UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL: THE FIRST WRITTEN STORIES
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.
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.
three
Hamo-semitic influence
The Mosaic Exodus And Its Great Moment of Tribal Definition Which Led to the Self-Identification and Creation of a Highly Motivated Wandering Tribe Who Called Themselves "Israelites"
In the beginning, there were mixed black (negroid) and semetic groups in Egypt and what can be called 'The Ancient Middle East". These hamo-semetic groups included what were to become the Ancient Egyptians, Meroetic culture, Sumerians. Babylonians, Assyrians, and a large group of small tribes, including the tribe which later called itself Israelite. At this time no one used the words "Jew" or "Jewish". Further, there was no cultural identity using this root word or any concept connected to it.
The word Jew derives from the Hebrew word Yehudi meaning a person from Judea, who would be a descendent of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob and heir to the original blessing of Yahweh; this blessing first given to the protopatriarch Abram ("Exalted Father") or Abraham ("Father of a Host of Nations"). It is most probably that the root word "Jew" was not used until sometime in the period 100-500 AD.
Proto-Israelite tribes lived in the swampy pastures in northeastern Egypt. The story of the Mosaic Exodus has been world famous for many centuries, but what really happened? There are some very interesting possibilities.
We note that Amenhotep IV (1375-1358 BC) who changed his name to Akhenaton was unpopular during his reign. At his death, most of his monuments and personal possessions were effaced or destroyed, his name removed from stele. Why? Because he started a revolutionary monotheistic religion in which there was only one supreme god named Aten - the God of the Sun; the Bringer of Life. Ancient legend has it that Akhenaton was set adrift in a reed basket as a child. Obviously, this story is very similiar to the infancy stories of Moses. Akhenaton was married to Nefertiti (?-? 14th century BC) and had several children. Later, he married his mother Queen Ty, and thereafter Queen Nefertiti vanishes from history.
Was it possible that Nefertiti took a band of Akhenaton's followers and led them into hiding as Akhenaton's empire collapsed; later leading this small dispised group of people to the area which became Judea and Palestine.
The worship of the Golden Calf then could be a return to the Worship of the Cow Goddes Hathor and a rejection of monotheistic Aten-worship of Akhenaton. After Akhnenaton's death or Sdisappearance, there was a strong, hostile, and violent "fundamentalist movement to restore the "true ancient gods". In the late 20th century, we have seen how the Ayatollah Khomeini attacked and virtually destroyed modern Islam in favor of his back-to-the-past fantasies of an Islamic 8th, 10th, or 12th century AD world.
Or perhaps,it is some form of worship of the Vedic goddess, Aditi. The Rig Veda names Aditi as the progenetrix of the cosmos and its creations. She holds Agni, the God of Fire and creator god in her womb like a mother. Aditi is the Yoni or Vagina of the Universe. She is the Cosmic Womb. As the mother goddess of the Vedic pantheon, she gave birth to most of the gods within this pantheon.Aditi is shining and luminous. She upholds the Law. She is gentle and kind. In her bountiful form, she is portrayed as the Unslayable Cosmic Cow. She is the circulator of the life substance of all there is.
What about the Crossing of the Red Sea? Perhaps, the area that actually was crossed was The Lake (or Sea) of Reeds (Yam Suph) near the upper extremity of the Gulf of Suez. There are many reports (some military) of shallow water being blown back considerable distances by very strong winds. The waters of Lake Menzaleh at the entrance of the Suez Canal have been known under the impact of the powerful east wind to receed as much as seven miles.
Others feel strongly that the evidence gathered and synthesized from studying the volcanic explosion on the isle of Thera, (Autumn 1628 BC) indicates that the well-known Red Sea is the one which was indeed the famous Red Sea commonly believed to be the one of the Mosaic Exodus.
Following this line of thought, the the reigning Egyptian pharoah would be Tuthmoses III, the son of the female pharoah Hatshepsut, who was perhaps, (along with Akhneton one of the more fascinating Egyptian pharoahs. As Tuthmosis I was nearing the end of his reign of 35 years, he married his daughter, Hatshepsut. he had her dressed in men's clothes and she began wearing a crafted gold beard. Tuthmosis I proclaimed her both king and queen of Egypt. Royal inscriptions about her alternated with the pronouns "he" and "she" and she was placed under the protection of Seth and Horus.
Of herself, Hatshepsut wrote:
Thou shalt triumph...
Move your arm and attack, damage, and destroy the bow-people...
My power overwhelms them who are across the sand [at Sinai]...
Asiatics...bring me the best things: cedar [from Lebanon]
And all the fine woods of the Gods' land.
My authority unites the Nile River's banks.
The Black Land [Nubia?] and the Red Land [Sinai?] are terrified of me.
My personal power causes other countries to kneel in front of me.
The Gods of the Northerners [Syrians, Hyksos, and Canaanites] are made into amulets to adorn me.
Familial enemies made it necessary for her to marry. She married her sister's son and named him Tuthmosis II and made him co-regent. He was exactly what she wanted. He was physically weak, somewhat transgendered in a male-to-female fashion. Officially, he ruled the army. In actuality he did very little.
Tuthmosis II died 1630, 1635, or 1645 BC. It is most likely that his concubine, Isis poisoned him to bring her son to the throne as Tuthmosis III. In fact, this occurred. Now there were two rulers of Egypt, Tuthmosis III and Hatshepsut.
Hatshepsut had married her father, her brother, and her son. To raise the stakes, Hatshepsut declared herself the product of a divine birth, through a hazy idea of immaculate conception or "formed in the womb be the Gods" and thus, she was divine. Hatshepsut gained the support of the priests of Karnak who proclaimed her the absolute salvation of both Upper and Lower Egypt. She was now the Saviour of Egypt.
Sometime later, there was a close fly-by of what was probably Halley's Comet, and Tuthmosis III seized the opportunity to proclaim that this Pillar of Fire above them was the announcement by the Gods of his own divinity. This message was publicly proclaimed to the masses by various priest, political allies, and his svengali-like primary minister, Rekhmire.
Now, Egypt was a country ruled by two "divine" beings who were politically at war with one another. The prize being the sole ownership of the throne of Egypt.
Eventually Hatshepsut died. Tuthmosis III set up poisonings and assasinations of her closets friends, ministers, and advisors. Tombs of her friends weredefaced. All likenesses of her were mutilated. he built walls around monuments she had built. Even the records of her death were destroyed. Most likely, the pharoah Tuthmosis II feared the ressurrection of Hatshepsut. She had cursed anyone who had or would despoil her grave.
During the next three months, Tuthmosis III had himself crowned as sole pharoah of Egypt and began to attack "the Asiatics" On the plains of Har-Megedon, Tuthmosis III attacked the kings of Palestine, Syria, and Kadesh (northeastern corner of Sinai Peninsula). Tuthmosis III defeated all of them. He took the sons of these "Asiatic" rulers into his palace and raised them as his own sons. basically, this is an obvious Egyptian version of the story of the young Moses. The Egyptian word "Tuthmoses" means Son (mosis) of Thoth, the God of Wisdom (Tuth).
In the autumn of 1628 BC, the isle of Thera exploded. It was a catastrophe for the entire Mediterranean and Middle east areas. Everything was now a survival issue.
Reconstructions of the effects of this disaster support the accuracy of the observations listed in the book of Exodus. This volcanic explosion is postulated as 50 times more severe than that of Krakatoa in 1883 AD.
Tsunamis would have occurred. Quite possibly, the parting of the Red Sea was the observation of a tsunami. Plagues of locusts and mice can easily take place after major ground shocks. These creatures are driven from their normal habitats and suddenly seem to appear all over the place. Volcanic ash in the atmosphere would darken the day, "blotting out the sun". People would be injured or killed by rocks blown into the sky, now falling back to earth. Incadescent volcanic ash could vaporize people or produce skin leisons and boils. Fierce winds could destroy almost everything their path.
The Egyptian document, Lament of the Writer Ipuwer known as the Ipuwer Papyrus and certain parts of the Old Testament corroborate one another and make a very vivid and realistic description of this cataclysm when put into a basic sequential order, with each voice assumed to be at a different location (because they don't reference the specific data nor do they reference the same data in the same descriptive manner of the other voices).::
Group 1 - Location One Ipuwer Papyrus:
The land - to its whole extent - confusion - terrible noise.
Group 2 - Location Two: Exodus 20:18:
And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses: "Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us lest we die." And Moses said unto his people: "Fear not! for God is come to prove you, and that His fear may bef before your faces, that ye sin not." And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.
Group 1 - Location Three Ipuwer Papyrus:
A period of 9 days existed, during which no one could exit the palace or see the face of another.
Group 2 - Location Three Exodus 10:21-23:
And the Lord said unto Moses: "Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt." And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for 3 days. They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for 3 days. But all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.
Group 1 - Location One Ipuwer Papyrus:
The sun is covered.
The sun does not shine in the eyesight of a human.
Life is not possible with the sun hidden in clouds.
Ra has turned his face from we the humans.
If only the sun would shine for a short measured time.
No one can measure the sun to know when it is noon.
A person's shadow is invisible.
The sun looks like the moon.
Group 2 - Location Four Exodus 7:20-25
And the Lord said unto Moses: "Say unto Aaron, Stretch forth thy hand with thy rod upon their streams, upon their the rivers, and upon their ponds, and all their pools of water, that they may become blood, and that there may be blood throughout the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone." And Moses and Aaron did so, as the Lord commanded. And he lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of the Pharoah, and in the sight of his servants. And all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood. And the fish that were in the river died. And the river stank. And the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river. And there was blood throughout the land of Egypt. And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments.
Group 1 - Location 3 Ipuwer Papyrus:
Upper Egypt now devasted. Blood is everywhere.
Group 2 - Location Five Exodus 8:5-7:
And the Lord said unto Moses: "Say unto Aaron, Stretch forth thy hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers, and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of Egypt." Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt. And the magicians did so with their enchantments, and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt
Group 2 - Location Six Exodus 9:2:
...the hand of the Lord will strike with deadly pestilence, your livestock in the field: the horses, the donkeys, the camals, the herds, and the flocks...
Group 1 - Location Four (near Group 2 - Location Six) Ipuwer Papyrus: Pestilence is throughout Egypt.
Group 2 - Location Six Exodus 9:3:
And on the next day, the Lord did so, all the Egyptian livestock died, but the of the Israelite livestock, there was not one died.
Group 2 - Location Seven Exodus 9:18:
Tomorrow at this time, I will cause the heaviest hail to fall that has ever fallen in Egypt from the day it was founded until now. And this hail will fall upon man and upon beast, and upon every herb of the field.
Group 2 - Location Seven Exodus 9:23-26:
And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven, that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, upon man and upon beast, and upon every herb of the field, throughout the land of Egypt." And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran along the ground. And the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt. So there was hail, and the fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. And the hail smote throughout the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast. And the hail smote every herb of the field and broke every tree of the field. Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail
Group 1 - Location 5 Ipuwer Papyrus:
Our fertile land is desert.
Group 1 - Location 3 Ipuwer Papyrus:
Towns are destroyed.
Group 1 - Location Six (near Group 2 - Location 3) Ipuwer Papyrus: People now flee.
Group 2 - Location Eight Exodus 13:18:
So God led the people by the round-about way through the wilderness toward the Red Sea.and the children of Israel went up armed out of the land of Egypt.
Group 3 - Location One Genesis 19: 15:
When morning arose, the angels hastened to Lot, saying, "Arise and take your wife , and thy two daughters which are here, lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city [Sodom], bring them out of this place for we shall destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord; and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.
Group 3 - Location Two
Genesis 19: 20-26: See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this particular city, for the which you have spoken. Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do anything until thou be come thither. Therefore, the name of this city was Zoar.
The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot sentered into Zoar. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven ; and He overthrew these cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him and she became a pillar of salt.
Group 4 - Location 1 Genesis 19:27-28:
And Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the Lord; and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward the land of the plain, and beheld it, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.
Group 3 - Location Three Genesis 19:30:
Now Lot went out of Zoar and settled in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar, so he lived in a cave with his two daughters. And the first born daughter said to the younger daughter: "Our father is old, and there is not any man on earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lay with him, that we may preserve the seed [genetic material] of our father.
Group 1 - Location (Group 2 - Location Three) Ipuwer Papyrus:
The fleeing people live in tents, like nomadic people.
Group 5 - Location One Numbers 9:15-18:
And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up the cloud covered the tabernacle, even the tent of the testimony. And at evening there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until the morning. So it was always: the cloud covered it by day, and the appearance of fire was by night. And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed, and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents.
Group 2 - Location Four (near Group 5, Location One) Exodus 13: 20-23:
And they took their journey from Succoth and encamped in Etham at the edge of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of fire, to give them light - and to be able to go by both day and night. He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.
Group 2 - Location Nine Exodus 14:1-2:
The the Lord spoke unto Moses saying: "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp before Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, over against Baal-zephon, before it, you shall encamp by the sea. For Pharoah will say of the children of Israel, "They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in.
Group 2 - Location Ten Exodus 14:19-30:
And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel removed and went behind them. And the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them. And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel. And it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these, so that the one came not near the other all the night. And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground. And the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left hand. And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all Pharoah's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen.
And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians. And he took of their chariot wheels that they drave them heavily; so that the Egyptians said: "let us flee from the face of Israel; for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians." And the Lord said unto Moses: "Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen. And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its strength when the morning appeared. And the Egyptians fled against it. And the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. And the waters returned, and covered the chariots. And covered the horsemen. And all the hosts of Pharoah that came into the sea after thethere remained no so much as one of them. But the children of Israel walked [had walked] upon the dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left hand. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore.
Group 1 - Location Eight Ipuwer Papyrus:
A foreign bow-people[Asiatic tribes or Israelite groups - all seen as "terrorists"] have invaded Egypt.
The Israelites would remember and ritualize somew of their historical behaviours and standardize their rituals which came out of their traumatic experience of the explosion of the island of Thera.
First Later Time-Frame - The Remembering: Group 6 - Location One
Numbers 9:15-18:
And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up the cloud covered the tabernacle, even the tent of the testimony. And at evening there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until the morning. So it was always: the cloud covered it by day, and the appearance of fire was by night. And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed, and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents.
Second Later Time-Frame - The ritualizing: Group Seven - Location One
Numbers 9: 19-23:
At the command of the Lord the children of Israel journed. At the command of the Lord, the children of Israel remained where they were. As long as the cloud abode over the tabernacle, they rested in their tents. And when the cloud remained over the tabernacle for many days, still, they would remain in camp. At the command of the Lord the would travel. At the command of the Lord they would remain in camp. Sometimes the cloud would remain from evening to morning, and when the cloud lifted in the morning, they woul;d set out, or if the cloud continued fora day and a night, when the cloud lifted, then they would set out.Whether it were two days, or a month, or a year, if the cloud continued over the tabernacle and resting upon it, the children of Israel would remain in camp and not set out; but when it lifted, they would set out. At the command of the Lord, they would camp. And at the command of the Lord, they wouldset out. They kept the charge of the Lord, at the command of the Lord by Moses.
Israelite Texts Based Upon the Attitudes About their Oral History, Stories and Remembrances of the Period Circa. 1240-922 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.
Israelite Texts Based Upon the Attitudes About their Oral History, Stories and Remembrances of the Period Circa. 1240-922 (but written several generations later): "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.
The Sources forthe "Origin of the Cosmos"/Genesis Stories Crafted and Written by "J" and "E":
"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.
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 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]
The Earliest Known Version of The Book of Job or the Story of A Good Person Who Suffers and Asks 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 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.
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.
Lord of Hosts - God of War
Even in the 8th century BC, the Proto-Israelites of Canaan were not montheists but henotheists - they believed in a plurality of gods, one of whom, Jehovah, maintained a special relationship with their group.When Jehovah was/is referred to as "The Lord of Hosts", it means "The God of War" Also,The Proto-Israelites were deeply involved in the worship of gods connected with fertility cultsand later celebrated their sexual orgies in the groves of Astoreth (Semitic version of the later Aphrodite and Venus). There are stories of prophets who condemned these practices, saying that the Hebrew people should only worship the one god, Jehovah - the God of War. Also, the Israelites mention themselves as being the messengers of Jehovah and his divine servants.
Thus, all the various Tanakh/Old Testament texts, with the exception of the "E" texts are from that Israelite sub-group who worshipped Jahweh-The God of War. Any other early Israelite texts which might have existed are unknown and unfound.
Within certain Israelitetribal or sub-tribal groups, polytheism began to change into ma Jahwehist monotheism no later than 750 BC. And while the new Jahweh-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 circa 500 AD (the completion of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds) and that the strict monomorphic monotheism first became dominant during the earliest period of the Post-Jericho-Proto-Qumran Communities, which periodically came and went near the Dead Sea during the final period of the Babylonian Captivity (circa 600 BC) and that finally, the teachings of the Nasci, (or Nazerene) Jesus the Chrestus, (for which he was crucified) and 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 direct but unmentioned polymorphic variabilty to montheism.
From Many Local Mahistrates to One Divinely Characterized Male King
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 circa 900-700 BC, the Israelites began building and living in their own cities or towns. Constant communication would die down. Linguistic changes would not necessarily be passed on to other groups and thus learned and multi-linguistic proficiency would become more and more rare.
The Proto-Isrealites were nomadic tribes, loosely organized under local sheiks or "judges". When threatened, the local sheik would orgainze his group into a citizen's army until the threat was eliminated. As time passed, this was perceived as an inefficient method of protection and rulership. These various groups were united under a single king who was entitled "The Anointed of Jahweh". This "Anointed One of The God of War" had the roughly the same temporal and mythic powers as The Pharoahs Amenophis III and Akhenaton, Caesar Augustus, Constantine 1, Tsar Nicholas II, and Benito Mussolini. Saul was the first king. His rulership was followed by that of David. It was David who reduced the almost impregnable Zion to helplessness and established his capital city: Jerusalem.
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). Taking into account local variations, this star symbol was pictographically used by the earliest Sumerians, the Indus Valley Aryan Civilization of Mohenjo-Daro, and the star was often used in many early Afrikan cultures as the Abode of Ancestral Wisdom or a "Mount Olympus like" environment for Orishas equally highly powered God-forms which take an active interest in the daily activities of humans, especially when asked (this, of course, is a very ancient form of law and source of law). From this ancient star symbol has come the Whirling Cross of the Swastica used within the ancient Hindu, Tibetan Bon and Buddhist cultures, and Meso-American cultures, as well as The Star of King 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. Also, one can make a case, that the Cross of Christ is either a Svastica/Star at complete rest (i.e. St. Andrew's Cross) or a Svastica/Star in the intermediate position between complete rest and complete activity (the traditional Christian Cross). These symbols and variations on these symbols existed in Roman and Greek Gnostic Groups, Mithraism (originally Vedic Hindu), the Mystery Religion of Isis and Osiris, and thers.
Further Political Expansion, Division, and Change
The expansion of this kingdom continued under the next ruler , the legendary Solomon who avoided war by adding the daughters of hostile rulers to his Harem. The luxury of his court was so great that by the end of his reign, his subjects were almost on the point of rebellion. At the same time, Solomon built the first temple in Jerusalem.
Upon the death of Solomon, his kingdom was divided into two parts:
1.) Israel in the north.
2.) Judah in the south.
There were frequent problems, border warfare, and violence between thse two kingdoms. These two kingdoms became pawns in the struggle of several empires: Egypt to the south; Asyria to the East; Babylon to the east; Persia to the north; as well as smaller hostile groups who felt that conquest of these two areas was possible.
The Canaanites were a fairly civilized group. after several attacks by the Hebrews, when the Israelites conquered several Canaanite cities and settled in the more easily defensible hills, while the Canaanites continued to occupy the plains until both groups merged into a predominate Hebrew culture.The invader Hebrews, adopted the Canaanite (Phoenician) script which ultimately became the Hebew script as also was the Aramaic (Aram=Syria) script which largely displaced Hebrew script in later centuries.
Israelite Decline and Renewel
After 721 BC, when Samaria fell, the people of the northern kingdom were carried away 'beyond Damascus" and disappear from history. Samaria was colonized by people from other areas who were forced marched to this land by the Assyrian military. These colonists intermarried with the remaining Israelites and this new combined group was known by the name "Samaritans".who were continually dispised by the other groups of Israelites until after the time of Jesus Christ. Only the writings of their prophets remain. "What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy,and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah)
To the south, Judah survived the Assyrian military takeover. Religious prophets became statesmen, practicing a relatively successful diplomacy. These prophets had to gues right about when wars might break out and among which groups and then stratigize accordingly by siding with the likely winner. When it was important to do so, they paid tribute. At other times, they did not. As time went on their advice was taken less seriously and disasterous consequences ensued for both the kingdoms of Judah and "Post-Samaria".
In 586 BC, Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians as warned by the Judan prophet Jeremiah who had made it clear that this would happen if the Judans would not bow to Babylonian power while there was still time to do so, instead of depending upon unstable alliances with Egypt and other groups. The issue seems to be the debate of whether Jehovah, the god of the Judans and "Post-Samarians" was also the god of the Babylonians.
Probably, just prior to this period, what we know as the Shapira manuscripts were written.
It was during this period which produced the book of the second law, known as Deuteronomy. This was a revision of the Mosaic law. It was written as though it was a revelation from Moses himself.
Some of the descendants of the original Judans who had been transported as cultural prisoners to Babylon, returned to Judah (now known as Judea) after the Babylonians were overthrown by the Persians. The Persian Imperial policy included the restoration of Jerusalem and a limited amount of Judean Autonomy. The Babylonian exile had caused the exiles to deepen and expand their worship and allegiance to Jehovah and now to see themselves not only as a closely knit religious group, but also, as a religious community - "the chosen of Jehovah".
Israelite Texts Based Upon the Attitudes About their Oral History, Stories and Remembrances of the Period Circa 1240-800 BC : Known as "D" or The Deuteronomic Source
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)
The Neo-Israelites: Post-Exile Restoration of Israelite Culture
During this post-exile period, both the prophetic and Deuteronomic movements fell into neglect. The main point of focus was the rebuilding of the Temple and its worship and the restoration of Jewish exclusivism. Required was the minute observation of the Sabbath. Marriage outside of the born Jewish group was not allowed. Samaratans from the north who wanted to help work to complete this restoration were excluded and treated with contempt and were sometimes killed.
These centuries following the exile, produced few inspired prophets. It was mainly a period of priestcraft. priestly functions were zelously defined and codified. Their hierarchical structure was fully created and became quite powerful.
Israelite Texts Based Upon the Attitudes About their Oral History, Stories and Remembrances of the Period Circa 622-515 BC: Known as "P" or The Priestly Source
Historical/Biblically mentioned events just prior to the P Authors:
622 BC: Legendary 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).
We do not know the origin of priesthood within Hebrew society. Perhaps, it was a natural developmnet from subconscious sources which reached back into the collective and mythic memories of the cultures of The Sahara (Afrika), Sumeria and Babylonia/Assyria, but it did seem to develope after they had developed their own absolute "divinely chosen" male king.
Further, during this period, the historic records (disallowing myths and self-serving historical allegories) are sparse and confusing. It is known that there were many wars and border skirmishes; that the Hebrew group lived and functioned within a theocracy administered by priests (kohen). Their geographic areas were frequently overrun in the ongoing conflict between Egypt and Persia. During this period, many Jews settled in Egypt as refugees. The area near the Egyptian waterways may be responsible for the concept of "green pastures" from the 23 Psalm of David. At Yeb (Elephantine) in southern Egypt, these refugees even built a temple to their god, Jehovah. This temple was destroyed in 410 BC by Egyptian priests.
Less than 80 years later, Alexander the Macedon (356-323 BC) defeated the Persians and in 333 BC, he triumphantly entered Jerusalem. For a single decade, Judea was not oppressed or menaced. With the death of Alexander in 323 BC, the fragile peace ended.
It was during this seemingly quiet and uneventful period, that Israelite tribal mysticism as elaborated by their Mosaic/Egyptian sttitudes and the accepted attitudes and rejected attitudes from the Babylonian/Assyrian influences during the Israelites period known as the Babylonian Captivity - entered into strong influence with the Pan-Hellenic and Mediterranean cultures, thus ultimately become one more polyglot influence in the mental and emotional construction of the Roman civilization.
Two of Alexander's generals divided the Macedonian empire between themselves, which then created two rivaling factions: 1.) The Ptolemies centered in Egypt; 2.) The Seleucids centered in Syria.. Judea now was the DMZ between these to beligerent empires.
After three abortive attempts, the Ptolemy I conquered Palestine in 302 BC and it remained a province of Egypt until 198 BC and from this latter date the Ptolemaic empire began its decline.
The Seleucid kingdom had been in decline for some time. During the reign of Antiochus III called "The Great" (reigned 223-187 BC), this empire was restrengthened and began its own internal recovery.
Next came Seleukos IV (reigned 187-175 BC), followed by Antiochus IV (reigned 175-164 BC) self-named Epiphanes (="The Appearance of God"). He attempted to suppress the Jewish religion of Jehovah. In this he was helped by two apostate Jewish priests, Jesus (later changed to Jason) and Menelaus. In 170 BC, Antiochus IV ordered the massacre of the Jews and plundered their temple. In 168 BC, he decreed this temple rebuilt as a temple of Zeus. He had successfully transformed Jerusalem into a Greek city, garrison by Syrians, and decreed that observation of the Sabbath to be a capital offense.
Birth of Separatist Israelite Social/Religious Philosophy: Creation of the Full Force of the "Chosen People" Concept
In 167 BC, Mattathias Maccabaeus, a Judaic priest, was ordered by an officer of the emperor to defy Judaic law and sacrifice on a pagan altar. An enraged Mattathias, who "...burned with zeal for the Law" (1 Macc. 2:26 killed the Greek officer and a Jewish priest who had agreed to make this sacrifice. Immediately, he began the Maccabaen revolt to attempt the destruction of ther Seleucids, "Let everyone who is zealous for the Law and supports the Covenant come out with me!" (1 Macc. 2:27). This new revolutionary group became known as "The Hammers" or Maccabees. With his three sons, Judas, Jonathan, and Simon, and two other people, and with a band of men called the "Hasidaens" who were "...mighty warriors of Israel, every one who offered himself willingly for the law" (1 Macc 2:42.) On his deathbed mattathias exhorted all to "show zeal for the Law and give your lives for the Covenant of your fathers" (1 Macc. 2:50). A great deal of bloodshed ensued.
Now leadership of this movement was in the hands of Judas, who "withdrew into the wilderness, and lived like wild animals in the hills, with his companions, eating nothing but wild plants to avoid contracting defilement" (2 Macc. 5:27). Perhaps, Judas had a religious vision of starting a fresh community and of "a new beginning". Perhaps, Judas had a mental breakdown from being involved in continous bloodshed (post-traumatic stress syndrome) or completely lost his mind, or a combination of these elements. In any case, it is known that he was murdered in 161 BC.
In the year 153 BC, the brother Jonathan gained the power to appoint himself the Jewish High Priest..
By 152 BC, the Maccabeans had walked over the bodies of their opponents and gained control of the entire area (roughly Palestine), pacified all areas, removed all "pagan" aspects from the Temple, and administered the Law with fundamentalist ferocity. Their role model was Phineas invoked from "The Covenant of Phineas". The story is as follows: after the Hebrews had established themselves in Palestine, they were devastated by a plague. Phineas castigates a man who has married a pagan foreigner. Seizing a spear, he immediately kills both man and wife. Jehovah, now declares that Phineas is the only man to "have the same zeal as I have" He makes a Covenant with Jehovah, in reward for which, Jehovah makes Phineas and his descendants permanent holders of the priesthood throut eternity ( 1 Macc. 2:54).
The Maccabees continued to rule Jerusalem as a theocratic state for almost the next one hundred years. Jonathan was succeeded as High Priest and Civil Ruler by his brother Simon. John Hyrcanus, son of Simon, succeeded his father , and ruled from 135 BC until 106 BC. During his reign, the Maccabee movement began losing its religious fervor and the more practical Sadducees.
Upon the death of John Hyrcanus, Aristobulus I became ruler. His rule was short lasting only one year. In turn, he was succeeded by Alexander Janneus, who, it is believed accomplished the terminal crucifixion of 800 hundred of his enemies who were probably Pharisees. After the death of Alexander Janneus, his widow legally reversed these attitudinal decisions, giving authority to the Pharisees. Upon her death in 69 BC, her younger son, Aristobulus II, now a Sadducee, deposed his older brother Hyrcanus. As Hyrcanus' allies and friends tried to resist him, Aristobulus II appealed to the Roman legate. Roman power prevailed.orthy, deposed him, making decreeing Hyrcanus religious ruler without the right to reign as king.
In 63 BC, the Roman commander, Pompey entered Jerusalem. he defiled all the holy places established or rebuilt by the Maccabees. Aristobulus IIseen as duplicitous, deceptive, and unstable was deposed as ruler and sent as a prisoner to Rome. Hyrcanus was transfered to the High priesthood, and then he made the whole of the Jewish nation a tributary to Rome.
When Idumean bandits raided Ascalon, a small town in Palestine and looted the temple of Apollo, they kidnapped one Antipater, the son of a certain Herod. a temple slave. As the priest was unable to pay for the child's ransom, this child, Antipater was raised as an Idumean. later, he was befriended by Hyrcanusnwho sent Antipater to Pompey as an ambassador. Antipater was made the superintendent of Palestine. Later, he was assasinated.
In 37 BC, as soon as Hyrcanus was taken prisoner by the Parthians,
Herod The Great (73?-4 BC) son of Antipater became the puppet ruler for the Romans and was later consequently chosen by Marcus Antonius and Caesar Augustus to be King of the Jews. He legitimized himself by marrying a female member of the deposed Maccabean dynasty. As soon as his position was secure, he murdered this wife and her brother, effectively ending this dynasty. Also, he removed, banished , or killed most of the hiher ranks of the Maccabean priestcraft, filling these positions with his own henchmen
In 44 BC, Julius Caesar (b. 100 BC) was murdered.
In 30 BC, Palestine became a Roman province. During this same year, Marcus Antonius (83?-30 BC) died and Cleopatra VII Ptolemy (69-30 BC) committed suicide. In this same year, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian Augustus (63 BC-14 AD) became the undisputed ruler of the imperial Roman government.
During the last few years of Herod the Great's life, he had heard the prophecy of Micah foretelling the birth of the messiah at Bethleham. his reaction to this was to issue a single decree ordering the destruction of the town of Bethleham and its environs, and the execution of all male children two years old or younger. This was carried out and today is known as the Massacre of the Innocents.
Shortly thereafter, Herod the Great became ill. here follows Josephus' graphic description of herod's final period (from Jewish Antiquities):
"Herod's sickness grew steadily worse...He was consumed by a slow fire which gave no clear indication to the touch of the burning heat that added so much to his internal miseries. he had an overpowering desire for food, which was impossible to satisfy, ulceration of the intestines with agonizing pain in the lower bowel, and a clammy tranparent humor covering the feet. The abdomen was in the same miserable state, and in the genitals, mortification set in, breeding worms. Breathing was constricted and only possible when sitting upright, and it was now offensive because of the heavy stench and feverish respiration. He suffered in every part convulsions that were unbearably severe...
He had unbearable itching all over his body...swelling of the feet as in dropsy..."
Knowing that he was dying, Herod ordered 50 drachmas (approx. $31.00) to each of his soldiers and large gratuities to his officers and high-ranking subordinates. Further, he ordered the execution of a third of his lawful sons, in addition to the two already executed, and possibly had others slaughtered as well. When the pain reached an even higher level, he stabbed himself with a knife used to cut apples.
The kingdom was divided.
Antipas ruled in Galilee, married his brother's wife, and was rebuked by St. John the Baptist, whom he had executedHe waas defeated in battle by Aretas, the father of his first wife, whom he had destroyed. His people rightly blamed him for the beheading of St. John the Baptist. His rule ended in the year 34 AD.
In Judea, Archelaus reigned for ten years, but he was so bad a ruler that he was removed by Caesar Augustus in 6 AD and replaced by a low-ranking Roman procurator who was directly responsible to the Roman governor of Syria.
Copyrigt 2001 Caiyros Verree
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