Genesis of Eden
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Alillat Ibrahim: The Elohim of Abraham
A tradition reported by Eutychius runs as follows: " At the
time of Abraham there reigned Shabib (Sheba), the wife of Sinn,
priestess of the mountain, who built Nisib and Edessa and surrounded
them with walls. She founded also the sanctuary of Harran, and
made an idol of gold, called Sinn." Al-Kindi reports in the
tenth century the tradition that Abraham lived with his people
four-score years and ten in the land of Harran, worshipping a
deity famous in the land and adored by the men of Harran under
the name of the moon (Briffault 3:108). Al-Kindy claimed this
was al-Uzza, but in Harran, Sin was supreme, athough it has been
stated that moon became female in much later times.
Many components of the genesis mythology, including the Garden of Eden, and the flood myth, indicate a significant link with Sumeria. Sumeria has its own flood myth and there are relics of a major flood early in Ur's history. The "ram in the thicket" is also a motif found at Ur (Woolley 1954 3). Genesis 11:31-12:2 states that Abraham originated from Ur and journeyed with his father Terah to Harran, setting out for Canaan only after Terah died. Ur is near the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates, Haran is in Southern Turkey, the northern limit of the valley of Mesopotamia, suggesting this journey was a meaningful one related to the common deity of the two centres. Many of his relatives and ancestors lived in the vicinity of Harran. Several key names in Abraham's family, Terah (compare Yerah of Canaan), Laban, Sarah and Milcah are derived from worship of the Moon Deity (Bright 80, 91).
The deification of Ab-ram, which in the earliest documents is a synonym for Ab-Sin (Briffault 3:108) is consistent with the ancestor worship associated with the Moon God in Aramaic cultures in which rites were regularly held to worship ancestors in cities stretching from Mari to Canaan. The Alillat Ibrahim, or religion of Abraham, was widespread among Semitic peoples. He was worshipped at the Ka'aba (Briffault v3 108).
The pattern of the two venus wives of the moon pervades the patriarchs and continues through Jewish and Canaanite history. Abraham had two wives, Sarah and Hagar who departed. Jacob also had Rachel and Leah. El courted two goddesses of the sea by roasting a bird for them, presumably Athirat and Anat. Similarly, the Hebrew god Yahweh was worshipped at Elephantine with two wives, (Briffault v3 82) apparently the same two goddesses (Kraeling 88). Adam was the husband of both Eve and Lilith, two particularly challenging women. Moses was known both for the Cushite princess Tharbis (Silver 76) and Zipporah the Midianite.
And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian
woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.
Numbers 12:1
Much later, Jesus is the Christ-messiah anointed of two Marys, Bethany who anointed his feet to his delight and Magdala who anointed his head to his doom. His crucifixion is celebrated at the full moon.
Triptych Sarah Maitland (A Myth of Hagar, Sarah and Abraham.
Harran continued to play a central role in the lives of the patriarchs. Jacob returned to Haran and spent fourteen years there ( seven for each wife). He gained the name Isra-El (struggles with god) while at Harran. The twelve sons of Jacob who represent the 'amphictyony' - the confederation of twelve tribes are lunar and astral in origin, representing the twelve months or zodiacal signs, in a rotating stewardship of the sacred sanctuary.
At Mari, despite having another patron deity, Dagon (the fish), there was a royal ancestor cult devoted to Sin. Ancestor worship was commonly performed through the Moon God in a kispim ceremony. "At the new moon and full moon I regularly placed before him his pure bread and precious water. Sin release them [the ghosts of the ancestors] to eat their bread and drink their water." Responsibility for dead ancestors fell on the guardian of heir, who would receive the father's deities. Conversely, by stealing her father's gods, Rachel was stealing Laban's inheritance.
A kispum-like ceremony is mentioned in 1 Samuel 20:18 "Then Jonathan said to David, To morrow is the new moon: and thou shalt be missed, because thy seat will be empty [at the king's table]. And when thou hast stayed three days, then thou shalt go down quickly, and come to the place where thou didst hide thyself" which lingers to this day in Israeli folklore. In Isiah 8:19 we also read "should not a people seek unto their God (ancestral spirits)? for the living to the dead?" It was also common practice in Israel and Phoenicia to lament for the dead with cuttings of hair.
Many of the names of the early tribal deities indicate a close link between ancestor worship and the deity, in which the god becomes patron of the clan deified in the person of the ancestor. We thus have the Mighty One of Jacob and in Gen 31 when Laban pursues Jacob, each swear by their gods, Jacob by the God of Abraham by the fear of his father Isaac and Laban by the God of Nahor.
At Mari, in the first quarter of the second millennium BC, a social continuum developed between the city dewellers and the nomads in the outerlying areas. The Benjaminites were a tribe noted at Mari which had specific associations with Harran. The names Abi-ram (Abraham) Yasmah-El (Ishmael) Yaqob-El (Jacob), a name also shared by a Hyksos chief and El-Laban (Laban) all appear at Mari. The root mlk denoting melech king or in its sacrifical form Moloch is also found. Another word at Mari in this time which will come to have significance in islam is ummah or "mother" unit of the nomadic tribes (Malamat 31, Bright 70). Mari despite its patriarchal culture was noted for the independence of its women, who officiated prominently as priestesses (Dalley 97, Batto). Nuzi texts also indicate special provision for daughters to inherit "as sons".
Malamat (54) comments further that the unusual genealogy of Nahor in Gen 22:20-24 suggests that Abraham was originally one of the wandering sons traditionally listed as children of concubines (Ishmael etc.) in the Old Testament. It is clear that the children of Israel are the wanderers from Aram-Naharaim on the upper Harbur. This is ironically the same place the ten tribes were later deported to by the Assyrians. Such pastoral migrations were noted at Mari.
Nahor occurs in the Mari texts as Nakhur a town in the vicinity of Harran (Gen 24:10) governed in the eighteenth century BC by an Amorite prince, and later Assyrian texts mention a town after Terah's name (Bright 70) and names dervied from the same roots as Gad (fortune) and Dan.
Early history suggests that the matriarchs were actually more important than the patriarchs.
Before the time of the Exodus, the deities were worshipped collectively as the Elohim, the many forms of 'deity'. El meaning simply 'god' is also identifiable with the kind old grandfather god of Canaan, who is horned like Sin but expresses more specifically the primal male fertility characteristics of inthyphallic gods Nabu and Hermes. As heavenly scribe, these are both also bearers of the covenant. El's many forms include El-shaddai - the Lord of the Mountains; Bethel 'the house of god' is mentioned in Jeremiah 48:13 as a god. Baityl, like El is one of the four founding Canaanite deities (Kraeling 88); El-Elyon - god the most high; The Elohim even included two forms of the Great Goddess as shown in the blessing of Jacob.
The Blessing of Jacob for the twelve tribes (Genesis 49), probably the oldest passage in the Bible (Freedman 1987 322) , specifically blesses Joseph "Even by the god of thy father who shall help thee, and by the Almighty (El -shaddai_ who shall bless thee with the blessings of heaven above (Sin), blessings of the deep that lies under (the underworld, the primal chaos - Tiamat, Shekina) , blessings of the breast and womb (Asherah - the creatress of living things) prevailing from the everlasting mountains to the eternal hills. This emphasis on the eternal is characteristic of the resurrecting moon deity of immortality.
A particular form of the Elohim worshipped until the destruction of the sanctuaries in 622 BC was the "Host of Heaven" the very astral deities surrounding the Moon God. Abraham left shrines at many high places and in many natural sacred sites, including the oak groves of Shechem and Mamre, which many centuries later was still a noted pagan shrine (Walker 5). A old tradition associates the Oak of Mamre with a vision by Abraham of the Son of Man.: Gen 18:1 And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground."
Gen 21:33 And Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.
Abraham's line were buried before Mamre. "And the field of Ephron in Machpelah, before Mamre, the field, and the cave therein, and all the trees in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field ... And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre; ... there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah. ... And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people and his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah."
Jacob leaves the strange gods at the oak of Shechem and becomes Israel at Elbethel. Gen 35:2 "Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean ... And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem. ... So Jacob came to Luz, that is, Bethel, and he built there an altar, and called the place Elbethel: because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother. ... And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel."
The astral form of the amphyctony of the twelve tribes, which is also paralleled in Greece (Gottwald 376), meeting and probably officiating in rotation at the tabernacle is consistent with the astral worship noted among Semitic nomads starting from the time of Hammurabi around 1750 BC (Briffault 3/85), although this may have postdated the time of Abraham.
Thoth and Hathor: The Balance of Wisdom and Fertility
In the beginning was the word, and the word was with god and the
word was god: "Thot the god of [Egypt whose sacred city was
Khemenu, also called Hermopolis by the Greeks after Thot's alter-ego
Hermes], represented as ibis or baboon, was essentially a moon
god, who measured time, counted the days, numbered the months
and recorded the years. Lunar divinities, as we know are everywhere
supposed to exercise the most varied powers : they command the
mysterious forces of the universe; they know the sounds words
and gestures by which these forces are put in motion, and not
content with using them for their own benefit they also teach
their worshippers the art of employing them. Thot formed no exception
to this rule. He was the lord of the voice, master of words and
books, possessor and inventor of those magic writings which nothing
in heaven, on earth or in hades can withstand. He had discovered
the incantations which evoke and control the gods; he had transcribed
the texts and noted the melodies of these incantations; he recited
them with that true intonation which renders them all powerful,
and every one, whether god or man to whom he imparted them, and
whose voice he made true became like himself the master of the
universe. He had accomplished creation, not by a muscular effort
to which the rest of the cosmogonical gods primarily owed their
birth but by means of formulas or even of the voice alone, the
first time when he awoke in the Nu. The articulate word and the
voice were believed to be the most potent of the creative forces,
not remaining immaterial on issuing from the lips, but condensing
so to speak into tangible substances, into bodies which were themselves
animated by creative life and energy" (Maspero143).
Thoth was an ancient deity going back to the earliest dynasties who remained outside the solar Heliopolitan ennead, and instad had his own cult center at Hermopolis. He is renowned for his wisdom, speaking the sacred words of creation, and for healing the moon eye of Horus. He is thus associated with the origin of written and spoken language, science and medicine and the power of magic. As scribe of the gods he is also the legislator of social order and justice, the Lord of Laws. I Thoth am the protector of the weak and of him whose property is violated, just as was Yahweh.
He is the protector of the goddess Ma'at who personified cosmic and earthly order. He is the leader of the sky, the earth and the nether world, Lord of Heaven, the silver sun, the brightly shining, Lord of Time the Reckoner (of time), and very anciently the Chief of Heaven. He that increaseth time and multiplieth the years. He that looketh through bodies and can read the secrets of men's hearts. He is the means by which all sacred rituals are achieved, without whom nothing can be furthered.
He gives to mankind, not only knowledge, but the very faculties of mind. He is the donor of human far-sightedness and astuteness. His wisdom is of such a nature that it will lead to resolution and satisfaction of all disputing parties. Both Thoth and Sin are described as "he who soothes the heart of the gods"."He is the Lord of Friendliness", "God of exceptional goodness among the gods". The merits of Thoth for the human community can best be characterised by calling him a "culture hero".
Thoth has a complex relationship with the Goddess Hathor (the house of Horus). Both are primal deities who have no formal consort. Their relationship extends far beyond the simple roles of Nannar and Ningal to a complementary relationship of independent creative deities. Thoth represents the principles of cosmic order and harmony, while Hathor represents fertility, creativity and inebriety. Both are ancient primal deities, which have neither consort nor parent. Thoth goes back at least as far as the third dynasty and Hathor to the first.
They are both deities of the underworld who are favourites in prayers of the deceased. Thoth is the psychopomp who takes the deceased to heaven on his wings and initiates the deceased into his secret wisdom. Hathor will offer the deceased a precious drink from her tree and will let him sit beside her under her tree. "I sit under the branches of the tree in the vicinity of Hathor". "The wings of the sky-doors will be opened for thy beauty (person). Thou risest up. Thou seest Hathor." The butchers who have to prepare the sacred offering are told "move your arm for the consecrated gift for the Lord of Eternity (Thoth) and to the Mistress of Inebriety (Hathor), so that they might receive him who brings this (gift) as a blessed one (in the hereafter)". (Thoth and Hathor). Hathor is also the Asherah, the vegetation Goddess who is present in her sacred sycamore tree, and gives nourishment from the midst of her tree even in the underworld.
Each is involved in different myths in healing the sacred moon eye of Horus which was struck out by Seth. Hathor heals the eye with the milk of a Gazelle. Thoth in resoring the moon eye to fullness is the healing magician who can make whole was has been already destroyed. The eye becomes a symbol of eternal regeneration which resurrects the dead Osiris in the underworld, thus identifying Thoth-Hermes with the cult of eternal life. Hathor makes a journey to Heliopolis "bearing the writings of the words of Thoth" - the so-called Book of Thoth, which is regarded as the secret book of magic power, in modern times to become a title for the Tarot. Both are pivotal in the life of Egyptian kings. It is Thoth who permits Re to fertilize the Queen and Hathor who suckles the young King.
The legends of Thoth and Hathor include a charming and pivotal myth of historic rapproachment between God and Goddess. Hathor as Tefnet, the savage lioness, was in the Nubian desert, in her militant angry form, devastating humanity as the angry searing sun eye. To save humanity, Thoth was sent to Hathor. He spoke his sacred words of wisdom to her calming her and inviting her to come willingly to the land of Egypt to become the joyful Goddess of fertility, dance, song and particularly inebriety - sex, drugs and rock and roll! The Maternal mysterium tremendum is thus accommodated to the human condition, despite retaining the essence of her tumultuous nature. It remains part of Thoth's duty to calm down Hathor each day. "Hathor is the divine being who daily brings good fortune to man whom Thoth wishes may have a rich and sound life" (Bleeker 48).
Thus shall Thoth again speak these sacred words to bring the Goddess of Fertility back from the brink of ecocrisis to become an eternal principle of unfolding evolutionary splendour!
Hathor leaves the sacrificial cycle to Isis and Osiris and despite being liable to volatile emotions remains the loving creatress. "The gods play the sistrum for Hathor, the goddesses dance for her to dispel her bad temper." As the joyful Goddess of fertility, dance, song and inebriety Hathor personifies - sex drugs and rock and roll - the very spirit and energy of the modern age. Her festival of inebriety was no mere drunken debauchery, but a state of ecstasy engendered in honour of the goddess - pacifying her and the participants alike .
She is the beloved of her people:
Hathor's dimension of love extends beyond sexuality to foster the affection of the heart by which two young people come together:
She is the goddess of the nocturnal sky (netherworld) - "She who loves silence". "Dedicate all beautiful good things to Hathor, mistress of inebriety, to Hathor ruler of the desert." The Greeks also called Hathor Aphrodite-Urania so she is al-Uzza, just as she is identifiable with Ishtar. She has stars at the point of her horns, ears, on the forehead and on her body. "May the golden give life to thy nose, may the ruler of the stars be united with thee". As the "golden one", Hathor is the sky-cow who bears the sun eye between her horns and nurses the infant Horus-Re.
Hathor maintained a special presence in Sinai on the high places such as Serabit, where the nomadic mining tribes worshipped her. (Maspero 354, Petrie 85). In Egyptian inscriptions, "Qadesh beloved of Ptah" appears as the Syrian and Canaanite fertility goddess known from terra cotta figurines from many sites in Palestine. Hathor is also known as The Lady of Byblos and is thus Ashtarte or Athirat. The twin curled headdress is characteristic of all three goddesses.
Hathor is the sacred cow of heaven. In the excavations at Gezer, in Palestine, a number of figures of bulls have been found, the usual representation of Yahweh, and with them the corresponding figures of cows (Briffault v3 187), consistent with Hathor assuming the role of consort of Yahweh as the Queen of Heaven.
Musa: High Priest of the Moon God?
Musa or Moses is traditionally described as the monotheist
who is the bearer of the tablets of Yahweh's law. Flinders Petrie
claimed the name was derived from Thutmose, Ahmoses etc. meaning
"unfathered son of a princess". His origin in the bullrushes
has a precursor in Heracles of Canopus and Sargon of Akkad (Walker
676). Miles (97) notes Moses has an Egyptian rather than an Israelite
name, and his father is not named in the Tanakh, a highly exceptional
omission. Does this omission suggest that Moses was illegitimate?
That he had an Egyptian father? ... the voice from the burning
bush subsumes "the God of your father," whoever Moses'
father was". One suggestion is that Moses' mother was coopted
as a surrogate slave wife by the Pharoah's daughter to sire from
her husband because of her own infertility in precisely the manner
of Hagar.
Akhtenaten c 1350 BC (Willis
52).
The mythology of his origin in the bullrushes and his high rank in Egypt led Sigmund Freud to suggest that Moses was a follower of the monotheistic sun god Aton of the period of Akhenaton around 1350 BC. This pharoah instituted an aberrant culture which had unusual creative arts, but rejected previous cults with the exception of the Pharoah as the son of the Sun God, representing an evolution of the beneficent aspect of Ra. Akhtenaten embarked on a severe repression of all other gods. There is an inscription "O thou only God, there is no other God than thou." Freud took this to be a fore-echo of "Schema Jisroel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echod" - "Hear Israel, our Lord God is the only God." The influence of the monotheistic idea is of significance and Aton clearly does have a place in the cultural origins of monotheism, but the worship of Aton was a cultural aberration which did not survive its founder and messianic embodiment the Pharoah himself. .Aton is also not associated with a moral order in the same way.It is more likely that Moses' Egyptian influence came form deeper more long-lasting cultural roots. Other historical analyses contradict the timing of this origin and place the Exodus at the time of Rameses II.
There is in fact nothing in the Biblical accounts nor the ten commandments which indicate that Moses was historically an exclusive monotheist. The extensive rewriting of history that occurred after the apocryphal re-discovery of the Deuteronomic texts, some 600 years later and again by the Priestly redactionist make it difficult to get a genuine picture of Moses teachings. The circumstantial evidence is consistent with Moses being a priest of the high Moon God, by the name of Yaho.
To put a gloss on the discussion, I will describe the story of the cultural hieros gamos of Moses as a transforming 'priestly messiah' who transforms the religious paradigm in a similar shocking manner to Jesus by reinterpreting the most abstract of Egyptian religious and Hapiru desert experience into a new articulate social force of historical redemption through 'literacy' - the logos. In this Moses figures similarly to Jesus in his complex relationship with women.
The Pharoah's daughter Meroe, the wife of Chenephres, ruler of the delta lands, is barren. She adopts Moses. It is possible that, in the manner also traditional to Abraham, she offers her handmaiden to her husband to secure an heir, which would ironically make Moses a Jew by maternal descent only. The episode of the bullrushes may have been a ritual aspect of Moses' adoption by the Princess, gaining his name 'drawn from water' as a spiritual title. Infanticide of male Hapiru children may well have also occurred. It was commonplace in ancient cultures. It is also a myth already told about Sargon of Akkad a millennium before "My priestly mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in the basker of rushes. With bitumen she sealed my lid" (Time 14 Dec 98). Horus is similarly decribed.
Exodus of course claims Moses as a semi-incestuous, full-blooded Levite: 6:20 "And Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were an hundred and thirty and seven years."
Moses thus grows up as the son of an Egyptian princess, as the Bible recounts, and learns from the inside the intellectual dimensions of current Egyptian thinking. He is brought up as the interpreter of sacred wisdom. He becomes a priest of Thoth who is an Egyptian manifestation of the God of Abraham. He discovers how the intellectual tradition of Thoth makes it possible to use sacred language as a vehicle for religious and ethical understanding.
As a young prince, he is commissioned to lead a military expedition to pacify Nubia, in which the ibis is used to secure a safe passage through snake-filled desert and founds a camp called 'Hermopolis' and marries the Nubian princess as a ritual consecration of the treaty he secured in fulfillment of the legend of Thoth and Nubian Hathor.
Moses subsequently becomes the victim of a court intrigue, and flees for his life to the Eastern desert. There he discovers the complementary aspect of his cultural identity, the fellow kinsman of his Hapriu side. He meets Zipporah drawing water, marries her and becomes a shepherd for her father Ruel or Jethro, a Midianite priest. While leading the flocks he has the visionary shamanic experience of the burning bush and the snake.This episode could have been a lone vigil at a mountain tent shrine similar to those found at Serabit and Timna. Moses takes of his shoes. The God is abstract, nameless - almost Vedantic.
Moses resolves to lead his Hapiru clansmen out of their predicament into a new life of wisdom and unity, imparting to them the full dimensions of the ethics and good judgement that are the hall-mark of both Thoth and Moses teachings. He returns to Egypt, later sending back Zipporah to her Midianite father. He becomes a key figure in the period of social turbulence which follows, culminating in the Exodus.
As a priest of Thoth, Moses in one person fulfils the roles of both Sin the God of Wisdom and Nabo the Heavenly Scribe. His journey in Sinai is a symbolic journey between the mountains of these two gods. Moses received the covenant on Mt. Sinai, the Mountain of Sin, (also called Horeb and Har Elohim) after passing through the wilderness of Zin. Sinim is the mythical place of spiritual belonging. Isiah 49:11 "And I will make all my mountains a way, and my highways shall be exalted. Behold, these shall come from far: and, lo, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim." He died on Mount Nabo.
Lydus expressly asserts that "the Chaldeans called their god Yaho". A Babylonian text reads "The god Ib is my god Yau" (Briffault 3:108). The real names of gods were often kept secret. Yahweh told Moses he was the God of Abraham but under another name, and said instead "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh - I am that I am" (Exod 3:14) - he was "god whom no one can name" just as Nannar was (above), as was the tabu in Old Testament times (Lev 25:16). This statement is traced to the Elohistic author writing after the separation of Solomon's kingdom (Flanders et. al. 76). Yaho is also referred to by Diodorus Siculus, the Valentinian gnostics, the Kaballa and Yahuq among pre-Islamic Arabs. A stele from Byblos, specifically cites Yaveh-Melek, 'Yahweh the King', [who] worships the Queen of Heaven. "It may well be that, ... the name of the god of the Levites as it appeared in their cult cry Hallelu Yah was the true name of the semitic god in all his local forms.... The first part of this cry is still used as a salutation to the new moon among the Bedawi and in Abyssinia" (Briffault v3 110).
A list of Amenhotep III (1402-1364 BC) also mentions the land of the nomad tribes of Yhw and the names Seir, Laban and Samati the Qenites of the House of Rechab who were affiliated with the Midianites (1 Chr 2:55). One from Rameses III specifically links Yahu with the name Reuel, the same as that of the priest of Midian, Jethro, Moses' father in law", whose flocks he was tending when he saw the burning bush (Num 10:29, Exod 2:18). During the Exodus Jethro visits Moses, pays his respects to Yahweh, offers advice on judgement and goes his way, just as Hobab his son does later. Exodus18:1: "When Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father in law, heard of all that God had done for Moses, ... then Jethro, Moses' father in law, took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her back." And with her two sons Gershom 'an alien in a strange land' and Eliezer 'god is my help' went to visit Moses. ... "And Moses let his Father-in law depart and he went his own way." Ruel's sons are also called Nahath, Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah - rising, descending, here and there suggestive of astral worship (Bartlett 89).
Thus, although there is a close link with the Midianites, the Bible also emphasises their separateness. There are also further complexities in the violent episode of Baalpeor (Num 25:3 ) attributed to the wiles of the Midianites. In this episode a plague is stayed by violently attacking the whoredom of the men of Israel with the women of Moab. Phinehas runs a copulating couple through with a javelin. This is regarded as a turning point of the whole exodus for Moses. Ba'al peor means "Lord of the Cleft" (Walker 86). It represents the fertility rite between the phallic god of the Phoenicians and the cleft of the Asherah.
Moses was a renowned magician and prophet. He carried the staff of the serpent (Num 21:8), a characteristic of both god and Mercury, and standard as the uraeus crowning the heads of Egyptian deities and pharoahs. The serpent staff of magic he received in the epiphany of the burning bush (Exod 4:4) strengthens this association. The term law'iu or Levite means serpent. The leviathan only later, like Tiamat, became the dark forces of the underworld, like the dark moon. The brazen serpent he bore before him, crafted by the Midianite miners, called Nehustan was only destroyed many centuries later in the reign of Hezekiah. The costume of Levite priests included a crescent moon on the head dress. The concept of the sabbath day is implicitly lunar. Briffault notes that the association between the serpent and the moon God is common to Ur, Babylonian pictography and South Arabia (3/108).
Syrian Rue is widespread and specifically found on Jebel Musa, one candidate for the Mt. Sinai of Moses. The 'burning bush' and the mana from heaven was derived from an acacia. The combination may have given Moses access to a potent visionary preparation know later to the Bedouins of al-Lat.
A copper serpent was the only votive object at a Midianite tent shrine at the copper mines of Timnah, atop an older temple to Hathor, which had suffered an earthquake and been deserted by the Egyptians towards the end of the 12 th century BC. (Weinfield 1987, Rothenberg 1972). The temple was cleared of its votive objects to Hathor and refashioned as a 'tabernacle' defacing stones used in their standing pillars. Two phallic idols were also found with a pile of offerings outside. The association between the serpent and male fertility and inheritance is characteristic of ithyphallic gods Hermes and Nabu. Hermes carries the caduceus and Nabu is the serpent. Like Thoth they are the scribes of the covenant with god and of the logos.
At Serabit, particularly before the sacred cave, the Egyptian worship of Hathor is overlayed on even more ancient Semitic worship of the Goddess "in the high places" of a type which would form a source for later Israelite ritual (Petrie 186-192). Shelters on the hillside are also consistent with night vigils reminiscent of Jacob's (Gen 28:10) before anointing the stone at Bethel (Petrie 68). Later desecration has also occurred here.
Just as Naram-sin and Ishtar were horned, so it appears that Moses became horned when he ascended Mt. Sinai, met god face to face and returned with the tablets. Exod 34:29: "And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him."
St. Jerome's commentary states : 'Moses also went up into a cloud and a fog in order that he might contemplate the mystery of God, which the people left behind could not see. Finally after forty days the common people with their clouded eyes could not look at Moses' face because it had been "'glorified,"' or as it says in the Hebrew, "horned".' Jerome had two different translations for the Hebrew qeren available to him: "'glorified" (shining) in the Septuagint, and "horned" in the Aquila version.' Familiar with both (he drew material from many different sources'), perhaps in his scholarly search for what he believed to be the original word, he chose "horned." Jerome's own comments make it eminently clear that he made a conscious choice, not a simple translation error; and furthermore, that he thought of "horned"' metaphorically (Mellinkoff 77). The alternative definition of queren is rays of light. These are also portrayed emanating from Moses.
A variety of archaeological, historical and mythological evidence from Egypt suggests Moses was a priest of the moon god Thoth associated with the ibis the snake-killing sacred bird (Silver 74-81). Modern scientific investigation however questions this role of the sacred ibis in nature. Artpanus notes that Moses was adopted by the princess Meroe, who was barren, and that he was called hermes interpreter [of the sacred texts]. This would precisely explain the birth of the teachings of Moses in the form of the word of god - the logos. Josephus states that Moses, as the Prince of Egypt he is described to be, leads a force into Nubia. He chooses a circuitous and dangerous inland route, infested with snakes and releases flocks of tame ibises to secure a safe passage (just as his brazen serpent did in Sinai). He then makes a treaty with the defending capital and marries the princess Tharbis - the Cushite wife despised by Aaron and Miriam: Numbers 12:1: "And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman (Cushite) whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman." The journey of Moses to Nubia, which is also confirmed in Artpanus's account, can thus also be seen as the journey of the priest of Thoth fulfilling in real life the myth of the homecoming of Hathor.
Documents from a temple precinct of a temple to Yahweh at Leontopolis in Egypt destroyed after the Jewish revolt, referred to the fact that it was consecrated on a previous site which had many animal mummies, consistent with having been the old site of a previous temple which claimed the privilege of Isiah 19 "In that day there shall be an altar to the Lord inside the land of Egypt - and it shall serve as a symbol and reminder". This suggests that it was built on a more ancient temple of Moses' followers who worshipped and mummified the sacred ibis, as is common in temples of Thoth (Silver 85).
Miriam, whose name is the title of the sea goddess Mari-anna (Graves 397, Walker 584) appears to have originally been a female priestess on a par with Moses. It is Miriam who celebrates when the Egyptians are swallowed in the Reed Sea: Exodus 15:20 "And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea." "Moses sister, later thought to be Miriam in Num 26:59 witnesses the discovery of the baby by Pharoah's daughter (Exod 2:4) and thus becomes the mother of his second birth" thus resembling Isis (Haskins 47). From the hostility expressed by Aaron and Miriam to Zipporah, it might appear that Zipporah and Miriam were competing high priestesses.
This is however seen in a different light by taking into account Jewish midrash. Here a picture emerges of Miriam as founding prophetess of Moses life, who prophesied his coming and left him incomplete on her death leading to his striking the waters at her well of Meribah. Micah reveals a deep secret of the origin of Zion when he says "And I sent before you Moses, Aaron and Miriam." confirming Miriam as the founding prophetess of Zion.
One also has to bear in mind that Tacitus says that the Hapiru were exiled from Egypt because of a disfiguring skin disease (Walker 677), rather than escaping over the Reed Sea through divine intervention. The episodes of the Exodus are plainly wracked with such skin disease. Miriam caught this disease for a week immediately after uttering against Zipporah: Num 12:10 "And behold Miriam became leprous white as snow." Thaumaturgic revenge on the prophetess.
Moses was declared tabu after smiting
the rock at Merbah freeing the waters of Kadesh (Qadesh) Num 20:11,
after dissention among the people of the Exodus who had to depend
on mana from heaven for food and scarce and bitter waters. Very
significantly this is where Miriam died linking her again to the
sacred waters and their dearth. He was committed to death on the
sacred mountain while still in full possession of his faculties,
because he had not sanctified the spring of the Goddess in the
name of Yahweh : Deut 32:48 "And the LORD spake unto Moses
that selfsame day, saying, get thee up unto mount Nebo in the
land of Moab, over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan,
which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession and
die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy
people; as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, because ye trespassed
against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah
Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because ye sanctified me not
in the midst of the children of Israel."
Horned Moses and the sacred water (Old Test).
This is not without irony because Wellhausen (Smith WR 181) has shown that the oldest Hebrew tradition refers the origin of the Torah to the divine sentences taught by Moses at Kadesh. The term En-Mispat 'waters of controversy' refers to the drinking of 'holy water' to test a person, instead of casting lots (Smith WR 181). Hagar in Gen 16:7 herself flew from Sarah to the 'fountain of judgement' between Kadesh and Bered where she knew from the deity 'thou seest me' of the birth of Ishmael.
One cannot but lament at Yahweh's fit of jealousy by the springs of the goddess Qadesh, but likewise one cannot but marvel at this journey of Moses from the Mountain of Sin to the Mountain of Nabo as being as graphic as Abraham's journey from Ur to Harran, regardless of occasional conjecture that these place names could have derived from later Assyrian conquests.
The tradition teaches that for the sake of their refusal to give their jewelery to the making of the Golden Bull-calf at Sinai, the women of Israel were given by God an exemption from work on Rosh Hodesh - the renewing of the moon at the beginning of the Jewish lunar month. ... The first four chapters of Exodus lay out a female-male rhythm of the first stage of the liberation of the Mitzrayim in which women are crucial. It is they who take the initiative and teach men the process of freedom, because they know the mysteries of birth. Thus the midwives save the baby boys; Miriam and Pharoah's daughter Moses; Moses must flee to seven women and a well, marry Zipporah, and have a child before he can experience the Burning Bush; and Zipporah must complete the birth by teaching him to circumcise his son before he can reenter Egypt to become the liberator. Zipporah was not Jewish. Was she a celebrator of the moon? (Note her association, like that of Rivkah and Rahel, with a well.) (Waskow 265).
As Freud has pointed out, this disconnection indicates a fracture of the tradition, corresponding to an overthrow of the religion of Moses by a nascent tribal cult, probably worshipping a form of Baal or Hadad, a more Zeus-like Ba'al-shamin (Lord of Heaven), thunder god of the skies and mountains, an event which continues to contribute a strange angst to the Hebrew psyche.
It is signal that the actual site of Mt. Sinai is debated and there was no tradition of pilgrimage to the founding spot of the covenanting prophet. In this overthrow, the cosmic Moon deity of the logos, Yaho, devolved into the patron deity of the Hapiru, retaining his aniconic astral aspect, while moving closer to features both of El, the gentle Canaanite father deity and Ba'al the impetuous storm god of Canaan, who thunders on the mountains and vanquishes the turbulent waters of the abyss.
In a Talmudic tradition, the moon complains to Yahweh that he has lost his pristine importance. "O Lord of the world, Is it not possible for two kings to wear the same crown?" But Yahweh says "Begone and become thou smaller" (Briffault v3 77). Jewish tradition still celebrates the new moon by commemorating dead ancestors as in the tradition of the Moon God with the saying "David, King of Israel is alive and flourishes" (Malamat 106). Jewish women are not forgetful of the immemorial object of Semitic cult, and when the new moon appears they recite reverently a prayer, saying: "May God cause thee to increase and mayest thou be enabled to bestow upon us a blessed month" (Briffault v3 117).
[When God created the sun and moon, the two great lights], the moon said to the Holy One, "Sovereign of the Universe! Can two rulers wear one crown?" He answered, "Go then and make yourself smaller!" ... R. Simeon ben Lakish declared, "Why is it that the he-goat offered on the New Moon [for a sin-offering] is distinctive in that there is written concerning it, 'unto the Lord'?" Because the Holy One said, "Let this he-goat be an atonement for Me [for My sin] in making the moon smaller."(Hullin 60a)
R. Akha said to R. Ashi: In the West, they pronounce the following blessing: "Blessed be the One Who renews the moons." Whereupon he retorted: "Such a blessing even our women folk pronounce." [Let there be added] . . . "The moon He ordered that she should renew herself as a crown of beauty for those whom He sustains from the womb, and who will someday, like her, be renewed and magnify their Maker in the same glory of His kingdom" (Sanhedrin 42a).
Yahweh: God incorporating all deities
The nature of Yahweh underwent one of the most advanced literary inflations to occur in human history. This happened early as a core part of the religious tradition and lent Yahweh multidimensionality lacking in pre-literate deities.
Many verses in the Psalms describe God in ways which clearly identify him as a God of thunder and of weather and the oceans. A stormy god which strides forth in thunder and bathes the land in spring showers. Vengeful and verdant as Ba'al was.
These characteristics broadened to that of a creator deity of the Earth and heavens, still significantly imbued with the storm god character with clouds as chariot, chambers in the waters and a voice of thunder.
In earlier verses Yahweh is clearly identified as merely the Lord of Hosts of the community of deities, not as the sole God not without which there is no other.
Yahweh was also identified strongly with Canaanite El in later apoalypses from Daniel to Enoch in which God becomes the Ancient of Days with white hair like wool.
Daniel 7:9 "I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire."
This passage indicates old man El clothed in the fiery chariot of the Sun god. By later centuries, particularly after the Persian era, Yahweh was to adopt all the characteristics of the Sun God drawn across the skies in his chariot, as in Isaiah.
Isa 66:15 "For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire."
The patriarchal ascendancy thus accomplishes by syncretic assimilation into one deity all the manifestations of Sin, Nabu, the ancient Canaanite gods El the grand old man and Ba'al the god of the mountains and weather, who rides in a storm cloud and a verdant shower of rain and the Persian sun-god of light of which Ahura Mazda forms the archetype. However this deity is not god manifest on earth in history, but rather a series of unashamed cultural assimilations accruing to one male godhead all the diverse powers traditionaly ascribed to the many ecosystemic parts of the polytheistic assembly.
2 Kings 2:8 And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and thither, so that they two went over on dry ground. And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so. And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces.
This identification with the sun God continues from the Persian to the Essene and finally Johanine dichotomies of light versus dark principles. The Essene calendar is also predominantly solar as opposed to the lunar calendar, although despite it's pretentions to the founding tradition, dates to no earlier than 600 BC. As the sun of righteousness, Jesus is the son of the sun. As the light of the world, he is likewise.
The cost has been specific - the loss of virtually all the feminine attributes, particularly in regard to fertility sustainability and the physical responsibility for the continued nutruring and welfare of existence. Despite the fact that Yahweh variously portrays himself as a wifely, or even a fatherly-motherly god, these attributes are generally by analogy only and definitely not a presentation of the female as a manifestation of divinity.
Part 2 b: The Redaction of the Decalogue,
Circumcision and the Sacrifice of the Firstborn
Part 2 c: Yahweh and The Asherah - On every
High Hill and Under Every Green Tree
Origins of Sin Part3: The Lunar Passion and The Three Daughters of Islam