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Understanding Satan, (he’s really a nice guy!)


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Angels and Demons, two sides to the same coin. More history lessons and comparisons.

Okay, what we now must realize is where the idea of angels and demons came from. What we must establish is that the Hebraic idea for angels and demons didn’t come until much, much later than the Bible would have us believe. So, how do we go about doing that? First, we will prove the origins of the Hebraic culture and civilization, and most importantly, their language. Second, we will compare and contrast their language and religion to the popular groups around the area.

First, let’s look at the language. Hebrew belongs to the northwestern branch of a family of languages called the Semitic languages. All the Semitic languages are related, meaning that they all started off initially as nothing more than regional dialects of a single language; this ancestral language, which we call Proto-Semitic, is nowhere recorded, since its speakers were illiterate. The earliest written record of Hebrew is the so-called Gezer Calendar, generally dated to the late 11th or early 10th century BCE, though the familiar Hebrew alphabet was not invented until quite a bit later, around 8th century B.C.E. Among the closest relatives of Hebrew are Aramaic (which still has a few speakers today, though those speakers somewhat confusingly call their language `Assyrian') and the famous but long-extinct Phoenician. Arabic is more distantly related, but still Semitic. Akkadian is also Semitic, but it belongs to the eastern branch of the family. Akkadian was spoken in two slightly different dialects, called Assyrian and Babylonian; these dialects were the principal languages of the empires of the same names. Hence `Babylonian' is not strictly a language name, but only a label for the dialect of Akkadian used by the Babylonians. `Chaldean' is likewise not a language name; it's merely another English word for `Babylonian'. Akkadian is long extinct, but it is abundantly recorded in cuneiform inscriptions.

In Hebrew, nouns are either masculine or feminine and are almost always derived from their cognate verbs. Masculine words form their plural by adding -im (for instance, the words cherubim, seraphim, and Elohim are all plural) and feminine words become plural by adding -oth. Since plurality can also designate a multiplicity of attributes, the words God, face, heaven and water are often found in the plural even when they refer to something singular. Hebrew nouns have no case, as does Greek. Instead, Hebrew uses prepositions, the genitive construct and the sign of the direct object "eth" to represent different cases. (In English we have cases only with pronouns: I {subjective}, my {possessive} and me {objective}).

The verb stem is usually made up of three consonants. In English we use tenses primarily to designate the time of the action. Hebrew tenses on the other hand describe the kind of action. In fact, it has only two tenses, perfect and imperfect (which represent complete and incomplete action respectively). Both of these tenses can be past, present or future, depending on the context. Greek on the other hand has six tenses which can describe both the time and kind of action.

To Kabbalist she is called Marah, "The bitter sea from which all life comes and must return." She is also the Superior or Greater Mother; the Inferior or Lesser Mother is called the Sephira Malkuth, traditionally symbolized as the many nature goddesses of folklore. The Moon in ancient history is closely tied with the spiritual or religious experiences of a culture, each culture keeping to the clock of the monthly lunar cycle.

The significance of the Hebrew moon cult was so significant that the very term for "month," is "chodesh", which literally means "new moon". This was used in reference to a new moon that began at the beginning of their "month". The lunar cycles were carefully observed in the cultural/religious aspects of Israel, and this is evident in various scriptures such as Exodus 19:1. The new moon was considered a day for festivals, and it was "worshipped" by heave offerings and banquets, (1 Samuel 20:5, Numbers 29:6, 1 Chronicles 23:31.) This festival was listed with the Sabbath day as an important one for ceremonial remembrance.

The Hebraic calendar contained 12 months consisting of a total of 30 days. Because the lunar cycle was only about 29 1/2 days in reality, the year was lost to a degree, which made it compose up of only 354 1/2 days. To keep this calendar balanced, it was necessary to add a 13th month to the lunar cycle seven out of every nineteen years. This month was referred to as the "Second Adar."

The Israelites took elements marking time from the other predominate cultures, (it seems to be a reoccurring theme in the Hebrew religion), from the Canaanites and Babylonians. Four months are from Canaanite names, while seven are from Babylonian.

Further proof lies in the Bible, (Acharya S arguments)."The moon appears as a power of good (Deut. 33:4) or of evil (Ps. 12:16). Traces of ancient moon-worship were energetically removed from the text by later editors. A few remained, however, and can be recognized in the prohibitions of Deuteronomy. In 4:19 the Israelites are warned: 'And lest thou lift up thine eyes upon heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, and be led astray to worship them, and serve them,' and in 17:3 the punishment of stoning is prescribed for the person who 'hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven . . . ' The Lord predicts (Jer. 8:2) that the bones of kings and princes of Judah will not be buried, but spread 'before the sun, and the moon, and all the hosts of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and whom they have worshipped.'"

Umm… so what right? But hang in with me.

The Bible as literal History

For now, we shall focus purely on history. The Bible has so many documented flaws with all known science that it is at total war. However, for the purposes of this book, that serves little to no purpose. What we want to talk about are the pre-existing Gods and forces in the Hebraic pantheon. So, for now, we shall stick to the realm of known history and archaeology. The Bible asserts that the beginnings of the Hebraic civilizations were brought about by a man named Abraham, who, along with many other tribal chieftains of the period, led members of his tribe from the city of Ur, went west towards the Mediterranean, to the "promised land" of Canaan. This happened sometime between the 19th and 18th centuries B.C.E.

The problem with this conjecture is that we don't have hardly any good archaeological evidence to support this story, while we simultaneously have access to volumes of literature; all of which point towards a different direction. The land where Abraham supposedly settled, the southern highlands of Palestine (from Jerusalem, south to the Valley of Beersheba), is very sparse in archaeological evidence from this period. It is abundantly clear from the archaeological record that its population was extremely sparse , little more than a few hundred people in the entire region, and the sole occupants of the area during this time were nomadic pastoralists, much like the Bedouin of the region today. We know from clear archaeological evidence that the peoples known as the Philistines never even entered the region until the 12th century B.C.E., and the "city of Gerar" in which Isaac had his encounter with Abimelech, the "king of the Philistines" (in Genesis 26:1) was in fact a tiny, insignificant rural village up until the 8th century B.C.E. It couldn't have been the capital of the regional king of a people who didn't yet exist!

The Philistines were people of Aegean origin, who settled onto the southern coast of Palestine in the 12th century BCE, which is about the time of the arrival of the Israelites. We have records of them in Egyptian records, and they were known as "prst", one of the Sea People that invaded Egypt around the time period of 1190 BCE. They went there after sacking and looting Anatolia, Cyprus, and Syria. After being expelled by the Egyptians, they moved in and occupied the coastal plain of Palestine from Joppa (modern Tel Aviv-Yafo) southward to the Gaza Strip. So, we find the theory that they were around before then just a little hard to swallow.

This is one of several problems that we come into contact with on the account of the Age of the Patriarchs. Another major problem is that of the camels. We know from archaeological evidence that camels weren't domesticated until about the late second millennium B.C.E., and that they weren't widely used as beasts of burden until about 1000 B.C.E. - long after the Age of the Patriarchs. This is more conjecture than anything else, so we must support this hypothesis with additional proof. What we find next with this problem and idea is the cargo carried by the camels - "gum, balm, and myrrh," which were products of trade with Arabia. That sounds nice, until you realize that trade with Arabia didn't begin until the era of Assyrian hegemony in the region, beginning in the 8th century B.C.E. Coincidentally, this was the actual time the Hebraic civilization was coming into being.

Another problem we encounter is the marriage of Jacob, with his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and his relationship with his uncle, Laban, all of whom are described as being Arameans. This ethnic group does not appear in the archeological record prior to 1100 B.C.E., and were not a significant group until the 9th century B.C.E. Once again, this is a few hundred years off in the Biblical story.

Now, some Bible scholars will admit that there are huge amounts of skepticism towards the Book of Genesis, noting the huge parallels between it and the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Sumerian mythologies. So, we have to look a little bit further into the Bible to see if there are still existing problems throughout the Old Testament. In Joshua 8, it says that the Israelites destroy Ai, and make it an uninhabited ruin. But archaeology has revealed that Ai was an abandoned city by the time the Israelites came across it, and that this story is nothing more than a myth invented to explain the ruins of an ancient city.

Extensive archaeological work at the site of Ai has revealed that the city was destroyed and burned down around 2400 B.C.E., which would have been over a thousand years before the time of Joshua. Joseph Callaway, a conservative Southern Baptist and professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, spent nine years excavating the ruins of ancient Ai. He afterwards reported that what he found there contradicted the biblical record:.

“The evidence from Ai was mainly negative. There was a great walled city there beginning about 3000 B. C., more than 1,800 years before Israel's emergence in Canaan. But this city was destroyed about 2400 B. C., after which the site was abandoned.

Despite extensive excavation, no evidence of a Late Bronze Age (1500-1200 B. C.) Canaanite city was found. In short, there was no Canaanite city here for Joshua to conquer” (Biblical Archaeology Review, "Joseph A. Callaway: 1920-1988," November/December 1988, p. 24, emphasis added).

This same article quoted what Callaway had earlier said when announcing the results of his nine-year excavation of Ai.
“Archaeology has wiped out the historical credibility of the conquest of Ai as reported in Joshua 7-8. The Joint Expedition to Ai worked nine seasons between 1964 and 1976... only to eliminate the historical underpinning of the Ai account in the Bible (Ibid., p. 24).”
The work of Kathleen Kenyon produced similar results in her excavation of the city of Jericho. Her conclusion was that the walls of Jericho were destroyed around 2300 B. C., about the same time that Ai was destroyed. Apparently, then, legends developed to explain the ruins of ancient cities, and biblical writers recorded them as tales of Joshua's conquests. Information like this, however, is never mentioned by inerrantists when they talk about archaeological confirmation of biblical records.

Archaeological silence is another problem that biblical inerrantists don't like to talk about. According to the Bible, the Israelite tribes were united into one nation that had a glorious history during the reigns of king David and his son Solomon, yet the archaeological record is completely silent about these two kings except for two disputed inscriptions that some think are references to "the house of David." This is strange indeed considering that references to Hebrew kings of much less biblical importance (Omri, Ahab, Jehu, Zedekiah, etc.) have been found in extrabiblical records. This archaeological silence doesn't prove that David and Solomon did not exist, but it certainly gives all but biblical inerrantists pause to wonder.

What presents stronger evidence that there was no King David and King Solomon are the cuneiform tablets of El Mardish, which list God names like: Ab-ra-mu (Abraham), E-sa-um (Esau), Ish-ma-ilu (Ishmael), Sa-'u-lum (Saul), Da-'v-dum (David). Further names found throughout are Is-'ra-el-u', along with place names like Urusalim, Hazor, Gaza, Lahish, Meggido, Is-ra-ilu, and Sinai. The name Is Ra Il U (El U) shows that the use of the three main Gods (Isis, Ra, and El respectively), to signify a place wasn't a particularly new trait. This discovery was in 1975 at Ebla, Syria, where there were found 20,000 clay tablets, which were dated back 4500 years ago, a thousand years before the biblical David and Solomon supposedly lived.

Now, even the most anti of anti-Biblical scholars knows that there are some portions to the Bible that are historically accurate. But how biased are these opinions that we receive from the Jewish authors? The Moabite Stone, for example, corroborates the biblical claim that there was a king of Moab named Mesha, but the inscription on the stone gives a different account of the war between Moab and the Israelites recorded in 2 Kings 3. Mesha's inscription on the stone claimed overwhelming victory, but the biblical account claims that the Israelites routed the Moabite forces and withdrew only after they saw Mesha sacrifice his eldest son as a burnt offering on the wall of the city the Moabites had retreated to (2 Kings 3:26-27). So the Moabite Stone, rather than corroborating the accuracy of the biblical record, gives reason to suspect that both accounts are biased. Mesha's inscription gave an account favorable to the Moabites, and the biblical account was slanted to favor the Israelites. The actual truth about the battle will probably never be known.

Further into the post Torah books, another problem we have is in Daniel 1:1, where it states that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Jerusalem in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim. But that couldn't be possible. That would have to be in 606 BCE, at which time Nebuchadnezzar was not yet king of Babylon. It was not until 597 BCE that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Jerusalem for the first time (without actually destroying it). By that time, Jehohiakim was dead and his son, Jehoiachin, was ruling.

In the same book, we find another central theme of confusion and lack of historical knowledge. In Daniel 5:31, a fictional character named "Darius the Median" appears, who is perhaps being confused with the real life Darius I of Persia. Darius I didn't come to the throne until 521 BCE, a full 17 years after the fall of Babylon. The author of Daniel incorrectly makes him the successor of Belshazzar instead of Cyrus.

From what we see here, due to the obviously horrible knowledge of history, the "Israelites" couldn't have even been a nation called the "Israelites" until much later than the myths attributed to them. Studying their archaeology, and studying their dialect, and studying their religion, the obvious train of thought begins to appear. That the Hebraic Gods were just the Canaanite Gods, and that the Hebrew’s adopted them as part of their pantheon.

Now, before progressing, it should be duly noted that most of the references to the older forms of Jewish worship have been carefully taken out, but a few still survive. There are two common phrases used to denote the first five books of the Bible. The “Pentateuch”, taken from two Greek words, pente, meaning five, and teuchos, meaning volumes. Pentateuch therefore means “five volumes”. Another interchangeable word is Pentatuch, meaning “five books”. Both of these things refer to the books of the Bible written by their supposed author “Moses”. We shall soon see why that is a huge fallacy.

(Taken from Scott Bidstrup’s very well-done essay on the real origins of Christianity)

about 1200 B.C.E.

In the south, from Bethel to the Valley of Beersheba, a transformation is taking place. In this climatically and geologically harsher place, a place with a much smaller and less settled population with greater geographical isolation, the Canaanite god Yahweh is being transformed by a culturally similar people of the land of Judah. The unknown author known to scholars simply as "J" has his god being familiar with and comfortable with Abraham, and he casually appears to Abraham in Genesis 18, introducing himself as Yahweh. But "J's" contemporary, author "E" in the north can't have God being so casual, and first appears as a voice, commanding Abraham to leave his people in Mesopotamia and settle in Canaan.

Yahweh, in his transformation from a pagan Canaanite god, to the god of the Jews, becomes a cruel and violent god in the hands of author "J." He commands Abraham to sacrifice his first-born son, an act which is not at all surprising given the nature of the pagan religions of the time. Many of these pagan religions (and remember that Yahweh got his start as a Canaanite pagan god) considered the first-born to be the seed of a god. Because of this, they were often sacrificed to the god who presumably sired them. We see this continuing theme throughout the Bible, with the slaughter of the “First-born” animals, humans, etc. Even in the Bible, it says:


Exodus 22:29 “Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me.” Now, current interpreters will tell you that this was due to the baptism, but the Jews didn’t have baptisms at this time did they? No, in keeping with the Canaanite tradition, (Yahweh was originally a volcano God, and how do you appease a volcano God? Through fire), they were supposed to offer up their first-born son, so we see this big reoccurring theme in the Bible about killing the “first born” of cattle, of children, etc. The cool things they never teach you in Sunday school.

Yet Elohim in the north continues to be a much more subtle god, who directs the affairs of men by revelation of the voice, hidden from the view of mere mortals. There is a tension among these peoples, both of whom identify themselves as culturally descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. One people, perhaps, but two very different gods.

The people of the north, with a much more favorable geography and climate, eventually prosper and establish trading links with their neighbors. Their wealth eventually comes to greatly exceed that of the south - to the extent that they become a nation in their own right - the nation of Israel. Israel prospers to the extent that it becomes a significant trading nation in its own right - greatly eclipsing its poorer neighbor, Judah.

By the end of the eighth century, B.C.E., a Hebrew alphabet appears, and literacy rapidly spreads among the wealthier Hebrews. Finally, after centuries of oral tradition, writing becomes widespread for the first time, and culturally changes everything. The myths are written down and compared. The two gods come into open cultural conflict with each other.

By now, the Egyptian hegemony in the region has faded, and the geopolitical vacuum was filled by Assyria. The Assyrians eventually assumed control of the region, with two provincial areas, Israel in the north, and Judah in the south. Israel, vastly more prosperous and populous than Judah, had its capital at various times in Megiddo, Samaria, or Seschem, while Judah had its capital at Bethel, on it's northern frontier, or sometimes at Hebron in the south. Jerusalem, up until this time, was a tiny agricultural village of insignificance.

However, widespread literacy and the geopolitical events of the day changed everything. Israeli rebellion against the Assyrians brought repression in the north, and with it, waves of refugees into the south. With the arrival of waves of refugees, Jerusalem is quickly transformed from a tiny agricultural village of no particular significance into a major town, with a religious influence of its own. It is from this era that the myths of the Old Testament become frozen in the form in which they have come down to us - the story of Abraham and his family traveling and trading with the use of camels, the myth of Exodus transformed as it was from the story of the expulsion of the Hyksos, the stories of the conquest of Canaan with David slaying Goliath, which was really a story based on the forced resettlement by the Egyptian authorities, of Solomon's great wealth and his great temple at Jerusalem; all were myths substantially altered from the facts as they originally occurred. But writing them down now froze those myths, and it is from this time they came to us unaltered for the most part.



About 700-600 B.C.E.

It is at least a century after the first books of the Pentateuch was written that the gods of the Old Testament are harmonized into a singular being, this having been done by the third major writer of the Old Testament books, a writer (or more probably group of writers) called by scholars, "D" the Deuteronomist. If we are going to have a monotheistic religion here, we can't go around having two competing gods, so something must be done. The tribes of Israel and Judah had a choice to make, and Joshua warned them that Yahweh was a jealous god. Which god would it be? In essence, there was no difficulty making a choice. Yahweh was the more powerful, having demonstrated his power by intervening on their behalf in Egypt, and in the desert at Sinai. The choice was easy. It was Yahweh.


A god has to have a home, and the home of the god Yahweh was in heaven. But his priests on earth had to have a place for the ritual sacrifices that were handed down as part of the ritual of the "El" pantheon, as well as the original pagan Canaanite god, Yahweh, which of course had been descended into the Hebraic monotheism. This place was the temple, of course, whose construction was attributed to Solomon, a mythical king. The reality is that it was built at least a century later than the period attributed to the rule of Solomon. The whole story of Solomon, his father David, and the events surrounding that dynasty, were created during this era to explain the fading splendor of Jerusalem, and provide a centering myth around which to rally the culture towards a monotheistic religion, which was under assault from the Assyrian culture that politically was hegemonous in the region.

In the year 742 B.C.E., while the Deuteronomist writers were still busy getting rid of Elohim, a member of the Judean royal family had a vision. In it, he saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, directly above the temple in Jerusalem. In the vision, Isaiah is commanded to bring a new message to Israel. Isaiah is filled with foreboding and with good reason; King Tigleth Pilesar, who had recently ascended to the throne of Assyria, had designs on Israel, and now the god of Israel had to take up the duties of defending the people of his covenant.

Isaiah was commissioned by his god to carry the message to Israel that he is the only god there is; this comes as a great problem to the Israelites who see Isaiah's concept of God as being the very god who had aided the Assyrians in their victories against them. Isaiah is largely rejected with his message, and Yahweh becomes a pensive, introspective god, who invites his followers to enter into a dialogue with him. Isaiah's second innovation was the notion that the commandments of the god should be integrated into the very lives of those who follow him, and not just be restricted to temple observance and ritual. Only by doing so would Yahweh be appeased and Israel saved. This also did not have much resonance in the lives of the average Hebrew.

In punishment for disregarding the prophet's message, Yahweh conveniently permits King Sargon II of Assyria to occupy the northern portion of Palestine and deport the population. Suddenly, the warnings of Isaiah are taken a bit more seriously as the ten "lost" tribes of Israel are marched off into forced assimilation in Assyria and Palestine becomes the land of the Jews. The reality of course, is that Sargon was punishing Israel for its insurrection and refusal to pay tribute. Israel, with a wetter, more productive climate and much easier geography was much easier pickings than the dry, rocky, thinly populated and more distant Judah. Therefore, it was only natural that Sargon would choose to occupy Israel rather than Judah. Yet, even as Sargon occupied Israel his own empire was beginning to crumble. Assyrian power was fading, but Babylonian power was increasing.

In the south, to ensure that the people of Judah hear his message, Yahweh sends a succession of prophets to them. They preach from the temple and ally themselves with the political power of the Jewish kings. In so doing, the temple and the political process become allied in the fight against the military power of their neighbors. There is no longer an Elohim cult, and the Israelites are long gone. The Hebraic religion and culture becomes a Jewish one. Amos and Jeremiah were the prophets of note from this period.

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