Debunking Sitchin Debunkers

originally posted by: undo
a reply to: Harte

i don't agree with the cylinder seal translation sitchin provided, so you're preaching to the choir on that.

This is what bugs me about most Sitchin adherents. Show them some of the absurdities of Sitchin's theories, and they'll say "I don't believe that part..." Yet, these are the core tenets of his theory. If you can't believe that part, then how can you believe any part of it? This cylinder seal translation is the root of his theory, everything else is spun from it. No Planet X crashing through the solar system means no Anunnaki and no alien-hybrid Adam/Adapa and no humankind.

It seems Sitchin adherents are in love with the idea that aliens seeded mankind, and are responsible for the highlights of our early civilizations. Most will say "I don't believe Sitchin on this part," or "This part of his theory is wrong," what they're really saying is "Can we skip all the technicalities and get to the conclusion where Aliens did it all...?"

i need to make an addendum to my enki-ea/enlil post above:

there's actually 3 gods, prominent in the biblical text. i'd say 4 but the 4th one is more evident in the new testament than the old (the holy spirit)

first there's anu, heavenly father of enki-ea and enlil. i traced his name etymologically to the egyptian amen / amun. (not to be confused with amen-ra). he is found at the end of every prayer and in a few other places.

then there's enlil. i personally believe that this is the actual bad guy in the text, otherwise known as the accuser and the adversary of humankind. he shows up in the text as an elohim and also as jehovah/yahweh (although i believe this was a misunderstanding).

and finally there's enki or ea or enki-ea. this is the god of life, creation and the savior of his creation, multiple times (including his visit as jesus). he shows up as an elohim and also as jehovah, and later, in the new testament as jesus.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

the reason i can believe some of the other parts is because THEY ARE IN THE ACTUAL TEXTS.

Sitchin was a great man. He was one of the few people who could read and speak Sumerian. Even if he made some mistakes, his books are like the bible decoded. I've read most of his books and he was on point most of the time. I don't care for "debunkers".

originally posted by: Oannes
Sitchin was a great man. He was one of the few people who could read and speak Sumerian. Even if he made some mistakes, his books are like the bible decoded. I've read most of his books and he was on point most of the time. I don't care for "debunkers".

No he was just a normal guy who made stuff up and made a good living doing so he could not read Sumerian and certainly couldn't speak it as no one can. He never claimed to be able to read Sumerian and his 'research' clearly demonstrates what he didn't even understand the difference between Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian.

a reply to: Hanslune

mainstream doesn't appear to be able to understand the difference between sumerian, akkadian and babylonian, either. and one of the reasons for that is because sumer was only dug up in the last 100 years. that leaves 200 years of archaeology and the subsequent theories regarding civilization and religion in mesopotamia, based almost exclusively on babylonian and late akkadian texts. he was just reading their works to fill gaps and holes in his theories.

for example, acharya s.'s theories are contingent, almost exclusively, on papers written about babylonian astrology. she develops the hypothesis that the sumerian's were worshipping planets, stars and moons, not kings, extra-terrestrials, gods, or any variation thereof, and she does this with the help of the screwed up babylonian texts.

a reply to: undo

Actually they do and in no way can you cover up Sitchin's grandiose mistake. It was a big one. Monsterous,lol

Face it he didn't have a clue, but then he was writing for people and at a time, when they would not have been able to find a Sumerian Dictionary without access to certain University Libraries, so he felt he was 'safe' in putting out nonsense. He may also not have realized that in the future people would take him seriously.....

originally posted by: undo
a reply to: Blackmarketeer

the reason i can believe some of the other parts is because THEY ARE IN THE ACTUAL TEXTS.

Yes, religious texts, that includes everything from anthropomorphic animals to anthropomorphic gods, as a means of explaining the unexplainable. Per Samuel N. Kramer;

Sumerian theologians took their cue from human society as they knew it and reasoned from the known to the unknown. They noted that lands and cities, and palaces and temples, fields and farms — in short, all imaginable institutions and enterprises — are tended and supervised, guided and controlled by living human beings; without them lands and cities became desolate, temples and palaces crumbled, fields and farms turned to desert and wilderness. Surely, therefore, the cosmos and all its manifold phenomena must also be tended and supervised, guided and controlled by living beings in human form.

Then, too, on the analogy with the political organization of the Sumerian city-state, it was natural to assume that at the head of of the pantheon was a deity recognized by all the others as their king and ruler.

As for the technique of creation attributed to these deities, Sumerian theologians developed a doctrine which became dogma throughout the Near East, the doctrine of creative power of the divine word. All that the creating deity had to do, according to this doctrine, was to lay the plans, utter the word, and pronounce the name.

What Sitchin and his adherents do is treat Sumerian religion as a series of factual events. Or should we say, they pretend to, because Sitchin's interpretations of Sumerian texts are so off base, he concocts a history that was never claimed by the Sumerians themselves.

a reply to: Hanslune

Face it he didn't have a clue, but then he was writing for people and at a time, when they would not have been able to find a Sumerian Dictionary without access to certain University Libraries, so he felt he was 'safe' in putting out nonsense.

Precisely, it's not 1976 anymore, it's a whole lot easier to fact-check Sitchin and his claims have been found wanting. This was back when "Pyramid Power" and all sorts of new-agey claims were being hyped. Von Daniken, In Search Of with Leonard Nimoy, Age of Aquarius, Voyager probes sending back pics of the outer planets... Everyone was jumping on the "life out there" bandwagon, Sitchin's big contribution was to dovetail that with Sumerian mythos.

originally posted by: Oannes
Sitchin was a great man. He was one of the few people who could read and speak Sumerian. Even if he made some mistakes, his books are like the bible decoded. I've read most of his books and he was on point most of the time. I don't care for "debunkers".

As stated by other posters in this thread about 20 times-

Sitchin could not read Sumerian cuneiform. He actually admitted it himself.

And nobody in the modern world has any idea how to actually "speak" Sumerian.

In other words...you are very wrong and basing some of your world view on extreme nonsense. Even Sitchin himself would correct you on this one.

Lastly, Sitchin was not "unintentionally wrong". It has been proven and exposed that he invented the whole of his information and made lots of money by doing so.

In short- he was a con-man and those who follow his "work" are gullible or uneducated on this matter. Like the OP of this thread, you misunderstand the facts and are placing unwarranted trust in nonsense that was poorly crafted for fringe types who have no time or interest for real information pertaining to these subjects.

What is worse is that people like you and the OP do a discredit to the hundreds of real researchers who spent decades translating and and sharing the true texts of Sumer.

MM

here's something sitchin points out, and good on him that he did, but he translated it to be something else which i believe is wrong.

in the enuma elish, the abzu is turned into a god who is having a relationship with a goddess named tiamat. sitchin knew from earlier texts that the abzu was not a god. further, later texts changed the spelling from abzu to apsu, which sitchin claimed was the sun. but if apsu was destroyed, how do we still have a sun in the sky? furthermore, why remove the "water" references associated with abzu? clearly something was wrong. here he borrows from velikovsky's theories about planets crashing into each other as a foreign body (nibiru) entered the solar system

mainstream researchers claim that abzu was fresh water and tiamat, was salt water, in enuma elish - represented as metaphors. this, however, totally ignores the other references to their identities in enuma elish. if they are going to ignore other references in the text, why not also ignore tiamat, since as far as i can tell, enuma elish is the first mention of the word "tiamat" and there's no earlier precedence for abzu having a "relationship", a mating or melding with, "tiamat" as salt water. i'd think they would be looking for all the metaphors. this bothers me greatly. sitchin at least tries to generate a hypothesis about what all the metaphors mean. the mainstream just ignores what it doesn't want to address

for example, what is their theory about kingu, who tiamat mates with when she can no longer mate with abzu? and what of the monstrosties that come out of tiamat when she mates with kingu? ignored.

a reply to: Mr Mask

yeah well the experts use to think the earth was flat (and in theoretical physics, as a dimensional space, it might be describable as a series of stacked planes wrapped on a sphere, but that's a different subject), as well, and they were wrong about that. i can also name several other things mainstream archaeology was wrong about, and the subsequent texts written on the subject of people and locations mentioned in ancient texts, that the mainstream claimed were fictions. or the fact they rarely retract prior statements that are proven wrong by their own archaeological findings.

a reply to: undo

If you insist on turning Enuma Elis into a factual history, then what happens when you have previous records that are different? The Eridu Genesis does not have a Tiamat in it, yet it's the older tale. By the time you get to the Babylonian period, which is when Enuma Elis was written down, you have a great deal of evolution and morphing of these tales. How does Enuma Elis then become the basis for a factual history?

Would you apply this sort of literalism to every religious text produced by mankind? There is not a single archeological or anthropological piece of evidence to corroborate these tales. Not one "Anunnaki" skeleton, or a machine part from 200,000 BC. It's just a tale.

Me, I'm more of a Panbabylonist, I think the Mesopotamian tales were the basis for the Hebrew bible, but I treat it like any religious text, myths and lore and not fact.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

you're not listening to the actual question:

firstly, I KNOW TIAMAT IS NOT IN OLDER TALES, I JUST SAID THAT. DANG GUYS, WILL YOU READ WHAT I'M SAYING INSTEAD OF AUTO ASSUMING THE WORST EVERY SINGLE TIME? HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO HAVE A CONVERSATION ON THIS SUBJECT IF YOU KEEP ASSUMING CRAP BEFORE YOU READ IT?

IF the mainstream is going to translate TIAMAT to be salt water, then they need to keep going with the rest of the story. Why stop there? Abzu was not a god. THE ENUMA ELISH CLAIMS IT IS. I'm saying it ISN'T.
I'm also saying it isn't the SUN, which was sitchin's theory. le mew, le sigh, le where's my blood pressure meds.

dag nab.

originally posted by: undo
in the enuma elish, the abzu is turned into a god who is having a relationship with a goddess named tiamat. sitchin knew from earlier texts that the abzu was not a god. further, later texts changed the spelling from abzu to apsu,

Evidence for this?
It's not as if there's an alphabetical comparison.

IMO, that's a choice of the transliterator, not a change in cuneiform spelling (though I'm sure that happened as well, I mean, have you ever tried to read Middle English? And that's only a few centuries before present.)

originally posted by: undomainstream researchers claim that abzu was fresh water and tiamat, was salt water, in enuma elish - represented as metaphors. this, however, totally ignores the other references to their identities in enuma elish. if they are going to ignore other references in the text, why not also ignore tiamat, since as far as i can tell, enuma elish is the first mention of the word "tiamat" and there's no earlier precedence for abzu having a "relationship", a mating or melding with, "tiamat" as salt water.

How could there be, with the EE being the first attestation we have found for Tiamat?

originally posted by: undothis bothers me greatly. sitchin at least tries to generate a hypothesis about what all the metaphors mean. the mainstream just ignores what it doesn't want to address

Sitchin takes advantage of the absence of evidence to insert his own line of crap about what it means. That's the point.

originally posted by: undofor example, what is their theory about kingu, who tiamat mates with when she can no longer mate with abzu? and what of the monstrosties that come out of tiamat when she mates with kingu? ignored.

They say Kingu is the son of Tiamat and Apzu, which is what the text says.

The monsters are there for Marduk to defeat. Guy's gotta get exalted somehow.

Besides, I thought you were interested in Sumerian, rather than Babylonian, mythology.

Harte

it's like they are having a conversation with sitchin and just directing it at me. i'm not channeling sitchin. i have my own theories.

originally posted by: undo
a reply to: Mr Mask

yeah well the experts use to think the earth was flat (and in theoretical physics, as a dimensional space, it might be describable as a series of stacked planes wrapped on a sphere, but that's a different subject), as well, and they were wrong about that. i can also name several other things mainstream archaeology was wrong about, and the subsequent texts written on the subject of people and locations mentioned in ancient texts, that the mainstream claimed were fictions. or the fact they rarely retract prior statements that are proven wrong by their own archaeological findings.

Undo, why make such ridiculous statements to try and make your points? There is evidence going back to over 2,000 BCE that no one thought the earth was flat, you are basing that on notions and assumptions that are completely wrong. We know Sitchin made things up, what is your problem with conceding that? It's really embarrassing to see such comments.

a reply to: Harte

Evidence for this?

The Abzu (Cuneiform: 𒍪 𒀊, ZU.AB; Sumerian: abzu; Akkadian: apsû)
en.wikipedia.org...

And that's not the actual point. If i were addressing the star gate theory, then, that would be a point. I just mentioned it because sitchin did, and i was introducing his theory into the mix because i was trying to highlight that sitchin at least recognized that the information didn't stop at abzu and tiamat, that something else was apparent in the metaphors. you're suggesting that it should be okay to call tiamat a metaphor for salt water in one place, and then she has a "son" who is not a metaphor? that makes no sense. where's the rest of the metaphorical story, and what i mean by that is, how does salt water give birth to a son from mating with fresh water? where's the rest of the story?

a reply to: uncommitted

read what i said in my op. then ask again if i think sitchin was always correct.

You say in the OP and post title you are going to debunk "Sitchin debunkers." Then proceed to tell us you also find Sitchin to be wrong and have your own theories. Therefore, you yourself are a "Sitchin debunker."