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Category: David

May 17, 2015

Sins of Man

“Merodach mourned over the doom pronounced against his city, and apparently with some effect; for after a good many broken and lost lines, the tablet goes on to describe the despatch of the terrible plague-god to Erech, “the seat of Anu and Istar, the city of the choirs of the festival-makers and consecrated maidens of Istar,” who “dreaded death,” for the nomad ‘Suti of the desert had combined against their state.

The eunuch-priests were now compelled to bow the face before another deity than the peaceful Istar, who “cried and was troubled over the city of Erech.” Eventually, however, Nerra was “quieted” by “Isum his councillor, the illustrious god who goes before him,” “and the warrior Nerra spake thus:

“Sea-land against sea-land, ‘Sumasti against ‘Sumasti, the Assyrian against the Assyrian, the Elamite against the Elamite, the Kossaean against the Kossaean, the Kurd against the Kurd, the Lullubite against the Lullubite, country against country, house against house, man against man, brother against brother, let them destroy one another, and afterwards let the Accadian come and slay them all, and fall upon their breasts.”

The warrior Nerra (further) addresses a speech to Isum, who goes before him:

‘Go, Isum, incline all thy heart to the word thou hast spoken.’

(Then) Isum sets his face towards the land of the west; the seven warrior gods, unequalled, sweep (all things) away behind him.

At the land of Phoenicia, at the mountains, the warrior arrived; he lifted up the hand, he laid it on the mountain; the mountain of Phoenicia, he counted as his own soil.”

In thus marching to the west, the minister of the Babylonian god of death approaches the country in which another angel of pestilence was seen by the king of Israel.

“By the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite,” David had beheld the angel of the Lord “stretching out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it.”

As in Babylon, so too in Israel, the plague had been a visitation for the sins of man. It was the instrument of God’s anger wielded by the hands of his angel-minister. That same angel-minister had once before stood before Balaam, and with a drawn sword in his hand had threatened the Syrian prophet with death.

He was not a demon from the lower world, like the old Chaldean plague-spirit Namtar; he was not the inexorable law of destiny, before whom even the gods had to submit their wills; but a member of the celestial hierarchy, the messenger of a beneficent God.

He came to destroy, but it was to destroy the guilty. The sins of man, and not the malevolence or passionless law of a supernatural being, brought death and suffering into the world. The Babylonian legend of Nerra, like the records of the Old Testament, tells the same tale as the Babylonian story of the Deluge.”

A.H. Sayce, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, 5th ed., London, 1898, pp. 312-4.

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April 23, 2015

Winds and the Babylonian Concept of Evil

“Hadad, Addu or Dadda, never superseded the native name of Ramânu (Ramman) in Babylonia and Assyria, and remained foreign to the last.

Ramânu, however, was sometimes addressed as Barqu or Barak, “the lightning;” and it is possible that antiquarian zeal may have also sometimes imposed on him the Accadian title of Meru.

He grew continuously in popular favour. In Semitic Babylonia, and yet more in Semitic Assyria, his aid was constantly invoked; and, like Anu, Bel and Ea, he tended as time went on to become more and more national in character. Ramman is one of the least local of Babylonian gods.

This was due in great measure to the nature of his origin. He began as the amalgamation of two distinct deities, the wind-god and the air-god, and the extension af his cult was marked by the absorption into his person of the various deities of the winds adored by the older faith.

He continued to grow at their expense. The spirits of the winds and storms sank lower and lower; and while the beneficent side of their operation attached itself to Ramman, there remained to them only that side which was harmful and demoniac.

Iraq ca. 800-600 B.C. Bronze Purchased in New York, 1943 Oriental Institute Museum A25413 The demon Pazuzu stands but has a scorpion's body, feathered wings, avian legs, talons, and a lion face front and back. Pazuzu, the "king of the evil wind demons," was not unfriendly. As an enemy of the Lamashtu demon, Pazuzu is portrayed on amulets for childbirth. The ring at the top of this figurine suggests that it was such an amulet. https://oi.uchicago.edu/collections/highlights/highlights-collection-mesopotamia

Iraq
ca. 800-600 B.C.
Bronze
Purchased in New York, 1943
Oriental Institute Museum A25413
The demon Pazuzu stands but has a scorpion’s body, feathered wings, avian legs, talons, and a lion face front and back.
Pazuzu, the “king of the evil wind demons,” was an enemy of the Lamashtu demon. Pazuzu was portrayed on childbirth amulets. 
https://oi.uchicago.edu/collections/highlights/highlights-collection-mesopotamia

By degrees, the two aspects of their character came be separated. The higher gods came to be looked upon as the hearers of prayers and the bestowers of all good gifts; while the instruments of their vengeance an the inflictors of suffering and misery upon man were the inferior spirits of the lower sphere.

But the old conception, which derived both good and evil from the same source, did not wholly pass away. Evil never came to be regarded as the antagonist of good; it was rather the necessary complement and minister of good.

The supreme Baal thus preserved his omnipotence, while at the same time the ideas of pain and injustice were dissociated from him. In his combat with the dragon of chaos, Merodach summons the “evil wind” itself to his assistance; and in the legend of the assault of the seven wicked spirits upon the Moon, they are nevertheless called “the messengers of Anu their king.”

Nerra, the god of plague and destruction, smites the people of Babylonia on account of their sins by the command of the gods, like the angel with the drawn sword whom David saw standing over Jerusalem at the threshing-floor of Araunah; and in the story of the Deluge it is because of the wickedness of mankind that the flood is brought upon the earth.

The powers of darkness are degraded from their ancient position of independence, and either driven, like Tiamat, beyond the bounds of the created world, or reduced to the condition of ministers of divine wrath.

If we would realise how widely removed is this conception of them as the instruments of divine anger from that earlier view in which they are mere elemental powers, in themselves neither good nor evil, we cannot do better than compare these legendary compositions of the Semitic period with the old Accadian hymns that relate to the seven harmful spirits.”

A.H. Sayce, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, 5th ed., London, 1898, pp. 205-6.

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March 24, 2015

Civil Centralization = Religious Centralization

“Up to the last, Babylonian religion remained local. It was this local character that gives us the key to its origin and history, and explains much that would otherwise seem inconsistent and obscure.

The endeavour of Nabonidos to undermine its local character and to create a universal religion for a centralised Babylonia, was deeply resented by both priests and people, and ushered in the fall of the Babylonian empire. The fundamental religious idea which had underlain the empire had been the supremacy of Merodach, the god of Babylon, over all other gods, not the absorption of the deities of the subject nations into a common cult.

The policy of Nabonidos, therefore, which aimed at making Merodach, not primus inter pares, but absolute lord of captive or vassal deities, shocked the prejudices of the Babylonian people, and eventually proved fatal to its author.

In Cyrus, accordingly, the politic restorer of the captive populations and their gods to their old homes, the priests and worshippers of the local divinities saw the pious adherent of the ancient forms of faith, and the real favourite of Merodach himself.

Merodach had not consented to the revolutionary policy of Nabonidos; he had, on the contrary, sympathised with the wrongs of his brother gods in Babylonia and throughout the world, and had thus deserted his own city and the renegade monarch who ruled over it.

In all this there is a sharp contrast to the main religious conception which subsequently held sway over the Persian empire, as well as to that which was proclaimed by the prophets of Judah, and in the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah was carried out practically by the Jewish kings. The Ahura-mazda whom Dareios invokes on the rock of Behistun is not only the lord of the gods, he is a lord who will not brook another god by his side.

A penciled illustration of the Behistun Inscription. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Behistun_Inscription_Eger.png

A penciled illustration of the Behistun Inscription.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Behistun_Inscription_Eger.png

The supreme god of the Persian monarch is as absolute as the Persian monarch himself. In the Persian empire which was organised by Dareios, centralisation became for the first time a recognised and undisputed fact, and political centralisation went hand-in-hand with religious centralisation as well.

In Judah, a theocracy was established on the ruins of the old beliefs which had connected certain localities with certain forms of divinity, and which found such naive expression in the words of David to Saul (1 Samuel xxvi. 19): “They have driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord, saying, Go, serve other gods.”

The destruction of the high-places and the concentration of the worship of Yahveh in Jerusalem, was followed by the ever-increasing conviction that Yahveh was not only a jealous God who would allow none other gods besides Himself; He was also a God who claimed dominion over the whole world.”

A.H. Sayce, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, 5th ed., London, 1898, pp. 89-90.

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March 24, 2015

The Rise of Marduk

“In an inscription upon a clay cylinder brought from Babylonia seven years ago, Cyrus is made to declare that the overthrow of Nabonidos, the last independent Babylonian monarch, was due to the anger of Bel and the other gods.

Nabonidos had removed their images from their ancient sanctuaries, and had collected them together in the midst of Babylon. The priests maintained that the deed had aroused the indignation of Merodach, “the lord of the gods,” who had accordingly rejected Nabonidos, even as Saul was rejected from being king of Israel, and had sought for a ruler after his own heart.

It was “in wrath” that the deities had ”left their shrines when Nabonidos brought them into Babylon,” and had prayed Merodach, the divine patron of the imperial city, to “go round unto all men wherever might be their seats.”

Merodach sympathised with their wrongs; “he visited the men of Sumer and Accad whom he had sworn should be his attendants,” and “all lands beheld his friend.” He chose Cyrus, king of Elam, and destined him by name for the sovereignty of Chaldea.

Cyrus, whom the Hebrew prophet had already hailed as the Lord’s Anointed, was thus equally the favourite of the supreme Babylonian god.

“Merodach, the great lord, the restorer of his people,” we are told, “beheld with joy the deeds of his vicegerent who was righteous in hand and heart. To his city of Babylon he summoned his march, and he bade him take the road to Babylon; like a friend and a comrade he went at his side.”

A single battle decided the conflict: the Babylonians opened their gates, and “without fighting or battle,” Cyrus was led in triumph into the city of Babylon.

His first care was to show his gratitude towards the deities who had so signally aided him. Their temples were rebuilt, and they themselves were restored to their ancient seats.

With all the allowance that must be made for the flattery exacted by a successful conqueror, we must confess that this is a very remarkable document. It is written in the Babylonian language and in the Babylonian form of the cuneiform syllabary, and we may therefore infer that it was compiled by Babylonian scribes and intended for the perusal of Babylonian readers.

Yet we find the foreign conqueror described as the favourite of the national god, while the last native king is held up to reprobation as the dishonorer of the gods. It is impossible not to compare the similar treatment experienced by Nebuchadnezzar and the native Jewish kings respectively at the hands of Jeremiah.

The Jewish prophet saw in the Chaldean invader the instrument of the God of Judah, just as the Babylonian scribes saw in Cyrus the instrument of the god of Babylon; and the fall of the house of David is attributed, just as much as the fall of Nabonidos, to divine anger.”

A.H. Sayce, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, 5th ed., London, 1898, pp. 85-6.

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March 22, 2015

The Etymology of the Name “Moses”

“Josephos has preserved an extract from the Egyptian historian Manetho, which relates the Egyptian version of the story of the Exodus as it was told in the second century before our era. In this it is stated that the earlier name of Moses was Osarsiph, and that he had been priest of Heliopolis or On.

Here it is evident that Moses and Joseph have been confounded together. The name of Joseph, who married the daughter of the priest of On, has been decomposed into two elements, the first of which is the divine name Jeho, and this has been changed into its supposed Egyptian equivalent Osar or Osiris.

It is clear that, whatever might have been his opinion about the name of Joseph, Manetho had no doubt that that of Moses was purely Israelitish. It was not until he had become the Israelitish lawgiver and had ceased to be an Egyptian priest that Osarsiph took the name of Moses.

But Moses finds no satisfactory etymology in the pages of the Hebrew lexicon. It stands alone among Hebrew proper names, like Aaron and David. We do not hear of any other persons who have borne the name. If, therefore, it is Semitic, it must belong to an older stratum of Semitic nomenclature than that preserved to us in the Old Testament. We must look to other branches of the Semitic stock for its explanation.

There is only one other branch of the Semitic family whose records are earlier than those of the Hebrews. Arabic literature begins long after the Christian era, when Jewish and Greek and even Christian names and ideas had penetrated into the heart of the Arabian peninsula.

The Arabic language, moreover, belongs to a different division of the Semitic family of speech from that to which Hebrew belongs. To compare Arabic and Hebrew together is like comparing Latin with modern German. There is, however, one Semitic language which has the closest affinities to Hebrew, and this is also the language of which we possess records older than those of the Hebrew Scriptures. I need hardly say that I am referring to Assyrian.

Now the Assyrian equivalent of the Hebrew Mosheh, “Moses,” would be mâsu, and, as it happens, mâsu is a word which occurs not unfrequently in the inscriptions. It was a word of Accadian origin, but since the days of Sargon of Accad had made itself so thoroughly at home in the language of the Semitic Babylonians as to count henceforth as a genuinely Semitic term.

Mâsu signified as nearly as possible all that we mean by the word “hero.” As such, it was an epithet applied to more than one divinity; there was one god more especially for whom it became a name.

This god was the deity sometimes called Adar by Assyrian scholars, sometimes Nin-ip, but whose ordinary name among the Assyrians is still a matter of uncertainty. He was a form of the Sun-god, originally denoting the scorching sun of mid-day. He thus became invested with the sterner attributes of the great luminary of day, and was known to his worshippers as “the warrior of the gods.”

The title of Mâsu, however, was not confined to Adar. It was given also to another solar deity, Merodach, the tutelar god of Babylon and the antagonist of the dragon of chaos, and was shared by him with Nergal, whose special function it was to guard and defend the world of the dead.

But Nergal himself was but the sun of night, the solar deity, that is to say, after he had accomplished his daily work in the bright world above and had descended to illuminate for a time the world below.”

A.H. Sayce, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, 5th ed., London, 1898, pp. 45-7.

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March 21, 2015

Sargon

“Sargon himself was a monarch whom both Accadian and Semite delighted to honour. Myths surrounded his infancy as they surrounded the infancy of Kyros, and popular legend saw in him the hero-prince who had been deserted in childhood and brought up among squalid surroundings, until the time came that he should declare himself in his true character and receive his rightful inheritance.

He was born, it was said, of an unknown father; as Mars had wooed the mother of the founder of Rome, so some god whom later tradition feared to name had wooed the mother of the founder of the first Semitic empire. She brought forth her first-born “in a secret place” by the side of the Euphrates, and placed him in a basket of rushes which she daubed with bitumen and entrusted to the waters of the river.

The story reminds us of Perseus launched upon the sea with his mother Danae in a boat, of Romulus and Remus exposed to the fury of the Tiber, and still more of Moses in his ark of bulrushes upon the Nile. The Euphrates refused to drown its future lord, and bore the child in safety to Akki “the irrigator,” the representative of the Accadian peasants who tilled the laud for their Semitic masters. In this lowly condition and among a subjugated race Sargon was brought up.

Akki took compassion on the little waif, and reared him as if he had been his own son. As he grew older he was set to till the garden and cultivate the fruit-trees, and while engaged in this humble work attracted the love of the goddess Istar.

Then came the hour of his deliverance from servile employment, and, like David, he made his way to a throne. For long years he ruled the black-headed race of Accad; he rode through subjugated countries in chariots of bronze, and crossed the Persian Gulf to the sacred isle of Dilmun.

The very name the people gave him was a proof of his predestined rise to greatness. Sargon was not his real title. This was Sarganu, which a slight change of pronunciation altered into Sargina, a word that conveyed the meaning of “constituted” or “predestined” “king” to his Accadian subjects.

It was the form assumed in their mouths by the Semitic Sarru-kinu, and thus reminded them of the Sun-god Tammuz, the youthful bridegroom of Istar who was addressed as ablu kinu or “only son,” as well as of Nebo the “very son” (ablu kinu) of thc god Merodach.

Sargina, however, was not the only name by which the king was known to them. They called him also Dádil or Dádal, a title which the Semitic scribes afterwards explained to mean “Sargon, the king of constituted right (sar-kinti), devisor of constituted law, deviser of prosperity,” though its true signification was rather “the very wise.”

A.H. Sayce, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, 5th ed., London, 1898, pp. 26-8.

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February 27, 2015

Semites vs. Sumerians

“Each new discovery of cuneiform tablets elicits a wave of publications asserting biblical ‘parallels,’ many of them uncertain and farfetched, even when a millennium or more may have elapsed between the tablets and the relevant portion of the Bible.

The biblical scholar M. Dahood, for example, saw parallels betwen the Bible and cuneiform tablets from Ebla in northern Syria, which date to approximately 1300 years before the kingdom of David. E. A. Speiser insisted that the ‘patriarchal age’ of the Bible was reflected in tablets from Nuzi in northern Mesopotamia (early fourteenth century BCE), although most of his analogies have been discarded in recent years.

The discovery of prophetic documents at Mari (eighteenth century BCE) attracted much discussion, as did comparison of ancient treaties with the biblical covenant.

A subtler interconnection between the worlds of the Hebrews and of the Babylonians was provided by what might be called ‘Pan-Semitism,’ the idea that the Semitic peoples had certain innate mental and emotional characteristics and limitations in common that conditioned their religious values.

A concise statement of this view, which is traceable, for example, to the works of the influential French thinker Ernest Renan, will be found in S. A. Cook’s contribution ‘The Semites, Temperament and Thought’ in the Cambridge Ancient History (1924), chapter V.

Cook held that Semitic thought was verbal rather than visual, emotional rather than systematic or speculative, and so could not have created such a grand astral system of beliefs as the Pan-Babylonianists had imagined underlay modern Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

To Pan-Semitists, Greece, with its alleged superior visual and speculative thought, albeit comparatively shallow religion, was as essential to understanding Christianity as was Judaism.

Scholars wrote of the ‘Hebrew’ and the ‘Greek’ element in Christianity and European culture. The Pan-Semitists bracketed Judaism, Islam and Babylonia as ‘Semitic’ in type, but not Christianity. This left the place of the Sumerians in the equation Babylonian = Semitic difficult to define.

The early twentieth-century historian Eduard Meyer, for example, therefore argued that the Semites were the original inhabitants of Mesopotamia and the Sumerians were later invaders, thereby maintaining the originally ‘Semitic’ character of Mesopotamian civilization.

In the period after World War I, some scholars tried to distinguish ‘Sumerian’ from ‘Semitic’ thought in Mesopotamian culture. Thus discussion of the relations between Babylonia and the Bible proceeded in an atmosphere charged with faith, scepticism and anti-Semitism.”

Benjamin R. Foster, “Mesopotamian Religion and the Bible,” John R. Hinnells, ed., A Handbook of Ancient Religions, 2007, pp. 208-9.

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February 27, 2015

Assyro-Babylonian Studies in Modern Context

“Mesopotamian religion has been of interest to biblical scholars since the discovery in 1872 by George Smith of a flood story in an Assyrian tablet. This proved that non-biblical ancient Near Eastern documents contained material directly pertinent to the Bible. To some thinkers, the uniqueness and integrity of the Bible could therefore no longer be maintained.

Leading philologists, especially in Germany, such as Hugo Winckler, Hermann Gunkel, Heinrich Zimmern and Friedrich Delitzsch, staked out different and sometimes contradictory positions in what became known as ‘Pan-Babylonianism’ or the ‘Astral-mythological’ school. The basic tenet of this group was that the civilization of Israel was essentially Babylonian in origin, including its religious ideas, such as monotheism.

Winckler, for example, argued that Joshua, Saul and David were actually Babylonian astral deities. Zimmern went on to suggest that Marduk was a forerunner of Jesus. Peter Jensen, a distinguished Assyriologist, argued that Abraham, Jesus and John the Baptist, for example, were borrowed from Babylonian mythology and that the Gilgamesh epic, to him a kind of astral saga, was the basis for the New Testament and the Koran.

Outside of Germany more moderate positions were taken, but still implying a strong cultural and religious dependency of Israel upon Babylonia. The extravagant claims of the Pan-Babylonianists eventually collapsed and are not taken seriously today.

A broader and more moderate view held that Babylonia was part of the ancient Near Eastern context of the Hebrew Bible (Lambert 1988). Committed Christian and Jewish scholars, for example, often put the Bible first, so to them ancient Near Eastern ‘parallels’ helped to clarify or even ‘prove’ the validity of the Bible because they were independent witness to biblical passages.

Mesopotamian studies, especially in the United States, became effectively an adjunct of biblical studies. In the period 1880–1940 the majority of leading American scholars in the discipline were Protestant clergymen, very much interested in possible biblical connections.

To some scholars, such as W. F. Albright, the ‘biblical world’ came to include the whole of the ancient Near East. There was therefore no need to separate Mesopotamian studies from biblical studies; they were aspects of the same agenda. In this spirit, Albright could entitle one of his most popular books From the Stone Age to Christianity (Albright 1940).

According to this, Mesopotamian religion was a ‘preparatio’ for the more profound religion of Israel, itself a preparation for Christianity. Today, because of the accumulation of new material, a panoramic grasp of the languages and civilizations of the ancient Near East such as Albright enjoyed is impossible to attain, but Albright’s fundamental approach remains influential, especially among conservative Christian scholars.”

Benjamin R. Foster, “Mesopotamian Religion and the Bible,” John R. Hinnells, ed., A Handbook of Ancient Religions, 2007, pp. 207-8.

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January 13, 2015

Prophecies of Isaiah

” … It is believed that Judah and other disaffected States were dealt with about this time. Manasseh had succeeded Hezekiah at Jerusalem when but a boy of twelve years. He appears to have come under the influence of heathen teachers.

For he built up again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove, as did Ahab king of Israel; and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them….

And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards: he wrought much wickedness in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger.

And he set a graven image of the grove that he had made in the house, of which the Lord said to David, and to Solomon his son, In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever.

Isaiah ceased to prophesy after Manasseh came to the throne. According to Rabbinic traditions he was seized by his enemies and enclosed in the hollow trunk of a tree, which was sawn through.

Other orthodox teachers appear to have been slain also. “Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another.”

It is possible that there is a reference to Isaiah’s fate in an early Christian lament regarding the persecutions of the faithful:

“Others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword.”

There is no Assyrian evidence regarding the captivity of Manasseh.

“Wherefore the Lord brought upon them (the people of Judah) the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon. And when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prayed unto him: and he was intreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom.”

It was, however, in keeping with the policy of Esarhaddon to deal in this manner with an erring vassal. The Assyrian records include Manasseh of Judah (MenasÍ of the city of Yaudu) with the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, Ashdod, Gaza, Byblos, &c, and “twenty-two kings of Khatti” as payers of tribute to Esarhaddon, their overlord. Hazael of Arabia was conciliated by having restored to him his gods which Sennacherib had carried away.”

Donald A. Mackenzie, Myths of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915, pp. 473-4.

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January 7, 2015

Magical Raiment

” … Some bodies which were laid in Sumerian graves were wrapped up in reed matting, a custom which suggests that the reeds afforded protection or imparted magical powers. Magical ceremonies were performed in Babylonian reed huts.

As we have seen, Ea revealed the “purpose” of the gods, when they resolved to send a flood, by addressing the reed hut in which Pir-napishtim lay asleep. Possibly it was believed that the dead might also have visions in their dreams which would reveal the “purpose” of demons who were preparing to attack them.

In Syria it was customary to wrap the dead in a sheep skin. As priests and gods were clad in the skins of animals from which their powers were derived, it is probable that the dead were similarly supposed to receive inspiration in their skin coverings.

The Highland seer was wrapped in a bull’s skin and left all night beside a stream so as to obtain knowledge of the future. This was a form of the Taghairm ceremony, which is referred to by Scott in his Lady of the Lake.

The belief in the magical influence of sacred clothing gave origin to the priestly robes. When David desired to ascertain what Saul intended to do he said, “Bring hither the ephod.” Then he came to know that his enemy had resolved to attack Keilah.

Elisha became a prophet when he received Elijah’s mantle.”

Donald A. Mackenzie, Myths of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915.

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December 17, 2014

Bodhisattvas

“Occasionally even the mystical illumination produced by the effluence of the divine power from one sefirah to another is designated as sod ha-‘ibbur. In general, the kabbalists of Gerona restricted the transmigration of souls, on the basis of Job 33:29, to three rebirths following the first entry of the soul into the human body, though they admitted the existence of exceptional cases.

An important detail has been transmitted from the school of Nahmanides. In the famous disputation with the ex-Jew Paulus Christiani, the monk invokes the well-known aggadah according to which the Messiah was born at the hour of the destruction of the Temple.

To this Nahmanides replied: “Either this aggadah is not true, or else it has another explanation according to the mysteries of the sages.” Although the wording of this reply clearly points to kabbalistic teaching, it has not been understood until now.

Nahmanides does indeed give a plausible—literal and exoteric—explanation of the aggadah, to the effect that the Messiah was currently biding his time in the terrestrial paradise, but his true opinion can be gleaned from the questions of his disciple Shesheth des Mercadell concerning metempsychosis, where this aggadah figures as a proof text for this doctrine.

What the aggadah means to say is, therefore, that since the destruction of the Temple the soul of the Messiah is in the process of ‘ibbur. On this point, Nahmanides and his school depart from the older idea of the Bahir section 126, according to which the soul of the Messiah does not inhabit a human body before.

On the other hand, this text already exhibits the transition to the doctrine, first attested shortly after Nahmanides, to the effect that the name of Adam is an abbreviation (ADaM) of the three forms of existence of this soul in Adam, David, and the Messiah.

This would imply that the Messiah has to pass through various stages of incarnation so that his essence “always lives among us” in one form or another. The idea that also arose shortly after Nahmanides and according to which “soul sparks” can fly off from a central soul and thus pass simultaneously through many bodies is not yet attested in Gerona.

This doctrine was also used in the school of Solomon ibn Adreth in order to eliminate the difficulty that would arise at the resurrection of the dead for the different bodies through which one single soul had passed. The different bodies of the resurrected would be inhabited by sparks of the same soul, thus providing a solution to the problem.

According to Azriel there also exist souls of such exalted rank that they do not return to the world of bodies, but remain in the “world of life” and thus do not participate at all, or only in a purely spiritual sense, in the resurrection.

In this manner the kabbalists seem to move, at least as regards a privileged category of superior souls, in the direction of a denial of bodily resurrection—precisely the view for which the radical Maimonideans were so bitterly rebuked. It should be added, however, that this idea appears only in strictly esoteric contexts describing the eschatological progress of the souls after their departure from the terrestrial world and was never formulated in a dogmatic manner.”

Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 459-60.

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November 26, 2014

Fallen Spirits

“The same symbolism occurs in the Bahir, but without any antinomian overtones. The souls finally return home to the “house of the father,” whence the king’s son had taken them in order to bring them to his bride. This is reminiscent of the interpretation suggested by many earlier researchers for the gnostic “Hymn of the Soul,” an interpretation that evinces a tendency similar to that with which kabbalists—whether they were historically correct or not— read the symbolism of their sources. In fact, the “house of the father” appears there in a similar context.

The further exposition of this theme in sections 126-127 is rather curious. Once again reinterpreting a talmudic dictum, this text explains that the Messiah can come only when all the souls “in the body of the man” are exhausted and have ended their migration.

“Only then may the ‘new [souls]’ come out, and only then is the son of David allowed to be born. How is that? Because his soul comes forth new among the others.”

The soul of the Messiah is therefore not subject to migration. Here the kabbalistic doctrine evinces a characteristic note of its own. We are not dealing with a reminiscence from earlier doctrines of reincarnation such as are known to us in certain Judéo-Christian doctrines concerning the true prophet, as in the Pseudo-Clementines, which also exercised considerable influence upon corresponding idea among Shiite sects in Islam. There the soul of Adam, the true prophet, traverses the aeon, this world, in many shapes until it finally finds repose in the appearance of the Messiah.

Later on, the kabbalists themselves developed this idea independently, in their assumed chain of reincarnations— Adam-David-Messiah; this doctrine, however, is not known before the end of the thirteenth century. Could this thesis of the Bahir have come into being in the Orient, perhaps even in conscious opposition to certain current ideas? Did it develop completely independent of them? It is difficult to answer these questions.

The German Hasidim know nothing at all of the transmigration of souls and the ideas associated with it, as is shown by the detailed work of Eleazar of Worms on the soul, Hokhmath ha-Nefesh. According to the pessimistic view of the Cathars, all the souls in this world are nothing but fallen spirits. Here, too, there is a distinct contrast to the doctrine of the Bahir, which considers the descent of “new” souls, at any rate, as possible and determined by the good deeds of Israel.”

Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 190-1.

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November 22, 2014

The Shekhinah is Bakol

“The pseudepigraphic disguise that lends it the appearance of an ancient teaching cannot deceive us concerning the true character of this dictum. “The rabbis have taught: Kol, Abraham’s daughter, is not dead. She still exists, and whoever sees her has made a great find, as it is said [Prov. 8:17]: and those who seek me will find me.”

By means of this verse from Proverbs, the daughter is clearly identified as the hokhmah or Sophia, which would be in accord with the symbolism of the Shekhinah in the Bahir, itself related to the mysticism of the Sophia (see following).

It is quite possible that the author of this dictum, preserved only in the Yemenite midrash, knew of an interpretation similar to the one that we read in the Bahir, and which must therefore already have been known in the Orient. But it is just as possible that he produced a similar interpretation quite independently stimulated by the desire to allegorize a strange phrase.

The tradition of the German Hasidim, around 1250, also shows familiarity with older materials that dealt with the interpretation of the Bakol of Genesis 24:1, though in a direction somewhat different from that taken in the Bahir. In connection with this same verse, Ephraim ben Shimshon (ca. 1240) cited a dictum of the adepts of esotericism, ba ‘ale ha-sod, according to which this blessing consisted in God’s charge to the “Prince of the Divine Presence” to grant Abraham’s every wish.

The role of the Shekhinah in the Book Bahir is here assumed by the angel Yahoel, the oldest name of Metatron, prince of the angels, whose relation to the patriarch is not only known from the Apocalypse of Abraham (early second century C.E.), but was also familiar to the German Hasidim of the twelfth century.

However, the particular exegesis relating the word Bakol to Yahoel probably originated in Germany, for it is based on the gematria method of interpretation practiced there at that time.

Whether there is a relation between the Bahir’s reference to the Shekhinah and the idea of the universal presence of the Shekhinah as current at the time particularly among the German Hasidim I would not venture to decide. Such a connection, if it exists, would rest upon a punning interpretation of the Talmud: “The Shekhinah is in every place” (Baba Bathra 25a). By abridging this phrase to shekhinah bakol, “the Shekhinah is in all things,” an association is suggested with the bakol in Genesis 24:1: the Shekhinah is Bakol.

Another example of such a reinterpretation can be found in section 126. The Talmud relates a dictum of the Babylonian amora R. Assi: “The son of David will not come until all the souls in the ‘body’ are exhausted” (Yebamoth 62a, 63b). Here “body” means the storehouse of the préexistent, unborn souls. This traditional interpretation was evidently also known to the Bahir. But there this dictum is further interpreted as a cue for the doctrine of the transmigration of souls: the “body” mentioned there would be the body of man, through which the souls must wander.”

Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, pp. 88-90.

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November 17, 2014

Gabriel, the Angel, on the Pearl

“And again, there shall be unto thee a sign that the Saviour shall come from thy seed, and that He shall deliver thee with thy fathers and thy seed after thee by His coming. Your salvation was created in the belly of Adam in the form of a Pearl before Eve. And when He created Eve out of the rib He brought her to Adam, and said unto them, ‘Multiply you from the belly of Adam.’ The Pearl did not go out into Cain or Abel, but into the third that went forth from the belly of Adam, and it entered into the belly of Seth.”

“And then passing from him that Pearl went into those who were the firstborn, and came to Abraham. And it did not go from Abraham into his firstborn Ishmael, but it tarried and came into Isaac the pure. And it did not go into his firstborn, the arrogant Esau, but it went into Jacob the lowly one. And it did not enter from him into his firstborn, the erring Reuben, but into Judah, the innocent one. And it did not go forth from Judah until four sinners had been born, but it came to Fares (Perez), the patient one.”

“And from him this Pearl went to the firstborn until it came into the belly of Jesse, the father of thy father. And then it waited until six men of wrath had been born, and after that it came to the seventh, David, [David was the eighth of Jesse’s sons] thy innocent and humble father; for God hateth the arrogant and proud, and loveth the innocent and humble. And then it waited in the loins of thy father until five erring fools had been born, when it came into thy loins because of thy wisdom and understanding.”

“And then the Pearl waited, and it did not go forth into thy firstborn. For those good men of his country neither denied Him nor crucified Him, like Israel thy people; when they saw Him Who wrought miracles, Who was to be born from the Pearl, they believed on Him when they heard the report of Him. And the Pearl did not go forth into thy youngest son ‘Adrami. For those good men neither crucified Him nor denied Him when they saw the working of miracles and wonders by Him that was to be born from the Pearl, and afterwards they believed in Him through His disciples.”

“Now the Pearl, which is to be your salvation, went forth from thy belly and entered into the belly of ‘Iyorbe’am (Rehoboam) thy son, because of the wickedness of Israel thy people, who in their denial and in their wickedness crucified Him. But if He had not been crucified He could not have been your salvation. For He was crucified without sin, and He rose [again] without corruption. And for the sake of this He went down to you into Sheol, and tore down its walls, that He might deliver you and bring you out, and show mercy upon all of you.”

“Ye in whose bellies the Pearl shall be carried shall be saved with your wives, and none of you shall be destroyed, from your father Adam unto him that shall come, thy kinsman ‘Eyakem (Joachim), and from Eve thy mother, the wife of Adam, to Noah and his wife Tarmiza, to Tara (Terah) and his wife ‘Aminya, and to Abraham and his wife Sara (Sarah), and to Isaac and his wife Rebka (Rebecca), and to Jacob and his wife Leya (Leah), and to Yahuda and his bride Te’emar (Tamar), and to thy father and his wife Bersabeh (Bathsheba), and to thyself and Tarbana thy wife, and to Rehoboam thy son and his wife ‘Amisa, and to Iyo’akem (Joachim) thy kinsman, who is to come, and his wife Hanna.”

“None of you who shall have carried the Pearl shall be destroyed, and whether it be your men or your women, those who shall have carried the Pearl shall not be destroyed. For the Pearl shall be carried by the men who shall be righteous, and the women who have carried the Pearl shall not be destroyed, for they shall become pure through that Pearl, for it is holy and pure, and by it they shall be made holy and pure; and for its sake and for the sake of Zion He hath created the whole world.”

“Zion hath taken up her abode with thy firstborn and she shall be the salvation of the people of Ethiopia for ever; and the Pearl shall be carried in the belly of ‘Ayorbe’am (Rehoboam) thy son, and shall be the saviour of all the world. And when the appointed time hath come this Pearl shall be born of thy seed, for it is exceedingly pure, seven times purer than the sun. And the Redeemer shall come from the seat of His Godhead, and shall dwell upon her, and shall put on her flesh, and straightway thou thyself shalt announce to her what my Lord and thy Lord speaketh to me.”

“I am Gabriel the Angel, the protector of those who shall carry the Pearl from the body of Adam even to the belly of Hanna, so that I may keep from servitude and pollution you wherein the Pearl shall dwell. And Michael hath been commanded to direct and keep Zion wheresoever she goeth, and Uriel shall direct and keep the wood of the thicket [Compare Gen. xxii, 13] which shall be the Cross of the Saviour. And when thy people in their envy have crucified Him, they shall rush upon His Cross because of the multitude of miracles that shall take place through it, and they shall be put to shame when they see its wonders.”

“And in the last times a descendant of thy son ‘Adramis shall take the wood of the Cross, the third [means of] salvation that shall be sent upon the earth. The Angel Michael is with Zion, with David thy firstborn, who hath taken the throne of David thy father. And I am with the pure Pearl for him that shall reign for ever, with Rehoboam thy second son; and the Angel Uriel is with thy youngest son ‘Adrami[s]. This have I told thee, and thou shalt not make thy heart to be sad because of thine own salvation and that of thy son.”

And when Solomon had heard these words, his strength came [back] to him on his bed, and he prostrated himself before the Angel of God, and said, “I give thanks unto the Lord, my Lord and thy Lord, O thou radiant being of the spirit, because thou hast made me to hear a word which filleth me with gladness, and because He doth not cut off my soul from the inheritance of my father because of my sin, and because my repentance hath been accepted after mine affliction, and because He hath regarded my tears, and hath heard my cry of grief, and hath looked upon my affliction, and hath not let me die in my grief, but hath made me to rejoice before my soul shall go forth from my body.”

“Henceforward [the thought of] dying shall not make me sorrowful, and I will love death as I love life. Henceforward I will drink of the bitter cup of death as if it were honey, and henceforward I will love the grave as if it were an abode of costly gems. And when I have descended and have been thrust down deep into Sheol because of my sins, I shall not suffer grief, because I have heard the word which hath made me glad. And when I have gone down into the lowest depth of the deepest deep of Sheol, because of my sins, what will it matter to me?”

“And if He crush me to powder in His hand and scatter me to the ends of the earth and to the winds because of my sins, it will not make me sorrowful, because I have heard the word that hath made me to rejoice, and God hath not cut my soul off from the inheritance of my fathers. And my soul shall be with the soul of David my father, and with the soul of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob my fathers. And the Saviour shall come and shall bring us out from Sheol with all my fathers, and my kinsmen, old and young.”

“And as for my children, they shall have upon earth three mighty angels to protect them. I have found the kingdom of the heavens, and the kingdom of the earth. Who is like unto God, the Merciful, Who showeth mercy to His handiwork and glorifieth it, Who forgiveth the sins of the sinners and Who doth not blot out the memorial of the penitent? For His whole Person is forgiveness, and His whole Person is mercy, and to Him belongeth praise.” Amen.”

E.A. Wallis Budge, The Kebra Nagast, p. 111-4. [1922], at sacred-texts.com

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September 27, 2014

The Free Gift of the Water of Life

“Come! Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.”

—Revelation 22:17. (Unable to locate a precise, exact translation. Multiple versions are close, but none are as good as this version, which remains unattributed.)

New International Version:

“16 I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.”

“17 The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.”

“18 I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophesy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll.”

—Revelation 22:16-18.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+22%3A16-18&version=NIV

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August 27, 2014

Misogyny in the Kebra Nagast

87. HOW THE NOBLES (OR GOVERNORS) OF ETHIOPIA TOOK THE OATH

“And the Queen said unto her nobles: “Speak ye now, and swear ye by the heavenly Zion that ye will not make women queens or set them upon the throne of the kingdom of Ethiopia, and that no one except the male seed of David, the son of Solomon the King, shall ever reign over Ethiopia, and that ye will never make women queens.” And all the nobles of the king’s house swore, and the governors, and the councillors, and the administrators.

And she made Elmeyas and ‘Azaryas (Azariah) the chief of the priests and the chief of the deacons, and they made the kingdom anew, and the sons of the mighty men of Israel performed the Law, together with their King David, in the Tabernacle of Witness, and the kingdom was made anew. And the hearts of the people shone at the sight of Zion, the Tabernacle of the Law of God, and the people of Ethiopia cast aside their idols, and they worshipped their Creator, the God Who had made them. And the men of Ethiopia forsook their works, and loved the righteousness and justice that God loveth. They forsook their former fornications, and chose purity in the camp that was in the sight of the heavenly Zion. They forsook divination and magic, and chose repentance and tears for God’s sake. They forsook augury by means of birds and the use of omens, and they returned to hearken unto God and to make sacrifice unto Him. They forsook the pleasures of the gods who were devils, and chose the service and praise of God.”

–E.A.W. Budge, The Kebra Nagast, 1922, p. 148.

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August 26, 2014

Death of Solomon

67. CONCERNING THE LAMENTATION OF SOLOMON

“And now I will tell you how he died. His days were sixty [years], when a sickness attacked him. And his days were not as the days of David his father, but they were twenty [years] shorter than his, because he was under the sway of women and worshipped idols. And the angel of death came and smote him [in] the foot, and he wept and […] as he spake these words tears streamed down his face, and he searched for his napkin.

And the Angel of God went down to him and said unto him, “Hearken thou unto what I shall say unto thee, for the sake of which God hath sent me. From being a wise man thou hast turned thyself into a fool, and from being a rich man thou hast turned thyself into a poor man, and from being a king thou hast turned thyself into a man of no account, through transgressing the commandment of God.

And the beginning of thy evil was the taking of many wives by thee, for through this thou didst transgress His Law, and His decree, and the ordinance of God which Moses wrote and gave to you, to Israel, that ye should not marry wives from alien peoples but only from your kinsfolk and the house of your fathers, that your seed might be pure and holy and that God might dwell with you. But thou didst hold lightly the Law of God, thinking that thou wast wiser than God, and that thou wouldst get very many male children.

But the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men, and He hath only given thee three sons: the one who carried off thy glory into an alien land, and made the habitation of God to be in Ethiopia; the one who is lame of foot, who shall sit upon thy throne for the people of Israel, the son of the kin of thy kin from Tarbana, of the house of Judah; and the one who is the son of a Greek woman, a handmaiden, who in the last days shall destroy Rehoboam and all thy kin of Israel; and this land shall be his because he believeth in Him that shall come, the Saviour.

And the tribe of Rehoboam, and those who are left of Israel, shall crucify Him that shall come, the Redeemer, and the memory of you shall be blotted out from the earth. For they shall think out a plan which they shall not be able to establish, and He will be wroth with them and blot out the memorial of them.”

–E.A.W. Budge, The Kebra Nagast, 1922, pp. 108-9.

 

 

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August 25, 2014

The Children of Eve

“And she tied a scarlet thread on the middle of the door of [the house of] her gods, and she brought three locusts and set them in the house of her gods. And she said unto Solomon, “Come to me without breaking the scarlet thread, bend thyself and kill these locusts before me and pull out their necks”; and he did so. And she said unto him, “I will henceforward do thy will, for thou hast sacrificed to my gods and hast worshipped them.” Now he had done thus because of his oath, so that he might not break his oath which she had made him to swear, even though he knew that it was an offence (or, sin) to enter into the house of her gods.

Now God had commanded the children of Israel, saying, “Ye shall not marry strange women that ye may not be corrupted by them through their gods, and through the wickedness of their works and the sweetness of their voices; for they make soft the hearts of simple young men by the sweetness of their gentle voices, and by the beauty of their forms they destroy the wisdom of the foolish man.”

Who was wiser than Solomon? yet he was seduced by a woman. Who was more righteous than David? yet he was seduced by a woman. Who was stronger than Samson? yet he was seduced by a woman. Who was handsomer than ‘Amnon? yet he was seduced by Tamar the daughter of David his father. And Adam was the first creation of God, yet he was seduced by Eve his wife. And through that seduction death was created for every created thing. And this seduction of men by women was caused by Eve, for we are all the children of Eve.”

The Kebra Nagast, by E.A.W. Budge, [1922], pg. 104, at sacred-texts.com

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