The Moses Scroll

The Evolution of the Bible

The earliest copy of the book of Deverim (Deuteronomy) is evidence of the evolution of the Bible. Why is that important?

For anyone who has not already watched our DocuVlog review of Professor Ross K. Nichols’ new book “The Moses Scroll”, go to our YouTube Channel and watch that HERE.

This short blog is designed to address the obvious question, “Why should we care?”

All three Abrahamic faiths, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible – the belief that the Bible contains – word for word – the words of God.

Over the last two hundred years, many of the people in Western countries have become atheists in reaction against this religious literalism.

Unfortunately, the loss of God has proved a disaster for Western civilisation.

 

The Good News:

The existence of the Moses Scroll demonstrates that, in reality, the books of the Bible evolved with the Hebrew people. Those texts directly reflect the changing socio-political interests of powerful groups within the Judean elite and their need to control the Hebrew people through a manipulation of their beliefs.

In the text of Shapira’s scroll, we see a text largely without reference to the Judean God Yahweh from the Negev desert. He is only mentioned by the editor at the beginning and the end of the Book. This demonstrates the evolution of Elohist theology into the Yahwist and confirms the position that the Jesus of History took against Judean literalism. We know from Epiphanius of Salamis that the religious school to which the Jesus of History belonged (Nazareans) believed (as did the Essenes and the Samaritans) that the Judeans had forged the Bible.

Interestingly, the text does not contain the openly xenophobic tone of the later versions.

Like the teachings of the Jesus of History, the text is almost entirely concerned with our inner relationship with our selves and God.

In light of the Moses Scroll, we can say that the Hebrew Bible is a record of a people’s struggle to find God and themselves within a changing and challenging world. We must test our weight on each line, as a climber tests a handhold because each line may contain a profound spiritual insight or it might be the evidence of an ancient evil. Reading the Bible without first engaging our commonsense has and will lead to madness.

That being said, the Moses Scroll suggests that maybe the God that atheists don’t believe in never really existed.

If you enjoyed this blog you might like to read “Two Gods, Two Countries”

Truth

Two Gods and Two Countries

The religiously motivated massacre in Orlando, Florida, is a sad reminder of the dangers of trying to find absolute truth in the written word. All books, without exception, are only shadows of the minds of the people who write them. Holy BooksWhatever motivations or inspiration a person may or may not have had at the time of writing are only faintly echoed within the text itself. It is important that we use our common sense when we read any written text except when it comes to reading a religious work it becomes a matter of life and death, as we see today on a regular basis.

Mean no Harm?

We know from contemporary evidence that prior to the middle of the first millennium a large proportion of Israelis believed that the Judeans had forged the books of Moses (Ref 1). The Old Testament paints a picture of a single united Jewish people. The overall narrative is that Abraham, Moses and then the Prophets advocated the God Yahweh and his cult of animal sacrifice. The Judean Priestly Theocracy insisted that all national calamities were due to some ‘failing’ in the Jewish people or due to their general lack of enthusiasm for the Judean blood cult. Jerusalem was the Davidic Capital and centre of the world. To be fair, sometimes a lie is told for the best of reasons and it is possible that this lie was told to protect the people, to unite them in the face of Babylonian invasion and exile.

Two Countries?

Israel and JudahUnfortunately, after a hundred years of archaeology we can now see that this Judean narrative is not supported by physical reality. Galilee and the north of the country were always the most prosperous and densely populated areas (Ref 2). Shechem and Megiddo were the major cities and it was in Shechem that Davidic Kings were crowned (Ref 3). It was the Northern God ‘El’ that gave Israel its name (Ref 4) and unlike Yahweh He was viewed as discarnate and eternal rather than anthropomorphically. Worship of El involved His feminine aspect Asherah and gifts of olive oil and incense were offered on the mountaintops and wild groves (Ref 5). Until the Assyrian invasion destroyed Israel, Jerusalem was only a small village in the godforsaken barren hills of Judea (Ref 6). The Judean nationalistic fantasy, post Babylonian return, fundamentally changed the nature of God to follow the Babylonian model of Marduk (Ref 7).

Two Gods?

This false narrative has ensured that the actual sayings of Jesus became almost impossible to understand and this confusion between El and Yahweh, between Judean and Israeli religious understanding has led to some of the worst atrocities the world has ever known (Ref 8). The Galilean movements, which included the Essenes and Nazarenes rejected animal sacrifice, avoided eating meat, practiced ritual purity and believed that prayer was a personal and solitary affair were in opposition to the Judean Theocracy (Ref 9). The fact that the Gospels do not understand this dichotomy but follow the false narrative of Rabbinical Judaism certainly attests to their creation by Romans and Greeks much later than previously thought.

Become Clear!

The power of the priests was weakened when first the Greeks and then the Romans invaded. By the time of Jesus a Jewish Palestinian religious reformation was finally possible (Ref 10). In this context of religious fundamentalism and political nationalism, many of the sayings of Jesus suddenly make sense. His blockade of the Temple and his execution shortly after becomes a desperate Israeli attempt to stop the horror of animal sacrifice. After the death of Jesus (Maran Yeshua) his brother James became the Rabbi to the Nazarene Yeshiva (Ref 11). After the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the Judean Pharisees evolved into Rabbinical Judaism and Israeli religious belief went underground – eventually to become Lurianic Kabbalah.

One or the Other?

Which vision better reflects the words of Jesus – a vision of God as being everything and a father to all life or a capricious God that will destroy cities on a whim? A God that demands sacrifice or a God that desires love. He cannot possibly be both. The historical Jesus taught an Israeli vision, which was later obscured by a nationalistic Jewish narrative. The situation was made worse by the emergence of a pagan cult intoxicated by its own ignorance and made blind by its own arrogance (Ref 12). In the face of such propaganda, it is vital that we read the Bible with the utmost care and use, to the best of our ability, our God-given common sense (Ref 13).

References

  1. Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion
  2. Professor Israel Finkelstein – the Bible Unearthed
  3. Old Testament – 2 Kings
  4. Merneptah Stele and Genesis 32
  5. Genesis 33:20 and Judges 9:46
  6. Professor Israel Finkelstein – the Bible Unearthed
  7. Professor R. Reed Lessing – Yahweh versus Marduk
  8. Blackman, E.C. Marcion and His Influence 2004
  9. Keith Akers – The Lost Religion of Jesus
  10. Professor Israel Finkelstein – the Bible Unearthed
  11. Josephus – Antiquities of the Jews and Acts
  12. Eusebius – Ecclesiastical History
  13. Rav Abraham Kook – The pangs of cleanings

If you enjoyed this Blog, then you might like: Are there two Gods in the Bible? and What is Spirituality and can it be found in a book?

Research Paper: The Jesus of History Versus Judean Supremacism

Non-Fiction Book – The True Sayings of Jesus: The Jesus of History Vs. The Christ Myth

Historical Fiction Book – The Last Letters of Jesus

The True Sayings of JesusThe Last Letters of Jesus

US and UK Flags

Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?

The problem many people have is that the Jesus in the New Testament makes very little sense. The image of an anti-Semitic Jew on a donkey driving two hundred thousand people out of a temple with a knotted piece of string was obviously never meant to be history. The Synoptic Q-Source and the extra-biblical Q-Source leave us with many sayings that are almost impossible to understand if all we have of Jewish history is the New Testament.

When Jesus said ‘Judeans’ did he mean all Jews? What was his problem with Pharisees? Why disrupt the animal sacrifices? Why teach in the wilderness?

Talking Donkeys

Unfortunately, the Old Testament fares little better with talking donkeys, genocidal wars, and genital mutilation. History, archaeology and common sense would suggest caution when we approach these books. The Old Testament speaks of Jerusalem as the centre of a Davidic Kingdom, which stretched from Egypt to Damascus. There was only one legitimate form of Jewish religion and the books suggest that all the ills that befall the Jewish people are due to some ‘Failure’ of worship within this cult of animal sacrifice.

I would suggest that to understand what the historical Jesus might have meant and what might have been actually happening, you have to understand his past from his point of view.

America and England unite

Imagine, if you will, that America is attacked by China and its people seek refuge in England. Over hundreds of years it might become expedient to unite Northern Europeans, both American and English, against the Asian threat. A scribe in England begins to rewrite history, downplaying the importance of America and creating a narrative where London is the centre of the world and the English church ruled over the historical kingdom of America of which England was the centre. In this narrative all the presidents were idiots and God punishes them for their failings as Anglican Christians. The legends and memories used by the scribe are based on truth but they are twisted to mean something new, which advances this English/European agenda and justifies the authority of London over all Northern Europeans.

Israel was like America is now. It was based in the fertile north of Palestine and was big enough to be an Egyptian headache. Judea was an insignificant and barren wasteland centred around the village of Jerusalem (Ref 1). Israel was centred around Shechem and it was to Shechem that Davidic Kings went to be crowned (Ref 2).

Israel and JudahInvasion

Judea and Israel had coexisted for centuries. When the Assyrians invaded Israel in the north, the Israeli refugees fled to Jerusalem and we see a village with one water source explode into a city. The refugees bring with them their stories both written and oral. After the return from Babylon a movement toward unifying the Jewish people begins within the Judean elite (Ref 3).

The stories of the Israelis were spun to create the myth of Judean supremacism and a justification for Jerusalem and its Theocracy to assume authority over all Jews everywhere. It was through the appropriation of the Davidic legend that this was achieved.

Some religious movements within the Jewish people resented and rejected what they saw as the subversion of their religion, history and culture. We know from several contemporary sources that the Nazarenes rejected the Judean view, their forged books of Moses and the cult of animal sacrifice (Ref 4). When Jesus is reported as saying ‘Judeans’ it is very likely that he did actually mean, Judeans and not Jews as a whole. When he disrupted the Temple Sacrifices, it makes no sense to think he suddenly got upset about the money – this Judean cult had been running for 500 years.

Whose agenda?

In the book ‘The Last Letters of Jesus’ we get to see the temple from the Israeli perspective. It is very likely that the Judean cult of animal sacrifice was as offensive to the Nazarenes as it is to us. Suddenly many of the most obscure sayings of Jesus in the Q-Source start to make sense (Ref 5). The stories, legends and histories of the Jewish people are remarkably accurate covering, as they do, thousands of years but just like any history written at third hand, a long time after the fact, the Bible stories reflect the bias and agenda of the writer and in the case of most of the Old Testament, the bias and agenda was principally Judean. The fact that the New Testament utterly mistakes the context and implication of the words of Jesus is further proof that the New Testament was almost entirely written by Greeks and Romans (Ref 6).

References:

  1. A Great United Monarchy? Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, in: R.G. Kratz and H. Spieckermann eds. 2010. One God – One Cult – One Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives. Berlin (2010): 3-28.
  2. 1 Kings 12-13.
  3. Prof Israel Finkelstein: The forgotten Kingdom – the archaeology and history of northern Israel.
  4. Epiphanius of Salamis: The Panarion.
  5. Burton L Mack: The Q-Source.
  6. Bart D. Ehrman: How Jesus became God.

If you enjoyed this Blog, then you might like to read: Animal Sacrifice is Evil and Did Jesus believe in Sacrifice?

Research Paper: The Jesus of History Versus Judean Supremacism

Non-Fiction – The True Sayings of Jesus: The Jesus of History Vs. The Christ Myth

The True Sayings of Jesus

Historical Fiction – The Last Letters of Jesus

The Last Letters of Jesus

Cuneiform Tablet

Are there two Gods in the Bible?

There is a question that has been waiting for an answer for two thousand years. “How many Gods are in the Bible?” It is one of the most common questions in Bible or Torah class. Any one with even a rudimentary grip of language comprehension would be forced to conclude there is certainly more than one God described.

Ultimately, the Bible is just a book. It is a compilation of lots of stories and God is just a character in the story. Like any long running television series, it is vital that the characters are true to themselves.

Ian Fleming is 007

Another famous fictional character is James Bond. Commander James Bond has been played as a Scottish psychopath, and as a smooth English gentleman. David Niven even played him as a comedian. The author, Ian Fleming, based some of the character’s tastes on himself but much of the character’s flare is based on the men with whom Ian Fleming served during the war. No matter how much the producers changed the character to suit popular fashion the men on whom the story was based remained the same.

Whatever you believe God to be, when God is a character in a book, he is a product of the writer’s imagination. The character of God is dependent on the writer’s ability to interpret what he is thinking into words. How those men interpreted God was also dependent on their own cultural history and the demands of the moment. What were they trying to achieve with that story. Before I offend anyone, it is important to remember that none of these stories actually affects God.

Broken Tablets

Long before the Kingdom of Judah came into existence, there was Israel. The word Isra’EL means ‘May El Preserve’. The original capital of the Kingdom of Israel was Shechem just between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea to the west of the Jordan.

In Genesis 35 God says to Jacob, ‘Arise, go up to Beth-El and dwell there’. We can assume from that reference that the ‘House of God (El)’ was in a high place. El-Shaddai (El of the Mountain).

What we know of El comes from Ugarit clay tablets written in Cuneiform (northwest Semitic) by the Amorites. El is known as ‘The Creator of all living things’ and ‘The Compassionate’. He was also often represented by a bull.

It seems likely to me that the tablets, which Moses broke, may have been made of clay rather than stone, as this was the most popular writing material at this time. There certainly seems to be some parallels here that should be explored.

The Serpent Staff

In Genesis 35:14 Jacob worships El by pouring wine and olive oil on the pillar of stone he had set up as an altar. It is important to note that the worship of El at this point did not involve sacrifice. Pillars are not very good for slaughtering animals on.

When the later Judean kings destroy what they call ‘idolatry’ it is the worship of El that they are destroying. The groves and high places where the people offered incense and libations, the Serpent Staff that God had given to Moses, all of these things were destroyed by the Judeans. Namely Hezekiah the son of Ahaz (2 Kings 18:4) and Josiah.

So most independent Biblical and Torah Scholars agree that ‘El’ was the first God of the Jewish people.

Yahweh on the other hand came later and took over the popular places of worship. Just as Christianity took over pagan sites and now Islam takes over buildings that were once popular churches, this process seems to be common to all cultural appropriation and religious atrophy.

Marduk and his Dragon

Many of the characteristics of Yahweh are the same as the Babylonian God, Marduk and his Dragon. Like Marduk, Yahweh is a God of anger and judgement. He, like Yahweh, is a duel God of both ultimate good and evil. Yahweh is a God of sacrifice and blood. He was also the God of storms and of vegetation. One moment he might bless the people and the next, on a whim, he would destroy them. This calls to mind (Exodus 4:24) the Yahwist insertion into the Elohist story of Moses with Yahweh’s sudden decision to kill Moses for no apparent reason. Zipporah, the Midianite wife of Moses has to sacrifice her son’s foreskin to save her husband’s life. (Handy girl that!)

I personally suspect that it was Hezekiah who introduced the worship of the Babylonian version of Yahweh into Judah and I’m still researching that point. Eventually the identity of the Gods became blurred and the name Yahweh was inserted over the Elohist stories until it became hard to tell them apart. Reading the Hebrew, I’ve noticed you can often see that the insertion of Yahweh is quite superfluous. Usually, it is obvious that the person is talking about God (Elohim) and there is no need to insert Yahweh. I’m no expert in Hebrew. (Read Dr. Steven DiMattei’s excellent blog for stronger references.)

Stories

So we have seen that there are clearly two fictional characters described in the Torah who could be called ‘God’. The characters of the two Gods were originally very different and it is often possible to see that difference in the context and meaning of the source stories. Obviously, both of these characters are expressions of the people who created the original stories. Stories are dependent on the writer’s skill and the ability of the reader to understand the cultural references and language of the writer.

The problem with the writers of the New Testament is that, except for James the Just, they were not Jewish. Paul was either a Hellenised Jew who knew nothing of his own culture or a convert. They misunderstood translation and cultural references and garbled the Tanakh. There is no basis in the Torah for the idea of the Trinity. The historical Jesus never said that he was the ‘Son of God’ in the Greek sense and Genesis makes no provision for this concept. The Holy Ghost beloved by Paul was his misunderstanding of the concept of the Shekhinah. Most independent Biblical Scholars all agree that it took the Gentile Church three hundred years to come up with the idea of the Trinity. No matter what intellectual yoga you want to go through the idea is purely Greek paganism.

More Gods

So through the Bible there are different Gods described, and as the Gentile Christians appropriated the Torah and Tanakh and bolted it onto their own Gospels, even more Gods were added.

None of this affects the nature of God and in themselves these stories tell us little of any use about God. Mostly these stories tell us more about the people who wrote them. Just as the fictional character of James Bond tells us nothing about Patick Dalzel-Job, Wilfred (Biffy) Dunderdale, or indeed Peter Fleming.

It doesn’t affect God

Ultimately, our minds create phantoms and then our ego will invest our belief in our own projections and make fools of us. Just as men dying of thirst in the desert will argue over a mirage, none of these visions IS God. They may or may not reflect the vision of God held by the writer in that time and place.

If you are looking for God on paper then I suggest you might be looking in the wrong place. Whether you see God as one or three, your concepts do not affect God so don’t take yourself too seriously.

I will leave you with a quote from Rav Abraham Kook, of blessed memory. “The tendency of unrefined people to see the divine essence as embodied in the words and in the letters alone is a source of embarrassment to humanity, and atheism arises as a pained outcry to liberate man from this narrow and alien pit, to raise him from the darkness of focusing on letters and expressions, to the light of thought and feeling, finally to place his primary focus on the realm of morals. Atheism has a temporary legitimacy, for it is needed to purge away the aberrations that attached themselves to religious faith because of a deficiency in perception and in the divine service. This is its sole function in existence…”

If you enjoyed this Blog, then you might like: My God is Better than Yours and Was the Jesus of History a God?

Dr Steven DiMattei website

Non-Fiction – ‘The True Sayings of Jesus: The Jesus of History Vs. The Christ Myth

The True Sayings of Jesus