Daniel's End of Days Cipher
This is the working title of my current book project.
The above sketches are taken from Near Eastern cylinder seals, and bullae impressions, dated variously from the middle of the third to the beginning of the first millenium b.c.e. This is a minute selection of the vast number of depictions of this particular iconographic motif, which archaeologists have uncovered throughout the Near and Middle East. The typical scene is of two figures in attitudes of devotion towards a stylized tree. The figures are of four kinds: 1. rampant he-goats or caprids, 2. humans (two males, two females, or a male and a female), 3. angelic or winged humans, and 4. cherubs (winged animals, usually lions, with the faces of humans or of predatory birds).
Judging from the number of representative images that have been unearthed to date, the religious conception denoted by this symbology was pervasive from Arabia, throughout the entire arc of the Fertile Crescent, and into Egypt, and can easily be said to be the single religious motif most shared by all of these regions. As time goes on, I'll be adding images to this page to demonstrate the variety of expression and wide provenance of this iconic type.
Even the Bible pays tribute to the ancient faith represented by this triune, iconic motif. In Ezekiel's vision of a New Jerusalem he describes the decorations on the walls of the temple: "And it was made with cherubims and palm trees, so that a palm tree was between a cherub and a cherub" (Ex. 41:18). As we all know, the place where the biblical narrative begins is in a garden, and at the entrance to the garden there was a pair of cherubs guarding the way to the Tree of Life (Ge. 3:24).
By the time of the writing of Genesis, the religious faith and practices, apparently memorialized in the Edenic passages, was that of a bygone era. Though its institutions were in the process of being repudiated and replaced by a more modern (urban and governmental/legalistic) cult, it seems to have still had its sympathizers, considering the unhappy circumstances depicted by the scribe who poetically records of its passing. The forlorn image of a paradisiacal garden, with its Tree of Life and cherubim, from which humans have been ejected, is surely a depiction of a romanticized past, apparently before the androcentric marital codes of patrilineal custom were established (3:16), and before the liberal forms of "pagan" sexual expression became criminalized. Whoever wrote this seems to have had mixed feelings. He seems to acknowledge the inevitability of the transition from one mode of life to another, but he also seems to be nostalgic about what is being left behind, the sacred Tree of Life, with the ancient belief system that it stood for.
Among others, Joseph Campbell recognized an axis mundi symbol in the tree described as located in the "middle" of the garden. Mercea Eliade defines the axis mundi as a symbol representing the "religious conceptions" that comprise the "system of the world." Societies can be seen as organizing themselves around a central complex of ideas, a creed or Weltanschauungen, a system of beliefs thought to be steady, enduring, and indisputably true. As such, the axis mundi serves a people as the ultimate authority, explaining and justifying their customs and institutions, and thus preserving the ordered patterns of their lives. But the Edenic story presents us with a problem, namely, we can hardly have two world 'axeses' and two trees are distinctly described by the narrator, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and both are said to be located in the "middle" of the garden.
This seeming contradiction to our axis mundi theory is easily solved, however, when it is realized that a transition from one belief system to another is being depicted, a world changing cult reformation, and that one tree stands for the old ways and the other represents the newly ascendant and now dominant doctrine.
This might be a plausible interpretation for the symbology of this antique tale, but it still has a problem. Who would weave such a story, subtly suggesting a bias in favor of the ancien regime; and who would couch in their poetry such a gloomy report of the change? Surely it would not be a scribe of the newly official priesthood. And who else would be authorized to compose the tale?
These questions have answers which are only hinted at in the surface reading of the biblical texts. Nevertheless, on another layer, an alternative to the outward story is told. It is a hidden record of the process of civilization and of its inevitable cultural and ideological conflict. It is an unexpected view of the controversial institution of the "written law" (Torah, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil), and it is an astonishing unveiling of those the law was designed to abolish. Secreted within the pages of the Hebrew Bible an alternative history can be read, told from the point of view of the losers of the "cultural war," which chronicles their subversive resistance and the cunning stratagem they devised to preserve their Wisdom Tradition. Though it has lain in plain sight for millennia, Daniel's hidden book has remained overlooked until now, for as it is written, the "words" were "sealed" till the "time of the end."
The book that I have written addresses the question of why the author of the book of Genesis would place the Tree of Life, with its attendant cherubim, the preeminent symbol of the cult and practices which so much of the rest of the Bible seems to be written to condemn, in the midst of the paradisiacal Garden of Eden, and then, why he would depict the banishment from the garden, and from its idolatrous tree, as a "fall from grace," and as such an unhappy affair.
It is clear, from the Scriptures, that there was contention among the people, and presumably among the priests, concerning the correct form of Jewish worship. The focus of the debate centers on the goddess whose name, and whose idol, is mentioned more than 40 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. Ridding the land of the goddess cult, and the "abominations" associated with it, is shown by the Scriptures to have been a primary aim of those who authorized and produced the books that became the Bible.
The Canaanite goddess Asherah, the Great Mother, "Mother of the Gods," (identified with Astarte, who is Ashtoreth and Ashtaroth Karnaim of the Bible) and her representation, the stylized tree, or "asherah," was worshiped on the "high hills" of Israel and Judah, and even within the walls of the Jerusalem temple. In the Deuteronomic Reformation of King Josiah's day (640-609 b.c.e.), the asherah was banned from the temple. "And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord ... and burned it" (2 Ki. 23:6). (The King James Version of the Bible translates "Asherah," and "asherah," with the rather unwieldy "groves," while most subsequent translations, and the RSV, correct this oversight.)
My book examines the identity of the "idolatrous priests" who, before the reformation, had been the officially "ordained" priests of the Jewish people, as the above verse clearly testifies. In eight separate places, in the Old Testament, the ancestral religion of the Jewish people is condemned, describing it as that which belonged to their "fathers," so we are not speaking of a foreign cult, or even of the apostasy of an insignificant number of rebels. It was the popular cult, and religious practice, which had once belonged to Israel, Judah, and all the land of Canaan.
Before the Deuteronomic Reformation, this ancient religion, found all over the Near and Middle East, was either permitted, or actively supported, by various kings of Israel and Judah, so there are three possible relationships which its cult may have had with that of Yahweh. It could have been a rival cult, as the Bible suggests, and before the reforms, it could have been the lesser of the two, again suggested by the biblical narrative, or it could have been the dominant cult. The third possibility, and the one supported by recent archaeological finds, is that the two cults were not two, but the same, that Yahweh and the asherah were worshipped together in the pre-reformation form of Yahwism (epigraphs with the phrase "Yahweh and his asherah" have been found at Khirbet el-Qom, 1969, and Kuntillet Ajrud, 1975).
The fact that, before King Josiah's reforms, the stylized tree, standing for the goddess Asherah, had a place in Yahweh's great temple at Jerusalem, as the above verse unmistakably affirms (probably displayed between its two attending cherubim), and that her "idolatrous priests" were then authorized administrators of the cult, clearly suggests that these now maligned priests must have once had a significant station in Jewish society, with all the prestige and authority of the official priesthood. Considering the apparent antiquity of this ancestral priesthood, their traditions and institutions must have been highly developed, and yet, because it is the victors who write the histories, they seem to have disappeared after the reformation. Their existence is barely mentioned by the Bible, and their story has never been told.
This is where it gets interesting.
What if the now ascendant priesthood wanted to insure their continued control of Jewish religion and, of course, of the lucrative sacrifice offerings, so they decided to write some books that, by explaining the how and why of events, would justify their becoming the official priests, and demonstrate why their view of the newly aniconic God is the true one, and why competing views are now to be understood as criminal. And then, what if they decided to employ the assistance of a certain class of scribes who were famous for their ancient traditions of story telling, of poetry, and of literacy? What if they gave these scribes orders to write stories, which, by seeming to be actual historical accounts of events, would authorize their priesthood, and their religious conceptions, for all time? But then, what if the class of scribes they retained were ex-priests of Yahweh and his Asherah, the defeated and seemingly broken idolatrous priests? What if these embittered ex-priests were particularly clever guys, and they resolved to pretend absolute submission, and write as they were ordered, but then they persuaded their masters to let them include extensive lists of names, as if they were genealogies, to give the stories added credibility? And in the meanings of the names, what if they concealed and preserved their side of the story?
This may seem like a fanciful scenario. Years ago, I certainly would have thought so. I was curious about why there were so many names in the Hebrew Bible, and the explanations that had been offered were simply unpersuasive. It has been conjectured that the name lists were remains of old "census lists," that some were authentic genealogies, while others were "pseudo-genealogies," that they were designed to "legitimize" one group of priests in opposition to another, that they were "art for art's sake," or, according to the most extensive and recent examination, they were designed for a "nonfunctional purpose." At the present, there is no theory which is comprehensive enough to ascribe a single function to all of the name lists, and yet their uniqueness, as a literary form, suggests their unity, either a unity of tradition, or of purpose.
(Right) Once again we see the Djed Column between two attending figures in typical votive posture, though this Ivory plaque was unearthed from the remains of the palace of King Ahab, of Israel (c. 870 b.c.e.).
The biblical name lists are totally unique among the world's literature, and though today's biblical scholars consider most of them to be "nonhistorical" (or not genealogical), their original purpose remains unexplained.
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible lists 8,674 Hebrew words. Of these, more than 32% are names. Nearly 1/3 of all the words in the language called Biblical, or Old, Hebrew are names. This proportion is so much greater than any other known language that you would think it would have gotten somebody's attention. You would think that somebody would have said: "Hey, what's with that?" As I mentioned, studies have been made, but generally the name lists have been set aside as a dead-end. Today's scholars consider them pretty much drained of any significant meaning. They are ignored. My research has discovered that their authors intended exactly that. Their being ignored was crucial to their purpose, and apparently, for more than 2,500 years, nobody has been crazy enough to devote a significant portion of their life to discovering what that purpose was, that is—until now.
A word about myself:
As the reader may have judged from my "voice", I am not a academic scholar, though my book is written in a scholarly fashion, exhaustively researched, with thorough credits. I think of myself as a digger, or independent researcher, who happens to have very good libraries at his disposal. As long as I'm blowing my horn, I'll add: "a tenacious digger."
I began this work more than 20 years ago, studying the Kabbalah. The Kabbalah is based upon the premise that the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures concealed material within the text by use of a number of devices. Ostensibly, from things thought to have been intentionally hidden, a vast literature has evolved, dealing with subjects such as philosophy, theosophy, metaphysics, and theurgy. This is what I was looking for when I became curious about the names, so the fantastic scenario described above wasn't something I began with and then tried to prove; it represents what I have learned from reading the ciphers.
The Real Bible Code
The idea that there is something intentionally hidden in the Bible came to me from the Kabbalists, and they apparently got the idea from a number of suggestive verses in the Hebrew Scriptures, such as: "And the vision of all this has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. When men give it to one who can read, saying, "Read this," he says, "I cannot, for it is sealed" (Isa. 29:11).
Then, in the book of Zechariah we read: "Again I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, a flying scroll!" (Zec. 5:1).
Like most Old Hebrew words, the word that is here translated as "flying" has multiple meanings. This word can also be used to say "covered in obscurities," which allows a possible alternative translation of the phrase to read "a scroll covered in obscurities," suggesting a book that is "sealed," "shut up," or hidden from view by some obfuscating device. Ezekiel also speaks of a mysterious book, or scroll, which is described as "written within and without," as though it had an interior, or esoteric, meaning, as well as an outward one.
And then there is Daniel: "But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, until the time of the end. ... Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed ... and none of the wicked shall understand; but those who are wise shall understand" (Dan. 12:4-9).
The name-list ciphers, which I was finally able to translate, read in whole sentences, whose meanings are sequential and logically connected to each other, so that a coherent message is conveyed. The Chronicles Cipher is written in the first person and its writer not only tells where his writing is being done, but from his description of events, the time of his writing can be guessed within 2 or 3 years.
The Chronicles Cipher had a dual purpose, which is described below, and because of its secondary purpose the author of Chronicles dwells at length upon the reasons the cipher-language was originally invented by his ancient brotherhood. He gives a significant example of how their secret code had been effectively used in the past to bring about the downfall of a king. Then he describes, in a great variety of phrases, precisely who the group was that he represented.
I did not begin to study Near Eastern history until I had completed a first draft of the translated Chronicles Cipher and could see that I would not be learning the secrets of the universe or about other Kabbalistic subjects, such as magic. Though the author of the Chronicles Cipher was diviner, and divination can be associated with magic, primarily he was a master politician, who, among other things, embodied the meaning of the Hebrew word hokhmah, which is "wisdom" or "shrewdness."
According to the description offered by the translated ciphers, the author's guild of ex-priests represented the single organized political entity that was able to offer significant resistance to the crushing oppression that was current in his day. His words declare that they considered it their sacred duty to be the defenders of the poor. According to their custom, they were forbidden to own land, which then was the primary means of generating and accumulating wealth. Traditionally, as itinerant priests, they were poor themselves, owning only what they could carry with them as they traveled from town to town. They were also required to sever ties with their families, and to remain unmarried, so they needed only enough to support themselves. Consequently, they identified with the underprivileged class, and the exploited many looked to them for comfort.
Once I was able to read the ciphers, my subsequent research of Near Eastern history, and culture, was able to concentrate on the most fruitful areas of inquiry, such as divination. The ancient diviner-priests of the Near East were once given the status that we give to scientists and physicians today. Apparently, because of their penchant for keeping exhaustive records of celestial events, and other anomalous occurrences, such as birth deformities, they had a reputation for great knowledge and for wisdom. Consequently, they served the people in various ways, and one of them was as judges in disputes between people.
The ciphers make it clear that it was primarily this status filled function that turned the growing aristocracies against the priestly diviner-judges, probably because it would have put the "idolatrous priests" in a position to determine who owed what to whom, and thus, to control the flow of wealth in their society. Because of their traditions of poverty and of not having families, they probably had a reputation for being immune to bribery (names that mean "pure" are frequently used in reference to them), which would have meant to the wealthy land owners, who favored a "might is right" conception of justice, that they would have to be eliminated, their tradition would have to be invalidated, and their memory, among the people, erased.
So, in the reforms of King Josiah, everything that the diviner-priests were famous for was made illegal, especially their "healing" function as sacred male-prostitutes, kedeshim. The priests of nearly all of the Near Eastern goddesses were not only male-prostitutes, as long as they were youthful and handsome, but they were also eunuchs, whose stones were crushed, or their genitalia severed, at a tender age, so that they never grew beards, and remained effeminate their whole lives. They were "set apart" from other humans, holy, and consecrated to the goddess.
Homosexualilty in the Bible
The ancestral Hebrew priests were male-prostitutes! This must come as a surprise to most readers. But before you throw up your hands and dismiss this little enterprise as straining credibility to the breaking point, consider the Hebrew word "kedeshim." It is a plural form of the word kedesh, which has a number of related meanings. In nearly all instances of the word "holy" in the English translations of the Hebrew Bible, it has been translated from the Hebrew kedesh. Kedesh means "holy," "sacred," and "consecrated." Its plural form would be to say "holy ones," which the King James Version translates as "sodomites" and the RSV translates as "male cult prostitutes." Kedesh with a feminine ending, "kedeshah," occurs a number of times in the Bible and is translated as "prostitute." Considering the unequivocal sanctions contained in the pages of the Hebrew Bible against both homosexual expression and prostitution, the inconsistency in the meaning of the word kedishim, when compared to the doctrine of the faith, is impossible to overlook and can only be explained through the model of "cult reformation." In other words, the practice and faith of the Jewish people, in the days of their "fathers," was a much different affair than the reformed Deuteronomic cult which became modern Judaism. And in that ancestral cult, as the word kedeshim testifies, the "holy ones," or priests, were eunuchs and male prostitutes, exactly as was the case in the various goddess, or pagan, cults of that region and era, where the Great Mother was represented by a tree, the bountiful, nurturing Tree of Life.
The name Zadok is used often by the ciphers, in several of the name-list books, to refer to the effeminate diviner-judges. Zadok primarily means "just," or fair, in the sense of impartial. It appears as though the fact of their being of indeterminate gender, neither male or female, "neuter," had a symbolic meaning within their cultural milieu, which translated as "neutral," or "impartial," and made these transsexual priests the preferred judges among the common people.
Though the great bulk of information concerning the identity of these secretive scribes is hidden below the surface of the narrative, they also included a few subtle references to their brotherhood, and their tradition, in the stories of particular characters.
The story of Caleb is one of these instances. Numbers 14:24 describes how Caleb was distinguished above all men, which only becomes interesting when we know the meaning of his name. Caleb means "dog," which, as is well known today, was a common euphemism for a male-prostitute (Deu. 23:18). Through the meaning of Caleb's name, the sacred male-prostitutes, who composed this narrative, imply that because they are the most loyal worshipers of Yahweh, the land of Canaan is the rightful possession of those who follow in their ancient tradition. It is a veiled argument, which very likely derives from earlier communal conceptions of land ownership, in which arable land was understood as the possession of the local tutelary deity and was under the administration of the deity's priesthood. It asserts that the followers of their tradition, that of Yahweh's original priests, are the rightful caretakers of the land.
Caleb, however, is a minor character, on both the outer and inner levels of the book, compared to three other names, whose stories are meant as memorials to the prestigious tradition of the eunuch-diviners. The significant characters of Joseph, David, and Daniel share a number of points in common, which when isolated, represent the prototypical pattern of power acquisition, which was the fame of the eunuch-diviner attendants to royalty, throughout the ancient Near East. All three of these were men of the lower class, slaves, or as David, a "poor man and of no repute," who were able to obtain to great influence through the gaining of an unusually intimate relationship and the exceptional favor of a king. It is their extraordinary, almost miraculous, rise to power which is being celebrated and commemorated in these narratives, which is the most notable characteristic of the tradition belonging to the eunuch-diviner/counselors of royalty, that flourished throughout the Near and Middle East, even to the close of the Ottoman Empire in 1920.
Another characteristic that all three of these men had in common was that they were all good-looking guys, "handsome," "comely," "beautiful of countenance," and "well-favored." In ancient China, the word that was used for the eunuchs who became lovers and counselors to the king and, by so doing, obtained great influence, meant "favorite," and they too were from the lower echelons of society. In China, their tradition was of such fame that it was common for impoverished parents to castrate one of their children in hopes that he would eventually find a post of employment among the royal servants, and thus be in a position to improve the condition of his family.
The employment of eunuchs as palace servants was once common in many parts of the world, and especially so in the Near and Middle East. The prophet Nehmeiah, for example, is generally thought to have been just such a servant to the Persian king Artaxerxes, the term "cupbearer," as he describes himself (Neh. 1:11), being the identifying expression. Both Persian kings, Cyrus and his successor Darius, preferred eunuchs in their administrations, appointing them exclusively to their chief offices of state, and even as generals in the field. According to Xenophon, this was because being without sons, they could never dream of starting a dynasty of their own through a palace coup, so their loyalty to the king was more assured. In Assyria the word for a eunuch meant "trusted," and it was this trait, their unique trustability, that made them so useful as harem guards, tax collectors, government officials, and counselors to royalty.
That Daniel was a eunuch is generally conceded by today's biblical scholars, as he was given over to the "master" of the kings "eunuchs," soon after arrival in Babylon. Apparently, Isaiah's warning to King Hezekiah came to pass with the Babylonian Exile: "And some of your own sons, who are born to you, shall be taken away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon" (Isa. 39:7). Also, the homosexual relationship between David and King Saul's son, Jonathan, is anything but a new revelation (Jonathan Loved David: Homosexuality in Biblical Times, Horner, Thomas M.). The description of their relationship leaves little to the imagination (1 Sam. 18:1, 2 Sam. 1:26), and judging from King Saul's reaction, which could have been from jealousy (1Sam. 1:26), the king probably found pleasure in more than David's harp playing. After all, we know something of the usual relationship of knights and Samurai with their "armourbearers" (1 Sam. 16:21), and it probably was a fairly universal pattern. While David was not a dream-interpreting diviner, as Joseph and Daniel, he was a musician, which, as the translated ciphers relate, was one of the cultic, and cultural, specialties that belonged to the sacred male-prostitutes of ancient Canaan.
The role of the guild of scribes, who wrote the name-list books, as counselors to royalty, is one of the most consistent themes of their hidden documents. The status which was enjoyed and exploited by the eunuchs and diviners who were counselors, and "officials," in the royal courts of the Near East, offers many parallels to the information contained in the ciphers, and it is through recourse to these contexts that the astonishing story of the clandestine biblical scribes can be best understood.
The role of the guild of scribes, who wrote the name-list books, as counselors to royalty, is one of the most consistent themes of their hidden documents. The status which was enjoyed and exploited by the eunuchs and diviners who were counselors, and "officials," in the royal courts of the Near East, offers many parallels to the information contained in the ciphers, and it is through recourse to these contexts that the astonishing story of the clandestine biblical scribes can be best understood.
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