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Chapter 10
Who Wrote the Bible and Why?
The Ark of the Covenant and the Temple of Solomon
When considering the idea of the God “dancing all night” in the
round temple of the Hyperboreans, our mind naturally turns to that
most remarkable of incidents in the Bible where David danced before
the Ark of the Covenant - in his underwear, no less!
Another curious
item is the fact that there is a tableaux on one of the porches of
the Chartres Cathedral of Melchizedek, the “king-priest of Salem”,
and the Queen of Sheba.
Equidistant between them is the Ark of the
Covenant in a cart. Melchizedek is holding a cup that is supposed to
be the Holy Grail. Inside this cup is a cylindrical object of stone.
Of course, one wonders what Melchizedek is doing with the Queen of
Sheba who is supposed to be contemporary with Solomon, but there are
many mysteries here.
The Ark of the Covenant: that most mysterious and powerful object
that we are led to believe was the object of the Templars sojourn
and searches in Jerusalem. What do we really know about the Ark?
In order to come to any idea about the Ark, we will naturally have
to make a careful examination of the religious structure in which it
is situated: Judaism. When I began to study the issues that
concerned me: religious questions, philosophical problems, and so
on, I really had no idea that I would uncover something so horrific
and far reaching as what I came to realize about religions in
general and monotheism in particular.
Please don’t misunderstand me
or think that I am promoting paganism or any other form of worship
of “Gods” or images of God. I am quite convinced that the source of
all existence is consciousness, and that this consciousness is, at
its root, what we would call God, or Divine Mind.
What we are
concerned about here is the imposition of monotheism in the form of
any one group claiming that their version of who or what God is or
is not is the only correct one. And the further result of this is
that Judeo-Christian monotheism prevailed with its twisted
conception of linear time borrowed from Zoroastrianism.
People have
been reading the Bible for ages. It has achieved a status in our
culture assigned to no other single body of text. There are more
copies of the Bible on the face of the planet than any other single
book. It is quoted (and misquoted) more often than any other book.
It is translated into more languages than any other book ever
written as well. More people in recorded history have read it,
studied it, taught it, admired it, argued about it, loved it, lived
by it, and killed and died for it.
It is the singular document at
the heart of Judaism and Christianity, and yet the common man doesn’t really seem to ever ask: Who
wrote it, really?
They think they know: it is divinely dictated,
revealed or inspired.
In spite of what the average person believes about it, many
investigators - mostly theologians - have been working on this
question for about a thousand years – when they aren’t being burned
at the stake for even asking it. What is ironic is the fact that
most of them have only been seeking closer communion with God by
trying to get closer to the original text “from the Hand of God", so
to say. When one studies literature in a classroom setting, it is
important to also study the life of the author, even if only through
the clues of the literary works under examination.
One is enabled to
see significant connections between the life of the author and the
world that the author is depicting. In terms of the Bible, these
things become crucial. Nevertheless, the fact is, when we are
talking about such “fuzzy” things as religion and history, we
immediately come up against a certain problem. Historians, when
writing about history, not only discuss the theoretical facts that
are being proposed as the timeline, but also the means by which they
arrived at their ideas. Generally, they draw their conclusions about
history by reading “sources”, or earlier accounts of the matter at
hand. In some cases these are eyewitness accounts, in others,
accounts told to a scribe by a witness, and so on.
Historians try to
make a distinction between sources as “primary” and “secondary”. A
primary source is not necessarily an eye-witness account - though it
would be nice if it was - but is defined by historians as one that
cannot be traced back any further and does not seem to depend on
someone else’s account.
Secondary sources are those that are
essentially copies or “re-worked” primary sources. Often, they
consist of material from several sources assembled together with
commentary or additional data.
Well, obviously this could present a problem if the primary source
is completely falsified.
Primary sources can legitimately require interpretation and
assessment; this is the role of a good secondary source, providing
the distinction between source and interpretation is made clear.
Indeed secondary sources - analyses - are vital to the average
reader who may not have the necessary linguistic, historical and
cultural background to assess the primary sources. But, all too
often, historians deal with their sources exactly as J. K. Huysmans
has described:
Events are for a man of talent nothing but a spring-board of ideas
and style, since they are all mitigated or aggravated according to
the needs of a cause or according to the temperament of the writer
who handles them.
As far as documents which support them are concerned, it is even
worse, since none of them is irreducible and all are reviewable. If
they are not just apocryphal, other no less certain documents can be
unearthed later which contradict them, waiting in turn to be
devalued by the unearthing of yet other no less certain archives.
[Huysmans,
1891, Ch II].
In the early years of the 20th century,
M. M. Mangasarian, a former
Congregationalist and Presbyterian Minister, who studied at
Princeton Theological Seminary, and very early in his life renounced
his Christian affiliation to pursue a remarkable career as a
proponent of Free Thought wrote:
The Bible is an Extraordinary Book: A book which claims
infallibility; which aspires to absolute authority over mind and
body; which demands unconditional surrender to all its pretensions
upon penalty of eternal damnation, is an extraordinary book and
should, therefore, be subjected to extraordinary tests.
But it
isn’t.
Neither Christian priests nor Jewish rabbis approve of applying to
the bible the same tests by which other books are tried.
Why?
Because it will help the bible? It cannot be that.
Because it might hurt the bible? We can think of no other reason.
The Truth is that The Bible is:
A Collection of Writings of Unknown
Date and Authorship Rendered into English From Supposed Copies of
Supposed Originals unfortunately Lost.245
Recently, Richard Dawkins,
author of the Blind Watchmaker, suggested that religion was a virus.
Dawkins argued that the widespread presence of religion - despite its
lack of obvious benefits - suggests that it was not an evolutionary
adaptation. [...] Society provides a breeding ground for the “virus”
of religion by labeling children with the religion of their parents.
Children, in turn, absorb these beliefs because they are conditioned
to do so.
Though it is universal, Dawkins said, religion is not widely
beneficial. Rejecting the theory of many of his contemporaries,
Dawkins argued that religion has not helped people to adapt or to
survive.
Beyond acting as a source of solace, religion provides no
protection against diseases or physical threats.
“A person who is faced with a lion is not put at ease when he’s told
that it’s a
rabbit”, Dawkins said.
Religion, in Dawkins’ view, not only provides
false
comfort - it is actively divisive and harmful. Designated as Christians or
Muslims
by their parents, children are apt to face the discrimination
associated with these
labels, Dawkins said. Dawkins pointed to the example of Protestant
fundamentalists
in Belfast spitting at young Catholic girls merely because their
parents labeled them
Catholic. 246
245 The Bible Unveiled, M.M.
Mangasarian, 1911; Chicago: Independent Religious Society
246 ASYA
TROYCHANSKY, Harvard Crimson, Thursday, November 20, 2003
Dawkins is right in many respects. Even if I do not agree with his
ideas that
promote existence as solely the consequence of the “accidental
mechanicalness of
the universe”, I have to say that he has zeroed in on the crucial
element of religion - or cult - as it is known in our day: that it is a virus, and a
deadly one at that.
One thing that Dawkins said that I disagree with
is,
“A person who is faced with a lion is not put at ease when he’s
told that it’s a rabbit”.
As it happens, that is exactly the problem
we face when we consider our reality. Many people are “put at ease”
by being told that the lion is a rabbit. It doesn’t help them to
survive, or to solve the problems of humanity, but it distracts
their attention away from asking uncomfortable questions about our
reality that the Powers That Be do not want them to ask.
As to why
people believe the lies of the Monotheistic Cults, Dawkins points
out rather succinctly that religion is a societal norm that stems
from children’s psychological tendencies.
“It is their unique
obedience that makes them vulnerable to viruses and worms”, Dawkins
said.
Their unique obedience. Religion is a form of coercing obedience a
la Machiavelli.
As the reader might know,247 I spent a number of years as a hypnotherapist as part of my search for answers in the “realm of
mind”. That work gave me a unique perspective on just about every
other branch of study I have followed since. The main thing I
learned from this is that most, if not all, human perspective is
rooted in emotional thinking. Emotions have a curious tendency to
“frame” and “color” what we see, experience and remember so that
what we think becomes, very often, a matter of “wishful thinking”.
247 See: St. Petersburg Times Magazine section on February 13, 2000
for a 20-page article on my work as a hypnotherapist and exorcist,
written by Pulitzer Prize winner, Thomas French.
The problem with the subject of the Bible and History is that there
are so many fields that can contribute data - archaeology,
paleontology, geology, linguistics, and so forth - these types of
things provide DATA, which are discarded in favor of “wishful
thinking”.
On the other side we have mythology and history. They
are, unfortunately, quite similar because, as it is well known, the
“victors write history”. And people are prone to do many evil deeds
in difficult situations, which they later wish to cover up in order
to present themselves in a more positive light for posterity.
The oldest extant texts of the Old Testament in Hebrew are those
found at Qumran which date only to two or three centuries before
Christ. The oldest version before the Qumran texts were discovered
was a Greek translation from about the same period!
The earliest
complete Hebrew text dates only from the tenth century AD! Something
is wrong with this picture.
It is generally believed from textual analysis, that a very small
part of the Old Testament was written about 1000 BC and the
remainder about 600 BC. The Bible, as we know it, is the result of
many changes throughout centuries and is contradictory in so many
ways we don’t have space to catalog them all!
There are entire
libraries of books devoted to this subject, and I recommend that the
reader have a look at the material in order to have some foundation
upon which to judge the things I am going to say.
Biblical scholars generally date Abraham to about 1800 - 1700 BC.
The same scholars date Moses to 1300 or 1250 BC. However, if we
track the generations as listed in the Bible, we find that there are
only seven generations between and including these two patriarchal
figures! Four hundred years is a bit long for seven generations.
Allowing 35 to 40 years per generation, places Abraham at about 1550
BC and Moses at about 1300 BC. This obviously means that there are a
few hundred years not accounted for in the text.
Tracking back to
Noah, using the generations listed in the Bible, one arrives at a
date of about 2000 to 1900 BC - about the time of the arrival of the
Indo-Europeans into the Near East. The geological and archaeological
records do not support a cataclysm at that time, though what could
be described as a global discontinuity of cataclysmic elements is
supported right around 12,000 years ago. In this case, we have lost
8,000 years, give or take a day.
In a more general sense, using the Bible as historical source
material presents a number of very serious problems, most
particularly when we consider the “mythicization” factor.
There are
many contradictions in the text that cannot be reconciled by
standard theological mental contortionism. In some places, events
are described as happening in a certain order, and later the Bible
will say that those events happened in a different order. In one
place, the Bible will say that there is two of something, and in
another it will say that there were 14 of the same thing.
On one
page, the Bible will say that the Moabites did something, and then a
few pages later; it will say that the Midianites did exactly the
same thing. There is even an instance in which Moses is described as
going to the Tabernacle before Moses built the Tabernacle! (I guess
Moses was a time traveler!)
There are things in the Pentateuch that pose other problems: it
includes things that Moses could not have known if he lived when he
is claimed to have lived. And, there is one case in which Moses said
something he could not have said: the text gives an account of
Moses’ death, which it is hardly likely that Moses described. The
text also states that Moses was the humblest man on earth! Well, as
one commentator noted, it is not likely that the humblest man on
earth would point out that he is the humblest man on earth!
All of these problems were taken care of for most of the past two
thousand years by
the Inquisition, which also took care of
the Cathars and anybody else who did not follow the
Party Line of Judao-Christianity.
For the Jews, the contradictions were not contradictions; they were
only “apparent contradictions”!
They could all be explained by
“interpretation”! (Usually, these interpretations were more
fantastic than the problems, I might add.) Moses was able to “know
things he couldn’t have known” because he was a prophet! The
medieval biblical commentators, such as Rashi and Nachmanides, were
very skillful in reconciling the irreconcilable!
In the 11th century, a real troublemaker, Isaac ibn Yashush, a
Jewish court physician in Muslim Spain, mentioned the distressing
fact that a list of Edomite kings that appears in Genesis 36 named a
few kings who lived long after Moses was already dead. Ibn Yashush
suggested the obvious, that someone who lived after Moses wrote the
list. He became known as “Isaac the Blunderer”.
The guy who
memorialized clever Isaac this way was a fellow named Abraham ibn
Ezra, a 12th century rabbi in Spain. But Ibn Ezra presents us with a
paradox because he also wrote
about problems in the text of the Torah.
He alluded to several
passages that appeared not to be from Moses’ own hand because they
referred to Moses in the third person, used terms Moses would not
have known, described places that Moses had never been, and used
language that belonged to an altogether different time and place
than the milieu of Moses.
He wrote, very mysteriously,
“And if you
understand, then you will recognize the truth. And he who
understands will keep silent”.
So, why did he call Ibn Yashush a “Blunderer”? Obviously because the
guy had to open his big mouth and give away the secret that the
Torah was not what it was cracked up to be, and if the truth got
out, lots of folks who were totally “into” the Jewish mysticism
business would lose interest.
And keeping the interest of the
students and seekers after power was a pretty big business in that
day and time. More than that, however, we would like to note that
the entire Christian mythos was predicated upon the validity of
Judaism, being its “New Covenant”, and even if there was apparent
conflict between Jews and Christians, the Christians most
desperately needed to validate Judaism and its claim to be the
revelation to the “chosen people” of the One True God.
It was on
that basis that Jesus was the Son of God, after all. In short, it
could even be said that Christianity created Judaism in the sense
that it would have faded to obscurity long ago if there had not been
the infusion of validating energy during the Dark Ages.
In 14th century Damascus, a scholar by the name of Bonfils wrote a
work in which he said,
“And this is evidence that this verse was
written in the Torah later, and Moses did not write it”.
He wasn’t
even denying the “revealed” character of the Torah, just making a
reasonable comment. Three hundred years later, his work was
reprinted with this comment edited out!
In the 15th century, Tostatus, Bishop of Avila, also pointed out
that Moses couldn’t have written the passages about the death of
Moses. In an effort to soften the blow, he added that there was an
“old tradition” that Joshua, Moses successor, wrote this part of the
account. A hundred years later, Luther Carlstadt commented that this
was difficult to believe because the account of Moses’ death is
written in the same style as the text that precedes it.
Well, of course, things were beginning to be examined more
critically with the arrival of Protestantism on the world stage and
the demand for wider availability of the text itself. The
Inquisition and assorted “Catholic Majesties” tried, but failed, to
keep a complete grip on the matter. But, it’s funny what belief will
do. In this case, with the increase in literacy and new and better
translations of the text, “critical examination” led to the decision
that the problem was solvable by claiming that, yes, Moses wrote the
Torah, but editors went over them later and added an occasional word
or phrase of their own!
Wow. Glad we solved that one!
A really funny thing is that the Catholic Index blacklisted one of
the proponents of this idea of editorial insertions, who was only
trying to preserve the textus receptus status of the Bible. His work
was put on the list of “prohibited books”!
Those guys just kept
shooting themselves in the foot.
Well, finally, after hundreds of years of tiptoeing around this
issue, some scholars came right out and said that Moses didn’t write
the majority of the Pentateuch. The first to say it was Thomas
Hobbes. He pointed out that the text sometimes states that this or that is so to this day.
The problem with this is that a writer describing a contemporary
situation would not describe it as something that has endured for a
very long time, “to this day”.
Isaac de la Peyrère, a French Calvinist, noted that the first verse
of the book of Deuteronomy says,
“These are the words that Moses
spoke to the children of Israel across the Jordan...”.
The problem
was that the words meant to refer to someone who is on the other
side of the Jordan from the writer. This means that the verse
amounts to the words of someone who is west of the Jordan at the
time of writing, who is describing what Moses said to the children
of Israel on the east of the Jordan. The problem is exacerbated
because Moses himself was never supposed to have been in Israel in
his life.
De la Peyrère’s book was banned and burned. He was arrested and told
that the conditions of his release were conversion to Catholicism
and recanting his views. Apparently he perceived discretion as the
better part of valor. Considering how often this sort of thing
occurred, we have to wonder about the “sanctity” of a text which is
preserved by threat and torture and bloodshed.
Not too long after this, Baruch Spinoza, the famous philosopher,
published what amounted to a real rabble rousing critical analysis.
He claimed that the problem passages in the Bible were not isolated
cases that could be solved one by one as “editorial insertions”. but
were rather a pervasive evidence of a third person account. He also
pointed out that the text says in Deuteronomy 34 “There never arose
another prophet in Israel like Moses....”.
Spinoza suggested, quite
rightly, that these were the words of a person who lived a long time
after Moses and had had the opportunity to make comparisons. One
commentator points out that they also don’t sound like the words of
the “humblest man on earth”!248
Spinoza was really living
dangerously because he wrote,
“It is […] clearer than the sun at
noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but by someone
who lived long after Moses”.249
248 Friedman,
Richard Elliot, Who Wrote the Bible, (New York: Harper & Row 1987).
249
Quoted by Friedman.
Spinoza had already been
excommunicated from Judaism; now, he was in pretty hot water with
the Catholics and Protestants! Naturally, his book was placed on the
“prohibited books” list, and a whole slew of edicts were issued
against it. What is even more interesting is that an attempt was
made to assassinate him! The lengths to which people will go to
preserve their belief in lies are astonishing.
A converted Protestant who had become a Catholic priest, Richard
Simon, undertook to refute Spinoza and wrote a book saying that
Moses wrote the core of the Pentateuch, but there were “some
additions”. Nevertheless, these additions were clearly done by
scribes who were under the guidance of God or the Holy
Spirit, so it was okay for them to collect, arrange and elaborate on
the text. It was still God in charge here.
Well, you’d think the Church would know when it was ahead. But,
nope!
Simon was attacked and expelled from his order by his fellow
Catholics. Forty refutations of his work were written by
Protestants. Only six copies of his book survived burning.
John
Hampden translated one of these, getting himself into pretty hot
water. He,
“repudiated the opinions he had held in common with Simon
[...] in 1688, probably shortly before his release from the
tower”.250
250 Ibid.
In the 18th century, three independent scholars were
dealing with the problem of “doublets”, or stories that are told two
or more times in the Bible. There are two different stories of the
creation of the world. There are two stories of the covenant between
God and Abraham. There are two stories of the naming of Abraham’s
son Isaac, two stories of Abraham’s claiming to a foreign king that
his wife is his sister, two stories of Isaac’s son Jacob making a
journey to Mesopotamia, two stories of a revelation to Jacob at
Beth-El, two stories of God changing Jacob’s name to Israel, two
stories of Moses’ getting water from a rock at Meribah, and on and
on.
Those who simply could not let go of the a priori belief that Moses
wrote the Pentateuch, tried to claim that these doublets were always
complimentary, not repetitive nor contradictory. Sometimes they had
to really stretch this idea to say that they were supposed to
“teach” us something by their contradictions that are “not really
contradictions”.
This explanation, however, didn’t hold up against another fact: in
most cases one of the two versions of a doublet would refer to the
deity by the divine name,
Yahweh, and the other would refer to the
deity simply as “God”, or “El”.
What this meant was that there were
two groups of parallel versions of the same stories, and each group
was almost always consistent about the name of the deity it used.
Not only that, there were various other terms and characteristics
that regularly appeared in one or the other line of stories, and
what this demonstrated was that someone had taken two different old
source documents and had done a cut and paste job on them to make a
“continuous” narrative.
Well, of course, at first it was thought that one of the two source
documents must be one that Moses had used as a source for the story
of creation and the rest was Moses himself writing! But, it was
ultimately to be concluded that both of the two sources had to be
from writers who lived after Moses. By degrees, Moses was being
eliminated almost entirely from the authorship of the Pentateuch!
Simon’s idea that scribes had collected, arranged and elaborated on
the textus receptus was, finally, going in the right direction.
I would like to note right here that this was not happening because
somebody came along and said, “hey, let’s trash the Bible”! Nope. It
was happening because there were glaring problems, and each and
every researcher working on this throughout the centuries was
struggling mightily to retain the textus receptus status of the
Bible!
The only exception to this that I have mentioned in this
whole chain of events is our curious guy Abraham ibn Ezra, who KNEW
about problems in the text of the Torah in the 12th century and
enjoined others to silence!
Remember what he said?
“And if you
understand, then you will recognize the truth. And he who
understands will keep silent.”
What do we see as the result of this
silence? Over eight hundred years of Crusades, the Inquisition, and
general suppression, and in our present day, the wars between the
Israelis and Palestinians based on the claim that Israel is the
Promised Land, and that it “belongs” to the Jews. Which brings us to
another startling bit of information.
The great Jewish scholar, Rashi de Troyes, (1040-1105), makes the
astonishingly frank statement that the Genesis narrative, going back
to the creation of the world, was written to justify what we might
now call genocide. The God of Israel, who gave his people the
Promised Land, had to be unequivocally supreme so that neither the
dispossessed Canaanites nor anyone else could ever appeal against
his decrees.251
251 Ashe,
Geoffrey, The Book of Prophecy, (Blandford, London 1999) p. 27.
Rashi’s precise words were that God told us the
creation story and included it in the Torah,
“to tell his people
that they can answer those who claim that the Jews stole the land
from its original inhabitants. The reply should be; God made it and
gave it to them but then took it and gave it to us. As he made it
and it’s his, he can give it to whoever he chooses”.
The fact is, the Jews are still saying this, with the support of
many Christian Fundamentalists whose beliefs are being pandered to
by George Bush and his purported Christian cronies for their own
imperialist and economic motives. This leads us to another
interesting point: the establishing of “one God” over and above any
and all other Gods, is an act of violence no matter how you look at
it.
In The Curse of Cain, Regina Schwartz writes about the
relationship between Monotheism and Violence, positing that
Monotheism itself is the root of violence:
Collective Identity, which is a result of a covenant of Monotheism,
is explicitly narrated in the Bible as an invention, a radical break
with Nature. A transcendent deity breaks into history with the
demand that the people he constitutes obey the law he institutes,
and first and foremost among those laws is, of course, that they
pledge allegiance to him, and him alone, and that this is what makes
them a unified people as opposed to the ‘other’, as in all other
people, which leads to violence. In the Old Testament, vast numbers
of ‘other’ people are obliterated, while in the New
Testament, vast numbers are colonized and converted for the sake of
such
covenants.252
Schwartz also writes about the idea of the “provisional” nature of a
covenant: that it is conditional.
“Believe in me and obey me or else
I will destroy you.”
Doesn’t sound like there is any choice, does
there? And we find ourselves in the face of a pure and simple Nazi Theophany.
In the 19th century, Biblical scholars figured out that there were
not just two major sources in the Pentateuch; there were, in fact,
four. It was realized that the first four books were not just
doublets, but there were also triplets that converged with other
characteristics and contradictions leading to the identification of
another source. Then, it was realized that Deuteronomy was a
separate source altogether. More than that, there was not just the
problem of the original source documents, there was the problem of
the work of the “mysterious editor”.
Thus, after years of suffering,
bloodshed and death over the matter, it was realized that somebody
had “created” what Westerners know as the Old Testament by
assembling four different source documents in an attempt to create a
“continuous” history, designated at different times as Torah, as
well as additional “edited” documents. After much further analysis,
it was concluded that most of the laws and much of the narrative of
the Pentateuch were not even part of the time of Moses.
And, that
meant that it couldn’t have been written by Moses at all. More than
that, the writing of the different sources was not even that of
persons who lived during the days of the kings and prophets, but
were evidentially products of writers who lived toward the end of
the biblical period!
Many scholars just couldn’t bear the results of their own work.
A
German scholar who had identified the Deuteronomy source exclaimed
that such a view,
“suspended the beginnings of Hebrew history not
upon the grand creations of Moses, but upon airy nothings”.
Other
scholars realized that what this meant was that the picture of
biblical Israel as a nation governed by laws based on the Abrahamic
and Mosaic covenants was completely false. I expect that such a
realization may have contributed to a suicide or two; it most
definitely led to a number of individuals leaving the field of
Theology and textual criticism altogether.
Another way of putting their conclusions was that the Bible claimed
a history for the first 600 years of Israel that probably never
existed. It was all a lie.253
252 Schwartz, Regina M., The Curse of
Cain, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1997).
253 Of
course, by now the reader has realized that it is not really a
“lie,” properly speaking. It is just a highly mythicized account of
the doings of some people in a certain historical context. But after
the mythicization, and the imposition of the belief in the myth as
the reality, as well as the passage of a couple of thousand years,
figuring out who is who and who really did what is problematical at
best.
Well, they couldn’t handle this. After years of being conditioned to
believe in an upcoming “End of the World”, with Jehovah or Christ as
saviors of the chosen during this dreaded event, the terror of their
condition, that there might not be a “savior”, was just too awful to
bear. So along came the cavalry – Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) - to
the rescue.
Wellhausen synthesized all of the discoveries so as to preserve the
belief systems of the religious scholars. He amalgamated the view
that the religion of Israel had developed in three stages with the
view that the documents were also written in three stages, and then
he defined these stages based on the content of the “stage.” He
tracked the characteristics of each stage, examining the way in
which the different documents expressed religion, the clergy, the
sacrifices and places of worship as well as the religious holidays.
He considered the legal and narrative sections and the other books
of the Bible. In the end, he provided a “believable framework” for
the development of Jewish history and religion.
The first stage was
the “nature/fertility” period; the second was “spiritual/ethical”
period; and the last was the “priestly/legal” period. As Friedman
notes,
“To this day, if you want to disagree, you disagree with Wellhausen. If you want to pose a new model, you compare its merits
with those of Wellhausen’s model”.254
254 Friedman, op. cit.,
pp. 26-7.
I should also note at this
point, that even though Wellhausen was trying to save the buns of
Judaism and Christianity from the fire, he was not appreciated in
his own time. A professor of Old Testament, William Robertson Smith,
who taught at the Free Church of Scotland College at Aberdeen, and
who was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, was put on trial
before the church on the charge of heresy for promoting the work of Wellhausen. He was cleared, but the tag “the wicked bishop” followed
him to his grave.
Nevertheless, analysis of the Bible has proceeded. The book of
Isaiah was traditionally thought to have been written by the prophet
Isaiah who lived in the eighth century BC. As it happens, most of
the first half of this book fits such a model. But, chapters 40
through 66 are apparently written by someone who lived about 200
years later! This means that, in terms of “prophecy”, it was written
after the fact.
New tools and methods of our modern time have made it possible to do
some really fine work in the areas of linguistic analysis and
relative chronology of the material. Additionally, there has been a
veritable archaeological frenzy since Wellhausen! This
archaeological work has produced an enormous amount of information
about Egypt, Mesopotamia, and other regions surrounding Israel,
which includes clay tablets, inscriptions on the walls of tombs,
temples and habitations, and even papyri.
Here we find another
problem: in all the collected sources, both Egyptian and west Asian,
there are virtually no references to Israel,
its “famous people” and
founders, its Biblical associates, or anything else prior to the
12th century BC. And the fact is, for 400 years after that, no more
than half a dozen allusions can be deduced. And they are
questionable in context. Yet the fundamentalist Orthodox Jews cling
to these tattered references like straws in the hands of a drowning
man. Oddly, the Fundamentalist Christians just simply close off any
awareness to the entire matter by the simple expedient of the
execution of the 11th commandment: thou shalt not ask questions!
The problem of the lack of outside validation of the existence of
Israel as a sovereign nation in the area of Palestine finds
correspondence in the Bible itself. The Bible displays absolutely no
knowledge of Egypt or the Levant during the 2nd millennium BC. The
Bible says nothing about the Egyptian empire spreading over the
entire eastern Mediterranean (which it did); there is no mention of
the great Egyptian armies on the march (which they were); and no
mention of marching Hittites moving against the Egyptians (which
they did); and especially no mention of Egyptianized kinglets ruling
Canaanite cities (which was the case).
The great and disastrous
invasion of the Sea Peoples during the second millennium is not even
mentioned in the Bible. In fact, Genesis described the Philistines
as already settled in the land of Canaan at the time of Abraham! The
names of the great Egyptian kings are completely absent from the
Bible. In other places, historical figures that were not heroic have
been transformed by the Bible into heroes as in the case of the Hyksos Sheshy (Num. 13:22). In another case, the sobriquet of
Ramesses II is given to a Canaanite general in error.
The Egyptian
king who was supposed to assist Hosea in his rebellion of 2 Kings
17:4 has “suffered the indignity” of having his city given as his
name. The Pharaoh Shabtaka turns up in the Table of Nations in
Genesis 10:7 as a Nubian tribe!
The errors of confirmed history and
archaeology pile higher and higher the more one learns about the
actual times and places, so that the idea that comes to mind again
and again is that the writers of the Bible must have lived in the
7th and 6th centuries BC, or later, and knew almost nothing about
the events of only a few generations before them. Donald B. Redford,
Professor of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Toronto, has
published extensively on archaeology and Egyptology.
Regarding the
use of the Bible as a historical source, he writes:
For the standard scholarly approach to the history of Israel during
the United Monarchy amounts to nothing more than a bad attack of
academic ‘wishful thinking’. We have these glorious narratives in
the books of Samuel and 1st Kings, so well written and ostensibly
factual. What a pity if rigorous historical criticism forces us to
discard them and not use them. Let us, then, press them into service
–what else have we? – and let the burden of proof fall on others.[…]
While one might be unwise to impute crypto-fundamentalist motives,
the current fashion of treating the sources at face value as
documents written up in large part in the court of Solomon, arises
from an equally misplaced desire to rehabilitate the faith and undergird it with any arguments, however fallacious.[…]
Such
ignorance is puzzling if one has felt inclined to be impressed by
the traditional claims of inerrancy made by conservative
Christianity on behalf of the Bible. And indeed the Pentateuch and
the historical books boldly present a precise chronology that would
carry the Biblical narrative through the very period when the
ignorance and discrepancy prove most embarrassing. […]
Such manhandling of the evidence smacks of prestidigitation and
numerology; yet it has produced the shaky foundations on which a
lamentable number of “histories” of Israel have been written. Most
are characterized by a somewhat naive acceptance of sources at face
value coupled with failure to assess the evidence as to its origin
and reliability. The result was the reduction of all data to a
common level, any or all being grist for a wide variety of mills.
Scholars expended substantial effort on questions that they had
failed to prove were valid questions at all. Under what dynasty did
Joseph rise to power? Who was the Pharaoh of the Oppression? Of the
Exodus? Can we identify the princess who drew Moses out of the
river? Where did the Israelites make their exit from Egypt: via the
Wady Tumilat or by a more northerly point?
One can appreciate the pointlessness of these questions if one poses
similar questions of the Arthurian stories, without first submitting
the text to a critical evaluation. Who were the consuls of Rome when
Arthur drew the sword from the stone? Where was Merlin born?
Can one seriously envisage a classical historian pondering whether
it was Iarbas or Aeneas that was responsible for Dido’s suicide,
where exactly did Remus leap over the wall, what really happened to
Romulus in the thunderstorm, and so forth? In all these imagined
cases none of the material initially prompting the questions has in
any way undergone a prior evaluation as to how historical it is! And
any scholar who exempts any part of his sources from critical
evaluation runs the risk of invalidating some or all of his
conclusions.[…]
Too often “Biblical” in this context has had the limiting effect on
scholarship by implying the validity of studying Hebrew culture and
history in isolation. What is needed rather is a view of ancient
Israel within its true Near Eastern context, and one that will
neither exaggerate nor denigrate Israel’s actual place within that
setting.255
255 Redford, Donald B., Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press 1992), pp. 301, 258, 260-1,
263. (Italics ours)
Please take careful note of Redford’s comment:
“any
scholar who exempts any part of his sources from critical evaluation
runs the risk of invalidating some or all of his conclusions”.
The
seriousness of this cannot be understated. You see, people have died
by the millions because of this book called The Bible and the
beliefs of those who study it. And they are dying today in
astonishing numbers for the same reasons!
In the end, if those who read and/or analyze this book and come to
some particular belief about it are wrong, and they then impose this
belief upon millions of other people, who are then influenced to
create a culture and a reality based upon a false belief, and in the
end, it is wrong, what in the name of God is going on? (No pun
intended!)
The problem with using the Bible as history is the lack of secondary
sources.
There is considerable material from the various ancient
libraries prior to the 10th century BC, “grist for the historian’s
mill”, but these sources fall silent almost completely at the close
of the 20th dynasty in Egypt. Thus, the Bible, being pretty much the
only source that claims to cover this particular period, becomes
quite seductive; never mind that the archaeology doesn’t really
“fit”, or can only be made to fit with a large helping of assumption
or closing of the mind to other possibilities.
But, might there be a reason for this silence of other sources?
That’s one good question about “what is”.
The person who is using the Bible as history is forced, when all
emotion is taken out of the picture, to admit that he has no means
of checking the historical veracity of the Biblical texts. As Donald
Redford noted above, the scholars who admit, when pressed, that
rigorous historical criticism forces us to discard the Biblical
narratives, nevertheless will use them saying “what else do we
have”? Again, I ask: why?
In older times, we know that the many books written about the Bible
as history were inspired from a fundamentalist motivation to confirm
the religious “rightness” of Western Civilization. In the present
time, there is less of this factor involved in Biblical Historical
studies. Nevertheless, there is still a tendency to treat these
sources at “face value” by folks who ought to know better! I could
go on about this in some detail, but I think everyone reading this
is with me here in having a clue about what I am saying, even if
they don’t agree.
But, the point is, again, “Who wrote the Bible and
why?”.
We come back to that curious assertion of Rashi’s that the Genesis
narrative was written to justify genocide. If we put that together
with Umberto Eco’s implication in his book, The Search for The
Perfect Language, that validation of the Hebrew Bible was supported
by early Christian scholars primarily to validate Judaism, which was
necessary in order to then “validate” Christianity as the “one true
religion”, we begin to get the uneasy feeling that we have been
“had”.
What this amounts to is that we are all “Christian” so that
the “rights” of the Jews, the unappealable decrees of
Jehovah/Yahweh, could be “inherited” by the Christian
Church as
instituted for political reasons by Constantine!
Nevertheless, by
the very act of validating Judaism, and “creating” Christianity in
the form of the Egyptian religion, the Western world, in its greed
for power, may very well have taken a tiger by the tail.
During this very period when the New Testament came into being,
(incorporating some older texts, based on internal evidence, but
highly edited and mostly a “cut and paste” job), we find the Western
world in the midst of the dark ages from which, again, very few
secondary sources survived.
Isn’t that strange?!
The Old Testament is written about a Dark Age,
though a few hundred years after it, and the New Testament is
written about a Dark Age, also a few hundred years after it. Both of
them incorporate some probably valid stories though mostly they are
edited, cut and pasted, with a lot of glossing and interpolation
from the perspective of a definite “political” agenda. Do we see a
pattern here? Could there be a reason?
At the end of it all, what we observe is a basically Draconian,
monotheistic system in place over most of the globe. It is the
wellspring from which nearly every aspect of our society is drawn.
It has been the justification for the greatest series of bloodbaths
in “recorded” history. Could there be a reason for this? Considering
this, one would think that the knowledge of who wrote the Bible, and
when they probably did it, would be considered crucial to anyone who
wishes to be better equipped to make decisions of faith and belief
upon which every aspect of their lives may depend.
As we have already discovered, what began as a search for answers
about the puzzling contradictory passages in the Pentateuch led to
the idea that Moses didn’t write them. This then led to the
discovery that several widely divergent sources were combined into
one, and that even this was done at different times, in different
ways. Each of the sources is clearly identifiable by characteristics
of language and content. New breakthroughs in archaeology and our
understanding of the social and political world of the time have
helped enormously in our understanding of the milieu in which this
document was created. Because, in the end, the Bible’s history is
really the history of the Jews.
The Old Testament is a book that is a combination of several
sources, J (Yahweh), E(lohim), D(euteronomy), P(riestly) and the
final editor who combined all of these and added his own touches.
It is theorized, based on the evidence, that the E version was
written by a Levite priest advocate of the Mosaic line of priests at
Shiloh, and J was written by an advocate of the Aaronic line of
priests and the Davidic royal house at Jerusalem. The conclusion is
that they were each written down from oral sources of myth and
legend with some history mixed in after the purported split of the
two kingdoms, and then recombined after the Syrian conquest during
the reign of Hezekiah.
However, it is also entirely likely that
there never was a united kingdom of Israel in Palestine, but that
these stories of a great kingdom were tribal memories of something
else altogether. The author of J is estimated to have lived between
848 and 722 BC and the author of E between 922 and 722 BC. Thus it
is that E is probably the older document and J represented either a
different perspective, or changes that were added.
In the Bible, the story of the unification of the tribes of Israel
under David, followed by the great reign of Solomon, followed by
schism in the reign of Solomon’s son Rehoboam, is the central theme.
The “hope of Israel” is based on the idea of reunification of Judah
and Israel under a Davidic king. Of course, all of this is based on
the giving of the land to the Children of Israel when they were
“brought out of Egypt” by the hand of God during the Exodus to begin
with. Moses represents the divinely inspired leader who revealed the
God of the patriarchs to the nation as the “Universal Deity”. Does
the testimony of the spade support the Exodus on either side of the
story?
The Exodus story describes how a nation enslaved grows great in
exile and then, with the help of the Universal God, claims its
freedom from what was then the greatest nation on earth: Egypt.
Powerful imagery, yes? Indeed! So important is this story of
liberation that fully four-fifths of the central scriptures of
Israel are devoted to it.
The fact is: two hundred years of intensive excavations and study of
the remains
of ancient Egypt and Palestine have failed to support the Exodus
story in the
context in which it is presented.256
256 Ibid.
The House of David
From the earliest times, Israel was composed of a poorly
distinguished and variable number of “city-states” (more like tribal
towns) whose population was a melting pot from all areas of the
Mediterranean. The specific location that is identified as Israel
proper was a more or less backward, rural buffer zone between the
civilized Syrians and the nomads of Arabia.
The “culture” of this
region was a mixture of the advanced cultures surrounding: Egyptian,
Assyrian and Babylonian. These “city states” rose and fell, fighting
each other incessantly. A retrospective view seems to suggest that
acquiring plunder was seen as more productive than agriculture. In
another sense, these petty wars were seen as the conflict between
the Gods of one tribe against the Gods of another. As we will
discover, this concept may not have been too far from the truth.
What about the Kingdom of David and Solomon?
The books of Samuel tell us that the anointing of David, son of
Jesse, as king over all the tribes of Israel was the culmination of
the promises that had begun with the covenant between Abraham and
“God”. Never mind that the first choice for king had been the heroic
and dashing Saul from the tribe of Benjamin, it was David who became
the “folk hero” of early Israelite history.
The endless stories in praise of King David were claimed by the
Bible to be so widespread that it passes understanding how they were
not known in the “external world” of Egypt, Greece, Assyria and
Babylon - if they were true. But, as we will discover, perhaps they
were - under a different name and title. The only question is: which
versions are the most accurate? Did the Hebrews co-opt these stories
to their own “history”, or was there something about their history
that was borrowed by the later sources? And in either case, what is
the actual historical setting of these stories? Were they an overlay
of myth on an actual historical series of events?
Or was a
historical series of events manufactured out of myth? In any event,
just as Perseus slew the Gorgon and cut off her head, David slew the
giant, Goliath. They both had “wallets” and “stones” were important
elements of both stories. David was “adopted” into the royal court
because he was a famous harpist and singer in the manner of Orpheus.
Like Hercules and other Greek heroes, David was a rebel and
freebooter, and like Paris stole Helen, he stole another man’s wife - Bathsheba. He also conquered the great citadel of Jerusalem and a
vast empire beyond.
The stories of David’s son and heir (from Bathsheba), Solomon, tell
us that he was the wisest of all kings. He was also the greatest of
all builders. The stories tell how he was so brilliant and how his
judgments stand as a model for all time. What is more, his wealth
was beyond anything else in the known world, and most particularly,
he constructed the great Temple in Jerusalem.
For millennia, readers of the Bible have discussed the days of David
and Solomon in Israel as though they actually occurred exactly as
described. Even people who are not Christian accept that the Temple
of Solomon existed, and the plan of this temple has been developed
and discussed endlessly by esotericists for centuries. Endless books
and legends and secret doctrines have been based on the stories of
the Temple of Solomon. Pilgrims, Crusaders, visionaries and even
many modern-day books about human origins and the origins of
Christianity, have all spread fabulous stories about the
magnificence of David’s city and Solomon’s Temple and the supposed
treasures contained within.
Our entire Western culture has a heavy,
vested interest in these stories being true. What are we going to do
with this vast body of literature, including such things as Masonic
and Magical lore if it turns out that there never was a “Temple of
Solomon”?
But, the fact is, that seems to be the case. At least, there was no
Temple of Solomon in the terms described in the Bible.
One of the first quests of archaeologists in Palestine was the
search for the remains of Solomon’s Temple and the great empire of
David. It would be tedious to go through all the descriptions of the
many excavations, the results, the assumptions, the wild claims of
“I’ve found something that proves it!”, which were then followed by
sober science demonstrating that it wasn’t so. The reader who is
interested in deeper knowledge in this area can certainly read both
sides of the argument, and then look at the scientific evidence and
come to the same conclusion we have: The Kingdom of David and the
Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem never existed as described by the
Bible.
Even though there were remains of some sort of “kingdom” found at
Megiddo, Gezer and Hazor, it was later determined that this “empire”
was actually something altogether different than might initially be
supposed as we shall soon see.257
257 Finkelstein,
Israel, and Silberstein, Neil Asher; The Bible Unearthed, (New York:
The Free Press 2001).
What is important, however, is the
fact that the area that was specifically claimed as the “homeland”
of David and Solomon - Judah - was “conspicuously undeveloped”
during the time of the purported empire of Solomon. The facts are
that the culture of this region was extremely simple. Based on the
evidence of the spade, the land was rural - with no trace of written
documents, inscriptions, or even any signs of the kind of widespread
literacy that would be necessary for a functioning monarchy. What is
more, the area was not even homogeneous.
There
is no evidence of any kind of
unified culture, nor of any sort of central administration. The area
from Jerusalem to the north was densely settled, and the area from
Jerusalem to the south, the land “in question”, was very sparsely
settled in the time that David and Solomon were supposed to have
lived. In fact, Jerusalem itself was little more than a typical
highland village.
Archaeologically, nothing can be said about David
and Solomon. Yet the legend endured. Why? The important thing to
remember at this point is the fact that the evidence supports only a
gradual emergence of a distinct group in Canaan at the end of the
thirteenth century BC, not a sudden arrival of a vast number of
Israelite settlers.
And, as noted, the ones who were present in the
land were not very organized or “civilized” in the area that was
claimed as the great kingdom of David and Solomon.
Ahab and Jezebel: Solomon and Sheba?
Biblical historians and biblical archaeologists have long attempted
to take the biblical account of the rise and fall of the united
monarchy at face value. They have assumed an original ethnic unity
and distinctiveness of the Hebrew people reaching into the primeval
past. They took for granted that the united monarchy of David and
Solomon, and its tragic collapse, were facts belonging to Israel in
terms of the land of Palestine at a particular period in time.
Further, it was assumed that, since Judah and Israel, the two
kingdoms, had originally been one, when they split, they both
inherited fully formed institutions of church and state. At that
point, they were believed to have engaged in competition with one
another on a more or less equal footing.
However, intensive archaeological work in the hill country of Israel
in the 1980s put those ideas to rest. Curiously, what the
archaeologists found was that there had been three waves of
settlement activity. The first was between 3500-2200 BC. The second
was around 2000-1550 BC. The third was 1150-900 BC. We recognize
these time windows as being previously related to possible
cataclysms.258
258 Baillie, Mike, Exodus to
Arthur (London: B.T. Batsford 1999).
In any event, during these three periods of
settlement activity - periods when new people arrived and left
evidence of a distinct cultural norm, the northern and southern
“kingdoms” always seemed to be separate in these terms. The northern
settlement system was always dense and possessed evidence of complex
hierarchy of large, medium, and small sites. These sites were
heavily dependent on settled agriculture.
The southern “kingdom”, on the other hand, was sparsely settled in
small sites, with only evidence of a population of migratory
pastoral groups. We have, then, a division between agriculturalists
and shepherds right from the beginning.
During the early period of settlement, these northern and southern
regions were each dominated by a single center that was probably the
focus of regional politics, economics, and most likely, cultic
activity. In the north, it was the area that was later occupied by a
city that the Bible calls Tirzah. This became the first capital of
the northern kingdom. In the south, the main center was Ai, located
northeast of Jerusalem.
In the Middle Bronze Age, there was the second wave of settlement,
again, the north was dense and agricultural and the south was sparse - with tiny settlements - and a lot of evidence of wandering
pastoralists. But, by now, the central site of cult and economy was
Jerusalem - a heavily fortified city that gives evidence of being
part of the Hyksos Empire.
This matches Manetho’s account of the
Hyksos leaving Egypt and building a city and temple in Jerusalem.
The only problem is: it’s the wrong date to have been built after
the Hyksos left Egypt, so most archaeologists just assume that there
was a Hyksos presence in Canaan that was contemporary to the Hyksos
in Egypt. Nearby was Hebron; also heavily fortified. In the north,
the center of activity had moved to Shechem. Apparently, Shechem
possessed significant fortifications and a massive temple.
Regarding this particular period of history, there is also external
evidence from Egypt as to who was who and what was what. These
consist of what are called the “Execration Texts”, the Egyptian
version of voodoo. The Egyptians would write curses on clay figures
of their enemies and then smash them and ceremonially bury them. The
idea was, of course, to symbolically smash the object of the curse.
What is important about the Execration Texts is that they give us a
clue as to who the Egyptians felt to be most threatening.
The
Execration Texts mention a large number of coastal and lowland
cities of Canaan, but only two highland centers: Shechem and
Jerusalem.
Keeping in mind the probable link between the Hyksos in Egypt and the Canaanites in Palestine, we can conjecture
why the Egyptians were feeling so hostile toward Shechem and
Jerusalem. The important thing is that the execration texts, which
purportedly date back to at least 1630 BC, mention Jerusalem,
Shechem, and Hazor, but none of them ever mention Israel.
Another
Egyptian inscription, which records the adventures of a general
named Khu-Sebek who led an expedition into the Canaanite highlands,
purportedly in the 19th century BC, refers to the “land of Shechem”,
and compares Shechem to Retenu which is one of the Egyptian names
for all of Canaan. Interestingly, the Egyptians also referred to the
Hyksos as “princes of Retenu”. This indicates that as early as 1800
BC there was a territorial entity in northern Canaan and that an
important center of this territory was Shechem; further, that it did
indeed have a close relationship, at some point, to the Hyksos in
Avaris, and it wasn’t Israel.
The Tell el-Amarna letters confirm that there is, at some point late
in this period,
a southern territory of some significance to Egypt, with the city of
Jerusalem as an
important center. A number of these letters refer to the rulers of
these two citystates - a king named Abdi-Heba who reigned in Jerusalem; and a king named
Labayu who reigned in Shechem. Each of them controlled a territory
of about a thousand square miles. This was the largest area held by
a single local ruler since all the rest of Canaan was divided up
into small city-states. It is also curious to note the similarity of
these names to “Abraham” and “Laban.”
The problem is, as Redford notes, that “one has the sinking feeling
in approaching this period that a most significant page is missing
in the record”. And indeed there is.
The bottom line is: archaeological evidence suggests that despite
the biblical claims of richness and glory, Jerusalem was little more
than a village in the time assigned to David and Solomon. In the
interim, during the “missing page period”, the former fortified city
had long since disappeared. In other words, the northern kingdom
that was supposed to have “broken away” from the rule of Jerusalem
was well on its way to major state status while Judah had been
returned to a condition not unlike a backwater sheep station.
At the same time that the northern highlands were outpacing the
southern highlands during all the three periods of settlement, the
coastal city-states were leaving both of them in the dust. They were
busy, thriving, cosmopolitan, and wealthy. Archaeologists think that
what made possible the initial independence of the highlands was the
fact that the city-state system of Canaan suffered a series of
catastrophically destructive upheavals at the end of the Late Bronze
Age. The archaeologists are uncertain as to the cause of this
“cataclysm”, suggesting it to be the invasion of the Sea Peoples or
other such propositions. We have an idea already that it was
probably more than that.
What seems to have happened is that the coastal city-states
recovered from the “cataclysms”, had been rebuilt and were thriving,
when suddenly they were destroyed a second time in a rather short
period, this time - supposedly - by military onslaught and fire.
Whatever it was, the destruction was so complete that the Canaanite
cities of the plain and the coast never recovered. The source of
this destruction is thought to have been the military campaign of
Shishak, founder of the twenty-second Dynasty.
This invasion is
mentioned in the Bible where it says that,
“In the fifth year of Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem; he took
away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the
king’s house; he took away everything. He also took away the shields
of gold that Solomon had made”.
Shishak/Sheshonq commissioned a triumphal inscription to commemorate
the event on the temple walls at Karnak. This inscription lists
about one hundred fifty towns and villages he wiped out in his
“march to the sea”, so to speak. The targets of the Egyptians seem
to have been the great Canaanite cities of Rehov, Bethshean,
Taanach, and Megiddo. A fragment of a victory stele bearing the name
of Shishak was found at Megiddo.259
259
Unfortunately, it had been dumped in the trash at the archaeological
site so its precise provenance is unknown.
Thick layers of ash and the
evidence of the collapse of buildings bear mute testimony to the
rage of Pharaoh, which led to the sudden death of the Canaanite
territory in the late tenth century BC. There is very
little evidence of this
assault in the hill country, the main campaign being directed at the
cities of the Jezreel valley. If there was a “Temple” that was
plundered by Shishak, it wasn’t in Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, it is suggested that this raid of Shishak’s created an
opportunity for the people of the highland to expand into the
lowlands at the beginning of the ninth century. Meanwhile, the
archaeological records show that, far to the south, Jerusalem
continued along as a regime of dispersed villages and pastoral
shepherds.
This is the evidence of the spade at the time of the supposed end of
the united monarchy around 900 BC.
In the northern kingdom, regional administrative centers were built
in the early ninth century. They were heavily fortified and complete
with elaborate, luxurious palaces. These cities include Megiddo,
Jezreel, and Samaria. Similar constructions appear in the southern
territory only in the seventh century. Yet, even when the
construction methods moved south, the buildings were smaller and the
construction was of a poorer quality.
In short, it can be said that the northern kingdom of Israel,
supposed to have been the “bad boy breakaway” from the great united
kingdom of David and Solomon in the south, was actually a fully
developed state while Judah was still a country cousin.
Yahweh was present in both kingdoms, however - among many other cult
Gods. And it is certain that peoples of both kingdoms shared similar
stories about their origins, though in different versions, and they
most certainly spoke a similar language. By the 8th century BC, they
also both wrote in the same script. The chief thing about them,
however, is that the two kingdoms had a different experience of the
world around them. Their demographics were different. Their economy
was different. Their material culture was different. How they
related to their neighbors was different.
In short, they actually
had quite different histories and cultures.
The question we should like to ask is: why does the Bible tell the
story of the schism and secession of Israel from Judah when that is
clearly not supported by the evidence of either archaeology or
history as known to external sources? Why were the two kingdoms
systematically portrayed as twin offspring of a single great empire
that was headquartered in Jerusalem? There was a reason, as we will
soon see.
In actual fact, the first great king of Israel was Omri. The Bible
gives a very sketchy and confused history of the first period of the
Northern kingdom after its supposed defection from unity. The sordid
tale of violence and treachery culminates in the suicide of a
usurper, Zimri, in the flames of the royal palace at Tirzah. Omri,
the commander of the army is invited by the people to become king,
and he naturally obliges. It was a good choice. Not only that, the
story bears some resemblance to the selection of David - a military
commander - for kingship over the heirs of Saul.
Omri built a new capital for himself at Samaria and laid the
foundations of his dynasty. After twelve years, his son Ahab came to
the throne. Ahab made a brilliant marriage to the daughter of the
Phoenician king Ethbaal, King of Tyre, so we have again a curious
reflection of the Bible story of Solomon and his friendship with “Hiram, King of Tyre”. Was this
Ethbaal the real “Hiram”?
In any event, Ahab built magnificent
cities and established one of the most powerful armies in the
region. He conquered extensive territory to the north and in the Transjordan, and Israel enjoyed wealth and extensive trade
connections. The kingdom of Israel was finally something to notice!
However, the character of this kingdom was markedly different from
the tiny kingdom of Judah. Ahab was about the most hated individual
in all the Biblical texts. What Ahab did that caused him to be so
viciously vilified, according to the editor of the Bible, was that
he committed the greatest of Biblical sins: he introduced foreign
Gods into the land of Israel and caused the priests and prophets of
Yahweh to be put to death. What’s more, he did it because of the
influence of that wicked Phoenician princess he had married:
Jezebel.
The Bible dwells long and pruriently upon the sins of this famous
couple. Nevertheless, we ought to note that these very same sins
were attributed to Solomon, who was, however, transmogrified into a
southern kingdom monarch, and was, therefore, forgiven even if
Yahweh was determined to punish his family. One gets the
disorienting feeling that the stories of Omri and Ahab and David and
Solomon are, essentially, the same. Jezebel was most especially
hated because she tossed the prophets and priests of Yahweh out on
their ears. Solomon was also recorded to have ejected the priests of
Shiloh, so again, we have a cross connection.
In the Bible, the heroes of the story of Omri and Ahab are the
prophets Elijah and Elisha - no doubt priests of Shiloh (which will
become quite significant rather soon) - since it was recorded as the
home of the prophet Ahijah in 1 Kings, 14:2. A great demonstration
of the power of Yahweh is said to have been engineered by Elijah in
his confrontation with Ahab, and the result was that the people
seized the prophets of the foreign God, Baal, and slaughtered them
at the brook Kishon. Jezebel, naturally, went on a rampage, and
Elijah felt it was time to get out of Dodge.
He headed for the hills
in the wilderness and talked to God on Mount Horeb just like Moses
was supposed to have done. Yahweh pronounced a dire prophecy against
Ahab, but curiously gave him a few more chances to redeem himself as
evidenced by his victories against Ben-Hadad, king of Aram-Damascus.
Yahweh, apparently, was willing to relent if Ahab would kill
Ben-Hadad. However, Ahab decided to make peace instead, and a treaty
was arranged. On and on the account goes, vilifying Ahab and
Jezebel.
After his death, Elisha anointed another general in the
army to be king, Jehu. This guy was more to Yahweh’s liking,
apparently, and Yahweh saw to it that Jezebel suffered a terrible
death, thrown from a window and devoured by dogs. Jehu then sent for
all of Ahab’s sons, (there were reportedly 70 of them), by any
number of wives or concubines, and had them all slaughtered and
their heads piled up in a mound at the gate of the city to inspire
awe and confidence in the new king, not to mention Yahweh. The Bible
says that Jehu brought down the Omrides, yet there is evidence that
this is probably not true.
In 1993, an inscription was found that is believed to have been
produced by Hazael, king of Aram-Damascus. From the inscription, it
seems that Hazael captured the city of Dan around 835 BC and refers
to the “House of David”. Hazael’s invasion was clearly the one that
weakened the power of the northern kingdom. The text of the Dan inscription links the
death of Jehoram, the son of Ahab and Jezebel, to an Aramaean
victory.
Hazael boasts:
[I killed Jeho]ram son of [Ahab] king of Israel and [I]killed
[Ahaz]iahu son of [Jehoram kin]g of the House of David. And I set
[their towns into ruins and turned] their land into[desolation].
Thus it is that the likelihood that the violent destruction of the
“Solomonic” palaces that was long ascribed to the Egyptian raid led
by Pharaoh Shishak in the late 10th century BC, actually took place
around 835, and was due to Hazael and not Jehu. Thus ended the
Omride dynasty.
Let me emphasize that the Omride dynasty is referred to by Hazael as
the “House of David”.
-
Why?
-
Was Omri, in fact, the “Beloved” of
Yahweh?
-
Or was the House of the Beloved originally the
Beloved of
another “God”?
Nevertheless, we begin to see how Elijah’s terrible
prophecy on the fate of Ahab was fulfilled: by twisting the facts
after the fact. Of course, as we will see, an awful lot of Yahweh’s
other prophecies were “fulfilled”, after the fact and only during
the writing of the Bible. The invasion of Ben-hadad, who Ahab was
supposed to kill and didn’t, and thus angered Yahweh, actually took
place much later in the history of the northern kingdom.
So we find, again and again, when the anachronisms and historical
inaccuracies are removed from the story, there is really nothing
left of the Bible proper except a tedious tale of threats by Yahweh
and fulfillment of those threats all designed to establish Yahweh as
the Universal God. Never mind that this process includes twisting
and distorting the facts all out of recognition.
What the record of
the spade shows about the Omrides is a great kingdom and a time of
general prosperity for all. It provides, in fact, a model of the
Davidic and Solomonic kingdom of Israel in all respects except for
the worship of Yahweh. That is why it was damned by the writers of
the Bible and retold in a “new version” that promoted Yahweh as the
God who had made Israel great, and whose abandonment had brought it
to its knees.
The facts are exactly the opposite. Israel never achieved anything
under the rule of the priests of Yahweh except constant suffering
and exile because of rulers who kept shooting themselves in the foot
with their two-faced politics and religio-cultural isolationist
policies.
The Omrides were a militarily powerful family of rulers reigning
over one of the strongest states of the Near East during that period
of time. It was only then that the rest of the world began to sit up
and take notice of Israel. A stele from this time says that, “Omri
was king of Israel, and he oppressed Moab.” Moab was a vassal state
of Israel. The stele continues by telling us how Mesha, the king of
Moab responsible for the stele, expanded his territory in rebellion
against Israel. We learn from Mesha that the kingdom of Israel
reached far to the east and south of its earlier domain in the
central hill country.
The Bible stresses the Omride’s military embarrassments repeatedly,
but it seems that they were sufficiently competent that they could
assemble a force that impressed the heck out of the great Assyrian
king Shalmaneser III, and sent him home in a hurry. Naturally,
Shalmaneser boasted of his victory in what is called the Monolith
inscription.
But it was found in Nimrud, not Israel, which testifies
to who really prevailed! The
Bible mentions an “Aramaean army” besieging Samaria; it is clear
that it was the Assyrian army and that Israel held their own. The
many archaeological finds in Palestine that were at first loudly
proclaimed to have been evidence of the reigns of David and Solomon,
actually turned out to be the building projects of Omri and Ahab.
Thus it is that if there was a David and Solomon of Israel, it was
Omri and Ahab, the dynasty that established the first fully
developed monarchy in Israel.
It is evident that the building projects of Omri employed
sophisticated earthmoving operations to turn small hilltop
settlements into significant fortresses. Where did the power and
wealth come from? What occurred to enable the northern kingdom to
grow into the Omride state? With the limited resources of the hill
country being only sufficient to maintain relatively small towns and
villages, what happened to nurture expansion?
Well, as noted, there was a wave of destruction of the cities of the
lowlands at the end of the 10th century BC, prior to the destruction
of the “Solomonic palaces”, of the Omrides and it is now thought
that this opened the way for a strong man with brains and ambition
to grab the reins and create an empire.
Apparently Omri was such a
man. He wasn’t responsible for the destruction of the “Philistines”,
as the Bible claimed about David, but he was certainly the man of
the hour who knew when his star was on the ascendant. He expanded
from the original hill country into the heart of the former
Canaanite territory at Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer. He enveloped the
territories of southern Syria and Transjordan. He established a vast
and diverse territorial state that controlled rich agricultural land
and held sway over a busy international trade route. What was even
more significant: his territory was a multi-ethnic society. This was
another reason the authors of the Bible demonized him.
When the northern kingdom of Israel united the Samarian highlands
with the northern valleys, it amounted to the integration of several
ecosystems including the heterogeneous population. It is very likely
that the core territory in the highlands would have identified
themselves as Israelites, but the peoples of the lowlands, the
valleys, were the indigenous Canaanite population. Farther to the
north were those whose ethnicity was Aramaean. Toward the coast,
Omri ruled over peoples who were Phoenician in origin. The
archaeology shows that the cultural roots of each group were
consistent through this period, and thus were apparently not
disturbed by Omri.
The evidence shows stability in the settlement
patterns such that it is evident that Omri did not try to force
anything on anybody; not even religious beliefs. He truly “united
the tribes of Palestine”, even if they weren’t, as the Bible
suggests, the “sons of Jacob” united under the divine guidance of
Yahweh; they were a diverse and unique mix.
And it is very likely
this gathering together of different ethnic groups was the real,
historical event that was later falsified in the myth of the 12
tribes as actual “families” of sons descended from Abraham. It seems
that this very diversity was the most important factor contributing
to the growth and expansion of the Omride dynasty. According to
estimates, Israel may have been the most densely populated state in
the Levant. Its only rival was Aram-Damascus in southern Syria.
The rise to power of Omri coincided with the general revival of
eastern Mediterranean trade. The harbor cities of Greece, Cyprus,
and the Phoenician coast were busily involved in trade and commerce, and thanks to Omri, Israel participated. There was a strong Phoenician artistic
influence on the Israelite culture, and a great many
Cypro-Phoenician style vessels appear in the archaeological strata.
This isn’t terribly unusual considering the fact that Ahab married a
Phoenician princess.
Conceptually and functionally, the Omride citadels resemble the
great Canaanite city-states of the Late Bronze Age. A similar
cultural continuity is evident in places like Taanach, where a
decorated cult-stand from the 9th century BC displays elaborate
motifs of the Canaanite traditions of that time. All of this is
interesting, however it creates a problem.
From the archaeological
perspective, there is nothing particularly Israelite about the
northern kingdom at all. In fact, it is only from the Bible that we
learn - or are told - that it was an Israelite kingdom, broken away
from the Solomonic empire. The true character of the Omride dynasty
is that of military might, architectural achievement, governmental
sophistication, and cosmopolitan tolerance. But all we learn from
the Bible was how much Omri and Ahab were hated.
The Biblical author obviously had to tell the “real” stories about
Omri, even if they had already been “mythicized”, but he twisted and
distorted every word. He diminished their military might with
ridicule and recitations of failures. He omitted the many victories
and successes that must have occurred or the dynasty would not have
achieved such expansion.
The Biblical author also linked the
opulence of the dynasty with idolatry and social injustice; he
connected the Phoenician princess to evil practices and whoring
after false Gods. The Biblical author historicized what had already
been mythicized, only he put his own negative spin on it. In short,
he wanted to show that the entire history of the northern kingdom
had been one of sin and degradation piled to heaven. Yet, the
evidence of the spade says otherwise.
The Biblical author then tells the tales of the “House of David” as
though it were the exclusive possession of the Southern kingdom. And
we are beginning to understand why: it was to justify Yahweh as the
Only God: the God of Israel.
The Ten Lost Tribes
As it turned out, the kingdom Omri built actually fell because he
succeeded too well. As an independent kingdom sitting in the shadow
of the great Assyrian empire, northern Israel was a tempting
treasure just asking to be plundered. In the reigns of the several
kings that followed Ahab, Yahweh is typically hypocritical in his
judgments. Or rather, he is written into the narrative as being
behind the successes or failures of the kings. If they succeeded at
anything while remaining idolatrous, it was because Yahweh had pity
on the people.
If the kings were faithful to Yahweh, but were
political failures causing the people to suffer, it was because of
some sin attributed to their forebears. Divine blessings seemed to
be singularly arbitrary. It never seemed to occur to any of the
priests of Yahweh that maybe he wasn’t such a hot choice for the
national God after all. In any event, after a string of kingly
failures, or failures of Yahweh to come through on his promises, a
truly idiotic king came to the throne: Hoshea.
At the same point in time, the late 8th century BC, Shalmaneser V
came to the throne of Assyria. Hoshea gave his word to be a vassal
to Shalmaneser, but went behind his back to form an alliance with
Egypt. He must have been a lousy judge of on which side his bread
was buttered, as well as not too ethically inclined since he made
one promise and then immediately reneged on it.
Remember how much
Egypt is supposed to be hated because of the slavery of the Jews
there? Well, we will notice repeatedly that this factor never seemed
to have entered the minds of the Israelites during this early
period. What Hoshea wanted from Egypt was support for a revolution
against Assyria. When Shalmaneser heard about it, he took Hoshea
captive, invaded what was left of Israel, laid siege to Samaria for
three years, and when he captured it, he “carried the Israelites
away to Assyria..”
Well, at least those who could not buy their
freedom.
After exiling the Israelites, Assyria brought in people from
Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and settled them in
the cities of Samaria to replace the people of Israel. None of the
original inhabitants were ever reported to have returned, and the
legend of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel was created from this event.
These lost tribes have been reported at: Great Zimbabwe in Africa;
Mexico, North America; Persia; Central Asia; China (the Chiang-Min
of Sichuan), and Japan.260
260 In Japanese, koru
means to freeze, and in Hebrew, kor means cold. This is taken as
proof that the “lost tribes” went to Japan, rather than the obvious
solution that there was, at one time, a proto-Nostratic language
from which all others descend.
The Book of Mormon discusses at great
length this matter of the “lost tribes” in America. The problem is,
of course, the assumption that there ever was 12 real tribes to
begin with as described in the Bible; that is, begun by the sons of
a single father, Jacob. I think that, by this time, the reader may
be coming to the realization that there could not be ten lost tribes
because there were no “tribes” to begin with – at least not in the
terms explicated in the Bible.
The story of Joseph in Egypt - Genesis 37 to 50 - is so different in
style and excellence that scholars believe it to be a literary
composition rather than a record. It shares many features with many
other Egyptian and Near Eastern stories of the same genre.
The
change in style in passing from the short and disjointed sections
dealing with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is unusual in other ways. The
story of Joseph demonstrates no interest at all in the covenant,
promises, and precedents of the rights of Israel or any of the other
matters that concern the authors of the earlier tales. There are no
meetings with Yahweh/Jehovah, no angels, no cities being blown up;
in short, nothing Jewish at all.
According to Genesis 45:11, the journey of Jacob and his family to
Egypt was an emergency measure to help them survive a famine.
Another version suggests that their clear intent was to settle in
Egypt permanently. This suggests the story is a borrowed piece of
Middle Eastern Literature, inserted into the Biblical narrative as
history, and, most especially, as a “genealogical placeholder”.
The
popular and obviously well known story of Joseph was claimed as the
origin of the diverse tribes that were later assimilated as “one
people”. The Joseph story brings all the “sons of Jacob” to Egypt
where they live out their lives. This directly and emphatically
contradicts the traditions of the individual tribes. For example, in
Genesis 38, Judah marries, settles, and raises his family in Canaan;
Simeon marries a Canaanite in Genesis 46:21; Ephraim dies in
Palestine in I Chronicles 6:20; Manasseh married an Aramaean in I
Chronicles 7:14, and his son, Machir, was at home in Gilead in both
Numbers 32:40 and I Chronicles 2:21-22.
Another discordant element
in the Joseph story is that the Egyptian names it mentions, Saphnathpane’ah, Asenath, Potiphar, and Potipherah, are names that
belong to the 21st Egyptian dynasty, and were common in the 9th
through 7th centuries BC - the Kushite-Saite period. Also, in
Genesis 42:34, an Aramaic title - saris from the Akkadian sa resi -
is a title found in the Persian administration of Egypt.
In short, a
strong case for a 7th or 6th century origin of the story can be
made, and the parallels to the story of Daniel in exile in Babylon
are numerous.
So, again, it seems that the “twelve sons of Jacob”,
as the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel, were originally
just simply loosely associated tribes with no specific familial
connection, and the story of Jacob as their father was developed as
a genealogical placeholder/connector.
The First “Torah” and the First “Temple”
At the time of fall of the Northern kingdom in 722 BC, many of the
refugees from Israel (who could be considered members of the other
“ten tribes” if one wishes to look at it that way), fled south into
the rural hill country of Judah. Apparently, among them, were the
priest-prophets of Shiloh - the enemies of Jezebel who felt that
their king had been corrupted by a woman - bringing their E document
with them. It was at this point that E was joined to J – probably by
a member of the Aaronic priesthood in Jerusalem, as part of King
Hezekiah’s program to consolidate his power.
Taking advantage of the situation presented to him – the destruction
of Israel, the acquiring of some of the population and its priests -
Hezekiah decided he wanted to unify the population and centralize
everything. He was going to be the new “David”. He was going to
unite all the people into one, and part of his unification plan
obviously included the psychological unity of religion. The lesson
of Omri’s tolerance for different groups and their beliefs was
obviously lost on Hezekiah. Either that, or he was well and truly
under the control of the priesthood.
This was the important moment
in which the P document was created and the division of priestly
status was established, with the Aaronite priests taking the higher
position and the Shiloh priests - the alleged descendants of Moses -
reduced to a servile status, which they did not like one bit. The P
document was the Aaronic priesthood’s editorial gloss of the
combined JE document. Even though they were unable to dispose of the
stories in J and E (the common property of the people), which
reflected a hostile view of Yahweh, history, and particularly of
Aaron, they utilized them in clever ways that laid the foundation
for the later full and final
imposition of the controls of Yahweh.
The P document sought to
glorify Yahweh over the other Gods that were an integral part of the
original stories, and it would naturally have edited out any
praiseworthy mention of them, though, as noted, the stories
themselves could not be dispensed with.
The writer of P was someone who knew the texts of J and E. The P
text was not just similar to J and E, nor was it just a lot of
doublets from J and E, it was written following J and E to stand, as
it’s own version of those stories. It was clearly written to be
presented in place of J and E, and that it is likely that J and E
were suppressed at the time of the presentation of P.
Not only did P open with a creation story and a flood story like J
and E, it went on to the major matters of the Abrahamic covenant,
the exodus from Egypt, and the covenant at Sinai. It refers to all
kinds of specific things that appear in the J/E text. There are more
than twenty-five cases of parallel accounts that were obviously not
intended to have been combined with J and E, as was done by a later
redactor. What’s more, though the similarities are blatant, the
differences are even more telling.
The question we need to ask is
this: why did the author of P think that it was necessary to write a
new version when he obviously had J and E in hand?
First of all, we need to consider what is said in J and E that is
significantly different from P. The peoples of the northern kingdom
had a long tradition of descent from Moses himself. Their documents
cast Aaron in a very bad light as the priest of the Golden Calf and
whose sister, Miriam, was stricken with disease because she
criticized the wife of Moses.
The northern kingdom, apparently, did
not worship a God who demanded sacrifices. The northern kingdom
beliefs emphasized prophets chosen by the Gods, rather than a
bloodline priesthood. In the purest sense, the creation of this part
of the text was primarily political just as the creation of the
Christian theology was primarily political. Both were designed to
emphasize those things that would make the subjects of the kingdom
amenable to control and domination.
Hezekiah undertook the elimination of all forms of religious
practice other than sanctioned worship at the Temple in Jerusalem.
Rigid religious control was instituted which meant that all the
places of worship of other Gods, and even Yahweh, outside of the
Temple had to be destroyed. These worship sites were called “high
places”. They were eliminated and centralized religion under the
control of the Levites in Jerusalem became the law in secular terms.
In fact, the law of Yahweh became the law of the land. As noted, the
Levites in charge at that time were the Aaronid Levites.
In order to understand the implications of this, one needs to
understand what was being done at these “high places” and why. The
function of sacrifice in the Middle Eastern world was not just the
senseless killing of an animal; it was, for the most part, a ritual
killing of the animal for food, and part of it was offered to any of
a number of Gods. The point was, if man wanted to eat meat, he had
to understand it as a taking of life, and such an act was sacred, to
be performed in a prescribed manner by an appointed person, a
priest, who also received a portion.
Thus, the effect of this ruling
was that, if people wanted to have lamb for dinner, you could no
longer perform the sacrifice at home or in a local “high place”. You
had to haul your sheep to Jerusalem where there was a conclave of
Levites. This, of
course, meant putting a lot of economic control and power into the
hands of a very few people. At the same time, the Aaronid Levites
who were writing the text of this new Torah made sure to add in
specific sacrifices to Yahweh over and above the simple ritualized
killing of their dinner. This ensured the enrichment of the
priesthood at the expense of the people.
Nevertheless, this very point of seeking to centralize religion at
that moment in time, and the writing of the P document, leads to one
of the important clues regarding the alleged existence of the Temple
of Solomon in Jerusalem. You see, one of the central controversies
about the Bible in terms of researching the internal evidence of the
documents in order to determine who wrote what and when, has been
the period from which the P document originated. It has been long
accepted that J and E came from the earlier period - from the two
kingdoms of Judah and Israel (8th and 9th centuries BC).
It is
almost universally accepted that D was written in the time of Josiah
(mid to late 5th century BC), as we will see further on. But,
figuring out who wrote the P document has been a very difficult job.
And, the fact is, P is the largest of the sources, being the size of
the other three put together.
The P document includes the creation story in the first chapter of
Genesis. It includes the cosmic version of the flood story, the
version in which the windows of the heavens and the fountains of the
deep are opened to flood the world. It has the stories of Abraham,
Jacob, the exodus, and the journey through the wilderness, most of
which are doublets of stories in J and E. It also contains a
tremendous body of law, covering about thirty chapters of Exodus and
Numbers and all of the book of Leviticus. So, this is a significant
question here that we cannot gloss over lightly!
In 1833, Eduard Reuss gave a lecture to his students in Strassburg.
In this lecture, he stated that the biblical prophets do not refer
to the Priestly law; they do not quote the P part of the Bible, nor
do they give any impression that they are even familiar with it.
From this observation, Reuss concluded that the law was later than
the prophets.261
261 Friedman, op. cit., p. 162.
Of course, Reuss was afraid to say this in public
and waited forty-six years before publishing a monograph on the
subject in 1879. At this point, one of his braver students had
already taken the idea even further, publishing his own paper on the
matter.
This student was Karl Graf. Being convinced by Reuss that the law
was later than the prophets, he began to search the text for clues.
It was already accepted that D was written after J and E, and that
this was in the time of Josiah, so Graf assumed a priori that P must
have been written after that time, during the period of the Second
Temple. This was part of the view that was synthesized later by
Wellhausen, claiming that the elaborate legal and ritual system, the
centralization of the priesthood, were later
developments in the lives of the Israelites at the end of the
biblical period.
There was one serious problem with this view that P was written by a
member of the post exile priesthood: a Temple is never mentioned
once in the P document. In P, Yahweh never commands Moses to tell
the people to build a Temple. There is not one law in P that
requires the presence of a Temple. What is more, even though P talks
about the Ark of the Covenant, an altar, cherubs, the Urim and
Thummim, and other sacred accoutrements of worship, there is not a
single solitary reference to a Temple.262
262 Ibid., p. 163.
Graf’s solution to the
problem of the missing Temple was that the Temple was mentioned
repeatedly as the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was the tent of meeting
that Moses erected in the desert to house the Ark of the Covenant.
It is mentioned in the E document only three times and in J and D it
is not mentioned at all. P, on the other hand, mentions it over two
hundred times! What is more, P gives elaborate details on its
materials and construction and the laws relating to it. It is a
regular feature of the stories in P; all assemblies of the people
take place at the Tabernacle. In short, the Tabernacle is essential
to P.
So, Graf’s solution was that the Tabernacle never existed, that it
was a fiction made up during the Second Temple period because the
writer wanted to establish a law code that was in the interests of
the Temple priests and needed the antiquity and authority of Moses
to validate the Temple as a replacement of the Tabernacle.
Thus,
Graf decided that the Tabernacle must have been deliberately -
falsely - created so as to pass its authority to the Temple being
rebuilt in the Second Temple period after that Babylonian captivity,
and the transfer of the ark from the Tabernacle to the Temple and
the laws that required the presence of the Tabernacle would now
require the presence of the Temple. Thus he proposed that the
Priestly Tabernacle was a literary and legal fiction created by the
post-exile author of P to support the rebuilt temple of the Second
Temple period.
So, again we notice that along came Wellhausen. Once
he had accepted Reuss’ theory that the law was later than the
prophets, and Graf’s theory that the Tabernacle was nothing more
than the symbol for the Temple, he was able to suggest that, in the
P document, centralization of religion was not being demanded, as it
was during the time of D, but was understood to already exist. He
stated that the laws and stories of P take centralization for
granted.
In the P list of different kinds of sacrifices there is one
called a “sin offering” and one called a “guilt offering”. Such
sacrifices are not mentioned in J, E, or D. Wellhausen reasoned that
it was only logical that sin and guilt offerings should be
established after the exile when the people felt guilty, believing
that their exile was punishment for their sins.
In the P list of holidays, there is a holiday that is known now as
the Fall New Year, or Feast of Tabernacles, followed ten days later
by a Day of Atonement. These holidays are not mentioned in J, E, or
D. And, since these two holidays involve atonement for sin,
Wellhausen said that this proved that they were part of the Second
Temple period when Israel was loaded with guilt that their
faithlessness to Yahweh had led to the destruction of the kingdom
and their exile to Babylon.
Another “proof” that was accepted by Wellhausen as demonstration
that P was written after the exile was the “Ezekiel matter”. Ezekiel
was an Aaronid priest who was exiled to Babylon (which we will
shortly discuss), and it was there that he wrote his book that bears
his name. The book of Ezekiel is written in a style and language
that is remarkably similar to that of the P document. There are
whole passages in Ezekiel that are nearly word-for word extracts
from P. In Ezekiel, the writer declares that in the future only
certain Levites may be priests. All others are disqualified from the
priesthood because of their past sins. The only Levites who may
function as priests are those who are descendants of Zadok. Zadok
was David’s Aaronid priest. And so, according to Ezekiel, only
Zadokian Aaronid priests are legitimate; all others are excluded.
It is also quite clear in the P document that only Aaronids are
priests in any context. P simply does not recognize the descendants
of Moses (the Shiloh priests) as legitimate. So, Wellhausen decided
that P had to have been written during the days of the Second
Temple, when the Aaronid priests came to power, taking Ezekiel’s
prophecy as their inspiration. At that point in time, the
competition between the priestly families was over. The Aaronids had
won and one of them wrote a “Torah of Moses” that reflected their
victory.
It was a good argument. But as Friedman says, “it was logical,
coherent, persuasive - and wrong”.263
263 Ibid., p. 167.
Reuss was wrong from the
beginning of the argument because it is clear that the prophets do
quote P, most notable among them being Jeremiah. The fact is,
Jeremiah seemed to fiendishly enjoy playing with the P document and
reversing its language in clever ways. Jeremiah also can be found to
reject the Ark of the Covenant in a “twist” of the language of the P
document. Ezekiel also seems to know the P document quite well. The
reader may wish to refer to Friedman for the list of comparisons.
In 1982, Avi Hurvitz of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
demonstrated that P is written in an earlier form of Hebrew than
Ezekiel’s work, so Wellhausen’s idea that it had been written after
Ezekiel was dealt another blow. Five other scholars in recent years
have uncovered additional linguistic evidence that most of P is
written in the biblical Hebrew of the days before the exile to
Babylon.
The bottom line is: Reuss was wrong, Graf was wrong, and Wellhausen
was wrong. But, by being wrong, they ended up highlighting a crucial
bit of evidence for something else altogether: the issue of the
Tabernacle. This Tabernacle brings us face to face with the
question: when was the “first temple” - the famed Temple of Solomon -
in Jerusalem really built, if one was built at all?
Jerusalem has been excavated time and again - and with a
particularly intense period of investigation of Bronze and Iron Age
remains in the 1970s and 1980s under the direction of Yigal Shiloh,
of the Hebrew University, at the city of David, the original urban
core of Jerusalem. Surprisingly, as Tel Aviv University
archaeologist David Ussishkin pointed out, fieldwork there and in
other parts of biblical Jerusalem failed to provide significant
evidence for a tenth century occupation.
Not only was any sign of
monumental architecture missing, but also, so were even simple
pottery shards. Some scholars have argued that later, massive
building activities in Jerusalem wiped out all signs of the earlier
city. Yet excavations in the city of David revealed impressive finds
from the Middle Bronze Age and from later centuries of the Iron Age - just not from the tenth century BC.
The most optimistic assessment
of this negative evidence is that tenth century Jerusalem was rather
limited in extent, perhaps not more than a typical hill country
village. This … meshes well with the … pattern of the rest of Judah
in the same period, which was composed of only about twenty small
villages and a few thousand inhabitants, many of them wandering
pastoralists.264
264 Finkelstein, op. cit., p. 2001
By the 7th century BC, Jerusalem had finally become
a relatively large city, dominated by a Temple to the God of Israel
that served as the single national shrine. But this was the Second
Temple, which was built as a result of the vision of the “captives”
who had returned from exile in Babylon.
The priesthood that returned from Babylon developed the Bible AS
history in order to bring scattered, war weary people together, to
prove to them that they had experienced a stirring history under the
direct intervention of God. The glorious epic of the united monarchy
was - like the stories of the patriarchs and the sagas of the Exodus
and conquest - a brilliant composition that wove together ancient
heroic tales and legends into a coherent and persuasive prophecy for
the people of Israel in the seventh century BC.
An elaborate theology had been developed in order to validate the
connection between the heirs of the Davidic line and the destiny of
the entire people of Israel.
According to this manufactured history, David was the first to stamp
out the
abominable influence of “other Gods”. David, being devoted and
faithful to
Yahweh, was assigned the task of completing the unfinished job of
Joshua, which
was to conquer the rest of the Promised Land and establish a
glorious empire over
all the vast territories that had been promised to Abraham! These
were, in fact, the
political ambitions of the priests in charge, not accurate history.
And so, the
glorious tale of David and Solomon and their marvelous Ark were
created to inspire the masses.
We do, of course, think that these
stories were based on more ancient models, but what is clear is that
the Great King Solomon - whoever he might have been originally - was
not a king of Israel or a worshipper of Yahweh. In searching for a
single, clear mention of the existence of a major temple in
Jerusalem during the period in question, that can be verified
archaeologically, I have come up empty handed.
Even Finkelstein,
quoted above, sort of skips over the issue. He says that in the 7th
century BC, Jerusalem was a “relatively large city dominated by a
Temple to Yahweh”. If that were the case, then there would not have
been so much focus in the P document on the Tabernacle. It seems to
have been fairly easy to put words in Moses’ mouth retroactively;
that problem hadn’t stumped the priests so far; so why the big deal
about the Tabernacle? They could have slid right over the Tabernacle
problem altogether by having Moses say, “when you get there, fold up
the tent and build a Temple”.
For some reason, that was not an
option. This “Tent of Meeting” was clearly something that the P
Document sought to establish as an item of great significance to the
people. For some reason, it had to be emphasized, and its historical
status as the only Tabernacle that was legitimate obviously needed
to be established over and above all other such “tents”. We find
several new things in the P document that were obviously a new spin
being put on something that was so commonly known and accepted by
the people that it required specific “shaping” to the purposes of
the priests.
First of all, we have a new Fall Holiday that was formerly known as
the Feast of Tabernacles. Next, we have a very specific Tabernacle
itself. Finally, we have the ostensible reason for this tabernacle
being the one and only legitimate tabernacle: an object that goes
inside the tabernacle: the Ark of the Covenant! All the references
to the Tabernacle in the P document suggest that this was an object
with tremendous historical value because it was assembled under the
direction of Moses himself. The P document describes it as the
sacred shrine that housed the Ark of the Covenant, the tablets, the
Urim and Thummim, and the cherubs. The P document tells us that the
Tabernacle itself was constructed of precious wood, gold, brass,
wool and linen woven with gold, scarlet, and purple, with a covering
of red leather.
Even though the Tabernacle was supposed to have resided at Shiloh
with the Ark inside it, (according to the P text), the E document of
the northern kingdom, the domain of the Shiloh priests, never
mentions the ark! According to the E texts, the “Tent of Meeting”
was the most important sign of God’s presence. God was in the tent,
not the ark. And clearly there were many “Tents of Meeting”.
The J
document, on the other hand, mentions that the Ark was very
important to the children of Israel as they journeyed to the
Promised Land. In the book of Numbers, the Ark was said to have been
carried in front of the people as they traveled. Another J text
emphasizes the Ark as a military “weapon”; the idea being that it
was impossible to be successful in military matters without it. And
then, of course, in the J text remarks about the Temple of Solomon,
we find that the Ark was the most important object in it. It should
come as no surprise that the Tent of Meeting is never mentioned in
the J document!
Of course, this leads us to a bit of a problem. If the kingdom of
Omri was the mythicized/historicized Jewish Kingdom of Solomon, and
yet they knew of no “ark”, and there is clear evidence that no
Temple of Solomon ever existed in the kingdom of Judah wherein an
ark could have been lodged prior to the time of Hezekiah, then were
did the idea of the ark come from? What was the “real” Temple of
Solomon? Well, we will come back to this.
For now, we only need to
understand that, via mythicization of history and historicization of
myth, some serious prestidigitation is going on here. Tents that
were formerly used for a particular purpose are now being
eliminated, and the centralization process is beginning by the focus
on one tent, and one tent only. The legitimization of that tent is
based on its use as the “home of the ark”, and a “historical
background” for this use of the tent is being created in the P text.
Whatever the Tent of Meeting was used for in ancient times, and
whatever the ark of the covenant might have been, it is interesting
to note that the overall tenor of the J document - the ark people -
is more balanced in its attitude toward women. The E document, from
the Northern kingdom priests - the tent people - was quite male in
perspective and concentrated on male characters with, essentially no
heroines, such as Tamar in Genesis 38. No wonder Jezebel kicked them
out! Speaking of Jezebel, the second to the last mention of the ark
in the Bible is in 2 Chronicles, 8:11265, where it is mentioned in
relation to Solomon and his wife, the daughter of Pharaoh.
265 Nice numbers for all the esotericists!
Solomon brought the daughter of Pharaoh out of the city of David
into the house he had built for her, for he said, My wife shall not
dwell in the house of David king of Israel, because the places are
holy to which the ark of the Lord has come.
The next to the last mention of the ark is also in 2 Chronicles,
35:3:
To the Levites who taught all Israel and were holy to the Lord, he
said, Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon son of David, king
of Israel built; it shall no longer be a burden carried on your
shoulders. Now serve the Lord your God and His people Israel.
We will shortly discuss the authorship of the books of Kings, but
let us just say here that the authorship of Chronicles reflects the
language and interests of the Aaronid priests. Most especially, they
extol Hezekiah, which indicates that this was the point in time when
the P text was produced.
The last mention of the ark in the Bible is a sneering “I told you
so” kind of comment by Jeremiah who writes:
And it shall be that when you have multiplied and increased in the
land in those days, says the Lord, they shall no more say, The ark
of the covenant of the Lord. It shall not come to mind, nor shall
they remember it, nor shall they miss or visit it, nor shall it be
repaired or made again.
That is certainly a bizarre dismissal of simply the most important
item in Jewish history! (At least, according to the Bible.) We will
soon see why Jeremiah had this attitude toward the ark. But, the
point is, he is clearly talking about it in terms that indicate it
had been broken or needed to be “made again”. Almost certainly, this
suggests that the Babylonians destroyed the ark that existed at the
time of the kingdom of Judah along with everything else.
What is
strange is the implication that it was not of sufficient value for
them to even cart it off or it would have been mentioned in the
objects that were specifically named as having been taken from the
temple. And for those who might wish to think that the lack of
mention indicates some major secret or conspiracy, allow me to point
out all the many confabulations that exist in the Bible have one
single objective: to inflate the importance of Yahweh. They do this
by using anything and everything as lessons to whip Yahweh’s people
into line. If there was any way whatsoever that the loss of the ark
could have been used to induce guilt, I think it would have been.
What seems clear is that a substitute ark was all that existed in
Judah from some point in history. Thus, at the time of the exile,
the loss of this substitute ark was no big deal.
It seems that when the ark was no longer needed as a major item to
legitimize only one Tabernacle, to change the perceptions of the
people, it was dropped as an issue. The idea that it was taken with
the fleeing Jews to Egypt and then to Ethiopia is another red
herring. There are several Arks that claim to be the legitimate
“original”. One of them is at Axxum, in Ethiopia. This item has been
venerated for centuries, housed in a special chapel, and cared for
by a priest whose life is devoted to maintaining the chapel and its
grounds. It seems fairly self-evident that if the Axxum Ark were the
real thing, the Israeli Authorities would stop at nothing to claim
it and retrieve it. Despite many rumors, nothing like this has ever
occurred.
But again, let us remember that even if the ark that was present at
the time of the Babylonian destruction was merely a “representative”
object, it was still based on some real object that existed at some
other point in time and space, and the history had been mythicized,
and then re-historicized. Nevertheless, this deals another blow to
the seekers of the Ark of the Covenant under the Temple of Solomon
in Jerusalem!
Getting back to a First Temple, we note that Finkelstein mentions
that the evidence of the destruction of Jerusalem, as a whole, is
clearly present in the archaeological layers, and it definitely
reveals the violence and thoroughness with which the city was
obliterated from the landscape; but no specific mention of a Temple.
That does not mean that one was not built in Jerusalem somewhere
along the way, Solomon just didn’t build it, and it wasn’t built in
the 10th century BC. Also, the issue of whether or not a Temple of
Yahweh existed in a precise context at the time of Hezekiah, when
the P text was being produced, is problematical.
A temple most
certainly seems to have existed at the time of the destruction of
the northern kingdom. One clue to this is the references to Hezekiah
“repairing” the Temple as part of his reforms. Rather than
“repairing” the Temple of Yahweh”, he might have been repairing and
refurbishing a Temple of another God in Jerusalem, and claiming that
it was the “Temple of Solomon”, when in fact it wasn’t. So, legitimizing the Tabernacle as the
temporary home of the ark, and then transferring that home to a
“cleansed” Temple would have made sense. The writer of the P
document talks about the “Temple of Solomon” and the items that were
kept there, but none of those things were present in the Second
Temple, nor were they considered to be important.
This is another
point favoring the writing of the P document before the Second
Temple period. Why would the writer talk about things that no longer
existed as though they did, even if we have some idea that their
claimed existence was a deliberate displacing of one idea for
another? What is more, we have already noted the astonishing silence
of the Bible as to the fate of the Ark except for that brief and
telling remark by Jeremiah. The Ark had a deadly reputation.
Touching it was supposed to have been lethal. After a battle, 50,000
Philistine soldiers rashly pitched their camp with the Ark gaping
open, and all died in their sleep. Their King promptly ordered it to
be sealed and sent back to the Israelites.
A bearer of the Ark
tripped and touched it, and was instantly killed. Two of Moses’ men
peeked inside it and were struck dead. Moses made sure they were
buried in the desert far away from the camp. Some have argued that
this indicated that the Ark was radioactive or was some sort of
technological device. It is a certainty that, if it had been so
powerful an object in military terms, it would have been mentioned
as being used against the Babylonians. The failure of the ark to
prevail against Nebuchadnezzar, or the carrying away of the ark,
mentioned in the older tales as bringing devastation upon those who
dared to touch it, would have been recounted, if such events had
happened.
They didn’t, and weren’t. And that may have been the
reason for the silence about the object afterward. In the final
analysis, the only stories we have of the actual use or presence of
a significant ark-in-action are in the historicized myths or mythicized history that lead us back to a time long before the exile
imposed by the Assyrians, or the carrying away of the people to
Babylon. One is even compelled to wonder about the destruction of
the Northern Kingdom by Hazael. Surely if the Ark had been present
there, it would have made the Omrides invincible militarily. Also,
certainly, if Hazael had taken the Ark, it would have been mentioned
somewhere.
So much build-up had been given to the ark, and then
destruction fell in spite of the presence of the ark. What were the
priests to say? It didn’t work, and better to just forget it than
have all the people asking why. At this point, the writers of the
bible, so close in time to the events, simply could not get away
with that sort of nonsense, and they didn’t even try. What’s more,
it’s clear that they no longer needed the ark at the time of the
Second Temple, so it was simply allowed to fade into oblivion as a
nice story of the grand and glorious ancestors.
Again, I suggest
that this was based on some seed of ancient truth, but figuring out
what it was - or is - is not going to be as simple as the many Ark
chasers of the present day would have us think. One thing seems to
be clear: there was no Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, and no Ark of
the Covenant inside whatever temple did exist there. So we can
discard the tales of the Ark in Axxum or the Ark under the Temple
being retrieved by the Templars or the Roman Emperor, Titus.
Nevertheless, the person who wrote P placed a specific Tabernacle,
the Tent of Meeting, with Yahweh embodied in the ark, at the center
of Israel’s religious life back as far as Moses, and forever into
the future, leading to the conclusion: P had to be written before D, since the laws all
through P say that sacrifices and other ceremonies must take place
at the entrance to the Tabernacle and nowhere else and that this is
the law “forever”. It also demonstrates that the Tabernacle was at
the center of worship in Jerusalem until a temple of some sort was
either built or cleansed, and that this probably occurred at the
time of Hezekiah.
Friedman suggests that the Tabernacle was later
placed in the Holy of Holies of a Temple in Jerusalem, under the
spread wings of the “cherubs”. But, as we have seen by now, there is
no archaeological evidence for the existence of a temple of the
dimensions of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. So, we are left
with the conclusion that either a smaller temple was was used, or
that the Tabernacle, a tent, was all that there ever was until the
Second Temple period.
In the stories of a specifically Jewish King Solomon, who we now
suspect to be Ahab assimilated to an even older archetype, it is
said:
And they brought up the ark of Yahweh and the Tent of Meeting and
all of the holy implements that were in the Tent.266
Josephus, the
Jewish historian, also wrote that the Tabernacle was brought into
the Temple, but he is also noted to have obtained his “mystical
interpretation” of the Tabernacle from Philo of Alexandria. In any
event, all of this leads us to ask the question: what was the
activity that transpired in the Tent of Meeting before it was
deliberately designated as the lodging of the ark? Why would a tent
need to be brought into a Temple except for the purpose of changing
its function?
As to the destruction of the “Temple” in Jerusalem,
Psalm 74:7 is quoted to refer to this event saying:
They cast your sanctuary into the fire; they profaned your name’s
Tabernacle to the ground.
However, it is suggested by textual analysis267 that Psalms 50, and
73 through 83 were composed between 730 and 720 BC for festal
worship at the northern sanctuary in Bethel, and accepted with
marginal amendments in Jerusalem thereafter. Thus, either this verse
about the Tabernacle being burned and profaned refers to a prior
event, before the fall of the northern kingdom, or it was added
after the Fall of Jerusalem to the celebratory hymn.
In the first
case, it suggests that the Tabernacle that was set up as the
Tabernacle in Jerusalem was merely a creation of that time, or -
again - that there never was a Temple at all prior to the Second
Temple period.
266 The Bible, 1 Kings 8:4; 2 Chronicles 5:5.
267 Goulder, Michael D., The Psalms of Asaph and the Pentateuch
(Sheffield Academic Press 1997).
The Tribe of Dan
An analysis of the genealogies in the Bible is very illuminating.
According to the book of Chronicles there is no genealogy for the
tribe of Dan. It has been observed by numerous scholars that many of
the names occurring in the genealogies themselves are either
blatantly geographical or connected with placenames; while others
are definitely personal names.268 But the case of the Tribe of Dan
is special, and holds a clue for us in this matter of the Temple and
the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant.
In II Chronicles 2:11-14
the D historian writes:
Then Hiram the king of Tyre answered in writing, which he sent to
Solomon, Because the Lord hath loved his people, he has made you
king over them. Hiram said moreover, Blessed be the Lord God of
Israel, that made heaven and earth, who has given to David the king
a wise son, endued with prudence and understanding, who should build
a house for the Lord, and a palace for his kingdom. And now I have
sent a skilled man, endued with understanding, even Huram-abi, my
trusted counselor, the son of a woman of the daughters of DAN; his
father was a man of Tyre. He is a trained worker in gold, silver,
brass, iron, stone, and wood, in purple, blue, and crimson colors,
and in fine linen; also to engrave any manner of engraving, and to
carry out any design which shall be given to him, with your skilled
men, and with the skilled men of my lord David your father. The
above is supposed to be a letter from Hiram of Tyre to Solomon,
discussing the attributes of a particular man, the trusted counselor
of the great Hiram, who is being sent to help the son of David as a
great favor. This man is presented as a great designer and
architect. He is named, and his mother is designated as being of the
tribe of Dan. He is going to be the architect of the Temple of
Solomon. In other words, he is the model for the archetypal “great
architect” Hiram Abiff of Masonic lore.
So, what is the problem?
Look at this next excerpt from Exodus 31:1-7:
And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, See, I have called by name
Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: And I
have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in
understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,
To devise skillful works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in
bronze, and in cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of
wood, to work in all manner of craftsmanship.
And behold, I have
appointed with him Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of
DAN; and to all who are wise hearted I have given wisdom and ability
to make all that I have commanded you: The tent of meeting, and the
ark of the testimony, and the mercy seat that is on it, and all the
furniture of the tent… 268 De Geus, Cornelis, “Of Tribes and Towns:
The Historical Development of the Isaelite City.” Eretz-Israel 24,
1993.
The above description of the command to build the Tent of Meeting
and the Ark sounds almost identical to the purported letter from
Hiram to Solomon, even including strong similarities in the names of
the principal worker: Huram-abi of the tribe of Dan has become Hur
of the tribe of Judah:
And Bezalel the son Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, made
all that the LORD commanded Moses. And with him was Aholiab, son of
Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan an engraver, and a skillful
craftsman, and an embroiderer in blue, and in purple, and in
scarlet, and fine linen.
The next problem arises when we find in I Kings, chapter 7:13-21,
the following most confusing information about Hiram:
And King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre. He was a
widow’s son of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of
Tyre, a worker in brass: and he was filled with wisdom, and
understanding, and skill to work all works in brass. And he came to
king Solomon, and wrought all his work. For he cast two pillars of
brass, of eighteen cubits high apiece: and a line of twelve cubits
did compass either of them about. And he made two chapiters of
molten brass, to set upon the tops of the pillars: the height of the
one chapiter was five cubits, and the height of the other chapiter
was five cubits.
And nets of checker work, and wreaths of chain
work, for the chapiters which were upon the top of the pillars;
seven for the one chapiter, and seven for the other chapiter. And he
made the pillars, and two rows round about upon the one network, to
cover the chapiters that were upon the top, with pomegranates: and
so did he for the other chapiter. And the chapiters that were upon
the top of the pillars were of lily work in the porch, four cubits.
And the chapiters upon the two pillars had pomegranates also above,
over against the belly which was by the network: and the
pomegranates were two hundred in rows round about upon the other
chapiter. And he set up the pillars in the porch of the temple: and
he set up the right pillar, and called the name thereof Jachin: and
he set up the left pillar, and called the name thereof Boaz.
We see without too much difficulty that these passages are taken
from the same source, though one refers to the building of a Temple
and the other refers to the construction of a tent and an ark.
One
of the problems is, of course, that according to the Bible, the two
events are separated by a very long period of time. We also note the
curious name similarities between Huram-abi of the passage in II
Chronicles, and Hur, the father of Bezalel, connected to Aholiab of
the tribe of Dan. Also curious is the name of Bezalel, which is so
similar to Jezebel, who we have tentatively identified as the
Phoenician princess, daughter of Ethbaal, king of Tyre. More curious
still is the claim of the Dan inscription that, in the destruction
of the City of Dan, the House of David was destroyed.
What was the
connection of the Tribe of Dan to the House of the Beloved? Were
they, as it seems from these clues, one and the same?
In the Exodus passage, we find an interesting substitution taking
place: the tribe of Judah has been connected with the tribe of Dan,
even taking precedence. The architect sent by Hiram whose mother was
of the tribe of Dan, and whose father was a man of Tyre, is now
relegated to a subservient position to Bezalel, of the tribe of
Judah, who is now the “son of Hur”. Importantly, we see that a
member of the tribe of Dan was the builder of the Ark! We are
entitled to ask: is the tribe of Dan the true “house of the beloved”
or Davidic line? And if so, who are they?
When we search for the source of this tribe, we find many
interesting things as well as things that are conspicuous by their
absence. In Genesis 30:1-6, we discover that Dan was the child of
Rachel’s maid, Bilhah:
And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied
her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.
And Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in
God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? And
she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear
upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. And she gave
him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her.
And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son. And Rachel said, God hath
judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son:
therefore called she his name Dan. This story is remarkably similar
to the story of Sarai and Hagar in Genesis 16:1-5 Now Sarai Abram’s
wife bare him no children: and she had a handmaid, an Egyptian,
whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the
Lord has restrained me from bearing: I ask you, have intercourse
with my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram
listened to Sarai.
And Sarai Abram’s wife took Hagar her maid the
Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and
gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. And he had intercourse
with Hagar and she conceived: and when she saw that she had
conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.
And Sarai said
unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my maid into thy
bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in
her eyes: the Lord judge between me and thee. The last lines of both
passages, dealing with “judgment”, indicate that they are, in fact,
the same story.
Another interesting connection pops up when we consider the
identification of Hiram as a member of the tribe of Naphtali in the
passage describing the creation of the pillars Jachin and Boaz.
From
I Chronicles, chapter 7:13:
The sons of Naphtali; Jahziel, and Guni, and Jezer, and Shallum, the
sons of Bilhah. Keep the name “Shallum” in mind because we will
encounter it again later in the chapter.
We next come to another clue. In Genesis 49, the patriarch Jacob has
called all his children to gather around his deathbed so that he can
pronounce their destiny upon them.
When he gets to Dan, in verses16 - 18, he says:
Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan
shall be a serpent by the way, a horned snake in the path, that
bites at the horse’s heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I
wait for thy salvation, O Lord.
This is said almost as though the activity of Dan that is negative
toward Israel, is the salvation. In Deuteronomy 33:22, Moses blesses
the tribe of Dan by saying,
“And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion’s
whelp: he shall leap from Bashan”.
But in the blessing of Jacob, in
Genesis 49:8-9 the attribute of the Lion is given to Judah:
Judah, you are the one whom your brothers shall praise. Your hand
shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow
down to you. Judah, a lion’s cub!
With the prey, my son, you have
gone high up the mountain; he stooped down, he crouched as a lion,
and as a lioness; who dares provoke and rouse him? Let’s compare
that to two additional items: the destiny prescribed by God when he
appears to Hagar at the well when she ran away after Sarai was cruel
to her during her
pregnancy, and the blessing given by Isaac to his beloved son Esau
after Jacob had defrauded his father with the help of his mother, Rebekah. There are interesting resonances to the remarks made about
Judah.
The first event is recounted in Genesis 16:11-12, and the
second in Genesis 27:39-40:
1] And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, you are with
child and shall bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael, or God
hears, because the Lord has heard and paid attention to your
affliction. And [Ishmael] will be as a wild man; his hand will be
against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall
live to the east and on the borders of all his kinsmen.
2] And Isaac his father answered and said unto [Esau], Behold, Your
dwelling shall all come from the fruitfulness of the earth, and from
the dew of heaven from above;
And by your sword shalt you live, and serve your brother. But the
time will come when you will have the dominion, and you will break
his yoke from off your neck.
One of the more interesting things we
discover when we dig into this subject is that Samson was of the
tribe of Dan.
Robert Graves remarks:
Hercules first appears in legend as a pastoral sacred king and,
perhaps because shepherds welcome the birth of twin lambs, is a twin
himself. His characteristics and history can be deduced from a mass
of legends, folk-customs and megalithic monuments. He is the
rainmaker of his tribe and a sort of human thunderstorm. Legends
connect him with Libya and the Atlas Mountains; he may well have
originated thereabouts in Paleolithic times.
The priests of Egyptian
Thebes, who called him “Shu”, dated his origin as, “17,000 years
before the reign of King Amasis”. His symbols are the acorn; the
rock dove, which nests in oaks as well as in clefts of rock; the
mistletoe, and the serpent. All of these are sexual emblems. The
dove was sacred to the Love-Goddess of Greece and Syria the serpent
was the most ancient of phallic totem-beasts; the cupped acorn stood
for the glans penis in both Greek and Latin; the mistletoe was an
all-heal and its names viscus and ixias are connected with vis and
ischus (strength) probably because of the spermal viscosity of its
berries, sperm being the vehicle of life.[…]
The manner of his death can be reconstructed from a variety of
legends, folk customs and other religious survivals. At mid-summer,
at the end of a half-year reign, Hercules is made drunk with mead
and led into the middle of a circle of twelve stones arranged around
an oak, in front of which stands an altar-stone; the oak has been
lopped until is it T-shaped. He is bound to it with willow thongs in
the “five-fold bond” which joins wrists, neck, and ankles together,
beaten by his comrades till he faints, then flayed, blinded,
castrated, impaled with a mistletoe stake, and finally hacked into
joints on the altar stone.269 His blood is caught in a basin and
used for sprinkling the whole tribe to make them vigorous and
fruitful.
The joints are roasted at twin fires of oak-loppings, kindled with
sacred fire269 The five-fold bond was reported from China by the Arab merchant Suleyman in 851 AD.
He writes that “when the man condemned to death
has been trussed up in this fashion, and beaten with a fixed number
of blows, his body, still faintly breathing, is given over to those
who must devour it.” preserved
from lightning blasted oak or made by twirling an alder or
cornel-wood fire drill in an oak log. […]
The twelve merry men rush in a wild figure-of-eight dance around the
fires, singing ecstatically and tearing at the flesh with their
teeth. The bloody remains are burnt in the fire, all except the
genitals and the head. These are put into an alder-wood boat and
floated down a river to an islet; though the head is sometimes cured
with smoke and preserved for oracular use. […]
To this type of Hercules belong such diverse characters as Hercules
of Oeta, Orion the Hunter of Crete, Polyphemus the Cyclops, Samson
the Danite, Cuchulain of Muirthemne the Irish Sun-Hero, Ision the
Lapth - who is always depicted stretched in a “five-fold bond”
around a Sun-wheel - Agag the Amalekite, Romulus of Rome, Zeus,
Janus, Anchises, the Dagda and Hermes. […]
In the classical myth which authorized his sovereignty he is a
miraculous child born in a shower of gold; strangles a serpent in
his cradle, which is also a boat, and is credited with causing the
spurt of milk that made the Milky Way; as a young man he is the
undefeated monster-slayer of his age; kills and dismembers a
monstrous boar; […] his other self … succeeds him for the second
half of the year; having acquired royal virtue by marriage with the
queen, the representative of the White Goddess, and by eating some
royal part of the dead man’s body - heart, shoulder or
thigh-flesh.270 We see in the above all the elements of the Jesus
myth, realizing that Jesus was said to have been of the Davidic
line, the house of Judah, the Tribe of Dan.
270 Graves, Robert, The White Goddess, (New York: The
Noonday Press 1948) pp. 125-6
To finish off this
little diversion, we find another curious remark about the tribe of
Dan in Judges 5:17:
Gilead abode beyond Jordan: and why did Dan remain in ships?
That’s a strange thing; an allusion to a sea-faring people? The
prophet Amos seems to have some conviction that this tribe of Dan is
a serious threat to Yahweh.
He writes in 8:14-15:
They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy God, Oh Dan,
liveth; and, the manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall,
and never rise up again. Amos seems to be suggesting that the “sin
of Samaria” is directly connected to the tribe of Dan. And we have
some idea already that the “sin of Samaria” was also the sin of Ahab
and Jezebel, the House of the Beloved.
Which brings us back to the
question: just what was the tribe of Dan, and why was it changed to
the tribe of Judah? If the tribe of Judah is really the tribe of
Dan, then that means that the House of David is the tribe of Dan.
And following the clues, we discover that this lineage belonged to
Ishmael and Esau, not to Isaac and Jacob.
We further discover that
the lineage is that of the “architect of the temple of Solomon”, the
designer and builder of the Ark of the Covenant, the right hand man
of the legendary King Hiram of Tyre.
The Festival of Tabernacles
This matter of the Tabernacle leads us into some additional
interesting speculations. Many scholars believe that the psalms were
literary creations for the central festival of the Canaanites: The
Festival of Tabernacles, or “booths”. The Feast of Tabernacles is a
weeklong autumn harvest festival. It is also known as the Feast of
the Ingathering, Feast of the Booths, Sukkoth, Succoth, or Sukkot
(variations in spellings occur because these words are
transliterations of the Hebrew word pronounced “Sue-coat”). The two
days following the festival are separate holidays, Shemini Atzeret
and Simkhat Torah, but are commonly thought of as part of the Feast
of Tabernacles.
One of the more interesting references to what may have been an
early celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles occurs in Genesis 33.
We discover from our exegetes that verses 1 through 17 are from the
E source of the northern kingdom. The incident in question follows a
peculiar event in the previous chapter where Jacob sends his family
away and remains alone to wrestle with a “man” all night. This “man”
is later identified as an angel of God, and the angel “wounds” Jacob
in the thigh.
What does it mean to say that Jacob was wounded in the thigh?
According to some commentators, he apparently sustained an injury
common to wrestlers, the inward displacement of the hip that is
produced by forcing the legs too widely apart. The injured person
finds his leg flexed, abducted and externally rotated. He can only
walk with a lurching or swaggering gait, and on his toes. The
affected leg is lengthened and this tightens the tendons in the
thigh and the muscles go into spasm.
Since the story of Jacob comes to us from the age when women were
the transmitters of the right to rule, and since Jacob won his
sacred name and inheritance which could only be granted by a woman
on this same occasion, it seems that something is wrong with this
picture. The element that stands out is that of a transition from
the hieros gamos to the ritual combat, with residual sexual
overtones.
In the myth of combat between Set and Horus, Set tries to mate
sexually with Horus. This is usually interpreted as being an insult,
but there is something deeper here.
It was a formal principle of Greek myth and literature that love and
death were two aspects of the same power. In Homer, there are as
many ways to kill as to love, if not more. The language and images
are disturbingly interchangeable. The verb damaz! (as also its
equivalent damn”mi) spans a range of meanings from subjugation to
slaughter to rape to seduction, and the “mingling” conveyed by
meignymi may be that of lovers or that of warriors.
Both kinds of couples grapple and cling and know a desperate,
intense intimacy with few if any parallels anywhere else in human
experience. Furthermore, both the love-act and the death-act are
accompanied by “small talk” and preceded by a form of play, a not-yet-violent contest soon to be
raised to a higher power and decided or consummated on another
plane.271 In his Poetics, Aristotle traced the origin of poetry to
the pleasure human beings derive in mimesis, or “imaging” that which
is delightful or disturbing. He tells us that, very early, poetry
divided into two currents: a poetry of praise and a poetry of
assault.
271 Meagher, Robert Emmet, Helen: Myth, Legend and the Culture of
Misogyny, 1995, Continuum, New York, chapter 3.
In the Greek war of wars and its subsequent Song of Songs, the
Iliad, the violation of the city of Troy and the violation of its
women became, in the minds of the Bronze Age thinkers, one. The
metaphor is linguistically embedded in the word kr”demna which means
both a city’s battlements and women’s veils. In the tale of the
Trojan war, the shining object of desire was not gold or horses or
jewels or even power: it was a woman, Helen.
Outside of the Greek tradition, in the cultural milieu of the
Eastern Mediterranean world of the Bronze Age, there was the same
convergence of eros and eris. The theme of violence or the threat of
violence provoked by rivalry over a beautiful women which was absent
from older literature of the ancient Near East, is evident in the
story of Abram, the husband of a remarkably beautiful woman. Fearing
that his wife’s beauty and desirability might put him at risk, he
passes himself off as her brother. In the end, the Pharaoh who takes
Abram’s wife to his bed is described as anxious to see her go since
she brought nothing but plague and disaster to him and his house.
When we peer deeper into this connection between eros and eris,
erotic love and deadly conflict, we find an even older layer
preserved in the poetic tradition and enacted in rituals such as
that of Jacob and the Angel. In ancient cities, it was the king in
his priestly or divine capacity who, with his temple consort,
reenacted the hieros gamos, the sacred mating of Heaven and Earth.
The story of Helen of Troy - her great beauty that provoked such
grief - is a key to the shift in the perception of women in the
ancient world. Hesiod explicated this shift in his story of the
first woman, Pandora.
Supposedly Hesiod composed his Theogony and
Works and Days sometime
around the 8th or early 7th century BC. It is thought that the works
of Hesiod, like the works of Homer, represented the terminus of a
vast oral tradition of anonymous voices of uncertain origin and age.
The Theogony is an account of origins of those divine beings who
created and preside over the cosmos. It is a Divine history, tracing
a succession of regimes culminating in the reign of Olympian Zeus.
The narratives are undoubtedly rooted in an array of succession
myths that circulated throughout the ancient Near East, and which,
due to the cosmopolitan nature of the Omride kingdom, were familiar
to the nascent Jews.
And this is where it becomes very interesting. The likeliest
principal influence on Hesiod’s account would seem to be the Hittite
versions of the Hurrian Kumarbi and Ullikummi myths as well as the
Babylonian
Enuma Elish. It is suggested that such Oriental material
reached Hesiod via Crete and Delphi.
The Theogony - like the Bible - is not metaphysics; it is, plainly
and simply, a political tool. In the Theogony, the regime of Zeus
and the reign of Olympian justice are celebrated as the achievement
of the aeons just as Yahweh is celebrated in the Torah. In the
Theogony, Hesiod recounts his new version of the beginnings of
Creation, making certain to regularly propagandize in favor of Zeus
who is as “just as he is terrible”.
Many passages in the Theogony
can be compared to the hymns to Yahweh supposedly composed by David,
or to the Enuma Elish which sings the praises of the warrior king,
Marduk.
In each case, there is a fusion of military might with
absolute authority, glory and promised justice to the exiled and
enslaved. And clearly, in each instance there is the complete
subordination of the female to the male, presented as a
philosophical achievement, an evolution from the old, savage, order
to the new, glorious world of male theriomorphism.
In the Theogony,
the first woman is the “kalon kakon”. Kalon means “beautiful” and
kakon means “evil”. In other words, the first woman is a living
oxymoron. Now, of course, this term could mean either “beautiful
evil” or “evil beauty”. That is to say, is woman essentially
beautiful and qualifiedly evil, or essentially evil though
qualifiedly beautiful, or both essentially evil and beautiful?
Hesiod doesn’t leave us in suspense because he clarifies this point
for us by telling us that it is kakon that defines the substance, or
essence or woman.
Woman is revealed as unambiguously evil.
“Thunderous Zeus made women to be a
kakon for mortal men […] he
fashioned this kakon for men to make them pay for the theft of
fire.”
Prometheus was provoked by Zeus’ withdrawal of fire from mankind in
retaliation for Prometheus’ earlier theft of the finest sacrificial
portions. Prometheus had proven himself more clever than Zeus,
outwitting the king of the Gods. In the first instance, Prometheus
wrapped the meat and fatty portions of the sacrificial ox in the
victim’s inedible hide and stomach and then wrapped the bare bones
in glistening fat, knowing that Zeus would mistakenly insist on the
latter as his prerogative. In the second instance, Prometheus
concealed living embers in a hollow fennel stalk, enabling him to
elude Zeus’ embargo and to return fire to mankind.
The theme is “skill” or “craft” that is used to create a “ruse” or
dolon. The words techne, dolie, and dolon occur repeatedly in
Hesiod’s account of Prometheus’s offenses which lead up to Zeus’s
retaliation in kind.
It is the word dolon that describes woman: once she is dressed,
veiled and crowned, she is called a dolon, a trick, a baited trap.
Woman, fashioned and dressed up by the Gods is a fitting retort for
the glistening bag of bones foisted on Zeus by Prometheus.
According to Hesiod, the difference between woman’s beauty and her
evil is the difference between surface appearances and reality.
Decked out in flowers and gold, woman is a thauma, a “wonder to
behold”, and men and Gods alike are filled with awe at the sight of
her. However, it is only men who are defenseless against her charms. Woman is a “lure” and men
have no “resistance” and it was designed that way by the Gods. A man
is unable to resist the irresistible bride who, after they get her
home and exhaust her superficial charms, will find that they are
stuck with a great misery, a bottomless pit into which they will
pour all their goods and efforts and life force.
And so it is, the moment of woman’s creation is the moment of man’s
destruction. In other words, the sacrifice to the Gods that went
wrong - a brief insubordination - ends in humanity’s endless misery
with a vengeance. However, what is not initially seen is that the
issue is actually sovereignty. Prometheus has issued two stunning
challenges to Zeus’ wit and rule in the name of humankind. The fact
is, the four sons of Iapetus272 and Clymene - Atlas, Menoetius,
Prometheus, and Epimetheus - were trouble to Zeus from the start
because they represent a rival line of descent from Ouranos and
Gaia, which, if allied with unruly mankind, could mean trouble for
the Gods!
The most troublesome of the four was Prometheus. His name
means “forethought,” and his knowledge of what was to come is what
inspired him to try to help mankind. He was an arch-rebel and
champion of mankind who was determined to elevate the status of
humanity by giving them creative imagination, defiant wit, and
divine fire - all that is needed to make them like Gods.
The story suggests to us a “contest” between humankind and the Gods
that was to be decided in the act of animal sacrifice.273 The
humiliation of Zeus prompted him to take the extreme measure of
withholding fire from mankind, without which they would soon be
little more than animals. Humiliated the second time, Zeus
formulated the Final Solution: Woman.
In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Four ages of man have now come and gone,
each one worse than the one before. Strife defines every
relationship, virtue (as well as everything else) is rewarded with
misery, and Hesiod recounts with great longing how men once lived
without toil and without pain. Why so much pain and suffering?
Hesiod’s account of the Fall of man answers that question with one
word: Woman.
The “first woman” in Works and Days, Pandora, is again, bait set by
the Gods to trap men. She is given the appearance of a Goddess, the
character of a hyena, and the heart and mind of a jackal. Woman,
adorned by the Gods, brings to man all that is hideous and
devouring. Woman, who takes all that is bright and beautiful from
272 A Titan, son of Gaia and Uranus. Clymene, and Ocianid, bore him
the Titans Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, and Menoetius. In the war
between Gods and Titans, he was imprisoned by Zeus in Tartarus.
273 There are curious reflections in this story of the sacrifice
challenge of Prometheus to the story of the challenge made by Elisha
against the priests of Baal, following which fire came down from
heaven to consume Elisha’s sacrifice.
man, gives back only
that which is dark and filthy. Her name, Pandora, means both “All
Giver” and “All Gifted”. Hesiod tells us that she is called Pandora
because, “all those who dwell on Olympos gave each one to her a
gift, a grief for men who strive and toil”. She has only one reason
for her existence: to produce human misery.
The gifts Pandora receives from the Gods - the contents of Pandora’s
Jar - are intended to produce endless torment for man. It is only in
later centuries that a “box” was substituted for a “jar”. This
change of imagery was attributed to the sixteenth century monk
Erasmus who mistranslated the original Greek word pithos with the
Latin pyxis. A pithos is a jar that is womb-like in shape and is a
symbol for the earth, the mother of all.
The implications of the pithos to the story of Pandora are obvious.
Pandora’s gifts are released from her own womb. Her fault lies not
in her curiosity, but in her being. She is constitutionally
deceptive and lethal because she draws men into her pithos, and
brings new men forth for a life of misery. She further perpetuates
the misery of man by bringing forth female babies.
The image of Woman as a pithos is extremely ancient.
In many ancient
Helladic burials, the pithos was used as a coffin. The deceased was
placed inside in a fetal position, covered with honey, and buried in
the hope of new life and regeneration. Hesiod records for us ideas
that were, apparently, spreading like wildfire in his time: the
profound estrangement of one half of humanity from the other. We
should like to know why?
In Hesiod’s re-writing of the ancient myths, man has somehow come
into being without being born of woman and contrary to the most
ancient depictions, it is woman who is derivative. Certainly, the
emergence of the first human being presents a challenge to any
thinking person; the existence of women before men is a mystery, but
the existence of men before women is absurd.
Hesiod presents the view that woman is a disruption to nature.
Because of woman, man can no longer appear and disappear by his own
will. Because of woman, man must be born in suffering, and then man
must die in suffering. What Hesiod fails to notice is that, if men
were suffering in that time, women were suffering also - and
probably a lot more.
Hesiod’s account of woman is a conscious denial and a deliberate
misogynistic propaganda. We see Hesiod’s line of argument reflected
in the J Document account of creation. In Genesis, man is created
and lives in a deathless, God-like existence, and woman is the
“second” creation, the “afterthought”. She soon brings death and
destruction on mankind by “eating of the fruit of the tree of good
and evil”.
In these accounts, we perceive a common thread of woman as an
“interloper” into the original scheme of things, bringing sex,
strife, misery and death. Hesiod works with the ancient images of
the all-giving mother, twisting and disfiguring them until they
reflect only the shame and degradation of the creatress of life.
Woman, created from clay according to Hesiod, is not only not
semi-divine as is man, she is something less than human.
Zeus, with timely advice from Ouranos and Gaia, appropriates his own
wife’s powers. He marries and swallows Metis and is thus able to
give birth to his daughter, Athena. In swallowing Metis, he reverses
the succession and the primacy
of female fecundity, and thus becomes sovereignty itself. Hesiod’s
insistence that Zeus does so with the consent of both Ouranos and
Gaia sounds like the ritual charade in which consent is elicited
from sacrificial animals just prior to their deaths. This claim to
the agreement of the older Gods is designed to give this most
radical of reversions a certain “legitimacy” and “continuity” with
the past.
With the parthenogenetic birth of Athena from the head of
Zeus, history has a new beginning in which woman will play no role.
The entire theme of Theogony is - as Hesiod would have it - a
triumphal ascent from the female womb of Gaia to the male womb of
Zeus, from savage nature, to Olympian civilization. These were the
ideas making their way around the Eastern Mediterranean during the
time in which the Bible was being written. It’s difficult to even
suggest the source.
Yahweh, like Marduk and Zeus sweeps the field of
rivals, making his power incontestable. This brings us back to the
Theophany of Jacob, wrestling with the Angel, during which incident
he apparently sustained an injury common to wrestlers, the inward
displacement of the hip that is produced by forcing the legs too
widely apart.
The dream of a purely paternal heredity never ceased to haunt the
Greek imagination. Greek poetry is resonant with the voices of men
who long for a world exorcised of women, a world in which men by
themselves are capable of producing their own sons. […]
Here, Mysogyny may be seen to conspire with the love of men for men;
for when men make love to men, their seed often finds its way to the
head and to the thighs, the would-be wombs of Zeus.274
The fact is
that there was organized sodomy in many temples of the late Bronze
Age where male devotees sought to “become women”. We note that
circumcision is a symbolic castration, and many male devotees
attempted to become a woman, to receive the seed of the God
directly.
Immediately after this wrestling match, the “angel” then changed
Jacob’s name from Jacob, meaning “supplanter, schemer, trickster and
swindler”, to Israel. This certainly mirrors Hesiod’s depiction of
woman as schemers and tricksters. In fact, Jacob was noted as being
“feminine” and completely unlike his brother, the rough and ready
Esau, so much so that his father disdained him.
The name changing incident after a meeting with a “divine being”
reminds us of the name-changing incident of Abraham which followed
an appearance of Yahweh and the making of the famous “covenant”
which was immediately followed by the circumcision of both Abraham
and Ishmael275, which leads to another odd “doublet” in terms of
essential events: Moses.
Immediately after the
“burning bush” incident in which God talked to Moses telling him to
go back to
Egypt and free his people, the following happens:
4:24 And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met
him, and sought to kill him.
4:25 Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of
her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband
art thou to me.
4:26 So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art,
because of the circumcision.
274 Meagher, Robert Emmet, Helen: Myth, Legend and the Culture of Misogyny, 1995,
Continuum, New York, chapter 3.
275 The Bible, Genesis 17:22-26.
This incident is like a “connecting link” between the story of
Abraham and the covenant of circumcision, the story of Jacob
wrestling with the Angel, and the story of Moses. We begin to
suspect that, at the root of all the Bible stories is a single story
that was mythicized in different tribal groups, and then later the
different stories were reassembled and “historicized”.
Names were
changed within each tribe by assimilating their own ancestors to the
primary story, so it was only necessary to insert genealogies to
make the different variations on the same story look “vertical” in
time, when in fact, they were horizontal in time. Getting back to
the story of Jacob, while he was still in the womb, Jacob supplanted
his twin, Esau, by catching hold of his heel, draining him of royal
virtue. The Greek word pternizein, used by the Septuagint in this
context, means to “trip up someone’s heel”. This brings us around
again to the issue of Dan.
We recall that Dan was the child of
Rachel’s maid, Bilhah:
Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son. And Rachel said, God hath
judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son:
therefore called she his name Dan.
-
…which is similar to the story of Sarai and Hagar in Genesis 16:1-5
And he had intercourse with Hagar and she conceived: and when she
saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.
And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my
maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was
despised in her eyes: the Lord judge between me and thee.
-
…compared to Genesis 49, where the patriarch Jacob has called all
his children to gather around his deathbed so that he can pronounce
their destiny upon them.
When he gets to Dan, in verses16 - 18, he says:
Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan
shall be a serpent by the way, a horned snake in the path, that
bites at the horse’s heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I
wait for thy salvation, O Lord.”
-
…compared to Deuteronomy 33:22, where Moses blesses the tribe of Dan
by saying, “And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion’s whelp” … But in the
blessing of Jacob, in Genesis 49:8-9 the attribute of the Lion is
given to Judah: Judah, you are the one whom your brothers shall praise. Your hand
shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow
down to you. Judah, a lion’s cub!
-
…compared to the destiny prescribed by
God when he appears to Hagar
at the well when she ran away after Sarai was cruel to her during
her pregnancy, and finally, the blessing given by Isaac to his
beloved son Esau after Jacob had defrauded his father with the help
of his mother, Rebekah.
There are interesting resonances to the remarks made about Judah.
The first event is recounted in Genesis 16:11-12, and the second in
Genesis 27:39-40:
1) And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold, you are with
child and shall bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael, or God
hears, because the Lord has heard and paid attention to your
affliction. And [Ishmael] will be as a wild man; his hand will be
against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall
live to the east and on the borders of all his kinsmen.
2) And Isaac his father answered and said unto [Esau], Behold, Your
dwelling shall all come from the fruitfulness of the earth, and from
the dew of heaven from above;
And by your sword shalt you live, and serve your brother. But the
time will come when you will have the dominion, and you will break
his yoke from off your neck. To look at this a bit more deeply,
let’s see the story of Jacob’s birth from Genesis:
25:21 And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was
barren: and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife
conceived.
25:22 And the children struggled together within her; and she said,
If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the LORD.
25:23 And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and
two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one
people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall
serve the younger.
25:24 And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold,
there were twins in her womb.
25:25 And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment;
and they called his name Esau.
25:26 And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on
Esau’s heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore
years old when she bare them.
Again we have a barren wife, only in this case, instead of having a
maid to give birth to the “other brother”, Rebekah has twins, and
one of them is “red”. The story that connects this back to Judah and
Dan is the story of Tamar.
38:6 And Judah took a wife for Er his
firstborn, whose name was Tamar. 38:7 And Er, Judah’s firstborn, was
wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him.
38:8 And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and
marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.
38:9 And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to
pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on
the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.
38:10 And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he
slew him also.
38:11 Then said Judah to Tamar his daughter in law, Remain a widow
at thy father’s house, till Shelah my son be grown: for he said,
Lest peradventure he die also, as his brethren did. And Tamar went
and dwelt in her father’s house.
38:12 And in process of time the
daughter of Shuah Judah’s wife died; and Judah was comforted, and
went up unto his sheepshearers to Timnath, he and his friend Hirah
the Adullamite.
38:13 And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in law goeth
up to Timnath to shear his sheep.
38:14 And she put her widow’s garments off from her, and covered her
with a vail, and
wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to
Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given
unto him to wife. 38:15 When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an
harlot; because she had covered her face.
38:16 And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray
thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his
daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou
mayest come in unto me?
38:17 And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she
said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it?
38:18 And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy
signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And
he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.
38:19 And she arose, and went away, and laid by her vail from her,
and put on the garments of her widowhood.
38:20 And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend the
Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the woman’s hand: but he
found her not.
38:21 Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the
harlot, that was openly by the way side? And they said, There was no
harlot in this place.
38:22 And he returned to Judah, and said, I
cannot find her; and also the men of the place said, that there was
no harlot in this place.
38:23 And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed:
behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her.
38:24 And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told
Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and
also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring
her forth, and let her be burnt.
38:25 When she was brought forth,
she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are,
am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are
these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff.
38:26 And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more
righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And
he knew her again no more.
38:27 And it came to pass in the time of
her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb.
38:28 And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out
his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet
thread, saying, This came out first.
38:29 And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold,
his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? this
breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Pharez.
38:30 And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet
thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zarah.
Notice that the story of the birth is told in identical terms except
that instead of a “red man”, we have a “scarlet thread”. The
important thing about Pharez is that he was the purported ancestor
of King David. Pharez had another son, Hezron about whom it was
said:
2:18 And Caleb the son of Hezron begat […] took unto him Ephrath,
which bare him Hur.
2:20 And Hur begat Uri, and Uri begat Bezaleel.
Remember Hur and Uri and Bezaleel who were supposed to have lived at
the time of Moses? We found a descriptive hint of them in the story
about the architect sent by Hiram of Tyre.
In II Kings we find this:
4:7 And Solomon had twelve officers over all Israel, which provided
victuals for the king and his household: each man his month in a
year made provision. 4:8 And these are their names: The son of Hur,
in mount Ephraim: … This Hur is a most mysterious individual. He
appears at Moses’ side:
17:10 So Joshua did as Moses had said to him, and fought with
Amalek: and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.
17:11 And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel
prevailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed.
17:12 But Moses hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it
under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his
hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and
his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.
It all becomes even more mysterious when we consider the names of
Terah’s other sons: Nahor, and Haran which remind us homophonically
of Hur and Aaron… Getting back to Jacob, after his wrestling match,
he becomes the sacred king in a new way: instead of marrying the
representative of the Goddess, he has usurped that role and has
succeeded to his office by becoming like a woman.
In I Kings, 18:26,
where the priests of Baal dance at the altar and cry out, “Baal,
hear us!”, they leaped up and down, according to the Authorized
Version. The original Hebrew word is formed from the root psch,
which means “to dance with a limp”, and from which Pesach, the name
of the Passover Feast, is derived. The Passover seems to have been a
Canaanite Spring festival which the creators of the Bible adapted to
their own use as commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt. At Carmel,
the dance with a limp may have been a form of sympathetic magic to
encourage the appearance of the God with a bull’s foot who was
armed, like Dionysus, with a torch.
The writer of the Bible refrains
from mentioning his real name, but since those particular priests of
Baal (and Baal merely means “lord”) were Israelites, it is likely to
have been “Jah Aceb” of “Jacob”, the Heel God. Jah Aceb seems to
have been also worshipped at Beth-Hoglah, the Shrine of the Hobbler,
between Jericho and the Jordan south of Gilgal. This has been
identified as the threshing floor of Atad where Joseph mourned for
Jacob. After his “wounding in the thigh” incident, Jacob travels on
to meet his estranged brother, Esau, whom he swindled many years
before, and being afraid of Esau’s wrath, he put his children and
wives in the front of the cavalcade in hopes that they would soften
his brother’s heart so Esau wouldn’t kill him.276
276 In other words, he was hiding behind the womens’ skirts.
But Esau was long
past any rancor, and he embraced Jacob and accepted his gifts of
livestock and possibly even slaves. The story then takes a truly
bizarre twist. Apparently Esau thought that Jacob/Israel was going
to travel with him to
Seir.
But Jacob hemmed and hawed and finally told Esau to go on
ahead. Then, after Esau had left, Jacob went in a completely
different direction where it is said he,
“built himself a house, and
made booths or places of shelter for his livestock; so the name of
the place is called Succoth”. (v. 17)
When we investigate this word, we discover that the archaic meaning
of it was that of a small cubicle set up by a “temple prostitute”
along the side of the road as in the story of Judah and Tamar in
Genesis 38:14, from the J document! This brings us back to the
question of what was the Canaanite Festival of Tabernacles?
The ancient Greek civilization dedicated one of their harvest
festivals to the Goddess of the earth and all grain, Demeter.
The
festival, known as the Thesmosphoria, was celebrated for three days
and featured the building of shelters by married women, fasting and
offerings to Demeter. The connection between married women and the
festival may point to a belief that childbearing and healthy crops
were interconnected. The word Mete is, of course, related to mother,
and De is the delta, or triangle, a female genital sign. This letter
in the ancient alphabets originally represented the Door of birth,
death, or sexual paradise. Thus, the “booth” or Tabernacle, was
little more than a structure set up to manifest a “doorway”.
Doorways in general were considered sacred to the Goddesses, and in Sumeria they were painted red to represent the female “blood of
life”. In Egypt, doorways were smeared with real blood for the
religious rites of the Goddess.
Where have we heard of that before?
The cult of Demeter which celebrated the Eleusinian rites was well
established in Mycenae in the 13th century BC, and it is more than
likely that the Feast of Tabernacles in Canaan was an offshoot of
this activity. Our sources of information regarding the Eleusinian
Mysteries include the ruins of the sanctuary there, numerous
statues, bas reliefs, and pottery. We also have reports from ancient
writers such as Aeschylos, Sophocles, Herodotus, Aristophanes,
Plutarch, and Pausanias - all of whom were initiates - as well as
the accounts of Christian commentators like Clement of Alexandria,
Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Astorias, who were critics and not
initiates.
Yet for all this evidence, the true nature of the
Mysteries remains shrouded in uncertainty because the participants
were remarkably steadfast in honoring their pledge not to reveal
what took place in the Telesterion, or inner sanctum of the Temple
of Demeter. To violate that oath of secrecy was a capital
offense.277 For these reasons, scholars today must make use of
circumstantial evidence and inferences, with the result that there
is still no consensus as to what did or did not take place.
277 Aeschylos, for example, once had to fear for his life on account
of coming too close to revealing forbidden truths.
Foucart and his followers concluded that the Mysteries at Eleusis
originally must have come from Egypt. The fact is, the sanctuary
ruins in Eleusis evidently go back centuries earlier than the
Egyptian Hymn to Demeter recited by Homer that is often cited as the
proof that the origin was Egyptian. What is more, the excavations
have unearthed no Egyptian artifacts there from that period. Many
scholars today favor the view that the cult of Demeter probably
derived from Thessaly or Thrace.
They base this conclusion partly on
references in Homer and other ancient authors to some evidently
pre-Dorian temples to Demeter in the Thessalian towns of
Thermopylae, Pyrasos, and Pherai; partly on certain etymological
links connecting key words in the rites of Demeter to pre-Hellenic
dialects from the north. Other scholars point out that Demeter may
be the same as a Goddess “Dameter”, who is mentioned briefly in
Linear B tablets from Pylos dating from approximately 1200 BC.
This
evidence suggests that the cult of Demeter may, after all, have
originated in the southern Peleponnesus. In any case, whether the
specific cult of Demeter at Eleusis originated in northern or
southern Greece, the undeniable parallels with worship of grain
Goddesses in other parts of the eastern Mediterranean region point
to frequent contacts and the cross-fertilization of religious ideas.
And while we certainly think that the Canaanite Feast of Tabernacles
was a corrupted version of some more ancient form, we also think
that there is something very mysterious going on behind this
deliberate establishing of the Tabernacle as the place where the
laws of Yahweh were kept, so as to convert it from some other, prior
function.
As it happens, the term “Thesmophoria” is derived from
thesmoi, meaning, “laws”, and phoria, “carrying”, in reference to
the Goddess as “law-bearer”. But the symbolism of the ark of the
covenant with Yahweh as the “law bearer” in the “tent of meeting”,
or the “Mother-Delta”, the “doorway to the higher realms”, replaced
the original meaning and the role of women in the process.
Entire
books are written that are full of speculations about the Eleusinian
rites. I may write one some day myself, but, let me cut to the chase
here: The closest we can come to understanding the goal of these
rites is to suggest that they had to do with “ascent” or “descent”
to other realms in order to perform the archetypal act of creation
of the New Year.
We already have some idea what these rites and celebrations
represented since they show clear parallels to the Grail ensemble we
examined briefly in the earlier chapters of this book. The New Year
festivals of the ancients included rites that symbolized the
cyclical nature of time, the exhaustion of cosmic resources
resulting in chaos, followed by the hieros gamos, or sacred
marriage. This was, effectively, the “planting of the seed” into the
new universe, or the “passage” through the waters of the flood, in
an ark, into the new world. It may also represent, in its most
original form, a utilization of the knowledge of Time Loops - a Time
Machine.
In this sense, it seems only reasonable to suggest that the ascent
or descent may have been the function or goal of the hieros gamos
itself and that perhaps the sacred intercourse that symbolized union
with the Goddess, also indicated in act, if not in fact, the meeting
of man with the divinity, and the receiving of the “laws” or
“destinies” for the entire group during the coming year.
Taking this
imagery even further
into the past - the hypothesized ancient science - it may be that
the hieros gamos was only another symbol of the “dissolving into
time” of a Time Machine. It was during the hieros gamos that the
lights were extinguished, the hierogamy took place under the
direction of the hierophant, in a tent erected for privacy, and when
the lights were re-lit, it was a symbol that the old year had died,
and the seed had been planted for the new year to be born.
It is
said that,
“the ultimate mystery was revealed at Eleusis in the
words, ‘an ear of corn reaped in silence’ - a sacred fetish that the
Jews called shibboleth”.278
This business of the “shibboleth” is an
interesting clue here. The word itself is derived from an unused
Hebrew root, shebel, which means, “to flow” as a lady’s train, or
something that trails after a woman or flows out of her. Thus, the
“ear of corn” is seen as something that grows “out of a woman”, or
that grain “flows from her”, as grain is the gift of the Goddess.
We
have here an image of just exactly what bio-electronic energy may
have been required to transduce cosmic energy to bring down the cars
full of baskets of grain as described in the Rg Veda:
The adorable Maruts, armed with bright lances and cuirassed with
golden breastplates, enjoy vigorous existence; may the cars of the
quick-moving Maruts arrive for our good. …Bringers of rain and
fertility, shedding water, augmenting food. …Givers of abundant
food. …Your milchkine are never dry. …We invoke the food-laden
chariots of the Maruts.” 279
278 D’Alviella, Count Goblet, The
Migration of Symbols, (New York: University Books 1956).
279 Rg-Veda, Vol III.
The word “shibboleth” occurs only one
place in the Bible, in a truly tragic story in the book of Judges,
chapters 11 and 12. It seems that there was a man named Jephthah who
was the son of a harlot. He was kicked out of the family home by the
legitimate sons of his father, Gilead, and went off and became a
sort of leader of other dispossessed persons.
Sounds rather like Robin Hood so far. Also sounds like David during his outlaw days.
As it happened, his brothers who had kicked him out, the “elders of
Gilead”, were being attacked by the “children of Ammon”. They
desperately needed help, and they knew that Jephthah had a
reputation as a fierce warrior with a well trained band of “merry
men”. So, they went to ask Jephthah for help.
Jephthah pointed out that they had a lot of nerve asking him to help
them fight their battles, but they persuaded him by saying “if you
help us now, we will make you head of the family”. That was more
than Jephthah could resist, so he agreed. Not only that, but he
swore a public oath to Yahweh that if Yahweh made him successful in
this enterprise, he would give as a burnt offering “whatsoever
cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return”.
I’m sure the reader sees what is coming now. Jephthah was, indeed,
successful in his battle.
And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his
daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she
was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.
And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and
said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art
one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the
LORD, and I cannot go back. And she said unto him, My father, if
thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that
which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath
taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of
Ammon.
And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me
alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and
bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. And he said, Go. And he sent
her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and
bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. And it came to pass at
the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did
with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no
man. And it was a custom in Israel, That the daughters of Israel
went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four
days in a year.
Well, aside from the fact that if we are to take the Bible
literally, we have here a definite indication that Yahweh was
originally a God who may have demanded human sacrifice, we most
definitely have an indication that Yahweh at least accepted human
sacrifice upon occasion! But, in another sense, this is merely
another version of the story where Abraham almost sacrificed his son
Isaac, which is almost identical to a Vedic story of Manu.
These
acts were based on what was called sraddha which is related to the
words fides, credo, faith, believe and so on.280 The word sraddha
was, according to Dumezil and Levi, too hastily understood as
“faith” in the Christian sense. Correctly understood, it means
something like the trust a workman has in his tools and techniques
as acts of magic! It is, therefore, part of a “covenant” wherein the
sacrificer knows how to perform a prescribed sacrifice correctly,
and who also knows that if he performs the sacrifice correctly, it
must produce its effect.
In short, it is an act that is designed to gain control over the
forces of life that reside in the God with whom one has made the
covenant. Gods such as these, who make covenants are not “literary
ornaments” or abstractions. They are active partners with
intelligence, strength, passion, and a tendency to get out of
control if the sacrifices are not performed correctly. In this
sense, the sacrifice is simply magic.
280 Meillet, Antoine, Memoires de la Society de Linguistique de
Paris, XXII, 1992.
In another sense, the ascetic or “self-sacrificer”, is a person who
is striving for release from the bondage and order of nature by the
act of attempting to mortify the self, the flesh; testing and
increasing the will for the purpose of winning tyrannical powers
while still in the world. He seeks mastery of himself, other men,
and even the Gods themselves.
In the story of Manu from India, we find that he has a mania for
sacrifice just as the ascetics and saints have a mania for
self-sacrifice. The most famous of the stories depicts Manu,
enslaved to his sraddha, giving up everything of value in his life
to the demonic “Asura brahmans, Trsta and Varutri”. To get something
from Manu, all these demons need to do is say “Manu, you are a
sacrificer, your God is sraddha”. So, one thing after another is
demanded of him, and finally even his wife, Manavi.
Indra, however,
intervenes at this point to save Manavi and appears to Manu and uses
the same words, “Manu, you are a sacrificer, your God is sraddha”.
To foil the plot of the demonic Brahmins who have produced in Manu
the state of sraddha, or the belief in the necessity of sacrifice,
Indra demands the sacrifice of the two demonic Brahmins themselves!
Manu, being a devotee of sraddha, hands them over without any
difficulty, and Indra beheads them with the water of the sacrifice.
Acts of sacrifice are, effectively, acts of trade - an execution of
a contract of exchange between man and divinity. “I give that you
may give.”
In the story in the Bible where Cain’s sacrifice of grain
was rejected, we find a reflection of the idea that a God evaluates
the greater or lesser worth of a proposed offering.
Manu, deprived
of his victim by the merciful intervention of Indra, did not like
his “rights” to be infringed.
“Finish my sacrifice!”, he said to Indra.
Indra gives him a pledge:
“The desire you had in taking your
wife for your victim, let that desire be granted you; but let that
woman be!” 281
281 Sylvain Levi, quoted by Dumezil, Georges, Mitra-Varuna: An Essay
on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignty (Zone Books;
reprint edition 1988) p. 63.
In the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son, Isaac,
and the appearance of the ram in the thicket, we have a most
interesting variation on this theme. Agni is equated with Vasishtha,
“lotus born”, or “of the Goddess”.
In the story of Jephthah’s daughter, we find that the editor of the
biblical texts felt that the story could not be removed, but had to
disguise the true nature of the sacrifice.
The matter becomes
clearer with the following:
Llew Llaw Gyffes (the Lion with the Steady Hand), a type of Dionysus
or Celestial Hercules worshipped in ancient Britain, is generally
identified with Lugh, the Goidelic Sun-God… ‘Would that it were no
more than the Sun! It is the glowing face of Lugh the Long-handed -
which nobody could gaze upon without being dazzled.’
His death on the first Sunday in August - called Lugh nasadh, later
altered to Lughmass or Lammas - was until recently observed in
Ireland with Good Friday-like mourning and kept as a feast of dead
kinsfolk, the mourning procession being always led by a young man
carrying a hooped wreath. Lammas was also observed as a mourning
feast in most parts of England in mediaeval times… In some parts of
Wales, Lammas is still kept as a fair.
Sir John Rhys records that in
the 1850’s the hills of Fan Fach and South Barrule in
Carmarthenshire were crowded with mourners for Llew Llaw on the
first Sunday in August, their excuse being that they were ‘going up
to bewail Jephthah’s daughter on the mountain’. This, oddly enough,
was the very same excuse that the post-Exilic Jewish girls had used,
after the Deuteronomic reforms, to disguise their mourning for
Tammuz, Llew Llaw’s Palestianian counterpart.282
The sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter is, thus, another instance where the new view of
women as explicated by Hesiod and his Bible writing counterparts was
being imposed on the Eastern Mediterranean world.
It’s interesting
to think about Pandora’s “pithoi” from which troubles flowed with
the clue of the shibboleth that is included in the story of Jephthah:
12:4 Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and
fought with Ephraim: and the men of Gilead smote Ephraim, because
they said, Ye Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim among the
Ephraimites, and among the Manassites.
12:5 And the Gileadites took
the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that
when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that
the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said,
Nay;
12:6 Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said
Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they
took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at
that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
Another clue to the Eleusinian rites is that they were said to be
celebrated by women only throughout all Greece in the month of
Pyanepsion (late October), their characteristic feature being a pig
sacrifice, the usual sacrifice to chthonic283 deities.
The Greeks attributed special powers to pigs on account of their
fertility, the potency and abundance of their blood, and perhaps
because of their uncanny ability to unearth underground tubers and
shoots. Experts suggest that it was believed that mingling pig flesh
with the seeds of grain would increase the abundance of next year’s
harvest. The scholars also tell us that the ceremonies comprised
fasting and purification, a ritualized descent into the underworld,
and the use of sympathetic magic to bring renewed life back out of
the jaws of death.
282 Robert Graves, The White Goddess, (New York:
Noonday Press 1948) pp. 302, 303.
283 “Dark, primitive and mysterious.”
Thus we see that the participants in the Themosphoria revered swine,
and their rituals featured the washing and sacrificing of young pigs
sacred to Demeter (although this took place on the beaches at Pireas
near Athens rather than at Eleusis itself). And somehow we find this
to be a Canaanite practice that is now very strangely juxtaposed
against a religion that is known for its ban on pork.
Was that
because the sacred animal of the rival religion was the pig, or was
it because, in some deep inner core of the founding of the religion
of Judaism, the pig is actually protected from being eaten because
of reverence? And if so, why would that be the case? Was the pig
ever an embodiment of a God?
Well, let’s look at this for a moment.
In Genesis 12:6-7 we find Abraham making a covenant with God. And
Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the
plain of Moreh And the Canaanite was then in the land. And the LORD
appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land:
and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.
Next we find God telling Abraham in Genesis 22:2-3
And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou
lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there
for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell
thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his
ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and
clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto
the place of which God had told him.
And in II Chronicles 3:1 we find:
Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in
mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the
place that David had prepared in the threshing floor of Ornan the
Jebusite.
Another name for Moriah is Mount Zion. Isaiah tells us that Mount
Zion is the Throne of the Lord of Hosts who, “scatters, distributes
and treads underfoot”. The “Temple” was built on the “threshing
floor” of Ornan (Araunah in another version), symbolic of the
harvest God Tammuz, who demanded the “first fruits” of the grain.
However,
Jehovah wasn’t terribly interested in grain. He wanted
blood:
Exodus 34:19 All that openeth the womb is mine; and every firstling
among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. 34:20 But the
firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou
redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of
thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.
34:21 Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt
rest: in plowing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.
-
Jehovah’s claim to the Seventh day as sacred to himself identifies
him with Cronos or Saturn.
-
The Phrygian Adonis is said to have been
metamorphosed into a fir by the Goddess Cybele who loved him, when
he lay dying from a wound dealt him by a boar sent by Zeus.
-
Set, the Egyptian Sun-God, disguised as a boar, killed Osiris.
-
Apollo the Greek Sun-God, disguised as a boar, killed Adonis, or
Tammuz, the Syrian, the lover of the Goddess Aphrodite.
-
Finn Mac
Cool, disguised as a boar, killed Diarmuid, the lover of the Irish
Goddess Grainne.
-
An unknown God disguised as a boar killed Ancaeus
the Arcadian King, a devotee of Artemis, in his vineyard at Tegea
-
According to the Nestorian Gannat Busame, Cretan Zeus was
similarly killed.
October was the boar-hunting season, as it was
also the revelry season of the ivy wreathed Bassarids. The boar is the beast of death and the
“fall” of the year begins in the month of the boar.
In Egypt, the year was counted as 360 days divided into three
120-day seasons each containing five periods of equal length, 24
days, with five days left over. The Egyptians said that the five
days were those which the God Thoth (Hermes) won at draughts from
the Moon Goddess Isis, composed of the seventy-second parts of every
day in the year. The birthdays of Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis and
Nephthys were celebrated on them in that order. It seems that, based
on the myth, a change in religion necessitated a change in the
calendar.
The old year of 364 days with one day left over was
succeeded by a year of 360 days with five left over. Under later
Assyrian influence, the three seasons were divided into four periods
of thirty days each rather than five periods of 24 each. The 72 day
season occurs in the Egypto-Byblian myth that the Goddess Isis hid
her child Horus, or Harpocrates, from the rage of the ass-eared
Sun-God Set during the 72 hottest days of the year, that third of
the five seasons ruled by the Dog star Sirius and the two Asses.
The
Greek legend that the God Dionysus placed the Asses in the Sign of
Cancer suggests that the Dionysus who visited Egypt and was
entertained by Proteus, King of Pharos, was Osiris, brother of the
Hyksos God Typhon, alias Set. According to the Homeric legend of
King Proteus, the earliest settlers in the Delta used Pharos, the
lighthouse island off what later became Alexandria, as their sacred
oracular island.
Proteus, king of Pharos, lived in a cave where
Menelaus consulted him. He had the power of changing his shape. Apuleius connects the sistrum of Osiris, used to frighten away the
God Set, with Pharos. This suggests that Proteus and Osiris were
regarded there as the same person. Another Proteus, or Proetus, was
an Arcadian.
The wide landing-quay at the entrance to the port of Pharos
consisted of rough blocks, some of them sixteen feet long, deeply
grooved with a checkerboard pattern of pentagons. Since pentagons
are inconvenient figures for such constructions, some researchers
think that the number five must have had some important religious
significance.
Robert Graves asks:
“Was Pharos the center of a
five-season calendar system?”
The island had been otherwise oddly connected to the numbers five
and seventytwo at the beginning of the Christian era. The Jews of
Alexandria used to visit the island for an annual festival, the
excuse for which was that the Five Books of Moses had been
miraculously translated there into Greek by seventy-two doctors of
the Law who had worked for seventy-two days each.
What is behind this story?
Festivals in ancient times generally commemorated some sort of
treaty or act of unification. What happened here?
Aeschylus calls the Nile Ogygian, and
Eustathius the Byzantine
grammarian said that Ogygia was the earliest name for Egypt. When
the Byblians first brought their Syrian Tempest-God to Egypt, the
one who, disguised as a boar, yearly killed his brother Adonis, the
God always born under a fir-tree, they identified him with Set, the
ancient Egyptian God of the desert whose sacred beast was the wild
ass, and who yearly destroyed his brother Osiris, the God of the
Nile vegetation.
Sanchthoniatho the Phoenician, quoted by
Philo, says, “the mysteries of Phoenicia were brought to Egypt”. He
said that the two first inventors of the human race, Upsouranios and his brother Ousous
consecrated two pillars, one to fire and one to wind. These are the
earliest forms of the Jachin and Boaz pillars representing Adonis,
God of the waxing year and the newborn sun, and Typhon, God of the
waning year and of destructive winds. The Hyksos Kings under Byblian
influence similarly converted their Tempest-God into Set.
In pre-dynastic times, Set may have been the chief of all the Gods
of Egypt, since the sign of royalty which all the dynastic Gods
carried was Set’s ass-eared reed scepter. The Egyptians also
identified him with the long-eared constellation Orion, “Lord of the
Chambers of the South”, and the “breath of Set” was the South wind
from the deserts which, then as now, causes a wave of criminal
violence in Egypt, Libya and Southern Europe whenever it blows. The
ass appears in many of the anecdotes of Genesis and the early
historical books of the Bible.
Egyptian texts and pictorial records are notorious for their
suppression or distortion of fact. It seems that the aristocratic
priests of the “Establishment Church of Egypt” had begun to tamper
with the popular stories as early as 2800 BC. For example: in the
Book of the Dead, at the Twelfth Hour of Darkness, when Osiris’
sun-boat approaches the last gateway of the Other world before his
reemergence into the light of day, he is pictured bent backwards in
the form of a hoop with his hands raised and his toes touching the
back of his head.
This is explained as “Osiris whose circuit is the
other world”. It is supposed to suggest that by adopting this absurd
acrobatic posture, Osiris is defining the other world as a circular
region thus making the Twelve Hours analogous with the Twelve Signs
of the Zodiac. It is clear that a priestly corruption has been
imposed on a more archaic understanding.
This posture represents Osiris who has been captured by Set, and has been tied, like Ixion
or Cuchulain, in the five-fold bond that joined wrists, neck and
ankles together. In other words, Osiris in this posture is an
economical way of describing the effects on him by the activity of
the God of the underworld, the serpent, Set who also appears as a
Boar and an Ass. We now have many more clues about the early
formation of the religion of Yahweh, including the description of
the construction of the Pillars Jachin and Boaz, historicized myths
of the Bible, attributed to Solomon. We also see a connection to the
Peribsen rebellion followed by the emergence of the Cretan
civilization which was later linked to Judaism.
In the present day, the Jews celebrate their New Year in September
of the year around the time of the harvest. This is followed by the
Feast of Tabernacles, which is supposed to commemorate the fact that
the children of Israel built “temporary shelters” while wandering in
the desert, the domain of Set. It is said that it was “in the tent
that God first tabernacled with man” during the Exodus. The
Tabernacle was a place for the meeting of God with man. The
comparisons are so obvious I don’t even need to point them out.
Now, returning to our most peculiar story of Jacob wrestling with
the “man”, following which he went south and did the whole
“Tabernacles” thing, it is clear that an ancient ritual drama has
been historicized.
Certain ancient myths tell us that a battle takes place either
between two brothers, or between father and son. The battle ends
when the elder king is “wounded in the thigh”, or ritually castrated
to symbolize his loss of potency. The kingdom, represented by the
queen, is then given over to the winning brother, or from father to son because the queen symbolizes
the land. It is interesting that this drama was enacted between
Jacob, and an “angel of Yahweh”, playing the role of Set. In this
way, the people understood that the kingship had been handed to
Yahweh personally because he “Tabernacled with Jacob” playing the
role of the Goddess. Yahweh, the Boar God.
We need to understand here that these ritual combats, dying kings,
cannibalistic and sacrificial activities are only the extreme
corruptions of an original, core idea that can be seen to represent
an ancient technology. Indeed, the technology aspect emerges from
time to time, but is often so disguised that it is difficult to sort
out the many twists and turns in the threads of transmission. Among
the most archaic representations of these ideas - even though we can
consider it to still be a corruption of the truly ancient knowledge - are the rites of the Shamans of central Asia.
When we look to the function of the shaman, we discover: the shaman
either descends to the underworld to save man, or he ascends to the
heavens to intercede with the Gods on behalf of his people. He is,
in effect, the divinely chosen “knight” who has the “right stuff” to
be able to make this journey. The symbolism of the stairs on which
the shaman ascends and descends are typically shamanic.
The “Tree of
Life”, the symbol of the birth Goddess, is a symbol of the shamanic
ascent to the celestial spheres to receive the communication from
God concerning the fate of the tribe. In this sense, the cosmic axis
and the heavenly book have become joined in terms of symbolism. One
can clearly see these elements in the story of Jacob’s ladder and
his wrestling with the “angel”. Unfortunately, Jacob lost the match.
What is most fascinating in terms of shamanic studies is a
mysterious “female sickness” that male shamans often suffered. One
of the reported (and variable) symptoms of becoming a shaman is that
the individual begins to dress as a woman, to act as a woman, and to
generally begin a process of feminization. We see a hint of this
factor in Jacob’s journey south to “build booths” which was a
strictly female activity!
This feminization of the shaman directs us to consider the fact that
the original shamanic/grail function was most likely fulfilled by
women only, and at some point, men attempted to dispense with the
function of the female and to acquire her attributes and natural
shamanic capabilities. It seems that, at the same point in time, the
place of the woman in the rites, who was present to “embody” the
Goddess in the sacred marriage, was replaced by other items,
including stairs, celestial trees, and even horses. The rhythmic
function of ritual intercourse, which was merely a corruption of the
act of “dissolving” into space/time, was replaced by drumming and
other trance inducing methods.
The clues to these transitions are held in the very words
themselves: knight and mare. Knight is derived from the same root as
yogi, or juga, which means “to join together”, and the word “mare”
for “mer” or Sea of the mother is obvious. In order to get us a bit
closer to some idea of how the transitions occur, Eliade remarks on
the shamanic role in funerary rites, which have been described and
observed.
It is thought that these sorts of rites are very similar
to the “secret rites” or functions that are hidden by vows of
secrecy.
Herodotus has left us a good description of the funerary customs of
the Scythians. The funeral was followed by purifications. Hemp was
thrown on heated stones and all inhaled the smoke; “the Scythians
howl in joy for the vapour-bath.” […] The howls compose a specific
religious ensemble, the purpose of which could only be ecstasy. In
this connection Meuli cites the Altaic séance described by Radlov,
in which the shaman guided to the underworld the soul of a woman who
had been dead forty days.
The shaman-psychopomp is not found in
Herodotus’ description; he speaks only of the purifications
following a funeral. But among a number of Turko-Tatar peoples such
purifications coincide with the shaman’s escorting the deceased to
his new home, the nether regions.[…]
The use of hemp for ecstatic purposes is also attested among the
Iranians, and it is the Iranian word for hemp that is employed to
designate mystical intoxication in Central and North Asia.
It is known that the Caucasian peoples, and especially the Osset,
have preserved a number of the mythological and religious traditions
of the Scythians. Now, the conceptions of the afterlife held by
certain Caucasian peoples are close to those of the Iranians,
particularly in regard to the deceased crossing a bridge as narrow
as a hair, the myth of a Cosmic Tree whose top touches the sky and
at whose root there is a miraculous spring, and so on. Then, too,
diviners, seers, and necromancer-psychopomps play a certain role
among the mountain Georgian tribes. The most important of these
sorcerers are the messulethe; their ranks are filled for the most
part from among the women and girls. Their chief office is to escort
the dead to the other world, but they can also incarnate them. […]
The messulethe performs her task by falling into trance.284
284 Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, pp. 394-6.
At this
point, allow me to interject the comment that we see a curious
parallel to the fact that the Themosphoria was celebrated “only by
women”. In other words, it was very likely an archaic custom of what
has been called “sacred prostitution” but the sacred prostitution
was clearly derived from archaic techniques of ecstasy which we have
surmised were actually disjecta membra of an ancient technology that
effectively modified DNA.
Over millennia of transmission, the
terminology describing this DNA factor was corrupted to refer to
sexual elements. We shall also later see that what was once a
“spiritual idea” was given a literal, physical meaning. The role and
participation of women is indeed important, but not at all the way
many occultists have interpreted it.
What is clear is that the very ancient idea of women as priestesses,
or as socalled “temple prostitutes”, was merely derived from the
fact of the natural role of the woman as true shaman.
When women
were extirpated from their role as natural psychopomp for their
tribes, a host of other items had to be invented to take their
place: trees, bridges (which is a word strikingly similar to “bride”
and “bridle” as is used for a horse!), ladders, stairs, drums, rattles,
chants, dances, and so on; and most especially ritual combat instead
of unification.
We have observed the striking resemblance between the other world
ideas of the Caucasians and of the Iranians. For one thing, the
Cinvat bridge plays an essential role in Iranian funerary mythology;
crossing it largely determines the destiny of the soul; and the
crossing is a difficult ordeal, equivalent in structure, to
initiatory ordeals. […]
The Cinvat bridge is at the “Center”, at the “middle of the world”
and “the height of a hundred men”. […] The bridge connects earth and
heaven at the “Center”. Under the Cinvat bridge is the pit of hell.
Here we find a “classic” cosmological schema of the three cosmic
regions connected by a central axis (pillar, tree, bridge, etc.) The
shamans travel freely among the three zones; the dead must cross a
bridge on their journey to the beyond. […] The important feature of
the Iranian tradition is (at least as it survived after
Zarathustra’s reform) is that, at the crossing of the bridge, there
is a sort of struggle between the demons, who try to cast the soul
down to hell, and the tutelary spirits who resist them.
The Gathas285 make three references to this crossing of the Cinvat
bridge. In the first two passages Zarathustra, according to H.S.
Nyberg’s interpretation, refers to himself as a psychopomp. Those
who have been united to him in ecstasy will cross the bridge with
ease.286
[…]
The bridge, then, is not only the way for the dead; it is the road
of ecstatics. […] The Gathic term maga is proof that Zarathustra and
his disciples induced an ecstatic experience by ritual songs intoned
in chorus in a closed, consecrated space. In this sacred space
(maga) communication between heaven and earth became possible. […]
The sacred space became a “Center”.[…]
Shamanic ecstasy induced by hemp smoke was known in ancient Iran.
[…]
In the Videvdat hemp is demonized. This seems to us to prove
complete hostility to shamanic intoxication. […]
The imagery of the
Central Asian shamans would seem to have undergone the influence of
Oriental, and principally Iranian, ideas. But this does not mean
that the shamanic descent to the underworld derives from an exotic
influence. The Oriental contribution only amplified and added color
to the dramatic scenarios of punishments; it was the narratives of
ecstatic journeys to the underworld that were enriched under
Oriental influences; the ecstasy long preceded them. [….]
We … have found the technique of ecstasy in archaic cultures where
it is impossible to suspect any influence from the ancient East. […]
The magico-religious value of intoxication for achieving ecstasy is
of Iranian origin. […]
Concerning the original shamanic experience … narcotics are only a
vulgar substitute for “pure” trance.
The use of intoxicants is a recent innovation and points to a
decadence in shamanic technique. Narcotic intoxication is called on
to provide an imitation of a state that the shaman is no longer
capable of attaining otherwise. Decadence or vulgarization of a
mystical technique - in ancient and modern India, and indeed all
through the East, we constantly find this strange mixture of
“difficult ways” and “easy ways” of realizing mystical ecstasy or
some other decisive experience.287
285 Zarathustra’s hymns.
286 Here I will comment that the influence of Zoroastrianism on the
creation of the Bible may have been profound.
287 Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, pp.
396-401.
With this very small series of
hints, we can deduce that Jacob’s dream of the ladder and his ritual
combat with the “man” who was an “angel of Yahweh”, are simply
glosses of the true activities of Jacob as a shaman. Whether or not
there was ever a historical Jacob, we can’t say. What does seem to
be true is that somebody did something at that point in time and was
“assimilated” to the myth of the “Heel God”.
We think again of the
encounters between Abraham and God, and Moses and God, resulting in
circumcision. In any event, the three events: wrestling with the
angel, the name changing, the circumcision of Abraham and the son of
Moses, were very likely originally a single event, separated in time
and context by the redactor of the Bible who we will soon encounter.
Nevertheless, Jacob lost the battle, failing to fulfill the function
of the shaman, and the following day, met his brother, knowing that
he had been “mortally wounded”, and transferred to him the
“blessing” or kingship. My own question is this: was this meeting
also a record of the transferring of some vital item to Esau as a
result of his shamanic failure?
Here, of course, is a stupendously key element that I must explain.
As it happens, there is one significant story in the Bible that is
claimed as “history” that DOES have external verification in the
records of Egypt in the form of the “rest of the story”. This story
is that of Abram and Sarai in Egypt. And in fact, this is one of the
very problematical “triplets”.
The story goes:
12:10 And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into
Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.
12:11 And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into
Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that
thou art a fair woman to look upon:
12:12 Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see
thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me,
but they will save thee alive.
12:13 Say, I pray thee, thou art my
sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall
live because of thee.
12:14 And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the
Egyptians
beheld the woman that she was very fair.
12:15 The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before
Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house.
12:16 And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep,
and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she
asses, and camels.
12:17 And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house
with great plagues because of Sarai Abram’s wife.
12:18 And Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this that thou hast
done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?
12:19 Why saidst thou, She is my sister? so I might have taken her
to me to wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy
way.
12:20 And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him: and they sent
him away, and his wife, and all that he had.
13:1 And Abram went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that
he had, and Lot with him, into the south.
13:2 And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.
I’m My Own Grandpa
In all of Egyptian history, nothing is as mysterious as the strange
life of Akhenaten and the odd appearance and equally mysterious
disappearance of his queen, Nefertiti, whose name means “a beautiful
woman has come”. We notice in the above account that the “the Lord
plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai”.
This reminds us of the plagues at the time of the Exodus.
We also
notice that the pharaoh told Abraham, “take your wife and go”. This
strangely mirrors the demand of Moses, “Let my people go”. The
timing of this event is also important, and I think that we can nail
it down to the time of the eruption of Thera on the island of
Santorini around 1600 BC, which happens to be the time that the
entire Earth experienced a disruption recorded in ice cores, and
brought the Bronze Age world to an end. It was very likely also the
time when many refugees from many areas of the Mediterranean all
showed up in Palestine - including Danaan Greeks - to form the mixed
ethnic groups from which the later Jewish state evolved.
There is evidence that the eruption of Thera coincided generally
with the ejection of the Hyksos from the Nile Delta. There is also
evidence that many of the king list segments that are currently
arranged in a linear way may have represented different dynasties in
different locations, some of which ruled simultaneously exactly as
Manetho has told us. In particular, there is evidence that the 18th
dynasty overlapped the Hyksos kings to some considerable extent.
This is important to us at present because of the fact that the
story of Abraham and Sarai in Egypt is mirrored by the story of
Akhenaten and his Queen, Nefertiti.
The earliest document that
describes the time of the Hyksos is from the Temple of Hatshepsut at
Speos Artemidos which says:
Hear ye, all people and the folk as many as they may be, I have done
these things through the counsel of my heart. I have not slept
forgetfully, (but) I have restored that which had been ruined. I
have raised up that which had gone to pieces formerly, since the
Asiatics were in the midst of Avaris of the Northland, and vagabonds
were in the midst of them, overthrowing that which had been made.
They ruled without Re, and he did not act by divine command down to
(the reign
of) my majesty.288
The expulsion of the Hyksos was a series of campaigns which
supposedly
started with Kamose who was king in Thebes. He unsuccessfully
rebelled against
the Hyksos. His son Ahmose was finally successful in pushing the
Hyksos out. An
army commander named Ah-mose records in his tomb the victory over
the
Hyksos.
He says:
When the town of Avaris was besieged, then I showed valor on foot in
the presence of his majesty. Thereupon I was appointed to the ship,
‘Appearing in Memphis’. Then there was fighting on the water in the
canal Pa-Djedku of Avaris. Thereupon I made a capture, and I carried
away a hand. It was reported to the king’s herald. Then the Gold of
Valor was given to me. Thereupon there was fighting again in this
place....Then Avaris was despoiled. Then I carried off spoil from
there: one man, three woman, a total of four persons. Then his
majesty gave them to me to be slaves. Then Sharuhen was besieged for
three years. Then his majesty despoiled it.289
288 ANET 1969,
p. 231; Breasted, James, Ancient Records of Egypt, 1906-7, rpt.
1988, 5 Vols.(London:
Histories & Mysteries of Man Ltd. 1988) pp. 122-26; Shanks, Hershel,
“The Exodus and the Crossing of the Red Sea, According to Hans
Goedicke.” Biblical Archaeology Review 7:5 (September/October 1981).
p. 49.
289 ANET 1969, p. 233.
Note that Avaris was
besieged, there is no mention of how Avaris was taken, and there is
no burning of Avaris claimed. What is more, the archaeological
evidence shows that Avaris was not destroyed in a military
engagement. The likelihood is that, after years of unstable
relations with the Southern Egyptian dynasty, Avaris was abandoned
due to the eruption of Thera.
This exodus from Egypt by the Hyksos, many of whom fled to Canaan,
was part of their history. In fact, there were probably many
refugees arriving in the Levant from many places affected by the
eruption and the following famine. When the descendants of the
refugees were later incorporated into a tribal confederation known
as Israel, the story became one of the single events they all agreed
upon. In this respect, they all did, indeed, share a history.
The fact is, other than the expulsion of the Hyksos, there is no
other record of any mass exit from Egypt. Avaris was on the coast,
and thus closer to the effects of the volcano. Naturally, the
Egyptians of Thebes saw the expulsion of the Hyksos as a great
military victory, while the Hyksos themselves, in the retelling of
the story, viewed their survival as a great salvation victory.
This
seems similar to other events recorded in ancient history where both
sides claim a great victory. Nevertheless, that there was something
very unusual going on during this time comes down to us from the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus.
There is a little diary
preserved on the reverse of this
work that records the events leading up to the fall of Avaris.
Regnal year 11, second month of shomu - Heliopolis was entered.
First month of akhet, day 23 - the Bull of the South gores his way
as far as Tjaru. Day 25 - it was heard tell that Tjaru had been
entered. Regnal year 11, first month of akhet, the birthday of Seth - a roar was emitted by the Majesty of this
God. The birthday of
Isis - the sky poured rain.
Recorded on a stela of King Ahmose from the same period:
The sky came on with a torrent of rain, and [dark]ness covered the
western heavens while the storm raged without cessation…[the rain
thundered] on the mountains (louder) than the noise at the Cavern
that is in Abydos. Then every house and barn where they might have
sought refuge [was swept away … and they] were drenched with water
like reed canoes … and for a period of […] days no light shone in
the Two Lands.290
290 Vandersleyen, C. RdE 19 (1968), pls. 8, 9; W. Helck,
Historisch-biographische Texte der 2.
Zwischenzeit (Wiesbaden, 1975), pp. 106-7.
The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus is named after the
Scottish Egyptologist Henry Rhind, who purchased it in Luxor in
1858. The papyrus, a scroll about 6 metres long and 1/3 of a metre
wide, includes certain information about who wrote it and when it
was written. The scribe identifies himself as Ahmes, and says that
he is copying the scroll for the Hyksos king Apophis, in the year 33
of his reign. Ahmes then tells us that he is copying the text from
an older version. It is here that we find some disagreement. Some
experts think that the original of the mathematical problems, which
is what the papyrus consists of, was written during the reign of
Amenemht III, from the 12th dynasty.
Egyptologist Anthony Spalinger
does not, however, entirely agree. In a lengthy, detailed analysis
of the papyrus, the mathematics, the arrangement of the problems,
and every observable detail about it, he asks:
One might query at this point the source or sources of Rhind. Did
the original exemplar contain the opening table as well as the
subsequent problems, or, to complicate the case further, was that
treatise itself derived from various unknown works now lost? That
this is not idle speculation can be seen by [Egyptologist]
Griffith’s remarks concerning the grain measures employed. He
stressed the presence of the quadruple hekat in this papyrus, a
measure which was unknown to him as a standard in the Middle
Kingdom. […]
In Rhind the quadruple hekat occurs in Books II and III but not in
Book I, in which only the single hekat occurs. […] In the Middle
Kingdom (Dynasty 12), only the single and double hekat have been
found; one has to wait for Rhind to note the presence of its
four-fold companion. […]
Can we therefore assume that Book I represents the copy mentioned at
the beginning, and Book II (as well as the problems on the verso)
another source or sources? […]
I am of the belief that the sources of Book II (and III, but this
needs more clarification) was either different from that of Book I
or else a reworked series of problems having their origins in the
copy that Scribe Ahmose employed.[…]
Significantly, the relationship
of one deben of weight to 12 “pieces” can also be found at the end
of the 18th dynasty, a point that Gardner stressed in his important
breakthrough of the Kahun Papyri.[…]
After the papyrus had been completed, and undoubtedly after some use
as a teaching manual, later remarks were written on the verso in the
great blank following problem 84. […] Upside down, in a different
(and thicker) hand than that of the original scribe, it presents an
early case of cryptographic writing. Gunn, in his review of Peet,
was the first to attempt a concise evaluation of the meaning, and he
observed the presence of such writing from Dynasty 19 on, citing
examples from Theban tombs, as well as other monuments from that
capital. […]
Following Gunn, I feel that the presence of
cryptography at this point ought to predicate a date within Dynasty
18, and the eventual location of Rhind at Thebes just may supply
some support for this supposition. After all, it is from that city
that we know the most about this so-called enigmatic writing, and
such texts are dated to the New Kingdom and not earlier.
With no 87, located […] roughly in the center, Rhind presents the
famous and highly-debated jottings concerning the taking of Avaris
by Ahmose. I feel that it was added to the middle of the verso, and
right side up, so to speak, soon before the entire roll was
transported to Thebes from the north. […]
The brief remarks provide not merely a terminus a quo for the
presence of Rhind later than year 33 of the Hyksos ruler Apophis,
they also indicated that a major historical event was purposively
written down on a mathematical tractate, itself being of high
importance and value.
Soon after, Rhind was, I believe, transported back by someone in the
victorious Theban army to the new capital and later used there as a
treatise, only to have a further addition entered (no. 87). […]
I feel that the regnal dates do not refer to the reign of Ahmose but
rather to that of the last Hyksos ruler in Egypt, a position that I
am well aware is open to question; however, the historical event is
at least clear: the end of Hyksos control in the eastern delta
(Heliopolis and Sile are noted as having fallen). If we follow
Moller, then the possessor of Rhind at that time felt these major
events worthy of a remark on one
of his prized treasures. […] The scribe was identical to the copyist
of Rhind itself.291
I hope that the reader caught the term
“cryptographic writing” in reference to the account of the events
leading to the fall of Avaris. It actually took me awhile to realize
what these guys were talking about when I read these references to
“cryptographic writing” in the 18th and 19th dynasties. Finally, I
understood that they were not suggesting that something was being
written in a secret code for military purposes.
What this term
actually means to Egyptologists is that, “since we cannot possibly
give up our chronology to allow these matters to coincide with a
certifiable cataclysm going on in the region, we must therefore say
that the writers do not mean what they say, but rather they are
using metaphors. What’s more, we will call it ‘cryptographic
writing’.”
Egyptologist R. Weill was the first to insist on this distortion
being a type of literary fiction. It then became the convention for
interpreting Egyptian historical writing. In this way, a period of
desolation and anarchy would be described in exaggeratedly lurid
terms of catastrophe and climatological cataclysm, usually for the
glorification of a monarch to whom the salvation of the country is
ascribed.292
Well, that’s pretty bizarre! Handy, too. A bunch of
guys spend their lives trying to validate the history and chronology
of these people, and when it doesn’t agree with what they want to
believe about it, it can be consigned to “literary fiction”. And of
course, this means that what is or is not “literary fiction” can be
completely arbitrary according to the needs of the Egyptologist!
Based on this “cryptographic” interpretation,
Sturt Manning contends
that the text on the verso of the Rhind papyrus is not about a “real
storm” or climatological event, but that it is about,
“the
restoration of the Egyptian state to the order and station of the
Middle Kingdom - after the dislocation (all-wrecking storm) of the Hyksos era, and the destruction of Middle Kingdom shrines… One might
even argue that the whole Theban text is a symbolic encoding of Ahmose’s defeat of the Hyksos…”293
291 Spalinger, Anthony, (1990), The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus As A
Historical Document, Studien zur altagyptischen Kultur; 17, p.
295-338.
292 cf. Redford, op. cit.
293 Manning, Sturt, A Test of Time (Oxbow: Oxford) p. 1999.
I must say that I was rather
astonished to read such a remark.
Part of Manning’s (and others’) arguments have to do with keeping
the 18th dynasty cleanly separated from the time of the Hyksos. No
overlapping is to be allowed here despite the fact that Manetho
clearly said that the Hyksos dynasties were concurrent with the
Theban dynasties. We can’t have Ahmose experiencing something that
has been dated by the experts to well before Ahmose was born!
Let’s have a look at how famed Egyptologist
Gardner has described
the problem of the dynasties in question.
Since the passage of Time shows no break in continuity, nothing but
some momentous event or sequence of events can justify a particular
reign being regarded as inaugurating an era. What caused Sobeknofru,
or Sobeknofrure’ as later sources call her, to be taken as closing
Dyn. XII will doubtless never be known. But the Turin Canon, the
Saqqara king-list, and Manetho are unanimous on the point.
The Abydos list jumps straight from Ammenemes IV to the first king of
Dyn.XVIII. The date of Amosis I, the founder of Dyn. XVIII, being
fixed with some accuracy, the interval from 1786 to 1575 BC must be
accepted as the duration of the Second Intermediate Period. This is
an age the problems of which are even more intractable than those of
the First.
Before entering upon details, it will be well to note
that the general pattern of these two dark periods is roughly the
same. Both begin with a chaotic series of insignificant native
rulers. In both, intruders from Palestine cast their shadow over the
Delta and even into the Valley. Also in both, relief comes at last
from a hardy race of Theban princes, who after quelling internal
dissension expel the foreigner and usher in a new epoch of immense
power and prosperity.
Some account has already been given of the formidable difficulties
here confronting us, but these must now be discussed at length. As
usual we start with Manetho. The Thirteenth Dynasty according to
him, was Diospolite (Theban) and consisted of sixty kings who
reigned for 453 years. The Fourteenth Dynasty counted seventy-six
kings from Xois, the modern Sakha in the central Delta, with a total
of 184 or, as an alternative reading, 484 years. For Dyns. XV to
XVII there is divergence between Africanus and Eusebius, while a
much simpler account is preserved by the Jewish historian Josephus
in what purports to be a verbatim extract from Manetho’s own
writing.
For our present purpose the data supplied by Africanus must suffice.
His Fifteenth Dynasty consists of six foreign so-called ‘Shepherd’
or Hyksos kings, whose domination lasted 284 years. The Sixteenth
Dynasty consisted of Shepherd kings again, thirty-two in number
totaling 518 years. Lastly, in the Seventeenth Dynasty Shepherd
kings and Theban kings reigned concurrently, forty-three of each
line altogether 151 years. Adding these figures, but adopting the
lower number of years given for Dyn. XIV, we obtain 217 kings
covering a stretch of 1590 years, over seven times the duration to
which acceptance of the Sothic date in the El-Lahun papyrus has
committed us.
To abandon 1786 BC as the year when Dyn. XII ended would be to cast
adrift from
our only firm anchor, a course that would have serious consequences
for the
history, not of Egypt alone, but of the entire Middle East.294
294 Gardiner, Sir Alan, Egypt of the Pharaohs.
Gardner’s problem, as he states it above, is that the numbers of
kings and years of reign given by the sources of Manetho result in,
“a stretch of 1590 years, over seven times the duration to which
acceptance of the Sothic date in the El-Lahun papyrus has committed
us”.
Remember what we said about scientific hypotheses in an earlier
chapter? In doing good “science”, a researcher must be aware of this
tendency to be fooled by his own mind - his own wishes. And, a good
scientist, because he is aware of this, must scrutinize things he
wishes to accept as fact in a more or less “unemotional” state, as
far as is possible. Things must be challenged, taken apart,
compared, tested for their ability to explain other things of a like
nature, and if a flaw is found, no matter how small, if it is firmly
established as a flaw, the hypothesis must be killed.
That does not
mean, of course, that the next hypothesis we make has to be
radically different; it may just need a slight expansion of
parameters. As Thomas Edison pointed out, before he invented the
light bulb, he discovered 99 ways how not to make a light bulb.
Hypotheses ought to be the same. If the observations or facts don’t
fit, it’s not the end of the world.
One just has to be flexible and
try to think of ways that the hypothesis can be adjusted. The
problem is that Egyptologists do not adjust the hypothesis except by
shedding of blood. They prefer to twist the facts so that square
pegs are pounded into round holes. In fact, Egyptologists did not
start out with a hypothesis; they started with a “convention”. This
means that they decided what would be firmly accepted and anything
that did not fit, had to be either discarded, or forced to fit the
convention.
It strikes me that Gardner didn’t even notice the clues to the
solution of the problem: the two “intermediate periods” in question,
being almost identical in so many respects, might very well be the
same, single period! That would mean that the Abydos list was,
essentially, correct when it, “jumps straight from Ammenemes IV to
the first king of Dyn.XVIII”. Perhaps Sobeknofrure was identical to
Hatshepsut?
Egypt’s Middle Kingdom has conventionally been dated to some 4000
years ago, largely on the basis of documents that are interpreted to
indicate a heliacal rising of Sirius on Pharmuthi 16 in Year 7 of
Sesostris III (1871 BC). Sesostris was also known as Senuseret.
The 12th Dynasty was a family of kings typically given dates in the
mid-20th to mid-18th century BC and consisted of 8 rulers: Amenemhat
I, Senuseret I, Amenemhat II, Senuseret II, Senuseret III, Amenemhat
III, Amenemhat IV, Neferusobek, or Sobeknofrure, a woman who, in one
of the few depictions of her in statuary, is shown with normal
breasts, and without a false beard as Hatshepsut was depicted.
Regarding Hatshepsut, we discover that she was said to be the fifth
ruler of the 18th Dynasty, and was the daughter of Thutmose I and
Queen Ahmose. Hatshepsut disappeared, supposedly, when Thutmose III,
wishing to reclaim the throne, led a revolt. Thutmose had her
shrines, statues and reliefs mutilated. When we consider the careers
of both Sesostris III and Thutmose I, we find them to be remarkably
similar, right down to being succeeded by a daughter. I suggest that
they were one and the same person.
One of the many problems of sorting out Egyptian chronology is the
fact that the individuals in question used many names for many
reasons. In fact, it seems as though many of the names were actually
titles, such as Thutmosis, which would be “son of Thoth”. There is
also Ramesses, which is “son of Ra”. It is hardly likely that the
chief God would change with each king as often as these titles
suggest. It is far more likely that each king was a “Thutmosis” and
a “Ramesses”. Of course, in a certain sense, that complicates things
a bit. But, in another sense, it simplifies them.
Just to give a specific example: in conventional chronology, we find
that King Ahmose married his sister, Ahmose-Nefertari, daughter of
Sekenenre II and Queen Ahotep. His son, Amenhotep I, co-reigned with
Nefertari, though he supposedly married a Queen Senseneb. Their son,
Thutmosis I ALSO married Princess Ahmose, daughter of Queen Ahotep,
which, of course, means that Queen Ahotep must have also been
married to his father, Amenhotep I, who was said to have been the
son of Ahmose-Nefertari, making Queen Ahotep his grandmother. Well,
I’m my own grandpa!
It’s a bit simpler to consider the idea that Ahmose and Thutmosis I
were one and the same individual.
The original reason for the identification of Kamose and Ahmose as
brothers is a statue of a prince who is the son of King Tao and a
certain Ahhotep. It is generally assumed that the king is Tao II and
the queen is King Ahmose’s mother Ahhotep who is well-attested
elsewhere. The problem is that Kamose came between Tao and Ahmose,
therefore it seems logical to assign Kamose as the older brother.
But here we come to the problem with Ahhotep.
The exact relationship
of Kamose to the royal family is also a bit problematic.
Vandersleyen suggests that Kamose might have been the uncle rather
than the brother of Ahmose.295 Other evidence from the cranio-facial
studies by Wente and Harris 296 shows that Ahmose is not close enough
to the skeletal forms of Sekenenre Tao or Amenhotep I to be the son
of the one or the father of the other.
The remains of Kamose were
destroyed upon their discovery in 1857, so they could not be
included in the study. Finally, we come to a most interesting fact.
Donald B. Redford notes that the tying of Kamose to the royal family
of Sekenenre Tao was a Ramesside development.297 Why would the Ramesside rulers even care unless they had a vested interest? And
what could their interest be except to validate their own
progenitor: Horemheb? We note that King Amosis asserts his own
parents to have been the children of the same mother and father, a
classical example of brother and sister marriage.
295 Egypt et la vallee du Nil volume II.
296 X-ray atlas of the Royal Mummies, pp, 122-30 and in C.N. Reeves,
After Tutankhamun: Research and Excavation in the Royal Necropolis
at Thebes, p. 6.
297 History and Chronology of the Eighteenth Dynasty, p. 37.
As
we have noted above, these
parents are assumed to be Ahhotep and Sekenenre Ta’o II. Ahhotep,
Ta’o II’s queen, supposedly attained to even greater celebrity than
her mother. A great stela found at Karnak, after heaping eulogies
upon her son Amosis I, its dedicator, goes on to exhort all his
subjects to do her reverence. In this curious passage she is praised
as having rallied the soldiery of Egypt, and as having put a stop to
rebellion. One thinks, of course, of Hatshepsut and Sobeknofrure.
Kamose’s tomb was the last of the row inspected by the Ramesside
officials, but later the mummy was removed in its coffin to a spot
just south of the entrance of the Wady leading to the Tombs of the
Kings, where it was found by Mariette’s workmen in 1857. The coffin
was not gilded, but of the feathered rishi type employed for
non-royal personages of the period.
Horemheb’s tomb was discovered in 1907/08 by
Theodore Davis.
Bones
were found in the tomb, some still in the sarcophagus, but others
had been thrown into other rooms. The mummies belonging to Horemheb
and his queen had not been recovered in the cache of kings, and so
it seems likely that these pathetic remains are all that is left of
this particular pharaoh and his queen (although there exist some
inspection graffiti on a door jamb within the tomb that cast a
little uncertainty on this assumption).
If a correct and proper
excavation had been undertaken at the time, perhaps more questions
might be answered, but Davis and his team were true to form of the
early “egyptologists” - greedy and careless and determined to prove
their theories more than to find out facts - and much of the
evidence has been lost.
We can note that the mummy of Amenhotep III - father of
Amenhotep
IV, also known as Akhenaten - was actually “found” in the tomb of
Amenhotep II. It was supposedly moved there for protection, which is
a reasonable explanation. The point is, the provenance of so many
things Egyptian cannot be firmly established and that means one must
be even more aware of the tendency to muddle things up by adopting
wrong hypotheses.
Part of the problem of sorting out the different kings and dynasties
is, I think, that we have the problem of what, exactly, constituted
a “king” during those times. It is beginning to seem likely that
many of the kings whose tombs have been found, who memorialized
themselves, or were memorialized by their families, were little more
than local rulers, or even just glorified puppets of a still higher
king.
Another interesting item is the fact that a proposal to extract DNA
samples from different mummies to see what the familial
relationships really might have been was halted by the Egyptian
government.
Egypt has indefinitely postponed DNA tests designed to throw light
on questions that have intrigued archaeologists for years: Who was
Tutankhamun’s father, and was he of royal blood? The head of Egypt’s
Supreme Council of Antiquities, Gaballah Ali Gaballah, said Tuesday
that plans for DNA tests on the mummies of Tutankhamun and his
presumed grandfather, Amenhotep III, had been canceled.
“There will
be no test now and we have to see if there will be one later,” Gaballah told The Associated Press. He declined to give a reason.
[…]
The announcement of the planned tests had sparked a controversy
among Egyptian archaeologists. Some said they were an unnecessary
risk that might harm the mummies. Others said the results might be used to rewrite
Egyptian history.
“I have refused in the past to allow foreign teams
to carry out such tests on the bones of the Pyramids builders
because there are some people who try to tamper with Egyptian
history,” the chief archaeologist of the Giza pyramids, Zahi Hawass
, told the Akhbar Al-Yom weekly.298
The above news release is more
interesting and mysterious than might be initially thought since
Tutankhamen was undoubtedly the son of the Heretic king, Akhenaten
and Nefertiti who may, indeed, have been Abraham’s Sarai which would
mean that she was also the putative mother of “Isaac”, the patriarch
of the Jews.
The tomb of Tutankhamun was undoubtedly the greatest archaeological
discovery of all time, yet everyone knows this remarkable find was
beset by troubles. The untimely death of Lord Carnarvon just after
the opening of the tomb, and his appetite for the occult, swiftly
gave rise to rumors of a curse. Also, the presence of certain art
treasures in museums across the United States provides evidence that
Howard Carter and his aristocratic patron removed priceless objects
from the tomb [illegally].
What is not so well known is that among the wonderful treasures
Carter and Carnarvon unearthed were also rumored to be papyri that
held the true account of the biblical Exodus of the Israelites from
Egypt.
Why did Carter threaten to reveal this volatile information to the
public at a meeting with a British official in Cairo shortly after
the discovery of the tomb?
At a time when Arab hostility towards
Britain’s support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in
Palestine was spilling onto the streets of Jerusalem and Jaffa, such
actions on the part of the hot-headed Englishman could have caused
untold chaos across the Middle East.299
298 The Associated Press, Cairo, Egypt, Dec.
13, 2000.
299 Jacket blurb from: Collins, Andrew and Ogilvie-Herald, Chris,
Tutankhamun: The Exodus Conspiracy, 2002, Virgin Books, London.
The only thing I can think
of that would make it imperative to conceal the “true story of the
Exodus” by the British government would be because in some way, such
information would have put a period to the Jewish claim to the
“Promised Land”. It may also have put a period to Judaism and
Christianity altogether. The fact is that most of the early
Egyptologists came to their subject as committed, if not fanatical,
Christians.
They sought to use Egypt as a means of expanding and
supporting the Biblical narrative. Many of them saw Akhenaten as the
inspired founder of a pre-Christian monotheistic religion, and his
faith in one God made him a figure of admiration.
To the early scholars in the field, Akhenaten was,
“The first
individual in History”, [Breasted]; to Toynbee his sun-cult was a
prototype of the Roman
imperial Sol Invictus; to Freud,
he became a mentor of the Hebrew lawgiver, Moses. To some, Akhenaten
was a forerunner of Christ or otherwise a great mystic.
Such ideas took shape and moved farther and farther away from the
primary sources and it keeps growing like a fungus.
As Donald
Redford says,
“one must constantly return to the original sources
[…] in order to avoid distortion”.
Our knowledge of Egypt has to be
gleaned from a random assortment of archaeological remains, a great
deal of religious and mortuary art and architecture, supplemented by
a small collection of historical documents. The Amarna period, the
time of Akhenaten, is particularly difficult because it seems that
all of Egypt sought to erase the memory of Akhenaten from the
individual and collective consciousness.
Akhenaten was hated, and
apparently, so was Nefertiti. The first five years of Akhenaten’s
reign actually represents a startling discontinuity in historical
knowledge. So thoroughly were the memorials of this period
eradicated - whether temple reliefs, steles, or tombs - that little
remains to tell the story. In other words, historically speaking, no
connected narrative is even possible. So complete was the
destruction of the Amarna remains by the pharaoh Horemheb, that
quite literally, no stone was left standing upon another.
Horemheb
was the fourteenth king of the 18th Dynasty. He was chief of the
army during Tutankhamun’s reign. When Tutankhamun died, Ay
apparently usurped the throne. Ay favored Horemheb and kept him on
as a military leader. When Ay died without an heir, Horemheb was
made king. Restoring order was his main objective. Once
accomplished, Horemheb moved to Memphis and began work on internal
affairs. He returned properties of the temples to the rightful
priests and lands to the rightful owners. He had restoration
projects and building additions in Karnak.
He erected shrines and a
temple to Ptah. He built tombs at Thebes, in the Valley of the
Kings, and Memphis. He was noted for admonishing high-ranking
officials against cheating the poor and misappropriating the use of
slaves and properties. He promised the death penalty for such
offenses. Nothing tears the mask from the Amarna Age like the Edict
of Reform. The picture conjured up is not like the beautiful relief
scenes at Karnak or Akhetaten.
Gone are the elegant ladies and
gentlemen, bowing low before a benign monarch beneath the Sun-disc,
his father; in their place emerge starkly an army allowed to run
riot, a destitute peasantry, and corrupt judges. It may be
maintained that these conditions could only have prevailed at the
close of the period of heresy, but the evidence opposes any such
defense. The withdrawal and the subsequent isolation of the head of
state and his court, which clearly brought on the anarchy, must be
laid to the charge of Akhenaten himself.300
300 Redford, Donald B., Akhenaten: The Heretic King, 1984, Princeton University Press,
Princeton, p. 225.
Horemheb had no heir so he appointed a military leader to succeed
him. That leader was Ramesses I and that was when the “sorting of
the mummies” began. One can only wonder if some of the confusion
that exists today isn’t due to the deliberate attempt on the part of
Horemheb and his Ramesside heirs to simply create a new history?
One interesting fact to note about the 18th dynasty is that,
artistically and in every other way, it appears to be the
continuation of the 12th dynasty. If we consider the idea that the
Hyksos kings ruled concurrently with a Southern Egyptian dynasty,
this factor then begins to make sense.
Manetho, quoted by Eusebius, Africanus, and Josephus, presents a
very messy history of the Second Intermediate Period, with
impossibly long lengths of reign for Dynasties XIII-XVII, and a
confusing picture of which group of kings belonged to which dynasty.
I think that it is entirely possible that a misunderstanding of what
he wrote led to errors among those who quoted him; i.e. Eusebius,
Africanus, and Josephus; all of whom had an axe to grind. And, for
all we know, Manetho had an agenda as well.
The problem seems to lie in the fact that, in its original form,
Manetho’s Second Intermediate Period consisted of five dynasties,
three Theban and two Hyksos which were not sequential, but rather
concurrent. Manetho said this, but it has been rejected. It seems
that, in order to indicate which dynasties served concurrently, and
which dynasties served consecutively, a series of subtotals was used
and this practice was misunderstood by those who quoted Manetho.
They thought they were looking at a sequential list of kings
interspersed with summaries and subtotals.
They thought that the
summaries were additional groups of kings. As a result, Africanus,
Eusebius, and Josephus committed grave errors in their citations of
Manetho. This led to a number of errors, such as Africanus’s mixing
together Hyksos and Theban kings into one dynasty, and Africanus and
Eusebius disagreeing as to whether a dynasty was Hyksos or Theban,
or how many years it reigned.
Getting back to our problem, it seems that what we are dealing with
is a rather restricted time frame in which the Middle Bronze age
came to a cataclysmic end, the Hyksos were ejected from Egypt, and
these events did not occur in the middle of the 15th century BC, but
rather over 200 years earlier. We also find that the curious
“cryptographic writing” of the 18th dynasty fits a model that
includes the end of the Middle Bronze Age and extraordinary
climatological events.
The archaeological excavations of the Islands
of Santorini and Crete demonstrate that the destruction of the
Middle Bronze Age civilization occurred in two phases which would
account for the turmoil in the time of Hatshepsut, followed by a
second period of disruption at the time of Akhenaten. This coincides
with the fact that there were indications of climatological
anomalies as early as 1644 BC, leading up to the final disaster of
the eruption of Thera in 1628 BC, followed by climatological
disruption for the following forty years or so.
The evidence on Santorini and Crete show that there was initial volcanic activity -
earthquakes - followed by rebuilding and habitation for some time
before the final, decisive eruption of Thera at least one or two
generations later! That there was some warning of the impending
eruption is verified by the fact that no bodies were found in the
several meters thick layer of pumice that buried the town of
Akrotiri.
Also, since portable precious items were missing, it seems safe to
assume, therefore, that the population abandoned the town in haste.
-
The Dilmun civilization of Bahrain is said to have existed from 3200
BC until 1600 BC.
-
The Indus Valley civilization is said to have
ended around 1700 to 1600 BC.
-
The Great Babylonian Empire ended
around 1600 BC.
-
The Middle Kingdom in Egypt is said to have ended
around 1600 BC (though we now think that the 18th dynasty was the
last of the Middle Kingdom dynasties).
-
The Xia Dynasty in China
ended in 1600 BC.
-
The use of Stonehenge ended around 1600 BC.
In
nearly every case, the end of the civilization and the mass
destruction read in the record unearthed by the spade is ascribed to
war and rampaging Sea Peoples or tribes of barbarians on the march.
Two of the most influential German scholars,
von Rad and Noth, have
argued that,
“The Exodus and Sinai traditions and the events behind
them were originally unrelated to one another”.301
Von Rad pointed
out that the Sinai covenant in the Feast of Tabernacles was
celebrated at Shechem while the settlement tradition was celebrated
at Gilgal with the Feast of Weeks. Von Rad also noted that the
salvation history was strikingly silent about the Sinai events in
Deuteronomy 26. It was then proposed that early Israel was actually
a tribal league more or less like city-state confederations later
attested in Greece and Italy and known to the Greeks as
“amphictyonies”.302
If such tribal groups were later amalgamated
during the reign of Hezekiah, it would then be necessary to “create”
a national history, utilizing the available oral traditions. And
this is, of course, where it becomes most interesting because it
seems that at least one small group - Abraham and his wife Sarai -
had a series of experiences during these times that was utterly
extraordinary. There are various suggestions as to where Mt. Sinai
really was. Jewish tradition seems to place Mt. Sinai in Arabia.
Demetrius stated that Dedan was Jethro’s ancestor which is
identified with the oasis of el-’Ela, and when Moses went to Midian
he stayed in Arabia.303
In 1954 Mendenhall put forth the idea that
the Sinai covenant is similar to the Hittite suzerainty treaties.
There does seem to be clear parallels between the Sinai covenant and
ancient suzerainty treaties, and ancient tribal leagues did exist.
In Josephus’ book Antiquities of the Jews he placed Sinai where the
city of Madiane was.304
301 Nicholson, E.W., Exodus and Sinai in
History and Tradition (Richmond: John Knox Press 1973).
302 Ibid.
303 De Vaux, Roland, The Early History of Israel translation by
David Smith. (Philadelphia:Westminster Press 1978) p. 435.
304 Antiquities, II.264; III.76.
305 Sotah 5ª, Freedman and Simon 1935, pp. 18-19.
In the Babylonian Talmud305
R. Huna and R. Hisda say,
“the Holy
One, blessed be He, ignored all the mountains and heights and caused
His Shechinah to abide upon Mount Sinai”.
According to Old Testament passages Mt. Sinai is identified with
Seir and Mt. Paran.
Deuteronomy 33:2 says,
“The Lord came from
Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from mount
Paran”.306
It seems that the itinerary that was followed in Numbers
33:18-36 locates Sinai in northern Arabia. Midian was also located
here where Moses lived with Jethro, priest of Midian, for forty
years.307 De Vaux believed that the theophany of Sinai was a
description of a volcanic eruption in northern Arabia because Exodus
19:18 describes the mountain like a furnace of smoke. From a
distance it would look like a pillar of cloud in the day, and a
pillar of fire at night. Following this cloud of smoke would lead
them right to the volcano.
306 KJV, see also Judges 5:4-5, Hab. 3:3,7.
307 The Bible, I Kings 11:18; Exodus 2:15, 3:1.
The only problem is, there are no volcanoes in Sinai. There are
several in northern Arabia, but we come back again to the fact that
the only known large eruption around this time is Santorini on the
Greek island of Thera.
On this point, we discover an intriguing
passage in The Histories of Tacitus:
The Jews are said to have been refugees from the island of Crete who
settled in the remotest corner of Libya in the days when, according
to the story, Saturn was driven from his throne by the aggression of
Jupiter. This is a deduction from the name Judaei by which they
became known: the word is to be regarded as a barbarous lengthening
of Idaei, the name of the people dwelling around the famous Mount
Ida in Crete.
A few authorities hold that in the reign of Isis the surplus
population of Egypt was evacuated to neighboring lands under the
leadership of Hierosolymus and Judas.308 Many assure us that the
Jews are descended from those Ethiopians who were driven by fear and
hatred to emigrate from their home country when Cepheus was king.309
There are some who say that a motley collection of landless
Assyrians occupied a part of Egypt, and then built cities of their
own, inhabiting the lands of the Hebrews and the nearer parts of
Syria.310
Others again find a famous ancestry for
the Jews in the Solymi who are mentioned
with respect in the epics of Homer:311 this tribe is supposed have
founded Jerusalem and named it after themselves. Most authorities,
however, agree on the following account. The whole of Egypt was once
plagued by a wasting disease which caused bodily disfigurement.
So
Pharaoh Bocchoris 312 went to the oracle of Hammon to ask for a
cure, and was told to purify his kingdom by expelling the victims to
other lands, as they lay under a divine curse. Thus a multitude of
sufferers was rounded up, herded together, and abandoned in the
wilderness. Here the exiles tearfully resigned themselves to their
fate. But one of them, who was called Moses, urged his companions
not to wait passively for help from God or man, for both had
deserted them: they should trust to their own initiative and to
whatever guidance first helped them to extricate themselves from
their present plight. They agreed, and started off at random into
the unknown.
But exhaustion set in, chiefly through lack of water, and the level
plain was already strewn with the bodies of those who had collapsed
and were at their last gasp when a herd of wild asses left their
pasture and made for the spade of a wooded crag. Moses followed them
and was able to bring to light a number of abundant channels of
water whose presence he had deduced from a grassy patch of ground.
This relieved their thirst. They traveled on for six days without a
break, and on the seventh they expelled the previous inhabitants of
Canaan, took over their lands and in them built a holy city and
temple.
In order to secure the allegiance of his people in the future, Moses
prescribed for them a novel religion quite different from those of
the rest of mankind. Among the Jews all things are profane that we
hold sacred; on the other hand they regard as permissible what seems
to us immoral. In the innermost part of the Temple, they consecrated
an image of the animal which had delivered them from their wandering
and thirst, choosing a ram as beast of sacrifice to demonstrate, so
it seems, their contempt for Hammon.313 The bull is also offered up,
because the Egyptians worship it as Apis. They avoid eating pork in
memory of their tribulations, as they themselves were once infected
with the disease to which this creature is subject.314
They still
fast frequently as an admission of the hunger they once endured so
long, and to symbolize their hurried meal the bread eaten by the
Jews is unleavened. We are told that the seventh day was set aside
for rest because this marked the end of their toils. […] Others say
that this is a mark of respect to Saturn, either because they owe
the basic principles of their religion to the Idaei, who, we are
told, were expelled in the company
of Saturn and became the founders of the Jewish race, or because,
among the seven stars that rule mankind, the one that describes the
highest orbit and exerts the greatest influence is Saturn. A further
argument is that most of the heavenly bodies complete their path and
revolutions in multiples of seven. […]
Rather than cremate their
dead, they prefer to bury them in imitation of the Egyptian fashion,
and they have the same concern and beliefs about the world below.
But their conception of heavenly things is quite different. The
Egyptians worship a variety of animals and half-human, half-bestial
forms, whereas the Jewish religion is a purely spiritual monotheism.
They hold it to be impious to make idols of perishable materials in
the likeness of man: for them, the Most High and Eternal cannot be
portrayed by human hands and will never pass away. For this reason
they erect no images in their cities, still less in their temples.
Their kings are not so flattered, the Roman emperors not so honored.
However, their priests used to perform their chants to the flute and
drums, crowned with ivy, and a golden vine was discovered in the
Temple; and this has led some to imagine that the God thus
worshipped was Prince Liber 315, the conqueror of the East.
But the
two cults are diametrically opposed. Liber founded a festive and
happy cult: the Jewish belief is paradoxical and degraded.316
308 “Hierosolymus” and “Judas” are the Greek renderings of the
Hebrew words for Jerusalem and Jew.
309 According to Greek legend, Cepheus was king of Ethiopia. His daughter Andromeda was married to
the hero Perseus. The main question about this is: where was ancient
“Ethiopia”?
310 This theory is plausible. In Greek and Latin, the
word ‘Assyrian’ can indicate everyone living in modern Iraq or
Syria.
Aramaeans, a tribe to which the Hebrews seem to have been
related, also fit within the definition of an Assyrian. We also note
that Abraham’s family referred to relatives as “Syrians.” There is
also the fact that the genetic studies show the Jews to be very
closely related to Syrians, both Jewish and non-Jewish.
311 The Solymi are mentioned by Homer in The Iliad 6.184
and 204 and in The Odyssey 5.283. They were brave warriors from
Lycia. The word Jerusalem was read as “Hiero-Solyma” or “holy place
of the Solymi.”
312 Josephus, Africanus and Eusebius all list a King Orus who the
“experts” agree is Amenhotep III.
313 The Egyptians represented Ammon with a ram’s head. However, there is more to this than Tacitus
suspects.
314 Leprosy.
315 A common title for Dionysus, the God of
wine, intoxication and ecstasy.
316 Tacitus, The Histories, Book V:
2-5. Translation by Kenneth Wellesley.
Regarding the “hearsay” recitation of Tacitus is that he states
quite clearly that the nation of Israel was an amalgamation of
tribes, including people who had once lived on Crete, who brought a
volcano story with them, and another most unusual group that had
been expelled from Egypt under very peculiar circumstances, bringing
an altogether different story to the mix. Tacitus’ record of this
group, its expulsion, and the fact that he has connected them to
King Bocchoris is an important clue.
The pagan story of the flood of Ogyges and its relationship to the
story of Noah was a problem for biblical commentators, as was that
of the later flood of Deucalion, which Deucalion survived with his
wife by floating in a large chest. Eusebius tells us that Ogyges
“lived at the same time of the Exodus from Egypt”.317 In the past,
scholars concluded that Ahmose must have caused the destruction of
the Middle Bronze Age, but Redford has shown that Ahmoses’ campaign
was restricted to Sharuhen and its neighborhood to punish the
Hyksos.318
317 Eusebius, Pamphilus, Preparation of the Gospel. Translation by
Edwin Gifford. (Grand Rapids:Baker Book House 1981) p. 524.
318 Redford, Donald “A Gate Inscription From Karnak and Egyptian
Involement in Western Asia During the Early 18th Dynasty.” Journal
of the American Oriental Society 99:2. 1979 p. 274; Bietak, Manfred
1991. “Egypt and Canaan During the Middle Bronze Age.” Bulletin of
the American School of Oriental Research 281 1991 p. 58; Weinstein
1981, pp. 1-28.
The first
substantial campaign against
inland Palestine was by Thutmose III.319 From a survey of the
central hill country Finkelstein does not connect the Egyptian
conquest with the end of the Middle Bronze Age.
He states,
“There is
no solid archaeological evidence that many sites across the country
were destroyed simultaneously, and such campaigns would fail to
explain the wholesale abandonment of hundreds of small rural
settlements in the remote parts of the land”.320
Again, what I am
suggesting is that the 18th dynasty of Egypt was not only the
continuation of the 12th dynasty in Southern Egypt, but that it ran
concurrently with the last Hyksos dynasty, the 15th dynasty, that it
ended simultaneously with the expulsion of the Hyksos.
Now, I am not even going to attempt to sort out all the assumed or
presumably confirmed family relationships of the Egyptian dynasties.
For our present purposes, the Egyptian chronology is only important
insofar as it enables us to sort out those matters that might lead
to the identification of the Ark of the Covenant and its possible
whereabouts during certain periods of the past. This period of time
is that surrounding the eruption of Thera, the fall of Avaris and
the end of the 18th dynasty.
I want to remind the reader of the problem defined by Gardner which
was that the numbers of kings and years of reign given by the
sources of Manetho result in “a stretch of 1590 years, over seven
times the duration to which acceptance of the Sothic date in the
El-Lahun papyrus has committed us.”
Gardner tells us why this just can’t be:
To abandon 1786 BC as the year when Dyn. XII ended would be to cast
adrift from
our only firm anchor, a course that would have serious consequences
for the
history, not of Egypt alone, but of the entire Middle East.321
319 Bietak, op. cit., p. 59.
320 Hoffmeier, James K., “Some Thoughts on William G. Dever’s
‘Hyksos, Egyptian Destructions, and the End of the Palestinain
Middle Bronze Age.’” Levant 22. 1990, p.87.
321 Gardiner, Sir Alan,
Egypt of the Pharaohs.
Sothis: The Sharp Toothed
As it happens, all the archaeological dating in the Mediterranean
has been suspended upon Egyptian chronology under the influence of
foundations laid by believers in the Biblical chronology. What is
more, all of their dates rely upon two major assumptions: the Sothic
Cycle and the identification of the Egyptian King Shoshenq I with
the Biblical King Shishak, the Egyptian ruler who came against
Rehoboam and took “all” the treasures of Solomon’s Temple and
“Solomon’s house”.
It is understood that Manetho only included 30 dynasties, the 31st
being added later for the sake of completeness. However, the fact
is, there are no original copies of The Egyptian History by Manetho.
All we have of his work are excerpts cited by Josephus, the Jewish
historian of the first century AD, and by two important Christian
chronographers, Sextus Julius Africanus (3rd century AD), and
Eusebius (4th century AD).
George the Monk, Syncellus, used both
Africanus and Eusebius extensively as his sources in his history of
the world written in 800 AD. It is fairly easy to realize that all
three of these men had agendas. We also note, once again, the period
of time in which they were writing, and the fruits of their efforts
in terms of the imposition of Christianity based on the platform of
Judaism, the ultimate arbiter of the “you are doomed” linear view of
Time. It is regularly claimed that Egyptian chronology is based on
“astronomical dating”.
What does this mean?
It actually means that
Egyptian dating is based on a theory that the Egyptians used
astronomical dating. But many people do not realize this and believe
that Egyptian chronology is actually based on astronomy. The fact is
there are astronomically fixed Near Eastern dates, but they are not
Egyptian dates. Two Babylonian cuneiform tablets have been found,
each one filled with an entire year of data on the sun, planets, and
eclipses. These dates fix two years: part of 568 / 567 B.C. and part
of 523 / 522 B.C. Those are our oldest astronomically fixed dates.
There is one other older Near Eastern eclipse, noted by the
Assyrians, which has enough partial data to fix it at one of two
years: it applies either to 763 BC or 791 BC. But experts do not
agree on which date this eclipse occurred.
When we dig even deeper into these dating assumptions, we find that
the main peg upon which the assumptions are hung is called the
“Sothic cycle”. What is the Sothic cycle?
The experts tell us that the Egyptian civil year had 365 days - 3
seasons, (Akhet, Peret, Shemu), 4 months each with 30 days per
month. To this, they added 5 additional epagomenal days. Since the
actual orbit of the earth around the sun takes 365 and about a
quarter days, this calendar falls behind by one day every four
years. Nowadays, we correct this by adding an extra day every four
years in a “leap year”.
However, if no calendar corrections are
made, such a year would soon create significant problems (the
experts say). How the Egyptians dealt with this was a matter of some
conjecture, and it was finally decided that they corrected their
calendar every 1460 years at the time of the heliacal rising of
Sirius. Where did this idea come from?
Our information on the alleged Sothic cycle depends largely on the
late classical writers Censorinus (ca. 238 AD) and Theon (379-395
AD). Sir William Flinders Petrie writes, referring to a table of
purported observations of Sirius:
Now in going backward the first great datum that we meet is that on
the back of the medical Ebers papyrus, where it is stated that
Sirius rose on the 9th of Epiphi in the 9th year of Amenhotep I. As
the 9th of Epiphi is 56 days before the 1st of Thoth, Sirius rose on
that day at 4 X 56 years (224) before the dates at the head of the
first column. As only 1322 B.C. can be the epoch here, so 1322 + 224
= 1546 B.C. for the 9th year of Amenhotep I, or 1554 B.C. for his
accession.
And as Aahmes I reigned 25 years, we reach 1579 B.C. for
the accession of Aahmes and the beginning of the XVIIIth dynasty.
This is not defined within a few years owing to four years being the
equivalent of only one day’s shift; owing to the rising being
perhaps observed in a different part of Egypt at different times;
owing to various minor astronomical details. But this gives us 1580
B.C. as the approximate date for the great epoch of the rise of the
XVIIIth dynasty. 322
We will soon discover that there is significant
reason to discard the above dates, but for now, we can just notice
that even with such a great system, Petrie - as did Gardner - is
still having some problems here.
Before that we next find another Sirius rising and two seasonal
dates in the XIIth dynasty, and an indication of a season in the
VIth dynasty. The most exact of these early dates is a rising of
Sirius on the 17th of Pharmuthi in the 7th year of Senusert III, on
a papyrus from Kahun.
This is now in Berlin, and was published by BORCHARDT in Zeits. Aeg. Spr., xxxvii, 99-101.
This shows that the
17th of Pharmuthi then fell on July 21st, which gives the 7th year
of Senusert III at 1874 or 3334 B.C. As he reigned probably to his
38th year, he died 1843 or 3303 B.C.
Amenemhat III reigned 44 years
by his monuments, Amenemhat IV 9 years, and Sebekneferu 4 years by
the Turin papyrus; these reigns bring the close of the XIIth dynasty
to 1786 or 3246 B.C. We have, then, to decide by the internal
evidence of the monuments of the kings which of these dates is
probable, by seeing whether the interval of the XIIIth to XVIIth
dynasties was 1,786 - 1,580 = 206 years, or else 1,666 years.
This
question has been merely ignored hitherto, and it has been assumed
by all the Berlin school that the later date is the only one
possible, and that the interval was only 206 years.323
322
Petrie, Flinders, Researches in Sinai (London: John Murray 1906).
323 Ibid.
Please notice
that this only other “Sirius rising” is dated to either 1874 or 3334
BC. That’s quite a jump. You would think that in all those thousands
of years, if they observed this every year, they would write it down
more often.
But Petrie struggles on mightily to fit the square peg
in the round hole:
Setting aside altogether for the present the details of the list of
Manetho, let us look only to the monuments, and the Turin papyrus of
kings, which was written with full materials concerning this age,
with a long list of kings, and only two or three centuries later
than the period in question. On the monuments we have the names of
17 kings of the XIIIth dynasty. In the Turin papyrus there are the
lengths of reigns of 9 kings, amounting to 67 years, or 7 years each
on an average. If we apply this average length of reign to only the
17 kings whose reigns are proved by monuments, we must allow them
120 years; leaving out of account entirely about 40 kings in the
Turin papyrus, as being not yet known on monuments. Of the Hyksos
kings we know of the monuments of three certainly; and without here
adopting the long reigns stated by Manetho, we must yet allow at
least 30 years for these kings.
And in the XVIIth dynasty there are
at least the reigns of Kames and Sekhent.neb.ra, which cover
probably 10 years. […]This leaves us but 46 years, out of the 206
years, to contain 120 kings named by the Turin papyrus, and all the
Hyksos conquest and domination, excepting 30 years named above.
This is apparently an impossible state of affairs; and those who
advocate this shorter interval are even compelled to throw over the
Turin papyrus altogether, and to say that within two or three
centuries of the events an entirely false account of the period was
adopted as the state history of the Egyptians.
This difficulty has been so great that many scholars in Germany, and
every one in the rest of Europe, have declined to accept this view.
If, however, the Sirius datum is to be respected, we should be
obliged to allow either 206 or else 1,666 years between the XIIth
and XVIIIth dynasties. As neither of these seemed probable courses,
it has been thought that the Sirius datum itself was possibly in
error, and here the matter has rested awaiting fresh evidence.
324
At this point, Petrie has almost fallen on his face on the very clue
that would lead him out of the dilemma. To see him state it so
clearly, and then just stumble on in the dark is almost painful.
What do I mean? I mean that perhaps Sothis is not Sirius. And
perhaps the “Sothic Cycle” was something altogether different.
To be clear, let’s look at these assumptions. First, it is assumed
that a Sothic calendar was used in Egypt. We do not know that for a
fact. We only know it because Censorinus said so. Censorinus wrote
his idea rather late to be considered so great an authority. He was
a Roman living in the third century AD who wrote de Die Natali, a
work on ancient methods of computing time. What is more, Censorinus
was highly praised by Cassiodorus, a converted Christian of about
two centuries later, so we discover here that Censorinus’ work was
very likely preserved because it was “approved”, while other works
that may have contradicted his ideas may be lost to us.
The next big problem is the assumption of the beginning date of the
Sothic cycle of 1,460-years. Again, Censorinus’ word was accepted
despite the endless problems this assumption has created. As it
happens, when one begins to investigate the issue more thoroughly,
it is found that the dates based on this theoretical Sothic calendar
do not agree with one another.325
324 Ibid.
325 It is known that a lunar calendar was used in ancient Egypt, but
not much is known about it. The end result of the use of this
calendar is that every date on any monument would have to tell us
which calendar was being used, but the Egyptians didn’t do that.
In the end, we find that the most
fundamental problem of all is that it is an assumption of modern
Egyptologists that the word they have translated in the observations
listed above - spd.t - is even Sirius at all! A lot of people are
sure that this is exactly what the Egyptians meant, but the fact is,
no one really knows this for sure! The word that is translated as
Sothis could have been something else!
Another point is that, in the
context above, it is not even certain what “rising”
means. It could mean a star, or
it could mean the rising of the river. It could also mean a ceremony
that was to be conducted called the “Raising of Sothis”. As we
discussed in a previous chapter regarding observational astronomy,
Sirius rises in the sky from any given vantage point once every 24
hours, but it cannot be seen during those times when the sun is in
the sky. The so-called heliacal rising of Sirius would have to occur
at least 36 minutes before the sun comes up in order to be seen,
which presupposes a rather accurate time keeping method, which
obviates the entire argument about a Sothic cycle to begin with.
Although it has been made the keystone of the absolute dating of
ancient history, the chronology of ancient Egypt rests on a host of
unproven assumptions. The whole structure is rendered even more
shaky by the lateness and the fragmentary nature of most of the
literary sources which are crucial for providing a skeleton for
Egyptian chronology.
As noted, the basic organization of Egyptian history around 31
dynasties begins from the work of Manetho compiled in the 3rd
century BC. Manetho’s records are supplemented and corrected by
records recovered from the ancient monuments and archeological
excavations of Egypt. Manetho’s work survives only in quotation.
John Brug writes in The Astronomical Dating of Ancient History
before 700 AD:
The use of astronomical calculations to decipher references to this
Sothic cycle in ancient Egyptian records forms the foundation of all
ancient chronology.
Censorinus says:
‘The moon is not relevant to the “great year” of the Egyptians which
we call the “Year of the Dog” in Greek and the “Year of the
Little-Dog” in Latin, because it begins when the constellation or
star “Little-Dog” [allegedly the modern Canis Major or Sirius] rises
on the first day of the month which the Egyptians call “Thouth”. For
their civil year has only 365 days without any intercalation. Thus a
quadrennium among them is about one day shorter than the natural
quadrennium, thus it is 1461 years before this “year” returns to the
same beginning point. This “year” is called “heliacal” by some and
“the divine year” by others.’ (Censorinus, De Die Natali, ch. 18, my
translation).
Censorinus’ statement certainly is not exhaustive. It gives us
little information about how this “great year” was used or when it
came into use. It is certainly open to debate how applicable this
description of the Egyptian calendar and astronomy is to the 2nd and
3rd millennia BC. It does not address the issue of changes in the
nature of the Egyptian calendar which may have occurred over the
millennia.
We have no definite proof that the Egyptians were aware
of dating long eras by the Sothic cycle in the 2nd millennium BC.
Even if we grant that they did, we have no certain knowledge of the
date when any Sothic cycle began.
Most historians presently accept the claim that
Censorinus places
the beginning of a Sothic cycle in about 140 AD and by extension in
1320 BC, 2780 BC and perhaps 4240 B.C.
Censorinus says:
‘As among us so also among the Egyptians a number of “eras” are
referred to in their literature, such as that which they call “of
Nabonnasar” which began from the first year of his reign, which was
986 years ago. Another is called “of Philip” which is counted from
the death of Alexander the Great which was 562 years ago. But the
beginning of these is always from the first day of the month which
the Egyptians call Thoth, which this year fell on the 7th day before the Calends of
July [June 25], 100 years ago when Emperor Antoninus Pius was consul
for the second time, and Bruttius Praesens was the other consul, the
same day fell on the 12th [corrected to the 13th ] day before the
Calends of August [July 21, corrected to July 20] at which time the
“Little-Dog” usually rises in Egypt.
Therefore it is possible to
know that of that great year, which as I wrote above is called
“solar” or “of the Little-Dog” or the “divine year”, now the
hundredth year has passed. I have noted the beginnings of these
years lest anyone think that they begin from January 1 or some other
time, since the starting points chosen by the originators of these
years are no less diverse than the opinions of philosophers. For
that reason the natural year is said to begin by some at the new
sun, that is the winter solstice, by others at the summer solstice,
by others at the vernal equinox and by others at the autumnal
equinox, by some at the rising of the Pleiades and by some at their
setting, by many at the rising of “the Dog”.’ (Censorinus, Ch. 21,
my translation).
Again it is noteworthy how little Censorinus actually says and how
much is deduced from his statement. Censorinus is writing not to
establish a system of chronology, but to discuss various dates for
New Years Day in different cultures. He gives no specific date as
the starting point for a Sothic Cycle as he does for the other eras
which he mentions. All he does is give the date of the Julian
calendar on which the first of Thoth fell in the year of his
writing, which is well established as 238 or 239 AD and one hundred
years earlier in 139 AD.
In 238 AD the first of Thoth fell on about
June 25 Julian. One hundred years earlier it fell on about July 20,
which is the date The Little-Dog (supposedly Sothis) usually rises
in Egypt. He seems to be referring to a conventional method of
dating more than to an actual observation of the rising of Sothis on
that date. […]
Besides lack of agreement of the time when a Sothic cycle began,
this theory also faces other uncertainties. It is not certain how
long a Sothic cycle lasts since there are other astronomic variables
involved besides the precise length of the solar year. Calculations
of the Sothic cycle have ranged from 1423 to 1506 years.
We do not
know for sure with which star or constellation Sothis should be
identified for all periods of Egyptian history. It is generally
accepted that Sothis is the star which we call Sirius, although none
of the sources gave any evidence for this from before classical
times. Porphry in De Antro Nym harum says, “Near Cancer is Sothis
which the Greeks call the Dog”. Solinus Polyhistor says that this
star rises between July 19-21.
In Chapter 21 of his work, concerning Isis and Osiris, Plutarch
says, “The soul of Isis is called ‘Dog’ by the Greeks and the soul
of Horus is called Orion”. Since Sothis is identified with Isis in
other Egyptian texts, and Sirius is called the Dog in Greek, we
conclude that Sothis is the star which we-call Sirius. However there
are a number of difficulties. At least the second half of Plutarch’s
statement appears to be in error, because Orion is usually
associated with Osiris not Horus.
According to some Egyptologists
Egyptian astronomical names did not always remain attached to the
same celestial object. Osiris was first associated with Venus; later
Osiris was associated with Jupiter. The planet Venus, which was
first identified with Osiris, was later identified with Isis.
Sometimes “right eye” is a title of Isis-Hathor, sometimes it is a
title of the sun.
Plutarch also identifies Osiris with the constellation which the
Greeks call Argo. The hieroglyphic triangle which represents Sothis
also appears to represent the zodiacal light, and the Egyptians
apparently knew both an Isis-Sothis and a Horus Sothis. The term wp rnpt which refers to the
rising of Sothis, also refers to the beginning of the civil year and
the birthday of the king. Even the Greek word “Sirius” is not always
attached to the same celestial object. Similar shifts and
uncertainties apply to the identification of ancient astronomical
names in general, for example, the constellations in Job.
According to the English astronomer Poole, Sirius was not on the
horizon coincident with the rising of the sun on the Egyptian New
Year’s Day in 140 BC, the date specified by Censorinus and those who
follow him. Macnaughton set up a chronology based on the supposition
that Sothis was Spica, not Sirius, as a way around this difficulty.
Canopus and Venus are other candidates that have been suggested,
perhaps less plausibly. Kenneth Brecher has revived the doubts about
identifying the bright star referred to in records as Sothis/the
Dog/Sirius with the star we call Sirius today. Babylonian and Roman
sources as late as Ptolemy all call “Sirius” a red star. Seneca says
it is redder than Mars. In his star catalog Ptolemy refers to the
bright red star in the face of the Dog. He links Sirius with red
stars like Aldebaran and Arcturus.
The star which we presently call Sirius is not a red star. No theory
of stellar evolution offers any explanation for how a red star could
become white in 2000 years, although much speculation has centered
around possible changes in the companion star which is part of
Sirius. There is a flaw either in our identification of Sothis as
our Sirius, in the ancients’ observations, in our translation of
their texts, or in present theories of stellar evolution, which must
be based more on computer analysis than on observation.
One explanation which has been offered is that the red color refers
to the star only as observed in heliacal rising near the horizon.
Perhaps “red” simply means “bright” or “beautiful” as it does in
Akkadian or Russian. At any rate, we can say that there is at least
some question about the identification of Sothis as our star Sirius,
and a thorough re-study of the pertinent Egyptian and Greek
astronomical terms would be valuable.326
326 Brug, John, The
Astronomical Dating of Ancient History before 700 AD. 1988.
Despite all of the problems
and reasons to discard the entire chronology based on the Sothic
dating in conjunction with the Biblical chronology, all of Egyptian
chronology is based on this Sothic cycle inferred from Censorinus,
even if there has been much argument about when said cycle is
supposed to have begun. In the absence of any real evidence, the
experts decided on one set of dates (1320 BC to AD141) as the cycle,
and proclaimed it as the standard for the setting of ancient dates.
Quite a number of Egyptologists have rejected the theory of the
Sothic cycle entirely. What is more, the theoretical sothic cycle
does not agree with radiocarbon dating, even if we already have an
idea that radiometric dating methods have their own problems. For dates within
certain ranges, these problems have been adjusted with tree-ring
calibration.
Another controversial item of Sothic dating is the so-called “era of
Menophres”. This discussion is based on a statement in the late
classical writer, Theon who says:
On the 100th year of the era of Diocletian, concerning the rising of
the Dog, because of the pattern we received from the era of
Menophres to the end of the age of Augustus the total of the elapsed
years was 1605.
Many attempts have been made to identify Theon’s Menophres.
Menophres has been identified as the city Memphis or one of a number
of pharaohs. Merneptah, Seti I, Harmhab, and Ramses I are among the
candidates that have been suggested. There is simply not enough
evidence to draw any firm conclusions about the meaning of this
text.
Otto Neugebauer began the ten-page section on Egypt in his later
History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy with the provocative
sentence,
“Egypt has no place in a work on the history of
mathematical astronomy”.327
327 Neugebauer, Otto, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (New York:
Dover 1969).
Did you catch that? Neugebauer is
telling us that the Egyptians were scientifically illiterate. He
read and examined everything. All the Egyptologists who were
inculcated into the belief of the superiority of Egyptian science
were sending him their papyri and inscriptions from tombs and
monuments. All the things that are so difficult to get hold of
nowadays were sent to Neugebauer.
And what did Neugebauer say?
Mathematics and astronomy played a uniformly insignificant role in
all periods of Egyptian history. […]
The fact that Egyptian
mathematics has preserved a relatively primitive level makes it
possible to investigate a stage of development which is no longer
available in so simple a form, except in the Egyptian documents. To
some extent Egyptian mathematics has had some, though rather
negative, influence on later periods. Its arithmetic was widely
based on the use of unit fractions, a practice which probably
influenced the Hellenistic and Roman administrative offices and thus
spread further into other regions of the Roman empire. […]
The
influence of this practice is visible even in works of the stature
of the Almagest, where final results are often expressed with unit
fractions in spite of the fact that the computations themselves were
carried out with sexagesimal fractions. […]
And this old tradition
doubtless contributed much to restricting the sexagesimal place
value notation to a purely scientific use.
It would be quite out of proportion to describe Egyptian geometry
here at length. It suffices to say that we find in Egypt about the
same elementary level we observed in contemporary Mesopotamia.
The role of Egyptian mathematics is probably best described as a
retarding force upon numerical procedures. Egyptian astronomy had
much less influence on the outside world for the very simple reason
that it remained through all its history on an exceedingly crude
level which had practically no relations to the rapidly growing
mathematical astronomy of the Hellenistic age.
Only in one point
does the Egyptian tradition show a very beneficial influence, that
is, in the use of the Egyptian calendar by the Hellenistic
astronomers. This calendar is, indeed, the only intelligent calendar
which ever existed in human history. A year consists of 12 months of
30 days each and five additional days at the end of each year. A
second Egyptian contribution to astronomy is the division of the day
into 24 hours, through these hours were originally not of even
length, but were dependent on the seasons. […]
Lunar calendars played a role since early times side by side with
the schematic civil calendar of the 365-day year. An inscription of
the Middle Kingdom mentions “great” and “small” years, and we know
now that the “great” years were civil years which contained 13 new
moon festivals in contrast to the ordinary “small” years with only
12 new moons. The way these intercalations were regulated, at least
in the latest period, is shown by the Demotic text.
This Demotic text contains a simple periodic scheme which is based
on the fact that 25 Egyptian civil years (which contain 9125 days)
are very nearly equal to 309 mean lunar months. These 309 months are
grouped by our text into 16 ordinary years of 12 lunar months, and 9
“great” years of 13 months. Ordinarily two consecutive lunar months
are given 59 days by our scheme, obviously because of the fact that
one lunar month is close to 29 “ days long. But every 5th year the
two last months are made 60 days long. This gives for the whole 25
year cycle the correct total of 9125 days.
Since at this period all astronomical computations were carried out
in the sexagesimal system, at least as far as fractions are
concerned, the equinoctial hours were divided sexagesimally. Thus
our present division of the day into 24 hours of 60 minutes each is
the result of a Hellenistic modification of an Egyptian practice
combined with Babylonian numerical procedures.
Finally, we have to mention the decans.
[…] The decans are the
actual reason for the 12 division of the night and hence, in the
last analysis, of the 24 hour system. Again, in Hellenistic times
the Egyptian decans were brought into a fixed relation to the
Babylonian zodiac which is attested in Egypt only since the reign of
Alexander’s successors. In this final version the 36 decans are
simply the thirds of the zodiacal signs, each decan representing 10
degrees of the ecliptic. Since the same period witnesses the rapid
development of astrology, the decans assumed an important position
in astrological lore and in kindred fields such as alchemy, the
magic of stones and plants and their use in medicine. In this
disguise the decans reached India, only to be returned in still more
fantastic form to the Muslims and the West. […]
[In the decans] we have not a calendar but a star clock. The user of
this list would know the hour of night by the rising of the decan
which is listed in the proper decade of the month. […]
We call this phenomenon the “heliacal rising” of S, using a term of
Greek astronomy. [...]
It is this sequence of phenomena which led the Egyptians to measure
the time of night by means of stars, which we now call decans. This
was intended to devise some method of indicating the times of office
for the nightly service in the temples, (and other practical
reasons.) Just as the months were divided into decades, so were the
services of the hour-stars. For 10 days, S indicated the last hour
of night, then the next star for the next ten days, and so on. […]
All this was, in fact, taken into account by the inventors of the
decanal hours, as can be demonstrated by the terminal section of the
“diagonal calendars” on the coffin lids. […]
By the time of the New Kingdom, the usefulness of the decans as
indicators of hours had ceased. […] The decans held a secure
position as representatives of the decades of the year in the
decoration of astronomical ceilings, as in the tomb of Senmut or in
the cenotaph of Seti I. In this form, they continued to exist until
their association with the zodiac of the Hellenistic period revived
them and made them powerful elements of astrological doctrine.
The coffins with the “diagonal calendars” belong roughly to the
period from 2100 BC to 1800 BC. […] Astronomical accuracy was
nowhere seriously attempted in these documents. […]
In summary, from the almost three millennia of Egyptian writing, the
only texts which have come down to us and deal with a numerical
prediction of astronomical phenomena belong to the Hellenistic or
Roman period. None of the earlier astronomical documents contains
mathematical elements; they are crude observational schemes, partly
religious, partly practical in purpose. Ancient science was the
product of a very few men; and these few happened not to be
Egyptians.328
328 Neugebauer, ibid., pp. 71-2, 78, 80-1, 90,
81-4, 86-9, 91.
It seems that we have learned several things from Neugebauer’s examination of the texts of the various papyri, tomb
inscriptions, monuments, calendars, and so forth. One of the most
important things we have learned is that the Egyptians did, indeed,
correct their calendar every five years, similar to what we do every
four years with our leap year.
This naturally makes the idea of the
Sothic cycle irrelevant in terms of calendrical reconciliation. We
also begin to understand some of the totally incomprehensible
sayings of the Pyramid Texts. They were recitations of prayers and
magical spells that had to be performed at a certain “moment” in the
night, and the only way to determine time at night was by the stars.
According to Neugebauer, there are sufficient numbers of these star
clocks in tombs to confirm this idea.
Next we note that Neugebauer tells us that the only texts which have
come down to us and deal with a numerical prediction of astronomical
phenomena belong to the Hellenistic or Roman period
and in Hellenistic times the Egyptian decans were brought into a
fixed relation to the Babylonian zodiac, which is attested in Egypt
only since the reign of Alexander’s successors.
In other words, the “occult secrets” generally attributed to the
Egyptians, must actually belong to the Greeks.
However, there is something just a little bit deeper here that I
would like to point out. As Neugebauer says, the Egyptians of
historical times were really scientifically illiterate. So much so
that their influence was inhibiting upon mathematics and science.
But we still have that most astonishing fact that they came up with
what Neugebauer declares to be the most sensible calendar ever
devised. Even the Babylonians, whose mathematics sends Neugebauer
into raptures, did not have so clever a calendar. We find ourselves
asking: where did the Egyptians get this calendar?
In an attempt to come to some understanding of this matter of
Sothis, (which actually is the Greek name for Sirius, and it is an
assumption that the word transliterated from the Egyptian texts is,
actually, Sothis or Sirius), I undertook a comparative reading of
Faulkner’s translation of the Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts.
Indeed, I am not an Egyptologist nor an expert in these matters, but
I wondered if I would notice anything at all with my “beginner’s
mind”, assuming that the translator dealt honestly with his text.
Reading every reference to the word transliterated into English as
“spdt”, that is then translated as Sothis, brought me face to face
with a number of interesting problems.
If we remember that Sirius is also supposed to represent Isis, we
notice first of all that the Egyptians had no problem specifying
Isis when they wanted to, sometimes in the same passage where Sothis
is mentioned.
In Utterance 216 of the Pyramid Texts, it is
translated, “Sothis is swallowed up by the Netherworld, Pure and
living in the horizon”. However, there is a footnote that says:
“Despite the lack of correct gender ... in a triple repetition of
the phrase, the scribe has ignored the discrepancy of gender in the
case of Sothis”.329
329 Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, (Aris and
Phillips. 1969)
In other words... Sothis is described in words
of male gender and the translator is having to deal with this
problem.
Apparently this gender issue pops up several more times, and the
footnote directs us to a paper in the Journal of Near Eastern
Studies, volume 25, p. 159. Repeatedly the word spdt is translated
as “my sister is Sothis...” after which, we are again referred to
the above paper, p. 153, which suggests that in each of these
instances, the problem with that pesky male gender keeps popping up.
In Utterance 366, we find Isis and Sothis mentioned together in a
strange way:
[Osiris is being addressed]
“Your sister Isis comes to you rejoicing for love of you. You have
placed her on your phallus and your seed issues into her, she being
ready as Sothis, and Har-Sopd has come forth from you as Horus who
is in Sothis.”
Isis is described as being “ready like Sothis”. This readiness is
described in overtly sexual terms as though some dynamic interaction
between bodies of the cosmos is being described sexually - an
exchange takes place between them. We then read that, as a result of
this cosmic interaction of impregnation, “sopd” is supposed to be
“born from Isis as Horus comes forth from Sothis”.
What is this
“sopd”?
In utterance 412 the following lines:
“The Great One falls upon his side, He who is in Nedit quivers, his
head is lifted by Re; he detests sleep, he hates inertness. O flesh
of the King, do not decay, do not rot, do not smell unpleasant. Your
foot will not be overpassed, your stride will not be overstridden,
you shall not tread on the corruption of Osiris. You shall reach the
sky as Orion your soul shall be as effective as Sothis; have power,
having power; be strong, having strength; may your soul stand among
the Gods as Horus who dwells in Irs. May the terror of you come into
being in the hearts of the Gods like the Nt-crown...”
In this passage, it seems as though Sothis is compared to something
that is “effective and powerful” and having strength like Horus.
In utterance 472, we find this:
“I go up on this eastern side of the sky where the Gods were born,
and I am born as Horus, as Him of the horizon; I am vindicated and
my double is vindicated; Sothis is my sister, the Morning Star is my
offspring.”
First the writer says I am “as Horus”, followed by an allusion to
Horus being his “double” followed by an immediate mention of Sothis
as this double, though the allusion to a “double” is given as a
“sister”.
In Utterance 1074:
“Sothis goes forth clad in her brightness, she censes the bright
ones who are among them. The striking powers of the city are quiet,
the region is content. I have prepared a road that I may pass on it,
namely what Meref foretold in On.”
This passage is, apparently, very
problematical because Faulkner has footnoted almost every term. In
particular, the word “brightness” above is noted to be a word that
means “sharpness”.
This brings us to our strange word that is transliterated as spd, or
Soped. Regarding the above mention of “sharpness” related to Sothis
going forth, we find that spd-ibhw means “sharp toothed”. Sharp
toothed occurs repeatedly in a certain context illustrated by
Utterance 222:
“I have come to you, my father, I have come to you, O great Wild
Bull. ...I have come to you, my father, I have come to you, O Sopd.”
Now, this “Sopd” is transliterated as “spdw” being very similar to
“spdt” that is translated as “sothis”. It is obvious that the
translators have a problem with this “spdw”, and just translate it
as “Sopd”. In the end, we have three very similar words: spdt,
spdw,
and spd-ibhw (sharp toothed), and my guess is that this “sharp
toothed” business may relate to something that is visually similar
to a mouth full of gleaming,
sharp teeth. Also, sharp toothed can mean that something is
radiating clearly defined “rays”, that are “sharp” like “teeth”.
The word sp occurs by itself in one reference:
“O God; your third is he who orders offerings. The perfume of
Iht-wtt is on this King, a bnbn-loaf is in the Mansion of Sokar, a
foreleg is in the House of Anubis. This King is hale, the Herdsman
stands up, the month is born, Sp lives.”
The more I read these
texts, the more I think that these are rote repetitions of something
that once really meant something, but through the centuries, with
the changes in language and semantics, they had long ago lost their
meaning and were simply being recited as magical texts. Either that,
or the experts in Egyptian language have a long way to go!
An
important point is, however, that every single reference to spdw
occurs in a passage about the “great wild bull” and both Osiris and
Seth were referred to as bulls though bulls aren’t generally thought
of in the context of sharp teeth. Seth was the “Bull of the South”.
Utterance 580 is a text to be recited at the sacrifice of a Red
Bull. This bull is supposed to represent Seth being sacrificed by
Horus.
Addressed to Seth the bull:
“O you who smote my father, who killed one greater than you, you
have smitten my father, you have killed one greater than you.”
This is followed by a passage addressed to the dead king/Osiris:
“O my father Osiris this King, I have smitten for you him who smote
you as an ox;
I have killed for you him who killed you as a wild bull; I have
broken for you him who broke you ...[he lists all the parts he has
cut off]. Its upper foreleg is on Khopr, its lower foreleg belongs
to Atum, father of the Gods, its haunches belong to Shu and Tefenet,
its shanks belong to Hnt-irty and Kherty, its back belongs to Neith
and Selket, its heart belongs to Sakhmet the Great, the contents of
its udder belong to these four Gods, the children of Horus, Hapy,
Imsety, Duamutef, Kebhsenuf. Its head, its tail, its arms, and its
legs belong to Anubis...330
330 Faulkner, ibid.
Now, of course, we wonder how an ox has
an udder... and of course, Faulkner has an explanation that the
scribe “forgot” that he was writing about a bull! Nevertheless, the
reference to Sakhmet brings up a very interesting remark in
Utterance 704:
“This King is the [...] which went forth from Re, this King has come
forth from between the thighs of the Two Enneads; he was conceived
by Sakhmet, the King was borne by Shezmetet. This King is the
falcon...”
The footnote tells us that where it says “he was conceived”, that,
regarding the word “he”, the scribe “for once employs the feminine
suffix”. So, we think that certain other translations of “he” may
have been “she” or vice versa.
Remembering that “Sopd” is supposed to be “born from Isis as Horus
comes forth from Sothis”, we find the curious relationship above to
“two Enneads” and they are there described as Sakhmet and Shezmetet.
Utterance 248:
“The King is a great one, the King has issued from between the
thighs of the Ennead. The king was conceived by Sakhmet, and it was
Shezmetet who bore the king, a star brilliant and FAR TRAVELLING,
who brings distant products to Re daily.”
We naturally have questions about the many references to the
“sisters” the “Two Enneads”, the “double” and the “twins” that are
repeatedly mentioned.
Sekhmet is the patroness of divine
retribution, vengeance, and conquest. She is represented with the
head of a lion to suggest the “mane” or “coma” of brightness.
Sekhmet means “The Mighty One”, and she was one of the most powerful
of the Gods and Goddesses.
She was the Goddess who meted out divine
punishment to the enemies of the Gods and of the pharaoh. In this
capacity she was called the “Eye of Ra”. She also accompanied the
pharaoh into battle, launching fiery arrows into battle ahead of
him. Sekhmet could send plagues and disease against her enemies, and
for this reason, as a preventative, was sometimes invoked to avoid
plague and cure disease.
Sekhmet’s capacity for destruction is well documented. In one story,
Ra sent her to punish those mortals who had forgotten him, and she
ended up nearly destroying the entire human race. Only the
cleverness of Ra stopped her rampage before it consumed every living
thing.
Sekhmet’s breath was the hot desert wind, and her body took on the
glare of the midday sun. She represented the destructive force of
the sun. According to the legends, she came into being when Hathor
was sent to earth by Ra to take vengeance on man. She was the one
who slaughtered mankind and drank their blood, only being stopped by
trickery. She was said to be the destructive side of the sun, and a
solar Goddess given the title Eye of Ra.
Since several of these
attributes also belonged to Set, the “Bull of the South” whose
breath was the hot desert wind that brings crime and destruction, we
wonder if Sekhmet is not a different “model”? If so, considering the
descriptions of Sekhmet, put together with the “sharp toothed”
appellation and the “far travelling star”, then we might suggest that
the term Sothis simply refers to a comet?
In such a case, we can
have no idea of which comet it might be, whether or not it is a
periodic body, and even if it is, what its period might have been.
In any event, in a general sense, we discover that the great
astronomical and scientific knowledge attributed to the Egyptians
falls far short of that which has been promoted by many “alternative
researchers” as well as mainstream Egyptologists. No wonder
Neugebauer’s results aren’t popularly known. They pretty much put a
period to the idea that the Egyptians were observing Sirius and
precession, or that they had a calendar based on a Sothic cycle of
1460 years.
Real Science was applied to the subject of Egyptology,
and the Egyptophiles just couldn’t stand it. They withdrew into
their private little world of dreams and illusions of Egyptian
grandeur, clinging desperately to the rags and tatters of their
occult beliefs like a drowning man clutches at straws.
It is only in recent years that the disruptions of civilization have
been scientifically related to celestial phenomena by serious
researchers, and even their observations have not moved the Egyptologist one inch from their
firm adherence to their chronology. After corresponding with a few
of them, reading their books and technical papers, I found that not
one of them was capable of answering a single question directly,
though one of them did suggest to me in a roundabout way that he had
a few mildly radical ideas.
Obviously, he didn’t want to say it too
loudly for fear of being run out of Dodge.
Moses and Aaron
Returning to the matter of Biblical chronology and its imposition
upon our world even down to the present day, we need to consider
several things. The redactor and editor of the Bible selected the
order of the stories in the new “history” to fulfill the function of
tribal unification for purposes of political and religious control.
This has resulted in many problems for those who have sought to find
real “history” in the Biblical history.
We have seen that the Priestly source that amalgamated the stories
of the loose tribal groups of Iron Age Canaan was constrained by the
need to include several variations of the same story. His audience
would have rejected any “history” that did not include oral
traditions they actually knew. Also, the evidence suggests he
assembled these stories in a certain order that was designed to
create the illusion of a long history of “chosenness”. This is
exactly the thing that Isaac Newton accused other ancient authors of
doing, yet he did not consider it possible in regards to the Bible.
Nevertheless Newton outlined for us the process by which it was
done. The editors of the Bible created their history by inserting
segments of the Book of Generations, so that retellings of stories
that occurred during the same time period suddenly looked like
they’d happened over many hundreds or even thousands of years. In
other words, the stories “horizontal” arrangement in time became a
vertical arrangement. What happened to many peoples suddenly
happened to the “chosen” people.
What is more, the stories that were
passed from group to group about a single individual and series of
activities, were often “personalized” to that specific group
according to the idea of mythicization we have already discussed.
The way we need to think about these matters is to consider first
the facts as we can discover them, and then see if any of the
stories of the Bible fit to those facts in any way, disregarding
entirely the manufactured genealogies and “historical timeline” of
the Bible as it is presented in the Bible.
The Bible is supposed to be the history of a long series of
eponymous founders. The different versions of the stories, assembled
from the different tribes, were arranged in a vertical timeline
across centuries, with the insertion of genealogies, most of which
were uncertain and repetitious if not actually invented for the
purpose.
Even so, I have suggested, there is one story of a series
of interactions situated in one frame of time reference that can be
extracted from these stories that IS recorded in both Egyptian
history and the Bible so accurately that the two sides of the story
fit together like a hand in a glove. What is more, as I have
suggested, understanding this event, this connection of a real
historical event that is reported both in the Bible, and in Egyptian
records, is the key to unlocking the entire puzzle of the Ark of the
Covenant.
Returning to the reforms of Hezekiah after the fall of the northern
kingdom, what is a descendant of Aaron to do in the southern
kingdom, upon the arrival of all the northern refugees, carrying
their stories and histories and genealogies? What are you going to
do when your own role, as a priest of the Aaronic line is denigrated
by these stories, and your role as the arbiter of the laws of
Yahweh, and your income as the only group that can perform the
sacrifice is being threatened? Well, you write another Torah! What
else? The P text was written as an alternative to J and E. In P,
Aaron is introduced as the authority.
In JE, miracles are performed
in Egypt using Moses’ staff. But the author of P made it Aaron’s
staff. In JE, Aaron is introduced as Moses’ “Levite brother”, which
could mean only that they are members of the same tribe, and not
necessarily actually brothers as has been thought. But now, the
author of P states categorically that Moses and Aaron were literal
brothers, sons of the same mother and father. What’s more, P states
that Aaron was the firstborn!
In P, there are no sacrifices until the sacrifice made on the day
that Aaron is consecrated as High priest. The author of P clearly
didn’t want anybody to have any ideas whatsoever that anyone other
than an Aaronid priest could offer a sacrifice! The author of P
deliberately omitted the sacrifices offered by Cain, Abel, Noah,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When he couldn’t omit the sacrifice from
the story, he omitted the entire story.
For example: in the J version of the flood story, Noah took seven
pairs of all the animals that were fit for sacrifice. P says he took
only two of every kind. In J, at the end of the story, Noah offers a
sacrifice. He needed the extra animals so he wouldn’t wipe out a
species! But in the P story, there is no sacrifice. To the author of
P, the issue of bloodline priests as the only intermediaries between
man and God looms very large. There were no angels, no talking
animals, no prophetic dreams, and most definitely anyone who
oversteps such boundaries is to be put to death.
In P,
Yahweh is a
universal, abstract God who created the “heavens and the earth” and
brought punishment on mankind due to a cosmic crisis at the time of
the flood. In J and E, God created the earth and the heavens - in
that order - and God is personal and talks to man on intimate terms.
The story of the flood was a cyclical great rain, not a cosmic
disaster of guilt and revenge.
So it is that, throughout P we read
about a cosmic God of order and control with whom man can
communicate only via the offices of an ordained, bloodline priest,
using the ordered rituals provided to the priest by Yahweh. Over and
over again P reiterates that the Aaronid priest at the altar is the
only access to God. These priests have become the psychopomp, the
feminized participants in a bizarre hieros gamos with a male deity
in which their role is symbolized by ritual castration -
circumcision.
In Plutarch’s Convivial Questions, one of the guests claims to be
able to prove that the God of the Jews is really Dionysus Sabazius,
the Barley-God of Thrace and Phrygia; and Tacitus similarly records
in his History (v. 5) that, “some maintain that the rites of the
Jews were founded in honour of Dionysus”. The historian Valerius
Maximus says that in the year 139 BC, the praetor of Foreigners, C.
Cornelius Hispallus, expelled from Rome certain Jews who were,
“trying to corrupt Roman morals by a pretended cult of Sabazian
Jove”.
The inference is that the praetor did not expel them for a
legitimate worship of this God, but because they were foisting a bizarre new rite on the Thracian
religion - circumcision! It is curious that later followers of this
perversion soon began to resort to full castration in adoration of
their God, even after their God had transmogrified from Jehovah to
Jesus! St. Augustine was one such, and it is conjectured that St.
Paul was also a self-mutilated eunuch, though I disagree. In later
times, this practice was modified to the idea of celibacy and
monasticism which further obscured and distorted the “Fire of
Prometheus”.
In the P text, there is not a single reference to God as merciful.
The words mercy, grace, faithfulness and repent never occur. The
writer intends for the reader to understand that forgiveness cannot
be had just because one is sorry or has learned a lesson.
Forgiveness can only, only, be had by sacrifice through an approved
priest who then, because he is unable to fulfill the true function
of the ecstatic ascent, makes a blood sacrifice to his God as a
substitution.
The person who wrote the P document was not just changing a few
stories: he was developing a complete concept of God - and his
motivation was theological, political, and economic control. He also
intended to establish one group as the legitimate authority on
earth: the Aaronid Levites.
The writer of P could not establish his
authority just by defending Aaron or placing him in a better light.
He also felt it necessary to deal with Moses and his descendants in
a very careful way. This suggests that he realized that he was in a
very precarious position. With the arrival of the refugees from the
northern kingdom, the Shiloh priests who were the descendants of
Moses, the author of P couldn’t just trash Moses outright. Moses was
the national hero of the northern kingdom, the kingdom of the Omride
dynasty, even if they had been displaced by Jezebel and her Gods.
Moses was, in fact, the founder of the northern kingdom.
So the creator of the P document couldn’t just make up lies about
any of it. But he could present the stories with a particular spin.
He could make up certain details that could be claimed as “inside”
or “prior knowledge” or “revelation from God”, if need be, to
bolster his claims and position.
Being concerned with the idea that the people would accept the new
Torah, the author of the P document had to consider what the people
already knew and accepted. He had to artfully produce an account of
the past that the audience would accept. So, for the most part, he
accepted the place of Moses in the tradition, but he minimized his
character and even completely twisted a couple of the stories to
place Moses in a very bad light.331 The author of P also tells his
own version of the revelation at Mount Sinai.
331 See the differences in the “water from the
rock” stories in Exodus 17:2-7 and Numbers 20:2-13.
P adds a detail at the
end of the story that is, up to that point, very similar to the
original. This detail is that there was something very unusual about
Moses’ face when he came down from the mountain. When people looked
at him, they were afraid to come near him, and he was
forced to wear a veil. According to P, whenever we think of Moses
for the last 40 years of his life, we are supposed to think of him
wearing a veil.
What is it about Moses’ face?
The meaning of the Hebrew term is
uncertain, and for a long time, people thought that it meant that
Moses had acquired horns. This resulted in many depictions of Moses
with horns in Medieval art. Another interpretation was that
something was wrong with Moses’ skin - that light beamed out from
his skin. So many translations and interpretations go along with
this idea and teach that there was “glory” shining from Moses’ face
that hurt the eyes of the beholders. I was taught this version
myself.
In more recent times, biblical scholar,
William Popp, has assembled
an array of evidence that suggests that the writer of P was telling
his audience that Moses was disfigured in the sense that he is so
horrible to look upon that the people cannot bear to see him. The
text does tell us that the “glory of Yahweh” is like a “consuming
fire” and this suggests that the flesh of Moses’ face has been eaten
away making him a specter out of your worst nightmare. If this was
an understood colloquialism of the time, then it is a masterly touch
of manipulation by the author of P.
He hasn’t denigrated Moses, but
he has created an image of horror that no one will want to
contemplate!
However, I believe that there is a different reason for this
allusion. Going back to our Sun-God allusion, we find that one of
the early efforts to demonize the Goddess was the symbolism of the
Old Babylonian God Huwawa (Humbaba). Huwawa appears in the Gilgamesh
stories as Enlil’s guardian of the Cedar Forest, and we have some
idea that cedar wood was very important to the God of Moses as
presented in the P text. We also know the earlier importance of the
fir tree to the birth Goddess, so we find this Huwawa assimilating
the Goddess’ prerogatives as well. We also note that most
interesting name: Huwawa.
Sounds close to Yahweh to me!
The use of cedar in the sacrifices, and the demand to build the
temple of cedar wood are indeed, most curious connections to this
God Huwawa. In 2 Samuel, chapter 7:7, Yahweh is reported as saying
to David via his prophet, Nathan, In all places where I have moved
with all the Israelites, did I speak a word to any from the tribes
of Israel whom I commanded to be shepherd of My people Israel,
asking, Why do you not build Me a house of cedar?
And then, in verse 13 Yahweh tells David that his son shall be the
one to build this house.
“He shall build a house for My name and I
will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever.”
In 1 Kings, 5:6,
Solomon is recorded as requesting cedars from Lebanon to build the
Temple of Solomon. Curiously, in the Bible story, Solomon raised a
levy of forced labor for the cutting of the trees and building of
the temple, quite similar to the stories of bondage in Egypt. The
foundations of the temple were “great costly stones” which, of
course, have never been found in Jerusalem.
Was the relationship of the terrible face of Moses, in comparison to
the terrible visage of Huwawa, the guardian of the cedar forest,
understood by the people?
Huwawa was described as a giant protected
by seven layers of terrifying radiance. He was killed by Gilgamesh
and Enkidu in a story that is quite similar to the slaying of Goliath by David and Medusa by Perseus. In those stories, the Osirian hero prevails over the Setian
serpent.
Melam and ni are two Sumerian words which are often linked. Strictly
speaking ni seems to denote the effect on human beings of the divine
power melam. The Babylonians used various words to capture the idea
of ni, including puluhtu, “fear”. The exact connotation of
melam is
difficult to grasp. It is a brilliant, visible glamour which is
exuded by Gods, heroes, sometimes by kings, and also by temples of
great holiness. While it is in some ways a phenomenon of light,
melam is at the same time terrifying and awe-inspiring.
Ni can be
experienced as a physical creeping of the flesh. Gods are sometimes
said to “wear” their melam like a garment or a crown, and like a
garment or a crown, melam can be “taken off”. While it is always a
mark of the supernatural, melam carries no connotation of moral
value since demons and terrifying giants can “wear” it too.332
332 Black, Jeremy, and Green, Anthony, Gods, Demons and Symbols of
Ancient Mesopotamia (Austin:
University of Texas Press 1992).
So,
it seems that this is very likely the point that the writer of P was
trying to make about Moses. Moses was being compared to Huwawa/Humbaba, the horrible guardian of the cedar forest, a
variation on the sun-God whose face is so brilliant that it must be
“veiled”; following which Huwawa/Yahweh demanded that his sacrifices
contain cedar, and his house be built of cedar!
The author of P was not only eliminating things that he specifically
rejected for theological or political reasons, he was also
eliminating the long tales of the J and E texts. Retelling the
wonderful stories of the people was not his intent; his intent was
the business of establishing Yahweh and his agents: the Aaronid
priesthood. He shows no interest whatsoever in the literary
interests of the people, alluding to them only in short lines or
paragraphs where they are mostly dismissed as pagan nonsense. In all
of P there are only three stories of any length that are similar to
JE: the creation, the flood and the covenant with Noah (excluding
the sacrifice after the flood), the covenant with Abraham,
(excluding his almost sacrifice of Isaac).
He also added a story
that is not present in the older documents: the story of the death
of Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu which is presented to instruct the
people that the sacrifice must only be performed as commanded by
God, even if it is performed by bloodline Levites! He was leaving no
angle uncovered! The repeated emphasis on this point tells us that
he was trying to change something that had existed for a long time:
that anybody could enter the Tent of Meeting.
But now, with a fake
ark of the covenant in there, only the priests could enter. In this
way, only they were able to see that the replacement ark was not the
original. Clever, yes? The P writer seems overwhelmingly concerned
with Sinai and the giving of the law, since half of Exodus, half of
Numbers, nearly all of Leviticus, is concerned with the Levite law.
There is another story that P presents that has no parallel in the
older accounts, so is thought to be entirely made up: the story of
the cave of Machpelah. This story gives a lengthy description of the
negotiations between Abraham and a Hittite over a piece of land with
a cave on it which Abraham buys as a burial place for his family.
Why does the P source, which leaves out so many fun facts and
stories, divert to mention this mundane piece of business? Friedman
believes that it is to establish a legal claim to Hebron, an Aaronid
priestly city. But if that were the case, it could have been done
any number of other ways. My thought is that maybe the story is not
made up.
Perhaps, since it was an Aaronid city, there was a certain
tradition about it that was only now being added to the “history”.
And maybe this tradition of Abraham being a “Great Prince” of the
Hittites wasn’t just blowing smoke because it does, indeed,
indirectly point us in the direction of Huwawa! But what I think is
more important is the fact that it points us away from something
else that the author of the P text does not want us to consider.
At any event, we now have a pretty good idea of what was going on at
the time of the Hezekiah reforms in the southern kingdom of Judah,
after the fall of the northern kingdom. We don’t know if Hezekiah
went along with this plan because he was promised that he would
benefit from the gifts to the priesthood, or if he was just simply
convinced that it would assist his consolidation of power and
expansionist aims. Whatever forces were behind the activity, we see
that Hezekiah was casting himself in the role of a new Omri-David
with his plans to rebel against the Assyrian empire. He organized
the Phoenician and Philistine cities against Assyria, and he managed
to get Egypt as an ally.
Assyria’s Sennacherib launched a massive military response and
captured the Judaean’s fortress of Lachish in an assault that
prefigured the Roman capture of Masada eight hundred years later.
The excavations at Lachish tell part of the story. The rest of the
story is at the palace of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian
empire. There, depicted on the walls, is one of the few known
representations of what Jews looked like in Biblical times. These
panels are now in the British museum, with casts of them in the
Israel Museum.
The story is that the Assyrians failed to bring Judah to her knees.
When Sennacherib appeared on the horizon, the call went out for,
“the kings of Egypt and the archers, chariotry and cavalry of the
king of Kush, an army beyond counting”, to come to fight the mighty
Assyrian army. Egypt, under Shabaka, had a large standing army
poised in the Delta, apparently waiting for the signal to march. In
the end, we have contemporary evidence of this campaign in the
Assyrian records, as well as Egyptian reliefs. These latter are
rather general, employing the standard “head smiting” scene with
some text.
There is no doubt that this battle was a serious reverse for
Sennacherib, and he ultimately permanently withdrew from the Levant.
However, the Bible tells us:
“And it was, that night, that an angel of Yahweh went out and struck
one hundred eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp, and they rose
in the morning and here they were all dead corpses. And Sennacherib
traveled and went and returned, and he lived in Nineveh.”
Curious
how the Egyptian army was transmogrified into an “angel of Yahweh”.
Nevertheless, this was the turning point in Judah’s history. Though
Sennacherib had laid waste to the outlying districts, Jerusalem had
not fallen. And Jerusalem began
to grow into the “Holy City”.
The population increased because,
obviously, it was more convenient to be close to the source of meat
preparation. And the Levites grew in power.
The Sin of Manasseh: Exile in Babylon
After Hezekiah died, his son, Manasseh came to the throne. During
his reign, the Assyrians returned, and he must not have been very
friendly to them because he was sent into exile in Babylon where the
Assyrian king’s brother was ruler. It is not known whether it was
because the people demanded it, or because the Assyrian’s put
pressure on him, but Manasseh’s exile ended after he and his son
reinstituted pagan worship, including putting pagan statues in the
Temple.
They also rebuilt the sacrificial locations outside of
Jerusalem. Manasseh was succeeded by his son, Amon, who was
assassinated after only two years after which Amon’s eight year old
son, Josiah, became king. (At least according to one version!)
Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in
Jerusalem one and thirty years.
And he did that which was right in
the sight of the LORD, and walked in the ways of David his father,
and declined neither to the right hand, nor to the left.
For in the
eighth year of his reign, while he was yet young, he began to seek
after the God of David his father: and in the twelfth year he began
to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves,
and the carved images, and the molten images. […]
Now in the eighteenth year of his reign, when he had purged the
land, and the house, he sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, and
Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Joah the son of Joahaz the
recorder, to repair the house of the LORD his God. […] And when they
brought out the money that was brought into the house of the LORD,
Hilkiah the priest found a book of the law of the Lord given by
Moses. And Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the scribe, I have
found the book of the law in the house of the LORD.
And Hilkiah
delivered the book to Shaphan. And Shaphan carried the book to the
king, and brought the king word back again, saying, All that was
committed to thy servants, they do it. And they have gathered
together the money that was found in the house of the LORD, and have
delivered it into the hand of the overseers, and to the hand of the
workmen. Then Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, Hilkiah the
priest hath given me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king.
And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the law,
that he rent his clothes. […]
And Hilkiah, and they that the king had appointed, went to Huldah
the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvath, the son of
Hasrah, keeper of the wardrobe;
(now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the college) and they spake to her to
that effect. And she answered them, Thus saith the Lord God of
Israel, Tell ye the man that sent you to me, Thus saith the Lord,
Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the
curses that are written in the book which they have read before the
king of Judah.[…]
And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries
that pertained to the children of Israel, and made all that were
present in Israel to serve, even to serve the LORD their God. And
all his days they departed not from following the LORD, the God of
their fathers.333
333 The Bible, 2 Chronicles 34.
Someone had created a document called The Law
Code, that was different from the ritualistic laws of the P source,
and this was then, “suddenly discovered” and officially endorsed as
the Torah. This code was thus going to be woven into a new version
of the official history.
As we see in the above account, in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s
reign, 622 BC, Josiah received word from his scribe, Shaphan, that
the priest Hilkiah had found a “scroll of the Torah” in the Temple
of Yahweh. When Shaphan read the text of this book that Hilkiah had
brought to the king, Josiah tore his clothes, (a sign of anguish),
and consulted a prophetess concerning its meaning. After this
consultation, he held a giant national ceremony of renewal of the
covenant between God and the people. The book that the priest
Hilkiah said he found in the Temple in 622 BC was Deuteronomy.
So it was that Josiah, instituted another “cleansing of Judah” and
centralization of religion after the manner of Hezekiah, overturning
his father’s and grandfather’s more lenient practices. What was
more, in addition to smashing the idols, cleansing the Temple, and
destroying the high places, Josiah also extended his sphere of
influence into the old kingdom of Israel in the highlands. Once
again, everyone was required to bring all their sacrifices to
Jerusalem, and the outlying priests were given menial jobs in the
Temple.
The fact that the Assyrian empire was weakening and that there were
tensions between it and Babylon at that time is probably what
allowed Josiah to get away with what he was doing. As it happened,
Egypt had now switched sides and was becoming friendly with Assyria;
they both had designs on Babylon. Josiah, like Hezekiah, was
definitely anti-Assyrian and throwing off the Assyrian yoke had been
the goal of Judah for some time.
Previously, when Egypt had been
after Assyria, Judah had sided with Egypt. But now, Egypt was on the
side of Assyria, and Babylon was against Assyria, so Josiah turned
against the Egyptians who had helped Hezekiah, and went out to fight
them on the side of Babylon. He met the Egyptian army at Megiddo and
not terribly unexpectedly, he was killed. Josiah’s early death meant
an end to political independence and religious reform. The high
places were rebuilt yet again (!), and three of his sons and one
grandson ruled for the next twenty-two years. Or so it is thought.
The reader may think that the history in the Bible was a little
confused over the Omri-Ahab time.
You are about to witness almost the most awful mess of historical
writing skullduggery ever committed.
According to the accepted timeline, the first of Josiah’s sons to
ascend the throne was Jehoahaz, who ruled for three months until the
Egyptian king dethroned him and hauled him off to Egypt, placing his
brother on the throne. The brother, Jehoiakim ruled as an Egyptian
vassal and managed to keep his seat for eleven years. Meanwhile, the
Babylonians finally subdued the Assyrians, and cast their eyes on
Egypt. Judah was more or less in the way and Johoiakim died in
battle against the Babylonians.
Jehoiakim’s son, Jehoiachin (yeah, I know, all these “Jehoia’s” are
getting tedious, but bear with me here) ruled for three months, but
was captured by the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar exiled him to
Babylon along with thousands of other Judaeans. Nebuchadnezzar
hauled back to Babylon everybody who was educated, professional, or
could cause trouble in Judea behind his back, plus anyone who might
be useful in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar put another of Josiah’s sons on
the throne: Zedekiah.
Zedekiah managed to do all right for eleven years before he got
stupid and rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar. That was the living end,
and it was not a joke. Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army came
back and destroyed Jerusalem and exiled the rest of the population.
Nebuchadnezzar brutally murdered the children of Zedekiah right
before his eyes – and then blinded him. It was the last thing he
ever saw. Or so the story goes.
Thus ended the rule of the “Davidic” line.334
334 Even if we have very strong suspicions that the “Davidic Line”
was so manipulated and/or falsified that to try to sort it out would
be like cleaning the Augean stables.
Nebuchadnezzar was tired of playing games so he appointed a Jewish
governor, Gedaliah, son of Ahikam, son of Shaphan, the scribe who
had reported the finding of the Deuteronomy scroll.
Now, as we noted, Josiah had been pro-Babylonian, and the Shaphan
family was also pro-Babylonian. In fact, the prophet Jeremiah was
pro-Babylonian. Nevertheless, having a pro-Babylonian governor from
a family of scribes placed over them, purportedly so infuriated the
house of David that, two months later, a relative of that family
assassinated Gedaliah.
That was a very bad idea. The people of Judah already knew that
Nebuzzy had a notoriously bad temper and it was said that virtually
the entire population fled to Egypt, although that was not exactly
the case. Probably just the family and connections of the assassin
left.
Now, before we attend the razing of Jerusalem, let’s examine this
new “Torah” that was presented in the reign of Josiah a bit more
carefully.
The book of Deuteronomy, which is the item in question, is presented
as Moses’ farewell speech before his death. It is set in the plains
of Moab.335 There is a special relationship between the person who
wrote this text and the next six books of the Bible336. It can be
shown that this set of books is a thoughtfully arranged work that
tells a continuous story – the history of the people in their land.
It was not by a single author because it was evident that there were
accounts written by a different hand (the court history of David and
the stories of Samuel).
336 The Bible,
Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel; 1 Kings.
But it was clear that the finished product
was the work of a single editor.
What emerges from the textual analysis is that this writer had
selected from a group of stories available to him and had arranged
the texts, either shortening or lengthening them as needed, adding
occasional comments of his own. All of this can be detected by
linguistic analysis. It is as clear as identifying fingerprints, and
in this case, we can ironically refer to it as the “fingerprints of
God”. In effect, this writer created the history of Israel extending
from Moses to the destruction of the kingdom of Judah by the
Babylonians. And he most definitely had an agenda.
For this man,
Deuteronomy was the book – the Torah. He constructed everything that
followed to support this idea. Deuteronomy was to be the foundation
of the history. The book of Joshua picks up where Deuteronomy leaves
off, thanks to this writer. Joshua develops the themes of
Deuteronomy and refers to Deuteronomy. Many of the key passages of
Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings use the same linguistic expressions
that are present in Deuteronomy. It became clear to the scholars
that the author of Deuteronomy was the producer of the next six
books of the Bible: the Deuteronomistic history.
But there is a particular little difficulty: this writer
occasionally speaks of things existing “to this day”, when the
things in question actually only existed while the kingdom was
standing. This begs the question: why would someone writing a
history in, say 560 BC refer to something as existing “to this day”,
when that something had ended back in 587?
In Kings 8:8 there is a reference to the poles that were used for
hoisting and carrying the ark. It states that the poles were placed
inside the Temple of Solomon on the day it was dedicated and that
“they have been there unto this day”. Why would someone write these
words after the Temple had burned down? This suggests to us that
this is the writer who created the history of the Temple of Solomon
as being in Jerusalem and applying this history to a temple that was
most likely built during the reign of Hezekiah or even a temple that
had been built for another God, but was taken over by Hezekiah in
his “repair and cleansing” of the temple.
But, more than that, why
would he talk about a Temple that had items in it 335 Remember that
Moab was “Hell city” to the Aaronid priesthood.
that had existed “to this day”
when that temple and those items had all been destroyed?
The obvious solution is that there were two editions of the
Deuteronomistic history. The original was by someone living during
the reign of King Josiah. It was a positive, optimistic account of
the people’s history. It emphasized the importance of the Davidic
covenant and made certain that the people realized that the Temple
was the Temple of Solomon. This writer believed that the kingdom
would thrive under Josiah and survive. But after Josiah’s death, his
sons’ disastrous reigns, and the fall of the kingdom, this original
version of the national history was not only out of date, the tragic
events had made its view completely foolish. So, someone wrote a new
edition of the history after the destruction in 587.
This second edition was about 95 percent the same as the first
edition. The main difference was the addition of the last chapters
of the story – the last two chapters of the book of 2 Kings – which
give the account of the reigns of Judah’s last four kings. The
updated history ends with the fall of Judah.
In the first version of the history, the “editor” referred to things
as existing “to this day” because in Josiah‘s time they really still
existed. The editor of the second edition did not bother to edit
them out because that was not his concern.
He was not rewriting the
whole history or looking for contradictions to eliminate. He was
simply adding the end of the story, with a little preface at the
beginning. There is another interesting thing that suggests that the
author of Deuteronomy lived during the reign of Josiah. It has been
pointed out that the length of the text dealing with Josiah is all
out of proportion to his importance and achievements. There are
other kings who lived longer and supposedly did more things.
Josiah’s reform was very short-lived. Not only that, the books of
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 2 Kings, and 2 Chronicles all suggest that
Josiah’s innovations were discarded after his death. So why was
there so much emphasis on this one, minor and relatively
unsuccessful king?
We have examples of similar writings in other times and places:
Josiah was obviously the king when the history was written, and it
was written to flatter him and to culminate in him by someone who
was currying favor or seeking control. There is another funny thing
about this. The book of 1 Kings, chapter 13, tells a story about
King Jeroboam. He set up the golden calves at Dan and Beth-El to
celebrate a festival.
When he came to the altar to burn incense,
something very strange happened:
And here was a man of God coming from Judah by the word of Yahweh to
Beth-El as Jeroboam was standing on the altar to burn incense. And
he called out upon the altar by the word of Yahweh, and he said,
“Altar, altar. Thus says Yahweh: ‘Here a son will be born to the
house of David, Josiah by name, and he will sacrifice on you the
priests of the high places who burn incense on you. He will burn
human bones on you.’”
Now, the point is that this story about Jeroboam is supposed to be
set three hundred years before the birth of Josiah! The fact is,
there is no other case of such explicit prediction of a person by
name so far in advance in any of the biblical narratives! What is
more, later in the text, the Deuteronomistic writer of Kings and
Chronicles made a special point of this story. He created the
fulfillment of the prophecy by writing an account of how Josiah went to Beth-El to
destroy the high place that has been there, “since Jeroboam’s days”.
Just to make sure that the reader is sufficiently impressed, he
describes how, while at Beth-El, Josiah sees some graves nearby and
digs up the bones in them to burn on the altar to defile it,
“according to the word of Yahweh”. If, by this time, we are not
sufficiently staggered at the predictive powers of the prophets of
Yahweh, the writer drives home the point by describing how Josiah
next notices the grave of the prophet who, purportedly three hundred
years before, had predicted each of these specific actions! Upon
finding out whose grave it is, Josiah tells everyone not to disturb
the bones of such a great guy.
Actually, it is not just that there was a prediction of the birth of
Josiah at the beginning of the history, and the fulfillment of the
prediction later on that raises questions.
The fact is, the writer
of this history rates every single other king in between – both of
Israel and Judah – below Josiah in significance and holiness and all
other praiseworthy virtues! Josiah is just the cat’s miaou!
Most of
the kings are rated as “bad”, and those that are rated as “good” are
still not as good as Josiah. Even the great and heroic King David is
criticized for adultery with Bathsheba.
In other words, the writer
of the Deuteronomistic history rates Josiah, and Josiah alone, as
the unqualified model of kingly virtue. But history shows that
Josiah did absolutely nothing except to make very bad political
decisions and managed to get himself killed thereby. Whoever wrote
this history wrote it at the beginning of what was hoped to be a new
and wonderful dynasty, coordinated with a centralized religion,
beginning with Josiah. And the author obviously saw his own place in
this dynasty as significant.
Thus we come to the idea that the person responsible for seven books
of the Bible was someone from Josiah’s reign. This individual
designed his history of the Jews to culminate in Josiah, who was,
effectively, compared to Moses. In all the Bible, the words “None
arose like him” are applied only to Moses and Josiah. The final
words of Deuteronomy are, “And there did not arise a prophet again
in Israel like Moses”. The final comment on Josiah was, “...and none
arose like him after him”.
Here is another curious fact: the book of the Torah is mentioned
only in Deuteronomy, in Joshua, and then never again in the Hebrew
bible except in one story: Josiah. Moses supposedly writes it, gives
it to the priests, who place it beside the ark, and it ceases to be
an issue until we find the story of its discovery by the priest
Hilkiah.
The writer of the Deuteronomistic history describes Josiah as the
culmination of Moses. Everything he did was modeled on Moses. The
covenant with Moses is to be
fulfilled in Josiah. And then: full stop, as Friedman notes. The
story resumes after the death of Josiah from a radically different
point of view.337 We also note that this writer’s agenda is
centralization of religion. All the kings who are rated as “bad” are
those who restored the “high places” where the sacrifice could be
made locally. The one consistent criterion applied to every king is
based on this centralization of religion.
337 Cf. Friedman, p 136 ff.
But after Josiah, this
criterion vanishes from sight. This suggests to us that religion was
not centralized in the time of Josiah, but when the Bible itself was
finally assembled during or at the end of the exile in Babylon, that
was no longer an issue, it was a fait accompli; accomplished by the
Persians, I should add..
King David also figures powerfully in the writings of the
Deuteronomist. Half of the book of 1 Samuel, all of 2 Samuel, and
the first chapters of 1 Kings deal with his life. The writer states
explicitly that because of David’s merit even a bad king of Judah
cannot lose the throne as long as he is descended from David. He
compares Josiah to David. The name David occurs about five hundred
times in the Deuteronomistic history.
Then, suddenly, it stops. The
text stops referring to the Davidic covenant, no one is compared to
David anymore, and it does not explain how this covenant failed to
save the throne. What is more, we have already seen that the “House
of David” was the Omride dynasty, and it was utterly destroyed by
the Assyrians when they massacred the sons of Ahab.
So, what is the
deal here?
Someone created the book of Deuteronomy and the following
six books of the Bible as one continuous work. The original edition
told the story from Moses to Josiah. One of the primary features of
this work was what is known as the “law code”. This law code takes
up half of Deuteronomy – chapters 12 through 26.
And the first law
is the centralization of worship. The second law is that the king
must be chosen by Yahweh – which, of course, means that a king
reigns only by virtue of being approved by the priests. The further
law codes include prohibitions against pagan religions, false
prophets, rules covering charity, justice, family and community law,
holidays and dietary laws, laws about war and slaves and agriculture
and magic. Most especially, it refers repeatedly to the sustaining
of the well-being of the Levites; all Levites, not just the Aaronid
family.
So, clearly, the author of this series of books was not
merely a scribe or someone from the royal court seeking to garner
favor from Josiah. It strictly proscribes the power of the king, and
gives the power firmly and fully into the hands of the Levites –
including the power of summoning the tribes to battle.
The fact that the writer of Deuteronomy favors Levites in general,
with no specific mention of Aaron, indicates that this writer was of
the lineage of the Shiloh priesthood of the Northern Kingdom who has
been indoctrinated into the Yawist religion.
Deuteronomy also never
makes mention of the ark, the cherubs, or any other religious
implements that were housed in the Jerusalem Temple. It also never
refers to the office of High Priest – an office of the Aaronid
priesthood. The law code does not reflect the views of the priests
of Beth-El during the two hundred years between Jeroboam and the
fall of Israel in 722. Those priests were not Levites. Deuteronomy
only favors Levites. They are the only legitimate priests.
The conclusion is that the author of the Deuteronomistic history is
a person who wanted to centralize religion, but who was not tied to
the ark or to the Jerusalem priesthood itself. Yes, they cared about
the Levites in general, but the focus was on a group of central
Levites descended from Moses. This writer accepted a king as a
necessity, but sought to insure that the king was controlled by this
central group of Mushite Levites. And, most of all, this individual
wanted to establish and maintain control over military actions.
He
wanted the power to wage war. Well, as we noted, it started with
Moses “writing the Torah” and then ended with the triumphant
recovery of the scroll, discovered by the priest Hilkiah, who then
read it to Josiah, and Josiah (probably believing every word of it,
because it prophesied his own birth) implemented the whole deal.
Why do the experts think it was a priest of Shiloh? Because it
minimizes the Aaronid priesthood – mentioning Aaron only twice: once
to say that he died, and once to say the God was mad enough to
destroy him over the golden calf episode. Further, this history
actually presents Solomon in the worst light possible, giving him
bad habits and a bad end. Then, of course, Josiah comes along and
destroys all the sinful works of “Solomon” in terms of the setting
up of the “high places”. It even specifies that these things that
Josiah was destroying were built by Solomon.
The Shiloh priests had
an axe to grind because, three centuries earlier, or so their
tradition said, Solomon – or a reasonable facsimile - had tossed
them all out on their ears and had instituted the Aaronid
priesthood. Or so it was claimed. And we know already who it was
that tossed the Shiloh priests of Yahweh out - it was Ahab and
Jezebel.
Now, remember that Hilkiah the priest was the one who discovered the
scroll, and Shaphan the scribe carried it to King Josiah and read it
to him. As it happens, when Jeremiah later, after the fall of
Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon, sent a letter to the exiles in
Babylon, it was delivered for him by Gemariah, son of Hilkiah, and
by Elasah, son of Shaphan.338
338 The Bible, Jeremiah, 29:
1-3.
My my! Doesn’t the plot thicken?! But
hang on, it gets better.
Jeremiah was closely connected to Josiah’s counselors who were
involved with “the book of the Torah”. Gemariah and Ahikam, sons of
Shaphan stood by Jeremiah at several critical moments; once even
saving Jeremiah from being stoned. It was Gedaliah, son of Ahikam,
who was appointed governor of Judah by
Nebuchadnezzar. It could be said that Jeremiah was associated with
the pro-Babylonian party and was probably the one who gave Josiah
the bad advice to side with Babylon against Egypt and Assyria.
So
much for the divine inspiration and superior advice of a priest of
Yahweh. Seems to be so that every time his advice is taken, it leads
to death and destruction for Israel. Maybe they ought to notice
this. More than this, Jeremiah is the one prophet in the Bible to
refer to Shiloh. He calls Shiloh, “The place where I [God] caused my
name to dwell”. This was, essentially, the central place of worship.
As we mentioned above, Solomon-Ahab had not been very nice to the
Shiloh priests. Their leader, Abiathar, had been one of Omri-David’s
two chief priests. They were expelled from Jerusalem by Solomon,
banished to their family estate in the town of Anathoth. This was a
town of the Aaronid priests, and presumably Abiathar could be kept
under house arrest there.
So, how do we connect things here? The first verses of the book of
Jeremiah say, “The words of Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, of the priests
who were in Anathoth”. And now we know how this “Torah” was
“discovered” so conveniently at just the “right moment”. It was
created just for that purpose. And we know who created it.
Jeremiah is a priest who never sacrifices, which is consistent with
the position of the priests at Shiloh. He is also the only prophet
to allude to a story of Moses’ bronze snake.339
That story comes
from the E source, the Shiloh source. King Hezekiah had smashed that
snake. His destruction of an ancient relic that was associated with
Moses himself is astonishing in and of itself. But, the fact is, it
was powerfully associated with the Shiloh priesthood. They were the
ones who told the story of this serpent. They were the ones who held
Moses in higher esteem than anyone, and they were, most probably,
Moses descendants – whoever Moses might have been. The term in
Hebrew for the bronze snake was “Nehushtan”.
Josiah married his son to a woman named Nehushta.340
339 The Bible, Jeremiah, 8: 17-22.
340 The Bible, 2 Kings, 24:8.
Now we must ask another question: if such a document was written by
the priests of the Northern kingdom, how did it find its way into
the Temple in Judah since we know that the Aaronid priests had a
pretty firm grip on things there? How did it become the law of the
land?
Here we come to a very strange thing that I have alluded to above in
terms of the confused genealogies.
In I Chronicles 3:15 we read:
“And the sons of Josiah were, the firstborn Johanan, the second
Jehoiakim, the third Zedekiah, the fourth Shallum.” In verse 16 we
read: “And the sons of Jehoiakim:
Jeconiah his son, Zedekiah his son.”
This means that there are two Zedekiahs. In any event, remember the
fourth son of Josiah, “Shallum”.
In 2 Kings 23, the death of Josiah is recounted. Verses 30 and 31
tell us:
“And his servants carried him in a chariot dead from Megiddo, and
brought him to Jerusalem, and buried him in his own sepulchre. And
the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah, and anointed
him, and made him king in his father’s stead. Jehoahaz was twenty
and three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three
months in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter
of Jeremiah of Libnah.”
The only problem at this point is that in the first passage from I
Chronicles above, the four sons of Josiah are listed and none of
them are named Jehoahaz. But, we do notice that the mother of the
new king is named as a daughter of someone named Jeremiah who hails
from the town of Libnah. This would mean that the new king is this
Jeremiah’s grandson, and that the dead king, Josiah was his
son-in-law. In other words, Hamutal is the wife of Josiah.
Next we find in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 1:3
It [the word of the Lord] came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son
of Josiah king of Judah, unto the end of the eleventh year of
Zedekiah the son of Josiah king of Judah, unto the carrying away of
Jerusalem captive in the fifth month. Very clearly here, Zedekiah,
is the son of Josiah and Hamutal, and is the guy who is taken
captive to Babylon.
Chapter 52 verse 1, tells us the following:
“Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and
he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was
Hamutal the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.”
Remember what the chronology is supposed to be: The first son of
Josiah, Jehoahaz. He is 23 years old when he came to the throne and
he ruled for three months until the Egyptian king dethroned him and
hauled him off to Egypt, placing his brother on the throne. The
brother, Jehoiakim ruled as an Egyptian vassal for eleven years. He
died in Battle against the Babylonians. Jehoiakim’s son, Jehoiachin,
ruled for three months, but was captured by the Babylonians and
exiled with everybody who was anybody.
The Bible says in 2
Chronicles:
“Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he
reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that
which was evil in the sight of the Lord.”
I can hardly imagine what an eight year old can do that is evil in
only three months. This is, however, directly contradicted by 2
Kings where it says:
“So Jehoiakim slept with his fathers: and Jehoiachin his son reigned
in his stead.[…] Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to
reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother’s
name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem. And he did
that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that
his father had done.[…] And Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to
the king of Babylon, he, and his mother, and his servants, and his
princes, and his officers: and the king of Babylon took him in the
eighth year of his reign.341
341 The Bible, 2 Kings, 24:6.
At this point, the mysterious Zedekiah
comes to the throne. He is a twenty-one year old son of Josiah and
he reigned for eleven years before he was hauled off by the
Babylonians.
Well, aside from the most interesting fact that we have a sort of
doublet here in terms of the lengths of the reigns, there is the
totally bizarre fact that in both “sets”, the three month reign ends
in being taken hostage: Jehoahaz to Egypt, and Jehoiachin to
Babylon. Not only that, but Jehoiakim’s eleven year reign ends in
him being killed in battle against the Babylonians, and Zedekiah’s
children are slain, his eyes are put out and he is taken in chains
to Babylon.
All of that is confusing enough. But, we notice that after Jehoahaz
is taken to Egypt, Pharaoh Necho supposedly put his brother on the
throne. Once again, we have a double header. But this one has a
twist: The second book of Kings, chapter 24, vs. 17 says:
“And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin’s uncle, king in
his stead, and changed his name to Zedekiah.”
But the second book of Chronicles tells us, in chapter 35, vs. 10:
“In the spring, King Nebuchadnezzar sent and brought him to Babylon,
with the precious vessels of the house of the Lord, and made
Zedekiah the brother [of Jehoiachin] king over Judah and Jerusalem.”
This means that we have now used up three of Josiah’s four sons. And
if the Bible can be specific enough to name an uncle in one place,
and a brother in another, I don’t think that the argument that a
“brother” can mean just a kinsman holds up.
What is more, only one
of the names of these brothers is the same as given in the
genealogy: Johanan, Jehoiakim, Zedekiah, Shallum as opposed to: Jehoahaz, Jehoikim, Mattaniah.
We also know that Jehoiachin is the
only one of this little group of kings at this period of time whose
existence has been confirmed by external evidence. Within the corpus
of administrative documents found in the excavations of Babylon are
some dating to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.
One broken document
mentions providing rations to Jehoiachin, specifically named as the
king of Judah, and to his sons. This same Babylonian document also
mentions provisions for the
Philistine king of Ashkelon, as well as for other kings. A second
document, also broken, mentions the kings of Gaza and Ashdod
performing duties for Nebuchadnezzar
So, who the heck is Shallum?
Well, first of all we remember that earlier in this chapter, we
recounted the story of the finding of the book of Deuteronomy in the
temple. It was found by the priest Hilkiah, apparently the father of
Jeremiah, and it was turned over the royal scribe, Shaphan.
The king
then ordered Shaphan to do something: he sent Hilkiah to a
prophetess!
“And Hilkiah, and they that the king had appointed, went to Huldah
the prophetess, the wife of Shallum the son of Tikvath, the son of
Hasrah, keeper of the wardrobe;
(now she dwelt in Jerusalem in the college).”
So we find a possible strange connection here, even if the genealogy
of the individual is given as being different from the Shallum with
whom we are concerned.
In Jeremiah chapter 32, King Zedekiah, the last of Josiah’s sons to
reign, a purported brother of a son of Josiah named Shallum, has
locked Jeremiah up in prison because Jeremiah keeps telling him that
the Babylonians are going to get him. Jeremiah is ranting about this
dreadful situation and tells us about a business transaction that
he, Jeremiah, was instructed to undertake.
And Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
Behold, Hanameel the son of Shallum thine uncle shall come unto thee
saying, Buy thee my field that is in Anathoth: for the right of
redemption is thine to buy it. So Hanameel mine uncle’s son came to
me in the court of the guard in accordance with the word of the
Lord, and he said to me, I pray you buy my field that is in
Anathoth, which is in the land of Benjamin; for the right of
inheritance is yours and the redemption is yours; buy it for
yourself. Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord. And I
bought the field that was in Anathoth of Hanameel my uncle’s son…
This suggests that the Shallum in question is dead, the son has
inherited, and that Jeremiah is the next of kin, giving him the
first right of refusal to buy this field that the son of Shallum
wants to sell. Of course, if Zedekiah were really a son of Josiah
and a brother of the Shallum in question, he would have the right of
redemption. So obviously we have either two Shallums, or just one
Shallum. Again, who is Shallum, listed as a “son” of Josiah? Is it
the same Shallum who is listed as the uncle of Jeremiah? And who is
the Jeremiah who is the father of the wife of Josiah, and therefore
the grandfather of Zedekiah?
Well, we can’t be sure, but my personal
opinion is that the genealogy has been doubled more than once and
that a few people have been inserted here who may never actually
have existed at that particular point in time and that there was
only one Shallum whose name was added as a son of Josiah in order to
establish a claim or a connection.
So, even if there is no way
possible to determine the relationships or even the precise times,
or to determine how these names all came to be maneuvered into a
timeline that obviously either did not exist, or was so confused as
to make any attempts to sort it out futile, we still have a very
powerful impression that Jeremiah, author of at least seven books of
the Bible, had a definite agenda in his prestidigitation of the
putative “history of Israel”.
He was also of the Davidic line
himself, whatever that was supposed to mean, and that he was also
connected somehow to the Aaronid
line of priests. His exact personal relationship we cannot determine
with any certainty, but he may actually have been a cousin of king
Zedekiah, or father-in-law to Josiah. In either case, this is what
gave him his “in” with the royal family.
Getting back to the content of Deuteronomy, the final result of the
analysis of the documents tells us that D and E complement each
other. Both traditions refer to the mountain of Moses as Horeb. J
and P call it Sinai.
These traditions regard Moses as a superluminary individual. He is at the turning point of history, and
is, in fact, the crucial element of history. His life and times are
carefully and thoroughly developed with nothing comparable in the J
and P sources. The Deuteronomistic books also give great emphasis to
prophets.
The word prophet occurs only once in P and never in the J
source. The Deuteronomistic historian also gives great favor and
support to the Levites. In J, however, the Levites are dispersed for
having massacred the people of Shechem. In P, the Levites are
separate from, and lower than, the Aaronid priests. And finally, D
and E both regard Aaron as bad, referring to the golden calf event
and the leprosy of Miriam. Neither of these is mentioned in either J
or P.
If we take a close look at this history, we find a curious thing:
all of the passages that mention the Davidic covenant divide into
two categories: conditional and unconditional. In the first case, a
representative of the line of David on the throne of Israel is
conditional on the obedience of the people. In the event of the
destruction of Israel, the Davidic covenant refers simply to
“holding the throne”.
Why is this?
It is obviously because the
writer had to finally re-edit his work. He had told the story of how
the house of David began ruling the whole united kingdom of Israel,
but that they had lost all of it except their own tribe of Judah
which would be theirs forever. And then, he had to deal with the
fact of the death of the sons of Zedekiah and the exile in Babylon.
Some have called this a “pious fraud”. Some would suggest that he
made up the Davidic covenant. But it does seem, indeed, that the
writer was only writing about what the people of this tribe
believed. The Davidic covenant tradition appears in some of the
psalms that were composed before the Deuteronomist ever wrote his
history. So, he wasn’t making the story up out of thin air; if he
had tried to do that, who would have believed him? Nobody. He had to
deal with accepted “stories” of the people around him. And this was
one of them.
He merely transferred the history he knew from the
northern kingdom and placed it in the setting of the southern
kingdom and appropriated it to those to whom it did not belong. In
this way, he could write the prophecy in the early part of the book
that would make Josiah out to be the messiah, and then all he had to
do was work on Josiah to make it all come true.
The Deuteronomistic historian based his interpretation of the
traditions and his
additions to the work on four things: faithfulness to Yahweh; the
Davidic
covenant; the centralization of religion at the Temple in Jerusalem;
and the Torah - as Deuteronomy, that is. His interpretations of what happened were
that: the kingdom split because Solomon had forsaken Yahweh and the
Torah.
David’s descendants retained Jerusalem because they had an
unconditional covenant. The northern kingdom fell because the people
and their kings did not follow the Torah. And now, at the time of
the writing, all was going to be smooth sailing because the Torah had been rediscovered and
Josiah, the descendant of David, was going to make everything right
again!
And then Josiah took an Egyptian arrow, and the game was lost.
So, twenty-two years after the writing of this history, it all
looked pretty sad and silly. The great “eternal kingdom” had ended
ignominiously. The family that would never be “cut off from the
throne” had not only been cut off, but had almost virtually ceased
to exist. The great place that Yahweh had “caused his name to dwell”
was in ashes and all the things that were said to exist “to this
day” no longer existed.
So someone had to go back through the whole work and insert some
changes that would explain this mess. He couldn’t just add a few
lines describing the later events; he had to save Yahweh’s buns from
the fire and make it comprehensible why the great dream of the
followers of Yahweh had failed – which ended up making Yahweh look
like a half-wit himself. And the evidence shows that this is what
was done.
The evidence shows grammatical breaks such as shifts from
singular to plural, special terms, themes, syntax and literary
structure – all designed to explain everything that had happened in
terms of the breaking of the covenant so that Yahweh, above all,
would stand forth as the only God. Never mind that all the advance
planning that was supposed to have been attributed to Yahweh had
fallen flat. Yahweh’s face had to be saved. It was a dirty job, but
somebody had to do it.
One of the most amazing things was the way Jeremiah dealt with the
death of the “chosen one”, Josiah, at the hands of the Egyptians.
What he inserted into the text was a “prophecy” of Yahweh from the
mouth of the Egyptian king that was ignored by Josiah, resulting in
his death.
But [Necho] sent ambassadors to [Josiah], saying, What have I to do
with you, you king of Judah? I come not against you this day, but
against the house with which I am at war; and God has commanded me
to make haste. Refrain from opposing God, Who is with me, lest He
destroy you. Yet Josiah would not turn away from him, but disguised
himself in order to fight with him. He did not heed the words of
Necho from the mouth of God, but came to fight with him in the
valley of Megiddo.342
342 The Bible, 2 Chronicles, 35:21-22.
Aside from the fact that the story of a king’s
disguise leading to his death in battle actually belongs to Ahab, as
told in the 18th chapter of II Chronicles, it seems that this
individual did not rewrite the whole thing; he only added occasional
paragraphs here and there to the “After the death of Josiah
edition”. He added passages that predicted exile, and it is
noticeable when such “prophecies” break the context and shift the
grammar.
Finally, to finish the whole thing off, the writer added in the
reason for the exile: the people had followed after other Gods.
On this point, he only had
to emphasize what was already written in
Deuteronomy, that the worship of Yahweh alone was the first
commandment. So, the exiled writer of this new edition added ten
more references to the command against apostasy and tied every one
of them to a reference to exile if this was not obeyed.
He then added this point to the last prophecy of God’s that Moses
hears. God tells Moses that after he is dead:
“This people rise and whore after alien Gods of the land into which
they are coming, and they will leave me and break my covenant which
I have made with them. And my anger will burn against them in that
day, and I shall leave them, and I shall hide my face from them, and
they will be devoured, and many evils and troubles will find
them…” 343
343 The
Bible, Deut 31: 16-18.
The Deuteronomist then had to find a plausible guilt hook
for the whole thing, and the textual analysis reveals this, as well.
It was obvious he couldn’t blame Josiah after all the praises heaped
on him, despite the fact that Josiah wasn’t a very convincing hero
in terms of the actual events of his life. Thus, his silly wasted
life was played so as not to contradict his position as a hero.
A
reason for the death and destruction and exile had to be found that
kept Josiah in the exalted position he had been assigned, and the
only way to do it was to make his exalted position a grand and noble - but futile - attempt to right the most terrible of all wrongs, but
–as wonderful as Josiah was – he was unable to balance the evil
of... Manasseh.
Yes, indeed Josiah’s grandfather. According to the first version of
the Deuteronomistic history, Manasseh had undone all the religious
reforms of his father, Hezekiah. He had set up a statue of the
Goddess Asherah and built altars to pagan Gods in the temple
precincts. This had set the stage for the story of Josiah and his
great reforms that were even more holy and complete than those of
Hezekiah.
But, the revision of the D history elaborates on Manasseh’s crimes
and adds in the consequences of those crimes. Again, this is clearly
evident in the textual analysis.
Here is what was added:
Manasseh instigated them to do
wrong, more than the nations that Yahweh had destroyed before
the children of Israel. And Yahweh said by the hand of his
servants the prophets, Because Manasseh King of Judah has done
these abominations … he has caused Judah to sin by his idols.
Therefore I am bringing such evil on Jerusalem and Judah that
the ears of whoever hears about it will tingle… I shall wipe
Jerusalem the way one wipes a plate and turns it over on its
face. And I shall reject the remnant of my possession and put
them in their enemies’ hand, and they will be a spoil and booty
for all their enemies, because they have done wrong in my eyes
and have been angering me from the day their fathers went out of
Egypt to this day.344
Heavy-duty guilt trip!
Manasseh is so bad, and the people are so bad
by following along with him, that it is now prophesied that the
kingdom will fall. And then, the writer jumps to the end of the
scroll and, where it says “no king ever arose like Josiah”, he
added,
“But Yahweh did not turn back from his great fury which
burned against Judah over all the things in which Manasseh had
angered him”.345
344 The Bible, 2 Kings 21:8-15.
345 Well, it almost seems like Manasseh is really Zedekiah. But no
point in going off on another series
of speculations on that point
There is a question with all this, however, because
when we read the texts in question, we find that the shoe does not
fit.
For example, in 2 Chronicles, starting with chapter 32, vs.33,
we read the following story:
And Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the
chiefest of the sepulchres of the sons of David: and all Judah and
the inhabitants of Jerusalem did him honour at his death. And
Manasseh his son reigned in his stead. Manasseh was twelve years old
when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty and five years in
Jerusalem, but did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord,
like unto the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord had cast
out before the children of Israel.
And the Lord spake to Manasseh, and to his people: but they would
not hearken. Wherefore the LORD brought upon them the captains of
the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the
thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.
And when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, and
humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prayed
unto him: and he was entreated of him, and heard his supplication,
and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh
knew that the Lord he was God.
Now after this he built a wall without the city of David, on the
west side of Gihon, in the valley, even to the entering in at the
fish gate, and compassed about Ophel, and raised it up a very great
height, and put captains of war in all the fenced cities of Judah.
And he took away the strange Gods, and the idol out of the house of
the Lord, and all the altars that he had built in the mount of the
house of the LORD, and in Jerusalem, and cast them out of the city.
And he repaired the altar of the Lord, and sacrificed thereon peace
offerings and thank offerings, and commanded Judah to serve the Lord
God of Israel. Nevertheless the people did sacrifice still in the
high places, yet unto the Lord their God only.
Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and his prayer unto his God,
and the words of the seers that spake to him in the name of the Lord
God of Israel, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of
Israel.
His prayer also, and how God was entreated of him, and all his sins,
and his trespass, and the places wherein he built high places, and
set up groves and graven images, before he was humbled: behold, they
are written among the sayings of the seers.
So Manasseh slept with his fathers, and they buried him in his own
house: and Amon his son reigned in his stead.
Amon was two and twenty years old when he began to reign, and
reigned two years in Jerusalem.
But he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, as did
Manasseh his father: for Amon sacrificed unto all the carved images
which Manasseh his father had made, and served them; and humbled not
himself before the LORD, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself;
but Amon trespassed more and more. And his servants conspired
against him, and slew him in his own house. But the people of the
land slew all them that had conspired against king Amon; and the
people of the land made Josiah his son king in his stead.
First of all, something very fishy is going on here. Now we have
another guy who was hauled off to Babylon by the Assyrians. Only
this one was miraculously returned without a single raised eyebrow.
He did a few rotten things, was punished, prayed some sort of
wonderful prayer that is nowhere to be found in the Bible, even
though it is said that Manasseh’s prayer is recorded in the book of
Kings and in a book called the “sayings of the seers”. What is the
“sayings of the seers”? They aren’t there.
What is there is the
following:
Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and reigned
fifty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was
Hephzibah. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord,
after the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out before
the children of Israel. For he built up again the high places which
Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he reared up altars for Baal,
and made a grove, as did Ahab king of Israel; and worshipped all the
host of heaven, and served them.
And he built altars in the house of the LORD, of which the LORD
said, In Jerusalem will I put my name. And he built altars for all
the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the LORD. And
he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used
enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards: he
wrought much wickedness in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to
anger.
And he set a graven image of the
grove that he had made in the house, of which the Lord said to
David, and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem,
which I have chosen out of all tribes of Israel, will I put my
name for ever: Neither will I make the feet of Israel move any
more out of the land which I gave their fathers; only if they
will observe to do according to all that I have commanded them,
and according to all the law that my servant Moses commanded
them.
But they hearkened not: and Manasseh
seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom the LORD
destroyed before the children of Israel. And the Lord spake by his servants the prophets, saying, Because
Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath done
wickedly above all that the Amorites did, which were before him, and
hath made Judah also to sin with his idols: Therefore thus saith the
Lord God of Israel, Behold, I am bringing such evil upon Jerusalem
and Judah, that whosoever heareth of it, both his ears shall tingle.
And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the
plummet of the house of Ahab: and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man
wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.
And I will
forsake the remnant of mine inheritance, and deliver them into the
hand of their enemies; and they shall become a prey and a spoil to
all their enemies; because they have done that which was evil in my
sight, and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers
came forth out of Egypt, even unto this day. Moreover Manasseh shed
innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end
to another; beside his sin wherewith he made Judah to sin, in doing
that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.
Now the rest of the acts of Manasseh, and all that he did, and his
sin that he sinned, are they not written in the book of the
chronicles of the kings of Judah? And Manasseh slept with his
fathers, and was buried in the garden of his own house, in the
garden of Uzza: and Amon his son reigned in his stead.346
Will the
real Manasseh please stand up? It sounds like two completely
different people! Not only that, but the mention of the captivity of
Manasseh in Babylon is missing, as well as his repentance and his
repairs of the Temple that are recited in Chronicles.
Just what is
going on here?
Speaking of repairs to the temple, it was actually during repairs to
the Temple that the purported scroll of the Torah of the Levites was
discovered during the reign of Hezekiah, Manasseh’s father. Again,
one has the sensation of loss of balance here; a page has been torn
out. Is it possible that Hezekiah and Manasseh were one and the same
person?
In fact, we find a strange resonance between the “humbling
event” of Manasseh and something that humbled Hezekiah, but which is
not elaborated:
In those days Hezekiah was sick to the death, and prayed unto the
Lord: and he spake unto him, and he gave him a sign. But Hezekiah
rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him; for his
heart was lifted up: therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon
Judah and Jerusalem. Notwithstanding Hezekiah humbled himself for
the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so
that the wrath of the Lord came not upon them in the days of
Hezekiah.347
346 The Bible, 2 Kings: 21.
347 The Bible, 2 Chronicles 32.
Somehow it sounds like Hezekiah wasn’t the great guy he
was portrayed to be and Manasseh was not as wicked as he was
depicted. What’s more, it is increasingly evident that some sort of
cover-up is going on here. What and why?
We may never know, but such questions need to be asked, and such
texts need to be considered when one is deciding whether or not to
believe that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God. My
thought is that the story of Hezekiah and Manasseh is just another
doublet of the story of Omri and Ahab. One begins to wonder if the
exile of the Jews really began with the fall of the Northern Kingdom
and if everything that was added after that, the whole history of
the Southern Kingdom and its kings and so on, wasn’t just simply
made up by priests in exile?
Another problem that the writer of this
history had to deal with was the promise of Yahweh that King
Solomon’s Temple would last forever. He had already written,
obviously under some kind of “guidance”,348 that God said:
“I have sanctified this house that you have built to set my name
there forever, and my eyes and my heart will be there all the
days.”349
348 We will deal in a future volume with the
possible “source” of this guidance.
349 The Bible, 1 Kings, 9:7.
Well, that’s pretty definite!
But now, the writer was
facing the fact that everything was gone, ashes, destroyed. What to
do? He obviously wasn’t ready to give up the idea that this had been
promised to Israel. So, he enfolded the promise in the conditional
nature of the Mosaic covenant. He added four sentences wherein God
tells the people that if they do not keep the commandments he has
given them, he will exile them and reject the Temple.
He then did something else: a long list of curses was added to the
text of Deuteronomy proper. This list of curses that would fall on
the people if they did not keep the covenant is still about the most
awful passage in the text. It included diseases, madness, blindness,
military defeats, destruction of crops and livestock; starvation and
cannibalism and then, the clincher: the last curse of Deuteronomy is
“And Yahweh will send you back to Egypt”.
The last sentence of 2 Kings is:
“And the entire people, from the
smallest to the biggest, and the officers of the soldiers, arose and
came to Egypt, because they were afraid of the Babylonians”.
And so, until the return of the exiles, the biblical texts warred
with each other as the weapons of the battle of the priests for the
control of the peoples’ minds. It was the final editor in Babylon
who put it all together, blending and combining the four documents,
cutting and pasting, adding and subtracting, glossing and enhancing
in so marvelous a way that most people read the text and get the
feeling that it is one continuous story. Only occasionally did he
slip and make it obvious to even the untrained eye that something
was wrong.
But for the trained eye, for the seeker of the deeper
truths of the Bible, the winding and turning of the text, first this
way and then that, becomes evident. It finally reveals itself as a
maze with something at the center that some
think is God.
And, perhaps it is. The only question is:
What God?
Another question at this point in the discussion is this: if there
was no Ark of the Covenant, and no Temple of Solomon, as the Bible
tells us, then,
-
What about the now famous story of the Templars and
their “doings” in the Temple?
-
What about the claims of many occult
and secret societies - most of whom stake claims on “Egyptian
Secrets” transmitted through Moses to Judaism?
-
Is it possible that
these stories were made up after the fact as Fulcanelli has
suggested?
-
If that is the case, who were the Templars really and
what were they doing and where?
That brings us back to our problem
of Abram and Sarai in Egypt.
This entire story will require a
further volume to explicate adequately, but allow me to just propose
here that Sarai and Nefertiti were one and the same person; that
Abraham and Moses were one and the same person; that they may have
been in possession of some sort of “object of cultic value”, if not
an ancient techno-marvel; and that they took it away from Egypt when
they fled, during the eruption of Thera, which caused the mad
Pharaoh, Akhenaten, to come after them in a fury.
If the real story
was: “give me back my wife”, rather than: “Let my people go”, and
the drama played out in the midst of a geological and atmospheric
catastrophe leading to the collapse of the Bronze Age, then we have
a useful lynchpin upon which to evaluate the rest of the chronology.
Moreover, if, in fact, there were concurrent Hyksos and Theban
dynasties, and Abram was possibly connected to the Hyksos, then we
also have a framework in which to understand the mythicization.
Reassembling the original story from its scattered pieces, given as
stories of different characters, (Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob,
Esau, Moses and Aaron, and even the exploits of the great King
David), we have some hope of coming close to what really may have
happened and who was who.
As mentioned, I plan to devote another
volume to comparison and analysis of these individuals, but for the
moment, I believe that the creative thinker can go to the original
texts, extract the elements of these stories, arrange them in
columns, and see for themselves that there are so many
correspondences that it is extremely likely that it was all about a
single individual, or small group, who lived at a single period of
history, and that period was the time of the eruption of Thera.
One
thing that strikes me as particularly important is this:
-
if Abram
and Moses were one and the same person,
-
if Sarai and Nefertiti were
one and the same person, “A beautiful woman has come”,
...then we must
think about the fact that the one thing that these men all had in
common - including Akhenaten - was Monotheism, and this may have had
more to do with the woman in question - who was shared among them -
than anyone might think.
And that takes us back to that odd event recorded in Genesis 33:11,
where something was transferred from Jacob to Esau.
Perhaps it was the Ark of the Covenant? The “Blessing”?
And if that is the case, and it was taken East, which is a most
intriguing idea when considering the grail stories and certain
remarks of Fulcanelli, (that we are to have faith in the story of
Plato, in which we are told that the Greeks were instructed by the
Arabs), it certainly makes us wonder who were these original “Arabs”
who seem to be the
Tribe of Dan.
And we note, of course, the name
similarity to Danae, the mother of Perseus.
And of course, Perseus
had the gorgon’s head which was
so similar in function to the Ark of the Covenant, and the stories
belong to the ancient Scythians.
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