Birth of The Book ZOHAR - Pt. 1

preface

What is Qabala? Qabbala means The Tradition It is a system of thought and of understanding which includes an open ended system of multiple-tiered relationships which connect and disconnect from other, endless numbers of multiple-teired relationships which continue the same identical process. Also, it attempt to show that any seeming disruptions of this system are 1.) genuine disruptions, and 2.) these genuine disruptions are in fact explained and included within the system that these disruptions disrupt. In other words, Qabala is a system of analysis-thought and synthesis-thought combined, based upon the movemnt and attempted full understanding of light (which includes color - the different wave lengths of light), number (which includes combination and separation, movement, rhythm within movement {{which includes within these "entities" time as we understand it, time as we do not understand it, the relativity of time, and the existence of possibilities of timelessness [[[and within these entities, the existence of what we call energy]]] }} ).

Underlying the entire Qabbbalistc structure is the idea that for a creation of God, humanity has extraordinary freedom of activity and can switch and combine paradigms, and thus alter his reality. Thus the Qabbala is a "hands-on" tool for conscious investigating, creative understanding, and immersion within the power of consciousness itself.

Also, Qabala is a notational system for both paradigm building, and (for lack of a better phrase) hyper-paradigm building. No one can say with full certainty whether or not Qabalistic though as a system of thought is fully developed and thus now static in its arranged terminology (but not in its usage and application) or whether it is still evolving as an open ended system.

Lastly, Qabala is a sytem for one to consciously and deliberatelu enter into a world of religious and spiritual experience, because as one studies the Qabala, one begins to see spiritual connections between and among diverse worldly and conscious elements. Qabala is a form of non-person images (light, movement, number, sound expressed or not expressed in symbol), ultimately used with one personified (human) image of the :"cosmic body of humankind" or "the prototypical cosmic human" in the same way in which a Hindu or Buddhist tantra is used. Ultimately, Qabala is a method for prayer.

The roots of the Qabala are very old and here it is the intention to begin with the earliest faint traces of Qabalistic thinking and show how these attitudes, intuitions, ephiphanies, and even totalitarian attitudes all played grew together to form a matrix from which was born what we call the Qabala.

It is probable that the Qabbala conglomerated first picking up mystical bits and pieces from religious communes such as the one at Qumran; then adapting various ideas from Gnostic metaphysics, such as the Valentinian, Manachaen, and Neo-Pythagorean schools, as well as the Catholic Christian writer Dionysius and Pseudo Dionysius. The next and perhaps greatest organizational influence was the giving of a profound way of voicing itself by 1.) the act of creation of Talmuds and 2.) the actual Talmuds themselves which presented a more profound, clear, and usable pathway to an intuitional-symbolic structure for the understanding of the human mind, pure consciousness, and physical reality.

Also, the Talmudic influence was immeduately adopted for finding hidden meanings in texts, divination, and the attempt to create physical change through extraordinary means ( or magic).

The qabbalah in legend dates back to the times of Adam, Abraham, and Moses. Beginnings of the qabbalah are attributed to certain statements in the Dead Sea Scrolls circa 1st century BC or speculated (again through legend) to have begun with the teachings and writing attributed to Rabbi Nachunjah ben Hakana ( fl 75 AD), Rabbi Ismael ben Elisa (fl. 130 AD); and Simeon ben Yohai (fl 150 AD).

And from the period of the Sepher Yetzirah (600-900 AD) to its first moments of maturity as a public system of thought (900-1300 AD), to its transcending of (while still remaining supporting of) the original group which gave it birth (the mature child leaves home), to finally its relevance in the influence of modern thought and its strong influence, as a single entity within consciousness, cooperatively working with other entities within human consciousness, to (at the minimum) push human conscious development into its own further evolution or to (at the maximum) push human consciousness into a realm or condition (currently undefinable) of human consciousness evolved beyond human consciousness.

While Qabalistic thought can be inferred from very early writings, at most, these inferences indicate only partial elements of the Qabalistic system and would further indicate that Qabalistic thought was almost virtually unknown (even in this partial and primitive form) amongst most Hebrew religionists and most Hebrew speaking people.

The two earliest Qabalistic texts (Sepher Yetzirah and the Sepher ha-Bahir) cannot be proved to have been written before the 11th century AD, although it is quite likely that these texts may have existed 100 to 200 years earlier. Qabalistic thought began to spread through Islamic Spain and Occitania (before its destruction by the Franks and the Albigensian Crusade) at the same time it was beginning to spread though Egypt and North Africa, the mediterranean generally, and the Middle East.

It is probable that the Cathars of Occitania, the earliest known organized Knights Templars, some secret (and unnamed) groups of Crusaders, and some mystical Christians such as Raymond Lully were all influenced by Qabalistic thought.

Later, in the period from ca. 1400 AD through the early 1600s AD, we see strong evidence of Qabalistic thought in the alchemical writings of Nicholas Flamel, Basil Valentine, Michael Meaer, Edward Kelly, John Dee, the Order of the Rose Cross, and various groups of Freemasons. During this same period Qabalistic writers or lecturers in the Hebrew diaspora were propounding some of the greatest ideas upon the subject. These writers and teachers include the brilliant Abraham Abulafia and Isaac Luria known as the Ari.

Since the late 1500s to the present there has been a steady and enlarging stream of books written on the subject of the Qabala. During the 1500s, the German abbot, Johannes Trithemius began collecting rare mystical manuscripts with an emphasis on astrology and qabala. His protegees Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus were both greatly influenced by the Qabal and their own writings obviously display their interest in this subject. In the late 1700s, Francis Barrett had a "school" of private students who studied the ceremonial magic aspects of Qabala. The English astrologers, John Gadbury and Ebeneezer Sibly added Qabalistic lore to their astrological assessments.

The first modern texts on Qabala start with the writings of Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant) especially his two books, Transcendental Magic and History of Magic. Both of these books are basic and simply (as Qabalistic texts go) and more modern texts have been much more detailed and accurate, but Eliphas Levi's great accomplishment was to create a modern enthusiasm for the subject and to provide a truly profound series of directly felt insights into the subtlety and experience in living, breathing terms, of one's immersion in Qabalistic thinking and practice. In this he is unsurpassed. Joseph Ennermoser's monumental History of Magic describes specific people, folkloric situations, and various specific occurences which are more and more noticeable and believable to one who continues to immerse themselves in the Qabalistic experience.

Alaister Crowley's Book of Lies and Konx Om Pax are profound "mind-teasers" and can be used to learn the subtle practice of finding multiple layers of meaning within either a "simple" or "absurd" text - these two books are a Qabalistic version of a Zen koan.Alaister Crowley's and Allan Bennett's 777 is a valuable and interesting series or qabalistic comparisons, equivalents, and parallel identities found in a number of different mythic and mystic systems (although some cases are open to question). This book, more than any other, presents Qabala as a non-exclusionary system of thought and reality-testing. The 17th century manuscript known and published as The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage is extremely important, very difficult to understand, and exists in an almost unique realm which is beyond discussion. The first modern Qabalistic philosophers were Adolphe Franck, Elias Benemozegh, and perhaps one could include Albert Einstein and Martin Buber and to some extent Dr. Carl Gustav Jung. More modern Qabalistic writers of the latter 20th century include Gustave Meyrink, Scholem Anski, Arthur Edward Waite, Dion Fortune, Gareth Knight, Dr. Israel Regardie, Franz Kafka, Rav Abraham Isaac Kook, Aryeh Kaplan, and Gershom Scholem.

At the present time, there is a flood of interesting and often profound books on Qabala, which indicates both a split in the Hebrew religion as well as a very strong growing "new influence" for mystical Christians and (believe it or not) mystical Confucians.

This book makes no attempt to compete with any of these texts, but rather to create a truthful experience of the growth of Qabalistic consciousness within the ancient and not-so-ancient Hebrew world and their growing ability to share these concepts and practices with the rest of the world. In doing so, the reader has the opportunity to watch the unfolding of Qabalistic knowledge within his or her own consciousness, to recaptiulate the every-growing process of Qabalistic consciousness from the earliest historical periods to the present (1999) and thus becoming an adequate "container" for this type of information and knowledge, to have lived through (in momentary conscious experience used as direct initiation) the entire historical development of Qabala within planetary human thought, and to fell "at home" and intuitively wide awake and acutely tuned to working with this form of information in the varied fields (some controversial, some not) of science, art, anthropology, ceremonial ritual and magic, future evolution, future astrophysics, future nuclear physics, cold fusion, psychology, and the exploration of currently unnamed and unidentified mental and emotional states, and, of course, religion.

To understand the birth into human consciousness, the further development in human consciousness, and the open door of varied possibilities of the Qabala, is to immediately find oneself using it with skill, compassion, power, and continuance.

Here is this complex story of the creation of creation, the development of development, and the birth of the meaning of meaning. Here, this story is told as simply as possible.


chapter one
MEMORY EXTENSION:
THE FIRST TIME THEY WROTE DOWN THEIR STORIES:


Now the whole Earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shal be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole Earth."
Genesis 11:1-4

Beginning With the Sumerians

The early cultures of the Middle East, all, have had an important influence upon one another, no matter how hostile they may have been to one another.

Eridu was five miles southwest of Ur, 130 miles north from the current Iraqi coastine or near the ancient coastline before its current distance added by 6,000 years of silt deposit by the Tigris and Euphrates. Eridu dates to circa 5,000 BC and is believed to have been the first place of human kingship. Eridu, is known and named self-recognized towns of our human race.

The Civilizations of Catal Huyuk and Sumer influenced that of Babylonia which influenced the Assyrian. All of these civilizations influenced the tribal cultures of the Moabites, Canaanites, Amorites, Israelites, and others, who were influenced also by early Phoenicia. Stories were handed down, elaborated, reemphasized and changed.

Today, Tanakh or Old Testament scholars generally agree that this work which are (an almost identical collection) of varied stories, insights, social customs, bits of history, ideas, and theophanies was created over a period of several thousand years, being periodically elaborated, changed, added to, and edited, that the earliest writing is the Book of Job, provanance and date of approximate date of creation unknown, and that the most well known stories from the Genesis section and the commandments or laws from the Exodus section derive directly from Sumerian and Babylonian sources.

In Judaism, the Holy Scriptures are called Tanakh which is an acronym for Torah (or the Teachings; The Pentateuch; or the Five Books of Moses) + the Nevi'im (writings of the Prophets) + the Kethuvin (the Writings). As such, The Book of J is the probable immediate point of origin of the Christian Old Testament.

The relationsahip of Tanakh to Old Testament is as follows:

Tanakh Old Testament
Bereshith Genesis
Shemoth [Names] Exodus
Wayiqra [And He Called] Leviticus
Bemidbar [In the Wilderness] Numbers
Debarim [Words] Deuteronomy

Whether one sees the Tanakh or Old Testament as the divine word of God or not, nevertheless, this series of "books" was written down and preserved by human beings and in the languages of human beings - complete with linguistic peculiarities, shortcomings, and differing strengths and modalities of description. The specific structure of verb forms, how descriptions are made, and even the possible dominance of an "a" sound over an "e" sound, can make a subtle change in emphasis. To understand this further one must be an explorer in linguistics.

All of the early Middle Eastern cultures were trying to understand and deal with the same life-issues which were physical survival, social organization, entertainment, and spiritual survival and development. By approximately 1000-800 BC, these stories were almost in their final form, better organized, clearer, missing some detail, eliminating various poltheistic groupings and concepts, and substituting a clear and unequivocal One God, Yahweh. One of the many woven elements in this continuum of story, is a sense that much had happened which was outside of mankind's control.

The stories of cataclysm from being booted out of paradise, the Great Flood, the parting of the Red Sea, and the sufferings of Job all demonstrate that apocalyptic thinking was a constant factor that only continued to grow more prominent, more specifically defined by specific event, public attitude just prior to the specific event, and attempts to create a wisdom which would explain either why the event happened or why God allowed the event to happen or why God deliberately created the event to punish the "wicked" and to educate the survivors.

Generally speaking, the Sumerians are very careful, almost timid thinkers, filled with ideas, very focused on individualities, but without much of any sense of the details of the passage of human time or history, and, of course, it is crucial to remember that writing and record-keeping , then, was practically brand new, and, as whereas mythology is based upon a tan oral tradition with a sense of timelessness, in contrast, human history is based upon a written tradition with an acute and detailed sense of the passage of time.

When experiencing the Sumerian mind-set, it is important to recognize that the Akkadians, Sumerians, and others (all scattered in clusters within a small geographic area of the planet) were they inventors of written history. It had never been done before. We read their writings and we directly experience the mental situation of the inventors of human history as they were inventing it.

The Babylonians saw the Sumerians and others as the classical past. Obviously, the effects of less than 800 years of the-newly-written-human-history-effect upon their culture had an intellectual effect upon the Babylonians similiar to the effect of time-distance of Plato's Greece and the second half of the 20th century AD - a period of approximately 2,600 years and an effect of emotional distance similiar to the world of Old Kingdom Ancient Egypt and the late 19th century AD - a period of approximately 4,300 years.

Compared to the Sumerians, the Babylonians were the busy moderns. They were elaborationists, not creators. They took other peoples' stories, which shows a dim perception of the value of panculturalism, but, more basically, they wanted to make their own interpretation of this "taken culture" (Sumer) their own culture itself. And at the same time, physically command or enslave this other culture (Sumer) and thus destroy it.

If one were to look for a modern example of this, one needs only to look at the many productions of Andy Warhol and his Magic Factory, in order to see this process in a different context. The Babylonians/Assyrians could not give birth to an innate newness in their own cultures, thus they were always under the influence of the Sumerians, which they had technologically and organizationally superceeded.. Warhol and his Magic Factory recycled other peoples' art, by either shamelessly copying it (Warhol's soup can advertisements, his soap boxes, and his multiple-positioned and color sequenced "re-doings" of photographs of motion picture stars and automobile wrecks) The Babylonians elaborated the Sumerian stories and ideas, renamed and repositioned characters and story elements, thus creating a symphony of derived forms and derived interrelated events.

The Israelites, especially the woman author known only as J seem to reference the Sumerian stories and philosophy more than the Babylonian stories and philosophy. At the same time, J adds much new material, an incredible, very alive story-style, and the monotheistic viewpoint of one God, Jahweh.

It is interesting to note that the Book of J and Genesis refer to a place called The Garden of Eden. Historically, there was an area of wild grassland in the area now known as southern Iraq. The Sumerian and Babylonian word for this area was Edem.

Ultimately, even the earliest written versions of the classic Biblical tales appear to be conceptually fragmented and elaborated and in some cases deliberately incomplete (was the story only partially told to the scribe?) and accidentally confused. Any person who is an avid reader of fiction can experience this for themselves.

It appears that these earliest known written stories were part of a much older, earlier tradition and that the early writers wrote down their own perception of what was the bare minimum of the oral tale in order to both keep the tale in a permanent record (then a very new concept and possibly a confused and/or conflicted concept) and to "jog" the memory of the story-teller who would keep the oral tradition alive. We cannot place any clear limits on how anterior to writing this oral tradition was, but it is highly likely that, given the sophistication of latter Ice Age groups, that these tales easily could have been first invented or mentally received and recited by human beings, during the latter half of the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age) - perhaps in the time period of 60,000 BC -20,000 BC. Perhaps, even this estimate of the antiquity of our earliest stories is too conservative.

chapter two
UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL: THE FIRST WRITTEN STORIES


The Original Origin of the Cosmos/Genesis Stories:

The Sumerian Creation Viewpoint
First: there was the primaeval sea which was eternal and uncreated.
Second: The primaeval sea gave hemaphroditic birth to the united Heaven-and-Earth.
Third: Heaven and Earth were solid elements. From them came air, which by its very action of being expands everything.
Fourth: Expanding air separated Heaven and Earth.
Fifth: Air gave hemaphroditic birth to the Moon, which was believed to be gaseous like air itself.
Sixth: through the power of the sun, air, earth, and water, gave triune birth to all plant, animal, and human life.

Simultaneous as these six steps were unfolding, so too, were the following seven steps:

One: The primaeval sea personified herself as Nammu.
Two: Nammu, goddess of the primaeval sea gave birth to An, the male god of Heaven and Ki, the female goddess of Earth
Three: The sexual male and female union of An and Ki gave birth to Enlil, the air god.
Four: Enlil separated his father An from his mother Ki, so that they were now completely apart from one another.
Five: Enlil now discovers that he is living in utter darkness, being forced to look at and live within a sky which resembles blackened lapis lazuli. He self-births the mood-god Nanna who brightens his celestial house.
Six: The mood-god Nanna self-biths the sun-god Utu, who is now a brighter light than his father.
Seven: Now Enlil has sexual intercourse with Ki, his mother at the same time the water god, Enki also, (probably) is having sexual intercourse with Ki, or in some way is assisting with the birth process. From this union, animal and plant life comes into being on the Earth.

The Sumerian Primal Mother
Goddess Nammu, the Primaeval sea,
Is the mother who gave birth to heaven and earth.

The Sumerian Primal Lord
The Lord in order to create what was useful,
The Lord, whose decisions can never be changed,
Enlil, who brings the growing seed up through the Earth,
planned to move the Sky away from Earth;
Planned to move the Earth away from Sky.

The Sumerian Story of Creation of Mankind Which Became the Story of Adam and Eve
[The gods are complaining that they can no longer make their own bread, now that female goddesses come into being. Enki, the wisdom god is awoken from his sleep by his mother, Ninmah, the goddess of the primeaval sea, who awakens him by laying the tears of helplessness of the gods before him:]

"O my son, rise from your bed,
From your....work what is wise,
Create doubles of the gods
Who may work as servants."

[Enki thinks and then talks to his mother]:

"Mother! That creature whose name you sounded,
It exists.
Bind it to the primordial image of gods.
Mix the inner powers of clay,
Which come from the empty Abyss.
High ly trained workers will thicken this clay.
You shall make these limbs live.
Earthmother goddess Ninmah will work over and beyond your work.
Birthgoddesses shall stand by you as you are created.
My mother, please decree the newborn's fate.
Primeaval sea goddess Ninmah bind upon this clay,
The archetypal form of the gods.
Now, it is man.

[Ninmah goes on to create 6 different kinds of man and then begins to see just how well Enki can create a human. But Enki creates a human who is entirely learning disabled, who has trouble recognizing anything, and cannot speak. this creature can not stand, brend his knees, or sit. There is an arguement about this. The remaining areas of the tablets are so badly broken, no further story reconstruction can take place.].

[from the tablets: PBS I; Ni 2724; Aii; Aiii; Aiv; Av; A vi; Ni 4151; PBS V 25; PBS X 4, 14; SEM 116; CBS 2168

After on the mountain of heaven and earth,
The heaven god An caused his followers called the Anunnaki to be born,
because even the name of the kindly maiden, the grain goddess Ashnan had not been fashioned nor born,
Because the living plants goddess, Uttu, had not been fashioned nor born,
Because to Uttu no temenos had been set up, the was noewe, no lamb dropped,
there was no goat, no kid dropped,
Ewe did not birth its two lambs,
Goat did not birth its three kids.

Because the name of the wise Ashnam and of the cattle god, Lahar, , the great gods, the Anunnaki did not know,
The....grain of thirty days did not exist,
the.....grain of forty days did not exist,
The small grains, the grain of the mountain, and the grain for pure living creatures did not exist.

Because Uttu had not been born, because the land's fertile crescent had not yet raised itself,
because the lord not yet was born,
because god of the plain, Sumugan, had not come forth,
like mankind when first created,
The Anunnaki did not know to eat bread or what bread was,
did not know to wear garments or how to make them,
they ate plants as did sheep with their mouths and drank ditch water.

In those days, in the creation chamber of the gods,
in their house Dulkug, Lahar, and Ashnan were actually fashioned.
The Anunnaki of the Dulkug eat the animal products of Lahar and the grain of Ashnan, but they are not satisfied.
Remember: for the sake of the good things within the pure farms,
Man was given breath.
[from tablet fragments: BB!7; CBS 3167; 0431; 13857: 29.13.464; 142; 29.16.417; 29.16.427; 29.16.446; 29.16.448; Ni 2705; 3167; 4004; SEM 46; SRT 41; STVC 125 - the following form "joins": BBI 7 + 29.16.142; 13857 + 29.16.427 + 29.16.446 + 29.16.448]

The Original Story of Emesh and Enten: [circa 1750 BC] Which Became the Story of Cain and Abel::
[missing portion]
Enten caused the ewe to birth the lamb and the goat to birth the kid,
He caused the cow and calf bear young and increase btheir numbers,
He caused the production of great amounts odf fat and milk,
He caused the hearts of wild goats, sheep, and donkeys to rejoice on the fertile plain.

In each their nest, he seet the birds of heaven, who had come down to the wild earth,
He had the fish of the sea and wet marsh areas, lay their eggs in water.

Where he planted trees, they broought forth fruit,
He drew the cut furrows in the soil,
And like the kindly maiden, grain goddess, Ashman, he caused us to see the appearance
of strength within and from the power of life

Emesh brought into worldly using existence the trees and fields.
He created the concept of farms and produce was created and multipled.
The....he caused to cover the earth.
He caused grainaries to be full and the harvest to be brought into houses.

[A violent quarrel breaks out between the two brothers. there are several arguements. Emesh challenges Enten's claims to be 'farmer of the gods". They go to the holy city of Nippur, where they state their case before Enlil]:

O our father Enlil, you gave me knowledge and I brought the water which brings abundance,
I made farm touch farm and filled the graineries,
As did the kindly maiden, the grain goddess Ashman, I too, caused strength to appear.
Now Emesh and those the irreverent, who do not know the living heart of fields,
is encroaching on my first strength - my first power and complains at the king's palace.

[Enlil answers Emesh and Enten]:

Enten is the knower of life-producing water of all lands,
as farmer of the gods, he has produced everything.
Emesh, my son, how do you compare yourself to your brother Enten?

This is the exhalted word of Enlil,
the meaning is profound.
This decision is unalterable and unchangeable.
Who is there who dares transgress this decision?

Emesh bent his knees to Enten.
Into Enten's house, Emesh brought wine from grapes aand fresh and dried dates.
Emesh presents Enten with gold, silver, and lapis lazuli.
Happiness exists once more and the two brothers now drink together and pledge to act wisely and well.
Enten, the steadfast farmer of the gods has been proved greater than Emesh,
This entirely seen from the praise of their spiritual father Enlil.


Ziusudra: The Original Story of Noah and the Great Flood
(circa 2000 BC)
[This story probably originated in the ancient Sumerian city of Shuruppak. In addition,it can be noted that the other Sumerian antediluvian cities were: Eridu; Badtibira; Larak; and Sippar.

(From the existing lower third of a 6 column Sumerian tablet in the Nippur collection of the University of Pennsylvania.)

Ziusudra is a pious and devout man who worships the god/s and who is continually eatching and waiting for personal visions and dreams and using religious incantations hoping and waiting for revelations of what he does not known and what is beyond his imagination.

He spends much time near a particular wall, where he hears a deity's voice telling him that the assembly of gods have made a decision to send a great flood and destroy the seed of mankind]

The great flood....
...........................
and so treated......
Then Nintu wept like a....
In a state of purity, Inanna lamented for people,
Enki listened to his own mind,
An, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag....
Gods of the Sky and Earth uttered the name of An and Enlil.

Now, Ziusudra the king, ....
Built a giant....
With humility, obedience, and reverence, he....
Attending daily, constantly, he....
Bringing forth all kinds of dreams, he....
Speaking aloud the name of Sky and Earth, he....
....the gods a wall....
Standing at its side, Ziusudra listened.

"Stand by the wall where my left side is....
By this wall, I will speak words to you: take my words!
Listen to what I specifically tell you to do:
By our....a flood will sweep over the community's buildings -the structured centers,
To destroy the seed of mankind....
It is the decisive word of the god's assembly
Especially, the command of An and Enlil....
That the kingship and rule will be ended.'

All the storming winds came and attacked as one group,
Together with the floodwater covering our buildings - the structured centers,
To rage over the surface of our Earth.

For seven days and seven nights,
The flood swept over our land.
The great ark had been tossed upon the great, roiling by the storming winds,
Utu known for shedding light within the Sky and upon the Earth,
Sent rays of light through a window of the ark that Ziusudra had just opened,
Then, like an entering hero, the light rays of Utu entered into the ark.

Leader Ziusudra prostrated himaself before Utu,
And offered to Utu a slaughtered ox and a slaughtered sheep.

.............................................................................................
[Here follows a break in the tablet of approximately 39 lines]:
.............................................................................................

An and Enlil uttered into existence
The life breath of the Sky,
The life breath of the Earth.
By their....it stretched itself,
Vegetation risesup, coming out of the Earth.

Leader Ziusudra again
prostrated himself before An and Enlil
Who both loved Ziusudra.
They gave him the same life as a god's life.
They brought down to him , for him,
The eternal breath of a god.

Then, Leader Zuisudra,
Who preserved the names of vegatation
And the seed of mankind,
Took these things , in the mountain of crossing,
In the land of Dilmun,
Which is the place where the sunrise begins,
And was caused to dwell.
.......................................................................................
[The next 39 lines of the text is destroyed]
......................................................................................
[the ending is missing]


An Early Variant Version of The Book of Job or the Story of A Good Person Who Suffers and That Person's Asking the Great Question, "Why?"
I am a man,
One who discerns,
yet those who respect me do not prosper.
My own righteous word has been turned into a lie,
A living deceitful man clothed me with the southwind,
And I am forced to serve this person,
Who holds me without respect and shames me in your presence.

Continually, you have doled out one continuously new sufferings.
I am entering a house, the spirit is heavy.
I, when in the streets, my heart is oppressed.
In my presence, my good shepherd is become angry,
And looks upon me with anger.

My herdsmen seek the evil forces to oppress me,
When I am not their enemy.
My companion does not talk to me in true words.
The deceitful man has plotted against me.
And you, my god do not stop this.

I, a wise person, am tied to ignorant youths, why?
I, a discerning person, am included with the names of the ignorant, why?
Nourishing food is everywhere, and my food is hunger, why?
On that day when shares were given to all,
My share was suffering.

My God, may I stand before You!
My God, I would speak to you in the language of pain,
I would tell you of the bitterness of my path.
I would cry in confusion....

Let not my mother who bore me cease the lament before You.
Let not my sister sing happy song and chant.
Let her utter through tears to you, this my story.
Let my wife voice her mourning for me.
Let the professional singer, sing the song of my bitter fate.

My God, as the day shine bright all over the land,
So for me the day is black.
The bright day, the good day has....like the...
Tears, lamentations,aguish, and continued depression
Live within me at all times.
Like a living being chosen for continuous lamentation,
I continue to suffer.
I rest within the hand of evil fate, which is carried
On my every breath.
My body baths in sick malignancy.

My God, You my father, You my begetter,
Lift my face upwards.
Have pity as You would for the groans of an innocent cow.
How long will You not notice me
And leave me in an unprotected state?
Like an ox....
How long willl You leave me without guidance?

Sages say with courage
These righteous, clear words:
"Never a child was born sinless to its mother.
.....no youth without any sin has existed
Since the Old Times'.

................................

This man's God now observed the bitter tears; the bitter weeping.
The heart of this man's God was soothed by the lamentations.
This man's pure words and tears were accepted by this man's God.
This man's words were the confession made from prayer.
Pleased....within...the God's flesh, the God physically withdrew the evil word force
Which oppresses the heart...he embraces...
The all-encircling demon of sickness, which had spread its wings to the widest width.
This man's God swept away.
This man's God made the disease which had attacked him dissipate and vanish.
This man's God turned him aside from his fate of sentence, measured, evil.,
This man's God turned his suffering into his joy,
And placed for him, within his world, self-personifying guardian forces
And the grace of angels.


The Original Story of Verbal/Symbolic Communication Confusion Which Became The Story of the Tower of Babel
At one time,
there was no scorpion,
no hyena, no lion, no wild dog, no wolf.
There was no fear nor terror.
Humans had no rival.

During those times,
The land of Shubar-Hamazi, Sumir, the great land
Of the me (ego) in rulership,
Uri, the land owning all appropriate things,
Martu, the secure land,
The Entire Universe,
And those people who survived well -
All spoke to the God Enlil,
Speaking one, the same, tongue.

But, next what happened:
The primary ruler was defiant,
The secondary ruler was defiant,
TheTertiary ruler was defiant.

Enki, God of abundance,
God of trustworthy commands,
God of far-seeing wisdom,
God of leading the Gods,
This Lord of Erdu changed the very speech within their mouths,
put verbal struggling and symbolic disagreement into this changed speech,
Put all this into human speech.


The Earliest Sumerian Symbol for a Ruler or Leader
The earliest symbol for a Leader is the pictograph and its later cuneiform symbol for a star, underneath of which is a ladder (late 4th millenium BC). It is quite possible that this symbol some 2,000 years later became the Star of David, symbolizing the ruler of a theocractic hierarchy. Of course, much later, the symbol of the great star which appears in the sky is used as one of the important descriptive elements in the Gospel story of the birth of Jesus Christ.


Exodus Pre-Exodus: Earliest Written Versions of Code Law Which Later Became the Mosaic Law of the Ten Commandments
The oldest known law code is that of the deified Sumerian king Ur-Nammu ( fl.2000 BC), founder of the famous 3rd Dynasty of Ur (tablet 3191 Nippur Collection; Istanbul Museum). He began his reign ca. 2050 BC. The tablet is divided into eight column - four on the obverse, four on the reverse. each of the columns contains forty-five small ruled spaces. A reconstruction of the text follows:

After the creation of the World,
After the fate of the land Sumer and the city of Ur had been decided,
An and Enlil-Nanna, the Moon-God, as King of Sumer and the city of Ur.
He found it necessary to do battle with the bordering city-state, Lagash,
Which was expanding its borders, thereby hurting Ur.
Ur-Nammu defeated Lagash's ruler, Namhani and executed him.
All this was done with the helping power of Nanna, the Moon God, king of the City.
Ur's former boundaries are now reestablished.
He removed the grabbers of citizens' sheep, oxen, and donkeys.
He established regulated, honest weights and measures.
He insured that the orphan would not fall prey to the wealthy;
That the widow did not fall prey to the powerful,
That the man of one shekel did not fall prey to a man of one mina (60 Shekels).

The laws themselves begin on the reverse of the tablet: They are so badly damaged that only five of these laws can be reconstructed:

One. ) It appears to be a trial by water ordeal.
Two.) It concerns the return of a slave to its master.
Three.) If a man to a man with a .... implement, his...the foot has cut off, he shall pay 10 silver shekels.
Four.) If a man to a man with a weapon, his bones of...severed, he shall pay 1 silver mina
Five. ) If a man to a man with a geshpu-tool has cut off the nose (?), he shall pay 2/3 of a silver mina.

In 1948 AD, Taha Baqir, curator of the Iraq Museum in Bagdad was digging in a mound known as Harmal, where he found two tablets inscribed with the oldest known law code. They are written in the Semitic Babylonian cuneiform. In a brief prologue that proceeds the laws, a King Bilalama is mentioned. There is no epilogue to the laws.

The Lipit-Ishtar Code is inscribed on a sun-baked clay tablet. It is written in the non-Semitic Sumerian cuneiform. From this damaged tablet, it is possible to ascertain the listing of some 37 laws (wholly or in part). This tablet was excavated at the beginning of this century and pre-dates the Code of Hammurabi.

The Code of Hammurabi (fl. 1750 BC), written in Semitic Babylonian cuneiform is on a diorite stele (now in the Lovre Museum, Paris, France) This Code contain close to three hundred laws. It begins with a prologue praising the greatness of Hammurabi and ends with a prologue cursing any who would defy this king and/or these laws. At the top of the stele is a bas-relief showing the seated figure of Shamash, the God of Justice in communication with the standing King Hammurabi.

The Code is granted by An, King of the Gods and Enlil, Lord of Heaven and Earth, and it is Enlil's functions as they apply to the rule of all humanity that are given to Marduk. marduk's city now is supreme in this world.

Is the story of the Ten Commandments engraved upon stone tablets taken from a cultural memory of the Sumerian and Babylonian clay tablets and carved stele which were used for the earliest public legal decrees in this area of the world? There seems to be no hard evidence that the early Israelites used stone or clay for inscriptions as did the Sumerians, babylonians, Assyrians, Hurrians, Hittites, Moabites, Phoenicians, and others. In fact in the texts of Genesis and Exodus, there appears to be no mention at all of writing. If we accept the Shapira manuscripts as real, then the earliest examples of Hebraic writing date back to ca. 600 BC. This is turn calls into question the quasi-established dates for most of The Old Testament. There is no convincing evidence of any Hebraic writing before 600 BC and no multiple evidence of Hebraic writing before ca. 300 BC. If the Israelites were writing down anything prior to this period, it would have had to have been in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics or hieratic, some version of cuneiform, phoenician, archaic Greek, or (although highly unlikely) Minoan.

It should be noted that oral traditions, while very good at remembering the exact wording of stories and other recited or "told" material, nevertheless, are very bad at calendrical dates and give no credit for "borrowed" material, but incorporate it into their own schema, taking full credit for its genesis.


The greater part of the Genesis Stories as well as the Book of Job predates the self-calling of some nomadic tribes as Israelites, dating back to at least the Third Dynasty of Sumer. This part of the Tanakh or The Old Testament began with the hearing of stories from Sumerian stories and Babylonian saved and elaborated stories from Sumer during their contacts with the Babylonian culture, at various times, the most recent period of 600-323 BC. And then, these stories would have begun to have been "polished" and finalized during the period of the Maccabean Dynasty (.167-73 BC).

Let us further examine the Hebraic "borrowings" and "incorporations" from the Sumerian and Babylonian sources.


The Babylonian Elaborations and Rewrites and the Israelite Secondary Elaborations and Rewrites
The Enuma Elish is an epic found written on clay tablets and fragments from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh dating ca. 668-630 BC, from the city of Ashur dating ca. 1000BC, and from Kish, Uruk, and uncertain provenance dating ca. 500 BC. The epic's date of composition can be placed minimally at 1000 BC. However, the inscription of Agum II (fl 1400 BC), ninth king of the Kassite Dynasty (which almost immediately followed the First Babylonian Dynasty) indicates that the Enuma Elish existed in some form as early as ca. 1400 BC. The inscription mentions God and situation aspects contained within the epoch. The epic shows distinct traces of "borrowings" from Sumerian literature. The gods such as Apsu, Anu, and Enlil are all Sumerian.Almost all the winds created by Marduk have Sumerian names.

The Babylonian Enuma Elesh and Genesis 1:1-2:3 both refer to watery chaos, which was then separated into Heaven and Earth. There is etymological similarities for both the Babylonian and Hebrew words for Chaos. Both texts refer to the existence of light before the creation of luminous bodies; both agree as to the succession in which the points of contact follow one another; in both cases prominence is given to the number "seven" ultimately, which may refer to the "Seven Planets":Sun; Moon; Mercury: Venus: mars; Jupiter: Saturn - all of which we know were a part of Sumerian and Babylonian astronomy/astrology.

Enuma Elish and Genesis chapter 1, both refer to watery chaos, which is also found in the cosmologies of the Ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, and the Aryan vedic literature.

Both accounts refer to the existence of light prior to the existing alternates of night and day and before the creation of the "Seven Planets".

Next, we note a connection with the creation of the firmament. Both accounts state that this action was accompanied by a division of primaeval waters.

The Enuma Elesh mentions three distinct types of waters: 1.) Apsu, the sweet-water ocean; 2.) Ti amat, the salt water ocean; 3.) Mummu, the fog, mist, clouds which arose from Apsu and Ti amat and hover over them. These waters were conquered by Marduk. Then, he divided them. From one half of Ti amat, Marduk formed the sky (also firmament) (tablet IV:128-145).

In Genesis, Jahweh creates a firmament "in the middle of the waters" to cause a division between the waters under the firmament and the waters above it. It is implied that at first all the waters were comingled as one, to then be separated by Jehovah in the same way that Marduk conquered and divided the primaeval water.

Concerning the creation of man (humanity), the Enuma Elish states in part:

8.)" Mami, the creatrix of humanity,
9.) Create man that he may bear the yoke...
12.) And she said to the great gods:
14.) With me alone , it is impossible to do this;
15.) With [Enki's} his help, there will be man.
18.) Enki opened his mouth
19.) And said to the great gods:
20.) In the month of substitution and help
21.) Of the land's purification and the judgement of its shepherd,
22.) Let them slay a god
23.) And let the gods....
24.) With his flesh and his blood
25.) Let Ninhursag mix clay.
26.) God and man
27.) ...united in the clay."

Genesis chapter 22 mentions the "at least considered" blood sacrifice of a human for a god or the God, whereas Enuma Elish lines 20 through 24, the blood sacrifice of a God or gods for a human "is considered as request".

Jahweh says to Abraham " take your son, your only son isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burning offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you..."

Genesis chapters one and two conceptually parallels the Enuma Elish, lines 25 through 27:

Chapter 1:"And Jahweh said, "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness...
Chapter 2: "And the lord God formed man from the dust." (Genesis: chapter 2).

An inscription from excavations at Ras Shamra:

" Behold your enemies, O Baal;
Behold your enemies, you shall smite,
ehold, you shall destroy your enemies."

Compare this to Psalms 92:10:

" For, behold your enemies, O Lord,
For, behold, your enemies shall perish!
All the workers of inequity shall be scattered!"


Structural Comparison of the Babylonian Enuma Elish and the Israelite Book of Genesis:

Enuma Elish Genesis
1.) Divine spirit and cosmic matter 1.) Divine spirit and cosmic matter exist
coexistent and coeternal. exists independently of it.
2.) Primeval chaos. Ti amat enveloped 2.) The earth is a desolate waste with
in darkness darkness covering the deep.
3.) Light emanates from the gods. 3.) Light created by God.
4.) Creation of the firmament. 4.) Creation of the firmament.
5.) Creation of dry land. 5.) Creation of dry land.
6.) Creation of the Sun, Moon, Planets, 6.) Creation of the Sun, Moon, Planets
and Stars. and Stars.
7.) Creation of mankind. 7.) Creation of mankind.
8.) The gods rest and celebrate. 8.) God rests and makes the seventh
day a holy day of rest.


If more literary Sumerian and related Babylonian tablets are ever found, then, perhaps, even more clearly, can we come to see the subtleties and evolutions within the relational chain of stories which contained literal truth, poetic truth, and assessments of human character.

It is clear that the Sumerians and Babylonians had a strong tradition of remembering physical and spiritual mishaps and were very concerned with avoiding all forms of misfortune. As stated earlier, this apocalyptic sense is continually experienced within the stories, religion, and arts of these Middle Eastern cultures.

How these early stories got to the Israelite tribes, we do not really know. We do know that the Biblical versions of these stories have more profound and subtle overlays of meaning.

Perhaps the earliest Tanakh or Old Testament fragment is the Song of Deborah edited into the much later Book of Judges (Judges 5. perhaps, here, we have the earliest account of the battle on the plains of Megiddo, which became the battle of Armageddon.

Originally the Canaanite, Hebrew, and Phoenician semitic cultures were polytheists. In the Old Testament or Tanakh, we can see remnants of this polytheism. In Genesis 1:1, Elohim is the Hebraic word used for God. Elohim is the plural form of El, the Canaanite word for God and literally means, "The Entire Pantheon of the Gods". Elyon is the singular form meaning "The Most High". El-Shaddai is another singular form meaning "The All-Powerful God".

In the story of the Tower of Babel found in Genesis 11:7-8, there is the interesting wraithful statement by God: "Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over all the earth, and they left off building the city." Here God obviously refers to Himself in the plural.

So from one viewpoint, we can see the historical transition from polytheism to monotheism. From another viewpoint, we can see the birth of the idea of God not being bound to a single or singular personality or individuality. And from yet another viewpoint, we can see the clear conscious assessment that tribal languages were becoming so different from one another that all known languages which were not one's native language were now (circa 900-550 BC) very hard to understand. This would be true especially of Sumerian and Early Babylonian.

Prior to 900 BC, the Israelites had been nomadic people acting as go-betweens for the "river monarchies" of Early and Middle Kingdom Egypt and Sumeria, Babylonia, and Assyria. beginning approximately 900 BC, the Israelites began building and living in their own cities or towns. Constant communication would die down. Languistic changes would not necessarily be learned and multi-linguistic proficiency would become more and more rare.

Scholars generally agree that the Hebrew polytheism began to change into monotheism no earlier than 1650 BC and this process totally crystalized into Jahweh - The One All-Powerful God, no later than750 BC. And while the new monotheism would be growing in power during this period, it is more likely that the monotheistic process contained spontaneous and subtle polymorphic defined variability within its own monotheism as recently as 550 BC and that the strict monomorphic monotheism became dominant during the period of the Qumran Community near the Dead Sea circa 100 BC and that finally, the early Christian belief of the Holy Trinity and the later Judaic development of the Qabalistic Tree of Life (The Ten Sepheroth) brought back a more the polymorphic variabilty to montheism.

Just what does "polymorphic variability" mean? The polymorphic variability of a monotheistic God can be equated to "the mystery of the Holy Trinity" and "an Infinite God who is never bounded or limited, even by the perceived structure of the universe. On a lesser level, it polymorphic variabilty can mean that there is a fuzzy-factor (as differently and ((currently)) inadequately explained by the concepts of "fuzzy logic" and "chaos theory") at any perceived point of boundary or boundaries.

Perhaps, it is best stated by the great Sufi Imam and writer, Muhyi al Din Abu 'Abdallah Muhammadi ibn 'Ali Ibn 'Arabi, al Tai, al Hatimi, al Andalusi in his treatise On Being (Risale-t-ul-wujudiyyah):

Let us praise God before whose oneness there was not a before, unless the Before were He, and after whose singleness there is no after, unless the After be He. He is. There is with Him no after nor before, nor above, nor below, nor near, nor far, nor union, nor division, nor where, nor when, nor how, nor time, nor times, nor age, nor moment, nor place, nor being.

He is now as He was. He is the One without oneness and He is the Single without singleness. He is not of name and named, because His name is He as also His named is He. There is no other name than He. There is no other named than He. He is Name and Named.

He is the First without firstness, and the Last without lastness. He is the Outward without outwardness and He is the Inward without inwardness. He is the very existence of all known as First and He is the very existence of all known as Last. He is the very existence of the Outward, itself and He is the very existence of the Inward, itself. Except for He, there is no first, last, outward, or inward, unless they are in the Becoming of Him or Him in the Becoming of Them.

chapter three
CONTRADICTORY ATTITUDES, DIFFERENT AUTHORS, AND THE POLYMORPHIC CREATION OF THE TANAKH OR THE OLD TESTAMENT


For some time, the majority of Biblical scholars have known that certain different parts of the Tanakh and Old Testament were written by different, anonymous authors, all of whom have been given a name tag for identifaction purposes. Each of these sections section has been assigned a title and analyzed.

Philosophic and Attitudinal Differences of the Three Basic Categories of Old Testament/Tanakh Construction:

There are three basic structures operating within the context of the Old Testament/Tanakh. These structures are:
The Tradition of Social Organization
The Exceptions to Continuity and Normalcy
The Prophets

Each of these three structures are subdivided into sub-structures. These substructures are:
The Tradition of Social Organization
The J Author
The E Author
The D Author
The P Author
The R Author

The Exceptions to Continuity and Normalcy






Ca. 900 BC: J also known as The Jahwist:

Historical/Biblically mentioned events just prior to the J Author:
1240-1200 BC: Israelite Conquest of Canaan
1020-1000 BC: Reign of King Saul
1000-960 BC: Reign of King David
960-920 BC: Reigh of King Solomon
922 BC: Division of the United Monarchy of David and Solomon into A Northern Kingdom called Israel and a Southern Kingdom called Judah

The oldest part of the Hebrew text is an author, who refers to God using God's personal name of Yahweh, which is the main vocal expression of the sacred letters of God's name YHWH. German scholars first investigated this person and, of course, in German Yahweh is spelled Jahweh, thus The Book of J. This author probably lived in theSouthern Kingdom of Judah circa 1000-800 BC. This author was probably a highly socially placed older woman, who crafted many bits and pieces of pre-existing materials into a coherent whole, and whom added what were then modern spiritual insights and conceptions. She created a literary epic which reads like an action novel. The prose of the Book of J is more active and highly charged than that of its later Genesis version .Obviously, the Sumerian and Babylonian stories were woven into the story-narrative. What is highly original is the clarity of viewpoint. Whether one is in agreement or disagreement with any or all points of attitude in the Book of J, one can easily feel and inrushing of energy coupled with crystal clear images. This is the birth of "modern" motivated literature in the human world, predating both Homer (of the greatest profoundity and which could only have been created through the highest spiritual inspiration.

The manuscript now known as The Book of J is the probable immediate point of origin for The Hebrew Bible.


Ca. 800 BC: E also known as The Elohist

Historical/Biblically mentioned events just prior to the E Author:
1240-1200 BC: Israelite Conquest of Canaan
1020-1000 BC: Reign of King Saul
1000-960 BC: Reign of King David
960-920 BC: Reigh of King Solomon
922 BC: Division of the United Monarchy of David and Solomon into A Northern Kingdom called Israel and a Southern Kingdom called Judah
900 BC: The J Author has completed her (most likely a woman) writing

A similiar series of narratives as J was created by the author known as E, because he refers to God as Elohim. This author venerates Moses and the succession of Mosaic priests. E is more elaborate about the Mosaic stories. Aaron, the brother of Moses is shown as Moses' rival in the story of the Golden Calf (which is probably a representation of Hathor, the ancient Egyptian Cowheaded Goddess). E may have been a Levite priest from the Northern Kingdom of Israel, writing during the period 900-800 BC.


Ca. 700 - 600 BC: D also known as The Deuteronomist

Historical/Biblically mentioned events just prior to the D Author:
1240-1200 BC: Israelite Conquest of Canaan
1020-1000 BC: Reign of King Saul
1000-960 BC: Reign of King David
960-920 BC: Reigh of King Solomon
922 BC: Division of the United Monarchy of David and Solomon into A Northern Kingdom called Israel and a Southern Kingdom called Judah
900 BC: The J Author has completed her (most likely a woman) writing
800 BC: The E Author has completed his (or her) writing

The book of Deuteronomy is stylistically different from the rest of the Old Testament. Its theological attitude and presentation also differs from the other Old Testament texts. The scholar Richard Elliot Friedman has made the assertion that this book was written by the prophet Jeremiah (Who Wrote the Bible?) In a mysterious and unclear manner, this text, considered the "Book of the Law" was found in the Jerusalem Temple during the reign of King Josiah during the period 700-600 BC.

The High priest Hilkiah said to Shaphan the secretary, "I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord." Than Shaphan the secretary came to the king and reported to the king,"Your servants have emptied the money that was found in the house, and have delivered it into the hand of the workers who have oversight of the house of the Lord." Shaphan the secretary informed the king, "The priest Hilkiah has given me a book." Shaphan then read it aloud to the king.
2 Kings 22:8-10

Deuteronomy is considered to be part of a longer Biblical sequence called The Deuteronomistic History which also includes the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, and 1 Kings and 2 Kings. This Deuteronoistic History is believed to have been compiled circa 600-538 BC. Deuteronomy is stylistically different from every other book in the Hebrew and Christian testaments.

Deuteronomy focuses on the idea of "what is Community?'. And it presents a very tightly organized, ritualistically legal community as its ideal model and as the only form of "correct" living. It is xenophobic, to say the least. Deuteronomy delineates a planned and ritualized theocratic state. Deuteronomy is not democratic, undervalues individuality, does not take into consideration diversity, varied viewpoints, indeterminacy, or existential conditions. It can be said justly, that Deuteronomy is a primitive version of the core social and political philosophy of Mao Tse Tung combined with that of Hideki Tojo.

Also, it ritualizes paranoia - the "Us" and "Them" polarity - as an eternal constant within their reality. This "War Code" is set out in:

Deuteronomy 20: 1-10
When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and an army larger than your own, be not afraid of them: for the Lord thy God is with thee, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be, when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people and shall say unto them: "Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them: for the Lord your God is He that goeth with you."

And the officers shall speak unto the people saying: "What man is there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her." And the officers shall speak further unto the people, that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people.

There are prewar rituals emphasize that the warriors are to be totally focused upon warfare. The priest reminds and enforces the rituals of war-purity prior to any commander taking command. There is a tight combination of priestly, military, and secular functions.

Deuteronomy 23: 9-10
When you are encamped against thine enemies, then keep thyself from every wicked thing. If there be among you, any man how has had an nocturnal emission [involuntary release of semen while sleeping], then he shall go outside the camp and not comer into the camp. But when evening comes on, he shall wash himaself with water: and when the sun is down, he shall come into the camp again.

The warriors' camps are to be kept in a state of ritual purity, which ironically is quite similiar to the attitudes of the various distinct military units of the Nazi Waffen SS almost 2200 years later. The warriors' code, itself, is found in. A dual war ideology is propounded. A warrior is aggressive and pragmatic. The enemy is treated as an inferior, a "non-human", a disease, and must be rooted out for the sake of tribal purity. Violence is justified.

Deuteronomy 20:10-20
When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace. If it accepts your terms of peace and then surrenders to you, than all the people in this city shall serve you as forced labor and shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shall besiege it: and when the Lord, thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt put all its males to the sword, but take the women and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.

Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: but thou shalt utterly destriy them ; namely, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee: so that they shall not teach you things which you abominate, and which they have done for their gods; so to make ye sin against the Lord your God.

When thou shalt beseige a city a long time, making war against it in order to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them; for they mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the seige; only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for food, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it falls.

Deuteronomy 21:10-14
When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, and seeist among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldst have her for thy wife; then tou shalt take her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; and she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, a full month, mourning for her father and her mother, and after that thou shalt go unto her [have sexual intercourse] , and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. But if you take no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go wherever she will, but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her .

Deuteronomy 13:12-18
If thou shalt hear say in one of the towns, which the Lord thy God hath given thee to dwell therein, saying: "Certain men, the children of Belial are gone out from among you and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known'," then shalt thou enquire and make search, and ask diligently; and behold! if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is done among you; thou shalt surely put to the sword all the inhabitants of that town, and with the sword, utterly destroying all, and all that is within this town, and the cattle belonging to this town.

And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil - everything - as a burnt offering, for the Lord thy God; and it shall be a perpetual junk heap forever; it shall never be built again.

And there shall be nothing of the cursed thing sticking to thine hand: that the Lord may turn from the fierceness of His anger; and shew thee compassion and in His compassion upon thee, to multiply thee as He hath sworn unto thy ancestors; when thou shalt obey the voice of the Lord thy God, by keeping all his commandments which I commanded thee this day, to do that wh ich is right in the eyes of the Lord thy God.

Deuteronomy 16:21-22
Thou shalt not plant thee an Asherah [as a sacred pole or totem - probably a sacred phallus] of any kind of tree near the altar of the Lord thy God, which thou shalt make thee. Neither shalt thou set thee up any image which the Lord thy God hateth

Deuteronomy 10:1
Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God: Him shalt thou serve, and to Him shalt thou cleave, swearing by His name. He is thy praise, and He is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things, which thine eyes have seen.

Deuteronomy 12:1-7
These are the statutes and judgements, which ye shall observe to do to the land, which the Lord God of the fathers giveth thee to possess it, all the days that ye live upon the earth. Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree; and ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars and burn their Asherim [sacred totems] with fire, and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. Ye shall not do so unto the Lord thy God. But unto the place which the lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put His name there, even unto His habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come; and thither ye shall bring your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, and your tithes, and the carried offerings of your hand, and your vows, and your freewill offerings, and the firstlings of your herds and of your flocks; and there ye shall eat before the Lord your God, and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your hand unto, ye and your households, wherein the Lord thy God has blessed thee.

Deuteronomy 12:8
Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes. For ye have not as yet come to the rest, and to the inheritance, which the Lord your God giveth you...

Deuteronomy 1 2:22
Even as the deer and the gazelle is eaten, so thou shalt eat them alike: the unclean and the clean shall eat of them alike. Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life; and thoumayest not eat the life with the flesh. Thou shalt not eat it. Thou shalt pour it upon the earth as water...

Deuteronomy 14
Ye shall not eat anything which dies of itself. Thou shalt give it unto a stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or thou mayest sell it to an alien...

Parents have the absolute power of life and death over their own children. Again the emphasis is upon keeping the community "pure", in total uniformity, and with a strong group mind.

Deuteronomy 21:18-22
If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have disciplined him, will not listen to them, then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. And they shall say unto the elders of the town: "This our son is stubborn and rebellious and will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard." Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear and fear.

And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and then he be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree [primitive crucifixion] his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt bury him in any way you can for he that is hanged is accursed of God. Do this that thy land be not defiled - the land which the lord thy God hath given thee for an inheritance.

Men have absolute control over women. Women are supposed to remain celebate-virgin before marriage and then to be monogamous after marriage. Young women who are not virgins or are adulterous are to be stoned to death. Thus women (and feminity) are seen as a captive field in which man has the control to sow seed and thus preserve the tribal community. In Deuteronomy, one can find a long litany of sexual and relational prohibitions focussed on controlling women by enforcing men to be unrelenting and dominant.

Deuteronomy 22:22
If a man is caught have sexual relations with a married woman, then both of them shall die - both the man who lay with the married woman and the married woman herself. So shall you purge the evil from Israel.

Deuteronomy 22:24-25
If there is a young woman who is virgin and already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and he has sexual intercourse with her, then ye shall bring them both out of that town and stone them to death: the woman because she did not cry out for help and the man because he humbled his neighbor's wife. In this way, so shall thou put away evil from Israel.

Other prohibitions include:
1.)Lines of male descent cannot be obstructed in any way
2.)Adulterous women and never married non-virgin women now about to be married are both to be stoned to death.(Deuteronomy 22:20)
3.) If a woman is accurately accused of not being a virgin at the time of her marriage, then she will be stoned to death in the entrance of her father's home.

Women have some of their rights protected, but these "women's rights" are completely androcentric. Thus these "women's rights" are based upon the protection of women because they are valuable as breeders and as items for exchange. If a woman is devalued (raped) then her husband must stay with her forever, so that she is frozen into time and space and her value as an object or commodity (while less) is maintained to some degree.

Deuteronomy 22:28
If a man meet a virgin who is not engaged, seizes her and rapes her, and they are caught in the act, the man who lay with her shall give 50 silver shekels to the ex-virgin's father, and the ex-virgin shall became wife of the man who raped her. Because he violated her, this man shall not be allowed to divorce her as long as he lives.

Even gender roles are made into a rigid polarity. There is no overlap, no blending, no transference of "male" and "female" energies.

Deuteronomy 22:5
A woman shall not wear a man's clothes, nor shall a man wear a woman's garment, for whoever does such things is abhorrent in the eyes of the Lord thy God.

This is further emphasized in favor of the male by defining wounded or maimed males as unworthy to be males and males not born in proper wedlock and not born into the Israelite tribe for 10 generations are all second class citizens (in other words, they are not fully male)

Deuteronomy 23:1-3
No man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.

A bastard shall not enter into the assembly of the Lord, even to his 10th generation shall he not enter into the assembly of the Lord.

No Ammonites or Moabites shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. Even to their 10th generation, none of their descendants shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.

Males are so obsessed with their masculinity that they even write laws to assuage their fears of the hint of physical mulitaion by women.

Deuteronomy 25:11-12
If a man gets into a fight with another man, and the wife of the first man grabs the testicles of the second man during this fight or arguement, her husband is to have her hand cut off.

Even rulers and men of almost absolute power are not allowed to break the laws of property or to make exceptions to them. The tribal laws are supreme.

Deuteronomy 17:14-20
When thou art come into the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shall dwell there, and shalt say: "I will set a king up over me, like as all the nations that are about me", thou shalt indeed, set a king over you. It is a king the Lord thy God will chose. It will be one of your own community for you are not permitted to place a foreigner over you, that is, one who is not a part of your community.

Even so, this king shall not multiply his number of horses, neither shall he multiplyto himself any silver and gold

Deuteronomy 27:
Here we have the 12 Curses which finish the closure for a warlike communtarian society which does not assume that there must be the rulership of kings, is masculine dominated and bent upon absolute survival by controlling and maintaining breeding, staying exclusive of other tribes, equating uncleanliness with sin, and "eliminating" or refusing to see any blurred edges or transformative societal motion, or indeterminacy such as is seen within Buddhism and early mystical Christianity.:
1.) Anyone who makes and idol or an image which is worshipped in any manner.
2.) Anyone who dishonors their mother or father.
3.) Anyone who moves a neighbor's boundary marker.
4.) Anyone who misleads a blind person on the road.
5.) Anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of Israelite justice.
6.) Anyone who has had sexual relations with his father's wife, because he has violated his father's rights.
7.) Anyone who has sexual relations with an animal.
8.) Anyone who has sexual relations with his sister, whether the sister is daughter of his father or daughter of his mother.
9.) Anyone who has sexual relations with his mother-in-law.
10.) Anyone who strikes down a neighbor in secret.
11.) Anyone who takes a bribe to shed innocent blood.
12.) Anyone who does not uphold these law precepts by not observing these precepts.

The question remains: Was the Assyrian conquest of the northern Israelites(ca. 800 BC) and the Babylonian conquest of the southern Israelites (ca. 600 BC) a twin trauma which led the majority of Israelites to believe that because they had not kept God's covenant, that they were being punished and that with the strict fascistic Deuteronomic Code, they could "cleanse" themselves and begin to eliminate their "bad karma" and begin to build the foundation of a "new world", a "new existence", an ideal or utopian existence.


Mysteries With the Research of Deuteronomy

The Moabite Stone:
Although controversial, this very early text directly is directly relative to Judaism The text of the Moabite Stone discusses the Israelite wars with the Moabites. I from the Moabite viewpoint. It is instructive to now give a short history of this stones discovery, its destruction, and what the papier mache squeezings of some (then) existing large fragments have to report.

The Discovery of the Moabite Stone:
......
.......[ Rev Parkinson's 19th century book excerpts]


What Does the Moabite Stone Say?
The Moabite Stone records the wars of Mesha, King of Moab with the kings of Israel - Omri (12 years), Ahab (22 years), Ahaziah (2 years), and Joram orJehoram(12 years) his successors which lasted perhaps for a total of forty-eight years. It is evident that this stone is one record from the period of the life and death struggle of King Mesha of Moab to revolt from the military power of Israel, and whose desperate resistance to the united forces of Jehoram, Jehoshaphat, and the King of Edom, which is recorded in the Bible in the third chapter of the book of 2 Kings: "The Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of Ahab" (2 Kings: I.1).

As Omri gained the throne of Israel approximately 929 BC, we can estimate that the Moabite Stone was created circa 889 BC.


The Moabite Stone: Translation of Its Inscription:
1.) I, Mesha, am son of Chemoshgad, King of Moab, the
2.) Dibonite. My father reigned over Moab thirty years, and
3.) I reign-ed after my father. And I erected this stone to Chemosh at Korcha ( a stone
of )
4.) (sa)lvation, for he saved me from all despoilers, and let me see my desire upon all my
enemies.
5.) Now Om(r)i, king of Israel, he oppressed Moab many days, for Chemosh was angry
with his
6.) l(a)nd. His son succeeded him, and he also said, I will oppress Moab, In my days he said (let us go)
7.) and I will see my desire on him and his house; and Israel said, I shall destroy it forever. Now Omri took the land
8.) MEDEBA and (the enemy) occupied it (in his days and in) the days of his son, forty
years. And Chemosh (had mercy)
9.) on it in my days; and I built Baal Meon, and made therein the ditch, and I (built)
10.) Kirjathaim. For the men of Gad dwelled in the land A(tar)oth from of old and the
k(ing of I)srael fortified
11.) A(t)aroth, and I assaulted the wall and captured it, and killed all the wa(rriors of)
12.) the wall, for the well-pleasing of Chemosh and Moab; and I removed from it the spoil and (of
13.) fered) it before Chemosh in Kirjath; and I place therein the men of Siran and the me(n of)
14.) Mochrath. And Chemosh said to me, 'Go, take Nebo against Israel (And I)
15.) went in the night, and I fought against it from the break of dawn till noon, and I took
16.) it, and slew in all seven thousand (men, but I did not kill ) the wom-
17.) en (and ma)idens for (I) devoted (them) to Ashtar-Chemosh; and I took from it
18.) (the ves)sels of Jehovah and offered them befor Chemosh and the king of Israel fortif(ied)
19.) Jahaz, and occupied it, when he made war against me; and Chemosh drove him out before (me, and)
20.) I took from Moab two hundred men, and all its poor, and placed them in Jahaz and took it,
21.) to annex to Dibon. Ibuilt Korcha, the wall of the forest, and the wall
22.) of the city, and I built the gates thereof and I built the towers thereof, and I
23.) built the palace, and I made the prisons for the crim(inal)s with(in the)
24.) wall. And there was no cistern in the wall of the Korcha, and I said to all the people,
make for yourselves
25.) every man a cistern in his house. And I dug the ditch for Korcha with the (chosen)
men of
26.) (I)srael. I built Aroer, and I made the road across the Arnon;
27.) I built Beth-Bamoth, for it was destroyed; I built Bezer for it was cu(t down)
28.) by the armed m(en) of Dibon, for all Dibon was now loyal; and I reign(ed)
29.) from Bikran, which I added to my land, and I bui(lt)
30.) (Beth-Gemul) and Beth-Diblathaim and Beth-Baal Meon, and I placed there the
p(oor
31.) people of ) the land. And as to Horonaim (the men of Edom) dwelt therein (on the
descent from of old)
32.) And Chemosh said to me, Go down, make war against Horonaim and ta(ke it. And I assaulted it,
33.) And I took it, for) Chemosh (restored i)t in my days. Wherefore I ma(de)........
34.) year....and I...."

The Shapira Manuscripts:
Again controversial, the second earliest text of Judaism may well be the Shapira manuscripts. Moses Wilhelm Shapira, born a Polish Jew, but a convert to Christianity, through his marriage to a German Lutheran deaconess, for many years had been an antiquities dealer in Jerusalem. He had supplied libraries in London and Berlin with valuable ancient Hebraic manuscripts (chiefly from sources in Yemen). He had found a commentary to the Midrash written by Moses Maimonides. Also, he had sold some crude Moabite statuettes to the Berlin Museum which were later claimed to be forgeries by Charles Clermont-Ganneau, who was then the French Consul at Jerusalem. Clermont-Ganneau found a local workshop that had admitted they had manufactured them. No further investigation was made and they were declared fakes. Additionally, Shapira sold some ancient manuscripts to Alfred Sutro, who was then the mayor of San Francisco, CA. These manuscripts still exist in the San Francisco Public Library.

In a letter to a friend in Germany, Shapira wrote that in July of 1878, he had visited the house of the Arab sheik, Mahmud el-Arakat where he talked with several Bedouin who told him of Arabs who had taken refuge from the local law in a cave at Wadi el-Moujib, near the east bank of the Dead Sea, where had existed the ancient Israelite tribe, the Reuben now Jordanian territory). In one of the caves they had noticed "several bundles of very old rugs" inside of which they found "black charms". Realizing that these might be very valuable artifacts, Shapia with the aid of Sheik Mahmud al-Arakat, managed to purchase or trade for these "embalmed leather" fragments which he initially deciphered as a version of "the last speech of Moses in the plain of Moab". In other words,a very early version of Deuteronomy and a version which contained marked differences from the standard, accepted Biblical text. These scrolls numbered fifteen strips of leather, each one being about 3 1/2 X 7 inches (coincidentally, very similiar to the later Asian book page style popular in early Indochina, Tibet, and China).

By 1883, Shapira concluded these documents to be genuine and brought these texts to London, England. The fragments with their translations were published in The London Times. Prime Minister William Gladstone discussed with Shapira, their possible purchase.

Dr. Christian Ginsberg published his tranlations of these texts in installments in The London Times and The Athenseum. Smaller newspaper and magazines reprinted these translations.

But because of rampant anti-semitism and a desire not to upset the Biblical applecart, Shapira was attacked almost as soon as he arrived in London.

Adolf Neubauer, a Hebrew scholar at Oxford University declared on August 18, that the manuscripts were forgeries.

Walter Besant, popular Victorian novelist and then secretary of the PAlestine Exploration Society, had made the statement in 1877 that Shapira was "a Polish Jew converted to Christianity, but not good works... He was a man of handsome presence, tall with fair hair and blue eyes, not the least like the ordinary Polish Jew, and with an air of modest honesty which carried one away..." In discussing the manuscripts, Besant added, "It was written in fine black ink, as fresh after three thousand years as when it was laid on..." and that it was found "in a perfectly dry cave in Moab..."

Claude R Conder, surveyor of Western Palestine, assured Besant that "...There is not a dry cave in the country". Conder states that any manuscripts made of perishable leather could be buried for more than two thousand years and survive in a land with a twenty inch rainfall.

On August 21, 1883, The London Times published a letter from Shapira's old enemy Clermont-Ganneau who wrote "The fragments are the work of a modern forger. This is not the expression of an a priori incredibility, a feeling which many scholars like me, have experienced at the mere announcement of this wonderful discovery. i am able to show, with the documents before me, how the forger went to work. he took one of those large Synagogue rolls of leather, containing the Pentateuch, written in the same square characters, and perhaps dating back two or three centuries, rolls which Mr. Shapira must well be acquainted with, for he deals in them, and has sold to several public libraries in England sundry copies of them, obtained from the existing Synagogues of Judaea and Yemen. The forger cut off the lower edge of this roll - that offered him the widest surface. He obtained in this way some narrow strips of leather with the appearance of comparative antiquity, which was still further heightened by the use of proper chemical agents. On these strips of leather he wrote with ink, making use of the alphabet of the Moabite stone, and introducing such 'various readings' as fancy dictates, the passages from Deuteronomy which have been deciphered and translated by M. Ginsburg with patience and learning worthy of much better employment." He had only taken a cursory glance at these manuscripts!

Further remarks made by Clermont-Ganneau include: that he might "make a fittting sequel to the Deuteronomy of Mr. Shapira..." and that it would have "the slight advantage of not costing a million sterling..."

On September 6, 1883, The Manchester Guardian accused Clermot-Ganneau of having "...shown the hand of a critic a little too soon for British notions of fair play..."

The Reverend Albert Loewy was one of the early doubters of the genuiness of the Shapira manuscripts. Also, he believed that the MoabiteStone was a fake.

The British Museum exhibit was summarily ended. Shortly afterwards, on March 9, 1884,Moses Shapira is supposed to have shot himself with a revolver in his hotel room in Rotterdam, Holland. The scholar John Allegro believes that Shapira may have been murdered. Why? The manuscripts indicated an ancient form of the book of Deuteronomy in which "gods" instead on "a single god" are mentioned.

The original leather fragments were purchase by a Bernard Quaritch, London antiquarian book dealer for L10 5s. Then, they disappeared. One rumour is that they were taken to Australia. Another rumor has it that some or all of the fragments along with Shapira's personal papers has been sent by Mrs. Shapira to a Professor Konstantin Schlottman at Halle and that these manuscript fragments and papers now reside in a collection at Halle University.

Ultimately, the arguements against authenticity were thatthere were linguistic anomolies and inconsistencies in the ancient Hebrew usage, as well as grammatical errors and late Rabbinic words. All of these inconsistencies do apply to the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Recently, Menahem Mansoor, chairman of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin has stated that"neither the internal nor the external evidence, so far as yet published, supports the idea of a forgery..."(quoted by J. L. Teicher: "The Genuiness of the Shapira Manuscripts", The Times Literary Supplement, March 22, 1957, p.184).

J. L. Teicher goes on to say that"On re-examining the evidence on which the manuscripts were pronounced to be forgeries, one realizes with a shock that the verdict was unfounded and that the manuscripts were in fact ancient and genuine". (p.225)


Ca. 500 BC: P also known as The Priestly Source:

Historical/Biblically mentioned events just prior to the P Authors:
622 BC: Discovery of the Book of Deuteronomy
587-586 BC: Destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem
The Fall of the Southern Kingdom of Judah
Beginning of the Babylonian Exile
538 BC: End of the Babylonian Exile. The Israelites return to Jerusalem
520-515 BC: Construction of the Second Temple at Jerusalem

These are various authors who concentrated upon sacred law and ritual, including the use of extreme detail of the various ritual observances and paraphernalia. There are no angels or animals which can communicate with humans, and there is no mention of the interpretation of dreams. This series of texts has a feeling of aridity about them. Most of Leviticus is attributed to P-which is quite a contrast to J's version.

Leviticus and Numbers emphasis the priestly leaders emphasis on defining categories of reality and setting forth methods of action and thinking which will prevent these issues from ever becoming confused. The proliferation of definable categories for the creation of total control is extremely evident. More and more of daily life loses its ability to be spontaneous and is increasingly ritualized and tightly defined. A strong mutual-identity relationship exists between the concept of physical "uncleanliness" (which includes being dirty, filth of all kinds, bodily fluids including blood, menstral fluid, and semen) and "sin" (attacking the "desires" of God; breaking the many rules and regulations of the Israelite tribe).

Leviticus 5: 1-2
And if a soul sin, and hear the voice of swearing, and it is a witness, whether he hath seen it or known of it; if he do not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity. Or if a soul touch any unclean thing, whether it be a carcass of an unclean beast, or a carcass of unclean cattle, or the carcass of unclean creeping things, and it shall be hidden from him, he also shall be unclean and guilty.

Leviticus 15: 1-11
When any man discharges semen from his penis, this act of discharge makes this man ceremonially unclean. The uncleanliness of his discharge of semen is this: whether his penis flows with this discharge or whether his penis is stopped from discharging, it is uncleanliness for him.

It appears as though women are considered "more unclean" or at least "more often unclean" than men, which, of course, aids in reconciling them to an arbitrary secondary or "lower" status.

Leviticus 12:1-5
...If a woman conceives seed and bears a man child, then she shall be ceremonially unclean for seven days; as (it is also) at the time of her menstruation, she shall be (also actually) unclean. On the eighth day the flesh of the foreskin of the man child shall be cut off (circumsized). Her (the mother's) time of purification shall be 33 days, during which time she shall not touch any holy thing, or come into the sanctuary, until these numbered days of her purification are complete. If a woman bears a woman child, she shall be unclean two weeks (as it is in her menstruation) and her time of blood purification shall be 66 days.

Thus a female child (at the moment of its own birth) was equated immediately with the lower status of its mother and numerically publicly accepted as being 50% lessened or 100 more unclean or both. The numbers used are exact. There is no ambiguity.

Further a strong mutual-idenitiy relationship exist between "blemish" (something no-standard and not part of a visual, physical majority) and individuality (a slight difference or variation is unacceptable to God and cannot be used in any sacrifice to God.

Leviticus 1:2
If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish...

Leviticus 1:10
And if his offering be of the flocks, namely of sheep or goats, for a burnt sacrifice; he shall bring a male without blemish...

Leviticus 3:1
And if his oblation be a sacrifice of peace offering, it he shall offer from the herd, whether it be male or female, he shall offer it withou blemish before the Lord.

Obedience to God is exactly equated to the rules and regulations stated. Obedience is rewarded by:
Proper amounts of rainfall for growing crops
The land will yield rich agricultural produce
There will be plenty of all the different foods for eating
People will live in security.
Peace will exist in the land.
Dangerous animals will be removed from the land.
All enemies will be able to be chased away from the land and then killed by the sword.
The population will grow larger and stronger.

Disobedience to God is exactly equated to not upholding all the stated rules and regulations. Disobedience is punished by:
Terror will be brought to these people.
People will die from hideous diseases and horrible physical maladies.
Enemies of the People will eat all the food.
Enemies will rule the People.
The sky will suddenly gain the look of iron.
The earth will suddenly gain the look of copper.
The peoples' children and livestock will be killed.
All punishments will "be sevenfold" (?) in the extremed existence.
People will be forced to eat the very flesh of their own sons.
People will be forced to eat the very flesh of their own daughters.
The cities will be destroyed.
All sanctuaries will be destroyed.
The land will be unliveable to the extent that the Peoples' enemies will not live on it.
Survivors will become faint of heart.
They shall "stumble over one another" (mental illness?).
The People shall be the prisoners of others.

The tribal rules do not admit of error or compassion or diversity. The followers of the texts of Deuteronomy and Leviticus are a tightly organized, communal, anti-individual, and totalitarian state

The P author(s) practice a "spin control" of the Deutero-texts. They are examiners of minutae and practice a totalitarian structural mysticism which finds modern reference in the visionary distopias of Aldous Huxley and the behavioural extremism of the late Dr. B. F. Skinner. Leviticus tightens up the rules and regulations of Deuteronomy. Leviticus can be paralleled easily with the core social and political philosophy of Envar Hoxa (former Communist ruler of Albania) .

Next comes the book Numbers which is perhaps the first fairly accurate census ever taken. The People, this tribe now has a very exact idea of who exists within it and who is related to whom. At the same time, there are mentions of cities of refuge(places to hide), order of encampment and marching, various duties, and in general creates all the defensive postures which can exist within a battle plan. Today, we would call this guerilla dispersion and civil defense. Additionally, some of the repressive laws of Deuteronomy and Leviticus are mentioned again, primarily to lend continuity to the other two books and to create them as a living entity-environment of totalitarianism defended by fierceness and necessary warfare-thinking-capacity. The final end part of Numbers replay Israelite Mosaic history and combines it with other periods of its tribal history in a loose narrative and also adds descriptions of rituals with statements (either general and "out-of-time" or "historical" or historical) of mystical and God-created mystical happenings.

Obviously, the Old Testament/Tanakh gives the order of these three books as Leviticus, followed by Numbers, followed by Deuteronomy, but a more cogent understanding of these books and their period can be had by placing these three books in the following order:

Deuteronomy 1:1-3
These are the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side of Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain, over against the Red Sea, between Paran, and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Dizahab; (there are 11 days journey from Horeb by way of the Mount Seir unto kadesh-barnea) and it came to pass in the 40th year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spake unto the children of Israel, according unto all the Lord had given him in commandment unto them...

Followed by:

Leviticus 1:1-2
And the Lord called unto Moses and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying:

Followed by the census sections of Numbers.

Followed by the rest of Deuteronomy.(1:4 - 34:12)

Followed by the rest of Leviticus (1:3 - 27:34)

Followed by the sections of Numbers which are the replay and glorification of Israelite Mosaic history and its combination with other periods of its tribal history in a loose narrative with added descriptions of rituals with statements (either general and "out-of-time" or "historical" or historical) of mystical and God-created mystical happenings.

And ending with:

Numbers 36:13
These are the commandments and the judgements, which the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses unto the children of Israel, in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho.

In the beginning Moses is alive, active, and dominant, and one is led to believe that "here is greater detail of the Moses History, which you all know so well, yet this will be new to you". At the end, the eternal God is emphasized, Moses is a symbolic past tense.

During this period, Jahweh or God was now seen as the all-powerful entity who could be controlled by mass obedience to a complex pattern and from whom the human being could earn love and respect. At no time during this period did this Group envision Jahweh of God as an all-powerfull grace and love bestowing force who was allways transcendent of human attitude and always beyond human need and attitude. Inner feeling of the people in this group were exteriorized and projected. Outer observations of life became anthropomorphic "tests of value, validity, and loyalty" instead of outer observations being an on-going experience of an endless parade of being created by a transcendent God. The Golden Calf was real but invisible to the participants. A major conceptual mistake had been made. Soon this mistake of belief, attitude, and perception of reality would all but destroy this Group.

Also, the P source is most likely responsible for the specific interweaving of story, chronology, and story elements of the J author with the E author - in the form which exists today within the Old Testament/Tanakh.:.. It is interesting to note that in the P version of creation, we observe great changes in writing style and attitude. The Creator is now aloof , impersonal, and hard to see: -

So God created humankind in His image,
In the image of God, He created them,
male and female, He created them
Genesis 1:27


then Jahweh formed man
from the dust of the ground
and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life,
and the man became a living being.
Genesis: 2 7

Most noticeably, the P authors never once use the word mercy.


Ca. 400 BC: R also known as The Redactor(s):

Historical/Biblically mentioned events just prior to the R Authors:
622 BC: Discovery of the Book of Deuteronomy
587-586 BC: Destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem
The Fall of the Southern Kingdom of Judah
Beginning of the BAbylonian Exile
538 BC: End of the Babylonian Exile. The Israelites return to Jerusalem
520-515 BC: Construction of the Second Temple at Jerusalem
500 BC: The P Authors complete their writings

These were the priests and scribes who began and completed the most recent of completed processes of editing The Old Testament or Tanakh texts. Jonathan Kirsch, in his book The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible, states that The Redactors were priestly "spin control" experts, who changed the flavor and viewpoint of many of the earlier texts to suit what they felt were their own current cultural needs. Here we find, the creation of a fully brutal attitude towards intermarriage and related issues. Here, we can assess the Israelite fear of being assimilated or bred out of cultural existence and the end of the Babylonian Captivity from 538 BC until the final canonization of the Hebrew Bible circa 90 AD.

During the 3rd century BC, to the Tanakh or Old Testament was translated into the Greek Septuagint. The word Septuagint comes from the Latin word septuaginta meaning "the seventy". "The Seventy" were the 70 (or 72) textual editors who, according to tradition completed the translation of thes Old Testament texts into Greek in exactly 72 days, while staying together on the isle of Pharos. Prior to the creation of this Greek Septuagint, there were some important textual differences. "Adam" was not called "Adam" but was called "The Man". "Eve" was not called "Eve", but was called "The Woman". "Moses" was not called "Moses", but was called "Mosheh".

By 100 AD, approximately 70 years after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the Middle Eastern stories which had been told and retold, written and rewritten for the previous 2,500 years, were in what would be their final form.

It seems likely that the R Authors were concerned about their tribe or "Group" becoming assimilated (The Babylonian Captivity) and thus losing their identity and fearing a loss of personal collective uniqueness and thus fearing an imagined collective death, they began to emphasis "uniqueness", "separateness", "betterness', and "chosenness" in order continue to survive psychologically through strict maintenance and repetition of their past through the use of their own culturally unique symbols (all cultures have some unique symbols and symbologies as well as those which appear in all cultures). All of this was a reaction to the culture shock of their own times and a form of Post Traumatic Stree Syndrome.


Greek Sources
In examining the Hebraic "borrowings" and "incorporations" from more recent sources, : we turn to The Wisdom of Solomon 11:17: "For Thine all-powerful hand that created the world out of formless matter lacked not the means to send upon them a multitude of bears or fierce lions". The Wisdom of Solomon combines Semitic with Greek thought. The phrase "formless matter" is pure Greek philosophy. This concept does not appear anywhere in Semitic thought. Major Greek influence on Hebraic thought probably begand be as early as the Alexandrian conquest of 333 BC and was fully incorporated into Hebraic thought through the writing and teaching of Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (30 BC-45 AD).