OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Timely Truths for the Modern World

[Stormer0628]

Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho:
Archaeological Missions Fail the Biblical Narrative
by Ze'ev Herzog

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Summary:

• Rather than contradicting earlier European findings as initially intended, the biblical archeological missions instead turned out to support the opposite claims it wanted to refute in the first place.
• One of the first to be confirmed is the revelation that the god of Israel is derived from earlier gods and he in fact has a consort or a wife in Asherah, who is also identified with an earlier goddess related to other gods and goddesses of other cultures.
• The Exodus is a total fabrication: never in any period of history did the Israelites stay in Egypt under any capacity, either as slaves or subrulers.
• The Israelites identify with the former rulers of Egypt, the Hyksos, who were the ones driven out of Egypt.
• The whole 40 years episode in the wilderness is a total fabrication.
• There was no parting of the Red Sea.
• The Israelites did not conquer the Canaan as the bible heroically depicts.
• King David and King Solomon did not exist or if they did, they were at best minor tribal rulers of Canaan.
• The story of the patriarch Abraham and others are fictional legends with no historical equivalents.
• The findings are well-known for many years through many fields, but conveniently ignored in Israel and in Islamic and Christian traditions for the obvious reason of the cataclysm it would bring about. In the Palestine, it threatened to jeopardize the "historical" claims of the state of Israel to “their” land.

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Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs' acts are legendary, the Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon, nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts have been known for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody wants to hear about it.

This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, Jehovah, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai. Most of those who are engaged in scientific work in the interlocking spheres of the Bible, archaeology and the history of the Jewish people—and who once went into the field looking for proof to corroborate the Bible story—now agree that the historic events relating to the stages of the Jewish people's emergence are radically different from what that story tells.

What follows is a short account of the brief history of archaeology, with the emphasis on the crises and the big bang, so to speak, of the past decade. The critical question of this archaeological revolution has not yet trickled down into public consciousness, but it cannot be ignored.

Inventing the Bible stories
The archaeology of Palestine developed as a science at a relatively late date, in the late 19th and early 20th century, in tandem with the archaeology of the imperial cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome. Those resource-intensive powers were the first target of the researchers, who were looking for impressive evidence from the past, usually in the service of the big museums in London, Paris and Berlin. That stage effectively passed over Palestine, with its fragmented geographical diversity. The conditions in ancient Palestine were inhospitable for the development of an extensive kingdom, and certainly no showcase projects such as the Egyptian shrines or the Mesopotamian palaces could have been established there. In fact, the archaeology of Palestine was not engendered at the initiative of museums but sprang from religious motives.

The main push behind archaeological research in Palestine was the country's relationship with the Holy Scriptures. The first excavators in Jericho and Shechem (Nablus) were biblical researchers who were looking for the remains of the cities cited in the Bible. Archaeology assumed momentum with the activity of William Foxwell Albright, who mastered the archeology, history and linguistics of the Land of Israel and the ancient Near East. Albright, an American whose father was a priest of Chilean descent, began excavating in Palestine in the 1920s. His declared approach was that archaeology was the principal scientific means to refute the critical claims against the historical veracity of the Bible stories, particularly those of the Wellhausen school in Germany.

The school of biblical criticism that developed in Germany beginning in the second half of the 19th century, of which Julian Wellhausen was a leading figure, challenged the historicity of the Bible stories and claimed that biblical historiography was formulated, and in large measure actually "invented," during the Babylonian exile. Bible scholars, the Germans in particular, claimed that the history of the Hebrews, as a consecutive series of events beginning with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and proceeding through the move to Egypt, the enslavement and the exodus, and ending with the conquest of the land and the settlement of the tribes of Israel, was no more than a later reconstruction of events with a theological purpose.

Albright believed that the Bible is a historical document, which, although it had gone through several editing stages, nevertheless basically reflected the ancient reality. He was convinced that if the ancient remains of Palestine were uncovered, they would furnish unequivocal proof of the historical truth of the events relating to the Jewish people in its land.

The biblical archaeology that developed from Albright and his pupils brought about a series of extensive digs at the important biblical tells: Megiddo, Lachish, Gezer, Shechem (Nablus), Jericho, Jerusalem, Ai, Giveon, Beit She'an, Beit Shemesh, Hazor, Ta'anach and others. The way was straight and clear: every finding that was uncovered would contribute to the building of a harmonious picture of the past. The archaeologists, who enthusiastically adopted the biblical approach, set out on a quest to unearth the "biblical period": the period of the patriarchs, the Canaanite cities that were destroyed by the Israelites as they conquered the land, the boundaries of the 12 tribes, the sites of the settlement period, characterized by "settlement pottery," the "gates of Solomon" at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, "Solomon's stables" (or Ahab's), "King Solomon's mines" at Timna—and there are some who are still hard at work and have found Mount Sinai (at Mount Karkoum in the Negev) or Joshua's altar at Mount Ebal.

The crisis
Slowly, cracks began to appear in the picture. Paradoxically, a situation was created in which the glut of findings began to undermine the historical credibility of the biblical descriptions instead of reinforcing them. A crisis stage is reached when the theories within the framework of the general thesis are unable to solve an increasingly large number of anomalies. The explanations become ponderous and inelegant, and the pieces do not lock together smoothly. Here are a few examples of how the harmonious picture collapsed.

Patriarchal Age: The researchers found it difficult to reach agreement on which archaeological period matched the Patriarchal Age. When did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob live? When was the Cave of Machpelah (Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron) bought in order to serve as the burial place for the patriarchs and the matriarchs? According to the biblical chronology, Solomon built the Temple 480 years after the exodus from Egypt (1 Kings 6:1). To that we have to add 430 years of the stay in Egypt (Exodus 12:40) and the vast lifetimes of the patriarchs, producing a date in the 21th century BCE for Abraham's move to Canaan.

However, no evidence has been unearthed that can sustain this chronology. Albright argued in the early 1960s in favor of assigning the wanderings of Abraham to the Middle Bronze Age (22nd-20th centuries BCE). However, Benjamin Mazar, the father of the Israeli branch of biblical archaeology, proposed identifying the historic background of the Patriarchal Age a thousand years later, in the 11th century BCE—which would place it in the "settlement period." Others rejected the historicity of the stories and viewed them as ancestral legends that were told in the period of the Kingdom of Judea. In any event, the consensus began to break down.

The exodus from Egypt, the wanderings in the desert and Mount Sinai: The many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites' presence in Egypt and are also silent about the events of the exodus. Many documents do mention the custom of nomadic shepherds to enter Egypt during periods of drought and hunger and to camp at the edges of the Nile Delta. However, this was not a solitary phenomenon: such events occurred frequently across thousands of years and were hardly exceptional.

Generations of researchers tried to locate Mount Sinai and the stations of the tribes in the desert. Despite these intensive efforts, not even one site has been found that can match the biblical account.

The potency of tradition has now led some researchers to "discover" Mount Sinai in the northern Hijaz or, as already mentioned, at Mount Karkoum in the Negev. These central events in the history of the Israelites are not corroborated in documents external to the Bible or in archaeological findings. Most historians today agree that at best, the stay in Egypt and the exodous occurred in a few families and that their private story was expanded and "nationalized" to fit the needs of theological ideology.

The conquest: One of the shaping events of the people of Israel in biblical historiography is the story of how the land was conquered from the Canaanites. Yet extremely serious difficulties have cropped up precisely in the attempts to locate the archaeological evidence for this story.

Repeated excavations by various expeditions at Jericho and Ai, the two cities whose conquest is described in the greatest detail in the Book of Joshua, have proved very disappointing. Despite the excavators' efforts, it emerged that in the late part of the 13th century BCE, at the end of the Late Bronze Age, which is the agreed period for the conquest, there were no cities in either tell, and of course no walls that could have been toppled. Naturally, explanations were offered for these anomalies. Some claimed that the walls around Jericho were washed away by rain, while others suggested that earlier walls had been used; and, as for Ai, it was claimed that the original story actually referred to the conquest of nearby Beit El and was transferred to Ai by later redactors.

Biblical scholars suggested a quarter of a century ago that the conquest stories be viewed as etiological legends and no more. But as more and more sites were uncovered and it emerged that the places in question died out or were simply abandoned at different times, the conclusion was bolstered that there is no factual basis for the biblical story about the conquest by Israelite tribes in a military campaign led by Joshua.

The Canaanite cities: The Bible magnifies the strength and the fortifications of the Canaanite cities that were conquered by the Israelites: "great cities with walls sky-high" (Deuteronomy 9:1). In practice, all the sites that have been uncovered turned up remains of unfortified settlements, which in most cases consisted of a few structures or the ruler's palace rather than a genuine city. The urban culture of Palestine in the Late Bronze Age disintegrated in a process that lasted hundreds of years and did not stem from military conquest. Moreover, the biblical description is inconsistent with the geopolitical reality in Palestine. Palestine was under Egyptian rule until the middle of the 12th century BCE. The Egyptians' administrative centers were located in Gaza, Yaffo and Beit She'an. Egyptian findings have also been discovered in many locations on both sides of the Jordan River. This striking presence is not mentioned in the biblical account, and it is clear that it was unknown to the author and his editors.

The archaeological findings blatantly contradict the biblical picture: the Canaanite cities were not "great," were not fortified and did not have "sky-high walls." The heroism of the conquerors, the few versus the many and the assistance of the God who fought for his people are a theological reconstruction lacking any factual basis.

Origin of the Israelites: The fusion of the conclusions drawn from the episodes relating to the stages in which the people of Israel emerged gave rise to a discussion of the bedrock question: the identity of the Israelites. If there is no evidence for the exodus from Egypt and the desert journey, and if the story of the military conquest of fortified cities has been refuted by archaeology, who, then, were these Israelites? The archaeological findings did corroborate one important fact: in the early Iron Age (beginning some time after 1200 BCE), the stage that is identified with the "settlement period," hundreds of small settlements were established in the area of the central hill region of the Land of Israel, inhabited by farmers who worked the land or raised sheep. If they did not come from Egypt, what is the origin of these settlers? Israel Finkelstein, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, has proposed that these settlers were the pastoral shepherds who wandered in this hill area throughout the Late Bronze Age (graves of these people have been found, without settlements). According to his reconstruction, in the Late Bronze Age (which preceded the Iron Age) the shepherds maintained a barter economy of meat in exchange for grains with the inhabitants of the valleys. With the disintegration of the urban and agricultural system in the lowland, the nomads were forced to produce their own grains, and hence the incentive for fixed settlements arose.

The name "Israel" is mentioned in a single Egyptian document from the period of Merneptah, king of Egypt, dating from 1208 BCE: "Plundered is Canaan with every evil, Ascalon is taken, Gezer is seized, Yenoam has become as though it never was, Israel is desolated, its seed is not." Merneptah refers to the country by its Canaanite name and mentions several cities of the kingdom, along with a non-urban ethnic group. According to this evidence, the term "Israel" was given to one of the population groups that resided in Canaan toward the end of the Late Bronze Age, apparently in the central hill region, in the area where the Kingdom of Israel would later be established.

A kingdom with no name
The united monarchy: Archaeology was also the source that brought about the shift regarding the reconstruction of the reality in the period known as the "united monarchy" of David and Solomon. The Bible describes this period as the zenith of the political, military and economic power of the people of Israel in ancient times. In the wake of David's conquests, the empire of David and Solomon stretched from the Euphrates River to Gaza ("For he controlled the whole region west of the Euphrates, from Tiphsah to Gaza, all the kings west of the Euphrates," 1 Kings 5:4). The archaeological findings at many sites show that the construction projects attributed to this period were meager in scope and power.

The three cities of Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, which are mentioned among Solomon's construction enterprises, have been excavated extensively at the appropriate layers. Only about half of Hazor's upper section was fortified, covering an area of only 30 dunams (7.5 acres), out of a total area of 700 dunams which was settled in the Bronze Age. At Gezer there was apparently only a citadel surrounded by a casematewall covering a small area, while Megiddo was not fortified with a wall.

The picture becomes even more complicated in the light of the excavations conducted in Jerusalem, the capital of the united monarchy. Large sections of the city have been excavated over the past 150 years. The digs have turned up impressive remnants of the cities from the Middle Bronze Age and from Iron Age II (the period of the Kingdom of Judea). No remains of buildings have been found from the period of the united monarchy (even according to the agreed chronology), only a few pottery shards. Given the preservation of the remains from earlier and later periods, it is clear that Jerusalem in the time of David and Solomon was a small city, perhaps with a small citadel for the king, but in any event it was not the capital of an empire as described in the Bible. This small chiefdom is the source of the "Beth David" title mentioned in later Aramean and Moabite inscriptions. The authors of the biblical account knew Jerusalem in the 8th century BCE, with its wall and the rich culture of which remains have been found in various parts of the city, and projected this picture back to the age of the united monarchy. Presumably Jerusalem acquired its central status after the destruction of Samaria, its northern rival, in 722 BCE.

The archaeological findings dovetail well with the conclusions of the critical school of biblical scholarship. David and Solomon were the rulers of tribal kingdoms that controlled small areas: the former in Hebron and the latter in Jerusalem. Concurrently, a separate kingdom began to form in the Samaria hills, which finds expression in the stories about Saul's kingdom. Israel and Judea were from the outset two separate, independent kingdoms, and at times were in an adversarial relationship. Thus, the great united monarchy is an imaginary historiosophic creation, which was composed during the period of the Kingdom of Judea at the earliest. Perhaps the most decisive proof of this is the fact that we do not know the name of this kingdom.

Jehovah and his consort: How many gods, exactly, did Israel have? Together with the historical and political aspects, there are also doubts as to the credibility of the information about belief and worship. The question about the date at which monotheism was adopted by the kingdoms of Israel and Judea arose with the discovery of inscriptions in ancient Hebrew that mention a pair of gods: Jehovah and his Asherah. At two sites, Kuntiliet Ajrud in the southwestern part of the Negev hill region, and at Khirbet el-Kom in the Judea piedmont, Hebrew inscriptions have been found that mention "Jehovah and his Asherah," "Jehovah Shomron and his Asherah, "Jehovah Teman and his Asherah...."

continued here....

 

[pustiso01]

Re: OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Shocking Truths That Never Shook the World

kulang ka pa sa research

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_archaeology

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org

 

[Stormer0628]

Re: OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Shocking Truths That Never Shook the World

kulang ka pa sa research

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_archaeology

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org

Talaga? Alin ang kulang? Wag kang mag-iwan ng site lang, specify details. Because nothing there contradicts what I have posted. Did you even read your wiki source or just hope that something from there would pop out and go against the content of my post, which did not—?

The author of the post, Ze'ev Herzog, actually explained the reason why archeologists abandoned the biblical-based direction of diggings: because all their previous attempts at proving the bible through excavations and disproving critics failed and they finally came to the conclusion that the science itself had to cut ties with dogma and religion and come out on its own.

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In any case, at least some sense and reason appear to be creeping into the Roman Catholic Church with this bit of information:

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible

The trouble with this development is that what happens to the doctrine of infallibility? And what happens to the very core tenet of the three Abrahamic religions anchoring their belief systems on the actual historicity of everything in the bible?

 

[Lucius Crassus]

Re: OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Shocking Truths That Never Shook the World

kulang ka pa sa research

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_archaeology

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org

Pakiexplain yung point of view sa mga ibinigay mong link.


By the way, in my humble opinion, Bible is fragmented history.

 

[Stormer0628]

Re: OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Shocking Truths That Never Shook the World

Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho
Archaeological Missions Fail the Biblical Narrative

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continued from first page...

Jehovah and his consort: How many gods, exactly, did Israel have? Together with the historical and political aspects, there are also doubts as to the credibility of the information about belief and worship. The question about the date at which monotheism was adopted by the kingdoms of Israel and Judea arose with the discovery of inscriptions in ancient Hebrew that mention a pair of gods: Jehovah and his Asherah. At two sites, Kuntiliet Ajrud in the southwestern part of the Negev hill region, and at Khirbet el-Kom in the Judea piedmont, Hebrew inscriptions have been found that mention "Jehovah and his Asherah," "Jehovah Shomron and his Asherah, "Jehovah Teman and his Asherah." The authors were familiar with a pair of gods, Jehovah and his consort Asherah, and send blessings in the couple's name. These inscriptions, from the 8th century BCE, raise the possibility that monotheism, as a state religion, is actually an innovation of the period of the Kingdom of Judea, following the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel.

The archaeology of the Land of Israel is completing a process that amounts to a scientific revolution in its field. It is ready to confront the findings of biblical scholarship and of ancient history. But at the same time, we are witnessing a fascinating phenomenon in which all this is simply ignored by the Israeli public. Many of the findings mentioned here have been known for decades. The professional literature in the spheres of archaeology, Bible and the history of the Jewish people has addressed them in dozens of books and hundreds of articles. Even if not all the scholars accept the individual arguments that inform the examples I cited, the majority have adopted their main points.

Nevertheless, these revolutionary views are not penetrating the public consciousness. About a year ago, my colleague, the historian Prof. Nadav Ne'eman, published an article in the Culture and Literature section of Ha'aretz entitled "To Remove the Bible from the Jewish Bookshelf," but there was no public outcry. Any attempt to question the reliability of the biblical descriptions is perceived as an attempt to undermine "our historic right to the land" and as shattering the myth of the nation that is renewing the ancient Kingdom of Israel. These symbolic elements constitute such a critical component of the construction of the Israeli identity that any attempt to call their veracity into question encounters hostility or silence. It is of some interest that such tendencies within the Israeli secular society go hand-in-hand with the outlook among educated Christian groups. I have found a similar hostility in reaction to lectures I have delivered abroad to groups of Christian bible lovers, though what upset them was the challenge to the foundations of their fundamentalist religious belief.

It turns out that part of Israeli society is ready to recognize the injustice that was done to the Arab inhabitants of the country and is willing to accept the principle of equal rights for women - but is not up to adopting the archaeological facts that shatter the biblical myth. The blow to the mythical foundations of the Israeli identity is apparently too threatening, and it is more convenient to turn a blind eye.

© 1999 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved

Additional Information About Herzog's Deconstructing the Walls of Jericho:

In a September 22nd, 2002 speech to visiting Christian Zionists, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asserted, "This land is ours... God gave us the title deeds..." However, recent scholarly research, including discoveries by an archaeological team from the University of Tel Aviv, not only deconstruct the Biblical Old Testament and Torah stories upon which this claim rests, but grant previously unthinkable credence to an ancient historian's claim that the Israelites of Exodus were actually the Hyksos, and therefore of Asiatic origin.

To trace the foundations of this ongoing Biblical bonfire, we must go back to 1999.

All hell broke loose in Israel in November of that year when Prof. Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University announced: "the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander the desert, did not conquer the land, and did not pass it on to the twelve tribes". Moreover, the Jewish God YHWH had a female consort - the goddess Asherah!

His conclusion that the kingdom of David and Solomon was at best a small tribal monarchy, at worst total myth, has made enemies for him in the camps of traditional Jewish and Christian belief systems. He asserts: all evidence demonstrates that the Jews did not adopt monotheism until the 7th Century BCE - a heresy according to the Biblical tradition dating it to Moses at Mount Sinai.

Tel Aviv University's archaeological investigation at Megiddo and examination of the six-sided gate there dates it to the 9th Century BCE, not the 10th Century BCE claimed by the 1960's investigator Yigael Yadin who attributed it to Solomon. Herzog, moreover, states that Solomon and David are "entirely absent in the archaeological record".

In addition, Herzog's colleague, Israel Finkelstein, claims the Jews were nothing more than nomadic Canaanites who bartered with the city dwellers.

The team's studies concluded that Jerusalem did not have any central status until 722 BCE with the destruction of its northern rival Samaria.

However, the real bombshell is Herzog's discovery of numerous references to Yahweh having a consort in the form of Asherah. Inscriptions, written in Hebrew by official Jewish scribes in the 8th century BCE, were found in numerous sites all over the land. For Yahweh, supposedly the "One God", to have had a female consort and, of all people, the goddess Asherah, is dynamite of wide ranging significance.

 

[epicmorsix]

Re: OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Shocking Truths That Never Shook the World

kulang ka pa sa research

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_archaeology

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org

it's hard to argue with a person who already made up their mind and not open to contructive criticism

 

[Stormer0628]

Re: OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Shocking Truths That Never Shook the World

it's hard to argue with a person who already made up their mind and not open to contructive criticism

So true, that—which brings to mind these words from Bergson:

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@epicmorsix:

Hey, man, did you check that other post I made? I asked because if you did, I wonder if you managed to read the whole attachment thing. I thought I've seem them all, but this is just on another level entirely, though I made some allusion to this possibility in some of my earliest posts here at SB....

Here, I actually found it...

The only reason why Christianity became the dominant religion is because the Roman Empire adopted it. Great organizers and utilitarians that the Romans were, they saw in the Old Testament, which lends itself greatly to a marauding interpretation, mighty opportunity to expand their territories and influence, while the New Testament they saw as a formidable sedative to keep the subjugated people meek and manageable—that is, as a way for subdued nations and classes all over the face of the earth to have some measure of pittance for their miserable existence and make them docile and submissive for later conditionings. The Old Testament they viewed as the master credo, the New Testament as the subject gospel, exhorting the conquered subjects not to seek earthly contentment in the current life anymore, but to seek it in the next one instead. Afterall, not all people could be masters at the same time, could they? If the first principle, that of physical conquest, failed them in their search for world dominion, then surely the second—spiritual conscription—should secure it for eternity. For the Romans who had been looking for a way to master the world ahead of Alexander the Great's vision—of one world system, if not government—Christianity was heaven-sent elixir indeed in that direction, a twofold approach whose probability of failure was almost close to nil given the immense resources of the Empire of that time.

 

[pustiso01]

Re: OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Shocking Truths That Never Shook the World

So true, that—which brings to mind these words from bergsson:

View attachment 1157007

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@epicmorsix:

Hey, man, did you check that other post I made? I asked because if you did, I wonder if you managed to read the whole attachment thing. I thought I've seem them all, but this is just on another level entirely, though I made some allusion to this possibility in some of my earliest posts here at SB....

Here, I actually found it...

may dalawang religion noon sa roman empire noon before naging popular ang christianity


pagan rome
at christian rome

 

[epicmorsix]

Re: OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Shocking Truths That Never Shook the World

So true, that—which brings to mind these words from bergsson:

View attachment 1157007

- - - Updated - - -

@epicmorsix:

Hey, man, did you check that other post I made? I asked because if you did, I wonder if you managed to read the whole attachment thing. I thought I've seem them all, but this is just on another level entirely, though I made some allusion to this possibility in some of my earliest posts here at SB....

Here, I actually found it...

reading it man.. been busy @ work haha

 

[Stormer0628]

Re: OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Shocking Truths That Never Shook the World

reading it man.. been busy @ work haha

I myself couldn't get through the entire book without being stopped by some itinerant thoughts flying all around along the way, haha. I am aware there are some criticisms to the whole work, but considering how the Romans viewed Christianity as the solution to all the social divisions throughout the empire wrought upon by religion—while getting the chance to mock the rebellious Jews in their faces by using their own sacred texts and the expectation for some prophesied Messiah along the way, and considering that the Romans take it to themselves that since the Jews are under them, it follows that they gained access to the Jewish religious system as subjects to their own will—gives us enough sense why Constantine came up with this tiny bit of solution:

The Emperor (Constantine) then instructed Bishop Eusebius to compile a uniform collection of new writings "bound together as one" … Eusebius was to arrange for the production of "fifty sumptuous copies … to be written on parchment in a legible manner, and in a convenient portable form, by professional scribes thoroughly accomplished in their art…."

"Make them to astonish," added Emperor Constantine….​

As well, we could revisit the following statements coming from nothing less than the most prominent fathers of Christianity:

Eusebius

We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity—(Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 8, Chapter 2)​

Eusebius ... was Bishop of Caesarea from AD 315 to 340. He wrote many books, including the Ecclesiastical History. This is now very hard to come by as it makes the startling revelation that even in those days the available history of the birth of Christ was extremely scant—J. Mendum (Revelations of the Anti-Christ)

St. Jerome

When we translate the Hebrew into Latin, we are sometimes guided by conjecture—Saint Jerome (AD 340-420. Translator of the Vulgate or Latin Bible)

How it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who want to be deceived—(Twelfth Book of Evangelical Preparation)​

John Chrysostom

...Do you see the advantage of deceit?...

For great is the value of deceit, provided it be not introduced with a mischievous intention. In fact action of this kind ought not to be called deceit, but rather a kind of good management, cleverness and skill, capable of finding out ways where resources fail, and making up for the defects of the mind...

And often it is necessary to deceive, and to do the greatest benefits by means of this device, whereas he who has gone by a straight course has done great mischief to the person whom he has not deceived—(Treatise On The Priesthood, Book 1)​

Ignatius Loyola

We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides.​

Martin Luther

What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church ... a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them—(Cited by his secretary, in a letter in Max Lenz, ed., Briefwechsel Landgraf Phillips des Grossmüthigen von Hessen mit Bucer, vol. I.)​

 

[Stormer0628]

Re: OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Shocking Truths That Never Shook the World

The Secret Identity of Yahweh

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The use of Yahweh as the name of God has always fueled speculation and philosophical argument. YHWH, sometimes pronounced Jehovah, is taken to mean "I AM" or "I AM WHO I AM".

There is also the puzzle of the rule that his mysterious real name is not to be spoken.

The identification of the goddess Asherah (Asherat) as his consort somewhere within the original Jewish faith leads to some explosive conclusions about the identity of the Jewish/Christian God of the Cosmos, the one Monotheistic God with whom we are so familiar from western religion.

But before looking at Asherah, and what she means to the identity of Yahweh, it is worth taking a look at another goddess, Ashteroth. Her significance will become evident a little later.

Referred to as an "abomination" in 2 Kings, Ashteroth was an important deity in the Near East pantheons.

• To the Sumerians she was IN.ANNA (Anu’s beloved) and is an important character in the Sumerian Epics
• To the Assyrians and Babylonians she was Ishtar
• Ashtoreth was her name for the Canaanites
• To the Greeks—Aphrodite
• The Romans—Venus
• The most important equivalent however is the Egyptian goddess Hathor
• Hathor was the wife of Horus, the God of War.

Hathor is identified with the symbol of the cow, and statues of her in the 26th Dynasty (572 - 525 BC) in Egypt actually depict her as a cow.

Asherah, (whose name means "she who walks in the sea") supposedly consort of the supreme god El, was also referred to as Elath (the goddess). According to the Ugarit tradition, whose clay tablets contain the earliest known alphabet, she was consort of El, and mother of seventy gods. She is also associated with Baal and is supposed to have interceded to her husband, the supreme god, on Baal’s behalf, for the building of a palace - in order to grant him equal status with other gods.

In the cuniform tablets of Ras Shamrah (Circa 1400 BCE) the head of the Pantheon was El; his wife was Asherat-of-the-sea (Asherah). After El, the greatest god was Baal, son of El and Asherah.

Curiously, Baal’s consort is his mother, Asherah. In the Lebanon traditions Baal is equated with Jupiter.

Carvings of Asherah in Syria show her wearing Egyptian head-dress. She was also referred to later as "the cow"—a reference to her great age.

Significantly, Baalat (an important Goddess at Byblos) is depicted in carvings as having cow’s horns, between which is a halo. Baalat is in fact the form of Asherah when she appears alongside Baal.

But what does this say about the identity of Yahweh? The Bible has always presented a confusing picture of Yahweh. In the light of Herzog’s discoveries and conclusions that Yahweh’s consort was Asherah, it deserves a closer examination.

Exodus 6:3 states

"And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by [the name of] God Almighty (El Shaddai), but by my name "I AM" was I not known to them."​

In the King James Version, "I AM" is translated as Jehovah (Yahweh) but means the same: "I AM". The use of "God Almighty" is a traditional translation of Shaddai, thought to have meant "Omnipotent", but arguably it could be linked to the Akkadian root word Shadu, meaning literally "mountains".

• And El Shaddai is only one of the versions of God described in Genesis.
• El Shaddai literally translated means, "God the one of the mountains"
• There was also El Olam (God the everlasting one),
• El Elyon (God most high),
• El Ro’i (God of vision).

The obvious question is, why did YHWH reveal himself to the patriarchs as El Shaddai?

The answer lies in the religious traditions of Canaan, where Abraham is said to have lived for a time, and which were brought to Canaan by the Phoenicians. (In turn, the root of Phoenician religious tradition is Sumer).

God-the-one-of-the-mountains has a Sumerian equivalent: ISH.KUR, the youngest son of Enlil, means "God the one of the far mountains." Ishkur was also known as Adad or Hadad in Hebrew, brother of Nannar/Sin, and was the preeminent God of Canaan—El-Shaddai.

According to biblical scholars who focus on the "P Source" for the old testament, Yahweh as a name is first used with Moses in Exodus, and is indicative of monolatory (exclusive worship of one of many Gods) rather than monotheism. The name Yahweh can also be translated as "I am who I am", literally a way of saying "mind your own business", a way of disguising his true identity.

Yahweh does not appear until Exodus and, strangely, the god Baal is entirely absent in Genesis.

(El Shaddai is still venerated in the Jewish faith in the form of the Teffilin, one of two small leather cube-shaped cases containing Torah Texts, traditionally to be worn by males from the age of 13. The Teffilin are worn in a manner to represent the letters shin, daleth, and yod, which together form the name Shaddai.)​

In Exodus 33:2 it states,

"And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite: 33:3 Unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou [art] a stiff-necked people: lest I consume thee on the way."​

This Yahweh is prone to violence and seems to despise his chosen people. He is a perfect match for ISH.KUR (Hadad), whose land is occupied by the Amorites and Hittites, and is a known demonstrator of violence and contempt for his worshipers.

ISH.KUR’s image, traits, and symbols match those of Baal. He is also anti-Babylon and anti-Egypt, as is Yahweh. And like Yahweh’s, the real name of the Canaanite Baal (Hadad) must not be spoken.

On the basis of Herzog’s discovery, the evidence within the Bible itself, the Sumerian, Phoenician and Canaanite traditions, the following is a logical conclusion and solution to the identity of the Jewish God of the Old Testament:

ISH.KUR = Hadad = El Shaddai = Baal = Yahweh​

(The Canaanite’s Baal was also known as Moloch, who we will examine later.)

This indicates, as does Herzog’s work, that the Jewish people evolved from polytheism to monotheism with the promotion of a god who had been known by a variety of names, into one supreme God, Yahweh (whose real name must not be spoken), and that they adopted for this purpose, not the supreme God of the Pantheons, El, but his son—ISH.KUR, Baal, Hadad, El-Shaddai, an entity who was in open revolt against his father El, and ultimately aided in this revolt by his mother and consort, Asherah, (also known as Baalat, Ashteroth, Elat).

This female entity was later merged by Greek and Roman traditions into Aphrodite and Venus, and known earlier to the Egyptians as Isis.

Once we understand this, the etymology of the name Israel—Is (either Isis or tomb) Ra (Head of the Egyptian Pantheon) El (Lord—Baal)—makes far more obvious sense than the convoluted "Yisrael" yarn from the Hebrew faith.

But what does all this do to the validity of the "Title Deeds" from God that Ariel Sharon refers to?

Quite apart from the obvious conclusion that the god assumed to have given the "promised land" to his chosen people was just one god from a pantheon and not the alleged monotheistic only God of the cosmos, Herzog’s findings corroborate theories that have been "out there" for some time.

The Hyksos
Like Herzog, the historian Josephus (c. 37CE - c. 100CE) denied the account of the Hebrews being held in captivity in Egypt, but he went a drastic step further about the racial origins of the Jews, whom he identified with the Hyksos.

He further claimed they did not flee from Egypt but were evicted due to them being leprous.

It must be said that Josephus has been vilified over the ages as a Roman collaborator by both Jewish and Christian scholars who have argued that the dating of the exodus of the "Hebrews" from Egypt in the Bible positively rules out their identification as Hyksos.

However, Jan Assmann, a prominent Egyptologist at Heidelberg University, is quite positive in his writings that the Exodus story is an inversion of the Hyksos expulsion and furthermore that Moses was an Egyptian.

Likewise, Donald B. Redford, of Toronto University, presents striking evidence that the Expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt was inverted to construct the exodus of the Hebrew slaves story in the Torah and Old Testament.

His book, which argued this theory, "Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times" was Winner of the 1993 Best Scholarly Book in Archaeology Award of the Biblical Archaeological Society.

There is irrefutable evidence that the Hyksos, a mixed Semitic-Asiatic group who infiltrated the Nile valley, seized power in Lower Egypt in the 17th Century BCE. They ruled there from c. 1674 BCE until expelled when their capital, Avaris, fell to Ahmose around 1567 BCE.

The Hyksos in Egypt worshipped Set, who like ISH.KUR they identified as a storm deity.

Under the "inversion theory", Jewish scholars in the 7th Century BCE changed the story from "expelled" to "escaped" and as a further insult to their enemy, Ahmose, changed and miss-spelt his name to Moses, presenting him as leader of a Hebrew revolt. But there is also a strong possibility of two separate origins to the "Moses" character being merged into one, which I will come to later.

Ahmose’s success in 1567 BCE led to the establishment of the 18th Dynasty in Egypt. ThotMoses III overthrew the transvestite Pharaoh Atchepsut, and under ThotMoses IV Egyptian conquests extended beyond the Sinai into Palestine, Syria, reaching Babylonia and included Canaan.

By the end of this expansion, Amenophis III (1380BCE) ruled an Egyptian empire whose provinces and colonies bordered what is now known as Turkey. This empire would have included the regions in which most of the expelled Hyksos now lived.

Amenophis IV succeeded the throne in 1353BCE. He established a new monotheism cult establishing "Aten" as the one supreme god and he changed his name to Akhenaton. Married to the mysterious Nefertiti, Akhenaton declared himself a god on earth, intermediary between the one-god Aten (Ra) and humanity, with his spouse as partner, effectively displacing Isis and Osiris in the Egyptian Enead.

Declaring all men to be the children of Aten, historians suspect Akhenaton planned an empire-wide religion. He banned all idolatry, the use of images to represent god, and banned the idea that there was more than one supreme god.

It is alongside Akhenaten and his father Amenophis III that we find the second Moses.

An important figure during this period was confusingly called Amenophis son of Hapu. He was First Minister (Vizier) to both kings. He is generally depicted as a scribe, crouching and holding on his knees a roll of papyrus. He more than anyone was responsible for authoring the religion in which the old gods were merged into one living god, Aten, who had been responsible for the creation of the Earth and of humanity.

The symbol of this god, the sun disk, represented Ra, Horus and the other gods in one. The sun disk, in symbolism, was supported between the horns of a bull.

The Son of Hapu says this about creation:

"I have come to you who reigns over the gods oh Amon, Lord of the Two Lands, for you are Re who appears in the sky, who illuminates the earth with a brilliantly shining eye, who came out of the Nou, who appeared above the primitive water, who created everything, who generated the great Enneade of the gods, who created his own flesh and gave birth to his own form."
​

The king’s overseer of the land of Nubia was a certain Mermose (spelled both Mermose and Merymose on his sarcophagus in the British Museum).

According to modern historians, in Amenhotep’s third year as king, Mermose took his army far up the Nile, supposedly to quell a minor rebellion, but actually to secure gold mining territories which would supply his king with the greatest wealth of any ruler of Egypt.

Recent scholarship has indicated Mermose took his army to the neighborhood of the confluence of the Nile and Atbara Rivers and beyond.

But who was this Mermose? According to historian Dawn Breasted, the Greek translation of this name was Moses. Does Jewish tradition support this identification?

According to Jewish history not included in the Bible, Moses led the army of Pharaoh to the South, into the land of Kush, and reached the vicinity of the Atbara River. There he attracted the love of the princess of the fortress city of Saba, later Meroe. She gave up the city in exchange for marriage.

Biblical confirmation of such a marriage is to be found in Numbers 12:1.

"And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman."
​

The end of Akhenaten’s reign is shrouded in mystery, scholarship about which is beyond the scope of an article of this length.

In summary, however, theories span from the death of Nefertiti from plague—Akhenaten’s own death from plague or murder—to exile. On clear record, in contrast, is the return of Egypt to the Enead of the gods and a systematic attempt to erase all vestiges of Akhenaton and his cult in Egypt.

Meanwhile, the expelled Hyksos, according to various historians, have been living in Canaan. It is here that a solution to the Biblical dating problem of linking the Israelites to the Hyksos appears.

Using the dating of the Biblical Exodus and comparing it to the Egyptian dating of the Hyksos expulsion throws up a gap of about 400 years. Using the dating systems of the books of Judges and Samuel, this gap can extend to between 554 and 612 years.

However, there is clear historical record of post Hyksos Egypt extending its empire into Canaan, the land into which the Hebrews entered and lived, according to Biblical sources, for 400 years before establishing the kingdom of Solomon.

The Hebrews living in Canaan were therefore under Egyptian rule. It is also here in Canaan that we can make a comparison between Yahweh and the Canaanite Moloch (Baal) and extrapolate a polemic inversion of the story of Pharaoh ordering the death of all the "first born" in Exodus.

The worshippers of Moloch sacrificed their first born children to their deity through immolation. Worshippers of Yahweh in Canaan were also known to carry out child sacrifice on occasion, especially in times of hardship, although immolation (holocaust) was supposedly frowned upon. Slitting the child’s throat, however, was acceptable.

The sacrifices were carried out and the remains interred at sacred sites known at Topheth. Sometimes—although rarely, judging by the vast predominance of infant human bones found at Topheth sites by archaeologists—animals were sacrificed as substitutes.

to be continued....

 

[Stormer0628]

Re: OLD TESTAMENT ARCHEOLOGY: Shocking Truths That Never Shook the World

continued from above...


The Unification
Modern historical disciplines studying the biblical era uniformly conclude that Exodus could not have been written earlier than the 7th century BCE, and certainly not by the Biblical Moses who at best is a fictional combination of Egyptian personalities.

In Israel itself, 7th Century BCE is the period in which the archaeological evidence presented by Herzog suggests the emergence of Jerusalem as a cultural centre occurs.

By all accounts, it is a cultural centre struggling to find an identity and nationality for itself and, given the discovery of the Jewish texts displaying Yahweh having a consort in the form of Asherah, it is not difficult to piece this jigsaw together.

In 639BCE, Josiah, king of Judah, is known to have introduced wide-ranging religious reforms and brought additional areas of "Israel" under his control.

It is during this period that "polemics" against and "inversion" of a wide variety of religious and cultural sources are brought together to form a religious and political unity.

For Josiah’s "inquisitors", where history is unheroic, such as the expulsion from Egypt in the form of the Hyksos, history is inverted. Where religion is bereft of moral unity, the cult of Aten is interweaved, satisfying existing belief systems within the region and bestowing upon the king, Josiah, the position of divine right through a lineage to Solomon and David—both replacements for Aten’s ancestors and his temple-building reputation. Josiah also destroys the Topheth Temple said to have been built by Solomon in the Hinnon valley just outside Jerusalem, to the south.

Within this unifying mechanism, there are obfuscations to mitigate existing belief systems, which require the true name of God to be kept secret, and for which there is precedence in the cults of Baal and ISH-KUR, all part of the mish-mash of the region, and all designed to plaster over the holes in the new Yahweh-based system.

An important separation of the identities of Baal-Moloch-Yahweh is implemented, although the evolution of ISH-KUR to Hadad to Baal to Yahweh does not remain disguised owing to the later polemic against Babylon written up as Genesis.

Well known in Egypt, including at the time of the Aten cult was the following passage from the Book of the Dead:

I have not robbed. I have not coveted. I have not killed people. I have not told lies. I have not trespassed. I have not committed adultery. I have not cursed a god.​

Josiah’s unification process takes Moses, an Ideogram combining the Ahmose who expelled the Hyksos, and the Mermose who led the Egyptian army to great victories, and credits him with receiving the Ten Commandments in tablets of stone.

In reality these laws are an elaboration of the above declaration.

Add to this the fact that the obscure Egyptian king’s "Hymn to Aten" is almost "word for word" Psalm 104 in the Bible and we have another compelling "coincidence".

These and other "coincidences" apparently convinced the renowned Psychologist Sigmund Freud, writing in his 1939 book "Moses and Monotheism", that the Jewish monotheistic faith had its roots in the Akhenaton cult religion.

Josiah’s unification should of course be applauded. It outlawed the Moloch cult and emphasized the spiritual morality of the Ten Commandments. The polemics and inversions adding a heroic slant to the history of his people are understandable and politically astute.

But beginning c. 200CE, somewhere along the line, and unlike the Aten cult, supremacy of race is added to the Jewish faith.

In summary, however, it is Herzog’s discovery of Yahweh’s consort Asherah in Jewish texts and his declaration of an archaeological absence of Solomon or David that is the scalpel with which to slice through all the fictions of the biblical Exodus and its suggestion of divine right and supremacy. For that reason, Herzog must not be forgotten.

Even though his scholarship is ignored by the politics of modern day Israel, it contains a lesson for the rest of the world, and in particular for those nations who support Israel’s supremacist doctrines.

Israel, modern, needs to face up to the fact that it has no "divine right" to the land it occupies. Israel must rely instead upon an equitable settlement in light of its undeniable modern day colonization and conquest—a reality its opponents must accept but without straying outside the boundaries defined by international law—i.e. the 1967 borders.

It is a realist position, which most modern day western civilizations have come to terms with without claiming divine right or racial supremacy.

They have accomplished this by recognition of human rights and an international standard of law limiting their behavior (in most cases), reserving instead to a faith in the democratic institutions upon which their modernity and equitability is based.

Given the religious and cultural battleground upon which Israel is placed, its absence of recognition of modern reality, and in a world armed with nuclear weapons, until Israel—armed with those weapons—separates itself from doctrines of "divine right" and "racial supremacy", it will continue to be the breeding ground for a fight against racial and political injustice—at the centre of the modern-day world’s geo-political processes—which could bring our entire global civilization to destruction.

 

[pustiso01]

pinaghahalo mo yung God of Israel at God of Egypt

 

[Stormer0628]

pinaghahalo mo yung God of Israel at God of Egypt

Changed my mind about that previous comment ... not helpful...

Well, anyway, para rin sa ibang di familiar sa background ng part na to about the two monotheistic religions of Aten and Yahweh/Jehovah, here's a brief backgrounder.

Aten was one of the gods of Egypt. Coming earlier than Yahweh/Jehovah of Israel, he was one of the first truly monotheistic gods. He was the God of Light, represented by the disk of the sun—the Aten. It was an extension of the old cult of the sun god, Ra, centred at Heliopolis, the "city of the sun." Ra was combined with Amun ("the hidden one") to become the great god Amun-Ra. A vast temple complex was based at Karnak to worship Amun-Ra, his consort Mut, and their son, Khonsu. The power of Amun-Ra's priesthood rivaled that of the pharaohs (a term that some historians now claim is wrong: nowhere in the history of Egypt does it show that they called their kings as such) of Egypt (just as, later, the power of the Hebrew priesthood rivaled that of the Hebrew kings.)

Aten was raised to prominence by "Pharaoh" Akhenaten, who started building a new capital city called Akhentaten, with great temples to Aten, at Amarna. The priests in Karnak and Heliopolis, all serving the former pantheon of many gods, were appalled by the new regime and sought to sabotage it.

To distinguish his new monotheistic religion from the previous polytheistic systems over which Ra had presided, Akhenaten called his God Aten rather than one of the usual forms of Ra. His radical monotheism encouraged the Jews to grow more monotheistic too. In a sense, a feedback loop was created between the worship of Aten and the worship of Yahweh, but the former was distinctively Egyptian and the latter distinctively Hebrew. (The Hebrews did, however, adopt many of the symbols and rituals of Egyptian religious practice, which were much grander and more impressive than their own.)

Akhenaten's reign was afflicted by severe plague, pestilence and famine. The Egyptian priests of the old gods and the ordinary people regarded these ills as the direct consequence of Akhenaten's rejection of the traditional gods. Virulent influenza, polio and Bubonic plague may all have broken out within a short period, possibly the first major appearances of these diseases in history. The deaths of so many led to fields not being tended nor crops gathered. Many animals also perished because of the plague. A terrible famine ensued. (Curiously, the exact opposite occurred at Israel: beaten by Babylon and taken away from their lands, the returning Jews blamed their losses on the worship of many gods, and soon rallied to make Yahweh/Jehovah their one god in deference to the Egyptians' Aten.)

The unrest against Akhenaten grew so severe that he was forced to flee into exile. His overthrow brought about a chaotic and unstable period in Egyptian history.

Akhenaten, his health damaged by the traumas he had endured (he was not in any case a healthy man), and his spirit broken by the people's rejection of his God, died soon after reaching the land of exile.

In Egypt, Akhenaten's son Tutankhamun was made Pharaoh after being made to reject Aten (the "Aten" was removed from his original name Tutankhaten).

Akhenaten's monotheism was envisaged as universal whereas Hebrew monotheism was based on a jealous, partisan god: a war god that was carried into battle by the Hebrews (in the Ark of the Covenant at the head of their army) to smite the enemies of Israel.

Although this is referred to as monotheism, it is really nothing of the kind. A monotheistic god is a divinity for all the peoples of the world, not for a single nation or race with whom he has concluded an exclusive and binding contract. A partisan god who makes a covenant with one people implies the existence of other partisan gods who make covenants with their "chosen people" too i.e. this type of "monotheism" is actually a disguised polytheism. The history of religious conflict shows that we live in a polytheistic system of competing gods and religions. Hinduism is more truly monotheistic than any of the Abrahamic religions. (The Christian Crusaders and the Muslim suicide battalions show that Christianity and Islam are also both on the side of an exclusive, violent god like Yahweh. Again, these are not properly monotheistic religions, but are divisive and partisan belief systems, sending everyone who does not agree with them to hell.)

This warped form of monotheism was first set out in the "sacred" writings of the Hebrews. How long will people go on believing the grotesque lies of the Old Testament? In Israel itself, the Jews have long been aware of such criticisms of their holy books and grew to distance themselves from it and rely more on secularism. But they cannot make much noise of it since all their claims to Palestine relied on the fictions of the Torah and the bible. So they turned a blind eye to the latest findings. A few of them, however, are not keen on this kind of attitude. Some, like Herzog, are willing to steer a new path for Israel, one that is based on truth and a better conciliatory approach to its relations to its immediate neighbors.

 

[pustiso01]

hahaha, binasa ko yang post mong copy paste


bakit pinagpipilitan mo pinaghahalo ang god ng Egypt at God ng Israel

 

[Stormer0628]

Hindi mo ba nakita naka-indicate kung saan galing ang article? The article is that condensed to further shorten or rephrase it.

You totally miss the point why the Egyptian and Israeli gods are contrasted with the other. Are you even capable of understanding what you read? If you have any counterargument let's hear them. Luma na yang style mo ganyan, empty statement in the final analysis. The Israelites were inspired by the Egyptians pushing and creating a monotheistic god. Does this simple idea presented by the article escape you? You still think Yahweh is unique, a true powerful god who actually exists? The post makes it clear he is nothing but a derivation of other earlier gods. Is this what you cannot accept but cannot directly counter so you resort to hollow nonarguments? Let's hear it. Baka may lalim at sense ka pang kayang hugutin, let's see it.

Also, by comparing the major tenets of the two traditions, Aten's monotheistic system emerges as a more powerful conception of true universal monotheism accepting of all men for which Yahweh's limited version pales in comparison.

Key Points to Understanding the Emergence of Israel's Monotheistic Religion Based on Yahweh/Jehovah

• The Israelites were always in close contact with Egypt at the height of Egyptian power and ascendancy. Jewish shepherds were given permission to use Egyptian lands for pasture; Jews worked as visiting foreign workers at the height of Egyptian pyramid and other structural construction efforts; Jews frequent the Egyptian centers for trade; some Jews have chosen to relocate and reside in Egypt itself
• During these contacts, many Jews became converts of Egyptian religion, among these the cult of Aten
• Two Thutmoseses in Egyptian history became the corrupted inspiration for the biblical fictional character of Moses. One of these Thutmoseses was a general in the Egyptian army and it was he who ultimately made the vicious campaign to expel the Hyksos from Egypt (the source of the fiction of Exodus—and how strange that they sound the same: giveaway clue, perhaps?). The Hyksos, to recall, were former rulers of Northern Egypt
• This same general Thutmoses was also a high priest in the religion of Aten
• When the Jews started the campaign to establish a monotheistic religion, they found themselves dealing with Jewish Atenists among their population who were pushing for an outright adoption of the cult of Aten in Israel as the national religion
• But some Jews were already initiates of the cult of Yahweh along the same time that other Jews converted to Atenism
• In the end it was decided that Aten was too foreign to the culture of the Jews, but to pacify the Atenists among the Jews, many religious practices by Atenists were incorporated into the cult of Yahweh
• The emerging Jewish state also had problems with a lowly nation compared to the mightier, grander Egyptian traditions. They needed a more heroic, more exalted starting point for their emerging national religion
• The solution for the Jewish scribes and fictionists were to make one of the patriarchs, Joseph, of Hyksos lineage (cloth of many colors), since the Hyksos were viewed as equal to the Egyptian nobles.
• Since they adopted the Hyksos historical line, the Jews were left with no choice but to adopt the point of view of the Hyksos: as a direct adversary of the Egyptians, and it shows in the bitter treatment of the Jews of the Egyptians in their holy books
• The adoption of Moses as a corrupted version of Thutmoses and the inversion of the Hyksos expulsion out of Egypt as the Hewbrews' own comprise a sarcastic willful twisting of history that appears to serve nothing but to amuse the scribes and the fictionalists, a reflection of their wicked sense of humor in order to befuddle future generations.

 

[Stormer0628]

The Hush Hush About the Name of God: Historical Origin

A curious feature of the bible is it's strict forbidding of the use of god's name. Previously the post made one reason: because it leads to another previously existing god of other nations.

There is also another reason—from Egyptian history again—coming to light after taking into consideration the fate of the cult of Aten (or also Aton) and the Atenists/Atonists in Egypt that met the same fate as the Hyksos: the new rulers forbade the mention of any reference to Aten/Aton, and in fact went as far as deleting any mention of the episode of Atenist/Atonist king and his reign in the official records of Egypt. The new rule ordered the punishment of death for transgressors who would mention the name of Aten/Aton or anything that might make a reference to the god.

It was Pharaoh Horemhab and his generals who destroyed the Akhnaton (Ankhenaten/Ankenaten) royal family and erased all their names, cities, statues, tombs and the names of the four Pharaohs from Akhnaton, Semenkhare, Tutankhamun and Ay and it was forbidden to even utter their name of Akhnaton or the name of Aton, it was punishable by death.

In the Jewish worship they don’t mention Adonai, but Jehovah. Adonai means in Hebrew "my lord"; ai = "my" and "Adon" means "Aton" (lord). This is because letter T in Egypt becomes letter D in Canaan or Syria. When the biblical writers wrote the passages forbidding reference to Adon, they had in mind the deadly law of Egypt meting death to those who would commit the crime. They were either warning those who were in Egypt or those in Canaan who might unwittingly find themselves in a deadly situation if they went to Egypt and made the mistake of being overheard mentioning ATON/ADON or any reference to him.

By the stroke of simple historical information, we gain essential insights to biblical verses that make no sense or for which we concoct our own reasons.

 

[Stormer0628]

Did the Exodus Happen?
The View from Jerusalem
By STEPHEN GABRIEL ROSENBERG \ 04/14/2014 07:21​

"The Exodus is so fundamental to us and our Jewish sources that it is embarrassing that there is no evidence outside of the Bible to support it."​

The short answer is “no.” The whole subject of the Exodus is embarrassing to archaeologists. The Exodus is so fundamental to us and our Jewish sources that it is embarrassing that there is no evidence outside of the Bible to support it. So we prefer not to talk about it, and hate to be asked about it.

For the account in the Torah is the basis of our people’s creation, it is the basis of our existence and it is the basis of our important Passover festival and the whole Haggada that we recite on the first evening of this festival of freedom. So that makes archaeologists reluctant to have to tell our brethren and ourselves that there is nothing in Egyptian records to support it. Nothing on the slavery of the Israelites, nothing on the plagues that persuaded Pharaoh to let them go, nothing on the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, nothing.

Nothing at all. There are three Pharaohs who said they got rid of the hated foreigners, but nothing to say who the foreigners were, and no Pharaoh is named as having persecuted foreign slaves or suffered unspeakable plagues.

However, there is another way of looking at it, another way of seeking support for this fundamental experience of our peoplehood.

We do not look for evidence from the biblical text, but we can look to it for the general context of a sojourn in, and an exodus from, Egypt, and there are three major elements.

The first is that the Israelites were slave workers in mudbrick. They had to manufacture the material and they were semi-skilled workers in laying the bricks. As there were thousands of Israelites, what projects were they working on? The pyramids and the temples were in stone, the mudbrick houses of the peasants were built by themselves, so what project needed hundreds of workers in mudbrick? Secondly, when the Israelites escaped, it was during a period of turmoil brought on by the magical plagues, a period when the Egyptians were off their guard and keen to see the slaves go as they wished into the desert.

When could that have been? And thirdly, the Israelites escaped into the desert and there built a most luxurious portable shrine to their God, to accompany them through their long desert trek and to house the Deity that would lead them and protect them on the way. It was to be made of fabulous materials, in hardwood and colored cloth with gold and copper trimmings, as described in detail in 16 chapters of the Torah.

How could all that have been manufactured and assembled in the arid Sinai wilderness? We should then ask, is there any period in Egyptian history when the conditions for these three elements could have come together and thus formed a basis for the context and account of the Exodus? And the answer here is “yes” – there was one such period.

It was around the death of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten, the one who decreed that all worship should be directed to the single god Aten, the disc of the sun, and all other gods should be downgraded to secondary rank. To impose his new religious order, Akhenaten closed the old cultic centers of Saqqara and Luxor, closed the temples there, disowned their priests and founded a new city, Akhetaten, called the Horizon of the Aten, on a prime site well away from the old centers.

TO IMPOSE the new rule, the city had to be built quickly, and it went up in the incredibly short time of two years, being built throughout in mudbrick, except for the temple and palace, which were in traditional stone.

How could it have been built so quickly? It was said to have employed thousands of slaves working under military taskmasters. It was the largest mudbrick project in Egyptian history and it required thousands of bricklayers and millions of bricks. It employed the army to supervise the slave workers and force them to work as fast as the Pharaoh demanded.

The new city was at El Amarna, on the east bank of the Nile, where there was plenty of soft mud for the bricks but little straw.

Thanks to slave labor, Akhenaten’s model city was built in record time, but it did not last long. After only 16 years, Akhenaten died, his reforms had been deeply unpopular and when he died, his new religion was abandoned, and so was his city. Akhenaten and his beautiful wife Nefertiti had had no son, only six daughters, and so it was one of the sons-inlaw who succeeded him: Tutankhamun, the famous boy king Tut.

He had the onerous task of restoring the old order, the old religion, the old gods and their priests, and he was under threat if he did not do so. The restitution stele says that the old gods would punish him if they were not given back their old rights and positions.

Hapi, the androgynous god of the Nile, would make its waters undrinkable; Kermit, the goddess of fertility, would release her frogspawn to swarm over the land; Osiris, the god of corn, would not prevent the locusts from consuming his cereals, and Ra, the sun god, would refuse to shine. Sound familiar? The laws of succession had already been altered, there was no firstborn son to succeed Akhenaten, only a daughter and son-in-law.... MORE

General Consensus on the Exodus

 

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MYTHS PERPETUATED BY ASHKENAZI JEWS AND HOLLYWOOD
Since the widespread use of the Torah or Old Testament, Ashkenazi Jews (see these prominent Ashkenazi Jews, for example) have been perpetuating and manipulating myths about Egypt which were later immortalized by Hollywood in a series of epic movies. By the time scientific evidence synchronizes with historical accounts [not one shred of evidence], it’s too late. The reality manufacturers know well that when something is accepted as truth by the masses, no amount of evidence will change the minds of those who have fallen in love with the lie, they nurture it and cherish it and don't wish to trade with it.

There were no PHARAOHS. There were only KINGS and sometimes their QUEENS
European scholars were unable to read Medu Neter [Egyptian Hieroglyphics], which means ‘Words of the Gods’ until 1822—after Champollion discovered the Rosetta Stone yet, they failed to mention that there was NO SUCH inscription of 'Pharaoh' anywhere in any Egyptian records—not even once. The word 'Pharaoh' is mentioned 273 times in the bible but the bible avoids using the names of the Pharaohs. This makes perfect sense, when you understand that the bible is a plagiarized version of Egyptian sciences, history, astrology, and myth. Another reason for these shenanigans is the Vatican's rewriting of timelines and calendars, in order to fit with their biblical creation account in Genesis, which states than 'man' is only 6,000 years old. A European scholar, Immanuel Velikovsky—wrote a book called, Ramases II and His Time—wherein he proved that Ramases II and Nebuchadnezzar were contemporaries, even though orthodox history claims they were separated by 800 years.

Biblical Accounts of Genocide Are Similar to Germanic Military Campaigns of the Holy Roman Empire
Though the historical accounts recorded in the bible cannot be verified, they do bear a striking resemblance of the historical genocides of aboriginal peoples around the globe as recorded by other nations by these Ashkenazi tribes who created the Holy Roman [Germanic] Empire. Prior to their invading Greece and Rome, these Germanic tribes were unknown to the classical world. The beginnings of their religions are also ambiguous, with the Vatican telling us that Christianity is two thousand years old and secular history pointing towards the middle-ages. Much more going on here and the Ashkenazum empire seems to be at the root of all three religions, which are expressions of Judaism.

BELOW: 8th century BC drawing of Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah/Ashterat/Ashteroth on pottery, which demonstrates, at best, that Jehovah was little more than a tribal chief with a wife​

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The Myth of the Jewish ‘Race’
Many assume the Jews to be a race—but are they?
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"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."
– Ezekiel, 16.17​

Race is a sensitive subject. To use the word almost invites the charge of racism. Yet to understand the rise of Christianity one must come to terms the people who were its original authors—the Jews.

The Jews claim themselves to be a race—but are they?
The earliest reference yet found to this singular people is on a statue from the Syrian city of Alalakh, dated to about 1550 BC. The inscription refers to hapiru warriors in the land of Kin’anu – a presence confirmed by clay tablets from Akhenaten’s capital of Amarna, referring to marauders in the hill country of Palestine. The famous stele of Pharaoh Merneptah dated to 1207 BC records 'Israel is laid waste, his seed is not’. 'Israel' here is a reference to a people, not a territory.

The weight of evidence suggests these original ‘Hebrews’ coalesced during the bronze age from successive migrations, some from the periphery of the Nile delta (in Egyptian, ‘Peru or apiru meant a labourer) but most from across the Jordan and Euphrates rivers. In their own semitic tongue, habiru meant ‘beyond’, suggesting an origin elsewhere. In Babylonian script khabiru referred to a class of slaves. As a people, therefore, the Hebrews combined Mesopotamian and Egyptian stock, almost certainly drawn from the lowest social order, conceivably including runaway slaves. One migration, at least, brought with it a mountain/sky god – Yahweh – destined for higher things.

Settlement in Canaan
As barbarous newcomers to what was the land of Canaan, these semites (speakers of a tongue common to Syrians, Arabs and Mesopotamians) took up migratory occupation of the less fertile hill-country of the interior. Neither their limited sub-culture – an illiterate donkey nomadism; nor their social organisation – patriarchal and authoritarian—distinguished them from other tent-dwelling pastoralists. These early, polytheistic, Hebrews scratched an existence in an unpromising land on the fringes of the major civilisations, occasionally moving with their animals into the Nile delta in times of draught.

It seems as if they were joined, over time,by outcasts or refugees from the more sophisticated Canaanite (Phoenician) coastal cities. ‘Israel emerged peacefully and gradually from within Canaanite society ‘ concluded Karen Armstrong, the noted religious scholar. (A History of Jerusalem, 23]

The Canaanite migrants brought with them cultic practices and images of their traditional gods. A major Canaanite god was El, and the phrase ‘El has conquered’ gives us the word Isra’el. The Canaanite god El had a ghostly presence in a host of Jewish heroes: Dan-i-El; Ezek-i-El; Sam-u-El, Ish-ma-El, El-i-jah, El-o-him, etc.

God-inspired names were common throughout the west-Semitic language region. Other Canaanite gods included Baal (a storm god)—also honoured in a host of Hebrew names, Asherah (a fertility goddess, consort of El), Shalem (a Syrian sun god—later to be honoured in the name Jeru’salem ), Milcom, Chemosh, etc. Ru’shalimum is mentioned in records of the Pharaoh Sesostris III (1872 - 1847 BC)—the settlement actually pre-existent long before the tribe of Hebrews made it their own. The site then appears to have been unoccupied for three hundred years until the Jebusites (otherwise known as Kereti or Peleti—Cretans or Philistines) arrived.

Blood Sacrifice
Influenced by these Canaanite cults, but devoid of artistic or metal working skills of their own, the early Hebrews adopted a way of honouring their god of choice by genital mutilation. This sometime practice of the Egyptian priesthood became, for the ‘Jews’, a tribal obligation, part of the male regenerative organ offered as a blood sacrifice to the ‘jealous’ god Yahweh. Other gods were worshipped but Yahweh demanded precedence.

Thus though the Hebrews were not a race, the males at least acquired a distinctiveness from other Semitic tribesmen who did not practice circumcision. Women, regarded as mere chattels, were spared this mutilation.

In this period of proto-Judaism, polygamous males acted as ‘priests’ for their extended families and kinship groups and exercised absolute authority over wives and children. At some point in the tenth century BC the Hebrews were completely overwhelmed by the more advanced Philistines, moving down from the north. Armed with iron weapons and deploying chariots the Philistines scattered the primitive Hebrew nomads into the hill country and a few austere places in the Jordan River valley.

The various Hebrew clans had no single warlord but were led by tribal elders and shamans. The backward Hebrews remained under the sway of their shamanic ‘judges’ to a much later date than neighbouring peoples. Theirs was a harsh culture of ‘scapegoat’ sacrifice and collective and inherited guilt (‘eye for an eye’ vengeance). As marginalised pastoralists they were acutely xenophobic and demonized the city dwellers and farmers. With the ebb and flow of empires over centuries, and the endless movement of peoples, we might have expected this marginal tribe to have passed into history, along with countless other peoples, assimilated into a greater multitude....
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