R
Raymond
Guest
On Sep 10, 4:44 am, Roger Pearse <roger_pea...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On 9 Sep, 03:27, "Stop The War" <stopthe...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> > "middle_class_warrior" <middle_class_warr...@verizon.net> wrote in messagenews:e9VDi.4922$J96.2919@trnddc02...
> > > Someone posted the Zeitgeist movie a couple of weeks ago that explained
> > > that the Jesus myth was taken form Egyptian mythology. Jesus is a
> > > reference to the Egyptian God, Horus ...
>
> > Right. Google "Christianity Before Christ" and "pagan Christs".
> > Horus is plagiarized by the Christians. The early Christians "borrowed"
> > much of their material from Horus and other pagan religions too, includingMithras, Bel, and more than a dozen other virgin birth/baptism/12 deciples/
> > trial/crucifixion/resurrection pagan religions which already existed in the
> > Middle East at the time of the origin and creation of Christianity.
>
> Google a bit harder and see all the people laughing at these cranks
> with their dumb suggestions about Mithras, Horus, etc.
>
> Only really stupid and uneducated people could fall for that one.
>
> All the best,
>
> Roger Pearse
The Bible is probably the greatest inter-text on the face of the
Earth. Almost all of its material is the result of interactions with
other Semitic literature and ancient Middle Eastern cultures.
Especially the discoveries in the last 150 years and the deciphering
of the texts on the unearthed tablets and other materials (foremost
among them the Sumerian clay tablets), demonstrated to what extent the
authors of the Old and New Testaments have borrowed their stories from
the ancient cultures and libraries.
The Old Testament is a supreme example of FICTION written many times
over.
http://www.geocities.com/spenta_mainyu/bible.htm
As we know many scholars have spent a lot of time to find out when the
various books of the Old Testament were written, and who the authors
were. Many of these scholars haven't cared to look into the history of
the scriptures and almost disregarded the fact that the present form
of the texts have come into being only about two thousand four hundred
years ago. But as the tablets from Sumer, Ras Shamra, Tell Mardikh,
Babylonia, and documents belonging Zoroastrianism etc., have shown,
these historical accounts and the fairy tales were collected,
compiled, summarized, and rewritten from a wealth of material that
Israelites have possessed, coming down from earlier periods. This
material of the Israelites are said to have been lost between the
second and forth centuries A.D. But at least we have the clay tablets
and the texts written on them, which indicate that the Old Testament
is not original but the authors have borrowed from other material.
We are told that there were some other sources as well, but the wars
throughout the region within the last two thousand years, have created
a situation where many of these have been lost or damaged to such an
extent that the contents do not make sense anymore. There were several
non-Hebrew historians who have dealt with the times of the best known
of the kings and some others, but these works have rarely been found
intact. The early Church fathers in Alexandria did however, in a lot
of their writings, included quotations from authors of quite a few
works that were a part of the celebrated library there in Egypt. We
are told that the sources that Ezra is thought to have employed were
shown to contain words and phrases that originated or were commonly
used in four distinct time periods; these are the 24th, 22nd, 14th,
10th, and 5th centuries B.C. The words and phrases of ancient origin
that exist in the scriptures, though they had been abandoned in the
surrounding cultures, show a continuity of understanding between the
language of the text and the language of those times. In other words
they do not belong to a more recent period, therefore are not the
result of some blending.
Here is a short list of these sources: Sumerian creation myths;
Babylonian Gilgamesh, Atrahasis (Ut-napishtim-Ziusudra) stories; hymns
to Marduk and Amon-Re; Ugarithic myths from Ras Shamra (with very
prominent gods - El and Baal); Zoroastrian doctrines; Mithras cult
etc. The rich coastal city of Ugarit which was destroyed in 1200 B.C,
had widespread trade relations throughout the Fertile Crescent and
across the Mediterranean. Ugarit had a twenty-six letter cuneiform
alphabet. This was an invention used by the traders and accountants
who had relations with other cultures and peoples in far away lands.
This alphabet and writing must have changed the illegible,
incomprehensible cultural atmosphere that was created by the ancient
temples; clearing the 'sacred' vagueness of pictographs and
transforming the communication medium into a secular, demotic script
which people of many different nations could easily adapt and use.
This language is seen as a direct forerunner of modern western
alphabets as well as the biblical Hebrew. Ugarit had a Canaanite
literature and the traditions of that society has influenced the Old
Testament. The scribes of Ugarit did know the city of Yerushalim and
the holy mount Zion nearby; this hill was known by that same name,
which meant in Ugaritic Canaanite, 'the seat of god'. That is not all,
many Old Testament characters, too, have typically Canaanite names:
For instance Absalom and Solomon. These names have a component in them
which is the the name of the Canaanite god of the evening star: Solom.
The fact that numerous biblical terms for the articles of daily life,
for clothes, perfumes and furniture were also Ugaritic underlines that
the Ugaritic influence was not only linguistic but also cultural,
extending into the appurtenances of daily life.
In 1868-1869 Charles Clermot-Ganneau found at Dibon (modern Dhiban,
Jordan) the famous Moabite Stele of King Mesha, dating from 9th
century B.C., which has a direct bearing on the Old Testament. The
stone was written in gratitude and devotion to Baal-Lebanon, in one of
the earliest known examples of the Semitic alphabet. Moabite national
god was Chemosh. On this stele, Mesha describes how Chemosh has
ordered him to "go and take Nebo from Israel"; how he has fought
Israel and killed seven thousand of them and "took from there the
vessels of YHVH, dragging them before Chemosh.." Chemosh's relation to
his children (the Moabites) was excactly like YHVH's relation to
Israel. Robin Lane Fox, in his book The Unauthorized Version writes:
"In Moab, the Number One was called Chemosh; in Israel, people looked
especially (but not solely) to Yahweh (YHVH): it is most striking that
Saul, the first king, gave one of his sons a name after the god Baal...
Jonathan did the same. From time to time Chemosh or Yahweh might be
angry with their worshippers, and, as a result (people believed) their
wars or weather could be unpredictable. To win Chemosh's or Yahweh's
favor, they had to offer animals and pay worship in their temples.
Eventually, the gods' anger would moderate (in due course people's
fortunes improved, if only from bad to less bad) and meanwhile the
priests lived off the necessary offerings. All the while, worshippers
were realistic about death. At best there might be a ghostly existence
for a few people in an underworld, but when they died, they died for
ever."
There were local cults as well to Baal Peor and Baal Meon. Mesha was a
strong follower of the Astarh-Chemosh cult. All the finds in the
biblical lands show that the biblical authors were suitably inspired
by the stories of the surrounding cultures.
The personal name of the god of Israel in the Bible is Y-H-UA-H
(Tetragrammaton='four letters'=YHVH). The Hebrew language had only
consonants and when the Masoretes produced the Masoretic text the
pronunciation of the divine name was lost, and since the pious Jews
did not pronounce the tetragrammaton and used words like adonai-adonay
(lord) or ha-shem (the name) we do not have the exact version. The
original ban on the free usage of god's name seems to have its origin
in Egypt, because every Egyptian magician believed that the one who
possessed the true name possessed the very being of god or man, and
could force even a 'supreme being' to obey him like a slave. Therefore
the magician has never stopped his attempts to obtain from the gods a
revelation of their sacred names. The only natural solution seemed to
be a ban on the free usage of god's name.
An excavation work started in 1964 at Tell Mardikh in north-western
Syria forty kilometers south of Aleppo turned out to be an excavation
of the ruins of the ancient city of Ebla. The documents unearthed
there have showed the existence of a mighty Canaanite empire in Syria
which embraced Palestine around 2400 B.C., and to the amazement of
everybody Tell Mardikh/Ebla turned out to be the ancient capital city
of this civilisation. There were 260,000 inhabitants in the city,
which existed 1,000 years before David and Solomon and was destroyed
by the Akkadians around 1600 B.C.
In 1975, a very important find was made at the Early Bronze Age levels
of Ebla in the form of nearly 20,000 clay tablets: The royal archives
of the city. These tablets date back to the middle of the 3rd
millenium B.C, almost 4,500 years ago. The language is Sumerian in the
form of wedge-shaped cuneiform script that is the world's oldest known
written language: The Old Canaanite, which is found out to be very
close in vocabulary and grammar to biblical Hebrew than any other
Canaanite dialect, including Ugaritic. This is an evidence as to the
age of the Hebrew language. The Ebla documents are vital insofar as
the linguistic problems in the scriptures are concerned. The original
Hebrew language had no vowels. Mainly Masoretes have worked on the
language; added vowels, and changed the definitions of the Hebrew
words between 6th and 12th centuries A.D. The language was already out
of use before their work. It was revived in 1948, after not being
spoken for nearly 1600 years. Therefore meanings of a number of words
are unknown, making it difficult to rely solely on the Hebrew version
as the last authority. The language of the Ebla tablets can give us a
clearer meaning of the doubtful words in these texts.
Before the stories in the Sumerian clay tablets were deciphered
mankind have thought that the Old Testament was a word of god, a
revelation. When the Sumerian stories were published the Old
Testament has lost its mystery completely, because the origin of the
fairy tales in the Book became clear. The records of the city of Ebla
has played an identical role (Check the page on the OLD TESTAMENT in
this site).
CITY OF EBLA AND A FURTHER PROOF THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT IS A
COLLECTION OF OLD TALES
The most important aspect of the unearthing of these tablets shows
itself in the place names.
There are references to places and vassal cities in Palestine like
Hazor, Gaza, Lachish, Megiddo, Akko, Sinai, and Ur-u-salima (coldn't
be anything but Yerushalim).
But much more important than the place names we read the personal
names which also appear in the Bible; names from the patriarchal age
like Ab-ra-mu (Av'ram-Abram-Abraham), E-sa-um (Esau), Ish-ma-ilu
(Ish'mael), even Is-ra-ilu (Israel), and from later periods, names
like Da'u'dum (David) and Sa'u'lum (Saul).
The most tantalizing revelation is the name of Ebrum (Biblical Eber -
the third and greatest of the six kings of the Ebla dynasty between
2400 and 2250 B.C.). He seems to have been placed on the throne of
Ebla by Great Sargon of Agade (Sharru-ken, Sharrum-kin) after a
punitive expedition in which Ebla was subjugated. This Ebrum reminds
Eber which is the person Hebrews claim to have descended from. Ebrum
reminds Av'ram-Abram (the patriarch) as well. Jews date Av'ram to
1900-1800 B.C. The name Ebrum reminds Abram; Ebrum has lived sometime
between 2400 and 2250 B.C., and Arabs date Abram to 2300 B.C. Could
Ebrum be the 'patriarch' Abram? Here one must not forget the 'sign of
identification' and the story of Bahram the Mandai connected with it
(Check the pages on SABIANS, PROPHET ABRAHAM and THE HAGARENE
TEACHING=ISLAM in this site). Ebrum of Ebla must have certainly
introduced substantial changes. In all the names like Ishma-el, Micha-
el and Isra-el the suffix -ilu or -el represents the god El. But when
Ebrum has begun his term as the king, a change occurred in the
suffixes of these names from -el to -ya(w) (yahu-yah), and for
instance Mi-ka-ilu became Mi-ka-ya(w) (Mi-ka-yahu). There is no doubt
that these suffixes are divine names, names of gods or words simply
meaning god; therefore it wouldn't be wrong to say that Ebrum has made
some major alterations in the religion of Ebla. The suffix ya(w)'s
relation to YHVH, which as the god of Israel had replaced the god El,
is arguable according to some researchers. It is only natural, because
the acceptance of a connection between ya(w) and yahu and YHVH will be
the proof that the Old Testament is really a collection of ancient
fairy tales with nothing divine in it.
One of the Ebla tablets names the five cities of Genesis 14:2 in the
same order as they existed in the Old Testament: Sodom, Gomorrah,
Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar. Don't forget that these tablets date back to
the middle of 3rd millenium B.C., but the story of Abram commences
around 1900 B.C. according to the Old Testament. Until the discovery
of the Ebla tablets, the existence of these biblical cities was
questioned; yet, here they are mentioned as trade partners of Ebla.
This record predates the great catastrophy involving Lot when Sodom
and Gomorrah were destroyed. There are also very early Canaanite
creation and flood stories in this archive, which very closely
resemble that of the Bible.
Leaving out;
The Dead Sea Scrolls;
A papyrus from the 2nd century B.C. containing the Ten Commandments
which does not conform to the classical text;
The Geniza/Genizeh (Cairo) pieces of the 5th century B.C.,
The oldest known section of the Old Testament was written in the 9th
century B.C. But now Ebla discoveries show that all of these were
already existing on tablets about 1600-1700 years before the Old
Testament!
The Dead Sea Scrolls made it possible to gain glimpses into a
community - Essenes - who practised in a way 'Christianity before
Christ'. As is well known the translation of this material was
systematically boycotted. Although there are differences between the
Essenes and the teachings of Yshua, similarities are obvious. As long
ago as 1831 the Stuttgart town vicar and repetitor at the T
> On 9 Sep, 03:27, "Stop The War" <stopthe...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> > "middle_class_warrior" <middle_class_warr...@verizon.net> wrote in messagenews:e9VDi.4922$J96.2919@trnddc02...
> > > Someone posted the Zeitgeist movie a couple of weeks ago that explained
> > > that the Jesus myth was taken form Egyptian mythology. Jesus is a
> > > reference to the Egyptian God, Horus ...
>
> > Right. Google "Christianity Before Christ" and "pagan Christs".
> > Horus is plagiarized by the Christians. The early Christians "borrowed"
> > much of their material from Horus and other pagan religions too, includingMithras, Bel, and more than a dozen other virgin birth/baptism/12 deciples/
> > trial/crucifixion/resurrection pagan religions which already existed in the
> > Middle East at the time of the origin and creation of Christianity.
>
> Google a bit harder and see all the people laughing at these cranks
> with their dumb suggestions about Mithras, Horus, etc.
>
> Only really stupid and uneducated people could fall for that one.
>
> All the best,
>
> Roger Pearse
The Bible is probably the greatest inter-text on the face of the
Earth. Almost all of its material is the result of interactions with
other Semitic literature and ancient Middle Eastern cultures.
Especially the discoveries in the last 150 years and the deciphering
of the texts on the unearthed tablets and other materials (foremost
among them the Sumerian clay tablets), demonstrated to what extent the
authors of the Old and New Testaments have borrowed their stories from
the ancient cultures and libraries.
The Old Testament is a supreme example of FICTION written many times
over.
http://www.geocities.com/spenta_mainyu/bible.htm
As we know many scholars have spent a lot of time to find out when the
various books of the Old Testament were written, and who the authors
were. Many of these scholars haven't cared to look into the history of
the scriptures and almost disregarded the fact that the present form
of the texts have come into being only about two thousand four hundred
years ago. But as the tablets from Sumer, Ras Shamra, Tell Mardikh,
Babylonia, and documents belonging Zoroastrianism etc., have shown,
these historical accounts and the fairy tales were collected,
compiled, summarized, and rewritten from a wealth of material that
Israelites have possessed, coming down from earlier periods. This
material of the Israelites are said to have been lost between the
second and forth centuries A.D. But at least we have the clay tablets
and the texts written on them, which indicate that the Old Testament
is not original but the authors have borrowed from other material.
We are told that there were some other sources as well, but the wars
throughout the region within the last two thousand years, have created
a situation where many of these have been lost or damaged to such an
extent that the contents do not make sense anymore. There were several
non-Hebrew historians who have dealt with the times of the best known
of the kings and some others, but these works have rarely been found
intact. The early Church fathers in Alexandria did however, in a lot
of their writings, included quotations from authors of quite a few
works that were a part of the celebrated library there in Egypt. We
are told that the sources that Ezra is thought to have employed were
shown to contain words and phrases that originated or were commonly
used in four distinct time periods; these are the 24th, 22nd, 14th,
10th, and 5th centuries B.C. The words and phrases of ancient origin
that exist in the scriptures, though they had been abandoned in the
surrounding cultures, show a continuity of understanding between the
language of the text and the language of those times. In other words
they do not belong to a more recent period, therefore are not the
result of some blending.
Here is a short list of these sources: Sumerian creation myths;
Babylonian Gilgamesh, Atrahasis (Ut-napishtim-Ziusudra) stories; hymns
to Marduk and Amon-Re; Ugarithic myths from Ras Shamra (with very
prominent gods - El and Baal); Zoroastrian doctrines; Mithras cult
etc. The rich coastal city of Ugarit which was destroyed in 1200 B.C,
had widespread trade relations throughout the Fertile Crescent and
across the Mediterranean. Ugarit had a twenty-six letter cuneiform
alphabet. This was an invention used by the traders and accountants
who had relations with other cultures and peoples in far away lands.
This alphabet and writing must have changed the illegible,
incomprehensible cultural atmosphere that was created by the ancient
temples; clearing the 'sacred' vagueness of pictographs and
transforming the communication medium into a secular, demotic script
which people of many different nations could easily adapt and use.
This language is seen as a direct forerunner of modern western
alphabets as well as the biblical Hebrew. Ugarit had a Canaanite
literature and the traditions of that society has influenced the Old
Testament. The scribes of Ugarit did know the city of Yerushalim and
the holy mount Zion nearby; this hill was known by that same name,
which meant in Ugaritic Canaanite, 'the seat of god'. That is not all,
many Old Testament characters, too, have typically Canaanite names:
For instance Absalom and Solomon. These names have a component in them
which is the the name of the Canaanite god of the evening star: Solom.
The fact that numerous biblical terms for the articles of daily life,
for clothes, perfumes and furniture were also Ugaritic underlines that
the Ugaritic influence was not only linguistic but also cultural,
extending into the appurtenances of daily life.
In 1868-1869 Charles Clermot-Ganneau found at Dibon (modern Dhiban,
Jordan) the famous Moabite Stele of King Mesha, dating from 9th
century B.C., which has a direct bearing on the Old Testament. The
stone was written in gratitude and devotion to Baal-Lebanon, in one of
the earliest known examples of the Semitic alphabet. Moabite national
god was Chemosh. On this stele, Mesha describes how Chemosh has
ordered him to "go and take Nebo from Israel"; how he has fought
Israel and killed seven thousand of them and "took from there the
vessels of YHVH, dragging them before Chemosh.." Chemosh's relation to
his children (the Moabites) was excactly like YHVH's relation to
Israel. Robin Lane Fox, in his book The Unauthorized Version writes:
"In Moab, the Number One was called Chemosh; in Israel, people looked
especially (but not solely) to Yahweh (YHVH): it is most striking that
Saul, the first king, gave one of his sons a name after the god Baal...
Jonathan did the same. From time to time Chemosh or Yahweh might be
angry with their worshippers, and, as a result (people believed) their
wars or weather could be unpredictable. To win Chemosh's or Yahweh's
favor, they had to offer animals and pay worship in their temples.
Eventually, the gods' anger would moderate (in due course people's
fortunes improved, if only from bad to less bad) and meanwhile the
priests lived off the necessary offerings. All the while, worshippers
were realistic about death. At best there might be a ghostly existence
for a few people in an underworld, but when they died, they died for
ever."
There were local cults as well to Baal Peor and Baal Meon. Mesha was a
strong follower of the Astarh-Chemosh cult. All the finds in the
biblical lands show that the biblical authors were suitably inspired
by the stories of the surrounding cultures.
The personal name of the god of Israel in the Bible is Y-H-UA-H
(Tetragrammaton='four letters'=YHVH). The Hebrew language had only
consonants and when the Masoretes produced the Masoretic text the
pronunciation of the divine name was lost, and since the pious Jews
did not pronounce the tetragrammaton and used words like adonai-adonay
(lord) or ha-shem (the name) we do not have the exact version. The
original ban on the free usage of god's name seems to have its origin
in Egypt, because every Egyptian magician believed that the one who
possessed the true name possessed the very being of god or man, and
could force even a 'supreme being' to obey him like a slave. Therefore
the magician has never stopped his attempts to obtain from the gods a
revelation of their sacred names. The only natural solution seemed to
be a ban on the free usage of god's name.
An excavation work started in 1964 at Tell Mardikh in north-western
Syria forty kilometers south of Aleppo turned out to be an excavation
of the ruins of the ancient city of Ebla. The documents unearthed
there have showed the existence of a mighty Canaanite empire in Syria
which embraced Palestine around 2400 B.C., and to the amazement of
everybody Tell Mardikh/Ebla turned out to be the ancient capital city
of this civilisation. There were 260,000 inhabitants in the city,
which existed 1,000 years before David and Solomon and was destroyed
by the Akkadians around 1600 B.C.
In 1975, a very important find was made at the Early Bronze Age levels
of Ebla in the form of nearly 20,000 clay tablets: The royal archives
of the city. These tablets date back to the middle of the 3rd
millenium B.C, almost 4,500 years ago. The language is Sumerian in the
form of wedge-shaped cuneiform script that is the world's oldest known
written language: The Old Canaanite, which is found out to be very
close in vocabulary and grammar to biblical Hebrew than any other
Canaanite dialect, including Ugaritic. This is an evidence as to the
age of the Hebrew language. The Ebla documents are vital insofar as
the linguistic problems in the scriptures are concerned. The original
Hebrew language had no vowels. Mainly Masoretes have worked on the
language; added vowels, and changed the definitions of the Hebrew
words between 6th and 12th centuries A.D. The language was already out
of use before their work. It was revived in 1948, after not being
spoken for nearly 1600 years. Therefore meanings of a number of words
are unknown, making it difficult to rely solely on the Hebrew version
as the last authority. The language of the Ebla tablets can give us a
clearer meaning of the doubtful words in these texts.
Before the stories in the Sumerian clay tablets were deciphered
mankind have thought that the Old Testament was a word of god, a
revelation. When the Sumerian stories were published the Old
Testament has lost its mystery completely, because the origin of the
fairy tales in the Book became clear. The records of the city of Ebla
has played an identical role (Check the page on the OLD TESTAMENT in
this site).
CITY OF EBLA AND A FURTHER PROOF THAT THE OLD TESTAMENT IS A
COLLECTION OF OLD TALES
The most important aspect of the unearthing of these tablets shows
itself in the place names.
There are references to places and vassal cities in Palestine like
Hazor, Gaza, Lachish, Megiddo, Akko, Sinai, and Ur-u-salima (coldn't
be anything but Yerushalim).
But much more important than the place names we read the personal
names which also appear in the Bible; names from the patriarchal age
like Ab-ra-mu (Av'ram-Abram-Abraham), E-sa-um (Esau), Ish-ma-ilu
(Ish'mael), even Is-ra-ilu (Israel), and from later periods, names
like Da'u'dum (David) and Sa'u'lum (Saul).
The most tantalizing revelation is the name of Ebrum (Biblical Eber -
the third and greatest of the six kings of the Ebla dynasty between
2400 and 2250 B.C.). He seems to have been placed on the throne of
Ebla by Great Sargon of Agade (Sharru-ken, Sharrum-kin) after a
punitive expedition in which Ebla was subjugated. This Ebrum reminds
Eber which is the person Hebrews claim to have descended from. Ebrum
reminds Av'ram-Abram (the patriarch) as well. Jews date Av'ram to
1900-1800 B.C. The name Ebrum reminds Abram; Ebrum has lived sometime
between 2400 and 2250 B.C., and Arabs date Abram to 2300 B.C. Could
Ebrum be the 'patriarch' Abram? Here one must not forget the 'sign of
identification' and the story of Bahram the Mandai connected with it
(Check the pages on SABIANS, PROPHET ABRAHAM and THE HAGARENE
TEACHING=ISLAM in this site). Ebrum of Ebla must have certainly
introduced substantial changes. In all the names like Ishma-el, Micha-
el and Isra-el the suffix -ilu or -el represents the god El. But when
Ebrum has begun his term as the king, a change occurred in the
suffixes of these names from -el to -ya(w) (yahu-yah), and for
instance Mi-ka-ilu became Mi-ka-ya(w) (Mi-ka-yahu). There is no doubt
that these suffixes are divine names, names of gods or words simply
meaning god; therefore it wouldn't be wrong to say that Ebrum has made
some major alterations in the religion of Ebla. The suffix ya(w)'s
relation to YHVH, which as the god of Israel had replaced the god El,
is arguable according to some researchers. It is only natural, because
the acceptance of a connection between ya(w) and yahu and YHVH will be
the proof that the Old Testament is really a collection of ancient
fairy tales with nothing divine in it.
One of the Ebla tablets names the five cities of Genesis 14:2 in the
same order as they existed in the Old Testament: Sodom, Gomorrah,
Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar. Don't forget that these tablets date back to
the middle of 3rd millenium B.C., but the story of Abram commences
around 1900 B.C. according to the Old Testament. Until the discovery
of the Ebla tablets, the existence of these biblical cities was
questioned; yet, here they are mentioned as trade partners of Ebla.
This record predates the great catastrophy involving Lot when Sodom
and Gomorrah were destroyed. There are also very early Canaanite
creation and flood stories in this archive, which very closely
resemble that of the Bible.
Leaving out;
The Dead Sea Scrolls;
A papyrus from the 2nd century B.C. containing the Ten Commandments
which does not conform to the classical text;
The Geniza/Genizeh (Cairo) pieces of the 5th century B.C.,
The oldest known section of the Old Testament was written in the 9th
century B.C. But now Ebla discoveries show that all of these were
already existing on tablets about 1600-1700 years before the Old
Testament!
The Dead Sea Scrolls made it possible to gain glimpses into a
community - Essenes - who practised in a way 'Christianity before
Christ'. As is well known the translation of this material was
systematically boycotted. Although there are differences between the
Essenes and the teachings of Yshua, similarities are obvious. As long
ago as 1831 the Stuttgart town vicar and repetitor at the T