Biblical Allusions in Turtledove's Work

The Bible is one of the most widely read and studied books in Western Civilization. As the vast majority of Harry Turtledove's works are set worlds where the Bible exists in nearly the same format as it does in OTL, dozens if not hundreds of his characters refer to passages from it. The references are rarely significant to the plot, but sometimes give brief insight to a particular character or culture.

Gideon
Gideon was a judge of the Israelites, whose career is summarized in Judges 7-9. During his life, Israel was under constant attack by the Midianites and Amalekites, and its people had turned to the worship of the false god Baal.

God commanded Gideon to free the people politically and purify them religiously. Gideon was very unsure of his calling and asked God to indicate His will through miracles, which God did. Gideon then condemned his compatriots' worship of Baal and destroyed the god's altars.

He then gathered an army to counterattack Midian and Amalek. God ordered Gideon to demobilize most of his troops till the army had shrunk from 32,000 to 300; with such a small force, there could be no doubt that victory had come through God's favor.

God sowed fear and discord in the enemy camp, so that the sound of three hundred shofars (each man in Gideon's army was ordered to carry and blow a horn) caused them to panic and kill one another. Gideon pursued the two kings of Midian, who had been responsible for the deaths of his brothers. He requested assistance from the men of the Israelite towns of Succoth and Peniel; the men of both towns refused. Gideon captured the Midianite kings unassisted, then destroyed Succoth and Peniel. He then killed the Midianite kings.

Gideon in The Guns of the South
One night in the Army of Northern Virginia's winter quarters, shortly after the arrival of the Rivington Men, Robert E. Lee found Andries Rhoodie alone, reading from the Bible by the light of a campfire. Lee was pleased to see this apparent sign of Christian piety, and it went a long way toward dispelling a certain unease which he'd felt ever since meeting Rhoodie for the first time. He asked Rhoodie what section of Scripture he was reading, and Rhoodie replied that he was reading the story of Gideon. He said he read it often, that it "seemed to fit." Lee responded that it did indeed fit and bade Rhoodie a good night.

Haman
Haman the Agagite המן האגגי, or Haman the evil המן הרשע is the main antagonist in the Book of Esther. In the story, he is prime minister in the Persian empire under King Xerxes the Great. When he thinks he has been insulted by Mordecai, a leader of Susa's Jewish community, Haman plans the complete genocide of Jewry. In the process, he builds a proudly ostentatious gallows on which he plans to hang Mordecai specifically. Unknown to Haman, Xerxes' consort Queen Esther, a secret Jewess and the niece of Mordecai, has learned of the plan. Mordecai and Esther concoct a plan which entraps Haman into perjuring himself before the King, leading to his being hanged on the very same gallows he built for Mordecai, who succeeds him as prime minister.

Haman's defeat is celebrated in the popular Jewish holiday of Purim (named after the "lots" Haman used to calculate strategy). This holiday is celebrated each March, and often involves pageants and puppet shows portraying Haman as an exaggerated comic villain.

Secular historians doubt the veracity of the Purim story, as the surviving accounts of Xerxes' inner circle do not mention any figures resembling Mordecai, Esther or Haman. The story may have originated as a myth about the Babylonian deities Marduk and Ishtar, and the Zoroastrian Devil-like figure Ahriman.

Haman's story is referred to in proverbial shorthand by characters in various Harry Turtledove works, who declare that certain traitors and other malefactors will be "hanged higher than Haman." Such proclamations can be found in The Guns of the South, "Must and Shall", The Two Georges, The Man With the Iron Heart, "Lee at the Alamo", and several volumes of the Southern Victory series. The phrase was used in famous OTL speeches by Stephen Douglas and Woodrow Wilson, either of which may have inspired Turtledove's use of the catchphrase.

Israelites
The Israelites (Hebrew: בני ישראל‎‎ Bnei Yisra'el)[1] were a Semitic people of the ancient Near East, who inhabited part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods, and lived in the region in smaller numbers after the fall of the monarchy. The ancient Israelites are considered an outgrowth of the indigenous Canaanite populations that long inhabited the Southern Levant, Syria, Palestine and the Transjordan.

In the Hebrew Bible, the term "Israelites" refers to the direct descendants of any of the sons of the patriarch Jacob, or of the people called Israel, and of a worshipper of the God of Israel, Yahweh. In the period of the divided monarchy it referred only to inhabitants of the northern kingdom, and is only extended to cover people of the southern kingdom in post-exilic usage. Other terms sometimes used include the "Hebrews" and the "Twelve Tribes" (of Israel).

The Jews, which include the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, Simeon and partially Levi, are named after the southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah. The word "Jews" is found in Kings (16:6), Chronicles (I, 4:18), and in numerous passages in the Book of Jeremiah, the Book of Zechariah and the Book of Esther. The Samaritans, whose religious texts consist of the five books of the Samaritan Torah (but which do not contain the books comprising the Jewish Tanakh), do not refer to themselves as Jews, although they do regard themselves as Israelites, in accordance with the Torah.

The Kingdom of Israel (Samaria), often called the Northern Kingdom of Israel, contained all the tribes except for the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Following its conquest by Assyria, these ten tribes were allegedly dispersed and lost to history, and henceforth known as the Ten Lost Tribes. Jewish tradition holds that Samaria was so named because the region's mountainous terrain was used to keep "Guard" (Shamer) for incoming enemy attack. According to Samaritan tradition, however, the Samaritan ethnonym is not derived from the region of Samaria, but from the fact that they were the "Guardians" (Shamerim) of the true Israelite religion. Thus, according to Samaritan tradition, the region was named Samaria after them, not vice versa. In Jewish Hebrew, the Samaritans are called Shomronim, while in Samaritan Hebrew they call themselves Shamerim.

In Judaism, an Israelite is, broadly speaking, a lay member of the Jewish ethnoreligious group, as opposed to the priestly orders of Kohanim and Levites. In texts of Jewish law such as the Mishnah and Gemara, the term יהודי (Yehudi), meaning Jew, is rarely used, and instead the ethnonym ישראלי (Yisraeli), or Israelite, is widely used to refer to Jews. Samaritans commonly refer to themselves and Jews collectively as Israelites, and describe themselves as the Israelite Samaritans.

Israelites in The Guns of the South
Robert E. Lee was confused by Konrad de Buys' reference to the Uzi as having been invented by an Israeli, a name Lee could only interpret as meaning Israelite. He did not pursue this line of inquiry, as he had more important things to deal with at the moment.