The God Culture: Residual Ancient Hebrew in the Philippines?

In chapter 13 of "The Search for King Solomon's Treasure" Timothy Jay Schwab of The God Culture theorizes that place-names in the Philippines show evidence of residual ancient Hebrew. Tim goes to great lengths attempting to prove that words such as Pilipinas, Mindoro, and Malacañang are actually Hebrew compound words and have nothing to do with Spanish, Chinese, or any local language.

The Search for King Solomon's Treasure, pg, 176

Tim's basis for this lies in his theory that Ophir moved east from Iraq and settled in the Philippines. Because he was a grandson of Eber he spoke Hebrew. That means when he arrived in the Philippines he named places using his native Hebrew tongue. Later when Solomon's ships arrived the Queen of Sheba, who also descended from Eber, understood the sailors and recognized the name of the Hebrew God because she too was a Hebrew speaker.

We pondered from the outset of this research that if the Philippines is Ophir, there should be residual Hebrew words within the language and perhaps even some monikers that the Spanish did not change but survive in their Hebrew origins still. Not only did Ophir have strong connection with Israelite Hebrews but we will show you that the word Hebrew is the word Eber. "All the sons of Eber," not just Peleg to Abraham are singled out in Genesis 10 as all are Hebrews including Joktan's sons Ophir, Sheba and Havilah.

 The Search for King Solomon's Treasure, pg. 176

Why were all the children of Eber including Joktan's sons called out here? They are all Hebrews and they are all Yahuah's children we will prove. Only those from Jacob are Israelite Hebrews. We do not debate that nor have we ever indicated otherwise but all those from Peleg and Joktan were Hebrews including Ophir, Sheba and Haviliah who migrated to the Philippines. This means Filipino roots, though mixed today to some degree, are actually Hebrew according to scripture.

This is why King Solomon built a new navy and port to go to Ophir because he knew family was there. It was also the reason that the Queen of Sheba came to hear not about Solomon necessarily but "concerning the name of his God." As a Hebrew she knew the same God. Lost Tribes of Israel could migrate to Ophir and mix in without detection making it the perfect place to relocate.

 The Search for King Solomon's Treasure, pg. 180

The families of Ophir and Sheba made the journey to the Philippines and they spoke Hebrew. Tim makes this same claim in his videos.

Solomon's Gold Series - Part 7: Track of the Hebrew to the Philippines. Ophir, Sheba, Tarshish

5:32 Our story begins with the separation of Peleg who headed west fathering Abraham Isaac, Jacob, Israel and Joktan his brother and Joktan’s sons who headed east about 100 years after God confused the languages of the earth at the Tower of Babel and dispersed the people. We believe both families still spoke the original Hebrew language of Noah and Shem as they do not appear to have been involved in the Tower of Babel confusing of languages.

Tim is very explicit that Hebrew was spoken by the entire family of Eber after the fall of the Tower of Babel and the confusing of languages. 100 years after the fall of the Tower of Babel Ophir migrated to the Philippines speaking nothing but Hebrew. When he arrived in the Philippines he used Hebrew to name the land.  Here is The God Culture's "Hebrew Pilipinas" map.

There are a plethora of alleged Hebrew place-names in the Philippines. Most people would tell you that Davao means river but did you know Davao really means menstruation? 

https://youtu.be/bPfIZpczybY

We realize at first, this may wax crude but contemplate this perspective. There is a modern prophecy which we would not normally pay attention. It is from Cindy Jacobs whom we do not support not know much about but this prophecy as we have vetted it, rings true. She identifies that the Philippines will be cleansed through the "bloodiest part." Little does she likely know Davao is literally the bloodiest part in Hebrew not just because of the turmoil in the past. This prophecy is available on our Youtube channel. The menstruation female cycle is one of cleansing and this becomes very appropriate as it may be Eve as it ties to her curse from the Garden once again just like Havilah. We would expect this if the Philippines is Ophir.

 The Search for King Solomon's Treasure, pg. 195

I suppose menstruation is a kind of river just not the one the natives were referring to. Who would name the place they live "menstruation?" That is disgusting! It's as gross and senseless as naming your homeland urine or vomit or any other vile human excretion. The residents of Davao City are referred to as Dabawyenos and they speak Davaoeño. According to Tim's etymology these people live in Menstruation City, are Mestruationites, and speak Menstruationese. Is Tim aware how stupid that is? It simply is not believable that Davao was named after the Hebrew word for menstruation. This is all based on faulty phonetic similarities and not genuine etymology or linguistics. 

The section of the alleged prophecy which mentions the "bloodiest part" is as follows:

As a sign that I am going to truly change the nation, I am going to show myself to the guerilla leaders. I am going to come, says the Lord, and I am going to begin at the places in the Philippines that have been the bloodiest; the places where the guerillas' insurrection have been the strongest. And I am going to come with signs and wonders and miracles! I am getting ready to pour out a miracle anointing upon the Philippines such as the earth has never seen! 

https://www.pinoyexchange.com/discussion/139886/cindy-jacobs-prophecy-for-the-philippines

It should be noted that this prophecy was delivered during a conference in the USA on October 27, 2001. 

Let's break this down. Timothy is citing a prophecy from a woman he does not know and does not support in order to bolster his claims that the Philippines is Ophir and contains Hebrew place-names. He claims Cindy prophesied the Philippines would be "cleansed through the bloodiest part" and then goes on to tell us that "Davao is literally the bloodiest part in Hebrew" because it means menstruation. 

But she says nothing about cleansing. She says God will visit the guerrilla leaders and show them signs and wonders. In that same prophecy she says the Lord will visit the University in Manila and "thousands and thousands and thousands are going to get saved."  I would not put any stock in the words of a false prophetess who declares she is an Apostle and who is an active leader of the New Apostolic Reformation along with Bill Johnson, Rodney Howard Browne, and a host of other kooks. That Tim puts faith in the words of a woman he admits he knows nothing about because he says they were "vetted" and ring true, just shows his total lack of discernment. Remember this false prophecy from false prophetess Cindy Jacobs forms part of Tim's "Monumental Case For The Philippines No One Can Disprove."

https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1235589092668329987

With the publication of his annotated "Book of Jubilees" and the advent of his new video series "Answers in Jubilees" Timothy Jay Schwab contradicts the thesis laid out above. Now he claims Hebrew was lost and only restored when God taught it to Abraham. For The Book of Jubilees tells him so. 

What Was The Original Language? Answers in Jubilees Part 1

2:57 Jubilees 12:25 "And Yahuah Elohim said open his (Abraham's) mouth and his ears, that he may hear and speak with his mouth, with the language which hath been revealed"; for it had ceased from the mouths of all the children of men from the day of the overthrow of Babel." Now this is being spoken by Yahuah himself in the time of Abraham about a century after Babel so he's telling us the language was lost at least in full until this time from Babel

17:28 Jubilees brings this to light and now we can answer this question thanks to the Book of Jubilees. The original language of creation forward was Hebrew. Lost at the Tower of Babel and reinstituted a century or so later by Yahuah teaching Abraham.

Here Tim says 100 years after the Tower of Babel Hebrew was a lost language "in full" and God taught it to Abraham. But in his previous video Tim said 100 years after Babel the family of Heber, including Ophir, were all Hebrew speakers! Both cannot be true. 

A possible solution Tim might offer is that after Abraham relearned Hebrew he taught it to Peleg, Ophir, and all the rest. In this scenario 100 years after the Tower of Babel Abraham is taught Hebrew by God, he then teaches it to his family which includes Peleg, Joktan, and Ophir, and then Ophir and the gang merrily make their way to the Philippines. Such reasoning would be totally ad hoc. That means Tim would be making up stuff he could not prove. The text does not say Abraham taught Hebrew to Ophir. Besides, every single place name in the Philippines has an explanation which does not require Hebrew. Genesis 10 is very sparse on details cornering Ophir and his migrations. Basically everything Tim has to say about the man Ophir and his journeys is ad hoc.

However neither Tim 's original scenario or the possible solution are correct because they hinge on the false idea that God taught Hebrew to Abraham a mere 100 years after the fall of the Tower of Babel. R.H. Charles has this to say about the timeframe of these events.

From the overthrow of Babel (x. 26) the knowledge of the Hebrew language was lost till the 75th year of Abrams life. 

https://archive.org/details/bookofjubileesor00char/page/94/mode/2up

Abraham learned Hebrew when he was 75. But how much time had elapsed since the fall of the Tower of Babel? 100 years? No. 312 years!

https://lmf12.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/chronology-of-jubilees.pdf

The tower went down and the nations were dispersed in 1639. Abraham learned Hebrew in 1951. That is 312 years. R.H. Charles has the tower going down in 1688 and Abraham learning Hebrew in 1953 which is the same timeline VanderKam gives in his commentary.

The language had fallen out of use at Babel when the tower collapsed (in the year 1688 [revised chronology]; see 10:26, where the tower ruin is called Collapse, as here). Now in the year 1951, 263 years later, the angel supernaturally revives it through Abram.

 Jubilees Commentary, VanderKam, pg, 457

That is 263 years. This timeframe means if Ophir and his family headed east to the Philippines 100 years after the fall of the Tower of Babel they could not have relearned Hebrew from Abraham. If the language was completely lost until God restored it to Abraham then Ophir and all the rest were most certainly not speaking Hebrew. The only solution is to posit that Ophir, Peleg, and all the rest did not migrate east until 312-263 years after Babel when they learned Hebrew from Abraham. But that would require Tim to recalculate his whole system as too much time would have passed. It would also be ad hoc and pure speculation.

It should be noted that Tim's own annotated version of Jubilees retains the timeline of R.H. Charles. Thus on page 104 Tim has 1688 for the fall of the tower and on page 112 he has 1951 for when Abraham relearned Hebrew. His video and his book contradict each other.

Timeline of Jubilees, Book of Jubilees, Timothy Jay Schwab, pg. 92

With this video Tim has contradicted his thesis about residual Hebrew being found in the Philippines. If there is residual Hebrew in the place-names of the Philippines he cannot ground it in Ophir and his family because, according to The Book of Jubilees no one knew Hebrew from the fall of the Tower of Babel until Abraham learned it 312 years later. There is nothing in Jubilees to indicate Ophir learned Hebrew from Abraham. To posit that idea is pure speculation and not based on what the text says.

Tim's comment on Jubilees 12:25 mentions a tradition that contradicts Jubilees.

i. e. the sacred language, Hebrew, knowledge of which had been lost since the overthrow of Babel. According to another tradition Heber alone retained knowledge of Hebrew because he had taken no part in the building of the Tower.

What is this other tradition that Heber did not lose his knowledge of Hebrew because he did not participate in building the Tower of Babel? Tim does not say. In fact later in the book he seems to have forgotten the existence of this tradition.

Book of Jubilees, pg. 247

What Was the Original Language?

Hebrew was the original language of Creation (Jub. 12:25-26). It was lost at the Tower of Babel until restored by Abraham who learned it in order to read the writings of his fathers.

Though Tim does not tell us what tradition he is referring to in his comments on Jubilees 12:25 there are two possible sources from which he is drawing. The first is R.H. Charles' note on this verse.

A different tradition from that in our text appears in the Catena Nicephori, 1. col. 177, on Gen. xi. 8, where Heber is said to have alone retained the Hebrew language, because he took no part in the building of Babel. In the next colophon of the same work the same statement is attributed to Diodorus of Antioch (378-394 A.D.). A similar view is set forth in Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xvi. 11…

https://archive.org/details/bookofjubileesor00char/page/96/mode/2up 

Augustine's passage about Heber and the Hebrew language is too long to reproduce here. But he does write one thing that is very significant.

Nor is it without significance that this is the language which Abraham retained, and that he could not transmit it to all his descendants, but only to those of Jacob's line, who distinctively and eminently constituted God's people, and received His covenants, and were Christ's progenitors according to the flesh. In the same way, Heber himself did not transmit that language to all his posterity, but only to the line from which Abraham sprang.

https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120116.htm

According to Augustine Heber transmitted Hebrew only to the line of Abraham and Abraham only transmitted the language to the line of Jacob. That is a rather interesting tradition which contradicts Jubilees and Tim. But what is the source of this tradition? Where is Augustine drawing from? 

The second place Tim could have learned about this tradition is Wikipedia.

13th century Muslim historian Abu al-Fida relates a story, noting that the patriarch Eber (great-grandson of Shem) refused to help with the building of the Tower of Babel, so his language was not confused when it was abandoned. He and his family alone retained the original human language (a concept referred to as lingua humana in Latin), Hebrew, a language named after Eber.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eber

That page leads to an encyclopedia article.

In one place Tabari ("Annales," ed. de Goeje, i. 220) gives a tradition that Nimrod ruled at Babil and his people were Moslems. But he seduced them to idolatry, and in a single day God confused their speech, which had been Syriac, and they became of seventy-two tongues. In another place (p. 224) Tabari tells the story practically as in Genesis. Ibn Wadiḥ (i. 17) has a longer narrative on the same lines. Abu 'Isa, the astronomer quoted by Abu al-Fida ("Hist. Anteisl.," ed. Fleischer, p. 18), also tells the Biblical story of the Tower and the confusion. He adds that Eber alone, because he did not join the others in their impious attempt, was permitted to retain the original Hebrew language. This is in curious contrast with the other narratives, which view Syriac as the original tongue. It is possible that the belief, current in all the Moslem world, that Syriac was the original language, is to be traced to the influence of the Syriac "Cave of Treasures" and the Arabic "Kitab al-Majall," with their anti-Jewish polemics.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2279-babel-tower-of

Following the citation there leads to the Latin version of Abufelda's history. As far as I can make out the story is as follows:

The cause of the languages ​​confused Abu-Isa story, Noahides those who grew up after the flood, forming a common citadel had resolved that if by chance the new flood erupted, they could protect themselves. That the mass of a certain very lofty, therefore, is to raise up, of which may reach the heaven, to rise.

With this design, for the first time in one of them, and rushes on that one of the two men, and seventy of the chiefs of the towers to have placed the Father, built, and who does the works by naval operations. But the God of contim, the arrogance of the dialect that much of their language, in their many different one from resolved.

Only Eber, who disapproved of the venture and in obedience to God persisted in the Hebrew language to be abandoned in the future preservation. So where Noahides in different ways, halfgods lot slim - Iraq, Iran and which are located further to India; Hamid of the earth, of the southerners, so that the Egyptians; and the other which the Nile's waters, and also as far as to the last of the things that were by the side to the west, Mauritania to; Jafethidis which is adjacent to the Caspian Sea and which tend to Seruin beyond the eastern region. At this time the confusion of tongues occurred to him, out of the tribe of the people of Noah's sons, and threescore and two sons already were.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951002074826l&view=1up&seq=254&size=125&q1=ebero

That is translated from Latin to English via Google translate. It's not the greatest translation but the story is clear enough. Is Tim referring to a tradition penned by a Muslim historian in the 13th century or is he referring to R.H. Charles' notes? Whatever the case there is indeed a tradition of Heber alone retaining the knowledge of Hebrew because he did not participate in the building of the Tower of Babel. Do the Jews ever mention anything like this in the Talmud? What is the source of this story? Since Tim refers to this tradition only once it could be he does not believe it is true. But then why even mention it? Why not take the time to explore it a little especially as it might help his case cornering residual ancient Hebrew being found in the place-names of the Philippines? Of course this story contradicts Jubilees 12:25 which is likely why he ignores it.

Tim most certainly does believe The Book of Jubilees is history and scripture. It is this belief that has caused a contradiction with his thesis about residual ancient Hebrew being found in the Philippines. If Hebrew was lost from the time of Babel until Abraham spoke it anew 312 years later then Ophir could not have been speaking Hebrew and any residual Hebrew in the Philippines cannot be tied to him. Likewise the Queen of Sheba would not be familiar with the name of Solomon's God as she would not have been a Hebrew speaker. Nor would Lost Tribes be able to easily "mix in without detection" as they would be speaking a totally different language. 

Even if she were a Hebrew speaker The Queen of Sheba would not know anything about Solomon's God because God only made himself known to Israel beginning with His covenant with Abraham. 

Amos 3:1-2  Hear this word that the LORD hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth...

The nature of that covenant disproves Tim's blasphemous and anti-Chrisitan doctrine "the law is what redeems us" as Galatians 3:17-19 clearly tells us. This verse also proves that not all Hebrews are children of God. Ishmael and Esau are also descendants of Eber and thus Hebrews. Tim will have to include them and the Edomites as children of God if he wants to say all the Hebrews are Children of God.  It just goes to show that relying on apocryphal books which the Church has rejected as scripture will lead you down a dark path ending in erroneous theology and false history.

From Jubilees Tim gets the bad theology that the law was originally delivered to Adam and not Moses and that the law, not Jesus Christ, is God's supreme revelation to mankind. I am not sure where he gets his doctrine of the Holy Spirit but Timothy Jay Schwab finally publicly denied that the Holy Spirit is divine.

COMMANDMENTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT: A Sabbath Reflection. Part 3: If You Love Me...

13:29 For those looking for our view on the Holy Spirit there you have it. We stick to the Word. He has a role and it is precious and powerful and it is something we all need. We love and treasure Him and His role. We always have and we always will. Now if you have followed our journey the past four years you well know we are not this smart but the Holy Spirit has revealed things that are ready to be revealed. That's it. So we have a relationship with the Holy Spirit and we find Him to be precious and valuable in our lives like nothing else. So, however there is not a single scripture that ever equates Him as the Father, it just isn't there so there's nothing to debate.

That is a thoroughly ignorant denial of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Of course there are no scriptures equating the Spirit as the Father because they are separate hypostases. They share the same divine nature not the same hypostasis! The Holy Spirit is as much God as the Father and the Son but they remain separate persons. There is a sharing of the nature without a confusing of the hypostases. Once again Tim has no idea what he is talking about. From this it sounds doubtful he has any idea what the doctrine of the Trinity actually entails. I recommend this video as a serious corrective to his theological moribundity.

Sadly not a single comment on that video has called out Tim's rank anti-trinitarian heresy. Timothy Jay Schwab and his followers are caught up in prelest. I hope they can find their way out.  I would recommend this video to understand what it means to actually test the spirits and the true nature of spiritual delusion.