Chapter Thirteen

PROPHETS OF AN UNSEEN GOD

 

"....How would Divine encounters with Yahweh take place?

"The immediate answer, in the wilderness of Sinai, was the Tabernacle, the portable Mishkan (literally: Residence) with its Tent of Appointment.

Mr. Sitchin explains how all other peoples (non Israelites) had methods of communicating with their gods: by visual contact, through carved images, other gods had spouses....

"....The answers are given by Yahweh himself.


"First, there will be the Angels, the Divine Emissaries, who would convey the Lord’s will and guidance and act in His behalf....

Other channels of communication: "it will be through the Prophets of Yahweh, appearing to them in a vision or in a dream, that the Lord will communicate with the people.

"The usual concept of a "prophet" is that of one who engages in prophecies - predictions of the future (in this instance under divine guidance or inspiration). But the dictionary correctly defines "prophet" as "a person speaks for God" in divine matters, or just "a spokeman for some cause, group or government...." And indeed, that is what the Hebrew term, Nabih, means: a spokeman....

"....The term appears for the first time in the Bible in chapter 20 of Genesis, which deals with the transgression of Abimelech, the Phillistine king of Gerar, who was about to take Sarah into his harem not knowing that she was married to Abraham. "And Elohim came unto Abimelech in a nighttime dream" to warn him off....

"....Next the term is used (in Exodus chapter 6) in its rudimentary sense. When the mission to the Pharaoh was imposed on Moses, he complained that his was a "halting speaking," which would not be heeded by the Pharaoh. So Yahweh said to him: "Behold, as an Elohim I will make thee before Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy Nabih" - your spokeman.

After more biblical examples Mr. Sitchin continues,

"The matter of the Nabih as a true spokeman for Yahweh must have needed further elucidation - witness the additional statements in Deuteronomy.... Unlike other people who "listen to diviners and magicians," the Lord said, to the people of Israel He will provide a Nabih, one from their own brethren who "My words shall be in his mouth, who shall speak to them as I will command....." "If there arise in the midst of thee a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and he giveth thee a sign or a wonder," but it was only to induce you to "follow other Elohim, unknown to thee, and worship them - do not hearken to the words of such a Nabih," Yahweh explains through Moses....

"....That it was not an easy matter to distinguish between true and false prophets was thus anticipated from the beginning; the ensuing events offered bitter confirmation of the problem.

""And there arose not a Nabih in Israel like Moses, whom Yahweh hath known face to face...." Before dying, the Lord made him go up Mount Nebo that was on the eastern side of the Jordan facing Jericho, to see from there the Promised Land.

"Significantly or ironically, the mount chosen for that final act, Mount Nebo, was named after Nabu, the son of Marduk. Il Nabium, the "God who is a spokeman," Babylonian inscriptions called him; for as historical records show, it was he who, while his father Marduk was in exile, roamed the lands bordering on the Mediterranean, converting the people to the worship of Marduk in preparation for the seizing of the supremacy by Marduk at the time of Abraham.

"....It was after the death of Moses the servant of Yahweh, that Yahweh spoke unto Joshua the son of Nun, the Minister of Moses, saying: "Moses my servant died; now therefore arise and cross the Jordan, thou and all this people, unto the land which I give to them, the Children of Israel . . . Only be thou strong and steadfast in observing to act according to all the teachings which Moses my servant commanded thee - turn not to the right or to the left."

"Thus begins the Book of Joshua, with a reiteration of the Divine Promise on the one hand and of the required absolute adherence to Yahweh’s commandments on the other hand. And right away Joshua, recognizing that the former depended on the latter, realized that it would be the latter that would be the problem.

"As in the time of Moses, divine assistance in the form of miracles was provided the new leader to make the double point: Though unseen, Yahweh was omnipresent as well as omnipotent....

Yahweh guided Joshua for the river crossing; the toppling of the walls of Jericho, and the defeat of the Canaanite kings in the Valley of Ajalon, when the Sun stood still and did not set for some twenty hours.

"...."And it came to pass after a long time, after Yahweh had given rest unto Israel from all their surrounding enemies, that Joshua waxed old and aged...."

"....So Joshua assembled the tribal leaders at Shechem, to review before them the history of the Hebrews from their ancestral beginnings until the present. On the other side of the Euphrates River did your ancestors live, he said - Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor - "and they worshipped other Elohim."

 

The migration of Abraham, the story of his descendants, the enslavement in Egypt and the events of the Exodus under the leadership of Moses were then briefly reviewed, as well as the crossing of the Jordan and the settlement under Joshua’s leadership. Now, as I and my generation are passing on, Joshua said, you are free to make a choice: you can remain committed to Yahweh - or you can worship other gods:

Would’st ye hold Yahweh in awe,
and worship him in sincerity and in truth -
then remove the Elohim whom your forefathers
had worshipped across the river [Euphrates]
and in Egypt, and worship [only] Yahweh.
But if it does not please you to serve Yahweh -
choose here and now whom ye shall worship:
whether the Elohim which your forefathers had
served on the other side of the River,
or the gods of the Westerners in whose land ye dwell;
and I and my family shall worship Yahweh.

And the people chose Yahweh....

"....So "Joshua said unto the people: Ye all are witnesses against yourselves that ye have chosen Yahweh to worship. And they said: We are witnesses." Thereupon "Joshua made a covenant with the people that day," writing it all down "in the Book of the Teachings of Yahweh." And he erected a stone stela under the oak tree that was beside the Tabernacle in witness of the covenant.

"....Among the difficulties inherent in the religion of Yahweh were the absence of a genealogy and of a primordial realm whence the gods had come. The gods who had been worshiped by the parents and forefathers of Abraham "across the river" - the first set of "other gods" listed by Joshua - included Enlil and Enki, the sons of the Anu, the brothers of Ninharsag, Anu himself had named parents. All of them had spouses, offspring - Ninurta, Nannar, Adad, Marduk, and so on. There was even a third generation - Shamash, Ishtar, Nabu. There had been an original homeland - a place called Nibiru, another world (i.e. planet) whence they had come to Earth.

"Then there were the "other gods" of Egypt; Yahweh had shown His might against them when Egypt was afflicted to let the Children of Israel go, but they continued to be venerated and worshiped not only in Egypt but also wherever Egypt’s might had reached. They were headed by Ptah, and the great Ra was his son - travelling in Celestial Boats between Earth and the "Planet of Million Years," the primordial abode. Thoth, Seth, Osiris, Horus, Isis, Nepthys were related by simple genealogies in which brothers married half sisters. When the Israelites, fearing that Moses had perished on Mount Sinai, asked Aaron to reinvoke the deity, he fashioned a golden calf - the image of the Apis Bull - to represent the Bull of Heaven. And when a plague afflicted the Israelites, Moses made a copper serpent - the symbol of Enki/Ptah - to stop the plague. No wonder that the gods of Egypt, too, were fresh in the Israelite’s mind.

"And then there were the "other gods of the Westerners in whose lands you dwell" - the gods of the Canaanites (Western Asiatics) whose pantheon was headed by the retired olden god El (a proper name or epithet being the singular of the plural Elohim) and his spouse Asherah; and his adversaries Mot and Yam. Their playgrounds and battlegrounds were the lands that stretched from the border of Egypt to the borders of Mesopotamia; every nation in that area worshipped them, sometimes under locally adjusted names; and the Children of Israel were now dwelling in their midst...

"To compound the "Basic Problem" of the missing ingredients of a genealogy and a primordial abode, was added the greater difficulty for the Israelites: an Unseen God who could not even be represented by a graven image.

"And so it was that, on and off, "the Children of Israel did wrong in the eyes of Yahweh, and worshipped the Ba’al gods.... And again and again leaders - designated Judges - arose to return the Israelites to their true faith and thereby remove Yahweh’s wrath.
 

THE KNESSET

"One of those Judges, the female Deborah, is fondly recalled by the Bible as Nebi’ah - a Prophetess. Inspired by Yahweh, she chose the right commander and tactics for the defeat of Israel’s northern enemies; the bible records her victory song.... David Ben Gurion (the first prime minister of the Modern State of Israel), in The Jews in Their Land, wrote that,

"that religio-national
wakening was movingly
expressed in the Song of
Deborah with its
reference to the great and
invisible God."

"In fact the victory hymnal song did more than that: It referred to the celestial nature of Yahweh, asserting that the victory was made possible because Yahweh whose appearance "makes the Earth tremble, the heavens quake and the mountains melt," caused the "planets, in their orbits," to fight the enemy.

"Such a celestial aspect of Yahweh.... was to become highly significant in the prophetic utterances of the great Prophets of the Bible.

"....The functions of the Nabih as teacher and upholder of moral laws and social justice, and not only for a conduit of divine messages, emerges from the deeds of even such an early Prophet as the enigmatic "Nathan" ("He who was granted")....

Mr. Sitchin relates here the event of David plotting the death of Bathsheba’s husband, so that he could take Bathsheba as his wife.

"....It was then that Nathan the prophet came to the king and told him a fable of a rich man who had many sheep but nevertheless coveted the only sheep a poor man had. And when David exclaimed, "such a man must be punished by death!" the prophet told him: "Thou art the man!"

"....David spent even more time in pious meditation and solitary prayer; many of the king’s reflections on God and Man found expression in the Psalms of David; in them the celestial aspects of Yahweh echo, and expand upon the words in the Song of Deborah.

Mr. Sitchin now directs his readers (in his book) to the events following the death of King Solomon (King David’s son), the splitting of the Kingdom; he relates in more detail the Prophet Elijah and his miracles.

"....The prophetic activity of Elijah is stated to have taken place after the "Angel of Yahweh" had given him instructions, and it appears that this was the manner in which Yahweh’s word was communicated to him. Untold by the Bible, though, is the manner by which Elijah was given his most memorable (and final) instructions for his ascent to heaven in a fiery chariot. The event, the likes of which harkens back to the times of Enmeduranki, Adapa, and Enoch is described in detail in II Kings chapter 2.

"....As Elijah before him, Elisha was also involved in royal successions that were divinely ordered....

Circumstances which came about after the fall of Egyp, Babylon, Assyria and the Hittites, gave way to smaller powers to rise: the Hebrews, Edomites, Moabites, Arameans, Phoenicians, Phillistines.

"....Their border wars and encroachments were small local affairs compared to the titanic battles of the erstwhile empires in past centuries - and to the major onslaughts that were in the offing.

"In 879 B.C. a new capital, Kalhu (the biblical Calah) was ceremoniously inaugurated in Assyria.... Its hallmarks were expansion, domination, warfare, carnage, and unparalleled brutality - all in the name of "the great god Ashur" and other deities of the Assyrian pantheon.... In 689 B.C. the Assyrians took full control of Babylon, and went to the extreme of moving Marduk himself to the Assyrian capital, as a captive god.

Babylon came to power once again under the leader Nabopolassar.... and now (626 B.C.) it was Babylon that emulated Assyria in conquests near and far - all in the name of "the lords Nabu and Marduk...."

"....the Biblical Prophets also expanded their mission to global dimensions.... all the doing and planning of Yahweh to put an end to individual and national inequities and transgressions. As though harkening back to the days before the Deluge, when the Lord expressed his dissatisfaction with the way Mankind had turned out and sought to wipe it off the face of the Earth on the occasion of the Deluge, so was the Divine Dissatisfaction great once again, the remedy being the demise of all kingdoms - of Israel and Judea included, the destruction of all temples - that in Jerusalem included, the end of all the false worship that is expressed in sacrifices to cover up constant injustices, and the rise, after such a global catharsis, of a "New Jerusalem" that shall be a "Light unto all the nations."

"....It was, as J.A. Heschel designated it in The Prophets, "The Age of Wrath...."

"....On the individual level, the great Prophets spoke out harshly against empty piety - rituals that papered over injustices.... It was a call to return to the essence of the Ten Commandments, to the righteousness and justice of ancient Sumer.

"On the national level, the Prophets saw futility and foresaw doom in the making and unmaking of alliances with neighboring kings in efforts to withstand the attacks and domination of the great Powers of that time, for those surrounding nations, too, were themselves doomed in the coming upheavals: "A storm of Yahweh, a wrath shall come forth, a whirling tempest will burst upon the heads of the wicked,"" (this included Israel and Judaea)....

"....The peoples who worshipped Ba’al and Ashtoreth, Dagon and Ba’al-zebub, Chemosh and Molech, were also sinners gone astray.

"....So were the "false prophets" against whom the True Prophets of Yahweh had waged a constant struggle....

 

"They proclaim, Peace! Peace! but there is no peace," Jeremiah said of them, whereas the True Prophets spared not the kings or the people when reprimand and warnings were needed.

"On the international level, the global arena, the Prophets displayed an uncanny grasp of geopolitics, and their remarkable insights and foresights ranged far and wide. They knew of the reemergence of ancient kingdoms, as that of Elam, and the emergence of a new power farther east; that of the Medes (later known as Persians); even distant China, the Land of Sinim, was accounted for. The early city-states of the Greeks in Asia Minor, their occupation of the Mediterranean islands of Crete and Cyprus, were recognized. The status of old and new powers bordering on Egypt in Africa was known....

"....At center stage were the three longtime powers: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon; of them, Egypt - and its gods - were treated with the least respect. In spite of close and sometimes friendly relationships between the Hebrew kingdoms and Egypt (Solomon married a Pharaoh’s daughter and was provided by the Egyptians with horses and chariots), Egypt was considered to be treacherous and unreliable.... Both Isaiah and Jeremiah spoke out at length against Egypt and its gods, prophesying the demise of both.

"Isaiah (chapter 19), in an "Oracle on Egypt," envisioned Yahweh arriving in Egypt airborne on the day when He would judge and punish Egypt and the Egyptians:

Behold Yahweh,
riding upon a swift cloud,
coming unto Egypt.
The idols of Egypt shall tremble before Him,
The heart of Egypt shall melt as he comes near.

"....Jeremiah focused more on the gods of Egypt, relating (in chapter 43) Yahweh’s vow to "kindle a fire in the temples of the gods of Egypt and burn them down . . . to break the statues of Heliopolis...." The Prophet Joel (3:19) explained why "Egypt shall be a desolation: Because of their violence against the sons of Judah and the spilling of innocent blood in their own land."

"....The exile (of the Israelites ordered by Tiglat-Pileser), according to the Prophets, was willed by Yahweh himself because of Israel’s transgressions, "they heeded not the words of Yahweh their Elohim and transgressed his covenant and all that Moses the servant of Yahweh commanded." the Prophet Hosea, in words and symbolic deeds, foresaw those events as punishment for Israel’s "whoring" after other gods, but it made it known that "a quarrel hath Yahweh with the inhabitants of Earth, for there is neither truth nor justice, nor understanding of Elohim upon the Earth." Isaiah’s prophecies specified that Assyria would be the Lord’s instrument for punishment....

"....Yahweh’s intent was only to chastise through punishment, to always leave a remnant that would be redeemed. Assyria’s kings can have no more free will than an axe has when in the hands of its wielder, He announced, and when Assyria shall have carried out its initial mission, its own day of reckoning shall come.

"Assyria not only failed to realize it was just a tool in the hands of the divine wielder, it also failed to recognize that Yahweh was the Lord, a "Living Elohim" unlike the pagan gods....

"....And it came to pass [that night] that the Angel of the Lord came and smote the camp of the Assyrians, all one hundred and eighty five thousand of them . . .

And Sennacherib (Assyrian king) died in Nineveh, in his temple, slewed by his son Sharezer. Babylon, would be the next divine rod for a global catharsis.

"....The prophets forewarned the kings and people of Judaea. It would bring upon them Yahweh’s wrath in the form of a "great and ferocious nation, coming from the north." It was in the very first year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that Jeremiah made explicit the oracle of punishment against the nation of Judah, the dwellers of Jerusalem, and all the neighbouring nations....

"....Not only was Babylon a tool in the hands of Yahweh - the specific king, Nebuchadnezzar, was called by Yahweh "my servant"!

"....Babylon, as predicted, fell before the onslaught of a new power of the east, that of the Achaemenid Persians, under the leadership of their king Cyrus, in 539 B.C. Babylonian records suggest that the city’s fall was made possible by the falling out between the last Babylonian king, Nabuna’id and the god Marduk; according to the annals of Cyrus, as he captured the city and its sacred precinct and entered the inner sanctum, Marduk extended his hands to him and he, Cyrus, "grabbed the extended hands of the god."

"But if Cyrus thought that by that he had obtained the blessing of the God Most High, he was wrong, the Prophets said, for in fact he was only carrying out the grand design of "Yahweh, the one and only God." Calling Cyrus "My chosen shepherd" and "My anointed," Yahweh thus pronounced to Cyrus through his spokeman Isaiah (chapter 45):

Though thou knowest Me not,
I am the one who hath called thee by name . . .
I am Yahweh, thy Caller,
The God of Israel.

"....It was in his very first year as ruler over Babylon that Cyrus issued an edict calling for the return of the exiles of Judaea to their land and permitting the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. The cycle of prophecies was completed. Yahweh’s words came true.

"But, in the eyes of the people, he remained an Unseen God.

Return to 'Divine Encounters'    or    Return to Jehovah



ENDPAPER
God, The Extraterrestrial

 

"So, who was Yahweh? Was He one of them? Was He an extraterrestrial?

"....The question and its implied answer, indeed, arise inevitably.

  • That the biblical creation narrative with which the Book of Genesis begins draws upon the Mesopotamian Enuma elish is beyond dispute.

  • That the biblical Eden is a rendering of the Sumerian E.DIN is almost self-evident.

  • That the tale of the Deluge and Noah and the Ark is based on the Akkadian Atra-Hasis texts and the early Sumerian Deluge tale in the Epic of Gilgamesh, is certain.

  • That the plural "us" in the creation of The Adam segments reflects the Sumerian and Akkadian record of the discussions by the leaders of the Anunnaki that led to the genetic engineering that brought Homo sapiens about, should be obvious.

"In the Mesopotamian versions it is Enki, the Chief Scientist, who suggest the genetic engineering to create the Earthling to serve as a Primitive Worker, and it had to be Enki whom the Bible quotes as saying "Let us make the Adam in our likeness and after our image." An epithet of Enki was NU.DIM.MUD, "He who fashions;" the Egyptians likewise called Enki Ptah - "The Developer," "He who fashions things," and depicted him as fashioning Man out of clay, as a potter. "The Fashioner of the Adam," the Prophets repeatedly called Yahweh ("fashioner" not "creator"!) and comparing Yahweh to a potter fashioning Man of clay was a frequent biblical simile.

"As the master biologist, Enki’s emblem was that of the Entwined Serpents, representing the double-helixed DNA .... One of Enki’s Sumerian epithets was BUZUR, it meant both "He who solves secrets" and "he of the mines," for the knowledge of mineralogy was considered knowledge of Earth’s secrets, the secrets of its dark depths.

"The biblical tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden - the tale of the second genetic manipulation - assigns to the serpent the role of triggering their acquisition of "knowing" (the biblical term for sexual procreation). The Hebrew term for serpent is Nahash; and interestingly, the same word also means soothsayer, "he who solves secrets" - the very same second meaning of Enki’s epithet. Moreover, the term stems from the same root as the Hebrew word for the mineral copper, Nehoshet. It was a Nahash Nahoshet, a copper serpent, that Moses fashioned and held up to stop and epidemic.... and our analysis leaves no alternative but to conclude that what he had made to summon divine intervention was an emblem of Enki.

"....Pertinent to this aspect might have been the fact that when Yahweh turned the shepherd’s crook that Moses held into a magical staff, the first miracle performed with it was to turn it into a serpent. Was Yahweh, then, one and the same as Enki?

"The combination of biology with mineralogy, and with the ability to solve secrets reflected Enki’s status as the god of knowledge and sciences, of the Earth’s hidden metals, he was the one who set the mining operations in southeastern Africa.... "It is Yahweh who giveth wisdom, out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding," Proverbs asserted (2:6), and it was He who granted wisdom beyond comparison to Solomon, as Enki had given the Wise Adapa. "The gold is mine and the silver is mine," Yahweh announced (Haggai 2:8); "I shall give the treasures of the darkness and the hidden riches of the secret places," Yahweh promised to Cyrus (Isaiah 45:3).

"The clearest congruence between the Mesopotamian and biblical narratives is found in the story of the Deluge. In the Mesopotamian versions it is Enki who goes out of his way to warn his faithful follower Ziusudra/Utnapishtim of the coming catastrophe.... In the Bible all that is done by Yahweh.

"This aspect of the similarities between Enki and Yahweh becomes more emphatic - and in one respect perhaps even embarrassingly so for the monotheistic Bible - when we reach a passage in the Book of Proverbs (30:4) in which the unsurpassed greatness of Yahweh is brought out by rhetorical questions....

Again Mr. Sitchin asks,

"....Was Yahweh, then, Enki in a biblical-Hebrew garb?

"Were it so simple... If we examine closely the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we will find that while it is the Nahash - Enki’s serpent guise as knower of biological secrets - who triggers the acquisition by Adam and Eve of the sexual "knowing" that enables them to have offspring, he is not Yahweh but an antagonistic of Yahweh (as Enki was of Enlil). In the Sumerian texts it was Enlil who forced Enki to transfer some of the newly fashioned Primitive Workers (created to work in the gold mines of the Apsu) to the E.DIN in Mesopotamia, to engage in farming and shepherding. In the Bible, it is Yahweh who "took the Adam and placed him in the garden of Eden to tend it and to maintain it." It is Yahweh, not the serpent, who is depicted as the master of Eden who talks to Adam and Eve, discovers what they had done, and expels them. In all this, the Bible equates Yahweh not with Enki but with Enlil.

"Indeed, in the very tale - the tale of the Deluge - where the identification with Enki appears the clearest, confusion in fact shows up. The roles are switched, and all of a sudden Yahweh plays the role not of Enki but of his rival Enlil. In the Mesopotamian original texts, it is Enlil who is unhappy with the way Mankind has turned out, who seeks its destruction by the approaching calamity and who makes the other Anunnaki leaders swear to keep all that a secret from Mankind. In the biblical version (chapter 6 of Genesis), it is Yahweh who voices his unhappiness with Mankind and makes the decision to wipe Mankind off the face of the Earth. In the tale’s conclusion, as Ziusudra/Utnapishtim offers sacrifices on Mount Ararat, it is Enlil who is attracted by the pleasant smell of roasting meat and (with some persuasion) accepts the survival of Mankind, forgives Enki and blesses Ziusudra and his wife. In Genesis, it is to Yahweh that Noah builds an altar and sacrifices animals on it, and it was Yahweh "who smelled the pleasant aroma."

"So was Yahweh Enlil, after all?

"A strong case can be made for such an identification. It there had been a "first among equals" as far as the two half brothers, sons of Anu, were concerned, the first was Enlil.... it was EN.LIL ("Lord of the Command") who took over as chief of the Anunnaki on Earth. It was a situation that corresponds to the statement in Psalms 97:9: "For thou, O Yahweh, art supreme over the whole Earth; most supreme art thou over all the Elohim." The elevation of Enlil to this status is described in the Atra-Hasis Epic in the introductory verses, prior to the mutiny of the gold-mining Anunnaki....

"....After Anu, the ruler of Nibiru, returned to Nibiru after visiting Earth, it was Enlil who summoned and presided over the council of the Great Anunnaki whenever major decisions had to be made....

"....The monotheistic Bible lapses several times into describing Yahweh in like manner, chairing an assembly of lesser deities, usually called Bney-elim - "sons of gods...." "The Lord stands in the assembly of the gods, among the Elohim he judges," we read in Psalm 82:1. "Give unto Yahweh o sons of gods, give unto Yahweh glory and might," Psalms 29:1 stated.... The requirement that even the "sons of the gods" bow to the Lord paralleled the description of the status of Enlil as the Commander in Chief: "The Anunnaki humble themselves before him, the Igigi bow down willingly before him; they stand by faithfully for the instructions."

"As far as personal characters were concerned, Enki, the fashioner of Mankind, was more forbearing, less stringent, with both gods and mortals. Enlil was stricter, a "law and order" type, uncompromising, unhesitant to mete punishments when punishment was due. Perhaps it was because while Enki managed to get away with sexual promiscuities, Enlil, transgressing just once (when he date-raped a young nurse, in what turned out to be her own seduction by her), was sentenced to exile (his banishment was lifted when he married her as his consort Ninlil). He viewed adversely the intermarriage between Nefilim and the "daughters of Man." When the evils of Mankind became overbearing, he was willing to see it perish by the Deluge....

"....Enlil’s character had at the same time another side, a rewarding one. When people carried out their tasks, when they were forthright and god-fearing, Enlil on his part saw to the needs of all, assured the land’s and the people’s wellbeing and prosperity. The Sumerians lovingly called him "Father Enlil" and "Shepherd of the teeming multitudes...." The last statement (in a Hymn to Enlil, the All-Beneficent), recalled the fact that it was Enlil who had to approve the choice of kings, and by whom the line of Priesthood extended from the sacred precinct to the "cult center" Nippur.

"These two characteristics of Enlil - strictness and punishment for transgressions, benevolence and protection when merited - are similar to how Yahweh has been pictured in the Bible. Yahweh can bless and Yahweh can accurse.... "Yahweh thy Elohim is a merciful God," Deuteronomy 4:31 stated; He is a vengeful God, the same Deuteronomy stated a chapter later (5:9) . . .

"It was Yahweh who determined who shall be the priests, it was He who stated the rules for Kingship (Deuteronomy 17:16) and made clear that it will be He who chooses the king - as indeed was the case centuries after the Exodus, beginning with the selection of Saul and David. In all that, Yahweh and Enlil emulated each other.

Mr Sitchin explains in his book also, the use for significant numbers, like the number 7 and the number 50, both important in the events of Enlil and Yahweh.

"....The similarities between Yahweh and Enlil extend to other aspects.... He (Enlil), was by and large an unseen god, ensconded in the innermost chambers of his ziggurat or altogether away from Sumer. In a telltale passage in the Hymn to Enlil, the All-Beneficent it is thus said of him,

When in his awesomeness he decrees the fates,
no god dares look at him;
Only to his exalted emissary, Nusku,
the command, the word that is in his heart,
does he made known.

"No man can see me and live, Yahweh told Moses in a similar vein; and His words and commandments were known through Emissaries and Prophets.

"While all these reasons for equating Yahweh with Enlil are fresh in the reader’s mind, let us hasten to offer the contrary evidence that points to other, different identifications.

"One of the most powerful biblical epithets for Yahweh is El Shaddai.... Early Greek and Latin translators of the Hebrew Bible rendered Shaddai as "omnipotent," leading to the rendering of El Shaddai in the King James translation as "God Almighty...."

"....Advances in the study of Akkadian in recent years suggest that the Hebrew word is related to shaddu, which means "mountain" in Akkadian; so that El Shaddai simply means "God of mountains...."

"....Now, there is no way that Enlil could have been called, or reputed to be, a "god of mountains," for there are no mountains in the great plain that was (and still is) Mesopotamia. In the Enlilite domains the land that was called "Mountainland" was Asia Minor to the north.... and that was the region of Adad, Enlil’s youngest son. His Sumerian name was ISH.KUR (and his "cult animal" was the bull), which meant "He of the mountainland." The Sumerian ISH was rendered shaddu in Akkadian; so that Il Shaddu became the biblical El Shaddai.

Other examples comparing Adad and Yahweh are given in the book.

"While these attributes tarnish the similarities between Yahweh and Enlil, they should not carry us away to assume that, if so, Yahweh was the mirror image of Adad....

"The comparability between Yahweh and Enlil is further diminished by another important attribute of Yahweh, that of a warrior. "Yahweh goes forth like a warrior, like a hero He whips up his rage; He shall roar and cry out and over His enemies He shall prevail," (Isaiah 42:13) stated....

"....There is nothing in the Mesopotamian records that would suggest such an image for Enlil. The warrior par excellence was his son, Ninurta, who fought and defeated Zu, engaged in the Pyramid Wars with the Enki’ites, and fought and imprisoned Marduk in the Great Pyramid. His frequent epithets were "warrior" and "the hero" and hymns to him hailed him as "Ninurta, Foremost Son, possessor of divine powers . . . Hero who in his hand the divine brilliant weapon carries...."

"....could Yahweh have been Ninurta?

"As Foremost Son and heir apparent of Enlil, Ninurta too bore the numerical rank of fifty, and could thus qualify no less than Enlil to have been the Lord who decreed the fifty-year Jubilee and other fifty-related aspects mentioned in the Bible. He possessed a notorious Divine Black Bird that he used both for combat and humanitarian missions.... His association with the Sinai peninsula and the channeling of its rainwaters, that come in winter bursts only, into an irrigation system is still recalled to this day.... is still called Wadi El-Arish, the wadi of the Urash - a nickname of Ninurta from way back. In association with the Sinai peninsula through his waterworks and his mother’s residence there, also offers links to a Yahweh identification.

"....One of the most decisive actions attributed in the Bible to Yahweh, with lasting effects and indelible memories, was the upheavaling of Sodom and Gomorrah. The event, as we have shown in great detail in The Wars of Gods and Men, was described and recalled in Mesopotamian texts, making possible a comparison of the deities involved.

"In the biblical version Sodom (where Abraham’s nephew and his family lived) and Gomorrah, cities in the verdant plains south of the Sea of Salt, were sinful. Yahweh "comes down" and, accompanied by two Angels, visits Abram and his wife Sarai in their encampment near Hebron. After Yahweh predicts that the aged couple would have a son, the two Angels depart for Sodom to verify the extent of the city "sinning." Yahweh then reveals to Abram that if the sins would be confirmed, the cities and their residents would be destroyed.... Finally, the cities’ doom begins as "Yahweh rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfurous fire, coming from Yahweh from the skies; and he upheavaled those cities and the whole plain and all the inhabitants thereof, and all that grew upon the ground....

"....The same event is well documented in Mesopotamian annals as the culmination of Marduk’s struggle to attain supremacy on Earth.... Alarmed, the Council of the Anunnaki met in emergency sessions chaired by Enlil. Ninurta, and an alienated son of Enki called Nergal (from the south African domain), recommended drastic action to stop Marduk. Enki vehemently objected. Ishtar pointed out that while they were debating, Marduk was seizing city after city.... Finally, Ninurta and Nergal were authorized to retrieve from a hiding place awesome nuclear weapons, and to use them to destroy the Spaceport in the Sinai (lest it fall into Mardukian hands) as well as the area where Nabu was hiding.

"The unfolding drama, the heated discussions, the accusations, and the final drastic action - the use of nuclear weapons in 2024 B.C. - are described in great detail in a text that scholars call the Erra Epic.

"As was the clear-cut case of the divine actors in the Deluge tale, so we find in this one concerning the upheavaling of Sodom, Gomorrah and the other cities of that plain astride the Sinai peninsula, whom does and whom does not Yahweh match when the biblical and Sumerian texts are compared. The Mesopotamian text clearly associates Nergal and not Ninurta as the one who had upheavaled the sinning cities. Since the Bible asserts that it was not the two Angels who had gone to verify the situation, but Yahweh himself who had rained destruction on the cities, Yahweh could not have been Ninurta.

"(The reference in Genesis chapter 10 to Nimrod as the one credited with starting Kingship in Mesopotamia, which we have discussed earlier, is interpreted by some as a reference not to a human king but to a god, and thus to Ninurta to whom the task of setting the first Kingships was assigned. If so, the biblical statement that Nimrod "was a mighty hunter before Yahweh" also nullifies the possibility that Ninurta/Nimrod could have been Yahweh).

"But Nergal too was not Yahweh. He is mentioned by name as the god of the Cutheans who were among the foreigners brought over by the Assyrians to replace the Israelites who were exiled. He is listed among the "other gods" that the new comers worshipped and for whom they set up idols. He could not have been "Yahweh" and Yahweh’s abomination at one and the same time.

"If Enlil and two of his sons, Adad and Ninurta, are not finalists in the lineup to identify Yahweh, what about Enlil’s third son, Nannar/Sin (the "Moon God")?

"His "cult center" ( as scholars call it) in Sumer was Ur, the very city from which the migration of Terah and his family began.... Was he then the deity who had instructed Abram the Sumerian to pick up and leave?

"....The Akkadian/Semitic name for Nannar was Sin, and there can be no doubt that it was in honor of Nannar as Sin that the part of the Sinai peninsula called in the Bible the "Wilderness of Sin" and, for that matter, the whole peninsula was so named. It was in that part of the world that Yahweh appeared to Moses for the first time, where the "Mount of the gods" was located, where the greatest Theophany ever had taken place. Furthermore, the principal habitat in the Sinai’s central plain, in the vicinity of what we believe is the true Mount Sinai, is still called Nakhl in Arabic after the goddess Ningal (Nannar’s wife) whose Semitic name was pronounced Nikal.

"Was it all indicative of a Yahweh = Nannar/Sin identification?

"The discovery several decades ago of extensive Canaanite literature ("myths" to scholars) dealing with their pantheon revealed that while a god they called Ba’al (the generic word for "Lord" used as a personal name) was running things, he was in fact not entirely independent of his father El (a generic name meaning "god" used as a personal name).... Described in the Canaanite texts as a retired deity, El as Nannar/Sin would indeed have been forced into retirement: Sumerian texts dealing with the effects of the nuclear cloud as it wafted eastward and reached Sumer and its capital Ur, reveal that Nannar/Sin refusing to leave his beloved city - was afflicted by the deathly cloud and was partly paralyzed.

"The image of Yahweh, especially in the period of the Exodus and the settlement of Canaan, i.e. after - not prior to - the demise of Ur, does not sound right for a retired, afflicted and tired deity as Nannar/Sin had become by then. The Bible paints a picture of an active deity, insistent and persistent, fully in command, defying the gods of Egypt, inflicting plagues, dispatching Angels, roaming the skies; omnipresent, performing wonders, a magical healer, a Divine Architect. We find none of that in the descriptions of Nannar/Sin.

"Both his veneration and fear of him stemmed from his association with his celestial counterpart, the Moon; and this celestial aspect serves as a decisive argument against identifying him with Yahweh....

"....All that suggests that in the Canaanite trio El-Ba’al-Anat (Anat being Ba’al sister) we see the Mesopotamian triad Nannar/Sin-Utu/Shamash-Inanna/Ishtar - the gods associated with the Moon, the Sun, and Venus. And none of them could have been Yahweh, for the Bible is replete with admonitions against the worship of these celestial bodies and their emblems.

"If neither Enlil nor any of his sons (or even grandchildren) fully qualify as Yahweh, the search must turn elsewhere, to the sons of Enki, where some of the qualifications also point.

"The instructions given to Moses during the sojourn at Mount Sinai were, to a great extent, of a medical nature. Five whole chapters in Leviticus and many passages in Numbers are devoted to medical procedures, diagnosis, and treatment. "Heal me, O Yahweh, and I shall be healed," Jeremiah (17:14) cried out....

"....The biological medical knowledge underlying such capabilities was possessed by Enki, and he passed such knowledge to two of his sons: Marduk (known as Ra in Egypt), and Thoth (whom the Egyptians called Tehuti and the Sumerians NIN.GISH.ZIDDA - "Lord of the Tree of Life"). As for Marduk, many Babylonian texts refer to his healing abilities but - as his own complaint to his father reveals - he was given knowledge of healing but not of reviving the dead. On the other hand, Thoth did possess such knowledge, employing it on one occasion to revive Horus, the son of the god Osiris and his sister-wife Isis....

"....When it came to the construction and equipping of the Tabernacle in the Sinai wilderness and later on of the Temple in Jerusalem, Yahweh displayed an impressive knowledge of architecture, sacred alignments, decorative details, use of materials, and construction procedures - even to the point of showing the Earthlings involved scale models of what he had designed or wanted. Marduk has not been credited with such an all-embracing knowledge, but Thoth/Ningishzidda was....

"....So was Thoth Yahweh?

"Though known in Sumer, he was not considered there one of the Great Gods, and thus not fitting at all the epithet "the God Most High" that both Abraham and Melchizedeck, priest of Jerusalem, used at their encounter. Above all, he was a god of Egypt, and (unless excluded by the argument that he was Yahweh), he was one of those upon whom Yahweh set out to make judgments....

"....If Thoth was not Yahweh, the process of elimination appears to leave one more candidate: Marduk.

"That he was a "god most high" is well established; the Firstborn of Enki who believed that his father was unjustly deprived of the supremacy on Earth - a supremacy to which he, Marduk, rather than Enlil’s son Ninurta, was the rightful successor.... He possessed a Shem, a sky-chamber, as Yahweh did....

"....Apart from the arguments that we have mentioned in the cases of Thoth that negate an identification with any major Egyptian deity (and Marduk was the great Egyptian god Ra after all), the Bible itself specifically rules out any equating of Marduk with Yahweh, in sections dealing with Babylon, portrayed as greater, mightier, and supreme over the gods of the Babylonians - it explicitly foretells their demise by naming them....

"....As we find so many similarities, and on the other hand crucial differences and contradicting aspects, in our search for a matching "Yahweh" in the ancient Near Eastern pantheons, we can continue only by doing what Yahweh had told Abraham: Lift thine eyes toward the heavens. . .

"....Even Marduk as he assumed supremacy on Earth recognized that it was Anu, and not he, who was "Lord of the Anunnaki." Was he the "God Most High" by whom Abraham and Melchidezek greeted each other?

"The cuneiform sign for Anu (AN in Sumerian) was a star; it had the multiple meanings of "god divine," "heaven," and this god’s personal name, Anu, as we know from the Mesopotamian texts, stayed in heaven; and numerous biblical verses also describe Yahweh as the One Who Is in Heaven....

"....Though Anu did visit Earth several times, he was residing on Nibiru; and as the god whose abode was in Heaven, he was truly an unseen god.... his image does not appear even once!

"Since Yahweh, too, was unseen and unrepresented pictorially, residing in "Heaven" the inevitable question that arises is, Where was the abode of Yahweh? With so many parallels between Yahweh and Anu, did Yahweh, too, have a "nibiru" to dwell on?

"The question, and its relevance to Yahweh’s invisibility, does not originate with us. It was sarcastically posed by a heretic to a Jewish savant, Rabbi Gamliel, almost two thousand years ago; and the answer that he was given is truly amazing!

"....Let us note carefully what Rabbi Gamliel’s answer was:

according to Jewish tradition, he said, the exact spot in the heavens where God has a dwelling is so distant that it would require a journey of 3,500 years...

"How much closer can one get to the 3,600 years that it takes Nibiru to complete one orbit around the Sun?

"....Biblical references to Yahweh’s throne.... they actually stated its location, in a place called Olam. "Thy Throne is established forever, from Olam art Thou Psalms 93:2 declared....

"....The Hebrew Bible, strict in the precision of its terminology, has other terms for stating the state of "lasting forever." One is Netzah, as in Psalm 89:47 that asked, "How long, Yahweh, wilt Thou hide Thyself - forever?." Another term that means more precisely "perpetuity" is Ad....

After more explanations about Olam, Mr. Sitchin continues,

"It was a place that was conceived as physically existing....

the hills of Olam.... the heat sources of Olam.... the pathways of Olam.... the lanes of Olam.... Yahweh the King of Olam.... (all expressions found in the Bible).

About the Circumcision,

And my Covenant shall be in your flesh,
the Covenant of Olam.
(Genesis 17:13)

"....Indeed, the answer that Rabbi Gamliel gave to the question regarding the Divine Abode was based on rabbinic assertions that it is separated from Earth by seven heavens, in each of which there is a different world; and that the journey from one to the other requires five hundred years, so that the complete journey through seven heavens from the world that is called Earth to the world that is the Divine Abode lasts 3,500 years.... Nibiru to someone on Earth would indeed be seven celestial spaces away when it disappears to its apogee.

"....And a possible clincher for identifying Olam with Nibiru was the statement in Genesis 6:4 that the Nefilim, the young Anunnaki who had come to Earth from Nibiru, were the "people of the Shem" (the people of the rocketships), "those who were from Olam."

"With the obvious familiarity of the Bible’s editors, Prophets, Psalmists with Mesopotamian "myths" and astronomy, it would have been peculiar not to find knowledge of the important planet Nibiru in the Bible. It is our suggestion that yes, the Bible was keenly aware of Nibiru - and called it Olam, the "disappearing planet."

"Does all that mean that therefore Anu was Yahweh? Not necessarily . . .

"Though the Bible depicted Yahweh as reigning in His celestial abode, as Anu did, it also considered Him "king" over the Earth and all upon it - whereas Anu clearly gave the command on Earth to Enlil. Anu did visit Earth, but.... as ceremonial state and inspection visits; there is nothing in them compared to the active involvement of Yahweh in the affairs of nations and individuals....

"....And so, in spite of the similarities, there are also too many essential differences between Anu and Yahweh for the two to have been one and the same.

"More over, in the biblical view.... He (Yahweh), was more than once hailed as El Olam, the God of Olam (Genesis 21:33) and El Elohim, the God of the Elohim (Joshua 22:22, Psalms 50:1 and Psalms 136:2).

"The biblical suggestion that the Elohim - the "gods," the Anunnaki - had a God, seems totally incredible at first, but quite logical on reflection.

"At the very conclusion of our first book in The Earth Chronicles series (The 12th Planet), having told the story of the planet Nibiru and how the Anunnaki (the biblical Nefilim) who had come to Earth from it "created" Mankind, we posed the following question:

And if the Nefilim were the "gods" who "created"
Man on Earth, did evolution alone, on the Twelfth
Planet, created the Nefilim?

"....The Anunnaki must have pondered their origins, and arrive at what we call Religion - their religion, their concept of God.

"Who created the Nefilim, the Anunnaki on their planet?


The Bible itself provides the answer, Yahweh, it states.... "Before the Elohim upon Olam he sat," Psalm 68:1 explained. Just as the Anunnaki had been on Earth before The Adam, so was Yahweh on Nibiru/Olam before the Anunnaki, the creator preceded the created.

"We have already explained that the seeming immortality of the Anunnaki "gods" was merely their extreme longevity.... and could (and did) die. A time measure (orbital) applicable to Olam.... was recognized by the Prophets and Psalmists, what is more impressive is their realization that the various Elohim.... were in fact not immortal - but Yahweh, God, was.... and tells them thus:

I have said, ye are Elohim,
all of you sons of the Most High;
But ye shall die as men do,
like any prince ye shall fall

"....Why the Bible’s very first verse that deals with the very Beginning, does not begin with the first letter of the alphabet, but rather with the second one:

Breshit bara Elohim
et Ha’Shamaim v’et Ha’Aretz

which is commonly translated "In the beginning god created the Heaven and the Earth."

"Since the Hebrew letters have numerical values, the first letter, Aleph (from which the Greek alpha comes) has the numerical "one, the first" - the beginning. Why then, scholars and theologians have wondered, does the Creation start with the second letter, Beth, whose value is "two, second"?

"While the reason remains unknown, the result of starting the first verse in the book of the Bible with an Aleph would be astounding, for it should make the sentence read thus:

Ab-reshit bara Elohim
et Ha’Shamain v’et Ha’Aretz

The Father-of-Beginning created the Elohim,
the Heavens, and the Earth.

"....an omnipotent, omnipresent Creator of All emerges from the primeval chaos: Ab-Reshit, "The Father of Beginning."

"And all at once Science and Religion, Physics and Metaphysics, converge into one single answer that conform to the credo of Jewish monotheism: "I am Yahweh, there is none beside me!"

"....But what is, we believe, not to be doubted is that at one time the first word in the first verse in the Bible did begin with the first letter of the alphabet. This certainly is based on the statement in the Book of Revelation ("The Apocalypse of St. John" in the New Testament), in which God announces thus:

I am Alpha and Omega
the Beginning and the End,
the First and the Last.

"....That this had been the case at the beginning of Genesis is confirmed, we believe, by the certainty that the statements in Revelation harken back to the Hebrew scriptures from which the parallel verses in Isaiah (41:6; 42:8; 44:6) were taken, the verses in which Yahweh proclaims His absoluteness and uniqueness:

I, Yahweh, was the First
And the Last I will also be!

I am the First
and I am the Last;
There are no Elohim without Me!

I am He,
I am the First,
I am the Last as well.

"....A frequent form of stating this everlasting nature of the biblical God is the expression "Thow art from Olam to Olam." It is usually translated "Thou art everlasting...." Literally taken it suggests that the existence and reign of Yahweh extended from one Olam to another - that He was "king, lord" not only of the one Olam that was the equivalent of the Mesopotamian Nibiru - but of other Olams, of other worlds! .... that encompass not only the Solar System but even the distant stars (Deuteronomy 4:19, Ecclesiastes 12:2).

"THIS IS THE IMAGE OF A COSMIC VOYAGER

"All else - the celestial planetary "gods," Nibiru that remade our Solar System and remakes the Earth on its near passages, the Anunnaki "Elohim," Mankind, nations, kings - all are His manifestations and His instruments, carrying out a divine plan. In a way we are all His Angels, and when the time comes for Earthlings to travel in space and emulate the Anunnaki, on some other world, we too shall be carrying out a destined future....

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