MUCH OF THE Old Testament is devoted to describing the origins and early history of the Hebrew people. According to the Bible, the Hebrews descended from a clan which lived in the Sumerian city of Ur around 2000 to 1500 B.C. The clan was befriended and ruled by a personality named Jehovah. The Bible claims that Jehovah was God.
According to the Biblical narrative, Jehovah encouraged the clan to leave Ur and settle in Haran—a caravan center in northeastern Mesopotamia. There, Jehovah later told the clan's new patriarch, Abraham, to lead his tribe on a migration towards Egypt. The tribe complied, and over the ensuing generations it slowly made its way through Canaan towards the Nile River. Starvation finally forced the tribe to enter the Egyptian region of Goshen where the Hebrews at first lived well under the pharaoh, but upon the coming of a new king to the Egyptian throne, the Hebrews were forced into slavery.
The Bible states that after four hundred years of servitude in Egypt, the Hebrews were led on an exodus out of Egypt by Moses under the watchful eye of Jehovah. By that time, the Hebrews numbered in the hundreds of thousands. After a long trek and many bloody battles, the Hebrew tribes returned to and conquered Canaan, which was the "Promised Land" pledged to them centuries earlier by Jehovah.
And so, according to the Bible, was born the Jewish religion.
Jehovah was clearly an important character in this Biblical story. Who was he? Was Jehovah God, as the Bible alleges? Was he a myth, as skeptics with a secular orientation would have us believe? Jehovah appears to have been neither.
The name Jehovah comes from the Hebrew word "Yahweh," meaning "he that is" or "the self-evident." This appellation conveys the idea that the Biblical Jehovah was a pure spiritual being; a true Supreme Being, if you will. But was he?
Old Testament descriptions of Jehovah have provided a field day for UFO writers, and for good reason. Jehovah travelled through the sky in what appears to have been a noisy, smoking aircraft. A Biblical description of Jehovah landing on a mountaintop describes him this way:
. .. there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the sound of the trumpet was exceedingly loud;* and all of the people that were in the camp trembled.
And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the lower part of the mountain.
And Mount Sinai was altogether covered with smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke from the fire billowed upwards like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.
GENESIS 19:16-19
-------------------------
* A trumpet-like sound accompanied many appearances of Jehovah.
If an ancient Hebrew were to observe the rumbling, smoke, and flame of a modern rocketship, the description would not have been much different than this Biblical narrative of Jehovah. A later visit by Jehovah contained the same phenomena:
And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they moved away and stood far off.
GENESIS 20:18
Lest it be assumed that these descriptions might be of a volcano, further sightings reveal that Jehovah was a moving object:
And the Lord travelled before them [the Hebrew tribes] by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night:
He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, or the pillar of fire by night, from in front of the people.
EXODUS 13:21-22
Exodus 14:24, 40:34-38, and Numbers 19:1-23 contain identical descriptions of Jehovah as he led the Hebrew tribes to the Promised Land.
The ancient Hebrew eyewitnesses responsible for the above descriptions were not able to get a closer look atJehovah. The Bible points out that no one was permitted to approach Jehovah's mountaintop landing sites except Moses and a few select leaders. Jehovah had threatened to kill anyone else who tried. The early Bible therefore contains only descriptions of Jehovah as eyewitnesses saw him from a distance. It was not until much later that one of the Bible's most famous prophets, Ezekiel, was able to get a closer look and describe Jehovah in greater detail. Ezekiel's description is probably the most often-quoted Biblical passage in UFO literature. Ezekiel's detailed account of strange aerial objects has created speculation of such intensity that even one Bible publisher, Tyndale House, prefaced its introduction to the Book of Ezekiel with the title, "Dry Bones and Flying Saucers?". At the risk of boring some readers with yet another repetition of Ezekiel's famous words, I reproduce them here for the benefit of those who are not familiar with them:
Now it occurred in my thirtieth year, in the fourth month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.
And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire flashed, causing a brightness about it, and out of the midst of it gleamed something like a pale yellow metal.
Also out of the midst of it appeared four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of men.
And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was shaped like the sole of a calf s foot; and they sparkled like burnished brass.
And they had human hands under their four-sided wings. Their wings were joined together; and they did not turn when they went, they all went straightforward.
As for the appearance of their faces, they had the face of a man, and the face of a lion on the right side: and they had the face of an ox on the left side: they also had the face of an eagle.
In amongst the living creatures glowed something like coals of fire or lamps, which moved up and down between the creatures: and the fire was bright, and from out of the fire flashed lightning.
And the living creatures ran and returned by flashes of lightning.
Now as I looked upon the living creatures, I saw four wheels upon the ground, one by each of the living creatures, with their four faces.
The appearance of the wheels and their composition was like the color of shiny amber: and all four wheels had one likeness: and their appearance and their composition was like a wheel in the middle of a wheel.
And when the living creatures went, the wheels went with them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.
And the appearance of the sky upon the heads of the living creature was reflected as the color of the terrible crystal stretched over their heads above.
And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, like the din of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings.
And there was a voice from the crystal covering that was over their heads when they stood and had let down their wings.
EZEKIEL 1:1-25
The voice told Ezekiel that it was the "Lord God." (Ezekiel 2:4).
The first portion of Ezekiel's vision resembles earlier Biblical descriptions of Jehovah: a moving fiery object in the sky emitting smoke. As the object moved closer, Ezekiel was able to observe that the thing was made of metal. Out of the metal object emerged several human-like creatures, apparently wearing metal boots and ornamented helmets. Their "wings" appeared to be retractable engines which emitted a rumbling sound and helped the creatures to fly. Their heads were covered by glass or something transparent that reflected the sky above. They appeared to be in some sort of circular vehicle or a vehicle with wheels.
We can safely conclude from the above passage that "Jehovah" was not a Supreme Being. He appears to have been a succession of Custodial management teams operating over a time span of many human generations. To enforce human obedience, those teams used their aircraft to perpetrate the lie that they were "God."
The Custodial teams known as "Jehovah" helped the Brotherhood of the Snake embark on a program of conquest to spread the new "one God" religion. Moses, the man chosen to command the Hebrew tribes on their exodus out of Egypt to the Promised Land, was a high-ranking member of the Brotherhood. One hint of this fact comes from the Bible itself in which we are told how Moses was raised as a child:
In which time Moses was born, and was exceedingly fair, and was raised in his father's house for three months:
And when he was cast out, Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and raised him as her own son.
And Moses became learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.
THE ACTS 7:20-22
Egyptian historian and High Priest, Manetho (ca. 300 B.C.), states that Moses had received much of his education in the Brotherhood under Akhnaton, the very pharaoh who pioneered monotheism:
Moses, a son of the tribe of Levi [one of the Hebrew tribes], educated in Egypt and initiated at Heliopolis [an Egyptian city], became a High Priest of the Brotherhood under the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep [Akhnaton]. He was elected by the Hebrews as their chief and he adapted to the ideas of his people the science and philosophy which he had obtained in the Egyptian mysteries; proofs of this are to be found in the symbols, in the Initiations, and in his precepts and commandments.
. .. The dogma of an "only God" which he taught was the Egyptian Brotherhood interpretation and teaching of the Pharaoh who established the first monotheistic religion known to man. '*
Strong evidence in support of Manetho's statement is found in the early teachings of Judaism, which were deeply mystical and utilized many Brotherhood symbols. Many of those mystical teachings are still taught today in the Jewish Cabala: a secret religious philosophy of Jewish rabbis. The Cabala continues to utilize a complex array of mystical symbols. Modern Israel's national logo, the six-pointed Star of David, has been a Brotherhood symbol for thousands of years.
Early human writers often portrayed mankind's Custodial "gods" as bloodthirsty creatures prone to excessive violence. Sadly, those lamentable qualities did not improve with Jehovah. During the trek from Egypt to the Promised Land, Jehovah demanded unflagging obedience from the Hebrews. Many humans rebelled and Jehovah reacted with extreme cruelty. Jehovah reportedly killed up to 14,000 Hebrews at a time for disobedience. He used a variety of killing methods, such as spreading diseases, just as other Custodial "gods" had done earlier in Sumeria.
When the Hebrew armies reached Canaan, Jehovah displayed a genuinely psychopathic bent. To establish the Hebrews in their new homeland, Jehovah ordered the Hebrew armies to embark on a campaign of genocide to depopulate all of the region's existing cities and towns. Under the new leadership of a man named Joshua, the first city to fall in Jehovah's seven-year holocaust
------------------
* This passage raises the question of when the Jewish exodus from Egypt had occurred. If Moses was a High Priest of the Brotherhood under Akhnaton, as Manetho states, but did not lead the exodus until the reign of Rameses II, as many historians believe, then Moses must have been an extremely old man at the time of the exodus. (Rameses II did not rule until almost one hundred years after Akhnaton.) The Bible, in Deuteronomy 34:7, states that Moses was 120 years old when he died. Claims of such advanced age may be difficult to accept in our modem day, but if it is true about Moses, then both Manetho and modern scholars would be correct in their datings.
was Jericho. According to the Bible, the Hebrew army, numbering in the tens of thousands, slaughtered everyone in Jericho except, ironically, a prostitute because she had earlier betrayed her own people by helping two Hebrew spies:
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.
JOSHUA 6:21
After that was accomplished:
.. . they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.
JOSHUA 6:24
The next target was Ai, a city with a population of 12,000 inhabitants. All of the citizens of Ai were butchered and the city was burned to the ground. This savagery was perpetrated city after city:
So Joshua killed all in the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the valleys, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded.
JOSHUA 10:40
The genocide was justified by saying that the victims were all wicked. This could not have been the true reason because children and animals were also slaughtered. It is hardly fair to massacre an entire city for the crimes of a few; neither is it right to murder a child for the crimes of its parents. The real crime, according to the Bible, was that the natives of the region had become disobedient. The more obedient Hebrews were therefore elected by Jehovah to wipe out the natives and replace them.
There is some debate today about whether the Hebrew assimilation into Canaan was as genocidal as portrayed in the Bible. Modern archaeological digs into some of the battle sites named in the Bible (such as Hazor, Lachish and Debir) have revealed evidence of violent destruction during the time of Joshua. Other sites have yielded less conclusive evidence. Many people understandably prefer to play down the Biblical bloodshed as much as possible. To whatever degree the Biblical story of the conquest of Canaan is true, it does tell us something very important about genocide:
Genocide is often a tool for promoting rapid political or social change by quickly replacing one group of people with another. For this reason, genocide has emerged as a significant historical phenomenon in connection with many Brotherhood efforts at bringing about rapid political and social change.
People who are familiar with Jewish moral teachings may be surprised at the brutal behavior ascribed to Jehovah and the Hebrews. The most famous of the Jewish moral teachings are, of course, the Ten Commandments, which were reportedly given to Moses by Jehovah during the Hebrews' trek to the Promised Land. After Moses' death, Jehovah and the armies of Israel clearly violated the Commandments in a big way. Thou shalt not kill was transgressed when the Hebrews massacred the inhabitants of Canaan. The Hebrews ignored the commandment Thou shalt not steal when they robbed the dying cities of their precious metals. They were no better about adhering to the commandment Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house ... nor any thing that is thy neighbor's when they committed genocide to take away the land of their neighbors. This behavior is puzzling because many Biblical commandments do establish a decent code of conduct. For example, the Hebrews were admonished never to cooperate with a wrongdoer by giving false testimony. Another commandment stressed the importance of individual responsibility in the face of group pressure by stating, "You shall not go along with a group in doing evil." Tolerance for outsiders was made law with, "You shall not vex a stranger, nor oppress him... ." Thieves were usually required to pay restitution to their victims. How do we account for the existence of such humane commandments in the face of such barbaric behavior?* Part of the answer may lie in the words of Manetho:
The wonders which Moses narrates as having taken place upon the Mountain of Sinai [the mountain upon which Jehovah reportedly gave Moses many of the Commandments], are in part, a veiled account of the Egyptian initiation which [Moses] transmitted to his people when he established a branch of the Egyptian Brotherhood in his country.... 2
If Manetho's words are true, then many of the Commandments may have come from human sources within the Brotherhood rather than from Custodial sources. This would indicate the continued presence of genuine humanitarians within the Brotherhood despite Custodial dominance. Moses himself appears to have been, at least to some degree, such a humanitarian. The Bible describes Moses as a man of moderation who frequently intervened on behalf of the Hebrews when Jehovah was about to mete out a violent punishment. As we shall see several times in this book, lingering humanitarian influences within the Brotherhood have often come to the surface, but sadly, not enough to entirely undo the corrupting influences.
Another puzzling aspect of the Biblical genocide story was the behavior of the people being slaughtered. According to the Bible, only one city surrendered. The rest chose to fight and be butchered. When confronted with an overpowering Hebrew army, and perhaps even a thundering "God" in the sky, is it not likely that more besieged cities would surrender, or at least offer to vacate Canaan peaceably? The
---------------------------
* Not all Old Testament commandments were humane by today's standards. Freedom of worship was not tolerated. Slavery was an accepted institution and Hebrew men were allowed to sell their daughters into slavery. The eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth form of punishment does not always result in justice.
Bible presents an interesting explanation of why that did not happen:
There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hi-vites, the inhabitants of Gib-eon, all others they took in battle.
For it was the Lord who hardened their hearts, that they would go against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might find no favor, but that he might destroy them....
JOSHUA 11:19-20
The above passage states that Jehovah had manipulated the victim peoples into fighting the Hebrews so that the victims could be destroyed. This is a stunning and important admission, for it would imply that Jehovah or other Custodians dominated other cities in the region and used their influence to manipulate people into fighting the Hebrews. This would not have been the first time it happened. The Bible reports similar manipulations in an earlier episode. When the Hebrews were still slaves in Egypt, Jehovah had instructed Moses to go to the pharaoh to ask that the Hebrew tribes be freed. Jehovah, however, had influence over the pharaoh and Moses had been warned in advance that Jehovah would cause the pharaoh to say "no." According to the Bible, Jehovah had a definite reason for manipulating the pharaoh in that fashion:
And the Lord said to Moses, Go to the Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might show my powers before him:
And so that you may tell in the ears of your son, and your son's son, what things I had brought about in Egypt, and my miracles which I have done among them: that you may know that I am the Lord.
EXODUS 10:1-2
After hearing those words, Moses went to the pharaoh a number of times to renew his pleas for the Hebrews' freedom. Each plea was rejected and each rejection was followed by a calamity visited upon the Egyptians by Jehovah. The calamities included vermin infestations, plagues, boils on the skin caused by a fine dust settling over the countryside, and finally the murder of each eldest son in Egypt during a night known as the "Passover." It was only after the Passover that Jehovah stopped "hardening the heart" of the pharaoh so that the Hebrew tribes could leave Egypt.
Many scholars would argue that Biblical references to Jehovah "hardening the hearts" of Israel's enemies merely expresses the religious idea that all human thought and emotion come ultimately from "God," and therefore such writings should not be taken literally. In this case, we should take the Bible seriously because it has described a very real political phenomenon: two or more parties being manipulated into conflict with one another by an outside third party.
One of the most famous philosophers to discuss thirdparty manipulation as a tool of social and political control was Niccolo Machiavelli, the sixteenth century philosopher. Although Machiavelli was not the first to write about these matters, his name has become synonymous with unscrupulous political cunning.
Machiavelli authored several unsolicited "how-to" manuals for the benefit of a local prince. Those writings have become literary classics. In them, Machiavelli describes several of the techniques used by various Italian rulers to maintain control over a population. One method was to breed conflict. In his treatise, The Prince, Machiavelli wrote:
Some princes, so as to hold securely the the state, have disarmed their subjects, others have kept their subject towns distracted by factions [disputes] .. .3
Machiavelli cited a specific example:
Our forefathers, and those who were reckoned wise, were accustomed to say that it was necessary to hold Pistoia [an Italian city] by factions and Pisa by fortress; and with this idea they fostered quarrels in some of their tributary towns so as to keep possession of them the more easily.4
Human disunity was a valuable commodity to the princes because it made the people less able to mount a challenge. Machiavelli described the exact steps to be taken by anyone wishing to employ this tool:
The way to set about this is to win the confidence of the city which is disunited; and, so long as they do not come to blows, to act as arbitrator between the parties, and, when they come to blows, to give tardy support to the weaker party, both with a view to keeping them at it and wearing them out; and, again because stronger measures would leave no room for any doubt that you were out to subjugate them and make yourself their ruler. When this scheme is carried out, it will happen, as always, that the end you have in view will be attained. The city of Pistoia, as I have said in another discourse and appropos of another topic, was acquired by the republic of Florence by just such an artifice; for it was divided and the Florentines supported now one, now the other, party and, without making themselves obnoxious to either, led them on until they got sick of their turbulent way of living and in the end came to throw themselves voluntarily into the arms of Florence.5
Despite the effectiveness of this technique, Machiavelli advised against using it because it can backfire on the perpetrator. The success of the technique depends upon at least one of the manipulated parties not being aware of the true source of the problem. If both parties should discover that they are being manipulated into hostilities by an outside third party, not only will those hostilities usually cease, but the parties will, more often than not, unite in a common dislike for the perpetrator. This phenomenon can be observed on a personal level when two friends discover that a third "friend" has been saying derogatory things about each one to the other behind their backs. For the technique to be effective, the perpetrator must remain hidden from view as the source of the conflict.
To summarize the observations of Machiavelli, we find that breeding conflict between people can be an effective tool for maintaining social and political control over a populace. For the technique to be effective, the instigator must do the following:
1. Erect conflicts and "issues" which will cause people to fight among themselves rather than against the perpetrator.
2. Remain hidden from view as the true instigator of the conflicts.
3. Lend support to all warring parties.
4. Be viewed as the benevolent source which can solve the conflicts.
As noted earlier in the Tower of Babel story, the Custodial "gods" wanted to keep mankind disunited and under Custodial control. To accomplish this, the Biblical story of Jehovah indicates that Custodians implemented the Machiavellian technique of creating factionalism between human beings. The Bible states that Custodians encouraged the factions they controlled to battle one another. All. the while, the Custodians have proclaimed themselves the "God" and "angels" to whom people should turn in order to find a solution to all of the warfare. This is the classic sequence straight out of Machiavelli.
For such Machiavellian efforts to remain successful over a long period of time, factionalism would need to be bred constantly and the Custodians would need to remain permanently hidden from view as the perpetrators. Both of these needs were met in the organizational structure of the corrupted Brotherhood. The Brotherhood was being forged into a far-flung network of politically powerful secret societies and religions which could successfully organize people into competing factions; at the same time, Brotherhood traditions of secrecy effectively disguised its organizational hierarchy. This secrecy became a screen behind which Custodians could hide at the top of the Brotherhood heirarchy behind veils of myth and thereby obscure their role as instigators of violent conflict between human beings. In this fashion, the network of Brotherhood organizations became the primary channel through which wars between human beings could be secretly and continuously generated by the Custodial society, thereby carrying out the Custodial intentions announced in the Tower of Babel story. The Brotherhood also became the channel through which Custodial institutions could be imposed upon the human race.
Wars serve another Custodial purpose revealed in the Bible. The Adam and Eve story mentioned "God's" intention to make physical survival an all-consuming chore from birth until death. Wars help bring this about because they absorb large-scale resources and offer little to enhance life in return. Wars tear down and destroy what has already been created—this makes a great deal of extra effort necessary just to maintain a culture. The more a society engages in building war machines and fighting wars, the more the people of that society will find their lives consumed in tedium and repetitious toil because of the parasitic and destructive nature of war. This is as true today as it was in 1000 B.C.
It is easily observed that people will fight and quarrel without any outside prompting. There is hardly a creature on Earth that does not at some time in its life attack another. One clearly does not need a manipulative third party for a dispute to arise between groups of people. Third parties simply cause disputes and conflicts to be more frequent, severe, and protracted. Spontaneous, uninfluenced fights tend to be quick, awkward and centered around a single visible dispute. The way to keep fighting artificially alive is to create unresolvable "issues" which can only be settled by the complete annihilation of one of the opponents, and then by helping the opposing teams sustain their struggle against one another by equalizing their fighting strengths. To keep a whole race in a constant state of strife, issues over which members of the race will fight one another must be generated continuously, and fervent warriors must be bred to fight for those causes. These are the precise types of conflicts which have been created by the Brotherhood network all the way up until today. These artificial conflicts have embroiled the human race in the unrelieved morass of wars which have so blighted human history.
Detecting Brotherhood involvement in human events is sometimes tricky. The job is made easier by following the use of several of the Brotherhood's most important mystical symbols. Those symbols act as colored threads weaving in and out of view by which we can trace the role of the Brotherhood network in shaping history. One of the most significant of the symbols is, curiously, an apron.
- pages 72-88, The Gods of Eden, by William Bramley
No comments:
Post a Comment