SARAH’S INFALLIBLE QUESTIONS

PART I

Sarah’s Infallible Questions --- A fictional story about the Bible - or is it?

        One day Sarah came up to her daddy and asked, “Daddy we used to attend church faithfully every Saturday.  I wondered why we attended on Saturday, rather than Sunday like most other Christians. We are not Seventh Day Adventist, as a lot of other people used to first think, and except for the holidays that you say the Catholics of the early Christian church added, we still believed in most things that most Sunday keeping Christians churches do.  It’s been hard to understand why everybody, other than the church we used to attend, has a big celebration every year around Christmas.  Even our government, who is supposed to separate church and state, has a Christmas tree on the White House lawn, and Christmas is a Federal holiday.  I couldn’t understand how so many people believe as they do yet we had a different understanding.  It made a lot of sense, when you explained how the early Christians of the Catholic church, while trying to convert the masses of pagans to Christianity, had to Christianize some of their pagan celebrations that they refused to give up.  The Winter’s Solstice on Dec. 25th was during their celebration of the birth of the ‘New Sun’ as the days were going to get longer as they headed towards another spring with hope of another year, it also coincided with the birth of Osiris the pagan god of Egypt, and Mithra the pagan god in Europe, at the time of the early development of Christianity and in competition for acceptance. All my Christian friends at school believe in a trinity, or God in three persons, but the Christian church that we belonged to couldn’t find, in the Bible, where it proves where a spirit or a ghost was a person.  Instead our church believed in only two Gods and they were also one. It had been decided in Rome when the Emperor Constantine, who was supposed to have been a Christian converted from Sun worshiping, called the council of Nicea in 324 C.E., because of a number of problems in the Christian (Catholic) church that needed to be resolved.  After deciding to change Passover to Easter to avoid observing and celebrating with the Jews, they Christianized the pagan spring fertility festival of the goddess Astarte, which I understand kept the Christianized pagans in line.  Then they took up the question of whether Jesus was the Son of God, which would make him a God also.  The main question was whether he was, of the same substance of God the Father, or an extension of God Himself.  It was decided it had to be an extension of the Father to be one.  It would be decided by a vote of the 214 Church Bishops in attendance of the Council.  I understand that prior to the vote, the Emperor Constantine threatened anyone voting negative with being exiled.” Jesus was voted into the God family by a vote of 212 for, and two against.  History reveals that Arius and one other dissenter were exiled.  It became accepted that God the Father and God the son were one.”

        Sarah went on to try to prepare her daddy for the question that was really bothering her. “Daddy, I have problems with that.  If the Father was one with his son, whom was Jesus always praying to, and whom did he cry out to when he was supposedly dying on the cross? That brought me to several questions, at that time. If they were one, why didn’t both die? How could a, omnipresent, eternal God, die? If Jesus wasn’t ‘really dead’, but off somewhere instructing some other group, where is the sacrifice for sin? How could they both be one, when one was dead and the other one was doing the resurrecting? Another thing puzzled me.  If Jesus was tortured into an almost unrecognizable state and then crucified on a cross or stake, how could he be considered a sacrifice, when the God of the Scriptures requires an unblemished sacrifice and that it be burnt?” Sarah went on.  “Daddy, to all these questions, at that time, you gave me the same answer that you had always been given when you had unanswerable questions, that I just had to have Faith.” “Those questions,” Sarah continued, “along with many contradictions in the holy Scriptures, made me understand why we had to leave the Sabbath keeping Christian church, and all the people that were near and dear to our hearts.”

        Finally Sarah got around to the question that was troubling her. “Daddy, you are obviously troubled by the things that I have related to you, about why we reached the point where we were almost a year ago.  At least then we belonged to an organization that was neither Christian, Jewish, or Islam.  Two of the three, Judaism and Islam believe as we do, in just one True God, and the other, Christianity with its multiple god whether it be two or three, they all are steeped in man made ritualism. For lack of a better label for ourselves, we called our organization ‘Hebrews’."  “As Sarah’s daddy painfully waited for the question he know his daughter was bound to ask, she continued bringing him up to date. “Daddy, we use to go and meet with others that had the same or similar understanding, on the Sabbath, but now you study on the Sabbath and have a weekly bible study with me from only the Old Testament part of my King James Bible storybook.  That brings up another question.  A year ago you used the King James ‘Holy Bible’ only sparingly, and that was just for referring to problems, instead you relied solely on The Tanakh, which even though published by a Jewish Publication, it was the Holy Scriptures compared to the King James Old Testament.  Now, you only use the Tanakh sparingly for reference as you study what you call the ‘sources’ of the Scriptures.”   Taking a deep breath Sarah asked, “Daddy, why don’t we go and met with others any longer, and what is it that we now should believe?” Sarah’s Daddy was somewhat slow to answer. His eyes noticeably watering, he finally tried to respond to her well-thought out question.

        “Sarah,” her daddy began, “I’ve always tried to answer any question you asked, to the best of my knowledge at the time, and even though it was with that ‘Faith thing’, like I used to get.  I had listened to hundreds of sermons being preached from the pulpit by highly educated theologians, and been a part of countless ‘guided’ bible studies.  If I couldn’t find an answer among all of that, it must not exist and I needed to take it by Faith.  After all, isn’t that what Christianity is based on?  Now I see it as ‘Faith in the unknown’.   Sarah, I am sorry I pushed that Faith answer off on you.  You asked a very understandable question, I just hope my answer will be as clear.”

         “Three or four years ago I was in a state of euphoria compared too now.  The ‘church’ had lain our future for this elite group that I was a part of, and tied everything up in a nice neat package.  All I had to do was wait for the Millennium to rule what was left of the world after the Beast did his thing. That would include straightening our what was left of the Christians that just couldn’t quite get it.  The Jews and the Arabs really had a surprise coming, but we were going to straighten them out too.  The rest of the heathen world fit some wherein those one thousand years after the return of this savior-god, that we were to do all this with. Also that time is supposed to be right around the corner by their reckoning, even though they don’t want to set dates.  The dead Christians that didn’t have the truth like we did, all the past Popes, and even Orrel Roberts, who collected eight million dollars to keep from having to go to Heaven.  All those deceived Christians would have to wait a thousand years, before we could let them know where they went wrong.  We didn’t quite know who would be a priest and who would be a king, or what we were king of, and of course there would be the savior-god over everything, or at least until sometimes later when the Father that was one with the son, would come down to join the works, and then would go on to finish creating the universe. That could even mean that each of us might have to go through the same ordeal on some other world, that Jesus was supposed to have gone through here.  The church didn’t say a whole lot about what the women would be doing, but surely there was something.  We just have to believe that it was all planned out.” 

         Sarah’s daddy paused, then he continued “Sarah, before I make an attempt to answer your main question, I’ll try to answer the last question. You wondered why we did your bible study from the King James Old Testament storybook, while Mother and I relied on the Tanakh, at least up until lately.  I didn’t want to force things on you. I wanted you to get the basics, and them learn to research and make judgments of your own.  True, I did try to shield you from New Testament Catholic Babylonian mystery religion whose main character has a parallel life with   that of Mithra and Osiris, plus many of the other fourteen crucified saviors.   Once that doctrine gets in your blood, it is very hard to over come.  You wonder, how could it be wrong when so many people believe it? As for the King James Protestant Bible, it is just a slightly modified version of the one the early Catholics created over a period of about 400 years.  We were told that they used the Greek Septuagint, which was the Hebrew Scriptures very carefully translated into Greek, during the third century B. C. E..  Today, the oldest manuscript we have of it, is dated about 400 C.E. That’s at least six hundred years to modify it, and destroy the originals, which is also what they did with the pagan sources they used while developing the New Testament.  That way it avoids traceability.  It has to be more than just a coincidence that 400 C.E.  is about the time they quit developing the N.T.  You will learn more about that later. What I basically feel is; instead of developing the New Testament, from the Old Testament, they adjusted the Scriptures to validate their own creation and fulfill prophecies that were either never there originally, or had already occurred and they would claimed to be dual, and that it would happen again.  They went so far as to claim that their savior-god was also the god of the Old Testament too, that everything that was done, was done by him.  Do you realize that took everything away from the Father God, even the planning? It makes one wonder why Jesus ever prayed to the Father anyway, if he had all the answers himself, and he didn’t need the Fathers help.   If this were true, why did he cry out to Him from the cross?  Sorry Sarah, I got a little diverted.  What I am trying to say is; the only deity there is in the Old Testament or Holy Scriptures, is the Father / Creator God. ‘He is the One and only, and shares His Glory with no other’.  It says that, repeatedly, in the Scriptures.  It also said he has no father or mother, so it couldn’t be the son making that statement. I don’t recall many, if any sermons given on those scriptures."

         Sarah’s daddy continued to try to explain why there are so many versions of the ‘truth’.  “Sarah, there is enough influences in day to day life that you will have to overcome, without intentionally studying something that is so well developed that it is so hard to break loose once you have been brainwashed. The information is always here for research, from Judaism to Talmudism, Islam, Babylonian Mystery Religion, various other pagan religions, including many books on the New Testament.  I want you to study, and decide for yourself.  When that final day does come you will be standing naked before your Creator, and you will not be able to say; ‘but so-n-so said’”.

         Still trying to stay focused on Sarah’s main question, Sarah’s daddy went on, “Sarah, let me see  if  I can get to an answer of your main question.  It is very difficult to determine where I am in this, today.  I seem to be getting more answers almost daily, but with each answer, it seems two more questions are added.   When I think of what I have learned in the last three years, it amazes me, because I thought I had a pretty good handle on it back then.  I guess that’s why I would hope that you don’t have to go through some of the same things I did, that causes the need for so much unlearning before you can be open for the truth.”

         He went on.  “As for the people we used to meet, study, and fellowship, with about a year ago, I think maybe most, if not all, are in the same state we are.  They could even be leery of getting caught up in some of the same traps of the past.  There always seems to be a tendency to get organized, and follow someone, whether we realize we are doing that or not.  I hope that one day, when we are somewhat secure with ourselves, we may be able to fellowship together again.  It’s very hard to remain very focused on this important spiritual need when the world around us seems to be going to ‘Hell in a Hand basket’ completely oblivious to the real problems.  There is a need, also to be concerned about the world situation. Contrary to what we were always taught, there is not going to be a savior-god come along shortly, and correct everything for us.  Even if there is not a lot I can do to change it, I don’t want it sneaking up, and blind-siding me.”

         “As for my present reliance on the Tanakh, Sarah, I still believe there is a lot of truth in it, but a lot of it was written with different motives in mind.  For instances, ‘In the Beginning’, we were always taught it was 4004 B. C. E.. but come to find out, the Sphinx, and numerous discovered Sumerian artifacts are older than that, but I am not really trying to pin down a beginning right now. I did discover that much of the Creation Story was either developed or modified by the Levitical Priesthood during, and shortly after the Babylonian captivity.  Maybe they were trying to trace their Jewish ancestry as far back as they could.  However, there were Sumerian, along with their neighbors in that same area, when the Garden of Eden was supposed to have been there.  The sixth century B.C.E. priesthood may not have known about that.  Sarah, I am not trying to discredit ‘The Scriptures’.  I am just trying to sift through the problems.  As far as when the Scriptures were first begun to be documented, most people think that Moses wrote the first five books of the Scriptures. By the time I get to your main concern, we may have found out, that it’s not entirely true.” 

          “During the tenth century B.C.E., probably during the reign of King Solomon, it must have been decided that there was a need to document a spiritual history. Due to the style of the writer, it was probably a female, either a close relative of Solomon or the Court Historian, that was given the task.   True, I think she did have a lot of the works of Moses that had been either written, or past down orally. Not long after the death of  Solomon, the Nation of Israel split with the ten northern tribes, which became known as the House of Israel, and became independent of the southern, or House of Judah, which included the tribe of Benjamin.  The first historical document that had been written was from the viewpoint of the House of Judah so it became known as the ‘J' document’. It could have come from the first letter of Judah, or from the first Letter of what they called their deity  Jahweh, or the mispronunciation of Jehovah.  Not long after, the sister country of the northern tribes got a hold of a copy of the “J” document and modified it to put their own slant on the Israelite history.  However when they referred to their deity they used the word Elohim, and didn’t mention much about David.  Their document became known as the “E” document.  It could have been from the first letter of what they called their deity, or the first letter of Ephraim, which was what the combined ten northern tribes were often referred to.  Later on after the return from Babylonian captivity, both sources were interwoven and combined by an editor, who is referred to as the Redactor.  It then became known as the “JE” document.  It, with a lot of modifications help from the ‘Priestly History’ crew, probably gave us the first three books of the Bible, up to reaching the Jordan.  More about the Redactor later, because he played a very important role.  Then, what about the other two books of Moses?  Leviticus was written, almost if not completely, by the Levitical Priestly Source or Priestly History, during and/or after the six-century B.C.E. Babylonian captivity, with a lot of Persian influence, as the priest were strongly allied to Persia, or Babylon.  Israel, at that time, was still a vassal-state of Persia, and that could have been the reason Cyrus let the Judahites go back to Jerusalem; because the vassal-state was not producing any income, with all the main Judahites in Babylon, and the rest voluntarily exiled to Egypt, after they killed the grandson of the Scribe Shaphan, who Persia had appointed as governor of Jerusalem, and they feared reprisal.”

          “A lot of the laws the Levitical priesthood imposed, the earlier Israelites were never aware of.  They were mainly for control purposes and financial support for themselves as well as their allies in Persia, but a lot were justifiable laws that had been past down over the ages.  Once again this requires a sifting job.  Later the Roman Catholic/Christians would use the tithe, laws along with some of their own, to make it an extremely wealthy independent state.  Even in recent years Christian churches use this to support above average life styles for their ministry, lavish institutions, and church buildings, while causing a lot of their membership hardships through un-necessary financial sacrifices”. 

          “Well that takes care of three books of Moses for the time being.  What about the Moses book of Deuteronomy?  That involves a little story from the Scriptures.  Not long before the exile to Babylon, there was a young king in Judah, name Josiah. He had been king since he was eight, and probably pretty much raised and influenced by the court High Priest.  Judah in those days was in need of what we would call ‘A Revival’. The nation had gotten a long way away from the knowledge and obedience of their Deity. One day Shaphan, the Court Scribe of King Josiah, came and informed the King of a mysterious scroll of the Law that the High Priest Hilkiah had found hidden away in the Temple.  The scroll, or book was undoubtedly written from sources whether written, or passed along orally by Moses, but the writer of the Deuteronomy Scroll was never revealed.  However, we might have a clue.  History tells us that the name of the son of the High Priest Hilkiah was Jeremiah. Later it was decided that all the books from Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, though I and II Samuel, and I and II Kings, have probably the same Narrator, and all written in the sixth century B.C.E. to form today what is known as the Deuteronomic History.   The references became DTR 1, DTR  2, and so on unless Deuteronomy itself was combined with the other sources, then it became the JED source, and occasionally JEDP to include the Priestly modification.  The Prophets were written just before, during, and after the Babylonian Captivity, often with multiple authors, including Isaiah.  The book of Isaiah covers a span of about 300 years.  The 1st Isaiah was the original, and is covered in chapters 1-39, the 2nd Isaiah wrote with the same style, and purpose as the 1st, and covers the period from Isaiah up to the Babylon Captivity, and can be found in Chapter 40 - 55.  The last 11 Chapters were by still a different author who also wrote in the same style and purpose as the original Isaiah, and it is referred to as 3rd Isaiah, and it was during the Babylon Captivity and maybe a little after”. 

          “While we are talking about Isaiah, this might be the  time to clarify the famous Christian “Virgin Prophesy” that they rely on so much to justify the birth of their Saviour. The Hebrew word ‘Almah’, doesn’t mean virgin at all, but rather it refers to a young woman, maybe in her middle teens.  In this case it was the young pregnant wife of Isaiah, who was about to give birth.  This event occurred during the divided kingdoms.  The House of Judah was at odds with the House or Kingdom of Israel.  King Rezin of Syria decided to join his army with King Pekah’s of Israel, and gang up on the army of the Kingdom of Judah.   This happened to be one of the times when Judah was ‘doing right’ in the eyes of God. God tried to assure the King of Judah that he did not have anything to fear by being out numbered, because King Ahaz of Judah had God on his side, which would assure him of the victory.  To prove where He stood, God said to name Isaiah’s newborn: Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us’ or ‘God is on our side’.  God made an additional proclamation, ‘that before the boy reached the age when he became aware and responsible for his sins, both of the opposing kings would be no more’.  This came to pass, but the Christians never mentioned this prophecy because, it revealed that the individual had sin. Also by the way, I understand that Isaiah’s young wife might have been named Almah. Virgin didn’t fit in anywhere, besides there were quite a few virgin births of savior-gods during the six to seven hundred years before the N.T.” 

          “Minor prophets mainly occurred during the divided kingdom, Babylon Captivity, and some what after. The book of Daniel may have been the last book added.  That means a lot of its prophecies were 20/20 hindsight, because they had already occurred.  As to whether there was really a Daniel in Babylon, there is some question.  For that matter, there is some question as to whether all Israel was in Egyptian Captivity, or just the tribe of Levi, with the rest already in the land when Levi arrived.  There are a lot of questions about the Egyptian captivity.  Just a couple would be: How could one man control and move the number of people and livestock they were supposed to have?   Speaking of livestock;  remember one of God’s plagues where God destroyed all of the Egyptian livestock: cattle, horses mules, and camels. Where did Pharaoh get the horses to pull the chariots that he pursed the Hebrews with? Also if they used all the gold to fashion the calf idol that later was turned to dust, where did they get the gold they used on the Ark? That’s enough problems for now, let’s get back to the Sources, there will be more questions there, with a lot of answers too.”

          “Sometime between the return from the Babylon captivity and the Maccabean period, it became necessary to combine all these sources into one. This had to be a monumental task that called for the skills of a super editor, which the ‘sources’ refer to as the Redactor.  By all accounts that Redactor was Ezra, either by himself, or with an assisting team.  Either way it was a task that deserves more credit than history has given him.  Just combining the competing J and E source would be enough.  One source would refer to the Deity as Elohim, while the other’s reference was Yahweh, one called Moses’ mountain Sinai, while the other was Horeb.  These are called Doublet’s, and they occur through out the Scriptures, including the Creation week and Noah’s Flood.  Of course the flood story got a little help from the Priestly History, so they could have seven pairs of clean animals, so they could sacrifice after the flood, and have meat to eat without causing a species to become extinct.  I don’t know what they would have done with flesh eating animals.”  

         "That brings up  another point, the flood had to be local in lower regions of Mesopotamia.  That was their known world at the time and the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers were known to flood from time to time just as the Nile did every year.  If you had a combination flood of both, it probably seemed like it flooded their whole world.  The animals they took on board were probably just their farm animals. I doubt that they could have gotten Koala bears from Australia along with their needed supply of eucalyptus, or Panda bears from China that requires a diet of bamboo just to mention a couple. As far as Noah and his family being the only ones alive on earth after the flood, I have my doubts.  Maybe the only ones in that general area.  I believe people were alive in different places all over the world, and all the different races too. The concept we were taught that each of Noah’s triplet sons were married to wives of different races that had originally come from eggs that Divinely had been created in Mother Eve, had to be another one of those ‘faith guesses’.  For instance, a lot of people had to be in the area to provide enough able bodied men to build the cities of Babylon and the Tower of Babel during the days of Nimrod, because he was only four or five generations from Noah, though Ham and Cush.  That’s not enough time to produce much of a family tree.  Besides, what were that many of the Black race doing in Babylon anyway? Ham’s descendants  were supposed the have produced the Black race.  I guess that is enough about flood for now except to point out that it is sometime easy to pick out the Priestly contribution to the Scriptures because they are more cosmic in references, whereas the others are more physical as in their Creation week, and flood accounts. Of course, a lot of the Priestly laws were for selfish reasons.  In the beginning times of post Babylon exile period, the required sacrifices were not as we were always taught. The people of Jerusalem area were not allowed to take the life of an animal, when they needed it for food.  Only a priest could do that.  In payment for his services the priest was given one tenth of the animal. So much more could be said on this subject, but we will save that to another time.”

          Sarah’s daddy paused once again, before deciding to change the subject.  “Sarah, I know we don’t talk a lot about the New Testament, so anything I say Now, I expect you to check out for yourself.  It’s only a couple of weeks until Christmas, and we don’t observe it, when it seems like all the rest of the world does.  At first we didn’t celebrate it as other Christians do, because we learned that it was the early Catholic/Christian Church that created the Holiday, as I mentioned earlier.  What we didn’t know at the time was; ‘as Paul Harvey would say ‘the rest of the story’.  They also created the main character.  In the early beginnings of the New Testament church they had very little to work with.  All they  had were some letters from a missionary type person named Paul, that was from an area we now call Turkey.  He was a Proselyte Jew, and because he was unable to become a Pharisee, he seemed to express his zealous ambitions in his letter writings to the groups in the towns of his travels.  He had a lot of moral teachings of this Rabbi from Nazareth in Judah, that taught in the Galilee area some time before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.  Well meaning, though he may have been, he created a resurrected God out of this Nazarene Rabbi of the ‘Q’ people, as the Nazarene followers became known.  Paul decided that this Rabbi was the prophesied messiah that the Jews thought was due, so Paul gave him the Greek name Christ. So all of Paul’s followers became Christians.  They probably still didn’t have the name Jesus until sometime later.  Some say it developed from the crowds chanting ‘yeah Zeus’ much like the Germans used the chant ‘heil Hitler’. Now the early church had a religious ‘hero’ that had a lot of worthwhile moral teachings, and there was a claim that he was a ‘resurrected god.  Now all they needed was a life to go with this individual.  Most people were familiar with the histories of Osiris and Mithra.  Mithra was real popular at that time.  Mithra was born on December 25th to a virgin, with shepherds involved, and three kings that visited him.  Now all they needed was an eyewitness gospel account to back up the story; so the task of developing this gospel was given to a group of these early Christians in Rome. They decided to name this gospel Mark after John Mark, one of Paul’s co-workers, who was probably also a gentile.  In those days, so shortly after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, it was not very popular to be a Jew in Rome.  Other groups of Christians didn’t like some of the ways the gospel, they named Mark, was worded, so they made variation of it until they had over a hundred versions.  They decided to select the best three, burn the rest that didn’t agree with them, then give them names that would make them believable.  Only Matthew and a later gospel that was written, were named after disciples of this Nazarene Rabbi.  It is unknown who wrote the gospel of John, or Revelation, but they were not the same writer.  The Acts of the Apostles was written about 100 years after the events were supposed to have taken place, and we have only the word of the biographer of Paul, named  Luke, a Gentile too, if there was a Luke,  that any of the events concerning Paul’s conversion, actually occurred.  For the Gospel of Luke, the group that wrote it didn’t take very much time to get their facts.  Maybe that was because they were not around during the time they were writing about.  They did some reaching in order to fulfill what they thought was Messianic prophecy”. “The Christmas story in Luke has to be more fiction than truth.  Cyrenius the Governor of Syria, that was named, did not take office until long after the death of Herod.  Joseph was not going to Bethlehem to be taxed.  The only reason to make a trip such as that is for a census, and the census was not taken until years later.  No husband in his right mind would force his pregnant wife, who was about to deliver, to make such a trip on a donkey, when there was no need for her to go at all.  The writers needed that for the ‘prophesy thing’.  I doubt that little Bethlehem was the ‘county seat’ of Nazareth anyway. The parallel story with Mithra about the visitation of three kings - If they were following a star that was light years away, and wound up directing them to a little manger in Bethlehem, how did they get lost, and go to ask directions from Herod in Jerusalem?  Wouldn’t you think that a king with any sense, would send spies along if he really cared about the location of this newborn king?  If there were three kings, and they came bearing expensive gifts, they would have to have a rather large caravan with many bodyguards to protect them and their loot as they crossed the ‘bandit filled desert’.  With the group  that they would have, it’s hard to understand how they could have sneaked out of town without the King’s knowledge.  Any event like that should have shown up in history somewhere, but none can be found.  On the subject of history; any mass killing of male infants, two years and under, would have met a great outcry from the people and been recorded in history somewhere, but once again, none can be found.  Josephus recorded every negative thing that the Herod’s did, but he made no mention of this”.

          “Now we come to a real problem - the father of Jesus.  ‘Will the real Father of Baby Jesus Please stand up’?  In order to fulfill the messianic prophesy, the candidate had to come from the tribe of Judah.  Jesus always called on his father in heaven, but the Heavenly Father was from Heaven, not Judah.  The Christmas story says Mary, was conceived by the Holy Spirit.  That makes the Holy Spirit the father.  John I and Hebrews I says; ‘everything that was done, was done by the Son’.  The Father, according to that, didn’t have anything to do with anything. This would mean that Jesus would have had to conceive his mother Mary with himself, thereby making himself his own father, but he too was from Heaven, and not the tribe of Judah.  Have I lost you yet?  That’s another problem.  Mary and Elizabeth were very close, more like sisters that cousins.  However Mary couldn’t have had a sister, and her mother have been a virgin too.  That’s all a part of the development of the Immaculate Conception, which they need to fulfill the ‘virgin prophesy’ they created in the Old Testament.  I’m not sure how far back in Mary’s genealogy the virgins would have to go to remove any chances of passing on sin.  The Bible says - ‘all have sinned and fallen short.......’  I guess that excludes Mary’s family tree, which by the way surely goes back to Shem, and then to Eve.  Back to the sister problem of Mary and Elizabeth.  Here is an instance when the writer of Luke may have put in ‘too’ much information.  They tell us that Elizabeth was ‘of the daughters of Aaron’,  and her husband Zechariah was a Levitical High Priest.  I think Mary was a Levite too.  That leaves the only way that Jesus could have been from the tribe of Judah, is by Joseph being the real father.  A lot of sources, believe this is true, however none of those ‘sources’ were selected for canonization. If Joseph were the real father then it would cancel what they voted ‘in’ at the Council of Nicea.  Then Constantine would have had to select Mithraism, instead of Christianity, as the state religion, for control purposes.  One of the gospels that didn’t make the grade was the gospel of Barnabas.  It just recently surfaced, and it is quite obvious why it didn’t make the canon.  Although most of the book is the same, with all the same moral teachings of Jesus . The main difference was the repeated denial by Jesus, that he was the Son of God, the Messiah, or even a god at all. Even the first gospel written, which was Mark, didn’t have any resurrection verses in the original manuscript. They were added later, to match it with the letters of Paul’s creation.

          All this leaves is the General Epistles.  They were the last to be written, maybe as late as 200 years, and once again they are generally unsure of the authors.  Last but not least, there’s Revelation.  Although the author is unknown, it is not believed that it was written by the same Christian group that developed the Gospel of John.”  Then Sarah’s daddy stopped and apologized, “Sarah, I didn’t mean to regress into this New Testament thing, but your recent questions about Christmas caused me to relate how my understandings have changed.  These, however, are my understandings, and my relating them to you, is to get you to check into these things.  Remember what I told you about ‘standing before your Creator’.  It’s difficult to understand how so many people can believe a certain way, and you have problems with going along with it. One of our ministers used to address the condition of the Sunday keeping Christians by stating ‘the deceived do not know they are deceived, if they did, then they wouldn’t be deceived’.  Little did he know that it might not be a statement, but instead, it might be a confession.  Maybe, even the elite ‘elect’ can be deceived, and just maybe they have one scripture right: ‘Satan has deceived the whole world.”

          Getting back to Sarah’s main question, her daddy went on to say, “Sarah, I think maybe you can understand why I don’t go to those churches any longer.  Most if not all of what I have just told you, did not come from the pulpit of those churches. You can not continue to do the same thing and expect different result, and the ministers of those churches continue to return to the same source for their information, even if it is the Protestant modification of the original Catholic version, it is only a compromise.  I have learned more in the last three years, than all my church going years put together. Christianity is supposed to be the religion of love, but more people have been killed in the ‘name of Christianity’ than all the combined wars during the last 2000 years. Sarah, I am still continuing to learn things. Just this past week I found out ‘that there is a very good chance that Isaac, was not just bound and then released, but that he was really sacrificed after all, and cremated.  The sheep was burnt just below him.  The books of Genesis and Hebrews even state this, but the Christianized versions modify it, and glass it over.  That would destroy the one edge the Christians have had over the Jews.  They belittled the Jews because they didn’t have an individual in their history who had been sacrificed then resurrected.  This source says Isaac was resurrected about three years later to keep the ‘promise’ alive.  However it was not in time to save Abraham’s wife, Sarah.  She had left him when he had revealed his intent, and she died of grief when she found out that he really carried through with it.  You won’t hear that come out of any pulpit any time soon, nor should it. Things like this should be thoroughly checked out.   Also, in a separate issue of this same source, it was revealed that: in the Midrash version of the Scriptures - Cain was born with a twin sister, and when Abel was born it was along with two sisters. Cain (the first born) felt he should have had the double - blessing of sisters instead of Abel, plus the other problems that added to the jealousy.  I don’t believe that one could go to any of the churches that we have attended in recent years, to find the answer.  That would be asking the ministry of that particular church to step out of the doctrinal box that they are allowed to operate in”. 

          “You see Sarah,” her daddy tried to explain, “There was more to church attendance than just going for the purpose of learning about, and worshiping God.  First you had to find a church that had a belief that corresponds to the understanding that you have at the time.  You contact them, as we did, when we came into the understanding that we should be observing the Sabbath instead of Sunday.  A lot of times you have to call first in order to find where they are having church. After calling the ‘1st Self-righteous Church of God’ in the area where you live, they are subject to send out a visiting team.  You think they are there to inform you about their church, but later find out they came to see if you qualify to attend their church. If you don’t have character traits that the church can’t correct, and your living standards are in keeping with their belief at the time, you will be told where the church is, and be informed when you have to attend.” “You see Sarah” he continued, “even the membership has a standard that they have to stay within, and it is usually higher, than that required of the ministry.  Your main requirement is to ‘pay, pray, and obey’.  If you step out of line, you are subject to disfellowshipment.  If that happens, and you want to stay within your same beliefs, you can seek out a secondary spin-off church of the parent one. The basic qualifications are not quite as strict, but you feel like you are still being judged.  The membership there is mainly victims, and refugees of similar experiences.  Each time, you think you have arrived at where you are supposed to be, that it has to be the ‘last house on the block.’ Then finally you discover it was, and you either have to start a church of  your own, or, find a group of like-minded people, and that is not always very easy, because by that time, people who have been through this, are suspicious of anything that bears resemblance of the past. They have passed the ‘last house on the block’ and they want no part of anything that hints of being organized, or ordained, and that is where I am today.  Where I will be tomorrow, remains to be seen”.

          “I still believe in a Creator, but it may not be the same one that is portrayed in the Holy Bible, or the Tanakh. I continue to study and look for answers.  The day is not far away when you will have to make some choices, but I want them to be your choices.  We have a large variety of information here, and I will try to find anything else that you would like to check into.” Then Sarah’s daddy concluded by saying, “I hope the day will soon come when we will no longer have any questions”.

        Sarah got up Sabbath morning and asked her Daddy, "What was all the noise last night?" This was going to be hard for Sarah’s Daddy to explain, without making it seem like his family was kind of ‘weirdo’s’. "Sarah" her daddy began to reply, "as you will see on the news today, all the world, including the Pope in Rome, thinks that 12 o’clock midnight last night ended, not only a year, but a very important 2000 year period. I guess this gives new meaning to: When in Rome, do as the Romans do’, because even modern Jews recognizes this date as being important. This, however, might be due to their involvement with the commercial world. Their religious belief is the same as ours, that the year begins in the spring when the Scriptures indicate that it does. I see by your puzzled look, that you are a bit confused, so I’ll try to explain."

        Sarah’s daddy paused for quite awhile, then he began to relate his understanding. "Sarah, over two thousand years ago, a Roman Emperor that history calls Julius Caesar, designed a preliminary version of the calendar that most of the world uses today. The first six months were named after pagan gods of that era. Even the days of the week received their names from similar sources. Four of the months of the second half of the year were named after Roman numerals. September, was supposed to be the seventh month, with October the eighth, November the ninth, and December was to be the tenth month. However, Julius decided that he wanted the seventh month named after himself, and not to be out done, Augustus Caesar selected the eighth month to be his Namesake. That pushed the Latin numeral months forward two months. That is why the ninth month of September has the Latin root word for seven in it. Both Caesars also had to have thirty-one days in their month, so the rest of the months had to be adjusted accordingly. There were adjustments that had to be made in this early calendar until it received the revision that was made by Pope Gregory of the early Roman Catholic/Christian church."

        Sarah’s daddy paused again, then he continued, "By today’s standards, one might call that ‘an oxy-moron’, a Christian religion adopting a pagan calendar, but not only did they accept it, but the Gregorian modification is what most of the world uses today. Their main concern at that time was to distance themselves, as much as they could, from the religion of the Jews, who were not very popular with the Romans. It probably was a fair compromise. The Roman Government had accepted Christianity as the State Religion of the Roman Empire, which in itself seems strange. In the days of the Roman Emperor Nero, one could be put to death for being a Christian. Shortly after the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine, Christianity became mandatory and you could be put to death for not being a Christian. That’s a lot of compromise".

        "Speaking of compromise," Her daddy continued. "It played a very important part in the development of the early church all the way from the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, to Plymouth Rock, to the Hundred of Christians denominations. In the early development of Christianity, it was necessary to compromise with pagan religions, in order to keep the multitude of converts they were getting from the non-Jewish pagan world. Compromise continued even into the era called the Reformation. That is a period when a lot of Christians stood up to the Roman Catholic Church and a lot of their pagan beliefs. Similar to the early days of the Christian envelopment, many lives were lost. Finally it arrived at a point where it became necessary to compromise with the Roman Catholic Church in order to avoid being burned at the stake. At this point they were allowed to create their very own Bible, which in the beginning didn’t vary very far from the Catholic version. By 1611 AD , the Protestant Church of England had developed what became known as the King James Version of the Bible’.

        At this point Sarah interrupted and asked. "Daddy, what is AD?" Then her daddy replied, "Sarah, that is a good question, and I will try to answer it as I get back to explaining why we use the calendar we do today, but for now I want to continue to explain the many compromises, that I have learned, were necessary to get the Christian world to where it is today. I mentioned the King James version of the bible. Most Sunday keeping Protestants, and Sabbath-Keeping Christians believe that the King James Holy Bible is the God-breathed infallible Word of God. What is strange about this is: at least eleven of the ‘infallible’ books of the original King James bible were dropped from the version that is used today, however the ‘Mother Church’ as well as the Septuagint, still have them. If they were ‘infallible’, I can’t understand why they were dropped from the Bible!"

        "Now I will try to explain how the Christian religion, along with its calendar, arrived in America". Sarah’s daddy stopped when he saw the puzzled look on Sarah’s face when he implied that the calendar was a Christian calendar. "Sarah," he continued, this might be a good point to explain what I was referring to earlier, when I said ‘1611 A.D.’ Not only did the Roman Catholic/Christian Church accept this new pagan calendar that was created by the Caesars of the Roman Government, but they gave it their own suffix - A.D. This (A.D.) stands for the Latin ‘Anno Domini’, Which means: Year of our Lord.’ This would assume that the counting of years, on this new calendar, began with the birth of their ‘Lord’. Most Christian Historian have trouble pinning down the exact year of this birth. Because there is no zero year, our previous church organization guessed it to be 4 B.C."

        Sarah stopped her daddy at that point and asked "What is the difference between A.D. and B.C." Her dad tried to explain, "I briefly described A.D., but the B.C. part is a little more difficult, at least for me. I don’t know if it stands for something in Latin or not, but most Christians generally believe it means - Before Christ. So, not only did the church put it’s stamp of approval on this new pagan calendar, but they also put their label (B.C.), on all the years that preceded this event. Of course, the main acceptance, as I mentioned earlier, came with the corrections to this calendar that was made by the Roman Catholic/Christian Pope Gregory. As you know, we use B.C.E. meaning Before the Common Era. With all the confusion of the various Christian organizations today it could mean Common Error.’"

        "Sarah, don’t misunderstand me when I refer to ‘Christians’. Most Christians of today are good, well-meaning people. Many I love dearly, and probably always will. I have been hurt by some of the leaders of previous church organization. Even at that, I don’t think it was personal, but either occurred as a result of defending what they believe, or in the case of the church leadership, their lifestyle. My main negative feelings are toward the early Catholic/Christian church. I just wished Christians of today could see what their beliefs are a product of. It is a belief system that is hard to break loose from, but once you break out of that ‘Holy Bible’ box, you find all kinds of information available, and the freedom to study it. I guess I can be thankful that the blinders were lifted. I know there must be a reason that we go through what we do, in life, to arrive at the point where we are. A lot of times we have to leave things and/or people behind. That’s the hardest part. If it is meant for them to follow a similar path, it will happen, and hopefully we will all be together again."

        ‘Let’s see Sarah, where were we when I mentioned that date that ended in A.D.? Oh, I remember now. I was telling you how I understand religion come to the ‘New World’. The early. explorers from Spain mainly went to the West Indies, Mexico, Central, and South America. Along with them they brought their religion of the Catholic Church. They proceeded to convert the natives of their conquered land, where ever they went. Most of the time it was by force. Their church history had provided a good guide-line. Up in the northern area, what was referred to as the Colonies, large numbers of people were arriving in search of ‘freedom’. History says they were looking for ‘religious freedom’ from an oppressive church. The problems is, it wasn’t very long before that church followed them across. At least in the colonies there was not the church-state type of control, as existed both in Rome, and the Church of England. Most arrivals were one variety of Christian or another. They had already splintered to many different understandings of that same King James Bible. Also, they brought that same ‘Christian Calendar’."

        "To most people today, the generally feeling is: all the early settlers were Christians, including all the ‘Founding Fathers’ of our country. Closer research shows most to be either Theist, Atheist, or Agnostic. For instance, we have a ‘Jefferson Bible’, written by Thomas Jefferson. In it is documented most, if not all, of the moral teaching of this Rabbi from Nazareth, that he also refers to as Jesus, however nowhere in this version is there any mention of Jesus being a deity, or a Messiah, or even a Christ. true, our Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, are based on good moral principles, but these all existed before the New Testament came along. They mainly call this a ‘Christian Nation’ because that is the majority religion in this country. With immigration being what it is, I’m not sure how long that will last."

        "In reading a lot of historical accounts, that you won’t find in your public schools, I find that there were also a lot of Jews among the early arrivals. As far as the calendar they used, it was the Christian Calendar of the Majority. The interaction of the Jews with others have always been commercial, so using the calendar of the customers seemed like the logical thing to do. Their own Orthodox Calendar is different, in that there is not the artificial break created by Julius Caesar. Their current year is fifty-seven hundred and something. This reminds me of something I have always been curious about. Our former church organization used to relate to us - how accurate time has been kept over the years, because the Creator gave the Jews, or the tribe of Judah, the responsibility of keeping the ‘Oracles of God’. This brings up several questions: If the Jews kept such accurate time for days, months, and years, why did our church use the pagan calendar? Who kept track of time before Judah was born? Finally, did the Jewish count include the ancient Sumerians, or is it only an estimation of the ancestry of the Jews? Anyway, I don’t place a lot of stock in the Jewish calendar either, after studying the history of the ancient Sumerians. The utilization of the Gregorian Calendar by our former church to establish a six thousand year period of prophesy that precedes the end-time millennium, is rapidly losing its significance. There is probably a few more years that can be juggled with, but then there will be little left that will fit."

        "Sarah, as far as the New Year’s celebration that woke you last night, it was very important to a lot of people, but I believe in a couple of weeks they will be asking themselves why they placed so much importance on it? As far as I am concerned it seems more logical that the Creator would want the year to begin in the early spring, when life is beginning, rather than in the middle of winter when most everything is dead."

Who Really Won?             

January 17, 2000

        "Daddy, today is suppose to be Martin Luther King’s birthday, and the banks, public schools, and city, county, state and federal offices are closed. Why do we honor a man’s birthday as a holiday (Holy Day)? (Other than Christmas, we’ve already been there). I heard on the radio today, that the Catholic Church is talking about elevating this Baptist minister to Catholic Sainthood. That makes about as much sense, as the event you told me about where the Pope is glorifying the Pagan New Years. The Vice President said we are going to spend a million and a half in tax dollars to preserve his birth place, and what does all of this have to do with a flag flying over a state capitol?"

        Sarah’s daddy wished that she hadn’t asked these questions. "Sarah, I will try to explain it the best can. Most grownups today do not understand the true history of that last question. The flag you refer to is the Confederate Battle Flag that flies atop the Capitol Building in South Carolina. A lot of people think it is offensive, because it represents slavery in their minds. Slavery only existed four years during the time of this flag, but it had existed for one hundred years under the American Flag. All this is supposed to have occurred due to the Civil War. Well, just as the history of the development of the Church is some what lost, so is the real background to that war. First, it wasn’t a Civil War. A Civil War is when two groups are trying to take over the same government, and Jefferson Davis wanted no part of the Union Government. It was just the opposite. The Southern States wanted the Federal Government to stay out of the business of the states unless the states allowed it under the constitution. States-Right was the real reason for the war between the states. The southern states wanted to keep the freedoms guaranteed by The Constitution. The right to have slaves was just one of those rights. Originally the individual states were more like small countries joined together by the federal government. There were a lot of commerce problems behind the war also. Time and politics have erased a lot of history. When the South lost the war between the states they not only lost their right to have slaves, they also lost a lot of their Freedoms to the Federal Government. Contrary to the Constitution, the Federal Government continues to take more and more of the freedoms away from the states. What the Union States don’t realize is that they lost the war too. They lost states-rights also. You might say that it was that, that put us on the road to socialism that we are headed for at this time. I can understand why the people of South Carolina are clinging to the memory their flags give them. Now The Federal Government is trying to take away Texas Homestead Exemptions, which is a states right. I think all the states lost when the North won the war.

Where’s the Truth?

February 5, 2000

        After trying to find a particular book in their home library, Sarah paused for a few minutes, then she asked, with somewhat of a puzzled tone in her voice, "Daddy, I know you have tried to answer this question in the recent past, but I am still a bit confused. Why do we have so many different bibles in our home library? If the bible is God’s Word, and every word in it is truth, as we have been taught in the past, why are there so many different versions? Would God have inspired a man to write something one way for one group, and a different way for another group, and still call it truth?"

        "Sarah", her dad replied, "Your questions are good ones. In fact, they are the very questions that I am trying to find answers for. In the past we have been told what to believe. It didn’t occur to us to question what we heard from the pulpit. These were highly educated men who had studied the bible at great lengths. They also spoke with great authority. We could even look up the few scriptures they used, to make sure their sermon was indeed coming from God’s Word. They often even let us know which version they were using. They sometimes would use more that one version to make their point more believable. We often were told the bible was God’s Truth, and every word was God Breathed and infallible. ‘How can there be so many different versions, and they all be God’s TRUTH?’ That is the question that I am trying to find an answer to."

        "Sarah, I believe the Creator, our Heavenly Father, wants us to know the truth. I believe His Truth is here on Earth at this time. It may not be all of His truth, but it probably is all we need to know at this time. What I have come to believe is that this is an on going educational thing. We could spend all eternity studying, and never attain the knowledge of God the Father. The scriptures today, I believe have the Father’s Truth in it, but it was highly corrupted by mankind to satisfy his own purpose. Most people, if not all, will tell you that God would not allow that to happen. Sarah, I am going to back up a little, and relate to you what I have come to understand."

        "First, because of the many errors that I have found in my recent studies, I pray often for guidance, and discernment as I search for the truth. I am not quick to assume that each fact I learn is an answer to that prayer. I have to go to many sources to find answers or clues to where they might be. I believe that a lot of truth has been destroyed over a period of time, because it interfered with the purpose the men were trying to develop at the time. A good example of that is the Septuagint. As I told you earlier, it was supposed to be the Hebrew Scriptures very carefully translated into the Greek, during the third century B.C.E. The oldest manuscript copy of that, which exist today, dates back only to about 400 C.E. That is about a six or seven hundred year gap. The last four hundred years of that period is when the church was developing the New Testament. A lot of the Pagan sources that were developed were also destroyed, to prevent traceability. You might ask why would the Creator allow that to happen? Most people do not think that He would, in fact their whole faith is build around the fact that ‘God would not allow error to enter into His Truth.’ That is why they think the holy Bible is the Infallible Word of God."

        "Sarah, this brings me to the second point. Once again I referred to my recent studies. I do not see the creation story in the same way I was once taught. In fact Sarah, I have found many different creations stories. Most of them are just that: stories, but they are not that much more far-fetched than the one that appears in the Holy Bible. For instance, God calling for Adam and Eve in the garden as if He didn’t know where they were, and then having to question them as if He didn’t know what was going on. This whole ‘forbidden fruit/tree of knowledge’ thing, I believe is a myth, if not the whole Garden of Eden story. I feel that the Father created mankind originally with a mind of self-determination. If He had wanted to populate the whole world with sinless creatures, he would have improved upon His angel design and created a world of humanoid-robots. That whole snake/apple things is what we would call entrapment, today. We are to assume that the Creator had no idea what choice they would make. What happened to the ‘All Knowing God’ our ministers preached to us about? Sarah, this Satan/Devil thing, I have to try to explain later, because it would get us to far away from the topic of your question. I could go on and on with picking the Garden of Eden story apart, but then you would not have something to research for yourself when you feel the time is right, or when you reach a point in you life when you no longer rely on the understanding of others as a source for your beliefs. Then, you will probably seek out for answers of your own. I guess that is why I am answering your questions the way I am: to put question in the answers that exist today, so that you will not take them as fact, like most people do, and will search for truth yourself someday."

        "Sarah, the Holy Bible is the Christian/Catholic version of God’s word. It contains the Old and the New Testaments, or the Old and the New Covenants. For some reason, most of the people that lived during the time of the Old covenant had a hard time being obedient to the God of that Covenant. Several times the Old Testament implies that maybe God made a mistake in the people he created. The flood story, and Sodom and Gomorrah are two examples. Another example is after the orgy-scene of Mt.Sinai, when Moses went back up the mountain to confront an all knowing Creator-God who was threatening to destroying all man-kind, except for Moses, and starting over again. This is a little confusing, because he promised he would never do that again, after the Flood. However, Moses who was a murderer, and the husband of an Midian wife, changed the Creator’s mind by reminding the All-knowing God of how that would look to the Egyptians that had chased them in chariots pulled by horses, that had been killed by one of the ‘Seven Plagues’, and then the same horses died again when drowned in the Red Sea . Sorry about that Sarah. I drifted away a bit."

        "Back to what the Church of today feels is the need for an Old and New Testament. They claim that it must have been next to impossible for the people of the ‘Old’ to love or obey the God of that period. If the Church of today were to witness just a fraction of the miracles that are alleged to have happened to the Hebrews and Israelites, there would be no need for the ‘faith’ that is required of its members today. The writers of the New covenant portion injected some miracles of their own that was supposed to have been done by the ‘god of the New Covenant, but a lot, if not all, had been duplicated by others. The one most rely on today is the one Paul created about the resurrection and ascension. More about that later, Sarah. Back to the difference of the need for an Old and a New Covenant."

        "Sarah, the church of today, whether they realize it or not, want to have it both ways. They want to claim the reason for the need of a new covenant is because the laws of the Old covenant were too hard to obey, and the God of the Old Covenant was a harsh, brutal, and bloody God. One who destroyed innocent multitudes of people just to satisfy his own purpose for his own people. Regardless of what the God of the Old Covenant did, he could not get the adoration and respect that most people of today have for the Pope, or this ‘Virgin Mary’ idea."

        "Sarah, herein, is where the problems lies. One day you will hear a sermon regarding the need for a New Covenant, because this harsh, war-like, bloody God of the Old Covenant made it almost impossible to love him. The next week you might hear a sermon about this god of the New Covenant, who is mild, meek, loving and would probably fit very comfortably in certain areas of San Francisco. The following week you might hear a sermon that this Jesus, god of the New Covenant did everything that was ever done (John I, Hebrews I ), which means his father would have had to sit back and watch everything that was going on, however we are told, that they claim, they are not sure who wrote the book of Hebrews, well, I have news for them, they only think they know who wrote the book of John. Back to the sermon varieties. The next week you might have a sermon telling you that this same Jesus was also the God of the Old Covenant. Could he have changed his ways? Not according to the sermon we received on the following week. The God in that sermon ‘changes not. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Sarah, I see you shaking your head is disbelief. Even as young as you are, you can see through this. It would take a lot of blind-faith to not see it. However, a person would never hear sermons like that back-to-back."

        "Sarah, the ‘church of today’ feels a need to have a two-part bible, the New Testament could not stand by its self. They might have a sermon one week, telling everyone that the laws of the Old Covenant were ‘nailed to the cross’, and the next week a sermon where this God of the New Covenant ‘Came not to change anything in the law, not a jot, or a tittle’. Ministers don’t like to refer to the Old Covenant scriptures for their sermons except for when it suits their purpose, and even then, they often have to take the quoted scripture out-of-context. They do get a lot of help, however, because much of the Old Testament had been changed to fit the New Testament. As long as they can convince people that all prophesy is dual, and that when the Old Testament refers to the YAHWEH or ELOHIM God of that time, they are really referring to the individual who later became Jesus."

        "The developers of early Anti-Jewish movement in Rome, after 70 C.E. must have had great difficulty coming up with a doctrine for their cause. It wasn’t very popular to be Jewish in Rome, shortly after the Romans invaded Jerusalem and destroyed their temple. At first all they had were these wise, and moral teaching of this Rabbi from Nazareth that taught in Galilee about 40 years before the destruction of Jerusalem, and some copies of some letters written to churches, in what is now Greece and Turkey, that this proselyte Jewish missionary name Paul had organized, and claimed that this same Rabbi was also a Resurrected Savior God. Paul claimed that this Rabbi from Nazareth had been resurrected from the dead, and there by, he must be the prophesied messiah that he had learned about. If he were the messiah, then he must be the ‘Anointed One’. Being that Greek was the native language ,he used, the Greek word for anointed, which is the word Christ, to identify this Rabbi that was alleged to have been martyred. It was through Paul that followers of Paul first were called Christians. By the time the full impact of this cult, in Asia Minor, had reached Rome, it was too significant to reject. even though they had some problems with a lot of what Paul wrote, they accepted the whole package. They even added additional verses to the doctrine that their first group wrote which they later named the gospel of Mark. It was probably named after John Mark, one of Paul’s companions, to give it some significance. Much later two more break-away groups would copy from, and re-write that same doctrine, but put their own slant on it. You see Sarah, they even had differing church denominations back then. A lot of this I told you before, but I need to add it to the explanation that is a part of the answer to your question."

        With that Sarah’s dad stopped and took a deep breath, then he said, "Sarah, as to why we have so many different bibles in our home library, the answer is the same as why we have added so many books to our home library-I am trying to locate the Creator’s Truth where ever I can find it. Part of finding the truth is finding out how the sources we have today were developed. Great multitudes of people today would not think of stepping out side of the King-James Bible, therefore the only information they will ever find will be confined to that book. That’s why I said earlier, ‘one cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different result’. An organization, church, or most ministers that owe their whole state-of-being, not to mention their income, to a belief or a certain doctrine, will not be looking for truth that runs contrary to that doctrine, nor will they publicly admit it when they do fit."

March 17, 2000

        "Sarah, today is March seventeenth. If you look on most calendars, it says that it is St. Patrick’s Day. Every year I encounter the same thing, people asking me "Where is your green?" I wear a uniform at work, and I sometimes have to explain that my company will not allow me to attach religious symbols on it. That usually draws a blank look from the one who asked the question. You see, Sarah, I work security at a city government facility. The employees are mainly a result of ‘Affirmative Action.’ Therefore there is large number of minorities resulting in mainly females, mostly Latino and blacks. The common slogan is ‘on St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish’. Well, being Irish is just part of the tradition. When people persist, and ask whether I have any Irish in me, I have to honestly reply that, I have more Irish ancestry than people in this area, but that I am not Catholic. Once again I get a blank look from the person asking the question, and then I get that usual reply, ‘but it is a tradition’. I stand looking around at all the black and Latino women wearing green. Most, if not all, have no idea why they observe this day. It has to be totally traditional for most of the black women. The vast majority of them belong to the Baptist Church, which is only a daughter of the Catholic Church. However like all traditional Christianity they are unfamiliar with the traditional history of their own church. The Latino women that are observing this day, come closer to being justified. You see Sarah, almost all Latino, or Hispanics, are traditionally Catholics. As I mentioned earlier, this resulted from Spanish explorers of Mexico and South America, bringing the Catholic Religion to the Natives and imposing it on them. In time the tradition grew to the point that some believe it is the religion of their heredity. They even refer to Mary, mother of Jesus of the New Testament, as ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe.’ Some probably even think she is Hispanic. This is another example of what tradition can do over a period of time. Most of the holidays (Holy Days?) on this pagan calendar were developed by the Catholic Church. Tradition has changed most of them. Most people would not admit what they are paying homage to, when they observe Halloween. Valentines, which we just went through, is similarly observed by these same people for the same unknown reasons. Time, however, has caused the ‘Saint’ part to be dropped from this holiday in most cases. Easter and Christmas, I have touched on before, and will go into much further at a later time. Among this pagan observances that were christianized by the Catholic Church, these are much more involved. What I’m trying to do at this point is to explain what part tradition has played in current religious thought. Last night I read the complete history of Lent, as recorded in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, trying to understand why so many people here claim they are observing it at this time. I venture to say , after reading it, very few that observe Lent have made the same effort to check into it. They observe it out of tradition. It is amazing how that tradition has changed over the years. It now is supposed to mainly be a forty day period of penitence prior to Easter. The type of wild revelry of Mardi-Gras that immediately precedes Lent, gives plenty to be penitent of. Although most Christians spin-offs of the Catholic church don’t observe Lent. Like the Catholic developed holidays, most people celebrate Mardi Gras, and it is with the same lack of knowledge as to why. Mardi Gras is French for ‘Fat Tuesday" which is the last day before Lent. When I was stationed in Mainz, Germany they had two weeks of Mardi Gras, which they called Fasching. On Fat Tuesday it was traditional for the married women to take off their wedding rings. Sarah, you are too young for me to tell you what followed, but believe me there was plenty to be penitent of the next day. Sarah, this is the reason your home-school field trip to Galveston had to be postponed to a Friday other than the weekend of Mardi-Gras. As an indication of how the tradition of Lent can vary, in the seventeenth century under King Charles I, there was a commanded abstinence of meat eating. In the same century under James I, the requirement became obsolete. This is just one of many variations. The Catholic Church, which is the ‘mother’ of all the spin-off Christian Daughter Churches, split between East and West, with a church in Rome and the other in Constantinople. Each had its own traditions and observed Lent differently. Whether that meant there were two Christian ‘Mother Churches’ or the Roman church was ‘mother of all’, I am not sure, but each have their own traditions to this day, if you consider the Orthodox church of today as being a descendant of the East split of the Byzantine era. At that time each had its own Pope. Can you imagine two people with different beliefs, being infallible at the same time?

        Sarah, tradition is a process of development. The New Testament, as I have told you in the past, is such a process of development. It didn’t really begin its finalization until the Council of Nicea in 325 C.E. This is also when Lent was first mentioned. Prior to that, spring or ‘lengthening of days’, which is what lent means, was mainly a pagan observance."

        At this point Sarah interrupted and asked, "Daddy, does this have anything to do with what you told mother, last week, about your conversation with Dr. Sumner of the Burke Baker planetarium?" Sarah’s daddy paused a minute, trying to think of a way to answer her question without confusing her more. "Sarah, for the past several years I have been contacting the local planetarium to determine the first new moon after the Spring equinox, so we can use the Holy Scriptures to know when we should observe Passover, and the Days of Unleavened Bread. From that point we can determine the rest of the Holy Days observances." Then Sarah said, "That seems simple enough. Why doesn’t everyone use that method." Her daddy replied, "Control, is probably the real reason, but that would take a lengthy explanation, so I’ll just stick to the question you asked about my checking out a local time for our calculations.

        When we were attending a Sabbath observing Christian Church, we were provided with a card which told us when to observe the Holy Days according to the scriptures. Once again we were following the concept ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’. A few years ago we learned that the Hebrews also did some calendar changing that we don’t believe has the blessing of the Creator. They use a method similar to ours, but if the scriptural count causes the Day of Atonement to fall on, the day before, or the day after a weekly Sabbath Day, they would adjust it to avoid a double Sabbath, then count backwards to get a starting point for Passover observance. As hard as it seemed to be for the early Israelite to follow the Creators laws, that would have really given them a problem."

        At this point Sarah interrupted again. "Daddy, that explains why our Passover is slightly different than it used to be for us, but why can it vary so much with the Christian Easter Sunday? Didn’t that have something to do with Passover according to the tradition of the Catholic Church?" Her dad answered, "Yes Sarah, in a way it did, but they focus on just one year. The Passover falls on a different day every year. The year, our former Sabbath-observing Christian church used for calculations was 31 B.C.E. That year the Passover was supposed to be on a Wednesday when the crucifixion of their savior was supposed to have occurred. At sundown began their High Day Sabbath on the Day of Unleavened Bread, mentioned in their Book of John. It was a Thursday that year, which means, if there had been a three day/three night determination for a resurrection, it would have occurred at three in the afternoon of the weekly Sabbath. That would account for the reason the women approaching the tomb while it was still dark Sunday morning, found it empty. All the other gospel books assume that high Sabbath was a weekly Sabbath which would have moved it to Saturday, that’s why there is a Friday to Sunday three day problem. Tradition, however, needed a Sunrise Sunday resurrection to fit the doctrine the early Catholic/Christian church was developing for their movement. Tradition blinded them to some of their own documentation. Their focus on Sunday, for reason I have explained before is why Easter can vary so much from Passover. Easter Sunday occurs each year on the Christian/Pagan calendar, the Sunday following the full moon on or after March twenty-first, even if the Equinox occurs on March twentieth, as it does this year. It doesn’t really have anything to do with what is recorded in the New Testament that they developed, much less the Holy Scriptures. Any way, Sarah, after selecting which ‘Sun-day’ they are to use, they, like the Jews who modified the Hebrew calendar, count backwards, but the reason is to determine the beginning of their traditional Lent season, which I mentioned before, wasn’t even started until the fourth century under Constantine. From there it varied from three days to a week, to 10% of the year, or 36 days. Under some kings it wasn’t observed at all. Somewhere along the line, the developers of the N.T. added a 40 day fast by their savior, to their documentation, then changed their traditional Lent observance to 40 days, and refer to his fast as the reason. Some, if there is a Catholic Church close enough, will leave their work briefly to go get. a black cross of ashes put on their forehead to show everyone that they are religious, and then little mention is made about Lent after that. If they do, or even know what to do during that period, only they know. It may be like a lot of Christians who ‘touch base’ on Sunday, by attending church, then go on and do what they want to for the rest of the day, or at least wait until noon. The setting aside a twenty-four hour period from the week, did not become part of their tradition as it developed.

        "Sarah, this brings me to another point. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but when I was describing the various holidays, I said they were ‘developed by the Catholic Church, rather than originated with the Catholic Church. All these observances pre-date Christianity by thousands of years, and were later Christianized because of stubborn Pagan converts. This is also true of a lot of the New Testament Itself. A desperate attempt was made to destroy the sources so as to avoid traceability.

        So, Sarah you see why there are so many Christian Churches. So many traditions and doctrines have evolved that the Christian Church, like Paul, one of its contributors, can ‘be all things to all people.’ Even my brother-in-law, your Uncle, when he ran into a disagreement with his church, resigned his membership, and decided to start his own church. The Catholic church , which is supposed to be infallible, universal, and the ‘mother of all’, split and changed as traditions dictated. Your mother and I thought we had arrived at the truth, when we started attending a Sabbath keeping church, which derived it’s holy day observances from the ‘Old Testament’ Scriptures, only to later find out that the church had only rejected the pagan sources, that were convenient to their doctrine. If they did discover the real truth of Christianity they sure didn’t let anyone know. That will be something they will have to explain to their Creator someday."

        Sarah, most of my life I followed the religion of my family tradition. That is what most people do. The main reason that I have these little sessions with you is not to get you to follow a certain doctrine, but to arm you with information that I didn’t’ have at your age. It is much easier to make a decision about your own beliefs based on your own research, when you don’t have a drastic process of unlearning to do, based on many years of religious tradition."

        Sarah, what we are trying to do at this time is to try to follow the example, the Creator wanted to Israelites to provide for the rest of the world, to the best of our understanding, and avoid following tradition. That could be like ‘following sheep to the slaughter.’ It could continue to change as we learn more truth.

Part III        

SLAVER or LIBERATOR        

        Sarah’s dad ask her to take is dirty work shirts, and put them back into his car, because the day before, the cleaners was closed when he stopped by. When Sarah asked, "why was the cleaners closed on a Monday"? Her Dad replied, "The owner said she was closed because it was a holiday." This puzzled Sarah, and she asked, "Daddy, what is holy about this past Monday", "I guess I don’t understand the meaning of the word after all?" Although he was glad Sarah remembered the origin of the word holiday, Sarah’s dad realized her question was going to take some explanation. "Sarah, what I am about to tell you is mainly for your information. Even being the truth doesn’t mean everyone wants to hear it. I’ll try to explain more about that in a little bit, but first I’ll try to expand on the word-‘holy’. Originally the word-‘holy meant: That which was set apart by the Creator, as being special to Him. Over the years, especially since the development of the New Testament Church, the word has taken on new meanings. The early heads of the Christian Church, they were developing, considered themselves equal with the Creator, by being infallible errorless. To be errorless is to be sinless, therefore on the same level with the Creator. Apparently being equal wasn’t enough for the early popes or ‘Holy Fathers’ as they called themselves, they wanted to ‘exalt themselves above the Most High,’ as the scriptures to suit their purpose, and changing the Creator’s Holy Sabbath to their Sun-day, day of worship. Any student of the true history of the Christian church is familiar with the corruption and immorality committed by the early popes who were anything but infallible (errorless), or what would be called ‘Holy Days’ were originally were days the Creator ‘set apart’ for His special purpose. Holi-days are those set apart by the Catholic/Christian church for their special purpose. Today, the word holiday has been corrupted to a point to where it can mean anything from an Englishman’s vacation, to a spot missed by a house painter, or a day a segment of local population ‘set apart’ to keep their victimization alive. Such a day is ‘June Teenth’, the day the cleaners was closed".

        At this point Sarah interrupted "Daddy, I want you to explain more about that day, but first, ‘victimization’ is a pretty big word for an eight year old to understand. What do you mean by that"? "Sarah", her dad replied, "even that word has lost a lot of its original meaning. Today, victimization is the process one group uses to make society at large feel guilty about something their fore-fathers were alleged to have committed against their fore-fathers. Usually to gain special benefits, privilege, or financial benefits. Israel has been using it since world war two to get billions of dollars from countries who really had nothing to do with the ‘Holocaust’ that the Jews alleged to have happened to them. To tell you the truth about that at this time, would get us to far away from answering your question."

        "Black Americans,, of the Negro race, like to be called Afro-Americans to keep all other Americans reminded that their ancestors were brought to America, and alleged to have been made slaves. They would not like to know the real truth, or "The rest of the story" as Paul Harvey would say. They would rather remain hyphenated American. Slaves have been around a longtime. The Levitical priesthood indicated that the Creator approved of slavery, as long as a slave was released after a certain number of years. White slaves and indentured servants were here long before the Jewish merchants brought blacks to America."

        Sarah, this brings up another question. Were these Jewish merchants-Slavers or Liberators? The popular concept is that: the American white man made slaves out of the African black man, when in reality these black people were already slaves in Africa. This usually was the result of warring rival black tribes selling their prisoners to black slave-masters. The black slave-master in turn would sell them to the Jewish merchants who would take them to the West Indies and sell them there. From there they made it to the states. If the black slave-master could not sell a slave, he had no other use for him or her, and would exterminate them. So you might say these merchants buyers were more of a liberator than a slaver. Most Afro-Americans today owe their actual existence to the merchants who redeemed their ancestors from the slave compounds in Africa and brought them to the New World. They also owe their citizenship to one man- John Wilkes Booth."

        Sarah, what I am about to tell you, should be kept along with other things I have just related to you. If you told the wrong people, you would be labeled as a ‘racist’, just as being called an anti ‘Semite’, if you related to the wrong people. That information I will tell you a little later, but back to what I was talking about. Sarah, most if not all, revere Abraham Lincoln as the Greatest Liberator that has come along since Moses. Now once again comes ‘the rest of the story’. Abraham Lincoln did believe that neither black man nor white man should own slaves. Yes, there were also black slave owners in America at that time. Contrary to popular belief, he did not think ‘all men were created equal, at least not in the since that the black man should co-exist with the white man in America, or anywhere else for that matter. His beliefs still followed the results of the Creator separating the race at Babylon."

        Sarah, you will either read, or hear about Lincoln’s ‘Gettysburg Address’, where people feel he is relating his feeling about equality. He wasn’t relating his feelings, but instead, quoting what the founding fathers did 87 years before. For that matter, the founding fathers were not referring to different races when framing the Declaration of Independence , the Constitution, or Bill of Rights, at the time. Black slave, Brown illegal, or Yellow Coolies were not a part of their consideration at that time. The main concern of the Founding Fathers of the colonies was the governments and monarchies in Europe, that they wanted to be free from, and these are the people that they considered their selves to be equal with. Multi-culturalism is a process designed to make a nation less sovereign, and more able to be controlled. The Founding Fathers knew that, but were unable to foresee the undercover power bloc that has been guiding events for some time now, but that also can be addressed later." At this point Sarah asked, "Daddy, earlier you mentioned a man named Booth, what did he have to do with all of this"? Her daddy replied, "Do you remember what, I said about Lincoln believing the slaves should be freed, but not believing they could co-exist with the white race? Shortly after the war-between-the-states, Lincoln had started a program of repatriation to Africa. At the time of his assassination by John Wilkes Booth, several thousand freed slaves had already been returned to Africa. This was not done by a show of hands. Most would have preferred life as a slave in American rather than be returned to life in Africa, or what ever awaited them. Although I doubt that John Wilkes Booth knew about this program, as it came to an end when Booth killed Lincoln. Much the same as the three main programs that John F Kennedy was pushing when he was assassinated, those being, pulling troops out of Viet Nam, breaking up the CIA, and preventing Israel from getting nuclear weapons, were reversed when LBJ took over. Lincoln’s program at his death was just as unknown to the public as JFK’s. However there were those that knew and would have suffered had JFK fulfilled his plans, however, again that is a story for another time. However if Kennedy had lived, the Viet Nam war along with its major drug production, would never have developed to the extent that it did, the CIA wouldn’t be uncontrolled, and Israel probably would not have nuclear weapons. If Lincoln had lived, we would not have had the black population that we have today. Now I think you understand why I said that: Not only do the blacks owe their existence to the Jewish merchants that brought their ancestors to America, but they can also thank John Wilkes Booth for preventing their ancestors from being sent back."

        "But what about ‘all people being equal’", ask Sarah. Her dad answered, "Sarah a society could not exist if everyone was equal. The holy Scriptures doesn’t make that claim, and even the New Testament with all its misrepresentation doesn’t either, except for some cute Christian children songs. ‘Equality’ is the most mis-used word in our society today.; usually when there is a desire to establish equality where it involves mixed races, there most often end up with process of lowering the bar’ or qualification, or utilizing Affirmative Action based on quotas of minorities, and comes closer to being reverse discrimination than equalization. Now what seems counter to equality, the Federal Government stuck its nose into states rights again. If a crime is committed against a Jew, Black, or Homosexual, it is considered a ‘hate crime’, and becomes a federal offence and turned over to the FBI . The feds are better able to deal with crimes of ‘hate’. I wonder what they think about how the Creator dealt with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and whether there was any hate involved. If memory serves me right, I don’t believe He mixed any words about how he felt about them. He wasn’t very fond of the idolaters in Canaan as the Hebrew/Israelites approached. I don’t think He considered them to be equal to His chosen People. All the destroying He did during this era, it’s hard to believe that a couple of the New Testament writer claim this was their Jesus during pre-New Testament. The virgin birth must have changed him a lot. However he claims he changes not’, Maybe he just adjusted to the times. The Roman pagan converts had an easier time of following the doctrine developed by the New Testament Church, with the help of ‘grace’, than the Hebrew/Israelite did following commandments, statutes and ordinances. I don’t think there was equality if they weren’t allowed to have ‘grace’ too, if all that was required is to know the name of Jesus. This is one time it turned out better to be on the ‘second string’, than on the ‘First String’‘. There was anything, but equality between the two groups."

        "Equality did not play much of a part at the end of the WAR BETWEEN THE STATES, when General Lee surrendered to General Grant, he surrendered most of what remained of the ‘States Rights’ of the South. The North sent ‘Agents’, which history calls ‘carpet bagger’, because that all they went down with. Their job was to oversee the reconstruction of the South. What they really did was to make slaves out of the South and finish spoiling it. This is similar to what the Allies did to Germany after World War II, but that’s another hushed up story you won’t hear about. The agents arrived with only carpetbags, but became rich within a short time. As I mentioned before both sides lost a lot when you consider how much central power the Federal Government started taking over. As I mentioned earlier about ‘hate crimes legislation’, it continues today. Especially in light of how the president is able to by-pass Congress."

        Sarah, the news of the end of ‘Lincoln’s war of Liberation’ did not reach Texas for over two month’s. It was called the ‘Emancipation Proclamation’, and it arrived in Texas on June 19^th, which the descendant of the freed Texas slaves, and all the ‘snowbird’ blacks that come to Texas, call ‘Juneteenth’, which a lot consider a holiday. If they can observe it, they do, like the cleaners that is independently owned. So far it is not a Federal Holiday like MLK Day, but the Federal Government has proven, that it is not above interfering into the business of the states, as we get closer and closer to the New World Order. This all gives new meaning to: ‘The Truth Hurts’, ‘Ignorance is Bliss’ and ‘To the Victor Belongs the Spoils’, "all the world loves a lie".

        "Sarah, I wonder where the ‘Hate Crime Legislation- Federal Police were after the recent NY City, Central Park event? Oh, I just remembered, Sarah. The victims were mainly ‘white women’, so the Feds had no jurisdiction."

Part IV

 OLD TESTAMENT - NEW TESTAMENT

OLD BABYLON  - NEW BABYLON

 July 15, 2000      

         One day Sarah came up to her daddy while he was reading a book. After waiting until he looked up, she asked, “Daddy, is that another book about Babylon? I noticed we have a lot of books in our library that have the word Babylon in the title. You have told me some things about Babylon, but something tells me there is more.”

         Sarah’s Dad paused a minute, then he replied, “Sarah,  I’ll try to answer your question in a way that you will understand ‘Babylon. That is in itself, an oxy-moron, because the meaning of Babylon is the opposite of understanding.  Babylon means confusion. As I told you in some of our past sessions, it has always been thought to have originated from Nimrod’s Babylon, which as I told you before, confuses me. I don’t see how they had such a mass of people to build all the things they were involved with, after only a few generations following Noah’s flood.  Noah was Nimrod’s great grandfather.  There seems to be some confusion in documenting the history of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament.  It is far from being totally infallible, but I don’t completely reject it.  I believe the  Creator’s Truth is still in there.  We just have to search for it”.

         “This book you asked me about is one that I read a week ago, for the first time, even though we have had it in our library for over two and a half years.  The title is “House of the Messiah” by Ahmed Osman, and even has a sub-reference to the ‘historical Jesus’, and I now am re-reading it. I seldom have time to re-read a book, because there is so much that needs to be researched. In fact, I had put religion on ‘hold’, and was concentrating on Jewish/and Catholic conspiracy influences behind our government that is pushing it toward the New World Order. Although Jewish and, or Catholic, the forces have nothing to do with religion.”

         “Sarah, this book opens a whole new ‘can of worms’, as they say.  Now I will have to split my research time between two completely different areas.  Even though I have many questions about the Holy Scriptures (Old Testament), I still had a similar faith that I used to have in the New Testament.  I thought the scriptures was the true  history of the Creator; as he worked with Israel as an example to the rest of the world.  Still I’ve always been told that the Creator is not the Author of Confusion’, and/or of lies, which were put in by humans for a purpose”.

         “Sarah, I am going to try to tell you what I am now beginning to believe.  I don’t have a lot of solid facts to back up my current thinking, but a lot of things are starting to fall into place.  First I was always led to believe that confusion originated with Nimrod’s Babylon. Now, I believe that it mainly began with the Babylonian/Persian controlled Jewish Priesthood as it returned from the ‘Babylonian Captivity’. I’ll try to explain how I think that came about”.

         “When Babylon invaded and took the ‘House of Judah’ into captivity, they only took the ‘Creme of the Crop’ so to speak.  This amounted to most of the military, the administration, the wealthy, the priesthood, and the main income producing population.  The rest they left behind. With no protection for the remaining inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the surrounding area. Jerusalem was soon integrated with Edomites, Idumeans, and Sumarian. Meanwhile, those that were taken to Babylon were, in my opinion, undergoing what we today would call ‘brainwashing’.  They wouldn’t support them on a 70 year vacation without expecting to get something out of it.  The area back in Palestine was not producing any income as a vassal state. It is my feeling that Cyrus, after conquering Babylon, did not allow the Jews to return home out of the goodness of his heart, or under the inspiration of a deity that he did not even worship.  Instead I believe he wanted to turn Palestine into an income producing vassal state.  To accomplish this would require a strong priest hood loyal to Persia/ Babylon, and a weaker governing administration. I  think the Catholic-new Babylon took lessons from this for a later era, but more about that later.  It seem like more than just a coincident to me, that the ‘Priestly History’ source, with all its additions and modifications, was a late creative editing source.  This source added the ‘Creation Myth’, and most of the genealogy  that is in the books of Genesis, and the entire book of  Leviticus with its strong controlling requirements and multiple means of collecting money to send back to Persia/Babylon.   This all happened at a time when Ezra, the editor, was called upon to organized and canonize the Scriptures.  Before this could be done, numerous strong historical stories need to be integrated into what they already had.  To do this they would have to look to another source. This is the same process that the Catholic-New Babylon used, later. Once again, more about that later. Back to the process of the canonization of the Scriptures, we were always told that the reason for the strict requirements placed on the Jews was due to their disobedience to the Creator’s Laws, which resulted it their going into captivity just like their brother Israelites who was removed by Assyria. They used the same return to captivity fear tactics for control, that’s similar to the later use of  Satan/hellfire by the Catholic/New Babylon Christian Church.  It is still used today."

         “Sarah, I am not trying to avoid your original question, but rather to give you an idea about the scope of the word ‘Babylon’. Confusion a lot of times is intentional for control purposes.  Remember Sarah, not long ago, when I told you I was confused regarding the lack of parallel histories by neighboring countries that were impacted by the things that happened to Ancient Israel? Now I think I know why. Although it is something that needs a lot more research, I find that a lot of things I am reading in this book make a lot of sense, and answers a lot of questions, but before I get to that and show it relates to Babylon, let me tell you how the subject of Babylon has affected me."

         “Sarah, until fifteen year ago the only times I heard about Babylon was during the limited Sunday School stories like ‘Daniel in the Lion’s Den’, ‘The Fiery Furnace’, and others that are similar. The reason I say ‘limited’ is because just enough information was given to prove the power and benefit of strict obedience to the Jewish God. These stories as well as others, I now believe were added for ‘effect’. It has been claimed, by unbiased researchers, that the book of Daniel with all its predictions of the near and distant future, was probably the last of the Old Testament books to be written, and added to the cannon. This was after a lot of the Daniel predictions were already history. Sarah, I did not know all of this at that time. I was just blissfully going along with the rest of the sheep, while being encouraged to stay in the ‘King James Bible Box’, and not read anything that wasn’t approved by the Church.  There was no point anyway, because the Bible was God’s Infallible Word, and He would not allow man to put any errors in it. This was spouted by some highly educated theologians. In reality zealot editors, copyist, and narrators had a heavy influence on the end result, but more about that later."

         “My next encounter with Babylon came about fourteen years ago also, when I became intrigued by this older TV evangelist who focused on the Book of Revelation and the end time. In a short time I also found that his son had a similar TV program with the same type programming. Most of my previous churches avoided the book of Revelation because it was either written in code, or was meant for the End Time. Well, these two evangelist felt it was the end time and they had broken the code. They knew exactly what the book was warning. I became hooked, even though they worshiped on Saturday instead of Sunday, and were still Christian.  The main thing that caught my ear was this ‘Mystery Babylon Mother of Harlots, and the Abomination of the Earth’, and the message to “come out of her and not be a partaker of her sins”.  Well I had experienced enough problems in my recent past, that I certainly didn’t need what ever that might be.  I found there were two organizations. One was under the father evangelist and the other was under  his son. I contacted both, and received a reply back from the church of the son, so I began to attend that church.  I later found out that: had I been contacted by his father’s church organization, I would not have qualified under the strict requirements he had laid down for attendance in his church.  When in church, and out of the public, I soon found out what this ‘Mystery Babylon’ thing was.  It was the Catholic Church, and because she was the ‘Mother of Harlots’, all Sunday keeping Protestant Churches were daughters of the ‘Great Whore’. Only, the Sabbath keeping Christian Churches had the ‘truth’. Boy, was I lucky. I could not understand why I had been chosen to be among the few, but I wasn’t passing it up.  The first thing I needed to do was find out all I could about this ‘Mystery Babylon'. After taking a Bible Correspondence Course from the father organization, I sought out the book I often heard referenced by his son in his sermons. That book was “The Two Babylons” by Alexander Hislop.  Hard though it was to read with all its sub-references, I tried to absorb all I could from it.  Being pre-conditioned from recent sermons, it was obvious that the early Christian/Catholic Church had developed from an eastern Babylonian Pagan Mystery Religion, and that its membership was almost entirely Gentile Pagan converts in southern Europe. This required a lot of compromise in developing it‘s doctrine, in order to keep its stubborn pagan converts.  It took a long time to develop its doctrine, in fact out of all the gospels they had to choose from, the final four were selected, and adopted in the year 1546 C.E.  That’s over 50 years after Christopher Columbus discovered the New World. Sometime prior to that many of this new gentile church with this new Jewish son of God as the main center of their belief, decided they couldn’t go along with a lot of the pagan beliefs of what would become the ‘Mother Church’ so after a lot of blood shed of Christian against Christians, the protesting group agreed to a lot of compromises in self-defense. A lot were being burnt at the stake. So the Mother Church’ allowed them to break away, but still maintained indirect control. Sarah, don’t misunderstand me, it is not the people that are a part of these systems or organizations, it is the system itself that is the problem.  The Babylonian/Confusion and deception is a subject that books could be written about, so I’ll try not to wander to far off in that direction. Much I have already told you about, and I hope you will continue to research on your own someday. I’ll try to stay close to you question about Babylon”.

         “Sarah, the church I was telling you about, that first got me hooked on this ‘Mystery Babylon thing, did not believe that they were a part of it, that they had ‘come out of her’, and were no longer ‘a partaker of her sins’. I felt God had put me where I needed to be. I still couldn’t understand why I was put in with all these ‘Righteous People’, because my past life had sure not qualified me for this.  The reason this church thought it was not a part of the Mystery Babylon Church’ was it observed the Sabbath instead of Sunday, which they considered came from pagan sun worship, they dropped one of the three gods that the Catholic church worshiped, and they observed the Old Testament Holy Days and the laws that were convenient among the ones that were established by the returning post Babylonian Priest-hood that were responsible to their previous Babylon Persian captors. This made them feel totally free from the catholic church, because Sunday, they felt , was ‘the sign of the beast’ of the Babylonian Mystery Religion.”

         “Everything went along somewhat smoothly for a number of years, until morality problems came up in the top ministry. At first this did not seem too bad. Even the minister involved was quoted as saying “God would forgive him because of the great work that he was doing for Him”.  When fellow ministers started lying and covering for him, it was at time to start looking elsewhere for a similar church.”

         “It was at this time when your mother, and I attended a large conference of Sabbath -keeping sister Christian churches.  None of them were much different. They all had the same doctrine, and all following a main-man as head of the church. During intermission we visited a room set-up for display of free information about the different churches.  One of the tables was unattended and had a stack of books on it about ‘Mystery Babylon’, so I took one to add to the rest of my free literature. Upon  reaching home I realized that it shouldn’t have been free, so I sent in funds for it, another copy , and two copies of the follow-up book two that was being written. It was shortly after this time, that your mother and I decided to take the tithe, that we hadn’t felt we couldn’t continue to give the church we had been attending, and use it toward establishing an independent church meeting place for like minded people who were having the same problems regarding our church at that time. We kept the same beliefs as our former church, and use the same bible, with its doctrine.  It is that New Testament doctrine that would soon become a problem”.

         “I read this new book that I picked up titled “Mystery Babylon- Mother of Harlots and the Abomination of the Earth,”  Book no.1. It was very similar to other books I had read on the same subject, but a lot better researched, written, and a lot easier to read. I was looking forward to receiving book two. When two copies of book no. two arrived, your mother and I started reading it at the same time. Apparently the truth hit us at the same time and we looked at one another, in what was probably a state of shock.  It seems this author, while researching his first book, uncovered a lot of things he had not been looking for. It seems other authors writing on the same Mystery Babylon subject had pulled up short from what Paul Harvey would call: ‘The rest of the story’.  It was this information that caused him to turn his back on  his previous beliefs, and change the subject of his second book to write the truth he had discovered.

         It was at this point that I really went on a book buying spree.  Even though things were becoming clear as a bell, I wanted to get as much information as I could.  I could not believe how much information there was available to confirm it, and it had been there all along.”

         “Other books on “Mystery Babylon” dealt mainly with the difference between Catholicism, and pagan Christianity and how corrupt, immoral, and pagan influenced the early church was.  What they all failed to mention, and what the Christian churches today, whether Sunday-keeping Protestant, or Sabbath-keeping Christian, they still rely on the New Testament that this corrupt, immoral, pagan inspired mystery Babylonian church developed over a period that lasted as late as 1546 C.E.  and the god they developed to be a part of it.  The only real difference is some worship three gods while others worship only two, and one worships the mother of the newest god in addition to the other three.  It’s hard to keep news of this quiet.  Your mother and I were soon the subjects of a sermon in our new church, regarding the contents of this new book.  Even though the minister admitted to not having read the book, he gave a sermon “In the spirit of the Anti-Christ”.  Needless to say your mother and I had to turn our backs on the brothers and sisters of the church we had grown to love, and resign our position in the church we had helped develop. I guess when the book of Acts in the New Testament mentions Peter being in Babylon, I guess he was gathering research for when he would become the first Pope of the New Gentile Church with a Jewish God."

         “From that point, we met on the Sabbath with others who had discovered the same truth. In time it probably seemed to much like continuing organized religion, and even that faded away. For sometime now we have continued to observe the Sabbath, and you and I continue weekly Bible stories. In recent months I  have been reading and researching the negative forces behind our government and the direction it seems to be heading. As I mentioned in the beginning, I picked up this book to read, while I was waiting on other books I had ordered to arrive. Now I will try to explain what this book has to do with Babylon/confusion”.

         “Sarah, before I get started, I want to repeat, the Creator is not the Author of Confusion’. Any confusion or error in the Scriptures was put there by man, and usually not by accident. That is what I need to explain to you, so you will somewhat understand the connection of this book to Babylon.  One other thing I should also cover first. What I am about to tell you needs to remain in our family. Later on after a lot more research has been done, and we may encounter some people who are very open minded, and seeking the truth, where ever it may lead. Additional research looks like it is going to be a problem. The Babylon/Persian controlled Jews and Priesthood did a lot better job of covering their tracks, than did the developers of the New Testament, but it is not because the NT developers didn’t try to conceal their sources.  Most were destroyed, while the rest couldn’t be traced to any other historical identification.  If you remember, Sarah, I had a similar complaint a couple of months ago, about the lack of mention of Israel in histories of other countries they came in contact with. Now I think I know why.  Where as the NT sources were mainly from pagan religions, other savior-gods life histories, or just made up; most of the major events depicted about Ancient Israel, for the most part, actually happened.  The problem is: it happened in a different time, in a different place, and to different people.  I think we are going to find out that Ancient Israel did not have an interesting history, on top of all of this, our recent church tried to plug Jesus into every Old Testament reference to the Lord’, even the fourth figure in the fiery furnace, his presence in Daniel’s lions den to shut the mouths of the lions, and on top of Mt. Sinai, but he may have been at the bottom, in the tent of meeting, where a very significant event took place”.

         “Sarah, I’m sorry. I am probably causing more confusion, than providing an understandable explanation.  I’ll try to quit going back and forth between New and Old Testaments. I guess its been so soon since we went through this with the New Testament that the hurt and anger is coming back. What I will be telling you, is not intended to get you to believe everything I’m going to tell you, or to create a new doctrine. Instead it is meant to provide you with information that I never had, to choose from. Most of my church history, I didn’t have any choices. We didn’t need any.  We were told that the entire Holy Bible was the inspired, infallible  word of God and He would not allow any error to enter into it. All we had to do was study our  bible, attend church, “stay, pray, pay, and obey”.  There was no need for proof, or other collaboration. Just having FAITH covered everything. As it turns out, that would create a world of ‘Righteous Robots’. I hope as you get older, you can help me with this research, and we may even find others that have a similar desire to filter through what mankind has done to the Creator’s Truth”.

        Most of the history information in this book revolves around Ancient Egypt. For the time being I’ll try to stay away from Pharaoh names, as a lot of them are very similar.  I have a chart you can follow. I guess we were always steered away from looking to Egypt for information, by the way the church demonized it and made its synonymous with sin.  Probably the best place to start would be King David, since everything in Ancient Israel revolves around him. Before I get into identities I need to make a major point. According to the history in this book, the territory of Israel was under the rule of the dynasties of Egypt all the way up until Egypt was overthrown by the Assyrian Empire. Back to David. According to this book there were two Davids.  The historical, harp playing shepherd, David of the 10^th century B.C.E., and the David-type Egyptian, warrior-King (Pharaoh) that perform most, if not all the feats attributed to King David, only it took place in the 15^th century B.C.E. I always wondered how David went from one extreme to the other almost overnight.  Forget the David and Goliath story. It was an insert from the pre-flood days of giants. It never happened in David’s time anyway. It was this David-type Egyptian that Abraham and Sarah went to see. More happened at that meeting than we were told. She became his wife and mother-to-be. Upon finding out she was also married to Abraham, he sent them back home  where the Pharaoh’s son was to be born. Along with them he sent an Egyptian handmaiden named Hagar to help care for the baby when it was born.  Isaac was the son of the Pharaoh born to Sarah.  Abraham was his adopted father. Abraham did later have Ishmael by Hagar. This is why there wasn’t that much problem for Abraham to offer Isaac for a sacrifice, and it killed Sarah, when she heard of his intentions. As for Ishmael being 14 years old when sent away. The Scriptures imply he was carried by Hagar along with her bag. Later she had to hide the baby under a bush. You can’t do that with a 14 year old. Due to the lineage passing through the mother, things continued on down until history arrived at Joseph being sold to Egypt. And later becoming a minister to the Pharaoh’s son when he became Pharaoh, who was the grandson of the David-Pharaoh. Later Joseph would also be minister to the Pharaoh’s son when he became Pharaoh. This would be the Pharaoh that all of the Solomon stories were taken from. Meanwhile Joseph married one of the Pharaoh’s daughters.  That marriage produced an infant daughter that the Solomon type Pharaoh became attracted to and later married. When they had a baby boy it had to be sent away to be near the Israelite family side.  The area it was sent to was separated by water. This would be the Egyptian that the Moses stories would come from. It was later arranged for him to marry his half sister, who was the rightful heir to the throne. This Moses-type marriage to this Mary-type and would produce a Joshua/Jesus-type. This Joshua/Jesus-type was tortured and hanged (sacrificed) in the tent of meeting, by the priest Phinas on the April eve of Passover. The second son of Joseph (Aye) who was a combination of Ephraim & Joseph of Arimathaea-type, took the body to the Valley of the Kings for burial. Joshua never made it to the Jordan. It is believed that the book of Joshua is a myth. The Moses-type and Miriam/Mary-type also produced a daughter which was considered to be a Mary Magdalene. When the Moses-type tried to regain his throne, he failed, and had to flee taking what Israelites that were outside the compound. He chose a marshy route that would cause pursuing chariots to bog down. The second Egyptian king that chased the Moses-type, caught him and he also perished in Egypt after trying to obtain water for his followers. Most of the Israelites died in the heavy fighting.”

        “Sarah, I have tried to find more copies of this book. It is out of print, and so far I haven’t located any used ones either. I will keep this one in our library and check it out, and send it to who ever request it, on an availability basis.  I am also looking for his books “Moses: Pharaoh of Egypt”,  “Stranger in the Valley of the Kings”, and “Out of Egypt”. We will have to see where this leads us. Remember, this is meant for information only, we are not trying to develop a belief or destroy one.”

        “Sarah, if any of the information, that I just told you is true, then it would answer a lot of Questions.

Part V                     

All Roads Lead To Babylon                

        One day Sarah came into the dining where her dad was doing research. Her mother had told her to take her snack to the dining room table, but her dad had the whole table and two chairs covered with papers and books. After her dad cleared a spot for her, Sarah ask him, “Daddy, the last time you were this involved in research, you told me that your research about Babylon had led you to Ancient Egypt and the influence it may have had on the development of the Old Testament. Is this some of the same study?  Hoping not to confuse Sarah, her dad thought about his answer, then replied, “Sarah, there is a saying that has been around a long time which states that, “all roads lead to Rome”.  Well, Rome must be a code name for Babylon, because it seems what ever I begin to study, it somehow always leads me back to Babylon. My recent study of ancient Egypt led me to a number of new names of peoples, kingdoms, and tribes of the Babylon area, and also some familiar ones like Hittites and Amorites. I had never thought of them as kingdoms. Names like Hurrians, Mitannians, Akkadians, Abaidians, and Gutians. As well as the Sumerians, most existed before, or shortly after the ‘Garden of Eden’."

        "Sarah, I see by the puzzled look I need to do some explaining. First I want you to know that what I am about to tell you is just to let you know what I am studying. It is not meant to interfere with our normal bible studies on the Sabbath. There will be plenty of time later for you to check into this. There should be plenty of material here for you to research. In fact, since I escaped the ‘Holy Bible Box’, it seems information is coming in at a rapid rate, and it has been there all along."

        When Sarah's dad paused, she asked him, "What do you mean 'escaped the Holy Bible Box'?". Almost sorry that he had made the remark Sarah's dad replied, "Sarah, for many years I was hemmed in on all sides with the teachings of the King James version of the Holy Bible. The church organizations that I belong to convinced me that all truths were contained within that 'box', and anything else was Satan inspired. When the truth about the New Testament was realized, the walls began to come down, and all of new information began to come in, that's why we have so many books now. I have five books I have yet to open, not to mention all that I have down loaded from the computer. Now that I feel the Persian/ Babylon controlled Levitical Priesthood was heavily involved in the creative writing and editing of the old Testament, it has opened up a whole new field of study, with more information to checked out than I can relate to you in a short time."

        "In our former church organization, I had everything wrapped up for us in a nice neat package. No one questions the church, the ministry, or the Holy Bible. According to the Bullinger’s, Companion Bible-King James Version, Creation Week started at 9:00 am (Kuwait Time) October 26, 4004 B.C. E. Mankind was started with Adam on the sixth day, which would have been October 31. The Catholic had not developed Halloween yet, so there is no connection with that date. Then the first wave of ‘Begats’, (that the Priestly History added), began and continued up until Noah’s Flood. We’ve already been through the problem with the Noah Flood of the Bible, so we’ll skip to when they landed and supposedly began recreating mankind.

        "Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. Each was married to a wife of a different race. Somehow all three wives descended from Adam and Eve. Ham and his wife was supposed to be the source that produced the black race that migrated south to Africa (except for Nimrod and a bunch of his people that must have gone to Babylon). Japheth and his wife was supposed to be the source that produced the yellow Oriental race that migrated to the East, and Shem and his wife stayed home and produced the ‘Semite’ people (the ‘h’ was supposed to be silent). The whole story of mankind, including starting over with the Noahs, covered a period of approximately 6000 years, according to the Bible. We’ve been over a lot of this before so I  will try to get back to your question about what I am researching now. And a little later relate a little more of a realistic story about Noah's Flood."

        "Sarah, what I will be able to tell you today will be somewhat sketchy, because I have only scratched the surface. The information seems to be corning in faster than I can read it, much less study and research it. Scientist believe the Earth has existed 5 to 8 billion years, and mankind could have  been here 500,000 years. However they have to go by evidence of civilized existence.  About 11,000 to 10,000 years B.C.E., it is believed that the ice from the ice-age began to recede, and savage mankind tried to live more civilized (this I wrote prior to reading any of Sitchin’s books) There are 5 main areas of the world where early civilization was located. In Africa all along the Nile Valley was the Nubian area, in the mid-east it was the Sumer Area in the Mesopotamian area between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, the Indus Granges was in the area of India, the fourth was the China Area which covered East China and Japan, and the only area in North America was the Meso-American Area in Central America."      "The black  civilization of the Nubian's have existed in the upper Nile Valley as far back as 8000 BCE. That’s over 5000 thousand years before Noah or his son Ham was born. Remember it was through Ham and his wife that the Black Race was supposed to have been developed. Sarah, I think it will get too confusing if I continue with comparisons, so from this point on I will just relate notes I have taken on dates and events, then I will read a couple of book reviews, then you will know where I am, as of now. I guess the year 8,000 B.C.E. is a good place to start.

        8000  B.C.E.: Also about this same time, a large group of people began a slow migration from just below the Caspian Sea heading in the direction of the lower Mesopotamian Delta Area. They would generally arrive there 3500 years later around 4,500 B.C.E.

        4,500 B.C.E. When the Caspian Sea people arrived in Mesopotamian (land between the rivers) Area, they soon become known as Sumerians, and the lower Mesopotamian Area from Agade to the Persian Gulf, and on both sides of the two rivers, became known as Sumer. Also when they arrived they encountered two tribes of people already living there. One group was called Ubaidians and the other was a Semite tribe called the Akkadians.  You may have noticed I said 'Semite.' This is over 1500 years before Noah was born, much less his son Shem, who the Church thinks the word ‘Semite’ comes from. So that is another area where the Jews are in error, when referring to ‘anti-Semitism’. The other area we talked about before when discussing the Kazarians as a source of most of the Jews of today , and they have an ancestry who would be of Japheth descendency, if there was such. Back to dates and events of early history.

        4240 B.C.E. This was the beginning of the Egyptian Calendar under the Egyptian ruler Menes.

        4004 B.C.E. October 26th, 9:00 a. m. (Kuwait time) according to the Persian/Jewish Priesthood and the early Catholic Church as recorded in the Bullinger's Companion Bible - King James Version, Appendix 50 - Hear after referred to as BCB, was the beginning of Creation Week, as I mentioned before.

        4000 B.C.E. Invention and development of the wheel by the Sumerians, this is also the general time of the existence of the five different civilizations I mentioned earlier, including the Xian Dynasty of China which was a yellow race that existed over a thousand years before Japheth. Also underwater block relics were found off the coast of Japan, that even gave an indication of civilization thousands of years earlier.

        3874 B.C.E. Birth of Seth per BCB

        3800 B.C.E. Nile Valley began to be developed.

        3761 B.C.E. Beginning of the Jewish Calendar (long before there was a Jew)

        3500 B.C.E. Hieralwnpolis was largest settlement in upper Egypt

        3200 B.C.E. Invention of writing by Sumerians (however it is thought that Egyptians may also have shared this accomplishment.).

        3114 B.C.E. Mayan Calendar began (North America)

        3074 B.C.E. Adam dies per BCB

        2962 B.C.E. Noah's flood: local combination flood of both the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that lasted seven days. Afterwards when Noah and his family they were met by other Flood survivors, per : Robert M. Best’s “Noah’s Ark and the Ziusudre Epic”.

        2900 - 2400 B.C.E. Peal- State culture in Sumer Area.

        2347 B.C.E. Year of the flood per BCB. Ages: Noah - 602, Japheth - 101, Ham was 100, and Shem  99 years.

        2230 B.C.E. Gutian (Barbarian hill people from the Zagro Mountain to the NE) invaded Mesopotamia and overthrew both Sumerians and the Akkadians.

        2100 B.C.E. The Akkadians and Sumerians ceased to exist as a people, but new invaders adopted the Sumerian customs and beliefs to the point, they took on the characteristics of the Sumerians. They were Semitic Amorites that came from the western desert to settle in the Babylon area (the former Akkadia).

        2040 B.C.E. First Dynasty of Babylon under Hammurapi.

        2000 B.C.E. Northern people (Hurrians) resettled in Mesopotamia, about this time, and established the Hittitic Empire in the Anatolia (Turkey) area, and the Mitanni Empire in Northern Mesopotamia. There was also a Kassite Dynasty around Babylon about that Same time.

        2000 - 1782 B.C.E. Middle Kingdoms in Egypt (Dynasties 11 &12)

        1996 B.C.E. Abraham born per BCB.

        1782 - 1570 B.C.E. Second Intermediate Period in Egypt (Dynasties 13 - 17) last 200 years of the rule of the Hyskos in Egypt.

        1668 - 1570 B.C.E. - Upper and Lower Nubia united into one state - Kush.

        1570 B.C.E. New Kingdom (Amarna) era in Egypt - founded by King/Pharaoh Ahmose - 18th Dynasty.

        1559 B.C.E. After an 11 year Hiatus, Ahmose expelled the Hyskos from Egypt, then annihilated them in Palestine, then he turned south to begin the overthrow of Kush, that was later completed under Tuthmose I. However each time power would change in Egypt there would be a new breakout in hostilities from Nubia. Palestine would, also remain under Egyptian control until the 7th century invasion by Assyria.           

        Sarah, I am going to stop at this point in the reading of my ancient history notes and read you a couple of book reviews. One about "Early Human Civilization" by Tony Smith at: www.innerx.net/personal/tsmith/oldciv/html     We can start a later session with the 18th Dynasty, and it's possible influence on Biblical Narratives.

        Sarah, I just want to mention one thing before we get to the reviews. I know you are familiar with the biblical town of Jericho, from our bible study sessions. The book I just completed "Out of Egypt" by Ahmed Osman, page 208 states that: Jericho dates back to 8000 B.C.E. that's 4000 years before Creation Week, and one of the ironic things about its history is the number of times it was destroyed and later rebuilt. One of the periods that it 'Lay in Ruin', was the time when Joshua of the Bible, was supposed to have 'brought the walls down'. It wasn't a city at that time, much less a ‘walled city’. There is a wealth of information in the book, and I will get back to it when we get to the 18th Dynasty in the next session, but for now let's get to the reviews.                                

                                                Early Human Civilization                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   (SOME PICTURES FAILED TO UPLOAD. UNTIL CORRECTION IS MADE: CLICK ON   http://www.innerx.net/personal/tsmith/oldciv.html  for the pictures) 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  REGIONS:

AFRICA; SUMER; CHINA; MESOAMERICA; INDUS-GANGES; COMPARISONS and CALENDARS         

Modern Cro-Magnon humans were around about 35,000 years ago,  and here are                   some notes about them during the Ice Age:

 At the end of the Ice Age 11,600 years ago, the Younger Dryas cold snap temperatures were 14 degrees Celsius below present-day levels, after which the Vela X supernova was seen on Earth and the Taurid/Encke fragmented, and a very sudden(50 years or so) warming event ended the Ice Age and marked the start of the HOLOCENE AGE of warm climate and glacial retreat.

If 11,600 years ago marked the beginning of the Rule of Mortal Humans on Earth according to Manetho (Egyptian historian ca. 343 BC), then his immediately preceding period of 11,025 years of Rule by Demigods and Spirits of the Dead (followers of Horus) would have begun about 22,625 years ago, or about the time of the beginning of the last Glacial Maximum, and his first period, preceding that, of 13,900 years of Rule of Gods on Earth would have begun about 36,525 years ago, or about the time of the Geminga shock wave, the Late Wisconsin Glaciation, and the appearance of Cro-Magnons.

 The total period of the Mantho's Ice Age Civilization prior to the Rule of Mortal Humans is therefore about 36,525 - 11,600 = 24,925 years, which is approximately the Earth precession period of 26,000 years and the travel time of a light from the center of our Galaxy to our Sun, about 25,000 light years distance. It may have been the time of construction of the Giza Complex of the Sphinx and the Pyramids, including the Great Golden Pyramid. The Ice Age Civilization may have been more spiritual and less crudely technological than the present Rule of Mortal Humans.

 This unconventional interpretation of Manetho's chronology is not inconsistent with his list of 30 Egyptian dynasties from about 2920 BCE to about 343 BCE, but it does extend his chronology from being a history of the past to a History of the Past and Future, in which we are now living near the end of the Rule of Mortal Humans.

After the end of the Ice Age about 11,600 years ago, the glaciers melted and sea level rose about 35 meters to its present level, a process that took about 4,000 years. In the very early stages of the process, about 11,600 years ago, the northern Sunda Shelf near China, Korea, and Japan began to flood, forcing the Jomon people to move to the high ground of what is now the Japanese Islands, and disrupting the Jomon/Sunda Shelf part of Ice, Age Civilization.

In Africa, Arabia, and India, things were more gradual and displacements less severe.

The African part of Ice Age Civilization had large lakes for another 1,000 years or so following the 4,000 year melting process, so that the Abyssinian/African Nile lake area of the Ice Age Civilization was its most highly organized and the probable source of ways to cope with the changed circumstances of the post-Ice Age world, including agriculture, mining, written communication, and organized armies, thus forming a Global Early Civilization with a Global early Language.

In my opinion, about 11,000 to 6,000 years ago was the latest reasonable time for construction of the Giza Sphinx and Pyramids. After about 6,000 years ago, the level of technology of the Great Pyramids at Giza could not be maintained by the economic and social structure of the indigenous population.

This period, 11,600 years ago to about 6,000 years ago, may have been the period about which Diodorus of Sicily said: "Now the Ethiopians ... were the first of all men. ... the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians, Osiris having been the leader of the colony... Osiris ... gathered together a great army, with the intention of visiting all the inhabited earth and teaching the race of men how to cultivate ....for he supposed that if he made men give up their savagery and adopt a gentle manner of life he would receive immortal honors, and that Osiris then went from Egypt and Ethiopia to Arabia, Greece, and India.           

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            After the end of the Ice Age Civilization, human civilizations were located in the major river valleys of Earth.

                As the Ice Age glaciers melted, lakes  filled up and the climate got wetter.

From  about 11,600 years ago to about 6,000 years ago the early human  river valleys had stable rainfall that supported productive agriculture and they extended their river water-based transportation systems to sea travel forming a Global Early Civilization during the period 11,600 to 6,000 years ago.

 The Global Early Civilization probably had a common world-wide language, corresponding to English as the global language of today. Like English, such a Global Early Language may not have been everybody's first language, but it probably was at least everybody's second language.                                                        

  After the climate dried out about 6,000 years ago, the Global Early  Civilization broke     up to be replaced by several isolated civilizations located in the relatively small remnants of the River Valleys that had adequate water.          

_{As the Global Early Civilization broke up 6,000 years ago, Edo Nyland has pointed out that the Global. Early Language broke up into regional languages. Egyptian hieroglyphics seem to have been a fully developed system of writing at least 5,000 years ago. Perhaps Egyptian Find Mayan hieroglyphics are regional forms of a Global Early Language picture- writing, and Chinese characters are a simplified abstract version of the same Global Early Language picture-writing. Perhaps such languages as cuneiform Sumerian and the Sarasvati-Sindhu language of India are less sophisticated writings used in trade and commerce.}

The monotheistic Israelites left Egypt, and Moses received the Torah. The Torah was revealed to Moses over 3,000 years ago in a complete form, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics had appeared in a complete form over 5,000 years ago, 

suggesting that they may have already then been in existence for some time.

The earliest alphabetical writing found so far is from the Egyptian (Abydos- Luxor -Thebes region) of 1800- 1900 BC.               

According to an article by John Noble Wilford in the 14 November 1999 New York Times: "... Egyptologists have found limestone inscriptions that they say are the earliest known examples of alphabetic writing. ... Carved in the cliffs of soft stone, the writing, in a Semitic script with Egyptian influences, has been dated to somewhere between 1900 and 1800 B. C., two or three centuries earlier than previously recognized uses of a nascent alphabet. The first experiments with alphabet thus appeared to be the work of ... people living deep in Egypt, not in ... the Syria-Palestine region, as had been thought. ... The previously oldest evidence for an alphabet, dated about 1600 B.C., was found near or in Semitic-speaking territory, in the Sinai Peninsula and farther north in the Syria-Palestine region occupied by the ancient Canaanites. These examples, known as Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite alphabetic inscriptions, were the  basis for scholars' assuming that Semites developed the alphabet ... From  other, non alphabetic writing at the site, the Egyptologists determined that the

inscriptions were made during Egypt's Middle Kingdom in the first two centuries of the second millennium B.C. ...If the early date for the inscriptions is correct, this puts the origins of alphabetic writing well before the probable time of the biblical story of Joseph being delivered by his brothers into Egyptian bondage, the scholars said. ... The other earliest primitive writing, the cuneiform developed by Sumerians in the Tigris and Euphrates Valley of present-day Iraq, remained entirely pictographic until about 1400 B.C. The Sumerians are generally credited with the first invention of writing, around 3200 B.C., but some recent findings at Abydos in Egypt suggest a  possibly earlier origin there.The issue is still controversial. ...".

The 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet of the Torah may have been derived from that alphabet.

According to an article by Nicholas Wade in the 1 February 2000 New York Times:"... In the beginning, there was one people, perhaps no more than 2,000 strong, who had acquired an amazing gift, the faculty for complex language. ... from their cradle in the northeast of Africa, they spread far and wide ...sailed to Asia, where some of their descendants turned westward, ousting the Neanderthal people of Europe and others east toward Siberia and the Americas. These epic explorations began some 50,000 years ago and ... adapted to the world's many climates in which they now lived, they no longer recognized one another as the children of one family. ... they had long forgotten the ancient mother tongue. 

... So might read one possible account of human origins as implied by the new evidence from population genetics and archaeology. ..

... Dr. Joseph H. Greenberg of Stanford University... has classified most of the world's languages into just a handful of major groups. ... he has identified words and concepts that seem common to them all and could be echoes of a mother tongue....

 "We have found a lot of significant correspondences between what he says and what we see genetically," said Dr. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a leading population geneticist at Stanford. In his view, the majority of linguists are not interested in the evolution of language. “They have attacked Greenberg cruelly, and I think frankly there is some jealousy behind it because he has been so successful,” Dr. Cavalli-Sforza said....

In a 1955 article, he [Dr. Greenberg] described ... Afro-Asiatic, which includes the Semitic languages of Arabic and Hebrew, as well as ancient Egyptian, and is spread across Northern Africa; Nilo-Saharan, a group of languages spoken in Central Africa and the Sudan; Khoisan, which includes the click languages of the south; and Niger-Kordofanian, a super family that includes everything in between, including the pervasive Bantu languages. After a decade of controversy, Dr. Greenberg's African classification became widely accepted.......            

         ... Amerind is the vast superfamily to which, in his view, most native languages of North and South America belong. The other two clusters are Na-Detle, a group of languages spoken mostly in Alaska and northeast Canada, and Eskimo-Aleut, spoken across northern Alaska and Canada. ...

        ... In the course of classifying the languages of the Americas, Dr. Greenberg realized that their major families were related to languages on the Eurasian continent, as would be expected if the Americas had been inhabited by people migrating through Siberia. Na-Dene, for example, is related to an isolated Siberian language known as Ket. ...

            ...'Dr. Greenberg has now classified most of the languages of Europe and Asia into the superfamily he calls Eurasiatic. Its seven living components are Indo-European (examples are English, Russian, Greek Iranian, Hindu); Uralic (Hungarian, Finnish); Altaic (Turkish, Mongolian); the Korean-Japanese-Ainu group; Eskimo-Aleut; and two Siberian families known as Gilyal" and Chukotian. ...

            .....Stanford colleague and associate Dr. Merritt Ruhlen, believes that if the Eurasiatic grouping is accepted, the world's 5,000 languages can be seen to fall into just 12 super-families. How these in turn might be related to a single mother tongue remains to be seen. But several years ago, Dr. Greenberg identified a possible global etymology derived from the universal human habit of holding up a single finger to denote one. In the Nilo-Saharan languages the word tok, tek or dik means one. The stem tik means finger in Amerind, one in Sino-Tibetan, 'index finger' in Eskimo and 'middle finger' in Aleut. And an Indo-European stern deik, meaning to point, is the origin of dakdulos, digitus, and doigt -- Greek Latin and French for finger -- as well as the English word digital. ... "

In areas that were isolated from the dynamic regional centers, the old Global Early Language was not changed much:  Ainu-Jomon in Japan; Ge'ez in Abyssinia; Basque in the Pyrenees between Spain and France; Ogam script in Scotland, Ireland, and North America; and Olmec in Central America.

            To see how the Global Early Civilization formed and broke up, look at each major river valley:

AFRICA

SUMER

CHINA

MESO-AMERICA 

INDUS-GANGES

Comparisons and Calendars

AFRICA :                                                                        

            The African Nile River Valley region became a desert, except for the lower Nile area in Egypt The Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza are outstanding examples of the Ice Age Civilization, or the period from about 11,600 to 6,000 years ago, but none of its written records have been found there. The written records of the later lower Nile Egyptians only go back about 5,000 years However, since hieroglyphics and Egyptian mathematics appeared highly developed about 5,000 years ago, it is likely that they came from an earlier civilization.

            There are two other written histories of African Nile people: the Old Testament, Jewish history of the past 5,800 years or so; and the Abyssinian Kbre Nege'st.

            A major problem is that the heartland of the African Nile River Valley region is desert, and many of its sites are probably buried under desert sand.

            We can, however, try to learn something from the legends of the area, such as the legends of Isis, Osiris and Horus, and of Thoth, who was called Hermes Trismegistus by the Greeks, who taught mathematics and music, who encoded the 78-leaf Book of Thoth as Tarot cards, (which are represented by the design of the Temple of Luxor), and who said: "... the true knowledge of music is nothing other than this: to know the ordering of all separate things and how the Divine Reason has distributed them; for this ordering of all separate things into one, achieved by skillful reason, makes the sweetest and truest harmony with the Divine Song."

SUMER:                                                                                 

             Here too, written history does not go back much further than 5,000 years ago, but we can look  to legends:  The Sumerian myth of Enki, who was also know by the Akkadian name Ea and the Greek name Oannes, may be related to the time of the Vela X supernova that was seen to explode around 9,000 BC, or 11,000 years ago.

            Murals and paintings at Tell Ghassul may have represented Vela X by an eight-pointed 'star' within a larger eight-pointed 'star'/culminating in a burst of eight rays.

        As Richard Shand has noted, Ea was called the Fish of Heaven; was half man, half fish and taught mankind writing and math; and was said to have drained marshes by the Persian Gulf to have replaced them with fertile agricultural land, to have supervised the construction of dams and dikes, and to have loved sailing and built ships in which to navigate the seas.

        I think that the Sumerian legend is consistent with the people of the African Sphinx-Giza region being the largest and oldest region of Early Human Civilization and bringing civilization to the other regions by world-wide sea travel.

CHINA:                                                                                     

        In China also, written history does not go back much further than about 4,700 years.

        However, on the Huang Loess Plateau, the cradle of Chinese civilization, is the settlement site of Banpo, near Xian, of 9,000 to 6,000 years ago. It shows a matriarchal society with a communal way of life, each individual grave of a female person being accompanied by three pieces of pottery utensils, without distinction to her status before death.

        I think that this shows that the Early Human Civilization had a good society in which people shared the benefits of their productivity.

        With only limited archaeological data, and no written history prior to 4,700 years ago we must again look to legends:

        The supernova Vela X may have been represented by a Flaming Pearl, which in turn may have represented a Rock Crystal Burning Lens.

         As the I Ching, based on 64 pairs of 8 Trigrams, is less comprehensive than the FA of the Fon people, based on 256 pairs of 16 Tetragrams, the I Ching may have been brought to China during the Ice Age Civilization or the Global Early Civilization by sea-faring ships from the African Sphinx-Giza region.

         Childress, in Lost Cities of China... (Adventures Unlimited 1991), described a Great Pyramid in China near Xian, and also describes a legendary foundation of Taoism by people from Shen Zhou, or Spirit Ships.

         A number of Chinese Pyramids exist, which may be at least 4,500 years old, and perhaps much older.

         Spread of civilization by sea travel is part of Chinese history and legend, ranging from founding of Japan to contact with Meso-America.

         Near Japan, there are block structures under the sea that may be at least 12,000 years old.

  MESO-AMERICA :                                              

         By far the oldest possibly accurate historical reference on Earth prior to our present century is found in two Stelae at Quirigua:

                                                           Stella  D                              Stella   F 

According to Morley, Brainerd, and Sharer, on page 559 of The Ancient Maya, 4th ed, Stanford (1983), Stela D describes a date of 400,000,000 years ago, which was about 2 Galactic Years ago (since the Sun orbits the Milky Way Galaxy with a period of about 200 million years) and which is about when North America and Europe began to collide with Gondwanaland (including Africa) to form Pangaea (and the Appalachian Mountains ), while Stela F describes a date of 90,000,000 years ago, which is about when the breakup of Pangaea had advanced to the point at which the North Atlantic Ocean was formed.

           Much more recently, during the last Ice Age, MesoAmerica was a good place to live, and eventually the Maya Mathematicians developed a system of mathematics using the symbol for 5 and. for 1, with a stack of four - representing 20, and an eye as a zero symbol, so that they could calculate efficiently in base 20.

        The mathematical system was good enough to be used effectively by Maya Astronomers. The Maya Astronomers used that mathematical system to devise a year of 18x20 = 360 days even though they knew that Earth's solar year is about 365 days. From that, they formed a 20-year K'atun and other time periods.

        Venus was important to the Maya. Venus, Earth, and the Sun form a system that is linked similarly to the way the Moon, Earth, and the Sun are linked so that total and annular solar eclipses occur. The rotational period of Venus is about 243 Earth days. The orbital period of Venus is about 225 Earth days. Venus always turns the same face to Earth when Venus is lined up between the Earth and the Sun, something that happens about every 584 Earth days, or 8/5 Earth years. The Solar day on Venus is about 117 Earth days, and, since 225 is less than 243, the Sun rises in the West on Venus.

        The 8/5 ratio is represented at Chichen Itza on a Venus Platform in the plaza north of the Pyramid of Kukulcan. The Pyramid of Kukulcan represents the 365 days of the year by 91 steps on each of its 4 sides, plus the one plat form at the top. (See two books by E. C. Krupp: Skywatchers, Shamans and Kings (Wiley 1997) and Echoes of the Ancient Skies (Oxford 1983).)

        On Venus, 2 solar days are 234 Earth days are 2 solar days.

        In the Earth's sky, Comet Hyakutake appeared to be near Venus, an "evening star", during the month prior to perihelion on 1 May 1996.

        The ACOUSTICS of MESOAMERICAN and ANDEAN STRUCTURES are quite interesting:

        The Castillo at Chavin De Huantar in Peru was a ceremonial center with drains where water could be pushed through and the roar of the water could be heard through vents and chambers within the center itself. When this was done, the center literally roared.

        Ancient Peruvian Whistling pottery vessels made a sound when you poured water from them. They were tuned fairly precisely, if you blew into them. Two vessels blown simultaneously produced difference tones.

        Chichen Itza has a series of cones that produce musical tones when tapped with a wooden mallet.

        At Tulum on the Yucatan coast there was a temple which gave a clear and long-

range whistle or howl when the wind velocity and direction were correct.          At the Mayan Pyramid I at Tikal a person standing on the top step speaking in a normal voice can be heard by those at ground level for some distance.

At the 3 pyramids of the Group of the Cross at Palenque a three-way conversation can be held at the tops of the three pyramids.

The Tikal and Group of the Cross pyramids all have flat tops on which are placed temples with roof combs! as shown in this cross section of the Pyramid of the Cross:                                                                               

           Note the similarity between the construction of the roof combs and the Grand Gallery of the Great Golden Pyramid of Giza.

           Since the Great Golden Pyramid also has a flat top, a similar temple with roof comb could have been there originally.

           Under many Maya Temple Pyramids are caves, both natural and artificial, where Maya Shaman mathematicians, astronomers and healers communicated with gods and ancestors ... gazed into crystals - a gift of the Earth found in caves - to peer into future or to diagnose sickness ...(and, also) ... to draw illnesses and curses our of those struck ill....".

           Stalactitic Ore was formed in Caves near Hurricane Hollow and Pine Mountain, along the Etowah River upstream from the Etowah Mounds.

            In China, Daoist Immortal creatures of light use mirrors in mountain Caves to show wise humans their secrets. Under the Great Golden Pyramid of Giza are Cave chambers. Another connection between Ancient Egypt and MesoAmerica may be the use! in art and architecture, of 19-1ine grids, just as a Chinese Wei-Qi board is a grid of 19 lines.

           A MAYAN QUANTUM NANOMACHINE is described in New Scientist (20 July 96, p. 17): 

           "... Nanoparticles [mostly iron! some manganese! chromium! titanium] scatter light in a nonlinear, quantum fashion. In Maya blue paint, the atoms in the metallic particles vibrate near the wavelength of the re-emitted light. This resonance amplifies the light, helping give the paint its brilliance.

           ... When boiled with indigo .. the clay (palygorskite) turned to Maya blue. The micro structure (nanoparticles inside cage-like structures of the clay) exactly matched the ancient paint. ..."           

              See also Science 273 (12 July 1996) 223.) If the Maya blue pigment is basically a scattering phenomenon then the Mayans used Quantum Nanotechnology to re-create the blue of the sky from the clay of the earth.

INDUS-GANGES:

           Here we find a record of the Early Human Civilization of 11,600 to 6,000 years ago: the Rig-Veda.

           Although current written versions of the Rig-Veda are written in Sanskrit or later languages, the earlier versions were transmitted orally. Perhaps the first versions were in the Global Early Language, or its earliest variant in the Indian region, the Sarasvati-Sindhu language. As Feuerstein, Kak, and Frawley have noted in their book In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (Quest 1995), the Rig-Veda mentions star patterns of 9,000 to 8,000 years ago, so the Rig-Veda is of that age.

           Their book is the source for most of the rest of this section: 

Perhaps about 6,000 years ago, the Sarasvati River dried up, and the lndus-Sarasvati region (with lndra as principal god) declines. Then, the Ganges region (with Shiva and Ganesha as principal gods) became dominant.

           The Rig-Veda has about 250 hymns to Indra. Indra's Net is a net with a jewel at each intersection, each jewel reflecting all the other jewels of the net. Indra's Net is a symbol of the internet, and can symbolize other interconnected systems even Many Worlds of lattice space-time. 

           As the being whose thunderbolts reveal the light of the sun and release waters to flow to the ocean, Indra could symbolize the Vela X supernova.

           The Rig-Veda has about 100 hymns to Soma, who has the nectar of immortality, also called soma. The soma nectar is used to stimulate visions. As it is produced by pressing and filtering the soma plant, so the Rig-Veda describes the yoga practice of purification of the mind by three filters, so that higher-level truth can be perceived.

           About one-fourth of the verses in the Rig-Veda are in the gayatri meter: 3 sections of 8 syllables each; the first 4 syllables free and the last 4 in fixed cadence.

           To me -with respect to physics - each of the 3 sections represents one of the three 8-dimensional representations of Spin's), and the fixing of the last 4 syllables of the section representing 8-dimensional space-time represents dimensional reduction to 4-dimensional space-time In that way, I see the music of the Rig-Veda reflecting fundamental physics.

           The gayatri meter is named from the mantra: tat savitur va\enyam, bhargo devasya dhimahi, dhiyo yo nah pracodayat. (English: Behold the beautiful splendor of Savitri- the Sun-God of the swastika - to inspire our visions.)

           As to whether all these things originated in the Indus-Ganges region, or whether some were brought in by contact with other regions of the Early Human Civilization, I do not know.

           However, there are a some interesting similarities, such as:  Egyptians used both binary and decimal mathematics.  The Indus-Ganges region used both a binary system of weights 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ... units (unit = 0.85 gram), and a decimal system of length measure (unit = 0.264 inches\ as well as a second system of length based on Egyptian cubits.

           If you look at the map of the Earth at the top of this page, you notice a couple of things:

FIRST: There are at least 3 major river valleys WITHOUT high-level Early Human Civilization: the Congo; the Amazon; and   the Mississippi-Missouri. What do they all have in common? They drain to the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific or Indian Oceans. The Early  Human Civilization of 9,000 to 6,000 years ago was primarily centered on the Indian and Pacific Oceans, although there probably was some travel to the Atlantic, perhaps to get such things as Lake Superior copper, although it could have been obtained from MesoAmericans, who in turn got it by overland trade (maybe that is the earliest use of the Mississippi River).

SECOND: Since the Indian Ocean was central to the Early Human Civilization, the Dravidian Civilization of South India would have been a high-level civilization that was based, not on a river valley, but on being centrally located for the sea-faring commerce of the Early Human Civilization.       

        In my opinion, about 11,000 to 6,000 years ago was the latest reasonable time for construction of the Giza Sphinx and Pyramids. After about 6,000 years ago, the level of technology of the Great Pyramid at Giza could not be maintained by the economic and social structure of the indigenous population.

         From about 11,000 to 6,000 years ago the Abyssinian Highlanders of the African Nile Lake were the most highly organized remnant of the Ice Age Civilization. They were the probable source of ways to cope with the changed circumstances of the post-Ice Age world, including agriculture, mining, written communication, and organized armies, thus forming a Global Early Civilization with a Global Early Language.

         Diodorus of Sicily, author of Bibliotheca Historica, lived in the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus (Encyclopedia Britannica). Richard Poe, in Black Sparks, White Fire (Prima 1997), quotes Diodorus as saying:

 "Now the Ethiopians ... were the first of all men. ... ... the Egyptians are colonists sent out by the Ethiopians Osiris having been the leader of the colony..., ... Osiris ... gathered together a great army, with the intention of visiting all the inhabited earth and teaching the race of men how to cultivate ... ... for he supposed that if he made men give up their savagery and adopt a gentle manner of life he would receive immortal honors. ..." Diodorus said that Osiris then went from Egypt and Ethiopia India.

       Poe also cites linguists who think-Asiatic Languages originated in the Abyssinian Highlands, and radiated out there from about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, which is consistent with the Abyssinian Highlanders being the repository of a Global Early Language which they reintroduced to the post-Ice Age world.

         Since the Early Human Civilization broke up about 6,000 years ago, there has been no global Earth Civilization until now.   

        The breakup of the Early Human Civilization about6,000 years ago approximately coincides with the Vedic beginning of the Kali-yuga era. The Kali-yuga era began about 5,000 years ago, in 3102 BC, about the same time as the Mayan calendar cycle began in 3114 BC, and about the same time as the beginning of the traditional Jewish (year 5757 beginning 13 September 1996) calendar, Chinese (year 4694 beginning 8 February 1997) calendar, and Egyptian (year 6237 in 1997) calendar, beginning at a coincidence of the Egyptian 365.25 day Sothic year based on Sirius and the Egyptian 365 day moving civil year of 12 30-day months plus 5 days, which coincidence occurs every 1,461 years. The coincidences of about 2780 BC and later are probably too late to have been the beginning of the calendar; as the Pyramid Texts of about 2500 BC indicate that the calendar began long before then, so the coincidence of about 4240 BC is the likely beginning at a time about half-way through the era of rule of mortal humans on Earth beginning 36,525 - 24,925 = 11,600 years before 340 BC, or about 14,000 years ago, according to the Egyptian historian Manetho. About 5,100 years ago, Menes, the ruler of Southern Upper Egypt, conquered Northern Lower Egypt and so created a united Egypt. The event 6,237 years ago commemorated by the beginning of the Egyptian calendar was probably the end of the Global Early Human Civilization, and the beginning of a regional civilization in the southern part of the African Nile River Valley region.

        The Vedic view is that "...prior to the beginning of Kali-yuga about 5,000 years ago... all living beings were on a higher average level than they are at present, and advanced beings such as demigods and great sages regularly visited the earth. ... Once the Kali-yuga began, demigods and higher beings earth, and the general sensory level of human beings also declined ... due to the lack of feedback from higher sources and the natural cheating propensity of human beings, the traditions... became more and more garbled... the present stage of civilization was reached in which old traditions are widely viewed as useless mythology and people seek knowledge entirely through the use of their current, limited senses."

        Spain and Portugal began European world-wide oceanic exploration and colonization around 1500 AD, but they did not combine exploration and colonization with industrialization After England, Cymru (Wales), and Scotland united around 1707 AD (about the time of Comet Sarabat of 1729 and the beginning of increased Solar sunspot activity) unifying the Island of Great Britain as a protected island with ocean trading ports and with sufficient population and natural resources, Great Britain initiated the Industrial Revolution and colonized much of the Earth.

        Now Great Britain's successor as dominant Earth power is its former colony, the United States of America (USA), which was protected by ocean barriers from damage in World War II, about 50 years ago.

        The same World War II gave the USA the technology of rockets, nuclear power, and electronics necessary to control the entire Earth.

        The only nations that might be able to influence the direction of Earth Civilization independently of the USA might be a resurgent China, or possibly Russia.

        The global Earth Civilization of the USA now faces a major political decision: Should its global Earth Civilization continue to advance, or should it protect its profitable (for the USA ruling class) status quo?

        Can the history of the Ice Age Civilization and the global Early Human Civilization tell us what we ought to do now, particularly in view of the possibility that they may have been more advanced especially in social structure and relations with higher intellectual/spiritual levels, than any later civilization including our present one?

                                                           THE SUMERIANS

        By 7,000 BCE, in what is called the Fertile Crescent, in West Asia, where hunters and gatherers had roamed, planting had grown into the major source of food. There, true farming had begun, with the growing of wheat and barley, the domestication of animals and people permanently settled. By 4500 BCE a people archaeologists call Ubaidians were living in towns in southern Mesopotamia near where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers emptied into the Persian Gulf. The Ubaidians drained marshes. They grew wheat and barley and irrigated their crops by digging ditches to river waters. They kept farm animals. Some of them manufactured pottery. They did weaving, leather or metal work, and some of them were involved in trade with other societies.

           By 4000 BCE in Syria, was a society with regional centers and a complex government. Here, as with the Ubaidians, were huge ovens for baking bread for numerous people, and people manufactured fine pottery. In the year 2000 of modern times, at Tell Harnoukar, archaeologists discovered a protective city wall, and they described the place of their digging as more than a town -- they described it as a city. And they found what they called primitive hieroglyphics: markings lot record keeping of trade transactions.

           It was around 4000 BCE that a people called Sumerians moved into Mesopotamia, perhaps from around the Caspian Sea. And the Sumerians round among the Ubaidians a people who spoke a Semitic language who had moved in among the Ubaidians. By 3800 BCE the Sumerians supplanted the Ubaidians and Semites. They built better canals for irrigating crops and for transporting crops by boat to village centers. They improved their roads, over which their donkeys trod, some of their donkeys pulling wheeled carts. And the Sumerians grew in number, the increase in population the key element in creating what we call civilization -- a word derived from an ancient word for city

           At least twelve cities arose among the Sumerians. Among them were Ur, Uruk, Kish and Lagash -- Ur, for example, becoming a city of about 24,000 people. In the center of each city was a temple that housed the city's gods, and around each city were fields of grain, orchards of date palms, and land for herding. Besides planting and harvesting crops, some Sumerians hunted., fished, or raised live-stock. In addition to an increase in population, civilization was also about variety, and enough food was produced to Support people who worked at other occupations -- such as the priesthood{ pottery making, weaving, carpentry and smithing. There were also traders, and the Sumerians developed an extensive commerce by land and sea. They built seaworthy ships, and they imported from afar items made from the wood, stone, tin and copper not found nearby.

 Sumerian Writing

 Sumerian writing is the oldest full-fledged writing that archaeologists have discovered. The Obsidians may have introduced Sumerians to the rudiments of writing and recorded numerical calculation, which the Sumerians used with the rise in trade and to calculate and to keep records of supplies and goods exchanged. The Sumerians wrote arithmetic based on units of ten -- the number of fingers on both hands. Concerned about their star-gods, they mapped the stars and divided a circle into units of sixty. from which our own system of numbers, and seconds and minutes, are derived.

           The Sumerians wrote poetically, describing events as the work their gods, and they wrote to please their gods. The Sumerians wrote by pressing picture representations into wet clay with a pen, and they dried the clay to form tablets. Instead of developing their writing all at once; as one might expect with divine revelation; they developed their writing across centuries. They streamlined their pictures into symbols called ideograms, and they added symbols for spoken sounds -- phonetic letters. 

A Belief in Spirits

            Like people who were not yet civilized, the Sumerians saw movement around them as the magic of spirits, magic being the only explanation they had for how things worked. These spirits were their gods,  and with many spirits around the Sumerians believed in many gods -- gods that had human like emotions. The Sumerians believed that the Sun, moon and stars were gods. They believed in a goddess of the reeds that grew around them and in a goddess of the beer that they distilled.

           The Sumerians believed that crops grew because of a male god mating with his goddess wife. They saw the hot and dry months of summer, when their meadows and fields turned brown, as a time of death of these gods. When their fields bloomed again in the autumn, they believed their gods were resurrected. They marked this as the beginning of their year, which they celebrated at their temples with music and singing.

           The Sumerians could dig into the earth and within a few feet find water. They believed that the earth was a great disk floating on the sea. They called the sea Nammu, and they believed that Nammu was without a beginning in time. They believed that Nammu had created the fish they saw and the birds, wild pigs and other creatures that appeared on the marshy wet lands -- a story of creation around two millennia before the Hebrews would put their own story of the creation into writing.

           The Sumerians believed that Nammu had created heaven and earth; heaven splitting from earth as being the male god; An; and the earth being a goddess called Ki. They believed that Ki and An had produced a son called Enlil, who was atmosphere, wind and storm. The Sumerians believed that Enlil separated the day from night and that he had opened an invisible shell and let waters fall from the sky. They believed that with his mother, Ki, Enlil set the stage for the creation of plants; humans and other creatures; that lie made seeds growl that he shaped humanity from clay and imbued it, as it states in Genesis2:7, with "the breath of life."

           The Sumerians believed that humanity had been created to serve the gods, and they served their gods with sacrificial offerings and supplications. They believed that the gods con- trolled the past and the future; that whatever skills they possessed; including writing{ their gods had revealed to them; and they believed that their gods provided them with all they needed to know. They had no vision of their civilization as having developed by their own efforts against worldly conditions. They had no vision of technological or social progress; and they saw no need of knowledge to aspire to beyond what they already knew.

           Nevertheless; Sumerian priests altered the stories that they told. They let human invention intrude into their religious life and created a new twist to old tales, serving that which would be common with religious belief for millennia to come: change. But, consistent with their tradition; they failed to acknowledge this as a human induced change of any sort. They gave no thought to a change in their story meaning that they had failed to get it right the first time. New ideas were simply revelations from the gods. The Sumerians did not recognize interpretation. They saw no need for rules of reason. No evidence remains in their writings of their respecting doubt or that they understood any benefit from suspended judgment. These; along with a distinction between spirit and matter, would come in a later age; beginning with self-examination; attempts at analyzing matter, and attempts at an all encompassing consistency called philosophy; and they would be served by the rise of science and a belief in change and progress.

           The priests did believe in axioms. A part of the change they had made in their religion was working their stories about their gods into axioms. Sometime around 2500 BCE. Enlil

became the greatest of the gods and the god who punished people and watched over their safety and well being. Like the gods of other ancient peoples, Enlil was a god who dwelled somewhere. He was a god of place, and that place was the city was Nippur, a sacred city believed to have been inhabited at first only by divine beings.

           By around 2500 BCE, the Sumerians were individualistic enough to believe in personal gods -- gods with whom individuals had a covenant. Individuals no longer prayed "I List for the community. Sumerian society was dominated by  males, and Sumerian scholars claimed that the head of every family n a male -- and every other adult male had his personal god. Men hoped that their god would intercede for them in the assembly of' gods and provide them with a long life and good health. In exchange, they glorified their god with prayers, supplications and sacrifices while continuing to worship the other gods in the Sumerian pantheon of gods.

 A Belief in Sin

            Believing that the gods had given them all they had; the Sumerians saw the intentions of' their gods as good, and believing that their gods had great powers and controlled their world, the Sumerians needed an explanation for their hardships and misfortunes. The obvious explanation was that their hardships and misfortunes were the result of human deeds that displeased the gods -- in a word, sin. They believed that when someone displeased the gods, these gods let demons punish the offender with sickness, disease or environmental disasters.

           The Sumerians experienced infrequent rains that sometimes created disastrous floods, and they believed that these floods were punishments created by a demon god that lived in the depths of the Gulf of Persia. And to explain the misfortunes and suffering of infants, the Sumerians believed that sin was inborn, that never was a child born without sin. Therefore, wrote a Sumerian, when one suffered it was best not to curse the gods but to glorify them, to appeal to them, and to wait patiently for their deliverance.

 Conflicts Among the Gods

            In giving their gods human characteristics, the Sumerians projected onto their gods the conflicts they found among themselves. Sumerian priests wrote of a dispute between the god of cattle, Lahar, and his sister Ashnan, the goddess of grain. Like some other gods, these gods were vain and wished to be praised. Each of the two sibling gods extolled his and her own achievements and belittled the achievements of the other.

           The Sumerians saw another dispute between the minor gods Emesh (summer) and his brother Enten (winter). Each of these brothers had specific duties in creation -- like Cain the farmer and Able the herdsmen. The god Enlil put Emesh in charge of producing trees, building houses, temples, cities and other tasks. Enlil put Enten in charge of causing ewes to give birth to Iambs, goats to give birth to kids, birds to build nests, fish to lay their eggs and trees to bear fruit. And the brothers quarreled violently as Emesh challenged Enten's claim to be the farmer god.

            A dispute existed also between the god Enki and a mother goddess, Ninhursag -- perhaps originally the earth goddess. Ninhursag made eight plants sprout in a divine garden, plants created from three generations of goddesses fathered by Enki. These goddesses were described as having been born "without pain or travail" Then trouble Came as Enki ate the plants that Ninhursag had grown. Ninhursag responded with rage, and she pronounced a curse of death on Enki, and Enki's health began to fail. Eight parts of Enki's body -- one for each of the eight plants that he ate -- became diseased, one of which was his rib. The goddess Ninhursag then disappeared so as not let sympathy for Enki change her mind about her sentence of death upon him. But she Finally relented and returned to heal Enki. She created eight healing deities -- eight more goddesses -one for each of Enki's ailing body parts. And the goddess who healed Enki's rib was Nin-ti, a name that in Sumerian meant "lady of the rib," which describes a character who was to appear in a different role in Hebrew writings centuries later, a character to be called Eve. 

                                   SUMERIAN PROPERTY POWER AND POLITICS

            Early in Sumerian civilization, eighty to ninety percent of those who farmed did so on land they considered theirs rather than communal property. Here too the Sumerians were expressing a trend that was common among others. Another individual effort was commerce, and with a growth in commerce the Sumerians had begun using money, which made individual wealth more easily measured and stored. Commerce required initiative, imagination, an ability to get along with people and luck, and, of course, some merchants were more successful then were others. Farming took stamina, strength, good health, good luck and organization. And some farmers were more successful than were other farmers.

           Those farmers who failed to harvest enough to keep themselves in food and seed borrowed from those who had wealth in surplus. Those who borrowed hoped that their next harvest would give them the surplus they needed to repay their loan. But if the next harvest were also inadequate, to meet their obligations they might be forced to surrender their lands to the lender or to work for him. When Sumerians lost their land, they or their descendants might become sharecroppers: working the lands of successful landowners in exchange for giving the landowners a good portion of the crops they grew.

           Accompanying divisions in wealth was a division in power, and power among the Sumerians passed to an elite. Sumerian priests had once worked the fields alongside others, but now they were separated from commoners. A corporation run by priests became the greatest landowners among the Sumerians. The priests hired the poor to work their land and claimed that land was really owned by the gods. Priests had become skilled as scribes, and in some cities they sat with the city's council of elders. These councils wielded great influence, sometimes in conflict with a city's king.

           Common Sumerians remained illiterate and without power, while kings, once elected by common people, became monarchs. The monarchs were viewed as agents of and responsible to the gods. It was the religious duty of his subjects to accept his rule as a part of the plan of the gods. Governments drafted common people to work on community projects, and common people were obliged to pay taxes to the government in the form of a percentage of their crops, which the city could either sell or use to feed its soldiers and others it supported. And priests told commoners that their drudgery was necessary to allow the gods their just leisure.          

Men Dominate Women

            Physically stronger than women, men could rule women by brute force, and in societies where men were the warriors, it was they who got together and made the decisions. Kings were the chosen by the warriors as the leading warrior. The Sumerians put the domination of men over women into law. If a husband died, the widow came under the control of her former husband's father or brother, or I" she had a grown son under his control. A woman in Sumer had no recourse or protection under the law. A woman's only power, if she had any, was the influence of her personality within her family.

Education

            Early in Sumerian civilization, schooling was associated with the priesthood and took place in temples. But this changed, and an education apart from the temples arose for the children of affluent families, who paid for this education -- and with men dominating women, most if not all students were males The students were obliged to work hard at their studies, from sun up to sun down. Not believing in change, there was no probing into the potentials of humankind or study of the humanities. Their study was "practical" - rote learning of complex grammar and practice at writing. Students were encouraged with praise while their inadequacies and failures were punished with lashes From a stick or cane.

 War and Slavery

            As Sumerian cities grew in population and expanded, the virgin swamps that had insulated city from city disappeared. Like other peoples, the Sumerians were inclined to empathize more with those closer to themselves and inclined to see their own interests more clearly than those distant from them. Sumerians from different cities were unable or unwilling to resolve their conflicts over land and the availability of water, and wars between Sumerian cities erupted -- wars they saw as between their gods.

           Eventually, the Sumerians made slaves of other Sumerians they had captured in their wars with each other, but originally they acquired their slaves from peoples beyond Sumer. The Sumerian name for a female slave was mountain girl, .and a male slave was called mountain man. The Sumerians used their slaves mainly as domestics and concubines. And they justified their slavery as would others: that their gods had given them victory over an inferior people.

           Wars with distant people were fueled by the greed and ambitions of kings The Sumerians described this in a poetic tale of conflict between the king of Uruk and the distant town of Arrata, a tale written by a Sumerian some five hundred years after the event, a tale of which only fragments remain. Here was reporting as it would be for more than three thousand years, as it would be with Homer and his Iliad, the sacred writings of Hindus and with the Old Testament, with gods in command and not disapproving of war.

           Among the Sumerian cities was an impulse to be supreme and, around 2800 BCE, Kish had become the first clothe cities to dominate the whole of Sumer. Then Kish's supremacy was challenged by the city of Lagash, which launched a bloody conquest against its Sumerian neighbors and extended its power beyond Sumerian lands. A bas-relief' sculpture uncovered by archaeologists depicts a king of Lagash celebrating his victory over the city of Umma. the king's soldiers, with helmets, shields and pikes, standing shoulder to shoulder and line behind line over the corpses of their defeated enemy.

 Dissent

           The variety of populous, civilized life produced differing opinions, and dissent -something authoritarians would never be able to extinguish. Sumerians complained. One wrote that he was a "thoroughbred steed" but drawing a cart carrying "reeds and straw." Another complained in writing of the stupidity in one city taking enemy lands and then the enemy coming and taking its lands. Rather than docility, people in the city of Lagash instigated history's first recorded revolt. This carne after Lagash's rulers had increased local taxes and restricted personal freedoms. Lagash's bureaucrats had grown In wealth. And the people of Lagash resented this enough that they overthrew then king, and brought to power a god-fearing ruler named Urukagina, who eliminated excessive taxation and rid the city of usurers, thieves and murderers -- the first known reforms.

PARADISE, THE FALL OF HUMANKIND AND A GREAT FLOOD                   

 Clinging to their belief in the goodness and power of their gods and wondering about their sin and the toil and strife with which they lived{ the Sumerians imagined a past in which people lived in a god-created paradise. This was expressed in the same poetic tale that described the conflict between the king of Uruk and the distant town of Arrata -- the earliest known description in writing of a paradise and the fall of humankind. The poem describes a period when there were no creatures that threatened people -- no snakes, scorpions, hyenas, or lions -- a period in which humans knew no terror. There was no confusion among various peoples speaking different languages, with everyone praising the god Enlil in one language. Then, according to the poem, something happened that enraged the god Enki (the god of wisdom and water who had organized the earth in accordance with a general plan laid down by Enlil). The clay tablet on which the poem was written is damaged at this point but the tablet indicates that Enki found some sort of' inappropriate behavior among humans. Enki decided to put an end to the golden age and in the place of the golden age came conflict, wars and a confusion of languages.

   On another clay tablet, surviving fragments of a poem describe the gods as having decided that humans were evil and the gods as having created a flood "to destroy the seed of humanity." a flood that raged for seven days and seven nights. The tablet describes it huge boat commanded by a king named Ziusudra, who was presenting vegetation and the seed of humankind. His boat was "tossed about by the windstorms on the great waters." When the storm subsided, the god Utu -- the sun–  came forward and shed light on heaven and earth. The good king Ziusudra opened a window on the boat and let in  light from U Jill. Then Ziusudra prostrated himself before Utu and sacrificed in ox and a sheep for the god.

 *Note: BCE (Before the Common Era) is suitable for application to all Cultures and IS equivalent to BC  (before Christ, which has been commonly used in the Western world.

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 copyright C 1998 by Frank E Smitha. All rights reserved .

THE GREAT DNA HUNT                                  

Genetic archaeology  zooms in on the                                      

origins of modem humans.                                              

By TABITHA M. POWLEDGE AND MARK ROSE                                  

    DNA can be used to understand the evolution of modern humans, trace migrations of people, identify individuals, and determine the origins of domestic plants and animals. DNA analysis, as one scholar put it, is "the greatest archaeological excavation of all time." Because ancient DNA molecules are normally so few and fragmented, and preserved soft tissues so rare, scientists had little hope of finding and analyzing it. But two breakthroughs have made this possible: the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a method for copying any fragment of DNA, and the successful recovery of DNA from preserved hard tissues, bones and teeth, that are durable and relatively abundant.

   DNA analysis traced human ancestry back to an African "Eve, setting off debate about how modern humans evolved. While there was general agreement that Homo erectus dispersed from Africa across Asia between I and 2 million years ago, what happened next remained a question. The "out-of-Africa" hypothesis contended that modern humans developed in Africa and migrated from there recently, driving H. erectus into extinction. Proponents of a "multi-regional" hypothesis held that H. erectus populations evolved into modern humans in many regions, and that these groups later bred with each other and with groups that emigrated from Africa. The Eve study examined mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed only by mothers to their offspring. The researchers, Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and the late Allan Wilson, estimated that the ancestor of all surviving mtDNA types lived between 140,000 and 290,000 years ago. When did the migrations from Africa take place? They dated the oldest cluster of mtDNA types with no modern African representation to between 90,000 and 180,000 years ago. These populations might have left Africa at about that time, but the mtDNA data could not determine exactly when.

   Geneticist Alan Templeton pointed out statistical and sampling flaws in the study. Its results, he argued, were in part dictated by the order in which the data were fed into the computer. Others questioned the reliability of "molecular clocks" and the rate of mutation in the human mtDNA used in calculating Eve's date. The genetic diversity of African populations was confirmed by later studies and is now generally accepted, but, according to Templeton, proponents of the out -of-Africa hypothesis assumed that genetic diversity reflected only the age of a population rather than population size. He contends that Africa has greater genetic diversity because its prehistoric population was probably larger than elsewhere. Recently John Relethford and Henry Harpending have argued that differences in ancient population size could mimic a recent African origin of modern humans. The data reflect population dynamics, they say, and do not support one model of modem human origins over another.

   Scientists are also studying DNA from the Y chromosome, which is passed only from father to son and is not recombined with the mother's genes. Because changes in the Y chromosome are caused only by mutations, as in mtDNA, it may be used as a clock. Assuming that all living humans share a common male ancestor, it should be possible to estimate when he lived. According to geneticist Robert Dorit the first modem human male lived some 270,000 years ago. The most recent research on modem human origins, by John Armour, examined nuclear DNA of populations from around the world. Armour and his colleagues conclude that the evidence fits with the development of modern humans in Africa and an emigration by a small number of them that became the basis for non-African populations. These observations, they say, are more difficult to reconcile with a multi-regional model for the origin of modem humans.

   New DNA studies by Bryan Sykes have challenged the leading theory about the spread of agriculture into Europe. In 1984 Albert Am merman and geneticist Luigi Luc Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford University proposed that it was people practicing agriculture who spread into Europe, rather than the idea of agriculture. They argued that agricultural productivity led to population growth, and that, as the population grew, early farmers gradually moved into new land inhabited by fewer hunter-gatherers. Thus the practitioners of agriculture spread from Anatolia, beginning about 7000B.C., to Greece and across all of Europe, ending in Britain and Scandinavia about 4000 B.C. Using mtDNA analysis, Sykes claims that the ancestors of most modem Europeans arrived at least 20,000 years ago, long before the supposed arrival of Neolithic farmers. In analyzing mtDNA from more than 800 modem Europeans, Sykes and his colleagues identified at least five main groups. Four of the five groups date to well before the last glacial peak, with ages ranging from 35,000 to 25,000 years ago. The fifth group is much younger in Europe (6,000 to 10,000 years ago) and has clear affinities to Near Eastern mtDNA Sykes and his colleagues accept this as the genetic echo of the spread of agriculture, but note that it is fairly weak. They conclude that, far from being overwhelmed by incoming farmers, the indigenous hunter-gatherer population remained intact and learned how to farm.

   Documentation of the early presence of Caucasian people in northwestern China, and information about their affinities with either modern European or Indo-Iranian populations, could contribute to the debate about the spread of Indo-European languages. Chinese and Uyghur archaeologists have been excavating naturally mummified bodies there since the 1970s. Paolo Francalacci of the University of Sassari, Sardinia, took samples from several of the bodies, dated to 3,200 years ago DNA analysis for these mummies suggest a possible European origin, although further research is needed to identify them more precisely. As part of a larger project, Chinese geneticist Du Ruofu has been collected samples of mtDNA from modern Tarim Basin populations. Comparison will determine how much of the ancient genetic composition survives.

   Most scholars believe that people from the Asian continent came to the Japanese archipelago in two migrations. An early wave brought the Jomon culture--hunter-gatherers who made pottery--to Japan more than 10,000 years ago. A second migration began about 2,3 00 years ago, when the Yayoi people, entering from the Korean Peninsula, brought weaving, metalworking, and rice culture to Japan. First appearing on the southwestern island of Kyushu, by ca. AD. 300 Yayoi culture had spread throughout most of Japan, altering all local cultures south of Hokkaido, the northernmost island. Michael F. Hammer and Satoshi Horai are examining the extent to which the Jomon did or did not contribute genetically to the modern Japanese. Current hypotheses can be classified as replacement, hybridization, or transformation. In the first, Yayoi immigrants replaced the Jomon people. Hybridization theories claim that modem Japanese are descended from both groups, in which case they should have genes deriving from both the Jomon and Yayoi people. Transformation theories posit that modem Japanese people gradually evolved from the Jomon. Hammer and Horai, based on their study of the Y chromosome, conclude that hybridization, a mixing of Jomon and Yayoi stocks, is the most likely explanation for the origin of modern Japanese. Nonhuman DNA has great potential for shedding light on cultural practices. Recent work by Daniel Bradley is a case in point. Before now it was assumed that cattle were first domesticated in the Near East. African, European, and Indian cattle were all thought to be descended from a domesticated Near Eastern progenitor, and to have developed into characteristic breeds afterward. Bradley and his colleagues have determined that Indian cattle broke off from an ancestral lineage between 117,000 and 2 75,000 years ago. The lineage split again about 22,000 to 26,000 years ago into groups that gave rise to modem African and European cattle. These are startling results because cattle in the Near East were not domesticated until about 9,000 years ago, and cattle in India and Africa were genetically distinct before then. The latter two could not possibly be descended from domesticated Near Eastern cattle, as was thought, but must have been domesticated independently. Geneticist Terence A Brown and his colleagues have devised a way to identify types of wheat using DNA analysis. This will make it possible to determine whether primitive wheats or modem varieties were grown at a site. The higher productivity of modern varieties means that a larger population could be supported, and fewer people had to be involved in farming. This may have been a factor that sustained the rise of classical civilizations. Brown also hopes to use similarities and differences in wheat DNA to investigate the relationships between Celts and Romans in Britain. Did the Romans bring their own wheat, or did they rely on indigenous agriculture to support the Roman community?

Genealogy of New Kingdom Pharaohs and Queens        

By SCOTT WOODWARD        

 Egyptologists have struggled with the genealogy of New Kingdom (I570-1070 B.C.) pharaohs for more than a century. Many royal mummies from this period have been identified, either by modern scholars or 20th Dynasty priests who rescued some of them from the depredations of tomb robbers. But we cannot always trust these identifications. The incomplete historical record is exacerbated by the fact that royal brothers and sisters, and even fathers and daughters, intermarried. Uncertainty abounds: How was a particular pharaoh related to his successor? Which of a pharaoh's wives was the mother of his heir? There are also many unidentified mummies. Could one of them be Hatshepsut or Akhenaten? Were the two fetuses found in Tutankhamun's tomb carried by his wife Ankhensenpaaten? Since 1993 microbiologist Scott Woodward has been analyzing DNA from the mummified remains of these pharaohs and queens, in cooperation with Nasry Iskander, chief curator of the royal mummies at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Copyright 1996 by the, Archaeological Institute of America

Web Sites                                                   

1.  Genesis in Sumer: http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch01.htm

2.   Sumer Religion: http://www.crystalinks.com/sumer.html

3.   Civilization search: http://oannes.com/

4.   Sumerians in Ancient Mesopotamia: www.eliki.com/ancient/Bobcivilization/sumenans

5.   Sumerian - World Culture: http://www.sanscrit-sansctito.com.ar/english/origin7.html

6.   Kingdom of Mitanni: http://www.touregypt.net/support/mitianni.htm

7.   Egypt Chronology: http://homepage.powerup.comau/~ancient/chron.htm

8.   Ancient Egypt: http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/menu.html

9.   Nubia  http://library.thinkquest.org/22845/index.shtml

10. Early Human Civilization:  http:// www.innerx.net/personal/tsmith/oldciv.html

11. Judeo Roots: http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/content/v12.3/vest.html

12. The Great DNA Hunt http://www.archaeology.org/9609/abstracts/dna.html