SPENTA MAINYU

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: "Ignorance is an affront."

YOU ARE IN DARKNESS

home page

by Mudarras Kadhir Gaznavi

The New Testament is a follow up series of texts, the prophetic background and many stories of the which texts have their origins in the Old Testament. The New Testament shares the history, geography and the personalities with the Old Testament. The first people that Christians have won over were Jews. All these points leave us no choice but to take the Old and New Testaments together. Let us begin.

The first note: The Old Testament (doesn't matter who says what) is a tribal book. It has nothing to say to the other peoples of the earth, unless these other peoples accept it as one of the origins of their belief system like Muslims. The imaginary supreme authority in the Old Testament is an entity particular to the Hebrew  tribes in the beginning and to Israel later on; and Judaism is a tribal belief system merging the Babylonian-Mesopotamian and Egyptian-Palestinian elements.

The Bible is probably the greatest inter-text on the face of the Earth. Almost all of its material is the result of interactions with other Semitic literature and ancient Middle Eastern cultures. Especially the discoveries in the last 150 years and the deciphering of the texts on the unearthed tablets and other materials (foremost among them the Sumerian clay tablets), demonstrated to what extent the authors of the Old and New Testaments have borrowed their stories from the ancient cultures and libraries.

First of all here is the canon of the Old Testament for quick reference:

CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

                                             (*) Numbers indicate order in the Hebrew Bible

GO FURTHER BACK IN TIME

As we know many scholars have spent a lot of time to find out when the various books of the Old Testament were written, and who the authors were. Many of these scholars haven’t cared to look into the history of the scriptures and almost disregarded the fact that the present form of the texts have come into being only about two thousand four hundred years ago. But as the tablets  from Sumer, Ras Shamra, Tell Mardikh, Babylonia, and documents belonging Zoroastrianism etc., have shown, these historical accounts and the fairy tales were collected, compiled, summarized, and rewritten from a wealth of material that Israelites have possessed, coming down from earlier periods. This material of the Israelites are said to have been lost between the second and forth centuries A.D. But at least we have the clay tablets and the texts written on them, which indicate that the Old Testament is not original but the authors have borrowed from other material.

We are told that there were some other sources as well, but the wars throughout the region within the last two thousand years, have created a situation where many of these have been lost or damaged to such an extent that the contents do not make sense anymore. There were several non-Hebrew historians who have dealt with the times of the best known of the kings and some others, but these works have rarely been found intact. The early Church fathers in Alexandria did however, in a lot of their writings, included quotations from authors of quite a few works that were a part of the celebrated library there in Egypt. We are told that the sources that  Ezra is thought to have employed  were shown to contain words and phrases that originated or were commonly used in four distinct time periods; these are the 24th, 22nd, 14th, 10th, and 5th centuries B.C. The words and phrases of ancient origin that exist in the scriptures, though they had been abandoned in the surrounding cultures, show a continuity of understanding between the language of the text and the language of those times. In other words they do not belong to a more recent period, therefore are not the result of some blending.

Here is a short list of these sources: Sumerian creation myths; Babylonian Gilgamesh, Atrahasis (Ut-napishtim-Ziusudra) stories; hymns to Marduk and Amon-Re; Ugarithic myths from Ras Shamra (with very prominent gods - El and Baal); Zoroastrian doctrines; Mithras cult etc. The rich coastal city of Ugarit which was destroyed in 1200 B.C, had widespread trade relations throughout the Fertile Crescent and across the Mediterranean. Ugarit  had a twenty-six letter cuneiform alphabet. This was an invention used by the traders and accountants who had relations with other cultures and peoples in far away lands. This alphabet and writing must have changed the illegible, incomprehensible cultural atmosphere that was created by the ancient  temples; clearing the ‘sacred’ vagueness of pictographs and transforming the communication medium into a secular, demotic script which people of many different nations could easily adapt and use. This language is seen as a direct forerunner of modern western alphabets as well as the biblical Hebrew. Ugarit had a Canaanite literature and the traditions of that society has influenced the Old Testament. The scribes of Ugarit did know the city of Yerushalim and the holy mount  Zion nearby;  this hill was known by that same name, which meant in Ugaritic Canaanite, ‘the seat of god’. That is not all, many Old Testament characters, too, have typically Canaanite names: For instance Absalom and Solomon. These names have a component in them which is the the name of the Canaanite god of the evening star: Solom. The fact that numerous biblical terms for the articles of daily life, for clothes, perfumes and furniture were also Ugaritic underlines that the Ugaritic influence was not only linguistic but also cultural, extending into the appurtenances of daily life.

In 1868-1869 Charles Clermot-Ganneau found at Dibon (modern Dhiban, Jordan) the famous Moabite Stele of King Mesha, dating from 9th century B.C., which has a direct bearing on the Old Testament. The stone was written in gratitude and devotion to Baal-Lebanon, in one of the earliest known examples of the Semitic alphabet. Moabite national god was Chemosh. On this stele, Mesha describes how Chemosh has ordered him to “go and take Nebo from Israel”; how he has fought Israel and killed seven thousand of them and  “took from there the vessels of YHVH, dragging them before Chemosh..” Chemosh’s relation to his children  (the Moabites) was excactly like YHVH’s relation to Israel. Robin Lane Fox, in his book The Unauthorized Version writes:

• “In Moab, the Number One was called Chemosh; in Israel, people looked especially (but not solely) to Yahweh (YHVH): it is most striking that Saul, the first king, gave one of his sons a name after the god Baal…Jonathan did the same. From time to time Chemosh or Yahweh might be angry with their worshippers, and, as a result (people believed) their wars or weather could be unpredictable. To win Chemosh's or Yahweh’s favor, they had to offer animals and pay worship in their temples. Eventually, the gods’ anger would moderate (in due course people’s fortunes improved, if only from bad to less bad) and meanwhile the priests lived off the necessary offerings. All the while, worshippers were realistic about death. At best there might be a ghostly existence for a few people in an underworld, but when they died, they died for ever.” 

There were local cults as well to Baal Peor and Baal Meon. Mesha was a strong follower of the Astarh-Chemosh cult. All the finds in the biblical  lands show  that the biblical authors were suitably inspired by the stories of the surrounding cultures.

The personal name of the god of Israel in the Bible is Y-H-UA-H (Tetragrammaton=‘four letters’=YHVH). The Hebrew language had only consonants and when the Masoretes produced the Masoretic text the pronunciation of the divine name was lost, and since the pious Jews did not pronounce the tetragrammaton and used words like adonai-adonay (lord) or ha-shem (the name) we do not have the exact version. The original ban on the free usage of god’s name seems to have its origin in Egypt, because every Egyptian magician believed that the one who possessed the true name possessed the very being of god or man, and could force even a ‘supreme being’ to obey him like a slave. Therefore the magician has never stopped his attempts to obtain from the gods a revelation of their sacred names. The only natural solution seemed to be a ban on the free usage of god’s name.

An excavation work started in 1964 at Tell Mardikh in north-western Syria forty kilometers south of Aleppo turned out to be an excavation of the ruins of the ancient city of Ebla. The documents unearthed there have showed the existence of a mighty Canaanite empire in Syria which embraced Palestine around 2400 B.C., and to the amazement of everybody Tell Mardikh/Ebla turned out to be the ancient capital city of this civilisation. There were 260,000 inhabitants in the city, which existed 1,000 years before David and Solomon and was destroyed by the Akkadians around 1600 B.C.

In 1975, a very important find was made at the Early Bronze Age levels of Ebla in the form of nearly 20,000 clay tablets: The royal archives of the city. These tablets date back to the middle of the 3rd millenium B.C, almost 4,500 years ago. The language is Sumerian in the form of wedge-shaped cuneiform script that is the world’s oldest known written language: The Old Canaanite, which is found out to be very close in vocabulary and grammar to biblical Hebrew than any other Canaanite dialect, including Ugaritic. This is an evidence as to the age of the Hebrew language. The Ebla documents are vital insofar as the linguistic problems in the scriptures are concerned. The original Hebrew language had no vowels. Mainly Masoretes have worked on the language; added vowels, and changed the definitions of the Hebrew words between 6th and 12th centuries A.D. The language was already out of use before their work. It was revived in 1948, after not being spoken for nearly 1600 years. Therefore meanings of a number of words are unknown, making it difficult to rely solely on the Hebrew version as the last authority. The language of the Ebla tablets can give us a clearer meaning of  the doubtful  words in these texts.

Before the stories in the Sumerian clay tablets were deciphered mankind have thought that the Old Testament was a word of god, a revelation. When the Sumerian stories were published   the Old Testament  has lost its mystery completely, because the origin of the fairy tales in the Book became clear. The records of the city of Ebla has  played an identical role (Check the page on the OLD TESTAMENT in this site).

CITY OF EBLA AND A FURTHER PROOF THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT IS A COLLECTION OF OLD TALES

The most important aspect of the unearthing of these tablets shows itself in the place names.

• There are references to places and vassal cities in Palestine like Hazor, Gaza, Lachish, Megiddo, Akko, Sinai, and Ur-u-salima (coldn’t be anything but Yerushalim).

• But much more important than the place names we read the personal names which also appear in the Bible; names from the patriarchal age like Ab-ra-mu (Av'ram-Abram-Abraham), E-sa-um (Esau), Ish-ma-ilu (Ish'mael), even Is-ra-ilu (Israel), and from later periods, names like Da‘u’dum (David) and Sa‘u’lum (Saul).

• The most tantalizing revelation is the name of Ebrum (Biblical Eber - the third and greatest of the six kings of the Ebla dynasty between 2400 and 2250 B.C.). He seems to have been placed on the throne of Ebla by Great Sargon of Agade (Sharru-ken, Sharrum-kin) after a punitive expedition in which Ebla was subjugated. This Ebrum reminds Eber which is the person Hebrews claim to have descended from. Ebrum reminds Av'ram-Abram (the patriarch) as well. Jews date Av'ram to 1900-1800 B.C. The name Ebrum reminds Abram; Ebrum has lived sometime between 2400 and 2250 B.C., and Arabs date Abram to 2300 B.C. Could Ebrum be the ‘patriarch’ Abram?  Here one must not forget the 'sign of identification' and the story of Bahram the Mandai connected with it (Check the pages on SABIANS, PROPHET ABRAHAM and THE HAGARENE TEACHING=ISLAM in this site). Ebrum of Ebla must have certainly introduced substantial changes. In all the names like Ishma-el, Micha-el and Isra-el the suffix -ilu or -el represents the god El. But when Ebrum has begun his term as the king, a change occurred in the suffixes of these names from -el to -ya(w) (yahu-yah), and for instance Mi-ka-ilu became Mi-ka-ya(w) (Mi-ka-yahu). There is no doubt that these suffixes are divine names, names of gods or words simply meaning god; therefore it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Ebrum has made some major alterations in the religion of Ebla. The suffix ya(w)’s relation to YHVH, which as the god of Israel  had replaced the god El, is arguable according to some researchers. It is only natural, because the acceptance of a connection between ya(w) and yahu and YHVH will be the proof   that the Old Testament is really a collection of ancient fairy tales with nothing divine in it.

• One of the Ebla tablets names the five cities of Genesis 14:2 in the same order as they existed in the Old Testament: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar. Don’t forget that these tablets date back to the middle of 3rd millenium B.C., but the story of Abram commences  around 1900 B.C. according to the Old Testament. Until  the discovery of the Ebla tablets, the existence of these biblical cities was questioned; yet, here they are mentioned as trade partners of Ebla. This record predates the great catastrophy involving Lot when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. There are also very early Canaanite creation  and flood  stories in this archive, which very closely resemble that of the Bible.

Leaving out;

• The Dead Sea Scrolls;
• A papyrus  from the 2nd century B.C. containing the Ten Commandments which does not conform to the classical text;
• The Geniza/Genizeh (Cairo) pieces of the 5th century B.C.,

The oldest known section of the Old Testament was written in the 9th century B.C. But now Ebla discoveries show that all of these were already existing on tablets about 1600-1700 years before the Old Testament!

The Dead Sea Scrolls made it possible to gain glimpses into a community - Essenes - who practised in a way ‘Christianity before Christ’. As is well known the translation of this material was systematically boycotted. Although there are differences between the Essenes and the teachings of Yshua, similarities are obvious. As long ago as 1831 the Stuttgart  town vicar and repetitor at the Tübingen Seminary August Friedrich Gfröer (who did not know anything about the Qumran texts) wrote: “The Christian church developed from the Essene community, whose ideas it continued and without whose regulations its organization would be inexplicable.” Yshua’s first public appearance took place in the Essene region. The Essenes are not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament, although their numbers were almost equal to the Sadducees and Pharisees. This would suggest an element of intentional secrecy regarding the influence of the sect on the teaching and work of Yshua, who has  received his first baptismal bath in the Jordan at the hands of Yohanan/John, only 5 km. away from the monastic settlement of Qumran. According to one proposition Yohanan/John was a shaliach - an apostle of the sect of Qumran. He led a community of Essene moderates, who were called the Nazarenes (Check the page on SABIANS in this site). After his baptism one should normally count Yshua as a member of one of these groups and refer to him as a nazarene. The Essenes wished to form the new covenant with god, which Martin Luther has later translated as the New Testament. They called themselves the 'New covenant'. Yshua was described as the founder of it only much later. This new covenant would last until the rise of the messiahs of Aaron and Israel.

Christians consider the Old Testament as the preparation for the Gospel.

• The expected  messiah is supposedly predicted in there,

• The assumed story (they call it the prophecy) about the fulfilment or consummation of the Mosaic order by ‘Yshua the Jew’ is there.

The Old Testament is full of stories of the constant rebellion of the Jews against YHVH, which made easy the New Testament representation of them as rebels against the light, against the messiah, and of course against the Christian churches. Christians used effectively and rudely, the sacred writings of Jews against them.

The main narratives of the Bible is contained in the section Genesis-Kings (supplemented by Chronicles). The stories invented and composed by human beings, like Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah’s Ark and the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Abraham and Sarah, Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice I'zak, Ya'kub and Esau, Yosef and his brothers, Moses and the plagues of Egypt, Exodus, Crossing of the Red (Reed) Sea, destruction of the Pharaoh’s army, Ten Commandments at mount Sinai etc. could be read in this part of the Bible.

The Old Testament narrative tells that Hebrew tribes have migrated into Canaan under the leadership of Abraham, who came from Haran (Remember the story of Bahram the Mandai). The evidence suggests that this was his ancestral home; the archaeological finds have shown  that customs presupposed in Genesis have existed in this area. We are told also that Abraham has moved to Haran from Ur in Chaldea (From Kutha in Irak to Ur in Syrıa of those days, Urfa of modern Turkey), where he was living. Why did he have to move in the first place? A simple search gives us a possible reason behind this move: In the 19th century B.C. Ur was destroyed by the invading Elamites. The reference in the Old Testament to ‘Ur of the Chaldees’. is wrong, because the Chaldean kingdom did not exist during the time of Abram, but when this section was written Ur of the Chaldees had existed. When the authors of the Genesis were busy writing down their stories there was a place called Ur. So they wrote it into their story in the Old Testament. Abraham’s religion, so far as we can tell, centred on his belief in a god whom he called El-Shadday (Deity/god of the Mountains). There is evidence that his tribe has also venerated ancestral images. The story about Abraham coming to Palestine and settling there as the forefather of the Israel; the stories on the Egyptian origins of the people of Israel are clearly an attempt to connect the mythical Babylonian ancestors with Israel coming out of Egypt.

All the other invented stories that are told in between these two narrations seem to have a purpose of taking the ancestry back to Canaan, and to Babylonia. Why? Well, during the second temple period the people living in and around Yerushalim were from two different origins: Babylonia (Remember the story of Bahram the Mandai/Mandaean coming from Kutha in Irak) and Egypt. They needed a scenario to connect  those people and create a nation. It is thought that Israel was initially a league of villages in the hills of Beth-El and Samaria from about 1230 B.C. The people living in those villages might have possessed oral traditions about a common ancestor : Ya'kub. They might have  preserved also the stories about the struggles of tribal leaders with the Canaanite cities (Genesis 34, Judges 4-5 and 9, and possibly Joshua 9 and 12). YHVH might have been their deity, who had delivered the ancestors of some of those settlers (now in Canaan) from slavery in Egypt. Amongst them there might have been a group of custodians to the stories of Exodus who have observed the passover. On the other hand Judah was a separate entity. They had traditions about an ancestor, Abram/Abraham, who had supposedly migrated to Canaan from Haran and eventually settled in the Hebron area. They also had other traditions about tribal leaders who had fought against the Canaanite cities (Judges 1: 11-17, Joshua 10). In the Egyptian version of the story of Israel, YHVH is the god and Moses is the founder as opposed to the Babylonian version where Elohim is the god and the founder is Abraham. The Old Testament and the story of Israel begin with the Exodus (‘the exit’, ‘the way out’, ‘the road out’), the coming out of Egypt. From Exodus to Deuteronomy 34 the dominant characters are YHVH and Moses. The legend of baby Moses, and the fairy tale of the ark of bulrushes are taken from the ancient Assyrian legends. In that connection Moses and the king Sargon of Agade (Sharru-ken, Sharrum-kin) share the same legend. The ‘pitch’ which is used in the basket to make it waterproof exists in Mesopotamia and not in Egypt. Therefore the authors of the story of Moses must have overlooked this sensitive point when they were adapting the narration about Sargon to Moses.

No one can suggest that the traditions as they are written in the Old Testament are identical with their oral form or content  ages ago, because as I have written earlier the Old Testament is a supreme example of fiction written many times over. The Old Testament could be likened to a scenario written after watching the actual film.

 bible page 2