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Passwords.
submitted by Steve Grant

I would like to emphasize that the Ephraimite's failing was a thoroughly ingrained, cultural one. It wasn't just that they didn't know a secret word. They did not have the -sh- sound in their language. To them, their pronunciation was not just the proper one; it was the only one possible by tongues untrained in making the aspiration sound.

Some of us may hold the naive view that other people are friends we just haven't met yet, or that they are Masons, who just don't know it yet. As warm and fuzzy as this sounds for a working assumption, I would submit that it is unrealistic. There are many, ... way too many, people who are habitually inclined to selfishness, to what many would call evil. As a man is first prepared to be made a Mason in his heart, so these people may be recognized by the values they hold as a thoroughly ingrained habit, as their culture. They cannot hide their habits of thought. It is in their humor, manners, and ways of speaking. The allegory of the shibboleth teaches us to recognize them by their cultural failings and to exclude them from our midst. It teaches us to guard well the West gate.

Although many, if not most, archaeologists call the events in the Book of Judges pure mythology, paleography suggests that the stories were first written down about 1,000 BCE. Various ways of dating Jeptha suggest that he might have lived as early as the 15th century BCE, but usually it is a century or two after that. I haven't seen any estimates as early as 4,000 years ago.

The statement that there fell on that day forty and two thousand of the Ephraimites, is probably way off. By the way, this was the KJV way of saying 42,000 rather than 40 + 2,000 or 2,040. The first value is too large for the populations that could have been involved. Prior to about 300 BCE, writers seem to have used a different convention for numbers that appears to later translators as multiplying everything by ten. Thus, the oldest prophets seem to have lived much longer than anyone since, and the people of the Exodus were many more than could have been sustained by the desert or passed through without leaving a trace.

In this case, a factor of ten means that there were probably more like 4,200 Ephraimites that could not frame to pronounce it right. This is at least more in line with the probably size of armies in the 14th c. BCE.

The test word itself has two meanings, either an ear of corn (a sprig of wheat or barley, rather than maize) or flowing water. Since the Ephraimites would have been trying to cross the Jordan river, the latter meaning would have been a natural one as a test word.

However, the combination of the two into an emblem may relate to something from the Middle Ages, instead. The story is that of St. Christopher, whose name literally means "bearer of Christ," from Christ + offero. He was a large man who used his thick staff to assist pilgrims in crossing a fast moving stream. While carrying a small child across the stream he nearly sank and drown from unexpected weight, as if he had the whole world on his shoulders. To make his identity known, the child told Christopher to plant his staff in the wet ground, whereupon it immediately sprouted leaves and fruit, similar to the miracle of Aaron's Rod.

From this story, or perhaps as a cause of it, people would mark good fords for streams with fruit or grain hung in a tree. Sometimes a bundle of sticks or other unusual object would be used. These eye catching objects would be called "Christophers" and were thought to bring luck to travelers who saw them. They certainly were lucky, if they were seeking a ford to the stream.

At any rate, Christopher was known as the patron of travelers and pilgrims until Vatican II declared him apocryphal. He would certainly have been a focus for groups, such as the building trades, who had permission to travel to distant work sites. Christopher was also sometimes portrayed in armor, similar to St. George in slaying the dragon. So, he was also important to Crusaders, the very model of a pilgrim traveler.