'The Word of God'

 

"In Azuripan, on the banks of the Euphrates, she bore me in concealment; she placed me in the box of reeds, sealed my door with pitch, and cast me upon the river, which conveyed me on its waves to Akki, the water-carrier. He took me up in the kindness of his heart, reared me as his own child, made me his gardener. Then Ishtar, the daughter of the King of Heaven, showed fondness for me and made me king over men."

This tale is told of Shargani-shar-ali (Sargon I), who lived in the third or fourth millennium BCE. The obvious feature of this is the similarities to the story told of 'Moses' in the Old Testament; Moses is not a Hebrew name but is Egyptian, as in Tuthmoses etc. We could here have an Archetypal Myth which features a child that is abandoned, placed in a reed-casket, and cast into a river, to be found at one point and brought up by the finder. Or, in view of the many parts of the Old Testament that can be found from Babylonian or Egyptian (as well as others) scripts, this could have been taken up and used to suit the authors of the book. 

It is not well known that the idea of the seventh day of the week as a rest-day stems from ancient Babylon, and was obviously worked into the Old Testament. The 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th days of every month were set aside for the days of rest, and this was strictly adhered to. In one sense we can see the point in this, since at one time no-one worked on a Sunday (or at least very few) which gave everyone a day of rest with their families. Since the waning of Christianity this has now ceased to be the case and everyone is expected to be able to work on a Sunday when necessary. There is no one single day that everyone has off, which is rather a step backwards than forwards, since if most have the same day off it puts families together for at least one day a week. The family is not high on the agenda though, and is being slowly broken apart in our era.

There may, of course, be a secret hidden in the above Babylonian text, since we find that Sargon is driven on the waves to Akki - the 'water-carrier', and when grown up becomes his gardener. I cannot imagine there being a job for a 'water-carrier', not as a full-time thing anyway; so maybe this actually hints at the Age of Aquarius - the 'Water-Carrier'. Maybe that thought is going too far, but it is possible, since the Third Sargon appears at the start of the Age of Aquarius.

The origins of the flood found in the Old Testament seems to have come from the story told of Xisuthros who received a message from the god of the watery deep to build a ship of certain dimensions, coat it with pitch, and put in this his family and the 'seeds' of all living things. This is cast adrift onto the waves of the seas where it eventually gets stranded on a mountain called Nizir in the Armenio-Medean mountains. Then follows a bible-like tale of how a dove was released but returned, a swallow followed, and then a raven was loosed and did not return. The story of the Flood can be found in the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. 

From Babylon we have also the Dragon-Slayer Myth which forms the basis of their Creation-Myth. Here Tiamat - Dragon of Chaos - is slain by the Spear of Marduk; he cuts the monster in half, from which are made the heavens and the earth. This was stolen from the Babylonians and the heroic dragon-slaying attributed to Yahweh. Marduk has the 'far-seeing eye, the far-hearing ear and the powerful arm'. What the Old Testament scribes did was to use the tale but leave out any overtly mythological elements. 

"Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Yahweh; awake as in the days of old, in the generations of ancient times. Art thou not it that cut Rahab in pieces and pierced the dragon?" Isaiah li:9

"He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smitteth the dragon." Job xxvi:12

An ancient cylinder-seal from Babylon shows a Sacred Tree bearing fruit, and woman seated to the left, reaching out towards the tree, a serpent coiled around the tree, and a horned-helmeted man seated to the right. This is no doubt the origin of the tale of Adam and Eve. There is even a Babylonian seal marked in cuneiform letters - Ia-ah-ve-ilu : Ia-hu-um-ilu which can be seen as Iaahve (Yahveh) - God, so perhaps even the name of the Old Testament God has been taken from another source. We must look carefully at this since the vowels were often omitted in ancient languages so this would be I-H-V rather than the IHVH of 'Yahweh'. It may thus have a totally different meaning.

These few examples show that the Old Testament is 'older' than we are being led to believe, and has its roots in other cultures. When Nebuchadnezzar sacked the First Temple in Jerusalem he carried off some of the Jews into Babylon, and this is likely where their rabbis picked up these texts and used them to create their own 'history'. An example of how certain words mean one thing in one language, but can mean a totally different thing in another language is the name Belili who was a Sumerian Goddess. The root of her name - bel - would be the same as Bael-Daeg which means 'Light', 'Bright' or 'Fire'. In Hebrew this became Beliiy ya'al which meant 'Sons of Destruction' - a totally different concept. 

Since these texts were taken from various sources and written down as a 'history' of one small tribe they cannot possibly be said to be the 'Word of God', which allows a small priesthood to interpret the texts how they wish to do so, and not have any form of opposition to their interpretations. This statement makes these texts unquestionable, which no texts really are; the need to question leads to the truth in the end. This is why Folkish Wodenism has no 'Sacred Texts' which cannot be questioned; even if there are texts that are 'sacred' to us, they are open to being questioned. This goes for all texts, even such ancient texts as the Vedas, which were written down by 'Seers' originally, but which have since no doubt been open to mistaken alterations and mistaken interpretations. An example of this are the Laws of Manu which seem to have far too many 'rules' as to be an original Divine Text. The essence may be there, but the form is most likely to have been altered to suit those who wrote these down. Everything has its peak from which it begins to decline, and a civilisation is in decline when it has too many petty 'rules', as we can see happening today.