Mark Twain once observed that most human tragedies don't come from basic ignorance, but from a profound belief in lies: "It's not from things we don't know, but things we know that aren't so" that will harm us, he warned. How true! There is nothing more deadly than people dedicated to the preservation of lies which they regard as truth—and most especially if those lies carry the stamp of "divine revelation."
From the dawn of time to the present, looming over mankind's historical horror-drama existence is the hoary image of an approving god and his army of sanctimonious ministers with their "divine revelations."
"Divine revelation" tossed new-born babies into the sacrificial fires of Molech. "Divine revelation" offered virgins on the altars of the Aztecs. "Divine revelation" sent hoards of Israelites into Canaanite villages to rape, hack, slice and pillage. "Divine revelation" shredded and burned bodies during the Holy Inquisition. "Divine revelation" bayoneted, shot and exploded countless millions in countless Christian wars. It is "divine revelation" that inspires a man to strap dynamite around his body, walk into a crowded Jerusalem street and blow himself and a hundred people into oblivion. And, just as bad, it was "divine revelation" that inspired George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003 and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
If men want to butcher one another, then it is time for them to drop the excuse of "divine revelation," boot out ministers, priests and rabbis, and kill for the real reason behind all religions: hatred, bloodlust and greed. That was the impetus that created Baal, Molech, Zeus, Woden, Allah, Yahweh and Jesus of old; and it is why organized religion remains the most successful business enterprise known in human history—and the most dangerous.
The eminent danger posed by organized religion is the reason for this study, for if life on this planet is to survive, we humans must first awaken to the truth of religious madmen, their gods and their "divine revelations"—truth that you assuredly will never hear in church!
How It All Began
Most Christians are familiar with the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They know that Jacob fathered twelve sons by four women, and from these sons came the twelve tribes of Israel. They may remember how the whole family eventually migrated to Egypt, where they languished in slavery for the next four hundred-plus years. Thanks to films like The Ten Commandments, most people know that the Israelites were liberated by Moses performing godly miracles. As children, many learned how the Israelites were promised Canaan, wherein they dutifully slaughtered the indigenous population down to the last suckling babe and established their homeland. All this was recorded by the hand of Moses, given to Joshua, and then passed on to succeeding generations of Jewish scribes who have painstakingly preserved the word of God over the millennia. This, in brief, is the tradition, and, to be blunt, there's no evidence that it ever happened!
Indeed, the evidence of history and archeology completely disproves the biblical legends of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Aaron. Even worse, it is even doubtful that any of these men ever lived, which means that they and their legends belong beside the likes of Zeus, Apollo, Baal, Dagon, Romulus and Remus and the hundreds of other gods and heros of mythology.
In a process that mirrors virtually all ancient nation-states, Israelite unification necessitated the creation of national propaganda centered on fabulous heros, gods and miracles. It is a time-proven method of stirring the masses to do the will of their leaders, which is why it has never ceased to be employed by nation builders—our own American Republic being a prime example.
In the Prologue to their controversial book, The Bible Unearthed, Archaelogy's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, Professor Israel Finkelstein (director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaelogy at Tel Aviv University) and Neil Asher Silberman (director of historical interpretation for the Ename Center for Public Archaelogy and Heritage Presentation in Belgium and contributing editor to Archaelogy magazine) write:
The world in which the Bible was created was not a mythic realm of great cities and saintly heroes, but a tiny, down-to-earth kingdom where people struggled for their future against the all-too-human fears of war, poverty, injustice, disease, famine and drought. The historical saga contained in the Bible—from Abraham's encounter with God and his journey to Canaan, to Moses' deliverance of the children of Israel from bondage, to the rise and fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah—was not a miraculous revelation, but a brilliant product of the human imagination. It was first conceived—as recent archaeological evidence suggest—during the span of two or three generations, about twenty-six hundred years ago [i.e. about 600 years before Jesus]. Its birthplace was the kingdom of Judah, a sparsely settled region of shepherds and farmers, ruled from an out-of-the way royal city precariously perched in the heart of the hill country on a narrow ridge between steep, rocky ravines.
During a few extraordinary decades of spiritual ferment and political agitation toward the end of the seventh century bce, an unlikely coalition of Judahite court officials, scribes, priests, peasants, and prophets came together to create a new movement. At its core was a sacred scripture of unparalleled literary and spiritual genius. It was an epic saga woven together from an astonishingly rich collection of historical writings, memories, legends, folk tales, anecdotes, royal propaganda, prophecy, and ancient poetry. Partly an original composition, partly adapted from earlier versions and sources, that literary masterpiece would undergo further edition and elaboration to become a spiritual anchor not only for the descendants of the people of Judah but for communities all over the world.1
These are extraordinary statements and to the average Christian or Jewish mind goes beyond controversial; they are in fact explosive—all the more so because Finkelstein and Silberman offer the archeological evidence to back up their words!
The record shows that at the time Israel was supposedly conquering Canaan under Joshua's leadership, the land was under rigid Egyptian military control, which would have rendered such an invasion impossible—especially considering that the scattered, disorganized Israelites were then vastly inferior both numerically and militarily. Moreover archeological excavations have shown that the formidable cities mentioned in the bible, against which the invading Israelite armies supposedly fought, were nothing more than administrative strongholds to house a regional ruler and his bureaucrats. This point is driven home by a request at the time from the king of Jerusalem to the Egyptian pharaoh that he supply fifty men to guard the land—a request that clearly shows the minuscule scale of the "kingdoms" allegedly conquered by Joshua. Even worse, many of the cities mentioned in the Old Testament (ot) as being conquered by the Israelites, did not exist at the time of the alleged Israelite invasion of Canaan, which includes Jericho and its famous tumbling walls, a tale to which we shall return later.
The first authentic historical record of Israel is an Egyptian record that dates to the end of the thirteenth century bce in which Pharaoh Merneptah, the son of Ramessess II, who is believed to be the pharaoh of the biblical Exodus story, boasts that his campaign in Canaan decimated a people called Israel. Prior to that brief mention the only evidence of Israel comes from archeology.
What archeology proves is that Israelites first appear in Canaan (around 1200 bce), that they were shepherds and farmers, and (most importantly) that their presence was not the result of violent invasion, but by peaceful settlement. It also shows that ancient "Israel" was comprised of some 250 hilltop villages. When compared to the fabulous bible stories, the real surprise for historians was the small scale of Israelite settlements—most being no larger than a single acre in size, containing around 100 men, women and children. The largest of those settlements were no more than three or four acres and held no more than a few hundred people. Most revealing is that none of the "villages" were fortified, which contradicts the biblical account of Israel being in a state of constant warfare with their Philistine neighbors. Another tell-tale fact is that there are virtually no signs of advanced civilization in those first settlements. There was no record keeping, nor luxury items, such as jewelry or imported pottery. A massive conflict with the biblical record is the overall numbers of Israelites in Canaan—about 45,000 instead of the millions boasted of in Exodus. All of this has serious implications for the origins of a biblical narrative. On page 118 of their book, Finkelstein and Silberman write:
The process that we describe here is, in fact, the opposite of what we have in the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause. And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan—they emerged from within it. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people—the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were—irony of ironies—themselves originally Canaanites!
The early Israelites were indigenous Canaanites who merely found greener pastures in which to establish new settlements. Although this is information kept from most Christians and Jews, Finkelstein and Silberman's revelations are hardly news to biblical academia. In 1941, based on the evidence of the time, in the article "Exodus" the editors of The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia were candid enough to admit the mythical proportions of the book of Exodus:
The chief difficulty in accepting the story in Exodus is the large numbers involved in the emigration of the Israelites, as well as the miracles of the ten plagues. These are explained by assuming that the present narrative in Egypt represents an idealization of the past and a fusing of the history of the various tribes. Probably only one or two of the tribes (especially those derived from Joseph) actually settled in Egypt, were enslaved and managed to regain their freedom; some of the others, however, may have had a tradition of Egyptian domination from the time when they settled in Palestine, as it is known that they exercised control over Palestine during the 13th cent.2
An Israelite presence in Egypt does have some historical support, although it bears little resemblance to the biblical narrative.
History confirms that Canaanites traditionally would migrate to Egypt in time of drought, famine and war. Egyptian historians record a people called the Hyksos who were Canaanite immigrants and who came to dominate a great delta city. Eventually the Hyksos were forcibly expelled by the Egyptians around 1570 bce. However, unlike the biblical narrative, the Hyksos did not leave Egypt as slaves, but as kings and nobles. Finkelstein and Silberman note that after the Hyksos expulsion, the Egyptian government controlled immigration from Canaan closely and built forts along the eastern delta and at one-day intervals along the Mediterreanean coast to Gaza. These forts kept extensive records, none of which mention the Israelites or any other foreign people entering, leaving, or living in the delta. In part, this is why Finkelstein and Silberman join other scholars and postulate that the legends of the Semitic Hyksos were eventually fused with the legends of ancient Israel.
Although this is a brief overview of Israel's muddied and/or mythical history (later we shall delve more thoroughly into some details), it should lead any thinking person to at least ask pertinent questions. For instance, if Moses and the Exodus can be shown as fabulous tales, then who invented them, when, and for what reason—and for what reasons have ministers, priests and rabbis consistently kept the truth of the bible's origins from the billions of faithful sheep who have lived and, in countless pathetic cases, died fervently believing the tales?
The Priesthood
The historical record of Israel's priesthood doesn't begin with Aaron and his Levites, it begins with the reign of Judah's King Josiah. In their book, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman explain how the "pure" faith of Israel/Judah was essentially the same as their Canaanite neighbors, which they sum up in these words:
The existence of high places and other forms of ancestral and household god worship was not—as the books of Kings imply—apostasy from an earlier, purer faith. It was part of the timeless tradition of the hill country settlers of Judah, who worshiped YHWH along with a variety of gods and goddesses known or adapted from the cults of neighboring peoples.... the clearest archaeological evidence of the popularity of this type of worship throughout the kingdom is the discovery of hundreds of figurines of naked fertility goddesses at every late monarchic site in Judah. Moe suggestive are the inscriptions found in the early eighth century site of Kuntillet Ajrud in northeastern Sinai—a site that shows cultural links with the northern kingdom [of Israel]. They apparently refer to the goddess Asherah as being the consort of YHWH. And lest it be assumed that YHWH's married status was just a sinful northern hallucination, a somewhat similar formula, speaking of YHWH and his Asherah, appears in a late-monarchic inscription from the Shephelah of Judah." (pp. 241-242.)
Israel's primitive faith took a dramatic turn when, according to 2 Kings 23:2-3, the high priest found a copy of the "original" Jewish bible during temple restoration. This newly-discovered book pronounced horrible curses on anyone found practicing the "heathenish" faith of the phallic worshiping Canaanites. Forthwith King Josiah determined to clean up Israel's faith, although he stood by a phallic pillar in the "house of the Lord" while taking his oath! (See this author's study on steeples for more details of Israel's true primitive faith.) Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman write:
Josiah's messianic role arose from the theology of a new religious movement that dramatically changed what it meant to be an Israelite and laid the foundations for future Judaism and for Christianity. That movement ultimately produced the core documents of the Bible—chief among them, a book of the Law, discovered during renovations to the Jerusalem Temple in 622 BCE, the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign. That book, identified by most scholars as an original form of the book of Deuteronomy, sparked a revolution in ritual and a complete reformulation of Israelite identity. (p. 276)
Perhaps most telling of all, Finkelstein and Silberman also go out to demonstrate how the high priest's "discovery" of "an original form of the book of Deuteronomy" was actually produced during the seventh century. After reviewing the evidence for this ancient forgery, they write: "Rather than being an old book that was suddenly discovered, it seems safe to conclude that it was written in the seventh century BCE, just before or during Josiah's reign." (p. 281.)
This then was the true origins of Israel's "special relationship" with the only "true" god, Yahweh! It was the invention of a king who was looking to build an empire and who had obviously learned the same lesson as would the French philosopher, Voltaire, who wryly observed that "if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." In other words, to hold sway over a bunch of quarrelsome nincompoops, one needs to convince them that certain men act on the orders of a divine boogeyman who is ready and willing to smite all non-believers! (Again, readers are encouraged to read this author's study of steeps for a full accounting of ancient Israel's true primitive faith.)
And so, this was the background as we move forward to the close of the Babylonian Captivity when the Persian king, Cyrus, allowed a small band of Judeans to return to Jerusalem in 540 bce to rebuild their Temple (known in history as the Second Temple), and appointed Zerubabel the first governor.3 Nearly 100 years later, in 445 bce, a Jewish official at the Persian court named Nehemiah persuaded emperor Artaxerxes I to make Judea a separate Persian province and to appoint him its governor. Thereafter Nehemiah led a second group of Judean exiles to Jerusalem where he took firm control of both politics and religion. It was during this time that Ezra persuaded King Artaxerxes I to grant him the authority to go to Jerusalem "to inquire into religious conditions there".4
What Ezra actually did upon his arrival was to institute royally-sanctioned religious reforms. Indeed, many historians believe that Ezra's "restoration" amounted to reinventing Judaism wherein he produced a newly-written national historical narrative, starting with Adam and continuing to the so-called Second Temple era—a period that conveniently starred Ezra, thus weaving himself into the religious and historical fabric of Israelite history. Hence, the more illustrious and divine the history, the more authority was accorded the priestly "successors of Moses." This is how Ezra became regarded as the founder and head of the Great Synagogue, in which supreme religious authority was vested. But what Ezra actually did goes far beyond rewriting and fabricating Judaic history and giving himself supreme authority. Ezra also incorporated Babylonian, Mithraic and Zoroastrian traditions into his national religion, using these to form the nucleus of what is now called Rabbinical Judaism and its offspring, Christianity. With his writing and organizing talents he not only ingratiated himself to his Persian overlords and gained their nodding approval, Ezra placed Judaism on par with the ancient world's other leading religious systems.
In his book, The Kabbalah, the well-respected Rabbi Professor Adolphe Franck bluntly admits that the rabbis of the Babylonian captivity borrowed much of their religion from the Babylonians and Persians. Noting that Zoroastrianism was at the height of popularity within the Persian empire at the very time the first group of Jews gained their independence, Professor Franck concludes that this group, followed by the second wave of Jewish exiles returning to Jerusalem, brought numerous Zoroastrian doctrines with them. He asks:
And indeed, can we think of an event in the life of a people more likely to change its moral constitution and modify its ideas and customs than the memorable exile that has been called the Babylonian Captivity? Could the seventy years' sojourn of the Israelites, priests and laymen, teachers and common people, in the land of their conquerors have exerted no influence on either side? We have already cited a Talmudic passage where the elders of the synagogue openly acknowledge that their ancestors brought with them from the land of their exile the names of the [pagan] angels and the [calendar] months, and even the letters of the [Babylonian] alphabet.
Professor Franck explains that the Jewish captives ...
crushed under the weight of their misfortune," could not have "remained indifferent to events in the land of their exile. The Scriptures themselves point with some satisfaction to the Hebrew captives' instruction in all the sciences and, consequently, ideas of their conquerors, which admitted them to the highest offices of the empire. This was precisely the case with Daniel, Zerubabel and Nehemiah, the latter two of whom played such an active part in the deliverance of their brethren. This is not all. Forty thousand returned to Jerusalem under Zerubabel; a second emigration, headed by Ezra, took place under the reign of Artaxexes Longimanus, about seventy years after the first one. During this interval the religious reform of Zoroaster had time to spread to all parts of the Babylonian empire and to take deep root in the minds of the people. From their return to Palestine until their conquest by Alexander the Great, the Jews remained subject to the Persian kings. And even after the conquest, until their total dispersion, they seem to have looked upon the Euphrates, whose banks they once bathed with their tears, as their second fatherland. The Babylonian synagogue arose under the civil and religious hegemony of the Leaders of the Captivity, and it cooperated with the synagogue in Palestine towards the definite organization of rabbinic Judaism." Professor Franck also makes it clear that, "The same schools produced the Babylonian Talmud, the final and most complete expression of Judaism. We may conclude that no nation exerted so deep an influence on the Jews as the Persians; that no moral power could have penetrated more deeply into their spirit than did the religious system of Zoroaster with its long procession of traditions and commentaries.
Citing the ancient Persian holy book, Zend Avesta, Professor Franck goes on to enumerate the customs of Zoroastrianism borrowed by Rabbinical Judaism (the ancestor of present-day Orthodox Judaism). He also notes that both religions have almost identical stories of creation, such as the six days of creation and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (the Persian account says that a demon in the shape of a serpent, "kindled revolt in the soul of our primal parents"). Franck accounts for this by mentioning an older tradition from which both religions borrowed—by which he means the holy writ and traditions of ancient Babylon, the empire that the Persians finally conquered, and wherein the Jews were living when the first editions of their "Holy Scriptures" were being produced.5
After Ezra's time, little historical detail is known about Judea. What we do know is that Alexander the Great conquered the country and annexed it to his empire in 332 bce. After his death one of his generals, Ptolemy I, took control of Egypt, and another, Seleucus I, took control of Syria. Judea lay between the domains of these two powerful, greedy generals, and became the object of continual contention. In fact, between 321 and 198 bce it is estimated that the control of Jerusalem changed hands about a dozen times, when at last the country passed to Seleucid rule.
Although tolerant of Judaism, the Seleucids began a slow process of Hellenizing Judea, which continued for the next one hundred-fifty years. This policy of slow Hellenization changed when Antiochus Epiphanes IV (bce 175-64) became emperor of Syria. To strengthen his rule, he adopted a policy of forced Hellenization throughout his realm. This caused great unrest in Judea, which was ruled by a council presided over by a high priest, who was a traditional descendant of Zadok, whose family had ruled the Temple for generations. The unrest was firmly squashed when Antiochus deposed the high priest, Onias III, and appointed his brother Jason, a dedicated Hellenist, in his stead. In his gratitude, the new high priest (who had indeed bribed Antiochus to gain his office) renamed Jerusalem Antiochia after the emperor, and imposed new Hellenistic educational reforms in government and religion.
Apparently Jason failed the emperor on some account because Antiochus eventually deposed him and gave the high priesthood to Jason's brother Menelaus, whose first act was to hire assassins to kill his brother, the deposed high priest, Onias III. It is said that "pious" Jews were offended by Menelaus's further reforms, such as equating the worship of Yahweh (the Jewish god) to the worship of Zeus, and assisting Antiochus IV in plundering the Temple, and offering a pig on the Temple altar. As a result of these offenses, a zealous priest named Mattathias led a revolt.
The long and short of this story is that Mattathias died, and two of his five sons, Judah Maccabeus and Jonathan, who are known in history as Hasmoneans, succeeded their father as leaders of the revolt, and managed to hold out until circumstances delivered victory. Those circumstances are as follows: Antiochus Epiphanes IV was busy dealing with trouble in his eastern provinces, and therefore never turned his power on the Hasmonean brothers; and when Antiochus died in 163 bce, his family was too busy fighting over succession to care about the little insignificant Judean province. With final victory the Hasmoneans marched into Jerusalem, executed the Hellenized high priest and "purified" the Temple, which, let us have no pious doubt, means that the Hasmoneans consecrated the Temple for their personal use.
Up until the Hasmonean brothers arrived on the scene, the history of the Judean priesthood had been one of buying favors, betraying and assassinating family members and rivals, waging open warfare and allying itself with foreign powers. Nothing changed when the next batch of "pious" priests took control.
After the death of Antiochus IV, Jonathan Maccabeus supported Alexander Balas against Demetrius I for the throne of Syria. When Alexander won out, he rewarded Jonathan Maccabeus by appointing him as high priest of Judea. But this favor was short lived because in time Jonathan was arrested and murdered in prison.
After Jonathan's death, his brother, Simeon Maccabeus, was confirmed by the "Great Assembly" as both high priest and "ethnarch" (ruler), and commander of the Jewish people. From thence this great authority was to become hereditary, making an already corrupt priesthood even more disreputable. But Hasmonean corruption was not going unnoticed. Already religious factions were moving for change—change that gained momentum when the Hasmoneans refused to ordain a Zadokite high priest, taking that office unto themselves. In short, this precipitated crisis led to the development of three religious sects. One was the Essenes, who are now famous for their library of Dead Sea Scrolls, and the other two were the infamous Pharisees and Sadducees, both of which are remembered today because of their prominent mention in the New Testament gospels.
Eventually High Priest Simon and two of his sons were murdered by Simon's son-in-law, whose bloody rampage missed a younger son, John Hyrcanus I, who succeeded as ruler and high priest of Judea. He was succeeded by his son, Judah Aristobulus I, who was succeeded by his brother Alexander Yannai, who took the title of King of Judea. For almost thirty years King Alexander Yannai maintained his power by murder, theft, and bribery—actions that often extended against his own family members. When Alexander Yannai's wife, Queen Salome Alexandra, succeeded to the throne, her elder son, Hyrcanus II, was named high priest and heir to the throne, and her younger son, Aristobulus II, was named military commander. As the two brothers fought one another for power, Judea erupted into civil war. In the end Aristobulus II won out, but only for a short time.
In a rematch, the younger brother, High Priest Hyrcanus II, allied himself with the Nabataeans (an ancient kingdom in what is now Jordan), defeated his brother Aristobulus II and laid siege to Jerusalem. When the Romans arrived in the region, Aristobulus bribed the Roman commander who forced the Nabataeans to withdraw from Jerusalem. This new commander was the famous Pompey, who entered Jerusalem and established Judea as a Roman province. From then on the power of the Hasmoneans was broken, which led to the rise of the infamous Herod family.
Most will know the story of the Herods. The first ruler, Herod the Great, was married to Mariamne, a granddaughter of High Priest Hyrcanus II, and was thoroughly subservient to the Romans. This new ruler of Judea, who was more corrupt than any of his predecessors, maintained rigid control of the Temple, a building which he remodeled on the lines of a "pagan" Hellenistic temple. Herod's first appointment as high priest was his brother-in-law, whom he later murdered, just as he murdered other family members, including his grandfather-in-law, the former High Priest Hyrcanus II. But we have no need to continue past this point, because, for the purpose of this study, the above history gives ample insight into those men who claimed "divine" responsibility for the preservation of Israel's "Holy Scriptures." What we need to do here is to sidestep tradition and look seriously at the documented history of those scriptures.
Israel's "Holy Scriptures"
Before a Bedouin shepherd boy found the famous Dead Sea Scrolls in a cave at Qumran in 1947, the oldest manuscripts of the Old Testament (ot) were as follows: The Samaritan Bible, which contains only the Torah (the Law, or first five books of the bible) because at the time of the Samaritan schism (ca. 400 bce), the first five books of the ot were all that had been canonized within Rabbinical Judaism. (Copies only survive.) Of interest here is that the Samaritan Bible played no part in the development of the later Masoretic Text (the bible used by the majority of both Jews and Christians), which is fortuitous because it would have been quite a task for the ancient priesthood to "tidy up" the some 6,000 differences between the two works, before stamping it all with the word "divine."
Next in line is the Septuagint (lxx), which was a translation of the Torah produced by Alexandrian Jews, and dates to the third century bce, although there are no surviving manuscripts dating to this time (only copies). We can note that this version differs from both the Samaritan and Masoretic editions. Popping up next on the scene is the Targum Onkelos, a Jewish translation into Aramaic, which dates to the second century ce, and which also differs greatly from the already-mentioned translations. After this comes the Latin Vulgate, which was pieced together by St. Jerome in the late fourth century ce. In this work Jerome used the Septuagint, the Old Latin, a Hebrew edition and Origen's Hexapla (which was an arrangement of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion's translations combined with the Septuagint), for his final edition. This work forms the foundation of today's Catholic bibles.6
The most important bible in our lineup is the Masoretic Text, so called for the Babylonian Masoretic scribes who produced it between the fifth and tenth centuries ce. For those familiar with bible history, you may have heard or read how the Masoretes supposedly followed a strict set of rules when producing a copy of the Old Testament, which in Judaism is called the Tanakh.7 They were 1): The skins of the parchments had to be specially prepared and dedicated to God so that they would be purified before having sacred words written on them. 2): The ink which was used was black and made in accordance to a special recipe used only for writing scripture. 3): The text could not be duplicated by memory but had to be reproduced from an authentic copy which the scribe had before him, and the scribe had to say each word aloud when he wrote them. 4): Each time the scribe came across the Hebrew word for God (el, or elohim), he had to wipe his pen clean, and when he came across the name of God (Jehovah-Yahweh, or yhwh), he had to wash his whole body before he could write it. 5): If a sheet of parchment had one mistake on it, the sheet was condemned. If there were three mistakes found on any page, the whole manuscript was condemned. Each scroll had to be checked within thirty days of its writing, or it was considered unholy. 6): Every word and every letter was counted. If a letter or word were omitted, the manuscript was condemned. 7): There were explicit rules for how many letters and words allowed on any given parchment. A column must have at least 48 lines and no more than 60. Letters and words had to be spaced at a certain distance and no word could touch another.
Reading the above, the question is if we can indeed trust that the Masoretes followed the rules, century after century? To answer this we will not recall the corrupt history of the Judaic priesthood, and speculate on the basic honesty of the Masoretes, both surely a major consideration. Instead, all we need do is go to the time of the oldest surviving copies of Masoretic Text.
Beginning in 895 ce, Moses ben Asher, who lived in Babylon, and his son, Aaron, who lived in Tiberias (Palestine), began producing copies of the Masoretic Text. One of these manuscripts, containing only the writings of the Prophets (the Nevi'im), known as the Codex Cairensis (or Codex Cairo, ca. 895 ce), is the oldest surviving MSS of the Masoretic Text, although its authenticity has been called into question. (Virtually nothing is known about the ben Asher family, other than their "authority" was helped along by the acceptance of Moses Maimonides of some of Moses ben Asher's views.) Next there is the British Museum Codex dating to ca. 950. This MSS contains only the Torah, which is incomplete. Codex Leningradensis is the next in line, dating to 1008 ce, and is based on the work of the ben Asher family. This is the oldest Masoretic MSS containing the entire Tanakh. The differences and errors found in these bibles was the basis for Rudolf Kittel's Biblia Hebraica produced in the early twentieth century. Significantly, Kittel's third edition, which was heavily revised, is now used to produce virtually all modern bible translations, such as the New International Version (1978), the New King James Version (1982), and the New Revised Standard Version (1989). In other words, some where along the years, the famous Masoretes and their "ridged" rules failed miserably, and a new "Old Testament" had to be pieced together!
This situation explains the problems with the manuscripts and fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date between 168 and 68 bce, and which predate the oldest Masoretic Text by at least 1,000 years. Scholars tells us that there are significant differences between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the accepted Masoretic Text of today—most notably in the book of Jeremiah. The Masoretic Text of Jeremiah includes verses that are not in the Greek Septuagint, and the Septuagint contains verses not in the Masoretic Text, whereas the Paleo-Hebrew copy of Jeremiah found in Cave 4 at Qumran agrees closely with the Septuagint, and not the Masoretic Text.
Speaking of the Septuagint, its translation of 1 and 2 Samuel greatly differs from that of the Masoretic Text, but is backed by a manuscript of Samuel found in Qumran. Ernst Wurthwein, professor emeritus of Old Testament at Philipps-Universitat, Germany, writes about the scrolls of Isaiah found in Cave 1 at Qumran:
The scrolls (1QIsa. a.) has a popular type text which supports (the Masoretic Text) essentially, but which also offers a great number of variants... A second Isaiah manuscripts (1QIsa. b.) is fragmentary, but stands much closer to the Masoretic text.8
This aside, Hebrew texts were found at Qumran that don't agree with either the Masoretic or Septuagint, or indeed with any known Hebrew, Greek or Latin texts, meaning that other "bibles" were once known and used by God's faithful.
One of the scholars who has closely dissected the Dead Sea Scrolls, Dr. Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, writes:
Of similar importance are the new data about the context of the biblical scrolls, since different texts are recognizable. Some texts reflect precisely the consonantal framework of the medieval MT [Masoretic Text]. Others reflect the basic framework of the MT, although their spelling is different. Still others differ in many details from the MT, while agreeing with the Septuagint or Samaritan Pentateuch. Some texts do not agree with any previously known text at all, and should be considered independent textual traditions. Thus, the textual picture presented by the Qumran scrolls represents a textual variety that was probably typical for the period.9
"Typical for the period"? What this phrase means is that there were numerous variants of the "Holy Scriptures" floating around ancient Judea at the time the Essenes were assembling their library at Qumran, and during the time that the Jewish high priests were busy bribing, plotting and murdering their way into and out of office. Among these different bibles were the "originals" for translations like the Samaritan Bible, the Septuagint and the later Masoretic Text. From a scholarly point of view, there is no problem, but from a fundamental religionist point of view, it's a disaster because it knocks a hole in the claim of the bible's divine authorship, which likely explains why so many learned men of all faiths were loath to release copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the gaze of the general public!
With this background, let's allow the editors of The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge to give us some insight as to the reliability of the Masoretic Text:
This Masoretic text does not present the original form but a text which within a certain period was fixed by Jewish scholars as the correct and only authoritative one. When and how this official Masoretic text was fixed was formerly a matter of controversy, especially during the seventeenth century. One party headed by the Buxtorfs (father and son), in the interest of the view of inspiration then prevalent, held to the absolute completeness and infallibility, and hence the exclusive value, of the Masoretic text. They attributed it to Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue, who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, were supposed to have purified the text from all accumulated error; added the vowel points, the accents, and other punctuation-marks (thus settling the reading and pronunciation); fixed the canon; made the right division into verses, paragraphs, and books; and, finally, by the providence of God and the care of the Jews, the text thus made was believed to have been kept from all error, and to present the veritable Word of God. This view of the text prevailed especially when Protestant scholasticism was at its height, and may be designated as the orthodox Protestant position. It was opposed by another party headed by Jean Morin and Louis Cappel, who, in the interest of pure historicity or in Antiprotestant polemics, combated these opinions, maintained the later age of the Masoretic text, and sought to vindicate value and usefulness for the old versions and other critical helps. They fell into many errors in respect to the details of the history of the text and overrated the value of Extra-masoretic critical helps; but their general view was supported by irresistible arguments and is now universally adopted. This view, instead of deriving the existing text from a gathering of inspired men in Ezra's time, assigns it to a much later date and quite different men, and, instead of absolute completeness, claims for it only a relative one with a higher value than other forms of the text.10
In other words, the Masoretes were not above tampering with the text, for which they claimed a divine commission to preserve. For one example, let's note the obvious change in Deuteronomy 32:8, where the Masoretic Text reads, "When the Most High divided the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the people according to the number of the children of Israel." The words, "the children of Israel," are not found in the early Greek manuscripts. They read "angels of God", while a few read, "sons of God", both of which are a clear reference to angelic beings. The verse itself is a reference to Genesis 11:8, when God supposedly scattered the nations at the Tower of Babel—which was centuries before Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or his twelve sons lived.
There was no way that the twelve sons of Jacob (Israel) could have any connection with the setting of national boundaries centuries before their birth. James C. VanderKam in his book The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, writes:
Here the reading in the Masoretic Text ('the sons of Israel') may represent a theologically motivated change from an earlier phrase: the reading, 'sons of God' refers in this context to divine beings, whom the uninformed reader might consider lesser gods—a thought precariously closer to polytheism. As recent translators have recognized, the reading of the Septuagint now supported by the Qumran copy of Deuteronomy, is more likely to be original, since it is easier to explain why someone might change 'sons of God' (a theologically suspect phrase) to 'sons of Israel' than it would be to account for the reverse.11
Perhaps the sorry state of the Tankah at the end of the old era explains why the ancient rabbis warned: "My son, be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes [found in the Talmud] than in the words of the Torah [i.e., the five books of Moses]."12 Speaking of the ancient rabbis, let's also ask who it was that gave the Masoretes their "divine" authority to keep, tamper with, and produce "holy" scriptures?
Essentially the Masoretes claim their authority because it was their religious sect (Phariseeism) that survived all the battles with rival Jewish sects, such as the Hellenists, Samaritans, Sadducees and Essenes. In other words, because their rivals died out (often through murder), the Masoretes ordained themselves with "divine" authority, and their much-touted rules of scripture preservation amount to nothing more than a twenty-five hundred-year-old public relation campaign begun by Ezra, continued by the Hasmoneans, then the Pharisees and finally the Masoretes.
The corrupt history of the Levitical priesthood from earliest times to the time of the Masoretes, combined with the conflicting translations of the Old Testament/Tanakh, must surely lead any thinking person to suspect that the truth about the "Holy Scriptures" will be reflected in its pages, which was publically noted back in the twelfth century ce when the distinguished Jewish commentator Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra demonstrated that certain passages of the Torah could not have been written by Moses, whom Jewish tradition claimed as its author. Ibn Ezra's questions eventually led both Jewish and Christian scholars to uncover four sources for the Torah's authorship, which they designated as "D" for Deuteronomist, "P" for Priestly, "J" for Yahwist (spelled Jahvist in German—hence the "J"—which is derived from Yahweh, the supreme Hebrew deity) and "E" for Elohist (or Elohim, the Hebrew word for gods, which is used in the Genesis creation account). Some scholars add an "R" source, for redactors or compilers.
If all this sounds complicated, it is; but even worse is that the complication hides the very serious fact that "D", "P", "J", "E" and "R" sources prove countless centuries of tampering, forgery and rewriting of the Old Testament/Tanakh by so-called "holy men." Add to this the additional fact that the ot/Tanakh was a patchwork quilt of plagiarized "holy" works from a variety of pagan sources before anyone ever set about with their tampering, and any serious bible reader must stop in their tracks.
In the Beginning
Several thousand years before the Tanakh/Old Testament was composed, the foundations of the Jewish and Christian bible had been laid in what historians believe was this world's first civilization—Sumer, which lay in an ancient region of Mesopotamia, or in present day Iraq.13 What is to the point is that the religion of Sumer was wholly absorbed and refined by the Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, and virtually every tribe of people in the ancient Middle East, including a later nation of people known as Israel. Understanding this fact is vital for anyone truly interested in the foundations of Christianity.
The essentials of the Sumerian faith centers on a multitude of gods, who were believed to be anthropomorphic (that is, resembling humans in form and characteristics), and who controlled every aspect of human life—which are concepts found in Judaism and Christianity. Although these gods supposedly favored truth and justice, the Sumerians also believed they were responsible for violence and suffering, and would bless or curse according to the works of man—a concept that would later be voiced in the ot book of Isaiah (45:5,7): "I am the Lord ... I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." So the Sumerians' chief duty in life was to keep their gods appeased—much the same way faithful Christians and Jews are taught to live their lives today, although most Christians and Jews would not admit to such a brutal assessment of their faith.
Within the religious structure of the Sumerians, the only way to communicate with the gods was by means of the high priest, who received "divine" messages through dreams, or oracles, and omens—which coincidentally was the means of "divine" communication claimed by the ancient Levitical priests. (See Exodus 28:30 for example.) Guided by their priesthood, the Sumerians built beautiful temples wherein images of their gods would dwell, and where the faithful were commanded to come to pray and offer sacrifices of gold, animals, grain and wine to be forgiven for their sins and transgressions. All these "godly offerings" were conveniently kept in the temple where they could be used by the priesthood on the gods' behalf.14 Speaking of the Sumerian temple court, the famous Egyptologist, Dr. James Henry Breasted writes:
To this sanctuary under the shadow of the tower-temple the peasant brought his offering,—a goat and a jar of water containing a few green palm branches intended to symbolize the vegetable life of the land, which the god maintained by the annual rise of the river. The worshiper's jar with the green palm branches in it later became 'the tree of life,' a symbol often depicted on the monuments of the land. These gifts the worshiper laid before the gods of the earth and its green life, of the air, the sky, or the sea, praying that there might be plentiful waters and generous harvests, but praying also for deliverance from the destroying flood which the god had once sent to overwhelm the land.15
We shall see later on that these natural elements, green life, air and sky, became the cornerstone of numerous religions, including the faith of Israel. Regarding images, Jews and Christians may well protest here that no image of Yahweh was ever made, let alone placed in the tabernacle, or the later temple of Solomon. However, the recent archeological evidence reveals that this assertion is in error, which is a fact that will be covered in due course.
The Sumerian priesthood made sure that a priestly presence became essential in every aspect of Sumerian society, which meant that the temple became more than a religious center. Within the temple one could find libraries, schools, a hall where people could come to take oaths, and a banking center where the needy could seek a loan from the temple treasury, which had to be repaid to the clergy with interest. Effectively, the priests of Sumer controlled the economic life of their communities, which made them some of the most wealthy and powerful men in the kingdom. The head of this clergy was the all-important "high priest," whose rule rivaled that of any monarch. Indeed, such was his power that when Babylon absorbed the Sumerian religion, the office of high priest was taken over by the kings of Babylon, who thereafter became king-priests. But, more to our point, history proves that the Sumerian-based Babylonian mystery religion became the prototype for Rabbinical Judaism, which in turn formed the foundation of Christianity.
Before opening the bible for inspection, consider this point. Today, no rational man or woman reads the ancient histories of Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome Europe or any other "pagan" nation and believes the fabulous tales of gods and goddesses. We all know that the tales of gods fighting one another in the heavens, or coming down to mate with earthly women, are nothing more than the imaginative attempts of ancient priests to explain the why of human existence—and to fill their pockets in the process! Yet, a large portion of otherwise logical people will read similar tales in the bible, and take them to heart without so much as a second thought—or indeed, become angry when someone suggests that they belong beside the fabulous tales of Zeus or Apollo. The answer to this bizarre logic is that fairy tales inoculated at a mother's knee are more dangerous than a creeping pestilence—recalling Mark Twain's warning at the beginning of this study that real danger isn't from things we don't know, but things we know that aren't so!
The fact is that unlearning a lie is one of the most difficult tasks in life, but unlearning a lie that has been instilled from birth is nearly impossible. It is what inspires men and women to strap a dozen sticks of dynamite around their bodies and detonate themselves in a crowd of "infidels." It is the impetus behind ramming burning coals into the flesh of a "heretic," and it is what will keep most Christians from reading the kind of information contained in this study.
Copyright © 2007 by Darrell W. Conder, Port Townsend, Washington. All Rights Reserved.
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NEW!
Rival Caesars
by
Desmond Dilg
