by sinis 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Great posts Sinis!
I've been doing research on this lately.
Have you ever read "The Sirius Mystery" by Robert Termple?...Good book.
I've read "The End of Days" by Zacharia Stichen, but there's many people who put him down so I stayed away from his other books.
Are there any books that you would recommend?
I had much the same thoughts as Narkissos when I read the OP; having Sumerian gods glossed as "Yahweh" and "Satan" is especially misleading and anachronistic. The personae of Yahweh and Satan reflect late henotheistic and monotheistic developments in Judean religion that do not neatly correspond to concepts in third millenium BC polytheistic religion and Satan especially, in his full dualistic role, is not even contemporaneous with pre-exilic Yahwism. So the OP has the rather odd circumstance of utilizing a very late Jewish reading of the Eden narrative in Genesis (one which inserts the character of Satan into the story) to establish a parallel with a very early Sumerian mythology, and it retells a character arc of Sumerian mythology with the Hebraic names Yahweh and Satan replacing the actual names -- implying that the deities Yahweh and Satan at some point in their history were believed to have been brothers, who were co-creaters of heaven, earth, and man, etc. etc. The actual development of Jewish religion was very different than presented in the OP, such that Satan only developed as a significant character in the post-exilic period under the influence of monotheism and dualism, with Yahweh originating in the pre-exilic period as a henotheistic tutelary deity of Judah and Israel, drawing directly upon the Canaanite gods of El and Baal (representing a henotheistic merger between the two major deities), with the far older Canaanite religion being itself influenced by Sumerian and Akkadian religion -- such that Baal-Hadad drew on aspects of Ellil (< Enlil), and Yahweh drew on aspects of Baal. It was not a matter of Israelite religion being a "rip-off" of Sumerian religion; it was rather a natural direct outgrowth of native Canaanite religion that itself was influenced by Mesopotamian religion....so it was an indirect influence, although there was also possibly influence during the exile of Neo-Babylonian-era religious concepts (such as the syncretism of Baal/Yahweh and Tammuz), although Persian influence seems to have been more distinct in literature of a post-exilic date. So, in other words, the names "Enlil" and "Enki" do not appear in the OT but El and Baal and Asherah do, and it was the Canaanite religion that the latter pertain to that was the main, direct influence.
Also, rather than appealing to a (semi)-fictional/traditional character in a patriarchical narrative and a late midrashic Jewish legend (dating to the first century AD) as evidence that the ancestors of the Israelites knew of Sumerian religion, it is better to mention actual early evidence that the Canaanite forebearers were familiar with Sumerian and Akkadian myths, such as Ellil in Ugaritic texts at Ras Shamra or the LBA copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh that was was discovered at Megiddo, or unmistakable evidence of influence in later texts, such as the biblical flood narrative or "Gilgamesh" (and possibly Utnapishtim) mentioned in the Jewish Book of Giants in the Enochic corpus.
If in 6,000 years the Bible has become so corrupted from the true version of events, and you feel better about getting your info from the presumably more accurate Sumerian texts, and they tell you that King so-and-so reigned for 38,000 years, doesn't that pretty much blow out of the water any chance that your Sumerian texts are not equally corrupted?
After tens of thousands of years, does it really matter if one story is a couple millenia older than another? They'll both be in pretty bad shape.
Not if the "gods" that religion teaches are not human. Does anyone really think its as black and white as the bible teaches? Explain the sites that indicate nuclear glass in Egypt, Ireland, India, etc. Explain why the skeltons in some digs are radioactive at a rate of 50 times greater than the Hiroshima affects. Explain how the kings ascensions are linked to events in the heavens (stars, comets, etc.) that coincide with astronomy?
Does anyone really think its as black and white as the bible teaches? Explain the sites that indicate nuclear glass in Egypt, Ireland, India, etc. Explain why the skeltons in some digs are radioactive at a rate of 50 times greater than the Hiroshima affects.
These questions have nothing to do with Sumerian texts, unless you've been reading Zecharia Sitchin, and Sitchin is not a credible source on Sumerian myths and texts (and that is quite an understatement...much of what he writes about Sumerian texts is total BS).
