SPENTA MAINYU

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: "Ignorance is an affront."

YOU ARE IN DARKNESS.

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The New Testament is a follow-up series of texts. The prophetic background and many stories of the texts called the New Testament have their origins in the Old Testament. the New Testament shares the history, geography and the personalities with the Old Testament. The first people that Christians have won over were Jews. All these points leave us no choice but to take the Old and New Testaments together. Let us start.

The first note: The Old Testament - no matter who says what - is a tribal book. It has nothing to say to the other peoples of the earth, unless these other peoples accept it as one of the origins of their belief system like Moslems. The imaginary supreme authority in the Old Testament is an entity peculiar to the Hebrew tribes in the beginning and to Israel later on; and Judaism is a tribal belief system merging the Babylonian-Mesopotamian and Egyptian-Palestinian elements.

The Bible (Hebrew Bible + New Testament) is probably the greatest intertext on the face of the earth. Almost all of its material is the result of interactions with other Semitic literature and ancient Middle Eastern cultures. Especially the discoveries in the last 150 years and the deciphering of the texts on the unearthed tablets and other materials (foremost among them the Sumerian clay tablets), demonstrated to us to what extent the authors of the Old and New Testaments borrowed their stories from the ancient cultures and libraries.

First of all here is the canon of the Old Testament for quick reference:

CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

                                             (*) Numbers indicate order in Hebrew Bible

GO FURTHER BACK IN TIME

As we know many scholars have spent a lot of time to find out when the various books of the Old Testament were written, and who the authors were. Many of these scholars haven’t cared to look into the history of the Scriptures and almost disregarded the fact that the present form of the texts have come into being only about two thousand four hundred years ago. But as the Sumerian tablets, Ras Shamra, Tell Mardikh, Babylonian, and Zoroastrian etc, documents have shown, these historical accounts and the fairy-tales were collected, compiled, summarized, and re-written from a wealth of material that Israelites have possessed, coming down from earlier periods. This material of the Israelites are said to have been lost between the second and forth centuries AD. But at least we have the clay tablets and the texts written on them, which indicate that the Old Testament is not original but the authors have borrowed from other material.

We are told that there were some other sources as well, but the wars throughout the region within the last two thousand years, created a situation where many of these have been lost or destroyed to such an extent that the contents do not make sense. There were several non-Hebrew historians who mentioned the times of the best known of the kings and some others, but these works have rarely been found intact. The early Church fathers in Alexandria did however, in a lot of their writings, included quotations from authors of quite a few works that were a part of the celebrated library there in Egypt. We are told that the sources that Ezra has used were shown to contain words and phrases that originated or were commonly used in four distinct time periods; these are the 24^th- 22^nd, 14^th, 10^th, and 5^th centuries BC. The words and phrases of ancient origin that exist in the Scriptures, though they had been abandoned in the surrounding cultures, show a continuity of understanding between the language of the text and the language of those times. In other words they did not belong to a more recent period, therefore not the result of some blending.

Here is a short list of these sources: Sumerian creation myths; Babylonian Gilgamesh, Atrahasis (Ut-napishtim-Ziusudra) stories; hymns to Marduk and Amon-Re; Ugarithic myths from Ras Shamra (with very prominent gods - El and Baal); Zoroastrian doctrines; Mithras cult etc. The rich coastal city of Ugarit which was destroyed in 1200 BC, had widespread trade relations throughout the Fertile Crescent and across the Mediterranean. Ugarit’s accountants used a twenty-six letter cuneiform alphabet. This was an invention used by the traders and accountants who had relations with other cultures and peoples in far away lands. This alphabet and writing must have changed the illegible, incomprehensible cultural atmosphere created by the ancient temples; clearing the ‘sacred’ vagueness of pictographs and transforming the communication medium into a secular, demotic script which people of many different nations could easily adapt and use. This language is seen as a direct forerunner of modern Western alphabets as well as biblical Hebrew. Ugarit had a Canaanite literature and the traditions of that society has influenced the Old Testament. The scribes of Ugarit did know the city of Jerusalem and the holy Mount Zion nearby; this hill was known by that same name, which meant in Ugaritic Canaanite, ‘the seat of God’. That is not all, many Old Testament characters, too, have typically Canaanite names: For instance Absalom and Solomon. These names have a component in them which is the the name of the Canaanite God of the evening star: Solom, Just like Jeru-salem (think about ‘shalom’, ‘selam’ the expressions of greetings in Jewish and Arabic). The fact that numerous biblical terms for the articles of daily life, for clothes, perfumes and furniture were also Ugaritic underlines that the Ugaritic influence was not only linguistic but also cultural, extending into the appurtenances of daily life.

In 1868-1869 Charles Clermot-Ganneau found at Dibon (modern Dhiban, Jordan) the famous Moabite Stele of King Mesha, dating from 9^th century BC., which has a direct bearing on the Old Testament. The stone was written in gratitude and devotion to Baal-Lebanon, in one of the earliest known examples of the Semitic alphabet. Moabite national god was Chemosh. On this stele Mesha describes how Chemosh ordered him to “go and take Nebo from Israel”; how he fought Israel and killed seven thousand of them and “took from there the vessels of YHWH, dragging them before Chemosh..” Chemosh’s relation to his ‘children’ (the Moabites) was excactly like YHWH’s relation to Israel. Robin Lane Fox, in his book The Unauthorized Version writes: “In Moab, the Number One was called Chemosh; in Israel, people looked especially (but not solely) to Yahweh (YHWH): it is most striking that Saul, the first king, gave one of his sons a name after the god Baal…Jonathan did the same. From time to time Chemosh or Yahweh might be angry with their worshippers, and, as a result (people believed) their wars or weather could be unpredictable. To win Chemosh's or Yahweh’s favor, they had to offer animals and pay worship in their temples. Eventually, the gods’ anger would moderate (in due course people’s fortunes improved, if only from bad to less bad) and meanwhile the priests lived off the necessary offerings. All the while, worshippers were realistic about death. At best there might be a ghostly existence for a few people in an underworld, but when they died, they died for ever.” There were local cults as well to Baal Peor and Baal Meon. Mesha was a strong follower of the Astarh-Chemosh cult. All the finds in the Biblical lands show us that the Biblical authors were suitably inspired by the stories of the surrounding cultures.

The personal name of the God of Israel in the Bible is Y-H-UA-H (Tetragrammaton=‘four letters’=YHWH). The Hebrew language had only consonants and when the Masoretes produced the Masoretic text the pronunciation of the divine name was lost, and since the pious Jews did not pronounce the tetragrammaton and used words like adonai-adonay (Lord) or ha-shem (the name) we do not have the exact version. The original ban on the free usage of God’s name seems to have its origin in Egypt, because every Egyptian magician believed that the one who possessed the true name possessed the very being of god or man, and could force even a ‘supreme being’ to obey him like a slave. Therefore the magician never stopped his attempts to obtain from the gods a revelation of their sacred names. The only natural solution seemed to be a ban on the free usage of god’s name.

An excavation work started in 1964 at Tell Mardikh in north-western Syria forty kilometers south of Aleppo turned out to be an excavation of the ruins of the ancient city of Ebla. The documents unearthed there showed the existence of a mighty Canaanite empire in Syria which embraced Palestine around 2400 BC., and to the amazement of everybody Tell Mardikh/Ebla turned out to be the ancient capital city of this civilisation. There were 260,000 inhabitants in the city, which existed 1,000 years before David and Solomon and was destroyed by the Akkadians around 1600 BC. In 1975, a very important find was made at the Early Bronze Age levels in the form of nearly 20,000 clay tablets: The royal archives of the city. These tablets date back to the middle of the 3rd millenium BC, almost 4,500 years ago. The language is Sumerian in the form of wedge-shaped cuneiform script that is the world’s oldest known written language: The Old Canaanite, which is found out to be very close in vocabulary and grammar to biblical Hebrew than any other Canaanite dialect, including Ugaritic. This is an evidence as to the age of the Hebrew language. The Ebla documents are vital insofar as the linguistic problems in the Scriptures are concerned. The original Hebrew language had no vowels. Mainly Masoretes worked on the language; added vowels, and changed the definitions of the Hebrew words between 6^th and 12^th centuries AD. The language was already out of use before their work. It was revived in 1948, after not being spoken for nearly 1600 years. Therefore meanings of a number of words are unknown, making it difficult to rely solely on the Hebrew version as the last authority, here the language of the Ebla tablets can give us a clearer meaning of ‘doubtful’ words.

Before the stories in the Sumerian clay tablets were deciphered mankind thought that the Old Testament was a word of God, a Revelation. When the Sumerian stories were published the Old Testament lost its mystery completely, because the origin of the fairy-tales in the Book became clear. The records of the city of Ebla played an identical role (Check the page on the Old Testament in this site).

CITY OF EBLA AND A FURTHER PROOF THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT IS A COLLECTION OF OLD TALES

The most important aspect of the unearthing of these tablets shows itself in the place names. There are references to places and vassal cities in Palestine like Hazor, Gaza, Lachish, Megiddo, Akko, Sinai, and Urusalima (coldn’t be anything but Jerusalem). But much more important than the place names we read the personal names which also appear in the Bible; names from the ‘Patriarchal Age’ like Ab-ra-mu (Abram/Abraham), E-sa-um (Esau), Ish-ma-ilu (Ishmael), even Is-ra-ilu (Israel), and from later periods, names like Da‘u’dum (David) and Sa‘u’lum (Saul). The most tantalizing revelation is the name of Ebrum (Biblical Eber - the third and greatest of the six kings of the Ebla dynasty between 2400 and 2250 BC.). He seems to have been placed on the throne of Ebla by Great Sargon of Agade (Sharru-ken, Sharrum-kin) after a punitive expedition in which Ebla was subjugated. This Ebrum reminds Eber which is the person Hebrews claim to have descended from. Ebrum reminds Abram (the Patriarch) as well. Jews date Abram to 1900-1800 BC. But Arabs date Abram to 2300 BC. Isn’t it interesting? The name Ebrum reminds Abram; Ebrum lived sometime between 2400 and 2250 BC., and Arabs date Abram to 2300 BC. Could Ebrum be the ‘Patriarch’ Abram? Ebrum must have certainly introduced substantial changes. In all the names like Ishma-el, Micha-el and Israel the suffix -ilu or -el represents the god El. But when Ebrum started his term as the king, a change occurred in the suffixes of these names from -el to -ya(w) (yahu-yah), and for instance Mi-ka-ilu became Mi-ka-ya(w) (Mi-ka-yahu). There is no doubt that these suffixes are divine names, names of gods or words simply meaning ‘god’; therefore it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Ebrum has made some major alterations in the religion of Ebla. The suffix -ya(w)’s relation to YHWH, which as the God of Israel replaced the god El, is arguable according to some researchers. It must be, because the accepatance of a connection between ya(w) and yahu and YHWH will be the proof   that the Old Testament is really a collection of ancient fairy-tales with nothing divine in it.

One of the Ebla tablets names the five cities of Genesis 14:2 in the same order as they existed in the Old Testament: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar. Don’t forget these tablets date back to the middle of 3^rd millenium BC., but the story of Abram starts around 1900 BC. according to the Old Testament. Until the discovery of the Ebla tablets, the existence of these biblical cities was questioned; yet, here they are mentioned as trade partners of Ebla. This record predates the great catastrophy involving Lot when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. There are also very early Canaanite ‘creation’ and ‘flood’ stories in this archive, which very closely resemble that of the Bible.

Leaving out;

• the Dead Sea Scrolls;
• a papyrus from the 2^nd century BC. containing the Ten Commandments which does not conform to the classical text;
• and the Geniza/Genizeh (Cairo) pieces of the 5^th century BC.,

the oldest known section of the Old Testament was written in the 9^th century BC. But now Ebla discoveries show that all of these were already existing on tablets about 1600-1700 years before the Old Testament!

The Dead Sea Scrolls made it possible to gain glimpses into a community - Essenes -which practised in a way ‘Christianity before Christ’. As is well known the translation of this material was systematically boycotted. Although there are differences between the Essenes and the teachings of Jesus, similarities are obvious. As long ago as 1831 the Stuttgart town vicar and repetitor at the Tübingen Seminary August Friedrich Gfröer (who did not know anything about the Qumran texts) wrote: “The Christian church developed from the Essene community, whose ideas it continued and without whose regulations its organization would be inexplicable.” Jesus’ first public appearance took place in the Essene region. The Essenes are not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament, although their numbers were almost equal to the Sadducees and Pharisees. This would suggest an element of intentional secrecy regarding the influence of the sect on the teaching and work of Jesus, who received his first baptismal bath in the Jordan at the hands of John, only 5 km. away from the monastic settlement of Qumran. According to one proposition John was a shaliach - an apostle of the sect of Qumran. He led a community of Essene moderates, who were called the Nazarenes (Check the page on Jesus in this site). After his baptism one should normally count Jesus as a member of one of these groups and refer to him as a nazarene. The Essenes wished to form the ‘New Covenant’ with God, which Martin Luther later translated as the ‘New Testament’. They called themselves the ‘New Covenant’. Jesus was described as the founder of it only much later. This New Covenant would last until the rise of the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel.

Christians consider the Old Testament as the preparation for the Gospel. Messiah is supposedly predicted in there, the assumed story (they call it the prophecy) about the fulfillment or consummation of the Mosaic order by ‘Jesus the Jew’ is there etc. The Old Testament is full of stories of the constant rebellion of the Jews against YHWH, which made easy the New Testament representation of them as rebels against the light, against the Messiah, and of course against the Christian churches. Christians used the sacred writings of Jews against them effectively and rudely.

The main narratives of the Bible is contained in the section Genesis-Kings (supplemented by Chronicles). The stories invented and composed by human beings, like Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah’s Ark and the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Abraham and Sarah, Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Moses and the plagues of Egypt, Exodus, Crossing of the Red (Reed) Sea, destruction of the Pharaoh’s army, Ten Commmandments at Mt. Sinai etc. could be read in this part of the Bible.

The Old Testament narrative tells us that Hebrew tribes migrated into Canaan under the leadership of Abraham, who came from Haran. The evidence suggests that this was his ancestral home; the archaeological finds have shown us that customs presupposed in Genesis have existed in this area. We are told also that Abraham moved to Haran from Ur in Chaldea, where he was living. Why did he have to move in the first place? A simple search gives us a possible reason behind this move: In the 19^th century BC. Ur was destroyed by the invading Elamites. The Old Testament refers to ‘Ur of the Chaldees’. But the Chaldean kingdom did not exist until many centuries after Abram. So what? When the authors of the Genesis were busy writing down their stories there was a place called Ur. So they wrote it into their story in the Old Testament. Abraham’s religion, so far as we can tell, centered on his belief in a god whom he called El-Shaddai, the ‘Deity/God of the Mountains’. There is evidence that his tribe also venerated ancestral images. The story about Abraham coming to Palestine and settling there as the forefather of the Israel and the stories on the Egyptian origins of the people of Israel are clearly an attempt to connect the mythical Babylonian ancestors with Israel coming out of Egypt. All the other invented stories told in between these two narrations seem to have a purpose of taking the ancestry back to Canaan, and to Babylonia. Why? Well, during the second temple period the people living in and around Jerusalem were from two different origins: Babylonia and Egypt. They needed a scenario to connect those people and create a nation. It is thought that Israel was initially an association/league of villages in the hills of Beth-el and Samaria from about 1230 BC. The people living in those villages might have possessed oral traditions about a common ancestor: Jacob. They also preserved stories about the struggles of tribal leaders with the Canaanite cities (Genesis 34, Judges 4-5 and 9, and possibly Joshua 9 and 12). YHWH might have been their deity, who had delivered the ancestors of some of those settlers (now in Canaan) from slavery in Egypt. Amongst them there might have been a group of custodians to the stories of Exodus who have observed the Passover. On the other hand Judah was a separate entity. They had traditions about an ancestor, Abram/Abraham, who had supposedly migrated to Canaan from Haran and eventually settled in the Hebron area. They also had other traditions about tribal leaders who had fought against the Canaanite cities (Judges 1: 11-17, Joshua 10). In the Egyptian version of the story of Israel, YHWH is the God and Moses is the founder as opposed to the Babylonian version where Elohim is the God and the founder is Abraham. The Old Testament and the story of Israel begin with the Exodus (‘the exit’, ‘the way out’, ‘the road out’), the coming out of Egypt. From Exodus to Deuteronomy 34 the dominant characters are YHWH and Moses. The legend of baby Moses, and the fairy-tale of the ark of bulrushes are taken from the ancient Assyrian legends. In that connection Moses and the King Sargon of Agade (Sharru-ken, Sharrum-kin) share the same legend. The ‘pitch’ which is used in the basket to make it waterproof exists in Mesopotamia and not in Egypt. Therefore the authors of the story of Moses must have overlooked this sensitive point when they were adapting the narration about Sargon to Moses. No one can suggest that the traditions as they are written in the Old Testament are identical with their oral form or content around ages ago, because as Spenta Mainyu has told earlier the Old Testament is a supreme example of fiction written many times over.

WHO SAYS THERE WAS A SINGLE WRITER? DID HE LIVE 900 YEARS?

Various parts of the Bible are attributed to different persons. For example the first five books are attributed to Moses (Imagine Moses writing his own death?); histories are attributed to the prophets (Joshua - 2 Kings); majority of the poetry to the kings David and Solomon (Psalms, Proverbs). Many many theories were introduced about the composition of Books in the Bible. For the possible authors of the Books of the Old Testament you may check the relevant pages. Nevertheless the verdict is unchanged, we don’t really know who wrote the Books of the Old Testament or whether the authors mentioned were really historical personalities. But what we are interested in, anyway, is the fact that there is nothing divine in that literature. This colorful literature is the product of earthly-human authors composing the output of their imaginations in the form of texts for the consumption of the illiterate ignorants.

READ THE TRANSLATION OF THE TRANSLATION !

The worst thing is that when compared with the whole of the adherents of these Books only a very very small minority is able to follow them in the original language of the texts, and English speakers are the most disadvantaged because the Bible they read is the translation of a translation. Here is an example of how translation changes the meaning: Torah is usually translated as ‘Law’ into English, but it really means something like ‘instruction, guidance’ or from the theologian’s standpoint it is ‘the revelation of the divine will.’ Add to this the differentiation made by Paul where he describes Torah as Law and Gospel as Grace. The personal factors involved in this presentation have caused tremendous damage to the relations between Christians and Jews. But did Paul really make such a harsh differentiation? Could we put the blame again on translation? It is quite possible. When so much translation (which entails a great deal of approximations and interpretation as well) is involved how can one be sure of what one believes in. I will remind you first the ‘virgin birth’ story. The original description used by the author of the Gospel of Matthew refers to Isaiah, and uses also the word ‘virgin’. This is most likely a quotation from the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament. In the Septuagint we see the Greek word parthenos which is ‘virgin’. But the word used by Isaiah in his so called prophecy was not ‘virgin’. The original Hebrew word which was not translated properly into Greek is ‘almah’, which means a ‘young woman’, not a ‘virgin’. The proper Hebrew word for a ‘virgin’ would have been ‘bethulah’, which means sexually pure, undefiled and untouched. English speakers and those who could only follow the Bible in translations into their languages are in a very difficult situation.

HOW A GOD COULD HAVE SEX WITH A HUMAN BEING?

While we are on the subject of a sexual act between a divine(!) being and a woman Spenta Mainyu would like to mention another story on a similar line: This time a sexual union between Lord/God and a woman in 1 Samuel 2:20-21: “And the Lord visited Hannah, so that she conceived, and bare three sons and two daughters. And the child Samuel grew before the Lord.” Let me remind you that a non-material, non-physical entity/being cannot impregnate a ‘physical’ ovum. Because conceiving physically must start with the fertilization of the ovum by a sperm, which is an organic material. No other alternative does exist. A woman can conceive solely in a humanly fashion either by another human being of the opposite sex or by the method of artificial insemination which also necessitates an ‘agent’ - a sperm. Therefore either the ‘Lord’ in this story is the ‘master’ - a human - or the story is a creation like many many others.

ANOTHER ABSURDITY : THE ORIGINAL SIN

The Old Testament stories were interpreted by the Christians in line with the requirements of the day. The example is the story on ‘original sin’. Later generations of Christian apologists created ‘sin’ out of a story, the original text of which has no hint of it (and neither the Jewish traditions) at all. Under the influence of Gnosticism and Manicheism the entire realm of the sexual was demonized. The sexual activity was seen as the temptational sphere of the devil, and women as a being was placed at the centre of this domain of diabolic temptation. These Gnostic and Manicheistic tendencies played a great part in determining the understanding of sin and redemption. These apologists also identified the snake with devil.

STORIES THAT MAKE YOU LAUGH

The next story we shall take up is the ‘Flood’. Elsewhere in this site Spenta Mainyu has quoted the archaelogical evidence and the calculations made which show that this flood is just another invention. There is not that much water on earth or in the atmosphere, which would cause a flood up to the height described in the Old Testament. This story has its origins in the Mesopotamian and Hurrian mythology. The Noah story, the Tower of Babel story are also creations of the people around the region. Jews believed that the Hebrew language was the oldest on earth because they thought it has survived the catastrophe of Babel. And they proposed Moses as the first author of it (well, they also believe that they have the oldest(!) the first, the ‘one and only’ monotheistic(!) belief sytem, starting with Abraham!). But when Babylonian, Ugarit and Sanskrit were found out to be much older than their language they had the shock of their lives; Tell Mardikh/Ebla tablets damaged the myth about Abraham; and various other records indicated that the concept of YHWH was introduced after the ‘exile’ and prior to that there was polytheism amongst Israel.

On this subject of monotheism read Genesis and you will detect two different parts in it: 1:1 - 11:9 is the first part, and it most probably has its origins in Babylon, because it ends with the founding of Babylon. The second part is 11:10 - 50:9, and it is thought to be Palestinian/Arabian/Syrian in origin, because it focuses on desert tribes, and their God, El. El is the most famous and common Canaanite-Babylonian-Syrian-Arabian name for God. El (‘God’), who is the supreme authority in the celestial court, gives his sanction to all the decisions among the gods affecting nature and society. He is the father of the family existing ‘up there’, and presides over the divine assembly on the ‘mount of assembly’, the equivalent of Hebrew har mo’ed, which the Greek translated as Armageddon. El is known as ‘the Bull’ in Cananite mythology. In the myths he is termed as bny bnwt, which might mean ‘Creator of Created Things’. But his role in the two royal legends from Ras Shamra makes some scholars think that the meaning of this expression is the ‘Giver of Potency’, but he is generally depicted as sitting aloof and indeed remote, enthroned at ‘the outflowing of the (two) streams’. This reminds the Biblical Garden of Eden, from which a river flowed to form the four rivers, Tigris, Euphrates, Gihon and Pishon. El is known as the ‘Creator God’, the ‘Kindly One’, the ‘Compassionate One’. El expressed the concept of ordered government and social justice (these also are the attributes of the God of Islam, which may be an indication as to the sources of the concept of the God of Islam might have been borrowed). The Old Testament never dishonours the Canaanite worship of El, whose authority in social affairs was recognized by the Patriarchs. El’s companion was Asherah, the mother goddess, represented in Canaanite sanctuaries by a natural or stylized tree (Hebrew ashera).

HEAVENLY HOSTS, EL, YHWH..

The kings of the region were El’s servants/agents/executive arm on earth. The Canaanite king is described as ‘the Servant of El’, like king David who was called ‘the Servant of God’. Thus the king becomes the executive of the will of the divine king. This duty entailed both privileges and burdens. There is no doubt that the Canaanite mythology survives in monotheistic(!) Israel, at least in their Code Book. An example is the representation of God as president of a court of the Gods, bene’el. The history of Israel is depicted as originating in the apportionment of Israel to her God YHWH by the ‘Most High’ in the assembly of bene’el (‘the sons of El)’. Here YHWH is not presented as the supreme entity, because there is one higher, the ‘Most High’. There are some scholars who say that the meaningless Hebrew description, ‘the sons of Israel’, is a desperate effort to avoid embarrassment due to this reference to a multitude of Gods. In Job, the Morning Stars and the Sons of God (bene’el) join the chorus of praise to the Almighty; In the Hebrew writings, the term ‘Heavenly Hosts’ includes not only the counselors and emissaries of YHWH, but also the celestial luminaries; and the stars (imagined in the East to be animated intelligences, presiding over human weal and woe) are identified with the more distinctly impersonated messengers or angels, who execute the Divine decrees, and whose predominance in heaven is in mysterious correspondence and relation with the powers and dominions of the earth (here Moslems may detect the origin of references in Qoran to celestial luminaries and stars). The narratives of the great Judges (Judges 3:7) and Deuteronomy 32:8 are thought as indications to the first stage of the Israelite adaptation from the Canaanite mythology of the conception of God’s presidency of the divine court. But Israel could not have remained long with this concept, and the divine court was rebuked (Psalm 82:1-7). Beginning in the 7^th and 6^th centuries BC., several Israelite writers especially Jeremiah, the Deuteronomist, and deutero-Isaiah categorically rejected the notion that there were gods other than YHWH, and portrayed the ‘hosts of heaven’ and the ‘god of hosts’ as a foreign invasion in Israelite monotheism, which in reality is the monotheism of ancient Iran, Zoroastrianism.

ABRAHAM OUT YHWH IN

How about the story of YHWH choosing Israel as his people. We read in 2 Samuel 15:8-9: “..Thou hast confirmed to thyself thy people Israel to be a people unto thee forever: and thou, Lord, art become their God.” But according to Arab prophet Mohamed this same God chose this time the Arab tribe of Quraysh and one of them (Mohamed) for his revelation. If Israel is the ‘chosen people’ what are we to call those Arabs?

If you remember, Moses survived the Pharaoh’s decree to kill all male children; he was taken to the court and raised as an Egyptian there. Well, if the Old Testament has such a story the New Testament must have its own version also. Read Matthew 2:13-20; the slaughter of the innocents and the flight into the Egypt is the answer to the Old Testament. Whether Moses was or was not an Egyptian did not make any difference. He is the major prophet of the Abrahamic belief systems - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But what happened to Abraham? The story of coming out of Egypt, the Pharaoh, Mt. Sinai, Ten Commandments, the eruption of a volcano, - pardon me! - YHWH’s manifesting himself with a lot of fire, smoke, rumble and shaking in the ground, and the amazement of the people watching this natural phenomenon - pardon me again! - the manifestation of YHWH, must have sounded much more effective, so Abraham was left in peace somewhere along the route, only to be brought into the limelight again with the shrewd Arab prophet, Mohamed, when he announced the return to the original belief system of prophet Abraham. Of course, if ever there was someone called Abraham, and if he lived around 1900 BC., and if his environment was Harran, then he is believed to be a Sabian, a star worshipper. But don’t ever forget the Ebrum connection.

Now let’s take up the story about the ‘burning bush’ where Moses encounters YHWH, where he responds to Moses as ‘I am that I am’ or ‘I am who I am’’ or ‘I will be what I will be’ (the last expression does not sound right though, and looks like an addition with the aim of connecting future and past events - a continuity). YHWH in Hebrew is said to be derived from the verbal root ‘hyh’ (to be, to exist, ‘I am’). YHWH is said to have the meaning which is ‘hyh shr hyh’ (ehyeh asher ehyeh) in Hebrew. This expression could not have had the meaning of a ‘self-subsistent being’ because the God of Israel acquired its metaphysical dimension 2000 years later. This Hebrew idiom, ‘hyh shr hyh’ expresses a deliberate vagueness, and it is widespread in the Middle East. For example one could ask the question ‘Who are you’ and easily get the rude response ‘I am who I am, what is it to you?’ Consequently when one meets an expression like ‘they went where they went’ in the Books one should understand that the writer ‘hasn’t the slightest idea where they went.’ You get the inference? In this context God’s declaration ‘I am who I am’ or ‘I am what I am’ means something like ‘Never mind who I am, just listen.. or ..do as you are told or ..mind your own business’. So ‘hyh’ reflects the name but it is not the name. The actual name is not known. In Exodus 3:7-14 we read that God instructs Moses to return to Egypt in order to lead his people out of their bondage there; and in Exodus 3:14, we learn that before acceding the prophet asks the name of this strange and powerful being who has addressed him (‘in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush’)..The Lord, however, does not respond directly to the prophet’s question. Instead he replies briefly and enigmatically with these words: “I am who I am”. (This exactly is the context of the original Hebrew expression, “I am who I am, what is it to you ..never mind ..just do as you’re told..just mind your business” - Check the pages on the Supreme Being and Moses in this site). By way of further clarification he then adds: “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” Hebrews accept the ‘name’ as ‘nature’ of the being, therefore in answering Moses’ plea YHWH does not reveal his whole being by giving his name right away, He reveals just as much of his ‘nature’ that mortal man could bear (!): “ehyeh asher ehyeh”; accompanied by a lot of fire, smoke, thunder, and rumbling (the volcanoe!). Therefore the ‘unnameable one’ who has spoken(!) to Moses is still the ‘One’ and ‘Unnamed’.

Meanwhile Laurence Gardner in his book Bloodline of the Holy Grail gives us a very different angle: “Originally, these four consonants Y, H, W, H represented the four members of the Heavenly Family: A quartet of Y representing El the Father; H was Asherah the Mother; W corresponded to He the Son; and H was the Daughter Anath.” With the Covenant, YHWH has adopted Israel as his people and, as a jealous god, demanded total allegiance from them. They were to worship no other god but YHWH. But it was much later that the Jewish exiles in Babylon came face to face with the exact formula in the form of an explicit statement outlining Yahwistic monotheism. ‘I AM YHWH, AND THERE IS NO OTHER, THERE IS NO OTHER GOD BUT ME’ (Isaiah 45:5). As pointed out Moses is not the initiator of monotheism. The notion of a single, invisible and almighty God, the creator of the universe, a father of love and goodness, of compassion, sensibility and trust, had long been in evidence in the Vedas. Zarathustra, founder of Zoroastrianism, also proclaimed his God to be the ‘one and only’.

There were many names of deities and people incorporating the name of the Canaanite god Baal like one of the earliest heroes from the time of the initial invasion, the warrior Jerubbaal. He later changed his name to Gideon. This shows that at that time YHWH was not as established as the later authors of the Old Testament would like us to believe. For many, YHWH was just an Israelite war god, useful in time of battle but a fairly lowly figure when viewed against the full pantheon of gods. We read in 1 Kings 20:23: “The servants of the king of Aram said to him, ‘Their gods are gods of the hills, and so they are stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.’”

THIS IS THE EGYPTIAN 'SOLE' GOD

In Egypt there was another God, 1000 years before Moses, who was referred to as ‘the nameless’ and ‘the One Whose name cannot be spoken’. This Egyptian God called himself ‘nuk pu nuk’, which when translated into English means exactly, ‘I am who I am’. Yes! This announcement is almost identical with the one in Exodus 3:14. In the Papyrus of Prisse, dating from about 1000 years before Moses, God declared himself as follows: “I am the unseen One who created the heavens and all things. I am the Supreme God, made manifest by Myself, and without equal. I am yesterday, and I know the morrow. To every creature and being that exists I am the Law.” Either this Egyptian God and the God of Moses were the same (!) God or authors of the Old Testament copied the central character from the older Egyptian tale. Of course one must point out that this unnameable, unspekable God of Jews is in complete contrast with the ‘God in flesh’ concept of the Christians.

THE DECALOGUE(!)

The Ten Commandments, the ‘decalogue’ (‘ten words’) are not original. There are much older examples of covenants of this kind in the Hittite, Canaanite and even Egyptian suzerainty treaties. Covenants of this type were deposited in a sanctuary, just as the two supposed tablets of stone were claimed to have been placed in the Ark of the Covenant (a portable sanctuary) and supposed to be read publicly at stated periodic intervals. Original Commandments in Hebrew are admitted to have been two to four words, as the name ‘decalogue’ (ten words) suggests. But they must have been expanded by later generations of mankind considerably, because now we have two sets of Commandments: in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Which set is the original? Which is the starting point of the ‘Decalogue’ Exodus 20:2 or 20:3? What happened to the original ‘ten words written on two stone slabs’, because we do not have ‘ten words’ any more, but sentences. No one knows the answers, because most probably nothing has taken place at Mt. Sinai, apart from a vocanic eruption, the memory of which is most probably turned into the story we read in The Old Testament, and the commandments were just borrowed from the earlier examples and added on to the story (Check the pages on Moses in this site for other examples of Ten Commandments).

YHWH BURIES MOSES(!)

Now Deuteronomy 34:1-12 where we are told that Moses died on Mt. Nebo and “..he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.” This is the last story in the series of Books called the ‘Books of Moses’, because the belief is that the author is Moses himself. How could he have written his own death and burial? The story is a narration, someone is telling us. Who is this novelist? Was he present at the burial ceremony? If he was, he must have stood side by side with YHWH, because in verses 5 and 6 the narration leaves us no choice but to conclude that God actually interred Moses. So who buried whom? Was that ‘he’ YHWH himself? (A preposterous thought) These authors, and the generations of editors of the Old Testament after them, were not attentive to the details at all. Can you imagine the ‘supreme creator’ interring someone? Alright those were the days when the author of Isaiah had not interfered yet with the narration and the God was anthropomorphic, but a supreme creator burying the ‘greatest prophet in history’ is too much! In a later epoch this same God would send his son down to earth (because mankind is unable to reach out to his level); and afterwards pull him, the ‘God in flesh’ up to his side. Then why would he leave the greatest prophet on earth, even put him in a pit and cover him with earth while on the contrary pull the other one ‘bodily’ up to the heavens? One should stop there! Beyond that point divine(!) knowledge takes over and humans are not equipped with the intellectual ability to comprehend the goings on. Only the authors of the Books and Paul could understand that part of the story. What happened to the greatest ‘created’ creator of all times - your brain? Can’t you see the truth?

Furthermore the word prophet has its origin in the translation of the Hebrew word nabî to Greek as prophe te s rather than mantikos (Greek ‘mantikos’ or French ‘mantis’ are akin to mainesthai = ‘to be mad’, ‘having a mania’, ‘maniac’). Prophets are thought to be mantics (diviners) as much as they are seers and speakers. But since these meanings will have a negative effect on the stature of the ‘prophets’ in their societies, biblical ideology prefers to mask such unfavorable factors by separating diviners from speakers. This is the eternal rule with the belief systems which;

• Uphold the system with every means available,
• conceal the truth,
• introduce your own version of reality,
• resort to terminological inexactitudes,
• purge the unwanted factors,
• reinterpret the reality,
• suppress, subdue, crush, and kill.

You just have to check the history to see the truth.

STORIES ABOUT THE TRUTH, THE POWER OF THE WORD ETC.

While speaking about truth, don’t stick to utterances like the one by Jesus where he says he is the truth. Moses, Krishna, Mani, Zarathutra/Zoroaster, Mohamed also laid their claim to the eternal truth. But they all gave different messages and those differences were really fundamental. If they were all ‘interfaces/modems’ of the ‘one and only’ supreme creator, their giving an identical message would have been much more acceptable. Those arguments which maintain that different revelations were necessary because of the existence of different races, different communities, different understandings don’t count. Those at the receiving end of this process have always been human-beings, the mankind. Why would the one and only supreme creator send different messages to different peoples (they are all humans)? Why would he need ‘interfaces’/‘modems’/prophets, when as the supreme arbiter he just has to will for something and utter the word ‘be’ to accomplish everything? The argument that mankind has deviated from the course intended by the divine authority, and prophets who speak the individual languages of the communities were needed to pull them back on course is also nonsensical. Because again the supreme arbiter has to will only and all the creatures will fall in line. Don’t forget, this supreme arbiter is the creator(!) of the universe. A creator can certainly carry out ‘course corrections’ or if he wills he can destroy the unwanted ‘thing’ (it may be mankind, animals, plants or whole of the universe). Didn’t he create it all? So God wouldn’t tell different things on the same issue to Krishna, Moses, Mani, Zoroaster or Jesus. If there are discrepancies in the allegedly divine(!) word, no one can say that it comes from the supreme being, because the concept of an omnipotent supreme being and contradictions don’t go together. If there is an eternal truth, it must really be internally consistent, eternal and never-changing. If there is a contradiction in the versions of eternal truth as it is relayed to us, either that truth is not the truth and invented, or the ‘modems’/prophets are giving us their stories because there is nothing out there except their imagination, the narrators of these stories are doing the invention themselves and encapsulating their messages with a divine concoction to give them authority. There is nothing divine in them.

PLAY WITH THE NOTIONS AND CONCEPTS

This is an example how the authors are playing with the assumed divine texts: It is the David and Goliath story in 1 Samuel 17? There we are told that David has killed the Giant Goliath single-handedly. But 2 Samuel 21:19 tells us that the deed was carried out by someone else. 1 Chronicles 20:5 makes an harmonizing correction and invents a brother of Goliath. Then the Authorised Version makes scholarly corrections to the text of 2 Samuel 21:19 and makes the person killed “..the brother of Goliath the Gittite”. It is just another created story and an amendment by the authors of the Old Testament.

All through the Old Testament one comes across the narrations of a volcanic eruption which seems to have been interpreted and written down by the authors of the Books as the manifestation of the mountain God, YHWH. Because the volcanic eruption as an ‘extraordinary’ or rare event for those who witnessed it, was extremely useful for their purpose. Because that volcanic eruption (at Mt. Sinai or somewhere else) was an awe-inspiring event that Israel witnessed for the first time. This story must have been developed, given a bias, written many times over loaded with personal interpretations, and used time and again later in other narrations. The examples are in Exodus 40:38; Numbers 16:34-35; 1 Kings 19:11-14; Isaiah 30:33, 64:1-4; Micah 1:2-3; Nahum 1:2-8; Habakkuk 3:3-14. This ‘mountain god’ is mentioned also in 1 Kings 20:23.

Now let me remind you the stories about the prophets in Samuel and Kings. Apart from the references to Isaiah speaking the word of God in 2 Kings 19:20 and 2 Kings 20:19, and Jonah in 2 Kings 14:25, try to find any stories of or a single reference to any of the prophets whose works form the prophetic collection of books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Book of the Twelve Prophets. You won’t find any. How could Amos, Hosea, Micah and Jeremiah be ignored? There is complete silence about them. Does this mean that they are all inventions? They have never existed? Your guess is as good as mine.

Whatever Satan may represent in the Christian texts we see him as one of the most loyal and obdient servant of YHWH in the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah 45:7 summarises the position of evil (Satan) vis a vis YHWH: “I form the light and create darkness: I make weal (good, peace, well-being) and create woe (evil, sorrow), I am the Lord who do all these things”. In the Book of Job Satan appears to be the partner of YHWH. Satan-Devil becomes the adversary of God in the post-Biblical Judaism. Following the Babylonian exile, under the influence of Zoroastrianism, Satan took on counter-God characteristics. When we come to the New Testament we see devil, Satan, Belial, Beelzebub (‘the enemy’ - ha-stan). He tries to win over Christ by offering him riches of this world (this theme of Satan trying to deceive another prophet, this time Mohamed, occurs also in Islam).

The Book of Ezra (together with Nehemiah) is very important, because it concentrates on the return of Judaeans (or perhaps their descendants) from exile in Babylonia to Jerusalem. Has anybody noticed the abrupt ending of the Book? This suggests a ‘cut’ at that point of the text. Furthermore, a substantial portion of the original Book (Ezra 4:8- 6:18) is not in Hebrew but Aramaic, which was the lingua franca of the Persian empire. The narration in this portion of the Book centres on the Persian kings Cyrus, Artaxerxes and Darius and their deeds favourable to the Judaeans. In later Jewish tradition Ezra was rated as the most important Jew after Moses (even a ‘second Moses’); As “a ready scribe in the law of Moses” he was sent to Jerusalem from Babylon with the Persian emperor’s authorisation to reinstate the temple cult and organize the community of Jerusalem in accordance with the Law (Ezra 7:6-28); because the Scriptures were allegedly perished during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews; thus Ezra was credited with overseeing the rewriting of the scriptures which had been lost during the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. Some researchers propose that at the time of Artxerxes, the then king of the Persians, the exercise of foretelling must have excited Ezra, who was in Babylon then, which resulted in him restoring the whole of the ancient Scriptures. According to this account Ezra has compiled and catalogued the books of the Israelite writings from sources ranging from Persia to Egypt; and wrote the books containing his peoples’ histories and the writings of the prophets (much of the histories were contained in the body of the prophetic works), quoting as much as he was inspired; he included their lineage and his commentary in the Scriptures. This is evidenced as one reads through the various books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and the Prophets (especially Isaiah). The list of books claimed to have been used for the ‘restoration’ of the scriptures are mentioned in many places. This is the list:

The book of the Beginnings;

The books of Eden;

The acts of the Patriarchs;

The acts of Moses;

The book of the laws given to Moses (Joshua 23:6);

The book of Numbers;

The book of Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14);

The book of Jashar/Jasher, the upright (Joshua 10:13, 2 Samuel 1:18);

The acts of Joshua;

The oracles of Balaam (Numbers 23,24);

The books of the Judges of Israel (a separate one for each judge);

The words and deeds of Samuel the seer ( 1 Chronicles 29:29);

The acts/chronicles of king David (1 Chronicles 27:24), in which the Psalms were found;

The words of the days of Nathan the prophet (1 Chronicles 29:29);

The words of the days of Gad the seer (1 Chronicles 29:29);

The acts of Solomon (2 Chronicles 9:29), which contained the song of Solomon, the proverbs and ecclesiastics;

The prophesy of Ahi’zah/Ahijah (2 Chronicles 9:29);

The visions of Iddo (2 Chronicles 9:29);

The words of the days of Iddo/story of the prophet Iddo (2 Chronicles 13:22);

The words of the days of Shemai’ah the prophet (Samaria) (2 Chronicles 12:15);

The words of the days of Jehu the seer, son of Hana’ni (2 Chronicles 20:34);

The words of the days of Isaiah the prophet, son of Amos (2 Chronicles 26:22);

Commentary on the book of the Kings (2 chronicles 24:27);

The words of the days of the seers (2 Kings 21:17);

The writings of the days of the kings of Judah (by Jehu);

The writings of the kings of Israel (by Jehu).

Do you get the picture now? Persian thought has become the determining factor in the reshaping of the Mosaic Law, and Ezra was the author of the new scripture. But the story does not end there: The scribal tradition is said to have invented Ezra as a character in order to legitimate a contemporary view of the past (History and Ideology in Ancient Israel). Together with Ezra there was another person called Nehemiah, who was sent again by the Persian king to build the city walls of Jerusalem. These two characters reconstructed the city and reinstated its cultic observances and feast days. The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah are texts about the reorganisation of Jerusalem and its religious life.

BORROW, ADAPT, INVENT, EDIT..

The Book of Esther is another evidence that the Old Testament is a collection of stories which have their origins in older myths and legends of peoples in Palestine and neigbouring lands. First of all the names of the main characters attracted the attention of Spenta Mainyu: Esther and Mordecai..They immediately bring to mind Ishtar and Marduk. So this Book of Esther calls for further research. The Book of Esther is one of the group of Megilloth (or rolls) called the Hagiographa. The others are the Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes. The story told in Esther must have originated amongst the Persians and Babylonians - the Gentiles - rather than amongst the Jews. We are told furthermore that the version of the story in the Greek Septaugint has its origins in older sources than the version in the Hebrew Bible. This story is claimed to have been written to shed light on the origin and name of the purim festival. Nothing is known about the author. Since there are Aramaisms in it it is thought to be one of the latest books of the Old Testament. Even as late as the 3^rd century AD. Jewish authorities in Jerusalem opposed strongly to its inclusion in the canon of the sacred scriptures and the observance of the feast on the 14^th and 15^th of the month of Adar. But amongst the Jews of the Diaspora the situation must have been different because the murals uncovered in the synagouge of Dura-Europos on the Euphrates show us that the story of Esther was popular there. This purim festival does not seem to have been known under that name in earlier times. 2 Maccabees calls the first day (the 14^th) the Mardukian Day (Makduk is the Baylonian God). In the paraphrase of the Esther story in Josephus’ Antiquities (1^st century AD) there is no mention of the word purim. In distinction from this paraphrase the Septuagint mentions the ‘casting of the lots,’ but instead of the word purim (‘lots’) uses phururai or phururaia. These words are not Aramaic or Hebrew. According to the reference books these words seem to be an adaptation to Aramaic of the vocable ferver, known, among other things, from the name Farvardigan. This word denotes an Old Persian festival observed in the ancient times in the same season as the Jewish Festival of purim. The story in the Old Testament tells us that the king named Ahasuerus has his palace in the city of Shushan, which is Susa. Before becoming a residence of the Persian kings Susa was the capital of the kingdom of Elam. The inscriptions excavated there prove that around 600 BC. the city was subject to the rule of the Chaldean kings of Babylonia. This implies that its population included Babylonians and Aramaeans. Ishtar is the Babylonian Goddess. In the religious literature of the Babylonians she figures frequently as ‘Ishtar the Queen’ or ‘Ishtar the Bride’. Esther and Ishtar are the Aramaic forms of the name. So the first designation becomes ‘Esther the Queen’ when Ishtar is replaced. The name which occurs in the Hebrew text, Hadassah is Aramaic and goes back to hadashatu which is the word for ‘bride’ in Babylonian. Therefore this Babylonian deity entered the story as the Queen Esther. There is more! The queen Vashti who was replaced by Esther seems to be reflecting the Elamite god Mashti. This tells us that the story goes back actually to a tale which describes how Ishtar was elevated above other goddesses and became the queen of a divine king - this is the topic of a Babylonian poem.

When we take up the other character - Mordecai - the name makes it clear that he is a worshipper of Marduk, thus a Babylonian. His adversary in the story is Haman the Agagite. This epithet is there to present him as an hereditary enemy of the Jews. But the Septuagint calls him ‘a Bouagean’ which is the Greek form of an Aramaic term derived from a Persian designatian of the god Mithra. So, the author or the authors of the Greek version of the story must have seen in Haman a worshipper of the Persian god Mithra. The Septuagint version of the story tells us that Haman and Mordecai were the subjects of Artaxerxes, and the archetype of this story must be the clashes between the adherents of Mithra and Marduk. One more indication that this story must have taken place amongst the Gentiles is the complete absence of YHWH in the story. Book of Esther is another clear example that the Old Testament derives from the stories of other peoples and cultures.

Now let us deal with the Song of Solomon, which is included in megilloth (rolls)? It is called the Song of Songs in the Douai form of the Bible; called Canticle of Canticles from Canticum canticorum in the Vulgate; derived from the title in the Hebrew Bible, Shir Hashirim. Hebrew Bible mentions king Solomon as the author but this is improbable mainly because Solomon is referred to in the third person and the language seem to be of a later epoch with the words borrowed from Persian and perhaps even from Greek. Of the interpretations proposed only the cultic-mythological interpretation seems to be right. Because what is read on the Sumerian tablets showed us that the poems of the Song of Songs are strongly reminiscent of the songs connected with the Sumerian rite of the sacred marriage. Similar rites with the Sumerian practice were in existence in ancient Canaan. To some extent the Ras Shamra texts dating from the 14^th century BC. substantiate this, and that these rites were taken over by Israel. There are also some Parallels in some of the Egyptian love songs, many of which are thought to have originated in the cult of the love goddess Hathor.

The Book of Ruth was called a short story based on a solid core of fact: no one would have invented a Moabite ancestress for Israel’s greatest king (if a king named David has ever lived). The work could not be earlier than David. Archaeological finds on the Hebrew language and the marriage customs are said to suggest a pre-exilic date for the bulk of the story, but the Book is thought to have reached its final form in the post-exilic period because the author was aware of the Deuteronomistic edition of Judges.

Lamentations consist of five poems. They are poems conceived in the form of laments for the invasion of Judea and Jerusalem by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar and the final devastation in 586 BC., for the sufferings of the population, and of the poet himself. Here we must rectify not a mistake but a wrong presentation. The biblical Nebuchadnezzar is actually Nebuchadrezzar II [ Nabu-kudurri-usur = ‘The god Nabu has guarded the estate (succession)’] whose rule marked the peak of the Chaldean or Babylonian kingdom. He was the one who conquered Jerusalem in 597 BC. There were two Nebuchadrezzars, I and II, but there were also two usurpers (Nidin-tu Bel and Araka) of the same title later in 522 and 521 BC. Lamentations were placed in the Jewish liturgy to be read on the 9^th Ab (July/August), the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem. The Christian Church interprets the book in line with its objectives and employs it to pour out its grief over the passion and death of Christ.

Ecclesiastes is called Qoheleth in the Hebrew Bible which means ‘preacher’ and in Greek it is Ecclesiastes. The author calls himself the ‘preacher’. Ecclesiastes contains of nearly 40 loosely arranged aphorisms, which may have been collected from a sage’s notebook and perhaps edited and arranged by the author. Their parallels could be found particularly in Egypt but also in Akkadian wisdom literature. The language is late Hebrew in syntax and vocabulary. There are Aramaic forms despite the fact that it was not translated from Aramaic. A fragment of Ecclesiastes was found in a cave in Qumran which has been dated to mid-2^nd century. Thus it must have had a semi-canonical appearance as early as 150 BC., otherwise Qumranians would not have taken it over. That being so a date about 250-200 BC. is thought to be more probable.

PROPHETS : THE STORYTELLERS AND THEIR STORIES; THE  POETS AND THEIR POEMS

Now it is time for the Book of Job which signals the start of the poetic books of the Old Testament. Poetry, in the most important ‘code book’ in history? Yes, and this shouldn’t be considered strange. Because in those ‘days of ignorance and darkness’ poetry was identified with prophecy. Moslems use the word ‘nabî ’ for a prophet who pursues a preceding revelation, or a belief system, but this same word has other meanings as well, like ‘a prophet, a poet or a musician, under the influence of divine inspiration’ (Robert Lowth, Oxford Professor of Poetry). Lowth says that the prophets of ancient Israel were a professional caste, trained both ‘to compose verses for the service of the church and to declare the oracles of God.’ The Hebrew word mashal (‘mesel’ in Arabic) which is used also for a poem corresponds to the Greek word translated in the New Testament as ‘parable’. Which means that the parables of Jesus were not an innovation but an extension of a traditional Hebrew genre by the gratest of the Biblical poets.

Let’s deal with the Psalms, many of which are attributed to king David. But this doesn’t mean a thing. Whether they were written by him, for him or with reference to him is not clear. ‘David’ may be a reference to the textual person or to the house of David. Which? Did he ever exist under this name? No one knows, but excavations at Mari (Tell el Hariri on the Euphrates) show that the term davidum served as a title for a military marshal. It has been suggested that David’s name was something else, perhaps Elhanan (2 Samuel 21:19) and that he was known to history only by his title as a military leader. As with the Psalms of David, the ‘Proverbs of Solomon’ should not necessarily be understood as written by Solomon himself.

The Book of Isaiah is described as ‘The vision of Isaiah’ and dated to the second half of the 8^th centıry BC. Three different ‘Isaiahs’ are thought to have written the Book. But recently some readers tended to prefer to overlook this fact and tried to see the whole Book in an aesthetic unity. The Christians have tended to see the material on the ‘servant of YHWH’ motif as an anticipation or prediction of the life and suffering of Jesus (Check the page on Jesus in this site for an analysis).

When Christians read Jeremiah (Jeremias) they find a high point in the words about the ‘new covenant’ (Jeremiah 31:31-34). The early Christians were so much under the infuence of Jeremiah that there were some people in Jesus’ lifetime who believed that Jesus was Jeremiah come back to life (Matthew 16:14). There are two radically different biblical concepts in the Book as manifested by the descriptions of Nebuchadrezzar which is ‘the servant of YHWH’ in the beginning but becomes ‘like a dragon’ (Jeremiah 51:34). We are informed that the Hebrew and Greek versions of the Book show considerable differences. An edition of the Book of Jeremiah is thought to have been prepared by a Deuteronomistic editor or school in 550 BC. possibly in Egypt.

The story in the Book of Ezekiel (in the Douai version of the Bible Ezechiel, in the Hebrew Bible Yehezqel) is told as if this priest-turned-prophet - Ezekiel - living among Judeans deported to Babylon existed on two locations at the same time. The interpretation is difficult. As usual it was written, then edited, expanded, re-written etc. There are those who think the Book is the product of a composite authorship, while there are also others who think that the Book is authentic. The Christian tradition of blaming the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah on sodomy has led us to the interpretation that the divine ‘being’, the ‘supreme creator’ has made known his displeasure against homosexual activities. But in this Book Ezekiel has a different reading of this event (Ezekiel 16:53-55).

APOCRYPHA : YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF THAT KNOWLEDGE !

Now the Apocrypha. The Christian churches inherited the Greek Septuagint of the Alexandrian canon from the Hellenistic Jews. Consequently until the 16^th century the Old Testament of the Christian Bible was longer than the Protestant Bible of our day. The concept of ‘canon’ is a Christian invention which was applied to the Christian Bible for the first time at he Council of Laodicea (360 AD.), which means that the Jews did not have a canon [ it was established at Jabneh (Jabne-el, Jamnia) in 100 AD.] . The original Jewish scripture was only the Torah (the first five books of Moses, the Pentateuch,) and the other books were just ‘commentary on Torah.’ But different Jewish communities like Pharisees, Sadducees, Samaritans had their collection of books with varying degrees or authority as scripture (mikra). But none of these books had canonical status. There were considerable differences between various collections of biblical books. Masoretic Text differs from the Septuagint and both differ from the Qumran Scrolls. Such differences still exist amongst the different canons of the Christian churches. Likewise there is no consistent list of books in the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha. But what are these? First what does the term Apocrypha means? It is the plural of the Greek word ‘apocryphon’ (‘hidden away’, ‘secret’, ‘obscure’). It is the term used to designate certain religious books of high regard with the ancient Jews but never included in the Hebrew canon of Scripture. These books are found in the Greek and Latin translations of the Old Testament but are not included in the original Hebrew. In a broader sense the term is used to cover certain other non-cannonical writings from the Hebrew antiquity, such as those more commonly called pseudoepigrapha which are books ‘written under a false name’, and most of them of an apocalyptic character. The origin of the term apocrypha is still a matter of dispute but the most probable view derives it from the legend preserved in 2 Esdras (14:18-48) of the Vulgate which relates that when Ezra was commissioned to republish the Law in the days following the Babylonian exile he was told that Moses on Mount Sinai had been instructed to ‘hide’ many of the words he received and that himself was to issue publicly only a portion of the books that were dictated to him, the others to be delivered ‘in secret to the wise.’ This is the story: In Esdras 14:6 YHWH is telling the prophet about the Mt. Sinai incident and the giving of the Law to Moses where he orders: “These words shall you declare, and these shalt thou hide.” Then YHWH tells Ezra what to do in Esdras 14:25-26: “..I shall light a candle of understanding in thine heart, which shall not be put out, till the things be performed which thou shalt begin to write..(Esdras 14:42) ..The Highest gave understanding unto five men..and they wrote..and they sat forty days.. (Esdras 14:44-48) ..In forty days they wrote two hundred and four books..(‘The Highest’ speaks) The first that thou hast written publish openly, that the worthy and unworthy may read it: But keep the seventy last that thou mayest deliver them only to such as be wise among the people: For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the stream of knowledge. And I did so.” The mandate is: Deliver the majority of the Books to anybody and everybody, but keep the ‘last seventy’ for the ‘wise’ among the people.

THE TWO TALMUDS : FROM JUDAISM TO ZOROASTRIANISM

Now an illuminating departure.. You know that there are two Talmuds. Talmud Yerushalmi (Palestinian Talmud) and Talmud Babli (Babylonian Talmud). The Palestinian Talmud is written in western Aramaic and full of many Greek and Latin terms and expressions whereas the post-exilic Babylonian Talmud (which is the most authoritive and usually called the Talmud) is written in eastern Aramaic and sprinkled with Persian words. The differences between the two Talmuds give us the progress of the Judaic belief system in time, from Mosaic to Zarathustran/Zoroastrian, from polytheistic to monotheistic. Who was the central character in this progress? Ezra.. He is almost the ‘second Moses’ in the post-exilic period for the Judaic belief system.

The Judaic Law took its final form when it was re-written by the kohanim (priests). Who are thought to be a school of people. Ezra was in this group of people. They have revised all the Books of Moses, and presented their rules as belonging to Moses. The Leviticus, and the section from Exodus 25 to Numbers 10 are thought to be written by this group of people. They are known to have born and lived under the Iranian rule and influence. The ancient Zarathustran/Zoroastrian belief system was an abstract and subtle religion, and its influence on Nehemiah and Ezra must have been really great. There are hints to this effect in the Old Testament. The ‘Spirit of God’, for example, that moves on the face of the waters in the opening of Genesis is an incredible idea.. “Now the earth was (or became) formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God (ruach elohiym - ‘spirits of gods’ seems to be a much better translation) was hovering over the waters.” An ‘earth’ is mentioned here. Is this the Earth we live on? It must be! Where were these people during the creation, watching the actual divine act? Were they on earth? Were these people first hand witnesses? If not who told them this fairy-tale? It is out of this world! No one in his/her right mind could accept that. They have taken it from the Zarathustran belief system.

Persians employed a trick to sell their monotheistic belief system to the Jewish people as the Law of Moses: Josiah is claimed to have gotten hold of the old ‘Law,’ the law of Moses..Where, of all places do you think they have found it? Let us read 2 Kings 23:24: “Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord.” So this Law was found in a faraway land, in Babylonia. But how did it get there? Hilkiah was unable to persuade the educated(!) people of his time. They thought that this newly discovered document was the secret creation of High Priest Hilkiah, secretary Shapan and the prophetess Huldah.

We know that it was Ezra who wrote down the law. But Ezra’s laws were different and more numerous than Josiah’s. Neither this newly found Laws of Moses nor Ezra’s could have been real. Both of them must be frauds. Because Moses could not have taken down ‘non-anthropomorphic’ laws from Mount Sinai. Because the God who gave this law was an ‘anthropomorphic’ God - YHWH. But the Laws, one that has been discovered(!) and the other ‘delivered to the heart’ of Ezra are both anti-anthropomorphic. Therefore they could not be real, they could not be the Law of Moses. Josiah’s and Ezra’s newly discovered books of Moses are all written by mankind, there is nothing divine in them. It is thought that Ezra’s laws are parts of the Avesta - the Zoroastrian code book. It is clear that the Persians had introduced their God and His laws to the Jews. Who did this work? Ezra.. He was born in Babylon, educated there, and was appointed high priest and judge over Israel. Being a legal expert, a priest-scribe and a worshipper of YHWH, he was sent from Baylon to Israel with the purpose of “teaching the statutes and ordinances/judgements” as told in Ezra 7:10. He was attached to the court of the Achaemenian ruler Artaxerxes (Artakhshathra). If you would like to see his document of appointment look at Ezra 7:11-26. It is addressed to “Ezra the priest, the scribe, even a scribe of the words of the commandments of the Lord, and of his statutes to Israel.” Ezra was sent to Judea to “see if the people there be agreeable to the law of God.” The people ‘there’ were all Jews, how could they unagree with the Laws of their God? This sentence would make sense only if this God and His laws (that Artaxerxes had in mind) were different. Therefore a mission of reconnaissance was planned. Artaxerxes was a monotheist and the law of God he was referring to could not have been the Mosaic Law, but the divine law of Ahura Mazda/Ohrmazd/Ohrmuzd/Hormuz. These laws were unknown to the Jews, and Artaxerxes spent everything possible to introduce them to the Jews. It took seven days to read these laws. Ezra explained how these laws came about as follows: God had spent 40 days with Moses on Mount Sinai. He gave Moses patterns for clothes, tongs, basins and snuffers etc. etc. And these laws were lost.. to appear suddenly in a foreign country.. These laws were alien to Judaism. Read the Leviticus, the evidence is there. The distinction between clean and unclean animals in Leviticus and Ezekiel was derived from Vendidad. Check the purification rituals in Pentateuch, which are identical with the ones in older Vendidad. Ezra 7:14 refers to “the king and his seven counselors.” This could have been an advisory chamber within the royal court, it might be a remnant of an earlier monarchical structure, imitating the seven divine beings in the Zarathustran belief system: The king representing Ahura Mazda and the seven counselors representing Spenta Mainyu (‘Holy Spirit’) and the Amesha Spentas (‘Immortal Bountiful Beings’). In the end an agent of the Persian king has introduced a whole new body of monotheistic laws - the laws of Zoroastrianism - to the Jews of Israel. That agent was Ezra. Under his leadership the Torah/Pentateuch in its entirety was made sovereign in the state of Judea. But at the same time the Old Testament has become the only religious Book to honour foreign princes. Artaxerxes was reportedly requested to mediate Jewish prayers. God reportedly called the Persian governor of Judah, Zerubbabel His ‘chosen one.’ Darius is revered. Cyrus is called the ‘Anointed of the Lord’ or ‘Messiah’ or ‘Christ’.

Books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel were written originally in Aramaic. Aramaic was the official language of the Persian empire. It is even possible that all the books of the Old Testament were written in that language.. Any more words needed?..

Now back to the story..

This tradition of ‘a store of books deliberately hidden away from public use’ led to the rise of an imprecise use of the word apocrypha to denote any books outside the familiar canon. The word was introduced into Christian usage as a convenient name for those books which were found in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) but not in the Hebrew one. The standard Apocrypha are: 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Book of Tobit, Book of Judith, Book of Esther, Book of Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon), Ecclesiasticus (The Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach), Book of Baruch (Epistle of Jeremy), Book of Daniel, the Prayer of Manasses, Book of Maccabees.

There are also pseudepigrapha, which are pseudonymous or anonymous Jewish religious writings from 200 BC. to 200 AD; one of such writings, the Psalms of Solomon is not included in any canon of biblical scripture. The apocryphal works from Qumran could also be mentioned under this title. In short, man writes, man designates, man announces, man keeps concealed, and since man sees himself as a ‘worthless, wicked creature’ man attributes everything to a supreme being to give his words an ‘out-of-this-world, pure, divine(!)’authority. There’s nothing more to it. Secondly the golden rule applies to this case as well: To initiate a religion make yourself incomprehensible, so that you can conceal the non-existence of anything behind the veil of the belief system, and give the impression that this incomprehensibility is the result of a higher knowledge from out there, somewhere..

If you remember, the method of giving the Law to Ezra was “lighting a candle of understanding in his heart”. Does it mean anything for us today? We do not think with our hearts or do not record information in our heart muscle. We process and keep information in our brains. The human constitution has not changed in the 2000 years since then. What is written in the Book is nonsense. But in those days they thought that heart was the centre of things, it was the influence of Ptah, and the Memphite teaching.

LET THERE BE LIGHT !

Now let us leave the fairy-tale here for another illuminating detour. As you know, the word “be” is the only ‘thing’ a God needs for the creation of whatever is willed. ‘Be’ is a word, but from the standpoint of God it is the expression of his will and the ‘trigger’ which creates. ‘The Almighty’ wills and ‘it’ comes into being at that moment. The origin of this concept could be seen in the myth that the spoken word is an oracle and the repetition of the word sets free the creative and re-creative power which it is full of. The power of the word ! In Sumer it was sufficient for the creator god to make a plan, and utter the appropriate word, his wishes were believed to be realized at that instant. Zoroaster preached positive thought, positive speech and positive deeds. Praying and praising the ‘supreme being’ with recitation of litanies; apprehension towards using negative words; the supposed power of a curse etc., most probably have their origins in this belief. The Gospel of John begins with the declaration that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” [ “In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum'” ], and furthermore Jesus Christ was the incarnation of the Word. According to the ‘code books’ of the Abrahamic religions - the Old Testament, the New Testament and Qoran - the utterance of a simple word has started the creation. Remember the command “Let there be light !”?

The wise and ‘all-seeing God’ of Zarathustra could see(!) everyone’s heart(!), and could talk not only to the priests but to everybody. This belief about heart being very important and the seat of conscience comes firstly from Sumer. So the divine knowledge was implanted into the heart of Ezra. This heart and tongue issue could be found also in Zoroastrianism, Mosaic belief system and also in Islam, because they all got it from the Sumerians and from one another.

Now here is the Egyptian origin of the ‘power of word’. First we have to learn who the Ptah is. Ptah the Great is the heart and tongue of the Egyptian Ennead. He is the one “who gave birth to the gods.” In Egyptian thinking the heart and tongue represent thought and speech. By his thought and speech Ptah brings the gods into existence. Memphis has become the new capital of the first dynasties of Egypt (3^rd milennium BC.), and in order to vindicate its importance a myth was created in the city. Ptah was originally the local deity of Memphis. In Egyptian belief Ptah was the creator of the universe and maker of things..etc. Ptah was always represented in purely human form. Ptah and the Memphite Theology transformed the Heliopolitan Ennead by giving the primacy in the activity of creation to Ptah. In the part of the Memphite Theology which concerns creation, Ptah is equated with Nun, the primeval ocean, and is presented as bringing Atum and all the gods of the Heliopolitan Ennead into existence by his ‘divine word’. Ptah also brings order out of chaos; (like Marduk) fixes the destinies, provides food for mankind, divides Egypt into provinces and cities, and assigns their places to various local gods. Now hold tight: This description of Ptah’s creative activities closes with the words “..And so Ptah rested (or was satisfied), after he had made everything”. (Sounds familiar? Yes! The God of Moses did(!) the same. And the account of creation in Genesis closes with an almost identical sentence).

YOUR INTELLECT IS NOT IN YOUR BRAIN, BUT IN YOUR HEART(!)

This myth came to light when a stone, apparently used as a mill-stone washed ashore in Egypt in 1805. It was taken to the British Museum. Prof. James Henry Breasted read the text on it. It was the ‘philosophy of a Memphite priest’. The text on it was evidently copied for preservation in 8 BC., upon a decree of the Pharaoh Sabakos, from an older version which was “eaten and damaged by worms”. This text on the mill-stone read “God said let there be light, and there was light”. The original text was written 2000 years earlier than the Book of Genesis, and it is the evidence that the power of the word has already been recognized even then, and the older texts act as a source for the later ones. In this Memphite text, God’s (Ptah’s) heart is presented as the ‘initiator’ of everything, and the God’s tongue is described as the repeater/echoer of the things thought by the heart: “Every single sacred word was created by the thinking of the heart and by the order of the tongue..When the eye sees, the ear hears, and the nose breathes in, they let the heart know. It is the heart which does everything and the mouth which repeats/echoes the thoughts of the heart. All the gods are created thus, even Atum and the Ennead” (2850 BC.). The symbol of the ‘creator word’ in the Memphite theology is the power of the tongue of Ptah. All the gods are the functioning parts of a bigger whole. Ptah, the bigger whole, the totality, exists in them as the infinite life force and their ‘ka’. “Thus heart and tongue have become sovereign on all the members. He (Ptah) is in the bodies and tongues of all the gods, in all the living humans, wild animals, reptiles and everything living”. The Sumerian concept of a self creating/producing and consuming/destructing god seen in the Sumerian seals dating 3500 BC. is almost identical with the Ptah myth. Ptah “..thinks everything as He pleases and governs them..His Ennead is in his teeth and tongue. These correspond to Atum's sperm and hand. As opposed to Atum’s Ennead being created by his sperm and fingers, Ptah’s (Ennead) were brought into being by the teeth and tongue of Ptah’s mouth which can say the names of everything..He is the one who gives life to the peaceful and death to the one who oversteps the limit..through the orders thought at the heart and given by the tongue He is the one who directs and gets completed every deed, every art, the movements of arms and legs and all the organs”.

THIS IS BIBLE

Historians, theologians, philologists and archaeologists who examined the Biblical tradition maintain that Bible is primarily “prophecy.” Therefore whether the things written in it are facts or not is a matter of secondary importance. It is claimed to be a religious message, made known to mankind via ‘interfaces’ (prophets), in the language of its time. If it is ‘prophecy’ it could not have had any connection with the reality. The only reality it could be connected to would have been the subjective and the personal reality of the person or persons who wrote it down. The starting point of these authors would be their subjective perception of their environment. They would also be driven by their ambitions as we witness in Paul. Gathering of the various books of the Bible took centuries. Song of Miriam (Exodus; thought to be the oldest text) may be really a genuine example of what has come down to us from the Late Bronze period (13^th century BC.) The second epistle of Peter (thought to be the latest one to be written) may not have been composed until the second quarter of the 2^nd century AD. Majority of the Biblical works are thought to be brought together to form the Bible (biblios) between the 6^th century BC. and the 1^st century AD. Beginning of some of the texts is almost certain to be farther back because of the source material they used, so add a few centuries to the beginning. A few decades may be added to the end of the period due to some of the books of The New Testament. Bible in reality is a collection of books written over a period of more than 1000 years, in a plurality of languages and styles.

Bible is a document of faith. Faith is belief. Belief begins where knowledge and proof cease to exist. The things a believer never need are proofs and evidences. A believer, a faithful, just believes. In what? In whom? He wouldn’t care less. It makes the least of a difference.. The fairy-tale about “Moses receiving the Ten Commandments which were written on two stone slabs by the finger of YHWH” and all the narrations that followed it are pure inventions, created with a special purpose which Spenta Mainyu pointed out elsewhere.

Bible has started as an account of the ‘exacting’ relationship between a people and their God. The Old Testament, in the beginning, had an anthropomorphic (human-like) God; following the Babylonian exile when Ezra completed his part in re-writing certain sections of the Book, this God lost all its human-like attributes and receded to his realm up there; with the New Testament, this supreme being (the ‘Father’), sent down(!) his ‘Son’ to the earth; God is not anthropomorphic (human-like) anymore, He is human, a ‘God in Flesh’; and in the end of the New Testament this ‘Son of God’ became Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the redeemer made of ‘Godly substance’, the God himself.

Neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament is a neutral or objective story of the events. On the contrary both Books are very much biased. Moreover we are not sure what the real story is. We don’t know even if there ever have been an original story.

Bible contains everything. It is a mixture of the worst kind. In consequence, the inferior ‘editing’ could easily be seen. It uses descriptive methods. Its language is abstract and very rich in images. The smallest, the shortest or the simplest of reports is turned into a story in the Bible. These stories are full of puzzling descriptions. The ambiguity is intentional, because ambiguity and incomprehensibility are fundamentals of a belief system. Anyone need an example? What do you think may be the meaning of the story on the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham? It is commanded by God, but not carried out just at the last moment. Could we say that it was just a test of faith for Abraham like it is written in Genesis 22: “God tempted Abraham”, or was it something else?

Who were these Hebrews we read in the Books? As usual with the belief systems there is no clarity. Some say Abraham was the beginning of the lineage of Hebrews. Others say the line comes from the Midianites. There are those who propose the people coming from Egypt as the origin of the ‘nation’. Here is another one: In the Middle Bronze age, groups of Canaanites moved into northern Egypt and established a local dynasty called the Hyksos. In the end they took over the whole of Egypt. In the Late Bronze Age, in about 1550 BC. the Egyptian pharaohs expelled the Hyksos, launched a military campaign against Canaan, and brought it under Egyptian control. In the reign of Rameses II (1304-1237 BC), the empire was reorganized. Key strategic cities like Beth Shan and Gaza were strengthened, others were allowed to decline. Many people were made homeless and migrated to the Judean hill country, where they established small farming settlements. According to some scholars these dispossessed Canaanites, known to the Egyptians as Hapiru-Epiru (or Hebrews), formed the basis of what was to become Israel.

Another theory which is popular amongst the Biblical scholars today is that Israel emerged from peoples indigenous to Canaan in the mid 12^th century BC. If this is true, then Biblical history and chronology prior to 1150 BC. would have to be thrown away. Proponents of the ‘12^th century emergence theory’ claim that the Israelites did not come into Canaan from outside to conquer the land around 1400 BC, as the Bible indicates. The emergence scenario would also reject the historicity of the Wilderness Wanderings, Exodus, Egyptian Sojourn and the Patriarchal narratives. However, if Israel were an established entity in Canaan already in 1210 BC., as the Merneptah Stele implies, then the 12^th century emergence theory would be negated. If Israel was well established by the end of the 13^th century, how could it have come into being in the middle of the next century?

The Old Testament is the invented and compiled history of Jews and an account of all the centuries of what Hebrews thought of themselves; how they tried to bestow upon themselves a privileged status amongst other peoples; how they invented a supreme creator who ‘owned’ them as His ‘chosen people’; how they stubbornly chased their objective of becoming a nation; and how in the end they landed as believers of (Zarathustra presented as) YHWH. Christians see themselves as heirs to all this history and thought. ‘Testament’ means a covenant or a bond. The Old and New Testaments outline this relationship with God in contrasting ways: The Old Testament does it according to the Law, and the New Testament does it according to the Holy Spirit. The Old Testament revolves around submitting to the ordinances of God, while on the contrary the New Testament is based on living the Faith. Christians regard the New Testament as the fulfilment of the Old. Why? Well, because the figure of Jesus and the events of his life supposedly fulfill the prophecies about the coming of the Messiah.

MOVE OVER TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

Let’s proceed to the boundary where we leave behind the wild world of the Old Testament where the God itself is bloodthirsty and vengeful to the extreme, and where lions slew man (1 Kings 13:24 and 2 Kings 17:25-26) and enter the urban Roman environment of the New Testament where the ‘God’(!) is killed by or sacrificed his life for the sake of mankind (feel free to choose your angle). The land was Israel, and the population was still Jewish, because Jesus was a Jew and the early Christians were all Jews. But with the letters of Paul and other early missionaries the Jewish origins of Christianity were transformed in a short span of time. By the 4^th century AD. all the Jewish elements were gone.

The Bible of Jesus and the early Christians was the Old Testament, but no list exists of the books it might have included. People tried to find out what books were in that Old Testament from the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament, which led to an uncertain conclusion regarding the state of the Old Testament ‘canon’ in the 1^st century AD. In actual fact Christians have to do a lot of thinking to realize that once upon a time there was a Christian Bible which neither contained the Old nor the New Testament. A time came and as we read in 2 Timothy 3:16 references began to “all scripture is given by inspiration of God” and this scripture “..is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” This statement might be taken as the indication of an ongoing editorial, scholarly, creative and compositional process. Gradually Christians felt the need to add a new collection of books to the Old Testament. But the Christian church had to find a method of linking itself to the past, to its roots. This search for a way to guarantee the continuation of the tradition of faith ended in the formation of a Christian canon. There were also many texts in circulation bearing the names of the apostles but no with no apostolic teaching (as it is interpreted by the church) in them. The need to eliminate these forgeries and define the limits of apostolic writings was another reason why the central characters of the church movement decided to have a canon. But one development was crucial: Heretic Marcion compiled a canon of the New Testament containig his edition of the Epsitles of Paul and the Gospel of Luke. Marcion regarded Luke as the only genuine Gospel. Marcion’s Gospel accelerated the process towards a Christian canon. This oldest Christian Gospel by Marcion does not mention Jesus’ baptism. Though many evangelical churches deny the necessity of baptism for salvation, the New Testament (Paul) insists on its necessity. Here is another question for you: What is the reason behind this contradiction?

When compared with the period of more than a millennium covered by the Old Testament, the code book of Christianity - New Testament - covers a time span of less than 100 years. From the beginning of the ministry of Jesus to the end of the acts of Apostles is only a little more than 30 years. The New testament is concerned with the life and sayings of a few individuals: It revolves exclusively around the supposed teaching of Jesus, his disciples and the apostles. The New Testament, written mostly during the 1^st century AD., consists of 27 books. The four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John which narrate the life and teachings of Jesus; the Acts of the Apostles, in which the first 30 years of the church may be found; 21 letters by the early Christian leaders to various communities and individuals, of which 13 are thought to have been written by Paul. But later research showed that many of the letters attributed to Paul were forgeries or created by editing a few genuine fragments into a whole. Jesus did not have a book or a canon. But Paul introduced a canon of his own which has now come down to seven documents: Romans, 1&2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon. Paul was never interested in the historical Jesus, he went on without hesitation with his creation of the concept of divine(!) ‘Lord Jesus Christ’. Especiallly in his letter to the Galatians Paul is in his most aggressive attitude. This letter is thought to have been written in 54 AD., in which Paul very severely warns the Galatians (we don’t know for sure where this Galatia is) and writes, “..we or any angel from heaven, preach any other gospel..let him be accursed”(Galatians 1:8); “if any man preach any other gospel..than you have received, let him be accursed”(Galatians 1:9). We see here the beginning of the practice of outlawing any other gospel than introduced by Paul. All those gospels, or books or texts differing from Paul’s are not wanted, because they present a different Jesus than what Paul wishes. His pretext is explained in Galatians 1, where he says he is “..an apostle, not of men, neither by men, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” So what he says must be supreme. He opposes other apostles in Galatians 2:6-15.

In Galatians 2:7-9 comes the clean break: He lays his claim to the “apostleship of the uncircumcision”. This meant the admission of the Gentiles (foreigners who were not Jews) into the Gospel without the necessity of their having to undergo circumcision. This was the greatest contribution by Paul, it was the final nail in the construction of a gospel of his own. This was the clean break which took the gospel out of the Jewish jurisdiction and placed it into a non-Jewish perspective. The Jewish characteristics and origins became obsolete in time as a result of this decisive act, and everything Jewish was forgotten. Another important point is also highlighted by Paul in this letter: It is the distinction between the Law and the grace. Judaism is based on the Law, the Law of the supreme creator. Paul in this letter makes the distinction clear with these words: “..a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ..that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” This is another fundamental difference between Judaism and Paulinism (Galatians 2:16). To stress his point about the supremacy of faith, Paul in Galatians 3:6 uses Genesis 15:6, and in Galatians 3:11 he mentions Habakkuk 2:4. Paul ties the knot with Galatians 3:24-26: “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For you are all the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ.” Therefore this story of the Old Testament becomes a preparation for ‘Christ’. That is that! The final battle is won by faith.

ABRAHAM, ABRAHAM.. HE IS EVERYWHERE

According to Paul the patriarch of the Jewish faith Abraham is the father of Christ; Christ is of “Abraham’s seed” (Galatians 3:16) and anybody who belongs to ‘Christ’ are “heirs according to the promise”. This promise is explained by Paul in the Romans 4:9-13 “..faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness...in uncircumcision..the promise, to Abraham and to his seed, that he should be the heir of the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.” It means in plain language that Abraham believed in God when he was uncircumcised. And he was ‘given the world’ because of his faith. Circumcision is the law, but faith is much more important than the law. That is why the believers of the Christian faith are not required to get circumcised. And this was again the crucial factor that separated Paulinism from Judaism. Galatians 3:7-13 gives us the story: “..those faithful are blessed with faithful Abraham...Who are of the matters of law are under the curse...And the law is not of faith..Christ has redeemed us from the curse of law.” What is faith? Look at Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Such eloquence(!) and incomprehensibility is incredible. Only the ‘interfaces’ between the supreme being and the mankind could manage that jargon. Qoran and Mohamed recognize the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the messengers to whom those books were revealed(!), Moses and Jesus (as pointed out above on the Jesus page in this site Jesus did not introduce a book). Mohamed considers Patriarch Abraham as an ‘ancestor,’ in other words the ‘head of family’. Therefore this is an unbroken chain starting with Abraham and ending with Mohamed. Which necessitates those orthodox Arab and non-Arab believers of Mohamed who give prominence to ‘law’, the Sharia, heed this call, or at least listen to it: Faith comes first. Otherwise all those who do not observe the Sharia - the law - become infidels even if they are believers, they do have a scripture, rituals to observe, and they do worship a god particular to their faith.

Now it’s time to give the bottom line of Paul’s gospel. It is in Galatians 3:27-28: “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Another serious parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity could be seen in Hebrews. The line of prophets went on uninterrupted until it was disrupted by ‘Jesus the Son’. Now imagine, how could one expect another prophet following Jesus? How could another person could come out in the open and lay claim to another messengership in this situation? Jesus is the zenith? He is the Son(!) of God, isn’t he? How could another prophet outdo him? Here Jesus is not the prophet of the Gospels anymore. He is the Son of God, he is also the radiance of God’s glory and the look of God’s person(!): “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature” (Colossians 1:15). Imagine the feelings of Jews who were confronted with this description. This Christology marks another division between Jews and Christians.

The very foundations - the texts cited here - of this organised religion we call Christianity are either unreliable narrations or creations. Here is one seemingly minor, insignificant example for some people: Did Jesus carry the cross himself or did someone do it for him? According to Matthew 27:32 and Mark 15:21 Jesus did not carry the cross himself along via dolorosa, but John 19:17 tells us that Jesus carried his cross. Who is telling the truth? Why is it that there are four Books on the life and deeds of Jesus? Why is it that these four books differ from each other?

BIBLE : AN INSPIRED BOOK

Bible is regarded as the arbiter of doctrine by the Christian church and the place where the proper rules of church life are to be found. It is considered as ‘inspired’, meaning that although there is a multiplicity of authors and a variety of styles, what is written is thought to have come directly from God. This means that the stories in the Gospels are the word of God. If that is so, then is there anybody out there who could explain why the all-seeing and all-hearing God is telling us four different stories? All the principles of this belief system was introduced and formulated by Paul although he was far away when Jesus was preaching. Therefore are we to believe that Jesus “lighted a candle in his heart when they met(!) and in a flash of illumination Paul grasped all the essentials of what Jesus taught”? Or do we have to think that Paul was an ‘interface’ himself? Which one is the word of God, the Gospels, the letters of Paul or the other texts in the New Testament? The acceptance of these texts as divine is the outcome of the ignorance of those days. Some take the writings to be absolute and true facts, others regard some of the stories, in both Testaments, as more allegorical and demonstrating the essence of the infallibility both of God and Jesus Christ.

Christianity is purported to be a monotheistic faith. But this hypothetical monotheism is complicated by the doctrine of Trinity: Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. How can a God be one and three at the same time? Mankind found the final answer to its invention called Trinity at the Council of Nicaea in the 4^th century AD., four hundred years after Jesus: There is one God, revealed in three persons. Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are ‘three persons in the same substance’ and as such are united/one - but yet separate (check the pages on the Supreme Being in this site). Some sections of Christianity and also some theologians do not accept this and moreover these theologians experience difficulty in accepting the resurrection as well.

Christianity is not a religion proper, but a cult because of its origins and due the fact that a person in Christianity is given the personal choice before God. A person could decide if Jesus is a god or a human being, or both, or the Son of God. The individual person has the authority to decide on questions like these. To have faith or to doubt one’s faith is a personal prerogative. In short a person who wants to become a Christian, first of all, must create a God (Jesus) for himself. An act of creation of this kind is possible only in a cult. It is only in a cult that a person can create a faith and a god symbolizing it. There is nothing like this in either Judaism or Islam. This type of authority has entered the so called monotheism with Jesus.

The Roman church and the other Eastern Churches accept seven sacraments: Baptism, confirmation, marriage, ordination, penance, anointing of the sick, and mass. Protestant Churches only accept the baptism and the Lord’s Supper - communion (Communion has different names according to the denominations like Eucharist, Lord’s Supper and Mass).

In order to understand the New Testament properly we have to know Gnosis, which is known as the fertile soil from which the Eastern ideas have sprouted. Gnosis grants us an insight into the workshop of some of the evangelists and into the ways in which the Buddhist material could have gained access to the writings of Christianity. This Buddhist material turns up in the New Testament independently of the discourses of the original Jesus. Gnosis is difficult to define because it is a very complex and an enormously interesting religious phenomenon. Gnosis was born in the encounter between the philosophical schools of neo-Platonism+neo-Pythagoreanism, and the syncretistic movements spreading from Egypt by way of Syria to Asia Minor, throughout the Middle East during the Hellenistic period.

Gnostic systems were mainly shaped from the east by Iranian dualism; from Babylon astrological symbolism was taken over; from India flowed a multitude of models including the idea of rebirth, and of a God and a redeemer coming down to earth; from Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome came elements of magic and aspects of the mystery religion; and from Jewish concepts the mythological forms of the creation story were put together.

The concept of rebirth (gilgul) only became established in the Jewish circles around the start of our millenium. Talmudists assumed that God had created only a specific number of Jewish souls, which were constantly reborn. For punishment they returned in animal bodies. According to that view a human has to live through a long series of transmigration of souls (gilgul-neschama) until redemption (tikkun - right order, harmony) is attained. According to Josephus the Pharisees believed in ‘the power of..those returning to life’ and that the souls of the good pass on to another body. The ancient Indian pre-Buddhist belief was that a human being had to pass through many earthly existences in order to attain that degree of spiritual perfection which makes possible a ‘return’ to his or her divine home. The Upanishads from the pre-Buddhist epoch viewed that return as realisation of the understanding that the self (Atman) is identical with the primal ground, with the highest divine totality (Brahman). For the Buddha who rejected the idea of either a highest god or a soul, that ‘return’ signified finding one’s way home through entering the void known as Nirvana. It was believed that before ‘coming down’ to earth buddhas existed in a heaven and returned there after their death - until their next voluntary incarnation. Jesus’ ‘Kingdom of God’ viewed in terms of rebirth turns out to be the Buddhists’ ‘Buddha Heaven’. The idea that redemption only occurs when the goal of earthly development is achieved indicates Indian and Buddhist origins. The way in which the teaching about the rebirth is integrated in Jesus’ message and made a fundamental component in his own understanding of redemption makes the assumption of Indian roots seem very plausible. In later centuries the Church devoted great efforts to suppressing all the New Testament references to the idea of reincarnation without being able to eliminate them completely.

This diverse collection of fragmentary ideas; Iranian Dualism; Babylon’s astrological symbolism; the idea of rebirth; a god and a redeemer coming down to earth; magic; and mythological stories on creation; started to ferment when exposed to the catalyzing effect of the philosophical schools of neo-Platonism and neo-Pythagoreanism.

Gnosis  means ‘knowledge’, the esoteric knowledge, and is in fact the exact Greek translation of the Sanskrit word ‘bodhi’ from which Buddhism derives. Gnosis like Buddhism, viewed itself as the opposite of a religion based on belief: knowledge (gnosis) against belief (pistis).. The Gnostic spirit of the age was like a sponge, soaking up all suitable religious convictions from the great river of oral tradition flowing from east to west. Gospels, like the apocryphal Christian literature, could not have escaped the influences coming from the east - gnosticism and the Buddhist thinking. One should mention the first conflated Gospel in Syrian or Greek, known as Diatesseron (Through four) which was assembled by Tatian arond 170 AD. He was an Encratic (A Christian sect who did not marry end preached the renunciaition of meat). Paul attacked Encratics for having fallen away from belief ( 1 Timothy 4:1-4). It is quite possible that they were the ones representing a religious attitude closer to the beliefs of the original Jesus, and Paul might have been the one who had fallen away. Hyppolitus’ thoughts might be useful in clearing this matter (Check the page on Jesus in this site). But the church authorities found the Diatesseron unacceptable, and early in the 5^th century all copies of the Diatesseron were destroyed, including the commentary by Ephraem. When all the alternative versions were destroyed the leading churchmen introduced their own version of the four New Testament Gospels, and declared them canonical - of course only after eliminating extensive passages of ‘undesirable’ character.

As quoted above the Gospel of John begins with the declaration that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. The Jesus of the Gospels is a Jew. No matter what he is called he is a figure (mythical or historical) within the framework and the traditions of the Hebrew Bible (the Greek Old Testament). But this ‘Logos’ hymn in the beginning of John’s Gospel is the source of the orthodox Christian doctrine which in turn produced, among other doctrines, the Trinitarianism. As necessitated by this doctrine the Jesus of the belief system is not a Jew anymore. He is the second person of the Holy Trinity, the ‘Son of God’. This divine figure with the Messiahship creates a very different figure of Jesus, which also means a discontinuity. But without the Greek Old Testament Christianity would lack its roots and the grand narrative in the Luke and Acts. The Greek Old Testament and the New Testament are the Christian scripture. In that sense Jesus is the ‘fulfillment’ of that scripture and its destroyer. This is the fundametal problem.

WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER GOSPELS THAT WERE LEFT OUT?

The New Testament was officially canonized in the 4^th century AD. Looking at the texts left out, branded as heretical etc., one can safely say that only a certain set of books were canonized. Among the Gospels left out are the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Everlasting Gospel. These are all ‘Gnostic’ gospels. They concentrate on the sayings of Jesus. Now you know why they were banned. Sayings of Jesus are the last thing the Church needs. The more they are forgotten and buried under the rubble of building a church the better. What about the accepted ones? The four Gospels are questionable in every sense of the word. The Gospel narrations are the ‘report of a report’ type. There is nothing in them to indicate the authorship. Matthew, Mark and Luke are basically very similar and called the synoptic gospels. Due to some material in both Matthew and Luke, which does not exist in Mark another older and common source, ‘Q’, has been assumed. The Gospel of Thomas is seen as a parallel source to the ‘Q’. This shows that either Mark and ‘Q’ are taken as the source texts, or Mark, ‘Q’, Matthew and Luke. Gospel of John is completely different from the others (Check the page on Jesus in this site).

THIS IS WHAT   PAULINISTS - CHRISTIANS - THINK ABOUT WOMEN

Would you like to know what Paul thinks of women? Read 1 Timothy 9-15, and in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. Spenta Mainyu will give you an outline. Women are not appreciated as public figures.. they cannot teach and have authority over men.. they should remain in silence.. they should adorn themselves in modest clothing with shamefacedness and dignity.. they should not have broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array.. but with good works.. women should learn in silence with all subjection.. Adam was first formed, then Eve.. Adam was not deceived.. the woman being deceived was in transgression.. notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.. they should keep silence in the churches for they are not permitted to speak.. they are commanded to be under obedience as also says the law.. if they will learn anything they should ask their husbands at home.. it is a shame for women to speak in the church. I’m sure that Moslems will find the origins of their attitude towards women in Paul’s reasoning.

What more one can say about a collection of Books telling us mostly imaginary stories about tribes of people and also about a Jewish itinerant preacher. Those who would like to have more information could check the pages on Moses, the Old Testament, Jesus and for related matters, the other pages in this site.

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