Archive for Mt Sinai

Disguised Background of Moses Epoch

Posted in belief, Bible, culture, faith, Hebrew scripture, history, prehistory, random, religion, scriptures, theology with tags , , , , , , , on January 17, 2015 by chouck017894

The timeframe upon which the Moses epoch was loosely structured was most probably c. 1576-1490 BCE. This was a particularly rough period for planet Earth and turmoil had continued for centuries following the earlier frightening event when a rogue planet-sized comet had lunged out of the skies from the general direction of planet Jupiter. Electromagnetic imbalance in the solar system resulted in interplanetary disturbances, and cultures worldwide were dramatically affected. In the following timeframe 1490-1480 BCE, for example, the royal city of Ugarit went down in flames, and in this same timeframe the cities of Troy, Knossos and the walled cities in the Indus Valley were also destroyed. Using the 1480 BCE date as anchor-point (which lasted to at least around 1200 BCE) not only the Hebrews (who were cast by priest authors as Israelites) but people everywhere suffered through worldwide calamities.

If this was the broad timeframe in which Moses allegedly heard God speak to him personally from a burning bush, he would have been around eighty years old (if he had been born c. 1576 BCE–one of the numerous dates that are debated). The approximate earlier date 1486 BCE is also often associated with the Exodus and the Moses tale. Still another date often theorized as the Moses saga is the 1480 BCE timeframe, which happened to be when Thutmose III came of age and officially became pharaoh of Egypt; until then his mother Queen Hatshepsut, wife of Thutmose II, had overseen her son’s duties in his name. (Note the mose part of the names.)

The plagues which Hebrew Scriptures (Exodus) claim was God’s way of affirming his favoritism for the Israelites and his divine prejudice against the Egyptians is largely priestly liberty with actual planetary circumstances. The plagues in the setting used for the Moses epoch were not peculiar to that narrowly focused region of the world. Worldwide upheavals in this period also plunged the Phoenician trading empire into decline due to the fall of so many trading partners. Indeed, much of this was recorded by Chaldeans, Hebrews, Greeks, Minoan Cretans, Egyptians, East Indians, Chinese, and even the South American Mayans. In the priestly accounts (as in Jeremiah 7:20) God is quoted as saying, “Look! My anger and my rage are being poured forth upon this place, upon mankind and upon domestic animals, and upon the tree of the field and upon the fruitage of the ground; and it must burn, and it will not be extinguished.” This is how holy hatred is glorified.

The unstable planetary conditions which lasted for generations were drawn upon by later priest authors for their own advantage. As portrayed by the priests, God is claimed to have spoken to Moses from a thick cloud upon Mount Sinai saying, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage (some translations incorrectly interpret this as out of the “house of slavery”). About this time, according to scriptures, God promised the Israelites that if they obeyed his “laws” (as interpreted by the priests, of course) they would prosper from what amounted to his conditional love. Thus were the Exodus 19:4-6 verses reinforced in which God supposedly said, “…you shall be to me a nation of priests and a holy nation.” The tone of this claim of selectivity rather tarnishes its credibility as spiritual truth.

The date most commonly given for the death of Moses is 1456 BCE. In the book of Deuteronomy 32:49 and 34:1, written long after the depicted wandering events (probably written by the High Priest Hilikiah in Jerusalem in seventh century BCE) Moses is averred to have died atop Mount Pisgah after viewing the Promise Land. This mount is identified with Mount Nebo, a mountain in Moab near the north end of the Dead Sea (and where later Jeremiah supposedly hid the Ark of the Covenant). This Mount was from ancient times held to be dedicated to the Sumerian-Assyrian-Babylonian god Nebo, the son of Marduk chief god of ancient Babylon, who bore the title of “Ilu-tashmit,” meaning god of revelations, and he was regarded as a soothsayer or prophet. From this the Hebrew word for prophet became nabi or nebi.

Many features of the Moses saga clearly indicate that the priest-written “history” actually concerns the process of energy involvement and development into matter form (Creation activity), not of some selected human leader who escorted “bound” Hebrews to a new location. Just as with the parting of water in Genesis, the waters are parted for Moses and the Israelites (elementary particles) to move into diverse and defined life archetypes. Indeed this is what is alluded in Exodus 33:20-23 where Moses, symbol of the Life Principle, is told by God, “Thou canst not see my face…” “…thou shalt see my back parts”—a clear reference to the primal condition from which life is made manifest. The fabled character of Moses can never see God’s front parts–the evolutionary results–because he symbolizes the energy action of the Life Principle up to where pre-physical energies begin to congeal and transform into material-matter form. And this is why Moses must “die” when that objective is within sight. It is therefore a certainty that “…no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day.” (Deuteronomy 34:6–written c. 8th century BCE)

Among the divine mysteries of this tale none is more puzzling than the manner in which the Lord is alleged to have fed the starving Israelites in the “wilderness.” According to the priest-written account over six hundred thousand Israelites were miraculously fed with manna. The Israelites were depicted as on the verge of annihilation and a somewhat indifferent Creator sent them only a microscopic form of nourishment. As claimed in the text, “And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as hoarfrost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is Manna; for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the Lord hath given us to eat.” (Exodus 16:14-15) HUH? Is it wise to believe that over six hundred thousand starving persons were given “bread” as small as hoarfrost as sustenance? This story feature clearly attests that the chronicle of Exodus is not history but is allegory of the Creation process, and the “hoarfrost” refers to elementary particles being infused with subatomic elements. Everything which is made manifest as matter-form is nourished by subatomic particles.

Perhaps the most honored part of the Moses saga is of God making Moses the bearer of the Ten Commandments to the stranded Israelites. Strangely, these Commandments passed through several transformations of their own, and became guidelines for moral/ethical conduct only after 700 BCE–and which were again rewritten in 400 BCE. The earliest intention in the “Commandments” which Moses would have received and relayed from the personified Source of Creation certainly could not have been in regard to moral and ethical behavior in the “wilderness” (prototypal conditions). Moses, traditionally revered as the “Law Giver”, is depicted as having descended from an ecstatic rendezvous with the Lord on Mount Sinai. The law-giver is commonly pictured as standing erect with the “laws” which he carried etched upon two stones . This image indicates allegorically that the “laws” did not originally concern moral conduct among physical beings but concerned the principles of genetics. All that could have been decreed there in those primal circumstances (“wilderness”) would concern genetic purity–the “law” of Creation which established that like is to beget like. This is Creation’s powerful “law” which carries weight far beyond the principle of genetic reproduction; it applies equally to each individual’s thought patterns which determine each person’s lifestyle and how they interact with others. Lost in this self-serving scriptural storytelling style is that this “law” of like must beget like also brings reprisal after its own kind. Thus this “law” of reproductive energy indeed supports divine advice to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Covenants of Special Favor

Posted in belief, Bible, history, random, religion, scriptures with tags , , , , on August 19, 2012 by chouck017894

…or Promises Not Kept.

At Mount Sinai, Moses allegedly received directly from God the list of Laws under which the Israelites were to forever abide.  But when Moses trudged down the mountain to the Israelite camp lugging two stone tablets of Law he found that in his absence the Israelites had fashioned a golden calf to lavish their attention upon.  In anger Moses hurled the tablets of Law at the discontented Israelites and God’s Laws became rubble.  The Lord apparently had no backup technology or recovery system in those days, so Moses had to trudge back up the mountain again to get a second batch of commandments which spelled out the rules by which the Israelites could make themselves worthy of receiving God’s conditional love.  This second set of stone tablets survived and were then lugged around in an ark for years and even served as their battle standard during their weary 40-year wanderings, for apparently the Lord had neglected to include with the commandments a road map to the Promised Land.

The rest of the Exodus saga pivots upon the alleged covenant that the Lord is said to have established with the Israelites at Sinai.  For some never explained reason Yahweh pledged to make the Israelites his chosen ones, and he then bestowed upon them—out of all the people on the entire planet—special favors.  Yahweh’s promises included providing the chosen ones with a peaceful and affluent homeland.  Oddly, that promised land was already inhabited!  But all that the Israelites had to do to receive the “Promised Land” was to indulge in a bit of genocide to show their worthiness of the gift.    According to the priest written “history,” the Israelites thus received their “inheritance” by cleansing the land with Canaanite blood as Yahweh cheered them on.

Once the Israelites were in possession of the coveted land, the Israelites had every expectation, according to their understanding of the Sinai contract, to live peacefully in their cleansed and enclosed region.  But evidently Moses neglected to note the fine print clauses that apparently attended the Sinai covenant.  The inherited land, according to priest “history,” was not as idyllic as the Israelites had anticipated.  After years of guidance under assorted peculiar “Judges,” Philistine armies routed the Israelite tribal levies in battle and took the Ark of the Covenant as booty.  The priests and “prophets” came to the conclusion that the reason for their problem was because Yahweh had expected, although he never told them so, that they would set up their inherited land as a kingdom.  Sure enough, the “prophet” Samuel avowed that was indeed the wish of Yahweh, and the Lord’s selection to be the first king of Israel, Samuel relayed, was to be Saul. (The name translates from Hebrew as meaning “asked for.”)  Saul proved to have been an apparent spur of the moment decision on the Lord’s part, and it proved to be a not so omniscient choice, for even as Saul continued to reign, God was directing the “prophet” Samuel to select the youngest son of Jesse of the Benjamin tribe, David, to be groomed to replace the king.  The timeframe for David is traditionally placed as c. 1040?-973 BCE.

So how did the Lord show his favor of David?  In a deadly combat situation with a Philistine giant named Goliath!  Priest “history” asserts that the youth David, who was too young to serve in the military, was the only one connected to Saul’s defense forces who was brave enough to meet Goliath in one-on-one combat.  The priest authors carefully noted in this scripted plotline that David shouted to Goliath, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with javelins, but I come to you in the name of the Lord.”  And then, of course, the Lord made certain that the single small stone in David’s slingshot struck the most vulnerable spot on Goliath’s helmeted skull.  Why the Lord needed an intermediary to bump off the Philistine giant is another divine mystery.  Even more mysterious, the Lord did nothing later to assist all those in dire need who had joined up with David when he became the renegade leader of fugitives and soldiers.  After King Saul’s death—some twenty-three years later—traditionally placed as around 1013 BCE, David was then allegedly anointed king of Israel.

The “word of the Lord” was again relayed to David through a minor “prophet” named Nathan who declared still another covenant promise (1 Kings 7:12-16); that the house, the kingdom and the throne of David “…shall be established for ever.”  The only restrictive clause in this covenant was that if the king did wrong in the Lord’s sight, the king, and not the people would be punished; even so God would not take the kingdom away from David as he had done with Saul (after 23 years).  This sounds like an unconditional promise—the house and the kingdom of David was to continue “for ever.”

Genuine history seems not to have followed the Lord’s plan, however, for the kingdom of Israel was conquered and completely destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE, never to be resurrected as a monarchy ruled over by some descendant of David.  (By the way, something time-altering did occur in 587 BCE which forced every nation on Earth to begin recalculating its chronology: it was not because David’s kingdom fell to the Babylonians.)  Today, of course, there is the nation of Israel, but it is not under the rule of a descendant of David; it functions loosely as a democracy.  This means that the greatest covenant that the priest authors claim was extended by God to the Israelites was another sacred promise that seems not to have been kept.

That predicament does not seem to register with today’s army of Christian Bible thumpers who cherry pick verses out of scriptural accounts that support their inflated egos.  This continues even in defiance of the many archeological findings that fail to support scriptural assertion of the Moses-David-Solomon stories.  Ignoring the unfulfilled promises in the alleged covenants that God is said to have extended to the Israelites (not to the Jews, Hebrews or gentiles) allows the devotees of “revealed word” the privilege of accepting the present day democratic nation of Israel as the fulfillment of God’s promises.  This, in turn, allows Christians to indulge in spiritual lust over the New Testament book of Revelation in which Christ takes total control over worldly affairs.  Considering that the book of Revelation was written c. 135 CE, right after Roman armies defeated the Jewish rebellion in Palestine, the invented achievement of unchallenged world domination by Christ simply mirrors the empirical aspirations of Rome concerning Jewish fanatics in their 135 CE timeframe.  The book of “Revelation” is not an end of the world scenario.

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