Food for thought: "Even educated can be ignorant."
YOU ARE IN DARKNESS.
abraham page 1Food for thought: "Even educated can be ignorant." |
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YOU ARE IN DARKNESS. |
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ABRAM'S RELIGION
From what the Old Testament tells us, Abram (later Abraham) must have had a personal supreme overseer. It was usual to have a personal god in those days. So what did he believe in? Which supreme overseer did he choose for himself? What was his religion when he came to the land of Canaan? As Spenta Mainyu brought to your attention earlier, the land of Canaan was the birthplace of two things which affected the world: The 'Bible' (Byblos-Biblion-Bible), and the letters of our alphabet, when the Greeks took them in the 19 th. century BC. The part of this land which was to become the home of the Israelite people was named by the Romans, 'Pelishtim', as the Phillistines are called in the Old Testament. The Israelites lived in the southern most part of the coast of Canaan (Dan to Beersheba). So what was Abram's faith when he came to this land of Canaan? What did the locals believe in? Were the newcomers influenced by the beliefs of the local people?
The Ugaritic texts were instrumental in our understanding of the Canaanite belief systems. The people living in the land of Canaan were western Semites. They had numerous 'supreme beings.' The chief 'supreme being' was named EL and its symbol was a bull. EL was the Canaanite version of the Sumerian ENLIL, the chief God. This EL in time has become ELOLAM (eternal God), EL ELYON (the greatest God), EL ROY (the God of vision), EL SHADDAI (God of the mountains) in the Hebrew community. Anne Drafkorn in an article (Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. LXXV, Part III, 1957) titled ILANI/ELOHIM writes that ELOHIM is a parallel entity to ILANI in the Nuzi texts, and means the figure of the 'God of the household' or teraphim. EL is ILU in Akkadian. EL and ILU is also IL in Canaan. EL is EL/ELOHIM in Hebrew, EL/ELAH in Aramaic, IL among southern Arabs, EL-LAH among classic Arabs (EL-LAH has become ALLAH in later periods. We shall come to that later). Many names were constructed with EL: Jacob-EL (Let EL protect); Jisma-EL (Let EL hear); Jishak-EL (Let El smile at me); EL-Ezer (Let EL help me).
Secondary but very close to EL we had BAAL. BAAL was the God of rain and storm. BAAL was called also the 'rider of the clouds and provider of rain.' BAAL is the God of life and fertility and the 'ruler of the earth.' (The God of wisdom, ENKI in Sumer carries the same title). BAAL is equal of the sky-God whose name was AN in Sumer and ANU in Akkad. BAAL has three daughters. PIDAI (light), ARSAL (earth and ground), TALAI (humidity and ground). These three daughters were adopted to pre-Islamic Arabs as Lat, Manat, and Uzza - daughters of the God. BAAL is the God of life, MOT is the God of death. They are in perpetual conflict. When BAAL dies MOT is born; when BAAL is born MOT dies. This repeats itself every seven years. With BAAL there is abundance, with MOT there is famine. BAAL's wife is ANATH. She is the Goddess of war. This 'superior being' is called INANNA in Sumer, ISHTAR in Akkad, ANAT or ASTARTE in Canaan, ATHAR in southern Arabia, and ASTAR in Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia). The last two are male and the rest are female This must be due to the character of the societies. The Arab and Abyssinian societies are patriarchal. Canaanite societies are matriarchal, and fertility cult is very important, like Sumer. All the belief systems are based on the fertility cult. The statue of Goddess symbolizing the fertility has never been displayed this much and naked in any other culture, as we see in Canaan. Prostitutes dedicated to the fertility Goddess were working at the Temples of the fertility Goddess in Canaan. There were also male priests wearing woman's clothes in these Temples. Priestesses working as prostitutes, and homosexual males werw present in the Temples in Sumer. These prostitutes had to cover their heads (It is known also that in the earlier periods there were whores among the Jews some of whom were having sexual intercourse in the name of God. God in Deuteronomy 23:17 orders: "There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel." There is another order from the God in Deuteronomy 23:18: "You shall not bring the hire of a whore....into the house of the Lord your God." These Jewish prostitutes used to cover their faces and their bodies with a veil/vail).
The God of storm HADAD is depicted as holding a lightning and riding a bull. HADAD is the equivalent of ADAD in Sumer and Akkad. ADAD burns because he uses the lightning and is benevolent because he brings rain, at least that is the belief in Mesopotamia. The Hittite equivalent of HADAD, TESHUP is depicted in a similar fashion. According to a myth castrated priests clothed like a woman used to serve HADAD and the fertility Goddess ATARGATHEI (Astarte) accompanying him in the Temple built over a rift into which flowed the waters of the Flood.
When Abram arrived in the land of Canaan he had a 'personal supreme overseer.' His children referred to 'Our father's God', 'Abraham's God'. In Mesopotamia and Sumer in the earlier times everyone had a 'personal God'. Every family had a 'special God' (Please refer to the Sumer and Mesopotamia pages). Abram's 'supreme overseer' shows himself either in a human form or in a dream. The tribes and persons in the pre-Islamic era in the region have reportedly established a blood tie - by making a sacrifice - with the 'supreme being' they wished to worship and made that 'supreme being' either the ancestor or the 'supreme overseer' of that tribe. People used to put the statue or image of that 'supreme overseer' in a special place in their homes and used it as an intermediary in their prayers (This practice continues in Christianity with the cross, and the icons, statues, and images of Jesus and Mary). Each tribal 'supreme overseer' stayed in its place as the tribe moved to another site. All the tribes worshipped their 'supreme beings' and those belonging to other tribes as well. When a tribe moved to another site, they adopted the 'supreme being' of that site. And the migrated tribe used to come back once a year at their festivals to visit their 'previous supreme being'. The yearly 'Hacc' of the Moslems must be the continuation of a practice established long long ago when people came back periodically to
Ka'ba to visit the stone, 'Al-Hadjar Al-Aswad'. The most peculiar thing is that, this concept of a 'personal God' continues even in the monotheist Qoran, in the form of 'guarding angels', 'guiding angels', 'recording angels' (Qoran - 3:18; 4:166; 6:61; 13:11; 34:40-41; 43:80; 50:17-18; 70:4; 72:8; 82:10-12; 86:4). Especially 82:10 is very expressive where it is written: "There is no doubt that there are guardians and sentries on you." But the best is 86:4: "There does not exist a being upon whom there does not exist a guardian."PERSONAL GOD OF ABRAM
Let's see where this 'personal God' of Abram is mentioned. Genesis 17 tells that when Abram was 99 years old when the lord appeared to him and said:
"I am the Almighty God, walk before me and be perfect." In Genesis 28:2 Isaac sends Jacob to Padan-aram, to Bethuel (father of Jacob's mother), to take him a wife from among the daughters of Laban (brother of Jacob's mother), and says: "...And God Almighty bless you.." We know that erecting stones is a Canaanite practice. Suddenly we read that members of Abram's family start erecting stones.It could be taken as Abram's family beginning to adopt a Canaanite tradition if we have to go by what is written in Genesis 28:12-22: Jacob was going from Beer-sheba toward Haran, night fell and he had to sleep out in the open. He had a dream. 'Lord' calling himself 'I am the Lord God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac.' Dream went on and this 'God' made promises. Jacob woke up and said to himself 'Surely the Lord is in this place... This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven..' Jacob rose up early in the morning.. set a stone for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.. and he called the name of that place Beth-EL (House of El)...'This stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God's house' said Jacob. But we know that this God of Abram was jealous of other Gods, especially the local Gods, of which EL is the most famous one? When we reach Genesis 31:11 we read that Jacob was dreaming again and 'the angel of God spoke to him. In 31:13 this 'angel of God' calls himself the "God of Beth-EL, where you anointed the pillar." This jealous god gives the name of his arch rival as his name. The writers of the Old Testament must have made a mistake. What was this 'supreme being'? An angel or the God? If he was the God of Abram, he should not have associated himsef with EL. But he did. So who was this God? In Genesis 35:9-14 Jacob leaves Padan-Aram and God appears to him again, calling himself the 'God Almighty' and changed Jacob's name to Israel.. and announces that "..a nation and a company of nations shall be of you, and kings shall come out of your loins.." Jacob set up a (stone) pillar in the place where he talked with him, and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon..and Jacob called the name of the place where God spoke to him, Beth-El. In Genesis 32:9 Jacob calls the 'supreme being' as the "God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac." In Genesis 33:18-20 we learn that after leaving Padan-aram Jacob comes to Shalem, a city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan. He buys a plot of land, pitched his tent, and erected there an altar and called it 'EL-elohe-Israel' (Israel's Lord EL). Here, the Canaanite God EL (Baal) becomes Isra-El's God. In Genesis 35:1 God commands Jacob to go to Beth-EL and dwell there and "make an altar there unto God that appeared to you when you fled from Esau your brother.' Here the "supreme being" is the one "which showed itself to Jacob."The God speaking here is Rabb, because Jacob calls him the "God of his father Abraham and God of my father Isaac.' If this God is the God of his father, inference is there: There are other Gods as well. But that is only natural. There were personal Gods, family Gods, tribal Gods, national Gods, regional Gods, and the Gods of the nations living in the lands around this region. Genesis 46:1 and 48:15 also refer the the God of Isaac and Abraham.Here is another story which tells us that there were personal and family gods around. In Genesis 31:34 Rachel takes the 'images' and puts them in the camel's furniture and sits upon them. Laban searches all the tent and cannot find these images. Rachel says to his father "Let it not displease my lord that I cannot rise up before you; for the custom of woman is upon me (she is having her period). Laban searches but cannot find the images. Rachel is Jacob's wife. Laban is her father. Rachel steals the 'images.' What are these things called 'images'? According to the Nuzi tablets they are the
teraphim, which are the statues of the family Gods. So what Jacob's wife steals are the teraphim of the family. We must mention the rule here: If the family have a son, the teraphim goes to him. If the family does not have a son and adopt one, teraphim is inherited by him. The brother of Jacob's mother Laban does not have a son, and he adopts Jacob and gives him his daughters, two of them - Leah and Rachel. But for the teraphim to stay with Jacob, Laban should not marry another woman and have a son. In the meantime Laban's wife delivers a child. Jacob's wife Rachel steals the teraphim and conceals them to prevent this child getting it. Which shows that each family has its own 'supreme being.'WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THE GOD OF ABRAM AND HIS CHILDREN?
The name of Abram's God is not known for sure. 'Rabb' was used always for the name of his God. This name is extremely important. What did it mean then? Did it have a meaning reminding people of a 'supreme being'? Following may have been the words which covered the meaning of this word then: Master, lord, overseer, ruler, chief, teacher. Can you detect anything out-of-tnis-world? Sometimes another name confronts us: 'Hayy.' This name appears also in Islam. According to Islamic reference books 'Hayy' means, 'alive, living, everliving, robust, vigorous (God).' Hagar, Abram's female slave and her son were taken out to the desert and left there, and the son was thirsty, she found water in a well there and called that well 'Beer la-Hayy ' or 'Hayy's well'. Moslems call this 'Zemzem well'. Canaanites' sacrificing their children to the God Baal in a river bed, in a pit or by the head of a sacred well, was an ancient and widespread practice. According to some researchers the well called 'Beer la-Hayy/Zemzem' was one of those wells. In Samuel 14:39 we see the expression: 'For the sake of the ever-living God', (where we used to see 'Rabb') and the concept of 'Rabb being Hayy'. In Hosea 1:10 we see the expression; 'You are the sons of the living God.' Here the 'living God' gives the meaning of 'Hayy'. This expression at the same time shows the transformation from a family God to a tribal God. In Hosea 4:15 Rabb orders 'Do not swear'on the name of God who is Hayy.' Remember, according to Hosea 1:10 Rabb has become a tribal God and the impression we have is, Rabb is trying to stop swearing on the name of Abram's personal God 'Hayy'. (Moslems have the same practice: swearing on the name of Allah, or using the name of Allah is forbidden) Is 'Hayy' a name or an attribute? Don't forget, Israel's God is Islam's God. The God of the The Old Testament is the God of Qoran. The names are different: Rabb, YHWH, Elohim, Allah.. That's all! So let us check Qoran. The name 'Hayy' appears also in Qoran as 'Hayy,' but in the form of an attribute in 2:255: 'There is no other God accept Allah.. He is Hayyy, ever-living. He is
Qayyum, source of omnipotence.' According to this expression 'Hayy' is an attribute and means 'alive-vigorous' Cyrus Gordon (Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 41/1, 1989) writes that 'Hayy'(ya) in Ugaritic is the name of the Sumerian God Enki (earth God). There is another name: 'Shaddai.' It means 'of the mountains.' In those ancient times mountain is the symbol of power. This must be an Akkadian name brought by Abram's family from Mesopotamia. Personal names were made from Shaddai. Here Spenta Mainyu must point out that there are very few God's names in the nomadic tribes, name giving begins with settlement. Why? Because they start attributing human values, characteristics, titles, functions and actions to God. The Abram family brought with them, their local moon-God Sin's wife Ningal and this name was deteriorated to Nikkal at their destination. Sin does not exist in Canaan, because there already exists a moon-God here: Yarih.THE NAME OF ABRAM'S GOD BECOMES 'YHWH'
Exodus 3:14 tells us that, Moses is asking the God, what name (of the God) should he give when he went to the children of Israel. Upon which God replies simply:
"I AM WHAT I AM...Thus shall you say unto the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you. (In other words,YHWH) From now on until the eternity this will be my name." Exodus 6:2 tells us the story of how the writers of the Old Testament transformed Abram's 'personal God' to a 'God of the nation.' Do not forget! This is the 'God of the nation,' peculiar to the children of Israel. If we follow the utterances of this God throughout the Old Testament we learn that there are other Gods as well, that this God was a jealous God, that he is in constant conflict with the other Gods, in short, he is not the 'sole' God, not even of Israel. This God declares elsewhere that he was the God of Abraham, Jacob and Isaac. So he must be the 'Rabb,' which was also Abram's personal God. And now he gives his name as YHWH. This YHWH becomes a national God. We have not reached the level of monotheism yet. This God will become a 'sole' and universal God later on. 'I AM WHAT I AM' (YHWH-JHVH) was first revealed to Moses. It is also called 'Tetragrammaton,' meaning 'having four letters.' This God of Moses, was also the God of the Patriarchs and known to Israelites as EL SHADDAI. YHWH (Yahweh in the Bible) is derived from the verbal root 'to be,' or 'to exist' and means 'HE WHO IS.' There are no real parallels in the Egyptian or Babylonian pantheon. YHWH is almost certainly older than the time of Moses. There is a reference in the Bible to a much earlier institution of his worship. Lets have an etymological trip: YAHWEH, in its short version, may be YAH or YAHU (Dervishes in Islamic societies chant repeatedly 'ya huu' in their collective worship, could these words be related in anyway to this ancient name of the Middle Eastern God?). The root from the word 'to be' occurs in the Babylonian texts in the form of EWU (emu) meaning 'to be' or 'to exist.' YAHWEH in the imperfect tense forms part of proper names such as 'YAWU-ILU ('ilu'- THE GOD, 'yawu'- EXISTS). When Moses asked the God his name, God answered 'I AM WHAT I AM' or 'I AM WHO I AM.' That was all. The 'timelessness and permanence' of the God which we do not see in this passage in Exodus crops up in later versions and becomes prominent especially in the Greek versions.The name YAHWEH disappeared due to a couple of reasons: 1. As Judaism gradually became universal YAHWEH left its place to the much more popular ELOHIM. This more popular name ELOHIM would become a name valid for other Gods and communities as well, and would be used as a proof of the universal dominance of the Israel's God. 2. YAHWEH became sacrosanct in time, and turned into a name that was impossible to utter or refer to (The name Allah is in an identical position with YHWH. Islamic belief system teaches the least possible usage of 'Allah' in daily life). With this transformation 'ADONAI' (My Lord) began to be used in the Synagogues (Make note of the closeness between the names ATON-ATEN, ADONIS and ADONAI).
Massoretes dropped the wovels in YAHWEH due to its sacredness and opened the way to the emergence of YEHOVA, or JEHOVA (7-6 th. centuries BC.)PROPHET ABRAHAM AND THE THE PEOPLE CALLED SABIANS
Sabians also recognize Abraham as their prophet. According to Ibn Nadim, Ahmad Ibn Abdallah Ibn Salam - who was freed from slavery by Caliph Harun Al-Rashid - wrote a book, about which he said: 'I have translated this book into Arabic from the book of Hanifs who are those people who believe in Prophet Abraham. They say that they got their 'suhuf' (Those pages which are believed to have divine revelations in them. In other words their 'code book', 'sacred book') from Prophet Abraham.' Jews, Christians and Moslems say that Sabian belief system was in existence when Abraham was around. Which means that Sabian belief system predates Judaism. Although it is written in Deuteronomy 26:5 that Abraham was Syrian. Syria then was called Aram. Therefore Abraham must be an Aramaean. Ancient Hebrews spoke Aramaic. The Old Testament also tells that Hebrews and Aramaeans are relatives.
THE NAMES OF ABRAHAM'S ANCESTORS
Riddles and unanswerable questions are the rule rather than exception when we start dealing with 'faith'. Everything is on the basis of 'as reported.' Those who do the reporting either orally or in written form are almost always anonymous, gathering the information and writing it down is done by different groups of people with different backgrounds, interests, priorities and emphases. The result is an extremely unreliable narration, and all through these years people have believed in these narrators, and their texts. There are many researchers, and scholars trying to extract the pieces - if they still exist - of the long lost reality. In addition to all these corrosive, degenerative and deteriorating effects there is the symbolism which acts as a shield and a weapon to conceal the non-existence of the 'reality,' and to persuade those who are ready to receive their messages. Here is another example: We read in the Old Testament the names of Abram's forefathers. They stare at us with mockery as the symbols of the naivety of believers. Why? These names emerge from those dark ages (Spenta Mainyu calls it 'darkness' where there is no light, where 'darkness' acts as a cover to this instrument (religion) of hegemony, of domination, of becoming the 'lord/master' of all those ignorant hordes) as names of the cities in northwest Mesopotamia (Peleg, Serug, Nachor, Terah, Haran). These all lie in Padan-Aram, (the 'plain of Aram').
Yes! They are all names of the cities. Is it not interesting? The names of the persons given in Genesis 11:10 are names of places around Haran. Haran, which is the name of one of the brothers of Abram is a town in southeast Anatolia: Harran. Nachor's equivalent is Til-Nahiri. Where was it? No one knows. There are guesses that it should be somewhere in the region of Harran. Abram's father is Terah. There are various places with names like, Turah, Torah, Til-Turakki. Torah means 'Goat Hill' ('keçi tepesi' in Turkish). It is on the river Balikh. Abram's grandfather is Serug. There is a town called Sarugi to the west of Harran. Another ancestor of his, Peleg, is proved to be the town called Palugi where the river Habur joins the Euphrates. So what is the meaning of all this? Does anybody have an answer? There is one suggestion: Either these persons were tribal chiefs living in these towns or the names of these tribes were given to the towns they lived in. We need to have more information. Semitic Amorites start their raids on Mesopotamia and Syria from west in 1200s BC. They go as far as Egypt. They establish Amorite towns all around this region. Mari, Haran, Nachor, Qatna, Ugarit emerge as Amorite towns. Then they take Babylon, which becomes the capital city of Amorites (The renowned HammuRabbi was their king about 1750 BC.). In this Amorite assault which is described as he biggest Semitic assault Haran became their center and the Sumerians withdrew from political life. Studies showed that these tribal chiefs were in the region of Haran exactly in that period, and there are names, in the Mari texts, like Abam-Ram=Abram; Jacob-El=Jacob; and Ben-Yamin, which are all Semitic. Ben-Yamin (Means 'son of the right hand.' Right hand is God's hand. Right hand is the 'powerful, effective, penalizing, acoomplishing' hand of the God. Thinking symbolically could be taken as the strength of God? There is no need to point out that being the sacred hand of the God and by way of analogy mankind consider there right hands the 'good' one) is the son of Jacob. The names of the majority of Jacob's sons, are names of mountains, and places. These all seem to suggest that those tribal chiefs were a line of Amorites. As it is with all the myths, the stories titled Abraham, Isaac, Jacob are most probably the stories of tribes carrying these names. There are those who say that they are actually stories of persons. Persons? We do not know if they ever lived. All these stories came down through the ages by word of mouth open to all kinds of influences. They were written down at least 1500 years later than the actual events. As a result, the towns which these tribal chiefs have supposedly visited are found to be non-existent in those ages. Those towns which were written to be situated on the southern shores of Palestine, could not be found when excavations were made in those places. The Egyptian works found along the southern shores of Palestine show that the region was under Egyptian control in those ages. So where is the truth? Who knows? Nobody. What were the origins of these tribal chiefs presumed to have lived in these towns? We do not know for sure. What we know is, in the later periods of Israel's history every child was taught that his/her 'father was an immigrant (or a fugitive) Aramaean.' Their native land according to Genesis 24:10 is the 'land of Aram' (present day Syria). Paddan-aram, 'between the two rivers' is written as 'Mesopotamia' in the Old Testament published in 1958. Genesis 25:20; 28:5; 31:20 tell that the family of Abram, Jacob, and his cousins were from Aram.
