April 15, 2025 • 62 mins
Gods, ETs, or both? Does our creation narrative tell of a cosmic battle high up in the Heavens? The stories we've cherished for millennia as divine revelations may have very ancient—and potentially extraterrestrial—origins than most realize. Our dive into the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth that predates Genesis by over a thousand years, reveals shocking parallels that challenge conventional religious understanding.
When 19th-century archaeologists unearthed the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, they discovered clay tablets containing creation narratives startlingly similar to Biblical accounts. The Enuma Elish, an epic poem written in Akkadian cuneiform script, tells of primordial waters dividing, skies forming, and humans being created to serve gods. These are all elements found in the Book of Genesis, but with dramatically more detail about cosmic battles and involving multiple deities.
We explore the provocative question proposed by ancient astronaut theorists: what if these weren't mythologies at all, but attempts by ancient humans to document encounters with advanced beings using the limited vocabulary available to them? As Zecharia Sitchin pointed out, while later cultures might create myths, how does the very first civilization—Sumer—get a myth? Perhaps their accounts weren't metaphorical but historical and then filtered down through generations of oral tradition before being condensed into the Biblical form that we know today.
The evidence suggests the Old Testament's formation occurred much later than many believe—compiled after the Babylonian exile around 520 BCE, allowing ample time for Mesopotamian cosmologies to influence Hebrew thought. Archaeological discoveries even reveal that early Israelite religion included a female consort for Yahweh named Asherah, paralleling the divine couples in surrounding cultures, before later theological developments emphasized monotheism and abstraction.
Whether you approach these texts through faith, historical interest, or the ancient alien perspective, they demand the same rigorous standards of evidence and critical thinking. The striking similarities between these accounts offer profound insights into humanity's earliest attempts to understand our origins and purpose. We must ask how they continue to shape our worldviews today?
"Space Journey" by Geoff Harvey
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Joe (00:02):
Hello everybody, thank you for joining us on Alien Talk
Podcast.
This is the show where wediscuss all things about aliens
and UFOs and, as always, we pushthe limits of our understanding
about subjects that pertain tothe existence of
extraterrestrial life, thepresence of UFOs and perhaps
even the very meaning of humanlife here on Earth.
We explore the mysteries of thecosmos and the enshrouded
(00:24):
secrets of our ancient history,constantly pondering what is out
there in the far reaches ofspace and asking questions about
what our ancestors reallyencountered in the revered
stories from the distant past.
So, the last time Laurie and Iwere with you, we had the
pleasure of hosting our goodfriend and colleague, Reverend
James Allerton.
He is a police detective justlike us, and he is also a
(00:47):
chaplain for many public serviceagencies out here in the Tucson
area, helping to serve thecounseling needs of first
responders in our area.
And, of course, as his titleimplies, he is a Christian
pastor.
And when he was here with us wehad the opportunity to examine
the intersectionality ofreligious dogmas with those of
(01:09):
extraterrestrial intelligenceideas and the idea of
extraterrestrial life existingelsewhere in the universe, and
we were able to compare andcontrast the major points of the
two subjects and debate thephilosophy tied to the long-held
biblical beliefs that areprevalent within
Judeo-Christianity, and Laurie,I thought it was a very healthy
(01:31):
dialogue, very honest andstraightforward, a bit lengthy
but yet all-encompassing, andactually there was more that I
wanted to bring up, more aboutscriptural eisegesis, of which I
would have liked to have hadfurther opportunity to challenge
him on that.
Laurie (01:49):
Yeah, I agree, there was more I wanted to get into about
the narratives in the book ofGenesis and debate the young
earth theory to which so manycreationists hold and I believe
James even said that he holds tothat belief as well and that
and the idea of dinosaursreferenced in the Bible to have
(02:11):
existed alongside humans, all ofthat with the young earth
creation, and I think we couldhave talked a little more, which
would have turned that intosomething like a four-hour long
episode.
But you know, I mean we couldhave, I mean we could have
talked about this for, you know,six to eight hours, but you
(02:34):
know I wouldn't mind havingJames come back on sometime to
discuss more topics in furtherdetail.
Joe (02:42):
I would like that too.
Further detail I would likethat too.
I think we really need to diginto the meaning of faith in the
Bible and the adherence thatpeople have to the belief that
it is inerrant and infallible,despite the preponderance of
evidence that fails to supportthat idea.
I think it is important to holdpeople everyone accountable for
(03:02):
their theology, whatever it maybe Christian or otherwise.
In other words, we shouldexpect them and us to provide
reasoning for why they and webelieve what we do, and that
should be not threatening.
That should be something wherewe desire to seek sensible and
(03:23):
provide sensible explanations toour ideas, our precepts and our
teachings, and we should allhold ourselves to that standard,
I believe.
Laurie (03:33):
Right?
Well, we need to scrutinize andanalyze the ancient alien
theory with the same methodsthat we would with religion.
Overall, I think the debate isgood.
It is a good thing that helpsexpand our understanding of
complex topics.
Joe (03:52):
Yeah, and we spent a good amount of time with James going
over the Westhoff and BillyCarson debate from early January
.
One of the points brought upfrom that is the significance of
a very ancient Babylonian textknown as the Enuma Elish and its
influence as a literary sourceto the biblical creation story
(04:15):
and it's nothing new.
We brought it up here on thisshow plenty of times before, but
the last time we were on weconcluded with the need to
expand a little more on theenumeralish and its importance
to much of the wholeJudeo-Christian tradition as it
comes from the book of Genesis,the intriguing points that a
(04:43):
Bible scholar who asserts itshistorical accuracy, wes Uff,
and Billy Carson raised duringtheir debates and today.
Laurie (04:55):
You know we want to focus specifically on Wes Huff's
assertion, for a little bitanyway, that there aren't many
similarities between the detailsin Genesis and the Enuma Elish.
Now, remember, Wes Huff is anapologist and scholar of the
Bible who asserts the historicalaccuracy of it.
(05:16):
Billy Carson, on the other hand, is the ancient alien theorist
who supports the idea that thereis a complex interchange and
adaptivity between the Biblicalnarrative and proposition that
much of it could be explained ascoming from extraterrestrial
(05:39):
encounters in the ancient past,by which some people were able
to describe what they sawthrough lavish and vivid
supernatural imagery, like wefind in these texts and it's not
just the Bible but all of theancient mythologies everywhere
worldwide.
(05:59):
But there is one story thatstands out as being very similar
to the one found in the book ofGenesis and that is the Enuma
Elish, and in their debate, wesand Billy fully agreed with each
other that verses mentioningthe separation of the waters are
(06:19):
nearly identical.
However, we know from readingits translations that it is full
of passages that parallelGenesis.
But you know with even moredetail.
So, consider what we have inGenesis 1: 6 to 10, with God
(06:41):
saying you know, let there be afirmament in the midst of the
waters and let it divide thewaters from the water From.
I think that's where theyseparate the fresh and the sea
water, the salt water, and Godmade the expanse and separated
the water under the expanse fromthe water above, and God called
(07:01):
the expanse sky.
What we have is God separatingwater from water to make the sky
the atmosphere, I guess.
So, the big question is youknow, what does that even mean?
And there's no mention of himmaking water in the first place,
because you know, the Spirit ofthe Lord hovered over the face
of the deep is what it says inthe Bible.
Joe (07:23):
Yeah, it's like the water was there.
Laurie (07:25):
Already there.
Joe (07:27):
Yeah, there was no creation of water.
It was just there along withGod.
Right Now.
This has always been aperplexing use of semantics and
has baffled people for centuries, whether theologians or
scientists.
It's always made me wonder.
So, if we are to acceptcreationism, then we need to
grasp what is going on in themaking of the sky and ocean, and
(07:49):
really all we have is Godspeaking it into existence out
of nothingness.
You know, are we just to assumethat everything was made by
magic?
Ancient people did notunderstand many of the natural
processes going on in the worldin terms of knowing about
geology, meteorology, astronomyand so on.
(08:10):
So this idea of the firmament,which was thought to be a mass
of water, sort of encapsulatingthe sky and the earth below it,
it was never supported by anykind of evidence, nothing that
suggests the Earth was onceinside what seems to be
something like a shaker snowglobe, one of those ornaments
(08:32):
we've all seen, in which thewater surrounds what is inside.
There's no evidence that such athing ever existed.
So what was it?
What was being talked about?
When you're mentioning thefirmament, it could be, as we
see as typical and common inmythological literature is that
it is referring to something asmetaphor or allegory and not so
(08:54):
much as a literal description.
So is it talking aboutsomething else?
That could very well becompletely different from the
way we are reading it today.
Laurie (09:03):
Very well be completely different from the way we are
reading it today.
Yeah, again, the Bible has itall.
In a nutshell, I believe, anddefinitely based on faith,
because there is no evidence toprove.
You know how it was formed inthe biblical text, but something
like the firmament might besymbolic of something else, like
perhaps something celestial orinterstellar.
(09:26):
Well, you know, compare what Iread from Genesis to the script
on the first tablet of the newmilitia.
That starts with the line they Iguess they, being the gods, had
mingled their waters togetherbefore Meadowland and Reedbed
was to be found when not one ofthe gods had been formed or had
(09:48):
come into being.
When not one of the gods hadbeen formed or had come into
being, when no destinies hadbeen decreed, the gods were
created within them.
La-mu and La Anu Amu wereformed and came into being.
While they grew and increasedin stature, ansar and Kesar, who
(10:11):
excelled them, were created andthey prolonged their days.
They multiplied their years.
Anu, their son, could rival hisfather.
Anu, the son son equaled Ansar.
And it goes on for about 300 orso verses describing how
everything on land, sea and skywas formed through a cosmic
(10:33):
battle of the gods way up inheaven.
And I believe I said I got ridof that from Genesis.
That was a mistake.
That's actually from the EnumaElish, but just from this
passage alone, you know, we seethat what is taking place is
extraterrestrials, as it ishappening beyond Earth.
So, the question would be, youknow, are these
(10:53):
extraterrestrials really spiritsand gods or are they life forms
with flesh and blood, physicalbodies much like our own blood,
physical bodies, much like ourown?
And you know, basically we havethe very brief first and second
days of biblical creation thatis elaborated in an almost
treatise or essay form.
(11:14):
You know, now it's really noless obscure than you know what
we read in Genesis, but it isdefinitely way more
comprehensive and that's why Iwas saying the Bible has it
condensed in like a nutshellversion.
It tells about God making theearth and creating everything,
(11:34):
but doesn't say how it allhappened.
So, and if you listen to all ofour previous episodes, you can
tell that we're pretty much onboard with these gods and
everything beingextraterrestrials.
But many scholars who havecompared the two have concluded
for quite some time now thatGenesis, and indeed the entire
(11:57):
Pentateuch for that matter, ismore like a condensed
transcription of the Enuma Elishand the other Mesopotamian
sources.
Joe (12:05):
Yeah, and is much more ancient, and that is evident
from studying the originalHebrew form of the scriptural
text in which they are compiled,integrated and refined in
sections that are retelling ofsomething else, something much
more antiquated that was aroundbefore it.
So, the Enuma Elish is alsoknown as the Seven Tablets of
(12:26):
Creation and is believed to dateback to an even earlier version
, predating King Hammurabi, hisreign in Babylon, which was
around 1792 to 1750 B.
C.
, and he is one who, inBabylonian mythology and history
, is elevated to the god Marduk,and that is the patron deity of
(12:49):
Babylon, the city and theempire.
So that's more than a thousandyears before the formation of
what we know as the OldTestament, and many history and
literary experts believe thatthe Pentateuch, which is Greek
for five scrolls, also known asthe Torah in Hebrew, was made by
using material from these oldersources, particularly from
(13:10):
Babylonian ones, just like theEnuma Elish.
So, you know, the Enuma Elishis Akkadian and it means it
translates when the heights, orwhen on high, or when the
heavens above, which is noneother than the very opening
verse of the text, and it issimilar in meaning to in the
(13:35):
beginning from Genesis.
We see a very Biblicalperspective, in that there is a
supreme deity in charge of all,that is, who is above all, that
is on the earth.
Everything happens and is therebecause of him, and humans are
made to obey him.
But unlike in the Bible, thatdeity in the Enuma, Elish, is
(13:56):
more corporal, very powerful,but not at all abstract or
transcendent, and not invisiblelike the Hebrew God and
subsequently the Christian God.
And that God is Marduk.
His role is more like that of achampion who has been
victorious over forces of chaosand disarray, and by doing so he
(14:16):
creates the universe.
Now Marduk is the BabylonianGod, and his depiction was
contrived from an even earliernarrative of the Sumerians, and
that mythology put Enki at thiscentral position in which he was
in contention with his brotherEnlil, both of whom sons of the
(14:37):
chief figure of a bigger godnamed An, and that name, of
course, is the root word for themythical figures known as
Anunnaki, children of An, i.
e.
, children of God.
And so, it all ties in nicelywith other traditions, as we see
.
Laurie (14:54):
Yeah, and on is just, you know, en and ki, on is sky
and ki is earth.
So, on, ki and ki and not ki,those are, from the heavens to
earth came, as Zechariah Sitchinhad translated.
But interestingly, like yousaid, that opening phrase, when
(15:17):
on I, it does sound very similarto the first line of Genesis in
the beginning, but both seem tomark an unspecified beginning
of time to a place above it, inthe heights, you know,
encompassing the world, namelythe heavens.
And they both describe theearth at that particular moment
(15:39):
to be formless and void withdarkness covering the face of
the deep, like I said earlier.
So, you know, many people aresurprised to learn that the
Pentateuch, the Torah, which istraditionally claimed to have
been written by Moses, wasmerely written by scribes who
gave literary attribution toMoses.
(15:59):
I mean, if you think about it,the final chapter of the book of
Deuteronomy portrays the deathof Moses.
So how could someone provide anarrative about their own death?
Clearly, the material for thismanuscript has come from other,
earlier sources.
Joe (16:16):
Yeah, and so up until the middle of the 19th century, the
consensus was that the Bible wasthe world's oldest book and it
was thought to be completelyoriginal, with nothing being
around before it.
After all, it contains storiesthat go all the way back to the
beginning of everything.
Then discoveries were madeduring European expeditions to
the Middle East, where artifactswere dug up which revealed much
(16:40):
more about the history of theancient world than was thought,
and people started to becomemore motivated to visit and
examine the lands of the HolyBible, to go and check out the
places that were mentioned in it, like Jerusalem, Bethlehem,
Damascus, the Sea of Galilee,Babylon, the Red Sea and many
others.
So as it was, in 1846, Britishexplorer Austin Henry Lanyard
(17:11):
came upon the ruins of Nineveh,the capital city of Assyria,
which is well known inscriptural lore from the Book of
Jonah.
Growing up as a kid, everyonehas learned about it in Sunday
school with the story of Jonahand the whale.
And upon excavating the site, heand his team found the buried
and forgotten Lbrary ofAshurbanipal, the Assyrian king
(17:31):
who was also found in the pagesof the Bible and who ruled from
668 to 627 BC.
So within the old structurethey came across some clay
tablets that had cuneiformscript, and there were over
30,000 of them, so quite a lot,and I would have loved to have
been part of something like that.
It must have been like a realIndiana Jones movement there,
(17:54):
entering a dark, dusty andforlorn chamber back in the
1840s.
This chamber is covered incenturies of dusty, dirty,
desert sand and then findingthese clay tablets belonging to
a king from the Old Testament.
I can only imagine what thatmust have been like.
Laurie (18:13):
Yeah, me too.
And even more intriguing isthat the language was Akkadian
and it was a Semitic dialectformed in Akkad around the 25th
century B.
C.
and spoken in Babylon andAssyria, and, along with ancient
Egyptian, it could very well bethe oldest written language
(18:36):
that we know of, and it isthrough this language that we
know of, and it is through thislanguage that the tales of Sumer
have survived.
And the Sumerian language wasnot like the other languages
that came after it.
So the knowledge from theoldest civilization on Earth is
preserved in the Akkadian script, in cuneiform, which was
(18:58):
discovered in I think it was the1800s, and from there it became
evident that everything aboutthe Sumerians was later passed
on to another Semitic language,Hebrew, from which you know, we
get the Bible, even yeah, andyou know, during that Victorian
era, like I was saying, you know, there were actually museums
(19:19):
and universities and churchesthat sponsored these kind of
excavations.
Joe (19:23):
So it was kind of a big hype back then, and these
excavations were of particularinterest to Mesopotamia, Egypt
and the Holy Land.
At the time it was all underthe Ottoman Empire, so I don't
know what traveling was likeback then.
It was probably prettydangerous.
But they wanted to search forphysical evidence for the
historical collaboration ofbiblical accounts and what was
(19:46):
found was really more theopposite.
And what they found was thediscovery of these cuneiform
tablets showed that the book ofGenesis telling about the
creation and the fall of man,the Nephilim, the great flood,
the Tower of Babel, thepatriarchs they were actually
Assyrian in origin, which inturn were Babylonian in origin,
(20:08):
which in turn were Sumerian inorigin.
So, it goes from Sumer toBabylon, to Assyria and then on
to other groups, one of thoseother groups being the
Israelites all over the course,I would say at least 2,000 years
.
So, it's 2,000 years later thatthe Israelites get the story
that we have in the Bible,coming from something much
(20:29):
earlier.
Laurie (20:31):
Yeah, and now here we are today, thousands of years
later, with our own religion,christianity, which derived from
the Jewish religion.
You know the Old Testament andwe've canonized that into our
Bible and now we have tocoincide with our New Testament
(20:52):
and you know, but all that stuffyou're saying, you know this is
all stuff that ZechariahSitchin wrote about.
Anyone familiar with theTwelfth Planet, the first book
in The Earth Chronicles series,you know they probably recognize
what we're saying here as itwas thoroughly covered and
analyzed in those works, andalso from Eric von Däniken's
(21:15):
Chariots of the Gods.
And we all know how the theoryof ancient aliens plays into you
know this mythology and, likeyou said, you know you went all
the way back to Sumerian andeverything you know.
After the Sumerians, othercultures can claim these stories
to be myths.
But, like Zachariah Sitchinonce the first civilization gets
(21:37):
said, you know how does thefirst civilization get a myth?
They don't.
Their stories are historicaldocuments.
So, and you know so it playsinto the mythology, as you know,
as many of the historiansbelieve and assume are to have
(21:59):
been the first civilization onEarth, at least based on the
accepted archaeological recordwe now have.
Granted there is evidence likeGobekli Tempe that challenges
that.
But at this time, but thenagain, Gobekli Tempe could.
Now I'm hearing that that maynot have been the Homo Sapien
(22:21):
race, that could have beenwhoever the Atlanteans were that
built that.
But at this time, mankind comingforth from that, we must ask
(22:44):
you know where did the idea comefrom?
You know how did such imageryspawn within the storytelling
ability of our ancient minds?
And you know what was thesource of that kind of
inspiration?
Was the source of that kind ofinspiration?
Well, and it's like we've beensaying, the idea of the imagery
(23:06):
came from the ancient peoples,their misunderstanding of
extraterrestrials and of theirtechnology, such that the
stories that were passed downbecame construed in the way they
knew how to express themselves.
And if we today were to try andexplain some scientific fact or
some natural phenomena to asmall child who has barely
(23:31):
learned how to speak and listen,they would visualize as being
more magical and more dramatic,visualized as being more magical
and more dramatic.
Being told that a comet's tailforms as it gets close to the
sun may very well conjure amental picture of it being a
living thing, with a literaltail that starts to grow as it
(23:55):
flies across the sky toward oursun, and so the ancient people
probably would have envisionedsuch notions in the same way
that they were told about them.
And it's like you know we don't.
We saw that tic-tac and wereferred to.
We don't know what that was,but what did it look like?
To us in our civilization'stime?
It looked like a tic-tac, andso we refer to it as that.
Joe (24:20):
Right, and in a previous time, when they didn't have
tic-tacs, they would have calledit an egg exactly that eggs,
didn't have tic-tacs, um.
But I mean, when we speak inordinary language about things
like um, like splitting the atom, many people tend to think of a
tiny atom as being broken intotwo pieces, like putting a piece
of fruit, when that is notreally what is happening, and
(24:44):
any you know theoreticalphysicist will tell you that's
not exactly what goes on whenyou split the atom, but that's
the imagery, that's sort of theword description we get.
So, yeah, this is what most ofus have in our minds when we
think about that and it's how weillustrate it when we're
talking about it to others right.
Laurie (25:02):
And so when we look at the, the um, the battles of the
ancient time, the ancients, howthey wrote those battles, um,
like the, the story of a cosmicbattle with these colossal gods,
they're like striking eachother in the heavens with, you
know force, almost like a pooltable of planets, may just be a
(25:28):
prehistoric rendition of themovement of the celestial bodies
in which the planet Tiamat wassplit into by Marduk, also
associated with the planetcalled Nibiru, where the
Anunnaki are from, and theEarth's formlessness and void.
That signifies that it had yetto coalesce into the planet that
(25:52):
we are living on today.
While the darkness of spaceenveloped the remnants of Tiamat
(26:26):
, which were in the process offorming a new world, the other
half of Tiamat scatteredthroughout the solar system,
eventually becoming the asteroidbelt aptly referred to in the
Bible as the hammered bracelet.
So mythology may just be apersonification of planetary
astronomy that dates back to thedistant past.
The celestial bodies are thegiven names as gods, but I think
it was Henry K Rawlinson whenhe first discovered the
cuneiform tablets.
He translated them as you know.
These, the planets as gods, butwhat else could have been given
(26:47):
divine names?
So could some be the names ofancient people, designated
highly sophisticated andtechnological beings from
another world, as Marduk, thechampion of the young gods in
their war against Tiamat, who isfemale, is of Babylonian origin
.
The Sumerian Inki, babylonian Iaor Enlil, is thought to have,
(27:13):
which would be his brother,half-brother, thought to have
played a major role in thisoriginal version.
The fragments of the copies ofthe Illuminae Lish found at
Asher have the god Asher in themain role, so the patron god of
different city-states would beprominent in the story.
(27:35):
So Marduk only figures asprolifically as he does, because
, you know, most of the copiescome down from Babylon or
Babylonian scribes, even in theAssyrian ones.
Even so, the Sumerian god Enkistill plays an important part in
these versions as the one whocreated human beings.
(27:58):
But this tendency for varioustribes and groups of people to
elevate their own deities to thestatus of being the most
powerful is quite evidentthroughout the Middle Eastern
cultures.
A parallel can be found withthe Hebrew theme, as can be seen
(28:19):
in Psalm 89.7, which says inthe counsel of the holy ones,
god is greatly feared andawesome above all who surround
him.
Now, this sounds a lot like anypantheon from the ancient world
, much like we would find inGreek mythology, with the gods
dwelling on Mount Levis right.
Joe (28:46):
Yeah.
So with that, it could be thatthe Jewish priests and scribes
were intending to develop andillustrate a stark contrast
between Yahweh, who is their god, and the Lord from all the
other pagan deities.
And yet it seems that thepsalmist was speaking of him as
being included within thiscouncil of other deities.
Granted, he is said to behigher than them, but at the
same time he acknowledges theirexistence.
(29:07):
And I think at this point inthis Old Testament scriptures,
we're trying to see Yahweh aslooking more of an abstract and
less like the pagan gods who arealways depicted in bodily form
with faces.
It got to the point where, inJewish belief, you weren't
supposed to even have the nameYahweh spelled out.
(29:30):
There was no way you were eversupposed to try to paint a
picture of God.
God has no image.
He's completely abstract.
Also, when you look at the TenCommandments, they emphasize
this directive from God to theHebrew people, instructing them
to have no other gods but him,and this is contrary to the idea
that other gods are not at allreal.
(29:51):
He's acknowledging that theyare and he's telling the
Israelites that they certainlydo exist, but they shouldn't
dare try to put any of themwithin their hearts or within
their worldview, as being abovehim.
And we also need to keep in mindthat when the Tanakh and that
is the entire Hebrew Bible whenit was actually compiled, it was
(30:13):
after the return of the Jewsfrom the Babylonian exile, and
that was around 520 BC.
Return of the Jews from theBabylonian exile, and that was
around 520 B.
C.
And it was then that thescribes began to memorialize
Jewish doctrine and theology bycompleting the written canon,
and that is a later date thanmany Christians realize.
After talking to a lot ofpeople, they don't realize that
(30:36):
the Old Testament as we know itwas actually compiled that late
in time.
Many of them believe that itwas written like 2000 B.
C.
and so there was a ton of timefor oral tradition to filter
down from earlier Mesopotamiansources to 520 B.
C.
to be written as the HebrewBible, and indeed that is what
(30:58):
we find.
Upon close examination of theCuneiform scripts, we see that
it morphed its way down into theform we have in the Old
Testament scriptures.
Laurie (31:11):
Yeah, now there are other tablets that were
subsequently found at sites likeAshur, kish, saper and Ur, all
of which were also part of theAssyrian Empire and Babylonian
Empire, that also containedthese scripts that made up the
(31:34):
Enuma.
Elish Scholars consider thestory to be one of the oldest,
if not the absolute oldest, inthe world, and it tells of the
birth of the gods and thecreation of the universe and
human beings.
And it references that in thebeginning there was only
(31:54):
undiffriated, undifferentiatedwater swirling around in chaos,
like everything was out ofcontrol.
And out of this swirl, thewaters divided into sweet, fresh
water, known as the god Apsu,and salty, bitter water, the
(32:16):
goddess Tiamat.
So, once Differiturated, theunion of these two entities gave
birth to the younger gods.
So here are some more versesthat cover this Babylonian
creation story.
This is quoted from thisancient story.
(32:40):
So these young gods, however,were extremely loud, troubling
the sleep of Apsu at night anddistracting him from his work by
day.
And, upon the advice of hisadvisor, mumu, apsu decides to
kill the younger gods.
Tiamat, hearing of their plan,warns their eldest son, enki
(33:04):
again Babylon, sometimes Ea andhe puts Apsu to sleep and kills
him.
From Apsu's remains, Enkicreates his home.
Joe (33:14):
With this.
What we're seeing is a muchmore descriptive account of
what's happening during creationVolumes, more than what we find
with the Bible.
In the Bible, God just simplyspeaks things into existence.
It's actually very brief.
When you look at the pages ofany Bible, you see that creation
(33:35):
takes about three pages, andthat's it Now.
Does this sound like fantasy?
Yes, of course a lot ofmythology does, but I think the
real question is does it speakin symbols?
Is the message being delivered,encrypted in some way, about
greater things that are perhapsdifficult for the ancient mind
(33:56):
to comprehend?
Laurie (33:58):
Right, and I think that the answer to that is yes.
I mean, it just goes on and onwith.
You know, then, tiamat, oncethe supporter of the younger
gods, tiamat, rewards Kingu withthe Tablets of Destiny, which
(34:26):
legitimize the rule of a god andcontrol the fates, and he wears
them proudly as a bristly.
With Kingu as her champion,tiamat summons the forces of
chaos and creates 11 horriblemonsters to destroy her children
.
Now, ea, enki and the youngergods fight against Tiamat,
(34:52):
futilely, until from among thememerges the champion, marduk,
who swears he will defeat Tiamat.
And Marduk defeats Kingu andkills Tiamat by shooting her
with an arrow which splits herin two.
From her eyes flow the watersof the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers.
Out of Tiamat's corpse, mardukcreates the heavens and the
(35:14):
earth.
He appoints gods to variousduties and binds Tiamat's eleven
creatures to his feet astrophies too much, you know
adulation from the other gods.
Before sitting their images inhis new home, he also takes the
tablets of destiny from Kingu,thus legitimizing his reign.
So after the gods have finishedpassing, praising him for his
(35:39):
great victory and the art of hiscreation, marduk consults with
the god Ea, which the god ofwisdom, which is also his father
, and decides to create humanbeings from the remains of
whichever of the gods encouragedTiamat to make war and Kingu is
charged as guilty and killed,and from his blood Ea creates
(36:02):
Lulu, the first man to help thegods in their eternal task of
maintaining order and keepingchaos at bay.
Joe (36:10):
And as this epic poem ends, it says that Ea created mankind
, on whom he imposed the serviceof the gods and set the gods
free.
So, following this, Marduk issaid to have arranged the
organization of the netherworldand distributed the gods to
their appointed stations.
So, then there's a long praiseof Marduk for his
(36:32):
accomplishments, much like howGenesis 2, 1-4 gives a doxology
of God sanctifying all that hehad created.
It's much briefer and, youmight say, less embellished.
It gets right to the point.
God made it, he thought it wasgood and he rested, just as the
people of Israel are supposed todo under the Mosaic law, right?
Laurie (36:56):
Right, and so from this narrative we end up getting an
elaborate pantheon of deitiesthat exist in all of the
Mesopotamian cultures.
Unlike with the Hebrews, thereis a prominent matriarchy with
Iana, Ishtar, asherah, ashtarat.
These are encountered by theIsraelites in their sojourn in
(37:18):
the books of Exodus, leviticusand Deuteronomy, with the tribes
of the Canaanites, the Moabites, the Am morites, the Midianites
, the Edomites and theGideonites.
A whole lot of "ts where thedeity Baal was a major figure.
Now, he was likely a derivationof Marduk, Ea or Enlil, as
(37:42):
theological was typical of allthese different groups of people
, meaning that the names andpersons and niche of these gods
were borrowed back and forthfrom among them back and forth
from among them.
Joe (38:07):
And not only that, but many Bible historians speculate that
the name and personage ofYahweh may have also been
derived from this source, fromMarduk.
And there's an interestingarticle by J Glenn Taylor from
the magazine BiblicalArchaeology Review.
It's dated May 1994, over 30years ago, and they found
artifacts from ancient Samariathat is located in northern
(38:30):
Israel, and they make referenceto Yahweh as having a female
consort, and these artifactsdate to 1000 to 800 B.
C.
Now this is the time frame inwhich David and Solomon's
kingdom was taking shape.
It was also a time of theconstruction of the first temple
in Jerusalem and it was a timeof the dominant theme being
(38:53):
formed, of the covenant withGod's nation and that being more
solidified within the Judaismfaith.
So, we have they're likepottery objects and they have
inscriptions that talk aboutYahweh and Asherah, his consort,
his wife, and this gives us avery strong connection.
This is almost, you know, kindof a bombshell in a way, because
(39:18):
it shows a strong connectionbetween Yahweh and the god, Baal
, who also had a consort,Asherah, and also sometimes
called Ashtaroth.
So, the same, same female, sameconsort shared by Baal and
Yahweh, meaning that it's almostseems like the idea of Yahweh
(39:40):
was sort of transposed from theimage of Baal.
Now, later on, that becameapparent that they were not the
same.
In fact, they were in the books.
One of the books I think it wasthe First Book of Samuel, Elijah
has Baal and God duking it outon a burnt offering altar.
But there is a parallel betweenthe Israelite religion, with
(40:02):
the Lord, that being Yahweh, andthat of the Canaanites as well
as the surrounding tribes, whichin turn is a parallel between
them and the Babylonians.
So, we can see how thisSumerian mythology is like
passed down, like filtered downall the way into the Jewish
religion.
Remember, this is over a courseof 2,000 or more years and
(40:23):
eventually we see it in theTanakh, the Old Testament, and
like in the Books of Kings andthe Books of Samuel, we see that
they break away from conceivingthe Lord as being completely
different from Baal.
By the time you get into thebooks of the Kings, the authors
want to make it pretty clearthat Yahweh is not Baal, and he
(40:44):
has no female consort, nofeminine goddess.
Laurie (40:47):
And that is one of the distinctions of Judaism and
Christianity is that therereally is no mother goddess of
theology and integration of godshappening everywhere throughout
the ancient world, as peopleadopt beliefs from others, as
migrations would be taking placeall the time and in Babylon,
(41:11):
marduk gained prominence duringthe reign of Hammurabi and
quickly surpassed the formerpatron deity Inanna or Ishtar in
popularity, and duringHammurabi's reign, in fact, a
number of previously popularfemale deities were replaced by
the male gods.
The Enuma Elish praising Mardukas the most powerful of all the
(41:34):
gods therefore becameincreasingly popular as the god
himself rose in prominence andhis city of Babylon grew in
power.
Scholar Jeremy Black writes therise of the cult of Marduk is
closely connected with the riseof Babylon from city-state to
the capital of an empire.
This was in much the way, asyou were saying.
(41:57):
You know that the rise ofYahweh was closely connected to
Israel becoming a unifiedkingdom.
After the Israelite exodus fromEgypt, the Marduk became more
and more important, until theauthors of the Babylonian epic
maintain that not only was hethe king of all the gods, but
(42:18):
that many of the other ones thatwere mentioned before or later
were nothing other than aspectsof his persona.
And this sounds exactly likehow the Hebrew God was written
into the Genesis story as theall-powerful creator who
transcends all human affairs,which, of course, resulted in
(42:39):
the writing of our Bible.
Joe (42:42):
And something important that we need to remember is that
the Bible is not the OldTestament, the New Testament as
well.
It's not complete.
We find all kinds of passageswithin the scriptures that
allude to books that are prettymuch wiped out of existence.
There's the Book of the Wars ofthe Lord, talked about in
Numbers 21 (43:00):
14.
Wars of the Lord, talked aboutin Numbers 21:14.
The book of Jasher from Joshua,10:13, and 2 Samuel 1:18.
The Book of the Rights andDuties of the King, that's 1
Samuel 10:25.
The Book of the Acts of Solomon, that's 1 Kings 4.
32.
The Book of the Covenant wasfound in Exodus 24:7, and even
(43:23):
one called the Book of theProphet Nathan in 2 Chronicles
9:29.
And there are about 30 or somanuscripts referenced which to
this date have not survived.
We really don't know what waswritten in them.
And although the basic paradigmof the biblical narrative and
the Enuma Elish stories they doalign closely, there are still
(43:44):
significant differences, andthat's noted by historian and
scholar Stephen Burtman, thatboth Genesis and the Enuma Elish
, they detail and celebratereligion.
While Genesis describes theorigin and founding of the
Jewish people under the guidanceof the Lord, the Enuma Elish
recounts the origin and foundingof Babylon under the god Marduk
(44:06):
.
Each contains a story of howthe cosmos and man were created.
Each work begins by describingthis watery chaos and primeval
darkness that once filled theentire universe, and then light
is created to replace thatdarkness.
Afterward the heavens are madeand in them the heavenly bodies
are placed, and finally man iscreated as the apex.
(44:28):
So, these similaritiesnotwithstanding, the two
accounts are more different thanthey are alike, and you kind of
point it out by his reading thepassage of how different it is.
Laurie (44:39):
Nothing like that is found anywhere throughout the
Old Testament different it isNothing like that is found
anywhere throughout the OldTestament.
Well, just as Genesis wouldhave, you know, resonated with
followers of Judaism, so too theEnuma Elish would have
resonated with Babylonians, whosaw, you know, their people
breaking with the traditions ofthe past to create an era of a
(45:00):
new god-king, who was none otherthan Nebuchadnezzar II, the one
who reigned from 605 to 562 B.
C.
during the Jewish exile.
Antiquity scholar E ThorkinJacobson, for example, notes
that Babylon warred with theterritory of ancient Sumer and
(45:21):
all its renowned and venerableancient cities and their gods.
And the story, then, can beread not only as a grand tale of
the triumph of order over chaosand light over darkness, but as
a parallel of the rise ofBabylon and the Babylonian
culture over the old Sumerianmodel of civilization.
(45:45):
Further, the tale can beunderstood as an illustration of
the concept of life asperpetual change.
And this is the exact same themewe get from the Christian
scriptures that the ways of theprior inhabitants of the
promised land and all theenemies of the children of
(46:06):
Israel are to be vanquished andreplaced with a new world order.
There is the same conceptchange and mutability to the
universe through their creationas mortal beings who are subject
to death.
Likewise, they are a peoplethat are tasked with keeping a
(46:26):
covenant with the gods andmaintain their eternal work on
earth and, you know, thereforegain measure of immortality by
doing it as well as they can.
The message is always the samewith religions, and that is,
humans have gotten theirrelationship with God completely
wrong, as it was meant to be inthe beginning, drastically and
(46:49):
irrevocably wrong.
So God then chooses a group ofpeople to bring about a renewed
order that eliminates the old,incorrect way of worshiping him.
That is certainlyJudeo-Christianity in a nutshell
, right?
What Mesopotamian myths likethe Enuma Elish teach us is that
(47:15):
this way of thinking is an oldand borrowed one from a long
time ago.
Joe (47:19):
So where does that leave us with the typology of the Bible?
And what I mean is that thatbeing an inspired series of
books put together to form whatis widely accepted as being the
word of god that conveys amessage to all of humanity, past
, present and future.
Clearly, the theory of ancientaliens, much like the theory of
(47:40):
evolution, turns such orthodoxthinking on its head, since it
introduces questions of doubt asto how people of faith, or how
people place faith in it asbeing infallible and inerrant,
making its overall narrativemuch more opaque.
I just wanted to correct what Isaid earlier in reference to
Elijah and Baal, and that's notin Samuel, that reference to
(48:01):
Elijah and Baal, and that's notin Samuel, that's in Kings.
That's not 1 Samuel, that's 1Kings, 1 Kings 18.
So I just want to point that outand also, by expanding our
hermeneutics so as to encompassthese sources that go back to
the same time era of the OldTestament, we're forced to
(48:24):
reevaluate what these narrativesmean in their literal sense.
So, if the account of Adam andEve was an apologetic method of
somehow abridging andparaphrasing something like the
Enuma Elish, then this altersmuch of the religious dogma that
stems from the interpretationsof it the notions such as
original sin, the fall fromgrace, atonement and covenant,
god's redemption of humanity.
(48:44):
These are all presented toChristians through teachings
that are based upon thetheological authority that is
attributed to the Bible and howit is read.
So, if these scriptures areactually inauthentic and
unoriginal, meaning that theyare compiled and syncretized
from Babylonian sources originalmeaning that they are compiled
(49:05):
and syncretized from Babyloniansources which are quite
different, as we just kind ofpoint out by reading them and
then go back much further in atime then does that challenge
the whole belief system?
Can we still responsibly talkabout the bible as a book that
is supposed to be an inspiredwork of God, a message from God,
and that tells the wholecomplete story about humanity's
(49:25):
creation, condemnation, struggleagainst evil and eventual
salvation from the Devil?
Laurie (49:33):
Right, and that's good questions, and it makes us ask
if this entire spiritual view iseven justified so it can be
accepted on faith and indeedthat is how it is taught
manifest when you find that itcertainly is not the oldest
piece of literature in existenceand that it was written as an
(50:02):
abridged way to Judaize andlater to Christianize the story
about our human condition andour place in the grand scheme of
things.
If that is so, then it behoovesus to really search for the
original message and theoriginal meaning of the earliest
tradition from which it allcame and, it seems, from the
(50:25):
comparison to the Enuma Elishhave all come from the
storytelling of Sumer of a timefrom a very long time ago very
long time ago.
Joe (50:34):
Well, it's something that you and I have been asked before
by people.
Is you know?
Does the ancient alien theoryreally posit the notion of what
we are reading in the pages ofscripture?
You know, things like theparting of the Red Sea, Jacob's
Ladder, Elijah's fiery chariot,the Ark of the Covenant,
Ezekiel's wheel in the sky.
Are these a record of people ina time of the Bible actually
(50:58):
witnessing some form ofextraterrestrial technology?
Is that what there is to thesestories?
And to that I would say notexactly.
It is yes and no.
But what guys like Sitchin andVon Daniken seem to suggest is
that the literary material andthe literary devices used in the
(51:18):
telling of the stories, likewhat we have in the Bible, comes
from much, much older imagerythat was passed down from a time
perhaps when alien beings cameto Earth and humans had
encountered them and interactedwith them, and this would have
been a time before there waseven real language and they were
incapable of documenting it inthe way that we would today.
(51:40):
So the stories and tales aboutall of that became the backbone
of oral tradition, and thatlasted for millennia after
millennia, until it did becomepart of the storytelling fabric
of the people who would havebeen the ones who had written
down the content of what we haveas the Hebrew Scriptures.
Laurie (52:00):
Yeah, and some folks have also said that the idea of
ancient aliens, about all thatSitchin wrote in the Earth
Chronicles, sounds mostly likefantasy.
Well, the stories of the Biblecan be taken as God's word to
all of humanity for all ages,and that all of the miracles and
wonders, the wonderful thingsthat were mentioned in it can be
(52:25):
believed because it is from Godand therefore it's not fantasy.
So this is not at all a soundargument at all.
It is the same as saying thatsomething is not too
extraordinary to believe as longas you believe it the same way
I do.
If you believe it differentlyfrom that way, then you're crazy
(52:48):
.
They are saying that Elijahbeing taken up in a fiery
chariot is not fantasy, as longas you have faith in God.
So if you suggest it is aimagery derived from some
extraterrestrial encounter inthe prehistoric past, then you
are merely dabbling in theimagination.
Joe (53:07):
Right.
And then the problem is thatboth ways of interpreting the
analytics of the narratives inthe Bible, whether acts of God
or acts of ancient aliens,require a good bit of
speculative thinking as well asa good bit of imagination.
And with one approach, it isaccepted through faith, through
your belief system, while theother is rejected due to a lack
(53:27):
of evidence.
It's important to take noticethat both of the so-called
models of belief lack evidence.
If you were to accept the truthin stories about talking snakes
, talking donkeys, a sea beingparted, trumpet sounds bringing
down stone walls and a manliving in the belly of a whale
(53:48):
for three days, all because youdo believe in an invisible God
that has the power to doanything, has the power to do
anything then that is flawed interms of logic and science as
thinking that aliens visited theearth in the past and are now
unseen and undetectable.
Neither of these views can bedemonstrated through reliable
evidence.
You really can't reject one andaccept the other, unless you
(54:11):
choose to do so by way ofpersonal faith, and that is how
we see that people do accept oneversion over the other.
You know, you were even pointingout with Moses.
You know that the belief of hebeing the author of the Torah
and that it mentions his owndeath.
So how does one write anarrative about their own death?
You also have to consider thatthe entire book of Genesis deals
(54:36):
with events that were beforehis time.
Moses doesn't appear until thebook of Exodus, so he's writing
about stories that were waybefore his time.
How did he get that information?
He had to have obtained thatfrom something older, something
that was around before he wouldhave written the first five
(54:57):
books of the Bible, as istraditionally believed.
So and clearly the evidencedoesn't support that that Moses
is not the actual author of thefirst five books of the Bible,
that it is attributed to him,but it was written by anonymous
scribes in the fourth century BCanonymous scribes in the fourth
(55:19):
century BC.
Laurie (55:20):
Yeah, I believe that Moses lived.
Was it 25, 23, 2500 years afterthe events in Genesis?
At least so that would be likesomebody 500 years from now
writing about times of Jesus andcalling that the gospel truth.
Joe (55:37):
Right, you know specific names, locations, that kind of
detail and just from oraltradition.
We know that oral traditionwould not have preserved that
kind of information.
You know there had to have beensome kind of written form, and
there was.
We see this with the EnumaElish.
There was indeed a written form.
That written form was you knowthe.
And there was.
We see this with the EnumaElish.
(55:58):
There was indeed a written form.
That written form was, you knowthe.
Laurie (56:00):
Cuneiform scripts yeah, and and uh.
Well, just look at the words ofJesus.
Right, they're all hearsay, andthat's just 2000 years ago and
Jesus is not attributed towriting anything.
So, um, the with the words, wasthere a being named Jesus
(56:21):
Christ or Joshua of Nazareth?
Yeshua, I guess, would be theactual original name for Jesus.
But you know, did he really saythese words?
He probably did, but not in theexact verbiage that we have in
the red letter text of the NewTestament today.
So yeah, things aren't realbecause they sound like they
should be real or seem to bereal.
(56:42):
They're real because they havebeen proven to be real, and that
actually requires a process, asyou and I know from doing
criminal investigations as cops,detectives.
When it comes to going to courtto prove a case, nothing is
left to imagination or thethought of.
Maybe.
You either show that somethingis true or it's not even allowed
(57:05):
to be acknowledged, and youmust follow strict rules in
doing so.
Joe (57:11):
Yeah, definitely the test of truth and the methods by
which something is proven to bereal or factual or accurate and
sound.
It could be quite arduous, butit also leaves hardly any doubt,
I mean.
So it's a hard standard, butonce you've achieved it, you
know that it is true and you donot have to really question it,
(57:32):
because it has gone through somuch testing and been
demonstrated so many times,repeated so many ways that it's
now considered an axiom.
And that's a difficult standardto reach, and I think what I
wish for most people is thatthey would hold the beliefs in
the same rigorous standard.
You know, question as much asyou can, as much as is sensible,
(57:54):
and be deliberate in thejudgments and decision-making so
as to ensure such confidencethat you have at least gotten
closer to finding the truth.
And even that may take.
(58:16):
You see that what you maybebelieve your entire life does
not hold up to scrutiny and theevidence does not support that,
and be willing to accept andacknowledge that.
So that is all for today.
There are many more ancienttexts that we would like to
discuss in the near future.
They come from places likeMesopotamia, but besides the
(58:40):
Enuma Elish, there's also theAtrahasis, which is a story
about the flood.
There's the Epic of Gilgamesh,the Code of Hammurabi.
There's also from ancient Egypt, the Book of the Dead and the
myth of Isis and Osiris manyothers and we hope to cover
those ones as well in the monthsahead and Osiris, many others,
and we hope to cover those onesas well in the months ahead.
Laurie (58:58):
Yeah, and before we get to those, we're actually
planning for next time onhosting a special guest for our
April 28th episode.
That's just two weeks away.
The author of the novel titledA Line in the Sand.
His name is Miles Spencer andhe has co-written with Wells
Jones this story, which is abouttwo friends who find adventure
(59:23):
traveling across the lands ofthe Middle East, which, as you
all know by now, ties into muchof what we've been discussing,
since the places of the Bibleand Mesopotamian slash Sumerian
mythology all come from theMiddle East.
So, you know, we hope that wecan get into talking about all
the ways that the cultures ofthat part of the world have
(59:44):
helped to shape much of what wehave in Western civilization.
So you know, we definitely lookforward to that one.
Joe (59:52):
Yes, apparently the novel covers a lot of history from
around the time of World War Iand bringing up the famous
British intelligence officer, teLawrence, aka Lawrence of
Arabia, and that has always beena subject of which I'm really
fascinated.
I just think it is a reallyinteresting period of time in
the history of the world,especially with what's happening
(01:00:13):
in the Middle East at the timewith the Balfour Declaration and
the Sites-Picote Agreement.
World War I has always been afascinating period of time for
me.
I've always loved watching someof the movies, some of the
period pieces that are onNetflix that while during World
War I, I think are reallyinteresting, and some of the
(01:00:35):
events that took place overthere at that time are still
affecting the region to this day.
So I'm sure that there will bea lot to learn about.
By talking to Miles Spencer,that should be on the 28th of
this month of April.
We hope you all join us forthat.
Please check our website,alienetalkpodcastcom, and our
Facebook page.
(01:00:55):
Take care, everyone.
Until next time, stay curious.
Hello everybody, thank you for joining us on Alien Talk
Podcast.
This is the show where wediscuss all things about aliens
and UFOs and, as always, we pushthe limits of our understanding
about subjects that pertain tothe existence of
extraterrestrial life, thepresence of UFOs and perhaps
even the very meaning of humanlife here on Earth.
We explore the mysteries of thecosmos and the enshrouded
(00:24):
secrets of our ancient history,constantly pondering what is out
there in the far reaches ofspace and asking questions about
what our ancestors reallyencountered in the revered
stories from the distant past.
So, the last time Laurie and Iwere with you, we had the
pleasure of hosting our goodfriend and colleague, Reverend
James Allerton.
He is a police detective justlike us, and he is also a
(00:47):
chaplain for many public serviceagencies out here in the Tucson
area, helping to serve thecounseling needs of first
responders in our area.
And, of course, as his titleimplies, he is a Christian
pastor.
And when he was here with us wehad the opportunity to examine
the intersectionality ofreligious dogmas with those of
(01:09):
extraterrestrial intelligenceideas and the idea of
extraterrestrial life existingelsewhere in the universe, and
we were able to compare andcontrast the major points of the
two subjects and debate thephilosophy tied to the long-held
biblical beliefs that areprevalent within
Judeo-Christianity, and Laurie,I thought it was a very healthy
(01:31):
dialogue, very honest andstraightforward, a bit lengthy
but yet all-encompassing, andactually there was more that I
wanted to bring up, more aboutscriptural eisegesis, of which I
would have liked to have hadfurther opportunity to challenge
him on that.
Laurie (01:49):
Yeah, I agree, there was more I wanted to get into about
the narratives in the book ofGenesis and debate the young
earth theory to which so manycreationists hold and I believe
James even said that he holds tothat belief as well and that
and the idea of dinosaursreferenced in the Bible to have
(02:11):
existed alongside humans, all ofthat with the young earth
creation, and I think we couldhave talked a little more, which
would have turned that intosomething like a four-hour long
episode.
But you know, I mean we couldhave, I mean we could have
talked about this for, you know,six to eight hours, but you
(02:34):
know I wouldn't mind havingJames come back on sometime to
discuss more topics in furtherdetail.
Joe (02:42):
I would like that too.
Further detail I would likethat too.
I think we really need to diginto the meaning of faith in the
Bible and the adherence thatpeople have to the belief that
it is inerrant and infallible,despite the preponderance of
evidence that fails to supportthat idea.
I think it is important to holdpeople everyone accountable for
(03:02):
their theology, whatever it maybe Christian or otherwise.
In other words, we shouldexpect them and us to provide
reasoning for why they and webelieve what we do, and that
should be not threatening.
That should be something wherewe desire to seek sensible and
(03:23):
provide sensible explanations toour ideas, our precepts and our
teachings, and we should allhold ourselves to that standard,
I believe.
Laurie (03:33):
Right?
Well, we need to scrutinize andanalyze the ancient alien
theory with the same methodsthat we would with religion.
Overall, I think the debate isgood.
It is a good thing that helpsexpand our understanding of
complex topics.
Joe (03:52):
Yeah, and we spent a good amount of time with James going
over the Westhoff and BillyCarson debate from early January
.
One of the points brought upfrom that is the significance of
a very ancient Babylonian textknown as the Enuma Elish and its
influence as a literary sourceto the biblical creation story
(04:15):
and it's nothing new.
We brought it up here on thisshow plenty of times before, but
the last time we were on weconcluded with the need to
expand a little more on theenumeralish and its importance
to much of the wholeJudeo-Christian tradition as it
comes from the book of Genesis,the intriguing points that a
(04:43):
Bible scholar who asserts itshistorical accuracy, wes Uff,
and Billy Carson raised duringtheir debates and today.
Laurie (04:55):
You know we want to focus specifically on Wes Huff's
assertion, for a little bitanyway, that there aren't many
similarities between the detailsin Genesis and the Enuma Elish.
Now, remember, Wes Huff is anapologist and scholar of the
Bible who asserts the historicalaccuracy of it.
(05:16):
Billy Carson, on the other hand, is the ancient alien theorist
who supports the idea that thereis a complex interchange and
adaptivity between the Biblicalnarrative and proposition that
much of it could be explained ascoming from extraterrestrial
(05:39):
encounters in the ancient past,by which some people were able
to describe what they sawthrough lavish and vivid
supernatural imagery, like wefind in these texts and it's not
just the Bible but all of theancient mythologies everywhere
worldwide.
(05:59):
But there is one story thatstands out as being very similar
to the one found in the book ofGenesis and that is the Enuma
Elish, and in their debate, wesand Billy fully agreed with each
other that verses mentioningthe separation of the waters are
(06:19):
nearly identical.
However, we know from readingits translations that it is full
of passages that parallelGenesis.
But you know with even moredetail.
So, consider what we have inGenesis 1: 6 to 10, with God
(06:41):
saying you know, let there be afirmament in the midst of the
waters and let it divide thewaters from the water From.
I think that's where theyseparate the fresh and the sea
water, the salt water, and Godmade the expanse and separated
the water under the expanse fromthe water above, and God called
(07:01):
the expanse sky.
What we have is God separatingwater from water to make the sky
the atmosphere, I guess.
So, the big question is youknow, what does that even mean?
And there's no mention of himmaking water in the first place,
because you know, the Spirit ofthe Lord hovered over the face
of the deep is what it says inthe Bible.
Joe (07:23):
Yeah, it's like the water was there.
Laurie (07:25):
Already there.
Joe (07:27):
Yeah, there was no creation of water.
It was just there along withGod.
Right Now.
This has always been aperplexing use of semantics and
has baffled people for centuries, whether theologians or
scientists.
It's always made me wonder.
So, if we are to acceptcreationism, then we need to
grasp what is going on in themaking of the sky and ocean, and
(07:49):
really all we have is Godspeaking it into existence out
of nothingness.
You know, are we just to assumethat everything was made by
magic?
Ancient people did notunderstand many of the natural
processes going on in the worldin terms of knowing about
geology, meteorology, astronomyand so on.
(08:10):
So this idea of the firmament,which was thought to be a mass
of water, sort of encapsulatingthe sky and the earth below it,
it was never supported by anykind of evidence, nothing that
suggests the Earth was onceinside what seems to be
something like a shaker snowglobe, one of those ornaments
(08:32):
we've all seen, in which thewater surrounds what is inside.
There's no evidence that such athing ever existed.
So what was it?
What was being talked about?
When you're mentioning thefirmament, it could be, as we
see as typical and common inmythological literature is that
it is referring to something asmetaphor or allegory and not so
(08:54):
much as a literal description.
So is it talking aboutsomething else?
That could very well becompletely different from the
way we are reading it today.
Laurie (09:03):
Very well be completely different from the way we are
reading it today.
Yeah, again, the Bible has itall.
In a nutshell, I believe, anddefinitely based on faith,
because there is no evidence toprove.
You know how it was formed inthe biblical text, but something
like the firmament might besymbolic of something else, like
perhaps something celestial orinterstellar.
(09:26):
Well, you know, compare what Iread from Genesis to the script
on the first tablet of the newmilitia.
That starts with the line they Iguess they, being the gods, had
mingled their waters togetherbefore Meadowland and Reedbed
was to be found when not one ofthe gods had been formed or had
(09:48):
come into being.
When not one of the gods hadbeen formed or had come into
being, when no destinies hadbeen decreed, the gods were
created within them.
La-mu and La Anu Amu wereformed and came into being.
While they grew and increasedin stature, ansar and Kesar, who
(10:11):
excelled them, were created andthey prolonged their days.
They multiplied their years.
Anu, their son, could rival hisfather.
Anu, the son son equaled Ansar.
And it goes on for about 300 orso verses describing how
everything on land, sea and skywas formed through a cosmic
(10:33):
battle of the gods way up inheaven.
And I believe I said I got ridof that from Genesis.
That was a mistake.
That's actually from the EnumaElish, but just from this
passage alone, you know, we seethat what is taking place is
extraterrestrials, as it ishappening beyond Earth.
So, the question would be, youknow, are these
(10:53):
extraterrestrials really spiritsand gods or are they life forms
with flesh and blood, physicalbodies much like our own blood,
physical bodies, much like ourown?
And you know, basically we havethe very brief first and second
days of biblical creation thatis elaborated in an almost
treatise or essay form.
(11:14):
You know, now it's really noless obscure than you know what
we read in Genesis, but it isdefinitely way more
comprehensive and that's why Iwas saying the Bible has it
condensed in like a nutshellversion.
It tells about God making theearth and creating everything,
(11:34):
but doesn't say how it allhappened.
So, and if you listen to all ofour previous episodes, you can
tell that we're pretty much onboard with these gods and
everything beingextraterrestrials.
But many scholars who havecompared the two have concluded
for quite some time now thatGenesis, and indeed the entire
(11:57):
Pentateuch for that matter, ismore like a condensed
transcription of the Enuma Elishand the other Mesopotamian
sources.
Joe (12:05):
Yeah, and is much more ancient, and that is evident
from studying the originalHebrew form of the scriptural
text in which they are compiled,integrated and refined in
sections that are retelling ofsomething else, something much
more antiquated that was aroundbefore it.
So, the Enuma Elish is alsoknown as the Seven Tablets of
(12:26):
Creation and is believed to dateback to an even earlier version
, predating King Hammurabi, hisreign in Babylon, which was
around 1792 to 1750 B.
C.
, and he is one who, inBabylonian mythology and history
, is elevated to the god Marduk,and that is the patron deity of
(12:49):
Babylon, the city and theempire.
So that's more than a thousandyears before the formation of
what we know as the OldTestament, and many history and
literary experts believe thatthe Pentateuch, which is Greek
for five scrolls, also known asthe Torah in Hebrew, was made by
using material from these oldersources, particularly from
(13:10):
Babylonian ones, just like theEnuma Elish.
So, you know, the Enuma Elishis Akkadian and it means it
translates when the heights, orwhen on high, or when the
heavens above, which is noneother than the very opening
verse of the text, and it issimilar in meaning to in the
(13:35):
beginning from Genesis.
We see a very Biblicalperspective, in that there is a
supreme deity in charge of all,that is, who is above all, that
is on the earth.
Everything happens and is therebecause of him, and humans are
made to obey him.
But unlike in the Bible, thatdeity in the Enuma, Elish, is
(13:56):
more corporal, very powerful,but not at all abstract or
transcendent, and not invisiblelike the Hebrew God and
subsequently the Christian God.
And that God is Marduk.
His role is more like that of achampion who has been
victorious over forces of chaosand disarray, and by doing so he
(14:16):
creates the universe.
Now Marduk is the BabylonianGod, and his depiction was
contrived from an even earliernarrative of the Sumerians, and
that mythology put Enki at thiscentral position in which he was
in contention with his brotherEnlil, both of whom sons of the
(14:37):
chief figure of a bigger godnamed An, and that name, of
course, is the root word for themythical figures known as
Anunnaki, children of An, i.
e.
, children of God.
And so, it all ties in nicelywith other traditions, as we see
.
Laurie (14:54):
Yeah, and on is just, you know, en and ki, on is sky
and ki is earth.
So, on, ki and ki and not ki,those are, from the heavens to
earth came, as Zechariah Sitchinhad translated.
But interestingly, like yousaid, that opening phrase, when
(15:17):
on I, it does sound very similarto the first line of Genesis in
the beginning, but both seem tomark an unspecified beginning
of time to a place above it, inthe heights, you know,
encompassing the world, namelythe heavens.
And they both describe theearth at that particular moment
(15:39):
to be formless and void withdarkness covering the face of
the deep, like I said earlier.
So, you know, many people aresurprised to learn that the
Pentateuch, the Torah, which istraditionally claimed to have
been written by Moses, wasmerely written by scribes who
gave literary attribution toMoses.
(15:59):
I mean, if you think about it,the final chapter of the book of
Deuteronomy portrays the deathof Moses.
So how could someone provide anarrative about their own death?
Clearly, the material for thismanuscript has come from other,
earlier sources.
Joe (16:16):
Yeah, and so up until the middle of the 19th century, the
consensus was that the Bible wasthe world's oldest book and it
was thought to be completelyoriginal, with nothing being
around before it.
After all, it contains storiesthat go all the way back to the
beginning of everything.
Then discoveries were madeduring European expeditions to
the Middle East, where artifactswere dug up which revealed much
(16:40):
more about the history of theancient world than was thought,
and people started to becomemore motivated to visit and
examine the lands of the HolyBible, to go and check out the
places that were mentioned in it, like Jerusalem, Bethlehem,
Damascus, the Sea of Galilee,Babylon, the Red Sea and many
others.
So as it was, in 1846, Britishexplorer Austin Henry Lanyard
(17:11):
came upon the ruins of Nineveh,the capital city of Assyria,
which is well known inscriptural lore from the Book of
Jonah.
Growing up as a kid, everyonehas learned about it in Sunday
school with the story of Jonahand the whale.
And upon excavating the site, heand his team found the buried
and forgotten Lbrary ofAshurbanipal, the Assyrian king
(17:31):
who was also found in the pagesof the Bible and who ruled from
668 to 627 BC.
So within the old structurethey came across some clay
tablets that had cuneiformscript, and there were over
30,000 of them, so quite a lot,and I would have loved to have
been part of something like that.
It must have been like a realIndiana Jones movement there,
(17:54):
entering a dark, dusty andforlorn chamber back in the
1840s.
This chamber is covered incenturies of dusty, dirty,
desert sand and then findingthese clay tablets belonging to
a king from the Old Testament.
I can only imagine what thatmust have been like.
Laurie (18:13):
Yeah, me too.
And even more intriguing isthat the language was Akkadian
and it was a Semitic dialectformed in Akkad around the 25th
century B.
C.
and spoken in Babylon andAssyria, and, along with ancient
Egyptian, it could very well bethe oldest written language
(18:36):
that we know of, and it isthrough this language that we
know of, and it is through thislanguage that the tales of Sumer
have survived.
And the Sumerian language wasnot like the other languages
that came after it.
So the knowledge from theoldest civilization on Earth is
preserved in the Akkadian script, in cuneiform, which was
(18:58):
discovered in I think it was the1800s, and from there it became
evident that everything aboutthe Sumerians was later passed
on to another Semitic language,Hebrew, from which you know, we
get the Bible, even yeah, andyou know, during that Victorian
era, like I was saying, you know, there were actually museums
(19:19):
and universities and churchesthat sponsored these kind of
excavations.
Joe (19:23):
So it was kind of a big hype back then, and these
excavations were of particularinterest to Mesopotamia, Egypt
and the Holy Land.
At the time it was all underthe Ottoman Empire, so I don't
know what traveling was likeback then.
It was probably prettydangerous.
But they wanted to search forphysical evidence for the
historical collaboration ofbiblical accounts and what was
(19:46):
found was really more theopposite.
And what they found was thediscovery of these cuneiform
tablets showed that the book ofGenesis telling about the
creation and the fall of man,the Nephilim, the great flood,
the Tower of Babel, thepatriarchs they were actually
Assyrian in origin, which inturn were Babylonian in origin,
(20:08):
which in turn were Sumerian inorigin.
So, it goes from Sumer toBabylon, to Assyria and then on
to other groups, one of thoseother groups being the
Israelites all over the course,I would say at least 2,000 years
.
So, it's 2,000 years later thatthe Israelites get the story
that we have in the Bible,coming from something much
(20:29):
earlier.
Laurie (20:31):
Yeah, and now here we are today, thousands of years
later, with our own religion,christianity, which derived from
the Jewish religion.
You know the Old Testament andwe've canonized that into our
Bible and now we have tocoincide with our New Testament
(20:52):
and you know, but all that stuffyou're saying, you know this is
all stuff that ZechariahSitchin wrote about.
Anyone familiar with theTwelfth Planet, the first book
in The Earth Chronicles series,you know they probably recognize
what we're saying here as itwas thoroughly covered and
analyzed in those works, andalso from Eric von Däniken's
(21:15):
Chariots of the Gods.
And we all know how the theoryof ancient aliens plays into you
know this mythology and, likeyou said, you know you went all
the way back to Sumerian andeverything you know.
After the Sumerians, othercultures can claim these stories
to be myths.
But, like Zachariah Sitchinonce the first civilization gets
(21:37):
said, you know how does thefirst civilization get a myth?
They don't.
Their stories are historicaldocuments.
So, and you know so it playsinto the mythology, as you know,
as many of the historiansbelieve and assume are to have
(21:59):
been the first civilization onEarth, at least based on the
accepted archaeological recordwe now have.
Granted there is evidence likeGobekli Tempe that challenges
that.
But at this time, but thenagain, Gobekli Tempe could.
Now I'm hearing that that maynot have been the Homo Sapien
(22:21):
race, that could have beenwhoever the Atlanteans were that
built that.
But at this time, mankind comingforth from that, we must ask
(22:44):
you know where did the idea comefrom?
You know how did such imageryspawn within the storytelling
ability of our ancient minds?
And you know what was thesource of that kind of
inspiration?
Was the source of that kind ofinspiration?
Well, and it's like we've beensaying, the idea of the imagery
(23:06):
came from the ancient peoples,their misunderstanding of
extraterrestrials and of theirtechnology, such that the
stories that were passed downbecame construed in the way they
knew how to express themselves.
And if we today were to try andexplain some scientific fact or
some natural phenomena to asmall child who has barely
(23:31):
learned how to speak and listen,they would visualize as being
more magical and more dramatic,visualized as being more magical
and more dramatic.
Being told that a comet's tailforms as it gets close to the
sun may very well conjure amental picture of it being a
living thing, with a literaltail that starts to grow as it
(23:55):
flies across the sky toward oursun, and so the ancient people
probably would have envisionedsuch notions in the same way
that they were told about them.
And it's like you know we don't.
We saw that tic-tac and wereferred to.
We don't know what that was,but what did it look like?
To us in our civilization'stime?
It looked like a tic-tac, andso we refer to it as that.
Joe (24:20):
Right, and in a previous time, when they didn't have
tic-tacs, they would have calledit an egg exactly that eggs,
didn't have tic-tacs, um.
But I mean, when we speak inordinary language about things
like um, like splitting the atom, many people tend to think of a
tiny atom as being broken intotwo pieces, like putting a piece
of fruit, when that is notreally what is happening, and
(24:44):
any you know theoreticalphysicist will tell you that's
not exactly what goes on whenyou split the atom, but that's
the imagery, that's sort of theword description we get.
So, yeah, this is what most ofus have in our minds when we
think about that and it's how weillustrate it when we're
talking about it to others right.
Laurie (25:02):
And so when we look at the, the um, the battles of the
ancient time, the ancients, howthey wrote those battles, um,
like the, the story of a cosmicbattle with these colossal gods,
they're like striking eachother in the heavens with, you
know force, almost like a pooltable of planets, may just be a
(25:28):
prehistoric rendition of themovement of the celestial bodies
in which the planet Tiamat wassplit into by Marduk, also
associated with the planetcalled Nibiru, where the
Anunnaki are from, and theEarth's formlessness and void.
That signifies that it had yetto coalesce into the planet that
(25:52):
we are living on today.
While the darkness of spaceenveloped the remnants of Tiamat
(26:26):
, which were in the process offorming a new world, the other
half of Tiamat scatteredthroughout the solar system,
eventually becoming the asteroidbelt aptly referred to in the
Bible as the hammered bracelet.
So mythology may just be apersonification of planetary
astronomy that dates back to thedistant past.
The celestial bodies are thegiven names as gods, but I think
it was Henry K Rawlinson whenhe first discovered the
cuneiform tablets.
He translated them as you know.
These, the planets as gods, butwhat else could have been given
(26:47):
divine names?
So could some be the names ofancient people, designated
highly sophisticated andtechnological beings from
another world, as Marduk, thechampion of the young gods in
their war against Tiamat, who isfemale, is of Babylonian origin
.
The Sumerian Inki, babylonian Iaor Enlil, is thought to have,
(27:13):
which would be his brother,half-brother, thought to have
played a major role in thisoriginal version.
The fragments of the copies ofthe Illuminae Lish found at
Asher have the god Asher in themain role, so the patron god of
different city-states would beprominent in the story.
(27:35):
So Marduk only figures asprolifically as he does, because
, you know, most of the copiescome down from Babylon or
Babylonian scribes, even in theAssyrian ones.
Even so, the Sumerian god Enkistill plays an important part in
these versions as the one whocreated human beings.
(27:58):
But this tendency for varioustribes and groups of people to
elevate their own deities to thestatus of being the most
powerful is quite evidentthroughout the Middle Eastern
cultures.
A parallel can be found withthe Hebrew theme, as can be seen
(28:19):
in Psalm 89.7, which says inthe counsel of the holy ones,
god is greatly feared andawesome above all who surround
him.
Now, this sounds a lot like anypantheon from the ancient world
, much like we would find inGreek mythology, with the gods
dwelling on Mount Levis right.
Joe (28:46):
Yeah.
So with that, it could be thatthe Jewish priests and scribes
were intending to develop andillustrate a stark contrast
between Yahweh, who is their god, and the Lord from all the
other pagan deities.
And yet it seems that thepsalmist was speaking of him as
being included within thiscouncil of other deities.
Granted, he is said to behigher than them, but at the
same time he acknowledges theirexistence.
(29:07):
And I think at this point inthis Old Testament scriptures,
we're trying to see Yahweh aslooking more of an abstract and
less like the pagan gods who arealways depicted in bodily form
with faces.
It got to the point where, inJewish belief, you weren't
supposed to even have the nameYahweh spelled out.
(29:30):
There was no way you were eversupposed to try to paint a
picture of God.
God has no image.
He's completely abstract.
Also, when you look at the TenCommandments, they emphasize
this directive from God to theHebrew people, instructing them
to have no other gods but him,and this is contrary to the idea
that other gods are not at allreal.
(29:51):
He's acknowledging that theyare and he's telling the
Israelites that they certainlydo exist, but they shouldn't
dare try to put any of themwithin their hearts or within
their worldview, as being abovehim.
And we also need to keep in mindthat when the Tanakh and that
is the entire Hebrew Bible whenit was actually compiled, it was
(30:13):
after the return of the Jewsfrom the Babylonian exile, and
that was around 520 BC.
Return of the Jews from theBabylonian exile, and that was
around 520 B.
C.
And it was then that thescribes began to memorialize
Jewish doctrine and theology bycompleting the written canon,
and that is a later date thanmany Christians realize.
After talking to a lot ofpeople, they don't realize that
(30:36):
the Old Testament as we know itwas actually compiled that late
in time.
Many of them believe that itwas written like 2000 B.
C.
and so there was a ton of timefor oral tradition to filter
down from earlier Mesopotamiansources to 520 B.
C.
to be written as the HebrewBible, and indeed that is what
(30:58):
we find.
Upon close examination of theCuneiform scripts, we see that
it morphed its way down into theform we have in the Old
Testament scriptures.
Laurie (31:11):
Yeah, now there are other tablets that were
subsequently found at sites likeAshur, kish, saper and Ur, all
of which were also part of theAssyrian Empire and Babylonian
Empire, that also containedthese scripts that made up the
(31:34):
Enuma.
Elish Scholars consider thestory to be one of the oldest,
if not the absolute oldest, inthe world, and it tells of the
birth of the gods and thecreation of the universe and
human beings.
And it references that in thebeginning there was only
(31:54):
undiffriated, undifferentiatedwater swirling around in chaos,
like everything was out ofcontrol.
And out of this swirl, thewaters divided into sweet, fresh
water, known as the god Apsu,and salty, bitter water, the
(32:16):
goddess Tiamat.
So, once Differiturated, theunion of these two entities gave
birth to the younger gods.
So here are some more versesthat cover this Babylonian
creation story.
This is quoted from thisancient story.
(32:40):
So these young gods, however,were extremely loud, troubling
the sleep of Apsu at night anddistracting him from his work by
day.
And, upon the advice of hisadvisor, mumu, apsu decides to
kill the younger gods.
Tiamat, hearing of their plan,warns their eldest son, enki
(33:04):
again Babylon, sometimes Ea andhe puts Apsu to sleep and kills
him.
From Apsu's remains, Enkicreates his home.
Joe (33:14):
With this.
What we're seeing is a muchmore descriptive account of
what's happening during creationVolumes, more than what we find
with the Bible.
In the Bible, God just simplyspeaks things into existence.
It's actually very brief.
When you look at the pages ofany Bible, you see that creation
(33:35):
takes about three pages, andthat's it Now.
Does this sound like fantasy?
Yes, of course a lot ofmythology does, but I think the
real question is does it speakin symbols?
Is the message being delivered,encrypted in some way, about
greater things that are perhapsdifficult for the ancient mind
(33:56):
to comprehend?
Laurie (33:58):
Right, and I think that the answer to that is yes.
I mean, it just goes on and onwith.
You know, then, tiamat, oncethe supporter of the younger
gods, tiamat, rewards Kingu withthe Tablets of Destiny, which
(34:26):
legitimize the rule of a god andcontrol the fates, and he wears
them proudly as a bristly.
With Kingu as her champion,tiamat summons the forces of
chaos and creates 11 horriblemonsters to destroy her children
.
Now, ea, enki and the youngergods fight against Tiamat,
(34:52):
futilely, until from among thememerges the champion, marduk,
who swears he will defeat Tiamat.
And Marduk defeats Kingu andkills Tiamat by shooting her
with an arrow which splits herin two.
From her eyes flow the watersof the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers.
Out of Tiamat's corpse, mardukcreates the heavens and the
(35:14):
earth.
He appoints gods to variousduties and binds Tiamat's eleven
creatures to his feet astrophies too much, you know
adulation from the other gods.
Before sitting their images inhis new home, he also takes the
tablets of destiny from Kingu,thus legitimizing his reign.
So after the gods have finishedpassing, praising him for his
(35:39):
great victory and the art of hiscreation, marduk consults with
the god Ea, which the god ofwisdom, which is also his father
, and decides to create humanbeings from the remains of
whichever of the gods encouragedTiamat to make war and Kingu is
charged as guilty and killed,and from his blood Ea creates
(36:02):
Lulu, the first man to help thegods in their eternal task of
maintaining order and keepingchaos at bay.
Joe (36:10):
And as this epic poem ends, it says that Ea created mankind
, on whom he imposed the serviceof the gods and set the gods
free.
So, following this, Marduk issaid to have arranged the
organization of the netherworldand distributed the gods to
their appointed stations.
So, then there's a long praiseof Marduk for his
(36:32):
accomplishments, much like howGenesis 2, 1-4 gives a doxology
of God sanctifying all that hehad created.
It's much briefer and, youmight say, less embellished.
It gets right to the point.
God made it, he thought it wasgood and he rested, just as the
people of Israel are supposed todo under the Mosaic law, right?
Laurie (36:56):
Right, and so from this narrative we end up getting an
elaborate pantheon of deitiesthat exist in all of the
Mesopotamian cultures.
Unlike with the Hebrews, thereis a prominent matriarchy with
Iana, Ishtar, asherah, ashtarat.
These are encountered by theIsraelites in their sojourn in
(37:18):
the books of Exodus, leviticusand Deuteronomy, with the tribes
of the Canaanites, the Moabites, the Am morites, the Midianites
, the Edomites and theGideonites.
A whole lot of "ts where thedeity Baal was a major figure.
Now, he was likely a derivationof Marduk, Ea or Enlil, as
(37:42):
theological was typical of allthese different groups of people
, meaning that the names andpersons and niche of these gods
were borrowed back and forthfrom among them back and forth
from among them.
Joe (38:07):
And not only that, but many Bible historians speculate that
the name and personage ofYahweh may have also been
derived from this source, fromMarduk.
And there's an interestingarticle by J Glenn Taylor from
the magazine BiblicalArchaeology Review.
It's dated May 1994, over 30years ago, and they found
artifacts from ancient Samariathat is located in northern
(38:30):
Israel, and they make referenceto Yahweh as having a female
consort, and these artifactsdate to 1000 to 800 B.
C.
Now this is the time frame inwhich David and Solomon's
kingdom was taking shape.
It was also a time of theconstruction of the first temple
in Jerusalem and it was a timeof the dominant theme being
(38:53):
formed, of the covenant withGod's nation and that being more
solidified within the Judaismfaith.
So, we have they're likepottery objects and they have
inscriptions that talk aboutYahweh and Asherah, his consort,
his wife, and this gives us avery strong connection.
This is almost, you know, kindof a bombshell in a way, because
(39:18):
it shows a strong connectionbetween Yahweh and the god, Baal
, who also had a consort,Asherah, and also sometimes
called Ashtaroth.
So, the same, same female, sameconsort shared by Baal and
Yahweh, meaning that it's almostseems like the idea of Yahweh
(39:40):
was sort of transposed from theimage of Baal.
Now, later on, that becameapparent that they were not the
same.
In fact, they were in the books.
One of the books I think it wasthe First Book of Samuel, Elijah
has Baal and God duking it outon a burnt offering altar.
But there is a parallel betweenthe Israelite religion, with
(40:02):
the Lord, that being Yahweh, andthat of the Canaanites as well
as the surrounding tribes, whichin turn is a parallel between
them and the Babylonians.
So, we can see how thisSumerian mythology is like
passed down, like filtered downall the way into the Jewish
religion.
Remember, this is over a courseof 2,000 or more years and
(40:23):
eventually we see it in theTanakh, the Old Testament, and
like in the Books of Kings andthe Books of Samuel, we see that
they break away from conceivingthe Lord as being completely
different from Baal.
By the time you get into thebooks of the Kings, the authors
want to make it pretty clearthat Yahweh is not Baal, and he
(40:44):
has no female consort, nofeminine goddess.
Laurie (40:47):
And that is one of the distinctions of Judaism and
Christianity is that therereally is no mother goddess of
theology and integration of godshappening everywhere throughout
the ancient world, as peopleadopt beliefs from others, as
migrations would be taking placeall the time and in Babylon,
(41:11):
marduk gained prominence duringthe reign of Hammurabi and
quickly surpassed the formerpatron deity Inanna or Ishtar in
popularity, and duringHammurabi's reign, in fact, a
number of previously popularfemale deities were replaced by
the male gods.
The Enuma Elish praising Mardukas the most powerful of all the
(41:34):
gods therefore becameincreasingly popular as the god
himself rose in prominence andhis city of Babylon grew in
power.
Scholar Jeremy Black writes therise of the cult of Marduk is
closely connected with the riseof Babylon from city-state to
the capital of an empire.
This was in much the way, asyou were saying.
(41:57):
You know that the rise ofYahweh was closely connected to
Israel becoming a unifiedkingdom.
After the Israelite exodus fromEgypt, the Marduk became more
and more important, until theauthors of the Babylonian epic
maintain that not only was hethe king of all the gods, but
(42:18):
that many of the other ones thatwere mentioned before or later
were nothing other than aspectsof his persona.
And this sounds exactly likehow the Hebrew God was written
into the Genesis story as theall-powerful creator who
transcends all human affairs,which, of course, resulted in
(42:39):
the writing of our Bible.
Joe (42:42):
And something important that we need to remember is that
the Bible is not the OldTestament, the New Testament as
well.
It's not complete.
We find all kinds of passageswithin the scriptures that
allude to books that are prettymuch wiped out of existence.
There's the Book of the Wars ofthe Lord, talked about in
Numbers 21 (43:00):
14.
Wars of the Lord, talked aboutin Numbers 21:14.
The book of Jasher from Joshua,10:13, and 2 Samuel 1:18.
The Book of the Rights andDuties of the King, that's 1
Samuel 10:25.
The Book of the Acts of Solomon, that's 1 Kings 4.
32.
The Book of the Covenant wasfound in Exodus 24:7, and even
(43:23):
one called the Book of theProphet Nathan in 2 Chronicles
9:29.
And there are about 30 or somanuscripts referenced which to
this date have not survived.
We really don't know what waswritten in them.
And although the basic paradigmof the biblical narrative and
the Enuma Elish stories they doalign closely, there are still
(43:44):
significant differences, andthat's noted by historian and
scholar Stephen Burtman, thatboth Genesis and the Enuma Elish
, they detail and celebratereligion.
While Genesis describes theorigin and founding of the
Jewish people under the guidanceof the Lord, the Enuma Elish
recounts the origin and foundingof Babylon under the god Marduk
(44:06):
.
Each contains a story of howthe cosmos and man were created.
Each work begins by describingthis watery chaos and primeval
darkness that once filled theentire universe, and then light
is created to replace thatdarkness.
Afterward the heavens are madeand in them the heavenly bodies
are placed, and finally man iscreated as the apex.
(44:28):
So, these similaritiesnotwithstanding, the two
accounts are more different thanthey are alike, and you kind of
point it out by his reading thepassage of how different it is.
Laurie (44:39):
Nothing like that is found anywhere throughout the
Old Testament different it isNothing like that is found
anywhere throughout the OldTestament.
Well, just as Genesis wouldhave, you know, resonated with
followers of Judaism, so too theEnuma Elish would have
resonated with Babylonians, whosaw, you know, their people
breaking with the traditions ofthe past to create an era of a
(45:00):
new god-king, who was none otherthan Nebuchadnezzar II, the one
who reigned from 605 to 562 B.
C.
during the Jewish exile.
Antiquity scholar E ThorkinJacobson, for example, notes
that Babylon warred with theterritory of ancient Sumer and
(45:21):
all its renowned and venerableancient cities and their gods.
And the story, then, can beread not only as a grand tale of
the triumph of order over chaosand light over darkness, but as
a parallel of the rise ofBabylon and the Babylonian
culture over the old Sumerianmodel of civilization.
(45:45):
Further, the tale can beunderstood as an illustration of
the concept of life asperpetual change.
And this is the exact same themewe get from the Christian
scriptures that the ways of theprior inhabitants of the
promised land and all theenemies of the children of
(46:06):
Israel are to be vanquished andreplaced with a new world order.
There is the same conceptchange and mutability to the
universe through their creationas mortal beings who are subject
to death.
Likewise, they are a peoplethat are tasked with keeping a
(46:26):
covenant with the gods andmaintain their eternal work on
earth and, you know, thereforegain measure of immortality by
doing it as well as they can.
The message is always the samewith religions, and that is,
humans have gotten theirrelationship with God completely
wrong, as it was meant to be inthe beginning, drastically and
(46:49):
irrevocably wrong.
So God then chooses a group ofpeople to bring about a renewed
order that eliminates the old,incorrect way of worshiping him.
That is certainlyJudeo-Christianity in a nutshell
, right?
What Mesopotamian myths likethe Enuma Elish teach us is that
(47:15):
this way of thinking is an oldand borrowed one from a long
time ago.
Joe (47:19):
So where does that leave us with the typology of the Bible?
And what I mean is that thatbeing an inspired series of
books put together to form whatis widely accepted as being the
word of god that conveys amessage to all of humanity, past
, present and future.
Clearly, the theory of ancientaliens, much like the theory of
(47:40):
evolution, turns such orthodoxthinking on its head, since it
introduces questions of doubt asto how people of faith, or how
people place faith in it asbeing infallible and inerrant,
making its overall narrativemuch more opaque.
I just wanted to correct what Isaid earlier in reference to
Elijah and Baal, and that's notin Samuel, that reference to
(48:01):
Elijah and Baal, and that's notin Samuel, that's in Kings.
That's not 1 Samuel, that's 1Kings, 1 Kings 18.
So I just want to point that outand also, by expanding our
hermeneutics so as to encompassthese sources that go back to
the same time era of the OldTestament, we're forced to
(48:24):
reevaluate what these narrativesmean in their literal sense.
So, if the account of Adam andEve was an apologetic method of
somehow abridging andparaphrasing something like the
Enuma Elish, then this altersmuch of the religious dogma that
stems from the interpretationsof it the notions such as
original sin, the fall fromgrace, atonement and covenant,
god's redemption of humanity.
(48:44):
These are all presented toChristians through teachings
that are based upon thetheological authority that is
attributed to the Bible and howit is read.
So, if these scriptures areactually inauthentic and
unoriginal, meaning that theyare compiled and syncretized
from Babylonian sources originalmeaning that they are compiled
(49:05):
and syncretized from Babyloniansources which are quite
different, as we just kind ofpoint out by reading them and
then go back much further in atime then does that challenge
the whole belief system?
Can we still responsibly talkabout the bible as a book that
is supposed to be an inspiredwork of God, a message from God,
and that tells the wholecomplete story about humanity's
(49:25):
creation, condemnation, struggleagainst evil and eventual
salvation from the Devil?
Laurie (49:33):
Right, and that's good questions, and it makes us ask
if this entire spiritual view iseven justified so it can be
accepted on faith and indeedthat is how it is taught
manifest when you find that itcertainly is not the oldest
piece of literature in existenceand that it was written as an
(50:02):
abridged way to Judaize andlater to Christianize the story
about our human condition andour place in the grand scheme of
things.
If that is so, then it behoovesus to really search for the
original message and theoriginal meaning of the earliest
tradition from which it allcame and, it seems, from the
(50:25):
comparison to the Enuma Elishhave all come from the
storytelling of Sumer of a timefrom a very long time ago very
long time ago.
Joe (50:34):
Well, it's something that you and I have been asked before
by people.
Is you know?
Does the ancient alien theoryreally posit the notion of what
we are reading in the pages ofscripture?
You know, things like theparting of the Red Sea, Jacob's
Ladder, Elijah's fiery chariot,the Ark of the Covenant,
Ezekiel's wheel in the sky.
Are these a record of people ina time of the Bible actually
(50:58):
witnessing some form ofextraterrestrial technology?
Is that what there is to thesestories?
And to that I would say notexactly.
It is yes and no.
But what guys like Sitchin andVon Daniken seem to suggest is
that the literary material andthe literary devices used in the
(51:18):
telling of the stories, likewhat we have in the Bible, comes
from much, much older imagerythat was passed down from a time
perhaps when alien beings cameto Earth and humans had
encountered them and interactedwith them, and this would have
been a time before there waseven real language and they were
incapable of documenting it inthe way that we would today.
(51:40):
So the stories and tales aboutall of that became the backbone
of oral tradition, and thatlasted for millennia after
millennia, until it did becomepart of the storytelling fabric
of the people who would havebeen the ones who had written
down the content of what we haveas the Hebrew Scriptures.
Laurie (52:00):
Yeah, and some folks have also said that the idea of
ancient aliens, about all thatSitchin wrote in the Earth
Chronicles, sounds mostly likefantasy.
Well, the stories of the Biblecan be taken as God's word to
all of humanity for all ages,and that all of the miracles and
wonders, the wonderful thingsthat were mentioned in it can be
(52:25):
believed because it is from Godand therefore it's not fantasy.
So this is not at all a soundargument at all.
It is the same as saying thatsomething is not too
extraordinary to believe as longas you believe it the same way
I do.
If you believe it differentlyfrom that way, then you're crazy
(52:48):
.
They are saying that Elijahbeing taken up in a fiery
chariot is not fantasy, as longas you have faith in God.
So if you suggest it is aimagery derived from some
extraterrestrial encounter inthe prehistoric past, then you
are merely dabbling in theimagination.
Joe (53:07):
Right.
And then the problem is thatboth ways of interpreting the
analytics of the narratives inthe Bible, whether acts of God
or acts of ancient aliens,require a good bit of
speculative thinking as well asa good bit of imagination.
And with one approach, it isaccepted through faith, through
your belief system, while theother is rejected due to a lack
(53:27):
of evidence.
It's important to take noticethat both of the so-called
models of belief lack evidence.
If you were to accept the truthin stories about talking snakes
, talking donkeys, a sea beingparted, trumpet sounds bringing
down stone walls and a manliving in the belly of a whale
(53:48):
for three days, all because youdo believe in an invisible God
that has the power to doanything, has the power to do
anything then that is flawed interms of logic and science as
thinking that aliens visited theearth in the past and are now
unseen and undetectable.
Neither of these views can bedemonstrated through reliable
evidence.
You really can't reject one andaccept the other, unless you
(54:11):
choose to do so by way ofpersonal faith, and that is how
we see that people do accept oneversion over the other.
You know, you were even pointingout with Moses.
You know that the belief of hebeing the author of the Torah
and that it mentions his owndeath.
So how does one write anarrative about their own death?
You also have to consider thatthe entire book of Genesis deals
(54:36):
with events that were beforehis time.
Moses doesn't appear until thebook of Exodus, so he's writing
about stories that were waybefore his time.
How did he get that information?
He had to have obtained thatfrom something older, something
that was around before he wouldhave written the first five
(54:57):
books of the Bible, as istraditionally believed.
So and clearly the evidencedoesn't support that that Moses
is not the actual author of thefirst five books of the Bible,
that it is attributed to him,but it was written by anonymous
scribes in the fourth century BCanonymous scribes in the fourth
(55:19):
century BC.
Laurie (55:20):
Yeah, I believe that Moses lived.
Was it 25, 23, 2500 years afterthe events in Genesis?
At least so that would be likesomebody 500 years from now
writing about times of Jesus andcalling that the gospel truth.
Joe (55:37):
Right, you know specific names, locations, that kind of
detail and just from oraltradition.
We know that oral traditionwould not have preserved that
kind of information.
You know there had to have beensome kind of written form, and
there was.
We see this with the EnumaElish.
There was indeed a written form.
That written form was you knowthe.
And there was.
We see this with the EnumaElish.
(55:58):
There was indeed a written form.
That written form was, you knowthe.
Laurie (56:00):
Cuneiform scripts yeah, and and uh.
Well, just look at the words ofJesus.
Right, they're all hearsay, andthat's just 2000 years ago and
Jesus is not attributed towriting anything.
So, um, the with the words, wasthere a being named Jesus
(56:21):
Christ or Joshua of Nazareth?
Yeshua, I guess, would be theactual original name for Jesus.
But you know, did he really saythese words?
He probably did, but not in theexact verbiage that we have in
the red letter text of the NewTestament today.
So yeah, things aren't realbecause they sound like they
should be real or seem to bereal.
(56:42):
They're real because they havebeen proven to be real, and that
actually requires a process, asyou and I know from doing
criminal investigations as cops,detectives.
When it comes to going to courtto prove a case, nothing is
left to imagination or thethought of.
Maybe.
You either show that somethingis true or it's not even allowed
(57:05):
to be acknowledged, and youmust follow strict rules in
doing so.
Joe (57:11):
Yeah, definitely the test of truth and the methods by
which something is proven to bereal or factual or accurate and
sound.
It could be quite arduous, butit also leaves hardly any doubt,
I mean.
So it's a hard standard, butonce you've achieved it, you
know that it is true and you donot have to really question it,
(57:32):
because it has gone through somuch testing and been
demonstrated so many times,repeated so many ways that it's
now considered an axiom.
And that's a difficult standardto reach, and I think what I
wish for most people is thatthey would hold the beliefs in
the same rigorous standard.
You know, question as much asyou can, as much as is sensible,
(57:54):
and be deliberate in thejudgments and decision-making so
as to ensure such confidencethat you have at least gotten
closer to finding the truth.
And even that may take.
(58:16):
You see that what you maybebelieve your entire life does
not hold up to scrutiny and theevidence does not support that,
and be willing to accept andacknowledge that.
So that is all for today.
There are many more ancienttexts that we would like to
discuss in the near future.
They come from places likeMesopotamia, but besides the
(58:40):
Enuma Elish, there's also theAtrahasis, which is a story
about the flood.
There's the Epic of Gilgamesh,the Code of Hammurabi.
There's also from ancient Egypt, the Book of the Dead and the
myth of Isis and Osiris manyothers and we hope to cover
those ones as well in the monthsahead and Osiris, many others,
and we hope to cover those onesas well in the months ahead.
Laurie (58:58):
Yeah, and before we get to those, we're actually
planning for next time onhosting a special guest for our
April 28th episode.
That's just two weeks away.
The author of the novel titledA Line in the Sand.
His name is Miles Spencer andhe has co-written with Wells
Jones this story, which is abouttwo friends who find adventure
(59:23):
traveling across the lands ofthe Middle East, which, as you
all know by now, ties into muchof what we've been discussing,
since the places of the Bibleand Mesopotamian slash Sumerian
mythology all come from theMiddle East.
So, you know, we hope that wecan get into talking about all
the ways that the cultures ofthat part of the world have
(59:44):
helped to shape much of what wehave in Western civilization.
So you know, we definitely lookforward to that one.
Joe (59:52):
Yes, apparently the novel covers a lot of history from
around the time of World War Iand bringing up the famous
British intelligence officer, teLawrence, aka Lawrence of
Arabia, and that has always beena subject of which I'm really
fascinated.
I just think it is a reallyinteresting period of time in
the history of the world,especially with what's happening
(01:00:13):
in the Middle East at the timewith the Balfour Declaration and
the Sites-Picote Agreement.
World War I has always been afascinating period of time for
me.
I've always loved watching someof the movies, some of the
period pieces that are onNetflix that while during World
War I, I think are reallyinteresting, and some of the
(01:00:35):
events that took place overthere at that time are still
affecting the region to this day.
So I'm sure that there will bea lot to learn about.
By talking to Miles Spencer,that should be on the 28th of
this month of April.
We hope you all join us forthat.
Please check our website,alienetalkpodcastcom, and our
Facebook page.
(01:00:55):
Take care, everyone.
Until next time, stay curious.
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