Wanted to add an interesting factoid that I found today relevant to the Greek Septuagint/Hebrew Masoretic text discussion:

The Hebrew Masoretic Text MT  (7th-10th C CE) is composed *much later* than the Greek Septuagint — which I think most people would just think the Masoretic is the original compilation, because it’s in Hebrew, the original language of the ancient Jews, and it’s the version used by the Jewish people.

This means that the First Century Essene DSS library did not contain the MT, but it has Hebrew texts, and also Greek and Aramaic versions of Bible books. So I looked, and the DSS Hebrew Isaiah  has the “OUR god,” like the MT. The Septuagint, as Porphyry helpfully points out, doesn’t.

On to BIG FINDS!

539 BCE – This is the last time that God speaks in the first person. God does so in handing off Israel to Cyrus the Great, the Messiah:

Isaiah 45:1-3 (NIV):

“This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him…so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.

Ok, repeating this for my fans, Isaiah 45:1 is the last instance chronologically in the Hebrew Bible where God speaks in the first person. Well, what millennias-long lineage might be the weakened hegemon over Canaan/Palestine that gives up to Cyrus? It’s the God-king Amosis.

And the three times in the Bible that a Pharoah is given a personal name seems to match to when there’s an illegitimate Pharaoh in Egyptian records. One is the rival to  that Amosis, Hophra/Apries. Using the personal name of a Pharaoh could be taken as an sign of recognizing illegitimacy. 

Illegitimate in my definition, means either: a) a non-Egyptian usurper. Usurpation meaning that they were not granted position or concession by the ethnic Egyptian government (like the 14th Century Amorite dynasty in Avaris who held the Ruler of Rjetenu title), or b) a  damnatio memoraed Pharaoh stripped of God-King status.

And in order to be on the radar of the Hebrew Bible’s authors, the illegitimized Pharaoh would also have to have some dust-up in Palestine/Canaan. (So this disincludes Hatseput, Akhenaten, and Tutankhamen, who did have damnatio memorae as illegitimized Pharaohs, but did not have military campaigns attested to in the Levant.)

This aligns with the Bible’s named Pharaohs taking condemnable military action in Canaan/Palestine and the Bible’s unnamed Pharaohs giving grain gifts, and even a city in the case of Solomon’s Egyptian wife. (I write ‘gifts’ because no purchase is mentioned, yet purchases are exceptionally detailed elsewhere.) Grain disbursements and territory are known benefits to Egyptian vassals of certain levels.

And again, there can be multiple Pharaohs ruling concurrently—either ruling Lower and Upper Egypt separately, ruling all of Egypt together as co-regents, or claiming that rule retroactively. Vassals (and their vassals) would not be permitted to use the Pharaoh’s personal name, and at least in the El Amarna letters were to address to Pharaoh formulaicly as Lord and God, so when both Pharaoh and God appear in the Bible, the Hebrew people could potentially only have a covenant with one and not the other. In the Bible, God gives detailed directives typical of an Egyotian god-king hegemon, like telling a kingdom to meet up with another kingdom for an activity in a precise region, and sending a forecast of regional grain stores.

The three named Pharaohs of the Bible

Pharaoh Shishak (Shoshenq I)

• 1 Kings 14:25-26 and 2 Chronicles 12:2-4

• Libyan usurper, not a rightful king

• In the Bible —famous for raiding Jerusalem in the fifth year of Rehoboam’s reign.

Pharaoh Necho II

• 2 Kings 23:29-30 and 2 Chronicles 35:20-24

• damnatio memorae’d by his son

• In the Bible — famous for his conflict with King Josiah.

Pharaoh Hophra (Apries) 

• Jeremiah 44:30 and Ezekiel 29:6-7

• damnatio memorae’d by Amosis, who ruled at one point concurrently as the God-king of Egypt and hegemon of Canaan/Palestine. It is Amosis that gives it all up to Cyrus.

(To be very technical, Amosis’ son is present for a few months, seemingly in the same way that Baalshazzar is with Nabonidus when the Babylonian empire is practically handed over to Cyrus. Cyrus is said to give Nabonidus a small kingdom after Nabonidus’ steps down as the Babylonian empire’s ruler, so the circumstances of the power transition implies that Cyrus gained some amount of consent from these former hegemons.)

• In the Bible — famous for his defeat and symbolic representation in prophetic oracles.

So these Pharaohs with names are spoke of negatively in the Bible, and the people who would obviously be signing the rights of their hegemony away with inter-Empire treaties are not spoken of negatively in the Bible. 

Amosis is exceptionally interesting to me because of his Iah/Yah/Aah theophoric (a theophoric is basically a god name referenced inside a personal name). Again, Iah/Yah/Aah is a well-attested Egyptian god, and a favorite of the Hyksos. I think what is exceptional is that I just noticed that this theophoric seems to be present from the beginning to end of the First Person Palestine Pipeline— ‘Aamu Aahotepre to Amasis.

There’s also an Amose replacing the 15th Dynasty that King Jacob was part of, replacing it with what is likely an overseer role. Then there’s Overseer Thutmose, my candidate for Moses, because the Thoth of the theophoric and Iah/Yah/Aah become syncretized as the same god in Egyptian statuary, as Thoth-Iah.

Maybe God no longer speaks in first person idk maybe because maybe the God-king hegemon of Canaan/Palestine stops being the direct hegemon of Canaan/Palestine exactly at this point?

There is no time period that I can find for Canaan/Palestine until the secular age where there *isn’t* a deified hegemon. It’s just that the Living God epithet would not be applicable when it is post-humous deification. The closest in geography for the First Century is the Temple of Obodat for Obodas the God in what’s now Israel. It  appears during the Hasmonean period. Then you have Herod the Great installing three temples worshipping the Roman emperor in places like Galilee. 

Nabataea is obviously the hegemon of the Hasmonean period:

•They judge and punish a Jewish leader for his crimes against *Jewish* people

•They back Hyrcanus over Aristobulus, beseiging the Second Temple, just like Rome would in 70 CE

•They tax the inter-kingdom roads, and Rome takes their stations over.

•They have marital alliances over three generations with important Jewish figures: Cypros and a Hasmonean, another Cypros as Herod the Great’s mom, and Phaesalis, Herod Antipas’ wife.

• The people of Gaza request assistance from the Nabataeans over an issue with a Jewish king. This is a proof for the existence of multi-kingdom hegemony.

•The Herodian dynasty children are partly raised in the Nabataean royal household, as is custom for a hegemon.

Deified Obodas the God was on coinage circulating at the same time as the deified Augustus, so I think this is what this clever response is about:

Luke 20:25 (NIV)

“He said to them, ˜Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”. 

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Hi, I think you’re referencing the Branch Davidians, Colin? Iʻll take a look at your Western etymology when I can, because I think gJohn echoes the hyssop branch (hyssop is David’s plant.)

For now I’m going to drop some knowledge:

So, it’s probably helpful to say who my guess for Jesus’ God is?

Short answer: Dushara.

Medium answer: Hayya, the epithet meaning “The Living [God], is the third millenium BCE Ebla name for the imported Ea/Enki. Hayya is, imo, the Mandaean God Hayyi with an -i suffix instead of an -a. The Mandaeans ofc claim a connection to John the Baptist.

In my hypothesis, Hayya would be persianized into Hayyi with the ancient Mesopotamian custom of being “elevated to Anuship”. Being “elevated to Anuship”  means assimilating the stories and qualities of Anu, the unmanifested god, into that god. Thus the Mandaean god is a water and light rite god (Hayya/Ea/Enki) who is unmanifested and supreme (Anu.) And Anu is the god of *kings only*.

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So being “elevated to Anuship” would explain why the Eblaite Hayya was only for rulers, and why the 3rd Millenium The Living God could have a First Century epithet in an attested inscription as the “Lord of the Ruler,” Dushara.

Longer answer: I believe it’s the same-ass deity under changing epithets. The art is the same. It’s just getting Persianized, then Hellenized, then Romanized.

I think it’s maybe possible that Jesus is reviving the “world’s first written religion”—that of the water purification rite, manifested son of an unmanifested Supreme God. Upon Ea’s introduction, the new pronounciation of Hayya  instantly becomes popular, with a Ya- theophoric element. In my opinion, Hayya is simply the new addition of West Semetic favorites H and Y. The “world’s first power, ” the Sumero-Akkadian polity of Ebla might be the first in that sphere to be ruled by foreign West Semites.

The Mandaean Hayyi and the Nabataean Dushara both appear to be a mix of the characteristics of Hayya and his unmanifested father Anu, the ONE GOD that then divided itself into a pantheon.

Dushara could not only be just “Lord of the mountains.” In the Transjordan, scholars are in agreement that the mountains can be named for divinized Mesopotamian entities — like Mount Sinai (Sin-Nanna) and Mount Nebo (Nabu.)

Maybe DU [Of] SR could (this is a wild guess) mean SR [Ruler]. Maybe the Mount Sier of the Bible is his mountain (I know, folk etymologies), and throw that whole Sharra range in there, too. The Egyptian land claim actually starts right outside of that mountain, meaning that it is not related to Egyptized traditions.

Dushara’s iconography are royal symbols only — like that of Anu who is “the Lord of Kings.” Dushara sometimes has the Mesopotamian horned crown, and Arabians are just known as more Mesopotamianized.

However, Dushara is ‘manifested’, as in anthropomorphized, with Hayya/Ea/Enki’s extra-curly beard. And Petra’s immense running-water hydraulic pool-and-garden complex exactly resembles Eblaite Hayya’s (Ea/Enki)’s art, as well as Isaiah’s promise of vegetation and running water in the desert.

And academics confirm that Petra is built around a resurrection ritual. Imo, that would be most directly associated with Hayya/Ea/Enki’s 3-day resurrection myth.

As we already know academically that Enki got Anuship, this just may be what it looks like three millennia later.

1. Gospel, Talmud and Elephantine Papyri Potential Proofs

Luke 1:38. Jesus is the son of a handmaid (female slave) to a Lord.

In Ketubot 3B, there’s a contract for Lords seeking intercourse with an engaged Jewish virgin – presumably for the purpose of creating an heir. The Jerusalem Talmud also covers short-term contract intercourse relationships in general, which are completely respected, and importantly, it explains that the heirs have full rights, and not lesser rights or status, like Paul says of Haggar. Yeah, why would some of Epiphanius’ ‘heretical’ sects say, “Don’t rely on Paul”?

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The Elephantine Papyri has the example of written contracts of a Jewish-Egyptian woman Tamet (converted Jewish) who has a minor Jewish official husband AND is the handmaid female slave to an Aramaean Lord. She first has a *male heir* with the Lord and then children with the husband. And they do not live with that Lord who is an Aramean traveler, but live far away in Egypt, and even own their own house (making them fancier than most Galileans.)

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Nabataea records to compare this to are pretty sparse given that it’s well attested they preferred secrecy, but later Arabian rulers love to have children with handmaids whose contract ends at first male birth. If you want to read the poetry of some women that are insanely stoked at their situation, read that of Arabian handmaidens.

These high-ranking Arabians typically claim an Ishmaelite origin, like the Nabataeans did, and like the Banu Haritath (Sons of Aretas). They choose the son of the handmaiden to rule the son’s matrilineal kingdom. They even preferentially exalt them to the main kingdom ruling over the other kingdoms as a “Great King.” This is what multiple Early Church reports say Jesus became, an actual Great King.

This in perhaps recognition of the original low status of Hagar, which, to be fair to Paul a little, is the West Semetic tradition as reflected in Hammurabai’s law. Paul just shows his ignorance of the authoritative Babylonian Talmud’s high status of children no matter who the mom is, because it doesn’t start being committed to writing until the early 3rd C, and he’s more Western-focused and waiting for that braincell to activate.

Ishmael became the patriarch of the highest-status Semetic peoples; Arabians that were unbelievably richer, more eloquent, and more statused than Jewish folk. This may be reflected in Jesus’ “the servant becomes the master” speech. 

In looking for a Lord candidate, Aretas IV is the only Lord who has interaction with Palestine, and so Aretas IV is my only candidate for Jesus’ father at this time. Again, Jesus’ Galilee queen was Aretas’ daughter, Phaesalis.

2. Epiphanius in the 4th C CE claims through accounts that he’s been told that the Nabataean city of Petra venerated Jesus as Dushara which they thought meant “only begotten son”.  And that Dushara in his time had a resurrected son of a virgin Theophany ceremony exactly the same day as Jesus’s Theophany ceremony! And the image is covered in crosses. He claims that its Dushara, the typical Nabataean god, but relates the virgin’s name as “Block,” which is just the aniconic stone blocks that they use.

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I think the image may be an aspect of Dushara, but likely first as the Nabataean Theandrios ‘who is Rabbos’— the half God-half-man deity who is especially venerated at Mount Hermon, the site of Jesus’ Transfiguration per the more educated scholars. Theandrios could then be exalted to Rulership.

The betyl image of Theandrios appears in a trinity display with Dushara the Supreme God, and an unknown third deity.

3. Ben Pantera

The Ben Pantera jibes about Jesus’ patrilineal lineage in Jewish haggada, in my opinion, aren’t about some Roman panther-skin-wearing legionnaire (which those existed).

Instead, I think they’re joking about the story of Sohrab and Rostam:

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• the panther-skin-whole suit-wearing divinized magical king

• who shows up for a night and gets a minor tribal princess pregnant — but no one sees him

• who only returns when his son is full grown and immediately unalives him accidentally, and then uses a magic potion to resurrect him, but it doesn’t work.

The Jewish people know their humor. This is a good one. This story’s earliest appearance in writing is c. 1000 CE, but the story setting goes back far earlier, with a settling most resembling the Parthians (3rd C BCE-2nd C CE) who conquered Judaea. In fact, the dad is characterized as Arabic in some tales.

4. Patrilineal Lineage
This typically had a higher social status than matrilineal lineage, meaning that your primary cultural allegiance would be to your father. While biological patrilineage did give a backseat to adoptive lineage, we also have this unique ceremony in the narrative of the Gospels where Jesus is being ‘adopted’ by his own biological father. 

It is in early First Century Judaism that special rights are given to matrilineage, probably with the purpose of legitimizing the continuance of the Herodian dynasty through the Hasmonean line of Mariamne. This would make the early First Century the only time period where full rights of Jewish kingdom inheritance existed both matrilineally and patrilineally. And thus the only time that someone with adopted patrilineal Davidic lineage, maternal Davidic lineage, and biological and adopted royal lineage could outright make all these specific claims.

4. Parables

Jesus’ Kingdom of Heaven parables in particular seem to be direct examples of Nabataea’s most well-known features:

• The Narrow Way is the Siq in contrast to Rome’s Broadways.

• The Rich Man And The Camel Through The Eye of The Needle
refers to the luxury camel cargo going through the Siq being taxed at an impressive 25%. The Nabataeans only transport Fine Luxury Goods. But taxing luxury goods in the previous Nabataean hegemony, meaning a wealth tax, is preferential to the new Roman way of taxing property. But you know who wouldn’t think so? Sumptuous, luxury-loving Herodian Edomites.

And you know what archaeologists say that Petra didn’t have? Poverty. And gonna have to tap the sign again here — “There are no Jewish camels.”

• The Parable of the Minas describe exactly what First Century Strabo said in his c. 19 CE Geography is the unique system of Nabataea — that of rewarding those that gain in wealth stewardship, and penalizing those that lost.
Strabo also writes of their society-wide craze for land investment, which is something evinced in the Jewish emigree Babatha’s contracts in Nabataea. This generates more profit than the interest gained in lending activities, and certainly more than the typical Galilee peasant practice of coin hoarding.

• wineskins instead of amphorae

• royalty chastizing servants, royalty chastizing enemies

• Two Pearl Parables. Jewish people didn’t have the sea! But Nabataeans rivaled Rome for sea-faring trade and there was even a temple at Puteoli, where Paul finds a pre-existing Christian community. That’s why there’s so much dolphin imagery in desert Petra.

• mustard seed. Yeah, that grows in the Transjordan.

• Nabataea was famous for wine, not Judaea.

This is how you separate the goats and the sheep — one group actually recognizes what you are saying to them.

5. Creeds
The “Our Father who is in Heaven” prayer could be any patriarch ancestor cult, not just Obodas the God. Notice that Jesus has Abraham being prayed to in a parable.

Again, ANE  vassals as in the leaders and not the everyday population, are to pray to the hegemon as a human manifestation of god like Herod’s three temples that I’m sure he never set foot in, especially because no ancient text says that there were vassal leaders that got exemptions. Go ahead and do whatever if you’re not a vassal. And what you actually have to give the vassals is something of material value for a covenant, btw, the Apostles are hoping to be a Tetrarch of Galilee-Peraea or a Herod of Chalcis at some point. Notice that the disciples use the generic Lord and not the personal name. Notice that no disciple, not even his mother, ever says to Jesus, “Hey, Jesus”?

Jesus’s prayer would be introducing his disciples to a new faith in the same-ish way as the Deuteronomist’s creed for Israel. The Deuteronomical creed give Aramaea and Egypt as Jacob’s two regions, and thus these are the two inputs into the original Israelite religion at the time of Jacob. My best guess is that Mesopotamian lore ‘before the Babylonians mucked it all up’ specific to the Creator God of Genesis who is also likely Hayya, is the new input that scholars underestimate for Jesus.

Thank you Robert!

Multiple heavens

The concept of multiple, numbered heavens like “3rd heaven” and “7th heaven” or Enoch’s “sort-of-10” heavens goes back to the Sumerian Mesopotamians. It was also held by Arabians, Persians and others:

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I think the reason that it starts appearing with Enoch is because the period of authorship overlaps with Nabataean hegemony, so thanks so much for helping me surface that. Ancient Palestine was not some free-thinkers paradise where the fertile ground is there to come up with new ideas. The idea that Jesus is coming up with all those new ideas that just happened to match Arabian ones, yeah.

So the traditions given to Abraham seem to specifically be West Semetic in Egypt — that of the Amorite 14th Dynasty of Avaris. While the traditions given by Jesus seem to be East Semetic, an Akkadian-influenced (through its history-reviving founders) Nabataea.

Abraham’s Amorite-in-Egypt influence c. 18th C BCE

• aspirated h addition to names

• Mamre the Amorite, his shelterer

• sacred oak groves

• wild ram sacrifice

• splitting animals in half

• fire passes through to witness a covenant

• substitute sacrifice like Isaac’s binding 

Amorite myth: Determined to outwit the underworld deity Mot, Ba’al has a child with a cow, dresses the cow in his clothes and then substitutes that in his place. (Also, Amorite-founded Phoenicia was noted at some point by 1 C BCE Diodorus to substitute children for other children in their unfortunate ritual.)

•Then of course all the Egyptian influence, like circumcision and grain vassalage.

So imo, there’s this realignment that Jesus seems to do, to pivot from the Amorite-Egyptized roots of his matrilineal religion to re-align with the first written civilization and a higher social class of now mysticy, gentle, affluent Semetic patrilineal religion. It’s a mystery to me if Paul was actually taught anything when he was in Arabia, or directly by Jesus, or if he’s just picking things up here and there.

Yes the idea of multiple heavens is in Second Temple Judaism, in their own mileu in Judaea, as I explained with the slightly earlier Book of Enoch too. I am saying that the Book of Enoch was authored during a period in which the hegemonic influence (because every period has one)  of the Maccabees is Nabataean.

• When there’s Persian hegemony the newest Bible books get Persian concepts (like the Book of Esther.)

• When there’s the Hellenic hegemony over Judaea, then all of a sudden the newest Bible book to be added reads like a Greek philosopher wrote it.

• For the Nabataean period that would be the non-cannonical Maccabees, where they simply explain that the priest’s “secret” of fire that burns in great amounts of water is naptha (petroleum product.)

So imo, there’s this realignment that Jesus seems to do, to pivot from the Amorite-Egyptized roots of his matrilineal religion to re-align with the first written civilization and a higher social class of now mysticy, gentle, affluent Semetic patrilineal religion.

I mean, I think Jesus is acting very different from David and Moses.

Hi Robert! The introduction of matrilineal lineage rights for Jews happens somewhere around the first half of the First Century CE, 10-70 CE, in the Early Tannaitic Period.

It is the 18th Century BCE that has the confirmed Amorite dynasty in Avaris, Egypt with two artifacts naming them the Rulers of Retjenu, meaning the Rulers of Syrio-Canaan. That is all of Syrio-Canaan—if Abraham is strolling on a mule from there to the Land of Goshen, that’s his ruler. It’s ok with him, Abraham’s best friend is Mamre the Amorite.  If you look at how they rule, they subdivide the work out to smaller confederacies.

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18th C BCE-1rst C CE is a span of almost two millennia. A much shorter-timeline analogy would be the Lenape culture in Manhattan.

•The Lenape culture’s hegemon becomes the water-managing, windmill building, wooden shoe-clomping Dutch. This changes the culture. How fast?

• Next their hegemon is the British Colonies, who have the highest living standard in the world at that time, because it’s being settled by second sons of primogeniture. What’s the Lenape people’s greatest influence here? Do they start writing in Kanji?

• Now Manhattan is the most polyglot cultural destination, and the Lenape are still there. I just read a Lenape individual’s interview and she’s very modern NYC. What affected their change substantially is these administrations. 

So, how would I distinguish what is “gentile”? How can you tell between the long-time Queen of Galilee, the Nabataean Arabian named Phaesalis, and a Jewish Queen of Galilee, like Herodias?

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The Nabataeans were gentiles.

The Nabataeans were not Gentiles/Goyim.

Arabians, Ishmaelites, Nabataeans and Aretas are never called Gentiles/Goyim anywhere in the Bible or in early Jewish texts. Instead, they are treated as a distinct category as descendants of Abraham.

They are circumcised (Genesis 17:25), unless individually adopting Hellenization, whereas Gentiles were not.