Lesson one: Land of the Pyramids. You correctly state the Egyptians were a remarkable people, technically skilled mechanics and craftsmen. Then you state the first clue we have to these remarkable people and their origin is found within the historical records of the Bible. That is again a blatant misrepresentation. No biblical records exist which predate 187 B.C.E. unless we include the records found at Qumran from the Dead Sea which anything but verify the biblical records. Such a statement is inexcusable and deceptive. Egyptian, Babylonian, Canaanite, Eblaite, Sumerian and many other records predate the biblical.
You state the Egyptians are the descendants of Ham, and as seen in Gen. 10:1-6, they were the descendants of Mizraim, a grandchild of Noah. You further use this to illustrate the Egyptians which were known as Mizr got their name from the same biblical legend and it illustrates the accuracy of the Bible.
In fact, this only illustrates your total disregard for accuracy and truth. The Egyptian civilization traces back to about 9,000 B.C.E. and the first great Dynastic period dates back to 3,000 B.C.E. This is long before the Flood and if your other biblical data is correct, this but illustrates the fact that the Hebrews in their Bible adopted the tales of the people with whom they came into contact and altered the tales to illustrate their own alleged greatness. Gen. 10 gives us this lineage. Noah's son Ham begot Cush and Mizraim. Mizraim as you state was the father of the Egyptians. Cush was the father of Nimrod (Gilgamesh). Only four generation after Noah, Nimrod built the great ancient cities of Babel, Erech, and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar (Sumer).
Where are your heads at? You state the God wiped out all Mankind by a great Flood and then four generations later, there are enough people to populate four great ancient cities from the descendants of one man. If you state that the three sons of Noah were with him, we have three generations in which three men are supposed to produce enough offsprings to populate four great cities. It is stupid! Four great cities do not exist by themselves. One of these offsprings, Mizraim, must have gone to Egypt.
You state that the reason the Israelites are not found in Egyptian documents is that the Egyptians did not write history as such and that they only wrote to eulogize their own greatness. You go on to state that the records are biased and this is all in contrast to the biblical records which you alleged are accurate.
Where were you all when history was studied in school? (I have since learned that practically no school system dare teach some of the parallels found.) How can you possibly make such a statement and expect to be taken seriously? Did you not learn anything at all from the tablets of Ugarit? Have you seen nothing of the tablets from Sumer or Mari or Ebla? The "historical record" of the Bible is the historical record of the Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites, Egyptians and all other races of the Near East. This is known by every scholar who can claim any knowledge about any Near Eastern literature. There was not a monotheistic religion practiced among the Israelites until after the Persians or about 500 B.C.E.
All Near Eastern religious sects worshipped their favorite Gods, whether this was El, Baal, Re, Yammu/YHWH or any number of other Gods.
The Christian cults have been in vogue for 1,700 years at the most. During this time, it has destroyed all the records and evidence of their religious beliefs being false they could get their hands on. That this has gone on for so long does not make it right. The conduct of the Christians over the last seventeen hundred years can only be compared with a criminal destroying all evidence through murder, intimidation and brainwashing in order to look good.
To paint a negative picture of other people in order to enhance your own image, by misrepresentation and falsifying the truth and distorting their tales or telling only a part of the story, is the action of a criminal.
You state accurately that the pyramids of Egypt were not the first impressive structures, that they were predated by the earlier civilizations of Mesopotamia. These earlier civilizations were the Sumerians, and you have the gall to refer to the tower of Babel, stating the tower of Babel was probably the first such structure. As we have seen, the Sumerians also predated the Hebrews, and prior to Abraham, the tales are all Sumerian. The tower of Babel was not as described in the Bible. Sumerian architecture cannot be evaluated through the records of the Bible.
The records of Egypt which describe the advent of the Hyksos cannot by the furthest stretches of the imagination be said to be self-glorification. Yet, you stated that the Egyptians wrote only to eulogize their own greatness.
You should however be congratulated for accurately depicting the part of the papyrus which report that the Nile was filled with blood, and a plague had entered Egypt due to the Barbarians of the east. These were the Barbarians "eulogized" in the Bible as Israelites plus a few other tribes of Canaanites. This record is where the Hebrews got their inspiration from about the plagues which their God inflicted on the land of Egypt.
Your first lesson is far from an accurate description of events. It is a lesson of biased opinion where your excuses and explanations do not measure up. Like your God, you are not being honest. Like your God, accuracy is sacrificed for self glorification and importance. You do not need to mislead. Telling your opinion and telling it as an opinion would not make it wrong. Distorting fact to eulogize the evil dragon of the Old Testament you worship makes it a crime of the highest order. It is a crime against the spirit, the only crime which can never be atoned for.
Ahmoses pursued the Canaanites/Hyksos to a town called Sheruhen where, after a siege of three years, the Egyptians defeated the army. Sheruhen is possibly Tall al-Far'ah but more likely, it was the fabled Jericho. You neglect to tell the writers the fact which is more than abundantly made clear by recent archeological discoveries as well as by Egyptian records that, according to the Bible, the time Moses allegedly left Egypt corresponds very well with the time Ahmoses drove the Hyksos out of Egypt and not at all with the alleged biblical story.
You omit telling the reader the fact that the Egyptians did not only vanquish Sheruhen about 1,550 B.C.E. but that they conquered the entire area now called Palestine and more. Then they held it for a few hundred years. This makes the biblical story of the conquering of Palestine by the Israelite a fairy tale. You omit looking at mountains of data in order to justify your tale.
That is falsification of data because all your scholars are aware of this fact. To call it brainwashing is too light. It is a blatant distortion of past history to eulogize a doctored up story. Another crime against the spirit of Man. In fact, it is treason against all your followers which expect you to correctly relate material.
You state that while in the "Tel el Amarna letters," there is a reference to the Hapirus, they could not have been the Hebrews which we know of since they were known from northern Syria to Babylon, so these must refer to someone else. Well, here goes your bubble again. You sure do want to defend your theories. The Hapirus were not really a true race, they were a social class.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, they were bandits, mercenaries, vagabonds and peddlers. These were referred to from about 2,000 B.C.E. until about 1,200 B.C.E. All Hapirus/Hebrews were not Israelites, but the Canaanite tribe known as Israelites was known as Hapirus.
Next you come with the statement that because Israel was mentioned on a stele erected by the Pharaoh Merneptah it disproves the theory by some biblical scholars that the Exodus took place during the reign of Rameses II. As usual, you tell only enough of the story to please your opinions shrouding the masses in the cloak of darkness designed by your infamous God.
Encyclopedia Britannica reports that twelve generations from Moses to Samuel, if the time as is stated in the Bible was 480 years, this would be 40 years per generation, and the true generations were probably more like 25 years. The Encyclopedia does not suggest that 40 years could have been symbolic for the worshippers of En-Ki, but it should be kept in mind. 25 years was figured because it was the only place in the history where the Exodus could be fitted with any semblance of accuracy. After all, the Egyptians ruled the entire Palestinian area until about 1,250 B.C.E. You are again just talking half truths and outright lies.
The next point which you conveniently omit mentioning is the fact that the Israelites mentioned was an extremely small Canaanite tribe and instead you call them established in Israel.
From an Egyptian Stele, the successor of Rameses II, Merneptah (1213-1203) conducted a campaign in Canaan where he met an insignificant tribe known as Israelites, and this is the only time the Israelites are mentioned in Egyptian literature. Merneptah conquered Ashkelon, Geezer, Yenoam, and one of the tribes in Yenoam is the Israelites mentioned. 1 Kings 9:16, "For Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and taken Geezer and burned it with fire, and slain the Canaanites that dwelled in the city, and given it for a present unto his daughter Solomon's wife."
This is the campaign mentioned on the stele, and you also neglect to tell your "lambs" that the pharaohs daughter, married to king Solomon, was given the city by the Pharaoh 150 years before Solomon. The Hebrews were about as bad when it came to correlate time and events as you are. Do not look surprised. The person who was referred to in the "legend of Solomon" in the Bible was no Israelite or Hebrew king. At this time in history, it was the practice among Hittite and Egyptian Kings to marry each other's daughters as a symbol of the treaty between the two kingdoms.
1 Chr. 14:16, "David therefore did as God commanded him and they smote the host of the Philistines from Gibeon even to Gazer." If that was correct, along with the rest of your allegations, David would not have had any Philistines to smite in Gazer, and if Solomon came afterwards no Canaanites would have been in Gazer for the Egyptian King to smite and the city could not have been given as a present by the Egyptian Pharaoh as it would already have been Israelite. Let us start straightening out some of the shambles. David came after Solomon. David was Canaanite. Solomon was a composite. There was no one man who was Solomon. He was made up out of an assortment of characters from the Near East, including Hittite kings and Egyptian Pharaohs, Canaanite rulers and a Greek lawgiver. See also 1 Sam. 6:17 and 2 Sam. 1:20.
You also report the story of Moses in Egypt and the tale of the basket as something factual. You suggest the name Moses was originally Hapi-Moses and this is not too bad. But the fact is the Israelites celebrated Moses as the emerging serpent which is what his name means in Sumerian, from Mus-e. For the significance of the serpent refers to Sumerian, Egyptian and Canaanite mythology.
You go on to state again that Egyptian history is not history as such, but a boasting of their accomplishments. What about the Israelites? They had no history of their own, and plagiarized the histories of the people whom they came into contact with.
You again state Shishak conquered Jerusalem as stated in 1 Kings 14:25. Again you tell but a portion of the story. He conquered most of Palestine. You totally neglect to mention anything which would shed an unfavorable light on the Israelites as you are accusing the Egyptians of doing. Shishak did not have to fight Jerusalem. All other Palestinian cities were such easy pray that the King of Jerusalem handed over to Shishak all the treasure in exchange for him leaving them in peace. Further, you neglect to mention that Shishak was the Pharaoh who reigned but a few scant years after Solomon.
Lesson two: The Egyptian Empire. Your first question here correctly identifies the Egyptian king Ahmoses as the Pharaoh which drove the Hyksos/Israelites out of Egypt. Now look at the name of this pharaoh! Where does the Ah before Moses come from? Right, the name is exactly the same name as Moses would be when written in Egyptian, and the "Ah" and the "I" instead of "e" was used to separate the name from the Hebrew hero.
The Hebrews spun their tale of the Exodus around the figure of Ahmoses in order to give it impact in antiquity. The tale as reported in the Bible today is ridiculous. One generation after Solomon allegedly married the daughter of the Pharaoh. If that was true, Shishak would hardly have invaded Palestine.
You state that Jeremiah predicted the fall of Egypt (Jer. 44:30) which is as accurate as me predicting Napoleon will loose at Waterloo.
In Eze. 30:13 and 29:15, Ezekiel also predicted the fall of the fallen Egypt. Ezekiel is not Hebrew prophesy as you would like us to understand it today. Ezekiel, as has been discovered at Ugarit, is a rewriting of Ancient Canaanite traditions and legends. The best illustration of the transfer of the Canaanite material into the book of Ezekiel we read in the Bible today can be had by correlating it with the material found at Qumran where the Essenes better show the transfer. As an illustration, even better than Ezekiel is Isaiah. When are you going to become honest enough to release for the public a correct translation of the Isaiah Scrolls from Qumran? Both the one written by Isaiah, and the two by the later Isaiah (Isaiah is only chapters 1-39, then deutero Isaiah 40-55 and Trito Isaiah 55-66.)
Not much can be said about facts like you see them. Like a horse with blinds is not accurate, a horse with blinds looking through a prism at the reflection in a bowed mirror does come awfully close. The way you are distorting factual data weakens a man's faith in the human race.
The end does not justify the means, for the end you will lead your lambs to is total oblivion. Asserting that you are right and every one else is wrong does not do. It is the type of reasoning which cause people to become murderers and rapists. You have no prophets. The God has been silent for two thousand years.
The Hittites. Here you have the gall to mention the fact that only the Bible retained the memory of the Hittites, totally disregarding the fact that the reason for this was the mass destruction and burning of material undertaken by Christians. Today, you no longer destroy material through burning, but hide it from the public through the excuse, "further studies are needed."
You correctly state the Hittites are Canaanites, but neglect to mention the most important fact of all. The God himself states in Ezekiel 16:3 "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 an Hittite." The God goes on to describe the miserable condition of the first Israelite, and how he took care of him and finally in verse eight where, because of this he entered into a covenant with this miserable bastard child which made the Israelite his.
You should be commended for accurately stating the Hittites had very humane laws which they did. You should have mentioned the fact that the Hittites held the opinion that if a man committed a transgression without confessing this, he would punish his family for three generations because of the lies he would have to formulate to justify his violation. This was the origin of confessions as practiced today, however, there has been much lost through time.
The original intent was not to pacify a Deity but improve social standards. Further, there was no punishment of a confessed transgression because the confession itself insured the transgression would not be made again. Any punishment would then justify a new transgression.
Genealogically, we see then in the Bible that the Canaanites were the grandchildren of Noah, and the Hittites were the Children of the Canaanites. How far down the line is not certain, but Abraham knew of them, and even bought his burial plot from them, and many Israelites married Hittite females, as they were of the same race as discussed earlier in this rather lengthy letter.
You commit an unpardonable offense when you scoff at historians saying the Hittites only existed in the pages of the Bible and they laughed at the biblical record of them. The Church is itself to blame for the destruction of the ancient records. The burning of the entire library at Constantinople was but one of these incidents. It is the shame of the Church no more data exist about them. Do not revel in your crimes against humanity or you personally become guilty in the shame. You report very little about the real Hittites and it was one of the few lessons where I did not have to cringe when answering your question sheets. I did not need to use much imagination to formulate acceptable answers.
Lesson Four: Assyria. The same cannot be said about your report or lesson on the Assyrians. You state for example that the enormous ages of the Sumerians prior to the Flood reflect the ages of the biblical patriarchs prior to the Flood. Ten in number. The ten biblical patriarchs from the Bible prior to the Flood in fact reflect the ten earlier Babylonian kings prior to the Flood. The biblical authors relied on Babylonian material such as the Atra-hasis for their information. Prior to the Flood, the kings were Sumerians and not Assyrians. The ages prior to the Flood in the Bible reflect the worshippers of the moon cult. Each year was one month. 931 years, the age of Adam divided by twelve is seventy seven years seven months. This does not indicate the amount of years, but rather the cult. The holy seven as seen in innumerable material is Babylonian and Canaanite in origin.
You do report about king Sargon and his having been sent down the river, a thousand years before Moses, in a reed basket to be rescued and reared as a son. You fail to connect the two. The Hebrew figure Moses was not a real person, and the Hebrew tale of the boy in the reed basket is the tale of Sargon fitted to a later Hebrew cult.
Sargon's dubious birth you also report on, and here again you neglect to correlate it with the dubious birth of the Israelite nation we just looked at. The possibility that the Hebrews were attempting to relate themselves with Sargon by the dubious birth is admittedly doubtful, yet the basket case of the Israelites is not a disputable affair.
You go on to describe the finds at Ebla and again you really diminish the significance of the material. You state that the people living at Ebla were people living with names that were similar to the biblical names and that they had no relation to the biblical figures.
The fact that you do not desire any connections to be found between the Hebrew and Eblaite community is obvious, but that does not make your presuppositions correct. You neglect to mention that names such as David were unheard of in the entire Middle Eastern area until the discoveries at Ebla, and do not connect the two. You state that the discoveries such as the progenitor of the Hebrews from Gen. 11:16, Eber, and the discovery of Ebrium in Ebla gives credence to the names of the biblical genealogies, yet this does not link the two together. This may, as you say, give credence to the genealogies, but the rest of the statement gives no credence to your own abilities.
Sargon started the first dynasty of ancient Mesopotamia. He was Assyrian and not Sumerian. He changed his God from Dagan which we have as the chief God of the Eblaites to En-Lil, the chief God of the Sumerians. These are important facts you leave out and instead, you report the petty squabbles among archaeologists. Then you report more insignificant details about earlier archaeologists. You say no more about the 2,400 era in which Sargon lived, and unanticipated, you reemerge with history 1,500 years later. You do not explain the reason for this leap.
Here, you state the importance of the biblical record in I Kings 18:22. You should refer to the entire context of I Kings 18:14-41. This is where the Canaanite worshippers worshipping Baal are shown that Baal is now in the underworld and the son of El known as Yammu is now the God of the Earth. Yammu, as indicated in the records of Ugarit (Baal II:iv.10), is none other than the Hebrew God YHWH. He is a dragon which we also see in the biblical record of the Hebrew God, and he is the evil son of the "God most high," known as El to all Canaanites. The evil God was whom Baal saved Mankind from when he was resurrected from the dead.
In the Northern Kingdoms there was not much rivalry between Baal and Yammu, but the Southern Kingdoms demonstrably wavered between the worship of Yammu/YHWH and Baal. Such as I Kings 18:27 where Baal is sleeping and must be waken up is amply explained at Ugarit. Here, the God of the fertile fields had to be awaken from the dead every season. The God Mot, another son of El, killed Baal at the end of every season.
Mot, another son of El, could not rule; he was the God of death. His brother Yammu/YHWH ruled in Baal's absence. This dragon God had no wife, so he was jealous of Baal and everyone else (who wanted to marry a dragon?). Yammu/YHWH did not desire to rule only when Baal was in the underworld in the off season and therefore his claim that the most high God (El) had given Judah to him as his lot (Deut. 32:8-9).
You should also have mentioned the fact that in the original text of Deut. 32:8 (Targum Yerushalmi), the Canaanite God El divided his inheritance among his seventy sons. The dragon Yammu/YHWH got Jacob. See also Baal IV. vi 45 from Ugarit.
The battle of Yammu/YHWH is readily seen in light of the newly recovered material. Who would want to worship an evil dragon? Today's Christian and Islam faith is based upon this dragon. Had only his image been reflected on the material about him it would never have come about. How about proposing a British Knight slew this evil dragon while rescuing a princess and saved us all?
You state that both prophets, Nahum and Zephaniah, predicted the fall of Nineveh and its burial. That would be like me in 1994 predicting that Hitler would lose World War II. You are not reporting on historical discoveries and facts. You are weaving your way through the recent finds like a slippery snake. There is no valor in insisting on the accuracy of an erroneous supposition. You are committing a serious crime against all of Mankind.
Lesson Five: Babylon. Your reporting here of historical material such as the Gilgamesh Epic and the Flood is disgraceful. Your omissions and suppositions are enough to make one's stomach turn and one's blood boil. You show absolutely no respect for accuracy. You have no reverence for truth. You are obviously defining truth in the same fashion as the ancient Israelites. Here, truth was the desire of their Evil God. Right or wrong had nothing to do with it. Accuracy had nothing to do with truth. The only thing which mattered was the truth as expressed by this evil Deity.
As you say, George Smith translated the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. The earlier more accurate Epic, the one which the Babylonians got their Epic from is the Sumerian, and I believe Samuel Noah Kramer translated it. From the book "Sumerian Mythology" by S.N. Kramer, page 97, "That the biblical Deluge story is not the original with the Hebrew editors of the Bible has been known now for more than half a century..."
That the biblical story was borrowed from the Babylonian story has been known and is a factual truth since Arno Poebel published his translation of a fragment of the Babylonian version of the Epic in 1914. There are no parallel histories and tales of the Flood as some religious leaders are suggesting. Why do you insist on deceiving the innocent lambs? That the biblical story is borrowed from the Sumerian tale which was borrowed by the Babylonians is obvious. That this does not agree with the tales of the Bible as relayed today does not justify deceiving millions of innocent victims.
According to the Bible, 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. Since the Bible states 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.
Further proof is Jer.11:13 For according to thy cities were thy Gods. Here you have a perfect description of the political system in ancient Sumer. The tale of the Flood in Babylon precedes the Hebrew tale by more than a millennium and the Sumerian tale precedes the Hebrew by more than two. The biblical story reflects the Sumerian society complete with their legends. These are the ones written down in the Bible. The Bible also does not deny the existence of these Sumerian Gods. The Bible verifies that the stories came from the Sumerians. When these stories again see the light of day and are different than the one we read in the Bible we are witnessing the feather chicken syndrome. If the Bible can not stand on the merits of its teachings it is too bad. To justify following tenets which are demonstrably to the detriment of man is a serious crime and if you do not like it and pursue your deceptive teachings you are a criminal of the worst order, you are deceiving the spiritual essence of man, a crime unforgivable.
If you want further proof it is amply evident. This letter cannot be long enough to include it all, but you can read from the tablets of Ugarit. For example, see Baal IV. vii:15, where the rift opened in the heavens to bring about the rain. This is identical to the Hebrew description in Gen. 8:2. and 7:11. Through the Canaanite tales, you can see the evolution of the tale, and then modify it with the fact that the Canaanite tribe known as Israel became a monotheistic religion after the Persian invasion.
I should also mention that the God En-Ki has some features which would have made an association with Yammu possible. En-Ki and Yammu were not the same God. But because of the fact that En-Ki's sacred number was forty, and the frequent association with forty in the Bible, such as the forty years in Sinai, the forty years of David's rule are but to name two of the many incidents. There is ample reason to believe the Israelites could have confused Yammu/YHWH with En-Ki.
You state that the reason for the Flood was because the God saw that the wickedness of Man was great so he decided to bring about the Flood. This is also wrong, Yes that is what your Bible states, but the original which you also are aware of is the Sumerian version, and here the reason was because the Sumerian God En-Lil (who later became the Canaanite El whom the Hebrews also worshipped along with Yammu/YHWH) was fed up with the infernal noise Man made.
The fact that it was the noise which displeased the God and brought about the Flood is verified in the Bible. Gen. 6:3 states: "...My spirit shall not always remain with man..." 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 gods spirit shall not always be violent toward Man would be a nice change. Further on it goes because he is also "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 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. " My wrath shall not always boil toward man because of his noise" or else, "My spirit shall not be forever strong in man because of the noise" would be more correct when it comes to the translation of Gen. 6:3. And this is also the attitude found in the Sumerian documents about En-Lil which were buried in Sumer where the Israelite traditions before Abraham are borrowed from.
The Church is aware of this and this is a fact. For further clarification read Helge S. Kvanvik's "Roots of Apocalyptic." The God of the Israelites was not on the scene at this time. The Israelites were not on the scene at this time. This has been verified through biblical sources already. I do not feel it necessary to go into further elaboration on this at this time. Genesis does not have anything to do with the God of the later Israelites. The God depicted in Genesis is not the jealous God which we can now positively identify as Yammu. The God in Genesis is El. El is the God En-Lil. Terah worshipped the Moon God and Abraham's new God was El.
Furthermore, you use these early records as proof that the biblical record is accurate yet you do not change the tune of your record to reflect this. When you use data to stress the accuracy of your tenets, you have to alter your data to reflect the earlier data you use to verify it. Especially in a case such as this where the data you use is a few thousand years prior to your own.
When you insist the Flood story is based on actual fact you cannot use the biblical data as the data which is accurate, for you as well as I are fully aware of the many emendations to the biblical story.
When you insist the Flood is accurate, and all stories from New Zealand to China, from Mesopotamia to America reflect this you would have to go back to 12,000 B.C.E. as the date of the Flood. There was apparently an enormous Flood back then as discovered by recent research. The only problem with that is that the Bible does not support such an early date for the Flood. Then nothing else is really supported by the Bible either when it comes to history.
Your insistence on the reliability of the Flood story is unbelievable. You look for further evidence and further proof and all you manage to uncover demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the entire tale is an ancient tale handed down through Sumerian traditions later to be written down and carried forward in time through the records of other religious beliefs.
You discover that nothing matches the monotheistic beliefs of the Bible. The fact is it never will. You know as well as I do that the religion of the Hebrews did not become a belief in one God until after the Persian occupation of about 500 B.C.E. You know also that there is no evidence of a monotheistic religion until about 300 B.C.E. among the Israelites.
You know as well as I do that there is an enormous amount of evidence that the Israelites worshipped the Canaanite Gods in all the recent archeological material uncovered by recent archeological finds in Palestine and Israel. Why do you deny it? Is the power of the mighty Church more important to you than the Spiritual Essence which each and every one of us really is? If that is the case, you are the worst criminals which ever existed on this planet and the Church would be most accurately depicted as organized crime at its zenith.
You do use geological data in your insistence on the accuracy on the biblical rendition of the Flood, but you forget all about time in relation to these deposits. Tell the whole story.
When you tell only the part of the story which eulogize your own theories and leave out essential parts you become guilty of what you accuse the Egyptians of doing!
Then you go on with the Tower of Babel story as if it was a religious story of yours. The Tower of Babel story is not Jewish. It is most emphatically Sumerian. Nothing you can say will change that. Another thing you totally neglect to state is that the Tower of Babel story along with the Flood story are demonstrable proofs of the accuracy of the Gnostic theories found at Nag Hammadi.
The Gnostics state that the evil Archon (God) of the Hebrews arranged to have Man's knowledge covered by a "cloak of darkness" (ignorance). Through the Flood, he killed the physical bodies and trapped the spirit which he implanted with false concepts and ideas whereby he confused the "tongue of man." The tongue of man was not the spoken word. It was the harmony spoken by Man.
When En-Lil brought about the Flood, and En-Ki followed this up by confusing the tongue of Man, this is a perfect illustration of this Gnostic theory, and the theory is backed up by material from a few thousand years before the Bible was written.
Next you go on to discuss Nimrod and Babylon as the worlds first city. You do not make yourself clear. You neglect to state the fact that Nimrod the hunter who was the first great hunter in the eyes of the lord has been positively identified as none other than the Sumerian great, Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was part man and part God, and you should get a better idea about him through I Enoch. By the way, the Church used I Enoch as a part of the Bible until its ridiculous ideas became untenable. It is your heritage. 1 Enoch is considered by some scholars as old or older than Genesis. For example, Milik claims Gen. 6:1-4 depends on 1 Enoch and not the other way around.
Read the Gilgamesh story and get a better idea about your heritage. In his search for eternal life, when Gilgamesh encountered Ziusudra, the biblical Noah, he discovered eternal life was not such an attractive state after all. He was however able to retrieve a plant which would give him eternal life, yet this was eaten by a snake before Gilgamesh ate it. Now look at this logically. What is the outstanding feature that snakes have? Yes, they change their skin. This Gilgamesh tale reflects the idea which all ancients were aware of. That the spiritual essence which was Man did not die. And a great many were also aware of the fact that like the snake changing his skin, Man just changed his body. This again supports Gnostic ideas and not the Christian concepts.
You mention Hammuraby and his legal codes. You relate these to the law of Moses, for which you should be commended. But nowhere do you mention the best law codes of them all: The Sumerian law codes from before the Flood which have no superstition involved. The just and fair laws. The tablets were about medicine and had nothing to do with Gods or demons. You must fear the truth terribly to omit such an essential clue to our inheritance from your supposed historical look at the past. The snake weaving his way around truth is useless. A religious order imitating the snake is a liability to all of Mankind.
You state God could not condone injustice with regards to Hagar in the Bible. Have you not read the Bible? If you say there is a just God in the Old Testament your interpretation of justice is perverted. Exo. 32:10-15, "And the lord repented of the evil he had intended to do..." How could a God who was not evil intend to do evil? Here Moses is only able to avoid the disaster of his God wiping out the entire race and then making a great nation of Moses alone by telling his God that the Egyptians would state that for evil purposes did he bring the people into the desert to wipe out one and all.
Isaiah 30:27 relates where the Lord is coming from afar, burning with anger, his lips full of indignation and his tongue a devouring fire.
Jeremiah 42:6 is a promise made to follow the lord whether he is good or evil by the followers of the lord, just so that it may go well with them. In Jeremiah 42:10, the Lord admits he did evil toward the Israelites... "I repent me of the evil that I have done unto you." A good God does not ever have to be excused of the evil he has done.
In Jeremiah 42:17, if they go to Egypt, none will escape the evil of the Lord. Evil deeds are the threats the God uses in order to make his people follow him. When the Church states free choice was a part of our original composition, it does not take into account the facts of the biblical material. This God wanted no free choice, he wanted submission.
Ezekiel 4:12, "And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shall bake it with dung that comes out of man, in their sight." This is a proclamation made by the lord. After pleading by Ezekiel, where he tells the lord what a good worshipper and great follower of the law he has been the Lord finally relents as we read in Ezekiel 4:15, "Then he said unto me, lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shall prepare thy bread therewith."
In Ezekiel 7:2-27, the Lord talks of his coming to judge the Israelites. In 7:5, he states about himself "...An evil, an only evil, behold is come." Not very flattering, but what is flattering about the Lord depicted in the Old Testament other than the evil he is capable off.
Yes, it has been justified by talking about the evil the Israelites did, but this holds no water. The followers did the best they could to follow the Lord. The Israelites did not do evil other than the evil which the Lord had demanded of them.
Ezekiel chapter 25 tells of all the evil the Lord is going to do. Not only to the Israelites, but Edom and Moab and Ammonites, and they shall all know he is the Lord because of the evil which he does is the conclusion of the chapter.
Amos 3:6, "...shall there be evil in a city, and the lord hath not done it? In 2 Kings 2:23, the mercy of the lord brings forth two bears which kill 42 children for mobbing one of the prophets, calling him bald and old and all those despicable things children speak which they deserve to die because of.
How could anyone who have little children dwelling in their neighborhood, or possibly having children who are a little on the lively side read this and realize that here, the lord willfully has bears devour 42 little brats just because they called an old man old and bald?
We could go on. We could go on and on and on. There is no good Deity depicted in the Old Testament. As a matter of fact, we would have to really justify the behaviors of most ancient Gods if we wanted to see real goodness in them. The God of the children of Israel displays anything but love for the Israelites. In some places, it is real hatred which is reflected. In other places, it is contempt.
The God of the Israelites does fit the description of the evil God of the Gnostic legends. The God of the Old Testament also fit the evil dragon Yammu/Yawwu. The only goodness anywhere in the Old Testament is that of Man. The Canaanites were aware of the fact that the chaotic situation of the world was because of the Deities. Anyone who can read what the Bible states as far as the Old Testament is concerned would have to question the morals of the Deity. From teaching the Israelites to steal and helping them accomplish this when they leave Egypt (Exo. 11:2-3) to murdering innocent children, no gross act seems to be too immoral for this God. Hitler looks like a saint next to the Deity you use to teach Mankind ethics and morals. Wake up!!
You state also that Abraham's concubine, Hagar, had a son by Abraham who was the progenitor of the Arabs. This is utterly ridiculous. The Arabs most assuredly existed at the time of Abraham, and it is also a fact that the Benjaminites existed at the time of Abraham. Your recording of events are no more reliable than your Deity!
You tell us that the Bible teaches that the son shall not be punished for the sins of the father and on the other hand, that all the offspring of Adam are but mortals because of the sins of Adam. Where are your heads at? Do I need to illustrate the innumerable injustices of the Hebrew Deity against countless people because of the transgression of a few? Are you all so immersed in the excuses pertaining to the biblical literature that you are unable to perceive the idiocy of what you are teaching?
Picture an alien civilization coming to Earth to study us. Imagine yourselves giving these aliens a copy of the King James version of the Bible and telling these aliens that these teachings are what the people on this Earth are using as the guide for moral and ethical behavior. First of all, if an alien civilization appeared they would have been appalled at the amount of crime and corruption on this planet. Our crime record is nothing to be proud of which I am sure you will agree with. If these aliens then studied our Bible with the view that this is what we used as a guide in our lives, you can rest assured their astonishment would be of a different nature. They would be amazed that the crime and corruption of the planet is not worse than it is. The reason it is not any worse than it is comes from the fact that all Mankind is basically good and just. It is his God who is evil and the God insisted man is evil in order to justify his own actions. The Canaanites of 1400 B.C.E. in Ugarit knew that Yammu/YHWH was evil. I know he is evil. When are you going to admit that a God who has not one decent deed to his credit is not a decent God? Do not give me the one about him sacrificing his son on the cross. First of all, the sacrifice Jesus made was wearing a physical body and secondly, he saved Man by showing him that life was not over after the death of the physical body.
You state Isaiah prophesied the fall of Babylon, (Isaiah 13:19-22). In lieu of the fact that Isaiah is written from 550 until about? B.C.E. but no authentic records are available of his prophesies until much later, I see no reason to believe you. The biblical record you quote may or may not be valid. Isaiah seems to have originally been a reflection of the Canaanite worship practices at Ugarit. The innumerable parallels with the documents at Ugarit cannot be disregarded and the fact that now for nearly fifty years, you have had a copy of the writings of Isaiah which does date to before the common era (B.C.E.) from Qumran but refuse to publish it can only mean you are hiding the more original material from the public.
You indeed get a failing grade on your report on the Babylonians. You are totally immune to all the biblical parallels found at Mari. Weaving your way as a serpent without conscience. You neglect to mention that the laws of Hammuraby were based upon earlier laws from the Sumerians. You fail to state that the Sumerian Dumuzi and the Babylonian Tammuz, who had ceased to be a major God of the Babylonians and Canaanites at the time, were still worshipped by the commoners (Ezek. 8:14). You do not mention anything about Tammuz in Ezek. 7:14 or the reference in Isa.17:10.
You omit to describe the ruin of the Temple of Tammuz (Psalm 74:3-9). Isa. 14:9-19 and Ezek. 32:20-31 both reflect the Gods of fertility, Tammuz and Baal who are being kept trapped in the underworld until the next growing season. Objectivity is not your forte. In Hos. 14:8, you have a borrowing from the Tammuz cult where the wife of Tammuz who has been unfaithful comes back to Tammuz when he again ascends from the netherworld. Ephraim is here portraying himself as the fir tree no longer having anything to do with idols. This type of mythological duplication is innumerable. It did not come directly from the Babylonians to the Israelites, it came through the Canaanites. You yourselves use the Encyclopedia Britannica as a reference when it will enhance your image, but you totally refrain from discussing the fact that this "Reliable reference book" states that the religion of the Israelites was virtually identical to the Canaanite form of worship until at least the 8th century B.C.E. Honesty is telling the whole story and not a distorted version only to make yourselves look good.
To weep for Tammuz was indeed a sin at the time of Hosea, Ezekiel and Isaiah. The women were then supposed to weep for Baal who had descended to the netherworld in the off season. And for more reasons than one. When Baal was in the underworld, they were governed by the evil dragon Yammu/YHWH.
The New Moon Festivals and Sabbaths and the obsession with seven as a sacred number is derived from Babylonian religions. They were adopted by the Canaanites but came from the Babylonians. If you taught and did not only brainwash, you would have reported this fact. For a complete picture on the Hebrew forms of prophesies, you should refer to the tablets of Mari. These were written down more than fifteen hundred years prior to the Bible and reflect exactly the prophetic situation of the Bible. For more knowledge of the Benjaminites, refer to the Babylonian tablets at Mari. For the Hebrew New Moon festival, refer to the tablets of Mari. For the Hebrew Cult of the Dead, refer to the tablets at Mari. To say you did not report on it because more studies are needed is stupid. To say you forgot would be an insult to the intelligence of your students. To say it is not relevant would be a blatant lie. So what excuse do you have? NONE! You are brainwashing, not educating.
The most ancient of cities was Eridu. The Babylonian Adam was Adapa. The model of Man was created by Ea (Sumerian En-Ki). You did not even report on him. Ea was supposedly the only God friendly toward Man. It would have been natural for Abraham to wish to identify with En-Ki. He could very well have had En-Ki as his God.
The fact that he also worshipped the Canaanite El (Babylonian Bel) would have been natural as El was the chief God.
Your failures are uncountable. How could you fail to mention that all the ancient demons had names in Babylonian as well as Sumerian religions? To know the name of the demon was to have power over the demon. Was it because you were afraid that the lambs you are misleading would then realize the fact that the real reason the Hebrew God had to keep his name secret? Yammu, the evil God, like all evil Gods was a demon. To know his name was to have power over him. To see his face was to despise him.
You fail utterly because you do not divulge the depth the Hebrews owed to the Babylonian Creation Epics. Nowhere do you mention the Atra-hasis or Enuma Elish. You fail to disclose the fact that the tale of Job is without a doubt a Babylonian rendition of an earlier Sumerian lamentation. That the Song of Songs comes from Babylon and innumerable Psalms are Babylonian copies of still earlier Sumerian originals. The list goes on and on, but this letter is getting rather long.
Lesson Six: The Neo-Babylonian Empire. Now here you report on the great Daniel. Where do we begin? Daniel of the time of Nebuchadnessar was not the Daniel we read about in the Bible as we all know. All biblical scholars agree, and the reason you teach as you do shows complete contempt for the knowledge of your poor followers. Daniel was indeed a great figure, and his name was used by a great many ancient prophets. The biblical rendition of Daniel was written in 170 B.C.E. a fact which can not be denied by anything but outright fraud. See Helge S. Kvanvik's "Roots of Apocalyptic" in the second part called, Son of Man. See also the Encyclopedia Britannica. That Daniel was a popular figure whose original texts date way back is amply illustrated by the countless parallels to non-biblical literature found in such places as Ugarit.
When you are talking about a Daniel from the time of Nebuchadnessar, you talk of the Canaanite Daniel. Daniel and the literature in Daniel can also readily be seen to have been of Canaanite origin in spite of the later Jewish and Christian rewriting of the Book.
In Dan. 1:18-20, Daniel is found to be superior to all other magicians and enchanters. This is no surprise. The difference between the Canaanite and Neo-Babylonian beliefs were virtually non existent. You forget also to mention the fact that it was not Nebuchadnessar whom Daniel brought back to the true God of Heaven and Earth as evident through the recent finds in Qumran, but Nabonidus. You also neglect to show that it was the Moon God Nanna/Sin whom Nabonidus was brought back to worship indicating thus that Daniel also worshipped Nanna/Sin.
I was glad to see you bring up the dream of the King which was interpreted by Daniel. The dream you say was gold, silver, bronze and iron representing the Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians and Romans. All this you have the gall to write on a piece of paper knowing it is inaccurate. Being trapped by your earlier lies is no excuse for the continuation of perjury. An honest person when he discovers what he has stated is a lie apologizes and the situation is rectified. Only a criminal continues lying.
The Encyclopedia Britannica reveals these four metals as the metals of the Cosmic Tree from Zoroastrianism. I could take the material which shows the original four kingdoms from innumerable reliable material, but for the sake of confounding, I use a book written by one of your own, "Qumran and Apocalyptic" by Florentino Garcia Martinez. On page 144, he reports the original four kingdoms were Assyria, Media, Persia and Macedonia. He then tells us the Roman empire was later added as a fifth. Your use and falsification of the Danielic material is no joke. You again knowingly lie in order to deceive and lend credence to your beliefs. Hold your faith together with lies and when it blows up in your face it will have unprecedented consequences.
In Dan. 2:20, "Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his" has a direct parallel in the Ugarit tablets where Anatu says the same to the Canaanite God El. Quite possibly it was El who was worshipped by Daniel. The Daniel who got Nabonidus back to worshipping Nanna/Sin is not necessarily the same. The name Daniel was used to lend credence to a great many ancient so called prophets. YHWH of the Bible is most assuredly not the God of any Daniel other than the one written in 170 B.C.E. You report Nebuchadnessar as falling on his face in front of Daniel and worshipping the God of Daniel as the God of Gods and the Lord of Lords and a Revealer of Mysteries. All these epithets would also indicate that the God whom Daniel was receiving his help from was indeed the Canaanite El. Later on you report on the God most High as the God of Daniel and this too is the Canaanite God El. What you are really revering in these prophesies is the wisdom of this Canaanite God whom the Hebrews of later years so detested.
You report on the unerring accuracy of the prediction, yet you omit crediting the proper God with such a marvelous feet. Prophesies of the past are a divine manifestation. Memory and the ability to reflect on the past are a divine character of us all.
You go on to tell the innocent that 60 seconds in a minute and sixty minutes to the hour and 360 degrees we inherited from the Babylonians. Again you have not read history. We inherited this from the earlier Sumerians.
Then you discuss the merits of the prophesies of the Canaanite God El, the Canaanite savior Baal, and the Canaanite "son of Man," but I have no desire to go into that here. Daniel is not as you portray him. In this lesson, you have extolled the virtues of a Canaanite seer. You are aware of the fact he is a Canaanite seer for you must have read the material available to me. You must be able to see and understand. Again you deceive.
Lesson Seven: The Medo-Persian Empire. How well you weasel your way through this! First of all, you state Isaiah predicted 150 years before Cyrus II that he would liberate the Jews and restore to them their homeland. You neglect to state that Isaiah, chapter 45 was not written by Isaiah. Chapters 1 through 39 were written by Isaiah and 40 through 55 are referred to as deutero Isaiah. Trito Isaiah is 56-66. The author of deutero Isaiah lived after the conquest by Cyrus II and would have no problem predicting his victory or his name. Cyrus II is referred to as the shepherd of the Jewish God and this was quite possibly the case when the material about him was written. The only part you neglect to mention is that the God he was the shepherd of was not the current or any previous Hebrew God. The Hebrews adopted the teachings of the Persians lock, stock and barrel. Later on we see the development of the new Hebrew religion which now became Zoroastrianism modified by the ancient Canaanite religions. Zoroastrianism is not only an intrinsic part of the Hebrew religion but also of Christianity.
Here, you should be commended for reporting the fact that the "wise men" of the time of Christ were of the Religion which came from Zoroastrianism, namely Mithraism, and also accurately relating the fact that the Christians got Dec.25 as the day to worship the birth of Christ from them.
Your report on the Persians is, to put it mildly, incomplete. I am not going to elaborate on the numerous omissions which you made that so clearly influenced the Jewish and Christian religions. In your lesson you said nothing. You did not make yourself clear and did not give them the credit they deserved, but as we have looked at your earlier lessons and what you did, it does not surprise me.
Lesson Eight: The Sumerians. Of all the disgraces I have seen in your report, that of the Sumerians is perhaps the greatest of all. I already covered the Sumerians and will not further elaborate on them. You did not report on the Sumerians at all, and obviously have no respect for anything other than the truth your God would have liked to have seen. The truth you report on reminds me of the truth an alcoholic brags about in front of his friends in a bar. The things he relates about happened to someone, but most of the tales are tales about people other than himself which he has borrowed to make himself look more interesting.
Lesson Nine: Petra. Why did you bother at all about this insignificant community when so many more relevant archeological sites are there to be reported on? How could you have totally neglected the Nag Hammadi manuscripts?
Lesson Ten: Israel. Now this is a different story. With the material recently made available regarding the Israelites and early beliefs, I was not certain you would attempt to justify the finds.
You state Abraham was born about 1,950 B.C.E. I have already looked closely enough at Abraham. You then affirm that the Moabites and Ammonites were born from incest between Lot and his two daughters. This is another impossibility. If the first Moabite came about after 1,900 B.C.E. there could hardly have been enough of them to warrant the punitive measures meted out by Rameses II only 600 years later. Theoretically it would be possible for people to multiply that fast, but only under ideal conditions. The Ammonite kingdom of the thirteenth century would thus deny this as a possibility.
Not only this should be considered when reflecting on the situation. No really new peoples emerged in the area after the second millenium B.C.E. Those who came from outside the Near Eastern area were quickly absolved into current peoples unless they were enormous invading hordes of peoples and then they had roots from other places.
If Abraham was born in 1,950 B.C.E., his son Isaac who was born when Abraham was one hundred years old would have been born about 1,850. Isaac's son Jacob was born when Isaac was 41 which means he was born about 1,809. Jacob was changed to Israel, and he was the father of all the tribes of Israel. In Egypt (Gen. 47:7), Israel is again referred to as Jacob. Here it is told he was a hundred and thirty years old when he came to Egypt which would have made his arrival in 1,679. This means that the Pharaoh which he conversed with was a fellow Canaanite, referred to as a Hyksos by the Egyptians. 70 People from the tribe of Israel were in Egypt in 1,679 B.C.E. (again indicating the Babylonian 7 instead if the 40 of En-Ki). According to your records, they stayed there for 215 years at which time over two million of them left Egypt at the time of Exodus.
From 70 to over two million in 215 years is not at all unlikely if you talked about rabbits who had few predators. For a human population to multiply that fast it would have to double its population every 15 years. A country such as Norway for example does not double its population in a hundred years.
It was clearly not the Israelites who left Egypt at the time of Exodus as we have seen. It was the entire Canaanite tribes who lived in Egypt, and they were rightly chased out of Egypt by the pharaoh, and the time of this chase corresponds with the biblical Exodus. A few minor errors were made in the recording of the incident. We have the forty years of the sojourn. This was a fabrication obviously. Forty represented the God to whom they were dedicated! En-Ki. The fleeing people did not need to take Jericho. Jericho was their stronghold. The Egyptian Pharaoh Ahmoses (the spelling is the same as that of Moses) did need to take Jericho, and he did. He also took the entire land of Canaan and ruled it for a few hundred years after the Hyksos fled Egypt. That is what archeology really divulges. Now could Moses have reflected the Egyptian Pharaoh?
This theory does not at all depend on Moses being identified with the Egyptian Pharaoh Ahmoses who came to the Hyksos Pharaoh of the time and demanded he leave, but the theory would be interesting to look at. There are a few implications here which would entail a rewrite of all biblical material. Yet, all biblical material needs to be rewritten anyway so this would just be one more area to look at. (I wrote this prior to discovering another mountain of data identifying the Moses of the Bible with Ahmoses of the Egyptians.)
Most plausible is the possibility the name only was borrowed by subsequent religious leaders when they changed from the worship of the Canaanites and with the incorporation of the God of the Israelites which most assuredly was En-Ki/Ea, whom they traded for the Canaanite Water God Yammu. Yammu, who at that time was referred to as Yawwu which is phonetically the same as YHWH, was the God whom the Canaanite tribe of Israel decided to worship. They were not the only ones who worshipped this Canaanite dragon. During the part of the year when no growth was possible in ancient Canaan, most Canaanites worshipped this God, and they were then saved by Baal when the next rainy season came about from the clutches of this God whom the Canaanites referred to as evil. Most Canaanites did not refer to him as a God even though he was the son of the God most high, El. They referred to him as a demon. Many Canaanites worshipped El rather than Baal or Yammu. When Baal was defeated by Mot, the god of death, his brother Yammu took over. This was a time of mourning.
Now we should look at this in just a little bit different perspective. The Exodus we looked at was the Exodus of the Hyksos. It was not necessarily the Exodus which gave the Israelites their God Yammu/YHWH. In fact it probably was not. It was when the Israelites left Egypt however, and if our dates are correct, it would have been 1,464.
Now the story about when the Israelites started reckoning their 215 years from, and when exactly Abraham was born is in doubt. It seems the tribe of Israel was among the Hyksos who came to Egypt. The Encyclopedia Britannica gives the year 1786-1633 as the time when this incursion of the Hyksos took place. Should we fit the Israelite tribe in as one of the earlier tribes of the Canaanites which arrived at Egypt and place them there in 1782 it would not be against any Old Testament records and it would not contradict any historical records.
1,782 minus the 215 years which is given in the Bible as the time when the Israelites sojourned in Egypt would bring us to the year 1,567. 1,567 is the year given in the Encyclopedia Britannica as the year in which the Hyksos were chased out of Egypt.
The problem amongst historians and biblical scholars has been that the Egyptians chased the Hyksos out of Egypt. The Egyptians followed and conquered all of Palestine. They held Palestine for over 300 years until about 1,250 B.C.E. so most have been placing the Exodus in the year 1,290 because 1,290 minus the forty years of sojourn in the desert would bring us to 1,250. Then this leaves another problem. In 1,250, it was not the Palestinians and the Canaanites which were driven out of the promised land, it was the Egyptians.
Here we do not have that problem. After the Egyptians conquered Palestine, they took slaves. Prior to the conquest there were very few slaves in Egypt, but there was a great increase in slaves after Ahmoses. The twelve tribes of Israel which are given to us in the Bible were fabricated after the Persian invasion.
As is amply indicated by archeological evidence from Palestine, Hebrew or the Israelite religion was virtually indistinguishable from the Canaanite religion until about 700 B.C.E. and then only because that was when the alleged prophets changed their faith. What the prophets originally said we may never know. The most recent records from Qumran have dug up the Isaiah Scrolls. One set from Isaiah, chapters 1 to 39 and two sets from pseudo Isaiah which are chapters 40 onwards. It takes no imagination to realize why the Church so adamantly hold on to these records and refuse to publish them.
So from the time Egypt conquered Palestine until they were evicted in 1,250, they took prisoners. These were made slaves, some of these would have escaped. Not the two million, I would venture to speculate about two hundred Israelites would have been the amount which escaped shortly before 1,250 and gave us "the Law of Moses." They would not have been in the desert 40 years. We know from Ugarit that the Canaanites were great at exaggerating and there are no reason to believe the Israelite tribe of Canaan was any different.
These were fugitives, what they really put together and really experienced we cannot know, but they would have been in Palestine about 1,250 with the rest of the tribes of Canaan including the rest of the Israelites to help evict the Egyptians and liberate their homeland.
The above theory is not necessarily exactly what happened. It is by far more sound than any other theory proposed so far, and the plus with it is that it does not violate any real records of Palestine or Egypt. The reason every time a stone is turned over by an archeologist in Israel the Jewish tenets become less tenable is because they have nothing to do with divine law, justice or the Spirit of Man.
Man is a Soul, therefore a part of the ultimate God. When we base a religion on faith and excuses we kill the Spirit of Man and that which is of a real God. Do not misconstrue this and mix it with anger. There is no anger at what has happened. It would not do any good. Those believing implicitly in the scriptures are all victims. Victims should be helped anger would only destroy.
The danger with this long letter is that I could be destroying a readers beliefs. You may feel a vacuum building, yet the vacuum will be filled without your knowledge. Now back to your lesson ten. Now someone found the tell into which Joseph was thrown. It is difficult not to ridicule such a statement. Now Joseph if you want to bring the name back was the eight son, not the one which should have ruled, and in passing it may be noted that the Canaanite literature is full of instances where the eight son became the one whom the brothers had to bow down for. This in reality was no exception in the ancient literature, it was almost as if the oldest son became the head of the family unless the father produced eight or more in which case the eight became the ruler.
Now you attempt to show in your lessons how the Exodus, and the destruction of the Palestine cities fit with the biblical Exodus. This is not nice. Try as you might, you cannot do it, so you come up with excuses. I do not blame you for this. You have to fit your Deity and his scriptures into everything. The problem is it just doesn't work. The destruction of all Palestinian cities coincide with the Exodus from Egypt of the Hyksos and are dated by archaeologists around 1,500 or so B.C.E. There is not one which coincide with the biblical record and I may remind you it is not nice to alter the facts to suit your pet theories.
You try to fit Jericho into the cities destroyed by Israel. If anything, Jericho was destroyed by the Egyptians about 1,550 or possibly earlier. When the Israelites arrived in Jericho the city was already in ruin. No amount of doctoring of data can bring this city back at the time of the Israelites. The Encyclopedia Britannica and Amihai Mazar, in his book "Archeology of the land of the Bible," date the destruction of Jericho at 1,550 B.C.E. which fits perfectly with the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt. Evidence is evidence, and if one has to adjust the mind at times to see the implications of this, so be it. The pain is short lived and it permits knowledge to replace ignorance. You cannot continually alter data to fit your theories it is not ethical.
You go on and talk about the cities excavated in Israel, but do not give the time of their destruction. This is now understandable because they were destroyed before the Exodus. Then you talk about the items found in Israel, and here you leave out the essentials. You leave out for example the items of old found which talk about Yammu/YHWH and his Asherah.
Now this was a concept held by the early Israelites. They gave their dragon God a female companion and this is contrary to mythology. According to data from Canaanite locations such as Ugarit, Yammu had no wife which was one reason for his jealousy. Ugly dragons had problems acquiring wives, and the possibility exist that the sons of God who in your former biblical Book I Enoch that married the daughters of man were also originally dragons. I Enoch tells how it became necessary for the sons of God to acquire bodies similar to the Sons of Man in order to seduce the daughters of Man.
But as mentioned, the Hebrew God had a female companion in those days indicating the Israelites were not totally aware of the Canaanite legends of the God. Then on the other hand, if they really confused Yammu with En-Ki/Ea, this would have been understandable for as the Sumerian tales depict, En-Ki's sex life was anything but one of abstinence.
You go on to state King Saul was found lacking by his God. You realize of course this means the God could not possibly have been omniscient. 1 Sam. 18:10 indicates an evil spirit came from the God of Saul causing him to prophesy. A good God would never be one who doted out evil spirits on his followers no matter how lacking the follower was. Here we also see that it was the God who was to blame as he elected the wrong man King, and then to blame the King for the mistake of the God is ridiculous. Also, evil comes only from evil. Only an evil spirit can cause evil spirits to enter a body. To try explaining such a thing away only lowers yourself and has nothing to do with reality. A true God is one which the followers need not explain away the actions of. Your excuses are very much reminiscent of the excuses an alcoholic's wife uses to justify the actions of her husband. The husband is sick and needs help and the same is true for the wife.
You go on to talk about the kingships of David and Solomon. These Kings were not Israelites as has been mentioned. Your further discussion of the archeology uncovered is disappointing. It is as if when you see nothing which will enhance the credibility of your faith to report, you report nothing at all.
Then you state in 880 B.C.E. Omri, King of Israel, purchased a hill (what this has to do with anything, I don't know). His son Ahab married Jezebel in Phoenicia who introduced the worship of Baal to Israel. Now give me a break. The one God who was continually worshipped in Israel was Baal. The amount of evidence from an archeological standpoint indicating a worship of YHWH as he is understood today does not exist in the entire region. No evidence at all links that religion to the area until at the earliest about 300 BCE and the Qumran caves. The amount of material from 1,550 until your year of 880 B.C.E. which indicates Baal was worshipped in the area is overwhelming. From the temple in Jerusalem to the horned God and the inscriptions found all over, nothing indicates YHWH except a few pieces with the inscription referring to YHWH/Yammu and his Asherah, and that is not today's Jewish religion.
You go on to mention the famous challenge from the prophet Elijah between the worshippers of Yammu and the worshippers of Baal. Here the followers of Baal were unable to produce any supernatural fire to light the fire with (1 Kings 18:18-40). As is indicated by the documents at Ugarit, this whole part is but a great big misunderstanding. Baal could not have lit any fire at the time because he was in the underworld. All ancients knew he was in the underworld until the next growing season. He had to be because otherwise no crops could ripen, there would have been too much rain. The priests of Baal would here have insisted Baal lived, he was resurrected and the new season had began. Elijah would have insisted no, the new season had not yet arrived and to settle the dispute, they arranged the contest.
Verse 38 shows the expected result. Yammu/YHWH wins. Like a fierce dragon he descends with a flame that consumed the burned sacrifice, and the wood and the stones, and he licked up the water in the trench. Now this is not the end of the story. The Priests of Yammu/YHWH proceed to kill the priests of Baal. This is probably a later addition, the Israelites were not at that time so vindictive. What is interesting here is the rain which arrives shortly thereafter. Verse 45 is where it indicates the new season has arrived. The rain comes. Baal lives (in the Bible, this is reported as the lord lives). Baal has been resurrected from the underworld for yet another season.
The Material from Ugarit which you received in 1929 was about as welcomed by you as an enormous bill an alcoholic would received from his credit card company after a drunken black out. The material from Ugarit indicated without a doubt where all material came from prior to the Persian revolution of the Hebrew religion. Your failure to report on it can only be likened to the drunk who refuses to admit the blackout occurred. Like the case of the drunk, the bill will just reappear. Like the drunk you have to pay the piper. Then you go ahead and report on 2 Kings 19:35 where the angel of the lord went out and killed 185,000 Syrian soldiers. What kind of angel is able to kill such an amount of soldiers in one night? A fire breathing dragon? The best part of the verse is, "...And when they rose up early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses."
Lesson Eleven: The Messiah in Prophesy and History. You state a deliverer had been promised in Gen. 3:15 who would save the Israelites. He was to crush the devil's head. "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel." This is not a promise of any deliverer.
This means that the lineage of the Serpent (does this include dragons?) and the lineage of Man is separate. It states to the serpent that the lineage (seed) of woman shall bruise the head of the serpent and the serpent shall bruise the heel of womankind. The original to these verses are to be found in Ugarit and Baal IV.
Next you use Numb. 24:17. Numb. 24:2-25 indicate only the fact that at that time the God of the Israelites was the same as the one of the Moabites, namely El, the chief God El. This is also indicated by the manuscripts at Ugarit. Balaam states a star out of Jacob shall come forth whom they shall heed. This is valid as Balaam was practicing the black arts. That YHWH was the one who communicated with Balaam is not questioned.
Why YHWH is communicating through the Moabite seer has not either been questioned. Numb. 24:2-25 indicates by it's context the fact YHWH and Balaam are not strangers. Then you indicate in Deut.18:15 that a prophet like Moses shall come forth. Who needs it? Moses did not prophesy and save the Israelites from the wrath of God a number of times by telling the God the Egyptians and others would accuse him of bringing them into the desert just to kill them. What is needed is a savior from this deity, not a savior of this Deity.
Next, you quote Isaiah 9:6. This Canaanite verse is also found in the legend of Aqhat. A son will be born which will be Danilu's savior. He will have someone to care for him after his death, remembering him on the new moon festivals. Then you quote the Canaanite Manuscript known in the Bible as Micah. Here, the savior will have his origin with the ancient days (Micah 5:2).
In short, you are getting several pieces of information from various places of the Bible which originally depicted the death of Baal at the hands of Mot, and then the subsequent resurrection in the next growing season. You state Daniel 9:25 refers to the birth of Jesus. This being a prophesy which refers to the birth of Christ, saying it also refers to Acts 10:37-38 could only possibly be deduced by someone after the birth of Christ with a vivid imagination. Dan. 9 is derived from Ugarit. It refers to the salvation from the "arrows of death" from Rashpu and other evils.
But congratulations on your honesty regarding the unlikely birthdate of Jesus on Dec. 25th. That was nice to see.
How you can refer to the resurrection of Lazarus in a respectable publication must be questioned. The earliest date possible for the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:25-44) is at the pen of Irenaeus, about 180 C.E.
Your lesson 11 is lacking in substance and expounding significance. Proper answers to the validity of the figure Jesus cannot be realized without a throughout examination of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts which contain more material regarding the Son of Man than the Bible. How you could have neglected the Nag Hammadi documents is incomprehensible.
The Dead Sea Scrolls. You ascribe the writings of the first six biblical Books to Moses. This is not true and no biblical scholar today even attempts to credit Moses with the writing of one of them. The difference in style between Genesis and Exodus and the different forms of worship as an example indicate different authors. That the books were brought together at a later date and reedited is however unquestionable, and that attempts to bring them into line with each other were made is also unquestionable, but they were not written by Moses.
You state there are mistakes made in the Bible due to copying errors and give John 5:4 as an example of one which the Church now judges to have been an error because it does not like it's content. Thus the Church omitted it. Are you going to omit all the dastardly deeds of the Deity in the OT? These are also totally unacceptable.
You state discrepancies were found in the Qumran manuscripts with the biblical, and site the omission of one holy in Isaiah 6:3. Where are your ethics? Why do you not publish the entire Isaiah scroll which you have had translated since the 1950s? Is it because there lacks one Holy? Are we supposed to take your word for it when you do not come out with the material?
You say absolutely nothing about the discoveries and only leave us poor suckers to take your word for it. If those are the biggest discrepancies, how do you account for material such as 4QDan where Nabonidus and not Nebuchadnessar is the obvious leader Daniel refers to? 4Q PrNab from Qumran reflects a more original tradition than the Daniel tradition we read in the Bible. The Christians changed the Babylonian leaders from Nabonidus to Nebuchadnessar in order to make the prophesies in Daniel reflect Jesus. The description in the Bible does not at all fit Nebuchadnessar while it does fit Nabonidus.
That the God which Nabonidus was converted to was the Sumerian Moon God Nanna only indicates the fact that Daniel borrowed ancient traditions of the Babylonians to espouse his own God.
Things such as the giving up of the throne was never done by Nebuchadnessar but Nabonidus gave up his throne to his son Balshazzar for ten years (the Hebrews changed this to seven because of the Canaanite affinity with the number seven). Nebuchadnessar did not change his worship while Nabonidus did. The Stele of Nabonidus recovered from Babylon reveals that it was the Moon God Nabonidus was converted to.
You do not come out with any of the material on Enoch and the Watchers which were so important to the ancient Hebrews. You do not come out with any of the material on Melchizedek which we may use to identify this character. You say absolutely nothing. You describe the Codex Sinaiticus as the greatest discovery proving the reliability of your New Testament. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, this manuscript was written in the fourth century. It also speaks of several revisions made in the 6th or 7th century to the manuscript. Invaluable indeed.
Your course on "Digging up the Past" has been a great disappointment. You relay biased opinion without consulting pertinent data. You are attempting solely to defend your own preconceived notions. It is an undertaking of brainwashing and deception.