Lloyd wrote: ↑Sat Dec 21, 2019 8:03 amI believe the Thunderbolts team, esp. Talbott, Cardona and Cochrane, were not able to concur with Velikovsky's revised chronology in Ages in Chaos nor with Velikovsky's claims that Venus caused the plagues at the time of the Exodus and of Joshua ca. 1400s BC, and that Mars caused cataclysms ca 700 BC. Most catastrophist scholars seem to agree that cataclysms occurred earlier, about 2300 BC.
As Egyptology is not an area of specialisation for me, I won't comment too much further here until I've actually read more on the specific criticisms of Velikovsky's evidences. But I did find his arguments rather persuasive in demonstrating that both the Ugaritic Ras Shamra texts and the El Armarna letters are contemporaneous, 10th-8th century documents, and do not pertain to the 14th century, Moses or the pharaoh of the Exodus at all. I am aware that some of Velikovsky's cuneiform methodology was heavily rebutted by Abraham Sachs but do not know the details of the argumentation.
I also have reason to understand that, after Velikovsky's passing in 1979, Ginenthal, Rose, Sweeny and Heinsohn revised the Egyptian chronology even further than Velikovsky did. I have not read any of those works yet so I cannot comment further. So while the Thunderbolts community specifically may have rejected Velikovsky's revision, other scholars building on Velikovsky's work actually took it further, rightly or wrongly.
My point is that Chandler wants to use Atenism as the precipitating force for Mosaic monotheism. But if Mosaic monotheism preceeded Atenism by 400 years, as per some of the stronger lines of argument presented in
Ages in Chaos, then Atenism simply cannot be its cause. What comes after cannot cause what came prior.
Of course I utterly reject Atenistic derivation of Judaism solely on the basis that Judaism's monotheism is derived from their familial relationship to their biological patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the twelve tribes, predating Atenism by 400 years even if one allows a 14th century date for it. According to Moses, Abraham received his monotheistic call by direct revelation from the same God, YHWH, whom Moses identifies as Creator of the universe (Genesis 12:1-4 cf. Gen 2:4). Acts 7:2-4 reveals that Abraham was called whilst he was living in Ur, Mesopotamia (compare Genesis 11:31). This call he partially obeyed at the age of 75 as recorded in Genesis 12:1-4, but it is not until he fully obeyed by departing from all his family (Lot went with him at first from Haran) that YHWH both grants Abraham the land of the Canaanites (Genesis 13:14-18; 15:1-21), in addition to the monotheistic covenant with Abraham and his descendants after him, sealed in blood with the sign of circumcision (Genesis 17:1-17), especially verses 7-8:
- "I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God."
To suggest that Moses adopted
Egyptian monotheism contradicts what Moses himself wrote and confirmed for the children of Israel: YHWH is the God of their biological ancestors: the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Israel) and the 12 patriarchs (Exodus 3:15-16; Deuteronomy 1:11, 21; 4:1; 6:3; 9:5; 12:1; 27:3; 30:9, 20; see also Joshua 18:3, 24:2; 1 Kings 8:53; 1 Chronicles 29:18-20; 2 Chronicles 20:6; 30:7; Jeremiah 34:13 amongst others). According to Moses, YHWH
judged the gods of Egypt (Exodus 12:12). YHWH also judged the Hebrews for following the gods of Egypt (Exodus 32). According to Moses, there is only one Hebrew-Israelite race descended from Abraham, not two distinct ones as Chandler falsely claims. According to Moses and later Biblical authors, YHWH is not some new invention of a later time, age or nation patched in to an existing culture. Worship of YHWH is the distinctive feature of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants, and the Torah records YHWH's constant interventions to ensure that remains so, especially when they turn away from him to worship other gods.
The only way to argue otherwise is to do as the source critics have done and reject the extant, attested whole narrative so they can mix up the parts into unattested, make-believe JEDPR sources they can happily rearrange to suit their a-priori ideologies of textual evolution proving the Hebrew/Mosaic religion, too, is nothing more than the syncretism and development of ideas stolen from everywhere else. That this method is so contrary to the actual
narrative of the Scriptures, the narrative in which YHWH is the central actor, creating the world, judging the world, saving Noah, choosing Abraham of all the families of the world, then Isaac, then Jacob, then the twelve, covenanting himself to them in the fires of Sinai by the hand of Moses, bringing them into their possession by Joshua, setting up the Kingship of David, judging his own people for turning away from him to follow the gods of the nations, and finally bringing into the world the Divine Son through that nation, should not need repeating or observation, let alone discernment of the
ulterior motive for carving up the Word of God.
I cannot help but conclude that Chandler's reconstruction is, like modern particle and relativistic physics or McLachlan/Holden's Ganymede hypothesis, a monstrous, intertwined edifice built up on numerous falsified assumptions and pseudohistories of the 'evolution' of the Hebrew textual tradition over time. That is why my first criticism concentrated on the fundamental error of Chandler's cut-and-paste methodology of Scriptural extirpation. Anyone can prove anything from the Bible if one can simply chop and change a text to suit the fancies and assumptions of the researcher. I don't really feel the need to address the specifics when this fundamental methodological error remains to undermine the whole.
Lloyd wrote:Re "Hebrew shabbat means to rest or desist exerting oneself", you agree, don't you, that shabbat refers to shamash = Saturn? ...
Charles mentioned similarity between sabbaton and saba-Aten (also Adonai). He said "in late Babylonian, they meant the same thing, sabbatum meaning pacify, Sun, or light. This would make sense if every 7th day, the Jews pacified themselves and worshiped a Lord who made his face to shine down on them (i.e., like a Sun god).
The
sabbath issue has a few interesting quirks of argumentation. The etymological discussion rests on two points:
- 1. Shabbath derives from a Hebrew root.
- a) The root is SH-B-TH, meaning to rest or cease.
- i) But if the noun derives from the verb, why is the qattal, concrete, rather than abstract noun construction used?
ii) But if the verb derives from the noun, that is to say the religious concept "keep the Sabbath" becomes the verb "to cease", then why does it exist in cognate languages, eg. Arabic & Ugaritic?
b) The root is SH-B-', meaning to swear an oath of sevens.
- i) If it came from SH-B-', why did the last root letter change and when?
2. Shabbath derives from an Akkadian loanword.
- a) But the supposed Akkadian loanword, sabbatu, designates only the religious ceremony of the 15th day of a lunar month.
b) The loanword for the 7th day celebration, sebutu, is more distant phonetically
c) Bablyonian pronunciation of the above two words can also be sappatu and seputu respectively, distancing them further.
You will notice at no stage is there any consideration of the word being derived from a compound of
sabbu and
Aten, either in Hebrew or Akkadian.[1] Would that solve the apparent paradox? Perhaps. Is it tenable from the linguistic data? de Blois is a better Oriental linguist than I am and he failed to notice any such connection. I would answer de Blois' objection of argument 1.b)ii) above by assaulting his assumption that Ugaritic predates Hebrew (based on misinterpretation of the dating of the Ras Shamra corpus by 600 years). I will add, however, that Talbott's discussion of the Egyptian Aten as the abode of the god at rest is intruiging, but there is no phonetic similarity at all between the Egyptian 'rest' (
hetep) and Hebrew
shabbath.[2]
I have indeed suggested that the Hebrew word for Saturn,
Shabt'ai, is most likely derived from the same parent root as Shabbat, and this could be a veiled hint at the fact that, in the past, Saturn
rested as the polestar. But the Jews did not celebrate, worship or otherwise acknowledge Saturn, the planet-god of the idolaters, as having anything to do with their 7th day Sabbath. In fact it was the opposite. They loathed association between pagan Saturn's Day celebrations as occuring on the same day as their convenantal sign.
I have now come to understand that the Hebrew spelling for Saturn, Shabt'ai, שבתאי, likely comes from Babylonian influence because of its Aramaic orthography (the aleph-yod ending is the dead-giveaway and a common feature of Aramaic nouns). So an argument can be made here to link together Saturn, Sabbath & Babylon, but the time period is Exile-Post Exile (600 BCE and afterwards), way too late to have anything to do with Atenism unless you want to argue pagan syncretism of Judaism and Babylonian/Egyptian religion at the same period. Given the significant esoteric infiltration of Judaism snowballing at the same time (post-Exile), I think a decent argument for syncretism can be made. But I will still ask, "Is post-Exilic Judaism the Judaism of Moses/Torah?" In some aspects, yes, like Sabbath keeping and the Temple Cult, in others, especially the adoption of certain pagan esoteric traditions, of which
Shabtai seems to be an interesting example, most certainly not.
Lloyd wrote:What about the Hebrew word for comet also resembling shamash?
The Hebrew word for 'comet',
kokhab shebit, is not derived from or related to
shemesh or
shabath. The word root is different: shebit comes from ש-ב-ט with a tet (ט) not a tav (ת), and means 'to branch off'.[3] Comets, to the Hebrew mind, are 'branched stars', a very apt description of their filamentary electroplasma tails, even if unintended! There is no Hebrew etymological or conceptual relationship between shabbath and comets except a chance phonetic similarity.
Lloyd wrote:Another thing you said earlier about Earth having orbited Saturn during the Great Flood, the Thunderbolts team does not support the idea that Earth ever orbited Saturn. Instead, Venus, Mars and Earth apparently followed behind Saturn as the system came into the solar system, and then the system broke up upon getting close to the Sun or Jupiter.
This is incorrect. Wallace Thornill himself has stated repeatedly in both written and video publications that the earth was once a moon of the brown dwarf proto-Saturn sun, orbiting within Saturn's plasmasheath.[4] This view diverges somewhat from Cardona and McLachlan who both claim that the earth existed in axial alignment beneath proto-Saturn's south pole, fixed in position Herbig-Haro object style until such time as Saturn's plasmasheath collided with the Sun's, the ultimate cause of the Deluge remembered by the whole world. Post-Deluge, both models posit that polar-axial alignment persisted for some centuries before all the planets finally broke free of Saturn's reign and were thrown into current orbits around the Sun. I posit that the 'throwing into orbit' also included elliptical orbital periods, not just for Venus and Mars, but also Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, resulting in occasional but highly memorable instances of catastrophism and possibly repeated ice ages.
[1] F. de Blois,
"The Etymology of Sabbath". I realise de Bloise concludes in Akkadian etymological derivation, but I believe some of his fundamental assumptions can be challenged.
[2] D. Talbott,
The Saturn Myth (Kindle Edition) pp. 53-55: "This primeval dwelling [Aten] was the “island of Hetep [Rest].”
[3] J. Benner,
Ancient Hebrew Lexicon, H7626
[4] See, for example, W. Thornill & D. Talbott,
The Electric Universe (Mikamar, 2007) p.84 and D. Cardona,
Newborn Star (Telwell, 2019) pp.43-49.