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Kittim


Kittim was a settlement in present-day Larnaca on the west coast of Cyprus, known in ancient times as Kition, or (in Latin) Citium. On this basis, the whole island became known as "Kittim" in Hebrew, including the Hebrew Bible. However the name seems to have been employed with some flexibility in Hebrew literature. It was often applied to all the Aegean islands and even to "the W[est] in general, but esp[ecially] the seafaring W[est]".Flavius Josephus (c. 100 AD) records in his Antiquities of the Jews that

The expression "isles of Kittim", found in the Book of Jeremiah 2:10 and Ezekiel 27:6, indicates that, some centuries prior to Josephus, this designation had already become a general descriptor for the Mediterranean islands. Sometimes this designation was further extended to apply to Romans, Macedonians or Seleucid Greeks. The Septuagint translates the occurrence of "Kittim" in the Book of Daniel 11:30 as ῥωμαῖοι ("Romans"). 1 Maccabees 1:1 states that "Alexander the Great the Macedonian" had come from the "land of Kittim". In the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Kittim are referred to as being "of Asshur".Eleazar Sukenik argued that this reference to Asshur should be understood to refer to the Seleucid Empire which controlled the territory of the former Assyrian Empire at that time, but his son Yigael Yadin interpreted this phrase as a veiled reference to the Romans.


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