WHAT WAS THE ANCIENT HEBREW RELIGION?

By Harrell Rhome, M.Div., Ph.D.

FOREWORD

          This is excerpted from my unpublished manuscript entitled From The Temple To The Talmud, a book exploring the history and origins of Judaic traditions.  Early on in the project, before moving directly into the Talmudic texts, I saw the need to answer basic questions as to the actual nature of the religion portrayed in the Old Testament.  This is a project in biblical revisionism that is crucial in several ways.  First of all, it is important to know the truth about a period of the ancient past which still impacts us today.  Secondly, the Old Testament bible stories are declared to be actual history as well as divinely inspired literature, from God himself, no less.  All three Semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) say this.  Hence they are rooted in this material.  Consider this for a moment.  What if it is not true, or that it has other origins?    Not only would this affect billions of believers, it impacts current events and geopolitics.  The troublesome State of Israel is not only predicated on the alleged history of the Holocaust, but its land claims are quite solidly entrenched in the Old Testament bible stories.  The political expansionist movement called Zionism glommed on to what is essentially a tradition of folklore and astrological symbolism to justify their seizure and occupation of Palestine.  The facts about bible origins are not a new revelation.  This has been talked about and written about for a long time, but is largely ignored by the Powers That Be.  A few hundred years ago, you might have faced death for your beliefs in both Catholic and Protestant realms.  In some fundamentalist Muslim countries, the same thing can happen today.  But, for the most part, these ideas are just ignored.   Of course, tens of billions of dollars are generated by various religions.  To say that the bible is theology, but not history, is a dangerous proposition. 

“It is not the ancient legends that tell us lies! The men who created them did not deal falsely with us by nature. All the falsity lies in their having been falsified through ignorantly mistaking mythology for divine revelation and allegory for historic truth.”  Gerald Massey.

Join with me now for an alternative explanation of the bible stories mistaken for history.

HEBREW EGYPTIAN ORIGINS.

To avoid lengthily citing the works of a host of scholars and writers, suffice it to say that much of the ancient Hebrew-Habiru religious ethos and mythos, indeed all its gods (and goddesses), came from Egypt.   The study called Astrotheology teaches us that the origins of all religions come from ancient humans who studied and observed the heavenly bodies, the sun, moon and stars.  This is portrayed particularly well in the 2008 documentary movie production, Zeitgeist as well as in, among others, the writings of D. M. Murdock (Acharya S).  In addition to Godfrey Higgins, Gerald Massey, Sir Richard Burton and more than a few other classic authors, researcher and metaphysician E. Valentia Straiton informs us greatly as to the true and actual beginnings.

“The Jewish glyph and the Hebrew language are not original, but borrowed from the Egyptian and are considered sacred.  Hebrew is composed of hieroglyphs, symbols and myths of the Egyptians and their gods.  The imagery, allegory and divinities found in old Hebrew writings are Egyptian and appertain to the Typhonian cult.  The Jewish “new” departure and developments were made out of the oldest of materials, originally made in Egypt, but converted into the historical by the Jews.” 

“Celsus says, ‘The Jews were a tribe of Egyptians who revolted from the established religion.’  Their Jehovah can be traced to the Great Mother.” …

“The Most High God of the Jews, El, Eloi, Elohim, plural, and Shadai, coexisted with Jehovah.  The Hebrew El was the male supreme deity.  El is also the Child.  … He is also called the Lord of Hosts or Angels and was the greatest of all the gods., goddesses or divinities of the primal Seven in heaven, Jehovah, the Mother of the Seven Great Stars.  The God of the Jews was frequently written in the Pentateuch as She, but was changed to He after the divinity had changed sex.  … 

“The names of Jehovah-Elohim are derived from the two words each of which is male-female; Jehovah, a compound or Jah, male, and Hovah or Eve, female.  Numerically Jehovah is the diameter of the circle and Elohim the circumference.  Jehovah-Elohim was the Mother of the Seven elementary gods, combined in one divinity, the one constellation.”

“A seven-fold god is mythological, whether Jehovah or Iao-Sabaoth.  Sevekh, the seven-fold, Ea with the seven arms, Ra with his seven souls, the Hindu Agni with the seven arms, the Gnostic Chnubis with his seven rays, the Dragon with his seven heads, and El of the seventh Planet, and many others, were the vehicles of many imaginings, and finally became converted into gods in relation to celestial phenomena, when ‘the Gods were seen in their ideas as Stars, and all their signs, and the Stars were numbered with all the Gods in them.’ (Hermes Trismegistus).” 

Miss E. Valentia Straiton, Celestial Ship of the North, 1927.

The “Seven Stars” or the “Seven Planets” as they were called, were the Earth, the Sun, the Moon and the most visible heavenly bodies: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.  Over the eons, these became the “Seven elementary gods”, the various astrologically personified figures seen in all the primeval religions, including the Habiru-Hebrew tribes of Egypt.    

“The only satisfactory ethnological designation for a people like the Hebrews must be derived from a religion that had its rootage in mythology.”  Gerald Massey.

As we see, the Hebrews definitely did not invent monotheism as claimed in the Judeo-Christian tradition; far from it!  Even Martin Luther, a skilled translator, sometimes let theology override his scholarship, such as in his limited translation of various words used for God, some of which are plural, others emphasizing feminine/goddess attributes.  In truth, monotheism came from many sources, but especially from Pharaoh Akhenaton in Egypt.  As we know, the Habiru-Hebrew wandering tribes learned a lot there, so they would have picked this up as well, to become an essential element in their later religious repertoire.  A German writer comments.     

“The contention that the Hebrews invented monotheism – the one god doctrine – belongs to the domain of thoughtless phrases, all the more as most ancient Jewish documents recognize a whole line of gods, such as Elohim, El-Schaddai, El-Elyon, Adonai, Zabaoth, Jahwe, etc.” 

“It was first of all Luther’s translation – which was frequently extremely free – of these names by the universal designation ‘God the Lord’, which is responsible for this semblance of Jewish monotheism.”  

“Moreover, it has been sufficiently established for many decades that the Jewish god has nothing to do with the Christian Father-in-Heaven, or the universal Father of the Germanic nations.  Jahwe… is the exclusive tribal god of the Hebrews: he has absolutely no desire to be the god of other peoples, for he persecutes the latter with unappeasable hatred, and assigns to his favourite the task of annihilating the remaining nations, or as Luther translates: ‘to devour them’.” 

F. Roderich-Stoltheim, The Riddle of the Jew’s Success, Leipzig: Hammer Verlag, 1927 (NY: Michael Santomauro, 2005), pp. 69-70.

RITES AND RITUALS OF THE TEMPLE.

          As to the specific innermost beliefs, mysteries, rites and rituals of the Temple, apart from the copious, cruel and bloody animal sacrifices, we know very little more.  Of course one need not read all that far into the Old Testament to realize that human sacrifice is also a part of their archetypal heritage.  Not surprisingly, their nomadic experiences came with the desert tribes from Egypt all the way to Canaan, which they attacked and appropriated, and then to the Jerusalem Temple.  What things came with them?  In the desert, they carried the so-called Ark of the Covenant.  Essentially this was what we might call “God in a Box”, where the mysterious Yahweh was supposed to reside.  Straiton tells us more with reference to what this “holiest of holies” was really about.

“In all traditions of the Deluge the Ark was made to contain the Sea of Life, which in various miraculous ways was always saved for future generations.  This germ of all living things was necessary for the repeopling of the earth.  It represented the ‘survival of life, and the supremacy of spirit over matter, through the conflict of the opposing powers of nature.’ (Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 444).” 

“The Ark, oblong in shape, was used as the ‘Sacrificial Chalice’ by the priests in the worship of the goddesses who represented the generative powers of nature.” …

“The Talmud books say that Noah was himself the dove (spirit), thus identifying him more with the Chaldean Nouah.  Baal is represented with the wings of a dove and the Samaritans worshipped on Mount Gezerim, the image of a dove.”        

 

The eminent explorer, ethnographer and linguist, Sir Richard Burton, speaks of Egyptian and even earlier Indian origins.

[Begin quoting.]  ... the Hebrews, who claimed the most ancient as well as the noblest of pedigrees, could not tell the tale of their origin as a nation without elevating its simple estate by a hundred fables, and embellishing it with signs and marvels and wonders tending to the honour of the Chosen People....    

Finding after his return from temporary seclusion ... his chosen people worshipping a molten calf, the god Apis, and playing -- in other words, a scene of Egyptian debauchery -- Moses broke in wrath the first Table of the Law....  Moses returned with a code (Exodus xxxiv.) better fitted to the sickly and diseased condition of the Hebrew soul.  Of this the proportion of the ritual to the moral is as ten to two.  It is a priestly system, a faith of feasts and sacrifices, of holy days and ceremonies purposely assimilated to those idolatries of Egypt….  The Lawgiver no longer disdained to borrow from symbolical religion, especially in the ceremonial worship, which at first he appears to have avoided. 

The ark and the tabernacle were old types among the Egyptians….  The Urim and Thummim (Ra and Thenei) were the Sun and personified Justice -- Light and Truth.  The Elohim were Kneph and Pthah….  The Spirit of God that moved upon the face of the waters is again the deity Kneph.  The silence with which Jehovah was to be adored appears to be an idea borrowed from Amon Ra, the Unutterable Word, similar to the Hindu ‘Aum,’ which must never be spoken of man. 

The Tree of Life, whose fruit made gods of those who tasted it, was a mere symbol, long before the day of Moses, incorporated in the Indian and Egyptian mythologies. … The cosmogony of Moses may be traced to the same origin.  [The Jew, the Gypsy and El Islam, 1898.] 

As to what was actually done deep in the interior recesses of the Temple, the bloody and cruel sacrifice of animals may have been all the priests and deep adepts dared to show the ordinary worshippers! We must conclude that the innermost esoteric Hebrew beliefs and rituals were polytheistic and pagan in nature, conflicting greatly with the prevailing Judeo-Christian mythology.    Other rituals rooted in Egypt would have been acted out, and serpent adoration and healing by serpents was widespread.  Beyond this, I see no productive reason to speculate further, but if you must, read more in the Old Testament about various horrors, ethnic cleansings, torture and other assorted atrocities, and decide for yourself what even more sinister secrets the Temple inner sanctum might have contained.  When we take a closer look, we see that the bible contains very little about the real doctrines and dogma of the Hebrew priests and adepts, who knew the truth about the origin of their beliefs and practices.  The Torah books, from Egypt, really did not mean all that much.

DID AN ANCIENT “Q DOCUMENT”, A “PROTO-TALMUD” EXIST?

“Philo, the most industrious and devout Jew of his race, recognizing the true nature of all sacred writings, treats the Pentateuch as allegorized and symbolical. … The Pentateuch was written on papyrus by a scribe’s pen from the ancient hieroglyphics, which were carved in stone.” 

“It is known that the Pentateuch arose out of the older primitive documents by means of a supplementary one.  The real Hebrew Bible was a secret volume, unknown to the masses, and is far more ancient than the Septuagint.”  Valentia Straiton. 

The Septuagint, of course, is the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew texts, translated between the third and first centuries BC.  It is still considered to be a useful rendering of the known and extant Hebrew scriptures of the day, including some books not included in the later Old Testament and Apocrypha.  However, it seems that more than this was involved in preserving the secret traditions and lore, some of which were later taken into the Talmud and Kabala.  As did Rudolf Bultmann about the Christian gospels, both Miss Straiton and I postulate that a “Q”, a quelle, a source, a foundation document in common, must have existed.  This “secret supplementary volume” as she describes it would have included both the oral and the already-written traditions, with commentary.  Among other things, this preserved the original polytheistic Egyptian pagan legends and lore.   We could call this a Proto-Talmud from eons ago, compiled by the Hebrew-Habiru Priests, Levites and Scribes, intended only for the inner circle of Elders, adepts and properly initiated “chosen ones”. 

CONCLUSION.

To claim, as do the three Semitic religions, that the mostly astrologically based mythos found in the Judeo-Christian Bible (and the later Koran) is a factual account is not a seriously sustainable position.  At its very best, the Bible (indeed, any religious writing) should first and foremost be seen as theology, not history.  What is more, to create and locate a nation-state based on myths and misrepresentations is a fallacy and a flaw.  Many books and articles have been, could be, should be, and will be written on all these matters, but what you have here sufficiently presents a reasonable and honest alternative explanation of the Bible legends and lore.  You can take it from here.  Search the Internet.  See the Zeitgeist movie.  Use your library.  There are mountains of material.  To bring this to a close, now you know just about as much as anyone else does concerning the rather murky, mystical, mysterious and elusive ancient Hebrew religious beliefs and practices.  As a matter of fact, you probably know more.

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© 2008 All Rights Reserved Harrell Rhome.