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Chapter Thirteen
PROPHETS OF AN UNSEEN
GOD
"....How would Divine encounters with
Yahweh take place?
"The immediate answer, in the wilderness of Sinai, was the
Tabernacle, the portable Mishkan (literally: Residence) with its
Tent of Appointment.
Mr. Sitchin explains how all other peoples (non Israelites) had
methods of communicating with their gods: by visual contact, through
carved images, other gods had spouses....
"....The answers are given by
Yahweh himself.
"First, there will be the
Angels, the Divine Emissaries, who would
convey the Lord’s will and guidance and act in His behalf....
Other channels of communication: "it will be through the
Prophets of
Yahweh, appearing to them in a vision or in a dream, that the Lord
will communicate with the people.
"The usual concept of a "prophet" is that of one who engages in
prophecies - predictions of the future (in this instance under
divine guidance or inspiration). But the dictionary correctly
defines "prophet" as "a person speaks for God" in divine matters, or
just "a spokeman for some cause, group or government...." And
indeed, that is what the Hebrew term, Nabih, means: a spokeman....
"....The term appears for the first time in the Bible in chapter 20
of Genesis, which deals with the transgression of Abimelech,
the Phillistine king of Gerar, who was about to take Sarah into his
harem not knowing that she was married to Abraham. "And Elohim came
unto Abimelech in a nighttime dream" to warn him off....
"....Next the term is used (in Exodus chapter 6) in its rudimentary
sense. When the mission to the Pharaoh was imposed on Moses, he
complained that his was a "halting speaking," which would not be
heeded by the Pharaoh. So Yahweh said to him: "Behold, as an
Elohim
I will make thee before Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy
Nabih" - your spokeman.
After more biblical examples
Mr. Sitchin continues,
"The matter of the
Nabih as a true spokeman for Yahweh must have
needed further elucidation - witness the additional statements in
Deuteronomy.... Unlike other people who "listen to diviners and
magicians," the Lord said, to the people of Israel He will provide
a Nabih, one from their own brethren who "My words shall be in his
mouth, who shall speak to them as I will command....." "If there
arise in the midst of thee a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and he
giveth thee a sign or a wonder," but it was only to induce you to
"follow other Elohim, unknown to thee, and worship them - do not
hearken to the words of such a Nabih," Yahweh explains through
Moses....
"....That it was not an easy matter to distinguish between true and
false prophets was thus anticipated from the beginning; the ensuing
events offered bitter confirmation of the problem.
""And there arose not
a Nabih in Israel like Moses, whom Yahweh hath
known face to face...." Before dying, the Lord made him go up Mount
Nebo that was on the eastern side of the Jordan facing Jericho, to
see from there the Promised Land.
"Significantly or ironically, the mount chosen for that final act,
Mount Nebo, was named after Nabu, the son of Marduk. Il Nabium, the
"God who is a spokeman," Babylonian inscriptions called him; for as
historical records show, it was he who, while his father Marduk was
in exile, roamed the lands bordering on the Mediterranean,
converting the people to the worship of Marduk in preparation for
the seizing of the supremacy by Marduk at the time of Abraham.
"....It was after the death of Moses the servant of Yahweh, that
Yahweh spoke unto Joshua the son of Nun, the Minister of Moses,
saying: "Moses my servant died; now therefore arise and cross the
Jordan, thou and all this people, unto the land which I give to
them, the Children of Israel . . . Only be thou strong and steadfast
in observing to act according to all the teachings which Moses my
servant commanded thee - turn not to the right or to the left."
"Thus begins the Book of Joshua, with a reiteration of the Divine
Promise on the one hand and of the required absolute adherence to
Yahweh’s commandments on the other hand. And right away Joshua,
recognizing that the former depended on the latter, realized that it
would be the latter that would be the problem.
"As in the time of Moses, divine assistance in the form of miracles
was provided the new leader to make the double point: Though unseen,
Yahweh was omnipresent as well as omnipotent....
Yahweh guided Joshua for the river crossing; the toppling of the
walls of Jericho, and the defeat of the Canaanite kings in the
Valley of Ajalon, when the Sun stood still and did not set for some
twenty hours.
"...."And it came to pass after a long time, after Yahweh had given
rest unto Israel from all their surrounding enemies, that Joshua
waxed old and aged...."
"....So Joshua assembled the tribal leaders at Shechem, to review
before them the history of the Hebrews from their ancestral
beginnings until the present. On the other side of the Euphrates
River did your ancestors live, he said - Terah and his sons Abraham
and Nahor - "and they worshipped other Elohim."
The migration of
Abraham, the story of his descendants, the enslavement in Egypt and
the events of the Exodus under the leadership of Moses were then
briefly reviewed, as well as the crossing of the Jordan and the
settlement under Joshua’s leadership. Now, as I and my generation
are passing on, Joshua said, you are free to make a choice: you can
remain committed to Yahweh - or you can worship other gods:
Would’st ye hold Yahweh in awe,
and worship him in sincerity and in truth -
then remove the Elohim whom your forefathers
had worshipped across the river [Euphrates]
and in Egypt, and worship [only] Yahweh.
But if it does not please you to serve Yahweh -
choose here and now whom ye shall worship:
whether the Elohim which your forefathers had
served on the other side of the River,
or the gods of the Westerners in whose land ye dwell;
and I and my family shall worship Yahweh.
And the people chose Yahweh....
"....So "Joshua said unto the people: Ye all are witnesses against
yourselves that ye have chosen Yahweh to worship. And they said: We
are witnesses." Thereupon "Joshua made a covenant with the people
that day," writing it all down "in the Book of the Teachings of
Yahweh." And he erected a stone stela under the oak tree that was
beside the Tabernacle in witness of the covenant.
"....Among the
difficulties inherent in the religion of Yahweh were
the absence of a genealogy and of a primordial realm whence the gods
had come. The gods who had been worshiped by the parents and
forefathers of Abraham "across the river" - the first set of "other
gods" listed by Joshua - included Enlil and Enki, the sons of the
Anu, the brothers of Ninharsag, Anu himself had named parents. All
of them had spouses, offspring - Ninurta, Nannar, Adad, Marduk, and
so on. There was even a third generation - Shamash, Ishtar, Nabu.
There had been an original homeland - a place called
Nibiru, another
world (i.e. planet) whence they had come to Earth.
"Then there were
the "other gods" of Egypt; Yahweh had shown His
might against them when Egypt was afflicted to let the Children of
Israel go, but they continued to be venerated and worshiped not only
in Egypt but also wherever Egypt’s might had reached. They were
headed by Ptah, and the great Ra was his son - travelling in
Celestial Boats between Earth and the "Planet of Million Years," the
primordial abode. Thoth, Seth, Osiris, Horus, Isis, Nepthys were
related by simple genealogies in which brothers married half
sisters. When the Israelites, fearing that Moses had perished on
Mount Sinai, asked Aaron to reinvoke the deity, he fashioned a
golden calf - the image of the Apis Bull - to represent the
Bull of
Heaven. And when a plague afflicted the Israelites, Moses
made a
copper serpent - the symbol of Enki/Ptah - to stop the plague. No
wonder that the gods of Egypt, too, were fresh in the Israelite’s
mind.
"And then there were the "other gods of the Westerners in whose
lands you dwell" - the gods of the Canaanites (Western Asiatics)
whose pantheon was headed by the retired olden god El (a proper name
or epithet being the singular of the plural Elohim) and his spouse
Asherah; and his adversaries Mot and Yam.
Their playgrounds and battlegrounds were the lands that
stretched from the border of Egypt to the borders of
Mesopotamia; every nation in that area worshipped them,
sometimes under locally adjusted names; and the Children of
Israel were now dwelling in their midst...
"To compound the "Basic Problem" of the missing ingredients of a
genealogy and a primordial abode, was added the greater difficulty
for the Israelites: an Unseen God who could not even be represented
by a graven image.
"And so it was that, on and off, "the Children of Israel did wrong
in the eyes of Yahweh, and worshipped the Ba’al gods.... And again
and again leaders - designated Judges - arose to return the
Israelites to their true faith and thereby remove Yahweh’s wrath.
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THE KNESSET |
"One of those Judges, the female
Deborah, is fondly recalled by the
Bible as Nebi’ah - a Prophetess. Inspired by Yahweh, she chose the
right commander and tactics for the defeat of Israel’s northern
enemies; the bible records her victory song.... David Ben Gurion
(the first prime minister of the Modern State of Israel), in
The
Jews in Their Land, wrote that,
"that religio-national
wakening was movingly
expressed in the Song of
Deborah with its
reference to the great and
invisible God."
"In fact the victory hymnal song did more than that:
It referred to
the celestial nature of Yahweh, asserting that the victory was made
possible because Yahweh whose appearance "makes the Earth tremble,
the heavens quake and the mountains melt," caused the "planets, in
their orbits," to fight the enemy.
"Such a celestial aspect of
Yahweh.... was to become highly
significant in the prophetic utterances of the great Prophets of the
Bible.
"....The functions of the Nabih as teacher and upholder of moral
laws and social justice, and not only for a conduit of divine
messages, emerges from the deeds of even such an early Prophet as
the enigmatic "Nathan" ("He who was granted")....
Mr. Sitchin relates here the event of
David plotting the death of
Bathsheba’s husband, so that he could take Bathsheba as his wife.
"....It was then that
Nathan the prophet came to the king and told
him a fable of a rich man who had many sheep but nevertheless
coveted the only sheep a poor man had. And when David exclaimed,
"such a man must be punished by death!" the prophet told him: "Thou
art the man!"
"....David spent even more time in pious meditation and solitary
prayer; many of the king’s reflections on God and Man found
expression in the Psalms of David; in them the celestial aspects of
Yahweh echo, and expand upon the words in the Song of Deborah.
Mr. Sitchin now directs his readers (in his book) to the events
following the death of King Solomon (King David’s son), the
splitting of the Kingdom; he relates in more detail the Prophet
Elijah and his miracles.
"....The prophetic activity of
Elijah is stated to have taken place
after the "Angel of Yahweh" had given him instructions, and it
appears that this was the manner in which Yahweh’s word was
communicated to him. Untold by the Bible, though, is the manner by
which Elijah was given his most memorable (and final) instructions
for his ascent to heaven in a fiery chariot. The event, the likes of
which harkens back to the times of Enmeduranki, Adapa, and
Enoch is
described in detail in II Kings chapter 2.
"....As Elijah before him, Elisha was also involved in royal
successions that were divinely ordered....
Circumstances which came about after the fall of
Egyp, Babylon, Assyria and the Hittites, gave way to smaller powers to rise: the
Hebrews, Edomites, Moabites, Arameans, Phoenicians, Phillistines.
"....Their border wars and encroachments were small local affairs
compared to the titanic battles of the erstwhile empires in past
centuries - and to the major onslaughts that were in the offing.
"In 879 B.C. a new capital, Kalhu (the biblical
Calah) was
ceremoniously inaugurated in Assyria.... Its hallmarks were
expansion, domination, warfare, carnage, and unparalleled brutality
- all in the name of "the great god Ashur" and other deities of the
Assyrian pantheon.... In 689 B.C. the Assyrians took full control of
Babylon, and went to the extreme of moving Marduk himself to the
Assyrian capital, as a captive god.
Babylon came to power once again under the leader
Nabopolassar....
and now (626 B.C.) it was Babylon that emulated Assyria in conquests
near and far - all in the name of "the lords Nabu and Marduk...."
"....the Biblical Prophets also expanded their mission to global
dimensions.... all the doing and planning of Yahweh to put an end to
individual and national inequities and transgressions. As though
harkening back to the days before the Deluge, when the Lord
expressed his dissatisfaction with the way Mankind had turned out
and sought to wipe it off the face of the Earth on the occasion of
the Deluge, so was the Divine Dissatisfaction great once again,
the
remedy being the demise of all kingdoms - of Israel and Judea
included, the destruction of all temples - that in Jerusalem
included, the end of all the false worship that is expressed in
sacrifices to cover up constant injustices, and the rise, after such
a global catharsis, of a "New Jerusalem" that shall be a "Light unto
all the nations."
"....It was, as J.A. Heschel designated it in
The Prophets, "The Age
of Wrath...."
"....On the individual level, the great Prophets spoke out harshly
against empty piety - rituals that papered over injustices.... It
was a call to return to the essence of the Ten Commandments, to the
righteousness and justice of ancient Sumer.
"On the national level, the Prophets saw futility and foresaw doom
in the making and unmaking of alliances with neighboring kings in
efforts to withstand the attacks and domination of the great Powers
of that time, for those surrounding nations, too, were themselves
doomed in the coming upheavals: "A storm of Yahweh, a wrath shall
come forth, a whirling tempest will burst upon the heads of the
wicked,"" (this included Israel and Judaea)....
"....The peoples who worshipped
Ba’al and Ashtoreth, Dagon and Ba’al-zebub,
Chemosh and Molech, were also sinners gone astray.
"....So were the "false prophets" against whom
the True Prophets of
Yahweh had waged a constant struggle....
"They proclaim, Peace!
Peace! but there is no peace," Jeremiah said of them, whereas the
True Prophets spared not the kings or the people when reprimand and
warnings were needed.
"On the international level, the global arena, the Prophets
displayed an uncanny grasp of geopolitics, and their remarkable
insights and foresights ranged far and wide. They knew of the
reemergence of ancient kingdoms, as that of Elam, and the emergence
of a new power farther east; that of the Medes (later known as
Persians); even distant China, the Land of Sinim, was accounted for.
The early city-states of the Greeks in Asia Minor, their occupation
of the Mediterranean islands of Crete and Cyprus, were recognized.
The status of old and new powers bordering on Egypt in Africa was
known....
"....At center stage were the three longtime powers:
Egypt, Assyria,
Babylon; of them, Egypt - and its gods - were treated with the least
respect. In spite of close and sometimes friendly relationships
between the Hebrew kingdoms and Egypt (Solomon married a Pharaoh’s
daughter and was provided by the Egyptians with horses and
chariots), Egypt was considered to be treacherous and unreliable....
Both Isaiah and Jeremiah spoke out at length against Egypt and its
gods, prophesying the demise of both.
"Isaiah (chapter 19), in an "Oracle on Egypt," envisioned
Yahweh
arriving in Egypt airborne on the day when He would judge and punish
Egypt and the Egyptians:
Behold Yahweh,
riding upon a swift cloud,
coming unto Egypt.
The idols of Egypt shall tremble before Him,
The heart of Egypt shall melt as he comes near.
"....Jeremiah focused more on the gods of Egypt, relating (in
chapter 43) Yahweh’s vow to "kindle a fire in the temples of the
gods of Egypt and burn them down . . . to break the statues of Heliopolis...." The
Prophet Joel (3:19) explained why "Egypt shall
be a desolation: Because of their violence against the sons of Judah
and the spilling of innocent blood in their own land."
"....The exile (of the Israelites ordered by
Tiglat-Pileser),
according to the Prophets, was willed by Yahweh himself because of
Israel’s transgressions, "they heeded not the words of Yahweh their Elohim and transgressed his covenant and all that Moses the servant
of Yahweh commanded." the Prophet Hosea, in words and symbolic
deeds, foresaw those events as punishment for Israel’s "whoring"
after other gods, but it made it known that "a quarrel hath Yahweh
with the inhabitants of Earth, for there is neither truth nor
justice, nor understanding of Elohim upon the Earth." Isaiah’s
prophecies specified that Assyria would be the Lord’s instrument for
punishment....
"....Yahweh’s intent was only to
chastise through punishment, to
always leave a remnant that would be redeemed. Assyria’s kings can
have no more free will than an axe has when in the hands of its
wielder, He announced, and when Assyria shall have carried out its
initial mission, its own day of reckoning shall come.
"Assyria not only failed to realize it was just a tool in the hands
of the divine wielder, it also failed to recognize that Yahweh was
the Lord, a "Living Elohim" unlike the pagan gods....
"....And it came to pass [that night] that the Angel of the Lord
came and smote the camp of the Assyrians, all one hundred and eighty
five thousand of them . . .
And Sennacherib (Assyrian king) died in Nineveh, in his temple,
slewed by his son Sharezer.
Babylon, would be the next divine rod for a global catharsis.
"....The prophets forewarned the kings and people of Judaea. It
would bring upon them Yahweh’s wrath in the form of a "great and
ferocious nation, coming from the north." It was in the very first
year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that Jeremiah made explicit
the oracle of punishment against the nation of Judah, the dwellers
of Jerusalem, and all the neighbouring nations....
"....Not only was Babylon a tool in the hands of Yahweh - the
specific king, Nebuchadnezzar, was called by Yahweh "my servant"!
"....Babylon, as predicted, fell before the onslaught of a new power
of the east, that of the Achaemenid Persians, under the leadership
of their king Cyrus, in 539 B.C. Babylonian records suggest that the
city’s fall was made possible by the falling out between the last
Babylonian king, Nabuna’id and the god Marduk; according to the
annals of Cyrus, as he captured the city and its sacred precinct and
entered the inner sanctum, Marduk extended his hands to him and he,
Cyrus, "grabbed the extended hands of the god."
"But if Cyrus thought that by that he had obtained the blessing of
the God Most High, he was wrong, the Prophets said, for in fact he
was only carrying out the grand design of "Yahweh, the one and only
God." Calling Cyrus "My chosen shepherd" and "My
anointed," Yahweh
thus pronounced to Cyrus through his spokeman Isaiah (chapter 45):
Though thou knowest Me not,
I am the one who hath called thee by name . . .
I am Yahweh, thy Caller,
The God of Israel.
"....It was in his very first year as ruler over Babylon that Cyrus
issued an edict calling for the return of the exiles of Judaea to
their land and permitting the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.
The cycle of prophecies was completed. Yahweh’s words came true.
"But, in the eyes of the people, he remained an Unseen God.
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God, The Extraterrestrial
"So, who was Yahweh?
Was He one of them? Was He an extraterrestrial?
"....The question and its implied answer, indeed, arise inevitably.
-
That the biblical creation narrative with which the Book of Genesis
begins draws upon the
Mesopotamian Enuma elish is beyond dispute.
-
That the biblical Eden is a rendering of the Sumerian E.DIN is
almost self-evident.
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That the tale of the Deluge and Noah and the
Ark is based on the Akkadian
Atra-Hasis texts and the early Sumerian
Deluge tale in the
Epic of Gilgamesh, is certain.
-
That the plural
"us" in the creation of The Adam segments reflects the Sumerian and Akkadian record of the discussions by the leaders of
the Anunnaki
that led to the genetic engineering that brought Homo sapiens about,
should be obvious.
"In the Mesopotamian versions it is
Enki, the Chief Scientist, who
suggest the genetic engineering to create the Earthling to serve as a
Primitive Worker, and it had to be Enki whom the Bible quotes as
saying "Let us make the Adam in our likeness and after our image."
An epithet of Enki was NU.DIM.MUD, "He who fashions;" the Egyptians
likewise called Enki Ptah - "The Developer," "He who fashions
things," and depicted him as fashioning Man out of clay, as a
potter. "The Fashioner of the Adam," the Prophets repeatedly called
Yahweh ("fashioner" not "creator"!) and comparing Yahweh to a potter
fashioning Man of clay was a frequent biblical simile.
"As the master biologist,
Enki’s emblem was that of the Entwined
Serpents, representing the double-helixed DNA .... One of Enki’s
Sumerian epithets was BUZUR, it meant both "He who solves secrets"
and "he of the mines," for the knowledge of mineralogy was
considered knowledge of Earth’s secrets, the secrets of its dark
depths.
"The biblical tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden - the tale
of the second genetic manipulation - assigns to the serpent the role
of triggering their acquisition of "knowing" (the biblical term for
sexual procreation). The Hebrew term for serpent is Nahash; and
interestingly, the same word also means soothsayer, "he who solves
secrets" - the very same second meaning of Enki’s epithet. Moreover,
the term stems from the same root as the Hebrew word for the mineral
copper, Nehoshet. It was a Nahash Nahoshet, a copper serpent, that
Moses fashioned and held up to stop and epidemic.... and our
analysis leaves no alternative but to conclude that what he had made
to summon divine intervention was an emblem of Enki.
"....Pertinent to this aspect might have been the fact that when
Yahweh turned the shepherd’s crook that Moses held into a magical
staff, the first miracle performed with it was to turn it into a
serpent. Was Yahweh, then, one and the same as Enki?
"The combination of biology with mineralogy, and with the ability to
solve secrets reflected Enki’s status as the god of knowledge and
sciences, of the Earth’s hidden metals, he was the one who set the
mining operations in southeastern Africa.... "It is Yahweh who giveth wisdom, out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding,"
Proverbs asserted (2:6), and it was He who granted wisdom beyond
comparison to Solomon, as Enki had given the Wise Adapa. "The gold
is mine and the silver is mine," Yahweh announced (Haggai 2:8); "I
shall give the treasures of the darkness and the hidden riches of
the secret places," Yahweh promised to Cyrus (Isaiah 45:3).
"The clearest congruence between the Mesopotamian and biblical
narratives is found in the story of the Deluge. In the Mesopotamian
versions it is Enki who goes out of his way to warn his faithful
follower Ziusudra/Utnapishtim of the coming catastrophe.... In the
Bible all that is done by Yahweh.
"This aspect of the
similarities between Enki and Yahweh becomes
more emphatic - and in one respect perhaps even embarrassingly so
for the monotheistic Bible - when we reach a passage in the Book of
Proverbs (30:4) in which the unsurpassed greatness of Yahweh is
brought out by rhetorical questions....
Again Mr. Sitchin asks,
"....Was Yahweh, then, Enki in a biblical-Hebrew garb?
"Were it so simple... If we examine closely the tale of Adam and
Eve in the Garden of Eden, we will find that while it is the Nahash
-
Enki’s serpent guise as knower of biological secrets - who triggers
the acquisition by Adam and Eve of the sexual "knowing" that enables
them to have offspring, he is not Yahweh but an antagonistic of
Yahweh (as Enki was of Enlil). In the Sumerian texts it was
Enlil
who forced Enki to transfer some of the newly fashioned Primitive
Workers (created to work in the gold mines of the Apsu) to the E.DIN
in Mesopotamia, to engage in farming and shepherding. In the Bible,
it is Yahweh who "took the Adam and placed him in the garden of Eden
to tend it and to maintain it." It is Yahweh, not the serpent, who
is depicted as the master of Eden who talks to Adam and Eve,
discovers what they had done, and expels them. In all this, the
Bible equates Yahweh not with Enki but with Enlil.
"Indeed, in the very tale - the
tale of the Deluge - where the
identification with Enki appears the clearest, confusion in fact
shows up. The roles are switched, and all of a sudden Yahweh
plays
the role not of Enki but of his rival Enlil. In the Mesopotamian
original texts, it is Enlil who is unhappy with the way Mankind has
turned out, who seeks its destruction by the approaching calamity
and who makes the other Anunnaki leaders swear to keep all that a
secret from Mankind. In the biblical version (chapter 6 of Genesis),
it is Yahweh who voices his unhappiness with Mankind and makes the
decision to wipe Mankind off the face of the Earth. In the tale’s
conclusion, as Ziusudra/Utnapishtim offers sacrifices on Mount
Ararat, it is Enlil who is attracted by the pleasant smell of
roasting meat and (with some persuasion) accepts the survival of
Mankind, forgives Enki and blesses Ziusudra and his wife. In
Genesis, it is to Yahweh that Noah builds an altar and sacrifices
animals on it, and it was Yahweh "who smelled the pleasant aroma."
"So was Yahweh Enlil, after all?
"A strong case can be made for such an identification. It there had
been a "first among equals" as far as the two half brothers,
sons of Anu, were concerned, the first was Enlil.... it was
EN.LIL ("Lord of
the Command") who took over as chief of the Anunnaki on Earth. It
was a situation that corresponds to the statement in Psalms 97:9:
"For thou, O Yahweh, art supreme over the whole Earth; most supreme
art thou over all the Elohim." The elevation of Enlil to this status
is described in the
Atra-Hasis Epic in the introductory verses,
prior to the mutiny of the gold-mining Anunnaki....
"....After
Anu, the ruler of Nibiru, returned to Nibiru after
visiting Earth, it was Enlil who summoned and presided over the
council of the Great Anunnaki whenever major decisions had to be
made....
"....The monotheistic Bible lapses several times into
describing
Yahweh in like manner, chairing an assembly of lesser deities,
usually called Bney-elim - "sons of gods...." "The Lord stands in
the assembly of the gods, among the Elohim he judges," we read in
Psalm 82:1. "Give unto Yahweh o sons of gods, give unto Yahweh glory
and might," Psalms 29:1 stated.... The requirement that even the
"sons of the gods" bow to the Lord paralleled the description of the
status of Enlil as the Commander in Chief: "The Anunnaki humble
themselves before him, the Igigi bow down willingly before him; they
stand by faithfully for the instructions."
"As far as personal characters were concerned,
Enki, the fashioner
of Mankind, was more forbearing, less stringent, with both gods and
mortals. Enlil was stricter, a "law and order" type,
uncompromising,
unhesitant to mete punishments when punishment was due. Perhaps it
was because while Enki managed to get away with sexual
promiscuities, Enlil, transgressing just once (when he date-raped a
young nurse, in what turned out to be her own seduction by her), was
sentenced to exile (his banishment was lifted when he married her as
his consort Ninlil). He viewed adversely the intermarriage between Nefilim and the "daughters of Man." When the evils of Mankind became
overbearing, he was willing to see it perish by the Deluge....
"....Enlil’s character had at the same time another side, a
rewarding one. When people carried out their tasks, when they were
forthright and god-fearing, Enlil on his part saw to the needs of
all, assured the land’s and the people’s wellbeing and prosperity.
The Sumerians lovingly called him "Father Enlil" and "Shepherd of
the teeming multitudes...." The last statement (in a Hymn to Enlil,
the All-Beneficent), recalled the fact that it was Enlil who had to
approve the choice of kings, and by whom the line of Priesthood
extended from the sacred precinct to the "cult center" Nippur.
"These two characteristics of Enlil - strictness and punishment for
transgressions, benevolence and protection when merited - are
similar to how Yahweh has been pictured in the Bible. Yahweh can
bless and Yahweh can accurse.... "Yahweh thy Elohim is a merciful
God," Deuteronomy 4:31 stated; He is a vengeful God, the same
Deuteronomy stated a chapter later (5:9) . . .
"It was
Yahweh who determined who shall be the priests, it was He
who stated the rules for Kingship (Deuteronomy 17:16) and made clear
that it will be He who chooses the king - as indeed was the case
centuries after the Exodus, beginning with the selection of Saul and
David. In all that, Yahweh and Enlil emulated each other.
Mr Sitchin explains in his book also, the use for significant
numbers, like the number 7 and the number 50, both important in the
events of Enlil and Yahweh.
"....The similarities between Yahweh and Enlil extend to other
aspects.... He (Enlil), was by and large an unseen god, ensconded in
the innermost chambers of his ziggurat or altogether away from
Sumer. In a telltale passage in the Hymn to Enlil, the
All-Beneficent it is thus said of him,
When in his awesomeness he decrees the fates,
no god dares look at him;
Only to his exalted emissary, Nusku,
the command, the word that is in his heart,
does he made known.
"No man can see me and live, Yahweh told Moses in a similar vein;
and His words and commandments were known through Emissaries and
Prophets.
"While all these reasons for equating Yahweh with Enlil are fresh in
the reader’s mind, let us hasten to offer the contrary evidence that
points to other, different identifications.
"One of the most powerful
biblical epithets for Yahweh is El Shaddai.... Early Greek and Latin translators of the Hebrew Bible
rendered Shaddai as "omnipotent," leading to the rendering of El Shaddai in the King James translation as "God Almighty...."
"....Advances in the study of Akkadian in recent years suggest that
the Hebrew word is related to shaddu, which means "mountain" in Akkadian; so that
El Shaddai simply means "God of mountains...."
"....Now, there is no way that Enlil could have been called, or
reputed to be, a "god of mountains," for there are no mountains in
the great plain that was (and still is) Mesopotamia. In the Enlilite
domains the land that was called "Mountainland" was Asia Minor to
the north.... and that was the region of Adad, Enlil’s youngest son.
His Sumerian name was ISH.KUR (and his "cult animal" was the bull),
which meant "He of the mountainland." The Sumerian
ISH was rendered
shaddu in Akkadian; so that Il Shaddu became the biblical
El Shaddai.
Other examples comparing Adad and Yahweh are given in the book.
"While these attributes tarnish the
similarities between Yahweh and Enlil, they should not carry us away to assume that, if so,
Yahweh
was the mirror image of Adad....
"The comparability between Yahweh and Enlil is further diminished by
another important attribute of Yahweh, that of a warrior. "Yahweh
goes forth like a warrior, like a hero He whips up his rage; He
shall roar and cry out and over His enemies He shall prevail,"
(Isaiah 42:13) stated....
"....There is nothing in the Mesopotamian records that would suggest
such an image for Enlil. The warrior par excellence was his son,
Ninurta, who fought and defeated Zu, engaged in the Pyramid Wars
with the Enki’ites, and fought and imprisoned Marduk in the Great
Pyramid. His frequent epithets were "warrior" and "the hero" and
hymns to him hailed him as "Ninurta, Foremost Son,
possessor of
divine powers . . . Hero who in his hand the divine brilliant weapon
carries...."
"....could Yahweh have been Ninurta?
"As Foremost Son and heir apparent of Enlil, Ninurta too bore the
numerical rank of fifty, and could thus qualify no less than Enlil
to have been the Lord who decreed the fifty-year Jubilee and other
fifty-related aspects mentioned in the Bible. He possessed a
notorious Divine Black Bird that he used both for combat and
humanitarian missions.... His association with the Sinai peninsula
and the channeling of its rainwaters, that come in winter bursts
only, into an irrigation system is still recalled to this day.... is
still called Wadi El-Arish, the wadi of the Urash - a nickname of Ninurta from way back. In association with the Sinai peninsula
through his waterworks and his mother’s residence there, also offers
links to a Yahweh identification.
"....One of the most decisive actions attributed in the Bible to
Yahweh, with lasting effects and indelible memories, was the
upheavaling of Sodom and Gomorrah. The event, as we have shown in
great detail in
The Wars of Gods and Men, was described and recalled
in Mesopotamian texts, making possible a comparison of the deities
involved.
"In the biblical version Sodom (where Abraham’s nephew and his
family lived) and Gomorrah, cities in the verdant plains south of
the Sea of Salt, were sinful. Yahweh "comes down" and, accompanied
by two Angels, visits Abram and his wife Sarai in their encampment
near Hebron. After Yahweh predicts that the aged couple would have a
son, the two Angels depart for Sodom to verify the extent of the
city "sinning." Yahweh then reveals to Abram that if the sins would
be confirmed, the cities and their residents would be destroyed....
Finally, the cities’ doom begins as "Yahweh rained upon Sodom and
Gomorrah sulfurous fire, coming from Yahweh from the skies; and he upheavaled those cities and the whole plain and all the inhabitants
thereof, and all that grew upon the ground....
"....The same event is well documented in
Mesopotamian annals as the
culmination of Marduk’s struggle to attain supremacy on Earth....
Alarmed, the Council of the Anunnaki met in emergency sessions
chaired by Enlil. Ninurta, and an alienated son of Enki called
Nergal (from the south African domain), recommended drastic action
to stop Marduk. Enki vehemently objected. Ishtar pointed out that
while they were debating, Marduk was seizing city after city....
Finally, Ninurta and Nergal were authorized to retrieve from a
hiding place awesome nuclear weapons, and to use them to destroy the
Spaceport in the Sinai (lest it fall into Mardukian hands) as well
as the area where Nabu was hiding.
"The unfolding drama, the heated discussions, the accusations, and
the final drastic action - the use of nuclear weapons in 2024 B.C. -
are described in great detail in a text that scholars call the Erra
Epic.
"As was the clear-cut case of the divine actors in the Deluge tale,
so we find in this one concerning the upheavaling of Sodom, Gomorrah
and the other cities of that plain astride the Sinai peninsula, whom
does and whom does not Yahweh match when the biblical and Sumerian
texts are compared. The Mesopotamian text clearly associates Nergal
and not Ninurta as the one who had upheavaled the sinning cities.
Since the Bible asserts that it was not the two Angels who had gone
to verify the situation, but Yahweh himself who had rained
destruction on the cities, Yahweh could not have been Ninurta.
"(The reference in Genesis chapter 10 to Nimrod as the one credited
with starting Kingship in Mesopotamia, which we have discussed
earlier, is interpreted by some as a reference not to a human king
but to a god, and thus to Ninurta to whom the task of setting the
first Kingships was assigned. If so, the biblical statement that
Nimrod "was a mighty hunter before Yahweh" also nullifies the
possibility that Ninurta/Nimrod could have been Yahweh).
"But
Nergal too was not Yahweh. He is mentioned by name as the god
of the Cutheans who were among the foreigners brought over by the
Assyrians to replace the Israelites who were exiled. He is listed
among the "other gods" that the new comers worshipped and for whom
they set up idols. He could not have been "Yahweh" and Yahweh’s
abomination at one and the same time.
"If Enlil and two of his sons, Adad and Ninurta, are not finalists
in the lineup to identify Yahweh, what about Enlil’s third son,
Nannar/Sin (the "Moon God")?
"His "cult center" ( as scholars call it) in Sumer was
Ur, the very
city from which the migration of Terah and his family began.... Was
he then the deity who had instructed Abram the Sumerian to pick up
and leave?
"....The Akkadian/Semitic name for Nannar was
Sin, and there can be
no doubt that it was in honor of Nannar as Sin that the part of the
Sinai peninsula called in the Bible the "Wilderness of Sin" and, for
that matter, the whole peninsula was so named. It was in that part
of the world that Yahweh appeared to Moses for the first time, where
the "Mount of the gods" was located, where the greatest Theophany
ever had taken place. Furthermore, the principal habitat in the
Sinai’s central plain, in the vicinity of what we believe is the
true Mount Sinai, is still called Nakhl in Arabic after the goddess
Ningal (Nannar’s wife) whose Semitic name was pronounced
Nikal.
"Was it all indicative of a Yahweh = Nannar/Sin identification?
"The discovery several decades ago of extensive Canaanite literature
("myths" to scholars) dealing with their pantheon revealed that
while a god they called Ba’al (the generic word for "Lord" used as a
personal name) was running things, he was in fact not entirely
independent of his father El (a generic name meaning "god" used as a
personal name).... Described in the Canaanite texts as a retired
deity, El as Nannar/Sin would indeed have been forced into
retirement: Sumerian texts dealing with the effects of the nuclear
cloud as it wafted eastward and reached Sumer and its capital Ur,
reveal that Nannar/Sin refusing to leave his beloved city - was
afflicted by the deathly cloud and was partly paralyzed.
"The
image of Yahweh, especially in the period of the Exodus and the
settlement of Canaan, i.e. after - not prior to - the demise of
Ur,
does not sound right for a retired, afflicted and tired deity as
Nannar/Sin had become by then. The Bible paints a picture of an
active deity, insistent and persistent, fully in command, defying
the gods of Egypt, inflicting plagues, dispatching Angels, roaming
the skies; omnipresent, performing wonders, a magical healer, a
Divine Architect. We find none of that in the descriptions of Nannar/Sin.
"Both his veneration and fear of him stemmed from his association
with his celestial counterpart, the Moon; and this celestial aspect
serves as a decisive argument against identifying him with
Yahweh....
"....All that suggests that in the Canaanite trio
El-Ba’al-Anat
(Anat being Ba’al sister) we see the Mesopotamian triad Nannar/Sin-Utu/Shamash-Inanna/Ishtar - the gods associated with the
Moon, the
Sun, and Venus. And none of them could have been Yahweh, for the
Bible is replete with admonitions against the worship of these
celestial bodies and their emblems.
"If neither Enlil nor any of his sons (or even grandchildren) fully
qualify as Yahweh, the search must turn elsewhere, to the sons of
Enki, where some of the qualifications also point.
"The instructions given to Moses during the sojourn at Mount Sinai
were, to a great extent, of a medical nature. Five whole chapters in
Leviticus and many passages in Numbers are devoted to medical
procedures, diagnosis, and treatment. "Heal me, O Yahweh, and I
shall be healed," Jeremiah (17:14) cried out....
"....The biological medical knowledge underlying such capabilities
was possessed by Enki, and he passed such knowledge to two of his
sons: Marduk (known as Ra in Egypt), and Thoth (whom the Egyptians
called Tehuti and the Sumerians NIN.GISH.ZIDDA - "Lord of the Tree
of Life"). As for Marduk, many Babylonian texts refer to his healing
abilities but - as his own complaint to his father reveals - he was
given knowledge of healing but not of reviving the dead. On the
other hand, Thoth did possess such knowledge, employing it on one
occasion to revive Horus, the son of the god Osiris and his
sister-wife Isis....
"....When it came to the construction and equipping of the
Tabernacle in the Sinai wilderness and later on of the Temple in
Jerusalem, Yahweh displayed an impressive knowledge of architecture,
sacred alignments, decorative details, use of materials, and
construction procedures - even to the point of showing the
Earthlings involved scale models of what he had designed or wanted.
Marduk has not been credited with such an all-embracing knowledge,
but Thoth/Ningishzidda was....
"....So was Thoth Yahweh?
"Though known in Sumer, he was not considered there one of the Great
Gods, and thus not fitting at all the epithet "the God Most High"
that both Abraham and Melchizedeck, priest of Jerusalem, used at
their encounter. Above all, he was a god of Egypt, and (unless
excluded by the argument that he was Yahweh), he was one of those
upon whom Yahweh set out to make judgments....
"....If Thoth was not Yahweh, the process of elimination appears to
leave one more candidate: Marduk.
"That he was a "god most high" is well established; the Firstborn of
Enki who believed that his father was unjustly deprived of the
supremacy on Earth - a supremacy to which he, Marduk, rather than
Enlil’s son Ninurta, was the rightful successor.... He possessed a
Shem, a sky-chamber, as Yahweh did....
"....Apart from the arguments that we have mentioned in the cases of
Thoth that negate an identification with any major Egyptian deity
(and Marduk was the great Egyptian god Ra after all), the Bible
itself specifically rules out any equating of Marduk with Yahweh, in
sections dealing with Babylon, portrayed as greater, mightier, and
supreme over the gods of the Babylonians - it explicitly foretells
their demise by naming them....
"....As we find so many similarities, and on the other hand crucial
differences and contradicting aspects, in our search for a matching
"Yahweh" in the ancient Near Eastern pantheons, we can continue only
by doing what Yahweh had told Abraham: Lift thine eyes toward the
heavens. . .
"....Even Marduk as he assumed supremacy on Earth recognized that it
was Anu, and not he, who was "Lord of the Anunnaki." Was he the "God
Most High" by whom Abraham and Melchidezek greeted each other?
"The cuneiform sign for Anu (AN in Sumerian) was a
star; it had the
multiple meanings of "god divine," "heaven," and this god’s personal
name, Anu, as we know from the Mesopotamian texts, stayed in heaven;
and numerous biblical verses also describe Yahweh as the One Who Is
in Heaven....
"....Though Anu did visit Earth several times,
he was residing on
Nibiru; and as the god whose abode was in Heaven, he was truly an
unseen god.... his image does not appear even once!
"Since
Yahweh, too, was unseen and unrepresented pictorially,
residing in "Heaven" the inevitable question that arises is,
Where
was the abode of Yahweh? With so many parallels between Yahweh and Anu, did Yahweh, too, have a "nibiru" to dwell on?
"The question, and its relevance to
Yahweh’s invisibility, does not
originate with us. It was sarcastically posed by a heretic to a
Jewish savant, Rabbi Gamliel, almost two thousand years ago; and the
answer that he was given is truly amazing!
"....Let us note carefully what
Rabbi Gamliel’s answer was:
according to Jewish tradition, he said, the exact spot in the
heavens where God has a dwelling is so distant that it would require
a journey of 3,500 years...
"How much closer can one get to the
3,600 years that it takes Nibiru
to complete one orbit around the Sun?
"....Biblical references to Yahweh’s throne.... they actually stated
its location, in a place called Olam. "Thy Throne is established
forever, from Olam art Thou Psalms 93:2 declared....
"....The Hebrew Bible, strict in the precision of its terminology,
has other terms for stating the state of "lasting forever." One is
Netzah, as in Psalm 89:47 that asked, "How long, Yahweh, wilt Thou
hide Thyself - forever?." Another term that means more precisely
"perpetuity" is Ad....
After more explanations about
Olam, Mr. Sitchin continues,
"It was a place that was conceived as physically existing....
the hills of Olam.... the heat sources of Olam.... the pathways of
Olam.... the lanes of Olam.... Yahweh the King of Olam.... (all
expressions found in the Bible).
About the
Circumcision,
And my Covenant shall be in your flesh,
the Covenant of Olam.
(Genesis 17:13)
"....Indeed, the answer that
Rabbi Gamliel gave to the question
regarding the Divine Abode was based on rabbinic assertions that it
is separated from Earth by seven heavens, in each of which there is
a different world; and that the journey from one to the other
requires five hundred years, so that the complete journey through
seven heavens from the world that is called Earth to the world that
is the Divine Abode lasts 3,500 years.... Nibiru to someone on Earth
would indeed be seven celestial spaces away when it disappears to
its apogee.
"....And a possible clincher for identifying
Olam with Nibiru was
the statement in Genesis 6:4 that the Nefilim, the young Anunnaki
who had come to Earth from Nibiru, were the "people of the Shem"
(the people of the rocketships), "those who were from Olam."
"With the obvious familiarity of the Bible’s editors, Prophets,
Psalmists with Mesopotamian "myths" and astronomy, it would have
been peculiar not to find knowledge of the important planet Nibiru
in the Bible. It is our suggestion that yes, the Bible was keenly
aware of Nibiru - and called it Olam, the "disappearing planet."
"Does all that mean that therefore Anu was Yahweh? Not necessarily .
. .
"Though the Bible depicted Yahweh as reigning in His celestial
abode, as Anu did, it also considered Him "king" over the Earth and
all upon it - whereas Anu clearly gave the command on Earth to
Enlil. Anu did visit Earth, but.... as ceremonial state and
inspection visits; there is nothing in them compared to the active
involvement of Yahweh in the affairs of nations and individuals....
"....And so, in spite of the similarities, there are also too many
essential differences between Anu and Yahweh for the two to have
been one and the same.
"More over, in the biblical view.... He (Yahweh), was more than once
hailed as El Olam, the God of Olam (Genesis 21:33) and
El Elohim,
the God of the Elohim (Joshua 22:22, Psalms 50:1 and Psalms 136:2).
"The biblical suggestion that the Elohim - the "gods,"
the Anunnaki
- had a God, seems totally incredible at first, but quite logical on
reflection.
"At the very conclusion of our first book in The Earth Chronicles
series (The 12th Planet), having told the story of the planet Nibiru
and how the Anunnaki (the biblical Nefilim) who had come to Earth
from it "created" Mankind, we posed the following question:
And if the Nefilim were the "gods" who "created"
Man on Earth, did evolution alone, on the Twelfth
Planet, created the Nefilim?
"....The Anunnaki must have pondered their origins, and arrive at
what we call Religion - their religion, their concept of God.
"Who created the Nefilim, the Anunnaki on their planet?
The Bible itself provides the answer,
Yahweh, it states.... "Before
the Elohim upon Olam he sat," Psalm 68:1 explained. Just as the
Anunnaki had been on Earth before The Adam, so was Yahweh on
Nibiru/Olam before the Anunnaki, the creator preceded the created.
"We have already explained that the seeming immortality of the
Anunnaki "gods" was merely their extreme longevity.... and could
(and did) die. A time measure (orbital) applicable to Olam.... was
recognized by the Prophets and Psalmists, what is more impressive is
their realization that the various Elohim.... were in fact not
immortal - but Yahweh, God, was.... and tells them thus:
I have said, ye are Elohim,
all of you sons of the Most High;
But ye shall die as men do,
like any prince ye shall fall
"....Why the Bible’s very first verse that deals with
the very
Beginning, does not begin with the first letter of the alphabet, but
rather with the second one:
Breshit bara Elohim
et Ha’Shamaim v’et Ha’Aretz
which is commonly translated "In the beginning god created the
Heaven and the Earth."
"Since the Hebrew letters have numerical values, the first letter,
Aleph (from which the Greek alpha comes) has the numerical "one, the
first" - the beginning. Why then, scholars and theologians have
wondered, does the Creation start with the second letter, Beth,
whose value is "two, second"?
"While the reason remains unknown, the result of starting the first
verse in the book of the Bible with an Aleph would be astounding,
for it should make the sentence read thus:
Ab-reshit bara Elohim
et Ha’Shamain v’et Ha’Aretz
The Father-of-Beginning created the Elohim,
the Heavens, and the Earth.
"....an omnipotent, omnipresent Creator of All emerges from the
primeval chaos: Ab-Reshit, "The Father of Beginning."
"And all at once Science and Religion, Physics and Metaphysics,
converge into one single answer that conform to the credo of Jewish
monotheism: "I am Yahweh, there is none beside me!"
"....But what is, we believe, not to be doubted is that at one time
the first word in the first verse in the Bible did begin with the
first letter of the alphabet. This certainly is based on the
statement in the Book of Revelation ("The Apocalypse of St. John" in
the New Testament), in which God announces thus:
I am Alpha and Omega
the Beginning and the End,
the First and the Last.
"....That this had been the case at the beginning of Genesis is
confirmed, we believe, by the certainty that the statements in
Revelation harken back to the Hebrew scriptures from which the
parallel verses in Isaiah (41:6; 42:8; 44:6) were taken, the verses
in which Yahweh proclaims His absoluteness and uniqueness:
I, Yahweh, was the First
And the Last I will also be!
I am the First
and I am the Last;
There are no Elohim without Me!
I am He,
I am the First,
I am the Last as well.
"....A frequent form of stating this everlasting nature of the
biblical God is the expression "Thow art from Olam to Olam." It is
usually translated "Thou art everlasting...." Literally taken it
suggests that the existence and reign of Yahweh extended from one
Olam to another - that He was "king, lord" not only of the
one Olam
that was the equivalent of the Mesopotamian Nibiru - but of other
Olams, of other worlds! .... that encompass not only the Solar
System but even the distant stars (Deuteronomy 4:19, Ecclesiastes
12:2).
"THIS IS THE IMAGE OF A COSMIC VOYAGER
"All else - the celestial planetary "gods,"
Nibiru that remade our
Solar System and remakes the Earth on its near passages, the
Anunnaki "Elohim," Mankind, nations, kings - all are His
manifestations and His instruments, carrying out a divine plan. In a
way we are all His Angels, and when the time comes for Earthlings to
travel in space and emulate the Anunnaki, on some other world, we
too shall be carrying out a destined future....
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