Will the Real Devil Please Stand Up?

Will The Real Devil Please Stand Up.

A brief history of Christianity and the devil

By Ron Hooft

Copyright 2011 Ron Hooft

Smashwords Edition

A brief History of the influences that made the OT.

To understand the present day devil, the Christian bible, and present day Christianity it is essential to understand the politics, cultures and mergers that formed it. In this section of the book I will be dealing with the origins of the Old Testament. The reason I say that this knowledge is essential, is because many Christians have been living under the impression that the bible is a book handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth; its original intent always preserved through the ages, intact. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Let’s start from the beginning: 5000 BC and the first modern culture. I say modern because this is where we find the first written language on stone tablets, and the people who are responsible for many of the stories of Genesis.

The people of Sumer lived in the mountains near land where four great rivers originated. The Tigris, the Euphrates, the Aras, and the Uizon. This land is now in Azerbaijan, in western Iran. One theory is that the Uizon, or pishon is also known to this day as the: Medan, or the garden. It is fed by an ancient volcano that brings fresh water from deep underground. From then till now, that volcano has been referred to as the Abyss, or the gateway to the underworld. The Abyss is known as the giver of life.

Lake Urmia is at the center of Eden according to archeologist David Rohl. It's a large lake with a volcanic island on it. It is a dead lake in that it supports no life due to a very high salt content. But on that island, we find hundreds of mummified snakes, and a very interesting artifact. It is a Sumerian cylinder seal impression. (Now in the British Museum.) You see a tree in the center. On the left you see a woman on a throne. On the right, you see a man with horns on his hat. In Sumerian mythology this tells us he is a god. You also see a snake behind the woman. The tree has seven branches, and fruit dangling from it.

This is the story of Lillith, not Adam and Eve, but the image is probably related to that story. In some of the later Rabbinical and Kabala writings, Lilith was Adam's first wife and in fact, some say god’s second wife. As we will see later, the bible has two creation myths in one. This reflects the two opposing factions in Judaism up to the Babylonian captivity. One maintained that Man and Woman were created at the same time, out of dust, as all the other animals were. The other claimed that Eve was created later from the rib of Adam, and that she was the only wife.

Out of those two factions came the story that Lilith (or Litit in Hebrew) was the first wife of Adam. It is said they bickered constantly, and she insisted that they were equals because they were created at the same time. She also refused his constant demand that she lay under him during sex. She went to god with her problem but he left it to them to work out. When she got nowhere with Adam or god on the subject, she got frustrated and uttered the real name of god. With that she was transformed in to a wind demon.

The earliest this story was written that we know of is 500 BCE. She is referred to often in the Talmud. We also know her story was embellished from the tenth to fifteenth century. There is debate over whether the Jews were acquainted with her stories before Babylonian captivity. But as far as I am concerned they had to be. They lived among the Sumerians and Babylonians for centuries. Abraham came from the Sumerian city of Ur. So they were absolutely acquainted with Lilith. The question only remains as to when she started popping up in Jewish myth as the first wife of Adam.

Lilith was a Sumerian wind goddess, it seems to me that the Rabbis were probably explaining old myths and folk tales to each other all the time, and probably defining the new ones.

As with the Sumerian goddess and her counterpart, the Babylonian Lilitu, Jewish legend has it she comes in the night to young men and gives them wet dreams. In other words, when a young man has a sexual dream, it was said that Lilith had seduced him in his sleep. Lilith was blamed for woman dying in child birth, and even more so for crib death. She is also said to be the reason there are so many demons in the word.

One story says that when she left Adam she went to the Red sea. There she became a prostitute and has 100 demon children per day. When god sent three angels to demand she return to Adam, she refused. Instead of killing her, they killed 100 of her children. Afterward, she told them that only babies that had an amulet with the names of the three angels, and Adam and Eve on it would be spared her revenge. There are many such amulets in existence today in museums.

Some Jewish versions of the story portray Lilith as the serpent in the garden. When she hears that god has made another woman for Adam, she is furious. Out of revenge she tricks Eve into eating the apple. In some versions she corrupts Cain in Eve’s womb. Some scholars have suggested that the entire story of the snake in Genesis was a way for the Jews to demonize the pagans of the area and their snake cults. It seems the most reasonable explanation, as we will see.

In the Babylonian Talmud, Lilith is portrayed as having a woman’s face, wings, and long hair. There is but one reference to her in the bible, and that is in Isaiah 34:14. In some English versions of the bible, Lilith is translated as Screech owl. There are a multitude of tales told about Lilith, both modern and post Babylonian captivity. In the middle ages she was even turned into a vampire.

Today she is the hero of some feminist groups, and has a fair dedicated to her. Little wonder.

In Kramer’s The Sumerians he translates this poem for us:

The tree grew big, its trunk bore no foliage,

In its roots the snake who knows no charms set up its nest,

In its crown the Imdugud-bird placed its young,

In its midst the maid Lilith built her house

The always laughing, always rejoicing maid,

The maid Inanna - how she weeps!

Sumerian Legend also has it that East of Urmia is the garden . If we read the bible, we see that east of Eden, is the garden.

So Eden itself can be traced to the valley of Tabriz. Today, due to centuries of grazing sheep, the land is but a shadow of its former self. We know this because the region is described in detail in the bible and in the Gilgamesh epics.

But perhaps most remarkable of all is the fact that east of Tabriz, through a mountain pass, is the valley of Gihon. There, is a town here called Ardabil. This town is on the map, so it is easily verifiable. But what is not on most western maps is the fact that all over this region there are villages called Nodi. The i at the end of the word meaning: of, as in Pakistani. (Of Pakistan) In this case it would be: of Nod. Is this the legendary land of Nod we find in the bible? These villages are all but forgotten to western consciousness, yet they are here, and have been here for thousands of years. According to David Rohl, they make our discovery complete, and verify the location of Eden.

We also know, through a study of the linguistics of the region, that the Aras and the Uizon rivers were once called the Gaihun and the Pishon. (As I noted above) These two rivers are a major part of the bible, in that they, along with the Tigris and Euphrates, mark the location of Eden.

But even if we don’t know about the other two rivers, the bible makes it clear that the Tigris and the Euphrates have their origin in Eden, so no more needs to be known than the location of the beginning of those two rivers to know generally where Eden is. But we can’t be sure Rohl was right about the location of the two other rivers.

There is still another theory which puts Eden right in the Persian Gulf. The theory tells us that the flood was caused by the end of the ice age when the sea rose by 500 feet due to melting ice some 7000 years BCE. All four rivers would have met and created a single river going right through Eden, or what is now the Persian Gulf. The Pishon in this theory is the dried up river now called the Kuwait river. The Gihon would be another dried up river bed coming from the east. The theory is that in pre-flood times all four rivers met at the mouth of what is now the Persian Gulf. A single river would have run down through the center of the deep valley below, to the sea.

The bible says: And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads. So perhaps the Gulf is not Eden itself, but the garden? It seems almost as if they are two separate places. Eden being a region and the Garden of Eden being separate; as the bible says a river runs out of Eden to a garden.

Like Atlantis, there will likely always be controversy over Eden’s exact location due to the fact that the land has changed so much over the last 10000 years. But it is certain that it would have been in what is now known as Iraq and Iran. Coincidently, the Sumerians often talked about a place they went to called Edin. Perhaps both theories should be combined?

My money is on Rohl’s first site for Eden itself, as that corresponds to the Sumerian Edin. During excavations of that area earlier this century, we found stone tablets written in cuneiform. This is the earliest known written language. The stories were the stories of Genesis, but they spoke of the gods of Sumer. An was the chief god of heaven prior to 2500 BC, but there were many gods in this pantheon. At least ninety odd. I won’t list all of them here, only the major players.

An ruled with his goddess, Ninhursag. She is also known as Ki, and this is probably her original name though she is also refered to as Nintu or Ninmah. She was the earth goddess. Ki and An were the partents of the gods. Enlil was their first born and he was the god of wind. Notice his name ends in Lil meaning air or wind. Later An, would become En which was the word: god. He became the leader of the gods and took power from An in myths dating from around 2500 BC. He invents the plow, he brings the dawn, and makes the plants grow. He also rapes his intended bride, Ninlil (Lilit) and is banished to the neither world with her. He later returns with their first born son, Sin. (The moon god) also known as Nanna. This is significant as we will see later on.

Enki would normally mean: god of earth, but he is actually known as the god of water, specifically, the water which surrounds the earth. Even more specifically, he is known as the god of the Abzu, (watery abyss) and semen. He, along with his mother create mankind. There is speculation that he is also Enkur, lord of the underworld, and wisdom.

In the Gilgamesh epic, he fights with a god named Kur, lord of the realm in the story called: Enkidu and the underworld. When he wins the fight, he claims the title for himself. He is also given the divine laws for safe keeping.

Nanna’s daughter is called Innana. She is the goddess of love and war. Her visit with Kur is replayed in the Greek story of Persephone. She goes to the funeral of her sister in law’s (Ereshkigal) husband, Gugalana (The Bull of heaven.) She ends up killed by Ereshkigal and is hung on a wall. But gods do not stay dead, and she is rescued by Enki. He restores her by giving her the bread of life and the water of life. Enki was later named Iya or Ya by the Acadians (A Jewish tribe). In Hebrew, the name for god is Yaweh. There is some evidence that Yaweh and Enki are one and the same god. Others speculate that Yaweh is the patron god of Ur, the Sumerian city Abraham came from.

It is written that: One day, the King of Uruk (by the name of Nmeaka) came down out of the mountain to the lush valley. There he built a ziggurat for his goddess Innana, who he took from the mountain kingdom of Arata. He was Sumer's first great builder. It is this Ziggurat, or tower, that would later bring about the story of the tower of Babel.

In the Story of Babel god says: Come, let us go down, and there confound their language God often comes down to see what man is up to. However, the Sumerians built these ziggurats high so the gods would have an easier time coming down to earth or going up to heaven from