Archive for September, 2010

Virgin Birth Myths

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, freethought, history, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , on September 30, 2010 by chouck017894

The first mention of “virgin birth” in the Holy Bible is in the book of Isaiah 7:14, which was composed in 7th century Jerusalem.  In that text it says, “Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call him Immanuel.”  It is this verse from the Hebrew Testament collection that was utilized seven centuries later by authors in Roman Empire times to authenticate the claim of the miraculous conception of Jesus.  Unfortunately for Christian fundamentalists who point to this OT “prophecy,” the intent that was imbedded in the tale written in 7th century Jerusalem then concerned local matters.  In that timeframe the priestly scheme was implemented to present the illusion that Isaiah had prophesied the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel, which at the time composition happened to be a past event.  Thus the authors of the book of Isaiah beefed up the story by having the alleged prophetic character say, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:6).   Note that in the original the action was presented in the present tense.  It did not allude to a world savior predestined to be born in an entirely different timeframe and under different circumstances. 

The notion that such an unnatural happening as a birth occurring without the necessity of having been implemented through sexual excitement must have been inspired through association with some ancient knowledge.  Amazingly, it had a sound scientific basis that was colored by faulty translation of original writings.  In the version of Isaiah that had been written in Greek from which this interpretation was borrowed, the word from which “virgin” was translated was parthenos, which actually does mean “virgin.”  But in the original Hebrew text from which the Greek version had been taken, the word was almah, which meant a young woman, not necessarily meaning a virgin.  To the Christian cult developers in Rome that fact was of little concern, for a virgin miraculously bearing a divine person was beneficial.  In fact it had been a feature in countless older Pagan belief systems such as Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek—and even on the other side of the planet where it was taught that the virgin Sochequetzal had borne her divine son Quetzalcoatl.

Obviously this widespread notion of virgin birth had to have a common source of inspiration.  That source was in prehistory references that once taught cosmological knowledge regarding the energy involvement that culminated in the immaculate conception of the universe itself—the energy involvement that is today erroneously pictured as the “big bang.”  Certainly lust, sex, explosive passion, or moral conduct cannot be conditions applicable to primordial energies.  Thus in the various cult developmental presentations around the planet the cosmic processes in which the primordial energy-substance issues out of virginal conditions became personified and literalized.  Such is the substance of the revealed word of the Lord.

The elemental and primordial is all that can legitimately claim to be virgin born, and in recognition of this all prehistory mythic accounts of virgin born saviors placed the birth scene as occurring in the lowest circumstances—to allude to primordial conditions.  In the older Pagan versions, the birth of a god was therefore generally depicted as having occurred in a cave as suggestive of the primordial void from which the universe had been made manifest.  Interestingly, caves just happened to have been used as natural stables in more primitive times.  So in the Romanized updated  version of Jesus being born in a manger, the setting was not exactly an outright misreading of ancient data, for a manger is a stall where horses are kept.  Christian observance of Jesus’ birth would later be placed immediately after the winter solstice, as were most similar Pagan observances, for at this movement along Earth’s orbit the horse of Sagittarius has just passed it dominance.

There is a nagging problem in the Christian virgin birth presentation, for Jesus is avowed to be the king of the Jews and is thus actually provided with a genealogy—two genealogies, in fact; one in Matthew (1:1-16), the other in Luke.  These were presented in an attempt to back up the claim of Jewish kingship.  The problem with this is, if Jesus was delivered out of immaculate circumstances then no mortal father can be claimed, and yet a genealogical line is attempted from Joseph who, it is stressed, acts only as a surrogate father.  Such genealogical lines are utterly pointless if Jesus was born of a virgin who had been impregnated through some  energy exchange suspiciously akin to osmosis.

Undeterred by logic, it is alleged that Joseph was the descendant of David, and so Jesus was in that way supposedly linked to the line of Jewish kings.  But even taking that peculiar patched together genealogical effort at face value, we have to wonder about certain confusions; like the book of Matthew says that Joseph’s father was Jacob, while in Luke it says that Joseph’s father was Heli.  The purpose of the varied genealogical lines was an anxious attempt to show that the character of Jesus was not only the fulfillment of the history of Israel, but that he was also the savior of the world.

As a closing note, allow an observation by none other that Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and was the third President of the young United States.  The right-wing fanatics like to quote some of his observations in their argument for smaller government, gun possession, etc. Jefferson wrote:  “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”  It is not likely Jefferson would be too keen on a Bible-based government.

Abraham, Sarah and India

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, culture, faith, freethought, prehistory, random, religion with tags , , , , , , , on September 22, 2010 by chouck017894

Did the Hebrew priests of Yahweh in 7th century BCE Jerusalem get religious ideas not only from Babylonia and Egypt, but from India as well? Few persons in the three western Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) ever seem to notice the anagrammatic relationship of the name Abraham to the supreme being known as Brahma in Hindu religion and philosophy.  In the earliest part of Hindu texts the name of the Hindu initiator of life was spelled Brama, but later the letter H is added thus making it Brahma.  To understand the value behind Brahma’s name, the Creator-being of Hinduism, it is found encoded in the word used for the Source and Cause of everything; Parabrahm.  There is insider information for the addition of the letter H to the names Brama and Abram—and it was also added to the name Sari, Abram’s sister/wife, as well, changing her identity to Sarah.  The letter H or h is inserted to indicate the accomplishment of life with defined matter form. 

The story of Abram and Sari appearing in Genesis, the book of beginnings, continues in mythological style the dimensional advance of pre-physical energies that were earlier represented with the characters of Adam and Eve, and which personified primal elements being moved out of Source.  In other words, Adam and Eve represent polar activity that is necessary for primal elements to be energized toward life.  Abram and Sari literally flesh out the story elements as personifications of the pre-physical energies advancing into material identity.  These biblical characters, therefore, were not based on any historical persons; they represent the two polar developmental aspects within creative energy that are responsible for all life attaining matter form.

Abram’s “ancestry” is recorded in chapter 11 of Genesis, the book of beginnings, with a listing of much begatting which ends, finally, with the terse verse 27; “Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.”  That’s it.  No angelic announcements, no signs in the sky, nothing that commonly attends the introduction of such a major mythic character.  Just splat! there he is.  For a man held to be the alleged seed bearer of all Israelites this is rather a short shrift.  Abram’s father’s name, Terah, has a curious phonetic and suggestive echo to the Latin word terra, which means “earth.”

Abram is depicted as having been the patriarch of “Ur of the Chaldees,” and the name of the city, Ur, means “light” or “fire.”  One of the identities in the Chaldean trinity was known as Aur, the god of light.  Thus Abram symbolically represents the Life Principle which is active within Creation’s Source, so he represents the same light that all theological interpretations say accompanies energy manifestation toward a defined form.

Abram is thus the personification of the Genetic Principle, and Sarai is the related primal energy-substance that is acted upon.  It is identical in plotline and meaning as the earlier Adam and Eve story.  Abram was told to leave “…from thy father’s house…” just as Adam was given the bum’s rush out of Eden.  And Abram departed “…not knowing whither he went.”  Hidden in this line is a scientific truth: genetic energy is not dynamic for the purpose of any particular destiny.  Abram departs from Ur and, the authors assert, winds up in Canaan, which is used as a metaphor for energy in proto-matter formation.  And he then has a layover at Beth-el, which happens to mean “house of God;” so the characters have not yet left the primal planes of Creation.  The source material from which the priest-authors drew inspiration for this claim is obvious, for beth is Egyptian meaning “house,” and el is Babylonian meaning “god.”  So Abram and Sarai are still “in the house of god” and not yet endowed with physical identity.

We should note here that the Hindu goddess Saraswati (saras means “flow”) was said to be the sister-consort of Brahma.  The Yahweh priest-authors who knew of the Hindu texts were not exactly confident as to what Brama and his sister-consort Saraswati represented.  The priest-authors, not knowledgeable of the polar aspect within Creative activity, felt morally bound to refine the idea of a marriage of brother and sister by recasting Sarai as Abram’s half-sister, which was then acceptable according to their law.  In doing so the authors wound up mystifying and suppressing the more scientific ancient teachings of how life becomes manifest as matter.  The authors did not feel any particular moral guilt in reinterpreting that knowledge into theological-historical context, however.

Thus the story continues that at the alleged age of 75 Abram set out with Sarai, Lot, their servants, cattle and treasures, and journeyed southward to Shechem, a major Canaanite hill country city.  There God allegedly appeared to Abram to tell him that his offspring would possess the material future.  At this point the priest-authors then had Abram journey into Egypt.  But Egypt was commonly used as a metaphor for energy as matter in scriptural myth, and since Abram and Sarai have not yet had the letter H added to their names, the plotline of them temporarily entering the energy plane of matter is out of sequence—they are not yet matter beings!  Nonetheless, their priest-inspired adventures illustrate how to gain by deceit, for by having Abram not telling the Pharaoh that Sarai was his wife, and the Pharaoh desired her for his concubine, they gained considerable material wealth.  Abram and Sarai are portrayed as using the same scam again on King Abimelech of Gerar.  (These episodes were “borrowed” from the Egyptian Tale of the Two Brothers—which also provided a similar storyline regarding Joseph and the wife of Potiphar, in Genesis also, 39:1-20.)

Even after years of marriage Sarai was barren, and so she provided eighty-five year old Abram with her Egyptian bond-woman that he might conceive a son.  Thus began the myth of Ishmael.  (We should note here that Sarai’s long barrenness is paralleled in the later Genesis myths of Rachel, wife of Jacob, and Rebekah, wife of Isaac.)  But then when Abram was ninety-nine, according to biblical reckoning, Abram evolved into Abraham, and Sarai was transformed into Sarah.  The transformation into definable matter had occurred.  It was then that God is alleged to have told Abraham that his descendants would rule all the land of Canaan.

In Hebrew myth the physical Sarah was said to have remained irresistibly beautiful even after her ninetieth year, which is when she conceived and bore Isaac.  And, legend asserts, she even was capable of suckling all her neighbors infant children as well as Isaac.  This is not within human capacity, but it underlines the mythic atmosphere that covered the ancient lessons that once taught how energy takes form as matter. “Barren” Sarai personified primordial energy-substance, which can and does suckle all developing life, but Sarah represents matter-life; so these two different personifications of matter-life development are again blurred.

Few who take the  Bible literally seldom ponder the implication of this transformation into Abraham and Sarah, or that aging of the body never occurred in any prior biblical tale.  And to Abraham and Sarah the son Isaac was born, and it was only after this that conditions of lingering death began to be portrayed.  There is no account of Eve dying, for example, because she represents the primal and eternal energy-substance out of which all matter is to be projected into manifestation.  On the other hand, Sarah “…died in Kirjath-arba; the same is in the land of Canaan…”  (Genesis 23:2), for she represents the energy-substance through which matter-life achieves its expression.  With the birth of Isaac, Sarah soon exits the story.  Strangely, Isaac is in turn about the most shadowy figure among the other alleged patriarchs.

Isaac fulfills the means for Abraham’s descendents to claim rule of all the land of Canaan, as Yahweh allegedly promised.  There is, however, a bizarre last-minute stipulation for them to receive this bequest, the priest-authors recorded, and that was the covenant that every male child was to be circumcised.  Ancient Creation lessons from which this practice was instigated had taught that consciousness in matter is to be cut away in order for higher potential to advance into refined being.  Circumcision of males offers wise health advantages for males, but it is hardly a reasonable mark of godly favoritism.  If God deemed the foreskin to be superfluous or offensive to him, he could, being omniscient, easily eliminate it without imposing pain and scars.  Indeed, twelve starring characters in scriptural myths are claimed to have been born already circumcised: Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Terah, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah and Jeremiah.  Thus the illusion of God’s tendency to favoritism is made to prevail.

Will literalists ever wake up to the fact that such stories as these are not based on historical events?  The mythical style used throughout Hebrew scriptures is acceptable only when understood that it illustrates the non-moral genetic nature of Causation.

Threats From Heaven

Posted in Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, culture, ecology, environment, freethought, history, nature, prehistory, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , on September 18, 2010 by chouck017894

Planet Earth had billions of years of experience and trauma behind it long before it eventually noticed that the proliferation of the animal that called itself man was a possible menace.  And man, on the whole, is so self-absorbed that he prefers to believe that the planet exists solely for his exploitation.  As a result, human acknowledgement of what he considers significant events in Earth’s past do not extend back much further than around four thousand years BCE.  The first year of the Jewish calendar, for example, is placed in the year 3760 BCE.  For most humans, whatever their “faith,” they labor under a peculiar blindness in regard to planetary disturbances that played into mankind’s spiritual understanding of Creation and the unity of all life.

For example, there is seldom even a nod given toward any past planetary events in organized religious practice; historians wallow in man’s continuous attacks upon it own species; and only a slim subdivision of science examines evidence of the traumas endured by Earth in the planet’s distant past.  This across-the-board avoidance in giving recognition to ancient cosmological interactions and Earth traumas seem almost schizophrenic.  Even when “holy” texts do allude to some celestial activities, the references are always kept tightly muzzled.

Past planetary events present some curiosities; such as the oddity that prior to c. 3600 BCE no object was recorded as moving in the orbital  position now traversed by the planet Venus.  And why is Venus the only member in our solar family that revolves upon its axis in a clockwise direction when all other “family” members revolve in a counterclockwise manner?  This is not likely to have developed if the object we call Venus had been in the formative period of planets around the gravitational force of solar activity.  It is curious also that prior to this time the Sumerians had believed in only one god.  Something seems to have happened in this general timeframe that changed popular belief in how the universe seemed to be governed.  Thus around c. 3500 BCE there came to be recognition of a number of gods, and chief among them in Sumer was the planet-god Marduk.

The later Neolithic period in Western Europe is calculated from around this same period; c. 3500 BCE to about 1500 BCE.  For some reason there seemed to have been widespread building of megaliths during this era.  It is estimated that over 50,000 such megaliths were built in this period of unusual celestial activity.  Placid skies may invite wonder and awe, but they do not often inspire groups  of people over a wide region to raise such structures for the purpose of vigilant observation of celestial movements.  From Egypt to the Indus Valley, from China to South and Central America there were also being built structures dedicated to the study of heavenly movements.  It was in this troubled age that the site that would become known a Jericho struggled as a small village which would last until it was leveled by planet-wide quakes around 1580 BCE.

Earlier, by about 2772 BCE, the great disturbances in the heavens and planetary shifts had necessitated the establishment of a new means of calculating the passage of time.  Thus a new calendar was introduced in Egypt in this period.  The beginning of the Egyptian calendar opened on the date which we would regard as July 19, 2769 BCE.  Years of observation had revealed that the fixed star Sirius appeared in the morning sky simultaneously with the onset of the flood season, which occurred annually between July 17 and 19.  And in China, too, the calendar was changed to the variable Sun-Moon observance, and by c. 2500 BCE it had been upgraded on the newly recognized equinoxes and solstices.

It is interesting to note that the Hebrew interpretation of regional happenings that make up the early books of the Hebrew Testament do not extend back in time much further than 2500 BCE.  By biblical tradition it is implied that Creation occurred only a thousand or so years earlier; thus Jewish tradition has their history beginning in 3760 BCE—or somewhat prior to the c. 3500 BCE onslaught of celestial disturbances.  There is a three hundred year time gap between the setting of Genesis and that of Exodus, which is traditionally accepted as having taken place around 1390 BCE.  The Flood story of Genesis, alleged to have occurred in 2348 BCE (according to Ussher’s Biblical Chronology), thus gets placed within the board timeframe of the celestial disturbances.  However, the succession of kings in ancient Egypt can be traced from 3001 BCE and continues uninterrupted through twelve dynasties, ending in 2146 BCE, so obviously any Deluge was not worldwide.

The legendary cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar would have flourished in this broad timeframe; all except Zoar are said to have been destroyed by a rain of brimstone.  Geologists who have studied the earth structure of the alleged locations have shown that the sites could have existed only in a 500 year span between 2800 and 2300 BCE—the very time that Ussher had placed the Deluge.  If the “wicked” cities had been built in the assumed locations they would have been built upon sandy soil that is subject to liquefaction under severe earthquake activity.  And this was a period of serious planetary quakes.  Buildings in that location would have quickly sunk into the ooze by at least three feet and the whole expanse would have flowed into the salty depths of the Dead Sea.  The friction and the sudden release of methane gas would have resulted in the intense fires that were said to have  accompanied the cities’ destruction.

For generations global climate disruptions continued to bring misery around the planet.  In Egypt rainfall ceased for years, and conditions became so bad that even the earthworms perished.  The severe conditions  prevailed for nearly 300 years (c. 2200 to 1900 BCE), and agricultural cities were completely abandoned.  But this is the time traditionally allotted for Abram and Sari—before they materialized as Abraham and Sarah.  Only in the early part of the second millennium BCE did there arrive in the Palestine region the tall, course, barbarous herdsmen—the ancestors of the Hebrews.  These cattle-owning, flesh-eating Semites who wandered into the agrarian region were at this time worshippers of a bull-god whom they called El.

The biblical patriarch Jacob is alleged to have lived around 1700 BCE.  And he is said to have moved to Egypt because severe famine had swept the world.  By this period the celestial disturbances had lessened for a while.  It was in this timeframe that Stonehenge, in what is now Great Britain, took on its larger megalithic form.  But then once again Earth was buffeted by celestial disturbances.  And curiously around 1600 BCE, according to the “authorized” accounts of humankind’s history, worldwide attention abruptly became  focused again upon disruptions in space.  The movements and proximity of that celestial body was again the source of uneasiness which would continue for more generations.  And nearly a thousand years later this would still be recalled in ancient Roman literature; it was even commented upon by Augustus, who quoted from a book called Of the Race of the Roman People by Marcus Varro.  In that book it was related that the planet they spoke of as Venus had once “…changed color, size,  form and  course, which had not happened before nor since…”   Of course religious implication had to be linked with the information, and Varro added, “…we read from the divine  books that even the sun itself stood still when a holy man, Joshua son of Nun, had begged this from God.”  This raises a problem, for if this happened in the time of Joshua’s invasion of Canaan then it predates Moses by centuries.  In association with this, however, the plagues that supposedly affirmed God’s favoritism of the Israelites and his prejudice against the Egyptians as related in Exodus would not be peculiar to Egypt; plague-like conditions would have been happening all around the planet.

Around 1500 BCE (slightly before the alleged time  of Moses) planet Earth entered into a strong magnetic field, resulting in a period of very heavy meteor showers.  This is confirmed by the accretion of meteoric dust throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and represent several times greater an accumulation than would otherwise be found there.  In the timeframe c. 1548 BCE the clouds that had long cloaked Earth had begun to dissipate, and to the astonishment of the world a radiant new planetary member had positioned itself: the Assyrians would call it Ishtar; the Greeks, Aphrodite; the Central American Indians, Quetzalcoatl; and the Romans named it Venus.

From c. 1548 BCE down to about the 8th century BCE was the period when the astronomer “prophets”  were repeatedly warning of approaching catastrophic events.  The newly established planet had affected not only the orbit and rotation of Earth, but had jarred the planet Mars into an uneasy path.  It was in this period that Mars gained the reputation around the world as the god of war; until this period little attention had ever been given to the quiet red planet.  It is the likely time that Mars lost its reserves of water.  While this was going on, all kinds of turmoil was loosed on Earth and there were mass migratory movements everywhere.  Thus c. 1445  BCE is the approximate time most commonly given in Hebrew accounts for the entry of the alleged twelve tribes of Israel into Palestine.  However, there are no history records anywhere to confirm this; there is only mention that a band of people known as Habiru or Abiri had come into the region.

Celestial  disturbances began to ease slightly toward the close of the 8th century BCE.  But Earth was experiencing exogenous disturbances in it rotation, and this  coincided with a reverse in Earth’s magnetic field.  Venus was then in an established orbit between Mars and Mercury.  It is in this timeframe that the “prophet” Isaiah referred to Venus in its orderly orbit allegedly saying, “How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer, son of the  morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” (Isaiah 14:12-13)  Other astronomer “prophets” of this general time were the minor “prophets” Joel, Micah and Amos.  Meanwhile Mars was struggling to obtain a regular orbit, and its unsettled circumstance was causing problems on Earth.

As is only vaguely indicated in the book of Isaiah, the mid-eighth century BCE was a period of worldwide disturbances, and this is supported by accounts from the other side of the planet.  Mayan chronology, according to the “Vatican Codes A-3738,” listed five distinct cycles of Earth’s continuation.  The end of the fourth cycle was given as c. 751 BCE (by modern calculation), and is said to have culminated in worldwide starvation.  Even so, it should be noted that the founding of Rome is traditionally placed in 753 BCE, and understandably Rome’s patron god was regarded to be Mars.  But troublesome events did not cease; a sudden catastrophic change in world climate occurred c. 747 BCE, which was hardest felt across the northern hemisphere.  After 747 BCE the orbit of planet Earth became slightly wider, the year lengthened accordingly, and it became necessary to again compile a new calendar.  Severe climate conditions were repeated again in 702 and 687 BCE.  Of course the familiar positions  of all constellations had changed, and this was even  commented upon centuries later by the great Roman playwright Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE).

These earthshaking events in our planets’ distant past were trimmed down as having been only regional confrontations in scriptural tales, which has only served to disguise and trivialize momentous truths. Could this scriptural habit be what inspires the advocates for Bible-based government in the U.S. to use climate science as a political football?

Myth of Moses

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, Bible, culture, faith, freethought, history, random, religion, thoughts with tags , , , , , on September 9, 2010 by chouck017894

Moses, like other Old Testament characters such as Adam, Joshua, Abram/Abraham, Jacob/Israel, Samson, David, etc., etc., are more like unnatural curiosities if they are to be taken as persons from verifiable history.  Their exploits and the unfailing forbearance of God toward them are made intelligible only if and when they are recognized as being personifications of creative energies in development prior to manifesting into matter forms.  This means that a scientific understanding of how energy transforms into matter and life was once understood and taught in extreme antiquity.  This secret hidden behind priest-written “revealed truth” may be difficult to accept for those who have for millennia trusted priestly interpretations. 

The birth of Moses, for example, is standard mythic style: the babe is soon cast upon the waters (of Creation) to be borne into prototypal development.  The name of the pharaoh’s daughter who allegedly rescued and adopted the babe is said to be Thermuthis.  This is not a likely royal name, for it was the name of the serpent that was sacred to the goddess Isis, the earth mother of the ancient Egyptians.  But it does suggest a connection to the life-directing powers in the pre-physical dimensions that is also represented with the serpent in the Adam and Eve myth in the Garden of Eden.  In fact, the Moses story follows the same layout as the Genesis account of Creation, complete with separation of waters and the expulsion from the abundant foundation.  We should remember that the sacred serpent of the pre-Jewish Hebrews was Nehushtan or Ne-esthan from the Hebrew root NHSH, which meant “to decipher” or “to make out the meaning.”  The serpent was therefore the emblem that was allegedly displayed as the banner by Moses to avert the plague (of non-development) in the wilderness.

Moses is the alleged law-giver, and this story feature is true as far as it goes.  But he is not properly the representative of moral laws since his character personifies the initial movement of the Life Principle through amoral pre-matter conditions.  Moral refinement and ethical conduct are the concerns of life after it passes over into the promised land of physical matter.  This means that Moses cannot rightfully symbolize moral and ethical nature as presented by priest-authors in 700 BCE Jerusalem.  The “law” that Moses decreed in the primal energy “wilderness” is in regard to genetic purity—the active principle that decrees like is to beget like.  In the many centuries between the alleged events surrounding Moses and the time of the final scriptural version, the story of Moses and the “commandments” passed through an incalculable number of priestly revisions.  In fact, the code of conduct known as the Ten Commandments were among the last inclusions in the Pentateuch, so moral instruction was not part of the original myth. 

This claim that it is the law of genetic purity which Moses really represents is backed up by the Mount Sinai episode.  Moses is depicted as descending from the heights of an ecstatic rendezvous with the Lord and stands rigidly erect before the people holding two stones upon which have been written the testimony of life.  (Note, these were referred to as two tablets of testimony, not commandments.)  Since the Israelites are themselves symbols of primal energies moving in pre-physical dimensions, the “laws” that are presented could only be about the principles of genetics and the fields of force that involve as the prototypal forms.  The conceiving of energy that accompanies these laws of genetics is personified with the character of Aaron: in fact the name Aaron means “to conceive.”  Thus Aaron is portrayed as the milder brother.  Moses is also characterized as having a speech defect, which slyly symbolizes the tumbling, uncertain energies within the pre-physical energy conditions, and Aaron is cast as his vocal intermediary through whom the Israelites (primal energies) are given direction.  And there is the necessary third part, the gestation of life energies, which is  personified with the “sister” of Moses and Aaron, who is named Miriam.  The source of the name Miriam was derived from the Sumerian/Babylonian name Meriram.  In Babylonian myth Meriram was characterized as the chief of the turbulentos—the turbulentos being the turbulent  primal elements from which energy substances develop.  Thus sister Miriam personifies the passive involvement of energy-substances at the initial stages (gestation) of materialization. 

The tribulations allegedly endured by the wandering Israelites—the forty years of mindless schlepping through a “wilderness,” the miraculous (but stingy) feeding by God of six hundred thousand Israelites with manna, etc.—make for strange examples to inspire belief in a compassionate god.  In regard to the heaven-sent manna, according to Exodus 16:14-15, Moses said, “This is the bread which the Lord hath given us to eat.”  Strangely, the manna was as small as hoarfrost—which could sustain elementary particles being infused with subatomic constituents, but it is not food for starving humans.

Moses’ death on Mount Nebo is another example of standard mythic style.  It is from the Babylonian god Nebo that the Hebrews’ own “prophets” came to be called nabi.  So it is no accident that the Hebrews’ most exalted “prophet” and alleged law-giver, Moses, was claimed by priest authors to have met his death on the mountain in the plain of Moab which happened to be named Nebo (Deuteronomy 34:1).  As personifications of pre-physical energy development, the characters such as Moses and Joshua are allegedly punished with death for doing exactly what they should do in order to pass over into the energy dimensions of matter-life, which is portrayed as the Promised Land.  When it is understood what these biblical myths were built upon—earlier known scientific principles—we understand why the priest authors wrote “…no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day.” (Deuteronomy 34:6)

The character of Moses in Hebrew myth was given only casual attention until around the 7th century BCE—the period following the fall of the northern kingdom of  Israel to Assyria.  In this timeframe the political aspirations of King Josiah and the priests of Yahweh in Jerusalem actively composed a “history” for themselves.  The purpose was more to overawe Assyria and Egypt to make them think twice about attacking Judah than it was to spiritually inspire the people of Judah.

Judaism and Ancient Mystery Religions

Posted in Atheist, belief, Bible, faith, random, religion, thoughts, Uncategorized with tags , , , , on September 1, 2010 by chouck017894

Beneath the surface of Judaism there has always existed a strong element of mystery. For most Jews, however, the zeal for studying the Torah in search of any relationship to the ancient tantalizing mystery religion ingredients are sufficiently gratified by the body of the Mosaic Law, not to mention the redoubtable commentaries that accompany them.  Thus their esoteric heritage has simply faded into the dim corners of Orthodoxy.

Canonical Judaism shows the influence of ancient mystery religions most closely in the so-called wisdom literature that gained prominence in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE—a timeframe coinciding with the Hasmoneans, a family of Jewish patriots better known as Maccabees.  This also happened to be the timeframe in which the Pentateuch, the Septuagint translation, was being written in Alexandria.  The texts that hint most closely at divine mystery elements are found in Koheleth (Ecclesiastes), Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Chokmah (Wisdom of Solomon), Proverbs, and the Book of Job.  These examples of wisdom literature are most notable for the perspective that is expressed, for the viewpoint does not arrogantly segregate mankind into Jews and Gentiles as is typical of priest-composed texts.  Instead, man’s worth is seen in the wisdom literature to be determined as either wise or foolish.  The Lord that is addressed in these wisdom texts is correctly understood as acknowledgment of the unified principles of Creation that produced and approved all that exists.

The Book of Job was a direct restructuring of an 1870-1830 BCE  Babylonian account, and is the most consistently theological work in the Hebrew Bible, focusing on an extensive dialogue on one theological issue—the purpose of suffering.  Its superiority stems from the lack of priestly philosophy and religiosity, and being rich in mythopoeic knowledge of reality.  That reality rests in the story of an innocent man not accusing himself as being deserving of the afflictions he suffered and placing the blame squarely where it belongs (on god).  This, of course, was an unacceptable premise for the priests of Yahweh, and so they fitted the superior Babylonian story with an anticlimax to serve their priestly purpose. 

The book of Proverbs consists primarily of short sayings that express terse insights into human affairs, especially of a social and religious nature such as wisdom, wickedness, violence, concern for others, greed, etc.  Authorship is  popularly credited to Solomon, but indications are that these treasures of wisdom were collected well after the time in which Solomon is alleged to have ruled (c. 960 BCE)—like about three centuries after.

The deuterocanonical book Sirach, written c. 180-130 BCE, was a collection of ethical teachings, and has much in common with Proverbs.  The book closes with the assessment that the wisdom and greatness of God is revealed in all his works, not just in the history and people of Israel, and this is what is presented as justifying belief in God. 

Cholomah is a Hebrew word meaning “wisdom,” and is defined in Cabala (Ha Qabalah, Kabala, Kabbala) as the second of ten sefirot (divine emanations), and regarded as the first power of conscious intellect within Creation.  When Cabalists analyzed the Pentateuch (first five book of the Old Testament) they believed that they had found metaphysical and cosmological doctrines to be concealed in the words broken down into their numerical equivalents.  This would seem to indicate that whoever the authors of those opening four book* may have been, they were proficient at understanding and concealing from the masses profound  knowledge of the Creation processes.  (*The book of Leviticus does not fit comfortably or logically into the book lineup of the Israelite’s alleged history; it is all about priestly authority propaganda and nothing more.)

In the text known as Koheleth, which translates something like “speaker of the assembly,” the main speaker claims to be the “son of David and king in Jerusalem,” and reflects often on the meaning of life.  The author’s assessment is that all of man’s actions are “transitory, “temporary,” “empty,” “vain,” “futile,” and “meaningless.”  The stoic flavored text focuses on mortality and the struggle that permeates life, and does not labor over the yearned for reward of Paradise.  The author’s rather cynical outlook is that the lives of the wise and the lives of the foolish both end in death, but he sees wisdom as being the best way to achieve a more self satisfying and well-lived life.  Even so, he could not credit an eternal reward for having cherished wisdom.  This is not typical priestly party-line material. 

Among the mystery items in Jewish observation to this day is the Menorah, the seven-branched candlestick that became the idolized feature of Judaism.  The ceremonial candelabrum allegedly symbolizes the seven days of Creation (Exodus 37:17-24), but it was not a feature in the earliest worship of Yahweh even though the priest-written history composed in 7th century BCE claims that it had always been an item used in veneration of Yahweh, its use having been suggested to Moses by God.  The object was used in Babylonia (and Egypt) and was absorbed into Jewish tradition during the days of  “Captivity” there.  The seven-branched candlestick in Babylonian observances represented the Sun surrounded by the six then-known planets, and it therefore symbolized for them the journey that the soul made after death.  This association of the soul’s journey was a feature in all ancient mystery religions.

The rabbinical explanations of the menorah as representative of the seven days of Creation is perceptibly faulty, for the central light being ascribed to the Sabbath does not correspond with the “Let there be light” command of the fourth day of Creation.  There is a more ancient tradition than the rabbinical one which is echoed in the Zohar (from Cabala, metaphoric discourses on the Torah), which says, “These lamps, like the seven planets above, receive their light from the sun.”  In ancient sun cult observances, such as in Egypt, the central branch of the candlestick properly represented Wednesday.  Thus the rabbinical view that it represented the Sabbath was neither poetically nor historically accurate.  (Incidentally, Moses is portrayed as having been a priest of the Sun god when in Egypt: in that timeframe in which the story is presented the menorah was indeed in use in the sanctuary, and had to face W. S. W.   So, in a manner of speaking, one could say that Moses had been counseled by God to continue in use of the seven-branched candlestick.)  The first cosmic association with the menorah is in Zechariah, who is alleged to have learned in a vision that the seven lamps were “…the eyes of Yahweh that run to and fro through the universe.”  In other words, the seven planets.  Thus the annual lighting of the Temple candelabra at the autumn festival actually commemorates the creation of stars on the fourth “day.”

These few examples drawn from ancient literature and symbolism still exert influence in today’s faith systems.