Feacturing Aileen Garoutte
SUNDAY, OCTOBER
22, 2006
THE OLD TESTAMENT REVISITED
By Roland Smyth
Continued - 2
Imagine, if you will, the following scene out of Greek mythology: High on the
summit of Mount Olympus, Zeus has gathered around him a somber assembly of some
of his subordinate gods. Because of their recurrently notorious affairs in the
world of mankind, Zeus has grown angry and is lecturing them into cleaning up
their act a little--or else!
Similar scenes as this appear in many of the mythologies around the globe. Some
Chief god or other is inevitably portrayed as delivering a no-nonsense pep talk
to the lesser gods before they manage, in their reckless enthusiasm, to ruin
what has been accomplished on Earth.
As you might by now expect, the Old Testament is no exception to the general
rule, for in Psalm 82 it is clearly written: "God presides in the Great
Assembly and gives judgment amongst the gods."
After cutting their inflated egos down to size with a severe oratory blast, his
anger seems only marginally dissipated, for he concludes by thundering, You are
gods, you are all sons of the Most High... (as though he himself had a
superior)... but you will die like mere men; you will fall like every other
ruler!"
No doubt about it, the Chief god was intensely angry. That's par for the
course, though. What's really interesting about Psalm 82 is that, once again,
we have a strong Homeric flavor in a sacred text which is supposed to be way
above and beyond Homer's style of writing.
Regardless of all that though, Psalm 82 has got to be one of the most striking
references to the gods that the Bible ever makes. It takes a while for it to
fully register, but here is a section of the Holy Scriptures which candidly
states that even God routinely acknowledges the existence of other-albeit
lesser--gods!! Obviously the ancient Israelites must have believed this to be true,
otherwise they wouldn't have entered the passage into their sacred texts... and
kept it here in subsequent copies.
While Psalm 82 is one, if not the most striking references to the gods, there
are plenty of run-of-the-mill types sprinkled throughout the Bible as well--but
as per usual, particularly in the Old Testament. Spotting them becomes second
nature once you get the hang of it... once you realize they're there to be
found. In Malachi 1:9, for instance, Jehovah advises the prophet to
"implore God to be gracious to us. With such (inferior) offerings from
your hands, will he accept you?"
You notice how Jehovah speaks of God as if he was a separate and higher-ranking
deity than himself? And who, I wonder, might pull rank over that deity in turn?
God Most High? (A title you occasionally run across.) You never know. You just
never know.
Anyway, there is no shortage of what can fairly be termed legitimate gods in
the Book which somehow acquired the reputation for recognizing only one. All
you gotta do is scout around.
Once you've accomplished some measure of success in that pursuit, it would then
be wise to ask yourself, "Who the hell were those guys?!" Why were
they so often on the warpath? And when they themselves were taking it easy, why
did they encourage their mortal subjects to rape, plunder, slaughter, and
destroy in their stead?
Ah, but you probably think I'm exaggerating with that kind of talk. If so, then
I can tell right away that you haven't read Joshua yet, or any number of the
other Old Testament books which have incredibly brutal battle scenes in them.
Did you know, for instance, that the invading Israelite soldiers during the
Promised Land campaign were allowed, by permission from Jehovah, to sometimes
keep the virgins for themselves, but to mercilessly massacre everybody else?
Yep. Men, women, children, and even the livestock. For a preview of all this
carnage, see Numbers 31:17, Deuteronomy 20:16, and Deuteronomy 21:10.
Sorry, I hadn't planned on laying the heavies on you so soon, but we've got to
be thoroughly objective about all this you know. It's easy to accuse the clergy
and their superiors of turning a blind eye to disagreeable passages, so it
would be hypocritical for us to adopt a similar attitude. Assessing the Old
Testament gods/extraterrestrials for what they really were is all part and
parcel of researching Biblical UFOs. It's a very serious field of inquiry, for
those gods of ancient Israel are still, through institutionalized religion,
having a considerable amount of influence on your life, whether you subscribe
to their dogmas or not. Others around you do.
Anyway, to get back to a slightly lighter mood, I find it extraordinarily
ironic that for so long the Bible has been judged to be the greatest testimony
of all for denouncing all those mythological gods of antiquity. It's nothing of
the sort! On the contrary, the Bible has, with a slight shift of focus, become
the greatest repository of credible evidence for strongly corroborating the
visits of those gods! By all means tell your friends and neighbors that this is
so. Go easy on them though. The topic can get pretty delicate for some folks,
and you've got to be careful not to overdo it.
We now return to the main theme...
Having at this point firmly established that the Old Testament is anything but
silent on real, honest-to-goodness gods, the stage is now set for formally
introducing its Chief God--or, if I may provide a new and fitting title for
him, the Commander of the Fleet. The best way to begin is to provide some background
information on his name, for this name figures strongly in helping us to gain a
clearer understanding of the Bible as a whole.
As already indicated, the Commander's name was Jehovah. Due to a complex series
of linguistic mix-ups... This rendition is not as accurate as recent scholars
would like it to be ("Yahweh" comes closer), but Jehovah is the
commonest one in general circulation, so I've opted to use it for general
circulation, so I've opted to use it for familiarity's sake. Precisely correct
pronunciation is presently out of reach for us anyway, and besides, it isn't
important. What is important is that the Commander had a name in the first
place.
The reason it's important is that it identifies him as a distinctly individual
and independently operating deity, thus setting him apart from all the other
deities of the ancient world. In other words, he was the exclusive, national
God of Israel, the God who dealt directly with the Israelites and nobody else.
The Old Testament repeatedly focuses an enormous amount of significance to the
name. Over and over again passages emphasize that it should be remembered in
the hearts and minds of the faithful, sung out joyously in hymns of praise,
used in reverence to swear sacred oaths by, and generally vocalized and
reflected on whenever appropriate opportunities made themselves available. In
short, the name was as central to Judaic worship and day-to-day living as the
Savior's is to Christianity.
It is an extremely puzzling mystery, therefore, that sometimes as late as the
first or second centuries AD (nobody seems to know for sure) a Judaic
"superstition" developed which judged the name to be too sacred for
uttering out loud. Indeed, it suddenly became a sin to speak the name!
Although in printed form it survived in then-existing Hebrew scriptures and
remained unexpurgated in subsequent copies, the name was nevertheless lost to
posterity. Or at least the correct pronunciation was lost. This is because, by
means of an ingenious cipher system long since forgotten or hidden away, the
Hebrew written language required only consonants. Thus, the name appears simply
as YHWH. To this day nobody knows what vowels are missing, and that's why we'll
never get the pronunciation right until someone cracks the code. (I'm sure
someone already has, but for reasons of his own is keeping quiet about it!)
In any case, due to the aforementioned superstition the name--which for at
least a thousand years previously had dominated early Judaism--was discreetly
withdrawn from active service. Jehovah had, as a consequence, and quite against
his own orders, been deprived of what could analogously be termed his
"legal" ID
To carry the analogy a step further, the priests behind this scheme then
provided him with a pseudonym to serve as a sort of alias. (It was from this
pseudonym, by the way, that "Jehovah" and "Yahweh" were
eventually derived. In those terms "Yahweh" is a pretty close if not
bang-on rendition of the name; ie., the pseudonym.)
As I was saying, a pseudonym was provided. The priests were very clever in
choosing the pseudonym, for they decided to incorporate within it, and in the
same order, the same consonants of the original name. Only new vowels were
introduced. Instructions concerning the new vowels were then spread around by
word of mouth and Presto! the populace had a new name for the Commander, on
which was 'OK' to vocalize.
To illustrate what I mean, the original pronunciation might have been (for
instance) YiH-WoH, but now it was YaH-WeH.
The really clever aspect of the switch lies in the fact that on paper the name
remained completely unaltered! YHWH was YHWH no matter what vowels were
mentally added. Perhaps only a lawyer can appreciate the full significance of
the tactic, for simultaneously everything was changed and nothing was changed!
Anyway, the new name (pseudonym alias, false ID) had been assigned the
vowel-sounds from the Hebrew "Adonai" (Lord), so the overall end
result was a hybrid noun which was regarded as part name and part title
(Jehovah or Yahweh). For all intents and purposes, though, it was really only a
name.
Unfortunately, as time passed by over the centuries, even the pseudonymous name
began to be viewed as too sacred for vocalization (God doesn't work in strange
ways; only priests do), and consequently the hybrid noun (part name and part
title) came to be regarded more and more as just a title. Since some of its
component sounds were borrowed from the Hebrew equivalent of "Lord,"
it was generally agreed that the entire, somewhat ambiguous and immensely
troublesome noun might just as well be translated as "Lord" and have
done with it once and for all. And that's what happened.
The result was, that not only had Jehovah been deprived of his
"legal" ID, he was also deprived of his "false" ID One
begins to grow suspicious of all this. It's as if Jehovah had a murky past and
the priests were desperately trying to cover for him.
In any case, because his papers got lost in the shuffle (so to speak), most
non-Hebrew Bibles in circulation today have replaced both his original name and
his pseudonym with the title "the LORD." Notice that all four letters
are capitalized. Bible texts use this as a literary device for distinguishing
"the LORD" as a replacement for both its predecessors. Well, at least
the translators had the good sense to include that distinction, although hardly
anybody notices it or realizes what it means if they do.
Yes, these last pages have been a little complicated, but what it all boils
down to is that "the LORD" is as much a mistranslation of YHWH as
"God" or "angels" are of ELOHIM.
It is also every bit as misleading... and then some; for it contributes
enormously to the confusion any serious Bible student will face when comparing
the two Testaments. You see, "the LORD" of the Old Testament is
naturally associated with "the Lord" of the New Testament.
See what I mean?
The two words, however, are only homonyms; that is, they are spelled and
pronounced the same, but they differ in origin and meaning. In truth,
"LORD" and "Lord" have about as much in common with each
other as do, say, 'WASP' and "wasp"--wherein the former represents a
certain class of immigrants and the latter speaks for itself. The analogy is
perhaps a little over stretched, but it illustrates the point quite nicely.
I'm taking great pains to elucidate the complexities surrounding Jehovah's name
and the differences between "LORD" and "Lord" for one very
good reason: Nowhere in the New Testament will you locate the title "the
LORD" (with all four letters capitalized, you understand).
What this means... and I would request that you proceed slowly here... is that
neither Jehovah's original name nor his pseudonymous name (at least one of
which was in use during the time of Jesus)... neither of these two names
appeared in the original Christian manuscripts. Otherwise, they would have
eventually been transliterated as "the LORD," you see --which is what
occurred in the case of the Old Testament, even from the sections which were
written in Aramaic.
Now, since neither of Jehovah's names were recorded in the New Testament, that
means that Jesus himself never spoke them; and what that means is the JESUS
NEVER IDENTIFIED JEHOVAH AS HIS FATHER. In order words, even though he
evidently posed as the expected Jewish Messiah, it appears that he was sent by
Somebody Else altogether different than the Commander!
That's a pretty controversial statement to make, I know but it does explain a
large proportion of he Bible's contradictions. It also explains why Jehovah's
name was mysteriously dropped: Jesus had conspicuously failed to endorse it.
Anyway, I'll not go into the ramifications of all that just yet. It's now time
to formally introduce the man behind the name.
__________
Read the Gospel of Judas. It was found on papyrus pages, originally a book, in
a cave about 20 years ago. In it Jesus told Judas that the god his disciples
worshipped was not his God. His God was the Supreme Being.
__________
I gave this book to a born again Christian, obviously he did not study the
passages, he gave it back to me torn to shreds! He also was interested in UFOs
and was a pilot, but a close minded one at that. He said, "How could you
do this!!" It was easy folks.
In the next chapters it will be much more interesting but you needed the
background on just who Jehovah was to make sense about the rest of the booklet.
posted by Aileen @ 10:39 AM 3
comments
No comments:
Post a Comment