryan usage alias Japhethitic custom. The brehons assume that kings and judges will enforce the Law. Yet in Ancient Ireland it is doubtful whether there ever was a central government. For the Law was above the king – and never vice-versa .

Sir Henry Maine concludes 156 that the schools of literature and law appear to have been numerous in Ancient Ireland. The course of instruction in one of them extended over twelve years. The mode of choosing the Chief-Druid alias the Lord Chief Justice – viz. by election – had its counterpart in the institution of tanistry. That determined the succession to all high office in Ireland, and also in ancient Celtic Britain.

In Ancient Ireland, there was no central government to nerve the arm of the law. So the Brehon Law itself declared actual ancient and indigenous practices. The Post-Christian brehons, however, claimed that St. Patrick and other great Irish saints had sanctioned that Ancient Law.

So, according to Law Professor Sir Henry Maine, 157 the practices of the Ancient Irish were close to the practices of the Celts in Britain of which Julius Caesar ( Gallic Wars 6:14) had heard. See too the somewhat earlier B.C. 60 Diodorus's Historical Library III:15:32 (at n. 55 above).

Those practices were quite equitable. Indeed, Ancient Celtic Law minutely regulated the mutual rights of the parties – showing an especial care for the interests of women.

Maine on private property rights under Ancient Irish Law

Dr. Sullivan (in his Introduction to O'Curry's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish ) – declares Sir Henry Maine 158 – dwells with great emphasis on the existence of private family property among the Ancient Irish. He dwells also on the jealousy with which it was guarded. It cannot be doubted that the primordial notion of kinship, as the cement binding communities together, survived notably longer among the Celts of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands than in any Western society. It is stamped on the Brehon Law.

Private ownership especially of family goods is plainly recognized by the brehon lawyers. Indeed, the private property of the various families – over against one another, and also over against the chiefs and the kings – is particularly stressed. Everything in the Germanic has at least its embryo in the Celtic land system. The Brehon law-tracts show that private property, and especially private property in land, had long been known in Ireland.

The interrelationship of tribal property rights and individual property rights in Ancient Irish Law, is very reminiscent of that in Ancient Hebrew Law. Cf. Deuteronomy chapters 4 & 15; Joshua chapter 13; First Kings 21:3. As Maine remarks, 159 the chief Brehon law-tract which sets forth the mutual rights of the collective tribe and of individual tribesmen or households of tribesmen in respect of tribal property – is called the Corus Bescna .

The Brehon tracts suggest that, along with the sacredness of bequest, the sacredness of contract was also to be stressed. In the Germanic countries, their ecclesiastical societies were – in mediaeval times – among the earliest and largest grantees of public or 'folk' land. Yet all of the ancient brehon writers seem to have a bias towards either private property or several property (as distinguished from collective property).

Ancient Irish Law, like Ancient Hebrew Law, discourages the accumulation of debt – and encourages keeping private property within the same tribe. As Maine explains, 160 a portion of the tribal domain – probably the arable and choice pasture lands – was allotted to separate households of tribesmen. They were to keep their shares of tribal land intact.

States an Ancient Irish law tract: "Every tribesman is enabled to keep his tribal land; he is not to sell it or alienate or conceal it or give it to pay for crimes or contracts" – by selling it outside of the tribe. Everyone is wealthy who keeps his tribal land perfect" and "who does not leave greater debt upon it than he found on it."

Yet the tribesman might alienate – by grant, contract, or bequest – a certain quantity of the tribal land allotted to him. He might do so either with the clear consent of the entire tribal brotherhood, or under pressure of strong necessity. He had considerably greater power of disposition over property which he had acquired, than over property devolving on him as a member of a tribe.

Brehon Law implies that individual proprietary rights all attained some stability within the circle of the tribe. The brehon lawyer was attached to the institution of separate or private property . References to ancient collective ownership and ancient collective enjoyment in the non-legal Irish literature appear to be very rare. 161

Maine on social mobility among the Ancient Irish

Maine further explains 162 that Ancient Irish Law also describes the way in which a common freeman could become a tribal chief. Whatever else a chief in Ancient Ireland was, he was before all things a rich man. Not, however, rich in land – but in livestock. Cf. Genesis 13:1-3.

Thus the tract called the Cain-Aigillne lays down that "the head of every tribe should be the man of the tribe who is the most experienced, the most noble, the most wealthy, the most learned, the most truly popular, the most powerful to oppose, the most steadfast to sue for profits and to be sued for losses." Cf. Exodus 18:21. Brehon Law shows with much distinctness that through the acquisition of such wealth, the road was always open to chieftainship. The bo-aire – literally the 'cow-nobleman' – was, to begin with, simply a peasant who has grown rich in cattle. Compare: Genesis 32:10 f ; First Samuel 9:21 f ; First Chronicles 17:7.

Maine also states 163 that the saer stock-tenant, like a lessee, was distinguished by the limited amount of stock he received from the chief. Yet the saer remained a freeman, and retained his tribal rights in their integrity. The normal period of his tenancy, was seven years. Cf. Exodus 21:2. At the end of it, he became entitled to the cattle which had been in his possession. Cf. Genesis 31:31 f .

But the daer stock-tenant was like a serf. He had unquestionably parted with some portion of his freedom, and his duties were invariably referred to as being very onerous. Thus the chief might himself assert title over the calf of the chief's own cow – even if that calf had been raised solely by the daer . The chief might further entitle himself also to the labour of the daer . Yet, though a chief, he must still deposit three heifers with the daer . That was for re-establishing the latter at the end of his serfdom. Compare Deuteronomy 15:12-14.

Maine on the Ancient Irish Law of Succession

According to Maine, 164 Dr. Sullivan – who appears to have consulted many more original authorities – expresses himself as if he thought that the general law of succession in Ireland was nearly analogous to the gavelkind of Kent. According to the Irish custom, property descended at first only to the male heirs of the body – and each son received an equal share. Ultimately, however, daughters too appear to have become entitled to inherit all – if there were no sons. Cf. Numbers chapters 27 & 36.

The eldest son, when dividing the patrimony with his brothers, took twice as much as the others. It was exactly the same as the 'birthright' of Ancient Hebrew patriarchal history. Deuteronomy 21:17 cf. Second Kings 2:9.

In Ancient Ireland, it was often coupled with taking exclusively such things as are deemed incapable of partition – such as the family house and certain utensils. It was sometimes enjoyed by the father, and sometimes by the youngest of the sons. It was connected with the Kentish custom of 'Borough English' – whereby the youngest son then succeeds to the burgage-tenements of his father. This has from time immemorial been recognized as a widespread practice of which even English Courts must take notice.

Maine further shows 165 that in the Brehon Law, the same word fine is used to describe a whole variety of different institutions. Thus it does service: for the 'immediate family'; for the sept or 'joint undivided family' alias the combined descendants of an ancestor long since dead; for the 'tribe' or tuath as the political unit of Ancient Ireland; and even for 'large tribes' or 'regional kingdoms' into which the smaller units were sometimes absorbed.

The Irish 'family' or fine undoubtedly received additions through adoption. The sept had a definite place for strangers admitted to it on stated conditions. Compare the fine taccair . The 'tribe' or tuath avowedly included a number of refugees from other tribes – whose only connection with it was common allegiance to its chief.

Maine on the contractual Guilds of Ancient Ireland

According to Maine, 166 the Ancient Irish guild was of tribal origin. Dr. Sullivan claims for the word itself a Celtic etymology. Indeed, he traces the institution back to the grazing partnerships common among the Ancient Irish. The same word is used to describe bodies of co-partners formed by contract – and also bodies of co-heirs or co-parceners formed by common descent.

Each assemblage of men was conceived of as a family. Guilds, therefore, have often been misattributed much too confidently to a relatively modern origin. Yet anybody can see, in many parts of them, plain traces of the ancient brotherhood of kinsmen: "joint in food, worship, and estate." It is right here that the nearest approach to an ancient tribal holding in Ireland is to be found.

Maine explains 167 that a 'spiritual relationship' such as the above – when introduced into a tribal society like that of the ancient Irish – very closely assimilates itself to blood-relationship. But by the side of this gossipred or Ancient Irish 'spiritual relationship' – there stood another much more primordial institution which was extraordinarily developed among the Ancient Irish. This was 'fosterage' or oileamhain . It literally means 'education' – the giving and taking of children for nurture.

Maine points out 168 that an entire sub-tract in the Senchus Mor is devoted to the law of fosterage. It sets out with the very greatest minuteness the rights and duties attaching to all parties when the children of another family were received for nurture and education .

'Literary fosterage' was an institution closely connected with the existence of the Brehon Law Schools . It consists of the various relations established between the brehon teacher and the pupils he received into his house for instruction in the brehon lore . Thus, the connection between schoolmaster and pupil was regarded as sacred by the ancient Irish – and as closely resembling natural fatherhood. Cf. Psalm 119:99 & Second Timothy 1:2 f .

The Irish evidence is consistent with the testimony of Julius Caesar as to the literary class of the Gallic Celts – and seems to show that anyone who went through a particular training might become a brehon. We learn something from the references in the brehon tracts on literary fosterage.

In the ancient stage, literary or religious fatherhood had been closely assimilated to actual fatherhood. A great profession would be formed, with stores of common knowledge. Irish society gave its colour to institutions of all sorts.

Associations of kinsmen shaded off into assemblages of partners and guild-brothers. Foster-parentage, spiritual parentage and preceptorship all took their hue from natural paternity. Even later, ecclesiastical organization blended with that of the tribe. Thus Sir Henry Maine.

Maine on the Ancient Irish Law of Distress

Again according to Maine, 169 the Irish system of the legal remedy of distress is rather obviously – in all essential features – the same as the Germanic system. It wears a very strong general resemblance to the corresponding branch of English Common Law.

There have been very ingenious attempts to argue for the direct derivation of the English set of rules from the Celtic. The virtual identity of the Irish law of distress with that of the Teutonic, is best brought out by comparing it with the Teutonic systems of procedure.

For, explains Maine, 170 the Irish law of distress as laid down in the Senchus Mor and the English Common Law (of distress) had the same origin. Both the Irish Law and the English Law were undoubtedly descended from the same body of usage once universally practised by the forefathers of both Saxon and Celt. Portions of Brythonic customs had survived the most desolating Saxon conquests, and ended up even with the Common Law of England. Yet long before then, the Irish rules of distraint very strongly resembled the English rules – and much less strongly resembled the Continental.

Maine was convinced 171 that Ancient Irish Law was far more compatible with later Christianity and its Biblical Law, than Ancient Roman Law ever was. He believed the Brehon Law possessed great integrity. In addition, Brehon Law had subsequently not been unaffected by Christian morality.

Ireland is probably the one of all Western countries in which the relations of the sexes are most nearly on the footing required by the Christian theory. The influence of Christianity on Roman Law as a much more famous system than the Brehon Law, has been overstated greatly. The truth seems to be that the Imperial Roman Law did not satisfy the morality of the Christian communities. Thus Maine.

Blackstone and Macalister on Celtic and Irish Law

Also England's great A.D. 1765 f Law Professor Sir William Blackstone has recognized the superiority of Celtic Law over Roman Law. He further understood the kinship between Celto-Irish and Celto-Brythonic Law – and also the relationship between Proto-Celtic, Pan-Celtic and Biblical Law.

Thus Sir William Blackstone has explained: 172 "Wales had continued independent of England, unconquered...in the primitive pastoral state which [the 55 f B.C.] Caesar and [the 98 f A.D.] Tacitus ascribe to Britain in general." This so remained, "for many centuries; even from the time of the hostile invasions of the Saxons, when the antient and Christian inhabitants of the island retired to those natural intrenchments for protection."

It needs to be remembered that also the later Scottish Law was pioneered by the Iro-Scots who brought their Irish Law to Scotland from Ireland. Thus it is significant indeed that leading jurists, such as Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke and Sir William Blackstone, have recognized many parallels between customs in the land of the (Iro-)Scots and those in the land of the (Anglo-)Brythons – and especially long before the accession of the Scottish King James VI to the throne of England in 1603 A.D.

The Scottish Scots derived from the Irish Scots. Observed Blackstone: "The custom of gavelkind in Kent [and in Ireland]...prevailed [also]...in Scotland (under the name of mercheta or marcheta ).... Scotland and England are now one and the same Kingdom " – viz. , since 1603 (and more particularly since the Act of Union of 1707 A.D.). Yet long before 1603, " both kingdoms were antiently under the same government, and still retain a very great resemblance though far from an identity in their laws ....

"Sir Edward Coke [1620 f A.D.] observes how marvellous a conformity there was not only in the religion and language of the two nations , but also in their antient laws .... He supposes the Common Law of each originally to have been the same ." 4 Institutes 345.

Yet "England and Ireland" – the 1765 Blackstone continues – "are...distinct Kingdoms.... The Irish were governed by what they called the Brehon Law.... But King John in the twelfth year of his reign [1211 A.D.]...established that Ireland should be governed by the laws of England.... Many of the Irish...still stuck to their Brehon Law.... Even in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth [1558 f A.D.], the...natives still kept and preserved their Brehon Law ...in which oftentimes there appeared great shew of equity ."

Dr. R.A.S. Macalister – M.A., Litt.D., LL.D., F.S.A., etc. – was Professor of Celtic Archaeology at Dublin University. 173 He states that the earliest Celtic migrations to Ireland were those of a Nordic people – fair-haired and tall, and physically akin to the Germanic nations.

The Celts established small States or Tuaths , the nucleus of each being a convenient assembly to which freemen could resort. Thus, the Early Irish Celts foreshadowed the (Pre-1776) American Colonists from 1620 onward.

Macalister further explains that the Ancient Irish chief presided over such an assembly. He also performed the functions of judge and general. Besides the Representative Assembly of freemen (or Oinach ), there was also a regional Senate (or Aireacht ) – thus resembling Numbers 10:1-4, and anticipating the later House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Each Tuath or 'State' formed a separate jurisdiction. A freeman was a citizen (or urrad ) in his own jurisdiction. Common jurisdiction (or cairde ) for legal proceedings, could be made by agreement between the States. The freemen were usually the freeholders of land, but their franchise extended also to men of certain professions and skilled crafts. 174

Barrister Ginnell on the ancient customs and laws of Ireland

Laurence Ginnell was a Barrister-at-Law of the Middle Temple. 175 In his book on Ancient Irish Law, 176 he refers to that practised in that very ancient and most archaic system of law and jurisprudence of Western Europe known as the 'Brehon Law' alias the 'Law of the Ancient Irish Judges.'

However, 'Irish Law' or 'Gaelic Law' would be a better name. The thing meant has always been known to Gaelic-speakers as Feinachus . It included 'Cai-in Law' alias Parliamentary Legislation, being that which was enacted or solemnly sanctioned by National Assemblies. It was of universal obligation, and could be administered only by professional judges. But it also included urradhus laws relating to local matters.

Very importantly, as regards the 'Cai-in Law' or Parliamentary Legislation, some of the commentaries attributed the origin of the laws to the influence of Cai . And that person, explains Ginnell, 177 is stated to have been a contemporary of Moses – who had learned the Mosaic Law before coming from the Near East to Ancient Ireland .

Barrister Ginnell denies 178 the truthfulness of Julius Caesar's insinuations that the Celts and their druids sacrificed human beings. Instead, it is probable either that Caesar was misinformed – or otherwise that some ceremony observed by the Gauls in putting capital criminals to death, was misinterpreted to him or by him. There is no reason at all to think that human sacrifice ever was practised either in Ireland or in Britain.

Around the year 250 A.D., in the reign of King Cormac – continues Ginnell 179 – some of the Ancient Irish laws were reduced to their present form. Yet they had also formerly existed as laws – for a thousand years before Cormac's time.

Thus, explains Barrister Ginnell, 180 the Senchus Mor or 'Grand Old Law' was designed to be a comprehensive and more or less codified embodiment of the laws which were already of universal obligation over the whole country long before the arrival of St. Patrick in 432 A.D. This is a great collection not of statutes, proclamations or commands of any sort – but of laws already known and observed from time immemorial . It is, in one word, a codification of the Ancient Irish Common Law.

One of the Gaelic commentators says that from the contents of the Senchus Mor were promulgated the four great laws. Those were: (1), the law of fosterage; (2), the law which relates to free tenants and tha relating to base tenants; (3), the law of social relationships; and (4), the binding of all by their verbal contracts.

The Senchus Mor was, according to the introduction to it, compiled at the suggestion and under the supervision of St. Patrick in the time of King Laeghaire (Leary). A.D. 431 is the date of the arrival of St. Patrick, according to the Irish Annals of the Four Masters .

Barrister Ginnell on the Irish Annals of the Four Masters

According to Ginnell, in those Annals it is said: 181 "[In] the age of Christ 438 [alias] the tenth year of Laeghaire [the Irish king in the time of St. Patrick], the Senchus Mor and Feinachus of Ireland were purified and written." The work must have extended over several years. Those from A.D. 438 to 441, appear the most probable.

"St. Patrick," declare the Annals , "requested the men of Erinn to come to one place to hold a conference with him. When they came to the conference, the Gospel of Christ was preached to them all.... And when they saw Laeghaire and his druids overcome by the great knowledge of Patrick, they bowed down in obedience to the will of God.... It was then that Dubhthach [the Chief-Druid] was ordered to exhibit every law which prevailed amongst the men of Erinn – through the Law of Nature and the Law of Seers, and in the judgments of the island of Erinn, and in the poetry.

"Now the judgments of true nature, which the Holy Spirit [by common grace etc. ] had spoken through the mouths of the brehons and just poets of the men of Erinn from the first occupation of the island down to the reception of the [Christian] Faith, were all exhibited by Dubhthach to Patrick. What did not clash with the Word of God in Written Law [alias the Old Testament] and in the New Testament, and with the consciences of believers – was confirmed in the Laws of the brehons by the ecclesiastics and the chiefs of Erinn.

For the Law of Nature was quite right – except [it needed to be supplemented by] the Faith and its obligations, and by the harmony of the Church and the people. And this is the Senchus Mor ." 182

As regards the compilation of the Senchus Mor under Patrick's supervision, adds Barrister Ginnell, 183 the Christian spirit – breathed through the whole Law – was important. But the actual changes were few – and, substantially, the laws remained the same as they had existed for centuries before .

This is a most significant statement as to the vast amounts of common grace operative in producing Ancient Irish Law. It also evidences much common revelation present therein. Indeed, it further points to the harmonious relationship between Ancient Irish Common Law on the one hand – and, on the other, the special revelation which the Irish had now finally received via the Celto-Brythonic missionary St. Patrick.

Even more significantly. Patrick, having supervised the compilation and christianization of Ancient Irish Law, ultimately returned to his native Britain during the fifth century. Doubtless he brought the influence of the 'Grand Old Law' of Ireland back with him. This would then re-stimulate the kindred Ancient Brythonic Law still operational not only in Patrick's native Cumbria but also in the territory surrounding Somerset's Glastonbury to which Patrick later retired and where he is reputed to have died.

Chadwick and Neill on the customs of Ancient Ireland

Professor Nora Chadwick rightly remarks in her book The Celts 184 that by far the earliest detailed information we possess about the institutions of the early Celtic peoples, is derived from Ireland. Here, no trace of later Non-Celtic legislatures disturbed the native system till the age of the Vikings – though the influence of Christianity should not be discounted.

In Ireland, a large number of ancient law tracts was preserved. Many of these go back to early times. The Irish laws are probably the oldest surviving in Europe – unaffected by Roman Law and the customs of the Mediterranean countries. The really ancient Irish communities served some of the functions of towns proper; being used as meeting-places, markets, or the like.

An oenach or fair seems to have been attached to each true town of whatever size. Larger centres, such as Tell-town and Tara, held large annual fairs. Below the king, society was divided into three principal classes – similar to the druides [or judges], the equites [or knights] and the plebs [or people] of Julius Caesar's Gaul. There were also the warrior aristocracy; the landowners; and the patrons of the arts. Such corresponded to the equites .

Of comparable social status were what we might terms the intelligentsia – the aes dania [or professionals] who in Pre-Christian times and later included not only the druids but also the bards, the jurists, the physicians, the historians, the artists and the craftsmen. The third class – the equivalent of the plebs – comprised the body of freemen, commoners, and peasants who formed the basis of society.

The obligations and rights of each freeman within a Tuath or individual State, were defined clearly and enforced by Customary Law. In Pre-Christian times, an important factor may very well have been the threat wielded by the druids – the threat of virtually outlawing a transgressor.

In general, it appears that parties to legal disputes agreed in advance to accept the rules of the brithem alias the professional jurists. The surviving legal codes show clearly that most causes of dispute from murder downwards were provided with means of redress not by imprisonment but by some form of log n-erech or 'honour price.'

The most striking feature of the native institutions of Ireland, is its system of fines. In Irish systems, privilege and responsibilities alike rested on the kindred – which extended for four generations. Thus Professor Chadwick. Cf. Exodus 20:5; 21:22; 22:1.

In Ireland, case laws were recorded in treatises written by jurists called brehons. By the time of Christ's incarnation, maintains K. Neill, 185 the ancient law tracts distinguished between no less than twenty-seven distinct classes of freemen. Yet rank depended on wealth as well as birth. It was possible to rise or fall in status – depending upon one's talents.

The land-owning class was the foundation of Celtic society. The farmer of this period was called a boaire . He was, literally, a 'cattle man.'

The Celtic legal tradition was very specific. It provided exact compensations for virtually every crime, and laid out elaborate procedures to be followed in cases of inheritance.

No one was above the law. Even kings deferred to the judgments of brehons. Celtic Ireland possessed one of the most highly-developed legal systems in the ancient world. Thus Neill.

Ireland's Lia Fail and the Stone of Scone in Westminster Abbey

The famous Scottish antiquarian Skene researched the story of Lia Fail – alias the Irish 'Stone of Destiny.' After his research, Skene rejected the story.

This is the story that the Stone which Jacob used as a pillow at Bethel (in Genesis 28:10 f ) – was later allegedly taken by the prophet Jeremiah via Egypt to Ireland, and there used at the subsequent coronations of the Iro-Scotic kings in Tara.

Thence it later allegedly found its way via Iona to Scone in Scotland – and was finally removed further to Westminster Abbey in London. There, it certainly functions as the coronation stone for the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 186 See our Addendum 10 below.

The ancient Chronicles of Eri contain perhaps the fullest account of the story of Lia Fail . Namely: "In its early days, it was carried about by priests on the march in the wilderness [Exodus 12:34 to Joshua 4:9 f & 24:26; Judges 9:6; Second Kings 11:12-14 & 23:1-3]. Later, it was borne by sea from East to West, 'to the extremity of the world of land' [ cf. First Clement chapter 5] – 'to the sun's going [down].'

"Its bearers had resolved at starting to 'move on the face of the waters in search of their brethren.' Shipwrecked on the coast of Ireland, they yet 'came safe with Lia Fail '.... Erimionn was seated on Lia Fail , and the crown was placed upon his head.... All clapped and shouted. And the name of that place, from that day forward, was called Tara." 187

Thereafter, according to O'Hart's famous Irish Pedigrees , 188 Fergus MorMacearca was unanimously elected and chosen as king, being of the blood royal by his mother. Fergus sent to his brother the monarch of Ireland, for the Lia Fail (or the 'Stone of Destiny') to be crowned thereon. This happened accordingly. For he was the first 'Absolute-King' (or Ard-Ri ) in Scotland – of the Milesian race. So the succession continued in his blood and lineage – ever since, to this day.

Because of Lia Fail (the 'Stone of Destiny') – Ireland herself became known as Innis Fail (alias the 'Island of Destiny'). Innisfail or Isle of Destiny – explains the Encyclopedia Americana 189 – is the name frequently applied to Ireland by the bards and sometimes also by Anglo-Irish writers.

Funk and Wagnall's New Encyclopedia traces 190 the name Innisfail to the Irish words Innis and Fail . The compound thus means 'Island of Destiny' – and is explained to be the poetic name for Ireland. Furthermore, it is derived from the name of the stone brought to Ireland according to legend and used in early Irish coronation ceremonies. Another legend tells that the British 'Stone of Scone' [in Scotland] was originally the Irish coronation stone.

In its own article Innisfail , it is added by the Encyclopaedia Britannica 191 that Innisfail [is] a poetical name for Ireland. It is derived from Faul or Lia Fail – the celebrated stone identified in Irish legend with the Stone on which the patriarch slept. The Lia Fail was supposed to have been brought to Ireland by the [Tuatha] de Dannaan , and set up at Tara as the inauguration stone of the Irish Kings. Innisfail was thus the 'Island of the Fail ' – the island of destiny, whose monarchs were crowned at Tara on the sacred inauguration stone.

Finally, there is the testimony of Dean Stanley, in his Memorials of Westminster Abbey . There he states 192 that the chief object of attraction to this day, is probably that ancient monument known as the Coronation Stone – a link which unites the Throne of England to the traditions of Tara & Iona, and also links all of the British Isles to Jacob's God of Bethel.

Summary: Common Law among the Ancient Irish after B.C. 2600

We summarize . In this chapter, we first examined the penetration of God's post-fall and post-flood revelation and laws – into Ancient Ireland. Noah's son Japheth dwelt in the blessed tents of Shem (Genesis 9:27), the ancestor of Eber or Heber (the forefather of the Heber-ews). Then, in the days of Heber's son the Heber-ew Peleg, mankind was dispersed (Genesis 10:21-25).

In this way God's post-fall and post-flood revelation penetrated especially into the Ancient British Isles. For, when the Ancient Japhethitic Celts (destined to 'dwell in the tents of Shem' the covenant-keeper) migrated westbound into Europe – some of them developed a civilization in the British Isles, very well insulated from many adverse foreign influences. Especially was this the case on the extreme western fringe of Europe – in Ancient Ireland.

The Pre-Christian Ancient Heber-ews and other merchants from the Near East then had ongoing contact with the British. See: Genesis 10:1-5,21-25; Judges 5:17; Jonah 1:3 and Ezekiel 27:6-9,12-19,25-29. But even quite apart from that, the Ancient British Islanders long preserved the early 'Shem-itic' religion of the Japhethitic Gomer-ites or Welsh-Cymric Cimmer-ians and the Japhethitic Magog-ians or Iro-Scotic Scyth-ians. Genesis 9:27 & 10:1-5.

Japheth's son Magog and his descendants (who were probably under Heber-ew influence), trekked first into Europe and later into the Ancient British Isles. Genesis 10:1-5 & 11:8-9. This occurred in successive waves – and perhaps from B.C. 2600 or at least from 2000 onward. Thus, some of the Japhethitic Magog-ians apparently established themselves as the Celtic 'Gaels' perhaps first in Britain and then certainly in Ireland.

It was only after the times of Magog and Heber – that God repeated His Holy Laws to Abraham. Genesis 10:1-25 cf. 11:16-31 f & 18:18-19. This was preserved – infallibly in the book of Genesis, and in somewhat perverted form in the Codex Hammurabi . Yet later, the body of those ongoingly-revealed laws was expanded and impeccably codified by Moses (in Exodus chapter 18 to Deuteronomy chapter 28 f ). Later still, it also influenced other nations during the B.C. 721 f Assyrian captivity of the Israelites, and during the B.C. 598 f Babylonian captivity of the Judeans – possibly affecting the fallible and perverted codes of Zoroaster and even of Buddha etc .

However, it was especially the Japhethites – and particularly the Magogian Scythians or Gaels (and the Gomerian Cymri or Brythons) – who dwelt in the tents of Shem. Genesis 9:27 to 10:5. In this chapter, we looked especially at the Gaels – and more particularly since they took up their residence in Ancient Ireland.

We noted traditions teaching that Ireland was inhabited probably before the destruction of the tower of Babel and possibly even before Noah and the deluge. Certainly after that great flood – it seems some of the Magogian Scyths soon colonized even Ancient Ireland. Indeed, there were Early Celtic migrations there – also according to secular hypotheses.

Both the Ancient Irish Book of Invasions and the Annals of the Four Masters note the migrations to Ireland of the Partholanians, the Nemedians, the Tuatha de Danaan, the Fir Bolg, and the Milesians. From the records, it is clear that Ollamh Fodhla was the B.C. 1383 'Father of Irish Law.' From the Greek Diodorus and the Roman Tacitus, it is clear that the Ancient Irish were kinfolk to the Ancient Brythons. Indeed, the Gaelic C -Celts apparently preceded the P -Celts into the neighbouring Britain – and Herodotus himself carefully stressed especially the Iberian connection of these Ancient Celts.

There is also much evidence of early literacy in the British Isles, especially as regards Pre-Christian inscriptions in Ogham – in Gaelic within Ireland, and in Pictish within both Ireland and Scotland. Certainly the vast wealth in gold of Ancient Ireland presupposes a sophisticated trading and legal system.

The Irish historian A.S. Green has clearly demonstrated the marvellous political and social structures of the Ancient Emerald Isle. Such structures include: the institution of tanaistry; the electability and replacability of the ard-ri or 'high-king'; and the sophisticated system of education by fosterage.

We then surveyed Post-Abrahamic social developments in Ancient Ireland, down till Early-Christian times. During that period, there was a Pan-Celtic culture in the Ancient British Isles. Indeed, there were also many sociological similarities between the Ancient Irish and the Ancient Brythons.

Also the Near East had a continuing influence on Ancient Ireland. Very many antiquarian perspectives – such as those of S.F. Skene – clearly demonstrate the antiquity of Ancient Irish culture. This is significant, notwithstanding Skene's rejection of the story of Lia Fail (alias Ireland's "Stone of Destiny").

Especially the famous jurist Sir Henry Maine has investigated the Law of Ancient Ireland – particularly as regards the Law of Nature and Erin's private property rights, social mobility, succession, contractual guilds, and distress. Also Blackstone and Macalister, and especially Barrister Ginnell, have reflected on Ancient Irish Law. All of those studies very clearly establish, as pointed out by Chadwick and Neill, that Pre-Christian Ireland possessed one of the most ancient and highly-developed legal systems in the whole World.