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A Lot of Bull: El, Kronos, and the Sin of Jeroboam

Scholar Amar Annus has shown that the name of the old gods of the Greeks, the Titans, was derived from the name of an ancient Amorite tribe, the Tidanu. The word behind the name Tidan (sometimes transliterated into English as “Ditanu”) is the Akkadian word ditânu, which means “bison,” or “bull” (and probably refers to the aurochs, an ancient species of very large wild cattle from which modern domesticated breeds descend). This is more evidence that the story of the Titans originated in Mesopotamia and not with Indo-Europeans.
That’s not all. Because Kronos, king of the Titans, and El, creator-god of the Canaanites, were identified as one and the same by the people of the ancient world, we can make a good case that the name Kronos probably had a Semitic origin, too:
The bovid sense of the form Ditanu/Didanu is particularly intriguing in view of other tauromorph elements in the tradition. Thus, the prominent Titan Kronos was later identified with El, who is given the epithet tr, “Bull”, in Ugaritic and biblical literature. Apart from this explicit allusion, we may well ask whether the name El, (Akkadian and Ugaritic ilu) does not already itself have a bovine sense. … Does it perhaps mean “Bull”, (perhaps more generically “male animal”), so that the epithetal title tr is in effect a redundant gloss on it? …
Furthermore, the name Kronos may well carry the same nuance, since it may be construed as referring to bovine horns (Akkadian, Ugaritic qarnu, Hebrew qeren), which feature prominently in divine iconography in the Near East. (Emphasis added)
It’s interesting enough to see the additional link between Kronos and El through the bull imagery of their names, but did you notice that there are references to “Bull El” in biblical literature?
In the book of Hosea, the prophet recalled the idolatry of Jeroboam, the man who led the rebellion against Solomon’s son, Rehoboam:
I have spurned your calf, O Samaria.
My anger burns against them.
How long will they be incapable of innocence?
For it is from Israel;
a craftsman made it;
it is not God.
The calf of Samaria
shall be broken to pieces. (Hosea 8:5–6, ESV; emphasis added)
The phrase, “For it is from Israel,” comes from the Masoretic Hebrew text, kî miyyiśrāʾēl, which literally means, “for from Israel.” That doesn’t make sense. But separating the characters differently yields kî mî šōr ʾēl, which changes verse 6 to this:
For who is Bull El?
a craftsman made it;
it is not God.
The calf of Samaria
shall be broken to pieces. (Hosea 8:6, ESV, modified; emphasis added)
That’s a huge difference! Jeroboam set up worship sites to rival the Temple for political reasons. If the northern tribes continued to travel to Jerusalem for the feasts, they might eventually switch their loyalty back to the House of David. Apparently, Jeroboam felt that the worship of El was close enough to do the trick. After all, hadn’t Yahweh revealed Himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai? Hence, the golden calves at Bethel and Dan.
Since El was Kronos, king of the Titans, then he was also Shemihazah, leader of the rebellious Watchers on Mount Hermon thousands of years earlier. Like the Titans of the Greeks, the Watchers had been confined to Tartarus (see 2 Peter 2:4; the word rendered “hell” in English bibles is the Greek word tartaroo), a place that was separate and distinct from Hades. By erecting the golden calves, Jeroboam drew the northern tribes back into the worship of a god who introduced the pre-Flood world to the occult knowledge that Babylon was so proud of preserving.
This crossed a big red line, and God made it clear that it was completely unacceptable. He directed the prophet Ahijah to give this message to Jeroboam:
You have done evil above all who were before you and have gone and made for yourself other gods and metal images, provoking me to anger, and have cast me behind your back, therefore behold, I will bring harm upon the house of Jeroboam and will cut off from Jeroboam every male, both bond and free in Israel, and will burn up the house of Jeroboam, as a man burns up dung until it is all gone. (1 Kings 14:9–10, ESV)
By reading “Bull El” in Hosea 8:6, instead of “Israel,” the verse becomes a polemic directed not just at the idols of Jeroboam, but against the creator-god of the Canaanites as well. Frankly, it fits the context of the passage better than the common English rendering. And this isn’t the only place in the Bible where that substitution may come closer to the Hebrew original.
The epithet has also been identified recently in a perceptive study of Deuteronomy 32:8 by Joosten, in which he proposed a similar consonantal regrouping in the expression bny yśrʾl (bĕnê yiśrāʾēl) to read (bĕnê šōr ʾēl). Since LXX (ἀγγέλων θεοῶ, some mss υἱων θεοῶ), and one Qumran text, 4QDeutj (lmspr bny ʾlhym), already read a divine reference here, rather than the “Israel” of MT, this proposal has much to commend it:
yaṣṣēb gĕbulōt ʿammîm he set up the boundaries of the nations
lĕmisparbĕnê šōr ʾēl in accordance with the number of the sons of Bull El. (Emphasis added)
As noted earlier, most English translations render Deuteronomy 32:8 “number of the sons of Israel.” A few, such as the ESV, follow the Septuagint (“angels of God” or “divine sons”) and the text of Deuteronomy found among the Dead Sea scrolls (“sons of Elohim”). What scholars Simon and Nicolas Wyatt propose is reading the Hebrew as “sons of Bull El” instead at the end of the verse. And to be honest, it fits.
That may sound like we’re playing fast and loose with the text. But note: In the Genesis 10 Table of Nations, there are seventy names, and in Canaanite religious texts, El had seventy sons.
Coincidence? No, it is not. I’ll explain next month.

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Mount Hermon, Mecca, and Mystery Babylon

The Antichrist’s church of the last days is called “Babylon the great,” but Mystery Babylon is the name that’s stuck. After two thousand years, scholars still can’t agree on what it represents. Here’s what we know: The Babylon of John’s vision is a religion and a city. Ezekiel gave us important clues that modern prophecy scholars have missed because they haven’t considered the history and religion of the people who lived in the ancient Near East.

Chapter 27 of Ezekiel is a lament over the city of Tyre. The great trading city was founded by the Phoenician descendants of Amorites who settled along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. This lament has a clear parallel in Revelation. It not only cements the connection between the visions of Ezekiel and John, it shows that the iniquity of the Amorites is still with us.

The word of the Lord came to me: “Now you, son of man, raise a lamentation over Tyre, and say to Tyre, who dwells at the entrances to the sea, merchant of the peoples to many coastlands, thus says the Lord God:

“O Tyre, you have said,

‘I am perfect in beauty.’

Your borders are in the heart of the seas;

your builders made perfect your beauty.

They made all your planks

of fir trees from Senir;

they took a cedar from Lebanon

to make a mast for you.

Of oaks of Bashan

they made your oars;

they made your deck of pines

from the coasts of Cyprus,

inlaid with ivory.” (Ezekiel 27:1–6, ESV, emphasis added)

Tyre was the most powerful commercial empire in the Mediterranean for centuries. Even after the city’s influence began to fade, its colony in north Africa, Carthage, grew so powerful that its most famous general, Hannibal, nearly destroyed Rome. At the peak of Tyre’s power, in Ezekiel’s day, the prophet linked the strength of Tyre, its ships, to Mount Hermon and Bashan.

Senir was the Amorite name for Hermon, the mount of assembly ruled by “the” god of the western Amorites, El. But the Amorites were history by Ezekiel’s day, at least under the name “Amorite.” Their lands were ruled by their descendants, the Arameans, Phoenicians, and Arabs, by the time of King David, about four hundred years before Ezekiel. So, why did the prophet use the archaic name for the mountain?

Ezekiel deliberately linked Tyre to the region’s spiritual wickedness in the minds of his readers. Not only was Senir/Hermon the abode of El, where the Rephaim spirits came to feast, it towered over Bashan, the entrance to the netherworld. By calling the mountain Senir instead of Hermon, Ezekiel specifically connected Tyre to the Amorites, whose evil was legendary among Jews. 

As we noted early in the book, Babylon was founded by Amorites. Descendants of Amorites, the Phoenicians, made Tyre the foremost commercial empire of the ancient world. The link between Tyre and Mystery Babylon is the lament over its destruction:

At the sound of the cry of your pilots

the countryside shakes,

and down from their ships

come all who handle the oar.

The mariners and all the pilots of the sea

stand on the land

and shout aloud over you

and cry out bitterly.

They cast dust on their heads

and wallow in ashes;

they make themselves bald for you

and put sackcloth on their waist,

and they weep over you in bitterness of soul,

with bitter mourning.

In their wailing they raise a lamentation for you

and lament over you:

“Who is like Tyre,

like one destroyed in the midst of the sea?

When your wares came from the seas,

you satisfied many peoples;

with your abundant wealth and merchandise

you enriched the kings of the earth.

Now you are wrecked by the seas,

in the depths of the waters;

your merchandise and all your crew in your midst

have sunk with you.

All the inhabitants of the coastlands

are appalled at you,

and the hair of their kings bristles with horror;

their faces are convulsed.

The merchants among the peoples hiss at you;

you have come to a dreadful end

and shall be no more forever.” (Ezekiel 27:28–36, ESV)

Now, compare that section of Ezekiel’s lament over Tyre to John’s prophecy of the destruction of Babylon the Great in Revelation 18.

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory. And he called out with a mighty voice,

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!

She has become a dwelling place for demons,

a haunt for every unclean spirit,

a haunt for every unclean bird,

a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast….

And the kings of the earth, who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning. They will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,

“Alas! Alas! You great city,

you mighty city, Babylon!

For in a single hour your judgment has come.”…

The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud,

“Alas, alas, for the great city

that was clothed in fine linen,

in purple and scarlet,

adorned with gold,

with jewels, and with pearls!

For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.”

And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning,

“What city was like the great city?”

And they threw dust on their heads as they wept and mourned, crying out,

“Alas, alas, for the great city

where all who had ships at sea

grew rich by her wealth!

For in a single hour she has been laid waste. (Revelation 18:1–2, 9, 15–19, ESV)

 

Let’s compare some key phrases from these chapters.

Tyre (Ezekiel 27) Babylon (Revelation 18)
“enriched the kings of the earth” (Ezekiel 27:33) “kings of the earth…lived in luxury with her” (Revelation 18:9)
Lamented by mariners, pilots of the sea, merchants, and kings (Ezekiel 27:28–36) Lamented by kings, merchants, shipmasters, and seafaring men (Revelation 18:9–19)
“‘Who is like Tyre, like one destroyed in the midst of the sea? …with your abundant wealth and merchandise you enriched the kings of the earth.’” (Ezekiel 27:32–33) “‘What city was like the great city…where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth!’” (Revelation 18:18–19)

 

The parallels here have been noted by Bible scholars for generations. What I propose is that this connection points to the spiritual source of this global end-times religion—the gods of the Amorites, who joined forces as the directors of Allah, Inc.

By extension, then, it also points to the city that this religion calls home—Mecca.

When God made His covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15, He told the patriarch that his descendants would spend about four hundred years in a land that wasn’t theirs, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Ezekiel gave us the clues. He pointed to Mount Hermon, Bashan, and the neighbors of ancient Israel who worshiped the gods who called that region home.

Who, what, or where is Babylon the Great of Revelation 17 and 18? The connection between Mystery Babylon and the Amorites is key. Spiritual wickedness, symbolized by the Amorite kingdom of Babylon, connected to an unparalleled maritime trading empire are the two main features of Mystery Babylon.

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.” And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.” And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.…

This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; they are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he does come he must remain only a little while. (Revelation 17:1–6, 9–10, ESV)

As you see, there are other characteristics. “Sexual immorality” is a euphemism for spiritual rebellion, like Israel’s “whorings” with the gods of the pagan nations against which the prophets of the Old Testament thundered.

Geography is another, but a location on seven mountains or hills is one of the easiest for potential candidates to meet. While Rome is the first name most people think of, it appears to be a status symbol for a city to claim that it, too, was built on seven hills. Other cities ostensibly sitting on seven hills include Mecca, Jerusalem, Brussels, Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow, and dozens of others.

Joel Richardson made a strong case for Mecca in his 2017 book Mystery Babylon. He argues that no other city on the earth has influenced world leaders over the last century like Mecca, home of Islam’s holiest site. The vast wealth accumulated by the House of Saud over the last century has enabled it to bend bankers, academics, and politicians to their will, using petrodollars to draw the West into Mecca’s orbit. Until very recently, OPEC nations, led by Saudi Arabia, dominated world oil markets, with about forty percent of that black gold delivered to end users by ocean-going tankers. 

Some argue that OPEC’s declining influence with the recent surge in American oil production means the Mecca-as-Mystery Babylon theory is flawed. On the contrary, it suggests that even as Islam grows, the Saudis themselves are not indispensable to the global economy. And since the Antichrist and his minions turn on Mystery Babylon, we know that the spirits behind Allah, Inc., consider the “great prostitute” expendable. While the scarlet woman of Revelation 17 has “dominion over the kings of the earth,” she’s resented by the ten principal kings represented by the ten horns on the beast. They and the beast “hate” her, and so they “devour her flesh and burn her up with fire.” 

The faithful followers of Muhammad won’t know what hit them.

It’s tragic irony. The ultimate end of Mystery Babylon is to be slaughtered and served up as a sacrifice for the Beast from the Abyss—just like the thousands upon thousands of children who were passed through the fire and buried in the tophets of the ancient world.

Mystery Babylon—Mecca—will be destroyed in the war that brings the Antichrist to power; a war that sacrifices an entire religion in a diabolical double-cross to lure Jews (and Christians, if the church is still on the earth) into worshiping the Man of Sin.

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Crowley, Cthulhu, and Chariots of the Gods

A key thread woven through the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft was a fictional grimoire, or book of witchcraft, called the Necronomicon. The book, according to the Lovecraft canon, was written in the 8th century AD by the “Mad Arab,” Abdul Alhazred. This was a bit of wordplay, Lovecraft’s childhood nickname because of his love for the book 1001 Arabian Nights (Alhazred = “all has read”).

Lovecraft claimed inspiration for the Necronomicon came to him in a dream, and through his many letters to friends and colleagues he encouraged others to incorporate the mysterious tome into their own fiction. Over time, references to the Necronomicon by other authors led to a growing belief that the book was, in fact, real.

By the 1970s, Lovecraft’s work had found a new audience, and his stories were being mined by Hollywood. Then in 1977, a hardback edition of the Necronomicon suddenly appeared (published in a limited run of 666 copies!), edited by a mysterious figure known only as “Simon,” purportedly a bishop in the Eastern Orthodox Church. A mass market paperback edition followed a few years later. That version has reportedly sold more than a million copies over the last four decades.

Simon’s Necronomicon arrived on the wave of a renewed interest in the occult that washed over the Western world in the 1960s and ‘70s. Interestingly, it was a French journal of science fiction that helped spark the revival, and it did so by publishing the works of H. P. Lovecraft for a new audience. Planète was launched in the early ‘60s by Louis Pauwles and Jacques Bergier, and their magazine brought a new legion of admirers to the “bent genius.” More significantly for our study here, however, was the book Pauwles and Bergier co-authored in 1960, Les matins des magiciens (Morning of the Magicians), which was translated into English in 1963 as Dawn of Magic.

 

The book covered everything from pyramidology (the belief that the Egyptian pyramids held ancient secrets) to supposed advanced technology in the ancient world. Likewise, the authors praised Arthur Machen, the Irish author of horror fiction, about surviving Celtic mythological creatures, and they discussed the genius of H. P. Lovecraft in the same breath as the scientist Albert Einstein and psychoanalyst Carl Jung. From Lovecraft, Bergier and Pauwles borrowed the one thought that would be of more importance than any other in their book. As we have seen, Morning of the Magicians speculates that extraterrestrial beings may be responsible for the rise of the human race and the development of its culture, a theme Lovecraft invented (emphasis added).

 

The success of Pauwles and Bergier inspired others to explore the concepts they’d developed from the writings of Lovecraft. The most successful of these, without question, was Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods, the best-selling English language archaeology book of all time.

You can say one thing for von Däniken—he wasn’t shy about challenging accepted history:

 

I claim that our forefathers received visits from the universe in the remote past, even though I do not yet know who these extraterrestrial intelligences were or from which planet they came. I nevertheless proclaim that these “strangers” annihilated part of mankind existing at the time and produced a new, perhaps the first, homo sapiens.

 

The book had the good fortune of being published in 1968, the same year Stanley Kubrick’s epic adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey hit theaters. The film, based on the idea that advanced alien technology had guided human evolution, was the top-grossing film of the year, and was named the “greatest sci-fi film of all time” in 2002 by the Online Film Critics Society. By 1971, when Chariots of the Gods finally appeared in American bookstores, NASA had put men on the moon three times and the public was fully primed for what von Däniken was selling.

It’s hard to overstate the impact of Chariots of the Gods on the UFO research community and the worldviews of literally millions of people over the last fifty years. In 1973, Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling built a documentary around Chariots titled In Search of Ancient Astronauts, which featured astronomer Carl Sagan and Wernher von Braun, architect of the Saturn V rocket. The following year, a Chariots of the Gods feature film was released to theaters. By the turn of the 21st century, von Däniken had sold more than 60 million copies of his twenty-six books, all promoting the idea that our creators came from the stars.

This, despite the fact that von Däniken told National Enquirer in 1974 that his information came not through archaeological fieldwork but through out-of-body travel to a place called Point Aleph, “a sort of fourth dimension” outside of space and time.

To put it simply, the claims of von Däniken don’t hold water. His theories have been debunked in great detail and he’s even admitted to making things up, but lack of evidence has never stopped crazy ideas for long. And now, thanks to a new generation of true believers, Ancient Aliens and its imitators are still mining von Däniken gold five decades after his first book hit the shelves.

Ancient alien evangelists have effectively proselytized the American public since Chariots of the Gods went viral nearly fifty years ago. This may sound like a joke, but more adults in the United States believe that the earth is being visited by extraterrestrials than believe in God as He’s revealed Himself in the Bible.

MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network, which calls itself “the world’s oldest and largest UFO phenomenon investigative body,” has gone all in with ancient aliens in recent years. The group now openly supports pseudoscientific and New Age interpretations of the UFO phenomenon instead of sticking to what can be supported by evidence. For example, the theme of MUFON’s 2017 national convention was “The Case for a Secret Space Program,” which was described by one critic as “blatantly unscientific and irrational.”

The conference featured among its speakers a man who claims he was recruited for “a ‘20 & Back’ assignment which involved age regression (via Pharmaceutical means) as well as time regressed to the point of beginning service.” In plain English, he claims he served for two decades in an off-planet research project, and then was sent back in time to a few minutes after he left and “age-regressed” so no one noticed that that he’s really twenty years older than he looks.

Another speaker claimed he was pre-identified as a future president of the United States in a CIA/DARPA program called Project Pegasus, which purportedly gathered intel on past and future events, such as the identities of future presidents. He also claimed Barack Obama was his roommate in 1980 in a CIA project called Mars Jump Room, a teleportation program that sent trainees to a secret base on the red planet.

 

You know, it sounds really bizarre when we step back and summarize things but there is no way to make this sound rational. The horror fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, which was inspired by the spirits behind 19th century occultists like Helena Blavatsky (and possibly the same spirit that communicated with Aleister Crowley), was filtered through the French science-fiction scene in the 1960s, adapted by a Swiss hotel manager named von Däniken, and recycled back to the United States at the time of the first moon landings, where it’s grown into a scientistic religion that replaces God with aliens.

Wow.

To paraphrase our friend, Christian researcher and author L. A. Marzulli: Now fifty years on from the publication of Chariots of the Gods, the ancient alien meme is real, burgeoning, and not going away.

And the old gods are using it to set the stage for their return.

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Celebrate Chanukah

Let your light shine

(Matthew 5:14-16) “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

(Ephesians 5:8) For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.

We are taught to place our Chanukah Menorah in a window so everyone who goes by our house can see it. Light is not meant to be hidden; it is meant to be seen. Yeshua needs to be seen so people can receive the gift of eternal life and have their needs met for their spirit, soul and body. Yeshua lives in us so now it’s our job to let Him shine so people can see Him and get their needs met.

When we do good works and are used by God we are not to draw attention to ourselves. Yeshua the light is to shine in such a way that it’s evident or plain to see that we are not the Light, but Yeshua is. When it’s obvious that Yeshua is the Light, people will thank God and glorify Him.

This is one reason we light the Menorah. We should not spend too much time inside our homes or the Synagogue/Church. We need to get outside where there are people and let God’s Light shine so that others can see it. Today, this includes using the internet to shine God’s Light.

We are mirrors who reflect Yeshua

(2 Corinthians 3:18 NLT) So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord – who is the Spirit – makes us more and more like him as we are changed into His glorious image.

(2 Corinthians 3:18 TLB) But we … have no veil over our faces; we can be mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord.

(2 Corinthians 3:18 MSG) Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of His face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like Him.

Since the Hebrew word Chanukah means dedication, we need to dedicate our temples (or bodies) to God every year during this feast. When we dedicate our temples to God, we remove things that function as a veil. Things that are like a cover or blanket and prevent people from seeing Yeshua. We need to remove any masks that hide Yeshua’s face from being seen. 

We need to make sure there is nothing between us and God so we can be a mirror which reflects and shines the glory of God or the brightness of Yeshua’s face. 

Judas Maccabee told us to celebrate the rededication of God’s temple every year, over and over again. We too must rededicate our temples to God over and over again. The truth is we’re all works in progress. We will spend our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as we allow God to enter our temples and make us more like Him.

Take time to celebrate Chanukah and rededicate your temple to God. Clean your temple so Yeshua the Light will shine more than ever before, and people will glorify your Father in heaven.

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The Spiritual Origins of Islam

The pagan gods of the ancient world did not humbly submit after the Resurrection. They’ve continued in their rebellion. Maybe they figure they’ve got nothing to lose. Like Inanna in the Epic of Gilgamesh, who tried to destroy Uruk because she’d been rejected by the hero of the tale, they’re willing to destroy everything rather than let the Messiah return to establish His throne over a world restored to its intended glory.

Their first response to the Resurrection was to inspire the Roman government and Jewish religious authorities to try to crush the growing body of believers. By the fourth century AD, when it was clear that Christianity was not going away despite the persecution from Rome, the Fallen tried a different tactic. The empire of the storm-god, called Jupiter in the west and Zeus in the east (and both just newer names for the old Canaanite storm-god Baal), legalized the faith with Constantine’s Edict of Milan in AD 313. Then in 380, Christianity became the official state religion when Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica. Once the Church became a path to wealth and political power, there was no shortage of men and women who chose the clergy as a career—but it wasn’t because they were interested in saving sinners from the fires of hell.

Making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire was a brilliant move. Corruption in the Church persists to this day and it infects all denominations. But that has only weakened the body of believers, not killed it; as of this writing, the followers of Jesus Christ still outnumber all other religions on the earth.

But the Enemy employed another stratagem, one that’s exploited the Church’s weakness and the dilution of the gospel since the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Let’s begin by tracking the activity of the pagan gods in the years after the Resurrection.

A rough outline of the spiritual history of the ancient Near East shows that there were at least two transfers of power in the pantheon. First, a primordial god of heaven was overthrown by his son, who was considered “the” god between about 3000 and 2000 BC.

Around the time that the Amorites emerged as the dominant people group in the Near East, “the” god, variously called Enlil, Dagan, and El (later Kronos to the Greeks and Saturn to the Romans), was replaced as king of the pantheon by the storm-god—except in Akkad and Sumer, where the city-god of Babylon, Marduk, occupied that place of honor.

However, the personal god of the founding dynasty of Babylon was the moon-god. Some scholars now believe that the Sumerian god Amurru was actually an epithet of the lunar deity, “god of the Amurru (Amorite) land.” A text only translated within the last ten years of this writing reveals that the moon-god, Sîn, was believed to preside over the Mesopotamian divine council at least some of the time. 

The nations led by these various deities fought with one another throughout the period of history covered by the Bible. Beginning around 1800 BC, the time of Abraham and Isaac, Marduk and his followers ruled Babylonia and Sumer, while Baal worshipers dominated western Mesopotamia (Canaan), followers of the sun-god controlled most of Egypt, and the moon-god was the chief deity of the nomadic tribes of the steppe and deserts of Syria and Arabia.

The fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the Medes and Persians in 539 BC was probably another rebuke of the moon-god by Yahweh, who revealed to the prophet Isaiah, about a hundred and fifty years earlier, His plan to use Cyrus to return the Jewish exiles to Jerusalem. The rise of the Persian Empire and its devotion to Ahura Mazda, possibly another aspect of Marduk, may have been that entity’s play to go solo by rebelling against the other rebel gods. Of course, God used it for His purposes, to free His people from Babylon and humble the moon-god. (Belshazzar’s feast was during the annual fall festival for Sîn, which coincided with Sukkot—the Feast of Tabernacles.)

But Marduk’s shot at glory didn’t last long; within two centuries, people of the storm-god, first the Greeks and then the Romans, pushed the Persian Empire back to Mesopotamia. And with the rise of Islam in the seventh century AD, Zoroastrianism faded into the background. 

This is admittedly speculation, an attempt to discern the history of the unseen realm from evidence in the natural. We have limited ability to see into the spirit realm. It does, however, fit recorded history. Before Christ, the Fallen fought amongst themselves as well as with God. After the Resurrection, it appears that they put aside some of their mutual distrust.

The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus apparently frustrated the plans of the moon-god to take over the empire of Nebuchadnezzar. But worship of the moon-god didn’t disappear with the Chaldean kingdom. The land south and southeast of Edom, around the north end of the Gulf of Aqaba, ancient Midian, was still moon-god territory. Tayma, the second home of Babylon’s last king, Nabonidus, was there, although it was no longer called Midian by his day.

Most of what scholars know about the pre-Islamic gods of northwestern Arabia, the area closest to the kingdom of Judah, comes from inscriptions found at Tayma and the other major oases in northern Arabia, Dumah and Dedan (Al-Ula). All three were strategically located along caravan routes connected to the spice trade between southern Arabia, Mesopotamia, and the Mediterranean world.

Getting a handle on the rest of the gods of Arabia between the fall of Babylon and the rise of Islam in the early seventh century AD is a challenge. Trying to pin down precise one-to-one correlations across times, places, and tribes is an exercise in frustration. For our purposes, the best approach is to draw some general conclusions.

It appears there were several deities that were most prominent throughout Arabia, although they were worshiped under different names. The other oases in northern Arabia, Dedan and Dumah, worshiped a pantheon headed by Attarshamain, the “queen of heaven.” The name of the goddess is a composite: Attar + shamain (“Attar of the skies”); in other words, she was the Canaanite Astarte, Babylonian Ishtar, and the ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna by a slightly different name.

Dedan, seventy miles southwest of Tayma, was the center of a tribal confederacy that included the powerful Qedarites, a tribe named for Kedar, son of Ishmael. Attarshamain, represented by the planet Venus, was part of an astral triad with Nuhā and Rudāʾu, the sun-god and moon-god.

In southern Arabia, modern-day Yemen and Oman, over one hundred deities have been attested but only one was worshiped throughout the region—the war-god Athtar, who was the male aspect of the dualistic Canaanite god/dess Astarte/Attar. Other important south Arabian gods included the moon-god Syn or Sayin (a variant of Sîn); Wadd, another name for the moon-god; the sun-goddess Shams (variant of Shamash, the sun-god); ʿAmm (“paternal uncle”), a god whose name suggests ancestor worship; and a trio of goddesses named al-Lāt (“the goddess”), al-ʿUzzā (“the most powerful”), and Manāt. Scholars are divided on the origins of those three, other than to note that they appear to have been brought to Arabia in the second century BC.

We’re painting with a broad brush here. To draw a general conclusion: As we look at the religions of Arabia in the eleven hundred years or so between the fall of Babylon in 539 BC and the rise of Islam in the 620s AD, the deities who survived were the old Mesopotamian astral triad—sun, moon, and Venus—and the male aspect of Astarte, the war-god Athtar. To add to the confusion, Astarte and Athtar may have been worshiped as separate entities as early as the ninth century BC, with the male war-god identity linked to Moab’s national deity, the war-god Chemosh.

But there is one more conclusion we can draw that seems solidly grounded in history: While the worship of Jesus Christ spread widely in the centuries after the Resurrection, reaching as far east as China and as far west as Britain, there is one land frequently mentioned in the Bible where Christianity never gained a firm foothold—Arabia.

Extrapolating from that bit of history, we offer this theory: The gods of the ancient world, stunned and alarmed by the Resurrection, withdrew, like the unclean spirit of Matthew 12:43–45, to a waterless place—Arabia.

And there they planned their counterstrike.

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America’s Great Awakening- “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God!”

The following article was written by Steve Strang in 1975 for the first edition of Charisma Magazine. It is a brief history of the American Great Awakening in the 1700″s and a summary of what some say was the most powerful message ever preached in America. (We will let you decide that for yourself) Our great country is in a great time of turmoil and struggle but some of us still trust our Almighty God can save souls, change lives, give hope and mend broken hearts. Read this tremendous article and be inspired and just maybe share it with a friend who needs to know the truth.

By Steve Strang-Fifty years before a Lexington minuteman fired the shot heard around the world, another revolution began that shook the American colonies.

It was a spiritual revolution which historians call the Great Awakening. It was marked by waves of religious enthusiasm as preachers like George Whitefield traveled the seacoast from Maine to Georgia, preaching that sinners should repent.

American history’s most famous sermon—”Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”—was preached in 1741 by Jonathon Edwards at the height of the great revival.

History records that sinners repented by the hundreds. Taverns closed as whole towns repented. Often people were so moved by conviction they trembled and shrieked and fell to the ground moaning and begging God to forgive their sins.

Edwards writes about a young woman in his congregation who was so convicted of sin she declared that “it was pleasant to think of lying in the dust all the days of her life, mourning for sin.”

The preaching about turning from sin and the importance of salvation over the rituals of the state church in places like Massachusetts, was important in the light of history.

The result of the revival, which continued strong for 15 years and the effect of which continued for many more years, was to establish early in American life the importance of a man serving God as his conscience, not the state, dictated.

Thousands of newly converted people were forced by their churches to leave because their new convictions about the importance of salvation often threatened the existing ecclesiastical power structure. This fostered the growth of new churches like the Methodists and toppled any hope of one denomination becoming dominant and becoming the American state church.

Some historians consider the Great Awakening a major turning point in American history, yet it is frequently overlooked. While the national remembers its 200th anniversary this year and next, the Christian community can be inspired by remembering one of the greatest revivals on this continent.

The Great Awakening, besides being a major spiritual renewal, did much to foster a feeling of independence in the colonies and helped wipe out the class structure brought to the New World from Europe.

It also fostered education and several major universities like Dartmouth, Princeton and Brown, had their genesis in the revival. In addition, it stimulated missionary work among the Indians and slaves.

Historian Monroe Stearns wrote: “The Great Awakening’s essential purpose was to fulfill the royal law of love—to cause men to serve not themselves but one another and to join in an effort to improve society. The vision it revealed of the social good led to a challenge of the rulers of colonial society in America and into the discussion and activity that produced the movement for independence.

The Great Awakening has been, however, relegated to relatively minor role by most historians who view it as only emotional hysteria that they say has characterized revivals throughout our history.

The truth is, however, that despite emotionalism that characterized some of the Great Awakening from 1720 to 1760, it was the first great move of God on this continent and was the first of many revivals that have come to America since then.

To understand the importance of the revival and its impact on America, it’s important to understand the religious and social structure of the day.

Many of the early immigrants to America came because of religious oppression in Europe.

The French Huguenots were the first Protestants to flee to America. In 1562, more than half a century before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, a small group of Huguenots arrived in Florida in present day Jacksonville, hoping to escape the massacres of Charles IX of France. But within months, their settlement was destroyed by an agent of Philip II of Spain. Not one Huguenot survived.

In 1620, the English Separatists among them soon headed for Rhode Island with Roger Williams looking for religious freedom the Puritans did not give them.

The Pilgrims were followed in 1656 by the early Quakers who, being unwelcomed in New England, settled in New Jersey, then in 17682 in Pennsylvania.

By the early 1700’s, group after group of other Protestants seeking freedom from European intolerance began to arrive.

Of course, not every new settler in the new world came for religious liberty. Many came for economic and political opportunities not available to them in Europe. But many of the immigrants did come to worship God as they saw fit.

This desire for religious liberty and their deep faith in God was all that strengthened many of these early colonists to brave the perils of the American wilderness.

But after a few decades the original closeness to God that drove the early settlers to seek religious freedom was replaced by the coldness and rituals of the churches the settlers established.

This is what Theodorus Frelinghuysen found in 1720 when he was sent by the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands to minister to Dutch settlers in New Jersey.

Frelinghuysen was a member of the Pietists who believed the power of the Holy Spirit could only be felt because it worked on the heart, not the brain. They put no emphasis on complicated church doctrines, but on having a “change of heart,” and becoming one with God.

Frelinghuysen preached that in order to be a member of the church and take communion, one must be born again. He caused quite a stir among the young and the poor who readily responded to his message.

The established, more prosperous members at first resisted, then began to become converted. Within five years his congregations had so increased and so many people had become converted, other ministers began inviting Frelinghuysen to preach at their churches, hoping for similar results.

Frelinghuysen greatly inspired a Presbyterian minister, Gilbert Tennent, and worked with him, breaking down denominational walls.

While Tennent and Frelinghuysen were preaching in New Jersey, Jonathon Edwards was causing a stir in New England with his sermons.

When he became minister in 1729 of the church of Northhampton, Mass., he found a generation of New Englanders who had grown up in spiritual confusion and who didn’t know how to be saved.

In addition, the churches of that area were controlled by the wealthy merchant class—the same people who controlled the government and who oppressed the people.

The Puritan Church had for many years preached salvation, but as the merchants began to seize control, more liberal ministers began to say salvation was not necessary for church membership.

Edwards resisted this trend, and preached faith in Christ was necessary for salvation. He began to see results.

In 1734, after five years at the church, he reported “a concern about the great things of religion began…to prevail abundantly in the town, till old and young, and from the highest to the lowest…Scarcely a person has been exempt, and the Spirit of God went on his saving influences…in a truly wonderful and astonishing manner.”

Word of the revival spread up and down the Connecticut River valley and by May, 1735, 25 towns had experienced similar awakenings.

The revival subsided until 1739 when a 24-year-old minister from England named George Whitefield began to preach in the New York area.

Whitefield had come to America in 1738 to establish an orphanage in Georgia.

Whitefield was such a magnificent speaker that many people came to hear him merely because of his speaking and acting ability.

He frequently preached on streets or in open fields.

Benjamin Franklin, who heard him in Philadelphia, estimated that Whitefield’s voice was so powerful 30,000 people could hear him at once, because he repeated key sentences four times—once in each direction.

Whitefield was so eloquent at raising money for his orphanage, that Franklin wrote he left his purse home on purpose when he went to hear him. Still, he had in his pocket several pieces of copper, several silver dollars and five pieces of gold.

“As he proceeded,” Franklin wrote, “I began to soften and concluded to give him the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give him the silver; and he finished so admirably, that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collection dish, gold and all.”

The Great Awakening was not without its problems, however.

Often when people felt convicted of their sins, they thrashed about on the floor, moaning and shrieking. Emotionalism was so widespread that it turned off many who had not been touched in their hearts with the Gospel message.

Rev. Jonathan Parsons of Lyme, Conn. wrote that some converts acted as if “the joints of their limbs were loosed and their knees smote one another…Several stout ones fell as though a cannon had been discharged and a ball had made its way through their hearts.”

One lady, Sarah Sparhawk, of Marlboro, Mass., was “like one deprived of her reason” and “was brought home (from church) by some young men. She often lay there crying out, screaming and striving much in her fits for an hour or two.”

Trances, visions, and something called “the jerks” became commonplace.

The opposers of the revival were led by Charles Chauncy, pastor of the old First Church in Boston. He objected to the “preaching of terror” and the “bodily effects.” He attacked the whole movement as a dangerous explosion of emotion.

Edwards saw the extremes of the revival, but still considered the Awakening a “surprising work of God,” and stedfastly defended it. He said the excesses of emotion were “enthusiastic delusions” or “impressions upon the imagination.”

He thought, however, that to oppose the revival as some ministers did, was evil. The “prevailing prejudice against religious affections at this day, in this land” was caused by none other than Satan, Edwards wrote.

He warned the critics of the revival that “for persons to despise and cry down all religious affections, is the way to shut all religion out of their own hearts, and to make thorough work in ruining their own souls.”

There were other great preachers in the revival. John Wesley, father of Methodism, was one. He preached in Georgia a number of years, and had an impact on the life of George Whitefield. But mostly Wesley’s influence was limited to England where a similar revival was taking place.

Samuel Davies, a Presbyterian, spread the revival to Virginia in 1748 where he had to get a license from the governor to preach.

The Anglican clergy opposed this non-Anglican in Virginia and took him to court saying he had no right to preach. The issue went to London in 1753 for a verdict and Davies won in 1755. It set a precedent for religious freedom in the colonies.

As the Great Awakening began to subside people like Davies continued to spread it until the 1750’s.

The Awakening had a long-run effect on education, social and moral structure of America for many years. But its main impact—and this should never be forgotten—was spiritual.

Men’s lives were changed when they encountered a personal faith in Jesus Christ. Despite the emotionalism that accompanied the movement, many new converts were made, and these converts had a different way of living.

Jonathon Parsons wrote of the new converts that “bitterness and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil-speaking seemed to be put away from them, with all malice…Rough and haughty minds became peaceful, gentle, and easy to be entreated… Their faith worked on love, and discovered itself in acts of piety towards God, charity and righteousness toward men and sobriety toward themselves.

That’s what true revival is all about.

Editor’s Note: The following are sidebars that appeared in the original edition of this article.

John Wesley

The founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley, was a methodical man. While at Oxford University, he scheduled his intellectual activity by the clock-meditating perhaps from 11 a.m. to noon on the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and from noon to 1 p.m. on the doctrine of free grace. He and other students, including George Whitefield (below) worshiped together in what some students ridiculed by calling “Holy Clubs” or “Methodists.”

Early in his ministry, Wesley was sent to minister to the convicts sent to Georgia colony. He traveled throughout the colonies and England a total of 200,000 miles—by his own estimate—traveling by foot, by horseback and carriage to preach an estimated 40,000 sermons in his 87 years.

His brother, Charles, during his lifetime wrote about 6,500 hymns, many of which we sing today, like “Love Divine, All Love Excelling” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” When a man once said he wished he had a thousand tongues to sing the praises of Jesus, Charles wrote “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing!”

Another time, when a bird fell onto his window while being chased by a hawk, Charles wrote the most famous of his songs, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul, Let Me to Thy Bosom Fly.”

George Whitefield

The Great Awakening’s most rousing speaker, George Whitefield, is said to have been able to stir crowds just with the way he said “Mesopotamia.” The great English actor, David Garrick said, “I would give a hundred guineas if I could say ‘Oh! Like Mr. Whitefield.”

In Boston, such a revival swept the town while Whitefield was there that the Rev. John Webb wrote that “the very face of the town seemed to be altered” and that the taverns were as empty as the churches were full, for “about a year and a half after Mr. Whitefield left us.”

In one sermon, Whitefield is said to have cried, “Father Abraham, whom have you in heaven? Any Episcopalians? No? Any Presbyterians? No? Have you any Independents or Seceders? No? Have you any Methodists? No, no, no? Whom have you there?”

“We don’t know those names here. All who are here are Christians.” Whitefield would quote the answer from heave. Then, he would add: “Oh, is this the case? Then God help us, God help us all, to forget party names, and to become Christians in deed and in truth.”

Jonathon Edwards

Historians record that Jonathon Edwards was a small, frail man who preached in a quiet monotone, without gestures. He was also one of the greatest intellectuals American society has produced.

Edwards pastored in Northampton, Mass., when the Great Awakening broke out. Like other preachers during this period, he began traveling to nearby churches. The reason – there were so few converted ministers that those who were saved were in great demand as the revival spread.

It was on the road that Edwards preached a sermon that historians say is the most famous in American history – “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It is said he preached it as a last-minute substitute for another preacher at Enfield, Conn., on July 8, 1741.

Historian Monroe Stearns credits Edward’s sermon with ending the superstitions of the Middle Ages and initiating the concept that man is responsible for his own happiness through coming to God.

The sermon had a great impact the day it was preached. The congregation shrieked and groaned and cried out “Oh, what shall I do to be saved.” It got so bad, Edwards stopped his sermon to ask the people to be more quiet.

The 76,000-word sermon is still studied by seminary and Bible college students. An excerpt follows:

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

Deuteronomy 32:35

-Their foot shall slide in due time.-

In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, who were God’s visible people, and who lived under the means of grace; but who, notwithstanding all God’s wonderful works towards them, remained (as verse 28)voice of counsel, having no understanding in them. The expression I have chosen for my text, “Their foot shall slide in due time,” seems to imply the following things, relating to the punishment and destruction to which these wicked Israelites were exposed.

  1. That they were always exposed to destruction; as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to a fall. This is implied in the manner of their destruction coming upon them, being represented by their foot sliding.
  2. It implies, that they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction. As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once without warning.
  3. Another thing implied is, that they are liable to fall of themselves, without being thrown down by the hand of another; as he that stands or walks on slippery ground needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down.
  4. That the reason why they are not fallen already, and do not fall now, is only that God’s appointed time is not come. For it is said, that when that due time, or appointed time comes, their foot shall slide.

Application

The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation. This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of Christ. That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.

Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment, for you are a burden to it. The creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly.

The sun does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts, nor is it willing a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon. The air does not willingly serve you for breathe to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of God’s enemies.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. This wrath towards you burns like fire. He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight. You are 10,000 times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful, wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell…but that God’s hand has held you up.

God seems now to be hastily gathering in his elect in all parts of the land; and probably the greater part of adult persons that ever shall be saved, will be brought in now in a little time, and that it will be as it was on the great out-pouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the apostle’ days; the election will obtain, and the rest will be blinded.

Therefore, let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is not undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let everyone fly out of Sodom. “Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed.”

My Notes: Our historic past is undeniable. It is what brought our young colonists together to form a united group later to be called the “United States of America”. The fiery messages that warned of a burning hell is seldom heard today because of the grace and love message that is what we love to hear. I am thankful that we serve a God of love and forgiveness, however remember those who reject Him are sadly lost as Jonathan Edwards preached. Our prayer is that you trust in Jesus Christ as your Redeemer and Savior.
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Sons of the Titans!

Scholar Amar Annus has linked the name Sheth/Seth, found in the prophecy of Balaam
recorded in Numbers 24:17, to an infamous Amorite tribe well known in the ancient
Near East, the Suteans.
He notes that the Egyptian term for the Suteans, Šwtw, a form of the Akkadian Shutu,
appears in one of the Execration Texts from the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries B.C.,
about the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The Ruler of Shutu, Ayyabum, and all the retainers who are with him; the Ruler
of Shutu, Kushar, and all the retainers who are with him; the Ruler of Shutu,
Zabulanu, and all the retainers who are with him. 1

Man Praying Sunset

The Execration Texts were like ancient Egyptian voodoo dolls. The names of enemies
were inscribed on pottery, which were ritually cursed and then smashed. In a nutshell,
“Sheth,” “Shutu,” and “Sutean” are the same name processed through different
languages and types of writing. 2   Other Egyptian texts place the Shutu/Sheth in the
central and northern Transjordan, which, significantly, includes Bashan—Rephaim
territory. 3
Other fascinating tidbits from the Execration Texts: The Shutu leaders were listed just
after the “Rulers of Iy-‘anaq”—the Anakim tribes that Joshua and the Israelites would
fight for control of Canaan about four hundred years later. Also, the Shutu leader named
Ayyabum bears the same name as the biblical Job. Now, this was probably not the Job
of the Old Testament, but the Egyptian curse does locate him in the Transjordan, the
same general area that was home to the long-suffering Job 4   and exactly where the Bible
places the Rephaim tribes. And because you’ve read your Old Testament, you’ve
noticed that the other Shutu leader, Zabulanu, has a name that Jacob would later give
to one of his sons, Zebulon.
Here’s the key link: Annus points to an Akkadian lexical list (that’s like an ancient clay
tablet version of Google Translate) that specifically equates ti-id-nu and su-tu-u—Tidanu
and Sutean. 5   Citing Michael Heltzer’s 1981 book The Suteans, Annus continues:
In Ugaritic literature Suteans are mentioned in the epic of Aqhatu, where the
antagonist of the mt rpi Dnil [“man of the Rephaim, Daniel”] is a nomadic Ytpn,
mhr št—“warrior of the Sutû, Sutean warrior.” …In the epic of Keret Suteans are
mentioned as dtn, spelled also as ddn, and it “must be understood as the
Di/Tidânu tribe, a part of common Amorite stock. It is even likely that this term
was used in Mesopotamia at the end of the 3rd millennium to designate tribes
later known as Suteans.” 6
Highlight that! The Ugaritic Epic of Keret links the Amorite Sutean tribe, the Egyptian
Shutu and the biblical sons of Sheth, with the Ditanu—the Titans!
Here’s one more bit of historical evidence for your consideration: The Shutu are also
identified in later Egyptian texts as the Shasu, 7   probably as language and pronunciation
changed over the centuries. About two hundred years after the Exodus, Ramesses II
(“the Great”) fought an epic battle against the Hittites at Qadesh, a city on the Orontes
River near the modern border between Syria and Lebanon. According to the Egyptian
2 Ibid.
3 Amar Annus, “Are There Greek Rephaim? On the Etymology of Greek Meropes and Titanes.”
Ugarit-Forschungen 31 (1999), p. 18.
4 Most Bible commentaries place the land of Uz in the Transjordan, usually near Edom.
5 Annus, op. cit.
6 Michael Heltzer & Shoshana Arbeli-Raveh, The Suteans (Naples: Istituto Universitario
Orientale, 1981). Cited in Annus, op. cit., p. 19.
7 “Biblical Archaeology: Evidence of the Exodus from Egypt.” Institute for Biblical and Scientific
Studies. https://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/exodus.htm, retrieved 3/3/18.

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The Tower of Babel: Abode of the Gods

The Tower of Babel: Abode of the Gods

 

Not all the holy mountains in the history of the world are natural, formed by the shifting of tectonic plates or the sudden, catastrophic opening of “the fountains of the great deep.” The Tower of Babel was one such artificial mountain. Babel was humanity’s attempt to force its way back into the divine council.

At Babel, mankind tried to storm the castle of God.

For generations, well-meaning Bible teachers have presented the story of Babel as an object lesson on the dangers of pride. Those foolish people were so arrogant they thought they could build a tower high enough to reach heaven!

With all due respect to those teachers, that’s an insult to the intelligence of our ancestors, if you think about it. And it’s a disservice to people in church who want to know why Yahweh was so offended by this project. Really? God is that insecure?

Look, if big egos were enough to bring God to Earth, He’d never leave.

Babel was not a matter of God taking down some people who’d gotten too big for their britches. The clue to the sin of Babel is in the name.

Remember, the Hebrew prophets loved to play with language. We often find words in the Bible that sound like the original but make a statement—for example, Beelzebub (“lord of the flies”) instead of Beelzebul (“Ba`al the prince”), or Ish-bosheth (“man of a shameful thing”) instead of Ishbaal (“man of Ba`al”). Likewise, the original Akkadian words bāb ilu, which means “gate of god” or “gate of the gods,” is replaced in the Bible with Babel, which is based on the Hebrew word meaning “confusion.”

Now, there’s a bit of misinformation that must be corrected about the Tower of Babel: Babel was not in Babylon.

It’s an easy mistake to make. The names sound alike, and Babylon is easily the most famous city of the ancient world. It’s also got a bad reputation, especially to Jews and Christians. Babylon, under the megalomaniacal king Nebuchadnezzar, sacked the Temple in Jerusalem and carried off the hardware for temple service. It makes sense to assume that a building project so offensive that God personally intervened must have been built at Babylon.

But there’s a problem with linking Babylon to the Tower of Babel: Babylon didn’t exist when the tower was built. It didn’t even become a city until about a thousand years after the tower incident, and even then it was an unimportant village for about another 500 years.

Traditions and sources outside the Bible identify the builder of the tower as the shadowy figure named Nimrod. Our best guess is he lived sometime between 3500 and 3100 B.C., a period of history called the Uruk Expansion. This tracks with what little the Bible tells us about Nimrod. In Genesis 10:10, we read “the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.”

The land of Shinar is Sumer and Erech is Uruk. Uruk was so important to human history that Nimrod’s homeland is still called Uruk, five thousand years later! We just spell it differently—Iraq.

Accad was the capital city of the Akkadians, which still hasn’t been found, but was somewhere between Babylon and ancient Assyria. Babylon itself was northwest of Uruk, roughly three hundred miles from the Persian Gulf in what is today central Iraq. But it wasn’t founded until around 2300 B.C., at least 700 years after Nimrod, and it wasn’t Babylon as we think about it until the old Babylonian empire emerged in the early part of the 2ndmillennium B.C.

So where should we look for the Tower of Babel?

The oldest and largest ziggurat in Mesopotamia was at Eridu, the first city built in Mesopotamia. Scholars put its founding at around 5400 B.C. In recent years, scholars have learned that the name Babylon was interchangeable with other city names, including Eridu. So “Babylon” didn’t always refer to the city of Babylon in ancient texts.

Artist’s conception of how the never-completed ziggurat at Eridu might have looked

 

 

 

Eridu never dominated the political situation in Sumer after the reigns of its first two kings, Alulim and Alalgar. But as the home city of Enki, god of fresh water, wisdom, and magic, Eridu was so important to Mesopotamian culture that more than three thousand years after Alalgar, Hammurabi the Great was crowned not in Babylon, but in Eridu—even though it had ceased to be a city about three hundred years earlier.

Even as late as the time of Nebuchadnezzar, 1,100 years after Hammurabi, the kings of Babylon still sometimes called themselves LUGAL.NUNki—King of Eridu.

Why? What was the deal with Eridu?

Archaeologists have uncovered eighteen levels of the temple to Enki at Eridu. The oldest levels of the E-abzu, a small structure less than ten feet square, date to the founding of the city. And consider that the spot remained sacred to Enki long after the city was deserted around 2000 B.C. The temple remained in use until the 5th century B.C., nearly five thousand years after the first crude altar was built to accept offerings of fish to Enki, the god of the subterranean aquifer, the abzu.

Now, this is where we tell you that abzu (ab = water + zu = deep) is very likely where we get our English word “abyss.” And the name Enki is a compound word. En is Sumerian for “lord,” and ki is the word for “earth.” Thus, Enki, god of the abzu, was “lord of the earth.”

Do you remember Jesus calling someone “the ruler of this world”?  Or Paul referring to “the god of this world”?  Who were they talking about?

Yeah. Satan.

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Here’s another piece to our puzzle:  Nimrod was of the second generation after the flood. His father was Cush, son of Ham, son of Noah. In Sumerian history, the second king of Uruk after the flood was named Enmerkar, son of Mesh-ki-ang-gasher.

Now, get this:  An epic poem from about 2000 B.C. called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta preserves the basic details of the Tower of Babel story, including the confusion of language among the people of Sumer.

We don’t know exactly where Aratta was, but guesses range from northern Iran to Armenia. (Which would be interesting. Not only is Armenia located near the center of an ancient kingdom called Urartu, which may be a cognate for Aratta, it’s where Noah landed his boat—the mountains of Ararat. So it’s possible Nimrod/Enmerkar was trying to intimidate the people—his cousins, basically—who settled near where his great-grandfather landed the ark. But we just don’t know.)  Wherever it was, Enmerkar muscled this neighboring kingdom to compel them to send building materials for a couple of projects near and dear to his heart.

Besides building a fabulous temple for Inanna, the goddess of, well, prostitutes, Enmerkar/Nimrod also wanted to expand and upgrade Enki’s abzu—the abyss.

“Let the people of Aratta bring down for me the mountain stones from their mountain, build the great shrine for me, erect the great abode for me, make the great abode, the abode of the gods, famous for me, make my me prosper in Kulaba, make the abzu grow for me like a holy mountain, make Eridug (Eridu) gleam for me like the mountain range, cause the abzu shrine to shine forth for me like the silver in the lode. When in the abzu I utter praise, when I bring the me from Eridug, when, in lordship, I am adorned with the crown like a purified shrine, when I place on my head the holy crown in Unug Kulaba, then may the …… of the great shrine bring me into the jipar, and may the …… of the jipar bring me into the great shrine. May the people marvel admiringly, and may Utu (the sun god) witness it in joy.”1 (Emphasis added)

 

That’s the issue Yahweh had with it right there. This tower project wasn’t about hubris or pride; it was to build the “abode of the gods” right on top of the abzu.

Could Nimrod have succeeded? Ask yourself: Why did Yahweh find it necessary to personally put a stop to it? A lot of magnificent pagan temples were built in the ancient world, many of them copying the pyramid-like shape of the ziggurats, from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica. Why did God stop this one?

We can only speculate, of course, but God had a good reason or we wouldn’t have a record of it in the Bible. Calling Babel a sin of pride is easy, but it drains the story of its spiritual and supernatural context.

In the view of this author, the evidence is compelling. It’s time to correct the history we’ve been taught since Sunday School:  Babel was not at Babylon, it was at Eridu. The tower was the temple of the god Enki, Lord of the Earth, the god of the abyss. Its purpose was to create an artificial mount of assembly, the abode of the gods, to which humans had access.

That was something that Yahweh could not allow.

1 Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker, E, Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G. Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.2.3#), retrieved 12/17/16.

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