Food for thought: "Even the educated ones can be ignorant."
	YOU ARE IN DARKNESS.
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AV'RAM'S RELIGION

Judaism is the oldest of the religions based on revelation (divine (!) message). Its history is older than 4000 years. Its origins could be identified in the religion of Av'ram (Abraham). Followers of Judaism believe that they are one people, chosen by god to be an example of light and love to all mankind, and guided by an ethical monotheism whose foundations were laid in the time of the patriarchs and elaborated through the Torah [Divine(!) teaching as revealed to Moses]. The heart of the Jewish faith is the belief in one god, the creator and ruler of all.  What the Old Testament's narration tells is that Av'ram (later Abraham) must have had a personal supreme overseer, which was usual  in those days.

• So what was his faith?

• Which supreme overseer did he choose for himself?

• What was his religion when he came to the land of Canaan?

As I have brought to your attention earlier, the land of Canaan was the birthplace of two things which affected the world: The Bible (Byblos-Biblion-Bible), and the letters of our alphabet (Greeks took them in the 19th century B.C.). The part of this land which was to become the home of the Israelite people was named by the Romans, 'Pelishtim', as the Phillistines are called in the Old Testament. The Israelites lived in the southern most part of the coast of Canaan (Dan to Beersheba).

• So what was Av'ram's faith when he came to this land of Canaan?

• What did the locals believe in?

• Were the newcomers influenced by the beliefs of the local people?

• Were the locals influenced by the religion of the newcomers?

The Ugaritic texts were instrumental in our understanding of the Canaanite belief systems. The people living in the land of Canaan were western Semites. They had numerous supreme beings. The chief  of them was named El and its symbol was a bull. El  was the Canaanite version of the Sumerian Enlil, the chief god. This El in time has become El-olam (Eternal god), El-elyon (Greatest god), El-roy (god of vision), and El Shadday (god of the mountains) in the Hebrew community. Anne Drafkorn in an article (Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. LXXV, Part III, 1957) titled ILAN/Elohim writes that Elohim is a parallel entity to ILANI  in the Nuzi texts, and means the figure of the 'god of the household' or teraphim. El is ILU in Akkadian. El and ILU is also IL in Canaan. El is El/Elohim in Hebrew, El/Elah in Aramaic, IL among southern Arabs, el/al LAH among classic Arabs (el LAH eventually has become Allah;  we shall deal with that later). Many names were constructed with El: Ya'kub-El ('let El protect'); Yisma-El ('let El hear'); Yishak-El ('let El smile at me'); El-Ezer ('Let El help me').

Secondary but very close to El we have Baal, which is the god of rain and storm. Baal was called also the rider of the clouds and provider of rain. Baal is the god of life and fertility and the ruler of the earth (The god of wisdom, Enki in Sumer carries the same title).  Baal is equal of the sky-god whose name was An in Sumer and Anu in Akkad. Baal has three daughters. Piday (light), Arsal (earth and ground), Talay (humidity and ground). These three daughters were adopted most probably by the  pre-Islamic Hagarene teaching as Lat, Manat, and Uzza - daughters of the god.  Baal is the god of life, Mot is the god of death. They are in perpetual conflict. When Baal dies Mot comes to life; when Baal comes to life Mot dies. This cycle repeats itself every seven years. With Baal there is abundance, with Mot  there is famine. Baal's wife is Anath. She is the goddess of war. She is called Inanna in Sumer, Ishtar in Akkad, Anat or Astarte in Canaan, Athar in southern Arabia, and Astar in Abyssinia (present Ethiopia). The last two are male and the rest are female due to the fact that the Arab and Abyssinian societies were patriarchal. The Canaanite societies on the other hand were matriarchal, and fertility cult in these societies was very important, like Sumer. All the cults, faiths were based on the fertility cult in Canaan. The statue of the goddess symbolizing the fertility has never been displayed this much and naked in any other culture, as in Canaan. Prostitutes dedicated to the fertility goddess were working at the temples of the fertility goddess in Canaan. There were also male priests wearing woman's clothes in these temples. Priestesses working as prostitutes, and homosexual males were present in the temples in Sumer. These prostitutes had to cover their heads. It is known also that in the earlier periods there were whores among the Jews who were performing sexual intercourse in the name of god. That is why god in Deuteronomy 23:17 orders: "There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel." There is another order from god in Deuteronomy 23:18: "You shall not bring the hire of a whore...into the house of the Lord your god."  These Jewish prostitutes used to cover their faces and their bodies with a veil/vail.

The god of storm Hadad is depicted as holding a lightning and riding a bull. Hadad is the equivalent of Adad in Sumer and Akkad. Adad burns because he uses the lightning and is benevolent because he brings rain, at least that is the belief in Mesopotamia. The Hittite equivalent of Hadad, Teşup is depicted in a similar fashion. According to a myth, castrated priests clothed like a woman used to serve Hadad and the fertility goddess Atargathey (Astarte) accompanying him in the temple built over a rift into which flowed the waters of the flood.

When Av'ram reached  the land of Canaan he had a personal supreme overseer. His children referred to 'Our father's god', 'Abraham's god'. Everyone had a  personal god in Sumer and Mesopotamia in earlier times. Every family had a special god. Av'ram's supreme overseer showed himself either in a human form or in a dream. The tribes and persons of the pre-Islamic era in the region have reportedly established a blood tie - by making a sacrifice - with the supreme being  they wished to worship and made that being either the ancestor or the supreme overseer of that tribe. People used to put the statue or image of that supreme overseer in a special place in their homes and used it as an intermediary in their prayers (This practice continues in Christianity with the cross, and the icons, statues, and images of Jesus and Mary). Each tribal supreme overseer has stayed in its place when the tribe moved to another site. All the tribes have worshipped their supreme beings and those belonging to other tribes as well. When a tribe moved to another site, they adopted the supreme being of that site. And the tribe which had migrated used to come back once a year at their festivals to visit their previous supreme entity. The yearly hac of the Muslims must be the continuation of a practice established long long ago when people came back periodically to the sacred place (called Ka'ba today) to visit the stone al-Hacar al-Aswad. What is striking is that this concept of a personal god continues even in the monotheist Kuran, in the form of guardian angels, guiding angels, recording angels (Kuran - 3:18; 4:166; 6:61; 13:11; 34:40-41; 43:80; 50:17-18; 70:4; 72:8; 82:10-12; 86:4). Especially 82:10 is extremely revealing, where it is written: "There is no doubt that there are guardians and sentries on you."  But the best is 86:4: "There does not exist a being upon whom there does not exist a guardian."

Let's see where this personal god of Av'ram is mentioned. Genesis 17 tells that Av'ram was 99 years old when the supreme entity of the time appeared to him and said: "I am the Almighty god, walk before me and be perfect." In Genesis 28:2 I'zak sends Ya'kub to Padan-aram, to Bethuel (father of Ya'kub's mother), to take him a wife from among the daughters of Laban (brother of Ya'kub's mother), and says: "...And god Almighty bless you.." We know that erecting stones is a Canaanite practice. Suddenly we read that members of Av'ram's family start erecting stones. This could be taken as an indication to the beginning of Av'ram's and his family's adoption of a Canaanite tradition (if we have to go by what is written in Genesis 28:12-22): Ya'kub was going from Beer-sheba toward Haran, night fell and he had to sleep out in the open. He had a dream. Lord, calling himself "I am the Lord god of Abraham your father, and the god of I'zak." Dream went on and this god made promises. Ya'kub woke up and said to himself "Surely the Lord is in this place... This is none other but the house of god, and this is the gate of heaven.." Ya'kub rose up early in the morning.. Set a stone for a pillar, and poured oil upon it.. and he called the name of that place Beth El ('house of El')..."This stone which I have set for a pillar shall be god's house" said Ya'kub. But, if this god is YHVH as referred to in the Old Testament, we know that  he was jealous of other gods, especially the local gods, of which El is the most famous one. When we reach Genesis 31:11 we read that Ya'kub was dreaming again and  the angel of god spoke to him. In 31:13 this angel of god calls himself the "god of Beth El, where you anointed the pillar." This jealous god (supposedly YHVH according to the Old Testament) gives the name of his arch rival as his name. The writers of the Old Testament must have made a very serious mistake here.

• Which supreme being was this?

• If  the god of Avram was YHVH, he should not have associated himself with El. But he did. So, which god was this?

• Which supreme being was this? Was he an angel or the god himself?

In Genesis 35:9-14 Ya'kub leaves Padan-Aram and god appears to him again, calls himself the 'god Almighty' and changes Ya'kub's name to Israel.. and announces that "..a nation and a company of nations shall be of you, and kings shall come out of your loins.." Ya'kub sets  up a (stone) pillar in the place where he talked with the supreme entity, and he pours a drink offering thereon, and he pours oil thereon.. and Ya'kub calls the name of the place where god spoke to him, Beth El ('house of El'). In Genesis 32:9 Ya'kub calls the supreme being, the "god of my father Abraham, and god of my father I'zak." In Genesis 33:18-20 we learn that after leaving Padan-aram Ya'kub comes to Shalem, a city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan. He buys a plot of land, pitches his tent, and erects there an altar and calls  it  'El-elohe-Israel' (Israel's god EL). Here, the Canaanite god El (Baal) becomes Israel's god. In Genesis 35:1 god commands Ya'kub to go to Beth El and dwell there and "make an altar there unto god that appeared to you when you fled from Esau your brother." Here the entity is the one which showed itself to Ya'kub. If you remember, Ya'kub has called him the "god of my father Abraham and god of my father I'zak." If this god is the god of his father, there must be other gods as well, and that is only natural. There were personal gods, family gods, tribal gods, national gods, regional gods, and the gods of the nations living in the lands around this region. Genesis 46:1 and 48:15 also refer to the god of I'zak and Abraham.

Here is another story which indicates that there were personal and family gods around. In Genesis 31:34 Rachel takes the 'images' and puts them in the camel's furniture and sits upon them. Laban searches all the tent and cannot find these images. Rachel says to his father "Let it not displease my lord that I cannot rise up before you; for the custom of woman is upon me" (she is having her period). Laban searches but cannot find the images. Rachel is Ya'kub's wife. Laban is her father. Rachel steals the 'images.' What are these things called 'images'? According to the Nuzi  tablets  they are the teraphim, which are the statues of the family gods. So what Ya'kub's wife steals are the teraphim of the family. We must mention the rule here: If the family have a son, the teraphim goes to him. If the family does not have a son and adopts one, teraphim is inherited by him. The brother of Ya'kub's mother Laban does not have a son, and he adopts Ya'kub and gives him his daughters, two of them - Leah and Rachel. But for the teraphim to stay with Ya'kub, Laban should not marry another woman and have a son. In the meantime Laban's wife delivers a child. Ya'kub's wife Rachel steals the teraphim and conceals them to prevent this child getting it. Which shows that each family has its own supreme being.

The name of Av'ram's god is not known for sure. Sabians used 'Rabb' as the name of god. If Abraham was a Sabian prophet he must have called his god 'Rabb'. The Islamicliterature on Abraham (Ibrahim) suggest that his god was 'Rabb'. This name is extremely important. Did it have a meaning reminding people of a supreme being? Following words may have expressed the meaning of this 'Rabb' in those days: Master, lord, overseer, ruler, chief, teacher. Can you detect anything out-of-this-world? No! Sometimes another name confronts us: 'Hayy.' This name also  appears  in Islam. According to the Islamic reference books 'hayy' means, 'alive, living, everliving, robust, vigorous (god).'

Av'ram took Hagar/Hacar, his female slave and her son supposedly to the desert and left them there, his son was thirsty, Hacar  found water in a well there and called that well Beer la-Hay / Bir la Hay or  Hay's well. Muslims call this Zemzem well. Canaanites' offering their children to god Baal in a river bed, in a pit or by the head of a sacred well, was an ancient and widespread practice. According to some researchers the well called  Beer la-Hay or Zemzem well  was one of those wells. In  I Samuel 14:39 we see the expression: "For the sake of the ever-living god". In Hosea 1:10 we see the expression; "..you are the sons of the living god."  Here the expression,  'living god' stands for 'hay'. This expression at the same time shows the transformation from a family god to a tribal god. In Hosea 4:15 god orders "Do not make vows on the name of god who is Hay." According to Hosea 1:10 god has become a tribal god (Muslims have the same practice: making vows  on the name of Allah is forbidden).

Is Hayy a name or an attribute? Don't forget, Israel's god is Islam's god. The god of the the Old Testament is the god of Kuran. Only the names are different: Rabb, YHVH, Elohim, Allah.. That's all! So let us check Kuran. The name Hay appears also in Kuran as Hayy,  but as an attribute in 2:255: "There is no other god accept Allah.. He is Hayy, ever-living. He is Kayyum, source of omnipotence." According to this expression  Hayy is an attribute and means alive-vigorous.  Cyrus Gordon (Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 41/1, 1989) writes that 'Hay (ya)' in Ugaritic is the name of the Sumerian god Enki (Earth god). There is another name: Shadday. It means 'of the mountains.' In those ancient times mountains were the symbol of power. This must be an Akkadian name brought by Av'ram's family from Mesopotamia. Personal names were made from Shadday. Here I must point out that there are very few god's names in the nomadic tribes, naming begins with settlement. Because man begin attributing human values, characteristics, titles, functions and actions to god. The Av'ram family brought with them their local Moon-god Sin's wife Ningal and this name was deteriorated to Nikkal at their destination. Sin does not exist in Canaan, because there already exists a Moon-god here: Yarih.

Exodus 3:14 tells us that, Moses is asking the god, what name (of god) should he give when he went to the children of Israel. Upon which god replies simply: "I AM WHAT I AM...Thus shall you say unto the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you. (In other words, YHvH) From now on until the eternity this will be my name." Exodus 6:2 tells us the story of how the writers of the Old Testament have transformed Av'ram's personal god to a god of the nation. Do not forget! This YHVH is the god of the nation,  particular  to the children of Israel. If we follow the utterances of this god throughout the Old Testament we learn that there are other gods as well, that this god is a jealous god, that he is in constant conflict with the other gods, in short, YHVH is not  the sole god, not even of Israel. This god declares elsewhere that he was the god of Abraham, Ya'kub and I'zak. So could this be Rabb?  Rabb  should be also Av'ram's personal god. And now this god gives his name as YHWH.  He has become  a national god. We have not reached the level  of monotheism yet. This god will become a sole and universal god later on.

'I AM WHAT I AM' (YHVH), which supposedly is the name of the supreme being was first revealed to Moses. YHVH is also called the  Tetragrammaton ('having four letters'). This god of Moses, was also the god of the patriarchs (or the authors of the Old Testament imagined him as such) and was  known to the Israelites as El Shadday. YHVH (Yahveh in the Bible) is thought to have been derived from the verbal root 'to be' or 'to exist' and also reportedly means 'He who is'. There are no real parallels in the Egyptian or Babylonian pantheons. YHVH is almost certainly older than the time of Moses. There is a reference in the Bible to a much earlier institution of his worship. Now let us have an etymological trip: YAHVEH, in its short version, may be Yah or Yahu (Dervishes in Islamic societies chant repeatedly 'ya huu' during  their collective worship, could these words be related in anyway to this ancient name of the Middle Eastern god? Could this be a remnant of the Hagarene teaching?). The root from the word to be occurs in the Babylonian texts in the form of evu ('to be' or 'to exist'). YAHVEH in the imperfect  tense forms part of proper names such as 'Yavu-ilu' ('ilu'- the god, 'yavu'- exists). When Moses has asked the god his name, god answered 'I am what I am' or 'I am who I am'. That was all. Surely this could not be the name of anything.  It is an expression (we shall see it in detail later). The 'timelessness and permanence' of the god, which we do not see in this passage in Exodus crops up in later versions and becomes prominent especially in the Greek versions.

The name YAHVEH disappeared due to a couple of reasons:

• As Judaism gradually became universal YAHVEH left its place to the much more popular Elohim. More popular name Elohim would become a name valid for other gods and communities as well, and would be used as a proof of the universal dominance of  Israel's god.

• YAHVEH became sacrosanct in time, and turned into a name that was impossible to utter or refer to (The name Allah is in an identical position with YHVH. Islamic belief system teaches the least possible usage of  Allah in daily life. But the desert Arabs and the Selefî-Vahhabî sect preaches otherwise). With this transformation Adonay (My Lord) has entered the stage in the Synagogues (Make note of the closeness between the names Aton-Aten, Adonis and Adonay). Some experts say that the Massoretes have dropped the vowels in YAHVEH due to its sacredness and opened the way to the emergence of Yehova (7-6th centuries B.C.), which does not sound right.

Sabians (These are the 'people of the book' mentioned in Kuran. They the Mandaeans) recognize Abraham as their prophet. According to Ibn Nadim, Ahmad Ibn Abdallah Ibn Salam - who was freed from slavery by Caliph Harun al-Rashid - wrote a book, about which he said: "I have translated this book into Arabic from the book of hanifs who are the people who believe in messenger ıbrahim. They say that they got their suhuf from messenger Ibrahim" (suhuf are the pages which are believed to have had divine revelations in them. In other words their codebook,  sacred book). Jews, Christians and Muslims say that Sabian belief system was in existence when Abraham-Ibrahim was around. Which means that the Sabian belief system predates Judaism. It is written in Deuteronomy 26:5 that Abraham was a Syrian. Syria was called 'Aram' in those days and it included Irak of our day.  If Syria including Irak was called Aram, Abraham must be an Aramaean. Ancient Hebrews spoke Aramaic. The Old Testament also tells that Hebrews and Aramaeans are relatives.

Puzzles and unanswerable questions are the rule rather than the exception when we are dealing with the invented dilemma called faith. Everything related to faith is  based on 'reports' and narrations. Those who do the reporting either orally or in written form are almost always anonymous. Gathering the information and writing it down are done by different groups of people with different backgrounds, interests, and priorities. The result is an extremely unreliable story. The worst  thing is that  people have believed in these narrators, and their texts in those ages. There are many researchers and scholars who are trying to extract the pieces of the long lost reality. In addition to the corrosive, degenerative and deteriorating effects of time there is the symbolism which acts as a shield and a weapon to conceal the non-existence of the 'reality' and to persuade those who are ready to receive their messages. Here is another example: We read in the Old Testament the names of Av'ram's forefathers. They stare at us with mockery as the symbols of the naiveté of believers, because these names emerge from those dark ages as names of the cities in northwest Mesopotamia - Peleg, Serug, Nachor, Terah, Haran, which are located in Padan-Aram  (the 'plain of Aram'). I call  those days the age of 'darkness' where there was no light and 'darkness' acted as a cover to religion, which was and is an  instrument  of hegemony and domination.

Yes! They are  the names of the cities. Interesting? The names of the persons given in Genesis 11:10 are the names of the  places around Haran. Haran, the name of one of the brothers of Av'ram, is a town in southeast Anatolia (modern Harran). Nachor's equivalent is Til-Nahiri. Where was it? No one knows. There are guesses that it should be somewhere in the region of Harran. Av'ram's father is Terah. There are various places with names like, Turah, Torah, Til-Turakki. Torah means 'Goat Hill' ('keçi tepesi' in Turkish). It is on the river Balikh. Av'ram's grandfather is Serug. There is a town called Sarugi to the west of Harran. Another ancestor of his, Peleg, is proved to be the town called Palugi where the river Habur joins the Euphrates. What is  this? Does anybody have an answer? There is one suggestion: Either these persons were tribal chiefs living in these towns or the names of these tribes were given to the towns they lived in. More information is needed.

Semitic Amorites have started  their raids on Mesopotamia and Syria  in 1200s  B.C. They went as far as Egypt. They have established  Amorite towns all around this region. Mari, Haran, Nachor, Qatna, Ugarit emerge as Amorite towns. Then they took Babylon, which became the capital city of Amorites (the renowned Hammurabi was their king about 1750 B.C.). In this Amorite assault which is described as he biggest Semitic assault   in history, Haran has become their centre and the Sumerians withdrew from political life. Studies have showed that these tribal chiefs were in the region of Haran exactly in that period, and there are names, in the Mari texts, like Abam-Ram (Av'ram); Ya'kub-El (Ya'kub); and Ben-Yamin, all of which are Semitic. Ben-Yamin ('son of the right hand') is the son of Ya'kub.  Right hand is god's hand. Right hand is the 'powerful, effective, penalizing, accomplishing'  hand of the god. Thinking symbolically it could be taken as the strength of god? There is no need to point out that being the sacred hand of god, mankind consider the right hand as the good hand. The names of the majority of Ya'kub's sons, are  the names of mountains, and places. These seem to suggest that those tribal chiefs were a line of Amorites. As it is with all the myths, the stories about Av'ram-Abraham, I'zak, Ya'kub are most probably the stories of the tribes carrying these names. Some say that they are actually stories of persons. Persons? Which persons? We don't  even  know if they have ever lived. All these stories came down through the ages by the word of mouth open to all kinds of influences. They were written down at least 1500 years later than the reported  events. As a result, the towns which these tribal chiefs have supposedly visited are found to be non-existent in those ages. Those towns which were written as situated on the southern shores of Palestine, could not be found when excavations were made in those places. The Egyptian works found along the southern shores of Palestine show that the region was under the Egyptian control in those ages. Where is the truth? Who knows? Nobody! What were the origins of these tribal chiefs presumed to have lived in these towns? We do not know for sure. What we know is, in the later periods of Israel's history every child was taught that his/her 'father was an immigrant (or a fugitive) Aramaean.' Their native land according to Genesis 24:10 is the 'land of Aram' (present day Syria). Padan-Aram, 'between the two rivers' is written as 'Mesopotamia' in the Old Testament published in 1958. Genesis 25:20; 28:5; 31:20  tell that the family of Av'ram, Ya'kub, and his cousins were from Aram (Aram=Syria=Irak is very important in our search for the real Av'ram)

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