What Happened to Our Ancestors?

reply to post by undo


No... I only did Guy Malone's Alien Resistance song.



Actually I'm in seminary now and I only play music for church, I'm too busy! It was arguing with hard heads on ATS inspired me to go to graduate school to to study theology and apologetics.

I suppose that rr email is still good for you. The sites I suggested you can dl a lot of interesting pdf books.

reply to post by Bigwhammy


lol that was fun. so you went to college because of ATS!? that's just awesome. wonder how many people this place has inspired to get further formal education. someone tried to convince me to take archaeology classes. i was like, not.gonna.happen. they'd flunk me real quick like. i like remembering back on my college days, where i was allowed to have a different opinion and still get a good grade.

Interesting, Undo

Apropos of nothing in particular here, but have you read 'The Bible Came from Arabia' by Kamal Salibi ? It's difficult to get hold of, although the Book Depository may well have it for a dollar or two, and they don't charge any postage, regardless of where you live in the world

Kamal Salibi was professor of history at the American University in Beirut, when he wrote it (he's authored scholarly works as well)

It is his contention that the geography of Palestine has never corresponded in any way to the apparently specific stories in the Bible.

Instead, he believes the Bible stories (and Judaism) originated in Asir (a 600 x 200 kilometre area in Saudi Arabia).

Salibi bases his claims in linguistic evidence and suspect that scholars in the 6th century added vowels wrongly when standardising texts (ancient Hebrew, like Arabic, was written without vowels)

Salibi went back to the original unvowelled old Testament to prove his theory --- and it's believed he did so, although as might be suspected, rank and file theologians worldwide castigated his reputation and research ------ because, imagine the ramifications !

Imagine if it became accepted that the Jews had been making false claims to Palestine all along ! Imagine if it were realised that tens of thousands of Palestinians had been killed by today's alleged 'israelites' over the wrong piece of land ! And imagine if current jewry, realising the mistake, were compelled to decide whether to continue laying claim to Palestine --- or instead would have to start all over again by moving to Saudi Arabia and laying claim to a chunk of that !

So understandably, Kamal Salibi's boook was dealt with savagely. No-one (not the Christian evangelicals, OR the Vatican, OR the jews) wanted to acknowledge that Salibi was correct. Or it would upset all their carefully arranged apple-carts. It was a massive elephant in the room. Easier to destroy Salibi than to admit they'd ever been wrong

Just getting the book published was like something from a Jason Bourne escapade -- heavy pressure was brought to bear on those publishers who'd initially vied for the prize. Result -- as intended by those with most to lose from wide dissemination of Salibi's theories --- is a little known book with epic potential

What a shame, huh ? In a strip of land in Saudi Arabia exists virtually all of Biblical history(maybe even the kingdoms of Solomon and David, which are currently regarded by Jewish scholars as 'myth and legend') but those charged with verifying that history (the 'keepers' of organised-religion) do not want to know


Next, just an oddity amongst many -- none of which are accorded a legitimate place within 'recorded human history' --- are the thousands of tiny, meticulously worked flints

Perhaps the most spectacular and baffling find was in the later 1800s. Hundreds of tiny flint tools were found in the Pennine hills of east Lancashire, all of which were no larger than half an inch long. The tiny tools included scrapers, borers, and crescent shaped knives. The craftsmanship of such tools were extremely fine, and in many cases, a magnifying glass needed to be used to detect the evidence of flaking used to bring them to a sharp point. None of these tiny tools were practical for perfoming the tasks that the regular sized ones were intended for. Because of this, some speculated they were ritualistic replicas...but why, and why so small? Were these tools made by similarly small people?

As with the elf legends, tiny tools similar to the ones found in Lancashire have been found worldwide including Devon and Suffolk, England, Egypt, Africa, Australia, France, Italy, and India.

There is evidence from bones and flint tools found in coastal deposits near Happisburgh in Norfolk and Pakefield in Suffolk that a species of Homo was present in what is now Britain around 700 000 years ago

en.wikipedia.org...


This is a great site for those interested in other than the conventional history, by the way:
www.old-earth.info...


Of interest to some might be current research into blood types/groups, which claims we share blood-types with chimpanzee (type A blood) and gorillas (type B blood)

reply to post by Dock9


now here's a topic i can sink my teeth into.

you're familar with the dome of the rock, which sits atop what is said to be the original site of the temple in jerusalem? follow along on this one it's gonna be fun:

while studying whether or not the israelites were indeed enslaved in egypt at any point in history, i discovered a group of people called the hyskos shepherd kings. these people apparently wandered into egypt with their sheep and other livestock in tow, and eventually took over egypt. after a few generations, they became exceedingly unpopular and were instead, enslaved. eventually they were driven out of egypt by pharaoh AHMOSE I. (moses was named after him before they had a falling out) here they are:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/1f3a4ce12d4e113a.jpg[/atsimg]

another name for these people were the habiru. the first time i read that, it didn't sink in what i was reading. now skip forward to my studies of ancient sumer. i discover the sumerian Enlil is the foundation for the biblical jehovah, and furthermore, that he had a temple city on the euphrates called NIBRU, which means the crossing place, or the place of the crossing, or simply the place of the cross (referring to jupiter crossing the meridian of the sky, which was mirrored on earth at nibru, and which was the planet associated with Enlil).

Later, while reading Zecharia Sitchin's Earth Chronicles, I discovered there was also a thing called NIBIRU, which Sitchin claimed was a planet. In the Babylonian Astrological charts, Nibiru was the name of Jupiter as it crossed the meridian at the place of the cross or the crossing place.

even later i learned that the word variants between neighboring countries were frequently off by just one letter, and as you pointed out, in some cases by a vowel placement in words that had no vowels originally. when vowels were added, the local dialect would determine what vowel was used. this is when it dawned on me that perhaps the hebrew language had more in common with the sumerian language than i originally thought. particularly since they had similar histories. and then the big discovery when i found out the egyptian language had many close ties to mesopotamian language, meaning it had been influenced, culturally.

now let's go back to the habiru. it was here that i realized the possibility existed that the habiru were the hebrews not just because of the linguistic similarities and phonetic pronounciation but because of their connection to Enlil and his city of Nibiru. It wasn't the israelites that had been enslaved but the hebrews, the habiru (important distinction in time line since israel wasn't israel till jacob anyway).

Where the data threw me was when i came upon references in the sumerian texts of Enlil's black headed people. To me, that was saying the habiru were black folks , which clearly did not match the paintings of the hyskos (habiru). Took me a long time to work this out. But this is essentially the conclusion I reached:

The habiru (as pictured) were the masons, the builders. The black headed people had different skills. The habiru were assigned the task of building the temples of the gods, starting at Enlil's sumer and then onto the post flood akkad and egypt. They would travel between locations with their families and livestock in tow. They grew rich and in defense of their treasures, became exceedingly good at the use of weapons of war.

Eventually, instead of going to egypt to build, they went to war with egypt and won the battle, rising to rule it instead of work for it. the rest of the story, however sketchy, is in the opening part of this post. But here's the real juicy bit, the bit that still freaks me out every time i think about it.

In Sitchin's research he described a powerful center of Enlil, in the lands of Canaan. A huge temple complex was built on the spot of what is known today as temple mount, but this temple preceeded israel by perhaps thousands of years. The huge slab upon which the temple of jerusalem and now the dome of the rock were built was itself very ancient, predating recorded history for the area! So in essence, when the habiru were ejected from egypt and travelled back to Canaan, they were going back to reclaim a site that had been the site of an ancient temple to Enlil in the first place! (by the way, enlil is jehovah and allah).

reply to post by undo


Well actually kind of... ATS and AshleyD got me interested in apologetics. God called me into ministry during the time I was sick and stuck in the house a few years back when I was posting like everyday. So now I'm following through with it.

reply to post by Bigwhammy


read my post above.

the habiru were the people of the cross
gives me goosebumps everytime i think of it.
that and the whole new city jerusalem thing.. .where's it going to locate itself?

you guessed it. over the very ancient site of enlil's massive temple complex in jerusalem.



[edit on 3-5-2010 by undo]

Undo: (back again and stealing a few minutes from Real Life, lol )

See if this has any relevance within your research. I'll have to type it because my scanning and uploading skills leave much to be desired:


' Among the known religions of the ancient Near East, Judaism stands in a category by istelf: no attempt to explain its origins in terms of the religions of ancient Mesopotamia, Syria or Egypt has so far been truly successful, except at the level of mythical borrowings. One such example is the story of the Flood, which may also be found in the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, not to mention other ancient folk myths one of them Chinese. Yet, even in such instances, one cannot really tell where such myths originated, and who borrowed what from whom. However, as we shall see later in Chapter 12, it is reasonable to suppose that the true origins of Judaism may be sourght in a trend towards monotheism in ancient Asir, where a number of mountain gods, such as Yahweh, El Saboath, El Shalom, El Shaddai, El Elyon and others, came to be identified with one another -- how we do not know -- and eventually recognised as one supreme deity, perhaps in connection with the amalgamation of some local tribes. Adopeted by a local people called the Iraelites, this rudimentary West Arabian monotheism eventually developed into a highly thoughtful religion with set scriptures, involving a sophisticated notion of divinity and an exceptionally refined social and ethical content capable of attracting converts from outside the vicinity of its origin, wherever a certain level of thoughtfulness and moral sensistivity existed. Teh fact that it was a religion with a book, developed by a literate people, must have facilitated its spread

As for the language of those jewish scriptures, traditionally called Hebrew, it would appear that it was a dialect of a Semitic language commonly spoken in various parts of South Arabia, West Arabia and Syria (including Palestine) during Biblical times. This one may deduce from an etymological study of Near Eastern place-names, taking their georgraphic distribution into account. For want of a better word, this ancient language is today called Canaanite, after the name of one Biblical people who actually spoke it.

Alongside Canaanite, another Semitic language spoke in peninsular Arabia and Syria was Aramaic, so called after the Biblical Aramaens. regardless of who the Canaanites and Arameans really werel, a matter I return to in Chapter 4, the Canaanite (or Hebrew), and Aramaic languages were certain spoken by different West Arabian communities at one period of time, much as was the case in Syria. One Biblical passage, if reconsidered in the light of surveying West Arabian place-names, clearly bears this out. It is Genesis 31:47-49. There we read of a mound called 'the heap of witness', erected to testify to the convenant between the Hebrew Jacob and his Aramaean maternal uncle and father-in-law Laban. Laban calls it 'Jegar-sahadutha' (Aramaic ygr shdwt') but Jacob calls it 'Faleed' (Hebrew gl'd) and 'Mizpah' (Hebrew H-msph), meaning a watchpost. All three names are still carried today by three little-know villages in the same vicinity on the maritime slopes of Asir, in the region of Rijal Alma' (Rigal Alma), west of Abha (Abha-). Their names are: Far'at AlShahda- ('l 'shd), meaning 'god is witness' or 'god of the witness', the Arabic 'r't or ph'h denoting a mound or hill, equivalent in meaning to the Aramaic ygr, al-Ha'd ('l-g d), which is an Arabicised metathesis of gl'd; and al-Madha'f

Such being the proximity between Canaanite-speakers and Aramaic-speakers in Biblical West Arabia, the Israelites, I would suggest, were at a loss to decide to which group they originally belongs. While the normally considered themselves Hebrews (see Chapter 13), according to Deuteronomy 26-5 they were urged to recall that their ancestor was an Aramaean. This apparent contradiction has long puzzled Bible scholars, but if my supposition is correct, it makes eminent sense.

More likely than not, the early spread of Judaism from its original West Arabian homeland to Palestine and other lands of the north followed the routes of the trans-Arabian caravan trade. In the ancient world, the West Arabian region of Asir was a meeting place for caravans carrying the trade of the lands of the Indian Ocean basin, that is to say India, South Arabia and East Afric, from one direction, and that of Persia-Mesopotamia and the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean basin, specifically Syria, Egypt and the Aegean world, from the other (see map). Located at the southern corner of Syria, close to the Egypt, Palestine was the first coastal terminus of the ancient West Arabian commerce in that direction. The first Jewish settlers there must have been the West Arabian merchants and caravaneers involed in this commerce. These settlers could not have failed to attract local converts to their religion, which, in terms of intellectual sophistication, by far transcended the local cults and even the high religions of the Egpytian and Mesopotamian empires. This is exactly what moslem merchant settlers were to do in various parts of Asia and East Africa in later times, attracting converts to Islam wherever they established themselves, among people who saw in Islam a religion of superior quality to their own.

I am not suggesting that the Jews were the earliest West Arabian settlers in Palestine. The Biblical Philistines (see Chapter 14) must have arrived there from West Arabia before them, considering that it was they who gave the country its name. Likewise, the Canaanites of West Arabia appear to have 'spread abroad' (Genesis 10:18) from an early time, giving their name to the land of Canaan (kn'n) along the Syrian coast north of Palestine, which the Greeks called Phoenicia (for the Faiqua or Phoenicia of Asir, see Chapter 14). That Phoenicia was actually called Canaan by its own inhabitants is known from a Hellenistic coin from Beirut, which describes this city, in Phoenician, as being 'in Canaan' (b-kn'n), and in Greek as being 'in Phoenicia'. Writing about the 'the Phoenicians' and 'the Syrians of Pelestine' in the fifth centurty BC;, the Greek historian Herodotus had no doubts about their West Arabian origin. He worte, concerning both: ' This nation, according to their own account, dwelt anciently on the sea-coast of Syria, where they still inhabit '. Whatever the antiquity of the earliest West Arabian settlements in coastal Syria, the Philistine and Canaanite migrations there must in time have grown in volume. According to the historial books of the Hebrew Bible, the Israelite kingdom was established, no doubt in West Arabia between the late eleventh and early tenth centuries B.C., largely at the expense of such communities as the Philistines and the Canaanites of the land. Defeated and demoralised by teh Israelites in successive wars, these Philistines and Canaanites probably increased the rate of their migrations to coastal Syria during the same period.

In Palestine, the Philistines appear to have called a number of their settlements (such as Gaza and Ascalon) after the names of West Arabian towns from which they came. The Palestinian village of Bayt Dajan (the 'temple' of dgn, or 'Dagon'), near Jaffa, still carries the name of their West Arabian god (see Chapter 14). North of Palestine, the Canaanites also gave West Arabian names to some of their settlements - names such as Sur (Tyre), Sidon, Gebal (Greek Byblos), Arwad (Freek Arados), or Lebanon. When the West Arabian Israelites (and perhaps other West Arabian jews) began to migrate northwards to settle in Palestine, whenever that was, they also gave West Arabian names to some (certainly not all) of their settlements, or to local cult shrines which they toook over and identified with West Arabian jewish shrines. Among the most obvious and best known are: Jerusalem (yrwslym), Bethlahem (byt lhm, see Chapter 8), Hebron (hbrwn, see Chapter 13), Carmel (krml), and perhaps Galilee (glyl), Hermon (hrmwn) and the Jordan (h-yrdn), all of which testify to this. In most parts of the world, at one time or another, nostalgic immigrants have called towns and regions, mountains, rivers or even whole countries or island by familiar names which they carried with them from the old country. Considering that in Biblical times the same languages were spoken in West Arabia and Syria, one must not exclude the possibilitiy (indeed the probability) that a number of places in both areas were originally called by the same names, especially where they denoted particular topographic, hydrological or ecological features or related to the worship of the same god. In traditional culture, as in language, Syria and Arabia were never far apart. At all stages, the emigrations from West Arabia in the direction of Palestine and Syria (and perhaps elsewhere) were enhanced by external factors. In Chapter 11 it will be demonstrated by topnymic evidence that the expedition of the Egyptian king Sheshonk 1 against Judah in the latter decades of the tenth century B.C., as related in the Hebrew Bible and substantiated by Egpytian records, was directed against West Arabia, not against Palestine and Syria, as has hitherto been thought. The proper study of another Egyptian expedition mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, that of Necho 11 in the last year of the seventh century B.C., would show that this expedition also, in which a king of Judah as well as the Babylonians were involved, was directed against West Arabia.

... Earlier Egyptian military expeditions dating from the second millenium B.C., which have generally been assumed to have been directed against Palestine and Syria are more likely to have been mostly directed against West Arabia, if the Egyptian records of them are carefully reconsidered in the light of West Arabian place-names which are still there'

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[edit on 3-5-2010 by Dock9]

reply to post by Dock9


Oh how interesting! I love all the juicy bits and to get a glimpse into the minds of scholars, even if we occassionally or frequently disagree with each other.

I went in search of the sumerian jehovah and found him in 3 distinct places: Anu, Enlil and Enki. The inability of translators to come to grips with the information appears to rest solely on their understanding of the word ELOHIM.

Michael S. Heiser, wrote a paper on the subject called WHAT IS AN ELOHIM?, which defines the word as a description of place of residence, an attribution to the fact these are spiritual entities from the spirit realm. He explains it better in this passage:

It may surprise you, but there are other beings in the Old Testament that are called elohim besides Yahweh and the gods of the divine council. Demons and the spirits of the human dead are also called elohim in the Hebrew text! Angels may also be called elohim, depending on how one takes a text or two. If we don’t come to grips with just what an elohim is, it can create a lot of confusion. We can’t very well have God, the gods, demons, angels, and the spirits of dead people all interchangeable with respect to their attributes! That just makes no sense—and highlights why understanding the term elohim as denoting a certain plane of existence is so critical to getting the Bible’s worldview and its theology right.

www.thedivinecouncil.com...

so to figure out how we're supposed to know which is which, i took it a step further, went to the original languages, and learned the root words of jehovah and yahweh.

both are roots of the word jehovah

Hayah (Ea/Enki -- to be, to exist)
www.blueletterbible.org...

from Hava (Enlil -- to breathe, air, breeze, spirit)
www.blueletterbible.org...


ENLIL is the foundational word for EL and every mesopotamian example of the god (spirit entity) word:

EN means LORD. and LIL means air, heaven, spirit, sky

ENLIL
LIL
IL
ILU
ILAH
EL
ELOHIM
ELOI
AL

as a result i theorized that anu was father, enlil was spirit and enki was son.
i also established an etymology for anu

AN
ANU
EN
ENU
ENTU
MENTU
MONTU
AMON
AMEN
AMUN
YMN

In effect, just as LIL had become the one size fits all word for the gods of mesopotamia, so had AN or ANU become the one size fits all word for designating a deity vs. a dead person/demon/angel. If it was preceeded by AN or EN, it was a deity. This would be like a last name designating divinty, in effect, stating you were from the gods.

Hope that makes sense.

followed the routes of the trans-Arabian caravan trade.

that also makes sense, as that was my take on it as far as the travelling caravan type of life they lead prior to becoming pharaohs in egypt for that short stint and then inevitably settling in the land of milk and honey (a topic i need to study!).

i've considered the possibility that they would eventually begin following the path of jupiter, since the sumerians, akkadians and babylonians, mirrored the sky on the land, as jupiter crossed the sky, it would cross the land as a mirror, and they would follow the route it took on the land.

as far as the discrepancies between the biblical scholars and arabic scholars, i think they're spltting hairs, as from what i can tell, the arabic people were initially habiru as well and that it was not until abraham that things got dicey. the whole abraham story is STAAARANGE.

for example, i don't think there was any racial difference between sarah and hagar. i think they were both egyptians who were sent to ur in some kind of arranged marriage thing between egypt and ur. at least that's what this seems to say. one was a handmaiden (hagar) and the other a princess (sarai), but because sarai was his wife, and hagar her handmaiden, the inheritance went to the wife's offspring not the handmaiden's offspring. i could be wrong, but i dunno, seems rather obvious to me the arabs and jews are very much related.

and now for a really flippy thing, (turn up the volume, use a headset if ya got it!). jupiter sounds



[edit on 3-5-2010 by undo]

This is a very interesting and informative thread. Thank you for listing your sources I will be researching them. You seem pretty well versed in Egyptology which is why its a shame that I have to adress your inaccuracies.

Your veiled racist statement about "black pride" is a shame. Let me point out a few things. First no one had an interest in the pharoahs being black. All egyptologists are either white or Arabic. Egyptians have always been portrayed as white or olive skinned in movies and articles, which is part of what makes your comments so laughable.Two out of three white people today still think Egyptians pharoahs weren't black.

There are a few things that make denial of this fact impossible. The oldest known hieroglyphics were found in Nubia dating to 4000bc and depicting the first known winged disc as well as Ausar. Egypt was founded from the Nubian kingdom. And unlike Rome they followed the bloodlines and interbred, not just anyone could become a pharoah you had to be of royal lineage. Then we have Napolean loppong off the nose of the sphinx as well as destroying many other statues with african features. Outside of this stone tablet the irrefutable evidence of the pharoahs race comes from Ramses II. Melanin content tests were run on his mummy and it placed him in the range of dark African. It was only after this was done in 1990 that it was finally accepted academically that the pharoahs were black. And due to the strict bloodlines it follows that at least up until Cleopatra, that's the case.

There has been a continual effort to warp the truth as everyone wants Egypt for themselves. Your contention of diffrent race based on what was found in tombs is shoddy. Egypt ruled the civilized world at the time thus they would have incorporated many different items from various cultures, that in no way says anything about the race of the pharoahs.

reply to post by ISHAMAGI


notice i said that there were many races of pharaohs, not just black. but the mainstream today, if you mention things like, this pharaoh is oriental (not just asiatic), they freak right out. i didn't notice a single pharaoh that looked white or european, but i saw quite a few that looked semitic, black, indian, chinese, and japanese.

reply to post by undo


First chance I've had to return since I last posted. Have only skimmed your first post since. Had to chime in, in relation to this:

Undo quote:

as a result i theorized that anu was father, enlil was spirit and enki was son.

i also established an etymology for anu

Will mean nothing to anyone but me, of course, but up until our twins were about 3 years old, they had their own language. Usually they used it when they were mostly alone, even if 'alone' meant on the other side of the room

One of their uncles worked at the time on commercial aircraft. He used to travel all over the place and he used to visit us every few weeks. He'd lean over to 'talk' to the twins and as he did so, the little pendant thing he wore on a chain around his neck would fall forward. From the very first time they saw it, and always afterwards, the twins took unusual interest in it. ' Anus ! ' (pronounced, ' Anoos', lol ) my daughter said, the first time she saw it, as if she recognised it, before turning to her brother as if to say, 'Look at this '. And her brother, who also seemed to recognise it, returned her expression, as if to say, 'Mmmm. Fancy that. Anus' (sounds like, 'Ahh-noos')

The uncle always corrected them and repeated several times, ' No. It's an elephant. See, it's an elephant'

And the twins -- who knew what an elephant was and knew that he was presuming to inform them, would smile at him as if he were the child, and repeat patiently to him, ' No. Anus. Anus'. They knew what they meant, even if we didn't.' It frustrated the hell out of the uncle and every time he visited, as if this were a case he had to win, he'd stubbornly attempt to get them to agree it was an elephant. He'd bought the trinket in Egypt, as it turned out.

The twins never called cartoon or picture-book elephants 'anus' ... just that trinket he wore. The stress was on the Anu, with the 's' hardly heard, and the 'A' was similar to an 'ah' sound. They began this when they first saw the trinket when they were around 18 months old, I suppose, and it continued until they were around four and a half years, when we moved interstate, leaving uncle behind. They never used that word in relation to anything else. I always wondered about it but when I mentioned it to them when they were older, they couldn't remember it and shrugged it off

No internet then and none of the books I searched contained any mention of 'anu' or 'anus', until years later, when I was reading something about the upper-Nile, there was a brief mention of an island in the Nile which the Egyptians reserved for a god named Anu, and was known as Elephant Isle



.

[edit on 3-5-2010 by Dock9]

reply to post by Dock9


Holy toledo what an awesome story! i may be totally wrong on some of my theoretical points, as this is all relatively new data (last few decades) and not enough bible scholars have studied it, so i could compare notes. one thing that doesn't weigh in its favor are the sumerian-akkadian stories about enlil, some of which are decidedly unenlil-like, considering the rest of the data.

oh get this, i figured out that jehovah in the bible is both enki and enlil. sitchin mentioned this in one of his books and i thought he was bonkers, but now i'm beginning to see it.

only thing he didn't see, that i'm seeing, is that it appears enki may be yeshua, as almost everything he did and said, ends up correlating back to enki in some fashion. the more i study it, the more obvious it is. and this solves the riddle of how yeshua could be both jehovah and not the father at the same time.. people were always asking me, "how can yeshua be the son and the father simultaneously?" . he knew the jews thought of jehovah as the guy who confused the languages at babel (which enki did), for example. he offered the king of sumer, advice on how to assuage enlil's anger at the realization that a nephilim hybrid had survived the flood. he has been our advocate in the past several times. it's yeshua to a T.

if sumerian texts hadn't been buried under several feet of flood silt, and akkad, babylon and egypt mostly buried in sand and dirt and covered in newer civilizations during the compilation of the biblical texts, i'd think the romans had copied enki but ain't no way they knew that, not to mention, you really have to study these two to see it.



[edit on 3-5-2010 by undo]

reply to post by ISHAMAGI


You've touched on a highly contentious issue

It rages here:

en.wikipedia.org...:Racial_origins_of_Ancient_Egypt/Archive_3

and is far from being resolved

reply to post by Dock9


i don't see the point of even debating it. there are letters describing the exchange of offspring between pharaohs and kings of other lands, as a political pact. ya know, same old same old. they have kids, their kids are half of this and half of that and one becomes pharaoh, and etc.

here's an example

Marriage as a tool of foreign politics during the New Kingdom
www.reshafim.org.il...

[edit on 3-5-2010 by undo]

reply to post by undo


Agree, although there's a strong push currently for a 'black Egypt'

I found this article to be well-researched:

mutnodjmetsmusings.blogspot.com...

Comes complete with links to Egyptian art, which demonstrates the Egyptians had a comprehensive palette and demonstrated the ability and preparedness to portray clearly those of different skin tones etc

'Many Biblical manuscripts have been found at Qumran, relating to such books as Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Job, and others. There are in addition commentaries on selected texts, and various documents of law and record. Among these ancient books are some of the oldest writings ever found - pre-dating anything from which the traditional Bible was translated. Of particular interest are certain Biblical commentaries compiled by the Scribes in such a way as to relate the Old Testament texts to the historical events of their time. Such a correlation is especially manifest in the Scribes' commentary on the Psalms and on such prophetical books as Nahum, Habakkuk and Bosea. The techinque applied to link Old Testament writings like these with the New Testament era was based on the use of 'eschatological knowledge', a form of coded representation that used traditional words and passages to which were attributed special meanings relevant to contemporary understanding. These measings were understood only by those who knew the code.

The Essenes were trained in the use of this allegorical code, which occurs in the Gospel texts in particular relation to those parables heralded by the words, 'for those with ears to hear'. When the Scribes referred to the romans, for example, they wrote of the 'Kittim' - ostensibly a name for Mediterranean coastal people, which was also used to denote the Chaldeans, whom the Old Testament describes as ' ... that bitter and hasty nation which shall march through the breadth of the land to possess dwelling places that are not theirs' (Habakkuk 1:6). The Essenes resurrected the old word for use in their own time, and enlightened readers knew that Kittim always stood for 'Romans'.

In order that the Gospels should be beyond Roman understanding, they were largely constructed with dual layers of meaning: evangelical scripture on the surface and political information beneath. The carefully directed messages were generally based on the substitution codes laid down by the Scribes.

Accordingly, references to 'Babylon' were actually references to Rome. But a working knowledge of the code was not available until some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were published. Only since then has an appreciation of the cryptic technique facilitated a much greater awareness of the political intelligence that was veiled beneath the Gospel texts. The most extensive work in this field has been conducted by the noted theologian Barbara Thiering, a lecturer at Sydney university from 1967.

Dr. Theiering explains the code in very straightforward terms. Jesus, for example, was referred to as 'the word of God '. Thus a superficially routine passage - such as that in 2 Timothy 2:9 , 'The word of God is not bound' - would be apprehended at once to concern Jesus, in this case meaning that Jesus was not confined. Similarly, the Roman Emperor was called 'the lion'. Being 'rescued from the lion's mouth', meant escaping the clutches of the Emperor or his officers.

Study of the Scrolls - particularly the Pesharim, the Manual of Discipline, the Community Rule and the Angelic Liturgy - reveals a number of such coded definitions and pseudonyms that were previously misunderstood or considered of no particular importance.

For instance, the 'poor' were not poverty-stricken under-privileged citizens; they were those who had been initiated into the higher echelons of the Community, and who on that account had been obliged to give up their property and wordly possessions. The 'many' was a title used for the head of the celibate Community, whereas the 'crowd' was a designation of the regional Tetrarch (Governor), and a 'multitude' was a governing council. Novices within the religious establishment were called 'children': the doctrinal theme of the Community was the 'Way'; and those who followed the principles of the Way were known as the 'Children of Light'.

The term 'lepers' was often used to denote those who had not been initiated into the higher community, or who had been denounced by it. The 'blind' were those who were not party to the Way and could therefore not see the Light. In these respects, texts mentioning 'healing the blind' or 'healing a leper' refer more specifically to the process of conversion to the Way. Release from excommunication was described as being 'raised from the dead' (a term that is of particular importance and will be returned to later). The definition 'unclean' related mostly to uncircumcised Gentiles, and the description 'sick' denoted those in public or clerical disgrace.

Such information hidden in the New Testament was of considerable relevance when written and it remains very important today. Methods of disguising the true meanings included allegory, symbolism, metaphor, simile, sectarian definition, and pseudonyms. The meanings were fully apparent, nonetheless, to 'those with ears to hear'.

Additionally, some of the esoteric terms in the New Testament were not merely descriptive of people's social status, but were titles - titles that also had special relevance to Old Testament tradition. The doctrine which the Community regarded as its guiding message was the 'Light', and that Light was represented by a high ranking triarchy (corresponding respectively to Priest, King and Prophet) who held the symbolic titles Power, Kingdom and Glory. In the clerical partriarchy, the Father was supreme and his two immediate deputies were designated his Son and his Spirit '

Mmmmmmm


Sorry about likely mistakes. I become dyslexic when typing

Excerpted from ' Bloodline of the Holy Grail'
Laurence Gardner
(c) 1996
ISBN: 1-86204-152-0


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[edit on 3-5-2010 by Dock9]

' A fundamental belief of the Essenes was that the universe contained the two cardinal spirits of Light and Darkness. 'Light represented truth and rightousness, whereas 'Darkness' depicted perversion and evil. The balance of of one against the other in the cosmos was settled by celestial movement, and people were individually apportioned with degrees of each spirit as defined by their planetary circumstances of birth. The cosmic battle between Light and Darkness was thus prepetuated within humankind, and between one person and another: some contained proportionately more light, others proportionally more dark.

God was held to be the supreme ruler over the two cardinal spirits, but for a person to find the Way to the Light required following a long and arduous path of conflict. Such a path culminated in a final weighing of one force against the other at a Time of Justification, later called the Day of Judgement. It was thought that as the time drew near, the forces of Darkness would gather in strength during a Period of Temptation. People would naturally be subject to this testing process. Those who followed the Way of Light thus sought to avoid the impending evaluation with the plea, ' Lead us not into Temptation, but deliver us from evil'.

By tradition, the Spirit of Darkness was identified with Belial (Worthless), whose children (Deuteronomy 13:13) worshipped gods other than Jehovah. The Spirit of Light was upheld by the hierarchy, and symbolized by a seven-branched cadlestick, the Mnorah. In the time of the Davidic kings, the Zadokite priest was considered the foremost proponent of the Light.

But just as the Spirit of Light had its representative on Earth, so too did the Spirit of Darkness. It was an appointment held by the Chief of the Scribes, and its purpose was to provide a formal 'opposition' within the hierarchical structure. A primary responsibility of the designated 'Prince of Darkness' was to test female initiates within the celibacy, in which capacity he held the Hebrew title of Satan (Accuser). The equivalent title in Greek was Diabolos (Aggressor), being the origin of the English word, devil. (Compare the idea of the Devil's Advocate who probes the background of potential candidates for canonization in the Roman Catholic Church.)

In the book of Revelation (16:16), the great final war between Light and Darkness, between good and evil, is forecast to take place at Armageddon (Har Megiddo, 'the heights of Megiddo), a historically important Palestinian battlefield where a military fortress guarded the plains of Jezreel, south of the Galilean hills. The War Scroll describes in detail the forthcoming struggle between the Children of Light and the Sons of Darkness'.

The tribes of Israel were to be on one side, with the Kittim (Romans) and various heathen factions on the other. In the context of this climactic war, however, there was no mention of an omnipotent Satan - such mythical imagery played no part in the Community's perception of the Final Judgement. The conflict was to be a purely mortal affair between the Light that was Israel and the darkness of Imperial Rome.

Much later, the fundamental notion behind this ancient concept was adopted and adapted by the emergent Church of Rome. The symbolic battle of Har Megiddo was removed from its specific location and reapplied on a world scale, with Rome (the hitherto 'Darkness') usurping the 'Light' in its own favour.

In order that the rule of the Catholic bishops should prevail, it was strategically decreed that the Day of Judgement had not yet come. Those who thereafter obeyed the revised principles of the Roman Catholic Church were promised the right of entry to the Kingdom of Heaven, as sanctified by the biships.

The one-time hill-fort of Har Megiddo was thereby invested with supernatural overtones, so that the very word Armageddon took the hideous ring of apocalyptic terror: it implied the fearsome ending of all things, from which the only sure route to salvation was absolute compliance with the rule of Rome. In this regard, it has proved to be one fothe most ingenious political manoevres of all time '

excerpt from same book:
'Bloodline of the Holy Grail'
by Laurence Gardner



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[edit on 3-5-2010 by Dock9]

' ... there is nothing spiritual or ethereal about the word 'angel'. In the original Greek, aggelos (more usually transliterated as 'angelos'', Latin 'angelus) meant no more than 'messenger'; Modern English derives the word 'angel' from this via Church Latin, but the Anglo-Saxon word 'engel' came originally from the old French 'angele'. An 'angel of the Lord' was thus a 'messenger of the Lord', or, more correctly, an 'ambassador of the Lord'. And 'archangel' was a priestly ambassador of the highest rank (the prefix 'arch' meaning 'chief', as in archduke and archbishop'.

The Old Testament describes two types of angel, the great majority of whom acted like normal human beings - as for example in Genesis 19:1-3, when two angels visited Lot's house, 'and [he] did bake unleavened bread, and they did east'. Most Old Testament angels belonged to this uncomplicated category, such as the angel who met Abraham's wife Hagar by the water fountain, the angel who stopped Balaam's ass in its tracks, the angel who spoke with Manoah and his wife, and the angel who sat under the oak with Gideon.

The other class of angel seems to have been rather more than a messenger, possessing fearsome powers of destruction. This type of avenging angel features in 1 Chronicles 21:14-16: 'And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it ... having a sword drawn in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem ' . Quite a few angels are described as wielding swords, but the are never described as divine, and there is not hint in the text of the graceful wings that are so often portrayed. (The now familiar wings were devised by artists and sculptors to symbolise the angel's spiritual transcendence above the mundane environment).

This brings ut to another category of daunting Old Testament phenomena which were said to rise above the earth by mechanical means. They were never called angels, and generally these blazing spectacles had wheels, as in Daniel 7:9: ' His throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.' In Isaiah 6:1-2 there is a similar account of an airborne throne, and 'above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings'. Yet another referenece to such an apparatus occurs in Exekiel 1, where the whole scenario - recounted at some length - is entirely in keeping with the others, including fire, wheels and noisy rotating rings.

Unrelated to the Bible, an ancient tractate from 3rd century Alexandria, entitled The Origin, tells of the immortal Sophia, and of the ruler Saboath who 'created a great throne of a four-faced chariot called Cherubim ... And on that throne he created some other dragon-shaped seraphims.'

Interesting, it is narrated in genesis 3:24 that the Lord stationed cherubims (chariots or mobile thrones) and a revolving sword of fire to protect the Garden of Eden.

The Cherubim appears again in an ancient Greek work called 'The Hpostatis of the Archons', which deals with the Rulers of Entirety and the Creation of Adam. Once more it concerns Saboath and his heavenly chariot (the Cherubim)

There is mention of a similar vehicle in 2 Kings 2:11, when Elijah is taken up in a chariot of fire. And there are further description of a similar conveyance in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, from the Mesopotamian Bible land of old Iraq.

It is not the purpose of this book to examine the whys and wherefores of such phenomena -- simply to present them as they are depicted in the ancient texts. What is certain, however, is that these flying chariots (cherubims) with their accompanying serpahims (fiery dragon shaped auxiliaries) were never at any time described as having human form, as angels always were. It was the fearful Christian dogma of the later Roman establishment that transformed the cherubims and seraphims into adoring celestial putti.

Nothwishtstanding these spectacular devices, the angels of the New Testament were without exception all men, and their appointments to angelic office were strictly dynastic.

... We should therefore understand that the Archangel Michael's battle with the dragon in Revelation 12:7 corresponds to the conflict between the Zadokite succession and 'the beast of blasphemy' - Imperial Rome. The 'second beast' was that of the rigidly strict regime of the Pharisees, who thwarted the ambitions of the Hellenist Jews by segregating Jews from Gentiles. This was the beast to which was attributed the number 666 (Revelation 13:8), the numerically evaluated polar opposite to the spiritual energy of water in the solar force.

Excerpt from 'Bloodline of the Holy Grail'
by Laurence Gardner

reply to post by Dock9


i think he's off the mark a bit about the whole men are angels thing, in the abraham story. those are not men. the english translation is just lame lol
that's why going to the original language is so useful.

the english translators made all kinds of assumptions, some of which are not supported by the original language.

for example, the three "men" were not men, they were enowsh (anash). anash means weak sick frail. lol so three weak men came to abraham lol
yeeeep, that's some messed up translation. i think anash derives from nachash which was the serpent, meaning they were likely seraphim. here's an example of seraphim from an abydos egyptian vase (hint: the tall guys)