[Previous entry: "GOD (Part I: Bird "doing it" with Mummy)"] [Next entry: "PROJECT GOD: A Scientific Experiment"]
07/04/2005: "GOD (Part II: Have it Yahweh)"
Prologue:
The other day I was channel surfing when I happened upon Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld making an appearance on the state-run media: or,
as it is also known, Fox and Friends (with friends like that…). Now,
whenever I come across an interview with Rummy I stop and listen on the
one-in-a-billion chance that he'll break character and decide to explain
either why we still haven't captured bin Laden (despite knowing exactly
where he is) or why Karl Rove felt it necessary to "out" Valerie Plame.
Once again I was shitouttaluck. Rumsfeld was crying in his beer over the
new President of Iran, whom Donald claimed was "too close to the Mullahs".
Yes, the last thing that anybody would want is a President with ties to
religious fanatics.
Finding out how we got to the point where one member of a government ran
by Mullahs can talk smack about a member of another member of a government
ran by Mullahs is, of course, what this series is all about. Last time we
took a look at the man who just may have been the world's first Monotheist.
This time we'll peruse the instruction manual for Monotheism: The Old
Testament.
"God said to Abraham, 'Kill me your son.' Abe said, 'Man you must be
puttin' me on.'"
For most of us, Science has replaced God (if we ever believed in Him
to begin with). Creation is either the result of the Big Bang or Membrane
Theory. No Great Flood covered the Earth; and the only "Eve" is the
Mitochondrial Eve. Because of this, we don't spend a great deal of time
(if any) reading the Bible, and that's a shame because, if you have the
right mental toolkit, the Bible is a fascinating book.
The first thing that you'll need to see the Bible with a fresh pair of eyes
is not an afternoon with Lisa Whelchel and two tabs of acid, but a
familiarity with the myths of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. For
example, the Epic of Gilgamesh not only contains a flood story which is
strikingly similar to the on in the Bible, but it also features a sneaking
serpent. Ever hear of the Enuma elish? It's a Babylonian Creation Myth
written between 1600 and 1100 BCE. When compared with the fist chapter of
Genesis, some interesting parallels emerge:
Enuma elish
In the beginning, Deities and the universe exist simultaneously
Primal chaos reigns (called "Tiamat")
Earth is dark and desolate
The Gods create light
Marduk defeats Tiamat
Marduk creates firmament
Marduk creates land
Marduk and his ol' lady, Aruru, create man from clay
The Gods rest and rejoice
Genesis 1
God creates matter
Darkness covers the deep (called "Tehom")
God creates light
God creates land
God creates man from clay
God rests
And those are just two examples. The amount of dovetailing between the
Bible and other mythologies is staggering. The thing to take away from
this is that many, many cultures share (or shared) a common mythology.
This may not be the great beauty that most people who open the Bible hope
to find, but it's there, nonetheless. You just have to know where to look.
The second thing you'll need to sink your teeth into the Good Book is a
fairly firm set of linguistic skills. This might come as a shock to the
entire state of Kansas, but the Bible was not originally written in
English, so it helps to know as much Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and
Sumerian as possible. And keep in mind that words have skeletons.
Here's a word skeleton that can be found in all Indo-European
languages: M_[T,TH,D]_R. The spaces show where vowels are placed. T,TH,
and D are a group of constanants which can be substituted for each other.
Hence we get the Latin "mater", the Greek "meter" and the English "mother".
Try it with the skeleton [F,P,V]_[T,TH,D]_R and you'll get the Latin
"pater", the German "vater", and the English "father". Now, ain't that some
shit?
If you take the above into consideration, along with the fact that early
Semitic alphabets had no vowels, it's possible to see how Lotan (word
skeleton: L_[T,TH,D]_N, a Canaanite sea monster slain by the god Baal,
ended up in the Hebrew Bible as, envelope please, Leviathan:
In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will
punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan, the twisting serpent, and
he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.
- Isaiah 27:1
Hey, didn't our new buddy Marduk, who we just met a few paragraphs ago,
also do battle with a sea monster?
May he vanquish Tiamat, constrict and shorten her life. Until the last
days of humankind, when even days have grown old, may she depart, not to
be detained, and ever swept away."
- Enuma elish
And what about Baal's scrap with Lotan?
When you smote the fleeting dragon, destroyed the crooked serpent…
- Enuma elish (Ugaritic text)
"Yes, my new novel does feature a character named 'Uncle Tom' and,
yes, he does reside in a cabin in the antebellum South, but any connection
to any other novel is pure coincidence. Now fuck off."
The final Sears Craftsman wrench in your biblical toolkit is an
understanding of what is meant by J, E, P, and D texts.
The 'official" view of the Old Testament has always been that the first
five books of the Bible, the Torah, were written by one man: Moses (an
author so dedicated to his work that he even managed to record his own
death!). And was finished around 1200 BCE. Today (around noon), most
biblical scholars saddle up to the much saner idea that that Torah (AKA
the Pentateuch) was most likely finalized around 400 BCE and had several
different authors. This theory is known as the Documentary Hypothesis, and
you're about to get a crash course in it.
"J" (derived from the German, or "Kraut", word for Yahweh - Jahveh)
indicates the earliest writing (probably written between 960 and 915 BCE)
and starts with the second creation story (Yes, there are TWO
creation stories in Genesis. As Julia "It's Pat" Sweeney puts it in her
one-woman show about becoming an Atheist: "It's like all those people who
consider the Bible to be the infallible Word-of-God must've never read the
first two chapters."), and portrays God in very anthromorphic terms
(Jacob actually wrestles with the Big Guy and wins by a pin)
"E" is for "Elohist". This text was written around 850 BCE. In it God is
referred to as "Elohim" (the word is plural: it means "gods"), not
"Yahweh".
"D" is for "Deuteronomy (written around 621 BCE), while "P" relates to the
"Priestly" texts (most likely penned before 568 BCE)
When you divide J, E, D, and P into separate narratives (and get a handle
on your binge-drinking), some very interesting tales emerge. For example,
there's a new take on the story of Abraham's sacrifice of his son, Isaac
(yes, I know it's Ishmael in the Koran. We'll get to that in a month or
two). In the E version of the story, both Abraham and Isaac go up
the mountain, but only Abraham comes back down. Translation:
Abraham sacrifices Isaac. Either that of Nicole Simpson's real
killer has been at it for a very long time.
You're probably more familiar with the additions to the story from the J
and P texts in which God stays Abraham's hand and substitutes a ram that
happens to be in the right thicket at the wrong time for Isaac. Once again
knowledge of other myths comes in handy: Remember in the Iliad when
Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, Iphigeneia, in order to get some wind
action? Well, the story of a king sacrificing one of his children (even a
female child) kind of embarrassed the later Greeks, so they altered the
story so that the goddess Artemis substituted a steer's ass for Iphigeneia
before spiriting the child off to safety and a lifetime of severe issues.
In another Greek myth, a ram, later to become the Golden Fleece, also saved
the hide of Phrixus.
Isaac may not have been the only human sacrifice in the Big Book of Family
values. There's some evidence to suggest that Cain (who has come to be
known as a farmer but was actually a smith - a sort of Hebrew Hephaestos)
may have offered up his brother Abel. After all, Cain does get off pretty
lightly for murder (True, the case may have been hard to judge due to lack
of a precedent) with only exile and a mark that means no one is allowed to
harm him.
Speaking of Cain, it was upon the occasion of his birth that Eve uttered
"I have gotten a man with the help of Yahweh." Now, the Hebrew word which
was translated as "gotten" is "qanah". Qanah can also mean "created". Why
would Eve say that she and Yahweh had created (a) man together? That's the
sort of stuff Marduk and Aruru got up to in their free time.
Maybe Eve was "echoing" an earlier sentiment expressed by God's wife?
There was a "Mrs. God"?!?
A few years back, some dirt scratching at a place called Kuntillat (named
after Michelle Malkin) Ajrud turned up a huge ceramic jar bearing the
inscription "I bless thee by Yahweh and by his Asherah. The jar
dates to around 800 BCE. If were to believe the traditional view of
biblical history (oxymoron alert!), rule numero uno - "Thou shalt have no
other gods before me" - had been if place for roughly four hundred years.
And yet here were Jews worshiping Yahweh and his Saturday Night Thang.
OK, so maybe God was once a member of the Canaanite pantheon. Fine. And
who cares if he had wife, fought sea monsters, and demanded human
sacrifices. I mean, it's not like anybody takes the Bible seriously…
By nearly all accounts, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was a kind
and decent man. For his role in the creation of the Oslo Accords, Rabin
was awarded the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. As part of the peace process,
Rabin handed over land which some Israelis believed had been given to them
directly by Yahweh. On November 4th, 1995 he was assassinated by a young
Orthodox Jew whose defense was "Everything I did, I did for the glory of
God"
Recommended reading:
God Against The Gods by Jonathan Kirsch
A History of God by Karen Armstrong
Secret Origins of the Bible by Tim Callahan
The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein
Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Friedman
Replies: 30 Comments
on Monday, July 4th, Sid said
WOW!!! the first commenter...
UMM... ok say something smart.
this is my opportunity to set the standard for all following Comments.. My chance to be smart, act witty pretend that i know what i am talking about!!!
DOH, I wet myself...
Damn Rodney Your a hard act to follow..
on Monday, July 4th, SirAtededge said
The J & E origins of the the Old Testament (ergo the reason behind why Jesus had to be all man and all God, google consubstantiality) has been well accepted throughout the western world since the mid-1800's, yet it has yet to stop any of this "divine word of God" prattle.
For some reason, which I believe vanity is a huge chunk, we believe mono-theism is a huge intellectual advancement, but I think it went down as follows:
Abraham, the harvest is meager but we must sacifice a fifth of it to Yahweh, the Sun God.
We must then sacrifice a fourth to Elohim, the water god(s), for we are a desert tribe, 'nuff said.
Tell you what, I spoke to him and it's just one guy!
on Monday, July 4th, Rodney said
We’ll get to Jesus in Part IV.
If you’re looking for the poly/monotheistic smoking gun, look no further than "Thou shalt have no other GODS before me"
Yahweh was, of course, just one of a pantheon of deities. It’s most likely that he was a War God whose chief rival was the Fertility God, El. Over time Yahweh and El were merged (Asherah was originally El’s consort). During the Babylonian Exile the entire concept of one supreme God was refined and concreted.
on Tuesday, July 5th, joff88 said
Great post.
May I suggest that another fine resource for information on the Bible, God and all that jazz can be found here:
http://www.trainupachild.com/
on Tuesday, July 5th, Nigel Tailwind said
Rod to be clear Ishmael is Abraham. The way it's written it looks like Isaac is.
on Tuesday, July 5th, briannirvana said
answer this.
i threw a ball
jesus probably once threw a ball
and buddah threw a ball
mahhamed threw a ball
dionysis threw a ball
just because we all did it at one point in history does not make it unbelieveable.
just becasue 5000 years ago the mesopiotamians wrote about gilgamesh and used the story of the man who survived the flood with a boat and animals does not make noah any less believable
peace out
on Tuesday, July 5th, briannirvana said
i enjoyed the blog, too.
wish it was more often though.
Wesley crusher isnt as direct.
on Wednesday, July 6th, irrelevant said
I was going to read this, but i felt sick to my stomach,
...
i'm sorry.
Dealing with politics and society is a ver disturbing process. I will read this later, and I guess that is why I decided to reply, as a reminder. To myself.
Behavior and feelings come into a sort of 'clash' of intelligence, and truth/knowledge. I've always respected you, Mr. Anonymous, for writing and speaking. However, It's at a time where I don't want to listen..
For that I feel... like I'm conforming, or losing a part of my soul.
I'll try to get it back, and reread this later. My sincere apologies.. -Chris.
on Wednesday, July 6th, irrelevant said
I was going to read this, but i felt sick to my stomach,
...
i'm sorry.
Dealing with politics and society is a ver disturbing process. I will read this later, and I guess that is why I decided to reply, as a reminder. To myself.
Behavior and feelings come into a sort of 'clash' of intelligence, and truth/knowledge. I've always respected you, Mr. Anonymous, for writing and speaking. However, It's at a time where I don't want to listen..
For that I feel... like I'm conforming, or losing a part of my soul.
I'll try to get it back, and reread this later. My sincere apologies.. -Chris.
on Wednesday, July 6th, irrelevant said
okay, so i left off the y at the end of 'very'...
if anyone (ahem.. certain people) care to judge me on this lack of respect towards the English language....
I have a finger you might like to sit upon... -.-
on Wednesday, July 6th, Paul Kircher said
Ah, Camp Gitmo, good times, good times
on Wednesday, July 6th, eric said
i wish i had my own camp where i could legally detain people for extended periods of time. i don't know what i'd call it though. maybe camp shitmo or maybe i'll call it tiny town in homage to the milkmen. there'd be plenty of cake, cookies, ice cream, and lashings at my camp. oh and definately testicular electricution.
on Wednesday, July 6th, Doc said
Uhhh Rodney,I'm pretty sure that that 'church lady' works at the PennDot on Market st. You're dang lucky that she's probably not gonna see this...
on Wednesday, July 6th, briannirvana said
Darth Vader was originally
darth vater
meaning dark father.
i love star wars
on Friday, July 8th, briannirvana said
seriously.
if there is no supreme being, even be magic, where did we come from.
i agree that amino acids can form the first protien but who made the amino acids?
any one know what was before amino acids?
i don't? any body?
on Friday, July 8th, dogfaceboy said
for what it's worth: amino acids are basically chains of individual molecules made from compounds which form naturally under certain conditions. when you got enough of those compounds chemically bonding, you end up with an amino acid molecule. stick enough of those molecules together and you got an amino acid chain. it's not exactly rocket science - we all played with legos when we were kids.
so to answer your question, nobody "made" amino acids - they were probably forming and breaking up again for millions and millions of years on this planet alone, before a combination of environmental conditions arose in which they formed proteins and the proteins formed the first cellular organisms. basic amino acid molecules have been identified in meteorite fragments, demonstrating that they will form wherever the appropriate conditions exist - more complex amino acids almost certainly exist in comets, for example, although nobody's proved that as yet.
a new theory proposes that viruses represent just such a type of "alien" amino development, and they actually ARRIVED on this planet in meteorites, most likely after earth's "indigenous" life had begun to develop. of course there's no way anyone could prove that now, but it is the best suggestion so far as to why viruses differ so fundamentally from every other form of life on earth.
I'm sure none of this will shake your inculcated belief in a "supreme being" any - since when have little things like scientific facts ever bothered religious folks? - but if you did really wanna know, there you go.
on Friday, July 8th, briannirvana said
no. its brilliant and makes me consider altenatives to catholicism.
I search for a better answer for my niece than its god. thats it.
so thank you.
brilliant again.
on Friday, July 8th, briannirvana said
again i see that enviromental conditions are necessary.
but who or what decided that condition and form?
on Friday, July 8th, Dave said
AAAAAHHHH !!! SKEET SKEET SKEET !!!
on Friday, July 8th, irrelevant said
Speaking of water serpeants, supposedly in Norse mythology one of Loki's son's was a serpeant that swam around the world in the ocean. Wonder if that was the same one (leviathan, or lotan) that god/marduck or whoever slayed.
Jormungand - a giant sea serpent enclircling the earth.
(read it out of a book, so i don't have a link. gomen nesai.
on Friday, July 8th, Grundy Sherwood said
Brian, when you start asking who made us, you start getting into the territory of five-year olds. If you ask, "who made us?" (or something similar to that), the answer must be, "nobody made us, we just exist." Otherwise, you invariably have to make up a god, and then the next question becomes "who made god?" So, you have to come up with another god, who created your first god, and so on. You cannot stop at one god, because if god just exists without being created by an even higher power, then we in fact must exist without having been created by a higher power. Occum's razor, and all that. God is not necessary, and therefore must be cut out.
on Friday, July 8th, dogfaceboy said
"again i see that enviromental conditions are necessary.
but who or what decided that condition and form?"
I think you're kinda chasing your own tail here - you're starting off assuming that someone or something MUST have made a decision on that basis, when there's no actual reason to suppose that any decision - or any external factor at all, conscious or otherwise - was necessary. and we've no evidence of any kind to suggest that - all we know is what atoms are made of, how they differ from each other to form elements, how those elements combine with each other to form chemical compounds, and so on. what you're trying to do is to impose human expectations on an entire universe of which humans comprise only a tiny, tiny part.
is it IMPOSSIBLE that a god, or aliens, or whatever, deliberately engineered the development of life on earth? not at all. but is it LIKELY, given what we DO know about life and the history of our planet? sorry, no it isn't. nothing we have ever been able to prove as scientific fact provides us any basis for supposing that there is any supreme being or guiding force to the universe. all we can prove for certain is that it's a whole shitload of random junk interacting with itself in all sorts of interesting ways. as Grundy points out, if you assume that a god exists in some way, then that god has gotta be MADE of something, hasn't it? and that just kicks off a vicious cycle of illogical straw-grasping with nothing demonstrable to justify it.
my suggestion is that if you admire and aspire to the qualities that your presentation of god embodies, try to find those qualities within YOURSELF and bring them to bear on YOUR world. if you know right from wrong, you don't need to imagine some kind of all-powerful avatar dictating that to you.
on Saturday, July 9th, Irrelevant said
My understanding of religion, well, at least Christianity,... (i capitalize that out of habbit.. (my name's Chris -.-;)) Is (i'm not Christian, actually, aside from my name) it's hard to explain the concept of life, the universe, and everything.
I think it was written down in the bible, and you can see how long THAT is :P
so it's easier to call life, the universe, and everything God.
I think the mistranslation of I Am to Lord screwed things up, since a Lord implies an 'outside' source. so if you say 'a Lord that is inside of us all', it well, sort of defines the point, but sounds like ...
i dunno, a landowner that's inside our stomach :P 'how'd HE get there?'
we're all supposed to be a part of God/Allah ... whatever you want to call it.
What people call it seems to start wars, and create too much pain and anger for my personal tastes.
speaking of pain and anger, what does yellow bile mean? (i think i may have salmonella poisoning)
on Saturday, July 9th, Dean said
Great post...two items:
1. It's worth listening to this episode of "This American Life" where is part 2 of the program Julia Sweeney (yeah - that Julia Sweeney - [I still think "It's Pat" is a good movie...]) explains why she lost her faith in god:
http://www.thislife.org/ra/290.ram
2. Read "From Primitives to Zen; A Thematic Sourcebook of the History of Religions" by Mircea Eliade. Available here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/offer-listing/0060621346/ref=dp_olp_0//104-8215649-3262337?condition=all
on Saturday, July 9th, briannirvana said
you guys have been very helpful.
i see that i learn a lot from opening my mind.
though catholicism is often closded-minded.
on Saturday, July 9th, briannirvana said
god part III:
jehova have a hova sceme
on Saturday, July 9th, SirAtededge said
Dean, is your critical perspective of "It's Pat" at all colored by the choice of background music, the party scene in particular?
on Tuesday, July 19th, Dean said
SirAtededge - no it's not really. Yes - there are DM connections like it being directed by our video director and has our friends Ween in it, and they used a bit of our song in that party scene.
I just think it got overly harsh critical treatment when it's just a silly movie...
on Wednesday, July 20th, Oneword said
If the story of the flood is in over 600 tribal cultures all over the world as part of there religion, and none of them ever heard of evolution, is it really a coincidence ? I think we need to have evolutionist missionaries in those parts of the world,
on Wednesday, July 20th, Oneword said
Sherwood, you do not notice odvious scarcasim, when I say "primative",thats why its in qoutes.I just think you need a big hug, and we can sing Jesus loves me together.
