Let’s leave the Priests and Rulers alone for awhile and start looking at God, as described. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in order of chronology, all worship the same God. Sort of. And they share a Creation myth. Largely.
In the beginning, so the story goes, God created the Heaven and the Earth, and the Earth was void and without form, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, “let there be light” and there was light.
OK. So, before there was a world that we know of, God existed. Which is all fine and good. In fact, if God created everything, He necessarily predates his Creations. Except that God was plural back then, not singular. The word was Elohim, which is the masculine pluralization of the feminine Eloha, which means goddess. In Hebrew, a masculine pluralization is used whenever there is a single male. If there is a girl, she is a yelda. If there are 500 girls, they are yeldot. If there are 500 girls and 1 boy, they are yeledim. So, we know that there was at least one male deity and at least one female. Which makes sense, because if you’re all into Creation and stuff, it’s best if there’s a male and a female doing the creating. In fact, if there’s one thing that men do differently than women, it is the creation of life. And, it seems to me that, if you have the choice, you might want the female deity sticking around being all protective of the fledgling universe, because men are a lot more mobile and can go off milliseconds after the women are impregnated to go hunt a yak or something, and the women, well, they stick around. They have to.
But, there are two names in Hebrew that populate the Old Testament that are associated with God. YY and YHVH. Now, this is a language where vowels are scarce, and where letters have more than one pronounciation. That Y there, that can be a Y or an I or a J or an EE sound. Or it can be 10. And, if we are created in God’s image that 10/10 thing makes sense, doesn’t it? 10 fingers, 10 toes. H is H, of course, but it can be an AH sound, or the number 5. V can be V or U or OO or the word AND or the number 6. So, YHVH is Anglicized as both Jehovah and Yahweh, but neither are said in Hebrew. In Hebrew, the name of God is not said. It is called Adonai. The closest word to that is Adoni, or Sir. So, Adonai comes closest to the English word Sire, which is, of course, Lord. But, if you wanted to drive your Jewish friends nuts, you could point out that YHVH could also be pronounce Je5u5. I always found that amusing. Of course, it is not proof of Jesus’s divinity, but we’ll get to that soon anyway.
But, when you talk to people, it is common to hear that they believe that God started the ball rolling, invented physics maybe, and walked away. This is the very definition of a male deity. What they do when they walk away varies, of course, but the Hebrew God was a Great Warrior God, and he spent time kicking around all the other deities of the populations of Middle East, sending plagues and stuff… if you’ve seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know that Ark thing was not to be screwed with. 🙂
God, in the earliest chapters of Genesis, was corporeal. He walked in the Garden. He chatted conversationally with Adam and Eve. Now, here we have something interesting. While Adam’s name may sound familiar to anyone who has attended a Passover Seder, because it comes from two words meaning Blood and Clay, Eve’s name is altogether different. Eve’s name meant Life or Living. So, while Adam was the manifestation of the Body, Eve was the manifestation of the Soul, and, together, they formed life. Isn’t that nice?
Here’s something to entertain you, though. Have you ever given any thought to why the first letter of the Bible is a “B”. B’rashit… In the Beginning. Why didn’t the Bible start with an A. I mean, hey, B is the second letter… surely in a myth so wound up with arcane details, the very first letter, should be an A. Well, in Hebrew, that first letter, Aleph, is silent. It is used with vowels (which, again, are hard to come by) to allow words to start with vowels, like Abraham, for example. But Aleph, itself, is silent. In fact it is one of two silent letters in Hebrew. I’ve always found that odd. Here’s this language with 22 letters, and not one but TWO of them are silent: aleph and ayin. And while aleph is equal to 1, ayin is 70. 70!
Letters, numbers, why am I conflating the two? Because, in Hebrew, letters are numbers. The whole Torah (the Five Books of Moses) are a long and complex math statement. The art of Jewish letters and numbers is called Gematria, and there’s lots of fun stuff you can do with it. In fact, the reason that Purim is such a big drinking holiday is because the hero’s name adds up to a word for evil, and you have to drink enough to get beyond the duality of good versus evil. Or so I’ve heard. I was never much of a drinker.
There’s even a book called Numbers. I mean, nobody spends a lot of time reading it, because it’s just a book of lists and numbers and more numbers. But if there’s a logical argument for the Torah actually being dictated from God to Moses, I gotta say, Numbers does it for me. I mean, can’t you picture poor Moses, his eyes about to close, sitting there taking dictation writing down chapters and chapters of numbers and numbers? Poor guy.
Well, that’s it for me tonight. If you have any thoughts for what’s next, shoot me an email or leave it on the suggestion page.
New Thoughts for a New Age 
Strange though it may seem, I recall reading an article about a professor discovering that a set of cutouts on a cylinder with a light shining within, would somehow, as it rotated, produce the entire Hebraic alphabet. I haven’t spent a lot of time searching for proof of this, but there it is…
God is absolutely real, and most assuredly, the ‘inescapable presence.’ I can say this for certain, because I had a very extraordinary near-death experience way back in early 1989. Anyone that tells you that such experiences are only all about dying brain cells and so on, are full of absolute crap…
During the period of soul separation from my physical body, I was ‘ensconced’ by what I believe was a seraphim, and carried ‘across’ to what I believe is the place of resurrection. The weirdest thing about the traversing time/space distance matter, is that once I was gathered up within the infolding light being that eventually appeared, and high up enough, the actual motion of moving from ‘here’ to ‘there’ was not ‘normally’ perceivable. Meaning, that during the movement from the ‘now’ to whatever point in the future the resurrection takes place, we (meaning myself, within the seraphim) did not move /at all/. The surrounding /universe/ moved. Seriously.
Other things of possible importance occurred, but here is not the place for them. All I want to say, is that yes, God really does exist, he loves us all, and there is a plan in place for forgiveness of sins and re-incorporation, meaning physical, glorified, body reanimation. I cannot claim to understand it fully, but I definitely recommend reading both the Old and New Testaments thoroughly, and remembering that very few of us have committed sins that will eternally prevent us from claiming the forgiveness of God via the finished work of Christ.
If this offends anyone, I’m sincerely sorry, but let me tell you, I have paid very deep dues to learn this truth subjectively, and have the privilege of communicating it to all of you.
http://www.angelfire.com/journal/archer/
Terry, I am afraid that I don’t have much experience on this particular subject. Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Dear Phil,
Thank /you/. I wouldn’t worry about having much experience, because God will give you those experiences soon, I’m certain. I’ve learned that even people that either don’t know God, or are separated from the love of God for whatever reason, will soon receive proof of the reality soon after another person gives sincere testimony. I love Bambi and have absolute respect for her formidable intellect. I’m just a little simpleton that has had some very unusual (and what I consider to be profound) experiences with God.
God, in the earliest chapters of Genesis, was corporeal. He walked in the Garden. He chatted conversationally with Adam and Eve. Now, here we have something interesting. While Adam’s name may sound familiar to anyone who has attended a Passover Seder, because it comes from two words meaning Blood and Clay, Eve’s name is altogether different. Eve’s name meant Life or Living. So, while Adam was the manifestation of the Body, Eve was the manifestation of the Soul, and, together, they formed life. Isn’t that nice?
Could we not imagine that God was their conscience? Known as the mentally ill, we call those who hear voices and commandments!? Adam and Eve was the animals, and isolated from their normal temperature, Wonderful understanding that Adam is weak, can be shaped community. How do you think Their 2 sons (only descendants) went out into the world … like a blob clay. That means he was compliant. Eva course that gave problems. She was even thinking, asking and questioning that “many women” even today!
Bambi says debate, or send me an e-mail!?
Now lacks enough just an e-mail address;) so we/ I have then only one possibility. Thanks for any listener / reader!
Dear Mette,
I also believe that the story of Eve in the garden is very, very profound, and offers us a lot of insight into the condition of humanity today. It has always pained me that men have largely crowded out the accomplishments of women throughout recorded history. There seems to be something very important missing, and that has everything to do with the fact that largely, history has been written by biased men who are big fans of other men. The whole biblical story of the ‘descent’ of mankind into chaos, and partial separation from God because of the indiscretions of Eve, has everything to do with a confluence between another set of sentient and deceptive intelligences that came between God and mankind in that misty antediluvian age.
The Hebraic words ‘tohu’ and ‘bohu’ mean ‘null’ and ‘void’ respectively. These two terms are used to describe what happened to the earth before it was entirely /recreated/ by God for re-habitation by what we know as mankind today, after a great (perhaps involving the local solar system) war that took place sometime in the far past. This world (and possibly, others in our solar system) had a former age, far in the past, where other sets of intelligent beings existed. Apparently, the beings that existed then were very advanced and able to travel not only through space, but also time. Some researchers (Like Daniken, Sitchin and Puharich) claim that what we consider to be the angels, are actually something akin to local system spiritual time travelers. This is again evidenced throughout both the Old and New testaments, most notably in the books of Ezekiel, Daniel (OT), Jude and Revelation (NT).
In Revelation, there is a passage that describes a ‘war in heaven,’ with the result being that the ‘red dragon,’ (meaning Satan) is ‘cast down’ to the earth. Furthermore, it is claimed that this dragon is very angry because he knows that he ‘has but a short time.’ Just prior to Revelation, there is a very informative book called Jude, which is a sort of expansion of an Apocryphal work known as the Book of Enoch. Those books, along with part of Genesis, provide a lot of sharp insights into interactions between human beings and what are described as the ‘host of heaven’ elsewhere throughout the standard biblical texts. Jesus, when asked, claimed that before he returned, things would be ‘as in the days of Noah.’ The days right before the story of Noah (in Genesis), involved the ‘sons of God’ coming down from heaven and boffing human women to produce a hybrid offspring.
In closing, what I can say for sure, is that yes, sinister non-corporeal anti-God forces really /do/ exist, and also, there are truly kind, healing and rescuing spirits available for the asking. Really, it’s all about /us/ and what our hearts and souls want to choose. The whole contest between God and his adversaries rests with us. We are allowed the right to choose what we want. The sacred choice that we have been given is truly the greatest and also scariest gift that the universal creator has given us.
I have always found Gematria to be an interesting concept, but way too complicated for me to study in any detail. I mean, words all by themselves are already laden with complicated shades of meaning, without translating them into Hebrew and then numbers to find a whole new set of meanings…yowza.
Having said that, this:
But, if you wanted to drive your Jewish friends nuts, you could point out that YHVH could also be pronounce Je5u5.
…totally cracks my shit right up. Hilarious!
my shit gos downwards…
and Terry..Its deficult for me going in a debat. I want rearly, but Im not sure my english is good enough! Thank you for your beliwe in…..Genesis!
I beliwe in Bambi too 😉 and I sure will follow all of you, writing here.
Thanks alot.