Thursday, December 29, 2011

Gilgamesh was Nimrod According to Livingston




 
 
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Who Was Nimrod?


by Dr. David Livingston



"Cush was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on the earth. He was a might hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, "Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD. " The centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh in Shinar. (Genesis 10:8-10) Many consider this to be a positive, complimentary testimony about Nimrod. It is just the opposite! First, a little background study is necessary.

Cultural Connections in the Ancient Near East

Gilgamesh
Found at Khorsabad, this eighth century BC stone relief is identified as Gilgamesh. The best-known of ancient Mesopotamian heroes, Gilgamesh was king of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. His story is known in the poetic Gilgamesh Epic, but there is no historical evidence for his exploits in the story. He is described as part god and part man, a great builder and warrior, and a wise man in the story. Not mentioned in the Bible, the author suggests Gilgamesh is to be identified with Biblical Nimrod in Genesis 10:8-12.
Besides the stories of the Creation and Flood in the Bible, there ought to be similar stories on clay tablets found in the cultures near and around the true believers. These tablets may have a reaction, or twisted version, in their accounts of the Creation and Flood. In the post-Flood genealogical records of Genesis 10, we note that the sons of Ham were: Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan. Mizraim became the Egyptians. No one is sure where Put went to live. And it is obvious who the Canaanites were. Cush lived in the "land of Shinar," which most scholars consider to be Sumer. There they developed the first civilization after the Flood. The sons of Shem -- the Semites -- were also mixed, to some extent, with the Sumerians.
We suggest that Sumerian Kish, the first city established in Mesopotamia after the Flood, took its name from the man known in the Bible as Cush. The first kingdom established after the Flood was Kish, and the name "Kish" appears often on clay tablets. The early post-Flood Sumerian king lists (not found in the Bible) say that "kingship descended from heaven to Kish" after the Flood. (The Hebrew name "Cush" was much later moved to present-day Ethiopia as migrations took place from Mesopotamia to other places.)
The Sumerians, very early, developed a religio-politico state which was extremely binding on all who lived in it (except for the rulers, who were a law unto themselves). This system was to influence the Ancient Near East for over 3000 years. Other cultures which followed the Sumerian system were Accad, Babylon, Assyria, and Persia, which became the basis of Greece and Rome's system of rule. Founded by Cush, the Sumerians were very important historically and Biblically.

Was "Nimrod" Godly or Evil?

Ancient Babylon
Nimrod started his kingdom at Babylon (Genesis 10:10). Babylon later reached its zenith under Nebuchadnezzar (sixth century BC). Pictured are mudbrick ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's city along with ancient wall lines and canals.
First, what does the name Nimrod mean? It comes from the Hebrew verb marad, meaning "rebel." Adding an "n" before the "m" it becomes an infinitive construct, "Nimrod." (see Kautzsch 1910: 137 2b; also BDB 1962: 597). The meaning then is "The Rebel." Thus "Nimrod" may not be the character's name at all. It is more likely a derisive term of a type, a representative, of a system that is epitomized in rebellion against the Creator, the one true God. Rebellion began soon after the Flood as civilizations were restored. At that time this person became very prominent.
In Genesis 10:8-11 we learn that "Nimrod" established a kingdom. Therefore, one would expect to find also, in the literature of the ancient Near East, a person who was a type, or example, for other people to follow. And there was. It is a well-known tale, common in Sumerian literature, of a man who fits the description. In addition to the Sumerians, the Babylonians wrote about this person; the Assyrians likewise; and the Hittites. Even in Palestine, tablets have been found with this man's name on them. He was obviously the most popular hero in the Ancient Near East.
Sennacherib's Palace
Part of Nimrod's kingdom (Genesis 10:11), Nineveh along the Tigris River continued to be a major city in ancient Assyria. Today adjacent to modern Mosul, the ruins of ancient Nineveh are centered on two mounds, the acropolis at Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunis (Arabic "Prophet Jonah"). Pictured is Sennacherib's "Palace without a rival" on Kuyunjik, constructed at the end of the seventh century BC and excavated by Henry Layard in the early 20th century.

The Gilgamesh Epic

Gilgamesh Epic, one of 11 tablets
The Babylonian Flood Story is told on the 11th tablet of the Gilgamesh Epic, almost 200 lines of poetry on 12 clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform script. A number of different versions of the Gilgamesh Epic have been found around the ancient Near East, most dating to the seventh century BC. The most complete version came from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. Commentators agree that the story comes from a much earlier period, not too long after the Flood as described in the story.
The person we are referring to, found in extra-Biblical literature, was Gilgamesh. The first clay tablets naming him were found among the ruins of the temple library of the god Nabu (Biblical Nebo) and the palace library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh. Many others have been found since in a number of excavations. The author of the best treatise on the Gilgamesh Epic says,
The date of the composition of the Gilgamesh Epic can therefore be fixed at about 2000 BC. But the material contained on these tablets is undoubtedly much older, as we can infer from the mere fact that the epic consists of numerous originally independent episodes, which, of course, did not spring into existence at the time of the composition of our poem but must have been current long before they were compiled and woven together to form our epic (Heidel 1963: 15).
Yet his arrogance, ruthlessness and depravity were a subject of grave concern for the citizens of Uruk (his kingdom). They complained to the great god Anu, and Anu instructed the goddess Aruru to create another wild ox, a double of Gilgamesh, who would challenge him and distract his mind from the warrior's daughter and the noblemen's spouse, whom it appears he would not leave in peace (Roux 1966: 114).
The Epic of Gilgamesh has some very indecent sections. Alexander Heidel, first translator of the epic, had the decency to translate the vilest parts into Latin. Spieser, however, gave it to us "straight" ( Pritchard 1955: 72). With this kind of literature in the palace, who needs pornography? Gilgamesh was a vile, filthy, man. Yet the myth says of him that he was "2/3 god and 1/3 man."

Gilgamesh is Nimrod

ancient ziggurat








Model of ancient ziggurat.
How does Gilgamesh compare with "Nimrod?" Josephus says of Nimrod,
Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah -- a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny -- seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence upon his own power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach! and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers (Ant. 1: iv: 2)
What Josephus says here is precisely what is found in the Gilgamesh epics. Gilgamesh set up tyranny, he opposed YHVH and did his utmost to get people to forsake Him.
Two of the premiere commentators on the Bible in Hebrew has this to say about Genesis 10:9,
Nimrod was mighty in hunting, and that in opposition to YHVH; not "before YHVH" in the sense of according to the will and purpose of YHVH, still less, . . . in a simply superlative sense . . . The name itself, "Nimrod" from marad, "we will revolt," points to some violent resistance to God . . . Nimrod as a mighty hunter founded a powerful kingdom; and the founding of this kingdom is shown by the verb with vav consecutive, to have been the consequence or result of his strength in hunting, so that hunting was intimately connected with the establishing of the kingdom. Hence, if the expression "a mighty hunter" relates primarily to hunting in the literal sense, we must add to the literal meaning the figurative signification of a "hunter of men" (a trapper of men by stratagem and force); Nimrod the hunter became a tyrant, a powerful hunter of men (Keil and Delitzsch 1975: 165).
"in the face of YHVH can only mean "in defiance of YHVH," as Josephus and the Targums understand it (op. cit.: 166).
And the proverb must have arisen when other daring and rebellious men followed in Nimrod's footsteps and must have originated with those who saw in such conduct an act of rebellion against the God of salvation, in other words, with the possessors of the divine promise of grace (loc. cit.).
Ziggurat at ancient Ur
Often attributed to Nimrod, the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) was not a Jack and the Beanstalk type of construction, where people were trying to build a structure to get into heaven. Instead, it is best understood as an ancient ziggurat (Assyrian "mountaintop"), as the one pictured here from ancient Ur of the Chaldees, Abraham's hometown (Genesis 11:31). A ziggurat was a man-made structure with a temple at its top, built to worship the host of heaven.
After the Flood there was, at some point, a breakaway from YHVH. Only eight people descended from the Ark. Those people worshipped YHVH. But at some point an influential person became opposed to YHVH and gathered others to his side. I suggest that Nimrod is the one who did it. Cain had done similarly before the Flood, founding a new city and religious system.
Our English translation of the Hebrew of Genesis 10:8-10 is weak. The author of this passage of Scripture will not call Gilgamesh by his name and honor him, but is going to call him by a derisive name, what he really is -- a rebel. Therefore we should translate Genesis 10:8-10 to read,
Cush begat Nimrod; he began to be a tyrant in the earth. He was a tyrannical hunter in opposition to the Lord. Thus it is said, "Nimrod the tyrannical opponent of YHVH."
Likewise, Gilgamesh was a man who took control by his own strength. In Genesis 10 Nimrod is presented as a type of him. Nimrod's descendants were the ones who began building the tower in Babel where the tongues were changed. Gilgamesh is a type of early city founders. (Page numbers below are from Heidel 1963)
He is a "shepherd" .................. page 18
From Uruk ............................. page 17  (Kramer 1959: 31 calls Uruk, Erech.)
A giant ................................... page 17  (11 cubits)
Builds cities ............................ page 17
Vile man "takes women" ......... page 18
Mighty hunter ......................... page 18

Gilgamesh Confronts YHVH!

The name of YHVH rarely appears in extra-Biblical literature in the Ancient Near East. Therefore we would not expect to find it in the Gilgamesh epic. But why should the God of the Jews rarely be mentioned? The Hebrew Bible is replete with the names of other gods.
On the other hand, the nations surely knew of Him even though they had no respect for Him. If so, how might His Name appear in their literature, if at all? The name of YHVH, in a culture which is in rebellion against His rule, would most likely be in a derisive form, not in its true form. Likewise, the writers of Scripture would deride the rebels.

Putting the Bible and the Gilgamesh Epic Together

The Gilgamesh Epic describes the first "God is Dead" movement. In the Epic, the hero is a vile, filthy, perverted person, yet he is presented as the greatest, strongest, hero that ever lived. (Heidel 1963: 18). So that the one who sent the Flood will not trouble them anymore, Gilgamesh sets out to kill the perpetrator. He takes with him a friend who is a monstrous half-man, half-animal -- Enkidu. Together they go on a long journey to the Cedar Mountain to find and destroy the monster who sent the Flood. Gilgamesh finds him and finally succeeds in cutting off the head of the creature whose name is "Huwawa" ("Humbaba" in the Assyrian version; see Heidel 1963: 34ff).
Is there a connection with the Gilgamesh epic and Genesis 10? Note what Gilgamesh says to Enkidu, the half-man, half-beast, who accompanied him on his journey, found in Tablet 111, lines 147 - 150.
"If I fall," Gilgamesh says, "I will establish a name for myself. 'Gilgamesh is fallen,' they will say, 'in combat with terrible Huwawa.'"
But the next five lines are missing from all tablets found so far! Can we speculate on what they say? Let's try . . . We suggest that those five lines include,
"But if I win,.. they will say, Gilgamesh, the mighty vanquisher of Huwawa!"
Why do we say that? Because Genesis 10:9 gives us the portion missing from the Gilgamesh tablets. Those lines include... "it is said, Nimrod (or Gilgamesh) the mighty vanquisher of YHVH." This has to be what is missing from all the clay tablets of the Gilgamesh story. The Gilgamesh Epic calls him Huwawa; the Bible calls Him YHVH.
The face of Huwawa, photo by Thorkild  Jacobsen
This face supposedly represents Huwawa who, according to the Gilgamesh's Epic, sent the Flood on the earth. According to the story, Huwawa (Humbaba in the Assyrian version) was killed by Gilgamesh and his half-man/half-beast friend, Enkidu. The author suggests Huwawa is the ancient pagan perspective of Yahweh (YHVH), the God of the Bible. About 3 inches (7.5 cm), this mask is dated to around the sixth century BC. Of an unknown provenance, it is now in the British Museum.
Heidel, speaking of the incident as it is found on Tablet V says,
All we can conclude from them (the lost lines) is that Gilgarnesh and Enkidu cut off the head of Humbaba (or Huwawa) and that the expedition had a successful issue (ending) (1963: 47).
The missing lines from the Epic are right there in the Bible!
Because of the parallels between Gilgamesh and Nimrod, many scholars agree that Gilgamesh is Nimrod. Continuing with Gilgamesh's fable, he did win, he did vanquish Huwawa and took his head. Therefore he could come back to Uruk and other cities and tell the people "not to worry about YHVH anymore, he is dead. I killed him over in the Lebanon mountains. So just live however you like, I will be your king and take care of you."
There are still other parallels between the Bible and the Gilgamesh epic: "YaHVeH" has a somewhat similar sound to "Huwawa." Gilgamesh did just as the "sons of god" in Genesis 6 did. The "sons of god" forcibly took men's wives. The Epic says that is precisely what Gilgamesh did. The Bible calls Nimrod a tyrant, and Gilgamesh was a tyrant. There was a Flood in the Bible, there is a flood in the Epic. Cush is mentioned in the Bible, Kish in the Epic. Erech is mentioned in Scripture, Uruk was Gilgamesh's city. Gilgamesh made a trip to see the survivor of the Flood. This was more likely Ham than Noah, since "Nimrod" was Ham's grandson! Historically, Gilgamesh was of the first dynasty of Uruk. As Jacobsen points out (1939: 157), kings before Gilgamesh may be fictional, but not likely. The fact that the Gilgamesh Epic also contains the Deluge story would indicate a close link with events immediately following the Flood. S.N. Kramer says,
A few years ago one would have strongly doubted his (historical) existence . . . we now have the certitude that the time of Gilgamesh corresponds to the earliest period of Mesopotamian history. (Kramer 1959: 117)
Palace at Nimrud in Iraq
Originally established by Nimrod (Genesis 10:11), and today known as Nimrud, Calah became an important city in Iraq. This is an artist's reconstruction of the interior of Tiglath-pileser III's palace (late seventh century BC).
What a contrast Psalm 2 is compared with the Gilgamesh Epic!
Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. "Let us break their chains," they say, "and throw off their fetters." The One enthroned in heaven laughs, the Lord scoffs at them. Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, "I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill." I will proclaim the decree of the LORD: He said to me, "you are my Son, today I have become your Father, Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery." Therefore, you kings, be wise; he warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.   (Psalm 2)

Bibliography

Brown, F., Driver, S.R., and Briggs, C.A.(abbreviated to BDB)
1962 A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Cassuto, U.
1964 A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. 2 Vols., Jerusalem: Magnes.
Frankfort, R.
1948 Kingship and the Gods. Chicago: University Press.
Heidel, A.
1963 The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels. Chicago: University Press.
Jacobsen, T.
1939 The Sumerian Kinglist. Chicago: University Press.
Josephus
1998 Jewish Antiquities. Books I-III, Loeb Classics, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Kautzsch, E., ed.
1910 Genesius' Hebrew Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon.
Kramer, S. N., ed.
1959 History Begins at Sumer. Garden City NY: Doubleday.
Keil, C. F., and Delitzsch, P.
1975 Commentary on the Old Testament., Vol. I, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Pritchard, J.
1969 Ancient Near Eastern Texts and the Old Testament. 3rd ed., Princeton: University Press.
Roux, G.
1992 Ancient Iraq. 3rd ed., Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin.
Thomas, D.W.
1958 Documents From Old Testament Times. New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

The Justification of Abraham

 

Taken from:

http://harvardmagazine.com/2004/01/the-evolution-of-abraham.html

 

The Evolution of Abraham





We first meet Abraham in Genesis 11. Abraham, a descendant of Noah through his son Shem, lived with his family in the city of Ur in Chaldea (today’s Iraq). Having left Ur with his father, Terah, his wife, Sarah, and his nephew, Lot, Abraham stayed for a time in Haran, where Terah died. But the story begins in earnest in Genesis 12:
Now the Lord said to Abram [as he was at first called], "Go forth from your country and from your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; and I will make your name great, so that it will be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you will I curse, and all the families of the land will be blessed because of you."
Genesis 12:1-3

Readers of the Bible have always wondered what it was that caused Abraham to receive these lavish promises from God; what exactly had he done so far to deserve them? In searching for an answer, interpreters were struck by this verse in the Book of Joshua:
And Joshua said to all the people, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘Your ancestors lived of old beyond the Euphrates: Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan.’"
Joshua 24:2-3

This idea came to be elaborated by the ancient interpreters:
This people [the Jews] is descended from the Chaldeans. At one time they lived in Mesopotamia, because they would not follow the gods of their fathers who were in Chaldea. For they had left the ways of their ancestors, and they worshiped the God of heaven, the God they had come to know; hence they [the Chaldeans] drove them out from the presence of their gods and they fled to Mesopotamia, and lived there for a long time. Then their God commanded them to leave the place where they were living and go to the land of Canaan.
The Book of Judith 5:6-9 (possibly second century B.C.E.)


And the child [Abraham] began to realize the errors of the land—that everyone was going astray after graven images and after impurity….And he began to pray to the Creator of all so that He might save him from the errors of mankind….And he said to his father, "What help or advantage do we have from these idols…? Worship the God of heaven."….And his father said to him: "Be silent my son, lest they kill you."
Jubilees 11:16-17, 12:2, 6-7 (second century B.C.E.)

He thus became the first person to argue that there is a single God who is the creator of all things….Because of these ideas the Chaldeans and the other people of Mesopotamia rose up against him, and having resolved, in keeping with God’s will and with His help, to leave his home, he settled in the land of Canaan.
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 1.154-157 (first century C.E.)




Sunday, November 27, 2011

Egypt’s Old and Middle Kingdoms Far Closer in Time than Conventionally Thought


The following samples are taken entirely from Nicolas Grimal’s
A History of Ancient Egypt,
Blackwell 1994.



P. 67:



“Like his Third Dynasty predecessors, Djoser and Nebka, Snofru soon became a legendary figure, and literature in later periods credited him with a genial personality. He was even deified in the Middle Kingdom, becoming the ideal king whom later Egyptian rulers such as Ammenemes I sought to emulate when they were attempting to legtimize their power”.



P. 71:



“… texts that describe the Fourth Dynasty kings …. It was … quite logical for the Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom and later to link those past rulers represented primarily by their buildings with the greatest tendencies towards immoderation, thus distorting the real situation (Posener 1969a: 13). However, it is difficult to accommodate within this theory the fact that Snofru’s reputation remained untarnished when he built more pyramids than any of his successors”.



P. 73



“A Twelfth Dynasty graffito found in the Wadi Hammamat includes Djedefhor and his half-brother Baefre in the succession of Cheops after Chephren”.



P. 79



“The attribution of the Maxims to Ptahhotep does not necessarily mean that he was the actual author: the oldest versions date to the Middle Kingdom, and there is no proof that they were originally composed in the Old Kingdom, or, more specifically, at the end of the Fifth Dynasty. The question, moreover, is of no great importance”.



Pp. 80-81



{Teti, I have tentatively proposed as being the same pharaoh as Amenemes/Ammenemes I, based on (a) being a founder of a dynasty; (b) having same Horus name; (c) being assassinated. Now, Pepi I and Chephren were married to an Ankhesenmerire/ Meresankh – I have taken Chephren to have been the foster father-in-law of Moses, with his wife Meresankh being Moses’ Egyptian ‘mother’, traditionally, Merris. Both Pepi I and Chephren had substantial reigns}.



Grimal notes the likenesses:



“[Teti’s] adoption of the Horus name Sehetep-tawy (‘He who pacifies the Two Lands’) was an indication of the political programme upon which he embarked. … this Horus name was to reappear in titulatures throughout subsequent Egyptian history, always in connection with such kings as Ammenemes I … [etc.]”.



“Manetho says that Teti was assassinated, and it is this claim that has led to the idea of growing civil disorder, a second similarity with the reign of Ammenemes I”.



P. 84:



“[Pepy I] … an unmistakable return to ancient values: Pepy I changed his coronation name from Neferdjahor to Merire (‘The devotee of Ra’)”.



P. 146:



“The words of Khety III are in fact simply the transposal into the king’s mouth of the Old Kingdom Maxims”.



P. 159:



[Ammenemes I]. Like his predecessors in the Fifth Dynasty, the new ruler used literature to publicize the proofs of his legitimacy. He turned to the genre of prophecy: a premonitory recital placed in the mouth of Neferti, a Heliopolitan sage who bears certain similarities to the magician Djedi in Papyrus Westcar. Like Djedi, Neferti is summoned to the court of King Snofru, in whose reign the story is supposed to have taken place”.



P. 164:



“[Sesostris I]. Having revived the Heliopolitan tradition of taking Neferkare as his coronation name …”.



P. 165:



“There is even evidence of a Twelfth Dynasty cult of Snofru in the region of modern Ankara”.



P. 171:



“Ammenemes IV reigned for a little less than ten years and by the time he died the country was once more moving into a decline. The reasons were similar to those that conspired to end the Old Kingdom”.



P. 173:



“… Mentuhotpe II ordered the construction of a funerary complex modelled on the Old Kingdom royal tombs, with its valley temple, causeway and mortuary temple”.



P. 177:



“… Mentuhotpe II’[s] … successors … returned to the Memphite system for their funerary complexes. They chose sites to the south of Saqqara and the plans of their funerary installations drew on the architectural forms of the end of the Sixth Dynasty”.



…. The mortuary temple was built during the Ammenemes I’s ‘co-regency’ with Sesostris I. The ramp and the surrounding complex were an enlarged version of Pepy II’s”.



P. 178:



“The rest of [Sesostris I’s el-Lisht] complex was again modelled on that of Pepy II”.



Pp. 178-179:



“[Ammenemes III’s ‘black pyramid’ and mortuary structure at Dahshur]. The complex infrastructure contained a granite sarcophagus which was decorated with a replica of the enclosure wall of the Step Pyramid complex of Djoser at Saqqara (Edwards 1985: 211-12)”.



“[Ammenemes III’s pyramid and mortuary temple at Harawa]. This was clearly a sed festival installation, comparable to the jubilee complex of Djoser at Saqqara, with which Ammenemes’ structure has several similarities”.



“The tradition of the Old Kingdom continued to influence Middle Kingdom royal statuary …”.



P. 180:



“The diversity of styles was accompanied by a general return to the royal tradition, which was expressed in the form of a variety of statues representing kings from past times, such as those of Sahure, Neuserre, Inyotef and Djoser created during the reign of Sesostris II”.



P. 181:



“A comparable set of statures represents Ammenemes III (Cairo, Egyptian Museum CG 385 from Hawara) … showing the king kneeling to present wine vessels, a type previously encountered at the end of the Old Kingdom (Cairo, Egyptian Museum CG 42013 …) …".

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Possible Evidence for the Great Sphinx Being a Middle Kingdom Product?



We (AMAIC) have, in our revision of Egyptian history in its relationship to the Bible, argued (following Donovan Courville) that the Old and Middle kingdoms of Egypt were basically synchronous.



Following article taken from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/the_sphinx_decoded.html


October 2, 2011

The Sphinx Decoded?

By Matt Patterson


"The first time I went to Egypt and saw the Sphinx with my own eyes, I was deeply shocked," writes Robert Temple, Ph.D in his recent book (with Olivia Temple), The Sphinx Mystery, for "the Sphinx did not look at all like a lion."

Everyone knows that the Great Sphinx, ensconced for millennia on the Giza plateau near modern-day Cairo, is a lion with a man's head; specifically the head of the Pharaoh Chephren, thought by archaeologists to have built the Sphinx during Egypt's Old Kingdom, roughly the mid-third millennium B.C.

But Robert Temple, try as he might, could see no lion: For one thing, the back of the monument, the spine (as it were) of the animal, is flat. It neither rises nor falls along its length, in striking contrast to the many representations of lions from Ancient Egyptian art which commonly portrayed the animal with a mane, broad shoulders, and muscular, sloping back.

Nevertheless, the notion that the Sphinx is a lion is a very old one, dating even to Egypt of the New Kingdom (circa 1400 B.C.), when the Pharaoh Thutmosis IV excavated and restored the already-ancient monument. Later restorations made during the Roman and modern eras cemented this notion, when the badly damaged paws of the beast were reconstructed in the image of a lion's. (Few modern tourists, or even knowledgeable amateur Egyptologists, are aware that the leonine forepaws are not original with the monument; in fact, we have no idea what the paws looked like when the Sphinx was first carved.)

So if not a lion, then, what is the Sphinx? Robert Temple has hit upon an ingenious theory that seems at once both shocking and obvious: The Great Sphinx of Giza was originally carved in the shape of a gigantic Jackal.

The god Anubis, often represented as a jackal or wild dog (the precise breed is unknown and may be extinct), was guardian of the dead in Ancient Egyptian cosmography, with special provenance over cemeteries and necropoleis. Temple recollects: "As I looked at the Sphinx that first time, noting the straight back of the creature...I was struck by the fact that I appeared to be staring at a dog."

The more he thought about it, the more sense it made - Anubis, guardian of the dead, looming over this most famous and ancient of cemeteries. But Temple doesn't stop with this suggestion alone, as radical as it is; he is also sure that he has discovered the true identity of the king whose visage graces the Sphinx. As it turns out, not only does Temple not see a lion in the Great Sphinx, he doesn't see the face of Chephren either.

Whose Face?

It has long been noted that the head of the Sphinx is diminutive in relation to the gargantuan, recumbent body, leading some rogue researchers -- to the consternation of the Egyptological establishment -- to speculate that the head was originally a lion's, and that the Pharaoh Chephren, rather than constructing the monument himself, instead merely re-carved the head in his own image (such usurpations of already-existing monuments was quite common in Ancient Egypt).

Temple agrees that the head was originally an animal, though of course he thinks it was a jackal and not a lion. But he suspects that the re-carving of the Sphinx's head came long after Chephren's time. For one, the iconography of the sphinx as a human-headed beast was a comparatively late one in Egyptian art. Temple writes:

"The human-headed sphinx as a motif in Egyptian art is really something that became popular in the Middle Kingdom only after about 2,000 B.C. and was not a motif of the Old Kingdom...."

Temple therefore reasons that the head of the very-old, Anubis monument was re-carved in the Middle Kingdom to represent a Middle Kingdom Pharaoh. But by whom? Temple found a clue in an article published in an obscure journal in 1897 by the German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt, an article which Temple has translated and made available as an appendix in his book.

Borchardt conducted a careful analysis of the paint stripes emanating from the back of the eyes of the Sphinx and the pleating patterns visible on its headdress, or nemes. Egyptian eye makeup and royal headwear were, like all such trappings, subject to fashionable trends. Borchardt asked: In which dynasty were the accoutrements seen on the Sphinx in pharaonic fashion? (Borchardt was fortunate in that, in his day, the Sphinx was still buried up to the neck in sand, allowing for a closer scrutiny of the head than is possible now that the Sphinx stands a full seven stories from the floor of the cleared Sphinx pit.)

After a careful examination of the stripe pattern running down the sides of the Sphinx nemes, Borchardt concluded:

"The grouped stripes on the King's bonnet are only found during the 12th Dynasty, perhaps only under [Pharaoh] Amenemhet III, because those pieces which are precisely dated and which have such an arrangement of stripes are all from his time."

Robert Temple is a great admirer of Borchardt and his calm, reasoned analysis, and credits the German with the identification of the correct dynasty in which the Sphinx had its jackal head carved down into the likeness of a pharaoh. Temple, however, parts with Borchardt as to the exact identity of the pharaoh responsible.

To be sure, Amenemhet III was an inveterate builder whose many and massive construction projects -- many of which still survive -- were renowned in antiquity. And this particular 12th Dynasty pharaoh certainly had an affinity for sphinxes -- many such statues survive bearing his unmistakable countenance. Nevertheless, Temple is convinced that an earlier king of the 12th Dynasty, Amenemhet II, is responsible for the face we see on the Great Sphinx today.

Amenemhet II, who reigned circa 1876-1842 B.C., was the third pharaoh of the 12th Dynasty, and was likely Amenemhet III's great-grandfather. This Amenemhet, like his later namesake, was fond of sphinxes; in fact, an exquisite sphinx statue bearing the face of Amenemhet II can be found in the Louvre in Paris.

During the course of his research, Temple came across an analysis of this large Louvre statue by one Dr. Biri Fay titled The Louvre Sphinx and Royal Sculpture from the Reign of Amenemhet II. Dr. Fay's book contains many photos of the statue which show quite clearly that the distinctive striped nemes pattern visible on the Great Sphinx at Giza, and which Borchardt had shown conclusively were in fashion during Amenemhet III's reign, were also in use earlier in the 12th Dynasty. In fact, the Louvre statue of Amenemhet II bears both the identical headdress and eye makeup of the larger, and supposedly earlier, Giza monument.

Curiously, Fay herself noticed the astonishing similarities between the two sculptures, right down to facial structure. She writes:

"Although a stylistic comparison of the Giza and Louvre sphinxes must be restricted to their heads, similarities are profound. Both faces are broad and full...each nemes is wide across the wings, set low on the forehead....and shallow at the crown....The pleating pattern found on the nemes of the Louvre sphinx - a fine triple-stripe executed in rounded, raised relief, with a wide stripe and a narrow stripe on each side - is rare in the Old Kingdom [when the Great Sphinx is supposed tom have been carved], but the treatment is similar on the Giza Sphinx...The eyes of both sphinxes are strikingly similar, with horizontal lower-eye rims and semi-circular upper rims...."

Fay's explanation for the unmistakable correlation between the two statues? "Amenemhet II used the Giza sphinx as a model for his own sphinx."

Temple applauds Fay's analysis, but is stunned by the ultimate failure of her imagination. He thinks it ludicrous to imagine that a Pharaoh -- among the most egomaniacal species of man ever to have existed -- would have gone out of the way to immortalize someone else's face on his own statue. Much more likely, Temple concludes, was that Amenemhet II commissioned both works (just the head, of course, in the case of the Great Sphinx), and both in his own image.

How Old?

If Temple makes a convincing case for the date of the current head of the Sphinx, what about the body? Whether originally conceived as a lion or Anubis, who first carved this glorious colossus, and when?

Egyptologists say Chephren, for whom the case is strong, though circumstantial. Chephren, the fourth king of the 4th Dynasty, is thought to have been the son or brother of Cheops, whom antiquity has credited as the architect of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Chephren is also thought have constructed a pyramid, which like his predecessor's still stands on the Giza plateau. A long limestone causeway shoots down the plateau from this pyramid, culminating in a cluster of megaliths which includes the Sphinx and two strange temples, at least one of which - the temple situated directly in front of the Sphinx - was apparently constructed from giant limestone blocks quarried out of the Sphinx enclosure itself, leading archaeologists to believe the two monuments were constructed in tandem.

The problem is that there is no evidence that this temple was actually built by Chephren, as it contains no identifying inscriptions or artifacts of any kind. The second temple, however, directly to the south of the Sphinx and known as the Valley Temple, was found to contain a magnificent diorite statue of Chephren, and fragments of what may have been hundreds of others. In addition, the roof of this Valley Temple opens up onto the causeway that proceeds up the plateau to the pyramid attributed to Chephren.

It is the Sphinx's place among this mortuary complex of Chephren that has led archaeologists to assume that it, too, was built by the Old Kingdom Pharaoh. Another tantalizing clue was found on the so-called "Dream Stella", a commemoration of the New Kingdom restoration of the Sphinx placed between the paws of the Sphinx by Thutmosis IV himself. This stella, when originally excavated, was found to contain the hieroglyphs representing the syllables 'kf' and 'ra'.

Unfortunately, those hieroglyphs, along with much of the original inscription on the stella, have since flaked off, leading to a fierce debate among scholars - did they actually represent the name of Chephren? If so, in what context? As builder, or only restorer? No one knows for sure.

Complicating matters still further, some scientists have in recent decades presented evidence that the body of the Sphinx is far older than the conventionally accepted date for Chephren's reign. Thousands of years older, in fact. These notions are vigorously disputed by archaeologists, who cling to the (circumstantial) case for Chephren with a curious fervor. Egyptologist Peter A. Clayton in Chronicle of the Pharaohs sums up the prevailing view of such heresies:

"Some recent nonsensical theories have suggested that the Sphinx is many thousands of years older than the pyramids, but there is no foundation for such fantasies."

Prime among these "nonsensical theories" are those proposed by geologist Robert M. Schoch of Boston University. Schoch, who earned his Ph.D in geology and geophysics at Yale, has personally conducted a number of extensive geologic surveys of the Sphinx and its enclosure. To the consternation of Egyptologists, Schoch claims there is evidence of heavy precipitation over prolonged periods of time on the Sphinx. The problem, as Schoch maintains, is that the Giza plateau has not been subject to these kinds of rains since pre-Dynastic times, a time when the inhabitants of the Nile Valley are thought to thought to have lived the primitive existence of stone age hunter-gatherers.

Robert Temple agrees that the Sphinx displays signs of water erosion, but disputes the notion that this proves an extreme antiquity for the monument. Temple writes in The Sphinx Mystery:

"I was never convinced by this [ancient rain] argument from the very beginning for the simple reason that there is just no archaeological record at all for any important civilization during approximately seven thousand years of the time of the time postulated between the 'ancient rain' and the apparent beginnings of high civilization in Egypt."

Rather, Temple is convinced that the pit in which the Sphinx rests "was once a moat filled with water," and that the Sphinx-Anubis statue itself "was once an island."

On its face, this theory seems nearly as far-fetched as Schoch's ancient rain hypothesis, given the arid conditions of the Giza plateau and its distance from the two nearest large bodies of water, the Mediterranean (some 116 miles) and the Nile (about five miles). But it has long been known that the course of the Nile has moved eastward over the millennia, and that in ancient times the river once ran much closer to the Giza plateau. In fact, there is documentary evidence that during its annual inundation the Nile came to within 660 feet of the Sphinx as late as the 18th century. Temple is convinced that in Old Kingdom times the river waters at least occasionally came to lap the foot of the Sphinx precinct, allowing the Egyptians to flood the pit via simple water raising devices. During his extensive on-site examination of the monument,Temple found evidence of what he believes were once sluice-gates to aid in the flooding of the pit, which he has photographed and made available in his book.

Temple believes the upkeep of such a moat could explain the signs of severe water erosion appearing as vertical fissures scoured into the walls of the Sphinx enclosure, writing:

"Let us think about the problems of maintaining a sphinx moat. There you are with your huge moat on the edge of the desert, and what are your problems going to be?....Sand! ...So what do you have to do, over and over again? You have to dredge the moat? And to do that, you are continually dredging at the sides, hauling up the sand from the bottom of the moat and letting all the excess water pour back into the moat in powerful torrents."

Not only does the moat theory explain the vertical fissures on the walls of the enclosure, but Temple also feels it explains the horizontal erosion marks on the body of the Sphinx itself, "..as one would expect on a giant statue sitting in the middle of a moat," the level of which was constantly changing (not surprisingly, Schoch vigorously disputes Temple's moat theory on his website).

Why would the Egyptians have gone to the considerable trouble of flooding the Sphinx pit and turning the statue into an island? Temple surmises that the waters of such a moat could have been used for ceremonial purposes, perhaps to ritually bathe the organs of a dead Pharaoh in preparation for his mummification, or perhaps for use in a celebration of the Nile's annual inundation.

The Battle Over the Past

Robert Temple's book occupies a unique niche in Sphinx literature: based on his own extensive surveys of the monument (the Egyptian authorities granted him access to parts of the Giza necropolis off-limits to tourists and even other scholars for decades), The Sphinx Mystery presents a holistic study of the monument that breaks new theoretical ground without resorting to fanciful explanations regarding aliens, Atlantis, or ancient rain.

Nevertheless, many of Temple's conclusions are at considerable odds with established Egyptological thought. Conventional Egyptologists are convinced that they know who built the monument (Chephren) and when (4th Dynasty), and they regard any alternative views as absolute heresy. It is probably why I found Temple 's book in the New Age section at my local bookstore, even though there is absolutely nothing "New Age-y" about it.

During a telephone interview from his home in England, I asked Temple why I found his book in the New Age section, while other tomes detailing outlandish notions that aliens built the pyramids can be found in the "History" section. He laughed at first, but then let out a long sigh. "That's publishing these days, I suppose," he said.

It is a terrible shame, because Temple has produced a work of analysis both bold and careful, buttressed by extensive field work and what must have been hundreds of hours of textual examination. From locating a copy of Borchardt's extremely obscure article from an antique book dealer in Germany, to translating the arcane German text himself, to putting Borchardt's clues together with Fay's highly specialized account of a little-known statue of a little-known king in a French museum, Temple's narrative is one of meticulous scholarship of a kind that is becoming rarer and rarer these days. The narrative is thrilling, old-fashioned detective work; the complete theory is carefully argued and eminently plausible.

The picture of the Sphinx we were taught is one that had a single origin for a single purpose by a single maker. The picture that emerges from Temple's work is quite different - a monument that was refined over millennia, fashioned for different purposes at different times, but whose ultimate origins are lost in the mists of deep antiquity. It is a picture that is both more interesting and, dare we say, more believable.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/the_sphinx_decoded.html#ixzz1eaZS1oUZ

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

A Largely Plausible Interpretation of Genesis 10's Table of Nations


Table of Nations
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Taken from: http://www.ezekielwatch.com/TheNations/TableofNations/tabid/1432/Default.aspx

The passage of Scripture known as the Table of Nations is Genesis 10, in which the first few generations of the sons of Noah (Shem, Ham, and Japheth) are described. Some of the lines have only 1 generation from their founder, while other have 3-4. The Abrahamic line from Shem is the only one that is maintained in Genesis, because it is the line through which the Messiah would come. The book of Genesis had multiple authors (probably around 10 different contributors) who would each contribute their part of the stories and the relevant geneaology. However, the Bible is clear in attributing the final editing and combining of the records of Genesis to Moses.There are several theories as to how the nations spread out after Noah and his family left the ark. Some scholars believe that the nations were forcibly dispersed after the Tower of Babel, while others believe they gradually migrated from the foothills near the Ark to further reaching areas as their current areas became crowded.

From the historical and archaeological evidence, a combination of the two theories is what probably occured. There are a number of ancient cities and villages being discovered that are hundreds of feet under water in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, but they have no damage as would be evidenced by the Flood. Also, not many of the families of Shem and Japheth appear to have been widely disbersed at the Tower of Babel, but primarily the families and tribes of Ham.

The Book of Jasher provides some interesting insights as to what could have happened after the Flood to the dispersion at the Tower of Babel. Coupled with some other information concerning the post-flood Ice Age and the decreasing lifespans, a timeline emerges that roughly satisfies the textual, archaelogical, and historical evidence of what happened in the early days after the Flood, and how the nations of the earth spread over the globe to their present lands.

The Table of Nations is a unique document in the world, and is invaluable in deciphering the nations mentioned throughout the Bible, especially Ezekiel 38-39. Alan Cooper has validated most of these tribes and their relationships in his book After the Flood, which has further proved invaluable in piecing together man's early history after the Flood. According to his research, the Tower of Babel dispersion appears to have occurred during the 4th-5th generation after the Flood, which matches roughly with Peleg in Genesis 10, which footnotes his name as saying "for in his time, the earth was divided".

The following timeline/sequence of events can be pieced together that squares with the textual, historical, and archaelogical evidence of what happened from the Flood to Abraham (which the Bible is largely silent about).

After the Flood, the ice caps began to grow. There is only evidence for one Ice Age that had a series of growths and melt-backs. Only during the years following the Flood could there have been enough evaporation from the warm oceans to grow the glaciers quickly enough to generate the 'Ice Age'. While the glaciers are growing, the ocean levels are being lowered and the animals begin to spread out all over the world. The climate is very rainy, but mild and temperate. The oceans are very warm and cause massive evaporation which rapidly grows the glaciers as the moisture moves over land and the ice sheets. The oceans are much smaller and lower, and people/animals can migrate easily over the land between continents. The main oceans are in the area of the Pacific, with a smaller, but deeper one in the Atlantic.

The families, still fearing God and the Flood, are obedient to Noah and God and spread out into villages, mostly in the hills and high-country. They live about 400-500 years now (down from 900 ) because of the water/ice canopy being broken up in the Flood and the air pressure being cut in half. The oxygen and CO2 content is still twice what it is today, which continues to give them long lifespans.

As the families spread out, some of the people begin following the herds migrating from the Middle East. When they find a good land, they settle and are isolated later. Meanwhile, the glaciers continue to grow, and the bulk of the civilizations are still in the Middle East in villages in hilly areas.

About 200-300 years after the Flood, people are building temples, cities, and such with a high degree of culture and technology. They build near the rivers and water sources. Nimrod is born in Cush's old age and becomes a great hunter. He starts a great building project at Babel with others of the families of Ham, who are the emerging superpower of the world at that time (Shinar, Egypt, Ethiopia). Other families from Shem and Japheth join them, but the majority is made up of Ham's descendants.

The Tower of Babel dispersion occurs and Ham's descendants are scattered all over the world. Few of the established villages let them settle because they speak strange languages and are nomads until they reach the unsettled lands, where eventually they establish their own remote villages and settlements. Most of Japheth and Shem's groups and families may have been still intact after the Tower of Babel, but their languages had changed. Later, as they intermixed with some Ham's descendants migrating through, the languages and geneaologies became muddied and unidentifiable.

A number of years after the Tower of Babel (perhaps 100?), the glaciers begin to melt and the Great Meltdown occurs, which floods the lowlying cities (Atlantis?) and separates all the landmasses. As the Great Meltdown occurs, much of the technology is lost and many of the people groups are now separated by water and isolated into their present locations.

As the glaciers melt, the warm oceans cool and draw the CO2 (and then the oxygen also decreases- with less CO2, the plants produce less oxygen) out of the atmosphere and the lifespans are again cut in half during Peleg's generation, down to about 200 years. The lifespans then taper off and continue to decrease until about David's time, when the lifespan has settled at about 75 years old. The older people with the longer lifespans end up outliving generations of their children and grandchildren, and are buried in the lands to which they have migrated and isolated. These older generations have the strange, long facial characteristics that are now classified as the Neanderthals (refer to Jack Cuozzo's book Buried Alive for information on who the real Neanderthals were).

The tribes, tongues, and languages settle down and change over the centuries into their current conditions.

Monday, October 10, 2011

The Genius Joseph (as Imhotep) Great Historian and Antiquarian


Taken from Robert Temple's Egyptian Dawn. Exposing Real Truth Behind ancient Egypt (Century 2010).
Pp. 246-248:
....
As for the Redford book, it also lacks completely an important dimen­sion to the king list issue, which is actually dealt with at length by O'Mara, and which I would have mentioned anyway, even if Olivia had not brought it up. I am referring to the extensive attempts made by Imhotep, the vizier of King Zoser (first king of the Third Dynasty) to construct some kind of 'historv' of the First and Second Dvnasty kings. Imhotep was one of the most famous intellectuals in the history of Egypt. We know that he wrote books on medicine and architecture, as well as designing and building the Step Pyramid of Saqqara. He was also Vizier of Egypt, High Priest of Heliopolis, and High Priest of Ptah at Memphis. There seemed to be nothing that he could not or did not do. Among other things he appeared to do, which are less frequently discussed, were to reform the calendar by creating what is called the 'Civil Year', and commence the traditions of creating annals and king lists (called in Egyptian by the name of genut). The really interesting part of the latter project was his collection of vast quantities - more than 40,000 - of stone bowls and vases, many of which bore the names of early kings incised upon them, and all of which probably came from royal tombs. Two of these actually bear a succession of the names of four kings who followed one another and, strangely, this king list is not noticed by Redford in his book on king lists, though O'Mara makes much of it. …. He calls it the 'Roval Block of Four', and it is indeed priceless archaeological evidence of the accurate succession of four early kings. This evidence was initially published by Jean-Philippe I.auer and Pierre I.acau in 1959, in Volume Four of the mammoth series of volumes about the Step Pyramid of Saqqara, La Pyramide à Degrés: Inscriptions Gravées sur les Vases [The Step Pyramid: Inscriptions Engraved on the Vases]. The relevant inscriptions are shown in Plate 4 of that volume…. I reproduce that photo on this book's website. Lauer is the man who reconstructed a section of the Step Pyramid complex at Saqqara, which is admired by all tourists today for the breathtaking beauty of its design. Lauer was a heroic figure, inspired by a vision and determined to realise it.
It is from his vast collection of stone bowls and vases that Imhotep clearly gathered much of his information and tried to piece together a chronology of the past, due to the paucity of other suitable written records. These bowls were all meticulously gathered and stored under­neath the Step Pyramid as a gigantic hoard. It is very unfortunate that most of them were smashed after a few thousand years, when some of the subterranean ceilings collapsed on to them. The majority of the pieces are in storehouses or sheds at the Saqqara site, as I was able to discover after a considerable amount of enquiry. Many of the choice and unbroken pieces are of course in museums. But the bulk of the 40,000 bowls and vases are still at Saqqara. I was told that I might, if proper reasons were given, be allowed access to these objects to study them, but of course application is a long process, and it is not at all clear that there are proper facilities available to study tens of thousands of pieces of bowls and vases in what might be very cramped storage conditions. One would need to spread numerous examples out on big surfaces, and probably there are no such surfaces, and the lighting might not be terribly good, and the storehouses would undoubtedly be very hot to work in for hours at a time. So, guess what, I never got around to it. Which is not to say that I have given up on the idea, but it might be the dream that never happens.
I have more reasons than mere chronology to want to study the bowls and vases. Apart from the alabaster ones, which are made of an extremely soft material and were easy to fashion, the objects tend to be made of very hard stones in ways that seem technologically impossible. Some of them have curled lips, as if they had been shaped from clay; many of the hardest stones have hollow spaces which extend and curve upwards on the inside in such a way that no one can imagine any drill tool that could conceivably have created them, or could do so even today. The ones made of the hardest stones would have required diamond drills in order for them to have been hollowed out. (In fact, in my earlier book, The Crystal Sun, I dealt with this issue and presented the evidence that the ancient Egyptians had the use of what we call industrial diamonds. They did not have diamonds as gems, and they had no idea that the hard black stones that we call industrial diamonds had any gem qualities. But they were able to use them for drill tips.)
The technology used to create those stone bowls and vases not carved from soft alabaster is a remarkable technology, the true details of which are known to very few people. The answer to the riddle is that they were probably cast, not carved or ground. The reason why lips could be curled as if they had been made of clay, despite being of solid stone, is because those lips were curled while the material was still soft. (See ­Plates 37a and 37b and Figure 44 for an example of one made of schist, with 'folded lips', which was excavated by Walter Emery at Saqqara.) At a very early stage, even before the so-called 'First Dvnasty', there was a secret, rovally controlled technology to manufacture these mirac­ulous bowls from liquid stone, which was then cast in moulds made from clay, or otherwise was moulded on potters' wheels while wet and soft, before it went hard. This technology was under the protection of the god Khnum, which is why his image appears on some of the bowls…. Khnum is often portrayed operating a potter's wheel. The same technology was sometimes used for statues made of diorite and other ­hard stone materials. This technology has been rediscovered in modern ­times by the French chemist, Joseph Davidovits. He has named it 'geopolymeric' chemistry. That is because an inorganic polymeric reaction takes place while the material is wet. The Egyptians used weathered rock particles, which could be easily disaggregated, formed a very fine aggregate, then added the necessary catalyst with water, and this formed a kind of polymeric concrete which sets hard. It is impossible to tell the difference between carved stone and cast stone with any chemical ­analysis or by X-ray diffraction analysis, as the results are identical. Davidovits began his professional life as an organic polymer chemist ­(his PhD thesis was on polyurethane), but he decided he would invent an inorganic polymer. Everybody thought that was impossible, and was a contradiction in terms, the word 'polymer' being, they thought, partially defined by the necessity of its being organic. However, Davidovits went on to invent a series of inorganic polymers. And by ­doing so, he was able to recreate some of the lost technology of early Egyptian stone bowl and vase manufacture. ….

Thursday, July 21, 2011

What Happened at Babel?

According to Dr. Robert W. Carter, in

Adam, Eve and Noah vs Modern Genetics

see: http://creation.com/noah-and-genetics

....

The Tower of Babel and genetics

The Tower of Babel has been a favorite bedtime story for generations. But is it more than a fairy tale? Could it be possible that there is evidence to back up this tale of rebellion and judgment? Like the Creation and Flood accounts, there are only a couple of verses that apply to our model of genetics. But, like the others, these verses are as profound as they are simple.

“Now the whole earth had one language and one speech.” Gen 11:1

“And they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’” Gen 11:4

It sounds like they were in a homogenous culture, but what do people in that situation do? Would you expect them to mix freely? Were language or cultural barriers present that would have prevented the sons of Shem from marrying the daughters of Japheth? Would the daughters of Ham be expected to marry freely with the sons of any of the three men? Note in Gen 11:4 that they knew about the potential for spreading out and getting separated from one another and intentionally did the opposite! However, this was against the express command of God, who had ordered them to spread out (to populate the earth). So, He took matters into His own hands.

“’Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.” Gen 11:7–8

There are tremendous implications that come from the Babel account. First it explains the amazing cultural connectivity of ancient peoples—like pyramid building, common flood legends, and ancient, non-Christian genealogies that link people back to biblical figures (e.g., many of the royal houses of pagan northern Europe go back to Japheth, the son of Noah9 ).

The dramatic rise in world population over the past several decades is a well known fact. From a biblical perspective, the current human population easily fits into the standard model of population growth using very conservative parameters.10 In fact, starting with 6 people and doubling the population every 150 years more than accounts for the current human population (a growth rate of less than 0.5% per year!). Population size would have increased quickly given the rate at which the post-Flood population reestablished agriculture, animal husbandry, industry and civilization. So we must ask the question, “Why are there so few people in the world today?” The answer is that the world is young and we have not been here many thousands of years.

When did the dispersion occur? Our best clue about the timing of the event comes from Genesis 10:25. In referencing the 5th generation descendent of Shem, a man named Peleg, it says, “in his days the earth was divided.” To what is this referring? Many people believe this is referring to a division of the landmasses (plate tectonics). This may be true, but it would require a huge amount of geologic activity after the Flood, and this would have occurred in historical times with no record of the events. The interpretation I favor is that this passage is referring to the division of people at Babel. Just a few verses after the Peleg reference, the section is summed up with another reference to the division at Babel. This fits both the context and the science. In context, Peleg was closely associated with Babel.

How large was the population at the time? We would expect rapid population growth, but we cannot know exactly. There are 16 named sons born to the three brothers, Shem, Ham and Japheth. If we assume about the same number of daughters, Noah had on the order of 30 grandchildren. At that rate of growth, there would have been about 150 children in Salah’s generation, about 750 in Eber’s generation, and about 3,750 in Peleg’s generation. Of course, these generations overlap, etc., so let’s say there were between 1,000 and 10,000 people alive at the time of Babel. This fits nicely with the available data. It is a high rate of growth, but wars and disease had yet to start taking their toll.

There is one more verse in this section that we need to discuss:

“These were the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, in their nations; and from these the nations were divided on the earth after the flood.” Gen 10:32

At Babel, God did not separate the nations according to language. He used language to separate them according to paternal (male) ancestry! This has monumental significance and is the key to understanding human genetic history.

Do you see the implication in this simple verse? At Babel, God did not separate the nations according to language. He used language to separate them according to paternal (male) ancestry! This has monumental significance and is the key to understanding human genetic history. Paternal sorting would lead to specific Y chromosome lineages in different geographical locations. Since males and females from the three main families should have been freely intermixing prior to this, it also leads to a mixing of the mitochondrial lines. It is as if God put all the people into a giant spreadsheet and hit a button called “Sort According to Father.” He then took that list and used it to divide up and separate the nations.

We already saw that Y chromosomes have little variation among them. We now add the fact that this little bit of variation is almost always geographically specific. That is, after the nations were separated according to Y chromosome, mutations occurred in the various lines. Since the lines were sent to specific geographical areas, the mutations are geographically specific. The current distribution of Y chromosome lines is a tremendous confirmation of the biblical model.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) adds another confirmation. We have already learned that there are three main lineages of mtDNA. We now add the fact that these three lineages are more or less randomly distributed across the world. Also, the various mutations within each of the three main families of mtDNA are geographically specific as well.11 In other words, as the three mixed mitochondrial lines were carried along with the Y chromosome dispersal, each line in each area began to pick up new mutations, just like we would predict.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Twelve Sons, Twelve Constellations


by John P. Pratt

Reprinted from Meridian Magazine (13 Jul 2005).
©2005 by John P. Pratt. All rights Reserved.

Index, Home

Contents
1. Determining Birth Dates
1.1 Seven Children in Seven Years
1.2 Which Seven Years?
1.3 Twelve Birthdays
1.4 Benjamin
1.5 Proposed Birth Dates
2. New Holy Days
2.1 Hanukkah
2.2 Feast of Esther
2.3 Easter
3. Confirming Dates
3.1 Rebekah
3.2 Leah and Rachel
3.3 Jacob
3.4 Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh
4. Scriptural Confirmation
5. Conclusion
Notes

Relating the twelve tribes of Israel to the twelve zodiac constellations helps unravel the mystery of the Lord's sacred calendars.

There is a strong Hebrew tradition that each of the twelve tribes of Israel was associated with one of the twelve constellations of the zodiac. The precise identification of which constellation goes with which of Jacob's sons has only been known with certainty for four of the tribes. Each of the twelve carried a banner or flag, and the many of those flags are believed to have displayed one of the zodiac symbols. Thus, those figures came to symbolize the entire tribe to a large degree, much as the eagle represents the United States. This article proposes a correspondence of each of those tribes to one of the zodiac emblems, based on proposed dates for the birth of each. Knowing those dates then leads to greater understanding of the holy days on the Hebrew Calendar, and testifies of the Lord's foreknowledge of all things and of his great plan of salvation.

Jacob alludes to the zodiac as he blesses his twelve sons.

What does the zodiac have to do with the twelve tribes of Israel? Aren't the zodiac signs the basis of astrology, and isn't that a false belief system? Wasn't Israel admonished over and over not to worship the hosts of heaven? Why would Israel put zodiac figures on their flags?

It is not surprising if these are your first questions as you read this article, especially if this is the first you've read on the subject. As has been pointed out in numerous earlier articles,[1] the Book of Enoch records that an angel revealed the constellation figures to the prophet Enoch some 5,000 years ago, and many scholars claim they symbolize the key features of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Last month's article proposed that each of the twelve constellations of the zodiac, through which the sun appears to travel during the year, represents one of the twelve principal roles of the Savior.[2]

Satan twists truth and perverts it for his own purposes, which he has clearly done with the zodiac signs. That causes many to avoid the entire subject, but the symbolism of these figures is so rich that it would be a tragedy not to learn of the beauty of their meaning, and the clarity of their symbolism. So my articles on the subject attempt to ignore the perversions and focus on the good. My position is that the sun, moon, and planets are like the hands on a huge clock, with the twelve zodiac constellations through which they move being the 12 numbers on the clock face. The Lord uses his clock to time key events in world history. But when Israel began to worship the hands on the clock, as did the pagan nations, then they were told they had missed the whole point, and to desist. Similarly today, if someone believes the planets are controlling his life, rather than merely keeping time, then Satan could falsely convince him that he is not responsible for his actions.

Having that disclaimer in mind, let us look at the evidence, even from the Bible itself, that the twelve sons of the prophet Jacob were each identified with a different sign of the zodiac.

Naphtali shows Joseph's blood-stained coat to Jacob.

First, consider the dream of Jacob's son Joseph, of the sun, moon and 11 stars (11 constellations?). He dreamed that they all bowed down to him (Gen. 37:9). When he told the dream to his family, they immediately knew that the 11 stars referred to his 11 brothers. Was that just because of the number eleven, or what it also because they already knew that each was associated with a different zodiac constellation? Evidence for answering this question affirmatively comes from noting that most of their names have close ties to the zodiac constellations, as discussed below.

Secondly, when the tribes received blessings under the hands of their father Jacob and many years later by Moses, many unmistakable references were made to zodiac constellations. Moreover, visions such as those of Ezekiel and John, describe figures with the heads of a man, lion, ox, and eagle, which just happen to match the four "cornerstone" constellations (Ezek. 1:10, Rev. 4:7).[3] It is precisely these four key figures which are the most easily matched with the four principal sons of Israel because each is mentioned in the blessings. Reuben is compared to a man and to water, Judah is compared to a lion, Dan to a serpent (counterpart of the eagle), and Joseph's two sons to the horns of the wild ox. Those link to the constellations of the Water Bearer, the Lion, the Scorpion, and the Bull, respectively (Gen. 49: 4, 9, 17; Deut. 33:17). Those four sons are each also assigned to four directions (Num. 2:3, 10, 18, 25), and those four constellations are evenly spaced around the circle, as are the four points of a compass. And even non-Israelite prophets, such as Balaam, have used the same figures to represent the tribes (Num. 24:7-9). All of this has been discussed in detail in earlier articles, and is summarized here only as review and to make it clear that the Lord himself uses the symbolism. There is something very profound going on here, and it is certainly seems worth investigating.

Until now, the identification of the constellations associated with the other eight tribes has not been known with any degree of confidence. The other references to the zodiac are sketchy, and different scholars have proposed a variety of associations based on scriptural clues. But historical evidence of exactly what emblems were shown on which flags has been weak, and is based mostly on tradition. Thus, the information about the zodiac associations has been lost. This article proposes a correlation based on the "brute force" method of actually determining the birth dates of the twelve sons, and then looking at which constellation the sun was in at their birth.


1. Determining Birth Dates

As is known to readers of my earlier papers, I have discovered a variety of sacred calendars, which the Lord seems to be using, including the Venus, Mercury, Enoch, and (Perpetual) Hebrew calendars.[4] My articles have proposed a framework of key religious dates in the history of mankind, from Adam down to the present day. Let us now begin to fill in more dates into that framework, and even be bold enough to propose precise dates for all of the twelve sons of Israel, and for two of their mothers, Leah and Rachel.


1.1 Seven Children in Seven Years

How is it possible to propose precise birth dates when the birth year is not given in the Bible for even one of the sons? In my former articles, at least the year was provided. Dates were proposed based on the birth dates being holy days on sacred calendars (especially the Hebrew calendar). How should we proceed if the years at not even provided? The answer is that it is clearly a puzzle to be solved, and the years are not necessary. The big clue is that we can calculate the seven-year period in which eleven of the twelve sons were born, and also the one daughter Dinah. If those dates must also fall on holy days on the Hebrew calendar and simultaneously on holy days of the Mayan Sacred Round,[5] then there are only a few dates available. If it turns out that there are twelve dates in the seven years specified, and it also happens that all twelve occur in different signs of the zodiac, then we have the beginning of evidence that we are correct. If the four principal tribes fit the cornerstone constellations and that the names and blessings of other tribes fit their respective figures, then the evidence becomes more compelling that we have solved the puzzle. So with that hope in mind, let us proceed.

The curious thing about the history of the birth of Leah's six sons and one daughter in a seven year period is that she had a barren period during that time. She was so distressed that she had stopped bearing children that she gave her handmaid Zilpah to her husband to bear children for her. Now when is the last time you saw something like that on the evening news? How many mothers do you know who had four children in four years who then became distraught when they didn't have a fifth in the next year? Both of Jacob's wives clearly qualify as understanding the importance of the blessings of having a large posterity. So we begin to see that the pieces of this puzzle must be very tight-fitting indeed because 7 births can barely be squeezed into those time constraints. So if it turns out that they drop into place perfectly, then it will be amazing indeed. Of every 18,600 families which have exactly twelve children, on the average only one will have each born in a different month of the year or with the sun in a different constellation. If the precise time of birth is known, then there is only about one chance in forty that any one date is holy on both of those calendars. Accordingly, if blind chance governed the universe, then there would be negligible probability that even one family in history could have such a noble set of birth dates. It has occurred to me that it would be interesting to calculate just how many seven-year periods even contain twelve such dates.

Jacob and Rachel meet (Gen. 29).

Let us review the entire story briefly in order to find the seven-year period. Jacob worked seven years to marry his beloved Rachel, and awoke after the wedding to find he had married her older sister Leah. How could that happen? The Book of Jasher, which is an excellent chronological source,[6] states that they were twins. It was still very important that one was slightly older than the other. Moreover, the bride's face was most likely veiled. In any case, seven days later he married Rachel. Leah gave birth to four children in succession: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. Rachel was barren, which was considered a great curse, because it would mean no posterity, no family. When it was clear she was not bearing, she gave her handmaid Bilhah to her husband, and Bilhah bore Dan and then Naphtali. Note that we are not told that Dan is born after Judah, although that is usually assumed. Then it was Leah's turn to have a barren period. Each of her four children were probably born about a year apart. It must have been at least six months after the birth of Judah that she realized that she was not expecting and got nervous because by then Bilhah's second son was probably born. So Leah gave her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob to even up the odds. Zilpah bore Gad and Asher. Again we are only told the order of birth to each mother.

Now the plot thickens. We find that part of the reason for Leah's barren period was that Jacob was not spending his nights with her. When Leah's son found some fertility herbs, Rachel traded her sister Leah a night with Jacob in exchange for them. Sure enough, the trade was a success for Leah, who soon gave birth to Issachar, and later to Zebulon and Dinah. Then, finally, Rachel gave birth to Joseph. His birth was the last because immediately afterward Jacob told Laban that the second set of seven years had past, and that he wanted to take his family back to his own country (Gen. 30:25).

So these four women had twelve children (11 sons and a daughter) in seven years. And Leah alone had seven of them, with a barren period. Allowing a least an extra year for the barren period, wouldn't that have taken Leah eight years to have seven children? When I began calculating the dates, it became clear that the only solution was that Zebulon and Dinah had to be twins. After I discovered that, I found it confirmed in two sources. First it is Hebrew tradition that they were twins.[7] Secondly, it states it implicitly in the Bible itself. For all of the other children, we are told that "Leah conceived" and brought forth a son. When it gets to Dinah it doesn't state that she conceived again, but only that she brought forth Dinah after Zebulon (Gen. 30:21). In other words, it implied that they are twins by leaving out the word "conceived." It is accuracy in minute details such as this which has led me to believe that Genesis is a revelation from God, rather than an attempt by Moses to record oral traditions. So that eases the requirement somewhat, for now we need only six birth dates in seven years, with an extra year between the fourth and fifth dates.


1.2 Which Seven Years?

Just when is the seven-year period during which Jacob's first twelve children were born? The scriptures provide us enough detail to zero in on the exact seven year period. Let us begin by reviewing the chronological framework already established in earlier articles.

Jacob, later renamed Israel, was the father of the twelve sons who became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. As was proposed in an earlier article, Jacob was born on Wed 20 Mar 1892 BC pm* ("pm star" means after 6 p.m., when the stars are shining).[8] That is a precise starting point, but we are not told in Genesis how old he was when he had his children. With all of the other prophets and patriarchs discussed in my articles, we have been given their age when their children were born, but in the case of Jacob, we need to do a little detective work to get the answer.

Jacob, age 130, meets Pharaoh.

Long after his children were born, and Joseph was prime minister of Egypt, Jacob took his family there to survive a famine. When he appeared before Pharaoh, he stated that he was 130 years old (Gen. 47:9), which was probably in the summer of 1762 BC. How old was his son Joseph at that time? Joseph had become prime minister of Egypt at age 30 (Gen. 41:46). The seven years of plenty began in the following year, and in the second year of the famine, Jacob's family came to Egypt (Jasher 55:26). Thus, the time that Joseph became prime minister would have been nine years earlier in 1771 BC. [9] He was age 30 at that time, so he would have been born in 1801 BC. Joseph was born at the very end of the seven years during which Jacob's first twelve children were born, so that puts the seven years from 1808 to 1801 BC.

The proposed date for the marriage of Jacob to Leah is Sat 30 Mar 1808 BC, which was the day 14 Spring 14 SPRING on the Enoch calendar. That means it was Passover day (14 Spr) in the year also representing Passover (14 SPR). That day only occurs once in 364 years, so that was a rare day indeed, but it was nothing special on the Hebrew calendar. The next week he married Rachel on Sat 6 Apr 1808 BC, which is the last day of passover on the Enoch calendar (21 Spr) and also the minor holy day 1 Iyar on the Hebrew calendar.

This example shows how the days are equally important, and neither wife is favored over the other because one date is more special on the Enoch calendar and the other on the Hebrew calendar. The same will be true of the twelve sons of Jacob. In other words, the birthright went to Joseph not because his "stars" were better, but because of both his actions and Reuben's actions. The proposed twelve birth dates are all very nearly equally good, which is another factor which defies chance.

If these marriage dates are correct, then the birth of Jacob's first twelve children occurred during a seven year period which corresponded to the Passover week of seven years on the Enoch calendar. The last born, Joseph, has a proposed birth date in the year 21 SPRING on the Enoch calendar, corresponding to the Last Day of Passover. In the Hebrew reckoning of years, it is similar. The marriage is in the year 10 NISAN, which is a the year of Consecration, and the seven years includes the year of PASSOVER. And both the first and last years are SATURDAY, the sabbath year of rest. If so, then it was a very unusual seven-year period during which these children were born from 1808 to 1801 BC.


1.3 Twelve Birthdays

Many years have been spent by this author in trying to determine the twelve actual birth dates for the twelve sons of Jacob. There are many problems but the principal one is to discover whether or not there is a pattern of holy days on sacred calendars which they all follow. Either God is using the sacred calendars to determine the birth dates of his prophets and key leaders, or he is not. Either they all follow a pattern or not. If they do, then there is a chance to discover the actual birth dates of these twelve sons of Jacob. If they do not, then the best we could hope for might be to determine the constellation associated with each birth, which would require an accuracy of about a month.

In the former published articles from my research, there have been three general patterns proposed that the birth dates of major prophets have followed. First, allbirths have occurred on holy days on the Hebrew Calendar, and usually also on holy days on other sacred calendars, with the Sacred Round being the second most important. Second, the length of their lives has usually completed an exact number of cycles on at least one sacred calendar. In the case of the antediluvian patriarchs who lived hundreds of years, sometimes the lives completed two or more such cycles.[10] And third, there has usually been a link from one parent to at least one child. That is, the interval between the birth of one child and the death of one parent is often an exact number of cycles on one calendar. In this case, there is one such link no matter what dates are proposed, because Benjamin was born on the day his mother died. That is exactly zero cycles on all of the sacred calendars, and it is perhaps the strongest parent-child calendrical link possible.

Rather than drag the reader through all my years of research on this subject, and preliminary attempts to discover any pattern that could be proposed for the twelve birth dates, I will simply report the results. It turns out that the requirement to fit eleven birth dates into eleven different constellations (four of which are known) in only seven years, with the twelfth birth many years later into the remaining zodiac figure is so difficult that one can easily rule out many potential patterns.

Here is the pattern which emerged. Exactly as in the case of the patriarchs, each was born on a holy day on the Hebrew calendar, and each was also born on either a day "1" or "7" on the Sacred Round. This latter proposal concerning day 7 being a minor holy day is new in this article. I have wondered about it for years. There are thirteen days in the time unit called the trecena on the Sacred Round, and it has been clear that both the first and last days ("1" and "13") are sacred, but there has not been an instance where the midpoint (or "meridian") day 7 of the trecena is also known to be holy. Now that has changed. The birth requirements are so strict for these twelve that to me it now appears that the day 7 must be a minor holy day. All twelve of the birth days turn out to be equally important. The ones which occur on minor holy days instead of major are compensated by also occurring on other sacred calendars, or having impressive conjunctions of the planets occur in the sky on those dates. We have already seen this in the case of Abraham, whose birth date was not as impressive on the calendar, but which was accompanied by a double conjunction of planets.[11]

Before listing the twelve birth dates, let us first turn to the difficult problem of determining at least the year of Benjamin's birth.


1.4 Benjamin

What about the twelfth son, Benjamin? He was born many years later, and we are not even given the year. Do we have any way of determining Benjamin's birth date? The answer appears to be in the affirmative because of the many clues we are given about the time of his birth.

On his way to Hebron, Jacob stayed at Succoth, Shechem, and Bethel.

Let us review the history in just enough detail to deduce the year of Benjamin's birth. Laban convinced Jacob to work for him six more years after the birth of Joseph (in the spring of 1801 BC). At the end of those six years (in 1795 BC) Jacob took his family and left on his way to Canaan. During that year he crossed the Jabbok at Peniel where he wrestled the angel who said his name would be changed from Jacob to Israel. Then they sojourned a while in Succoth, and then moved to Shechem. There his daughter Dinah was defiled by Shechem (the prince and namesake of the town), leading to Simeon and Levi destroying the entire village. This caused Jacob to fear retribution from the local inhabitants, and when Jacob prayed for help, the Lord told him to go south to Bethel, where he should stay and offer sacrifice (Gen. 35:1). This he did, and there the Lord appeared to him and officially changed his name to Israel, and told him that whole groups of nations would descend from him (Gen. 35:11). While there, his mother Rebekah's nurse Deborah died and they also got word that his mother had also died in Hebron at the age of 133. After mourning for both, Rachel conceived, and later they decided to relocate back to Hebron, further south. During that journey, when they came near Bethlehem, his beloved Rachel died while giving birth to their twelfth son Benjamin (Gen. 35:16-18). They continue on south to Hebron, where his father Isaac lived (Gen. 35:27).

Hebron, home of Isaac and Rebekah.

So when was Benjamin born? The unknowns have been how long the family was at Succoth and then how long they remained at Bethel. Of many possible approaches to solve this problem, the following now seems the most straightforward. If we start from the premise that Rebekah died at age 133, a year or so before the birth of Benjamin, then everything works out easily, because Rebekah's birth date was already established in an earlier article.[12] This method avoids the problems of exactly how long the family stayed in those two areas because it skips most of that time period. It also dovetails nicely with the record of events after they arrived in Hebron.


1.5 Proposed Birth Dates

Here is a table of the proposed birth dates for the twelve sons of Jacob, as well as some other related events, such as the births of Leah and Rachel. If the day on the sacred calendar is not a holy day, then it is indicated at a dash (—). In the event column, "b." means birth, "c." means circumcised (one week later), and "md." means married. On the Sacred Round calendar, the day "1" represents beginning, so it is ideal for birth. In the cases where the birth is on "7", then the circumcision day falls on "1" on an especially significant day. In the case of Reuben, it is 1 Water, and Water is his emblem. In the case of Judah, the circumcision is on 1 Temple, where Temple also signifies birth.[13]

EventGregorian Date (BC)HebrewSacred
Round
Other
Isaac b.16 Mar 1952Tue 10 Nisan1 Serpent1 Res (V) 1 Bir (M)
Rebekah b.8 Nov 1923 pm*Wed 1 Kislev1 Jaguar1 Bir (V) 1 Res (M)
Jacob b.20 Mar 1892 pm*Thu 15 Nisan1 Temple1 Birth (Venus)
Leah/Rachel b.2 Mar 1836Sat 15 Adar1 Storm1 Birth (Venus)
1 Lord (Merc)
Jacob begins work9 Apr 1815Sun 16 Nisan13 Deer15 Spr (Enoch)
Jacob/Leah md.30 Mar 1808Sat —10 NISAN (H)
14 Spr 14 SPR (Enoch)
Jacob/Rachel md.6 Apr 1808Sat 1 Iyar10 NISAN (H)
21 Spr (Enoch)
Reuben b. (Aqr)23 Dec 1808Mon 25 Kislev7 Wind10 NISAN (H)
14 SPR (E)
Reuben c.30 Dec 1808Mon 2 Tebeth1 Water1 Res (Merc)
Simeon b. (Cap)16 Dec 1807 pm*Wed 1 Tebeth1 Flower1 Res (Merc)
Levi b. (Psc)5 Feb 1805Fri 1 Adar1 Condor1 Birth (Merc)
Dan b. (Sco)9 Oct 1805 pm*Mon 15 Tishri1 Temple1 Adult (M)
Judah b. (Leo)19 Jun 1804 pm*Tue 1 Tammuz7 Condor14 NISAN
Naphtali b. (Vir)17 Aug 1804 pm*Fri 1 Elul1 Eagle14 NISAN, 1 Prime (V)
Gad b. (Sgr)2 Nov 1803 pm*Sat 1 Kislev1 Quake15 NISAN, 1 Cre (M)
Issachar b. (Cnc)29 May 1802Wed 1 Sivan1 Serpent1 Res (M)
Asher b. (Lib)23 Sep 1802 pm*Tue 1 Tishri1 Wind1 Res (M)
Zebulon b. (Ari)4 Mar 1801Tue 14 Adar7 Dragon
Joseph b. (Tau)6 Apr 1801Sun 18 Nisan1 Quake15 Spr 21 SPR (E)
Rebekah d.6 Apr 1790 pm*Sun 18 Nisan1 Jaguar15 Spr (E), 1 Lord (V)
Benjamin b. (Gem)
Rachel d.
25 May 1788Tue 1 Sivan1 Jaguar1 Adult (V), 1 Lord (M)
Leah d.1 Jul 1786 pm*Sun 1 Tammuz1 Light1 Res (V), 1 Adt (M)
Ephraim &
Manasseh b. (Tau)
3 Apr 1767Thu 1 Nisan1 Grass1 Prime (M)
Jacob d.14 Apr 1745 pm*Tue 15 Nisan1 Storm1 Birth (V) 1 Cre (M)
Joseph d.5 Mar 1691 pm*Sun 1 Nisan1 Light9 AB (H), 9 MSU(E)

Let us consider some of these results and their implications in more detail.


2. New Holy Days

One problem that has been difficult in all of this research is to know just what the "official" holy days are on the Hebrew Calendar. What are the holy dates which the Lord has on his calendar, not including those which have just been added by man to celebrate joyous occasions? It must be remembered that all of these births occurred long before the birth of Moses, and most of them would celebrate future events. Many of the holy days are explicitly described in the law of Moses, so there is little question about them. But what about Hanukkah, the eight-day Festival of Lights which commemorates the rededication of the temple in 165 BC? Was that date on God's calendar from the beginning? What about the Feast of Esther which celebrates Esther's saving the Israelites from execution in the fifth century BC? These questions have puzzled me for years.


2.1 Hanukkah

Grouping of Mercury, Venus, Saturn and the Sun in the Water Bearer on Hanukkah, 1808 BC.

The dates for Reuben teach us several things. First, to me it appears to establish the first (and last?) day of Hanukkah to be an official minor holy day. The first day of Hanukkah falls on 25 Kislev, near the Christian Christmas season. The last day occurs seven days later on either 2 Tebeth or 3 Tebeth, depending on whether the month of Kislev has 29 or 30 days. Reuben's birth date was almost certainly on Hanukkah, and the day of his circumcision one week later would have fallen on the last day. That day was "1 Water" on the Sacred Round, and Water is the symbol of the Water Bearer constellation (Reuben). As shown in the illustration, there was also a grouping of three planets with the sun in the Water Bearer on Hanukkah (25 Kislev) that year.


2.2 Feast of Esther

The same question concerns the Feast of Esther on 14-15 Adar. Are those two days "official" holy days or not? Again, the answer seems to be in the affirmative, because the twins Zebulon and Dinah were most likely born on 14 Adar. Not only does the date fit the pattern perfectly, the planets Mercury and Venus were both located in the leg of the Ram which is breaking the bands of death. Henceforth in these articles, both Hanukkah and the Feast of Esther will be treated as minor holy days.


2.3 Easter

Joseph was probably born on Easter.

Again, a similar question arises concerning Easter, called the Waving of the Omer on the Hebrew Calendar. It falls on the Sunday after Passover, but was not declared to be a holy day in the law of Moses, but only the day of a special offering of the firstfruits from the ground. After the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, it became clear that this was really a major holy day, but was it an official holy day from the beginning? To me the answer now appears to be in the affirmative because the birth of Joseph most likely occurred on Easter Sunday of 1801 BC.

An interesting point is that Genesis states that Joseph was born at the completion of the second seven years (Gen. 30:25). According to these proposed dates, it was exactly seven years on the Enoch calendar from his marriage to Leah, and also exactly 14 years from when he began work for Laban. Apparently the seven year periods were precise to the very day.


3. Confirming Dates

Now let us look at some of the birth and death dates of the parents and grandparents of these twelve sons. They form the same type of interlocking pattern as we have seen in earlier articles about the birth dates of the antediluvian patriarchs.


3.1 Rebekah

Rebekah, born and died on 1 Jaguar.

One result of this study is the proposed death date for Jacob's mother Rebekah. Her death date is the key link in discovering the birth date of Benjamin. Her death date now appears solid enough to be the basis of forming an anchor point in history.

As discussed in an earlier article, the proposed birth date for Rebekah ties perfectly to her husband Isaac's. Her proposed birth date is Tue 8 Nov 1923 BC pm* which was 1 Kislev (Hebrew), 1 Jaguar (Sacred Round), 1 Birth (Venus) and 1 Resurrection (Mercury). His proposed birth date is Tue 16 Mar 1952 BC, being 10 Nisan (Hebrew), 1 Serpent (S. R.), 1 Resurrection (Venus) and 1 Birth (Mercury). The important feature to note is that the Venus and Mercury calendar dates are reversed for the two, just as they are for Ishmael and Isaac. That was such a rare coincidence as to really lock in her birth date.

The Book of Jasher, states that Rebekah died at age 133 while the family was at Bethel, shortly before the conception of Benjamin (Jasher 36:6). An ideal date is found at that time, being Sat 6 Apr 1790 BC, which was the same day as her birth on the Sacred Round (1 Jaguar). It is common in the ages of the patriarchs (and now matriarchs) to have their life be an exact number of cycles on one of the sacred calendars. In this case, the length of Rebekah's life would be exactly 186 Sacred Rounds. The day was also Easter on both the Hebrew and Enoch calendars, as was Joseph's proposed birth date. Again, it is common to have the period to the birth of a child or grandchild be an exact number of cycles. Moreover, it was also a holy day on the Venus calendar, as was her birth, and there are only 16 days in 584 days that such an alignment occurs. So these fulfillments of multiple patterns convince me that he death date truly has been found: Sat 6 Apr 1790 BC pm*.


3.2 Leah and Rachel

After discovering how impressive Rebekah's death date and life was, it caused me to search for the birth and death dates of both Leah and Rachel. Their birth and death years, and ages, are given in the Book of Jasher (Jasher 36:11, 41:2), so it was a much easier problem than the birth of the twelve sons of Jacob. Jasher also mentions that they were twins (Jasher 28:28), even as were Jacob and Esau. Their birth date was most likely Sat 2 Mar 1836 BC, which was the Feast of Esther (Hebrew), 1 Birth (Venus) and 1 Lord (Mercury). Thus, it is proposed that both of these wives were born on 1 Birth (V) as was Jacob, so that is a rare match. Rachel's death occurred at Benjamin's birth, and the day was also 1 Lord (M), so her life completed an exact number of cycles on the Mercury calendar. It was also on 1 Jaguar, the same as Rebekah's proposed birth and death dates.

Leah only lived a few years longer than Rachel, dying before Joseph was sold into Egypt. Her death was most likely on Sat 1 Jul 1786 BC pm*, which was 1 Tammuz, the same as her son Judah. It was also 1 Res (V), the same as Isaac's birth date, and also 1 Adult (M) the same as Jacob's birth date. Again, these are not just holy days, but the match the pattern of being the same as husband and children. It was also 1 Light (S.R.), the day beginning that cycle. These are enough patterns to merit publishing this date as likely to be her death date.


3.3 Jacob

Jacob lived an exact number of Hebrew years and Venus cycles.

One new date which emerged from this study is Jacob's death date. After discovering that Rebekah's life most likely was an exact number of Sacred Rounds as well as being a holy day on the Venus calendar, it seemed like a good idea to search for Jacob's death date. To me the result was stunning. By far the most likely date is Mon 14 Apr 1745 BC pm* which was both Passover and also 1 Birth on the Venus Calendar. It is amazing that such a date exists exactly 147 Hebrew years after his proposed birth date on Wed 20 Mar 1892 BC pm* which was also Passover and also 1 Birth (Venus). Until writing this article, I had not even considered that possibility for at least two reasons. First, 147 = 3 x 49, meaning that his life was exactly three jubilees long, and that alone was impressive enough to me to stop looking. Secondly, 1 Birth (Venus) only occurs on Passover about twice in 584 years on the average, so one wouldn't expect it after only 147 years. Note also that both 1 Birth (V) and 1 Temple, on which he was born, are the very days of those cycles that represent birth. Thus, this is yet another compelling confirmation of the birth date proposed for Jacob several years ago. [14]


3.4 Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh

Jacob blesses Ephraim & Manasseh.

The book of Jasher states that Joseph's two sons were born when he was age 34 (Jasher 50:15). While not stating that they are twins, my conclusion is that they are, because they are compared to the horns of the wild ox (Deut. 33:17), and there is a clear birth date for them when the sun is in the constellation of the Bull, the constellation of Joseph, whom they would replace in the set of twelve tribes. Moreover, there is a clear candidate to be the death date for Joseph at age 110 (Gen. 50:26) and it occurs on the same day of the Hebrew years as the proposed birthday for his sons (1 Nisan). Moreover, their birthday fills in one more very important holy day to the set of twelve (New Year's Day). Thus, the timing of the births appears to have been foreseen and carefully planned.


4. Scriptural Confirmation

There are several clues in the scriptures about which constellation is associated with which tribe, but some are not obvious at all. When I began this study I was really encouraged about how easy the four cornerstone constellations were, because each of those four tribes (Reuben, Dan, Judah, and Joseph) were compared to the figures (Water Bearer, Scorpion, Lion, Bull) explicitly in their names or blessings. Moreover, Dan means "Judge" and Judah means "Praised," both of which tie directly to the corresponding roles of Jesus Christ of Judge and King, as discussed in last month's article. So those are the four about which everyone agrees. But the other eight were not obvious and there is little agreement about them.

After I had finished this study and had determined the birth dates in the above table, and was in the process of writing this article, the idea occurred to me to read those names and blessings one more time. It was surprising how easy it was to see that there were strong indications in front of me all the time, but many of them are only clear in the light of knowing how the twelve roles of Jesus Christ correspond to the twelve constellations.

Joseph reveals himself to his brothers.

Simeon is the Sacrifice. There are two clues that Simeon is the Sea Goat which is sacrificed. First, the blessing by Jacob stated, "Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations" (Gen. 49:5). What does that mean? Ostensibly, it refers to their slaying of the village of Shechem to defend their sister Dinah's honor, but could there be more? It occurred to me that Levi's sign is Pisces, which contains the chains or bonds which shackle the fish to the Sea Monster. Those are certainly instruments of cruelty. And the Sea Goat is the other sign which refers to an animal about to be slaughtered by the knife. Thus, the Sea Goat is a good match for Simeon's instrument of cruelty. Moreover, it was Simeon whom Joseph kept behind in Egypt as a ransom for Benjamin, that is, he was the sacrifice.

Levi is The Fishes. Levi means "Joined" which now seems like a clear reference to the Fishes, which are joined by two bands or chains to the Sea Monster. Moreover, Levi's tribe was that to whom the priesthood was given, which corresponds to the Fishes representing the role of Jesus Christ as the Great High Priest.

Conjunction of Mercury, Jupiter and the Sun in the Maiden at birth of Naphtali.

Naphtali is the Maiden. There are at least three scriptural clues that Naphtali corresponds to the constellation of the Maiden. First, in the blessing of Jacob, he is compared to a hind or doe, that is, a female deer. Why not a buck? Perhaps it is because he ties to the female constellation. Secondly, in his blessing by Moses, he is told he will be "full with the blessing of the Lord." As in many languages today, the word "full" has the double meaning of expecting a baby. Truly the Virgin Mary was "full with the blessing of the Lord." Thus both blessings contain references not only to females, but one to an expectant mother, which is clearly the Virgin's Seed. Finally, the name Naphtali means "to struggle or wrestle," [15]which could describe the struggle of giving birth.

Gad is the Archer. The name Gad means "fortune," coming from the root which means an invading troop or an attack which overcomes. The Archer is like a one man cavalry (a centaur) attacking and overcoming the scorpion with bow and arrow.[16] His blessing was that Gad "shall overcome at last" (Gen. 49:19) which again fits perfectly with the Archer representing Christ as the "Savior."

Issachar is the Crab. The name Issachar means to "he will bring a reward"[17]. That is exactly the role of the Crab, who represents Christ as the "Deliverer" who brings the captive dead forth from Hades. And his blessing echoes this theme: he is likened to a donkey "crouching down between two burdens" and "becoming a servant unto tribute" (Gen. 49:14-15).

Thus, six of the eight tribes with unknown constellations have hints in their names or roles of Christ. The other two Asher ("happy") and Zebulon ("habitation")[18] are not as obvious. Asher may well tie to the Balance because of the joy that comes after the price has been paid. And Zebulon's "dwelling" could refer to the everlasting life of the Ram's golden fleece, but neither of these is nearly as straightforward as the other six.


5. Conclusion

The mystery of how the twelve constellations of the zodiac correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel appears now to have been solved by applying knowledge of the Lord's sacred calendars to the chronological clues in the scriptures and the Book of Jasher. Confirmation is found in the meanings of their names, as well as in the corresponding roles of Jesus Christ. Some of the implications are that Hanukkah, the Feast of Esther, and Easter are all Hebrew holy days which were on the Lord's calendar from as early as the time of Jacob. All of these together testify of the importance of the Lord's calendars as a tool to determine the exact dates of key historical religious events, and to provide many more witnesses of the historicity and accuracy of the scriptures.


Notes

  1. See Pratt, John P., "Enoch Calendar Testifies of Christ," Meridian Magazine (11 Sep 2001) for authenticity of Book of Enoch, and " The Constellations Testify of Christ,"Meridian Magazine (9 Oct 2001), section 1.8, for reference to Uriel revealing the constellations.
  2. Pratt, John P., " The Constellations Tell of Christ," Meridian Magazine (15 Jun 2005), called "The Zodiac Testifies of Christ" on my website.
  3. Pratt, John P. "The Lion and Unicorn Testify of Christ, Part I: The Cornerstone Constellations," Meridian Magazine (8 Nov 2001).
  4. Pratt, John P., "Venus Resurrects This Easter Sunday," Meridian Magazine (27 Feb 2001) for Venus and Mercury calendars, and footnote 1 above for Enoch Calendar. The Perpetual Hebrew Calendar has yet to be published, being a work in progress.
  5. Pratt, John P., "A Native American Easter: How the Ancient American Calendar Testifies of Christ," Meridian Magazine (28 Mar 2001) is an introduction to the Sacred Round.
  6. Pratt, John P., "How Did the Book of Jasher Know?," Meridian Magazine (7 Jan 2002).
  7. The Book of Jubilees states, "and she bore twins, a boy and a girl, and she called the boy Zebulun and the girl's name was Dinah" (Jubilees 28:23), from Charlesworth, James H.,The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), vol 2, p. 110. I believe that account correct, but in general Jubilees is entirely unreliable in chronology and has all the earmarks of having been largely a fabrication. It gives many precise dates to give the feeling of authenticity, but they all appear to be nonsense. In this case, the birth dates of the twelve sons do not all fall within seven years, but within fourteen, which is not what is described in Genesis.
  8. Pratt, John P., "Divine Calendars Testify of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," Meridian Magazine (11 Sep 2003), section 6.
  9. Thus, Joseph would have been 39 years old when his father was 130, meaning that Jacob was 91 years old when Joseph was born. That age is confirmed in the Book of Jasher (Jasher 31:21).
  10. One notable example is Jared, the father of Enoch, who lived 602 Venus cycles and also 1,352 Sacred Rounds. See Pratt, John P., "Astronomical Witnesses of the Great Flood,"Meridian Magazine (13 Aug 2003), section 2.5.
  11. Pratt, John P., "Divine Calendars Testify of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," Meridian Magazine (11 Sep 2003), section 2.5.
  12. Pratt, John P., "Divine Calendars Testify of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," Meridian Magazine (11 Sep 2003), section 5.
  13. The meanings of the twenty day names are discussed by Pratt, John P., "The Twenty Day Names," (20 Apr 2000).
  14. See footnote 8.
  15. Strong, James, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (McClean Virgina: MacDonald) Hebrew words 5321, and 6617.
  16. Strong, Hebrew words 1410, 1464.
  17. Strong, Hebrew word 3485.
  18. Strong, Hebrew word 836 (Asher) and 2074 (Zebulon).