While I worked on setting it all straight, I was offered a course on today's Church through one of our mail order wonders. This offered a look at both Archeology and, Christ and Prophesy. I decided to take the course in order to see what the Church today had to say regarding these things, and to better understand their position.
I sent them a letter after I had enough of the course and have not yet, about two years later, received any reply.
I decided to include this in this material. The Church offering this course relied too heavily on Daniel and his prophesies which today are acknowledged by just about all religious leaders to have been written about 170 B.C.E. and to reflect Nabonidus who was converted to the worship of the Moon God and not Nebuchadnessar.
While the refutation of Irenaeus of the Gnostic was without substance this is not.
I intentionally leave out the name of the cult since any cult of today is guilty of the same or similar deceptions. I am including it here since this cult did not have the courtesy to answer my lengthy letter which I spent a lot of time writing. Perhaps now, I may at least hear from them. I include this material, not to get even, but to illustrate the futile effort the Churches of various denominations are using to get new recruits to their zealous movements.
Dear Xxxxx
Over the past few months have I been sending answers to your lessons regarding religious topics. I started off with Archeology, (digging up the past) and I desired to see what you (the Church) were saying about Christ and Revelations also.
My primary interests are archeological discoveries, and how you (the Church) interpreted these finds. I myself have had a profound interest in religion in relation to archeological discoveries since I read a book called, "Verden og Geniet," when I was about eight years old. I have no idea who wrote the book or who published it, but there I read among other things that the Babylonian/Sumerian rendition of the Flood was written 2,000 years prior to any biblical material.
That was nearly forty years ago. Since that time, I have been devoutly studying matters pertaining to the spiritual, the mind and the Soul in ancient literature. When I received the offer of the free course from your institute about the Church and the archeological material discovered, I was, as you may understand, more than a little interested in seeing your interpretation.
At the time I received this invitation, I was busily working on a study regarding just this very subject. After forty years, it was time to put something down on paper.
Now do not think for a moment this is going to be an attack on you or anyone else in your organization. Your interest as well as the interest of all your colleagues is the preservation of the spiritual, the betterment of Man and how to enable Man to survive and gain eternal life. No one could attack people with such motivations unless they were evil. The best people alive today can most assuredly be found within the ranks of the various religious organization. While I am writing this to you, I am also writing it to your superiors and I expect you to bring it to their attention.
The problem I now see, and which I am sure you will agree with is the death of the Soul. The Soul dies when it is made a part of the physical universe. When authorities professing great wisdom proclaim it is the brain which thinks when they state a part of the physical universe which has evolved by chance is what we are, the Soul dies. No part of the physical universe can think.
The mind is spiritual, it is a part of the Soul. The brain is the physical manifestation by which the spiritual can communicate with the physical. Like a computer, if there is nothing which interprets its data, the computer is nothing. Thus the brain is nothing without the Soul.
The Soul dies every time an excuse is made. Behind every failure lies an excuse and to justify a failure only multiplies its size.
Before we go on, let me define the Soul for you. The Soul is the "I." Whenever you or anyone else say "I," they are referring to themselves, the Soul. The Soul does not partake in the physical universe, it is not subject to the laws of the physical universe and can therefore perceive future as a real prospect and the past as having happened. The Soul is that which perceives.
No, I am not writing this letter to espouse my philosophies or to tell you about myself. I am writing this letter because of what is happening. One of the ancient heathens about the time of Christ wrote down a collection of ancient sayings which became known as the "Sentences of Sextus." He wrote a truism we may be well advised to bring up again today # 318: He who does not harm the soul does not harm man.
In other words, the only real harm which can befall any one of us is by harm done to the Soul. This is a truth which can not be emphasized enough. The only true manner by which to hurt the Soul and actually kill the Soul is by lies and deceptions.
Now over the past forty years, I have read the entire Bible several times. I have read all the material I have been able to get a hold of regarding the interpretations of the Bible. I have read the archeological material pertaining to the Canaanites discovered at places such as Ugarit. I have studied all the material I have been able to get my fingers on from the finds at Mari. I have read the material I have got a hold of regarding Egypt. I have read all I can get my hands on regarding archeological discoveries in Palestine. I have read of the Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites and your lessons had no new information regarding these cultures. You only taught me how you present this material to your followers.
Now one more thing before I start on what I really have to say. I know it is difficult to learn new things. We all have our minds made up and, when new data presents itself we naturally adjust the data to fit our minds and disregard data which cannot readily be altered by branding it "Incorrect," "False," "Forgery" or the like. To adjust our minds to fit the data is the privilege of the few and an arduous task at best. What I have to say may make the hears rise on the nape of your neck, and if you cannot read on let your superiors read it. This will not go away. You will be far better off knowing it. It will not destroy the Church, while at times, as you read, it may seem as if my intent is to destroy your beliefs. Just remember, this it is not, all I want is for the truth to be known and the truth cannot hurt anyone. "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." (John 8:32)
If it should prove to be the fact that this truth is not exactly what we thought for years was the truth, this will not alter this verse from John.
In another place, it is said that when chaff is mixed with the grain, it is not the chaff which becomes polluted it is the grain.
If we say the word is the grain and discover there has been some chaff mixed with this grain, we would not proceed to throw out the grain with the chaff, that would be our loss. Bear this in mind while reading this. I just happened to know what a Soul is and I would like to see the Souls freed and ignorance removed. Remove ignorance and you remove the chaff. All you have left after ignorance is gone is pure grain and that is in the interest of all mankind.
I may cover all the material you sent me, and if you have additional material I would be happy to revue it as well.
Let us start with the Sumerians. Before reading your lesson on the Sumerians, I had read all the books by S.N. Kramer. The famous American archeologist on the Sumerians and some other revelatory material where their culture and thought was reflected. Here I could mention books such as, "Roots of Apocalyptic" by Helge. S. Kvanvik which also had a study on the "Son of Man." Now Kvanvik revealed a few things regarding the Sumerian thought and the Jewish thought. Kramer wrote down a lot of material pertaining to the discoveries at Sumer and the translations of their documents without any religious coloring.
I have no way of knowing if you have read these books. In all likelihood, you have not. But the leaders and heads of the Church have read them and more. Now, do a spiritual exercise for me if you will. Picture me sitting here. I have all this data on the Sumerians. This data includes the Sumerian parallels to all the Biblical Patriarchs mentioned prior to Abraham (most of which can be found in "History begins in Sumer" by S.N. Kramer). From Adam and Eve and the Sumerian Rib story, the Sumerian parallel to Cain and Abel, the Sumerian Noah etc. Picture also that I know for a fact that the earliest written Biblical legends are the Dead Sea Scrolls which do not agree with the Bible and that the first true Biblical data which was written comes from the second century B.C.E. No matter what you state, no material can be found which was not written down more than 2,500 years after the Sumerian legends depicting the same events.
Picture also that I know for a fact the parallels do not end there, but are also found in the "Song of Songs," "Proverbs," Psalms, etc. Picture also that I have read the parallels to the Canaanites between these Sumerian/Hebrew tales written down much more than a thousand years before any Biblical material. Also the Parallels from Mari, etc.
Now how do you think your "lesson" on the Sumerians looked? You had absolutely no information on the Sumerians. About all you managed to drag forth was something discreditable regarding some burial customs. Do you think anyone who had any knowledge of the Sumerians could think of that as education? If so what form of education? Yes, brainwashing. And before you call this harsh judgment, there is something else you should be aware of. The Bible also verifies that the patriots before Abraham were all Sumerians. The Bible also verifies that they worshipped the Sumerian Gods.
Joshua 24:2, "And Joshua said unto the people, Thus saith the lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the Flood in old time, even Terah the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: And they served other Gods."
The other side of the Flood in the Norwegian Lutheran bible is translated as Euphrates. So this could only be Sumer and the Sumerians Joshua is talking about. Now before you criticize me too harshly because I point this out, remember this is all a part of a complete picture and I can only communicate this complete concept one part at a time. This is not really as bad as it looks. The continued teaching is, on the other hand, worse unless you teach the truth of the matter. To omit telling all of the story is tantamount to lying. To drag out negative things to state, and hide the true nature of the Sumerian legends is deceptive teaching which the writer of Sextus would strongly have condemned and he would have branded what you taught in your lesson on the Sumerians as a lie of the utmost degree.
What you deceive is the Soul and a crime against the Soul of Man is a greater crime than a crime performed by the most vicious murderer or rapist. A crime against the physical can never measure that of a crime against the spiritual. The physical is temporary and the spiritual is permanent.
This is not the only place in the Bible this can be verified by far. Another example is Jeremiah 11:13, "For according to thy cities were thy Gods." Certainly, the Sumerians had different Gods which were over their various city states, just like the Bible states. In Jer. 11:10 where the Israelite God is accusing the Israelites of going back to the forefathers Gods and calling this a misdeed, this is not because this in itself is a misdeed. This is based on a different passage in the Bible which I will cover later. The Gods which Abraham's parents believed in were the Sumerian Gods. It was the God Nannar or Sin as he was also called which is amply attested to by the fact he moved from Ur to Haran.
Now look at the first part of Genesis after the knowledge which we have obtained. How could you possibly have left out such significant accounts as the Sumerian account of the Rib story?
When you relay only those things you would like your readers to see, you are misinforming and not educating. A true Church is not one which needs to hide material from its parishioners. It is one which permits the parishioners to see all pertinent data and comprehend such for themselves. Only the liar can be hurt by honesty, not the honest man, or the honest Church.
The Sumerian Rib story is a little different from the one in the Bible, but considering the fact it was written several milleniums before the Biblical tale, the remarkable fact is how similar they are. The Sumerian tale reflects the creation in their Paradise which was called Dilmun. Dilmun is identical to the Hebrew Paradise except this was but for the benefit of the Gods.
The only thing lacking from Dilmun was water for the growth of vegetation. The sun god Utu, who was also in charge of keeping law and order, brought up a mist from the Earth to water the gardens of Dilmun. Gen 2:6. "But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole ground."
The Sumerian epic continues with the mother goddess, Ninhursag. By an intricate process known only to her, she made eight special plants grow in Dilmun. These took a great deal of time to grow and produce. The two faced God, Isimud, who was also En-Ki's servant, tricked his master into eating these plants. He did not eat just the one, he ate all eight. Upon learning the misfortune of her special plants, Ninhursag became furious and pronounced the curse of death upon En-Ki.
Like the biblical story of Eve, it is not the perpetrator of the crime, Isimud, who has to pay for the prank but the God En-Ki who falls for the trick.
En-Ki's health begins to fail. Eight of his organs begin to die, one for each plant. The other Gods get worried and carry on concentrated efforts to locate Ninhursag. They know she is the only one who can cure En-Ki. In the meantime, Ninhursag had disappeared from amongst the Gods, so she would not be tempted to cure him. She was eventually found by a fox and convinced to return. Ninhursag was then persuaded to help the dying God and proceeds to heal his eight ailing organs. To heal them, Ninhursag had to create eight healing deities. These deities eventually brought En-Ki back to health and vigor.
One of En-Ki's ailing organs was the rib and the deity that was created by Ninhursag to heal this organ was the goddess Nin-Til. In Sumerian, Nin-Til has two meanings, so this is actually a play on words. The first meaning is "the lady of the rib" and the second is "she who makes live." Eve means "she who makes live" to the Hebrews in their language. They do not have a word with both meanings and could have made their first lady the lady of the rib in a totally different fashion.
This is the story from which the Hebrews got their original sin epic. Deny it if you will but the material discovered at places such as Ugarit makes any refutation fruitless. Gen 1:6 along with other places such as the Enuma Elish are found in the legend of Baal from Ugarit written a millenium before any part of the Bible. Here, El is the God who dwells at the horizon of the two firmaments. This is the dwelling place of Marduk, YHWH/El and El of the Canaanites. See the legend of Baal. This is not saying these Gods were identical, they were not.
The greatest neglect of information that you make is perhaps the omission of the fact that the material from Sumer which is of a very early date has no superstition in it. The medical records have no mention of any of the Gods. About all the physical evidence available from this Golden Age of Man are some medical and legal tablets from Sumer. These are the oldest available medical records prescribing cures and describing illnesses. These records make absolutely no mention of any Gods. They do not mention evil spirits as the cause of any illness and do not invoke the aid of Gods for the curing of the ills. They are as a matter of fact considerations without superstitions and without magic. And the legal material from this period is far superior to anything in Hammuraby's law. This indicates to those who study them a real age of enlightenment, a "Golden Age of Man" seems to have been factual.
Now, what does this parallel? It is not so much the present Biblical material. It is a virtual emphatic statement that we need to take a closer look at the Gnostics and the Gnostic Christians as these records definitely would support a view that the "cloak of darkness" which the Gnostics spoke off could have been factual.
The Golden Age was talked about in Sumerian religion, in Babylonian religion, in Accadian and Hittite religion before the great Flood. This was the same Golden Age the Hebrews also talked about. Now what really did happened? Did Man know who he was, what he was, and the order of the universe. Down came a God, and confused his tongue. In the Sumerian Babel story it was En-Ki who confused the tongue of Man. The Babel story is another story which is undeniably Sumerian.
Gen. 11:6-8, "And the lord said, Behold the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another."
One may ask oneself why the Gods were so worried about the abilities of Man, yet it is of little concern what his motivations was yet. This very strongly suggest that the Gnostic interpretation is the correct one. The confusion of tongues was not the spoken word, it was the tongue of harmony spoken by men of Knowledge. Gen. 6:3 states: "My spirit shall not always remain with man." We can now look at what your own experts say about this. Helge S. Kvanvik states in his book that "Remain" comes from Yadon, and it is possibly Accadian, but definitely does not mean remain or anything like it. The meaning could be "strong" or "violent" and a statement that the God's spirit shall not always be violent toward Man would be a nice change. Further on it goes because he is flesh and that is even more absurd. Flesh comes from the Accadian sagam, and sagam means to howl or shout or cry out or any other loud noise. Here, we have a tradition which reflects the Sumerian God En-Lil and his attitude about the noisy man. This could quite well have been what he said after the Flood when En-Ki had convinced him that what he had done by bringing about the Flood and killing off Mankind was wrong. According to En-Ki it was wrong to kill off all Mankind because of the noise of a few. But this is deceptive. We have the good guy and the bad. They were both equally as responsible if we were to take a view closer to the Gnostics.
The view of today's Church is at best deceptive. Here, the two Sumerian Gods are discussing the Flood. The Flood and the confusion of the tongue of Man has to my knowledge not been put together before, but fits well with the manuscripts at Nag Hammadi (see the Nag Hammadi Manuscripts). The whole story validates the Documents of the Gnostics and this whether we use the Babylonian rendition, the Canaanite rendition, the Sumerian rendition or the Hebrew rendition.
Here is no dispute, here is only clarification. Another clarification might be called for. These Sumerian traditions were not really the borrowing of the Israelites. They were the borrowing of the Canaanites to whom the early Israelites belonged and were only changed to reflect the Israelite community and form of worship more than two thousand years after they were buried in the sands of Iraq. It should also be mentioned that the same Sumerian traditions were borrowed in Iran where the later Persians brought along their version down through history. These two variations merged in Israel via Zoroastrianism after 539 C.E. and the result was the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions we have today, albeit with further changes and alterations over the last 2,400 years.
The fact of the matter is that this Flood or killing off of great numbers of people did come about. In the original documents, the God En-Lil was made the villain and En-Ki was made the good guy. En-Ki was no better than En-Lil, his role was just different. En-Lil got the Souls ready for the implantation of false data. En-Ki implanted them as revealed in other literature. This would indicate the veil of darkness the God Yaldabaot draped over Man so as to have him ignorant of where he came from and what he was. The actions of the Gnostics' Yaldabaot were the action of the Sumerian Gods En-Lil and En-Ki. The spoken language would not have been a problem. An intelligent person easily picks up another language. It was the tongue of harmony among Man which was confused. I am not stating that the Gnostic material is the correct material at this stage. I am emphatically stating that what the Church alleges regarding the Sumerians and regarding the Gnostic as well as about their God is a crime against all Mankind. It cannot possibly be correct. You know this because your experts are studying this material and have far more data to look at than what is available to me. One day, you will have to come out from the shadow of excuses behind your God and face your actions. The sooner the better. The crime is not nearly as severe before you discover what you do as it will be once you take a true look at the material.
According to the Bible, the reason for the Flood was because of the evil Man did, yet the reason according to the Sumerians was the infernal noise. Other Hebrew as well as Babylonians were saying that the Flood came about because of the teachings of the Watchers which the God did not desire man to be acquainted with.
That this also verifies Gnostic speculations would be a redundant statement. The Gnostics stated that the Gods of this world where evil and they desired Man to be kept ignorant so as to suppress and make him a servant. This is what the Bible also states.
Gen. 2:17, "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die."
The Tree of Knowledge matches the Canaanite Tree of Death. The Paradisical Tree of Knowledge as we know became the Tree of Death for the entire human race. It also matches the Sumerian Mes tree. But what does good and evil really mean? Moses was the Patriot who supposedly wrote Genesis and we look to his homeland, Egypt, for the definition. Good and evil was that knowledge which separated man from the beasts according to Egyptian law. This would have been the definition which Moses had of the concept and thus we must regard it likewise.
Thus we can clearly see that the God of Moses desired Man to be an animal. According to Egyptian law, animals could not tell the difference between right and wrong and a Man who could not tell the difference between right and wrong was of the same status as an animal, and could thus not stand trial.
Our original sin was to rise above the members of the animal kingdom and become like the Gods (Gen. 3:22).
According to the Bible, Adam and Eve were like children before they ate of the fateful Tree and learned to tell the difference between right and wrong. Some of us have children of our own and we have at times done exactly the same thing as this God did. We called it reverse psychology. We would tell the child not to eat some food to get the child to eat his supper. Should you as a parent proceed after getting your child to eat in this fashion to punish your child for his disobedience by eating his dinner? What would be punishment befitting the crime in this case? Eternal damnation? Some seem to believe so. Deut. 24:16, "The father shall not be put to death for the children neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." This Canaanite law was not known by the Deity who condemned all Mankind to death because of the sin of Adam.
These are but a few of the parallels and considerations one would have from correlating the study of the Sumerian data with the Bible. Other things should also be mentioned. Let us also see some of it through the eyes of the Gnostics.
We begin with the Sumerian Archons, referred to as Gods. The God responsible for it all, or the father of all other Gods was An. An means "sky" and as the creator of all other Gods, he was the chief Archon. While An or Anu which the later Mesopotamians called him was worshipped, not many actions were assigned to him in the affairs of the Gods. He was depicted as the bull of the sky, but he supposedly relegated all affairs pretty well to his sons En-Lil and En-Ki. He was the head of the divine assembly granting authority to his offsprings. The reason the Father of all the Gods was not such an important force in the affairs of Man on this planet could simply have been because the original Yaldabaot was never here.
He did not need to be, his minions were enough. The Chief of his sons who was here was En-Lil, a fact which supposedly brought about jealousy from his brother En-Ki. Even the depiction of the bull was taken over by En-Lil, the later El. The names of these Deities were quite possibly in existence in Sumer prior to the advent of these "Gods." They would have taken over existing names and the significance associated with the names would have changed as these Gods would have made their actions felt.
The catastrophe designed to immerse Man again in ignorance was twofold. The first part was the catastrophe which is so well described all over the globe. The Chinese tell the tale of a devastating Flood as do the American Indians and all the Near Eastern peoples. The Flood of course could not have killed off everyone with the exception of a handful of people in an ark. Should this have been the case, there could not have existed more than one tale of the Flood from one area. To state that all these different races descended from Noah is untenable. As an example, Abraham, ten generations after Noah, left Sumerian the Ur for Theran and from there, went to Egypt.
You too report on the Flood, but you do it in the lesson on the Babylonians. It is well known the Babylonians got their rendition from the Sumerians. Why do you not put the Flood among the report on the Sumerians? The Sumerian record of the Flood is available. The Babylonian record is closer to the original than the one given by the Hebrews, but not as close as the Sumerian.
Your statement that the tradition from all over the world about a universal Flood proves the Bible is correct is however a blatant lie. What is proven by the recovery of data written down thousands of years prior to the material in the Bible is that the Hebrews took the stories of other people and changed them around to reflect their own form of worship. The reason for the differences of the Flood story is the later changes.
Until after the Persian occupation, the Hebrews believed in the Canaanite Gods. The Israelites, as amply proven by Biblical records, the records from Mari and archeology of Palestine and Ugarit, were a Canaanite tribe. The Canaanites primarily worshipped the Gods El and Baal. The God to whom the Israelites were given was the God Yammu, the son of El. Yammu ruled Earth after Baal was defeated by Mot and spent his time in the underworld.
Let us sidestep just a little bit. All the Biblical stories prior to Abraham come from Sumer. The people peddling the biblical tales tell us that all their stories are true and, if this is so, the fact that the Sumerian tales are original is verified through Biblical material.
Josh. 24:2, "And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel. Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the Flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nachor; and they served other Gods." Certainly! Terah came from Ur where the Sumerian Moon God Sin was the ruler and he moved from Ur to Harran, another site dedicated to the cult of the moon God. Anyone of old who worshipped the moon cult would have been well versed in Sumerian mythology, and since the Bible states here that the ancestors of Abraham came from Ur and they worshipped other Gods this is Biblical material. When all Biblical material prior to Abraham has its counterpart in Sumerian mythology, there can be little doubt where this material came from.
Jeremiah 11:13, "For according to thy cities were thy Gods." Certainly, the Sumerians had different Gods which were over their various city states, just like the Bible states. In Jer. 11:10 where the Israelite God is accusing the Israelites of going back to the forefathers Gods and calling this a misdeed, this is not because this is a misdeed. This is based on a different passage.
Deut. 32:8-9, "When the most high (the most high God is El-Elyon, the Canaanite God El. He was worshipped by the Hebrews as verified by the documents at Ugarit.) divided the nations their inheritance, When he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the children of Israel. For the Lord (YHWH's/Yammu's) portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance."
In plain English, this states the fact that the God of the Canaanites El-Elyon separated the people according to their lot. To state that it was YHWH who gave YHWH the Israelites is ridiculous. The records at Ugarit, Mari, Babylon, etc., all indicate this is not true. The Church knows this and to continue the denial of this fact is to perpetuate a lie.
Different Gods were given different people to rule over. El had seventy sons, and the lot of YHWH fell on the Israelites, here defined as Jacob. The reason YHWH got so perturbed when the Israelites went back to the worship of their ancestor Gods was because El-Elyon had given him the Israelites to rule over. Besides this being the factual case by this short demonstration of Biblical material it can also be verified through the documents found at Ugarit, the ancient Canaanite society existing a thousand years before the bible was written.
It can be verified from the records of Mari, another site discovered, and the records there were written down at least twelve hundred years before the bible. Besides this, it can be verified by the records dug up at the sites in Israel and Palestine where all records prior to the infiltration of the Persians indicate the Hebrews worshipped a Canaanite religion.
Ezek. 16:3-8, "And say, thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother was a Hittite." Since both Hittites and Amorites are considered Canaanites, the Hebrews, as it is stated by their God, were Canaanites. Since the religious basis of both the Canaanites and the Babylonians go back to the Sumerians we have to look at the Sumerians. Not only do these religious principles go back to the Sumerians, so do also the religious foundations of a great many other thoughts. Sumer is also the home of Gilgamesh, the famous part man part God hero who in the Bible is referred to as Nimrod. Nimrod was the grandson of Ham which would possibly be a valid enough claim. "A mighty hunter in front of the lord..." (Gen. 10:8,9) and he established the city Uruk which is the same city called Erech in Sumerian.
The later recorders attempted to fit everything into a neat picture of conformity with this same YHWH having been the only Deity ruling and having been the one who was the Creator. It was desired that this God was the one whom had been worshipped from the Creation of Heaven and Earth as is stated in the Bible. Archeological discoveries especially over the last century disproves this claim resoundingly. To teach so in any Church is treason toward Mankind, treason of the spiritual, the only crime which is severe.
En-Ki was one of the most important Sumerian Gods. En-Ki was however jealous of his older brother En-Lil, suffering from an inferiority complex much like another God still worshipped today.
En-Ki the lord of the Earth, was renamed Ea by the Accadians who succeeded the Sumerians. He was identified with water and with wisdom. Ancient Sumerian cylinder seals depict him with two streams of water and swimming fish. Fish was the symbol of En-Ki and the religious symbolism of fish has followed us down through the ages. Many a cult used both fish and snakes as a symbolism for fertility. Could the fish swimming up these streams represent the male sperm in the birth canal? Could it represent the DNA chain? Those possibilities are interesting yet outside the scope of this material. It has no bearing on our study of what the exact content of all these ancient theologies stated.
En-Ki was revered as the father who imparted knowledge to his son. When En-Ki told his son these important facts, the knowledge was written down on clay tablets. What use this knowledge he was supposed to have imparted to his son was to man is questionable. By his teaching to his son man received that same knowledge. His son was the famous Marduk. When the god En-Ki created Man, clay was also his building material. This is not by far the only similarity between the Hebrews and the Sumerians. The body created by En-Ki was a physical body. The Sumerians did not believe life ceased at physical death, yet no material to my knowledge in Sumer or by the Hebrews tell us who created the spiritual entity which Man is. It seems awfully strange to me that not more thought was given to the creation of spiritual Man by the ancients.
The Gnostics had this figured out. Could the ancient Sumerians have been in possession of similar material? It does not seem impossible. The Sumerians held that the Gods created the bodies as implements to do the service of the Gods. After death they went to the nether world. This was indeed a most dismal place ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal. She was the goddess who ensured her subjects in the nether world were subjugated to her laws. Man in the nether world was but a shadow of his former self. But that is not any different than he is on Earth today. The guardians of the netherworld have a lot in common with the Archons of the Gnostic beliefs and I believe there are more Gnostic traditions dating back to Sumerian originals than to the Hebrews.
The Sumerians thought of themselves as being there just to serve the Gods. To do the chores of the Gods to make their lives easier. They knew they were more than mere bodies and it would seem incredible they had no thought of how this more came about. The Sumerians were aware that their Gods only created the physical body. The tablets found at Sumer are of clay, they survived through the milleniums, therefore they can be read today. This may not have been the only written record and even if it was, could there not similarly have been a separate tradition?
According to the Bible, Gilgamesh/Nimrod's grandfather was Ham, the brother of Shem. We have the Paraphrase of Shem, when it came to the creation of the physical universe. Could the Sumerians have had similar material available? (To see what the Paraphrase of Shem really states, write it into your computer. Substitute matter for water and Space for hymen, time for afterbirth and black hole for womb. Astonishment is gravity, then read and your understanding of physics is elevated beyond any so far available in textbooks.)
The traditions told by the Sumerians all reflect the actions of their Gods and the children of Gods by humans. Tales such as Gilgamesh/Nimrod for example. Innumerable tales of what the various Sumerian Gods did. These could have been but a part of the knowledge of the Sumerians. It is unreasonable to speculate that they were more primitive mentally than we are, and the most important question would then, as today, have been what was the spiritual aspect of Man. The body was mortal, what about the Soul? The material recorded on the clay tablets could very well have been the view of the Sumerians of what the Gods desired them to know and desired for them to relate.
If the Sumerian Netherworld was as dismal as the clay tablets reflect, the burials of kings would not have been mass burials of willing victims. That could only have happened if these people felt they were leaving a dismal existence for something better.
Me's were the Sumerian tablets of divine knowledge, En-Ki planted his tree of divine Me's in his city Eridu. Eridu was in the southernmost part of ancient Sumer, just a few kilometers from the city Ur where Abraham's family came from. En-Ki computed the number of the stars. He was referred to as the shepherd of his people and he made sure the people followed their shepherd.
En-Ki says, "I am the lord. I am the one whose word endures, I am eternal." En-Ki curses Elam in much the same fashion YHWH curses the Elamites and he also curses the Marhasi (who are the Marhasi?). Utu, the sun god is comparable to Uriel of the Hebrew religion. He is placed in charge of the universe by En-Ki. After the occupation of Israel by the Persians, the Hebrews adopted a monotheistic religion (no, it was not monotheistic before as will be made clear). They had to rewrite their doctrine to reflect the new belief. The earlier Sun God became an Angel in charge of the Sun. The God of the Nether world became a fallen Angel and so on and so forth.
Human bodies with wings were common in Sumer. It is possible they were depictions of deities, but were quite assuredly the forerunners to today's angels. The Hebrews did not carry forward these angels through their lineage of the Canaanites. They rediscovered these angels after their encounter with the Persians, another Sumerian lineage carried down through history.
To the Sumerians, the "breath of life" was what drove the rain clouds over the heavens. In other words, the breath of life was the wind. Not only the Sumerians held this belief, but the Babylonians, Hittites, Canaanites and others. To surmise the Hebrews held the same belief would only stand to reason. The Hebrews were not an isolated people. They had close ties with the other people of the region, and the reason why all of the Old Testament writings can be correlated with other Near Eastern belief is because the Israelites, or Hebrews or Jews or whatever one desires to call them, held the same beliefs as the people of the area.
It cannot possibly be otherwise. When the Bible tells the story of the child flowing down the river for example, they are telling their story. It was not really plagiarized. The fact that the story belonged to the great Sumero/Accadian king Sargon the great is not new. The people told their stories. When the Hebrew religion changed a few hundred years before Jesus they still wanted to tell these same stories and they did. They only changed the significance of the tale. If there is one thing Man has been great at during the ages it is the change of the significance of tales. At one time or another, most of us have been guilty of exactly the same thing at least once. We hear what we perceive is a great story and when relaying it we make ourselves a leading actor in order to make our lives more interesting. No big crime in everyday life, just awfully embarrassing should it be discovered. However, when this comes to alterations regarding the Human Soul, the crime is of devastating proportions.
En-Ki was known as the God who knows everything. The "word" of En-Ki could bring order to chaos, or destruction to order. "You are true with those who are true, and you are not true with those who are not true..." was said of En-Ki. Here too seems to be a fatalistic attitude similar to the religion of the Jews. The God is only good to those who are true to the desires of the God. Right or wrong was not even a part of the picture. The Gods could wipe out our bodies, therefore they were right seems to have been the attitude. Now this brings up the question of the savior figure so commonly awaited in the various religions. Be it the Canaanites, the Babylonians, the Assyrians or the Hittites. The Hebrews and most other people were all anticipating this savior figure.
What was the savior to save them from? The Gnostics stated it was from the evil Archons who were the Gods of the Earth and, when looking at ancient material and the character of these Gods, they were obviously right.
This is no big deal once one gets the picture of the physical and spiritual separated. The God can have the physical universe and the bodies. The only problem is too many of my kin are here suffering. It would not be right not to do something about it.
Am I the only person around who has ever thought it was ridiculous or asinine that the God who created the entire Universe including Man and all which walks and breaths in it should want to save Man? Absurd, ridiculous, moronic and a few other adjectives also fits the idea. What would the God be saving Man from? Who would the God be saving us from? Is it not clear yet? If the God created everything, what are we to be saved from? The answer could only be that which the God created. If we are created in the image of the God and we are evil, then we are to be saved by the evil God from himself! He was supposed to know everything so he would then have known beforehand that Man would commit the transgressions he supposedly did. Some foreknowledge!
"We were supposed to have a choice," is the excuse used by religious leaders. No! According to the Bible, we had no choice in how we were created for the God who supposedly created us messed up. If the God created us and we do not measure up to his expectations, we are not to be blamed: God is. If I create something which is substandard, I am the one who is responsible.
If I make excuses for my failures, it is assured I will continue to make the same errors. How can a God be excused?
When the Sumerians suffered through their trials and tribulations, it was because they had sinned, so this was not something new to the Hebrew religion. It was because they had offended the Gods in one way or another, and it was sin to offend or neglect their Gods at the appropriate times. Here, we have the same philosophical attitude all oppressors have used. It is a well known fact if you desire to have total control and domination over people, all you need to do is make them feel guilty. It does not matter if the guilt comes from real or imagined transgressions. Man is inherently moral. Was it not so he would not feel guilty because of his trespasses? To dominate Man is the easiest task imaginable. All anyone has to do is make him feel guilty and he is bound by an imagined or real offense.
In a magical incantation which En-Ki/Ea is teaching to his son Marduk, the fluid from a leaf of a reed plant is referred to as the "water of life." Now before we go looking for reed plants, it is more likely that the life giving fluid was the water of life, sap in plants and blood in animals. We should refer to it as the "water of living organisms." Living organisms are a symptom of life and not life itself. There is no holy water. Water is a part of the physical universe and nothing physical is holy. Only what is spiritual is. Holy water basins were also used at Sumer indicating our Sunday traditions go back much further than thought. Here again the significance of the tradition has changed. When the significance of a tradition is changed, it does not indicate a superior form of worship, it only signifies a worship practice with hidden meanings. When an accepted religious practice no longer is acceptable because of changing moral values, the changing of the significance it represents is to bury an error. If this error was in the foundation of a house, it would eventually topple. If the error is in the foundation of spiritual Man, spiritual Man will eventually topple.
When the demons were out to get a Man, say he fell sick or was dying, a sheep was often offered up to the demons as a substitute for the ailing person. This was a practice which among others was practiced by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Canaanites and many other peoples of the time and area. The Hebrews' sacrifice of a goat in Lev. 16:8-10 is where all the sins of the Hebrews are born by the scapegoat Asael, written Azazel in Aramaic. The practice was common of the Near Eastern peoples of the time and area. It is not anything unique or special. Superstitious yes, special no, and the redemption value is nil.