This is mostly just bad history, but there's also bad linguistics here trying to explain that Japanese sumo wrestling is actually from Israel. : r/badlinguistics

物議を醸しているが、実際否定しきれていない。

https://www.reddit.com/r/badlinguistics/comments/o31z12/this_is_mostly_just_bad_history_but_theres_also/
1 word "sumo" to the Hebrew world "shemo" despite the fact that it's pretty well attested that "sumo" comes from "sumai no sechie" which was a festival that often had wrestling matches as part of the celebration.
2 Relating the phrase "hakkeyoi" to two Hebrew words meaning "grab" and "throw."


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millionsofcats
モデレーター
•
4 年前


I'll leave the post up since you do explain why one small part of it is wrong, but for the future, you should know that this isn't really enough explanation of why the video is wrong. For a long video, for example, you could make a statement about the kind of mistakes it keeps making.
It's especially helpful to provide more explanation if the video's not in English, too.


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AngelMCastillo
OP
•
4 年前

My bad. Thanks for the check.


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tokumeikibou
•
4 年前


Maybe, but all festivals are actually descended from Hebrew words as well. Haven't you heard how Gion comes from Zion?


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AngelMCastillo
OP
•
4 年前

Lolololol I love even more when they propose a Hebrew origin for a fucking Chinese loan word.


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MeIRLinAsheville
•
4 年前


I don't usually comment here, but I saw the thread title and literally said TF???
I would be happy if people simply knew the history of Krav Maga as it relates to WWII, Eastern Europe, and Israel. Sumo is as old as Christianity. Israel is not even 100 years old. What the hell?
I absolutely loathe when people try to coopt ancient Hebrew to draw connections that don't exist, often misinterpreting the original Hebrew word and connecting it to a far more modern language. What is the damn fixation?
I don't know more than scraps of Japanese, so idk if it's the case here, but typically I hear the dumbest 'explanations' about some completely BS Hebrew 'fact' from people who can't speak or read a lick of it. It is crazy-making. If one more faux Judaic-flavored religious follower says "See, Hebrew doesn't have vowels(!!!)," I think I might actually puke a little. Just because Hebrew is perfectly legible without diacritics doesn't mean vowels don't exist. My (extremely Hebrew) name is 50% vowels ffs.
Agh. Rant over. I couldn't help myself.
But I would LOVE it if someone could tell me why there seems to be a compulsion to make up Hebrew origin stories for words totally unrelated to Hebrew or why the inane yet seemingly rampant misinformation about Hebrew persists today. In a time when most people worldwide are walking around with a pocket-sized, internet-connected computer, I would have thought these stupid myths would simply die.


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AngelMCastillo
OP
•
4 年前


I have to wonder if it's some kind of weird internalized colonialism where people want to legitimize themselves by finding some secret connection to "Judeo-Christian" (scare quotes intentional because I think the term is meaningless) history. I was listening to a podcast where they hypothesized that the key to Mormonism's success in the US was adding in the spin of the Native Americans being a lost tribe of Israel so that way there could be a legitimizing connection to old world Abrahamic religion but still be a uniquely American religion.
I share your disgust and frustration, friend, it's why I had to share it.


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MeIRLinAsheville
•
4 年前


Tl;dr I agree with your understanding of why this is a trend, plus me apparently REALLY needing to vent my frustrations on this topic generally, including a lot of personal anecdotes/experiences.
Disclaimer: my reply here includes some observations of and experiences with American Christians that may offend the sensibilities of American Christians. No offense is meant. It's just my personal experience and perspective. I'm not religious at all. I'm just very frequently put in the position of either dispelling myths about Hebrew and Judaism or being asked to speak about it by those who (say) they want to know.
My theory is pretty close to yours. My experiences have all been with monolingual English-speaking Christians whose denomination (?) is usually a fledgling religion... which is to say they're always Jehovah's Witnesses or Latter-Day Saints (I haven't personally interacted with Seventh Day Adventists, but I believe it's likely they're similar in this regard). My sense is that these people feel somehow unmoored by their youth as a sovereign religion, and they look to Judaism and Hebrew as a means of anchoring themselves to something ancient and abiding, seeking, pretty much like you said, legitimacy by association.
I have had many conversations with a variety of American Christians who have expressed feeling as if they lack meaningful roots and, therefore, identity. Those individuals were all people who felt they didn't really have a religious community and could not delineate the premise of their sect/denomination—Easter and Christmas church types. They just knew the church they attended was Methodist or whatever it was or that their family identifies as Lutheran etc. Necessarily, that experience illustrated to me that they didn't have a religious identity informed by community and ritual.
That's the weird thing for me about the fledgling religions that cherrypick weird things from Judaism or try to incorporate Hebrew into their beliefs or culture. I've done a significant amount of research on Jehovah's Witnesses and way, way, wayyy too much research into LDS/Mormonism. These religions are absolutely grounded in community and ritual, and they're really not built for the Easter and Christmas only type church-goers. That is why I think it must be some self-consciousness about their status as young religions that causes this (often misguided) appropriation of or grasping for something old with which to ground themselves.
But I really don't know, because it's not just young religions that seem to have a sort of culture of fixation toward Judaism and its language.
Everyone in my Orthodox community acted like I was going to be lynched on sight when I moved to the South. Don't get me wrong; I've had some super scary moments with people casually telling me about their status in the local KKK or otherwise bragging about being a white supremacist or Neo-Nazi. But mostly I have become disturbingly familiar with Southern Christians treating me like some kind of inherently sacred being because I'm Jewish. It's really strange. I always describe it, jokingly, as "people acting like I'm Elijah's BFF" or like "Jesus is my personal homeboy." Then, directly after they recover from some sort of awe about me being Jewish, they... try to save me. I have tried to clarify that being saved would make me Christian and not Jewish, and I have yet to find anyone who seems to hear me. The closest I've gotten to a real response was when a friend of mine stopped by to give me a Jews for Jesus pamphlet entitled "The Complete Jew." I cannot make this stuff up, I swear.
Anyway, bringing it back to language: the most crazy-making part of American Christians who seem eager to connect with Judaism and/or expressing (usually intense) interest in Hebrew is that if I actually begin sharing little facts about either, I get totally shut down. I'm not religious at all, so I could not care less about their faith. I don't have a dog in the fight, if you will. I'm just trying to give them what they ask for, which is a better understanding of the culture, history, and language with which I was raised. But it turns out that once I begin to answer their questions, they immediately lose interest/drop it/pivot the conversation elsewhere. It's so predictable that I tend to just spit out whatever I think will get us to that point faster, because it's a little exhausting after awhile. "So why don't Jews accept Jesus Christ as the messiah?" used to get a multi-tiered response from me, usually beginning with the Hebrew that has been interpreted differently in Christianity than it is understood by Judaism (like Christians' interpretation of the word for "virgin" being understood as "young maiden" by Jewish scholars). Now I just say, "Well, the Torah says that when the messiah comes, all will know the truth of God, and there will be peace on earth." Cue eager agreement from my listeners. Then I say, "Yes, well you see, the advent of Jesus didn't really do that for the Jews, did it? I'm sure you're familiar with the Crusades, Inquisition, and Holocaust?" How quickly that conversation ends!


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その他の 3 件の返信


SeeShark
•
4 年前


As mod of r/Hebrew... I wish I knew. I can tell you that unlike with e.g. Sanskrit it's NEVER Jews or Israelis coming up with these theories.
I will say, though, that while the modern State of Israel is less than 100 years old, the Kingdom(s) of Israel are MUCH older than Sumo (like more than 1000 years older).


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MeIRLinAsheville
•
4 年前


I'm totally aware that ancient Israel is a thing. But sumo is approximately 2k years old, says Google. So are we saying that Jesus/Christianity and sumo wrestling were contemporaries? It just sounds really stupid, but I'm no historian.
And my goodness THANK YOU, yes. I just got done telling my goyish husband that I have never, ever encountered a Jew or Israeli making up these weird things about ancient Hebrew.


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[削除されました]
•
4 年前
•
4 年前
に編集


Tying your identity to some important milestone in the cultural lore you want to place yourself within is ancient practice. E.g. viz. the Aeneas myth, the Byzas myth, and similar. ‪https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15285.html‬ I think this whole business may be analysed with that approach. If you want to legitimise your identity within a Judeo-Christian supremacist view of the world centred around the Judeo-Christian history/narrative, ancient Jewish society is a big milestone, esp the Genesis "era" (so to speak), and the times of Jesus. So that's a logical target, coming from that perspective.
(Granted, I left this strand of research sometime in my undergrad years, so IDK the details or the reception of these theories, so take this with an obligatory grain of salt)


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kangaesugi
•
4 年前

Yeah I wish I had the nerve to claim something like a sport from one of the oldest consistent nations in the world is actually from one of the youngest, lmao


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[削除されました]
•
4 年前

Israel is not even 100 years old
c'mon man, read the description of the youtube video. Obviously he is talking about ancient Israel. He is still wrong of course, but try to take it in good faith


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JoshfromNazareth
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4 年前

This is an entire series of videos (I remember posting it years ago but can't find it). They claim all sorts of wild stuff, like that kana are related to Hebrew, a sailing song is actually Hebrew, etc. It's one of my fave badlings.


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SeeShark
•
4 年前

While this theory is idiotic, there's a delightful Israeli Sumo movie called A Matter of Size (orig. סיפור גדול) that's worth watching if you like movies that are good. Israelis like Sumo.


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dal33t
•
4 年前

I legit thought I was having a goddamn stroke reading this.
Thankfully I don't smell burnt toast...


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just_another_commie
•
4 年前

strong "gaijin and goyim come from the same root!!!" energy here


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MG1231
•
4 年前


Ah yes, the good old 日ユ同祖論. Can't believe there are actually people who believe in this.


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[削除されました]
•
4 年前

its one of those fringe theories that i hear japanese people talk about now and then but its almost just like they enjoy imagining the possibility and nothing else. I'm glad it hasnt spread to be a deeper thing where a majority of people fabricate history and take it really seriously or anything. Still annoying but I can kinda enjoy the wackiness of it on an 'ancient aliens' type of level


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[削除されました]
•
4 年前

Sumo is related to Mongolian wrestling


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7WondersFanAuthor
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4 年前


there is this whole theory that the japanese descended from the hebrews. check it out online. it's mind blowing for sure.


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AngelMCastillo
OP
•
4 年前

If I ever decide I am just TOO sane and need to remedy that, I will know how.


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