Fenrisulfr
01-20-2007, 05:46 AM
Take some time and read this article. I guarantee this will be the single most fascinating thing you have read today. If I am wrong, then you can give me some negative rep points..:suicide:
I highly recommend this!
http://www.thevesselofgod.com/thefirsteden.html
“...all those that have written antiquities, both among the Greeks and barbarians... relate that the ancients lived a thousand years... .”
“West of the Maya were the tribe called Tyendal, whose white culture-bringer was Votan. [He]... invented hieroglyphic signs, taught them how to cultivate maize and cotton, and collected them into villages. Votan... is also said by them to have measured the Earth.”
“Wodan is regularly represented as ... a Chaldee priest, and latterly sometimes mythologically as a serpent... .”
It is remarkable how many creation myths have nearly identical beginnings. They begin with tales of a primordial chaos, and that chaos is usually symbolized by the element of water. For the Babylonians, the goddess Tiamat (“the bitter ocean”) represented the chaos which spawned all things. She took as her husband Apsu, the god of the fresh waters. This union of bitter ocean and fresh waters is certainly suggestive of a flood, and this idea is borne out by the fact that their son Ea equates with the Sumerian King Ia, who was known to history as “the Lord of the Flood.”
The Egyptian story of creation also begins with water and chaos. Before the gods there was only a dark, watery abyss called Nun. Within its chaos, Nun contained the potentiality of all things and the latent divinity of the creator. At the dawn of the world a primeval mound arose from the waters, providing the first deity with a place to come into being. Finding himself alone, he created the world and peopled it with gods and men patterned on his image. This first deity became the Sun God who brought light and order to where darkness and chaos once reigned.
These are but a few examples out of many. Most are not incredibly dissimilar to what is found in Genesis, where it says: “And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face o the waters.” (Emphasis ours.) Like the Egyptian deity, Jehovah also created order out of chaos, brought light into the darkness, and created man in his own image. Virtually identical stories are told by cultures existing in parts of the world far distant from these. The striking similarities between so many creation myths cannot be explained as mere coincidence. They have to represent a shared primordial memory of some sort. We think they do. We think the symbolism of chaos and a vast watery abyss is related to another of man’s most widespread myths - that of the Flood.
Nearly every culture recounts the tale of a global flood. Nearly every culture has a Flood hero who survives the Deluge, along with a remnant of humanity, to repopulate the Earth. We believe that the Flood represents the true starting point of our current historical epoch, and that it represents the end of the previous epoch - one referred to by many cultures as “the First Time.” Plato records that the Egyptian priests told Solon the Earth was far older than the Greeks thought, and that it had been ravaged by fire and floods repeatedly. Each time there was enough of a remnant left living to start anew. Could this be the reason why, in the first chapter of Genesis, God says to Adam, “...be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth”? The commandment is fairly unambiguous. Though contrary to the storyline, God is clearly telling Adam to be fruitful, multiply, and repopulate the earth.
The story of Eden is a highly symbolic account, containing elements of both truth and fiction. Those aspects that reflect the most historical accuracy are the various names involved, which can be shown to relate to very real figures in the Sumerian king lists. “King Ia” is Adam, his son “Kin” is Cain, the third king “Enu” is Enoch, and so on. But the king lists may also contain clues which shed light on the fictional aspects of the Eden story. The Sumerians also had an antediluvian king list, which is generally regarded as a work of fiction. It purports to document a glorious pre-history of Sumer - one that stretched back 241,000 years into the past. Some of the kings included on the list were said to have lived exceedingly long lives, a few to the age of 30,000. Sumeriologist L.A. Waddell was able to demonstrate that this antediluvian king list could be patterned upon names and alternate titles of figures in the post-Flood king lists, and that the fabrication had probably been an attempt on the part of the Sumerians to reconstruct that part of their history which had been lost or forgotten. Authors of the Old Testament, using the Sumerian prototype as a guide, started their tale with the post-Flood figures, later inserting the story of the Flood out of sequence. We find support for our thesis, yet again, in the strange figure of Enoch.
Central to the lore of Enoch is the notion that he preserved the lost wisdom of the antediluvian world. The question such an idea naturally raises is this: How could a figure who vanishes from biblical texts before the Flood (not to reappear thereafter) be expected to have accomplished such a task? Even in The Book of Enoch, he dispatches his “antediluvian” wisdom well before any suggestion of a coming deluge. Enoch’s story only makes sense if Noah’s story didn’t happen in the way it is presented. And evidence exists to suggest that this is precisely the case.
As unorthodox as such as idea may seem, there is evidence indicating that Enoch and Noah were really the same figure. In some ancient texts the name “Noah” is rendered as “Noach”, while elsewhere Enoch is presented as “Noach.” Joseph Riess, author of Language, Myth and Man, believes that Noah, Noach and Enoch are all alternate names for the same figure. L.A. Waddell, citing different evidence, also believes Noah and Enoch to be one and the same. According to Waddell, Enoch was sometimes called “Hanuk”, and in certain translations of Genesis Noah is called “Hanuk” as well. Also, a tradition exists among the Chaldeans specifically linking the third Sumerian king Enu (Enoch) to the legend of the Flood. Enu’s son bore the royal title of Ia-patesi (“Priest-King of God Ia”), which Waddell believes is preserved in the name of Noah’s son, Iapeth, or Japeth. Waddell even states that, “Enoch... is regarded by Biblical authorities as being identical with Noah of the Flood myth.”1 If such an idea was in currency with the Biblical scholars of Waddell’s time (the 1920s), it doesn’t seem to have taken hold. And yet it is immanently logical. If Enoch piloted the Ark, it would explain how it was he who was credited with preserving the secrets of the antediluvian world. In The Book of the Cave of Treasures, it is said that one of the most sacred things taken aboard the Ark was a text containing “the most ancient secrets of the church” - the very secrets synonymous with the legend of Enoch.
Presuming that Enoch piloted the Ark necessitates a complete rethinking of the chronology contained in Genesis, and would require viewing the events described as history told in highly symbolic terms. It is altogether possible that this may in fact have been the intent of the original authors, and that they have left enough clues for us to read between the lines. Comparing the details of Genesis with the traditions from which it was derived provides further clues still.
Let us start with a simple hypothesis: Could the story of Adam’s expulsion from Eden be emblematic of a previous Golden Age empire coming to an end? And could the ensuing banishment to a wasteland symbolize the condition of a planet left devastated by a flood? Virtually every culture had a legend of a “Golden Age” sometimes in the mythical past. Perhaps the most well-known of these is that of Atlantis. Like the stories of Genesis, Atlantis is intimately connected with ideas of a fall from grace, divine retribution, and a flood. The history of Sumer begins with a flood; the story of Atlantis ends with one. Many mainstream scientists and experts now concur that such a flood did in fact occur. Is it a tale rooted in history, and not myth? Could it be possible that Atlantis was the first Eden?
Let us take a closer look at the most pertinent details of both stories. Both take place in a primordial paradise of perfection, a place whose “soil produced a wealth of roots, wood, gums, flowers and fruits, the sweet juice of the grape, and corn, all desirous... vegetables... shady trees sheltered it’s happy people, and diverse fruits appeased their hunger and thirst... in a word, there was to be found ... everything which could satisfy the body, the spirit, and engender piety towards the gods.” The foregoing description, so evocative of the Biblical Eden, is in fact Plato’s description of Atlantis. It wholly reflects the popular conception of Eden, though in The Book of Genesis Eden is never described with such a vivid wealth of detail.
In both stories, the end of the idyllic paradise is precipitated by a rebellion against the gods (or “God”, as the case may be). Divine punishment ensues, and the Golden Age comes to an end. Perhaps the oddest theme to be shared by both stories is that of giants. In both stories, giants are the result of miscegenation between gods and mortals - or more precisely, between gods and mortal women. Could such startling similarities be pure coincidence, or do the stories of Eden and Atlantis have a shared origin? Are the Watchers of The Book of Enoch synonymous with the antediluvian gods, perhaps the survivors of the island’s destruction?
Continued....
I highly recommend this!
http://www.thevesselofgod.com/thefirsteden.html
“...all those that have written antiquities, both among the Greeks and barbarians... relate that the ancients lived a thousand years... .”
“West of the Maya were the tribe called Tyendal, whose white culture-bringer was Votan. [He]... invented hieroglyphic signs, taught them how to cultivate maize and cotton, and collected them into villages. Votan... is also said by them to have measured the Earth.”
“Wodan is regularly represented as ... a Chaldee priest, and latterly sometimes mythologically as a serpent... .”
It is remarkable how many creation myths have nearly identical beginnings. They begin with tales of a primordial chaos, and that chaos is usually symbolized by the element of water. For the Babylonians, the goddess Tiamat (“the bitter ocean”) represented the chaos which spawned all things. She took as her husband Apsu, the god of the fresh waters. This union of bitter ocean and fresh waters is certainly suggestive of a flood, and this idea is borne out by the fact that their son Ea equates with the Sumerian King Ia, who was known to history as “the Lord of the Flood.”
The Egyptian story of creation also begins with water and chaos. Before the gods there was only a dark, watery abyss called Nun. Within its chaos, Nun contained the potentiality of all things and the latent divinity of the creator. At the dawn of the world a primeval mound arose from the waters, providing the first deity with a place to come into being. Finding himself alone, he created the world and peopled it with gods and men patterned on his image. This first deity became the Sun God who brought light and order to where darkness and chaos once reigned.
These are but a few examples out of many. Most are not incredibly dissimilar to what is found in Genesis, where it says: “And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face o the waters.” (Emphasis ours.) Like the Egyptian deity, Jehovah also created order out of chaos, brought light into the darkness, and created man in his own image. Virtually identical stories are told by cultures existing in parts of the world far distant from these. The striking similarities between so many creation myths cannot be explained as mere coincidence. They have to represent a shared primordial memory of some sort. We think they do. We think the symbolism of chaos and a vast watery abyss is related to another of man’s most widespread myths - that of the Flood.
Nearly every culture recounts the tale of a global flood. Nearly every culture has a Flood hero who survives the Deluge, along with a remnant of humanity, to repopulate the Earth. We believe that the Flood represents the true starting point of our current historical epoch, and that it represents the end of the previous epoch - one referred to by many cultures as “the First Time.” Plato records that the Egyptian priests told Solon the Earth was far older than the Greeks thought, and that it had been ravaged by fire and floods repeatedly. Each time there was enough of a remnant left living to start anew. Could this be the reason why, in the first chapter of Genesis, God says to Adam, “...be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth”? The commandment is fairly unambiguous. Though contrary to the storyline, God is clearly telling Adam to be fruitful, multiply, and repopulate the earth.
The story of Eden is a highly symbolic account, containing elements of both truth and fiction. Those aspects that reflect the most historical accuracy are the various names involved, which can be shown to relate to very real figures in the Sumerian king lists. “King Ia” is Adam, his son “Kin” is Cain, the third king “Enu” is Enoch, and so on. But the king lists may also contain clues which shed light on the fictional aspects of the Eden story. The Sumerians also had an antediluvian king list, which is generally regarded as a work of fiction. It purports to document a glorious pre-history of Sumer - one that stretched back 241,000 years into the past. Some of the kings included on the list were said to have lived exceedingly long lives, a few to the age of 30,000. Sumeriologist L.A. Waddell was able to demonstrate that this antediluvian king list could be patterned upon names and alternate titles of figures in the post-Flood king lists, and that the fabrication had probably been an attempt on the part of the Sumerians to reconstruct that part of their history which had been lost or forgotten. Authors of the Old Testament, using the Sumerian prototype as a guide, started their tale with the post-Flood figures, later inserting the story of the Flood out of sequence. We find support for our thesis, yet again, in the strange figure of Enoch.
Central to the lore of Enoch is the notion that he preserved the lost wisdom of the antediluvian world. The question such an idea naturally raises is this: How could a figure who vanishes from biblical texts before the Flood (not to reappear thereafter) be expected to have accomplished such a task? Even in The Book of Enoch, he dispatches his “antediluvian” wisdom well before any suggestion of a coming deluge. Enoch’s story only makes sense if Noah’s story didn’t happen in the way it is presented. And evidence exists to suggest that this is precisely the case.
As unorthodox as such as idea may seem, there is evidence indicating that Enoch and Noah were really the same figure. In some ancient texts the name “Noah” is rendered as “Noach”, while elsewhere Enoch is presented as “Noach.” Joseph Riess, author of Language, Myth and Man, believes that Noah, Noach and Enoch are all alternate names for the same figure. L.A. Waddell, citing different evidence, also believes Noah and Enoch to be one and the same. According to Waddell, Enoch was sometimes called “Hanuk”, and in certain translations of Genesis Noah is called “Hanuk” as well. Also, a tradition exists among the Chaldeans specifically linking the third Sumerian king Enu (Enoch) to the legend of the Flood. Enu’s son bore the royal title of Ia-patesi (“Priest-King of God Ia”), which Waddell believes is preserved in the name of Noah’s son, Iapeth, or Japeth. Waddell even states that, “Enoch... is regarded by Biblical authorities as being identical with Noah of the Flood myth.”1 If such an idea was in currency with the Biblical scholars of Waddell’s time (the 1920s), it doesn’t seem to have taken hold. And yet it is immanently logical. If Enoch piloted the Ark, it would explain how it was he who was credited with preserving the secrets of the antediluvian world. In The Book of the Cave of Treasures, it is said that one of the most sacred things taken aboard the Ark was a text containing “the most ancient secrets of the church” - the very secrets synonymous with the legend of Enoch.
Presuming that Enoch piloted the Ark necessitates a complete rethinking of the chronology contained in Genesis, and would require viewing the events described as history told in highly symbolic terms. It is altogether possible that this may in fact have been the intent of the original authors, and that they have left enough clues for us to read between the lines. Comparing the details of Genesis with the traditions from which it was derived provides further clues still.
Let us start with a simple hypothesis: Could the story of Adam’s expulsion from Eden be emblematic of a previous Golden Age empire coming to an end? And could the ensuing banishment to a wasteland symbolize the condition of a planet left devastated by a flood? Virtually every culture had a legend of a “Golden Age” sometimes in the mythical past. Perhaps the most well-known of these is that of Atlantis. Like the stories of Genesis, Atlantis is intimately connected with ideas of a fall from grace, divine retribution, and a flood. The history of Sumer begins with a flood; the story of Atlantis ends with one. Many mainstream scientists and experts now concur that such a flood did in fact occur. Is it a tale rooted in history, and not myth? Could it be possible that Atlantis was the first Eden?
Let us take a closer look at the most pertinent details of both stories. Both take place in a primordial paradise of perfection, a place whose “soil produced a wealth of roots, wood, gums, flowers and fruits, the sweet juice of the grape, and corn, all desirous... vegetables... shady trees sheltered it’s happy people, and diverse fruits appeased their hunger and thirst... in a word, there was to be found ... everything which could satisfy the body, the spirit, and engender piety towards the gods.” The foregoing description, so evocative of the Biblical Eden, is in fact Plato’s description of Atlantis. It wholly reflects the popular conception of Eden, though in The Book of Genesis Eden is never described with such a vivid wealth of detail.
In both stories, the end of the idyllic paradise is precipitated by a rebellion against the gods (or “God”, as the case may be). Divine punishment ensues, and the Golden Age comes to an end. Perhaps the oddest theme to be shared by both stories is that of giants. In both stories, giants are the result of miscegenation between gods and mortals - or more precisely, between gods and mortal women. Could such startling similarities be pure coincidence, or do the stories of Eden and Atlantis have a shared origin? Are the Watchers of The Book of Enoch synonymous with the antediluvian gods, perhaps the survivors of the island’s destruction?
Continued....